An Advisor who ‘Rocks’ — with Bryon Holz

Bryon Holz built a long and substantial career providing investments and insurance to successful individuals and business owners throughout the Southeast.

Although he had a humble start in the business, he eventually earned life membership in Million Dollar Round Table. Today, he regularly speaks to audiences around the country — and around the world — while continuing to lead his practice, Bryon Holz & Associates of Brandon, Fla., which he founded in 1983. In 2023, he will take on a new role — president of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors.

His speaking engagements most recently have taken him to Australia. “Wherever I travel in any state or any country or place I go, I always find something amazing to enjoy and appreciate wherever that is, whether it’s a house of worship or it’s a vineyard or a winery or whatever it is,” he said. “I think that some describe that as a sense of wonder, as almost a childlike sense of wonder. But I think that if we never lose that, then life is full of great things to enjoy and appreciate.”

A graduate and presidential scholar of the University of Tampa, he finds his professional education never ends, and he has obtained numerous designations and certifications over the years. Holz is known for his love of music — his Twitter handle is @BryonHolzROCKS — and is also an avid photographer who shares his hobby through his social media. “I don’t know how many guitars I have, but it’s one of my problems. I have a lot of friends in music, and it’s certainly something I love.”

As Holz prepares to take on the leadership of NAIFA, he shares his thoughts both about the role and the future of the organization, as well as the success he has had, while offering lessons and advice learned over the course of his career.

Paul Feldman: You have had such an incredible career in the insurance industry, nearly 40 years. How did you get in the industry?

Bryon Holz: It was pretty much by accident. I kind of fell into it. My family moved out from the Chicago suburbs in the early ’70s, when I was still in middle school. We moved from a large metropolitan area into a relatively rural area in West Central Florida. There wasn’t a lot to do, so I became very involved in extracurricular activities at school. One of the individuals I got close to was my high school biology teacher. He started working with teachers and educators while I was still in high school, helping them with 403(b)s, tax-sheltered annuities and retirement planning. He did so well that soon he quit teaching and did that fulltime.

I always did well in school, and I was the first one in my family to go to college. I had a full scholarship — a presidential scholarship — to the University of Tampa as a business student. I knew I wanted to work in business. At my college graduation, my former high school biology teacher asked me what I was going to do, and I really didn’t know. There was a recession going on. He said, “Why don’t you come work with me until you get your real job?” Now, 39 years later, I’m still looking for a real job.

We started working with educators back then and, of course, did a lot with 403(b)s  and retirement. But we quickly went to other areas of life insurance, mutual funds and retirement planning. For the last 39 years, most of my focus has been on retirement planning. I always think of the NAIFA logo, which is the symbol of helping our clients should they live too long, die too soon, or become too sick or hurt to work. Holistic financial planning and risk management are what I’ve done throughout all these years.

Feldman: You’ll be assuming the presidency of NAIFA next year. How did you get involved with NAIFA, and where do you see yourself taking the association?

Holz: I had a mentor early in my career who invited me to attend a local NAIFA meeting, saying, “If you’re going to be a professional, you need to be a member.” So I became a member. I quickly found out the importance of affiliating with fellow professionals — we were in competition, but we supported each other and really lifted each other. All of my best sales ideas, all of my best practice management ideas, have come from others.

NAIFA has always been important to me throughout the years, whether it’s on the local level, state level or, of course, on the national level. Any time I get together with NAIFA friends, I always learn something. Whenever I speak — and I’ve been all around this country, speaking and sharing with NAIFA members and fellow professionals — I always get something out of that. There’s that synergy, and that’s so strong with the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors.

Feldman: As a practicing advisor, you’ve had agents who have entered your practice. How do you integrate them into the system, nurture them and help them grow?

Holz: One of the greatest challenges of our profession right now is replenishing ourselves, filling up the bench. Where are the new professionals coming from? There are two sides to this. On one side are identifying and encouraging them and bringing them into the profession. Some years ago, my firm had intern programs for educators, for college students and for people from other professions who wanted to try a new profession. Those are pretty much gone now.

The traditional agency system is not what it used to be. NAIFA, for example, has a future leaders program that we’ve developed in various colleges and universities around the country. We need to reach into our communities and work with Women in Insurance and Financial Services, the National African American Insurance Association, and the Latin American Association of Insurance Agencies, and make sure that we’re growing NAIFA’s Young Advisor Team.

While on the one side we need individuals who can come into the industry, on the other side is the advocacy role of NAIFA — regulation, Congress and legislatures across all 50 states to make sure that we can continue to serve Middle America. Unfortunately, our profession has been regulated in so many ways that we’re almost at risk of not being able to serve the majority of clients. It’s getting to the point where if you don’t have a quarter of a million dollars in investable assets, no one wants to talk to you or no one can talk to you because of the way things are being regulated.

