Hey everybody,

Sorry I’ve been MIA - February through April is always a gauntlet with conferences, but now its Summer and I’m ready to lock back in.

Over the last few months as I’ve chatted with agents all over the country, and it seems like everyone is struggling to attract AND keep employees.

So, I figured I’d share how we thinking about the "Employee Value Proposition” of working for us at Peachy Insurance. We have numerous people who have been with us over five years, and several who have worked with us for near a decade.

When somebody comes to work at Peachy Insurance or Next Call Club, we’re not just telling them about a job. We’re selling them an opportunity and a vision. We have to give them a reason to pick us, a reason to grow, and a reason to ultimately stick around!

So today, I want to break down the four pillars of a great Employee Value Proposition (EVP). If you're struggling to attract candidates, or if you're hiring people and they're not sticking around, this one is for you.

If the embedded link doesn’t work, you can access the video here: Click Me

For the best experience and most information, I highly suggest you click the video!

The four pillars of a great value proposition are:

1.) Pay

2.) Benefits

3.) Culture

4.) Development

Each is important, and all four take work to lock-in and make amazing. Some focus too much on one, and too little on another.

Lets be frank: Pay is table stakes. It is the bare minimum required to get someone to come and work with you.

If your pay isn’t good enough, nothing else matters and we’ll get into that a bit more.

Pay is hands down, the most important of the four pillars and its incredibly important to get right.

Get it wrong, and either your team doesn’t make any money or YOU don’t make any money.

And look, I’m not saying that money is the only motivator. Its not, and it would be foolish to think that it is. But its is the CORE motivator so we need to get it right.

That's why I always tell agents to put your pay structure right at the top of your job ad. In bold. Salary, bonus opportunity, and whether you're paying W2 or 1099. Put it right up front, because its what every applicant is looking for.

This is the million dollar question I’m always asked:

“Should I pay a high base with lower commission, or a low base with aggressive commission.”

When the compensation plan has a low base and the commission is mediocre, you’re going to get the bottom-of-the-barrel people, who are either desperate for work or not good enough to work anywhere else.

And while I don’t want to be rude or judgmental, I think most people know exactly what I’m talking about.

But what do people always say: "I want to pay a low base and a high upside because I want hungry people."

And while I get that logic, it also means you’re going to limit your hiring pool. If someone is 22 years old and has no kids maybe they can take a low salary with no benefits and take a bet on themselves.

But what about the 35 year old breadwinner with three kids and a mortgage? They might need a $60k or $70k base just to have the conversation with you. If you don't have that base, you've already excluded them. Which means the candidates you do attract have less experience which means you better be really good at developing people.

If you're not great at developing people? Pay the higher salary and bring in experienced candidates. You’re paying a premium for time and knowledge (and thats OK).

We pay a higher base and a lower commission. People can earn $65k, $85k, or $95k base salaries depending on what they're producing. Minimums are high, and we use a “draw” to make the math work. In layman’s terms, it means that what you produce, on average over the next six months, determines your salary for the next six months. And just like you can raise your salary by doing well, if you don’t keep doing well, your salary can drop too (but that rarely happens).

It's a unique setup but we've been running it for a decade and it hasn’t failed us yet. Our best salespeople sit in the $90,000 to $100,000 base range, write 100+ items a month, and we still make money on them. And the best part is, they’re making a ton of money themselves AND are unlikely to leave since they’ll be looking for a similar base.

I'm linking our actual comp plan inside this newsletter so you can download it and look at the structure: Click Here for Comp Plan

If you want me to look at your comp plan and give you some thoughts, just shoot me an email, I’m happy to do it.

Some agents do annual reviews with a small inflation bump. Others say "if you want to make more, just sell more," which is technically true but can feel discouraging. Everyone wants to make more money than they did last year, and salary raises support that goal.

Here's what we do. Every six months, we re-evaluate production. What you did the past six months sets your salary for the next six months.

Somebody can come in at $48,000 a year (base plus what we call the gimme bonuses) and raise their salary to $65,000 or $75,000 in the first six months. They have to write a lot of business consistently to do it. But they can earn their way up, and once they hit a level, that becomes their floor.

Two big benefits to doing it this way:

1.) Getting a big salary raise quickly is extremely motivating.

2.) That new salary becomes their psychological floor. Somebody making $75k base is not gonna take a phone call from a recruiter offering $45k. It prevents poaching.

Yes, paying a higher base means you take more risk as the owner. But you're an entrepreneur. You're supposed to take risk. Its rare for a staff member to be entrepreneurial, so stop asking them to act like an owner. If they're willing to take big risk on themselves, they're probably able to leave and start an agency on their own anyways.

