Risk & Resolve
The Risk & Resolve Podcast is your go-to resource for insightful conversations at the intersection of leadership, business ownership, and the insurance industry. Hosted by Ben Conner and Todd Hufford, this podcast dives deep into the challenges and opportunities that leaders face in an ever-changing world.
Each episode features candid discussions with business owners, industry experts, and thought leaders, exploring topics like innovation, risk management, and the strategies that drive success. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, executive, or insurance professional, you’ll gain actionable insights and inspiration to navigate today’s complex business landscape.
Tune in to Risk & Resolve—where leadership meets resilience.
Risk & Resolve
What Drives a Top 5 National Benefits Advisor?
Diana Miller, a Benefits Pro 2025 Advisor of the Year finalist, shares her remarkable journey from growing up in Bogotá, Colombia to becoming one of America's top five benefits advisors through grit, analytical thinking, and cultural perspective.
• Benefits advising requires wearing multiple hats to serve employers, HR professionals, and employee populations
• An advisor's true value is revealed during challenging times when problems need solving
• Diana's "secret sauce" includes grit developed through childhood adversity, strong analytical skills, and cultural empathy
• Growing up in Bogotá during the drug cartel wars required constant security protection from armed guards
• Attended an English immersion school that prepared her for global opportunities
• Earned a scholarship to study in the US, choosing Dubuque, Iowa primarily based on weather expectations
• Experienced culture shock including a memorable incident trying to bribe a police officer
• Transitioned from marketing representative to advisor by going beyond expectations and providing strategic input
• Frustrated by seeing employees walk out of enrollment meetings due to poor benefits, sought better healthcare solutions
• Motivated by creating positive healthcare experiences for her community and designing better systems for future generations
You're listening to Risk and Resolve, and now for your hosts, ben Conner and Todd Hufford. Welcome back to another episode of the Risk and Resolve pod. I'm your host, ben Conner, and today our special guest is Deanna Miller, benefits Advisor at Conor Insurance and drumroll 2025 Advisor of the Year, finalist that's recognized by Benefits Pro, one of the top five advisors recognized in the entire country. Deanna, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Hey Ben, I'm doing well. It's an honor to be here. I'm very excited to be a part of the podcast, so thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, congrats to you on the recent recognition of your long-term efforts is kind of how I view it. This has been something that's been on your professional bucket list for a little bit of time, hasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sure has. It's one of those things where, you know, we kind of see all sorts of colleagues and advisors across the country being recognized for the efforts and their hard work, and it's one of those things that, when I started in the benefits industry, I thought you know what, one day I'm going to be on the cover of that magazine, because I believe that hard work deserves recognition. And I'll definitely say that I have a pretty strong work ethic when it comes to that. And just seeing people like you, you know, following your, your footsteps on that, and now seeing my name within the recognition, is definitely an honor that I don't take for granted. So pretty excited to see one of my dreams come true.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and it's been fun for me to be able to watch that occur. So you talked about motivation and work ethic as like kind of some of the main things. I'm sure there are other characteristics that go into play, but what's kind of the behind the scenes of like what does that hard work look like to become an advisor of the year finalists? Like what does that look like on a day-to-day basis?
Speaker 2:It's an advisor role. I feel like it's wearing multiple hats because you do have to tend to many different stakeholders. So of course, you have the employers that you work with, and within that employer setup, there's also different types of parties as well. I mean I have my CFOs, my CEOs and my HR professionals, who I'm working with from a strategic perspective day in and day out to understand their company objectives and help accomplish those objectives through the management of the benefit programs that they offer, partnering with us. But in addition to that, we have their employee population, who also has very specific needs, and it is my responsibility and I take that very seriously in helping our team. So everybody who supports our clients, including account managers as well as member support individuals, understand what sort of needs that employee population has and help serve those needs as best as we can.
Speaker 1:That's not an easy task.
