Health care battles remind me of my brief insurance ‘career’
All the sound and fury about health care insurance and health care reform takes me back to a younger, more innocent time when I thought it would be good to sell insurance.
This was actually part of a “multi-level marketing” company (called “network marketing” by many as a more politically correct or euphemistic name for it) which was recruiting agents nationwide. I THINK the company is still in business, though I suspect their marketing model has changed.
It was a legitimate insurance company, with agents actually hustling around to find legitimate life insurance lead and prospective customers. They required their agents to have valid insurance licenses in the state where they were working. (In my case, that was Missouri.)
So I went through an insurance agent’s class for several weeks to get licensed to sell property and casualty and life insurance. (But not health insurance.) I paid to take that class, and I paid for, took, and passed the state licensing exam. I was happily a fully licensed, legitimate insurance agent.
My “career” lasted something less than two months because I made a very quick discovery about my personality and personal value system: I would rather rip my own teeth out, perform my own appendectomy, or do a host of other excruciatingly painful things than glad-hand someone into buying insurance. In addition, I wasn’t just selling them insurance. Remember, this was part of an “MLM” scheme — I was first and foremost working to sign them up as potential “agents” to work in my downline. That was the primary source of income for me and for those in my upline.
Nope. Not for me. I’m perhaps the last person on earth who will ever again tale an MLM “business opportunity” — so be forewarned and please don’t waste my time asking me.
But that was one of life’s little experiences/experiments that left me wiser about myself and what I really enjoy and DON’T enjoy as a career.