The to-do-list of the incoming Million Dollar Roundtable executive committee will focus on expanding mentoring programs, succession planning and boomer retirement, the MDRT’s incoming president told delegates attending the association’s annual meeting today in Toronto.

Walton Rogers, who will serve as MDRT’s 83rd president starting September 1 of this year, says one of the mentoring goals will be to help more agents reach MDRT standards.

“(Mentoring) increases everyone’s production — the advisor benefits, the client benefits and the (new agent) benefits,” he explains.

The 34-year MDRT member from Annapolis, Maryland also stresses that one of the obligations of thriving advisors is to create solid succession plans, for themselves and their clients.

“It’s not only that advisors are aging at the MDRT but, once we planned our own succession plan, we need to help our clients do theirs,” he says.

He describes clients as castaways on a deserted island, surrounded by seas of uncertainty and that, “It is up to us to provide a life insurance boat, a disability insurance boat, a living benefit boat.”

Rogers told audience members his recipe for success lies in finding the right balance between seven key ingredients: education; family; career; finances, service; health; and spirituality.

“You may be thinking that the world is a cold, crowded place, wondering, ‘What can I do?’ The answer is you can build a better you,” Rogers says.

Restating the theme of the Toronto annual meeting, Rogers says, “At MDRT, we change lives.”

The “changing lives” theme of the conference echoed when Dave Williams, retired Canadian astronaut and emergency doctor, took the podium to talk about the effects human activity leaves on our planet.

Williams, dressed in his astronaut uniform, told the audience of advisors that he saw the Earth no bigger than a raisin, and showed them pictures of the costs of pollution and the “tragic reminder of the human condition — violence.”

The dramatic images included black petrochemical snow in a Chinese city, the three volcanic cones of Mount Kilimanjaro without snow, and the aftermath of slash and burn policies that wipe out rainforests.

“Rainforests are the lungs of our planet and it looks to me that we have a case of emphysema,” says Williams.

“We may be small and humble as the cosmic dust but changing lives – that’s what we are here to do,” he concludes.