Choosing a Path

For a few years now, I've known that starting a business of my own is something I would like to do. I've learned a fairly specialized aspect of insurance; self-funding and how to help small businesses take advantage of risk management strategies that are typically only offered to larger businesses. As our company's sales rep, I currently utilize retail entities like agencies, GA's and TPA's to distribute our products. I believe this knowledge gives me a potential competitive retail advantage if I started my own brokerage focused on helping small businesses. Last year, the President of the company I work for retired, and the new presidents (the company was split by brothers who will not speak to each other) have taken the now two companies in a direction that leaves me without growth opportunities. As such, last fall I was determined to leave and start a practice of my own. As I began to prepare for this, I felt strong promptings on several occasions that I should stay and wait for further instructions. 

 Seeing the syllabus and watching the introductory videos this week I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this situation and the planning aspect of this class. I've not ever had a series of promptings that hold me back from a professional choice. However, I have learned over the years that ignoring a prompting is not a wise course of action. Over the last year I have asked and asked for further instruction and the answer has continued to be – wait. Generally, I don’t believe that we should wait for the Lord to do things for us or make decisions for us. It is our responsibility to use our agency to act and learn from our actions. So a bit of a dilemma. What exactly does wait mean? Don’t do anything? That doesn’t seem right either. 

I am hopeful that this course will help provide some of the further light and knowledge I’ve been asking for. After reviewing The Action Foundation introduction video and introductory elements of this course I am confident that I will be able to build a significantly better plan than if I had done this on my own a year ago. I've got a paper journal I've kept this year that contains ideas and some lists. I'll begin to transfer some of that into this blog when or if relevant to each week's lessons. More to come!

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