The triumph of daily victories — With John Nichols

John Nichols knows that no one achieves success alone; it takes mentorship to survive and thrive in a business that’s tough to break into.

Nichols has served as head of two of the industry’s major professional associations. He was president of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors in 2013-2014 and recently wrapped up his term as 2026 Million Dollar Round Table president. He has been a sought-after speaker at industry events for more than a decade.

He is a nationally recognized disability benefits consultant, the creator of disability products and administration systems and an expert witness in disability proceedings. Nichols served as president of Disability Resource Group Inc., a national insurance agency that he founded in 1999.

In 1993, Nichols had a near-death experience from a water-skiing accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down to his toes. Through six years of rehabilitation, he reached a level of recovery that less than 1% of all spinal cord injury patients attain and eventually became a marathon runner. He chronicled his story in his first book, Income Protection: The Conversation.

Nichols attributes much of his success to self-leadership, learning from others in the industry and fighting the fear of rejection that almost every advisor knows.

In this interview with InsuranceNewsNet publisher Paul Feldman, Nichols describes what he calls his “daily victories,” and shares his views on how the industry can attract more professionals.

PAUL FELDMAN: You became a quadriplegic, were told you could never walk again, but you ran a marathon, reached MDRT Top of the Table, and pushed through. This is such an inspiring story for me.

JOHN NICHOLS: Sometimes it feels as though I’m outside of myself, because I’m not sure how it all came about. I think one of the key strands of any form of success we may look to or achievements we may have is the people who have helped us along the way. 

The story I tell on the MDRT platforms is about the suit that I had made. It’s an MDRT suit. I had the stitching of the pinstripe made of MDRT, and then the logo of MDRT on the suit coat, but on the back panel I put 180 names of NAIFA members, MDRT members, MDRT Foundation members, my family, my professional staff, other salespeople, mentors, friends — all the people who contribute to who we become as individuals. For me, yeah, I know I’ve done the work, but I always look back to those who helped me on my path. 

FELDMAN: How did you get started in the business?

NICHOLS: I grew up in a big family and my parents always had us working as kids. One of the jobs I had was as a caddy at our local country club, and it was through my caddying that I met a gentleman named Norb Winter. He was a third-generation general agent. 

I was selling radio advertising to pay for school, and Norb invited me to breakfast and said, “If you can sell radio advertising, you can sell insurance,” and that was my invitation into the profession. 

I didn’t make it. I failed. I was a statistic. I couldn’t get out of the way of my own fears. Then I got the bright idea of moving from Minnesota to Chicago. I stayed in the profession, joined another company, and started to work on my skill set and face my fears. It took eight years from the time I started in the profession to reaching MDRT, and things started to click from that point forward.

FELDMAN: I appreciate what you said about perseverance for those first eight years before you made MDRT. Once agents get past the five-year mark, it seems to get better, but those first five years are difficult for a lot of people.

NICHOLS: It’s that journey of self-discovery. A fair amount of the content I share is about leadership of self. We all want to be leaders, and we want to direct people, but until we can be leaders of ourselves and recognize how we best operate, will we really achieve the success we want?

FELDMAN: That’s a powerful statement. You can’t be a leader of others unless you can lead yourself.

NICHOLS: I was exposed to this in grade school. I was in the safety patrol; I was in Boy Scouts. Then I was a team captain in high school. But I needed more of that development as I matured so I could overcome some of the fears I had, and my biggest fear was the fear of rejection. It’s the issue I had to deal with to make the calls, go see the people and be OK with rejection.

FELDMAN: What are some of the tricks you use to overcome that fear of rejection?

NICHOLS: The first one is picking a mantra that works for you. Mine is either “release” or “next.” When I get a rejection, it’s immediately about releasing it or saying, “Next.” 

What really got me over the hurdle was something I learned when my general agent sent me to call-reluctance school. I learned the psychology around rejection. I learned about a tool called the “thought zapper”; it’s a rubber band around your wrist. I’ll even use a Life Happens rubber wristband. 

When you feel that reluctance to make that phone call, you snap the rubber band and it sends a signal to the brain to make the call. Snapping the rubber band kind of interrupts the flow of your excuse and you do the work.

There’s a difference between our mind and our intellect. Our mind goes 24/7 and it’s where all the emotions and all the excuses sit. Our intellect is where the reasoning and logic sit. When you use your intellect to manage your mind, you will accomplish more than you will if you listen to all the excuses in your mind. So rejection sits in all the excuses that sit in my mind. When I use my intellect with the thought zapper, and get the work done, I don’t think about rejection.

FELDMAN: What I found interesting is that you went to a school for call reluctance. I think there should be a class about call reluctance because people are reluctant to get on the phone nowadays.

NICHOLS: I would broaden that class and make it about tools around behavior, which ultimately lead to leadership itself.

I am extremely disciplined — maybe fanatical — about something I call daily victories. That’s another tool I use to manage my behavior and my mindset to accomplish my objectives for the day. If you followed me for 24 hours — except when I’m sleeping — you would see that’s how I work; it’s about achieving daily victories and saying, “next,” “next,” “next.”

FELDMAN: During your career, mentorship and training were prevalent. How are we missing this in today’s world? What can we do better?