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:At the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's also one of those things where I feel like the advisor is also the first line of defense if something goes wrong, and so we have to be prepared to be that problem solver. That can come from many different aspects of a plan again, or stakeholders within that employer, and so sometimes too, from an advisor hard work perspective. Advisors don't get a lot of recognition when it comes from clients, because usually you know if things are going well, things are quiet and things are not going well. That's when we really hear from a specific employer and something that's not going well, and so I do feel like the advisor role for it to deserve or to receive recognition. It doesn't happen very often, and so when it happens, you got to take on it, but it's a lot of hard work. You got to wear a lot of different hats as being an advisor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always kind of found that, or at least I feel like I've learned over the last many years that our clients should actually look at in those hard times, like when things are like a little dicey or problems occur, like that's when they get to find out like if they actually hired the right advisor, because it's easy for everyone to look great when it's going well, but it's like you find out what your advisor is made of and how good they are on their feet and how well they think and all those sorts of things. When things go wrong, when there's problems that occur, yeah, you're 100 percent right.
Speaker 2:I feel like it is in times of pressure that a character of a person really comes through the advisor, vice versa, back and forth. Seeing how those problems get resolved will really be a test to you know. Are they the right fit or are they not the?
Speaker 1:right fit. So don't they say like pressure, like obviously pressure can crush things right, like just general, like science, but also pressure is what creates diamonds, right? So, there's opposite things that can occur from an event like pressure. So what would you say? Is your like secret sauce for your personal craft of advising? Like what is the thing that you're like? You know what like these characteristics to my approach is how I accomplish what I can accomplish with my clients on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:That's a very good question. Well, I think that a lot of my success is attributed to my personal experiences in life and how I have been able to face, you know, adversity, challenges and be able to come through successfully from those. I think one of those skills is grit. I think that's a characteristic that, from my childhood, was something that I always saw in my parents, my father especially. He was a man of all sorts of tricks. He's an accountant, he also went to law school and then he also participated in the political sphere in Columbia, and he was always busy, but not the busyness of like timing, but more the busyness of helping across multiple organizations, across multiple people. I just always saw him advising and helping others. And my mom was the same way. She's a teacher, former teacher, but at the same time like just very hard worker, always looking out for how she could improve herself and be better in the role that she was performing. And even in those like situations where I truly saw they were being challenged, they persevered. They always persevered and pursued what was right, what was the right outcome. And so I think that grit is something that I see as a big skill where, just because of the life circumstances that I have been through. When there's challenges that come to me as an advisor, as I work with my clients, I don't lose sight that there's always going to be a solution. So even though problems can be very complex at times, we will always find an outcome for that specific challenge.
Speaker 2:And then I would say, another characteristic too is I'm very analytical. It's one of those things that, from a math perspective at school, I always did great at math. I loved math classes honestly, like anything from algebra to calculus. I've been a huge math geek my entire life. And then like bringing that into using things like Excel. I'm an Excel nerd, I will confess to that. I love anything that has to do with Excel.
Speaker 2:But those analytical and technical skills that have really served me well when it comes to understanding all of the numbers and budgeting and just strategic calculations and projections for the benefit programs, again, that my clients and I partner with Deploy to work on, that technical slash analytical skill has served me really, really well. And I would say the last one is I come from a different culture and I definitely had to learn a lot of new things when I came to the US in terms of what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, which was different from my upbringings. This challenge, coming from you know what, perhaps, is coming from a place where this specific CFO, ceo, even an employee, you know, based on the situation that they're going through, there's an emotional response to it and there's a reason for that. And just being able to see that human side of the situation and empathize with it in order to come up with a solution has really helped me develop a lot of trust with the employers that I work with.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, I've seen. Definitely in watching you perform your craft and succeed in that way, I can definitely see those three things of culture. Grit I also call toughness. You have a toughness about you and then you're just analytical nature. I mean numbers is the language of business, right, and understanding that really well, and how the numbers within a health plan like pervades throughout a business, is really important for sure. Well, two of the three of those are going back and like talking about your roots and obviously you have a, you know, one of my favorite pictures behind you Bogota. One of my favorite pictures behind you, bogota. Obviously, your journey started very uniquely from others in the benefits realm, growing up in Bogota and then coming to the United States. Can you share with us just kind of like what it was like growing up in Bogota and then what were the circumstances around, what brought you to the United States and how that played out the first, maybe even 48 hours while you were here, what that was like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can go down memory lane a little bit. So, growing up Bogota. For those who don't know, bogota is the capital of Colombia. Bogota is a city currently. I think we just crossed the 11 million people mark, so it's a very large city.
