Krystalynn Schlegel started in the insurance business as a way to get her foot in the door.
After graduating college, Schlegel, who had always wanted to be a stock broker, moved to Lake Tahoe for a year. Upon returning, she said, she found she’d lost the edge she’d need for a junior associate position, so she joined John Hancock in 2003.
“[I knew] I could get all my licenses and decide where I wanted to go,” she said. “But I found there’s a lot more to life insurance and life insurance planning than what was on the surface, and found I really enjoy working with clients and talking to them about their goals and how they’d like to have things happen if there was a premature death, long term care issue, or disability.”
In 2007, Schlegel joined her father, Michael, at the Novato, CA firm of M.G. Schlegel & Associates, where she specializes in life insurance, long term care insurance, and disability. This year alone, she said, her business has grown by at least 20 percent despite tough times for clients and prospects.
Q: What challenges did you find most pressing at the beginning of your career?
KS: The major challenge I would say in the beginning of my career was being too young. This is going to be my eighth year, so I was 24, 25 when I started, and my natural market was not in the marrying and child-bearing phase. A lot of the big push when working with career companies is they want you to work your natural market first. The next step is cold calling, and in this day and age, it’s very difficult to do that and be successful at it, so I’ve found that getting out there and being more visible in the community has helped. With NAIFA, I’m with my peers and it’s allowed me to make connections, and getting involved with BNI [Business Networking International, a referral group she works with] has exposed me to the greater community, as well. Where I live is kind of a small town, and I got involved with BNI in another town 10 miles away from where I grew up. I knew people there, but didn’t know ins and outs of everything. Once I got involved, it was, ‘Do you know so and so,’ and all of a sudden, you know everybody.
With NAIFA, I’m with my peers and it’s allowed me to make connections, and getting involved with BNI [Business Networking International, a referral group she works with] has exposed me to the greater community, as well. Where I live is kind of a small town, and I got involved with BNI in another town 10 miles away from where I grew up. I knew people there, but didn’t know ins and outs of everything. Once I got involved, it was, ‘Do you know so and so,’ and all of a sudden, you know everybody.
Q: What have been the most recent challenges you’ve found yourself facing in this business?
KS: This year, even with the economy, people always need insurance. People are always getting married, they’re always having kids, they’re always experiencing long term care events with their parents. There’s always an opportunity to provide insurance services, and my challenge is, this year, people want to move forward, but they may be in an economic situation that doesn’t enable them to do so. But other than that, this past year has been one of my best years. It has to do with having positive outlook. I can’t tell you how many people at the beginning of the year were all about doom and gloom. If you say that as a mantra, that’s what’s going to happen. Having a positive outlook about things and being optimistic is helping.
I never once thought this was going to be a bad year for me. I stayed focused on the things that would move me forward in business, which are education, continuing to be active in the community, continuing to be visible, and just trying to do the best thing for your client — and I think that that’s going to continue to snowball. I didn’t really expect many challenges other than with two or three cases this year, which literally was people were unable to move forward because they didn’t have the funds to move forward with a specific insurance product.
Q: To what else would you attribute your growth?
KS: I really like to educate people, and I find there’s not a lot of information out there about life insurance in particular. Everyone thinks you buy term and invest the difference, or buy term because whole life is too expensive. A big part what I do is educate people about how life insurance works and why it’s important to look at permanent insurance versus term insurance because there can be much more benefit later on in life using a permanent type of life insurance when you’re young if you can afford it. Mostly how I sell is, I let people make decisions based on information I provide and giving them a really good education about how these products work.