How to Build a Sustainable Business with Jennifer Peek

Do you know how to handle finances when it comes to your business? Jennifer Peek does! She’s the Founder and CEO of Peek Advisory, a B2B financial advisory firm focused on small business accounting, planning, and transactional strategies for women-led businesses. A seasoned professional in her field, Jennifer provides expertise as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA), venture investor, business owner, and consultant. Tune in and get some business advice from a finance guru who knows what she’s talking about!

Transcript

Jay:   0:00
if you're like me When you started your business, you didn't realize how many hats you'd actually have toe wear and many of those hats you're not an expert at today. I talked to Jennifer Peak. She is an expert in the financial field and helps women led businesses see financial success. She has a ton of experience. We get into all kinds of things about hiring and firing. We get into talking about cash flow and cash conversion cycles and businesses that run out of cash and high growth seasons. So full of things that you're curious about and want to know more about. This episode is for you without any further ado. Here's my interview with Jennifer Peak. Hey, Jennifer, Thanks for being on the show.

Jennifer:   0:45
Oh, glad to be here.

Jay:   0:46
So I'm really excited to talk to you today because you talk about and are focused as an expert in an area which a lot of people struggle, which is financial information in general. There's all kind of issues around that when people start a business and we're gonna deep dive into some of those things. Maybe some key tactics and tools that might be able to help people. But before we do that, the whole purpose of this podcast is to talk about building a business that lasts. How have you learned over time to build a team and kind of get to wear that you where you are? I love to just hear from you some key struggles. You've had to overcome scum, some key successes that you kind of landed on. Tell us a little bit about kind of where you got to, where you are in your business journey.

Jennifer:   1:28
Sure, so I think like a lot of professional service providers, which is how I would categorize myself because we're providing service is we're not building products or or do anything like that. I started out independently, and there comes a point at which you can only do so much. Work yourself without having to hire people. And that, I think for a lot of professional service providers, is the first big cross road, which is the Am I going to continue to be independent because there's some real pros to that, Or am I going to figure out how Thio scale get more work that that could be in hiring people of that it could be outsourcing and kidney different things, depending a farmer in doing so. For me, that was, That was the rial turning point was deciding that I wanted to have a team for a lot of folks. That's also the point that there independent job becomes an actual company. And then there are a number of things that go with making that transition. Which prison? Cons. And but there's a There's a lot of really good things about it. There's a lie of ongoing value building that you are start thio able to do once you make that change. And so, from a longer term business company perspective, there's a lot of benefits to people who are ready to make that transition and some real immediate gratification and value elements that they get from doing that. So for me, that was that was my big step, really was adding that team and the things that have come from being able to do that there is an exponential value and having other people's thoughts and and contributions to the business as well.

Jay:   3:28
Yeah, absolutely. And anybody who is starting a business at some point is gonna have to make that decision. I mean, the idea of what you just said, What I think is really important is taking it from a job to a company. I think a lot of people start a small business or they go out on their own as a freelancer, independent or whatever you wanna call it with the idea that they're gonna free up their schedule and have more time, and they're gonna increase their bank account and have more money. And what happens very often for a lot of people, including me at times was it's the opposite of that. You have no time, and sometimes you have no money because you don't know how to run a actual business. And all you're really doing is you just have a job for a lot of bosses. If you have multiple clients and I have just one boss and you don't have the consistency and reliability that comes with being team member at a company somewhere. So when you start to make that decision, you said All right, you've decided I wanna have a team. I'm gonna start hiring people now. I didn't do this very well. At the very beginning, I had made some pretty big mistakes trying to figure this out. How did you do when you first started figuring out that team and bringing people on board? What helped you hire the right people and what have you learned along the way from that process?