Speaker 1:That's like New York City style, right there, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is a very large city, all sorts of ethnicities and backgrounds and you know, there's just a lot of people, a lot of people within that city. And growing up I would say that was interesting for me because, you know, as a kid I mean you go through kind of what we consider the traditional aspects of childhood of like taking vacations and going to school. I went to an all girls school but the school that I went to was a program that's like an English immersion program. So it was started by, technically, sisters from the Franciscan community that actually resided in Rochester, minnesota, and their intent was to develop a system from kindergarten through 12th grade, senior year in high school, where these girls were immersed fully in learning English and learning all sorts of subjects in English to make them fluent and be able to speak English when they graduated. So all that is pretty normal.
Speaker 2:Bogota is a busy city. I mean you do have lots of traffic. It's to get from point A to point B you do have to plan well in advance, and this was prior to the day and age of Waze or MapQuest or anything like that. So just growing up in a city like that, but for me specifically, I think one of the things that made my childhood a little bit different was my dad's involvement in politics.
Speaker 2:I definitely witnessed things that I love to share, because I know that not everybody went through the same experiences that I did, and I would say a couple of things that I like to share are so my dad was heavily involved when the drug cartels in the 90s were fighting for after Pablo Escobar died, were fighting to take over his territory and his market share and his routes to ship cocaine to different parts of the world, and so my dad was heavily involved in the anti-narcotics task force.
Speaker 2:So with that comes a lot of safety concerns for him and for his family. That comes a lot of safety concerns for him and for his family, and so that definitely made my childhood a little bit different. Just because from again, vacations, going to the park, going to school, we always had guards that were behind us in an SUV. So you can picture like Jason Bourne or James Bond movies where you have like the black Suburbans or you know whatever, as you leave kind of behind you at all times making sure that you and your family are safe. So that was a little different growing up A little yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 2:But from that point on I went through school and, luckily for me, my mom and dad really pushed me to be one of the best students in the class and actually that played out excellent for me because I was awarded a scholarship to come to the US and go to school here for college. It was a fully covered scholarship.
Speaker 1:Real quick before we go to like going to college in the United States. Why do you think going to like an English immersion school was like really important to your parents to have you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very good question. I've asked that question myself to my parents because you know it's a decision that technically I didn't make. They made the decision for me.
Speaker 2:And they have two big reasons for that. The first one was in the late 90s, early 2000s. Globalization was starting to be a trend where countries were starting to trade, you know, create trading agreements with each other. Dad started identifying that. He understood that in order for his kids to go far, it could open a lot of doors if they knew or learned a second language at least, if not more. And so yeah to your point, like going to that school. Right now, nowadays there's a lot more schools that teach a second language, but at that point in time when I went through that school, there were a handful of schools that wanted in Bovita to attend to do that.
Speaker 2:So that's one of the reasons. But the second one too, was based on kind of some close calls. I'll leave it at that that my dad had, from a livelihood and safety perspective, a livelihood and safety perspective. He really thought that it was probably a better way to keep his kids safe if they went to a different country and started their life that way. So there's part of that as well that he potentially considered asylum for us in a different country to protect us from some of the unsafe things that were happening.
Speaker 1:So there's like a globalization, like trade and how the world operated, as well as like. My children probably need to graduate out of Columbia and head somewhere, and so I need to get them set up in a way that can happen more seamlessly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow. So you got a scholarship, you got awarded a scholarship.
Speaker 2:I did. I got awarded that scholarship and I will never forget that day, because it was my mom, and I attended the school meeting where we had been hinted that these scholarships were going to be granted. So the sisters, the Franciscan sisters, are reading the names and they read my name as Diana Carolina, which technically the way you say my name properly in Spanish is Diana Catalina. So there's a little bit of difference there and my mom just like elbows me and she's like is that you?
