Andy Neary

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Good morning. Good morning. I am Deb Krier and I am passionate about giving professionals the tools that they need to make themselves and their businesses as successful as possible. And we're going to have such a great discussion today because we're going to be talking about how to really be successful. Right. But what does it take to be successful and what are the challenges? So please join me in welcoming Andy Neary to our program today. Welcome, Andy. How are you?

I'm doing good, Deb. I'm excited for this conversation. Thank you for. Thank you for having me.

Cool. I love it. Well, let me tell people a little bit about you and then we'll jump into this. So Andy Neary is a former professional baseball player. A two time Ironman finisher, he is a business coach and founder of Complete Game Consulting. Combining the skills and talents he used to compete in professional baseball and in Ironman, Andy is on a mission to to help business and insurance professionals succeed in their careers and in life. He helps insurance professionals target the right audiences at the right time. His programs help people cultivate the off field habits, mindset and rituals that lead to all star performances. So again, Andy, welcome.

Yes. Let's dive in. Cool.

Well, I always like to find out how my guests got to where they are today. So how did you get from baseball to. To business coaching and all of those parts in between?

Yeah, so played a couple years in the Milwaukee brewers organization in the early 2000s. And when I realized pro baseball wasn't going to be in my future, or better said, pro baseball told me I'm not going to be in its future.

I found myself early, in early 20s, figuring out what the rest of my life is going to look like. And I did what everybody else does. I decided to get into insurance. And you know, nobody really gets into insurance by design. Somebody told me I can make a lot of money doing it, so I jumped in.

That's something where a lot of athletes get into.

Yeah, a lot of sales, right? A lot. It's definitely sales. And so, you know, I spent the last 22 years in the insurance industry. In different ways. But really, Deb, where my career changed was in 2014.

Amy and I made the decision to move to Colorado. Woohoo. And I found myself. You know, I'd been in the industry for 13 years. At that point, I found myself in a new market where nobody knew me. Right. And I went to work for an insurance agency that really had not leveraged marketing all that much in the past. So I quickly realized I had a. A problem, and that was, how am I going to grow a book of business in a market where nobody knows me? And so I had a choice to make. It's 2014. I said I could do it the way I was taught, which is to cold call, go pound the pavement, all the traditional ways of getting out there. Yeah. Or I could try something different. And at that point, what I did is I went and looked at what other industries are doing when it comes to marketing. And that's when I discovered social media marketing. I discovered public speaking. And podcasting was kind of still in its early stages. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna build a personal brand. And at that time in the industry, people are like, what are you doing? Nobody does that. And then this. What do you.

What do you mean? Personal brand?

Yeah, just go pick up the phone. Shut up. And I said, no, I'm gonna get a lot of people to know who I am. I'm gonna create a marketing plan so I get a lot of people to know who I am quick. And that's when I leaned into using LinkedIn, started public speaking do it, held a lot of webinars, eventually started a podcast, and before you know it, I built a nice book of business. And I realized there's some power in this. What made that work? Well, I got a lot of people who know me, and fast forward that to today. Business is about who knows you as much as it's about who you know.

Right.

If not more, if not more. And a few years later, I had some peers reach out and say, hey, man, can you teach me what you did? And lo and behold, I realized there was a big opportunity, which was the insurance industry has a problem with marketing and communication. People don't know how to sell themselves. Right. And lo and behold, what started as a side hustle in January 21 became my full hustle. Complete Game Consulting. Gave up my book of business in January of 2021, and the business was born. And we've been growing ever since, and it's been fun. We help today. We help people put the right message in front of the right people, so they get the right attention.

I love it, you know, and I think it's probably especially.

Important with someone like a former athlete and. And even at, you know, especially at the pro level, because that was what you were known for. And then, poof. You are not. As we are recording this, the Olympics ended yesterday. And, you know, you always wonder what happens with a lot of them. You know, the.

The.

