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On Cornerstone Conversations, we explore the unique dynamic of fathers and sons who work together, whether they built something from scratch or carried something forward.
Our mission is to create a space for intentional conversation and storytelling around family business transitions and legacy by enabling more dads to see working with their kids as a discipleship opportunity and more sons to see working with dad as an honor, not a handout.
Learn more about Cornerstone Coaching at www.cornerstoneco.com
Kile Graves: [00:00:00] Welcome to Cornerstone Conversations where we discuss timely topics impacting communities, cultures, and economies. First topic we're gonna dive into in this series is family business. Currently, there are 32 million family businesses in the US generating over half of our GDP as a country. They also employ 83 million people.
What's interesting is only 30% of family businesses make it to the second generation, and only 12% make it to the third. You've probably heard of the great wealth transfer that is taking place across the globe in the next five to seven years. 40% of all the small businesses in the US are owned by a baby boomer.
Who is reaching retirement age pretty soon. As coaches, we're really interested in what those impacts do to communities and cultures at large. We've had the privilege of walking alongside a lot of family business leaders over the past few years, and we believe this major intersection is something that can really, uh, impact communities as well.
We're gonna talk to six, uh, dads and sons that are working together and are trying to navigate what it means as a [00:01:00] son to carry forward, what their dad started, and as dads trying to let go of something that they've held onto for so long.
All right. Hey, before we dive in today, I wanna take a second to talk to you about our sponsor and our guest on this episode. Uh, grave Schmid Lee and BHC Insurance. You're about to hear Graves and his dad Shannon, uh, talk about what it means to build something that lasts, navigating all the big decisions, the pressure and the relationships that hold their business together.
I've known Graves and their family for over a decade now, and I've gotten to see their values and their work ethic on display firsthand in a lot of, uh, areas of life. BHC Insurance, their company was started in 1915, which means it's over 115 years old. They're independent, which means they're not pushing one product, they're trying to find the right thing for you and your business and your family.
If you're a business owner and you're looking for someone to bring some insurance products to your company or an individual looking for some protection on your family, I would highly recommend checking out bhc. You can go to the website, b hca.com. Now, let's jump into the episode. Thank you guys for coming to do this and being willing to [00:02:00] sit down and talk.
Uh, known you for a while over 10 years. Mm-hmm. Like we just got to the bottom of. Um, when we work with family businesses, there's true broad categories that are showing up. One would be legacy businesses, so this is multi-generational. This company was here before you started. It was here before you were born.
Um, and you're stepping into something that already existed and there's a lot of layers in that, um, as a dad and son. The other category would be joint family ventures. So this is a dad and son that are starting something together new. Um, you guys are in the legacy category with BHC insurance. Uh, and not only that, you're at the top tier of that, probably because it's a over a century, uh, old business started in 1915.
Mm-hmm. Is that right? Mm-hmm. So, uh, there's a century of reputation and weight and name that kind of goes with the business that you're walking into and you got to even walk into.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: Um, we, we want to get into kinda your story 'cause you have the same last name and you work in the [00:03:00] same company, but you each have your own stories.
Uh, and, and I want to hear that, but maybe start Shannon.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: Uh. What was it like to step into something that was already a pretty old, pretty established firm whenever you got involved? And then tell us what your career has been like at BHC.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. Well, I, you know, prior to my employment at BHCI had worked for a BFH system.
I graduated from college, had a transportation logistics degree, thought I wanted to be in the transportation related side of things. Um, a lot of that's in northwest Arkansas, and I thought it'd be a good thing to go off in. And then six and a half years into it, Marty and Scott, uh, Clark, my partners at BHC, they were, uh, on their way back from a, a big consulting group that they're a part of, having meetings with Mr.
Hiller and their dad, Larry Clark, the late deceased Larry Clark, and came back and they were in the car. The [00:04:00] conversation was, we need to get someone else involved in the business for perpetuation.
Kile Graves: Hmm. What year was this roughly?
Shannon Schmidly: Uh, 1996. Okay. Yeah, 96. So I, I get a phone call from Scott and Marty, who I was friends with growing up in Fort Smith, ran in a little bit different circles, had different interests, different hobbies, but I knew 'em and they knew me and they were great guys.
They said, we'd like to talk to you. I said, okay. So we all got together. Sam Heller, Larry Clark, Scott Clark. Marty Clark got together and went to this place that used to be in Fort Smith, called the Town Club, had had dinner, and they said, we'd like for you to come work with us at BHC and, uh, help us perpetuate the agency.
And I said, well, you know, I'm. Sounds interesting. Obviously Scott and Marty were third generation.
Steve Graves: Yep.
Shannon Schmidly: Sam and Larry were second.
Kile Graves: So
Steve Graves: at this, and Shannon, what, what does BAC stand for [00:05:00] again?
Shannon Schmidly: It stood for Brown Hiller, Clark and Associates.
Steve Graves: Okay.
Shannon Schmidly: Larry Clark came along after Mr. Brown and Mr. Hiller and they added his name to the name of the company later when he moved to Fort Smith.
Gotcha. So Sam Hiller was there prior to Larry, and then Larry came in and added his name. So Brown Hiller Clark and Associates. It's, you know, when we turned a hundred years old, we rebranded the company to BHC Insurance, um, and, and kind of rebranded things changed the slogan.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: More than a Promise did all these different things, just trying to give new life to it.
And we've since then done another new life thing we can talk about later with. What Marty and I have done with acquiring the agency back.
Kile Graves: Yep. '
Shannon Schmidly: cause we had sold to a privately held bank in Arkansas 23 years ago, actually, 23 years ago, March 1st.
Graves Schmidly: How old were you when, um, when Marty and Scott reached out?
How old were you in 96? 30?
Kile Graves: Dangerous question.
Shannon Schmidly: [00:06:00] Yeah, that is, yeah,
Graves Schmidly: I just, I'm curious though, because I'm 26.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. Uh,
Graves Schmidly: I'm thinking about what age you gotta
Shannon Schmidly: do. I was born in 67.
Kile Graves: Okay.
Shannon Schmidly: So 29.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah. Okay. Similar.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Schmidly: 29. Um, my, my daughter Parker was born in July and I made a job change, a career change in October.
Kile Graves: Young kids.
Shannon Schmidly: Young kids, new job. Um, living paycheck to paycheck, Uhhuh. Um, you know, and I, I had no idea, uh, what I, what I was getting into, but what Marty and Scott both said to me, um, about perpetuating the agency. Drum. It, it, I, it, it interests me, you know, what could I do? I was sitting in a cubicle at A BF and a BF is a wonderful company and I have a lot of great friends and that, and relationships with people at a BF.
But I was sitting in a cubicle and I was working, and they had white noise going over the intercom. Deaf, quiet, you're [00:07:00] in cubicles, you're working. And what I, I kept thinking was, is that there was, I wanted to do more with my skillset than what I was doing right then. And, and, and it, you know, if I was still at a BF today, I, I would probably not have been in the same department that I was in.
I might've been in the sales side of things with the company or maybe risk management side of things, their insurance side of things, so and so forth. Yeah. But Scott and Marty's coming to me and saying, Hey, we'd like you to perpetuate that. That was just, it sounded good.
Steve Graves: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Schmidly: Um,
Steve Graves: so easy, easy answer for you to say yes to, or was it
Shannon Schmidly: just easy answer for me to say yes to As long as they didn't pay me less than I was making about that, because I could barely make it.
Steve Graves: Yeah. There you go. There
Shannon Schmidly: you go. You gotta pay me the same, I'm not asking for a raise. 'cause you know what? There's no proof in the pudding yet on whether or not
Steve Graves: Yep.
Shannon Schmidly: I, I had the ability to sell insurance and selling property and casual casualty insurances, which is what I [00:08:00] really focused on and not the life and health benefits side of things.
Uh, it's, it's a technical, complicated product that no one wants to talk about.
Steve Graves: Okay. Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: And outside of payroll on the ledger, it's the second largest expense that they have.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: So it's something that people want, someone that they trust to be involved with, with helping them make those decisions. So they asked me if I'd do it, I said yes.
They put me back in a cubicle. They handed me a legal pad, a number two pencil, and said, there's the phone.
Steve Graves: Get going,
Shannon Schmidly: get going. Yeah. And, and I found an old phone book for you, and Graces may not know what that is. That's this thing I heard of phone numbers,
Steve Graves: I've seen pictures of them. Exactly.
Shannon Schmidly: You know, you start dialing for dollars, then you just, you're calling people, obviously, uh, to see if you can get an opportunity in front of 'em to tell your story and to see if you can be of help to them.
Steve Graves: But you, but you were, you were [00:09:00] riding on a company that had a significant brand strength or, or, or not. Is that true or not true?
Shannon Schmidly: It, their, their brand and their strength in Fort Smith was insane.
Steve Graves: Okay. Okay.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah, no, they had built a tremendous amount of credibility in Fort Smith. They were iconic. Yeah. As far as insurance agencies go in Fort Smith.
