On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with James Leary, cofounder of OneProtection about changing the way we think about protecting our most valuable asset, our income.
In this episode we discussed:
James Leary, DIA is the Co-Founder of OneProtection. With nearly 25 years of dedicated experience in the insurance and financial services sector, James has primarily specialized in individual income protection planning throughout his career. OneProtection stands as a cutting-edge income protection (DI) sales enablement software platform, meticulously crafted to empower insurance agents and financial advisors in effectively presenting, selling, and securing adequate income protection plans for their valued clients.
Connect with James Leary:
Website: https://one.oneprotection.tech/demo-90-day-free-trial
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-leary-dia-07a65852/
On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with James Leary, cofounder of OneProtection about changing the way we think about protecting our most valuable asset, our income.
In this episode we discussed:
James Leary, DIA is the Co-Founder of OneProtection. With nearly 25 years of dedicated experience in the insurance and financial services sector, James has primarily specialized in individual income protection planning throughout his career. OneProtection stands as a cutting-edge income protection (DI) sales enablement software platform, meticulously crafted to empower insurance agents and financial advisors in effectively presenting, selling, and securing adequate income protection plans for their valued clients.
Connect with James Leary:
Website: https://one.oneprotection.tech/demo-90-day-free-trial
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-leary-dia-07a65852/
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Watch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work. Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast changing the way we think about money. Tony is pleased to be joined today by James Leary. James is the co-founder of One Protection. In this episode, we'll be discussing James's thoughts on how we change the way we think about money and disability insurance. James, welcome to the Get Ready Money Podcast. Thank you for joining us today, tony. Good to be here. Appreciate it. Yeah, well, glad to have you. And, as always, this is the first question I ask everyone is what is your origin story?
Speaker 3:Well, I am 42 years old and I was born in Minnesota, lived there for the vast majority of my life, recently moved out to the Black Hills of South Dakota Just over a year ago. Love it out here. We could spend the whole podcast talking about that, but I'll save that for a different day. You know, when I was younger I really you know, as far as a business mindset is concerned, tony, I really struggled in school. Math was my worst subject of all time and it's interesting on how I deal with a lot of numbers today. But I knew I didn't like school and I knew I wasn't going to do well in college. But I always had a mindset of wanting to help people, love that sales dynamic for sure. So I started in business. My first real job was doing medical debt collections 26 years ago. I was about 16 years old and I did that for close to five years and that was a tough job. But that's where I kind of cut my teeth on the phones, so to speak, in that environment right there. And I'll come back to that probably later here on the conversations I had through those years with people that were dealing with some rough stuff health events and medical events and so on and so forth. That moved me more into the financial world I might.
Speaker 3:My next you know career that I got into was mortgage planning and I worked with a ton of financial advisors on debt restructuring strategies and stuff like that, and I always try to take an approach with their with or with my clients, I should say or their clients like hey, this mortgage is one of your biggest items that you have to manage and your biggest liability here. We want to make sure that this fits in the overall concept of a financial plan super effectively. Here, example we'd be talking, I'd be talking with a lot of clients and be like well, hey, how long are you going to be in your home for? Oh, we're moving in three years. Well, you have a completely wrong mortgage strategy here.
Speaker 3:In that environment, here's some ideas on how you can retool that a little bit and have it fit much more smoothly in your overall financial plan. So after years of doing that, I guess I got to a point, tony, where I was like do I just want to be a financial advisor? Is that my? Is that why I'm doing this? So I started talking with a bunch of financial advisors. Long story short that's when I that's when I got into the business 18-ish or so years ago, where I started to get licensed and started running my financial advisory practice and that led to different areas of specialties and I really started to focus in on the income protection or disability insurance side of things, and that's what my whole universe is today.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, and I think you said something there at the very end. That I want to highlight is income protection is I know other people have talked about it too is maybe disability insurance isn't quite the right way to describe it. It's really about protecting your income, not about a disability. We don't call life insurance death insurance, even though that's what it's also about. So you know, maybe that's it. So you know, tell us a little bit about One Protection. It's an interesting company. What inspired you to start One Protection?
Speaker 3:Well, when I was an advisor, tony, a number of different bullet points kind of came into this, but here are some of the main ones. I was looking at statistics and the two big statistics that hit me right between the eyes was the leading cause of bankruptcies and home foreclosures was disabling or health events and people not being prepared to mitigate that storm with adequate income protection or disability insurance plans there. And that brought me back to my medical debt collection days, when this really started to become clear to me. On this issue of people having health events without the right coverage in place, I'm like holy smokes. I talk to people every single day that we're dealing with that situation. And here I am think about how ridiculous this is. I'm calling people that are in my queue right as a medical debt collector. They're laying in a hospital bed or something like that, and I'm like, hey, you're behind on your medical bills. I mean, how ridiculous is that? The responses that I got there were. I think everybody can imagine what a lot of those responses were from those folks when I made that call, but a lot of them that response was, hey, you're going to have to talk to my attorney. Why? Because they were filing bankruptcy. So now fast forward.
