Craig and Jason have spent 650+ episodes talking to agency owners who are actually doing it, not consultants, not carriers, not aggregators trying to recruit you. This is the unfiltered playbook: organic growth benchmarks, producer systems, hiring frameworks, and what separates a Best Practices agency from everyone else. No fluff. Just operators.
680 episodes from Craig Pretzinger & Jason Feltman, hosts of The Insurance Dudes Podcast
07/23/2026 · 11 min read
Most captive owners hit a ceiling at year three: they built a job, not a system. A growth plan that beats it for good: lead math, split roles, and ops that run without you in the shop, all day long.
07/22/2026 · 11 min read
Three things rule if you grow or stall: cost per deal, team role per call, and client life span. Most owners can not say them cold. Fix the math and the book will stack from there, year in and out.
07/20/2026 · 14 min read
The 89% turnover stat gets quoted a lot, but the agencies with the lowest churn are not the ones with the best comp plans. They are the ones with the best systems, and here is exactly how they do it.
07/19/2026 · 9 min read
Your agency runs on a caller-to-closer ratio and yours is off. One closer needs one dialer to hit the daily quota. Two dialers per closer is how you scale up fast. Here is how to do it, the real math.
07/18/2026 · 10 min read
Most captive owners track cost per lead, not per sale. That one shift in how you view the math is why some firms grow a real book while others burn cash on leads they can never turn into a sale.
07/17/2026 · 8 min read
One bad hire costs a captive agency 50 to 200 percent of annual pay. Most owners skip the full math: job ads, lost new deals, dead team morale, and a rebuild cost no one ever puts in a real budget.
07/16/2026 · 11 min read
It is not the leads, it is the math. Cost per sale, not per lead, is what you need to know. Sort real from fake by intent, split dial from close, track your unit cost by source and by week.
07/15/2026 · 11 min read
Your close rate is not a script issue. Sales live or die in the first two min of a call, not in the line at the end. Most captive agents close in the 20s. Here is the fix that actually works.
07/14/2026 · 10 min read
Most P&C owners hire in a panic while sales churn runs 25 to 30 percent a year. The fix: run paid ads for a full pipe, screen with DISC, use group talk, then put new hires on a 30/60/90 plan.
07/07/2026 · 8 min read
Pre-renewal calls are the top ROI move an owner can build, yet most skip them. Call 45 days before the carrier mails the rate hike so you own the chat before they ever open a new quote on their phone.
06/30/2026 · 9 min read
Call is spam on a lock screen. Not a sales gap. Carrier AI sees six bits you can fix: get A, cap dial rate, match codes, warm lines, sign up, swap old. Fix all six. Lead cash hits a live person.
06/25/2026 · 10 min read
Daily one percent improvements are not a motivational slogan. They are math. Agencies that run a daily sales huddle, drill the same script every morning, and treat producer training as a standing system rather than a one-time event compound tiny gains into years of separation from competitors who let entropy eat their sales floor.
06/16/2026 · 8 min read
Organic growth for independent agencies has fallen from 11.2% to 7.1% as rate tailwinds recede. The agencies that sustain growth in 2026 are leaning into tech-enabled production, cross-selling their existing book, specializing in commercial niches, and treating retention as a valuation multiplier, not an afterthought.
06/09/2026 · 8 min read
Insurance agencies are racing to deploy AI, with 70% now running it in live operations, but one in five is simultaneously cutting training budgets. The agencies that close the gap between technology deployment and people readiness are the ones that will pull ahead in 2026.
06/08/2026 · 8 min read
To sell more P&C insurance, build a system: lead generation, producer accountability, pipeline tracking, and follow-up discipline. The Insurance Dudes documented this across 800+ episodes and $10M in combined new business. Here is the framework.
06/02/2026 · 11 min read
Most insurance agencies hire the same way they did a decade ago and wonder why results do not change. A structured five-step system, from outcome-based role definition through a deliberate 90-day ramp, cuts time-to-hire and doubles retention. The process is the problem, not the people.
06/01/2026 · 7 min read
The best insurance podcast for a P&C agency owner is the one you act on, not just listen to. Look for operator-level tactics, episodes short enough to finish, and a clear next step. The Insurance Dudes was built around that test across 800+ episodes.
05/26/2026 · 9 min read
Best Practices independent agencies hit 10.7% organic growth and 26.1% EBITDA margins in 2025. Here is what those numbers mean for your agency, why the gap is operational rather than luck, and which specific benchmarks to measure against right now.
05/25/2026 · 8 min read
Most insurance agency staff who quit are not chasing money. They leave over burnout, unclear expectations, inconsistent leadership feedback, and no visible career path, and raises rarely move those numbers. Personal-lines voluntary turnover runs above 11 percent. Fix the emotional environment first and you keep your best people without inflating payroll.
05/23/2026 · 9 min read
Producer systems turn a P&C agency from owner-dependent to scalable: a written role scorecard, daily activity tracking, a structured onboarding ramp, and weekly accountability conversations. The Insurance Dudes documented these systems across 800+ episodes. Here is how to build them.