Are You In the Red Zone or the Green Zone?

Foreign. Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode. And we have a very special returning guest with us today. So I think all of you as an audience should be excited about what this person is going to be sharing today. And without further ado, I better just do an official welcome before we get into the content. So we have Roger Sitkins with me here today. Roger, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great and I'm really looking forward to sharing this concept because the people that have seen it so far and have bought into it are just saying, wow, blinding flash of the obvious. Absolutely. We have to do this.

Yeah. So we, as you know, as an organization at Sidkins, are always looking through different ways and ideas to explain things to have more of an impact. And as a group. And Roger's been working on this, there's this concept that he's going to be sharing today that I know that if you are an insurance producer, if you are a sales leader, if you're an agency leader, listen up. In fact, I'll tell you right now, get a pen and paper and if you're on the road, don't do that. But if you're at home or at your office, grab a pen and paper and be ready to take some notes because Roger's going to share some nuggets today that's really all based around this idea of productivity. And so we'll get into that in just a minute. Before I get into Roger with the official content, I just want to share a couple things. First of all, as I mentioned on previous podcasts, our program, in particular the all inclusive model program and the training programs that we have within that are all launched here at the start of 2021. And wow, it's been a really awesome last few weeks. Great participation, great interaction, great learning, great sharing. And so if you and your agency want to be part of our programs, and certainly we have programs for sales producers and for account managers and for sales leaders and for agency leaders. And if you want to get your entire team to be part of all of our programs at one low monthly fee, visit sitkins.com aim@sitkins.com aim we would love to be able to help you and your agency get better, to sell more, to retain more, to earn more, to lead better, to lead more. If you're into those kind of things. Well, hey, check us out. We would love an opportunity to work with you and, and have your agency get the success that we're seeing with other agencies that are already starting in this process. So with that, I want to just lead into this. And of course, obviously got Roger Sitkins here with me today, as I've mentioned. And just, first of all, start off by saying, as I'm recording this, it's January 28th. Now, I don't know when you're going to be listening to it, if it's right away or down the road, but one of the things I wanted to share before we got into some of the content with Roger, is that what I often see with insurance professionals, and this is probably true with any human, is the fact that we have these intentions of things that we want to accomplish and do. And guess what? Because we're human, we're not perfect. And unfortunately, what I see oftentimes is, hey, I really want to start to do this. And this is going to be my goal, of course, at the beginning of the year, my resolution, or whatever it is that you call it. And then, guess what? You have a bad week or you have a couple bad days, and they go, well, you know what? I guess it's not going to work. I'm going to just go back to the old stuff that at least I'm comfortable with. And so I just want to challenge you and encourage you as we start off, just kind of as a mindset approach, the fact that failure is not final. So any things that I've talked about on this podcast, any things that Roger is going to mention on the podcast, things that you've heard or the things that you've been wanting to do, if you fall short, you have two choices. You either quit and go back to all the bad stuff or the stuff you did before that you didn't, you didn't like. That's why you want to change. Or you learn, you adapt, and you grow from it. And so I just want to share that with you because I just, I get that feeling sometimes as I'm recording this that, you know, January's flown by, we're already going into February, and I have a lot of people saying, you know, well, I, I tried this and I, I don't know, stay with it. Learn, adapt and grow. So those are my mindset words, Roger, as we, as we kick things off here on this podcast. And I want to, I want to kick the, the specific content off which is going to be around productivity, specifically for insurance producers, because I' guessing, if you're listening, that you wouldn't mind if your insurance producers, your sales team, sold more. One of the things that we say at Sitkins is that revenue doesn't solve all problems, just most of them. And so if we can get our producers in the game to be more successful, it's obviously, we know, duh, as Roger mentioned, blinding flash of the obvious. We're going to have a lot healthier organization. And I'm going to share a quick analogy and then ask Roger and have Roger explain his new concept that I know will blow you away. It's powerful stuff when you really think about it. And, you know, I'm a. I'm a basketball fan. I'm a sports fan. So if you're not a basketball fan, I apologize, but I think you'll get it. And I was just trying to think about the fact that on a basketball team, if you got the best player, at least the player who. One of their roles, top roles, is to score points, right? I mean, imagine like in my day, Michael Jordan, maybe now LeBron or, you know, Steph Curry, whoever, right? The best player that, you know, their team is better when they score points. Their. Their team wins when they score. And imagine the best player on the team spends the majority of the game on the bench. Now, maybe it's foul trouble, but in this case, when I want to share it, they're on the bench just because they realize that, you know, although they should score points, maybe because they're so busy, they should go ahead and maybe fill up the water bottles or hand out towels or talk to the. Talk. Talk to people in the crowd, right? Back when they're people in the crowd, whatever it is, they're distracted doing stuff and they're not on the floor. And guess what? They're surprised when they don't score points or their team doesn't win. Well, you went on the floor, right? And so this idea, the fact that as a producer, as a sales organization, we've got to have our producers, our salespeople whose job is to score points. The definition of a producer, one who produces. And they're not even in the game. They're not doing. Selling stuff. So as we were talking about that, and we've, you know, at Sitkins, we, we, we train deeply on this and give examples and some tools and resources. Roger just, I don't know, probably a few. Roger came, came to me and goes, I got something. And this idea that there's these two zones, and I briefly mentioned this a few weeks ago, but I want Roger to really expand and go deep on this, that there is a. There's a red zone and a green zone. And this concept that Roger's going to share today again. Get your pen and paper ready because it's, it's powerful. So, Roger, I, I try to tee this up. I talked a lot about it, but I, I want you to expand on what is red zone? What is green zone? What does it mean? Why is it important? Just help the audience know about this concept.

