Winning

If you’re a business owner, an entrepreneur, then you undoubtedly have a story to share. It is a story about trying, about failing, about success, and about the journey through it all.

It’s a story a lot of people want to hear, because they either know the path, or they are afraid to take the leap.

Everyone has a story.

I am Mark Brodinsky and this is Storytelling for Business.

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Storytelling for Business: Winning

That’s why I still work seven days a week. It’s fun for me, business is a sport, and this is my sport. I play it to win all the time. – Jason Blank

You get to make a choice in life, you can work to live, or live to work.

The best in business choose the latter because they love what they do, and it shows – so it’s really not work at all it’s literally an extension of who they are – and the energy they exude resonates with other people, bringing value into those lives.

Meet Jason Blank.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, especially when you are as dedicated and consistent and hard-charging as Jason. Jason first joined USHEALTH Advisors in October of 2016 and about two years later, we first spoke to share his story.

One thing hasn’t changed, and there’s a line I’ve included from his original story that bears repeating: “His name is Jason Blank. And for Jason, you can fill in the blank with one word; the word he believes and knows will bring about success. That one word is work.“

Jason has done and continues to do just that – work!! In fact, he’s been working so relentlessly Jason received another promotion within USHA for 2025, and with good reason, his teams have produced more than $395 million in annual volume. That’s a lot of insurance policies and ensured that Jason deserved a shot at building more teams as a Regional Sales Leader.

“I know what we’re doing is working,” says Jason. “It’s a proven system. I watch it work. I watch people’s lives change. I watch them change personally and develop themselves. And for me, that’s rewarding. I love people who win. And that’s one thing I’ve realized over the years since we (Jason and I), first talked six years ago, because back then it was about me winning. It was about me getting after it and me chasing my goals. But about four years ago is when I realized it was all about other people – I enjoy watching people win and I really dislike watching people lose, and that’s really just a choice, winning and losing. I love the people who push it and win. And that’s I think why I still work seven days a week is for that, which is a challenge, but also very rewarding at the same time.”

For some, success is about reaching a goal and stopping to admire the view. For Jason, the moment he reaches one peak, he’s already mapping out the next climb. It’s about discipline, drive, and an unshakable commitment to helping others win, especially when you have experienced what else is out there.

Jason lived the other side of the work world, first in the clubs, and then in the other “C” world and he says he would never, ever want to go back.

“I was young, I was really young just out of college,” says Jason. “All I had done prior to that first Corporate-America job was working the nightlife scene. I used to own and manage nightclubs and bars and restaurants, and I did incredibly well financially doing that, but I was managing drunk college kids the whole time, which got really annoying after a while. I finally got my degree in finance from the University of Central Florida and I knew I wanted to be a professional. So that’s kind of how I got sucked into corporate. It looked really good on paper, so I didn’t know any better. I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do in America; you put your shirt and tie on every day and you work your way up in a corporate company.”

Jason’s corporate job was managing a rental car company at one of the busiest airports in America and it was relentless.

“So, the rental car company was at the Orlando International Airport, which was their number one location in their entire company,” Jason says. “We rented like 3,000 cars a day on average there. It was a beast of an operation. And I was in my mid-20’s 26 right out of college, didn’t know any better. Jumped right into this operation management role, managing 40 and 50-year-old adults, which is honestly harder than managing the drunk college kids. The adults know how to get around the rules. So I was just miserable.”

“I thought that was the way to make real money and I was wrong. I didn’t know sales was the path to go down. And it took me a while, almost a year and a half to two years, before I realized that there were people working in corporate for five, six, seven years that had families and kids at home and were still making very little money – like $3,000 to $4,000-a-month after taxes. I couldn’t understand how people were surviving like that, and I didn’t see the upward mobility and the trajectory there.”

Feeling stuck and unsatisfied, Jason’s pivotal moment came when he took the advice of someone he trusted, his mom.

Sometimes, mother knows best.

