What got you started in insurance?

It all started about 40 years ago, when I got a summer job high-school working for a "financial planning" firm. I then did an internship with a wealth management firm, which had an IB division. I had wanted to be a T&E (tax) attorney, but I liked the work that the wealth management/estate planning professionals were doing far better than what the attorneys were doing. I loved what I was doing then, and still love what I am doing today. So here I am today...and I've been doing this 35 years.
 
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Going through a separation.
Her cousin's husband, a buddy, was part of a John Hancock team opening up an office in the San Francisco East Bay area.

He called me and said 'You want to get out of town, come work for us, 3 hours away, as an insurance agent. I laughed at him and said, 'I work for a living. I am not going to be some pencil neck insurance agent.' I was estimating and running construction crews.

I wound up wanting to get out of dodge bad enough. He offered me his couch, I slept behind it on the floor for a couple of months.
Those were wild times.
 
My father was an insurance agent from the mid 50s until the mid 80s when he retired. I recall occasions while growing up where I said I never wanted to go into the insurance business.

In high school I was very good at Chemistry and wanted to be a Chemical Engineer. However, during college, I spent more time at the pool hall than studying, flunked out in 1966 and got drafted.

After I got out of the Army I had 3 jobs, all through referrals from my father. The first two were dead ends and lasted about 6 months each.

For the third job my father referred me to one of the companies that his agency represented and I was hired as a liability claims adjuster in 1969. Whenever one of our insureds caused an injury to somebody I was sent out to negotiate the settlement. I did that for about a year, liked it, and quit to go back to college (1970) where I took lots of insurance courses.

In 1972 I decided to heed the advice of Horace Greeley ("go west, young man") and moved to Phoenix from NYC (another long story there).

From there my career progressed from personal lines underwriting to life insurance sales to property/casualty sales, death and disability claims investigation, and finally to property claims adjusting from 1997 to 2006 (retirement).

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
 
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