Every Halloween as a young boy, Daniel Blumberg dressed as a police officer. That’s what he wanted to be when he grew up, and that’s the career path he pursued, interning all four years with the local city police department while earning a business management degree at Radford University in Virginia. When he came home during summer breaks to his family’s farm in New York’s Hudson Valley, he interned at local sheriffs’ departments and the state police with the goal of one day becoming a field agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

“What the FBI wants is a business degree, and I built up my resume as best I could and my contact list to help me get hired somewhere,” said the four-year MDRT member from Pawling, New York, USA. “For whatever reason, I wanted to serve and protect.”

It worked. After graduation, he had several job offers from law enforcement agencies and started the interview process with the FBI. However, that summer while installing an electric fence on the farm, he had an accident that changed the course of his life and his relationship with first responders.

The accident

Blumberg was holding a spool of steel cable under his left arm as he cut the wire using snips with his right. The cable snapped, recoiled and tore through his right eye. He was rushed to a New York City hospital for an eight-hour trauma surgery. Doctors found two major eye infections, which laid him up in the hospital for weeks of treatment. Later he had a corneal transplant, and after that, endured another surgery to reattach his retina. Those procedures couldn’t save his eye, and then an autoimmune disease attacked his left eye. He was completely blind for three months until his family found a doctor who restored and corrected his remaining eyesight. But what was left of his vision rendered him ineligible to become a federal agent.

“It dawned on me with that accident, that just one simple body part eliminated every aspect of what I wanted to do,” Blumberg said. “Losing the vision is one thing, but the career being gone, that was the second stomach punch. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, as I had spent my whole life up to that point prepping to get into the front lines of law enforcement.”

Career pivot

He could have worked in that sector as a dispatcher, corrections officer or in some kind of support role, but those options were too far afield from what he had long desired to do. His dad, John, was a financial services advisor and former two-year MDRT member, but Dan didn’t exactly know what that was other than he wore a tie and talked to a lot of people from Manhattan’s Wall Street. He did remember his father attending 41 funerals during the months after the September 2001 attacks for people who died in the World Trade Center towers collapse. John had been in the towers many times to meet clients, and he processed the life insurance death claims for their families.

“I was a kid at the time and didn’t really take it to heart then, but looking back on it, it was absolutely amazing what he did at that time. I didn’t know what to expect, so I went to his office to test the waters and became completely obsessed,” Blumberg said.

He started learning the tools and strategies for creating insurance plans and enjoyed face-to-face meetings with clients in their homes — his preferred interaction for meetings despite the convenience of video conferencing — and working through ways to help and protect them. His approach was to find out where his clients were financially, as well as what their goals and concerns were, and then work on getting them to a better place. That exercise, which could involve as many as three to four visits before a contract is signed, might even include an invite to the farm where client families go for a wagon ride pulled by draft horses that the Blumbergs raise along with oxen, goats and other animals.

Blumberg started building his client base with his police, firefighter and military contacts and jokes that it must be the law that cops have to marry a teacher or a nurse. So, he made inroads at schools and hospitals with the spouses’ colleagues. Workers in these fields tend to have a generous pension or a deferred-compensation package, yet they’re decades away from retiring and touching those benefits. Blumberg presents permanent life insurance as a way to fill the gap between working and retirement. It earns money faster than a checking account; it’s liquid, unlike a retirement account, and protects the family. He also tells first responders his story and how he wishes he could wear a badge like them, but he can’t.

“So, the next-best thing I can do is protect those individuals who I used to work with against three different scenarios: passing away prematurely, becoming sick or living a long, healthy life,” Blumberg said. “I share my story with all of my clients, as it is very important to me that they know why I am so passionate about the work that I do.”

Since joining the family’s independent brokerage 10 years ago with his father, his brother, Nick, and mom, DeAnn, Blumberg has never had to make a cold call, and his business is 100% referrals. Many of his blue-collar clients also know high-net-worth individuals, enabling him to cultivate business from that market as well. He qualified for Top of the Table in 2022 and is on track to reach the top tier again with this year’s production.

Pivoting to become an advisor rekindled the mission he once sought from law enforcement.

“My dad always loves to say I still am protecting and serving, just without a badge. I’m kind of addicted to it. I love the feeling of being in front of people, helping and solving problems for them. “I’m helping way more people than I would’ve as a police officer,” Blumberg said.