This isn't re­al­ly a rags-to-rich­es sto­ry; it's more like a slack­er-to-suc­cess sto­ry. It's about how one young man de­cid­ed to find pur­pose in his aim­less life–and how he went from earn­ing $25 an hour dri­ving a truck to be­ing among the top four earn­ers in one of the na­tion's top in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, in just 18 months.

The fun­ny thing is, it al­most didn't hap­pen.

James Ker­ron Rose nev­er fin­ished sec­ondary school. He went to class with a half-bot­tle of rum in his bag. He got in­to fights, of­ten.

"If some­one in­ter­fered with you, you could come to me and I would fix it. I par­tied a lot," he said.

He fol­lowed his im­puls­es in­to trou­ble. His moth­er cov­ered him with tears and prayers.

"It's not a good lifestyle," he warns. With all the neg­a­tiv­i­ty sur­round­ing youth to­day, es­pe­cial­ly young men, Rose wants every­one to know start­ing off on the wrong track doesn't mean your fi­nal des­ti­na­tion is dis­as­ter.

"I could have been one of 'those' young men. But I want them to know it's not too late. You don't have to start off on a par­tic­u­lar path to be suc­cess­ful."

Rose stud­ied Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing at UTT. He nev­er fin­ished that, ei­ther.

He drift­ed through life. He was truck­ing in a quar­ry in Va­len­cia, when, out of the blue, his part­ner ground to a stop and an­nounced, "You have to sell in­sur­ance!"

"He used to be an agent, and was an ex­cel­lent sales­man. He saw some­thing in me." Rose, how­ev­er, couldn't see that same thing in him­self.

He re­sist­ed. "I didn't want to hear that. First, I didn't know any­thing about it, and sec­ond, there's a stig­ma about in­sur­ance. No­body wants to talk about loss."

But his friend in­sist­ed that he of­fer his ser­vices to one of the na­tion's top agen­cies. "He lit­er­al­ly took me by the arm and dragged me in­side.

When I walked up those stairs, I prob­a­bly wasn't the most pol­ished. A man gave me a fun­ny look...," he laughs rue­ful­ly as he re­mem­bers. That look alone al­most made him change his mind, but he per­sist­ed.

"If I'm one thing, it's open-mind­ed. I just want­ed to find out how the com­pa­ny works," Rose said.

What he dis­cov­ered blew him away.

"I could pay a pre­mi­um of a few hun­dred dol­lars, and if some­thing hap­pened to me, my fam­i­ly would get a mil­lion dol­lars.

If I'd died the day be­fore, all my fam­i­ly would have was $5,000. I want­ed the best for my son. Sign me up!"

He be­gan work­ing with the agency on com­mis­sion, but for him it wasn't on­ly about earn­ing, but about spread­ing his new­ly-ac­quired knowl­edge of fi­nan­cial man­age­ment.

"I made sense to me; I want­ed to see how many oth­er peo­ple it made sense to," he said.

He was mo­ti­vat­ed not just by the op­por­tu­ni­ty to help oth­er peo­ple pro­tect their own fam­i­lies, but al­so by the de­sire to of­fer the best life to his five-year-old son and sev­en-month-old daugh­ter.

He start­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2014, and by De­cem­ber was Agent of the Month twice-over, both for the num­ber of set­tled cas­es and high­est lev­el of com­mis­sions.

He was Agent of the Month four times, and was named Rook­ie of the Year... not just for his agency, but for the en­tire in­dus­try.

His achieve­ments were so high that the top stra­ta now seems in­ad­e­quate to con­tain him. "The high­est cat­e­go­ry for awards is 300 ap­pli­ca­tions. I com­plet­ed 600."

In his first year he qual­i­fied for the Mil­lion Dol­lar Round Ta­ble, keep­ing com­pa­ny with just one per cent of agents around the world, and bring­ing $2 mil­lion in busi­ness to the agency.

He was the on­ly agent (non-man­ag­er) to qual­i­fy for the Chair­man's Club Pal­la­di­um, which on­ly a hand­ful of in­dus­try mem­bers achieve.

While most agents on­ly see one or two po­ten­tial clients a day, he has seen as many as six. "The com­pa­ny's mis­sion is to erad­i­cate pover­ty and cre­ate wealth... so why are you on­ly see­ing one per­son a day? What are you do­ing with your 24 hours?"

His work­load has be­come so great that he is now as­sem­bling a team of three or four young agents to sup­port him.

Rose's easy smile and en­gag­ing per­son­al­i­ty, backed up by a sin­cere de­sire to help clients pre­pare for their fam­i­ly and their fu­ture, is part of his recipe for suc­cess. "I hon­est­ly be­lieve that the on­ly rea­son some peo­ple haven't tak­en out a pol­i­cy with me yet is that they just haven't had a con­ver­sa­tion with me.

I can help them see how to cre­ate a lega­cy, to un­der­stand the val­ue of their dol­lar. Why work for 40 years of your life and put aside noth­ing?"

De­ter­mined to leave the fol­ly of his youth be­hind him, he has dropped "Ker­ron", the name by which his be­lea­guered school­mates knew him, and is now known pro­fes­sion­al­ly as sim­ply James. He is mod­est about his achieve­ments. "Hon­est­ly, I don't re­al­ly think of my­self as do­ing any­thing spec­tac­u­lar, but peo­ple who know me from be­fore al­ways say, 'Wow, you're do­ing plen­ty!'"

Look­ing back at a pho­to of his youth­ful self is like look­ing at a stranger, and he's cool with that. "Every­one has a choice; ei­ther you want to do this, or you want to do that. There is no neu­tral zone. Right now, I just choose to do the bet­ter thing. And I haven't re­al­ly tapped in­to my best... yet."

Roslyn Car­ring­ton