Today we’d like to introduce you to Crystal Ware.
Hi Crystal, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I went to law school with the big idea that I wanted to protect and support “people” and take up causes (whether they were individual people, commercial, I just wanted to right the wrongs of the world.). While in law school, I focused on advocacy, participating in Mock Trial and Moot Court (my team won a National Title for South Texas College of Law, so fun fact, my name is etched in glass there at the school) with the intent to go into litigation.
After law school, I did just that, moving into a boutique litigation firm doing insurance defense essentially for maritime clients. However, billing hours was not excited and no one could prepare you for that, so I started looking, and like most people “I fell into” insurance, taking on a role at a large, national insurance brokerage. I love every minute of it and learned what it was like to be on a work team, have a great office culture and thought of them as truly my work family. Then I fell in love and got married. First comes marriage, then comes….babies.
As it turned out, my husband (who is a sports agent, most refer to him as a Jerry Maguire of baseball, and that is partly true) has a busy career, so we needed my role to be less client centric. So I maneuvered into a position at Halliburton and become the client I once served. From there I strategically honed my skills in all aspects of risk management, claims, contracts, and more on the client side, between Halliburton (Fortune 500) and Total (Fortune 100, French oil and gas giant).
At Total, entrepreneurial spirit was one of the core values and it really crept into my soul. I started searching for the truth and the path that would help me grow as a person and business woman. Serendipitously, I met my now business partner at (follow me here) a couples baby shower for my husband’s client. And the rest is history.
What we have done is put together my partner’s long-standing employee benefits practice and launched a commercial platform with my Fortune 500 experience so that we can serve our clients no matter their insurance needs. My goal in moving from big company to boutique company was truly to be able to have more connectivity with clients and communities. We want to be a partner where we are and with our community. We want to work with universities to help usher in a new generation of insurance experts. We want to help people learn what it means to be happy at work, to enjoy the office and to truly be able to have work life balance. And of course, most of all, we want to be able to be the outsourced Risk and/or HR departments for our clients.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Is growth ever easy? I ask myself this constantly.
And the answer is rarely. Growth usually comes with some sort of pains or discomfort, so why would growing a business be any different? A growing company has to manage their budget closely. A growing company has to focus in on its people to see how/where the dynamics shift and hats are switching as you hire and expand.
I would love to know if any entrepreneurs said their road was smooth sailing. I have not met one yet. But what I have seen is the genuine happiness and joy that they have and the freedom/liberation they experience daily.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Empower BIG’ delivers innovative solutions that can protect your business and personal needs. Our team will work with you to develop an insurance and risk management strategy with an integrated, single-source approach that creates ease of doing business. It’s important to protect your business from claims and lawsuits that you can’t see coming. We provide simple solutions for your business.
Empower BIG is a local firm with a national reach delivering concierge level, full-service insurance solutions. Relationship Driven Local Feel, National Reach. As a local and trusted firm, we can be the single contact to bring all your resources together. We specialize in insuring entrepreneurs and start ups with tailored coverage for a wide range of professionals. We deliver Innovative solutions to our clients with stellar support and excellent service.
When only the best will do, when service and relationships matter, we are there to deliver all of that, and more.
We are: Dedicated and Committed, implement Leading Edge Technology, provide Concierge Level Service and partner with our clients for Continued Growth and Optimized Solutions no matter where they are in their life cycle!
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
None! When we seek the RIGHT path, we find happiness. I think it’s as simple as that. There have been times when I felt like I was having bad luck or doors were closing, plans were not going as I had hoped, but in reality, there was something better on the other side. We just need to seek, and we shall find. When we seek positivity, we find it, even in the negative.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.empowerbig.com
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/empowerbig/
Image Credits
Sommer B. Photography