“I remember I was sitting in a rental car one day,” Jason says, “and I called my mom so miserable, and I was like, “Why am I working here?” And she asked me the tough question, “What’s the point of having a job if you’re so miserable? Just quit.” And I told her, I don’t really know. I never quit anything before.”

“I didn’t really feel comfortable quitting, but she convinced me to and I did. I quit that job. I had nothing else lined up. But it was ok because I was done. It was awful, I had no life, working all week and then being off on Tuesday and Wednesday every week. I actually didn’t quit immediately – I told the company that I needed to take a little time to be with my family and I ended up traveling. I took out a rental car in the Dominican Republic. I took out a rental car in Las Vegas, used my benefits as long as I could and then eventually just told them I’m not coming back. And I was unemployed for three months.”

Then, while tossing back a couple of beers with some friends, Jason heard some things that led him to toss his hat into the ring with USHEALTH Advisors. Even though, at first, he thought the whole insurance thing seemed laughable.

“I was having drinks with some friends, and I was lost,” says Jason. “I wasn’t going to go back online looking for work. I wasn’t going to fall for another corporate trap. So I was asking my buddies what they were doing for work, and Chris George told me he was selling health insurance. And I’ll never forget, I laughed right in his face. I was like, “Okay, man, sounds great. Cool.” And then he said, “Yeah, and I made three grand last week. And I said, “What?” I was making $3,000 a month in corporate, so my ears perked right up. I was burned out from working 60-hours a week at the car rental agency, so I was looking for something different.”

For Jason, it was time for a cool change.

“At the start, at least for me, I looked at USHEALTH Advisors as a good stepping stone till I figured out what I wanted to do next in my life,” remembers Jason. “And I think you know how it kind of went from there. I got addicted to this job, I fell in love with this company, I fell in love with the opportunity, and the funny thing is I ended up working twice as much as I did when I was working in corporate. But the difference was I was working for myself. I was making a lot more money and I felt good about what I was doing because I was in full control over all of it.”

With this new feeling of being in charge of his own destiny, Jason hit the ground running, having a great time selling and being with his team. He shot to the top of the national leaderboard in personal production with USHA and, before long, moved from Orlando to West Palm and was promoted time and time again to other levels of leadership, running successful teams.

As Jason has learned in leadership over the past six years, for every level there’s another devil – the responsibility for – and taking care of more and more lives – every move up in the ranks means higher expectations for Jason and his teams.

“So what’s it like being a leader? I mean, it’s a double-edged sword,” he says. “There’s tons of advantages and tons of positive things that come from it, but it’s also extremely painful at times. And the more people that you have, the more challenges you have and you must care about your people and you tend to their issues. You have to solve problems for other people and retrain and reinvigorate and re-motivate. It’s not just like a set it and forget it type of position. It’s not like I can train you, make you successful, and then that’s it. I leave you alone and you do your thing, it doesn’t work that way. You constantly have to be on top of them, helping them, answering their questions, because some people, they don’t have the mental fortitude to push through the suck all the time. Not only are you a leader, but you’re a psychologist, you’re a loan specialist, you’re their rock, you’re wearing a bunch of different hats here. So it’s extremely rewarding and challenging at the same time. I love it.”

Jason says he also tries to set expectations with new recruits from the very beginning, so he makes sure the recruits he brings in, and his other leaders bring into USHA, know upfront what’s expected of them, and he is quick to hold these agents to the goals they told him they wanted to achieve and most importantly the commitments they made to themselves and their businesses.

Jason says, “I tell new people all the time when they come in, I didn’t apply for this job. That’s why the first question I ask people is, “What brings you to insurance? What makes you want to explore an opportunity like this?” Because I don’t think I ever would’ve applied for something like this on a job board. I had a friend that was doing it, he was making money. I didn’t know insurance could be so much fun or paid this well. I had no idea at the time. I don’t think I ever would’ve applied for this career. Definitely not back then. So I always ask the recruits when they come in, what brought you here? What made you click on our advertisement? What made you explore this type of industry? I’m always really curious to know.”

