Chrissy Myers is the CEO of Associated Underwriters Insurance (AUI) and Clarity HR, specializing in insurance benefits and HR services for small and medium-sized businesses. With over five years leading Clarity HR and helming AUI, she is an innovative leader in a third-generation family business.
As an advocate for community service, Chrissy champions employee participation in local initiatives and has designed programs like AUI Gives Back and Clarity Cares. She is the author of Reluctantly Resilient and is a member of the Entrepreneurs Organization.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[2:46] Discover how simplifying complex services leads to empowered business decisions
[6:07] How a company can provide additional value through networking
[8:01] Maintaining a proactive, personalized approach in client communications
[13:16] Creative ways businesses can give back to their communities
[14:26] Learn the importance of resilience in entrepreneurship
[19:59] Personal fulfillment as a driving force in business ownership
[21:30] How Chrissy Myers learned from adversity to become a more mindful leader
[26:17] Balancing business with family life
[28:42] The role of AI in HR and its limitations in replacing human interactions
In this episode…
When faced with overwhelming complexity in business, is there a simpler path to peace of mind? What does it take to lead with resilience in your professional and personal life?
HR expert Chrissy Meyers delves into the strategies that have led to her companies' success and the philosophy behind them. She shares the importance of being coachable and open to change as core expectations of their clients. Reflecting on her leadership journey, Chrissy talks about steering clear of technology and outsourcing, embracing change, and why she decided to start another company amid the complexities of family business transitions.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker sits down with Chrissy Meyers, CEO of AUI and Clarity HR. They talk about simplifying complex business services and community involvement, how growth and success come from focusing on what you excel at, and the power of resilience. Chrissy also emphasizes the role of companies in their communities.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Chrissy Myers’ Email: cmyers@auiinfo.com / chrissy@clarityhr.com
Reluctantly Resilient: One CEO's Journey to Thriving in Leadership and Life by Chrissy Myers
"Tips for Driving a Company’s Growth With Ashtan Moore of Model B" on The Customer Wins
"World-Class Technical Documentation for Increased Customer Satisfaction With Caity Cronkhite" on The Customer Wins
"Achieving Sustainable Growth as an Agency Owner With Frank Cowell" on The Customer Wins
Sponsor for this episode...
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of our past guests have included Ashtan Moore of ModelB, Caity Cronkite of Good Words and Frank Cowell of Revenue Ranch. Today I'm speaking with Chrissy Meyers, CEO of Associated Underwriters Insurance or AUI, and today's episode is brought to you by Quik! the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time reviewing the forms, instead get quick using our Form Xtract API simply submit your completed forms and get back clean context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate. Visit quikforms.com to get started.
All right before I entered this to today's guests, I want to give a big thank you to Entrepreneurs Organization for introducing me to Chrissy both of us are members of EO and if you are the founder or CEO of your own business and want to meet other CEOs go check out eonetwork.org to find a chapter in your city. All right, I'm really excited because today we're talking with Chrissy Myers. Chrissy is the author of Reluctantly Resilient and CEO of AUI and Clarity HR which provides insurance benefits and HR services to small and medium-sized businesses in both for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Chrissy describes herself as the chief cheerleader for both companies setting direction steering, marketing content, and finding creative ways to disrupt to establish business sectors.
Chrissy is also the author of AUI Gives Back and Clarity Cares to Community Impact Programs where employees serve in the community, track their impact and share what they're doing on behalf of their customers versus goals to leave her community a better place. As a leader in Akron, Ohio. She has received several awards for her work and is an advocate for families struggling with addiction and mental health issues. Chrissy serves our community as a board member of several charitable and community organizations. So this is also fun when she's not plotting world domination of the insurance industry or volunteering in the community. Chrissy can be found at home with Team awesome sauce, who includes her husband Steve and two children, Maddie and Caleb. Chrissy, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Chrissy Myers 2:26
Oh, thanks, Rich. I'm so excited to be here. Happy hello for me.
Richard Walker 2:30
Awesome. If you haven't heard this podcast before, I love to talk to business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience and the challenges to growing their own company. Chrissy, let's understand your business a little better. How does your company help people?
