Stop Replacing People and Start Developing Them with Ashley Napier
September 2, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readAshley Napier, a leadership coach who works with insurance agencies and other organizations, shared a story that captures the central tension of the episode: an agency principal wanted to fire a woman because her average phone call was 30 minutes. When asked what the calls were producing, it turned out she was adding new lines of business and generating significant revenue. The principal had never listened to the calls or checked her revenue-per-call metric. "It's so easy for us to have a predetermined confirmation bias of what's wrong," Napier said. That moment frames the episode's core argument: the instinct to replace people with AI is often a failure of leadership and development, not a sound business decision.
The Development Square
Napier described a structured process for training new hires that she calls the "development square." The sequence has four steps: (1) I do it, you watch, then we debrief; (2) I do it, you help; (3) you do it, I help; (4) you do it, I watch. The critical insight is that most organizations skip the middle two steps. "If I skip those two middle steps, then people are left and they don't know how to work well," Napier said. "And then we're frustrated with them. And then we say things like, 'Well, Sally's not really working. I'm just gonna go get some AI and replace her.' But really it was our responsibility to develop her."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (03:01) **Recruiting, Retaining, and Developing Talent** - Ashley explains why people are disengaged and how to fix it from the hiring stage onward
- 2 (10:06) **The Development Square: A Four-Step Training Model** - Ashley outlines a structured progression for onboarding new producers
- 3 (11:03) **Don't Replace People—Build Around Their Strengths** - A framework for using AI to augment employees, not fire them
- 4 (14:59) **Where AI Actually Fits in an Agency** - Ashley identifies the most productive use of AI and warns against over-adoption
- 5 (17:32) **Why Insurance Agencies Are Over-Focused on AI** - Comparing insurance to other industries reveals a dangerous imbalance
- 6 (19:56) **The Foundation Problem: No CRM, No Data** - You can't run a sales organization on feelings
- 7 (22:47) **The Trap of Throwing Tech at Your Team** - Ashley shares her own mistake of overwhelming people with too many tools too fast
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
In this episode of the Power Producers Podcast, David Carothers is joined by Ashley Napier of Solomon for a conversation about recruiting, developing, and retaining talent in an insurance industry increasingly obsessed with artificial intelligence.
Ashley explains that development cannot stop after hiring. Agencies need intentional onboarding, clearly defined expectations, and a progression where leaders demonstrate the work, perform it alongside the employee, allow the employee to take the lead with assistance, and eventually step back and observe.
David and Ashley challenge the idea that AI should automatically replace employees who struggle in certain areas. Instead, leaders should identify what people do exceptionally well and use technology to strengthen their weaknesses. AI should assist people rather than become the entire agency strategy. David also warns that agencies can become so consumed with the latest AI tools that they overlook foundational technology such as CRMs, processes, data collection, and training.
The conversation then moves directly into producer development. David shares his own experience of having to reset the training process with a producer after realizing that both of them had drifted away from the established framework. The lesson: having a process isn't enough—you have to execute it and hold people accountable to it.
They also discuss the value of immediate post-appointment coaching. David credits the "curbside chats" he received early in his insurance career—immediate conversations about what worked, what didn't, and what needed to change—with accelerating his development as a producer.
Finally, David translates leadership development into a middle-market sales strategy by explaining the Stop, Start, Continue exercise. Producers can anonymously gather feedback from a client's employees to uncover operational problems contributing to workers' compensation, commercial auto, and general liability losses.
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