How a Farm Girl Became Insurance's Top 1%

leaders that are actually no less than you and couldn't do what couldn't sit in your chair.

“It's challenging. You just have to continue to speak up. Be bold and there's times when you”

want to give up. You just gotta keep powering through. Katrina Wiling App is an insurance strategist entrepreneur in the founder of Katrina Wiling. Through her work, she empowers clients to navigate complex insurance decisions with confidence while helping them safeguard their businesses, investments, and long-term success. Becoming a top-one person agent and a male dominated industry is lonely and it really is. I really credit my grits or just fighting through

to be on it and again just being too stubborn to quit. I'm not women specifically but I want people in general to not have as hard of a journey as I had. I didn't have the resources. I didn't have the same mentorship that I want to provide and so I'm watching all these people struggle and people ask like how are you doing it? How did you do it? Take a while. There you go. Send this class. The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy.

Welcome back to another episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast, the Women and Power Edition. For Insight's Success, I am Riga Tears. Joining me today, I have my show notes is Katrina App. Katrina, first of all, I apologize. We got your slate wrong. We forgot to add an extra pee. We fixed it. Why are the extra pee here? Let's talk about the app. Where is your last thing come from? I actually don't know. It's a merry name. I don't. Yeah, it's an I'll tell you this. It's

a challenging one. It's short but it's challenging. People always want to misspell it and do

“E.P. or P.E. Even. I think you were dropping a new rap album. I'm like, all right, Katrina Katrina,”

E.P. Let's do this extended play. Oh no. So you are officially a woman in power. Well, he's always been, but now the camera is wearing in the room and so not official. What are we going to learn about your episode today? You're going to learn about my background and what it's like becoming a top one person, I need you in a male dominated industry and a male dominated niche, which is construction. I was just going to say, a lot of folks don't understand what that means.

It's fair and percent. That is quite a badge of honored rare. Tell us about this journey. To how do you become a top one person? Absolutely. Well, and I teach about this in my master

class, right? We'll sign up to that later. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it was challenging to be honest.

I really credit my grit and my stubbornness to be honest 21 years in the industry or just fighting through to be on it. I mean, sitting at tables, speaking the truth, and again, just being too stubborn to quit. Yeah, it's interesting to be a female or a feminine energy and then being stubborn and being ruthless and then being sharp and then being smart and then getting results. What? What? I know, right? Can you talk about, I can say this because I'm a male. What it's

like to sometimes feel like you're babysitting a room when it's primarily males? It's really challenging. I mean, you think the world is coming. I mean, we were more advanced, I would say, and the women versus male, you know, issues, but sitting, the insurance industry is incredibly archaic in this. And so you'll sit at tables with leaders that are actually no less than you and couldn't do what couldn't sit in your chair. Couldn't sit at the tables you sit at.

It's challenging. You just have to continue to speak up, be bold, and there's times when you want to give up. You just got to keep powering through. Why, why, why do you think, is the, how is the business? Is it cutthroat? Is it everyone's rooting for each other that arise? What's

“what's what's the culture like? It is cutthroat is very cutthroat. That's why. Yeah. You know,”

I think that the real issue is we, insurance is something that everybody needs. And so I think we get a lot of people that are lazy that come in and they can just kind of skate by. And so when you have people that are trailblazers and you have people that are actually passionate about, yes, you can be passionate. I think insurance is sexy, but you can be passionate about insurance absolutely and passionate about what it is that you're selling. And if you believe in it,

you're good for sure. And then it becomes a lot. I mean, people say, right, being at the top is lonely and it really is. And it's, it is, it's cutthroat. It's not just cutthroat, but it's also, it's lonely because you're alone with your own thoughts and folks that understand that we're not just thinking for one person. We're thinking for several dimensions and things are happening at the exact same time. All at once, by their three different influences in our brain. 100%.

Talk about the challenges of kind of focusing those voices into what you do. Absolutely. Oh, Christian. I have ADD on to ADHD on top of bed, right? So I read a lot of things

I will write out the agenda. What my intent and purposes for the day and the night, I have to

write out all of my thoughts and make sure I close it down other ways. I don't sleep. Awesome. But yeah, being able to find other, I mean, when you are at that level, being able to find other leaders and other high achievers, sitting at tables, it's hard. People have different goals, people have different thought processes, and being able to sit at those

“tables and go, okay. The way that I think and feel is different, and that's okay.”

