A Legacy of Leadership

Stanley Novak was a plasterer by trade, the son of a Polish immigrant working in a business dominated by Italian craftsmen. In New Haven in those days, it was either go to work for Erector Set or Winchester Rifles. Or if you were in Holyoke or Easthampton, you went to work in the mills. It was the same all over the country.

Stanley, my dad, didn't like the idea of counting on a big company to provide for his family's future, so he grabbed his trowel and went into business for himself. And he made it work.

When I think about the legacy of leadership I want for me and the agents I’ve trained and work with, I realize that I’m not much interested in the old-school management model that has long dominated the financial business.

That model has been called “entrepreneurial,” but I say that’s not about true entrepreneurship. It’s about absolute control—based on concern about taking care of yourself and your own above everything else.

What I want instead is to leave the agency we built together—and especially the clients we work with every day—in a better place. That means asking, “Who will be successful after me? What keeps the culture of helping others going long after I’m gone?”

That’s the kind of thinking I learned from my dad, who was also focused outwardly on others. And it’s the kind of thinking I brought from my other career prior to insurance. As a social worker in New Haven, I counseled heroin addicts and sat down face-to-face with people in desperate need of help. I learned just as much about running a successful business from helping out my dad and working with inner-city kids as I did earning degrees or climbing through the ranks of the insurance industry.

In fact, I feel I owe a great deal of my success as an adult to never forgetting where I came from. The old neighborhood is still a big part of who I am. I remember tagging along with my dad on a grueling 95-degree work day and listening to him sing while he laid plaster in the unbearable heat. Those days are burned into my memory—and are the reason the connection between working hard and taking pride in what you do has always stuck with me.

We’re in a helping profession. Why wouldn’t we want to leave this industry a better place than it was when we came in? There’s no reason you can’t succeed beyond your wildest dreams, do good for clients, develop the next generation… And maybe even have a little fun while you’re at it. My dad taught me that—along with what real entrepreneurship looks like, and to always be thinking about how to leave behind a legacy that makes the family name proud.