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Brett Young
Erb and Young Insurance
CEO Personal Development, Company Culture, Fitness, Team Development
Brett Young is the co-owner of Erb & Young Insurance, an agency with offices in Dr. Phillips and Melbourne, Florida that places a large focus on internal personal development and a strong corporate culture.
Growing up
Growing up, Brett struggled in school but it wasn’t until later in life that he realized he loved learning and that the school environment just wasn’t the best model for him.
While attending UCF he met one of his mentors and became enthralled with the concept of personal development. He fell in love with everything about it and gravitated towards the idea of becoming more. This revelation became an important pivotal point in which his life would find direction.
The Start of Erb & Young
In February 2011, Brett partnered with his brother Taylor Young and Rod Erb to launch Erb & Young Insurance. The three of them had an idea to create a business where the office environment was fun and powerful. They felt this type of business model would attract people who were looking for more than what most companies provided for workplace culture.
The Core of Erb & Young
Creating an Environment Where People Love to Work
Empowering Others in Personal Development
One of the companies that impacted Brett the most was Florida Virtual School, where his mom served as CEO for roughly 17 years. The people who worked for her were fanatical about what they did. She empowered her team to be better through reading and spending time at fun events. Taking a similar approach, Brett has incorporated a couple ways that he empowers his team with personal development.
With the books chosen, the team is responsible to read a chapter on their own every two weeks before jumping on a call. Each call is led by a different person giving them the opportunity to practice team leadership and public speaking. They start out giving their thoughts on the chapter with examples on how it has applied to them and why they thought it was great. It also gives them an opportunity to share with the rest of the team if they’re experiencing struggles and find ways to overcome them.
“Often times it makes people uncomfortable to lead the team on a chapter overview, but after a while those efforts translate onto a customer call. The beauty of this is that these skillsets are transferrable, whether you’re on a call for insurance or your coaching your kid’s football team.”
How to Handle Conflict at the Office
With any team-working atmosphere, conflict is inevitable. Here’s what Brett had to say on how they encourage people to handle it:
The Difference Between Team and Family
Listening to Brett and how much he cares for the people he works with, engaging with them outside of the office and hearing his passion for incorporating personal development, it’s easy to think that he views the people he works with as family. But that’s not the case.Brett draws a hard line between defining the people he works with as his team and the reasoning for this is so incredibly righteous. This became my favorite segment of the interview:
The Team’s Favorite Book on Personal Development
Recognizing Accomplishments
Teams fight for victories and reaching those moments require hard work and dedication. Here’s Brett’s take on incorporating recognition at work:
Defining The Orlando Life
Last but not least, the one question I ask all my guests is how they they define The Orlando Life. Here’s Brett’s response:
