CRO Brett Godwin on Ownership, Pipeline Habits & Wealth #sales #salestips #salestraining #ai

Brett, good to see you. Appreciate you joining today. As a way of getting started, tell us a little bit more about your story and your journey.

Thanks, Dustin. So I graduated Wake Forest in 1990, so that is a long time ago. And I had a job in the Foot Locker management training program, which is retail. And that was terrible. And so my apologies to anybody in retail, but, you know, it's working weekends and holidays. And so I took any job that was not that, which was as an underwriter in insurance. And so a nice, you know, more regular scheduled Monday to Friday job. And that was fantastic. And that started my career in underwriting. And I spent a long time in underwriting with Hanover and Aetna. And Hartford, and gradually with Hanover, I worked there about 18 years. I began to get into some other projects. I did some M&A stuff. I did some work with big data, and just kind of broadened my skill sets, which led me to Sterling Seacrest in the independent agency side almost nine years ago. And so just always curious about that side. We work with agents all the time, obviously on the carrier side, and there was an opportunity to become the. Chief Operating Officer at Sterling Seacrest, and so I did that, and we grew the firm from. Let's see when I started we were roughly thirty-two million in revenue in two thousand seventeen eighteen, and and now we sit here at about a hundred million more and a hundred and thirty million in revenue. So it's been been quite a quite a journey. Most of that is organic. There is one merger of about twenty million in there, but learned a lot and sort of grew out of the COO role into Chief Revenue Officer. We were I was doing both of those revenue activities and operating activities, and the revenue activities were taking a backseat to the operating stuff. And so transitioned to more of a strict revenue role. And it's been fantastic. And so continue to do that today. That's awesome.

That's awesome. A quick note on the retail. I feel like it is a good place to start because you have to get your hands dirty and it's just, you just get beat up in retail. I used to crawl around Home Depot floors and, and the stores. So I, I know exactly what you're talking around with the Foot Locker. And okay, great, awesome ride. You've moved into the CRO role relatively recently but been there for a long time. Uh, tell us a little bit more about Sterling, and then I know you have a pretty big team of— I call it sales folks, but I think they're producers is how you would, would refer to it. But tell us a little bit more about your sales team and just what that looks like compared to maybe other industries out there.

Yeah, so we have about 100 salespeople in the sales force. We categorize them as partners and future partners. And so we're an S corp, and one of the things that's unique about us is we offer an objective path to partnership. And so we give somebody a very clear number that they need to hit to make partner. You, of course, along that journey, there is a little bit of subjectivity. You basically can't be a jerk, right? But outside of that, if you treat people the right way, and you produce what you produce, we have a very clear path to partnership. And so they fall into those 2 categories. And it's roughly 55-60 partners, and the rest being what we call our future partners. And so future partners are those people that we spend most of our time in producer development on, and they're on their journey. We sell commercial insurance, employee benefits, and private client or personal lines, as most people would think about it. And so you need to choose a lane and become an expert. What we ask our sales force to do is to be really trusted risk advisors. And so we don't want you to think of yourselves as a commodity seller because we're not selling a commodity. We want you to really provide good risk management advice and hopefully get a seat at the leadership table of your clients. And so— A lot of time spent on education. We want you to be a lifetime learner. I'd say our sales force tends to fall into 2 categories. So we have the vertical seller, right? So those people that are experts in a specific area. So that could be medical malpractice, or that might be construction, that might be, you know, pharma. There could be a lot of things that they really have an expertise in and they lean into that. And the other people played quarterback at Georgia and they know everybody and they can open a lot of doors. And so those are our generalist sellers who really are great relationship people, rainmakers, and they kind of fall into those categories.

Go Dawgs, by the way. I went to UGA, so I got to throw that in there. And okay, that makes total sense. And I love the idea of giving them ownership in that future path because I think most really good individual contributors, they're looking for ways to grow. And sometimes that's hard if you're an individual contributor. So having ownership or partner status, I think that it's super smart. So is it, I guess, depending on which lane, those 2 lanes you mentioned, is it more of a quicker sale or is it very complex? I mean, these, are these long drawn out months, year relationships to get to the next stage or what does that look like from a sales cycle?

