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.
When someone in your local market thinks of your category of business, who comes to mind? For most categories, the answer is a list of about four names. Not ten. Not twenty. Four. The four local businesses that...
Keep reading →An agency owner will tell you they know the difference between a good lead and a tire-kicker. Then they will run eight quotes that week, close two, and discover six months later that both of the closed households...
Keep reading →You are good at what you do. You are not good at selling it. This is the most common self-assessment from small business owners who find themselves with capacity to take on more clients but cannot reliably fill...
Keep reading →Most agencies do not have a marketing plan. They have a handful of marketing activities that have accumulated over the years. A carrier co-op campaign here. A local sponsorship there. A newsletter that goes out irregularly. A social...
Keep reading →Most small businesses do not have a marketing plan. They have a list of marketing activities. A newsletter they sometimes send. A social media account someone posts on a few times a month. Maybe a referral program that...
Keep reading →Ask most personal lines agency owners about commercial and you will hear a version of the same response. It is complicated. The service burden is heavier. The sales cycle is longer. The relationships are harder to build. Most...
Keep reading →Most small business owners hear recurring revenue and think subscription software. Netflix. Spotify. The tech companies that sell access to a product on a monthly basis. This is a narrow read of what recurring revenue is. Recurring revenue...
Keep reading →A family leaves the agency this month. They had auto, home, and umbrella with you for seven years. What did that cost the agency? Most agency owners cannot answer this precisely. They know it is bad. They have...
Keep reading →How much does it cost your business when a client leaves? Most owners have never run this calculation. They know intuitively that losing clients is bad. They do not know how bad, which means they cannot make informed...
Keep reading →Every agency owner has told themselves the same story about referrals. We get them. They just come in organically. We do not really have a system. It kind of works. The story is usually almost true and completely...
Keep reading →Most small businesses want more referrals. Very few have a referral engine. The difference matters because hoping for referrals and running a referral engine produce completely different results. Hoping produces the occasional unpredictable referral, usually from a particularly...
Keep reading →The average independent agency has never charged a fee for advisory work. Not once. They give away coverage reviews, risk assessments, claims consultations, and renewal strategy sessions, all under the assumption that commission is the only acceptable way...
Keep reading →You started charging hourly because that is what everyone in your industry charges. An hourly rate felt honest. You were selling time. You put a number on the time. The client paid for the time used. It seemed...
Keep reading →Pull up your book. Find a household that has been with you for five years with only an auto policy. Look at their situation. No home coverage, no umbrella, no life. That client has probably bought a house,...
Keep reading →How many revenue streams does your business run on? For most small businesses, the honest answer is one. Maybe one and a half, if there is a small product line that supplements the main service. Everything else is...
Keep reading →Most independent agencies have one revenue stream: commission. It has been the default for the industry for decades, and for a long time, it was enough. The agencies that are growing fastest today have built on top of...
Keep reading →Your revenue is the same this year as last year. Maybe slightly up. Maybe slightly down. Either way, flat. The first instinct is usually to blame marketing. More leads. Better funnel. Bigger ad spend. More social media. The...
Keep reading →Most agencies grow flat. Five years in the same premium range. Ten years in a slow drift. Twenty years as a comfortable practice that never quite got past the owner's personal ceiling. The industry story about why this...
Keep reading →One useful idea. One honest behind-the-scenes story. One tool I actually use. Every Tuesday.