On Today's Episode...LORI IVEY

This transcript is an excerpt from the LongviewNOW podcast with Kelly Hall and Lori Ivey from Lori Ivey State Farm. To hear more stories about why people chose Longview as their home, listen anywhere you get your podcasts.

So why did you choose to stay in Longview?
“I chose to stay in Longview for family. When we raised my family, we wanted to be close. Growing up, even though I was in East Texas my whole life, we still moved a lot and went to six or seven different school districts. So, once I had kids, I had already decided I wanted to kind of put down roots and stay for the long haul. And of course, it was the best decision ever. We love the community.”

When you think about your childhood, what is your favorite childhood memory?
"That's a good one. I think it's going to have to be Christmas, or as I call it, the '-ber' months like October, November, and December. Those are my absolute favorite, you cannot get better than the holidays in East Texas, especially with the trees. Also, my mom just had a way of making holiday super special, cool, and magical. Now that I am older and a mother myself, I realize it was probably just a lot of hard work, but she made it a magical childhood."

Letourneau University plays such a big part in our community and oftentimes I'll hear, ‘Well, what do those college kids do?’ I want to talk to you a little bit about when you were in college. What did that after-class time look like? What did Lori do for fun?
“Yes, I always worked. I mean from the time I was 15 years old, I've always wanted to work. I've always been a little bit of an entrepreneur, so I was always working. I would go to school and then immediately study and then go straight to the mall. I was an assistant manager of a little store there in the mall and it was a great little community of fun people and eclectic people. And we had our hangout spots that we, you know, hung out at on the weekend, and thank goodness now they've got a lot more. This is quite a long time ago, I would say. Back then, we loved to go dancing on the weekends. That was something that a lot of our friends did either in Longview or Tyler. The lake in the summer was a big deal around here. We would spend the whole day on boats just having fun and soaking up the sun.”

If you were at LeTourneau today, What would your weekend activities look like based on the things that you see happening around town?
“So today there's a lot more. My goodness. It depends on what you're interested in. For me, like I said, I was always the outdoors type and we've got lots of groups that are outdoor groups like I'm a part of the women's outdoor group for hiking. I've done a lot of mountain biking. We have a ton of mountain biking trails in East Texas. Hiking, walking, and running. Right now I play a ton of pickleball because you know that's taking the country by storm. I’m part of the pickleball cult. We have these beautiful new courts that have a ton of different people playing on from teens up through their 70s, which I think is awesome. I love what's happening downtown. The coffee shops, the breweries, the wineries, the pop-ups, and all these different small businesses that are just bringing all kinds of cool stuff to Longview. It's pretty exciting.”

We've got a huge creative community and so I think in five years we're going to see a lot more of that.

In about five years, what would you like to see happening in Longview? How do you envision Longview?
“That's a great question. Anytime I get one of those questions, I do the math and figure out how old I will be in five years so I can visualize it right. I absolutely love everything that's going on with the downtown expansion, and the art scene downtown. All of these entrepreneurs and small startups have been popping up everywhere. We've got a huge creative community and so I think in five years we're going to see a lot more of that. I think our community is very much embracing that. So in five years, definitely that I also love the development that's happening on the northeast side of town. There are some really cool things going over there as small businesses are expanding and ad building that area up. So that's exciting, which is close to where we live. So just today I went over to grab a coffee at the little coffee shop over there by the new Jacks Natural Foods, Yukon, and then went through the drive-through for Rusty. I worked from home one day a week and picked up Jacks at the new Jacks. It's beautiful for lunch, and so all that development is awesome. It's really cool to see these new businesses coming in, but also these 50-year-old businesses like Jacks expanding and going on with their services. What the people have been enjoying for so long.”

Lets talk a little bit about your career path. What you did and how did that lead you to where you are?
“I was the kid that wanted the plan and I wanted the plan to happen and life doesn't usually happen like that. And when I look back at the trajectory of my career, every experience, every boss, every coworker that I had played an important role in building in me what I needed to be successful in what I'm doing now and what I'm doing now is my dream job. I absolutely love it. It inspires me, but I started off not sure what I wanted to do with my life and struggling to find a good place that was a good fit for me and so I started in education and technology in the education sphere, and I loved it. So data became kind of my thing and I got to where I got to help a lot of organizations understand their data and processes. Help them to make decisions by organizing and helping them understand their data. All very nerdy stuff. But you know, I tell my kids even now - I have between Rusty and I now have 6 and they're all young adults and we've got lawyers and we've got artists and we've got every different personality they're trying to figure out what they want to do. I have found that it's less about what you're doing and more about the experiences that you're having at each organization, building those soft skills, learning to lead, even just learning how to lead a meeting, all of those things, what you do is important, but I think more important is who you do it with and the opportunities that you take that are presented to you and what you do with those things. In 2020, actually right as COVID was happening, I took the leap and became a small business owner. And I've never looked back.”

So you own an insurance company here in town. What is 1 myth? If you could debunk something about, being a small business owner, what would that be?
“I would say in insurance, I would say there's really no such thing as full coverage. That can mean 100 different things. What I do love about the industry is how much I get to help my customers. Honestly, if my customers are interacting with me, they're probably having a bad day. I want to see my customers, but when they're calling and coming into the office, that means they probably had an accident, or something happened at their home and so being able to help them through those times is probably the most rewarding part of being a small business owner. The other thing I would say about being a business owner is a small business owner specifically as you've got to wear all the hats. You're going to be HR and you're going to be a counselor to your employees and you're going to be a problem solver, you're going to be a CPA. All the things, which is what I love because it changes every day.”