I’ve watched agencies get swallowed up because the owner refused to change. I’ve been in those rooms. I’ve had those conversations. Here’s what I know.
BY MITCH GIBSON
The First Step Has Nothing to Do With Technology
I know that’s not what you want to hear. Everyone wants a tool recommendation, a software stack, a new system to drop in and fix everything. But none of that works until you do the harder thing first: check your ego at the door.
The industry is changing. It’s not getting any younger either. The clients who used to walk through your door to pay a bill or request a quote? Those days are largely behind us. If you’re still running your agency like it’s 2010, you’re not just behind the curve. You’re actively handing your best clients and your best people to someone else.
“If you don’t pivot your mindset first, you’re going to lose quality staff, you’re going to lose business, and you’re probably going to be consumed and bought by another agency. The old ways of doing business are not the ways you need to be looking at for the future.”
That’s the starting point. Not a new CRM. Not a virtual hire. The decision, made genuinely, not just said out loud, that you’re going to run this business for the benefit of your customers and your staff.
Ask yourself honestly: Does your agency want to be here for five years or thirty-five? If it’s five, maybe the status quo gets you there. If it’s thirty-five, you have to start accepting change now. And not just on your terms.
The Three Pivots That Actually Move the Needle
Once you’ve made that mindset shift, truly made it, not just nodded at it, here’s where I’d focus your energy. In this order.
PIVOT 01: Give Your People Real Ownership
Not equity in the business. Ownership of specific functions, processes, and decisions. Think about this: if you’re the agency owner and you’re still the one approving every workflow tweak and every technology decision, you are the bottleneck. Your younger employees, the ones in the CRM all day, the ones feeling the friction? They understand what needs to change better than you do. Stop overriding them. Start listening. The feedback you’ve been dismissing might be exactly what saves you.
PIVOT 02: Build for Remote and Hybrid, For Real This Time
Foot traffic is gone. I don’t mean it’s declining. I mean the model of running your agency around people walking through your door is functionally over for most markets. The agencies winning right now have built systems that let their team work from anywhere. Yes, it takes work upfront. Yes, you have to think about computers, security, internet, communication tools. Most owners stop right there and use that complexity as an excuse. Don’t be that agency. The payoff is real: lower overhead, wider talent pool, and a team that isn’t burning out under one roof.
PIVOT 03: Rethink Who You’re Hiring and For What
I talked with an agency owner recently who wanted to find a tech-savvy hire to run their CRM, build automations, and manage integrations. His instinct was to go find an IT professional at $80 to $90K a year. My advice: flip it. Look for that young producer already in your agency, the one who’s sharp, hungry, and willing to grow, and invest in turning them into your technology lead. They already know how insurance works. Teaching someone tech is easier than teaching someone insurance. You’re multiplying an asset you already have instead of importing someone who has to learn your entire world from scratch.
The Virtual Staffing Misconception I Hear Constantly
Here’s the thing. Agency owners hear “virtual staffing” and they immediately picture someone overseas who won’t understand their business. That fear isn’t crazy. But the risk people are imagining is the wrong one.
The real risk isn’t where someone is located. It’s hiring anyone, domestic, remote, in the office down the hall, who doesn’t understand how your agency actually operates. A virtual employee who doesn’t know your workflows is going to struggle, no matter how technically skilled they are. Does that make sense? The question before any hire should always be: do they understand this business, or can they be trained to?
If you’re not willing to open your mind to flexible hiring, remote, virtual, hybrid, you’re going to keep overpaying for employees who leave in two years and keep wondering why you can’t build stable teams. I’ve seen it happen too many times. The agencies that figured this out are not looking back.
Let Me Push Back on the “Get Your Time Back” Narrative
I’m not doing that. I’m sorry. The whole “hire a VA, go golf at 3pm” pitch? I think it’s trash. It sets agency owners up for disappointment every single time.
When you bring on virtual support, you don’t get your time back. You get your time redirected. There’s a massive difference. Your staff, wherever they are in the world, still needs your leadership. They need culture, direction, feedback, and someone who actually cares whether they grow. Train them, or they’ll check out. That applies to virtual employees just as much as it does to the person sitting ten feet from your desk.
What virtual staffing actually gives you is the capacity to work on the right things. Instead of getting buried in service tasks and admin work, you can focus on growth, relationships, and the decisions only you can make. But you have to stay in the game. Your staff is only going to grow as much as you invest in them.
Career Pathing: The Retention Play Nobody Talks About
This is the one I want to close on, because it’s the most underutilized low-hanging fruit in agency management right now.
If someone joins your agency as a CSR and they can see clearly, concretely, that there’s nothing beyond that role waiting for them, you will lose them. Maybe in a year. Maybe two. But they’ll leave. Younger people especially want to see a trajectory. They want KPIs they can hit, titles that mean something, and a path toward earning more or taking on a senior role.
Build that out. Map it from CSR to licensed CSR to managing rep. Show them what a leadership role could look like down the road. Document it. Make it real. And this isn’t just for your in-office team. It applies to every virtual team member too.
When people feel like they have a future with your agency, they stop shopping their resume. That’s how you build something that lasts thirty-five years instead of five. At the end of the day, that’s the whole game.
The bottom line: The agencies that thrive in the next decade won’t necessarily be the ones with the biggest book. They’ll be the ones whose owners made a real decision, at some honest moment, that the old way was done. And committed fully to what comes next.
Ready to build your agency for the next decade?
The team at Virtual Intelligence works exclusively with independent insurance agencies who are serious about scaling smarter, with the right virtual talent, the right systems, and the operational know-how to make it work from day one. If what I’ve laid out here resonates, they’re the people I’d point you to.