One of Pete Poggi's top P&C producers was waiting tables, bartending and driving Uber on weekends when Pete hired him. Today that producer writes almost $1.5 million a year in premium, and his book is approaching $10 million.

Pete has interviewed well over a thousand people and hired hundreds of agents across 20 plus years, and he made just about every hiring mistake there is on the way. What finally fixed it was not a better resume filter. It was learning to tell an entrepreneur from a wantrepreneur.

The entrepreneur is planning their day. The wantrepreneur is planning their lunch.

In this solo episode Pete lays out how he tells them apart before he hires, and how he tells them apart after.

Here's what you'll discover:

• The one line Pete's dad used on him growing up that now explains every bad hire he ever made
• What an entrepreneur says in an interview, and the very different thing a wantrepreneur says
• The question Pete asks when four people have the identical resume, and why he goes silent the second he finishes asking it
• The difference between a producer who is struggling and one who is resisting, and why only one of them is worth coaching
• Why Pete hires Rocky Balboa over Apollo Creed every single time

About Pete: Pete Poggi grew a personal lines P&C insurance agency from $3 million to over $180 million in 84 months. No commercial. No cold calls. He created the Million Dollar Producer program and works with independent P&C insurance agency owners stuck between $2M and $5M in annual premium who are ready to stop being the bottleneck and start building a real book.

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And if you have ever hired someone who talked a great game and then never did the work, send this one to another agency owner. Every one of us has paid that stupid tax.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com

Pete Poggi hired his third producer and did the math that changed his life. One producer at $750,000. Himself over a million. A third approaching $500,000. Three people were already producing more than he ever could alone, and they had not hit their ceiling yet.

That number is where this episode starts. Where it ends is $20 million.

Here is the arithmetic Pete runs on this one, out loud, in real time: five producers writing $400,000 each is $2 million a year, which already doubles what you could do by yourself. Coach those same five up to $800,000 and you are at $4 million a year. Five years of that is $20 million, and none of that counts your own production or the book you already had.

But the part he says nobody talks about is what happened when his right hand man grew into a leader and Pete started traveling Florida to speak and train. Every time he came back, the numbers were better. It became a running joke in the office: let's see how long we can keep Pete out of here.

This is a solo episode about the difference between hiring somebody and duplicating yourself, and why almost every agency owner confuses the two.

What you'll discover in this episode:

• Why hiring a customer service rep is not duplication, and what it actually is
• The day duplication really starts, which is not the day you sign the offer letter
• The 80% question that decides whether you can ever build a team
• What most owners get wrong in the first 30 days with a new producer
• What Pete says is better than the money duplication brought him

Pete Poggi grew a P&C insurance agency from $3 million to $180 million in 84 months. Personal lines only. No cold calls. He now works with independent P&C insurance agency owners who are stuck between $2 million and $5 million in premium and cannot scale past themselves, teaching the systems, hiring standards and referral relationships that turn a top producer into an agency owner who actually owns their agency.

If this one helped, follow the show so you don't miss the next episode, and send it to an agency owner who is still trying to do all of it himself.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com

Nathan Brainard runs a $100 million division inside a $4 billion P&C agency. He is also willing to put a real number on the record: the $40 million his company spent on an online quoting platform before deciding to stop.

His words: "We were already $30, $40 million deep into this adventure. And we ended up cutting bait and saying, it's better to take our losses now."

Walking away from a number that size takes more discipline than most people give it credit for. The advice that came out of it is four words long: Don't get over your skis.

Nathan started at Insurance Office of America in January 2005, after Marriott cut the $30,000 bonus he had earned down to $3,000. Twenty-two years later he oversees roughly 100 producers and 400 people across IOA's largest division. Last November his company took private-equity money for the first time in its history, and he walks through what that actually felt like from the inside, including the seven months he calls the roughest of his career.

