Time Is Money: How Valuing Your Hours Multiplies Margin with Amanda Brinkman

We're kicking off our first guest episode with a bang joined with creator and host of the Emmy-nominated Small Business Revolution, Amanda Brinkman. We swap origin stories and the moment she gave us permission to build a great small business without falling for the trap of scaling for scale's sake. Amanda shines a light on what most owners miss (think: your Google listing, true profit drivers, and why you must actually pay yourself), how to protect partnerships before feelings get weird, and the real reason valuing your time multiplies your margin. We also dig into her leap from corporate to founder, the ripple effect of purpose, and why contentment, not just achievement, keeps your business from running you.

Highlights

00:00 Amanda's career journey.

06:45 Behind the scenes of an Emmy nominated show.

13:00 The overlooked tool to bring customers straight to your door.

20:15 Why profitability decisions matter more than exciting new ideas.

25:45 The one thing most entrepreneurs forget to do for themselves.

32:00 How to protect friendships when business partnerships get tricky.

36:30 The hidden cost of doing everything yourself in business.

44:00 What are you applying to your business that you wish every small business knew?

52:00 Operating from and keeping your mindset focused on purpose.

1:00:00 What are your current favorite books and podcasts?

Resources + Links

Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind HERE

More resources for custom clothiers HERE

Watch on Youtube

Follow

Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Amanda Brinkman: @amandakbrinkman

Resources + Links
Apply for Luxury Clothier Collective Mastermind  HERE
More resources for custom clothiers HERE
Watch on Youtube

 Follow
Appointment Only in IG: @appointmentonlypod

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thanks for being our first guest. I'm honored to be your first guest. We are so excited about this. And uh I told you I was gonna hype you up a little bit. So I think we're just gonna start doing that. We're gonna start by hyping you up, hype squad, so you feel really comfortable and really awkward right away.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Well, you know what? My love language is words of affirmation. So I am here for this.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Okay. So is ours, which is maybe why I thought to do this. Yes. But listen, okay, so it was the year was 2018, I believe. Correct? I think the year that we met. Do you remember? I think probably. That sounds about right. So 2018, we connected with you, which we'll probably talk a little bit about today, but we were sitting down chatting and you said something to us that I, it was the first time I'd ever heard anyone say it. And it just gave us such encouragement and empowerment. It was talking about small business and the fact that it's okay to want to run a great small one and not scale. And everything else out there that we'd ever consumed, everything we'd heard or seen or watched was all about scaling. And obviously, our connection point to you was about small business, which we'll get into a lot. But you were the first person who ever said to us something along the lines of the fact that it's great to want to run a great small business. And I carried that with me. And it was like one of the most encouraging things. And coming from you especially was just so inspiring.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Oh, that's wonderful to hear. I think it is really a gift when you think about it, where you have these opportunities to say something to someone else that maybe is just a passing thought that comes into your mind. And then when you hear later that it was an impactful thing, it helps us all realize what a ripple effect you can have on the people around you and how much purpose there is in those moments. So that um very much honors me to hear that that was that encouragement meant so much and that that helped inform a direction of your business. That's wonderful. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Of course. And thank you for being here. When we started kicking this idea around, we were thinking, what could this look like? We want to talk about small business, not just custom clothing. And we put together like who might be interested, who might we be interested in talking to? You were the first person on the list. Thank you. So, number one. So the fact that you are our first guest, it means the world to us. And we are so honored that you're here. And you look amazing.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Well, thank you. This is a King Brothers original.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

It is an original, and you wear it well.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

This is Appointment Only, the podcast for entrepreneurs building profitable high-end businesses. If you want control, profit, and freedom from the endless hustle, this is for you. We're Kenny and Danny, twin brothers from day one, and business partners for 15 years. We're sharing insights from our own experiences running a high-end small business, the highs, the lows, and what we've learned along the way that will help you build businesses you enjoy running that aren't running you. We're here to help you continue creating businesses that support the life you actually want to live. Your appointment starts now. This is Appointment Only. We are joined in studio by one of our favorite people in business. Amanda Brinkman is here on Appointment Only. Thank you so much for being here, Amanda.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

So here's the deal about who Amanda is. You she may look familiar. In fact, she probably does if you're watching this. Amanda is the creator and host of Emmy nominated Small Business Revolution, streamed on Hulu. It was named among Inc. magazine's top shows for entrepreneurs. She's a nationally renowned brand expert, Forbes contributor, and frequent on-camera personality for national news outlets and celebrity interviews, ranging from LL Coljay to Peyton Manning to now appointment only. Your top build experience to date.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

The biggest honor you've had in your career, I'm sure. And after brown groundbreaking campaigns for brands like BMW, Reebok, and Sony, in addition to her role as an inspiring executive at Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies, she's now a bit on a bit of an entrepreneurial path herself. And I'm so excited to have this conversation with you, Amanda, because you have been so impactful, not just on us, but on hundreds, thousands of small businesses and small business owners and entrepreneurs around the world.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Thank you. That I never I never really stopped to think about that kind of impact. Thank you. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

It's amazing, of course. And I just wanna, I just want to hear from you about kicking things off. What exactly is it that caused you to find this passion for business?

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Yeah. So I uh spent my entire career in the marketing space, uh, as you mentioned, working for different companies in the healthcare sector, CPG, financial services. And then I ended up at a company called Deluxe. And um, they were known as a check printer, and they were about to celebrate their 100th anniversary as a company, and they had really started to shift their products and services more towards helping small businesses. And so when I was hired as a chief brand officer, my job or the task in front of me was how do we use our centennial celebration to reach more small businesses and kind of use the centennial to talk about our future and not just our legacy or our past products? And so, as a marketer, whenever I started a new company or in a new sector, I love to go out and spend time with the customers. I mean, you guys know, like the more the closer you are to your customers, the more you have better insights. You can scale your business in the right way. You how do you communicate with people if you don't understand what it's like to be them on a day-to-day basis? As the business world, we're so data-rich now, but nothing can replace kind of that qualitative, almost ethnographic, like uh anthropologic like research. So I was out spending time with small businesses in order to kind of come up with what will be our idea for reaching small businesses. And as I was out meeting with small businesses, I was just so moved by their stories, you know, why they started their business, what's hard about running their business, what they were learning in building their business. And I thought, you know, I had spent my whole career trying to prove this thesis that companies can do well by doing good. And doing well by deluxe standards would be raising our brand awareness with small businesses. And it struck me that doing good for small businesses would be to drive more business. And could we use our platform to actually create a movement to get people to understand the importance of supporting small businesses? So not just saying that we love small businesses, but like putting your money where your mouth is and supporting them. And so we decided to do something called the small business revolution, where we featured a hundred small businesses over the course of our hundredth year. And we rolled those out throughout our centennial celebration. And then it evolved into an unscripted reality show on Hulu, and it be it gave uh it had a life of its own, but that's how it all began was it was really a marketing challenge. How do I help this company reach more small businesses? And again, as a marketer, I think you do something good for the people you want to reach, and it organically happens.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

