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Meet an Insurance Industry Expert · Workplace Confessions: Behind Closed Doors

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Elsa Barby.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Don Andrews.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have been friends since sixth grade.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what was really going on, including at work.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer digging into workplace drama from the inside out.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: I built a long career in the beauty industry as a brand educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Every episode we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: And because our guests stay anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Equal Parts Informative and titled.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: First and foremost, let's start at the beginning.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: What was your first paying job?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: My first paying job was in high school.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I worked at a yogurt shop, which kind of then morphed into almost more like a cafe, but it was like a little your shop cafe kind of place.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: My best friend's parents owned it in high school.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really nice because by the time she and I both became of working age, like 15, 16-ish, like her parents could not wait to get us working in the yogurt shop.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us what you do now.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm I've spent my whole career in the insurance world.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I like to joke when people have asked when you meet people or clients, in my case now, what's your background, what's your history?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: I always joke that I've pretty much done everything in insurance except for auditing because it didn't sound very fun to me.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I have done a whole host of things in the insurance world from claims adjuster to underwriting all the way up to being the boss lady of an underwriting department to project manager at the home office with the company I was with for a majority of my career to a field rep with the agents and the district managers in the state of California, to trainer for many years, a corporate trainer setting.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So now, though, in the last few years, I have transitioned into a Medicare agent.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I have my own agency.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Which of all the aspects of insurance do you like the most?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love being a trainer.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I actually miss that almost every week.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: That that is my passion.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I would not mind getting back into that.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I do see my appointments with my clients like a mini training session because a lot of times I'm helping because I do Medicare, I'm helping your turning 65.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So they're new to Medicare, as we call it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a mini training session with them when I meet with them, especially the first time, actually, a lot of sessions, a lot of times to get them going with their Medicare.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I get a little bit of that, but I do miss the classroom setting.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: I miss, I love seeing the light bulbs go on.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: What made you change then?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Why did you leave that part of your career?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I got into the training.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, a lot of times once you get into a role like that, you have to have had some knowledge and experience, right?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're not going to put you in front of a group of people if you don't know much about the industry or had experience.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So by the time I did that, I jumped into the training side of things.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was training new agents and district managers primarily for the company I was with.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had, as I mentioned, I had quite a few roles within the company.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I had learned all different angles of the business, both the field and the corporate side, project management, so forth, the state aspect and so forth.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did that for seven years, the classroom training.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: That one of the big ones was it wasn't a challenge anymore.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I had gotten to the point where every day when I went to class, while I loved being in the classroom, I knew what people were going to ask.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I knew what it was so predictable.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I used to joke that I could do it in my sleep at that point.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the I guess this is not all bad news, but they were starting to push me to go to the next level.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, like a director or an executive level.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't, I never wanted that.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just watched my friends who had done the executive level, and it didn't look like a fun life to me.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then at that same around that same time during that same year, my dad died unexpectedly.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when that moment occurred, I just kind of went, What am I doing with my life?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I just decided to hang it all up.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I walked away from everything.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I sold my house.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: I walked away from the career that I knew, I felt like it was a dead end and it just it was time for a change.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I moved, I was up in the LA area and I moved back to Orange County to be closer to mom and friends from college.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I literally just kind of walked away from everything.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't regret it for a second.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So glad you have so exciting.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say is the best part about your job?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: The best part is insurance is complex.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's most people, it the feeling about insurance is it's really frustrating and annoying, and I really don't want to have it, but I have to have it.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I enjoy, especially in my current role as a Medicare agent, is helping people understand, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: We spend a lot of money on insurance, and I find I'm actually not shocked anymore, but I used to be, we spend a lot of money and nobody's taken the time to explain it what it is you're buying.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I always joke, where else do you go and throw thousands of dollars into a cart and not pay attention to what it is you're buying?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Especially with seniors, I love knowing that I'm helping them because I look at them, all of them, even the just turning 65 who aren't that much older than me at this point.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I look at them as like my mom.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I'm helping my mom every time I help somebody.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I help my mom with hers, right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's what I try not to lose sight of is knowing I'm helping other people's moms or dads or uncles or aunts or whatever.