From My Diary - Choices I made ~ #3

In this series I am sharing the choices I made as far as my professional life goes.

Why I took up my 1st job at the age of 17 is answered in my earlier post  "From My Diary - Choices I made ~ #1 and then why I moved on to my 2nd one and why I left that can be read here >>. "From My Diary - Choices I made ~ #2

The first two jobs is about me as Salaried person.

Here now you will read about my journey of transition from being salaried to becoming Self- employed.

I was brought up in a lower middle class family. No one from my family ever ventured into business, I was the first one to take this path. Naturally every body was worried about me.

I wanted to do something where money was not required as a capital to start something. As it is we did not had enough money, and then asking for help from my parents for business was not something I wanted to do, so I explored my options. I was prepared to do hard work and long hours.

A friend of mine told me about "Life Insurance Corporation of India" (LIC). During those days I was staying at Ambarnath and there was an LIC branch I was aware of. So one day I went there and met Mr. Deepak D Sawant also called as DD by his colleagues and friends.

DD is a very dashing personality and he spoke very enthusiastically about his work and how his agents working under him was doing both professionally and financially. He introduced me to few of them while my meeting with him.

One thing I observed about him was that he was different as compared to all the other Development Officers there. His approach was very professional and he was not trying to push me into anything.

I came back home and went over with all that he spoke. The decision was made and I enrolled myself under his mentor-ship to become an LIC Agent.

I had to undergo IRDAI training for 100 ours in order to get my License to do LIC business.
I completed the training and procured my License. In the meantime DD encouraged me to meet people and talk to them about my new profile and how I could help them in securing family and saving money for various provisions of life.

Before I did that I had made two of the most important principles which I followed, the first one was "I will not ask for business from my family or friends" and the second one was that "I will not do unethical business"

DD believed in learning and hence encouraged his agents to do the same. So I also involved myself in the learning. Usually all the agents preferred agents manual for easy premium calculations but DD made sure that all his agents also learned the basics of calculations manually as prescribed in LIC's agents manual which I call as LIC's bible.

Thus DD was instrumental in incorpoarating in me the habit of working from basics, and I am very grateful for him for this. Even today I start with working at the basics first and then gradually move to the advanced stages.

Within a very short span of time I knew about all of the plans offered by LIC the purpose they were meant for and how it worked.

At LIC I also met one of the most important person who further groomed me at various levels. He was an MBA Finance who also joined LIC like me as an agent under leadership of DD. His name is Krishnan Raman Vedant.

Krishnan and me became very close friends and our friendship has grown stronger with each passing years. He is lot of things for me a great friend, a mentor, a guide, a teacher and an incredibly brilliant and well read individual. With Krishnan it's never a dull moment.

We started our journey in the financial service sector together and are still walking the road together.
It was Krishnan who introduced me to Mutual Funds and shares. He taught me about FD's and NCD's, Bnnds & Debentures.

I owe a lot to these two people whom I met during my course of working with LIC.

You must be wondering what the heck, did he left LIC too :-/

Yes, I did that because it was time to take the next big leap. What that next big leap was and when and why I decided to do it?

You will learn all about it in my next post on this series, till then keep wondering and if you have any questions please feel free to write to me at "nilesharma@gmail.com" I assure you that I will respond to your e-mails within 48 hours

Thank you so much for dropping by and reading my posts.

Stay Happy :)