I Lost EVERYTHING… Then Rebuilt From Scratch | Bruce Weinstein

What happens when you lose everything, your career, your income, your identity?

In this episode of The Gold Coast Podcast, Eric Winegard sits down with Bruce Weinstein, also known as The Planman, to break down one of the most powerful comeback stories you’ll hear.

From building a $100M financial practice… to losing it all after the 2008 crash… to being forced out of the industry entirely, Bruce had to rebuild his life from the ground up.

Driving Uber. Starting over in his 50s. Reinventing himself.

This isn’t just about money; it’s about mindset, resilience, and what it really takes to come back stronger.

💡 In this episode, you’ll learn:

The mindset that separates winners from everyone else
Why most people fail when they lose everything
How to rebuild your life (even when it feels impossible)
The truth about sales, entrepreneurship, and risk
Why money isn’t the most important thing
Bruce now runs Plan Man Insurance and hosts the Ask The Plan Man podcast, helping people make smarter financial decisions through education, not pressure.

If you’ve ever faced adversity or want to prepare for it, this episode is a must-watch.

📲 Connect with Bruce:

Website: weinsteinwealth.com & planmaninsurance.com
YouTube:  @asktheplanman  
🎙️ Subscribe for more conversations with entrepreneurs, business leaders, and high performers:
👉 The Gold Coast Podcast

Thank you all for listening in on today's episode of The Gold Coast Podcast!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Gold Coast Podcast. Very excited. I have a dear friend here, Bruce Weinstein, uh the Plan Man himself of Weinstein Wealth.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Well, now it's Plan Man Insurance, but Plan Man Insurance. Plan Man Insurance. Weinstein Wealth Insurance Solutions, it still exists. Awesome. But we're rebranded under Plan Man Insurance. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

All right, cool. I tell people I'm a driver expressive. Somebody sent this lengthy email. I'm on the Delray membership committee now, right? So tied to the chamber and the board of directors. So somebody sends an email response that I tell you if I printed it was probably 20 pages. Unsolicited, nobody was expecting it. And it's got all this stuff. And I scrolled to one page and then I kept see like it kept going. And I didn't read a word of it. And I was out of my mind of like, what are you sending me all this for? Right? So then we had the meeting and the Zoom to address all these things he's bringing up. And it was, it was uh it was antagonistic, to say the least. But I'm like, I said to the group, like, I want three lines, I want three bullet points. Like, I will never read a 20-page, I will never read a 10-page, I will not read a like, don't send me something like that unsolicited and just expect me to read it. That's not my MO. So it's like, Brad, like it's just I'm a driver expressive. I'm talkative, but I'm a driver. And the driver is, I don't care about the features and the benefits. Like, is does the key work? Like, turn the key. Did it open the door? Okay, fine. Like, I don't need to know that the the horsepower of the Mustang G, like uh that's just like I'm like, is it pretty? Is it pink? Like, okay. Like, you know, is it my color? Like, I care about a couple things, right? Like my budget, my color, like, is it available?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Is this term driver expressive something you made up, or is this this goes back years?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

A lot of people use disc today. Okay. I've never really figured out how to coordinate the disc model. But years back when I went through the exercise, there's four quadrants to your personality driver expressive, amiable, analytic. And we did a test. They give you those profile things to kind of back you into where your personality is. So, based on the questions, it's this and this and this. So my quadrants were driver expressive. Now, I would have pegged myself, as you're seeing, is I'm chatty, right? I could talk. So I like to talk. That's why I have my podcast. I'm a talkative, but that's my strength. I'm an educator, yeah, right? So I'm not a written, I'm not gonna write you a 30-page report. Like I'll talk. So, like my book's taking three years. Why? Because I don't write. Like, I can't, so the podcast became the precursor to my book, right? Because I'm just not so I have to hire ghostwriters to help work with me. Yeah, and we record conversation and then they transcribe it and put it into the book, right? Yeah, so I would have pegged myself as expressive, but based upon the questions, the driver led. So I'm a driver first, like I don't fluff and like I won't, I just don't bore me with all the other details, right? And you've met Robin. Robin's the other two quadrants, she's an amiable analytic. Now I have analytical skills, I'm I certainly have amiable, like nobody's 100 and 00, yeah, but it's where your percentages lie and your strength. So when you're it was an exercise in sales back then. Uh basically, you want to mirror and understand what your client, customer is. So you're dealing with an engineer, he's gonna want that 30-page report. He's gonna want to see performance and history and the market projection. Like he's an analytic, he's an engineer, right? You get another personality and they're an expressive. So you want to educate and deliver to your client based upon where you're finding them, which is what disk is. Disk is basically, you know, whatever the D, the I, the S, and the C. So like I'm a high I, I guess, in their version, but I never quite grasped it.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

