#320 Adam Crabbe – Transcript

Jess Brady
This week’s guest is Adam Crabbe. He’s a risk strategy specialist at Zurich. But I wanted to add him to talk about something that happened in his life. That was pretty dramatic. And how advisors can help people when something unexpected occurs in their life. It was quite fascinating. And I left the conversation with my mind buzzing with ideas of how we can support better conversations and make sure our team are trained to pick up on cues and help think outside of the box. I hope you enjoy today’s chat. Hi, Adam.

Adam Crabbe
Hi, Jess. How are you?

Jess Brady
I’m great. How are you doing?

Adam Crabbe
Well, actually, really well. Thank you.

Jess Brady
That is very, very good to hear. And it’ll make more sense as we go through the conversation today. Why I asked that was a little bit of a pause in the beginning. I feel like I always say this because it’s true. But I think we’re in for a fascinating conversation today. Before we get into the really specific reasons as to why I wanted to have you as a lovely and esteemed guest for today’s podcast. For the people that don’t know you, Adam, maybe you can help them learn a little bit more about you and help us know what is your story.

Adam Crabbe
I’d be happy to do that. So I am a bit of an insurance nerd, Jess, I hate to admit that, but it is true. So love life insurance, love advice. And those two things have really stepped me to where I am today, which is you know, official business card says risk strategy specialist, but I kind of create content, all around life insurance and advice and sort of bring that to the fore at PD days conferences. I’ve been doing that for a number of years and loving it.

Jess Brady
So let’s learn a little bit more about Adam. So that’s your work life. Yes. Tell us a little bit about sort of your other life. Presumably you have another life. I know you have another life. Tell me a bit about that.

Adam Crabbe
I do. So I am married, in fact, just celebrated my gosh. 23rd wedding anniversary, which is ridiculous.

Jess Brady
Oh my god. Wow.

Adam Crabbe
Thank you. I have four delightful children. They are for teenagers. And so having a job that involves travel is fantastic at the moment they have to be they have their wonderful. A eldest is currently 19 youngest is 13 going on 14. So there’s a lot of attitude around the house. But you know, we have a pretty good in that regard. I have two for pets as well love dogs. And yeah, that’s kind of my life outside of outside of work.

Jess Brady
You have four teenage children. Oh, my God, and you had four children. I didn’t realize they were all teenagers. Wow, what a time you must have had over the last few years.

Adam Crabbe
COVID has has definitely taught us a few things. Patience is one of them. And I think anyone out there that is thinking about kids or has kids. And like surely gets better with age. I think the short answer to that is no. But I’m told it will improve eventually.

Jess Brady
Just spreading hope early in the conversation today. Adam Well done. All the people that are like struggling with toddlers learning that actually in 10 years time it’s not gonna be much easier. One thing you haven’t mentioned though, is that you quite like writing a book The back.

Adam Crabbe
I do I do, I think it’s important that we will do something outside of work outside of family. And I know you probably got a question a bit later on for me around what’s good for mental health, but honestly for that it is that it’s motorcycle riding. It’s something I kind of fell into. I was kind of commuter here. I’m in Sydney. And you know, did for many years, yeah, buses and trains and getting to the office and one afternoon it was a three hour trip from door to door and I remember getting home saying to the wife look enough’s enough. If there’s got to be a better way of doing this, and I have motorcyclists in the family, and my brother and my stepfather, and we just thought, Well, why not do it? Why not give it a go? So I was a bit late to the motorcycling. I’ve been doing it for years now. But certainly not something I did when I was young. And once I started, it was like an addiction. What happened? So yes, often, I think one of the best bits of advice I got when I first started was you’re going to come off at some stage. Generally, you sort of brush yourself off and pick yourself up and off you go. But yeah, that wasn’t my experience. So I was, I was actually on holidays on annual leave. And it was a beautiful, sunny afternoon. So I decided to just go for a quick black, quick ride. And I was going I was only five minutes from home actually. And even the police are not quite sure what happened. So I didn’t pass the I didn’t blacked out. But going through a roundabout, police believe I may have been nudged. All traffic was going in one direction. But still not quite sure. Next thing I remember is coming into contact with the ground on my back initially then on my front rolling and see my bike doing flips next to me, and ended up kind of on the side barrier. And as I didn’t blackout I remember everything. I remember people coming up to me, I remember the excruciating pain. I remember the fun ambulance trip, which then became a intensive care ambulance trip because they kind of lean me forward took a look at my back and realize that there was some some damage there. And the ambo I remember saying to me, I’m gonna give you something now, and you’re not gonna remember much after that. And he was right. It was. I can’t remember what it was. But it was some form of opioid and it was not pleasant. I just remember. You know, seeing things and hearing things. But yeah, so what I managed to DGS was once I got finally got to hospital, I had shattered my right scapula. So my right shoulder blade. I had broken seven ribs, punctured and collapsed lung a little bit of blood getting in as well. Yeah, so they quickly did some scans got me up to the high dependency unit. And yeah, I spent, like I only spent a week in hospital. And that’s because my beautiful wife is not in paid work. She works very hard at home looking after the kids.