My. My favorite of the. The whole Olympics is Mr. Pommel Horse Guy. Right. Who is, you know, he. He already has his career. He is an engineer, you know. Now will he be forever Mr. Pommel Horse Guy? Probably no, because people are like, the. What's it? But he'll, you know, he'll play on that for a while. But for many athletes, they are. That role doesn't matter, you know, what sport it is. And then really, they're not. And. And in many cases, it does. It can end really, with. Overnight. Right. With an injury. But for all of us, we don't always know what our personal brand is. So walk us through that process of actually figuring out. How do we find out what our personal brand is?

Yeah, you bring up a really good point. The athletes. I just gave a talk. So we moved back since. Since 2014. We've now moved back to Wisconsin and live in my hometown, which has changed a lot. But I gave a talk at the high school to high school athletes a month ago at my former alma mater. And that was the whole message was your identity as an athlete. Right. Because someday that sport's going to come to an end.

Yeah. You are not going to be the high school quarterback forever.

Correct. And. And. But that can't define who you are. And I think to your point about Olympic athletes, that's why they struggle. You hear about these Olympic athletes that come out of the Olympics and depression, all these things, because it was who they are, and then without it, they don't know who they are. So personal brand. When we work with somebody on building a personal brand, the first thing you've got to ask yourself is, how do you want the market to talk about you? Okay. How do you want the market to look at you? And the way we do that with our clients is we say, all right, if I went and interviewed your best clients you have today, what would they say? What would you want them saying about you? And then we spin it, because when people start answering that, they keep everything at a professional level. And I say, okay, what if I said, now I want to go interview all your family and friends? What would they say about you, how would you want them talking about you? And that's where the brand starts. Because you. You've noticed I've said the word want twice now. When you're building a brand, it's not what you think. It's what do you want people saying about, right? So let's list out the words, the phrases you want people using, and then at that point, those words and phrases are your judge and jury. You need to show up as that person every day. And I think that's. That's the first place to start with brand. Now, when it comes to putting the brand out there.

My belief is, especially from a business standpoint, if you're going to use it to grow your business, there's a couple questions you have to. You have to be able to answer clearly. Number one, what makes you unique? And what I don't want to hear is, I'm a trusted advisor. I give. No, no, no, no.

I'm good at customer support.

Correct. That's table stakes. What makes your story unique? This is where I landed as an advisor in Colorado, Deb. I said, you know what? I bet there's not a lot of former pro baseball players selling health insurance. Colorado. That's going to be part of my brand.

Even though you hadn't been a Colorado Rocky, you still now.

Irony. Funny story. Two or three years after I moved to Colorado, a former Rocky did start selling health insurance in Colorado. So I'm like, oh, that's not. That doesn't make me unique anymore anyways. But the thing that your competition can't take from you is your story, right? So what is it about your story that makes you unique? Everybody has a unique story. Everybody. So we start there, go into, okay, professionally, what do you want to be known for?

So when people think of it, they think of you, right? And I think this is where people go wrong, Deb, with brands. I see it in the insurance industry. If I said, what is the one thing you want to become known for? People have a hard time because they want to be known for a lot of things, Right? So great. But I'm going to force you to become known for one.

Mm.

Because the only way you can break through and build brand awareness is to become known for one thing. Great. Example I use is Arnold Schwarzenegger. We know him as a movie star, former governor. He's probably an entrepreneur now, owns dozens of businesses. But what did he do to break through? He was a bodybuilder. I'm known for one thing. So when it comes to building brand Especially in the world of business, it's what do you want people saying about you? What makes you unique? What do you want to become known for?

We get clarity there. You can start building money.

What's your one?

My one thing is helping people get the right attention from the right prospects.

Ah, very cool.

I love when it comes to getting attention, the insurance industry, how do I get attention from my prospects? We want people thinking in a complete game, consulting.

