Kelly Bishop runs Montana Legacy Insurance from Livingston, Montana. She started in insurance at 18, spent 20+ years with Farmers, kept an independent book for another decade, then took a detour through real estate and a stint as a Shelter agent in Las Vegas. When Shelter pulled out of Nevada, she came back to Montana and decided that if she was going to do insurance again, she'd do it independent. Montana Legacy is the result — about a year old, now writing through 60 carrier appointments, focused on commercial and farm-and-ranch with personal lines on the side.
In this conversation we get into the texture of running a small independent agency in rural Montana — including the placement process for commercial accounts (sometimes submitting to twelve carriers), why wildfire scoring is reshaping the homeowners market, why she joined Montana Agency Alliance / SIAA for appointments, and the EZLynx-to-Semsee journey that's reshaped her commercial workflow. We also get her honest take on the technology paradox: that despite all the automation, she feels the work takes longer now than it did when she was writing 50–100 policies a month at Farmers.
We talk about the single-agent operation she runs with Bree, plans to expand into all 50 states, the cross-sell with her real estate practice, and what she'd want a virtual assistant to actually do.
Kelly and Montana Legacy Insurance: montanalegacyinsurance.com
