Like any good musician, Stetzen Bailey doesn’t miss a beat.

 

When Stetzen, a former rock band guitarist and current Farm Bureau Insurance agent, is asked if the two occupations have anything in common, he doesn’t hesitate in responding. “It’s all kind of a show,” he says. “If you want to be successful, you have to put on a show like you already are successful. People have certain expectations of me in both places and it’s my job to deliver that performance.”

 

THE FIFTH QUARTER

Stetzen began playing guitar in the seventh grade. “I learned from my dad and grandpa,” he says. “There was always music in the house when I was growing up. Luckily, my dad had great taste in music – 70’s and 80’s rock.”

 

Even before he took the stage, Stetzen learned to put up a front. “I couldn’t read guitar sheet music until my junior year in high school. I faked things until then by watching others play and learned by playing by ear.” During his junior year in high school, Stetzen and some classmates got together and did a jam session. Things gelled quickly and the band soon landed a weekly gig. “We played at a local church every Friday night after the Minico high school football game, and the gig was called The Fifth Quarter.” Each show lasted about an hour to 90 minutes. “It was an alternate activity for the kids. A fun and safe way to keep them from getting into trouble after the game.” The band, named First Monday, played together until just after their high school graduation.

 

Stetzen can still play, but doesn’t perform live anymore. “I’ll play once in a while for friends and family,” he says. “No one at Farm Bureau knew I played guitar until I hung a guitar on the wall of my office. Now Ron thinks he can get me to play at Statewide next year. He’d have to pay me a lot, and even then I don’t know.”

 

PACKING THE AISLES

After playing in the band, Stetzen went from packing venue aisles to packing grocery store aisles. He worked for several years as a jack-of-all-trades at Stokes Market and a dairy manager at Smith’s Food and Drug. They were steady jobs that allowed Stetzen and his wife, Brittney, to start a family. They now have two girls, Avrilyn, five, and Sylvie, one and a half. But Stetzen felt like he’d peaked in the grocery business. “These were good jobs, but there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for moving up.” The physical demands of the job also concerned him. “I checked my steps one day at work and it was 40,000. And a lot of that involved repetitive motion. I looked at the guys who had been in grocery for 20 or 30 years and saw the physical toll it was taking on them. It was time to look for something else.”

 

SECOND ACT

That something else turned out to be selling health and life insurance. “I took a job managing a health insurance book of business for a local health and life insurance salesman. The flexible schedule and opportunity to make more money was appealing,” Stetzen says. “But it actually turned out to be less money, and I’d lost my benefits.” Stetzen worked in health and life insurance for a year before another opportunity presented itself.

 

“I happened to be talking with my agent and longtime family friend, Russ Holland, one day about the insurance market,” Stetzen recalls. Russ mentioned to Stetzen that he needed an assistant and then said, “You’d be perfect. Come work for me. And who knows – maybe when I retire you can be an agent.’”

 

Stetzen says this offer was another “scary, big risk,” but he accepted. In 2017, Stetzen became Russ’s production assistant (PA). “I took to property and casualty insurance much more quickly. I studied P&C for one week and passed all the tests. It clicked really fast.”

 

Besides learning about the products, Stetzen also learned about the service side of things. “I saw things as a PA that could be troubles or problems. But I also saw the opportunities these situations presented.”

 

Two years after becoming Russ’s PA, Russ retired, and Stetzen stepped in to service Russ’s clients on March 31, 2019.

 

The chain of events leading up to becoming a Farm Bureau agent has special meaning for Stetzen. He believes everyone has a purpose and that God guides them. “That’s what this felt like. It felt purposeful; it felt right.”

 

RISING TO THE CHALLENGE

There’s another reason working as a Farm Bureau agent feels right to Stetzen, and it has to do with him also working as a volunteer firefighter. Stetzen has worked as volunteer firefighter for eight years, and he’s now a captain at the Heyburn Fire Department. “As a firefighter,” he explains, “everything is about reacting to bad situations. And after bad things happen you feel helpless.”

 

He has different feelings now, though, thanks to his job as a Farm Bureau agent. “As an agent, this situation is reversed. You can be proactive, you can help people by protecting them before something bad happens.”

 

Another way Stetzen helps others as a firefighter is by participating in the annual “Scott Firefighter Stairclimb Challenge” at the Columbia Center skyscraper in Seattle. During the climb, about 2,000 firefighters from around the world gather to climb the skyscraper’s 69 flights of stairs and 1,356 steps - in full gear.

 

The firefighters collect donations in order to compete in the event and the money raised benefits The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. “I’m passionate about this event and am looking forward to it again this March,” Stetzen says. To contribute to Stetzen’s fundraising efforts for the upcoming climb, please visit:

https://www.llswa.org/site/TR/LLSWA/llswaFF?px=1880942&pg=personal&fr_id=1640

 

MAINTAINING MOMENTUM

Stetzen’s first eight months as a Farm Bureau Insurance agent have gone well. “It’s turned out better than I thought it’d be.” His parents had been Farm Bureau customers for 20 years, and his grandparents for 40 years. “This has helped me get a lot of referral business,” he says.

 

Besides referrals, Google reviews have also helped him grow his business. “Just by asking, I received several five-star Google reviews. I believe this is the future.”

 

Also shaping Stetzen’s future are three questions he asks himself every day. They are:

 

1. Who are you?

2. What do you believe?

3. What are you going to do?

 

“You’re going to get told 'no' a lot, so it’s important to maintain forward momentum. These questions help me with that.”

 

ENCORE

It also helps that Stetzen sees being a Farm Bureau agent as an encore performance to his rock and roll days. “You have to go out every day and put on the show. It doesn’t mean you’re necessarily comfortable doing it, or that you’re putting out a false pretense, but you recognize this thing you’re doing is important, so you’ve got to put on the show. Whether it’s for a concert or for a customer, it’s all part of the show.”

 

Let’s hear it for Stetzen’s latest act.

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