Storytelling as an Insurance Career Tool with Rena Strohmeier

So you have a background in personal lines.

And I'm curious, a lot of our guests tend to be on the commercial line side.

We haven't had a ton of personal lines specialty guests.

I'm curious, give us your perspective on personal lines.

So the way that I sell personal lines, I'm not an agent and I don't sell things, but the way that I sell personal lines really is through storytelling.

And I also teach at San Diego State.

Um, they're, um, risk management classes.

They're starting a program.

And what I tell the students is this, um, no matter where, what you do in life, you're going to have an insurance claim, whether it's a death claim, whether it's a health insurance claim or a car claim, you're going to have a claim.

So you, we might as well wrap our minds around understanding the business of insurance.

And then that makes you, or let you make better decisions when it comes to insurance related items.

So if I think about personal lines in that same vein, everybody is going to have some type of personal lines claim in their life.

It's inevitable.

So we might as well, again, let's get as educated as we can about it so that we can make the best decision for yourself and for your family.

And then if you happen to go into a business and become an entrepreneur, the commercial lines will flow a lot easier for you.

because at least you'll have that solid foundation behind you of what insurance looks like, how it should function, what you do need in order to prove a claim, what information you could gather in order to help your claims partners out.

And I know you speak to various student groups, you speak to potential new entrants into the space.

What's your message as to why insurance? So my message is very personal when I talk to them.

And the thing that I share at the beginning of every semester is let me tell you why you should not go into insurance and why I should not be standing in front of you to talk about insurance.

And I tell the story about my grandparents.

In 1957, they bought a house in Chicago.

My grandfather had returned from the war and started working on the docks.

And coming new into a middle-class lifestyle, one of the things that they knew they needed to do was have life insurance policies.

So they bought the house.

They had five kids and bought life insurance policies.