Jennifer Tijerina

I attribute my success to my parents. I was an only child, so I didn't have any siblings, and my parents really poured into me and pushed me as far as I could go. They pushed me pretty hard as a kid and always showed so much effort. If they would not have showed so much, poured so much into me and showed so much effort, I probably would have gone a different path and not really pushed for myself as much as I did. They really set the foundation for me to strive for excellence in everything I do.

A teacher in high school told me to do what makes me happy. She said if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. So if you go and follow your dreams and you do what you love, it never feels like work. I remember that to this day. Do I do what I love? I would love to just be home and living life like that, but I think that I do love my job enough to where it doesn't really feel like work to me. It feels more like I'm helping people, letting them pick the stuff that they need, helping a parent get the right insurance for their child, or whatever I accomplish for the day. She also told my mom that your daughter will always be right, even when she's wrong, and that she has a very strong mind and is going to get through life very well with the way she looks at life. But she said, always follow what you love, and you will never work a day in your life.

Learn to love it, learn to love insurance, because it's not for everybody. You better have a very thick, thick skin, because there's a lot of different people you're dealing with. You need to know how to handle those situations, how to handle angry customers, because I deal with that every day - cussed at and yelled at every day. You have to know how to just leave it at work and turn it off, and just try to be the best person you can be outside of it, because you can get wrapped up in it. Love it, learn to love it, because if not, it's not for you. Insurance is such a broad spectrum that it's really hard to fall in love with the field because it can be very demanding. There's so many different companies out there, so you have to try to fight the challenges of what they offer besides what we offer. If you're gonna do sales especially, just learn to fall in love with it, because if you're not, you're not gonna like it.

In the insurance field, the biggest challenge for me is dealing with people when something bad happens to them - when they've been in an accident and it results in a fatality, or they had a death in their family and they're calling about a death claim. I talked to a man not too long ago who lost a 4-year-old child in an accident. Those types of things are really challenging because you really don't know what to say. I've been in this field so long, but I still don't know how to handle those situations that well because I get so attached to my customers. I can handle an angry customer all day long, but don't give me one that's so upset because they just lost their house in a fire. That's very challenging in this field - to be able to handle those situations.

The most important value to me is being true to your word. Do what you say you're gonna do. If you're gonna do something, do it. When I talk to my customers, I immediately tell them if it's something I can do or something I can't, and I stick to that. I believe in holding your own self accountable for things, and I always tell my kids, all you're gonna have going through life is your word. You're not gonna have anything else, and everyone's gonna depend on you for your word. So the minute you let somebody down with your word, you lost everything, because that's all they're gonna know you for. You have to set yourself up for people to know you for your word, and everyone in my family and knows me knows that I'm good for my word, and they know that I'm telling them the truth, even if it's the hardest thing to do. That's something I take pride in. Make sure you're honest and loyal to people, because it's all you're gonna have.