From Maître D' to Medicare Mogul: James Blumetti's Journey to Entrepreneurial Success

James Blumetti's rags-to-riches story will ignite your entrepreneurial spirit as he takes us through his ascent from restaurant maître d' to Medicare mogul. When a blind date turned into a career pivot, James discovered the grit required to sell life insurance one knock at a time. This episode unpacks his relentless pursuit of success, the resilience it takes to face rejection, and the personal conviction that drove him to choose the unpredictable world of commission-based sales over the familiarity of the food service industry.

Building a business is no small feat, but James gives us a masterclass on the essentials, from nurturing self-discipline to the art of hiring a team with a servant's heart. Our conversation with him reveals how intuition can guide you in assembling a team that's dedicated not to the paycheck but to the people they serve. James' approach to creating genuine value for clients and his strategic embrace of mistakes as learning opportunities provide a roadmap for anyone looking to leave a mark in their industry.

We round off this inspiring episode with the reminder that relationships lie at the heart of a booming business. Dive into stories of kindness, like James teaching a veteran to do laundry, which illustrates the profound impact of going beyond expectations. He credits his father-in-law's wisdom on 'showing up' mentally and the importance of work-life harmony in cultivating both personal contentment and professional triumph. Wrap up with us as we celebrate the shared wisdom, gratitude, and growth that this conversation brings to light, leaving you with insights that might just be the catalyst for your next big leap.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Today we're going to talk to James Blumetti. James started out in the Medicare industry knocking on doors, getting rejected, getting laughed at by some people, but ultimately, his persistence and perseverance paid off. Recently, after many years in the business, he was able to sell his business and he still works there today, helping his staff, helping clients and making sure that this transition is seamless. And today he's going to share some of the things that he did to become successful and hopefully it touches one or two of you out there. James, tell me, how did you get into the business?

Speaker 2: 1:03

It's actually an interesting story, michael. I was a major D at a restaurant locally to me here in New Jersey and one of my regular customers was always trying to recruit me into the insurance business and I always said, no, I don't want to do that. So it turns out that instead of that, they ended up setting me up on a blind date with their daughter. And here we are 28, 29 years later we're married. And shortly after we got married was when I decided to leave the restaurant industry and go into insurance sales.

Speaker 1: 1:36

Your wife came from that as well as you going into the business.

Speaker 2: 1:41

That's exactly it. Again, it started out as a kind of a joke. It's like how much are you going to pay me? She said the same thing to her mother and, yeah, we hit it off right away and we became very close and over time the restaurant industry was doing very well, but I was working crazy hours. It was just 80 to 100 hours a week and I just said there's no way to raise a family. So I decided to go to my father-in-law and ask him for a job and thankfully he started me out right at the bottom. He gave me a stack of leads for life insurance and said here, go knock on some doors. Now this is going back 27 years ago, but yes, I was knocking on doors selling life insurance, started right at the bottom and made my way up through the ranks, but, yeah, thankfully my wife got me the job.

Speaker 1: 2:28

I guess you could say why do you think it's so important to start from the bottom?

Speaker 2: 2:40

in my view, if I had started in a managerial position one, I wouldn't really get an understanding of what it's like to be in the field, what your typical professional insurance professional or financial professional is dealing with on a day-to-day basis. So I really feel that I can lead from the front because I've done it myself and been in front of clients and had people turn me away and had my share of wins and my share of losses.

Speaker 1: 3:03

It just gives me a wider perspective in order to lead the agency. When you're talking about wins and losses, how did you deal with that, especially first being in the business?

Speaker 2: 3:10

That's a great question because it really in the beginning was so difficult to take those letdowns People saying no, I'm not interested, or I'm going to call the cops, get off my porch, those sort of things. But one of my mentors at the time his name is Bob Botto. Bob really sat me down after a couple of weeks of getting my teeth kicked in and said James, listen, this is a numbers game. You have to get through the no's to get to the yes's. So every time someone tells you no, thank them because they didn't waste your time, they basically let you get on your way.