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Such a gift to be an expert in something that's so hard for everyone else and be able to translate it into stories that they can understand, right?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, simplifying is really important.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I never try to go the angle of dumbing down because I never want someone to I a lot of the people I'm helping are highly educated, long, great careers people, right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a difference I always think in terms of it versus dumbing down versus simplifying.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: What's the hardest part about your job?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: My current role as the Medicare agent, I would say the biggest thing, and has been uh not a shock, but I it has been surprising to me at moments, is highly regulated.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because Medicare is the government, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew that going into this when I started down this path.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the amount of compliance and regulation that exists, especially for us as agents, and I part of me goes, that's great, because seniors need to be protected, right?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's really important.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: The flip side is as an agent, some of the requirements that we're you know asked to go through, especially when we're enrolling people into plans and changing plans, doctors, and so forth, are just it's really specific and really to the point where sometimes honestly it's it stresses me out.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I lose sleep over it.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, am I doing this right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Am I dotting my eyes and crossing my T's?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been a big learning curve.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting, it's been a couple years now, so I'm getting much more familiar with what we have to do and right the specifics and the things we need to do.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: But oh, it was scary at first.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was really scary.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about your industry, what would it be?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is a great segue.
• 8:40
  unknown: Yeah.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: When I speaking specifically in terms of the Medicare piece of my career, it would be to can we simplify a little bit for everybody involved?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those of us that are helping clients, helping seniors, and then the seniors themselves.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: What is it about the insurance industry that drew you?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I always joke that nobody goes to college to get into insurance.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's true, it's just a reality.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's probably one or two or ten people on the planet that you know there is an insurance degree, believe it or not.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: They do exist, but they're very rare.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was by accident.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I graduated from UC school and needed to get a real job, right?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually went my degree is in criminal justice.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I went to school with the idea of being an FBI agent.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ah cool, amazing.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then what happened?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're thinking, what happened then?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then I was lucky enough to have through connections two different people who were currently FBI agents when I graduated that I got to interview.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when I graduated from college, I got to interview them.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I also then started looking into what does it take?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like how do you even how can you even apply to be in the FBI, right?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was 22 at the time, right?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when I started looking into it and I did the interviews of the FBI agents, and to then the good news was they did both of them, they did two different areas of the FBI.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it was good.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let me look at the landscape, right?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And how this their thoughts on the FBI.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And a few things deterred me at that point.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: One was at the time, the FBI is always changing what's required to get hired based on the knee.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So at the time, I either had to have a JD or a high-level master's or more in accounting, because that's what they were looking for.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I needed to speak fluently, preferably both, but at least one, either Mandarin or Farsi.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and what happened?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't understand the problem.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, okay.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then I interviewed the two FBI agents, asked them a series of questions, and they both one of the themes they both came back with was if you are not the kind of person who can go to work, see some really horrific things, and then go home and act like just live your life, this is not the career for you.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, between the requirements and then them telling me that, I knew myself in at 22 well enough to know, go, no, I'm gonna go home and cry every day.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, I'm not that tough.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm tough, but I'm not that tough.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you the shortest version.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a job fair, and that was, of course, from in the 90s, no internet, no fancy ways to get jobs.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I got dressed up in the one suit I had bought for myself, and I got my resume printed out on really fancy paper.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: The heavy stock had a nice like texture to it, like tint base.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I took I marched around to HR departments, and then I went to a job fair one day and went around to the different tables and introduced myself.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the insurance companies there gave me a chance, hired me.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I remember getting that first job thinking it'll just give me real job experience.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then next thing I knew, it had been 10 years and I'm an insurance.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I had been getting promotions every couple of years and getting pretty substantial pay increases, and had really become, I look back on it now and I think, gosh, I had really become your career woman.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was my whole world was my job and my promotions and the living the corporate life.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not all good for sure.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely some positives.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: I always say that a big reason I am where I am today is because of the insurance industry.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I bought my first house because of the insurance industry, right?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I bought my first nice car because of the insurance, right?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: So those have led me to where I am today.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't complain too much.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: The flip side of it is I definitely got wrapped up in the corporate what do they call it rat race, right?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: But two challenges I really struggled with over the years in the insurance industry is two things that I'm not and that are very common in the insurance industry.