Legacy Lines: Women, Work, and What Really Matters

Five powerhouse women in insurance share their journeys and perspectives on how the industry has evolved over their combined 150+ years of experience. Rachel Crump, Susan Clift Gislason, Sharon Clift Drbul, Jenny Kopun, and Amy Hruska discuss the family connections that brought them into insurance and how they've witnessed dramatic shifts in technology, client relationships, and opportunities for women.

Highlights:

• Family legacy plays a significant role in bringing new generations into insurance
• Technology has transformed the industry from manual ratings and in-person visits to digital interactions
• Despite technological advances, relationships remain central to insurance success
• Women have gained significant ground in leadership positions, though recruitment challenges remain
• Insurance offers remarkable career stability and work-life balance
• Understanding coverage fundamentals is essential for career success
• The industry provides diverse opportunities beyond sales
• Educating clients about catastrophic protection versus maintenance is crucial
• College recruitment and mentorship are vital for bringing women into the industry
• Insurance careers allow professionals to build meaningful legacies

Remember that insurance isn't just a maintenance policy, it's protection against catastrophic losses. Make sure you have adequate liability coverage, especially umbrella insurance, in today's increasingly litigious environment.

Learn more about:

• Rachel Crump
• Susan Clift Gislason
• Sharon Clift Drbul
• Jenny Kopun
• Amy Hruska
• Diane Delaney
• PRMA
• "Big I" Association for Independent Agents

Visit monoline.com to experience our revolutionary platform that's making personal umbrella insurance a breeze for agents across the country. Follow us on LinkedIn for the latest updates!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Introduction
• 3:03 Careers in Insurance: Family Backgrounds
• 9:27 Women's Insurance Evolution & Technology
• 16:39 Opportunities for Women in Leadership
• 24:20 Recruiting Women & Industry Knowledge
• 33:39 Legacy Building & Final Thoughts

Transcript

Janessa: 0:00

Welcome to Monoline: Beyond the Coverage, the podcast that goes deeper than policy limits to explore why a personal umbrella insurance matters more than ever. I'm Janessa Vanderhey den and today we have something truly special: a roundtable discussion featuring five powerhouse women in insurance. We'll hear from Rachel Crump, Monoline's own agency transfer manager, her mother, Susan Clift Gislason, her aunt, Sharon Clift Drbul, Jenny Kopun of USI, and Amy Hruska of Unico Group. All five of these women are longtime insurance professionals and have seen firsthand how this industry has evolved over the years. In this episode, we'll dive into their journeys, the changes they've witnessed, the challenges and opportunities for women in the field and their vision for the future of insurance. Let's jump in.

Janessa: 0:54

Thank you, ladies, so much, for joining me. I'm so excited to have you all. I'm just gonna go around and let you guys introduce yourselves. So Susan, if you want to go ahead and just give a little intro.

Susan: 1:06

My name is Susan Clift Gislason. I am actually Rachel's mother. I am so proud to be her mom. I started in the business 42 years ago. Blows my mind that it's been that long, but it's been fun. It's been so fun and I'm so proud that both my kids are now in the business.

Janessa: 1:26

It's so fun working with Rachel too. I'm also proud to work with her All right. Next we have Rachel

Rachel: 1:32

Hey, my name is Rachel Crump.

Rachel: 1:35

I work here at Monoline. I have been in the business for I was kind of trying to think of like legally in the business versus licensed in the business. So licensed for 13 years. But I grew up working at my grandfather's and now parents agency. In high school and college I ran the front desk and put all the binders together for proposals. You had the little twirly, the big machine and putting it all together. And then I worked in the mail room for a good summer that didn't have air conditioning, so I was back there handing out all the mail. So legally in the business a decade or so, but grew up in the agency.

Janessa: 2:19

All right, and next up we have Jenny, so I'll go ahead and let you introduce yourself.

Jenny: 2:24

My name is Jenny Kopun and Amy Hruska, on this call, is my mom, and I've been in the business nine years. Love it, absolutely love it, and a lot of that is thanks to my mom.

Janessa: 2:38

Next, we have Amy.

