Expect the Unexpected in Life: An Insurance Blog: Personal Development

Showing posts with label Personal Development. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

What I'm up to!

I thought I'd let you guys know a little bit about what I'm up to these days.

Really, it's all about building my business and myself in the process. This last month or two has been really good (other than it getting dark at 5pm now and the coldness that is making it's way in)

Writing this blog is good for me for a few reasons. It gives me more confidence in my knowledge which is a tough thing to get a hold on when you're just starting out in this business with competition who have been doing it for years and years. It also lets you guys know what I do while providing you guys with invaluable information that you will use through your whole lives. I also have this on my business card as a link to my personality and knowledge. So when I give it out, the person I give it to can look me up and find that I'm a credible, nice, helpful person. I'm going to continue this through my career and it will continue to grow and get better as I grow and get better.

Businesswise I'm focusing on a few different things and I could use your help!

Firstly I am trying to talk to homeowners in Kitchener/Waterloo. As you may or may not know from reading this blog. Homeowners who have mortgages most likely have mortgage life insurance on their mortgage. What they don't realize is they are paying up to double the amount that you would pay for a similar amount of Life Insurance and their insurance is not nearly as good for them. They don't realize this because it's included in their mortgage payment. So basically I'm reducing the cost of people's mortgages and helping them protect their debts in a much better way.

Another thing I've been trying to do is build a network of professionals that I could potentially help. By having this network of people I can send clients or friends to them if they have a need for the services and they can do the same for myself. So I've made a point to make friends with some young professionals and this is going pretty well. I've found it's much easier to make friends with someone than to get them to buy from you. The thing is these friendships will be vital to my success. If you know anyone who owns a business or is a young professional trying to build their client base let me know I'd love to meet them.

Lastly, since my wife if a pharmacist and I understand a lot of the daily struggles she faces I am trying to talk to as many pharamcists as I can about their group disability insurance coverage. Basically, group plans (not just for pharmacists) don't necessarily pay you your entire amount of monthly income with their disability insurance. Another thing with pharmacists is they can get something called Own Occupation disability insurance. This allows them to be paid the disability cheques if they aren't able to perform their duties as a pharamcist. With most jobs they will say...well...can you work in the mail room? or can you sit at a desk and do a similar job? With pharmacists if they can't stand, see, write, deal with stress, then they can be paid their disability insurance. So if you know any pharmacists, doctors, lawyers, MBA grads. I can help them get the best disability coverage there is.

That's about it for now. I'm focusing on these areas because I feel like these are things that I can truely help people with. Rather than just saying "hey you should get insurance" I'm saying "Hey, lets take a look at your insurance needs and determine a solution to the problem that you're facing."

I want to leave you guys with one final thing, something called an elevator speech, or 30 second commercial. Basically it gets the full point of what I do across in under 30 seconds. (this is still a work in progress but I like this one!)

I am a financial insurance specialist. I help people ensure their investment assets and debts are well protected if they were to face economic downturns, prolonged injury or illness, and pre-mature death.

I love feedback so let me know what you think!

Have a great one!

Mike Hamilton

Thursday, October 29, 2009

The good in the bad!

0 comments Posted by Hammy at 7:17 AM

I got thrown for a loop last week, I was on my way to Hamilton (I know! My city :)) to meet with my advisor coach and my car started making a really odd noise. It almost sounded like I was driving a race car too fast but I was going slowly in traffic. It started getting worse so I pulled over to see what was up. I popped my hood, didn't smell anything funky, didn't see anything out of place so I decided to drive again and deal with the issue later.

Too bad my car wouldn't drive :( I couldn't even get it into gear. I sat on the highway searching my car for my CAA card, no luck. Did you know that if you call CAA and you don't have your card they can still pull up your account? I wish I knew that before I called them because I was freaking out! Even though my car was not working and I was stuck in Hamilton I decided to not let these things ruin my day.

I saw this as an opportunity to meet some new people!

I met a nice police officer, she ended up stopping and waiting for me to get my tow truck. She was very helpful and made sure I was good to go before she left.

I met the tow truck driver who was a nice guy and he took me to a great auto shop to get my car fixed. We chatted the whole way and had a lot in common.

Then I met the head mechanic at the shop. He was a nice guy and seemed to know what was wrong with my car. Transmission...UGH! I knew it was going to be expensive. But as the old saying goes "Shit happens!" and it most certainly does! He ended up staying 30 mins late to let me pick up my car on the Friday which was very nice of him. He fixed my car up to tip top shape and now it's running better than it ever did!

Since I was in Hamilton I had to wait an hour or so for Megan to pick me up. Rather than waste my time and be bored for an hour. I struck up a conversation with the owner of the auto sales part of the shop. She was super nice! We talked for the whole hour about her business, her kids, her marriage, and how she percieved the world and having children at a young age. She was great and she made my day!

