Hunter Nelson (speaker) provides an overview of his insurance agency’s history, hiring timeline, growth trajectory, business focus, and culture. He says the agency started in May 2022, began as a home-and-auto shop, shifted to trucking as the main focus, grew rapidly, and emphasizes hiring highly motivated staff, strict client selection (denying roughly half of prospects), professional standards, and a goal to become the largest locally owned agency in South Dakota. He names early hires: his father (first ~6 months), Becky (hired June 2023; still with the agency, office manager/CSR role), and first agent Julian (hired November 2023).
Questions this video answers
May 2022.
His father (worked with him about six months).
June 2023.
Julian, hired November 2023.
Started with home and auto; current main focus is trucking.
Chapters
All right, I'm gonna do basically another little overview of agency information and just a little bit about the agency. So a little bit about the agency. We. Let's see here. We started in May of 22. First year it was just me. That door knocked like crazy. My dad was with me for about six months. So for the first six months is me and him. Let's see. Probably about the first year. First year is just me and him actually. I door knocked like crazy. He kind of helped me out show for a couple hours a day. And then after that, I hired my first person, which was Becky. Becky is still with us. And she. And she kills it. She's not the office manager. And so hired Becky. That was, you know, 2023. I hired her in June of 23rd, I believe. And then we hired our first agents. Oh, November of 23, which was Julian. So. So bear with us for about a year, about a year and a half. But yeah, that's a little bit about the agency. Start as home and auto. Now we're doing trucking as our main focus now. As you know, we do like to have. We. We. We just really target middle, middle market. So I've. I've done the home and auto. The CSRs into home and auto because it's a great cross sale. All CSRs can cross sale. Our referral partners can cross sale other policies to our clients. For example, I sold Mark to cook and if I had a commercial C at the time, they could have cross sell his home and auto. And his work comp is that is stuff he asked for. And actually I sent him selling it because I have a C at the time. But you guys keep doing that and then, yeah, we grow. We grow very, very. We're growing very, very fast. So kind of like what I was saying, beginning agency or beginning of the other video there is. We are growing at a very rapid pace. The largest agency, locally owned agency in South Dakota. Oh, I don't actually. I don't even know how much how fast they grow. I want to say, seriously, they grew about the same rate we did after talking to one of the guys over there. Not that I want to compare ourselves or I'm putting anybody down, but we are just growing very, very fast. You know, I do have the study here from 2024. It says with the average. Average agent rights, what the average agency writes, how long they've been around for that certain size. The average agency that is 50% bigger than us. So one of the year, hopefully about double the size we are now. So after our three and a half years, we will be larger than the average agency after 40 years. So. And that'll be three and a half years. So. So again I just say that I hire, I hire very, very motivated people. I'm a very motivated person myself, very competitive person. I just want to make sure that everybody keeps this culture and not that it's going to be, you know, hey, work is life, but. And your life is work. But I want everybody to succeed and I want, I want us to succeed and I want everybody to make a lot of money. So that's, you know, that's what we're doing here. It's not, this is not your typical just hey, getting in low stress job, you know, don't worry about it ever again. You know, I could just come in, you know, kind of, kind of pass made hours and, and get out with life because you know, I could have people like that. But then I have to pay like it. I pay everybody as how much money they bring in and, and how well they do. So I'm here to help everybody grow. But just a little bit information on the agency. You know, we like to offer some risk management services. We are very picky on the clients we bring in and that, I mean that's, that's for real. We deny probably about half the people we have come in the door and we want to keep doing that. If anything we want to keep. Tonight we probably want to die even more. Just kind of going over this stuff again. If there's really anything that needs to be get just kind of run over, you know, again, like our, our branding, our values, our mission. We are here to succeed and take over. You know, my goal or the agency's goal too, I mean, is to be the largest local owned agency in South Dakota. That sounds crazy, you know, to be one of the large locally owned. But these big guys get bought out by, by the ABC companies and the ABC companies are the monsters. The guys who have billions of dollars on the books. They are Acushure locked in marsh, McLennan, brown and brown Aon. I've never, I don't plan on ever selling out those big guys. I want to be here to have a common name and, and you know, we've been around for three years and everybody's joining this stuff early. So I don't, I don't like motivation. So I'm not trying to get all motivation, everybody motivational on everybody. But we are just here to succeed. I want everybody to feel like they're like they have the resources to succeed, that I help them to succeed. And that's what we're here to do. And again, just following our values, you know, I don't want to ever step outside those values. I never want to put the agency or your job or anything at risk for one client. We never want to do that. I never want to put anything at risk for one client. I don't ever want to put our brand or reputation at risk to win over one client. I don't care if it's a five million dollar account. I'm not stepping outside those guidelines because, you know, and I mean, we could write 5 million back the right way and soon enough that'll be pretty easy. Some other things to kind of go over here quick are the action plans. You guys should review this over again. You guys should review this. And signed off saying, that's fine, just kind of touch on it real quick. Actually, you know what, you guys have already reviewed it just to kind of touch on it real quick. The agency act, the agent action plan, you know, that's not set in stone, but it, it's something we wanted to do. We want to be writing good business every month. We want to be writing a lot of it. You know, I get no problem if you feel like, hey, it's been three months, I can't figure out how to sell. There's no harm in that. You can be a csr. A lot of the big guys, a lot of the big agencies like Bone and Associates, they start you off a CSR for a year and a half before you become an agent. So it's not a bad idea. I just, I just think we can put people as a, as an agent, I can get a little more involved than other agencies can, so I can help you be there. But if you guys want to be a csr, you guys want to maybe try another role, you got no problem doing that. I wouldn't even take. That's not even, that's not even a bad thing. It's just saying I want to, When I, When I want to go do something, I want to do it right, and I want to know exactly what I'm doing. So that's just fine. You know, our employee handbook. We, We're a professional agency. We, this is a professional office. We want to make sure we're acting a professional way. You know, at the time I'm recording this, everybody is in their 20s, plus Becky. But, you know, we do want to be, we do want to be professional office, and we don't hold everybody to a high Standard. You know, I was talking to the number three State Farm agent in the nation. I met him at a business conference and he said there's five, there's five important things that an agency has to worry about. Number one is culture. But it takes over everything by a long shot. So you know, we, if, if somebody is working with us hard than the next person, than the person next to them, it's, it's going to show on everybody. And I don't want, I don't want anybody to be having to work harder than the person next to them. If you're an agent, I guess I don't really care, you know, know you get paid. You kill what you eat what you kill. And so if you are going to be lazy peer the next person, the person next to you, it's, it's going to be, I mean you, you're going to feel that, you're going to feel that. But you know, if you're a salary or anything else then you know we always want to encourage each other and grow together. But yeah, I mean this, I mean this, this step is really. We kind of went over the last step, the last deal. But I just want to show everybody, you know, what this agency, what this agency is, what this means. Everybody here. I hope that we're all together, we just achieve greatness and we, we kill it and take this thing to the moon. We are not even a small agency. We are small compared to some of the guys been around for 100 and some years because they're honestly our agencies in Taco have been around for 50 to 150 years. So we are small compared to them. But the guys who started around the same time as us or the production per producer count, we kill IT compared to 90 of the agencies in South Dakota here. So we're part of a great team but excited to see what everybody, what everybody does here and it succeeds and how we, and how we just take this thing to the moon. So let's get on to the next step and start getting to the quoting binding all the day to day stuff here for you guys.
