298 - From Insurance to Impact: How One Leader is Changing Lives Through Listening and Community Support with Pancakes for Roger's Susan L Combs

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Susan L. Combs, welcome to Listening with Leaders.

You are—

you wear a lot of hats. One hat you wear as the CEO of your company called Combs and Company, which is in, involved in some very interesting insurance. And you're also the executive director of a nonprofit you founded called Pancakes for Roger.

Yes.

Which is about veteran support. And we'll talk about that too, because that's an interesting story, a little sad, I think, but also interesting. And so welcome to Listening with Leaders. And let's start off with just a quick summary of your backstory.

Oh, summary of my backstory. It depends on the day on what I want to tell you. I grew up in the northwest corner of Missouri in a rural farming community. My father was a general as well as a judge. So to say I had a strict upbringing would probably be an understatement. But I had parents that basically said, hey, the world is bigger than your backyard. You can go out and explore it. And if you find your way that way, that's great. But there's no shame in coming back to your backyard as well. I decided to explore and ended up in New York City for about 25 years. And went to New York City in 2001 to be a banquet manager at the Marriott at the World Trade Center. And then a couple of weeks before my job started, there was a budget revamping and they said, we're going to do 2 banquet managers instead of 3. So get to pick from Detroit or New Orleans, kid. And I remember saying to them, my mother got me a going away cake and it had pictures of New York City. It didn't have pictures of Detroit or New Orleans and Marriott didn't really care. So I, I talked to my dad and I said, look, uh, if some of your listeners remember 2001, pre-9/11 was an excellent job market. And so I, I graduated college in 2001 and I had 8 job offers. So I decided to come out to New York. I had a fallback plan if it didn't work out, but I interviewed around. I lived in a military hotel for, for about a month and came up with a job. With Paychex, a payroll company, and started selling payroll and auditing. I have a background, I have a minor in math, so I got to parlay part of my degree program into that. And that's when I was exposed to the world of insurance and worked a lot in the workers' comp arena. And then I ended up having an aha moment at 22 years old where I started thinking about my job right now. Everything starts at zero every single month. And if I can consult and I can have relationships with clients and build those relationships, Insurance is a good way to go. So I ended up going to work for a couple of larger insurance brokerage firms. And then at 26 years old, I started my own firm and which is Combs and Company and still in existence today, almost 20 years later.

Wow. And tell us a little bit about Combs and Company. I went to the website and I know when I was a trial lawyer back in the day, I did some insurance litigation.

Yeah.

Coverage disputes. Pansed a few insurance companies, thought he'd get cute with me and my client. Tell me, what kind of brokers do you guys do?

So we handle all types of insurance from life insurance, health insurance. We do a lot of employee benefits and then also what we call property and casualty. So we're known as the experts in the weird and the unusual. So we'll get— we get a lot of brokers across the country that just— they'll get something and they'll be like, ah, we don't know how to do this. Can you guys figure this out? And I've always been able to take complex ideas and make them pretty simple. I remember when I insured my first web application and the carriers are like, what do you mean? It's, it's on a phone. What are you talking about? Type of thing. I got a reputation for that. So we have things like sober coaches, clowns. We'll do feature film production insurance. We have robots that charge electric vehicles. We're working on a company right now that's going to be launching satellites, which kind of makes me a little scared because I'm like, oh, that'll be the one thing that falls out and hits somebody. And then I got to deal with a great big claim. And then I also do a lot of expert witnessing on the Affordable Care Act all across the country as well. When I look at my career and with the insurance, like where I've always had my next success has always been when I've been open. So when I have somebody that says, hey, I started out as a life and health broker, but I worked for a house that was a property and casualty house and they required you to get property and casualty license. So I was like, okay, let me check this out. So then I enjoyed that aspect. And then when somebody came to me with the Affordable Care Act designation, I said, let me look at this, let me focus on this. And then we started charging consulting fees on things because You can't work for free. Right. And so it's just every single time I look at where I've had my next success, it's always been where somebody came to me and I was like, instead of saying, nah, that's not gonna work. It's hey, why not be a little bit open and see what, what can happen.

So is your firm—

I, I'm, I'm gonna assume that your firm is virtual, mostly virtual. Yeah.

So it's just, so we have 13 people all across the country. So we have a lot of, you know, what we call sub-producers. So people that place insurance coverage through us. You and I were talking before we started doing the interview that I recently moved to New Hampshire 3 weeks ago. So it's, it's a big difference from New York City. We have an office in New York City. We have— now I have an office in New Hampshire, but we can handle pretty much every single corner of the United States for sure.

