Focus on Talents: The Story Behind Scott Archer’s Personal Disability and His Success in Business

Amber Stitt 0:00
Hello, and welcome to The Amber Stitt Show. I'm your host, Amber Stitt. And today we're going to speak a little bit about focusing on talents. And we have Scott with us. And we're gonna dive deep into the Focus on Talents category. And, Scott, this is so important because you've taught me a lot in the business. And I actually just reached a one year anniversary of the podcast. And so I thought having you here almost at the 100th episode, will be a great way to kind of take that moment to celebrate the success of the show, but also to celebrate your success in business too. And that a lot of people know that your story. And so we go back in time, I know a little bit about it. But not all the details, I think it'd be fun for people to know how you got into the business and why you picked disability insurance too, because that always confuses people a little bit. It's not the most sexy conversation or product out there. So. So I think having you here in Arizona, and the Arizona office, let's share a little bit about your background, because I think you've really embodied this pathway of success. But it's hard work. And it's a journey, but you've put over 30 years into it. So can you take us back into How did this even become a thing for you,

Scott Nelson-Archer 1:06
I guess my history, if you will started way back in 1990, I was working at a hospital while I was in college. And it was neurobehavioral hospital. And so some of our patients had some, let's just say issues controlling their behaviors. And one of the things that happened is once a patient escaped right out the front door, and it was on the facilities located on the edge of a highway. And so you know, everybody runs as fast as they can to try to oh my god get up to him so that he doesn't run out and trafficking, killed. Well, as I'm running in hot pursuit, as one might say, there was a water meter box and you know, that literally went to my head, I can't step on that thing, I better step in front of that thing. Because I don't want to slide you know, I'm wearing dress shoes, stepped in front of it. And there happened to be a hole because there was a leak in the water meter and eroded away and full speed, you know, my body kept going on, my legs stopped. And so you know, oh my goodness, those ligaments in my left knee and three ruptured discs and three bulging discs happen. And so that put me through a few surgeries and 29 months of therapy, you know, going to PT Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday from 830 to about 1130 or 29 months,

Amber Stitt 2:15
back in 1990. I don't know that I want to ask how old you are then. But okay, so you're telling the story about this person escaping? And then we stop on this awful, crazy story about your disability trying to save somebody? Can we talk about that person? Were they okay?

Scott Nelson-Archer 2:29
Oh, yeah, he was one of might say apprehended. So he did not get into the lanes of traffic

Amber Stitt 2:35
during that. So you're hobbling over and this person's being rescued by others. But now you need to be rescued as well. Yeah, pretty

Scott Nelson-Archer 2:41
much just need to go to the emergency room started a pretty long pathway of orthopedic adventures, if you will, you know, a number of surgeries and a lot of therapy, for sure.

Amber Stitt 2:52
I'm sorry, you had to go through that I knew that there was a story, but you never told me the full details. But this was before being in the business within your current business, this was a different job

Scott Nelson-Archer 3:02
Correct, I was in college. And so, you know, with that, I got to experience how group disability fails. Number one, it hadn't been presented to me as an employee benefit. And so I didn't have it. And number two, how poor the workman's comp system functions. I remember my weekly check being $163 a week to live on. That was it. So you know, I had a lot of beans and rice and on a really fancy they might have rice and then beans, you know, switch it up a little bit. That was a long time. It was a long time. It was tough to get back, you know, and are now to kind of redo everything. You know,

Amber Stitt 3:38
I guess that tells the story that we know that there are statistics and there are genetics, and there are things we face, but then there are these weird moments that happen in life where you just you can't predict that. And so even though you're young, I think you still have some residual effects that flare up here and there too, right?

Scott Nelson-Archer 3:54
Absolutely. It's, yeah, it's kind of a little bit of a constant, you know, dealing with it from time to time, but that's okay. It gave me an appreciation for kind of what I had gone through and what others would go through and gives me gave me a perspective on what's important and how you do things.

Amber Stitt 5:29
Well, you did graduate without we're not in finance, per se, when you finished college? Correct. So how did you end up in the insurance business,

Scott Nelson-Archer 5:38
I'd finished up my bachelor's and just starting on my master's, and my then-current insurance agent, you know, asked me if I'd be interested in looking at his business, he needed some help is doing a lot of things with the Chamber of Commerce folks, and, you know, McDonald's franchise holders, and just said, Would you mind, you know, getting involved? You know, I'm saying, well, seem to have just a little bit of Taiwan. And so why don't I come over, and, you know, started spending, you know, a couple of days a week, you know, just an afternoon, or maybe in the morning, and it just seemed to be kind of a really good fit for me.