Speaker 1:And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's me.
Speaker 2:So, like they pronounce it wrong, we're so confused and we just kind of looked at each other and we're like, yeah, pretty sure that's me. So I went up and, effectively, yeah, it was me who I was awarded a scholarship. So, anyway, get the scholarship. And I have three schools to choose from. First one is in Iowa, second one is in Wisconsin and third one is in Iowa. Second one is in Wisconsin and third one is in Minnesota. And I had never been to any of those states in the US previously. So we literally pulled, once they told us the options, we go back home my dad's not home, he is at work and we pull up a map on the computer and just like, like, where are these schools located at and in the map? I'm like, well, I know that winter is pretty bad in the northern part of the country, so I'm thinking Iowa being closer to the south, it's got to be way better than the other two. And uh, of course there were, you know, a lot of meetings that took place as well to make sure my major and all of that aligned. But ultimately picked the a school in Iowa Loris College in Dubuque mostly because we expected more favorable weather, which now, 20 years later, not really the case, but that's how we based on what are the reasons of the decision. But yeah, attended. Loris, I definitely had some, like you said, some cultural things that I had to learn.
Speaker 2:I would say one of the funniest one that I can recall was getting my first car paid by myself, and I was so proud of it. It was a Pontiac Sunfire. It was like a 1990 dark blue Pontiac Sunfire. It was a rattling thing on wheels, but I was so proud of it. I think I paid 1200 bucks for it.
Speaker 2:And one of the first time I'm driving through Dubuque streets and I see this police car right behind me with the lights on. Well, in Bogota, when somebody's getting pulled over for speeding or whatever the case might be, the sirens are also going off within that police car. So I kept driving. I'm like, okay, this is not for me, it's definitely not for me to pull over. So I keep driving and the police car keeps getting closer and closer and closer to my car. So now I'm starting to think maybe this is for me, maybe I should pull over. What should I do here? And I'm just by myself there. So I pulled over to a parking lot and I remember it was a church parking lot and the police guy comes right behind me and he comes over to you know roll down the window because it was rolling down the window in those days, and he's like license and registration please.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, I pulled you over and I said no, I don't know, but I'll, I'll get you my stuff. So I got my light, my driver's license, my car registration, and I put a twenty dollar bill in between those two and I gave it to the officer and he looks at that and just kind of lifts his eyes and just says do you know what you're doing? What is this for? And I said, no, it's totally fine, you can keep that, that's no problem. Because again, back in my hometown nothing that I'm super proud of, but you know it happens where people avoid tickets by providing a little bit of a payout to the cops or to the police and they're just let go.
Speaker 1:There's I mean cultural difference, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So I thought that was completely okay here and I said, no, it's fine, you can keep it. Just, you know, go forward with whatever you need to do. And he's like, do you really know what you're doing right now? And he was getting kind of upset and so I pulled another twenty dollar bill and I gave him that one as well and I said, ok, this should do it. This should take a while.
Speaker 1:Doubling down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Doubling down, yeah, doubling down my odds. And I think at that point he kind of chuckled and he's like where are you from? So I explained what I was from. I'm an international student, I go to Loras College I'm a few blocks away and he totally understood at that point. Okay, this girl really does not know that this is not something that's appropriate. So he explained, he gave me the class, he explained to me that that was completely wrong and I apologized. I didn't get a warning or a ticket. I think he saw my panicking face of like, oh my goodness, what am I getting myself into? I could go to jail for this. And he let me go. But that was one of the very first shocks that I experienced when I came to the US.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that's so good. I also think that just kind of reveals like the beauty in different places and the cultural norms and like just the things that make different places like home to different people, right, it's just that's just like a small revelation of that. So you came from Bogota, columbia of 11 million people, which we just recently did a geography lesson on Bogota. It's like a mountainous area, right, yes, and you went to Dubuque, iowa.
Speaker 2:Population in Dubuque is what I think we're at about 90,000.
