The New Playbook for Corporate Wellness in 2026 | with Brittany Nelson

Hey, hey, welcome back to the Accelerate Your Insurance Sales podcast. Andy Neary here, CEO and founder of Complete Game Consulting, where we help you sell more insurance with confidence and conviction. I am excited today. I am joined by Brittany Nelson with Shepherd Insurance. Brittany holds a position of Director of Population Health and Wellbeing, leveraging her credentials as a registered dietitian, certified health value professional, and certified health and wellbeing coach, along with a wealth of experience in delivering effective health and corporate well-being solutions for diverse populations. So Brittany, welcome aboard. We are going to have a conversation about wellness today.

Awesome, I love it.

Well, I'm going to start here. I actually have two questions I want to ask you. Yeah, uh, before we dive into the wellness piece, and then where we're going to go, by the way, with, with today's conversation. Number one, why do most wellness programs fail, or why have they failed. Uh, when you and I met offline, you talked about the golden handcuffs, uh, and as it relates to wellness, we're going to talk about that as well. And then we're going to dive into mental health, EAPs, things like that, how to improve, uh, utilization there. I think that's a very hot topic today. So, but before we get in there, I have all my guests fill out a form so I can get to know them a little bit, and You know, what we do at Complete Chaim Consulting is we help companies, you know, help producers, insurance professionals turn their story into a message they can sell with conviction.

Right.

I love your story. I asked you what most people don't know about you. You worked on the assembly line, right, at a car manufacturer. What was that like?

Oh, I, I cried a lot and wore steel-toe boots. No, actually, um, my, my dad was an HR professional, so for years he worked in HR. And for years, you know, he worked hard and helped me through college, and he said, after 4 years you're on your own. And my 5th year, actually, I had to go through my dietetic internship. So as you mentioned, I'm a dietitian, and as a dietitian you have to do a non-paid, normally, uh, internship. And so I thought, okay, this summer how can I make a lot of money? And I went to my dad and he said let's work at, let's work at the manufacturing plant. And I said, okay, let's do it. So, um, I was, um, completed with my bachelor's degree, kind of debating on a master's degree, and I, I made quite a bit of money that, that summer, um, on the assembly line. And that's actually how I got into, into wellness right then and there.

Well, and just so people don't judge right out of the gate, it was a Toyota manufacturer.

Yes.

And I gotta tell you, I've driven Toyotas in my life, and I, I, I, uh, I had a really bad car accident in 2010, and it was a Toyota Highlander, and I think it, it saved my life because of the way it was designed. So I will always be grateful to Toyota.

Yes.

Well, let's go to the other obvious question I love to ask folks that come on the show. Most of us don't get in this industry, insurance, by design. And I know you, you're coming at it from a different angle outside of production, but what got you aligned with the insurance industry?

So, I kind of came from a clinical background as a dietitian. I went and then into wellness and actually getting a graduate degree in corporate wellness, actually. And I did that for many years for a hospital. So, I was still clinical, but I was more in the corporate space. And during that time over restructuring, I was actually able to sit underneath the human resource department. And I sat in, starting to get in meetings with our broker at the time, and really learning, you know, that side of the space. And I've always been an efficiency kind of person, you know, how can I make the most of my time? And I thought, how could I reach more people? At that time, I was meeting one-on-one with patients. I was meeting one-on-one with one employer, and I thought I could be more efficient here, and I could scale this out more. And that's how I really got into wanting to work in the benefits in the insurance space so that I could not work with just one employer. I could work with 50 employers that have, you know, 500 employees each, and I can kind of scale out, you know, my experience in that way.

How long were you on the clinical side before you actually got into the insurance side of it?

About 6 years.

6 years. Okay. So I'm curious, when you went to work, was it Shepherd out of the gate?

No, Riverview Health up in Noblesville, Indiana.

Okay.

I worked in there. I worked in a variety of different areas of that health system.

Okay.

Primarily doing corporate wellness.

Okay. When you got— when you, when you went— when you leveraged your gifts within the insurance industry, was there anything that surprised you about how benefits and insurance approaches wellness?