Right. You know, and, and what I love, and I have my own marketing firm. And so what I love is several things about that. Right Audiences, right time. Right. Because that's one of the tricky things about all of this. You know, if we're bombarding people with the wrong message, first of all, if we're bombarding the wrong people, that's just a total waste. But, you know, so many people are like, well, I have to talk to everybody. No, no, no. You know, you figured out your, your target market are insurance people. That's a perfect niche. You understand it. Can you help others? Sure. Do you help others? Yes. But you have your niche. And that is one of the hardest things, I think, for people to, to do 100.

I couldn't agree more. Especially coming from the insurance industry, there's a belief you can help everybody. Whether that's true or not.

Right.

You don't want to help everybody. You have to have a niche. Who are you best positioned to. To serve? And, and there we, you know, my, my viewpoint is, you know, there's two ways to qualify a prospect. We got demographics and we got psychographics. And that to use an athlete analogy, demographics is an athlete's height, weight and speed. It's a lot of the stuff you can't teach they're given cycle. The psychographics is how's that athlete going to perform in the fourth quarter when the game's on the line? This is where I think college athlete athletics go wrong in recruiting. They recruit the height, weight and the speed and they go, oh, wait, this kid melts in the fourth. Yeah.

Oh, no.

But when you think about that from a prospecting standpoint in business, the, the riches are in the psychographic niches because it's who are your prospects between the ears? What do they believe? What do they stand for? How do they make decisions? What do they think about what you sell? These are the people who let you do your best work, but why not build a marketing message to go attract the people who are going to let you do your best work? Right? And that's where the psychographics Come in. Right.

You know, and, but so many people, they do think, oh, I have to sell to everybody, you know, and, and you know, it's the old shotgun after a fly type of thing. You might hit that fly, but you're going to have wasted so much more, you know, and are you limiting? Well, yes, but if they were never going to buy from you to start with, then why would you want to waste your time?

Yeah, I.

We teach people how to sell with exclusivity. And what I mean by that is, you know, I come from an industry where a good year doesn't mean you have to have a hundred sales depending on what you're selling for. A lot of our producers, they have 10 sales, they have an amazing year. So why not go tell the market you're looking to work with 10 people this year and you're going to see if they're going to be one of the ten. I learned this strategy from a peer of mine and he, every year he sold out, he hit his quota because he would go out and say, I got 12 gold coins to give this year. My goal this year is to figure out who's getting the 12. When you sell from that place, one you're selling with confidence, which the prospect feels right. But to your point, it's saying not everybody is a fit for what we do and that's the way we want it. We're just seeing who are going to be the 8 to 10, 10, the 20 who are going to be a fit. It'll change your business when you apply that attitude. Oh, yeah.

You know, it's like somebody selling, say, a Mercedes Benz, they're not going to try and sell it to the person who's currently driving a Toyota, you know, and now, you know, the person with Toyota might have saved their pennies and they might be able to buy a Benz. Right. But for the most part, there's no point in, in wasting their time. You know, they might give them a test drive, just, you know, humor them, but they're really not going to waste that time because the most important thing is they absolutely have to be ready when the right people come along. And, you know, how many times do we see that you're spending your time off with the maybes and you miss the yeses.

You just brought up a really good point nobody wants to talk about. And that is maybe suck. I know. Our number one job in marketing and sales is to get people to make a clear decision. And as much as we hate hearing no's, at least they're Clear. Right. Yeah. Nos allow you to move on. Where people get stuck is their pipelines are filled with maybes.

Well, I'll think about it. I gotta ask my husband.

Not right now.

100%. Yeah, it's. I, it's something I've had to learn. It's something I teach my own sales reps now, and we're teaching our clients is when you hop on a call with a prospect, one of the first things you should tell them is, my goal today is to help you make a clear decision. Even if it's a no.

Yeah. I'm wish you well.

Yeah.

You know, and. And I think the issue is we take no's personal.

Yeah.

You know, and, and I remember years ago, you know, we were talking before the thing. I. You lived in Fort Collins. I went to CSU and I had an English professor there who we wrote a paper, got it back and in. This was back when they still graded things right by hand. And he. Every person in the class, I don't know how many red pens he used up, but he bled all over everything. And of course you're like. And he said, these are words. They are not your babies. And when we got over that, then we could think, okay, you know what, what are we going to do? And I think that's the thing is we think, oh my God, everybody has to want to buy from me because it's the one most wonderful in the world. No, not everybody thinks it's the most wonderful thing in the world. And that's perfectly fine.