NICHOLS: This is one of the great things about our profession. By participating in associations, you develop that camaraderie. I’ve made friends for life because of my association involvement. But it was also the mentorship that helped me move from MDRT to Court of the Table to Top of the Table, and it was the mentorship that helped propel me. Quite frankly, it isn’t just business; it’s my entire life.

I didn’t search out leadership positions in any of the associations that I’ve been connected with; it was my peers who put me in those roles. The return on one’s life will be based on their depth of engagement, and a great way to get engaged in our profession is through the associations.

FELDMAN: How did you find your mentors?

NICHOLS: Sometimes they found me. As you know, I kind of became a disability expert. Someone identified that I was running down that path, and they mentored me when I got involved in NAIFA. It was NAIFA members who were kind of a generation or two ahead of me who identified me. There are, and there have been, occasions where I have asked for help, and I’ve done that through those relationships within the associations. 

I’ve been grateful to be able to speak at many different offices and events around the United States. One of the things that I offered the audience was that if you’d like to have a 20-minute call with me, reach out to me. There were 200 people in the room; I made that offer. How many people in the room made the phone call? Only one out of 200. But when I said, “If you want a 20-minute call with me, just turn in your business card and I’ll reach out to you,” how many business cards out of the 200 did I get? I got all 200 business cards. 

The surprising thing is, the people who gave me their business cards never expected me to call, so I made the phone calls. Why do I tell this story? The point of the story is that if you want it, you must go after it. There is one person out of those 200 who I still mentor today. She’s an MDRT producer and a leader. That started six years ago, so I don’t know when it flipped from me being the mentee to me being the mentor, but at some point in time, it happened. 

FELDMAN: Let’s go back to the 200 business cards. What did you learn from that experience?

NICHOLS: I perform best when I position myself into an environment of accountability, so when I have association work or my business, my family, my workouts — what work do I do first? I do the public work first because I don’t like to be embarrassed. Second, there is a demand for more knowledge, more connection, more relationships. Associations play a role in fulfilling that demand. If we don’t fulfill that demand, then more apathy sets in. Third, we have to be more proactive. We can’t just sit and think business is going to come; that isn’t the case.  

FELDMAN: How did you get started in the disability insurance space?

NICHOLS: I was doing disability insurance before the crazy accident. I had the honor of working with the Association of American Medical Colleges, and we developed an HIV disability program. That really kick-started my specialty. I became a student of that and then I had a mentor help me accelerate it. At that time, I was with a career company. Six years after the accident is when I spun out on my own and broadened the number of carriers I represented. 

My business has always been what I’ll call joint work or buddy system work. I worked with a ton of advisors in my vertical of disability insurance, so another value in getting involved in associations is that you get to meet people and you can work together.

FELDMAN: September is Life Insurance Awareness Month. What strategies can advisors use to leverage it?

NICHOLS: The No. 1 thing is to do client reviews. Even though I mainly work in disability insurance, when I do reviews, I can extend the offering, whether it’s more planning, product, trust or charitable giving, and estate planning. It’s asking clients if their will is in order. It’s trying to create the mindset of habit that every year we will visit with clients to make sure they have their house in order. 

No. 2, let’s make sure our house is in order. Just yesterday, I emailed my estate planning attorney to say, “I want to make sure we have this in place, etc., etc.” So, again, it’s up to us to be proactive in the promotion. And it doesn’t have to be about selling something; it can be about educating. “Hey, as you may or may not know, it’s Life Insurance Awareness Month. Not only did I want to review your life insurance portfolio, but I also wanted to help educate you on such and such.”

FELDMAN: Part of the struggle we have is that we do not have enough people in our profession. What can be done about that?

NICHOLS: We just don’t have enough people in the profession, and so therein lies incredible opportunity. But this is something that gives me hope: I’ve had calls from two young men recently. One of them found me on the NAIFA website and contacted me to see if he should join NAIFA — and this was before he even had a job. We had a conversation, and I finally asked him what part of the business he wanted to be in. He said he was leaning toward wealth management.

The other young man was being recruited by a career company, and he was thinking about wealth management but also that the career company is going to teach him insurance. I had to open his eyes a little bit so he knows what he’s walking into. 

We just need more people in our profession.

FELDMAN: You recently wrapped up a year as president of MDRT. What is new at MDRT?

NICHOLS: MDRT is rolling out ChatMDRT. It won’t be a generic internet search. ChatMDRT will be within the wisdom of MDRT and with the capability of translation into any language. Artificial intelligence will be our backstage; our frontstage will still be human-to-human connection, human-to-human relationships. I think that’s where our associations can continue to develop individuals back to that leadership of self.

We’re formalizing our learning program. It will be called MDRT Learn, and it’s where members can learn so that they can achieve their dreams and goals.

And it’s also MDRT’s 100th anniversary this year. We’re growing leaders and we’re delivering on the mission of empowering our members so that they can serve their clients better.

I have to be honest with you, I’m trying to figure out, am I in the association business or am I in the insurance business? I haven’t figured that out yet. My peers keep putting me in these positions, and I’m like, are you just trying to take me away from my insurance business? 

But our profession has blessed me and so many others. It’s not about the money; it’s about making a difference.