Independent insurance agency · Built agent-first

Own Your Future.

Most agents rent a career. You should own one. Optimum gives you the carriers, the coaching, and the tools to build a book that belongs to you — in health, life, and retirement.

40+carriers appointed — you're never captive to one shelf
50states licensed — write business wherever your leads are
10+years running an independent agency, not a downline experiment
3 mothe Winning System — a formula, not a pep talk
Who we are

Real people helping real people.

Optimum was started by someone who left a twenty-year corporate sales career — a Chief Sales Officer's seat — because the thing he was building belonged to somebody else. That's the whole thesis of this agency.

We're independent. We're appointed across forty-plus carriers. We help families optimize their path to financial freedom, and we help agents do the same thing for themselves. No hype, no recruiting theater. A real business, run by real people.

“You should own what you build. That's it. That's the agency.”

Jesse Stamm · Founder, Optimum
  • Independent, not captiveForty-plus carriers means you write what's right for the client, not what's on one shelf.
  • Health, life, and retirementThree lines, one relationship. More ways to serve a household and more ways to earn.
  • Your book is yoursYou build it, you own it, you keep it. Ownership isn't a slogan here.
  • Coached, not managed1:1 strategy calls, daily kickoff, and a leader who still writes business.
The organization behind us

You're not joining a startup.

Optimum is an independent agency — and we're plugged into the largest insurance distribution organization in the business. The carrier relationships, the lead partners, the contracting, the back end: all of it is already built and already working at a scale most agencies will never see.

Nobody here is figuring out the model. It's figured out. Your job is to learn it and go.

$100M+in premium moving through the organization every month
Thousandsof producing agents across the country, not a handful
Top contractsnegotiated at organization scale, not at one agency's scale
What you can write

One household. Many ways to help.

Most life-only agents have one conversation with a family and then leave. You'll have six. That's not a bigger catalog to memorize — it's the difference between selling somebody a policy and actually being their agent.

Final Expense

Covers burial and cremation costs so a family isn't fundraising during the worst week of their life.

Who it's for: seniors, fixed income, simplified issue

Mortgage Protection

Keeps the family in the house after a death. Reframes a payoff into protecting equity and buying time.

Who it's for: homeowners, new mortgages, refis

Term

Large coverage for a defined window — the mortgage years, the kids-at-home years, the income-replacement years.

Who it's for: young families, high need, tight budget

Indexed Universal Life

A death benefit plus a cash value component — growth tied to an index, with protection from the downside.

Who it's for: builders, business owners, tax-aware savers

Annuities

Protects long-term savings from market loss and creates guaranteed income a client can't outlive.

Who it's for: pre-retirees, rollovers, market-loss fears

Health

Medical and supplemental coverage. The line most life-only agents can't write — and the one that opens the door.

Who it's for: self-employed, gap coverage, whole households
The math most agents miss

One lead. Three policies.

A health client becomes a life client becomes an annuity client — same family, same trust, three times the book. More ways to help a household is also more ways to earn from one lead, which is how our agents stop buying their way out of a bad month.

Culture

Own Your Future isn't a tagline. It's the operating system.

Four things we actually hold each other to. If these don't sound like you, we're probably not the right room — and that's a fine answer.

01

Ownership

Nobody is coming to build it for you. We hand you the system and stand next to you while you run it.

02

Honesty first

We tell clients the truth and we tell each other the truth. Including when the number is bad.

03

Process over mood

Activity you can count beats motivation you can't. The plan works when you work the plan.

04

Lift as you climb

The agents who grow fastest here are the ones already helping the person behind them.

Training

The Winning System.

Three months, start to self-sufficient. A validated income ladder, a real orientation, and a strategy call with a human being — not a folder of PDFs and good luck.

Month 1
$10KMonthly AP. Learn the products, run the script, get your first families protected.
Month 2
$20KMonthly AP. Consistency, better cases, cross-line conversations that stick.
Month 3 & beyond
$30K+Monthly AP. Your own rhythm — and the option to start building a team.

Self-serve onboarding

Get licensed, contracted, and oriented on your schedule. No waiting for the next group call to start.

1:1 strategy call

The primary live event. Your numbers, your market, your plan — built with you, not handed to you.

Morning Kickoff

Daily. Short. Sets the number and the target for the day, then everybody goes to work.

Support & tools

We build the things we wished we had.

Every tool below is free, runs in your browser, and stores nothing. We built them for our own agents first — then opened them to every agent in the Family First Life family. They're powered by Optimum.