Speaker 3:When I was as an advisor in that environment, I'm like gosh, this is just a really important area of planning. So many people are having just financial problems because of that, they're not being prepared for it, and it's a solid and solvable problem. And then I started talking to all these other advisors that I knew like, hey, are you doing anything with DI planning or disability insurance planning? And I'm like, eh, same answer, different advisor Not really, I try to. It's really tough. I don't know how to position it, I don't know how to present it effectively. I get to this point and then it kind of stalls out, can't really get my client to move forward, hurt it over and over and over again.
Speaker 3:So I started researching for tools, presentation tools, specifically, tony, on how to better present that need and demonstrate that in a way the client could understand and grasp. And I remember all these other financial planning tools that I had at my fingertips. Nothing was doing a really effective job in that specific conversation right there, and I remember Googling eight, nine years ago now, literally, disability insurance presentation software for financial advisors. Nothing, tried to reword it a thousand different ways, nothing. And I was just mind boggled by that. How could something so important, such a critical area of risk mitigation planning, and us as advisors didn't have real effective tools to be able to present, communicate that need and provide those solutions for the client? I was just dumbfounded by it.
Speaker 3:So what I started to do is kind of built out by you know some rudimentary presentation tools. I started testing it on clients Don't tell principal compliance, but I started testing it out on clients. Back then I'm like, wow, this is really, this is really working. Back then I was working at principles when this all developed. So, long story short, it kind of started there, tony, and then we moved it into a kind of a prototype.
Speaker 3:Mike sir, some people on this call might know that name is a DI industry legend. We kind of developed this together. He's my current business partner and once we found out this prototype was really working effectively, we had a lot of advisors start to see this and they started to ask how do you have, is that your tool? How do I get access to that? I'm like, no, it's just, I'm the only one in the world with it on my computer here. It's a complete from scratch prototype that we designed out.
Speaker 3:So once we started to get more feedback on that, tony.
Speaker 3:It's like, huh, maybe we have a bigger mission here, instead of me or Mike and I being these DI consultants out there. Maybe we broaden that mission and give advisors a better platform, a better tool, a better training system all of that so they can get confident in this area of planning and have the tools to successfully do it and get their clients to take action on it. So that's a long backstory to where we're at right now today. So, as we sit right now, we have a product it's a disability insurance presentation sale software and it's a cloud based, subscription based platform and we train advisors on how to use it really effectively all across the country and now into Canada, and it's really helping advisors who want to get proactive here and feel that this is an important area of planning really helps them to be able to demonstrate that need and that solution to their client like they've never been able to do before. So that's our company and kind of what led into creating it extremely niche, but it's very effective for the right advisor.
Speaker 2:Well I think this is so important is. I know as an advisor, I struggled on, you know, placing disability insurance policies getting. I consulted mainly to financial planners and other professionals and that it was hard to get people interested in disability insurance for their clients. So I think one if you are an advisor, you have to talk to your clients about disability insurance. I think that's a must.
Speaker 2:If you're an insurance agent, I think it's malpractice Tonight. It's like you wouldn't let your client not have homeowners insurance if they own a home. Well, if your client has an income, they have a disability insurance need. So, yeah, this is also a plug for one protection. But even if one protection is not your flavor, you know there's other resources out there we should be thinking about. And if you are a consumer listening to this, bring it up with your insurance agent. If they're shy in talking about disability insurance or financial planning and, as you're hearing here, they may not be as familiar with it themselves, but ask them about it and they'll be able to explain it to you. They do know about it. It's just something they don't bring up. So, james, you know this is a natural follow-up question is why has disability insurance not been recognized as the foundation of a sound financial plan.
Speaker 3:Well, a couple of things there, tony. Number one, it's just what you said disability insurance. That's a pretty strong word, right? I think they have mislabeled that product from the very, very beginning. Just like you said earlier, we don't call life insurance death insurance. Even if you Google disability insurance versus Googling life insurance and hit images, you get two totally different worlds there, right? Life insurance typically has dads throwing their kids in the air and families jumping off docks at the lake and walking through wheat fields holding hands.