Jennifer:   4:37
So I'm much better at hiring now than I was in the beginning, and I came into my company with an extensive corporate background. So I had hired people I had managed people, but I had done so for a large company and not in my own company. And certainly that's that's the first thing that I learned with How I needed to hire for my company was different than the hiring I had done in the past, even though most of the work that we were doing was similar to the work that I had, I had hired for who's directly. So I think I One of my big lessons was You can't underestimate the changed in the company environment when it comes to looking at the fix that you're gonna hire for me personally, it was a better route that I had somebody on the front end, so I had a recruiter who helped me. And I think the biggest reason that I did that I will say this now. And I do think it was always true. The biggest reason that I did that is because I knew where my weaknesses were in hiring process. So for me, I would lose a lot of time and energy at the front end of the hiring process and then just be like, That's it. I'm done. I'm either not gonna hire anybody before I ended up hiring the wrong person, right, Because you just get worn out and you're like, Oh, now I got another full time job. Hiring people wrote it, right. So that was I think you really have to you if you can, and sometimes you can't. But if you can figure out where you are, you as the hiring person as the business owner are most likely to trip over yourself, Then get some help. Like if you think you're not gonna call their references or do the background checks, then find something else to do that for you.

Jay:   6:35
Yeah, I think that's so important. So often, people focus on the idea of trying to improve their weaknesses, which maybe that's a weakness for you. It certainly is for me of trying to find that right person do all that sort of those detailed things that front or just not. It's not for me. And they think, Well, I'm just gonna do it myself because it'll be cheaper and I can do it right? Allegedly. But the problem is, I think this is an old Dale Carnegie principle, not sure where I stole it from. But if we're to, it's something out of 10 and we really work hard and we improve it to a four. We're still pretty bad, you know?

Jennifer:   7:08
That's right.

Jay:   7:09
But if we're a seven and we focus on the things that were seven to make them, tens were experts were the best that we could possibly be. And so that's been a big thing for me, especially the last few years is what are the things that I Onley Aiken D'oh that I actually want to do there in my desires own. I'm good at them. They're my proficiency zone. That's that's where I need to be and everything else I gotta find somebody else to help leave you that So you kind of did that by trying to find a recruiter to help you build that team initially. And that doesn't always go right either. I mean, it's none of these things are perfect from a execution standpoint. We're trying to grow a team, but what you just said, which is be willing to get the help that you need In whatever area that is, I waited way too long in so many areas where I should have gone. You know, I need to find an expert to take care of this thing for me. I mean, should I set up my own invoices for way

Jennifer:   8:01
too? So, you

Jay:   8:02
know, I just because, you know, it's like, I'm not gonna let go of those pieces of the puzzle. But it was foolish because I was missing stuff that was costing thousands of dollars at one point. Thankfully, it's all fixed now, So eso hiring, obviously, is a big transition when you're growing a business, trying to build that team is hard work. Making that decision to do it in the first place is hard. But if you're going to allow the business to actually be a company like you said and operate without you, you have to have that team. What other things have you learned along the way that you've kind of gone? Okay, these are things I wasn't expecting to have to deal with that I didn't have to deal with when I was an employee somewhere. But I now have to deal with that. I'm an owner. What has been some of those things along the way?

Jennifer:   8:44
You know, I think one of the biggest transitions that people have to make is also I think there's a couple of them. One is how many hats you do truly, where at any given point in the day, and as the CEO as the company owner, as whatever title you wanna put at the top part of the pyramid, you're going to get to do that. And that's just going to be the way that it is, really, regardless of no matter how many people you hire, there were always gonna be those decisions that you have to make. So I think is a business owner. One of the biggest things is really coming to terms with how many decisions you're going tohave to make and minimizing those where you can. So here's an easy example. I loved your invoicing comment, so I waited a long time to do that. And I don't know if it was harder for me to hire somebody to do that because I'm in that field. But, Michael, I should be even better at it, but for a very long period of time, even after I hired somebody to do it. We have a lot of clients that are on mentally retainers, and we would go through the client list of every single month. I mean, like, nothing's changed, nothing changed. And I bet it took us two years before I said, Can we just automate this so that these automatically go out on the first of the men versus? So I wasn't sending the invoices out, but she waas, so she manually sending them out. And so now they go out like it, too am on the first of the month, and nobody has to do anything. So I think there are even those what can seem like minor elements if you have to have a conversation about it, and you really find yourself having the conversations all the time because that's part of your business, not because you have a problem with client or a person or anything like that, really trying to automate that stuff. It helps, and there's a lot of other reasons for automation. But I think one of the reasons that we forget the most is because you only have so much time and so much energy. And if you're using it, Thio have a conversation about yeah, all the invoices of the same again this month. That's the time, and energy don't have to have another conversation on and e think I would. I know there are some studies out there that whether it's decision making or will power or whatever it is, and it goes with the power of habit. And that is the less of those things that you have to make decisions about, whether it's wear the same thing every day or you ate the same breakfast, the more energy you have left to go throughout your day and for other parts of your business. So that's really one of the biggest things that I have learned on, and that feeds right into what you were saying, right? It does it. Is it in my desire Desire zone is that in my zone of excellence is this where I can add them? This value and trying to marry those things that's much possible not only makes your company better, but I think it makes you happier at the person who's in charge of the company.

