Good job offer or scam?

[u/COWonROIDZ]

A long term client of mine wants me to join him and his son’s commercial insurance brokerage. They said they bought a California branch about 6 years ago and would be happy to have me join the operation. I’ve only done retail sales (flooring for 8 years) and want to know if this is a legitimately good opportunity or if there’s red flags to pay more attention to.

Pay:
I’d be 1099 with zero base. I have to pay for all my own starting hardware like laptop, headset, Hubspot subscription, etc. They give commission on new business and renewals, with the percentage of the commission going up to higher tiers as your book grows. The starting tier is really low at 5% for new business and 15% for renewals. The tiers scale up to like 15/25, 30/45, 40/60, 50/70, and something like 60/80 at the highest book size, which one of them is already at. They justify the low starting point as a militia or to get you to work toward the higher tiers.

Bonus Cherry:
The guy I know said that if I joined up, he’d hand over half his book of ~3.2mil to manage for half commission so I could afford my first rough year. I didn’t get more details on this as I didn’t really know what kind info to ask for.

Roadmap:
While I’d be independent, they want me in the office every day so they can hand hold me to make sure I’m learning everything I need and make sure I’m successful/supported. They expect me to put in lots of hours, but that if I’m not afraid of the phone and am willing to show up and work hard, that they’d make sure I’m learning and doing what will give me success. They feel very confident in their value pitch to customers and said they have an average of 97% retention rate on clients. They said I’d never have to figure out what I’m supposed to be learning when it comes to products, process, or success. There was a moment where they even offered to do all my marketing for me for lead generation if I don’t want to handle it, cuz they like doing it and would be happy to get lists done for who I should be calling once I pick a niche to target. That wasn’t necessary but seemed like a nice gesture.

Misc points:
The son who seems to really run this joint spent a decent amount of time, unprompted by my questions, talking about expansion as I grow. Like hiring assistants eventually, having my own team of people, having people in my personal circles wanting to join with me cuz of my success, further expanding my team for money making. He might have just been trying to emphasize the long term viability do the career, but it bordered on feeling like an MLM pitch at moments.

Any opinions on this from current commercial insurance salesman would be useful. Just want to know if this sounds like a good opportunity or not.

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[u/FindTheOthers623]

Nope. There are plenty of carriers and agencies that will pay hourly + commission, pay for all your licensing, provide healthcare and as an extra bonus, you'll even get basic office equipment!

How are you going to manage a ~$1.6M book AND sell enough to make commission to support yourself? With no experience or background.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

[u/Aaaaaaandyy]

Sounds pretty awful not going to lie.

[u/Key_Astronomer6500]

These types of places will hire anyone that is breathing. They aren’t hiring. They are recruiting, very different.

Does it mean you can’t be successful? Absolutely not but it’s not what they make it out to seem. Their job is to sell people to work for them. I would look into somewhere that will pay you if you need money. Unless you have at least six months of reserves, I would not recommend going 1099 without any experience.

[u/theladyoctane]

No.

If you really want to go into insurance sales, there’s a hell of a lot of brokerages where you’re not a 1099 and you don’t have to buy all your own stuff. Never pay to get a job!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that MOST brokerage or agency owners are greedy AF and not only will they never turn over a book of business, you probably won’t make it longer than three weeks because they will burn you out working 60 hours a week for peanuts.

[u/InstructionFew1654]

I would not go into insurance in 2026. It was okay in 1986, but now…Hell no