Yeah. And the other thing about it was, is that. They knew their competition in Fort Smith, and they knew that the same perpetuation plans were not being put in place.
Kile Graves: Gotcha.
Shannon Schmidly: And then, then you throw in the comp, the, the, the complicated side of things of all these independent insurance agencies being bought out.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Private equity, money, all these things. They wanted to stay strong and stay private, and the only way they could do it was to continue to roll new talent into the agency to keep it going the way it had been going for the previous a hundred years.
Kile Graves: Got it. Yeah. And when you came on, you were in sales, not as a partner, just coming in, selling right at the [00:10:00] beginning.
Shannon Schmidly: I was, I came in as sales, not as a partner. And can't do this today in today's business world with the acumen that you have today, or? I don't recommend it. Scott and Marty both told me in the perpetuation ideas that they had, that if I was successful in the business, that I would be included and the ownership of the company.
And, you know, I had mentioned that we were bought by a privately held bank. Uh, uh, it was First National Bank, a tremendous amount of respect for the CCAR C card family.
Kile Graves: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Schmidly: Um, we were bought by them, but we had already kind of started an internal perpetuation with Sam Hiller, the late Larry Clark and late Tom Cooley.
Uh, not a name that was in, involved in the, in the name of the company, but Tom Cooley was a, a, a minor principal too. We'd already begun a perpetuation plan with them. And it, and I was involved in that perpetuation plan on a [00:11:00] handshake with those guys because I did sell enough insurance to justify my being there.
That's true. I validated as a producer.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: So they included me. Yeah. And it was all a handshake.
Kile Graves: That's awesome.
Shannon Schmidly: It was, it was. Yeah. So, you know, I've heard
Kile Graves: a lot of stories that not
Shannon Schmidly: went the other direction. Not that way, but Yeah. But, but I have the, I have the, um, Scott Clark and Marty Clark. The, the in integrity that they had and the, and the, the transparency that they had and their ability to stay focused on the deal that I would be included.
So that's what happened. That's great. And now, you know, October 1st of this year will be 31 years, I believe.
Kile Graves: Wow, that's great.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: Um, did you feel, last question kind of on your story, Shannon. Did you feel stepping into a company that had been around for however many years, uh, and then maybe, maybe it became more real when you became a partner, but did you feel the weight of, you know, like, this company has a legacy that's bigger than [00:12:00] me and I'm trying to carry it forward.
Did you feel that at all when you stepped in and started working there?
Shannon Schmidly: Um, I don't know that I necessarily felt weight and pressure of that. And maybe one reason I didn't as much is that Fort Smith. I've always said Fort Smith is like a large Mayberry.
Kile Graves: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. You know, it's, the community is, I was born and raised there.
I left and went to school in Fayetteville for, to get my undergrad, came back and I already knew a lot of people in Fort Smith and they knew me. They knew the Clarks, they knew the Hillers, they knew the Cooley's. They all knew that. So it's kind of like, if Sam and Larry and Tom have brought you in and made you part of the company, everyone within the community felt like you were qualified Yeah.
To be a part of that company moving forward. Yeah.
Steve Graves: So, so
Shannon Schmidly: Shannon, so it was, it was kind of a G in a way. It was a gift.
Steve Graves: Yeah. That makes sense. So when [00:13:00] you, one more quick question. Uh, so when they approached you. Were they, did they approach you because of some friendships and relationships? Did they approach you because they knew they were about to go into a growth curve and they needed somebody with a different set of skill sets and wiring than they had?
Did they go to you because it was like, let's get a buddy in on this thing early on? The more the better. Like if you, if you had to read what was going on in their brain, why, like, why'd they call you?
Shannon Schmidly: They called me because they knew that my family and our reputation in the community of Fort Smith was good.
Steve Graves: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Schmidly: And they also knew that they wanted to, to enter into extreme growth mode.
Steve Graves: Got it.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: And they did
Shannon Schmidly: growth
Steve Graves: driver.
Shannon Schmidly: And it was a growth driver. That's right. That was a, it was a driver of growth. And we did grow it. There were 28 employees when I started. Now we have 92.
Steve Graves: Oh man. [00:14:00]
Shannon Schmidly: So a lot has changed over, over those years, but I really think it was growth.
And the fun thing about working with Scott and Marty was we all celebrated everybody's wins.
Steve Graves: That's great.
Shannon Schmidly: I mean, it wasn't three individual pods of producers selling business. Um, we all, it got excited when someone rang the bell.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: I mean, it was one of those things, and you know, Scott and Marty, we were friends, but you know, I, I didn't call 'em all the time and we didn't do stuff all the time together and all that, but.
As soon as I saw their car pulling outta the driveway at Brown Hill Car, I, I was like, rerun. I was chasing after the car going, I need in the back seat. 'cause I need to go listen to what you're fixing to do.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: You need to do that. And Grace can expand on that a little bit more too. That's correct. It's important.
Kile Graves: Mm-hmm.
Shannon Schmidly: And they were willing to, and you learn so much from
Kile Graves: Oh yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Being out with someone else that's done this for a long time. Um, and that's why we think, you know, mentoring our new [00:15:00] producers, boys and girls, extreme mentorship is key. That's great. Yeah. Key key. It's, it's the, a lot of
Graves Schmidly: will just throw young agents to the wolves.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Like, kind of like he was throwing to the wolves a little bit. Yeah. Just go figure it out.
Kile Graves: Yeah, I can see
Shannon Schmidly: that. But you can't do that today. That's not the way it works.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: And there's, there's, that didn't, there's nothing wrong with that. Everything's changed. Lots of things are different now and, and you have to change with it in order to continue to stay.
Ahead of the cycle. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or be on the riding the, the wave of that Yeah. Of, of how it goes now.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah.
Kile Graves: No doubt. Yeah. So, graves, you weren't born yet when your dad started at DHC. Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: 90.
Kile Graves: Uh,
Shannon Schmidly: I,
Kile Graves: I'm
Shannon Schmidly: 99, baby. So
Kile Graves: you were negative three? Yeah. Any, uh, I always think, this is a funny question. Any early memories of like, your dad working or like things that come to mind when you were like a kid, like dad going to work?
What was Anything that pops up? I mean,
Graves Schmidly: he was always super intentional about being at every practice and it, and everything [00:16:00] that I ever had, picking me up, dropping me off was a mix between him and my mom.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, but I mean, I do remember he always made me breakfast. Yeah. And so
Steve Graves: what do you think your dad did if, if you, if you could go back to your early version
Graves Schmidly: mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: And somehow your teacher said to you in the fourth grade or whatever and said, well, what does your dad do? You would say, what
Graves Schmidly: an insurance. He's an insurance agent.
Steve Graves: Okay.
Graves Schmidly: That's all I knew. I didn't know what that meant. Mo most, I mean, think about. When you, when you start adulting is when you figure out what insurance is.
Yeah. So you really don't even know until, I'd say probably college.
Kile Graves: Yeah. But youve heard of it, so you
Graves Schmidly: can just say, yeah. Yeah. You just, you just think insurance. It's a, it's a necessity. People gotta have it. But I said insurance agent and I knew that he was high up at the agency he was involved with, um, even in college.
Like I didn't, the magnitude of what he did didn't really resonate with me.
Kile Graves: Yeah. I asked that question and we can edit this out, but we did a practice recording with McCain and Jeff Martin. Yeah. And McCain was telling a story [00:17:00] that he was like, as a kid, I would just always, I thought he said Mason, their older brother
Graves Schmidly: mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: Was he said, uh. He thought his dad just drove Aaron's truck on his phone all day. I thought he did for work.
Graves Schmidly: That's who built Hunter and Parker's house. The Martins,
Kile Graves: yeah. Right over there. Yeah. And so he is like, if my dad just pulls up to like pieces of land on his phone in his truck and just talks, that's what he does for work.
And then McCain said right when he started working with his dad, he was on the phone with somebody, pulled up to a job site in his truck and he and his truck, and he is sitting there like point pointing just like his dad. Mm-hmm. He's like, I'm, I'm literally, he called his brother. He is like Mason. I literally just had like a Jeff moment.
Yeah. Where I'm like doing the same thing. Figured it out. So funny. I've become my dad
Graves Schmidly: around.
Kile Graves: Right. So how did you get into BHC? Was there ever a version of you that wasn't gonna work here?
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Kile Graves: Tell us, tell us what that was like.
Graves Schmidly: Um, so I went to the university and Shannon was real intentional, intentional on making sure I had internships lined up.
Um, he let, after freshman year, he let me, uh, that summer he let me do the whole rush or, you know, rush chairman deal or whatever it is, you know, [00:18:00] helping the, yeah. High schoolers come into, uh, the university. So I had a fun summer doing that. Which is selling. Which
Kile Graves: is
Graves Schmidly: selling. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is selling.