Amy: 2:40

I'm Amy Hruska and I'm Jenny Kopun's mom. I have been working in the industry full-time since I graduated from college, so 40 years this year. But I've been working in the industry since I was 13, so I did the math, that's about 49 years. So I too started at my parents' agency. My dad purchased an agency in 1972, and, kind of like Rachel said, they stuck me in the back room and there were literally boxes everywhere, non alphabetized. I don't know if you know what a dead file is, but there were dead files and there were active files and I had to sort through them. One summer, before the twirly things, we had three ring binders and so I was inserting manual pages when the company would send out updates to their rates. I did the mail, I did accounting, I did claims, I did inventory filing, I answered the phone. So I started doing that. That was my part-time job in high school and college, and now I'm at Unico Group as a private client advisor.

Janessa: 3:45

Love that. We're so happy to have you here, Amy. And then, last but not least, we have Sharon.

Sharon: 3:51

Hello, I'm excited to be here. So, I am Sharon Clift Durble, Susan's sister and Rachel's godmother. I've been in the business I'm just going to say 35 plus years, started not far outside of college. So I worked for Berkeley companies. I worked on the agency side and then I went to the company side.

Janessa: 4:16

And I'm so thrilled to have you all here. I think it is so important to just highlight women in insurance, but to also have a family affair here and have moms and aunts and everything. I'm super excited to jump into this. So now we're just going to go into some questions and I'd love to hear from all of you guys. The first question, Rachel, let's start with you. What first drew you into the insurance industry, besides your family being a part of it? Was it something you always wanted to do or saw yourself doing?

Rachel: 4:52

No, absolutely not. So I turned 18 when I was already in college and I remember my Papa sitting me down and saying the second you turn 18, you need to go get licensed. This is so important. Whether you're going to use it or not, you need to go get licensed. This is so important. Whether you're going to use it or not, you need to be licensed. It's your fallback career. Cause I was, I wanted to go into being a social worker, criminal justice. I was going to work in the jails and reform everything. And he said that's a great dream, but having your license is a great thing to fall back on and stability. So it's funny because that's what I did.

Rachel: 5:28

I got my license but never really used it and went to college, graduated with a sociology degree. I worked at children's hospitals, I worked at homeless shelters, kind of had to grow up and get off my parents' health insurance and get out into the world and make some money. And as I was looking around at all of my friends' careers and then started talking to my family actually, my aunt Sharon was a huge - I went to her first. I sat down with her and said what do you think when should I do? There's so many different areas that I could get into. I could go join the family agency. I could join a different agency. She was at Liberty Mutual at the time and I said I could come work with you at Liberty Mutual. So we kind of just sat down and she gave me a rundown of underwriting and sales and product and all the things and eventually decided to go ahead and start through the sales route with Liberty Mutual. I did go join her over there.

Rachel: 6:27

The thing that really drew me to it was stability was a big part. The second part was I know that I want to be a mom someday and I know that my mom and my aunt showed up for everything for their children. They were at every sporting event, they were at every overnight camping event. Their careers or their jobs never kept them from being very present, full-time working moms. I mean really that was like the big big thing that drew me into this career. And also just the people were amazing. I mean everybody in my life that I knew was kind of associated with insurance in some capacity and they were all really cool people and got to do fun things with their companies, so yeah.

Janessa: 7:15

I think that is such a fun thing about insurance, too, is you don't realize all the amazing people you meet through the industry and that you keep in touch with all of them too.

Janessa: 7:25

It's not like you just meet them, but then you follow them throughout their whole career too, I think, which is really cool. Jenny, what about you? What first drew you into the insurance industry, and was this something that? Did you want to follow your mom's footsteps in this, or was this kind of something that you fell into as well?

Jenny: 7:44

So I did not grow up thinking I would be in the business. I went to college and got my degree in marketing and thought that that was the route I wanted to go down. I worked in the marketing space for several years after graduating from college and in fact one of my favorite jobs was a marketing rep at a local restoration company, and so that allowed me to meet insurance agents in town, liked that. But then also I mean, both of my parents worked at the same agency for oh gosh what mom over 30 years, 35 years, and so I knew that space, knew the independent agency world, but again, didn't think I would end up in that. Well, after working in marketing for several years, realized I didn't like it and one of the agents that I had met while being a marketing rep, he asked if I wanted to come work for his very small agency in town and I agreed and got licensed there and that just was the start of my insurance career.

