My name is Leonard Austin, and I am the Marketing Director for CMS. I have over 30 years of Marketing and Sales experience. I have had an insurance license since 1990 but no longer actively work in that industry. Over the years, the insurance industry and my mentors have helped me develop the skill set I have today. For nine years straight, I earned every incentive trip the company offered, including two trips to Maui and a week in Rome, Italy. As an agent in personal production, I won a silver medal and was Manager of the year 2004. I started my career as an agent and ended up as a Regional Director.
Before moving to Alabama from Georgia, I was the International World of Rodeo’s Marketing Director. My father’s father owned a Rodeo in the 1950s, and my father was a World class horseman and won many competitions, including World Champion trail horse rider. I guess being a horseman is in my blood.
I am a member of the church of Christ that meets in Helena, Alabama, and I met my wife on Christian Mingle. I sold my small horse farm, gave my horses to my friends, loaded my dually pickup truck with what I needed and my dog, and moved here in 2014.
Hoping to get a job helping people by doing assisted living home marketing, I quickly discovered that I did not have the experience they wanted. However, I had been selling medicare supplements since the age of 24. I did find a job with a local mobile storage company, and over the 4.5 years I worked there, I helped almost triple their container storage.
While working there, I met Eric Crocker, and we talked several times a week for almost a year. Eric would ask my opinion on different things he was considering to grow his business, and I, 20 years his senior, was happy to help this eager-to-succeed young man. See, Eric is what my father would have called a “Go-getter.”
One day I asked Eric if he wanted me to come to help him, and he said I don’t know if I can afford you, I asked whether he could afford me part-time until I get enough business to afford me full-time. He asked how long it would take. I said about three months. I started working for him in March 2019 and came on board full-time in July. Since then, we have added six logo trucks and are on Television, Radio, and Billboards. Eric and I are a great team.
He understood that he could not work on his business and in it, which is what I do; I work on his business, not in it.
