In this episode Heather Graves Ramsey, owner of Coach to Brilliance, discusses Dan Brown’s business move from San Francisco to Lake Oswego three years ago. Dan has been with Farmers Insurance for over 34 years. He shares his real-life experience utilizing all that the Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce has to offer to build relationships – and a transplanted business – to be successful in Lake Oswego.
From Dan Brown:
I began my Farmers® career as an agency owner in 1990. After a successful 6-year run building my agency, I was called upon to become a district manager. I obtained a small group of 17 agents, and over the next 26 years, my team and I grew the district into 46 agency owners. During that time, the district operated as one of the most successful in the entire company, and in 2014, it was recognized as #1 in the country.
In 2020, my wife and I came across the beautiful town of Lake Oswego, Oregon. After some soul-searching and buoyed by the opportunity to be close to my two daughters, twin grandchildren, and son-in-law, I made the decision to go back to my agency roots. I am fortunate that one of my daughters, Donna Jo, works alongside me on my team in the office.
I was pleased to have the opportunity to acquire a very successful agency located in the exact area we decided to settle in. Being able to retain the entire existing staff made the decision all the easier and confirmed it was the perfect next step.
Our goal is to continue to be known for excellent service, attention to detail, and easy accessibility. We are here to build relationships with our clients while helping them protect their assets and grow new ones through our Farmers Financial Solutions brand.
We are on Lower Boones Ferry Road and Douglas Way. Thank you, and we hope to speak with you soon!
Give me a call at (503) 699-0189 and I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.
LIZ HARTMAN:: [00:00:00] This is Business LO, a podcast by the Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce, which connects, educates, advocates, and champions our business community. We have nearly 500 members from international corporations to home based businesses, and we serve them all. Each episode of Business LO gives insider information to the local business community and the neighbors who support them.
And now let's talk business L. O.
MICHELLE ODELL:: Welcome back to another episode of business. L. O. Happy December. I'm Michelle O'Dell here with Chamber CEO Liz Hartman and Heather Graves Ramsey and special guest, Dan Brown from Procter Gamble. Farmer's insurance. Now, one of the things we discussed when we were planning this episode is the idea of just because you buy a gym membership doesn't mean you're going to get in shape.
You actually have to use the gym. Now, the same thing is true for the chamber of commerce. Becoming a chamber member [00:01:00] is just the beginning. You got to go and you got to participate. So this is perfect time to talk about this topic. Heather Graves Ramsey, owner of Coach to Brilliance. She will be talking to Dan Brown from Farmer's Insurance about his success here in Lake Oswego.
Now, Dan has been with Farmer's Insurance for over 32 years, and he's known for excellent service, attention to detail, and easy accessibility. He's licensed in California and Oregon and located on Lower Boones Ferry Road and Douglas Way. So Heather and Dan, thanks for being here. Let's talk about how to boost your business footprint here in
HEATHER GRAVES RAMSEY:: LO.
Take it away. Dan. Thanks It seems like you're doing business with everyone here in LO, and yet you moved here pretty recently. How have you been able to dig in so deep?
Speaker 4: We moved up here probably around three years ago after spending 30 plus years in the Bay Area. Purchased a farmer's insurance agency [00:02:00] with the intent of growing that agency and switching my career a little bit from a sales manager back into the actual face to face sales.
I decided that one of the best ways to do it was to get involved with the Chamber of Commerce. And that was a unique way of meeting a lot of people. And it's a lot of people who are interested, oddly enough, in growing their business. That's why they're out and about at 730 on a Friday morning.
Speaker 3: And you definitely have become involved in the Chamber.
So tell me a little bit about what it looks like to be Dan Brown, Farmers Insurance, digging in and involved in the Chamber as much as you are. What are you doing?
DAN BROWN:: First and foremost, I try to do things that are going to better my agency footprint, my business footprint, but also I truly believe that any community has to have a strong business community as well as a residential community.
I kind of walked into the [00:03:00] Chamber of Commerce randomly and suddenly found this Group or this unit of business, like minded people, and frankly, a lot of very positive motivated people that really drives the attendance. I mean, you can go into that meeting and it's very difficult to leave a chamber meeting in a bad mood, in less of a good mood than you walked in.
