Andy Neary presents a webinar titled “The Presentation That Changed My Career,” recounting a career-defining shift that began with work in the early 2000s, deepened when he learned self-funding as an account executive in 2011 at Burke Wald, and culminated after moving to Colorado around 2014 when his niche knowledge gave him a competitive advantage. He previews a simple slide deck and frames the talk as a lesson in identifying ideal prospects rather than a technical how-to on self-funding.
Chapters
And as always, start out every webinar. Guys, I'm going to thank you for showing up live. And if you're watching this recording, I challenge you to show up live. Don't be lazy. So how are we guys doing? How are we doing today, guys? Good, good.
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, what I'm going to share with you guys today, you saw the title presentation that changed my career. What I want to talk about today is something I started doing back in 2000.
I think 15. And it was born out of frustration.
But it really helped me identify my ideal prospect. In fact, I'm going to show you a little slide presentation today that's very generic. So when you see it, you're going to be like, there's nothing on it. There is nothing a whole lot on it. But you're going to see the gist of what I was getting across with the presentation because let me take you back, Wade. If anybody saw my Rosetta talk earlier this week, Wade, I know you did. I said let me take you back to andy Neary in 2011, right?
Ten years ago I was that advisor who came to your company and I asked three questions every time. How many employees do you have? What's your X date and who's your carrier? Give me a census, I'll go get a bunch of quotes. Because that's what we all did 10 years ago.
And then in 2011 at that same time I actually took a step back. I went from producing to going back to account exact to be an account executive for a very well respected firm in the Wisconsin market. But it was there I was given a really big gift and I'll call it the gift of knowledge because that's where I learned self funding. I remember when I would go into accounts in 2011, some of you might, this might bring back memory for some people. I remember going into accounts in 2011, bigger opportunities and they were self funded and it was like a foreign language. I was like, I have no idea what this is, I can't help these people. But then in 11, when I went to work for Burke Wald, I was able to study, learn this self funding because most of our accounts were bigger accounts, self funded accounts and I'd be over three years there. I became really good at it and loved the conversations around reporting and claims and all that stuff. And so I remember sitting in front of some very high level CFOs, sitting in front of school boards, unions, like pretty, pretty tense meetings with school board unions. Like it was insane stuff but just loving this knowledge of what the heck this self funding was. Now today's topic is not to teach you self funding, but I will make a point here and you'll see where I'm going. So then in 2014, so after three years of being an account exec with Burkwald, Amy and I decided to move out here to Colorado and.
I went back to producing. I was at a independent agency in Longmont, Colorado and when I went and started meeting with clients, I quickly realized I had a knowledge advantage.
And because I understood self funding inside and out. And we had been doing it for years in Wisconsin, but in Colorado it's still fairly new. In fact, for most advisors, self funding was cigna's level funded product. That was self funding out here. And so I'm like, okay, I got an advantage.
But I quickly realized I had a problem because I would go into these meetings with prospects all fired up to share my.
