Winning isn’t everything, and it’s not the only thing, but the journey to try and win, to do your best, is essential.
In business, it’s a daily grind, a rollercoaster ride; some days you’re hands up, and other days you are clenching the bar. It’s hard and it’s supposed to be; if it were easy, everyone would do it. Cliché? Of course, because it’s true.
The story of your journey to do your best, to do all you can with all you have been given, is one everyone will want to read.
Everyone has a story.
Welcome to Mark Brodinsky Storytelling.
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Mark Brodinsky Storytelling: Loss, Love & Leadership
Face your fear and do it anyway, or if you’re like Katherine Moskal, face your fear and find a better way.
When Katherine joined USHEALTH Advisors in 2020, she was afraid. She was afraid to pick up the phone, afraid to make a call, afraid to talk to a lead – Katherine was deathly afraid.
“It was rough, if I’m being honest,” says Katherine. “So that first year, I was still in the place where I’m like, okay, I’m just going to do this temporarily until COVID goes away, and then I’m going to get back into real estate. So I was kind of one foot in, one foot out. I was terrified to talk on the phone. Believe it or not, this is a true story. My husband thinks it’s hilarious and tells everybody I wouldn’t even call to order a pizza. I wouldn’t talk on the phone to anybody. If I couldn’t text to get something handled, or if I couldn’t go online and order it, it wasn’t going to happen. I was not calling anybody. And so I sat down, day one, and my sales leader, Debra Salmans, who was training me, said, “Ok, start calling people. We make a couple of hundred calls a day.”
“And I was like, “Excuse me, what?” That was a little bit of a shock, and so I had to adjust. So, I was on the dialer for about a year and a half, which I mean, I did, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. And then I started to tap into some other ways to get business: going to networking groups, utilizing social media, and developing referral partners. At that time, we were part of Harley Brown’s team, and I went to Harley and said, “I’m quitting the dialer.” And he says, “What?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m quitting it. And he says, “That’s insane. What are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to get business my own way. And Harley says, “Okay, good luck.”
“The next week, I was the number one agent in the office for sales, doing it my way. And then from there things got better, and better, and better. And here we are.”
Yes, here we are, and where we are is with Katherine well on her way to $5 million in personal production with USHEALTH Advisors and leading her team to more than $8 million in team insurance sales.
Doing it her way has been the right way for Katherine. Or should we say, “It’s the right way, eh?” After all, Katherine was born in Toronto, Canada. Her family moved to the United States when Katherine was a year old. And this year, Katherine proudly became a U.S. citizen. 🙂
“After Canada, I grew up in Littleton, Colorado,” says Katherine. “So l’ve lived here since then, except for eight months I lived in Texas. I also have a younger brother who lives in Littleton.”
Katherine says her childhood in Littleton was good, but eventually, a big loss rocked her family to its core.
“I think that you’re put here on earth to do certain things and help certain people and be there for certain people,” says Katherine. “And so thinking back, I’m like, “My gosh, if I had done that, if I had ended my own life, I never would’ve had my son, my husband would’ve, well, I don’t know what he would’ve done in that case. I don’t know what my mom would’ve done, how it would’ve impacted my other family members, and my friends? And so it taught me it’s okay to have those thoughts, but you need to be strong and seek help because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You don’t need to think this way for the rest of your life. You can pull yourself out. And just because life is hard for a moment, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be hard for the rest of your life. You have one hundred percent control over your life, your destiny, and your mind. I know some people don’t believe that, but you do. You can control what’s going on, and what’s going on in your mind. It takes time and training. It’s not easy to do, but you can absolutely, absolutely do that.”
Moving forward, as Katherine did, saved her life, and her story will no doubt bring hope and purpose to others. She and her family are living examples of resilience because life’s challenges never end. Yet, the loss of her dad didn’t end what life had in store for her that year. Katherine was still trying to finish school to become an elementary school teacher, and it wasn’t going well.
“I was still in college when all this happened. My husband and I got married in August of that year, and in September, I lost my dad,” says Katherine.
“By October, we were trying to buy our first house, and then, in December, I lost my grandpa up in Canada. Before he passed, my dad had been going up there to take care of his parents because they were both in their nineties. My dad was up there on a regular basis, but now I needed to go instead and help my grandma and get her situated. And so with all that happening at once, it was hard for me. I was working too. I was working multiple jobs while I was in college and I couldn’t handle everything on my plate. I had to give up something, and unfortunately, that was school, so I ended up dropping out.”
Katherine was a semester-and-a-half from graduating and promised herself she would go back. But after a move to Texas and a short time living there, Katherine and her husband knew they had made a mistake.
“I had no college degree, so all I had was restaurant experience,” says Katherine. “I worked in two little restaurants, making $7 an hour, and we just couldn’t get by. It wasn’t working for us. We were tapping into our savings every month. And so after eight months, we ran out of money, and I said, “I don’t want to be here anymore. I am working two jobs. We’re in a small town, and I don’t know anybody. I want to go back to Colorado.”
“So, we sold a bunch of stuff to pay for a moving truck and for gas, and we moved back to Colorado. We had no choice but to move in with my mom. Neither my husband nor I had a job; we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. And right after we moved back home, I found out I was pregnant.”
“And so basically things kept coming up where I realized I don’t know how I could go back to school. It’s not in the cards for me. So here we were, pregnant, and living with my mom. We finally found work. My husband ended up going to work for Volkswagen, selling cars, and he was great at it.”
