The Broker's Voice: Chris Wolpert - Founder, Group Benefit Solutions

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the Broker's Voice. I am excited this week. I've got a friend up here, somebody who's doing some really cool things in the industry. Joining me on today's show, Chris Wolpert from GBS Benefits. But before we get there, I want to make a quick, quick announcement for our sponsor Agency Annex. Listen, if you're an insurance agency, you have a website and you were to go take a look at it right now, ask yourself, does our website align with what is coming out of our mouth when we go meet with prospects and clients? It probably doesn't. So if you know your website could use a little upgrade, do yourself favor. Reach out to the guys at Agency Annex. They have built in an agency dedicated just to help insurance agencies build better websites. In fact, I'm going to put Steve's email right there. Steve Solutions. Reach out to him today. You wouldn't be disappointed. They built my site and I couldn't be happier. So get a hold of Agency Annex today to take your website to the next level. All right, let's get into this week's show. I'm excited to have one and only Chris Wolpert from the Pacific Northwest join us. Chris, what's up, man?

Hey, Andy. How's it going, man?

Good. I am doing well. Well, I'm excited to have you, Chris, for multiple reasons, you know, you've built a cool little brand using social media.

You've taken that brand and used it, applied it to another area that so many advisors fail to look at, and that's writing a book. So I'm excited to talk about that, what you've done with that. But before we get there, I've always, I always start with this question, Chris, because most of us did not get in this industry by design. How in the world did you find yourself in insurance?

Yes, good, Good question For anybody that finds themselves in this. In this career path. Right? Well, and mine was figuring out what I did not want to do. So what I mean by that was I went to school to be a journalist, and more specifically, I wanted to be a sports writer. But the problem was at the end of my senior year, I did an internship where I had an opportunity to do that. And it was, in many ways, it was a lot of fun. It was very eye opening, though. What I realized through that process is that I didn't necessarily want to do that as a career. And so what I ended up doing was I took the job that was going to pay me the most, that had the best benefits, and that happened to be in the insurance industry. So it's been a meandering road even since I've gotten into the industry itself. But that was the original story, was kind of more of a writer by trade, got into insurance and haven't been able to get out since.

So I love how you haven't been able to get out. And we're going to talk about how you've used your skill of writing as you. As you made the decision to write the book. So I'm excited to talk about that. So here you are in the insurance industry. One thing I want to talk to you about because I love what you're doing every week now, you have kind of built a little social media brand, mainly on LinkedIn, around telling fables and using these fables to talk about life and business lessons. So for the people who don't know you haven't seen them, kind of talk about why you decided to do that, why you chose fables and, and kind of how you're using them right now with your social media strategy. Because I think it's awesome.

Yeah, well. Yeah. Okay, so what, what happened was a couple years ago, this was in, you know, 2019, I had. And this isn't meant to be, you know, a pitch for pitching from the stage, but it's going to be. So what happened was I hired this speaking coach, this stud, Andy Neary, who helped me put together a talk that I was going to go deliver, put on a seminar in my local market up here in Tacoma. And in doing that, there was other people I was drawing inspiration from. One of them was another guy in the industry who used a fable to illustrate a point about how I can't remember exactly what fable it was now, but how the lion was like the insurance carriers and that type of thing. And I thought, oh, that's so clever. And at the same time, my oldest daughter was in the drama club at her elementary school and they were putting on a play that was all about Aesop's Fables. So I kind of had these two things happening at once.

And it was something that I incorporated one of those fables into my talk. I don't know if you remember that, Andy, but I did. And it was such a. Just, you know, compared to the rest of the talk. It was so effortless. It was so easy. You know, you're just simply, you know, you're sharing this story that involves these animal characters. It's, you know, many times, I think, geared towards kids, but there's always a lesson at the end, right there's something to learn from it, from this, you know, minute and a half, two minute long story. And I just felt like, man, this illustrates a point so well. And there's dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of these stories of these Aesop's fables. And so what I did was I just decided, you know, this is something that's. As I'm building out my brand, as I'm trying to hold myself more accountable and do more marketing things and kind of bring people into my world and not just tell them, you know, you're paying too much for healthcare and, you know, those kinds of things. I mean, or going in and talking about features and benefits and plan design. I mean, you know, I think most CFOs or HR directors would rather get a stick in the eye. So.

You know, so I just felt like it was such a great way to. To draw people in and for them to kind of get to know you and build a brand around some of that. And so that was really kind of the genesis behind it was. It was a lot of these. It was kind of the perfect storm of all these events happening at once. And then finally it was like, you know, it was like a light bulb went off, like, oh, duh. Like this is something so obvious that nobody else is doing. But yet all these stories were written 2500 years ago. Why don't I just, you know, use what. Use what's already there and make it kind of put my own spin on it, put my own flavor on it, I guess, if you will.

