Under Construction by Jennifer Packard
There is no normal and there is no perfect but we all have value.
Many of us go through life comparing ourselves with others rarely knowing more than what's on the surface. Join JP as she interviews folks in different parts of their professional journey for their candid experience. We have more in common than we think. We are all under construction.
Under Construction by Jennifer Packard
Anna Lissiman - Aspiring Author and Insurance Expert
Anna Lissaman shares her unique journey from being a commercial account manager in the insurance industry to pursuing her passion for writing. The conversation explores the challenges of both professions, the importance of relationships, and how vulnerability can fuel creativity and growth.
• Importance of relationships in the role of a commercial account manager
• Unique challenges faced in risk management and insurance
• Transitioning into writing after a sabbatical
• Structuring a book and the writing process
• Challenges of editing and marketing a manuscript
• Essential storytelling skills and the art of research
• Anna’s passion for language and its connection to storytelling
• Embracing vulnerability for personal transformation
We're all under construction. Thanks for listening.
greetings and welcome back to under construction with jennifer packard. The intended goal of under construction is to focus on reminding people the common ground we have in our daily experiences by educating through sharing the nuts and bolts involved in one's job like a small spotlight, and seeing where it takes us. Vulnerability, growth and change are often a part of our lives, but they are not signs of weakness. Rather, they are powerful strengths that foster personal transformation. We all have much in common, even in our differences. Today, my guest is Anna Lissaman.
Speaker 1:Anna is a commercial account manager working for a major national insurance brokerage.
Speaker 1:She graduated with degrees in political science and German. She stepped away from the corporate world for two years in order to care for an ailing family member and to focus on writing, and during the sabbatical period she penned three manuscripts and sent them out on submission for representation by agents and, ideally, publication. Navigating the world of literary workshops, pitching to the would-be agents and attending writing critiques was a major departure from the relatively straightforward world of insurance, but she developed a strategy for personal accountability to herself and for storytelling to a broader audience via the written medium. When not dreaming of new plot lines or contemplating character arcs, she enjoys international travel, surfing, foreign languages and anything that feeds a hungry imagination and keeps the creative engine humming. This year, her writing goal is to refine her manuscripts and partner with an agent. Her personal goal is to travel to Namibia and continue exploring landscapes and cultures that consistently inspire her with a deeper appreciation for the goodness of humanity and for the awesome beauty of our planet. Welcome to the show, Anna. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me, Jennifer.
Speaker 2:thank you so much for the opportunity to visit with you and with all your listeners.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Let's jump right in. According to interviewguycom, a commercial account manager is a person who is responsible for maintaining and developing relationships with business clients. They oversee these relationships to drive sales growth, achieve sales quotas and improve customer satisfaction. How would you define it?
Speaker 2:Well, I would agree with this definition and I've heard the word relationship many times in the definition and I think it's really a key word Because, on reflection, I thought not only do I maintain a relationship with the policy holder who's buying the insurance and act as a point of contact for their questions whether it's needing to endorse a policy, provide evidence of insurance, turn in a claim but I also am a key relationship manager with the agency itself and with the individual in most agencies who is in the sales department, like a producer who's going out and bringing in new business. And once they bring that new business in, then it's my job to deliver what's been promised in terms of service. Not only that, but I'm also a relationship manager in a lot of cases with an underwriter who represents the company. So it'll be my job to present the insured in the best possible light, to go to bat for them when a claim happens and also to explain insurance questions that will come up. So relationship really is key across all of these different scenarios.
Speaker 1:What kind or how much training is required for your job.
Speaker 2:I think most people who sit in my desk have probably got a high school degree and done more education after that, in terms of maybe a Bachelor of Arts or science. They probably majored in finance, although my entry into the insurance world was a little unusual. I'm a German major, but I was hired by a German insurance company who figured it was easier to teach me insurance than to teach an insurance person German, and that's probably accurate.
