Stryve Stories: Joey Kelly, Agency Owner

Joey Kelly never wanted to talk to an insurance guy. Now he is one.

For most of his adult life, Joey Kelly was busy building things that had nothing to do with insurance. He spent seven years as a trainer, and later, he and his wife ran a successful short-term rental business. They were different businesses, but the same instinct ran underneath all of them: Joey wanted to own his time and answer to himself.

Insurance was the one thing he had no interest in. His wife handled the policies on the properties they owned, and Joey was glad to leave it there. "My goal was to never deal with an insurance person," he says. "A common saying in the industry is, 'you don't find insurance, insurance finds you,'" and that was definitely the case for Joey.

The point came when life forced a decision. His wife was seven months pregnant with their second son, they were winding down their property management company, and the math at home was simple. One of them needed dependable income, and Joey already had a job in medical sales nearly locked in.

What he also had was an open door. Years earlier, Jeff Davidson, Founder of Stryve Insurance, told Joey that if he ever reached a fork in his career, he should come find him before deciding which way to go. Joey was standing at that intersection, and he connected with Jeff about what a career in insurance could look like, including the chance to own his book and build real flexibility into his days. By the end of the conversation, the medical sales job was off the table.

Learning the hard way

The early days as an insurance agent were humbling. For a time, it was just Joey, Jeff, and another agent, three people trying to build an agency without much industry experience or carrier access between them. They were eager and undertrained, and Joey is the first to admit it.

"Looking back, we really didn't know what we were doing," he says.

They learned by trial and error, wasted time on processes they had not yet figured out, and slowly pieced together how the business worked. What they were missing was structure, and that is what eventually changed everything.

As Stryve matured, it brought in seasoned leadership and built the infrastructure a real agency runs on, including stronger carrier relationships and the systems and training that take the guesswork out of a day. Joey felt the difference fast. He went from someone improvising to someone who knew what he was doing and could prove it. The agency that started with three people grew into a team of eighteen, and what caught him off guard was how much that team came to matter.

"Having a team around you is the most powerful thing we have," he says. The company Slack channel runs all day with agents trading questions and covering each other's blind spots. Even the experienced ones lean on the group when a carrier shifts its underwriting rules. Behind the scenes, tools like EZLynx for multi-carrier quoting and Canopy Connect for gathering client information turned a slow, manual process into something close to a single conversation, freeing Joey to spend his time where he is strongest: with people.

Thinking about building something of your own? Stryve will walk you through the full model before you ever commit, including how the economics work and what owning your book actually looks like. Starts with a 15-minute intro call with our team to learn more!

A Professional Friend

Ask Joey how he wins business, and he will not describe a sales funnel. He will describe friendships. Joey built his book by becoming genuinely useful to the people positioned to send him clients, the lenders and realtors who touch a deal long before anyone needs an insurance quote. Some became referral partners, and many simply became friends. A networking group he joined on a hunch, unsure it would pay off, turned into one of his steadiest sources of business.

What ties it together is the way he treats the work itself. Insurance has a reputation for being dry and confusing, and Joey set out to give his clients a different experience.

"One of my missions is to make insurance fun," he says. "I like breaking a policy down so even a third grader could understand it."

That patience tends to show up in dollars. He once worked with a longtime USAA customer who was paying around $8,000 every six months to insure a single vehicle. By the time Joey finished shopping the market on her behalf, she was closer to $2,000, a savings of roughly $10,000 a year. Wins like that are why he keeps the explanations simple and the relationships real.

The Life Insurance Built

The reason any of this matters to Joey comes back to the thing he had been chasing through every venture before it. He wanted a life that fit his family rather than a family squeezed around his work, and insurance is where he finally found it. His wife Cait works in corporate, which means Joey can be the one who handles the sick days and the school pickups. He can step away in the afternoon when his sons need him and make up the hours at night or over the weekend. When the family wants to travel, they go.

"That flexibility has been huge for our family," he says. "It's just made life work better."

He is careful not to make it sound easy. By his own account, building this agency has been the hardest thing he has ever done, tougher than any of the businesses that came before it, and he leaned on a lot of faith to get through the early uncertainty. What he has now is momentum, and he can feel it building.

"It's like rolling a snowball down a hill," Joey says. "It keeps getting bigger and faster. I know it's going to be worth it."

The guy who once wanted nothing to do with insurance has built a career, a client base, and a life around it. He found the freedom he had been looking for all along, and he found it in the last place he ever expected to look.

Want to see what the Stryve model could look like for you? Joey started with a simple conversation and a willingness to bet on himself. Request a call with our team, and we'll send the full payout breakdown before we connect. This could be your story one day.