Page 6 of 13 · 245 total
06/21/2021 · 5 min read
Five canary signals every agency owner must watch weekly: staff disengagement before resignation, slowing client service response times, top producer production dips, renewals processed without review, and owner complacency. Track them on a weekly scorecard, not monthly.
06/14/2021 · 5 min read
The conversations agency owners avoid (with underperforming staff, difficult clients, and their own reflection) are exactly the conversations that determine whether the business grows or stalls. Courage isn't a personality trait. It's a business skill, and operators who practice it consistently are the ones building something worth owning.
06/11/2021 · 6 min read
Play the hero role with insurance clients by leading with discovery (not quotes), being proactive about coverage gaps before renewal, showing up advocate-style at claim time, and owning the client outcome. Heroes get the referrals and the retention. Order takers get the price shoppers.
05/28/2021 · 5 min read
Real coaching starts with the agent's self-assessment, moves into exploration questions instead of prescriptions, and ends with the agent naming the specific change they will make and why. Anything else is management, performance review, or cheerleading dressed up in coaching language.
05/17/2021 · 5 min read
EQ in insurance sales is three trainable skills: reading the prospect's emotional state accurately, resetting your own state between calls so residue doesn't bleed forward, and staying calm when a client escalates. Agents who develop these close more, retain more, and burn out less.
04/23/2021 · 6 min read
Find your agency's purpose by ignoring mission-statement answers and asking three honest questions: when were you last actually proud, who do you go above and beyond for unprompted, and what would you keep doing if money were not the issue. Purpose drives persistence, and persistence drives long-term results.
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.