Speaker 3:Disability insurance, you have somebody in a full body, cast with a long straw, trying to drink their drink, wheelchairs and handicapped symbols. So when I think people hear actually I'm certain of it when people hear the terminology disability insurance or if you were to become disabled, they get that imagery in their mind and they think of like a Christopher Reeves or a Stephen Hawking type scenario, so they start to shut down right away. So I think that's one of the main cruxes of the roadblocks on why disability insurance is so hard to sell. The other really critical component to that is when an advisor or if you're not an advisor listening to this think about where you're at right now. You're probably, however old you are 30 or 35 or 40 or 45, doesn't really matter. But your job might be going well, you have a couple of kids, you know you're married, you're in a nice house, got a new couple of nice vehicles, a boat up at the cabin, things like that. Are you thinking for one second? Or, as an advisor, trying to have this conversation with that client kind of profile there, are they thinking for one second? You're having a health event tomorrow, next year, five years from now? Probably not. Health events are extremely low that you will.
Speaker 3:What we have to pay real close attention to in this area is when do health events typically strike and what's that average claim duration? If you look at all the carriers out there, I mean go right on down the list. In the fifties is when health scenarios tend to spike dramatically. That's when those carriers if you got a DI policy and something happens that's when carriers tend to pay out the most claims by far. It goes up like a hockey stick in the fifties. What's the average claim duration? Usually three to four years. Some are a lot shorter, some are a lot longer, but usually three to four years.
Speaker 3:So all of a sudden you're 38 years old right now, or whatever. Everything's great. You're like, yeah, I don't need something like this, and you just kind of forget about it. The advisor doesn't know what to do, because they tried to bring it up and the client's like, yeah, no thing, let's talk about life insurance Right Now.
Speaker 3:All of a sudden, 52 hits, boom, there's a heart attack, there's a back explosion, there's arthritis, I mean, there's a stroke. The list goes on and on, and now we have a problem on our hands. We're unable to work. We for sure can't qualify for an income protection plan. Now the horse is already out of the stable, and that, right there, is the core reason why bankruptcy is in home foreclosures. Tony just continued to lead the way on this health event type scenario. So being able to communicate that differently to clients, using the right vernacular and the right tools to position and present that is that's what it's all about. Right there and without it, advisors just not all the vast majority of them, though tend to struggle with it, and most consumers can't get their, can't get their head around it, because they're just not thinking in the right way about it.
Speaker 2:So basically change the way you think about disability insurance, you know, and reframe it as income protection, as you're talking about is is how can it help you? So, james, you know let's jump into the get ready questions If you're ready. The first one is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?
Speaker 3:I wish people would think of their income differently, and what I mean by that is you know, if you're, if you're out there or if you're client out there, is, you know, making $100,000 a year or $150,000 a year? They're thinking of their income, tony, from a monthly or an annual number perspective, and that's typically it. We have to retrain and refocus that big time. It's not about that monthly or annual income, it is from a short term budgeting perspective and a financial planning perspective. For sure, just day in and day out, you gotta do small increments to grow. But somebody that's 40 years older, than $150,000 a year right now, with a 3% annual income increase from now through retirement, that's a $6.4, $6.5 plus million income asset. So your ability to work, earn, grow your income over the course of your career is, by miles, your most important and most valuable asset that you have at your fingertips by millions of dollars in the vast majority of situations. So I think we need to get people thinking differently about that and how important that is and how important you are as that most critical asset to grow that income stream.
Speaker 3:The other thing, too, that I see a lot of is, generally speaking, people tend to be pretty conservative with their overall financial planning or investment strategy. Oh, I don't want to take a lot of risks. I like to. You know I don't want to swing for the fences here. Slow and steady wins the race in most scenarios, and I couldn't agree more with that. The problem is when you're conservative on one side of the coin and you're not protecting your most valuable asset. That is the fuel for everything, including funding your financial plan and retirement goals and dreams. Something goes wrong there. Being conservative turns into the most risky thing ever. Right, and I think having a good balance between the two is really, really critical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love that and I think that hits on it especially. Think about it as the total value of the asset. If you had a home that was worth $5 million, you wouldn't think twice about ensuring it, so I think that's a great way to reframe it is hey, this is a lifetime asset. This is how much you're going to earn. Protect it. It's not about anything else. The next question is what is one simple thing that people can do each year to set themselves up for financial success?