Jess Brady
Thank you for being very specific about not being in paid work. She’s very clear on calling that out.

Adam Crabbe
Definitely, definitely, She works really hard. And if she was able to support me outside of work, because I was like from insurance speak, I was totally disabled for a period of about seven to eight weeks. I couldn’t really do anything. Anyone listening that’s had broken ribs will know that anything you try and do is debilitating, whether it’s sneezing, coughing, talking, breathing. Yeah, everything. So kind of made a bit of a mess. Um, so

Jess Brady
if you did, you really did. And so why I wanted to have you on today’s chat is as you have already pointed out, you come from a life insurance background. Ironically, you do something that many underwriters would shiver at, which is ride a bike in Sydney. And then you had this pretty spectacular accident that was debilitating for a long time. And you’re talking about the period that was sort of that acute phase. But and I want to sort of get stuck into a bit more around how advisors can support people when they go through this. But no doubt there was a much longer journey to recovery, if you ever will be fully recovered from this.

Adam Crabbe
Yeah, definitely. I it was a weird period. Yes. I remember being in hospital. I have a lot of time to think and just question what you’re doing. And yeah, the journey piece was was a topic one and I’m happy to sort of step you through that in this particular podcast. But I think what was one of the surprising things of the whole event was when I was I don’t know maybe three weeks in was back of home that stage, hardly even walking. One of the first questions I said to my surgeon I remember the words just sort of spilling out of my mouth not really thinking too much about was, how soon can I get back on the bike? Which you might think is like, it’s not so right. But yes, it’s such a weird thing like, and I think this is something that advisors really need to be mindful of is if you are ever engaging with a customer, or client, and you’re suddenly questioning what they’re doing, whether it’s occupation, whether it’s outside of work, there’s that logical piece, which may suggest that you need to say, well, you know what, you need to stop doing that, and do something else, something a bit lower risk. But when you think about what makes people take, and you know, what is good for someone’s mental health can involve different levels of, I suppose, risk. And for me, yes, mine’s on perhaps the higher end of the risk spectrum. But I think not being able to do that would be detrimental to my mental health, longer term, shorter finding something else to do, but you think about whether it’s playing soccer, or whether it’s, you know, getting this tiny little golf ball, you know, hundreds of yards into these tiny little hot, like, those sorts of things. Some people might say, that is what they love to do. Others might think it’s crazy. But there is something, I think that advisors need to kind of consider in all of that, that sometimes when even things go wrong, people will either want to jump back on the horse, or in my case back on the bike. And I think advisors need to be mindful that they may have to actually consider partnering with them through that journey.

Jess Brady
I’ve never thought about that. In that way. Did you find that everyone was very unsupportive when you were trying to get yourself back on the bike?