What you'll discover in this episode:

• The first thing a $4 billion agency screens for in a producer, before experience, book size or production history
• Why 99% of their producers stayed through the private-equity transition when the PE firm had forecast 85%
• The one question to ask a private-equity firm before you sign anything
• What a softening market does to renewals you thought were safe, and why owners under 40 have never seen it
• The interview question Nathan asks that has nothing to do with insurance

Pete Poggi grew a P&C insurance agency from $3 million to $180 million in 84 months. Personal lines only. No cold calls. He now works with independent P&C insurance agency owners who are stuck between $2 million and $5 million in premium and cannot scale past themselves, teaching the systems, hiring standards and referral relationships that turn a top producer into an agency owner who actually owns their agency.

If this one helped, follow the show so you don't miss the next episode, and send it to an agency owner who is being courted right now.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com

Patrick Mignon built a $2.4M P&C book after a non-compete forced him to walk away from every client he had ever written. Eight months into starting over, his wife looked at him and said "just go get a job." He told her: "I'm the job."

Today he runs $80,000 to $100,000 a month in production and is chasing a million-dollar year. But the thing that unlocked it was not talent. He already had that. It was finally hiring, and the first four people he brought on did not last three months.

In this conversation Patrick walks through exactly what he got wrong, what he changed, and the moment the stress came off his shoulders instead of piling on.

What you'll discover in this episode:

• Why a "vicious non-compete" turned out to be the best thing that happened to his career
• The five-word morning system Patrick calls GARLIC, and why he runs it before he does anything else
• The one word that explains why most agents never get referrals from realtors and mortgage brokers
• What Patrick looks for in the first two to three weeks that tells him whether a new hire will last
• Why he says hiring gave him more time to build his business by doing less work

Pete Poggi grew a P&C insurance agency from $3 million to $180 million in 84 months. Personal lines only. No cold calls. He now works with independent P&C insurance agency owners who are stuck between $2 million and $5 million in premium and cannot scale past themselves, teaching the systems, hiring standards and referral relationships that turn a top producer into an agency owner who actually owns their agency.

If this one helped, follow the show so you don't miss the next episode, and send it to an agency owner who is scared to make their first hire.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com

Zane Lefko was 20 years old, sitting on a couch in Orlando, when his roommate's dad walked in and asked if the two of them wanted to get their insurance licenses. He said "sure, I guess." He had no plan. He later dropped out of college to keep going.He committed to Pete's system at 21. Between his agencies he has now surpassed the $45 million mark, and he has personally produced a million to a million and a half a year for about eight years.He did try buying leads online once. His office called somebody who had filled out a form, and the man told him he was only trying to get his Outback gift card. That conversation cost $30. His line ever since: "I always tell people I spend $0 on marketing. It's all referral based."(On the tape Zane sizes the book at about $30 million. Between his agencies today he is past $45 million.)The part most agency owners will not expect is what he says about the last year. He nearly walked away. "Probably a year ago, I got to the point and I'm like, I don't think I can do this anymore."What you'll discover in this episode:

• The four-step system Zane says is the whole secret, and the one thing he says everybody else does instead
• Why the "what ifs of not hiring greatly outweigh the fear of hiring", and the hiring mistake he still makes
• How 10 or 15 unreturned voicemails turned into 40 to 50 referral partners
• The attrition math that traps agency owners at $3 to $5 million, and what has to change before it breaks you
• What he actually did in the year he almost quit, and the line about breakthroughs he keeps coming back to

Pete Poggi grew a P&C insurance agency from $3 million to $180 million in 84 months. Personal lines only. No cold calls. He now works with independent P&C insurance agency owners who are stuck between $2 million and $5 million in premium and cannot scale past themselves, teaching the systems, hiring standards and referral relationships that turn a top producer into an agency owner who actually owns their agency.If this one helped, follow the show so you don't miss the next episode, and send it to an agency owner who thinks they have to do it all themselves.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com

Pete Poggi grew a P&C insurance agency from $3 million to over $180 million, and most of the producers who built it had never worked in insurance a day in their lives.