Yes, very much so. Wellness is one of those things that it's such a fluffy word. Wellness, I think, is on my deodorant, right? Then I'm sitting in a meeting with a CFO talking about how wellness isn't working or costing them too much money. And so it's a huge— it's a different word. And from my clinical background, I take a very quantitative approach to wellness. Prove it, right? Prove it to me. How is it working? I'm not one to really ever take someone else's word. You know, I love testimonies. I think there's a space for them, and we can talk about that later. But I wanted to see the numbers. I wanted to see the metrics of wellness. And when I got into that, I realized there's not a lot of very good metrics.

Yeah, I, looking at my bookshelf, still remember reading the book Al Lewis wrote about What was it called? I'm forgetting the name now, but healthcare costs.

I know what you're talking about though, why nobody believes the numbers, right? Exactly.

You talk about how you can make the numbers say whatever the heck you want them to say to show that your wellness program's working. Yeah, but, uh, let's talk about why so many traditional wellness programs have failed, right? Incentive-based wellness programs became the norm 10, 15 years ago, right? What are your, what are your thoughts there?

You know, people, people aren't mechanical. People aren't robots. The idea is brilliant. You know, we pay people to come to work, they come to work, and our business is successful. But what's your employee engagement, right? Um, we pay people to be healthy, our claims go down, right? But behavior is a lot more complex. Daniel Pink wrote a book called Drive. I highly recommend it. He talks about how incentives work for simple behaviors, simple tasks. And that's what wellness has become. The wellness programs have become— we pay people, whether that's through a premium differential whether that's through an HSA deposit. We pay people to be healthy. They're not being healthy. They're checking the box to complete what needs to be completed. And what is the outcome? It's again complex to be able to prove ROI on a premium differential has never been done. And the reason why is the— and some people try to do it, but they don't include that premium differential as part of the I, right? Part of the investment. And it very much is. Um, so, so in the past, yes, the idea of we will pay people to become healthier and lower our claims was a mirage, um, and not, not thinking of the person as a person but thinking of them as black and white.

Well, and I can just remember, I mean, work— I, I've been— I've worked for agencies where wellness was heavily preached back, back in the day, and you know, to your point, the carrot and the stick, uh, there was always a debate. Do you go with carrots? Do you go with sticks? And you would incorporate these wellness programs, and they definitely checked— were to check the box. But the funny part is the people who participated were the ones who didn't have claims in the first place.

It's very easy for them to do so, isn't it?

And so that, that, um, Why do you think— I don't know if I'm going to ask this the right way, but why do you think employers got trapped into believing premium differentials or end or HSA contributions were the right way to do this?

I think, you know, they would say that wellness was what safety used to be, you know, decades ago, kind of. And so I think safety was very black and white, right? You either We work with a lot of our P&C clients, and we kind of can tell what safety issues could be happening. Wellness is so much more complex that it can't be the same as safety was. So, the other thing that I would mention with that is just wellness, I guess, not knowing what to do, right? A lot of employers are like, how do I get my people to care? Yeah, right. How can I get them to drink from the water? Right. I'm pouring the water out. How to get them to drink? And they didn't know. So they thought the easiest thing to do was money. And it is quick and easy and fast, right? Do a premium differential, do an HSA incentive. It's just moving on, right? Checking the box in the employer stance, right? Versus changing the environment, allowing employees to take the day off for wellness. You know, there's a variety of different things that are more complex or more difficult to do.

You actually described in our, in our offline call wellness programs as kind of golden handcuffs. What did you mean by that?

Yeah, we made this internally and we don't joke about it, but we almost have to laugh so we don't cry when it comes to the golden handcuffs. There are so many clients we have that we talk to, whether that's a prospect or whether that's just our current clients, and they've done this type of wellness for a long time. They have a premium differential. They even will have a vendor, right, that comes in and does a biometric screening, or they have an app or something like that. And they— we ask them, you know, what has the outcome been? Quantitative, qualitative. What has the outcome been in the past 10 years, 5 years? And a lot of times, unfortunately, it's we're not sure. You know, we have some reporting that our vendor has given us, which we can talk about that. Um, but other than that, we're not sure. Um, but we have spent over $500,000 and, um, on these vendors, right? Plus incentives that we've given. So how do you get out of that, right? There's, there's really essentially a couple ways, right?

I was going to ask you, how does somebody— because what you're saying is it's almost like, well, it's the, it's the old, well, we've done it this way forever, why would we want to get rid of that? And you can put them on the spot and say, but how 'How much ROI has it created?' Uh, I don't know. Yeah, we've always done it this way. Um, how do you unwind out of that?

