The 3 Habits That Saved My Insurance Career

There's three lessons, I think, that have really shaped my career in the last decade. To go from failed insurance producer to successful insurance producer to now owner of Complete Game Consulting, who coaches insurance professionals.

Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. As you can probably tell, this is not Andy Neary. This is Amy Ethig. I am director of Client Content Strategy here at Complete Game Consulting. And we're going to change it up a little bit today. So here's what we're going to do. Andy's in the hot seat. We wanted to give you guys the opportunity to hear about his journey over the last decade. There are quite a few lessons that he's learned along the way and some habits that he has implemented that have really changed his career. And so we thought it would be really fun to hear about those from him. So I'm excited to have the opportunity to host today's episode to. Hey, Andy, thanks for being here.

Amy. This is an honor. Welcome to doing your first podcast as a host.

So we worked together starting in 2014, way back when you moved to Colorado. But before that, tell me about who you were. Like, describe Andy, Mary, prior to 2014.

Yeah, good question. You know, I came in 2014. Amy and I different. Amy moved out to Colorado in May of 2014. I believe you came back to Voc Bell later that year, before the end of the year.

Before that. I sucked at insurance. There's no other way to say that, Amy. I got in in 2002, and I like to tell people it found me as it did most people in this industry. We didn't get in here by design. And I was told, you know, I was taught the. The old school tactics. You know, when I got hired, I was thrown in the old proverbial bullpen and make a bunch of calls and just get somebody to buy something. And I think for me.

I struggled because I was, I. I wasn't disciplined.

Even though you could argue I was with my past sports career, from a business perspective, I was not disciplined. I had terrible habits or lack of any, and I was too afraid, you know, to be put in a sales. A position. I wasn't born to sell ketchup to a woman in white gloves. So I just was really bad at sales. And therefore.

Every year, I was way behind in the sales charts. And that's why I tell people for the first 10 years of my career, I was a failure. I was there. There actually came a point. I don't share this a whole lot. I was selling for a smaller PNC agency here in Town, who has since grown pretty significantly. And I was hired to start up their benefits division. And this was in 2007. So we slowly growed it. Grow, grew it. Excuse me. And with a lot of small group business. And then 2010 came around, and I wanted to go more upstream, larger groups, but I didn't have the resources, I didn't have the people. And then this thing called ACA came around, and this whole Affordable Care act was going to change the way we do things. And I actually quit.

In July of 2011. I quit. I walked into the office that, I can't do this anymore. I'm done. I did not know what I was going to do next.

Two weeks later, I got a call from a firm who I had wanted to work for for years saying, hey, we got an open position. I know we talked to you in the past. Can we talk to you again? And lo and behold, that saved my career. That's for another story. But before that, Amy, for 2014, before we met anybody listening, who hires producers, you would have fired me in an instant.

Wow.

Well, okay, so now here we are in early 2025. So let's talk about some of those lessons that you've learned over the last decade of the last 10 years. So those. Because these are lessons that I know are going to be incredibly helpful for our audience. Lesson number one, be curious. Talk to me about that.

Yeah. So there's three lessons, I think, that have really shaped my career in the last decade. To go from failed insurance producer to successful insurance producer, to now owner of Complete Game Consulting, who coaches insurance professionals.

The reason I brought up my journey prior to 2014 is because most people in this industry are somewhere in the middle of comfort, and comfort kills. And why I bring that up is because even though I was failing, I was still getting paid pretty decently. So.

There wasn't enough pain between where I was and where I wanted to go to do anything about it. And I think that's where a lot of insurance professionals are right now. We are an industry that gets paid pretty well even if we're not winning.

Therefore, if you're not where you want to be, is there enough pain with where you are to actually do something about it? And I would argue for the majority of the people in the industry, the answer is no. We talk to them every week. But in 2014, when we moved out.