Chrissy Myers 2:46
Yes, so our purpose statement is we provide peace of mind by simplifying the complicated. So we take two things that a lot of times business owners can find overwhelming employee benefits, health insurance, all the things for your employees and human resources, HR, then we simplify them to make them easy for a business owner to feel empowered to make decisions about their people.
Richard Walker 3:06
Well, I'm trying to think back in like 2010, my COO and I, we said, what do we what's our core competency? And we decided it was customer service. It was product design, it was forms management. And we said everything else we're outsourcing it, because who wants this to be their core competency? So obviously you do what made you interested in this to say I'm going to be the master of this universe?
Chrissy Myers 3:29
Yes. So we pride ourselves at AUI and clarity as that we are nerds, we are insurance nerds, and we are HR nerds. So I would say I'm an insurance nerd by birth. So AUI is a third-generation, family business. I'm not the only family member in that business, but it turns 50 This year, and then as someone who bought the family business then launched her own startup in HR. It's just It's the ability to provide that weight that comes off of an employer shoulders when they realize that they don't have to make all of those hard decisions, or those things that can sometimes seem complicated coordinating a PTO schedule, how do I work in a payroll system? What's the right health insurance for the people that I have? I'm afraid to hire that first employee. Those are the things that we love helping and kind of getting people to understand.
Richard Walker 4:14
So are you guys like an outsourced service? Are you consultants? Are you brokers? Are you all the above? How do people really engage with you then?
Chrissy Myers 4:22
Yeah, so it's all of the above. So on the insurance side, we're brokers. We're not a captive agency. So we work with all of the carriers within the regions that we serve and kind of help the client find the right type of insurance for their needs. And sometimes the answer is no insurance at all. Not everybody has to have group benefits, which is probably makes us a little bit different for most insurance agents. There are times where we say no, that's not the right product. We're not going to sell you something that you don't need. And then on the Human Resources side, we are small business fractional consultants. So we are in your business as much or as little as you need.
So we have some clients that we're in their business every week, helping with all of their employees answering their question seems really being their HR person that only needs to be there between five and 10 hours a week. And then others are that HR bat phone where I've got I don't have a lot of issues that are ongoing. But every once in a while I have a question, I get a form that I don't understand, I get an employee issue that I just wasn't expecting. And I need you to be my second set of eyes to make sure that everything that I'm doing is correct. So I don't have to call necessarily my attorney, I can always call my HR expert, because we are far less expensive than some of those employment attorneys that you may have to use if you don't pay attention to your HR issues.
Richard Walker 5:32
That was something I was thinking about, like, do you have attorneys on your side that you work with and can help with some of these answers?
Chrissy Myers 5:39
Yes, we do. We have someone in our organization that actually has their law degree but does not practice and then we have licensed attorneys that we will work with and hand you off to should you need something done at that level. Because oftentimes, as entrepreneurs, there's certain like, we're good at certain things. We're not always good at everything. And sometimes we think we need a lawyer that knows all of the things and there's moments where specificity is really important, I would think that you would have that experience to Rich with what you do being so, so specialized.
Richard Walker 6:07
Yeah, I mean, we do we have like an HR attorney, we have a corporate attorney, we have a contracts attorney, and we just use them sparingly. Of course, I feel very fortunate on the AR HR front, my co handles a lot of it with our lawyer to figure out the handbook stuff, but we just don't have drama in our company. We've tried to create the least stress environment so that there's just no politics and drama. Now maybe it's because we're small, we're about 28 employees at this point. And that was going to be one of my questions. What size company comes to most often? And what do you look for in a company?
Chrissy Myers 6:39
Yeah, so organizations that kind of runs the gamut. So we have some organizations that have a full time HR person, and where their extra set of eyes and ears. So they'll call us when they need us. And they had usually have between 50 and 100 employees, our sweet spot for questions tends to be between that 15 and 35 number of employees, because it's just enough where you're getting the point where there's different changes that happen at the federal or the state level, a lot of times those organizations have scaled to the point where they have remote employees in other states. And they don't realize that the rules that they have in their maybe their home state of Ohio is very different than the rules that they have in Colorado.