One of his best hires ever was managing a Foot Locker when he walked into Pete's office. He didn't know the carriers, couldn't speak the lingo, and Pete still jokes that he couldn't spell insurance. Pete hired him anyway, then surrounded him with experienced agents. Almost every experienced hire failed. The Foot Locker kid became his top producer.

In this solo episode, Pete lays out the hiring philosophy that came out of interviewing thousands of people and hiring hundreds of producers: Stop hiring resumes. Start hiring people.

Here's what you'll discover:

• Why one bad hire can set your agency back a full year, and why it usually wasn't the person's fault
• The math on "10 years of experience" that most agency owners never do
• What Pete saw in a Foot Locker manager that a thousand resumes never showed him
• The exact interview questions Pete uses to spot a future top producer in the first 10 minutes
• The one question running through Pete's head in every single interview

About Pete: Pete Poggi grew a personal lines P&C insurance agency from $3 million to over $180 million in 84 months. No commercial. No cold calls. He created the Million Dollar Producer program and works with independent P&C insurance agency owners stuck between $2M and $5M in annual premium who are ready to stop being the bottleneck and start building a real book.

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And if you know an agency owner who says they can't find good people, send them this one. It might save them years of frustration.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com

Greg Brunt built a $20 million P&C insurance agency without hiring a single experienced agent. He pulled his first hires out of restaurants.

In 2013 Greg walked into a small executive office in South Florida with a childhood friend, two phones, two computers and not a single client. Before that he spent eight years inside a State Farm agency, and he started there at the front desk answering phones and taking out the garbage.

Thirteen years later Brunt Insurance has roughly 7,000 clients, eleven in-house staff, three or four virtual assistants, and nine affiliate locations across Florida. Four of his current producers started at his own front desk. He has never bought a lead.

Pete Poggi sits down with Greg to walk the whole build: The captive educator model that made his first book and the day it died, what he had to physically stop doing before the agency could outgrow him, the hire that took eighteen months to pay off, and why he quit buying agencies and started building affiliates instead.

Here's what you'll discover:

• Why Greg pulls his best hires out of restaurants and gyms instead of out of other agencies
• The school partnership model that built his first book, and the single event that ended it overnight
• What he had to hand off before the agency could grow past him, and how long it actually took him to let go
• The hire that had nothing to do with insurance and fixed the entire back office
• Why he walked away from acquisitions in a three-times-revenue market and built nine affiliate locations instead

About Pete: Pete Poggi grew a personal lines P&C insurance agency from $3 million to over $180 million in 84 months. No commercial. No cold calls. He created the Million Dollar Producer program and works with independent P&C insurance agency owners stuck between $2M and $5M in annual premium who are ready to stop being the bottleneck and start building a real book.

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. If you know an agency owner who says they can't find good people, send them this one.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com

Gina Prizzi got laid off at 51 with zero insurance experience. Five years later she runs a $15M P&C insurance agency.

When COVID shut down the medical laboratory she ran, Gina couldn't get hired anywhere. Not for $20 an hour. Not for $15. No college degree, and everyone said she was either overqualified or underqualified.

A friend introduced her to insurance, and she started over from nothing - no license, no book, and by her own admission she could barely work a computer.

Today she personally produces about $100K a month, has built a personal book of almost $5M, and leads a team of five producers averaging $40K to $50K a month each. All personal lines. In one of the hardest insurance markets in the country: Florida. 

If you think you're too old, too late, or too far behind to build something real in this business - or you're an agency owner convinced you can't find good people - this is the conversation that proves otherwise.

