r/InsuranceAgent

Interested in hearing State Farm Agency owners or former owners thoughts/advice on whether taken over a Book of Business is wise.

I have a strong chance of getting a 2.8 million book of business in Illinois. But I have looked at other states like Texas, FL, and SC.

Do you think taken over SF book of business a good move? Currently I’m a Personal Lines Agent, so I know the weakness of being captive but SF can be competitive too.

I am writing this to prevent others from wasting their time and money and perhaps even a great deal of second hand embarrassment. In this post I am going to cover in detail the scheme that is otherwise known as “American Income” or “Globe Life”; heavily trending in Miami.

It starts with roping vulnerable people in. On social media, agents are FORCED (yes FORCED) to post dramatic “before” stories like: “I dropped out of school,” “I had no direction in life,” or “I couldn’t provide for my family,” followed by claims that American Income/Globe Life completely changed or “saved” their life. Then come the flashy posts: high-rise apartments, Lamborghinis, first-class flights, private jets — all paired with captions implying that this lifestyle came from becoming a licensed life insurance agent and “changing people’s lives.” The entire image being sold is designed to make people believe they, too, can achieve immense success in as little as ONE YEAR and financial freedom if they join.

You send the DM like instructed and are invited to join a Zoom call, usually on a Monday or Tuesday night. You join the Zoom and one of the “big names,” Spencer K “self made multi millionaire”, walks everyone through the process. They explain the learning modules for the licensing exam and tell you that you’re expected to complete the program within about a month. The Zoom itself is usually brief, but before it ends, you’re assigned an “overseer” or mentor whose entire job is to make sure you complete the program. From that point forward, this person is contacting you constantly — almost daily — checking in to make sure you’re completing modules, taking practice exams, and staying on track for your test date. At first, it feels supportive. It almost feels like people genuinely care about your success. But later, it starts to make more sense why they’re pushing so hard to get as many people licensed as quickly as possible. Eventually, test day comes. You pass. Everyone congratulates you, hypes you up, tells you how proud they are, and immediately instructs you to be on another Zoom the very next day.

On this zoom you’re told your job is now to make 300 dials a day MINIMUM and schedule as many Zoom appointments as possible in order to sell life insurance policies — specifically whole life insurance. It is made very clear that whole life policies are the priority. You are essentially trained to convince people they need it no matter what. The focus quickly stops feeling like helping families and starts feeling like pushing expensive products onto vulnerable people. And here’s the part that genuinely disturbed me: the “amazing free leads” they brag about are, elderly individuals or people who seem to have very little understanding of what they’re being sold. Many of them were connected through labor unions or rotary/member organizations and were told they were receiving benefits or information. After only a few phone calls, it became painfully obvious that a large portion of these people were either financially struggling, lacked the education to fully understand the policies being pitched to them, or were extremely elderly and easily confused. Some could barely follow the conversation. Others sounded lonely and simply happy someone was talking to them. Yet the expectation was still the same: keep pushing, keep booking appointments, keep trying to close deals.

Here’s where it became even creepier. During these calls, you’re expected to stay connected to Zoom the ENTIRE time, completely unmuted, so your “mentor” can listen live, interrupt, correct you, and coach you in real time while you’re speaking to potential clients AND “make sure you are working at all times”. You had to ask permission to USE THE BATHROOM AND MUTE YOURSELF.

A situation in particular that genuinely stuck with me:

I witnessed another agent on a call with a single elderly man who calmly explained that he simply did not have extra income to afford another policy. While the man was speaking, the mentor suddenly started screaming through the Zoom call, instructing the agent to say — and I quote: “Can you really put a price on leaving your family with nothing to collect when you die?” The agent was obviously uncomfortable and hesitated instead of repeating it. The mentor immediately became furious. Meanwhile, the elderly man on the phone had gone silent because all he could hear was awkward dead air on the line. Eventually, he just hung up. The second the call ended, the mentor redirected everyone’s attention back to the Zoom and proceeded to criticize the agent for “losing the sale,” as if the issue wasn’t the fact that an elderly man had just explained he couldn’t financially survive another monthly payment.