It was our way of actually resetting. Yeah, we wanted to get to Colorado, the sunshine, the mountains. But it was kind of a reset. Amy and I were searching, searching for and the same thing for me, quite frankly, in the industry. And it was a chance to hit the reset button. And I realized if. If I'm gonna win out here, it's on me. I can't rely on my. On my boss to do it. I can't expect my boss to do it for me. I can't expect my agency to funnel me leads. No, no. If this is gonna. If I'm gonna do this, it's all on me. And that's where the be curious started. Which is the first lesson right, I can remember. In 2014, I made my first investment in me and I bought a course called Insane Productivity from Darren Hardy. And it was a course on how to plan insanely productive weeks.

I did not ask my boss to pay for it. It was 999, $997. I did not really have the money, Amy. And I actually lost money to come to Colorado. People don't realize that I lost money on my condo because, oh, by the way, I. I bought my condo in late 2007. Do the math. What happened in 2008?

Yikes.

So I didn't have any money, but I bought it anyways because I knew it would help. And that was my. That was the beginning of understanding and tasting what it meant to invest in me and Amy. You know, it. We still teach time management techniques. I learned in that course 10 years ago, 100%.

And so I think, you know, when I. We talk to producers every. All the time about investing in themselves. Our industry is. It's something that is not preached enough in our industry.

That if you're gonna win, you gotta have skin in the game. And you can't expect your boss or your sales director to do it for you. No, no, no. You're gonna have success in this industry.

You gotta do it yourself. You gotta own the wins and you gotta own the losses. And I think what I learned by making that, now what I look at small investment 997 was that's where my mindset started to shift around money. Up until that point, I had a terrible money mindset. I lived in lack of. I kept putting mental ceilings on my ability because of my fear of losing money. And it was in that moment when I made that investment, I realized, and I had heard this from a mentor of mine, the reason you want to go, all you want to develop and invest in yourself is you will always have the ability to make more money in the future. If you believe you can make money in the future, you will invest in yourself today. That was My first chance to prove it, and it is still paying dividends a decade later.

Wow.

Are there other ways that you've invested in yourself over the years?

Yeah, I mean, that just. That just started the journey. I mean, that was 2014, right? You come along in late 2014, 2015. This is the part about curious. I want people to hear. My journey from 2014 to 2018 was all about curiosity. And I would not be standing on this stage today owning this business if this didn't happen. So make the court, make the investment on the course. And Time Management 2015, I invest in creating an effective email campaign. Now, that didn't require money, but it required a lot of time into learning about how to write emails, how to write email campaigns. And that's when I started my newsletter. And I talk about this a lot in my workshops and keynotes. I wrote $180,000 in that first year off the, off the. That email campaign. We wrote Boulder Associates. I don't know if you remember that architecture firm. We wrote via. Via Mobility.

Yeah.

And we wrote B. How do I remember these names bc I forget the name of the company in Longmont? Bc something Interiors. Interiors, maybe. Yeah. We wrote those three accounts off that email newsletter. 180 grand.

And it was nothing fancy.

Nothing fancy. It was an Outlook, Outlook account blind copying 30 people at the start. It was kind of atrocious, to be honest with you, but I learned a secret there. I gave away my free stuff for good. I gave away the good stuff for free. And then in 16, I made an investment on my speaking career. Right? I invested in the Speakers Academy with the National Speakers Association. Then I hired my own speaking coach.

And then in 2017 is when I heard Gary Vee speak and he talked about, you got to treat yourself like a media company that happens to sell what you sell. So I went all in on social media at that point, especially the video content. And in 2019, I started my podcast. All of that required me to be curious. All of it was self taught, except Jerry teaching me, you know, how to put together a good speed, good talk. It was all self taught. And I think that's what separates, that's what changed my career, is when I be. I became more curious about growing and getting better. And again, all of it were investments I made on myself in both time and money. I mean, some of those investments with.

The Speakers Academy, I think it was 2,500 bucks. Hiring Jerry was several hundred dollars every call. Like it was not cheap. But again, I knew I have the ability to make More money because of this. So I'm going to do this now.

