Shawn Meaike, Founder, President, and CEO of Family First Life Insurance, shares how his early career in social work primed him for his future in insurance, the story of the day that changed his perspective on everything, the wealth of products now available to protect families, what makes the relationship between FFL and Southwestern Legacy special, and what kind of legacy he wants to leave for generations to come.
Thank you so much for having me. for you and those you care about of growing today for a better tomorrow that's what legacy means at southwestern legacy insurance group what does it mean to you let's talk legacy
Welcome to Let's Talk Legacy, and I'm really excited about today's show as I actually get to spend time with Sean Mike, the president, founder, and CEO of Family First Life. And he started with the company in 2013, building a company that truly puts both the families of our clients and the families of our agents as a priority to him. So welcome to the show, Sean. I really appreciate you being on.
Thanks for having me, Gary. I appreciate you, bud. So you started off your professional career in the social work area in the Department of Children and Families before you got into the insurance field. So where did that come from and how did you get that piece of your heart that wanted you to be a servant and help others?
Well, you know, Gary, I think it was how I was raised. My mother raised me and my brother. My mother struggled financially, and she somehow thinks that that made her less of a parent, which is weird to me because it made her more of a parent in my eyes with what she did as a single mom. And I think I got to see a lot of dysfunction on both sides of my family. And I think I was blessed by that.
You know, substance abuse was a big problem. It was some violence. It was just, you know, so I think I went to college to play baseball and I was a business major and I was sitting in my economics class. Never forget, the professor went on to be a president of one of the universities in Connecticut. And I pulled her aside after my class and I said, you know, can I ask you a question?
She said, yeah. I said, none of the professors here are actually businessmen or businesswomen. You're just teachers. I don't mean just teach like it's not at all, but like you're teaching me on things you haven't done. And what I loved about her answer was she was transparent.
And she said, if that's important to you, Sean, then you need to find a major where the folks that are teaching there live in it. And I say, can you recommend one for me? She said, social work. And so, you know, I didn't switch majors right away. I took a couple of social work classes and I'm like, God, I love this. Like it was what I want to do. But God is great.
And a buddy of mine called me and said, hey, come to the department show in the family's and work with abused and neglected children. And I was like, all right. I went interviewed and I spent 14 years there, man. It was probably the most gratifying job I've ever had in my life. It was definitely tough, but it was gratifying. So that's what led me there.
And I think I had I didn't want to see women be in violent relationships. I didn't want to see kids abused. I don't want to see any kids or women hurt for that matter. But I'd lived a lot of that. So I think I could relate to some of the kids. I did a lot of the stupid things. The 15, 16 year old boys I was working with were doing they were angry and violent. I really loved my job.
That's how I got there, though.
It seems like that carries into your day, not wanting to see your agents and see people out in the world hurt. It's still in you today.
Yeah. Well, selling life insurance is social work. That was the thing for me when a guy named Jim Godwin introduced me to the business. I said, what do we do? And he said, we call people up and we protect them and their families. I'm like, well, I do that over here. And he said, yeah, but you don't make enough money to live the life you want to live for you and your kids. And he was right.
It struck me. I was like, OK, cool. But I really want to do things that are making a difference to money. We'll come. I want to make a difference. And I'll never forget. I was selling life insurance part time about two and a half months. And I went to a home in Worregan, Connecticut. Lady's name was Lisa. Never forget it. And she answered the door and she said, you won't be able to help me.
And I said, why not? And she said, because I have stage three or four pancreatic cancer, like I'm dying. And she said, can you help me? And I said, no, I didn't have any graded products that time. I like had you. I couldn't get her insurance. Now, I'm not going to lie to anybody about anything. I was like, ma'am, I won't be able to. She was in her early 30s and her husband came around the corner.
Big old dude started yelling at me, cussing me out. And I sat down with them for about a half an hour and I got him a $250,000 policy. and he was healthy as a horse. I mean, big guy, great. I mean, big guy, meaning six, four, two 30, great shape, not a partier, not any medication. And 48 hours after I wrote him a policy died in a motorcycle accident. And then she died shortly after that.
And the only money the kids had was the quarter million dollars I got from him. I think Gary, after that happened, my whole perspective on insurance changed. The whole thing changed. Everybody's life is fragile, I realized. You never know when it's your time.