So we tend to work with those types of employees who are just trying to figure out how do I get my policies and procedures in place? How do I get my human capital management in place? And then also, has you asked what was the two things that we asked from our clients specifically, is that they are two things. One is that they are coachable that they're willing to listen, even if they don't want to follow. They're at least coachable. And the other is that they're open to change. Because sometimes, you have to go through the decision-making of whether you're going to hire a person, whether you're going to change expectations and performance, review that person, what you need to do to kind of change within yourself and hold individuals accountable. Are you willing to have someone help you hold your hand through that process so coachable and open to change are the things that we like to see in our customers? What do you like to see in yours?
Richard Walker 8:01
They have a problem we can solve. That's fair. No, I mean, honestly, we look for is, can we partner with them? We don't want to do business with people we don't like. And we have a simple rule, no one happy customers. And that means we're not selling for the sake of selling. And we're not picking up customers who are just going to be so difficult and never plausible that we just can't solve their problem.
Not to go too far into details. But we had a prospective customer come to us and talk to us for three months go all the way to contract signing, start the implementation and say, we just want to fill out paper form still like, what are we talking about? We're going to automate this. Yeah. But that will work for us. We still want to do paper, like tear up the contract. We're done.
Chrissy Myers 8:43
That's not what we do for you listing in the first meeting. No.
Richard Walker 8:46
Yeah, I know. I know. But, you know, I was gonna ask this kind of from another perspective, you're helping customers deal with the things they don't like to deal with? What don't you like to deal with? What do you guys outsource?
Chrissy Myers 8:59
That's a very, we outsource all of our IT. We do not do anything we are we are nerds. When it comes to rules and regulations for the federal government, when it has to do with labor and employees, we are not good with technology. So we outsourced that. outsource our bookkeeping and accounting. What else we outsource some of our marketing, we outsource finding individuals who are willing to sit at different types of trade shows and networking events can be a challenge, especially in insurance getting those people that are always outgoing, that can sell and then and do the work on internally. So we do a lot of that outsourcing. We contract with an organization that helps do that for us as well.
Richard Walker 9:37
I like that I like that you are open to that kind of model as well. You're drinking your own Kool-Aid, so to speak, you're doing what you guys do best. You're getting other people to do what they do best. And ultimately, I think that's how you build your business, you know, to be the most efficient, most effective, but also the best results for your client. So I would guess that some of the value bring your client isn't just saving the money on their insurance but There's peace of mind. And are you eliminating stress for them? are you solving huge problems? Or just a bunch of little problems? How do you view it?
Chrissy Myers 10:08
Well, I think it depends on what the employer thinks is a huge problem. So instead of being the agent that just kind of renews your business, and we see you once a year, we're calling you depending on your group size, either quarterly or monthly to check in and see what's going on. Are there anything? Is there anything we can do for you having a number that your employees can call and ask questions, hey, I got this doctor's bill, and I don't understand it, hey, I don't know how to use my insurance coverage. So giving them that ongoing support, as opposed to just saying, here's the app, and here's the carrier website, you're on your own.
And then the other part because we work with so many small businesses, the ability to be that connector, I think, is really where our value shine. So we may not have all of the answers. But if someone says, Hey, do you know a good accountant, IT person, fractional sales manager, someone who can help us find efficiencies and how to fill out forms, we have all of those resources to be able to connect, because we're living in that space working with business owners every day.
Richard Walker 11:03
Yeah. So it's basically think about something. I think a lot of business owners do this. I don't know if you guys do this or not, but it sounds like you probably do, which is building a cadence of connecting with your customer? Do you guys have a specific model or process you follow to make sure that you're always in touch with your customer proactively?
Chrissy Myers 11:21
Yes, we do. So part of it is the communication cadence of electronic versus a phone call. So we always make sure that there is personal touch in person touch, depending on the size of the group and what the business owner needs, we really try to customize the relationship that we build, to make sure that we can continue to build and grow that relationship moving on, because for us, getting the sale is just the beginning. We don't want just customers, we want partners and business partners and relationship because when you succeed and you grow your business, we also succeed.
