Appreciation Financial - Entrepreneur of the Year

Company: Appreciation Financial, Henderson, NV
Company Description: Appreciation Financial is a full-service financial powerhouse that operates in more than 50 cities across the USA and has nearly 1,000 financial professionals. Founded in 2009, CEO Terry Kennedy started the company after seeing teachers fall victim to bad financial advice. Since then the company has grown to become the national leader in retirement and financial planning for public employees.
Nomination Category: Entrepreneur Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Entrepreneur of the Year - Financial Services

Nomination Title: Terry Kennedy, President & CEO of Appreciation Financial

Terry Kennedy is the founder, president and active CEO of Appreciation Financial, a full-service financial services company working in the 403b public employee niche. Kennedy is a visionary who has overcome odds, trusted his path, and has disrupted an entire industry. Kennedy has an internal drive for success through providing opportunity and helping others. Kennedy’s life is devoted to growing the Appreciation Financial opportunity so both the Appreciation Family and clients can make and save money for a better lifestyle and increased financial freedom.

Focused on providing solutions for all areas of your life, including insurance and retirement planning, the birth of Appreciation Financial happened in a classroom. Kennedy saw the 403 market as underserved and deserving of help. The volatility of public retirement systems, constant union v. school district battles that often impact teacher retirements, create a niche market in need of a professional salesforce to educate the educators and help them retire with dignity.

Kennedy’s “teams” do not look like the typical insurance and financial services industry. With a high percentage of female agents, agents of color, and a medium age of 32, the Appreciation salesforce is a young, diverse team excited about helping people and growing their business. This often takes insurance carriers who play in a mostly older, white male dominated space by surprise, however the numbers, good work the company does in their communities and Kennedy’s sheer passion wins them over every time.

Kennedy has a feverish goal to grow his company by 10,000 agents in the next five years. He is working toward this goal by implementing new and innovative programs company wide. He started the “What are you doing after school?” initiative that offers teachers a part-time position with the company where they don’t have to sell anything and can make money from simply providing referrals and warm introductions of the people that they know. He created a national “Fact Finder Folder” for agents to use when gathering client information. The folder resembles a house and has “four corners” (income, assets, debt, and insurance) to make sure that prospective clients have a “solid foundation” for their retirement and their financial future. He also started a program called “Operation Duplication” which allows agents to essentially duplicate themselves and have a representative call previous clients on their behalf to conduct annual reviews and follow up appointments. This frees up time for the agent, giving them the opportunity to help more clients and make more money. Kennedy also introduced a new service to his salesforce that helps people get out of debt through debt consolidation. Additionally, he invested in a brand new website specifically for recruits which can be found at www.appreciationfinancialcareers.com .

Kennedy is more hands on than ever and is in the office every day working on his goals for the company. Kennedy changed Appreciation Financial’s core values to “Drive, Fun, Love”. He also changed the company’s mantra to “We help a lot of people. We create life changing wealth. We get better every day.” He implemented the use of a new communications platform, Slack, and encourages his entire company to be active and post daily on it. He formed committees (recruiting, leadership, training, sales, technology, and marketing) and assigned company leaders as committee heads. He then, ensured all of his committees were on Asana, a project management platform, so that he could be up to speed on every vital task and the status of it. He also has his staff set goals, write them down, and keep him updated on the status of their goals. He has generously helped many employees achieve their goals by funding tuitions, offering legal expertise services, assisting with down payments towards the purchase of a car, offering to pay for piano lessons to support an employee’s dream of learning to play, and more.

-For the second year in a row, Appreciation Financial was named on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America
-Kennedy was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist for the highly-competitive Greater Los Angeles Region
-For the second year in a row, Kennedy received a Gold American Business"Stevie" award for “Entrepreneur of the Year-Financial Services”
-Appreciation Financial also received a Gold American Business "Stevie" award for "Company of the Year-Financial Services-Medium"
-Appreciation Financial was also named one of the most successful companies by Entrepreneur 360
-Appreciation Financial received the Gold award for “Company of the Year-West US” by the Best in Biz awards
-Kennedy was named one of the “Top 100 Men of Success” by MyVegas Magazine
-Kennedy wrotea best-selling book on Amazon, along with his President of Sales Don Spini, called “Thi$ Change$ Everything”.