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: One is it's very male dominated, it's getting better.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say in the last 10 to 12, 15 years it's gotten better.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: But when I started, I was oftentimes one of the only women in the room.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that carried its own challenges for sure.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is it's a fairly conservative industry, and I am not.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And insurance is pretty political.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I have many times through my career felt myself feeling very fish out of water.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I always say, like when I talk to my friends' kids that are in college or starting out on their cruise, I always say, you're gonna take a lot of different paths in life.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Some are gonna be some you chose, you wanted, some are gonna be.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: What am I doing?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get good and bad from all of it, right?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the challenge is in a really male-dominated industry, you have to walk a fine line of not coming off like a bitch, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because the automatic thought is that she's being a bitch.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to learn, and luckily I had some wonderful mentors who guided me along the way, especially in those important meetings where I was the only woman in the room, was to learn to be like, I'm here, right?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm here for a reason, and I have thoughts and I have ideas and I have maybe suggestions, and to not be steamrolled over or ignored.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: What's a myth about your job or your industry that makes you crazy?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest one is putting my customer client hat on, is all insurance are trying to is trying to do is rip us off.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're just trying to rip us off, they're trying not to help us or pay our claims, and that's just the the general consensus, right?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: With customers slash clients.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: There are companies that are that way.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have worked for one and they literally told us try not to pay claims.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dunyem.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't there very long because I didn't sit right.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's what insurance does.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: There are better companies or really great companies out there who do write by customers and do as they should be doing for customers.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: The I think the confusion too, and I used to train my new agents on this, is nobody likes insurance.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's something we all know we have to have, but it costs a lot of money and it's really annoying.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And but as soon as you really need it, you're so glad you have it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I now as an agent, I try to remember that, right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: That this is where people are, right?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Mentally.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing I try to clarify is how the insurance world works.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Previously, I was primarily personalized, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: So auto, home, heavy, some life insurance, and commercial insurance.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And people also the perception is when you collect that thousand dollars of premium from me, you everybody's off having a good time with it.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not the case at all.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Just a quick sort of explainer again.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: I used to give my new agents that I found worked really well, using$100 of premium because the math is easy that way.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would say, okay, for the$100 of premium you collect from somebody, how much of that does the insurance company use towards claims?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And people were always super low.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: $20,$20 of it,$25 of it.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: It usually runs in the$40 to$60 range.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right off the top is what is used for claims.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, for an insurance company,$40, that's a good, right?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: They want to be closer to$40.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: You start getting closer to$60 or more of that$100 of premium, they're starting to be upside down, right?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: The insurance company, it's like, okay, we're paying out more than we're gonna take in potentially.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So then people go, where does that other say$40,$50,$60 go to?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: We still haven't considered the operating cost for that company.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: All the employees, all the buildings, all the cars for the adjusters, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: All the overhead, right?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: That in on a good day runs between 20 to 30 percent for a company, which is actually pretty lean.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of insurance companies run a lot more on the lean side than other companies.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So then they're going, okay, that's only$20 left, roughly$20,$25.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: What happens with that?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Believe it or not, that's not all profit.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Insurance companies by the departments of insurance are required to stay solvent.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: They have to have a savings account, essentially.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they have to stay in a certain range with that savings account.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: So an extra$10 goes towards that savings account of each hundred dollars of premium.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: At the end, there's not a whole lot of profit.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Insurance companies are not profit companies.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: So something interesting for those that you talk to going forward, the misconception that insurance companies are just rolling in the dough.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're not most of the money gets paid right back out.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Wish I had jumped into the agency side much sooner because the income possibilities and the freedom, right, to do as as more as you please.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, five, 10 years, they have to work really hard.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's miserable, right?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: But usually most agents, if they really crank their first five or 10 years, then they're making well into the six figures and enjoying life pretty nicely.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I had known that then.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the I, as I got older, I became more attracted to the idea of making money for myself and not somebody else.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the time that you get as well, and the freedom, yes, because I can go to lunch on a Tuesday with my mom if I want to.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody, I don't have to tell anybody.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if I was to tell like a 20-something now getting into the business, I would absolutely say, Hey, there's two paths you can take.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can go corporate side with companies or you can go field, right?