Adam Crabbe
That’s a great question. One I’m not actually asked very often in because of what I do. Yeah, you would often think that perhaps a close support network might be like, What are you doing? You’re crazy. I’m very fortunate, my wife very early on, recognized and said, Look, yeah, you know, I’m happy to support you getting back on the bike, she’d we often joke now she says, you know, people often get three strikes around, I think it might be one strike. It might be a bit she she said to me more than once that, you know, not being able to do that you’re a different person. And I think that’s, there’s something in that, that, you know, people that know people well, if they have that outlet, that’s not work that’s maybe not family, but does allow the body to detox, then people recognize that my mum was one of the first to say you’re getting back on you, like got to make sure you get back on. So yes, in short, I had a really supportive family. I’ve had some colleagues and others that have, you know, laughed and said, Surely you’re nuts. What are you doing? Even if you just, you know, tone down the risk, maybe get off the motorized version and do the pedal version but donning lycra, you know, that that’s not for me. And there’s risk in everything right, that’s, that’s the weird thing whether whether I’m writing a pushbike and even doing you know, I love going for a walk at lunch so just an hour’s walk just to clear the air clear their head there’s risks than that there’s you know, 1000s of pedestrians that end up in hospital each and every year because of transport related accidents. So I think there is the view that regardless of what people do to help them through their life what they do outside of work there is a level of risk and equally choosing to do nothing sitting on the couch has risks as well right like we could start to develop these horrendous chronic illnesses and you know, that’s not for me either. So yeah, it look it’s a weird one but and probably a long answer to a question but I’m very fortunate that I had a terrific support network that were quite encouraging of me to get back out and do what I love doing.

Jess Brady
And are you fully recovered?

Adam Crabbe
Yes is the short answer I was fortunate that the the injuries sustained were ones that could recover quite well just over two years now and I’ve got pretty much full mobility back in that arm.

Jess Brady
He’s lifting his arm I can see it going down well done

Adam Crabbe
casting but but now at this time of this recording, it’s winter and usually that’s the period where it starts to you start to feel a little things muscles just reminding you of the the accident but honestly I’m I’m 100% I’m lucky very lucky. I think if the bike had decided to land on me then it would have been a very different story. It was a complete write off. I put down part of my luck I suppose to the fact that I do wear like full gear all the time. There are some riders that I see in shorts T shirts thongs and I just I just questioned sanity at that point. Maybe because I’ve come off right but for me it’s it’s a saying in our in our motorcycling is all the gear all the time. And that’s definitely me. I do look like an astronaut when I you know Jump on their bike. So I think that’s great. Yeah, it’s risk, but I manage the risk and maybe that to justice because of the work that we’re in, right? It’s life insurance device. It’s risk management. I acknowledge it, I understand it, and I accept it.

Jess Brady
So let’s talk about the device side of things. You were insured. Yes, you have. Good. You, you presumably have an advisor had an advisor? Yes. Are you comfortable sharing what you wanted that interaction to look like? Or what best practice could have looked like, for you and what you needed and what your family needed? At different points of the journey?

Adam Crabbe
Yeah, definitely. It’s, it’s something I think that not only I learned from, but it sort of led me to create a piece of work for Zurich, the client connection, but really, it allowed me time to step back and understand what was perhaps important to me from an advice relationship, which regrettably, for me, wasn’t a great experience. And I had to put that down to the fact that maybe, maybe I didn’t have the right discussion, maybe with an advisor early on about what was perhaps important for me if something was to go wrong. And I don’t think there’s any fault per se on on the advisor in my particular situation. But I think that maybe there’s that understanding of Well, surely this is someone who has a large support network, as you know, for kids, wife, who could provide me, you know, 24 hour a day care, surgeon, GP, a fantastic employer in Zurich, you know, a supportive family. And I think many advisors are probably listening, thinking, Well, is there room for someone else? Like what what potentially could an advisor bring to that table? But I think the easiest way to answer that would be, you know, imagine yourself in a situation where your life is effectively pause, and everybody around you is just still in play. And while I did have support, phenomenal support, I felt there was something missing. Okay. And it was perhaps someone that could just, you know, check in from, from insurance perspective and other claims payments coming through. But even more than that, and I think this is where some, I’m noticing, now, some risk specialists are really differentiating themselves is getting themselves into a position where even if there’s not a claim, right, it could be a non claim, but something’s happened. What those advisors are doing is they’re stepping in, and they’re just being that sounding board for a, okay, is money coming through, it could be from a worker’s comp, it could be from motor accident claim, it could be some other mechanism, it could just be from their work. But But more than that, for me, I think one of the things that I did, and would highly recommend, if for advisors are wanting to deal with this and understand some of the non financial stuff they could do, is I tracked my milestones. And it they were daily, they were weekly, but just allowing me to be like, Okay, well, I’m in a position now where I’m taking, you know, 35 medications a day. I don’t like that, I want to try and work on improving that. So I would, I couldn’t write clearly, but I used my phone and just documented verbally, you know, where I was at any particular point. And, you know, over the weeks and months, you know, I’d look back at it and say, Well, you know, I’ve really progressed well, in that, in that regard. You know, I’ve gone from 35 to 20 tablets today. And that decreased I think by about week six or seven to, you know, a dozen or so. And I remember my surgeon just saying to me, Adam, don’t be here, take the medication, I might, but I want to be on track. I want to try and get myself off these if I can. So it was these little things that I was doing, even measuring how far up I could move my arm over time. I think week, week seven, I could finally lay flat so I could lie back in bed and just these little one percenters and maybe having someone to kind of check in and say, hey, you know, you know when last we spoke, you said the money was coming in and you were doing well with the meds. How’s that progressing? How many days a week he got doing the physio. Have you moved to the exercise physiologist yet? What? What’s that? So I think in that regard, those are probably things I would recommend even positioning with with clients. And that I think in itself is a challenge because if you’d asked that of me before the accident, it would have been a hard one to answer. What sort of support would I have wanted? I don’t know it was the short answer, but maybe sharing these sorts of stories to say, Well, look, these are the things that other customers other people in the community are wanting in a time of crisis is that something which aligns to someone else’s values. See, my advice relationship regrettably, wasn’t fantastic.

