Uncaptive Agency: The Future of Insurance, Ep. 21

Join me as I discuss how personal branding plus technology equal insurance success with Meg McKeen, Founder and Chief Confidence Builder of Adjunct Advisors.

This week’s guest is one of the Hot 100 for 2021 for Insurance Business America Magazine, and also a podcaster herself, and she was extremely candid in her talk with me. We discussed her career history and how she ended up getting her Hot 100 recognition, along with the importance of aligning your values and skills with your work.

The insurance industry is facing a talent crisis, and as a coach and insurance agent herself, Meg has a lot of valuable insights on how to find your niche and make it profitable while staying true to your values.

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Tony Caldwell:

Great. So hi everybody, Tony Caldwell. Welcome to another edition of Uncaptive Agency where we're talking about the future of insurance distribution. We're looking at early 2021, March 1st as a matter of fact. And we're thinking three years, five years in the future and today my guest is Meg McKeen, who is joining me from Maine, where she has recently moved. Meg is the cool title of founder and chief confidence builder of Adjunct Advisors and she advises people on how to do insurance differently, I think. And we're going to get into that in just a few minutes. And I was really interested to meet Meg because she is one of the Hot 100 for 2021 for Insurance Business America Magazine, and also a podcaster herself, with a podcast focused on women’s insurance. And, which you'll tell us the name of in just a minute because I forgot. Sorry. Welcome, Meg.

Meg McKeen:

Thank you, Tony, so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Tony Caldwell:

You bet. So we were just talking about a new chapter in your life where you're sort of giving up some of the groundedness maybe that has been a part of your life and career for a long time. And so what a wonderful way to start a conversation about the future.

Meg McKeen:

Yeah, I'm an open book. Those who know me well know I have no secrets at this point. Maine frankly, is a stop along the way, it's my first stop along the way. I've sold my place in Chicago, where I've been for the last decade or so, and it's been a wonderful place to land, but I find myself in transition again and ready for the next chapter. And so I've decided to leave that behind and see what else is out there. So Maine is the first stop.

Tony Caldwell:

Well, that's awesome. Well, professionally, you bring a lot of things with you of course: underwriter, highly technical insurance professional, salesperson, all kinds of things in the insurance business for a number of years, and now you have a coaching company which, I noted on your website, you said that you're marrying modern sales technology to what, let's face it, is a very traditional business. Tell me a little bit about, what do you mean by modern sales technology?

Meg McKeen:

Yeah, so the world is changing and evolving around us yet we work in an industry that largely looks and feels the same way that it has for decades and generations, frankly. And as our buyers of insurance change, whether it's an individual purchasing homeowner's insurance or a small business owner wanting to protect their business, their vantage point has changed and is continuing to change and we have not just an opportunity, but an obligation to change along with our clients. So it's really honoring what's available to us as salespeople and also who we are and how we choose to show up in the world and serve those around us. So it's very much the head and the heart of our business.

Tony Caldwell:

So one of the things I'm picking up from what you just said is that increasingly perhaps insurance sales in particular can be a highly individualized occupation. There's no, maybe the rules that we used to all follow or think we had to follow don't apply anymore. Is that part of what you mean?

Meg McKeen:

Yes and no, right? I believe our business is a relationship business. It always has been, but how we connect with our clients, both the ones we currently serve and those we want to, has to evolve with the times. We have to meet people where they are, and I'm not sorry they're not on the other end of a phone line that's ringing. They're not on the other end of a mailer that's landing in a mailbox that they're checking once every couple of weeks. They're on social media. They're out in the world showing up in different ways and we have, again, an opportunity, a huge opportunity to meet them exactly where they are using tools and techniques, yes, but also language that they understand and stories, which are so powerful. And that, as insurance salespeople, we tend to get really hung up in the jargon and we want to show and prove just how smart and just how technical we are when really what our buyers want to know is just how human we are and how much we understand them and their unique needs.

Tony Caldwell:

So how do you think that we're doing as an industry in adapting to people today, whether it's a consumer or a business owner trying to buy insurance? What kind of rating would you give the industry right now for adaptations of their needs, wants, and desires?

