What's Your Agency's Financial Model?
3 Jun 2021 · 34 min
Brent Kelly and Roger Sitkins discuss why insurance agencies get stuck in the semi-successful trap and how to escape it. Target 30% operating profit, invest 2% of revenue in training instead of the industry average 0.4%, and stop letting profitable accounts subsidize unprofitable ones.
Questions this episode answers
30%
30% profit, ~40% service & administrative expenses, ~30% sales expenses ("30/40/30")
About 2% of revenue (best practice) vs. average agency ~0.4%
Minimum GrowFit = 25; aspirational/effective agencies ~40
Approximately $500,000 of revenue per producer
Chapters
Foreign.
Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode and for the fourth podcast episode in a row. This is, this is a world record, Roger. We have the great Roger Sitkins with us. And if you haven't been listening to the Agent Leader podcast, why wouldn't you be? The last three sessions, Roger and I have been discussing some key areas in the agency. The first podcast episode we did together in session number one was just about going deeper in your agency and some of the aspects of what that looks like. We've talked about sales, we talked last session about retention, and today we're going to be talking about earning more. So what agency leader doesn't want to earn more? If you do want to earn more, you're in the right spot in today's podcast. And Roger, welcome back to the Agent Leader Podcast.
Well, Brian, it's great to be back. And this is one of my favorite topics. You know, it's not what you make, it's what you keep. And how can you make more and keep more? And that's what we're going to be talking about.
Amen. And I do want to just make sure a note, I was, you know, Roger always laughs when I say, you know, Mr. Sitkins or the great Roger Sitkins. But I will tell you, I mean, Roger won't be the one to toot his own horn, but certainly as a mentor of mine and CEO of the Sitkins Group, you know, Roger has devoted 40 years to this industry. And you can learn a lot in 40 years in working with agencies and just getting results. And that's really what it's all about. And so as I said before, if you don't have a pen and paper and take some notes, shame on you. Go get a pen and paper. Of course, unless you're driving, be careful where you're listening to this. But seriously, take some notes of what we're going to be talking about today, because really it will be about earning more for your agency, which ultimately gives you freedom.
Right? Right.
And that's what we really want. Our mission at the Sidkins Group is to help agencies sell even more, retain even more, and earn even more than they ever thought possible. And that's the big part of this podcast. And I also want to make a note that if you and your agency team are looking to really transform your agency and, you know, just move to greater heights, please go check out our program, specifically our all inclusive model, the AIM model that we have. So go to sitkins.com aim and learn how every person on your agency team. And we've got sales and sales leadership and leadership and account management, ongoing forums, but every person in your agency can hear a similar message. To get greater buy in and ultimately greater results. Go to sitkins.com aim we love to talk to you and see if your agency is a fit for our program. With that, Roger, you ready to talk about earning some more money for agencies?
Oh, absolutely. You already said the key term there, financial freedom. You know, it's not what you make, it's what you keep, as I said. But more importantly, it's the freedom that those additional earnings, those additional increases in agency value, it's the freedom that it brings you.
Yeah, it does. And I just want to ask you because again, from all of your experience, you know, I know you've seen agencies of all kinds and types, you know, Roger, and sizes and demographics and geographical areas, but if you would just summarize, I think it would be great for the audience. What are some of the common traps that you see that prevents insurance agencies from earning more at least as much as they could or should?
Well, the first trap is one that we talk about on a regular basis. It's a great business. It's a business where you don't have to do a lot because the bar is very low. It's a great business where you can get pretty good results and certainly fall into that semi successful trap we've talked about before. Where to the outside world. My gosh, look how great he's doing. Look how great she's doing. Nice house, nice cars, kids at the best schools, you know, vacations whenever you want them. So to the outside world, and compared to the outside world, things look pretty, pretty darn good. But the sad news is that when you start accepting, they'll say when good is good enough, you know, good's the enemy of great. But when good is good enough or semi successful is good enough, you're really falling way short of the best version possible, best version possible of you as a leader, best version possible of your agency overall. And, and you wind up losing millions and millions of dollars of agency value. And at the end of the day, everybody listening here will eventually leave this business, whether you want to or not. But everybody's gonna leave. None of us get out of this alive. So when it's time to leave, and you hopefully have succession plans, et cetera, when you leave, are you gonna look at what you get and say, wow, that's really great, or, or will you have some regrets Going, yeah, boy, I probably should add two or three times that amount. So this semi successful trap, really, it's so real in our industry and I just wish people would wake up. And I guess that's part of our mission here. Just face the reality of if good is good enough, at the end, you won't be best version possible and you'll have regrets. And one of my favorite sayings, as you know, is you have regrets or regrets. And regrets is let's do great things, let's get great results and let's replicate them on a regular basis.