Yeah, we've done this successfully a few times, which is super, um, super fun. I'll just say it very simply, super fun to do, uh, when a client is ready to do so, right? There are some clients we have that, that want to continue, and maybe they even need to from a plan standpoint. They're just not in the and they're just not ready to make the change. And so, at that time, we look at their investment, right? The investment of time, huge. We never forget about the investment of time because time is everyone's money, right? And then we look at the investment of their vendors and can the investment be lowered? Because really what we're getting out of these programs, right, is it's not nothing, but it's not return. And it is value, but, you know, ROI, value on investment. So, if we lower the investment, of these programs, well, then we'll raise the value, right? A little bit. We lower the investment a lot of it. We have a great value, right? And we can talk about that. But so, so there's kind of two— well, two direct options. One, the employer takes on the delta and everyone gets the participation rate, or the employee, the member takes on the— everyone gets, or they take away with it and everyone gets the lower rate. And that would be just the simplest thing to do. But that makes no one happy, right? The employer's not happy there. The employee's not happy in those two options. So what we've done over time is kind of take two approaches. One, more of a strategic approach of throughout the years finding savings wherever that might be. Maybe it's in ancillary benefits, maybe it's in plan design, small plan design changes. And every year we have different goals and different KPIs we hit, and those savings go into the premium differential. So we start changing the amount of premium differential to make it really low. And what that does is causes people to have less motivation to want it. You know, we had one client that their premium differential before they were able over years, over able to get, do away with it, that was down to $300. Up from like $1,500. So now it's down to $300. So we just lower it, lower it, lower it, lower it, lower it. And, um, so that's worked. The other option is complete plan design. So maybe we work with a transparent PBM, or we work with, um, you know, a different, a different carrier that we're just showing us guaranteeing a lot of savings. And then we're able to just do it all in one year of giving everyone a lower premium, participants and non-participants, and then saving the company money as well to get out of that. So, it's done very personalized and strategically. And like I mentioned, it's not for everyone. Not everyone is ready. So, for those clients that aren't ready, we just really work on fine-tuning that VOI.

That right there, that's what I wanted to expand on. You know, I think a few years ago, the wellness industry probably got bashed when they came out with the VOI, right?

Yeah.

It's like, oh, you proved it's— you went to VOI because you could never create ROI.

Yep.

Um, and I think this may be a two-part question. There's a big difference between a company who has a wellness program and a company who has a culture of wellness.

Mm-hmm.

And so I'd love to know your thoughts on that. What separates a company who says we offer a wellness program versus a company who says it is a part of our culture? And do you still believe the premium— let's call it the carrots or the, in this case, carrots, premium differentials, things like that are still necessary to create the level of participation somebody needs in that wellness to create the cultural wellness? So first part is what's the difference between having a program or having a culture? And then are the, are the carrots still a necessary part of creating engagement?

Right. You know, I, um, I did a talk last year to a variety of HR, you know, professionals, and I had a lady come up to me after and ask— I'll explain that, or I will say that the title of the presentation was "Why Your Employees Don't Care About Your Wellness Program." Perfect.

Hey, couldn't be more clear. I love it.

Yeah. And I had an employee or an HR professional come up to me and say, you know, we don't have a wellness program. Do we need one? And, you know, so it created a great conversation between me and her. We went and got coffee, you know, later. And they were tracking engagement throughout the, you know, throughout their population. They were tracking retention. They were tracking recruitment and how those services— they were doing a really good job of having exit interviews. They had a wonderful professional development program. So She explained all this to me, and they were tracking these KPIs internally to show their— improve their culture of well-being and of wellness. You know, they had a maternity leave, paternity leave. They had, you know, one of the— I always joke, one of the best wellness things Shepherd has ever done. Actually, they do it a couple times, but we have an annual kind of State of the Union, right, kind of presentation, and our president has been known to just be like, take tomorrow off, everyone gets tomorrow off, or make it a long weekend, everyone. It's an HR nightmare. I'm sure HR people are like, what are you doing, Quinn? But he does that just randomly, giving people the time. Like, that's the greatest incentive, right, is their time back. And so sometimes you don't need a wellness program if you have a culture of wellness, or if you want to just create a culture of wellness. You know, culture is, is contagious. Um, Richard Safir wrote a book, The Cure for the Common Company. If you've never read it, it's fairly— it's maybe 5 years old now, but he mentions how culture is contagious and it starts with just one conversation. And so no, you don't have to have a wellness vendor. You don't have to have a broker coming in, uh, to create— help you with that wellness culture. It can come from internal. Um, when it comes to incentives, I would say you can have an incentive if you know the outcome that will be produced. And the best example I have is I'm always talking about wellness vendors and showing outcome and savings proof And Shepherd has— Shepherd internally, we have a wellness vendor we use. And, um, but our goal and our expectation of that wellness vendor is just some participation, right? Just people to say they like it and to use it. That's it. It's not going to generate savings on our claims. It's not even going to make people healthier. That's not the goal. The goal is just to have a certain participation level And for people, like, I think we have a goal of 80% of people to say it's helpful. Oops, sorry, I need to turn my light back on. I'm not moving enough.

