Business Refocused

In this episode of Business Refocused, Carey sits down with Dan Vander Kooi of Manna Insurance to talk about the value of having the right people around you as an agency owner.

Dan shares the story behind Agent Underground, a small, collaborative event created for independent agency owners who want to learn from each other, talk openly about what is working, and have honest conversations about the challenges that come with ownership and leadership.

The conversation also gets into something many business owners experience but do not always talk about. Running an agency can feel lonely. Having a group of peers who understand the decisions you are making, the pressure you carry, and the problems you are trying to solve can make a real difference.

Dan and Carey also talk about technology, leadership, and how agencies can use tools like AI to create more capacity for their teams. The goal is not to replace people. It is to give them more time to focus on clients, relationships, and the work that actually needs a human touch.

A few things we cover

• Why agency ownership can feel isolating
• How trusted peers can help you make better decisions
• Why collaboration can make independent agencies stronger
• How technology can create more capacity for your team
• What agency owners can learn from each other about staffing, leadership, and growth
• Why smaller, relationship-driven events can lead to better conversations
• The importance of staying curious and open to new ideas

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Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused

In this Coffee Break episode of Business Refocused, Carey and Lindsay talk through what agency owners should actually be looking at when evaluating an acquisition.

Too often, the conversation starts and ends with revenue or a rumored multiple. But as Carey explains, that can lead to a very incomplete picture. Growth, profitability, staffing, book mix, retention risk, and the people behind the business can all change whether an agency is a strong acquisition or one you should walk away from.

They also preview Carey’s upcoming “Buy or Pass” session at ITC Agents, where attendees will evaluate real agencies, decide whether they would buy them, and then see what those businesses actually sold for. The goal is to show just how much the answer can change once you look beneath the surface.

One example drives that point home. On paper, the agency looked attractive: strong revenue, solid profitability, commercial lines concentration, and positive growth. But once they revealed that 72% of the staff was over age 68, the risk profile changed significantly. A buyer would need to think about potential turnover, staffing gaps, client retention, and what happens when a major transition hits the team.

A few things we cover:

• Why revenue alone is not enough to evaluate an acquisition
• Which financial and operational metrics buyers should look at
• How staffing and succession risk can affect agency value
• Why the same agency can look very different once you dig deeper
• How buyers can avoid overpaying for an agency
• What sellers can strengthen before going to market

If buying an insurance agency is part of your growth strategy, this episode is a good reminder that the multiple is only one piece of the decision. The real work is understanding what you are actually buying.

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Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused

In this episode of Business Refocused, Lindsay sits down with Michael Ley, Director of Networks at HawkSoft, to talk about the career decisions that shaped his path through the insurance industry.

Michael grew up around insurance, joined his family’s agency, helped modernize the business, and eventually stepped into a larger leadership role. But after years of working in the agency, he reached a point where he knew something needed to change. That ultimately led to one of the hardest conversations he had ever had with his dad: telling him he was considering leaving the family business.

Michael shares what that transition looked like, why he waited until he had a plan before starting the conversation, and how his experience inside an agency continues to shape the way he works with agency owners today.

A few things we cover:

• What it is really like to work in a family-owned agency
• How Michael helped modernize the agency before COVID
• Why leaving the family business was such a difficult decision
• How he approached the conversation with his dad
• Why agency experience gives him a different perspective in his role at HawkSoft
• The importance of relationships, education, and client service
• Why putting off hard conversations usually makes them harder
• How to recognize when it may be time to explore a new direction

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Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused

In this episode of Business Refocused, Carey and Lindsay are joined by Kirk Chester, CEO of Grit Insurance, to talk about something more agency owners are quietly wrestling with right now. Artificial intelligence, and whether it's actually a practical business tool or just the latest industry buzzword.

Kirk comes at the topic from a different angle than most. Rather than using AI to write emails or summarize documents, he has built AI agents, complete with names, personalities, and a place on his website's team page, to handle his agency's marketing. These agents research topics, write SEO optimized content, and appear on camera teaching prospects about insurance around the clock. He shares how the idea came about, why he intentionally gave each agent a distinct voice for a distinct audience, and what it actually took to build the first one, which took less time than you might think.

Perhaps most interesting is his perspective on what this means for the industry. Kirk doesn't see AI replacing the judgment and relationships at the heart of the business. He sees it handling the work nobody wants to do, so his people can focus on the work that actually matters.

A few things we cover in this episode.

• How AI agents differ from the AI tools most business owners are already using
• Why Kirk built different AI personas for different client types
• How a small agency started competing with companies spending $30,000 a month on marketing
• What the shift toward AI powered search means for how clients find you
• Why new producers at Grit are writing business faster than seasoned hires
• Why Kirk started with internal friction instead of lead generation
• How to think about AI as leverage for your existing team, not a replacement for it

Connect with us:
Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused

In this Coffee Break episode of Business Refocused, Carey and Lindsay are joined by AgencyFocus team member Adam DeLaForest to talk about one of the most important, and often misunderstood, metrics in an insurance agency: retention.

Retention plays a major role in agency value, but many owners are not fully confident in the number they are tracking. Adam explains why agency management systems can make retention difficult to measure, especially when carrier downloads label rewrites as new business or when policies are packaged differently from one carrier to another.

The conversation also looks at why agencies should not rely on a single retention number. Policy retention, premium retention, and revenue retention can all tell a different story, especially as the market shifts from hard to soft and premium increases stop masking underlying performance.

