Working In An Insurance Agency With Your Spouse

Thinking about working in an insurance agency with your spouse? There are some amazing opportunities when working with family and or your spouse. 

Just like anything, there are also several sticky points if you aren’t prepared. When working with families the highs are high and the lows can be very low. 

However, at the end of the day, you have a true life partner next to you to drive home the growth of the agency. 

The downside is that there can be challenges in having work and home boundaries. The best spouse couples that we see working together do so with very specific roles and responsibilities.

When working with your spouse you will have (generally speaking):

• Someone as committed as you to agency growth
• A person you know like, trust, and respect as your partner
• A partner that can support the long hours that sometimes must be put in 
• A sounding board for making decisions
• Someone to be there on the difficult days

What you know in advance you can prepare for in advance. By reading this blog you will prepare yourself for a healthy relationship. 

If you are currently working with your spouse you can use this blog to provide a few tips and tricks to enhance your work relationship. 

In this blog we will review:

• The importance of communication & boundaries
• Identifying each other’s roles based on skills
• Agency culture and how working with family can impact the team
• Continuous professional development
• How to handle conflict
• Remembering to celebrate 

Communication & Boundaries On Working In An Insurance Agency With Your Spouse 

Just like in your marriage working in an insurance agency with your spouse requires communication and boundaries. 

However, in the insurance agency when working together you are in a professional environment – not the kitchen table or living room. What we find in working with your spouse is that communication can slip to be unprofessional. 

Both parties must listen to each other and understand you are in a working environment and disagreements must be handled professionally. 

One way to avoid conflict when working in an insurance agency with your spouse is to identify clear roles and responsibilities. Some common delineations between spouses included:

• Sales and Service
• CEO and COO
• Accounting & CEO
• Personal and Commercial

You want to make sure the team understands clearly who to go to and why. If not you may be getting caught up in the mom and dad syndrome where the team goes to whomever they think will give them the answer they want. 

When working with your spouse it’s also important to note that you have a family, personal life, and business to run. 

You want to make sure that there is a work-life balance. One common thing we see is that spouses never quite shut work down. 

While they leave work they don’t always stop talking about work. If the agency has a leadership team you will find that they are trying to catch up all the time. Also, spouses need a break too to leave work behind. 

 “One common thing we see is that spouses never quite shut work down.” – Kelly Donahue-Piro

Consider putting together a family contract that outlines both parties’ expectations on work and life. 

Identifying Complementary Skill Sets

You know the phrase opposites attract. It’s so true! When working in an insurance agency with your spouse you must leverage each other’s skills. 

No agency needs 2 people doing the same thing. Start by identifying each person’s natural skills and talents. 

We recommend you identify:

• Kill zone – the things that you love doing and could do all day
• Drudergy zone – not good and not passionate about
• Disinterest – you can do it and you are fine to do it but don’t love it
• Distraction Zone – you like it but aren’t proficient in it so it takes you a long time

When you identify the things you like and are good at it will stop a lot of agency drama. In addition, this allows you to find the things that you maybe should outsource or find help for. 

When people do things out of their kill zone mistakes happen and people can grow resentful. 

Every person in the agency needs a job description. Including owners and spouses! In a small business, you do need to be flexible. 

However, having a set of roles and responsibilities for clarity to each other, the team and the clients is critical to minimize unnecessary distractions that come up with unclarity. 

Every year we recommend you sit down and revisit your job descriptions to make updates. 

In addition to job descriptions, each role needs goals. Too often agencies run by spouse teams don’t celebrate enough. 

It’s always on to the next problem or plug the next hole in the agency. Goals help even spouse-lead insurance agencies take time to celebrate. 

Watch more about how to get an agency owner’s job description. 

Creating a Positive Spouse Lead Agency Culture

For many team members they may have some apprehension when working for a family agency or an agency run by spouses. 

You need to make sure at work you focus on having a professional relationship with your spouse during the work day. 

Some common spouse-run agency pitfalls can include:

• Spousal personal disagreements happening at the office
• Tension from home life entering the office
• One spouse speaking negatively about the other to the team
• Spouses having different work ethics
• Mixed messaging to the team from spouses
• If a personal matter impacts the business

You have to have a very clear boundary between work and personal life. We encourage a zero-tolerance policy on having personal matters impact the business. 

Another way to keep a positive culture when working in an insurance agency with your spouse is to make sure you compliment and recognize your partner. 

While both parties may have different skills it’s important not to take each other’s contributions for granted.

In many spouse-run agencies, the other partner may go about solving a problem in a different way and this can cause friction. However, if the outcome is achieved make sure to recognize your partners. 

There will be times when spousal teams need to work together. This could be on a big policy, a new hire, office space, or technology investments. 

When working together, remember to review each other’s strengths and weaknesses to make the strongest and best decision for the agency. This includes listening to each other’s different points of view. 

How to Separate Personal & Professional Relationships at The Agency

Imagine you and your spouse have a disagreement about a family-related matter. If you went to a job you would shake it off and have time to regroup (maybe even vent to your work best friend). 

Usually, by the time you head home, things have calmed down and everyone can work on solving the personal problem. 

Now, change the dynamic. Instead of having time to regroup and calm down, you see them all day. Maybe your spouse/business partner wants to talk about it at the office. 

Or for some, it’s difficult to compartmentalize to focus on work vs. the argument you recently had. The whole team can see something is happening! 

Then they stop working and wonder what is happening!

When you and your spouse are at odds about something personally here are some ideas to separate work and personal disagreements:

• When you walk into the office you are business partners not spouses
• Make it a family contract rule that you do not discuss it at the office – go to lunch or speak about it after work
• If it’s something that had you worked up consider working from home for some separation
• Consider not driving in together to give some space
• Notice if you may be passive aggressive to your spouse 

When we do our agency assessment on spouse run agencies one of the common issues that come up is the communication between spouses. 

The absolute rule you cannot bend is:

“Do not vent about your personal lives to the team. It puts them in a very unfortunate position.” –Kelly Donahue-Piro

When you go to the insurance agency you need to treat each other as colleagues, not spouses. 

Career Development for Spouse Run Agencies

Just like if you were working at a traditional job you would want career development. This can include networking, keeping up with industry trends, carrier updates, and even technology. 

Working in an insurance agency with your spouse can give you the opportunity to travel and improve the agency at the same time. Take full advantage of being able to travel with your business partner/spouse! 

This can be tricky if you have responsibilities with family but it is certainly a plus!

You can also keep learning independently. As you define your roles and responsibilities there are times when the specific roles need additional training and development. It’s also healthy to explore career development independently. 

Having a network of other spouse-lead agencies can be important as the agency grows. 

As the agency grows and needs new roles development will be key. Business owners can be very diverse in their learning. Investing in development will be a great way to keep your agency ahead of the curve. 

Protecting Your Personal Life When Working Together

How often does it happen when you have a date night and then work comes up? What a bummer. 

Who wants to talk about carrier goals or employee issues, or who doesn’t replace toilet paper? For husband and wife teams you need to make sure you create some spaces where work doesn’t bust in. 

Having open communication about what this looks like (not in the moment) allows you to help identify where that boundary can be. 

We also recommend that husband and wife teams schedule a time to talk about work. It’s really easy to push off a meeting with your spouse/business partner and talk about it at home. There is always so much to do. 

However, if you had a business partner that you were not married to you would make time. You want to make sure that you use work time for work and home time for being home. 

Too often agencies struggle with this because there are no goals and roles. Our 2 year Agency Performance Program can help align your agency. 

One of the ways that work and personal life cross over is self-care. You can see how the burdens of running a family and a business can take over. 

Make sure you watch out for your partner. It’s important that you think about making sure there is some balance and that you watch out for signs that they may need a break and make sure to encourage it!

How To Address Conflict In An Agency

No matter how bad the dispute about work-related matters, business partners must prevail. The difference is you go home with the person. 

But trust me we have seen severe business partner, sibling, and spouse business disagreements. This is often when we lean on the job descriptions to identify who makes the final decision. 

When a decision is made you must support your spouse 100%. We all make difficult decisions and not all of them will pan out. 

From time to time, you may need to seek outside help. In marriages from time to time seeking outside help to work through challenges can be helpful. It’s the same when you have work-related disputes. 

Many times using an outsider (like Agency Performance Partners) can be helpful to see other solutions and work through what to do during difficult times. Your goal should be to listen and learn and strengthen your relationship both personally and professionally. 

You can watch our 3 Minute Video on how to handle conflict with your business partner that also happens to be your spouse. 

Celebrating Agency Success & Milestones

Just like you celebrate when your kid graduates high school. It’s important for you both to celebrate achievements in the agency. 

This can be landing a big account, hitting a revenue target, and or getting a big carrier contingency check. Make sure you take time to stop and celebrate. 

These can be big moments that get brushed off as you rise to the occasion and solve the next problem. 

If you can set goals for each of the roles of the spouses it’s also important to support and celebrate individual achievements as well. As people stretch and hit new individual milestones make sure as the spouse you  recognize it and celebrate. 

While focusing on the agency is important, individual achievements are still important. Think about it – if your spouse hit a big milestone at their job (not at the agency) you would celebrate, you must do the same thing when you work together. 

To do this, accepting each other’s plans and goals is important. You can’t always push off personal development, make sure it’s balanced, and planned and you advocate for each other. 

Conclusion

Working together with your life partners and business partners can be amazing. There is no one better you can lean on. You have the same culture, vibe, and commitment. 

When it comes to challenges they are preventable as long as you focus on creating a healthy plan and commitment to the agency not negatively impacting your relationships.

Identify your plan, keep communication open, handle challenges professionally and you can create a strong business and family life.