All good.

And so I would say incentives are helpful when you know that the outcome will be something simple like participating, not something complex like losing weight or stopping smoking. I would not necessarily recommend putting in an incentive or a— premium differential for something that's complex for the member to have to change.

Well, and I think to your point, again, you just started to describe the wellness programs, you know, of yesteryear, which was, hey, let's do a weight loss challenge, let's walk 10,000 steps, smoking cessation program, right?

Very complex things.

Well, I was just going to say, people don't realize that's a psychological, emotional thing that you're trying to get these people to change, right? That is way above and beyond the pay grade of most wellness programs. Let's be honest, you're, you're, you're, you work, you're trying to work with people at a very deeper level. Um, you brought up something though I would love your opinion on, uh, any, if you are going to create a culture of wellness, because I think what we've established is if, if you want to have wellness a part of the business stop trying to focus on ROI. And I think that that ship has sailed anyways, but it's make it a part of the culture you bring, you create with the organization. So it's a thing you should do, not a thing you should do so it lowers costs, right? In your opinion though, talk to the listeners about the importance of the role leadership plays or leadership behavior in instilling the culture of wellness? Because personally, I think there's a lot of leaders who say, we're doing this, you're participating, and then you look at them and you go, really?

Right.

What are your thoughts?

It is not uncommon to have a leadership, you know, wellness initiative and wellness program begin, and leadership is in it. They're motivated, they're, they're involved. And then that fizzles out and you go to the leader and you ask them, what's going on? Why aren't you participating? And they're too busy. So your, your people aren't too busy, but you're too busy. So it's a problem right there. If they're not interested in it, why would they expect or think that their employees are interested in it? I've worked with clients that the wellness champions aren't even interested in some of the stuff they're doing, or they don't have time for it. Um, so that's, that's an issue. You know, wellness is something we all do intrinsically. We, um, we don't need to— we, we all want to be healthy, right? We all want to— no one wants diabetes, no one wants to be, you know, excessively morbidly obese. So why, why is wellness really the only industry we have to pay someone to do something that they already want to do?

Yeah, good point.

Like, why do we have to pay them? You know, if I— Andrew, I'm sure you're— Andy, you're pretty healthy guy. If you needed a drink of water, you probably would just take one.

But you don't need me to give me a— give me a smaller premium contribution.

Well, if I said, Andy, I got a glass of water here, I'll give you $10 to drink it. It muddies the water. Those incentives muddy what people are already interested in doing. Right. And you would be like, what's in this water? Good point. Next time I drink it, I need 20, you know? And you would have drank it if I never even said anything. Maybe if I put a glass in front of you and brought over a Brita container, you know, or had infused, right? And so maybe if I change your environment a little bit. But, um, I don't know if I got off subject a little bit.

Well, it makes sense because it's like, um, I am somebody who would do that anyways, right? Yeah. But I think even above and beyond incentivizing me to do it, one, it would potentially get a guy like me to question, why are you trying to pay me $10 to drink this water? Yeah, but I think the other part of it that it goes over— goes overlooked— goes overlooked is, but I don't know why I'm supposed to drink this water. I'm just doing it to get the money.

That's a big part, right?

And I become Pavlov's dog.

Yeah, you know, that's a big part with leadership too, um, and just overall, why are we doing wellness?

Yeah.

