Careers

Advisory work is one of the few careers where the ceiling is set by what you do rather than by who is above you. That is the appeal, and it is also the risk: nobody hands you a month's work on a Monday morning.

What an agency is actually for is closing that gap. Ours does it in four ways:

• A named manager, not a group chat. You know who is responsible for your first year, and so do they.
• Joint field work from your first case. You watch how a real meeting is run before you are asked to run one alone.
• A training calendar published in advance, so you can plan around it rather than being summoned to it.
• Small intakes. We take a limited number of planners each quarter because mentorship stops being mentorship when it is spread too thin.

None of that makes the work easy. It makes the work learnable, which is the part most people are denied.

Who this does not suit

It is worth being equally plain about the other side, because a wrong fit costs you a year of your life and costs us the same.

This work does not suit someone looking for fast money. The income follows the client base, and a client base takes time to build. It does not suit someone who does not believe in what they are selling — you cannot sit across from a family and recommend cover you privately think is a con. And it does not suit someone who needs a manager to set their week for them, because nobody will.

What we are actually looking for is short: willing to learn, willing to change how you do things, disciplined enough to work without being watched, and responsible enough to still be answering the phone in year five.

The thing most people underestimate before joining is the last one. Selling a policy takes an afternoon. Servicing it takes years, and that is the actual job.

Before you start. We take you through registration and the pre-contract examination, and we tell you the exact cost of licensing before you commit to anything.

Month one to three. The Foundations Workshop covers needs analysis, product mechanics and how to run an honest first meeting. You sit in on real meetings before you run one, and your first cases are worked jointly with your manager.

Month four to twelve. Weekly coaching with your manager, monthly agency training, and case clinics where planners bring live situations to the room. This is the stage where most of the learning actually happens.

Year two onward. Advanced case work, professional qualifications, and, for those going that way, the management track. Anyone moving into a leadership role is trained to coach before they are given anyone to coach.

The training calendar is published a quarter ahead so you can plan around it.

What gets taught that most places skip

New planners are usually taught what to say. The harder skill is knowing what is actually being asked.

When someone says insurance cheat people one, or that claims always get rejected, the instinct is to argue. What we teach instead is to find out where it came from first — a claim in the family that went badly, a policy someone did not understand, an agent who disappeared. Until you know that, you are answering a position rather than a person, and you will lose.

So the first move is a question, not a rebuttal: just out of curiosity, what makes you say that — did something happen? Most of the time there is a real story behind it, and once it is on the table you can be useful about it. Some of those conversations end with no sale and a person who now understands their existing cover. That is a good outcome, and we treat it as one.