I'm glad to do this. And I want everybody to really visualize in their mind these two zones, red zone and green zone. And just think about this as we go through here. The red zone, green zone concept is really an extension of our producer's perfect schedule and the concept of pay versus no pay time. And our goal in the producer's perfect schedule is, hey, get control of time, your only diminishing asset. Now, one of the things we always share, and I know you've shared in the podcast and so have I in the past, that that time management is not doable within an insurance agency. Time management as a concept was developed for manufacturing, manufacturing industries, but what you can control are situations. So rather than time management, this is all about situation management. And when you're breaking out your day and you keep in mind there are certain things you do that are pay things. In other words, you get paid to do them. And other things where it's no pay stuff, it's just maybe some hysterical activity. So the green zone, I guess we call it green branch because that's where you earn green. That's where you're making money. And the red zone should be like, red alert, red alert. Why am I over here? Why am I doing it? Does this have anything to do with my unique abilities or the things I really love to do? And am I bringing value to my team and to my clients and to my family when I'm in the red zone? The answer's no. You're bringing value to everything that's important to you when you're in the green zone. Now, what we see, unfortunately, is the producers bounce back and forth all day long. Good intentions, you know, and the producers that have already heard this are saying, you know, it's just pretty cool because when I'm up in the morning and I'm getting ready to, quote, play the game, and like you said, you only score points when you're in the game. I have really good intentions to be in the green zone, but then things start happening because I don't have my high performance team in place. So again, the basic concept, green zone, it's the stuff you do to make money. Red zone, well, it's Not a perfect world, you'll be in it, but it's not helping you make money, it's not helping you bring value to everything that's important to you.

Roger, you said that, you know, it hit me and you were kind of explaining the, obviously the differences there and what we see. I know when we do our producer fit training in particular, we talk about this and go deep into it. And you know, one of the things that, that I know you share all the time and I share now is the fact that are you a full time or are you a part time producer?

Yeah.

And you know, unfortunately and, and I think there's an awareness that sometimes that many salespeople don't even realize it, that what they're doing because it's just become habitual. And I guess my question to you around it is, you know, you mentioned this red zone or green zone, red zone concept. Why do so many producers, why do so many sales organizations spend so much time in the red zone? The, the zone that doesn't produce any money? Why does that happen?