I think that’s a significant challenge. It’s hard to get someone in the business to hit the ground running if they have to hit such large goals and targets to stay in business. The great news is that when we are able to sit down with our regulators, members of Congress and legislators in all 50 states, as only NAIFA can, they recognize what we do helps all of society. What we do as professionals is the solution, it’s not the problem.

Advocacy is one of the things that makes NAIFA not only so strong and important but makes serving with them so important.

Feldman: Let’s talk about your business. You have talked about offering sensational client service, and I think that’s important for our industry. It’s a good message. Can you tell us a little about that?

Holz: Several years ago, I realized that we’re educators. We primarily depend upon the effectiveness of our communication with our clients and prospects to be able to serve them. How successful we are depends upon how well we can communicate and motivate our clients to take action to solve the challenges that may be present in their lives. I learned years ago that in order to strengthen your message, it’s best to appeal to as many senses as possible, whether it’s sight, sound, taste, touch, smell.

I started with some simple things that I learned from mentors — a stick of chewing gum in birthday cards to our clients and their children, for example. We host ice cream socials. We do intergenerational marketing to all of our clients to bring their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, their parents, their grandparents — and anything that we do clientwise, we always try and get as many senses involved as possible.

I have a great passion for music. That’s a great way to brand myself and our practices. That’s a great way to involve and engage more senses.

Feldman: You also do wine tastings. How do you generate business through wine tasting?

Holz: Well again, that’s all about the senses. It’s just a chance to enjoy and celebrate. We don’t sell anything through these events, but we do try to talk about how different vintages are better from different places in different areas and different regions. It’s the same thing with asset allocation.

Some years bonds might do well, some years international stocks or domestic blue-chip stocks might do well. It’s the same with wine. We have that story to tell, but at the end of the day, it’s just an opportunity to connect with our clients and prospects — and introduce ourselves and invite their referrals to do business with us as well.

Feldman: Let’s talk more about this. Let’s say someone wants to host a wine tasting for their practice. How do you do that? What does your format look like? How do you market it?

Holz: We’ll invite clients who we know enjoy wine, and we’ll invite them to bring a friend. The main thing we’ll use it for is to introduce referrals to our practice and to help our existing clients feel good about what we do — especially now with the volatility in the market. And it allows us to reiterate the message that every year a certain wine region’s going to produce the best grapes or the best wine. And that it’s the same thing with investments — there are ups and downs. I don’t do the presentation about the wine. I leave that to professionals.

We have a wine shop nearby and they have a great classroom, and we’ve used that several times. We have a winery and a vineyard that we’ve used as well. I don’t personally talk about the wines, and I try not to even talk about the message as well. I usually try and bring a product sponsor, a partner, in and talk about that message as well.

My goal, my role is to be the ambassador. It’s to be the relationship builder. I don’t pick stocks for my clients. I don’t pick issues for my clients. My goal is to help them find out where they need to be and connect them with the products and services that best meet their needs. It’s the same way with these wine tastings. I wouldn’t do well leading it personally — especially after the third glass or third tasting!

Feldman: I want to come back to regulation. What do you see as the most significant regulation issues that agents should be concerned with and supporting NAIFA on?

Holz: Right now, there are really two primary issues that I see. The first one is that agents and reps are able to serve Middle America — that regulation doesn’t price out Middle America, middle-income consumers and others. We all need an advisor. That’s our greatest challenge.

Our second one is being able to serve as an independent advisor. I think that’s a serious issue that’s coming up in a lot of different states and one we need to be aware of so that they can continue to be independent to provide that service. We’re concerned about duty of care, of course. The SECURE Act, saving our seniors. Being able to use annuities in retirement planning is really important. Seeing the agent and the rep as the enemy first is an issue that we’re vigilant on. NAIFA has advocated for agents, making sure that we’re able to do our job and help people.

That’s the most important thing we’re doing right now — and we’ve done it for more than a century.

Feldman: What are some things agents should be doing right now that they’re not doing? What advice and tips can you give to agents to help them be more successful?

Holz: First, they should join NAIFA. Right now, I think it’s important for them to align themselves with resources that can support them in their practice, resources like NAIFA’s centers of excellence and our Advanced Practice Center, Limited and Extended Care Center, and finding places that can truly help them with the best thought leaders in the industry. I think that in the last few years, especially with COVID-19, they don’t realize that these resources exist.
I think the most important thing for our reps is to recognize that we’re stronger together — we need each other.

So many of us are working with our clients virtually and through the phone and through email and online. That’s great, but what we need to also keep in mind is that nothing replaces the role of the agent. We have indications that might suggest the contrary, like automatic sign-ups for 401(k)s, but no one’s going to take care of them as well as an advisor can.

