YOUR Story Is Your Secret Weapon! [NAHU Annual Conference, June 30 2019]

Do you find yourself in this position today?

Business is good.

Sales are good.

Profits are good.

But.

When you look out at your competition.

Looks like their business is booming.

Looks like they're writing bigger business every single day. And it looks like their business is growing beyond their wildest dreams. And you're wondering, how in the world are they playing so big? Because you want to play big, too.

Who feels that? Now, I want you to close your eyes for a second.

Why don't you go back to your childhood.

And I want you to envision your childhood dream.

What was it you wanted to be when you were a kid?

See some smiles. We must have some good dreams.

Now open your eyes.

How many envisioned becoming a health insurance broker?

Most of us just somehow ended up here, right? I know I did. You see, my childhood dream was to be a professional baseball player. I grew up in a baseball family. My dad was a college baseball player, went on to be an extremely successful high school baseball coach. He was a longtime coach in my hometown. I played for him. And he's now one of the winningest coaches in Wisconsin State history.

Go, Scotty. So I was raised in a family by an environment of baseball. I was raised around the tools, the mentorship to be a great baseball player. And by the time my senior year of high school rolled around, I had my first chance of tasting what it meant to play bigger. You see, going into my high school or my senior year, I had committed to pitch at Winona State University in Minnesota, a Division 2 baseball program. But I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to play bigger. I wanted to play Division 1 baseball. I had a problem.

You see, in high school, I was a shortstopping pitcher, and I knew that my best route to the next level was on the mound as a pitcher. But.

I was 5 foot 9 and I weighed 145 pounds my senior year. Not what I would call an intimidating presence on the mountain.

But by the time my senior year had come to an end, I had one last shot to play bigger. You see, it was the first round of the playoffs and I was pitching, and I knew that the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee was coming. Watch me pitch a Division 1 program. And I also knew that I had the confidence and the confidence to be successful that night because I had created a course of action throughout my high school career to be successful. And that night I threw a one hitter. I gave up a hit on the first pitch of the game, and that was it.

And so that was my first chance of tasting what it meant to play bigger. Because that night I Got a call from the head coach at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and was offered a scholarship to pitch it. You know What? A Division 1 baseball program.

Now, my first two years at the program, I thought playing bigger literally meant getting bigger.

So I focused my efforts on the weight room, hit the weights, and I took this magic powder called creatine. Where are my college athletes in the room. You probably know exactly what I mean when I talk about creatine. It was the legal way to get bigger back then. God knows what the long term ramifications are. And I put 30 pounds of muscle on my first two years.

So here I was, 5 foot 9, 175 pounds. But.

I realized I took the wrong course of action again. Because when you're a pitcher, the last thing you want is a muscle bound bicep. So my first two years at UWM were terrible. My stats were bad. And by the time my sophomore year came to an end, I wanted to quit, wanted to give it up. Who's been there in their business before?

Maybe in 2008, 2010.

Last week. Last week. Thanks, Eugene.

But something happened between my sophomore and junior year. I was named captain. And going into my junior year, being named captain gave me the confidence back that I needed to be successful on the mount. And I took a different course of action my last two years. I was effective in the weight and I honed my craft of pitching. I worked on my mechanics. And by the time my senior season came to an end, I gave myself a chance to play bigger yet again by signing a contract to pitch in the Milwaukee brewers organization.

Now, I wish I could keep telling you cool stories of success, but this is where the success ends. You see, when I got to pro ball, I lost my confidence. Here I was on the same playing field with guys from bigger schools like lsu, Arizona State, Texas. And I let it get to my head. And I got away from the course of action that had made me successful in high school and later on in my college career. In fact, there's one game that defines how short my pro career was. And it was our first trip to Missoula, Montana, to take on the Missoula Osprey. And I can remember the bus ride. I was pitching for Helena Brewers. Helena, Montana. I can remember the bus ride from Helena up over McDonald Pass into Missoula. And on the bus, the coaching staff had warned us that the crowd in Missoula gets pretty rowdy. You've got the college kids there at the University of Montana. It's summer. School's out and they love to come to the game, they love to drink a bit too much, and they love to make every home game a nightmare for the opposing players.

So here we were as the first game of the series. It was a Friday night. I remember the game like it was last night. It was an odd night in Missoula. It was hot and humid. So if anybody's from that part of the country, you know how unique that is. That's not the norm. The stands were filled, there were 5,000 people in the crowd, and it was the most gorgeous red orange sunset I'd ever seen. Because wildfires were burning around Missoula. If anybody lives in an area like I do in Colorado where you have wildfires, you know the unintended beauty of sunsets during wildfires, right? Ash was literally falling from the sky. And that night, our starting pitcher was terrible.