No, and I love it because you're right. And I think what you realized is you're telling stories.

Yep.

That are easy to tell. Like you said, the storytelling aspect of it's fun. It comes naturally, but it teaches us things about life and business, in this case, insurance, where it's like, once you hear the fable, you're like, well, duh, that makes all the sense in the world. And that's. That's the power of storytelling is if you're able to take complex issues like we work in every single day and make them easy to understand through analogies, through fables. It's a powerful, powerful weapon that you have. So talk to me about this two things. You've gotten really consistent. I mean, you now have been doing these fables for at least a year, year and a half on LinkedIn. Talk about, number one, where you pull each of those fables from. Because I'm curious. And number two.

Walk somebody through that first video you did to how you feel today going on camera because there's a lot of advisors who are afraid to put themselves on camera. And so I'd love for you to talk about that journey you went through that first time you hit play to like today. What's that feeling like for you?

Yeah, well, the. Where I get them is basically what I ended up doing when I decided to make this a series was I hopped on Amazon, found a couple of books. I kind of read some of the reviews. I kind of figured out okay, you know, because some of them are more geared towards kids where they might have two dozen stories, right. With lots of pictures and whatever. Well, I got a couple that were a little bit longer. I've got one book that has several hundred stories now. Some of them, you know, we always think of like they've got, you know, there's a lion, there's a. There's a fox. Appears in a lot of them. Goats, you know, whatever. All these animals. There's a ton of them that have different Greek gods that are associated with them. So I've kind of stayed away from those. I did. I have sprinkled a few of those in, but for the most part, I tend to focus on the ones that have the animals or have. Have a moral that. That I haven't told yet. Right. So some of them kind of have overlapping moral or overlapping, but just kind of go through there and figure out which. Which ones I haven't told yet, which ones I want to tell. And even at this point, it's been over two years now that I've been doing it and I still have, you know, I still have so many to draw from, you know, know, even. Even now. And the other thing is too, is I'm thinking that at some point I'll go back to some of those early ones and I'll re record them because, you know, to your point, I mean, in the beginning it would take me an. An hour and I would go through take after take after take after take and. And just. And not feel confident the whole time. And then I'd have to like I had. I got pretty good on the editor on using imovie because I'd have to cut so much out, you know, and so anyway, so you get better through repetition. And now I've kind of got a flow and that type of thing. So now I'll record for about 10 minutes. I never stop it or restart it or whatever. But basically I kind of break it up into three sections where I've got the beginning of the story and then I've got Kind of the end of the story. And then I've got the moral. And so what I'll do is for each line or for each kind of section, I'll do two to three takes of that. And then, and then that's it. So I'll do the entire recording. Time is probably about 10 minutes now. And then what I'll do is I'll go back and then chop that up and pick whichever take that I feel like, you know, I was.

Just, just came across best. Right. So I'll just pick the best take from each of those.

So even the editing process is a lot faster now too, where I'm not, you know, spending a ton of time. Because in the beginning, yeah, I was spending a lot of time on it. But I've also kind of got this nice, you know, I've got this nice flow now that I don't have to think about it so much. Right. And I don't, you know, I just kind of get in that mind space as soon as I hit record and then, you know, get through it in 10 minutes rather than 60. So. And again, it makes it a lot easier to edit once you've, when you've got that small, you know that your videos that much shorter than when I'm like constantly stopping and restarting and deleting and, you know, all that kind of stuff. But, you know, it, it, for me, it was like I just had to do it. I just kind of realized I'm like, I watched, you know, I watched you. I watched somebody like Eric Silverman and a number of others, you know, of people that would, that would get on video. And it was like, man, there's not hardly anybody's doing this. So if I just do this, I'll already kind of differentiate myself just by the nature of, of doing something that's a little bit different. And that, you know, is.

Is really not that difficult once you get started doing it well.

And there's three lessons that came out of what you just said. Number one, let's face it, in the insurance industry, when it comes to marketing, the bar is pretty low. You can, you can find ways to differentiate yourself. Number two, you knew when you started the videos you weren't going to be good at first, but over time you've gotten better to the point now it's probably very easy for you to hit play on that, on that camera. And then number three, it's the fact that you can go back to the a post you made a year ago and literally remake that post. And no one's going to remember that you posted it last year. And that's the beauty of repurposing content. So let's now dive into the real reason, the main reason I wanted you here because.

Yeah, there's even.

Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

Oh, I was just gonna say one. One of the things that I've done is there have been times where I haven't, you know, I haven't had time to do a fable that week or whatever the case is. And I'll usually batch them. I'll usually do four or five at a time. But there's been times where I'm like, oh, my gosh, I don't have a new fable this week. I'll pull one from my library and repost it. And nobody knows, nobody has any clue, you know, unless it was coronavirus and I had my long, my long hair. But other than that, they wouldn't be able to tell. So anyhow, I love that.

Well, let's talk about. Because you've used fables and now you've done something with it I absolutely love. And you decided to write a book. The book is called Hit Zero the Quest to Make Healthcare a Controllable Expense. So I know you're in the process of launching that as we speak. What I love about it is so many in our industry, Chris, want to write a book. And it's always around, here's the problem with healthcare and we're gonna fix it. But it's like you decided to take pieces of your brand, which is the fables. I don't know if you liked comic books as a kid, but you've taken it and you've written a book in a way that's melded and aligned with your brand. So talk about why you decided to write the book and then talk about why it is different or how it's different from a lot of the health insurance healthcare books we see out there right now.

Yeah, well, what I've been telling people when I start to tell them that, you know, I wrote a comic book, I wrote a hero's journey story, is that basically what I've done is I've taken it's Lord of the Rings meets the office and this next generation of healthcare benefits. And so they kind of think on that for a second and it's like, oh, wow, okay, that's really interesting. And they can't quite picture it in their mind because those are really three very different things. But that's how I like to frame it to be to begin with. So what, what I Did was like you. You know, I, I had noticed that, yeah, it, there was, there were some healthcare books out there. There were some insurance books related to health insurance and etc and employee benefits and all that. But they were. It was very much. And I even started to write a book that way. I started to do an outline and just realized this is the most boring damn thing ever. I, I don't even want to write this. Nobody's going to want to read this, right? And it was like, okay, if I'm going to do something that is part marketing piece, part educational and a little bit of a vanity project mixed in, I want to write a Hero's Journey story. And then to take it a step further, what I decided to do was then have a lot of images because then that way I felt like as though, again, it's going to be different from what anybody else has seen. Some people are going to hate it. They're going to think it's stupid and corny and whatever. And maybe it is, but it's also, you know, it is, it is authentic to me. It's something that is. I did like comic books as a kid. I was never much of an artist, but I love the stories. And who doesn't, right? When you think about some of those classic stories and things like that of a hero's Journey, who doesn't aspire to be like that? And humans have.

For thousands of years now told stories like this as a way to, to relate to their environment, to, you know, to adapt and to, you know, kind of have a piece of themselves that they can associate with, you know, the greater universe, I guess, as it is. So anyway, so what I did was I decided, okay, rather than just have one hero for the story. You know, a lot of times what I found is you, especially these days, you really have to be able to build consensus with multiple people, particularly in the C suite. But typically it comes down to the people that really need to be on board. The ones that are the most involved in this decision are the CFOs from the finance perspective and the HR directors from the people's perspective. And so what I did was I created a story that uses a CFO who's kind of the reluctant hero of the story. And then I use the HR director who's more of the catalyst hero. Because every Hero's Journey story has the hero is kind of in one of those two camps where, you know, for example, you've got like.

In. In. Even in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is more that reluctant hero. He's like, you know, he just wants to stay on this planet with his aunt and uncle and stuff. And then of course, you know, his, his aunt and uncle die and then he's forced into this journey where he has to then become, or figure out, you know, how to become a Jedi and all those kinds of things. And then you've got kind of more the catalyst hero type, which might be.

Somebody like.

In Beverly Hills Cop where Eddie Murphy's character, he's kind of the catalyst hero. He's pulling along everybody else in his precinct. He's kind of pulling everybody else in a direction. And so those are kind of the two heroes, the hero archetypes. So I started with that where we've got kind of this push, pull between those two. And the King of the Castle, the CEO of the business tells him, look, we've had such a difficult year between, I think what I referred to it as is the plague and the riots. But obviously what I'm referring to is coronavirus and all the protests and stuff from last year. But we need to figure out a different way to do this because I think anybody who says that over the last, since 2020, that they are doing everything the same, I think they're lying to you as well as themselves. Right. And so anyway, so that's kind of the premise that I started with and, and they had to go out into the wilderness and find a guide and in the form of this mysterious creature, the Wolper Tinger. And the Wolper Tinger has the, has the secrets on, on how to actually make health care a controllable cost and all this. And of course, what ends up happening is the heroes find themselves on this journey and they're really the ones that have to find this for themselves. They're the ones that have this personal growth happen and they have to return to the castle with the elixir, with the magic.

