Latest / The Inner Wealth Podcast / Ep145. The Art of Insurance: A Conversation with Meaghan Dowd on Defending Your Wealth.

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Ep145. The Art of Insurance: A Conversation with Meaghan Dowd on Defending Your Wealth. · The Inner Wealth Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I love seeing people passionate about things.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I love feeling the passion that people have for things and I love fueling the passion that people have for things.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: When I see someone passionate about something, I want to do everything I can to amplify it, to help them just multiply that passion and get the benefits and provide the benefits of that passion to the world, to society.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I never thought there could be anybody passionate about protecting people's lifestyles and making sure that they are in awesome financial state and defending their wealth.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Now Megan has been with me in the inner wealth world since pretty much I jumped into coaching and I refer to Megan, refer to her as my little sister sometimes, because I've watched her grow up, both personally, professionally and in the world, and really step into her own power.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: In today's episode, I'm going to introduce you to Megan and I want you to feel and experience what a truly passionate person is, and you're going to feel it and you're going to hear it in her words and in the love that she has for educating people in the insurance space.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Stand by to have your socks blown off, because when I first really noticed and understood how passionate Megan was, it it just I mean it opened up a whole new world for me, that anybody can be passionate about anything at any time.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: You ever wake up feeling like there's something missing in your life.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: You ever feel the need to escape your business.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Are you running your life or is your life running you?
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I'm Mike Kitko and I'll help you design and create a life so authentic and aligned with who you really are.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: You'll get excited just to wake up.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I'll help you create real wealth, success and freedom from the inside out.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Inner Wealth Podcast, where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Today I've got a.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I've got a really I say this about everybody but I've got an awesome special guest.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: And when I talk about why Megan is special to me is because Megan is she's a friend and a client and she's been a longtime follower of me and Angie and InterWealth Global.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: But when I think of Megan, I think of she's like my little sister.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: It's almost over the course of my time in business and my time coaching, I've watched Megan grow up and it's been really, really fun.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Not that she's like she was ever a kid, but it's just been fun watching Megan grow up, bloom, blossom, get married, have children, start to build business, become a new author.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: It's really been fun watching you grow up, megan, and every day is a new adventure and we never arrive, but it's been fun watching you grow up and today I want to.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: My intentions are for the rest of my Facebook, or my Facebook community and my social media community, to get to know Megan, for Megan to start to get the visibility that she deserves and because she can help a lot of people and she's an expert in the insurance field and the craziest part is, she's passionate about insurance.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: So, ladies and gentlemen, everybody across social media, meet Megan Dowd.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, mike, and I apologize if you all can hear the background noise.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: There's a little work going on, so hopefully it's not too bad.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: But I appreciate being here and super excited to talk about my journey through becoming an expert in insurance.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Expert and passionate about insurance 100%.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we talked a little bit offline about whether to reschedule this because of the noise in the background, but we hey, we just decided to jam, so we're going to fight through any distractions there are All right.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: So viewers, anybody watching, put your name in the comments, let me know.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Let us know where you're coming from.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I want to have a dialogue with you guys.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: I want you included.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: This isn't just me and Megan talking, but it's interacting with you guys.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Let us know if you have any questions.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: As time goes on in the comments, so throw your name, throw your location in.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Time goes on in the comments.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: So throw your name, throw your location in.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: But, megan, listen.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: First question why are you so passionate about insurance?
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I didn't start off that way.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I started off like most people in the insurance world where I kind of fell into it, got a job in college just processing some paperwork and as I was doing it I really learned a little bit more about what my dad does, which he's an attorney and he does like medical malpractice and sues people when they don't have enough insurance and realize a lot of that could be fixed up front.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: But then the other thing I really realized is I was that bad 16 year old driver that got into you know a few fender benders and would tell my parents just file the claim, just file the claim.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: You know there's commercials every day telling you you you can get insurance for cheaper.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: What I didn't realize is, even if those companies were available, they may not have been at the right limits from liability protections to protect the net worth that my parents were working on.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: It may not have been the right coverage for the cars they're driving and where they want to get them repaired.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: So there's just a lot behind the scenes that, again, even as a 16-year-old driver, I didn't know much about.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: But now that I'm in the shoes trying to help guide clients through that, I realize how much of a jeopardy I put my parents into by being quote-unquote ignorant about just what insurance really does and why there's so many options out there.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: It's not because they're all the same, it's because they're all so different, and making sure they align with your lifestyle is really what's driven me to be so passionate about this, because it is very unique, based on what you choose to do day to day.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So looking through your book and we're going to discuss your book in a little bit this is Megan's new book Protect your Lifestyle Make Empowered, educated and Effective Personal Insurance Decisions.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk a little bit about the book in a bit.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: But looking through and reading the book, what I noticed is, first off, is I mean, I've always outsourced my insurance.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I hire an agent and I'm like you solve that shit.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I don't want anything to do with it.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: So but looking through and understanding the different aspects of insurance, it is very unique to the individual.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Each person has unique needs and it's tailoring insurance to your exact lifestyle.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: So is that kind of what you help people do on a regular basis?