Notice my attitude? Something really crappy and expensive happened to me that day but shit happens. I wasn't going to let it get me down because what's the point? I've got more important things to think about then being miserable. I made the best of what I was given that day and I see it as more like "shit happens for a reason." Maybe it didn't get me any more business than I have now, but it did allow me to practice talking to people.

That's the power of a positive attitude, you don't have to be all sunshine and rainbows all the time. You just need to see the opportunities in bad situations. Because with bad situations always lies a greater opportunity, you just have to have your eyes open so you can see it.

So I challenge you. When life throws you a curve ball just hit it outta the park!

Mike Hamilton

Thursday, October 8, 2009

What am I about?

0 comments Posted by Hammy at 11:51 AM

This week I wanted to share with you guys something I made for my business. This sums me up in one page and is something I am going to be giving to clients and potential clients.

Read it over and let me know what you think! (you can click on it to make it bigger!)

Yours awesomely,

Mike

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

A key to success: Self-Discipline

0 comments Posted by Hammy at 6:55 PM

"The first and best victory is to conquer self" - Plato

This is an idea I've been focusing on in the last few weeks. I've gone over my strengths and my weaknesses and have figured out that my strengths as a person and a financial advisor far outweighed my weaknesses. All of my "weaknesses" actually boiled down to one thing and one thing only. Self-discipline.

The odd yet very true thing about this as a weakness is no matter how many strengths you have...if you lack self-discipline...you won't achieve the goals you have in life.

If you conquer yourself, dismissing desires for priorities, you have a large base of operations to conquer your goals.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this. It has a lot to do with everything I've talked about in this blog up until now. In order to save you have to dismiss some desires to enable the priority of saving. Same goes for insurance...sure it may not make financial sense in terms if your desires but when you think about your priorities in life (income, protecting your family, protecting your savings) then insurance makes a lot of sense.

For me, because I'm a self employed professional these dive even deeper to the core of my life. In order to be a success I need to be disciplined about my priorities.

I hope this is enlightening to you guys. Not just in the sense of investments and insurance but in your overall life.

Books I recommend:

The 7 habits of highly effective people (this book will completely change how you see life and will show you how to be the person you strive to be, rather than just one of the worker bees...I highly recommend it to everyone)

Eat that Frog: 21 great ways to beat procrastination.

Let me know if you have any questions about any of this. I can lend you the books if you'd like to read them.

Have a great one guys!

Mike

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Where oh where has Mikey gone?

0 comments Posted by Hammy at 9:42 PM

Hey guys and gals!

Im sorry that I haven't posted in a few weeks. Ive been busy trying to plan my business goals that I unfortunately neglected this a bit. That's one of those problems us geminis have, we tend to move on to something else too quickly and forget about the other things that we're doing. So sorry :) I hope you can forgive me!

In other news I FINALLY got myself a smartphone. In the past with my old phones etc I've been fairly difficult to reach. I'd get messages etc after it was too late. I think this new phone will help remedy that. I love being able to access my emails on the go and I now have MSN running as often as possible.

I am also going to cut back the amount of weekly blog posts to one a week. I feel like I'm spamming Facebook a little with the two per week. If you liked two a week let me know and ill see what I can do. I figured most of you will be fine with the change. The new blog day will be Wednesday so expect one this week.

Well everyone have a great one and feel free to contact me by email or MSN or phone is you really want. Also expect quick responses from me as I'm religious about email lol.

Mike

P.s. I'm getting flashy new business cards this week so expect one from me next time I see ya!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Ah ha!

4 comments Posted by Hammy at 11:14 AM

I'd like to start off by saying sorry. I said that I would update this blog every Tuesday and Thursday. I didn't do it on Thursday because I was driving to my favourite place on earth, Saranac Lake, NY.

I went out and bought a really awesome book before I left and I read it while I was there. The book is called Guerilla Selling...by the same person as Guerilla Marketing if you know what that is.

One of my biggest issues with being considered a sales person is how I percieve other salespeople. I flat out disagree with a lot of the "pushy" tactics that salespeople use to increase their own comission. That's not what I'm in this business for.

Ok, I'll get this out of the way now, commission is how I get paid and yes getting paid is nice. However, I will never sell something to someone for my own benefit. This is why I liked Guerilla Selling so much. It gave me the tools I needed to be the type of salesperson that I know I am. For all of those who know me I am a fair person and I care about every one of them. That would be no different if I was your Financial Advisor.

Anyway, during the reading of that book I had many Ah Ha! Moments. It was like I had a mind explosion and now all of a sudden I have a greater understanding of my place in this world.

This is what I hope to bring to you guys. Little mini "mind explosions" along the way to help you understand what is out there and how to keep you one step ahead of the general public. If I can give you one Ah Ha! in each of my posts then I've done my job!

To those who have a salesish type of job, I recommend that Guerrilla Selling to you. If you want to borrow it let me know!

Also just so you're not caught off guard I'm going to start contacting each of you one at a time to sit down and talk, the coffee is on me!

Till next time!

Mike

Expect the Unexpected in Life: An Insurance Blog