 Hey, good afternoon, Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter. We're coming to you live from Corolla, North Carolina. This is Smart Business Moves. And we're coming to us live remote from Foundation Scale. Yes. Yeah, Foundation Scale. This has been a good day. Oh, I just ran into somebody who hasn't filled out her scorecard yet. Don, scorecard. You did? I'm lying. She filled out her scorecard. Anybody that's ever been to one of our events, Tom, you know, we're very hey, Denny. You don't get fed. Yeah, we're not letting off the hook without you. He looks like he's incognito. He's in a tell everybody about your outfit, Tom. I'm at the beach. You guys were at the beach. I thought I would dress up like I'm at the beach. How come I look like I'm more at the beach than you guys? And you guys are really at the beach. Always at the beach. You live at the beach. Yeah, kind of. But I mean, you are literally on the beach. We are. I wish I could show you. It's actually really overcast here today. When we first came in, it was, wow, sunny and warm. I think there's like 75 degrees sunny or just but it's overcast today. It's warm. It's nice out there. But yeah, it is it is a little on the overcast side. So I'm so how is it to be here? We got a lot of people. This is the third day. Sandy, watery. Okay. It's awesome. The beaches. Oh, man, we have a terrible lag. Okay. Oh, I'm sad about the lag, y'all. I don't know what it sounds like for everybody else, what they're going to hear. But yeah, if you go down to your settings, Liz, camera resolution. Can you bump that down a little bit? Maybe 720 or even 840. I'm on 480 right now. You're on 480. Okay. 480p. I can go to low. Let me go low. See what happens. That's low. Is that better? Well, the lag isn't bad here. Oh, the lag is this lag seems much better right now. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Good. Well, here we are. We're three days in to scale. And this third day has been the most impactful. We got all five ratings from every single person that was at the event. I now that I just found out that Dawn stuck her five in as well. And I know right, you know that that's hard to get hard to get all five. And especially midweek. And people are starting to get tired. They're starting to, they start to settle in in the middle of the week and expectations get really high, so they're like, yeah. And they know what they're wanting and what they're expecting. So today's speaker was actually Tom, you met him, Kevin Bassett from Bassett CPAs. And he was on, hey, Denise. Yeah, we're all going to share our favorite little tidbit that we got. So let's see. My favorite tidbit that I got is, oh, what's it called? Because it's called, what's the number kitty 509. The 509. Oh, so many things. I'm going to be doing an investment for my grandbaby. I can be putting in 50k. What is it? Oh, 529. And we put in 50k a year. And the thing is, it is protected against like X's and divorce and the money is just protected in a really, really big way. So I'm super excited about that. But gosh, I've had a lot of takeaways. There is what they call an owner's scorecard. What day was that? Monday. That I'm already started filling out and got some stuff on there that I hadn't had before that I'm really excited about too. So let me give you kind of a rundown about what we've done so far this week. So Monday we had Scott, what's Scott's last name, Katie? Phoebe? Yeah, Scott Phoebe. And we talked operational excellence all day long. He's, he's great. We love him. We didn't get all fives on that day. We got all fives, two fours. And the fours were not about Scott. One was about the food. One was about the noise. Although the food here has been amazing. So that very first day, we had a little bit of a glitch. But since then we've been getting high marks for food over here too. Now it's really awesome. Linda's been doing a good job. We found a great caterer catering breakfast out here too because we don't have Denit cooking for us. Oh, so you're doing breakfast too? Okay. Yeah. We normally cook breakfast ourselves. Yeah. Well, we're, we're having breakfast catered. And well, last, last foundation is 13. Remember, Denit was cooking. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Made, made Oru his six eggs a day that he ate. Oh my gosh, I know. And all that bacon and everything. So, and so we did Scott on Monday. And then yesterday we had a marketing guy. His name is, I'm a little brain dead already. It's only Wednesday. Steven Semple. And he's the Wizard of Vads guy. He does a lot of, he has a podcast. I've never, I've never met him. I don't know him. No, he's, he's cool. I think he's signed up three people that are at this event to, they hired him already. So he's a pretty amazing guy. I know quite a few people are, Tricia Lake is planning on working with him. Some people that already I think have some pretty good marketing chops. So, and then of course today we had, I know, right? Angela, he looks so cute. His little outfit. I loved Denit called it a costume. This is proper beachwear. If I were on there at a bank, so I'd be wearing that. Well, I think he kind of matched Matt was kind of beachy out yesterday. Tricia Lake is, has her beachwear on for sure. So we'll bring her on here in a second. Actually, I'll bring on a couple of people. I told you about Kevin already and let you hear what, what they got from this event. And the reason why I'm bringing people on to talk about this event first, let me kind of make this point. It's because a lot of times when people are, are thinking about investing in their company, they don't know what they're going to get. It's like, I don't know. And some of these, some of these events are really pricey. This one costs $13,500 to come to. And I know Matt said that his wife was like, what are you going to get out of this event? You know, what, how much value are you going to get out of this event if you're going to go away for five days, leaving with the kids this