Speaker 1:90,000 people. So 11 million to 90,000 people. I would say it was actually surprising to me when I first went to Dubuque, which was on your first day. Is it's actually pretty like hilly around Dubuque? It's not like Midwestern flat like Indiana, is it's actually fairly hilly next to the Mississippi River? But 11 million to 90,000 people, mountains to hills. What was the first couple of weeks like, when you showed up and you realized my goodness, it's not necessarily terribly warm in Iowa and like where are all the people?
Speaker 2:I love that question this is such a fun question because I do get asked that a lot and to give you a visual. So Dubuque, iowa, has an airport. So I did have to, you know, make a couple of stops before arriving to Dubuque. But as I'm flying into Dubuque, there's no buildings, everything I can see. This is August, so August 19 of 2005.
Speaker 2:I'm flying in with two gigantic suitcase where my try to bring as much as I could of my life with me, with weight limitations, and we paid for overweight, but anyway I'm flying in and I see cornfield after cornfield, because, of course, at that point in time in August, the corn is already starting to tassel. It's tall, you know, it's lots of grain and I'm like where are the, you know, kind of like the skyscrapers or any sort of apartment buildings or anything like that? Don't see anything, for that matter. So we land in Dubuque and there's two other students of my school as well, so three of us came to school and we arrive at the airport and this airport has one runway. So again we're like where?
Speaker 1:are we now?
Speaker 2:What's happening here. Grab our bags and we are meeting our host family. So I'm very blessed that I did have an individual who worked at Laura's. Him and his wife welcomed three of us into their home to live for the time that we were in college, which I will be eternally grateful for. But they pick us up. They have a Chevy Impala. At the time I remember that we're struggling to get all of our bags in that car for the three of us and get us there. And they have a son too, too, and he came to welcome us and we start driving on this like county roads and again we're all looking at each other like where are we? What kind of setup is this? And they live in a very wooded area as well, so we're not even seeing anything. Dubuque wise yet as it relates to like the actual town.
Speaker 1:Right, this is the outside, you went straight to the country yes, straight straight to the country.
Speaker 2:You're seeing cattle, corn, cattle, corn, cattle, corn. That's kind of a the landscape. And uh, I just remember asking that night to Steve, my host dad, like is this Dubuque, or are we going to have to drive, you know, 30 minutes or whatever to get to Dubuque? And he said, no, this is, these are the outskirts of Dubuque. Dubuque looks, you know, pretty much like this. I mean, all you're going to see once we get into the actual downtown is, you know, the college buildings and additional like city buildings and whatnot. But this is Iowa. Welcome to Iowa. And we all knew at that point that this was definitely going to be a much different experience than we expected, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, at least in August you got tricked into thinking that it was warm weather oh absolutely months yes, that is for sure, because that first winter was, uh, actually what?
Speaker 2:it was? One of the highest, uh, one of the snowiest winters on record, the 2005 winter. So I welcomed us with all of its strength and mightiness when winter came around.
Speaker 1:That's epic. So you went to Loras and then you start your professional career in Dubuque. So tell me a little bit about the professional journey right out of school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, so went to Loras, graduated Loras. I did have a couple of experiences. We talk about sales right and, like being an advisor, I pick a lot from those two experiences that I had as it related to sales. The first one was I went to California for a summer because I had a family member there that worked for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and they were working with the Archdiocese on selling cemetery plots, more specifically for Latino members of the community. So we were speaking Spanish and helping people understand how to prepare and plan ahead for that specific need. And a lot of the time was spent at parish festivals, just different events and communities where we could seek a space to talk to Hispanic families and then be able to make appointments with them and, you know, get them educated on the options and get them paying for this specific type of planning. So that was interesting. I mean learning to sell and talk about death, which I know is kind of a topic that people are not super comfortable talking about, was hard. But I think that again, that Hispanic component really helped relate values and culture with the people that we were talking to.