At one point, the mentor actually asked us: “Does a lion care about the sheep’s feelings before it kills it to eat?” That was the mentality being pushed. That was the “mindset training.” And somehow, it only got stranger from there.

The following day, there was a branch-wide Zoom call with some of the higher-ups, including someone referred to as “Big Brah,” who is, in my opinion, one of the most unhinged people involved in the entire operation. He screamed at everyone for not completing 500 dials a day. He told us we “had no real desire for a better life” and “didn’t want it bad enough” claimed that if we weren’t actively dialing, we should either be sleeping or working. He demanded that everyone send screenshots of their iPhone screen time at the end of the day every day so he could supposedly see “who was really hungry” and “who deserved to be there.” And somehow, the environment got even more cult-like….. We were told the only acceptable reasons to not be working were going to the gym or “dieting.” Inside their Slack-style group chats, people were genuinely posting PROOF that they had gone to the gym along with photos of their “clean eating” meals for approval and validation from leadership….DAILY. The craziest part is that people were actually doing it!!! Fully grown adults reporting their screen time, workouts, meals, and daily activity to complete strangers in order to prove they were “committed” enough to sell insurance. At that point, it stopped feeling like a workplace entirely. It felt like a bizarre mix of toxic hustle culture, manipulation, and psychological control disguised as “motivation.”.

If you weren’t in the Zoom room exactly on time, your mentor would immediately start BLOWINGGGG up your phone with calls and messages asking the location of where you were, why you weren’t online, and what you were doing instead of working. It created this atmosphere where people felt guilty for having any life outside of the company. You were expected to be constantly available, constantly dialing, constantly “improving,” constantly proving yourself. There was this underlying pressure that if you slowed down for even a second, you “didn’t want success badly enough.” And the scary part is how quickly people normalized it. Having strangers monitor your activity, demand proof of your productivity, question your whereabouts, and pressure you into spending every waking hour working somehow became framed as “discipline” and “commitment.”

Here’s the gag-

You’re told there’s a second way to make money — and this is where the entire structure really starts to reveal itself. Instead of endlessly making calls yourself, you can recruit multiple agents underneath you and “build a team.” Once you have enough people under you, you transition from being the exhausted person cold-calling all day into becoming the mentor managing everyone else. In other words, you become the same person pressuring others to stay on Zoom for hours, tracking their activity, demanding productivity screenshots, and pushing them to sell policies or recruit more people beneath them.

The real money, they imply, comes from building downlines and living off the production of the people under you.

BUT it gets crazier….

The reality behind the “luxury lifestyle” being advertised online.

One thing that stood out immediately was the car situation. These “big dogs” constantly post themselves supposedly buying new Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Rolls-Royces every other month. The image they push is that they’re making so much money selling insurance with their teams that they can casually keep adding exotic cars to their collection. But if you actually pay very close attention, the cars NEVER come directly from Lamborghini, Ferrari, or Rolls-Royce dealerships. They repeatedly come from the SAME luxury used car dealership in Miami. Why are all these guys only buying their luxury cars from the same dealer? Well a little birdie told me that these vehicles are NOT being purchased outright at all — they’re being LEASED at extremely high monthly rates/ have a maximum number of miles they can not exceed and then the cars are swapped in and out frequently. That’s how they’re able to constantly post “new” cars within weeks or months of each other while making it appear as though they’re endlessly buying more and more luxury vehicles.

The entire thing is carefully curated for social media. It’s a LIE. Then there’s the living situation:

In many cases, multiple agents are actually secretly living together — sometimes 6 or 7 people in a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment — just to split the cost and make it affordable while they’re trying to survive on commission-based income in a Miami high rise. That detail never makes it into the posts. And in other situations, there’s another layer: some of the apartments or homes being shown aren’t even theirs. They’re borrowing or STAGINGGGG content in friends’ or family members’ places, presenting them as their own success story from insurance income. It is MADNESS.

This is unethical, and EMBARRASSING for those involved. Unfortunately it’s only the tip of the iceberg, I hope this is enough to steer some people clear.

