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Archives for 2010

Presenting at the Federation of Insurance Women of Texas

October 12, 2010 by 3 Comments

I was honored to be asked to be the keynote speaker at this organization’s annual convention.  I have attended this convention over the years as an exhibitor and as a member.  My busy schedule and the dates for this convention have not worked together for several years.  Thus, there are a number of people I haven’t seen in those years.  When I was asked to do a presentation on social media I was delighted.  Wow, how fun would this be.

  • I would get to talk about a subject I really enjoy sharing.
  • I would get to see a whole bunch of friends I haven’t seen in a long time.
  • The convention was being held in Arlington (a short 20min drive from my house – no airplane ride).
  • They were feeding me lunch.

There are no minuses here in my mind.  Well as time went on, some of this changed.

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Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , ,

What Color is the Language in Your Office?

September 7, 2010 by 8 Comments

I haven’t thought much about this lately as the offices I have been visiting the last few months seem to have little if any “blue” language.  However, in the Parade Magazine in our newspaper this week there was a short piece on “Gordon Ramsay, Meanest Man on TV?”  For those of you that might not know this TV personality, his shows are all blue language.  I don’t watch his show, however, on one of our recent visits to a hospital emergency room, his show was on.  I was surprised and offended.  There were a number of children present and felt that it was certainly inappropriate viewing for these young people.

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Filed Under: Agency Culture Tagged With: , ,

Managing Change

August 10, 2010 by 3 Comments

When I do a presentation on change I like to compare change we choose to change inflicted upon us.  If you choose to go buy yourself a new cell phone, it is likely that there will be no complaining.  You will embrace the new technology and learn to do new things.  In my presentation I talk about the resistance that many companies face when implementing change.  My example here is implementing a new agency management system.  The agency staff is busy doing what they do best, sell and service insurance, so many see having to learn and begin to use a new system as a big headache.  There are even obstacles encountered when a vendor makes a major change in a process within their system.  I had a narrow vision which limited me to thinking of only two types of change.  But in the last year my vision of the types of change has been widened.

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Filed Under: Pat Thinking Tagged With: ,

Where Has Pat Been?

July 13, 2010 by 11 Comments

A number of my friends have asked that I blog about what happens when you are 1,000 miles from home and you are injured.  My husband, Gene & I were on vacation when he injured himself.  Here is our experience.  I always buy travel insurance when we go out of the country so that we can get back home incase of accident or illness.  I have never done this for domestic travel, but I am reconsidering.  Today’s airline flights are so full that you are only flying on the plane you are scheduled on in many cases.  The proper travel insurance would have allowed us to return home a few days earlier.

My plan was to take a short break from blogging and social media.  I knew that during the first part of our vacation in Yellowstone National Park we would not have access to the internet.  I thought this would be a great time to clear my mind and do some planning.  Well, all of that part went as planned.  However, the afternoon of June 18, 2010, my husband slipped and fell and tore the quad muscles on both of his legs.  This rendered him immediately unable to walk.  We were in the Badlands National Park and 1,000 miles from home.

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Filed Under: The Glamour of the Road Tagged With:

Who Is On Your Agency’s Team?

May 25, 2010 by 2 Comments

Last week there were several news reports about ladies in their 90s receiving Master Degrees.  One such lady is Helen Small show graduated from University of Texas Dallas.  Here is an article on this amazing lady. http://tinyurl.com/29rrbhb.  So what do people like this have that others don’t?  Why do they keep learning when they could be doing leisurely things all day?  When working with agencies I hear a number of excuses related to learning.

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Filed Under: Agency Culture

WebSite Re-Design

May 11, 2010 by 10 Comments

Our world of social media continues to explode. Along with that comes new technologies and new design. While creating a new social media plan for a client over the past few weeks, I determine that my site was too busy and outdated in its design and performance. It has only been about a year since I last had a re-design. However, as someone working with clients on updating who they are and how they operate, I think I need to be as current as possible in addition to looking to the future.


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Filed Under: Social Media

Me and My Mac – TAAR January 2010

May 5, 2010 by 4 Comments

In this article I relate how I evaluated the type of new laptop I chose and how that relates to evaluating your technology needs in your agency.  In looking back to what I said in the article there is only one item that I no longer agree with.  I said I really like the blogging software better than what I was using before.

A few weeks ago I helped an agency set up Microsoft Windows Live Writer for their blogging.  This is the software I was using when I changed to my Mac.  After testing 4 different Mac blogging software I am going back to the Windows Live Writer software.

I am enjoying the best of both worlds.

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Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: , , ,

Do You Have A Social Media Plan?

April 27, 2010 by 10 Comments

In January 2010 I presented a session at the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas‘ Joe Vincent Seminar on Social Media in Insurance Agencies. I have received so much positive feedback about this session. As a result of this session I have had the pleasure to work with an agency on developing their social media plan. The owner of the agency attended the session and had some ideas in mind. The initial question was – “What tools do we use?” Then – “How do we manage them?”

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Filed Under: Social Media

Social Media Can Drive Traffic to Agency's 'Home Base' – Insurance Journal – March 2010

April 8, 2010 by Leave a Comment

In January this year I had the privilege of presenting “Turning Social Media Into Social Business” as a breakout session at the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas‘ Joe Vincent Seminar. This was one of three breakout sessions in the last time slot of the day. The session was almost full. I was amazed as there were other sessions offering CE credits and each had great speakers. It seems there was plenty of interest in the session at hand. The questions were plentiful and engaging.

The following is the opening of this session as reported by the Insurance Journal‘s Stephanie K. Jones.

One of the primary reasons why insurance agents don’t jump into the world of social media — such as blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the myriad other Web-based avenues for reaching out to the world at large — is that they are unsure how to go about it, according to a Texas-based agency consultant, coach and mentor who said there’s a lot of resistance to using such tools in the agency universe.

The link will take you to the Insurance Journal article written by Stephanie K. Jones Social Media Can Drive Traffic to Agency’s ‘Home Base’

Thank you Stephanie for a great article.

Filed Under: Social Media

Best Practices Documentation and Management – TAAR – November 2009

April 6, 2010 by 4 Comments

A conversation at an industry event centered around the use of wikis.  My colleagues agreed that an agency’s best practices should be posted in a wiki and editable by the staff.  I expressed my concerns about this and my colleagues told me my concerns were old-fashioned and out-of-date. Well, of course that set me to thinking they might be right. So I checked with insurance agents’ errors and omissions underwriters. This article discusses this issue in depth.

Best Practices Documentation and Management – TAAR – November 2009

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Filed Under: Articles
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