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Voices of Leadership w/ Chris Atwell - Annie Mitchell · Voices of Leadership w/ Chris Atwell

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome to Voices of Leadership.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_04: I'm Chris Atwell, and in each episode, I sit down with the leaders shaping the future of the manufacturer's rep industry.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_04: Real stories, real challenges, real growth.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_04: This is where leadership comes to life.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_04: I have a guest with me today, Annie Mitchell.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_04: She's the principal and director of sales at OCS Lighting and Control.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_04: Annie, thanks for joining me.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Chris.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_04: You've spent years building and leading in the lighting rep world.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_04: And we had a conversation a few weeks ago, and we touched on how much the work and the leadership behind it has changed over the years.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_04: And I want to explore what agency owners need to understand about that shift and how leaders can keep their people moving forward without losing the relationship or relationships, I should say, that make uh this industry work.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_04: So um why don't we why don't we start with um a point of view?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_04: For someone meeting you for the first time, how did you find your way into the lighting business and eventually into age agency ownership?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I came in through family, actually.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um my brother is one of the owners of OCS Lighting and Lighting in Control, and so you know he's the one who kind of brought me in.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we joke that lighting is a bit like the mafia.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Once you get in, you never get out.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been here for almost 20 years and uh kind of worked my way up the ladder, but I've always been in the sales side, and I've always believed that um relationships are the cornerstone of any business, really.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we we really work hard to maintain relationships, not just with our clients, but with our manufacturers and with our staff.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: We want to provide a nice, happy, healthy place for them to work.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_04: Amazing.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and I mean, obviously your brother was in the business, but what was it him that drew you to this side of the industry?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_04: What drew you to the industry in the first place?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, it was a downturn in the economy that uh the industry that I was in was was really being affected, you know, in um you know, during the bubble burst in the mid-2000s.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a little bit of it ahead of it and I went into lighting that still was coasting a little bit because of the time that it takes for jobs to to be constructed.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd been in it for a few years when when um the bottom collapsed, and that was a really, really challenging time for us.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I was new in the industry, I didn't uh I didn't know enough on how to handle it, but I think it it taught me some great lessons that I carry to this day.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: So when do you feel like it stopped being more of a job and like something that you really want it to be?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think early on, because I I like the aspect of sales, um, because it's a people business.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, sales is really just about connecting with someone and finding out what it is that that they want, how you can solve a problem for them.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think that there's a um, I think that there are awful salesmen out there, but but I think by and large, salespeople really want to try and and figure out what the customer wants and needs and help to marry them with the correct products.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that always appealed to me.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I like to be a problem solver.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I try and surround myself with salespeople who are problem solvers.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not our job to push product, it's our dot it's our job to provide options and allow our customers to select the correct solution.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's probably what drew me to it and what's kept me in it as I've developed so many relationships over the years.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's their friends and family at this point.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, it really is a close-knit industry, isn't it?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_04: And and I like what you said about you're not going into push products, you're going into understand what it is they actually need and then and then craft something that meets those needs at the end of the day.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_04: When when we were first talking a few weeks ago, you said that uh lighting projects have become much more complex, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's it's changed over the years.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_04: So what does that complexity look like from your seat as one of the partners in the business?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when I started, we were still in you know fluorescent and and HID fixtures, and I think we had two manufacturers on our line card that had LED, and they were really purely decorative.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we've seen the the complexity of the products change, we've needed to have more staff.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, when I started, it was me and and one other person, and we were the two spec salespeople, and he did part-time controls.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: We now have a controls department of eight people just to handle um you know your everyday projects as as well as you know, arc attainment and things that are a little bit more complex, things that we're getting asked for pretty regularly because they're not unique products anymore.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're things that you can buy at Home Depot and Costco, and so people want to have a little bit of bling, even if it's as simple as putting some you know RGBW in their break room or at their front office desk.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, someone has to be able to understand those products and be able to interface them with a control system.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that side has definitely gotten more complex.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: There are way more manufacturers.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean, our line card, every single day we are turning away manufacturers.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that that might sound hard to believe, but I get an email every single day from someone somewhere wanting to know if we will rep their line.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so there's always the you know, the balancing act of do we take the line off the street so that our competitor doesn't get it, or do we add it on to, or or or do we allow them to have it and potentially empower them, and it could be a brand that goes on to do something.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So those decisions are are constantly having to be made.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But it is definitely a more challenging design environment as well, where designers are are pushing the envelope because we've given them tools that make their projects really cool and unique.