Right. Because it's, it's upbeat and it's. People coming up and asking, Hey, can you help me with this? Or, Hey, can you help me with that? Or, you know, in my case, just like today, Hey, I need 300 pens for a staff person who wants to go out and start visiting businesses. Where am I going to get 300 pens? And rather than go to pen.
com, it's nice to be able to. Ask a person and say, can you do this? And they're like, yeah, just send me what you wanted to say. And I'll have them to you Monday.
Speaker 3: You have the relationships and you get to know those people over time. The biggest thing that you do, Dan, is you are a part of those Friday networkings, right?
So you're there on Fridays, you volunteer your time to be MC sometimes, which we really get [00:04:00] to know you there, but. Even when you're not emceeing, you are part of the ambassador committee. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 4: There's no better place to be than standing at the door and greeting people and saying hello and meeting them.
And then I said, so who are those people? I mean, I want to be one of those people. You see that they have this badge that says ambassador on it. So then I'm like, okay, how do I become an ambassador? And then. Point here, point there, point here, and all of a sudden I was an ambassador. Probably the most important role in that, right?
Because people come in, and they're like, okay, I'll fill out this name tag, and then I'm going to shuffle off into the farthest corner I possibly can. And I don't want them to do that. And I'm like, hey, wait a minute. What's your name? What do you do? Hey, that's really cool. And hopefully I can say, there's Joanne who does this.
And that could benefit you and then kind of direct them somewhere. And they're, and we have a great group of ambassadors and they'll jump in. And they're excellent communicators. So they can involve [00:05:00] themselves. I mean, Heather, you're, you know, you're one of the best.
Speaker 3: But what I hear you doing is one, you know, you came into the chamber.
Decide to be a member. You're showing up. Not only that, you're engaging in the ambassador committee. You're digging in and you're digging in with something that resonates for you. Like Dan, it's like, that's something that you enjoyed. And so it's, you've got to do something that's authentic to you. So for you, for me, like ambassadors are really great area, but there's tons of different ways that people can plug in.
But I think the, the gem of that is do something, do something to engage.
Speaker 4: That's absolutely the case. Go up to someone, say hello, interact with them, see what you can do to help them. And then perhaps in turn, they can help you. And the other big factor here is you can never go into a relationship expecting something.
And that's one of the things that's very unique about the chamber.
Speaker 3: Real key here is it's relationships. It is not transactional. And I, and when you say the chamber, I just want to, Be clear for me anyway, and you've lived in many different places. The Lake Oswego chamber is [00:06:00] very different from, you
Speaker 4: know, I will tell you, it is a very different environment.
I think I've joked with Liz several times about this. I was in the chamber of commerce in my previous city and all that I got from that chamber in about, 24 years of membership was a lot of Swedish meatballs once a month. You know, I would go there and it was, it was such a different environment. And that's the thing.
I mean, Christopher does an incredible job of moving through an agenda and just the agenda alone is so valuable in an. Our, we get our business done and then there is time left for you to seek out people. All the experiences I talk about positively are absolutely the Lake Oswego chamber of commerce.
Speaker 3: The other thing too, is we do have the networking and we have probably about 25 percent of our members are actively going to those Friday network is we have a lot of members.
So not everybody's going to those, but there's other ways to get involved. You've gotten involved on the ambassador committee. You're also one of our board members. So what are the. Two big ways that [00:07:00] you have really increased your footprint here in Lake Oswego.
Speaker 4: I saw an opportunity to become a member of the board of directors of the chamber.
And I always feel like anytime I'm on a trip, which I will call the chamber of commerce, one of the trips of my life, and I always want to be in the front seat. So being on the board of directors allows me to have a seat. In the front seat and not necessarily directing the chambers every move, but at least know where they're turning next and see how I can be a part of that and help that.
And then the other thing that I've done a lot of in taking over my agency was become heavily involved in advertising and the advertising is a three pronged approach. I try to be in the newspaper and the newspaper kind of had a double reasoning behind it. Number one was I was taking over an existing agency with a lot of existing clients.
