Spilling the Tea – Big Things are Happening
In the summer of 2021, I went on an adventure in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. I knew going into it that along the way, I would be taken out of my comfort zone and challenged by several things that don’t come naturally to me: sleeping outdoors among nature, for days, alone and without a plan. As a person who always has a plan, going into this situation without any real strategy knocked me off center a bit.
Once I got there, I instinctively started seeking order, searching for steps to a process that didn’t exist. Before heading into the portion of the trip that would take me into the wilderness for four and a half days by myself, I asked the retreat leader if he had any sort of helpful advice.
“Don’t think about what to do, think about how to be,” he said. “When you focus on how to be, what to do takes care of itself.” And then he walked away.
In the moment, I didn’t feel like that was particularly helpful. But over the next few days, I found myself repeating what he said many times over when I was alone and unsure what to do next.
Turns out, he was right. And I’ve repeated that wisdom to myself many more times since.
As a leader, I’m not just proud of what our team has done—I’m proud of who we are.
Since the merging of J.A. Hinke & Company with Miller and Fidler Insurance Agency in 2011, we have been strategizing, cultivating and refining everything we do as a company…all with intention. The intention has always been centered on being better. In the first few years, we hustled for one thing—survival. We relied on the old school ethic of working hard to keep the company alive.
At the same time, those first few years we also felt the undercurrent of something more. We pushed through the survival mode knowing that there was even more potential to thrive. At one point, I realized that to grow meaningfully, we needed the capacity to serve our clients at a higher level. We needed to strategically add talent to our team that brought broader capabilities, experience and passion for high-quality service.
With a new focus to our growth strategy and design, we were able to diversify our team along with our client base and services. We put intention into getting the right people into the right seats on the bus—and it worked. We began attracting more clients that valued customized insurance planning and personalized service from a reliable team that loves what they do.
Over the last 12 years, we have more than quadrupled the number of people on our team and our revenue. While I’m proud of all the growth, I honestly get the most encouraged and energized not by what we’ve done, but by who we have grown to be as a company…together.
I’ve been reflecting back on what the retreat leader said and find it pretty relevant as I share a big change for our company in 2023. This change is not a reflection of something we’re going to do differently; it’s a reflection of who we are.
Introducing…a name that reflects our purpose.
I have been waiting in excited anticipation to share that as of today, Miller, Fidler & Hinke will move forward as Vibrant Insurance Group. While the old name served us well for many years, the defining inspiration for a name that will carry us well into the future is who we’ve grown into and are proud to be. It’s bigger than me or any one of us individually—it’s who we are collectively, and it’s a feeling we hope reverberates through every experience with our agency.
The vibrance of our energy and values is our difference. It’s the aspiration, motivation and purpose that drives us to be better individually and as a company. Together, we’ve grown into our own skin with authenticity, enthusiasm, reliability and hard work. It’s also the way that we’ll continue to evolve, bringing each of our unique talents unabashedly to the table.
As the Vibrant team, we thrive on innovation and growth, positive energy and excitement, and we are proud that our clients and partners have come to recognize and embrace that in us.
It’s a new name, not a new company.
The new name isn’t aspirational, it’s who we are. In 2016, we participated in an exercise as an entire company—the goal was to clarify our core values. We were still in a relatively fresh marriage of two companies, and while I felt we had built a steady personality as a group, I wasn’t sure if everyone was on the same page, reflecting the same story.
We brought in a consultant and took part in an exercise to identify what matters most to each of us in the agency. The consultant gave one deck of cards to each employee, but they weren’t your typical playing cards. Every card had a word on it—a value—and we were asked to choose 25 cards/values from our decks that were most important to us personally. Through the process, the consultant had us narrow down our chosen values from 25 to 10, then 8…then 5. At the end, we all had an opportunity to share the values we chose.
I was blown away, not to mention pleasantly surprised, by how similar everyone’s final five values were. There were obviously some deviations, but when we talked about why we each chose our values, we found that different words were often chosen for the same feeling. In the end, 100% of the team agreed on the five values that serve as the foundation of our company, who we strive to be, and what we incorporate into everything we do.
Our new name doesn’t mean we’re a new company. A brand is built from the inside out, and we’ve been defining and refining who we are for a while. Now it’s time for our name and brand identity to display outwardly what we’ve worked so hard to build internally. Our brand essence can now welcome people in before we’ve even had the chance to shake hands in person.
We are…GENUINE, HONEST, TRUSTWORTHY, RELIABLE and FUN.
These values are the very DNA of our company! They’re not just words displayed on the wall—we talk about them a lot, and we demonstrate them daily. During the hiring process, they’re a part of the conversation to make sure candidates align with who we are. They are integrated into our annual review process so that we have checks and balances in place to ensure every employee is being fulfilled through our values and also fulfilling others through them.
Recently, I overheard someone who’s been with us for a while telling a new employee, “This is one of those places where you have a voice, and not only do you have a voice, they will listen to you and do something.” It’s hard for me to feel proud of that because that’s the way it should be.
That mode of operation is not only something that happens internally among employees, it’s also the way we approach every client relationship. Employees and clients are the lifeblood of every organization; striving to continually serve both better is critical. One of the best lessons I’ve learned in my career is that if you simply ask someone what they want, they’ll tell you.
So, we ask. And we listen. Then we work hard to deliver on what clients want, plus a little more. For a long time, we overcomplicated things by giving clients what we thought was our best work, and yet it only hit on a couple of the things they were actually looking for. We’ve learned if we ask people what they want or need, they’ll give us an honest answer. Then we can deliver accurately, efficiently and confidently.
At Vibrant, the future is always bright.
I am excited to continue building a legacy for Vibrant Insurance Group that can be passed on to future generations of amazing leaders who will continue to build upon it. My vision for our future includes finding ways to expand both on our services and our service geography. We’ll continue to be strategic and innovative to bring our expertise to specific niche markets, where we know we can offer value to customers who have a need for what we offer.
Thank you for joining us on this exciting journey. I look forward to the next adventure with the Vibrant team, our clients and our partners. We are committed to making sure that no matter what the future brings, our team will approach it with a spark of excitement, ingenuity and FUN.