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: It is and, like I say to your point, there's a lot of insurance agents out there.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Most people just rely on them, but there's the difference between an insurance agent and an insurance advisor.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: An agent's going to take your order.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: You're going to tell them what you need as a consumer.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: They're going to do what you say and they're not going to advise on if that coverage is appropriate or not.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: What you really want and what this book allows you to do, and what I focus on primarily, is helping clients understand what their needs are and what the policies that they need align with them, and then implementing those as necessary.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: It really is a fascinating world that I got to admit, I know very, very little about, because that that's something that somebody else does for me instead of, but it's probably time to, you know, and Angie's on the line here.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Angie's here, and Melissa Edwards stamps is here, and and Tam Tamara Lynn Bellow is here, like every time we have an interview.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: So, thank you, tam.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: You know, angie and I we don't.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: We don't know a lot about our insurance policies.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I got to admit I've got business insurance, I've got personal insurance, I've got, you know, we've got liability insurance, we've got our home, obviously, but we don't.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I can say for certain that, looking through and reading your book, we don't know anything about the insurance policies we have.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And again, we'll dive into that.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: But listen, go back to the beginning of your time as in the insurance field.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: What was that like and why?
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Like, tell us about the developmental path that you took.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: How did you get?
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Because I know a conversation you and I had probably going back a year, maybe a year and a half ago.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: It's like you were being highly recruited by multiple companies to seek out your expertise.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: You're not just and you're not an agent, but you're not just an insurance agent or a short, you're, you're like, an expert in your field.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: You're, you are.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: You are industry wide known and people seek you out.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: That's why you wrote a book about insurance.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: It's not just you're there to advise somebody, you're, you're a powerhouse in this field.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: How did you get there?
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: What did that look like?
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Um Pat.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: So I would say it starts with an machine.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: It's understanding.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Again, there's a lot of different insurance products out there to sell and I really knew at a young age that I wanted to support personal lines.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Specifically, I wanted to work with families and what they're doing.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: I wanted nothing to do with the commercial side, which is where a lot of my counterparts go in and there's a lot of noise.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: So I think one learning where the noise wasn't allows you to shine a little brighter than when there's a lot of competition.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: So, if I'm being honest, that was one of the reasons I chose personal lines is there's not too many people that want to niche this world back eight, nine years ago when I decided niche.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: Now there's a lot of us that like to do the high net worth.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: But I think the other thing that makes me very unique is I love to have the hard conversations.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: I love to read the contracts.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: I have a memory for the fine details in contracts and then being able to break it down in layman's terms to the consumers and or what we call my industry centers of influence, who send us business and we support them.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: There was just, or there is just, this natural relationship that I'm able to build, and for me, it comes just from a place of wanting to help and treating people like I want my grandma to be treated when it comes to education and not feeling salesy, and so my brand has really built itself around Megan's.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: An educator, she's going to know what to do she's going to know how to get it done, but she's not going to try and sell you anything.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Like Megan, you know I would love to close the deal, don't get me wrong.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: But my motive at the end of the day is not to close the deal, it's to make sure the people I engage with understand what their needs are, where they need to get that insurance and how to avoid those you know potential large, financial, devastating gaps.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: And then that's when I learned that people it takes a long time for people to trust you, especially in icky insurance sales.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: People just feel like you're the car salesman.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with car salesmen, but we get labeled with them, and so for me it was also about changing that reputation or that label that gets put with insurance agents, and I wanted people again just to feel comfortable to tell me everything in their life, not feel like it was going to jeopardize their underwriting, and really be an advocate for who they are, what they're doing.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: I then had the lovely childhood upbringing of being at a dinner table out at the farm with my dad and his brothers that are all attorneys, so I heard some of the horror stories that would happen and just by piecing things together, I've really been able to kind of foresee like what's ahead for these clients and understand some of the lifestyles that they're living, whether that's trust or LLCs, or maybe they have a family farm or an employee such as a nanny working on premise.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: These are all things that had I not kind of heard in my life throughout my childhood, I don't know if I really would have understood the importance of putting these policies and being proactive.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: And my dad always said you don't want to end up in a courtroom without documentation.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: So, if I'm being completely honest, a lot of my education started because I just wanted to make sure I divulged everything to people so they could never say you didn't tell me that when we went to court and there was like an uncovered claim because in my beginning years I had no idea what I was doing I literally had like a check sheet that was like all right, you do the replacement cost estimator and then it's 321, 300,000 liability, 2000 medical payments, $1,000 deductible, and while that's not bad, there's just so much more to insurance than that.