Speaker 2:Other than that, a person should have a real strong comfort with algebra and with calculating percentages and as much as this sounds like a job similar to an actuary or to an accountant, it really really relies heavily on a strong appreciation for and comfort with language and with contracts, because an insurance policy in so many ways really is a risk transfer mechanism, and so you have to know that what the policy wording is is a promise to pay in consideration for adherence to policy terms, and so I guess it's getting a little into the weeds, but there has to be a lot of appreciation for language and a lot of strength in math.
Speaker 1:Okay, one of my first three interviews was with somebody who was an insurance agent, so it's similar to what you do, but also yet different. And then I had to ask him to explain the difference between what he did and a broker. So you might have to go back to the audience to listen to that episode. Are there any further details you would like to add about this specific job?
Speaker 2:Well, this specific job. If I really have to boil it down, what I think I do on a daily basis is protect the bottom line for the insured, and I protect their physical assets. So it's risk management. I'm essentially an employee of any company I represent and I'm acting as their risk management department, because maybe they don't have one in-house and so in my role I may see that they need to have an inspection or upgrade to their electrical system. I might have a risk manager who send out and do a report. Maybe they need help with valuations on their buildings.
Speaker 2:Or it could be the worst day of their life and they just had a major security breach and now we have to help them restore their reputation. Or maybe they're a volunteer group that's doing something in South America and they've had a fatality, and now we have to deal with repatriation of remains, and so there's all kinds of things that a person could be called upon to do. We don't necessarily plan what the day looks like, but we respond when disaster strikes or when there's something as mundane as just adding a car onto a policy. So any day could really be an earthquake someplace. You never know, and that's part of what keeps it exciting on the one hand, but it also can be very stressful.
Speaker 1:Wow, it sounds like anything can happen.
Speaker 2:Depending on the agency you work for, it can kind of feel like it's sort of like that show how does it get made where they go to factories and they show the process, and on the one hand, you might get to put on your hard hat and go on site and learn about your business that you're representing that way or not. So it continues to be an evolving and engaging job.
Speaker 1:What is the most challenging aspect of pursuing this field of work?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say that the most challenging aspect is probably understanding a broad variety of industries. So in one of my roles in New Zealand working in an agency, the biggest account was a mine, so it was an underground mine and you really do get to put on the hard hat and go down and try to understand how these businesses work and where their risk is and what their exposure is. And when you get into those situations where you have a claim, where there has been a fatality or there's been a recall of a product or some type of an issue, that, let's admit, you're kind of learning, as the client is experiencing this too, because it might be new for you.
Speaker 2:I think that's that real challenge is to Really hear them and really understand what their business is and what their exposure is, and when we say exposure we mean Potential vulnerabilities before risk. So I think that's the biggest challenge.
Speaker 1:Now, I personally may have missed it. Your primary client is somebody who works in a particular company. You're not dealing with the public per se.
Speaker 2:You're dealing with personnel in a company, or both you can be in a commercial department, so you're dealing with companies and you're the insurance agent for the company and then in certain agencies there'll be personal lines. So, if I understand the question, I don't do anything for individuals, like I wouldn't write homeowner's insurance or a personal auto policy. I'm really only working with companies. Okay, so primary contact is probably going to be their CFO or their finance team.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Or an office manager.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you Just in case. Yeah, all right, thank you Just in case. We mentioned a little bit in your intro that you had a little bit of a sabbatical. What did you transition into? Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Well, I took a break from insurance. I just felt like I wanted to write. But in order to do it, I felt like I needed to do it 100% and I didn't think it was something I was going to be able to do in my evenings casually. So I had no idea what writing a book would entail. And yet I thought probably the easiest way to do it is to break it into pieces, because that's how you handle anything. That seems monumental. So in research it looked to me like the average book was somewhere between 75 and 90,000 words. So I thought well, if I write 1,000 words a day and it gives me three months, I've got 90,000 words I've written in the book. So what's it take to write 1,000 words and what should I write about?
