His typical client is someone like his father.

“They’re self-made individuals and talented at whatever they do, be it a dentist, attorney or construction guy,” said Thomas A. Schmidt, CFBS, CLTC, a 15-year MDRT member from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA. “But they don’t want to take the time to do the planning necessary so they can avoid what happened all of a sudden in our family.”

LaVon Schmidt was working as a laborer during the 1960s carrying a piece of steel in a north central Kansas foundry when he injured his back so severely that the married father of three with a fourth on the way ended up in a body cast for a year. Ultimately, he endured several back surgeries and two triple bypass heart operations before passing away at age 52. Although the elder Schmidt believed in life insurance, advisors told him before his first heart surgery that he was uninsurable.

Schmidt’s father got bad advice. He actually was insurable. He just wouldn’t have been granted a waiver on the premium.

“I came to the conclusion that if I could ever help a family not have to endure what we did , then that was going to be my mission,” Schmidt said.

Resilience through adversity

Schmidt’s dad was unable to do manual labor after his accident, but with $15 worth of plastic flowers and two design books purchased at the local drug store, he started a flower shop, which eventually flourished for 22 years as a family business. Making something out of nothing was among the lessons Schmidt learned from his parents. That example rubbed off on Schmidt during his first year in the profession. That’s when a car accident knocked him out of work for six months, and he had to learn how to walk again.

“It was a tough time. Some days, I was choosing which can of corn to open,” he said, adding that with no commissions coming in, he thought about quitting and going back to a regular paycheck at his previous job in the oil and gas industry.

Schmidt tried drumming up business by sending direct mail to prospects, yet his only nibble was a lead his carrier sent him from a retiree who responded to a newspaper ad. The lead didn’t look promising, as the prospect had questions about his estate plan. He wasn’t interested in buying insurance. Schmidt agreed to meet anyway and although he didn’t know a lot about estate planning, he suspected something was wrong with the man’s documents. He took the paperwork to an attorney friend who pointed out that the prospect’s trust was unfunded, a mistake that could have cost him greatly in taxes.

The retiree tried to pay Schmidt for his help, but he declined to accept any money. So, the man, who used to sell for a regional coffee company, referred Schmidt to senior executives at his former employer. They invited him to the company’s break room where he picked up about 30 clients and later their children and grandchildren.

“So, when I had no one to see, trying to do the right thing and that referral is what got me back in the business,” Schmidt said.

Control what you can control

He then grew that business by joining the local chamber of commerce to target small businesses and attorneys. He also wanted to establish a work-life balance with daytime client meetings, and in the last 25 years, he’s had only about 10 appointments that started after 5:30 p.m. His guiding mantra for every client conversation, phone call and email was: Are you better off having talked to me today?

“The more I started working with business owners, the more they wanted me to do not just their buy-sell agreements and key executive insurance, but I started doing a lot of their employee benefits,” Schmidt said. “That was not intentional, but it’s grown into this massive block of business, and I do benefits for about 70 companies here.”

Because he took the “hard employee benefits stuff” off his employer clients’ desks, they knew Schmidt was taking care of their workers — he knows all of them by their first names — and dozens of his family businesses have stayed with him even through successions to the third and fourth generations. When he saw that processing applications was taking too long, Schmidt sought a better way. He arranged for the carrier’s examiner to conduct physical exams in a spare room at his office and then asked clients, since they were already coming in to complete paperwork, if they would mind having their physical exam during the same visit. No one declined, and combining in-office exams with the paperwork visit cut underwriting time by seven to nine days.

The second crisis

Schmidt had to muster up resilience again several years later when he was hospitalized for complications from a blood clot after having his gallbladder removed. Doctors ordered that he had to sit up on a hospital bed and stay there only to move for using the restroom. This went on for six months.

“After the first day, this was really boring, so I asked the doctors, ‘Do you have a problem with what I do in bed?’” Schmidt said. “The answer was no, so I called the office, and they brought in my files, and I started working on cases. The doctors would come in and ask what I was doing.”

By the end of the week, he sold disability insurance to three doctors and six life insurance contracts to nurses and their children. As this was before carriers sent quotes through the internet and he couldn’t put a fax machine in his room, Schmidt would phone medical carriers to request quotes, and they mailed that information to the hospital. By the end of the month, Schmidt had written and closed more business than any of the company agents on the street. By year-end, he was the company’s disability insurance and overall sales leader.

Resilience has enabled Schmidt to bounce back, adapt to changes and keep going when he doubted his ability. But no one can do this business without a support system. His wife Terri and son Michael encouraged him during tough times by reminding Schmidt that he is the best version of himself when he is serving others.

“If you feel like giving up, take a step back and remind yourself of why you started in the first place,” Schmidt said. “Think about your goals and what you want to achieve. Are you passionate about your product or service? Do you believe in what you are doing? If so, then don’t give up now.”