On the heels of yesterday's email about buying up master agency bases, Microcorp announced today that Brad Miehl, founder of MicroCorp, will ne replaced as President by Microcorp's current Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Phil Keenan, a 28-year industry veteran.

Karin Fields will take over reigns as both COO and CEO.

Big shift to one of the largest and older master agencies who, according to the email yesterday, is looking to grow through acquisition of other agencies.

The Master Agencies seem to be at the transition stage if you look at the number of management changes that have taken place in the last couple of years. As the email headline states: What's Your Exit Strategy?

Much like the NCTA members, retirement planning is top of mind for agents and VARs as the marketplace changes and the owners age. It has been 18 years since the Telecom Acto f 1996 opened up the brave new world for CLECs. And many of those CLECs don't exist any more due to mergers, bankruptcies and vagrancies of the market. (I will hold back a rant about poorly executed strategy by the CLECs.)

As an agent and consultant, retirement planning is on the to-do list. (It just happens to be on the bottom right now.) What are your plans?

Congrats to the Brad, Karin and Phil!