As an avid golfer and former tennis pro, Kolt Byerly understands that every shot counts.
So, it’s no surprise that he’s found remarkable success by capitalizing on both big and small opportunities – ultimately leading to his current role as the owner of Byerly Agency, LLC.
It all started back when he was a car salesperson at Porsche Audi, and he happened to meet a successful individual who was a partner at an insurance agency. Through subsequent conversations, Kolt learned about the opportunities available in insurance, and one detail in particular caught his interest: Residual income.
“It was very intriguing to me,” Kolt recalls. “Work for it once, get paid for it ten times. That’s the goal. And it just kind of went from there.”
Kolt passed a three-day course and got his insurance license. He went to work for the man who got him interested in insurance, and he stayed at that agency until it closed. An agency closure can often be disruptive for employees, but by then, Kolt had earned a reputation. He was quickly recruited to another agency.
The Insurance Sand Trap
Many people fall into insurance. Once they do, it can be hard to leave. That’s how it was for Kolt.
After two years at his second agency, he knew it was time for a change. “Honestly, I was about to leave insurance,” he says. He’d decided that the 8 to 5 life behind a desk just wasn’t for him. “I wanted to become a police officer. I went through a year-long hiring process, got hired, and started training in the academy.”
Then, another break fell into his lap.
He was offered a position at a Farmers Insurance agency, where he would manage the health insurance line. The owner had been following Kolt on Facebook.
“He had messaged me before and I turned him down,” Kolt recalls. “He messaged me again, so I agreed to have lunch with him. And sure enough, after that lunch, I dropped out of the police academy and went to work managing his health insurance.”
Stepping Onto the Fairway
Managing health insurance at a Farmers agency was unlike Kolt’s previous experiences in insurance. For one thing, it was considerably more lucrative.
“I was able to quadruple the income that I had made from my previous insurance jobs. I went from $50,000 a year to $100,000 to $150,000 to $200,000 really quickly,” Kolt says. “I finally got a taste of real money in insurance. I was no longer just a salaried salesperson.”
Needless to say, he was glad he hadn’t become a police officer.
He stayed at the Farmers agency for roughly three years. The experience showed him that insurance was a great career for him – he just needed to approach it the right way. Managing health insurance at the Farmers agency was certainly a step in the right direction, but he was beginning to realize that there were even better opportunities out there.
“That experience sparked my interest in owning an agency and doing it myself,” Kolt explains. “In the health insurance role, I had a small ownership stake, and I did it all. I was the manager of it. I started thinking … if I can do it for him, why can’t I do it for me?”
Hitting A Hole-In-One
Finally, Kolt took his next shot and opened Byerly Agency, LLC. At first, there were a lot of choices to make – each with its own pros and cons.
For example, Kolt decided to run his agency on his own, without any assistants or other agents. The pro is that he can more easily control his overhead costs and there’s no payroll to worry about – but the con is that he has to do everything himself.
Kolt chose to establish his company as an independent insurance agency rather than operating as a captive agency. This setup provided him the freedom to place risks with multiple carriers, but it also meant he needed access to multiple carriers.
“The first thing I wanted to do is acquire carrier contracts,” he says. At the time, he was aware that aggregators and networks existed, but he wasn’t familiar with any specific organizations. “I just had to go do some market research to find which one I wanted to use.”
His research led him to Smart Choice.
“I was concerned to learn that some aggregators wanted large down payments upfront, and some had no cap on the amount of commission they would take from you,” Kolt says.
Conversely, Smart Choice takes a 30% commission split, but only up to a certain amount. Once that cap is reached, Smart Choice doesn’t take any of the commission at all. Kolt found this arrangement to be intriguing. “I was pretty confident I would get to that cap.”
Smart Choice has helped him in other ways, as well. “They provided a lot of relationships with carriers that I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise,” he says. “Also, Joan Curtis, Territory Manager for Oklahoma was ready and willing to share her knowledge of the independent agency world, where I had little experience.
With my Smart Choice team’s advice, I was able to be efficient in how I set up my business, how I did business, and who I did business with. It helped me become successful very quickly.”