So I'm like, I know a lot of companies are using these assessments for hiring now, yeah, right, to try to evaluate, you know, are you a cow manager? Are you a salesperson? It's fascinating because I have a guy that's worked with me for 11 years. He's my go-to number one guy, so reliable, so trustworthy, and he's become a great salesperson. But you can tell when you meet him, he's he's going against his natural personality grain. So we actually took one of these assessments about three or four weeks ago. I can't remember the name of it. Uh, it was kind of a custom one that a guy made, but similar to disc, right? And it came back that, yeah, his natural skill set is not that of a salesperson. So my only caveat, or not more warning's probably aggressive, but my only caveat to any of these uh assessment tests is that it doesn't mean it has to define you, right? Because my friend and colleague who is not a natural-born salesperson has made himself a salesperson, right? So it's no different than, yeah, if you're six foot three, Steph Curry is six foot three. Yeah, you probably won't play in the NBA, or could you? You know, oh, you can learn another skill like shooting the ball better than everybody else. That yeah, you can't jump out of the gym and dunk on people, but he developed his own way to play in the in the NBA. So I think I I'm a psychology guy at heart and I love these assessments, but it doesn't mean it's uh not pigeonholed. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah, but you know, the the Glen Gary Glenn Ross movie, right? Yeah, is they had signs up the Alec Baldwin character and everything. And if you looked around the room, it said salesmen are born, not made. Oh, did it really? I never noticed that. Yeah, that that's one of the things up the wall. Now he doesn't say it, but if you look in the room when he's going on that coffee's for closers and put the coffee down and write all that, but it it that's like a key line is like a sales, a true salesperson is born. Your natural kibbitzing conversation skills, personality, that's the natural salesman. It doesn't mean that Dale Carnegie and all that other stuff can't get you to be a good and train yourself, no different than the 150-pound guy hitting the gym and eating right to put on 100 pounds and be a football star, right? You you have to grow, you have to train. So it's the same thing. But for me, the innateness since I'm five, like lemonade stand, newspaper route, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, like I always hustle to make money. Like I've been in that entrepreneurial go make money since I'm five. And I've been literally, I say to people, it's my 40th year in this industry, and I've never been on a salary. I've always been commission generated, and I eat what I shoot, and you gotta be a rainmaker, and that takes a certain skill set. People like, well, how do you become a rainmaker? I'm like, I don't know. I just I just do what I do, I can't necessarily define it.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I love this conversation because this is interesting. You could and I'm not nitpicking you, but I agree with you. I agree with you here, but this is a great conversation. You said it takes a certain skill set. Isn't it a decision to have that skill set? Isn't it a decision to be willing to forego uh a salary and go for and go for the high risk, high reward, right? So isn't it a conscious choice that you want more for yourself and that you're willing to risk more to get more? I guess or is that a skill in itself?

SPEAKER_01 7:50

It's innate. It there's an innateness. So my brother is a very successful attorney, worked his way through the top law firms in New York, got involved in the hedge fund industry, makes tons of dough, lives in Greenwich, like no if, ands, or buts, done very well for himself, right? But there was no point in his career that he ever wanted to have his own firm, his own practice, launch his own company, like he wanted the paycheck. Now the paycheck was lucrative, but most lawyers probably want to go on their own and set up their own firm, and so Yeah, he makes a million, not ten million. But you know, there's a risk taker, and so for me, it's like it's just money, like you go take a risk and you believe in yourself and you try. So I don't know. It but two kids raised in the same house, two totally different personalities, very different. He's he's not a driver expressive, he's a driver, but he's analytic, right? He's a lawyer, yeah, right? So he's not expressive, he's quiet, he doesn't have my personality, he's not as spontaneous or vocal, and I'll say funny, right? Like he doesn't have the same sense of humor as I do. Yeah, but we physically don't even look alike. His build is totally different. Like we're just two totally different children from the same. My friend, my friend, my fraternal brother's wife, she's they got two kids, and she said this funny line to Robin a couple years ago. She was same factory, two different products. Really? Her two kids are totally different from each other.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

So she dropped that line, like same factory, two different did you uh did you grow up in uh Sherfield County? Oh okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Oh, Jersey. Okay, Jersey. My folks divorced when I was young. My dad moved to Connecticut many years ago. My brother lives in Greenwich. So where because I kind of know Connecticut. I grew up by Rutgers in the New Brunswick area, like central Jersey. Yeah, cool. Very good. But I I was that product of the 70s when nobody was divorced. So my folks split in 1971. My father went back to New York and eventually met my stepmother and moved to Connecticut. But I was raised by a single mom in New Jersey, and everybody was out in Long Island, and you know, it was the Brooklyn thing. Yeah. And everybody usually went to Staten Island, Long Island, and for whatever reason, they came to New Jersey.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

And are are you okay talking about your entrepreneurial journey? I feel I feel like you've had some. I'll talk about anything. No, I know I love it. No, because I think you have a very, you know, you went into great length with me one time about you've had some ups and downs. I've lost it all. I've lost it all. Yeah, unpack that. I think it's a I think it's a very inspiring story. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

