In terms of P&C I can try to help you there.
First off, as a captive, were you mainly commercial or personal lines? I take it that you focus in one or the other, you might want to start in PL since commercial for independents can be a headache to pick up at first.
For getting the carriers, they will basically be asking you TONS of questions or trying to get an idea about how you can help the company grow. I would imagine you had to do a similar interview when becoming captive.
Insurance carriers will want to see what you did with the captive more than likely as a reference for what you can do for them. I would keep a 3 year experience report showing your total book, 3 years of growth, and your loss ratio. I don't know if you have access to that but it will sure as heck help out.
Also, try to write out a marketing plan with your projected production for the next 6 months, year, two years, 3 years, and 5 years. How are you looking to grow and market? How can you tie in the prospective carrier to your goals and why you think they will be a great fit? Will the insurance companies think you can reasonably do this? If you say you plan to have a 1-2M book in 5 years do you have enough ideas there that are reasonable and good enough to get you to 1M or close to it? Think of this as like going to a bank for a loan- they want to see if the investment is worth it. They also want to make sure your target market is what they are looking for, though most carriers I'm sure are all looking for the same target market.
I'm not in CA so I don't know ALL of the competitive carriers out there. Find 2-3 companies you think will help you the MOST and try to get a direct appointment with them. It could be Allied, Safeco, GMAC, Progressive,or Mercury. I don't know, I'm just throwing names out there so don't quote me on those as being the best of the best. See what the production requirements are and gauge if you can do it or not. If not, shoot for less companies and make them happy first and figure out which ones those are. For all the other companies I would go through a third party for carriers such as a cluster (Iroquois Group, SIAA, Agent Secure, Insurance Noodle, some CA-regional ones, etc.) an MGA (no binding authority but they can place the weird risks or one-of's like mobile homes or multiple claim properties) and an E&S broker for the homes that standard markets won't use. You want to be prepared for everything but you CAN'T. So have some carriers that you think will handle 70-90% of your business and outsource the rest so you spend time placing business that is good for the client rather than trying to fill up a bunch of requirements to keep your carriers.
MGAs will also be your friend for commercial in the beginning since they have SICK production requirements for people that are new and you have a long time to figure out how to market your niche. MGAs will haircut your commissions but you don't have to worry about losing the book because you only generated 30-40k for a company and found they aren't good for your niche.
Hope that helps- it's a 5 min. typing of some ideas to get rolling that is non-specific. Talk to some local agents in the area or CA agents here to help with the CA specific stuff. I'm sure there are some threads here about it as well.
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