Yeah, great question. The one of the benefits of insurance is it is, it renews every year. And so we have a recurring renewable revenue stream. But I will say there is a correlation between size of revenue, generally speaking, and time to sale. And so many of these relationships, you can imagine if somebody's paying $1 million or $2 million for insurance, they have relationships and those current brokers are going to fight hard to keep them. And so that sales cycle can be quite long. And there are other sales on the smaller side where they may not have seen their broker in a long time. They got a last-minute big increase, and those sales can be quite short. And sometimes we take policies over, and we encourage this as a broker record letter in the middle of the process. Other times you're competing at renewal like you do on many products. We encourage all of our customers to choose the broker not get quotes from multiple brokers and choose the cheapest one. What you want to do is choose your best risk advisor. Let us do our work. Most of us have all the same markets. And so let us do the work of the shopping and then let's work together on a really good program.

No doubt. Makes sense. Yeah, the customer tends to put us in that commodity bucket naturally. So we have to try to get— change their thinking a little bit. It's nothing offensive. It's just how we're trained.

So yeah, Dustin, your, your audio cut out. There you go. Now you're back.

Okay. Yeah, sorry about that. But yeah, as far as a commodity standpoint, the customer is going to put us in the commodity trap out of the gates. And it's our job to differentiate and show that value that you're talking about. It sounds like you guys do a good job of that. What do you think has changed in the last 4 or 5 years? Has anything specific changed in your industry, or just has sales gotten harder compared to what it used to be? What have you seen?

It's changed. A comment on the commodity business. So it is tricky because many of your clients, you know, they are selling a commodity or they're used to a bidding process. And so you're trying to coach them out of a process in which they engage every day. And so So that's, that's an interesting part of the sales process. Uh, so what has changed? Uh, look, flat out, like cold calling has gone from maybe a, a 1 in 20 success to a 1 in 40 to maybe even 1 in 100, if that. Uh, and so just cold calling is a dying science if, if you ask me. Uh, and so can you still catch people occasionally? Sure. But I'm sure your phone, just like my phone, man, it says spam. Right? Or maybe it's spam, maybe, or something, and you're not answering that call. And so I think the just, hey, I am going to hammer the phones and make my living hammering the phones is tricky. And so you have to do things like this. I think brand management in the last 4 or 5 years has become much more important. And so am I doing short-form video? Am I doing a LinkedIn blog post? Am I all over Facebook? Am I going to the Cobb Chamber? Am I on nonprofit boards? So you have to find ways to meet buyers on their own terms. We do have a lot of people that are successful still with drop-ins. I do think, you know, they still can't get away with you. So where the cold call might not work, it's just not as efficient. You know, you can do 10 drop-ins in a day and 100 cold calls. And so I'd say that, that has certainly changed. I think people have easier access to who you are than they used to. And so the first thing I think a prospect is gonna do is they're gonna go into LinkedIn and they're gonna look at Dustin. And if Dustin doesn't have a picture and he hasn't posted anything, may not necessarily be bad, but they're not learning anything about you versus, you know, Dustin, you go in and, you know, you clearly have posted a lot of stuff and you have some interesting content. And I think it just establishes credibility. There's just more. Much more access. And then our customer is more educated. So anybody can use ChatGPT or Claude, and they can say, what do I need to know about D&O insurance? The good news for us is it's still a little bit of Greek, and it's still complicated. And as we sit here today, everybody still wants an advisor in the middle of that to kind of help with that decision process. But our buyers are certainly more educated than they used to be.

