Carey Wallace: It Was Always the People

A career in three chapters

When six people nominate you for an award, it says something about the mark you’ve made. For Carey Wallace, it’s still sinking in.

“It's pretty humbling that I had multiple people nominate me, which is pretty unbelievable,” she says. 

Her path into insurance was anything but a straight line. Carey started her career at a tech startup and helped take it from launch to IPO. Then she stepped away for 12 years to raise her two daughters full time. One of her daughters has special needs, and Carey says those years taught her the most about herself and the kind of person she wanted to be.

“I feel like my life has almost been in three segments,” she says. “I had this really cool start to my career, and then I got to know myself really well and what life's all about by raising my girls. And then insurance was my third part.”

For her first several years back at work, she rarely talked about that gap, worried she wouldn't be taken seriously. Once she found her footing, that changed. “Other women need to hear it's okay to do this,” she says. “You can still be very successful and choose your family over your career for a period of time, and then build your career from wherever you are.”

Finding that balance has been her biggest challenge, from 18-hour days in the startup world to building a business with a family at home. She credits a supportive husband and learning to give herself grace. Today she travels constantly, but she's proudest that her daughters remember a mom who was always there.

The project that became a career

Carey came to insurance for what she thought would be a small project: helping Ohio's Big “I” and PIA state affiliates merge, using the mergers and acquisitions experience she'd gained taking her startup public. She planned to head back to tech afterward.

Then she met the agents on the two boards. “They were passionate about their community. They were some of the most interesting people I've ever met,” she says. “I stayed because of the people. There's just no two ways around that.”

After the merger, the association asked how it could help agents most. Carey built its valuation and perpetuation planning services and later led IntellAgents, the first data-analytics company built only for independent agencies. She's quick to credit the agent leaders who saw that vision first. Her role, she says, was taking it from idea to business plan to execution, and convincing people “before data was sexy” that it mattered.

It was also her education in the industry. “You wanna learn about 'em, look at 20,000 independent insurance agencies' data,” she says, “and you're gonna learn quite a bit.”

Betting on herself

By 2021, Carey was holding three full-time jobs: a leadership role at the Ohio association, CEO of IntellAgents, and lead consultant for the association's valuation work. She asked herself whether she was serving everyone well and whether she had work-life balance. “The answer was no to all of those things, and I needed to choose,” she says.

What she loved most was the same thing that drew her to insurance: working directly with agents. So in the middle of COVID, she launched AgencyFocus, a consulting firm that helps agencies with valuations, perpetuation and succession planning, acquisitions, and Fractional CFO support. A Certified Exit Planning Advisor, she has since worked with hundreds of agencies.

“Listen, you gotta bet on yourself at some point, and I chose to do that,” she says. “Probably one of the best decisions I've made. My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner.”

Agencies are valuable

Many agency owners avoid asking what their agency is worth and what comes next. Carey believes the reason is simple: fear. “We don't wanna think about what life is after the thing we're in, and sometimes it's really hard to imagine,” she says. “But the reality is we're all not gonna be in the companies we're in today, and if we don't plan for it, it can really be detrimental.”

Her mission is to remove that fear by breaking planning into steps owners can actually take, “rather than feeling like you have to eat the entire elephant.” And she wants owners to know their worth. “Agencies are valuable,” she says. “I do not wanna see people sell for a discount when they don't need to.”

Living in the gray

Carey's work often brings her into owners' hardest moments, like a partnership falling apart or an owner passing away unexpectedly. Her nominators say that's where she shines. “Carey and her team updated the valuation and led me through 11 months of unknown,” wrote Jessica Holder, an agency owner who nominated her. “She not only provided professional advice, she was a friend and mentor.”

Carey says the job demands more than math. “Numbers are really black and white, but what I do, they couldn't be more gray,” she says. “I've been told often that I'm not your typical numbers person, and that's a huge compliment.”

Owners sometimes tell her that opening their books feels like opening their underwear drawer. She wants them to know there's no judgment. “I've seen absolutely everything,” she says. “My whole goal is to make sense of it, help them understand the decisions that are in front of them, and help them make informed decisions.”

Charles McDade, founder of McDade Insurance Brokerage Group, put it this way: “She helps owners see what they are missing without making them feel small for not knowing.” Two nominators separately called her a matriarch: Casey Nelson of AgencyX called her “the matriarch of my insurance network”, and Holder called her “the matriarch of the modern independent agency industry.”

Carey doesn't take that trust lightly. “When you're an outsider and someone trusts you to send you all of their financial information and expose the good, the bad, the ugly, I don't take that lightly,” she says.

Giving back

Carey shares much of her expertise for free through webinars, the Business Refocused podcast, and LaunchPad, a free series for young professionals entering the industry. She and her team also lead Mastermind groups, where agency owners learn from one another, not just from her. She's a frequent speaker at industry events too, though she says she does it because people ask, not because the stage was ever her dream.

“There's been a lot of people that have been helpful to me and that I've learned from,” she says. “I think it's a responsibility as a leader that you also need to give back to the community that's given so much to you.” Her goal is content that's easy to understand, takes the mystery out of tough topics, and feels relatable.

That generosity is part of what she loves about insurance. Coming from the “dog eat dog” tech world, she was surprised by how welcoming the industry has been. “People wanna see you succeed, and they really do embrace people that take the time to care,” she says.

Her message to women in insurance

“There's a place for you in this industry, and you can make an incredible difference,” Carey says. “I think there's a seat at every single table. You need to make those seats, and you also need to welcome other women to sit beside you as well.”

“Just because the people at the table don't look like you doesn't mean that you don't have something incredible to bring,” she adds. “Diversity of thought is a gift, and that's what we bring.”