Speaker 2:And then the next, the other sales experience that I went through, was another summer I was recruited by a book selling company an encyclopedia and book selling company and so for that it's all college kids we drove to Tennessee, to Nashville, for training, so drove from Iowa to Tennessee to get trained on how to do this. And then we drove to California to pick a neighborhood where we had to get everything we needed. So we had to ask for a place to stay, because they didn't have a place to offer for us to stay. We got started with some base cash, but everything else was based on your book sales. So, like to eat if you don't sell, you're not eating. Or you better have good friends that are with you there that can lend you, you know, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, because some of us, like myself, are not very good at selling books, and so I had a lot of good friends that lend me their hand.
Speaker 1:That wasn't your jam, huh.
Speaker 2:No, definitely not my jam, no, especially. I mean the internet was around already, and so that was a big competitor and a big reason to say no.
Speaker 2:So those were my two like kind of sales experiences. Post-college I got started. I graduated during 2008. So it was like the recession that was taking place in the US, and so the job market was tough. Lots of interviews, spent some time unemployed and then I finally was able to get a position with a financial institution in Dubuque and from there I kind of just worked my way up through different roles within that institution and eventually, in 2013, I made my transition into benefits with a local agency in Dubuque, and that was 2013 on. Have been in benefits since then excellent.
Speaker 1:I think it's one thing to note too. We haven't said it yet, but your husband owns his chiropractor practice, so so like you've also had like an experience with that of like being a business owner alongside with him and running the business with him, which is a just another education in and of itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that has been awesome. I will say that. You know, I always believe there are certain marriage tests as part of being a couple, and I think that having kids is one, but owning or starting a business together is definitely another one, and we've had our. You know, I heard Todd speak a little bit about this in another podcast, but peaks and valleys we've had those as well. I mean, there's a lot of stress that comes from understanding the financials of business plan and getting the bank to lend us some money to get started and then trying to develop some marketing to make sure that we can get patients in the door right.
Speaker 2:That's how his business operates is. He's a chiropractor, so he treats patients and if he does, then he gets compensated for it. So we have a lot of stressful times, but we always look back and it's one of those things that we're the most proud of. It's like our marriage. We've been married for 15 years and, through the good and bad and the ugly we've made it through and we feel like we were in a pretty good spot. We have a successful business from that perspective.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's awesome. I have a couple of good friends that are in business with their spouses and described as a beautiful cobblestone road. Obviously, no, cobblestone roads are beautiful, but we also know that they're bumpy at times. So, but I know, just like what you said, they said it too. They wouldn't have it any other way, so it's really cool. So, 2013, you get into the benefits world, you get introduced. What was your first role in benefits? And then? Where did it progress from there?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I started as a benefits marketing representative and this was from an agency whose owner whose company owner I was the last person that he interviewed and then he passed away. He hired me and then he shortly after passed away. So it was one of those situations where, like, I fell in love with the mission, I fell in love with what he wanted to accomplish with me and my role, and then he was gone and it was a pretty quick transition to a different manager that I worked with.
Speaker 2:But from a benefits marketing representative I learned from scratch benefits. I had to learn. I had no clue how deductibles work. I had no clue what an out-of-pocket maximum was, deductibles work. I had no clue what an out-of-pocket maximum was because, luckily enough, from college through that time, my husband and I had been pretty healthy. We never really had to use the health insurance. So I had to learn a lot of those terms from scratch. And then my primary responsibilities were to spreadsheet Every single quote, every single proposal that came in from a carrier. I was putting them together in a spreadsheet in a comparison and then giving those to the account manager as well as the advisor to present to the client.