A few things on that. It is, I mean, you're a chief revenue officer. I'm a founder of a company and I try to promote the profession of sales, but I don't answer cold calls. I maybe every once in a while I might, if it looks like it's something similar, someone's been following up in a tactful way, but like, I just literally don't, I go straight to voicemail, then I delete them. Don't even listen to it. Sounds like you're probably the same. So that's coming from people that are probably empathetic. to sales reps trying to get meetings booked. So you can imagine the buyer's point of view, they're getting hit from every angle possible. So I totally agree with you on the cold calling. I do think there are some maybe young professionals, certain industries that are just straight savages that can probably be good at it for a year or two, but then they get burned out and it's not really sustainable. So that's an interesting point there. And then, yeah, 100%, especially with ChatGPT and Claude, the buyer is going to get probably 80 or 90% of the way there. before they even talk to you. And, and in their mind, they might think they don't even need to talk to you because they already have all this information. So you have to be really differentiated, which kind of goes to your, your personal branding comment, because if you don't stand out and somehow you're just going to be in that, I call it the sea of sameness and just like everybody else. So you have to, maybe it's not personal branding, but it's got to be something, a subject matter expertise or something that they remember Brett by or Dustin by. You mentioned personal branding, so it sounds like you probably have a lot of people that do that. Is there, is there other ways that you think the reps can differentiate?

For sure. I want to tell this story because it just happened the other day. It's super cool. So the coolest thing I've ever gotten from a solicitation perspective, and people send me gifts all the time, but this person, a box appeared on my desk and it said fragile, open immediately on it. And, you know, Being the daring person I am, I just ripped right into it. And inside the box, it had, I'll call it a booklet, but you opened up the booklet and a video immediately started playing. And the video was personalized. It said, dear Brett, I'm so-and-so, I'm selling this. And so it was about 30 minutes of a personalized introduction. And then it had about 2 minutes of, you could tell it was very well done, but it transitioned into like a 2-minute pitch of what they were selling and it had some cookies or something in it, right? So it also had a small gift, but I was like, wow, that's literally the coolest thing I've seen. And so I called the guy and took a meeting, but also he's like, yeah, it's about $75 a box to do that. So the client has to be meaningful, but it was truly different. So I thought that was a cool story. So it somewhat fits in your comment about differentiation.

That's great, by the way. That, I mean, that's going above and beyond. And I guess you need to have a budget to do that apparently at $75 a pop, but like that, that's gonna make you stand out. I love that story.

Yeah, but look, you know, if he ultimately lands a business and who knows, it's worth a lot more than $75. So you just gotta, you gotta place, place your bets wisely. So in, in terms of differentiation, I, look, I, I think everybody's a little bit different. What we always encourage folks to do is to think about what you're passionate about and see if you can find a way to combine what you're passionate about and meeting the prospects that you need to meet, because you're just going to come across as more sincere. And so you, Justin, may love to play golf, and what you don't want to do is go play golf with your buddies. What you do want to do is find the golf course where the rich people play and walk on as a single. And meet 3 new people. And so that, you know, that's one example. Or maybe you like mahjong, and Dustin, you're going to play in mahjong tournaments, and you're going to meet new people as you go through that, or the tennis clinic, or whatever you're passionate about. I think the people that are most successful are in some way combining what they're passionate about. That could be nonprofit boards, giving time. So that's a little bit of differentiation. Yeah. So I think the answer in terms of, yes, you have to differentiate, but it's different for every person. And much of it also comes back to just showing some product expertise in a way that you are communicating to people in a simple and effective way.

I like that. Yeah, what the passion is key because you're going to end up getting burnt out at some point, whether you're making good money or not. So if you can bring the 2 together, that's incredible. Understanding what your buyers enjoy doing, which is pretty easy to get that research these days, and then pairing it with you. I mean, of course, dinner, drinks, the classic stuff could be be effective depending on the situation. But yeah, you mentioned it, whether it's pickleball. I know people that do hikes with folks and then they, you know, snap a picture for LinkedIn, like all these different things you can do to be creative. It doesn't have to be just dinner and drinks, which is fine too. Now, with the other salespeople, you mentioned it already probably, but as far as like, what's the hardest part of the role now? Is it, you think, the prospecting? In getting the meetings, or do you think it's some of these more complex deals, getting that really tough renewal, things getting stuck in procurement, then getting ghosted at the last minute when they think the deal is going to go through? Like, what's the hardest part you think of the job right now?

