Hunt. Kill. Eat.

Sounds like a pretty gruesome alternative to the “work-life balance.” And yet, as an accurate description of the “workday” of our earliest ancestors, perhaps it is not entirely without merit. Ancient civilizations, with the primitive means they had to sustain themselves, were far removed from the securities and comforts which we have come to rely on as life essentials. If you wanted to eat, you went out – into the wilderness - and you captured the meal that would sustain you. You didn’t come back home until you captured that meal, and that kind of urgency fueled your continued quest for food; moreover, it was the means to sustain your life and that of your family. Today, save for a few eccentrics who might actually get psyched up about extreme wilderness experiences, most of us “look back” to our primitive ancestors with a good dose of gratitude for how far we are from that kind of grueling work. Like many “advancements” however, it's interesting to take notice of the valuable aspects of the past that have become lost throughout history.

We “hunt,” if it can be called that, today for a “secure position” which, ideally, removes the kind of urgency that forced our ancestors out into the unknown reaches of the wild. Find a position with a livable base salary, good benefits and job security, and hold onto it for dear life, come what may! This is the ideal that so many of us strive for and it's also the “dream” we sell to our children: seek safety, security and predictability. There’s nothing wrong with that model of “work life,” of course. I suspect the majority of people will continue to find relative satisfaction there. There are others though, who wrestle with an inherent restlessness and dissatisfaction. There lies, at the heart of that restlessness and dissatisfaction, something of the ancient hunter whose fire will cannot be so easily extinguished. Among these men and women, predictability and comfort will never be enough to quench an urgency to capture something greater. When I take a look around at some of the successful giants in this industry today, it’s clear to me that the wisdom and grit of our ancestors is alive and well – the “catch” today, however, feeds urgent dreams and sustains incredible visions.

TAG recruits, like many insurance agents, don’t collect a base salary. Their worth isn’t neatly calculated with an earning potential that is pre-written and assigned. Their value, professionally, is not pre-determined by a lack of experience or any other uniformly measurable evaluation. We’ve taken a look at that career model and quickly determined that - for the kind of agents we commit to develop - it stifles rather than ignites. A TAG success story, and there are too many to count, is written by the sheer force of determination that inspires some men and women to capture greatness. Their potential cannot be gauged according to any metric or measurement – it is a living, breathing, relentless force discovered in action. It is the kind of sheer tenacity that is only possible for those who have already determined, before getting out of bed, that they will not return home empty-handed. It is the inner knowing that, beyond the constraints of predictability, beyond the comforts of mediocrity, there is a life - beyond what most will ever dream of - that can be captured.