End of Year Small Business Tasks and Opportunities

Hey, everybody, we're almost done with 2020. I think everyone will agree that that's pretty exciting, right, Dave?

I think that's pretty. Yeah, Yeah, I guess so. I mean, safe to say, maybe, you know. So first of all, all those jokes that I made last year about having, you know, 2020 vision and, and look, in, in, in, you know, in a year and a half, we'll be able to say we have 2020 hindsight and all that stuff. Like, those jokes didn't age all that well, it turns out. But we really don't know what's going to happen in 2021. So I, sure, I'm, I'm fine with this year being kind of done in, in the books, and that's great. I, I'm, I. And I am hopeful that the future is a little easier and, and, but it's different. It will never go back to what it was.

Well, it'll always be impacted, right?

It will always. We will get through this. Not.

Yes, back to.

We will get through to normal. Not back to normal.

Yeah, it'll. It'll just be a little different, but, you know.

Different.

Yeah, a little bit different. But, but, you know, we have a few weeks left in the year, and so it's time. We want to do our annual do this stuff before 1231 episode, which we also call, you know, end of year tasks and opportunities. And so hang out with us today. We're going to discuss things that you must do before the end of the month and some things you can do to save money, pay less taxes, and plan for a successful 2021.

I like it. I'm looking forward to this. Are you ready, Shannon?

Now? I'm ready. To small business, man.

I'm ready to small business. Let small business. He's Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton, and this is episode 306 of the Small Business Show. Well, Shannon, where do we start here? What's the first thing to do now that we're. We're looking at our business? You know, we know that there's some things that we have to do or should do before the end of the year. So what's a good place to start?

Let's.

Let's start.

Actually, let's back up a little bit more. I wanted to ask you a question.

Okay.

How was your year this year compared to previous years? I know there was all kinds of, you know, complications and different things, but I was looking, you know, doing end of year accounting, which we're going to talk about in a bit, and, and I was surprised because, well, let me ask you that question. How was your year, Dave?

My year. And I'm thinking about this with all the businesses I have, and it was actually a pretty good year. Our biggest one, the one that I talk about all the time, which is backbeat media that, you know, March and April were definitely down months. I mean, this is a business that primarily drives its revenue from selling sponsorships on podcasts and websites to that. That focus on consumers. So, you know, it. We didn't shut down, but we could have. And we would have earned exactly the same amount of money, you know, but. But we couldn't have. Right. Because there was a lot of customer service happening then. But, but anyway, we. By November was the best month that business has ever had, and by the end of November, we were ahead year over year of where we were last November. Now, I am not necessarily convinced that we will end December ahead year over year. I think we might still be down 5, maybe even 10 points. The Q4 is a big quarter for us every year in terms of our bookings. So. So we may still be down a little bit. And if we are, I can, I can blame at least half of it on Covid. There have been some changes in our industry that may. That are affecting us. And we, There are some adaptations that we may or may not need to do. But, but I would say, yeah, if we, if we, if we break even, then I will say Covid didn't really have an effect, but there's probably more that we can always do for the business. But, but yeah, it, I mean, Covid has affected us, but cash flow wise and all of that, we've been very fortunate that, you know.

That's great.

Yeah, we're in an. Okay, we're on.

Okay, that's good. Yeah. For me, you know, anecdotally, I felt like it was much more dramatic at times.

Sure.

But when I was real, when I sat down and ran the numbers, for me, it was. I think we're going to be down. I will be down maybe about five points a year, which is significantly better than I thought. But what I realized is trying to figure out why I was thinking, like, that was just my cash flow is so different this year. Much less steady, much more peaks and valleys. When I can tell you, like right now as some states are announcing, you know, kind of new or regional shutdowns.

Yeah. Well, that hurt.

That hurts my business because people start to worry a little bit more when restaurants are shutting and different things. People like, wow, am I going to have my job discretionary income tends to tighten up and I, I definitely feel that. So I was a bit surprised.

Are you feeling that now? I don't, I do actually. I do mean to take us on a tangent because I think listeners might be interested in hearing this. I, I ask only because that type of stuff, the, the high end, higher end items, the, the, well, our consumer goods. Right. We're up like 6% year over year spending on that, but we're down 5% on services. So like. Yeah, you know.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, I think that, that what I noticed is that more of the mid to low tier.

Yes.

Sales have been impacted than the higher end. The higher end have been. I, my quantities of sales are, were far more, less, significantly less this year. Maybe about 15 to 17%, but I think the revenue is only going to be down about 5%.

Yeah. So that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think, you know, the people with. Not service industry jobs. Right. Because there's been, they said what, 10 million jobs lost as a result of COVID 19, 9 million of those in the service industry.

Service.

So, you know, if you are in that white collar, you know, office job type of world and you made it through thus far, you're, I mean, you're probably as safe as you would have been a year ago in your job. I don't want to say you're safe because. Yeah, that's a whole different conversation.

Thank you.

But, but yeah, you know, we certainly have seen. Yeah, we saw kind of the same thing. The types of sponsors, the types of things that we're getting for sure are, are targeted towards that higher end. You know, I don't want to say luxury goods because, you know, something that costs 10 bucks a month may or may not be seen as a luxury. Yeah, but, but it is that discretionary income kind of thing where it's like, yeah, I, I can afford to spend this and not worry about the 10 bucks a month, whereas, you know, that. So those sorts of things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, talking about financials, I think that's where we should start.

Okay.

We just talked about. And, and when I say this, you know, I'm like the cobbler. The kids don't have, you know, the kids have holes in their shoes. Because I'm, I'm really not good at this part of my business and thankfully I'm not either. I've. Yeah, I've been able to, I'm a top line sales guy and I've been able to make up for a lot of the problems in my bottom line. Financials by driving sales. And even though they tell you that's a terrible idea, it's kind of worked for me my whole life.

I wouldn't advise people to do it, but I'm, I'm the same way when, when things start to get into a little bit of trouble, the first thing I do is drive the sales higher. I don't look at what expenses can I cut. I do that eventually. My first instinct is, well, throw more cash at the, or pull more cash into the business, not throw more cash at it.

But yeah, you can't grow by cutting. I just don't. You got to find that right. Revenue stream. But maybe even more important is, is you have to have, you've got to have good financials to be able to see what's going on.

Okay.

And you know, if you're looking at your P L and your balance sheet and you're not confident in that data, well, you're not going to be able to take advantage of some of the stuff here. We're going to talk in today's show.

Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah.

Because you don't know. You don't know. Is, is that real? Is the, are those numbers real up to date? You know, have you entered everything in that you need to have, have. Has your bookkeeper or your accountant looked at. When's the last time they looked at things to, you know, to, to give it to you? It's, it's, it's very important that you get that stuff figured out before you do anything else. Right. Cash flow statements, all that stuff.

Yup, yup. I think that's, that makes a lot of sense because yeah, you need to be able to. Yeah, I agree. Perfect. Perfect. Okay, so I think so.

So. And you need to sit, just sit down and do it. And if you've been putting it off, and I'm the king of putting it off, you just have to get together and you know, usually December, you can, it's actually a pretty good time to meet with your accountant. They can make time for you. After the end of the year, it's going to get start to get a little tougher and tougher.

Well, that I, you know, we like to share action items on this show, Shannon, and usually we share them at the end, but I'm going to share one right now. And, and then, and then you'll be able to figure out what you're going to do. And my action is in fact that today call or email your accountant and set up an appointment for either later. This week or early next. Now we're, you know, we're recording this on the 8th of December, so the 9th, you know, you want a day or two between today and when you meet with your accountant to do all of the things that we've started talking about and that we'll keep talking about, to pull all your records together, to pull your questions together. But you want to make sure that you meet with your accountant, say by the 15th, 16th, 17th of the month, because you want to give yourself time after the meeting to get the things done that you and your accountant decide you need to do before the end of the year. So that's our action item, or at least my action. And maybe you have one too.

Yeah, I like it.

That's great. Like right away, call or email your accountant and say, I want to talk before the end of the year. They're probably not going to call you today. So you, you almost, almost guaranteed to have that built in time to get your stuff together. So you can even pause the episode now call them, but just don't forget to unpause so that, you know what.

Yeah, and, and it's a good kind of good segue. You know, Dave and I are not accountants. We're not bookkeepers. Any advice you get from us, you should definitely back up with your accountant, your bookkeeper, your attorney, whoever. This is based on our personal experience and things that we've often done wrong. So yeah, yeah, we learn by mistakes.

You know, we love mistakes, but there's a reason we love because we've learned from them. We'd rather not make them again. So correct. Yeah, yeah.

And then one of the other really important things that I frequently miss because I'm driving these top line sales numbers is who owes you money. Now is the time you need to look at your accounts receivables and, you know, is make sure they're as current as you possibly can get. Right. Maybe have those phone calls and remind people that, hey, if you want to get that write off, you know, before the, you need to pay my bill. And I often think too, wait, wait.

I want to, I want to pause here because you just, you, you passed over something that I think is really important when you're looking at, you know, when I saw your agenda you had on there, you know, take care of the write offs before the end of the year. And that's true. I saw it as write off from our side, the people that won't collect. But there is that other side of the write off that, that is your sales pitch. To get someone to pay their bill and that's if they pay it, they get to write it off before the end of the year. Now they may tell you they're on the accruals basis and they can write it off anyway. That's true. But then they do have to pay you, you know, otherwise the IRS gets mad about things like that. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.

And then from our standpoint, if you know, if they owe you money and if you're just not confident that they're going to pay you, you know, take the, the, the write off for the bad debt, you know, you can always book it later if they do eventually pay you. But I wouldn't wait.

Now that would only be if you're on the accruals method. If you're on a cash basis accounting, there is no write off for bad debt to take. Right. As far as I understand. Because you didn't.

Good question.

You didn't book the revenue. So what, what would the write off be? I don't think there would be any.

Well, if you booked it, if you booked it, let's say if you're in the, if you have costs associated with that, if you're in the inventory business and you shipped out.

Sure.

X that had a, you know, a ten thousand dollar value, let's say, and you never got paid, you certainly should be able to take that.

Yeah. Your cost on that thing. Yeah.

Correct.

You would have that anyway if you were on the cash basis. But maybe you've always been it or mostly been in the inventorying business. So you've probably always had to do accruals, is that right?

Yeah, it depends on particular situation.

Got it.

But very, very common.

Yeah. Okay. So that's why you're thinking of it that way. It makes sense.

Yeah.

I, I've stayed away from accruals. Although there's one business that we have where we might actually be really smart to move to accrual sometimes.

Yeah.

Well if you. Yeah. If you're holding cash that. Yeah. Anyway. Yep.

Sometimes it can help you. And so I'll segue for a moment and talk about. I think that there has probably never been a better year, the year of the pandemic to take big juicy write offs than there is this year. I think that the expectation from your bankers, your financial partners, the IRS are very wide and open to the fact that everybody struggled this year. We're not going to be surprised when we see some large write offs. So if you have been thinking of and you have the cash or you have the wherewithal to do it. I think this is a great year to expense additional things. There's actually some increased benefits out there with the IRS this year, I believe for you can take larger chunks of the write offs and expense things due to the pandemic. So you really should talk to your accountant, especially if you're in the inventory business. You know, if you have a warehouse and there's a bunch of stuff that you've been sitting on and you're just thinking, wow, you know, I, I didn't want to show this write off on my books, so I've kind of held and tried to sell this stuff. 2020 is the year, in my opinion.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's hard to predict, but I, I, I, I like your logic that if you're, if there's a year to take that, I don't want to say questionable write off, but write off that would potentially trigger more questions, which is different from a questionable write off. Right. But those things that even when we do everything right, we still don't like it when the IRS asks us what we did. And this year sure feels like one of those years where they may not be asking as often because some of it is really obvious. Yeah, I like this. This is, is good. This is good. Hey, Shannon. I want to keep. I know. I'm actually really eager to get to some of these things on the list, especially like the funding of retirement accounts, because this is something I've been getting better at over the past couple of years, but I'm not quite there. So I definitely want to talk about that. What I want to do next, if it's okay with you, is talk about our two sponsors.

Yeah, let's go.

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Right on. Now we're going to talk about a really, one of my favorite areas and a really interesting categories. The question I always ask, you know, is would you rather pay the money to the government or give it to your employees? Or, you know, and, and because you're going to do one way or another, right? You're going to pay it in taxes, you're generating revenue, your income, your business tax, your, your personal. Or can you reward your employees more? And maybe those employees, like in my case, my spouse works for me and I can reward her. And, and there's so many ways to do this with your accountants, you know, kind of hand on your shoulder, if you will, advising you.

Yeah, yeah.

And especially if, you know, I have a lot more experience being a sole, sole proprietor, a solopreneur than I used to. But after selling my, you know, those businesses and the first thing my accountant says, like, well, you need to, you know, Renee's running this for you. Make sure you get her. And you need to start a payroll, so she's on your payroll so that you can pay her healthcare, which covers you, your whole family and all these machinations of it that are really very important and a huge benefit. And I wish I'd set it up many years ago, but. Yeah, but there's a lot of rules and regulations you have to understand. It's, it's tougher if you have multiple businesses that have different classifications. If one has employees, the irs, they get really picky.

Yeah, yeah.

So you can't, like, oh, I've got one company that I can do this with. But it, no, they look at your, your kind of. Your portfolio.

They look at the portfolio. Yes. And it gets very, you're right. It gets very tricky.

It does.

When you're, when you're in that kind of scenario. Yeah, yeah.

But you should get, get that advice from your accountant. They can tell you what you can, what you can and can't do.

I was shocked. Last year. I, I had some, you know, some money that I needed to account for and things like that. And I was shocked at how much benefit a thing like a Solo 401K.

Incredible.

It's incredible. If you, if all you're looking at is IRAs and things like that, you, you are missing the boat. And I say that because I missed the boat for so long. And the worst part is I had a guy, a financial advisor years ago, probably 20 years ago, tell me you need to set up an individual 401k. So I did, you know, and I put some money into it and I knew it was there. I mean I didn't forget about it, but I did nothing with it until this year when I was saying to my accountant like, well, what can we do? And yada yada. And I said, well, you know, I have this individual 401k says you do? And I said, yeah. He's like, well, let's go. Like, what are you, why didn't you tell me?

Yeah, yeah. Especially as you get older. Yeah, there's lots of makeup contributions you can do do. And combined with your spouse, I mean, the amount of cash, I mean you need to have the cash flow.

You need to have the flow. But, but if you're like you said, if you do happen to have, you know, you had a good year and we did have a good year last year, trust me, we've had our bad years, but last year turned out to be a good one. And it was like, how do I not pay all of this to the government? And. And he was like, well, do this, this and this. And I'm like, well, that's a lot less than I'm paying to the government. Of course I'm also in a position, I think like you are, Shannon, where I get what I call double taxed because not only do I pay the government taxes, which I'm fine paying if I have to, but whatever my AGI is, is seen by my kids colleges and that's how they decide whether or not I can pay, you know, how much, how much of a financial aid grant they're going to give us.

Right.

And you know, we made a, I think, well, we'll find out soon what last year's taxes impact had. But I know it will be better than it would have been had we not lever leverage some of these things. So yeah, there's so many vehicles out there to use.

100. Yeah, of course. And so talk to your accountant, your financial planner, you know, sep Iris, self employed Iris, another vehicle you can use in certain cases. I have had, we've had those as well. The Solo 401K, which is just like you said, it's an incredible way to set aside money for your future. And the numbers are extraordinary, are shocking how it works. You definitely want to get. And if you have a bunch of employees and you don't have a retirement plan getting something in place, it's not that expensive. The management fees have dropped tremendously. You can probably start a 401k for a thousand bucks a year and, you know, giving everybody those bonuses. You can also give yourself those bonuses keeping, you know, the money in the family, so to speak, of all your employees and everything, instead of paying it all in taxes. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. If you think about your employees as your extended family, like you said, you can either give the money to them or to the government. And here's the thing. Does giving your money to the government engender any sort of loyalty from the government? Oh, just giving your money to the employees engender loyalty? Well, usually, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I think it's great. So. So look at those, you know, those tax liabilities. And just, you need to be thinking like that and get creative. And look at your. If you're. If you have a fleet of vehicles and start thinking, okay, I know there are some, like I said, additional benefits for 2020 that their IRS is encouraging, equipment purchases that you can, I think, write off of huge, much larger chunks than you normally would be able to.

I wonder if my business needs a plane. Shannon.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah. So all those things that you need to look. And again, we suggest, talk to your accountant just so you get some guidance. And I'm famous for doing things and then following up and saying, hey, was this okay? That's not the way to do it. You just, like, I'm thinking about doing this. What does that make sense? And they'll help you tweak it a little bit to make sure everything works.

And I will even say this, like, last year, I thought I knew what I was doing. I funded our, like, IRAs and our Roth IRAs and like, that sort of stuff. And then when it came time, because you can, like, those things, you can fund up until the day your taxes are due, which if you get an extension. Again, we're not accountants, so please don't blame us if any of this is wrong. But generally speaking, you don't have to fund those by 1231. It's super helpful if you have them set up by 1231. But again, there are some ways around it. But anyway, I had Done all my stuff. I'd funded up my IRAs and my Roth and all that stuff. And then when it came time to do this, and my accountant said, wait, wait, wait, wait, slow down. Do you have individual 401k? He's like, yeah. I'm like, how many did you put in there? I said, zero. He says, okay, you have to now call the person, you know, the company that administers your Roth and IRAs, and you have to pull money out. And I wound up having to pay some penalties because of the way I wanted to do things. And it was simply because I did not have the conversation this week with my accountant last year to be like, hey, don't do anything. Wait until your taxes are finished, and then let's figure out the plan. No, that's not necessarily what's right for you, but last year, it would have been what was best for me, but I didn't have the conversation the right way. I did have the conversation, but I was an idiot about it. Sometimes I think I know how to do everything myself. Shannon. I know this is going to be entrepreneurial type thing.

So you think the disease. Yeah. You have enough info to be dangerous, right?

Well, that's. That's what it turns out to be. And I was dangerous. I, you know, I cost myself a little bit of money and some. Some penalties, but I've done it, too. Yeah, but. But it. I mean, in the end, it was absolutely the right move. So, like, okay, I'll deal.

Yeah. And so also, I. I think that if you're in any sort of inventory business or anything like that, that there's never been a better time to buy deals than the end of the year. And it may be worth shifting your end of year to another month, because December, in my looking back and historically, is one of the biggest buying months because everybody else wants to dump inventory before the end of the year. They're trying to hit their revenue numbers, trying to do things. So if you're. If that's your type of business, ask yourself, you know, should. Should our fiscal year end in January? Because then in December we could take advantage and save significantly if those deals are out there. And do you do that?

Did you shift your fiscal year?

Not with this business, but we did it with our other, you know, larger companies.

Yeah, yeah.

I always seem to be.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah. We. Well, with us, we always had big trade shows in January, and that meant we needed cash for those shows. And. Yeah, yeah. And so we have not, but we should be. You know, I always say it would have been easier if we shifted our fiscal year to end March 31, you know, it would have been way easier, I think.

I don't know. You know, you just make sense, figure it out. Makes sense.

Yeah.

And then one of the last things on my list, you know, is to create an executive summary of the year. Call it the dumpster fire of 2020, call it whatever you want. We'll put a link in the show notes. We have an example template up@businessshow.co. it's really an important document for a number of reasons. One is it forces you to sit down, create a narrative of how the year went for you. Start with a monologue. You know, this is what happened. This is where we thought. Almost like where we talked when we started the show here. Dave, how was your business? How did things go? Did you sell? You know, what were sales like? Did you. What does your employee situation look like? Are y' all working remotely? Trust me, it will be very helpful to have that document for yourself to come back and look at it. But also when you're trying to tell the story of your business to a potential partner, financing your bank, someone's, you know, a lender, whatever, because it just shows that you're. You're. It's a thoughtful, paying attention, reflection. You're paying attention. Yeah. And. And it is really nice to be able to go look back on those year after year and say, I used to tell myself, I'm making the same mistake every year. You know, you'd write down whatever, dang it, you know, I can't do that again. So it's great. And talk about the highs and lows. You know, what worked, what didn't work, what mistakes there were. You know, what big deals did you do? Like I said, employee staffing changes, did you get new financing? Did somebody invest in your company? Did you sell your business? Anything you could think of? And then I always like to have a section on, okay, what are the opportunities for next year? You know, what is our, you know, our one year, two year, three year, five year plan? What do we. What are we working on? I like to ask that question to guests when they come on the show. You know, what's next for you? Are you just focused on grow, grow, grow, or you've got a more strategic kind of thing. And it. It helps us, all of us, you know, and. And just being able to compare those executive summaries, it's really. And for me, I can't tell you how helpful it has been to. To look and say, oh, okay, we are achieving this.

Well, it helps you hack your brain, right? I mean, we all get. I say we all because I assume it's true, but I know it's true about me. I get trapped into thinking that, okay, whatever I currently define as success or whatever I've defined as success in the past is the definition I live with going forward. And it can be really easy to hit that and then lay off the gas a little bit. It's like, well, if I hit all these things that I thought were success. This is why we like systems instead of goals, right? But doing this executive summary, you can train yourself that you are capable of. Of improving and doing more each year. And by looking back, you get to say, wow, look at how I remember how impressed I was with what we did back in, you know, 2005. But, man, if we did that this year, it would be a disappointment. So you get to learn that your perception of what your business is doing is actually the most important thing to manage. Because from there, everything else falls from it.

It.

You know, yeah, yeah.

And. And I like to start it, and I just leave it on my computer and I revisit it over a few weeks. Like, you know, get it going here this week and just kind of leave it in draft mode and try to get it wrapped up by the end of the year. Because I. I think if you sit down and try to do it at one time, you miss things. So it's nice just to be able to, you know, dip back into it. And maybe you have your managers, your supervisors say, hey, I'm working on our executive summary for the company. Why don't you give me one for your department, your division, your, you know, whatever you're in charge with. You know, HR department, admin, whatever, whatever. Yeah, technical warehouse. What? What? What Worked this year with your. And it. It makes you think, and it will make. Your employees will benefit it as well when you can hand that to them next year and go, hey, here's what you wrote last year. Now reflect on this next year and tell us what's going on. What are your goals or what? What systems are you putting in place to increase efficiency or, you know, hit those sales numbers or whatever, whatever your priorities are. It's just a great exercise for everyone.

I have really.

I really love it.

I have a second action to share. Shannon earlier. And I did this earlier this year with one of my business partners, and I'm planning on doing more and more of it. You always, you are famous for saying you get to tell your own story. And one thing that I did, and it sounds like would be perfect to do at the end of every year was I challenged my business partner and I said, okay, look, in two weeks we're going to get together and meet. And right before we meet, we're going to send each other an email with the story that we each told in five years about how, what we did during the pandemic to better the, to set the business up for amazing success in the future. And I framed it as you're at a cocktail party, somebody says to you, wow, business X is doing amazingly well.

What.

How did you get here? Like, what did you do that changed things? And that's the question you're answering. And you're not answering it to me, I'm not answering it to you. We're answering it to a stranger at a cocktail party in five years. And it took a little bit to get everybody on the same page with how to frame that because it was like, well, here's what I think we should do. No, no, no, no, no, no. Tell me what we did. And by doing that, it was a very enlightening thing. And it also like eye opening thing for all of us because it's like, oh, wait a minute, we are actually telling the story. And now that we know the end, okay, great, let's figure out a path to get there. So this is a good time of year to do that too. So bonus action item.

That's really good. And I love, I think it's a great, great place to end as you start to wrap up the year. Don't forget, you as small business owners get to write your own story. So, you know, think about that narrative of how we're gonna, you know, what's, what's your myth for your business and your, your, what do they call your origin story or whatever? I just applied for this. Ebay is giving out grants for small businesses. I'm like, yeah, what the heck? You know? And one of their questions, like, what's your origin story? And it's very easy for me because I've already talked about this so much. But that is a great way to elevate your business about what you're doing. You're not just a landscape contractor. You're not just, you know, whatever a reseller like I am or in the ad business, you're, you're doing something greater than that. Create that story, wrap yourself around it, bring your employees into that narrative and, and you put it in your marketing and it's just more authentic and I love it. And I think that that's a great thing for all of us to focus on. And maybe starting with that executive summary is a place to do it.

No, that's where you get to tell that story. But I like your idea of encouraging other people involved in your business, either your partners or your managers or whatever it is, to write their own version of the story.

Well, you'll be. I'm sure you'll be amazed at how it may differ from yours.

I was shocked reading this other one. I was like, you know, I'm looking at it like, what in the. How in the. Okay, actually, wait, that's not a bad idea. You know, but it took me a minute to digest this. I'm like, who are they talking? Oh, they're talking about people we hired. Ah, wait. Oh.

Ah.

You know, it was like. Right? Yeah, it was. Yeah. I thought I. I started that exercise thinking, this is great. I'll be able to control what happens. And I mean, in a sense, I did in that I controlled that. We are being more intentional about some things, but the specifics of that were very much not in my control, you know, and that's a great thing. That's part of the benefit of having partners. So. Yep.

Yeah, that's awesome.

That's good.

Well, it's great. I love going over this stuff. You know, if you have some tips you'd like to share for things that you do at the end of the year, our list is certain, certainly far from all inclusive. Feedbackus show co. The other thing we'd love for you to do the end of the year is go leave us a review up at your podcast directory of choice. Wherever you're listening, hit that. Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you get each week's episode up on your list of things to action items to listen to. Yeah, we appreciate having you here.

Each week we do it. You. You are the best part about this. I know. Shannon and I, we fight over who learns the most each week. And it's true, we really, we do compete over this, but really, we know that it's you that wins too. And we all win together. And if it weren't for you being here, we certainly wouldn't be able to learn anything. So thank you so much for all of that. And, you know, keep doing what you can do to live that charmed life. That's what we're all here for.

Yeah, go back and see us again next week. Yeah, come back and see us again next week. We have a great guest that's going to talk all about data driven decisions, which gives me goosebumps.

See you next week.