Jay:   11:50
Yeah, there's three key things there that you kind of hit on that I think are fundamental to growing a business that last one is You got to find ways to simplify particular areas to is, you gotta find ways to automate things, and three is you need recurring revenue didn't specifically say that, but you talked about retainers, and that is within that we also

Jennifer:   12:05
want to

Jay:   12:05
come back to on the simplify thing. There's the most extreme example of that is somebody like Steve Jobs, who literally had a closet full of black turtlenecks and the same pair of jeans because that was one decision he wasn't gonna make every day. The other really good story that I've heard on that is Warren Buffett. And allegedly, his wife puts out two sets of change in the morning for his breakfast that he stops McDonald's. Apparently, every morning there's two different breakfast, one is like $2.73. Another is like a dollar and 83 cents. And if the market's up, he uses the dollar. 83. I'm sorry. The market's up uses the 2 73 of the market's down. He's the 1 83 So here's some halting billionaire, one of the richest men in the world making a dollar, but he doesn't make decisions on. He knows exactly what he's gonna eat. He knows where he's going to stop. You know how long it's gonna take. It's not part of his process, and that seems kind of like crazy to some people. But I think at that level you're gonna end up being Many of us are going to being Steve Jobs for Warren Buffett's. But there is something to take from that kind of. How can I simplify what I'm doing? The other thing that you hit on, which I think is really important the automation thing. Somebody taught me this process one time a while back and it was really helpful. It's four questions. One is Do I have to do it in other words, or even doesn't have to be done? Even is The first question to you is, Can I automated which what you were talking about? Three is. Can I delegate it to somebody else? And four is, does it have to be done now? And that's kind of the four part test of, like wind to do what what needs to be happening. But I like to circle in specifically on recurring revenue, because I think that this is like the bread and butter for a lot of businesses that are missing out on thinking about this as an idea. Is there a place in my business that I can generate recurring revenue? And I've found that most businesses the answer is probably yes. Somewhere they matched couple, some kind of special plan or package or something else they can provide ongoing value. But years ago, my uncle told me, Look, everything you're doing this project based So you're making $1000 here or $5000 there or whatever it was back when I was 19 years old, but every month you're starting over. Every year you're starting from zero. How can you generate recurring revenue? And back then, I remember the first thing we ever sold was Ah, hosting account for a website. It was $10 a month, and it cost me $4 a month. After I made $6 a month on it, that was the first thing that we ever sold. It was 10. I had $10 a month in recurring revenue, so I was like 120 bucks a year. Well, now we've got, like, a 1,000,000 1/2 and recurring revenue every year. And it makes me sleep a lot better at night when I know that all the basics are covered just by waking up in the morning and doing the work that's already promised to be done to talk about that a little bit. Recurring revenue. How you How about it kind of works for you from a retainer basis? Is your whole business recurring? Revenue is just parts of it. And then how do you advise clients for a financial standpoint as to how to handle those things?

