[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to from caving in to crushing it, the podcast for those who find themselves immersed in adversity and choose to write their story instead of having others write it for them. I'm Drew Deraney, and I'm your host. Today's guest is Nancy Wolf. Nancy Wolfe is a business consultant, advisor, and a wife who lives in Orange County, New York. She has over two decades of sales experience as an insurance agent and business owner. Now, as independent Medicare specialist representing twelve companies, Nancy helps navigate the complicated maze to help make the process stress free for her clients. Nancy is available seven days a week for complimentary, no obligation consultations. So if you have or know someone who has Medicare questions, she has answers. Nancy is licensed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, and Colorado. Enjoy the show. Hey, Nancy, it's so good to see you.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Oh, it's so nice to see you, Drew.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: I appreciate the, absolutely, absolutely.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: So, you know, I bring people on here who have gone through faith shaking moments in life, and they've made a decision not to give up or retreat. They've made a decision to move forward and become stronger people because of their adversity. And you do have definitely have a story to tell, and I'm sure your story will help others who may be in a similar situation.
We all know that we have defining moments in life, that it's either a tap on the shoulder or two by four upside the head that tell us, hey, Nancy, wake up. There's a better way to live. And hopefully we listen to that and move forward in a different path in life. If you could reach back to however far it is and find that defining moment that really did change the trajectory of your life.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: I've been thinking about that.
I always wondered what would happen had I found a teaching job when I graduated from college and if I stayed in that line of work who I might have met in my future self, because that's not what happened. I went to college. I got the degree just like I was supposed to, but I didn't specialize.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: And so I went out to Yellowstone National park after I graduated from college for the summer and I learned the hotel business.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: When I came back, I was substituting. And every time I applied for a job, they said, that's not experience. Volunteering and substituting doesn't count. I said, well, then, who's going to give me the first job? And they said, you can move down south or out west. So I decided to follow the hotel career.
And as I landed at Bear Mountain Inn. I was there for about four years.
I got a promotion. So he had me working two full time jobs for one salary.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: They took me from hourly, put me on salary, and then when the night auditor didn't show up, I was the night auditor, too.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: So I was the front desk manager, the night order and conference sales. So at one point or another, I said to the general manager, you need to find a front desk manager. He says, you go back to the front desk. I said, I'm not going backwards. So, needless to say, we didn't see eye to eye.
And then after that, when I moved home, because I knew that if I was going to ever try a commission only job, I needed to be at home, where I was going to have a roof over my head and my mom was going to feed me and do my laundry.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: So I went into business in commission sales for 18 and a half years. And during that time frame, when I had a business partner, that was an abusive relationship. I didn't know how to get away from it.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Oh, boy. Okay.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: So a second defining moment there. It took me 14 and a half years to get away from that.
And then I had nothing. So then I was starting from scratch.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Oh, my.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: So, again, I needed to reach out to people who were going to be there for me. So I would tell my younger self to not be afraid to ask for help, because I kept it to myself. And I tried to hide it. And then I went and I packed everything up as best I could, and I ran around the country. Like, I drove around the country for two and a half months, moving every single day, thinking he was going to send somebody after me. So I went all the way from New York up over to California, and then back around.
Stayed in Virginia for a while. And then he convinced me to come.
I. And he said if it didn't work, he'd move out in a month. From that point, it took seven and a half years.
I went back.
Yeah, he had made a cassette tape telling me how sorry he was and all this stuff and how things were going to change. And they did change for a month.
And then I had foot surgery, and I was stuck at home. I couldn't walk, I couldn't work, nothing. And the first few weeks were okay, but I think it took me six or eight weeks to recover before I was able to walk around and work again.
And by that time, things started slipping back to the way they were.
So it was very difficult because when I went to a support group, Drew, I couldn't relate to the people that were there because I didn't have children.
I was in a completely different situation, being single, a business owner, and not knowing who to talk to.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Sure, absolutely.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: So I kept it to myself for a very long time. That's the first thing I would change. And then the other defining moment was when I left that sales business and my mother said I needed a real job.
So I became an insurance agent.
I had a four hour interview.
I had a four hour interview on a Friday afternoon. I left on Sunday to go to Albany for training.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: And I became a combined insurance, knock on the door insurance agent for life and health. And then a few years later, they made us get our life license. So now I am life and health and disability and all that stuff. And now specializing in Medicare in the last seven years, so everything.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: I was like, how did I get involved in Medicare? Well, my husband got prostate cancer, and I didn't know anything about Medicare.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Just the same husband from the.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: I wasn't married to him.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Oh, okay, good. So you had never married. Yeah. You never married that abusive guy? Good.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: No, I knew better. I knew that wasn't what I wanted for the rest of my life.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Okay, good.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: And my parents were married for 50 years, so I knew what a good marriage was, and I knew what I didn't want. I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn't want.