whole time? She wasn't worried about the money. She was worried about being alone with the kids for five days. It's true. So you better be bringing home something good if you're going to be leaving with these kids. And I know that Matt said, well, let him share with you what he's gotten out of the events part. Yesterday was his birthday. So yeah, but he really wanted to see yesterday's speaker. So he was like, okay, I'm going to sacrifice my birthday to come. And he's, he said to me at least five times today, all right, this was a really good way to spend my birthday. I wasn't sure. I really thought. And Matt's a marketing guy. Yeah, I know. And when you look at his stuff too, right? You're like, what could he learn? But like, I told you, even Trisha was like, yeah, I love this guy. She's talking about working with him. You know, Trisha, she's so picky. She does everything herself. She does everything so well anyway. So all right. No, no, she doesn't need help. I mean, like, we wouldn't necessarily think that she needs help. So let me get, oh, here's Trisha right here. Actually, what's happening? All right, we were just talking about you actually, I heard that. Oh, oh, you did? Oh, we're talking about Steven, how you were liking yesterday and how you said that, yeah, you were talking about working with him. So maybe the car share a little, what did you get out of them? Yeah, well, what I learned basically was like, he confirmed a lot of my marketing that I already like to do. Hi, Trisha. What's his name again? Steven Stemple. Okay. S-T-E-P-H-E-N. Yeah. Stemple. No team. No team. Stemple. Yeah. We got somebody else. Is it what? Does he have a website? That's a silly question. I know he does, but if we had moved to his website, we could share it maybe. Okay, I'll grab it. I'll go grab it for you while Trisha shares. Okay. Yeah. Well, he had just a lot of really great information that it kind of validated all the reasons like why my certain marketing works so well. I just didn't, you know, like I just do, I do certain things and they work well and like he just preached on a lot of those things, which the reason that I think I really like to work with him probably is because he could help me drive farther than just doing on my own, right? So it'd just be beneficial for me to have somebody in the driver's seat with me instead of me doing all of it by myself. And he just, he shows like really how to have a really great, you know, brand voice and how to communicate with the feelings. And right now, like he confirmed we're doing a lot of really great things and we can make it even better. I think with his help. So you're finding what you're doing here to be useful for you and you're getting information that's good for your business. You know, when you- Yeah, definitely. But you weren't struggling a little bit yesterday, right? Oh, yeah, in the beginning. I mean, I like to tell the whole truth. Yeah, I mean, so Liz is reminding me that in the morning I was struggling in the morning of his stuff. And the only reason I'm struggling in the morning with his stuff is simply because in the beginning he was talking about like life goals and like more like the coaching style of like where do you want to be from, you know, in two years, five years. And I don't love those conversations really. So those are hard for me. But once he started actually talking about, you know, action items, then that's where I saw, okay, this guy does know he's talking about. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna go bring the elsewhere. Okay. So yeah. Well, so Tom, why are you dressed this way? I thought everybody hanging out the outer banks, I thought you would have your beach stuff on. If I was on the outer banks, this is how I would be dressed. Yeah. Oh, no, I think Matt, Matt Ricketts might have a shirt on like yours. Yeah, Matt knows what he's doing. We'll, we'll bring him over here. Matt, we're just seeing Matt, he's got a outer banks shirt like you. Where's your hat? This is the way you dress when you're at the beach. You got your flip flops on? Do we have anyone watching us? Or is this, is it just us? Like, no, we're, we're streaming. We're streaming on like six different, seven different places. Yeah. It's more than just just us. I mean, to come in down here, this was worth my time though. That's awesome. You know, when you're small or starting out, there's so much stuff that you need. It's a lot of it's like volume information. You need a lot of stuff, but you guys are all running really meaningful, you know, big businesses and the, the stuff that really matters most is sometimes just one thought. You get one thought, you leave there with, with one thought it can more than, than pay for the time and, and, and treasure you put into this. Absolutely. So I was, I was kind of doing some back envelope math and just some like restructuring of my P and L could make my business. If I, if I were to read, if I were to be value today, you know, and trying to get, and trying to get, you know, or something like that, some of his ideas today were probably worth close to a million dollars to in today's money, not, not alone, what we do in three years, paying some things up by just moving some things below the line that are above the line now, things that I really hadn't, I thought, you know, I thought my own salary should be part of the EBITDA because I've got to pay my, like, there was just, I don't want to get too deep into it because, you know, it was a little bit technical and I don't want to bore people, but definitely made me an extra quarter million dollars within the next 12 months in terms of just cleaning, just cleaning up my books a little bit. It was, it was good advice and I already knew a lot of it, but I just needed to hear it again. So when you go home and you have to explain to Angela what we got, what Angela got for keeping the kids for a week, she's got an answer for her. Angela will, will make good on this. Yeah. So maybe let me buy an airplane soon, soon. So that'll be, that'll be my room. Bye Tom. Thanks. Hello. All right, we got Sarah. So Sarah also really loved today. Sarah really loved today also. So I'm going to, I'm going to prompt her over on the side here because she freezes up a little, gets nervous on camera, but she knows what she wanted to talk about, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what I love about this event in general is just disconnecting from my business and being here to work on my business with some of my closest friends and the conversations that happened after late at night, after we've been working all day. What I've really gotten out of it so far is the finance aspect. I love numbers and spreadsheets, as we mentioned before in the show, but I learned to leverage my business to benefit my children and create that generational wealth. And they are the reason I started this company. So it's kind of coming back full circle now. Like I built the business to be able to provide for them. And now I'm learning how to build their future because of the business. So it's been pretty powerful. Yeah, that's huge. I mean, this is the whole next level stuff. And that's, you know, certainly why you're one of the reasons why you're there. Plus, you love the beach. Have you been getting your walks in? I have been getting my walks in. I start every morning with a sunrise walk, which sets me up for the day of mental clarity. And I feel good and I'm ready to learn. And so that's always the added benefit. Okay. And you're a beach connoisseur. I mean, you go to beaches a lot. How does that beach stack up to some of your favorite beaches? I love all the Carolinas. So, I mean, I owe poems as a special place in my heart, but it's a great beach too. And being able to just enjoy the beautiful scenery and have each talks about business and all that. Very good. And you guys are just kind of getting into. Yeah. Yeah, we're about halfway through the trip now. And so I'm really excited for the next two days. And then we have a whole day to process and kind of spend how we want to spend it. We're probably going to put some action plans together and enjoy the area, enjoy the pool, and then also talk about accountability and how we're going to bring this all home and make it work. Very good. All right. All right. Thanks. Thank you, Sarah. All right. So, you know, the generational wealth portion of the presentation today was really cool because a lot of people haven't really, well, this was a couple of things. One, a lot of people haven't really thought it. And then Kevin was talking about he had like four different options. One, yes, I am planning for generational wealth. It's part of what I'm doing. The second option was I'm going to give my kids like some stuff now, but they shouldn't plan on any kind of big anything. The third thing is, yeah, you're getting nothing from me. I'm spending every single penny of it. Do you remember what the last one was? The last one was, I haven't even thought about it. Oh, yeah. And the last one was, I got no ideas. Generational wealth, I'm just trying to make it through the day, right? So I love that we're all kind of on this spectrum. That's cool. And I thought everybody would kind of gravitate toward that first one of generational wealth, but no, we're pretty, no, we're pretty evenly split, I think, between actually all four of them. All right, I've got Heather and Heather brought Lexi with her. Lexi is her amazing operations manager. I've worked with her for a few years now. And I'm sure that Heather would tell you that her business is where it is in large part because she found Lexi. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely over the last five years, she's been in the office. Yeah. It's helped our growth exponentially. Next moment. So it's been a big, a big thing. Heather. How are you? I'm awesome. It's not just finding them either. You also have to grow them up because you are not always as amazing as you are today. No, and I thought I did, but when I did start with you as a mentor, I realized very quickly I didn't. The things you don't know that you don't know. We don't know what we don't know. It's true. All right, you guys share, what did you get out of today? What was, or this event so far? What's been your highlight? Having the action items. Today's speaker was awesome because I probably came away with 10 plus action items and I've kind of crystallized down into five or six that need to be done. ASAP, liability things that you're not even aware of that might be a liability. And he was very easy to understand even though it was a financial day. And I'm not, I'm not numbers. I am not numbers. He loves numbers. I am more like the idea dreamer marketing person. So he was even easy for me to kind of understand what he was saying and follow. Yeah. What did you think? I'm not super into the numbers. It's not my wheelhouse for our business in particular, but I found it pretty easy to understand for someone who doesn't do the financials on a regular basis. So even though it doesn't apply to me and my role necessarily, I did learn a lot. And some of the things I learned from myself, even though I'm not the business owner, investments that I should think about making. And yesterday was great too. I was wondering like, was today your favorite day? Marketing was, marketing was really good too. Yesterday afternoon, I thought he gave us a lot of good action items. You know, I'm somebody, like I said, marketing is my wheelhouse. And so we do have billboards, but he gave me some litmus tests for how to structure your billboards for best efficacy, you know, specifics. I think day one was my favorite. Even just going back to, it sounds so silly thinking about your vision and making sure everyone in your entire team understands what it is. Otherwise you're going to go nowhere. You're just going to keep going in circles if no one knows where you're supposed to be going. And then figuring out the values that are so unique