Hi all,
I currently work as a team member at State Farm and have been for a little over a year. I love my agent, we top 3 in our territory for fire, auto & life. I never worked in insurance or sales before starting with her. Our office works mostly off of internet leads and I write anywhere from 30k-60k in premium a month for p&c and 3-5 life apps.
I recently have moved around an hour away from my old house. The commute now is driving me nuts, it’s over an hour in traffic and I cannot realistically do this long term. I did talk to her and she is not willing to budge on working from home whatsoever, even a day or 2. I also have 2 toddlers in daycare close to my new home.I was planning on calling State Farm offices around my new city this month and start considering other options. There are 3 in the area and at least 10 within 30 minutes of my new home.

My agent just came back from Vegas and basically shook our office pretty heavily. She said State Farm’s are going to be closing left and right, commission will be changing, shit is basically going to be hitting the fan. Now here’s the thing, is this a not good time to be looking for new positions? I know our office will be okay but she made it seem like State Farm’s goal is to basically erase the agent model and that very little State Farm’s are going to be able to function moving forward. Do I hold off on looking for a different office? I know long term there’s absolutely no way I can function working an hour away, it is just a matter of when I start looking.

Should I completely stray away from State Farm? There are a few Allstate, Farmers, 1 AmFam & AAA just in my city. I have only been in this industry for about a year. I honestly do love what I do now, I don’t want to screw over my agent, she has been great to me I just cannot spend 2.5 hours of my day everyday in traffic. If I do stay with State Farm, how do I approach this without pissing her off. I am assuming my new agent is going to call her if I do get potentially hired. Any advice is highly appreciated, thank you.

I'm currently working as a producer for a newer agency and while my Agency owners is awesome in providing a number of leads I tend to chew through them fast as I work 8-10 hours a day 7 days a week since I am building my foundation. I have been researching ways to prospect my own leads. Right now I don't have the capital yet to invest into increasing my own direct marketing etc. so I am wondering what no cost but high effort lead prospecting techniques I may be missing.

So far I am:
1 Requesting for referrals from anyone have a pleasant conversation with. I tend to get complemented as being very helpful and easy to work with so I try to leverage that into referrals on top of my happy customers.
2. Direct referral partnerships. This is not working quite as well as I was hoping as I am dealing more with lenders then realtors who are more and more going to automated systems for EOI, but I am reaching out to realtors, plumbers, and roofers to establish a referral partnership. This has not yielded anything yet but I know this takes time.
3. Social media. I try to answer questions and be helpful online, and then if appropriate reach out offering my services on home owner and other related social media sites. This has been pretty good so far as I tend to be a bit more on the technical knowledge side of being a producer so I often get customers who already spoke with an agent and they were told the wrong thing, so I get the "knows what they are doing" bonus points.
4. Friends and family, this is a pretty limited group as I am selling in a State where most of Family and Friends do not live, the few who are though do try to send people my way.

I am very happy with my agent even with the growing pains of a new agency, but as a 1099 if something does not pick up I will have to look elsewhere and I would honestly greatly prefer to grow with this agency if possible.

Any tips on other ways to prospect and use my free time to increase my own opportunities? Anyone know of a lead service that takes a percent of wins instead of flat rate or a similar model?

Also please do not contact me attempting to sell me leads or AI solutions, I have that covered.

As a bonus, questions, has anyone seen a remote based servicing or account manager positions that is salary with a fair commission package? I got my start in tech support turning angry customers into cross sales and that is a strength I would love to be able to lean in to, just seems like all servicing and even account management positions are not remote at the moment.

Looking for advice. Im currently captive agent and dont care for it at all. Its not me. I want to work independently i am looking at using first connect as well as another company

I am licensed in personal lines

May get.my medical back but currently focusing on auto and home.

Can anyone give me any advice has anyone left a captive job with hourly pay and commission and made it on there own and have no regrets?

Please any advice

Thanks in advance.