Speaker 2: 3:43

It's a numbers game. Put that one in your pocket, go to the next house. That's probably going to be your sale and sure enough and that's how I teach all of my agents now is that it's a numbers game and if somebody lets you down, it's okay. If you were selling a hundred percent, the insurance company probably wouldn't have you working for that. There are always discouragements. There's always situations where people are going to not want to buy from you and even put you down. When you can't let it get to you Really just have to move on to the next one. There's plenty of great people out there, great clients who are waiting to see you.

Speaker 1: 4:21

It's just a matter of how soon you're going to get to them. You learned initially a no was actually a good thing because it was going to lead you to a yes, but I would imagine that there were times where, even knowing that, you would still get really frustrated and maybe upset and maybe even, at times, potentially questioned being in the business. How did you deal with that?

Speaker 2: 4:37

Absolutely. That went on for quite some time, I would say the first couple of years, until the renewals started to really kick in. One, I knew I had no safety net. I had nothing I was going to fall back on. That was like the number one. I am not going back to working in the restaurant business and working for someone else. I thought working for myself is definitely the best way to do it and I could work as hard as I could. And I'm just realizing not every person is courteous and nice. They tend to take their frustrations out on you. So you tend to get frustrated when you're not making the sales. But what I really found was not measuring anything on a daily basis, on a weekly basis and not even on a monthly basis. I would base my sales on monthly to quarterly basis rather than doing it on a daily or weekly, Because again, with those numbers you could have a bad week and then the following week you come out and have 10 sales and with no effort at all.

Speaker 2: 5:36

So you really have to get by that and say these people don't know you, they don't understand what you do, they can't appreciate what they don't know. And those who let you sit down and go over and help them to understand why you need this protection, those are the ones you're really looking for. The other ones, you just have to let them go and they'll find their way. They just won't find it with you and maybe they don't find the right way. Maybe they find it. They go out on their own. They make the wrong decisions, but you can't be their keeper for that. You just have to move on to the next one who's waiting for you.

Speaker 1: 6:06

You said something that I want to highlight. You said something about making a decision, a decision to never go back to doing what you were doing before. How important was that for you in becoming a success.

Speaker 2: 6:22

It had a large part of it. I knew if I took that work ethic that I learned in the restaurant industry and just use that same work ethic in this industry, I knew I would do well. But I think it's a big problem in any commission sales arena is the tendency to want to fall back to that safety, back to that salary with benefits. We've had agents who we thought were going to be very successful. They couldn't take that little bit of intimidation in the beginning and right away they want to go back to what they were doing before and being stuck in a position for a long period of time. I have a very good friend who actually was pivotal in me getting the job. He for a long period of time.

Speaker 2: 7:00

I have a very good friend who actually was pivotal in me getting the job. He was a good friend of mine and he actually started at the agency before me. He had come from the supermarket industry. He was a general manager of a local grocery store and he was doing really well and then he wouldn't do so well. He'd have a couple of bad weeks, a couple of bad months and eventually he went back to the supermarkets and I really feel bad about that I felt that if he had hung in he would be an incredible success. Now he would be well in $300,000, $400,000 a year in income, and now he's probably working his tail off for $120,000 a year. But I think not looking back is definitely the key, for any sales position is not falling back to what is comfortable. You have to leave yourself a little uncomfortable and you just have to believe in yourself.

Speaker 1: 7:50

You have to believe in yourself. What were some of the things that you would do to help you believe in yourself when those doors were being slammed and people maybe weren't saying no in the not so nice way?

Speaker 2: 8:03

Yeah, it's certainly reaching out to other folks that I wish I'd known you back then Michael would have worked even better. But back then you're out driving around and you're all by yourself. You do reach out. You reach out to friends, family, other co-workers who may have gone through the same thing. I leaned on my father-in-law quite a bit. He always had the comment some weeks you eat the bear and some weeks the bear eats. You was always what he would say to me and try to build me up. But I didn't have that strong sense back then that I do now Again. I've learned so much over the past couple of years of working with you and perspective that I can look back to some of those successes and really see how I leaned on other people to get me through the situations.

