Introducing Popsicle Insurance, A Children’s Book

I wonder how many of us grew up wanting to get into the insurance business.

I know that I didn’t. My path took me around the world before I found myself in need of a job. That’s what brought me into the insurance realm. Except for a few hiccups along the way, I haven’t looked back. I’ve enjoyed the arc of my career over these 15 years.

The question keeps coming up about how we are going to keep showing people the benefits of a career in insurance. I could herald the millennial cry of work-life balance, keeping team members from getting bored, and rapid advancement. That’s not the point today.

In truth, I’d like to suggest that we shift focus from all of these external trappings. The workforce today is simply doing what the generations before them did. For the Millennial, they want to know that their company is doing good, they want to have time to go do good, they want flexible schedules, etc.

My fellow Gen X’ers (yes, we’re still here) came into the workforce looking for something that would provide us mobility, whether that was location mobility or position mobility. One of our goals has been to move on to different responsibilities. There’s more to it than that, but it sets the stage.

The Boomer generation looked for a stable company where they could hang their hat for 40+ years, working their way up the ladder. They prized the joint loyalty that they had with their companies. They also liked company cars and expense accounts, but that’s another story. We’ve come a long way from the early days of the industrial revolution when workers were simply happy to have a job where the possibility of dying at work was lower than their neighbor’s job was.

You see, every generation wants something from the jobs and careers that they choose. I’d like to posit that the generations to come will have certain expectations from their jobs that we can’t even think about yet and that’s not where we should focus.

I want to focus on the stories that get told.

In many minds the story of the insurance agent is the story of Ned Ryerson. Needle-Nose Ned, Ned the Head, amiright or amiright?

What if the story of the insurance agent was about a small business owner who, in the midst of the chaos of a major hurricane ripping his town apart, works his team sunup to sundown to make sure that their customer-neighbors can get their claims filed?

What if the story of the insurance company isn’t about how many claims are denied, or how often payments are less than expected, but it’s about companies that proactively reach out to their customers, prepared to pay what’s owed so that the customer can start getting back to normal?

What if the story isn’t about how boring insurance can be, but it’s about how exciting it can be?

The stories that we tell color the experiences of our lives. We would like to tell a different story.

We want to tell the story about how insurance helps people in their most difficult days. We want to tell the story about how insurance backs some of the greatest innovations yet to come. We want to tell the upside of the insurance story.

You might ask if we plan to tell the negative side of the story as well. No. We don’t. That story is told all too well. You can find that part of the story with a simple internet search, or a drive down most interstates.

That’s why we have a new project in the works. We have released the first in a series of books designed to help children discover the realm of insurance: Popsicle Insurance. We wanted to create a short story that would connect moments in the lives of children (like when you really want a popsicle, but you can’t get any help) to the realm of insurance.

In our first book, we meet Drexler and his family. They’re a regular family. Mom is an underwater welder and Dad works from home as an insurance agent. Spoiler alert: Drexler asks dad the one question he had always wondered; what do you do?

It’s our hope that you will embrace this book in the same way that you’ve embraced our other books. Our goals in writing this book are simple.

• We wanted to show young people that insurance is an important part of life.
• We wanted to show them that insurance helps people.
• We wanted to show them that insurance is an interesting career choice.

We are proud to present to you our first adventure into children’s books; Popsicle Insurance.