Thanks for a Great First Year!

By Dominic Siciliano

Those of you in Michigan may not believe this by the weather but it is June.  June is a special month for Lena and I here at Benefit Profiles Inc because it marks the one year anniversary of our new beginning.  June 1st is our official start date.

I wanted to take a second to say thank you to all of you agents, account managers, and agency staff who have been so supportive to Lena and I.  You have been patient with us as we recreated and revised who and what we were this past year.  We don't exist without our agent relationships and we live to hear your voices and interact with you on a daily basis, so thank you.

After a year, we've seen great growth.  You may have noticed our website is much more updated.  That is because we hired a marketing intern, Jason Sissing.  Jason is a student at GVSU and he is very talented.  I'm just hoping that when I'm old and gray he sees it in his heart to remember the 'little people' who helped him get to the top because that's where he's surely heading.

We continue to add carriers and services.  Allstate has been a great addition as they have introduced us to so many interesting and innovative firms who can bring brand new services and solutions to your clients.  Look for a call from me in the near future to discuss these opportunities.

But beyond the business and beyond saying thank you to you, our agents, I find it important to take moments to simply appreciate what we have.  After all we've been through in our industry and especially as former MA's, don't we still have to look around and say, 'Man, we have it pretty good." We see so many different groups in our various employee meetings and we see how so many people earn a living.  For my money, I wouldn't want to do anything else.  Yes, we're in a crossroads in our industry but that just means we have an opportunity to reinvent ourselves.  Look at us here at BPI, I think we can be somewhat of a poster child for that theme.

So on that note, I wanted to share two videos with you today to make you smile.  The first is the recent Pure Michigan ad that will be running nationwide to a variety of states.  It features my hometown, Grand Rapids, MI and it makes me proud.

The second is a Youtube video my daughter's second grade class put together.  Find it here!
This makes me smile.  My little Natalie was two days old when I walked into Priority Health on my first day in the insurance industry.  Now, she's eight and bouncing around happily with her classmates.  Needless to say, we're both doing just fine.  Couldn't have been possible without you.

Cheers!

Dominic