Scott Insurance

If you're not bonded, you're not bidding.

Especially when it comes to major construction.

When you need a bond, you want to be able to call up your insurance company and get it taken care of promptly.

I am one of the staff at Scott Insurance who make sure a company's bond is accurate and on time, mostly for construction-type projects:

--The company who is building a subdivision and needs a maintenance bond

--The contractor who is replacing the HVAC equipment for a school

--The paving company who is laying down a new road.

These types of bonds take some legwork up front to build a relationship between your company and an insurance carrier. 

At Scott, we're good at building that trust. Clients and carriers recognize us as a service-minded, responsive company. 

That's why I'm involved. It may seem like a stretch for someone to move from advertising and marketing, or non-profit leadership into the world of insurance.

But my analytical and organizational skills are critical here at Scott. Attention to detail, care for the client, and a fascination with construction and economic development serve me well in this role.

If you want to meet your proposal and bid deadlines with accurate, financially-secure bonds, give us a call at Scott Insurance.

If you want to know someone with a love for hiking, music performances, taking care of people and apparently, surety bonds, connect with me!

Bonds Processor

Traci DeGroat Coaching

Building an Online Coaching Business can go wrong before you can say “Doritos!”

The reason?

99% of coaches focus on the wrong things.

Rino made the same mistake.

She had bought a URL.

She had registered her business name.

She was creating content on social media.

Bottom line: All the bells and whistles were in place.

Yet she wasn’t getting clients.

She’d already invested heavily in getting help.

Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

When Rino started talking with me:

- She was frustrated
- Not so sure she wanted to spend more money to learn what to do

Sound familiar?

Rino decided if her business was going to grow, she needed guidance AND a framework to follow.

The first step in solving her problem was analyzing her niche and offer.

A few sessions in, she figured out that her offer didn’t speak to her values and dreams.

She had a deeper passion and we worked to discover it so that her business could fulfill it.

Rino realized her biggest win was divorcing a narcissistic and controlling partner and rebuilding her relationship with her children.

That’s how she could best help other women.

Once she realized her true purpose, she changed her service to Divorce and Parenting Coaching.

The next steps we took were:

- Crafting her Ideal Client Avatar
- Building a program to help her clients get the results they want and pricing it to its value
- Creating content, reaching out to ideal clients, and generating leads for her business
- Building a system so she can replicate the process repeatedly without my help

6 weeks into the program, she closed 2 clients.

Coaching is a useful skill in many applications.

While I'm not currently running a coaching business, I'll always be a coach.

I love entrepreneurship...and I love helping others achieve their dreams.

Business Coach

Habitat for Humanity Prince William County

When you build and repair houses for low-income families, failure isn’t an option.

When you do it with limited resources, it’s hard not to fail.

When I joined Habitat for Humanity, they’d already been active for 7 years.

Yet only the Board of Directors ran the organization.

The only other employee was someone who came to open the mail.

And that was it.

The result?

The organization helped only 5 families in 7 years.

The Board was worn out and the situation needed to change.

They hired me to wear all the hats:

- Raise funds
- Manage staff and volunteers
- Get word out to the community
- Deliver results with limited resources
- Satisfy customers, volunteers, clients, funders, and board members

I helped the organization launch a new program to repair homes for low-income families.

We also opened 2 retail stores, ‘ReStores’, to sell donated materials like furniture, household appliances, décor, and building materials at 50%-90% off retail prices.

We used the funds from the ReStores to help even more families.

This was a huge success!

We helped more than 200 families in 18 years.

The best part of working for Habitat was seeing the happy faces of the people who just had their homes repaired or built.

Now I feel the same happiness when our construction clients win their bids!

President/CEO

KTDiD Marketing & Advertising

In a marketing and advertising company, you:

- Conduct market research
- Find out the client’s problems
- Form an idea of where they want to be
- Place proper systems in place to take them there

You also learn another important lesson:

You can never stop marketing.

The moment you do, you’re setting yourself up for future failure.

These are lessons I continue to use, whether for coaching or in insurance:

- Understand the root cause of the problem
- Figure out steps to fix the issue
- Build proper systems
- Market your services
- Sell

With KTDiD, I started my own marketing with the Chamber of Commerce.

I got all my clients through networking and direct mail.

I served as a contracted marketing department for businesses.

Here’s my biggest takeaway from the experience:

Be it as an owner of a marketing and advertising agency, as a coach, or someone who offers Surety Bonds:

Take the right steps, do them consistently and persistently, and you’ll never run out of clients.

Owner

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)

I felt like the lone survivor of a car accident.

All of my colleagues were laid off.

Including my supervisor.

When I joined AIAA, the marketing department had half a dozen employees.

We were responsible for marketing the books and magazines the organization published.

This was a time when MS Excel was new.

One day, they sent me to an Excel learning session.

The training was held on the other side of the building.

When I returned at lunchtime, the room was empty.

They had fired the entire department.

Swoosh. Gone. Never to enter the building again.

That stayed with me for a long time.

To be honest, that’s probably how the entrepreneur in me was born.

The takeaway is that no matter what we do, it should be something that offers a sense of purpose.

Something that fills us with joy.

Something that feels stable and secure.

It instilled in me a desire to work at something that makes lives better.

One client at a time.

Manager, Marketing Development

The Gooder Group, Inc

The foundations of running a business may not be exciting but building them saves you from hearing crickets in your DMs.

That’s what this job did for me.

Nothing groundbreaking but it taught me the foundations and the basics of small business ownership.

My boss gave me the reins to make some improvements in fulfillment of a program.

I struggled.

He supported me.

I learned.

It improved things for the client.

This job taught me that it’s okay to try new things.

It taught me there’s always something to learn, even when there are challenges.

It taught me the mundane is as essential as the breathtaking.

It taught me to keep pursuing the dream and never give up.

Without this job, I wouldn’t have been as successful in business.

For that, I’ll forever be grateful.

Sales & Marketing Manager

For the first time in my working career, I'm not on the hook to sell something.

I have so many rich experiences to share with others from my work with marketing, branding, entrepreneurship, non-profit leadership...insurance...and life.

And I'm going to have some fun doing it!

So, if you’re waking up each day knowing you’re helping others, and yourself, become better each day, connect with me, DM me, or send an e-mail to traci@tracidegroat.com.

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