About me
How I got started in Primerica
•My background
•I grew up in a very working class family. My dad was a carpenter and my mom was a bank teller for St. Bernard Bank and later worked in the mail room for the Orleans Parish School Board.
•How I learned the value of investing
•What I remember most is that when I was a kid my dad had these envelopes in one of the drawer in the dresser. Each envelope was marked with whatever bill it was designated for and each week my dad put money in each envelope so that at the end of the month there would be enough to pay each bill. I also think there was an envelope for some special thing he might have been saving for like a new motor for the boat or something. In retrospect, this is important because it proves that my parent's were savers and not investors.
•My dad's company
My father started a construction company in the early 1980's and at the time it seemed like a great idea. The construction market was hot, there were new subdivision going up all over eastern New Orleans and unemployment was at an all time low. What we couldn't see was the oil bust, that ended up destroying the economy in the local area, was just over the horizon. This was the equivalent of investing in the technology sector in February 2000. To compound this, my dad knew a lot about construction but very little about running a business. With better business acumen he may have survived the fall but it would have been difficult. The economy fell apart, interest rates were still high but so was inflation, and people began moving out of the city, especially professionals. This caused his business to go under and not too long after our financial situation took a turn for the worst.
I had attended Catholic school for all of my school years and I was a freshman at Brother Martin when all of this happened. It just so happens that my academic performance that year mirrored the stock market decline of 2000-2004. The following year I had to attend public school and retake all of my freshman classes. I ended up dropping out of school and getting a GED at 15 years old.
•How this affected my education and educational opportunities
•Now career prospects for a 15 year old GED graduate are not great. I went to work with my dad and applied to the University of New Orleans. I was accepted the following year but for whatever reason at that time you could not get financial aid unless you had registered for the draft and I was too young to register. My parent's could not afford to pay for my tuition so it was back to construction. Oh, don't be too impressed with my acceptance. I believe UNO's admissions criteria at the time was a pulse.
•I finally attended with the help of financial aid when I was 19 and promptly failed with a GPA of 1.8. I went back at 22 and got straight A's my first semester.
•My job history
During my college days at worked a lot of part-time jobs most of which I hated. I believe in my entire life I have had something like 14 or 15 jobs. I don't even remember them all. It is safe to say that most of them sucked and did nothing to prepare me for Primerica.
•The job at American Express Financial Advisers
I remember that I was invited to interview with AEFA by email because of a resume I had posted on Monster.com. Now I lost my invitation, I think I deleted it because I felt I was unqualified, and later my girlfriend got one too. Well I used hers and went to the interview. I believe it involved some kind of computerized test and then you waited for a response from the company. I was called back in for an interview and had to take a written test and then if I passed that I would be called in for a role playing interview that would be the final test. All this took about 12 weeks to transpire. When I was finally called in I was told that I scored off the charts on the test and despite my educational background, or lack thereof, and I was being offered a position. I gladly accepted.
•Life at AEFA
The first 12 weeks at American Express were spent studying for the NASD Series 7 Exam and the Louisiana Life, Health & Accident Insurance exam. I left training for a week to get married and go on my honeymoon. This was probably the least stressful time in my whole employment there. We also went to AEFA's headquarters in Chaska, MN which is about 30 minutes outside of Minneapolis.
The training in Chaska was supposed to teach us about “how to be advisers”. It turned out to be about “how to survive long enough to become an adviser”. Most of the training was based on Daniel Goleman's groundbreaking work on “EQ” or emotional intelligence or how to handle the ups and downs of working in a commission based business. It was very good training but I don't think that I was ready for it at the time. I didn't make my benchmark numbers required and quit before I was most likely going to be fired. There is a much longer story there but this is not the time for it.
•The article in Home Based Business magazine (I think!)
After I left American Express I need a job so I went to work in the Oakwood mall selling phones for Bell South Mobility (now Cingular Wireless). Every day for lunch I would go to Waldenbooks and check out the business books and the current magazines. Well in December of 2000 I stumbled across an article about Primerica in Home-Based business magazine. I was so intrigued by the article that after finishing it I opened the phone book and called the nearest Primerica office asking how I could get involved. Dominick answered the phone that day and invited in for an interview. I joined the company the following January.
•Katrina and it's affect on my business
I have been part-time for the most part since I joined back in 2001 and I have held various other full and part-time jobs during that period, most recently with Home Depot.
When you got to work at Home Depot they tell you the real test as an employee is working during the hurricane season before an evacuation.