Well, some of it's because they don't have a plan other than let's show up and see what happens today. And they just constantly react to incoming arrows, you know, the clicks, the pings, the dings and the rings where they're just chasing stuff, hoping they might get a result versus being very specific. So they wind up where they're really hiding behind activities because, see, if I look busy, and I know you've talked about it, we've talked about this for a long time, that if you look busy, people must think you're doing okay. And you know, you have to watch the language that you talk to yourself. You know, what are you saying to yourself, well, I'm busy, I'm really busy. And the agency itself or the high performance teams is the language about, man, are we busy? Or is the language about, hey, look at the great results we got, or what can we do to get better results? So when they focus on just hiding behind activities and not saying very specifically, what are the things I should do? And now in the new term, what are the things I should be doing in the green zone that are going to help me sell more, retain more and earn more, and it's about being very intentional, very purposeful, whatever phrase we want to use, but just basically saying, this is my plan for the day, this is my plan for the week and I'm going to follow it. Something I read the other day that really hit home with me and I hope everybody writes this Down. As long as you're not driving like you already said, Brent. But you've got to stop negotiating with yourself. Maybe I should do this. Oh, but this thing's over here. And how many times have we all had the click, the ping, the ding or the ring and we get distracted and we jump over, we do something, quite frankly, is not urgent. It could easily be done tomorrow morning before paid time starts, or tonight during no pay time when I'm out of paid time. Done. But it's just, you know, all of you, if at the end of the day you're saying, wow, I was so busy today, but then you say, but I didn't get anything done, then you're stuck in the red zone. You're part time producer. That means you're earning part time money. That's not a great way to be in this career.

I love that thought of Roger, you said at the end there. And it's funny, you talk to enough producers and they're like, oh, so busy, so busy, so busy. And you know, and then they get home and talk to their spouse or someone, they go, how was your day? I was so busy. What did you do? And like, I have no earthly idea. Yeah, it was just busy. I just know I was busy. You mentioned something there about, I think to define the Green zone would be important for the audience. Roger, about, you know, how would, as a producer, how would I know that I'm in the green zone? Like, what things am I specifically doing? Because I think sometimes there's that fuzzy area, like, well, I think this is good. I don't know. So as a listener, what are some things that, as an agency leader, as a sales producer, this is green zone stuff. How would you define it?

Well, before I even say that, I'll say something I've heard you say before is the first thing you've got to do is you've got to figure out what things you have to say no to so that you then have the time to say yes to the right things. But from our perspective, the Green zone activities are straightforward. Number one, not a surprise. Selling new business. That is a Green Zone activity. Number two, continuing existing relationships. So as you know, we talk about our concept of deep delivering excellence in every process. And in this case, it's deep. What is the deep continuation process you have? We don't renew accounts, we continue relationships. And that starts at quote, unquote, policy delivery. It certainly takes many different approaches now, but identifying with the client exactly what their expectations are, documenting them, then delivering them. But it's a whole continuation process that gets you towards that 99% effective retention. So it's sales, it's continuations, it's relationship management. All the best producers that we work with and all the ones that are now becoming best producers know that everything's getting digitized, transactions are going away, and you've got to pivot from transactions to relationships. And the total focus is relationships. And the relationships that need to be managed are the clients, especially the top 20% that are 80% of your revenue. The future ideal clients, not suspects or prospects. Okay, so clients, future ideal clients, the carriers, your best relationships with the underwriters and reps, your team members making deposits with them, and then finally having 10 centers of influence that you're reaching out to once a quarter. So when you're doing those relationships, then things are really great. So it's sales continuations, relationships, and then guess what? Pipeline building. Pipeline building. You know, one of the reasons so many producers hide behind activities is their pipelines are empty. Right. They don't get focused on it, as we've all said a million times, but getting focused on the fact of, okay, my pipeline really is future ideal client, all right? That second relationship to manage. And how am I going to identify them? How am I going to get introduced to them? How am I going to start a great discovery session with them? But those are the four key things that anything you do that is outside of those four, again, sales, continuations, relationship management, and pipeline building. Anything you do outside those four is red zone.

