My start in the insurance industry was purely random, I had been working for a company that provided therapist to skilled nursing facilities they had relocated me to Sacramento and after a few years they decided to centralize their operation back to the East Coast. I decided to stay in Sacramento, so I was searching for a job and the controller position was open at McGee & Thielen they hired me and that was my introduction to the Insurance Broker World.

 What is your favorite thing about insurance?
The thing that I love the most about insurance is that there is always a new twist to business that our clients or prospects are coming up with, you really get an education on just about every client on how different people approach business it is very dynamic.

Will you talk a little about your relationship with PIIB?
Our relationship with PIIB started when we were looking for a different aggregator solution than what we had with our former network/cluster. I was serving on the IBA board with Wayne Shepard, and he shared with me how great PIIB had been for his agency, and he connected me with Larry Manning.  At the initial meeting it was clear that everything that we needed was available from PIIB and the value proposition was better than anything that I could find in the marketplace and frankly better than I could have imagined.  PIIB has become an irreplaceable component of our business plan. Tiffany and the whole team always deliver above our expectations.

Did you ever have a mentor? What was the best piece of advice they gave you?
I have been extremely fortunate to have a few mentors in life, my first mentor’s advice was about education and the importance of becoming educated, my accounting mentor’s advice was in how to read and determine if the financial statements lined up with the story that management was telling.  My insurance mentor was Ron Wood he steered me towards developing relationships with other agency principals and operators, with the thought that, there is a shared experience and knowledge to be gained from helping each other. backgrounds and specialties.

A little birdie told us, that you have received your pilot’s license. Will chartering affiliates to PIIB events be your part time job?
The pilot’s license issue comes up and I am always happy to fly to PIIB events, I am actually looking forward to making the Huntington Beach event my first official PIIB fly-in so if there are any other pilots in the PIIB family lets connect I think it would be a blast.

Besides flying, how do you spend your free time outside of work? Favorite places to go or things to do?
Outside of flying I like to stay active by playing basketball, golfing, and traveling when possible.  Since flying is my new hobby, I have been exploring small airports to fly into and just wander around.  So far, my favorite places to fly into have been Half Moon Bay, Little River, Harris Ranch, and Columbia.  All of these are Northern California, so I am looking forward to expanding my adventures south this year.

We finish the interview and you find a lottery ticket that gets you 10 M; what do you do?
After finding the $10M ticket I would continue to show up for work, I love what I do and would go stir crazy sitting around the house.  So, I could be more generous with charities and projects, and more secure for retirement, but you would find me at my desk plugging away at it.