to your team. That's what stood out to me is we picked values, but are they unique to our team that they actually understand and want to use them? It sounds so simple, but I think that's really a good place for us to start. Yeah. How about the roadmap? Did you guys like process roadmap? Actually, what we spent our afternoon on today with a large group of the ladies here was working on our job hour charts, the pie chart that he did, where it shows your tech or whatever position you're looking at, what percentage of their job is dedicated to certain things. Because as we know, you're not just doing cleaning all day. You know, you have admin stuff. We do community service stuff. We have leadership and growth and mentoring things that we want them to do. And this pie chart that he showed us will really help us when we onboard a new cleaner. They won't have to be like, why am I reading this chapter of this book? And we'll be like, well, education was on that pie chart, remember? So we want you to leave us better off than you came to us as a professional, wherever you can take this knowledge with you. Yeah, setting the expectations a little more clearly. We tried to do that already, but I think this will just make it a visual times easier. All right. Tell him. Okay. Oh, the cartoon magazine. Yeah. So this is our first time here. We did not go to the original foundations. But because Lexi was in the class and Liz knew where we were with our growth and revenue, she said, just jump on board into scale. And we'd love working with everyone here. Even though we're at the very low end of the revenue spectrum at 1.3, you know, we've had a really good time talking with the 3 million, you know, learning from networking, not just from the speakers, but from the other business owners that are here, are really getting some good stuff on our downtime during our breaks, on lunch, sitting out by the pool. There's a great pool here. So we're getting information left and right. And I'm like, let's see, write that down, write that down. Because there's so much cold nuggets for us to take back with us. We don't want to lose any of it. You'll have a lot of stuff that you'll be bringing home with you. Yeah, we're making checklists left and right. And just one quick thing to add. I'm one of the only managers here because there's about three of us. And I think this is an event that people find unusual to bring someone from your office to. But I think as an owner, the goal ultimately is that your business succeeds and grows without you. So I'm very grateful that Heather brought me because I plan on helping her do those things. So if another owner is thinking about it, I would recommend I've learned a lot from myself in the business. I mean, that's better than one, right? Yeah. No, it's a big commitment that that Heather is making bringing Lexi. But I'm curious at this point, are you confident that you're going to get a good return off of your investment? I mean, you're both giving up a week. You know, it's, it's, you know, you're making a financial investment to be there. It's hard for people to wrap their minds around, what am I going to get out of this because I've got a business to run. I need to stay home and work. But, you know, six months from now, you're going to have a better business and you're going to have more money in the bank because you went there. I guess I'm asking, do you believe that to be true? Oh, definitely 100%. And it's going to be so much easier to implement some of these, some of these changes are large scale and it'll be better to have a cheerleader by my side who was here and saw the vision with me and have somebody to lean on when, you know, we're trying to push this down to our cleaners and all the other people that work with us. You know, I've got someone here that's seen the vision. We've seen the top of the mountain. So I have someone that's here to help me get there. And if you're ever going, you know, that's an event like that, trying to explain, trying to explain what you saw and what you did, it always falls short. It's like, I'm not explaining it well. Being there is just a whole another thing. Hey, Aja. Yeah, because you just don't have five days, full day to explain it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that we're going to change our main central dress color. Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Lexi. Yeah, we're going to have to dress like this. I didn't want to say one thing. Yeah, I'm not buying it. Sorry, Tom. I did want to say one thing before I move on. I've got Joanne here. She's going to share with us too. But like Heather is bringing Lexi. I don't think just anybody should bring anybody from your office. You got to have the right person. You do have to have, you have to make sure that this is the right person to bring because it is a large investment to come here. You have to know that this person is like 100% on your side, got your back going to be with you for a while. It doesn't make sense. We have, do we have two managers here today? Three managers here and all like, like, hot, right? Just hot for the company. And these are, these are the kind of people that you want to bring, not just anybody, but the people that are all in with you. They think of it with you. All right, so I'm bringing Joanne on here. Y'all know Joanne Williams. Hey Joanne, how are you? Good. How are you doing? Nice glasses. Hey, thank you. I just felt that you guys were at the beach. I should be at the beach too, but I'm more at the beach than you guys are and you're there. He's freezing. So, how's it going? You're freezing, Tom. We can't, it's going really good. Good. The weather's been pretty decent and it's almost warm. It was warm today. A little bit, yeah. You didn't have to have a coat on out there. There was a little bit. Did you? Yeah. Okay. All right, so we're going to ask Joanne what, what she has liked the most about the event so far. It's, it's kind of a toss-up between Scott on Monday and kind of