Yeah, it's, you know, one of those things. And we talk about this in our programs, but whether a producer, you know, writes this down, I mean, that's. That's up to you, I suppose. But if you really want to be serious, I mean, you could, you could take every hour. And of course, in some cases, I've done productivity things where I was even tracking every 15 minutes, just to be really honest of what I'm doing. But you could spend an hour power and go, is what I just did, did that generate a result or was I just being busy and, you know, was I in one of those four areas that you just talked about or was I doing other things? Because the term you use, hiding behind activities, you know, we kind of chuckle about it, but it's true. You're right. If you don't have an empty or if you don't have a full pipeline, if your pipeline's empty, you're certainly. That's one of those areas. You're certainly going to be like, well, you know, I just couldn't get to it today. I was covered up. You know, I had all this stuff coming in. So, you know, pipelines tomorrow, and that's that you just can't be successful. I want to, I wrote down a question here as you were saying that, you know, as you were speaking, Roger, I said, you know, you can, you can spend time or you can invest time. I really believe that. Or at least spend your energy or invest your energy. And part of that is, am I investing in something? Like obviously want to invest in things that give us a return for us to be successful. And I think there's a big difference there. And so I guess my question around that is how do agencies, how do producers begin to invest more of their time? Like, what are some of the first steps? Like, if I was to say, okay, Brett and Roger, you're hitting home here, you know, I think I'm one of those. Or agency is probably more reactive and we're probably, you know, more busy than we are getting results. What are some of the first steps that you would tell a producer, an agency to take?

Well, the first thing you have to do is fire yourself from service. You got to get out of the service trap. And if you're saying to your clients, well, if you need anything at all, call me, just call me. And then you wonder why everybody's calling you or emailing you and you have to introduce your service team at the point of sale or at the point of continuation. And if you're not doing that, if you're still in the trap of, you know, boy, we give personal service. And I say PS is BS because the reality is the day to day service is much better handled but by your service partners who that's their unique ability. And I know you've talked about this before, but when I talk with the service teams and when we have our account managers in our programs and we ask them, hey, if Your producers took 10 policy changes today or this week, how many would have complete, accurate, total information? Or you could process the request without going back to the producer or back to the client. So out of 10, we normally hear, well, one or two would be correct. One or two, let's be kind and say two. That means eight out of 10 or 80% are wrong. Now think about this. If you had a processor in your agency or data entry person in your agency and 8 out of 10 times they did something wrong, what would you do? You'd fire them or you'd make them a producer, but you sure wouldn't let them Stay there. Hey, if you're making an error, eight times out of 10, you've got to hand it off to somebody who has the unique abilities, talents, the technical knowledge to handle it properly. The other one here, Brent, is, and we talk about this so much about activities versus results, and we have the graphic of the A circle and the R circle. And something we always say in producers, please pay attention to this. You can give, you know, you can either focus on activities or you focus on results, as Brent mentioned. Okay, if you have this activity circle out there, you can give it one of two things. You can give it your time or you can give it your money. You don't earn 100% commission as a producer. So that means you're giving your agency. That's part of the deal is you've outsourced your early outsourcer. You've outsourced service and transactions to the agency. So you can be freed up to focus what we now say in the green zone. So you're paying the agency to do the red zone stuff, so you can spend your time in the green zone. But what we see all too often is, hey, you know, we've got a contract. I don't get all the commission. It goes to the agency. So you've given them part of your money, but then you also give them your time. So your return on that is you're paying somebody to do something, but then you turn around and do it. That's like, I guess that'd be like hiring a landscaper. When they show up, say, you know, sit down, have a glass of iced tea. I'm going to go cut the grass for you.

That's right.

You know, doesn't work.

It's. I love that now. It's so true. I mean, so if you didn't write that down, write it down again. You can either give activities as a salesperson, you can give those activities your time, as Roger just mentioned, or you can give it your money. And again, I don't know many producers or any producers that make 100 commission, as Roger alluded to. So there's a reason for that, right? You have a team, a support team that, by the way, not only is paid to do that, but they're way better at it than you. That's the other part, too, as you mentioned. The, the, you know, the, the complete and accurate information. How often producers mess that up because they're not good at it, quite honestly. And so not only are they giving it time and giving it money, but they are making a mess while they're doing it. So, you know, it's kind of like lose, lose, lose. I don't think any of us would, would want that. I want to ask about the A word. Roger. There's an A word that we talk about and typically when it comes up, people nod in agreement or they, they shudder in fear. And the word is accountability. And you know, the idea is this, is that you mentioned the word intentions earlier. I think a lot of people have good intentions. Boy, I really want to get more in the game. I really want to be focused on those four areas that Roger mentioned. And then I start, and then I go back to the bad habits. And guess what? No one says a thing to me. So how, how can a producer, how can I, how can an agency be more accountable and have more accountability with their producers being in the green zone?

