Don't work for Goosehead, Don't get a Franchise with them.

Frankly there isn't much I like about my Franchise with Goosehead.

1. Their customer service sucks. There is frequently a long wait times on hold over the phone for clients calling Goosehead Service to get help with their policies. So much so, that they come back to the agent to get help with their policies. I have had my clients complain that Goosehead customer service reps do not have adequate answer to their insurance questions, like they don't know enough to help my clients. Help with servicing clients is the fundamental underpinning of the Goosehead franchse offer. You pay them 20% of your new business commissions and 50% of your renewal commissions to have Goosehead "handle" your customer service for you. 2. Mangers don't connect with me nor are they helpful. Very little personal interaction, all I seem to get from Goosehead Management are "webanars" that suck my time when I could be spending that time selling and marketing my agency. Managers are often young and inexperienced with a limited experience in sales and even less experience with how to run their own business. There is a culture at goosehead where managers "do their time" in sales before competing for a 6 figure job as a manager. Many of them are not even 35 years old and may have done a year or two in sales and have never had to hire their own employees. 3. They arbitrarily apply their production standards to purposefully "weed out" franchisors that they deem are not producing enough or are otherwise not profitable enough. Right now they are trying to force out as many franchisors and corporate agents as possible. My manager said to me "a buy out" (by Goosehead) is always an option." They are presently offering 1.5 x your profit "up front" for your book of business when in our contract your book value is paid out to us over 2 years. They are really on a tear! They recent increased their production standards by 66% all at once with short notice. Goosehead imposes the minimum production standards regardless of the state or area in which you operate, the state of the insurance market that you operate in, the size of your agency or how many years you have been with Goosehead. So if you are a 2nd year franchisor working in an area where home and auto insurance are much less in premium on average, or the premiums offered by the carriers you represent are much high higher or offer much less coverage than more mainstream carriers like State Farm, that agent will have a difficult time making the minimum $4885 per month minimum in commissions to keep their franchise. 4. Goosehead does not offer the agent as many carrier choices and access to different carriers as other Parent Agencies do. For example, for a long time, we could not sell Travelers auto on it's own while other agencies could. We are not appointed with carriers like Hartford, Cincinnati or Auto Owners to sell their personal lines products. 5. Goosehead restricts agents in what we can sell as far a commercial business and they impose a minimum 3 policy per month quota in order to keep your commercial access with Goosehead. I don't know of a similar production standard imposed by other Parent Agencies. 6. I work 12 hour days, I'm extremely stressed-out in trying to make these production standards given the challenging insurance market in my state, yet I face termination of my agency that I've worked so hard to build up. Basically, if you don't get large enough to hire a sub-producer by year 3, they are going to try their best to force you out! That is a real high hurdle to meet if you are selling in state where there are many problems with the P and C insurance market, such as California, Florida, Texas, Colorado, Louisiana, and other places. Finally, the problems with Goosehead are evidenced by the high producing agents who have left them. I know of 2 very large, very high producing agents who have left Goosehead altogether within the last 2 years. I know that you judge a company not on what they are saying about themselves, you need to judge them based on who is leaving the company, or who they are attracting to the company as employees or franchisors.

I have to get back to work, but it would take me hours of writing to tell you what they need to improve themselves.