383

Adapt or Die: A Survival Guide for a

Changing World
Joseph W. Jordan

I don’t give the normal financial services presentation, but
I think you will find it interesting because it’s about how
you feel about what you do. It’s not a pep talk. I’m going to
deal with the three major issues that everyone deals with in
financial services:
1. Increasing per rep productivity
2. Creating the right mix of business built around client
needs
3. Creating a culture of value, not price
Dealing with change is difficult. Remember what Charles
Darwin said, “It’s not the strongest of the species that sur-
vives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive
to change.”
Let’s look at the drivers of change: technology, regulations,
the private sector versus the government, and demographics.
There are six Ds of technology that can impact businesses.
First, they are deceptive, then disruptive, dematerialized,
demonetized, and, finally, democratized. Consider how
technology revolutionized transportation with Uber or
shopping with Amazon. In our own business, we are facing
our own technology pressures, such as robo-advisors.
There is a global negative of our profession as evidenced
by recent regulatory actions.
Here are five countries that recently did away with
commissions: Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, the
Netherlands, and Australia. Both the United States and
Canada have recently announced more stringent regula-
tions. We have never been more needed and less trusted.
While we may feel that many of these regulations are
unfair, if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that
some of these rules are the result of self-inflicted wounds.
As an industry, we are not known to be client centric. That
makes us easy targets for regulators.
Before we go any further, I need to address a misconcep-
tion: I have this reputation of being a motivational speaker.
I’m not. How could I possibly motivate you? Look at the
profession you have chosen. You talk to people about stuff
they don’t want to talk about, and nobody wants to see you.
When they do see you, they don’t want to buy what you’re
selling.
I think this business has so much negativity and rejection
in it that self-driven motivation is not enough. What you
have to do is get inspired because inspiration drives you. So
how do you get inspired?
You have to know, and beyond knowing you have to
believe that you can be the most important person in
someone’s life, that as a result of your actions, a family can
continue, a small business stays intact, or a legacy is born.
Not only do you have to know it; you have to believe
it. Let me tell you your unique purpose: to make sure the
money outlives the people. You must insure against what can
go wrong to gain the luxury to invest for what goes right.
Now, what is your value proposition? The value of the
advice you provide and the products you sell are worth far
more than what your clients pay.
Your beliefs drive your behavior. If your desires or goals
don’t sync with your beliefs, you will always manifest your
beliefs. If your only goal is to make money, then you can be
subject to something I know no one talks about in financial
services: low self-esteem.

Joseph W. Jordan
Jordan is the author of the award-winning book Living a Life of Significance and was a Main Platform
speaker at the 2004 Annual Meeting. His book has sold more than 80,000 copies and has been
translated in four languages. Jordan formerly ran insurance sales at Paine Webber and was a senior vice
president at MetLife. He was responsible for retail product development and started MetLife’s fee-based
financial planning program and behavioral finance department. Jordan is also a founder of the Insured
Retirement Institute (formerly known as NAVA).
440 East 23rd St, Suite 1G, New York, NY 10010 USA
email: joe@josephjordan.com phone: +1 617.717.8294 website: josephjordan.com

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

©Million Dollar Round Table Annual Meeting Proceedings | 2017

384 Focus Sessions: Whole Person
All chronic production issues are behavioral! Your behav-
ior. How do you deal with this? You have to create a culture
and mind-set that celebrates the impact you have on your
clients and community.
Here are some suggestions on how to create that culture.
You need to qualify and go to MDRT meetings. The
meetings not only talk about sales ideas but also talk about
our impact on clients.
I also think our metrics need to change. All I see is com-
missions and assets under management. How many of you
know the face amount or sum assured that you have created
in your community?
We had a top producer at MetLife who wanted to quit
because he couldn’t take all the negativity. He called me later
and said, “I read your book, and for the first time I realized
that if all my clients died last night, the greater Philadelphia
community would receive more money than if they hosted
the Super Bowl.” When you change the way you see things,
the things you see change.
It’s not all bad, because we do have some fans. There was
a meeting in Rome in the early 1960s, and a very important
person said to a gathering of life insurance professionals:
You are the admiring witnesses to the sacri-
fices of families who, through the guarantees
of your firms, wish to assure their children
a serene future. The light of goodness shines
on the insurance person because it puts him
or her in contact with the powerful and
subtle forces of the family, a union which
the stability of individuals and nations
depend on.
Do you know who said that? Pope John XXIII. He was
quite a guy. Someone asked him how many people worked at
the Vatican. He said half.