And he was a Vietnam vet, and he kept using that as an excuse and all that stuff. But the man I finally met and married is a wonderful man. He was a butcher, hardworking, married for 31 years, three kids, and he just had a crazy ex wife.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: It took us a while, but we are now married 18 years.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Congratulations.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: And he's wonderful. And he was working as a butcher, and he found out that he had prostate cancer.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Oh, boy.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: So I went to the chamber of commerce, and I spoke to one of the agents there, and so he helped us put him into a plan.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Oh, good.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: And as we started getting all these bills and everything, the explanation of benefits as people get.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: It was very confusing. Very confusing. And so when the time came and somebody said, why would you give your life insurance clients to another agent to handle do it yourself?
I learned about Medicare in 2017, so I've been doing that, specializing in that since then.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: That's such a value because a lot of the elderly do not understand Medicare. Yes.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Very confusing.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: It is part a, part b, and all that stuff.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: C and D. C and D, too. Jeez.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: I didn't know, I just talked to a gentleman a little while ago who is legally blind. He's only 38 years old.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: And he's on Medicare. So most people don't know that if they're disabled for 24 months in a row, they can get Medicare.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: I did not know that. Okay.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: It could be two years old if they've had 24 months of total disability.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: They can apply for Medicare. Anyhow, long story short, he was looking for advice and he came to me. Thank goodness I found him. But I said, did you ever sign up for the part d, the drug plan? And he said, no, I didn't know I needed to. And I said, you're now at risk for a late enrollment penalty because he didn't sign up when he got the Medicare. And so there's so many different avenues that people need to know about. That's why I'm writing the ebook.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Tell me about the ebook. Because I hadn't known until we talked before we hit record that you were doing that. Tell us about the ebook and how it's going to help people.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: I'm explaining what the parts are, how to look up things. I'm giving them definitions and a glossary, and also explaining the difference between having original Medicare with a supplement and a drug plan versus the part c that everybody's talking about is the Medicare Advantage plans, where the government is giving the insurance companies money to put the extra benefits into a plan so we can keep our seniors healthier.
Okay. And if they're not paying as much money up front, they pay as they go.
If they're not paying as much money up front, then they hopefully won't hesitate to see the doctor to get the drugs and to stay on a regimen. If they're supposed to take them, we want them to be compliant. And then they've even thrown in all of them that I work with, a fitness benefit, dental, vision, hearing, and sometimes extra beyond that.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. Because the wellness care a lot don't take advantage of wellness care. They just wait till they're sick and it gets to that point and then they don't know what to do. So that's definitely value added that the wellness piece is in there. And I admire you for this. And do you thank your mom every day for pushing you into the insurance business?
[00:12:23] Speaker B: No, unfortunately, I lost her the year I was getting married.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: And I did not thank her then. No. My father was the one that pushed me to the academics in college.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Or actually high school.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: And I chose college. My mother said, well, you're just going to grow up, get married and have children. You shouldn't go to college and waste the money. So we did not see eye to eye on that.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: I see that. Well, it's good you had two parents. Yeah.
You have two parents who had different views, and you sided with dad on the college. I did, yeah. That's awesome.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: I grew up completely different than my mom.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, the fact that you had the ability to see both, potentially both sides and you could choose was certainly a benefit. Now, do you miss that you didn't go back to teaching now you kind of are teaching now in a different way.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
I'm still a teacher at heart. And the funny part is, when I go into a store and I'm drawn to books, I'm drawn to children's books.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: I still think about the games that I used to make up for the kids. I used to write individual Christmas cards to each one of my kids.
And in the experiences that I had, I had two grades in one classroom, so I had second and third in the first part. I had fourth and fifth in the other part. So I had double sets of lesson plans. I don't miss the teacher conferences. I don't miss lesson plans. And now I have a different kind of homework, but I'm still a teacher at heart. So now when I bring people into whatever business I'm working on, I try to teach them what I did wrong so they don't make the same mistakes.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: That's good. How many years did you teach in the school system?
[00:14:25] Speaker B: I didn't get a full time job. I substituted for a couple of years.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: That was a substitute. Okay.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: And then I was offered a teacher's assistant job, and at that time, it was $2.65 an hour, and that wasn't even enough to pay a little car payment.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: So I had three jobs.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: I had a hardware store as a cashier. I had the theater as a box office cashier.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: And the substituting, I still didn't have enough money to live on.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: That's a shame.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: I moved home.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's also a shame, too, because if you were able to go that route, you would have been a wonderful teacher, but you would have had to go back for all the schooling and all those degrees. They didn't take your experience and wisdom as part of it. Yeah. That's where the broken piece of the education system is.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: But you know what? I don't regret becoming an entrepreneur. I don't regret the people that I've met the relationships.
I don't like getting up at five or 06:00 in the morning. So I don't that part at all. I make my own hours. I work from home and I can teach people seven days a week.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: There you go. There are some major benefits when things go differently from what you plan. I hear you. So I know you're calling from, you're on location, so tell us about what you do for the Medicare out in the public.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: So this year I have three different locations. I'm in a galleria one day a week. I'm going to a Marshall's an hour and a half from my house, and I'm going to a Walmart an hour and a half from my house in Kingston. We set up a table. We allow people to come and ask us questions.
We have them sign a little piece of paper that gives us permission to contact them and to go over whatever details, answer their questions. And I let them know that I do complimentary consultations seven days a week. So I make an appointment that's convenient for them.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: That's wonderful. Now you can help people across the country, right. It doesn't just have to be in New York, right.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: I have to have a license in whatever state I'm talking about. So right now I have New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and then three of my clients move to other states. So I now have Virginia, Texas, Colorado, and working on Georgia.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: All right, there we go. We're getting there. We'll be at 50 states soon. Okay. All right.
In addition to the insurance, I know you're involved in other ways to help people, whether it's in the legal realm or the identity theft realm. How about telling us about that?
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Interesting how I got involved in that, because. Remember about that abusive partner?
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: Well, in the year 2000, he had a friend who was an attorney, and I didn't. I paid $295 an hour for my legal counsel to separate. And I didn't know. In New York, they don't recognize living together, they don't recognize alimony. I didn't know that. I also didn't know that you can't pick up a phone and call and not receive a bill. So when I got a bill for $3,000, I thought I was going to.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: So the next time that somebody talked to me about legal shield and I knew it was a prepaid service where everybody pays a small amount like we do with health insurance, a small amount each month to have access, I didn't hesitate to sign up as a member and an associate, because I knew the benefit of that and the fact that there was emergency coverage all around the United States anyhow. So I wished I had had it at that time.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: So I signed up because I had been a victim of identity theft. When I came out of one of the stores one time, had a big fat pocketbook, and somebody came from behind, grabbed the pocketbook and kept running.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: And from that point on, and I had a personalized license plate at that time, and my checkbook was in there, my paycheck was in there, even my car insurance. Anyhow, long story short, was I had a lot of nightmares. Three months later, the Cornwall police called me and said, we found your pocketbook in the woods. Of course, the cash was gone and everything was ruined, but I had to start all over. And now our information is in the dark web. From the time we start going to school, we apply for our first jobs. You're in the military. Your Social Security is out there, date of birth, the whole nine yards. Now it's a matter of not if, but when somebody's going to take advantage of it. So it's been statistically shown that when people are a victim of identity theft or fraud, it keeps happening because our information is bought and sold in the dark web and sold in bundles, like, not even individual.
And one guy got a call one time when an Ohio state trooper called him and said, I have your license. He said, it's 02:00 in the morning.
How could you have my license? He said, we just arrested somebody with yours and 199 others that he bought in a flea market for $80.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: 200 people.
And then when the equifax breach happened and it affected 143,000,000 people, that's half of America.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: So the bottom line is that when people are victims of identity theft, oftentimes they're going to need that extra protection, the legal thing, because it affects them in getting jobs loans.
They can find mortgages in their name.
Somebody was stopped on a routine stop from a police officer. And when they ran the license and registration, they found that there was a warrant out for their arrest in Alabama. Meanwhile, the guy had never been to Alabama. He lives in Illinois.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: So these things can involve character criminal as well. And so I'm very passionate about helping people to have access to equal justice under law.
24 hours emergency protection in both of those plans for a very affordable price, and we even offer it as a voluntary employee benefit. So now I can bring it to a small company that can't afford benefits and it's voluntary. It doesn't cost the owner anything to offer it. And the people have the coverage and it's a now benefit. It's not like the insurance I sell.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: They can use it every single day and never get canceled.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
That's awesome. Actually, I'm a member of Legal Shield. I have legal shield and ID Shield. And ID Shield has been great, man. I get just tips and warned if something looks weird and they do scans. And it's definitely a peace of mind is what it does, too. It helps you with peace of mind. Exactly. Yeah. And then with legal shield, I've actually used it. I bought the business addendum or whatever it is, too. So I've used it for my business and individual.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Right. And it's really wonderful. They're coming out with more and more supplements so that the solopreneurs and the entrepreneurs that are working remotely and from home are able to get business advice, too, in addition to the personal.
