Whenever my wife and I meet new people, the question usually comes up within about two minutes:
"So, what do you do?"
My wife goes first. She's a real estate agent, and people love that. Almost everyone lives somewhere or wants to live somewhere, so their faces light up.
"That's awesome. I'm sure you love it! "
Then they turn to me.
I pause. Somewhere between my brain and my mouth, I lose a little confidence.
"I sell insurance," I say, a bit quieter than I meant to.
Then come the caveats.
It's a family-owned business. We really focus on culture. We're not like other insurance agencies. We talk about financial freedom. We really care. We see insurance as a tool to support your dreams, not just a bill you pay.
No matter how many I add, the embarrassment doesn't go away.
And honestly, I get it.
For most people, insurance is tied to one of the worst days of their life. Or a bill that felt too high. Or a guy in a red polo on TV.
Insurance is complicated. It's full of acronyms. And nobody wants to talk about it at a dinner party.
But lately, I've been thinking about why I actually love what I do.
And I think it comes down to this:
Insurance, done right, is the opposite of fear.
Some people sell insurance by scaring people..
What if your house burns down? What if you get sued? What if a tree falls on your car during a hailstorm while you're on vacation?
Some agents pitch like they're narrating a true-crime podcast.
I've never liked that approach, because I've never liked fear.
Fear has a way of shrinking our lives.
It tells us not to take the chance.
Don't ask the girl out. Don't start the business. Don't have the kids. Don't buy the house. Don't move to the new city.
(I did ask the girl out. She's the real estate agent. She's still the more popular one at parties.)
But some of the best things in life require us to step into uncertainty.
And that got me thinking about what insurance is actually supposed to do.
It shouldn't make us more afraid of everything that could go wrong.
It should help us decide what we're willing to risk, protect what we're not willing to lose, and then get back to living.
Which brings me to the strange part of my job.
When you buy a car, you can sit in it, drive it, and smell that new-car smell.
When you buy insurance, you get a PDF with your policy number. Maybe a welcome email.
(We always send welcome emails.)
Nobody has ever parked their new auto policy in the driveway with a giant bow on it.
It's basically a contract: an agreement that, in exchange for a premium, a company will help protect you financially from certain risks.
And if everything goes well, you'll never use it.
It's like a gym membership, except with insurance, not using it is the goal.
So what am I actually selling?
Not a policy.
I'm selling the ability to live without constantly worrying about what happens if something goes wrong.
We protect the house so you can enjoy your home.
We protect the business so you can build it.
We protect your income so you can provide for your family, and their increasingly expensive sports schedules.
We protect the things you've spent years building so that one bad day doesn't erase them.
Insurance doesn't make anyone brave. It doesn't make risk disappear.
(I've read a lot of policies. That clause isn't in any of them.)
And it doesn't guarantee everything will work out.
What it can do is remove one particular kind of fear: the fear that everything you've built could be wiped out financially by one event you never saw coming.
That doesn't mean living recklessly.
If you're taking up base jumping, please call me first.
Actually, call me and I'll come with you.
It means preparing for the things you can't control.
Ask the girl out.
Build the business.
Buy the house.
Take the trip.
Raise the kids.
Try something new.
Not because insurance makes those things safe, but because you've protected what you can't afford to lose.
The goal isn't to spend your life thinking about your insurance.
That's my job.
And I've got it covered.
So the next time someone asks what I do, I'm going to try a different answer.
I'll puff out my chest a little. I'll raise my voice and say with as much confidence as possible:
"I help people stop worrying about what could go wrong, so they can start thinking about what could go right."
Or I'll just hope my wife's real estate stories are so riveting that nobody gets around to asking me.