InsurePodcast #4: Steven Wiatrek

Steven Wiatrek is a sixteen-year veteran of the insurance industry who spent most of his career building a $4.5 million book at a captive carrier in South Texas before being let go on Christmas Eve, 2024. He started over from zero in January 2025 as a branch owner with City Centre Insurance Agency — a distribution firm with sixty-five branches that operates as a single licensed entity, giving its agents access to over sixty P&C carriers and two hundred life and health markets without the captive quotas. From a town of two thousand people an hour and ten minutes from San Antonio, he's grown to over two hundred clients in the past year, almost entirely face-to-face.In this conversation we get into the texture of how a real face-to-face producer actually builds a book. Steven walks through "the pickle method" — his half-joking, fully serious technique for turning a grocery store aisle into a prospecting opportunity — and why he always hands out three business cards instead of one. We talk about his exclusive relationships with Remax loan officers and car salesmen (one card with the $25 gift card cap, one with his personal cell), and why he'll leave a family dinner to write a quote when a referral partner calls.We also get into the work itself. The EZLynx workflow and why he never trusts the rater's first number. The motor vehicle report as a gate against tire-kickers. The carrier panel he's built across Safeco, SageSure, Assurance America, and the legacy markets, calibrated by region across Texas. Why he won't write a house with a hole in the floor or one with a dog on a bent chain — and the time he was bitten on a home inspection. His review process, which he carried over from his captive days and turned into a 70–80% life insurance close rate. And his bigger thesis: that in the next ten years, having a human independent agent will be a luxury flex, and the agents who win will be the ones who use AI to deepen face-to-face service rather than replace it.Steven and City Centre Insurance Agency: citycentreinsurance.com/steven-wiatrekInsure Podcast is a long-form interview show with the owner-operators of small independent insurance agencies. Hosted by Ben Shaw.insurepodcast.com