Stories That Move

Silveus Insurance | Cultivating Community and Growth

• DreamOn Studios • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Join us as we sit down with Scott, Erin, and Cameron —leaders at Silveus Insurance Group, navigating a transformative era as a fourth-generation family business. Discover how they steward a family legacy, advocate for American farmers, and share exciting news about the future of Silveus.

Hear firsthand their journey from a small crop hail insurance venture to a robust agricultural insurance powerhouse. Learn how they balance professional dedication with personal growth, ensuring their business transcends financial returns to make significant contributions to their community.

What does it take to keep a family business thriving through generations and strategic shifts? We dive into leadership transitions, the importance of hiring the right people, and the complexities of scaling a business. Whether you're interested in agriculture, insurance, or the blend of family legacy and business innovation, this episode is a must-listen.

Silveus Insurance Group
Website: https://silveuscropins.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/silveus-insurance-group
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silveusinsurancegroup/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SilveusInsuranceGroup

Speaker 1:

You know, everybody thinks their business is special and a unicorn and ours actually is. It's immensely complex and like we've cut a lot of one-off special arrangements over the last 20 years to help promote growth and ultimately you build something and create. You know wealth and business and progress and it's been an awesome career for us and I think with this deal, like we're starting a new chapter in it, but none of us are done by anyone else.

Speaker 3:

Hey everyone, welcome back to Stories that Move brought to you by DreamOn Studios. I'm Mason Geiger, CEO and co-founder here at DreamOn.

Speaker 4:

And I'm Matt Duhl, co-founder and executive producer, joining Mason today for a very special episode. We're excited to dive into a conversation that is both insightful, inspiring and, for the first time ever, a little breaking news-ish.

Speaker 3:

Yes, it is so. Today we are sitting down with Scott, Aaron and Cam from the Silvius Insurance Group, a company with a profound legacy in the insurance industry, based right here in Warsaw, Indiana.

Speaker 4:

Not only will we explore the rich history and core values that have shaped Silvius, but we'll also discuss some exciting news about the future of their business.

Speaker 3:

It's going to be a fantastic discussion, so let's get right into it. Here's our interview with Scott, Aaron and Cam.

Speaker 4:

Hey everybody, welcome back to Stories that Move brought to you by Dream On Studios. I'm Matt Duhl here with me, as always, good friend, business partner, mason Geiger. Mason, how are we doing today?

Speaker 3:

So good, so excited for today's conversation.

Speaker 4:

Absolutely, really, really exciting. We have a whole crew of people here today. I'm going to let you all introduce yourself. Cam, start us off.

Speaker 1:

My name's Cameron Silvius. I'm a managing general partner now. Yes, you are. I'm not an owner of Silvius Insurance Group, but spent most of my career owning and running my business with my siblings.

Speaker 2:

I'm Erin Westray. I am a sibling.

Speaker 4:

And you're happy to be here, right.

Speaker 2:

I am thrilled.

Speaker 5:

Scott Silvius, just like my siblings here managing general partner now at Silvius Insurance Group. But over the years we've worn lots of different hats. We've worn the CEO hat, cameron's, worn that hat and crop insurance agents. We do a lot of direct sales. Still continue doing a lot of that but our next chapter is, as a managing general, partners of Sylvia's Insurance Group.

Speaker 4:

Perfect Love it. So we're going to start to unpack that and get into that and some of the history.

Speaker 5:

But I mean just to kick it off. So for our local community, if you live in Kosciuszko County and you don't know what Sylvia's insurance does outside of the beautiful building, on Highway lives of every person we encounter while we help the American farmer and rancher manage risk, that's lived out on a daily basis by us formerly in ownership and by our leadership group and by every person that works there. So it's primarily done through crop insurance, every person that works there. So it's primarily done through crop insurance. That's been our main. I guess that's been our main profession back for generations now, whether it's doing hail insurance back many, many years ago or selling the federally subsidized crop insurance products that we've got today.

Speaker 4:

That's awesome. So my understanding is, you know, for the, the family farm farming's obviously changed a lot over the last number of years, right, and so seeing less and less family farms, some more corporate farms, some of what you all do is helping some of these family farms to stay in business. Is that fair?

Speaker 1:

yeah, I mean the um. The risk in agriculture, in modern agriculture today, is huge and we often we actually have to spend a lot of time in DC promoting this subsidized program to the I'd say, the non-rural representatives that exist in DC. We have a lot of support at the Senate because every senator's got a heavy amount of ag in their state. But with the House you've got a lot of support at the Senate because every senator's got a heavy amount of ag in their state. But with the House you've got a lot of urban representation. They don't understand agriculture and we have to go and explain. The insurance the majority of the insurance that American farmers benefit for risk management is they get. On average, about half their premiums are paid for with taxpayer funded government dollars and so there's a duty of explanation for that that our industry bears of. Why are we subsidizing American farmers? I mean, for the most part they're successful and they do well financially. I think I mean not without their struggles for sure. But the story we like to tell is that a family unit is not designed well to bear the financial risks that full-time production agriculture brings to the table for them. You know we have, you know, your average farm family lives in a. You know their upper middle class is probably their income levels. Uh, and nowadays it's, you know, 1500 to 2000 acre farmers is about what it. You know, for corn and soybeans there's all different kinds of crops. But you know, when you think of farming in america you think of row crops first. Uh, specialty crops aren't as visible because they don't cover as much ground. But you know, corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat, soybeans, cotton, wheat, grain, sorghum, rice. You know those are your big major row crop commodities that occupy about 250 million acres, I think in the US. I know we're about 80 million acres of corn, we're about 90 million acres of beans, and then wheat comes in there. So yeah, I mean added up, we're a little over 200 million acres and that then wheat comes in there. So yeah, I mean, added up, we're a little over 200 million acres, and that doesn't count rangeland and grasslands that feed cattle. You know that you're in the, you're easily in the hundreds of millions.

Speaker 1:

Um, so for farmers to sustain a living and support a family and send their kids off to school and hopefully, you know, live their piece of the American dream, they've, they've got to make a profit every year and the, the. The analogy I say is you know most of us the most, the biggest risk any of us ever take financially is to buy our home. That's the most expensive asset any of us will ever own, for the most part, and you know a typical rural farm home might be, you know might be worth four or 500 grand. You know I'm not a real estate agent but something like that. You know you've got a family and a couple of kids and you know that mortgage, that debt that sits on that we're all. We all know how that feels to make your mortgage payments. Well, that same family that has that mortgage on that little house, big house.

