Dear Friend,
I want to tell you about a conversation I had a few years ago that changed how I think about everything I do.
I was helping a small business owner work through the aftermath of a significant property loss. The damage was bad, but the real problem was worse — his business interruption coverage was outdated. It had never been adjusted as his operation grew. The policy paid out a fraction of what he needed to keep the doors open while repairs were made.
He could survive it financially. Barely. But that's not what broke him.
What broke him was the Tuesday morning he had to sit down with his team — eight employees, some of whom had been with him for years — and tell them he was cutting hours. He couldn't guarantee full-time work while the business recovered. Two of them would need to be let go entirely.
He told me one of those employees was a single mother. She'd been with the company for three years. She was reliable, hardworking, and loyal. And she was about to lose her income — not because of anything she did, but because of a coverage gap her employer didn't know existed.
He looked at me and said, "John, I always thought insurance was about protecting my building. I never thought about it protecting her."
That conversation rewired my brain.
Because he was right. When we talk about insurance, we talk about assets — buildings, vehicles, equipment, inventory. Those things matter. But they're not the most important thing a business owner protects.
People are.
Every employee who shows up to work for you is placing a quiet bet on your leadership. They're trusting that you're paying attention to the things they can't see. They don't think about your liability limits. They don't worry about your business interruption coverage. They don't ask whether your cyber policy is current or whether your contractors are properly insured.
They shouldn't have to. That's your job.
And when a business suffers a major uninsured loss, the consequences never stop with the owner. They ripple outward — to employees who lose hours or jobs, to families who lose stability, to customers who lose a business they depended on, to vendors who lose a partner. One coverage gap doesn't just hurt a balance sheet. It hurts people who had no say in the decisions that led to it.
That's why I believe protection isn't about fear. It's about stewardship. You don't review your coverage because you're expecting a disaster. You review it because other people are counting on you to have already thought about it before the disaster arrives.
The strongest leaders I work with understand this instinctively. They don't ask, "What's the cheapest policy I can get?" They ask, "What am I responsible for protecting?" And when they answer that question honestly — when they think about the employees, the families, the customers, the community — the conversation changes completely.
So let me ask you something personal.
If your business experienced a major loss tomorrow, who would be affected besides you? Not just financially — who would feel it in their daily life? Make that list. Write down the names. Those are the people your protection strategy is actually for.
Now ask yourself: does your current coverage match that responsibility?
If you're not sure, that's not a failure. That's a wake-up call. And it's exactly why I built Protection Circle Insider — for business owners who understand that protection isn't a line item, it's a leadership obligation. Inside the circle, I walk members through the real claims, the real gaps, and the real strategies that keep businesses and the people who depend on them standing when things go wrong.
👉 Join Protection Circle Insider — $29/month: https://www.theprotectioncircle.com/upgrade
And if you want to start thinking differently about what protection really means, The Prestizia Protection Playbook was written for exactly this conversation — the one where you stop thinking about policies and start thinking about people.
👉 Get your copy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GM94983Q
Protect the building. Protect the vehicles. Protect the equipment. But never forget — the most important thing you're protecting has a name, a family, and a future that depends on decisions you're making right now.
Stay protected. Stay passionate. And never let what you've built be taken from you.
John Crist Founder, Prestizia Insurance Author, The Prestizia Protection Playbook