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: And so as I went through the stages different companies I learned just the importance of risk management with insurance and how they pair nicely together, and so I would say that's really what makes me distinguished from an aspect of I'm not a salesperson.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: I have no want to sell you anything.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: I would love to help you implement the right program and get the right needs met, but that's really my goal is to help you sleep better at night.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: And you said one word in there and I'll go back to that in a second but something that just stuck out to me, that you know you've said it before, but it just hit me at a different level right now.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: But I remember being on a phone call with you and again, it's just coming from my limited perspective and worldview, right, I'm like nobody wants to be in insurance.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Come on, let's be honest.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: But nobody wants to be in insurance, nobody really wants to be in mortgage, nobody wants to be.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: And then there are certain fields that I just thought you're just doing it because you have to, or that's an avenue for money.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: But I remember being on a phone call with you one time when we were just unpacking things and I said, megan, do you really want to be in the insurance industry?
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: And you're like, yes, I was like, but are you settling or do you really want to be in the insurance industry?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And you said, yeah, I really want to be here.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Like, are you, are you passionate about it?
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: You're like, um, yes, and and that was hard for me to comprehend that that, that level of passion and that level of interest was inside of you and you really do give a shit about people's wellbeing and their, their, their lifestyle, protecting their lifestyle through insurance, and that was evident.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: But the word that you just said, you are an insurance educator.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: This goes beyond just, and you said some people just take people's orders.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: This isn't about that.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: This is about educating people to their fullest, your fullest capabilities of everything, all the moving parts of their life and that's obvious in your book of everything, all the moving parts of their life, and that's obvious in your book all the moving parts in their life, from you know, from their, their residents and from their family.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: But also when you have like people, like groundskeepers and you specifically call that out, you know groundskeepers and cooks and chefs, and you know people that have a high net worth.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: They have an army of people that are taking care of them.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: They all have to be insured too, and your entire net worth has to be insured.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, you brought some things to light.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: This is what you're passionate about and you're an educator first and foremost, and insurance just happens to be your vehicle to educate and that is what you bring to this world.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: So is that your favorite thing to do is sit down across from somebody, understand who they are and then help them like understand the whole life cycle of insurance.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent From buying it to also just using it at claim time.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: There's a whole chapter in my book about you know should you really file a claim or not, cause it's not just as easy as it once was, and not that it's not as easy as dialing a 1-800 number, but there's a lot of repercussions that can follow a claim.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: That may not always be in the insured's best interest to move forward.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: But to your question earlier too, I think that's what has allowed me to have so many doors, as I now get speaking engagements with family offices, wealth firms, financial advisory summits where I get to go and talk in front of a thousand 2000 people about just education, and it's definitely my favorite part of my job.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so what is your official role?
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Like, what is?
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: What is your official role within it?
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Within cause, you, you, you work for an insurance company.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: What is your official role?
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: So I'm director of private client at this point with core insurance.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Very cool, very cool.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: And and there's something that stuck out in your book and it's right on the back cover it says wealth defense.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: I never, never, thought of that before.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: So is that all the stuff that you, that you kind of put together and that you educate?
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Talk about what wealth defense means to you.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: So I think a lot of people focus on growing their wealth and how do I invest and how do I save, but you can do all the saving you want and have a really bad car accident and it all be taken away.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: The same as a lot of people spend money on trust and LLCs but then they put together an LLC and they use their personal credit card to pay the insurance for the rental property and now they just pierce the corporate veil.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: So I think it's really just being that bow on all the planning people are already doing in their lives and helping them understand that, just because you have a great savings account or you have great documents in place, there's still things that can unravel, that can be transferred to an insurance company that you don't have to hold on to.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: But most people don't even know those exist and or have this false sense of security.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Well, that'll never happen to me and hopefully it never does happen to anyone.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Less than 8% of people have claims, so 92% of the population is correct and it won't happen to them.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: But that 8% can have some truly life devastating events, whether that's a child getting killed in a car accident, you know, someone being severely injured and no longer being able to do their job.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: You know your future earnings or current earnings, any creditable assets of the stuff that you have in the investments that's all garnishable by a court if your insurance is not enough and what I mean by that is your liability specifically.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: So, if your car insurance you have state minimum coverage and you hit someone and they have to go to the hospital for three days, you total out there.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: You know, even if it's a 2020 BMW, that could be $80,000 and you have 10,000 in property damage on your state limit policy, you're now trying to come up with $70,000.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: I don't care how rich you are, that's still a lot of money to come up with.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: And so, again, from a wealthy person's standpoint, do you really want to pull that out of the market?
