At Hagerty, we are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. The official date is April 3, but we’ll celebrate from 7 to 9 a.m., Friday, May 10 at our downtown headquarters with one of the Cars & Caffeine gatherings that we’re known for locally. An event centered around vintage cars and the people who love them seemed like a fitting way to mark the occasion. Car passion is what we’re all about, but as some of you may know, it all started with wooden boats.

Back in 1984, my parents, Frank and Louise, founded Hagerty because they couldn’t find insurance for their beloved classic wooden boats, the type you sometimes see cruising West Bay, Glen Lake or Lake Leelanau. The insurance industry at the time considered such boats, not unreasonably, to be too risky and too few to bother with, so mom and dad did what entrepreneurs have always done when they detect an unfilled niche – they filled it. Dad was the visionary and the charmer. Mom was the operational glue that held things together. She ultimately became our first CEO. Eventually, my sisters, Tammy and Kim, and I joined the family business, and we started to insure what were then called “classic cars,” and the rest, as they say, is history.

What a ride it has been. We started in the basement of my family’s home on Old Mission Peninsula with a few employees, and today we employ nearly 1,700 people worldwide, including about 500 in the Traverse City region, and insure more than 2.4 million vehicles. A few years ago we joined the New York Stock Exchange, which still feels like a dream to me, and last year we passed a billion dollars in total annual revenue for the first time ever.

A billion dollars – can you imagine that?

People sometimes ask me what moments were among the most pivotal in the growth and direction of the company, and I often mention two. First, mom, who had a knack for such things, understood early on that adding collectible cars to our insurance mix would be a solid business move because, as she put it, “People take good care of their toys.”

And she was right. People are very careful with their prized cars, motorcycles and trucks, and that means fewer claims and lower prices, which adds up to a great business if you couple it with fantastic service, which we take pains to do. We pride ourselves on our Net Provider Score, which is a healthy 82, far and away the best in our industry. An NPS score measures customer loyalty by looking at their likelihood of people recommending a given business. Referrals in any business are vital, and you earn them by taking great care of the people who take care of you, meaning your customers. It is an important metric for us and for every business.

Another big moment came during a marketing meeting I attended at Nike headquarters back in the early 2000s. The head of marketing was describing a video that deeply influenced Nike’s future. You may remember it. In 2006, Jason, who is autistic, was the manager of his high school basketball team in Greece, New York. He loved basketball and had tried out repeatedly for the team but never made it. During the last few minutes of the last game of the 2006 season, Jason’s coach let him play, and the crowd went nuts. He missed his first shot but thereafter found his stroke and ended up scoring 20 points. There wasn’t a dry eye in the gym, and Jason was mobbed. Nike’s CEO saw the video and fired off an internal email saying something to the effect of: “I don’t care that he’s not a Nike-sponsored athlete. I don’t care that he wasn’t wearing the Nike logo, THIS is what we’re about – the spirit of sports – and we’re going to build the whole company around it.”

For me, that story was an “aha” moment. It helped me understand that there was far more to the car hobby than just insurance and that, like Nike, we needed to think bigger. We all need insurance, of course, but the whole point of owning a cool, older car is becoming part of a de facto community and sharing the joy. Car people love to talk to car people. They want to go to car shows. They love to read and watch videos about cars. They love spending their time and money on their hobby. Cars are a big and important part of their lives.

So, we pivoted to meet those needs. It has taken us years, but today our focus is to do as much as we can to help car enthusiasts protect, buy, sell and enjoy their cars. In addition to insurance, we operate engaging events like The Amelia, the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance and RADwood so people get to see, up close and personal, incredible examples of the world’s finest cars. (And in the case of RADwood, the raddest cars and fashions of the ‘80s and ‘90s.)

We help people buy and sell classic cars through our online Marketplace and our live auction company called Broad Arrow. (Our most recent auction in Florida drew a sold-out crowd and tallied $63 million in sales.) Our media division produces some of the finest automotive journalism in the world. Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, for instance, is the 2nd biggest car magazine in the country, and our YouTube channel has more than 3 million subscribers. More than 800,000 people have joined Hagerty Drivers Club, which provides exclusive offers, expert support, member experiences and more.

Of course, none of this would have happened without the skills and passion of One Team Hagerty, which is what we call our employee group. Nor would it have happened without the endless support of the people of the Traverse City region, the business community and our elected officials. You have made it easy to scale and sustain our company here, and I am grateful. I am proud to call Traverse City home. While our first responsibility is to be a successful company that employs a lot of great people, I am proud of our long track record of directly giving back to the community that nurtures us. Since 2010 we have supported more than 500 local nonprofits, provided $5.5 million in local community support, and volunteered over 100,000 service hours.

What does the future hold? That one’s easy: More. We want to keep expanding our niche until Hagerty is a worldwide household name synonymous with cars and driving. I think it can happen. I have a feeling the next 40 years are going to be even more fun than the first 40.

Thanks for being on this ride with us.