Speaker 1: 8:46

When it comes to leaning on someone else, we'll see that as a sign of weakness. What's your perspective on that?

Speaker 2: 8:53

I'm the direct opposite of that. I feel that having people around you helps you grow, that I feel that having people around you helps you grow. Having the right people around you.

Speaker 2: 9:02

I should say, because there are situations where you can have folks who are toxic around you that actually make it harder to do what you're out of doing. You have to stay away from those folks. In our agency here we often say to any of the rookies you stay by the people who are talking positively, who already have a successful program, and emulate them, work with them and appreciate they've already been through what you've been through. This is not unique and really working with other people to get through those situations. Otherwise, yeah, you're right, it's very easy for someone to fail.

Speaker 1: 9:33

You had mentioned that sometimes you dealt with people that weren't so nice. Is there a story that you can remember like the worst of the worst that you ever had to deal with? Someone yelling and screaming.

Speaker 2: 9:46

There was one gentleman. I knocked on his door. He had sent back a card saying he was interested in life insurance. And I knocked on the door and almost instantaneous he just went off the rails and I put up my hands. Well, sir, I'm only here because you had wrote to me requesting information about life insurance and I was here to deliver that information. How dare you show up at my door? And he's going on and on and I'm going to call the cops. I said, okay, I'll wait.

Speaker 2: 10:13

And I said nothing after that and I guess he thought I would run off after that and I just stood my ground. I knew I had a purpose for being there. I was not afraid of the cops being called and I think that really deflated his situation. So it just stormed off and I smiled after that and laughed and after that any of those situations became a lot easier to deal with, because getting the door slammed or anything like that, okay, no problem. Moving on to the next. Again, it's a learned situation. It's not easy in the beginning but eventually it does get easier as you do it, it gets easier and easier.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Was that your it?

Speaker 2: 10:50

definitely was. You sharpen up your skills, you get better. Of course there's still those people out there, but that's okay. Not everyone is for everyone. I realized that I got out of the business of trying to please everyone a long time ago. I realized that was detrimental to my own growth, that I realized not everybody wants to deal with me. That's okay, as long as I have my conviction I'm doing the right thing for everyone. I feel comfortable in that. So, yes, it does get easier as time goes by and repetition and just working the numbers. The other saying that, always floated through our office, was some will, some won't. So what? Move on to the next.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Owning your own business, there are a lot of challenges that do come up. What would be your advice to people, given your years of experience running a business, on how to best and most effectively deal with challenging situations that come up?

Speaker 2: 11:44

I think the main thing that I learned over the years is to take them head on. I sometimes will take an hour or two to let it sink in and think of how I'm going to react to a situation, but what I don't do is leave it sit on the back burner. I usually take on any of those challenges right away because when they're in my mind it's preventing me from getting other, more important things done. So I'll take those challenges on right away and it may take a little bit of time, methodically, to go through what we have to do to remedy the situation, but I never put it on the back burner. So I know once it's done I can put it aside and now we can move on to bigger and better things.

Speaker 1: 12:22

If you don't do that and you put it on the back burner, and then you put a couple other things on the back burner, then what happens?

Speaker 2: 12:30

You never catch up and you never get down to the important things which were in sales. We own our own businesses. We have to grow our businesses. So if you end up with too many issues hanging out there and they're festering and eventually they're going to get larger, so it's going to prevent you from building your business, you're better off just taking those situations head on, getting them finished and moving on to what helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 12:54

You built this really beautiful business and you ultimately were able to just recently sell it for a very nice profit. What do you think the secret was for you in that process? What are two or three things that you think are the most important to being able to build that business to the size you built it to?

Speaker 2: 13:14

Very early on to build the business. It was really about self-discipline, I think, was the most important part. When you're your own boss and no one's really guiding you in a direction, if you're not willing to get up every morning, put your feet on the floor, put your pants on and go out there and work hard, your business can easily fail. So self-discipline is probably the biggest part of what I learned early on was that you can't just say well, I'll go to work tomorrow, I'll take today off, or maybe I'll play a round of golf and I'll get to it tomorrow, because there's always another situation that comes about and other things that can distract you. As I grew larger, it became my team. I think having key people around me was just a game changer for me, and I inherited an office of a lot of cutthroats and people who really didn't work as a team, didn't have that servant's heart I like to call it. People were willing to take a job based on they want to help others.