I appreciate it. Um if I get emotional, it's okay. Uh so 23 years of age, I got into the financial industry, stockbroker, Merrill Lynch, Princeton, New Jersey. Didn't know, can I curse? Shit from Chinola. Fuck, fuck, but cockballs. I think we're good. Okay. Sorry. You know, uh I I went to a small school in western Pennsylvania, studied computers, computer science, was miserable at it, didn't like it, but I learned a valuable lesson which served me later. Uh I quickly dropped out of computer science. Here's the analytical lack thereof. A programmer needs to be able to see and have the vision to generate coding, right? To get from A to Z. And I didn't know how to do that. I never was very good at creation. But everybody came to me to fix their programs. I could debug. I could tell you what was wrong, I'm a problem solver. But I couldn't create it, right? So that I share that because what my career was as a financial advisor has been, and now as insurance people, I'm a problem solver. You tell me what's going on, and I could help show you the SWAT, right? This weight, uh, strength, sweetnesses, opportunities, threats. So I I learned that about myself a long, long time ago. So go to your story. So I started in the industry, and I became a CFP, certified financial planner, uh, built a nice practice,$100 million of assets under management, and the market crashes in 2008, as people are aware, it's a long time ago already. And the firm I was with went under. And so I lost a half a million dollars of company stock, I lost 40% of my personal portfolio because the market's down, my clients have lost 40%, so my revenue is down, like everybody's hitting the panic buttons, right? This was a pretty, and more importantly, if you're a history of this financial markets, the last time something like this happened, it was a 10-year blight. Like things didn't come back that fast. And I'm like, I gotta survive. So I got recruited to go to a competing firm and was offered a$3 million package. That's hard to pass up after you've just lost about a million dollars of your own money, right? And your income's cut by 40%, and your clients are leaving, and you don't know who's gonna survive. Every all the Wall Street firms were collapsing. Bear Stearns was gone, Lehman Brothers was gone, right? Uh the banks were failing, as well as the brokerage firms. So I'm like, I'd be a fool not to take the package. I have to survive. If I can survive, then my clients still have me. Well, turns out made a deal with the devil, and they started playing games, and ultimately I got a lawyer, and the next thing I know, I'm being shown the door. And eventually I got shut down, regulators got involved, and I was forced to give up my license. I was this was it's uh it's all public record. I was accused of submitting a falsified expense report in order for the firm that I was with to force me to leave. Forcing me to leave, they still owed me a million, which they don't have to pay me, and they claw back one of the million that they gave me. So this is a two million dollar swing for them. Okay. Now you can look it up. They did this to hundreds of advisors. It wasn't just me. So I was targeted. I became an expendable because they needed to purge advisors that they owed money to. It's a whole thing, right? We don't have to, I'm not gonna name names, but it's pretty easy to find. So, long and short, I spent about six months. I'm fighting them, I'm fighting the regulators, my lawyer is$700 an hour, and this is at the same time, we're trying to transition to Florida. So I'm coming here, I'm dealing with that, I have to leave their firm, I go with an independent firm, I reestablish down in Boca, buy our house, and rebuild under Weinstein Wealth Management as an independent financial advisor and CFP. Well, I'm here a year, and now the regulators come knocking about this expense report, and now I'm dealing with them as well as the firm. So I'm battling all these fronts. So, long story long, May of 2016, I'm pretty much told I have to give up my license. I have to sell my book and I'm done. I'm gonna give you this, and it's the opening in my book. It was Friday the 13th, May 2016, that I got this phone call from my attorney, which is pretty much my death blow. This is not a good day, right? But this will give you the sense we talk about personalities and perceptions and and attitudes. I have to go tell Robin. This is still good. I have to go tell Robin. It's not new news, but it's the last punch in the gut news, right? Like the fight's over, we've lost. Okay. And I wake up the next, it's a sleepless night, my phone rings 10 o'clock Saturday morning. It's a friend from high school asking me if I heard from another friend from high school, Adam. I said, no, why? He goes, Adam's daughter's a freshman at the University of Maryland. They were out drinking. She stepped off the curb and went faceplanted into a Ford explorer. She's 19. He's like, they don't think she's gonna make it. Adam and his wife are on the way down to Maryland from New Jersey, da-da-da. I'll keep you posted. Like, oh my god. I don't know Jamie, but I certainly know Adam. I grew up with him, right? So we know each other since third grade. So I go downstairs, Robin's making coffee. We've just had the worst news of our lives the night before. And I said, Chris just called. I said, Do you think Adam would trade places with us? I said, Robin, it's only money. We're about to lose everything. Bankruptcy, we're gonna lose our house, gotta find a new career, 30 years to flush down the toilet. And my attitude was it's just money. Our kids are healthy, we're healthy. This girl may not survive the weekend. She did, thank God. Okay, she had some recovery time, she's had some damage, but she's graduated college. Okay, so I like to make sure people know she survived because it's not that bad of a story, but certainly horrific. But the point is, and it's the opening in my book, people like where did that come from? And it's just me. I I don't I don't know how or where. It just whatever got me from the seven, eight-year-old kid whose parents got divorced and lived through that and had to be raised in an environment where everybody else was married and had dads, and I didn't. To you, you and I, I know we first met, your mom had passed. My mother died from cancer when I was 22, she was 45, and I lived and dealt with that. So all of these things are building your character, good or bad, to be an adult, and and whatever got me to this point as a 50-year-old, give or take, I forget how old I was at the time, um, to say it's just money, and we'll figure it out and move on. I didn't cry, I didn't climb in a bottle, I didn't go hang myself. I, you know, people have had worse responses than that and never came back. And actually, if I may, I had an estate planning attorney, he's on one of my podcast episodes I worked with, and he came on the show, and he's he's got a special needs child, and so the show was about estate planning tied with special needs. And after we stopped recording, and he'd known me for years, we'd done a lot of business together. He goes, you know, I gotta tell you, he goes, I'm really proud of you. I go, really? I mean, not like we're buddy buddy, you know, like we're drinking and going out or whatever, but if you know from afar, he goes, a lot of people don't know this. He goes, My father lost his business when I was a kid and he climbed in a bottle and never came out. And I had to live with that as a child and a young adult to watch my father self-destruct. He goes, I'm so proud that you've overcome and are succeeding in this recovery journey after everything. Because he knows what I went through. Like his law firm helped me, and like it was it was bad. It was horrific. People hear that story of how I got targeted and what they did, and nobody cared about destroying my career, my life, my family over money, you know. And uh so that that meant a lot. I mean, that was that was very touching uh to hear that from somebody else. But again, what's his perspective? My father didn't overcome. My father couldn't get past it. My father became an alcoholic and killed himself, right? So I don't know where it comes from, Eric. It just it's just here, it's my fortitude. And so I spent the first year driving Uber trying to figure it out, which was fun. I'm a social, right? I like to talk. Driving Uber was a very good thing.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Definitely a cool Uber ride for sure.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

