What does it take to launch and lead an Insurtech company? Logan Wease joins us to discuss leadership, failure, and how he has grown We Insure Things, a ground-breaking new company.
Download the show notes at NewGenerationLeader.com/23
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Show Outline
- 0:00 – Who is Logan Wease and what is he up to?
- 3:00 – Who was one of the most impactful leaders he spent time around?
- 4:32 – Get healthy and multiply that into the people around you.
- 6:07 – How to differentiate a mistake from a failure.
- 8:04 – People are what makes any business successful.
- 10:54 – What’s really changing the game?
- 13:11 – Put people first.
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Connect with Logan
Logan Wease has had a varied career, seeing many different leadership styles throughout his life. He’s used this experience to become an effective leader himself.
Logan is always looking for ways to improve and grow as a person, and he wants the people around him to do the same.
Episode 23 – Full Transcript
Aaron Lee 0:01
Welcome to the new generation leader podcast, we’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world ready to reach your true potential. This is the new generation leader podcast.
Aaron Lee 0:16
Hey, welcome to episode 23 of the new generation leader Podcast. I’m excited to have Logan wese on the show today, and we’re gonna dive into this conversation. Logan has a nonsense attitude and believes in leading by example, he knows what it takes to be successful and wants everyone on his team to achieve their goals, which sounds pretty similar to a lot of what we talked about here on the show. So let’s dive in. Logan, welcome to the show.
Logan Wease 0:40
Great chat. Great to be here. Thank you for having me are.
Aaron Lee 0:43
Absolutely. So give us a little more background fill in the color commentary. Who is Logan? And what are you up to these days.
Logan Wease 0:50
So I created a insure tech company we insure things about 13 months ago, and we’ve been growing that deal with pretty much any type of insurance, whether it’s auto home life, to more specialty types of insurance, crypto wallet, drone, or if you want to take your car to the track, we do track insurance as well. And anything in between.
Aaron Lee 1:09
All right, so you’ve got a pretty varied career and background. What was it about your experience that led you to launch into the Insure tech space,
Logan Wease 1:22
I never thought I’d end up into insurance. I went to school at Old Dominion University, I graduated. And while I was at school, I managed to Starbucks their brand, a Starbucks location. And when I graduated, still managing that same Starbucks location, how to interview with State Farm and didn’t really want the job. But it was anything other than Starbucks, and so moved forward with it. And that’s how I ended up in insurance. And insurance is one of those things like once you stumble into it, it’s a wide, wide industry. And you can really do anything you want inside insurance, whether it’s taking care of people when it comes to claims, putting them back together, or helping them when it comes to purchasing a policy.
Aaron Lee 2:04
That’s awesome. So what kind of lessons did you pick up leading at Starbucks that you found yourself using over time as you got into insurance?
Logan Wease 2:15
Sure. So I’ve had many different bosses and managers throughout my career, I’ve had bosses where they roll up their sleeves, and they’re doing the job with you. There’s nothing they’re afraid to do. And then I’ve had bosses and managers, where it’s do as I say, not as I do. And I’ve had bosses where it’s more strategic like this is how we set up an organization. Here’s how we execute or goals. So I’ve seen many different types of leadership styles out there. And I would say my leadership style is really a combination of of all those both good and bad. And I’ve seen some bad leaders in my career. And I’ve learned a lot from them, things not to do. And I’ve seen some really good leaders, and I’ve tried to emulate all their successes in everything they do.
Aaron Lee 3:00
So going back through your career, who was one of the top leaders, the most impactful leaders that you worked for spent time around, and what was it about them that kind of drew you into their style of leadership?
Logan Wease 3:14
Sure. So personal side, my father was always a great leader in the household. He was a hard worker, he took care of everybody. He was very unselfish. And then professionally, I was in spring, Sam Brown, he was a great mentor. And so as a great mentor and great leader, he always put people first always gave them the benefit of the doubt. And he tried to work with people. If they’re having a bad day, we’re just trying to make their lives better in any way he could. And that pays big dividends. Because people are hard to find good people are extremely hard to find. And if you find somebody good, you really want to hold on to them for both good times and bad times. You want to work with them.
Aaron Lee 3:54
Absolutely. So what kind of team have you built up around you with this new venture?
Logan Wease 4:00
Yeah, so we’re a smaller team. As it stands today, we have some people who do tick tock videos for us, you salespeople we’re very much in the lean startup phase of our business. And as roles I led a larger team, and it was all divided up based on responsibilities. And I really helped develop leaders. And the greatest compliment that I learned throughout my career was being able to duplicate yourself as a leader and as a manager to help people achieve greatness.
