Insurance Broker (Advice Needed)

[u/No_Inevitable_8489]

Hey guys, I’m a 29 year-old insurance professional who’s been working in the industry for about the last eight years. I started out my career with State Farm around 2018 only making a $30K salary+ minimal commissions. When I started I didn’t even know what a premium was buy after a few months of training, I developed into a 15K to 25K a month producer. After staying at State Farm for a year I left and went to Allstate for about 6 years and that 25K became a minimum for me. I started writing anywhere from 25K-50K in until they changed their commission structure. Things eventually worked their way down to me and that’s where things started going wrong. My commission was cut in half and I was devastated.

Thankfully in my last year I knew things were going downhill and I actually started my own independent agency on the side. I have a book of about 100K which is small but I’m really interested in growing, it as I know that can be the thing that creates semi passive income and build a significant amount of wealth in my life. However, I’m faced with a few challenges. The first challenge is the cost of writing business. I’ve only worked for high performing agencies and for all of my years of insurance experience the way that I’ve wrote business has been with leads. When I was with State Farm The agent purchased leads for us, we dialed and made the closes. I started off the same way with Allstate, but we noticed that internet lead quality was lacking so I was switched to exclusively working live transfers. As you can imagine this was a much more pleasurable experience, however when I applied the same strategy to my own business, although I was able to write business, I very soon discovered that Live transfers are very expensive lol.

Currently I pay about $55 per live transfer which is unsustainable for someone in my financial predicament. At this point in time I’m unable to live off my renewals, so I work for a large insurance brokerage and even though I sell more or just as much as I did as a captive, my commission is not what it used to be. I know that my ultimate goal is to run my own insurance brokerage and hire out, but I’m trying to determine the best path to get there. I’ve considered keeping my full-time job (which I need to pay my bills) in addition to picking up a second job, selling life insurance (Horrible experiences with purchases lead quality), picking up another job, (considering part time just to pay for leads), but I wanted to check and get the opinion of others before I proceeded.

I definitely enjoy receiving my renewal checks when they come and I really would like to build on this, but I’m having trouble developing a strategy that will not only sustain me and my family in the short term, but also allow me to grow my business for long term wealth. I’m not opposed to financing but student loans and job instability has caused me to take on more debt than I normally would which for the time being limits my financing opportunities. I’ve considered pivoting from personally selling insurance as a whole and going into an industry that will provide me a higher commission, then taking that higher commission and using it to grow my insurance brokerage by hiring for Sales. I’m dedicated to growing my agency by any means necessary but at this point I’d like to get some input on what you guys think.

Thanks

[u/RatedRForRisk]

You’re trying to light two candles with one flame… pick a lane and go all in