It was interesting because obviously that was our introduction to you was through watching the show. And uh I remember watching the was it the Wabash season? Was that the first season? Yeah, it was season one, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The w the Wabash season in Wabash, Indiana. Correct. Yeah. We were watching the season, and because at the time, I believe, you know, obviously Shark Tank has been on forever, but you know, there was The Profit, which was also a small business show. We're we've always loved like business focused TV shows. And and of course, we know that there's some, oh, you should say this and do that. And we know that there's some scripted stuff, but I don't know who found out about the show. It was probably you. You you generally do. Yeah, you it is usually me, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 7:56

You have such a finger on the pulse.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

I do. I know what's current. So checked in. Yeah. When it runs across comes across his desk, he's all over it. That's right. Well, anyway, I I guess I discovered it and we started watching it. And then we actually we actually started watching it at work, which feel felt so weird to like cue up a show while we were in between appointments, but we just like got so into it and we we we grew up in a small town. And so I think there was part of the show that resonated with us in that way where where you're in a small town and you're helping people and we can really relate to those people because that's how we grew up. But yeah, it was just uh that was our that was our introduction to you, was through the Wabash season.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Well, you know, this watching it at work though was helping serve the business, though. Like that was one of our favorite things we would hear in feedback from the audience that they were certainly that they loved it and they were inspired and they were moved by the stories, but that the small business owners who were watching it couldn't take notes fast enough that they were learning from it. And that was the whole point of it. Um, for those in your audience who might not be familiar with the small business revolution as a show format, it was essentially a small business makeover show. And as you know, each episode we would work with a different small business and we would help them with their marketing, their finances, operations, and then some sort of physical renovation to the space. And we really were defying the category, though you named some of the other shows that were often shared the same breadth in terms of, you know, business shows that were focused on entrepreneurial aspirations. But what we were doing that was different from the tropes of the category was we weren't creating faux drama. We weren't feeding lines because the whole thing is you don't have to create drama when you're featuring a small business. Like the There's plenty. Yeah, it just exists. You know, there's there's tons of stress already. You don't need to uh actually create it, especially when you start talking about the finances 100%. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

That's when the drama starts.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Well, we used to always say it was a small business makeover show with heart. Like that was a really important part. And even when the show was early on and we were seeking distribution and talking to the different streamers and the different networks. A couple of the networks that we talked to, they wanted me to act more like as the I was the host of the show. Um, they wanted me to act more like Marcus Slimonis and kind of like and do the kind of the yelling and how could you get this wrong? And it was like badass. And it was like, that's not the ethos of the show. I don't think that's that's not me. And that's not how we want to walk alongside these businesses. I think we can for sure help them run it better, but we don't need to make them feel stupid in the meantime. That's not how is that helpful? Right, they might think that makes great television, but I think people loved our show because it didn't do that, and it still was dramatic and interesting, and there were stakes, and we didn't have to, you know, make people look silly on camera to do that.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Yeah, well, I I actually I love watching people get screamed at on TV. But it is a rare human being. Who doesn't love that? But one of the things I remember about watching the show and feeling so connected to it was the fact that I remember you in particular were so respectful of these people and these business owners. And a lot of, I mean, when you when you're watching and you've you've been through it, there are a lot of things that feel basic to a lot of people, but then you you forget, like, I didn't know this all the time either. I learned this at one point too. We all learned something at some point and we don't know it forever. So I remember thinking, well, like she's the way that she's communicating that not only is it very clear and direct, but it's respectful, which is totally different than what you're finding on TV. And I think too, one thing that was unique about the show from my perspective was I think that type of a show where there's clearly a lot of heart behind it and there it's coming from a really solid place of wanting to help the businesses as opposed to wanting to make good television, is it helped the entrepreneurs watching, I think, actually learn and and figure out like, oh, okay, I know I shouldn't do this, but I could do it in these ways and actually understand how to do it as opposed to like, you don't know your numbers, what's going on? Yeah, you know, yeah. So I I do think it was a it was a breath of fresh air for sure. Thank you. Just the the way that the show was and the way that you were as the host and kind of pulling back the curtain on small business ownership.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Well, and kudos to you for starting this podcast. I mean, I think one of the things we learned is that entrepreneurs want to learn from other entrepreneurs. Even if that entrepreneur doesn't have all the answers, there's something about like, well, you get what I'm going through too, because you're doing it as well. So when you come from, you know, a corporate office and you say, you know what you should be doing, there's a certain level of like, you don't know what it's like to actually have your personal money in this business or your house mortgaged in order to buy the oven to be able to meet the demand of the bakery. Like it so I think it's really helpful to watch another to learn through someone else's experience and someone else that you feel understands your world as an entrepreneur. It's hard to be a business owner. And I mean, you referenced it earlier, but like most people when they start a business, it's because they have an idea or a passion for something. They're great at making croissants or they really care about childhood, early childhood development. How does that possibly translate into understanding how to use social media to grow your reach or understanding what your numbers are or what they're telling you, or how you should think about scaling the business? Those aren't always that that's a whole different skill set. And so it was a blessing for my team and I to be able to use what we know how to do to help entrepreneurs to then help those business owners sit more squarely in something that they really have a lot of passion for and see a lot of purpose in. So you did uh how many seasons of it was it? Small. Six seasons.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Six seasons. So, and it was all over the the United States. And were there a couple things that you noticed season over season that were strong themes that either most small business owners weren't understanding or that you kind of walked into it a small business assuming I'm gonna have to probably share this piece of bad information with them or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Yeah. Um the list is long. Yeah, I bet. But I think also it's affirming to know that the things that most small businesses struggle with, most small businesses struggle with. And so I think that was also very affirming for the for the small businesses who are watching the show that they were like, oh, phew, it's not just me. I'm not the only one. Who doesn't know that piece of it? It just I just think it just makes you feel just better. Yeah. Um, but crazy enough, the number one thing is that businesses don't understand how to use their Google listing. Uh, and so they're they aren't updating their hours, they aren't updating the phone number, the website link might not work, they're not using the categories and the metadata you can use within your Google listing to be findable online. Um, we worked with uh an incredible restaurant here in uh Minneapolis for season six. We brought it home and we can talk more about that, but they weren't even listed as a lunch spot and they were curious why they weren't getting more lunch business. But people search uh one of the biggest tips is like just pretend you're the customer and then go to your search bar. And most people do their searching through maps if you're a retail or a restaurant or coffee shop, anything like that. And so search the way you think your customers are gonna search, you know what? And most people are like coffee shop near me, lunch spot open now. Like they're, you know, and so a lot of times you're you're missing what we call search authority or search volume because you're you're just not listed in the right way. And so it's time well spent, and your Google listing doesn't cost you anything as a business. It costs you some time. Um, but it's very simple to use. And so almost every every town that we would visit in determining the winning town, there's a whole process for it. Um, and every town that we ended up featuring, um, uh Julie Gordon on our team, who is amazing, would go like door to door and help all of the businesses fix their Google listing because it's like the easiest way to start bringing in more customers. Absolutely. So I wish it was more of a or not, I don't know if I wish. Isn't it surprising that it's not a more complicated answer? Like you would think it's like cross-functional scalability surplus inventory. I don't know. Jargon, jargon, jargon. Jargon, jargon, jargon. No, it's your Google listing isn't working for you.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

