Rebecca Yates
Rebecca is a published author, licensed insurance broker, consultant, and owner of Ark Insurance Solutions, LLC.
She has been working in the health insurance industry since 2004. Rebecca Yates has 5 small businesses.
Her first business was a clothing line for women with large breasts. In America, we were whiny, and she felt like they could give people jobs. She knew nothing about clothing but decided to start the business. That business gave her the confidence when her day job became unhappy to get into insurance.
The other businesses include retail insurance brokerage, wholesale insurance brokerage, a book written with Jack Canfield, and a short-term vacation rental company with properties in Arkansas. She is planning to follow the wise words in The Pumpkin Plan that says to consolidate, so she is contemplating letting the clothing line go.
Rebecca never intended to be an entrepreneur.
She loved business, she was in the business clubs, but she didn’t want to be an entrepreneur. All of her friends wanted to be entrepreneurs. She didn’t want to work massive hours and just wanted to climb the corporate ladder and be an archaeologist. She is probably the only one of that group that actually owns a business.
Rebecca is a science geek.
Even as a child she collected old bones. She used to volunteer at the museum of natural history cleaning dinosaur bones and putting them back together. She likes money and is very fair skinned so being out in the weather digging for bones probably isn’t realistic, so she did business instead.
Rebecca had a struggle as a business owner because she got sued when she started her second business. She also had another experience with partner separations. The lesson learned here is to always get contracts cleaned up and signed right at the start.
Make good friends with excellent lawyers.
Rebecca talks about partnerships. To have a partnership everyone needs to have equal ownership. There needs to be a way there is a tiebreaker. Make sure there is a leader. Be very selective about who you let into your business. Even background checks are necessary. Do not assume anything.
You need to business date and not get business married.
Rebeccas balances personal and business life by being kind to herself. She takes care of herself during the day. If she needs a massage or wants to go to a movie she does it during the day. She turns off her phone at night. Clients try to make herself feel guilty, but she turns the phone off.
The book she co-authored with Jack Canfield, was a great experience. The book is called, Conversations with Top Achievers and whe wrote a chapter in the book. She has many boxes full of these books and hasn’t figured out how to distribute them.
Rebecca's company was selected as one of the Mountain West Capital's 100 fastest growing companies in Utah. They were ranked number 63. They also received the highest award from the Federal Government, the elite circle of champions. CMS which runs healthcare.gov and selected 17 brokers across the united states and her company is one of them.
Rebecca ended up in insurance even though she considered insurance agents scummy.
While she was working for a cold weather gear company, they decided to move out of Utah and her soon to be ex-husband blocked her from leaving Utah because of some law that said it was in the child’s best interest.
She found herself as a single parent with no job and got offered a job in health insurance. At the time she didn’t believe in insurance. At the time she had taken her ex-husband off her insurance, and he rolled his four-wheeler. The nurse pulled her aside and said because he didn’t have any assets and because they were still married...
