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By DEREK REDD
Laura Mull remembered something her father Doug Bissett once said, a lesson she learned that she has taken with her through her professional career.
"He said, 'People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care,'" she recalled.
Building and cultivating relationships has served Mull's family well in the insurance business for six decades. Both her father and late grandfather Paul Bissett loved that part of the daily job, and Mull is a chip off the old block.
"Genuinely, I feel my cup is filled by having relationships and conversations and getting to know people," Mull, a State Farm agent, said. "That is one of my favorite things, and when I realized that being in the insurance business was about building relationships, that's when I said yes, this is my path."
While Mull has followed in the family footsteps with State Farm, that wasn't originally her path. She knew she wanted to be in the business world, but she wasn't sure where in that world she wanted to make her home. She spent three years right out of college in Chicago, working in financial consulting for an intellectual property firm. After she became engaged to her future husband Adam Mull, they decided to move closer to home and ended up in Pittsburgh, where she worked for Pfizer and then for UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.
But when her first child Grace turned 1, the Mulls decided to come home to Wheeling, and Laura Mull started working with her father in her transition to becoming a State Farm agent.
"Once I realized I wanted to grow professionally, and if I was going to be a working mom, I really wanted to make an impact and do something meaningful and not just ho-hum through work," she said.
There was one other big factor in returning home, she said - the people.
"We moved here for the people," she said. "That's the number one selling point of Wheeling, not just because we knew people from growing up. With the overall larger percentage of people ... it is the Friendly City.
"People are absolutely number one, and just the overall feeling of sense of community and support," Mull added. "But I do feel that overall the vast majority of people are invested in our city and in bringing it through the revitalization."
Mull spends much of her working day talking and learning about people, the customers she has and the customers she wants to bring in. It's not just about getting straight down to business for her when she talks to those people. Conversations are key, just as they were for her father and grandfather.
Those conversations build connections, she said. They build trust.
"I do really love building relationships with customers and giving them options," she said. "This is a family business. It's been around for 60 years. So we're just very genuine about caring about who we work with, getting to know them and understanding how to meet their needs best."
Mull's spirit of community goes beyond the working world. She's very active at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church and on the board of directors at Crimestoppers. She also gets connected to organizations throughout the Ohio Valley through her membership in Business Networking International.
Mull would love to see the professional generation that follows her keep that sense of community and connection close to their hearts as they enter the working world. But before that, her advice to debuting professionals is to not let the early bumps in the road get them down.
"Be kind to yourself," she said. "Let yourself make mistakes. That's how you learn. There's a lot to take in when you're in your first professional job. Keep a positive approach. It's all good learning when sometimes you're going through a transition, even when it's awkward and uncomfortable, that's when you're growing the most. That will get you to the place you ultimately want to be."