There is no right or wrong answer here, truly. Find what works for you, but weight the pros and cons.

Think about it from your own POV.

If you’re a captive agent, you’re chasing a year-end bonus. If you’re an Indepedent Agent, you’re chasing profit sharing. These are MASSIVE opportunities as an agency owner to increase the revenue of our business and its a huge carrot.

So why would it be any different for your salespeople?

We give bonuses for writing $1M in premium. Bonuses for writing 1,000 items. And here's the part that's in our handbook: if Peachy gets a 4% year-end bonus from the carrier, our staff gets a 4% year-end bonus too. Same percentage, top to bottom.

This matters more than people realize. It keeps people pushing through November and December instead of pulling back. It tells them that when the company wins, they win and that we’re all in it together.

I think its uncommon for an agency owner to cut their staff in on bonus, and for good reason. It costs a lot of money in terms of staff, marketing, and time to hit that bonus, but we operate profitably throughout the year, and we’re happy to share in that.

One of the biggest mistakes I see agents make is not talking about the dollar value of their benefits package. Benefits are a part of pay - whether its a direct monetary benefit, or a benefit in-kind.

You should be talking about the dollar value of your benefits package early and often ESPECIALLY if that benefit package is robust . We just talked about how people are often unwilling to take a step back in salary. The same thing goes for benefits, so lean into that.

I've talked about this over and over but it bears repeating. A PEO (Professional Employment Organization) is a godsend for an agency owner.

It can literally replace an entire person who does administrative work in your agency, and if you’re still doing payroll, benefits, and HR yourself, its time to give yourself a break.

We use Justworks (more below) but there are a number of PEO companies out there. Amongst other things, when working with a PEO you get:

If you're not on a PEO, consider it - Justworks is amazing and my contact Dan Park (don’t call the 1800 number or random website) is the best person you can talk to. Here is his email: [email protected]

A lot of agents don’t offer group health insurance and its usually for one of three reasons:

1.) They don’t want to pay for it.

2.) They believe their staff won’t use it

3.) The cost is prohibitive for a group plan so they do “reimbursement”

The reality is that access to health insurance is a GREAT value add for anyone, much less someone who has a family.

So, if you’re not offering insurance because of what it costs, think about what not having great employees is costing you? I promise you, its so much more than a couple hundred dollars a month for insurance.

If you believe your staff won’t use it, well, things change. People have life changes, they have health scares, and new employees come along. The idea is to give them the option, and if they don’t take it, well that is their prerogative. But like dad always said: “Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.”

And if the cost is prohibitive for a group plan, so you’re doing $300 or $400 a month in reimbursement, you’re almost certainly going to pay less money as the owner AND get better plans if you go through a PEO. For instance we pay $250ish per employee and our team can pick from 9 plans across Aetna, United Healthcare, and Kaiser with the cheapest plan costing something like $60 pre-tax a month for the individual employee.

We give 21 days off starting in year two. People sometimes look at me sideways for that. "21 days? You're crazy."

And while that is a lot there are two reasons. First, its not 21 days to use however they want, there are some strings attached (see below).

Also, we ride people hard at Peachy Insurance. We're asking for 15 quotes a day, first-call binds, and a lot of “pushing” day in and day out. That kind of pace burns people out quickly without rest. So we give the time, but we have some rules about how it gets used.

For instance, five of those days off must be taken off in succession as a sabbatical.

Why you might ask?

Because what was happening before was people taking a Monday or Friday off and stacking long weekends. They never actually rested and we were constantly down staff members. While you might say “who cares if they hit their numbers” - the reason is that we staff telemarketing and buy leads to push transfer volume. When we are short on people, we drop transfers and thats no bueno.

The point I make to the team all the time: I'm all about work-life balance, as long as you hit your goals. If you're leaving at 5:30 on the dot and taking every PTO day and missing your goals, you're not gonna be here long. Balance is great, but don’t focus so hard on balance that you end up unemployed.

Hit your goals when you're here. Take time off and rest when you're not. Its that simple.

Don’t forget that remote work is a benefit for your team!

The average savings for someone working from home is $5,000 to $10,000 a year depending on where they live. Gas is over $4 a gallon nationally and I just saw $6 in Nevada last week!

So, if you are offering remote work - lean into how much of a benefit that is!

If you're trying to recruit somebody from a remote job into an in-office job, you have to understand: that's $5,000 to $10,000 of value they're giving up. Plus wear and tear on the car. Plus lunches out. Plus the time spent getting ready and commuting.