Amber Stitt 6:08
I think it was life insurance to begin with,

Scott Nelson-Archer 6:10
It was mainly life insurance, and, you know, executive benefits for those McDonald's franchise holders. And then some of the group health insurance, quite frankly,

Amber Stitt 6:18
that's right. So the health insurance component too. So I think you do share your story a little bit with your clients. But, you know, you go back then use you started out as somebody kind of takes you under their wing, then was this person, somebody that helped to mentor you? Or did that come a little bit later,

Scott Nelson-Archer 6:32
what happened was, he was a person that knew how to market and how to engage businesses in a market advertising-driven role. And so he was able to come in and explain to me some of the things that of how do you find a product that you like? How do you find a type of person you like, and how do you advertise or attract that business? And so, you know, there are certainly people in our business that are really good socialization, they could find people just, you know, shaking hands, you know, being at the country club, get friends, or it just, it just happens, anywhere they go,

Drop them off, you know, anywhere and all sudden, you know, two hours later, they know everybody's name, and you know, pat them on the back, and that wasn't necessarily was my personality, my type is more, you know, I want to run a very organized business, very structured, and part of that came from working with small as McDonald's franchise owners. Okay, you know, you go to McDonald's, no matter if it's here in Arizona, you know, back in Colorado, in Europe doesn't matter. It's exactly the same as the same process, the same product. The objective then is to, you know, how do you solve this one problem, or as many people as you can? And that's what they do, right?

Amber Stitt 7:40
Yeah. And I feel that a lot of the leaders that I'll follow will say, it's really about the process. And being consistent, you can be smart, but it's a little bit about awareness, but a lot about consistency, and process. 100%. So you would say that's one of the things that people want to take away something from this episode meeting you and getting to know you, we haven't completely dove into your background. And we'll get to that throughout some series of episodes, you can say that's part of the foundation of why you're successful today. And why you're able to continue on and be excited about your business and work all over the nation is having that process. So no matter where you go, you're able to do that. So you have some freedom there, once the processes are set up.

Scott Nelson-Archer 8:18
That's correct. I mean, the reality is, you know, you can know a little bit about everything, or a whole lot about one thing. And so I chose to do one vertical, you know, understand every single thing I can about disability insurance and why it works and what works best for and how to apply it and how to build it correctly, and how to get the maximum discounts and how to create the most efficient vehicle or acquisition for a client. And that's what we wanted to do

Amber Stitt 8:41
over a decade of being in this business. I mean, over 20 in total a paralegal before... focusing on where you're talented. We've done a lot of we'll say, team engagement over the last couple of years, you and I and some strategic partners really diving in, it could be any assessment, but really diving into how you tick, you knew at a young age that not that you're not out, shaking hands and meeting people that way boots on the ground. But there's a process and a way that you would prefer to run your business. And we'll get to that and some other segments here. But for the pathways audience, I want people to know that there is a way to align your talents and not really change who you are, but find what works for you. Because if you can provide a solution to people in your way that's more genuine, but it's also a lot of fun when you're doing things the way that fit your personality. So you found that younger sounds like but you ran with that, sure.

Scott Nelson-Archer 9:28
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy being social as much as anybody else. So what I always wanted to do from a business standpoint is understand how to make something rentable and repeatable, right? Just do it over and over and over again. And because of that, then you end up with volume. When you do that you end up with better deals. And when you end up with better deals, your clients are more well taken care of. And so that was what my goal was how do I drive down costs so that I could pass all that cost savings on using that process is just it made sense to me because I would read Spend the time that I might need to be socializing to engage new clientele, you know, doing something else. So I'd rather spend it on marketing dollars or advertising dollars. Yeah,

Amber Stitt 10:10
I mean, a lot of our work that is out of the office is working with different organizations leadership, speaking, teaching, and so on. So I certainly don't want to make it seem like you don't want to be out and about, but I know that for you and I, we have to be really dialed in and have efficient meetings, we'll talk about that more in the marketing segment. But that allows for us to be good at what we do, and then be able to prioritize how we can help and when and how do we then keep the cost down overhead low, but also help bring that value price point to the client to our clients? So that's helpful. Do you have any war stories, you want to share? Anything fun, interesting that you go, gosh, if I would have talked to myself, 20 years ago, I would have done XYZ instead,

Scott Nelson-Archer 10:50
the idea of fun or interesting is not really correlated with what I think about that, obviously, just the reality is most people don't take time to get focused on what they want, they have to discover kind of what they want first, and then once they do, are they willing to pour everything into it, you know, there's a whole lot of people that, you know, what, what the top of the hill, you know, has, but they're unwilling to climb, it's always surprising to me, you know, I have this conversation often with folks in the office, but, you know, I get to comment, you know, I want work-life balance, well, you know, that's great. You can have a life, but if you don't work hard, and work really hard and work a lot, then you may not have as much life as you wanted. In other words, you gotta go out and kind of bust your hump, work really hard and do things that your colleagues and your friends won't do. If they're saying, Gosh, I'm working my tail off at 40 hours a week, probably not going to get you to where you want to figure out how to go work 6070 hours a week, you know, every one of my clients, you know, right now, they're all finishing up, you know, residence, right, that's what's going on. They're working 78 hours a week. And that's the deal. Yeah, they know what it takes.

