Nicole Shaver, Founder & CEO - Nicole Shaver Coaching & Consulting

Background

Nicole: I spent the majority of my career at West Monroe Partners - I was there for 18 years, from when we were like 100 people all the way to 2000 people. My background is in finance, I was kind of number two in line behind the CFO. I am the primary earner of my family. My husband and I have been married for 14 years and we have nine year old twins, so my husband stayed home with them. Obviously all the insurance and all the benefits came through me.

I made the decision to leave and to make a career pivot - I became a leadership coach. I wanted to try this on my own, really wanted to kind of create my own path going forward. The part of my job I love the most was building and growing my team, working with people, so I was able to follow my passion.

The Health Insurance Challenge

Nicole: With the transition from leaving West Monroe, obviously, a big question was like, what's that going to look like for us as I made a bigger pivot and decided to start my own business? When it came time to figure out what was next insurance-wise, I knew that the best option was going to be not private insurance, but really the marketplace. And that just seemed super scary to me, because you just hear all of these horrible stories about people ending up in things they don't know what they're getting.

I'm in my 40s, I have small kids, and want to make sure that my family is covered and we can still be comfortable with people we see. As a female, you get really used to the doctors you have. So for me, finding the right path was really helpful and important.

The When Experience

Nicole: Working with When I had a wonderful woman that was really consistent in following up with me, got on the phone with me multiple times, helping me understand the logistics, all the details, help me go through the process of looking at what my options were, and getting me to the other side of being prepared to actually do that transition and for it to be as seamless as possible. I was really grateful for that, because I felt really nervous.

Yumi (When): Could you dig in a little bit further about the financial side?

Nicole: We were paying for COBRA for the family like $1800 a month for the four of us. And then now I'm paying like $2200 a month, all in, but it allowed us to stay - I was able to stay on Blue Cross Blue Shield during COBRA, and then decided to go with Aetna based on conversations about coverage of doctors. I wanted to be able to stay with my therapist and my kids' pediatrician, and I also have sinus issues and the possibility of surgery again. I didn't want to have to not have coverage with the doctor I work with at Northwestern.

I'm a finance person by background, so I'm conservative and want to make sure that I have coverage. You're paying for catastrophic situations. God forbid anything happened to anyone in my family, I would want to be able to make sure that we could have the best care and have the doctors we know.

What Made When Different

Nicole: I think the idea that you're partnering that people aspect with what you can bring on the technology side is such an important thing. For something like this, where it's your livelihood of taking care of your family and health, knowing that you also have a human to work with, and that it was the same person, and she was flexible, and she followed up - I think that was huge. We have great technology at our fingertips, but for comfort of something like this, that human support was so important.