Andy Neary recounts career anecdotes (a small 2017 Denver speaking event that led to contact with a Fortune-50 benefits leader, a Boulder benefits roundtable influencing ~25,000 employee lives, and a 2019 Omaha airport LinkedIn encounter with a CHRO of a 5,000-employee company). From these stories he extracts sales/communication lessons: the power of storytelling and the importance of being known (not just who you know). The talk emphasizes leaning into communication to create opportunities and influence.
Chapters
It's January 2017, and I'm invited to speak at an event down here in Denver. Truth be told, I didn't do much research on the event.
I put my hat in the ring, signed up, filled out the rfp, and I was picked. So in one early winter morning in January, I'm excited. I get in my car, I drive down to south side of Denver, I get ushered into the breakout room that I'll be speaking from, set up my PowerPoint, get everything ready. And now the attendees start walking in, and I'm greeting people, and I'm counting the people coming in. 8, 9, 10. And then the door shuts.
And I pause, and to myself, nobody heard this. I said, seriously.
I drove all the way down here through traffic to talk to 10 people.
Now, I gave myself a pep talk, and I walked up to the front and I said, dude, you invested a lot of money in becoming a speaker. You need to pour your heart out here. You need to give, you need to teach. This is what you want to do. And so for the next 45 minutes, I poured my heart out. I taught. I taught more than I wanted to. I gave away everything for free. And I gave a presentation on how to build a better health plan with less money. And I told stories. And after that talk was over, people started coming out of the room, shaking my hand, thanking me. But one gentleman came up to me in particular, and he said, dude.
I have never heard anybody talk about health insurance like that.
He said, that was one of the best presentations I've ever seen on the topic. He goes, this is exactly what my team has been talking about. I would love for you to jump on a call. Here's my business card.
And I looked at the card, and this is where I learned the lesson. Because on that card was the name Duncan McCalef. Now, the name Duncan Michaliff means nothing to anybody in this room. It's his job title in the company is with that. Should you see, Duncan was the director of Total Rewards for a little company called Pennsylvania PepsiCo, a Fortune 50 company.
Now, what I didn't realize is this conference was intended to be small. There were only a few attendees, but they were made up of some of the largest local and national companies.
And my story, my ability to communicate just grabbed the attention of a Fortune 50 company. And it's there I learned my second lesson.
Plato said this once, those who tell stories will rule society.
Communication is everything.
And so I just kept leaning into communication. Two months later, I am running a benefits roundtable for the Boulder county public sector market. We had St. Vrain Valley School District, Boulder Valley School District, City of Boulder, county of Boulder, City of Longmont. Heck, Cherry Creek School District was driving up from Denver to be a part of it. We had three of the five largest school districts in the state in this thing, representing over 25,000 employee lives. And I'm running it with my stories, my teaching. We had Clint Flanagan come in, speaking about direct primary care. Ryan Schmid from Vero Health, Jim Milway come in, and we have 25,000 lives we're influencing. And it hit me again. Yes, those who tell stories will rule society.
Fast forward two more years, and this is where I learned my third lesson. This is the one that still grabs. Too much resistance from this industry, and I want to share it with you. It's 2019.
I'm no longer with Vocabell. They've sold the GBS. So I moved on. I'm now partnered with the Olson Group out of Omaha. And I'm in the Omaha airport.
On a Friday night. I'm just ready to come home. It's been a long week, hard week on the road, and I'm standing in line for Southwest. I think I'm like a 17. And if anybody's ever been in Omaha's airport, it's not really big, so it's hard to actually make a line.
And this gentleman comes up to me. Never met him, never seen him. And he takes his phone and he goes, hey, is this you?
And I recoil a little bit, regain my focus. And I said, yeah. And what he had about on the phone was my LinkedIn profile. He said, dude, I love your stuff.
He said, keep posting, man. I've been following you for a year.
I'm taking what you're telling me and I'm sharing it with my employees. I said, man, I appreciate that. That means a lot. By the way, what's your name? Steve Garbage. Cool. So he went back in his line. I went, stayed in mine, got on the plane, and I did what everybody in this room would have done. I went right to LinkedIn. I'm like, who is this guy?
And sure enough, Steve is the chro of a company called CSG with 5,000 employees.
And it's here I learned the third lesson. When he came up, I didn't know who he was.
Within 30 seconds. I felt like I knew him forever. And this is the lesson I learned. Business is no longer about who you know.
Business is about who knows you.
In a noisy industry like we're in, gang, you got to get people to know who you are.