In a jaguar. I was driving people in a red-on-red jaguar until they got repossessed. And people like, I'm pulling up in Los Oulas in Fort Lauderdale. People are like, is this a Jaguar? Like, what you know, they're used to Honda and uh, you know, I'm like, yeah, and I but I drove Uber and eventually worked my way back to the insurance industry. But go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Let me ask you a question. Beyond inspiring, you got me almost teary-eyed there for a second when the guy said he was proud of you. Because those words, I think when somebody says they're proud of you, it does mean a lot. It's it's almost like the four-letter word love, like it means a lot, right? So I try not to use those words unless I really, really mean it. Proud's a big word, right? It's an emotionally moving word. Um, you know, let me ask you this. If that young girl, if that incident doesn't happen that day, do you think you respond to that event differently?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Maybe it's a good question. Obviously, don't know, right? But it happened for a reason, right? It it gave me instant clarity and perspective that somebody else always has it worse. And in the perspective of what's really important, money's not it. And I've as much as I like to make money, everybody wants to have money and spend money, but life's about more than just the money side. I love what money does for you, right? But losing a parent at a young age, having a disconnected father relationship at a very young age, like you just kind of learn these things that there's more in life that's important than than just that. So yeah, I don't know. It um it's a great question. But it framed it to where I still talk about it. It's almost it's 10 years already. May May of 16 will be this May. It'll be 10 years since this all fell apart. Um this is our sixth year in the new business, so it took a couple years to figure out what to do it myself. How do you reinvent yourself at 53 years of age? I'll be 63 this summer. And I I again I'll tell this this this side of the story. Um, I punched around driving Uber. My son, my older son Josh, came down and we got involved with some life insurance stuff, trying to make some life insurance, like we're trying to figure out what to do. And so somebody turned me on to where you can buy like live leads that call in looking for life insurance. So I had to leverage him and his license to do this. So we tried that for a while, and he don't want to work, he don't have my work ethic. So it kind of failed. And then I took a position with a Colorado-based property and casualty company that's like auto and home. And I was looking for a job. First time in my life, I'm on an Indeed and all these job-looking places. Like, what am I gonna do? Like, my resume is beyond weighted to one thing, and everybody wants to hire me for that, and I can't do that, right? So I gotta start at the bottom, I gotta find a new niche. Like, I'm not in technology sales, I'm not a CR, like I don't know any of this stuff, and I'm in my 50s, so nobody wants to hire me for 40 grand when I need to make 200, right? And I can't take a job for 40 grand. So I got a hit. Oh, so my oldest son went to Arizona State, Scottsdale, Tempe, beautiful, love it, almost moved there instead of Florida. Dahda. So I said to Robin, if we had to leave Boca, where would you be okay going? And she's like, always love Scottsdale. So I looked for jobs in Scottsdale, and I got a hit. And so I became the director of sales for an insurance company recruiting agents to sell and build their own practices in the auto and home space. Okay? So, like your state farm, all state farmers. I'm recruiting them into an agency recruiter, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:28

An agency owner recruiter. So I have a couple of those guys as clients, by the way, that are independents.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

