a position where I was asking a client for an appointment to discuss $100,000,000 worth of insurance. Thirty years earlier I had arrived in Toronto as an immigrant – virtually penniless. And somehow, since then, I had managed to rise to the top of the insurance business. As I thought about it, I realized that the answer was not really a mystery. In fact, the meeting with Rolf was an inevitable milestone on the path that I had chosen and created for myself. Since those first days in Canada, I had dreamed that I would meet people like Rolf, earn their confidence and do business with them. This book is about the strategies I developed to help me realize those dreams.
I have written this book in the hope that others might be able to use some of my strategies to realize their own dreams. The truth is, if I can do it, so can you. I have never felt I was a natural salesperson. When I was a young agent, I would marvel at the ease with which the other new salespeople seemed to sell. If they made it look easy, I made it look difficult. But, because I wasn’t a natural, I was forced to develop strategies to help me sell, first small insurance policies, then larger and larger ones, until I eventually broke through to selling megacases – cases where the insurance amount is $10 million or more. In this book, I will show you all of the strategies I used to take my business and sales to the top. And, yes, I will tell you how the case with Rolf turned out – but first, the lean years.
Part II
How to Lay the Foundation for Taking Your Business to the Top
2
Creative Survival In the Lean Years
You’ll soon see that I didn’t start off my insurance career with a bang. Rather, I struggled and made many mistakes along the way. But I did learn one thing in my first few months in the business – how to survive. In this chapter, I’ll tell you the story of how I got into the insurance business and some of my early struggles. I’ll show you the methods I used to survive, which I sum up in the phrase “Creative Survival.” Learning how to survive is not only important in the beginning of someone’s career, especially one in the insurance business, but also crucial throughout a career that – like mine – is bound to go through many cycles, some of them difficult. Bouncing back from tough weeks, months, or even tough years, is one of the key ingredients to success.
So, I’ll begin this chapter with how I got my start in the insurance business. I’ll show you my four strategies for creative survival:
1. See yourself today as you want to be tomorrow.
2. Develop a plan and stick to it.
3. Find the courage to open doors and close sales.
4. Hold personal strategy sessions.
Then I’ll end it with how, many years later, I managed to bounce back from a rather dark period in my life.
Strategy 1: See Yourself Today As Tou Want to be Tomorrow
The traffic cleared and Hans put the pedal to the floor. The half-open passenger window beside me started rattling from the wind and I leaned down to roll it up. I struggled with the stiff handle, finally managing to get the window close to the top, where it stuck, letting the air whistle in at a high pitch.
“Hans,” I said, “you have to repair this window.”
“I’d love to, David, believe me, but Mr. McDougall won’t part with the money – he’s a true Scot.”
“Hey, watch it, Hans, I’m Scottish.”
“Yeah, but you can’t keep a dollar in your pocket for more than a minute.”
“I’m a big spender,” I said with a shrug.
Hans laughed, “No offense, but isn’t big spending for wealthy people?”
“I believe you’ve got to see it in your head first, then the money will follow. I see myself as a wealthy man who has a big house, a family, and takes vacations in warm places,” I said. “You can’t get anywhere in life by settling for what you have today.”
“You’re never satisfied.”
“No, I’m not, and that’s why I will be successful.”
A big, tail-finned Chevy swerved in front of us and Hans slammed on the breaks, torpedoing me towards the windshield. I braced myself against the dash to avoid head injury as we screeched to a halt. As I slumped back into my seat, Hans sighed, “David, if you were wealthy you’d get yourself a car instead of trusting your life with me.”
“I have my eye on a Thunderbird, white with a red interior,” I said staunchly.
Strategy 2: Develop a plan and stick to it
Even as a young man growing up in Scotland, I had always dreamed of being wealthy. But from a very early age, I knew that my dream would not become a reality unless I developed workable plans for achieving my goals and stuck to them.
In Scotland I was making ends meet as an interior decorator and part-time tenor, but unfortunately my country was crumbling around me. I saw my dream of becoming wealthy slip away from me as a socialist government came into power and the country’s economy began to fail. Although some of my business associates at the time were content to watch their businesses dry up, I developed a plan for turning my life around.
The first step in my plan was obvious – I needed to pull up my stakes and make a new start. I love my family, my homeland, and my heritage, but in 1957, I looked across the ocean to North America and saw a land where the economy was growing and opportunity abounded. I planned to transplant my interior decorating business to Canada.
On March 10, 1957, I arrived in Toronto and knew immediately that I had made the right decision. I was 29 at the time and remember walking up University Avenue, the main business corridor, and seeing cranes and scaffolding, workmen buzzing around. I thought of Scotland with its half-empty buildings and the listless, aimless way people moved about on its streets. Here there was activity, the promise of wealth.
How I Got Into the Paint-selling Business
Living in a country where wealth was achievable, was a step in the right direction. But I knew that in order to become wealthy I would have to work for myself. So, my long-term plan was to start my own business. However, I literally had only $40 dollars in my pocket. So my short-term plan was to use my experience to find work in the interior decorating business in order to make ends meet.
In the small living room of the apartment I rented above a laundromat, I began looking up local interior decorating companies in the phone book. The first few numbers I called were no longer in service, but finally I reached somebody at Stan and Associates, Exteriors & Interiors. Unfortunately, the woman who answered the phone told me they were now strictly in the exteriors business and planned to change their name to avoid phone calls like mine.
“The department stores are doing it all,” she said, “Everybody has closed down but them. They’ve got a monarchy.”
“Monopoly, you mean,” I corrected her.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
I