Speaker 3:Well, I heard this. I got one of his books right behind me there, brian Tracy, and I think one of his kind of taglines in one of his books was hey, if you stop, if you stop learning, you stop earning. And I think that that's a critical component. I personally have the tendency to overwhelm myself with new ideas and then I just get lost in it all and I apply none. So I think, reading a lot, studying different concepts, talking to your financial professional about, hey, what's the one thing I can do next year? Just start moving the needle a little bit further and just dominate that one single thing, small chunk of it, but continue to learn, keep it simple and just slowly but surely stack things in there. So, stop learning, you stop earning. So I think you continue to learn, you'll continue to earn as long as you apply those concepts and keep it simple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you know that goes hand in hand with that is you stop growing as either a professional, as a consumer, as an educator. If you're not learning new things, you're going backwards and you're doing everybody in your circle of disfavor, including yourself. So, james, what is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money?
Speaker 3:Oh man, there's so many that just kind of flood into my mind here. But I think one of the most important money habits another book I don't have it out, but another book here Dr John D Martini. One of his big taglines is piggy banks become biggie banks. You just have to start small and just increase it incrementally over time. Kind of ties into the stop learning, you stop earning conversation that I just had and how to add just one kind of new thing incrementally in there.
Speaker 3:But I think, keeping it, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time and you just start small and get into the habit of saving, Try to automate things as best as you can so you don't see the money, it just automatically goes into your strategy. I think that's probably one of the most important things that I know from a personal perspective. The small rican chunk big dreams and goals down into the smallest bite size chunks goes a lot further than trying to do it all or do big chunks at a time. So create habits, start small and just build on it. I think that's the most important thing when it comes to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think that's wonderful advice and that's why I share with people as well is when you look at everything with your money, it is overwhelming. And then you start on a task and even review your insurance. Well, that's still big, so pick a smaller thing. Review your life and your group DI policy at open enrollment since we're sticking to disability insurance and just think about that. Isolate it for a minute is like do you need to go from 50 to 60%? Should you go after tax or pre tax? Focus in on that and do that as your one thing. I love that breaking it down.
Speaker 3:They started to interrupt me, but that's such a critical point that you just made right there. Oh, I already got the coverage through work. I'm good to go. 9.9 out of 10 times when a consumer or an advisor gets that response from their client, they have absolutely no clue how that group income protection plan really, how that employer has it positioned for them from a maximum coverage or taxation perspective. That has to be flushed out and the client must be educated on that, Otherwise they're in for most of the time they're in for a pretty hefty surprise. Something happens later on down the road and they're out for a few years or worse and they're only relying on that plan there and they do not know how it works. A lot of times it's not even enough to cover just their basic living expenses.
Speaker 2:Let's go deep in that, because I was hoping you would pick up on that. I sort of served you a softball there. I think, people, really, when you look at your group disability insurance, you have to think about, well, is there a monthly cap on it? What is that monthly cap? And does it cover bonuses? Does it cover other compensation? Is it taxable? Yeah, is it taxable, as you said, and because if you buy an individual income protection insurance policy, we're going to change the words we use today.
Speaker 2:That was the time to start, you pay for the premium with after tax dollars, which, yes, that's a little bit of pain, that you don't get a tax deduction on it, but you get the major benefit of getting after tax dollars when you make a claim. And that's a huge difference as compared to a policy, a group DI policy, that pays you a, that's paid for on a pre-tax basis, but your benefit is subject income tax. So think about it this way you have 50% benefit on your group DI policy. Then that 50% goes through, let's say, a 25% gross tax rate, which is a little bit small, but we'll just be generous on that. So all of a sudden you're talking about that. Maybe you're getting 35% of your income from your work, without even counting commissions and bonuses and cap and everything. So I love it. Great point. I don't know if this ties into the next question I was going to ask you is but what money myth are you trying to break?
Speaker 3:Hmm, the money myth that I am trying to break. You know, if you want to get rich quick, out there, pick a different, pick a different job. I saw this, gosh. I wish I could remember who posted it. Sorry if they see this, and I can't recall who posted this on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3:The other day or last week there was two pictures and one said the get rich quick line, and then the next to it was another door that said you know, take things slow and steady line. There was a thousand people in the get rich quick line and one person in the slow and steady line. So I think the Mitch the Mitch the myth that you don't know why that came out. I got a buddy named Mitch, that's about it. I think the big myth is wanting to get rich quick is just simply that it's a myth. You got to do some basic blocking and tackling. Get your foundation set up real effectively, protect your most important and valuable asset, which is your ability to earn work and grow your income stream. Start slow and build into it. Over time you will outpace everybody in the get rich quick line there they're looking for short cuts.