The advice firm did contact me. Oddly enough, just because it was time for a quote unquote, review. And this was about two weeks after the accident. It wasn’t the adviser, but someone in the in the firm that actually rang. So I said to them what had happened, and that they got off the phone pretty quickly, because they felt that I was, you know, they were maybe intruding, but I don’t know if that information was fed back to the advisors. So yeah, throughout the journey, I they actually didn’t hear back from the advice firm at all. So yeah, look, as I said, not that I think there’s any fault, particularly on a particular advisor or firm, but maybe part of that was not really setting the precedent, perhaps what I would have expected as a client as a customer in that regard.

Jess Brady
Adam, my brain has got so many questions for you. Why haven’t you called your advisor yet? We’re still not in a good, like we were intending on what was your intention at that point? Knowing that you were pretty sick?

Adam Crabbe
Yeah. Look, I actually have family members also that are advisors. And I’ve chosen deliberately to deal with advisors outside the family. So I’m in a situation where I’m thinking of just simply changing advisors. That’s kind of where I’m at and partly why I haven’t actually reached out to this particular planner on my own

Jess Brady
sorry, let me re ask you the question. Sure. When they called you for your review, which happened to be at the time of when this was all going down? Was there a particular reason why you hadn’t engaged them at that point? Or soon after? Presumably, you knew you were gonna have to go and claim?

Adam Crabbe
Yeah, I think for me, it was more that there was a level of, I kind of knew what I was doing. So that was part of it. And even though I do know what I was doing, you know, that that soon after the accident, I wasn’t in the right headspace. So it was probably, it was probably about the time that I was actually going back to work, which was about three months after the accident that I was kind of in a in a space where I was then thinking about well, why isn’t the advisor on me back here, or maybe I should reach out to them. But there was so much that was going on in my life at the moment. Because also that was that time I was studying to get back to work was also when the COVID locked down to happen. So I felt like I’d been tracking these milestones, I was on track to going back to work and then bang, another roadblock that happened. And so I think there was a combination of things just that when I look back now, I think, well, maybe I should just pick up the phone and give them a call. But I think part of it was that I kind of felt like I knew what I was doing. But then there was a lot going on. And also that I think mentally I wasn’t quite 100% on track.

Jess Brady
Hmm. It brings up a very good conversation with staff members about almost for any advisor that’s listening. I mean, I don’t know what everyone does. But we do weekly meetings, almost bringing you up as a case study to any of our team members who get on the phone and who have interactions with members, and making sure that they understand what you might have needed in that moment and how to ask you exploratory questions to find out what they could do to help and obviously make sure that that gets fed back to the advisor, and there’s some sort of thread or workflow or something started. Because that’s a training issue.

