1982 was not a good year in Houston, Texas or anywhere else, for that matter. I was in the insurance business at the time, about a third of the way through a 27 year career. Most of the Savings and Loans in the entire country and especially in Houston were either merged or confiscated or consolidated and run by the government for a several years.
Times were so bad; it seemed that most every real estate deal would fail. People were walking home mortgages right and left. Commercial developers were declaring bankruptcy in the droves. As and example, we were occupying space in a 7 story office building that was totally empty, for two years. Business was terrible and hope was something that few experienced.
The homeowners insurance market was suffering and that was being optimistic. Most of our 35 agents were in a survival mode. Everything they did was focused on hanging on the business they had and no, literally no effort was focused on acquiring new business. They believed that you could not sell homeowner's insurance, because prices were too high. This attitude was fueling an attitude of survival, rather than growth. No one was actively soliciting new homeowners business and guess what; no one was selling homeowners insurance.
That is, almost no one! No one except those agents that were new to the industry who did not know what older agent knew? Those agents fresh out of training that were anxious to build their agencies and their futures were selling homeowners insurance like it was going out of style. You see, they did not know that you could not sell homeowners insurance in this market and they were setting sales records. For the years beginning in 1982 and continuing through our leaving the industry in 1997 we led the entire company in homeowner's insurance sales.
The reason? We taught them to believe that they could achieve what they wanted and gave them the tools to do so. We kept them away, as best we could, from those people who believed they couldn't because of the times or the environment or both. We taught them the success formula:
E + R = O
O is for outcome, what ever outcome you hope to achieve from any E (event) you might encounter is determined by your R (response). We taught them that they were in control, not others, not the environment, not anything!
We taught them to be pro-active about their future and focus on what was necessary to achieve their goals and they did. They developed an attitude of success, not survival. They adopted an attitude of "I can instead of I can't." They believed they were winners and they were! Attitude is everything!
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