Effective June 1st

Hello!

To those who regularly read my posts, a warm welcome back.

If by some chance you are new or haven't been here in a while, I'm glad you're here.

I often use this blog-space as a means to share some of the ponderings that buzz around inside my head. I greatly appreciate anyone and everyone who takes the time to entertain and engage with those thoughts.

But this week, my post is more of an announcement rather than a public rambling:

Effective June 1st, the Facer Insurance Agency (my family's aviation insurance agency), will officially purchase the Skysurance Aviation Insurance Agency based just outside of Cleveland, OH.

On Tuesday we flew to Ohio to sign the final purchase agreement.

Andy and I are excited for this opportunity to grow our family business and continue to expand our nationwide reach of brokerage services. This will be the fourth agency acquisition during my time as Vice President at Facer Insurance and it will be the largest we have purchased thus far.

Due to the size of the Skysurance Agency, this will be the first agency acquisition where we elect to keep the currently operating Cleveland office open for the foreseeable future. Largely through the efforts of Andy, we have built a positive working relationship with the Skysurance Founder and CEO, Thomas Dus, and plan to utilize his professional services and his Cleveland team throughout the transition.

I have no doubt that a business purchase of this size will come with its bumps in the road and obstacles to overcome. After all, even the smaller agencies we have purchased have come with their own thorns (and that's okay).

But in just nine years as the Vice President of Facer Insurance, one thing I have learned is that life tends to breed life, whereas complacency welcomes death. I see this first-hand throughout the aviation industry: The dreamers have a strange knack for inventing success out of nothing; the content and the indifferent eventually fade into oblivion.

I don't know that I am quite to "dreamer" status. And I don't know that we're starting from nothing either.

But I'm up for some hurdles. I accept the challenges this new purchase will bring.

Just don't call us complacent. And to the competition- Don't get content.

Pops and I following the closing luncheon at the Brazilian Court in Miami we hosted for our insured, Southern Airways. We insured Southern from the time it was a single airplane all the way through its tenure as the largest commuter airline in the United States prior to its purchase by Surf Air Mobility. Talk about something out of nothing.