Page 10 of 16 · 310 total
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.
04/07/2021 · 7 min read
Starting an agency from scratch takes activity-over-outcome focus during lumpy early months, relationship investment in prospects who will not buy for years, and deliberate post-call debriefs that compress a 10-year learning curve into three. License training does not cover any of this. The reps do.
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.
03/24/2021 · 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.
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.
02/17/2021 · 6 min read
Stories close insurance better than statistics because actuarial data activates rational processing while a specific client claim story activates the emotional processing that drives buying decisions. Every working story has a real person, a near-miss tension, and the coverage as the difference. Keep it under two minutes.
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.
02/12/2021 · 6 min read
Run father-son agency disagreements by entertaining the other side's read as real, not as courtesy. Make succession gradual so clients move with the brand. Younger producers connect faster with thirty-something households who will not renew on inertia alone.
02/08/2021 · 6 min read
Prepared agencies have four structural buffers: diversified lead sources so no single channel is above 60% of new production, multiple carrier relationships, a book not dependent on any one producer, and three to six months of cash. Build them before you need them.
02/05/2021 · 6 min read
Track three numbers weekly: cost per acquisition by lead source, close rate by lead source and producer, and policies per new household. Build the manual habit for eight weeks before automating reports. The agencies that scale make marginally better decisions over time, not dramatic pivots.
02/01/2021 · 6 min read
Captive agents who grow inside Farmers run three plays: multi-line density on every household from the first call, active use of carrier programs and MDF other agents ignore, and renewals worked as prospecting touchpoints rather than retention checks. Mindset filters the noise.
01/29/2021 · 6 min read
Real social media presence for an insurance agent is consistent (three posts a week for six months), personal (your face and voice, not carrier graphics), educational (umbrella coverage, post-accident steps, premium changes), and platform-targeted (Facebook for homeowners, LinkedIn for commercial). Results land at month six.
01/20/2021 · 6 min read
Build peak agency performance with three daily non-negotiables: seven to nine hours of sleep, 30 minutes of intense movement four days a week, and intentional nutrition. Periodize the year with peak campaigns and deload weeks so the operator never breaks.
01/18/2021 · 6 min read
Build peak performance as an agency owner by treating mind, body, and business as one operating system. Replace limiting stories with documented action, invest in sleep and movement as business inputs, and watch decision quality compound across the agency.
01/15/2021 · 6 min read
Three Stoic principles run an insurance agency through turmoil: discipline of perception (separate facts from stories), direct-action bias (move on the situation as it actually is, not as you wish it were), and long-game orientation (use obstacles to expose and fix structural weaknesses, not just replace what's lost).