Speaker 2: 14:13

So I had a really tough time my first couple of years in running the agency, and so I made some changes and found the right people and now I just have a team that they support each other. They support me. They make me look like I walk on water to other agencies. And I think that was a big part of the sale was when the acquiring company came out to visit my office and got to meet everyone and realize what a professional crew I have. They were really impressed.

Speaker 1: 14:38

How did you do that? How do you build the team? What do you look for in a person to do that?

Speaker 2: 14:45

Yeah, I tell you it really goes back to that term a servant's heart. When interviewing you can sense people who are. You sense the assertiveness of folks very easily but it's a little harder to find the servant's heart. But if you're asking all the right questions of that person, you're going to find that right fit, the person who's not just looking for a job, not looking for how many days off, not looking for astronomical pay, they just want a job where they can help people off, not looking for astronomical pay, they just want a job where they can help people. And one by one. It took some time. Probably took about five years to get the right crew in. But once you have the right crew then it makes it really easy to bring anyone in after that because they see what the culture is right from the start and it really keeps everyone together.

Speaker 1: 15:28

If you had to pick one aspect of that servant's heart, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 15:32

Ooh, that's a difficult one. It's almost like an instinct that I have when I meet with them. One person I hired I hired based on the voicemail she left me to come in for the interview. I could tell she had a smile on her face when she left that message and she is one of my best I've ever hired. Based on that. I've had others where I've. I brought them into a room and then I brought sales agents in and sat them down and just had them fire different questions at them. And they did it with a smile, they laughed, they had a good time with it. They weren't threatened by that six people interviewing them and they just really, they really did well. But I think it's really, it's an instinct.

Speaker 1: 16:15

I'm so glad you're talking about instinct, intuition. How much has that played a role in all areas of your business?

Speaker 2: 16:24

It has. I don't see it as much as others do. Several of my key agents have said my insight and intuition into the markets and the vision that I have is amazing. They would never see it that way. Yes, call me Yoda.

Speaker 1: 16:38

I'm hearing you say that when you trust the answer that's inside of you, has that ever been wrong in the past?

Speaker 2: 16:47

Oh yes, I've made bad decisions past. Oh, yes, I've made bad decisions. I often say there's a cemetery in back of our building where all my great ideas are buried. That didn't work out, but I never stopped trying the situation. I never got discouraged from it. When I made bad decisions, I owned them and found solutions and moved on. But if you don't put yourself out there, you have to give it a try. And yes, I have some moves in the past that I learned. I'll never make them again. That's part of the growth.

Speaker 1: 17:21

If you had to start over from scratch today to build the business that you built, what advice would you give to yourself?

Speaker 2: 17:30

Ooh. I'd say stay the course. It will be worth it in the long run. It's very tough in the beginning. You question yourself. But stay the course. If you believe in it, it will work, and it's up to you to make it work.

Speaker 1: 17:45

That's great. What about providing value for a client? How have you done that and how important is providing value to the client?

Speaker 2: 17:54

There's a saying that my father-in-law always says no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. That's a cliche of the industry, but it is so true the fact that when you sit with a client and you get to know who they are, you get to know their family, you get to know their wants and their needs and you educate them on the products that you're offering. And we're very unique when it comes to Medicare sales. It's a very complicated presentation. You can really lose people very easily with all the different facets of Medicare, but once you've built that trust and they know you're there for the long haul you're not there for a quick sale, as they say and you really care about them, they're going to listen. They may not completely understand, but they'll trust you enough for you both to make the right decision for them.

Speaker 2: 18:42

I think that was key. I have all of my agents working on all the time and the fact we get surveys back dozens every week and every one of them says thank you for caring, thank you for spending the time. You really made this easy for us, all those type of things. It's really rewarding as well to be able to walk out of a house and when you walk in they have their arms closed and when you're walking out the door, they're shaking your hand and putting their other hand on your shoulder, thanking you and looking you in the eye. It's a great feeling. I'm very blessed to be in the industry that I'm in.

Speaker 1: 19:14

Do you have an example of how you went above and beyond for a client in the past?

Speaker 2: 19:20

Early on in my career I ended up meeting a nice gentleman who I really got to know a lot. His name was Max, and Max and I got along really well. This was going back some years. He had served in World War II and actually was in the death march of Bataan back in the day. So the stories he would tell me were as horrible as they were riveted. We'd spend hours together.

Speaker 2: 19:38

Whenever I was free I would stop by his house just to catch up with him. But his wife had developed Alzheimer's disease and he was at his wit's end. He really didn't know what to do and finally we ended up finding a home for her. But he did not even know how to do laundry. It became the big joke. James went down to see Max to teach him how to do a load of laundry. I think that's about the farthest I've gone. But as far as other situations just helping my clients, the filling out even when it's not a financial gain to me, filling out financial forms for my clients for the state of New Jersey to receive state assistance I've done that multiple times pro bono, knowing that it'll come back tenfold eventually. To me it's going. The extra yard is always the best way I always found. It always comes back. I end up winning a different way. I end up getting referrals from those clients or things just can tend to go my way when I do the right thing.

Speaker 1: 20:36

How much of your business became referral-based?

Speaker 2: 20:39

I would say after probably seven years in the business of 20 years ago I stopped having to work lead that I was getting anywhere from five to six referrals per week from either financial advisors, clients, even doctors were sending their patients to. And still to this day, even though I haven't been active in the field, I still get probably 30 referrals a year.

Speaker 1: 21:04

That servant's heart. Going back to that, what percentage do you think that created these referral days coming from that place?

Speaker 2: 21:14

100%, 100%. It's treating every client the way I wanted to be treated with compassion and not talked down to educated, so they understood the process. They knew they could trust me to do the same with their family and friends.

Speaker 1: 21:29

If you're giving advice to someone on the best way to go out and get business in your business, what would you tell them?

Speaker 2: 21:38

I really feel finding professional relationships I think that is one of the keys to early on was visiting doctor's offices, visiting accountant's offices, property and casualty offices, just looking for those referral sources and explaining what I did. I'm sure that people on this podcast will feel the same. You're unique in a lot of industries where not every accountant wants to do insurances, not every financial advisor wants to do insurance or long-term care, things like that. So finding those professionals, I think that is the biggest start. And the other thing is when you get in front of somebody who's loved the one you're with. I think that is key. I would spend as much time with that client as they needed and I knew that they would stay on the books If I would rush the presentation because I had another appointment I had to make. Those were always the ones that were a little rocky and I had to go back and smooth those over.

Speaker 1: 22:31

Love the one you're with Servant's heart being a theme here to running a super successful business. I really mean that. Thank you for successful business. I really mean that, Thank you. What would you do when you say you?

Speaker 2: 22:47

it was more important to spend the time with that client. A lot of times it was just having that extra cup of coffee, just making sure they were comfortable with a, with everything we discussed. And a lot of times you have that feeling when you're getting ready to leave that they don't quite understand it. And one of the worst things for me was to spend a lot of time with a client or potential client and then leave and then have the voicemail waiting at the office for me that they wish to cancel, that they didn't understand. So I would take that extra time, whatever it would take, to make sure to build that bridge solid and make sure no one was coming in behind me and make sure they understood and just reiterating the fact that I'm there for them.

Speaker 1: 23:23

What's the best piece of advice that you've ever gotten?

Speaker 2: 23:26

I think it comes back to again. My father-in-law, frank, has done so much for me over the years, but the big thing he would always say, this job is all about showing up. Give 100%, show up every day and you're going to be successful. And I wasn't talking about physically showing up for work, I was talking about mentally showing up. You have to show up every day and you have to be disciplined. I think that was probably the strongest advice they ever gave me.

Speaker 1: 23:53

How could you explain to someone how to mentally show up?

