When I say "working in insurance," what is the first image that pops into your mind? Let's be honest: For most people, those words usually bring up images of an adult, with a hat, a briefcase, an impeccable suit, knocking on a suburban house door, selling insurance. At least, that's the image I saw, until I was 24.
See, my father had always had his own life and disability insurance policies that were complementary to the ones offered by the companies he used to work for. When I was about 8 years old, I remember a gentleman dressed up in business attire sitting at our dining room table taking my dad's vitals and asking about his health. This struck me as odd and I remember asking my mom who was that man. "He's your dad's insurance agent," she said, and didn't explain why there was a sphygmomanometer on the table or anything else for that matter.
It wasn't until my father decided to start his own business that I learned the true value of having insurance: when you're barely scraping by due to the economic recession, anything that could upset your balance sheets could potentially mean that you have to close your business.
And knowing Murphy and his law of "anything that can go wrong will go wrong," you know where this story is headed. Early one morning, as my dad parked his car in front of the office, he noticed a waterfall emanating from under the main door.
Someone had left a tiny water hose faucet open, thus flooding the entire office in about 8 hours: the tiles started coming off from the floor and the 700 sq. ft. of carpeted area was ruined. Thank Lady Luck that the floor was slanted towards the entrance and nothing else of the furniture, computers or wiring was lost!
Still, it would have been a terrible setback to a company that was barely alive. But, like a superhero, my dad's insurance agent had it all covered. He came in, reassured my dad that everything was going to be all right (he must have had a really good mentoring/calming-hysterical-people-down bachelor's degree!), that he would take care of everything because the policy covered "floods."
