Safe and Sound
Joe Rueter and Rueter Insurance Give Clients Peace of Mind
The road to Joe Rueter ’s success in the insurance business didn’t start in college or at an agency. It all began on a golf course when he was an 11-year-old caddie, schlepping bags for $12 a day.
Every Saturday morning for a good chunk of the 1970s, Joe went to work at the Torresdale Frankford Country Club in northeast Philadelphia and got a master class in patience, communication and customer service.
“You learned how to hustle and develop a work ethic, but the most valuable lesson was learning how to talk to adults and be comfortable with people’s emotions,” he says. “You experienced their joy when they made a hole-in-one…and at other times, you learned a lot of four-letter words.”
He now uses all those skills and more as President of Rueter Insurance, the company he launched in 2002 after two decades of working for large insurance brokers. Rueter Insurance protects clients in the construction industry and other fields throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
Joe, 57, got his first taste of success from his father, Charles Rueter, who worked mostly in real estate but also ran a flourishing Christmas tree company. Every December, while other kids were slacking off on their Christmas breaks, Joe and his brothers worked nearly nonstop selling trees.
“You had to be there 24 hours so your trees weren’t stolen,” he says. “But it paid a lot of money. At a very young age, I learned the numbers game and learned about business opportunities.”
The Concept of Risk
A multisport athlete whose college football career was sidelined by a knee injury, Rueter found his true calling when he took a risk management class at Temple University. His dad had spent part of his career in insurance, and Joe, too, found himself mesmerized with the concepts of risk, uncertainties and probabilities.
Joe went on to earn a business degree in risk management, and all these years later, he still has risk on his mind 24/7, says his wife Kathleen Rueter, Vice President of Rueter Insurance.
“He’s very good at what he does—almost to a fault,” she says with a laugh, describing how over-protective Joe can get when the couple’s four children invite friends over to play. “He’s always thinking about the worst-case scenario, and our boys are like ‘C’mon, Dad!’ ”
But as Joe points out, paying extreme attention to risk and details is what makes him so valuable to his clients.
“I’m a little intense with making sure all the coverages are there,” he says. “I take insurance seriously. I put together checklists and stay on top of everyone to make sure we don’t miss anything…there’s always a small chance something could go wrong.”
Although Rueter Insurance covers everything from individuals to all types of small- and medium-sized businesses, the company has a special focus on construction. Joe is a member of the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA), and he and his staff have earned Construction Risk and Insurance Specialist (CRIS®) designations. The company’s many construction clients include Northeast Fence & Iron Works, Northeast Fireproofing, and Blasz Construction.
Fine Details of Construction
“We’ve really concentrated on all kinds of risk issues that have to do with construction,” Joe says. “We understand our construction clients and deal with their project managers and general contractors on a direct basis, with encouragement from the management. I’m not an employee, but I’m like an extension of their company, simplifying things and making things more efficient so they don’t have to worry.”
As construction continues to boom around the country, Joe says insurance brokers need to be more handson. His pet peeve is brokers and agents who rely solely on phone calls.
“You can’t insure a business or a property unless you know a lot about them, which is why we meet with the clients no matter how big or small they are,” he says. “A lot of these phone call/boilerplate insurance programs don’t cut it, in my opinion. If you don’t really know a lot about a client, you’re probably going to miss something.” Another key to running a successful insurance company, according to Kathleen, is hiring the right co-workers. The account managers at Rueter Insurance have been with the company for so long that “our team is kind of like a family,” she says.
One secret to keeping the team happy, Joe says, is not overloading them or being too rigid with their work schedules. “I’ve seen larger brokers where people work until 7 every night, and they’re all pretty stressed out,” he says. “But here, people tell us, ‘You’ve got a great staff…they always sound so positive.’ ”
Dig a Little Deeper
At first glance, Joe might not seem like the picture of positivity. Deadpan and business-like, he doesn’t come across as a ray of sunshine.
“He’s more serious, and I’m more personable and friendly,” Kathleen says. “We’re pretty much opposites in our personalities, but we make a good team.”
But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that Joe is quite passionate about what he does. Recently, someone told him, “I’ve never found anyone that likes insurance as much as you do”—a statement that Joe took as the ultimate compliment. Insurance might not be particularly sexy, he says, but he finds it endlessly fascinating.
“I was always good at math, and to me, insurance policies are like math problems—every word and every comma means something, and you have to go back and forth to make sense of it,” he says. “It’s like a calculus problem or a puzzle. It’s a challenge I find really interesting.”