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Adapt and Adopt

Jennifer A. Borislow, CLU and Michelle L. Hoesly, CLU, ChFC

Borislow: Micki, I can’t believe that it has been more than
20 years since we met at an MDRT study group meeting.
Remember how we stayed up all night long talking and then
the next morning wondered if anyone noticed?
It’s been an amazing friendship. Even though our practices
are very different, we have learned so much from each other.
One of my favorite ideas that I’ve learned from you is your
approach to honoring your clients with the opportunity to
direct a charitable grant. Can you share more about that idea?
Hoesly: I actually got this idea from the MDRT Foundation.
We decided to honor a couple of our clients each year by do-
ing a sizeable grant in their name to a charity of their choice. I
love making these phone calls to each year’s recipient. People
are blown away that we want to give money in their honor to
something they really care about. This year, I found out that
one of my clients and his wife were volunteering at a horse
stable where they help disabled children learn to ride. [visual]
He told me how the children just light up when they learn to
ride by themselves and become friends with their horses. Our
charitable grants have really helped us learn about the deeply
personal side of our clients’ lives . . . things we would never
have known otherwise.
I know that you liked the idea, and I bet you brought it
to a whole new level.
Borislow: When we see something great, we quickly R+D—
Rob and Duplicate. We are passionate about giving back to
the community. This idea fit perfectly into our agency phi-
losophy of honoring clients. We took your idea and took it
one step further and decided to set up a donor-advised fund
for our company. Oftentimes, we are asked for donations,
whether it is to support a local charity, sponsor a golf event,
or honor clients by supporting their favorite cause. We estab-
lished a charitable giving committee of five people, who re-
view all charitable requests and make recommendations. We
empower the team to determine how our charitable money
is spent. This committee also helps us select four clients each

Jennifer A. Borislow, CLU

Borislow is a Past President of MDRT and the founding principal of Borislow Insurance (BI). A 29-
year MDRT member with one Court of the Table and 19 Top of the Table honors, she is a nationally
recognized expert, author, speaker and thought leader on employee benefits, insurance and related
business strategies. As the CEO and strategic coach of the organization, Borislow focuses her energy on
helping the agency create a unique experience for clients. For more than 34 years, Borislow has helped
business owners and executives develop a clear, forward looking strategic vision for their organizations
that leverages employee benefits, risk management, and much more.
Borislow Insurance Agency, Inc.
One Griffin Brook Drive, Methuen, MA 01844 USA
email: jennifer@borislow.com phone: +1 978.689.8200 website: borislow.com

View this presentation in the Resource Zone at mdrt.org or purchase from mdrtstore.org.

Michelle L. Hoesly, CLU, ChFC

Hoesly is a 38-year member of MDRT with three Court of the Table and 14 Top of the Table honors.
She is a Past President of MDRT and past Top of the Table Chair. She has spoken numerous times
internationally and has been quoted by the Wall Street Journal and Kiplinger’s on financial and insurance
topics.
Resource 1 Inc
370 World Trade Center, Norfolk, VA 23510 USA
email: Micki@R1Advisor.com phone: +1 757.616.0600

View this presentation in the Resource Zone at mdrt.org or purchase from mdrtstore.org.

©Million Dollar Round Table Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2017