the guy today. Stephen. Stephen today. He did a lot of, I'm sorry, Kevin. Kevin. He did a lot of CPA talk, finances, you know, what you need to look at in your books and, you know, and that's right really where I am having to set my books up. You know, the, how I was structuring things at a million dollars isn't going to get me up to 2 million or 2.4 million or even 3 million the way I've got my P&L and, and my chart of accounts set up. Okay. So you've learned some things that you're going to take home with you and make some change with them? I have two pages of notes to talk over my CPA with just to make sure that we've got everything set up. You know, at some point I might sell and so just making sure that everything is set up to where I can put all of my, my expenses, my conferences, my payroll and all that back into the bottom line is super important. Maximizing the value. You're creating wealth. Yeah. Yeah. And just getting up there and figuring out how I want to do that. Liz just had a great question about what we're doing after the classes and then there's so there's a bunch of little groups of us and we're splitting up and we're tackling the things that we've learned. And so that's been really nice. We're, you know, we're talking about it. We're doing it. We're actually going away. We're going home with the work done so that when we get back to our office, if it gets real hectic or something like that, we don't have to worry about it because it's done. Well, let me, let me ask you, is everybody behaving at night? I know that crowd gets a little rowdy sometimes. You know, Tom, if I told you I'd have to kill you. What happens at the chateau stays at the chateau, but now we're all, we're all having a lot of fun. There's, you know, there's a lot of camaraderie and there's a lot of, you know, hot talk, cool talk, beach talk, some over computers and shut some just you talk about what we're going to do. What's our, you know, what are our takeaways today? So it's, it's been a lot of fun. All right. Very good. A lot of fun. Getting valuable information too. Thank you, Jaya. All right. See you later, Tom. All right. So y'all are used to Katie being like so enthusiastic and so excited about every single thing. Nobody can wear Katie down. She was over there. Tired. The girl is tired. We're wearing her down. This is what it's been intense, even though we're making it sound like it's fun. I know I'm going to bring her all right. Come on, Katie. I'm just really tired. Why? What's, what's going on? How are you doing? I'm awesome. How are you? Why? Because it's like 12 hour classes, which is awesome. I mean, I love learning, but then, you know, just like networking after and I go in the hot tub every night, which has been amazing. And I woke up early one day to watch sunrise, which it was just one day because that threw me off. So I've seen pictures and it looks really beautiful. Sometimes like the clouds are like on the horizon. You really can't see the sun, but it looks like there's no clouds and the sun's just like coming right up. It's amazing how fast it rises. Isn't that amazing? So I'm probably going to have to do at least another one before I leave. Okay. Very good. So what's your learning? Yeah. Okay. So the, we've done, H.J. has been focused on a different topic. The first day was operational excellence and that's what we've been focused on for the last year. I came to this event last year and just getting our processes in place and organized. We have done so much work over the past year. It's incredible. Like my whole team has turned around, my whole company and culture, and we've been putting so many processes in place. I just didn't quite know how to organize it and I was having a hard time wrapping it around my head. And so we got a really great tool to do all of that. And I got it figured out and I've got it most of the way done. So we're going to be really far with our operations manual while I try to get back. And the marketing was amazing. I got some really good insight and also with Made Central, I love it. I started digging in and can you believe this? I found one of my zip codes, one of my zip codes is our highest money maker. And we have like a half of the clients that we have in any other zip code in that zip code. So we want to optimize that zip code basically. So I have three zip codes in particular that are like make more money than anything else by almost double. And so we're going to start because I, you know, it's like, I have all my ads at every zip code, but it's like, I'm going to focus on the ones that are making us a lot of money. So was that part of the marketing exercise? So, so, Katie, knowing the zip codes that you make the most money and from a marketing standpoint, what do you do with that? So I'm going to hyper target those zip codes now and then the neighborhoods. So I just started working with a new digital marketing company too. So part of this is like, I was starting to do homework for them. And that's why I did that research. Sorry if there's a lag, but, but yeah, so I found through reports, I found the three most profit or, you know, the three highest revenue zip codes and that through another report, I found how many customers recurring we have in those zip codes. And I looked, you know, one month back, current month, three months back, it's very, very consistent with those three zip codes. So what I'm going to do instead of targeting every single zip code on next door, I'm only going to target those three, I'm going to do mailers and I'm just going to hit from all ends, retargeting. I've already sent my digital marketing company emails being like, can you guys help me with this? So yeah, I have a lot of plans to be a lot more focused when I get back on my marketing instead of trying to do the whole entire service area. Wow, that's powerful. That's, you know, when you start, you know, it's like, I'm not I love it. Well, glad that you have me central to help you with that. I mean, that's that