It starts with yourself. You just asked me how can an agent, number one, remember what I said earlier? You've got to stop negotiating with yourself. You've got to determine those things that, that you deem to be non optional. I was doing some review this morning and I came across a great saying, you know, review like I do every morning, but it said your, your average day is your life in miniature. Think your average day is your life in miniature. And so keep doing what you've always done. The old saying, if you always do what you always done, you'll always get what you always got. Well, the reality is with all the disruption in our industry, you keep doing what you've always done, you're going to get way less. You're going to get way less. So it starts with being truthful to yourself. And that means you take that, which I love the term you use all the time, apr, absolute personal responsibility. And if it is to be, it's up to me and just basically sitting down and saying, what are the things that I've got to make non optional in my day, in my week, in my month, in my quarter, my year to be great. And then you can't keep it a secret. You need to find an accountability partner, whether it's another person in the agency, whether it's your significant other, whether it's whoever, I don't know who it is. But you find somebody that you're willing to say, you know what, let's you and I hold each other accountable. As you know, Brent, we do that all the time. That's a cornerstone to our company. We have an absolute culture of accountability and it's a huge difference from where it used to be years ago. So That's a starting point. Then the next thing is that leaders have to lead and they have to say, look, in our firm, one of the things that makes us great and gives all of you as part of this team an opportunity to do well is we do what we said we were going to do. And that's as simple as it is. When you look at the best ones, once they declare, they make a declaration, here's exactly what I'm going to do. Then they put themselves out there, they tell the world, they don't keep it a secret. And then they ask others to hold them accountable. Okay, you remember we talked about this before that at our last in person event last March almost a year ago.

Yeah.

I said, I said to the members of our Sipkins network at the annual networking meeting and this hit me the second morning as I was doing my final prep for the morning and I came in and asked everybody this question. Hey, if everybody in your agency did everything they said they were going to do, how great would your agency be?

Whoa.

You know, and I said, what about you as a leader? What if you did everything you said you were going to do? How great would your life be? And when people buy into that and then they start writing it down and they start journaling every day and they just say, you know, I just, I'm going to not negotiate with myself anymore. And if this average day is my life in miniature, that average day is not going to be average anymore. It's going to be great. And that's how I'm going to change it. So it's just absolutely doing it. And then finally it comes back to the team. And you know, we've talked about teams before. We could do five hours just on the importance of the team. In fact, you and I've got a session today online with our account managers, our program. But when it gets to the point that everybody understands 8020 in life. All right, but then more importantly we see, okay, green zone, red zone, we've got to get those producers as we said earlier, so spending 80% of their time in the green zone. And the best agencies I've ever worked with and this was just in the early days of the producers, perfect schedule. They would literally, the account managers would say to the producers if they were in the office Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 8:30 and 3:30 they'd say what are you doing here? You talked about our great agency that we work with EHD or they have the mirrors. A mirror in every office. That's the producer. Look at walk in they can see it right away and says, is this the best version possible of you? And underneath it it says, hey, if it's Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday between 8:30 and 3:30, you shouldn't be looking in this mirror. Okay? So the, so if we can just get a singular laser focus from everybody in the agency saying, you know what, our producers have got to transition, okay? Transform from being 80% in the green zone to 80%, excuse me, from being 80% in the red zone to 80% in the green zone. And the coolest thing about that as people are talking about it is they realize they are no longer that activity based producer where every year looks the same. They have literally transformed. And something you've been saying a lot lately that I absolutely love, you know, if you can just have information or transformation, what do you want? You take the information and actually execute and do what you said you're going to do now you're transformed. So how do we transform from 20% green zone to 80% green zone and get everybody in our organization just having a common language, hey, are you in the red zone or are you in the green zone right now? Total awareness zone.