By far, it's activity. And so you simply have to get enough meetings with decision makers. If you do that in our model and you're smart enough to bring the right set of resources with you, you're going to be successful. But to your point, there's just a certain number of deals that are not going to go for whatever reason. It might be— true story— that the other agent invested $1 million in that guy's business. Well, I'm not getting that business. Or it might be my incompetent brother-in-law is my agent and I can't fire him. Again, all these are true stories. And so you might get through the process and all of a sudden it goes to you because Who knows why? And so it becomes ultimately a frequency game. And so we think about it a third, a third, a third. So, you know, if you're, if you're calling, you know, getting 100 meetings and you're getting, you know, a third of those into the pipeline, right, in a meaningful way. So now that's 33. And, you know, a third of those I'm getting into the process and I'm closing a third of those. You just do, you just back into the math and that math is true over lots and lots of data points. So, of how many I need to close at what size to hit my goals. And the folks that fail often just don't have enough activity. And so they're not crazy enough. And back to your earlier comment where, yes, if you've got nothing else to do, you gotta pick up the phones. And so can I generate enough meetings in other ways? So activity is the hardest and the hardest to solve. Uh, if you are getting enough meetings and we're not closing enough, that's a little bit easier to diagnose and fix.

Yeah, good point. I, I totally understand that. And then you're right, there's gonna be things out of our control that derail a deal last minute that, that we can't really affect. But the reality is nobody— at some point, nobody cares about the excuses. You got to look at yourself and be accountable and figure out how do you make up for that, or how do you continue to be different, as we talked about. So I Totally get where you're coming from on that. And last thing on the reps, where do you think they waste the most time? Do you think that they spend their time in areas that isn't very beneficial? For example, like working on deals that don't close. That can be very frustrating to people because you spend a ton of time and then it doesn't close, and then it messes with your mindset. Or maybe they get complacent where they have a lot of existing business and, and they, you know, become more of an order taker. Where do you see people, I guess, not putting their focus on the right time?

Yeah, man, that's a phenomenal question. And I'll think about it in a bunch of ways. But first, it's tricking yourself into thinking that B activities are A activities. And so you feel really great. I do when I clear out 100 emails, man. I walked in today and I had 300 emails. Now I got 200. What a great day. You know what I did? Nothing. And, and so don't trick yourself into what are activities, because those A activities do not pay immediate dividends. And so that might be getting 10 of those boxes together with the videos, or that might be sending, you know, gifts out or thank you, handwritten thank you notes, whatever it is you're building your pipeline with. There is no immediacy to that whatsoever, but those are activities that are going to pay dividends long. So I think for the most part, people are just tricking themselves into thinking that they're, they're being productive when, when they're not.

Yeah, it feels good to clear out those emails. It feels good to check some of those boxes, but it's probably not a revenue generating activity or an A activity, as you put it. So I, I like that. And that's just human nature, right? You have to know that and you have to try to be relentless with your time. I think the best leaders and salespeople I've been around, they're relentless with their time. They say no to stuff that isn't gonna provide a ton of value within reason. And they really focus on those A-moving needles. So I like that.

You trick yourself into thinking that somebody like is a true prospect when they're not, right? So you don't walk away, right? You don't read the room and realize who the actual decision maker is. And so you make that mistake and you're convinced that Dustin's the decision maker, but it's really the CFO. Or it's really the controller and you haven't actually convinced the right person. I mean, there's a million reasons that things get sideways. But yeah, probably the second most common is I am chasing a bad position. And I think a third one is, hey, I've got a lot of I'm sorry, Dustin. I lost my train of thought there.

No, you're good.

Yeah. Keep, let's keep going.

Yeah, you're good. No, I mean, I think what you mentioned there, I, I call it the confidence paradox in sales. We need to be confident. There's no doubt about that because we have to ask for the business. We have to be professional in front of a big group, scary situations, tough conversations. But when you're chasing your pipeline, if you treat everything the same and you're overconfident and you let the ego get ahold of you that, oh, well, It's not a good fit for all these reasons, but I can still overcome that and, and win Brett over. That's not gonna be a good use of your time, most likely. And maybe you can get there, but it's gonna be like 5 times harder versus focusing on more likely to succeed opportunities. So that's where the confidence can backfire and the ego can backfire for people because they think they can just overcome anything because they're invincible.