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: But from an everyday individual standpoint, too, do you really have 70,000 to be garnished for the next 15 years?
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: So it's just so important, regardless if you're wealthy and or living paycheck to paycheck, that you understand what your insurance can do for you and where those gaps lie.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what it sounds like to me and this might be true or might not.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Let me know if I'm on the right path.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I have a CPA and that CPA knows all the financials and works with our bookkeeper, and the CPA knows everything about the puts and takes to our P&L and our personal finances and where our money is and where our wealth is of the money in our business.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: It almost sounds like, from an insurance perspective, that's what you do for people you help them understand the puts and takes and where they're exposed and risk mitigation and closing the gap.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Is that an accurate statement?
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: So at what point and I know you love working with the high net worth people Okay, so that's pretty obvious.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: High net worth people need someone like you in their life.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: What, what is that when, when you talk about, you know somebody who's the perfect client for you and someone who's just not quite there?
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Where, where would you put that level at in terms of net worth?
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so typically, the clients I work with have anywhere from three to 50 million in net worth at this point in time, and the reason I wrote this book, though, was to help that group underneath that $3 million, because you can have $500,000 in net worth and still have a very complicated life, but where I tend to see them have multiple homes LLCs and really need that person that can help wrap their arms around it maybe they have two or three agents in different states tends to be in that $3 to $50 million net worth range, yeah, $3 to $50, that's not a pretty wide window, holy cow.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: So over that people start to self-insure themselves.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: So I used to say, you know, $3 million and up, but then above the $50 million, you just get into a whole new world of self-insurance, opening their own insurance companies and then having to deal with states insurance companies and then having to deal with states, and so I just I capped it at 50 at this point, yeah, I would say over 50, you're probably being insured by Lloyd's of London and you have your arms and your legs insured right Individually, but but but, yeah, I mean three, three to 50, but people underneath of 3 million have specific insurance needs too.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: So this, this book, Protect your Lifestyle, was really written to arm those people with the information they needed to make sound decisions.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Are you still an advisor for people?
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Are you still willing to be an advisor?
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Do you have anything to offer from a time perspective and an advising perspective to people under 3 million?
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great question.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: So the lifestyle questionnaire that's in my book is a great starting place.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Or they can connect with me Sorry about that noise right at the second or they can connect with me online at protectingwithaningyourlifestylecom and request some time and then I can do a lifestyle review for anyone in any network.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: That's not a lot of time, but it's basically you're going to answer 20 yes or no questions about do you sit on non-for-profit boards, do you have a dog in your house, and then, from there, upload copies of your current deck pages, at which point I'll review hey, based on you live life and based on your current coverages, here's some gaps, and then here's the steps that you need to take to fix it.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: So they can go back to their current agent and fix those issues.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: And or, if they are looking to shop, I have a great network of other insurance advisors that I work with that I can happily refer individuals to.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Awesome, in case you didn't catch it at the front side and, by the way, jamie Frazier is here and Maggie or Emily Winden is here.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: It says Maggie Bradford.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I'm a little confused, but either Maggie Bradford or Emily Winden's here, I'm not quite sure.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: But if you're, if you're watching us, put your name in the comments and where you're calling from, and that would be.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: That would be awesome.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: We want to know who we're talking to.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so when I had a question all teed up and then I just lost it, if you know, this isn't.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: It wasn't really a question.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: If you didn't catch the beginning of this, megan has a little bit of construction going on at the office right outside and we contemplated pushing it or rescheduling it or moving it somewhere else, but we didn't do that.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: So we're jamming.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Jay, jay Blake is here.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Jay's winning, holy cow, jay winning.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: So, megan, listen when you talk to, let's talk to the people below.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: We'll move into the higher.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: You know three to 50, but people below 3 million, like where do you see the biggest gaps and the most risk in people's?
