If you have a dream – and let’s be honest, we all do – then you owe it to yourself and the world to give it a shot to make that dream come true.
Your talents, your skills, your heart, your leadership, your creativity, they all matter, and if you can pour all of what you’ve got into something that helps and serves others – and moves the world forward even by one modicum – then that’s a gift for humanity and a win for you.
If that “something” happens to be a business, then so be it – and lucky us – for you are enhancing the lives of others by what you have created.
That’s some story, and a story we all want to read about.
Everyone has a story.
I am Mark Brodinsky, and this is Mark Brodinsky Storytelling.
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Mark Brodinsky Storytelling: Courage
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
– Ambrose Redmoon, Author
This was going to be hard, and Alex knew it, but he didn’t realize how hard until he was ready to say goodbye.
“I can remember that day because I had packed everything in my Subaru Forester,” says Alex. “The garage was open, and my mom was standing there. We have these two little stairs that go from the house into the garage, and my sister was there as well, and they were literally both crying.”
“And as I’m backing out of my driveway, I kept thinking, ‘Why am I doing this? What’s the point of doing this, of leaving New Jersey?’ I’m moving to a different state just because I want to or just because I feel like it. I’m leaving my mom and sister behind; they’re upset. I don’t know how life is going to go for them.”
That was the day Alexander Deleon and his buddy Louis Rivera left to make the drive down south, no apartment, no job, only a dream. Alex’s dream was simple: He wanted to live in Florida, work on cars, the hobby he loved, and figure it all out from there. Alex made his dream come true (more on the how and why in a minute) and found what ended up being his dream job – where he now flourishes as a Division Leader for USHEALTH Advisors. Alex’s teams have produced more than $131 million in insurance policies, and Alex, individually, is a $5 million+ producer. The Sales Division team Alex leads is riding high in 2026 as well, currently in the Top 20 in the country.
So was it worth the “ride” from New Jersey to Florida? It certainly appears to have been, but make no mistake, change is hard.
Back to the beginning of Alex’s drive down the coast.
“I mean, no lie, I probably drove from New Jersey to about Virginia, without a single song playing at all,” says Alex. “I was just deep, deep in thought. The guilt I felt for leaving my mom and my 5-year-old sister was strong. I was around my sister a lot when I was younger (Alex is 30 now). And my mom had me when she was like 16 or 17-years-old, so we are all super close. I always had a really close bond with both of them. And it was difficult to move out of the state and take the chance that I did. It’s something that, even to this day, I’m still working on. So I make sure to have daily phone calls, and I visit for birthdays and things like that. It’s probably been my biggest challenge in life.”
But even through the challenge, Alex has always longed for more.
“For me, it was mostly that I always loved the concept of Florida, but ultimately it came down to the weather,” he says. “I loved being outdoors. I loved working on cars. That was always my favorite thing to do. And it was really sad when it was super cold up north, and you weren’t able to do anything, or even to go outside. I didn’t really like that. In addition, I grew up in Linden, New Jersey, which is a very small, blue-collar industrial town. And it’s one of those cities that, if you stay there too long, it will rope you in. You will get stuck. You will end up getting some kind of job, whether it’s corporate or maybe New York City, earning some normal amount of money, or you have a friend of a dad, or a friend of a friend that ends up getting you a job at the port, or you become a truck driver or something like that.”
“So when I was in New Jersey, I felt like if I stayed there longer, my path was going to be set for me based on the sphere of influence and the typical path that everybody takes, because of essentially what family they grew up in. And I wanted to be sure that I had my own narrative through and through. I didn’t want to be the car guy who was going to be a mechanic, and only had a repair shop. Even though I love doing it, I wanted to make sure I gave myself a chance to operate at full steam in a completely new environment. That way, when I look back in 20, 30 years, I wouldn’t say, “Oh, it would have been different had I done this or had I done that, or if I had taken that chance.” So I figured, why not? Let’s get out of here.”
And with his mom and young sister teary-eyed and waving goodbye in his rear-view mirror, Alex got out.
“The way I always broke this down in my head was if I do this and I go back, it’s not like anything’s changed. I essentially am pressing pause because everybody else is going to be doing the same thing if I go back up north. I can tell you what my one buddy’s doing at two o’clock on a Tuesday. I can tell you what my mom’s doing at five o’clock on a Monday. So I didn’t feel like I was missing out, and I wanted to see if I could find a new life down here.”
“To this day, my sister, who is now 13, calls me every single day at 3:40 PM, as she’s walking home from school. So I feel like obviously I could have done more if I was there with her, but in the position that I’m in now, I’m able to help in different ways and provide a lot of wisdom for my sister and my mother, which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I stayed in Jersey, because I wouldn’t have gained the knowledge that I’ve gained here living on my own.”
Alex’s dream sounded good and looked good on paper, but as we all know, success is never a straight line, and so before Alex found his way to USHEALTH Advisors, he had to navigate some speed bumps.
