Marketing Tips For Insurance Agents: Health Rosetta Keynote Talk_ August 2022

You guys excited to be here? Welcome. I'm going to welcome you to my hometown, even though I live an hour north. One thing you're going to realize that everything in Denver or everything in Colorado is under construction because people keep moving here. So no. Welcome, guys. I hope you're excited for this event today. This morning, I want to share three lessons that I've learned that have changed my career. In fact, there are the three lessons that are the reason I am standing on stage this morning talking to you as the founder of Complete Game Consulting. But before we get to those three lessons, I want to take you guys back in time. Sometimes you got to take a step back before you take a big leap forward. Let me take you back to 2011 and describe or tell you who Andy neary was in 2011.

I was running a small benefits department for a PNC agency, Midwest Insurance Group in Delafield, Wisconsin, and I hated it. In April of 2011, I was involved in a pretty bad car accident. In fact, my car was hit by two semis, and somehow I walked away with a shattered hand and a bad concussion. A month later, my girlfriend decides to break up with me. And by July, I had hit rock bottom. Now, I think everybody at some point in their life hits rock bottom. We all have different degrees, different levels. For me, this was my rock bottom. In fact, I can remember July of 2011. I was sitting at my desk at my office at Midwest Insurance Group, so frozen with anxiety. I literally couldn't do anything. I was still recovering from my car accident. I was recovering from breaking up with my girlfriend, and I hated my job. And at that time, when I look back at the kind of advisor I was in 2011, some of you might be able to do the same. I laugh because I was the guy going and getting the spreadsheets going and asking for the census. How many employees do you have? What carrier you are with? How many? When's your ex date? I'm going to go quote all the fully insured carriers who was there about 11 years ago. Come on, guys.

I remember walking into Accounts Larger Opportunities.

And they had this thing called self funding.

And I'd look at it and I'd walk out going, I don't even know how to help these people. It's a foreign language.

And here I sat at my desk in July, frozen with anxiety because I literally hated what I did. And in that moment, there was only one thing I knew to do. And I got up and I walked out of the office. I didn't even tell my boss Walked right past our office manager at the front desk and I just left. I got in my car, I drove to my parents house, and for the next two hours I sat at their pool and I just stared.

And I didn't know what to do next.

And two hours later, I left my parents house, I drove home and I made a decision. A decision that would alter my career. I did not know it at the time, but it was a decision to quit.

The next day I walked into Midwest Insurance Group. Jeremy and I went and grabbed lunch. Jeremy was a friend of mine. And I said, dude, I can't do this anymore. I hate my job. I hate working with these small groups. At the time, they sold mainly to construction and manufacturing. So great PNC opportunities, right? Small groups for benefits. And then this thing called the Affordable Care act was coming around the corner. I'm like, forget that. I'm done. And I quit.

And when I walked out that day, I had no idea what was next. In fact, I thought that was going to be my last hurrah in the health insurance industry.

But what's next came calling two days later.

Because two days later, I get a call from Chris Meyer, chief operating officer at Burk, Wall and Associates. I don't know if we have any Wisconsin folk in here this morning. Burke Wall and Associates was a highly respected benefits consulting firm in the market I was competing in. In fact, I had applied for a job there years earlier and did not get hired. And Chris said, hey, I have no idea what you're doing right now. Little did she know I was literally quitting. And she said, but we have a new position for account exec open, and I'd love to talk to you if you're open to it.

And this is where the string of good decisions started impacting my life. You see, up until that point, I'd been making a lot of bad decisions, both personally and professionally. But the first good decision I made was I said yes.

And that first interview turned into a second interview, turned into a third interview, and a month later, I accepted an offer to become an account exec at Burk, Wall and Associates.

Now, this required me to take a step back because I had been a producer my whole career. Now I was going back to being an account exec. It's like a head coach getting fired, going back to becoming an assistant so you can become a head coach again.

But at Burkwald, I was given two gifts.

Number one, I was given a mentor.

