A wise man once said, “Be the change.” The founders of The Acquisition Group took those words to heart. In 2005, the pair struck out on their own with no assurances other than their conviction that the industry needed to change. Today, The Acquisition Group is 500 strong, and still growing.

We sat down with The Acquisition Group’s founders to find out what their vision was when they took that fateful leap, and what that vision looks like today:

Q: What made you decide to start The Acquisition Group?

A: We could see that the industry needed to change. We tried to influence and create that change from within an organization, but eventually it became clear that to do our vision justice, we had to build it on our own. And that’s when we decided to go all in.

Q: How did it feel to make that decision?

A: When we left our positions, it was a major gamble! But we knew that the industry was operating in the Wild West, and we were confident that if we stuck to our vision and delivered one to two successful campaigns, we would have the momentum and trust needed to take over the industry.

Q: What drove the creation of your business plan?

A: We based our business plan on how we wanted our people and consumers to be treated — with respect, integrity and support. Those values served as a foundation for our plan, and everything we built from there was rooted in those three pillars. We knew we needed to focus our operations on professional attitudes, product knowledge, training and customer support. These values and that focus allowed us to align ourselves with industry-leading businesses that had also built a reputation around trust, quality and a focus on the consumer.

Q: How did you manage to survive in such a competitive industry?

A: What really helped us survive and thrive in the early days was our commitment to following our systems and processes and delivering consistent training to our team members. We were focused on proving that the relationship with both our clients and consumers needed to be based on trust — trust in us as representatives and trust in the products and services we were representing.

Q: What is the key to The Acquisition Group’s success?

A: Our success comes from our people. Our people are successful because of the training and support programs we have in place. Our HR operations are the backbone of our success. The other key to our success is positioning. The reason we have been able to grow 10-fold in 10 years is because we have always aligned ourselves with industry leaders looking to innovate in their field.

Q: What advice would you offer an aspiring entrepreneur?

A: Start small, then build, grow, launch! We started with a small, close knit team that was 100% bought into what we wanted to build and grow – together.