Remote agents versus in-office agents. I'm Jason Feldman. This is a playbook, and if you stick to the end, I'm going to give you exactly what I think the best answer to this problem is. But let's talk about the difference. Why are agents? How? By encovering the state that's between predictable, consistent, and profitable agency sales exchange. I am great products. I am Jesus. We are agents. We are insurance agents. So typically, insurance agents, we've always worked in the office, right? 2020 comes around, kind of changes the game. Now we have uh remote teams. And and so the question is going into you know 2024 and beyond, like, how do we handle this? Like, what's what's the best answer? Is there uh an exact way that works better? Is it all remote? Is it all in office? How do we deal with that? How do we uh navigate that? Well, I believe that both work well, right? I mean, if you're in office, there's nothing like the the feel of a team in an office that's succeeding, and you're in our office, we have little bells that go off for sales. And and when you have a team that's all working together and high-fiving, that could be super fun, right? The energy is infectious. You can control the environment, the energy in the room. Uh, it gets really difficult to do that when you do it remote. Um, you can do that, you can use tools like Zoom, um, like Slack and kind of create those moments in which you, you know, celebrate things and and communicate with each other, but it does get more difficult when you are remote. So in the new year, I'm actually going 100% remote. Do I think that that's the best answer? Well, I'm still gonna have an office. Okay. Like I'm literally still gonna have an office because I wanna be able to have somewhere that if agents are struggling and they just they need that one-on-one support, they're still have somewhere to come as a home base to be in the office. Do I think that we need it? Well, not really. Like, I don't think you have to do that. I think it's a great option. Uh, most of our agents are local, so it does it makes sense for me. But if you don't do that and you are going 100% remote, make sure that you have clear expectations of daily work. And if you're thinking about using tools like, I believe it's Active Track and uh any of those other kind of tracking softwares, I would say this is that if you can be clear on the expectation of daily activity and you monitor just the daily activity, then you don't have to be so worried about what somebody's doing remote. Then you know that every single day, if they do this amount of activity, your agency is going to have success. And I would use math on this. I would look at how many incoming calls are coming into your office, how many outbounds uh equal uh, you know, a connected call, how many quotes do they need, how many sales do you want, and just really work backwards. I think the clearer that we can vocalize and give the tools to our team to be successful in a remote environment, the better they're gonna be. And I think that kind of goes with anybody. I do think that there are some people that struggle in a work-at-home environment, but that becomes very clear, especially when you have uh very clear expectations. Otherwise, it can be a, you know, I was on the phone, I was doing this, and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but these were the numbers. This is exactly what you expected when we started doing this. You signed this doc, you said that you were going to be able to do this. So you either need to come into the office or, you know, some sort of option like that. So, which is better? I think that if you're all in office now, you're really running into you're going to run into problems in the future because you can hire from anywhere in the nation for an agent, right? And then also, this is such a good benefit. I mean, people will take less pay if you give them the option to work from home. So it becomes a huge benefit. And even without the pay, I mean, the attraction to your agency when you're trying to hire is so much better. And we want people that want to be able to hold themselves accountable. We want to create an environment in which there's more autonomy, right? Unless you like micromanaging. So I think it's something that even if you are in office, it's something that you need to get think about giving the option for or testing. And when you test for the first time, think this. If they do, what do they have to do in the day? If they do this, this means I will be happy. And then write that down, right? And then clearly uh explain it. Have them write it down, have them sign it, and and there you go. And I don't think that you will be disappointed with those results. So there you go. That is uh remote agents versus in office agents and what I'm doing next year.