Dan Burkwald was the first mentor I had in this industry. He taught me about health insurance. He taught me about life. He taught me about business. And as I mentioned, the good things just started rolling at this point in my life. This is fall of 2011. In fact, in October of 2011, I got to share this story with you guys. My next great thing happened is when I met Amy, the woman I'm with today. Now I got to share the story with you guys. I know it's a complete side note, but Amy and I met in 2011 online. Anybody meet their significant other online? Come on. Willing to admit it back in 2011. It was kind of creepy and weird.

Very creepy back then, right now, here's the story. We meet, we're talking on the phone. We actually never meet in person yet. It's a Thursday, early October, October 6th. And we had planned to make our first date dinner in Madison, Wisconsin. So I'm excited. I get off the phone with her at my office. An hour later, I get a call from a buddy of mine, Pete Slosher. He's like, dude, I got two tickets to game five for the Brewers Diamondback series. You want them now? It's game five of a five game series. This is winner take all. I'm like, shit.

So I said, pete, hold on. I get on the phone, I'm like, amy, I know we have never met. I know this is super weird. Can you get off of work tomorrow afternoon?

She's like, I guess. Why? I said, well, I got two tickets to the Diamondbacks Brewer series. Now she has no clue that I love baseball. I used to play baseball. Now she made her first good decision and she said yes. So our first date was game five of the Brewers Diamondbacks. For nine innings, I did not talk to her. I sat in my seat like this. Every pitch, nervous as hell. And if anybody remembers baseball fans, brewers end up winning in extra innings. The place was bananas. It was insane. One of the greatest games I've ever seen. Somehow, someway, Amy said yes. To date two. And the rest is history. Here we are today. So complete side note back to Burkwald.

I got a mentor. But the other gift I was given.

Is I was able to become a student of self funding. You see, at Burkwald, we didn't have a ton of clients, but we had big ones and they were all self funded. So I got to become a student of the game. I got to study the craft like an athlete studies their sport. And I got really good at self funding. I love the conversations with our clients, the numbers, the financing, the reporting. And three years later, 2014, I'm pretty darn good at this thing called self funding.

Now in 2014, Amy and I decided to make another very good, important decision. We decide to relocate from Wisconsin to Colorado. Now for the historians in the room, you may remember that in February 2014, Colorado became the first state to legalize marijuana. So when you move of May 2014, it's met with some friendly criticism.

So we move Memorial Day 2014, pack up our stuff, head out here. We live an hour north in Fort Collins. And when I went to work, I went to work for an independent insurance agency up in Longmont, 30 minutes away, Boke and Bell. And I quickly realized I had a knowledge advantage out here. And I don't say that egotistically because we had been doing self funding for three years back in Wisconsin. Out here, self funding really wasn't a thing. Yet in 2014, in fact, for most advisors out here, self funding was Cigna's level funded product.

So I knew I had an advantage. And I loved going and talking to prospects about my knowledge. But then every meeting I'd walk out going, what is going on? They don't get it. And I kept blaming my prospects stupidity.

And here's where I learned a very important lesson quickly. Out here in Colorado.

Knowledge is not power.

Your ability to communicate what you know is where the power lies.

Then I had a second problem. June 2014, about a month into the job, we're sitting in the conference room at VOC and Bell.

And the whole team's around the table for our first sales meeting that I'm involved in as an employee. And I ask a really simple question. He so what's our marketing plan here? What are we doing to go grab attention from prospects? And I remember without hesitation, every single eyeball around that table looked back at me without an answer.

I can remember looking down at the table and to myself, I just went, oh shit, what did I do?

And in that moment, I made another really good decision.

Number one, I realized the first lesson that I want to share with everybody today is knowledge is not power. If you can't communicate your knowledge, none of it matters. Your ability to communicate the knowledge you have is where the power lies. But in that moment, I made two investments. Number one, I invested in becoming a better communicator. See, at that time, like you, some of you in the room, I read this article by this guy named Dave Chase. Some of you might remember the article the job that could save America any. Remember that? That changed my perspective. In fact, I was telling Dave, behind the stage here, the next Day, I went on my LinkedIn profile and changed my job title from benefit consultant to healthcare strategist. Like there's a different way to do this. The second thing I did is I invested in becoming a better communicator. I joined the National Speakers association here in Colorado. They had a six month speakers academy. I jumped right in. When that academy was over, I hired my own speaking coach because I said, if I'm going to win in a market, by the way, where nobody knows who I am, I got to be the best communicator around. I've got the knowledge, I've got to communicate.