Speaker 2:So my initial phase of writing the first book was you're gonna spend a lot of time telling this story, so what do you want to be comfortable living in for the next 90 days? So you pick your genre and then you start thinking who do you want to tell the story? Is it gonna be I, me or voice, or is it going to be a she, they, he, voice? And then what should it be about? Should it be a gothic? Should it be historical fiction? Should it be? And you just start thinking about stories that you enjoy, kind of like when you go through Netflix, you know you're going to spend 90 minutes with a story. What's really up your alley. So I picked the genre and then I thought your alley. So I picked the genre and then I thought I need to write with a true voice and so I have to be that character. I have to know that character inside and out, because if you have your, if you have respect for your reader, authenticity matters and your audience deserves nothing less than authenticity. So pick an era character that you know more or less and then put together the plot. So that's kind of how my structure started.
Speaker 2:I built a real general outline how many words did I think it was going to take for me to get this story told?
Speaker 2:And then broke it up A thousand words is going to be about this, a thousand words is going to be about this, a thousand words is going to be about that. And then every day I'm going to write to get to that next thousand word block. And even though it kind of sounds like a mathematical way to break it down, since I'm an insurance person, I kind of would expect nothing less than to take a real strategic approach to this. So there's the writing of a book and that's one part of it, and you'd be surprised sitting down and making time in your day for a thousand words. I could pretty much get that done If I started writing at 8.30, I'd probably be done at like two o'clock with a thousand words and that's kind of how the nuts and bolts of it get put together. But again, you really have to be comfortable with that story that you're going to tell because you're going to spend a lot of time with it.
Speaker 1:When people ask you what you do and maybe you identify as a writer, do you find that some people think that that's an easy job?
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people are their worst enemy and they say no to themselves before they say yes. I think a lot of people believe that writing a book is something they want to do, but they say someday big capital letter S, someday I'll write a book. I think that they look at the white space on the computer or the page as being enemy territory. But you know, you don't feel that way. When you build a soup from scratch, you don't get palpable anxiety when you add the carrots, you know you can always edit.
Speaker 2:The best thing to do is just get started. And if you're holding a paintbrush you don't just sit and wait. You kind of have an idea what you're going to paint before you just stand in front of it. So again the planning and maybe doing an outline, maybe saying to your friend hey, I'm thinking about writing a book about a professional wrestler, and they go. Well, you don't know anything about wrestling. Well, you're right. So at least for the first book, write something that you can authentically occupy in terms of the space and the story, so that you're confident, because the next book's going can be a lot easier. Maybe you'll take more of a risk. Not number two.
Speaker 1:I have talked to a couple other writers and been in a couple writing groups myself, and writing is a challenge. It can take immense amounts of time and thought, so I never see it as an easy thing to do, but that's my take. What is your biggest challenge right now as a writer?
Speaker 2:I think my biggest challenge in writing is probably the change that I did not expect I would have to undergo once the book was completed. Undergo once the book was completed Because, unlike so many other jobs, after you've gotten done being a one-woman creative powerhouse who just cranks out words, then you're done and all of a sudden you have to be an editor and maybe you don't know the first thing about editing and maybe you feel precious about what you've just created. So it's hard to go back and start tearing things out. And someone intelligently enough told me your first book is probably not going to be very good. And I think that they're right, and I think it's also a really good idea to shelve that manuscript for six months and then go back and look at it with fresh eyes.
Speaker 2:I went right away to writing workshops and pitched to agents and went on submission and then I started my second book.
Speaker 2:And what no one tells you is that after you've gotten done or you think you've gotten done being an editor, then you have to turn into a marketer who learns how to give an elevator pitch to an agent or receives rejection letters in email form and has to just say okay, cross that one off the list, but this is not personal.
Speaker 2:What starts out as being kind of a pet project and you feel very precious about it in the writing stage and then you feel critical and overly analytical in the editing stage and then you feel like you're selling something and you become a salesperson in the marketing stage. There is a lot of change that you go through at different phases in this book, and so I never expected that to happen, and I think that's the biggest challenge is where do you go from there if you feel like you've done this marketing? Is that the point in time when you hire a professional editor? Or how do you get an agent to be your representative? Because I think everybody wants to see their book in Barnes Noble and it can be frustrating when it takes longer than you think it should.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good point. What are three things you would like others to know about your job as a writer?
