Talk about how life insurance literally saved your life. And obviously people like there's a ton of living benefits to insurance, which is great. Obviously, you sold life insurance and still sell life insurance as a powerful death benefit play, which I think is so important for people to understand the idea. And if you would have told me, OK, is life insurance going to keep people alive? It would be like, what are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. But actually... Insurance companies are better off if you live long. And as humans, we want to live longer. And so you guys have put together something that is pretty revolutionary, but it shouldn't be. And hopefully every insurance company in the future adapts a side of this and helps people actually be healthier while still doing better planning for their future. So when Howard approached me with this idea about 2019 that One of the reasons it appealed to me is he was basically wrapping it around the Hancock Vitality product. And, you know, that was super appealing to me because I had the Hancock product. I was a life insurance, I was a Hancock policyholder, and I had been working with Vitality. I think Vitality started 10 years ago. And so I understood that. the power of the wellness. I understood why it was important for Hancock, because it encouraged people to live longer, which was good for them. And I saw the power of the vitality program for myself, because it allowed me to take advantage of some of the wellness tools. And that's kind of where the story started. I was rolling along as platinum in the Hancock life insurance policy. And two summers ago, Hancock, I think Vitality, took on Grail, which has a test called Gallery, which is a cancer early detection blood test. And I was offered the test. And at first, I said, you know, why would I want to take this test? I mean, it's just like it. just it scared me and then I kind of woke up one day and I said wait a minute this is like a win win if I have cancer it's going to allow me to get after it earlier and if it says I don't have cancer then it's kind of a kind of a relief so um in November uh October October of um this is a year and a half ago now, I took the test. Like everybody that takes a test, I had no symptoms, I had no cancer history in my family, so I was expecting a negative result. And a week later, a woman from their healthcare side gives me a call, and I knew that this was a bad call because they had already warned me that if it's negative, they send you an email, if it's positive, they call you. As soon as I saw the call, I went... I, this is not good. And so she calls up and she said, I just want to go over the results of your test. And you have a high incidence of, of cancer from the throat up. And I said, the throat up, like it could be, it's, it's potentially in my brain. It's in my, you know, mouth. It's in my throat. She goes, well, our, our test is not that precise, but it's. you have a marker that says you have cancer, a high incidence of cancer thrown up. So I believed the test. I mean, I went to my doctor, and he had a lot of skepticism, and he said, well, you know, this is new. It could be a false positive. I said, well, we're going to start hunting. And I spent four months, five months hunting, and I just bludgeoned the medical system into a brain MRI. An op full eye exam, a jaw x-ray, an ultrasound of my neck, just hunting from top to bottom. I'm a pretty logical person, and so I just hunted from top to bottom. Meanwhile, I had no symptoms, and the test kept coming back negative. So I went back to Grail, and I said, all right, I'm a false positive. I want a retest. And so they gave me a retest, and the retest came back exactly the same, high-incident cancer. So now I was like super hypervigilant. But I was out of tests and all I could do is wait for a symptom. And finally, in June, it's like nine months later, I was out of tests. Once later, I have a little tickle in my throat, goes on for a week, like, just clear my throat. I would have done this for months. It was just, it was annoying, but it wasn't sore, it wasn't revealing, it was just like, clear my throat, just like that. But because I was hypervigilant after two positive tests by Grail, I said, alright, that's the symptom. And I went to my PCP and he looked down my mouth, you know, with the tongue depressor and he gave me a full, you know, neck exam. He said, I can't find anything. And I said, I'm not, I just can't accept that. Send me to an ENT, ear, nose and throat guy. He has the better equipment. He has that scope that goes up your nose, up your sinus cavities and down your throat. And it's, More visual than just opening up your mouth. So he sent me to an ENT. He did the scope. He said, can't find anything. I said, ugh. I said, I'm really beside myself. And I said, I'm not leaving until we find it. Oh, jeez. He said, well, I only have one thing left, and that's my tongue depressor. He said, so there's no ah in this. We're just going to gag you, and I'm going to look down your throat with a tongue depressor. So he. Takes a tongue depressor and jams my tongue basically down my throat where I reflexively gag like wider than you normally would, you know, open your mouth. And he said, oh my gosh, there it is. It was three quarters of a dime in the back of my throat. And he said, I don't know what it is. And I said, I know what it is. I've been looking for it for nine months. I said, he said, we've got to biopsy it. And I said, okay, let's go. He said, no, no, no, you'd have to be under anesthesia for me to biopsy that because it's in a very painful spot. And I said, okay, well, how