Adam Crabbe
So yeah, I think it’s a great point, just the fact that if as a business, you kind of regroup with your staff each week, and just sort of talk through any issues, what’s been happening. And the fact that you know, someone like me, or a client, or like you just reached out for review for a particular client and then out they’ve just, you know, been in a serious accident, multiple broken bones, they’re back out of hospital. So, yes, hopefully someone in that team then might be able to say, Well, gee, maybe we should do something, put them on to a bit of a, you know, a regular, even just a phone catch up to say, hey, what’s happening? It’s been two weeks now. Have you spoken with your physio, what’s the latest update? Is the money coming through from whatever source it is? But yeah, just just making sure that what is essentially may be expected of that particular client if there is any expectation or maybe just asking the question, is there anything you need from us? Is it okay if we contact you say in the next couple of weeks, just to kind of check in reflecting on some of like, the milestones for example that I mentioned. Because I think part of the The work that we’ve done, actually in Zurich is that while you know, technical expertise from planners is important, what a lot of clients are really looking for is that kind of interpersonal peace, you know, one, the technical brings to their situation, this trust this care, honesty that the sorts of things that I think really come to the fore when something does go wrong. And you know, that could mean just picking up the phone and just checking in, you know, a five minute phone call. And I’d look, I know, many advisors we speak to say that their time poor, and we get that, but being able to maybe just have that opportunity just to sort of check in that, I think can really help be a differentiator for advisors in business.

Jess Brady
Yeah, I mean, just thinking as you’re speaking, there’s an element of pragmatism here, like, perhaps in your circumstance, which is a really interesting one. Like if you have a big business, and you have someone who’s potentially quite green, or quite new, who their sole job is to organize reviews or renewal conversations. And then they’re sort of given this information. We know that when people have big life, things happen, as humans, really, we’re a bit shit at knowing what to say, you know, someone gets sick, someone’s injured, someone passes away, that’s close to someone, like, we don’t quite feel like we’ve got the coping mechanisms. And so we sort of turn and run the other way. And so, you know, I’m just thinking about my team, we’ve got young green people, I’d like to think that they would absolutely let us know. But, you know, I think it’s an important case study to put to the team and say, what would we do here? How would we tackle this, what I do is do we have, I’m going to be fascinated to hear what my team’s say, se. But I, I really want to drill into this milestone piece, because you’ve really piqued my interest here. So action item for me, and probably everyone else has to go and have a fascinating discovery conversation with maybe the greenest person in the team and then see where you go from there. But I’m on what to do if something like your situation happens. And so thank you for sharing it. It doesn’t sound like it was very pleasant. But I hope that it leads to lots of training and opportunities for us to all do better for people next time. When you assigned and tell me to back off, you know that you can tell me to back off, if it’s too much. Were you assigned a case manager of any sorts or a psych person to help you through your journey?

Adam Crabbe
Yeah, so not a psych. In my particular case, I don’t think it was required to be honest with you. So, but just just thinking about a comment you made there, Jess, around engaging with your team. One of the things that I would recommend in terms of positioning this is, forget what you do for work. Forget that your advisors. Imagine this as someone in your family? What would what would you do in that situation? And again, there may be a multitude of answers. Some, like you mentioned the word green, I love that. I think if you’ve got maybe even younger people as part of your business, they probably haven’t experienced a traumatic event in their family. Or maybe they would maybe too young, for example, but what is it that they would do there? If they found out that it was, you know, a sibling, a loved one? What would they do? Would they want to contact them what they want to stand back? Leave them alone? And then I would think of that then in the context of advice, because often clients do become I know for many businesses and extension almost of their family, you know, we hear advisors that are going to events with families and funerals. And and I think, therefore, that context of family becomes I think, really important, because there may be an expectation that many clients are thinking, well, we trust this advisor like we do someone in our family. So would that then mean that the treatment should be any different?

