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After I graduated from college with a degree in Russian & Eastern European Studies in '93, I had to face the hard facts that 1) there were no jobs in the US for folks like me after the fall of the USSR, 2) I was never going to make a living running road races and 3) I didn't want to leave the US. That left me with writing skills and lots of energy. I visited a buddy in Atlanta, met this really cool girl and decided to move there. I got a job in the marketing department of a landscaping company, basically working with the sales force in several markets doing designing campaigns and setting up a call center. It was interesting for a couple of months and then started to really suck when they wouldn't raise my pay despite my results. A year and a half later, the girl and I had broken up in the worst ways possible, and the company offered me a sales job in Riverside, CA. I moved without even visiting.
The sales job was harder than I anticipated because of the lack of support and the fact that the branch I was in was in serious trouble. I didn't exactly hit the ground running, and it took me 3 months to make my first sale. A couple of months after that, they eliminated my job to "increase production" but shifted me over to a hodgepodge of estimating, running a crew and sales (in that order). Given that I hated where I lived, hated the people I worked with and only had 2 or 3 friends in the area (none close), I couldn't wait to get out of there. I resigned effective the day that my lease was up and moved to Chicago since that's where most of my college buddies lived. I didn't have a job or a place to live, although I had the promise of a place to crash for a few weeks.
So I got to Chicago and signed on with a temp firm, whose first assignment for me (and the only one as it turned out) was with a managing general agent who underwrote for some syndicates on the Illinois Insurance Exchange. One of his underwriters had the pen for a used auto dealer program for Illinois and Indiana and needed help with assembling policies since he had about 300 that needed to be issued. After I cranked through all those in a few weeks, they decided to keep me on for service work and ended up hiring me full time. At that point, I thought that being an underwriter was a great idea because it was ok money with the ability to say yes or no. It seemed pretty cool, especially since the job was right downtown and I could meet friends for lunch (when I took one).
Everything was very cool until the owner of the MGA decided that he wanted to move the operation out to the suburbs to be closer to his house. Since it would have been an hour drive each way for me or a 1 1/2 hour train ride each way, I told him that I wouldn't make the move. Since he liked me and respected my work ethic, he told me he would find me another job and got me an interview.
That interview was a real turning point for me, but it was the strangest one I'd ever done (although I've now done the same thing myself several times). I got there at 6:30 in the morning and sat with my future boss while he tried to talk me out of taking the job. He mentioned long hours, constant pressure and having to check your ego at the door since this wasn't an underwriting job but a brokerage instead. When I refused to go away, he told me where I would sit and when I could start.
That was over 10 years ago, and I started at the very bottom rung. I've worked my way up to the level to exactly where I want to be. Last year I made 2500% of what I made my first year out of college and about 2000% of my starting salary here. I've learned a lot about litigation and about human nature. I've seen some of the worst things that can happen to good people next to bad people trying to game the system. I learn something every day, and every day is a new battle. Every once in a while I will show up with no motivation to actually work, and inevitably something happens to get my competitive drive going. I also get to do neat things - last year I went to Vegas to watch some guys blast out the side of a mountain, I've hacked up several of the finest golf courses in the country, I've been to the Superbowl, World Series and football games - all in the name business.
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo
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