Meg McKeen:

Well, full disclosure, Tony, I left the industry three and a half years ago. I was feeling, I think the way I would describe it now, but didn't have the language at the time, was burnt out. I was in a role that was not allowing me to be at my best. I was culturally aligned with an organization that really didn't support me and my values and my mission and was serving clients who frankly didn't appreciate and didn't respect what I brought to the table as a career underwriter, shifting into a sales role. I knew what I was talking about. And so I'm fortunate in a sense being single and of a certain age and made some smart financial choices. I was able to take some time off and I did, and I fully intended to leave and never come back and took a year off, and I've talked about this very candidly on other podcasts, but I did a lot of travel.

I did a lot of what we would call now, self-care: yoga, long walks, naps, reading books, cooking wonderful meals, and just reconnecting with myself. And I graduated with a Sociology degree from college. I have a passion for the social sciences. How I ended up in insurance is the same silly story that we all tell, right? Completely by accident. And I started to look at who I am, the journey that I'm on personally, all the progress that I've made in my own personal life, and what that meant for me professionally. What could I possibly do to support myself that didn't mean that total misalignment with my work and my clients and my income source. And rather than running away, I decided to run towards what I thought to be the problem at the time.

And that is how insurance people are connecting with their clients and how they're valued. And so my coaching practice is not built on the model of 10X ing your business overnight, growing your revenue by X percent. That happens because when you show up authentically and who you are in your business, the right people land on your doorstep. And so it's a very different model. To answer your question, how are we doing? Well I don't think we're quite there yet, or I would not have staked my entire future on the belief that we're ripe for change, but I see progress, right. The more I talk about my approach in a public way on LinkedIn, on my podcast, on your podcast, the more people reach out and say, "Oh my gosh, she gets it. She gets me. She gets how I want to show up in the world." And that validation is just what I need to keep going. But we have a lot of work to do. We have a whole generation ready to leave the workforce and we need a generation coming up in the workforce and I'm nervous. I don't think we're there yet.

Tony Caldwell:

Well, there certainly is a huge talent gap. There's no question about that, but I think that's going to get solved because anytime there's opportunity, it gets filled and there's a huge opportunity. It's just opportunity and filling of that opportunity never go in lock step, but it's going to happen. One of the interesting thing, you just, you really are touching on something that I've talked a lot about, which is a complete paradigm shift in the way markets work and the way marketing works, the way advertising works and so forth, which is really easy to understand, but I think a lot of people miss it and it's this. In the old days, you spent money advertising and broadcasting your name and your message so that people would find you and I think the new paradigm is no, you just put out your wisdom into the world or your offering into the world and the people who are looking for it will find you and that's completely different. And that's sort of what I think you're touching on, isn't it?

Meg McKeen:

Yeah, absolutely. Personal brand is huge. It's the most powerful tool that we have. And I think a complete untapped opportunity for us as salespeople, but not our fault, right? Not our fault that we've been a little slow to recognize that because we tend to work for much larger organizations that perhaps have brand recognition and so we rely on them to do a lot of that marketing and branding for us when, at the end of the day, fundamentally people buy from people, right? We know this. And so my clients are not buying from a logo, they're buying from me. And that's really powerful.

Tony Caldwell:

Yeah, it is powerful, but it is really different because people tend to, at least in the old paradigm, to talk about the organization that they belong to, it's size as if size confers quality and connection. And we know, I think that it doesn't necessarily do that, but I was reading something just this morning where in a newspaper for Santa Cruz, California, I live part of the time on the West coast and so staying in touch with Santa Cruz when I'm not there is interesting. One of the ads in the local paper was all about how they were the biggest real estate firm in town. And I thought to myself, "Well what difference does that make? What good does that do to you?" Because you have the multi-list and information that used to be the purview of larger organizations, and data that used to be really concentrated in large organizations, it's no longer concentrated, it's free and available. You can know anything you want to know very easily.

So what good necessarily is the size? And yet we do seem in our industry, to be getting more and more focused on bigness. There's a huge increase in the size of agencies and a hollowing out a smaller, what I'd call local insurance agencies. And so the industry itself, the distribution industry, the agency industry, seems to almost be going in the opposite direction to what you're talking about. Is that what you're seeing?

Meg McKeen:

Yeah, I don't disagree, but I think it's an important reminder that there are a lot of ways to get where we want to go. And I think we have the opportunity, as an industry, to be nimble and to offer a variety of paths, right? Some people are always going to be happier with brand recognition. You see a rise of more of the gig approach. Full disclosure, I'm still an insurance agent. I have a book of business that is not my primary income stream, but it sure is a nice little subsidy to what I'm building on the coaching side. It keeps me in the business, which means that the wisdom that I share as a coach is even more meaningful because I'm living it in this moment. And so it also helps that when I'm selling an insurance product, there isn't that forced sale because whether I make that sale or not, I'm still making a living in another way.