Jennifer:   14:54
Thio on Really, from a basic recurring revenue perspective, I completely agree with your comment that somewhere in every business there is the opportunity for recurring revenue, and in a perfect math world, it's exactly what you said. And that is, if you can get your recurring revenue to cover your basics, you'll sleep a lot better at night, and there's a that cannot be overstated on how valuable being able to sleep ignited. The other thing and related to that is that it allows you to do some other things in your business that you wouldn't otherwise have the bandwidth to. D'oh. Whether that's from a creative perspective or whether that's from an operating perspective. There's all different sorts of elements to that that if you're out there hustling and for every dollar that comes in every single month, then you've got a lot of time and energy devoted to hustling. And then the other 50% of your energy is devoted to fulfilling that. And that's even more true if you if it's just you right now, right, and in the early days it is for a lot of people. So there there's that element to it as well. Our particular business model has been a recurring revenue elements to it, as well as project beast elements, and sometimes those overlap. We'll do both types of work for our clients. In some cases, we just do recurring revenue work and in some cases were just doing project based work. We have a lot of I'm going to make a clarifying comment here. We have a lot of strategic partners that we work with so that we have a fairly good, consistent pipeline from them, even if the end user is different. But I think what can happen to some businesses is that they have ongoing customers. And I think in that I think one of the best examples of that is is a lot of our clients are in, say, a construction type industry or something like that, and they have homebuilders that they do work for. So those home builders are a customer and they build multiple houses a year, and so our client can do work on multiple houses. But there is a difference between a stable customer list and recurring revenue on. I think a lot of businesses can confuse those two and one of the reasons there's several reasons and certainly financial wins. But from a customer management perspective, you still have thio get new projects, go with this customers. You were kind of at the mercy of their business versus having a recurring revenue model where it comes in, and it's something that they rely on and you're you know that it's coming in, and that doesn't mean you don't have any turnover, but it's dramatically different than if you're still just doing project based work or getting orders from them. So let's say you sell a product and they order. They've been ordering 100 of your product month in month out for the last three years. It could still dropped to 50 or zero, depending upon what they're able to sell. So there. I think that's an important distinction. And there's a spectrum, right. So there's the one time project work. There's Rickert. There's the ongoing customers on. Then there's recurring revenue and you know there's value to businesses for all of this different types.

Jay:   18:43
Yeah, I think that's really important. I was actually having a conversation. I was doing some cult consulting with another business sort of the other day and that I was talking about this very issue. I said Well, how much a recurring revenue when we've got all these clients that you know, bring us work on a regular basis, Mike, that's great. That's not recurring revenue. I mean it, Rikers, and it is revenue. But it's not the same thing as I have a 12 month agreement. They're gonna pay me X number dollars a month for the next 12 months. And then we're gonna renew that agreement because that allows you, especially from a financial perspective, the forecast. What's going to happen? I can't forecast the hope that a client might do business with me. I can forecast the fact that I have 10 contracts at $1000 a month over 12 months. I know exactly how many dollars that is, and I can tell what's gonna happen now. You know, my psychosomatic cancels air goes out of business or something else. But you at least have ah, agreement upfront that assumes everybody's gonna abide by that agreement and carry that through. So that's a really important distinction for him. But it's listening that has not thought about that before because, gosh, there's nothing that has made me feel more comfortable in business in the right way is not in a complacent way, but in a way like okay, now can focus on the things I need to focus on breasts like, Where's the next sale? Where's the next sale? Where's the next sale? And that that can be where a lot of people end up. And and most who will hate that cause that most people didn't sign up to be in the sales business. They don't want the salespeople they want to be whatever they are, they want to be the best cupcake maker in town. But they have to go sell cupcakes, and I like what I had to bake them. I don't have to sell them. But if you have some kind of a record agreement, even something as silly as that is making cupcakes. If you got you got a provider that you know you're dropping off every single week. X number of cupcakes for external dollars, they have an agreement. That's the plan as way better knowing I have so many people coming in overtime. That's a really good clarification. Thanks for making that. So I was looking at your website, which I love, by the way, and I'm do websites, so that's a compliment, an actual compliment. And I love your brand and the colors and the way everything's put together and the clarity of messaging. It says financial advisers with the flare for the feminine. So you're very focused on Hey, we want to help with accounting, planning and traditional transactional strategies for women led businesses. So deciding on that niche because you're deciding on a niche there from a percentage standpoint, is an intentional decision. What people are deciding, whether they should do a niche or not that could be industry related. It could be focusing on women led businesses or veteran led businesses or whatever. There's all kinds of different ways to kind of focus that. Did you do that from the very beginning, or was that a niche decision? You decided to transition to, to focus the business? What's your thought process and how you came up with that decision?

