So last week I talked about using intuition in hiring Joseph Myers.  I’ve never had a moment’s regret.  The day Joseph came on board, we began to open our hearts and will to becoming a new and different kind of Promark.  We became very intentional in our openness to not doing things the same way it was always done unless it was a path to health and wholeness.

I saw a lot of sad things my first year on the job.  I watched agents fall off the grid because they couldn’t survive on their own without Len there to help them.  I saw people make unethical choices out of fear because they didn’t feel there was a better way.  And I had people begging me to do things the traditional way so everything would feel normal again.

One of the biggest weaknesses I saw as I looked around the industry was the lack of really great training and leadership development.  Training happened either in the field with a senior agent or through a product seminar by an insurance carrier.  Leadership development happened by observation or through the occasional paid coaching program.   I didn’t exactly know what was wrong with that, but I sensed it was a problem that needed addressing.

I began envisioning a Promark University system where agents could get more than just product knowledge.  I wanted to see them learn life skills like time and project management, how to sell with integrity, and things that would better them as a person and a leader so they’d be more effective on the job.  I wasn’t sure how we’d accomplish Promark University, but I tossed my ideas around with Joseph.

One day about a month into his job, Joseph said, “I don’t think we’re gonna accomplish the idea of Promark University without hiring someone who’s qualified to build it.  We need a Master of Pedagogy.”

“Peda-what?”

“A Master in the field of Pedagogy.  It’s the science and study of teaching and instruction.  We need someone who knows how to put this kind of a program together.  I think I know the person.”

“Who?”

“Denise VanEck.  She lives in Grand Rapids.”

“Grand Rapids?  Like, out of state?”

“Yep.”

“But…she lives out of state.”

“That’s OK.  I think we can get her to move here.”

Huh?  It was a mind-trip to think that Joseph was willing to move here from Denver to work for Promark.  Now he was thinking more people would want to do the same?

Unbeknownst to me, Joseph had called Denise a few weeks prior.  “Hey, Denise,” he said.  “Remember how we used to work as consultants with people who wanted to change the world?  I’m working for a company now that’s actually gonna do it.”

Thus, Denise came to visit.  She met all the people, toured the office, interviewed at length with Joseph.  And we went to lunch.

Over chicken salad, Denise asked me to talk about what I wanted to see happen at Promark.  I described my heart of sadness at the lack of holistic training and development and how I felt it ultimately impacted the clients in an unhealthy way.  I told her I wanted to see something different but didn’t know how to make it happen.

“All I know,” I said, “is that I know what I want our clients to feel like when an agent leaves their house and I know what I want our agents to feel like when they go to sleep at night.”

I guess that was the ticket for Denise.  She said yes.  And moved here from out of state to become our Chief Learning Officer and the Provost of what we now affectionately call ProU.  She has taken her vision and passion for ProU to places I’d never dreamed could be possible.

This afternoon when I told her I wanted to tell her story, she said, “You know, they’re not calling it Pedagogy anymore. That’s the term they’re using for training children.  The latest buzz word is Androgogy.”

“Andro-what?”

“Androgogy.  It’s the study of adult learning methodology.”

So there you have it.  I’m not positive, but I’d guess we’re probably the first insurance marketing agency to willfully hire a Master of Androgogy.

Did I mention Denise didn’t know anything about insurance?

When I made the decision to run Promark after Len’s death, I decided to pay homage to the conventional wisdom subscribed to a “new guy”.  Make no immediate changes.  Spend quiet time learning the people and the processes.  Then, carefully tinker.

It’s especially important to do this when you and everyone else knows you “don’t know anything about insurance.”

So, I put a moratorium on change and accepted the kind and willing help from all Len’s agents and industry colleagues who’d been part of the Promark family for years.  It wasn’t even a year before I realized that there were far more moving parts to the job than I’d be able to manage alone.  I felt like I was drowning and knew I needed help.  The search began for someone who could step in and help me create what I called “sense and order.”

It was a given that I’d be looking for someone from within the industry who understood life insurance and how this business is traditionally run.

I found a great candidate who indicated an interest.  We met and discussed the possibilities.  I paid a seasoned consultant to write me a savvy, incentivized C-level contract.  I presented the offer.  And I waited with baited breath to see if this person would come aboard and save me from my distress.

