If you haven’t had an “ah-ha” moment in your life yet then I would encourage you to put down the video games, spend a little less time sweating the small stuff, and dare I say even spend a little more time doing something that clears your mind.
For me, I am normally functioning at an intense level of multi-tasking so I have a problem of sometimes missing my “ah-ha” moments. So much so that it can sometimes take me revisiting something about 100 times before I make the commitment to jump.
In business I have learned so many invaluable lessons that have shown me it is ok to have crazy thoughts and ideas, mostly because out of those 50 crazy ideas I normally can formulate something pretty groundbreaking.
I have found like minded individuals who encourage my “crazy” and have at times kicked me off a cliff that I probably wasn’t all that ready to be kicked off of. The point to this is… everyone at least one time in their life will have a moment of clarity to where everything somehow just makes sense.
You will feel it.
For me this is exactly how Arizona Wedding Insurance was born.
Rewind back to about July of this year and picture me on the phone with an over anxious bride who had just been referred to me by a local captive agent (agent who can only write for one company) because she needed an insurance policy for her upcoming wedding.
Basically all she needed was a form that showed she had coverage in case her or her guests caused damage to the venue during her event. This is everyday stuff in my world.
We talked for what seemed to be a very quick conversation but as I peeked at the clock I noticed it had been 40 minutes. We were lost in the details.
Her Dress
Her Florist that at the last minute was able to find the exact flowers she dreamt of
Her ring
Her wedding cake
We also talked about their honeymoon and how she was looking forward to every moment with her new husband
It was one of those conversations that you get personally invested in and genuinely feel the person on the other end of the phone wants to be in the conversation with you.
This is what I live for in my business.
An invested customer.
After we hung up, I sent her the policy information and she gave me a wonderful review on my Facebook page. She was thrilled. I followed that up with a Congratulations card in the mail while she was on her honeymoon and she was frequently in my thoughts.
Besides me having serious wedding envy (see I got married before Pinterest existed) she just stuck with me.
This was the type of client I dreamed of but I couldn’t figure out what made her different. I couldn’t put my finger on it as to what made this experience with her inspiring to me as a business owner.
Fast forward a few weeks later and she had called me back and again raved about her experience and that she wanted to bring everything over to me for her insurance policies. We combined households with her new husband, we talked about her life insurance needs, we also talked about the possibility of her having kids in the future.
Hanging up the phone with her I felt a sudden ping of “ah-ha”. Not because I had “sold” her a policy. Not even because I had the potential of selling her new policies.
It stuck with me because I realized that my industry was severely lacking in being able to provide the arena in which Brides had come to play. Even more important we had created a relationship based on one common feeling… excitement.
After sitting on this for a few days I headed out to the internet and researched just who is doing this? More importantly who is doing this right. To my absolute shock this was something that was pretty much unexplored.
I had to filter through boring insurance agent sites to even see if this was something mentioned. Needless to see… I wasn’t a bride and I was underwhelmed.
The Need was there… now I needed to fill it.
How would I incorporate this new “division” into an already successfully branded insurance agency?
What would I call it?
How would I get the word out?
Then in a sudden rush of epiphany, a friend (who knew nothing of what was about to happen) sent me this quote.
“Once you have found the Why… the How is easy”
How unreal is that? She probably thought she was just being motivational and cute, but what she didn’t realize wasthat what she had just done pushed me off a cliff I needed to be pushed off.
I knew in that moment I was about to do something crazy.
Launch a new division of my company.
My why for launching this new division wasn’t strictly to get more business. No.
The sole purpose for launching this was because of the excitement I felt that day when I was able to join a new family together after they committed in front of their loved ones that they were going to do life together.
It became important to me.
Truthfully the fact that I can insure the wedding is a bonus… it’s the after the wedding that became the Why.
I went in head first. If you haven’t figured out by now, I tend to do everything on a Grand Scale. I knew this was going to have to be larger than anything I had done before. The Bridal industry deserved it.
They had no one that could represent this tastefully and provide the level of customer service I knew I could provide along with the representation of an elegant brand like I could.
Between the months of July and November I worked behind the scenes creating a plan to implement our biggest launch yet.
Needless to say an extremely talented insurance website developer, an elegant video production crew (Arclight Pictures), a photographer with the dynamic eye I needed, and one of the most creative florists I’ve met…. made my dreams come true.
Not to mention the amount of support that was shown to me through my friends who didn’t question getting up at 4 am to have me in a hair chair by 5 am.
We launched Arizona Wedding Insurance on November 5th 2015 in a big big way.
The most rewarding part of all of this, getting to see my “Why” become other peoples also. They were excited.
Since then our focus has been to become the go to for people in the wedding industry who don’t even know this type of protection exists. Our goal is to make sure not just our consumers are educated but that they are excited about the possibilities of the new division of Icon Insurance Solutions.
The Wedding Insurance policy is most certainly one of the most dynamic policies I have ever sold. In itself it is protecting not just a day from disaster, but it is also giving you something money simply just can not buy… Your peace of mind on one of the most important days of your life.
It has opened new doors not just for our agency but also for a new type of customer that I am genuinely excited to get to grow with. I can’t wait to have a more steady stream of brides or grooms calling into our agency or visiting our site so together we can talk about their wedding, future, and the future with our agency.
This product is not just for brides and grooms. This product package is also for any key business component that helps make a wedding run. If you are a photographer, a florist, a venue, etc… there are coverage’s you need to make sure you are protected while you are providing that wedding day service.
Arizona Wedding Insurance was developed, launched, and will continue to provide service in a manner unlike any other in our industry. By launching the new division of our company it has allowed us to break through boundaries that clearly were set by the lack of attention to this “niche” market.
We are unique in the way that we will, like your special day, make you feel from start to finish that it truly is about you.
Albeit there were times where I doubted if I could create a brand worthy of the bridal industry and the thought of convincing our “Preferred Referral Partners” that this would provide a value to both mine and their customers was somewhat terrifying.
At the end of the day on November 5th I knew what we had done was about to catapult my agency into another playing feeling. We had adapted to a need in the bridal industry and filled that need with not just an option, but THE option for your Wedding Insurance needs.
So whether your “ah-ha” comes at 11 pm at night, next year, or maybe you are sometimes just in too much denial to see that it has already come. I would encourage you whether you are a business owner or not, find the Need and fill the void.
Once you have mastered that you will never have to worry about how you will continue to grow as a person or a business owner.
If you haven’t had an opportunity to check out our video please make sure to head over to our website. Or if you are curious about partnering with us to provide our customers another level of service by becoming one of our Preferred Referral
Partners, I would encourage you to head over to our website and don’t wait to contact us. We can’t wait to work with you.