Jennifer:   21:23
Yeah, I did not do that from the very beginning, and the thought process behind it was The industry in which my company is based is very male dominated on, and I think there's plenty of people that can say that about the headmistress you. But it's very male dominated, and one of the things that I was seeing Waas and is that there are more and more women owned businesses that are growing to the size where they need this type of advice and just from obscure come for perspective, having not really been around a lot of that type of activity. It's it's a natural fit for us. So I own a women. You know, I have my own company as a woman, the people that work for me or women. It's easy for me to understand some of the challenges that women have. It's all so easy for me to understand how they're building their businesses, so they have, ah, huge focus on long term value corporate culture. You know, some of those those elements and most of them and there's a lot of statistics in this mist of them have been struck their companies, so they didn't go in thio starting their companies, looking for any sort of funding, or even having that as part of their mindset. So as their companies have grown and they're considering those other options, it's a whole new world for them, and it can be a little intimidating. There's no question there's jargon and the financial world just like there isn't any world, and it's it's just one of those elements where we think we can provide a lot of value.

Jay:   23:13
Yeah, I think it's, I think the niche ing is smart. A lot of people talking about that is like if you want to scale a business focus on a particular niche, I've never actually done that, even industry specific. Which it would be easier for us to run a marketing agency if we're focused on a particular vertical, because what I don't like about about industry specific verticals sometimes is. Your business is often subject to that verticals economy. And so if I had just done real estate websites, for example, in 2007 as that economy collapsed, my economy would have collapsed, too, and I would have had to have tried to buffer that accordingly. The beauty of doing the focus that you have is you still have vast diversity with regards to the potential type of business that they're running. But you're still clarifying your message in a way that somebody reads, It goes, Oh, this looks like something that's for me. Seth Godin, from a marketing perspective, always talks about how people like to buy things that other people like them by basically like people like me do things like this. And so if they can look at the website and go, these people look like me. They do things like this. That's something that I can do is well, I think that's really smart strategy. So nice work with that. When you think about where small business owners get stuck, we're about financial stuff specifically. So let's talk about like your area of expertise. There's 1000 places to mess it up. I certainly have messed it up along the way. But where do you see, like, the biggest problems People come to you and you're like, Oh, gosh, you're missing this. And then when you helped resolve some of those things for them were taken off of their plate. Maybe it just makes their life so much better and their business flourish in a way that may be it hasn't before. Where are they getting stuck initially?

Jennifer:   24:54
So and I think this is more true if you've got a company that has employees, I think it's true across. I think it's true, regardless, but I think the pain is greater if you have employees and it's in its cash flow on the reason that it's greater if you haven't Swayze is because you have to make payroll on. There will be nothing that keeps people up more at night than how am I gonna make payroll, and how am I gonna pay those payroll taxes you can. You have flexibility with vendors. At times, you never have flexibility with payroll, and and some of that goes back to our recurring revenue conversation as well. So if you have recurring revenue coming in, it's easier for you to plan. It's easier for you to know how you're gonna have payroll covered. It's all of those types of things. A lot of companies have situations also where they have to do a bunch of work and then issue an invoice and then get paid. So the cash conversion cycle is what that's called, which is how long does it take me? Thio get the money back in the door from when I sent it out the door. So if I sent it out the door for payroll or I sent it out the door because I had to buy products or whatever it ISS, how long does it take you? Thio do whatever you need to do with it, Cindy, and without and get paid by your customer. And that lag is what just kills businesses and business owners and not understanding how that can work. And and that is true always. But one of the miss interesting things that I think people miss is that is even more true if you're in a high growth phase. So a lot of our clients of Compass and I'm A and R like we're growing by leaps and bounds. We've opened these other locations, we have all of these customers and look at our look. And I'm like, Okay, And you also did these things that cost you this much more money. You signed a new lease, you hired new people. You've got these extended payments, lands all all of these different decisions that they made that start snowballing on top of themselves. And it just becomes it's It's at some level. It's what, you know, back in the day, we would call the Oprah Effect. Today we recall it. The shark tank effect. You're you're so wildly successful it kills you.

