Hello, my name is Don Stevens, I live in Michigan and I own a couple of insurance agencies in Michigan. I have insurance agencies in the Detroit and Kalamazoo areas of the state. In March of 2004 I officially started my independent insurance agency GLIGA (Great Lakes Insurance Group Agency) entirely by myself. I say that not to brag by any means but rather to paint a picture. I had been in the insurance industry since 1998 selling life insurance and decided to try selling home and auto insurance because I felt everyone has to have it so I can be the one they buy it from. I sold the very first policy in 2004 and still sell insurance policies today.

When I started my insurance agency I was also working in retail at Target from 4 am-1 pm 5 days a week in the stocking department. I would leave Target and go home to change so I could go into a little back office I rented to return voice mail and market myself until 9 pm that night. I hated getting up at 3 am and going to bed at 11am without seeing my family. I had to find a way out of the 4 am-1 pm trap I was caught in. I was glad to have a job but I also knew my future was limited when I was earning $9 an hour with a wife, four kids, and another one on the way. My wife couldn’t work because the cost of child care for our pre-school aged children would have cost more than she could make at any job she could find.

Every day I would go to my little office that cost me $300 a month plus $250 for a phone and spend the rest of the day trying to find customers. I quickly learned that the fastest way and most predictable way to generate clients was through referral. Not BNI, chamber of commerce, or business after 5 meetings, but through getting to know people who would send me customers because they needed my help. I knew a couple of Farmers agents and I started with them. They would send me the stuff that they couldn’t write and I wouldn’t go after any of the other policies. It was a win-win because I would get some high quality business referrals and the agent could protect whatever else the customer had insured with them.

After several months my checks eventually grew to $2500 a month. Personal lines insurance (Auto, Home) doesn’t pay a lot per policy, it is an accumulation business. I wasn’t making a killing, but when you are making $360 a week, $1600 a month, that was enough so I could quit my job at Target. Sleeping in until 8 was awesome and I really felt like I was on a vacation for the longest time. I actually was coherent and alert upon waking up and it was great.

Now I needed to turn it to high gear. I started recruiting to show new agents how to grow a predictable book of business. We quickly became an agency that wrote 200-300 policies a week with several agents and staff. Today in 2009 we are licensed in 8 states and soon to be more with multiple agency locations. We continue to grow our agency force, locations, and referral base in Detroit in the worst economy anyone around here can ever remember. We are not just the Big 3 here (Ford, GM, Chrysler), we are the suppliers to the Big 3. So when the Big 3 goes down we all go down.

Over the last year we have focused on our Internet advertising. We generate exclusive leads every day and our conversion rate is high because we are perceived as experts in our field. My website is not great, http://www.getgliga.com, but the marketing is. We spend about $500 a month on advertising and I am now looking for website referral sources. I try to partner with websites that have products that compliment mine where my product is not represented well. I try to contribute to high quality sites hoping that they will enhance my image and visibility on the Internet and eventually lead to future customers.

Now we look to partner with new agents or existing agents looking for a new opportunity. We give them all of the tools and training to get them off the ground and eventually into a successful agency of their own. We are also trying to purchase smaller agencies to expand our reach and we are always open to discussing potential acquisitions.

If you are looking to take control of your future, then you need to take some risk. Trust yourself that if you work long enough and hard enough, you will win. Partner with the right people. The difference between a winner and a loser in life is not the failures but what you do with them. Do they stop you in your tracks or do they teach you something new? Do they defeat you or make you a stronger, wiser person? Everyone fails, I will say it again, everyone fails. When we fail some of us quit and some of us try again. If you are looking to make some extra money and help other people market themselves so they can be the last ones standing when this economy gets done shaking out, then you should take a moment and contact us.

If you have any questions you can email me at donstevens@getgliga.com and I will be happy to share.
We have expanded to multiple locations and look forward to helping people reach their dreams as I reach mine. I am not a marketing guru or life coach, just an insurance agent trying to pay the bills like a lot of people. I believe with real hard work and persistence, we can succeed no matter what stands in our way. If we continue to try and never give up we will make it big, or at least have one heck of a story to tell when its over. Either way it will be a life that was lived. Thanks for your time and interest in my story.

Donald Stevens
Great Lakes Insurance Group Agency