If the characteristics of a strong woman are independence, self-awareness, honesty, intelligence and passion, Charlotte Potts is certainly a power woman. Exuding grace and nurturing for her fellow human beings, Potts has imbued her State Farm business in North Little Rock with these qualities and as a result, her agency is among the top 5 percent in the country, earning Potts and her team the coveted Chairman’s Circle Award.
“There are only 60 agents out of 19,000 who earn that every single year in their career, and my office is one of them,” she said. “It means to me that we are forming relationships and taking care of people, which is always my goal.”
Potts said she always knew she wanted to own her own business. Both her parents led their own companies, her mother as a photographer and her father as an equipment operator and seller. Her father died in her senior year in high school, and she credits her interest in becoming an insurance agent to that.
“He didn’t leave any life insurance, and a major factor in me going to the University of Central Arkansas [in Conway] was because they offered me the most scholarships,” Potts said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to pay for college, as we didn’t have the money for it.”
Potts said she pursued a degree in business education so that if she ever wanted to go into the teaching realm, she would have the opportunity. She taught business classes for two years in the Little Rock School District before being recruited into pharmaceutical sales.
“I was terrified to leave. I didn’t know if it was for me, but I gave it a try, and I did like it. I started that in 2000,” Potts said. “In the meantime, I got a master’s degree in corporate training, an educational piece that helped me to be a trainer in the pharmaceutical world. I believe if you can be an educator, then you can help people fill in the gaps, whether it’s medicine, education, insurance — doesn’t matter.”
It’s the education component Potts believes sets her team apart. After spending more than a decade as a pharmaceutical representative, she was recruited to become an agent for State Farm. Her approach to insurance was the same one she took with the Little Rock School District — education.
“We have a team, and while I am the leader, we work together and educate each other,” she said. “My team helps educate people on what they have as far as insurance coverage, where the gaps are, whether they will be responsible for money out of pocket if something were to happen, etc. We then fill those gaps with contracts. Some people say we sell insurance, but I don’t think we sell anything. I think we educate people, then they determine what they want.
“That’s a very different mindset because you as the insured can purchase whatever you want,” she said. “As long as I have had a conversation with you about your needs, it doesn’t matter to me what you have. What matters to me is when you call after having had a wreck, you don’t then realize you don’t have the appropriate insurance to fully cover you in a time of crisis. I don’t want my clients to be surprised.”
Potts herself doesn’t like surprises. She witnessed a series of layoffs during her pharmaceutical sales career, so she got her resume together and was contacted by State Farm through LinkedIn.
“I thought, ‘Well, this will be your way to be a difference-maker,’” she said. “I want to know somebody feels like I have helped them. This is a career path where I can be in front of a lot of people and maybe make a difference.”
That desire to make a positive impact extends well past her career. During the spring 2023 tornado, Potts was on a plane, returning from Phoenix to Little Rock. She said she watched the tornado on her smartphone as it made its way across the Arkansas landscape.
“I called my son and told him to get somewhere safe and stay there,” Potts said. “I then called my team and told them to get our smoker together and go provide meals for the central Arkansas residents who had been impacted.”
The agency has a 16-foot smoker trailer that became its tornado-relief cooker. For days, the team cooked burgers and bought supplies from wholesale warehouses, packing collapsible wagons and walking as far into affected Little Rock neighborhoods as possible. Everyone from residents to emergency workers to volunteers received a hot meal.
“We were in Walnut Valley first, then in Chenal behind Roller Funeral Home,” Potts said. “Another day, we went to Cammack Village, then the neighborhoods north of Cantrell and Mississippi. We finished up with the areas hit in Sherwood.”
That’s not the only way the Charlotte Potts State Farm team helped. Homeowners whose homes were damaged and destroyed in Walnut Valley came to her for assistance in understanding their policies from other insurers.
“They were single ladies whose husbands had always taken care of their insurance policies,” Potts said. “They wanted to ask me questions about the coverage they had, as they thought they had enough to rebuild their homes. I walked them through each policy so they knew what they had, where their gaps were and what next steps to take.”
When asked what advice she would give to someone considering finding or switching careers, she said to avoid the “golden handcuffs” at all costs.
“Definitely don’t take a job just because it pays well,” she said. “I believe you can marry your passion with your career. Find something you would do for free, and let somebody pay you to do it. Just because one career path pays more, it doesn’t mean you’ll be fulfilled. If you don’t love what you do, you’ll go home to bleed all over your family at night because you’ve hated your job all day. Find something you would do for free, and don’t ever be in a golden handcuffs situation.”
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