about tomorrow? And he said, my operating theater is booked out for three weeks. And I said, three weeks? I've been hunting for this for nine months. I'm not waiting through more weeks. I said, how about now? He said, you're not going to like this. And so he just went in and scrape, scrape, scrape. Then he got a sample and he called me two days later. Before he even talked, I said, you're going to tell me I have cancer, right? He said, yes. And so he said, let's send you to an ENT guy. And he sent me to an ENT guy. And two weeks later, a day after my 70th birthday, I had this. Amazing ENT surgeon. By the way, when I came to him for the first time, he said, how did you find this? He said, I operate on people all the time and nobody finds it this small. Nobody finds it without it either pops out of the side of your neck or your voice changes or your horse, but nobody finds it this small. And I explained my whole process and he goes, I gotta take that test. So anyhow, day after my 70th birthday. He took it out, took 20 lymph nodes out of the side of my neck, and interestingly enough, took it out robotically because trying to work down your throat is kind of difficult with a big hand. So he took it out robotically, and pathology came back four days later that he got everything. So I ended up with no radiation and chemo. And my conclusion... My conclusion was simple, that owning a life insurance policy saved my life. And if you think about it, Caleb, that is the most oxymoronic thing you could ever couple together and say that a life insurance policy, I've been selling it for death benefit all my life, actually had saved my life. And because I would have never taken that test without owning a life insurance policy. And again, I know that you probably know. know more of the data here if you didn't catch it how deadly was this cancer and how like what what would have i mean it's it's remarkable but even people that even people that have could have taken the test may totally believe the doc like oh i have nothing to worry about but at least made you aware and i mean props to you i think i mean it's amazing like how dedicated you were i think most people would just be relieved and want to believe whatever gives them the best news and You almost like wanted to find the... find it, which is, which I want to give credit where credit's due, but you also deserve a lot of credit for just taking responsibility of your health. What would have happened if you didn't catch it? Is it, would there have been a big chance of passing away or just a harder, you know, recovery process? Yeah. Throat, throat cancer is a fast growing cancer. There's a lot of other cancers that are slow growing, but it's a fast growing cancer. And, you know, weeks, weeks. Weeks are much different than months, and so if I hadn't taken the test, if I hadn't looked, if I hadn't had this innocent, you know, innocuous symptom, it was either going to manifest itself in the usual way by popping out of the side of your neck or growing large enough that it impacted you from eating or talking, and then your prognosis slides way below 50 percent. And with where I was, the prognosis that my surgeon gave me, and I've had three quarterly checkups since that have been clean, he says statistically you're at 96%. There's no cancer survivor that's at 100. And so you should take 96 and feel pretty good about it, and I do. That's awesome. Yeah, it wouldn't have been a good result. And what's interesting is one of my fraternity brothers, who I'm very close to, ended up three months ago with cancer in the same spot, but his manifested itself in a very sore throat. And it's spread to both sides of the palate and his lymph nodes, and surgery's not an option, and he's going through radiation and chemo now, and his prognosis is not near. Let me ask you this. How much is a Grail test? Just like if someone doesn't have the insurance, right, that you had, how much is that to take? Yeah, so $950. And there's a lot of different ways. I think Grail just announced that they're distributing it through healthcare providers. But once it becomes insurance reimbursable, I think that's when it's going to become really kind of more universal. but yeah But the point was you didn't have to pay for it because John Hancock paid for it. And I just want to come full circle. John Hancock paid for it and it kept you alive, which is great for you and great for them because insurance companies obviously are incentivized to pay out later and all parties win. And so I think that's a do you envision more companies getting on board with this concept? I mean, I know you I know right now this is not available for you. Like you have to have a big enough death benefit, even with John Hancock, to have certain things available. But do you imagine that this is going to be like the gateway to other insurance companies getting on board with this? Yeah, I think so. And the reason why I think so is, you know, early detection saves lives, increases mortality or elongates mortality. and You know, like I said in the beginning of this podcast, it's been sitting there all along. It's a win-win for an insurance company for them to be incentivized and incentivize you to keep you alive longer by early detection tests, wellness motivation, workout motivation, all the different things that these wellness apps provide. But, you know, the health care industry. is on to the same thing. They're teaming up with wellness apps now too. Yeah. So, but mine was centered around early detection. And I have, if you want a second part of this story. Yeah, no, you told me early on that there's a part