So it's really about, how do we build in the ability for you to make connections with other business owners to learn things that may not necessarily reflect back into AUI or to clarity, HR, but could just be beneficial for you another thing that we're doing so AUI turned 50 This year, and service is one of our core values. We believe that serving the community is just as important as doing business in the community. So we are doing 50 acts of service for this year, and encouraging our clients to say, hey, are there organizations that you support that you serve on boards of directors, four that you believe are really important our community that you would like us to champion and one of those 50 acts of service, please let us know.
Because we know that our success is predicated on your success and your ability to support us. That's what enables us to do those 50 acts of service. So yeah, it's been a fun start to the year, we're continuing. And our goal is to be done with those 50 before the end of the third quarter, because our fourth quarter is really like our Super Bowl, we're really busy with insurance at the end of the year.
Richard Walker 12:52
So it's more than one a week. You guys are busy.
Chrissy Myers 12:54
It is. So we've got 25 right now that are already scheduled in process, or completed. But if any, if anyone listening to podcasts has a suggestion for an organization to support we are all we are open and listening to different things that we could do to help again serve the community.
Richard Walker 13:10
So for other business owners who may be listening, give us ideas of what is it to give back to your community? How are you doing it?
Chrissy Myers 13:16
Yeah, so a whole bunch of different things. So there's a few things that we do specifically that are kind of AUI clarity centric. First, we give our employees a set amount of hours a year to be able to serve in the way that they see fit. However, they want up to 10 hours of the year that they get as not PTO but they get paid time to serve. So I guess would be PTS paid time serving. So we do that. Another thing that we do is we have a jar so once a month, everybody puts money in the jar to be able to dress down and then the organization votes on what's the nonprofit that we're going to select and care for.
So last month, it was choices which is a mental health center for individuals within the Akron area. Next month, it is for the stark county dog warden. So we're talking about we deal with mental health issues. We're taking care of animal welfare, I would say in a couple of months, it's going to be another organization that helps people stay in their homes called oh shoot, when is it Rebuilding Together Northeast Ohio. So I mean, we deal with a lot of different things. And then we serve in the community as well. So there's board service there is we collected items at the beginning of January for Goodwill Industries of Northeast Ohio to kind of distribute all sorts of things.
What are we doing to we're collecting, we're doing a school we'll do a school drive or sponsor a family at Christmas. We're gonna do some painting and restoration work with one of the habitats in the area. So I mean, we run the gamut school sponsorships, hey, I need a gift basket for this raffle. Hey, will you attend this fundraiser? Hey, will you sponsor a car for the Akron soapbox derby? I mean, we're doing all sorts of fun things right
Richard Walker 14:49
now. Now. I feel like we're not doing enough. We plant trees. We sponsor certain nonprofits with forums capabilities, but we're not doing enough My goodness. Those are always the ideas.
Chrissy Myers 15:00
Any momentum towards serving the community or nonprofit space is so important. And I will say this for all of your podcast listeners who are across the country, there are programs called Jobs For America's Graduates. And so what they do is provide meaningful work experiences for high school students. So a base, potentially for recruiting can be some of their summer work programs. So we have one in Ohio, that's local to us called Jobs For Ohio's graduates.
And they help find individuals and employers that connect them. So they can do like a 12-week service work project where they're learning a job, and then it's subsidized through your tax dollars. So you're not even paying for that person to be learning and working. And then at some point in time, when they graduate from high school, or graduate from college, you could have another employee that just got introduced to your organization, because you were willing to serve with a nonprofit.
Richard Walker 15:47
Wow, what was it called again?
Chrissy Myers 15:49
It's called Jobs For America's Graduates and then locally for us, because we're in Ohio, it's Jobs For Ohio Graduates.
Richard Walker 15:49
That's cool. That is so neat. All right, let's switch gears a little bit. Why start another company, you have this really great successful company that's, you know, legacy, etc. And I understand like the complementary aspect to it. But that's a lot of work to take on a whole another company.