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: You can speak separately between their lives and their business.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: We work primarily with entrepreneurs in InterWealth Global, but you, but people that are in that lower below $3 million income net worth sphere.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Where's their biggest exposure from a life perspective and biggest exposure from a business perspective?
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: So I'll start with business, because that is an area that I know well enough to be dangerous but I'm not the expert in.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: But it really comes when they intermix their personal life and their business life.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: So you brought up a CPA earlier.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: They're great support systems but sometimes they think very money logistics.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: So they're like, hey, let's put your car in your business name because that's a tax write-off, but then your 16 year old actually drives that car all the time.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: So now you have a liability to your business and your personal life because of how that car is titled.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: So, while it may be on your personal auto insurance, if there's an accident, they now are an attorney and judge can go after both your personal assets and your business assets, because your child was driving a business asset at that point.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: So titling makes a huge difference when it comes to personal and pleasure and business and really understanding who's using that car, why you're using it and, again, sometimes outweighing the different benefits, whether that's for tax purposes or for LLC and what you think it's limiting the liability.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: But then you don't actually plan to execute the true contract of an LLC.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't end up working out in client's favor and, in all honesty.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Would it just been cheaper for them to do it all under their own name than have it done in a business and personal avenue?
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: So let me touch on that a little bit.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: What our CPA calls it and I think this is pretty common language it's piercing the corporate veil.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: If you can pierce the corporate veil, if there's a personal incident but it can pierce the corporate veil in any way, now the corporation is at risk, the LLC is at risk.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: So making sure that these two don't meet, that they're not together.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: You can't cross that corporate threshold in terms of or the other way around.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: There's a business risk or a business experience, business incident.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: If they can pierce your personal assets now the business exposure can pierce the personal Now they're both at risk.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: So it's keeping them separate.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: And what you're saying is in insurance, it's even more critical.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: It's critical that when you're insuring assets, you're insuring them correctly.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: So that's from a business perspective.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: How about a personal perspective?
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Where are people most exposed?
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: So I would say it comes in their liability, where they don't have a personal umbrella, they have very basic limits, so they have just the state minimum in order for them to drive their cars.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Or they have $300,000 in liability on their homeowners, because why not?
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: But liability is your biggest unknown.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: You never know what kind of car accident you're going to cause.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: You don't know what friend your kid's going to invite over that gets severely injured, and so when it comes to liability, it's actually the cheapest thing people can buy in insurance and it's the most valuable.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: When it comes to financially devastating losses From the homeowner side, the biggest thing I see is people under insuring their home.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: So they insure it for what we call market value, which is typically what they buy it for, instead of replacement costs and if there is a total loss, they can sometimes find themselves with a gap anywhere from 50,000.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: And I found them upwards of, you know, $2 million sometimes, depending on how they're rated.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so talking about homes, so that's awesome.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And you just brought something else to mind.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: First of all, you just said limited and in your book it's in the excess chapter, right, when it talks about ensuring excess, what you have in excess.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: But you said ensure your entire net worth, because if it's all at risk, if something happens, somebody can pull in your entire net worth.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: You want to be able to make sure you replace it and this is the cheapest form of insurance.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: You just brought something else to mind.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: I work at Interwealth Global.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: We have a lot of real estate investors in our group and you know you're familiar with all of them.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: There's probably 70% 75% of all of our students in our mastermind are real estate investors.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: How about?
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Do you see any problems with real estate investors when they build these massive real estate portfolios?
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: You know I know someone that there's somebody in our group that has almost 300 doors.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: There's somebody else with 115 doors.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: There's people that have net worths of $50 million.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Where is the biggest exposure when you're building these huge rental portfolios?
