Purple Martin
Liz Martin: Hatching experience at Martin Insurance
Her jubilant laughter reverberates through the office. “My
dad put me on the payroll at eight. I tell everyone I’ve been working for 33
years,” she says, roaring with laughter. “I hated it, and he said, ‘Some day
you’ll thank me for this!’”
For Liz Martin, owner agent of Martin Insurance Agency and a
farmer’s daughter, that day has come. “I found when I came into the insurance
business I worked that much harder than people who have been in the business
all their lives and are used to working eight to five, getting vacations and
holidays.”
Liz graduated from Elizabethtown College with a bachelor’s
in business administration and a minor in English. Her father needed help with
his chicken hatchery business, and so she spent the first eight years out of
college hatching baby chicks and managing about 25 people.
Taking Flight
Between college’s sophomore and junior years, Liz enjoyed
the summer with her uncle who operated a small insurance agency on Manor Avenue
in Millersville.
“A week after I finished my finals at E-town, I actually got
my license in property and casualty insurance thinking I could do that
part-time and still work at the chicken hatchery. But the chicken hatchery was
many, many hours. So I still always wanted to get into insurance.”
Concerned for her aging uncle’s business, Liz left the
hatchery in May 1996 to work for him. In October that year, she purchased the
agency and moved the business that November to its current location on North
George Street in Millersville. Liz will relocate again this summer to a
recently purchased building next door.
She’s forth generation owner for Martin Insurance, which has
been passed down from her great grandfather, to her grandfather, to her uncle.
“It’s a family business, but I don’t have family working here.”
No blood relatives, perhaps.
Her Brood
Liz speaks about her staff as loving as family. “People are
one of my passions. I like having a great team of people that I work with; I
like seeing them develop; I like the fact that they give me ideas; and I like
the fact that we can go to Christmas parties and happy hour and have fun
together.”
Liz’s management approach plays a role in Martin Insurance’s
ability to operate as a functional family. “Communication, communication, communication!
I always say 99 percent of all problems are the result of lack of
communication.”
She explains the agency’s tiers of monthly team meetings,
emphasizing it takes time, energy, and effort to foster positive employee
relationships. “We are constantly communicating with each other.”
Communal by Nature
“One of the things I’ve appreciated so much about being
successful is truly being able to give back to the community. Giving back to
the community isn’t a right, it’s an obligation.”
Liz certainly walks the walk. She serves on the boards of
the Farm and Home Center Foundation, Lancaster Chamber of Commerce &
Industry, Rotary Club of Lancaster, and the YWCA of Lancaster. In 2006, she
received the Lancaster Chamber’s Athena Award, and in 2003 she received
Elizabethtown College Business Alumni Association’s Rising Star Award. She is
also a graduate of Leadership Lancaster.
Liz encourages her employees to volunteer too. She matches
volunteer hours with employees’ hourly rate and donates their “earnings” to
charity. Her staff also volunteers with the Long’s Park Art and Craft Festival,
YWCA’s Race Against Racism, Big Brothers Big Sisters’ Bowl for Kids Sake, and
at The Mix—a hang out for inner city kids where the staff delivers a hot
meal every month.
“I’m proud I can employ other people who can have a viable
life and give back to society. Not everybody has the opportunity to do that.”
Defending Territory
Liz identifies her parents as her greatest influence. “They
taught me to do what you say you are going to do and led their lives by
example. I get my business sense from my father, compassion from my mother. My
mom says I’m the best of both of them.”
Liz is also fifth generation owner of Iron Stone Spring
Farm, the 85-acre family farm in Manor Township. After an injury, her father
had trouble maintaining the farm. Liz, youngest of three,
stepped to the plate.
“I talk to my farm manager once a day. People in the office
think it’s funny how I’ll be on the phone talking policy to someone one minute,
and the next I’ll get a cell call from Larry and be talking about cows. I love
it,” she says howling with laughter.
Liz is building a natural grass-fed beef business with a
Black Angus heard now numbering 35 breeding stock. This year she kept a steer
for slaughter for the first time—and named him T-bone.
“Hey, you have to mentally prepare yourself,” she jokes.
Range
Travel is big in Liz’s life. She’s been to China, Korea, and
South Africa. Future plans include Dubai this March and next year, she hopes, a
second Rotary Club mission trip; her first mission trip was Brazil in 2004.
“When you give yourself a couple weeks away from your
business, you can really rest your mind and you come back refreshed and often
have different ideas that ultimately help your business.”
When not migrating the world, Liz is hiking, playing squash,
or reading— having just finished Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long
Walk to Freedom and John Wood’s Leaving Microsoft to Change the
World. Oh, she’s also contemplating helicopter lessons.
“It’s important to do things in your personal life that are
outside what you normally do in business. We do this as business owners all the
time—always doing things we didn’t think we could do—that’s why we
are successful as entrepreneurs.”
Field Marks
She hands over an index-sized card printed with the agency’s
values, vision, and mission; a large poster in the conference room reads the
same.
“This is not created by me; it’s created by all of us,” Liz
explains proudly. “As you see, ‘fun and humor’ are mentioned under ‘shared
values’ and ‘energizing mission’—we try to maintain a sense of humor,”
she chuckles.
Humor and fun balance the busy pace of her professional and
personal lives much the way the color purple balances the warmth of red and
coolness of blue. Maybe it’s her lavender office walls or the violet radiating
from her blouse that balances Liz’s drive for success with strong sense of
place.
“I’m a big purple person. I like to wear purple at least
once a week,” her rich laughter breaks again behind that genuine smile.
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