The second prong of my approach is to try to find out, utilizing again, members of the chamber, what's [00:08:00] coming up and what's important to me. Things that are really cool in this town that jump out is. Hey, it's a small town. It's kind of cool that we do 4th of July stuff. But then I also do things that are important to me.
Veterans are, are huge. That's one of my advertising angles is to try to get in, in front of people that I think things are important. And then my third deal is I'm a huge believer in I'm where I'm at because I had a great high school experience. And what I try to do there is if somebody needs. Money for a sports budget or somebody needs money for a band to try to do anything I can when it involves high school.
Speaker 3: One thing I also noticed that you did is you were one of the sponsors for the Hop at the Hunt last year.
Speaker 4: That was just amazing and the fun of getting it set up, right? It is small town. It's not like Hey, we have this company come out and they put the eggs out the night before. It's 10 of us throwing eggs.
And there's a skill to that. I learned that's what makes this so cool is that when you [00:09:00] say, Hey, I'm going to sponsor this Liz or the powers that be say, cool, you're sponsoring and you're also going to help us. That's a unique experience, right? I mean, the old story of, hey, it's easy to write a check and just say, okay, cool.
Yeah, I wrote that check and I'm out. But when you get to actually see what the check does, that just makes such a big difference. And if you're actually part of the reason, that makes the community better.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker: Well, Dan did not mention that he is also one of our leadership team for Leadership Lake Oswego.
And. That is another one of his time commitments where he is meeting a lot of people in town.
Speaker 4: One of the blessings and curse of being in management with a large insurance company is they tend to invest a great deal of money making you go to different classes and flying you around the country and bringing in these amazing speakers.
And frequently I would listen sometimes at these meetings [00:10:00] and some of the things would actually drip down through, but one of the nice things about it is I got a real broad range of, you know, management experiences and management talent and. Thoughts and processes around management. And one of the things that I really enjoy here is when I came up here and they said, we have this thing called leadership Lake Oswego, it did a couple of things.
One is it allowed me to sit in a class and interact with other people, which I always think is so important rather than just have the lecturer lecture and you sit out there and you listen. The leadership Lake Oswego class allowed me to, first of all, meet some people and really meet in depth with those people and have the ability that it's in a small, you know, you're in a larger group, 25, 30 people in the class, but then you break out into these.
And it really gives you a chance to listen to some of those people who won't [00:11:00] speak up in a group of 40. They'll just sit there and they won't share their valuable, truly valuable information that they have. Soft spoken people will rarely speak up in a large group. And sometimes it's the whisperers that actually have the best idea.
I took the class and I really enjoyed the learning experience. And so much so that I said, Hey, I would Love to help out moving forward in any way I could. So this year I've been able to become a facilitator in the class, which is actually great for me because I've never really facilitated before. So it's nice to be a facilitator because you get to listen and you also get to draw in people that sometimes would not speak up.
That's one of those things where I talk about. You know, my prior chamber experience, just being all about the meatball, this, you know, this thing, Hey, we're here to exchange business and do that and make sure we have a healthy business community. But we have this weird thing where we also want to make your business better.
We want to help you personally be better. And the great thing [00:12:00] about this class is it's one of those things, right? Where they hide behind it's a business oriented class, but really it's helping you all around. I mean, it's helping you in your personal life too.
Speaker 3: As you said, Dan, like we're trying to elevate and raise Lake Oswego and keep Lake Oswego as one of the best places to work, stay, play.
And so part of that is making sure that the businesses are thriving there. By being a member, whether you come to the events or not, you are supporting and helping the business community and that ecosystem of that community grow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. It's so valuable to be able to do that in three years, four years in a community.
And that just wouldn't. Wouldn't have happened without the Chamber of Commerce, and I truly believe that. The Chamber of Commerce, advertising, and it's the old saying, right? The community is only as good as the people that are contributing to the community. This is a great way to meet a bulk of people every week.
