Drive innovation mindsets and behaviors internally to customer-centric product and service outcomes.

Deliver class based on my book, "Enquire to Inspire" to professional adult learners.

Launch, build, and retire businesses in the areas of education and consulting in response to market opportunity. Partner with others to test new business ideas. Goal to build recurring and residual income streams for myself and others.Built three state-specific professional education sites for insurance agents to complete mandated training. Tested variations on traditional industry business model to capture underserved and diverse market segments. Measured high retention and promotion from targeted segments. Streamlined customer journey through qualitative and quantitative analysis. Captured and maintained noteworthy market share in a commoditized market dominated by several dominant national players.

Mentor early-stage entrepreneurs and their teams in the areas of customer value discovery, rapid experimentation and prototyping, and scaling. Teach the behaviors of Agile Innovation paired with appropriate tools to document and guide team progress. Help startups focus on building right-sized low-fidelity value propositions before building high-fidelity physical products. Focus on runway and the key assumptions that must be tested before scaling conversations can take place.Work with founders to believe their customer when they are saying "no", and make courageous decisions to pivot their work so that they can survive to the next opportunity.

Behaviors: Leadership, mentoring, coaching, customer empathy, rapid experimentation, prototyping, story-telling, asking questions to reframe thinking, reducing bias.Tactics: Team formation and building, sponsor mentoring, product design, agile/scrum, idea-validation/invalidation, design thinking, lean startup, business modelling.Outcomes: De-risked project prioritization, rapid learning about new ideas, stopping low-value projects quickly. New customer value in core, adjacent, and novel market spaces.Case studies: (delighted to discuss details upon request) Student loan product sprint stops project and saves 6-12 months and $1MM+. Employee referrals empathy sprint stops $1MM investment in software platform. Accelerator team reimagines recruiting strategy for company, reduces days-to-fill by 70%. Lead optimization team finds $3.4MM in lost top-line revenue while experimenting with lead distribution. Noise detection product road show exposes reality of rental property challenges, cancels expensive rollout. Boot Camps give employees tools to transform themselves, their work, and build new customer value. LaunchPad venue matches transformed employees with business units that want to learn about and solve problems. “We achieved 3 months of work in 3 days!”

Responsible for creating and driving consumer-facing promotions of AFI products.Introduced and executed the concept of cross-promotional consumer promotions at AFI. Earned CA-AM designation.Designed and implemented successful programs for customer weather alerts, AMEX card acceptance, as well as other sweepstakes promotions that have generated thousands of leads for agents.Identified a gap in Marketing's capabilities. Built and programmed a visual basic-based lead assignment program to automate agent lead assignment. Assigned over 42,000 agent leads in the first year of use.

Trained new and veteran B2B and B2C agents in the field and the classroom in product, selling, marketing, sec. 125 plan administration, field automation, major account service, running a business, and professional development.Established and maintained state sales force website. Established similar sites for two other states and successfully trained local team members in programming and maintenance.Revived and managed Aflac's national relationship with a national insurance broker. My role was to promote relationships and sales activity between local agents on both teams.Recruited and interviewed statewide for new sales associates. Had significant impact on sales by new associates. Personally recruited over 500 new agents in an 8-yr period through electronic and personal methods. Instructed sales managers and managers-in-training in recruiting skills as well marketing and sales skills in classroom and field settings.As one of the first people in this role company-wide, I helped define the role, responsibilities and impact that this role had for the entire company. Worked completely autonomously in tandem with state sales director. 100% commission position. New sales tripled during my tenure.

Drove sales in specialty life and senior insurance markets.Responsible for training and managing a team of five regular producers. 100% commission position.