On a Friday afternoon in Ohio, a group of 11 fifth-generation employees of Stolly Insurance—dubbed “G5”—meets to brainstorm on challenges, oppor­tu­nities and the future of their agency.

At a time when many baby boomers are selling out and a lack of perpetuation planning plagues the industry, Stolly Insurance paints the opposite picture. Of the agency’s 54 employees, 14 are members of the Stolly family—and the average age of the G5 group is 32.

Producer Chad Stolly says G5 is focused on the future because they know “G4” won’t sell the agency to a third party.

“They say all the time, ‘Every move we make is because we want to see this thing go to the next generation—not sell it off for the highest dollar to some big conglomerate,’” Stolly says. “That’s being instilled in us. And as G5, we should start thinking about G6.”

CHAD STOLLY, AGENT

Maybe it’s a misconception that you hear kids who grew up in a business say, “I want to do anything except that.” If you step back and think about how many of these guys are following in their dad’s footsteps, it makes an impression on me.

I’ve never felt as if just because my name is Stolly that anything is a given. We had to earn it. Reputation’s everything in our communities, everything to the carriers, everything to the customers and everything to us internally. As a G5 group, we’re finding out we have to create that identity but also respect what’s been passed down to us. We have that last name and it’s a reputation. How we manage it going in to the future is going to mean everything.

ERIC STOLLY, AGENT 

When a Stolly joins the agency, we are brought in as a producer—we’re responsible for our own book of business. Nobody is stagnant in this office. We all know that in order to carry this forward, we have to grow as an agency. We have invested in a lot of younger producers, knowing that organic growth is the way we’re going be successful in the end. Our ownership puts us in a position to succeed, but not to get comfortable.

What we can look like in 5, 10, 20 years—that picture is really interesting to think about. We could be twice the size we are now and have people from the sixth generation interested in joining us. It’s something that keeps us focused on going forward.

ADAM STOLLY, AGENT 

The G4 group is established. They’re vested, they have their relationships. We almost felt like we were two companies. The thought was, “Let’s find our identity as a G5 group and form some chemistry,” because we are all in different locations. We realized we needed to know each other’s strengths and just get to know each other better.

I think our agency’s success can be attributed to the precedent G4 and those before them set: always living within our means, giving back to the communities we’re in and hiring good people. One of the cool things we can do as an office is put trust in ourselves, reinvest in our employees and make sure we’re all taking care of each other.

Photo by George C. Anderson