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08/10/2022 · 5 min read
Manage team energy through rejection by normalizing the call ratio up front, celebrating activity not just outcomes, building mid-day recovery rituals between calling blocks, naming hard days out loud, and using peer accountability. Resilience is environment design, not willpower.
08/08/2022 · 4 min read
Pamela De La Cruz grew her agency by treating personal energy as a business asset. She tracked her morning energy against team production, locked in a non-negotiable morning protocol, removed depleting tasks from her plate, and built energy awareness into her one-on-ones with producers.
07/27/2022 · 4 min read
When the numbers go hard, Bryan Taylor protects culture by separating market conditions from performance failures, handling underperformer conversations quickly and privately ("here's what I'm seeing in your activity data"), keeping the win-of-the-week ritual alive, and narrating his own resilience out loud so the team learns the move.
07/25/2022 · 4 min read
Bryan Taylor runs deliberate positivity as agency infrastructure, not personality. He audits meeting tone, runs specific recognition (Sarah handled X exactly right) instead of generic praise, and refuses fear-based management. Result: lower producer turnover, higher engagement, and a client experience that produces referrals organically.
03/28/2022 · 5 min read
Agent identity caps the agency at your personal capacity. Owner identity builds enterprise value beyond any one person. The shift requires systems thinking, real leadership over management, and permission to let your team produce results instead of you.
11/08/2021 · 7 min read
Real urgency in P&C sales is concrete risk tied to the prospect's actual situation plus a clear next step, not fake deadlines. Inside the agency, real urgency means naming the one issue you have been deprioritizing for weeks, assigning a 30-day resolution date, and treating it like a client commitment.
10/30/2021 · 5 min read
Laura Harris's framework: surrender control to documented processes, redefine winning to include team health and business value (not just revenue), and treat your process library as the one asset competitors cannot copy. Build one process, run it 30 days, refine, repeat.
10/30/2021 · 6 min read
Documented agency processes drive profitability through four mechanisms: lower error cost, faster onboarding, scalable service quality, and recovered owner time. Start with the highest-frequency transactions (quoting, binding, renewals, claims), write the steps, have someone else test them, then iterate on a quarterly review cadence.
10/29/2021 · 5 min read
Proactive agencies grow because they play offense on three fronts: client retention (reach out 60 days before renewal), team retention (ask producers what would keep them two years), and market shifts (read carrier signals early). Protect 10 hours a week for proactive work and delegate the reactive.
10/22/2021 · 5 min read
Every agency has wins, losses, and draws right now. Run the 90-minute self-assessment: score retention, new business production, team performance, profitability, client satisfaction, and owner time allocation with actual numbers. Name the losses. Find the draws that are eating capacity. Build one fix for the biggest loss.
10/22/2021 · 6 min read
Most agency owners who do this assessment honestly land in draw territory: revenue flat, team stable but not growing, owner busy but not strategic. Winning means positive trajectory and growth problems. Losing means declining leading indicators. Drawing means comfortable stagnation. The diagnosis determines the intervention.
10/21/2021 · 7 min read
Three de-biasing techniques that actually move agency decisions: the pre-mortem (assume the decision failed, list why), structured disagreement (assign one person to argue against the plan), and the information audit (where did this data come from, who has a different view).
10/21/2021 · 6 min read
Stop trusting your gut on big agency calls. Use the EGRIP framework: name your Emotions, clarify Goals, separate Reality from assumption, Integrate dissenting perspectives, and run a Planning pre-mortem. Build it into hiring, financial, and carrier decisions before you commit.
10/20/2021 · 5 min read
Four cognitive biases drain agency decisions: confirmation bias (only seeing what supports your call), sunk cost (keeping the producer because of past salary spent), availability bias (one vivid loss skews your whole strategy), and overconfidence (10 years of experience builds blind spots).
10/18/2021 · 5 min read
Every insurance agency owner operates in one of four modes at any given time: manifesting, thriving, surviving, or prevailing through adversity. Understanding which mode you're in and what it takes to shift changes how you approach every decision in your business.
10/16/2021 · 5 min read
Mega agency owners operate from a leverage mental model, not personal capacity. They build specialist team architecture (dedicated sales, service, and ops), manage culture as an active leadership function, and evolve the owner role from producer to system-builder to strategic leader.
10/16/2021 · 5 min read
Stephanie Hamilton's mega agency playbook comes down to three disciplines: define the role before you hire for it, treat retention as a growth strategy not just a defense, and accept that culture is determined by what you tolerate, not what you post on the wall.
10/15/2021 · 5 min read
Stoic philosophy isn't abstract ancient wisdom : it's a practical operating system for navigating the chaos, setbacks, and pressure that come with running an insurance agency. Brian Johnson's modern take on stoicism has direct application to how agency owners think and perform.
10/14/2021 · 6 min read
Structured onboarding has four parts: pre-start preparation, a detailed first-week agenda, a written 30-60-90 day plan, and weekly check-ins for the first 90 days. Cutting early turnover even 20 percent pays for itself many times. Make hard underperformance calls early.
10/13/2021 · 6 min read
Dave Williams's hiring circuit has five phases: attraction with a job post written as a sales document, initial filtering, structured behavioral interviews, observed performance simulation, and a 90-day onboarding ramp. Treat every bad hire as a circuit gap to fix, not a person to blame.