You bring it back right to the athlete and the identity crisis. One of the things I struggled with as an athlete is letting my success dictate my selfworth. So as a pitcher in sports, the scoreboard tells you if you're doing well or not.

You won, you lost.

And when you're playing in pro baseball, you are literally getting judged by your stats. Right. And it's easy to let that dictate your own value of yourself. And I struggle with that. Even early in my business, I still struggle with time. Time. Like if I'm. If my business is going well, I'm great. If business isn't great, I suck. Right? Yeah. And to your point, in sales, you have to learn how to let that go. If, if every no is going to be devastating and it's going to have a negative impact on your self worth, it is going to be a long road to success in sales for you. Yeah. Yeah.

Now you should learn from those no's. But then let them go.

Yeah. It's not an indication of who you are. It's just you found somebody who isn't interested in what you have.

Yeah, and maybe they will be later. Who knows, but you know, then. And so that's where you do things. Like you have them on an E newsletter, you connect with them on LinkedIn, all those various things. So they're still getting the trickle message, but you're not spending any more time on them.

That's one of the biggest things we teach producers right there. What you mentioned is for the people. When you're out selling, you gotta remember, most people, I'd say probably 80 to 90%, are not ready to buy from you right now.

Right.

That's fact. Be okay with that. Approach your sales that way. But when they give you the cool. Sounds interesting, but we're not ready right now. What are you gonna do between now and the time they're ready to make sure they never forget who you are. And the problem with that is most producers who pick up the phone today when they get the maybe call us in six months, they don't do anything for six months. And they call them back that cold that calls as cold as it was six months ago. And they go, who are you again?

Right.

My question is, what are you doing from a email standpoint, like a newsletter? What are you doing from a LinkedIn content standpoint and other forms of content to make sure that prospect never forgets who you are? And by the time you call them back, they go, oh, heck yeah, we're ready to have a conversation. Yeah.

Or somewhere in there, excuse me. They might have said, you need to talk to this guy Andy.

You know, and. And. And I think that's. But so many times when we hear the no. And we're crushed. We're like, I'm never talking to him again. Well, you know, unless it was, no, you suck. You know, then you can probably at least keep it. And you know, on social, on e newsletters, all of those things, they can always unsubscribe. And again, that's not the end of the world. Do I look to see who unsubscribes? Yes. And then I go, huh? Right. You know, it was just they. They didn't want my stuff at that point in time.

Let me give you a really. Let me give you a real life example. I got a text message from a client who two weeks ago said, andy, check this out. He got a call two weeks ago from a prospect. Now, this is a prospect he met with over a year ago. Wow. And they said, chris, just so you know, we're happy to meet. We're, we're really happy though, with our current advisor. We have no intention of leaving, but we'll meet. So we did. He walked out of the meeting going, yeah, they're not interested.

Yeah, they gave you the polite meeting.

He never followed back. But he was connected to him on LinkedIn and had him in his email newsletter two weeks ago. A year later, he gets a phone call from this prospect. Says, hey, Chris, don't know if you remember me, we talked a year ago. Can you, would you mind meeting with us again? The next day Chris goes out, sits down in the conference room and he's excited because he didn't think this prospect would ever get back in touch. So he goes up to the whiteboard in the conference room to start showing him what he could do for him. Prospect said, chris, sit down. You don't need to show us anything.

Yeah, we know.

We've been reading your emails. We've been seeing your videos on LinkedIn for a year. We're sold. We're bought in. We brought you in to talk about next steps. That was a $250,000 revenue account.

Wow.

But it goes to what you just said. If you go at it with the attitude, most people aren't ready to buy from you yet, but you're gonna let all your content do the talking in the meantime.

Right?