If you're in-office and you don't have a sales pit or active training going on, you don't have a value proposition. Why would anybody come in just to sit in a cube?

So lean into whichever side you're on. Remote? Sell the savings. In-office? Sell the energy and the development.

Not everybody offers retirement. Some agents do a 401k, some do a Simple IRA, a lot do nothing.

We do a 2% match through a 401k housed through Justworks. (And in full transparency, we should probably raise that. It's been a minute since we looked at it.)

Here's the thing about retirement plans. It used to be a "nice to have." Now I get feedback from candidates regularly that without retirement, it doesn’t make them look at it as a career option, but rather a stepping stone. So, just something to think about.

We vest immediately. A lot of agents do a longer vest, three or four years, because they think it'll keep people around and I understand the logic.

But here's why we don't. The last thing I want is somebody on my team who's unhappy, who wants to leave, but is sticking around for six more months waiting on their match to vest.

This week’s edition of All Aboard is brought to you by:

We have been talking about benefits, and y’all know I’m a huge fan of Justworks. They also support this newsletter and help keep it free for all of you, so give it a look!

Justworks helps with that by helping insurance agents provide amazing benefits to employees like group health insurance, vision, dental, mental health services, and so much more.

They offer a ton of benefits for you as the business owner too. Things like tax savings, HR services, and helping to ensure you don’t get sued or fined.

We’ve worked with Justworks for 5 years now and they helped us reduce our healthcare premiums, payroll costs, and eliminated our need for an internal HR person while handling all our state compliance for remote employees.

Their team is stellar and they have so many solutions to help agents beyond what I just listed.

If you’re not 100% satisfied with your payroll and health benefits provider, I highly encourage you to reach out to them.

Want an introduction, I’m happy to make it happen - Just let me know.

If you want to reach out yourself, you can email our account rep Dan Park at [email protected].

P.S - I’ve heard people call in on the main phone line or email a generic form and have choppy experiences, but nobody has ever said that when they reached out to Dan directly. He’s a great guy and knows his shit inside and out!

When I think of an employee value proposition, I often think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The bottom two levels are physiological (food, water, shelter) and safety (security, medicine, stability). Pay and benefits cover those two levels. They're the foundation and those needs must be met before anything else matters.

But once those are met, people move up the hierarchy and we start to think about belonging, self-esteem, and what type of person we want to be and what we want to achieve.

Thats where Culture and Development (pillar 4) come in.

I'm bringing this up before we get into culture because I want to be really clear: Culture is not throwing ice cream parties and having fun in the office. That stuff does not matter if pay and benefits suck. It also doesn't matter if people feel like they can lose their job at any moment, or they don’t know where they stand with their boss.

Culture is how somebody feels about their job on a Sunday night. Do they want to come in Monday morning, or do they dread it? Do people call out on Mondays often? Spoiler alert - They hate their job or they party too hard (usually the former).

One of the best signals you have a good culture? Somebody who's clearly in the wrong role, who isn't great at the job, who maybe doesn't even like the work, doesn’t want to quit because they love the team.

That's a culture win, but it's also a leadership problem. Because it's our job to get that person into a role where they can thrive. And if there isn't one, it's our job to help them get to the next step in their career.

Recognition runs two directions. Leader-to-employee, and peer-to-peer.

Peer recognition is what creates belonging. When your team is cheering each other on, giving each other props, celebrating wins together, that's the warm fuzzy feeling that makes people not want to leave even when the job is hard.

Leader recognition is what creates esteem. When the boss comes in and says, "You're crushing it. I see what you're doing and it matters," that lands differently than praise from their peers. That's where pride in one’s work comes in. You wouldn’t believe how many people come to work with us and tell us this is the first time they’ve ever felt recognition at work.

We often discount this stuff way too easily and shake our heads at the “everyone gets a trophy” generation. We look at the leaderboard, we look at the spreadsheet, and we say "the numbers are the numbers." Sometimes they are but its not uncommon for people bring intangibles that the spreadsheet doesn't show. I’ll give you an example….

Shane Battier was an NBA player for 13 years and a 4 year starter at Duke. He won a National Championship in college and two championships as a pro.

If you pulled up his stat line you wouldn’t see anything special or anything that stands out. But here's what made him special….. When Shane Battier was on the court, everyone else's stats got better. He brought intangibles you had to look a little deeper for. He was the guy that Lebron and D-Wade turned to when they needed advice on how to approach someone they had to defend or how to attack another team. He is incredibly smart and saw things other player’s didn’t.