Yeah. You know, Roger, there's. I was thinking as you were saying that there are a lot of Sitkins principles, I guess, right. Whether you call them Sitkins100 or Sitkins101. But if they say, you know, what is it really all about? When I think about earning more, there are two things that you say and I say all the time to agencies, kind of things that say, listen, there's, there's profitable and unprofitable, and I think it's always very, very sticky. So I'd like you to kind of share maybe two huge principles that again, that if you're not writing this down and think about this for your agency, please do so. So, do you want to elaborate? I think you know where I'm going with this.
Well, absolutely. The number one is don't allow profitable accounts to subsidize unprofitable accounts. Face the reality 8020 is real. And if the top 5% of your customers are 50% of your revenues, and that means the other 95% of the customers create the other 50% of the revenue, where are you making most of your profit? Just take a look at it and start breaking it down. How much revenue do I have on my A's, B's and C's? Top 5, middle 15 and bottom 80. And just think of this. If you lost the top 5% of your customers, which would be 50% of your revenue, how many expense dollars could you cut? And could you cut them quickly enough? We'll go even further. Brent, what about the super. As the top 2% of the customers, average agency, 33 to 40% of the revenue. So let's go on the low end, say 33. So if you lost 2% of your customers, there's a pretty good chance that you'd be in deep trouble. So agencies are very vulnerable when they don't do separate profit center analysis when they're not going through and saying, hey, if all I had were my A customers, what Expenses would I have and you'd go through and you would allocate a percent of rent and the equivalent full time employees dedicated to the A customers and you would break it down as many ways as you could and you just say, am I making a profit or a loss on my A customers? What about my B, what about my C customers? What about the bottom 25% of the customers that are about 5% of the revenue? So what happens is because it is a great business and because unfortunately the vast majority ignore the reality of the 8020 overall, they look at it, they go, yeah, you know, we're doing pretty darn good. I guess we're making a profit. Well, I would just challenge you. And by the way, can you make a profit on every account? Yes. You know, maybe not the, not the bottom 5% of customers. Certainly you can make profit on every account if you're willing to handle it properly. But unfortunately, because it is a great business and because you don't have to do this stuff, most people are really subsidizing their less than profitable accounts with their really great accounts. And we've done this challenge before too. We said, look, what if you just had the top 50% of your customers and you only had them? What would you do for them that you're not doing today? And would that be a better experience for them? Could you wind up replicating them? Could you fill your pipelines up with similar accounts? Yes, but it starts with a deep, you know, we love that word, deep. Delivering excellence in every process. Well, what about a process that identifies profitability versus lack of profit on various account sizes? It's crucial in my opinion.
Yeah, so that first one there is, you know, never allow profitable account to subsidize unprofitable accounts. I mean, that's everything that Roger was talking about. And I want to get to the second one too, but I have to share something. I had a call yesterday, an agency that's part of our A model or Sitkins network all inclusive model. And I kind of asked them, I said, well, as you've gone through this, what's jumping out of you? And they said, just what you said, Roger. They go, Gosh, 8020 is just something that we know, but we haven't executed and you'll probably get a chuckle out of this. And, and they're agent leader listeners. So they'll probably go, yeah, they're talking about me. But, but it's just interesting without giving names away, they said they had 27 accounts that had 78% of the revenue Roger. And the rest of them were 700 accounts that had the bottom 22%.
Yeah.