Amber Stitt
Do you think that that mindset has changed for the worse, as we have gone on,

Scott Nelson-Archer
I think people were wanting to work a little bit less, but I don't think necessarily they want their needs or wants to go down, you know, so you kind of get what you do. And you know, if you work hard, anybody else, you're probably gonna get more things than other people do. And sometimes they don't realize the balance their life stuff, you know, there's a lot of obstacles in front of you. And, you know, you sit back and let those things happen to you, you know, life's gonna happen to you versus for you,

Amber Stitt 12:41
I appreciate you saying that, I feel that sometimes in business ownership, or if you have some of these ideas, maybe you are working for somebody and you have these extra hours, you're going to start something else or invest your time can feel a little lonely sometimes, because your ideas might not resonate yet with where you can see this strategic plan unfolding in front of yourself. So sometimes you just gotta give it some time and try different things to know that we have

Scott Nelson-Archer 13:04
you do, one of the things I think it's very important is that you always advocate when you're just two components into business, right? There's working in the business, and there's working on the business. And during that time that you're working on the business, what you're trying to figure out is, how do you open up the next new market? How do you bring a better solution to your client? How do you work more efficiently? How do you interact better with your team, all that stuff's really, really important. And you've got to allocate not only time, but you probably allocate resources to, to trying something new, because if you never try anything new, and you never interact any differently, you're gonna get the same result. And so keep trying to keep him swinging the bat, eventually gonna hit another ball. And that's what really matters just keep working at it,

Amber Stitt 13:45
it was important for me to have you on this show, eventually, to dedicate something outside of insurance because I felt that there was an alignment with our partnership and some of those core values there. And you just got to really work hard and we take turns kind of one will be out doing something, we cover each other's back. So really finding a good team to then help I guess the alignment is not having somebody that's exactly like you, but to similar core values can be really helpful. In closing with focusing on talents, I feel that the work ethic speaks for itself when it comes to how you've built your business. And I'm happy to be able to do more with you on that. So I'm really grateful there is anything else that you'd like to share as a takeaway, I always like to give people the conversation, something to think about from the intellectual perspective, but I think we've kind of covered it already. But really just you got to show up and keep doing a little bit more than the next person. I mean, that's really there's no excuse, right?

Scott Nelson-Archer 14:35
Well, there aren't you do, you just have to continue to work as hard as you can, and put in every effort can know who your audience is working with whenever they're available. If you only want to work when you want to work, and that doesn't align with your client. Probably not gonna be very successful. And, you know, like he's mentioned, you know, having the right team that fits together. You know, one of my silly analogies is if you have a puzzle and all the pieces are exactly the same, they don't fit together very well. They all need to be a little bit different. so they can fit together and really be a nice snug fit. And if you got people with different skills, and different characteristics, lean on them for the things that they bring to the table, and hopefully, they lean on you for the things you bring to the table. And together, you should be able to be quite successful.

Amber Stitt 15:15
We work with families too. And just to kind of wrap this up, that's business advice. But that goes into the house too. And so when someone's opposite of you, which often partners can be can be frustrating at times, but just understand that we wouldn't want everything to be the same all the time, it might feel good for a little bit, but we need that balance. That's the balance you're probably talking about. And as you're looking at teams, we deal with boards, and other organizations that are important to us, we don't want everyone to be the same, we have to have that collective

Scott Nelson-Archer 15:41
You mean you need pieces and people from all different walks of life viewpoints because if all you have is the same thing, you're going to be pretty vanilla, and whatever that means to one, there's gonna be the same all the way through. And that didn't make for a very balanced or round organization, or family life truthfully.

Amber Stitt 16:00
So I think that's a great way to land this, where if you don't feel that you've really invested the time to develop yourself first, you're not going to know what kind of team you might need. So I would start there, because once you get that synched up, you might not have the perfect people always right away. But as long as you know who you are, and working within your talents and love what you do, or trying to get and get to that job that you love. It really doesn't feel like work, especially with all those hours you're talking about, build it out doing something you like then this doesn't feel there are hard days. It's not always gravy, but so appreciate you being here. And we'll keep talking about some other aspects of the pathways. But thanks so much for having the conversation.

Scott Nelson-Archer 16:37
Sounds good. Thank you.

Amber Stitt 16:41
Thank you for joining us on today's episode of The Amber Stitt show. For more information about the podcast books, articles, and more, please visit me at Amber stitt.com. 

Until next week, enjoy your journey at home and at work. Thank you for listening!