Jay:   27:36
Yeah, and I laughed because I have been there right on the edge of like I am going to run out of money.

Jennifer:   27:43
How about a round of money?

Jay:   27:44
We're making more money than we've ever made. How is this possible? How don't have enough cash. I don't understand. And it really was not. I had a I had some help of internal office Admit there's a lot of work that I had had an external bookkeeper who helped kind of keep the taxes and accounting and c p A. He really don't look at it like once a year. There's a little over a year ago I switched to, and I think this kind of work that you'll do I switched to basically like a virtual CFO is what I would kind of classify the mess, and all of a sudden I start see things and have data that I didn't have before. And now I can make decisions better because we are like even there were 20 years in. We're still in a high growth fit season right now, and you know, we're up about 36% over last year, which is great for our 20th year in a row of business. But there have been times like in the not too far past, You know, within the last 24 months where I was like, Gosh, how am I gonna, like, float all this and get to where we're going? I don't wanna take money of my own accounts tohave toe, float the business. I shouldn't be doing that at this point, but to your point, if you don't know how those things operate, you don't have the data around that. And most of us a small business owners, even me, who's been doing this since I was 17 years old. There are a lot of things around cash flow and understanding. I understand pl but your P and L can show profitability and not have cash in the cash in the bank so really important.

Jennifer:   29:08
And one of the other related elements to that. So it talks about the cash conversion cycle is understanding if you have highly variable revenue and that could be months, a month or that could be week to week. But you have highly fixed expenses. That also creates this mismatch. And I think it's the it's hard when you're in the middle of it. So, to your point about having a virtual CFO, you now can be less in the middle of it and have the opportunity to look at the information and see aspects of the data or trends that you couldn't see when you were buried in the middle of it.

Jay:   29:53
Yeah, I think that I think it kind of goes back to We're talking about the very beginning, which is higher out your weaknesses. I'm not a C p A. I'm not a CFO as they're not my strengths. I'm a marketer. I could help people with their messaging. I can help people strategize their business second home, understand the structure of the whole of how I should operate and get attention and acquire customers. But when it comes down to like balance sheet versus cashflow statement versus everything else and figuring out what needs to be in what account win and how that needs to operate, I need something else to help with that. And it really took me away too long to figure that out. And so I think that's really good counsel people. They're listening. We talk about this stuff forever because there's 1000 things to talk about as it relates to financials. But I want a transition because we gotta wrap up the show at some point. I want to talk about the one thing I always talk about, which is work life, balance. I don't love that title that much, but it's the title. We kind of reference it by its the reality of work that needs to be done, especially as an entrepreneur and everything else in life, whatever that looks a little different for everybody. Some people have kids. It will have spouses. People have friends who have hobbies. But how have you, over time, kind of gone? Hey, this is the right balance if that's even the right word for you and what kind of things have you done to help improve that in your own life?

Jennifer:   31:06
So the biggest thing for me has been being honest with myself about what I think that really means. So even when I was in corporate and it's certainly been true in your in my own business and that is that for me personally, I would rather be attuned and plugged in all the time. At a minimum level. I'm gonna think about it anyway. So if I'm going to think about it anyway and my work, my job. My company is going to get that mine space than it should be productive mind space. And I think in fairness to yourself, you have to be willing to be honest about it. Otherwise, you just be yourself up and where's that gonna get you? So for me, I do a lot of travel. I have. My Children are a little bit older now. I have a senior in high school and a sophomore in college, so that provides a certain amount of flexibility that if you have a five and a seven year old, is not the same. Yes, so it's and they're just this seasons of life is another thing that I think everybody really has to understand you 10 years ago. What works for me on the diet exercise front worked for me 10 years ago, and it doesn't work for me now. And I think we all get second our patterns of believing that if we were highly successful, utilizing some of method five years ago that it should work for us today, whether that's work, life balance, whether it's business related or just personal related, it doesn't work like that. So I think you also have to be willing Thio, let go of those things that aren't working for you anymore and be okay with that. And just so you know what, this is a different season of my life, and I'm fine with that. So my biggest indulgence is traveling. I am a huge fan of that. We I do it personally. I do it with my husband. We do it with our kids. So we have all of the different kind of mix of that. And then I know people who hate traveling, so that wouldn't be there today. For me, that's what I drive a lot of pleasure out of, and that's my ability to do. That is my biggest measure of work. Life balance.

