Today, I am enjoying my birthday. This was a little cake that was given to me by my office staff this morning by my office manager, Jenn. It is my birthday today, and it is a great time to consider where you are, where you are going, where you’ve been, what kind of a difference you are making in your life, and what kind of a difference you are making in the life of others. When I think about things like this, music goes through my head, through my brain. I remember the song of a movie that I’ve always wanted to see, but never have. There was a remake a couple of years ago, but the original movie stared Michael Caine in 1966 called Alfie. I’ve never seen, but the reason the movie comes to mind today is because of the theme song of that movie. It was a song originally by Dionne Warwick called “Alfie” asks “What is it all about?” Isn’t that true today and every single day of your life. What is it all about?
We get up every single day. We go to bed at night. We sleep about a third of our life away and during those waking hours what is it that we’re doing that makes our life satisfying? Most of my awake hours are spent here at the office: engaging with people, engaging with clients, making sure that the right thing is done, and again, what is it all about? Isn’t it about making a person’s life better than when you originally met them?
I was reminded of this this last week. As I do every single morning, I spent time looking through the paper: looking at the headlines, reading the editorials, looking at the comics, and scanning the obituaries for names of individuals that I know and maybe how they’re connected. This is often how I find out that someone is no longer with us that was just days before. I had one of these Ah-Ha moments. In fact, Jenn, who provided the cake today, said there’s been kind of a break in death claims for a while. We had three right away after the first of the year and then a little break. Then last week again the name of an individual came up who I’ve actually worked with for 30 years.
When we look at all the work that we do, and when I look at how I spend my day and the different planning that we do, the thing that I am the most thankful for, the thing that I am the most grateful for, the thing that I believe I make the biggest impact, the thing that that provides the hugs in my life (that’s where the name of my book came from, Investments Don’t Hug: Embracing the Life Insurance Asset), the place where the hugs come from on a consistent basis are from clients who are Life Insurance clients, and the hugs typically don’t come because someone has died. It’s just a different mindset that the individual has. It’s a mindset of making sure that everything is ok. We’ll be ok. Family will be alright. Children will be alright. Spouses will be ok. It’s the hugs that I have gotten from clients over the years from just making sure that everything is going to be okay.
So, I read the paper. I saw the obituary. I made sure that my schedule was going to be taken care of in such a way that I would be able to connect with the individual that I needed to talk to during the time of the upcoming wake, which was this last week. I made sure that I was there. I was there with family and friends standing in line, waiting my turn. And where people left cards and good wishes and condolences, I was able to have an embrace, hold a hand, and say that all the work that we did long ago was going to play out. Don’t think about the money. Don’t worry about the bills. We’ve got this.
That’s what I want to leave you with today because this is a very boring topic that people don’t wish to discuss. These are concerns that people wish that they could just put off because they think it’s never going to happen to them. Yet, it happens with everyone. Whether we have clients here, locally, or whether we have clients that we interact with over the internet, we still make that personal connection one-on-one. You can talk to someone through a ‘type of program’ and go online and go through the algorithms and purchase whatever it is that you believe you need for your family. Or, you can have a person who will literally look eyeball-to-eyeball with you whether it’s across a desk or whether it’s across miles who will ask the right questions about your dreams and your hopes to make certain that the life that you have planned for yourself and for all those people that you love happens because we’re talking about the “love product” (life insurance). That it plays out exactly the way that you want it to at exactly the time that you need it and as quickly as possible because there’s so many other things that will be happening in your loved ones’ lives that they have to deal with. This, they don’t want to have to deal with. You want to be certain that you can create an estate income tax free at the moment it’s needed and without delay. So again, I think of that old song from 1966 by Dionne Warwick, “What is it all about?”
Thank you for joining me today. If you would like to know more about me, my team, my book Investments Don’t Hug: Embracing the Life Insurance Asset which is available on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, or Audible, if you want to find out more detail about how we work with people nationwide, explore our website at www.investmentsdonthug.com.
