Mark Brown: Good morning every body, Friday morning, we're on the line and
doing ... Mike McCoy: Yes, absolutely, good morning and thanks for having me
on.
Mark Brown: Good morning every body, Friday morning, we’re on the line and doing an audio recording with our newest author that was at our convention this past week in Oklahoma City. None other than Mr. Michael McCoy and what we want to talk about this morning is Michael’s new book The Silent Crime. I hope a lot of you that are going to listen to this audio, met Mr. McCoy at the National Convention, if you haven’t Michael, welcome to the call this morning. I’d like you to just kind of start off, if you could just introduce yourself to the folks that are going to be listening and include a little bit about your background because you’ve got an impressive background not only in the insurance industry but you’ve done a lot of work obviously with Identity Theft and in that world so if you could kind of introduce yourself and give us a little of your background. Mike McCoy: Yes, absolutely, good morning and thanks for having me on. I come from the research side after ten years in the insurance industry as an agent from the sales side. I come into the research side and the academic side with Iowa State University, doing the research for the National Science Foundation and the Center for Information Protection on workplace behavior and how it relates to the employer and their policies on identity theft and data law. About two years ago we were fortunate enough to acquire the National Science Foundation grant, started that research a little over two years ago, I guess at this point and we will continue for another year at least doing this research. The importance of that and what is so interesting about that is three or four years ago you would have never heard of the National Science Foundation giving a grant out for the policy side of things. They are usually giving out grants for the hardware security and the software program writing, that type of thing, for the security of the computers and the data within the corporation. Now they are taking a hard look at the behavior of the employees inside the company and saying, you right, that is where we need to start. We need to give them a training program at the end of this project, so we need to train them on workplace behavior for Identity Theft. I understand that you have the ADRS program and that is a lot like what we are going to be doing. Your ADRS is kind of what we are going to use as a template, a little bit, on what we are going to deliver to some of the largest corporations in the United States. Mark Brown: Right, very good, interesting background and what I want to do is also pull in we’ve got another guest on our call this morning, and that is none other then our top producer in our company, Mr. Rob Vest. Rob, good morning. Rob Vest: Morning, Mark. Morning, Mike Mark Brown: We are going to ask your some questions also Rob in relationship to this book but I want to kind of get the party started here this morning. Just in general talking about your book Michael, why is this book significant, what does it have for the Pre-Paid legal associate and the people that they talk to out there? What does it have in the book to help in our crusade, to really help people, educated people, make people knowledgeable not just the large companies and small companies but individuals. What does this book have for everybody?
Mike McCoy: That is a great question and I have had some folks in the past week, since it has been out really keen on two pages, page 190 and 191, where I do a comparison spread of four companies. I don’t want to key in on that right now, and we’ll get back to that. Really I’d like people to look at the whole book and not just those pages. The reason that I say that is because I think that we try to bring you through the entire problem of Identity Theft from the beginning to end. What we are keen on is, we like education and that is what we’re pushing, and we want knowledge. I talk about three different areas often and that is knowledge, ignorance and stupidity. Knowledge is great and that is where we all want to be. Unfortunately, the majority of people both in the sales side of Identity Theft and also the lay person, the consumer, are ignorant of the subject of Identity Theft, and that is okay to be ignorant. I talk and joke a lot about ignorance and a lot of people take ignorance as an insult and it is not an insult it is just a lack of knowledge that is all it is. What this book tries to do is take those that are a little bit ignorant of the subject, lack this knowledge of Identity Theft and what it is all about, and try to put as much knowledge as we can into them in the shortest amount of time. With knowledge, I believe, my opinion, is knowledge lowers your fear of something. Most people fear Identity Theft and so they don’t want to deal with the problem of Identity Theft because they your scared of it, you turn your head to it. We are hoping that if we can give you a little bit of knowledge, we can give you, at the end you will work yourself into what I believe is a solution to the problem. It is not a silver bullet, it is not going to stop the problem but it going help you limit your losses and your exposures when it comes to Identity Theft. I think that then will lower your fear and then you will act on your knowledge. That is what we are hoping from this book. Mark Brown: That is great. One further question and then I want to get Rob in here on the call