Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Paul Castner President of C&K Healthcare Advisors Discussing Advice for Financial Professionals to Choose Marketing Mentors

Episode Date: September 15, 2024

Paul Castner started out his path in the insurance industry by working at one of the Nation’s Top Medicare carriers. He began in the broker services department, under strong leadership who encouraged him to always pursue learning and trusting his skill set. From there he joined their sales team and had some of the best in class mentors along the way who not only strengthened his knowledge of the insurance products but also the importance it was to the population it served. C & K Healthcare Advisors was developed by Paul Castner and Mike Killmeyer based out of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, with the concept of giving back to the generations that have came before them. What started out as an agency that only serviced Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia rapidly grew to now servicing the entire United States. Our agents live and work in your communities and we strive to be the face of comfort and trust. Our pledge to you is that we will always do our best to inform you of the options that fit your needs, lifestyle, and budget, while working ethically and doing what is morally right.Discover the peace of mind that comes with Paul Castner and his team of licensed consultants expert guidance—because you’ve earned a retirement that’s as fulfilling as it is secure. Call them today or visit their website at https://www.ckhealthcareadvisors.com/C & K Healthcare Advisors, LLC and their agents are licensed and certified representatives of a Medicare Advantage (HMO, PPO and PFFS) organization and a stand-alone prescription drug plan with a Medicare contract. C & K Healthcare Advisors and their agents are not affiliated with the United States Government or the Federal Medicare Program. Enrollment in any plan depends on contract renewal. Medicare is available to some individuals under the age of 65 in limited circumstances. Plans and products may not be available in all areas. Certain exclusions and limitations may apply. We do not offer every plan available in your area. Any information we provide is limited to those plans we do offer in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov or 1–800 MEDICARE to get information on all of your options.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-paul-castner-president-of-c-k-healthcare-advisors-discussing-advice-for-financial-professionals-to-choose-marketing-mentors

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us Paul Kastner, who's the president of C&K Healthcare Advisors, and we'll be talking about advice for financial professionals to choose marketing. mentors. Paul, welcome back to the program. Hey, Mike, it's a pleasure to be back. I mean, how many of these have we done together? You know, it's really fun when you kind of hit on a little sweet spot and just keep on going.

You know, and I love this topic today because I know a passion of yours is mentoring people that want to help the consumer. So you want to mentor financial professionals to help them become successful, but not just for a financial gain to help the community, to help their clients. And I think that is just spectacular. So, get us started with what were some of those initial inspirations to even make you start C&K health care advisors. So, Mike, it's, you know, I go back over my background and I'm not going to bore everybody with the story, but I'm going to give you the overview really quickly. So, you know, I started out working various jobs, you know, out of high school and out of, you know, school period, including management at country clubs

until the market crashed in 2008. And when the market crashed, you know, people were cutting back on expenses. country clubs downsized a ton so management rules were being eliminated but it taught me a lot of valuable skills you know it taught me uh customer service and people's skills so i learned from that then i went to work for a company called coventry health care working the broker services department writing these contracts so agents that are out there that have contracts with either life or annuity or medicare whatever kind of business they're in contracts i was the guy back then writing it you know that that was temporary um few years later out of the industry doing a couple other different things.

One of the big three in the Medicare space called me. And they said, hey, you know, you were one of our top people. They happened to buy Coventry. Asked me to come back to broker services. Went in, you know, didn't even need retraining. You know, it was like riding a bike, man. I jumped back on, boom, right back into it. From there, I grew so fast that one of the reps that on the sales team came to me and said,

hey, there's an opening position, you really should take this. I jumped at it, got pulled on the sales team, started to, to a brand new skill set, right? Beautiful thing was very rapidly and under a year. They had to create a new position for me because I grew that big. I was a national senior account manager working with all the top FMOs and IMOs across the country. But what that did for me is I got to see what these big Goliath in the industry did so well, right? I learned from them. I saw what made them successful. So working from there eventually the job as the vice president of sales at one of the smaller FMOs in Thomasville, Georgia was supposed to come in, help, you know, get them back up

