Once a week at least, we remember one of the great insurance gurus of the 20th century, Jake Jacobsen, by driving recklessly in a rental car. It's what he would have wanted.

There are people, certainly, who consider him an insurance charlatan who didn't know "indemnity" from "identity." But they didn't know Jake like we knew him. They don't have his photo-copied book of ageless insurance quotes, like "A fresh roll of toilet paper is the best insurance." They haven't watched the videos he made of the temporary adjusters he hired, sometimes for only an hour or so, haggling with collision guys about fixing a car that he personally demolished.

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He's my idol; he's the man I would point to if a God happened to ask me who should be immortalized with his own constellation. He's the source of my liberation, the man who taught me the most important phrase every insurance agent needs to know: "Don't worry about it, you're covered."

My buddy Jeff who started about the same time as me, has a poster-sized picture of Jake in his office--the one where he's standing next to the car he drove into eternity. Jake understood the poetry of insurance, that's for sure.

See, the coolest thing about "Jakejake" (I know it's ridiculous, but that's what we called him) was that he never listened to the details. "Insurance is about the big picture," he said. "A car. A rocket. A horse-drawn carriage. All the same," he said. "Everything is temporary," he said.

Jake was absolutely the philosopher king of our office. One part of him was all rationality, but the rest was magic. He used to talk about magic and risk all the time, especially when we drove around in his old car. He said, "See what we do is, we take the risk from the client, and we make it into our own risk. So what I do, since I don't want all that risk weighing me down in the office, is I go out and drive my car like a maniac. All the risk gets transferred to me that way. See? But it's just temporary. It's a temporary transfer of cosmic risk. That's why I do it once a week."

For the longest time I thought he was absolutely mad. I thought the insurance business had driven him crazy. But then I realized that we never had to pay any claims. By jamming the accelerator to the floor in his own car, he was putting his toes on the universal scale, tipping it towards himself. When I think about it now, I know of course his success had to be temporary. One person, one insurance agent, can't trick fate indefinitely. Not even somebody as charming and good-humored as Jake Jacobsen.

So that's what it's all about, for me at least. I know this might not all add up to a good marketing campaign, but all I can say about that is "Don't worry about it, you're covered." Thanks again, Jake.

Copyright GLORIA 2008