Lead your team, build culture, and create an agency that runs without you. Management, delegation, and leadership lessons from agency owners.
239 episodes from Craig Pretzinger & Jason Feltman, hosts of The Insurance Dudes Podcast
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 leaving for money. They leave because of burnout, unclear expectations, poor leadership feedback, and no visible career path. Fix the emotional environment first and your retention dollars go three times further.
05/19/2026 · 8 min read
Independent agents now write 61.5% of all P&C premium and top agencies post 10.7% organic growth, while captive agents keep 5 to 10% commission on first-year premium and do not own their book. Here are the real numbers a captive P&C owner needs before making the jump.
05/15/2026 · 8 min read
Captive agents can use AI today for sharper social posts, a real Monday sales meeting, and numbers a kindergartner can read. None touch a quote, a binder, or a carrier system. Zero compliance risk. Three wins that buy back hours every week.
05/10/2026 · 6 min read
When a carrier nonrenews homeowners business in your state, you have 30 days to keep the client. Triage the book by renewal date and risk class, run a structured rewrite cadence to surviving markets, and communicate proactively so clients hear about coverage from you, not their lender.
05/05/2026 · 9 min read
Insurance agency employee turnover costs 75-150% of annual salary per lost producer. Here's what the latest BLS, Reagan Consulting, and industry data reveals about finding and keeping your best agents.
03/20/2026 · 6 min read
Beau Vincent grew Vincent Family Insurance from 300 to nearly 13,000 policies by shifting from producer to leader: setting non-negotiable standards, making people development a daily rhythm, treating culture as what you reward and tolerate, and pairing hard accountability with genuine care.
03/06/2026 · 6 min read
Fear-based cultures fail because they make teams risk-averse and protection-oriented. Six-time CEO Brendan Keegan builds the opposite: leaders treat presence as a skill, run failure reviews with curiosity instead of blame, simplify complexity instead of managing it, mentor emerging talent intentionally, and work through self-doubt out loud.
02/27/2026 · 6 min read
DISC profile is a description, not a prescription. Use it as a conversation starter, not a binary filter. Values alignment, sales-strength attributes (especially need for approval), and life stability predict producer retention better than a high D, high I template.
02/20/2026 · 6 min read
The five-step P&C agency hiring system: run paid traffic continuously so the pipeline is full before you need it, use assessments to see past interview polish, run group interviews to expose real behavior, use one-on-ones to choose between filtered finalists, then onboard with 30/60/90 success metrics and daily activity standards.
02/06/2026 · 6 min read
Build an insurance agency that doesn't depend on you with Jack Wingate's three-step sequence: outwork the competition to establish position, automate every repetitive rule-based task, and protect daily time for the strategic activity only you can do. Audit your week in 30-minute blocks first.
01/30/2026 · 6 min read
Teams perform sustainably when intrinsic motivation replaces prize-based contests, accountability cultures lead with clarity instead of pressure, and data helps people understand themselves instead of catching them failing. Track daily activity, not just monthly results, and reward consistency, not just peaks.
01/23/2026 · 6 min read
Sustainable insurance agency growth runs on four levers: daily activity consistency that compounds, structured lead generation that delivers predictable volume, retention tracked obsessively as the most ignored growth metric, and team motivation built as a system, not a personality problem. Boring fundamentals done reliably beat exotic tactics.
12/26/2025 · 5 min read
Culture beats strategy because tactics never survive bad leadership. Kelly Donahue's framework starts with the owner stepping out of every transaction, then layers in intentional culture, documented sales and rounding processes, and accountability built into weekly rhythms instead of crisis moments.
11/28/2025 · 5 min read
Build confidence through action, not preparation. Consistency beats quality for visibility in the early stages. Motivation is an output of work, not a prerequisite. Manage self-doubt instead of trying to eliminate it. Build systems that don't depend on daily energy levels so growth and sustainability coexist.
11/21/2025 · 5 min read
After 25 years in insurance: follow up at least five times after first contact (most revenue lives there), document your sales process so the team can run without you, use AI to handle repetitive non-judgment tasks, and design systems flexible enough to survive disruptions.
11/07/2025 · 5 min read
Read attribution patterns in how candidates describe past jobs, study what they value outside work, test their planning capacity, trust early value-mismatch signals, and walk away before commitment locks you in. Casual conversation is more diagnostic than any structured interview.
10/24/2025 · 5 min read
Empathy is structural, not personality. Engineer it into the agency with pause protocols (one clarifying question before any response), curiosity about what is driving behavior, and weekly team rituals that surface what is hard. Empathetically engineered cultures retain clients and producers.
10/20/2025 · 5 min read
Susana Gibb runs her agency like a director runs a production. Confidence is rehearsed, not waited for. Listening means hearing what's under the objection. Authenticity beats scripts. Accountability is collegial because ensemble work demands it. Hire for the non-industry competencies and your producers stop sounding like robots.
08/15/2025 · 6 min read
Don Wilson's insurance branding playbook makes the agency impossible to forget: target one specific demographic, run physically memorable prospecting (oversized novelty checks, hand-delivered pastries), and put employees first so client experience follows. Authentic and unconventional beats generic and digital.