makes me feel good. You know, but it's awesome that you're getting that information with just one or two ideas and they can make such a big idea, a big change in your business, you know. I mean, I think a lot of us today learned ease the things that like it's like, wow, we're not doing that. And it's going to save us so much money. So like, I think I've already easily paid for this class and last year's class and probably next year's class just from the presentations and everything I've learned so far. So I love it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Katie. Oh yeah, dinner. It's time for dinner here. So Liz, I know that Wendy know it here, Tom. Yeah. Okay, well, yeah, we can talk to Wendy. I want to I want to talk about the speakers that you have, though, before we get done because we never really, you know, talked about that. The speakers you have are like professional speakers, people who travel the country and speak, you know, 200 times a year type speakers. And we need to talk about that a little bit before we get done. Okay, yeah. But you guys, once you get going, it's coming across. So that you're right, they are excellent speakers. For example, they asked if we could please get information from all of the attendees so that they could prepare in advance and be able to speak to our industry. The speakers that we have had aren't in this industry, right? They don't, they're talking about big businesses. For example, today, Kevin was talking about he doesn't work with any businesses that don't have at least $500,000. That's the smallest company he works with. But with some of our people, he's willing to start giving some ideas and some tasks and some things to get them there. He believes that there is zero reason why any company in our space looking at our numbers, the way we do things, et cetera, that we shouldn't all be at 1 million EBITDA. So that's what I'm pushing on. Now, that's my, that's where I'm going. I'm done. Kevin's saying there's, he can't even see any reason why we wouldn't all be at a million dollars EBITDA. So that's where we're going. That's where we're pushing. That's awesome. All right. Are you on the phone? Wendy? Okay. I didn't recognize when I first saw you. We're at the beach, aren't we? I thought we were supposed to dress like we're at the beach. Where are you here with us? I should be. I really feel a sense of missing out at this point. You are missing out. I'm having a great time. My favorite speaker was actually Scott Beebe, because he really was just talking about how it's normal to kind of have to kind of like go back to base camp. And that's the stage where I'm at. So it was very encouraging. And I have like a notebook full of things I want to implement second quarter. And I'm going to divide it up into each quarter so I can do everything in one year that I have planned. It's just like one of the best conferences I've ever been to because it's a small group setting and the speaker was here all day talking to us versus just like, you know, a short segment of 30 minutes. It's been one of the best conferences and I really feel like a good investment in myself. Are you going to be taking some things home that are going to be useful to you? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I learned a lot. I mean, from finance to working in the business to showing my staff what they're really supposed to be doing with graphs. I mean, I'm blown away. I know, I know in the house cleaning industry, we're not used to making investments like what you've made this week, both, you know, taking an entire week out traveling across the country. And these are professional speakers. So I mean, there's there's fees associated with that Liz already shared, you know, it's like $13,000 investment to participate in that. How long do you think it will take with what you've learned so far? And it's only Wednesday before you make that money back tomorrow as soon as I make a phone call to make some changes to that I've learned today. Like I've already made 10 times already, just from what I've learned and what I'm going to be implementing into my business. Sometimes one idea and getting to know the other business owners. That's right. And it was really eye opening, having a, you know, CPA firm here today talking about finances, you know, it's really opened up my eyes that I need to get someone like that on my team. They're not just a bookkeeper because there's many things I'm missing out on that I'm going to play catch up on for 2024. Very good. Very good. What are you guys doing tomorrow? I have to see who's on the list for tomorrow, but we have another great speaker and we've been enjoying great meals. Everything's been catered and it's been so nice. And we've been having a great time in the Lazy River and enjoying the beach tonight. We're going to go for a walk as a group. So, cool. Really good. Awesome. So, Liz, you got another one? Good chatting with you guys. All right, Tom. So, I've got, I've got one more person here. Well, I've actually got a couple more people, but I have one that I'm bringing on right now, Lisa. She did not want to come on here, but she was like, all right, I did love one of the people. Did you love all the speakers, Lisa? She did love all the speakers, but she really loved one and so she wants to talk about him. For those of you that don't know, Lisa, one thing that's interesting is she's going blind, unfortunately, but she has an amazing sense of humor about it. So, she said she didn't want to come on here and I reminded her, hey, at least you can't see anything shit. You won't even be able to see how you look. She won't be able to see your amazing costume. So, that got her on here. Just joking around with her as the way to get Lisa. All right, Lisa's awesome. Hi, Tom. Do I look like you? Hey, Lisa, how are you? Hey, Tom. Hey, how's it going? Pam, how are you? I'm good. You guys having fun? We are. We are. It's great. It's great. Are you learning anything? Oh, yeah. I got so many nuggets. Oh my God, I have so many nuggets that I have to go home and implement. I'm very excited. Okay. Tell me, give me one. Did you pay to come? No, I didn't. If I did, I would be there. I would be there. So, I'm dressing up pretending that I'm there, but I'm so excited. You did a good job, Tom. Thank you, Pam. Let's see. One of my big nuggets is I'm going to go home and I'm going to stuff my Roth. I'm going to max that along with in the background because I already do a 401K, but now I found out that I can do this behind the scenes thing to also stuff my 401K. So, I'm going to go home and do that. Yeah, my Roth. 401K is already stuffed. Now I'm going to stuff the Roth. Very good. So, it'll save you a lot of money on taxes. It's going to make me a lot of money, actually. It's going to help my retirement go a lot better. So, this is a good investment. Very much. Oh, I learned so many things just from today from the guy that came in, Kevin, who came in and talked all about tax strategies. Oh, well, he was very engaging. Liz went up to me to tell you how fun Kevin was because Kevin was very fun. He's an accounting type. Yeah, he was an accountant and he was engaging. A funny account. I didn't even know accountants could be engaging. Wow. You're hard to find. He was very engaging and very smart and he kept coming up with yeah, more and more new things. Yeah, I'm used to the introvert type accountant. All right, Pam, what was your read? Gosh, there's so many. I think even the first day, Scott Beebe, hearing him again this year, I think I kind of needed to hear it again, but he had a different perspective and my husband is here with me this time for the first time and he looked at me and he said, did you hear all this last year and how much of that did you get done, dear? So my accountability partner now is here. So this year, I said, you know, I got thrown back into the weeds, into the fire when I got home, but I'm at a different spot now. We have more office help. We've grown a bunch this last year and so, and now he's in the business with me. So now I have more hope and more time to get things done. Was it helpful having an extra time? And it was. We ended the sessions this time about 3, 330 and Tom, did you freeze? Yeah. Oh, here you are. Anyway, we ended the sessions about 3 or 330. Okay, I thought you were dead there for a minute. So anyway, so we had time to implement, you know, and have those brainstorming sessions and actually implement some of those things, which was helpful because I think in the past we've gone till 5 and it was great. It was a lot of information, but we didn't have the time and energy then to implement really. Okay. Well, yeah. You know, I guess we think that you've got all night to implement. Sleep is way overrated. Yeah, right. Yeah. No, there's got to be some fun time. Some people get all these other owners standing around, so you're exchanging even more information throughout the night. Right. Yeah, it's crazy. That's a big part of it. You hear these professional speakers give you information and they don't live in the cleaning world. They come from other industries, so it's a different perspective than being able to synthesize that by sharing with other successful business owners in your own industry. I mean, that's powerful. Oh, it is. Yeah, for sure. All right. You want me to get you? Yep. All right. I'll talk to you later. Stay here. Sorry. Yeah, I have to stay here until somebody else comes. What you want to talk about? Okay. So let's see. I'm trying to think because my brain is full. Oh, okay. Sorry. I thought about one more thing, what she said. So we do have workshop time this time, which is incredible. And after the presentation today, I already called my banker to ask him all these things and to start implementation. And I told him I was at a conference. He's like, wow, it's really amazing that you're doing this right now. Most people just come back from conferences and forget to implement. And I was like, oh no, we have workshop time at the conference. And he was like, impressed. And I am too because I'm actually getting things done. So that's really nice. Well, that is awesome. That is great. It really is. This is so cool. Yeah, it is. All right, here's Ben. He thinks he's here. We're at the beach, aren't we? I thought this is the way you dress when you're at the beach. Well, maybe if the beach was a little bit warmer. Yeah, that's what I hear. Which way is the land blowing? Is the way coming from the north? It might be. Yeah. Right now. I used to spend a fair amount of time out there when the wind comes from the northeast. It gets nippy. Ah, okay. Yeah, my wife is definitely disappointed that it's not 80 and sunny right now. So maybe the wind will shift. It comes out of the south. It'll make it better. Yeah. Oh, she does not want to get on camera. So what's everybody saying about the week so far, Tom? They're saying they're having a great time. They're learning a lot. They're taking useful information, putting action plans together because you got time to work on that. We're talking with other cleaning business owners. So you're taking what you're hearing and comparing it to what other people are hearing and kind of putting it together to this kind of a synergistic effect going on. It sounds like a lot of value is being created. So what do you think? And you've got Don there behind you. So you guys having a good time? I'm having a good time and I'm learning a lot. And you know, it was just the foundations a couple weeks ago. And that was great. But this is different. It's very different. You got better speakers this time. I wouldn't say that. I kind of wished you were going to be here this week. I was very disappointed you weren't here. I think you ought to get on a plane and come over tomorrow. I was going all last week and I got home and I just couldn't make it happen. It's not that far of a drive, is it? Oh, it's about an eight hour drive. It's a good little height. Yeah. I understand. Have you? Yeah. Well, I think the week is amazing. I'm so glad I came. Yeah, I was just thinking all the speakers have had their own little twist on how we could be more successful and kind of take it to that next level. So no complaints here. Okay. Anything in particular that you've heard that you're going to take back and implement? I think this week for me has been about 10xing. I was living, as you know, 2xing everything till our little meeting on Saturday at Foundations. And this has been also a catalyst in that mindset change. So you're taking things that you've been figuring out. You're just building on it. Yeah. And this is complimenting the work you did a couple of weeks ago, several weeks ago. Absolutely. Very good. How about you, Ben? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Good. So one of the speakers, Scott, had his little acronym, RPM, repeat repetition, predictability and meaning. And you just basically take what you're doing and, you know, kind of do it over and over again and build and build and build. So did the 10x. And I thought that was just so simple and genius that I'm going to take that back and kind of look at the things I'm doing well and what I need to make repeatable, predictable and add meaning to it to really just like accelerate our growth. So that was one thing I pulled out. I thought that was pretty cool. And then just the concept of our businesses are here to serve our families and freedom. You know, we're not slaves to our business. So that's another little nugget, I guess, that I liked. So that was a couple That sounds like Scott BB as well. It was. Yeah. Yeah. Have you met Scott? Oh, yeah. He lives down Buford down this way. I met him several years ago, actually. I've seen him speak before. You've got a lot of good speakers there. You guys are in for a treat later this week. When Scott Wozniak speaking. Friday, I think. I think it's Friday, yeah. Scott's going to blow your mind. Scott's going to blow your mind. He's good. He's really good. Yeah, that's exciting. All the speakers are very, very insightful into helping us to grow our businesses, to make life better for our businesses, our families, our cleaners, everybody. It's awesome. Yeah, for sure. All important stakeholders. Well, yeah. And then all the people in the room of, you know, coming from different sized businesses across the country and sharing their nuggets, you know. Well, brainstorming, working together. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you get as much value out of networking with the other people there as you do the speakers. Every day around, I think it's three or three thirty. We do what Liz calls workshop and we put into motion what we learned throughout the day. And it's a different dynamic, you know, being locked up in the same house with everybody for a week. You really kind of get to know people and, you know, this is, this is, you know, some stuff that you'll carry for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Just like a foundation should make lifelong friends. Yeah. Yeah. And we have good meals too. Yeah. Is the food, is the food better than it was a couple of weeks ago, Don? I'd say they're both really yummy. That's diplomatic. Yes, I know that's what I was thinking. She's being the diplomat. But the speakers, the speakers are better and you're not hurting my feeling saying that. I mean, these people, these people travel around the country and they do this 200 times a year. So, you know, you're, you're getting, you're getting top shelf talent this way. That's awesome. They're, I was really disappointed. Don doesn't want to hurt your feelings. No, I love him and how he just, he speaks to me when he teaches. You're so kind. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. I was really disappointed at the time. I almost was in tears when I heard him. I was in DC all last week. I just told Liz, I just didn't have it in me. I needed to, to tend to some things at home. But we'll get together soon. There's going to be other stuff going on this year. Good. Good. And maybe we could zoom. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Touch base on some of the things we talked about at Foundations. Well, we are pressing up on top of the hour here, which means we're going to have to transition off of this. Is Liz hanging around out there anywhere? No. Nope. She just took off. The VIP's out to dinner. Nope. She out of reach? You just have us for the last time. Is she picking up? She is out of reach. She's out of reach. Well, that's fine. I'm glad to have you guys. We can, we can do this. We don't need Liz. We don't need Liz. We all need Liz. We do. The world needs more Liz. Yeah, right. Well, enjoy your time on the beach, Tom. I was looking, I was wondering, are there any stories? Anybody like get crazy out there? I know at night sometimes things go a little sideways. Is everybody behaving themselves? You know the rule. What happens at Foundations stays at Foundations. It's just us. We can talk. It's just us. I'll call you. I'll call you. We're just live streaming on half of social media. That's all. Yeah. Everybody's getting along and having a good time. Everyone hears an angel. Yeah. Perfect angels. Everybody kept their clothes on this year so far. It's only Wednesday. I know. I heard about last year. So far, nobody's done that. Okay. Wow. Yeah. That brings us pretty much up to top of the hour. So with that, I guess we'll go ahead and wrap this. Ben, Don, thank you so much for helping out. I'm glad you guys are having an awesome time. And you're just, you're just getting started. Seriously. Wozniak on Friday is one of my favorites. You're gonna like him. You're gonna like him. I can't wait. Yeah, we're super excited. You guys have a great rest of your time. Tell everybody we said hello. And we'll be seeing you soon. Smart Business Moves will be back next Wednesday, five o'clock Eastern. Until then, everybody take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye, Tom.