Jenny: 8:59

I never really wanted to work at the same firm as my parents just because I wanted to make a name for myself from them. I also don't think that their firm would have hired me just because I do personal lines and that's what my mom does, but it's been really rewarding for me in my career to still have a separate path since getting into the business in 2016,. I have loved it. I love doing personal lines and it's just a big part of that is my mom and how successful she's been in the business and she's been a mentor, a resource for me. My dad's in commercial lines and has done that for over 40 years in his career, and I'm also I'm the ninth member of our family to go into the insurance business, so it probably was inevitable at some point, similar to Rachel and even my mom. You know, when I grew up, I would play insurance agent at my grandparents' agency in a small town in Nebraska. I'm so happy I made the switch from marketing to, you know, insurance sales.

Janessa: 10:08

Yeah, and I have to say meeting you last fall at PRMA and then meeting your mom too. I remember talking to Jared and Ben and Rachel when we were at our booth and we were like gosh, Amy and Jenny. They are powerhouses in the insurance industry and that's why we've loved working with you guys. So it is so cool to see that relationship together as mother and daughter. But, like you just said, you also wanted to make a name for yourself, something so different, and that's just really cool.

Jenny: 10:37

Sometimes, when my husband and I are out to dinner with my parents, the three of us my mom, dad and me will talk about insurance, and then my poor husband is like I don't even know what you guys are saying and I don't even care, we just we just leave him by himself and the three of us just we can just talk, you know, for so long about it. So it's yeah, it's fun.

Janessa: 10:56

O h, that's so fun.

Janessa: 10:58

Okay, Susan, I'm going to jump over to you now. So, a little different since, you know, it's not your daughter saying that she wanted to follow you. So I'd love to hear from your perspective kind of what drew you into the insurance industry.

Susan: 11:14

Well, my mom was a social worker and so she would work and see her clients on Saturdays. So dad went to the office and he would take the three kids and we would just run around that office and that's how we grew up. And then summers we all worked for dad and every summer we work, like Rachel, in different departments. But it was nice, you know. Just to see what my dad did. The funnest part was that we could go to the annual convention at Lake of the Ozarks every year.

Susan: 11:44

My dad was very prominent in that industry. He was very well known and watching him my mom have so much fun with other agents I mean, these were competitors, but they were their friends and I thought how fun to be able to do a job where you have the opportunity to spend a lot of time with friends and co-workers. Like Rachel said, my dad was at all of our sporting events. I saw my dad have a really good work-life balance, yeah, and dad was able to coach our teams and he was just there whenever we needed him. So that's probably what drew me into the business.

Janessa: 12:25

All right, Sharon. What drew you to the insurance industry?

Sharon: 12:29

Much like you guys. You know, working at the family agency during the summers was kind of a rite of passage. We were exposed to all aspects of the business. You know, I was put on the switchboard and then take it off the switchboard an hour later because I rerouted people to the wrong people. So I got fired from that job pretty quickly and then I was put into. I worked in the file department for one summer and that just seemed so odd to me. I spent the entire morning pulling files and the entire afternoon putting them back. It was very Groundhog Day-ish and I'm like, okay, I don't think I want to do that, but anyway, it was good to be exposed to it. I did go into teaching, which was always my passion. It's still my passion. It's amazing when you think about what we do in the insurance business we're educating, we're educators, we're teaching, we're educators, we're teaching and it just seems such a natural fit.

Sharon: 13:30

I did teach for a year and then my dad said I have a position for you now and you can come back. So I came back, went into personal lines and I worked on the agency side for about 13 years and a company approached me about coming to the company side, sat down with my brother my sister. I'm like I'm just going to go the company side for a little bit and get all this great information and bring it back to the agency. I didn't go back, not because I didn't love the agency side. It was really because I saw a bigger scale of how I could help agencies grow their business. So I will tell you one of the things I remember in my mom and dad going on all these amazing company trips. I'm like, well, that's kind of cool, I kind of like that. I didn't like the fact that we could never go with them, but it's been a great industry to be a part of.

Janessa: 14:29

Yeah it really has been All right. Amy, what drew you into the insurance industry?

Amy: 14:34

I always thought maybe I would end up in insurance. But I wasn't quite sure. My older sister used to work at a hospital and she ran the EKG machine and when I was younger I used to like to go to the hospital with her. So I always thought I would love to go into medical research. But I knew my limitations and they knew that I probably wouldn't be able to pass all of the chemistry, physics and all those kinds of classes. So I took the business route, going to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the early 1980s. They only offered three insurance classes but I took them all. And then when I graduated from college I knew that I wanted to move to the bigger city of Omaha and I wanted to be a sales rep. I wanted to be a marketing rep.