So yeah, that's a big number one thing we are saw. What about like as far as the numbers go? Because I feel like so many small business owners, they don't think where, and I mean, I'm speaking for us too. We do not think necessarily with uh finances first and foremost. We got into this business, our business because we're creative. And then all of a sudden you're and you're figuring out taxes and profits and all of that. Was there something that you noticed across the board with lots of small businesses that they weren't really maximizing as far as their money went?

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Yes. So I I actually think the pandemic helped some businesses because there was a forced moment where you had to, or the businesses that not only survived the pandemic but could thrive within it, really figured out what is making me the most money in my business and how do I double down on that and ignore the rest until we get through this. And that kind of judicious analysis is actually really healthy all the time. So we we see a lot is that entrepreneurs, the thing that makes you an entrepreneur is that you have ideas, right? And you believe in them and you believe that you can scale them and bring them to people. And so that is the very thing that you have to also watch out for is that you have a lot of ideas. And ideas can be expensive. And adding, I don't know about for you guys, but like if you had a I maybe if you had a certain fabric line or a certain additional offering, there's an investment that has to be made to do that. And it can be very tempting to do it. And so the when we talk about people knowing their numbers, it's really about understanding your profitability. It's really understanding what are you, what are your highest margins and how are you making sure that you have a lot of volume around those items in order to then also be able to invest in some of these more creative things that bring you joy or are fun or could be potentially a growth, but you can test into them, you know, instead of investing in this big inventory purchase, is there a way to kind of dabble, see if there's interest, if if the market's demanding it? So that's what we saw a lot was that businesses just didn't understand the finances behind some of these decisions, you know, to add a new oven, like if it's only for one, like I'm just using a bakery as an example. If there's only one thing you're making in this particular kind of convection oven and it costs you twice as much as the one that's your high volume one, your money is better spent getting a second oven so you can double down on your high volume, high margin product. And that's not as fun, but that's profitability and that's essentially the health of the business.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

So oh Amanda, I'm so glad you said that. That was that's good stuff. Oh, yes, that's exactly what we were wanting to do. And that's one of the things, one of the things that we run into um as we talk with people in in the custom clothing space and and some of the people in our coaching program is I think as a because we are very much a high margin, low volume business. And I think those people who are running the businesses that are that are high margin, low volume, I think they have a tendency to take the things that they sell a lot of and be like, oh great, that's where I can give the best deal, or I can cut into my margin because it's what I sell them. I'm gonna sell a whole bunch. So I don't need to really focus on my profit. When you just told us, and what we tell people is the flip side is true, that's where you need to be making your the most margin so that you can explore some other things if you want to.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