Magical things will happen. Right?

You know, and the thing is, people get all caught up in their content. Oh, I can't give them this stuff for free. You know, you, you, you not telling them everything, but you are telling them enough so that they know, you know what you're talking about. You know, and, and if you're in this, I can't give away anything, then that's a totally different problem.

I agree. Prospects expect more value today than they ever have. We have a phrase here we live by. Give away the farm, reap the harvest. You got to teach them, teach them how to do it as if they can do it themselves and they will eventually hire you. I, I learned a very important lesson from one of my mentors when he said, andy, people come for the information, they pay for the application, Give them the good information, they will still hire, they still need to hire somebody to do it, and they're going to hire you.

Right? Well, and just because we can read it doesn't mean we want to do it. You know, I mean, I can read about how to do my taxes. I have no desire to do my taxes. You know, but reading somebody's email newsletter I'm going to go, yeah, they know what they're talking about, you know, and, and so that's the thing is you give them that information so that then they go, yeah, you do know what you're talking about.

Yeah, it's, and it's, it's. We have leaned in on this really hard lately. I'm a big believer in tactical information right now, which is give your prospects quick wins, give them content they can literally do something about right away, even if it's going back to their current advisor. Right. Give them something they can leverage right away and they will love you for it. See, And I tell people, how do you know when that moment's arriving? It's when you're doing a video or you're writing an email and you're right at that point when you're about to share the good stuff, what most people do is they'll go, and that's why you should call us.

Yes.

Mm, no, just give it away.

Right.

And that, that to me is important. We, we, we have a social media sales academy we run teaching people how to use LinkedIn. I remember I was on a call with a guy who was looking at it a couple months ago and he said, andy, you put out so much free content, couldn't I just watch your free content and do it myself? I said, yes, you could, but are you going?

You want to.

He still signed up, right?

Yeah. You know, and is that a lot of work? Yes. But again, by the time they talk to you, they're at the yes point.

Yes.

Not.

We. You know, in, in any sales environment there is known, what is known as a sales cycle. Right. Some are short, some are long. In the insurance industry, especially in the benefits commercial space, it's long sales cycles. Benefits could be a two or three year sales cycle.

Right.

Well, if the only time you get a chance to influence that prospect is when you're meeting with them, it's going to take a while. But if you're using content, that content is shrinking that sales cycle with while you sleep.

Right.

And then when you do interact, they're already bought in. Like, like to your point.

Right.

There's nothing, there's not a better feeling to walk into a prospect who already feels like they know you and they're already valuing what you've delivered to them. You want to have a leg up on the competition, that's how you do, right? Yeah.

I want to talk a little bit more about LinkedIn because that's the great way to have been researching them, you know, I'm finding out a little bit about them before you have those meetings. Yeah, there's a little stocky part to it. Right. But, you know, for one thing, if somebody puts it out there, well, then they shouldn't be surprised if you read it. But. And, and, but that's where I like LinkedIn, definitely for the business, as opposed to, you know, Facebook, because, you know, or. Or Instagram or any of those. But, you know, I remember one time I was. I had a call with somebody and, you know, they. They. And it actually was a baseball thing. I noticed in his profile, he said colorado Rockies fan in his LinkedIn profile. Was that professional? No, but he put it in there because it was part of who he was. So first meeting, I take him, you know, this cost me five bucks, a Colorado Rockies mug with chocolate in it. He remembered that forever. And now I told him I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you liked Rockies. So that way he doesn't, you know, didn't really think that I was stalking him. But, you know, that's where we find out where they went to school, other places they were, other people they know. I mean, let's be honest. That's why LinkedIn puts that information out there. But, yeah, you can find out things and. And, you know, and that is part of being a good salesperson. You know, you're looking when you're meeting with somebody, maybe they've got a picture of their child playing soccer. Well, then you ask about it. Then the next time you talk to them, how's, you know, how's soccer going? You know, what about, oh, my gosh, did you just watch the Olympics where the women won? You know, all of those various things, and it. That's the cool thing about social is it now gives us a lot of that information.