Speaker 5:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That that same family might go to, to their ag lender and borrow. You know, if they have a half a million dollar house, they might be borrowing one and a half or $2 million to basically invest into the soil in the hopes that the weather will cooperate, grow enough crop for them to harvest and then that markets will sustain themselves at a at a level where they can sell that commodity and make a profit. And you know we wrote, you know we run businesses and you know even you guys you guys have a video production and business here and you know you know what it's like to look at your P and L and watch your income, good months and bad months. You know for farmers they're going to have their volatility and income could change up or down 30% almost every year just on price. And then you have the volatility of weather that comes in and again their production the side that they produce and that they probably have the most control over still has, you know, easily 20% volatility up or down.

Speaker 1:

So you know you have families that are trying to sustain a business. I mean it's more than a business for most of our farmers, but that's the reality of it is. It does provide for their families, and so you know their P&L or you know their profit and loss for the year can vary wildly from year to year. So the government has the American government has decided that it's advantageous for our country that a big chunk of production, agriculture, is the hands of families, not corporations, and so crop insurance mitigates a lot of that risk, because we ensure both their price and their production, and it mitigates a lot of that risk to allow families to stay on the ground and keep producing food, fiber and fuel.

Speaker 4:

That's the saying, we say so you are a lifeline to these companies.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think we slow consolidation down for sure, and I'd say we're a really good mix of government help, government intervention, but private industry delivery. So we're actually a private company and the insurance companies we sell for are private companies, uh, but we have federal policies that are subsidized and rated by the government. It's like, uh, it's like if you bought auto insurance, still from your local agent, still through a private company, but the auto insurance policies designated where you can buy these select policies at these select rates. So the government has a has a hand in things, but the private. We have all the motivations of the private industry of profit and service and excellence. That, I think, makes our actual delivery system effective.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, so that makes crop insurance. It's, you know people. People say, well, what is that? What does crop insurance? It's not a welfare program. Most years most farmers write a check, um, you know, and those checks are going to total, you know, I think, with the, with the premium and subsidy it's, it's uh, the imputed premium is going to be somewhere around 16 billion I think this year. Um, and that's just for the, the row crop, uh portion. You've also got uh, livestock and other things that are growing. But it's a, it's a really great program. It's the envy of the world. Other countries study, reach out to us and say, hey, help us, how can we do a program like this? And it's been a great program for many, many decades. So it works. The farmers love it and we've been blessed to just be a part of that and being on the delivery system side to help farmers pick the right programs, the right companies at the right time.

Speaker 3:

Wow, that's awesome. I love all that. It's just cool to understand. I think, so many people they don't realize, like farmers, the whole idea of like the mortgage on your house If it's like to plant a field's like yeah, you don't just.

Speaker 3:

I mean, there's a lot that goes into that and you're putting a lot at stake a lot at risk every year whenever you do that, and so to be able to yeah everything that goes into making that happen. Um, so you guys started to mention on the front end some new titles, yeah, and so we've heard some like maybe some murmurings and stuff in the community. Can you guys? Yeah tell us about some exciting announcements that are coming out of Silvius.

Speaker 5:

Yes, let's see.

Speaker 5:

So, after many decades and generations and a very long process of trying to determine how do we take Silvius Insurance Group into the future, you know we have a lot of employees, a lot of insurance agents, a lot of customers and it's really important to us to really steward this business well. So we've looked at a lot of things over the years. You know we are a fourth generation to be selling crop insurance so we very much value that. We've got a lot of family in our business insurance agents, employees and other folks that are working in the business. So we made the decision to look for an acquirer. It was a very deliberate decision. That's taken many years, but a really strong focus over the last couple few years. Yeah, and we found a great partner, a fantastic company to be acquired by.

Speaker 5:

So we, on the 30th of uh last month, we were acquired by risk strategies, which is a very large private insurance company and it is a um, um going to be a really great family to be a part of.

Speaker 5:

They like to say that a lot and that was part. That was the reason that we made that decision. Um, and the biggest, the biggest word that we looked for as we pushed through this whole thing was culture. Yeah, um, we have a great culture at our company. We don't want to lose that that. So we wanted to find an acquirer that was a respecter of cultures and risk strategies would say hey, we are a company that looks for companies that are already successful, already have successful cultures, and we want to make sure that we don't fix things that aren't broken. We want to make sure that we are as hands off on your culture as we can be, because that's what makes Sylvia's insurance group Sylvia's insurance group. So that was probably the biggest single thing that we looked at when we were talking to an acquirer and we were able to find just that.

Speaker 3:

That's exciting.

Speaker 4:

That's really exciting, yeah, really exciting.

Speaker 5:

Even Aaron likes them. Aaron's our skeptic, aaron's our uh uh break pedal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so how did how?

Speaker 4:

did you know, aaron? When did you know like these are our people?

Speaker 2:

Uh, the first time we met in person in Chicago in. Chicago. Um, I think you get a lot of song and dance with some companies and they just seemed very real and open and transparent and down to earth, which is how we've always functioned. Um, it just immediately felt right.

Speaker 1:

Their, uh, their charitable giving policy was, um, uncannily similar to ours. Um, like it was. It was like it was a clone of what we try to do with employees and promoting you can give your, like it was a clone of what we try to do with employees. In promoting you can give your time or your treasure to something and the company will match that. With some people, they give time and we match with donations. In some cases, they donate and then we match the donation. It seems like we do a lot of donating. We do, but the company can't give time.

Speaker 1:

I guess, yeah, but they had a way of doing that, promoting it with their employees. That matched us I almost identically, and it was us kind of looking at each other in the first meeting. It was kind of, it was a, it was a sign that we might have found someone early on with them. And then it turns out um, they have been. They were extremely authentic and represented themselves accurately to us as Because, when you go through a deal like this, everybody thinks their business is special and a unicorn, and ours actually is. It's immensely complex and we've cut a lot of one-off special arrangements over the last 20 years to help promote growth at the expense of management. Sorry.

Speaker 2:

Aaron.

Speaker 1:

But to unwind a business like ours and to get it into a deal, there's a lot of work that goes in by a lot of people, and so you know, we had hundreds of hours with Risk Strategies folks and their executive team and their M&A team and their retail team, and just when you spend that kind of time with someone, you know the big risk is, you know this is the courting phase, you know, are we getting their best foot forward?

Speaker 1:

And things change after the deal and to some extent that risk is never a hundred percent gone.

Speaker 1:

But man, we had, you know, so many issues came up that could have gone.

