Community Leader Spotlight
Featuring Tim Leman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Gibson
Q: What key attributes do you feel have led to your success and ultimately the continued success of Gibson?
I think three things come to mind to me. One, I’m a quick start. We use Kolbe for personality assessments, and this trait was identified from that. I have a high sense of urgency. I like to get things in motion and usually that’s really a good trait for my company and my teammates — but I can also wear people out with that one. Second, I’m just fortunate to have really strong written and verbal communication skills. Those have allowed me to communicate our vision and purpose in person, in big meetings, in small meetings, and in writing. Third is that we’ve got a long-term outlook on everything. I play the long game and I think the skill or attribute that comes with that is a sense of resilience. And I don’t know whether I influenced Gibson or if they influenced me, but the whole company is aligned that way — we play the long game. And that helps us get through the short periods where things aren’t always perfect.
Q. What role has marketing played at Gibson? And how has marketing, or the way you use marketing, changed and evolved over the years under your guidance?
I’m a former sales jockey and I see sales and marketing as cousins — they’re closely related. 20 years ago we hired someone to lead our marketing efforts which, at the time, was rare for insurance agencies. Up until then, most of the effort was focused on community development, coordinating with non-profits, and doing community outreach to create brand awareness.
But that’s evolved; we’re much more strategic and focus on brand alignment in everything we do. Even how we go about connecting on a B2B basis, all of that is much more coordinated. We got more purposeful about what we were doing in the community. We had started with a shotgun approach years back, and in the past five years, we’ve really evolved to be focused and specific in what we get involved with. We still are very community-centric, and that position plays a significant role in our marketing efforts. We don’t do a large amount of paid advertising. I think our “advertisement” is buying a table at a big event that we support, and we can invite friends and clients. And I love it because it’s a win, win, win. It reflects well on Gibson. It does something good for a great organization and we get to spend time with people we want to do business with.
We’ve also rearranged our chairs a little bit, in that our director of marketing now reports to our chief administrative officer. The chief administrative officer role is all about the employee experience, which includes facilities, IT, traditional HR, learning, and growth. We came to realize how important the marketing effort is in terms of recruiting — getting the right people and being able to develop our brand from a recruitment and retention standpoint.
And I’m looking ahead to try to get more and more focused into some of the digital space and be able to connect with prospective clients. That’s something we’re working on right now, so we can have our advisors spending most of their time advising clients instead of finding clients to advise.
Q. Gibson is known for having a progressive corporate culture. How do you bring that culture to your offices outside of South Bend?
We’ve gotten a lot better at it, but we’re not perfect. It’s a work in progress and we continue to work hard at it. We have four offices outside of our core market here in South Bend. When we opened up our first office outside the area about 15 years ago in Indianapolis, we didn’t get it right. We made a lot of mistakes, and it took a long time for us to get our momentum going there. I give a lot of credit to EOS, (the Entrepreneurial Operating System). That’s helped us a lot because it’s brought a keen focus on right person, right seat. As part of this, we use a “getting to know you” form that we run through HubSpot for new potential employees. We ask them things centered around our values, and we just want to hear their stories, too. There are no right or wrong answers, but we want to understand their stories, and it all helps us know whether there’s a fit for our company.
We run our team meetings on the same agenda and format across locations, so that consistency has really helped across the board. We’ve opened more offices — Fort Wayne, Kalamazoo, and even ventured out of our Midwest comfort zone to Phoenix. The consistency that EOS brings has really connected these offices together and we all feel like we’re doing things the same way.
Also, we really try to get the whole company together once a year, as well as sending a leadership team member out to the various offices for celebratory events. I’ve been getting out to Arizona once a month and I try to rotate around and make sure I’m in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, and Kalamazoo once a month, or at least every other month. My family, parents and in-laws live in Fort Wayne, so it gives me an excuse to go see my mom and get one of my favorite dishes from when I was growing up, which is always kind of fun!
Q: What’s new or on the horizon for Gibson?
To date, we’ve been in mid-size markets — sort of like minor league baseball cities. Markets that are economically viable, big enough to support a minor league baseball team and have lots of sophisticated businesses that need help, but not massive cities. Entering Phoenix last year, venturing more than a two-hour car ride away into a bigger city, has been a real learning opportunity for us. But we think it’s an excellent opportunity, and so far, the momentum’s going better than it’s ever gone for any of our new offices. And that’s because we’ve learned from mistakes we made as we got the other ones going.
We’re getting into different, more diverse economic and industry cycles and things like that. So, we think it’s good risk management for us as a business, playing the long game. And Phoenix also happens to be the fastest growing large city in the country. So, there are a lot of things that happen organically out there that aren’t going on in some of the other markets we’re in. We have big hopes for Phoenix. While we’re investing in all our markets, we see a time in the future looking out 10 years or so that Phoenix could be a third or more of the entire size of our company.
Q: What was your first job?
I’ve been selling for a long time! My mom used to buy me Hubba Bubba gum at the grocery store. And I think it was about 5 cents per piece. And I would resell that on the playground and on my bus in fifth grade, for like 15 or 20 cents each. When times got tough on the playground, and some kid really wanted a piece of gum, I might even get a quarter for it. So, it got to be a pretty big operation! A Ziplock baggie full of gum, and I was raking the money in — maybe $20 or $30 a week. I thought I was rich! Then I got called down to the principal’s office and my bag got confiscated on the bus. They appreciated my energy and effort, but said I needed to shut down my business because it was distracting to the bus driver. And not all kids had money to buy gum on the playground. But I learned that I enjoyed being in sales!