Um, and then the next two summers though, it was buckle down and kind of figure out what you like. So I had an internship in banking in Little Rock and then in wealth management firm in Little Rock. Um, and I really liked the wealth management side. Banking was I, I was like in the accounting department.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Kind of sitting with a controller, um, and working with CFO stuff really in income statements and balance sheets. And I was like, it's not it. Yeah. This is not for me. I'm like similar to him in the, in the fashion that I just have trouble sitting still. Um, I, like a, a desk job wouldn't fit what I'm looking for.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, wealth management was attractive to me. It was, you know, selling, building a book of business.
Kile Graves: Mm-hmm.
Graves Schmidly: Um, and ultimately af that was in between my junior and senior year when I did that and kind of talked to that, I was offered a [00:19:00] job. With this firm and I, you know, was bouncing the idea off Shannon, like any son would do, you know, um, and really got in the weeds about like how hard it is to build a book, a business
Kile Graves: and wealth management that
Graves Schmidly: time and wealth management.
How hard just selling anything in general is
Kile Graves: Yeah,
Graves Schmidly: you don't know you have it until you do it.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, which is crazy looking back on now, um, getting into it. But anyways, I talked to him and I was like, well let's talk about insurance. Uh, just, you know, I don't want you to push me. And he was very good about like not being like, come talk to us, let's like see if we can figure something out.
Like, he never once did that. Actually, I interviewed, uh, for a very, for a large personal lines, um, agency that's out of Dallas, but they have locations everywhere. Um, I interviewed there and just 'cause I was curious about insurance and I didn't really understand what personal lines was versus commercial.
Yeah. I just, you know, and I [00:20:00] remember in the interview they said, I told 'em that my dad was in the insurance business and I'm curious about it, and that's probably why I didn't get a job offer. Sure. Um, but I remember they said, does he do commercial or personal insurance? And I'm a senior in college and I didn't know the answer.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Back to your point about, I just knew he was an insurance agent, Uhhuh. Um, and so anyways, I didn't get that, that job offer so called dad and I said, you know, I'd like to just talk to Marty, um, his partner.
Kile Graves: Yep.
Graves Schmidly: Without you in the room. Just me and him sit down.
Kile Graves: Why'd you do that?
Graves Schmidly: Um, I di I wasn't worried that he was gonna pressure me.
Yeah. But I, I didn't, I wanted to hear it from Marty's point of view about like what the job's, like how easy slash hard it is to make it.
Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um,
Steve Graves: so were they hiring or were they just like, so
Graves Schmidly: we have
Steve Graves: somebody, a talent walked through the front door, they're knocking on knock,
Graves Schmidly: so another. Side of the story is, [00:21:00] um, bh.
She's based outta Fort Smith. I did not wanna live in Fort Smith. I was gonna live, uh, either go off maybe somewhere for a couple years, um, or stay up in northwest Arkansas. I fell in love with Fayetteville Rogers, Bentonville when I was in college, and I knew that like this was probably gonna be home eventually.
Um, and I also was seriously dating my now wife. And I knew that she wasn't gonna move to Fort Smith. Um, but they had this office in Lowell, um, just south of the amp. Um, and I knew that that was an option. Um, and it was very, I don't wanna say dead, but it was kind of like. Redheaded stepchild office for like 15 years.
They had it.
Shannon Schmidly: Oh, wow.
Graves Schmidly: Um,
Shannon Schmidly: up
Graves Schmidly: here
Shannon Schmidly: is that long.
Graves Schmidly: Yes. And they just didn't, and I don't wanna speak for you, but I don't think they paid attention. I've seen it transform, so that's why I'm speaking to it, but
Shannon Schmidly: yeah. Yeah, it was, it was an underperformer. Yeah. [00:22:00] Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: It's just, yeah. Um, I don't wanna say it was an underperformer, but it just wasn't producing the way it needed to be producing in a growing market like northwest Arkansas.
Kile Graves: Right. Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, and then also Paxton, Marty's son is a whole nother part of this deal, and he was, he joined the firm a year before me, and I grew up with Paxton buddies with Paxton, and so he kind of started recruiting me too. Um, we went to lunch and, you know, he was really pushing for me to join the agency.
And similar to Shannon talking about perpetuating.
Steve Graves: Yep.
Graves Schmidly: Um, obviously that's down the line. I don't think we had any idea how quickly things would move and how much we'd grow in the time. We have since we've been there. But anyways, that was a huge selling factor for me too. Um, and Marty was just Marty, if, if you've ever met Marty, he's extremely charismatic and he is, you can see how good of a salesman he is.
And he was like very, very good at getting me to make up my mind almost on the dot that I was [00:23:00] gonna join the agency.
Steve Graves: Yeah. So did you, I mean, did, was it a fast decision? Green lights?
Graves Schmidly: I think I took about, here we go, a week and a half.
Steve Graves: Mm-hmm.
Graves Schmidly: And I made a few more calls to the wealth management firm to discuss just more in detail about the job.
And after think, I think it was about 10 days, and then I decided to,
Steve Graves: how long ago was
Kile Graves: that?
Graves Schmidly: That was this, uh, early spring, late winter of my senior year, so 2021.
Kile Graves: Okay.
Graves Schmidly: Beginning of 2021.
Shannon Schmidly: Okay.
Graves Schmidly: And so now I've been there going on five years.
Kile Graves: That's great.
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: Shannon, when he decided to say yes, was there any like.
You doing a fist pump Yes.
Shannon Schmidly: Inside, you know? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't want the, the, the last thing I wanted was to, to make graves feel pressured.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: To come to BHC. What I think I said to Graves that made the most sense to him and resignated with him without saying you're coming to work at BHC, was don't go sell wealth management and decide five years later [00:24:00] that you want to come to the insurance agency.
Build your book right now.
Steve Graves: Yeah. That's great. Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Go right here.
Graves Schmidly: That was the
Shannon Schmidly: big kicker. I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in my, I'm in the go zone right now.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: I'm all about book building. I'm still growing my book. I'll help you grow your book. I'll show you how I do it, and Marty will show you how he does it. And that's the most important thing.
So if you think there's a chance that you're gonna go to work for one of these great wealth management firms, like the ones he had worked for, I said, don't do it and leave. You're walking away from a book of business.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: I said, someone else is gonna take it over. They're gonna transfer it to someone else.
They're gonna keep servicing it and taking care of it like you're supposed to do. But I said, let's just start right here, right now, today. And, uh, that's probably, you know, probably that something that made him think about
Graves Schmidly: it was a huge deal when he told me that. Mm-hmm. Because I didn't really understand it until he put it that way.
Just I don't, because that was probably gonna happen, you know, I could have moved to [00:25:00] Dallas and done something or went to Little Rock, but ultimately I probably would've wanted to be up here and moved and then I would've had to let go of a book. And I knew that at the time, so.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Kile Graves: That's cool. So I wanna talk about what it's like to work together because you're both in sales, you know, that's a little bit, uh, unique from.
Some of the other dads and sons we'll talk to, you know, you're in the same, not really separated by role or department, you're kind of both mm-hmm. Doing the same job, which is unique.
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: Um, what is that like day to day to be doing the same job, you know? How does that, how does that play out?
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: Do you ever bump into each other, uh, with, with customers or anything?
Graves Schmidly: It changed, it's changed over the years. Uh, 'cause the first year I was living up here, I still live up here in Fayetteville, but he is in Fort Smith. I was going down at least twice a week, most of the time, three days a week. And I was sitting in a chair next to his desk all day. He probably hated it, but, and I watched,
Kile Graves: yeah.
Graves Schmidly: I, to him talk to his customers. I listen to him talk to underwriters [00:26:00] and the carrier, uh, reps that we work with, and I listen to him talk to his service staff and the people servicing all the business that. He was that a, the agent on, um, and I asked questions and essentially shadowed while selling. And I'd say those first, um, three and a half years, I probably really got my feet under me, like after a year of watching him.
Um, and then two years it was like, okay, you can definitely do this on your own now. Yeah. Kind of deal. Stop going to Fort Smith three times a week. Yeah. Maybe once a week for leadership meetings and things of that nature. Um, but the first three and a half years we were, we were going like together, selling together, and we were running like hard.
I I I was kind of worried about run, running him out the door because of how much activity we had going.
Shannon Schmidly: Really?
Graves Schmidly: Yeah. We were selling together and Yeah. Doing the father son dynamic du deal
Shannon Schmidly: call people joined at the hip. I mean, yeah. And, and a lot of people [00:27:00] probably, I. I had to, I had to really think about what the best way to bring grays into the insurance business was and help make him successful.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: But I knew his personality. Um, and, and you know, there's a carrot and a stick method and all that kind of stuff, and grays is real motivated, motivated by a carrot and stick type set up.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: But I, I, I needed him beside my desk, literally on the same side of my desk, not sitting on the other side beside my desk, listening to all these conversations, looking, I'm a, I, I, I've got paper all over my desk.
I'm, I, I'm, I'm the guy that still prints off an email and writes all over it. I just felt good about it. And, uh, I mean, I, this morning it looked like an F four tip, my desk. I had one of the ladies in the office back there looking at two or three different renewals with me and crunching these numbers and understanding what's going on, but.