•For those of you that don't know this is when thousand's of idiots wait until the last minute to go to Home Depot and all want to buy the cheapest plywood possible to board up there windows. Well home Depot inevitably sells out of cheap plywood and before long the only thing left is ¾ inch cabinet grade hardwood sheets for like $50/sheet and people say they are price gouging. No you were just STUPID and waited until the last minute. Also if you had saved the sheets from last year and labeled them for each window you could just put up and go in a less than an hour.
Well working at Home Depot after a major hurricane has hit the area is not just a test, it's graduate school. I didn't return to the area until 28 days after Katrina hit and it was CRAZY. We were working open to close every day, we were always out of stock for everything and just wanted out. About this time I decided to go full-time.
I had been contemplating it the entire time I was evacuated but the reality of it was here and I decided if ever there was a time it was now.
•My decision to go full time
I quit Home Depot went full-time and it was a disaster. Now it was a disaster of my own making but nonetheless a disaster. I made no money for months. This was most likely for lack of trying and when I did try I was awful. I didn't use any scripts when calling, I gave up at the first or second objection when I did call, I didn't prospect nearly enough and I kept looking for problems rather than opportunities. I realized there was a problem and decided to step back and re-evalute the situation.
•Introspection
I decided to look at what I was doing wrong, why I was doing it wrong, and if I should be doing it at all. I realized I was unhappy and I didn't know if it was because I wasn't making any money or because I should be doing something else. I spent some time exploring careers and looked back over my lifetime and tried to decide what I really enjoyed. I came up with idea that I might want to be a lawyer.
•Lawyers
I read a few books namely Law School Confidential and Planet Law School II. I also interviewed a few lawyers and discovered that a lot of lawyers don't like being lawyers and most of them if they had the chance to do it over again wouldn't. This was not going well. I decided that before I could go to law school I would have to complete my undergraduate degree and then decide. This leads me to.....
• My current educational dilemma
Whether I want to complete my undergraduate degree and then continue on to law school. Also, whether I want to go to a Tier 1(Tulane), Tier 2(LSU or Loyola), or Tier 3(Southern Law Center) school. This boils down to several factors mostly notably cost and whether you believe that school choice is a determinate factor in your success and/or job prospects. There is also the deeper question of “Why do I want to go law school?”
•My background
•I grew up in a very working class family. My dad was a carpenter and my mom was a bank teller for St. Bernard Bank and later worked in the mail room for the Orleans Parish School Board.
•How I learned the value of investing
•What I remember most is that when I was a kid my dad had these envelopes in one of the drawer in the dresser. Each envelope was marked with whatever bill it was designated for and each week my dad put money in each envelope so that at the end of the month there would be enough to pay each bill. I also think there was an envelope for some special thing he might have been saving for like a new motor for the boat or something. In retrospect, this is important because it proves that my parent's were savers and not investors.
•My dad's company
My father started a construction company in the early 1980's and at the time it seemed like a great idea. The construction market was hot, there were new subdivision going up all over eastern New Orleans and unemployment was at an all time low. What we couldn't see was the oil bust, that ended up destroying the economy in the local area, was just over the horizon. This was the equivalent of investing in the technology sector in February 2000. To compound this, my dad knew a lot about construction but very little about running a business. With better business acumen he may have survived the fall but it would have been difficult. The economy fell apart, interest rates were still high but so was inflation, and people began moving out of the city, especially professionals. This caused his business to go under and not too long after our financial situation took a turn for the worst.
I had attended Catholic school for all of my school years and I was a freshman at Brother Martin when all of this happened. It just so happens that my academic performance that year mirrored the stock market decline of 2000-2004. The following year I had to attend public school and retake all of my freshman classes. I ended up dropping out of school and getting a GED at 15 years old.
•How this affected my education and educational opportunities
•Now career prospects for a 15 year old GED graduate are not great. I went to work with my dad and applied to the University of New Orleans. I was accepted the following year but for whatever reason at that time you could not get financial aid unless you had registered for the draft and I was too young to register. My parent's could not afford to pay for my tuition so it was back to construction. Oh, don't be too impressed with my acceptance. I believe UNO's admissions criteria at the time was a pulse.
•I finally attended with the help of financial aid when I was 19 and promptly failed with a GPA of 1.8. I went back at 22 and got straight A's my first semester.
•My job history
During my college days at worked a lot of part-time jobs most of which I hated. I believe in my entire life I have had something like 14 or 15 jobs. I don't even remember them all. It is safe to say that most of them sucked and did nothing to prepare me for Primerica.