And so I went heavily invested in my ability to communicate. The second thing I did, the second investment I made is I said I got to build a brand.

And a lot of people think a brand is logos and fonts and influencers we see on social media. No, a brand is representing your reputation to the market.

And that brand that I built was built on three pillars. They are the same three pillars we still use today at Complete Game Consulting with our clients. Number one, I had to know exactly who my ideal prospect was, because up until that point, I was talking to a lot of the wrong prospects. Number two, I had to build a brand message for those prospects. I had to give those prospects the ability to raise their hand and say, yes, that's us. That is the problem we're struggling with. And number three, I had to have a platform to share that message far, fast and wide. And so I jumped on LinkedIn. I started hosting webinars, I started public speaking, I started my email campaigns. A couple years later, I started my podcast. My whole goal was I'm going to get as many people to know me as fast as I can. I need to create exponential awareness. See, up until that point, I only know two ways to prospect. And if you've been in this industry for a while, you know those two ways. Pick up the phone, smile and dial and go pound the pavement. But I realized every time I pick up the phone, I could only talk to one prospect at a time.

Every time I park a car in an industrial park, because that's how I started. Every door I knock on, I can only knock on one door at a time.

So I need to create exponential awareness. And it worked. I was able to build a nice book of business in a market. Nobody knew who I was in a relatively short amount of time.

Fast forward two years.

This is where these next two lessons came in. It's January 2017 and I'm invited to speak at a 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 McCaliff. 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 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, along by 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 Schmidt 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 the. With Volken Bell. They've sold the gbs. So I moved on. I'm now a partner 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'm thinking 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. And what he had about on the phone was my LinkedIn profile. He said, dude, I love your stuff.

He said, keep posting that. 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 Garbarich. Cool. So he went back in his line. I 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.

Now, I wish I could have A Disney ending to all of these stories. I wish I could tell you. I ended up writing PepsiCo. I ended up writing Boulder Valley School District. I ended up writing csg. But you know what happened in every single one of those cases? Every single time each one of those companies sat me down and said, andy, I would hire you today, but I can't. You're not big enough.

And in that moment, I realized I had two choices. I could leave Olson Group and go to work for a Lockton, a Gallagher, an Aeon, the big boys. So I had the support and the size to win it. Or I could take that defeat as a victory. And I instead chose to take it as a victory because here's what I learned in those defeats. I have a gift.

And that gift is the ability to communicate, tell stories.

And the ability to grab attention.

And this is why I'm standing on stage right now as founder of Complete Game Consulting, because our job today is to help you guys get attention. Help you guys get the attention you need to win the business. You deserve help. And it's through the power of communication.

You see, in this room today, there is more collective knowledge than anywhere else in the industry. I mean, that you guys are smart.

But knowledge doesn't win alone.

Your ability to communicate that knowledge is what is going to send your business through the roof. And if most of you are willing to look in the mirror, you would admit you're not winning as much as you want. It's not your knowledge.

It's communicating that knowledge you already have.

So this is why I am honored that Lynn Ann and Dave have given me the opportunity to stand up on stage this morning and lead an exercise with you guys. Because we're going to do an exercise. It's something we do with every one of our clients at Complete Game. And we are going to build one hell of an elevator pit for Health Rosetta. You guys interested?

Because there's some questions we've got to answer if we're going to get super clear on who and what companies are the best fit for this Health Rosetta model. You guys know you have something special here. We have now got to go communicate it to the world. In a way, they go, yeah, that's us. Because the three things I want to leave you with today before we dive into the exercise is, number one, knowledge is not power.

Your ability to communicate that knowledge is where the victory lies. Number two.

Business is no longer about who you know. It's about who knows you. And number three.

Those who tell stories will rule society.

So What I want to help you guys do this morning to kick this awesome event off is we're going to take some time at the tables. You guys are going to have some discussions, and we're going to start developing one heck of a story for the health Rosetta. Who's up for that?