Graves Schmidly: Don't let him trick you though. He's like very [00:28:00] OCD. So like, yes, he has papers all over his desk, but they're like very neatly like stacked
Shannon Schmidly: before the end of the day. Yeah. When I go home night, there's, there's definitely division between all. Yeah, all of 'em. But during the day it's a, it's, it's a dumpster fire, but it's an organized dumpster fire.
Oh
Kile Graves: yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. That um, uh, obviously I wouldn't want someone to go in there and figure out what's going on, but
Kile Graves: yeah,
Shannon Schmidly: there's a method to the madness. But I wanted him beside my desk listening to me, we, we would close the door. This is how you talk to an underwriter. This is what, um, the underwriter's saying, this is what we want out of the conversation, so let's, let's figure out how to negotiate with that underwriter to where both sides hang up the phone and feel like they've won.
Yeah. It's, it's not always one sided. Sometimes it is, and you know, sometimes there's no method to the madness what these insurance carriers are doing, but I've always thought that that is the key piece. Of handling all of your customer's accounts is how you go to the [00:29:00] mat for 'em, negotiating for 'em. If you go, if you do that and you do it consistently all the time, your customers will have the trust and loyalty to you going forward.
That's worth all the, it's worth everything. Yeah.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: And, and that's the thing is that you gotta be able to do that and that's what makes you go home at night and you can lay your head down and you can go to sleep when you go home and at night and you can't sleep, and there's a lot of nights in this business after 31 years, I hadn't slept a wink.
It's because my mind motors turning in my mind of what do I what? How do I need to handle this or do this or do this differently? He got to hear all that. So I think it helped him build the platform that he sells on and has now made him self-sufficient. Honestly, graves will go out and sell on a bunch of stuff now, and I don't get a phone call to get invited or anything.
And it, you know, kind of hurt, hurts my feelings a little bit, but at the same time it's, there is a sense of satisfaction, [00:30:00] um, and thankfulness that, uh, God's favor's been on Graves and he's been able to do this and he's been able to, uh, gain trust and loyalty with people.
Steve Graves: Yeah. So, so was this three and a half year mentoring and development and growth and all that, was that just kind of the model that the company had had place and you were just installing what we do across the whole company?
Or did you kind of Yeah, we're doing that, but I'm gonna really add a few layers because he's my son. Like how, how much of that was unique because your son is, is joining you in sales, same thing versus, Hey man, that's just what we do with anybody.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: Name or no name. This is what we do for
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah.
Steve Graves: Highly technical training kind of a thing.
Well,
Shannon Schmidly: since, since Grace has, since Grace has come along, things have changed a lot.
Steve Graves: Okay. As
Shannon Schmidly: far as the onboarding of a new producer, um, what I said extreme mentorship.
Steve Graves: Yeah. Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Marty's written [00:31:00] a couple articles for a couple of our, uh, our insurance companies, newsletters and things about the importance of extreme mentorship.
That was extreme mentorship before we actually had it in, you know, A, B, C, D, E form. Gotcha. Right. Um, now, uh, we take a client or a prospect suspect through a process on does it make sense for them and BHC to do business with one another? And you're taking 'em to a value added proposition. Schedule of things that you're talking about and you're trying to figure out what's important to them.
Um, the, the, the, the big most important thing you can do going out and calling on a client is listening. Yeah. And I'm bad about not listening. I like talking 'cause I get excited and I'm about what I'm doing and what we can do for you and all that. But listening to it is listening to what's important to them is real important.
But then number two, showing them what we offer them. [00:32:00] If we become their trusted source for their property and casualty insurance to their homeowners insurance or their health insurance or whatever. You're taking 'em through a process of what it looks like to do business with BHC. Mm-hmm. At the end of that process that we're taking 'em through.
And this is, this is in writing color form for all of our producers to take out this shiny. Booklet for them to walk through someone with. Um, it's called our Ignite Process. We brand, we trademarked it, it's called Ignite, and take 'em through the Ignite process. Um, you get to the end of it and that the, the customer at the end of it has a decision on whether or not it looks like a good idea to do business with BHC.
And it could be they like it so much that they. Sign you as the agent of record letter on all of their policies, or they ask you to move forward and it, and they would like to see you bring some options, um,
Graves Schmidly: or, or there's no fit at all,
Shannon Schmidly: or there's no fit at all. Yeah. Hey, look, you know what,
Graves Schmidly: which is, which is a huge
Shannon Schmidly: deal.
I'm never gonna change my, [00:33:00] my, my brother-in-law's, my insurance agent.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: I played golf with him on Tuesdays and Friday.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: I'm not, you know, so it's like, Hey, it's common, common than you think. Lemme know. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't need practice.
Steve Graves: Yeah, I know. It's really funny 'cause we, you know, I've, I've been coaching CEOs and business owners for almost four decades.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: And three and a half decades ago, I developed a three green light system
Shannon Schmidly: mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: To do the same thing. Oh. The same thing. And literally it's never failed me one time.
Kile Graves: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: In three and a half decades. Mm-hmm. But, but it's, it's slowing down the dance to see if there really is a fit.
Kile Graves: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: And then to be courageous enough to say. It's not a fit, or we know exactly what we're working on here. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Not just, Hey, let's just, you know, let's just get in here and f we'll figure it out along the way. Sure. And versus like, no, man, this is what you're, this is what you're solving from it.
That's it. You know?
Graves Schmidly: Exactly. And we are salesmen, but like, sometimes you walk in on an account and you know, when you sit down after 30 minutes that this is not an account that you wanna Yeah. Be working on. There you
Steve Graves: go.
Graves Schmidly: Sure.
Steve Graves: There you go.
Graves Schmidly: You
Steve Graves: know?
Graves Schmidly: Yeah. It's a fact of the matter. It's not like [00:34:00] we're desperate.
We need to ride everything we can. It's very, I mean, you pick, you, you pick and choose sometimes.
Steve Graves: Yeah. Mm-hmm. So, so graves in the, in the three year, or three and a half year extreme mentoring process mm-hmm. You know, are you, um, you know, are there ever any consistent stretches that you're like. Wow, what am I doing here?
Like, why didn't I go wealth or why didn't I, and I'm, this is not a second, not a serious second guessing. I'm not, I mean, every business has bad Fridays or a tough Wednesday or whatever. Yeah. None, none of that. I'm talking about where you're like, you're just in the, in the grit grind part of it, and you're saying, I don't really like the, the, the, the subject matter is not really that appealing to me, or was any of that going on, or are you just, are you just still green lights pretty well, generally speaking, three years just,
Graves Schmidly: yeah.
Steve Graves: Here
Graves Schmidly: we go. The first three years it was so busy and so much was thrown at, thrown at me, [00:35:00] and we were so busy and we bought our agency back, which was a whole nother deal that kept us extremely busy. I don't even think I had time to think like, is this the fit? I mean, yes, there are times I, I got my teeth kicked in in sales.
I mean, everybody does at some point. Um, so those times are. And you go, was it me? Am I doing this right? Is this for me? And then like the next day, you get a lead and you're onto something else and it's great and you're back. Um, so
Steve Graves: glad to be there.
Graves Schmidly: Yes.
Steve Graves: Glad that your mm-hmm. Your answer was Yes. Yes. I'm
Graves Schmidly: in.
Absolutely.
Steve Graves: Let's go load, load it up
Graves Schmidly: in let's sw. Yeah.
Kile Graves: So you're, you're, uh, on ramp to get into this training with your dad. Pretty unique that, that close proximity. Pretty awesome. A lot of advantages there. Something that we see a lot is when a, when a son decides to go work with his dad, usually the older generation is a magnet and a wake.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: For their son. Not, not always bad things, just kind of by default. Mm-hmm. And you're a [00:36:00] magnet because you have a big network. You've been in it for 20, 30 years. And so if the sun's not intentional, he can just kind of, you know. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Slide over and I'm just gonna be kind of close to you. And that's kind of how it's going wake because.
You've already put out, wake into the market with all of your work. And so he can kind of just ride, well, my dad's been doing this, I can just kind of ride his coattails a little bit.
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: Um, not that you would choose that. Mm-hmm. But if you're not intentional about getting away from it, then that can kind of be a default.
How did you learn from him, but also build your own voice, your own way of doing things like, Hey, I'm, I'm Graves, I'm gonna do my stuff this way.
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: I'm sure there's a lot of similarities, you know, but like, how, how did you do that?
Graves Schmidly: Um, one, being in Northwest Arkansas, although it's 45 minutes from Fort Smith in the River Valley, I was pretty determined to, you know, make a name for myself here.
Um, our agency had a very, very small presence in northwest Arkansas when I, when I started. Um, but after I [00:37:00] started, I mean, we started hiring a couple guys, uh, local that were established, um, and then hiring young guys and really just like pushing growth
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: In northwest Arkansas. Hard and that's still where our main focus is.