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Agency side.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you think you can make it work, it's not easy, but that is definitely the path to take if you're going to go into insurance.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard, it's hard, like I say, for the first five, 10 years for those people.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I go, if you start that at 25 by 35, you're living as you are there jobs that are totally safe from being replaced by AI?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, good question.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was just talking to a couple of colleagues about that recently.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of companies are already using AI for underwriting and claims.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them more have gone more down that route than others, but just to give you an example from the underwriting standpoint, what companies are doing, person wants their home insured.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're using a drone to check the house.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: A person doesn't go look at it anymore.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: They use a drone to look at the house.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's a person controlling the drone, right?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: But you maybe only need one or two of those instead of 10 of those people.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I tell people with AI is it's amazing in a lot of respects.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is it going to eliminate jobs?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: But no, it'll be less people to do those jobs, I think, is what we'll be looking at.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe they need one or two people to go run the drone and go look at houses and neighborhoods and so forth, make sure they're insurable and so forth.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then they just run the rest through AI using county records and stuff, as far as how many stories, how many, right?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: The different aspects of the home.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then they use those two things to determine whether they all insured the property or not, is one example.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: On the claim side, the impression I've gotten is they're more simple claims so far that companies are your pretty clear-cut accidents, not major accidents.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're just running a lot of that through AI now.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you might need one or two claims adjusters instead of 10 to handle the caseload, right?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: The number of claims.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do you panic at all when you hear in the news that Medicare cuts are imminent?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Are you following the ticker on the Oh yeah?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: That is probably the most common question I get these days, including my mom, who I think for a while there called me once a week when it was really in the news there last year, called me once a week and said, Does this mean they're getting rid of my career?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Does this mean you're getting rid of my?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: It is something else I'm definitely keeping an eye on.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: One from the perspective of being able to inform clients, right?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: But also, what does this mean for me for my career going forward?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is the juicy part.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: What is the wildest, weirdest, or most unforgettable thing that you've ever witnessed at work?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then again, this is not anonymous.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: It it ties back into the male-dominated being one of the only women.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Do you share?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: I have sadly in my career.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Early in my career, I did have an executive who a couple of on a couple of occasions was inappropriate verbally and sexually harassed me.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was in my late 20s, much younger, single, right?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to make my career.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Amazingly enough, the two times.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: He said inappropriate things to me were at social things with other colleagues.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was lucky enough to have another male colleague who told him to back off to knock it off.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: So they are out there.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: They will stand up.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: There are the guys out there that will stand up, right?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I was after the fact, I just told him.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was that's back to the assertive.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to handle it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: I learned how to be pretty assertive and not let people mess with me in various ways.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thankful to have him as well.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was the same guy because it was the same department social group.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had that experience.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: I never, it wasn't to the level where it felt like I needed to go to HR and open that whole can of worms.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: We seemed to have nipped it in the bud.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Had it gotten worse or continued, obviously I would have.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the couple instances that it occurred, then it stopped.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: He was, he could have been my dad.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was a lot older than me.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was an executive.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: So there was that.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other, I think I'm thinking of along those lines, but a little different, is in my days as a trainer, we had a training team.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And our classes for the new agents, they would come in from all over the country for the week.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: So every week we'd have a new group of say 30 to 45 people in our classrooms and all from all over the country.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had a facilitator, a training team.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it was one of my colleagues, my fellow facilitators, fellow trainers, who uh he would, and I had seen him do it to others, he would just all of a sudden lose it.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: He'd something would set him off and he'd go into rage.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as I mentioned, I had seen him do it to a couple other people.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I kind of knew, okay, tread lightly with this guy and so forth.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of times we'd share the class for the week.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there'd be two or three facilitators that would rotate, right?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so one week I was doing class with him, and I ran over a little bit.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: I had done the morning session.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: I ran over about 15 minutes worth that still needed to be done in the afternoon, right after lunch.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what we normally did is whoever you were doing class with, you'd touch base at lunch and go, hey, got about 15 more minutes.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Just need to wrap up from the morning, this section of the curriculum.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I can either do it, or if you're good jumping in and just doing the wrap-up and then heading through the afternoon.