Speaker 1:And then, real quick, you mentioned marketing when we have some listeners that aren't native to the insurance or benefits space. Most people, when they think of marketing, they think of like marketing a product to an end user. But insurance is a funny thing where we like to use normal words and give them different definitions. What does marketing mean in the world of benefits?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question in the world of benefits. Yeah, that's a great question. So marketing in the world of benefits is very well used for the research and comparison of pricing of various solutions or various vendors or insurance companies, and then really that is what is presented to employers as the options that are on the table for their benefits program. So there's a lot of negotiation that's involved in that, as well as relationship management and, of course, the technical part of it, the analytical skills.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very different than that, right? We're going on getting proposals and then figuring out how to get it to a place where it's presentable to a client. So you started out learning the basics. You're in the marketing realm. What did it look like to grow into that role?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So as I got more experience with the terminology and showing the producers or the advisors the options, I started adding my touch to it and saying here's who I would recommend, here's who. I think makes a lot of sense because I got to know all of the vendors and all of the carriers extremely well. We were having conversations day in and day out and of course you know they want to pitch their best to you so that they become your recommendation. So as I started providing recommendation to producers and advisors, I think that was noticed within the members of the management team and so I started getting more opportunity to participate in sales conversations with prospects as well as with existing clients. There was a lot of trust put in me to, also from a producer, to take the front seat and present the options to the client. So thankfully I did get a lot of exposure on how to maneuver and how to navigate a conversation with CEOs, cfos and HR professionals that way.
Speaker 1:So you could have just grown in that role of plug and play I'm supposed to do this task, so I'm going to do this task and complete it. But you leaned in further and said I'm going to add strategy to this, how can we improve what we're doing? And ultimately you started advising the advisor. Right, so the producer is technically the advisor to the client. You started advising the advisor on hey, I think you should do this, that or the other, and because you're so technically sound on the product and everything else, that advisor just kind of got out of the way because you knew it better and wanted you to present that to the client. It's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What was that motivation like of just hey, I just don't want to sit here and give you the proposal, Like I want to get involved here.
Speaker 2:I have been a true believer that ever since again since I got the opportunity to come to the U? S that there's gotta be a reason why I'm here, you know, because it's really hard not every day, because it's really hard not every day, but a lot of days it's hard to be away from home. But I also think that God has put me in this position because there is a mission that I need to fulfill where I'm at, and so, with every single job that I have held that is how I hold myself accountable is am I doing the best that I can in the position that I have held? That is how I hold myself accountable. Is am I doing the best that I can in the position that I have, with the resources that I have for the people that I work with and I think, some people.
Speaker 2:I remember being called unsettled many different times because I was looking to get better and ask for opportunities for professional development, personal development, always looking for that. I'm always asking those questions, but it's it comes from a place of more like ambition and wanting to continue to be better and conduct my calling here where I'm at today. So I think that's what has always inspired me and motivated me to do more than what it is asked of me is because there is a higher calling for me here.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, that calling led you to a conference 2021, right, that's where I got to meet you.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So sat at the same table talk shop a little bit, but talk about attending that conference and then kind of what transpired after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, part of giving recommendations to the producers that I was working with, I started getting a sense of frustration from clients, getting a sense of frustration from employees because of the harsh reality of our healthcare system. Just as ways to control costs, employers were raising deductibles as a way to do so and maintain or keep costs down, but then delivering those news to employees was really tough. I remember very vividly being at employee enrollment meetings, helping with those and having employees walk out because they were so disappointed at the benefits that were being offered at those companies and I had to figure there's got to be a different way to do this, there's got to be a better way to do this, and thankfully, social media was a great way to do that. I literally hopped on LinkedIn and started following people like Dave Chase and started reading information about like David Contorno, and I remember also following Nelson Griswold.
Speaker 2:In fact, I had started to set up meetings with him to see if I could learn about, you know, a book that he had just come out with, and how he was advising and coaching agencies into a different way of doing benefits, a better way, and so that conference in 2021 was, I think, my first step towards saying I need to become savvy on what else is out there and then be able to bring that to my region where I'm at today, because I know that from a Midwest perspective. I think a lot of the times the Midwest region is considered kind of a late adopter of certain things that may be cutting edge, that are more early on adopted in, like the East Coast or the West Coast, and that's totally fine. But I wanted to be one of the first ones to bring it to the region. But I needed to understand it as best as I could.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally agree. So similar story from my perspective. Yeah, you get tired of it. I think probably a lot of the advisors that we've become friends with we all have the same like catchphrase of like what went through our heads is there's got to be a better way. Like literally those exact same words there's got to be a better way. This is so terrible. This healthcare delivery model is disgusting and you can see it crushing employees that you're standing in front of and it's ridiculous. But yeah, so we met at the conference and then you followed up and you decided to come on board at Conor Insurance and that's been awesome. You've done a great job. So I'm really proud of you and what you've done. This award is certainly deserved from what I've seen. So top five broker of the year or, I guess, advisor of the year.