And we see it all the time. And I said, well, what do you think? And it's like you never really thought about the impact of just that, that top 20%, or in this case, 27 accounts and how much more opportunity is we talk about to round out, retain and replicate those and what that would mean? I said, what if you focus. There they go. Oh my gosh. It would be a game changer. Why aren't you doing it? I don't know. You know, so it's just that idea of just getting really, really focused. So the first one was profitable accounts, subsidizing, unprofitable. What's the second one, Roger?
Second one, Profitable producers. Subsidizing unprofitable producers. Now, the reality is a new producer. You know, the old saying is it takes three years for them to be profitable. I would challenge that. If you're not making a profit on them before three years, there's a real good chance you may never make a profit on them. And we could do nine hours of podcasts just on that. But the reality is that in so many agencies, the agency principals are still the biggest producers. And I can't tell you how many times, and you've seen it certainly, Brent, where we'll ask agency principals, how would you like to be paid as a producer? In other words, pay yourself the same way you pay a producer. So if you're paying 40 on new and 25 on renewal, we. Would you like to pay yourself that way? Well, the ones that understand this is a results based business, not a transaction based business will look at it and say, well, heck, I already do. But so many say, no, I would get a raise if I paid myself as a producer, but I'm not taking that because I'm trying to subsidize others. Well, again, newer producers working out, that's different. But once they get past that level of and they're at least validated, are we making an acceptable profit on them? I remember several years ago we talked about this in one of our private client meetings. And one of the agency principals who, exceedingly astute financially, went back and analyzed all of the things that they provide to their producers, but they included all of the tools that they have. So things that help the producers create more results. And as we always say, the tools are the agency's responsibility, the behaviors are the producers responsibility. Okay, so the agency went through and said, what tools are we providing? What training? Of course, Sitkins is part of that for them, what things do we do to support them, etc. And what they found in this agency was that unless the producer was generating at least $500,000 of revenue, they were not making an acceptable profit on them. Now, a lot of people say that sounds like a lot. Well, maybe it is for your agency, but. But here was one of the big differences. This agency now knew they had an exact handle on, okay, what does it cost to have that producer here, that producer getting ready to go out and generate more business for us, help us to sell more, retain more, earn more, et cetera? But what do we need to have a profit on that? And I think maybe a better word, Brent, is an acceptable profit, which we're going to get into profit models here. But at the end of the day, if you're sitting there saying, wow, I've got all these producers that are really retired in place, and I guess they're not hurting us. Well, yeah, they are, because they're dragging down your whole culture. They're dragging down energy. They may be hurting you in your marketplace with their brands, but the producers that are just coasting, well, are you making a profit on it? And you. And I've had this discussion with a bunch of the chief revenue officer several times now, and a lot of people say, well, you can never let producers coast. Well, the reality is they will because it's a great business. The key is at what level can they coast? Because a producer with 2, $300,000 of revenue, that's coasting, there's a tremendous cost of the lost opportunities there. But getting to the point, say, okay, if they're going to coast, what does that look like? And several agencies, once a producer starts coasting, they start reducing commission levels on them. And again, that can be a whole other discussion. But I just want to challenge our listeners here to say, hey, am I allowing profitable accounts to subsidize unprofitable, and what if I didn't do that? Am I allowing profitable producers to subsidize unprofitable, and what if I didn't do that? And many times the where the very profitable producers, whether owners or not, where they're getting hurt and where they're subsidizing others is agency resource, whether it's the service team, whether it's tools, whatever, agency resource is being used to support producers that aren't growing. So it's a status quo. I don't think anybody wants to stay flat forever. So just some thoughts here to say, gosh, why are we doing that for first of all, maybe are we doing it? The answer for most are yes. And what are we gonna do about it? Cause knowing it is one thing. Whether you're gonna make a change, whether you're gonna do something to improve your situation, or will you accept status quo? I hope not.