Jess Brady
Yeah, I mean, the logical person in me says that you would have so much care and compassion and communication and all the things. But you’ve got to build robust systems and processes, which I want to come to in a second. It’s not how my brain works, but I’ve been thinking about it while you’ve been talking. Why I asked you about the case manager pieces, having never been through something like you. What I’ve heard from other people, though, is you can sometimes feel like no one’s really helping with the ecosystem that you have to endure. And it feels very disparate, because you’re working with so many different people and often they’re quite busy, like if your GP is meant to be the sort of person in the nuclear and they have 10 minute consults. Like it doesn’t quite work but To your point around having that person check in and sort of be that more holistic point, I’m trying to see if that was something that was available to you and wasn’t done how you’d hoped? Or do you actually just think that that’s a huge opportunity for advisors to step into that space,

Adam Crabbe
it’s definitely a massive opportunity, I was kind of looking at an end in on reflection, you know, it wasn’t necessarily case managers, it wasn’t the GP, everybody has time poor. And, you know, I, I felt myself using my physio, actually, for a lot of that just, you know, checking in milestone interaction, and my physio was phenomenal, or I’d spend, you know, I’d spend Gosh, an hour with them regularly, not daily, but certainly a few times a week. And that happened for weeks on NZ kind of get to know these people. But like you said, You alluded to, you know, 10 minutes with a GP, many physios, including mine, they would have like, back to backs. So they would, you know, manipulate, manage my muscles, my shoulder and my back, and we chat, and then they move on. And I’d be doing sort of some stretching, work, and then sort of be chatting with someone else. So I think everybody is time poor, including people around me, like, you know, my kids are at school, and my wife was doing things shopping or cleaning the house or, you know, doing what needs to be done. And I think having somebody else there that knows your health, they know your wealth situation, they know your super, they know, like really, that I think is an amazing opportunity for advisors to just be that, that extra voice to jump in to say, what’s happening, how’s it going, and then almost that, that center of influence in a way to really make sure that someone’s on track. And I say that because one of the things that still resonates with me is my physio said to me, you know, despite the physical work that’s involved with physiotherapy, my physio she said to me Look, 90% of what I do is what she does, is mental. If people are not mentally ready to kind of go through that rehab, that recovery piece, then she can manage muscles as much as she wants. And she shared with me examples of people who were in a, she said to me a much worse as they were in a, a better situation from an action perspective. And I was yet there many years into rehabilitation. And because they’re not geared up in their mind, they’re not on that road to recovery. Yet, for me, I was three months off work six months in physio, and then a little bit of exercise physiology after and I was pretty much back to normal within 12 months. So which she said to me was remarkable, but I was really wanting to get back to normality. And many will laugh at this but wanting to get back on the bike. And after six months, yes, that I had a replacement bike. It’s back in the garage now. And I’ve done close to 10,000 K’s on this new bike. So yeah, it’s because I might say, Oh, my God, what are you doing? But it’s my release? It’s it’s that thing that is good for my mental health?

Jess Brady
In a moment. Yeah, I That’s why I asked you earlier about the psych piece, because I think there has to be an acknowledgement that you know how your mind goes through the the journey is just as important maybe if not more important, given what you’ve said, then as to how your body goes through it. So let’s help advisors who feel busy, who feel time poor, like the other medical professionals you were talking about, and don’t currently have a really robust claims process. So they like me will say to you, we want to give everyone the time and space and attention that they need and want when there’s a claim. But what do you think claims best practice looks like today.

Adam Crabbe
So I think a lot of it does come down to the sort of client that you’re dealing with. If you’re dealing with young professionals, if you’re dealing with mature age clients, pre retirees, there’s likely to be a level of differentiation. But I think I use the words earlier first responder, I think is something which should apply across the board. So just being there as a first touch, if something was to happen, you want, I would certainly from the advisors we deal with and speak with and those are risk specialists I like to engage with, they’ll often say to us that they tell their clients, we want to be the first responder if something goes wrong. You know, so you want that, that spouse to pick up the phone and say, Look, something’s happened. I just want to let you know. And that can then give, I think the advice firm time to say okay, so let’s just map out a bit of a process here if it’s an insurer as BDMS can actually help in this regard. Right, if it’s a particular a fracture, you know, if the broken arm then ensures the industry, we kind of know what that is likely to look like from a time of workpiece. So it may be touching base with a client and say, Well look, you know, experience shows that you should expect, you know, X amount of weeks or X amount of months off. And then even just being proactive with that client to say, what is it that that you’d like from us over to particular period, you know, other clients like you could expect, and it might be just checking in financially, it could be making sure if there is an opportunity to claim what odor that is, is it through soup? Or is it outside of soup? Or is it through, you know, an IP product, it could be that element, or even just be, you know, a network of professionals that they may want to liaise with. So for me, for example, I never had a physio before. So the Advisor may know of a physio that works locally, some of their clients have used and would recommend. So just kind of being that sort of source of truth and direction, in a way, I think would be would be invaluable.

