Allan Mckisson

Today we are talking with our featured insurance broker Allan McKisson located in Eden Prairie. Allan is a broker at One Source Insurance Brokers.

One Source is committed and focused on providing simple, no nonsense insurance solutions for the Twin Cities metro families and businesses.

Allan’s passion and focus is Twin Cities families to remove the confusion, stop the frustration and simplify access to tailored insurance.  He specializes in clients who want to focus on the families and their businesses and not stress about insurance.  He has a proven proprietary process to identify and assess risks and minimize premiums.

How did you get started in the insurance industry? You got into insurance partially because of what happened to your grandmother. What happened?

Yes. My grandmother was not feeling well.  She was always like a bigger lady, right? So when she started getting sick and no one understood why. So when she went to a doctor, she found out she is actually in stage four of ovarian cancer, and all the weight that she had gained, was actually tumors. There were huge tumors.

It was that kind of a situation. And everyone thought she had life insurance, but she didn’t. You know, when she passed away, everyone was shocked that she had no life insurance, because they just knew for sure she had some through her job. But that wasn’t the case. She had no life insurance. And that kind of sparked me and put me in a mindset of kind of realizing that the African-American community doesn’t know anything about life insurance. We don’t have this conversation, you know, with our parents about it. So that’s kind of why I got started. I got started in it because that happened. And I wanted to make sure that my community understood the importance of life insurance.

But when I actually started working, I realized that like no one knows anything about insurance. So then it turned from being this thing about just educating one section of people, I want to educate everyone now because it’s such an important thing. So that’s what got me started.

So that’s how you got into the insurance industry?  What did you do first?

The story really is, I wanted to educate my community. Now, I got into insurance with the specific purpose of knowing that it could be financially successful. So it definitely was both. It wasn’t that I wasn’t thinking about the money and money comes last, that’s not my personality. I actually, when I sat down when I first . . . One of the times when I first got licensed, there’s this place called IMO, Independent Marketing Organizations or FMO, Field Marketing Organization.

And you go sit down with them as this licensed agent. And, you know, they’re interviewing you to see if they want to bring you on and give you training and free leads and all this stuff. And the guy I was talking with the guy I was interviewing with and I told him, “Hey, you know, I want to educate our people. And at the same time, I want to make sure that I make money. That’s why I got into this for both of the reasons.” So, and he said, “Well, hey, you know, you can’t really say that. And, you know, that personality doesn’t work for me.” And so on and so forth, so . . .

What part of the personality doesn’t work for him?

The fact that I’m saying I’m in it to make money.

Really? Oh, okay. Got it. You can feel it, but don’t express it.

Yeah, that’s kind of how I was. Like, you could feel it, but don’t express it, because, I think because insurance is such a personal thing. And I don’t know if people feel like, “Oh, well, you shouldn’t really talk about, you know, become successful from something that’s so personal as insurance.” You know, like if somebody says, “I got into the mortuary business to make money,” people would kind of be like, “What?” You know, like, that’s what . . .

So when did you get started?

So this was about . . . Yeah. I mean, 11, 12 years ago. And you know, back then at the time, the industry was seriously like Caucasian, 50 year old men, right? There wasn’t anybody else. I remember when I finally started getting appointments with insurance companies, they will have their own meetings for all their agents. And I remember going into this meeting, and I walk in there and I go in there and I’m like, “Am I in the right place?” Because there was nothing but old white men just sitting in there looking at us, I was kind of like, “Where am I?” And they turn around looking at me like, “Is he in the right place?” So we both had the same look on our face. And then I started seeing, like the badging. And I was like, “I guess I’m in the right place.” But at that time, the average insurance agent was over 50. There were no younger agents than that.

How did you get started?

So when I first started it was, I would send out these mailers. So like they do a mass mailing to, say, Minnetonka or Plymouth, right? In a specific set of zip codes. And then once they all came back, we would drive out the suburbs and then we’d go to the houses with the card, saying, “Hey, you sent this back. We’ll be working in your area of the Twin Cities for three or four days.” You know, and try to sell them insurance.

I know everybody has to go through the process of buying insurance for the car or home, but tell me a time when things didn’t go your way.  I know it’s hard to get started and there are setbacks along the way.

So there are so many different avenues of insurance. So like when you get licensed for insurance, you get either licensed for life and health, or property and casualty. There are two different exams. You have to take them both if you want both licenses. I got licensed in life and health. So the first thing that I tried was trying to do the door-to-door sales. It didn’t really work for me. I said, “Hey, you know what? I want to sell this over the phone.” And everybody was like, “No, that’s impossible. Nobody’s going to buy insurance from you over the phone. People just don’t do that.”

And so the first company I started with was called Minneapolis Life. And the product was a final expense product. And the way final expense works is that it’s for people over the age of 50, between 50 to 85. And it’s basically a burial insurance policy, coverage amounts up to $25,000 and the premiums are pretty high, right? But they’re only specifically for people who are over 50 who can’t get approved traditionally through life insurance because of their medical condition.

So that’s the first real area of insurance I started in, and it completely failed. Like I think I might have done it for like eight months. And it just was one of those things where the seniors weren’t really ready for. I mean, they weren’t ready to pay for something like that.

What services do you offer to your clients?

We are a full service insurance brokerage.  That means we are experienced in different types of insurance and risk management. We help individuals and companies procure insurance for themselves, their homes, their businesses or their families. We provide advice on many different types of insurance, from homeowners, to auto and life. We provide a service to our customers in helping them find and buy insurance at no cost to our client.

So I can figure out my expenses, how much will my homeowners insurance deductible be?

We have developed a proprietary system to help you determine exactly what risks and risk tolerance each customer has.  We walk through a number of simple questions and input those answers into our system.  The output is an easy to understand list of policy recommendations that we can explain how that impacts your premium.  In many cases that allows us to help our clients reduce their insurance premiums

What impacts the price of my policy? Does the age of my home impact the price of my policy?

The simple answer is maybe.  There are many factors that determine your premium cost.  I’d recommend prospective clients give me a call or send an email.  I’d be happy to help them compare the many factors that are involved in pricing a homeowners policy.

Anything else we should know before we finish our chat today?

I encourage anyone looking to compare their coverage to the large assortment of policies that we can provide to give our office a call or send us an email.  It only takes a few minutes and we can send you the information you need to make an informed decision.

What is the best way to get in touch with you if I want to discuss my insurance options?

The simplest way to go to our website and fill out the inquiry form.  We will get back to you in short order. 

Thanks for you time today. All the best Allan.

Thank you very much. I enjoyed our time today.