Speaker 1:

You know, against us or for us, or, and it seems like over and over and over, they made good, ethical, fair decisions, one after another after another there, and you know, some of the stuff you're dealing with has big price tags on it. When you're dealing with a transaction like this, sure, and they just they show themselves to be true to their word and um, their word is that they care about the people in our business more than they care about the profit of our business, and we, to the best of our abilities, have tried to live out that method in in the marketplace, where you take care of people first because, like, the thing that people don't know is if you really do that, that actually is what's best for business is like, if you really genuinely care for people and try to do what's right, that that reputation precedes you in the marketplace and people want to work with you yeah um, and it works with our agents and their farmers, it works with us and our employees.

Speaker 1:

It's just, it's a method, it's. It's nice because you know we're at a place in, in, in, in business and agriculture that so often you run into situations where everybody wins, like it's not a zero sum. You know you give a little, someone else gives a little and ultimately you build something and create. You know wealth and business and progress and it's been an awesome career for us and I think with this deal, like we're starting a new chapter in it but none of us are done by any means yeah, awesome.

Speaker 4:

So we had the privilege of getting to hear your internal meeting, your announcement to your people when, um, when the risk strategies folks came and and announced Um. So a couple of things that stood out to me and, and two things you both touched on, one just seemed like the most down to earth people, right Like you think venture capital, you think investment, you think stiff, you think super panel where they sat in front.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and it was just. I was struck by just how kind and just normal they felt. So so I see that and heard over and over again the culture piece and their passion for their culture, your culture, the, the, the meshing of that. Um, I think one of the other pieces that stood out to me was there are massive insurance group, like you said, but but you all are their first kind of dipping their toes into the ag side of things.

Speaker 4:

Right, and so you all are kind of the flagship for them in the agriculture side. Is that fair?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and not not in, not in any vain sense, but like the name Sylvia's insurance group, it matters to us. It's been part. You know it's our family name but we feel like it's a good name in agriculture and you know it would be. It would not a tragedy, it'd be unfortunate if that, if we did something that made that go away. And one of the things they wanted to do from the start with us was they wanted to promote the brand that we built as the brand we built it in ag and they you know I'm there'll be a slight slight you know we'll be sylvia's insurance group, a risk strategies company. Well, they're definitely, you know, going to be tagged in there. But, uh, they want to build their entire agricultural risk management base off of, uh, our agency, off of our company. Um, so that'll include, you know, financial hedging and management for farmers. It'll include. You know we've dabbled in the property casualty market, commercial farm policy stuff. We were really bad at it. Yeah, we weren't any good at it.

Speaker 5:

That's the main insurance sold in the country. Yeah, yeah, there's probably more of that than there is crop insurance would be my guess that's a larger market itself.

Speaker 1:

They want to get into that market but leverage our brand and our name and our goodwill within agriculture to launch that. So they have big plans for us and our company and the brand and that's going to be fun to see what we can do together with them, because we've been doing it on our own so long. It's going to be interesting to see what we get some actual people with a little more gas in their tank than what we have.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yeah, excellent, okay, so we're going to get more into just some of what this means and some of the future pieces, but we want to rewind just a little bit. We want to take a look at history, because there's a rich history here. You all's great grandfather started this in 1940. So, scott, tell us about the early days, some of the history, and then I want to hear from you all how you entered into the business.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, so our family history goes back to just selling crop hail insurance. So this is before the government ventured into the subsidized crop insurance world. So going back, I mean you can actually go back into the early 1900s and even a little bit before that, there were some companies that were doing hail insurance, but it it wasn't done in this part of the world until about 1940 when, um, our great-grandfather, which was grover sims, this would be our grandma's dad uh, went to farmers mutual hailale and brought the hail insurance concept back here. And this was a group effort. This was family members, friends, kind of like what we're doing today, a little bit. But they would actually go out and just drive the country roads, knock on doors, you know.

Speaker 1:

you go to areas that had maybe seen some bad hail in in you know years past, or it was crop insurance ambulance yeah, a little bit, a little bit of angus chasing go to the county where the storm hit the day before, but it was a brand new thing.

Speaker 5:

This was very innovative. This was uh, this was something wasn't done before and it certainly wasn't done full time, and that's something we've learned over the years is this was a part-time thing that school teachers did, or or?

Speaker 5:

you know, somebody did that had seasonal work, but uh, they were really that. That group was really the first that started developing it into a full-time career. Um, and so then you know, his daughter and her husband, our grandma and grandpa, started doing hail insurance. Um, uh, there, started doing that as well. And then, um, our father came in in 63, I think was the year um started doing crop insurance and then I started in 89 after the 88 drought. He's old, um, but you know, it was really kind of a one-person show, although we had friends and people that kind of work together. They had territories back then, areas where they would work, but when I came in we had a couple of office people, my dad. We had a couple other salesmen that came into the mix back then, but it was, it was pretty much just my dad and some office help. So it really hadn't grown very much until we got into like the 1990s and 2000. That's when we really started to see a lot of growth.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, about when I came in, about when you came in.

Speaker 4:

So Scott, for you back in 1989, when you started, what did you see there that kind of drew you in, because I mean, obviously you've been at this for a long time, so what was the piece that just said, yeah, what did you see there that kind of drew you in, cause I mean, obviously you've been at this for a long time, so so what was the? Piece that just said yeah yeah, this is me.

Speaker 5:

Well, I I didn't know that this was what I wanted to do, but I started working in the summers, um, selling hail insurance. Um, and I really loved it. I loved farmers, um, farmers are a different kind of people, um, obviously, it's just like you think. I mean very down to earth, very honest people, very laid back people, people that become friends and family to you. They. It's not uncommon to sit and have a meal at the house.

Speaker 5:

It was just a really really good quality of life working with farmers, and we found that we could actually make a difference as the years went on, because not everybody did everything the same and there were starting to develop an array of products and it was starting to become complex. My dad had always invested in software over the years. He's always tried to grow with multiple companies that would bring different options, and that was something that we really worked on over the years is trying to give good analysis, good service and good products, and we excelled in those three areas. Not just things that we did, but the people that we brought into this business, because Silvius Insurance Group is not just the Silvius family, it's a couple hundred people that are just really good, people Like we. We love the people that work for us and they really are who we are. So if you see that great things in the community and things like that, it's it's the folks that we have working for us.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, love that.

Speaker 5:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Love that Awesome.

Speaker 3:

So then, Scott coming out of so, you joined at 89. You were working, Yep. When did you guys you know, Aaron, Cam when did you guys start to come into the business?

Speaker 1:

I was about to graduate from IU. Okay, barely. I think our father was not super excited to bring me into the business. Scott, I think, pushed on dad to bring me into the business.

Speaker 1:

And he was right like I was a undisciplined adrenaline junkie when I was 21 years old. Scott, though, wanted me to come in and convince. You know, him and dad sat down for some reason I remember it at a pizza hut, but I don't know if that's right, but I remember they sat down and the line was like you can still. I was, I was doing health administration. I was probably looking around Indy to do something in healthcare, and they basically said come back and give the family business a shot, won't cost you anything, do it for a year. If you don't like it, go do something else. And you know, insurance sales was not high on my list of aspiring careers to enter into, especially in agriculture. You're a 21-year-old kid. You don't want to go into ag. I mean, unless you're an ag kid, which I wasn't it wasn't quite the adrenaline rush you were looking for.

Speaker 1:

No no, it wasn't. But I said, sure, I'll come back. I actually moved into dad's basement, left IU in December, moved into dad's basement, rode around with dad for about three weeks and Scott um, and kind of got the lay of the land. And it was fun because at the time uh right, I entered at a good at a good time for someone new to enter, and that was there was a an ag econ professor, dr Jerry skis, out of the university of Kentucky. He had developed this new concept for the federal government and submitted it through RMA and got approval of a new way to insure. And it was like, up until this point my dad would say you know, yeah, our career was pretty boring. It was we sold these policies that didn't come into effect for farmers, but maybe once every five or six, seven years. It was just they were very, very cheap, they guaranteed low levels of production and didn't really come into play that often.

Speaker 1:

And then this new concept came out that was called GRP and it was an index-based policy that didn't insure the farmer's yield but insured Kosciuszko County's yield. So it insured instead of at that time you were limited to buy 75 percent guarantee on your farm you could guarantee 75 percent of your average corn yield, bean yield, wheat yield, whatever these county plans came in and you could do 90 percent of the county yield and the industry and it was. It was kind of gimmicky in a sense. It was this, it was them kind of. It was like a more like a disaster program than a crop insurance policy. But fortunately for us, like the, the crop insurance industry and most of our competition and agents looked at this policy and go you're, that's just gambling, like that doesn't insure your farm. Why would you gamble on the county? And so it really got ignored and so we were just coming in, we were just latching onto this policy and did a little research on it, realized it was better in the most cases.

Speaker 1:

So I come out of college we're just starting to promote this new risk management program called GRP and we're out basically educating farmers on it. And I didn't want to do it until my first sales call by myself. I got in the kitchen. It was a Yoder family, but not the Yoders that do the popcorn, but it was in Napanee and I remember I sat down in the kitchen with the farmer and his wife and I got so nervous in the meeting I got cotton mouth so bad I couldn't talk. And at one point the farmer's wife leans over and goes, honey, can I get you a drink of water? And I'm like, yeah, can I have a drink of water please? But at the end of that meeting they bought crop insurance from me and I'm driving home going holy cow.

Speaker 1:

I just sold a policy and there was a rush from that and then, really quickly, we were uniquely, we were uniquely able to go out and and instead of selling something to people because of the way the market was set up at that time, it was, if I can properly educate this next customer with what I know, they're gonna buy from me. So it just it was a really amazing time where you would go out, you would, you would teach the farmer this secret that you knew, that nobody else knew about, and when you taught it properly, they would buy, do business with you. So it wasn't like this typical sales relationship. You know it's not like selling vacuums door to door. It was I have something that's good for you. It'll work better for you, let me show it to you. And oh, by the way, your neighbors don't know about it.

Speaker 1:

And and so we really exploded in those next few years. Um, because the industry kind of ignored what we were doing and it, and it's what built us up. It's that that program is what broke the mold for us as a family Cause. In agriculture crop insurance was almost sold County by County. You had an agent in that county and he sold crop insurance in that county. That grp program got us driving to michigan and illinois and ohio and southern indiana. It like it broadened our geography because we knew if we'd go, the more farmers we found, the more farmers we'd educate and then they'd be our customer.

Speaker 5:

And it like I mean I don't know what the closing ratios were in those days, but I mean you'd, you'd acquired 60, 70 percent of the people you'd meet with would end up switching to you in those days and it was just exciting we did a lot of uh, historical analysis, because you've got a lot of data that you can go back over the years with prices and yields and so when you you're able to go out and say, hey, I think this insurance product would have worked the best for you historically, that's a big piece of it and there weren't a lot of people doing that at the time, which really is what got us into the software and we were doing things by hand.

Speaker 5:

Even back then. I remember I wrote a major agricultural university. I got their crop insurance because I did an analysis of three different kinds of insurance products but I did it on a typewriter and I used highlighters and I mean it was it's. It's really strange to think back to that. And now a lot of this stuff is just all automated and we look at things that are going to help the family farm stay profitable using a profitability analysis. So there's a lot of forward looking and backward looking analysis that we kind of roughed out over the years and learned how to analyze and illustrate, get into the analytics of it.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, and that really started to grow a lot of the folks that we had in house that were doing software for us and really gave us an advantage which helped the customer pick the right product. So when the bad year hits, they're good to go Awesome.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, the customer pick the right product. So when the bad year hits, they're good to go. Awesome, yeah. So before we move on, as you talk about riding around, I heard you tell a story about your dad's van the. Explorer van Tell us about that experience.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, dad, he, he literally had a. He had an Explorer van converted. I don't know if it was custom just for him or if they did this van, but he had an explorer van converted where he had two captain's chairs put in the back with a little table in between, and he had a monitor set up that the grower could look at. I mean, and this was probably, this was 1997, 90, 96, 97. Yeah, and dad had a laptop laptop computer plugged into a monitor in his van, so that not a flat screen monitor.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he could see his screen and the farmer could see the same visual in the back of the explorer van and he had uh, you know, he had this hard plastic covering the back of the van.

Speaker 5:

He's like yeah, that's for the hog farmers I got plastic on the van I still have farmers in in some in illinois that reminded me about that, that still remember. They still remember the van. Yeah, that was fun.

Speaker 1:

I never got the van. I did do the dual monitors but, nowadays they fit in your, in your bag.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, yeah, all right, aaron.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, tell us how you started.

Speaker 4:

I know you jumped in around high school initially, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would come just work in summers. I would file paperwork and answer phones and get some running around money. I came in accidentally. The only thing I knew going into college was I absolutely was not going to work at the agency. That was the only definitive in my life. Met my now husband in college. We were kind of in limbo right after we graduated so I decided, hey, I'll come home, do this for a little bit till we figure things out, and then we'll peace out of Indiana and go someplace a little bit more fun. Um, through a course of internal business stuff going on, through a course of internal business stuff going on, I ended up getting the financials dumped on me and I've been there ever since.

Speaker 1:

Erin has been acting CFO without the title for the last six or seven years.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, A lot of the things we do strategically. If it involves a dollar sign, erin has it in her head and in her computer screen, so you can imagine going through this sale process. Her face has been glued to a couple of screens for about four inches away for about the better part of five months now and it's been quite an ordeal. But we couldn't have gotten through that without her and without her expertise with the financials. Director of Finance has been her title, but yeah, she's functioned as the CFO basically.

Speaker 4:

So tell us, coming out of school, how qualified did you feel? For this financial role.

Speaker 2:

I did really good in my college finance classes, and by really good I barely passed.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing Because it's your life.

Speaker 2:

Now, I didn't care about it, Like I was never, ever going to use this information in my life. So it was like, oh, I need to pass this class.

Speaker 5:

She read the manual for the QuickBooks software, and so that made her the most qualified to handle and do things. So what year did you come in, erin?

Speaker 2:

2006.

Speaker 5:

Oh, six Okay.

Speaker 2:

And I tried sales and very quickly figured out that was not going to be my jam.

Speaker 5:

You came in how many years before that, cameron, 97., 97. When did Tyler come in? He was.

Speaker 2:

He dropped out of college? Yeah, he started early.

Speaker 1:

Software 99. 99. 99, maybe for Tyler yeah.

Speaker 5:

So Tyler did a lot of insurance sales with us back then as well and ran and CEOed the company for a number of years in between. There too.

Speaker 1:

So we've all had that title. Baton went from Tyler to me. To you, yes, yes.

Speaker 4:

That's awesome. So, as you, aaron's turn next. Yeah, yeah, are you up next? No Risk strategies they love her.

Speaker 5:

They love her. They love her, yeah, yeah, she's, she's very capable. I'm going to clock all my PTO through her.

Speaker 2:

That's okay. You don't even know how to log your PTO. No, I don't, and I vow to never learn.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing.

Speaker 4:

So, Aaron, I want to ask you before we move on, so for for you to come in saying hey, I barely passed these classes. I tried my hand at sales Definitely not my jam. What was it that just started to ignite in you in this financial piece?

Speaker 2:

I don't know. That's a good question. Um, there's definitely a big part to coming home and, like I had nieces who were what? Probably three at the time that I moved back home, two or three being background family recognizing that like that's it's not so bad. I mean, it's easy to get, you know, starry-eyed of other places when you're younger and you don't always appreciate what's here in this community and the people and the company. And I think the more involved I got because I'd filed papers and answered phones like that was not like, oh, this is amazing and I want to do this forever. So I think the more involved I got on the management side and involved with our people and just kind of opened my eyes to what really was special about the company and you know our community and where we live and decided this was where I wanted to raise my family and invest my time in.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 2:

And finances are fun. They make sense. It's like one plus one is two. There's not a lot of emotion that has to go into them.

Speaker 3:

But I will say I've heard you talk about like the emotional care that you have for people and your heart for people. I know that you guys have, like your, your three returns. So it's financial, culture and spiritual, correct. Yes. And so it's like finance is number one because, you know, if you're not financially strong, you can't take care of the families who are involved.

Speaker 1:

It is number one in order. It is least in significance but without it you don't get to pursue the other two.

Speaker 5:

Yeah well, give us a little moment of silence for steve long break.

Speaker 2:

You have that in here he's not dead, he's still alive, just in recognition of his contribution.

Speaker 1:

Yes, uh you talk about like we we a lot of times we say god, drive god. Seems. When you look back over the last 25 years it's it's like God dropped just the right person at just the right time into our business over and over and over Like there's too many people that you can think of to name them all and one of them was Steve Longbreak, and I would say we had, um dad, helped model doing business, I think in a good, fair, ethical, like try to say loving manner for us, and I think we learned some from him in the marketplace. But then so, and there were things that we instinctually tried to do in the market because of our faith. Steve came into our business. You want to guess a year? Probably 15, 14, something like that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Probably around 2014 or 15. Steve put intentionality and a definition to the way that we wanted to do business and you know he helped champion and create our three returns philosophy, which is we have financial returns that are first in order because they're absolutely necessary, but they're least in significance, you don't value them so much. And then you have cultural returns, which is contributing to the communities that you work in, the communities that support your business, so agriculture, our farmers, our employees here and their satellite places. And then the last one is spiritual returns, which on that we say you can only control your inputs, you don't measure the outputs. Um, you know, spiritual returns are um changing people's lives and helping them realize that they're created by God and have infinite value, no matter what.

Speaker 5:

It's the eternal things.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, the spiritual returns are the things at the end of your career you'll think back as to like, wow, those are the things that mattered, you know, yeah, the cultural stuff's great and it's fun to be part of good, healthy things in the community and it's fun to promote a culture of your employees that they enjoy. And I feel like doing that. When you have this culture of grace and excellence and fun, it opens the door to have the inputs on the spiritual side to change people. And I'm saying that like I've done a ton of it.

Speaker 2:

Some people are afraid of me sometimes until they know me, I think, because you yell at them on their first day.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but I would say the people in our company doesn't do it either. But the people in our company doesn't do it either. But the people in our company have done that and, I think, done a really good job of living it out, which is why I mean, to some extent, this announcement of our sale freaked some people out, like I would say. You know, especially initially, like the day we announced it, it was not good news to our employees. But that just speaks to how much they loved the place they worked for and don't want it to change from what it is. And that's where we felt, we felt a real burden of we got to get this one right. We, we want to hand this thing off to someone that respects and appreciates the way we do things and and the nice thing is for us too, we still get to do exactly what we've always done. So you know the change will be minimal but ultimately that handoff is for the long-term, it's not just for the next, you know, five, six, seven years.

Speaker 5:

That's really important. You know, we've been a part of investing in various businesses and things over the years and sometimes those businesses move on or we move on from them, and we've had instances where things have fallen apart. Gosh, you know, we should have kept going the way we were going and still own those businesses, but this is different because it's still going to be the same people. It's still going to be doing the same things we're doing. We're working the same insurance carriers and we were critical to risk strategies. They weren't going to do this without us. They bought us. They think we're critical, but that and our message back to them is thank you for being a respecter of cultures, because here is our culture and these are the pillars of our culture, which is speak truth and do what's right, cultivate a culture of creativity and innovation, show grace and live generously and build meaningful relationships.