Now, if your goal is to put yourself in contact with people
and venues that remind you of your obligation to others,
let me give you another person: Pope Francis. Not only is it
amazing that he is the first pope from the Americas, but he
is a Jesuit. You have to be Catholic to appreciate that. No one
thought a Jesuit would become pope.
Look at his impact: He was Time magazine’s Person of
the Year; Fortune magazine listed the top 50 leaders in the
world, and he was number 1. Why am I telling you this?
This has nothing to do with Christianity or religion; it’s the
fact that he is a global voice. He is no fan of capitalism. In
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his first message, he talked about the negative impact of
unbridled capitalism.
I think he is more concerned about excesses of capitalism.
Milton Friedman said that the only purpose of business is
to generate profits. In 2014, the top three CEOs made more
money than the other 47 in the top 50 combined.
However, no creation of mankind has elevated more
people out of poverty than capitalism.
When I graduated from college in 1974, there were 4 bil-
lion people on the planet, and one out of every two lived
in poverty. In 2014, there were 7 billion people, and those
living in dire poverty are now one out of every ten.
This happened for two reasons:
1. Spread of the free market versus socialism
2. Exponential progress of information technology
China’s rise has more to do with attracting foreign invest-
ment and privatizing its lumbering state-owned businesses.
By 2005, these two actions represented 80 percent of its
growth!
This is the greatest acceleration of wealth by the most
amount of people in human history!
Now there is a historic social transformation of capi-
talism under way. The book Firms of Endearment by
Rajendra Sisodia discusses businesses that “subscribe to a
purpose for being that is different from and goes beyond
making money.”
Comparing the time period from October 1, 1998 to
September 30, 2013, the S&P was up 5.2 percent, while the
“Firms of Endearment” were up 21.17 percent. When you
have a purpose that creates value first, the money follows.
Profit-only-driven firms seldom are the most profitable.
Once you understand your purpose by creating a cul-
ture that celebrates your impact on others, you have to take
action. Positive thoughts don’t always lead to positive action,
but positive action always creates positives thoughts.
What is the one thing we all must do in this business
that we all want to avoid? Prospecting! Facing rejection. If
that’s the number one issue we face, here’s a suggestion: Set
up a daily contact commitment. That means that five days a
week, make a commitment to ask X number of people to see
you. If you are new in the business, it can’t be less than 10. If
you’re more established, it could be less.
Let me tell what is different about this. You’re managing
the effort, not the results. You don’t control your results; you
only control your effort. Gandhi said that true satisfaction
doesn’t come in the accomplishment but in the effort. Total
effort is total victory.
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I was doing this as a rookie in the 1970s. Catch this: If I
had 10 noes, I had a successful day, because I faced my fears.
I knew if I kept asking 10 people a day, the appointments
would come. The more you prospect, the better you feel, and
the better you feel, the more you prospect.
Look, I don’t think this is something you just do. I think
it’s reaffirmation of faith that you do something worthwhile.
St. Augustine said that faith means believing in what you
can’t see, and when you have faith, you can begin to see what
you believe. I don’t mean to get religious here, but I do think
there is a spiritual side to the business. Nelson Mandela
said that only inspiration can get people to perform beyond
which they think can achieve.
Nick Murray says it best when he says there are only three
variables in this business:
1. The quality of your work
2. The number of people you try to show your work to
3. The reaction or nonreaction of the people you show
your work to
You only control the first two. By focusing on the first
two, the rest will come. Nick goes further when he says there
are only three kinds of people in this world:
1. People who listen to your advice
2. People who don’t listen to your advice
3. People who never heard your advice
Your job is to keep the people who listen, get rid of the
people who don’t, and talk to the people who have never
heard your advice to turn them into people who do listen to
your advice.
Now, you may think that this insight about committing
to prospecting is not very profound. So why don’t we do it?
The answer is that we let fear into our practice. Here’s a short
video on fear. [video]
The person who said it best was Franklin Delano
Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
When you get down to it, there are only two emotions in
this business: One is fear and the other is love. 1 John 4 says,
“There is no fear in love, and total love drives out fear.” You
know what your real job is? It’s to kill the wolf every day.
I want to share a personal story about Bob Benmosche,
the former chairman of AIG. He took over the impossible
job of turning around AIG. He paid the federal government
back the full $182 billion the government gave him, plus a
$20 billion profit. When the coauthor of his book, Good for
the Money, asked me what was special about him, I responded
that he took the fear away from the employees. That’s your
job too. Your job is to take away the fear from your clients.