A few things we cover:

• Why retention is so difficult to track accurately
• How carrier downloads can distort new business and rewrite data
• Why policy count can change depending on how carriers package coverage
• The difference between policy, premium, and revenue retention
• Why hard market premium increases may have created a false sense of growth
• How to clean up agency management system data and improve retention tracking
• Why carrier reports alone do not give you the full picture

Connect with us:
Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused

In this Coffee Break episode of Business Refocused, Carey and Lindsay are joined by AgencyFocus team member Adam DeLaForest to talk about something that can have a surprisingly big impact on an agency valuation: owner compensation.

How an owner pays themselves can make an agency look more or less profitable on paper, even when the underlying business has not changed. Adam explains why AgencyFocus adjusts owner compensation during a valuation, what “reasonable compensation” means, and why there always needs to be a realistic cost associated with running the business.

The conversation also looks at how an owner’s role changes the equation. An owner who is still producing, managing the team, and driving growth may need to be replaced very differently than an owner who has already built a leadership team and stepped away from the day-to-day.

A few things we cover:

• Why owner compensation matters in an agency valuation
• How W-2 wages and distributions can affect reported profitability
• Why an agency cannot realistically be valued with zero owner compensation
• How an owner’s role in the business impacts the adjustment
• Why reducing owner dependency can strengthen agency value
• How compensation strategy can support growth, reinvestment, and future perpetuation

Owner compensation is just one line on the financials, but it can tell a much bigger story about how the agency operates and how dependent the business is on its owner. Understanding that story gives agency owners more clarity around both their current value and the decisions that can improve it over time.

Connect with us:
Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused

In this episode of Business Refocused, Carey and Lindsay sit down with Covington Carlson from Live Oak Bank to talk about one of the biggest questions agency owners face when they want to grow through acquisition: How do you actually finance the deal?

Covington breaks down how banks look at insurance agency acquisitions, why some debt can be a powerful growth tool, and what buyers need to understand before taking on a loan. He explains debt service coverage, EBITDA, cash flow, seller notes, and the difference between SBA and conventional lending in a way that makes the financing side of acquisitions much easier to understand.

They also dig into a few of the mistakes buyers make when evaluating a deal. Revenue alone does not tell you whether an acquisition makes sense. The profitability of the agency, the quality of its recurring revenue, the adjustments made to EBITDA, and the amount of debt the business can actually support all matter.

A few things we cover:

• Why acquisition debt can be considered “good debt”
• How banks determine whether an agency can support a loan
• What debt service coverage ratio tells you about a deal
• SBA vs. conventional financing for insurance agencies
• Why EBITDA matters more than revenue when evaluating an acquisition
• Common mistakes buyers make with add-backs and due diligence
• How financing can work for internal perpetuation and partner buyouts
• Why planning early gives buyers and sellers more options

Connect with us:
Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused

In this episode of Business Refocused, Carey and Lindsay sit down with Trey Siner to talk about one of the hardest questions an agency owner can ask: When is enough, enough?

After more than 20 years of building his agency from scratch, Trey started thinking seriously about what he wanted the next chapter of his life to look like. The decision to sell was not just about valuation or getting the right number. It was about his family, his time, his team, and whether he was ready to let go of something he had spent decades building.

Trey shares how he prepared the agency before the sale, why finding the right buyer mattered so much, and what the transition actually looked like behind the scenes. He also talks about something that often gets overlooked in succession planning - preparing yourself for what comes after the deal closes.

 Key takeaways include: 

• How to know when it may be time to sell your insurance agency
• Why preparing years before a sale can create better options
• What to consider beyond the purchase price
• How to evaluate the right buyer for your team and clients
• Why agency valuation and clean financials matter before going to market
• How to prepare personally for life after selling your agency

Connect with us:
Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused

In this Coffee Break episode of Business Refocused, Carey and Lindsay are joined by AgencyFocus team member Lauren Washington to break down how to calculate your agency’s adjusted EBITDA and get a clearer picture of true operating profitability.

They walk through the discretionary and one-time expenses that can distort your P&L, from country club dues and luxury vehicles to severance, rebrands, technology conversions, and other non-recurring costs. They also explain why properly categorizing expenses matters when benchmarking your agency against peers. 

Key takeaways include:

•  Which discretionary expenses to adjust out of EBITDA 
•  How to identify one-time and non-recurring expenses 
•  Why expense categorization matters for agency benchmarking 
•  How adjusted EBITDA provides a clearer view of profitability 
•  Why understanding true profitability matters for valuation and financial decisions

Connect with us:
Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused

In this episode of Business Refocused, Carey and Lindsay welcome back agency owner Kyle Becker to discuss how benchmarking changed the way he manages his agency. From improving financial reporting to evaluating technology investments, Kyle shares how understanding his numbers has helped him make more confident business decisions.

The conversation explores why many agency owners only see part of the financial picture and how benchmarking provides the context needed to measure growth, profitability, staffing efficiency, and operational performance. Kyle also shares how his agency is using AI and automation to improve revenue per employee, increase capacity, and create a better client experience. 

Key takeaways include:

•  Why benchmarking is more than comparing numbers 
•  How accurate financial reporting leads to better decisions 
•  The role of revenue per employee in measuring agency efficiency 
•  How AI and automation can create capacity without sacrificing service 
•  Why agency owners need peer groups and benchmarking to drive growth

Connect with us:
Follow AgencyFocus for more conversations that help agency owners build clarity, confidence, and long-term value. Learn more at https://agency-focus.com/

Show previously named Insurance Refocused