So I do think people, underwriters for example, who have strong technical backgrounds would make great agents. Have we created a path to help them see what that could look like? Probably not, probably an opportunity in this day and age to start thinking about multiple income streams and what the future of insurance sales can look like. It's not for everyone, but that very traditional, you start with a firm and you retire 35 or 40 years later, I just don't see that being the way of the future, so how do we take this generation and help create the work experience that they're looking for and also meet the business needs?

Tony Caldwell:

So what do you think that work experience looks like as we sit here in 2021?

Meg McKeen:

The work experience for those coming up in the industry?

Tony Caldwell:

Yeah.

Meg McKeen:

Yeah, So I think they're going to have multiple jobs and multiple careers, maybe even at the same time. And I don't necessarily mean driving part-time for Uber, but I mean, these are our kids if I can say that who have grown up facing things, that as a young person, I couldn't have even fathomed. And so when we talk about resiliency and we talk about their ability to adapt and be nimble, they're learning that at such a young age and will carry those skills with them into the workforce. So if one thing's not working, let's try something else. I can't wait to work alongside this generation here in the industry, frankly. There's, there's so much creativity and ingenuity and that rolling up their sleeves and making it work that entrepreneurial-ism, which I know you appreciate is such a great skill to have as you're building a book of business.

Tony Caldwell:

Well, the truth is that the independent agency system in the United States, it in itself is somewhat entrepreneurial in some cases, right? It's also very bureaucratic, but anyone who's attracted to come to work in it, at least in a production role, is at heart and by nature, an entrepreneur, because nothing's given to them, they have to build everything. And it's all a process, always has been actually a process of discovery and figuring out what works. So I don't know that today's young people are necessarily different, but ones going to be successful, I would say in the business. To your point though, they just have a lot more tools, but one of the tools that they don't have coming in is something that you talk about and I want to explore that for a minute and that's confidence. Again, your title, Founder and Chief Confidence Builder. I thought was interesting.

I believe that confidence is the entrepreneur's most important off balance sheet assets. And you really can't do much without confidence and yet coming into the business, which is, as you said, highly difficult. Usually it takes many years to master from a technical perspective, but also one in which, you don't have a lot of income. In some cases, you don't have any income at all and so you have to kill something to eat. All those are confidence killers and so how do you as a coach see the need in our business? I mean, how do we, as people who are already in the org in the industry and understand the talent gap that we've got to fill, how do we go about instilling confidence in young people that they need to have to make the leap to join us?

Meg McKeen:

Yeah. We have how many hours for this conference? I mean, you've just hit on exactly why I have a business, why I do what I do. So very often sales managers, who are those who are tasked with things like building confidence and coaching and supporting new salespeople have sold, but sold in the past. And so their memory is very short about what it was actually like to build a book of business from the ground up. And so there's some often unrealistic expectations in terms of timing and volume and revenue and activity. Right out of the gate we want to see X amount of business within X amount of time. And I frankly thrive with my clients in that zero to three year period, because that is when we are figuring it out and it's clumsy and it's awkward. And often while we want that sales manager and that sales manager wants to be that mentor and that coach and that support, they often have a book of their own business that they're managing, or they have an entire sales team that they're managing.

And so their resources are spread really thin and that's where I come in. I'm an uninterested third party, right? And so our sessions are as much about sales as they are about life. And so while I'm not a life coach, someone just said to me, the other day, "You're like a life coach for insurance agents." And yes, I am because I can hear the words. I'll give you an example. So a couple of weeks ago I was on a call with a client, a coaching client, and he was talking about his weekend. And he had been working on this proposal on a Sunday afternoon and he was really happy that he was ready for the meeting and he was prepared and I stopped him and I said, "What's up with working on a Sunday?" This is a fairly new producer. He doesn't have a huge book of business.

He's still figuring it out. And I said, "What's that about?" And he said, "Yeah." He's compensating, right. He's trying to look busy because he doesn't have the results yet and so we talked about work-life balance. We talked about boundaries. We talked about making sure that instead of finding time on a Sunday afternoon, maybe let's look at your week ahead and let's make sure that we've got time spent for sales activity in the week ahead. And so the difference between a coach and a sales process is that in-between gray space and that's where I live. So my ability to kind of cut through the noise and see through the excuses and hold someone accountable and frankly give them that third perspective, that outside perspective can be really powerful.