The so-called job was commission only, no salary, no base, no expense account. I had to leave Robin in Florida. I drove to Scottsdale. My buddy got me a condo for six months, and I networked and rain made, figured out how to recruit agents, and in 18 months I recruited 17 agents. Wow. And then the company sold. And I got shown the door because they want my 20% override. So I never got to make any money off of the people that I built. So I wasn't producing, but I took my 30 years of experience of let me show you how to build a business, right? Come over here, leave farmers, we'll set you up. Da-da-da-da-da. I'll help you with marketing. Like I was using my skills to help them. What's that? It was farmers. I was recruiting from farmers all state state farmers. I was recruiting the captive agents into an independent model. Gotcha. Sorry. There you go. Okay. So no sooner does this thing fall apart, COVID comes. I'm back here. I'm not in Arizona anymore, and COVID's coming. And I'm back to square one. So here's the the long about side of this story. I get a random phone call from the neighbor of a former client. And they want to talk about their finances, investments, financial planning, retirement, all the stuff I used to do and did for their neighbor. And I'm like, look, I'm not licensed anymore. I'm happy to have the conversation. This is what I can do, which is on the insurance side. And then I'm happy to get you with an investment person if need be, right? We have a two-hour conversation. Robin's listening. And I'm back to be, I haven't done this in a couple years now, right? But I'm back to being a duck in water. And Robin, I hang up the phone, and Robin looks at me and she goes, I miss that guy. I go, I miss that guy too. So here's that story, the lesson. Because I couldn't do business the way I did business, I ran the totally opposite direction. I don't want to be half of me. I don't want to be a one-armed paper hanger, right? Because as a CFP, we have fiduciary responsibility, certified financial planner. And that, just like a doctor is, do no harm, you know, patient first, you got to do right by Eric, not right by Bruce. You know, it's not about YTB, yield to broker. It's got to be what's right for the client, right? So I offered so much in the world of investments and insurance, something would fall in place. I didn't have to push or sell as much as consult and solve, which is back to the computer stuff, right? Like let me help you solve your problems, we'll implement, and I'll get paid somehow, somehow, right? So because I couldn't do it that way anymore, I just stayed away. And having this conversation with this potential client, I realized I was denying myself being part of me, even though I couldn't be all of me, it was okay to be part of me. And I kind of, and I've spoken about this at events. It's like the person suffocating, getting the oxygen. It's the person who's getting chemotherapy that rings the bell. I was reborn. I found my purpose. I was 280 pounds when this happened. Okay, you met me kind of in between my weight loss journey, but I'm 217. I've lost over 60 pounds. Okay. I was lost, I was had no purpose. I obviously had some levels of depression. Like, what am I gonna do with myself? How do I make a living? I tried this other avenue with the other insurance, and then they turn around, I lose control. It's the only time I ever worked for somebody, right? Um, that dictated my control, and they took it away from me. So I'm like, oh, I gotta go back to working for myself. And so the epiphany was let's do what I can do, which is insurance. And so I can't do investments, but I could still do insurance. And that's what we relaunched during COVID was we got into and rebuilt an insurance-only business. And I'm back to being a duck and water and just helping. I love helping people. I love consulting and helping people, and you do right, and money comes, money comes and business gets done. And this is our sixth year, so it just kind of elevated, escalated, but it it it it was a journey to get back.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Amen. There's uh definitely some spiritual, uh, spiritual uh and divine um.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Well, you know, they say that the the two intervention there for sure. The two biggest days in a person's life is the day they're born and the day they find out why. I think I don't know if I'm saying that right now. No, that hit hard. That was good. That was good. Because when you and there's books out there like what, you know, what's your why and you know, type of stuff. But yeah, I found my purpose many at 23. I've I was doing when we were cold calling cowboys, just literally smiling and dialing out of a phone book for Merrill Lynch, right? 12 hours a day. Everybody was selling, and at 23, I was consulting, and people are like, What are you doing? I'm like, I'm asking questions. Like, you're cold calling of a phone book. Two or three things are gonna happen. You're gonna get a voice. We didn't have answer machines too much back then. You didn't have caller ID back then. It's 1987. Technology's not the same, right? There's not do not call lists and everything else. So you're calling of a phone book all day long. If a female answers, it's probably a stay-at-home mother, right? So I'm gonna talk about college planning. I'm gonna ask questions like, are you, you know, you preparing for college? Like you had to have some shticks, you had to be able to ad lib instantly based on what you're hearing on the other end of the phone. There were guys in the office who would call all the retirement communities and pitch municipal bonds because the seniors liked safety and they, you know, bought New Jersey turnpike bonds, right? Like you had your pitch. But I would be doing things and asking questions, and then I would put them in things I thought appropriate for that situation. I got in trouble with management because they wanted me to sell the crap that they wanted me to sell, and I wasn't selling it. And I would be called in, like, well, I'm not selling this thing that everybody else is selling. I'm like, because that doesn't work for my clients, like limited partnerships and cars. And this is why I left Merrill Lynch. You know what I was told at 25 years of age? I don't pay you to think, I pay you to sell. Like, really? See ya. So I was beginning of my uh my uh rebellious, you know, management.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

I'm not a fan of do you know what the four levels of learning are? Tell me. I don't know. This is gonna hit you here. I love this. All right, so this is a psychology stuff, right? So there's the lowest level is unconsciously incompetent. Right, right. Okay, you have no clue why you're doing wrong. Then there's consciously incompetent, you kind of know why you suck.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Then there's consciously competent, you got to try to be good, but then there's unconsciously competent, right? That's Steph Curry shooting a basketball. That's when you get to that level in whatever you're doing, and you get to that rarefied air, that's when things get really fun. So for me, that that that's sales. Like sometimes when I because I'm a CEO and I have to manage people and I have to hire people, and you know, all of those things I'm consciously competent at, right? It does I'm not unconsciously good at it, but but when my team says, Oh, Eric, uh, you got to handle these two sales calls or these two places, and you know, it's a Tuesday morning, and I know I gotta just get in my car and go see a couple people and talk business and sell, that is where I'm at my eating. It's so fun. Yeah, you know, that that part's really fun.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

So it sounds like I have a high level of unconscious competence, yes, right, especially doing it 40 years. Yeah, for sure. My mom I try to bring my son into the business, right? Uh he was still in college, and so he hung around with me during his summer break, and I was doing my retirement planning seminars, and then you bring in the prospects and and sit with them in a conference room like this, and I'd run meetings way longer than they should ever be, but two to three hours, right? And working with this couple, having conversation, you know, taking notes, asking questions, getting information, da da da da. So they leave, and my son's like horrified face. I'm like, what's the matter? He goes, I can never do this. I go, why? He goes, you literally spoke for three hours. He goes, you knew so much I'm never gonna know all that information. And I said, Josh, at this point in time, he's let's say he's 20, I'm in my late 40s. I'm like, I I didn't wake up at 23 and start in this business knowing that, but I developed and I became a student and I learn and you you pick up. So you just gotta keep putting quiver, you know, arrows in your quiver, like you gotta get information. But as a young person, he got so intimidated by the breadth of my knowledge and the way I can share it and conduct it and educate the client. He's like, How the hell am I gonna ever do that? And he totally went, you know, the other way with it. So yeah, it's uh what's the other way with it?