©Million Dollar Round Table
Adapt or Die: A Survival Guide for a Changing World 385
Embracing emotion is critical since we are really not in
the financial services business. We are in the human behav-
ior business. We sometimes forget that people’s brains have
two sides. The left-hand side thinks and the right-hand side
feels. The left side knows; the right side believes. The left side
requires hard skills; the right side requires soft skills.
The future belongs not to the advisor who has the right
answers, but to the advisor who asks the right questions. In
the future, the sale will become incidental to the relation-
ship. Face-to-face distribution creates a value added.
People can talk about the past and the present, but they
have difficulty articulating the future. Asking the right ques-
tions can help people do something they can’t do on their
own; begin to think about the future. That connection is the
beginning of creating a relationship and ultimately trust. No
robo-advisor can do that.
The problem is not the problem; they don’t even know
how to think about the problem. They want a process, not a
product, to help them see the future on their terms. People
don’t really care how our stuff works; they simply want to be
heard. The goal is not to sell, but to be understand!
Changing Demographics
What is the defining issue of the twenty-first century?
Terrorism? Global warming? Energy? It’s not any of these.
It’s the aging population of the world.
By 2062, there will be 2 billion people on the planet over
the age of 60. There will be five countries with more than 50
million people over the age of 60. Japan will lose 18 percent
of its population in the next 50 years. In 2008, they bought
more adult diapers than baby diapers. By the end of the cen-
tury, Japan will lose half its population. By 2062, China will
have more people over age 65 than the combined population
of Japan, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. No
government can afford to provide for all these people. There
must be a partnership between government and the private
sector to deal with this. That’s why what we do is important!
A positive demographic for our business is the feminiza-
tion of our business. Women instinctively create trust and
relationships.
But the most opportunistic demographic trend in the
world is millennials, individuals born from 1980 to 2000.
There are a lot of stereotypes about millennials. Let me show
you a video that illustrates that. [video]
There he sits inside his local coffee shop
sporting a man bun and facial hair.
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386 Focus Sessions: Whole Person
Somehow he believes although he has no job
that by his thirties he will be a millionaire.
M-I-L-L-E-N-N-I-A-L! Gotta love
millennials.
M-I-L-L-E-N-N-I-A-L! Gotta love
millennials.
… This story started October 12, 2006. And, I
27 years old trying to make it on their
own. Maybe start by leaving your parents’
home, but maybe we’re just wrong.
Criticism isn’t easy for their ears. They
feel like they know most everything. See,
they grew up with undeserved confidence
cause they got trophies just for participating.
M-I-L-L-E-N-N-I-A-L! Gotta love
Millennials.
M-I-L-L-E-N-N-I-A-L! Gotta love
Millennials.
… changed forever and we really understood
There are a lot of millennials: 1.7 billion worldwide. It’s
the first global generation. They communicate effortlessly
with people around the world. It’s the last generation with
one foot in the old world and one foot in the new world.
They grew up with books, and now they are not tech
savvy—they are tech dependent. They are called the two-
screen generation.
I was never a fan of millennials, but I was wrong! The
number one goal they have is to have a meaningful career.
We own that space! We give the aging population of the
world independence and dignity.
Currently, a male aged 65 has a 50 percent chance of living
beyond age 85. For women, life expectancy is age 88. And,
for a couple at age 65, there’s a 50 percent chance one will be
alive at age 92. Now, this is life expectancy. That means that
half the people will be dead, but the other half are still alive.
How are people dealing with this? There was a funny car-
toon in the paper that showed an elderly couple at the dinner
table. The old man says to his wife, “We need to move back
in with your parents.”
This was funny, but here’s something that’s not: the Wall
Street Journal article, “How to Protect Yourself from Your
Parents.”
All the commentary on this subject comes from people
like me, baby boomers who take care of children and parents
at the same time. Has anyone given any consideration about
the person for whom the care is being provided?
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Women have longer life expectancies than men.
Additionally, women are more frequently the ones whose
careers are impacted the most when a family raises a child.
This means that caregiving is a particular issue for women.
Listen to Robyn Lewis-Oglesby’s story on this issue. [video]
know exactly where I was. I was in my office
in downtown Denver and the phone rang
and it was my dad. He said, “It’s bad, it’s
really bad.”
I said, “What is it, Dad?” That was the
day we learned he had pancreatic cancer.