“Slowly, we were able to get on our feet and get into our own place and everything. Then I decided, instead of going back to school, I wanted to get my real estate license. I did that, and then good, old COVID hit, and we went into lockdown. I hadn’t even sold a house yet. I didn’t know how to do any of this. I started looking for other opportunities, and that’s how I found USHEALTH Advisors.”
The rest is history, as they say, but history is our greatest teacher. Everyone’s story matters, and Katherine’s should serve as an example of the rise and fall we all face in life and the ability to keep going. Her experiences also taught her that when you run into a wall, one you can’t seem to scale, then come up with a different way.
Katherine’s strength is in her ability to pivot. She might not like to make calls at USHA – but man, or should I say woman – Katherine knows how to connect!
“Once I got myself out there, networking, etc, most of it started turning into inbound leads,” says Katherine. “People were booking on my Calendly, people were calling me or texting me to get health coverage. And so most of it was running appointments. I also started using Facebook or going to networking groups. I started my own Facebook group called Colorado Boss Ladies, which has over 2,000 women. I was hosting monthly networking events for the group. So, I really started developing solid referral partners. I joined a number of women’s networking groups, and I changed my focus. I became “The Woman”; if you were a self-employed woman, you were calling me for health insurance.”
“That was 90% of the business I had coming in, and so I stuck with it. Again, utilizing my group, going to networking events, hosting my own events, everything really took off just from focusing on that area. Since then, things have developed because somebody told somebody, who told somebody, and people are reaching out to me. I think that really helps my business and could help anyone’s business – picking that target audience, because then when someone sees or hears, “Oh, you specialize in helping self-employed women. That’s exactly what I am, so I’m going to work with you!”
Sometimes, to get the job done, all you need is a hammer and a nail, and then hit that nail squarely on the head. Find your niche, then use focused determination, ingenuity, and be relentless in the pursuit of your goals. Katherine’s perseverance at USHA led to a promotion into leadership. She currently serves as a Field Sales Leader with the company, and this has also led to a life-changing situation for her family.
“One of my greatest accomplishments with this USHA opportunity,” says Katherine, “is a year-and-a-half ago, retiring my husband, in his mid-30s, so he could stay home and take care of our son, Carson, our dog, and our home. It’s crazy how quickly our lives have turned around in only 3-and-a-half years of being here.”
“That’s why I tell any new agent, don’t give up on yourself. There will be hard days. There are going to be many days in a row where you want to throw in the towel. I’ve been there; that was my first year and a half, and thankfully, Harley and Deb talked me out of it every time. And so I tell these agents, if you have those thoughts, come to me. Let’s talk it out. Don’t be ashamed. It’s hard. You’re starting a business. You have to learn about health insurance. You have to learn how to manage your own schedule because nobody is watching you to make sure you’re punching in and out at a certain time. It’s a big learning curve, especially for people who have never been self-employed or don’t know about selling health insurance. And so I tell everybody, don’t give up, because yes, the first year is going to be hard, but after that, I mean, you’re going to be so thankful that you stuck it out because this is the best opportunity out there, period, hands down. There’s nothing else like USHA.”
And while there’s nothing out there like USHEALTH Advisors, Katherine says there is something she wants to do more of, and that’s to give back.
“A couple of years ago, I went to the Inspire event in Colorado,” says Katherine. “And one of the motivational speakers was showing us videos of people who need help, and other countries building wells for them and getting them out of these, basically, slavery camps. And he said, “How long are you going to sit on your ass and be lazy and let all these people suffer? How long are you going to keep doing that?” And I’ll remember this forever, and he said it a lot better than I will, but in essence, it was that you should realize you can do whatever you want with your life. It is a choice. I could have chosen to be broke and live a life that, realistically, I didn’t want to live. And now I don’t. I fought back, and I have the life I want.”
“But when you’re living the other way, you’re living paycheck to paycheck. You can’t think about helping other people; you can only think about helping yourself. That’s all you can think about. How am I going to pay my mortgage? How am I going to get groceries for my family? But once you gain the opportunity for unlimited income, you realize that it’s not about being rich or buying more sh*t for yourself; you can do something so much greater. You have the opportunity to help so many more people. And then you’re like, “Oh, I can pay my own bills, and now I can help my mom, my dad, I can help my grandparents, I can help my neighbor. Maybe somebody posts on a community site like Nextdoor, and says, “Hey, I have no money and I need dinner tonight for my kids.” And then I message them and say, “Hey, send me your address and I’ll have groceries delivered tonight, or pizza delivered, or whatever.”
“And that gets my mind spinning into thoughts of, maybe we start a nonprofit and we go build houses for people who don’t have anywhere to live or something like that. And so when you have the opportunity, whether it’s USHA or really any commission job, or a business where you can earn unlimited income, you can do so many things to help other people in the world. I think that’s amazing. That’s my mission.”
“I’m doing this because I want to help as many people in the world as possible, not only to find good health insurance, but also to be able to help them if they need money to pay a bill, if they need food, if they need a house built for them. I want to be able to do all those things. I don’t want to have to say no. I think that’s the purpose in this life. I think that realistically, whether people realize it or not, it’s the thing that makes everybody happy, being able to help others.”
Until next time, thanks for taking the time.
Your Storyteller,
Mark Brodinsky