Speaker 5:

And that's something that we didn't come up with, that Our leaders came up with that alongside of us, and that is what we want to continue within this business. Well, that's the difference.

Speaker 1:

well, it's fun about going through those pillars that Scott named and we. We went through a process to figure out what those were and it was. I loved the process because they weren't aspirational when we came up with those four pillars of the business. It wasn't a process of what do you want to be. It was take a look at what's caused your business to be successful to this point.

Speaker 4:

Who are you yeah?

Speaker 1:

Who are you actually not, who are you aspiring to be, and so those were the things that we figured out Like. Those are the pillars that helped our business grow and thrive over the last 25 years.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, as you've explained it to me before, the products that are out there are essentially the same. So when you talk about your competitors, other carriers are out there. They're selling the same thing that you're selling. This culture piece that you're talking about is the differentiator right. Your software some of the deeper analytics To a big degree. Yeah.

Speaker 5:

To a big degree that many of the federal products are the same price and same rate.

Speaker 5:

And we compete on service analysis. But then there's the innovation part that we talked about. We have helped develop private, private products, some things that help fill a gap, meet a need with farmers. Um, sometimes we create those, sometimes we partner with the insurance companies that have created those. That does set us apart as well. So it's it's not a completely um benign environment. There are some unique um products and aspects that and we want to make sure our customers get those. But for the most part crop insurance is subsidized, regulated and the rates and formulas and things are fairly similar. But it's a growing market. It's really growing a lot and there's a huge tent with lots of different specialty crops growing a lot. And there's a huge tent with lots of different specialty crops, products in the livestock world, products that are based on federal schedule f tax returns. I mean there's a huge, huge tent. It used to be just a couple of products. Today it's it's dozens and dozens of products and hundreds of crops yeah, there's the, the option.

Speaker 1:

Our, our industry is beautifully complex. Because the complexity is awesome, because the more complex it is, the more opportunity you have to be better than the next guy. Because if you can simplify and sort through the complexity and teach your customers well, then you, you win out in the end. But like the like the data you know everybody says, oh, we, we serve our companies. About service, like we're going to service our customer well, and you think about a lot of insurance. It's like, well, what are you, what are you servicing? How much work is there?

Speaker 1:

And in the case of agricultural risk management, the data transfer between the farmer and his crop insurance agent is massive. Crop insurance agent is massive. I mean you know they're dealing with in some cases, you know large farmers are dealing with hundreds of farms Could be you know five, six, seven, eight crops. We're measuring planting dates on every acre. They plant production values on every field. They harvest And's like you know there's, there's paperwork for a large farmer that is the size of I'll date myself here.

Speaker 1:

You know a phone book which we don't have anymore, that's right. But um, so the data transfer there is immense and there's automatic ways to do it. There's old legal pad ways to do it, depending on your customer, and so the opportunity to actually elevate service in our industry is huge. Like you can do a lot of work for your customers as their crop insurance agent or you know, you can do it excellently or poorly, and so we really try to teach our guys to do you know and then just the risk management decision before. All the data is required is you know there's hundreds of different ways a farmer can start to offset his risk with crop insurance literally hundreds, because there's a dozen different crop insurance policies and every policy can be bought from 50 to 95 with different options.

Speaker 5:

yeah, different levels different and you got different decisions on different counties and it's a combination lock of how do I best protect myself and manage this risk, and so it used to be that way.

Speaker 1:

What we tell our guys is you're better equipped to do the best job for your customer with Sylvia's than any agent in the country. Because we got into the software writing business dad got into that. In like 96 or 97 we started building our own quoting software and quoting software turned into risk management software, turned into financial analysis software and you know now we're projecting uh, you know value at risk financial matrices for our guys, you know, for next, for the following year, and we're doing historical analysis. And you know there's a local company, winona IT, that was founded just by. It was actually Michael Paul's idea to spin out our technology department into a private company because they were so good at what they were doing for us. We're like there's a need in the community for what Michael does, um, and uh, you know that's a whole another. We can do another podcast.

Speaker 4:

We have a Michael Paul podcast. Everybody go watch the Michael Paul podcast.

Speaker 1:

Uh but no, they uh the the complexity is so much fun because it gives so much opportunity to be excellent. Uh, and you know Michael's got a team of around 30 people that just build and maintain our current risk management software for the business. So you know it's a big lift and it makes things a lot of fun for us.

Speaker 2:

But our agents are excellent.

Speaker 1:

I think Scott talked about you.

Speaker 2:

Like in the early days it was a part-time gig, they were doing it for two months. How good are you going to be at your job if you're doing it for two months out of the year and you're not paying attention to it the rest of the year? And I think even in the industry today it's still pretty fragmented where someone's primarily PNC and yeah, I'll do your crop insurance if you want me to. For the majority of them, this is all our agent force does and they care about the customer. They are highly educated, they know what they're doing, they know what they're talking about and they're top notch at their jobs.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And the opportunity for moral hazard, where I can walk in the door as a crop insurance agent and I could set up your risk management, where I make X in commissions or I could convince you to do things where I make four X, like there's a huge outcome variation, and so there that moral hazard is. Do you want to do what's right and good for your customer or do you want to do what's right and good for you? Uh, it's beautiful when those two things align, but when they you know they don't always align. Are you going to do what's right for your farmer? Um, and you know we, you know we joke that we tell them. You know, the best way to convince your customers that you care about them is to actually care about them. Like, and if you don't fake it until you do, um, and it works, it really does work. If you go in and you blindly put yourself, you take all the knowledge you have about crop insurance and our guys have a lot of knowledge. We train them. There's a ton of training.

Speaker 3:

We educate them. That's right.

Speaker 1:

We don't train, but you put yourself in their seat and what would I do in their seat, knowing everything I know? And then you try to teach them that what you would do in their seat is probably what's best for them and that's what they should do, and that's what I think our guys are really good at. And then what we do is we equip them with a technological, a technological platform that makes them better at it than everyone else. Yeah, it's, it's. It's fun to be equipped to be the best.

Speaker 3:

Love that. I want to go back a little bit here because so fourth generation, first three, is fairly small kind of like mom and pop shop yes, one man show you guys have come in. Yeah, it is scaled exponentially. Yes, what has it been like through that growth and kind of coming in and figuring it out, kind of, as you go in this whole new market, you're innovating, you're chaotic, you're training and all these things. And what are some of those?