Awesome. Okay, so here's what we want to do. Oh, you guys have. Some of you guys have that book. By the way, here's a great example of attention I was going to share, and I totally just glossed it over. Everybody's familiar with Dave's first book, right? Everybody's read it, right? If you look in the forward of that book, there's a name in there you'll recognize. It's yours truly. Dave was kind enough to say I was one of the influencers that helped write that book. I was humbled. But, guys, the only reason I was named in that book, if I'm being honest with you, is I could grab attention. I had an ability to communicate and grab attention. I'm humbled. But the point is, did I deserve to be in there? Probably not.

But it's the power of communication. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go over four questions at your tables. We're have some table discussions here, and there's four questions we want to answer very clearly. And I think I want to give each of you a chance to talk. Number one, what is your why? What is your why behind joining the Rosetta movement? I want to give everybody in the room a chance, 30 seconds to a minute to just talk about your why. Why the heck are you sitting here today? Because when I have these discussions with my clients and I ask, why do you do what you do? I tell them the only answer you can't give is, I'm just here to make money. I hope you have a bigger why than money.

The second question is going to be, who is the ideal prospect, the ideal company.

For the health Rosetta?

And then the key question we need to answer is, what problems are we solving for companies today? Because I do want to tell everybody in this room, there is not a company in America right Now, especially in 2022, that shows up to work every day saying, we need to fix health care.

They're worried about recruiting. They're worried about inflation, rule changes. Heck, just trying to keep the people they have. They're not concerned about health care. So if we can take what you guys have and put it in a message, a story that makes them go, that's us. We've got something powerful. And then the last question. This is where you get to do your own elevator pitch. Describe the Health Rosetta in your own words.

So we're going to kick this thing off. We're going to start with question one. Again, we're just going to have some table discussion, guys. So you're going to split off in your tables, and I want you guys to go around the room, around the table for a second and just talk about why you are here this morning. Why are you or do you want to be a part of the Health Rosetta movement? So, all right, here we go. Start some discussions. I'll bring you guys back, and then we'll move on to question two.

As you guys are having these discussions now, slowly move into question number two.

Who. What kind of company is the ideal fit for the Health Rosetta model? Start describing that company.

If I could grab your attention quick, G.

I want everybody to take these questions. We're a little behind time, so I apologize. I want everybody to take these questions and chew on them today after the event's over. Because, guys, here's where the secret is. I want to share this with you. If any of you in the room right now are going, okay, I need to be winning more business than I am. I deserve to be more winning business. I know I have the knowledge. The secret will be found here. Number one, when you look at who your ideal prospect is, there's two ways to identify an ideal prospect. There's demographics and there's psychographics. Everybody in this room has been taught how to identify a prospect demographically. Size, location, industry, number of employees. Right. Psychographics is how do they think, what do they stand for, what do they believe? How do they make decisions? Because your favorite clients believe what you believe. They stand for what you stand. They make decisions like you make, and they let you do your best work. So. So when you think about the best clients for the Rosetta, think about the psychographics. And when you think about the problems that you help them solve, it is not fixing healthcare. It is not lowering prescription drugs. It's controlling their cost in a time of inflation. It is helping them create a package that stands out when they're just trying to recruit the best people. Right now, when you focus on the right problems, you focus on the right people with the right message and you lock it in on them. You're going to get the right people to raise their hand over and over and over. So even though we had to cut the exercise a little short, guys, take these questions back to your team, back to your company and chew on them, go through them because I promise you this is the unlock that is going to take the right business with the right prospects to the next level. So I want to thank you guys today. I hope you guys are ready for an awesome conference. Who's ready? You guys are a little quiet this morning.

I think what we got coming up next is a countdown video, a welcome video. So again guys, I just want to thank you for listening to me for the last 20, 25 minutes. I hope it was a little insightful, a little beneficial, a little impactful. Guys, you are working with some of the best right now. This is your opportunity to take what you're doing to the next level. The advice I want to leave you with, knowledge is power. That ability to communicate. That knowledge you have, guys, will be everything. So thank you guys. I appreciate it.