Accelerent Breakfast: Turning hardships into victories – Noelle Pikus Pace

Following the amazing Summer Olympics just a couple of months ago, it was excellent timing to have an Olympian speaker at this morning’s Accelerent/BCG Breakfast Event, held at Warehouse215.

Noelle Pikus Pace is a 2X Olympian, World Champion, Olympic Silver Medalist, and Moment of the Games Winner. She battled injuries and other challenges and still was victorious. She shared how her determination and strength propelled her to reach her greatest success by turning hardships into victories.

In 2005, Noelle Pikus Pace was the #1 skeleton racer in the world, expected to not only compete in the 2006 Olympics – but bring home the gold. Just three months before the Olympic Games, Noelle suffered a tragic accident when a bobsled spun out of control on the icy track and shattered her leg, leaving her unable to compete. She came back from that injury and won the silver medal in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Accelerent—Phoenix

The Phoenix division of Accelerent is the area’s leading business development organization, and Benefit Commerce Group is proud to be the Title Sponsor of this division. At breakfast events throughout the year, guests invited by members of Accelerent hear from nationally-recognized speakers and experts like Noelle Pikus Pace.

Lessons Learned from Noelle

Noelle described in detail the harrowing sport of skeleton, where participants reach speeds of 90 miles per hour on a mile-long track. Every movement matters. Even if you breathe at the wrong time, you can lose a race. Shoelaces dragging on the ice cost her a fraction of a second in one race putting her in 4th place instead of the medal that she could have won.

In 2005, when a bobsled behind her at a competition flew off the track, it hit her and broke her leg very severely. Many athletes would have just stopped competing then, but Noelle—with the help, drive, and support of her family—kept going and actually improved her game. She won the silver in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Her lessons for all of us:

• Choose to be 1% better today. It’s not about 100% different. Tiny changes will get you to where you want to be.
• Where you look is where you will go.
• Watch people who do it right.
• Ask yourself 3 questions each night before you go to bed:

1. What went well today? Give yourself some credit.
2. What didn’t go so well today? What’s something you can improve?
3. How will I be better tomorrow? Be intentionally improving every day.

And, to take Noelle’s experience and make it personal to you, she asked: “What are your bobsleds? What did you learn?  What can you do to help others? You have a choice how you view the experience and what you do with it. Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make is what makes you, you.”

For more information about Noelle, you can go to her website: https://noellepikuspace.com/.

Scott Wood Explained BCG’s Approach to Employer Medical Plan Renewals

In line with the keynote speaker’s theme, Scott Wood, BCG’s Managing Partner and Principal, took a few minutes at the Accelerent meeting to explain this year’s significant hardship for many employers who are seeing higher than usual renewal rates on their employee medical plans for 2025.

He discussed the contributing factors of these high increases, and outlined BCG’s approach to help our clients turn this hardship into a victory so they remain an “employer of choice”:

• Analyzing
• Negotiating with insurance companies
• Offering exclusive solutions to reduce rates without reducing benefits

Watch for Our Next Accelerent Phoenix/BCG Breakfast Event—Nov. 22nd  

We have had an amazing year of quality speakers and motivating topics at the Accelerent/BCG Breakfast Events in 2024!! Our last Breakfast Event for the year is scheduled for Friday, November 22, with our speaker, Commander Kirk Lippold. He was Commander of the USS Cole when it came under a suicide terrorist attack by al Qaeda in the port of Aden, Yemen.