Jay:   33:27
That's good. And I think what you said in the beginning there are being honest with yourself is really important. I think it's easy to I want to tell ourselves a story that's not really true, and I think the seasons of life stuff is huge. I mean, I have five kids who range from six years old to almost 15 years old. I'm sorry she's actually turned seven yesterday, so she's seven now from seven years old, almost 15 years old, and we're in a busy season right now. And so, like, people are like, Well, Jay, if you would do this and show up at this event and do this thing, you could really grow your business. I'm like, I know I know how to make more money. That's not the issue. I want to be home for dinner most nights, not every night, but most nights I want to be there, and most days I'm there for in the mornings, you know, and and those that that's a decision I made for this season. But 10 years from now, when my seven year old is 17 that may be very different. I want to do a lot of speaking and traveling, and I don't have to be a home as much at that point. So I think that seasons of life thing is absolutely critical. So as we kind of wrap up here and land the plane a little bit and you're thinking about talking into somebody who wants to build a business that last, that's why they're on the podcast right now. After all, they're tryingto find stories, tips and ideas to avoid being worn out, stressed out and ready to quit. What parting advice would you give them to kind of take away from this episode?

Jennifer:   34:45
I think the biggest thing is Thio. Be as clear about your end goal as you can and also realize that that may just get you through the next six months. So I see a lot of business centers who have their two year plan or their five year plan, and that's that's really publicized. I mean, that's a big thing in the media. And my gosh, we're getting ready to come to the end of the year and you can't Hurley open up a open up any bang and not see they're ready for 2020. Hindsight is coming, right? So I think all of that's really good. But I also think that there's a huge value to 30 60 and 90 day goals and in pivoting and course correcting as you go. So in general, I know that you're trying to get Thio a certain place in your business. But I also understand that there are seasons in business too, man. Sometimes it's gonna click. It's gonna go really fast you're gonna feel like you're on fire in a good way. And other times you're going to feel like you're walking to quicksand and and being okay with that and knowing that it's just part of the process is important. Also, knowing that you can't go around that process, you have to go through it, and your goal is to get through it as fast as you can. So daggers back to that higher, higher expertise where you need it, and you could do that in little short segments. You don't have to commit to some giant program or process or any of that. You can get it as you need it. And being willing to do that, we'll help your presses go a lot faster. So you don't feel like you're walking through quicksand.

Jay:   36:33
Yeah, I love that. Have a big vision. But the 30 60 90 day goals. I think you're so much more important, and I'm just being clear about where you want to go, and then we'll look back and go, Hey, it might change. I mean, I have I have big goals for the next 25 10 years, but I also know I might change that in six months, and I look totally different based on where what's going on. We never know what life is gonna deal us along the way. I heard a great great quote from one of the guys who helps run chick flings and Mark Miller, and he said We can't control what opportunities are given to us, but we can control it for ready for them or not when they get there. And I was like, That's pretty good. So be prepared for for where we're going and when we want to do is really great. Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the show today. If people want to find you online, where's the best place for them to look

Jennifer:   37:19
the best places? Our website, which is Peek p e k advisory dot com.

Jay:   37:25
Awesome. Thank you so much for me on the show. Today has been a pleasure. I think I'd be a real value for those who listen,

Jennifer:   37:29
thank you very much.

Jay:   37:32
Hope this episode has given you some ideas or inspiration that will help you grow your business if you found it helpful and you know somebody else who might benefit from it, as well. I would greatly appreciate it if you would take the time to share this with him, maybe on Facebook or Twitter were linked in, or even shoot an email over to a friend with a link to this podcast in it. And if you haven't already, make sure you sign up for email list at building a business that lasts dot com.