Top 10 Moments - Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the top 10 moments of ADJUSTED. In this bonus episode our host, Greg Hamlin, talks about his top 5 favorite moment from ADJUSTED.

ADJUSTED is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp.

Comments and Feedback? Let us know at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/F5GCHWH

Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkindcomp.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com

Transcript

Greg Hamlin: 0:12

Hello, everybody, and welcome to adjusted. I'm your host, Greg Hamlin coming at you from beautiful Birmingham, Alabama. And, again, no co host today you're stuck with just me. But I'm excited to be here and to go over some of my favorite moments from adjusted. This has been a fun two year journey from creating a podcast to interviewing thought leaders and meeting with people throughout the country engaged in workers compensation to talk about how they're making an impact. And so as I've thought through the last two years, I really have thought about some of my favorite moments and the people that I had a chance to meet in those moments. So today, I'm going to be sharing with you the top five quotes slash moments from Justin. So we'll just dive right in with number five, which comes from Episode 21. With Carl Van, he is the president of the International Insurance Institute. And funny thing, so I first met Carl, when I was an adjuster maybe 10 years ago, he was actually maybe as a supervisor at the time in Cincinnati, and he was hired by my former employer to come in and do a training on settlement negotiations. And I was so impressed with him then that I ended up buying his book, The eight characteristics of an awesome adjuster and spent some time with that and used as a training handbook for my team when I was in Kentucky. And so in this episode, I had a chance to actually go over that book with him and have him share some of those principles with our audience, which I thought was really fun. And so I'll go ahead and share that with you now,

Carl Van: 1:52

the more experienced we get, the more technically strong we get, we pride ourselves on how much we know, and how technical we are, and how nobody can fool us and how we know every exclusionary policy or whatever it is every rule under every worker's comp, you know, state statute. So we tend to pride ourselves on how technically strong we are. And we forget what we're actually here to do. And so I think as people get their experience grows, they become technically strong, they tend to pride themselves on that. And they forgot, they basically forgot at the at the core of it, we're in the business of helping people, which is oftentimes while the new people don't know they're not technically technically strong, will do actually quite a bit better job of providing empathy and customer service. And people have been doing it for 15 years.

Greg Hamlin: 2:40

I think what stands out the most to me in this quote is he says at the core of it, we're in the business of helping people. And I really liked that, because ultimately, that's what we do. On the claims side for workers compensation insurance carriers, we are keeping the promise that was made to that particular employer that we would be there when they needed us. And I think it can be easy to forget in the craziness of claims that that's what it's all about. At the core, we're in the business of helping people and if we reset everything we do to that spot, I think it changes our outlook. And it changes how we handle what we do every day. Coming in at number four is from Episode 16. And this is Alex Elswick. And this was a little different path to take. I had run into Alex a few years back when I lived in Lexington, Kentucky, and I had attended one of his meetings where he spoke about how he overcame an opioid addiction. And this is something I feel like in our society as a whole. We don't talk about enough. A big part of that is it's embarrassing to talk about our struggles with something like I think there's a stigma behind it. And what I really appreciated about Alex is Alex punched through that stigma. And he talked about things that are very difficult to talk about in a very open and transparent way that I felt like needed to happen. We know that in the Workers Compensation space. So many of our injured workers get started on or had been started on opioids for legitimate reasons, difficult work injuries. And then over time, in some cases, that has morphed into something different. So Alex, sharing his story from overcoming that and then becoming an addict and then eventually becoming homeless to then find his way back to helping others overcome addiction really hit hard for me. And so I want to share that quote from his episode with voices of hope.

Alex Elswick: 4:50

It's an important question. So the first thing I would say is I learned I don't know if I learned this in sports or recovery, but it applies both places and it's brilliant. You got to connect before you correct In other words, you know, when you're working with your kids, when you're coaching, when you're doing anything, you can't just come in and start telling people what to do and criticizing them if you haven't built a rapport. And so when I'm talking to family members, in that sense, what I'm saying is you really have to protect the relationship always, that's really, really important. Because like I said, they're, they're in a place of shame. They're in a place of trying to protect their ability to survive. And so what they need, right, there is really some compassion. So that's step one.