two. So, yeah, I'm all ears. So Hancock, as part of Vitality, offered me some months later a full body scan by a company called Prunuvo. But this one I had to pay for. It's like $2,500. But because of this early detection test with my throat cancer, I'm like, I'm all in on early detection. That's $2,500. It's priceless to me. So here I go again. I take a full body scan in November of last year. And it finds a couple of things that I knew were there. Like I got some arthritis in my right shoulder and my right knee. It found a bump on my prostate and I didn't know it was there. And so I went to a urologist and he confirmed it with a physical examination and then did a biopsy and called me up and said I had prostate cancer. So right now I'm working through that. But the good news, again, is. He said you caught this super early. This usually doesn't get caught this early. You got it super early. So I'm not recommending surgery. We're just going to do some radiation. And you have like a 90, again, you have like a 95, 96% survival rate. And so, you know, but again, It's Hancock with Vitality, partnered with a company that has an early detection test. And so, do I feel like I'm unlucky that I had two unrelated cancers in my 70th year? I don't really feel unlucky. I feel like, I feel lucky. I feel super lucky that I had the ability. I had the availability to take these early detection tests that caught both of them early. So that's a good part. Well, I know that there's lots of people that will be listening to this and watching this that will be. praying for you through this process. And so if you are, please put that in the comments. I appreciate the prayers, but I just think what I get out of this podcast, and Caleb, thank you for doing it, is I'm hoping it makes an impact, an impact on people that, you know, early detection, these wellness apps, whether it's attached to some other life insurance company, I don't think this podcast was designed to sell John Hancock necessarily. But it's because of that policy that I had that saved my life and probably twice. Well, and I think John Hancock's a great company, and we've been grateful enough to be connected with them. I need to get Brooks on the show. He'd be a fascinating interview. And if you're watching this or listening to this and want to learn more, we'll have a link down below. And if you want to talk to someone on our team around… John Hancock or what this program could look like, we'd be more than happy to facilitate that. For the person that's listening to this and saying, like, John, can you explain vitality and what that is in your own words? How would you explain that? Well, okay. I've overused this word wellness, but it's a wellness app first and foremost. And if you do certain things, you go up to certain levels and you get certain benefits. And. Some of these benefits range from big discounts on hotels, to discounts on buying healthy food, to availability of early detection tests, which obviously I took advantage of. But it has a whole array of benefits that motivate you to actually walk through the steps of trying to be healthy, even if it's just a simple act of walking each day. Walking is... Just walking, not being sedentary, is a basic wellness function. It doesn't mean you're going to the gym every day and lifting weights. It means you're just walking. And so it has a whole range of benefits that are attached to the life insurance policy. So Vitality is a great company. Hancock's a great company. I appreciate you for allowing me to share my story. Absolutely. John, is there anything else you want to say? Obviously, you've been in this space for so long. What do you think is a big mistake that you see people making on the consumer side, but then also the sales side when it comes to talking about insurance? You've probably seen all kinds of things, and I would imagine a lot of it is cringeworthy. What would you say in kind of your final thoughts as it relates to the good, bad, the ugly in the space? Well, I'm... But on the sales side, that was my aha moment in 19 is that I just spent 30 years in a life insurance career passing up people like my children and passing up people that only made $100,000, only made $200,000 because they weren't the right type of clients for me. But almost all of those people need and can take advantage of the value of life insurance. And I just, from a sales standpoint, you know, if you're building a company and you're building a company like my company, also have a part of your company that's serving the middle market, is serving the underinsured and underserved marketplace. And that is clearly an underserved and underinsured marketplace. From the consumer side, I think the number one issue for me. is jumping into a life insurance contract that you can't afford. And, you know, maybe it sounds like a car payment, and you say, oh, I can afford the car payment. But this car payment could go on for 20, 30, 40 years. It's not a three-year car loan. It's a 20, 30, 40-year contract. And I don't think salespeople necessarily sell it properly, and I don't think consumers... make the right decision sometimes. Yeah, I find that a lot of people, they hear the pitch and then they over-obligate themselves or have the potential of over-obligating themselves to a product that is amazing, but the product itself can create uncertainty if you're over-obligating yourself. And so we're a big fan of creating flexibility and minimums that are very attainable for that same reason. The last thing you want is your safe asset to make your financial situation less safe.
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