27 posts found
05/07/2021 · 5 min read
The routine that built your agency calcifies into a ceiling. Break the humdrum with deliberate variation at the edges: one new input, one new conversation, one new experiment per month. Keep the consistency core that clients trust. Add novelty at the periphery until the edge learnings move the core.
04/12/2021 · 6 min read
Build a career in insurance that lasts by showing up authentic instead of polished, leaning on your partner's strengths to expose your gaps, and using humor as a delivery mechanism for the real stuff. Memorable agents beat low rates every time.
03/08/2021 · 6 min read
Most agency anxiety is a visibility problem. Run accountability across four domains, production (daily leading indicators, not just monthly close), activity (calls, follow-ups, asks), service (response time, first-contact resolution, errors), and owner (external coach or peer group). Knowing the numbers is what kills the anxiety.
03/05/2021 · 7 min read
Build an agency that runs without you by converting processes into systems (steps plus the why, trigger, and exception protocol). Audit your five most important recurring activities, record your best operator doing them on Loom, transcribe to a checklist, test with a non-expert, then run the owner exit test.
02/26/2021 · 6 min read
Stop competing on price by defining a blue ocean: niche by industry (contractors, restaurants, trucking), by life stage (first-time buyers, retirees), or by service model (premium high-touch). Commit for 12 to 24 months and the referral flywheel beats lead-vendor scraps.
02/24/2021 · 6 min read
After a record month, name the specific numbers, recognize individual contributions, then reset daily execution standards to match the behavior that produced the win. Lock in the new floor before raising the ceiling. The danger month is the one after the record, when habits quietly loosen and results slide back.
05/20/2020 · 7 min read
Build a time architecture: three protected hours per week for strategic work in 90-minute blocks, reactive tasks batched into set windows, a 15 to 30 minute Friday review, real delegation, and a regular practice of saying no. Time does not appear. It gets engineered.
05/06/2020 · 6 min read
Stay clean by documenting every material conversation, knowing your state's specific rules cold, training your team on compliance like it's their job, building a culture where questions are welcome, and self-auditing quarterly. One violation creates a record. Records compound into terminations.
02/19/2020 · 7 min read
Grow an agency faster with four moves: show up daily with mechanical consistency, give educational value before asking for business, ruthlessly simplify to two or three highest-leverage activities, and shift identity from "agent who markets" to "marketer who happens to sell insurance."
02/12/2020 · 6 min read
Craig's three worst leadership mistakes: micromanaging instead of leading (his top producer quit), only giving feedback when things went wrong, and hiring fast then firing slow (one bad 8-month hire cost $40K+). Fix the ratio to 3:1 positive to corrective, define decision boundaries, act on poor fit inside 30 days.
02/05/2020 · 6 min read
Three operational moves for P&C agents this year: reverse-engineer your income goal into a daily contact number you can hit before lunch, build a referral system with a trigger, a specific script, and CRM tracking, and time-block the first three hours of every day for revenue-generating activity only.
01/29/2020 · 6 min read
Pick three to five daily revenue activities (calls first, handwritten notes, one piece of content, five-minute number review) and execute them every day. Thirty calls daily produces about 150 policies a year; the same calls in one sprint week per month produces 36. Consistency wins.
01/22/2020 · 7 min read
Run an agency through physical pain by separating discomfort from danger, modifying how you work (standing desks, video calls, walking meetings), and treating every shutdown as a systems audit. The fix is delegation and prevention, not toughness.
01/15/2020 · 6 min read
Three enemies stall most insurance agencies: complication (adding unnecessary steps as preparation), hesitation (waiting for 100 percent certainty instead of moving at 70 percent), and excusenation (treating conditions as reasons to surrender). Strip every project to version 1.0, set a 48-hour decision rule, find one agent winning anyway.
01/08/2020 · 6 min read
Rejection on a sales call fires the same threat response as physical danger, and your reptilian brain hijacks the conversation. Retrain it with high-volume call exposure, environment design, box breathing for vagus reset, and pattern-interrupt questions when you feel activation rising.
01/01/2020 · 7 min read
Resolutions fail because they are wishes without structure. About 80% are dead by mid-February. Replace them with an honest audit, three specific targets, 90-day sprints, a weekly scoreboard, and an external accountability partner. That is the revolution that produces a different year.
12/25/2019 · 7 min read
An agency accountability system has four parts: clear daily numbers per role, daily visibility for the person and the manager, a 10-minute morning huddle plus 5-minute end-of-day report, and real consequences and recognition tied to the numbers. The owner has to be inside the system, not exempt from it.
12/18/2019 · 7 min read
Process selling builds a repeatable insurance sales system on five stages: opening frame, discovery, recommendation, concern handling, and close. Document the flow, train through role play, review recorded calls for stage adherence, and measure drop-off at each stage.
12/11/2019 · 6 min read
P&C agencies lose 10 to 15 percent of their book annually to non-renewals. Cutting marketing or freezing hiring during flat quarters accelerates the decline. The fix is a growth floor: a monthly new-business minimum that beats attrition, tracked weekly with a team that knows the number.
11/27/2019 · 6 min read
Small goals let agency owners hide inside busywork. Goals 50 percent bigger than what feels realistic force systemic change: reverse-engineer daily activity targets from the outcome, block your three highest-leverage hours first, and review every Friday so drift cannot survive.