Who you would actually be dealing with

I live in Columbus with my wife and our four children. I hold an Ohio property and casualty license.

I ran my own company for seven years. I started a software consultancy in 2010, grew it from myself to a small team, and delivered work for enterprise clients until 2017. I made payroll every one of those years. That is the part of my background that matters most here, because it is the part most people who call you have never done.

Before that I spent six years in the Navy's nuclear program, as an electronics technician on aircraft carriers. You qualify on a reactor prototype before you are allowed near an operating plant, and nothing about that work rewards improvisation. Since then I have led engineering teams — nine people at a consulting firm, then building the engineering organization at a biotech company from its first hire. I have a master's in entrepreneurship from Oklahoma State.

I am looking to buy one insurance agency, because I want to own and run a business properly rather than advise on many. Between the Navy, the consultancy and the engineering teams, I have spent my career fixing the operational problems that cap a business like this one. Almost none of them are the part the owner is good at. It is renewals nobody chased, a producer's book that lives in their head, and a service process that only works because one person remembers everything.