out of a slump, bring fresh ideas in there, they're a little afraid to change. But I saw what wasn't working. So now I got to see from the big guys what did work. Now I got to see what wasn't working. Eventually I went out and I started my own agency. And from there, you know, we developed technology. We grew a nice size team. We developed. We developed. of the lead generation systems, but our number one piece is grassroots marketing always will be. We're big in the community. Community engagement is one of our top priorities on our list due to we live and also work in those communities. So by beginning locally, any agents to take that advice, start locally, grassroots marketing,

be that name in the community, and then start focusing regionally and eventually growing nationally. And that's where we're at right now, Mike. We're at that national level. We're licensed in about 42 states so far and growing. We have agents all over the country. But the biggest thing, when you're going to be a local face in the community, you want to be that person that everybody comes to for help, whether that's on health care or retirement planning or life insurance, no matter what your product, a passion is, you got to give back

to the community. You've got to not only be that face in the community, but you've got to get back. So like my company, we just recently, on Monday, today's Friday, by the way, on Monday when we played in a golf out, because we sponsored it. We sponsored the swinging game against hunger. That's a Meals on Wheels and Erie. From there, we also have donated to the Penn Hills 5K. That goes to a local church organization. And one of my favorite ones, Mike, to be honest with you, we write a check every year to these guys based off our sales production.

One of my agents, his name is Bruce David. He has a charity called Papa and Lola. Papa and Lola Foundation helps starving children with food and medicine and vitamins over in the Philippines. Bruce's wife is straight from the Philippines. So they started this large organization. So every year prior to our biggest sales season, I get on a team call and I say, I promise, I pledge X percent of my company's overrides to Papa and Lola. we generally have some kind of after our big sales season event you know the state that does the best we hosted dinner Bruce is there and we present that big check and I challenge my agents every year by increasing their sales to make me write a bigger check to that so when we talk about giving back we're doing it at the local level we're doing it at the regional level we do it at the national level with you know fight against hunger that's a big organization but we're also doing it at the international level like

You know, and a lot of people say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get back and they stroke just a little check here and there, but you're doing it in multiple levels, but you're also doing something else, which is more than just writing a check. You're out there getting involved because actually when you were mentioning that golf outing, I saw the post on Facebook with you sitting in the golf cart. And it's like, yeah, you're in it. You're doing it. You're there. You're boots on the ground and then writing the check. So I think that is spectacular when people see you. that engaged in the community as well.

Well, Mike, on top of that, I preach to all my agents and my downline, not only should we be doing that and looking for charity organizations, but we volunteer time at like soup kitchens and places like that as well. Because again, you know, I look at this in the big picture, okay? I can make a fortune, right? I can make a lot of money in this business, but when I die, I can't take it with me. So why not while I'm alive help those that need that help? I've been there in my life.

You know, I grew up in a very poverty neighborhood when I was young. My dad remarried, you know, we got into a better neighborhood. But I see the effects of it. Heck, I see the effects of it still today when I'm dealing with certain clientele. So if I have the ability to help at that level, whether it's donation of money or donation of my time or, you know, even all the way donation of my time working at something like a soup kitchen or, you know, food bank, it's worth it. It's valuable.

And at the same time, my name's out there, my brands out there. We strive to give back to those communities. Yeah, that's awesome. So let's talk a little bit about what sets C&K Healthcare advisors apart from other choices. Because when a financial professional wants to kind of hang their shingle and provide financial services to their contacts and clients, they need to work with someone. Why pick you guys? Okay, so real simply, you know, our growth helps our partners growth. So we all have upline partners.

And so again, my growth is their growth. But our company is based off this value. We build on tradition, growing for the future, and we look at ourselves as a partnership for life. So we like to say that we're breaking the chains of leadership at the IMO and FMO levels. A lot of those companies, the tops of their organizations, are guys who came from a fancy university with a high-end business degree or marketing degree. But they never had any real-world experience.

of what it's like to be an agent in the field. Okay. So our organization, you know, we're an agency of agents built by agents. And again, that's been our piece. Okay. But one of the best pieces of advice I can for agents out there is don't believe the hype of some of these other agencies out there. They're screaming from the rooftop that they're the number one FMO in the country

or they're yelling the same thing we are. We're starting an agent revolution. And here they're stealing ideas and preparedness. intellectual information, maybe doing damage to you. So please, if you're looking for where to park your contracts, what agency to work with, agents, please do your research on who you're about to join. There's tons of forums out there. There's tons of information.