100%. Yeah. I remember you were incredibly disciplined with your time, incorporating that and producing and even some account exec work. I mean, together. That was really fun, though, to watch you go through that journey. I was glad I was there to witness it.

Well, and don't recall, there were people in the office that thought I was weird. Right. There were people probably looking at me like, what are you doing? Why are you doing all that stuff?

Why?

Because I knew. I knew where sales was going. It wasn't going to be done the way we've always done it.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah.

Okay, we'll move on to lesson number two.

Actually, can I. I want to share one more thing about that, if I may.

Be curious. That's our first lesson, right?

Yeah.

The investment I don't talk about enough. And this is the one that changed everything. So that was my journey from 14 to 18 and 19. I started complete game consulting as a side hustle 2019. And it literally started because one of my peers, Jim Blacek, came to me and said, hey, man, I got a talk coming up at the benefits pro conference. Can you help me put a talk together? I'll pay you. Actually, it started a little earlier, if I may share this. I was coaching at a speakers academy that one of my peers was hosting, Nelson Griswold. It was at that speaker's academy, another peer, Jeff Fox, looked at me at breakfast on day two of the academy and said, dude, what are you doing in this business? Like, you need to be coaching. And I just put that in the back of my head. I said, hey, Jeff, thanks. It really means a lot. But I never did anything about it. Well, then a year later, Jim Blacheck comes to me and he says, hey, man, can you help me put a talk together? I'll pay you. I said, sure. He goes out and he hits a freaking home run. At that keynote, in fact, if I recall, he damn near got a standing ovation.

Wow.

Like, that's interesting. And I had others start to reach out and I started coaching people on how to put talks together. Well, then I realized this was a bigger issue. This is a marketing issue. People in this industry don't know how to get attention. And it continued to be a side hustle into the pandemic. But I will be honest, I hit about midway through the pandemic, and. And I would see a coaching call on the calendar, and I'd get fired up, and I'd see a client meeting on the calendar for benefits. And I'd be like, oh, and I love these people. These were great clients. But I just wasn't enjoying it anymore because I knew where my heart was. So I made a decision in the fall or that summer. Excuse me, that January 2021. I'm going all in on growing complete game consulting. And I'm getting rid of the book. Huh. A month later, my biggest client that had hired me to coach lets me go. I am literally down to three or four coaching clients by October. And I'm like, oh, crap. Like, I don't think this coaching thing's gonna work. I think I need to go back and focus on.

Selling in health insurance.

And I made a decision in October 2020 that changed everything.

I made a decision that at the end of the year, I was going to get rid of the book, and I'm still going to go through with it. But over the course of two days in October, I invested $17,000 I didn't have. I invested it in hiring a mindset coach who I still work with today. Christina. I invested in a mastermind, Fast foundations that got my entrepreneurial career launched. And I invested in a men's. I'll call it a men's retreat hosted by a now dear friend of mine, Kyle DS all in. It was $17,000, and I put all of it on a credit card.

Wow. And it changed my career forever.

Yeah.

So I share that because I have a lot of people that we meet with that tell me they can't put a couple hundred dollars on a credit card. And I. I want to have empathy, but I don't because I know what I've done. And it's. I know it's because of the mindset that they're unwilling to go in on themselves because they don't believe they can win down the road. If you just shift your mindset and believe you will always make money down the road, you know how to make money. You will always invest in yourself today 100%.

Almost like burn the bridges. You gotta trust me.

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Right, so lesson number two. This is a lesson that we talk a lot about because without this.

You know, there's almost nothing without this piece. And that is to be consistent.

That word on the wall, Right?

Let's talk consistency.

I. Amy, I don't think it's, it's ever been easier to win today in business in general because most people can't be consistent.

You see it with our own clients sometimes. Right. They struggle with it.

True.

And I think to me the secret of consistency is just show up every day. And the, the consistency. The question I love to pose is, are you willing to show up every day even when you're seeing no progress?