Free agent website

A real site clients can look you up on, live in minutes.

Digital business card

Saves to their phone in one tap and verifies you're licensed.

Booking calendar

Send a link, let them pick a time, stop trading texts.

Carrier & case support

Underwriting questions answered by people who've written the case.

Why here and not somewhere else

Eight things almost nobody else can say.

Ask any agency you're talking to about these. The answers will tell you more than any recruiting pitch will.

01

No contract.

You sign with the carrier. You don't sign with us. No independent contractor agreement, no non-compete, no release you have to beg somebody for. If we ever stop being the best place for you to write business, you can walk — and that's the whole point. We'd rather earn you every month than trap you for a year.

02

Comp that works either way

Top contract levels, structured so the producer who never wants a team and the builder who does both make real money. You don't have to recruit to do well here.

03

Renewals vested day one

Yours from the first policy. Not year five, not year seven. Leave the business entirely and they're still yours. No vesting cliff, no fake equity.

04

Bonuses a chargeback can't take

Producer and manager bonuses on top of commission, funded from a profit-sharing pool the organization pays out every single month.

05

Overrides when you're ready

Build a team and get paid on their production. That's the part that's still there the month you take off — and the reason this becomes a business instead of a job.

06

Taught by people who actually sold

Our leadership carried a bag and worked the phones. Most people running IMOs never did — they were 1099 recruiters, not 1099 salespeople. You can't teach a call you never had to make.

07

You own 100% of it

Agents in this organization have sold their books to outside buyers and taken real exits. It's your business — not ours with your name on it.

08

Endless high-intent leads.

Not a purchased list you cold-call until somebody hangs up. Vetted partners feeding you people who already raised their hand and asked about coverage — and never one source, so you're never stuck with one price, one quality level, or one bad week killing your month. The leads don't run out here. The only limit is how many you decide to work.

Compensation

Straight answers about the money.

Contract levels, raises, overrides, vesting, and what it actually takes to build an agency underneath you. We'll walk you through the whole comp plan on the first call — no drip campaign required to see the numbers.

What we won't do is put an income screenshot on a website and call it a recruiting pitch.

What we'll cover

  • Starting contract level and how raises are earned
  • How advances, chargebacks, and renewals actually work
  • Overrides and the path to building your own team
  • Lead cost, lead credit, and what a realistic first month looks like
  • Health, life, and annuity comp side by side
The five year path

Year one you have a job you like.
Year five you have something you own.

Most agencies sell you month one. Here's the part nobody shows you — what changes about where your income actually comes from.

Year 1

Producer

You write business. Every dollar comes from a case you personally closed — which is how you learn the products, the objections, and the close for real. Renewals start stacking quietly in the background from your first policy.

    Where the money comes from
  • Personal production
  • Renewals — just beginning
  • Overrides — the day you recruit
Years 2–3

Builder

You're still writing, and now you're bringing on agents and training them the way you were trained. Overrides start carrying real weight. For the first time your income isn't a straight line out of your own calendar.

    Where the money comes from
  • Personal production
  • Renewals — compounding
  • Overrides — building
Years 4–5

Owner

The agency produces whether or not you're on a call today. Renewals compound, overrides carry, and you hold something with transferable value — a book and a team that exist independently of your calendar.

    Where the money comes from
  • Personal production — by choice
  • Renewals
  • Overrides
Primary income Building — and it never stops once it starts

“Nobody gets to year five by accident. But nobody gets there at all in a business that isn't theirs.”

And after year five — nothing resets. The policies you wrote in year one are still paying renewals. The agents you trained in year two are training their own. That's the difference between a job that pays you for this month and a business that keeps paying for the work you already did.

Illustrative of how an agent's income mix typically shifts over a career at Optimum. Not a projection or guarantee of earnings. Agents are independent contractors; results depend on effort, market, licensing, and persistency.

Start the conversation

Let's find out if this is a fit.

One call. We'll ask what you're actually trying to build, tell you honestly whether we can help, and show you the comp plan either way.

Licensed already? Great. Not yet? Also fine — we'll walk you through getting your life and health license and what it costs.

“We bring the mentorship, the tools, and the team. You bring the work ethic.”

What we tell every candidate

Optimum agents are independent contractors. Income depends on effort, market, and licensing; results aren't typical. We'll never sell your information.

Looking for coverage, not a career?

This page is for agents. If you're a family looking for health, life, or retirement help, our client side is where you want to be.

Visit optimumprotects.com →