He said no.  Very nicely, but no.

Boy was I was disillusioned.  I’d done everything by the book.  I’d taken all the conventional steps I was told were standard and reliable.

Several weeks before I had begun the search for help, I’d had dinner with Morgan and Joseph.  Morgan was a girlfriend from Denver and I was meeting her husband, Joseph, for the first time.  During the dinner, we spoke of Promark and my goal of giving away $20 million.  I told him my dreams of creating a company that would change the world by focusing on people first and profit second.  Joseph looked at me at one point and said, “You make me want to work for Promark.  No, really.  I want to work for Promark!”  I laughed.  He was kind, respectful, wicked smart, and lived in another state.  And he didn’t know anything about insurance.  I couldn’t see the possibility but it was flattering to hear.  We talked about the hiring process and he gave me great advice and encouragement.

After my perfect candidate declined my offer, I called Morgan and let her know.  A few hours later I got a voicemail from Joseph.  He said, “Morgan told me your news.  I know you must be hurting and I just want you to know that I’m sorry.”  I called him back that night and sobbed on the freeway drive home.

Several weeks later, I got an email from Joseph asking if I’d consider hiring him to help me.  “Joseph, you don’t know anything about insurance,” I wrote.  “Yes, but I’ve owned companies since I was 16 and I know I can help you,” he wrote back.  I told him I’d think about it and headed out of town for a week in Mexico.

On the plane ride, I opened a book on business planning.  In the midst of reading and contemplating, I had another one of those encounters with God.  This time I heard God say, “Kim, you did everything right, by the book.  This time around, I want you to use your intuition and don’t fear the unconventional.”  When I got to my hotel, I emailed Joseph and said, “let’s talk.”

Joseph flew out a few weeks later for a weekend interview.  We sat down in lawn chairs that Friday night. I didn’t waste any time.  “Why on earth do you want to come work for Promark?” I asked.

“I could give a whole bunch of reasons and try to convince you how qualified I am to help you.  The real reason, though, is that I feel like I’m supposed to.  I don’t know why, but it’s the truth.”

That was enough for me.  I allowed myself to intuitively decide that this was OK.  We spent the rest of the weekend talking through logistics.  Then, Joseph cancelled his flight home to Denver and showed up to work Monday morning as my Chief Operations Officer.

The rest of the story has been one of learning to trust intuition.   Even when no circumstances seem to support it.  Especially when you don’t know anything about insurance.

Hello again after a long hiatus.

Yes! I’m still trying to give away 20 million dollars.  My journey to reach that goal hasn’t stopped since I was impressed to do it three years ago this February.

Every journey, though, has its moments where the traveler needs to rest by the side of the road.  After reaching that point this past summer, I was due to take some Time In.

I call it Time In because while it was definitely “time off” from Promark, it was a different kind of work altogether.  When Len passed away and I took on this challenge at Promark, it was easy to throw everything I had into it and avoid trying to figure out who Kim is now that her life has been so abruptly redefined.  You can only do that for so long when it comes time to take a sit by the road and start looking inward.  The Time In has been restorative but painful, surprising and exhilarating.

In a lot of ways, Promark has had a year of Time In as well.  As a team, we’ve done a lot of quiet work on ourselves.  On our culture, our business processes, and our company identity.  We’ve discovered our DNA and we think it’s profound.  We’ve taken some time by the side of the road to do hard internal work so we’ll be positioned this year to take flight on a whole new mission.

It’s funny what happens when you take time to rest on the side of the road.  You wouldn’t think that you can make progress on the journey while you’re having Time In. That’s been an exciting discovery!

Promark has now become a new company with a much broader identity.  Amazing people have joined with us since the summer.  They bring talents in recruiting, technology, philanthropy, and entrepreneurship.  They’ve discovered a home at Promark and we’re laboring together on a company that will change the way financial products are sold in America.

The journey to give away $20 million has become a story of repurposing a company called Promark to do just that.  I can’t wait to tell you the stories of what’s been transpiring.

Thanks for giving me (and Promark) the breathing space to have Time In.

Big words. Change the world?

People seem to think that changing the world is a huge, audacious undertaking that requires serious money, masses of people, and unwavering focus on a big collective goal.

