Surviving and Thriving After a Career Crisis with Bruce Weinstein

Business is unpredictable. More often than not, the only certainty is uncertainty. So it’s critical to learn to pick yourself up and get back to the grind when things get tough. Our guest is the perfect example!

Meet Bruce Weinstein. He’s the Co-Owner & Founder of Weinstein Wealth Insurance Solutions, an insurance company helping clients prepare for the unexpected and protect themselves against unforeseen risks. Bruce suffered a huge crisis himself in 2016 when his 30+ years career was unexpectedly taken from him. Even though he had a successful career as a financial advisor and was considered in the top 1% of income earners (over $350k/year), it all came to an end one day and Bruce was forced to shift gears. He took his greatest loss and turned it into a major victory.

He’s now a successful entrepreneur and an inspiring businessman with lots of wisdom to share about the power of perseverance and not giving up when things get tough.

In this episode of the Think Business with Tyler podcast, we talk about the importance of living your purpose, why you should consider the ‘octopus style’ strategy in business, different insurance policies for different types of businesses, and why it’s critical to watch your money.

If you want to learn more about preparing for the unexpected in both business and life, make sure you tune into this episode to hear what Bruce has to say.

Guest-At-A-Glance

 

💡 Name: Bruce Weinstein

💡 What he does: He’s the Co-Owner & Founder of Weinstein Wealth Insurance Solutions.

💡 Noteworthy: Bruce is also the host of a podcast called “Ask the Planman.”

💡 Key Quote: “Every day, no matter what I’m doing, I’m in the path or a process to helping somebody move a quarter of an inch in knowledge or education in this whole world because it’s as confusing as heck for a lot of people and we’re not getting it in the schools.”

💡 Where to find Bruce: LinkedIn

Key Insights

Find a way to live your purpose. Life is full of challenges and obstacles. What matters is always to find a way to fulfill your purpose. Bruce is a great example of how you can dust yourself off when things get tough and still go after your dreams. When his successful career suddenly got taken away from him in 2016, he didn’t quit his dream, but he found another way to live his purpose. He says, “I had basically decided if I couldn’t be what I was, I didn’t want to be anything, so from a hundred to zero, right? But the AHA came in that conversation of, and my wife was listening, and she said to me, ‘I missed that guy.’ And I said, ‘I missed that guy too.’ And so what I realized was I’d rather be part of me than none of me, and I was denying myself being any of me up until that point.”

Be like an octopus in business. If you want to build a stable and successful business, you’ve got to go all in. From referral programs to marketing strategies, adopt the ‘octopus’ style of outreach. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Instead, concentrate on more areas to increase your chances of success. Bruce explains, “I don’t cold call, I don’t buy leads. We get probably five to seven opportunities a week coming to us through strategic partners, referral partners, social media. So everything we’ve done in two and a half years has been through my octopus style, right? A lot of tentacles out there, or the teepee hut, a lot of stakes in the ground, so you have to do a lot of activities. And so all those different activities have just created for us a consistent flow of business and all the aspects of insurance.”

Every business has different insurance needs. Every business is unique and every business needs a different insurance policy. Depending on your company’s challenges and problems, you will need a different type of plan. Bruce says, “It certainly depends on what particular things we’re talking about and that term asset protection. So a $1 million business versus a $10 million business can have different problems, different challenges, and different needs, certainly […] so in the world of insurance from a small business owner to mid-sized business owner, there’s different things they’re going to encounter.”

Watch your money. One of the most important lessons in business is to watch your money because nobody else will do that for you. Your money, your responsibility. According to Bruce, you should always track your income and expenses. He says, “When I started at 23 years of age as a young stockbroker, a couple of guys took me under the wind, and the simple message was, ‘If you don’t watch your money, nobody else will.’ […] Regardless of your industry, regardless of your technology, inabilities capabilities, whatever, always know where your money’s going, always track where it’s coming in, who it came from.”

Top Quotes

“Insurance is nothing more than a pool of everybody else’s money, and so when Tyler has a problem, we’re all going to use that money and help you fix that problem. And so when a hurricane comes through, and they have a 10 billion loss on the west coast of Florida, and I’m on the east coast of Florida, all the clients start screaming, ‘Why are we paying more? It didn’t hit here.’ Well, the bucket got emptied, so you’ve got to fill the bucket because if it hits the East Coast or the Northeast or some other part of the area, you’ve got to have the money again so rates go up.”

“If you’re a manufacturer and you have the capacity to make a thousand items a day, and you get an order for 10,000, well, how are you going to meet that demand? You don’t have capacity, so it’s kind of the same in an inverse relationship on insurances. If I can’t cover the risk, I can’t take on that new client, and so a lot of clients are getting dropped.”

“Every day, no matter what I’m doing, I’m in the path or a process to helping somebody move a quarter of an inch in knowledge or education in this whole world because it’s as confusing as heck for a lot of people and we’re not getting it in the schools.”

“I’m like, ‘We’ve got to work for ourselves. What can we do?’ So I got my wife licensed, so she has her insurance license for life and health. We were able to get new relationships.”

“You got your tire kickers and your plate lickers in any business, so when you’re generating leads, cold calling leads, you’re playing that crapshoot game, there’s no trust, there’s no credibility. If you’re telling me to call your brother-in-law because your brother-in-law was looking for something, I’ve got instant credibility, especially if it’s a client that’s done business with us or a strategic partner.”

“It’s very much easier to catch that fish being referred in by a positive existing relationship than a stranger.”

“Some buzzwords that the business owners are going to be encountering is key person, key man, key woman, key person. So key man disability. If you’re my top salesperson making 500,000 a year, and you’re doing 20 million in sales for me, and you get disabled, what am I going to do? I’ve got to pay you, and I’ve got to go find a new salesperson.”

“You can create tax-free income streams using life insurance. A lot of people know about 401ks, putting money into a qualified retirement plan, but then there’s leverage waste using higher income earners to use life insurance to create private pensions and give tax-free income later as well.”

“If you think insurance companies play the delay game of denying your coverage for your claim, whether it’s your car accident, your homeowner leak, or your health insurance. Oh, you went to the ER, and they’re declining the claim. Oh, I wasn’t covered. And you got a fight with them, and yes, you were. It’s a game. Look, I’m on the inside. It’s a game. Well, they know so many people will just pay the bill and not fight it, and then they’re hoping a certain percentage go away, so squeaky door gets the oil. It’s no different on the commission side from the insurance companies.”

Links

Ask the Planman Podcast

Weinstein Wealth Website

Send the text ‘planman’ to 3214215213 for Bruce Weinstein’s digital business card