Amy: 15:17

I remember back when I was little my dad would bring home a marketing rep, kind of just like a spur of the moment, and have to hope that my mom had prepared enough food. And Jennifer that's where the term FDHB came from family hold back. So cause you never knew. If you know, here's this random company marketing rep that's now showed up for dinner. Anyway, my first job offered was for fireman's fund in Omaha as a personal lines underwriter. So I took that job and I worked there for about oh, two and a half years or so and then decided to join the agency. But while I was there that's kind of where my passion for private client and high net worth started I haven't looked back for a moment and I just love where I'm at today.

Janessa: 16:07

Oh, I love that. I'm so interested to hear from your guys' perspective how you guys feel the insurance industry has evolved over the decades, and then do you feel like technology has made a huge impact on that and your experience from when you started to today as well?

Jenny: 16:25

I've only been in the business nine years, so I haven't seen a whole lot. However, the last three or four years there have been significant changes. But you know hearing my mom talk about or even my dad talk about how years and years ago you know there were like $50 deductibles, $100 deductibles on homes and you know the manual rating or whatever you guys would do, and I just I'm much happier I am in the business now than when you know, way back when you guys started. It just seems so complicated. Actually, technology is such a big part of it now and the agency I work for we're very technology driven and you know utilize those resources a lot and clients like that resources a lot and clients like that. So that is playing a really big role in getting clients and retaining them, definitely from the technology standpoint.

Rachel: 17:16

Jenny made me think of something, because I remember when I was younger and my mom would get all dressed up in her little pantsuit and I did, like now, looking back, I was like, ooh, that's cool, I want to wear a pantsuit one day.

Rachel: 17:27

But my mom would wear a pantsuit and she'd be like I'm going to client number one's house this morning, then I'm going to client number two's house for lunch and then happy hour with this secure company rep and then I'll be home to help you with dinner and whatever. And now I went to visit her recently and I'm sitting there listening to her work during the day and and I'm sitting there listening to her work during the day and she had probably 30 client calls. So you go in the last 25 years from three client visits a day and one in-person carrier meeting to 20 client calls, three carrier Zoom meetings Monoline says this like we're new technology, but old school people relationships. They're not in their kitchen anymore going through their renewal policies. However, they still know who you are. You still know their children are graduating in May. Like you still have that relationship and I think that's one thing our industry is really good at.

Susan: 18:21

I'll add that when I started, we did all of our ratings. I mean I would spend hours at night rating, you know, with pencil on paper, a personal lines account. Then I would type invoices because we did all that and so there wasn't as much like Rachel said. You know, I spend so much of my day now talking to my clients before I was doing all the work. Yeah, rarely did I talk to them. And that's where, jenny, the technology is huge. Yeah, you know, I mean we do have folks in the office that rate, but they're rating all the carriers at once. I mean I will say the things that haven't changed are my larger clients. I will say the things that haven't changed are my larger clients. I still see them in person, but it's more of a how's the family doing? So it's more of a friendship relationship and they still do want to see me in person. I think that's important.

Janessa: 19:22

Susan, do you feel like that's been a challenge for you from when you started to now and having technology becomes so much more relevant? Do you feel like you sometimes struggle with not having that personal, in-person touch anymore with your clients, or is it making your life a bit easier now because you have the technology to help you so you can focus more on your clients, like? I just kind of love to hear your perspective on if it's a challenge or if it's just something that now you appreciate.

Susan: 19:51

You know, it's just part of the business. Yeah, Grace, change, you go with the flow. I kind of would watch my dad and he would bring in whatever there was. He was always very open to technology.

Janessa: 20:05

Yeah, and I think it's super important to note that in that short amount of time the last three to four years you've seen all these changes, so I can't imagine from when you ladies started 30, 40 years ago to what it's at now. I'm sure that's just such a big big difference.

Jenny: 20:23

So many of us have clients in other states too, and so I'm noticing that more clients you know across the country are willing to do a video call and they welcome that, whereas 20, 30 years ago maybe it was harder for you to have clients in other states because you would never have the opportunity to meet them and I don't know what that was like. But now it's not even an issue. If you've got a client across the country, they don't care.