Speaker 5:

a lot of mistakes, yeah you're gonna hear the humble side from us here, because we've Cameron's right. I mean we there's. There's a lot of times that you know when you have large amounts of exponential growth over the years, it exposes how much you're really just feeling your way along and learning. There's just a lot we don't know, and that's where we've had to hire people. You know, in the world of finance and HR and IT technology, we've had to go find the people that know what they're doing, because all we've ever known how to do is sell crop insurance, and so it's been a real struggle for us as we've grown through that over the years.

Speaker 1:

I'd say Erin's a little different in that she actually has talent for management and precision. But for a lot of years Scott and I and Tyler- drove the business.

Speaker 1:

We pushed it and drove it for a lot of years and what we were really good at is identifying strategic opportunities and then going after them at all costs, all costs. But what happens is that's great when there's six people and you can double the company year over year. When you get to where you have 150 people or 200 people the talents that we had to grow the business. You know, if it was just us and if God hadn't put the right people in the business and put people like Aaron that care about precision and budgets and management I said the caution. Without that we would you know, ifott and I were left alone to run a business, it would grow up to be something really cool and awesome and then everybody would get frustrated and things wouldn't happen right and people would leave yes, everyone would quit.

Speaker 1:

Everyone would quit. If I ran a business by myself, yes, it would be a really cool little rise and then it would crumble, yeah and but like and that's what we were were good at at strategically seeing what our market needed and then chasing after that.

Speaker 2:

It was easy to do when the risk was small.

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Like if you failed, the impact was was minimal. Yeah, it was kind of contained within us and we grew so much.

Speaker 1:

Okay, we screwed that up, but you know top line grew enough within us. And we grew so much. Okay, we screwed that up, but you know top line grew enough. We could afford to mess that up that year. And so you made mistake after mistake, but like you also had enough wins that your mistakes didn't matter. And then what happens is you get to the size that we've gotten in the last few years. All of a sudden, it's way more expensive to make mistakes you know one of the people like me become way less valuable.

Speaker 5:

So one of the biggest, I would say, milestones would be our brother from another mother, craig Snow, owner of Sylvie's Insurance Group, with us and he came in at a time when we really needed him, when we really needed that structure, when we needed that strategic voice in there.

Speaker 1:

Well, what were we? 30 or 40 people in the company at that time. Yeah, it was Agents and employees.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and dad was running HR.

Speaker 5:

Yes, our father was running HR, yeah so you know he was dad, was very big about the family and the family running the business, and in a very short amount of time he got to be to the point where he said, well, what does Craig think? And that really spoke well of who he was and how much he means to us as an owner, fellow former owner, and you know he was brought into ownership in the business because he provided a value and a leadership that we needed at the right time.

Speaker 4:

Structure.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 5:

Structure. Craig was about structure and he brought that structure to our business.

Speaker 3:

Which Craig? Whenever he first came in, he was sales right. Yes, yeah, he came in through. Yeah.

Speaker 5:

We can do a podcast on his sales. He actually did pretty good he just, it just wasn't his thing, Craig likes to say he was a terrible salesman.

Speaker 1:

He was successful. He just hated every minute of being successful.

Speaker 5:

But I think a big piece of the success and we've talked about that CEO role that we've all had. If you walked in there on any given day, you might struggle to find out who that leader is, because Aaron Tyler, cameron Craig and I we have all deferred to one another.

Speaker 5:

We all respect one another, and that has has been. I think, the biggest key ingredient is we have had a harmonious ownership group over the years that cares about the other person and puts their needs ahead of ours, and it's been a really, really great thing. Not that we don't butt heads every once in a while, but, uh, we, we leave it at the end of the day. Honestly, though, we almost never.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I wouldn't even go as far as say we really butt heads, we disagree. Yeah, yeah, um, we leave it at the end of the day. Honestly, though, we almost never. I mean, I wouldn't even go as far as say we really butt heads, we disagree. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, for me it's been a really my my career is one of the healthiest things that ever happened to me personally, because I go somewhere and I submit to my siblings and what their views are. Yeah, you know, I, I get to practice submission at work.

Speaker 1:

I mean now I'll fight for what I want and think what I say is right, but like when we, when we disagree, sometimes Scott's right, sometimes Aaron's right, most of the time Aaron's right. And every now and then I'm right and but like it's, it's been a, it's been a really healthy career for me, because I get to be wrong and I get to submit to people at work and it works for me personally.

Speaker 5:

As Steve Longbreak has taught us, we need to strive to be great leaders, but we also need to strive to be great followers. And we don't put enough emphasis on followership, and I think that's something that's really, really important.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, no, that's amazing. No, I love this and I think, for the entrepreneurs out here listening to this, there can be this stress of when you go to start a business, you have to have all these things figured out Right, and we can say to this you know, we're three years into our journey here at Dream On, I've just all the pieces of just so many things of do the right thing, surround yourself with good people, treat people well, clients and employees, and there's a whole lot of these other details that you'll figure out along the way, and please don't take advice from us.

Speaker 1:

We are, I feel, like our business. I feel like we've cheated the whole time, because we the the amount of mistakes we've made and the the the wrong paths we went down and had to turn around and go back. We shouldn't have made it. We were in this wonderful thing called crop insurance, though that just gave us um, we were able to grow, we were just able to outgrow all of that um, we could probably do a podcast with you guys.

Speaker 5:

That would just be. Here's this impending disaster that was upon us we prayed about it and god worked it out. Yeah, and I've got a list that is ginormous of those kind of things. Um, and then you know, the list of all the actual disasters that did hit us is pretty short. Um, yeah, we talk about, you know, talk about prayerfully walking through the decision to sell the business, and we ask God please open the doors and close the doors. And he closed some pretty hard.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, some we thought we might walk through.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, and he's opened some very wide, very obvious to us, and that path was just laid out. But I feel like we are reaping a harvest of many, many people praying over many, many years and it's led us to where we are right now.

Speaker 4:

So so, with that where you are right now, why now? Why this decision now? You mentioned there were some other opportunities along the way and we've yeah we've looked at all those different.

Speaker 5:

You know transition of your business. You know the business has grown, outgrown us. We need structure, we need to continue to invest in that structure. Recruiting, hr, all the things that a business. As you go to these next phases, you need to say, hey, we need. We need more than what we have now.