That second part you said there, Roger, I mean, I just one thing to chime in on. And as we talk about this in our sales leadership and agency leadership program, you know, obviously every producer that were to come into your agency, if you'd bring them in, they deserve a high level of training and commitment from the agency. Right to. But you're right, at a period of time when they've established, well, maybe this isn't going to work. What's frustrating, even that I see certainly frustrating for agency leaders is the amount of capacity and time and energy. Of course money, as you said, that gets sucked into producers who simply aren't producing. Yet we have these other producers who could just go even to a higher and higher level. But the time and energy money in many cases is invested elsewhere. And you just have to ask yourself, as you just said, are my profitable producers subsidizing my unprofitable producers and am I okay with that? So hopefully you all took great, great note of that. I want to get into financial models just to give some perspective and ideas to agencies out there. And you know, I think one of the questions you ask all the time and I ask is, you know, hey, what's your model? And I'm paraphrasing this quote, but something in the fact of, you know, if you aim for nothing, you're likely to hit it about every time and often see that with agencies. So just from your perspective, Roger, you know, why is having a financial model for agencies so important and what would it look like? What would be some examples of that?
Well, you know, why have it? It's similar to what you just paraphrased there. But you know, without a, without a plan, without a journey in mind, all roads are going to lead there. We can try this, we can try that, we can try this. But without a financial model, I don't know how agencies make decisions. And even within producers where we talk about this, so we say to the producers, do you want to be a million dollar producer? Oh, yeah, sure do. Great. How are you going to do that? I'm just going to write a lot of business. Well, as we say, tongue in cheek, but it's true, you can't be a million dollar producer writing thousand dollar accounts. So for a Producer, we'd say, okay, you want 50 customers at $20,000 each, and what if it takes you five years to get there? It's still a pretty good model. But more importantly, coming back to the agency itself, it's understanding that we have to take in our mind a P and L and turn it upside down, make the bottom line the top line. You start with your profit. Number one of my very best friends in the world, who I dearly miss. He passed away last year from cancer. Built a phenomenal CPA firm. And one of the things that we talked about, I. I loved him as a friend for so many reasons. But just when we would get into business discussions, he was so astute. I learned so much from him. And I said, how did you make all that work? He said, it's real simple. He said, if any of the plans or any of the. You know, when the cp, my partners would come in with a new plan of where we were going, I would always ask one question. What percent of the revenues goes to partner? Distribution? Okay. And if it was less than 40%, he'd say, bad plan. Go back. Come back with a new one. So in his mind, because their profit, of course, is distribution and their model. So we look at this and we just say, what's your profit goal? Start with that. What's your profit goal? And in our model, at a minimum, we say you should have a 30% operating profit. And I hope all the listeners know that means your operating revenues minus operating expenses. So your investment income or any contingency income you earn is a bonus. It's gravy. In fact, you make 100% profit on that when you get it. So your core operations, then your sales and service expenses, what's left? So when we look at the P and L and we look at the model, we say 30, 40, 30. So let's start with. We have to make a 30% profit. We've talked about this before. The secret. The secret to make 30% profit. Everybody should write this down. You ready? You can only spend 70%. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, you can only spend 70%. So if I have to make 30 and I can spend 70, how do I spend the 70? Well, I think for the right. In the right business model, we look at, it's 40% for service and administrative expenses and 30% for sales expenses. Does this mean you pay a producer 30%? No, because there are other sales expenses also. What it does mean, though, is when you start looking at the bottom, certainly the bottom 50% of your customers, if not more, probably no producer compensation. All right? Because that's one of the ways agencies lose money. That's one of the ways profitable account, subsidized, unprofitable is paying a producer on every account there has to be that minimum account size. Look above X will pay you. Below that it's a house account. Maybe we'll pay you first year, Although I'm not a tremendous fan of that. But that works for some smaller agencies. But again, coming back to it, just say, what's our business model? 