Agent Profile: Humble Producer Has Monster Success With a Motivational Mindset

You may have never heard the phrase “No energy vampires allowed,” popularized by Jon Gordon’s 2007 best-selling book The Energy Bus, but for Acrisure’s National Healthcare Practice Leader Michael Sadler, MBA, cyRM, these are words to live by.

“Happiness and success are a choice, a frame of mind,” Mike said. “And energy vampires thrive on negativity—they’ll try to drain that positive energy right out of you. So energy vampires are just about the only people I try to steer clear from. Everyone else is welcome in my world.”

For those of us who’ve had the pleasure of speaking with Mike, it doesn’t take long to understand his gratitude for the people who’ve influenced him throughout his life. With every step he takes forward on his path toward success, he is routinely looking back to figure out how he can thank those who’ve helped him along the way.

Early Setback

Growing up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with aspirations of playing collegiate sports, Mike credits his father for coaching and pushing him to excel in both football and wrestling.

“He was instrumental as a mentor in my formative years because he gave me a lot of the grit that I continue to attack challenges with today.”

In high school, Mike had a number of college scouts keeping a close eye on his wrestling matches. It was through his time on the mat that Mike found deeper meaning that shaped his approach to personal and professional life later down the road.

“Wrestling teaches you all kinds of life lessons. And those life lessons are very important because they’re attributes you continue to take forward: showing up on time, being respectful to individuals, doing what you say you’re going to do, demonstrating integrity, and earning trust. And then there’s the intangibles: working harder when no one’s around, always trying to become better than your opponent, and looking for different ways to be more efficient so you can be the most dominant wrestler in your weight class.”

But one of the most critical life lessons Mike learned happened not once but twice during his high school competitions.

“I had a couple of ACL injuries—blew out both my knees. One my junior year, and the other in my senior year. During my second injury, a coach who was recruiting me called the hospital and asked me what my outcome was going to look like. I had to tell him, ‘It’s not looking good. I’m going to have my ACL replaced and I don’t know what my recovery time’s going to be.’ I mean, the goal at that point was just to be able to walk again and live a healthy life afterwards. So, even though my window to be a collegiate athlete was closing, I just persevered and was fortunate to have these remarkable physicians and physical therapists that got me back on my feet in about six months.”

Counting his blessings, Mike felt he owed the sports he grew up playing a debt of gratitude for the valuable lessons they taught him. While enrolled in Northern Michigan University (NMU), Mike looked to give back by making his way into the officiating side of wrestling and football.

“That’s where my selling skills fell into place. At age 18, I was cold calling high school athletic directors and principals trying to get officiating contracts for wrestling meets, tournaments, and football games. I would tell them, ‘Hey, I know officials are rare to find, and young officials are even more rare, so I would really like to cut my teeth, so to speak, by officiating games and matches for you.’ I built out a football crew of five college kids, and we officiated freshman, junior varsity, and varsity games three to four nights a week. Then in the winter, I was able to get some large wrestling tournaments and meets right off the bat and officiated those three to four nights a week as well. It paid my way through college and I became the first person on both my mother’s and father’s sides of the family to graduate with a four-year degree.”

Rise Above

In addition to the biochemistry degree Mike obtained, he met his future wife at NMU, and she was hired as a registered nurse in Grand Rapids, Michigan, right after graduation.

“We found a place together and I needed to get a job to pay for rent, so I ended up working for a business called Gutter Helmet, which was exactly what it says: selling gutters for the eaves of roofs that would collect water and divert it. In my third month, I received a call to go to a house that was owned by this gentleman who was an executive for a pharmaceutical company. During my sales process, he asked me if I’d like to go inside and have a bowl of cereal. I told him, ‘Sure,’ because you never say no to a future client, and then he started selling me about pharmaceuticals over our bowls of Lucky Charms.”

The executive arranged an interview for Mike at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the next thing Mike knew, he was taking a test on pharmacology and receiving an offer letter for a pharmaceutical sales representative position.

“So, that’s how I dipped my toe into healthcare. My first manager was very influential in getting me to become effective at sales, but also really efficient in educating myself and learning more than the physicians do about pharmaceuticals. He gave me the tools and resources to understand different disease states, the medications that were being utilized, and how to interpret both our studies and our competitors’ studies so I could explain to physicians the differences in our product versus another product they might be using. I just focused on consistently educating myself.”