So bad that by the third inning, the call comes down to the bullpen, get Neary up, get him loose right away. So I jump up, stretch out my arms, stretch out my legs, grab my glove, grab a ball, and I start warming up.

And no more than 10 throws later, I'm coming into the game right into this loud, obnoxious, drunk crowd.

So I get to the mound, grab the ball from Dan Norman, the Helena Brewer manager, and I look to the Osprey dugout to see who I'll be facing right away. And it's Andres Torres, the top prospect in the Diamondbacks organization, one of the top prospects in all of minor league baseball. So here's my chance to play bigger, right? Here's my chance to go up against some of the best competition and prove myself in pro ball. So I start warming up. And as I start warming up, the crowd starts chanting.

And little by little, the chanting gets louder. And after my third warm up pitch, I now can hear what they're chanting. How can you pitch when you're 5 foot 6? How can you pitch when you're 5 foot 6?

And in that moment, my mind went somewhere it shouldn't have. Instead of playing bigger.

My mind listened to the crowd. It said, yeah, who am I?

Five foot nine, not five foot six.

I don't have an overpowering arm. I wasn't a high draft kick. What right do I have to stand on this mound and face the best like Anders Kors, because I'm average?

Who's felt that way before? Especially against some of your competition?

Sucks, doesn't it? So I finished out the year in Helena, went back to spring training the following spring. And on the last day of Spring training, got released, got let go. Now, get this. I was one day away from breaking camp, as they call it, to go pitch for the Beloit Snappers in Beloit, Wisconsin, 50 miles from where I grew up. I was three promotions away from pitching for the Milwaukee Brewers, 30 miles from my hometown. Talk about a childhood dream.

Gone over.

And I look back at that day. I was released. And I learned a lesson that day that has stuck with me to this day. And this is the lesson.

If you want to play bigger in your life, in your business, you gotta have a major league mindset. And a major league mindset requires confidence, competence, and one effective course of action.

Now, who wants to play bigger in their business right now? Who wants to be writing bigger business, growing their business faster than you are right now? Okay, so how are we going to get there?

In my opinion, you're going to get there with a little competence and one effective course of action. But, oh, we have a buck. You got some challenges right now, don't you? In baseball, my challenges were my height, my pitch velocity, and my draft status. Yours, number one, noise. Our industry's a little noisy right now, isn't it? Oh, is there a lot of noise? Right. Everybody's out talking about the same things. Everybody's out saying the same things. We're all Talking about healthcare, 3.0, healthcare supply chains, HDHPs, RBP, DPC, OMG, WTF.

Number two, the Pandora's box is open. There's no more competitive advantages. Everybody has access to the same stuff now. And number three, for most of you, your competition, they're like Andres Torres. They're a lot bigger than you are. They have more resources and more capabilities. So what are you going to do to rise up, stand up, and stand out against this noise and against your competition? Well, today, I want to share with you one course of action that I think is the most effective tool to help you grow your business faster in less time and less effort. Does that sound good? That's doing exactly what I'm doing right now and what every single one of these speakers has done today, including Cedric so eloquently this morning.

Share your story.

When you get on stage, you get in front of a room full of prospects, and you share your story. You share who you are, you share your failures.

Your prospects are going to want to do business with you. Because when you share your story, here's what happens. You give yourself the best asset I think you need in business, and that is era.

Now, where are my baseball fans? You know, ERA in baseball, as Earned run average. For me, that was the benchmark of my success in baseball. The higher my era, the better chances I was going to get released. The lower my era, the better chance I could play bigger. It literally determined whether or not I was going to stay in baseball.

ERA in business is engagement, relationships, and authority.

And you want your ERA to be as sky high as you can possibly be. Because the higher your engagement, the higher your relationships and the higher the authority you have in your market against your competition. I promise you, you will write bigger business and better business than you ever have before. Now, close your eyes one more time.

I want you to envision what you know your business is capable of. I want you to envision writing the prospects you've always wanted to write, but you just thought you could never do it. I want you to envision rising up against your competition and leading them in the dust.

Now open your eyes.

Public speak. Telling your story.

Will give you the engagement, the relationships, and the authority that you need to grow your business faster than you are today.

And telling your story, guys, is your secret weapon.

Unlike my pro career, you're not three promotions away from playing in the big leagues. You're just one mindset. Shift away.

I'll close by saying this. Right now, you have two choices.

You can continue looking up and wondering how your competition continues to play bigger, or you can look back and celebrate the growth, the amazing growth your business has had. Because you're going to be in one of those two places one year, three years, five years from now. The choice is yours. All you need is a little confidence. I know you have the competence because you wouldn't be here. And just use this course of action to grow your business faster in less time and less effort. Because when you share your story with your prospects, I promise you, your prospects will share their business with you. Thank you.