Arlington agent has plenty to teach others about success

State Farm Insurance has more than 17,600 agents nationwide – it’s a big company – but the most productive agent in the entire system runs an office in Arlington: It’s Al Clark, whose $30 million annual enterprise continues to run at a pace five times or more ahead of everybody else in the national top 10.

It’s a no-contest deal. He’s the corporation star, albeit a modest one. Whenever the phrase “marketing genius” comes up, Clark cringes a little. But the numbers tell the tale.

Clark – whose first name is really “Almond” – has been the company’s multi-line sales leader nationally for 12 of the last 13 years, “multi-line” being an average sales ranking of all the components of the business, from auto insurance and mutual funds to retirement planning.

That consistency and, of course, profitability, has resulted in a long line of emulators asking Clark the same question again and again: “How do you do that?”

It’s a good question. Though his business card doesn’t contain this particular bit of information, he is, in fact, “Dr.” Al Clark, his doctorate in business and vocational administration being a credential that would seem more appropriate for a higher education environment than an insurance agency.

“I really consider myself an educator who simply has applied that particular discipline to business,” Clark said.

Some background: Clark grew up in LaPorte, Minn., and originally intended to be a teacher, first picking up an education degree at little Bemidji State University before signing on as a high school business teacher – and assistant baseball and basketball coach.

“One of the subsets of that job was a job training program and providing instruction in entrepreneurship,” Clark said.

Clark’s career in education progressed nicely, and he’s also one of those people who happens to enjoy school himself. First he obtained a master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. Then a doctorate.

“I had students who literally turned their high school projects into life works, including one student who eventually became a millionaire with a company that installed communication and power lines,” Clark recalled. And in the meantime Clark himself enjoyed dabbling in one entrepreneurial activity or another while still teaching.

His students did so well that eventually Clark was offered a lucrative job as administrator of a private vocational school, but with a proviso: He could have no other outside business interests.

“It was one of those moments when I realized that what I really wanted to do was have my own business – be my own boss,” Clark recalled. “I decided on insurance.”

Clark’s analysis of potential in Minnesota did not produce good grades, but those of another state – Texas – did. In particular he was impressed with a city that in the 1970s was the fastest growing municipality in Texas. That was Arlington, where he landed a job as a State Farm agency employee.  The pay? Eight hundred bucks a month.

But two years later he started his own agency, first in a six foot by eight foot tiny office on Pioneer Boulevard, then a bigger office on Arkansas Lane and in 1984 to his own building on Interstate 20.

His success attracted so much attention within State Farm that eventually Clark authored a four-manual how-to series on building a multi-million dollar agency. That how-to series has now registered sales of more than half a million dollars, though none of it ended up in Clark’s pockets.

“I’m a believer in education and all of the profits from the manuals have been re-invested back into education,” Clark said.

Those include scholarship programs at Bemidji State University and – most recently – a $100,000 donation to the Arlington Rotary Foundation to provide college scholarships for students who attended the mostly-minority, Title I Webb Elementary School in Arlington.

A fifth manual focusing on hiring and personnel is in the works.

“A bad hire can be a $20,000 or $50,000 mistake, or worse,” Clark said.

So what’s the secret formula? It’s more like collective wisdom.

“There’s no doubt that relationships are important, but a lot of people think the insurance business is just about shaking hands and word-of-mouth,” Clark said. “I wanted to use all that I’d learned about advertising, promotion and marketing to see if it would really make a difference. It does. You’ve got to create a winning business environment, manage for results, protect your money and avoid expensive management mistakes. It’s really about my formula: Ability plus attitude plus activity minus excuses equals success.”

Now 67, Clark disdains the idea of retirement. And he’s working on a general business advice book that focuses on his clearly successful ideas transferring the educational process to entrepreneurial success.

okcarter@bizpress.net.