Jess Brady
Yeah, it’s almost like this two streams at play here, there’s the financial stuff, piece, because there is a lot to that all the claim forms and the follow ups and the case management liaison and all of that stuff, which I think there could be an element of process wrapped around so that there’s at least a skeleton for what a claim could look like. And of course be. And I’m talking about claims where a person has survived whatever has happened. But then listening to this milestone piece, it’s like, we need a whole different tract. And I think that asking permission is such an important point of care, can we do this? Is this helpful? Is this what you need, and actually getting them on board to agree to whatever it is, and then having that as sort of a, an Element that sits next to and in tandem? Is something I’ve never really thought about? And yet it makes so very much sense?

Adam Crabbe
Yeah, I’m sure there’s gonna be some clients are gonna be just like, look, leave me alone. I’m happy to to contact you as an advisor in you know, two months, three months, six months, but there’s likely to be others who perhaps are like me that just wanted to have a phone call. You know, I’ve known in my advisor for years. So just, you know, what it’s like, when you’re dealing with clients over a long period, they do become maybe not friends, but certainly closer than, you know, some other clients that you might deal with. Right. And just that regular check in would be? Well, certainly for me would have been would have been fantastic. And but for other clients, you’re right, that I think asking that permission, just so that there’s that not the ground rules, but you’re sort of seeking insight into what their expectations are.

Jess Brady
We’ve talked a lot today about what you needed. What did your family need than an advisor could have helped with during this period as well?

Adam Crabbe
That’s a good question. I think further support would have been fantastic. I know. I look at that speaking, honestly, I was fortunate. So one of the things that my employer did, actually, and we didn’t know this, but literally at the front door. Within a week, there was like a box of food. And we were like, wow, that was like, some might think that’d be weird, like a box of food. But these were pre prepared meals. And they were decent sized, like family sized meals. So I remember my wife kind of got upset in a good way. Because she’s like, why don’t and I don’t need to think about cooking now. Because I’ve got, you know, he’s a meal here and a meal there. I don’t even know what company it was just that it had a name of one of our one of our big bosses at Zurich and as a bit of a just kind of thinking of you during this time. And that meant so much even like it’s like, over two years now. It’s the first thing that comes to mind when you ask that question is some of those little things about and often family does that Right? They’ll just rock up with here’s a, here’s a dish of food that we wanted to make for you. We’re just it’s something you don’t have to think about. Yeah. So yeah, not that I’m suggesting advisors suddenly reached out to, you know, food companies and started giving food but I think those little things that people themselves may not think about whether it’s, you know, here’s a voucher for a local blog to come and mow your lawns for a week. You know, you know, I know your wife enjoys, whatever it is gardening or in a here’s a little voucher for it’s just or Bunnings voucher, I don’t know but something that may be aligned some out of the ordinary, it’s that it’s almost like that surprise and delight, despite the fact that something significant has happened. And I think it really does show that people do genuinely care.

Jess Brady
I think that’s a very, very, very fascinating tip. I’ve had two claims since we started the first. It’s not funny. The first one was when Glen and I both decided to take leave over Christmas of the first year of us being on leave. And so both of us were in Europe. And we were like all and it was only the two of us in the business. And Glenn was Glen’s client. And I know that he basically just called him almost every week just to be like, what’s going on? How are you? What can we do? And I know that the client really, really valued that. But I think being able to bring some structure, and some almost house rules into what we think about just as businesses grow, or get more complicated, you just want to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks, the cracks. So yeah, you’ve given me lots and lots of food for thought. Do you have any final thoughts ideas, before I go into rapid fire questions for you? I think some of the big takeouts for me is like, don’t assume that someone isn’t gonna want to do that thing anymore. And don’t not support them through that journey. And think about how you can give them a support that is around milestones. And that’s fascinating. And so in line with what we do from a gold perspective, it’s just through a different lens. But do you have any other sort of things that we should consider? From your son?