And I realized that middle class and lower middle class and lower class people weren't taught what wealthy people are taught about life insurance. Nobody taught my wife insurance when I was growing up. I'm a smart person. My mom's not dumb. She's smart. But we never talked about it. And I realized that when wealthy folks died, it was like an event.
Nobody wanted it to happen, but they had everything. People got paid. They actually planned for these things and put money in place and developed legacies. The first time I heard the word legacy that meant anything to me outside of sports was in life insurance. And I'll never forget a guy said to me, Sean, when you meet with people, they're already going to leave a legacy.
All we're trying to do is help you be a positive one. But if they do not have life insurance. And they leave their wife and children, you know, encumbered with bills, got to pay for their funerals. They leave a negative legacy. So I really wanted to not only help them leave a positive one, but prevent them from putting their families in a terrible position.
Because, okay, what's going to happen if you die or he dies or you both die? So, yeah, it became my passion. What I trained agents on. Gary, I knew that a lot of times we had one shot. You call somebody, you go meet with them. They opened up to you and they gave you an opportunity.
And if you screw it up, when I say screw it up, I mean you left them and they're not going to meet with anybody else ever again. Did you give it everything that you had? If you did, that's all you can do.
But if you didn't, that's a problem. When you were creating this company, how much of that went through your mind and how much does that still go through your mind today? This isn't just revenue for the company. It's so many people were changing their lives.
Well, I think that it goes, it's what I live by, Gary. I mean, I've never changed that thought process. For me, every client is an opportunity to do good or unfortunately to fail. And failing is not them saying no. Failing is you not doing everything you need to do professionally, respectfully. To put them in a better position.
I've had clients I went and met with Gary that had died after that and didn't get life insurance. But there is not one time that I ever look back and go, I wish I would have said this because I did everything I could with every single client I met with. It's the only way I can sleep at night. I only put my head on the pillow and go, you know what? Did you do everything you could? I did.
And I feel the same way with agents because I think the thing about life insurance is this, is that everybody's going to die. So everybody's got to have it. Right. And the vast majority of people don't have it or don't have enough. They admit to that. And then they get vulnerable and fill out a lead and send it back to somebody.
Selling the life insurance is all about getting in front of as many people as you can or as often as you can, getting as uncomfortable as you can, challenge them as much as you can, because their legacy has to be as important to you as yours is. I want other people to win as much as I want myself to win. You go, that's a lie. No, it's not a lie.
If you go, do I care more about your kids than my kids? No, I can't care more about your kids than my kids. And I don't care equally. They're my children. Just like it'd be weird if you're like, I care as much about you can't. That would be awkward. But your success, I care as much about your success as I do my own.
And I think for me, we have such an amazing opportunity because I give you a hundred stories of people I met with. They thought they had insurance. This guy didn't do that. They didn't really put it. They didn't challenge him. If I left the house or I got off a phone call or I got off a Zoom. As long as I did every darn thing I could do, when you do it that way, you put them first.
I was never afraid to say anything because you, as a client, were more important. Your family's protection, your legacy, your safety financially was more important than my feelings. And when you do that for people, they become very comfortable because they know you genuinely care about them.
Yeah. It's interesting in the time that I've been here, so much of it was about the final expense. And that is such a policy that I think is so important for people to have. Maybe you could share with people a little bit your philosophy on how so many more products have come available. Maybe they've been around for years, but What is mortgage protection? What is a cashback offer type policy?
What is the IUL, the index universal life of setting up your retirement and having life insurance serve as not only a protection in case you do pass, which you're going to, but also potentially have a certain amount of money being every month that you set in your retirement when you retired.
Could you share for the person that maybe isn't as educated about giving people lots of choices and why they need those choices?
Yeah, I think the beautiful thing about what we do is we have an opportunity, an option for everybody. When you find somebody who's, you know, 60, 70, 80 plus years of age, you know, he or she can get themselves a whole life policy. You call it final expense. You call it whole life. You get a policy where you pay X amount of dollars a month. Here's a death benefit.
You got that till, you know, whatever it's like till the day you die. Right. I was raised in this business with term return of premium. So to await what I was attracted to was. Here's a policy. They pay in every month, and at the end of their term, they outlived it, and it paid me back. So that's an amazing product.
To your point about the Indexed Universal Life, if you've never read the book Tax-Free Retirement, I think y'all should read it. I don't care what other books you read in your life, but Patrick Kelly, it's an unbelievable book. I was introduced to that book early in my life insurance career. I didn't know what an Indexed Universal Life was.