It fuels it. That's how you fund the business. Yeah, there's two ways to make money in business. Either you sell more things or you make more money with the things you sell. That's it. Like that's those are the two things. And so uh figuring out always those two levers is yeah, how are you driving the growth? But then how are you? Also, let's just talk about growth for a second. I mean, let's go back to the piece of advice that that you shared was so meaningful to you. Is I think a lot of times, especially I think it's an American culture thing too in the business world. We're always talking about VC funding and angel investing and exits and growth, growth, growth, 10x, this and that, all to have this exit. And a lot of small business owners just want to run a really beautiful, healthy business that they enjoy, where they're connected with customers, that they're doing what they love. Growth usually means you get further away from the thing that you originally loved about running and starting this business. The whole reason. Like if you guys, if you were to play it all the way out, I'm sure you already have. But like if you were to keep growing, you're gonna do less of the customer interactions and the and you're so, I mean, look at you, you're just so well styled. Like you're gonna get away from that advice piece and and all the things that people originally came to you for because you're gonna be so busy working on the business, running the business from up here. And so, you know, I think a person just has to decide what kind of living do I want to make? And then growth is fun, but at what cost? There's always a way to make more money from your business, but at what cost? Are you sacrificing something personally in terms of balance? Are you sacrificing working on the thing that you actually loved and where you can grow your business best? I stand by that advice all those years ago. Like, I think why are we always so focused on the growth piece? Like just a really healthy business is a great option too.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Yeah, yeah. That was one thing I remember resonating with a lot in the show was as you would talk with these entrepreneurs, these small business owners, they were very much sacrificing their personal, especially finances, in order to keep the business afloat. That was something that so many of them had in common. Like they were so focused on keeping everything in the business. And we did this for so many years. And it would often take an outsider, someone like you or someone else from your team to come in. And I remember I can't remember who it was specifically, but there was someone I remember you really pushed, like you need to pay yourself. It's time for you to make some money so that you can live a life and you don't have to just be stuck here all the time working, working, working. Cause at what point isn't it worth it? Yeah. And that was like a huge light bulb for that person. And that again was one of those things we're watching, saying, Yeah, you know what? I think, I think Amanda's right about this one, also. So that was just, yeah. I I'm I'm every every time you talk, I'm just like, I'm gonna steal that. I'm gonna say that. And I'm Pretend like I made it up. That's what he does all the time. I'll say something good and Danny steals it, pretends it was his. Just like I was pretending when you were reading Amanda's intro, I was pretending you were introducing me.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That's right. Well, he's got that. Yeah. That's like a silk thing, I think. Um, but I think that's also you pointed. I mean, you're you're touching on something else that businesses often get wrong is that their personal and their business finances are intermingled in a way that is actually very dangerous and risky for the business, as well as personally stressful. And so I think um let's just talk about side hustles for a minute. Like so a lot of people sometimes will want to start aside, maybe they're working for a company or a corporation and they're also running this small business on the side and they're waiting until it gets to a certain point before they'll kind of leap. I always advise people if you're doing that, start saving right now and in order to cover your personal lifestyle for at least a year, because it's really hard to make the kind of money you need to out of any business in year one. You're building in that year. And so to then to jump from a corporate job where you might have a 401k match and health insurance and all of these consistent paycheck to all of your like the the safety and health of your family relying on this new business, it's too much stress. It's too much, it's gonna take all the joy out of what could be of starting that business. So, if for any of your listeners who are thinking about starting the business and are currently employed by someone else, the biggest thing you can do is reduce your expenses in life right now and save in order to buy yourself the peace of mind of letting the business mature the right way in that first year.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

How do you balance that with the idea that the the timing will never feel totally right?

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Yeah, great point. I think people want this like really smooth, like I'm not a skateboarder, but I'm sure there's some sort of ramp analogy in here. I know, I crazy, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Oh, so gnarly skater girl.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

I do have some skater shoes, but just because they're hips. I believe right. But I think people think that, but how could you possibly go from that? You've spent your whole career up into this point building up your compensation and title and levels to all of a sudden expect a brand new business to be able to sustain that level of income is like nearly impossible. And so there is gonna be that dip, but that's what I'm talking about with having personal savings so that you you understand what it really costs you to run your household for a year and that you have it saved up so that if you if your business doesn't provide that you're not, you know, in trouble. And so, but giving the business that patience, but there it does need to be a point where you have to take the leap. We see this all the time with businesses that they're like, I will leave when the business is at X or whatever. And it's like until you actually like have stakes though, until you actually need it to make money. Again, I'm I think you should have a safety net, but until you need it though eventually to make money, you're never gonna actually dedicate the kind of time and attention it needs to grow in the right way. And in the master of your full-time job will always win. You you want to spend time, you know, building out the software or building out the the portfolio for your business and working on it, it brings you joy. But uh I got that Zoom call in 20 minutes. I better get on. You gotta go to work. And so at some point there do need to be stakes. Um, but I'm just I'm just cautioning that people make sure that they have a financial, personal safety net that isn't tied into the business that can cover them so that until the business makes the money.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

I like that. And I I think our story in in going all in was we had to remove any sort of a safety net. And thankfully we knew so little about money that it worked and we're, you know, we didn't know what we didn't know when it worked out. And looking back, it's like, yeah, that was obviously the right move. But now I feel like when we have this conversation with people, our attitude is more like that. Just, hey, be be careful, be cautious. Because not everybody is cut out to leave everything, and and not everybody has the ability to turn their side hustle into their main thing.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

It's true.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Um, so that's I I like that you said that because there was a time shortly after we had gone full time and were all in where we were like, everybody should do this. I don't know why everybody should do this. Our advice to anyone, no matter who was go do it, go full time, you won't be sorry. And uh that's not great advice either.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

You have to have like you have to have first of all cojones, and then you have to have like the stomach for it. It's a different kind of journey, and it's not for everyone, and it can be quite stressful. And I think sometimes people do mistakenly take passions and hobbies and think, how do I make money from this? Because people always say, like, if you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life. However, you can also squeeze the joy out of the thing that was bringing you joy. I mean, unless you really think that there is a scalable, um I mean, it's down to business basics. Is there market demand for what you do? Is it scalable? Is it is there an opportunity for it to be profitable? What kind of distribution would it require? Like, you have to kind of test the wares of it too. I mean, you might love knitting, but like, is there demand for enough little knitting animals? Can you make those little, like my daughter loves those at craft fairs? There is a market for it. Clearly. 14-year-old girls say craft fairs.

unknown 27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Knitting.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

Oh, that's funny. Okay, let's talk about something else that I think business owners often mistake. I don't know how you guys did it when you first started. We probably did it wrong. When you get into business with friends or family, there are multiple businesses we worked with where it was so scary from the outside to see how little structure they had around the actual um legalities of the business. And especially with friends, it can take one fight and uh stuff gets real weird real fast. And it feels so awkward to talk about it ahead of time. But there was there was in particular a recording studio in Alton, Illinois, that would have been season three that we were working with and they were friends and we had to, and they did not want to do it. They just did not want to sit down and do it. Just felt too awkward. And we said it will be so much more awkward if something happens. What if one of you just decides with all of the greatest of intention? I mean, if what if you leave leave amicably, but one of you doesn't want to be in the business anymore, like, but you have ownership in it. You have to have those things outlined about how are you gonna buy the other person out, what kind of rights, who owns more, who it if one of you bought the equipment that should be reflected somehow. I mean, so anyway, um, for for anyone listening who is thinking about going into business with friends or family, with anyone, any if you're gonna have any sort of partner, first of all, rethink whether or not you actually need a partner.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