Speaker 2: 23:55

I've had my days, situations where I come to the office and I'm not a hundred percent, not mentally engaged, and I feel it. I can sense I'm just not there. I'm finding things to fill my time and I can recognize it now. I couldn't recognize that early in my career but I can recognize it now that if you don't show up mentally you're not going to get anything accomplished in your day. You may accidentally get it accomplished, but if you show up mentally every day you're going to get so much more accomplished, so many more opportunities if you show up mentally.

Speaker 1: 24:29

How important is it to have a work-life balance?

Speaker 2: 24:32

Yeah, this is thanks to you I'm learning this. This is spent the past 25 years working and not spending so much time socially outside of the office Very few friends that I sacrificed some of that for my success. But now I'm finding, with your help and just taking a step back and saying there's great things in life, it is great to have a successful career and not have to want for anything. But when it comes to having that balance, it makes my days much easier. When I do, when I do go home and I put down the phone and I have dinner with my family or go out to dinner with my wife or take a walk with the dog, just having that separate time just for me really recharges me. It makes it worth going to work the next day. But when I was just doing the grind every day, it became difficult. I did not realize what I was missing in that work-life balance and finding more and more that finding more time for myself is actually making it easier to do my job.

Speaker 1: 25:38

What would be any piece of advice that you would give to anyone listening?

Speaker 2: 25:43

Believe in yourself, I think, is one of the best. A lot of folks can question what they're doing, question their job and so on, but if you believe in yourself and you go at it 100%, you're going to find success, no matter what. It may not be where you are currently, maybe it turns out this is not your current spot, for you now but if you believe in yourself, you're going to find something for you and it's going to be rewarding and you're going to enjoy the rest of your life.

Speaker 1: 26:10

That is great advice. How did you do that for yourself? What was one or two ways that you were able to believe in yourself?

Speaker 2: 26:20

Early on. It was very hard. It's especially learning the business, learning people's personalities, who you're working with, and so on. I think it just became a confidence in the product that I had and that I understood it and I could explain it to folks. I think that was the kind of gave me that confidence to believe in myself. With any opportunity I had, I thought I had 100% chance of making that person a client and it didn't happen that way. I certainly did close the majority of folks that I did sit with, but there were still those ones that walked away Some of those I still remember. So I'm like I can't believe I didn't get that. Because there was such confidence in believing myself that I made such a solid presentation, how could they not want to work with me?

Speaker 1: 26:58

Did you ever think back in the day when you first started that you would be as successful as you are today?

Speaker 2: 27:05

No, not at all. I did believe in myself and I was growing my business and I felt great. It's just been the past five or six years where things have really taken off and it's been a fun ride. It's again being acquired. Sounds like a negative thing, but it turns out to be a positive thing that the acquiring company just wants us to grow and they're making it even easier for us to do that. But early on I wanted to make sure my family was taken care of. That was what my concern was. I wanted to provide for my family. That was my considered my success. Yeah. And then again, 20, 27 years later, it's been just. I could never have imagined it would have worked out as well as it did.

Speaker 1: 27:44

When you did actually finally have the deal go through where you were able to sell it. How did that make you feel inside?

Speaker 2: 27:52

It made me proud in a lot of ways that I had built something so strong that other people were interested in buying it. And they were aggressive. They really wanted. They wanted the agency, they buying it. And they were aggressive. They really wanted. They wanted the agency, they wanted me, they wanted the agency and even in the talks they wanted to make sure that I was not going anywhere, which just made me feel great that they weren't looking to acquire and disband the agency. All they want to do is they said James, tell you exactly what you've been doing. Don't change a thing, we just want to enhance what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 28:23

We don't want to take anything away, so it made me feel really proud.

Speaker 1: 28:27

I bet it did. I just want to say thank you for being here. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with others. I'm sure you may not realize it, but something that you said probably impacted someone that's listening to this. I appreciate you. I appreciate your time.

Speaker 2: 28:44

Appreciate you, michael, thanks for all you do and I hope I have touched a couple of people out there because I was very happy and proud to be part of this podcast, and thank you.