Chrissy Myers 16:12
It is. So it's actually a story that comes out of service and nonprofit work. So I was working with an organization that was one of our nonprofit clients. And they had asked for years Chrissy, you do benefits. So well, we have a revolving door on our HR person. And we really don't need someone here all the time. But we do need someone who knows what they're doing. Would you be willing to look at that as starting a company and at that point in time, I was deep in family business transition. And in my book, Reluctantly Resilient, I am very honest, and saying that family business transition is difficult. It's not for the faint of heart, and anybody that says it's easy is lying. So at that point in time, I wasn't willing to start another business.
But this individual called me like the week after I had gone through the transition of an officially bought a UI, and said, Would you just try it because you'd like we can do a pilot, you can call it a different company, if you fail, we won't talk about it again. So you can brand it differently. And it was like, you know, this is a great idea. So let's try the startup thing. Let's see how it works. Let's put my fingerprints over here and make it something new. So that's how clarity HR was born, it was born out of the nonprofit request of, hey, we can't afford this person full time. And we know we need an expert, is there a way that you can create a business to fulfill this need. And now, Clarity is five years old, we're working on growing to our eighth employee, and we're continuing to grow across the country.
It's not just a small local company anymore, it's continuing to ripple out and we have clients in California and Nevada, Texas, all over the United States. And so it's an interesting space to kind of provide the benefits in HR. And I will say, at some point in time, probably after AUI celebrates its 50th birthday, those brands will probably unite into one because what we've learned is that the human resources side is really supportive of the benefit side and to work together is a synergy that's really special for small business owners outside of having to use a payroll company or someone else to kind of do all of those services, we can provide a more local high touch approach that gives them more freedom and the ability to have more flexibility than just than just a call center, which I would think Rich with what you do being so specialized and customizable for your customers that that would be something that is similar for both of us.
Richard Walker 18:23
Yeah, I would definitely say so. So I want to ask you another question about your book, and a bunch of questions that keep popping into my head. So Reluctantly, Resilient. Tell us about the book, what made you want to write it? And who is it serving?
Chrissy Myers 18:39
Yes. So I would say Reluctantly Resilience, kind of like a high five and a hug for small business owners. So anyone who is thinking about business ownership, business leadership, or working on transitioning a family business, I think it's a great book for you, if you're learning if you want tools on like, how to streamline your HR processes, it is not the book. So this is really talking about my journey as a business owner and kind of taking care of my own mental wellness through that transition and the things that I needed to do to kind of grow and become a better person. So it talks about our family business transition.
And it talks about a transition that I had when I lost my first husband to suicide and kind of the things that we've had to rebuild and kind of as you walk through those hurricanes, and I think there are two things. And I'm going to ask you when I after I say my two things that I think every business owner needs, what your two things are that you think every business owner needs to be successful. I think they are good interpersonal effectiveness skill. So building your own mental health care plan and how you take care of yourself and then finding your what else for your business, which is beyond the making money part. What is the thing that drives you? Because if we were just going to make money Rich, I think we would all just have jobs. So what are the two things that you think are important to being a business owner to kind of drive you through the hard parts?
Richard Walker 19:51
No, this is great. I think that you have to define what is fulfillment for you. So people who listen to my podcast over and over again, hear me ask the same question like, how does your company help people? And the reason I asked that question is because I figured out humans are dependent on other humans, we're not meant to be alone. You didn't get your orange juice from your tree in the backyard and squeeze it unless you're happened to be orange juice farmer or something. So what do we do? We depend on others. So therefore, how do we get fulfillment is from how we help people, we don't help people by making money. We help people by the service we provide by the products we invent by the problems that we solve.
And I think that if you're a leader, you have to think about what is defining your personal fulfillment, and the fulfillment of your company. The second thing of that is something else I think about which is really leads to confidence and fulfillment. And that is, what is mental strength. And I define mental strength as the conversation you have with yourself. In the moment, that's hardest. So if you can have a really good conversation, I don't mean upbeat, optimistic, positive, I mean, a healthy conversation, it no matter what you're going through, oh, I just lost my biggest customer. What do I do? I'm gonna close my company, I'm, I'm gonna go cry, no, have a good conversation with like, what can I do?