And then second, if you really feel like you do, be very clear about the the ownership and and have all of that set up and hire and spend the money on an actual lawyer to help you with it, because then it's not the two of you, but they'll ask you the right questions to make sure that you have it structured properly.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

It's kind of it's like a, I mean, it it is a prenup, sort of, because it's a relationship, it's a business relationship, but it's just, you know, it you're not nobody gets married thinking that they're gonna get divorced. You never know. And the same with business. You don't start a business with your best friend thinking it's not gonna work, but it it often doesn't. So just, you know, be safe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

This also relates, you asked me about commonalities that we saw across businesses. Business owners don't value their time the same way they value their fiscal resources.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Are we both smiling? I think we are we're both like biting our tongues kind of like that Grinch smile going where it starts really low and then it gets really high.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Well, this relates to the legal, the legal and kind of the structure of the business topic we're just talking about, which is you have to have a lot of clarity around what are each of you going to do? Like, literally write job descriptions. Again, that feels so awkward because it's like, oh, I know your sales and I'm operations. It's like, no, write that down. Like, be very clear because as soon as one of you starts to feel any sort of slippage of like, I'm doing more than you, again, stuff can get weird real fast. And then it gets awkward and then there's resentment and just builds over time. But oftentimes business owners just uh you have to pay attention to like how do you most uh squarely uh grow the business? What are you best at growing the business at? Is it business development? Is it uh product development? Is it employee management? Is it client retention? Whatever, is it the actual design, whatever it is, how do you make sure you are spending uh as much time on that piece of it as possible? Because it also, by the way, probably brings you the most joy. We're meant to feel good at what we do, and we usually are drawn to things we're good at as humans. And so making sure you're really clear about like what are you actually spending, like where do you need best need to spend your time? And then just because you can figure out the other things, it is money well spent to hire those things out, to employ other small businesses or entrepreneurs to do your accounting or your tax return or post for you on social media. Like we spend as business owners, I mean, I now that I'm an entrepreneur too, I fall I'm guilty of this. I definitely will be like, I can figure out how to update that thing on my website. I've done it for hard. How hard could it be? Yeah, yeah. And it's like, but I don't, it doesn't bring me joy. It takes me probably four times as long. I'm like crossing my fingers like, did I get it right when I hit like update site? And it's like, oh I mean, it's just it's better that I hire a developer to do it and they can do it faster because my time is best spent out at events and things like that. As I am a I'm a speaker now, and I need to just be out and about. And that is where I uh am best able to kind of grow my awareness and business.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

I I do think that is such uh such an underrated truth that most small businesses struggle with because they do feel the, I mean, we feel the temptation as well to, well, I'll just do it real quick. And because it's not real quick, you know, someone else could do it better and faster. And you hate it.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

And you probably keep procrastinating to do it, and it probably needed to be done. And it you're gonna miss a deadline or you're missing opportunity, or yeah. So it's it it feels painful to spend the money, but your time is your most valuable resource. There is value there too. We just always associate finances with the only thing that has value.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yeah, I don't know why that is, it just feels so much easier to think about.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

If you were doing the same job for someone else, your billable hourly rate would be pay up.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Yeah, right. Yeah, let's go.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

But we don't think about it the same way for ourselves. Like I'm spent, let's say whatever number you would put on your own is would you pay someone that much money to post on social media? Probably not. So why are you right, you know, or whatever it happens to be, right? Like in so anyway, you need to focus on how you can best grow your business because it also is probably what is bringing you joy in the business. And the further you get away from that, the less fun it is. And running a small business should it's hard, but it's rewarding and it should be fun. That's the whole point.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

I love listening to you talk because it's it's the it's so in line with what we say all the time, but the way the way we say it all the time is in is in the same way. So it's so great to hear you communicate things that we believe to be true, like your time is valuable and the disconnect between it's not just about, you know, monetary value, it's about time. Well, we're spending and we're always saying this is the podcast we wish we would have had when we were, you know, 10 years ago or whatever. And the things you're saying are exactly what we needed to hear then that we weren't hearing in quite this eloquent of a way. And, you know, we're over here, Danny, Danny joked about it a few minutes ago. We're over here like smiling like the Grinch as you're talking because it's just hitting so close to home. And it's exactly what we needed to hear. It's really good reminders for anyone at any stage of running their own business. And for the listeners, I know that they're I well, I hope they have their notes app open and are taking notes because this is so valuable. I do think we should transition and talk about what you're doing now and the lessons that you've been able to transfer from teaching and coaching and building small businesses and supporting them to now all of a sudden you're doing it for yourself. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about uh when the transition from corporate and host of a TV show and all of that happened, how it happened and why.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

Yeah. Okay. Um, so uh about uh three years before I left, I started to dream about, first of all, more time affluence, a little bit more control over my time. I love what I do and I feel good at it, but I wanted a little bit more control over when and how I was doing it. And so I really loved how the small business revolution was a beautiful case study in how a company could do well by doing good. And again, I felt very passionate about that, that it shouldn't be so binary that either your company that makes money or your nonprofit with mission, how can a company actually advocate and make a difference in people's lives? And so I felt like I was, I had this beautiful case study of that, and I wanted to go help other companies do that, but I didn't necessarily want to go be an executive at another company to have to do that and spend another 10 years at a company. I wanted to be able to do that through film, and so I wanted to start my own production company to help other companies create these long-form shows or documentaries. And so I launched Sunshine Studios. I learned a lot in certainly starting that business. But the other piece, the reason I left was because I wanted to be able to dedicate more time to speaking. I feel great purpose in affirming and encouraging people. You've seen it in my work with these entrepreneurs and small businesses, but I really feel like speaking allows me to do that at scale. You know, I am able to, I love having conversations with people one-on-one after a keynote, but also I'm able to share some of this, you know, inspiration from a stage. And so I felt a lot of calling to go do that. So I left to start my own film production company and to go out and speak. And I thought what I was gonna go out and speak on would be on how companies could do well by doing good. It was my TED Talk was on, it was what I had been booked to speak on up until then. But I had prepared everything about my exit from corporate. We had saved up personal finances, we had all of our personal finances in order. Um, I was really planful about what my team would do next after I left, how we would wrap the show. I had planned everything about it. I had my LLC and all my partnerships lined up for the studio. But the one thing I did not prepare myself for is how much of your personal identity is tied to what you do. And because I was working on something that was so meaningful and was truly, as you mentioned, changing lives and entire communities, I started to associate my personal purpose with that work. And so when I left and the show wrapped, I felt like I had left all my mojo there. And I remember the first cocktail party I went to, and someone asked me that quick, that classic question, what do you do? I used to have a really sexy answer. You know, I'm a chief brand officer at this big publicly traded company. I host a television show on Hulu. I mean, I would never say it like that. But why not? I would have.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

