Neil McKinnon - Journey from Corporate Executive to State Farm Entrepreneur

From the vibrant streets of Brooklyn to the corridors of entrepreneurship, Neil McKinnon's tale is nothing short of cinematic. He takes us on a journey marked by deep reflection and a bold step into the unknown post-9/11. His candid recollections of transitioning from GEICO's corporate halls to running a photo booth rental empire, and eventually becoming a State Farm agent, are steeped in the lessons of resilience and adaptability. Neil's story isn't just about successful career pivots; it's a masterclass in balancing the tightrope of family life with the rigors of building a business from the ground up.

As we peer into the world of insurance through Neal's lens, the conversation shifts to the post-COVID business landscape—a terrain he navigated with the finesse of a seasoned entrepreneur. He pulls back the curtain on the challenges he faced, from staffing woes to learning the ins and outs of independent operation, all while managing a robust $3.5 million portfolio. Neil doesn't shy away from complex topics like the fluctuations of insurance premiums, and offers a unique perspective drawing parallels with technology's impact on the industry. His insights are a treasure trove for anyone looking to understand the future of insurance premiums amid evolving tech.

But Neil's narrative doesn't end with personal triumphs and industry analysis. He paints a vivid picture of his engagement with the community, underscoring the vital role connection plays in growth—both for individuals and businesses. His involvement in chambers of commerce and commitment to sales and marketing education highlight a reciprocal exchange of wisdom and support. Neil's ambitions gleam as he discusses future business horizons and the delightful chaos of parenting a seven-year-old. This episode is a cocktail of professional wisdom, community spirit, and the occasional splash of humor—it's an invitation to witness the incredible impact one person can have on their surroundings.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

I'm Neal McKinnon III and my business is a state farm agent. So, neal McKinnon state farm agent. I'm based out of Fairfax, virginia, operating in DC, maryland and Virginia, and we offer our clients full insurance coverage anywhere from their home and car to their business, to their life, to health. So we're all lines State Farm Agency.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Okay, and can you tell me a little bit about your story, like as a human being, like where you grew up and how did you get to this point?

Speaker 1: 1:08

I'm old so this might take a little while. So I was born and raised in Brooklyn, new York me and my sister and so went to school upstate New York and then so highlights Well, I don't know if it's highlights, but so, born and raised Brooklyn, new York, I went to high school, went back to New York to live and work for a little while, and I actually worked on the 77th floor of the World Trade Center.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Yeah, Whoa, yeah. So on the day of 9-11, my wife now at the time she was my girlfriend was actually walking in the building when the first plane hit.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1: 1:49

So that kind of took life into a little bit of a tailspin at the time, absolutely. That kind of took life into a little bit of a tailspin at the time, absolutely. And so we ended up roughing it out in New York for another half a year and then we moved to Florida, and when I got to Florida is where I started to work for GEICO at the time. So I worked for GEICO for seven, eight years and left there because I started my own equipment rental company. I had a equipment rental company that I started just part-time because I wanted to buy a house and next thing I know, we were renting photo booths.

Speaker 2: 2:30

I was going to ask what kind of equipment.

Speaker 1: 2:32

It was photo booths, party equipment like DJ equipment that kind of stuff. It started as photo booths, just as like a little side gig, like hey, we're going to just do this to, you know, get enough money on the side to help pay for a house. And then, before we knew it, we were expecting to do like maybe 20, 30 events. Our first year we ended up doing like 70. Whoa, and then it went from 70 events to 140 events and then just kept doubling and more equipment and team.

Speaker 1: 3:05

So after about a year I had to quit Geico at the time and then go on to work on that full time. So I did that from 08 to about 2018 when I sold the company. I sold Posh Booth it was what it was called to a larger entertainment conglomerate.

Speaker 2: 3:28

And I'm sorry, what was it called?