The next thing is we have an experienced leadership team. So when I talk about an agency of agents built by agents, okay? My group, I'm not the only guy making the decisions. Yes, I own this company. But I have key professionals that are my downline that are on a leadership team. So I'm going to go a little shout out to a couple of those guys because without their knowledge, we wouldn't be where we are today. So like Bruce Davis of Erie, he's been in the Medicare field for more than 30 years. One of the smartest minds I've ever met in Medicare.

Great advisor helps train my agents. Great for our team. We got a guy named Vern Henry. He's out of Johnstown, PA. 50 plus years in life insurance has almost a perfect persistency rating. Again, he works with our agents teaching him how to sell life insurance the proper way. And then we got guys like young up-and-coming Luke Harrison out of Johnstown as well. He spent years in the MLM, did a bunch of different things than the insurance on the property casualty side.

While he might be young, he has tons of experience in agent development and building teams. Then you got me. I've got more than 15 years, I'll closing in on that 20-year gap in the industry. And my business partner, Michael Kilimer, Kilmire, he has experience in other realms, not so much the insurance industry, but as an operations experience specialist. So as you can see, we've got basically that agency built by agents with the top helping advise. Okay. The other things, we've got, first off, we cut partnerships with some of the best companies

in the industry. We have top-level contracts with the best carriers. We got those agent leaders on our team, and they know products across the nation like nobody else. Our agents, they get the best tools in the industry. We're always developing better tech, helping them to close more sales. We have our own CRM called Lifeline. It's a system to maintain, you know, client records, run marketing funnels, automate processes, nurture leads. So we provide that as well. Our agents can also count on us to and back office support when it comes to contracting and certifications and carrier-specific product training. We provide discounts on E&O. We provide discounts on AHIP for those in Medicare. We help them build agent websites. And we also help build product illustrations for when they need

assistance because maybe they're new to the financial market. So that's a big strain off. Again, we talked about contracts and products. You know, there are some three-letter company, abbreviated IMOs out there, they offer lower than what street level is. For those of you, if you're newer and you're listening to this, street level is technically the predefined contract for the beginning of an agent's career. C&K, we offer higher compensation. Some of these three letter abbreviated IMOs, they offer subpar levels and make you think you have to do all this just to hit where you're really supposed to be at compensation-wise.

And on top of that, Mike, we got a robust portfolio products, niche market products. you know, final expense products for people with medical conditions that normally would be denied or getting guaranteed only. So our products and services, we like to keep our clients in-house. We also do estate planning. And we have proprietary products out there as well. We encourage team building. Okay. A lot of these other companies, they want everybody direct so they get this bigger override check. We encourage you to build a team. We want the agent's dream of the day that their income is primarily based on the majority of their time of running a team versus writing at some point, right? So we assist with agent leads to help them on their recruiting effort. And finally,

Mike, the number one topic for all agents out there, no matter what part of the market you're in is leads. So we have three-pronged approach on leads. So we're big on grassroots marketing. Like I was talking about before, when we were talking about community engagement, okay, grassroots marketing, and lead generation from your own needs. network, it's more sticky business. A business stays on the table. We teach agents how to harvest their own leads from social media ads. And then we have a handful approved vendors for lead gen. I do not ever, ever might put a lead vendor in front of any of my agents if I have not beta tested it myself, meaning I will not say, Mike, hey, welcome to the team. You should probably

get your leads from this resource. And I never worked any of those leads myself. I want things that work. So we only promote lead vendors that we ran a vigorous beta with, but the best one out there. And we've got it for Medicare, final expense, and wealth management products like annuities and IULs. We have a company that does guaranteed appointments. Get what I'm saying here, Mike? That's not a lead that they got a call and chase down. They pay for that. It's a pre-booked appointment. They show up, boom, the person knows why they're there. They know exactly what the topic's going to be. and they're interested in purchasing said product. Yeah.