Wow. So you've been doing this for a long time. What, what gets you up in the morning, gets you excited to go to work?

CrossFit. Now, I'm, like I said, I was a general's daughter, so I was always a— and my grandparents were dairy farmers, so I was always an early riser, and I'm a big gym goer. And so that's— they always say when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. Some days are better than others. You were a litigator, you understand that, right? Helping others and being able to educate others. And then I've parlayed things because, as you mentioned, I have a nonprofit now that, that helps veterans. And so that's truly a passion project for me. It's helping continue my father's legacy, and that, that gets me out of dead some days more so than, than the insurance brokerage.

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Your nonprofit's called Pancakes for Roger. Roger, would you tell us the story behind that?

I was fortunate enough— how sometimes you make a decision in your life and you don't know how well it'll impact it until much later. When I started my company at 26 years old, I always said, as long as you have your computer and your phone, you should be able to work anywhere in the world. And I didn't know how much that decision at 26, when I didn't know anything, would truly impact, um, my life later on. And one of the biggest one of the biggest things that it impacted is being able to return to Missouri from New York City and help care for my father when he was dying of Agent Orange-related throat cancer. And my dad and I were two peas in a pod, very much Type A. And we had a rule in the house that if you got up in the middle of the night, you always checked on Dad because he had a feeding tube for the last year of his life. He was also on oxygen. And anybody that's listening that's been a caretaker can know that the nasal cannula can get dislodged in somebody's sleep and oxygen levels can get low and that can create some havoc. With my dad, I would get up in the morning because I still did CrossFit. And because I feel you have to fill your own cup every single day. And for me, I always start my day with filling my cup because if you don't fill your cup and you have to give of yourself to everybody else for the rest of the day, you can be running on empty really quick. So when I would get up in the morning, I'd check my dad. If he was good, I'd go to the gym, come back from the gym, check on my dad again. If he was still good, then I'd get cleaned up for the day and then I'd help him get around and get his tube feeding done for the day and get him into his chair. And I would literally work with my laptop at my childhood home at the coffee table for the rest of the day. And so one morning I had gotten back from the gym, got cleaned up, and we were very fortunate enough to have hospice at home. And because my father through the military had a long-term care policy right when they came out, because he was very much a man that was a very logical man, very methodical man, and was like, I don't want to be a burden to my family. And so he set up a policy that he could have care at home from the beginning. When I went to his hospital bed and he wasn't there, my parents' house goes in a circle. So I just kept going room to room trying to find the General. And ultimately I found him in the kitchen and he had his placemat down and he had set the table. And I looked at him and I said, oh, Dad, what are you doing? And he said, I want pancakes for breakfast. And it was a request that just broke my heart because like I said, he had a feeding tube the last year of his life and he had never complained about that. He had never asked for any food or any accommodations. And I looked at him, I said, oh, Dad, there's nothing more in this world than I want to give you the pancakes for breakfast, but you're in hospice. We have a DNR, and if I give you pancakes and you choke, I said, we're probably done here, and I don't think we're quite ready to be done. And so he looked at me and said, oh yes, I can. Matt said I could. And Matt's my brother, and Matt's a nurse, and he wasn't there that morning. So I knew we were dealing with some confusion from some oxygen levels getting down too low. So I looked at him and I said, let me see what I can do. And I took the tube feeding formula. The general always wanted it heated up for 14 seconds. Never 11, never 13, never 12. Like he would know. And so I heated up and I went and sat it down on the table and he looked at me and he said, what's that? And I said, that's your syrup. So his oxygen levels started rallying around and he understood and he said, okay. So a few short weeks later, my father would ultimately pass away. And when I came back to New York, I took one day off work. I just needed one day to just shut out the noise, not look at an email, not look at a text, just have one day for me. And my husband said to me, he's like, why don't we go have some pancakes for your dad? And so it just was such a great idea, just a spur of the moment. So we went to the Bel Air Diner in Queens, New York, and my husband took a picture of me and we posted on social media. And I told a little bit about the story and I said, all of our lives can change in a blink of an eye. And we all have things to be thankful for in our lives. And I said, so if you're so inclined, why don't you go have some pancakes for Roger and remember all the things that you have to be grateful for. And Doug, I— it was just me talking. It wasn't supposed to go anywhere. It was just sharing some of my heart, some of my sorrow. And people started having pancakes and they started sending me pictures and they said, I can't have pancakes and not think about your dad. I can't have pancakes and not talk about military service to my kids. So what we turned this into is an annual fundraiser for the University of Missouri School of Law Veterans Clinic, and they provide free legal services for veterans and their families navigating the claims and appeals process, discharge upgrades, and a lot more, totally free of charge to veterans. And so my father's birthday was February 22nd. So the month of February, for every picture, pancake-loving picture that we get on social media tagging our accounts or using the hashtag Pancakes for Roger on public-facing posts, we make a donation in his honor for every picture to the clinic.