Speaker 1: 3:29

Posh Booth, posh Booth, posh Booth Photo Booth. Where it came up with that name, nobody, I don't know. I wanted a dot com and I wanted something unique, and you know I put way too much work in the name and the logo. At the time I was like people would have just rented whatever, they didn't really care, but. But I wanted the branding part of it, I guess, and so that's why I started it that way. And so we did that for 10 years.

Speaker 1: 3:58

And then it got to the point where, uh, the business was running me instead of I was running the business. At this point I had three, four kids. I tell you that story too. Um, I'm a girl dad, so I have four daughters, oh yeah, uh, 15, soon to be 13, 10, and 6. Congratulations. Having a party rental company is good when you're a dad of four girls, but it was also bad because I was never around on the weekends that's when things were really busy and stuff like that. And you know, as I said, the business was running me instead of me running the business. So we ended up selling the company and from there I was just trying to. I was like I'm never going to be a boss again. I hate, you know, having to hire people and you know, depend on people.

Speaker 2: 4:49

And being at work 24. 7.

Speaker 1: 4:50

Being at work 24 7. I was like no, because you know, when you're a small business owner, I work 24-7. I was like no, because when you're a small business owner, people think that you do stuff like this, you get to go out and have fun and blah, blah, blah. This is the great part about it you work longer than everybody, and I'm sure you know that from talking to other small business owners, and so I really was not looking forward to doing that again. I was like there's no shot, I'm doing that.

Speaker 1: 5:18

And then uh, so I left and I started doing a bunch of business development things just throughout the throughout the uh area, and I actually worked for a junk company for a while, which was really good, and then I was just capping out wherever I was going in business development and I decided I really wanted to give insurance another try. A friend of mine owned an insurance agency and I went to work for her, but State Farm was calling Like they were on me from as I said, I sold the company in 2018. They were on me from like 2018 to just every month, I get a call from a from a state farm recruiter like hey, you ever thought about owning your own business or coming back into insurance.

Speaker 1: 6:04

They were watching you, they were watching me and they're like I was like I've been out of insurance for so long, I don't know if I want to get back into it. And so they were just watching and watching and watching, and you know just, and then I was working in insurance again for an independent and I wasn't really doing well there, I really wasn't liking it. Um, I just it was during the covid times and I was just like this is just weird. And state farm came calling again and I actually called. I was called, I was telling my barber about it. I was like Chuck, state Farm, he's calling me and I don't know if I want to do it. He's like why don't you talk to Rodney, rodney Lewis, who is a good friend now, and we both went to the same barber. So I talked to Rodney and Rodney said hey, you brought me into his office and he showed me his commissions for the month. I was like you know what? This, this?

Speaker 2: 6:58

insurance is not. It's not a bad idea.

Speaker 1: 7:02

No, but that wasn't the only thing. He. We talked a lot about the support and I went there and I went to all the companies because I was like all right, fine, I want to be my own boss again, I want to be independent, I want, I want to own and do my own thing, because working for somebody just wasn't working for me. And so I went out and I started doing my own work. I was like, well, state Farm's there and they're calling Let me look at Goosehead, let me look at Allstate, let me look at all these places and went around, probably spent a good three months just trying to figure out, if I'm going to do this, where I was going to go and everywhere I went, I interviewed the agents and the only company that would let me talk to any of their agents they were like hey, just pick whatever agent you want to talk to call them up and tell us how it went afterwards With State Farm.

Speaker 1: 7:56

Every other company I went to was just like oh, we got this agent in Albuquerque, new Mexico, we'd love for you to talk to, or this agent that's in, you know, nobody local, or anything like that. They had people all and I was just like, ah, you know, and I talked to probably about 10 agents and they were all very supportive. They were all like, hey, this is they open up their books and show me, like, how they do things. And you know, they really came from a place of you know that there was a lot of business out there for everyone and that you know it was brand and they were probably the estate farm was the most supportive company and so I decided to go with them and go into their program, their agency program, and it's been great. So we're going into our. We opened our doors in December 2021.