So I was determined one there to, you know, yeah. Build a name for myself, um, you know, get my feet in the ground here and, you know, help build the, the brand. Um, repeat the question though about
Kile Graves: Yeah. Just, I mean, was it easy? Did you find yourself kind of getting like sucked over to the vacuum that, Hey, my dad's been doing this for 30 years mm-hmm.
Or however many years and
Graves Schmidly: Yeah,
Kile Graves: it'd be kind of easy just to kind of ride
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Kile Graves: Behind him a
Graves Schmidly: little bit, I think. Yeah. I think. I had to make a decision for myself, and I probably made the decision once I figured out after like a year or so, that, okay, I'm good at this and I can, I can sell,
Kile Graves: built out some confidence.
Graves Schmidly: I, yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, but you have to make, it would've been real easy for me to come in, Paxton to come in and, you know, they're cruising into the sunset eventually. And [00:38:00] we can sit on our hands Yeah. If we want to.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: But we, we obviously, yeah.
Steve Graves: But having, having a new market, having a, having a fresh, you know, un undeveloped to speak of compared to the standard of the business.
Right. You know, that, that makes it just a
Graves Schmidly: Right.
Steve Graves: Pretty much a, a deal changer. A game changer. Yes. Yeah. That's the clear distinction. It does. You does.
Graves Schmidly: But I could
Steve Graves: have, because you, you weren't gonna just ride on their hotels here.
Graves Schmidly: No, I mean, I could've, like I said, sat on my hands and said, you know, we will give this, I'll, I'll learn from Shannon.
We'll give this thing, you know, 10 or 12 years till he is done, and. Hopefully if he trusts me, I can take over his clients. It would've been real easy for me to do that, probably.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, but honestly, being in our organization, BHC, we're a very sales focused or, uh, organization, it's competitive. Uh, which is what's so much fun about it.
Um, and you know, when I was looking at, you know, his book of business as a young producer figuring out I was good at sales, I was like, I wanna match that. Like, I don't wanna just, you [00:39:00] know, sit on my hands and wait till he retires and you know, whatever, take over his book, whatever that looks like. I want be able to build something for myself.
So, so, and we'll worry about that part later.
Steve Graves: Yeah. So who's, who's the better salesman today?
Graves Schmidly: He is
Steve Graves: for sure.
Graves Schmidly: I mean, I've been at five
Steve Graves: years, but he's
Graves Schmidly: got 31 years
Steve Graves: of
Graves Schmidly: experience.
Steve Graves: Well, I was just getting you, I was gonna give you a chance I was gonna, I was gonna give you a chance to, I'm up here, I'm in northwest Arkansas.
I better mm-hmm. Yeah. About how fast
Shannon Schmidly: Grace, grace does. He does a great, he does a great job. And you know, some of his clientele that he's been able to get in front of, I'm like, who is that again? He's like, yeah. He tells me. And I'm like, no kidding. Go man. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. But one of the things that Grace has figured out too, though, it can't all done strictly on his own.
You have to, you have to reach out and you have to get the right centers of influence. You have to spend time with the right people that know [00:40:00] people that want to go tell someone about you. Yeah. Yeah. And Grace has done a good job of championing that process. And it's been, I mean it's, it's, it's a, it just continues to feed you with opportunities.
Um,
Steve Graves: but that's part of your best practice. I mean, like that's, yeah. That's the way you guys had built your business. You got to Yeah. For decades. Mm-hmm. And so you're Yeah. And I mean, you're transferring that best practice over. Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: I mean, there was guys in Fort Smith on the benefits side, guys up here on the benefits side, who had been in the business a long time, who took me under their wing and said, we're gonna get you in front of a couple people.
And helped me gain that confidence to figure out that, okay, I'm good at this. That's
Kile Graves: cool.
Graves Schmidly: I can sell.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm. But that's kind of how BHC is though, you know, we cross sell a lot. We help out the young guys. Mm-hmm. It's really easy. It would be really easy to just turn blind eye to the newbies and say, figure it out.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Uh, but we invest in all of the young guys and make sure that they're gonna figure it out.
Steve Graves: So is [00:41:00] there a layer? Is it guys, is there a layer of. Uh, let's see how to ask this question. You know, some industries are going through such significant, um, evolutionary steps because of ai, because of whatever, just whatever it might be, you know?
Um, and so like is there an element that, that your generation is having to really re-engineer some of the work itself, or is insurance one of those industries and verticals that at least as of now, there's not a lot of that going on. And I don't mean that there's nothing fresh going on, but like, you know, like construction, you know, construction's kind of construction and we can have newer bulldozers and we can have, but, you know, an acre of land's.
An acre of land and whatever. So my question is, is, is there like, are you having to kind of figure out what insurance looks like in today's world because it's pretty much different than it was 10 or 20 years ago? Or is it like. [00:42:00] Not really. It's, it's generally the same kind of offering as a, as a general rule.
Graves Schmidly: I think it can come in cycles. Um, one new product that's like very important now that wasn't 10 years ago, is cyber insurance, maybe started 10 years ago. Cyber liability, cyber insurance, ransomware attacks, phishing, social engineering. Um, but for you it was mm-hmm. When you got into the business, it was EPLI, right?
Shannon Schmidly: It was, yeah, there was, uh, management lines liability, D and O-E-P-L-I, fiduciary, liability, crime, all of those things. Especially, yeah, the EPLI was a hot button that was coming on that people were getting hit with employment practice liability suits. They didn't have coverage, so it became kind of a hot thing.
The cyber thing, like Graves said, is, is something that is definitely, there's more awareness about it going out there. It doesn't have to happen to Target and Home Depot for us to realize it happens internally with. Are small businesses that we write a [00:43:00] tremendous amount of. It happens all the time.
Steve Graves: So is every, is every small business, generally speaking, is it going to have to carry that, that insurance?
Shannon Schmidly: No, nothing. Nothing's gonna require them to carry it.
Steve Graves: Well, I'm, yeah, I, I meant would like, would their leadership just be crazy not to be entertaining that expense in their p and l? Because it is a risk and it's a real risk.
Shannon Schmidly: I think everyone's different. I think everyone's different and what kind of IT support that they have, uh, how often they're looking at their firewall and all their controls that are in place and their backups and their protocols for payment, payment instruction changes and so on and so forth.
But I definitely think that for the money, it's a good investment for someone to buy cyber liability. Because I, I could sit here and tell you stories all afternoon about different things that have happened to different people, but I think at the end of the day, it's a small price to pay [00:44:00] for a lot of support and backing of things that you could potentially be liable.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Li before by the regulatory means.
Steve Graves: Yeah. I mean, that certainly wasn't around 25 years ago. Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: I
Steve Graves: mean, it was, you know, it was by the insurance to keep
Graves Schmidly: Right.
Steve Graves: A case of a fire, a case of a whatever. That's it. So it's ever changing. Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: The core though is still the same. I mean, your general
Steve Graves: liability, your work.
Yeah. The reason I was asking a lot of times, second or third generation, they really are re-engineering. Yes. Core offering of the business that
Shannon Schmidly: mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: Grandpa started, right? Mm-hmm. Know or whatever. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and just, I was curious to see if there was any of that,
Shannon Schmidly: but you, you mentioned ai.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: AI is something that we definitely are paying attention to internally within our office.
Um, you know, uh. I don't like it when someone says AI is gonna make everybody dumber.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: No, it's not. It's not gonna make everybody dumber, but it, but it, it has to do with the person and how they're applying it. I don't think AI is, is coming into the insurance business, is gonna replace Graves and I, not in any kind [00:45:00] of way.
I, I, I, I, there's just not, not before he retires, I don't think it will. I think people still want to have a relationship with someone that they buy their insurance from, but I think AI will definitely enhance what we're doing. It's not gonna annihilate it
Kile Graves: internally.
Shannon Schmidly: Internally.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: No, I think it, it's gonna help us become even more professional than we've already tried to be.
Graves Schmidly: And more efficient
Shannon Schmidly: and more efficient on the servicing side. More efficient. Oh gosh, yeah.
Oh
Kile Graves: yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm talking with clients and friends and, and even our firm every day about how they're using AI and how it's showing up. Mm-hmm.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Kile Graves: Maybe last question on working together, we say.
All the time. You working in a family business is uniquely rewarding, but it's also uniquely challenging. Has that shown up for you guys at all? Is there anything that's been uniquely rewarding or like, man, this is really cool, that we're doing such and such together? Or is there anything that's been like, man, this is uniquely challenging because I gotta tell you, you're wrong or you [00:46:00] know, or mm-hmm.
Has any of that showed up since you've been working together?
Graves Schmidly: I think there's plenty of,
Kile Graves: uh,
Graves Schmidly: examples. Uh, rewarding. I mean, just getting to win some big, some nice accounts with Shannon by my side and like doing it together, I think early on was really cool for me. Uh, the feeling of gaining a new client and somebody like entrusting you to take care of them and like what they've built is really cool.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, and to feel that and to know that like, dang, my dad's been doing this my whole life. Like, I look back at that sometimes and think like, you know, when I was in sixth or seventh grade, he was doing this. Like, you know, um, that's been really cool. Um. Uniquely rewarding as well has, I mean, the purchase buying back the agency was just a huge deal.