Wow.

And that's how it all started. And then, and then it became a book. So I, I had people after me to write a book for a long time, and my dad was supposed to be a chaplain. Actor. And then my dad took over the whole freaking book, and it's called Pancakes or Roger: Mentorship Guide for Slaying Dragons. And I was always raised that if you get a good piece of advice, it's your duty to sell it, share it with somebody else, because if it impacted your life, it would probably impact others as well. And I had a great dad, and I realized not everybody had a great dad. And so I recognized that in the book. And I think one of the best compliments I ever got on the book is I have a girlfriend that was raised in the foster care system in New York City. And she said, I didn't know my dad and I never knew what a good dad was. And she said, I loved reading the book because I got the good dad advice that I missed out on growing up. This is a woman in her early 60s now. It just, it just took my breath away. And the book, I was like, you know what? I know we've impacted the clinic so much. This past February, we had pictures from all 50 states, all 7 continents, and 29 additional countries.

Wow.

And so we made a donation to the clinic of over $10,000. And, and I was like, you know what, but there's more that we can do. We incorporated as a nonprofit the end of last year in December because fourth quarter isn't busy enough. Let's just start another company while we're at it. And our mission is to create pathways for veterans to improve their lives and their communities. And we're super excited about that because we're always going to have an affinity to the clinic. We're always going to support the clinic. But we're in the process right now of building an endowment so that we can, you know, provide some grants. Somebody actually just reached out to me this morning. That's a veteran that just had a hip replacement and, and he's going to be in a rehab center for the next month, but they need a ramp for his house. And so I saw it. I just saw it on Facebook and I said, you know what, we can help with that. Which things like that, that just pull on our heartstrings that we're like, you know what, we can financially help support that, help buy the materials and help to connect them with laborers that'll donate their time and make an impact that way. That's the gist of Pancakes for Roger. And we're just excited to see where it's going to go too.

And so you've got this nonprofit 501 that you manage, and manage from New Hampshire, that is benefiting vets in Missouri.

All over. So this veteran was actually in New Hampshire. And I think it's also a misnomer because the Veterans Clinic at the University of Missouri, you don't have to be from Missouri. You don't have to be alumni from Missouri. You just have to find them. So I always tell people, if you have listeners that have a veteran in their family and somebody's been having problems with their VA claim, we always tell people like, hey, just connect me and I get to do almost like a little intake and get some information. And then I reach out to the clinic and if the clinic can help them, they will. There's veterans clinics all across the country too. And a lot of people just don't know about them.

My mom, I have a niece who's a VA psychologist.

Oh, wow. So yeah, so she probably knows all about them.

Yep. So let's see the veterans clinic. So that would be at the law school. So that would be a student clinic supervising lawyers.

Yeah. And it's so cool because a lot of them, are they have a veteran tie. So a lot of the students that, that work in the clinic, they actually, they're either veterans themselves or their fathers were veterans or mothers were veterans. And then one of the really cool things about the University of Missouri is they've actually brought in the med school. So they have med school students that again, maybe they're, they were veterans and now they're going to med school and they can read the, yeah, where it's just like a lot of times people are, I work as medical malpractice expert witness. It's a lot of Greek information that you're trying to decipher. So it's just like having that is pretty, pretty cool to be able to connect them as well. And then it creates ambassadors all across the country for veterans long after these students have graduated.

That's a great idea. And I'm, it's really cool that you're able to support that. Yeah. So you obviously have a, a, I'm going to use the word brilliant in the terms of multicolored with bright colors. That's what I see in you having this a brilliant life in the true meaning of the word brilliant. What is it, Susan, that you think is unique about you personally that's allowed all of this to happen?