I’m a 28M and I got offered a position as an insurance broker. Long story short I got my 2-20 License and got offered a job from guy that’s I’ve become really close with. He has been running his own agency in another state since 2004 and wants to open another agency in the state I live in. He asked me to be the guy to run it, I will be the only guy in the office until the agency grows and we need to bring on more people. I have no prior insurance or sales experience but him and I have a good relationship and he’s told me many times I’m a hard worker and I hustle (I currently do valet and work at a place he visits very often). He said salary is 40k a year and I get 50% on new business and 25% on renewal. Is this a great opportunity or too good to be true? It sounds amazing and I’ve been looking for a career change into sales. What would you guys do if you were in my shoes?

We're a 7 person SaaS startup and just got quoted $15k/year minimum from Zoom͏Info. That's literally more than our entire marketing budget right now.

Currently using a mix of LinkedIn Sales Nav and manual research but it's killing our productivity. Our SDR is spending most of her time just finding contact info instead of actually reaching out to prospects. My cofounder keeps asking why our pipeline is so thin and I'm like... because we're doing data entry instead of selling.

Been looking at different zoominfo alternat͏ives this week. Narrowed it down to Pro͏speo and Apo͏llo based on features we actually need - verified emails, mobile numbers, and some kind of technographic filtering so we can find companies using our competitors' tools. Prospeo's accur͏acy claims caught my attention since bad data has burned us before with bounced emails tanking our domain reputation.

Anyone here made the switch to something che͏aper than ZoomInfo? What's your setup look like now? We need to pull the trigger on something this month but want to make sure we're not missing better options.

I wanted to get some feedback on how my current pay structure is set up.

Up until last year, it was 70% new business, %50 for renewals.

They switched me over to a 70% new business, 1.5% of the book of business renewal of the month.

does this sound like a good deal?

Very new to insurance. Hopped into a role as a producer at a captive agency fresh out of high school and have been in a couple of different roles in this industry to this point over these last 2 years. I always hear and see talk about how insurance is potentially the best industry to create substantial wealth long term where guys are living off renewals and putting lower hours into their work weeks towards the second half of their working career and playing golf at noon on a Wednesday after grinding and front loading that work at a young age.

My question to you who have done it. How? Is the only route owning an agency. Just starting one young and riding it out until eventually it clicks and you build? Or, is there other alternative routes such as plugging into someone else’s agency where you can still get that freedom and wealth long term?

I have been thinking about this for a little while now, maybe about a month. With my current job I'm an agent that is forced to an hourly schedule and paid as a W2 employee, but with the "commission" they pay us for getting sales feels so unmotivating.

I remember seeing a post mentioning how with their job, they pool all the commission pay from everyone's sales and pay you out based on how many sales you made from the last month. I think this is likely the same situation I'm in, because for example I recently had 3 sales that totaled to a 5k ANP. If I was an independent that would've paid me at least several thousand, but based on the employment, only counting those 3 sales, I'd be paid like $9 each.

Some of the pros of working here is that I don't pay for any leads and that all the calls done are on an automated system, also since it's hourly it's completely stable income.
Some of the cons are the constant QA reviews, being forced to an uncomfortable schedule, no extension so people I worked hard on can't call me back directly and there's no agent to agent transfer except for spanish. The "coachings" and lectures, the company can't stop changing scripts and processes.

But with going independent, I worry about leads, buying good leads might be too expensive for me, but I'll have my own schedule to control, bigger payouts when I do make a sale, and a direct line. If I go independent and start selling for the insurance company directly instead of through the agency I work at I worry about the whole list of pros and cons.

What advice would you guys have on staying as a captive or going independent? And to clarify, the field I'm in at the moment is life insurance.

Hi all,
I currently work as a team member at State Farm and have been for a little over a year. I love my agent, we are number one in our territory and I never worked in insurance or sales before starting with her. Our office works mostly off of internet leads and I write anywhere from 30k-60k in premium a month for p&c and 3-5 life apps.
I recently have moved around an hour away from my old house. The commute now is driving me nuts, it’s over an hour in traffic and I cannot realistically do this long term. I did talk to her and she is not willing to budge on working from home whatsoever, even a day or 2. I was planning on calling State Farm offices around my new city this month and start considering other options. There are 3 in the area and at least 10 within 30 minutes of my new home.

