Carly R. Eastwood, ACP, TMCA-CM

I attribute my success to God, my father, and my grandfather. My grandfather was a businessman who was very successful. He owned savings and loans companies all over East Texas and Dallas, and he used to take me to work with him in Palestine, Texas, to First Finance, which was his loan company. I was calling cards at 9 years old, calling collections, telling people that they owed my grandfather money and they needed to come pay. I got my business prowess from him. I got my work ethic from my father, because him being a police officer, he worked third shift. He would go to work at 8 o'clock at night and come back at 8 in the morning, and he was always there, always working and trying to make a living to take care of our family. Whatever I put my head into, I try to do it at the best possible level that I can. Being hardworking is key, and I attribute that to having a dad and a grandfather who instilled those values in me.

Think before you react. Count to 10 before you react. I have an impatient clause, you know, I'm a pretty impatient person, and I've had to learn to be patient, because not everybody around you knows what you know. Sometimes that's frustrating, especially if they've been in the industry as long as you have, but not everybody takes your positions as to heart as others. That's not a bad thing, it's just a difference in the way we're built. The best piece of advice I ever got was don't take it personally.

If you want to be in risk management, you have to have thick skin, first of all. It's a very hard industry. The first step is to know what direction you want to go, because risk management has a lot of different niches. We have the claims, we have compliance, we have legal and ethical, we have the carrier compliance which is onboarding carriers, we have driver qualification when you're an asset-based company. So know which niche you want to be in, and then study everything about it. And then if you want to learn more, get a mentor. I had many really good mentors in this career, and I think that that's really helpful. If you have somebody who loves it and who's passionate about it, then learn from them. Soak it all in. Make sure that you have the tools necessary, and if you don't have the tools necessary, find somebody who does. There is an amazing group called RISE, R-I-S-E, and they are on LinkedIn and also Facebook. It's women and men that are in insurance that are mentors for young people who want to come into insurance. We have a mentorship program in RISE that is just absolutely incredible, and it's free to join. You can find RISE on LinkedIn or go to RISEProfessionals.com.

Communication, honestly, is a huge challenge, because people have become keyboard warriors instead of wanting to pick up the phone and talk to each other. You and I could have done this via email, right? You could have sent me a list of questions, I could have answered them, but that's not personal. To me, that's not as personal as you and I having a meaningful conversation, and people have forgot how to communicate. That's the downfall of this entire world, because people want to get behind a keyboard and become a keyboard warrior instead of having an active communication with anybody. When you're reading your emails, I always say, read your emails back before you hit send, because you don't want to make people think that you're mad, even if you're trying to make a point. And if you need to get that detailed, you really do need to pick up the phone. I tell my staff that all the time. If it gets to email number 3 and somebody still doesn't understand, you need to be picking up the phone. The back and forth 25 times is not productive.

Honesty and integrity are huge. If you don't have those in either part of your life, you're not going to be successful in either part of it. Trust is a huge factor. Imagine wrecking your car and getting on the phone with somebody, and you've never had to deal with something like that, and you're literally putting your money and your physical being into someone's hands. Imagine that person not being the right person to talk to. I always tell people that work for me, you need to treat others like you're walking in their shoes. What if this happened to you? How would you want to be treated if this happened to you? The first 5 minutes of that conversation is going to set the whole tone. The biggest part of risk is having somebody in your corner.