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: But it's just not as easy as it used to be of putting a fixture in a ceiling.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and those fixtures back then were dumb, you know.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: You had a switch on the wall and you turn them on and off.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And now the fixtures are smart, they can do lots of different things, even the fixtures that aren't color changing, even the fixtures that that might just be static white, they might have dolly drivers and they're configured differently based upon what's being done in the space.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to have a much more knowledgeable team, and I would say we as salespeople also have to be more knowledgeable because our clients are and they expect it from us.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and when you when you look at your business, knowing that you know there's there's m a lot more of this complexity.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_04: Who on your team, or it sounds like you added a lot of team members, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_04: So who's involved now who might not have been involved before in the process?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: For sure, um on the sales side, we are interacting with um quotes, project management for lead times, um, controls to make sure that that um you know the products that we're using um will work with the control system that's being proposed.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, and and I would say I'm on the specification side of the sales team, but on the contractor distributor side, we're constantly having conversations about how a project is moving forward.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is it going to go a spec?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is it going to be VE'd?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is it what we call a hybrid, which is uh, you know, a little bit of both, where you know maybe we try and hang on to the you know the decorative fixtures or the color changing fixtures, but we're value engineering, you know, other fixtures in the space to try and kind of hold the design together.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not it's not as compartmentalized as it as it once was.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: When I when I first started on the spec side, spec was really spec, and then once I got it onto the plans, then it went to someone else.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: It went to quotes for quoting and and it went to the uh contractor distributor team to negotiate on that side, and now I find that we're all working together at the same time.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that is because projects are being designed and built at the same time.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: We see this.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wouldn't say that it's the norm, but we see it a lot.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, it's like we really all do have to be involved because our jobs are are overlapping.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's turned into, you know, this sandwich that that everyone is trying to eat at the same time.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_04: Can you think of like a project or a moment when you realized like that the old way of operating was not wasn't gonna be enough anymore?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_04: When when did that like when did that s switch happen?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think we all saw it coming pre-COVID.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was creeping in.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: We were starting to do more um virtual calls and things like that, which certainly have their place.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, if I've got three calls and they're all in different parts of town, I can now do them, you know, online and my my days allows for other things, whereas back in the day I was driving from one to the other.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: So so there are advantages, and we saw it coming pre-COVID.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: But COVID really, really accelerated that.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And coming out of the other side, there were a lot of people within our own office and you know, in our client base who were just didn't want to come back to the office, you know, or they only wanted to come back to the office part-time, and so I felt incredibly lucky that I had been doing it for a long time and had established relationships.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: We um had lost some team members during COVID who had decided to move out of state, and when we replaced them, those new team members were really struggling to build relationships because how do you build a relationship with someone that you never really get to meet, that that you you only email with and sometimes see on a on a Zoom meeting?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a very different dynamic.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think I and many others thought that you know the minute that that COVID was kind of lifted and we could go back into the office, that that would change, and that has not changed.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, yes, there are more people back in the office, but there are still enough that are remote or that have flexed schedules that it's become very difficult to get manufacturers in.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the old day of you know, five calls a day, a lunch and learn was the cornerstone of your day.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Those days are gone.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we've by and large um eliminated manufacturers coming in and doing um, you know, the kind of the daily sales calls.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've gone more to an event-based model because we just we can't guarantee that we'll have people in the office.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll get an RSVP for 10 people and three will show, and one of them is the receptionist.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not good bang for your buck, but it's something that we just really don't have any control over.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it sounds uh that there's a lot of things that aren't in your control, right?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_04: You're you you've got all these people that are working remotely, you still have to get in front of them, so you've got to come up with creative ways to overcome that.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_04: And I would imagine that as your team's growing as well, that there's uh people who don't have as much knowledge and experience as well on the team that are building these relationships and learning about the process and how to effectively sell and and and build those relationships what makes I mean you've been in the industry for for for a while, you're you're a senior leader in the business.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_04: What makes knowledge transfer so difficult in a business where relationships count so much?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh boy, that that's a tough one.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I do think part of it is that the the seasoned people oftentimes are just underwater, you know, because that knowledge is so precious and they kind of become the one that everyone goes to and they can't get their own work done, you know.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I find that that oftentimes the senior people are trying to work from home.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I I think that unfortunately a lot of times the younger ones don't get the benefit of just that osmosis, just being around uh the senior members of the team, just just listening in on conversations.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I find that you know the office oftentimes is just kind of haphazard on who happens to be in and at what time.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the transfer of knowledge, you know, historically we've we've done it a very specific way.