What if told you that changing the world can be as simple as one person making one choice to do one thing? What if that one thing was a small game-changer that led to another choice, that led to another, and so on?

Think about Rosa Parks choosing where to sit.

Choices are what changes the world. And small choices are as effective as big choices in determining how the world is going to turn out.

William Paul Young chose to write a story as a gift to his kids to help them in their adult journey. The Shack ended up at a publisher and has sold 20 million copies worldwide. Countless lives have been transformed as a result. The world has changed.

A friend of mine chose to spend $1800 to help a young man in Kenya get a Master’s Degree in Sociology so he could go back to his village and begin providing counseling and practical helps to his suffering neighbors. The futures of hundreds of orphans are being changed as a result. The world has changed.

Indulge me for a minute?

It might seem off-the-wall, but I believe that life insurance changes the world. There’s not a lot of things that you can buy so inexpensively that change the game more than life insurance.

When people choose life insurance, they change the entire outlook of the family they leave behind. Life insurance means the difference between a mom getting two jobs to support her kids versus staying home with them for the first few years after they’ve lost their dad. It determines whether kids will be able to attend college in the future and have opportunities for a better future. So many grieving people struggle when the choice to buy insurance has been avoided or ignored.

Danny Gokey, the American Idol contestant who’ll be performing with Stories from the Shack this week, lost his wife Sophia three years ago. He didn’t know that Sophia had chosen to buy life insurance until after she died. He used the proceeds to purchase an old hospital in Nashville. It’s being transformed into an operation that will feed, house, and vocationally train the homeless in his community. The world has changed.

Ed, one of our agency partners at Promark, helped his grandmother purchase a life insurance policy early in his career. When she died suddenly several weeks later, the proceeds helped put his cousins through college. They were the first people in his family to ever go to college. Ed will tell you that the world is changed.

For me, insurance gave me the ability to decide that what I wanted to do with Promark Financial. It kept our staff employed in the wake of Len’s death, and it gave me the freedom to donate our profits to our Promark Foundation. When we raise that $20 million, it will only happen because years ago Len walked his talk and made the choice to buy life insurance. And…the world is gonna change.

As we head to Seattle this weekend for the opening night of Stories from the Shack, I hope that people will see that Promark and I are looking to change the world one choice at a time.

“Building the bridge as we cross it.” That’s our daily motto at Promark as we endeavor to put structures in place that will lead to generating the $20 million.

Our latest chunk of the bridge is the establishment of the Promark Foundation.

Instead of applying for our own 501c(3) public charity, we chose to simplify our lives and place Promark Foundation under an organization called the GuideStream Charitable Gift Fund. When donations are made to Promark Foundation, the checks are written to GuideStream Charitable Gift Fund with Promark Foundation in the memo line. The funds are managed by Guidestream, the IRS stuff gets handled by Guidestream, the headaches are mitigated by Guidestream. All we focus on is offering great life insurance and retirement planning and directing our profits to the Foundation.

Thank you, Tim Burkhart and your folks at Guidestream, for helping out organizations like Promark reach their philanthopic goals without all the red tape.

Another chunk on the bridge completed. On to the next…

We’re in Tales of the Revolution: True Stories of People Poking the Box and Making a Difference!

Our story of Promark and our work with ProKids and Stories from the Shack was entered into a contest sponsored by Seth Godin. People were encouraged by Seth to send in their stories of how they’re initiating new ideas in response to his best-selling book Poke The Box. Readers of Seth’s blog got to read 200 of the best entries and voted on the winners.

And Promark made the book! You can download the free version here.

Congratulations to all the great people at Promark who are working hard to change the world!

Part of the work we’re doing to raise $20 million is to re-invent the way we do things at Promark.  We’ve spent the last year reinventing our company culture.  We sought and found our new DNA…the core of who we are and what we’re about.  We overhauled the way we train and develop our agents.  And, we went about creating new ways to get the message out about the services we provide.

One of our most exciting ventures is our sponsorship of Stories from the Shack, a 4-city live event featuring William Paul Young, author of The Shack, American Idol recording artist Danny Gokey, and a host of marvelous performers guaranteed to amaze and inspire.  This is going to be a beautiful, powerful show with a lot of surprises and delights. It keeps me up some nights thinking about how much fun it is to be involved in a production like this.