SPEAKER_00 34:21

And it's just intimidating.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

I mean, he yeah, he was so intimidated. I mean, I had to talk him off that ledge, yeah, but you know, he's not in the business. He he never pursued getting in the business beyond that little bit of life insurance. He's like, not for me, and not for me, right? It's sales are not for everybody. So um there was something else I had I was gonna tell you, but good. We'll keep going.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

There's this old movie, it's called I think it's called Barry Gordon's The Last Dragon. It's a night, probably 1984. It's kind of like a what do you call it? There it's a black man, his name is Bruce Leroy. They're just kind of it's like a spiff off of Bruce Lee. He's kind of like a funny black karate guy calling him Bruce Leroy. But it's it but it's a really inspirational kind of movie, too. And there's a good guy and a bad guy. But the good guy, Bruce Leroy, is looking through, you know, this entire movie is trying to find the master to help him. And if he can find the kung fu master, it'll solve all his problems and and he'll find his purpose and he'll be able to finally accomplish his, you know, finish his journey, whatever it is. And he keeps looking for the master, and he can't find the master. And then at the end of the movie, you got the good guy and the bad guy fighting each other, and the bad guy is kicking the good guy's butt. And, you know, there's this one scene where he takes his hair and he's like throwing it into this like water bucket, whatever the heck it is, and he pulls his head out and he goes, Who's the master?

unknown 35:55

Right?

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Like he wanted the good guy to call the bad guy the master, and then it dawns on the good guy. I'm the master. Everything that I've been looking for the entire time is right here. And then, you know, he starts glowing, and you know, he kicks the bad guys. Yeah, he he he kicks the guy's butt. So, like I to me, uh whenever these young people are learning like sales or they're intimidated by something, you sometimes you just gotta believe you're the master. And once you once you have that belief, you can do whatever you want to do, you can accomplish whatever you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

A lot of people have that head trash and struggle with their own limited beliefs, and they can't get out of their own way because it's always a no and a negative instead of why why can't I do it? You know, you you see the guys that out there that talk about those things, the meltzers and and the like, like that's what they talk about us. Like, except I can't dunk a basketball, I can pretty much do everything else, right? Like there's things you just can't do. Yeah, you gotta be a little realistic, right? There's things you just can't do, but uh I at a young age, you know, I was I was the kid that didn't have the dad around, and so I overcompensated and you know had this you know young child reputation of being somewhat obnoxious because I was overcompensating. But what does a 10-year-old know, right? And the the struggles of being different, you just evolve and put shells around yourself and and you protect yourself in these different ways. You have to undo a lot of that trash, right? And but I always felt like there's no reason I can't do if that human being did it, then I should be able to do it. Like I just had that view at a very young age of like nobody's any different or better than me. We're all we all came out of the same origin, right? Uh so what makes Elon Musk different than Bezos, then Zuckerberger, than you and me, right? It's it just how they did whatever they did and accelerated and believed. But for every one of them, how many thousands have trashed ideas that they were too afraid to even try, right? Or go ask and borrow money.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

I don't know if you know my story, but I don't I don't really I grew up in a household that never talked about business. The idea of being a business owner was not an idea. And the the my entire goal in life was just to go get a good job somewhere and to get a good salary, right? Completely the antithesis to what you did. And eventually I became really good at sales and my job and became good at sales leadership and understanding the marketing world. And I but I eventually got to a point, you know, I was like, I wanted to take this entrepreneurial jump. It was scary, you know. It was scary to go from having a salary, and you know, sure, I would make bonuses and those types of things, but I had like$300,000. It was guaranteed to me every year, no matter what. That's pretty cushy, no matter who you are, right? But then I had to take this, I knew I wanted to get the best version of myself, not just income, but the most high performing, high character, high value. I want to be the best husband, the best father, the best friend, the best leader. And I knew I had to put myself in the fire to get the best version of myself. I knew I had to. So me being an entrepreneur isn't just about, it's not just about making more money, it's about forging myself in fire to become the strongest damn sword there is. And and to be candid, I think the reason why you got your ass back up after a bunch of unfortunateness is because you were always forged in fire. You forged yourself in fire at an early age. Very young age. And you're kind of unbreakable.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

I I I I recall, I don't know if it was the conscious, unconscious, subconscious stuff, but you know, my mother's cancer was about a four or five year journey, if journey is even the right word, right? And and the end, you know, all things end badly, otherwise they don't end, right? The end couldn't have been any worse because it's you know it's now brain tumors, and you know, she's rotting away, and my brother and I are at each other's throats, it's just the two of us. But I remember somewhere in there going, I've lived through hell. There's nothing I'm ever gonna face again that was as bad as what I just went through dealing with her dying at 22 years of age. So something forged, that steel forged of like, I survived hell. Bring it on. Like it there's nothing that's gonna be worse than that at that moment in my life. Now, certainly there could have been other challenges, like a child sick or a spouse sick and whatever, but not good, that hasn't happened, right? But yeah, it it all morphed from that.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

So one of the reasons I love my wife so much, she had a little bit of hardship as a young girl, young, young lady, earl uh late, mid to late teens, and and you know, just had some challenges and and uh and they were financial. And you know, when I met her, and she's a young, young woman, I swear in my life, she's never had a bad day. Ever since I've known her for six years, she's never had a bad day. And I asked her that a couple years ago. I I said, how do you you never turn into negative Nancy? You know, I get frustrated because I expect exponential growth all the time, so I'm just always in a hurry. So I get frustrated that we're not at$100 million, you know, like and I said, How do you was this innate or is this a decision? Like, how are you like this? And she said to me, she goes, honestly, she goes, when all that stuff happened to me when I was younger, it just made me kind of realize just nothing is that actually big of a deal. You know, not nothing when when heartache and chaos hit, cancer hits, it's it's gonna be all right. There's nothing that's really all worth worrying about and stressing about. And so what it did is it it forged her into this woman who doesn't have a bad day. Now she's been pregnant for 13 weeks. Different story now. This first trimester has been a little interesting. Um body's not her own anymore. Oh my gosh. But uh I love her to death, and fortunately, I've learned patience. Yeah, you better. Um, but you know, we don't have too much more time, but what I want to do, I want I want you to dig deep into your business today. I want to talk about your business today. Who's your target avatar? Who are you serving? Who should call you? Tell me about uh Ask the Plan Man today.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