For sure. How often does it upset you when someone tells you things are going to be okay? Oh, it's going to be fine. Oh, it's going to be okay. Oh, yeah, it's like, oh, man, you know, yes, it pisses me off. For sure. Yes. No, we don't want to hear that. No, I'm like, I'm going to ask her this question. Like, you, you, you, you've had me as a type, which is awesome. You're, you're my people. Where does this, I'm sure you didn't come out of the

woman and, and, and, and enjoy being this way. Like, you, you, you met a more if you evolve into this person. Absolutely. Where were you the day before you became the person that you are today? You know, and I talked about this on the show. I remember at a very early age, being like, I want to focus on what it is I'm going to do next. I want to, you know, I, for I decided not to do sports anymore. I was playing basketball. I wasn't very good at it anyways, but I decided to do

running start, running start program, which was college my last year as a high school. And that's all I, I mean, I went full time. So I missed out a lot of that senior junior senior, um,

“those activities and, and missed out on the sports. I, I, I, I believe it a very early age. I was”

driven and wanted to, it wasn't just about money. I wanted freedom. Right on, what was your home, home life like, where, where did you grow up? Which I couldn't. Yes. So I had two siblings. I was a middle-child, middle-class family grew up on a farm, who I believe it or not, and so much different lifestyle than I have now. Right? Um, yeah, we had cows and horses. I bear ories. I used to wear wringlers or rockies. I think they called it up to here. Yes. A little childhood. Yeah. The childhood

that I would watch in television. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, look here alone in my house in Miami. Exactly. Um, so can you connect a dots here? Because growing up in a farm, it's, it's the Clark Kent story before you flies off in Metropolis. Right. Come Superman. Some of that, those values are instilled in your work today. I'm sure. Oh, absolutely. Can we, can we go down the list? Absolutely. We used to bring the hoses in at night, so they wouldn't freeze. There is no

problem that I can't solve. Right? Like, you, you, it's the grit. It's, we're going to do it. And I, I work, I worry, honestly, even for my own children, right? Like, they're being requisite and completely different worlds. I taught myself how to drive a stick shift. I mean, I can do anything, right? Like, at 16 years old, I still can't drive a stick shift. So I, I would have met that, that, that, that's my way. And I lived in Switzerland for a year and everyone made fun of

me, because everyone fought Paralyns, right? Stick there. And Switzerland. Even like, part of our time, she's like, what? Yeah, so we're like, we're going up a hill, then going to left and that one, friends. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, what's, what's your day to day like today? Like, what gets you out of bed? You mentioned journaling, you mentioned, uh, so I grateful journal. Um, I, that's the first thing I actually do. I start my day out thinking about the things that I'm

grateful for. I also set an intention every morning, because otherwise, it's like you said, we're alone with their thoughts. It's a little crazy. So I set an intention. And I tried to think about that throughout the day. I also typically start if I'm doing one of them supposed to be doing

“my day with meditation and then Pilates. I think that's very important. The meditation itself is”

incredible for ADHD. Oh, sure. Yeah. What do you see in your mind when you're meditating? You know,

when I first started meditating, it was really challenging. I thought, I'm not going to be able, like, who can, who can stop all the craziness? I actually ended up hiring a breathing coach and her voice. She's got one of those magic like soothing voices. She really taught me how to actually truly meditate. And so when I am in a full meditation mode, which typically the full, you almost feel like you're levitating. It's like that feeling like, oh, there's no outside influence to

fill this way. This is just myself breathing. It's pretty incredible. Yeah. Yeah. It goes blank. Yeah. I kind of picture myself that my brain, my third eye is falling this thought of lying at a tron. There's like, yes, you're going through this like home of stuff. Sometimes I will have thoughts, but it's, it's okay. That's the solution to that problem because I finally get my

brain this space to think. It's pretty amazing. Well, how are you educating folks beyond your

day to day hustle? Like that the forces reel that magic is out there and that folks need to be attuned to it more. How are you helping folks get attuned to the magic? You know, social media actually ended up hiring a social media team because I'm like, I can't do this. This is just all of the SEO, all of the stuff that you have through the hashtags. I'm not, and I'm just too much. But I have a team that helps me and I know the message that I want to send out. I had a message

back on Instagram this morning that was like, hey, thanks for posting all of this stuff. I post I post a real stuff like, hey, it was a shitty day or today was great or I'm hormonal. It's like a period of what I post about whatever is real. And I think the authenticity is what people need to

generations ago at a different reality, you got to stay disciplined because it's hard because those shitty days will become two days, three days back to back. Oh, yes. I got to post, I got to meet a content schedule because now I have a team that has to be seen. It's exhausting. When you're

like the light of ours, like I can always be a light, can I sleep now? And they have the trends now.