They gave him two years to live. What made
things so difficult was that he was the care-
giver for my mom, who at the time had been
diagnosed with dementia. And that was the
day that, all the kids in the family, our lives
what it means to be a caregiver.
Nothing slowed my father down, and
one day he came home and he had found my
mom had badly shattered her ankle. We had
to call 911, get her out of the house, and she
was in nursing care in the hospital for three
months. Every six weeks, I would fly home
and give everybody in the family a break,
and I would care and just do all the work.
And basically, those were my vacations—
from 2006 until this year my vacations were
flying to New York to give everyone a break.
One week I was at home and my sister
called. I remember her calling to him and
saying, “Daddy, do you need oxygen?” I
heard a voice in the background say, “Yes.
I can’t breathe.” She says she’ll call me back
and that she’s going to get some oxygen.
The phone rang 15 minutes later and he
was gone.
I keep thinking back that if he had
had long-term care insurance, which I had
asked him about years ago, would we have
had more luck bringing someone else into
the house? I know there would have been
so much less stress. I just think of those
final days. My mom doesn’t remember any
of them, but I just think of how horrific
©Million Dollar Round Table

they probably were with him trying to do
everything for her while knowing that she
was the caregiver for him and was unable to
do anything.
That has just had a profound impact
on what I do. If there’s one thing I have to
crusade for, it’s for them not to do what I
did or have to go through what my dad did
and to get the story out and get the cover-
ages for people so they can live their final
days in dignity. So that they can have the
people around them to love them and not to
be exhausted, worry, or juggle. So they can
think of the last days with good memories.
I wear my dad’s watch. It will be with
me forever. This is Mother’s wedding ring
and her engagement ring. They don’t leave
me. They are just reminders of two people.
Granted they are my parents, but there are
millions of people who are just like these
two people. I think about what we do and
nobody has the opportunity to make a dif-
ference like we do.
What a story! These are the aspects we need to help our
clients understand. One issue of major importance is help-
ing clients understand income in retirement. During the
accumulation phase, ROI means “return on investment.”
However, during the distribution phase, it means “reliabil-
ity of income.” In retirement, the new challenges we face
are turning assets to income, managing the risk, not just
the money (like in Robyn’s story), and making the most of
what we have.
A life of significance is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.
The challenge of living a significant life is that there is not
much instant gratification. Significant people must focus on
what’s important, not just what is popular. This can be dif-
ficult at times.
Now let me close with my story. Here is my family.
[visual] My two sisters are highlighted. I have a brother, but
this story is about the girls. My mother was married to a
successful lawyer who was an advisor to Harry Truman. In
1952, my father canceled a $100,000 life policy to make an
investment and was killed in a car accident.
My mother woke up with four children and me, the
youngest six months old. She had to provide for us. She was
never raised to be professional person. She finally got a job
©Million Dollar Round Table
Adapt or Die: A Survival Guide for a Changing World 387
as a secretary at the bartenders local in the Bronx—a far
cry from going to the White House for tea. She had to live
through a number of adjustments. The Bronx was wonderful
in the 1950s, not so nice in the 1970s. But the hardest deci-
sion was that neither of my two sisters went to college, even
though one of them got a full scholarship. They had to work
to support the family. Tough legacy.
I’m telling you this because despite being in this business,
I thought it would be unprofessional to tell a personal story.
I thought it would sound like I was looking for sympathy.
How stupid can you get? Our entire business is built around
real-life stories. So I realized my personal connection, and I
became mad. Rather than describe how mad I was, listen to
what I sounded like on this very stage as the opening speaker
at the 2004 Annual Meeting. [video]
And I want to know, where was the person
of significance, the advocate, who could have
taken my father, even pushed him up against
a wall and said, “Don’t you understand you
have to have life insurance? Because I’m
advocating for your wife, because if you’re
gone, life could be miserable.”
Where was the advocate who advocated
for my sisters who were denied a college
education at the appropriate time? Where
was the advocate even for my father, whose
younger son stands in front of you now? The
only legacy I can tell you that my father left
us was he left us alone.
I’m over it now. In our Western culture, with our empha-
sis on individualism, we focus on our separateness from other
people and from nature. In Native American traditions, the
interconnectedness of all living things is said to bring har-
mony to one’s life. This belief sustained the Native American
people through many trials.
In time, I would come to value the words of the Native
American leader Chief Seattle as the quintessential mani-
festation of coming to terms with a painful experience.
