What I Learned Growing Up as an A.L. Williams Kid

As Primerica Financial Services celebrated their freedom from Citi Group starting on April 1, 2010 and became a publicly traded company I thought back to the days when my father started working with them in the 1980's when they held the name of A.L. Williams. Art Williams, now an icon to us, was just a regular guy with a southern accent that owned the company my Dad worked for. My brother and I attended many conventions and fast start schools with other kids learning about the differences between cash value life insurance and buying term and investing the savings. We watched our parents win trips and trophies and learned early that owning your own business definitely beat working for someone else. My Dad brought me home a personally signed copy of Art's book "Pushing Up People" that became a New York Times best seller. I still have the book and read it often so that I too can become like the master in motivating others to do their best.

I think the most important life lessons I gained from the early days are as follows:

It's not popular to do the right thing most of the time. It's not even a question these days of which type of life insurance is the right kind for consumers to purchase. When I was a kid my friends thought my Dad was the devil. Replacing whole life policies every day to help consumers save more money for retirement was his job and others treated us like the plague. Today the truth of these no win policies is well known thanks to Consumer Reports and other financial magazines that tout the truth. No one can ever imagine the ridicule my family faced during the early years but doing the right thing finally prevailed.

If you help others to succeed first, you'll succeed as well. Art was the master at helping people to reach their potential including my Father. It amazes me every day that a dumb ole' contractor from Sumner, WA is a six figure earner many times over. A.L. Williams gave everyone a chance regardless of their background, race, religion, etc. If you had a winner inside of you Art helped to pull it out and develop it. That is something I've never forgotten.

If you want to win you need to stop talking about it and just go do it! Art's mantra was JUST DO IT and he had t-shirts he gave out that said the exact words. People fought for those t-shirts by doing what they needed to in order to win a contest. My Dad actually wrote 41 life policies in one month to win the company's first trip to Hawaii. My Dad was a great example to me in the fact that if you just work hard and stay to the course you'll outwork 99% of the others you are competing against. He won company trips time and time again because of his work ethic.

Art Williams was an incredible leader and example and started a company that today is debt free, has a ton of assets and gives over 100,000 agents the chance to own their own business every day. I'm thankful for knowing Art and continue to learn from him today.