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: no-transcript injured and now they're suing you for lost wages and all those sorts of things.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: So especially when you're starting out and you may not have like a business program or policy of some sort and you're just buying one off homeowners policies to cover the rentals as you build, you really have to make sure your contractors are insured so they don't turn you upside down.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And then there is a big difference.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Really it's right around 16 doors.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Anything under 16 doors can stay on the personal lines form and then once you get over that you really get into a commercial like true business.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: So it's going to be your general liability, there's going to be property forms and really if a flipper and investor can get on a commercial form, that's going to be their best bet.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: They just understand the market a little better.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: It's meant for it to be run and operated like a business.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Not as many exclusions as we sometimes see in the personal lines as well as the personal lines is way more expensive.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: They just property is something they really wait heavily on from a rating perspective, where at commercial they rate a little more heavily on liability than property.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: So it just kind of differs in those ways at times.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: But then and I'm going to geek out a little bit.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: There's two policy or there's three policy forms when it comes to the personal line side, and again policy.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Or there's three policy forms when it comes to the personal line side, and again those people that have one to like 16 doors.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: And a lot of times I'll either see people go insurance poor.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Where they buy the DP three, they insure the home for full value, but they're actually pretty handy, so they're never going to file a claim.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: They're going to be able to fix everything, and in those situations they probably bought too much insurance and they could go to what I call like a DP1 or DP2, which is really going to cover you for fire, or like a total loss, and in those situations, again, if you're the handy investor, that's the better policy.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: You're going to get a better bang for your buck and you're probably never going to really need or have to file a claim.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: But for if I was an investor, I would have a DP3, because I don't even know how to pick up a hammer and if anything happened to the home, I'd probably be calling the insurance company or someone to file it.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: However, I'm going to put a caveat to that.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: When you have a rental portfolio, you have to be extremely careful of your claims history because it does follow the corporation or the individual.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: So again, if you file two claims on two homes because they have hail damage but they really didn't need to be filed, you may not be able to get insurance come renewal next year because you have two claims in five years in your program.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: So again, insurance and using it for you as an individual when it's necessary is important, but also not feeling like it's your maintenance plan or it's your bank that's always going to be there to catch you.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: And that is what I tend to see from the real estate investing world is they'll try and file a theft claim for $5,000 because there was some lumber that they left there and someone stole it and it's like well, $5,000 theft claim on any policy over three to five years in a surcharge is going to cost you $6,000 in surcharge.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: So it's not even worth filing those sorts of claims that a lot of investors, especially in the beginning, have very low margin for income and so if they lose $5,000 on a job and they think insurance can cover it, they're very quick to do that and it ends up biting them as they try to grow their portfolio, because if you again have 300 doors but you have five losses, you're going to pay a lot more for those 300 doors than if you had no losses.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get back to you for a second again, not insurance, Because I'm trying to help everyone understand exactly what you can and what you can't do for them.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: So when I have a question about finances, I call my CPA and he says, hey, buy it this way, Fund it through the business, Buy it through this, you know, and he's kind of like advising me.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: It almost sounds like when somebody works with you, you understand their entire estate and you're going to you're going to advise them on the holistic nature of their entire estate in terms of don't file a claim for for that roof, for hail damage, because three steps down the down the road something's going to fall.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: So is this, is this a good, a good snapshot of what you do?
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: You're, you're an overall estate insurance planner.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I want to read documents.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: If my clients are going through renovations, I'm going to read the documents they're signing with their contractors and make sure there's no waiver of subrogation, or if there is, what does that mean for the homeowner's contract?
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: So what people don't tend to understand is insurance is a really bad contract.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: It's not written for the consumer and so there's a lot of exclusions and conditions and life throws a lot of curve balls at you that can fall quickly into those exclusions and conditions if you don't prepare ahead of time.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: I see, so I'm just going to go down.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Peggy Hoffman's here from Austin, texas.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Peggy Tracy Teeter is here and Kara Kara's here.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Great to see you here, kara.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: We're talking to Megan Dowd.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Megan is an expert in the insurance industry.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Not only is she an expert, she's actually passionate about it.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: So I've never seen passion in somebody for insurance.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: So I've never seen passion in somebody for insurance.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Megan was number one.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: I didn't think it was real at first, and I'm not talking about on this session, I'm talking about years ago, when we started working together.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: It blew my mind that somebody was passionate about insurance.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: But she really does care all about protecting her clients' assets and protecting, especially, their lifestyle.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: So her new book is here and it's titled Protect your Lifestyle Make Empowered, educated and Effective Personal Insurance Decisions.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: So, megan, let's talk a little bit about your book.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: When did you decide to write a book about insurance?
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Like three and a half years ago when I was pregnant with my first child and I thought I'd have some time during maternity leave to do some writing and I had a lot of people just ask if I answer the same questions a lot and people do you have anything on that?
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: And I wouldn't.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: And so then I just started taking notes and it was 2021.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: I joined a class for Chubb, which is an insurance company, and they partner with Wharton on it, and so I got to go to Wharton for a year and I had to do a capstone project.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: So that is when I really finished this out, because I was like I'm going to be around a bunch of highly educated individuals that should know this stuff.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: I would love to get their feedback.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: And that's where I really got the confidence to finish it and invest in it, because everybody was like holy cow, like yes, we need this in the industry, not only from a consumer standpoint, but my industry has very few college kids or just anybody getting into it, and so it's also a great way to get individuals up to speed on what insurance really is outside of policy forms.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: So we can hopefully have better staffing and you know the services we provide.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what surprised you most about the book writing process we provide?