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: You you just are around those people, you know, someone will take you under their wing until you can kind of fly solo, and then someone else might take you from there.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I just don't see that happening as much.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is kind of living their own life in their own bubble, and there's there's less overlap.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's taking people longer for sure to get up to speed.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_04: So then what do they what do they need then from leaders today that may be different from what you needed when you started?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's taking longer.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_04: So how do you give that support without creating dependence on you at the same time?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we as leaders need to be more um proactive and basically pull some of these people out of their comfort zone and take them with us.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yes, it's gonna be a little bit challenging to take them on a day of calls or to have them sit in the quotes department for several weeks and then start doing quotes themselves.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that's been what kind of got bypassed during COVID, is there was this rush to just get people out and performing.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so they didn't get a lot of those foundational skills.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say that I've been guilty of that as well.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so focused on we don't have um a mature sales staff, so let me double down and bring in the work to make sure that the the cash flow is there.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, that only solves today's problem.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't solve the problem for tomorrow, and so I do think that that we um as owners need to excuse me collectively think about the generation that's up and coming and actively invest in them, not passively.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just thinking about investment and you know active versus passive.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: Where um how have those new employees, how have their expectations changed versus the way it was maybe, you know, ten years ago?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_04: Because you've got these these different generations, younger people coming in.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um have the expectations changed and and has that changed the way that you lead?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_04: It sounds like it has, but um what what are they what are they asking for that's different that that wasn't there before?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that one of the things that has been different is that back in the day pre-LED, there were fewer manufacturers and the technology was pretty basic.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the questions you asked were do you, you know, is it 120 or 277?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then universal driver um ballast came in and that was exciting because then you didn't have to pick one or the other.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: But in LED, there are so many questions to ask, and a lot of the newer staff, they didn't come in when LED was in its inception.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like for me, I got to learn little by little by little.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the the new sales staff that are coming in today, it's a pretty complex environment, and I find that there are a lot of challenges with with just learning the product itself.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not even really into those sales skills yet.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're just still into understanding when to use certain types of products, um, why you would use them, just just really some of the most basic things in lighting.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say that that I feel like people need to work on jobs that that almost force them to do it, right?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you work on a job where you need explosion-proof fixtures, you start to learn all of those ratings and why they're used and where they're used and the costs that are associated with it.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if you didn't have a job in a paint booth, you would never learn those things.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And lighting has become so massive.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to take this gigantic amount of information and condense it down into this kernel.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I've kind of learned that that is impossible.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: You really just kind of have to wrap your arms around what it is and you have to dive in and you have to do the work.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that I think is what a lot of the younger generation is struggling with.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: That it's a lot of work.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just, hey, isn't this pretty?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like it?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, you got to know all the background of it.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: You have to know how it interacts with other fixtures in the space, with a control system.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know your competitors are gonna be coming after you, you got a target on your back.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: What do they have that's similar to what you have?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any idea of what their price points are?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there are many, many pieces that that um they have to learn, and it just doesn't happen overnight.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we used to say that it was a year to two years to get a salesperson up and running and be pretty self-sufficient.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's closer to two to three years now, and even some of my seasoned people I see are coming to me, excuse me, with questions that I would consider more basic.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I always tell my my sales staff that we're all like like Swiss cheese.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: We have holes in different areas, and and it's hard to kind of know where someone was missing a piece of information.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've been at this almost 20 years, and sometimes something comes up and I think, wow, I didn't know that.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: How did I miss that?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't get formal education in lighting, right?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: We we learn on the job, in the fire, and you never know where people are gonna get um you know missing information.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So so we try and do internal training, but I would say that that it kind of it just deflects off of people.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: The best way to learn is on projects.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, real-world uh impactful work is gonna teach you the most when in this industry for sure.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_04: I also know that AI is becoming uh a part of the industry as well, right?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_04: The big talk around uh AI.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_04: And I would imagine that there are areas where maybe you see it emerging.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_04: Where do you see it helping?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: You know, in in in situations with wet whether with your clients or with your team.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_04: And uh in comparison, as important as AI is, where do you see relationships are still winning over it?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think AI, because it's so good with rules and numbers, I definitely see it in our quotes department.