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I that's kind of what I said to him, exactly like I'm saying it to you.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that was normal.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: We did that as a team the day I did this that I'm thinking of specifically, he was not having it.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we were in a conference room.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I had we had stepped aside into a conference room to chat for a few minutes privately about all this.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he just, it was like a switch went off, and he just started screaming at me.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: How dare you fucking go?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was he stands in front of the door and blocks me, so I can't get out.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And starts screaming.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there's tables, there's chairs, there's a podium, there's all kinds.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm this is now going through my head.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: This guy's losing it.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I just kind of stood there.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was so in shock.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was it was like rage.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I again I knew he had done this to others and he still worked there, which was my other issue, but so there's that.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I kind of just stood there.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then when he simmered down for a second, I just again assertively looked him dead in the eye and I said, You need to move away from the door and let me out of here.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he did, thank God.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: All the while screaming and yelling at me as I'm walking out.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then I just turned as I was leaving the door and I said, Just so you know, I'm headed to our boss, the vice president we work for.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to let them know that you've done this again.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then he followed me down the hall.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very aggressive, very hostile.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had a situation in class where I had a student, by the way, that one and that time it ended up in HR.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: More happened.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: He finally ended up getting fired because he did it to somebody else after me.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: But he was so bad that they hired security for a week after to the entrance of the building to be sure he didn't come in and do work police police violence for being fired.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's how bad he was.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, there was that.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't like strong women, we figured out.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't like women that spoke up.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll just give you another quick example.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of my classes had an attendee, an agent attending class, and we were doing an activity, and he didn't like the way the activity was going.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we gave away this very funny, like monopoly money for activities that and then they could use it.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: We had auctions for branded things.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Fun because they tried to make it fun, yeah.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: We stop class every once in a while and do a little auction for things, right?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: With their bucks, right?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he didn't like that I didn't reward him and his table the appropriate number of bucks.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: So he took his bucks that he had on his desk.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can part partially laugh about this, but these are grown people, by the way.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are grown adults.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: These are adults.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I used to always say you can see what they were like when they were kids.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: But he takes his stack of bucks and he in front of the whole class stands up and looks at me and goes, You want your money or you want to use your money me to use your money?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Pick it up and he throws it on the ground in front of the whole class.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: What a dick.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: These are grown people.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: This was not a child.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: He is the over the age of 21.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: He was well over the age of 21.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can still see his face.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I very calmly just stared at him with this like I don't know if I should even say what my brain was thinking.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you can say it.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can't, you can say it.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: My brain immediately went to go fuck yourself.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't come out as I kept it in.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: The professional that you are.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the whole class, it was silent.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: You could heard a pin drop.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: They knew.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And next break came up a few minutes later, and I went immediately went up to him and I said, You and I need to chat.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Put me back to my assertive.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I took him in a conference room and I said, You do that one more time, and you are on the road home, and you are not gonna be a agent with this company.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I will make sure of that.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you get to decide how you want to conduct yourself going forward, but I'm not playing this game.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he was apologist.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this was a grown man.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: How was he after?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: How was he after?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he was pretty quiet, and because the rest of the class wanted nothing to do with him.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were like, Well, that's not what this is a professional setting.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's one lesson that you've learned along the way, the hard way?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest one when I look at just career in general, and I know I'm not alone in this, is I lost sight, especially in my late 20s and 30s during that promote, make more money, right?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Bigger titles, all that.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I lost sight of the work-life balance for a long time.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I really did become such a career woman.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I look back, and it was around my late 30s, around the time my dad died.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, I haven't done some things I probably would have wanted to do if I had stopped being so focused on my career, some if I had mellowed out on that.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I will say it's something I admire.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: People sometimes have opinions on this, but of the younger generations, they have a better grasp on the work-life balance, I think.