Always striving to be at the top of his game, Mike won a rising star award and a couple quarterly sales awards during his first three years. While eyeballing a promotion to a Senior Therapeutic Business Specialist, his interim manager was approached by another pharmaceutical company, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, and after taking them up on the opportunity they had offered her, she convinced Mike to join her. He was then able to relocate with his wife back to his hometown while working for Novartis.

Par for the course, Mike won several president’s club awards over his tenure at Novartis, establishing relationships with cardiologists, diabetologists, and endocrinologists. He also decided to simultaneously go back to school—at the New York Institute of Technology—to get his master of business administration (MBA) degree, which was paid for by Novartis.

Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical sales industry was on a downward slope and Novartis began “white spacing” territories—a practice of reducing the number of sales representatives in rural territories.

He made the cut numerous times, but eventually was asked to leave, and he landed on his feet with another pharmaceutical company, Boehringer Ingelheim, where he won several more president’s club awards over the next six-and-a-half years before once again falling victim to the downsizing bug. 

“I saw 13 downsizings in my career, and I made it through 11 of them unscathed. During the last one, I told my wife, ‘I don’t think I can continue to do this and worry about having a job to support our family.’ At the time I was coaching youth soccer, and the father of one of my players was a risk advisor at VAST, which was part of Acrisure. He told me they were in need of a risk advisor to come into the healthcare space. I was hesitant about switching careers and going into insurance, but my grandfather taught me at a young age to always have a conversation and learn from it—and then make a decision. So I met with some of the leadership at VAST to better understand the role I would play selling medical malpractice insurance for physicians, and with my strong relationships with the physician community, it seemed like the perfect fit—and I gladly hopped onboard on Halloween of 2020. It was a great transition! Being involved in the healthcare community was super important to me because that was my network.”

Synergy

As if shifting into a new industry wasn’t challenging enough, Mike did it in uncertain times during the COVID-19 pandemic. Undeterred, he took it upon himself to make up for lost time.

“I was in my early 40s, and other producers there had 20-years-plus on me. So I needed to make sure I educated myself in a fashion where I felt confident. A lady by the name of Nancy Garijo gave me a book called Medical Professional Liability Insurance: A Practitioner’s Primer that changed everything for me. That little book was my bible to learn medical malpractice, in addition to making connections with different business development people and underwriters at specific carriers. Every time I met with somebody, I’d ask them, ‘What are you utilizing for resources to learn from?’ And I would take their advice and incorporate educating myself into my daily routine—at least an hour or two each day.”

As he became more knowledgeable and moved his way up the ranks within Acrisure, Mike took it upon himself, along with his team, to get licensed in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. He also earned a Cyber Risk Management (cyRM) designation. Now in his role as National Healthcare Practice Leader for Acrisure, one of his main endeavors is helping his agency partners round out accounts.

“Being on a national platform with agency partners across the U.S., I’m always operating under the phrase ‘who not how,’” Mike explained. “We have so many different solutions for our clients as a large fintech company. So it’s a daily exercise of mine to assess their needs and introduce them to the who [within the company] that can help them with the how [to solve any given issue or lack of coverage]. It’s a simple concept that works. If one of my clients needs something, they can reach out to me and I can make a connection to a teammate that can help them with that. I just want to make sure my clients understand that there’s different parts to what we do at Acrisure—not just medical malpractice—and I’m more than willing to make an introduction for them, and be an advisor to them, to make sure they’re protected as a whole.”

After five years of industry success under his belt, Mike makes sure to point out that it’s completely a team effort.

“I’m the type of person that writes my goals down every year. I had a new business goal in 2025 of writing $600,000 of revenue, with a stretch goal of $1 million. And we surpassed that stretch goal. I could not do it without my colleagues and teammates, whether they’re account executives, account managers, our placement team, our sales enablement team, our head of growth, and all the different leaders that we have within the organization that allow us to do what we do every day at a very high level. I’m very appreciative of everybody I’ve worked with or been around who has influenced my mindset and me as an individual. I take all these different experiences and try to mold them together to make me better going forward, create a positive culture, and surround myself with people that are better than me. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t have such an exceptional team that constantly motivates and supports me.”