Um, and took a lot of guts from him and Marty. Um, so that was an extremely cool experience to be a part of and still be a part of.
Steve Graves: How about hard? How about hard? It, it was
Graves Schmidly: [00:47:00] challenging.
Steve Graves: Yeah. If somebody just said, you gotta give me something that's hard, what would that Or challenging.
Graves Schmidly: Uniquely challenging.
Yeah. From working with them.
Steve Graves: Yeah. What would that be?
Graves Schmidly: Um, I won't say anything bad about you.
Kile Graves: You're on
Graves Schmidly: camera. We worked, we, we worked really, really well together for our father son duo. But there are times, and especially when we were running really hot and we still are running pretty hot, uh, but there was like a year there where.
We were running so hot and he already has a big book of business that he is managing and I'm calling him asking questions, trying to figure out like, how does this, this, this work? And it got to the point where if there was attitude given, one of us would probably be hanging up every now and then. It happened, it happened not often, but like maybe once every other week.
Steve Graves: It just don't have time for that.
Graves Schmidly: Right. Um, and also challenging, uh, was everybody telling me my whole life, wow, you look just like your, like your dad. You have the same mannerisms as your dad. And even the [00:48:00] first year in the business, the service staff in the office saying our footsteps down the hallway sound the same way.
But then figuring out that we're act, our personality traits and characteristics are very, very different. And we're very, very different people. And it was challenging to figure out where we're different and how to, um. I guess work together. Like
Steve Graves: that's
Graves Schmidly: knowing that,
Steve Graves: that's, that's fine. Yeah. That's
Shannon Schmidly: good.
Steve Graves: Mm-hmm. Shannon, how about your side? Same question.
Shannon Schmidly: Oh, I mean, um, way more rewarding than challenging, but I'm the dad, you know, might be 50 50 to him.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Way more rewarding. Um, the challenging side of things is, I can't tell you how many times I've, at six or seven o'clock at night, I've called Graves and said, Hey, I'm really sorry about the, uh, attention and time I gave you today.
I could, 'cause he was reaching out to me, wanting, asking, inquiring, you know, looking [00:49:00] for discernment and different things. And then I didn't give it to him the way I should. Yeah. You know, um, I did the same thing walking up the steps, talking on the phone to someone at my office a minute ago, but I was like, Hey, I gotta go.
I'm, I'm supposed to be here 10 minutes ago and I'm, I'm nine minutes late.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: So, you know.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: And I'm gonna call that person back when we get outta here, and that's gonna be the first person that I, I pay attention to and help them do what they're trying to do on the other end. Um, but, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's, uh, fun to win together, but you gotta, you gotta learn to win together and you gotta learn to lose together.
And how you react from losing together is what it's all about. It's where your character comes out. Yeah. It's easy, it's fun. Everybody's flexed to win.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Everything's good when you're winning, but it's when all these other things that come in together, you think about, okay. Grace tells me he, he, uh, he didn't get an account that he had worked on.
And I'm like, okay, let's, let's, like, let's break this [00:50:00] down. What'd you do?
Steve Graves: Yeah. Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: What do you think? Let's, what's the root cause of why this didn't work? Oh, you weren't talking to the decision maker? Note to self, always talk to the decision maker. Get a seat at the table with the decision maker. If you're gonna spend 10 or 12, 15 hours working on something, trying to earn their re their business, make sure you're talking to the decision maker.
'cause it's hard to ever get someone's business if you're not talking to someone that has the authority to make the decision.
Steve Graves: So is is, is 10% of y'all's time still situated in the mentoring, like, like, like that, like that question there didn't get the business and you're gonna process with your dad slash your boss mm-hmm.
Or your, your, you know, the person above you with experience.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: So would you say that even though you're not in the three and a half years of intense extreme sitting next to his desk, like, do you guys still spend 10% of the of, [00:51:00] of a given month? Processing how to keep growing, keep learning, keep, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Shannon Schmidly: yeah.
Absolutely. Maybe more. Yeah, I still think more, yeah. I mean, I learned something every day and I've been doing it 31 years. Like, there,
Steve Graves: there you go.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. I was reading a form before I came up here for renewal. I got on April 1st and I was like, I've never seen this form in my life. Yeah. And, and that's what that call was.
I was talking to someone, coming substance was trying to enlighten me on what this form means after what I read and what I interpreted. But, uh, no, it's, it's definitely, it's definitely more rewarding than not. And uh, you know, one, one thing I was gonna say too about Graves than you were talking about Graves and him coming into the office and, you know, you were talking about a weight or maybe a health or
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Magnet
Shannon Schmidly: and weight magnet. Yeah. Magnet and weight. Yeah. Um, you know, graves is always, I've been Shannon since he got there. I've never been dad and in all of our meetings with everyone he prefers to me as Shannon. And I think it. [00:52:00] Like makes us coworkers.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: More than father son. There you go. For him to refer to me as Shannon, he's always done it.
And, and it, and I like it. Yeah. I've gotten where I like it and is it's, it's good. And I feel like we're, we're teammates selling together. Yeah. That's
Steve Graves: great.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: It's not outside of the outta work.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Graves Schmidly: You know? I mean, we still hunt and
Shannon Schmidly: fish. Yeah. One thing I wanted to say, and this is retracting way back to a couple of subjects ago.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: When we were talking about Graves and his, what made you decide you didn't want to do wealth management? What made you decide you didn't want to work in the banking business? You know, what made you decide, what made you decide? You know, when he did come to me before he went and talked to Marty, I was like, he told you all earlier that he told everyone that his dad was an insurance salesman.
This is when it resonated with me. Grace. I said, grace, what do I do? And this is he's, he's got his college degree. He said internships that are meaningful and everything else. He said, you take care of people.
Steve Graves: Yeah. [00:53:00]
Shannon Schmidly: I said I don't wanna know anything else. Mic drop. That's what I wanted him. That's what I was curious to see what his, where his maturity was.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Because bless his heart, he is been on, you know, 26 years of being around me with driving to Dallas, Texas and I don't get off the phone for four hours.
Kile Graves: Wow.
Shannon Schmidly: Trying to get a piece of equipment covered for someone that they didn't have scheduled on their Inland Marine policy.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: And I'm working with travelers, you know, it's just like brutal.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: What they had to listen to.
Kile Graves: That's fun.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. Uhhuh
Kile Graves: taking care of people.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. Taking care of people. That's what it's all about.
Kile Graves: Um, let's talk about the future. So this is kind of the last section, but, um. We say there's, there's broadly speaking, three seasons that a family business will go through when there's two generations together working.
There's three seasons you're gonna walk through. Season one is, and we've talked about this a lot, graves, but older generations leading, whether that's from a title perspective, role perspective, ownership perspective, [00:54:00] whatever. And the younger generation, just learning, you know, maybe that was you sitting next to 'em for the three years, just getting your feet wet, trying to get up to speed.
Steve Graves: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: And that can last a couple months, could last three years changes. The second season is, uh, where you're both leading in some capacity, so you're still in your role. But now the younger generation has stepped up and maybe they get a promotion, or maybe they're managing people, they know what they're doing now they have some type of leadership role within the company.
And then the third is the final season where the older generation says, Hey, I'm, I'm done. Here's the baton. And they take some type of shepherd role advisor role. Or maybe you're just hunting, fishing nonstop and you're not answering it's call, whatever it is, you know, that's the final season. Mm-hmm. And the younger generation's leading from a role, perspective, title, perspective.
Mm-hmm. Ownership perspective, the whole thing.
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: Um, ultimately, I know those are broad strokes, but ultimately that's what's gonna happen. Where are you guys right now in those three kinda seasons? Are you, it feels like you're kind of in dual leadership, uh, [00:55:00] right now. Where are you?
Graves Schmidly: I'd say we're right in that middle where he's still, I mean, we, I feel like we just came out of that first phase you talked about.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Where, uh, he's leading and I was learning.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, and now I feel like we're at a point in time where he's leading and I'm leading too. Um, same with Paxton and Marty. Um, Paxton's leading. Marty's leading too. And we're just kind of, that's how I feel right now. Mm-hmm.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. Yeah. Well. Uh, I 100% what he said.
We're in the middle, that middle season. Yeah. I'm not sunsetting, I'm not going anywhere. Um, you know, if somebody called me tomorrow, like last year I had an count four hours away that I was referred to. I made a phone call, I said, I'll drive four hours, but you're gonna do business with me if I drive four hours.
They were like, I don't know what you're waiting for, get in the car. So I still, if, I mean, if, if, if my phone rang, if I got a message when I walk out [00:56:00] here that says, you need to be in, you know, star City on Friday at 10 o'clock in the morning, this account, I'd be there.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. I mean, so I'm still actively thinking about the growth of BHC.