30, 40, 30. Then when we look at this and we do the analysis within our private client group and we do their annual assessment and we help them set their KPIs and we monitoring them on a regular basis, we come up with a term called grow fit, which is G R O W and then capital F I T, just like profit, professional experience. And we say the grow fit is a combination of two things. Your operating profit percentage and your net new revenue growth. In other words, your organic growth rate. And you combine those two numbers, they're both a percentage. What should it be? Well, in our mind, the minimum combination is 25. But the real goal, and our best agencies are hitting this and exceeding it is 40. So if, let's say you have a 20% operating profit and a 10% organic growth rate, then your grow fit number is 30. Well, it always comes back. Then what's our business model? What's the business model? Our business model is 30, 40, 30. And our business model is a grow fit of, let's say, 40 or 45. But the key is to have numbers like this. And what I see is once we have that as the end in mind, as Stephen Covey said in the Great Work, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People said, begin with the end in mind. Begin with the end in mind. So the end in mind is financial model and growth in. But the other thing is you start identifying your key performance indicators. Okay, the key performance indicators that are helping you to make decisions. And one of them, of course, is revenue per employee or spread per employee. So let's just look at revenue per employee. Of course, we get into closing ratio and all and retention numbers. But just look at revenue per employee. This is a great way to make a great leader even better. All too often we see in an agency where people say, oh, we're behind, we're understaffed, we need more people, we need this, we need that. And maybe you do, but maybe your people just are not very effective. And historically, what we have found throwing more People at the problem is rarely the answer. Go back to the source of the problem. Why do we need more people? Are the ones we have ineffective? Are the ones we have not using the technology we have available? Are we not training them? Are we not holding them accountable? But probably the easiest example is let's just go back to revenue per employee. And so, Brett, let's say that you're one of the members of my team and you come in and you say, hey, Roger, in the service area, we need to add a new employee. Things are really backing up there. Well, historically, if I don't have a model to work against, I guess I'd say, well, okay, hope it works out. But if you came to me with that request and I knew that our revenue per employee goal is 150, which is too low, but I'm using it as an example. Here's what I would say to you, Brett. How will that person directly or indirectly help us generate an additional $150,000 of revenue this year? And if you can't tell me specifically how that person is going to help us hit our KPI of revenue per employee, I'm going to say go back to the drawing board. Go back to the drawing board. But if you, as one of our team members, you've been part of the planning session, everybody buys in. And you came to me in the right culture and you'd say, hey Roger, I need to have another person in the service area and here's exactly how this person will help us generate another 150,000. So just think of the power that gives a leader to just say, well, what does that have? How does that impact our key performance indicator? Now the reality is, are there times when you'll hire somebody and your overall key performance indicator, the actual results drops because you've hired somebody? Yeah, that's a ramp up period. But again, if the person requesting the additional person, the additional team member cannot tell you specifically, and here's what's going to happen as a result of having this person, then I say, sorry, go back.
Yeah, you know, Rogers, you were saying all that. I'm just listening, obviously, and just thinking at a deeper level as you're sharing stuff, but I think the thing that just, I hope the listeners got, and you said the word Ethereum becomes a decision making tool.
Yes.
And I think I see so often, I know you do too, that agencies make decisions based on a feeling, you know, and sometimes that's okay, I guess, maybe, but it doesn't have substance behind it. Well, I think we might you know, it's like, well, is that really going to get you to where you want to go and just goes back to awareness, creates the right actions. And I think, you know, you say, what's your model? If you don't know your model, how can you make the proper decisions? And so, so much good stuff that you shared there. And again, I appreciate you going through those different examples because just it's truth. It's truth. I want to ask you one more question with the time we have left, Roger, and it really goes into, you think about earning more. You know, as we talk about, in fact, in our CEO boot camp that we run, you know, one of the mistakes that we see is that agencies step over dollars to pick up dimes. And, and there's a lot of meetings behind that stepping over dollars. Well, one of the biggest dollars they step over are the people that are already in their agency. And you know, question is, how well are you developing and training and mentoring and coaching your team? And you know, the answers are sporadic, but typically it's, well, not enough. And so I'll just ask you, I gave my opinion, but do you believe that agencies right now, are they investing enough in resources and training to the people, people that are part of their agency, their greatest asset?