Sponsoring a major show like this is not a normal marketing strategy of a life insurance and retirement planning company, but we’re taking the risk anyway.  I didn’t want to be on my deathbed someday and wonder with regret what would have happened if we’d been part of Stories from the Shack.  I wanted to live it and see Promark be part of something extraordinary.

If you live in Seattle, San Diego, Boise, or Denver, consider coming to the show.   If you know folks in those cities, encourage them to attend.  It’ll be an experience they won’t soon forget.

As the weeks unfold and the Stories from the Shack events take place, I’ll update the blog with stories of the folks we met and fun that was had.  Most importantly, I’m confident I’ll be able to tell how the show has gotten us closer to our goal of raising $20 million.  Won’t that be excellent?

On an ordinary Friday night a few weeks ago, one of my Promark agents, Jenn, lost her husband. Mike was 34 and collapsed and died from a perforated ulcer. It is a senseless loss since he’d been to emergency care twice with stomach pains and was sent home with antacids and a pat on the back. Someone please explain to his 4 year old, Lilly, how different things could have been if someone had paid attention and done what was right and necessary to help Mike.

The Promark family was suddenly brought back to a place of grieving and shock that we experienced when Len passed just two year ago. We’ve been here before and we’ll be here again I would imagine. We learned before that if we hug each other, stand by each other, help each other, and care for each other, we’ll get through it together again. I know with confidence that Jenn will have first-class support and care from her Promark family because I experienced nothing less.

Every time someone we know dies, those of us in the insurance industry are struck by the fact that what we do matters. Every time we deliver a check to a grieving family, we realize that our clients’ lives are forever changed by a decision we helped them make at a time when things weren’t as difficult or fearful. If you ask Jenn, she’ll tell you that what she does matters and makes a difference. She’s just lived the reality of it. So did I. If Len hadn’t had insurance, I wouldn’t be in a position to write this blog or try to give away $20 million.

One of my agents in Seattle, Washington, Ilyas Nuri, wrote me an email recently. I quote:

‘You have to believe in what you sell.’

That’s an interview requirement from the old days. If you don’t see the value of life insurance, don’t come on board.

So, back when I first joined Promark, I had to really look in the mirror, and I mean literally/physically look in the mirror, and ask myself, do I really believe in life insurance? Do I believe in the value this financial protection brings to the table? Do I really believe that I might actually die tomorrow, heaven forbid, and that I need to be prepared today?

9 years and never once looked back.

I believe.

I believe, too.

For more information on how to schedule your own ProKids Workshop,

please contact Erika Usher:

Erika Usher | ProKids Coordinator | 714.513.2500 ext 105 | eusher@thepromarkgroup.com

Someone emailed me this article last week.

I quote: “In life insurance, we have a product that most people need but that is sold in a way that makes them not want it and not care about who they buy it from. The door is wide open to anyone willing to try new approaches with a very old product.”

This is what I’ve been chewing on for a year now.  How do you take a product that people really need, but hate to buy, and mix it into a corporate mission to give away a boatload of money to charity?

It’s popular marketing these days for a company to say, “when you buy from us, we donate a percentage to [enter socially conscious non-profit of your choice].”  But with Promark, I’m not looking to find customers by giving to charity.  I’m just giving the profits to charity, period.

I don’t want Promark to sell people things they don’t want or need.  I don’t want them buying from us because we give all the profits to charity.  I want them to care that they bought stuff from us because we were people that earned their business.  That we earned their trust because we care more about their financial needs than just pushing a sale and we’re smart, skilled professionals that give great guidance.

So, we’re working on ideas that combine earning the business and giving away $20 million as two independent but symbiotic pursuits.

One of our new approaches is our ProKids Workshop™.  It combines giving away money to local kids’ sports teams and clubs while giving some great guidance to the parents about their financial journey.  We’ve gone overboard to make sure the workshops are short, fun, interactive, and very helpful.   (Here’s a link if you want to know more.)

So far, the response from the parents has been great.  It’s a new program and it’s taken way longer to get off the ground than I’d hoped, but I believe in it and think it’s gonna do a lot of good for everyone involved.

The article again:  “The door is wide open to anyone willing to try new approaches with a very old product.”

My mind doesn’t stop thinking about how wide that door could open.  The wider the door, the more money I can give away.  As long as we earn the business.