How can I solve the problem, then I think with that mental strength, and a sense of confidence, and I define confidence as knowledge of yourself in any given situation, then you can really pursue fulfillment because you can approach your purpose and tackle the hard problems with knowledge of who you are, and your ability to have a good conversation during the hard times. That's my answer.
Chrissy Myers 21:29
I love it, you fit really well into the Reluctantly Resilient. So a lot of times we're resilient as business owners, not necessarily because we always want to be but sometimes because we just have to be so.
Richard Walker 21:38
Yeah, I actually have a long history of resiliency, because I've moved 33 times in my life, my father was a drug addict and alcoholic when I was four, my parents divorced. I mean, I have all sorts of different stories to go through. That led to my challenges, where your challenges started earlier in life, or later in life that made you realize how important resilience is.
Chrissy Myers 21:59
I think mine happened a little bit later. So I mean, we went through a, probably like an essence that doubled trauma or a financial hurricane. So we did this in in our professional life, when we were dealing with the Affordable Care Act of transitioning at AUI. And at the same time, my husband was dealing with some mental health, mental health issues. And so when I lost him to suicide in August of 2013, it was 30 days before the Affordable Care Act was supposed to go live on healthcare.gov. So the so my resilience in my building kind of came a little bit later, I think I've always been the Migrate forward and get things done if I can, but I've gone from growing in saying that showing no weakness is actually something that can be detrimental to me that weakness and being willing to be vulnerable about it, about it is kind of showing more strength.
So I would say my lessons have come a little bit later in life, I wish they would have been when I was a little bit younger, but I had a really awesome charm childhood of growing up in a family business with parents that were, I mean, working on the business, working in the business and working together. So I learned a little bit later on, like how to balance and how to make sure that you take care of your own mental well-being. I mean, in the book, I talked about how trying to be superwoman at Christmas Eve almost cost me my house when I tried to barbecue it because I wanted to make sure I got all of the things right, the first year that the first Christmas after my wife died. So I have learned slowly, how important it is to take care of myself and to work on being resilient. And that resilience, I feel is really a long game. So I would be interested to see do you feel the same way or?
Richard Walker 23:31
100%, I'm looking another way to talk about my journey is I'm a survivor. I know how to survive so many circumstances, having $5 to my name, and a week before my next paycheck, for example, not knowing where food is going to come from, and getting food somehow. I have always been a survivor in my life. And I don't know, I mean, I think you go through challenges, and it does make you stronger. But it's actually how you choose to look at those challenges and the experience that came out of it. It's how you choose happiness or not happiness, it's always your choice. And I guess a methodology I came up with in my college years because I was super poor had a lot of challenges, then was that I view the world as every choice you make has 43 options.
Why 43 It's just a sufficiently high number to make you think beyond black and white. There's not just true or false, there's a whole bunch of other ways to look at the problems that you have. And that exercise has also I think led to resilience because I can see positive outcomes, negative outcomes. So if you don't have enough money, what do you do? Well, stealing is actually an option. Is it a good one? Is that the one you want? Probably not. But it is an option, right? It is starving is also an option go without food, that's an option.
So yeah, I think a lot of it comes back to and I would guess that a lot of CEOs go through this, that you're constantly being forced to make hard choices, and you have to keep pushing your way through it. And what's your comment on that with other leaders that you've known, especially entrepreneurs, with how they're trying to make these choices? And what drives them to make the choice they have to make?
Chrissy Myers 23:45
Oh, I think it's absolutely it's the statement of this is what is happening to me is not going to define me, but it's going to refine me. So reshaping and reframing the perspective. And I think you're right, as business owners, we have to pivot and move in different directions all the time, we have lots of weight when we're dealing with payroll in the economy and dealing with customers. And I mean, we can have changes to government regulations that could change the landscape of any business at any time.
So we are constantly living in a state of where do I need to be and who do I need to be? And how do I achieve? So I think that if you haven't mastered your resilience, yet, as a business owner, you're going to have to, because that's the See, I think the secret to longevity is being able to be a resilient business owner. It's not just being a resilient person. It's being a resilient entrepreneur.
