Roger McCarty: Light Up a Room
January 24, 2012 by Brian Anderson
January 23, 2012
A very small percentage of people in the world truly have
the ability to energize a room. Life insurance and annuity industry icon Roger
McCarty, the founder of Brokers International who passed away late last year at the age of 81, was one of
those people.
I had the privilege of meeting with Roger at the Brokers International campus in
Panora, Iowa — about 45 miles west of Des Moines and in the middle of the only
remaining county in the state still without a traffic light — on two occasions
within the past three years and interviewed him one other time several years
ago.
No matter how many people were at the table, Roger would frequently dominate the
conversation with his unbridled and genuine enthusiasm for not only his
company, but also the insurance and annuity business in general. He wasn’t
being rude; he just had a lot to share.
Perceptions of him from my own personal experiences were corroborated when I interviewed
some of his close friends and family members for a feature about his legacy
that will appear in the February issue of Life
Insurance Selling.
“I think everybody would recognize that Roger’s enthusiasm was contagious,” says
his nephew Bill McCarty, president at Brokers International. “Roger could
literally be in a room of insurance agents where somebody else was the speaker,
and if the meeting wasn’t going right because the agents didn’t like what the
speaker had to say, Roger would jump up and take control of a meeting that you
thought was going south, and all of a sudden it turned into a positive meeting
because of Roger’s enthusiasm. Everybody else caught that enthusiasm and said,
‘Well, gee, the way Roger spun it, it sounded pretty good.’ He was a hell of a
promoter and probably the most enthusiastic guy I’ve ever known.”
Longtime friend Mark Heitz, executive vice president of sales and distribution for Aviva
USA, also recalls how McCarty’s enthusiasm would spread across an entire room
and says he was just as engaging in one-on-one situations. “He always made the
person he was talking to feel like they were the most important person at that
particular moment, and in some cases, the only person in the room,” Heitz says.
“He just had that knack, because he was so genuine. It wasn’t an act — that’s
how he was. He just made you feel good and that what you were doing was
important and you were contributing to the overall cause and the overall good.”
If you have any stories you would like to share about Roger McCarty, please feel free
to do so using the comment tool below. And stay tuned for that feature on
McCarty’s legacy.
About the Author
Brian Anderson
Brian Anderson , 44, is the Editor-in-Chief of Life
Insurance Selling magazine, and is a former editor of Senior Market Advisor. A
career journalist, Anderson has been working in magazine publishing since 1995.
Every publication he has edited has focused largely on providing strong sales
and marketing content for readers, across a variety of industries, who are
essentially salespeople. He has been a central figure in the launch of three
publications and a variety of websites.
Anderson is a journalism graduate of the University of
Wyoming, Laramie. An avid skier, golfer, basketball and softball player, he
resides with his wife and two children in Centennial, Colo. Brian Anderson can
be reached at 720-895-1529.