So the other thing I was really hard thing to balance. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was gonna mention when my child opened the door and distracted me, right, was We also get a really great opportunity and we work it and we work it and we work it. And you know what we've forgotten to do? Continue to prospect. And so we've, you know, and we've got all our eggs in this basket and sometimes it works out and then you get the backside of that and sometimes it doesn't. And oh my God, I haven't prospected in 30 days. And so that's just the discipline of the continuous process.

Yeah, trying to turn that prospecting into a habit of some form, you know, even doing 20 or 30 minutes when you're really busy and you have stacked meetings, just keep it as a habit is the way to go depending on which way you prospect. Switching gears a little bit to leadership, because I know you're a CRO, you've been in leadership for a long time. I feel like it's a really, really hard job these days for— I don't care what the industry is, you're getting pounded from every direction, whether it be the CEO, the board or trying to manage down to your team. But what do you think is the hardest part of a CRO job or VP of sales job? Is there anything that stands out to you?

Well, look, I think talent is the— it wins. And so the hardest part of the job is the consistent recruiting of talent. And we're a little bit blessed right now because of the marketplace, and there's been a lot of consolidation in our space. So Many producers have now found themselves working for private equity firms, or they found themselves working for publicly traded, probably more than most people want to know. But for the first time in a long time, insurance is on sale, and so we're in a soft market. And so we have a tremendous headwind as an industry. And while that sucks for us too, it is really hard on private equity folks with levered with a lot of debt, and they want to recap or whatever they want to do, and now they're shrinking. And their debt-to-EBITDA ratio is growing. I mean, it is really tricky. And so their only levers to pull are they can cut back on producer commission, they can stop investing in service staff, and it just becomes this death spiral. Not materially different on the publicly traded side because they have analysts and different people pounding on them for results as well. And so what that's created is a lot of friction in those spaces, which are leading salespeople to us, which is great. But just to generically answer your question, if you're not consistently investing in developing your sales staff, talent, you're dead. And so that really is what we focus on, is making sure we're hiring the right number of new salespeople every year, we're investing in those salespeople, and they're being successful enough at a high enough rate.

That makes a ton of sense. And investing in them, like you said earlier about giving them potential equity or partnership in the company long term. And I imagine it takes up a lot of your time too, or a good percent of your time, and you have to take it seriously, right? It's not an afterthought where you get involved with it. It's It's one of the core competencies, it sounds like. So that's great advice. Well, what's your thoughts on AI? Is it something that you use daily yourself? Is it something your team uses?

It's a— man, absolutely. It's right now, and that's probably a me problem. It's making me 5 to 10% better. It's really neat. And it can do some very clever things situationally. And so we are, as a firm, really exploring top-line and bottom-line AI ideas. There are clear ways in which AI can make you process efficient. But at the end of the day, you still have to teach people new habits. You have to build new workflows. You have to train on them. But there are clear process efficiencies. So if you ask me where it's going on one side of our business, the service side, I think ultimately the rate at which you need to grow your service staff relative to salespeople will slow because there will be efficiencies in the process. On the sales side, look, at the end of the day, you still have to go to the tennis clinic and meet the prospect and get them to take a meeting and do all those things. Like, that's still the bulk of your time. You can't replace the recruitings, the lunches, the dinners. You have 15 opportunities every week to have breakfast, lunch, and dinners with people. AI can't replace that. Now, can AI make your presentation better? Absolutely. Can it make Sterling C. Press Pritchard every bit as good on paper as a Fortune 500 company? Absolutely. Can it shorten our learning curve? I've seen amazing things with AI with a new producer. And so we have some great tools and they'll drop it in those tools and it'll analyze 160-page policies and tell them what they need to know about that policy in a couple of short paragraphs. That is a tremendous shortening of the learning curve for a new producer. So there are ways right now, I would say, on the margin and maybe a little bit more than on the margin, that AI is impacting our business. And from a top-line perspective, you know, we're still trying to figure that out. We're spending a lot of time in how does AI think about and read the content and the website of Sterling Seacrest Pritchard. And so, for example, it struggles with our website because basically we do a lot of things. And so we've got them all sort of just laid out randomly across our website where what it's looking for is a clear page or microsite that says, hey, Sterling Seacrest Pritchard is really good at medical malpractice insurance. And so kind of adjusting the way in which we interface with both our social medias. And our website to drive in clients. So right now it's just almost overwhelming, the different things. But have I seen the smoking gun that says, hey, you can clearly save 50% of time and service? Because you just can't yet, but you can see it coming. There's some very clever stuff. I still don't know how you're going to replace ultimately getting the meeting and those relationships and how AI is gonna save you time in that. I don't think so.