It explained I had gotten into my 401k when I was in my 20s at the state. And I didn't realize what was happening. I had to wait till age 59 and a half. How do people cash them out and take a huge penalty? It taught me a lot about Indexed Universal Life. I bought myself a policy in Indexed Universal Life and set that up when I think about whatever age I decide to start pulling the money out.
So that's an amazing product. And the Indexed Universal Life has changed our business. As a matter of fact, half of our business by the end of this year will be IUL. Now, why is that so amazing? It has so many different benefits. You talked about the retirement. You talked about it being tax-free. You talked about the opportunity. to be able to utilize your money earlier.
When you're in insurance, I think you need to be very honest about the products. You know, they're not magical. I see people say things about products that is not true. I don't like that. I give you the good. I give you what might be, but I give you the strengths and weaknesses of everything. Here's how this works. Here's how you're going to take it. Here's the cost of insurance.
Here's what goes in an investment. Here's how it's performed over this many years. Here's a guarantee. Here's a non-guarantee.
And I think that's part of why I've had a very successful insurance career is, you know, I always told my kids when they were young, a salesperson has a successful career if he or she can walk around in the communities that they sell in and help people in and be excited to see people. I never wanted to bump into somebody at the grocery store and have them be like, Walk the other way.
I want to be like, that's my insurance guy. I'd be out with my kids all over the place and people would not remember my name. And they'd be like, you were at my house. You're my insurance guy. I'm like, yeah, I'm your insurance guy. But that was my job was to protect you and protect your legacy. So there's a lot of diversity in products.
That's also why I think if you get in the insurance business, you should be independent. Like you should get multiple carriers. People call me all the time. We sell this one product. What do you think I should do? I'm like, I'd quit. If failing first life was like, you can sell one product, one product only, y'all should quit.
And then also what happens when you do that is you start selling people that one product. Like they probably could have gotten something else, but you're out there going, I don't make any money if they don't buy this one product for me. All I got is this one product. So one of the things I'm proudest of, you know, the annuity, be able to protect people's retire. That was 2009.
I hadn't sold an annuity. The guy sat me down and said, you need to ask people what they're doing with their safe money. Ask them if they're a saver or an investor. I knocked on a Door knocked this lady's trailer. I opened the door and I got COPD right away because she must smoke like 14 cards of cigarettes a day. Then her husband came with both smoking.
She's got cancer, but she'd had treatments or is in good health. But I'm like, she's not going to get these products because she's smoking. She doesn't have a history of cancer. She has other stuff going on. Yes, you've been cancer-free for a little bit of time, but not long enough for me to really take care of you. And I'm just talking. I just asked the question to the guy.
I said, what do you all do with your safe money? She said, what does that mean? I said, money you have that you don't want to lose. She goes, I have money in the market. I lose it all the time. My 401k is killing me. So I'm like, how much you on your 401k? I'm assuming Gary, she's going to say eight grand, 12 grand, 20 grand, 30 grand. She said just over a million dollars. And I'm like, what?
She's like, I worked at JCPenney since I was 18 and they matched me. And I was like, how much have you lost the last quarter? She told me it was obnoxious. I wrote her an annuity for a million bucks. Her husband won for 300 grand. I'd never written one before. And every year they would call me like they didn't lose any money. They didn't lose.
Because again, anything we've gone through economically, when COVID hit, I wasn't worried about my clients that had an IE well or nobody losing any money. Matter of fact, the thing I used to say to them was, I'm not licensed to lose you any money. I have an insurance license. I'm not a securities guy. I don't even have the ability to get you in a product where you can lose money on it.
So it's good to have access to all and be able to help people.
Three and a half years ago, you met with a few of our leaders in our company. Where do you align with Southwestern? Where do you think our two companies align and what do you think is important for someone to be successful?
I think the thing I liked the most about it was the work ethic, yes, because that was impressive. It looked like it was a really great relationship. But I think, Gary, with full transparency, working with you and some other folks now has really solidified that. You are a guy in the field. You are a guy that knows what it takes. You are a guy that should be on this podcast.
And with full transparency, that was always what I believed in it. I mean, like I'm a sales guy. I got my life insurance license. I went and sold. We launched Fan First Life. I was in the field full time. I own the company. I'm the president of the company. The insurance carriers would call me and be like, hey, we're trying to get ahold of you. I'm like, I'm selling.
