The unlikely insurance agents.

January 1, 2010 my mother died and that pretty much set the tone for most of that year.  Not being enough tragedy to start the year on a properly sour note, my father-in-law passed in March.  Never being one to be left out, Uncle Seymour left us in April. Believe it or not, this is how we started our journey from the most unlikely insurance agents to the #ProtectionPros .

As you can imagine, 2010 was a pretty tough year for me and mine.  Between Mom passing and Dad passing, I lost my job. Mom had no resources of her own and I wasn't going to see her in a home. My father-in-law was a CPA and a child of a depression.  His ducks were so in a row that you would have thought a team of engineers lined them up as part of a MIT graduation project. He had life insurance, long term care insurance, home care insurance, even a prepaid funeral.

So, I began desperately throwing my resume out on the street. You know how it is; you throw that thing out everywhere. I wasn't about to let my family go hungry. Furthermore, I had grown rather attached to my home and thought I might personally miss eating. 

As my job search continued, I was called by a life insurance company for an interview. (Well, they call it an interview but it was really a sales presentation.) I came home sold and explained to my better half how we could open our own business, help people avoid what we went through with my mom, and earn a good living all at the same time. Damn, I was excited!

So, like most people we set off to do research.  Our bubble popped when we saw that this company had a “B” financial rating and one of the highest complaint ratios in the industry. Ok, all insurance companies have complaints. But a quick Google on these guys showed us how bad it was. There was no way could I work for a company I didn’t believe in.

Not to be deterred. I continued to interview with other insurance companies and ended up with three offers. One of those was with Farmers’ Insurance. We took Farmers’ offer for many reasons. Matt Bennett was one of them. Always positive and supportive, he seemed willing to help us every step of the way as our district manager. In my estimation he had the knowledge and experience to do so.

Farmers’ philosophies were another reason.  Farmer’s provides free educational courses to schools. They had just finished a “Thank a Million Teachers” program and offer many teachers and educationalresources free of charge. They encourage agents to get out and meet their customers. They also had a pretty good contract Etc. (I will refrain from including the whole list.)

The last reason we joined Farmers’, and not an insubstantial one, was that during the interview process they didn’t ask us for a list of our closest two hundred friends. You see, our biggest reservation about becoming agents was that our friends and acquaintances would end up walking the other way when they saw us in a crowded room. (Ok, not that this doesn’t happen naturally, but we didn’t want to exacerbate it.)

We are very gentle with our prospects, and even gentler with friends, no hard sell stuff. We make sure our friends know what we do, and we hope they will trust us enough to allow us the privilege of reviewing their insurance. Rarely would we ask them directly. It’s a quandary because we know that no one will care for them or be more concerned for their interests than we will. Yet you do not want to turn anyone off. It’s a delicate dance and we are still taking lessons.

Thank you for taking a moment to get to know us.  I am your author (blogger?) Barry Fidlow. I am half of a dynamic duo. Together over the last five years, I and my wonderful wife and business partner, Barbara have gone from being the most unlikely insurance agents to becoming #ProtectionPros.  We invite you to join us in our journey by allowing us the privilege of reviewing your insurance program. We would love to be your agents.  Write us at bfidlow@farmersagent.com  or Tweet us using the hash tag #ProtectionPros. You can also follow us on Facebook and, if all else fails, there is always the land line 630-297-1407. We look forward to talking with you soon.

Building our agency one friend at a time,

Barry Fidlow