Yeah.

And when I look at, you know, people ask how or where can I be more consistent? I think the first place I'd start is.

Habits. What are your daily habits and rituals that you incorporate on a daily basis? Like, Amy, I'd love to ask you on a daily basis, what are some of the daily habits? Probably even since we started working together, since you came to work here at Complete Game, what are some of the habits you incorporate on a daily basis?

Well, for me, it's working out and, well, I had my coffee every morning, but it's the same. I make it exactly the same. Right. I'm sure most people do work out and I get some sunshine. Those three are kind of my non negotiables.

So let's talk about this. This is good. Why do you have coffee every morning?

I think it is truly the ritual because I know I don't need it. It's the, the ritual of it. It just kind of like I let it start.

My. Those who don't know Amy, she doesn't need it. She's like a natural energizer bunny.

Yes. Why do you exercise?

Yeah. To keep. I say, like healthy body, healthy mind. It just keeps my, you know, my.

Mind going straight and notice what you said, Healthy mind. Yeah. Not just healthy body. And why do you get sunshine?

Same. I just feel better. I just know that I need to. You got to get that sun in your eyeballs, on your skin. Be outside and go jump on the trampoline for a little bit.

Talk about that. I know, I know. Now we're spinning it back at interviewing you, but like, talk about why you jump on. You have a trampoline in the backyard. Yeah, I know it's originally probably for the kids, but why do you go and jump on it every day?

Yeah, it just like resets you get, fuels you up, gets the blood flowing. Get it. Oxygen to the brain. Gets my sunshine. I kind of an all in one. It just really does help. I just feel like. And then if you don't by the end of the evening, I can tell if I haven't. You know what I mean? You just kind of feel like, oh, I didn't complete my day. For me, that's a big deal.

You know, I wanted to ask you because I wanted to ask the most important question about habits. Why do you do them? And I think a lot of people, even when you have habits, you're not. You're. You don't know why you have them. You do them because somebody you saw in a video told you to do it and you don't even know why you do it. Right. That's how I used to be. Oh.

Great. Cardone said to do this on a sales call. So I'm gonna do this and. And so forth. Says I need to cold plunge, so I'm gonna do cold plunging. But I don't even know why I do it. I think the most important thing about habits, you gotta understand why you do them.

Yeah, that's actually a really good question. I don't know if I just know that for me, that's what is important to me. It's. You change as you, as you do more things and it's okay to adapt and modify. But for me. Yeah, you're right.

Here's the most important thing. Do those three habits allow you to perform better on the field? Totally, 100%. And that's what I want to. When I talk about consistency, it's. Consistency isn't sexy. It's all the things you're doing off the field when nobody's watching. Why do I have a morning routine? Because it puts myself in the best position to win. But it's more important as to why I do it. I cold plunge every morning. Now, I don't do it because everybody says to be rich. You got a cold plunge. No, I cold plunge because it's number one, it's good for your body. It's actually got immunity boosting ingredients in it. But two, you're doing something hard first thing in the morning.

Talk about a brain hack. Like, if you're gonna do something, what Else can't you do that or what else can you do that day? Right. Number two, I told about my YouTube routine. I watch at least 20 minutes of personal development, professional development content every morning. I've done that, by the way, for eight years. I've counted, I'm almost at a thousand hours of YouTube viewing in my morning routine. Why? Because I want to get a little better every day.

Yeah.

And I look at some of the other things you talk about. Coffee. Some of the things I've started incorporating into my day. I used to be the. I used to have coffee. The first thing I did when I woke up. And I would notice I get a little anxiety in the morning. Like why? It's weird. It's almost like it was like this out of body experience. So I heard somebody say, hey, you shouldn't have first coffee first thing in the morning. You should at least wait 60 to 90 minutes because your system will get going, then have the coffee. So I started doing that. Guess what? Anxiety went away.

I don't eat.

