National Underwriter

I suspect if you are the average age of an insurance agency owner (now pushing 60, according to industry reports), you’ve had your share of “lessons learned.” If you’re still relatively young, you will get your hard knocks soon enough.

We all have examples of mistakes we’ve
made or things we might have done differ-
ently. In project management, reviewing lessons
learned is the process managers go through
at the end of a project to capture what went
right and what went wrong. NASA defines it
as, “knowledge or understanding gained by
experience.”
But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist
to appreciate that not everything in life goes
according to plan. It’s the wise man or woman
who learns from mistakes and adjusts accordingly
— or who listens intently (let’s hope!) to those
who have gone before.

The agency principals I’ve spoken with over the years certainly have their stories to tell. Some of them have said they should have managed their expenses better. Others wished they had paid more attention to developing staff, mentoring and work-life balance. Many have regretted not identifying a successor at their agency who could take over when they were ready to retire.

Although it’s different for everyone, I find that agents generally spend their 20s producing, their 30s managing, their 40s becoming owners, and their 50s and early 60s exiting their agency.

Along the way, there can be some bumps and detours, but the road towards agency ownership and perpetuation usually follows this 30- to 40-year trajectory. Here’s the distilled wisdom that I’ve heard from agency owners over the course of my career that might help smooth your path forward. Call them my lessons learned.