Speaker 1:That's right, I'm so old I know it as broker of the year, but now it's the advisor of the year top five across the country. So we'll find out soon who is the winner. But what we really know is all five of you are winners, because five out of the entire country is incredible. So congrats to you. Before we get into our final questions I wanted to get into just real quick I want to ask you like you look back. You've almost been at Connor for three years and you've had the experience that you've had. What do you hope for the next three years in your advising career Like? What are your aspirations for? What that looks like.
Speaker 2:That's a really good question. I think that one of the things that I still am working towards is being able to bring change to my backyard like that, my community here. You know I've been within this community for 20 years. Actually, this year marks my 20th year of being here and I know so many people just because I went to college here and now I have three kids that are attending, you know, local schools here and so I'm starting to get to know the parents of other kids that are in their class and it's like kind of that saying of like loving your neighbor. I want to love my neighbors by being able to provide affordable health care to them, Because I have been a health care user again, had three kids, so, of course, you know I had to deliver my kids in hospital, so I understand very much how it works now and thankfully, with Connor and having my third child, I was able to experience a better way of doing so and within my community.
Speaker 1:So I know it's possible, I know it can be done, and so for the next you know, three, five, 10 years, I really want to help bring that excellent experience that I had to other people in my community, Because I know, go, I'm trying, yeah, now then in your community is lucky to have you, and I'll be fun to watch them realize that as you continue to grow your client base in that greater area Cause really, like Dubuque, is right on the border of Wisconsin, so your market really is Iowa, wisconsin, illinois, I mean, they're all right there and even up in Minnesota where we have clients already. It's a great state. So we have two questions that we ask everyone that comes on the pod. So the first question is and you probably have several to choose from actually what is the risk you have taken that has changed your life?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a yeah, definitely have several ones. I think the risk that propelled everything that I've been doing here was the risk of coming to a different country, like that is. It was a hard decision at 17 to leave home. I know it was super hard and I understand it now as a parent like letting your children go and pursue their dreams, but much further, into another country, another culture and a very different setting. It's hard, but it's also a decision that has opened so many doors. So many doors met fantastic people, being able to have some of the best memories in my life meeting my husband. That would have never happened if I wouldn't have come to the US. We met in college, and so I think that just making the leap of faith and deciding to build my dreams in the US has been one of the best risks I could have ever taken.
Speaker 1:I think that is an absolute fascinating story of trying to put myself in your shoes, of being an immigrant and going somewhere new. And you mentioned, like 17 years old, hopping on an airplane and going to a different country to live and go to school. And there's probably several parents, maybe even listening right now, that like have heartburn about their 17 year old driving on the interstate. You know like just the incredible risk. I mean, it is an incredible risk, so that's awesome. So the second question is more about like, maybe future dreams, but what's unfinished for you that you have the resolve to complete in the near or not so near future?
Speaker 2:That's an excellent question too. I think that you know kind of what I mentioned before about being able to make an impact in my community is so significant, and especially because I do want like my kids are my motivation every day when I wake up and go to work, even when I'm having a bad day, I just think of them and think of they deserve better healthcare experiences. They deserve to get taken care of by high quality physicians that have the best outcomes possible for whatever health challenges they face, and so the work that I'm doing now, even though it's one teeny tiny piece of sand in this gigantic behemoth of a healthcare system, I'm hopeful that it will help make their experience better, and so I have the resolve to not just make an impact in my community, but also to help design a better healthcare system for my kids.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I don't think there's a better place to end than that. De Diana, thanks for joining me today on the pod. Congrats to you on the 2025 Advisor of the Year finalist Super well-deserved and thanks to the audience for joining us for another episode of the Risk and Resolve pod. Thanks for tuning in to Risk and Resolve. See you next time.