As you were saying that I'm always taking notes, always trying to learn as well. And as you said that it just reflected back to, to really our entire movement at Sidkins, right, The experience that we're wanting to create with agencies and are creating with agencies, the professional fitness experience and how to be professionally fit, how to be a professional and the three kind of pillars, so to speak, on our clarity, understanding what you really want, consistency, doing a vital few things really well and consistently. In that last part, I just put a big circle around it because you look at accountability, it's commitment. What's the commitment you're going to make? And you know, so many agencies and people have good ideas and back to the word intentions again, but are they really committed to it? And you know, you referenced EHD and we've got, you know, some really great private client members of our network and love to work with them and we learn a ton from them. But you know, it's funny, it's we, we introduced the term, the idea of best version possible. And a lot of people go, oh yeah, that's, that's cool, best version possible. But they not only bought into it just from an idea and yes, they got mirrors that say is this your best version possible? And yes, they talked about every week and yes, they created a creed, right, that they actually have within the agency. Like there's a Difference. That's a commitment, right? And that becomes part of the culture. And, you know, it hits me too. I probably used this analogy before, but just think about this from a sense of, let's say, and I'm not saying you want to, but let's say you decide you want to run a marathon or maybe a half marathon or 10k, I don't care what it is. And you go, you know, that would be really cool if this spring I ran a marathon or a 10k and whatever it is that you want to do, that'd be really cool. I'd like to do. That would be neat. That would be, that'd be a really good accomplishment. I would really feel better about myself and I'd be happy and that would be a really good goal I'd like to accomplish. And that's as far as you took it. Are you going to do it? Probably not. What if you paid for the race? What if you developed a training plan? And here's the last part. What if you had an accountability? Each week you say, how's the training going? Where are you at? What does it look like? Who, who's more likely to succeed in that endeavor? And I see that with agencies and producers, it's like, well, I'd really like to be a million dollar producer. That would be cool. I could do lots of stuff in my life. That would be freedom, right? And they kind of, oh, that would be neat. And I would need to do this. But yet they never actually get clear enough on the plan. And then the big thing is they never have someone specifically to say, this is what I want. I need you to hold me accountable. Because guess what? I'm going to screw up sometimes, and I know that ahead of time. But I want it, I want it really bad. I need someone to hold me in line. And that's how you win. So kind of my little, my little sermon there, Roger, my rant. But it just hit me as you were, as you were saying that one last question I really want to ask you on this is because some of it is, you know, I alluded to it a little bit there, but what's the payoff, right? I mean, what if we've got, you know, we have agencies and producers that are living in this green zone and having successful. What does that look like? You know, paint the picture. What happens when you live in the green zone? Give some ideas because there's some pretty cool stuff that happens.

Well, number one, you have more green.

Okay, here you go.

This logically, and let's Assume you're. You're only 20% in the green zone. Now, maybe you're 30 or 40, but let's just assume you're at 20 and look how much money you're currently earning. All right, what happens when you can transform to 40% of the green zone, 60% of the green zone, and eventually 80% in the green zone? You'll never be 100% because it's not a perfect world. But if you can go from 20 to 40, that's called 2x, and if you go to 60, that's 3x. And if you can go to 80, that's 4x. Okay? And so why wouldn't you just say, you know, I get paid for my on results, I don't get paid for activities, and so what am I going to do to say, all right, I have got to transform myself as a producer and as an agency leader. I've got to transform my agency into a sales organization? There's always been this conflict in our industry between sales and service. What comes first? What's most important? Well, I think that sales is one and service is one A. There's no number two. Okay. And so when we look at this and just say we have to become a green zone sales organization that provides an excellent client experience that leads to a exceedingly high retention rate. Well, that's our thought process that we've been. Everybody starts talking, red zone, green zone, red zone, green zone. Where are you? Where are you? And ultimately, Brent, it comes down to for all of us as individuals, we have to take responsibility for our life. And wherever we are as producers or wherever our agency is, it's based upon the decisions we made and how good of a job we did following the right decisions. And it's as an individual producer, you know, one of the things that you've heard me say a thousand times, and I know you say it now, too, we can't want it for producers more than they want it for themselves. Take responsibility for your life, get control of this hysterical activity, be purposeful about what you are supposed to be doing, and then do it on a regular basis. When you do that, life is really pretty cool.