I try to have a 14 hour break between dinner and breakfast. Why? Because your system, it's good for your body, it's good for energy. Actually.

I do breath work every morning. Why? I want to get my mind clear. It's all those little things that you do and I understand. I don't have kids, so I probably have more time in the morning than other people. But it's those small things that go a long way.

In putting yourself in the best position to win. And here's the crazy thing, Amy. When I talk to all of our top clients, the elite and the experts, the reason we love working with them is because they're in the same stuff that that's exactly what they do.

Totally. Yeah.

And I think consistency, here's a word, here's something I want to say about consistency. I think the more simple you make things, the more consistent you will make. You'll become.

I say this all the time. You do not need to go to the gym for an hour to get a good workout. Literally, I do 100 jumps on the trampoline. I feel great. I got the blood flowing. It's those, just like you said, those little baby steps, little things, they all add up. It's those little deposits into your. The right mindset, the might, you know, the things that will help your body stay healthy.

I think if you can incorporate more simplicity into your life, you will naturally become more consistent. And what do I mean by simple? Number one, I'm not here to impress anybody. I wear the Same crap every week. Why? It eliminates choice. Now, if you're into somebody looking good, you got to wear the right suit coat with the lapel. Have at it. I keep things simple. Why? It eliminates my choice when I go speak, Amy. I literally have a wardrobe of two different jackets and four different shirts I wear. Eliminates choice. Simplicity.

I prep my breakfast and lunch every day when I'm at home. Why simplicity? Because I. I will have. There are days. Tomorrow, we're recording this on a Monday. You know how many coaching calls I have tomorrow?

8 hours of coaching tomorrow.

Yeah.

So I have to prep my breakfast and lunch because some days I literally have 10 minutes to eat. But if it's already prepared, I don't have to think about it. It's done. So I will take the 15 minutes the night before to prepare to put myself in the best position to win. Matthew McConaughey calls it setting up green lights for yourself.

Yes.

Like turning on the coffee timer before you go to bed, so when you wake up, the coffee's on green light. It's consistency is all about simplicity. When I look at the best people, the people that we see, the clients we work with that are having the most success, they don't complicate things. They make their life simple. I work when I'm home. I literally work in a 50 square foot radius all day.

Simplicity. You got to keep things simple. And I think a lot of people make it way too, way too. They make life way too complicated and they make success way too complicated.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. You've definitely helped me kind of level up in my own life in this area for sure. From the way we run our team meetings to our quarterly challenges, the way that we keep our clients accountable, I mean, all those things are. Being consistent is just so key.

Yeah. And I, I share that. By the way, one more thing I want to say about Be, be consistent and the simplicity of it. I think a lot of people in our industry pride themselves on being so sophisticated slash complicated in what they do. That's why you're not where you want to be. If you would just put a little more simplicity into your practice, whether it's business or personal life, you would actually see a lot more success right now.

No.

Okay, so we're ready. We're going to move on to lesson number three, which is, I can't wait to hear you speak on this. Be competitive.

Oh, yes.

Be competitive with yourself.

I think if you're not, I have a hard time with this, Amy. And I know people probably push back on me. If you're not trying to get better, what are you trying to do?

People like to use the word. Can't you just be happy where you're at? I'm like, no, no, those, those are, those, those are two different things. Yes, you want to be grateful for where you're at, but shouldn't you always strive to be better?

You know, I was thinking about this yesterday. Sunday is my day. I typically do my track workout.

Why do I do a track workout? Because if I focus effort on faster intervals on the track, when I go out for my four mile run tonight, I'm going to be faster.

And I love training. I love the competitiveness of training for something even though I'm not racing in anything.

But it's that competitiveness with yourself. What are you doing to get better every single day? How are you competing with the version of you yesterday? You know, I was talking to Chris Hamilton a couple weeks ago and he and I were talking about that. Like, he said, chris, if you're listening, shout out. He's like, dude, for the first time in my life at 46, I see I have a six pack.