Steve Graves: Yep.
Shannon Schmidly: But I'm putting the, the growth of BHC with our younger producers and the rest of our producers, uh, at the forefront of my mind. So Hackston and Graves are very much involved in leadership of the agency. 'cause we put EOS in entrepreneurial operating system several years ago. Made them part of the management team.
Yeah. And gave them spec sp uh, specif, uh, specific duties and responsibilities within the organization. Um, you know, if you just graves and, and the sales and producing side of things, Paxton in some sales and producing side of things in the CFO side of things.
Steve Graves: Yep.
Shannon Schmidly: So they're definitely, they're on our, our, every Monday we have a management meeting that's an hour and a half [00:57:00] long talking about high level stuff.
Whereas we've got all these different managers of all these departments that are doing their jobs and they've been given the ability to make decisions and delegate on their own without coming to Marty. I and Graves and Paxton. So,
Steve Graves: yeah. So, so Shannon is the, you mentioned earlier, did you say there's 80, 90 employees?
Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. 90, 92, I think
Steve Graves: 92 employees. So in the next five to 10 years, um, like will the business potentially double, will it? Mm-hmm. Like what's the state of Arkansas? Are you only in the state of Arkansas or are you outside home too? We're actually
Shannon Schmidly: in eastern Oklahoma too.
Steve Graves: Okay, okay.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah.
Steve Graves: Okay. So there's not, this is not a geographical parameter
Shannon Schmidly: mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: Business. We rather in 50
Shannon Schmidly: states.
Steve Graves: Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay. That, that's my question. So you could
Shannon Schmidly: we yeah, we could, you
Steve Graves: can ride anywhere.
Shannon Schmidly: You, we have non-resident licenses in all the states other than our main state that we're resident in. Um, we, we, we, it, it might go to 150 [00:58:00] employees. It might go to 125 employees.
We're not gonna say it's not when, when, when revenue, when we generate additional revenue, and we need the staff behind that revenue to service it. At the level that BHC will take care of an account, we will hire that. We will hire, hire the support to go behind it.
Steve Graves: Yeah. Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: We just recently opened up an office in Little Rock, Arkansas at, uh, Rodney Perman.
Breckenridge never really wanted to be in the central Arkansas market with a office, but, and we've always written business in central Arkansas. In fact, all over Arkansas, El Dorada, little Rock, Stuard. I mean, you, Jonesboro, Harrison, you, you, we've all been northwest Arkansas. We've always written business there.
But we put, had an opportunity with a producer that had 19 years in the business who's very good at what he does, and his service staff person came over with him. So we just opened up that. But Little Rock and Fort Smith and Lowell or Rogers, s [00:59:00] Oklahoma and Poto, Oklahoma. So we've got five locations there that bicycle.
Steve Graves: Got it. Mm-hmm. Got it. We still
Graves Schmidly: expect a lot of growth.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We, we do definitely. But. You know, if a, if a client called me tomorrow and said, we got a deal in Alabama that you need to be in Birmingham on Monday, I'm going to go to Birmingham, I'm gonna be in Birmingham, whatever we need to do.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Steve Graves: Looking like a good salesman.
Kile Graves: Yeah,
Shannon Schmidly: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Kile Graves: Um, when you think about the future of BHC, maybe 10, 10, 15 year vision, what is your vision of, of BHC and is your a little bit different? I mean, that's something that starts to happen, you know, when you move from that second season to third season is some of the vision that you and Marty have been carrying Graves and, and Paxton start to cast a little bit of vision and say this, Hey, this is what I want it to look like.
Mm-hmm. You know, some of, some of that vision casting starts to shift. Sounds like you're not quite there yet, but
Shannon Schmidly: mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: What would, what is your vision of the future and the graves? I wanna hear your answer too.
Shannon Schmidly: I think that [01:00:00] passion and graves. Vision are gonna be very similar to mine and Marty's only because of three years ago, this March 1st, couple days ago, three years ago, when Marty and I went to the bank and said, we want the opportunity to buy ourselves back.
We're gonna start our own agency, or we want to buy ourselves back. Um, why'd we do that? It was not about genera, it wasn't about wealth to Marty and I in any kind of imagination, uh, or, or reason or behind what, what was behind it, why we wanted that. But what we realized was that being privately owned for 20 years, we had no way to share.
Generational wealth with people and within the organization, with our sales staff, equity opportunities for them or for our kids moving forward. Because we were owned by a bank. We had no equity. And yeah, [01:01:00] you can get into phantom equity models and all these different things. They're complicated, they're clunky, they're not real.
So I think Graves and Paxton, to go back to your original question, their mindset on what we want to do and how we want to scale our agency is the same as mine and Marty's, 'cause they've been with us from the very beginning of when we bought ourselves back and what we set goals wise within our EOS leadership teams.
Steve Graves: Yep.
Shannon Schmidly: So yeah, we, we, we set a goal that we wanted to be at a certain revenue by 2030.
Steve Graves: Yep.
Shannon Schmidly: Uh, I think we're gonna be at that goal. I think we're actually gonna exceed the goal, but the agency as a whole has scaled quite a bit. In the last five years. Not to get into number details, I don't wanna go there, but
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. We have scaled a lot in the last five years.
Steve Graves: Yep.
Shannon Schmidly: So, um, everyone's on the, everyone's, it, it, it's, it's, um, it's kind of like, you know, everyone pulling the same [01:02:00] direction on the rope. We all are, and we all have the same vision and purpose.
Kile Graves: Yeah. Yeah,
Shannon Schmidly: yeah.
Kile Graves: Yeah. I mean, a major intersection like buying yourselves back when you were already there, everyone was already at the foundation at, at the same time.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's, here's the new vision. We were all here at the moment. Yeah. When you have a big intersection like that mm-hmm. Yeah. Everyone's gonna rally. It was helped.
Graves Schmidly: It was a huge moment. And it was, I remember, I'll never forget the conversation, sitting in the upstairs conference room in Fort Smith, Marty, Shannon, Paxton, and me and Marty going, this is what we're thinking about doing.
Like, and it was kind of like. Are y'all like on board?
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Like, 'cause this is, if we do this, it's like
Kile Graves: asking you and Paxon.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah. I mean everybody's like, are you gonna lock in and
Steve Graves: see? That's great. That's great. We, you know, we've, I've said for decades that every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: Every organization's perfect designed to get the results. It gets well you guys buying back your company [01:03:00] structurally from a design standpoint, it made everybody get on the same page from a vision like you're talking about Shannon. Just like we all basically said, this is what we're designing against.
So, you know, it doesn't mean you don't have some, you know, stuff that you can do along the way, but mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It forced an alignment, you know? Yeah. Um, a structural alignment. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And philosophical alignment in a good way.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm. I agree.
Steve Graves: You know? How about surprises? Biggest, if you just had to say biggest surprise I've had working with my dad.
Biggest surprise I've had working with my son. If you just had to say a surprise, what would it be?
Graves Schmidly: Hmm. Biggest surprise. Um, I'd say I was a little surprised at how, uh, not to toot his horn, but I like his clients. A lot of his clients are like really, really close friends of his, and that's not because they were close friends first.
It was like he is, you know, somehow he [01:04:00] wrote their business a while back and now they're sending me like, birthday cards. These people are, and no, but seriously, like these people, like, I mean, he truly means it. When he tells 'em he is gonna take care of him, he builds a relationship with him that is unbreakable.
And I've witnessed it firsthand. It is like the people who are with him, they're with him. Um, and that was really surprising to me because you. When you get into insurance, you can see how on one hand it can be transactional.
Steve Graves: Yeah, that's exactly what I
Graves Schmidly: was thinking. And um, you know, there's some, especially personal lines, it can be extremely transactional.
Um, and now you're seeing AI things where you can go on and just quote your own stuff, but
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, for, and that's, I, so I didn't know what to expect getting into insurance, and that was really surprising to me. I was like, okay, if I do, if I do it how he's doing it, like I can get people to build true relationships with people.
Like they'll stick with you.
Steve Graves: You'd be seeing [01:05:00] your kids' birthday, birthday cards.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah, exactly. But it's true. Um, so that was surprising to me.
Steve Graves: That's awesome. Shannon, you got one?
Shannon Schmidly: Uh, I, I, I would probably say that the biggest surprise is, is, um, Grave's, Grave's ability to be self-sufficient in the timeframe that he has become self-sufficient.
I think it's faster than what I was be able to do. Oh yeah. Um, he's been able to do things, uh, and understand what's important in talking to these clients and what's important on doing and following up with them and, and, and understands that, uh, faster than I was able to. Yeah.
Steve Graves: Yeah. I got, I mean, I've told Kyle the exact same thing and I don't,
Kile Graves: I I was thinking
Steve Graves: that when you were talking, I dunno if, if they're just smarter than we were mm-hmm.
Yeah. I's learning, we were learning on our, we were learning as we went.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah.