And if that's not communicated, yes, people think, oh, they're, they're, they're thinking I'm unhealthy. They— people come up with whatever they want to come up with, with why why you're doing this. Um, everyone knows Simon Sinek, right? Simon Sinek says start with the why.

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You have to start with why you're doing this and then not then programs, challenges, all those things of what, but how How we track this. So we do this a lot with our clients. So starting with a why, aligning it with their core values, aligning with what their leadership believes in and wants. So what is the why statement of why we do wellness? And then we just focus on why we're doing wellness for a while with our groups. And then we get into how we'll be successful, right? So before, again, before the vendor, before the what, right? How will we be successful? And then If we need a vendor, if we need an incentive, if we need a program or a challenge, that will come. But we're not going to start with one of those things because it just takes a lot of time and we don't have an outcome.

So let's have some fun with this.

Yeah.

You and I are going to sit down and we're going to design a wellness program for a company in 2026.

Mm-hmm.

If it were 2013, you and I would sit down and we go, okay, Who's— let's go pick a vendor to do biometrics. Yeah, we're going to have a smoking cessation program, we're going to have a 10,000-step challenge and a weight loss challenge. Biggest Loser, because that was a hot show in 2013, but it's now 2026. Yeah, there's a lot— our— we live in a very different world than 13 years ago. Let's build from ground up what a good wellness program for a company who prides itself on building a culture of wellness looks like. So in your opinion, what do we need to include in this design to be effective, given that it's 2026 and everything we've got going on today?

I, I think of measuring what matters, okay? So it's super personalized to whatever company, our company, we'll say our company, we're looking at.

So it's not a one size fits all, right?

It's hard to do, right? That's what wellness vendors do because they have to have a one size fits all so they can stream it out. So I would say we would measure what matters. What matters? Look at your data, get your data. Real time. Get your data, claims, engagement, recruitment, R&R, you know, whatever the data is that you can get your hands on, get that data. Do we need more data? Do we need to do an employee survey or a pulse survey or pilot study within our— so we need to know what we're going to measure. And then we think about why, right? So one thing, you know, that we did at Shepherd when when I was hired a little over 3 years ago is we looked at, you know, why we do wellness or why we're going to continue to build this culture that our founders built. And we looked at the core values: serve, respect, ethics, humility, some of these big words. And we said, this is going to be incorporated in our why. And we created a why statement. So that's what I would do. I would think about what matters to us. And create a why statement. And maybe that's a little bit of my coaching background, you know, wellness vision, but a why statement around why we will continue or start doing things a little differently or doing things the same within our organization. And then next, so that would take, you know, a month or two probably. And then next we'd start thinking about strategy of how. So we would start saying again, Where's our investment? Not forgetting about the investment of time, not forgetting about the investment we're already making, maybe, or if we want to start, we want to start making. And we look at, you know, what will we track? What will be the outcome quantitatively? And AI is huge right now, right? AI can help with this. They— it can help so much of saying, you know, create a SMART goal or creating, you know, create, uh, quantitative goals that I can hit for my, my wellness program. And it will give you percentages that you'll be able to hit. And failure is not we just pivot, right? If you don't hit a goal, you just pivot. But you create a plan that you want to hit by year 1. And then if needed, you start implementing the interventions. So whatever that might, might look like, that's needed. And so that's what I would do. It's worked very well with many of our groups and our clients, and it helps to have a partner who can help hold you accountable to that. And that's one thing with my coach approach background. I'm able to meet with our clients and help hold them accountable through this process. Because let's be honest, like, this is a whole— this could be a whole full-time— it is a whole full-time job for a lot of people, right? They have an internal wellness coordinator to do this work, but most don't. And so having a good partner to come alongside and hold that plan and that strategy accountable and to ask those questions, if you do have a vendor, to ask those questions to the vendor to kind of hold them accountable as well.

Yeah, I, I think the word accountability is very important these days. You know, I think about wellness programs of old and the lack of accountability. You know, sometimes you just had to answer a questionnaire to get the credit, or I remember just writes the check and move on to next year, right? It was the 10,000 Step Program. It's the 10,000 Step Program where you get your tracker Oh, you put on your dog and then you put it on your dog to get the 10,000 steps. Yeah. I mean, the stuff that used to go on just to get the credit. Yeah, it was a joke.

And I was—

it was nothing short of a joke.

Yeah.