So we're we rebranded the the business, the Ask the Plan Man's the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

So I rebranded it was Weinstein Wealth Management before I lost my license. And then when I restarted, I rebranded that to Weinstein Wealth, because I the WWs and my logo, insurance solutions. So that's how I rebranded the insurance entity in 2020, 21. Once I launched the podcast, this logo and asked the plan man kind of became Its own animal. And everybody loved. I mean, I was hesitant because it's my face, and I didn't want that, and the logo was supposed to be something innocuous and you know, not me, and it became me. And Robin's like, that's your logo. I'm like, oh, I don't want to be the face of this thing, right? Right here, right? Right here. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

So that branding took over. And then last year, this is this is 2026. So at the end of 2024, heading into 25, ego, epiphany, things were happening. I keep getting introduced as Weinstein Wealth, and nobody says the next two words, insurance solutions. And as much as I don't want to give up the Weinstein Wealth brand, people still think I'm a wealth manager. And I don't do that. And if they're not thinking me for insurance, then I'm not being thought of. So I had my graphic artist redo a logo, taking the headphones off, Plan Man Insurance. So we're now rebranded as Plan Man Insurance. I still have all the Weinstein Welt stuff that I'm trying to unencumber, which is a whole thing. But so it's Plan Man Insurance. I am a unicorn in the space. I'm duly licensed. So what is that? I have a life and health license. That's life insurance, health insurance, Medicare, long-term care, disability, annuities, into employee benefits, right? So anything in that world. The PC license I got when I was recruiting, that's for auto, home, and commercial. So for you as a business owner, you need general liability. If you're a manufacturer, you gotta have, right? You're a truck driver, you know, commercial is all these buildings that you're in, right? Somebody has to insure this. So that's commercial. You drive your car, you have a home, you need auto and home. So I'm duly licensed because of that, right? So I can back to I can help anybody with anything insurance related, right? Never say no to an opportunity. You need an investment portfolio rolling over your 401k, I'll bring in one of my partners, they'll handle the assets, we'll do the financial planning. If there's insurance work, I'll do that. If it's investment work, they'll do that. So when I say I reinvented myself, I figured out where I can go to do what I used to do and where's my gap? Well, my gap is I can't manage money anymore. I don't have that license. So now I went back to all my old friends. I know hundreds of people in the business, right, working all those years. And so I have a few people that I lean on and we collaborate. So if you say, hey, I need your help, I'll bring in this one, I'll bring in that one. I'm still the lead dog because I'm the financial planner mentality, and then I'm gonna say Eric's gonna implement the investments with you, and I'll let Eric take over from there. And then from the insurance standpoint, I'll pick up the conversation again, right? So so I'm a two-headed dragon in a lot of regards, and I'm even better for you as a client because I've got colleagues that are CFPs. You know, I'm bringing in another CFP, so now for the price of admission, you're getting two or three CFPs, not just one. You're getting 60 and 80 years of experience, not just one, right? So it's hard for me to answer your question is what's my avatar? Because I help everybody. You know, when I was in the big Wall Street firms, they all instituted minimum account sizes. You didn't have a million dollars, you couldn't be a client of XYZ. My clients were not multimillionaire business owners. I was after I was cold calling neighborhoods, the millionaire next door, the guy with 250, guy with a half a million, the guy with a million dollars at J and J that retires and now I get his rollover. Like my clients were the everyday person. I wasn't dealing with Mark Zuckerberger. I wasn't running family offices and managing billions of dollars. It wasn't my niche. I was a 23-year-old kid cold calling out of a phone book. So who are you getting? Warren Buffett's not answering the phone. My biggest, my biggest uh uh reach, if you will, when I was starting, I was about 24, I cold called Lee Iacoka. Remember Lee Iacoka? Lee Iacoka was uh Chrysler. He left Ford. He was the he was the inventor or creator of the Mustang in the 60s, and he took over Chrysler back in the 80s when it was falling apart. So I cold called Lee Iacoka, and I got all the way to his assistant. And I kept I kept getting passed through and passed, like up the line, up the line, and uh we had this like reverse directory. So I had the number, I'm calling Detroit. I'm 24, I don't know what the hell. Like, what am I gonna say if he actually picks up the phone, right? Like so I hadn't thought that far. You know, fail, fail forward, just fail forward, right? Yeah fire ready aim, you know, just do it. So but I had I called Colgate Palmolov C. I was calling all these CEOs out of the out of literally this reverse directory. Um I had Chutzbah, you know, I had balls. So I wouldn't ever do it now. I'm petrified now, but back then I did. So I got all the way to his executive assistant. She's like, Well, what's this about? Who are you with? And I said, I'm I'm you know, I'm with Merrill Lynch. Oh, Mr. Icoco already works with you know the people at Merrill Lynch. Thank you very much. I'll let them know you called. Like, because he's dealing with the institutional people, he's not dealing with a retail stockbroker. They don't know I'm 24, but you know, but they're oh, thank you very much. Like, we already work with Merrill Lynch, right? But but I knocked on the doors, like that was a great story for a young person of like, you know, you're you're calling the guy living on Mulberry Lane and or you're calling Lee Iaco, like there's a big difference. But but yeah, my clientele was i in that regard. Um so I I didn't I never had so the the end result in this was I had client loyalty because I never pushed my client aside. I could tell you a million stories, but I never pushed a client aside because they did or didn't have money. If you were committed to the process and you were committed to doing what I told you and had a thousand dollars, I took you on as a client. I didn't say I need a quarter million, a hundred thousand, a half a million. I'm like, will you put away a hundred dollars a month? Will you cut up your credit cards? Will you do all these things I'm gonna tell you to do? Will you get life insurance to protect your family? Okay, let's get started. And they became the most because not everybody's born with a million dollars, right? I mean, you have what you have now, but 20 years ago, did you? Like, so who helped you? Who guided you? Who so all these self-help books and all these things that are out there, you know, the do it yourself. So that's part of what my book is, is part of that journey. Is it's a self-help financial planning journey book that I've been working on, that and that's the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