Steve Graves: We were just bootstrapping our intelligence and [01:06:00] our knowledge
Shannon Schmidly: mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: As it happened. Sure. Like I've told Kyle that so many times, like, man, I, I just can't imagine.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Steve Graves: You just don't realize how fast you're moving through learning gates and
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Steve Graves: You know, milestone gates and revenue gates, right. And on and on and on of everything compared to what I did.
Graves Schmidly: So Kyle might agree, but a big part of that is because of the groundwork. No doubt that was laid before.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Me to be able to figure it out.
Kile Graves: Yeah, no doubt. I do think it's because you were, y'all were doing on, on your own and there was no one, like, you weren't sitting next to somebody's desk.
You know, you weren't sitting next to your dad's desk for three years learning. No. Mm-hmm. So that's definitely part of the on-ramp.
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: But that's also part of Right. Why I decided to go join in. Like, I don't if you ever thought about doing insurance without your dad, but it's like, why would I go, why would I go start from scratch?
Graves Schmidly: Sure. Yeah.
Kile Graves: When I can go over here.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Kile Graves: You know? Sure.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah. No doubt.
Kile Graves: Um, so, uh, fast forward maybe to the, the final year when you're hanging it up and you're crappy fishing every day or something, [01:07:00] what does the, what does the handoff look like? Because there's, there's probably some like title role stuff, uh, like are you taking some of your book?
How does that traditionally work? And it, have you talked about it? Mm-hmm. What does all that look like? Kind of the final handoff? Season when you
Shannon Schmidly: get paid. Yeah. Well, I mean, it, it, it, it, I think that, uh, as
Kile Graves: much as you wanna share, you
Shannon Schmidly: know, don't come to it. No. I, I think that Sam and Larry and Tom were both, were all three real instrumental in how the handoff of their accounts came to Scott and Marty and I, and you know, it's transferred business, uh, producers compensated less on transferred business 'cause they didn't bring it into the agency.
Um, but you're still paid well on it. Um, but it's your, but it's your responsibility. It's yours now. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, it's, it's like it know the car running down the track running a hundred miles an hour and the, the, the driver trainer over here, let's go at his steering wheel and says, you've got [01:08:00] the steering wheel.
Kile Graves: Yeah,
Shannon Schmidly: there's two steering wheels in the car, but you're the only one controlling it then. Or the person flying a plane, taking the yo from the other pilot. Um, I think that, uh, we will do the same thing. Graves having not, wasn't born when I started in the insurance business. He knows so many of my clients from just the community.
Uh, they've come to my daughter's wedding. They've done, you know, different things of life events. Uh, they know what's going on. Mm-hmm. I mean, I got clients that, uh, you know, know what's going on in my life right now. Some of the things I was sharing with y'all before we started talking and recording
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: They know what's going on, you know, and I think that we'll do the same thing in some cases there's generational changes taking, going on in the businesses that I take place. Yeah.
Steve Graves: I was, I was literally sitting here thinking about Yeah, it could be. Some of them are just,
Shannon Schmidly: some of them are.
Steve Graves: Yeah,
Shannon Schmidly: some of them are.
And it's a beautiful thing because Cool Grace will have the opportunity, [01:09:00] uh, to go and he's gone on a lot of my renewals on some of these businesses and stuff and sat and listened with the person that I have the relationship right now. And I'm dealing with second and third generation people on business, some of the businesses that I write today.
So, we'll, we'll do that for a period of time. 'cause I will not just run out and throw the keys up and say good luck. I'm just,
Graves Schmidly: yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: There's no way. I, it is too, too much pride, too much, uh, respect for the customers.
Kile Graves: Yeah,
Shannon Schmidly: because the relationships I've built with my customers, I feel like. It's my, it's, it's, it's important.
Yeah. It's, it's really important to me is building those relationships with those people.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm. I care about that relationship too much. Just to go, Hey, there's this new kid named Graves, he's gonna call on you. He's got you. Don't worry about it. No, we're not gonna do that. Yeah. No. We're gonna have multiple years going through the renewal process
Graves Schmidly: together.
Shannon Schmidly: Yeah. Together.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah. Me going out meeting these people year over year. [01:10:00]
Steve Graves: Mm-hmm.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah. So we need a little bit of a heads up
Kile Graves: of
Graves Schmidly: a heads up before you just That's right. That's exactly, exactly right. We'll do
Steve Graves: that.
Graves Schmidly: We'll work on that. But we're not, we're not there yet.
Kile Graves: Yeah. Yeah. One, at least one hunting season ahead at least.
Exactly. Gimme, gimme one, one. Hunting season. Right. Um, maybe to land the plane here. Um, so 120 5-year-old business, by the time you're, you know, getting done and you're stepping into the. To a leadership role, you know, a hundred thirty five, forty five, however many years you wanna keep rolling. Uh, that's an old company.
What, Shannon, what is something that's important that you want Graves to carry for, we asked this at the dinner over here when you guys came. Mm-hmm. But what, what's something that's really important to you that you wanna make sure Graves carries forward? You know, he's stepping into a company with a history, and he is learning what it means to mm-hmm.
Carry that forward.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: What is something that you're like, man, you gotta, you gotta get this right and you gotta carry this forward.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm. Um, [01:11:00] always put your, put yourself in your customer's shoes and buy the insurance form like you own their company.
Steve Graves: That's great.
Shannon Schmidly: Uh, that's
Steve Graves: great
Shannon Schmidly: Uhhuh, but just, just, just get in their shoes.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: And buy and procure the insurance from a price and a coverage standpoint, as if it, it was you that owned their company.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm. That's good. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: That's
Steve Graves: good.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Graves Schmidly: That's good. Yeah, I'll, uh, I'll say one more thing about like, looking down the line and one thing that Paxton and I align on really, really well is, um, you know, like he was talking about in nine, in 96, there was 20 something employees.
We've always had like a great family feel, um, at BHC and the culture's extremely strong. And it's cliche to say that I know, but it really is.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, and it's special. 'cause Fort Smith, you know, it's a, it's not a huge town. It's not small, but, you know, we employ 90 people in Fort Smith.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: You [01:12:00] know, um, and like we were saying, we could grow to, you know, it could be 150 employees one day, but like Paxton and I have always been really in the same mindset of we cannot lose like the family feel of this agency, because that's what it's always been.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Like it's really easy for a company to grow too fast and get. I don't know, corporatized or however you wanna say it.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, but that, it was cool to hear Paxton say it and me going, golly, that's yes. Like we cannot ever lose that. So I think that's really important in the 10, 15 year
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Plan as well.
Kile Graves: That's great.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Kile Graves: Um, last question from me, unless you have one. If you're talking to a dad and son thinking about working together or, you know, a young guy comes outta college and he is like, Hey, you work with your dad. Should, should I do it? Should I not do it?
Graves Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: What advice would you give? Would you give another father, son duo that's gonna step into business together?
Graves Schmidly: I'd say give it a go. Um, unless you know that you guys cannot work together, like if there's, if [01:13:00] there's issues underlying that, that would prevent that, uh, but no, give it a go. And, uh, I'd say you gotta be patient with each other. Um, I'd say for the son, uh, joining a family run business, it's really important to, to join that.
Business. Um, as a newbie, you need to be very humble. Uh, but you also have to carry a little bit of confidence 'cause you don't wanna get trampled.
Steve Graves: That's good.
Graves Schmidly: Um, and to come in and listen, um, and really, really, really work hard at, uh, gathering the respect of your coworkers, um, service staff, a anybody mm-hmm.
Gather respect for the people because there's people there that have been there longer than you.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: And they don't wanna see a son come in and be spoonfed.
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Graves Schmidly: Um, and so I think that's a, that's a really important part too.
Kile Graves: Yeah. That's good.
Graves Schmidly: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: Mm-hmm.
Kile Graves: That's good.
Shannon Schmidly: Um, take care, take care of the customer, obviously.
But one of the things that I [01:14:00] really like and whether that father son situation is a son joining, a father coming right out of school or right out of high school, or whatever it is he's gonna do.
Steve Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: You, you. Just realize that someone helped you too. Don't expect your kid to come in, uh, and know everything.
Someone invested. Marty and Scott, Tom and Sam and Larry made me successful today. That's good. I I owe everything to them. Um, and the good Lord that people tr found, you know, I had favor on me and people trusted me. And, and there were times in my career where I was more or less in front of people saying, I need you to help me.
And they did.
Kile Graves: That's great.
Shannon Schmidly: You know?
Kile Graves: Yeah.
Shannon Schmidly: But, um, I would say that, um, when you're not coming right out of school or right outta high school and you're gonna join with your father and you have done something [01:15:00] for a while, no. Don't be scared to do something you've never done before. I, I'm a prime example of it.
I had no idea what I was doing, but look what it did for me today. Yeah, I've been blessed immensely, uh, by the opportunity that Scott and Marty thought about in their head and went to Sam and Larry and Tom and said, we wanna ask Shannon to, so it's just, you know, don't be scared to try something you haven't done
before.