Wanting to Grow and Deciding to Grow Aren't the Same Thing

Most agency owners say they want to grow. Ask any of them, and every single one will say yes. But wanting to grow and actually deciding to grow are two completely different things, and that gap is where most agencies stall. In this episode, Randy Schwantz breaks down what real commitment looks like: a specific number, a deadline, and an honest answer to the question most owners avoid. One agency owner took this seriously, made his commitment public to his team, and grew 31% in two years. If you're sitting on a plan that hasn't moved, this episode tells you why. Listen before your next leadership meeting. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, an agency owner flew to Dallas to meet with me a few years back. He'd, he'd been planning this trip for months. He had everything prepared, the growth strategy, the hiring plan, the technology [00:00:10] investments gonna make. He'd done the work. And we spent the morning going through it, and honestly, the plan was pretty dadgum good, and I kept waiting to find out what the problem was, [00:00:20] and then I found out.
It wasn't in the numbers. It wasn't in the strategy. It was in a ten-second pause he took when I asked him one question, [00:00:30] and here's what it was. I said, "Are you ready to do what this plan requires?" And then 10 seconds, [00:00:40] boom I knew the plan wasn't the issue, something else was, and until we dealt with that something else, this plan was gonna end up in a binder on [00:00:50] some shelf somewhere.
So then I said, "Well, let me ask you a different question."
Welcome to the Agency Growth Machine Podcast, where it's [00:01:00] all about transforming potential into profit. And now your host, Randy Schwantz
Hey there, everybody. Welcome to The Agency [00:01:10] Growth Machine. I'm Randy Schwantz, author of The Wedge, founder of The Wedge Group, and creator of Bignition, the only sales operating system that is built specifically for [00:01:20] commercial insurance agencies.
And today, we're talking about the thing that comes before strategy, before hiring, before [00:01:30] technology. We're talking about the decision to grow because without that decision, really nothing else matters. So let's get into [00:01:40] it. So here's the deal. Most agency owners will tell you they want to grow. Just ask any of them, "Do you wanna grow? Do you wanna grow your agency?" [00:01:50] And they'll all say yes, I mean, every single one of them will. But wanting to grow and deciding or being committed to grow, those really [00:02:00] are two completely different things.
And I'll tell you something I've never forgotten. When I was selling Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door, early 20s, before [00:02:10] I ever got into the insurance world, my manager sat down one morning and said, "Hey, Randy, wanting to make a sale and deciding to make a sale, that gap right there, [00:02:20] that's the whole game."
I'm gonna repeat that. He said, "Randy, wanting to make a sale and deciding to make a [00:02:30] sale, that gap, that's the whole game." And honestly, I didn't really fully understand it then, but I do now. [00:02:40] Wanting is passive. It kind of sits in the background. It doesn't require you to do anything. Deciding is different.
Deciding [00:02:50] means you've looked at your life, you've looked at your business, you've looked at your team, and you've said, "We're going somewhere specific. We're going there [00:03:00] deliberately, and we're gonna change what we gotta do to get there." Now, that's a commitment, and commitments require something from you.[00:03:10] 
The agency owners I've seen go from five million to 10 million or fr- from 10 to 15, I mean, they all had something in common. Here's what it was. There was a day, a [00:03:20] specific day, when they decided they're gonna make it happen. It wasn't when they started growing. It was when they decided to grow, and those were [00:03:30] months apart, but nothing meaningful happened until that decision was made.
So here's the thing about commitment. It sounds inspiring, but what does it [00:03:40] actually look like day to day? Well, it looks like clarity. It looks like specif- specificity. There's a number, there's a timeline, there's a target. It's not, "I wanna [00:03:50] grow," but, "We're gonna go from 11 million to 17 million in revenue in the next three years."
That's the target. I'm gonna write it down. I'm gonna tell all my leadership team. [00:04:00] We're gonna build a plan around that Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic emperor, he wrote about this in his private journal. [00:04:10] He keep re- he kept returning to a few ideas in those pages, make no excuse. Be clear with yourself about what you intend to do, [00:04:20] and then do it.
And when you fall short, don't make it catastrophic, just correct it. I mean, think about [00:04:30] that for a second. He was running an empire, and the thing he kept coming back to was be specific, be clear, and just keep moving. [00:04:40] Most agency owners aren't that specific. They say things like, "I wanna grow my best producers.
I wanna add two or three good people. I wanna get my retention up." [00:04:50] And those are good, but they're not a commitment. They're a wish list. A commitment looks like this. By the end of next year, we'll have added four new producers. Our average book size will be [00:05:00] about 800K, and our retention will be at 92%.
Those are the three things. Everything we do this year will point back to those three things. [00:05:10] So are you with me on that? I mean, that's a commitment. Now, here's the hard part. A commitment is only as real as what you're willing to give up to keep it. [00:05:20] The agencies that stayed flat at 3 million in revenue, the owner was comfortable.
He was doing fine. He had his routines, his golf [00:05:30] game, his vacations, his way of running things. Growth required disruption, and he wasn't willing to accept a disruption, [00:05:40] and that's not a judgment. It's just, like, being honest. I mean, some people aren't ready for what growth requires, and that's understood.
