Joshua James, Bill C. Brown Associates

07/22/2026

07/22/2026

I’m proud of the work we do, but I’ve always struggled to talk about it publicly. Most industry awards celebrate personal revenue, and something about celebrating that in public has just never sat right with me. No judgment on people who do. It’s just not my thing.

So I was genuinely caught off guard at this year’s OneAmerica Financial Leaders’ Conference to be the first-ever recipient of a new honor: The Sentinel Award, given to the advisor who wrote the most life insurance death benefit in the prior year. My service team and I placed over $100m. That’s a number I didn’t even know until they said it, because it’s not something we track.

I’m sharing this because the award was never the point. What it represents is.

Saving and investing gets all the attention. Every pre-retiree, Boglehead, and FIRE follower wants to optimize that side, and should. But life, disability, and long-term care planning gets treated like an optional extra you get around to eventually. It isn’t. It’s the plan for the day nothing else matters.

That $100m isn’t a number to me. It’s promises. Commitments to show up with more than a warm dish and platitudes when the worst day imaginable happens to someone’s family. If strengthening our clients’ financial security isn’t the conversation we’re having, we’ve missed the job entirely.

So if you’re the person your family depends on, and you’ve thought about life insurance but didn’t know how to start that conversation (or want to re-evaluate a current strategy), let’s talk. Not about a policy. About what happens to the people you love, or the businesses that depend on you, if you’re not there.

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