What is an agency owner supposed to be doing in 2026 anyway?

This is one of the questions I've spent the most time thinking about lately. 

What am I supposed to be doing as an agency owner in 2026? 

When most of us started, the answer was obvious. We were everything. 

Producer. CSR. Marketing department. Bookkeeper. IT support. Janitor. 

If it needed to get done, we did it. 

Then we hired our first CSR. Maybe a producer. Slowly, a team started to form. But even as we hired, most of us kept producing. And if we're being honest, most agency principals are still the top producers in their agency. 

That was me for a long time too. 

My friend and mentor, Dr. Billy Williams, has a simple framework for what agency owners should be doing. He says there are only three things: 

• Hire 

• Train  

• Hold people accountable 

That's it. 

When you strip everything else away, that's the job. 

The problem is that when it's just you wearing all the hats, you don't have time for any of those three things. You're too busy quoting, servicing, and putting out fires. 

As you start adding staff, you have to intentionally time-block for hiring, training, and accountability. And the more people you hire, the more time those three things demand. 

Which brings up the question that keeps producing principals up at night: 

When do I stop producing? And where should I actually be spending my time? 

I don't think there's one right answer. But I can share what's worked for me. 

I've always produced in my agency. But over the last three to four years, I've produced less and less. Instead, I've shifted my time toward networking, marketing, training my team, holding people accountable, and building and improving processes. 

The shift was gradual. It had to be. 

One thing you cannot do when you go full operations mode is forget about sales. Sales drives everything. You start with sales, then you focus on retention, because it doesn't do you any good to bring in new customers if they're leaking out the back door. 

Where I see most agencies get stuck is here: they stop growing because service or operations becomes overwhelming. The day-to-day takes over, and new business production slowly falls off a cliff. 

Balancing sales, service, and operations isn't a one-time fix. It's ongoing work. 

Here's something I've noticed about agency owners, myself included. When we see a sales problem, our instinct is to fix it ourselves. 

Is the closing ratio dropping? I'll take more leads.  

Is the new business revenue flat? I'll work more hours. 

It makes sense. Sales is often how we built the agency in the first place. 

But as you grow, the game changes. 

I have two inside sales producers now. My job isn't to out-produce them. My job is to help them get better. Increase lead flow. Improve conversion. Build consistency. 

Eventually, when you have enough producers hitting your new business goals, you can start stepping back. But it has to be gradual. And it has to be intentional. 

I chose to pass most of my leads to my producers and focus on building them. 

Here's something I don't talk about often: for the last three to four years, I have not been the top producer in my agency. 

That was a hard decision at first.  

But you have to look at it from this perspective. 

If you're the top producer in your agency, you'll likely work harder and make more money today. However, long term, it becomes much harder to delegate sales. You become the bottleneck. Growth gets capped by your personal capacity. 

If you focus on hiring and training salespeople instead, you'll probably make less money in the short term. But you gain time freedom and build long-term income. You stop trading hours for dollars and start building something that multiplies. 

That's the difference between linear growth and exponential growth. 

None of this is easy. We all have financial responsibilities. Bills don't care about long-term vision. 

But the way I think about it is this: the more time you invest in hiring and training salespeople now, the faster you win the race. You delegate yourself out of a sales job and into a leadership role. 

You can still stay in the game. You can still produce. You just get to be selective. Which lines of business. Which clients. When you sell. 

That's freedom. 

This doesn't happen in one year. It can take several. But it's like planting a tree. 

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is today. 

The sooner you start, the sooner you move from producer to manager. And eventually, when you have enough salespeople, your role becomes mostly managerial. The workload gets lighter. Work-life balance improves. Income becomes less dependent on your personal effort and more on the system you've built. 

Then you rinse and repeat. 

So what is an agency owner supposed to be doing in 2026? 

I think it depends on where you are in the journey. But the direction is clear: hire, train, and hold people accountable. Invest in people. Build systems. Step back from production and service gradually so you can step fully into leadership. 

That's been my path. It's not the only way, but it has worked for me.  

— Mike Cruz 

If this hit home, forward it to an agency owner friend who's wrestling with the same question. Sometimes it helps just knowing you're not the only one figuring this out.