Speaker 2: 8:45

Congratulations yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Just after ending COVID times and all that stuff. But by the time we got to the end of that, then we went right into building and the first six months were terrible. Why it was a hard time? Because you're dealing with you know you learn a lot but you don't learn everything.

Speaker 1: 9:09

So it was a lot of hiring people and them not sticking around and trying to figure out how you wanted to do things, at the same time trying to do what you needed to do to get the business. And you don't have a boss anymore and there's nobody to really depend on. But you have support, but you don't know how much support you need, and so it was just a lot of learning how to walk again and trying to figure everything out, but once we got through the first six months after that it just like took off.

Speaker 1: 9:40

It's been really good. So we've grown from zero. I was what we call a scratch agent, so I had no business. The first thing I wrote was myself to probably now we have about 1,200 clients. We manage probably an area of $3.5 million in protection assets for folks, including home, auto businesses, life just from that and so it's been a crazy time, but it's been really good. So I just talked for about 12 minutes straight, no, you're good this is your podcast.

Speaker 1: 10:17

You're listening to your story. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. That's right.

Speaker 2: 10:23

All right. So now tell me, in your industry of business, insurance, so all lines of business commercial auto, uh, commercial, liability, life, workers comp, health, uh, in life insurance.

Speaker 1: 10:51

I said already so we offer pretty much all lines but it's like owning a uh, it's like owning a chick-fil-a or it's very much like in that franchise type system, yeah, um, wherein I only sell, you know, chickens, I only sell state farm products. So I don't sell all lines of stuff and there's stuff that I can write and there's stuff that I can't write. State farm is the, the number one auto, home and life insurance, number one auto and home insurance in the in the country and commercial. But we don't write every business. There's certain businesses like if you own a demolition company, we're not writing you, but you know, we, we, we, we do well, state Farm does well in the mom and pops. So when you're looking at your storefronts, those kind of things, that's where we really hit niche, because just like those folks, I'm a small business owner. I'm right next to an accountant and a home health care company and a barber shop on the other side. So those are the kind of people that we write Very much a very main street type thing with State Farm.

Speaker 2: 12:02

And what kind of policies or plans are you seeing people like, oh whoa, suddenly we have a spike in life insurance or there's what. What's going on?

Speaker 1: 12:11

right now. You asked that that's the top question. I was actually prepared for this one. No, so I'll tell you car insurance there's been probably across the board. So all insurance companies have seen somewhere in the area of 20 to 35% increase in premiums. Or what you pay for your insurance, especially in the auto industry, like car, and the big thing about it is, or what we've seen is that the cost of for coming out of covid, the cost of parts, was very expensive because you had shipping things and getting them over and that type of stuff, but also people were in their cars longer or in rental cars longer, so that cost really made everything spike in terms of what we were doing. And then you're just looking at the cars now and this was the thing that made me come to the realization and understand why they were spiking so much.

Speaker 1: 13:15

I bought my first new car in late 2023. I bought a 2023 GMC what is it? Acadiana, and this is my first time getting a new car in like 10 years. I had like the big. I had the big. I had the big Toyota Camry and I had my Nissan Pilot and all that stuff Sorry, not Nissan, honda Pilot for the kids and everything and we had that and I was just like hey, we need a new car. Pilot's dying, so bought a new car, got in it. This car has eight cameras. My Pilot had eight cameras, my iPilot had no cameras. It has eight cameras. It has a camera in the rearview mirror above it.

Speaker 2: 14:07

Oh, I've seen those. That's so cool.

Speaker 1: 14:09

It is cool, yeah you can see everything, and then it has another camera I don't even know how this works where it's like it shoots a drone into the air and it like shows me backing into spots and stuff like that A drone.