And they have peace of mind knowing that their college students are covered as well.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Nationwide up to the age of 26 now.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: And they added a $3 million protection policy to the identity theft protection that just happened two weeks ago.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Oh, that's great. Okay. All right. Wonderful. And what does that mean?
[00:22:51] Speaker B: What's the benefit if you've become a victim of identity theft and it costs you money to have childcare or elder care for an attorney?
Not covered under.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: The legal shield membership.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Part, that covers everything. Yeah.
In the 25% part, that's not. Yeah, it would cover that and it would cover other things. So it's a protection policy.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: That's what they call it.
And it went from 1 million to 3 million. Wow. At no extra charge.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: No extra charge to the members. That's even better.
So you're able to help individuals in a wide range of aspects of life that we take for. So that's, people are definitely going to want to get in touch with you. And speaking of that, I could talk to you all day about this stuff, but we're going to wrap it up.
I want to be able to have people get in touch with you, Nancy, because certainly the audience has grasped the essence of Nancy Wolf in your journey through life and how you're helping people avoid some negative things that could happen to them in. So everybody out there, if you want to reach out to Nancy Wolf to ask her about insurance or legal shield, an id shield said, you can call her. You can call her or text her at 9144-3889 and I would definitely take her up on it, especially if you're at Medicare age and you want to alleviate some of the confusion navigating that crazy system.
So, Nancy, I want to ask you two final questions. Right. And I'm going to give you the opportunity to go back and speak to your younger self. I know you alluded to that previously, so I'm going to ask you this, and it's okay if you say the same answer, but you get a chance to sit down with seven to ten year old Nancy Wolf and you want to give her advice about life. What are you going to tell her again?
[00:25:00] Speaker B: I was going to tell her to reach out and get help from people who have more experience than I do and to keep an open mind and to keep learning constant improvement, 1% better every day.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. All right, so put on a different hat. Now. You're speaking with Nancy, the young businesswoman entrepreneur, and you want to give her some business advice. What are you going to tell her?
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Have a contract reviewed before you sign it.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: I love that one.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Seek out mentors, constant improvement as far as personal development. Read, listen to people, listen to podcasts like yours.
And if I had it to do again instead of going for teaching, be honest with you, I would take something in the computer field and business administration so I would understand how to run a business, because that's why I had the partner, because I didn't know about business and he did. So I allowed myself to be naive and let him run it and spend all the money.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Oh, boy.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: And not discuss it. Like, he spent that money as fast as I made it. I was a top salesperson in my company, and I led by examples. So that's the other thing is being a role model. So I led by examples so that I could teach other salespeople that we had. And he did all the books and the repairs and things like that of this machine that we sold.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: It was a cleaning machine and it was a very expensive one, so there was a lot of cash. And everybody kept saying to me, what is he doing with all the money? What is he doing with all the money? I said, I don't know.
So I would want to know more about business accounting and marketing. Marketing, because that was a knock on doors and word of mouth advertising.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Yeah, those are all definitely valuable. Yeah, that's a very good point. People can say I go out and work for myself, be an entrepreneur, and many think it's easy, but when you're going out there, yes, you have to know the content, which could be the easy part because you had to know the content. But all the other aspects of starting and running a business the way you want it to be run. Yeah, there's a lot to learn, and we make a lot of mistakes in the beginning. That's a given.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Still making mistakes.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: So am I.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: But I have people to ask.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Now, that's the thing. You surround yourself with the experts, and it saves you some heartache and stress and more money.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: And I wish that I had met you years ago and I would have had somebody that I could relate to that was compassionate and understanding.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: I didn't have that.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you do now. And I'm grateful that you and I are friends and you've come into my life and there's a reason why. And we're going to continue our relationship, and I wish you all the best. Keep doing what you're doing. You're a wonderful human being and you're providing services that are helping so many people.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Thank you again so much for this opportunity.
It's an honor to be asked to be on your podcast, and I'm going to tell people about it. Thank you.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Thanks, Nancy.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: All right.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: All right, everybody. You be well and take care of yourselves.
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and give us a review to help others find it. If you find yourself immersed in adversity and would like to find support from other men in times of struggle, please become a member of my men's supporting men collaboration tribe by emailing me at
[email protected] expressing your interest, and I'll get in touch with you. Speak to you soon. Bye.