Not only can you research and get a lot of good intel on prospects, because prospects actually want personalization these days. It's getting harder and harder to hit prospects with these cold blasts of emails. They want personalization. But to flip that script, it's also how you can get a lot of people to know you before you meet them. I tell people all the time when I'm creating content. There's two types of content I'm going to focus on personal stories and thought leadership. Personal stories serve a very important purpose. I'm gonna let you get to know me a little bit, because if you're a prospect watching my content, you and I might have the same hobbies. Maybe we have a child with similar conditions or health issues or similar past Events that have occurred, we went to the same college, whatever it might be. That content is what lets that prospect say, you know, kind of like him. And there's nothing else that can do that today.

Right.

That's where you walk into rooms with prospects who already like you is when you let people get to know you in your content.

Right? Yeah. And we're not saying tmi, folks. You know, this is, you know, just, just kind of rein it back. You know, there's always that right before you hit send or post. Okay. If you go, then you shouldn't, you're.

Covering your eyes like, okay, here we go.

Yeah, you know, and, you know, and, and you know, but it's funny because I, you know, like we're getting, we're, we're not getting ready to, we are in a very contentious political time period. And I've had people ask me, you know, should I put that in there? Well, you know, I've told them, you know, you have to be authentic if that is really, really, really important to you, but understand that whichever side you're saying you just alienated 50% for the most part, you know, and, and, but it was really funny. I had somebody one time, I was working with him on his LinkedIn profile and, and he was going for managerial type of positions, right, where he was going to have to stand up and give presentations and things like that. Didn't have a lot of experience doing that. So I was talking. Well, it turns out he was a lay leader at his church. Nice, standard run of the mill church, you know, nothing that, you know. And, and I said, put that in there. Don't go into detail, just put it in there. And he kind of looked a little startled. And I said, it shows people that you can get up in front of people and speak. And you know, and, and I said, you know, you're not, don't put a video in there. Don't, you know, do any of that, you know, but, but just, you know, and, and, and he, you know, a couple weeks later, calls, he's got the job and he said, they specifically said, we knew you could speak in front of people because you did that. It also meant he probably knew budgeting, you know, all sorts of things. And so, you know, you kind of think about those things. That's why LinkedIn really put your volunteer stuff in because so many of the things that we do or learn come from volunteering.

Yeah, you brought up, I mean, we could probably have an old whole podcast.

We could, we could.

What you talk about in content. I I've always, personally, I've just been of the mindset I'm not going to ever say anything politically.

I'm never going to post what I.

Loved about his post. He wasn't, he wasn't expressing his religious beliefs. He was just saying, I'm a lay person at, at this church. But I do warn people who do want to use religion or politics in their content, just know it's going to be polarizing. Yep. And when you throw the grenade in the house, don't be surprised when it explodes.

Oh, yeah.

Like there are going to be backlashes from that content. So if you're willing to put it out there. Awesome. Right? Don't get upset then when you get the poor feedback. Right.

Yeah. I was talking with a delightful young woman just last week who was a. She was a consultant for Fine. For political campaigns. That was her paid job, you know, things like that. So it made sense that she put it in there, you know, and, and, and it was because she actually did list which party. I mean, she could have gone a little bit more generic, but, you know, but again, she said, you know, I know that it's going to do it. Now I also know that, you know, I might put in there that I am a University of Colorado graduate and somebody from O, say, Kansas or Nebraska is going to go, ew, okay, well, then I might not want to work with them anyway.

And I, but, but that's a funny point you bring up because I'm like, even, even if it was from a rival school, I still don't believe there'd be enough vitriol. Somebody be like, I'm not working with.

You can trash. Right.