Speaker 2:Three things I wish that people knew is that this process just takes so much time, saying that you were successful and you got a book written in three months. You know, after that there are certain agents who you'll send off your submission to and there'll be a cover letter and maybe they're requesting the first five pages and a synopsis or something like this. They might not even take nine months to get back to you. Um, and it's just sitting out there on submission and you kind of wonder when am I going to hear back from this agent who I'm just dying to work with? So it takes a long time. Um, the other thing I really, really wish that people understood is the art of storytelling and how much research and contemplation that takes.
Speaker 2:Someone once told me that a good story is like a three-legged stool. It's comprised of a strong plot, really good characters and excellent world building, and if you're missing one of those legs on the stool, you're going to fall over. So you've got to really spend a lot of time being able to do that in order to have a great story and maybe read up on the hero's quest. You know and understand the way a story is writ. I also wish people understood how much time it takes researching what agents and publishing houses want on their manuscript wish list. If you're going to send off your romance novel submission to someone who really gets into horror, you're wasting your time. So you have to put in a lot of time understanding and that's the marketing aspect of the job really who your customer is and how best to get your product into their hands, because at the end of the day, that's what a book really is is a product. So those are the three things I wish people knew about writing.
Speaker 2:It isn't just sitting with a plume in your hand and scribbling down a poetic verse.
Speaker 1:No, I think that's good, solid advice, thought, you know, food for thought, because I think there are so many people out there now trying to get their books published, and there there's a glut of them on Amazon and digital publishers, and so what does an average day at work look like for you?
Speaker 2:in the writing world it was a lot of planning and plotting and a lot of typing. I have a keyboard. You can't even see any of the letters anymore because they've just been worn right off. But in the insurance world it really is responding to client needs, whether it's a claim or whether it's an acquisition of another company, whether it's reading a contract, planning emergencies prioritizing, whether it's reading a contract planning emergencies prioritizing. And it also is getting out in front of a renewal date and preparing your submission for the companies and to position that client in the best light. It's a little bit more interesting, I think, to listen to the writing world because I think we can relate a little more to that, broadly speaking, than insurance, which can sometimes be a bit of a dark art.
Speaker 1:So you've touched a little bit on it. What's the most difficult part of your work?
Speaker 2:Is it self, people, communication, circumstances, all of the above I think the most difficult part certainly is producing, and I really really struggle with this. I might be a bit of a perfectionist and I think that a lot of writers are. You really really want to create a story that everybody loves, a character, an ending. You know that everyone thinks, oh, it was perfect, which goes on to become a classic.
Speaker 2:One of the most terrifying things that happened to me in writing was I went to a writing workshop and one of the things they did was solicit from everybody the first page of your book. And then the whole audience is sitting there and they're going to read it, and then this panel of agents are going to critique and the minute they get tired of it one, they're going to raise their hand. So you're sitting there and you're thinking, boy, I just hope they pick mine, I hope they pick mine. But I turned mine in and then I realized I did not want them to pick mine because I I wanted to create something that everybody would love.
Speaker 2:And on this particular book there was a bad word on the first page and I thought you know, I just don't want to be the girl who wrote a cuss word and made these professional agents read something out loud. That would have made them mad. So there's tons of books out there, and my challenge is I really want to create something that is the best I can do, and so I don't want to write anything that's vulgar. I don't want to write anything that ultimately disrespects the reader, and so I think that's my biggest challenge is wanting to produce something that everybody can relate to and that everyone will like. Pretty impossible.