We need to make sure that we’re positioning ourselves in our communities to truly be the trusted advisor. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of division right now in our country and in the world. “They” are the enemy. It’s us against them. That saddens me so much. What we do at NAIFA is purple. It’s not red, it’s not blue.

Our clients and our fellow citizens, our communities, they’re sick from this. They’ve got shell shock from all of this. They need professionals who can be the voice of reason. The more we recognize that as agents and reps and members, I think the better we’re going to be.

Feldman: As an advisor, how do you deal with somebody whose beliefs may be so different from yours? How do you manage that?

Holz: My faith is very important to me, of course, and my family. I always try and see it from the individual’s point of view and perspective. Even if we may not agree on something, I still see that they need help. I see where they’re going, and I recognize the need for them to get there. I help them to get there. I always try to have empathy. What can I do to make things better?

Feldman: One of the things you described earlier was that some of your best ideas come from others. What are some of the best tips and advice that you can share with our readers?

Holz: Virtual client service. Working with our clients virtually rather than in person in advance of the pandemic, which has been huge. I thought you had to be at their kitchen table or they had to be in my office. That’s been a game changer for me.

Also, hire a scheduler. Your time is your most valuable asset as an advisor. I started having someone schedule my time about four or five years ago, and it has been a game changer for our practice. We have more meetings with our clients. We’re more in touch with them. We do more for them. We’ve been more successful. Our production has increased.

Another thing I’d emphasize is storytelling, which is so important in what we do as well. We’ve developed several stories. They’re not our own, of course. We’ve stolen them. For example, the story about the young man who saved the princess’s life. The young man saves the life of the princess, and the king is so grateful for saving his daughter’s life that he offers to give the young man a million-dollar reward. The young man, being a smart young man says, “Instead of the million dollars, why not just give me a grain of rice, doubled each day for a month?” The king thinks, “Sure, I’ll give him the rice.” But he didn’t realize that at the end of the month, the young man would end up with the entire kingdom’s rice production. That tells the story about the power of compound interest. Stories are great to use in our practice. People can remember and identify with them.

I think the most important thing I’ve learned as a professional is to be in touch with your clients — to touch them regularly, to send out the emails, to send out the snail mail, to have events, do the birthday cards to everyone in the household — to just reach out and touch them regularly. Don’t be afraid to reach out when times are tough like they are now with the economy and with the markets.

We are very active in social media, and we really have a very well-planned-out approach and calendar to our social media program. We make sure that we have days in the week when we do fun things that align with our brand. Whether it’s about rock stars — in my case, classic rock, because we target baby boomers — you need to mix it up. We’re very careful to do that, and it’s very calculated, and we found great success in our response to it. Has it gotten business for us? I know it has.

Another thing is our branding. Everyone who’s in our business, every rep, every agent, can brand themselves. I use music as my brand. If you’re a golfer, you can brand yourself with golf. Brand yourself and you’ll have a stronger identity with your clients and prospects, and it makes a difference.

Feldman: How would you recommend somebody create their own brand? How do you really drive brand?

Holz: Once you identify what your passion is, you can share that with others and others can relate to it. If it’s cooking, hold cooking classes at the local kitchens. Just make sure that you’re open to all the different ways that you can share those passions with your clients. Don’t think “Well, this will be corny.” Go all in and make sure that you have fun doing it.

If it’s authentic and it’s truly you, that’s what it’s all about. I think that’s the most freeing thing that I’ve done in my profession, is recognize what I am and who I am and what I like. In my case, it’s music. Then just be open and free about it, and people will say, “Yeah, that’s Bryon. He’s the music guy, but he’s also a financial advisor.” Dig deep, open up and go for it.

Feldman: What is NAIFA doing to make sure it remains relevant?

Holz: In addition to advocating for our members, NAIFA is partnering with more companies than ever before. So not unlike how advisors may brand themselves, NAIFA is branding ourselves in ways that we can attract and serve more advisors and agents than ever before. I think that’s really important.

What is insurance? It’s taking a small amount of something and putting it together with something much larger to manage that risk. Well, that defines NAIFA — taking one person at a time, adding them into something bigger to strengthen who we are and what we do as professionals. That’s why I’m so excited and humbled to be the incoming NAIFA president, to be a part of that.

Paul Feldman started the website InsuranceNewsNet in 1999, followed by InsuranceNewsNet Magazine in 2008. Paul was a third-generation insurance agent before venturing into the media business. Paul won the 2012 Integrated Marketing Award (IMA) for Lead Gen Initiative for his Truth about Agent Recruiting video and was the runner-up for IMA's Marketer of the Year, a competition that includes consumer and B2B publishing companies. Find out more about Paul at www.paulfeldman.com.