Page 6 of 12 · 239 total
04/14/2021 · 6 min read
Trying to please every client trains them to push you around, drives you to cut coverage to hit a number, and produces hostile relationships after claims. Boundaries are professional integrity. Clear limits build trust with good clients, run off the bad ones, and protect your pipeline.
04/09/2021 · 6 min read
Matt Dietz scaled past survival with three moves: accepting a short-term production dip to invest in team development, hiring for long-term opportunity orientation over technical skill, and documenting his head-knowledge into trainable systems so new producers started higher than he did.
04/09/2021 · 6 min read
Randy Thompson's coaching playbook: ask instead of tell so producers build independent judgment, treat teaching as the leader's main job by explaining the reasoning behind every significant decision, and replace vague feedback with specific behavioral forward-looking observations that point at the exact moment to change.
04/09/2021 · 6 min read
Onboard new agency team members successfully with three structural moves: a real cultural orientation conversation with the owner in week one, an assigned buddy for the first 30 days, and early wins designed into the first two weeks. Hire for values alignment using behavioral stories, not posted-values agreement.
04/09/2021 · 6 min read
Rebuild your life after burnout by stopping long enough to ask Tommy Breedlove's four questions: Is this the life I would choose consciously? What am I building this for, specifically? Who am I being with the people that matter most? What would I do if the results were already enough?
04/09/2021 · 6 min read
Garrett J. White on mindset, marketing, and money: identity beliefs cap the size of the bets you make, apologetic marketing reflects an apologetic story about your value, and revenue is feedback from the market, not a verdict on your worth. Fix the story and the numbers follow.
04/09/2021 · 6 min read
Training is foundational because an agency without a documented curriculum, leveled materials, scheduled practice, and skills refreshers for veterans is dependent on hiring people who already know the job. A real system has a curriculum, role-play practice, and the same calendar protection as client meetings.
04/05/2021 · 6 min read
Larry King taught us that great communication is skill, not talent. Prepare deeply, then put the notes aside. Ask short questions. Listen all the way through the answer. Stay genuinely curious across 50,000 conversations. Every one of those moves is learnable, and they close insurance business.
04/02/2021 · 6 min read
Agency owners set the bar too low because last-year-plus-10-percent feels responsible while requiring zero structural change. A real goal forces a new channel, new team structure, or new system, carries a non-financial why, and is announced to someone whose opinion you respect.
03/31/2021 · 6 min read
Brett Young's operational moves that drive scale are continuous behavioral hiring with role-creation for exceptional candidates, documented culture and onboarding instead of personality-driven contagion, and mapped workflows owned by department heads so the agency runs cleanly when the owner is not in the room.
03/29/2021 · 6 min read
Building a mega agency takes three moves: the identity shift from owner-as-producer to owner-as-builder, the structural jump from flat to layered with real authority delegated, and the willingness to make calculated expansion bets in staff, tech, and marketing before revenue fully covers them.
03/26/2021 · 6 min read
Agency owners take back control of their routine by building the calendar from their priorities outward, not from other people's requests inward. Block the strategic work first, defend it like a client meeting, and reschedule (never delete) anything that has to move. That is how you rule the week.
03/24/2021 · 6 min read
Every agency owner needs to hear this self-care argument because your judgment is the asset the agency runs on. Protected morning time, hard stop times, daily movement, and honest off-work conversations are not indulgence. They are the recovery that makes your hours at the desk productive.
03/17/2021 · 6 min read
Small daily changes build a dominant agency because micro improvements compound while big-move thinking burns out. Three more dials a day, one tighter follow-up step a week, one tracked metric improved by one percent: those moves stack into untouchable production while everyone else hunts the breakthrough.
03/15/2021 · 6 min read
Self-discovery shapes better agency owners by exposing the unexamined patterns (control, anxiety, defensiveness) that quietly leak into hiring, conflict, and culture. Owners who do the inner work hire for self-awareness, lead with less projection, and define winning past commission checks.
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.
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.
02/22/2021 · 6 min read
Build an agency that runs without adrenaline by adopting a training identity over a sales identity, designing the environment to remove friction, rehearsing tough conversations, and coaching producers with granular, impersonal feedback ('your contact rate is 23%; top is 41%').
02/19/2021 · 6 min read
Lyneil Mitchell, a former athlete turned agency owner, runs the wobble diagnostic: when production dips, isolate the specific mechanical deviation (close rate, contact rate, average premium) and correct that one variable, not the whole system. Athletes train so execution is automatic. So should agents.
02/15/2021 · 6 min read
Insurance agents who complain less grow faster because complaining feels productive but burns the time and attention that builders spend responding. Run a one-week complaint audit, categorize every gripe as within or outside your control, and shorten the gap between problem and response.