But to your point, though, sports is one thing, but when you're really, when you want to go down the religious or political path again, do not be upset about the ramifications.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Just know that that could happen now. I live in Georgia. I live in the Bible Belt. You're certainly going to see more in, even in people's LinkedIn profiles. That's perfectly fine. You know, I remember when we first moved here, I went to my first big networking thing, and it was great. Everybody made me feel welcome. I had made a lot of contacts before I ever moved on LinkedIn because we knew we were moving all sorts of stuff. They took me to this great event. I, I won the door prize. I'm so excited. It was a Bible, you know, and it was like, you know, and, you know, my first thought was to tell them, thanks, but I have one. I, of course, Thanked him profusely. And, you know, and, and, and. But it was like, oh, yeah, okay. But I mean, that was just. That was what was important. And I also learned, you know, anytime I'm out eating, even for a business thing, food comes pause because they very likely are going to say, grace. That's just, you know, doing business in the south, not going to happen in Colorado. Right. And probably not in Wisconsin either. But, you know, it's just. Just knowing. Kind of. Kind of reading your audience, right?

I was. You took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say, no matter what you decide to post or say, just know your audience, right. It comes back to who is your ideal prospect. Right. Know their audience.

Right.

Whatever you're about to post, you better know who's going to receive it on the other end. And don't be surprised when it's a reaction you expected, but now are upset it's happening. Ignore your audience.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I very well might post that University of Colorado has the best mascot. Buffalo, Right? A live buffalo. But the people down here who have UGA for the bulldog mascot are going to quibble with me, and that's perfectly fine. Right. You know, and, and, but, you know, but it's also.

As you said, getting to know people, you know, because then we almost always have the discussion of, remember when they brought Ralphie down here? Or, oh, my gosh, do you remember when Bevo tried to take aga? You know, and so, yeah, it just kind of comes back to that. But, you know, it. It is, It's. It's. It's winning friends and influencing them.

Right.

You know, and just knowing that you could say something and sometimes it's a perfectly innocent thing and it's taken the wrong way.

Well, I think the big picture today with sales and marketing and sales, Deb, is historically.

We viewed prospects as a list of people to sell, right? When today are. Today it's a community to bring value to. And if you just approach your sales more with that approach, that I'm going to build a community and I'm going to deliver a ton of value to it. You not only will have clients out of that down the road, you're going to have raving fans. And when we teach LinkedIn, I teach a really simple concept. I say, listen, go look at the number of connections you have, whether it's 500, 5,000 or 10, 50,000, I don't care. That's your community, and you're the mayor of the community. And as mayor, you have two jobs. You got to go get more of the right residents to move in. Right. And you've got to make the ones that feel who live there feel good. They do. How do you do that? Make good connections, deliver good content. Right?

Yeah. And it's just that simple, you know, and, and it comes back to almost the golden rule, right. You know, whether you're religious or not, you want to treat people like you want to be treated.

100%. 100%. And that's where plat social media platforms today, I still think get a bad rap because there's a lot of toxicity on them. And I understand. But if done well, social media platforms like LinkedIn can literally change your career.

Right.

We've seen what it's done for clients of ours that are now writing big, the biggest cases they've ever written. They're walking into rooms with prospects, having all the credibility established and never met these people. It's unbelievable what can happen if you're willing to show up, you're willing to be your authentic self, your brand.

Right.

And you're willing to over deliver and give away the good stuff when you do all those good things happen.

Right. You know, and it is about being authentic, you know, and, and, and you back to the, the, you know, the personal brand, you know, you bring in your baseball history, right. Your logo, I noticed, is a home plate. Now, not a lot of people might catch that, but I did, you know, and, and, but yeah, there's, there's things that you can put in there that just kind of like, oh, well, that's cute. Right? You know, did it, did it mean anything? No, but I thought, well, that's kind of cute because that is part of who you are. And I think the problem comes in when we try to not be that.

Yep. There's a lot of people in sales, regardless of the industry, that are willing to be whoever they need to be to win the business. And I don't think that's a way to grow a business. I think at the end of the day, you just got to be you. Whether that means they like you or not. The people who don't like it, they were never going to hire you anyways. And if they did, if they did, it's not going to be a good fit. Six months.