Well, you gave me a softball there. I could hit it and say, well, only those that are involved in our all inclusive model and get everybody on the same page. But here's the reality. If you look at professional services firms, you look at the National Training Directors Organization, I can't remember exactly what it's called now, but the studies have shown that the highest growth, highest profitable, the most profitable professional services firms, which certainly agencies fall into that category, are investing 2% of their revenues in the training and development of their team members. Okay, and we've talked about this before and we've done it in some of our webinars, but when I look at the best practices numbers, the average agency, this is a best practice agency, it was at 0.4% of revenue, less than a half a percent. Now that makes zero sense to me now, certainly. And by the way, that point four includes continuing education credits, which are crucial in our industry. You need your people to constantly be doing those things. But I look at this and I say, why is it that you would not develop your team on a regular basis? Well, number one, you're going to get semi successful results even if you don't. But when I think of teams, you know, my background playing football in college and just looking at what goes on in teams. I can't imagine any professional team that doesn't have ongoing training and development of their team members. So whether it's the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, okay, those are all sports teams. What about symphonies? Do you think orchestras have training and development or just a touring band? I'm a huge Jimmy Buffet and Eagles fan, and two years ago I was fortunate to go to a big outdoor event in Orlando where they were both there, the Eagles and Jimmy Buffett. Jimmy Buffett opened for the Eagles. What a great concert. But, you know, they practice. They practice. Think of now that things are opening up again and you're going to hopefully go to some live theater, you're going to go see some musicals, whatever's exciting for you. How much preparation and training do they do, getting ready for the event? All right. And I just, I can't imagine. Well, I guess I shouldn't. I can't imagine. I can't imagine because I see it every day. But the reality is that your team's not going to get better if your people don't get better. And certainly to do the things that train them in the skills, the processes and the attitudes, the mindsets, it's crucial. And yet most won't invest. Well, studies have certainly proven, and we've proven the return on investment is phenomenal. If you'll invest in your people and if you don't invest in them, I don't think you have any reason to complain about why they're, gee, why aren't they growing? Why aren't they handling more? It'd be like taking a football team and say, just go run around for a while and figure it out yourself. We don't have to work out. Don't worry about a training table. Do whatever you want. Yeah, we probably won't win any games this year, but we'll be out there. So it's obvious I could get on a soapbox forever on this one. But it's just so amazing when you see the difference with the. In our case, in our golden program, of course, is the producers creating net new revenue. And we look at agencies that are growing at 5 or 6%, which is pretty much the average now and then we look at producers that are really committed to the skills, the processes, the attitudes, and getting better all the time and constantly being reinforced. And we're seeing 10, 15, 20% growth on large producers books of business because they're doing the right things and because they have their team members aligned with them. And one of your sayings that I Absolutely. Love. And this is all part of training and development. It's getting everybody on the team to understand this. We have the same goals but different roles. And I love how you share that with people. So, yeah, I mean, if you don't invest in them, don't expect much from them. I guess that's a easy final response.
Well, I mean, there's so many different takeaways to that. I mean, I could probably go for 20 minutes too, Roger, because, you know, my passion around just growth and development of people. But, you know, one of the things that we've shared for several years now in our programs is that, you know, what if you just got 1% better at week? You know, now, you know, I think you could do more than that, but let's just say 1% better a week and you go, oh, that would be. That'd be pretty good. I'd be pretty good in a year. Like, let's not even use compound interest. Let's just say that it's just 1% direct and you take two weeks off. That's 50% better. Now, that doesn't mean it's just better. And the growth, just money financially, yeah, that could be part of it. But I'm just talking about growth as a professional. And then you multiply that and say, well, my team's got 15 people or 20 people or 6 people or 48 people. What if. What if they all got 1% better? You go, wow, we would be a really good agency. Well, then, then why aren't we doing that? Well, you know, it's just. It's been so crazy. It's just been so busy. I just, I really don't have time to get better, which is always just the craziest things that we hear. I mean, what. The greatest investment that you can make is in yourself. And I think the greatest investment you can make it as a agency leader is outside of yourself is into your team. Right. How do I get our team to get better? And you know, this is paraphrased in different ways. We use this for sales leaders, but this is true for agencies. Lead agency leaders. When I say, well, what's the number one job of an agency leader? Well, and you get different answers. Well, you know, increase revenue to grow sales to be profitable. Now, the number one job of any leader is to improve their people. I mean, that's the job. That's the number one thing. So how are you going to do that? So before I have my wrap up, Roger, again, I, I appreciate. First of all, I want to thank you for coming on with me and investing basically a couple hours here. Right. If we look at these four sessions, and I know, my guess is if I ask nicely, you may come back again. Is that, is that fair?