Sharon: 20:54

I think COVID was the biggest impact to that, because it really transformed our customer interaction. Right Now, all of a sudden, these virtual calls were commonplace, they were acceptable. I do think automation and technology has revolutionized how we're able to do business, leaving behind the fax machine, the three-part memo, the typewriters, the beepers, all of that To Susan's point, what we can accomplish in a day and the people we can touch is phenomenal. There's a lot of companies that existed before that don't. Also, on the agency side, right, there's a lot more acquisitions and so agencies are getting bigger. And to your point, jenny, what does that do? And COVID now we have remote producers. We've now just broadened our radius of where we do business, so without that technology it would have been hard to support it.

Susan: 21:54

I wanted to add one of the things that concerns me with some of the technology is especially Jenny and Rachel. Your generation has no trouble going to the internet to buy things, and one of those is insurance, and it scares me when I see these folks that go online and they've got 25, 50, 25, or they got 100,000 and they're a commercial contract. They're buying insurance. They don't have an advisor, there's nobody educating them, and then if you're on the other end of that and there's a lawsuit and somebody's injured you and they have really low limits, I mean, what a devastating thing that's. The one thing that I get concerned about is that there's no education there. Rachel and Jenny, what do you feel about that?

Jenny: 22:48

As an insurance agent. Yeah, I don't like it either, but it is nice when you do work with a younger client and if you have insured their parents for a number of years, then you're able to work in that education piece with their children who are going off on their own insurance.

Rachel: 23:07

I think that's why Amy's involvement with with the big guy like I think the organizations like the big guy are so important now, because it's the resources behind learning, educating, marketing out to all those different type of buyers.

Rachel: 23:25

Like I know, when I was at my prior big personal lines carrier, we did a bunch of research on how people buy business and how it can shift in the matter of 12 months and being able to show the value of having an independent agent and the whys and putting the claim stories in front of you guys. And I think that's why, from the carrier side, it's so important for us to be supporting you guys and giving you all of those materials and resources to go out there and to still capture that market, because there are people out there who still want their advisor. They see the value in it and we just have to be able to weed through all of that to kind of meet in the middle. So give a little bit of technology, still have your independent agent and just try to get out there and be louder than the $8 million Super Bowl commercial where you go online and buy it in 20 seconds.

Janessa: 24:17

Such a good point, Rach. I'm glad you brought that up too. So, Susan, Sharon and Amy, I want to start with you on this next question. What was it like for women in insurance when you started and how do you feel that your opportunities with being in leadership have improved, or what do you think still needs to kind of change with this shift of, you know, women in the industry?

Sharon: 24:40

When I joined the agency I was a CSR. All the producers at the agency were men. You know I was fortunate because I had my dad who empowered me. I really felt like the doors opened for me as a woman in the industry when I went to the carrier side. I went over in a marketing position and that's when I started to see opportunities really open up. I surrounded myself by some really great mentors in my career. They were significant. There are so many women in leadership roles now doing phenomenal things that we just need to keep that going, because those women are the role models, the women in insurance associations. At this point in my career, I feel as empowered as anybody else in our organization to do great things and move up the ladder. It has been a significant shift in my opinion.

Amy: 25:35

Well, I agree with Sharon. I think that when I first started in my career, it was predominantly a men's club the business owners, the executives, the C-suite, the president they were men and I don't know if it's like just in the past decade or maybe even the past five years. I've been going to PRMA summit for a number of years and I looked around last year and I looked at the list of attendees and all of the women who are in empowering roles in their organizations and I think that they're really making a difference. I think that there definitely has been a shift and I think Diane Delaney at PRMA has done an excellent job, bringing more of a focus to women in the industry.

Janessa: 26:17

Yeah, and I love that you just talked about that too, because Diane just started that PRMA webinar series focused on women, and I don't know if any of you guys sat on that last month, but for anybody that has it, you should go back and listen to the recording and sign up for the future ones, cause I think she touched on just so many important topics of women in the industry and it was just really cool to see people talk about it now and hear from so many different perspectives, and so, yeah, again, it's just really cool to see and hear and watch women becoming so much more powerful in this industry, and I am here for it, ladies! Rachel?

Rachel: 26:56

I was just sitting here thinking about how we all ended up as women who are doing very well and love the careers that we're in. How we got here, it was because of our fathers and grandfathers starting the business, and then that's naturally how we kind of were exposed to it and then, however we ended up, we moved our way in and I think we could do a much better job about recruit, about recruiting women or young women out of college that don't have connections. So whether that's I mean Amy talked about there were only three insurance classes that you could take in college. I mean there's some universities out there but not a lot that can start to offer insurance actuarial roles, Like Sharon was talking about underwriting.

Rachel: 27:42

There are so many heavy men like recruiting men out of college into the underwriting roles. Can we start recruiting women? Can we start offering more insurance degrees across the country rather than at just the few big universities that do that, and starting to recruit women in the college level as their career, versus just the connections of, hey, you want to come work at the agency with me? So that's one thing I really would love for us women who are already in this to start to do is go to those universities, teach some of those classes on the side, or offer mentorships or internships to women at that level, so that when they graduate they're excited to go into the insurance industry, even though they would have never thought about that before.

Sharon: 28:32

You bring up a really good point. What can we do as women to have a greater presence within those universities, to get in front of folks, to educate them on what insurance is and what it isn't?

Susan: 28:43

Our association in Missouri and I love what we're doing. We have a committee that we are going to universities and we are wanting women to go and we're going in and talking to the kids at campuses and we specifically said we want women. That was a thing that I liked that our association is doing. I love how your monoline owners, your founders they feel the importance of having women on the team. My dad always said you know, I was a CSR for a long time and he says you're ready to be a broker. You need to go into commercial lines as well as personal. But you know, he said you wear that suit and you put those pantyhose on and you will get past the secretary. But once you get in that door, you better know what you are talking about.

Sharon: 29:37

I'm really glad that we left that in the dust years ago.

Janessa: 29:41

I do want to bring the pantsuit back, I'm kind of good on that.

Jenny: 29:45

What also has been really cool for me to witness and especially with growing up and my dad being in commercial lines and my mom in personal lines I always had this idea that commercial was more men-driven and personal was more women-driven. But it's been really cool to see how many women are selling commercial lines. How many women are selling commercial lines and you know just where I work. I mean, it just seems like it's almost even kind of and there's a lot of men selling personal lines, and so that's just been a people for me to witness ever since I was little and just kind of always had this notion of oh, commercial was more male driven and personal was more women driven. So that's been cool to see just how many more women are in commercial lines than in years past.

Sharon: 30:37

I see that too, Jenny.

Sharon: 30:39

I would add one other thing to what you're saying around the importance of educating yourself, because the consumers these days have access to so much information through Googling and the internet and now they think that they know. It's so critically important that we've got that knowledge because in some ways we have to re-educate, because what they think they know they don't really know, or what's driving rates. We have to re-educate because what they think they know they don't really know, you know or what's thriving rates, the Education is is a big big thing.

Janessa: 31:24

to. educate Rachel those younger women, you, what would be a piece of advice if you were the one educating them that you would want to give young women entering the industry now that you've been in it, for you know, 10 years, one plus years now.

Rachel: 31:38

I kind of have to go off of what my mom said is know what you're talking about.

Rachel: 31:43

I think that's why I'm so passionate about the education piece, because I think that I pushed myself straight into sales and I wish I would have educated myself more on how does the rating work? How does building a product, the exclusions, the add-on filing rates with the DOI, how does that work? How does an insurance company interact with a DOI? And then everything trickles down to the insured. And so I think some of us we just see the flashiness of you can do really well in the insurance industry and you go into sales and sometimes you see these people and even on the carrier side they'll hire marketing people that go into an agency and the agency sits there and they're like this rep has no idea what they're talking about. And so I think just the importance of really understanding how insurance works, especially in today's environment, with the regulatory environments in Europe and London and ENS and admitted and Amy was talking about parametrics, like the new things that are coming up that were maybe commercial, that can now be personal, and the foundation, the foundation of insurance, is where I think a lot of us can make a big difference in the future versus just jumping in as the flashy salespeople future versus just jumping in as the flashy salespeople.

Janessa: 33:12

Yeah, no, I think that's great advice too. Well, ladies, we are coming up to the end of our time. I know I could. I could honestly continue talking about this for another hour if you wanted to, but I just go around and do one last round table question with you all while I have you all. And that is what do you wish more people knew about the insurance industry. So, susan, you're up top, so I'm going to start with you.