Tony Caldwell:

Well, and at the same time though, you're touching on something, that really is timeless, which is all about time management and managing a process. And understanding of the process is really what gets you to the end result in the first place? I think most people find that whether it's called chunking or however you want to describe it, that at some point they learn that you have to have rest, which includes mental rest, but you also have to be focused on certain things at certain times and you get there, but that is something that is learned. It doesn't come naturally. But all of these things really just that we're talking about here, point out and we're in a really unique time in the history of the agency business and we are always having new people come into the business.

We're always struggling to find new people to come into the business. None of that's new. I think what's new is the size of the issue. And, because we have to do it with so many more people, or the industry itself has to change fundamentally to a place where it's all about process and not about relationship and I don't think that really, that works for the industry because frankly if it's about process, you can do that better with an algorithm and cheaper. So it's really a size problem. We have to find the people, but then we have to bring them in and train them in an unprecedentedly large number compared to the past. So one of the things I'm noticing, and I'm just curious about your own experiences is that the term, insurance coach, insurance agency coach, insurance coaching, coaching, I mean, that term has been exploding, I would say over the last 24 to 36 months. And I just wonder if it's, because there's this recognition, there's a huge problem that we've got.

I think it's either it's either a fad and a new word that everybody is seizing on, something that they've got to have for themselves or for their team, or it's because the actual reality of the fact that we're having fewer and fewer people working in an industry that still has more and more people to serve is coming home to roost. So I don't, I'm just curious what you think about, which is it?

Meg McKeen:

I'll say even, so three years ago, when I started my business, I didn't use the term coach because there was a stigma that only coaches were life coaches. And while I see validity in life coaching, in insurance, never the two shall meet, right? We're business people. We separate work and life, right? And so I resisted the term a lot until actually a mentor of mine, who's a coach asked me, I used the term consultant instead, and she said, "Are you going in and are you setting up a process and are you leaving or are you actually with your client along the way?" And I said, "Well, I'm with my client along the way." And she said, "Well, then you're a coach."

And I realized, I have to use the word for what it is and if the industry isn't there yet, and doesn't appreciate and respect that a coach is a valid business tool, just like a system or a consultant would be, then I'm willing to go play the long game and I'm willing to roll up my sleeves and stay in it. And it's something over the last three years, I think we've warmed up to, we still have a long way to go when we talk about marrying our personal development with our professional development, right?

As an industry, we support designations and we support continuing education, it's required, right, in order to maintain your insurance license, but none of that subject matter deals with the sort of things that I'm dealing with as a coach, but arguably that's the work that allows someone to stick with it for those critical first two to three years where they see success and they stay for the long haul. So we can pump them full of technical knowledge of which I fully support, but if you haven't figured out to your point, the confidence gap, if you haven't figured out how to keep going when you're not quite sure that you're on the right path, then all of that technical knowledge falls by the wayside when you exit the industry.

So we're in a really, really interesting period of time for so many reasons, right? But when I think about myself and my career choices, my decision after 20 years to exit a very traditional corporate path and start my own thing, what rose up around me, a lot of other people that are doing the exact same thing. Different attachment points, different issues, some are more technology focused, a close colleague of mine, and I call her a colleague because when you're out paving your own path, you need support is focusing on corporate culture. And we're collectively working on an initiative to help agents and carriers communicate more effectively and more authentically in this hard market that we're in. And so I see people like that coming out of the woodwork with this knowledge and these skills that don't fit that more traditional mold, but that are finding great success. And so I think as an industry, we're becoming more and more open to less traditional problem-solvers. And obviously I'm a huge fan and supporter of that.

Tony Caldwell:

Well, COVID-19 has really been an accelerant. It didn't create this. I mean, I've been on Zoom for four or five years, but it was real hard to find somebody to Zoom with. And so, so now of course, it's ubiquitous. In fact, we have a robot in our office, a telepresence robot we've had for four or five years where you can beam into the robot and run around the office and have meetings with people. You don't have to be there. And people still look at me with amazement when I tell them. No, it's commonplace and it's old school from our perspective, we've been on it for years. People just woke up because of COVID because they had to. But what it's doing, I think, is it's causing and there's all kinds of articles about the future of work and all that kind of stuff and nobody knows what it looks like, but what it's telling me is that COVID's an accelerant for change that was already underway.