I had a guy on my sales team that never put up big numbers. Sometimes he even missed the monthly goal. People used to ask me, "Why do you keep him? He's setting a bad example."

And I'd say, you're not wrong if you're only looking at the leaderboard. But here's what you didn't see unless you sat in the room. He was the most tenured guy in there by a decade. Seven of the nine salespeople were asking him for tips and help multiple times a day. He was basically a coach on the floor that had more knowledge than the leaders.

Did he show up as the number one guy on the sales board? No. He was usually toward the bottom. Did he add value? 100%.

Look for the Shane Battiers on your team and find a way to make it a win. If they’re not producing and there are no extra intangibles, jet em.

This is one of our hard rules at Peachy: Every manager is promoted from within.

If we create a brand new position that didn't exist before, we may consider looking outside the organization for an expert.

But if you need a manager, and you don’t have anyone on your team that can fill that role, then you need to start developing people now.

We only promote from within for two main reasons: One, managers who've done the job can call BS when they need to. They know what their team is going through because they were just going through it. Two, and this is the bigger one, it proves to everybody else that growth is possible within the organization. "Look at her. Two years ago she was on the phones. Now she's running a team. That can be me."

That's a way more powerful recruiting and retention message than anything you can put in a job ad.

And in my experience, hiring managers from outside almost never works. You overpay, they don't know your culture, and you usually end up backing out of it within a year.

You have to define the culture you want to live by and if that culture is only defined in your mind, there is no way that the team can understand it much less follow it.

Want it to stick? Well it needs to be written down.

AND if you want to hold anyone accountable to it (including yourself) you need something you can reference back to.

Let's say one of your stated values is "we don't make excuses, we find solutions." Now somebody on your team is making excuses. Without a written culture document, the conversation goes:

You: "Stop making excuses."

Them: "I’m not - its not fair to just ignore the reasons”

Now it's a back-and-forth and its you .vs. them.

But if you have it written: "Hey, remember that culture document we built together where we said we don't make excuses, we find solutions? Right now you're out of accordance with that. So what's the solution?"

Same conversation. Totally different feeling. It becomes solution-oriented instead of personal. It hits wayyyy differently when it's referencing something we already agreed to as a team.

And the point here is that if you’re unilaterally defining culture as the leader, thats well within your rights, but its going to hit a lot harder when its something people build together.

Of all the pillars, development is my favorite. I value education and learning EXTREMELY highly and feel strongly that investing in either is the best ROI you’ll get in your business.

But here is the thing…

Everybody thinks they want growth, but not everyone actually does.

And while sometimes people get to later in their career and they actually just want stability and security, thats not true for most people.

Growth is what keeps people engaged.

A lot of people think development means becoming a manager, and without that possibility, growth is impossible.

But I call bullshit! Growth comes in all shapes and forms!

Development can be: "I want to be the best salesperson I can possibly be. I want to know everything about the auto policy so I can be a great advocate for our customers."

It can be: "I want to get better at handling conflict” or “I want to get better at negotiation."

It can be getting one percent better every single day at the same job you're already doing.

That counts too!

We've had multiple team members get MBAs on our dollar while working for us, multiple people have picked up advanced certifications, and so many more have taken courses to improve a specific skill or learn a brand new one!

Every single new hire gets the same speech from me: "I hope you use every dollar of your education reimbursement. Because if you don't use it, you lose it. So use it."

If you're not offering education dollars right now, even a few hundred a year, start. It's a cheap benefit that signals huge things about how you view your people.

And if you’re a leader at Peachy Insurance or Next Call Club, it is EXPECTED that you use your full $5,250 a year.

Its our job as leaders to set the example for growth.

This is the framework we run when we approach development.

Development should be employee-led, manager-supported.

It is NOT the manager's job to do the development work for the employee or necessarily even decide what they work on. It IS the manager's job to bring up the conversation, ask the right questions, and help guide the employee in their growth path.

Think of it like a venn-diagram. On the left hand side, you have a circle that encompasses what the employee is interested in, and on the right hand side you have a circle that encompasses what the organization needs.

Where it intersects is where the development focus should be.

Let me be blunt. If you're a manager and you're not training your team to do their job better consistently (ideally daily) and you're not having career growth conversations with them at least once or twice a quarter? You are not doing your job.

The number one job of a manager is to develop their people.

But the manager doesn't pick the path. The employee picks. The manager bridges the gap and supports the journey.

We do written development plans for our people. If you want to see what one of those looks like, just shoot me an email. Happy to share an example.

