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American Agrisurance full-time afterward .
Dave Hulcher : How has your past experience helped you in your current agency ?
Doug Smart : Growing up , my parents are both very social people very involved in the community . When you ’ re in Washington , Kansas , and you walk down the street , you stop and talk to every person that you run into ; there are no strangers . Insurance is still a relationship business , and I think growing up in a small town helped me feel comfortable talking with people . I get along well with all types of people and can effortlessly speak with anyone . Most of my customers want somebody who will tell them what they need to know about insurance , be honest , and straight forward in working with them .
Dave Hulcher : Tell me about the journey from claims adjuster to agency owner .
Doug Smart : In 1980 , while I was adjusting hail losses after college , the Crop Insurance Act of 1980 was enacted , and private crop-hail companies were going to be allowed to sell federal crop insurance . So that summer , American Agrisurance made the strategic decision to start the process of appointing agents across the country to write crop insurance through the federal program . The adjusters met in Wichita and went literally in five different directions to start the agency appointment process . After the first day , we re-grouped to discuss how we did . I had seven new appointment contracts outpacing the company president , who had four , and the other guys had two each . The President said , “ Doug , what the heck did you do differently to have so much success ?” My response was simple , “ I don ’ t know , I did what you told me to do .” We did the same thing in the coming weeks , and I had similar success . From there , they invited me to come work with the company fulltime in their marketing division . I was the marketing person for Southern Kansas and Oklahoma for two years .
They moved me to the home office in Council Bluffs , Iowa , to be in charge of claims at the national level . They ’ d never had a national claims manager . I managed claims on a national level for about two or three years , and then they offered me the position of the national marketing manager . There were two of us , and my territory consisted of Texas to North Dakota and everything west .
The national marketing manager role had me on the road a lot . Generally , I got on a plane on Sunday nights and would get home Friday night for 52 weeks a year . One day I got home , and my wife and I both agreed that we were tired of me being gone so much . The year was 1991 , and we just
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