Yeah, some good points there. A couple follow-ups. I totally agree AI is overwhelming. It's chaotic. There's something new every day. It's Claude this, Claude that. It's just, it's, it's too much sometimes. And I think people just shut down and then they don't even try or don't— they just make up an excuse and give up quickly because there's so much noise and so much there. But at the same time, You know, you have to kind of get in the game. So it's, it's like these conflicting things going on, but it's, but it is confusing. And then I, I think sales team, sales leaders, salespeople tend to be the most stubborn with change and people vastly underestimate the change management for new stuff like this. And they take it for granted like, oh, AI is easy to use. It's just gonna naturally implement itself. But that's not true from what I've seen, unless if it's a very, very intuitive tool that's like taking over the world like Claude or something other than that. There is a change management part and you have to get people bought in. You have to have people like yourself that are governing it. You have to have all these different systems to put in place to get people to use it. But do you think, do you agree with me that salespeople tend to be more stubborn with change? And then have you had any, any things that have gone well when you've tried to bring in something new that have helped people adopt something quicker?

Human beings in general suck at change. So I don't know that salespeople are any better or worse than the average human. But look, if you've been successful as a salesperson, your immediate mindset is, well, why do I need to change anything? I've been successful. You gotta be careful with that. The next thing you know, you're not as successful as you thought you were. And yeah, so I think we're just gonna continue to navigate AI, be a fast follower. Look for those clever things that make us a little bit better. But again, I go back to, I just, I don't know how AI anytime in the next, you know, 5 to 10 years is really going to replace that relationship. So it'll sort of be the last person standing.

Yeah, no, I think my view on it is that it needs to be very intuitive, easy to use. It needs to be behind the scenes. I think the mistake people make is they're trying to take AI and solve a complex problem. within the company, whether it's sales or other areas, they need to be looking at it for like monotonous tasks. So things that are not a good use of my time, more admin-related order entry type stuff, stuff that sucks the life out of you and burns people out. That's what AI is really good with, like more behind the scenes, more stuff that's not revenue generating. And then what that does is it frees up salespeople's time and their energy because they don't have to do that stuff to be more effective in front of the customer and Ultimately spending more time in front of the client or prospect is a win for everybody. And if you're good, that should just elevate you more. So I think the people that figure out how to get the behind the scenes stuff with AI right now will get better from a sales point of view. But that's just my perspective. And that's what I've been seeing. It's got to be easy to use, not a lot of clicks behind the scenes that works well, at least so far.

Yeah, you theoretically should be able to take a lot more meetings because it's making you substantially more efficient. in the process of preparing for that meeting. And right now, because of the inertia you talked about, we should— if you're using it, your presentations on average should be better than your competitors. And so your success rate should also be higher. So I think there's this unique window where if you are open to AI, you can take advantage of those who aren't. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. And yeah, we'll see what shakes out. It's not going away anytime soon, but we'll, we'll see how it shakes out. All right, couple more for you.

It was really helpful last night when I was cleaning the rust off my Blackstone grill and I asked ChatGPT how to do that. So that was really cool.

There you go. Yeah, yeah, there's all kind of personal use cases too. I mean, there's endless, but a couple more questions for you. If you could go back and just give yourself some advice, When you're starting out either in sales or becoming a sales leader, what would that advice be that might help other people out there?

