Hi, I'm Billy Gwaltney and this is the CYA podcast. This show is for the physician who understands the importance of protecting everything you've worked so hard to achieve. Each week I'll bring you tips and advice to help you cut through the clutter and misinformation and show you exactly what you need to preserve your income and way of life. If you're ready to achieve the peace of mind that only financial security can bring. Let's get started.
Welcome to the cover your assets podcast. This is episode number one. This is a podcast designed for physicians who want to learn as much as possible about disability insurance and life insurance. I am a founder and president of professional planning group incorporated. I'm an insurance broker, work with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of physicians around the country in regards to helping them establish, you know, specialty disability coverage and life insurance. This first podcast is, I'm just going to share a little bit about who I am and why I'm doing this podcast.
01:01 I thought it would be helpful to know that upfront. The first one is why? Why would I do it? Well, I think ultimately I see, I know that I've been able to help a lot of clients. I'm really good at, this is what I, and I say that because I just do it all day. Every day is my focus and I've become an expert in it and my clients would affirm that and I want to make this information kind of the stuff that's in my brain and in my experience available to you to access anytime, anywhere. I just want to make it easy and convenient for people to get the information they need to be able to make the decision that's best for them. I would obviously love to work with all of you, but whether it's me or someone else, primarily I think it's important to make sure that there's concise and yet thorough and accurate information available for you to make that decision because there's a lot riding on it, which leads to the second reason that I'm doing this are the, are the stories, are you the people that I've worked with and unfortunately the people that, that I've not worked with and one story that has been burned into my brain from a handful of years ago where it was a decent number of clients that have particular training institution that came to me because one of our colleagues who was within the last year of training, I think, I think he may have been five or six months away from graduating, became disabled, significantly disabled.
02:21 I think it may have been, I don't know if it was an injury, but I, I didn't get those details or don't recall those. But I do recall that he was never gonna practice medicine. And he was about, like I said, six or so months away from graduating. And he had, he had put off getting his disability coverage like a lot of people do. He was going to wait until he was about to graduate and get it. And and that didn't work out. Fortunately for him, he was disabled enough to meet the definition of disability for the little group policy that he had through the, through his employer, but it wasn't gonna provide a lot. And he still had a, like a, just a ton of medical school dad apparently. And that was not going to go away or at most of it wasn't.
03:00 And so he was left in a really tough spot, not only health wise but also financially. And I remember one client in particular, she was in her very first year of training and was like, Hey, I'm getting this because of him. I'm getting this because I don't want that to be my story. It was painful. And so that is something that, that I've just never forgotten when a client tells me. Hey, you know, cause I asked him, you know, why, what makes you, why are you moving in this direction? What kind of tip the scale for you. And when they share experiences like that, they're pretty impactful. The other story, another story as a CLA, a client story that I was involved with, she was across the country and got a diagnosis and it was it was bad and she called me and left a voicemail.
03:51 I got it one morning when I checked my phone and it was basically her sobbing. I couldn't really understand what she was saying. I could tell I knew who it was, but I couldn't understand a lot of the questions she was asking. And she basically was just scared to death because she knew that she was going to be disabled. She wasn't gonna be able to work. And she was scared to death, not only about her health, but it didn't take long before the financial consequences of her situation became something that she wanted to, to confirm and deal with. And it was was powerful. It was significant because I ended up calling her back and comforted her in the fact that her policy was going to do what she, you know, it was designed to deal with this exact situation and the definitions were strong.
04:38 It was true specialty. There were no moving parts to it. She had the residual, she had, she just had everything. And it was interesting because she ended up calling me back you know, during the elimination period, further down, she left another message with her crying, I think even harder because her claims representative, obviously the companies deal directly with people because of HIPAA and privacy issues. But you know, the broker can be as involved as you want us to be. And so I, she wanted me involved and so she called me and was really upset, concerned about are they looking for a way out? Is there something they're going to try? Not to pay. And I certainly understood that that was a legitimate concern. And so I clarified some things with the company and just look, I had a pretty good feeling that they weren't trying to wiggle out.
05:23 They were just wanting to adopt the I's and cross the T's and that turned out to be the case. And she got paid. Everything went according to plan from a policy standpoint. And I think she was disabled for about two years and she came back to work and she's working now. She's had a, just a remarkable recovery because she was healthy going in. And I think that that really helped her with her recovery and she's back working, had multiple conversations with her about what happened. She was so thrilled with her policy. She was so happy. The only complaint she had was she had not gotten the maximum amount of coverage, which is interesting. You know, she had chosen a lower amount primarily because she said she didn't think she would ever be disabled, of course. And so she heard one complaint and she said, okay, from now on I'm carrying the max of everything.
06:07 And that certainly made sense. And, but she was so thrilled because she really didn't know what her policy said. She had basically trusted me to make sure that, that it was going to do what it was supposed to do. Again, she didn't really think she would ever need it, but she was just so thrilled that it actually did happen. And she didn't really know that it would she had just kind of taken a step of faith and bought a policy to check a box and move on down the road. But it turned out to be a really good thing for her. And those kinds of stories drive me. Those kinds of stories are why I do what I do. I absolutely love it. I don't know why I love and you know, talking to people about insurance. I think it's the stories.
06:45 I don't think it's the topic of insurance itself, but this is what I do. Again, I work with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients across the country and actually all over the world. You, you guys and gals move everywhere. And I love that. I love having conversations with people that are on the other side of the planet. But the details of this coverage are really important. And you know, when you find out that your plan a, which for most people is, you know, a long and successful career, and if that plan a in, in what you envision with that, the kind of house you're going to live in the school, your kids are going to go to the vacations you, you, you can take the, just the quality of life that you and those that you love and care about can have. If that plan a comes crashing down, then your plan B all of a sudden becomes really, really, really important.
07:34 And the thought and kind of decisions you've made in regards to a plan B and who you've trusted to help you set up a plan B are vital. And so my focus, my reason for existing from a business standpoint is to help make sure that plan B is exactly right as it is the best it can possibly be. And also with the largest discounts that are available, there's, I don't believe that you have to overpay for this stuff. If you do it right then then it can be very affordable. And that's what we help our clients set up. I used to be a certified financial planner. I used to do financial planning in general and those kinds of things. But over time it just became, it was just very obvious to me that I was not going to be able to be an expert at a lot of different things, but I could be an expert in one or two things.
08:20 And so I just dove in and really devoted myself to the disability insurance world. And like I said, life insurance has kind of come along as a result of that. I help most of our clients with life insurance, but all of our clients have the specialty disability coverage. As an independent broker, I'm able to bring the, you know, those, the best solutions that are available regardless of who the company is. Because ultimately the contract is what determines the quality of coverage much more so than the name brand of a particular company. And so again, we'll talk about these kinds of details in the, in this podcast. My focus will be to keep these relatively short and sweet and impactful and information filled. And I look forward to the opportunity to be of service to you. Until next time, this is Billy Gwaltney. Feel free to text me anytime to arrange a conversation if you have questions or want to talk with me directly. The number is (704) 270-2376 again, (704) 270-2376.
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