And even though we don't know where it's going necessarily, the next three to five years, I think some things are becoming clearer. One is there going to be more folks like yourself who don't need to be tethered to geography to pursue a career, whether that means they're selling insurance all over the place, just because their relationships are arising all over the place or whether it's because they choose to live in multiple places at one time. I mean, there's all kinds of choices like that that are getting made which the industry has to accommodate.

I was interviewed recently and the question was, "Do you think agencies will be able to pay people less if they look at work from home?" And I said, "No, they're going to have to pay people more and let them work from home." Why they have to pay people more is because we're in this huge talent gap and it's a supply demand problem. And you have to let people work from wherever they want to work from, if you want to hire them because there's a supply demand problem. And so one of the things, it seems to me, is that the employee in the business, whether it's a producer or anybody else, CSR or whatever, has increased flexibility, increased choice, and increased power in the industry, I would say. Not just the employment relations, wonder what you think of that?

Meg McKeen:

Yeah, you're absolutely right. You are absolutely right. I think about the very traditional CSR or account manager who worked for the one agency in town and she chose to work there because it was a 10 minute drive. She could come home for lunch and she could let the dog out or feed the kids lunch and be there when they got off the bus. Well now, with remote work, which I agree has been a long, long time coming in our industry, she's now highly employable by dozens of dozens, hundreds, thousands of agencies across the country, if you're good and we still need good talent, right? And it's, it's one of the most interesting, I spent a lot of time in Chicago as a field underwriter for a couple of different carriers and then in leadership. And one of the things I was asked because I saw agencies from the inside out, "Who are the good people?" Agencies were always looking for the best talent.

They didn't necessarily want to pay them, but they wanted the best talent. I have another friend in the business who's working internationally. She's a licensed insurance agent in the states and she's sitting in another country doing account management work. It's pretty remarkable what we're able to accomplish. So a lot of change in a short amount of time. And so I'm sure there will be the after of that, right? So what are we not thinking about, what are we sacrificing because we've had this sort of rapid shift into this remote environment? But for the good talent, I think it's going to be a game changer.

Tony Caldwell:

Well, I think it's going to be a game changer for agencies as well, because it means no longer do you have to plant really expensive physical flag in the marketplace to sell insurance in one place. And it means that you can go wherever you need to go looking for talent. I had a guest on just recently who has a virtual agency. And I think she's got five employees if I remember right and she's in three states and one country, other than the US with those people. Our business has employees in four states and five cities and it frankly just doesn't make any difference. It really doesn't.

So in fact, it's highly efficient with less wasted time from interruption. We've all lost study doing that. But I don't see a lot of agencies yet making long-term commitments to that kind of work. There's more of an attitude I think, over the last year or so that, "Okay, we're just holding place and waiting until COVID is over, so we can get back to normal." In your coaching practice, I know you talked to agency principals, I'm curious what you're hearing, what your conversations are like as people are struggling with this question. Where do you think that's going to end up?

Meg McKeen:

Yeah, it's coming up a lot. For me personally, as a licensed agent, I've met in person few of my clients, so they're all over the country. Most of them are like me, they're women who had careers doing other things and now are consulting back to that industry and so it's a pretty straightforward transaction, but when you create a niche like that, that isn't geographically focused, it does open up opportunities as long as you have the right mindset. To answer your question about agency principles, I'm saying this a little tongue in cheek, Tony, but when in our industry are we cutting edge, right? Like what about insurance is cutting edge?

So I do think it's going to be a look before we leap sort of approach. So think about technology, not insurance technology, but technology as a whole, and all sorts of other industries have been doing what we're sitting back, kind of biting our fingernails, wondering if it's going to work. They've been doing it for a long, long time and doing it successfully and so we're going to get there. It's going to be clumsy, like I said earlier, a little awkward and we're going to have to figure it out as we go.

But as we talked about, there's going to be a certain demand on the employee's standpoint that we figure it out because they just simply won't leave an established life, an established routine, in X city for your opportunity in Y city, not when we've got the technology available to us, not when we've got the infrastructure that makes it possible. So if you want someone to move their own geography, you're going to have to have a really compelling reason. They're looking at their employees, not necessarily as revenue generators, but as humans and as people who are worth the investment for however long they are there. And yeah, thanks for the opportunity to talk about it. I still, as an underwriter trainee 21 years ago, when I started out, never ever would have thought that this is where I could land, that I would be able to be in this place of combining my expertise, but also my passion and my beliefs with my work.