Oh, yeah. I mean, if you're having to go into it being someone else, you.

Yeah, it just, just show up as it. To me, we, we try to do this with new producers, especially who are new to the industry. It's like, number one thing, I can tell you, as a new producer is number one, be yourself. To just sell with that confidence that you, if you believe in what you sell and you believe it can actually help people and help their business, you have an obligation to tell as many people as you can.

Yeah, I remember I was at a mastermind group and our, you know, mastermind groups, typical, the way it was has, you know, people in there who. We had an insurance salesman and he started to give his little pitch and he stopped and he said, I gotta tell you, he said, we had a call yesterday from somebody whose husband died and they didn't have life insurance.

Now, we believed it. You know, that was the big thing. You know, we knew that it was not a line. He was not. Because, you know, I mean, we just knew him. That was. But, yeah, you know, and, and we all were like, okay, we need to make that phone call.

And. But he allowed himself to show that pain, you know, And I think that's the thing, you know, people are like, ah, I don't know about that either, you know, and. And because we have our box and we don't want to get out of our box.

Well, and I, I think one of the best tips I can give to people who are trying to build a brand, especially an online brand, where you're trying to establish some kind of rapport with your prospects is vulnerability matters. You know, I learned this the hard, the hard way and the good way is public speaking. I've been speaking for about eight years now. And I remember when I would stand on stage, I'd share all these stories about playing pro baseball and overcoming the odds of being an undersized pitcher, yada, yada, yada. But at the end of the talk, I'd be like, I don't have a lot of people coming up to me, like, telling me how great it was. I'm like, I thought that talk was awesome, right? Well, then one day, 2018, I just said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go up on stage. It was a room full of human resource professionals, and I'm going to talk about. Use my pro baseball career to set the theme of the story. But I'm going to talk about why I failed in pro baseball. I'm going to talk about the fear of judgment, the fear of comparison, the fear of failure. At the end of that talk, that was the first time I had somebody come up to me and hug me. And I realized a moment, important thing, you want to build a brand. People resonate, be vulnerable, because you know what I knew not everybody in that room or almost nobody had ever played pro baseball, but everybody had failed.

Right?

And the more your brand can have people say, you know what? He. She is just like me, the better it's going to be.

I love it. Well, oh, my gosh, Andy, this has been great. It's been a little bit abbreviated because we gabbed too much before we started. But that just means we have to have you on again because we're just scratching the surface with all of this. But tell us how people find you and what are the services that you provide?

Yeah. Number one, connect with me on LinkedIn. Andy Neary, complete Game Consulting. Come check us out@completegameconsulting.com we also have a free training on how to use LinkedIn. I can share the link with you, Deb. So you want to promote that on your show notes? You can, but what we do is we help. We help producers. We. We work with the insurance industry primarily, but we help. We help agencies and producers put the right message in front of the right people. We say we help them take reach and relevancy and turn it into revenue.

Perfect.

The truth is, not enough people know you exist.

Mm.

We're gonna get your audit. You're gonna get. We're gonna get your message out far, fast, and wide so a lot of people who know who you are so you can build that credibility you need to win.

Perfect. I love it. Well, we will definitely get that Lincoln and put it in the show notes. You know, we will have you on again, and I look forward to that. But until then, do you have any final thoughts that you want to leave everyone with?

Yeah, I would just say, you know, if you're listening in and you are in the world of marketing and. Or sales, I'll wrap by saying what I said about 10 minutes ago. Biggest lesson I had to learn, especially when growing my own business, was if I don't tell people I can help them, my business isn't going to grow. And I'm here to tell you, if you believe in what you sell, you believe what you sell can actually help people, possibly change their life. You have an obligation to tell as many people as you can. You're not being salesy. You're not being.

Pushy in any way. You just believe in what you sell. And by not telling them, you are negating them the opportunity to get the help they need.

I love it. Oh, my gosh. Well, I'm Deb Preer. We've been having so much fun chatting. I've been talking with Andy Neary. And until next time, everyone have a great day.

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