Goosehead Insurance reviews

Cons: I want to break this down so it's easy to follow. Again I am a former employee and have bias, but I can almost certainly assure you that all of the people who left Goosehead and probably over half of the current employees will attest to these points. 1.) The Pay: From the first recruiting call, to your initial in office-interviews, you will be fed all kinds of numbers and income-potential by corporate management which are false. I have no idea how they get away with consistently presenting false income numbers, but when you run your company the manner in which they do, you can do whatever. They say first year account executives average, again AVERAGE, $51,000. WRONG. Most people aren't even making $51,000 2 to 3 years in to the job if they stay there that long. They show everyone the top 5%'s earnings like it is attainable, which it is not. If you look at it, the very successful people in the company have typically been there for years before Goosehead actually created compliance/quality guidelines and before there became a MAJOR saturation issue. There is a reason by 80% of account executives don't make it to one year at this company: they are either fired or they smart up and leave because they realize the income potential is a blatant lie. 2.) The hours: The standard hours at Goosehead are "8:00 AM-6:00 PM". If you actually work these hours, you better be the top producer at the company or you will be heckled and micro-managed by management. Normal hours at Goosehead are typically from 7:30 AM- 6:30 PM, so you are AT LEAST working 55 hours a week. If you think about it, with a 40K salary, that comes down to 14 bucks an hour WITH a college degree which is AWFUL. If you are behind your goal you will likely be working an additional 5-10 hours a week, and Saturday work days will become a norm if you are behind. 3.) Fees: I bet many of you are wondering what I mean by fees. Goosehead is as far as I know the only insurance company in the nation who charges fees for writing policies. These fees, $199 for a home/condo policy, $79 for an auto and so on, are charged on top of your premium for the actual insurance. They are unnecessary and if you try and get them waived, you will face all kinds of push back from your manager. I promise you, this will end relationships you develop with referral partners and will lose you deals with potential clients. 4.) Renewals: In regards to renewals, Goosehead says they "pay industry leading renewals". FALSE. It takes a quick Google to show that they pay well below the industry average. Again, BLATANT lies told to you my senior-management where it literally takes 5 minutes of research to realize it's all false. The most compelling part of insurance and making money in the industry is from renewals. Goosehead will do everything they can to prevent paying you money. If you do not hit certain metrics (even if you sell the most insurance of anyone in the company) you will not be paid on this. This is THEFT. If you have missing signatures and fees on policies, you will not be paid. So many things that are out of your control will be counted against you and you will LOSE money from your own company TAKING it from you. 5.) "UNIQUE AND INDUSTRY DISRUPTING BUSINESS MODEL": This is almost the most laughable part of Goosehead. Their "industry disrupting" business model and complex strategy is simple: target realtors and loan officers and solely focus on this for your referrals. EVERY insurance company and agent already does this, it's not anything new. Goosehead hires countless college students and send them out blindly into these mortgage and realtor offices where they heckle these folks until they send referrals their way. It's essentially throw as many Goosehead agents at specific loan officers or realtors until someone sticks. I have heard COUNTLESS realtors and loan officers mention how their offices are pounded by visits from Goosehead agents. Many people in the industry do not respect Goosehead, and it's easy to see why. This business model is a joke, and it will not last. In the DFW Area, there are literally shops with "No Goosehead Agents Allowed". 6.) False and Inflated Metrics: Goosehead last year won the award for the "Best Company Culture" of any mid-sized business in the United States. This is HIGHLY unlikely, as many of the people that are there are finding ways to leave the company. Managers and upper management push employees to fill out surveys where they inflate these numbers to appeal to investors. This winning this award is LAUGHABLE: remember, nearly 80% of new hires don't make it to 1 year. Goosehead also brags about how they have the HIGHEST NPS(net promoter score) of any company in the WORLD. How did they do this? By begging their clients to fill out positive surveys. I cannot explain to you how many clients have issues with the service team and claims processes. The only reason they have this score is because agents, both sales and service alike, are pressed to make people fill out positive reviews to push this number as high as possible. 7.) The Service Team: I feel like the service team almost has it worse than the account executives. When I first started, when you called into the service line, Mark Jones, Goosehead's CEO, had a goal of calls being answered by the service team within 1-2 minutes of the client calling in. When you call in now, you will wait a minimum of 8-10 minutes to even have someone take your call. This is a HUGE issue, because all of senior-management says the service team "is right where we want them". It's really a joke because the company is so against hiring an adequate number of service agents and would rather work the agents they have to the bone. Also remember all of those wonderful fees I told you about? These fees are charged because Goosehead has "the highest rated service team" in the industry. Again, false. Another lie to feed to investors. 8.) Women's "leadership" program: One of the many feedbacks Goosehead has received is that in recent years up until the last 2, is that they have lacked diversity and a balance on male and female employees. To combat this, they’ve hired more women and a more diverse background and with this, they have succeeded. Where they have failed is with their "women's leadership" program. This group is almost laughable. It's another way the company checks the boxes. It provides zero benefits to anyone and serves literally almost zero purpose, just another pitch they can offer to women interviewing at the company and to investors. 9.) SATURATION: This is something upper management will deny until the end of time: there is no saturation. FALSE. It has become so difficult to find new prospects within the state of Texas. Any person you meet, they've likely heard of Goosehead, not from directly working with them, but having talked to the revolving door of agents that come in and out of loan officer and realtor shops like it's a factory production line. Management feeds all of these numbers saying "we are only working with say 20% of loan officers in Texas, that means we still have thousands of people to work with(the other 80%). The truth is, the majority of these people will NEVER work with Goosehead because of its damaged reputation due to huge volume of agents contacting shops, and because of their policies where they are supposed to use in-house insurance. The main reason turnover is so high is because of the lack of new loan officers to contact. Seeing they are the lifeline of the business, you would think that management would face this reality, but they never will.