Greg Hamlin: 5:27

So I love that, quote, you have to connect before you correct. I think that that's really important. Obviously, you know, being in management as long as I had been being a father, I think that's such an important concept is you have to have a relationship of trust with people before they listen. So Alex talked a lot about that, in that there was no way for him to overcome his opioid addiction, with out the caring relationships of people who put their arm around him and really helped him. And I think whether you're coaching your kids softball team, or you're leading a workers compensation team, or you're the president of a company, at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we connect before we correct and the correction has to happen, but the connection is important. And so that's why this one was number four. For me, I really love it, we're getting into some of in my mind, some of the, I call them like universal truths, they don't have to apply to just workers comp, they could apply to really multiple facets of our lives. So I really appreciate Alex for sharing that. Coming in at number three was our own van Lange, who's the director of safety, we call it ramp here at Berkley industrial calm. And he shared a quote that really struck a chord with me in how to build a safety culture. So one of the things van does as he goes out into the field and works with our insurers to figure out how they can build a safety culture. Berkley industrial comp is built on ensuring high hazard workers compensation risks, meaning jobs that are dangerous. And so van spends every day working with our employers to figure out how they can build a safety culture. So those horrible days don't happen. Obviously, when you're insuring jobs where people are working 30 or 40 feet in the air, working with explosives, working underground, and mines, there's a high risk component there. And if there's not a safety culture, something that could go wrong. And another type of job in this type of job could result in a fatality, or a permanent life changing event where someone's a paraplegic or loses a limb. And so then talking about how to build a safety culture shared this quote with me.

Van Langham: 7:39

That's right. And, you know, I've used this saying in safety training as well that, you know, building a safety culture is like raising a child, they can be easy now, or it can be easy later, but it can't be both.

Greg Hamlin: 7:51

So I absolutely love this quote, I hadn't heard it before. But building a safety culture is like raising a child, it can be easy, or it could be easy later, but it can't be both. And that's so true. We put in the hard work up front in most parts I felt like and whether that's with our team, building safety culture of raising children, we put in the hard work up front, so that it can be easy later. And if we skip those steps, then it ends up being really difficult in the end. And so I just thought that that was just a real nugget of truth that I thought about a year and a half later, still a quote that sometimes I shares, it can be easy now or it can be easy later, but it can be both. And there's a lot of truth in that. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. So number two, we're getting close to the number one quotes, but this one is amazing. It is from Timothy Alexander. And honestly, if you just want to spend 45 minutes, writing down quotes, I really encourage you to go to Episode 17 and just listen to the entire episode. Because literally everything Timothy Alexander says could be on a poster somewhere as an inspiring quote. He is just a phenomenal human being one of the favorite people that I've ever met in my lifetime, in that he just exudes positivity. And for somebody who's been through as many challenges as he's been through to do that. It's just me mind blowing. So for those who don't know he was a going to be a division one scholarship athletes for football had offers from schools like Florida around the time Tim Tebow was at Florida, and then went through a tragic car accident coming home from a football game, or going to I can't remember which that resulted in him becoming a paraplegic and really having all those dreams ripped away from him. And in that episode, he talks through what it was like to learn how to eat again and learn how to talk again, and to take back control of his life and So I'll share this with you now and then share my thoughts after. So here you go.

Timothy Alexander: 10:03

I'll never forget meeting with Dr. Tice, here at UAB was going on my last heat because I had to cut my back open when I broke my spine and gave me a titanium plate with five screws. So I got a huge cut going down the middle of my back where they opened me opened like a watermelon. And this was the same week where I had just tried to commit suicide three times in one week. And so I told myself, as soon as I get to the doctor, and the doctor asked me that they always asked on a scale of one to 10 was what's the pain? I'm like. And I'm like, I put my mom out of the room. I said Dr. Tice, I don't need you to talk to me, like I'm a patient. I don't need to talk you to talk to me, giving me this PhD talk. I don't need any of that. What I need is for you to be completely honest, because I don't want to be here. And I've already tried to commit suicide, right? So is it anything you can do to help me? And Dr. Tice, took off his white jacket, sat down on his seat. And he said, Tim, your mind will kill you quicker than this injury will. If you don't get your mind right. The best information I can give you is get your mind right. And it was on that day when Dr. Thais told me to get your mind right is when I went on this hiatus and Trent being transformed by the renewing of my mind. So I