Speaker 1:It's a tall order, I mean it's you know you can't please everybody all the time kind of thing, but we want to try. What is the biggest lesson you have learned as a writer so far?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest lesson is that you must be diligent, and even if writing is a written process, there's also storytelling, and so, even if you have an hour and a half empty in your day instead of watching the news or instead of, you know, doing any of a variety of things, I would honestly just consume as much story as possible, whether it's via Netflix or going to the movie. Then read all of the reviews of that story and try to understand why somebody liked it or hated it. Constantly pick apart a story after you've read it or watched it, to try to identify when a character changed its opinion or how a plot became less interesting or more interesting to you, so that you can take away lessons from the way a story was successful or not for you. And I think you know how does an author build tension? Where is the hook, the cook and the sizzle in your plot? Those are the kinds of things that I really want to study when I'm watching a movie or I'm reading a book, and what does the?
Speaker 2:language even taste like you know if you read it in your head. What flowery language or poetic comparisons or anything like this what appeals? Not that you're going to copy it, but that you can just be inspired by how someone did it and make a study of that and see if you can recognize it in other works. That's something I spend a lot of time doing.
Speaker 1:That's the research part of being a writer. Yeah, I think so. What are a few things you would like others to know about you, and this can include your hobbies or interests that we haven't covered already.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I love and that occupies a big part of my time is language the study of language, how words evolve, etymology, foreign languages. I just went to Africa for the first time this year well, I guess it was last year now and when I was on the safari in South Africa, I just wanted these people to teach me how to speak Tongan so bad. So I was just asking them every morning okay, if you teach me four new words, then by the end of this trip I'm going to be able to have a short sentence or two. So I love languages, I love surfing, I love traveling and I love cooking. So I think, like most people, I'm just curious about everything, and I think the world is big enough and amazing enough that you just got to keep on living and learning in order to get the most out of it and to give the most to it. So I'm very, very motivated by travel and by language.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have studied a lot of languages myself, but I'm only fluent in one. But I do enjoy that. But I'm only fluent in one, but I do enjoy that. And the history of words and the origins and where they came from, it's fascinating to me.
Speaker 2:Well, it is the building blocks of how we communicate with each other. So kind of important.
Speaker 1:Anna, do you have a website?
Speaker 2:I promise you that I will have a website, but that's one thing I just haven't gotten around to, and I suppose once I finish the editing and get my agent on board, then I will have a website that I can put out there.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Fingers crossed.
Speaker 1:Well when it's ready send it to me and I'll upload it for the episode and on my website. But even the website itself is a work in progress. I'm still working on mine for the podcast. I'm gonna start a new podcast soon, wonderful, um. Any last comments that you want to share with the listeners?
Speaker 2:well listeners. Just thank you for spending some time here listening to us talk about writing and about insurance and go out and make the world the most excellent world it can possibly be.
Speaker 1:Well, anna. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me. Thank you Afterthoughts. Thank you, anna, for sharing your experiences with us. Trying new things and sticking with them, while learning about the process and ourselves, is always a challenge, but it's also an opportunity for personal growth. We all come from different backgrounds and the way we respond to circumstances shapes our unique experiences. It's amazing how much diversity exists in our lives, yet how much we can have in common with others. The real challenge arises when we encounter someone who's very different from ourselves. Do we shut them out and, in so doing, shut ourselves off from growth, or do we choose to listen, learn and perhaps be inspired to try something new, all the while looking for common ground? In the end, it's about understanding what we like and what we don't like, and finding ways to grow from those realizations. If you enjoyed this episode, text a friend right now and tell them how much you enjoyed this episode, and a friend right now and tell them how much you enjoyed this episode, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. And if you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to reach out to me on my Facebook podcast page of the same name or the following platforms my podcast is available on Spotify, buzzsprout, podcast Index, podcast Addict, podchaser, pocket Casts and Listen Notes.
Speaker 1:Please check out mindwavemediadesign, even as it is a work in progress, and leave me a message. I also have a blog, but with my Wix site, no one can read it without subscribing. I know that's a big ask, but if you can subscribe to the podcast and the blog, that would be marvelous. Part of the website is going to change pretty soon. In fact, I have started updating it for the new podcast that I'm going to embark on in March and April. Until next time, thanks for listening and I can't wait to bring you more conversations like this in the future, and if you want to chat with me, please reach out. Remember we're all under construction. Music by Alexander Nakarada and Rafael Crux.