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what, what surprised you most about the book writing process?
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Um, I, I really enjoyed it.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: If I'm being honest, I thought it was going to be a lot more cumbersome than it was.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: It took a long time because I definitely found like my spurts of creativity where I could just like type up 10 pages in no time.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Um, but the hardest part was getting it all like laid out and how did I want to break it all up.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: So you know, at first I had it broken up based on, like, net worth, and then I had it broken up on other things and I ended on let's do the first five chapters just on the five pillars of personal insurance so home, auto, valuables, um, excess, and then toys, and then the last three are really for consumers, cause I honestly don't think most people that aren't in the insurance world or in a like attorney, financial advisor will read this front to back.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: It's really meant to be kind of paged through or used as like a guide to say, hey, I'm buying a home, let me go the home chapter, what do I need to consider?
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Or, hey, I'm a business owner, I should read chapter seven.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: I hope people read it from front to back, but there is a lot of content that if it doesn't apply to you it can get very boring, but if you know kind of what you're looking for, that is extremely helpful.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Nuggets and tips on, just like downfalls that I've seen clients go through, or just things to consider that I talk to all my clients about when making choices.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like I shared with Megan.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Right before we started I said listen, I just want to be honest.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't read this thing from cover to cover, but I went through the chapters that were kind of relevant to me and it sounds like that's exactly.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: You wrote this so that it could be a reference guide, more so than a reader book.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: And the first chapter I went to is protecting your lifestyle, literally because that's what you know.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I'm a lifestyle guy and I've built the lifestyle business.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I'm a lifestyle guy and I've built a lifestyle business and that's what I care most about.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I built my business around my life because my life, in my mind, my life is.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I hired a coach.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: She said that while you're working on your book, your book is working on you.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put you on the spot here a little bit.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: What was the most surprising thing?
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: The thing that you learned, not about the book writing process, but about insurance while you were writing this book.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: That there's so many ifs, ands or buts.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: I found myself 160 pages was like me, taking it down probably 50 pages.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: The first draft I wrote was very long because I went down a lot of rabbit holes of very specific situations and so at the end of it we just decided let's adjust it a little.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: 150 pages on insurance is plenty for the everyday consumer and the rabbit holes I went down weren't necessary for, again, the target market I was really going after.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: So I think for me the hardest was really staying focused and having something that was digestible from the everyday person and wasn't just like again a 200 page college book on insurance that nobody was ever going to pick up.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: So reader-friendly was hard, and breaking down that jargon that we use in insurance was kind of the key that I was trying to write, and I talk about it really well, but writing it out is very different, and so I would say getting it on paper was also an interesting experience.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and when I was looking through the book and I was reading the sections that were relevant and specific to me, what I noticed is it's not heavy on the technical aspects of insurance.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: There's high-level concepts that are easy to understand, easy to digest.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: They give you enough to know that there's something you don't know, that you should probably go and explore the gap that you're currently living in.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: So what is?
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: You know the we've got you know we've got people on the call.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: What's one thing that you see most prominently in people's lives that they should look deeper into, because there's like most of society is exposed in this manner.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: I would say most people have honestly never checked their homeowner's policies or coverage since the date they bought them.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: A lot of people buy the policy and let it sit.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: So my piece of advice is just check in.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: You know, understand, like, does your current policies align?
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is do you have an umbrella?
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: If you're not worth over a million dollars, have you, you know, done some upgrades in your home that your current company doesn't know about?
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Call them and talk to them about that.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Have you gotten a new dog, like?
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: So just call your current agent and have a conversation with them, tell them what you're doing and put it on them to be like hey, are there any changes?
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: I need and that's you know too with this book, it's to help consumers be able to challenge the industry a little bit and not just take what they say for what it's worth.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: And so that would be my you know ask to everyone on this call is call the person you're working with you.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Whether you know it or not, you pay them.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: 15% of your premium every six months or year goes into their pocket.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: So they my industry does have to earn it.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: And again, that's not saying we need to shop it and go to market every year.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: But that is saying you deserve to have a conversation for us to understand who you are and what you're doing, and that it aligns.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: Because if it's not, again I would love to say I'm the only one out here that's passionate at this point, but there's even some people on this call right now that are in my industry, that are phenomenal individuals.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: So I think again, it's just about finding the right person and not having insurance.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Just be a checkbox on your checklist it's so much more important than that and find someone you like.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Find someone that you don't mind talking to once a year Again, it's not saying you have to re-give your life to them once a year, but someone that checks in on you.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've shown up at my uncle's house to a whole new pool and had I not sent out renewal reviews like I wouldn't know that about half my clients.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: So there are proactive touches that they can be doing and if your agents aren't doing that for you, drive it a little bit.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: And if they're not going to engage, I'd say, find someone new, because you deserve to have a partner in all of this, especially if you're working with an agent directly.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: It's almost like sitting down with a financial planner a couple of times a year and going over the entire plan, everything puts and takes, and making sure that all the gaps are covered.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Megan, how about last question?