You would call Kenny and have him give you the intro.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

But that was kind of the answer, and that was like a much better answer. But the first cocktail party I went to, and someone asked, I mean, sometimes students was going well, we had business, this I was being booked to speak. I had a good story, but I could not spit out the elevator pitch in a way that made any sort of sense. Yeah. And I remember just standing there and just hot tears behind my eyes. I just, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what I just did. I just left this very reliable, lucrative career to start my own business. Like, what the fuck did I do? Like, what did I do? And I mean, people liked the other answer better. You know, when I hosted a television show, that was interesting. They could ask more questions, tell me more about it. I also cried less when I gave that answer than I did in this new one. So I started to recognize that I was having a bit of a kind of a personal purpose crisis. I was so focused in my career thinking about brand purpose for all the companies I worked for that I had forgotten to think about personal purpose. And I think when we think about employee engagement and we think about kind of this quiet quitting, or I just heard the term the other day, quiet cracking. Like people are quiet, cracking. What's that? That just like people are just like not doing well. Yeah, they're just not feeling fulfilled in what they do. And I think the pandemic opened our eyes to a different way of living. I think we all promised ourselves we were gonna make different decisions, we're gonna be more judicious about what we let back on our calendar.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

And we didn't because there was no definitive date where the pandemic was over. It was like it just life slowly like re-emerged. And it's but it's not like it was before. It's like some weird cloned version of before, right? Like restaurants close at nine now and like it's well or more, or just like weird stuff like that. You know, where it's like this is just not as good. Anyway, I feel like people are just really struggling with it. And I think the answer is to see purpose in your work starts to solve for some of that. So, anyway, so I started doing the research. I wasn't gonna just sit there and like boo-hoo. I am a I'm an oldest type A. I'm like, I gotta get to the bottom of this. And so I started just doing tons of research. I started reading any book I could get my hands on, listening to podcasts. I went on yoga retreats to the desert. I did a listening tour, anyone I would talk to, how do you find purpose? I was taking copious notes, becoming a voracious collector of ideas.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

Did you ever do uh what is it? It's uh that thing where they you like go to the desert and you you take the thing and then everybody's like puking. What is that called?

SPEAKER_02 39:16

Oh, awasca? Yeah. No, I did not do that. No, I did not go to quite that part. You didn't do a minor. I mean, I tried Reiki, but that no, no, no throwing up. But um, but I've I've heard that can be very I mean, I wouldn't know. That's what I was gonna ask. Um, but I tried just funny. Just I just shy of that. And I started to find some things that were making me feel better, some things that made me feel grounded, that reassured me around my purpose. But I also found that I think we've gotten the concept of purpose a bit wrong. And I'm like, I gotta start sharing this with people because everybody I was talking to, especially on the listening tour, they were also struggling with it. Even though they had some answers for me, they kept saying, I keep trying to find my purpose. I cannot find my purpose. And everything I read, every time the word purpose was used, the verb finding was used in front of it. Meaning there is some sort of action you have to take, and meaning you don't yet have it. And that so I said, I gotta, I gotta package this up, I gotta go out and start speaking on this, I gotta tell people about it, help them feel better and help them readjust how they think about purpose. So, do you want to hear how I think about purpose? I'll give you that. I'll give you the big so the the purpose pursuit keynote is like organized, and it's an online course too. It's organized like one big conclusion, three ahas and like five ways to see purpose in your life. So the big conclusion is that I think we've gotten the concept of purpose a bit wrong. We do use the term finding, which implies that you have to take some sort of mythical magical path to find it, some sort of woo-woo in the desert path to have it be revealed to you. And then we've given purpose a big capital P and we talk about it like it's something we'll do someday or find someday. And I don't think purpose has a big capital P. I think it actually has a lowercase P. I think purpose is much more about thin slicing our life and it's interaction to interaction, email to email, client interact meeting to meeting, um, how we talk to the parking attendant, how we interact with all the people around us. Like all of those moments in accumulation is actually your life. That's your legacy, is how you treated people. I think we've talked a lot about knowing your why, which I love that that's part of our lexicon now. But what I'm trying to advocate for is I think your how is just as important. How you do your work, how you treat other people, how you make people feel. I mean, in a customer service-based business like you're doing, like you have an opportunity of this incredible ripple effect for people, not just in the confidence they feel in the clothes and feeling like they're bosses because they have these incredible um custom suits, but because you treated them with incredible dignity and hospitality, and it was a wonderful experience. There's incredible purpose in that. You have a big capital P purpose in in the actual clothing business, but your lowercase P is just as vital to both the health of the business and your own meaning and fulfillment in life.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Yeah, it's interesting. Those are our nicknames. Kenny's nickname is little P and mine's big P. I was gonna I was I was biting my tongue. I was like, I'm not gonna take it there, but of course, leave it to Danny to take it over the line. It's so true that so many people are are kind of missing it. And I do wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that there was really no re-entry into our worlds. Like we had this long year of COVID, and then all of a sudden, yeah, we crept back in and now we're like, oh crap, we're we're right back where we were. And it just feels so uncomfortable. So we're searching for something. And here you are, sort of discovering what that thing looks like for you in your small business now. Uh, you mentioned you have a course where people can do this from home and and and at work too. What has that experience been like in getting into the online course world?

