For Winlock Residents, There’s a New Insurance Company in Town

Sept. 18--If someone asked Evie Leef five years ago what she would be doing today, she wouldn't have answered "selling insurance." On Thursday, however, Evie Leef Insurance held the grand opening for its Allstate office in Winlock.

"Why work for somebody else when you can do it on your own, right?" Leef said.

Leef, who is a first-time business owner, has done everything from manage a Pizza Hut, to waitressing, to working in a law firm doing collections.

Most recently, however, Leef was an insurance agent at the Winlock Farmers Insurance agency, before it closed its doors at the end of January. She was with Farmers Insurance for two years. Jim Hammer, who is now a personal financial representative for Allstate, ran the Farmers Insurance agency.

"If you would have asked me five years ago if I would have done this, the answer would have been no," Leef said. "But there was an opening at the Farmers agency when Jim was the agent and he needed my help. So I came in and I started working for him and he decided to transition to Allstate."

Leef said she couldn't be happier with her decision.

"The opportunity came to me to potentially reopen the office as an Allstate agent," Leef said. "I had a few interviews, and testing and they approved me to open the agency. I went through a lot of training and it's been a great transition -- best decision I've made."

Leef's daughter, Payje Schulz, also worked at Farmers and made the transition to her mother's Allstate office in June. Schulz, 21, is a marketer and remembers the first phone call she ever made at Farmers.

"It was awful," Schulz said. "I can guarantee you that that person did not get a quote. ... I didn't know what to say or how to say it. When I get nervous, I talk really fast or jumble my words up. That's basically what happened with my first call. What I was trying to say just came out like a jumbled mess, like someone learning to talk for the first time."

That phone call was in summer 2015 and Schultz said she is now "110 percent better" on the phone.

Allstate agent Chanel Miller said Schulz was being modest and described her as a "master marketer."

Schulz is currently a college student and will continue to work part time for Leef when she goes back to school.

Leef joined the Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce about a month ago and is one of its newest members. She said that she has been attending events and networking as much as possible since she opened her business.

"It's a lot of dedication and hard work and a lot of forgiveness from my family to not be there," Leef said. "I have been working crazy hours, a lot of hours, sometimes no days off. And that's okay -- I don't mind doing any of that stuff. I have to start somewhere."

Leef noted that the Allstate marketing team has helped her tremendously through the process.

"As far as being a business owner, this is all brand new for me," Leef said. "There is a lot of stuff I'm still learning, but I honestly have the best people that I work with that help me through this process and they help my staff."

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