76 General Sessions: MDRT Speaks
year whom we want to honor with a directed grant. The re-
sponses are truly heartwarming.
On another subject, we have implemented some pretty
cool technology in our practice. I know that you have as
well. What’s really working for you?
Hoesly: We have done a lot of new technology the last two
years, which is working really well and, surprisingly, was easy
to learn. We are now doing effective client meetings remotely.
There are a lot of good web-based programs that do this; we
are using join.me. Both the clients and we sign into a pri-
vate web connection, and clients can see our computer screen
on their computer screen. This lets us take them through
a complete financial plan or show them charts or graphics
that we normally use with them in our office meetings, yet
keep control of how we progress through the discussion. This
works great when it is difficult for clients to come into our
office, and it allows us to have both spouses participate in
the meetings, even when they are in two different locations
themselves. Afterward, we send them a copy of the full plan
with the visuals and all the backup data. This is very easy,
inexpensive technology that helps us when it is important for
clients to see visuals that will help them better understand our
recommendations.
We also purchased a great platform, which has trans-
formed the way we do research, the visuals we use with
clients, and our ability to exchange confidential data with
them. The program we use is Morningstar Office. Our busi-
ness has significantly changed, because now we have the
ability, at our fingertips, to get deep data on all of our clients’
accounts [visual]; generate meaningful, easy-to-read reports;
and give clients access to it all through a secure portal they
can see, even on their iPad. This has given us capabilities
we never had before. For example, when Puerto Rico was
defaulting on many of its bonds, we were able to see if any of
the mutual funds or separate accounts that our clients were
invested in had exposure to Puerto Rican bonds. It allowed
us to see on November 10, immediately after the election in
the United States, the response of each of the holdings to the
huge change in market perception. It allows us to check on
any day how our client portfolios compare to a typical allo-
cation for their level of risk. During scary market times, it
allows us to show the upside and downside capture of every
holding and portfolio, so we help clients understand how we
are tracking and helping them manage risk. The important
thing is that this brought us to a whole new level of com-
petitive analysis and accessibility for our clients. This is the
Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2017
type of technology that will either help you be the advisor of
choice or help someone else lure your clients away. Jen, tell
me what you are doing so that I can copy that too.
Borislow: When I started in the business 35 years ago, it was
just me—selling, servicing, and following up with prospects
and clients. Today, we have more than 50 team members.
Communication is critical, and it is technology that allows
us to do business from anywhere in the world. My partner
and I believe in work-life integration and hire team members
that are motivated by our vision. We encourage all of our
team members to find the right balance in their lives so that
when it’s time to focus on work, they are successful in achiev-
ing their goals. We have a high degree of confidence in our
team as we allow a great deal of flexibility during the regular
workday. More than 50 percent of our employees have a com-
mute of 30 minutes or longer, so we allow them to work from
home. We use Skype for meetings and have two Beam robots
in our office. When we first introduced the robots, the word
often used by our team was creepy, but it didn’t take long to
see how effective this communication tool is. We use the ro-
bots to beam in to meetings and interviews or simply to work
collaboratively with others in the office.
Hoesly: Jen, wow, you have a robot, and I am trying to hire
another person, which should be easier but hasn’t been that
easy. You hire lots of staff. Can you give me some pointers?
Borislow: We are all at our very best when we focus on what
we love to do and what gives us great energy. It is your Unique
Ability. At our agency, we have built a team and support sys-
tem that we consider very talented. All members of our team
are encouraged to work in their Unique Ability. We have
learned that it is not a requirement that our team members do
everything themselves. In order to be more efficient and effec-
tive, you have to think outside the box. We use crowdsourcing
websites, like Fiverr, Freelancer, or Upwork to handle proj-
ects. For example, we wanted to put together a marketing list
of all private schools on the East Coast. Our team members
could have spent hours researching, but instead they created
a project request identifying what we were looking for and
posted to Fiverr. Within 24 hours, we received 50 responses.
We selected one bidder, and within 48 hours we had our in-
formation. The total cost was $75. Now, that’s efficient!
Hoesly: Like you, we have been outsourcing more and more.
Our technology person actually lives hundreds of miles away,
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and we pay for him on an as-needed basis. Our website person
is also remote and as-needed, yet he caught a hack of our web
address on a Sunday and fixed it before we started business on
Monday. We have one staff person doing paraplanning with
all the input work on our financial plans. We have found, like
you, Jen, that utilizing each person’s Unique Ability gets bet-
ter results, is much more effective, and keeps us all happier.
I think everyone who knows you, Jen, would agree that
one of your top Unique Abilities is networking. What are
you doing now to get your clients more engaged?
Borislow: There is no question that our business is all about
relationships. People want to do business with people they
know and trust. Referrals are the best source of new busi-
ness and the greatest compliment you can earn from your
clients. Creating networking opportunities and asking for re-
ferrals is the key to future growth. One of the ways I love to
©Million Dollar Round Table
Adapt and Adopt 77
network is by getting groups of people together for nothing
more than social events. Every quarter I host a ladies’ night
out with a wonderful group of women—CEOs, CFOs, and
HR VPs—and we do something fun. We might do a cooking
class, see a show, or just have dinner together—all completely
social. There is no business conducted, and yet lots of busi-
ness tends to happen. I typically invite a few prospects whom
I think would benefit from the group. These amazing groups
of women have become great friends and now network with
each other, and, in the end, they are my biggest source of new
opportunities.
Hoesly: I think both of our offices are high touch, technol-
ogy enabled, and with personal client touches. I think each
of these expresses how grateful we are to the clients we serve
as well as to our teams that work with us. We are incredibly
blessed to be working in this great business.
Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2017