What are Your Options: Prepare to Perpetuate

One of the really great things about owning an independent insurance agency is that you are Independent! You can and do make choices every day that affect your agency’s performance and success, both in the short-term and long-term. In other words, you have options and you’re exercising them, some more purposefully than others.

As we look forward to 2015, now’s a great time to examine some of the options you have concerning the future of your agency.

Option Four: Prepare to Perpetuate

Something we absolutely know is that everybody eventually leaves their business. Hey, I just did and it took me a long time to do so! But I chose to perpetuate part of my business, which requires meticulous planning.

Step 1: Get the boat ready to sell! You may recall the story about the time my son, Patrick, and I wanted to sell our 16-foot flats boat and get a slightly larger one. Together, we worked really hard to clean it up so that we could sell it quickly. Once we were finished, the boat was polished to perfection! It looked so good that Patrick (then a teenager) remarked, “Maybe when we get the new one we should pretend that we’re always going to sell it and keep it really clean like this all the time!” The moral of the story: Get the boat ready to sell!

Step 2: Choose your path. Assuming you want to perpetuate, what are you doing to get the boat ready to sell? Remember, there are two types of perpetuation: Financial and Leadership. So determine the perpetuation path you want to take and stick to it.

Step 3: Start preparing now! The time to prepare is NOT when you need to perpetuate.