That's awesome.

He said, I went and got my blood work done. Look, it's like that's, that's that competitiveness I talk about. Yeah. How are you competing with yourself to be a better version of you tomorrow than you were today?

I mean.

When you look at your boys, you've got, you got two high school boys, right? One about to be in high school, one about to graduate. They play sports, Right. What happens if they don't compete?

Yeah.

They just live for. Yeah, it's just in their mindset naturally. I think they just live for it, whether it's amongst themselves with their friends and then on the field, it's like always competing to get better. Colton's out here on a Z bike, up and down, just wheelies, wheelies, wheelies, wheelies. How can he be doing more tricks? More tricks, more tricks. I mean, they're just always competitive with their self and beyond.

Yeah. I think again, the reason I wanted to do this episode today was when I look back on my tenure since we made the move to Colorado, it'll be 11 this year, actually. I, I, I, I've changed so much in who I was 11 years ago. And it's funny because when we moved back here to Wisconsin a couple years ago, I think some people struggled with it. Amy and I are not the same people we were when we moved away. And the biggest thing that's changed is the stuff. The stuff we're saying between our ears. And when I look back on the last decade, it's. It came. It comes down to the three lessons we wanted to share today, which is be curious, be consistent, and be competitive. You have got to be a lifelong learner. If you're not trying, if you're the kind of person who thinks all you got to do is master something and you're done learning, you're going to get killed. Moving forward in the business environment we're in, you're always going to get defeated by a lifelong learner. Number two, be consistent. Show up every day. That's why you have habits. That's why you. You. You follow a diet, a training plan. It's about showing up. It's not the. It's not the how you're training, frankly. It's what are you doing every day to be consistent, to show up even when it feels like you're not making progress. And number three, it's the be competitive. Are you challenging yourself every day to be a better version of you tomorrow than you were today? You do those three things. Amy, I. I mean, you've been at. You've been with me since 2022. I mean, look how far our business has come in just the last two and a half years. I know. Following these principles 100%.

And just to remember that no one's going to do it for you, you got to take accountability for yourself.

Yep. That. That, to me, might be the secret to the whole thing, is at the end of the day, I still remember the day that I realized I can grow this business. And it was the worst, probably one of the worst days I had in this business. It was the day that coach, that coaching client I mentioned, let me go.

And I think I lost two other clients the same day, or told no by two big opportunities. I actually can't remember what it was, but it was terrible. Like, the doubts of my ability to actually have a coaching company really came to the forefront. But the thing that blew me away or made me realize I have what it takes to do this was when I went to bed that night, Amy, I was equally excited to get up and try to do it all over again the next day.

Yeah. Yeah. Your competitive spirit came out.

And I say this, and I want to share this, Amy, because I think this is important. I watch a lot of people in our industry who go to work for somebody, start making some good money, have some sales success, and then. And then they. And then they get that. I don't want to have to share revenue anymore. And that's what gives them that inkling to go start on their own. And so they do. And what they realize. A lot of people in that moment have a big, big realization.

Yeah.

Oh, that's right. There's a whole nother side of this business. Other than selling insurance. There's running a business. And when you run a business, you got to own the wins and you got to own the losses. There's going to be days when you lose. It immediately impacts your bottom line, and I don't think a lot of people can handle that pressure, and that's why they're unwilling to be consistent or competitive, and they'll go right back to working for somebody else.

Well, hey, it's been an honor today. Thank you for sharing.

I know I did most of the talking, but I'm. I'm. I. Sometimes you just have to ask me one question. I'll go. I'll go on for 40 minutes.

Well, as you said, I. My first opportunity to host, I, you.

Know, try to make it easy on you. Ms. Essay.

We gotta be more consistent. We're gonna keep going, keep learning, keep growing.

Well, I do want to share this. I do want to say this before we wrap up. Amy, you know, if you're listening in right now, and you are the person we just described, my journey sounds a lot like yours, right? You're. You're curious.