The first job Alex took in Florida was as a physician recruiter, which he says was “ok”, but not what he wanted. There were still constraints, and Alex didn’t make the leap of faith to come to Florida to get stuck. But once again, a “ride” made all the difference, not the one he made to come south, but the “ride” he managed to buy once he got here.
“It’s actually pretty crazy,” says Alex. “The physician recruiting job I thought was a medical sales job initially, but they kind of tricked me. I had a $40K base salary, and I made commissions, and I was kind of doing my thing. But ultimately it wasn’t for me. It was a very slow type of sales job and a lot more like corporate, where they’re just going to keep most of what you make. So I was looking around for jobs, but couldn’t really get any traction. I had sold a lot of the cars that I had up in New Jersey, and I was buying and selling, and I was actually sitting on a little bit of cash. I always wanted a Nissan GTR. That was my dream, a big dream vehicle. That’s the only reason why I woke up every day and worked at the physician recruiter job because I wanted that thing.”
“I told myself, “Here I am down in Florida. I’m living on my own now. Mom’s not here to yell at me if I do something like this. “And if I get that car and someone sees a 22 or 23-year-old guy driving something like that, they’re going to talk to me. And when they talk to me, I can use that to navigate my way into whatever business they have. I can prove myself. I can show that I’m disciplined. I can show that I work hard, and they’ll give me a job. I’ll become best friends with that guy, and I’ll make a ton of money. I’ll become some C-Level executive in his company.”
Thinking big and acting big are a powerful combination, and the next thing he knew, Alex was in the right place and in the right car at the right time.
“And ultimately that’s exactly what happened,” says Alex. “I bought the car, and I had a great time with it. One day I was at a tire shop in Hollywood, Florida, when a guy walking by, probably a little older, maybe 60s or something like that, said, “Wow, that car is sick. How do you own that?” he asked me. I told him I’ve been working since I was 15, and I finally grabbed one, and he asked what I did for work. I said, “I do physician recruiting, but the money’s not from that. The little bit of cash I saved up wasn’t from physician recruiting, it was from buying and selling cars. Being a physician recruiter is the work I’m doing right now, but I’m looking for more.” The guy told me his son used to work at Best Buy, and he had this guy come up to his son and tell him he was opening an office in West Palm Beach, selling health insurance. His son went to the office, started working, and was actually doing well. He told me his son was making like $1,500 or $2,000 a week. And then he said, “He’s not really that sharp,” laughs Alex. “He literally told me that. Then he said, “But he’s still doing well there. If you’re good on the phone and you like to work hard, you’ve got to give this a shot,” said the man.
“And I thought, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever,’ says Alex. “This wasn’t how I wanted the story to play out. My story was that I’d be driving around and meet an absolute stud who offers me a job. But this was just some guy’s dad. Still, the father took my number down. He gave it to his son. His son gave it to Jason Blank, written on a little sticky note, and Jason called me. I didn’t answer. I listened to the voicemail, figured I’d keep it in my back pocket. But then, maybe like a month later, I had a really big deal at my job fall apart.”
One of the doctors couldn’t fill the days he had agreed to fill. And so all my commission was gone. And I was like, “You know what? I’m done.” I called Jason back. He told me to come in for an interview, and I did, and that’s when everything changed.”
Life can turn at any moment. Never think that one moment, one encounter, one unexpected conversation can’t change your life. It happens all the time, and time is all we have. Alex wanted no limits, and so after talking to USHEALTH Advisor Sales Leader, Jason Blank, Alex took a leap of faith, albeit with some reservations.
“I actually trusted this opportunity so little that I had about five days of PTO at my old job and figured I’d use it, but not quit, just in case,” says Alex. So I told Jason I would work in the West Palm office. I took five days of paid time off at my other job and actually came into the USHA office. I told the other job I was going to be in New Jersey, visiting family.”
“I worked as hard as humanly possible for five days at this insurance thing. I was in the office before everybody. I stayed super late. I got one deal transferred over to Jason. He closed it. I think he paid me out like $700, and I was like, ‘Okay, I can do it.’ I went back and quit my job. So that was maybe like the first week of June 2019. I worked all of June, and I picked it up pretty quickly just from doing as much work as possible and listening to everybody.”
“I had my first new business issued on July 3rd. July was a decent month, and then August, right away, it was insane. I was in the top five issued in the region, and I ran it hard the whole second half of the year. I did the best I could. It was actually a pretty fast start for me, I’m not going to lie. I picked it up pretty quickly, and I was hungry because I needed the money. Being that I didn’t have any family down here and was in a commission-only job, if this failed, I knew what was waiting for me outside of the USHA opportunity, and it wasn’t good. By 2020, I had been promoted to a Field Training Agent and I barely even knew what that was. I had two agents on my team, and I finished fourth in the company and did almost $2.6 million in issued business, and that’s when things really got good for me.”