Pete Poggi sits down with Gina to break down exactly how she did it: The daily habits, the referral engine, and the hiring playbook she now uses to build producers from scratch. Here's what you'll discover:

• The one thing Gina does every single day that separates her from "a billion agents" out there
• The open house move that put her in front of realtors with zero competition in the room
• How she went from crying for the first three months to million dollar producer status (and how long confidence really takes)
• The time blocking structure that keeps a $100K-a-month producer from getting lost in her day
• Her 90-day rule for new hires, and the first-hire mistake that taught her when to let go
• Why she'd rather hire an 18-year-old with no experience than a veteran with bad habits

About Pete: Pete Poggi grew a personal lines P&C insurance agency from $3 million to over $180 million in 84 months. No commercial. No cold calls.

He created the Million Dollar Producer program and works with independent P&C insurance agency owners stuck between $2M and $5M in annual premium who are ready to stop being the bottleneck and start building a real book.

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. 

If you know someone who thinks it's too late to start over, send them this one.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com

Sixteen years ago, Kyle Quezada was running a Foot Locker.

Today he owns three P&C insurance agency offices approaching $40 million in combined premium - and he doesn't produce a penny. 

Kyle was Pete's first hire. He didn't know what insurance was. He jokes he couldn't even spell it. Pete took a bet on him anyway, and that one hire helped build a personal-lines operation that grew from $3 million to $180 million.

In this episode, Pete sits down with his own vice president to pull apart the part of scaling most agency owners get wrong: Hiring. Who to hire, what it really costs, when to let go, and how to step out of production without your book falling apart. 

If you're a top producer who can't step back - or an owner who's afraid the next hire will cost too much - this is the playbook, from the guy who lived both sides of it. Here's what you'll discover:

• Why 10 years of P&C experience can be the most dangerous trait to hire for
• The 75% rule that lets a team of six outproduce any superstar producer
• What a new producer actually costs (and the surprisingly small number where you break even)
• The referral partner handoff that turns $100K a month into $300K without you selling
• The behaviors to measure in a hire's first 90 days instead of premium
• The step-by-step ladder from your first policy to a $10M agency that runs without you

About Pete: Pete Poggi grew a personal lines P&C insurance agency from $3 million to over $180 million in 84 months. No commercial. No cold calls.

He created the Million Dollar Producer program and works with independent P&C insurance agency owners stuck between $2M and $5M in annual premium who are ready to stop being the bottleneck and start building a real book.

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

If you know an agency owner who's afraid to make their next hire, send them this one.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com

Most P&C agency owners think they have a hiring problem.

They don't.

They have an opportunity problem - and it's costing them their next producer.

You've said it yourself: "I can't find good people."

But good people are everywhere.

The reason they're not choosing your agency has nothing to do with your pay, your splits, or your nice office.

It's that you're pitching a job when you should be selling an opportunity. 

Nobody leaves what they're doing to go answer phones. They leave for a future.

In this solo episode, Pete Poggi breaks down how to recruit producers the way you built your book of business: relentlessly, and by selling a dream instead of a paycheck. He walks through the exact language he uses to make pay a secondary conversation, the reframe that turns recruiting from an event into a daily habit, and the 90-day challenge that fills your pipeline from people you already talk to every week.

Pete grew a personal lines P&C agency from $3 million to over $180 million in 84 months - no commercial, no cold calls - and he's coached hundreds of agents through the exact wall you're hitting right now.

Here's what you'll discover:

• Why most agency owners have an opportunity problem, not a hiring problem - and how to tell which one is yours
• The one question to write down before your next recruiting conversation
• Why leading with pay, splits, and a nice office quietly kills your best candidates
• The 90-day challenge that turns your network, your referral partners, and even your customers into a recruiting engine
• The three people in your network who will find your next producer for you - if you ask them the right way

About Pete: Pete Poggi grew a personal lines P&C insurance agency from $3 million to over $180 million in 84 months. No commercial. No cold calls.

He created the Million Dollar Producer program and works with independent P&C insurance agency owners stuck between $2M and $5M in annual premium who are ready to stop being the bottleneck and start building a real, sellable agency.

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

And if you know an agency owner who's stuck doing everything themselves, send them this one.

Learn more at www.PetePoggi.com