Speaker 2:Ah, that was it. That was the word I was waiting for. It's shortcuts. There are no shortcuts to be successful at anything, especially in the financial world. You know when you're talking about the stuff is having enough money for financial independence or, you know, even going on vacation. There's no shortcuts. You actually have to do the work and have a strategy. So you know, let's get out the time machine for a minute. What advice would you give your younger self about money if you could go back in time knowing what you know now?
Speaker 3:Oh, I would make. I would really make sure I understood what my core values were Younger. Here's what I mean by that. I was fortunate enough, when I was pretty darn young, to start making some pretty pretty decent income. What were the things that were really critically important to me back then when I was younger? Well, fishing. I was a car fanatic I still am going on vacations and having a really nice house Still into all those things. But back when I was younger, tony, guess what was really low on the totem pole as far as my values were concerned? Saving money. So I had this beautiful.
Speaker 3:I was young, I was in my early 20s. Beautiful house, I had some pretty rad cars, just going on vacations Doing all sorts of fun stuff. I lost all of that, like that Market, this, that the other thing, boom gone. I was like whoa, okay, because even though my values before I was making money, those were my values. So when I started making more money, those values shifted over and I just put more money into those top things and I still didn't have left as any money to save. I was still.
Speaker 3:I was at a the same net worth as I was, making $30,000 or $20,000 a year when I was younger than when I was making $150,000 a year in my early to mid twenties. I had the same net worth, I had more cool things, but my values were out of line. So if I could go back and make sure, boom, I took saving money from the bottom to the top. That's what I would do in an absolute heartbeat. I'd be probably being a better position today, 20, 20 plus years later, to be honest with you. So that's, if I could go back to my younger self, that's, that would be it.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's okay because the choices you made. Going forward is now things are going well. You're a founder of a company, you've got a home, you know so to people out there who are watching and listening, you know, is you know that's also a lesson is that you can have a setback, or things may not go exactly as you plan every time, but you know it's possible to adjust. Yeah, it is inevitable that you know. I mean that's the one thing about a plan is you know it's not going to happen with what's that saying is you know like you know when you go to war is like the one thing that certain is the plan is not going to work. I can't remember what it is, I don't know. If you know that one, okay, your spot on.
Speaker 3:I actually pay one of one of the things I do virtually every single night as I get into like Navy Seal podcast and special forces podcast I am just into that and they talk about that exact same thing all the time, tony, they train and train and plan and plan times more than we could ever even grasp. And so you know, I think the second they get into that mission, that plan is already that plan is already off off tilt, and now they have to learn to adapt with it. So, anyways, you're you're absolutely right about that. I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 2:And I wanted you to bring it up. As you know, I've done some reading about special forces and I think that for people out there is you know what James is talking about is that they spend a lot of time going through the options before they do a mission is a continuously run through it and see what will happen. And so you know, when you're thinking about your money is you know, don't just do the first thing that pops up. Think about it Well, if I do this, how's it going to impact that? Think it through, game it out.
Speaker 3:Continuity plan amazing advice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, have a contingency plan. I love that. And coming back to insurance, insurance is the ultimate contingency plan. That's what it's about. It helps you out. So, james, you know. To wrap up, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money.
Speaker 3:I think we have to. My number one tip about changing the way we think about money is you have to protect your most valuable asset, and that is your income and ability to work and earn it. I know that's been a theme since the word go here on our podcast, tony, but if you're not protecting your most important asset, it's the one thing you can least afford to lose. You just have to have that adequately protected, because anything else that you do there's our contingency plan there Anything else that you do, moving forward, is just simply at complete risk if you lose the fuel that makes it all happen.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's a fantastic tip. So, james, where can people learn more about you, what you're up to? Where can they learn more about one protection?
Speaker 3:I'm best super active on LinkedIn. It's the one and only social social media platform that I that I'm on. James Larry, search me up, connect with me, love to interact with you further. Otherwise, if anybody has more precise, direct questions or wants to maybe learn a little bit more about what we do specifically to help advisors grow their D I business, I can be reached also directly at James dot leary. At one protection, dot tech, one protection. All spelled out one word dot tech, t E C.
Speaker 2:H Fantastic and as always for everybody watching and listening is there will be links to James's Lincoln profile as well as to the one protection website. So, james, thank you very much for joining us today. Appreciate your time and your insights.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you so much, Tony. Some of those questions maybe kind of think a little, maybe think about some things that I haven't really thought about in a while. So this was, this was fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these were some wonderful insights. I hope everybody watching and listening we're able to pick up one or two things to help you change what you think about money and disability insurance. So thank you, as always, for tuning in to the Get Ready Money podcast. Please remember to subscribe and like this video Until next time.