Let's, let's segue because we think about, okay, how have— how has wellness changed in the last decade plus? I, I think there's no hotter topic than mental health, and we're going to talk a little bit about EAPs and, and where they've been successful, where they've failed. But let's start with like, what do you, what do you think, or where do you think employers misunderstand what employees need when it comes to mental health today?

Yeah, um, you know, people, people all have issues. Everyone has an issue. Um, I think I saw a statistic one time that said, you know, it takes 10 to 15 years for someone to go to get help once they feel like they have an issue. It takes a long time. And so, you know, we've talked to employers about EAP and they've said, you know, our EAP utilization is 2%, so our people are doing good, you know, and you're like, whoo, okay, let's start some education. And then the EAP goes up, right? And so it is, it's a difficult topic, but mental health can look different in different ways. We started doing Mental Health First Aid training and just how, you know, if someone's not coming into work or they're running late into work, instead of being judgmental, be curious. You know, how, why, what makes them being late every day? And is it a mental health struggle? So I think the idea of mental health being generalized anxiety, major depression, schizophrenia, But then there's mental health of just stress management and, you know, trying to juggle it all, or, you know, losing a loved one. There's a variety of, of that that's really, really important so we don't get to, you know, a more dramatic diagnosis.

Why do you think EAP utilization still sucks? I mean, 2%— if we're celebrating 2%, we got a problem.

Yeah, 2 to 6% is a very average A lot of people don't know. I mean, why call it EAP? What the heck is that? Yeah, we call it free counseling. That's what we do. And we make everyone put it in there, put the phone number in their phone so that it's not a barrier to go find it. Who wants to say, oh, I finally want to go get help, so I'm going to call my HR team?

That's a good point. That's a really good point.

Yeah, it's a barrier. So they don't know what— people don't know what it is. They don't know what it includes. They also— we've gotten even to the chance of they don't know what it is from a short-term standpoint. You know, an EAP is not long-term counseling. It is not for someone who has, like I mentioned, generalized anxiety or major depression. It is for someone that's just trying to get over something they're struggling with in their current state of their life right now. It's that first peel of the onion, right? You think of mental health, you think of like peeling back layers. And so it's that first. And so What we've done that we've seen a lot of success with is testing out the EAP. EAPs are completely free for most all employees and their family members. So again, investment, it's no cost other than your time, which is important. So what we do, what I do for our clients, or if what my client is interested, they will test out their EAP. They'll go through the process, they'll see what it's like. They'll have a counseling session. Everyone has stress in their life. Everyone can use an EAP session. And that's what we try to present to our groups and what we present to our own employees. We actually just had a mental health— mental health month in May, a presentation last, last week, and I sat in front of 150 of our employees and talked about my EAP session. And I lowered that stigma, right? I lowered that. This is not for someone who's crazy. This is not for someone who needs a lot of help. This is for someone that's just going through a little something.

Well, it's a good point. You know, we probably could argue a lot of EAP programs out there today are outdated. Uh, to your point, you get a certain number of calls and that's about it, and you may not even know who you get. Um, but we're doing some work right now with an organization that is— I guess you could call them within the EAP space, but they're, they're addressing what I would label as some very modern-day stressors. You know, things that bring stress to one's life that probably weren't even here 5, 10 years ago. I mean, for transparency, even down to deportations, right? Something we didn't really have to deal as much with in this country that we now have as a part of everyday life for some people. And so, yeah, I think, I think mental health has definitely shifted over the years, and how EAPs address and support that definitely has to continue to evolve because we are just dealing with mental stressors today that we didn't have before.

Right, right. And again, the tracking piece is so important in the outcome, right? Because we have, we have a lot of vendors, you know, EAP mental health vendors that will come to us and we'll say, you know, we can, we, we can do this, this, and this. And to me it sounds real fluffy and real great, and I want to do it, but to our CFO or to someone who's looking at the finances, we have to be able to provide a return if that's the expectation, and how will we prove that return or an outcome that is tracked? And so what guarantees can be put into place? Because a vendor is still a vendor, even if it's doing God's work, right? But a vendor is still a vendor. And we have to really think both from a value standpoint and doing that strategically, especially when you, when you up that investment because an EAP investment is really low. I mean, you don't really even have to much— a lot of people don't track EAP utilization because the investment is so low that the value is fine. But when you start increasing that investment with some of these great, great vendors, it does kind of make you want to halt and think about what's the plan before we do— we sign that check.