Aaron Lee 4:32
Yeah, absolutely. I just got off a coaching call in the last hour and we were talking about that. I’ve been coaching this leader for probably 18 months now. And one of the things that we talked about at the beginning was I wanted him to be 100% healthy, self confident, assured as a leader himself and able to then multiply that out into the people around him and when we started he had a lot going on internal personal turmoil that he wanted to get back to a place of being healthy himself, and being able to lead with influence not only at work, but also at home and in his community. And the second part of that, so once you get healthy, then you’ve got to multiply that. And I said, Hey, today, over these last few months, you’ve started talking about the ways that you’ve multiplied. And it’s not just you, but it’s now your team. And so instead of being one person now is three of you who can lead with that kind of motivation and be able to lead effectively multiply that out into the world around you into the workplace. And that kind of posture is different. It’s new, as you highlighted Logan going all the way back in your career to all those different kinds of leaders. I’ve quoted a lot of times, working with lean one of my coworkers at one time, we joked that we could write a book on how not to lead based on people we had led or worked under, who had been leading us and our teams early in our career. And so you go through all of those examples, and you see who it is you want to work for, who you do want to emulate and become. So that’s great to hear how you’ve started to incorporate those lessons and experiences into what you’re doing and how you’re leading now, what would you say is something that’s surprised you about leading a new insight based on your current experience and role and where you are right now.
Logan Wease 6:34
So leaders are not perfect, they make mistakes, you just have to own up when you make mistakes, doesn’t matter who the leader is, no one’s perfect. And I remember reading something a while ago that the most successful leaders were right 51% of the time, that means they’re wrong 49% of the time. And so it’s just acknowledging when you make a mistake, and learning from it, running a startup, I mean, I can’t tell you the number of mistakes I’ve made. But I can tell you each time I make a mistake, I learned from that mistake, and I’m not making it again, as a leader, you just keep moving forward, you put people first put yourself in their shoes, do the best you can.
Aaron Lee 7:13
So let’s talk about that for a minute. You said you’re learning from your mistakes. And that’s a powerful lesson that a lot of people don’t focus in on, how have you differentiated a mistake from a failure, and learn to grow from it instead of letting it cripple you.
Logan Wease 7:32
How I look at it. Failure is when you give up, and you’re like, well, this just isn’t for me. A mistake is something where you move forward, and you get better. I’ve made numerous mistakes, as a leader, whether it was taking people for granted not appreciating them. In some cases being selfish. I mean, I’m human after all. And so putting the business needs over the individual. So just trying to learn from those. And so when those same situations happen again, well, person first over the business, if you put people first you’ll get results, the business will be there. Regardless, people are what makes the business is what makes we ensure things is what’s made. Any business I’ve ever worked for the business is successful because of its people, the people successful because of the leadership that they’re involved, where you have a bad leader, while you’re not going to want to come to work, you’re not going to want to do your best, you’re not going to put the company first, you’re going to cut corners. We’re a term that’s going around today’s quiet quitting. Most of these people probably have bad leadership in their organization, and they don’t feel engaged. They don’t want to do their best leadership is all about getting people to reach their highest potential. Some things they may not even know they’re capable of, and helping them get there.
Aaron Lee 8:45
What kind of experiences have you had? Have you seen any of your your team members be able to accomplish something they didn’t think they could do? Oh,
Logan Wease 8:54
absolutely. In my current role, some of my team members, they never thought they would be building a company from the ground up and how far we really come in 13 months, things they thought they were incapable of these everybody has this comfort zone that they want to stay in this equilibrium. Part of leadership is helping your team members get out of that comfort zone and achieve her goals, higher expectations than they had for themselves.
Aaron Lee 9:20
That’s great seeing people grow and flourish and identify those growth opportunities because you know, so many of us graduate we get our our degree or diploma and think Alright, good. I’ve got it made. Now let me go do the work. And it’s the continual growth and development that often brings the most success and most opportunity for us. So Logan walk us through your current business and what you’re doing and how people can connect with you.
Logan Wease 9:50
Sure, so they can connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, tik, Tok, Instagram, Facebook, current businesses, we insure things we insure things.com Um, we can help with any insurance that you have. Or if you just have questions about the type of insurance or we’re happy to help you with that, or do a policy review, again, we’re happy to help you in any way we can. What was the what was the second part,
Aaron Lee 10:13
sorry, people connected with you and what the business is doing. So we insure
Logan Wease 10:17
things, we’re just simplifying the insurance purchasing process. So if you think about how people engage with their insurance, it’s usually negative rate went up, they had a claim they got into an accident, we’re changing that we’re adding a positive spin to insurance. And we’re simplifying how people engage in purchase insurance. We’re providing more value when it comes to your insurance, making sure you understand what you’re purchasing what your insurance is actually doing for you, where your dollars are going and what they’re doing. We’re trying to change a decades old industry and bring it into the new century, while making it fun and engaging.