Speaker 1: 14:20

It feels like that because it's like a hover above the car so and so in my mind I'm like, oh, it clicks, like, okay, if this is how they're making cars now, with eight cameras on and my car is not like, it's not, you know, anything crazy or super expensive or anything, it's not anything crazy or super expensive or anything. But if this is how they're making this car, just imagine when this is in an accident and you don't only have to buy the parts to replace. But now you have to. Maybe, if you get rear-ended, you have to buy the camera, and then you have to buy just the regular part in terms of where to put it, and then you don't only have to go to a mechanic, you have to go to a computer person to help calibrate what's happening with this car. So all those things add into cost and that's what's adding into the increase in premium.

Speaker 1: 15:07

So I think we're gonna see a level very similar to and this is a crazy thing flat screen TVs. When you bought a flat screen TV, maybe 10 years ago, a 50-inch flat screen TV would cost you, you know, thousands of dollars. Now it's gone down in terms of pricing because they're making so many of them and it's caught back up. I think you're going to see that leveling maybe within the next three to five years, where people are going to get better at what they need to do to fix these cars faster. You're going to have more parts and that type of thing, but between car parts and you know, the cost of everything going up. That's just what we've seen in the last uh, in the last two years.

Speaker 2: 15:57

So another 12 minute talk no, no this is inside that people want to listen, yeah and then, who are you outside of state farm like? What do you like to do? What do you enjoy to do?

Speaker 1: 16:07

okay, so, as I said, I have four daughters, so I'm pretty much a big girl dad. I they my actual, like we're able to choose our own websites and do our own, like publicity and that kind of thing. Okay, and mine is girl dad agent just because it's a handful, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 16:27

It's a handful.

Speaker 1: 16:28

So I'm very much into a lot of the things that they're into. And they are all into different things. Like I have four same parents. None of them are alike. One is really techie and you know, into anime and video games, and then the next one's like sporty and girly, and then the next one is, you know, just all about playing with her friends and being outside all the time and the baby's just a baby and she's probably going to kill us and bury us in the backyard one day. But they just keep us busy and stuff like that. But at the same time I very much enjoy hanging out with my friends. I have a nice group of folks. I play poker on Fridays with a bunch of clients every couple of Fridays and friends, and I play basketball twice a week because if I didn't I'd be like 400 pounds. I love to eat. We talked about this. I'm about to hit that taqueria up on my way back. So you know it's a lot of things like that. I'm also very involved in my community.

Speaker 2: 17:40

What do you do?

Speaker 1: 17:41

Yeah, I sit on a couple of boards. I sit on a board for my alma mater, my college and board alumni board, and then, locally, I'm on the Northern Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce so I run their ambassador program. We have probably about 400 businesses in the chamber.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Just helping small business owners again, which is like my thing. I don't know why I don't always just help them with insurance stuff. I do talks on sales and how to market yourself. So I really enjoy working with that stuff. And then, on the broader side, I just signed on with how do you pronounce this? Virginia Minority Chambers of Commerce, which is an organization that helps actual chambers throughout the state of Virginia manage and become better in terms of raising funds and getting people in. So I'm very active with that organization right now because we're in our growth stage, we're in our building stage, so working with I really like working with the community and being out there. So I stay busy, busy. I only get like 14 minutes of sleep a night. Oh, stop, no, no, it's not no, seriously, because, um, it's not that I'm not in bed, it's just that I have a six-year-old that, as I said, is trying to kill me because she constantly she's seven now, she's seven now but constantly, um, wakes me up, oh my goodness.

Speaker 2: 19:15

For a variety of reasons why is helping the community so important to you like? Where did that passion come from?

Speaker 1: 19:21

I think that it came from me being a small business owner a couple of times and um knowing and not really knowing where to go when you had question and um seeing being able to see the bigger picture, because I've been through it. Like, as I said, when I had Posh Booth and I was setting it up, I was like, oh, the logo's got to be perfect and you know I have to, this print is wrong and that type of thing. And then you know, learning through business, that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is marketing and sales and being comfortable doing that stuff, because a lot of small business owners are really good at what they do in terms of photographers.