And I feel that entrepreneurs have the ability to change the world, because we touch so many people with we touch our customers, we deal with our employees, I mean, we create ripples in the world that can truly change an impact. And so if we take care of the business owner, I feel like we're really taking care of the broader community. What's your thought on that?
Richard Walker 26:17
No, I totally agree. And I think that entrepreneurs change the world, because they have the ability to see the world the way it could be, and not the way it is. And they strive for that could be version and they have a vision for how to get there. I'm curious about something else, you went through a lot of challenges. And you came out the other side and this great attitude, this this great persona and energy. Did any of your beliefs change? Did you redefine yourself through the process?
Chrissy Myers 26:44
Oh, absolutely. And I love that now people are like, you seem so bright, you seem so I went through change, kicking and screaming, like, I don't like it. This is dumb. I mean, I will tell you, I am a huge proponent and champion of therapy. But for the first couple of years, I was like, I'm going to schedule when I'm grieving, I'm going to schedule when I have my breakdown, I don't have time to deal with some of the things that I need to deal with. And I don't want to communicate with you when it's uncomfortable. I just rather avoid, which is another reason why we have Clarity, because Clarity HR is an organization that helps individuals who are constant avoiders and wanting to have difficult conversations and we hold your hand through that process.
So I would say absolutely, I've changed tremendously, I'm more mentally present, especially as a business owner, I mean, learning to be mindful and focus on the things that are important, because here's the other part rich, and you have a family too. It's not just being an entrepreneur, it's being an entrepreneur that has a family that I think is another added challenge. Because if you're building an organization that at some point in time, you might want to hand down, having a good relationship with your business. And having a good relationship with your family is really important. Because if you want to hand it down to your kids, your kids have to look at that business as something that was helpful and helps your family Thrive not necessarily the third child that they hate, because it got all the attention.
Richard Walker 28:02
Yeah, no, you're living something that I aspire to, which is I want to build a multi-generational company. We're in year 23 of business. My kids are so young. So slowly, I've got another 20 years to get to the point where they're gonna say, yeah, let me come work and have the skill to do. So. I want to go back to a business topic, because this comes up in a lot of my conversations, I have to imagine it's coming up in yours. And that's artificial intelligence. And we were talking about how leaders have to make these hard choices. And this is top of mind to so many people. So I'm curious, from your perspective, how do you see AI impacting your world, your customers, the kind of decisions they have to make and really customer experience overall?
Chrissy Myers 28:42
Yes. So I would say a couple things I think AI is wonderful. And I think there are going to be companies that leverage it, use it and do really well. And then there are going to be companies that get left behind because they're afraid. So I think that having a healthy relationship and trying to be curious and figure out how it can work for your business is important. But what I will say is that AI is a tool. And tools are only as good as the team you build to use them. So it's really important as you're looking at AI, what you need to do to help continue to build your team because you cannot AI the human experience.
And there are certain things that are not, you're never going to be able least I don't think you're ever going to be able to completely AI your human resources, because you're always going to be dealing with some sort of people. And as long as you have people, you need to have those people skills to be able to navigate and communicate with them. But I think leveraging technology and AI being able to make forms completion more efficient, being able to have different types of scheduling payroll, I think can be something that is extremely easy to use with AI insurance will continue to be more AI friendly.
I think insurer tech is really something that it's something that we continue to look at on the AI side kind of how can we be more efficient and how can we give more value to our customers? because when we have AI working on some of the things that aren't necessarily things that require a human touch, it makes us able to customize the customer experience.
Richard Walker 30:10
Yeah, you hit on the topic that one of my previous guests, and I'm pretty sure it was Cody Foster of Advisors Excel, and they employ hundreds of financial advisor is and he's built this incredible business. But he said, Do you ever see an AI sitting with a client when they lost their spouse? Exactly, they're not going to go through the hard time, they don't understand it. So you still need the human touch. Even if the AI makes you faster at what you do have better insight and better decisions, etc. The human touch, this is why I come back to we are dependent on humans to interact with each other and find our fulfillment. So I have to imagine all the people saying I can outsource HR to AI. It's a fallacy.