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Yeah, a lot of people were like, This is they would hear the keynote and they're like, this has to be a book. You should turn it into a book. And the uh first of all, a book, the process just takes a long time. And I'm in the film industry and I like to consume content in this way. And so I said, I I think I can take this keynote and turn it into eight modules. So it's eight videos, and they're all less than 20 minutes, and they break down a different principle from the talk in each one. I share more stories, more examples. There's like a journal prompt, something to think about for the day afterwards. So you could take it, you could watch one every Monday, you could watch one every morning for a week, and you could go through at your own pace. I just wanted to meet people where they're at. I feel like that's easier. I mean, I think we have great intentions to read these books. And then you read the back cover or maybe the first chapter, and then you kind of like sometimes personal help, personal growth. Stuff can feel a little daunting and a little heavy at the end of the day. Like, I don't need to read about becoming a better person. I just, you know, want to go to sleep. Um, whereas this is, I just think a very digestible format. It can be layered on for small businesses or big businesses on top of any or other sort of learning and development stuff you're already doing. Because this is about like if people can see purpose in their work and in their current role, they're not gonna leave your company, they're gonna double down, they're gonna see meaning. And so they're just gonna put so much more emotional, they're just gonna take their jobs more seriously and they're gonna, they're gonna show up better for you.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

So as you've made this transition from serving small businesses, you know, helping them succeed. Now you've become your own small business, you're running your own thing, you're kind of like, you know, walking the walk as well as talking the talk. What have been some things that you continue to have to sort of remind yourself of that you were telling small business owners that you're like telling yourself now?

SPEAKER_02 44:58

Yes, to be patient with growth. Um, and so uh I think again, I think it's just part of our ethos, it's part of the DNA of an entrepreneur if you want to go and you want to go fast and you get ideas, and here we go. And how about tomorrow? And sometimes you just you have to test into something, you have to try something, get some feedback, and then modify. And so I would say it now that I'm in my kind of third or fourth year now of business, I'm getting much more patient. Like I just had my second annual Purpose Pursuit Live, the the half day conference, and and it was very clear after this year that this is gonna become an annual thing. There was there's market demand for it. We sold out, we're at capacity, we need to need a bigger space. Yeah, we need bigger space, we need to bigger and better for next year. And I'm excited about that because now it's a third pillar. But if in year one I would have wanted it to go as big as it's potentially gonna be in year three or eight, year 10, it wouldn't have there wasn't demand there yet. But now, you know, there were a lot of people who came back and then new people. And and so I think I'm just getting better at being patient with the pace of growth because it's gonna be healthier for the business, it's more manageable. I mean, a huge reason why I made this shift was because I wanted, as I mentioned, time affluence. Again, we always think about fiscal affluence, but like actually owning your own time is the real win. Like that's actually success, is that you get to choose who you're spending time with, how you're spending your time, and what you're doing. And entrepreneurs have way more control over that, A, than we think we do. And B, that should be the gift of being an entrepreneur. But running a business, I think is a little bit like studying for a test. You could always do more, you could always review again. You could always be, you know, and never quite to you. Right, exactly. And so I think it's about kind of being a good boss to yourself and saying, no, you've done great work. This is a good pace. This is, you know, you also have a life you want to live.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

And do you think the time affluence is probably is like the thing that you enjoy the most about being on your own? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Yes. We have a a teenage daughter, we've got four years, we have just a one and only. And so I call it cliff nesting. Like when she leaves the house, yeah. That's it. Like a lot of a lot of people have multiple kids. And so they'll kind of like it'll be a gradual thing. For us, it's like, I just really want to be there for stuff. I want to I want to drive her to school. I want that other parents call it windshield time. You have great conversations in the car. So yeah, I would yeah, I think it's it is my favorite part. But it's real tempting to want to work harder at on the business and do more and faster. So I think it's just about pace.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

And I feel like you have to learn how to be patient and operate with pace and how to value your own time. Yes. Because I think that's one thing that used to drive me nuts when we first started our business is people who didn't own their own business saying, Oh, it's so nice. You you can work whenever you want to. It must be so great. And feeling in that moment like they have no idea that I'm that I work constantly. Yeah. And I'm always on the clock. And there is still an element of that today where, you know, if something great hops into my email and it's 7 p.m., oh, you know, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 47:59

And I don't, it doesn't feel as burdensome though, as when it was an email that popped into your inbox from someone you worked with or a boss. Then it felt like a violation of your personal time. But because you're working on your own business, you feel like you have that choice and it doesn't feel quite as yeah. I think it's uh it it's a really interesting and magical thing. What I've started to do is just write down, I have a just a document on my phone that's called Future Vision. And it's it's specifically related to the event, it's related to the course. Like every year when I do my event, I'm recording new content, new ideas, things I've learned in the last year. How do I add that to the course every time? Like, so I've got all these ideas. And so to kind of quiet the like, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, part of my brain. It's like, I'm gonna write it down. The idea is not forgotten. I'll pull from that. And I've done this multiple times where I'll go to add something to the list and I'll just kind of review it. And I'm like, oh yeah, like a couple of these things we've already started doing. And it just kind of organically started happening. So those ideas will find their way into your business when the business is ready. And so I I love that as a tool. Just like have somewhere where you write it down. It's not forgotten, but you don't have to do it like tomorrow. Um, okay. So uh I I might regret telling this story. But I um uh I used to, okay. This well, you guys again are much younger than me, but like I was in the workforce where we did not have BlackBerries or phones or email at home. Okay. So it was dialogue. I mean, we had to like uh so I but we did have cell phones. Um, they just weren't smartphones. Um and so we believe it or not, we remember that time. Do you? Oh, yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

We weren't in the workforce, but we do remember it.