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't fault them for it because I also saw my career more than once the person who passed away, and they were filling their job pretty quickly and entering their office pretty quickly.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I did, I learned that the hard way.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I made it such a focus, especially in my 30s when a lot of my friends were doing other things like getting married and having babies as well.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't, I was so into the career.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not a regret, but it is something I look back and go, would I have done some things differently?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's the question related to that.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned earlier that you started, you didn't think you'd carry on insurance, but you started and then you looked up and it was 10 years later.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have advice for our listeners about how to break that cycle?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because the same thing happened to me.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: I looked up and literally decades had gone by, and I was like, Whoa, wait a minute.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do over.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get a choice here.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: What's something that that one of our listeners could do to prevent the that time from going by?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's it sounds corny, but something I used to train my new agents on was once a month, whatever day works best for you, figure out which day is a little quieter for you, maybe.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a Saturday, maybe it's not even a weekday.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Make an appointment for an hour or two with yourself.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Look at your butt business.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: What do you like that's going well?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think needs to be worked on or changed?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And how can you do you need to seek help for that?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Do you need to evaluate evaluate your budgets, right?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And along with that, look at do you need to shift money?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the way you're spending money on marketing isn't working and you need to look at other opportunities.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: But sit down and make that appointment.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go get your nails done or go get new tires on the car or whatever.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Literally sit down in a space where you're not bugged by anybody for an hour or two.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, the agents I knew, successful agents I knew who did this, they got to where they could do it once a quarter instead of once a month because they were so dialed in on what was going on, and especially in their business and then their personal world.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because that was the point is doing soul searching for an hour or two.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: However, frequently I used to tell my new agents once a month, don't let a month go by without sitting down with yourself.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: But we get so caught up and so busy in everybody else, work-wise, personal, right, family, all that.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: That I think, especially again as women, we lose sight of.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, I need to stop and think about me for a minute.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: What keeps you going when the work gets tough?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: One, yeah, the bills need to be paid, right?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's always a motivator ultimately.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the other piece is knowing that I'm helping seniors like my mom.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes people make the assumption that everybody has a lot of family around to help.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of seniors who do not, especially the older they get.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking of a client in particular, she's in her late 80s.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: She's trying to navigate this all pretty much on her own.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I sometimes think I'm the grandchild, right?
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Her grandchild, but I'm the person that helps her with her Medicare and her, when she gets a bill, she doesn't understand, or she needs a different doctor or whatever.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: So on the tough days, I try to remember that what I'm doing matters, right?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's important to them.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it is confusing, and they do need that guidance.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I will admit, working with seniors, it can get frustrating because they get really confused really easily and so forth.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I've actually learned ways to hopefully prevent that.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: One of them, by the, for example, is I put things in writing more.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because verbally I find I can't just blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and they'll retain and know exactly what to do or whatever, or provide documentation of some type.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I just try to remember that the thing I always try to remember too, and that I again used to train my new agents on is people utilize their insurance at the worst times of their lives.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's typically your worst moments where you need your insurance coverage.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: And whether it's Medicare for a surgery or it's your house, part of your house just burned down, or you had a horrible car accident, or whatever, right?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And to not lose sight of that.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I've always shared is the first time you deliver deliver a life insurance payment, you'll never look at insurance the same again.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I bet.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because you have this grieving, usually family member who is distraught and lost and heartbroken, and then you hand them a check for$250,000, and you see their stress start to melt away, literally, like in front of your eyes.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're still crying, they're still heartbroken, but there it's a moment of oh.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's more like you said, than just let me sell a policy.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're literally helping people get through horrible times a lot of times.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I try to remember that as well.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what insurance does.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: To wrap things up, thank you so much for your time today.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure our listeners are, I'm sure their heads are spinning about insurance because of what they thought and what it is are completely different.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for that explanation.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: And with that, we want to thank you for sharing your story with us.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: You've officially joined the ranks of the brave and the bold.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's it for this week's confession.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: We've laughed, cringed, and maybe questioned our own career choices.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got a workplace confession of your own for all ears, hit us up at our email address.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Your support helps us keep the secrets flowing.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, keep your badge clicked, your coffee's drunk, and your stories wild.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.