Adam Crabbe
Yeah, it really is an extension, I think of that point you made, I think it’s trying to remember that, while advice does think from the head, it’s shifting that in certain times to think from the heart, or that visceral using the gut instinct approach. Sometimes you’ve kind of got to leave rationale and reasoning to one side and just sort of check in to that. That’s certainly one of the things I would I would recommend advisors do, which I know many advisors do, instinctively, in some cases, but I think really dialing that up at a time of claim or non time, depending on the situation would be would be huge.

Jess Brady
Right? Are you ready for I could go on all day, but we’re not allowed to. Are you ready for some rapid fire questions?

Adam Crabbe
Yeah, hit me.

Jess Brady
You’ve talked about this for the last I don’t know, however long we’ve been chatting. But let’s just formally ask you what is one thing, Adam that you do to look after your mental health?

Adam Crabbe
I do love drop jumping on the back of my, my tribe for 900 cc parallel twin. So yeah, motorcycle enthusiast. A bit more cautious these days, but still love, love getting on. And yeah, just clearing the head.

Jess Brady
What’s a piece of advice that you would give to young Adam?

Adam Crabbe
I would say go with your gut instinct. I think quite often something happens in life that I’ll often deliberate on. I’m a procrastinator. Yes. And, but I’m, I believe in karma. And I think sometimes things pop up in life for a reason. And if it feels right, I’d say nine times out of 10. It’s the right decision. So if I was chatting to my younger self, now it would be when opportunities do come up, just grab it with both hands.

Jess Brady
Love that. What’s something that’s big on your bucket list that you haven’t ticked off yet?

Adam Crabbe
Something on my bucket list? Look, I’ve done a few hair raising things like skydiving and obviously motorcycle riding. So that sort of extreme side of things. I’ve never bungee jumped. I don’t know if that’s necessarily on a bucket list. But something like parasailing, I think would be something I’d love to do.

Jess Brady
Is that where you like run off a cliff with a parachute on your back?

Adam Crabbe
It might be but what I’m thinking is where you’re like on a beach and you’re running on the beach. And there’s like a boat in the water. And then when the boat takes off, and then you go

Jess Brady
and there’s a string attached? Yes. Ideally, yeah, I fall more into that one. Okay, okay. We’ll allow it. On this occasion, Adam will allow it to have whatever you want on your bucket list. And do you have a book that I should read as part of my fake book club?

Adam Crabbe
Look, I actually got a gift from my daughter, recently, and the book is called devoted by Dean Koontz. It was a really good read if you’d like a bit of like a bit of a scare factor, but a thrill. So it’s not for the faint hearted. But yeah, it was a book I enjoyed called devoted nothing to do with work. But that’s good.

Jess Brady
That’s fine. We need to balance in life. Thank you. I’ve already worked out the lack of thrill factor. So that’s coming out in multiple areas of your life. Bless you, Adam. How can people learn more about the good work that you do? Because you’ve created a whole raft of things off the back of this pretty significant event? Right?

Adam Crabbe
Yeah, we have. So we’ve called the client connection, but there’s a series of white papers that we published. One is lessons in leisure. So it’s effectively the data of what people are doing, including things like my or cycling? And but then what’s the advice elements? So it’s one of the mental health benefits? What are the risks involved? And we’ve even developed some tools to help advisors that want to know a little bit more. And maybe, you know, for those clients that are reaching out saying, I wouldn’t mind trying, you know, golf for soccer, but at my age, are others doing it? The short answer is yes, we can provide you with that those insights to how many others are doing and what risks are involved the rate of hospitalizations, if whether it’s low, medium high risk. And there’s some other white papers too, just to enable advisors to maybe look at how to implement change in their business if they want to. And it doesn’t need to be massive change, it can just be really small steps. So yeah.

Jess Brady
Well, I’m very happy to hear that you’ve made a remarkable recovery. I’m frustrated for you that you went through a pretty lonely advice journey, as as you were getting better. But as I say, I think you know, weird silver lining way, you know, the fact that you’re here talking about it, and helping us learn how we can be better and the fact that you’ve developed a whole heap of tools off the back of it is a beautiful way to round that out. So Adam, I just want to say an enormous thank you for sharing a very private story with our x y community.

Adam Crabbe
It’s my pleasure, just thank you for the invitation. It’s I’ve had a great time chatting to you.