🩸

A History of Blood – Vol. 3, Chapter 20

Yesterday I shared a handwritten note of the above phrase; it was my first time sharing a message in Haitian Creole with another person.

It was the word “inikite” that caused him to stumble. The word translates to “iniquity”, but I realized that the problem was less of the translation and more of the transliteration. He questioned as to whether or not I understood what I was writing.

It took a while for it to click, but eventually I realized the problem: translating a complex phrase in one language to another does not solve the problem of complexity. It was less about him asking what the word literally translated to but rather he asked for a simplification; “inikite” translates to “iniquity” but transliterates to “sin”.

It was an extremely important lesson.

There’s more than one way to say anything.

At first, I didn’t fully understand why that lesson was so important, until I began to understand that there were a few messages that I desperately wanted to both translate and transliterate.

It took awhile to really understand what I wanted my story to be, but I’ve given it enough thought over the last few days of work.

The singular most important thing is my family. That includes all of American History, all of Haitian History, and all of Jewish History. There is a special focus on religion, the military, relationships, and the other topics in the conversation guide known as FORDS.

Another lesson I learned was to lock in.

I realized that the key to my agency is taking this business a lot more seriously. I’ve finally understood the difference between myself, the majority of people I work with, and where the opportunity is.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been working with a few different promotional marketing companies trying to get my name out there and I’ve had slow, but positive results. I’ve gotten my new resident license, met a lot of potential clients, converted some, started rebuilding my team, started building my brand, and finally realized what I want my brand to be:

גנג הדם

I’ve been working in sales for a little over 10 years, working in a few different industries throughout my career. Eventually, I decided on Life Insurance, but what I realized was that progress didn’t start until after the commitment, and not before.

Having my 215 (a fancy term for a Florida Life & Health License) makes me a legitimate insurance agent even though I don’t use the license everyday. It’s a similar situation with my Priesthood Ordination, although I don’t like to lead with the fact that I’m a Priest, because it’s not something I did for personal or financial gain. Generally, the work I do as a Priest is largely unprofitable, extremely difficult, and extremely exhausting. It’s work that must be done, it’s work that. I’m passionate about, but it’s not always work I get enthusiastic about. It’s different from doing business.

In my line of work there are four distinct but equally important aspects of business: sales, sales training, recruiting, and administration.

Sales is the ability to personally write new business. For the most part I don’t have any problem with this. I’ve learned to rely on systems; sales is mostly a numbers game, the recognition of which removes the wild emotional swings that come with working in the field. There is still an art to the craft, especially when it comes to improving efficiency, but the reality of the situation is that rejection and disconnection will always be involved.

But the rejection no longer concerns me, nor does the disconnection: the people who say yes are my biggest focus, as are my personal connections, my personal development, and the completion of my management training program.