“Now I am a Division Sales Leader, and I have about 55 agents contracted. I’d say I’m the best I’ve been mentally. I feel really good. It’s difficult sometimes with an opportunity like this because you’re young, and there’s a lot of responsibility placed on you, and you get thrown into a major business pretty quickly. So there are a lot of things you have to learn about making money, investing money, things you have to learn about yourself, right? Especially discipline. I wake up every single day before my alarm, usually like 5:45 or 5:50 am. I walk over to the gym, I get a good lift in, and I come to the office happy and charged up. I already gave myself 100% for the past hour before I started distributing my energy to others. I go through my day, I eat my two little meal preps because I’m focused on getting into the best shape possible, and I’m helping people throughout the day. If anybody taps me on the shoulder, I’m there.”
Being there for others and being in the office, on a strict, disciplined schedule, is how Alex has made it all work. Want success at USHEALTH Advisors? Simple game, follow Alex’s lead, and replicate.
“I’m in the cubicle all day,” says Alex. “I still work from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM Monday through Thursday. I’m here from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM on Friday. I’m here from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM on Saturday. I’m here from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM on Sunday. I always put work first. The first thing I do when I wake up is think about work because I know what the opportunity has done for me. When I came into the business, there were a handful of people who were doing it at a high level. And those people were the ones who allowed me to see what was possible. So the main thing with my team is I don’t ever want it to get to the point where no one’s operating at a high level because then they’re not going to be able to achieve what I achieved, or feel what I felt from doing this.”
“I want to make sure that there are always five, six, seven, eight top producers out there who are writing big numbers, making checks, changing their lives, and gaining the same confidence that I gained from joining this career. So I put my all into it. I’m here every single day still. I don’t have any thoughts of not wanting to work as much or anything like that. I don’t think burnout’s really a thing if you’re doing what you enjoy doing, and if you’re winning. So I feel good about it – and I literally sleep on my couch at night to make sure that I can wake up on time, because if I sleep in my bed, it’ll be way too comfortable and I don’t even want to think about missing my alarm, not for a single day. It’s a lot of work. And I realize once you get good at something, you actually have to try harder. It’s strange, but it’s so true.”
Every great, successful individual has leaned into a great coach or mentor to get where they need to go, and for Alex, he says that man has been Jason Blank.
“Jason’s pretty much shown me everything,” says Alex. “There’s not one thing he would ever keep from me, and he’s the guy who sees potential, no matter where you start from. “He’s going to make you see it, and he’s going to push you, and he’s going to be honest with you and always be transparent with you to make sure that you achieve it. So yeah, when I came in, Jason was a young guy that everybody knew for working hard and trying to make the most of anything. And when I came in, people had more of an attitude toward him, like, “He’s going to make you work!” And I would say, “Well, that’s kind of impossible because I want to work.” You know what I mean?
“I want to stay till 10:00 PM. I want to stay till 11:00 PM. When I go into a room, I want to be better than other people or do what the top guy is doing to impress him. That’s the whole objective of starting new: to impress people and work your way up. So I was like, “I’ll just get here before Jason, and then I’ll stay a little bit later than him because he has stuff to do and he’s been doing this for years. So maybe it’s time for someone else to come in and be the guy who stays till midnight and works hard. But Jason would stay with me, nonstop. It was impossible to say goodbye to that guy at night because he was always going to be there anyway.”
Despite the hard work, there is some downtime to reap the rewards. In the hours that Alex isn’t giving all he can to USHA, he’s working with his other love… cars.
“Back in April of last year, I actually got myself a small warehouse,” says Alex. “I rented a thousand square foot warehouse that fits about four or five cars, and I was able to paint them up and make it look like a personal mini showroom. And now I actively go drifting, which is going sideways with a car, at all these local race events. Jason Blank does it with me, too. And on the side, on the weekends, I typically work on the cars that I import. So I’ll win cars at auction in Japan and I’ll actually have them shipped to America, clean them up, make them look nice, and then post them for sale.”
While he might be busy drifting in cars, Alex never drifts in his relentless drive to be the best he can be and to share his message with others.
Alex says: “If you have something you can visualize and you can feel – and you know there’s something out there for you – and you go to sleep thinking about it and you wake up thinking about it, that’s all you need. All you need is that mental framework and that pure “want”, where you feel like you’re not even in the right place right now because you want that visual so bad. You have to keep chipping away at it, nonstop. Definitely never give up, you know, keep pushing forward. Don’t let off the gas, don’t settle.”
“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Be sure to impress yourself daily. That’s something people forget to do. They want to impress others, but they forget to impress themselves. And when you finally get where you wanted to go, reflect and feel some of that gratitude. It’s a beautiful thing to achieve anything, big or small. Most people don’t do 5% of the things they say they’re going to do. So everyone should be proud of themselves. No one should give up on anything they want. As long as you’re making a conscious effort, no one should care about previous circumstances or future circumstances. If you want it, go get it.”
So, begin as Alex did, backing out of his driveway, saying goodbye to his family, and opening the door to his new life.
In fact, you can sum up Alex’s life in one word: Courage.
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky