S5E17: Abbey Road | Lucky Bucket IPA | End of Year Strategizing

Disclaimer: The information in this video is not intended as financial advice. Consult an expert before making any decisions in regards to your finances.

Today, Pam and Francis dive into the ups and downs of scaling businesses and share what patience has taught them about growth, focus, and keeping clients happy.

They also review Lucky Bucket’s American IPA (hops lovers, take note!) and chat about balancing business with life—Francis even shares how he’s managing his first year as an entrepreneur while planning a wedding.

Check out the awesome guys at Sims Distillery: 
https://simsdistillery.com/

For all of your cyber security needs: 
https://ezit.solutions/

📰 On this week's 'What's News:
https://boingboing.net/2024/10/31/the-original-beatles-recording-console-is-on-sale-for-3-million.html

Today's Brew🍺: Lucky Bucket Brewing IPA

Learn more at: https://luckybucket.beer/

🍻 The P.B.K.P.I (Pam's Beer KPI) Scale, for reference ⚖️: 
1. I'm NOT touching it
2. I'd drink it again if you gave it to me
3. I'll order it from the menu
4. I'll scour the ends of the earth to find it

About the Brewery: 
Lucky Bucket Brewery, one of Nebraska’s first craft breweries, has been crafting high-quality beers since 2008, starting with the Pre-Prohibition Lager and Certified Evil Imperial Stout. Known for blending tradition with innovation, Lucky Bucket explores forgotten styles and experiments with unique ingredients to create both classic favorites and exciting new brews. Whether at the taproom, your local bar, or your back deck, Lucky Bucket beers are made to be shared and enjoyed with friends and family.

Transcript

0:00

We gotta wait and see if this works first. Exactly. And that's been a big growth for me this year too. So I'm glad you mentioned patience. It was the hardest thing, patience. And then I think the other thing is just I've owned businesses, I've been involved in businesses before. Never to the scale or to the operational capacity or level of responsibility or level of responsibility that we have built out and what we've built over the past year, you know, as we've scaled forward press and now are starting to build and scale, good to go. There's been so many layers and I think that I've learned the most from watching you as we develop this, working with you one on one as we develop this, doing the podcast and running through these scenarios and these situations that we've been in and really just kind of running through those, those processes on the podcast has been super beneficial and I think I've like. Hey, welcome back to the Cash Flow podcast with me, Pam Prior. Glad to have you here where we talk about everything money related in your business. So without further ado, let's hop right in. Hey, welcome back to Cash Flow. I am Pam Prior and I'm so excited to be here today. We have a fun news topic today telling you what to do with your $3 million that you've got lying around the house. Then we're going to jump into our beer segment which is beer from Lucky Buckets Brewing Company. And then finally Francis and I are going to talk about 2025 strategy when you own multiple businesses and give you a couple of tips to get the noise and confusion out of the way for you. So we can't wait to jump right in now with our so it's been done and now there's a really good way for you to invest that $3 million you have lying around. The Abbey Road console that was used by the Beatles has been reconstructed with 70% original parts and is on an online auction market called Reverb. And it's an original EMI TGI 2345 recording console and it was used by the Beatles at Abbey Road Studios to record the album Abbey Road. And it was a one of a kind console that was built specifically for this occasion. So the Brian Gibson who was who carries over from that time period was part of the crew that reconstructed it and it can be yours for$3 million. It went through a five year restoration process and they reunited it with 70% of its original parts like I said. And they've been working with a lot of British companies to make sure that it really gets constructed or reconstructed authentically. So when you're wondering where to Invest your next 3 million, this is not investment advice, but here's an option. And on that note, I think it's time for a brew. You feeling lucky, Francis? Always. Because today we have Lucky Bucket as our brewery. So Lucky Bucket is one of Nebraska's oldest craft breweries. Shout out to Nebraska. Our IT support group is from Nebraska. E Z I T. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah. If anybody needs exceptional IT security, cybersecurity and support for a small business, easy it is definitely the one to call. They get it. They get how we work as entrepreneurs and they get that we don't really know enough about phishing and stuff to do cybersecurity. No, we're not sponsored by them. I just love them. But they're in Nebraska. They're just a lot of fun to work with. And one of our bookkeepers lives in Nebraska. Oh, really? Priorities, bookkeepers. Karen. So shout out to Karen. Shout out to Travis and Cody at Easy It's. And Austin and Stephen and the whole team. Shout out to everybody. So, Lucky Bucket, we're about to try your Nebraska beer. Lucky Bucket was formed in 2008 and they started with a lager and then followed up with a stout. And their values are authentic, versatile, integrity, dedicated and humbly confident. That's what they want to brew into each of their beers. Okay. And what I like especially more about them is 1% of their revenue is donated to local charities and 2% of their employee time is donated to local communities. So a giver backer, which we always love and we're going to try now the American IPA. A couple little facts about this is 6.3% alcohol by volume, which is in our normal zone for IPAs. Very glad to be back to IPAs. It's available in six and 12 can packs and we got a six pack here. And it's what it says about this is that it's no secret that IPA is all about the hops. American craft breweries have become especially adept in the way the Humulus Lupulus can be used to make spectacular beer for hopsheads to enjoy. Our original west coast ipa. So it's a West Coast IPA with a little bit of interesting diversity and hop flavor. Said the final result is big and bold and in your face. Okay. So we'll have to decide if we agree with that, but we'll also have to look up Humulus Lupulus. We'll have to drop that in the notes for sure. With a link Harry Potter spell. It sounds like a disease, but apparently it's used to make a spectacular beer for hop's heads to enjoy. I guess we'll be the judge of that. Meaning us. Yeah. So I guess it's a type of hop. I will find out. All right, let's take a peek at it here, Francis, what does it look like? A really good open. Good fizz. I like the fizz. Nice head. Good clear color. Smells good. I can smell it. Is the west coast clear and the white east coast hazy. I don't know, but that looks like a pretty clear IPA to me. Honestly. Nice and clear. It smells great. Oh, it does smell good. Much closer to what we've smells like an IPA gotten accustomed to. Not too fruity. No watermelon in there. No watermelon, no. Too much orange. Let's see here. Not bad. An IPA indeed. Oh, a nice, complex ipa. It coats the lupulus. Lupulus. It really coats the tongue with the hoppy. Yeah. But it's not. I feel like it's not overly bitter, right? It is in your face, but it's not overly bitter. You're right. But it does have that pop rocks feel, which I love about IPAs. And it stays there a minute. It's caramelly. Caramelly. A little bit like a pine flavor in there. Yeah. I do get like a caramel. That is what that is. I couldn't quite place it. It's rich. Yep. I like this. I can tell you what my PBKI is on this. Yeah. Where are you going? Yeah, this is a strong four. This is. So you're maxing out the scale. I would go find this again, Nebraska. Cheers. I'm going. Oh, that's very good. I think we're going a three. I like it. It's like a little bit still. I think border ipa. But that's not a knock on the beer itself. That's just like my taste. Right. I think it's really good. It's smooth. It's. I feel like rich is the wrong word. I like that as a descriptor act because it's a little. A little bit different. A lot of times with IPAs, it needs to be an alternative to bitter because it's not bitter. It's. It's definitely got the hops. It's definitely got the bitter you expect. But it's nicely. It's well balanced. Yeah. I think lively, maybe instead of rich. It really dances along your taste buds. Like, this is like the perfect I think that what we should try to incorporate is, like, a pairing. What would we pair this beer with? Okay, so what would you pair this beer with? I would pair this with a really good, like, bitey cheese. Like, thinking of a hard cheese. Like a charcuterie board, though. Yes. But like a good cheddar. Okay, a good cheddar. I like that. I was thinking, like, sliders. Like a slider with, like, an onion. Like the cheese there, too, but like onion meat. Like, that type of flavor, I think would really be the perfect pairing. I can see that. Right, I can see that. But I feel like a pairing is a fun, like, little addition to this because I like that you can rate it and people can assume from that, but then if you add, like, that. Layer, then you can get a little. Bit of a feel for an idea. Yeah. But this is. If you're an IPA fan, I would say this one's worth grabbing. Yeah. This is a three. This is a solid three out of four for me. I'm happy with it. I'm really happy that we're back on the beer train and not drinking fruit juice. Yeah. The watermelon, it was not gross, but. Oh, it wasn't beer. No, it just wasn't beer. The last two have been like little breakfast champagne. We had, like, three in the past, like, month. I think October was really, like, I. Thought I had to go. I felt guilty because I refused to do a pumpkin beer. Oh, okay. So in lieu of refusing to do a pumpkin beer, which I probably should have just done, I got these three, like, odd non IPA things or IPA fruity things, and I regretted it. So I think next year I'm not going to say it because I still can't say the words, but I might not make it so hard on myself in October, but maybe we'll do an Oktoberfest celebration. I like that idea of Oktoberfest beers. Some good pilsners. We'll try. We'll taste test as many of the Oktoberfest that we can. That works. I think that's a fair trade off. And then we don't have to worry about watermelon, mint or mimosa. You remember the names? I, like, blank them out of my head on purpose. I think that's. That's the long term move for me. Well, in the meantime, lucky bucket, we're glad to meet you. This is a great ipa. Thank you. Cheers, everybody. Cheers. All right, so one of the things we've talked about doing here, and I think it's really important now that we're in November. November. Oh, my God. 2024 is almost over. Can you believe that? No, I really can't. They go faster. The older I get, the faster they go. I feel like this year has so much packed into it though, too. Like, there are so many. Yeah, we've done a lot. That's actually a good point. We don't talk about. Is part of next year's strategic meeting. Should be celebrating this year. Yeah, Right. So in Priorities, we launched a brand new podcast. We did two more seasons of the Cashflow podcast. We've added a number of clients. We've attended and supported scalable femmefluence Podcast movement. Podcast movement. We've been participants in Steve Sims distillery, which is an amazing mastermind group. Yeah. We've gotten so much from them. Those guys are awesome. The marketing and people relationship and speaking stuff we've gotten and learned from them is just incredible. If you don't know who Steve Sims is, you ought to look him up. We should put a link to. Yeah, I'll drop because just he's my personal coach as well in business and one of them and just tremendous at it also. Just like such a fun guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Keeps you laughing. Yeah. That's the only way I can like describe him is just like fun and. Full of information and relationships and willingness to help and great. Two great books that he's written as well. And he makes it all really approachable. Yeah, yeah. And which, you know, fits our vibe. So in Priorities, we've gotten all that done, plus, you know, number of new employee or new clients and just taking on more and more in a scalable fashion for our clients and loving that we can take people from oh my God, I'm drowning in numbers. I don't understand to holy cow, I can sleep now. Which is what we live for at Priorities Group. That's the goal. Right. And then we launched our partnership. Two partnerships. We did launch two partnerships. And so both of those are off the ground and running. And I think what we want to do is take a moment to say that was a very good year. It was a good year. I feel like this year I've learned more than I've learned ever in my entire life. Just with the combinations of different things that have gone on, all the new endeavors that we've kind of experienced. It's been so much. Just thinking back to all the things that we've done this year, it's crazy. Yeah. How much. You know, one of the things I often do when I'm Starting something new is. I'll say when you go to bed at night. Yeah, think what do I know tonight that I didn't know last night when I went to bed? I love that. And every day there's going to be something, and especially when you're feeling kind of defeated or if you only looking. A lot of times as entrepreneurs, we know what we haven't done yet, but we don't often go, oh my God, I came this far today. And so that's kind of a really cool little exercise to do anyway. But not. What I find as an entrepreneur is not only have I learned technical stuff, but in the last six years, no, eight years now. Yikes. That I've been out of corporate. I think I've learned more about myself in those eight years and developed as a human and a person, like kind of self awareness and EQ than I ever did in corporate. Have you felt a lot of personal development as well in. At this stage in what you're doing? I think so. I feel like this year has been the year of patience for me. Like, tell me what you mean by that. And by that I mean I've always been able to be a patient person, but still I've had impatient moments throughout. Obviously, you know, anytime you're waiting on something, you're stuck in traffic. All that stuff. All that stuff is still affecting me. But I feel like this year has been the year where I've learned the biggest tools to cope with it just from the experiences that we've had in developing these businesses and working on these in these businesses as well. And kind of scaling and building the plan to scale. Yep. Finding the patience to let things ride. Finding the patience to make sure that we're giving ideas enough work and value and time to see where they go in. Because I feel like a lot of times when you're in entrepreneurship or business, you're moving at such a fast pace where it almost feels like you don't have the opportunity of patience. And those are the times where you need to be the most patient with what you're doing. That's a really good point. And I think working with you and with Wen and with Jennifer so much has also helped me get there too, because as an entrepreneur, we're very quick to. All right, let's try this. All right, that didn't work. Let's try this. That didn't work. Let's try this. And I think I've learned from your guys patients is like, you know, stop whiplashing us. Pam. Yes. You need to Keep moving forward. And we have a great tension there where I'll keep bringing stuff to the table. I've got another new one, by the way. I mentioned you, but. Or. And we gotta wait and see if this works first. Exactly. And that's been a big growth for me this year, too. So I'm glad you mentioned patience. It was the hardest thing. Patience. And then I think the other thing is just I've owned businesses. I've been involved in businesses before. Never to the scale or to the operational capacity or level of responsibility or level of responsibility that we have built out. And what we've built over the past year, you know, as we've scaled Ford Press and now are starting to build and scale, good to go. There's been so many layers, and I think that I've learned the most from watching you as we developed this, working with you one on one as we developed this, doing the podcast and running through these scenarios and these situations that we've been in, and really just kind of running through those processes on the podcast has been super beneficial. And I think I've, like, unlocked all these different things that I want to do even more of now, which is kind of scary because it's like, where do you fit the shenanigans? Yeah. And you add patience to the mix. Right. And it is. It is kind of crazy fun. And I think a big part of why I like this work so much more than being in corporate. I love corporate, every bit of it. But I also changed. Like, I got moved and promoted a lot. So I go in, we deal with the problem issue, we put something in place, and then I'd move. Well, it never occurred to me it's a good thing because I'd get bored once it was fixed. Yeah. Right. So once everything's moving smoothly, it's like, okay, now what? And we get the now what? There's this backlog of stuff we want to do and investigate and play with and learn. And I think it's just an awesome thing was reading as we were picking our news story for today, it was talking about the fact that I think 46% of the private people who work for private companies now work in small businesses. Oh, really? So, yeah. Which is a bit of a shift, and it's increased since COVID and all that stuff and applications for new businesses. But I think a lot of people are recognizing that just how much kind of fun and personally developing these things can be. Yeah. And the other thing, too, is I feel like one of the things that being an entrepreneur and working with entrepreneurs like you has helped me realize is that there are so many translatable skills that you can get from building a business into life. Communication, relationship management, patience, problem solving. Like I look at entrepreneurship as your. As people that are entrepreneurs or just people that are excited and enthusiastic about solving problems. Each others as well sometimes. Because that's basically what I feel like we've been doing. And that's what we do, you know, that we look for a problem, we solve it, and then we move on to the next one. Yeah. And just figuring out all of those flows that go into that has been super interesting because then I can then translate that into the rest of my life as well. A very cool observation for somebody who's getting married in six days. Five days. Five days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Yeah. Five days. Big shout out to Kaya and Francis who are getting married this coming Saturday. We are across all of our companies, so excited for you guys. We're excited. It's just crazy how quick this is happened. You know what I mean? I feel like it was just like two months ago where we were starting to like. Yeah. You know, I remember your engagement date. Yeah. And talking about getting all excited about how you were going to do it up on a rooftop. Yeah. And it feels to me like that was literally last week. I know. It's crazy. Now we're coming up on the wedding and it's just so awesome. Like she's a very big part in support of what you're doing. Yeah. And like a lot of married couples, she's holding down full time job while we're off entrepreneuring. And, you know, that's a thing we can probably address on this podcast because I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs like that and it's two very different personalities. Yeah. But what's kind of cool is, you know, hopefully some of what we learn in just doing business this way as entrepreneurs helps a better marriage. Yeah. Does you know the marriage has helped with entrepreneur, not the marriage, but the relationship has helped with entrepreneurship as well because it's perspective. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I don't always have. You don't go all the way down and like you can't. You can't even realize you're human anymore. Exactly. Sometimes you need that person that's your partner to tell you, hey, maybe you. Should eat Dungeons and Dragons time, bud. Yeah. Yep. Maybe it's time to step away for a moment. Yeah. That is so true. Because we can get so hyper focused that it seems like nothing else matters. And Just like corporate folks can think there's no alternative to what they're doing in their core. I'm stuck here. I have to stay here. It'll never change. I'll always hate Mondays. We can get stuck in. Oh, if I don't succeed at this thing, then I failed. Yeah. And it's not the case. It's like having that partner to kind of pick you up and go, hey, dude, relax, is pretty cool. Yeah. And then just that reminder that if you don't succeed at this thing, it's not that you failed, it's that you've learned. Love it. Yeah, Love that. So in. In the celebration of the prior year and looking forward into next year, one of the things we're wrestling with, and I'm guessing a lot of our listeners are too, is multiple businesses, multiple obligations. So some of us are not just single business owners or we have multiple business interests and we are active in multiple business as opposed to just passive throwing money at them. And we talk today about the fact that you kind of have three things that you're owner, part owner in and contributing to. How are you kind of thinking through approaching 2025, given those do the do the things conflict, do they get muddy? How do you deal with that one thing? It's stepping back from being directly in because I feel like as entrepreneurs, we're working in the business and then we're working on the business and then we're working in the business. I feel like the biggest part of figuring out your strategy as you're going into a new chapter, quarter a year, whatever it may be, is stepping back and looking at, okay, this is where I'm at. This is what I've been doing this period of time. This is what I am capable of. Am I capable of more? Am I capable? Do I need to dial back more because I'm burning myself on both ends. Because I just got married. Yeah, exactly. And I think that stepping back has been one of the biggest things in looking at it. And kind of going back to one of the conversations that we've had recently and planning out and just figuring out what makes sense because kind of going off of what you said, it's one of our businesses is in one industry. One of our businesses is in a very similar industry. And figuring out the balance between those businesses, how that might feel feed into one another, how we might need to dial back in certain areas of one business to allow another business to thrive and grow and be able to devote the time and necessary resources that it deserves to have. That Chance to grow. I think that stepping back has given me the perspective that I need in order to kind of rationalize where I need to be and what I need to do to drive the ball forward in the areas that are key. I love that. And I think as kind of, I think we're each other's coaches as well. And one of the things that popped up for me today is you really do want to talk to somebody about your strategy because just that conversation can just break things loose that you weren't probably even realizing we're going to be an issue or I was real wasn't realizing we're going to be an issue. Like the tax thing that you helped me with this year, it's like, Pam offer taxes. I'm like, oh, right, I'm a cpa. I can do that. So we in our conversation this morning, if you don't mind me sharing, I'm like, so you've got three vested interests, all of which are important, and each one of them has a slightly different demand. One of them's in a very different industry that's pretty easy to just say, okay, we're going to do that, but two of them overlap a bit. So you're an owner of a marketing agency and you're a part owner of a audio video product production company. Yeah. And they have a lot of clients that are going to have overlap. So what we talked about, I don't know if you remember, we talked about a lot of details, but one of the things that struck me is as an entrepreneur, Alex Sharfen shared this with me and I love it. You want to minimize noise and confusion because you're making hundreds of decisions every day, if not thousands, and you want to remove as much as you can from your brain capacity so that you can do that. And Stephen Jobs, I think this story is very well known, but he used to always wear a black T shirt and jeans. Yeah. And so that he didn't have to use any brain capacity to figure out what to wear. And as stupid as that sounds, he did that across a lot of things. Right. And it's part of what led to the design of Apple. It's like, how do we remove as much thinking as we can from people? So when we talked about, you know, what we're really going to do is focus marketing effort, your marketing time on one of the companies. Yeah. And the other company is going to still get clients because of reputation and word of mouth, but so that you don't have to go through the process of any time something Pops up, having to go process which company should this be? How do we split it? What are the numbers we just said, hey, just let's remove that altogether. Yeah. We're going to focus on marketing, on Good to Go. And Forward Press has a great reputation and a lot of referrals and we'll continue to make sure that those get addressed. But to me, the biggest benefit of that is removing any bit of confusion we can from your head so that it's just easy to make the decisions like, yep, new client, great, here's what we're going to do. Not oh, where are we going to put it? And here's what we're going to do. And it's really interesting because as we've been building Good to Go kind of on the not talent, but towards the end of the development of all the processes and ideas and production companies put into. Yeah, but you know, we had kind of just hit this stride in Forward Press where we had proposals that we were comfortable with, where we had the kind of back end operations where we felt comfortable in and being able to take all of that and just immediately apply that into good to go and drive Good to go forward in a way that I don't think I would have been able to do if we hadn't done all the work in Forward. Every experience that we have kind of done has been stacks up, stacks and building upon one another. And it's not like you said that we're taking anything away from Forward Press, this one entity. It's just we're adjusting focus. We'll still provide for our clients with Forward Press. We'll still handle the ins and outs and all of that. We'll still grow it, we're gonna still scale it. We just don't need to actively be involved in driving marketing. Yeah. In driving that. Customer support. Absolutely. Operations. Absolutely. But the marketing effort, we don't have to do there because it's got its own momentum. Yeah. So you don't have to split your marketing brain to say, oh, I've got these two email lists now we do one email list and someday we may combine those two businesses. In fact, highly likely. Yeah, businesses. Right. So you know, everybody gets win, win, win. Right. Clients get fantastic support in everything that we're doing. Number two, clears the clutter from your head. And number three, the minute you stop marketing for a company, it's going to end up having a lineup of customers anyway. Isn't it funny how that works? Isn't it funny how that works? And it's also this year to me is also going to be the year that we learn a lot more about how to do work internally versus hiring people. Not internally, ourselves versus when do we hire, when do we train, how do we do it so that absolutely no quality is lost and yet we can support more and more people. It's, you know, scaling in the appropriate way that doesn't lose the benefit of. Of your magic. Yeah. Which is what we're working on in priorities as well. We scale without using. Losing the benefit of my magic that I bring to the table. Exactly. And I think one of the cool things is looking back over, back over the past four or five years that we've known each other and been work, which is crazy to me. Four or five years. That insane. Yeah. But looking back at that time that we've put in together and starting in building different aspects of priorities group that are functioning a certain way now where we don't need to be as handled as just handled. Right. Looking at how we developed that and then developing forward press and then developing. Good to go to do the same thing. All of that made the development of the processes and the ideas behind good to go so much easier. Oh, that's awesome. Because we're going in with intention as we're doing each process. Everything that we're building and good to go right now, whether it's an editing flow, whether it's a content developing matrix or something like that, all of it is going in with the intent of okay, how do we document this so that we can teach this to the people that we need to so that we're not working in the business perfect as much and we're working on the business perfect. Yeah. That is such a thing that most people at startup as you know, we don't know. I didn't know it when I started. Yeah. So that's awesome. That kind of this layering effect is helping a lot. But I think that's the biggest thing from a strategic standpoint. When we sat down and said, and this is what I suggest everybody does, is what do I want to do with my business next year? So whatever your ending. And I always start with the financials because I'm a finance geek, but it really is all about the cash flow. What do I want to do for revenue next year? What do I want my net income to be for next year? And for revenue, you want to think about the quantitative things. How many do I want to sell? How much do I want to sell them for? But recognize that there are two other big energies in your business. And it's time and passion. Yeah. And by passion, I just mean how much you like what you do. So there's the time you spend on how much you like what you do and. Or how much joy it brings you. Maybe I'll call it time, joy and cash. I like it. And so you want to not just say, oh, yeah, I want to double sales. You want to think about that and say, okay, in order to double sales and also retain or grow the joy I have in the business and also minimize the time I put in the business. How do I want to do that? Do I increase my prices? Do I hire some people? Do I spend more on marketing? Do I spend less on marketing? So I think it's really important that we take those three things and say, what do I want to have happen to revenue? What do I want to have happen to my time? And what do I want to have happen to my joy level? And the thing that I think we clicked on in talking about time is, oh, well, let's get momentum. We already have the momentum behind forward press. That's great. We're ready to now start using some of those processes to make sure it scales with the quality that we're going to insist on. Yeah. And now let's put all our marketing momentum into good to go visuals. Yeah. Which I'm very excited to say is going to have a documentary style example film for people to see. How soon? Within like two weeks, I would say is the goal. Yeah. And we can debut it here. That would be cool. I think that would be awfully fun to debut it here on Cash. We'll have to do like your first run through. Yeah. And get your reaction. I love it. That would be perfect. Yeah. We will do that when we get to see it for the first time. So I got to be the initial client. And when you see the quality of what I think you all saw some previews of like when we did. Yeah. Filming day. Yeah. And I cannot wait to see. It's the outcome. We're really excited. You know, we've kind of laid out the framework for what it is currently and now we're just kind of putting the puzzle together. But it's such a unique approach to style. Yeah. Style. And unique vision that we had for this. And then just also learning and watching our other two partners work in this way and see that they're. How their creative brains work has been really, really cool. That is so it's really amazing what they are bringing to the table. I think this is going to be an Amazing. These films are going to be an amazing marketing tool for any business owner. Yeah. And I kind of can't wait to see mine. I'm so excited. I can't wait to share it with you. And the important thing about this too, you know, I'm a big ROI person. Right. So in our companies, we put a lot of time and money into developing this. And the thing that will be very cool to share here is the ROI. So, as you know, way back in 2018, I did an event down in Florida and I had it professionally filmed by somebody that we all know and love, Eric Manana, who is an amazing videographer and production guy. Yeah. And I spent money for that and for that event, and I've been getting ROI from that footage for six years. Yeah. And I fully expect, you know, seeing the quality of this one, it'll be the same thing. So these high quality video is the thing now. Yeah. You know, it's just print ads don't do the trick. No. And video is what is. Allows you to build. What allows you to build a relationship with the person behind the. Or in front of the camera. Yeah. And so I just think there's such a place for this for coaches, for products, for any kind of business that I'm really excited to be a partner in it. And it's the kind of thing you want to find. You want to find the businesses that you're going to invest in that you believe are the trend of the future. Yeah. And you guys are incorporating AI where it makes sense. Yeah. The goal is to make. Keeping the human where it makes sense. Yeah. We want engaging storytelling, and that's the. That's what it will always remain. At its core is dynamic and engaging storytelling. And being able to translate that into so many different avenues, whether it be long form video, short form video, podcasts, content development, anything in that kind of space. Yeah. Being able to tell the story that the business or entrepreneur needs to tell and might not know it. Right. And different things like that. I think that that just brings such a new layer to. Absolutely. Yeah. And like having. I remember the gifts that you guys have. Kenny asking the questions. Yeah. Like just drew out from me stories I'd forgotten about. Yeah. And. And I'm like, oh, wow, that's a really cool thing. We need to talk about that more often. So that was very cool. Yeah, it was. It was such an exciting process and it was so fun to be able to do that first one with you, especially as you're one of our partners. We're just so Excited to share it. Awesome. But one of the things kind of just going back really quick to main conversation that we had started with, with the strategy was one thing that I think that was super important that we didn't hit on was what the first year of business taught us was a lot of what we want to do, but a lot of what we don't want to do as well. And going into this new year, strategy wise, knowing the types of clients that we want to work, in what capacity, yes, we can offer this super high level, embedded type of support. It might not be the best fit for everybody. And not needing to correctly push that in those ways, you don't compromise. I think what you learned is something I learned a few years ago is, you know, what you're, you, you learned like I learned. Here's what I do really well. I'm not going to piecemeal this service. I'm not going to say, you know, oh, you want to adjust it this much here and that much there and this much here. Okay, cool. It's, hey, here's what I offer. Yeah. And that is so hard to do. First, it's hard to learn. What is it you offer. Second, it's sticking to it. Like, I still to this point have people who call and say, oh, can we just do this and this and this. Well, no, because I know if we don't do A, B and C, then what you want from D, E and F aren't going to work. Yeah. And as you're in business a little bit longer, you start like we learned this year is, you know, if you want this package, we'll give you this package. If you don't want this package, here's an alternative. We're not going to hybrid it anymore. Yeah. That is a great, great point. And I would suggest people do that kind of self discovery. Which clients for you or customers for you worked well this year. And what was really good about those and what didn't work well so that you can make sure you don't go down that same rabbit hole again. Yeah. One of the things that I think for our business, for all of our businesses across the board, that the strategy that I think the strategy sessions that we've done so far, one of the biggest benefits I think is the debrief section of those. You know what I mean? Yeah. And we do debriefs in so many different areas. Every event we do, every speaking stage, every time you're in front of people, every time we're out there and about, we do a debrief whether it's something as small as one of our bruise and schmooze meetup. Right. And it's four people that come and we debrief from there and we figure out exactly what went right, what went wrong, who we follow up with, or if it's something that's huge, like an event sponsorship. Yep. But taking that kind of strategy and that, the idea behind that, and applying that to, like, your business practices overall and debriefing. Okay, quarter one, this is what we saw. Quarter two, this is what we saw. Quarter three, this is what we saw.quarter. Four, a really good idea. I don't do that on the operation side as much. Yeah. And I like that. I debrief when a client leaves because there are very good reasons for clients to leave. In our case, a lot of times we've built, you know, we've worked with them and they've built to the point where they need a full time person or we've trained their staff and they're ready to take it on their own. So there are very good reasons that clients move on, but sometimes there are reasons that clients move on because it wasn't a good fit. And I do kind of in my head go, oh, what went wrong with that? What could I change? But I don't officially debrief it. Yeah. And I think that's a really good idea. We do it on the marketing side all the time because we have a demanded ROI for every dollar we invest and time we invest in that. So that's really, really good idea. And then even applying it to, like, not even just the clients that have left, but the clients that you have for each one and what's going well, why they are here. You know what I mean? That everything. I think there's like that value that the experience of looking back at what you've done and using that 100% to leverage and denounce and figure out what you need to do to continue driving the ball forward. It's, you know, history is your biggest. Is the biggest driver of success, and. You can get complacent. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I love the idea. In fact, you've made me think about this. I'll talk to Jennifer about it. Literally reaching out to each of our clients at year end and saying to them, hey, what's not just so much what's working well, what could be better? But why are you still here? What is it you're getting out of this? Do we need to be giving you more? Do we need to add other things? Because One of the things that's important is there could very well be other needs they have that they haven't even thought of mentioning to us. Yeah, yeah. There could be some little irritating thing like maybe we send emails on Tuesday and they'd rather have them on Wednesday that we could figure out with one quick call rather than just talking about the business to say, hey, how are things going? And it goes back to your main approach, which is the genuine connections of people taking the time to go back in and have. Sometimes I feel like with clients, we can go into a client meeting, go through all this stuff and then done. Don'T talk to them. And then you go through actionables and then you go through and rinse and. Rinse and you get everything fixed and then you're just on your way. Exactly what needs refinement. Having that added attention to detail and then the added connection aspect to it, I think is a big thing that we can continue to focus on and leverage. I like that a lot. I like that. I mean, we touch base with our clients every month, but it's usually to just keep things moving and stay on track. But every now and then to pause and say, how's everything going? Do you feel like. Because I see it from my perspective, so I know all the awesome things that are happening. But sometimes, as you know, from another perspective, it's gonna be like, I see my reports once a month. What else is there? Yeah. Oh, wait a minute, we forgot to blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be. Yeah. And I think that just like, it's crazy how these types of things come up in conversation and then trigger other ideas. But I just think that that's like one of the fun things about doing this. It's, you know, being able to draw off of these things that come up. That come up in business. Yeah. And then just being able to build upon them. Yeah. So I would say the big takeaways from this for entrepreneurs here coming into 2025, do take the time to celebrate your successes from 24, 100% and spend enough time to really capture them all. Yeah. Two, think about keeping. What would you need to do next year to keep your mind as clear as possible in the decision making process? As you're thinking about next year, think about what you want to change in all three of time, joy and money. Yeah. And four, get yourself a talking buddy. Happy strategizing, folks. Definitely drop us a line here. If there's something you do on a regular basis when you do strategy that we can share with folks, we'd be glad to do that. And be sure to like and subscribe wherever you're listening to us. And Francis, I look forward to hearing all about your wedding. Yeah, and I look forward to attending your wedding and then us sharing all of that when we come back. And in the meantime, y'all have a great week. We'll see you next week. Have a good one, guys. See ya. Thanks so much for watching the Cash Flow podcast with us. We want to bring more and more of this to you. So please like share, subscribe, comment so that we can keep bringing more of this content to.