My agent just came back from Vegas and basically shook our office pretty heavily. She said State Farm’s are going to be closing left and right, commission will be changing, shit is basically going to be hitting the fan. Now here’s the thing, is this a not good time to be looking for new positions? I know our office will be okay but she made it seem like State Farm’s goal is to basically erase the agent model and that very little State Farm’s are going to be able to function moving forward. Do I hold off on looking for a different office? I know long term there’s absolutely no way I can function working an hour away, it is just a matter of when I start looking.

Should I completely stray away from State Farm? There are a few Allstate, Farmers, 1 AmFam & AAA just in my city. I have only been in this industry for about a year. I honestly do love what I do now, I don’t want to screw over my agent, she has been great to me I just cannot spend 2.5 hours of my day everyday in traffic. Any advice is highly appreciated, thank you.

I applied to a job where I’d be selling life insurance. I’ve got no experience at all. I’m gonna have this interview tomorrow for it. What would be good questions for me to ask? Only thing I know is this job is commissioned based and they give you leads.

Hey everyone, looking for some honest feedback from people in the insurance world.
I’m currently a realtor in Ohio doing both residential and commercial real estate. I have no issue talking to people, networking, and building relationships, but for whatever reason seller leads have been few and far between lately. Since the recent buyer-side changes, buyer leads have slowed down too.
One thing I do have is a strong commercial network. I currently work with a large book of commercial clients who collectively own 150+ hotels, convenience stores, truck stops, and gas stations, plus I have connections with other commercial business owners.
Because of that, I’ve been seriously considering keeping my real estate license while getting my P&C license and adding insurance as another income stream.
I spoke with a local independent (non-captive) broker in my town who said I could come on as a 1099 producer and split a percentage of my commissions with him. He also mentioned he’s working on expanding more into commercial lines, which is what interests me most.
My questions:
Does this sound like a smart move given my existing network?
How difficult is it to break into commercial P&C compared to residential personal lines?
For someone with relationship-building and sales experience, what does the ramp-up realistically look like?
Would you focus on commercial accounts first if you already had those connections?
Anything I should watch out for in a 1099 producer arrangement with an independent broker?
I’m trying to figure out if this is a legitimate opportunity I should pursue or if I’m underestimating the learning curve.
Appreciate any advice from people who’ve been in the business.

I currently work at State Farm and are in there aspirant program. However with new contract they are rolling out, seems like a good time to leave. Took away health benefits,the retirement and lowered base for agents.

Is it still worth staying? With all of these agents retiring there’s a good chance I could land my own office but should I take it if I get the offer?

My next move would be independent or commercial. Thoughts?

Hello. I have an offer contingent on a background check. I submitted it may 7th, the background people tell me its still in the works. Im very frustrated at this.

I have a life and health license in Texas (Austin). I am working on my P&C now. Im 55, former tech guy, I work very hard, am hungry to succeed.

I need work. Anyone want to hire me?

Texas dept. Of insurance did a background check on me and passed it in two days... so my background isn't a problem.

I’ve tried running my own but I want to work with an experienced team who runs successful ads on Facebook using Gohighlevel forms instead of the Facebook?

Just looking for some insight from people who work in this area. Was putting together some thoughts for a friend and just wanted your perspective.

I have my state exam coming up Friday morning, I was hired on Monday morning.

Going through ExamFX. Still failing the quizzes.

Any tips I can use to help better my chances of passing the exam and not losing my job?

TIA!

Hey everyone , for those buying insurance live transfers at scale, how are you finding reliable vendors that consistently deliver quality calls?

There are so many companies out there, but it’s hard to know who actually sends exclusive, compliant, high-intent transfers versus recycled or low-quality calls.

What do you usually look for before working with a vendor? Things like call recordings, refund policies, TCPA compliance, exclusivity, minimum durations, etc.?

Would appreciate hearing what’s worked (or what red flags to avoid)