Susan: 33:33

Two things.

Susan: 33:40

For consumers.

Susan: 33:40

I wish they would know that insurance is not a maintenance policy. It is for catastrophic losses. I've learned a lot from Rachel and listening to the podcast that you all did. I'm educating my clients on these. Like Amy said, nuclear verdicts. So now my mission is educating and explaining to my folks that you need lots of umbrella coverage. More about liability, I mean, yeah, you need your property covered, but that's a finite number For consumers. That's a goal. As an agent, the insurance industry is really, it's for anybody who wants to serve others. It's taking care of clients. We're protecting them at their worst time and there can be a really good work-life balance.

Janessa: 34:24

I love that. I always tell my clients too, like after something traumatic or catastrophic happens to you besides your family, the first person you always call is your insurance agent. So I mean, you have to just think about that. All right, Amy, what about you? What do you wish more people knew about the insurance industry?

Amy: 34:43

It's my job to show them the value. You're going to have a different experience when you work with me. I'm going to talk about coverage, kind of one of the things that Diana's teaching, or what PCG University taught for those who went through those courses years ago. You're talking about coverage and the protection and the why that they should buy the insurance and if they have a need, then I can provide a solution. If you can really hone in on what is driving that customer to call you and reach out and get insurance and why they want to leave their current agent, if you can show the value in what you are offering, that's the takeaway.

Janessa: 35:23

Yeah, I think that's so important too.

Janessa: 35:26

All right, Sharon. What do you wish more people knew?

Sharon: 35:30

From a career perspective, what I'd love for people to understand is just what a broad scope of opportunity there is within the insurance industry. From a account exec, client exec, csr, producer, broker, to risk services, to claims, to actuary, to the marketing, to the operations. I mean you can navigate and find what you feel passionate about from a career perspective. That's what I think we're all tasked with is making sure everybody understands that and we can get more people in.

Janessa: 36:09

Yeah, I love that. Okay, Jenny and Rachel, I'm going a little bit rogue here, but I want to ask you two, when you guys think about your future and when you get to your mom and your aunt's career at the 30, 40 year mark of insurance and where you're at, what excites you the most about where you can potentially be and what could be happening in the industry?

Jenny: 36:35

Even being in the industry for nine years. This has been such a rewarding career. I have been given opportunities that I never dreamed I would have, so I just I look forward to seeing how I can continue to expand upon my career. Knowing how insurance was 40 years ago, I can't imagine what it's going to be in the next 30 to 40 years and what that's going to look like.

Janessa: 37:02

Yeah, definitely.

Rachel: 37:05

It kind of like makes me a little bit emotional, but I guess what excites me the most is the idea of having built something meaningful. So I know in our family we talk about Papa all the time. Papa built the agency. I think you guys said there's nine of you. It's not just a career, it is a family business and we're making a real impact on the industry and whether that's mentoring the next generation that we talked about, or leading a business or shaping how the industry evolves because it's somebody who's in product development there's just so much potential to leave a legacy. And I think that's what excites me is looking back and having my third generation in the agency talk about what Grandma Rachel did and hopefully it inspired them to join the industry as well and keep the generations coming.

Janessa: 38:05

Well, I think all of you being family on this call as well too. It's so cool that in 10-15 years, Rach, you can call your mom and be like, did this happen to you, like when you were working? And then Jenny, same thing with you and Amy, and Amy I'm sure you can call Jenny and be like, what is this coverage that they're talking about? That we thought, and you know it's just, you guys are always going to have that connection to each other and you're always going to have that mentorship just within your family, which I think is amazing.

Janessa: 38:35

Ladies, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I know that's been super empowering just to hear how things have changed since, you know, Susan, Amy and Sharon, you started, and Rachel, us working together, and Jenny, you being in the industry for now nine years, too, and just watching it evolve and watch women, you know, just take over the world in insurance. That brings us to the end of today's episode. A huge thank you to Rachel, Susan, Sharon, Jenny and Amy for sharing their journeys, wisdom and perspectives on the insurance industry. It's inspiring to hear how experience, resilience and family ties have shaped their careers. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe and follow us on LinkedIn for more insights into the world of personal umbrella insurance. Thanks for listening.