Allison Hainlen joins us to discuss her multifaceted career from lawyer to 3rd generation owner of her family's business, Gardner Insurance Agency. Allison is the first woman to own and manage Gardner Insurance Agency and in doing so has ushered in a new age for the company. From creating a maternity leave policy, to accommodating the developing needs of working women, to implementing her legal knowledge to helming a team of experience, professional, community-driven and bi-lingual insurance agents. It is refreshing and liberating to hear Allison's straight talk with her children to her team of employees "with plenty of respect but with very little sugar-coating". Allison highlights how you don't have to be warm and fuzzy but every perspective is worth hearing and considering. 

01:11 min: How straight talk helps you to run your own business.

01:53 min: Allison details how you can embrace your career and motherhood separately, that our drive for work can be for ourselves. "I also want something that's mine too. I'm a person walking around this earth too [...] It feels like something that really energizes me to be a better mom when I get home."

06:14 min: "There's just so much pressure on moms [...] it's such a reoccurring theme, and it's not coming from a place of victimhood [...] there is a lot of pressure and the only way that comes off your shoulders is to take it off."

07:11 min: "Self-care to me is have your career if you want it [...] once you start talking to other women they say yeah, I really do like my career."

08:33 min: Allison on taking over her dad's business and merging her law knowledge with running Gardner Insurance Agency, a community, people-serving business where "doing a good job for people [...] and being available [...] doing right by the clients" is her company's core strength.

11:01 min: How adding more technology benefits companies today.

13:42 min: Allison explains how her own goals to balance work and home life drove her to implement policies and procedures that she would want from an employer. 

18:44 min: Realizing "I can solve almost everything if I step back and I take a breath and I regroup" as a way to overcome obstacles.

19:39 min: "A good day is just always going to come back for to balance. [...] For so long it was I want to be the best at my business" the best at everything we do " and that was unattainable. And it's exhausting [...] Once I started to let myself off the hook for the A+ report card every day I can be happier. I can enjoy every part of my life a little bit more."

22:06 min: On being a straight talker and straight forward with language. "I want to consider everybody's input, everybody's ideas, but at the end of the day I want to be straight forward about how I feel, what I need, what my expectations are. [...] The truth is simple."

24:37 min: Goals for the company moving forward are rebranding the business for younger consumers, taking their needs and wants into consideration and recognizing their influence.

25: 29 min: Allison's quote to send out for listeners is "Do it from love, not for love. [...] Do something because you want to do it. [...] Ask yourself: Do I want to be doing this?"