“There's the trends. I don't know that's been always been a thing, but I'm like, you want to do what?”

No, like I'm supposed to dance. I don't know if it will. Yeah, when it looks like what's happened, the like, we've all become infertals. We're like, we're better. We're called humans, not commercial. Life's not for sale. But if you figured out how to monetize your life and hell yeah, good for you. No, hundred percent. Do you have a team that kind of protects the vessel protects you from said intrusions, what's like, hey, Tuesday to Wednesday, we're going to create content.

Yes. Yeah. They tell me what to do. Sometimes I don't do it. Sometimes I'm bad, but most of time, yes, absolutely. I go and I will film. So my team is in Charleston. Right. And so I'll film like three months worth of content typically. But I still have to do. I still have, they still

reach out and say, hey, can you do this? Can you? Can you do that? And it's, yeah, it's, I mean,

otherwise, I don't know how people do it with their job. Like that have like, it's a job and so. Oh, yeah, it's a job, but it's often good for you for, for funding and, and, and, uh, uh, employing, uh, folks that are in the United States to do this because folks are, are making a killing, uh, not killing. That's a terrible way to use it. It's mentioned this day and age. But they're crushing it when it comes to like outsourcing this content,

sure to smaller countries that don't quite understand that this piece of content is making quite an impact, uh, because several thousand miles away and some folks are made to be taking advantage of it because of that and it's a terrible practice. No, I did not know that but absolutely not. Yeah, that's good. Oh, my goodness. What you're doing is actually you're, you're feeding families here. So good for, good for you. What's next for you now? When you

walk out that door, what happens next? What happens next? I am about to launch my masterclass, which I am super excited about and it's the exact stops that I took, which very specific to get to where I'm at. I want, I want women specifically, but I want people in general, preachers in general, to not have as hard of a journey as I had, um, I didn't have the resources. I didn't have the same mentorship that I want to provide. And so I'm watching all of these people

struggle and people ask like, how are you doing it? How did you do it? It's like, well, I just, here you go. It's in this class. How do you monetize something you want to give away for free? You know, I'll tell you this. So time is money for me. And so in the beginning, I'm mentored and I would give the advice and I would share without an issue. Like, I just know how I'm problem doing that. As you get busier, to be that top one percent, I mean, my clients take

presidents right. I have to be able to to put food on the table. And so I essentially finally

came to a place. It's like, hey, is this something that you, you want to pay for? Like, I want to, I'm going to make it affordable. Is this something that you want to, to buy? I also want to focus on, you know, this class isn't for everyone. It's people that want to be in that top one percent that really want to be passionate. If you're a generalist, if you come in, you're like, I just want to go to work for me to fight. Like, I'm not interested

in actually really doing this. It's not going to be the course for you. But it's funny because I'm going to twist your world here. My grandmother was, it will still as she's around us. She is, it was a white witch doctor from Cuba. And you come to my house to get your car dread.

“But you have to offer something, a quarter, anything. But the value of what you offered”

equal to the, uh, the what the prediction led to. So the more money you obviously donated the bigger, the prediction that it was. So essentially kind of what you're doing there where it's like, hey, the putting how much you're willing to commit because time, time, and money is energy. You're devoted to saying, here's my value of my time. Yeah. You're going to get results. So people need to change your mindset and understand that. That this is how it really kind of works.

Speaking of how it kind of really works. Katrina, why, Lynn. What, what, what is this? I mean, tell you. So why, Lynn is my middle name. Right. And that was my grandmother's name that was born. My mother's mother. She was, um, she died three days before it was born. And so I feel like, yeah, she's still here with me. But she was a forced man. She was spunky and she was outspoken. Before it was, I mean, it's acceptable now. Maybe not at some of the tables that I set out.

But way before it was, it was okay. Sure. For women to, she was a fireball. So that's why I wanted to honor her. But honor myself, because I do. I feel like she's my spirit guide. She's still, I feel like she's here with me. Right. How does that? What do you think she'd be saying about a Miami studio? Yeah. She's like, oh, my house. It's like, back, good, back in Miami. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. She'd be my bone. I was a little mind-blown. Pretty cool. Cool. I'm glad you

“enjoyed your experience and enjoyed your morning. How can people find you and learn more about you?”

Yeah, Katrina Wailey on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn too. Cool. Katrina Wailey. Right. So, Kaiji? Easy to find. Don't you, I, L, E, N, E. So. Right on, Katrina Wailey. I was such a

For a happy meet. Yeah. Thank you. For a insight success. This is Regusiers.