Speaker 2: Appreciate you taking the time today. That was great. Dan was so helpful. There are some other ways to boost your
Speaker: footprint. Liz. So we frequently [00:13:00] have people who are brand new businesses and immediately join the chamber and what we suggest is that they have a ribbon cutting. If you're a business within the first year, have a ribbon cutting, bring in the mayor, bring in the chair of the chamber, bring in All of your friends do an open house.
Let people see that and have a ceremony that you can cut the ribbon, officially open your business, put it on social media. We at the chamber like to help you get that visibility. And when we have these ribbon cuttings, we encourage the new businesses to invite their neighbors. Number one, it's a great way to introduce themselves.
And number two, it's nice to have them all there to celebrate together because you wind up doing business together. You want those opportunities to bring your neighbors into your business and you should also be visiting them as well. Let them know what you're doing. You should know what they're doing.
Speaker 2: And 3rd Thursday is another great way. Explain
Speaker: a little bit
Speaker 2: about
Speaker: that. 3rd Thursday is still building. It is something we're doing on the 3rd Thursdays from 4 to 6 [00:14:00] p. m. Some of our businesses are offering 10 percent or 20 percent off if they're a retail business. We have businesses like Cascade Hasson Sotheby's that will have an artist featured there.
We have restaurants that have a special item on their menu. So if you go to Bamboo Sushi or to the Tap House, You may find something on there that says 4 to 6 p. m. on the 3rd Thursday. You can get this item at a special rate. It is interesting how all of these businesses are working together. And you'll find you can go right down on State Street or on A Avenue or 1st Avenue and go to a number of businesses.
They're all celebrating 3rd Thursday.
Speaker 3: Another way that you can plug in, you may not be able to go to the networking. You may not be able to volunteer a ton, but the other way for you to get your name out there is through sponsorships. And there's a ton of different ways you can sponsor and things that you can sponsor with the chamber specifically, though, you, you can take a look at things like the community awards, the tree lighting, you can look at the wine walks, the hop at the hunt.
All of these [00:15:00] things. Yeah. Get your name out there, not only in the newspaper, but also social media. You're getting all the boosts that are there, but also all the chamber members every week, get a newsletter and your logo. Your name is in that we have a 49 percent open rate. I don't know any other newsletter that has that.
that many people opening consistently every week. It's kind of the go to place for things to know what's going on. And so sponsorship is a really great way for you to get your name out there and to get yourself embedded into the community.
Speaker 2: And of course, all that information, Liz, can be found at the
Speaker: Chamber website, which is LakeOswegoChamber.
com. And you can find every single event right on that landing page. Okay, so what do we need to know in LO for December 2024? There is a chamber party at the Iron Light on Wednesday, December 4th from 5 to 7 30 p. m. Bring your employees, bring your spouse, bring your partner. It is a great opportunity to [00:16:00] see all of Lake Oswego from the top of one of downtown's highest buildings.
They can RSVP, of course, at the website. Yes, they can. And then we also want them to know that this is the month to nominate people for the Community Leader of the Year and the Business of the Year. We will be celebrating that on February 26th, but you need to get your nominations in in December so that they can be selected by January and we can celebrate them in February.
Anything else?
Speaker 3: The Chamber, every year, sponsors one event that helps us really hone in on our networking. And January 3rd, at our regular Friday networking event, you are going to have an opportunity to come and learn from the different Chambers. We've got Tigard, we've got Tualatin, we've got Lake Oswego, all coming together to help you learn how to network in the best way possible for you and your business.
Speaker 2: Well, being December, it's the holiday season, I hope everyone has a wonderful time, I hope you get out and enjoy all these chamber events, and I'm looking forward to a brand new year with [00:17:00] everybody.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Michelle. And don't forget everybody, shop local. Shop local. Shop LO. That's for sure.
Thank you, Liz. Thank you, Heather. Till next time. And remember, every day is a Chamber of Commerce Day here in Lake Oswego.
Speaker: The Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce thanks you for listening to Business LO. We would love to have you as a member so you can help Lake Oswego continue to be one of the best places to live, work, and play.
If you want to share an idea for a future episode, call us today. Or become a member, visit us at LakeOswegoChamber. com and please like, and follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And for help with your business podcast, go to ModCastProductions. com.