Chief Seattle, for whom the city of Seattle, Washington, is
named, was a brave and eloquent leader of the Suquamish
and Duwamish tribes, which controlled much of the area
around the northern Puget Sound in the 1800s. He was
greatly respected by his people, and his prophetic vision of a
world without respect for nature has earned him respect far
beyond the cultural boundaries of his time. His legendary
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388 Focus Sessions: Whole Person
speech delivered in 1854 has inspired historians and envi-
ronmentalists for more than a century. Here’s the modern
interpretation of the speech:
We just got word from your president back
in Washington that he wants to buy our
land. But how can you buy and sell the sky?
The land? The idea is strange to us. All parts
of this earth are sacred to my people. Every
shining pine needle, every sandy shore.
Every meadow is all holy in the memory
and experience of my people. We are part of
the earth, and every meadow is all holy in
the memory and experience of my people.
We are part of the earth and it is part of us.
The perfumed flowers. These are our sisters.
The bear, the deer, the eagle, these are our
brothers. Each ghostly reflection in the clear
waters of the lake tells of the events with the
voice of my grandfather’s father. The rivers,
these are our brothers. They carry our canoes
and feed our children. If you buy our land,
know that the air is precious to us. Know
that the air shares its spirit with all the life
it supports. The wind that gave my great-
grandfather his first breath also received his
last sigh. This we know.
The earth does not belong to man. Man
belongs to the earth. All things are con-
nected like the blood that binds us together.
Man did not create the web of life; he simply
is a strand in it. What he does to the web, he
does to himself. Your destiny is a mystery to
us. What will happen when all the buffalo
are slaughtered? What will happen when all
the secret corners of the forest are heavy with
the scent of many men? And the view of the
ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? It’s the
end of living, and the beginning of survival.
When the last Red Man and his wilderness
is gone, and his memory is that of a cloud
going over the prairie, will there be any
memory of my people left? We love this land
like the newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat.
So if you buy this land, love it as we
have loved it. Care for it as we have cared
for it. Hold in your mind the memories of
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the land when you receive it, and preserve it
for all children. Love the land the way God
loves you, because this we know, no man, be
he the Red Man or White Man, can stand
alone. Because we’re brothers after all.
This speech was delivered at a time when Chief Seattle
and his people were about to lose everything, yet his philoso-
phy of balance with nature caused him to pity the civilization
that was taking the land. You see, in the Western tradition,
we view nature as something to be conquered. In a culture
without harmony, you can be enriched but never fulfilled.
When you change the way you see things, the things you
see change.
I spoke of my anger on the Main Platform at the Annual
Meeting in 2004. For the first time, I personalized the
business I had been in for 30 years. Chief Seattle revealed
a culture and a way of thinking that did not compartmental-
ize life to me. It is in the synchronization of what you do and
who you are that assists in your transformation.
The incident that finally completed my transformation
was a meeting at MetLife. Despite a 23-year career in the
home office of MetLife, I was never a terribly popular figure.
You see, they ran a lot of meetings. You know the definition
of a meeting, don’t you? It’s the unfit managing the unwilling
to do the unnecessary.
After the meeting started, one of the participants attacked
me. The person said, “He’s not a team player. He always
demands what he wants, and he hurts my feelings!” I have
heard this throughout my life. I never gave it much credence,
and I thought the other person had a problem. But I said to
myself, You’ve heard this a lot, and maybe there’s something to
it. I always had a fire in my belly, but I never answered this
question: Why did I do what I did?
And with this I continued questioning: How did I get
into this business? Why is it I am speaking to tens of thou-
sands of people around the world every year? How did this
happen? The answer came to me in an instant.
I feel that I have been directed by my mother to get to
where I am today. As Joseph Campbell would say, the way
I “follow my bliss” is to talk to the thousands who can save
millions from a fate like the one she endured.
For the first time in my life, who and what I did were
in congruence. I understood my purpose; my life had
meaning. In life, it is not the pain of the journey, but the
rapture of the revelation. That which I thought was a trag-
edy was a triumph. You all have your very own personal
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journeys, but there are very few professions where you can
make a very good living and also fulfill your obligations
to others. Success is getting what you want; happiness is
wanting what you get. But I’ll tell you the best thing that
happened.
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Adapt or Die: A Survival Guide for a Changing World 389
I’m Irish, and my mother always wanted to go home to
Ireland. She never made it. But in 2006, my MDRT buddy
Brendan Glennon invited me to speak at the Annual Meeting
in Dublin. I told my mother’s story and showed her picture.
And, in my mind, I took my mother home.
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