Greg Hamlin: 11:45

just overall I'm really impressed with Timothy Alexander ta he like he goes by he says Your mind will kill you quicker than this injury. Well, this was a conversation he was having with his doctor about the power of his mind, and that his mind could be a competitive advantage. And I really think you know, as I think through those people who have come through on the other side of difficult catastrophic injuries, it really seems like the one thing that stands out to me is the mindset. And he is so hyper focused on that, that it inspires me. And he talked a lot in that episode about eating. I mean, obviously he gets discouraged. He still can't walk today, but he still believes he will someday, which is inspiring to me. And so just really encourage people to take a listen to that episode. And think about where your mind is at now in your own life. I think about it frequently and what things I can do to better control that because I think that's the difference in him. He could have spent the rest of his life in a hospital being taken care of. And instead he works for the University of Alabama in Birmingham with division one athletes coaching them, and at the same time is married to a beautiful woman has a wonderful life. But it's not without him being able to overcome those challenges. And a lot of that I think started in his head first. So very powerful. All right, so number one, this is my favorite quote from a year and a half, almost two years of doing adjusted. It comes with Becky Curtis, episode three, Becky Curtis is the founder of take courage coaching, and they provide coaching for injured workers who have been through difficult injuries. And I'm really impressed with their program. But also with her as a person. She was in a very difficult motor vehicle accident that it was a work related injury and became a partial quadriplegic and decided through that process much like Timothy Alexander that she was going to move forward, create her own path and help others who dealt with chronic pain. So I want to share this quote with you and I'll share my thoughts after

Becky Curtis: 14:02

there. There used to be an ask the question on a scale of one to 10 What's your pain? Tell me about your pain? How are you doing? And, and you know, and so that gets the focus, we know that what we focus on we empower and enlarge in our brain, learning the language learning to drive all of these things as we do them and focus on them. They get easier and easier and easier. And that's what happens with pain. It gets easier and easier and easier. You you talk to somebody who has chronic pain and they'll say my pain just gets worse and worse and worse. Yeah. Because that's what we focus on what we what we focus on. We empower and enlarge. So as we try to turn that around in clients by saying tell me what's going well. When we first asked that question, they don't have anything to say what I don't know anything that's going well. I can't think of anything But after a while, as we asked that question, there might be a time where I forget that and they've been thinking about that all week. Hey, you forgot to ask us what's going well, I have five things to say.

Greg Hamlin: 15:14

So I just absolutely love this. It does go back to mindset again. But she says, we know what we focus on. We empower and enlarge in our brains. And I really really believe that that that the things we put our attention to we empowered, enlarge, and it has made me probably in all the things that I've done in adjusted the podcast, this one single quote, has made me consider more my own life than anything else that's been shared with me and that I it's made me think about, well, what do I focus on, because the things that we focus on whatever those things are, we're in power, we're empowering and enlarging. And so if we focus on the things, whether that's pain, difficult relationships, any number of different things, then we make those things bigger. And conversely, if we focus on the positive things, the things that really bring us happiness, then we are empowering and enlarging those. And that's something that I can't tell you how many times with my children over the last year, I've said, Hey, remember that which we focus on, we empower and enlarge. So there's really a lot of truth to that favorite favorite quote of the episode. I really want to thank everybody who has supported us as we've put this podcast out there, it's grown. It's been a fun journey for me to be able to meet some of these different people in the industry, and share their stories with you. And I really hope that as we move into season four that you will follow along. And if you know amazing guests or hosts that people are people that we should talk to reach out to us, let us know because we want to get those stories out there for everybody to hear so that as an industry we can be better overall. And with that, I'll end by saying our quote, which is, do write think differently, and don't forget to care. And that's it for the season.