Speaker 1:

We want to be, we want to continue to grow, we think we might, yeah, like it was enough of a risk yeah, like I like to say that I I think that over the next five years, if we hadn't done this I I really think it's a 50 50 coin flip could we double the size of this company, bring another hundred people in and get involved over the next five years, we might have been able able to do that. With the talent and the people you know, us leading our leaders, leading our agents out there in the market, we might have been able to do it. And there was there was a uh. We got solicited by, uh, uh, a potential buyer, and that's happened at least five or six times over the last 20 years.

Speaker 1:

We've had people pretty seriously inquire about hey, would you ever think of selling? And most of those times it has been just a no. But a couple of times we were like I don't know, maybe, and then you talk to them and we got close with a couple other entities. But the one happened about two and a half years ago. They gave us some ideas about how to monetize the business and then also log a win for our sales force and log a win for our employees, a financial win, and I think it's been a combination of ownership's, a burden you do carry it home at night. We got a lot of families that rely on us and sometimes you have that imposter syndrome, feeling of there's no way we're going to keep this up. You know you can. You can feel that sometimes Like we shouldn't have gotten this far. And look at how many people are here now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah like we shouldn't have gotten this far and look at how many people are here now, yeah, but like the market was offering really high multiples right now, like interest rates were super low when we started this and it was thinking like there's the chance that, you know, maybe this is the most valuable our company will ever be, and there's always headwinds and tailwinds and risk in the future.

Speaker 5:

But we saw an opportunity where we could value this company and we could bring a lot of people along for a win with us, which is when I really got interested and we always, you know, looked at other businesses and there's a very common theme out there that people who are entrepreneurs and own businesses common theme out there that people who are entrepreneurs and own businesses don't take action until it's too late or they're too late in their career and saying, gee, if I had only and I had said through this whole thing, I would rather sell our business a few years too early than a few years too late, because we don't know what the right time is.

Speaker 1:

We just didn't know.

Speaker 5:

And I would rather do it intentionally, so that we can take our time and and get the things that Cameron is talking about to do that, um, you know I was in the CEO role and you know it's it's like okay, um, what's most important to this company? You know the the longevity of this company, the people in this company.

Speaker 3:

that was at the forefront of all of our decisions so, looking ahead then, with the, the sale and things were happening, what, what's going to change, what's not going to change? I'm sure there's a lot of people who are kind of wondering these things, and why don't you tell them? Aaron, I was gonna say we don't know yet um, we don't anticipate externally.

Speaker 2:

I don't know that anyone will see a change. I mean we continue to still invest in the community and the people here. Um, internally from an hr standpoint, yeah, there's going to be some minor changes, like we're switching over our benefits plan, and so our employees will feel some of it yeah, mean, I'm proud that we went through this.

Speaker 1:

We went through this transaction, which a lot of businesses do, and we have one retirement and zero layoffs. Every single person that had a job before the deal has a job after the deal. We had one employee retire, yeah, and every single agent we had before the deal we have after the deal. Um, you know, this is and this is what this company said they would do. They said we don't come in and cut costs. Yeah, they partner their word they. They say we like to partner with smart, successful entrepreneurs and help empower them to do what they do. And we convinced them that we were smart.

Speaker 5:

People will come and go in our business, as any business over the years, but, as Cameron's pointed out, as a result of this sale, nobody didn't change anything, didn't change our direction. There's people that will be gone someday from our business and people that will be coming in, but it won't be as a result of this. They bought us, as is, because we were a successful business and that's that's what they wanted to continue doing.

Speaker 1:

I think that's probably one of the advantages of doing a deal two years too early rather than two years too late.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're probably going to see risk strategies on some t-shirts though. Yeah, that's fair, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

A little makeover there. So again and I mean this is just to put it in in black and white for for your farmers that are out there, your, your, you know future potential customers they've bought into the sylvia's name, the family yeah the three of you. Where are you going as of today?

Speaker 1:

nowhere, nowhere nowhere, unless I have to do expense reports. That's right, you're going to have to do expense reports.

Speaker 2:

I might take a vacation for like a week, that's fair once we get like we're done with due diligence and once integration is done, then I might no, I mean, none of us have any intention.

Speaker 1:

None of us did this as a course of I want to retire and stop doing what I do. Um, I don't think that's on the table for any of us right now in a course of I want to retire and stop doing what I do. Um, I don't think that's on the table for any of us right now. In fact, you know, for me personally, this is the the. The opportunity generated from this is energizing and scary and fun, and I like that. So I'm I'm feeling as engaged as I've ever been.

Speaker 4:

You've got new gas in the tank to go after that coin flip you talked about. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5:

Awesome. I've got two sons in the business that are a fifth generation doing sales. Um, Aaron's husband, Brad, has been in sales for us and we've got cousins and close friends. I mean it's a business that we love. We love coming into work and we love the people in our business with the best leadership team I think anywhere ever hands down.

Speaker 5:

There are very selfless, selfless servant leaders and and that was one of the things that attracted risk strategies to our business was that leadership team. So it's a great place to work. We want to keep working there and that's our message is that it's still going to be Sylvia's Insurance Group and we're still going to be in there leading within that business.

Speaker 4:

Excellent, excellent. Well, as we wrap up our time today, we want to say from us as we were launching Dream On Studios three years ago, we were discussing what kind of business do we want to be?

Speaker 4:

And you know we were looking at a handful of businesses around town and you all are at the top of the list of inspirational businesses and models for us to follow, and so um so, from us, from our community, thank you, uh, for the investment you've made, the ways that you've done business and the ways that you've given just an amazing example and the good and the bad you know, and and the positive and the more humble moments of of how to do things the right way. So we really appreciate that. Well, thanks, that's cool, Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate the generosity, uh, the privilege it is to to share this news with the community through this podcast is amazing. So, thank you everybody for joining us on Dream, On Studios, Stories that Move, and thank you to you all.

Speaker 1:

And we will see everybody next time.

Speaker 4:

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories that Move brought to you by Dream On Studios.

Speaker 3:

Make sure to subscribe so that you don't miss the next episode. And remember, if you or your organization have a story you're eager to share with the world, Dream On Studios is here to bring that story to life.

Speaker 4:

Don't hesitate to reach out. You can find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or visit our website at dreamonstudiosio. We understand how overwhelming it can be trying to bring your vision and story to life, but that's why we exist, and we've walked alongside hundreds of clients doing that very thing.

Speaker 3:

We believe every story has the potential to inspire, to move and to make a difference. Let's make yours heard.

Speaker 4:

Until next time, keep moving forward and keep telling those stories that matter.

Speaker 3:

Take care everyone. We'll see you next time on Stories that Move.