Chrissy Myers 30:48
Oh, absolutely. And I'm going to tell you right now, if you're using chatGPT to answer your Department of Labor questions, it's wrong. Because it changes and interpretation is an issue. And you don't know where the information is completely getting pulled from. So you need to be careful, and how much you use it to be efficient. If you want to use it to fact-check. Fine, you want to use it to explain something. Okay. But if you're asking it, like, what is the full-time equivalent employee in the state of you could be wrong. And that could be a costly mistake, just like how we tell you don't Google your HR questions. You shouldn't use ChatGPT for him either.
Richard Walker 31:22
Yeah, yeah. Oh, and that's definitely a pitfall. Um, look, we're getting close to the end. I want to wrap up. I have another question for you. But before I ask that question, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Chrissy Myers 31:34
Yeah, so a couple things. So we have a couple companies so several websites, clarityhr.com is for human resources, auiinfo.com. But the easiest way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. So it's Chrissy Myers, Chrissy Meyer CEO, on LinkedIn that, I think I'm an okay follow, but I love following other people too. So if you connect with me, please send me a message so I can connect with you as well. Don't just follow hit the connect button so I can know who you are.
I would love to be able to connect with you. And then chrissy@clarityhr.com is my email address and you can email me anytime as well. I love connecting with people willing to have a Zoom meeting. Or cup of coffee. If you're local to me, I think part of what I love and being CEO is that I have the ability and the breadth to be able to meet with people at any given time. So that's my favorite thing to do. I don't know if that's one of the things that you love to do Rich I would assume so because we're doing this amazing podcast and you just are so good at meeting people.
Richard Walker 32:31
Are you kidding? I went to breakfast slash coffee this morning outside my house already. I love those opportunities to meet people in person. I live in Austin. So if anybody's in Austin, hit me up, come say hi. I'll even invite you to my house. And your book, I know it's on Amazon is that the best place to find it?
Chrissy Myers 32:48
It is on Amazon or reluctantlyresilientthebook.com is the website. So you can just click through really easy. And it is currently in print and on Kindle. And it will be available on Audible probably in the next month or so. So maybe what yeah, when you go online, you may get the audible too because I know a lot of people like I want to read your book. But I don't read paper books anymore, or I don't read it like I don't read I listen. So working on making that. So that's consumable for everyone.
Richard Walker 33:14
The truth is, probably by the time we've published the podcast, it'll be out. Yes, the audio version. That's awesome. Yeah. All right, Chrissy, here comes my last question, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style, or how you approach your role today?
Chrissy Myers 33:27
So Rich, it's not fair to say one person, there's like a million. But what I will say is the one person that I think right now has put so much value into my organization has been one of the business coaches that I have worked with. And her name is Adele, DeMarco, and she has a company called The Innovate and she has been instrumental in helping me think bigger. So I mean, everybody, you can have those people that help you. We have an EOS coach that does some work with us.
But Adele really has worked with me on family visioning and kind of looking at, what is our purpose statement for our family? We've worked together as with Team Awesome Sauce, what is our purpose statement and our vision for our organizations as a whole? And how does this fit into this giant piece of life? And so I would say Adele is amazing. And she's a great follow on Instagram, and LinkedIn as well. So Adele DeMarco.
Richard Walker 34:17
That is awesome. I love hearing about great coaches like that. They're sometimes hard to find the one that just gets you and helps you be you better. So I'm really happy to hear that you found that. Yes. All right. I want to give a huge thank you to Chrissy Meyer, CEO of AUI and Clarity HR for being on this episode of the customer wins. Go check out Chrissy's websites at auiinfo.com and clarityhr.com. And don't forget the checkout Quik! at quikforms.com where we make it easier to process your forms. I hope you enjoyed this discussion. We'll click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for the future episodes of The Customer Wins. Chrissy, thank you so much for joining me today.
Chrissy Myers 34:59
Thank you He had a great time.
Outro 35:02
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