making time

this morning, we had a kick-off session at the DBS auditorium as a sort-of pre-launch pep talk for the new year.

one of our speakers was a man who had made the million dollar round table in his 2nd year of business as an agent. he had given up a $100k per annum paying job to join insurance. he basically talked about what he went through and how he came to decide that insurance was the business for him. he went through quite a fair bit, lost one of his parents, had to work night jobs while in school, basically trying his best to get to where he is today - a straight-a student accepted into a prestigious graduate programme with a big-named MNC in singapore. he got married to his wife whom he met in school, and they have 2 beautiful children. all before the age of 30.

for most singaporeans, that's the dream. do your time in school, get into a good company work your way up to a 6 figure salary, get married, have kids, earn more than enough to spend,  so for him to give up all of that at the height of whatever life is perceived to be about, is REALLY SOMETHING.

all that being said, the amount of effort this guy puts in at work is astounding too. he said he was used to 3 or 4 appointments a day, had to put off seeing his kids and wife for a good chunk of his first year in business and basically work his ass off in order to get to where he is today.

i would LIKE to be as successful, but to be very honest, i'm hardly THAT ambitious.

in life there are 3 things that everyone strives to achieve. Love, Career and Finances.

in that order.

it's very easy to argue that the 3 are so intrinsically linked that it's hard to separate one from another, and in fact, absence of one leads to problems in the other. 3 items at 100% is obviously the optimum configuration, but more often than not, that's highly unlikely.

for me, i strongly believe that i need to help the people that i come across, but i don't believe in sacrificing LOVE (or family) for CAREER, or FINANCES. i believe in work-life balance. not solely for my benefit where i would get to come back home after 7 everyday and see my family, but also for my clients and their families. nobody wants to talk business after "work", or so i like to convince myself. 

that's where i started thinking. my "work" never ends, precisely because it isn't work. it's about telling people the importance of protection. i believe in the benefits of insurance on every person and not everybody can take a day off to do a impromptu meeting about insurance for sure. sometimes dinner and weekend appointments are the most important (and lucrative) times in a salespersons' week.

As much as possible, i try to minimize disruption to a family's normal routine. but insurance should be part and parcel of the routine. and in saying this, people need to see that because they love their families, they need to make time to do something about it.

for me, it's a good wake up call. especially after yesterday's post about how i'm working towards something - if i'm not working hard enough to get it, then i jolly well don't deserve it. in my line, i'm not the only person that benefits from my effort, so i shouldn't be so selfish as to limit myself.

on fire,
Jessica