November 1st 2006 Four Short Years Ago

2. November 2010 by Kelly.

Four years ago today, I had quit my job, used up all the savings my wife and I worked so hard at saving because I was mad and I was sick and tired and I was sick and tired of being mad.

 I quit my job because it was either that or get fired for ‘placing a higher priority on my family’ than I was on my J(ust) O(ver) B(roke) and I quit because I was mad that my employer had the balls to tell me that ‘the company’ came first and my wife and sons came after that; so I quit and went in search of a new start and in less than time that it will take to write this, all the money in our savings account was gone; gone paying bills and buying groceries, just gone; and its funny what a person will do when they have one foot on the edge and the other foot over it, I stepped and the next step appeared . . .

My beautiful wife had enough, she told me I better get to work and get things ‘figured out’ because I was about to lose everything . . . everything that mattered most, my wife, my children, the roof over my head . . . everything. Adding to my thoughts at the time was a conversation I had with a gentleman named ‘Bill’ William Bailey; I had won the opportunity to a 20 minute phone conversation with Mr. Bailey, the first 5  of which he told me to tell him what I wanted ‘more in life than I currently had’, then after telling him my story for the next 5 minutes he proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes explaining that based on what I had just told him, that if I didn’t make a drastic change and make it immediately, I was on a direct path to living in a cardboard box and holding a sign stating ‘Down on my luck, any help will do’.

Being just short of homeless and placing my fate in the hands of prayer, I went to my insurance agents office and asked one simple question, would he ‘teach me to sell insurance?’ I had spent my entire adult working life, selling auto parts and though I didn’t really sell anything more than ’service’ and my ‘reputation’, I knew nothing else; so insurance was truly a new start, and being broke was motivation. One more thing to add motivation, my new employer had just opened his agency and did not have any budget for ‘employees’, therefore from day one (after I had paid for and earned my license) I would be paid strictly on commission based on closed sales or policies “sold”.

Four short years ago; I was broke, and so you get the what I’m saying, broke is different than ‘being poor’; broke is ‘running out of money before you run out of bills’, poor is not having any money to accumulate ‘bills’. I’m not sure which is worse, however I do know now that I never want to be faced with either EVER again. So I started over and four short years later, I’m paying my bills, I still have my loving wife, my children and a roof over my head; I’ve sold nearly 1 million dollars in premium of insurance, home and auto insurance specifically; and ‘no’, I am not making nearly the money I was when I quit my job 4 years ago, but everyday when I leave my office for the day to go pick up my sons from school or tend to any ‘family’ matter, I do so knowing that ‘the results I produce are directly reflected in the amount of my commission check’, and this is okay with me.

Four years ago seems so distant, yet the scar remains to remind me of my lesson learned; in my mid 40’s I started over in a profession I knew nothing about and with a young man half my age. I have gained that which I was given when I needed it most; trust, confidence and Respect and I am forever grateful. You can start over right from where you are, you need only take one step.

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