Yeah, I love that. And, you know, one of the things I guess I want to share here, too, and Roger, I'll give you one final thought to kind of wrap up with, with the audience here, but before I get to that, it just as you were saying, that this idea of, like, transitioning from, well, let's just say you're at 20% in the green zone, and that's true for a lot of producers, but your goals go, wow, what would it look like if we were 80%? One of the things that you've taught me, Roger, been very powerful, is kind of see the end in mind and then work backwards a little bit, right? The idea of, okay, if I'm 80% in the green zone, which means I'm focused on sales and relationships and proactive continuations and pipeline and how great that would be to be in my strength zone and do the things and obviously make more money and have more freedom, then begin to kind of peel that back. What does that look like? And so I would just challenge you as a producer, if you're listening. Certainly if you're a sales leader and working with your production team is kind of paint that picture. What is the end in mind? And then work backwards. And you know, I saw a. Sell an infograph or something and it's been kind of going around the Internet for a while, but it was really interesting ahead. And just visualize this. There was a person sitting between, standing between two ladders. And you know, both ladders, you know, obviously go way up high to the top of the picture. And one ladder had the rungs that were close together so you could climb it. And one, the rungs were too far apart where you'd like, I could never get to the next rung. And, and so, you know what I. What hit me is something I shared with a group a couple weeks ago is we need to have big thinking. I don't think agencies and producers think big enough. I think they have head trash and they limit themselves for. From being anywhere close to that best version that we talk about. And we see it, and it's exciting to see people go, oh, you know what? I have been the one holding myself back. But where a lot of people stop is they go, I don't even know, like, how would I ever get that? How would I ever get to 80%? Just take the first step. Like just, just start to take the first step. It's not going to happen overnight, but find ways to make progress. If you envision that ladder, just put the next hand up and not get worried about how am I going to get to 80% tomorrow. You're not. But start to make progress and good things will begin to happen. So I just wanted to share that. And with that, Roger, I want to give you some just Roger's final thoughts, closing comments, final word, over to you.

Well, I think all this probably makes sense that people are going, oh, yeah, red zone, green Zone. But then they show up tomorrow and nothing changes. As we always say, nothing changes if nothing changes. And when you take a look at this, trial and error takes way too long and it's too expensive. All right, so whether you have an agency that's committed to it or you're committed to it, we'd love to help you because we know it works and we see the results all the time. By the way, when you were talking there, I was thinking about. I listened this morning in the gym to your podcast with Super Joe. Look how far he came. Because he committed to it. He committed to it. So keep in mind that what you have to do is make sure that you're showing up every day at least four days a week. Monday's prep day on our perfect schedule. But at least four days a week, you're showing up ready to play in the Green Zone as much as possible. And it is transition. It's one step at a time. Whatever you talk about, take the things you learned today and say, what can I do with that? And certainly we'd love to help you. See if there's a fit. See if there's a fit, Right? That's my comment.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Roger. And always we appreciate you and your time and your wisdom. And hopefully. I said hopefully you should be. Hopefully you took some notes from what Roger shared today, because it's just, again, it's powerful stuff and we always say, oh, well, yeah, I know, I know, I know. Well, that doesn't matter. It's not how much you know, it's how much you do. And so I would just challenge you all as a listeners, what's the first action you're going to take and understanding what's the first action you're going to take to get into the Green zone? Also, again, as an invitation, if you're interested in learning more about what we provide at Sitkins, certainly for sales producers, but also for agencies as a whole, we would love to have a conversation, learn more about you, you learn more about us. Go to sitkins.com we can learn about our entire organization or go to sitkins.com programs. Learn about all the different programs that we run for agencies. Also, if this podcast has adding value to you and your life and your agency, and I certainly would appreciate a review on itunes or whatever podcast platform you listen to. So with that, thank you again, Roger. Thank you to listeners, and until next time, all the best in your success.