"As an advisor, every singe client, at on point something is going to go south... You have to have the ability to have those difficult conversations. Resilience is key. There is always going to be a solution, no matter how hard the challenge is... True character shows when a problem comes up in a health plan," says Diana Miller, benefits advisor, Conner Insurance.

"Look at the way health care is experienced by your clients. It's not experienced nationally, it's not experienced on this big scale. It's experienced locally, with the local providers within your community. So, if you want to solve the problem, you can't just solve it in Congress, you can't just solve it on a national scale. You have to find a way to solve it in your market, within your community," expresses Luke Davis, benefits strategist at Novaura.

"I realized the best way to win a client was to solve their problem. It's to figure out what their problem was and solve it, instead of trying to convince them that the solution I have was the solution to the problem I thought they had," says Gabriel Aponte, advisor, Black Ink Benefits.

The biggest takeaways

"The first thing we all need understand is that we are not competitors. The reason we are attending these conferences is to cooperate and help each other and feed back into our communities," shares Miller.

"My biggest takeaway is how critical meaningful and accessible communication is. Accessible as in meeting people where they are, understanding what their knowledge background is," says Youngwerth.

"The field is ripe for harvest. There is so much opportunity for this business... I can assure you that if you're talking about the right stuff and you're getting after it, there is so much opportunity," Aponte states.

"We are so used to engaging employees and telling them about the benefit, but not about how it benefits them. That's a huge beast. There is so much good that we can do within our communities and that's who it really impacts," says Davis.