Speaker 1: 20:04

Photographers are really good at taking pictures, but as far as marketing and getting new clients and that type of stuff, they're not always that because that's not what they enjoy doing. But you have to learn to balance that as a small business owner. So having that experience and what. So when I meet small business owners and I meet a lot it's talking to them about oh well, you know, tell me about your business and what's going well and where are you struggling, and then trying to help them figure out a better way or you know a better way to do business. Because that's the thing that hurts me the most.

Speaker 1: 20:39

I hate seeing businesses come and go Like that's just nobody wants to see that. You don't want to see businesses fail, and when you hear that they fail not because their product was bad but because they didn't know how to provide good customer service or they didn't know how to market themselves, those are things that nobody really teaches business owners. So working with them to kind of build that stuff that's kind of why I enjoy working with organizations like the Northern Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce and FAMC.

Speaker 2: 21:11

Wonderful. And now? Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

Speaker 1: 21:16

My seven-year-old doesn't kill me.

Speaker 2: 21:19

Seven-year-old.

Speaker 1: 21:20

Seven-year-old. She's a terror, I'm telling you. You don't know, I'm a little too old to have a seven-year-old. But no, within the next. You said 10 years. Five, five, yeah, next five years. My goal is to.

Speaker 1: 21:38

I have an office in fairfax and my next goal would be to have a second office somewhere in, either in the, in the dmv area, probably closer or closer down to, uh, like um, central fredericksburg area, virginia, that type of stuff, so okay, or even out here, because this is pretty far from where I am. I'm out in this, like right at the edge of the earth. But you know it's. I just think it's an opportunity to expand, and that's a great thing about working with a company or a partner like State Farm is that they allow you to.

Speaker 1: 22:13

You know, if you, if you can build something successful, they allow you to. You know. You know if you, if you can build something successful, they allow you to, you know, expand on that. So expanding that in a way. But you know, another thing is helping my girls. You know, by that time I have one in two in college, hopefully, and so you know being able to be there for them, and that's another great part of being a small business owner is being able to manage your time so you can be there for your family and loved ones and that type of stuff.

Speaker 1: 22:44

That's right so those that I'd say those are my big, I mean really nothing big, just I think they're beautiful.

Speaker 2: 22:50

I love those pretty simple I'm rooting for you, seven-year-old, seven-year-old man.

Speaker 1: 22:56

She doesn't take me out.

Speaker 2: 22:58

My goodness, this poor girl.

Speaker 1: 23:00

You're like poor me.

Speaker 2: 23:02

Yeah, you don't know her, All right, and so for my final question is if you could leave our listeners with a message, what message would that be? It can be in regards to life in general, insurance state farm.

Speaker 1: 23:19

Wow, that's a good question. I would say it's something that I learned from an author that I read all the time, malcolm Gladwell, that if you really want to be good at something, you have to work at it. You know it takes 10,000 hours to become great at something, so just imagine you're not going to be like I would say my biggest attribute is that I'm a good salesperson. I'm a good and I'm really good with business development. But if you ask me that 10 years ago, I'm like I'm OK, you know so. But you know you work on it and you have to work on it. You have to practice it. You have to, you have to put in the effort at the stuff that you know you want to become good at.

Speaker 1: 24:11

You're not going to be able to, you know, buy your way into being good at something you know. And I think that that's what people sometimes feel like, oh okay, if I'm not good at sales, then I can just buy more Google ads or I can, you know, hire this company or that company. It's much better and you find yourself learning so much more when you do it yourself. So that would be my thing. You know it's going to take time, but work at it, you'll be better at the end.

Speaker 2: 24:40

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing that piece of information and your story with us. We really enjoyed having you here on the show. Oh, really, okay, hey, thank you, you're welcome.