Yeah. And I think the message I would love people to hear listening in is when it comes to your clients or your own business, run whatever wellness program you want. Yeah, create any kind of culture of wellness you want, but if you don't give people the support to be in a good place mentally, none of it matters. The reason people are overweight, out of shape, uh, not productive, present— what do they call it? Presenteeism. Yeah, it's because of this, hands down. It's what's going on between the ears that is creating everything else that's going on. Yeah, whether— and, and we can throw financial stress in there too, the financial stress people have in their life. But I'd love to ask you two more questions, and then we're going to get to know you a little bit, if you're okay with it. Okay, two questions. Thought leadership cap right now, when you look at the wellness programs and, and how organizations view wellness today, if you could eliminate one outdated practice from that, this— in the industry tomorrow, what would it be?

It would be vendor-generated result claims.

Hence going back to Al's book. Very much so.

If you don't create your own outcomes for a wellness program or wellness vendor, they will do it for you and they will make it look good. I went through— I know I spoke to you about the Validation Institute Certified Health Value Professional certification, which I geeked out, totally geeked out from a clinical standpoint about this. But this really helped me know how to ask the vendor, the wellness program vendor, specific questions within their reports. And what we've done is, again, measure what matters. We've looked at what are our goals for our clients or Shepherd, and they can report on whatever they want to report on. But we know what metrics we need reported on and we hold, we hold the key. So that's what I would wish I could just get rid of. I'd almost wish that vendors just stopped doing it because what it does is it makes it look really good, right? So if someone has a heart attack on year one, and then you put them in a heart disease program on year 2, yes, their claims will go down. That's just regression to the mean, right? Um, it will happen that way and they will take 100% credit for that. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And so it's just one of those things that you have to really be cognizant when you're looking at some of that, that reporting.

And I failed to say this at the beginning, Brittany, and I apologize. You are a Validation Institute Certified Health Value Professional, and I want people to hear that. That's a rare designation, which gives you a lot of credibility when it comes to your clinical expertise, how to, how to match that with the financial rigors of a program and whether it's successful or not. Um, so Shepherd's lucky to have you because of that designation.

So that's taught me a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, and I highly recommend the designation to anyone listening.

That's great. Well, the other question I wanted— now let's spin it more to the optimistic approach. As you look ahead, Are there any trends going on within the wellness space right now that you're very optimistic about as you see them being integrated into employers?

Yeah, I'm actually really excited about— so I mentioned earlier in the podcast about some clients just not being able to get out at this next year of their incentive model. Right. So they just— they're wanting to keep the premium differential. They're needing to at that time.. And so what we're doing is changing the— and what we've seen successful is changing what the person has to do, right? Let's just be honest, what do I have to do to get my, my incentive? And what we've done is take a kind of a healthcare consumer approach. So instead of doing the health risk assessments that tells you to eat more vegetables and exercise more often, drink less alcohol, and thank you for wearing your seatbelt, we will Do kind of an assessment on what does your benefit guide say? What kind of cost transparency tools are available to you? You know, how, you know, asking a question about how to read an EOB and, you know, how claims are generated. These types of things that actually can make changes to not only the employer but the employee. What do they care about? Do they want to be charged twice by the hospital system because someone had a fat finger, right? And no. And so So we will— we've done with a lot of clients, and we've seen this, Al Lewis with Quizify having done this as well, of lowering the investment, so making this super cheap, but then which would up the value and teach our people something about health insurance and healthcare to kind of help them through those very, very complex not— no one's— I'll say not— I was gonna say not a lot of people's favorites— no one's favorite, um, topics.

Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. Well, I'm sure, uh, folks listening in, that was a wealth of knowledge you just shared from a, uh, a wellness perspective. So thank you. Now we're going to take a couple minutes to get to know you a little bit.

Okay.

I am a— I did not prepare you for these questions.

Great.

I am a man of habit, discipline, and ritual. I believe in them. So I love to learn from others as to what theirs are. Yeah, we're going to start with morning routine. I love my morning routine, but I want to know what yours looks like. What does Brittany Nelson's morning routine look like today?

Oh my, so I'm in the thick of motherhood, man. I have a 3-year-old son, I have a 7-year-old son, and I've got a 36-year-old husband's son.

