How I Became an Entrepreneur (No Silver Spoon, No Shortcuts)

This is the story of how I became an entrepreneur—and no, it wasn’t some overnight success or perfectly mapped-out plan.

In this first episode, I share where I started, the jobs I worked, the lessons I learned the hard way, and the moments that pushed me to finally bet on myself. It’s an honest look at the doubts, risks, and decisions that shaped my path into entrepreneurship.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, unsure of your next move, or wondered if there’s more out there for you, this episode is for you.

This is just the beginning.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, my peoples. Robert the Realist here. I'm gonna try this on a different platform so we don't get confused between Robert the Realtor and Robert the Realist. Because this does have to do with entrepreneurship, but it does not have to do with real estate or insurance. And today I am going to talk about how or why I got into entrepreneurship. It's more not it's probably more of a how than a why. You know, when I grew up, I did not think anything about being an entrepreneur. I say that, but growing up I wanted to be a mechanic uh because that's what my dad was, and I think that um that's what everybody kind of does. You know, you look up to the parents and you want to do what they're doing. You think it's cool. So I guess a diesel mechanic would be some type of entrepreneur. But uh getting out of high school life didn't go that way. Um I tried different several different trades. I was in I roofed houses, I've helped build a house, I've poured a lot of concrete. Uh did some odds and ends. You know, back in the day we were building houses in Higby, and code wasn't a problem, so probably ran a little bit of electricity, etc. Uh, you know, but either way, then I got in too after that. I did a little mechanic work for a guy named Kurt in Higby. Then, you know, went to the factory side of things and uh worked at uh AB Chance over at Centrelli. I think it's called Hubble now. I don't think I know it is. I worked there for a little while and then worked at the distribution center. Um I'm not gonna say their name, but because they're not part of this, but I worked at the distribution center in Mowberley for a couple years. I ended up hurting my knee, tearing a meniscus, and had to have arthropic knee surgery. And during that time, the wife looked at me and said, I think you need to get into something sales related because I think you're good with people. And I think you could find a calling in that. And so all this time up to then, I've done everything, you know, physical labor that you can possibly imagine, and uh decided that I would start searching. So I know a lot of people don't know what a newspaper paper is, but back in 2006 I was looking through the Mobile Monitor Index, and I think it would guess it would be the Help Wanted ads. I found a help wanted ad for insurance agent, and uh it said you can make up to a hundred thousand dollars a year your first year, and then back then, I mean, even today, that's still a lot of money. And I thought, well, you know, I've spent my life up till now working hard or harder than most people, and always got paid the same. So here's my opportunity to to uh get into a business that if I work hard, I can make more than everybody else. So uh set in on an interview, kind of explained to me that it was commission only, no base pay. Uh come back for a second interview with the wife. She said it sounded good. It was an insurance company that most people hadn't heard of, and I never heard of. It was a life and health insurance company. Uh, great managers, great training. Uh, so I got into that and spent a couple years and kind of uh it was a little different back then. I would go in two days a week and make cold calls, uh 250 to 300 or 400 dials two days a week, and then I'd run appointments three or four days a week, and I'd basically work from daylight till dark, uh serving areas from Moberly to Kirksville to uh Troy, Missouri, uh all the way up to maybe even Greentop, so all over Missouri, and uh door knocked. Uh I know that still happens without much. So co-called door knocks and some leads. I had uh built a business off of. So, you know, the first year I made, I think, around $65,000, $66,000. The first year I was agent of the year and rookie of the year. I've got plaques and awards, etc., from all that second year, did about the same thing. Into the third year, um, I was recruited by another insurance company that was a little well, a little more well-known. Um, they were gonna give me the opportunity to become a district sales manager, uh, but they wanted me to be an insurance agent first, and so I did that, an insurance agent, for about a year, most a year with them, then promoted me to district sales manager, and at that time I started building a team for them in Columbia. I don't know, I think the team got up to probably six or eight people. Uh, we started at a business center, uh, which was just multiple offices, not one office combined, but it did have a centralized conference room that we could use. After a while, we they decided that they were going to build out a new office uh in the village of Cherry Hill in Columbia, and they did that. And from there, I hired, fired, interviewed, recruited, called, trained all the things that you could possibly imagine. I was the secretary. Uh I don't think I cleaned the bathrooms, but if they needed to be cleaned, I would. And that worked out pretty good too. I actually became a registered representative uh with them, kind of known as a financial advisor as well, and a registered principal, which made me oversee other registered principals in the area. And I made a pretty good living. I think maybe in that line of work, I started to touch the six-figure mark. Remember if uh I told you that the uh wanted ad in the monitor index said that I would make that my first year, so maybe I still don't think I did, but probably a year five or six in the insurance agency, I was getting closer because I did get a base pay plus my commissions as a district sales manager, and so I would go out in the field and train people, so I'd also still make some commission, I'd still have some renewals and I sell the base pay. So, but either way, to keep that kind of short as well, uh, which will lead us up to you know the opening of an insurance group, which we'll hit on another podcast. But this will take us right up to that. So, what happened was my managers for this particular insurance company were let go. Now, I have to remind you that this manager and his assistant manager for this particular insurance company, they had the number one or number two uh offices, because it was made up of several states, in the United States of America. So they would bounce back between being number one and number two. So um when they were let go abruptly, uh it was pretty crazy, uh, pretty eye-opening. I didn't know what was happening. Either way, uh, my regional manager came in at the time of uh their letting go and told me they were being let go. Well, so then they decided they were gonna look for a new manager. Um, I applied for the position and did an interview, they didn't think I was quite ready. They brought in somebody that I did know from the insurance company that I worked at prior, and I thought all was well. Fast forward, I don't know, nine months um of being a district sales manager under the city manager, and they really went corporate. And uh long story short of that was we had a meeting. Uh there was four or five of us district sales managers, and we all were at a meeting, and they were laying out how they were going to change the way things were being done, and this was driven by two younger gentlemen who sat in the room who had the piece of paper from college that said this was gonna work this way, and that's why we're gonna do it. And to me, uh, me and two or three other guys were like, well, you know, we've we're kind of old school and it's working pretty good the way we're doing it, and the way they wanted us to do it, they wanted us to work more for less. So we uh the three of us resigned, three or four of the five of us resigned in 48 hours from that position. So then I took a month off and uh did my cabinets. Yeah, no, that has nothing to do with it, but then from there, and we'll get into that in the next podcast, is where Huffman Insurance Group started. So that's a pretty pretty quick podcast, and I just went through about five or six years of my life. So, but that's how I got into entrepreneurship, and the entrepreneurship really started in 2014-15 when I opened Huffman Insurance Group. So stay tuned for that. Um subscribe to this podcast. I think there'll be some fun stuff on it. But this is how or why I got into entrepreneurship. Appreciate you guys. Appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks.