insurance agencies. They worked crazy hours for 5-7 years before it was close to auto-pilot. Even then, they have staff managing the customers and selling new policies. I've talked with them a lot about their agencies. They average about $100/yr per customer. So, 1,000 customers = $100k. That's gross. Subtract lease, utilities, licensing/CE fees, marketing, insurance, etc and that's not much money to manage 1,000 people.

You pay an office manager $40-60k to do that so you can focus on growing the agency and you're not making much at all. My buddies go in later in the day because people don't like telemarketers calling at 9am. Dads are at work and moms are getting kids to school. That means most days they work the hardest from 4-8 (or 9) pm, when families are home.

My buddies stuck with it and do pretty well now, but they still have to work at it. Retention is between 80-90% on average. That means you're losing $10-20k a year that needs to be replaced just to break even. A few more potential negatives:

- hiring/managing kids to do your prospecting (HS kids suck)
- you will get sued
- depending on the company, your agency may not be worth much when you're ready to sell
- you'll be in the phones all day competing on price alone. Insurance is a commodity no matter how much value they try to put into it. You'll lose customers because the other guy saved them $5/mo.
- you'll have to make friends with realtors and mortgage people (some of the worst people on the planet - behind dentists and lawyers)
- lots of competition from online options