PREVIEW
THE BOOK
Excerpt from Chapter 3
Kermit, the Wizard of Oz and The Royal Hangover
Excerpt from Chapter 5
Death Ground
Excerpt from Chapter 11
Ice on the Wing, the Angels May Sing
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
Gene Reiling writes:
"In The Insurance Wars, Tompkins tells every mistake he made and how
he solved those mistakes to build his agency from scratch into the
powerhouse it is today. In The Insurance Wars, the 'how not to'
is as important as the 'how to'..."
-Western Dakota Insurors
Rapid City, SD
Bruce E. Cook writes:
"I started reading it at four in the afternoon, and
finished it at midnight...I wish I read it 30 years ago; it would have saved
me literally millions of dollars."
-Aloha Insurance Services, Inc.
Kailua Kona, HI
WORDS OF WISDOM
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If your marriage is shaky, probably having
your wife help you in business for no wages is a bad idea. |
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Do no count on a loan until you are certain
you have one. |
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Network, network, network: when you are done
doing that, network some more. |
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Snowmobile racing can be hazardous to your
marriage. |
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Do not ignore good technology, even if you
are hard up for money. |
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Advertising can be fun and does not have to
cost you an arm and a leg. |
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If good employees show up on your doorstep,
hire them, even if you do not know if you can afford them. |
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You can still do handshake deals in the Old
West. |
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Ice
on the Wing, the Angels May Sing
I finished qualifying for my single and
multi-engine commercial pilot's license. Linda and I hit the beach,
played a few more rounds of golf, and headed back to North Dakota. It
was time to put on our farmer meetings for multi-peril crop insurance and
get the spring's sales effort kicked into high gear. Shortly after
returning to North Dakota and putting on my crop meetings, I was scheduled
to go to Aquity's yearly agents' meeting in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Since it is around 500 miles from Minot to Rapid City, I was going to be
flying the Twin Comanche. Piloting the plane was fun...
...A big fat low pressure weather system had
come into North Dakota that morning, and the front end of it was due to be
in Minot late that afternoon. The difficulty with flying in the clouds
in North Dakota that time of year is that often those clouds in the spring
of the year cause severe icing conditions. As any of you pilots know,
ice and small planes do not mix; this can be a fatal combination. I
did a quick flight plan calculation that morning at the hotel that told me I
had better be in the air and headed home by around two that afternoon in
order to be safe. I headed for the airport and checked the weather.
As I saw the front approaching Minot, a chill shot through me. I was
too slow getting out of Rapid City and the front was moving too fast.
At any rate, the route to Bismarck, North Dakota, which is 100 miles south
of Minot, looked fine, so I filed an IFR flight plan and headed in that
direction.
 ...A huge danger,
however, was that as I said before, in North Dakota in the spring many times
rain in the clouds will turn into ice when it hits your airplane. In
icing conditions the worst place to be flying into a large low-pressure
system is in the northeast portion of it. Where was the northeast
portion of this big low? Where else? Right over Minot, my
destination. My plane was not equipped to fly in icing conditions.
If I had had a brain in my head, I would turned back and stayed in Bismarck
a couple of days. What did I do--what else? I kept going... |
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ORDER THE
INSURANCE WARS
ORDER
CONTACT INFORMATION:
(800) 735-4955
The Insurance Wars
408 20th Ave. SW, Suite 101
Minot, North Dakota 58701
info@theinsurancewars.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
 Chuck
Tompkins, CEO Western Agency, Inc., is a 31 year veteran of the insurance
business. Chuck started his career as a captive agent in 1973 for Farm
Bureau. In 1976 he started his own independent agency, Western Agency,
Inc., which has seven offices, seventeen employees, and writes over $12,000,000
in premiums excluding workers compensation insurance. Although Western
Agency, Inc. writes all lines of insurance, they specialize primarily in
contractors and farms. They are the largest single farm agency in North
Dakota insuring over 900 farms in the state at this time. Chuck and his
wife, Linda, live on a farm southeast of Minot and have six grandchildren.
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