•The job at American Express Financial Advisers
I remember that I was invited to interview with AEFA by email because of a resume I had posted on Monster.com. Now I lost my invitation, I think I deleted it because I felt I was unqualified, and later my girlfriend got one too. Well I used hers and went to the interview. I believe it involved some kind of computerized test and then you waited for a response from the company. I was called back in for an interview and had to take a written test and then if I passed that I would be called in for a role playing interview that would be the final test. All this took about 12 weeks to transpire. When I was finally called in I was told that I scored off the charts on the test and despite my educational background, or lack thereof, and I was being offered a position. I gladly accepted.
•Life at AEFA
The first 12 weeks at American Express were spent studying for the NASD Series 7 Exam and the Louisiana Life, Health & Accident Insurance exam. I left training for a week to get married and go on my honeymoon. This was probably the least stressful time in my whole employment there. We also went to AEFA's headquarters in Chaska, MN which is about 30 minutes outside of Minneapolis.
The training in Chaska was supposed to teach us about “how to be advisers”. It turned out to be about “how to survive long enough to become an adviser”. Most of the training was based on Daniel Goleman's groundbreaking work on “EQ” or emotional intelligence or how to handle the ups and downs of working in a commission based business. It was very good training but I don't think that I was ready for it at the time. I didn't make my benchmark numbers required and quit before I was most likely going to be fired. There is a much longer story there but this is not the time for it.
•The article in Home Based Business magazine (I think!)
After I left American Express I need a job so I went to work in the Oakwood mall selling phones for Bell South Mobility (now Cingular Wireless). Every day for lunch I would go to Waldenbooks and check out the business books and the current magazines. Well in December of 2000 I stumbled across an article about Primerica in Home-Based business magazine. I was so intrigued by the article that after finishing it I opened the phone book and called the nearest Primerica office asking how I could get involved. Dominick answered the phone that day and invited in for an interview. I joined the company the following January.
•Katrina and it's affect on my business
I have been part-time for the most part since I joined back in 2001 and I have held various other full and part-time jobs during that period, most recently with Home Depot.
When you got to work at Home Depot they tell you the real test as an employee is working during the hurricane season before an evacuation.
•For those of you that don't know this is when thousand's of idiots wait until the last minute to go to Home Depot and all want to buy the cheapest plywood possible to board up there windows. Well home Depot inevitably sells out of cheap plywood and before long the only thing left is ¾ inch cabinet grade hardwood sheets for like $50/sheet and people say they are price gouging. No you were just STUPID and waited until the last minute. Also if you had saved the sheets from last year and labeled them for each window you could just put up and go in a less than an hour.
Well working at Home Depot after a major hurricane has hit the area is not just a test, it's graduate school. I didn't return to the area until 28 days after Katrina hit and it was CRAZY. We were working open to close every day, we were always out of stock for everything and just wanted out. About this time I decided to go full-time.
I had been contemplating it the entire time I was evacuated but the reality of it was here and I decided if ever there was a time it was now.
•My decision to go full time
I quit Home Depot went full-time and it was a disaster. Now it was a disaster of my own making but nonetheless a disaster. I made no money for months. This was most likely for lack of trying and when I did try I was awful. I didn't use any scripts when calling, I gave up at the first or second objection when I did call, I didn't prospect nearly enough and I kept looking for problems rather than opportunities. I realized there was a problem and decided to step back and re-evalute the situation.
•Introspection
I decided to look at what I was doing wrong, why I was doing it wrong, and if I should be doing it at all. I realized I was unhappy and I didn't know if it was because I wasn't making any money or because I should be doing something else. I spent some time exploring careers and looked back over my lifetime and tried to decide what I really enjoyed. I came up with idea that I might want to be a lawyer.
•Lawyers
I read a few books namely Law School Confidential and Planet Law School II. I also interviewed a few lawyers and discovered that a lot of lawyers don't like being lawyers and most of them if they had the chance to do it over again wouldn't. This was not going well. I decided that before I could go to law school I would have to complete my undergraduate degree and then decide. This leads me to.....
• My current educational dilemma
Whether I want to complete my undergraduate degree and then continue on to law school. Also, whether I want to go to a Tier 1(Tulane), Tier 2(LSU or Loyola), or Tier 3(Southern Law Center) school. This boils down to several factors mostly notably cost and whether you believe that school choice is a determinate factor in your success and/or job prospects. There is also the deeper question of “Why do I want to go law school?”
posted by unogeology at 1:22 PM
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