They're like, you sell life insurance. I'm like, yes, I'm in life insurance. I'm like, you're the president of the company. I'm like, is there a rule that says I can't sell? They're like, no, there's no rule. I'm like, I enjoy helping people. Why would I not want to do that? So you guys for a long time about the community, helping people. I want to build people to Gary.
And I think a lot of the folks I was building, people didn't necessarily believe in them. They weren't raised in this situation where it's like, hey, man, all I got to do is show up and grandpa, let me run the company. they're trying to find their way. And a lot of times this entrepreneurial journey is their first entrepreneurial journey.
And also folks pull against them, not because they're bad people. They just don't know they're not entrepreneurs. So it's easy to be scared of what you don't know. So I have to appreciate them. They're on cover the list. So I look at guys like you and, and meet my job was to walk in, put my hand on the guy's back and be like, Hey man, I know a lot of people are telling you can't do it.
I know a lot of people are saying things like if it's too good to be true, it is and yada, yada. You know what? It's a great industry. I looked at you guys and you had a lot of guys and girls with a blue collar mentality to go out there and serve people. And you're fearless.
One last question that's such a big question we always ask on every one of our podcasts. Sean, what does legacy mean to you?
For me personally, we live our lives however long those lives last. 100 years, 20 years, 80 years. We do leave a legacy, good, bad, or indifferent. I think that for Sean, Mike, I want to make a difference in the world. I'm not delusional. I don't think that everybody across the earth knows who I am and make a difference in everybody's lives individually.
I want to do the best I can in my portion of the world. I'm going to do the best I can with the people that I impact. I want to leave behind belief level for other people. I want to help people create wealth for their families. I do want to put a hedge of protection in financially for people. And I think I'm driven by the other dog.
You know, it's not that I haven't written life insurance on all kinds of people, but the folks that are really in a tough position, like I'll never forget what I've done to be able to put them in a better position. You know, there's a way if you when you have kids and you're when you're a dad and you have sons. I read this a long time ago. You go through three phases.
Every dad and son goes through three phases. First phase is your son will idolize you. The second phase, he'll demonize you. Then he'll humanize you. And I remember asking this psychologist that was saying it one day, I go, he goes, and the hardest thing will be if you've been a really good dad, he'll idolize you longer than he was supposed to. I was like, really?
He's like, yeah, that'll actually last longer. Like he shouldn't be idolizing you when he's 18, 19, 20. And for me, I don't know how long people are going to talk about us when we're gone. but I want to do enough good in the world in causes, giving money back, making a difference.
And if some grandkid one day says, I don't know, man, my dad, he went on my, my grandpa first, he went and built a business and life insurance. Then my dad got in. That's how we've been able to, and here's what we've been able to do. And we give back over here. But if we hadn't found that and some guy ran out, his name might've been Sean. I don't know. Family first.
Like, like if that's the way it works, I want people to, And I want to be honest with me that that I was hard charging that I was a pain in the butt at times that I probably could have said things a different way that I maybe was a little bit too passionate. But damn, my motives were good and that I inspired people that didn't believe in themselves to believe in themselves.
And then I want to help other people realize they're leaving a legacy, too. whether it's positive, negative, you're leaving something. And I want to help people develop that and leave that because it will last for generations, especially if it's the first time somebody is doing it in their family. To be somebody that breaks the mold.
Our family was heading this way and I took us in a different direction, showed us a lot more to this world. So I'm very, very focused on legacy.
Well, Sean, thank you for being on today. I always ask people if they have more questions. If someone wants to get in touch with you, how would they reach you?
They go to my Instagram. It's just my first name, Sean, S-H-W-N. Last name is M-E-A-I-K-E. They can find me on Instagram there. You send me a DM, I'll get back to you. If you're looking for some help with something by all means, you can do that. You go to the website, SeanMike.com. So again, S-H-A-W-N-M-E-A-I-K-E.com. You can find me there, get information.
Somebody will reach out to you because I remember what it was like when I started. And I remember how hard it was to find information or find credible people that could give me information. And I want to help eliminate that gap for a lot of people.
Well, you've been listening to Let's Talk Legacy with Sean Mike. Thank you so much for being on the show today. That's awesome. Thanks, guys. Appreciate y'all.
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Let's Talk Legacy is a presentation of the Southwestern Legacy Insurance Group, a member of Southwestern Family of Companies.