The 3 simple shifts that take women business owners from owner-operator to CEO of a business that runs without them.
(An insurance-specific masterclass is in the Agency Collective.)
Real strategy, real numbers, and real stories from the businesses I coach. New essays each week.
Every business owner knows the question by heart. How do I grow faster? It is the default lens. The default podcasts. The default advice. The default shape of any conversation with a peer at any conference. Almost no...
Keep reading →Ask an agency owner to describe themselves and watch what happens in the first sentence. Nine times out of ten, it goes something like this. I have a three-million-dollar book in the Midwest, focused on small commercial and...
Keep reading →Your revenue was down twelve percent last month. How did you feel? If the honest answer is something like I felt like I was failing, personally, as a human being, you have an identity problem that will, eventually,...
Keep reading →Go look at your agency's values right now. The ones on the website. The ones in the employee handbook. The ones that were the output of a retreat two years ago and got printed on a nice poster....
Keep reading →Think about the life you are actually living, not the one on Instagram and not the one you are trying to get to. The kids you have. The spouse or partner or solitude you have. The body you...
Keep reading →At the end of every month, most agency owners do one of three things. They close out the commission report, look at the premium number, and move on. Or they think about doing a review, decide they are...
Keep reading →Every January, you write down a new set of goals. Every December, you look at the list and realize you hit maybe one or two of them, and you are not sure what happened to the rest. Most...
Keep reading →You have been tired for a long time. Not sleepy tired. Bone tired. The kind where a weekend off does not actually restore anything, because by Sunday night the weight is already sitting on your chest for Monday....
Keep reading →You are at your desk at seven. Your first team member arrives at eight-thirty. You are still there at six, finishing things up. They left at five. This has been the pattern for years, and you have told...
Keep reading →You sit down at your desk at eight. By eight-seventeen, you have been pulled into three things that were not on your plan for the day. A CSR needs an answer about an endorsement. A carrier rep wants...
Keep reading →At the end of a twelve-hour day, you have two options for how to feel about it. Option one: you were busy all day. Back to back. Never stopped. Your calendar was full, your inbox was moving, you...
Keep reading →Ask ten agency owners how their agency is doing, and nine of them will answer with a premium number. Five million. Three million. Up twelve percent year over year. Down a little, honestly. Premium is what we track...
Keep reading →The honest reason most small business owners skip quarterly planning is not that they do not believe in it. It is that quarterly planning feels like something you do when your life is already in order, and theirs...
Keep reading →When was the last time you took two uninterrupted hours to think about the agency instead of run it? For most owners, the honest answer is some version of never, or some version of last January, with the...
Keep reading →Walk through your office on a Wednesday afternoon and count the number of things that are paused waiting for a decision from you. Not big things. Small ones. An email that needs an approval. A vendor invoice that...
Keep reading →Your team calls you the closer. They say it like a compliment. You are the one who saves the accounts that are about to leave. You are the one who handles the hard carrier conversation. You are the...
Keep reading →Close your eyes and describe last Tuesday. Most small business owners can give you the broad strokes. A meeting at ten. Client work in the afternoon. Email throughout. Something on the phone around three that took longer than...
Keep reading →You feel like you are working all the time. You are also not sure what you actually did this week. That combination is the most reliable sign that an agency owner is due for a time audit. Not...
Keep reading →Why does your business exist? If the first answer in your head is "to make money," that is fine. It is true, and it should be true, because a business that does not make money is a hobby....
Keep reading →Ask the average agency owner what the agency's vision is, and the answer is usually a number. Five million in premium. Double the book. Ten thousand households. Break into commercial. Those are goals. Those are not vision. The...
Keep reading →When someone asks where your business will be in two years, what happens in your body? For most small business owners, the honest answer is a low-grade shrug. You know it will be bigger. You hope it will...
Keep reading →You get a referral from a long-time client. A friend of theirs. Good risk, good premium, and a relationship that would be easy to close. You could hand it to your producer. You know you should hand it...
Keep reading →The word CEO gets thrown around a lot by small business owners. It is on LinkedIn. It is on the website. It is on the business card. The honest question is whether the work behind the title actually...
Keep reading →Look at last month's commissions. Whose name is at the top of the report? If it is yours, and it has been yours for three or more years running, you have a growth problem that has nothing to...
Keep reading →It took Laura six years to notice. A successful bookkeeping practice. Eighteen clients. Two part-time helpers. Consistent five-figure months. On paper, a business. In reality, a job with extra steps. The moment she noticed was a Tuesday in...
Keep reading →It is Tuesday morning. Your CSR just sent a text because the carrier pulled a quote. There are ten emails, three voicemails, and a renewal that needs a decision before eleven. A carrier rep wants a call back...
Keep reading →One useful idea. One honest behind-the-scenes story. One tool I actually use. Every Tuesday.