The first component of storytelling is believing the person sharing the story.

Rosaline was running Mercer & Marsh in 14 countries. They grew 800%, but during the last 5 years, she was trying to convince them to use technology to personalise to each person, and the higher-ups said no.

She left and did it on her own. She used her own money to buy her first broker and build her first platform. She used all her savings ($5 million) plus borrowed $5 million more to create her own company. She saw the need and couldn’t convince anyone to do it, so she did it herself.

Six years in, she wanted to work with the largest banks and insurance companies. She used to use telemarketers or people lurking in branches, which was not effective. They went digital.

Rosaline was in retirement services and built the 401k of healthcare. Every job she had was workplace related with benefits or payroll. Now she connects the dots.

The old way of selling insurance was cold calling, but people are more weary, and the internet helps people evaluate and make better decisions.

Rosaline uses her own personal stories, including childhood, to be personal and build trust. She was always an outsider looking in, being bullied, and fighting all the time.

You lose your fear growing up in that environment, including the fear of failure. However, she didn’t become confident until 40 and stopped caring at age 50.

It’s okay to share your vulnerabilities and failure. You’re trying to pay it forward by keeping others from making the same mistakes.

More women at age 60 start new companies than at age 50, because they’ve overcome insecurities. One of Rosaline’s first hires was a doctor, who said the unhealthiest person she’d met could not be the face of the company.

Rosaline had no time for sleeping, eating, drinking water, or exercising. She was so busy, she didn’t know she was unhealthy. She is focused on how to pay it forward and make a big impact.

All CXA’s investors ($25 million a few weeks ago) are clients. If their offer can help improve health and repurpose money from treatment to prevention, it gives those clients permission to bundle their own services.

Banks in Asia will offer mortgages, mortgage protection, and life insurance for your spouse in a bundle. If you can help someone with their health and their families, you have permission for other things.

It’s about building the trust trail. The more you build trust, the more you can ask for more things. Don’t ask for a $200k-$300k sale without building any layers of trust. You’ve lost me as a client forever. Banks are now more customer-centric.

Was it hard to get people to buy into prevention? It’s had to be brick-by-brick. People in Asia are fearful of startups. Her first ten employees left firms and were looking.

Some were interns and some were her children. Their first clients were Rosaline’s ex-clients. In the first year, they showed prototypes and helped solved issues.

One was a tech company, one was financial service, one was manufacturing. Many more employees joined after the company was valued at $100 million.

When you’re building something that’s never been built before, and you buy an old company (four brokers now), changing is hard. There are always protest when you change.

They also have to integrate with all the hospitals, insurers, gyms, health screeners, tele-docs. Not everyone can take an API, sometimes it’s SFTP and Microsoft Excel/Outlook. They survived the five-year mark.

People may have blood tests or screeners, but no one pulls it together. Physicians cannot see if diabetes and cancer is related to family history or lifestyle.

CXA covers insurance, wellness, disease management, and connects all the components. They build a quotation system so insurance companies can place bids simultaneously.

The brokers have not caught up. The proposition to companies: if you appoint us as the broker, you get our platform for free to get your employees healthy. If you can prevent claims, you can reduce costs.

Each person gets a health age versus body age. You can improve your health even after age 50. Many people in Asia are simply living fast-paced stressful lives and don’t know anything different.

Getting healthy is a matter of education. You don’t know until something happens.

The team runs trials on themselves. They split into 25 teams of 10 each, took blood tests, weighed themselves, and competed against each other with step challenges, Zumba, yoga, mindfulness, took pictures of food, learned about carbs/nutrition, recorded videos chanting against each other, etc.

After 8 weeks, they lost 65 kilograms, 360 inches off their waists, people felt better, and improved habits. HBA1C (blood sugar) improved.

There’s a solar panel manufacturer who, over the course of growing his company, began caring about the environment. Sometimes, by solving a problem, you begin championing that cause.

Beyond CXA, Rosaline is big on diversity. How do we have more role models for women to get them to maximize their potential?

Women need role models go outside their comfort zone and follow their passion. Women tend to rise to the occasion, and underestimate themselves.

You won’t stretch unless you do things you aren’t ready for. It’s like sports: do something beyond what you’re doing now to stretch and grow.

Take that extra step because it can only help you. Pursue the promotion, lateral job change, or entrepreneurship.

Start with the small first step. Even if you fail, get back up and take the next step. Setbacks don’t drag you down, they make you stronger.