Like I mentioned before, I'm a big believer in helping others. I had a great father that, that was a mentor to so many. He sponsored so many people and just listened to them. And I'm, I'm good at taking complex ideas and breaking them down to, to simple things. But I think also too, I'm a, I speak a lot about knowing your worth. And when I publicly speak, I talk to women a lot about this because there's kind of two types of women. There's the women that say yes to everything and there's the women that say no to everything. And the women that say no to everything are the ones that you want because they're super busy and they know that they don't have the capacity. A lot of times I talk to people and say, you need to know how much you're worth per hour. And a lot of times people think it's not all about the money, but as soon as you know what your time is worth. It makes saying yes or no so easy because if you know what the cost is, because if somebody says, hey, I'd like to pick your brain on this, let's grab some coffee. It's not just the $5 cup of coffee. It's maybe the 45 minutes to get to the location. It's an hour and a half spending time with the person, and then it's the 45 minutes back. That coffee just got really expensive. It doesn't mean that you're going to say no to it, but you need to understand what it's actually going to cost you. So you don't have to be in a sales capacity to understand that. The down and dirty thing is you just is just take your annual salary, divide it by the number of hours you work, and that kind of gives you a good indication. And as soon as you do that, it makes things so clear.

It's actually, I think there's a better way to do that. And don't use your annual salary. Use your productive value as determined by the Federal Department of Labor Statistics, which you can just Google it. So if you're, let's say you're an insurance, say you're an insurance brokerage expert. Type, just go to ChatGPT and say, what's the hourly, what's the hourly productive rate of somebody in an insurance brokerage? And it'll come back and give you an hourly rate, which will be 4 or 5 or 6 times higher than probably what you're being paid.

Hmm.

But that's your productivity rate. And the reason that I suggest that is because when I'm talking to people who have chaos and conflict in their business and they need to bring somebody like me in, they oftentimes don't realize how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost productivity conflict is costing them.

Oh, absolutely.

So I'll give an example of, okay, so you got 2 employees who are fighting. How many hours a week do you think they're losing in productivity a week? 5 hours each.

Okay.

5 hours. That's 10 hours a week. And the average US worker has a productivity rate of about $115 an hour. So you've got 10 hours you're losing a week. That's $1,000 a week, $4,000 a month. $50,000 a year just to employees messing around with— that's a lot of money.

Yeah, absolutely. You could hire another person for that. That's right.

Yeah. So you bring me in and for pennies on the dollar and we'll stop it in 8 weeks.

And it's the productivity rate. I'm like, I'm gonna write this down.

Yeah. So that's why I thought you'd like it.

Yeah.

So you go to just, you can Google it or go to ChatGPT. It is, it's the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I like that.

Productivity, hourly productivity rate, and they have it broken down by classes of all different kinds of job classifications. I was on the call earlier today with a colleague of mine and we were testing it out and went to ChatGPT and I said, okay, he was gonna, he's gonna be talking to car dealerships about helping them solve internal conflicts because he's, I've trained him in my skills. And so I was giving this concept to him. And so ChatGPT laid out the hourly productivity rate for customer service representatives, cart, the mechanics, guys working in the shop, the salespeople, the finance and insurance people, and looking at all their productivity rates. And it was really interesting.

That's great.

The technicians, their productivity rate was around $105 an hour, but the finance and insurance guys, the guys that get you to sign all the paperwork, $625 an hour.

Oh, I love that. I love that. I'm gonna— I know what I'm gonna do when we get off this call.

But I think you're absolutely right. I think that you really have to understand your, the value to you, the value of your time to, to, in order to make informed decisions about where you wanna spend your time or not.

Absolutely. And I think, and it's just time, treasures, and talents. So it's, I think a lot of times people think, oh, I can't make a big donation. I can't make a big impact. Like you said, like your time can be so much more of a, a, a cost than just writing a check for $10,000.

Right.

I'm curious, you strike me as being a pretty good listener. How did you learn how to listen?