It's a choice. [00:05:50] Growth and staying the same, they don't live at the same address. That's just the deal you gotta realize. So stick around with me 'cause I'm gonna walk you through the [00:06:00] conversation that owner had with his leadership team that turned that decision into a plan. One specific question he asked and the answer that changed everything.
So here he was. He called [00:06:10] a meeting, just his three key people, and he said, "I want to walk you through something." He drew a line on a whiteboard, left side where we are, [00:06:20] right side where we're going, and in between a big old gap. And then he asked his team, "What is standing between us and that number?" [00:06:30] Not, "What are we gonna do?"
He asked the question, "What is in the way?"
Now, that question is different because most planning [00:06:40] conversations focus on action. This one focused on obstacles, and obstacles are honest. They don't let you hide behind optimism. [00:06:50] His team listed twelve pages: producer recruitment, carrier access, their service model, their owner's own time being consumed by accounts that should have been [00:07:00] handled by others.
Twelve things. And they looked at all twelve and said, "Okay, some of these we can fix fast, some will take time. [00:07:10] Which ones do we attack first?" Now, that's a conversation that matters. Not the vision board, not this inspirational speech. The [00:07:20] honest look at the gap, an honest look at what's in the way, and a team that's decided to work through it.
And here's the other thing he did. He made it public, [00:07:30] not to the world, but to his team. He stood up at his next all-hands meeting and said, "Here's our number. Here's our deadline. Here's what we're gonna do about it. I'm asking you to commit to [00:07:40] this with me." And then he told me, "That moment changed the culture of our agency."
Because when a leader makes a public commitment, it does two things: it raises the stakes [00:07:50] and invites others in. His people wanted to be a part of something going somewhere. People always do. Now, back to the beginning of this episode. [00:08:00] That one different question I asked the owner before he went down the commitment road, I said, "What is your life gonna look like in five years if the agency stays [00:08:10] exactly where it is now?"
And he thought about it, and then he said something he hadn't said out loud before. He said, "Honestly, I'd be okay. I mean, I'd be fine." [00:08:20] And I said, "So the plan isn't actually for you. So who's it for?" And there was a long pause. And [00:08:30] then he said, "It's for my managers, my producers. I think they want more than this agency can give them right now."
And that's when the commitment got real, [00:08:40] not for himself, but for his people. He left Dallas with the same plan he came with, but something had changed. The reason behind it was real now. [00:08:50] And two years later, the agency grew by 31%, he called to tell me.
Now, here's what I want you to do this week. Write down a number, [00:09:00] not a range, a specific number.
Where do you want your agency to be in revenue in three years? And then write down your current number and then look at the gap. Then [00:09:10] ask yourself one really honest question: Am I willing to do what it takes to close the gap? And if the answer is yes, you just made a commitment, and now we can talk about [00:09:20] a plan.
If the answer is, "Well, I'm not sure," you wanna sit with it a little bit. Well, the agencies that grow fastest have a clean yes, and a clean yes starts with an [00:09:30] honest answer. So clarity is the beginning. Growth follows clarity every single time. So, hey, subscribe, share [00:09:40] this with someone on your team, but before you go, I wanna leave you with something.
Commercial insurance selling has gone through three eras, and right now you and your agency are living in one of them. Era [00:09:50] number one I call selling 1.0. It's what your daddy did, three by five cards, Yellow Pages. And then the, the, the sales strategy was, you know, meet with people, find coverage gaps, quote [00:10:00] it, price it, hope that you win.
There was almost no differentiation. And then selling two, 2.0 came along, and that's when we got technology, things like Salesforce [00:10:10] and HubSpot with beautiful dashboards. But you wanna know what actually happened with that technology? Answer is really not much. [00:10:20] About the only difference was a, a pipeline report could be pulled on Friday by the manager.
But here's the problem: the training still lived in a binder, the technology lived on a [00:10:30] browser. They didn't talk to each other. They didn't support each other. And in most cases, the agency doesn't grow And then the next era [00:10:40] I call selling 3.0, and that's where Bignition fits in. And here's what it actually looks like.
With Bignition, there's three tiers: a tier for producers, a [00:10:50] tier for leaders, and the t- technology that, that, that really glues it all together. And for producers within it, you set your revenue goal, and the system works backwards. It helps you really [00:11:00] calculate how many points do you need, how many accounts do you need to close, at what size.
It tells you, your appointment setting script is there. It's tracked. It's tied to a specific target. [00:11:10] It's not random. Every sales call starts with a pre-built strategy to drive a wedge and displace the incumbent. And then when you close the account, a documented service [00:11:20] timeline, which you can create in about three minutes, goes in place, so that you can keep what you win.
Everything, every step, everything's there, all measured. Now, [00:11:30] that's not a binder and a dashboard that don't talk to each other. That's one system running the whole game. That's Bignition. So if you're one of those agency owners with [00:11:40] two or five or 10 producers, and you want to take this whole thing to a new level, man, come check us out at thewedge.net.
And look, if you like this, I hope you'll leave a review. [00:11:50] I'm Randy Schwantz. I look forward to seeing you next week