Ashley Barrios: Career stems from childhood desire

Ashley Barrios is 39 years old, but she’s been with State Farm for 23 years. But even that doesn’t explain how long she’s worked in State Farm offices, although for a few years, her pay was $10 a day and a po-boy.

Barrios’ mother was office manager of her brother’s State Farm office in Chalmette for 30 years and obtained her insurance license when Barrios was 7 years old. From that time onward, Barrios spent school holidays and summers filing, taking photographs of vehicles and mailing out insurance policies.

“When I was little, a little boy across the street said ‘I want to be a fireman’… I said ‘I want to be a State Farm agent,’” she said. “They asked, ‘What is a State Farm agent?’ I didn’t know, but that’s what I wanted to be! I just grew up around it.”

She started drawing a real paycheck from a State Farm agent in 1986 as a COE student in high school and continued while earning a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice at night. She thought of going to law school, but a week after graduation, a State Farm manager who was seeking an agency field specialist called; Barrios interviewed for the job on Friday and moved to Baton Rouge for work the following Monday.

Barrios worked with the goal of becoming a State Farm agent in New Orleans. She was finally approved for an agency in Metairie in March of 2005. When she went to sign the contract on a Friday, they decided to wait until after completing a pending agents’ conference call about a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. After the call, they agreed to wait to sign the contract until the following Monday “to see what this thing does.”

“It was a good idea,” Barrios said, since Hurricane Katrina came ashore and destroyed the office and devastated New Orleans. It also was the catalyst for 45 State Farm agents to retire, she said, leaving 48,000 State Farm customers without agents. So she ran the policy holder service office in New Orleans for one and one half years until the agent in Larose gave notice that he was retiring.

Since company officials said they wouldn’t open any new agencies in New Orleans (where Barrios wanted to be) for five years, she figured her second choice would be Lafourche Parish. It was a place she’d visited all her life and where her grandparents, aunts and cousins lived. She requested the agency and opened her office in Lockport in December 2006.

Barrios knew that in her business, one of the first things she needed to do was visit with the Chamber of Lafourche and the Bayou Region. So when one week after opening, a client asked if she would like to attend the Chamber’s banquet that night, she agreed. She subsequently joined the Chamber, then its Board of Directors in 2007.

She’d been involved with Cerebral Palsy of Louisiana for quite some time, but she started handling the VIPs for the annual telethon held in Lafourche. After the Macondo oil spill, she organized an auction for Island Aid (on Grand Isle) and raised $10,000 with the help of her fellow State Farm agents.

Barrios also supports Restore or Retreat, celebrates Arbor Day by donating trees to the fourth-graders in southern Lafourche Parish, is drawing upon her experience as a foster parent to push for changes in state law to protect children and is the Lafourche drop spot for Bruce’s Coats for Kids.

“I need more coats by the end of January,” said the ever-competitive agent who has taken out advertisements and is promoting the initiative on Facebook. “I’m on my second box, but agents in New Orleans are collecting a lot.”

That competitiveness shows itself in business, too. In Barrios’ first year in business, she ranked No. 8 among U.S. State Farm agents in terms of total production n in a community of 2,000 people and with a competitor, a second State Farm agent, in town.

“I talk to people and I listen. I don’t sell anything,” Barrios said. “I listen to what people need and I do what’s right. I’m not high-pressure sales. I listen and I advise. Most of my business comes from referrals.”

“It’s not easy to run a business,” Barrios said, but she’s had the training and knowledge n along with that of her mother and her sister, who also was a State Farm trainer, and three other staffers. “I know what it means to work hard.” She’s never shied away from hard work, which allowed her to buy her first car at age 16 and pay her own insurance and maintenance expenses, and buy her first house at age 19 and pay the bills. “We were a middle-class family. It wasn’t handed to me on a silver platter.”

NAME: Ashley Barrios

TITLE: State Agent

COMPANY: Ashley Barrios State Farm

ESTABLISHED: 2006

ADDRESS: 213 Crescent Ave. in Lockport

TELEPHONE: (985) 532-0988

WEBSITE: www.ashleybarrios.com

AGE: 39

EDUCATION: Bachelor’s Degree from Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans

FAMILY: Husband of three years, Jim Seward, and a foster child

FIRST JOB: Working in an insurance office

GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT: I have traveled and qualified for every program with State Farm. I’ve been an agent for 5 years, and I exceeded my 15-year production goal in my business plan by year 3.

ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE SELF: Passionate

ADVICE TO OTHERS: Pursue education; do what you love and you’ll have success

WOMAN IN BUSINESS YOU ADMIRE: Alexis Ducourbier, a State Farm agent in Hammond and one of her best friends n but she still wants to beat her production figures.