I did general as a dad. You had to listen. No, my dad always said to me, it's important for you to be understood, but it's more important for you not to be misunderstood. And that's one of his lessons I put in the book. And look, I've been in sales since I was I was mowing lawns and babysitting when I was 10 years old. But professionally, like as an adult, I've always been in the sales capacity. And I will tell you, like with Paychex, Paychex has a great sales program. And I don't know if they do this now, but man, when I was going through training there, you would go through the training and you literally, you're there, you're learning all this stuff, and then you take an exam. And if you fail the exam, they have a plane ticket for you and you're done. Them. So you have to pay attention. You have to listen. And the thing that I've always learned with sales is people will sell themselves if you just listen to them. I think a lot of times, yeah, people are so busy, what's the next thing I'm going to say, that they miss the biggest opportunity where somebody says, hey, you know what? Okay, I can give you an example of somebody that didn't listen. When I was working for a very big brokerage firm, I had a manager that wanted me to take him on an appointment with me. And you don't say no to your manager when you're 22, 23 years old. And we were going up to the Harlem Boys Choir up in New York City, and they're a nonprofit. And they, they were talking and they were explaining how they struggled to, to pay their bills sometimes during the month. And they were concerned about that. And that was one of their biggest things. It resonated completely with me. And to me, when you're selling something, you— if you want to give examples, you have to give pertinent examples. We had at the time, we insured the Cotton Club. And so the Cotton Club was just 2 blocks away from the Harlem Boys Choir. And we also had plenty of nonprofits, plenty of people that struggled to pay their bills that sometimes we had to give an extra 30 days to and work with the insurance carriers to make work. And the manager was like, We, he was like, we do Britney, we do the Stones, the Rolling Stones. And I'm like, don't be an asshole. I remember getting out of that meeting and I was like, you didn't listen to him at all. I was like, he was talking about they're a nonprofit. Sometimes they struggle to pay their bills and you're coming out with the Rolling Stones. I was like, that makes him think, hey, we're not the right broker for him because, hey, we're not going to matter because we're somebody that's going to struggle to pay the bills. So it's just one of those things that sometimes you just need to shut up and listen. And then people will— sometimes people just need to hear the cadence to figure things out. In our office, we'll say, I'll say to my business partner, hey, can I talk at you? And she's, yeah. Sometimes I just need to talk something out. And then I got the— I have the answer once I like verbalize it and talk it through. And sometimes that's all you need. You just need to get your words out there and listen to yourself too.

Right.

And that helps you along the way.

I work, I've been working with this sales training organization for the last 2 years, introducing my ideas of how to listen to emotions into conversation. And we changed the phraseology that there's no such thing as a sales call, it's called a buyer's conversation.

Oh, there you go.

And you're, to your point exactly, when you listen, especially when you listen to validate what people's emotional experiences are, you don't have to sell anything. They'll buy, they'll buy They'll make the decision to buy themselves. You don't have to do anything. All you have to do is just listen, help them understand their problem, show them a solution that meets their needs, and then they can, they make the decision about, they make a buyer's decision.

Well, I think sometimes it's okay to know when you're not the right fit.

Of course.

I think early people, especially when they're young and in sales, I had this one—

they go after everything.

Ah, they go after everything and they'll come to, I had a kid that came to a networking coffee with an agenda printed out. And I was like, okay, that you don't do. I was like, I said, I know in the old school insurance way of selling in the life insurance and disability, they do that. But I'm like, it's not the mail, pale, stale world anymore. And I was just like, if you feel like it's too formal, people buy from who they like and respect.

Know and trust.

Exactly. And so it's just like, and it's so funny, I have a girlfriend that she's actually, so she's from Canada. She's living in Puerto Rico. She just got an appointment with a big company in Wichita. And she's, Susan, what do I do? And I said, it doesn't matter what you say. They just want to like you.

Right.

And I said, don't come in with all these large Fortune 500 companies that you have. They don't care. I said, they want to know that you played softball in college. They want to know that your dad owned a plumbing contracting business your entire life and that now your brother's taken it over. I said, those are the things that resonate with them. I said, they don't care about that you got Broker of the Year. They don't care that you got all these other awards and accolades. I was like, they care about liking you. So she's, okay, I got it, Susan. I got it.

Really cool. I can see that we're aligned in many ways. So I, I got one more question for you before we go. What is one thing, Susan, about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Oh, I have a 205-pound bench press. That's a pretty, I'm a pretty strong girl. So that's probably one of the things that you do.

I don't know.

You do a 205-pound bench press?

Yeah. I'm a strong girl.

I'm a strong girl. So that, yeah, that would probably be a little bit over your body weight, I think.

Oh yeah, a little bit. Yeah.

So what happens in the gym? People, whoa, like that.

Yeah, I can pretty much do double the bench as most girls, but I can outbench a lot of guys too. So yeah, so that's always like an impressive thing. I'm pretty— I got a sweater on, but I'm pretty muscular. So if it's summertime, it was so funny. I mentioned that my husband and I just moved to New Hampshire and the contractors were working and walking through with me. And one of them said, they're like, so are you like a bodybuilder? I was like, no, I was like, I'm just a strong girl. I'm farm strong. It's my grandparents' parents were dairy farmers. So that would probably be the one thing that people wouldn't know just by looking at me.

That's really cool and a great conversation. Thanks so much for your time today.

Thanks so much, Doug. I appreciate it.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast. Doug Noll, D-O-U-G-N-O-L-L.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team.

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