Yeah, for sure. I would ask myself, how do I best monetize my asset, which is my ability to sell, or it could be your ability to do whatever it is, and if you're in the right place to do that. And so, you know, I don't have a Huge picture of the entire universe, but I do know that game-changing wealth is created, I think, most easily inside of being an owner of a privately held business. And so as you reflect on yourself, are you— sounds like you are, Dustin. I am. Our sale— our partners are. If you're an owner of a privately held business, that is a great way to create game-changing wealth for your family. And so just kind of look at yourself and say, am I in that position where I'm able to do that or not? And if I'm not, do I need to consider doing something where I have the opportunity? I fought the corporate ladder for a long time and you do quite well. But, you know, in terms of the real game-changing wealth, it's, it's being part of an owner in a privately held business.

I like that. I, I agree. I didn't think about it from more of the privately held standpoint. Because I think I've been around some VC and PE-backed stuff, but that privately held makes it more like a family, more like what you've been talking about this whole conversation. I can definitely see that. And look, it might not happen right away, but if you have that end goal, that vision in sight, whatever your reasons are to get there, you might have to take a couple of shots on the way. They might not always work out, and then eventually you get where you want to go. It might not happen overnight. And I think sometimes people are scared to walk away from that comfortable, cushy corporate job and take a risk.

Right.

But if you don't, you're going to look back and perhaps regret it. Maybe not always. And I think take those shots when you can, as long as you've vetted it out the right way.

I encourage you, if you're an insurance salesperson, to think about yourself as an NFL wide receiver and you're a free agent. Are you going to take 25 cents on the dollar or are you going to take 65 cents on the dollar? Well, of course you're going to take 65 cents. And I don't think that really good salespeople often think of themselves in that context of, hey, I'm, you know, I'm basically in free agency here. How do I best monetize my skillset, which is my ability to drive revenue? And so I just encourage people to think like that.

Love it. And it's hard to find the really good salespeople. So they are becoming, you know, harder and harder to find in my opinion. But I think that will continue to bode well for those people that do find what you're talking about, because you can make some pretty serious money if, if you really master your craft and stick to everything we're talking about. Uh, what's something you're most excited about this year? It could be personal, professional, anything excited, uh, for the rest of 2026 that you're looking forward to?

Uh, well, I'm excited about the England-Argentina game in about 50 minutes, so, uh, that, that's, that's super cool. Uh, we've started planning for our, uh, All Salesperson Summit, which happens next January. That's always a super fun event. My kids are both soccer players, so we're about to roll into the next soccer season, and we all love watching our kids play soccer, right? Or whatever sport it is. So yeah, just a good old-fashioned variety of typical stuff.

That's a good reminder. I need to make sure I have that on because I missed the one yesterday, which didn't look like it was that exciting a game, but I need to make it happen. And then Yeah, I think the World Cup really lifted up soccer. We'll see. I mean, it was unfortunate, I guess, when we got kicked out in the round of 16, but it felt like it changed the next decade in soccer. And I think also there's less injuries in soccer compared to like football, etc. So it might trend up anyway. So did you think it helped the cause from a soccer standpoint?

Yeah. And I think the The play of the US was sort of a neutral event because we performed like everybody thought we would perform. But just the reminder of the awesomeness of the American culture and how great our stadiums are and how exciting soccer is and playing the games in time periods where they're very accessible to everybody and just some of the natural drama around soccer reminded everybody how great a game it is. And so to your point, I think it will continue to gain traction here in the United States. I mean, we have our own challenges in terms of that growth, but I think it will continue to catch on. But I think it's been awesome. I'm going to be very sad in a couple of days when it's over.

Likewise. And then if people want to get a hold of you or learn more about Sterling, what's the best way to do that?

Look, the best way probably is LinkedIn. But you can also— cold calls.

You don't want any cold calls?

You can try. Odds are very low. But if you do, you know, the funny thing about those spam calls, they don't leave messages for the most part. So I do check my messages. You can also call Sterling Seacrest and just call the switchboard. But yeah, LinkedIn, email me, any of those things. Fantastic.