I would love to.
But any, just as we wrap up all of these sessions together and again, I, I do appreciate you very much for doing that. I know the audience will appreciate, appreciate your wisdom and what you've shared. Any just final thoughts that you want to share with the audience?
Yeah, brand new thought based upon what you were saying, the 1% a week. Okay, what about 1% a month? Just 1% a month. That's 12%. Well, the average growth rate rate now is 6%. So if you just got 1% better a month and you compounded that over a few years, you'd be 12%. But it takes a laser focus on the most important issues and takes a laser focus on knowing what's really going on. So just 1% a month would be phenomenal because it would be double what the best practice study is showing for the average agency today. And so can you get 1% better a month? Well, not doing what you've been doing right now, the property rates, of course are going up. All the rates are going up. And so we're getting into a hard market based on a lot of reasons. Okay. And so agencies will get an artificial growth, but it's not new client growth, it's existing client growth, which is fine, take it one of the beauties of the business. But just sitting here and saying, hey, if every one of our team members just committed to getting better every week, every month, every quarter, and we talked about it, that that is our culture. The culture is how do we get at least 1% better all the time? And you know something we talk about, whether you use the 1% or 2% number doesn't matter. But you know, only 1 or 2% of people can really implement long term, meaningful change. Well within an organization. It takes a leader that's committed to it and a leader that constantly reminds people the journey that they're on. And this comes back to again, same goals, different roles, teach each individual to each department. What's your purpose? What's your role on this journey we're on together? And when you get leaders that start talking that way and communicating that way and constantly reinforcing it, it's really exciting to see what happens to them. And by the way, they earn more and they have financial freedom. That's pretty cool.
Yeah, there's that word, freedom. Absolutely. Well, just some Some thoughts for me on this. And again, I know I've mentioned our all inclusive model several different times, but just two things that I want to share with you and why this model has been so impactful and why, if you're an agency, as Roger just said, that's committed to getting better and to earning more. Of course, to sell more, to retain more, and to earn more, why it's been so successful. I think two things jump out at me, Roger. Number one is we want to give you a process and not just not an event, but a process that your entire agency can be part of and learn together. You know, if you think you're going to, you know, I think we've all dealt with this, but in our mind, oh, there's, where's the magic pill? What's that secret thing I need to do? Well, the magic pill and secret thing is doing things very well for a long period of time. Well, that's a lot of work, Brent. Well, guess what? That's what the best do. And so we want to give you an actionable process that you can, you can really do by basic principles. And the second part of it is holistic. You know, I know that many agency leaders, one of the biggest frustrations they see, Roger, is the fact that, well, I'm on board or this person's on board. This person, you know, she's excited, he's excited. But their service team is not, or vice versa. The sales team is not, or the leadership is not. And so what we want to provide agency is a way holistically that every member can go, you know what? This is something we can do. This is something we should do. This is something we, we must do. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our agency, we owe it to our clients to be better. Because ultimately it's going to provide that word again, freedom. So if you want to learn more about that program in particular, again, go to sitkins.com aim that's for all inclusive model. Also, one final note. We are be doing, I've been doing, I did a workshop just this week, our summer series workshops. I'm gonna be doing two more. One in July, one in August. There's no charge for these. And the one I'll be doing in July will based around sales, go go a little deeper into the sales process, sales philosophies. August will be more about productivity and utilizing that one. The only diminishing asset, Roger, which is time. And if you want to register or learn more about that, just email us @podcastitkins.com. so we've got an email domain podcast, sitkins.com that'll go to our team. They'll get you registered, no charge, but get you in. Make sure you're. You're registered for July and August. Those workshops, you don't want to miss those. It'll make a huge impact on the agency as you move forward. So. Oh, by the way, there's also maybe a possibly a special offer if you attend that. I'll just give a little tease there. So I want to thank you all for listening. I appreciate you. If this podcast out of value to you, please leave a review or rating or subscribe. We'd love to have more agencies get involved. Again, Roger, huge thank you to you. You did so well. Roger that I'm going to invite you back. Is that all right?
That's absolutely all right.
All right. Hey, thanks for being a listener. I wish you all the best and your success.
