Product Description

In a story rich with details and anecdotes, heroes and villians, Art Williams chronicles how A.L. Williams and it "ragtag army of part-timers" took on a Goliath-sezed insurance industry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25755 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-28
• Binding: Paperback
• 321 pages

Review
As the pastor of a growing chuch in Austin, TX, I found "Coach" to be an incredible, inspirational, and instructional book. Art shared real-life advise about overcoming adversity and doing what's right. His ability to dream big - and to challenge others to do the same - made a huge difference in this preacher's mission to change the world. --Ryan Rush

I have always believed that your crusade was one of the 3 legs supporting the huge economic expansion which took place in the 80s and early 90s. History books will be sadly incomplete if they don't show the impact of what one man was able to do to the American economy, purely on his coaching abilities. --Robert Hamilton

One of the most powerful books I have ever read. I could not put the book down until completely finished. --Joe M Sewell

About the Author
In 1967, A. L. (Art) Williams, Jr. was a high school football coach in south Georgis making $10,700 a year. He founded A.L. Williams in the 1970s and built it to the number on seller of individual life insurance in America during the 1980s. Today, Art is retired from the financial services industry.

Customer Reviews

How A.L. Williams Changed the Life Insurance Industry
COACH
The A.L. Williams Story

"But I've never heard of term insurance."
"It's the oldest form of insurance - nothing more than pure death protection. Everyone in the industry knows about it, but most companies don't sell it."
"Why not?"
"Because it's so inexpensive."

One April night in 1963, a good man died of a heart attack. Just 48 years old, he left behind a wife and three children. And not much else... No will. Too little life insurance. No meaningful savings. The oldest son, Art Williams, already married with a family, watched with heartbreak as his mother struggled to raise his two younger brothers and pay the bills... alone.

A high school football coach, Art Williams didn't know anything about insurance or investments. Most people he knew - including himself - bought just enough "whole life" to cover burial expenses. Life insurance was expensive. And growing up in Cairo, Georgia, in the 1950s, nobody had much money. People just worked hard... and got by.

Then, four years after his father's premature death, a cousin introduced Art to a little-known financial concept called "Buy Term and Invest the Difference." The conversation revealed two shocking truths: Term insurance - pure "death protection - typically offered ten times more coverage than a whole life policy... for the same price. Why then did nobody own it or even know about it? The second shock: Most insurance companies offered term but rarely sold it. Why? Commissions! Term was simply too "cheap" to be profitable.

"Wait a second. For the same price I'm paying a month now for a $15,000 whole life policy, you say I could get $150,000 of term? But that's one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars more!"
"That's right."

The truth about life insurance made Art Williams angry. Why were insurance companies deliberately selling a product that left people poor in their wallets... and desperately underinsured? Why wasn't his father offered a choice between whole life and term? How different his mother's life would be today, if he'd known!

What happened next proved providential: An unexpected opportunity to sell term insurance part-time... The discovery of a vast, untapped market... The birth of a crusade - and a company - that eventually brought a corrupt and outdated industry to its knees.

On February 10, 1977, A.L. Williams entered the marketplace with a mere 85 agents. Over the next 13 years, the "peanut" company grew into an industry phenomenon - a licensed sales force of 225,000 agents, $300 billion in cumulative sales, thousands of offices across the United States and Canada. Controversial from the get-go, A.L. Williams exposed the "evils of cash value" and ingeniously used a part-time sales force to take "Buy Term and Invest Difference" to the people who needed it most - Middle America.

Here, finally, in riveting and unprecedented detail, is the complete story of A.L. Williams - told by "the Coach" himself. From the high school football fields of South Georgia to the heights of commercial glory in the New Orleans Superdome to a shared podium with an American president... This deeply personal account reveals how A.L. Williams took on the political, scheming world of the traditional life insurance r industry to make "term insurance" a household word.

Full of heroes and villains, amazing victories and dashing defeats, this book is a must-read for anyone who's ever dreamed of building a team, of winning big, of doing what others said couldn't be done.

An inside look at a crusade
Let's see: a non-fiction story of how an Insurance industry empire was built, that also happens to be incredibly compelling and a real page-turner. Can't say I've ever seen those two combined before. But, this book is exactly that!

Starting with Art as a child, told in first-person, all the way through the sale of the company and to the present-day, this book had me in its grip. Highly recommended to: those who want more out of life; those who are entrepreneurial; those who study business, especially business success; those wanting/needing lessons in leadership. I found the first half of the book to be more compelling, as the second half seemed to spend a lot of time relaying more and more records that were racked up, and the numbers behind them. Nit-picking aside, the book was thoroughly engrossing, and I tell ya, it sure is fodder for a movie!

The zenith of networking + commitment in action
As a self-employed individual, I know that networking and referrals are the most effective ways to increase my business. Networking seems so simple but really is a learned skill. Al Williams is a pro. "Coach" gives a "start to finish" accounting of how it works and strongly emphasizes the old saying of "plan your work and work your plan." While I am at least 90 degrees from Williams' spiritual beliefs and political stance, those themes did not deter me from finding a lot of business-building style and posture.

Strongly recommend the book to anyone who is thinking of starting his or her own business or wondering how to improve it. Particularly valuable to those on the service trades or network marketing.