“In the early years here I had a reputation of being pretty aggressive in my leadership style. And only because I didn’t want low producers rubbing off on high producers. Over the years I’ve changed, I’ve gotten more lenient, and I kind of let the “mold sit” – and I try to get those people out of here in a respectful way. But listen, we have to grow and the trajectory of the company for the past couple of years has been growth. So I’ve been trying to get better on that, but I used to be hyper aggressive on cutting the cancer. If you were a little bit cancerous, I would get you out of my culture. And honestly, we always kept an extremely strong culture because of that.”

Jason knows he needs to stay in his lane, remain focused on growth, keep only those on the team who want to win, and do the one other thing that is at the core of who Jason Blank really is.

“I’d say my biggest piece to my success and the success of my teams is still the discipline. My discipline is what helps the team stay strong because they know I’m always going to be here. They know I’m always going to be watching. They know I’m always going to be taking mental notes on who’s doing what. And they know I like winners and they know I don’t like losers. So if you wake up one day and you’re wondering, “Damn, should I go to the office today? Should I put in some work?” It’s not even a thought for a lot of my guys. They know Jason’s going to be there, so they think, “If I don’t show up, he’s definitely going to notice I’m not there. And he’ll make a mental note about that.” So I still think to this day that my discipline and how bought in I still am with this great company is my biggest strength to growing teams.”

Discipline IS Jason’s secret weapon. Yet, it’s no secret that it’s a core ingredient in the recipe for long-term success. Jason developed his skill of discipline at a young age, doing bodybuilding and transferring those same traits into his business. It took years of sacrifice to learn to build himself into the man he is now.

“People ask me all the time, where did you learn the discipline, where did you learn to be like this?” says Jason. “People call me a robot all the time,” he laughs. “And I have to attribute that mostly to bodybuilding. I think that’s where it all came from, just because I’m highly, highly competitive and I don’t ever want to lose. And I will do whatever it takes to at least give it my all – my full best effort to win. So back during my bodybuilding days, I was on point. I never strayed away from my meal plan. I ate very regimented – on time all the time – hit my workouts that my coach had set for me to a tee, and on time, drank exactly the amount of water he told me to. My trainer said I was so on point with that, and I did it for a long time, five years straight of constant routine and never breaking diet.”

“Being able to overcome your thoughts of hunger when you’re hungry is the biggest mental strength ever. And if you can’t accomplish that, there are not many other things in life that you’ll be able to endure in my opinion. And for me, being able to harness and contain that type of urge I think is what made me as disciplined as I am today. And then that translates to sales because it’s the same thing. It’s time management, which I had to do a lot back when I was competing on eating at the right times and working out at the right times and making sure you’re not missing meals and still accomplishing my everyday tasks of going to school and working and all that other stuff. So time management was a huge, huge proponent from bodybuilding, the discipline, the mental toughness, pushing through the pain, all that stuff that translates to sales because you have to be good with time management. You have to be on point.”

Jason was so disciplined, so on point, it even got him a few other perks of the business.

“I was competing in bodybuilding very, very heavily back then, which was another huge passion of mine. I was very committed to that, and I ended up getting on a couple of book covers and some photography events out of that, which was great, because back then I wasn’t making money. So $600 to do a cover of a book was like, “Hell yeah, I’ll do that. I already took the picture, why not?”

But now, instead of appearing on the cover of a book, Jason is writing his life every day as a best seller, filled with the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and building and leading teams, partnered with a company he is exceptionally proud of. And make no mistake, his pride with this company and in his business model is something Jason refuses to compromise on and makes sure his new agents know the same.

