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08/28/2020 · 6 min read
Five agency fundamentals determine whether advanced strategy has anything to land on: follow-up cadence above five touches, quote-to-close ratio tracking, retention as a revenue strategy, staff accountability to specific metrics, and owner time allocation above 70% on growth work. Skip any one and the book stagnates.
08/24/2020 · 6 min read
The one agency practice that produces both growth and happiness: full presence in whatever domain you're currently in. On the prospect call, fully on the call. With family, fully there. Built on protected calendar blocks and transition rituals between modes.
08/21/2020 · 6 min read
Run a five-area self-assessment in writing every quarter: personal production habits, response to adversity, relationship with discomfort, awareness of your blind spots, and ability to develop people. Comfort is not a growth strategy. Your agency reflects your current level of development.
08/19/2020 · 6 min read
Garrett J. White's wake-up call for insurance agents: you cannot build a great agency on a broken personal foundation. Standards aren't departmental. Inventory the areas where you tolerate mediocrity outside the office, pick the most neglected one, and close the gap. Owner standard sets team standard.
08/17/2020 · 5 min read
Insurance agency owners develop leadership by practicing three skills: clear expectations, consistent accountability, and coaching instead of fixing. Leadership is not innate. It's a learnable craft built through repetition, the same way you learned to sell.
08/12/2020 · 7 min read
Frame of Mind Coaching rewires leaders at the belief level, not the behavior level. Kim Ades uses a structured journaling diagnostic to find the thinking that produces stuck results, then deliberately installs a new frame. Skills change nothing if the underlying beliefs still cap the ceiling.
08/07/2020 · 7 min read
Letting go of ego is the producer-to-leader transition every agency owner has to make. Stop closing deals your team could close, stop rescuing every process failure, ask for help visibly, and let decisions get made without you in the room.
08/03/2020 · 6 min read
Agencies plateau when they optimize a model with a fixed ceiling instead of questioning the model itself. Question your defaults, import ideas from outside insurance, run small experiments, and learn from failures faster than successes. In a market moving this quickly, staying with the same playbook is not neutral.
07/31/2020 · 6 min read
Self-discovery is the engine of agency growth. Build an accurate operator map of yourself in three areas: how you handle uncertainty, what you actually want the agency to be, and where your confidence is real versus performed. That map raises the ceiling.
07/22/2020 · 6 min read
Bryan Falchuk sees insurance reshaping around agents who update their identity from salesperson to trusted advisor faster than the market moves. Survivors close knowledge gaps with curiosity instead of defensiveness, write down what they believe the industry looks like in five years, then build the version of themselves it requires.
07/17/2020 · 6 min read
Most agency problems start with the owner, not the market or the team. Audit your own patterns, communication gaps, enforced standards, and what you have been tolerating. The leader who goes first on self-reflection unlocks every other change.
07/15/2020 · 6 min read
AI is already reshaping underwriting, claims, and customer-facing comparison tools at the carrier level. Build AI literacy now, automate the work that does not require your judgment, and double down on relationships, expertise, and advocacy. Agents competing on price and speed lose to machines.
07/13/2020 · 6 min read
Self-accountability for agency owners is a four-step diagnostic: name the specific result you don't want, trace it back through behavior to decision to belief, identify one measurable behavior change inside your control, then run it for 60 days without negotiating. External conditions are real but they aren't the lever.
07/10/2020 · 6 min read
A coaching culture creates team cohesion through regular developmental one-on-ones, structured skills practice on real client scenarios, specific timely feedback, and peer coaching. The owner gets coached first. Cohesive teams retain clients better, refer more, and keep top producers longer.
07/08/2020 · 6 min read
Randy Thompson runs his captive agency with a coach's operating system: develop people, not just train them; treat clients as diagnostic conversations, not pitches; and break production plateaus by addressing the mindset ceiling, not the market.
07/06/2020 · 7 min read
Unify your team around a vision by saying the mission in one clean sentence, connecting every role to it, building a usable success mantra, making the values visible in daily decisions, and earning buy-in by showing you care. A vision only in the owner's head is private aspiration, not culture.
06/22/2020 · 6 min read
Brad Lea built Lightspeed VT and a billionaire network by treating sales as service and value creation as the real job. For agents: fix belief in the product and the close handles itself, build skill development as an ongoing function (not one-time onboarding), and answer who this business is for.
06/15/2020 · 6 min read
Mike Watts built six companies and $50M in combined sales by aligning financial, personal, and spiritual goals into one integrated system. Specific income targets, calendared personal priorities, and a purpose bigger than the P&L produce better decisions under pressure and longer founder runway.
06/10/2020 · 6 min read
Bad management in insurance agencies looks like avoidance or micromanagement, never anything dramatic. The fix is five repeatable moves: hold the avoided conversation, write down expectations, run tighter meetings, push three decisions down, and stay consistent week after week.
06/08/2020 · 6 min read
The top insurance agencies grow on clearer vision and stronger culture, not better leads or bigger ad budgets. Operational vision answers where the team is going, why it matters, and what each role does. Culture is the behavior you tolerate, celebrate, and model every Monday.