Aaron Lee 10:54
There’s certainly lots of opportunity for disruption and advancement in in so many different industries. So it’s exciting to see you taking on this one. And we’ll link to all of those all of Logan’s social networks, and we ensure things we’ll drop that in the show notes at New Generation leader.com/ 23 blowgun, as you look to launch, we ensure things and now that you’re 13 months in, what do you feel like is really changing the game? What is it that people are identifying with, it’s drawing them to connect with, we insure things,
Logan Wease 11:33
it’s our differentiated insurance offerings, crypto wallet insurance has been a big one. Currently, it’s really our simplified purchasing process, using data and analytics to simplify. So you can get a quote, and as little as 30 seconds, and then the education that comes behind that, then we ensure things promise, making sure you understand where your dollars are going, what you’re actually purchasing, we can make an insurance policy kind of cost, whatever within certain reason, but it does no good. If it’s not there when you need it. We ensure things promise, making sure you fully understand what you’re purchasing and how it can protect your assets.
Aaron Lee 12:14
So Logan, for you personally, what’s a habit or tool, some sort of growth hack or life hack that you’ve adopted in either your personal life or in leadership that’s, you feel like has helped to maximize your own potential,
Logan Wease 12:31
I meditate, I try and do that either in the evening or in the morning. That’s been a big improvement in my overall mindfulness, I write down my goals, what I’m trying to accomplish for the day, that’s always been a big thing, whether it’s in my phone or on a scratch piece of paper, writing down what I’m trying to accomplish, just kind of living each moment as if it’s my last, working hard and saying, thing determined. Being involved in start, there’s a lot of rejection. Just keep moving forward, keep pushing on, take some feedback, and apply. And there are other pieces of feedback in the trash. Just keep moving forward. And that’s a big thing. put people first
Aaron Lee 13:13
people first is so important for them from so many different arenas, not only in service on the customer side, and we often think about it that way in terms of, hey, let’s take care of our customers first make sure their needs are met. But so often we don’t look internally into our own team and making sure people come first we’re building up each individual to maximize their potential, like you’ve mentioned, but also maximizing their role in tweaking and adjusting, optimizing the team in order to perform effectively based on who’s on the team, the same coaching client. In the last hour. We were talking about people within their team, and how they’re focusing on individuals. We’re coming up here on on year end, and lots of time to be thankful and wrap up the year to celebrate what’s been accomplished. And he said, You know what, Aaron? There’s no chatter about any of that in our ecosystem. And and that’s sobering. And it’s it’s disappointing to watch from organizational perspectives, but a great opportunity for us to lean in and make sure that we’re taking care of the people around us and giving them an opportunity to be successful logon. As we wrap up, though, one question that I always ask is, what’s something that you’ve learned throughout your career that you wish you had learned earlier in your career? It’s important
Logan Wease 14:45
to have balance, both professionally and personally. Without balance, it affects everything it affects your decision making. It affects your your mood, your energy, how you treat people, it’s it’s important to have balance To everything you do, that balance is going to come to depend on each individual person. But it’s very important. And then kind of piggybacking on what you were just saying about how putting people first employees or team members, first ever customers, I couldn’t agree with that more, I think that’s the most important thing. I’m a big football fan. And whether you like the Patriots or not, Bill, dollar check is really good about his system. He doesn’t try and cram a buyer to do something that they’re not good at. He plugs and plays. And he builds systems around the players. And they complement each other. And I think that’s why he’s been so successful as a football coach.
Aaron Lee 15:42
Yeah, lots of good lessons from the football field, baseball, diamond, the basketball court, whatever the case may be lots of parallels, lots of things we can learn and pick up. And I think it’s especially helpful in in crossing that sometimes to another arena and saying, Okay, let me get outside of my comfort zone a little bit, what can I learn from a different context and, and bring back to apply? So Logan, any last thoughts? Any questions that I should have asked you today,
Logan Wease 16:11
I’m happy to be able to have talked with you about leadership. Leadership is not one of those things that’s like a set it and forget it. It’s constantly evolving. You can constantly become a better leader. And there’s, there’s so many resources out there. You can read so many books, and there’s wonderful podcasts like this. But part of leadership is just going out there and doing it. You’re gonna make some mistakes. Just learn from your mistakes, put people first and have good intentions, and you’ll figure out the rest.
Aaron Lee 16:41
It’s a continual growth journey, always a journey to continue onward and upward and continue growing, flourishing and expanding our own capabilities. Well, thanks so much, Logan, Logan wese. From we ensure things you can connect with Logan, download the show notes and look for links to Logan social networks on our website, new generation leader.com/two Three. Well, Logan, thanks so much for being on the show today. We’ll look forward to staying in touch and hopefully having you back sometime soon.
Logan Wease 17:14
Thank you for having me.
Aaron Lee 17:16
Thanks for listening to the new generation leader podcast subscribe today on your favorite podcasting platform, ready to solve your leadership crisis. Download the show notes and unlock your true leadership potential, a new generation leader.com/podcast Thanks for listening today, and we look forward to seeing you next time on the new generation leader podcast