I want to tell you something about this business that we usually keep to ourselves, because it explains everything we are doing this October.
There are Medicare plans we help people with that pay us nothing. Not a reduced amount. Nothing. And every year, when the plans and the rules reshuffle, that list gets a little longer.
By the arithmetic of a normal company, the answer is simple. Stop helping with those. Point those people somewhere else. Spend the hour on something that pays.
We have never been able to make ourselves do it, and I finally understand why.
I grew up watching my father sit with families at his office. My dad, David, has been doing this for twenty-five years. What I learned from him, before I understood a single thing about insurance, was that the person across the desk is usually a little scared and a little embarrassed to be scared. They have worked their whole lives, they are careful people, and this one topic makes them feel like they missed a class everyone else took. What my father gave them was not a plan. It was the feeling of walking out standing up straight.
You do not get paid for that part. You just do not get to skip it either.
Here is my confession. For a stretch, we drifted from it. We got busy, we got bigger, and the help we never charged for quietly became the help that waited. I am not proud of that, and I am telling you because the fix is public and it starts this month.
We are going back into the libraries. Not a hotel ballroom with a steak dinner and a sign-up sheet. A library. A public room, in the middle of the day, where anybody can walk in, on Medicare or not, our client or not, and get the truth about the year ahead with nothing owed and nothing sold.
We are doing it now, in October, on purpose. This is the season the scary letters go out and the loud commercials come on. It is exactly when people are most likely to make a rushed decision out of fear, and exactly when a quiet, honest hour is worth the most. Seniors need that hour more than ever this year, not less, precisely because so much of the noise around them is being paid to alarm them.
So yes, some of the people who come will be on plans we earn nothing from. Some will never become clients. We know that going in. We are coming anyway, because the measure of this firm was never who paid us. It was who walked out standing up straight.
If that is the kind of help you have been looking for, come find us.
Friday, October 2. Foothills Library, Glendale, 10:30 AM. Mustang Library, Scottsdale, 2:30 PM. No cost. Register at 123easymedicare.com/oct-workshop or call (877) 220-1089.
This event is presented by 123EasyMedicare, a brand of American Retirement Advisors, an independent, private organization. It is not sponsored by, endorsed by, or affiliated with Medicare, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Social Security Administration, or any government agency. The libraries are not sponsors of, and are not affiliated with, this event. Educational only; not tax, legal, or insurance advice.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only. It is not sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise representative of Medicare or the federal Medicare program. American Retirement Advisors is not a government agency. For official Medicare information, visit medicare.gov or call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).