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see us losing um staff.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: What I see is that our staff will become more efficient and more accurate.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's gonna have to um be kind of hand in glove with the manufacturers because the manufacturers are gonna have to provide that information so that when you're typing stuff into a system, it starts to auto-populate.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um there are already programs where you can upload a schedule and it will pull the specified product and then it will also go into your line card and pull what it thinks are the closest matches.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that we might be able to, instead of increasing staff, actually be able to use some of these tools to help become more efficient and and hopefully more profitable.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, especially on the on the quote side.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we land as agents, we quote so much to land just a fraction of it.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's that part gets to be painful because you're paying for those services and you're not reaping the reward.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if we could offload some of that to AI, I think that that would be a huge win for our industry.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as far as the the negatives of AI with relationships, I firmly believe, and and maybe I'm I'm just optimistic, but I firmly believe that that relationships will always trump everything else.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: People are um, you know, we're we're a herd mentality, a pack mentality.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be with other humans, we want to exchange ideas.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think ideally we will still be able to do that.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in fact, maybe even do it better, and AI will be running in the background doing the things that we don't want to do.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be, you know, sorting through our inbox and scheduling appointments and reminding us we need to leave to a meeting and doing those types of things so that it frees up more time for relationships.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: But but I will I will forever believe that relationships are the key to everything in life.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: But especially in business, my most solid clients are those that I have very good personal relationships with.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean that they're coming over to my house on Sunday.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, it means we know about each other's lives.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: When we call each other for a project, there's a few minutes of catching up.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the clients that have been with me for years and will probably be with me until I retire.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: I completely agree with relationships are still the most important.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_04: And the technology will help you manage time, be more consistent, find efficiencies, but there's nothing like a human-to-human interaction, and AI will never replace that.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_04: I'm curious, you know, if if another agency owner is feeling the pressure of more complexity in the business, they've got a stretched team that are, you know, they've got more work to do.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um you've got all these changes that are happening in the industry.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_04: From your perspective, what would you want them to think about first?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think that um we as agents need to come together more and share ideas and you know things that are working for us.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you're not going to do that within your own territory, but if you go outside of your territory and you have a sister agency in another state, um, we do this pretty frequently, and and some of my best ideas were not mine.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: They came from other people that I I met on a factory trip or had known through someone else.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we've just chit-chatted and I've been able to pick their brain, and they said we did this and it was really successful.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I like to share that with other people as well.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we we did, I think we were one of the first who started doing a really big single agent show.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: We we started doing um, we did it like at Petco Park, we did it on the USS Midway, and it became kind of the the talk amongst manufacturers, and we started to see other agents do it.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I think it's like it's great for us to share that.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: We are all kind of in the same boat, we're all going through a lot of the same problems together, and I think that like rep councils are are really important.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're pulled together through manufacturers, but uh we have a group of people that they do it on the side on their own, and they're agents from different parts of the country, and one of the principals from our agency gets together with them, spends, you know, four or five days, and and it's a fun trip, but at the same time, they're exchanging ideas and sharing thoughts and looking towards the future.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: How do we adapt and and make sure that we stay relevant?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we continue looking backwards and saying, you know, well, this is what we always did and this is what worked, I think that that we're gonna get lost.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like those manufacturers who were reluctant to jump onto LED, lots of them aren't even in business anymore because it just moved so quickly.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think that there are certain things that we've done historically, like building relationships that are forever.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Those those are just core foundational principles that that I think will never go out of style.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: But there are other things like adapting to people working from home.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, how do we how do we not just do the typical business model of bringing in a regional and and you know whoever's there sees it and whoever isn't doesn't?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, how do we get those people out of their houses?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get them to see our products?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get them to interact with us, to know more of our team?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like we will invite a lot of our team to our events so that they know our quotes people and they know our project managers if it makes sense.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like the you know, it doesn't dilute um our company.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think it it makes us better the more people that you know and can interact with.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_04: Beautiful.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Annie, thank you.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_04: I I appreciate how uh how important and how much of a reminder it is to all of us that we should lead forward with with with relationship building.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_04: Make sure that that's at the center of everything because those relationships hold the most value.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm pretty sure that that whole concept will resonate with a lot of agency owners.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_04: So thank you for sharing your experience with me today.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_04: I appreciate that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.