Meet Founding Victory Circles Member, Leslie Wallace of Safety Net, Inc.
With her parents urging her to choose a specific degree while attending Oklahoma State University, Leslie Wallace honed in on her love for cooking. The ultimate answer became a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Administration. To this day, with a continued passion for cooking, she watches the program, The Next Food TV Star and mentally tries to compete with the challengers. While she did obtain the degree, making very good grades along the way, her path ended up taking a whole different course.
Upon graduation she began to quickly realize that something was just not right about the choice of degree she had made. Among other things, she came to the realization that she would be working while every one else she knew was partying. She worked for one month at a Student Union job, a job the degree was meant for, and realized that this was definitely not for her.
Fate pointed her towards financial services. A manager she had worked with at the Student Union referred her to a local bank. She found herself having fun as a bank teller while teaching gymnastics on the side (another passion of hers). “Financial Services was always a good niche for me.” Leslie shared during our recent interview, “I learned (in that job) about customer service and how to relate to people. The art of customer service was a great lesson to learn. I liked communicating with people and helping to meet their needs.”
After 5 years in banking, she moved towards the stock brokerage industry. Realization soon came to her that in order to be a success in the financial services field she needed securities and insurance licenses. The more selling licenses, the more opportunities would become available to her.
With that in mind, in 1992 she decided to move into the insurance industry with Met Life and began getting the licenses necessary to sell insurance and securities. That is when her vision for what she really wanted to do when she “grew up” began to crystallize. Met Life became a great training ground.
However, her real growth spurt towards building her expertise really began to emerge when she joined Taggart and Associates, a multi-line independent insurance agency in Boulder, Colorado. The diversity in the insurance products and customers of the local agency taught her a great deal. She was meeting new people and writing different kinds of business everyday. “The most important part of my job is knowing what questions to ask and at Taggart, I learned a lot about the right questions to ask.” Leslie explained.
“In the financial services industry, in order to promote yourself, you have to change jobs.” Leslie further shared as to why she decided to move on to Edward Jones and get her Series 7 license in 2000. This gave her experience in selling insurance and securities, including stocks and bonds. After two and a half years of running her own Edward Jones office she opted, to go back into insurance and open a Farmers Insurance Agency.
“It is just more fun to protect peoples assets”, Leslie said, as to how she has gained the trust of a multitude of customers with a variety of insurance needs including auto, home, life and health. In 2007 she incorporated under the name of Safety Net, Inc. while holding the vision to create her own multi-line insurance agency!
As Leslie looks towards the future she sees an abundance of opportunities. “My goal is to always ask, ‘How can I best help this client and apply all that I have learned.’ I can help clients’ understand their exposure and what they need to protect their hard earned assets. “After all”, she said, “Shouldn’t your insurance agent be a very close advisor.”
The best skill Leslie feels she has is in matching her client’s needs to the available products. If their wants are unrealistic she will tell them and help find a product that will in fact bring them the results they are looking to achieve.
When talking about her role as a Victory Circles member Leslie had this to say, “What is so important to me about the Victory Circles is learning about the others (members) experiences and being able to relate them to mine. I love the idea of regularly getting together and discussing the various businesses. One day I might go and not be particularly excited about my business and the meeting revives me. The extra added value is that it has helped me to figure out where I want to grow professionally and personally as well. The dialogue between the women always inspires some kind of action for my life. Meeting with other members during the month carries me until we meet again.”
As for her thoughts as to what the future holds, Leslie sees focusing on Long Term Health Care Insurance as her opportunity to really make a huge difference in people’s lives. “It is becoming one of the most important planning tools for women moving towards their 50’s!” Leslie shared, full of the passion she feels on this topic. “We are all healthier and are going to live longer than past generations. Medicare and the government are not going to provide for our old age. We need to plan now.” She is looking forward to attending the National Long Term Care Symposium in Kansas City this November.
Leslie lives in Lafayette, CO with her husband Dan and two four-legged family members, Buster and Cricket. Her only child, Bradley, just got married in July and attends school in St. Louis. She remains to this day an avid Oklahoma State Cowboy fan.
