Budget Insurance

How an 18-year-old from Sebring, Florida turned one carrier appointment into an agency serving tens of thousands of customers across the state.

Built in Sebring

Sebring was founded in 1912 on the shores of Lake Jackson.

Its historic downtown still revolves around Circle Park, with locally owned shops and restaurants surrounding it. There’s a nostalgic quality to the town, including an old-fashioned soda and ice cream shop stocked with dozens of sodas where kids still stop after school.

It’s a charming small town, far from Florida’s major population centers. And it’s not the obvious place to build a large insurance business.

But more than 20 years ago, an 18-year-old named Ashley decided to do exactly that.

One Company Said Yes

Ashley’s first office sat next to her father’s car dealership.

She had one employee, little experience, and no grand plan for what the business might eventually become. She was focused on taking care of customers and figuring things out as she went.

There was just one problem: no insurance company wanted to appoint her.

She was 18, inexperienced, and trying to build an agency in Sebring. To the carriers whose products she needed permission to sell, she wasn’t an obvious bet.

Eventually, American Traditions took a chance on her.

That first appointment changed everything.

Ashley began writing business and quickly proved she could produce. One appointment led to another. One customer became hundreds, and eventually thousands. What started as a tiny office with one employee grew into two offices and a team of more than 40 people.

More than 20 years later, American Traditions remains one of Budget’s major carrier partners.

“You never forget the people, or the companies, who believed in you before you had anything to prove that they should.”

Whatever It Takes

As Budget grew, Ashley developed a simple view of what it meant to take care of a customer: once they became a Budget customer, they were her responsibility.

Sometimes she took that more literally than most insurance agents would.

When a carrier required a repair to keep a policy in force and a customer couldn’t afford it, Ashley would find a way to help. Over the years, she sent handymen to install handrails, paint houses and make repairs so customers could avoid having their insurance cancelled.

“To me, it was never just about selling someone a policy. Once you became our customer, I felt a responsibility to you.”

That philosophy also shaped how she built the company.

Ashley created what she calls a “salary mentality.” Rather than building a culture where producers were primarily motivated by commissions, she wanted employees focused on finding customers the right coverage at the most cost-effective price.

Take care of the customer first, she believed, and the business would follow.

It did.

Mr. Brock

Of the thousands of customers Budget has served, there is one Ashley still thinks about often.

Mr. Brock was one of her earliest customers. Whenever he came into the office, he would only sit with Ashley.

Over time, their conversations became about much more than insurance.

His wife had passed away, and he didn’t have children nearby. Sometimes he would come into the office simply to talk. Ashley listened.

At Thanksgiving and Christmas, she baked him pies. She would stop by his house to visit, and they would sit outside together.

One particularly hot day, Ashley suggested they go inside.

Mr. Brock put his head down.

“Hunny, it’s hotter in there.”

He didn’t have air conditioning and was embarrassed to tell her.

Ashley had an air-conditioning system installed in his home. Later, she put a new roof on it.

At some point, Mr. Brock stopped feeling like a customer and started feeling like family.

He passed away a few years ago. Afterward, a family member Ashley didn’t even know he had came to see her. She told Ashley that Mr. Brock had talked about her all the time and that she had made a real impact on his life.

“That meant more to me than I can probably put into words.”

Ashley had built a successful company, but Mr. Brock was a reminder that not everything worth measuring shows up in the numbers.

“Sometimes success is knowing that you made someone’s life a little better simply because you took the time to care.”

Growing Up Alongside Budget

Ashley started Budget when she was 18, which meant that as the company grew, she grew up alongside it.

Her best friend, Megan, eventually left a career she was comfortable in to take a chance on building Budget with her. The agency expanded to two offices and more than 40 employees, many of whom stayed for years.

For a long time, Ashley was too busy building the business to fully appreciate how unusual it had become.

That changed when she and Megan were invited to a private appreciation lunch hosted by one of their carrier partners. As the company went through the production numbers, Ashley realized that what they had built in Sebring wasn’t normal.

The 18-year-old who once struggled to convince a single insurance company to appoint her had quietly built a significant business.

But the part Ashley is most proud of isn’t how large Budget became. It’s how they built it.

“I didn’t just build a successful company. I built a company around core values.”

More than 20 years after starting Budget, the company had become far bigger than anything her 18-year-old self imagined.

It had also become almost impossible to separate from who she was.

One More Meeting

By 38, Ashley was working 15-hour days, seven days a week.

“I’m a wife, a mom, a daughter, a sister, and a friend, and somewhere along the way, all of those roles had started taking a backseat to my business.”

Budget was growing faster than she could keep up with. She began exploring a partner, met with several potential buyers and hired a brokerage to help with the process.

But her biggest concern had little to do with money.

“My biggest fear was no longer being the boss of Budget.”

After several meetings that didn’t feel right, Ashley was ready to abandon the process and figure it out on her own.

“Right when I was ready to give up on the process, the brokerage I was working with called me and said, ‘I have one more person, and I promise he’ll be worth your time.’”

Her first response was basically, No thanks. I’m good.

But she agreed to one more meeting.

What’s 30 minutes of my life?

“I will forever be grateful that I took that meeting. Freddy was different from the very beginning.”

What mattered to Ashley was finding a partner she could trust with the people, history and business she had spent more than 20 years building. Over time, she became convinced HoneyQuote was that partner.

“I wasn’t simply making a business transaction. In many ways, I was handing someone a piece of my identity.”

Budget became a HoneyQuote company.

The Next Chapter

Ashley is still building Budget.

The goal was never to replace what she had built. It was to build on top of it. Today, Ashley and the Budget team are working alongside HoneyQuote to grow the business, with more technology, resources and support behind them while preserving the relationships and culture that made Budget what it is.

She’s proud of what the company was before the partnership and excited about how much bigger it can become from here.

But the next chapter is also personal.

“For so long, I thought finding a partner might mean losing a piece of what I had built or even losing a piece of myself.”

Instead, she found a way to keep building Budget while making room again for the other parts of her life.

Wife. Mom. Daughter. Sister. Friend.

More than 20 years ago, Ashley started Budget with one employee and one carrier willing to take a chance on her.

She’s still building.

She just doesn’t have to build it alone.