Ami...

My homage to Emmanuel (Ami) MAISHLISH - Z"L, ZY"A.

A recent back and forth we never finished. I will miss him.

Ami... Jeff, thank you.?I read your comments and they make sense; we seem to be on the same page, with one exception:?I believe that the "kitchen table" folk deserve no less of a level of service and care than the Cadillac and butler golden nugget.?

Jeff... Ready… here’s the question. What does the independent life insurance sales professional need to put in writing so the so the kitchen table folk have the information they need to make an informed decision?

Ami... The industry's caterers to the Cadillac and butler crowd are aging and (most) eventually retire, leaving the "newbees" and Primerica refugees to grow into professionals.?They need to internalize better practice habits and to acquire knowledge of how "it" works and why "it" "works" the way "it" does, the "it" being insurance as such.

Jeff... Perfect. Professionals in our business do their best to put it in writing. Here is our guide, in writing. We can call it…Ami and Jeff’s professional guide to life insurance… how and why it works the way it does. It can be our first book together!

Ami... Insofar as LifeGuide is concerned, I designed LifeGuide over the years, starting in 1975 when I was a "newbie" employed by CIAG (Now, The Co-operators) as a salaried agent.?I was never cut out to be a salesperson and probably could not give away a cup of water to a thirsty soul lost in the desert but I became the "top selling" agent of the company at the time, purely and merely through happy referrals.?

Jeff... It takes a special kind of person to sell life insurance. I was fascinated by the product because my dad was a successful home builder in Toronto who passed away suddenly when I was 15 years old and I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t insured for millions. I too was never cut out to be a salesperson. I was successful in sales because I split cases with great salespeople.

Ami... My first "big" case at the time was a $100,000 whole life policy on the life of an MD for whose aging parents I prepared the tax returns for the prior year and who were very happy that I saved them a couple of hundred dollars in tax over and above what the paid tax preparer did (the application required two MD medicals on separate days, extensive blood-work, Bruce Protocol ? stress test, X-rays, a notarized copy of his practice's financial statement and tax return and two separate investigative interviews by PIs ? hired by the company.?It took 6 months to issue the policy; fortunately, at the time, "age" was "age attained"/"age last".?My next largest case was an architect with swollen ankles (I used to put extensive notes on the "part two, often with attached sheets for more verbiage).??It was a "small" policy, $25K whole life and u/w sent him for a cardiologist work-over because of my note about the swollen ankles.?He believed that I saved his life and the referrals came to me in a heavy stream.??I guess I'm fairly "detail" oriented.

Jeff... Details matter. Product matters. We should be telling folks.

Ami... When I established my own agency in 1981, I used my then TRS 80 computer with a whole 64K of memory and 8-inch floppy disks, wrote the program in machine language ("assembler") and entered the policy data manually from rate books that I "borrowed" from other agents.?

Jeff... I mention WANG computers in my book because I remember them being singled out as an example of a great company in one of the In Search of Excellence books. My first exposure to computers was when I was an undergraduate at York University writing programs on punch cards using APL.

Ami...?I called it "Get A Life" and used it as such until 1989.?In 1990, shortly before Xmas, I decided to further enhance "Get A Life", to rename it "LifeGuide" to continue with its main theme of the best interest of the buyer and to make it available to all agents who were like minded.?It's not a matter of "good guys" vs "bad guys", plus LifeGuide has become a "household" word over the years in the industry.??Therefore, I have no intent to change the name to anything and certainly not to "Vigilante Insurance".?

Jeff... I was kidding. I love the LifeGuide name. ?

Ami... Yes, we need to be vigilant and LifeGuide is a guide to that end, in other words, for the best interest of the insurance buying public.?In my view, insurance professionals should be counselors, not policy pitchers.?The approach served me well in my "newbee" days.?I still don't have the skill to sell or even give away a cup of water to a thirsty soul lost in the desert.

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