If you listen to Ask the Plan Man, there's no commercials, there's no products, it's education. It's just talking about a specific item of finance or planning, being proactive, and it's helping people understand terminology because there's no cookbook. There's no, you know, you got rich dad, poor dads out there, and Ramsey's and Susie Ormans. I want to be one of them.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

And I'm really good at that conversation and the education. I want to give you that. I remember that one story, and then uh I'll go back. When I relaunched, uh, restarted the business, uh, had a colleague from the Colorado business. She, you know, we all got scattered, right? All these directors got displaced. So she landed somewhere, she's in San Antonio. So she calls me up and she goes, Would you come out, C E, continuing ed? She goes, My company has to run the continuing ed for all their life insurance agents. She goes, it's pretty dry stuff. She goes, you'd probably pepper it up, like your personality. She goes, if I bring you out, will you run a class? I'm like, I'm not an instructor. Like, what do I know about continuing ed? Like, what's the criteria? So, like, don't worry about it. We'll we'll put it together and we'll make sure it's compliant and approved by the state and you know meet all their requirements. I'm like, okay. Well, the one course became me doing the whole thing for two days. Okay. And what I want to say is, unscripted, I had a basic outline. I spoke for 11 hours over two days, unscripted. And they were eaten out of my hands. They were captivated. Like the applause, the coming up to me afterwards, the like in the first hour, Robin was there, and and my friend, they were both Robins. Um, and I'm like, Am I doing okay? Is everything they're like? Their faces were like, dude, you're crushing it. But it was I'm sharing stories, I'm talking about the products, how to implement it, what to do with it, how your clients are going to respond. Like these are the there was a hundred insurance agents with plenty of years of experience, and they were like, dude, you're feeding us gold 11 hours. So that was before the podcast, right? Like, so you you do that and you realize what you've learned over the years and how you do what you do, and now I gotta find that next genre for the man, right? If I could do it in this room to these people, and so eventually I met some people in the podcast world, and I'm like, that's my next genre. I gotta get into podcasts. So that's the asked the plan man. I had a license plate, was Plan Man back in New Jersey, so you know it kind of got a nickname, and so it just kind of evolved into that next evolution for me, and now it's Plan Man Insurance.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

So you're giving me some ideas with the with the shirt there and the constant branding. This is good, man. I um if if somebody do me a favor, take a look into that camera, and if somebody wants to talk to the plan man, yeah, or if somebody is interested, I'll talk to anybody. I know you will. I'll always talk to somebody. Where can they find you?

SPEAKER_01 53:54

844 Plan Man is my toll-free number. Go to planmaninsurance.com. You go to planman.tv for my YouTube channel. I got over 90 episodes. I got about 20 shorts as well. So I've got all kinds of topics. I have I have topics on my show. You talk about eclectic. Um financing or leasing a car, like how to car shop. How many times I was asked as a financial advisor over the years for help on should I lease, should I buy, you know, you know, those are questions people ask, right? Who's educating you on the do's and don'ts of car purchasing and the games they play and you as an unassuming, unknowing, uneducated consumer? So I had a car salesperson on with me who's no longer in the business telling me all the bullshit they pull and we talk on the episode. Okay? I had the special needs trusts, I've got elder care episodes, long-term care, disability, life insurance. I talk about the state of the markets, I have Bitcoin experts, I have blockchain experts. Like I've got stuff 90 episodes. I haven't done them in a while. I've been on hiatus because uh the book kind of became the precursor. So I haven't I haven't released an episode in a while, but we're once the book's done, we're gonna re do more episodes. Um but yeah, it it I enjoy it. It was it was good and easy and hard and challenging to get the right guests. I had Coach Bird on. I had Brad Lee on, so that's business coaching conversations, right? It's proactivity, it's mindset, skill set. Like, you know, I'm trying to I'm trying to mold the audience and give something for everybody. Like you can't look at that library and not find something. The people helping my book is uh Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul. This is the largest bookseller ever in the history of the world. He's sold over 500 million books. So look up Chicken Soup for the Soul, Mark Victor Hansen. His team is who is working, helping me with the book. He's on my show. Like, that's that's a name. Like, that's that's amazing. That's like having Stephen King in a different genre, you know, on a show. Like, he's a big, a big name. So, you know, my show's got a lot of different stuff, and I'm hopefully we'll bring out some more.

SPEAKER_00 56:11

Yeah, you got a lot of valuable stuff in there. I'm gonna make sure I tune in too, too. I uh I know a little bit, I know the car stuff, residual value, and all that sort of stuff. I know how to negotiate a good deal. Guys, do me a favor, we're gonna put all his links in the description. The plan man has more information than just insurance. You heard him his podcast and his on his YouTube channel. There's a ton of valuable information ranging from crypto to uh purchasing a car. Don't let those salesmen hustle you. But thanks again for tuning into the Gold Coast podcast. Make sure you give us um uh a like and follow, and make sure you give Bruce a follow as well. We'll see you again.