Wow. So I think you took one breath in all of that explanation, which is just unbelievably powerful of all those tools. And it's spectacular. It makes me think about one other thing that I'm confident that you do, but I would like to get your thoughts on what do you do to help your team focus on personal development so that they're able to maximize and optimize all of those resources and tools that you provide for them. So again, we've got with that leadership team, we do a lot in, you know, agent development.

Okay, Luke Harrison is in charge of recruitment and agent development. So we sit down as a leadership group and go, okay, from start to finish. If this is a brand new person just getting into the industry, we take them from the pre-licensing up to the point they get their license. Most of these people don't understand. They've got to have E&O insurance. So we explain that process. And then we take them every step of the way through all of that. Now, we have a system in place where we have a video library conducted by these leaders.

Okay. When you got guys that have been selling product for 30 or 50 years, you want those guys teaching, right? Why have they been so successful for that long? So we've done recordings. And they watch them in small little snippets, right? It's not a two hour long call that they're like, oh my God, why am I on here? Right. So we have it in that manner where it's like 15 minute videos. There's a couple quizzes. And the idea of the quizzes, Mike, aren't really to intimidate these people.

We don't make them hard. We make them real easy. But it lets like the team leaders when they're checking on their agents and their training understand, you know, did they actually absorb the knowledge from these experts. You know, I love that because it reminds me of the old, um, quote, I forget who, it actually is attributed to, but success leaves clues. And if you want to be successful, look to someone or a group of people who have done it. And because the clues that they leave are things that they have proven and documented in their success journey. So if you're with a group of people that is like, look, I'm out here doing it every day just like you. Here's what I've learned. Here's what not to do. Here's a little tip that I overcame this problem that you're having, these little snippets of learning and teaching, I think is spectacular.

Well, and these guys that we have on that team that are doing these trainings, okay, you know, when you take a guy like Bruce Davis has been in the industry for 30 plus years, he probably forgot more information about Medicare than some people know, okay? And you're getting in a crammed in course with an expert, you're getting 30 years of real world knowledge. He can tell you what works and doesn't work. Why? because he's tried it all.

And then he summarized it down into just a list of what he knows factually works over and over again. Wow. So looking ahead, think of, you know, you've got a minute or two in the industry, obviously. But what do you see in the industry as far as changes that might be coming? And then how is C&K healthcare advisors evolving to kind of make sure that you're skating where the puck is headed, you know, as as Wayne Gretzky said? I like the sports reference. So like here at, you know, C&K health care advisors, we're passionate about staying ahead of the curve to be able to serve our clientele, right?

As the landscape changes in Medicare and life insurance and retirement planning, and it's always evolving, so do we, okay? Our vision for the future, it's centered around adaptability and innovation, but also we highlight that personal service aspect. That's what everyone's looking for. Personal service, right? So we're constantly investing in advanced technologies and AI-driven tools as that's becoming bigger. You know, data analytics to offer a more customized, an efficient solution tailored to our client's unique needs. Okay. Our biggest goal is to simplify the complexities of things like Medicare and life insurance options. You know, it's also

empowering our clients to make informed decisions with confidence. The last thing you want to do is walk out of there and that person question, you know, did I make the right decision, right? Additionally, we're always expanding our retirement planning services to include a little more of a holistic strategy that goes beyond the traditional approaches. We focus on long-term financial health that leaves a peace of mind for our clients. We see ourselves not just as advisors, right? The most of the people running around, oh, I'm an advisor, I'm a consult.

But we see ourselves as lifelong partners in our clients. journey. We want to ensure that they're well prepared for whatever their future holds. And we, with a commitment to continuous education and strategic partnerships, my agency will remain at the forefront of this industry delivering innovative products and services that meets not only the dynamic needs of our clients today, but for many years to come. And I think that if we were to see in writing what that last statement you just made, I would add dot, dot, dot, with passion and enthusiasm because you just bring it. It's just really easy to hear and listen to the passion you bring to the industry and the enthusiasm that you want to serve not only your clients, but your team.

So I just think that is just wonderful, what you put together there, Paul. So if someone is interested in learning more and connecting with you, how can they do that? They can visit us at www.cK.healthcare Advisors.com, Mike. Awesome. Well, that is so great, Paul. Thank you so much for coming back on today. It was a real pleasure talking with you. Pleasure seeing you again, as always, sir. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.