Utilize a team-oriented practice to focus on what you prefer to do

“The reason I got into the business was to show up with a check when something went wrong,” said Rickson Joel D’Souza, a 21-year MDRT member as well as a Top of the Table member. “Instead, people started calling me up about how their funds were performing at all times of day or night.”

Preferring to deal with insurance, not investments, D’Souza found a partner to handle that for clients, which cut out about 80% of his calls and freed up his schedule. The result was more time with his family and more money with fewer meetings.

Eventually, though, it also taught him a lesson, as the partner (single, no kids), hired to emphasize numbers, not relationships, turned out to be a bad fit for clients (families with kids) accustomed to a different style. “I realized that regardless of the money, I needed to make sure that the proposition was right for the customer,” D’Souza said. Now, he has a client servicing team to handle investments. If a person you work with does not have the same mindset about managing clients, they should be on board as an employee rather than a partner, he said.