Criteria
What I look for
Here's the shape of what I'm looking for, so you can see in a minute whether we're in the same neighborhood.
Why insurance
It's a good business and a growing one. Renewals recur, clients stay for years, and the book you build compounds — an agency run well becomes more valuable every year it's owned.
And it's a business about people. Insurance is what lets a machine shop take on a bigger contract, a family replace the roof after the storm, a business owner sleep at night knowing somebody has their back.
The shape of the agency
- Revenue
- Roughly $500K to $2M in annual commission and fee income.
- Mix
- Commercial P&C led. Personal lines and benefits alongside it are fine.
- Retention
- Roughly 85% or better.
- Geography
- Ohio. I'm licensed here and live in Columbus, so this is where I can serve a book from day one.
- What you want for your people
- What you've promised them, out loud or not. Who's close to retiring, who was going to buy in one day, who's been carrying more than their title says.
- Owner situation
- Planning to step back and either sell and leave, hand over gradually, or stay on as a producer.
What does not disqualify you
Messy financials
Personal expenses in the business, no clean P&L, a chart of accounts nobody's touched in years — I've seen plenty of messy books. We'll sort it out together; it just takes longer.
No agency management system
Or one that's really an expensive address book. Untangling that kind of thing is the part of the work I'm most at home in.
You are still the biggest producer
That's most agencies this size, and it's the kind I'm looking for. It usually means you stick around a little longer, and we shape the sale around that.
You have talked to other buyers
Good. You should know what the market says before you take anyone's number, including mine.
Close enough to worth a call?
If two or three of these fit and the rest don't, that's still a conversation.