That'S going to save the day. So ultimately, as you know from studying storybrand and as I know from studying that as well, you know, that's really what it's all about, is putting your, your, your prospective clients, putting those people that you're looking to get on your, in your book of business or on your side. It's their story that you want to tell. It's them becoming the hero. It's not you being the hero for them, it's you being the guide for them. And so anyway, so that's, that's the 10,000 foot overview of hits.

Well, and what you said, Chris, I was going to say it anyway, so thank you for saying number one, you put the hero's journey in the title. Like that's what storytelling is, is telling the hero's journey. You talked about story brand and number two, you, you pinpointed the right hero. Right. In our industry, I think we make the mistake that thinking we the agents are the heroes. No, no, no, no. The CEOs, CFOs and HR directors that we work with, they're the heroes. We've got to tell their stories. So I absolutely love how you frame that. Now I gotta ask for the listeners, Wolpert Hanger. Now there's a really interesting tie to talk, talk about where you got the name Wolpert Hanger for a second.

Yeah, so that's, I did not make that up. I, I, that was co opted. So there was, you know, I'm in, obviously I'm active on LinkedIn and there was a, there was a guy that I'm connected with on LinkedIn who was in the same pod as me and he, you know, we've been connected for a while and he mentions this thing about the Wolpertinger. Have you ever heard of it? Well, he's over in the uk. I think he's originally from somewhere in Germany and he's like, oh yeah, you got to look this thing up. The Wolper Tinger. It's, this is like a real thing and I look it up and it's basically, it's, it's a, it's very similar to what we associate as a jackalope, right, where you've got a little, a rabbit with the, with antlers, with deer antlers. So over in in Bavaria, Bavaria, there's this legend of the Wolper Tinger, which obviously it's, it's just, it's a mythical creature, it's made up, but it's basically it's a jackalope that also has not in addition to being a rabbit with the antlers, it's got owl wings, it's got red glowing eyes, it's got fangs. So it's kind of this like vicious creature and all this. And there's the story behind it, which there is a joke about this in the book itself too. But the story behind it is that the, that go out in the woods with a beautiful young woman and then she has to like expose her breasts to get it to, for it to fall into a stupor and then you can capture it easily. So obviously, you know, it's this ruse, right, that, that, that. Anyway, so I make a joke about it in the, in the story. But anyways, when I, when I started to like, read about this thing online, I got sucked in and I thought, man, like, that's, that's the guide. And it's like literally part of my last name. So I mean, I just. Some things you just kind of. They just fall into place, you know, and that was one of these things. And so, and so to take this a step further in the story, I'm not spoiling anything here, but obviously the Wolpertinger is the guide in the end. And, and he, he's differentiated himself against the jackalopes and the jackalopes. That. Which everybody's understands is that's your, your traditional kind of broker or brokerage model where you're talking about features and benefits. You're, you know, kind of bringing the same things each year. You're talking about how you can get, you know, a 6% renewal increase rather than 12 or whatever. And so anyways, so it just so perfectly played into the, the imagery and kind of, again, you know, I struggled with that for a long time, was, you know, who's the shadow characterist and how do I position against the mentor or the guide character? And so that's, that was, that's how that happened. Totally by, by accident.

That's a. It tells you you were meant to write, just like my career, I guess. It tells you you're meant to write the book, man, that universe is always listening. Well, if somebody wants to get their hands on a copy of it, what is the best way to do that?

So right now it'd be on Amazon. Just type in hit zero. Chris Wolpert. It literally, I just. The paperback just got uploaded today. There was, you know, formatting issues and all that. But so there's a paperback version. There's also a Kindle version that's available. I'm going to be putting that. Posting that link on my website as well. GBS benefitsgroup.com But I'd say that the easiest, quickest way for most people would just be to hop onto Amazon and you can find it there.

And I've also put your email right here, Chris. So if somebody has a question, they can get a hold of you right here if they got any questions about that. Well, man, thank you for being on the show today. I think what you're doing right now with the brand, building it around the whole theme of fables comic books and bringing them together in this book that you have written. Again, not that I. So I don't screw up the name Here it is. Hit zero. The quest to make healthcare a controllable expense. Get a copy of it. If you're an HR professional, CFO watching this, or even a broker, Chris has done a fantastic job with writing a book in his style that aligns with his brand, that tells one hell of a story on how to fix this thing. So, Chris, thank you again, man. I really appreciate your time.

Thank you. I appreciate you having me on here, Andy.

Absolutely. And if you're listening in, remember, when clarity, confidence collide, massive things happen. So go make it happen today.