Um, the 3 boys in the house. Yes.

And, um, we, we have a crazy routine. Um, you know, I get— I try to get up I've never been a morning work— I love to work out. It's my favorite thing to do. I've never been a morning workout gal yet. I would say yet.

So, you more afternoon? Yes.

Yeah. Okay. I love going in the evening, actually helps me sleep better. But, so, it is getting the kids up and getting them out the door and getting me to work on time. It is fun and exciting. It's lots of hugs and, you know, I work, I work, I'm a working outside the house mom. And so, I try to be present with my kids as much as I can in the morning, those 2, 3 hours we get together in the morning. We'll go out, shoot some basketball sometimes. We'll, you know, make the lunch together. But I'm all things mom in the morning.

That's awesome. Yeah, I've actually shifted my routine a little bit. I'm not first thing in the morning, let's go to the gym. I actually start work first thing in the morning. I do a little morning routine, but then I get in the office at about 6, 6:15. Because I have no, no distractions and I can do some of my CEO work I've got to do.

Yeah.

And then I find pockets throughout the day to get my exercise in. And I actually really like that versus what it used to be is I got to get my workout in before I start working. Yeah, start working first. And I actually, it's been, I really like it. It's, uh, it's been, it's been a nice shift. Okay, you brought up exercise. You got 60 minutes to work out. What's your workout of choice?

Ooh, um, talked about efficiency earlier in the podcast. So I love barre. Love, uh, barre. I've done barre for a very long time. I was a gymnast growing up, so I just love it. Um, I've just recently started doing barre inside a sauna.

Really? That's a thing?

Have you heard of Hotworx?

Yes, that— okay, yeah, yeah.

Yes, so you'd work out inside a sauna, you, you know, it's kill two birds with one stone at a time. And so you're just drenched after and you feel great. And yeah, so I started doing barre in a sauna.

Awesome. Love hearing that. How about this? You got an afternoon to yourself. Husband's got the boys. What would you do if you had an afternoon completely to yourself?

Oh, you know, this is just— people are like, really, Brittany? But I love to just shop but not buy anything. I just love walking around. I would put a book in my ear. Okay, I would listen to a book. Um, I like all kinds of books, but I like to listen. So I'd listen to a book and I would just touch everything and look around and just people watch and just walk around.

I actually am kind of that way a little bit too. I could go grab a cup of coffee and just people watch.

Yeah, yeah, it's super just fun and relaxing.

Well, you had a good segue to the last question. Yeah, any interesting audiobooks you've read lately or listened to lately you recommend?

Ooh. Um, I just— or I'm right in the middle, and this is very girly for any girls you have, but right in the middle of ACOTAR, you know, the A Court of Thorns and Roses. Okay, not something I've ever gotten into. Um, it's very mythical and, and all of that, but, um, it's just different, you know. Something I've— for the years I've done the, the professional books and the professional audiobooks and, um, you know, the, the love stories, and just recently I've started to get into Dragons.

Yeah. As I get, I get older, I realize you gotta have the fiction books in your life. The first thing is you, if you've read enough self-development books, you, you realize they all say the same thing. And, and so the fiction I think is what helps you put, bring the creativity.

Yeah, for sure.

Your brain into your life. So they're actually, especially at night, if you do any kind of listening or reading at night, I think you should be listening to, uh, uh, fiction. Instead of self-development. So, well, Brittany, this has been awesome. Uh, thank you for taking the time. I am, uh, I'm very biased because you said you did a talk on why employees don't like your wellness program. I love that. If somebody wanted to hire you to come give that talk or just wanted to reach out because they were inspired by this episode, what's the easiest way to get in touch with you?

LinkedIn, Brittany Nelson, Shepherd Insurance, out of Louisville, Kentucky, right? Uh, Evansville.

Evansville. Evansville. I say Louisville, but is it Shep—

I'm in Louisville a lot. We have a, we have an office in Louisville. We have an office in Carmel, Indiana. Um, I'm in Carmel, Indiana more than I'm in Louisville, but I actually am in Evansville, Indiana. So message me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active there. And yeah, we can, we can keep going.

Well, I think this is a great episode. It'll be— give people a good insight of what corporate, corporate wellness looks like in 2026. So Brittany, thank you.

Thank you, Andy.