The Only Way to Get Started Is to Start: Why Action Beats Planning Every Time
Hosts of The Insurance Dudes Podcast — 1,000+ episodes helping insurance agents build elite agencies
There is a version of your agency that exists only in your head. The scripts are perfect, the team is fully trained, the systems are airtight, the marketing is dialed in, and you finally have enough data to move with confidence. That version of your agency will never exist. It can't, because it requires a state of readiness that only comes from doing the work, not from preparing to do the work. The only way to get started is to start. That is not a motivational poster. It is an operational fact.
The Preparation Trap
Jason has watched it happen across the agency space repeatedly. Someone has a real idea, a new niche to target, a referral program to build, a commercial line to add, a marketing system to implement. They research it. They talk about it. They buy the course, read the book, listen to the podcast. They draft the plan. They refine the plan. They wait for the right quarter. Then they wait for the right month. Then something else comes up and the idea goes into the folder with all the other ideas that were going to be the thing that changed everything.
This isn't laziness. Lazy people don't research and plan. This is a specific and common cognitive trap called preparation as progress. Your brain cannot tell the difference between learning about taking action and actually taking action. Both produce a small neurochemical reward. Both feel productive. Only one of them changes anything in your business.
The insurance business rewards this trap especially well because there is always more to learn. More coverage nuances to understand, more carrier products to study, more marketing platforms to master, more sales techniques to absorb. The information supply is infinite. The demand for actual results does not wait for you to finish your research. Your clients need coverage now. Your revenue needs to come in this month. Your team needs leadership today.
Jason's point is direct: the cost of imperfect action is almost always lower than the cost of extended inaction. A cold call made with a mediocre script generates more revenue than a perfect script that never gets dialed. A referral program launched with three partners produces more leads than a six-partner program that's still being designed. An email sent to your existing book asking for commercial referrals, even if the copy isn't polished, converts better than the polished version sitting in your drafts folder.
What Action Actually Teaches You
The other half of this equation is what action gives you that preparation cannot: real feedback. Every time you do the thing, make the call, send the email, have the conversation, run the campaign, you get data. That data is worth more than any amount of secondary research because it is specific to your market, your book, your voice, and your clients.
The agent who makes fifty cold calls to contractors this week knows exactly what objections come up most often in their territory. They know which opening line gets engagement and which one gets a hang-up. They know how long the average conversation runs before the prospect either commits or disengages. That agent's fifty imperfect calls have generated a competitive intelligence advantage that cannot be purchased or studied into existence.
This is why the best coaches and trainers in the agency space, people like David Carothers, the guys at Agency Nation, the operators who built real books, will all tell you the same thing when pressed: start before you're ready. Not because preparation is worthless, but because a certain level of preparation is sufficient and the rest is stalling.
The threshold for sufficient preparation is lower than most agents think. For a new prospecting system, you need to understand the basic concept and the first step. That's it. The rest will reveal itself in execution. For a new niche, you need enough industry knowledge to have a credible first conversation and enough humility to learn the rest from the prospect. For a new marketing channel, you need a test budget and a hypothesis. The optimization comes after you have data, not before.
What This Means for Your Agency
Identify one thing you have been preparing to do for more than thirty days. Something you know you should be doing, that you have the basic information to start, that you have been holding in the planning phase.
Do the first step today. Not this week. Today. Make one call, send one email, have one conversation, write the first line of the first draft. The first step does not need to be perfect. It does not need to be the best version of the thing. It needs to exist.
Then do the second step tomorrow. The momentum of starting is real and it is your most important early-stage asset. Protect it by keeping the bar for each step appropriately low. You are not trying to build the whole system this week. You are trying to break the inertia of not-starting, which is the only obstacle between you and the business you're trying to build.
Hold yourself accountable with a simple daily question: did I take action today on the thing I said I would do? Yes or no. There is no partial credit. This question, asked honestly every day, will tell you more about your agency trajectory than any production report.
The Bottom Line
The gap between where your agency is and where you want it to be is not an information gap. It is an action gap. You already know enough to take the next step. The plan does not need one more revision. The script does not need to be perfect. The system does not need to be fully built before you turn it on. The only way to get started is to do this: start. Today. Imperfectly. Immediately. The rest builds from there.
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About Jason Feltman: Jason Feltman is co-host of The Insurance Dudes podcast and a P&C agency owner. He specializes in the operational and mindset side of building an insurance agency that produces results without burning out the owner.
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