When Stacy L. Kahan, RFC, CLU, was growing up, she often heard her father, former 45-year MDRT member Stanford L. Lang, RFC, ChFC, ask people he met this question: “How can I help you?” 

The 29-year MDRT member from Northfield, Illinois, USA, admits it had a significant impact on her, especially as she entered the same profession as her father, who passed away in 2021.

“I followed in my dad’s footsteps of wanting to help everyone,” she said. 

Kahan started her practice in 1994. At the time, she was primarily focused on insurance. As time went on, she realized that while selling insurance products might be the way advisors get paid, it didn’t have to be the only thing she did.

“Once you start to experience people and their problems, you become more holistic in your approach to discussions with people,” she said. “And it’s not always about insurance. It’s more about what their goals are. A really high-level view of who that person is and where their priorities are can be helpful.”

Business intertwined with personal

Kahan primarily works with business owners, who may not always see a clear connection between their business and personal lives. 

“They think insurance is just one-dimensional, when, in fact, it’s multidimensional,” she said. “The process of determining what insurance looks like is a discovery process. If your business fails, your family is in trouble, and if your family fails, the business has a lot more pressure to perform.”

She remembers one client who owned a manufacturing business and only wanted to focus on protecting it, rather than his personal needs. Kahan created a small carve-out disability plan for the key people, which he didn’t want to buy. He ultimately was persuaded. Two years later, he became disabled and now he will collect from the policy for the rest of his life without putting additional strain on his business.

Kahan credits her own emotional intelligence, combined with being “the master of questions,” for her before-its-time holistic approach.

“I think you need to be very direct with people. ‘Holistic,’ what does that mean? I think it just means that you’re looking at their whole life,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Take a step back and let’s prioritize what needs to happen that I can help you with. The other stuff, I can refer (experts) to you.’ That’s holistic too. At the end of the day, we’re also connectors, which I truly think is one of the greatest values we bring to our clients.”

She describes this as finding people who can “wrap around” her clients to help them with additional needs, like estate planning or accounting, which are not her area of expertise. As she began to work with more human resources departments on group benefits, she realized a need for HR help, so she decided to create an HR business to fill that gap.

“I call that holism too,” she said. “Listening to our clients and finding solutions to help them so that we can still be involved.”

Kahan says “holistic planning” is just a newer term for what she’s been doing for years. She believes it’s a natural outpouring of the approach she’s always taken to life and business: They’re inextricably connected. 

Family time and time for business

When her daughters, Cara and Alana, were young, Kahan had a “dark line” between work and home life.

“I was present when my kids were growing up, which I think made them want to come and work in our business,” she said. “I also think it’s because we meet such interesting people along our paths, and we’re asking people all these cool questions and they’re telling us their successes and their failures.”

About 10 years ago, Cara approached her mom about joining the business, followed by Alana two years later. Now the women hold the positions of CEO and president, respectively, and a formal plan is in place for them to buy out the practice over the next decade. 

“I was lucky,” Kahan said. “I have the most intuitive, focused, bright young women that have two very different skill sets. Together, they should be able to conquer the world as they wrap people around them.” 

Maintaining their relationships as mother/daughters can be tricky when working in a professional capacity, but the trio have found a good balance, due in large part to this rule: “When we have family time, I am not allowed to talk business,” Kahan said. 

She also intentionally started bringing her daughters to meetings to help get clients comfortable with the idea of working with them. While she doesn’t think she will ever truly retire, she plans to step back and allow her daughters to grow the business in their own way. 

“We all make a promise to protect our clients,” she said. “That promise will still be fulfilled, not with my face, necessarily, but with theirs. It’s not transferring the relationship; it’s enhancing it.”

And as the third generation prepares to take the reins of what’s become a de facto family business, it’s certain they will be guided by the same question, in all its dimensions, that Kahan learned from her father those many years ago: How can I help?