Private Risk Advisor

Following is a link to an article I authored for from the International Risk Management Institute, providing over 30 helpful ideas to manage a wide range of personal property and liability risks.  Be sure to check the links to MANY MORE helpful ideas from ACE Private Risk Services and Chubb Personal Insurance:

http://www.irmi.com/expert/articles/2015/obrien02-personal-risk-management.aspx

The following anonymous critique about blogging could not be more sobering (or accurate): “Never have so many words been written by so many and read by so few.”  Ouch!

This blog has now been visited over 10,000 times. While that number has required over 5 years of monthly (or more often) posts, it is a big milestone for me. When I fret to others about wanting this number to be higher, I am often reminded the content is, after all, focused on insurance and personal risk.  Not exactly scintillating stuff for most, or so I am told. Many visitors have provided encouraging feedback over the years, some even un-intentionally. My favorite comment was one intended to mock me: “I see you’re still blogging….how much money is that making you?”

I have always been wary of anyone, in any vocation, whose efforts are focused solely on actions that will make them money. While I am very pro earning an income, the objective behind this blog was and remains a much more ambitious one: to educate consumers and those who advise them on strategies to better protect tangible and financial assets from uncovered property and liability losses.

The snarky “how-much-money-is-that-making-you” observer might be amused by this recent anecdote: at a recent industry event, I met a friendly competitor who chided me that he appreciates my blog because he monitors it for new sales ideas he can use. He explained he recently presented a strategy of mine to a prospective client, who liked the idea so well it helped him “win a great new account”.  I can also be snarky.  I congratulated my friend on the great new account he’d won using my idea, and invited him to continue visiting my blog so that could replace his tired and ineffective sales pitches with original and helpful solutions that actually offer real value to his clients.  While his clients won’t know the helpful ideas are mine, this friendly competitor knows.

Thank you for being one of more than 10,000 visitors to this blog. I will continue to try and offer real insights and helpful solutions on managing personal risk to any who may benefit from them. Even unoriginal competitors in need of good ideas.

Ever wonder what would happen if “The Big One” — a really big hurricane — hit the New York City area?  A new study reveals if a hurricane similar to the one that battered the East Coast almost 200 years ago were to strike today, it would make the damage caused by Superstorm Sandy seem modest.

If the hurricane that ravaged New York and the Northeast two centuries ago was a “once in a hundred year event”, we are well overdue.  To learn more check this article in Property and Casualty 360 (http://fw.to/U4PQjQC)

Was Your Gmail Account Leaked?.  Check this link to learn how to find out!

I met the author of the blog post linked below after he wrote the following in a discussion thread on LinkedIn: “It does not matter what you know until you know what it means.”  

I reached out to the author to ask him for the source of this observation and to learn more about his work, and we had a nice e-mail exchange. These words are his own, and they struck me as profound and widely applicable.  Turns out the author, Don Shaughnessy, is a CPA who has had an accomplished career, and is a truly gifted story-teller.

Several days later I was honored to learn Don wrote of my efforts to suggest insurance practitioners take a different approach to guide consumers to making better informed decisions by posting this on his great blog: http://moneyfyi.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/price-and-cost-are-different/

Thank you, Don —– it does indeed “not matter what you know until you know what it means.”