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Before we start, we start wrapping up.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: But business owners, so when, when we're talking about net worth, like and I know, when I calculate my net worth, part of my net worth is, uh, is the um, the value of my business?
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: So do you do any work around ensuring the value, the current value, of a business?
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: I don't specifically there's other people out there that do but what I do talk to business owners about is more like the liquidity events that may.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: So if you were going to say, megan, I plan to build this and sell it in five years, what do I need to consider?
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: There are considerations from an insurance perspective that you can again start to increase your liability, make some adjustments, but make it ready for sale.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: But otherwise it's just more.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: How does your inner workings of the business work and what does that look like?
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: And I've always, since day one, I've always been advised to build a business to sell.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: So even if you don't plan to sell it, still build the business for an eventual sale, because if you're ready to, when you get to the point, if you ever get to the point that you're ready to sell it, it is saleable.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: But if you don't build a business that's capable of being sold this is why we have Interwealth Global and not Mike Kitko LLC, because if it was, if it was just, if the whole business was my kit co, then it's not sellable.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Because when I go then, so build a business that you can sell.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: And it sounds like you do some preparation to help a business become and be sellable when it's time.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: That and protecting.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: So you know, from a liability perspective, if your current net worth is $5 million and when you sell your business it's going to be $30 million, there's steps we have to do to be able to have you qualify for a $30 million umbrella.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: It can't just be overnight.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Hey, megan, now I need to go from $5 to $30.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: My underwriters are like heck.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: No, he's about to go buy a Lamborghini, go to Mexico and have a great time, and we don't want to take on that liability.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: So there's stuff we can do to help you prepare so you can go buy the Lamborghini and go to Mexico and also have it all protected within your umbrella or excess liability.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: So we'll leave it this way where, wherever you are now, you're going to have more in, you know, in 10 years.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Starting having the start having the conversations now about what you plan to have in 10 years.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: So, even if you're below $3 million of net worth right now, chances are you're going to be above $3 million.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: If you're a business owner, if you're on this call, the likelihood is you're going to be over $3 million and you're going to be in that $3 to $50 million wheelhouse that Megan talked about.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: That's her ideal client.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Start having those conversations now, preparing for what you're growing into.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Megan, listen, you offer a couple of things, not just Protect your Lifestyle Megan's new book you also offer some tools and some training, some resources.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Can you share that with our watchers and listeners?
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: So if you go to protectingyourlifestylecom, you can buy the book on there.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: You can set up time to talk to me.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: At that point we can go through the lifestyle review again, regardless of your net worth.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: So if you just want a second set of eyes to kind of look at everything, I'd love to do that.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: And then I also do free speaking engagements for financial advisors to provide CEs and for attorneys to provide CLEs for their continuing education.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: That sounds fantastic and it's.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Her book is protect your lifestyle, but the website is protecting your lifestyle.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, make sure, make sure you're getting that right.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: And I love the fact that you just invited yourself out to put to speaking engagements or and you just asked for speaking engagements, because that's where your passion lies is in the education portion of this and that's where Megan really shows up, and Angie said literally have never known anyone this passionate about insurance, and I am in that same boat.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Megan, your passion is wildly obvious.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being in our lives.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: You've watched InterWealth grow up over the last few years.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: You're part of our community now.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: It's awesome to have you there in Miami at the retreat.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: It was fantastic.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Megan was leading one of our small little groups, doing an awesome job.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: She's a leader and an educator in every aspect, so it's great to have you part of our community.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: And guys listen, megan is a valuable asset and when I'm talking to my good friend, brian Schroeder, brian always talks about making sure you have a team, and what that means is my CPA is part of my team, my bookkeeper is part of my team, my insurance professionals are part of my team.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: We have a home cleaning service.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: They're part of our team Making sure you have the right team to support your life and your business.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Megan is an awesome team player.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: She's an awesome resource to make sure that your insurance, your world of insurance, insurance and the insurance protection that you have is in place and that it protects your lifestyle.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to wwwinnerwealthglobalcom for more tools and resources.