We have had five or six people leave Peachy Insurance to go open their own agencies, and we could not be happier or more proud of them.

I've had multiple people call me and say, "Andrew, I think it's time. I'm gonna go open my own shop." And every single time, my answer is "Congratulations. How can I help?"

People are sometimes shocked by that reaction. But if I’m an entrepreneur, then why would I ever hold someone back from being one too?

One of our best producers recently left to open his own agency. Losing his knowledge, leadership and production sucked. I won't pretend it didn't, but it was the right thing for him and it was good for everyone else to see what type of growth is possible.

Imagine somebody held you back. Imagine your boss tried to keep you from launching your own thing because they didn't want to lose you. How would that feel?

Shitty right?

Now flip it around. Think about the signal it sends to everybody else still on your team when somebody can come in, work their tail off, and walk out the door to launch their own agency with your blessing. Or come in, work their tail off, and become a manager and get promoted multiple times.

That's an incredible story to tell candidates. And it's an incredible story for the people who aren't leaving, because they see that there are multiple paths to growth.

We have a program called CATAP. Career Advice and Transition Assistance Program. (And yes, this was created before ChatGPT, I have no idea who came up with the acronym, but it stuck.)

Here's the idea. If you're somewhere on our team and you've been with us three or four years and you don't want to be an agency owner, and there isn't a management role open that excites you, and you start thinking about going somewhere else, we don't want it to be weird or a secret.

You don't have to sneak around and you don't have to quit out of nowhere on a Monday morning. If you're six to twelve months out from wanting to make a move, come talk to us.

We will:

1.) Help you make time for interviews

2.) Help you polish up your resume

3.) Introduce you to our network and people we know who might have the right job fit for you.

I genuinely believe that the way you handle people leaving your company sends a message to everybody who's still there. It tells them what kind of leader you are. It tells them whether it's worth investing in you the way you're hopefully investing in them.

Continuous development is a core value for us. And at the end of the day, it's about leaving everybody we come in contact with better than we found them.

If somebody works for us for a year, does great work, picks up a certification, and goes somewhere else for a better opportunity? I'm not mad. I'm proud. That's a win in my book. That's the best possible result we could get!

Pull all four pillars together and here's the way I want you to think about it.

Pay and benefits are the contractual layer. The bottom of the pyramid. Without these, nothing else matters.

Culture and development are the experience layer. Once the contract is solid, this is what makes people happy and growing.

And then if you can build a mission-driven organization where people get meaning from their work? That's the bonus level. That's the top of the pyramid.

Real talk, that mission piece can be a tough sell in insurance. Not everybody finds deep meaning in selling insurance policies. Hell, I don't always find a ton of meaning in being an insurance agent (often I do).

But I find a ton of meaning in developing people. In helping them grow. In building an organization where folks are usually pretty happy to come to work. That's what gets me jazzed and coming back for me.

If you want to see anything we use, just shoot me an email. I'll share my comp plan (linked above), benefits package, development plan template, or our culture document. Any of it.

I hope this was helpful and as always, I’m here to help!

If you’re wanting something actionable for next steps, try these three things.

1.) Put your full pay structure (salary, bonus opportunity, and W2 vs 1099) in bold at the top of every job ad you post this month. It's the number one question candidates have. Answering it upfront filters out the wrong-fit folks immediately and signals that you're confident in what you're offering. You’ll get more applicants, I guarantee it.

2.) Write down your culture document this week, even if it's rough and you don't love it yet. List the values you want your team to live by, including the aspirational ones. A messy first draft you can hold people accountable to beats a perfect document that doesn't exist. You can iterate on it later, but make sure you bring your team into the process.

3.) Have a real development conversation with one employee in the next 7 days. Don't prescribe what they should work on, ask them where they want to be in two years, what they want to get better at, and what they need from you. Then write down what they say so you can come back to it next quarter and check in on the plan.

As always, I’m here to help if you need it, just shoot a reply.

Until next time, Cheers!

Three ways I can help you:

1.) If you need leads or live transfers - We’d love the opportunity to show how Next Call Club can help you grow faster and more profitably than before.

2.) Looking to scale in 2026? Maybe you’re shifting your strategic direction. Want a person you can work through plans with? Lets talk about 1:1 Consulting for you and your agency!

3.) Want to sponsor this newsletter? Lets talk about whether you’re a fit to reach 1,000+ agency owners every week!

As always - Thank you for the support! I’m looking forward to bringing you insights, ideas, and actionable strategies multiple times per month! If you enjoyed this newsletter or it gave you value, please consider sharing it with a friend!