Tony Caldwell:

Well, this whole conversational topic is really interesting to me because I remember 20 some odd years ago being in a sales management seminar and we sat around the room, a bunch of us and we were asked the question of how much money do you have to have to get a producer through to validation? And I'm not sure anybody had really thought it through before and it was a lot of money. And it even seems now, thinking about it, a lot of money and that was a long time ago. The additional investment in training people correctly is fairly modest actually in comparison to that, but whether you're hiring somebody and just paying their salary for a period of time to see if they're going to ever validate or whether you've done that plus investing a lot of time and effort into them, it's expensive, which is one of the things that I think is among others, driving the consolidation inside the industry. Certainly bigger organizations can afford, for a variety of reasons, to provide that kind of training and support of people on a long-term basis.

On the other hand, it's the local, small, locally owned agency that's been the backbone of our industry for a really long time. And I personally am concerned that hollowing out is not good for our industry, and it's not good for our communities either in particular. I mean, because when you begin to make decisions in any industry on a decentralized basis, there's all kinds of problems that arise from that that aren't, and most of them are aren't very good.

So I'm hopeful that what will happen in fact, is that the competitive need to really train people properly will force even smaller agencies who are going to make that investment to do it right. We'll see if that works out. But one thing is for certain is that, is that Zoom and other distributed work technologies make it easier to find people that fit with your culture and your marketing efforts, all of the things that you're trying to do in your individual business, I should say. Is that how people find you? I mean, you're working with folks, I'm sure all over the country and they're finding you, I take it rather than the other way around.

Meg McKeen:

Yes. So I'm very active on LinkedIn. I highly recommend it to anyone who's listening to stop lurking and start showing up. There's a lot of business happening on LinkedIn. You mentioned the podcast that I host, and that's been a lovely way to share the stories of women in the industry, but it's also a business development tool. It's a great opportunity in that way as well. And a lot of word of mouth, right? So when you hang yourself out there in a way, and you speak candidly about what you do and the way that you do it, the people who you are for are going to know that you are for them and that creates a nice sort of a tidal wave from there. And so you mentioned that IBA Hot 100, I've been really fortunate to work with Insurance Business America on a couple of different panel discussions and in a variety of ways.

And that recognition came from a lot of those interactions within the industry and if you're playing small, if you're sitting on the sidelines waiting for people to call you, they're not going to know that you exist unless you create the pathways for them to find you. And this is a page from my coaching model, right? So how do you create visibility so that the right people are able to find you? So, yeah, lots of word of mouth. I mean, I've been at this far too long. A lot of people are out there supporting me and my very first client, I love the story. I went into his office and told him what I was up to. And he said, "Meg, if you were selling Tupperware, I'd buy it from you."

Tony Caldwell:

What do you think looks the same in five years and what looks different?

Meg McKeen:

So I love that question and I wish I had a crystal ball to tell you that I have it straight, but one of the things that I think is going to continue is our focus on technology. We've got to leverage these resources, invest in them to create the efficiencies that we can so that the human capital that we have, we can use in the most effective and efficient way. And what I hope looks different in the future is there's a lot of focus and a lot of overdue attention right now on diversity and inclusion and equity in the workplace. And I hope that the people, the humans that make up our business look different.

Tony Caldwell:

Well, I hope you're right too and I think what you've just said really echoes something that I say a lot, which is that when compassion and purpose meet, money shows up when you need it. So if you focus on passion and purpose, the economics really take care of themselves. And that's a difficult thing to take action on for many people, but I can tell you that it works. And so I think what I'm hearing in part is an agreement with that philosophy and you think maybe the future looks more and more like that and I hope you're right.

Meg McKeen:

Yeah. I mean, I, initially, fundamentally, my very first mentor in the business reminded me, "This is a people business." And I think the next five years show a nice resurgence on making sure that we're able to thrive in the workplace, whether it's remote or in person, whatever that looks like that we're being supported as human beings. It's really powerful and I'm excited to be here for it.

Tony Caldwell:

Well, thank you, Meg. Thanks so much for joining me today. It's been a great conversation and I've enjoyed it very much.

Meg McKeen:

Great. Thank you, Tony, so much.

Tony Caldwell:

You bet. I'm talking to independent agency owners about this all the time. If you'd like to have a more personalized conversation, click on the button or the link in the description and we'll make that happen. You can also reach out to me at Tonycaldwell.net/contact.