The journey from advisors to owners

LAS VEGAS - After being fired from his job, Jason Mickool decided it was time to stop working for someone else. He and his wife founded Florida Financial Advisors at their kitchen table. Nine years later, the practice grew is now a multimillion-dollar company.

Christopher Gandy took the teamwork lessons he learned in his professional basketball career and used them to become a successful life insurance agent, but he didn’t stop there. He felt the call to do something bigger and founded The Legacy Wealth Group.

The two shared what they learned on their journeys to the top during Protectors 2026.

In basketball and in business, Gandy said he “never wanted to be just a player.”

“I wanted to do it very well so I could progress to the next thing,” he said.

He started his insurance career as a Northwestern Mutual agent. “I went into it full throttle to help build,” he said. But he said he realized that as an agent working for someone else, “the goal was set for me. The problem was that I was chasing someone else’s success dream for me.”

Gandy eventually moved to management but said he never stopped producing. “If you’re a producer, do what you do well and success will follow,” he said.

The desire to continue building was one factor motivating Gandy to establish his own practice.

“I took a step back and asked how I can build this thing. I’m optimizing my skill set, my capability, and at the end of the day, doing what I do well,” he said.

'You have to empower people'

Gandy credited his staff with handling the tasks that free him to do what he gets paid for.

“I get paid to do two things – see people and fight to see people. For everything else, I hire people to do them,” he said. “You have to let go to grow. You have to empower people to support the vision.”

Gandy said he hires people who have skills he doesn’t. “You can’t have 12 Michael Jordans on your team,” he said. “You need complementary people on your team.”

He said his professional team enables him to make decisions quickly, “and I don’t have to babysit them all the time. I tell them to understand what role they play within the team, stick to that role and don’t get distracted.”

During his days as a professional athlete, Gandy said he hated to lose. That emotion carries into his practice.

“We expect to win every game, every client,” he said. “Part of my culture is the mindset that we don’t have to lose; we have the opportunity to win every conversation because we are stronger together. It’s about empowering people to be stronger versions of themselves and own the results.”

A success formula

Mickool said much of his company’s success comes from recruiting and training agents in a way that helps the company scale.

“We have a success formula: activity times conversion times case size,” he said. “We know how to scale, open and develop an office, hire and develop leaders and make 45-50 cents on the dollar.”

Mickool said he finds that young adults are interested in becoming entrepreneurs and are attracted to what the industry has to offer.

He said he isn’t afraid of the prospect of artificial intelligence taking over the advisor’s practice.

“AI is a cold hand to hold when the market is down 20% or a loved one dies - and that won’t change,” he said.

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Susan Rupe is editor in chief, magazine, for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at susan.rupe@innfeedback.com.