“What sometimes people lose in translation. They think I’m just trying to be a hard ass,” he says. “It’s like by me forcing them to do what’s right, I’m simply going to make more money. My income is as earned now, no advances. This isn’t for my health. I tell the agents, “I’m doing this for you. That’s what it takes to be successful. And when you came onto the opportunity, you told me that you wanted to win.” People get mad at me all the time like, “Oh, he is so mean. He’s such a stickler.” It’s like, no, this is what you committed to and you told me you wanted to win. I’m just trying to guide you. And if I didn’t say anything about it, if I didn’t call you out, I would be a bad leader.”

Sports teams win because the leader has the vision and the team members are able to train, learn, and execute that system. It’s the leader laying out the principles of discipline and also persuading everyone to collaborate, become cohesive, and win as a team. It’s the I + the Me becoming the We. If everyone wants to win, the feeling becomes contagious. Jason has this down to a science. And now, almost nine years in with USHA, because he’s been working so hard, leading by example and winning for so long, he is able to take a little time to reap some of the rewards in his personal life. Giving back to those he loves.

“I accomplished my biggest goal last year,” says Jason, “which when I first started the career, I really wanted to get a house on the water and have a boat in my backyard so I can go fishing. And that’s always been my goal. When I was growing up, my dad and I used to go fishing every single weekend. I used to drive down the Intercoastal with my father, just wondering how people can afford to live on the water like that. Because my family growing up, we didn’t have money like that. So for me, we used to trailer the boat, put it in the water, have to go through that whole thing, and it was always a huge hurdle to do it. And we wouldn’t do it every weekend sometimes. It was just a lot. So for me, when I first started making money in this career, that was always my goal, get that house on the water and my boat, so I put my head down and I went after it.”

“Last year, I bought a nice house and I got a boat and I started fishing, and I’m really enjoying it. It gives me a little bit of margin, gives me a little bit of time off. It gets me outside of the office. I still work every single day, but sometimes I’ll, on a Sunday morning, take the boat out and go fishing. That’s why I did this past Sunday, took the boat out, caught two wahoos, went back, cut ’em up, cleaned the boat, and I was in the office before three o’clock.”

The house, the boat and the thing Jason now realizes is a huge, heart-warming accomplishment, to take his dad fishing too.

“My parents came down over Christmas break in December,” says Jason, “and I got to take my dad out on the boat, which was awesome. A complete 360 in the life circle. He used to always take me out when I was younger and now we’re on a bigger boat right behind my house, and it felt like old times again, man, it is actually awesome and a huge accomplishment for me. And I know my dad’s proud. I’m proud that he’s proud.”

“Full circle, man. Full circle. And it’s so awesome to have this because we gave up fishing when I went to college. My dad sold the boat. We had no use for it anymore. I was in Orlando, and my parents were in South Florida, so we were pretty far away from each other. I had gotten caught up in work and school and everything, so it wasn’t even a thing for us anymore. But I always remembered that, and that was always my passion. I always loved fishing. And I loved going out with my dad.”

So what’s next for Jason Blank? Nine years into his journey with USHEALTH Advisors and already accomplishing so much, what does the future hold?

Jason is quick to let you know, “I mean, just I’m a real guy and I do what I say I’m going to do. If I tell you I’m going to do something, I always stick to that and I always do it. There’s not, my word is my bomb. I’m pretty impeccable with my word. And if I tell you I’m going to do something, I do it. If I say, this is my goal, I’m going to achieve it, I’m going to do it. And I guess that’s one thing that people know about me, and that’s one thing that I would like people to continue to know about me, is he does everything he says he’s going to do.”

“I think my purpose right now is just watching and helping people win. Helping people get to what they consider success. That’s what I like the most. I love watching people win. Buy new cars, houses, vacations, start families, whatever. Or it’s that they’re pay off their debt, whatever they want. Everyone’s definition of success and winning is different, but I guess that’s my purpose right now is helping people win and watching them win. I really enjoy that. I absolutely despise losers. People that just don’t do what it takes and they cave in and they lose. I hate that, it actually makes me sad. Life is about winning.”

Until next time, thanks for taking the time.

Your Storyteller,

Mark Brodinsky