too. I know he has some comments and question for you. You’ve made the statement to me with the word pandemic, about ID theft. Will you elaborate on kind of what you have told me in the past and your feeling on this we kind of call it the coming pandemic? Mike McCoy: We were talking about the subtitle of my first book, called, Who Is You, and it was the coming epidemic of Identity Theft. What I’ve said is, boy I wish I could still use the subtitle from the first book on the second book. The coming epidemic and people look at me a little confused and I say to them…well it’s still coming. The epidemic is still coming it is not at the epidemic proportion. The worst is yet to come, in my opinion, and like I said a minute ago, there is no silver bullet there will be no company that comes out and can tell you to buy their product and they’ll stop it from happening to you. So, with that, again, I repeat myself, you’ve got to as a consumer and as a sales force, you’ve got to figure out how you are going to limit your losses or limit your clients losses and exposures. So you need to pick out the best product on the market that is going to do that knowing the worst of the problems are still to come in the future. Mark Brown: An interesting comment, and again, talking about the book, The Silent Crime, what you need to know about ID Theft, available from Pre-Paid Legal corporate. This is not Video Plus folks this is available by calling Pre-Paid Legal corporate offices and order just like you would order your other supplies, this is available from Pre-Paid
Legal. It is at a special rate right now, can’t tell you how long it is going to be that way, but it is at a special rate right now at 5 dollars per book, just an exciting price. Now, I want to bring Mr. Rob Vest in again, our top producer for the last, I think, 4 years. Rob welcome to the call again, but I know that you’ve got some questions and comments for Michael so let me turn it over to you sir. Rob Vest: Thanks Mark, I bought 500 of these books at convention and have given a lot of them away already. What I like about the book is, and what I like to do in this business is educate people instead of scare them. Scaring the public and scaring the owners just really puts them on the defensive and they shy away from us but when you go in with an educational mode of thinking and you explain some of the problems that are going on with Identity Theft. Everyone is aware of Identity Theft but what this book does is make them aware of how it can affect their customer and how it can affect their employees. What I have found is some of the owners just don’t understand that until it happens to then and that is too late. I am using the book, unfortunately Mark I brought 15 of the books with me on a business trip this week and gave them all to business owners that I have met with already. One of the pages that I turn to immediately, I think it is in Chapter 8 or 9, Michael will know, it is a paragraph about how your customers will leave you and how many of them will hire lawyers if there is a Identity Theft breech in your company. That is just a great opening paragraph and I have that highlighted so, I am going to use this book in a lot of ways. The other way I am doing it is, I am going to give them away as door prizes at my employee meetings, doing some drawing and giving those away because the whole key is that the education level is there and also making sure that people are aware of Identity Theft. I am leaving one in the lunch room the owner is always going to have one, I am going to use them for trade shows that I am doing or chamber meeting, it is an inexpensive piece so to get that out there of course with my name on it and some highlighted pieces that are tabbed that affect the owner directly. I just think it is going to be a great, great marketing tool, a great drip piece and a great educational tool. Mark Brown: I agree wholeheartedly, and I just also want to get across to everyone on the call, we are getting ready to wrap up here in just a second, and again this not just for the employee benefits side of our business, our companies. I came back with I think about the same amount of books from the convention, just what I could carry, Rob and I have already given those away. Anyone that I talk to about our business about our products about anything that we do, I am going to leave that with them at the initial exposure. That is just my opinion that is just what I am going to do, when you see what our products can do, it will make you feel better about Identity Theft so I would like to leave you this book. Rob Vest: I agree, Mark, I think in order to sell our program an associate has to understand, they don’t have to be an expert but they have to understand Identity Theft and that is what this book will really help you with. So, every new associate, it should almost be required to give this to a new associate.
Mark Brown: Even a prospect, it shows that we are out educating folks, that we are on the cutting edge of what is happening with this. Michael we appreciate you being on the call with us, and we look forward to a lot of success with this book. Like you said it is a Silence Crime but it is a crime that affects every one of us in thousands of different ways. Right? Mike McCoy: That is correct, absolutely Mark Brown: We appreciate you being on the call with us, and we love you book and we look forward to talking with you again Mike McCoy: Thanks for having me on. Mark Brown: Thank you. Thanks Rob Rob Vest: Thank you Mark.
