31 posts found
02/14/2022 · 5 min read
Hiring is one of the most painful and consequential things an insurance agency owner does. This SOLO Playbook episode is a practical guide to hiring better — fewer mistakes, faster decisions, and a higher rate of building a team that actually performs.
12/08/2021 · 5 min read
Hiring is the one decision in agency management that amplifies everything else — including mistakes. Craig covers the hiring framework that belongs in every 2022 agency plan, with specific attention to the mistakes that keep agencies understaffed or badly staffed.
10/14/2021 · 6 min read
Getting a great hire is only the beginning. Part 2 of the Dave Williams conversation covers what happens after the offer is accepted — the onboarding, training, and integration that determines whether your new hire becomes a high performer or a regret.
10/14/2021 · 6 min read
Part 1 laid out the philosophy behind Dave Williams's hiring circuit. Part 2 gets into the execution — the specific filters, interview techniques, and onboarding steps that turn a recruiting framework into a machine that consistently produces great hires.
10/13/2021 · 6 min read
Dave Williams has cracked a code that most agency owners struggle with their entire careers: how to build a consistent, repeatable hiring system that produces great team members instead of leaving the agency perpetually understaffed or stuck with the wrong people.
10/13/2021 · 6 min read
Dave Williams doesn't guess about hiring. He runs a circuit — a deliberate, repeatable system that finds the right people, filters the wrong ones fast, and turns promising candidates into producing agents. Part 1 breaks down the philosophy behind the circuit.
10/09/2021 · 5 min read
Leadership failures in insurance agencies rarely show up as dramatic implosions. They show up as slow, quiet decline — team members who stop caring, clients who drift away, growth that stalls for no obvious reason. This is a hard look at the leadership patterns that create those outcomes.
10/09/2021 · 5 min read
Bad leadership in an insurance agency doesn't announce itself. It shows up quietly in your retention numbers, your staff turnover, your culture, and eventually your production. This recast episode breaks down what lackluster leadership looks like from the inside.
10/07/2021 · 6 min read
Part 2 of the Kirk Baker conversation goes beyond the framework and into execution — how to make delegation actually stick, what to do when it breaks down, and how to build a team that doesn't need the owner's fingerprints on every client interaction.
10/06/2021 · 6 min read
Captain Kirk Baker has navigated the new frontier of insurance agency service by mastering one of the hardest skills in the business: knowing what to delegate, to whom, and when. Part 1 breaks down the delegation framework that frees agency owners to lead instead of labor.
09/27/2021 · 6 min read
Managing a team in an insurance agency is its own discipline — one that most agency owners learn on the job, usually through expensive mistakes. These seven simple principles shorten that learning curve.
09/24/2021 · 6 min read
The agency owners who build great teams share two characteristics: they have high hiring standards and they act on performance problems quickly. Most owners have the first or the second, rarely both.
09/17/2021 · 6 min read
If you've tried to hire in insurance recently, you already know. The candidates who look good on paper disappear after the offer. The ones who show up can't close. And the rare great hire has three other offers. Here's how to survive it.
08/28/2021 · 5 min read
Hiring is the one lever that changes everything in your agency — and most owners pull it wrong. Here's what a real hiring system looks like when you stop winging it.
08/28/2021 · 5 min read
You've heard it before, but the message is worth repeating: your agency will only grow as fast as you can build the team behind it. Here's a focused look at what it actually takes to get hiring right; keep getting it right.
04/09/2021 · 6 min read
Jason digs into the hiring and onboarding practices that create genuinely committed team members — not just competent employees — and why the first thirty days shape the next three years.
12/04/2020 · 7 min read
Most insurance agency meetings accomplish nothing. They run long, cover the wrong things, and leave people less motivated than when they walked in. Here's how to fix that — with a meeting structure designed to drive production, not just fill time.
11/13/2020 · 9 min read
A solo episode from Craig on the most underestimated force in any insurance agency's growth: belief. Not motivation, not strategy, not systems — the foundational conviction that what you're building is worth building.
09/28/2020 · 6 min read
Episode 205 is a milestone, a thank-you, and a declaration. Jason reflects on the community behind The Insurance Dudes — the agents, the staff, the listeners, the people in the trenches — and makes the case that ownership of your agency's results starts and ends with you.
09/04/2020 · 6 min read
Empathy is not a soft skill. In an insurance agency, it is a production multiplier, a retention tool, and the single most underutilized leadership capability most owners possess. Jason Feltman makes the case.
09/02/2020 · 7 min read
Kris Plachy has spent years coaching leaders who were technically excellent but failing with people. Her message for insurance agency owners is precise: leadership is a responsibility you accepted the moment you hired someone, and most owners are not meeting it.
08/17/2020 · 6 min read
The biggest lie told to struggling agency owners is that great leaders are born, not made. Jason Feltman tears that down and replaces it with something you can actually use.
07/10/2020 · 6 min read
Coaching isn't just for struggling performers. Jason makes the case that a coaching culture is the single most underutilized advantage in the insurance agency space — and breaks down what it actually looks like in practice.
07/06/2020 · 7 min read
A vision that lives only in the owner's head isn't a vision — it's a private aspiration. Jason breaks down what it takes to unify your team around a shared mission and build a culture where staff buy-in is real, not performed.
06/05/2020 · 6 min read
Some agencies grow incrementally. Others find a method that accelerates everything. Ben Barrientos of the By The Minute team built a growth engine that most agency owners haven't seen before — and he came on to break it down.
04/29/2020 · 7 min read
Dave Williams runs the #1 Allstate agency in New York. The edge isn't a secret marketing funnel or a better lead source. It's who he hires and how he does it.
03/11/2020 · 6 min read
You hired great people. So why isn't your agency performing? The answer might not be who you hired — it's where you put them. Matching talent to the right role is the leadership skill that separates growing agencies from stuck ones.
02/26/2020 · 6 min read
Your sales pipeline gets all the attention. Meanwhile, your hiring pipeline is a dried-up riverbed, and that's the real reason your agency can't scale.
12/30/2019 · 7 min read
Hiring in insurance is broken and everyone knows it. Dave Williams from Team Hired and Kat Ternes from Agency Zoom sit down for a roundtable on what's actually going wrong — and how to fix it.
11/18/2019 · 7 min read
Mark Mercer built his insurance agency on culture first, production second. His counterintuitive approach to team building proves that the agencies with the best culture consistently outproduce the agencies that only focus on numbers.
10/09/2019 · 6 min read
You hired people so you could stop doing everything yourself. So why are you still doing everything yourself? The difference between teaching and doing is the difference between scaling and stalling.