SPEAKER_02 49:33

You heard the story, the lore of this olden days. Okay. So I would call myself in order to remind myself to do something like the next day. But I again, words of affirmation, I would be like, I would tell myself, because I at the time I did not have a boss that gave me that affirmation. So I'm like, I'm gonna do it myself. So I'd be like, hey Amanda, it's Amanda. You're doing great. You're killing it, girl. Okay, now remember to get Bob the call report for the meeting from yesterday and make sure you do all of the competitive reels and get those up. Okay, bye. And I'd sit there for I love you, bye. Okay, um, and then I would do that for a long time until one day I, you know, with these big voice with these big phones on our desk. And I was I sat down at my desk and I was getting my computer loaded and I decided to listen to my voicemails out loud, forgetting that they would be just voicemails. And uh all my coworkers heard me saying like whatever version of like, girl, you are killing it. And they're like, you are bizarre. And so then I stopped doing that. Instead, I started writing myself emails. There we go. Promotion incoming. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Brace yourself. Yeah, you're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 50:38

Things are about to get good. But I I share that story just to say that I think sometimes we seek affirmation from outside, whether or not your words of affirmation, love language, degree of um loving it, we all need that. We all need to hear we're doing a good job. And sometimes it needs to be you and to each other. And because sometimes you have customers who will tell you, or sometimes, but I think it's just really important to just stay grounded in your own truth and remind yourself that you're good. Um, I do it a lot with speaking, actually, where when I get off of a stage and I like I have particularly positive feedback or or the sustaining, like you can just tell, like, whoa, this was meaningful to this room. Every time that happens, I write myself a little letter and I say, because this you have those days, I think, as an entrepreneur, where you forget or you doubt yourself, like, am I good at this? Am I, is there anything to this, or is this just a bunch of nothing? Like, is this smoke or is this a real thing? And I'll write myself a note. I'll be like, this is a real thing. This is meaningful, it matters to people, you are good at it. And I'll explain and I'll write in the letter why I'm good at it. And I have had to on days when you're kind of forgetting that it's worth it, I've had to read those back. And it's really helpful to kind of like talk to your future self when you start to kind of doubt because it creeps in for all of us. And I think, especially in the entrepreneurial space, you don't have a lot of feedback. It's just yeah, you only use the health of the business as your feedback. Right. But uh anyway.

SPEAKER_00 52:06

Yeah, for us, we operate with a no news is good news. Yeah. If we're not hearing from people, that's a good thing. That's great. That's as good as it gets. Are you someone who, when you step off stage, you're like, oh man, everything I said was so stupid? Or are you like, that was pretty good? Like, how do you see it from your own perspective?

SPEAKER_02 52:21

Every time I I know it's of value because of what people say afterwards, but also I can hear it now. And I think it made me feel better. And so at the very least, that's a truth. Like that it it helped me see purpose that I'm not finding my purpose, purpose, that I need to be living in my purpose. And I have an opportunity to do that every day with anyone I encounter, and that the ripple effect we can have on other people is really powerful. And so every time before I step on stage, I say this little kind of prayer mantra like, okay, if if today's message is just for one person, if there's just one person today who needs to hear this, like let this speak to their heart, let this be for them. Let me be in service of this moment and in service of that person. And I always say it a little bit different, and uh every time it is like the most uh uh magical God moment, universe moment, whatever your term for it is, where people will come up and they will almost repeat it, they will repeat it like verbatim. Like they will say, You were speaking directly to me, you were speaking to my heart. I needed to hear what you had to say today. And what I think is fascinating is that the per what they say resonated with them. I mean, I make a lot, you've heard the the talk, I've I say a lot of things within it. Uh what one person says and then the next person online, what they say spoke to their heart is different. And I think that's what's so affirming for me in knowing that the contents of value is that like there's something for everyone to take from it. And we hear that from the course too, where it's like there's something that's gonna change your outlook on it. And sometimes you need to hear those things at certain times in your life. And some messages you don't need to hear right then, and others it's like, whoa, like, how are you seen into my soul at this exact moment?

SPEAKER_00 53:59

Yeah. Sort of going back to small business revolution because we're from a small town. We grew up in Wilmer. Did you know that? I did. Yeah. Oh, but did we tell you that before? Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm sure that came up. We're like always talking about the Cardinals. Go Cardinals. Go Cardinals.

SPEAKER_02 54:10

I think you guys are on like the welcome to Wilmer sign, aren't you? Like you're very successful entrepreneurs. Oh my gosh. You're like their claim to fame, I think.

SPEAKER_00 54:16

I'm on one side, Kenny's on the other side.

SPEAKER_02 54:18

You're how I know about Wilmer. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:21

Okay. Well, so being from a small town, like there are some things that are just so you cannot replicate them anywhere. And I that was definitely one of the things that fascinated us about small business revolution. So there is, I'm gonna see if I can do this. Wabash, um, Bristol Boro. Yes, Alton, yes, Circe. Yes, Ferdonia, and then Minneapolis. Yes, right? Yes. Okay. So is that the right order to do it? It sure is. That was impressive. Thank you. Thank you so much. Goldstar. But uh so as we were watching these small towns, they're not even that small, really. I mean, they're they're cities, small cities. We were like, oh man, that'd be so cool to visit. Have you ever gone back like and done a weekend there?

SPEAKER_02 55:02

Yes. Yeah, we um for uh almost every season would actually do a return to episode where we would go back a year later and check in on the businesses formally. Um, but informally, we've gone back. Um, I've probably been back to Bristolboro the most. We have some dear friends there, uh, Ron and Michael. Um, you see Ron in the Discover, Learn, and Grow episode, the early childhood learning. We love all of the communities that we were able to spend time in. But what is fascinating is we hear from the towns that, like, you know, they had like, you know, 50% occupancy on the main street, like open buildings, like no tenants in them. And a lot of them have like one, like now, and it's like years later. And like, I mean, talk about Ripple effect. I mean, it's it's no wonder I started to see my personal purpose in that work because it was truly not just changing the lives of the businesses we worked with, but the families who worked for those businesses, the entire community. And even if it wasn't a business that we featured, all the businesses got we would host marketing seminars and we'd go door to door and help them. And then just the energy, the positivity. I think sometimes it can be just very affirming to have someone come in from the outside and say, you have something really special here in this community. And then when we were filming Fredonia, that was the you know, we started filming that season in January of 2020. And we had the first scene of every episode. You know, we would we would film the first scene of every episode on one shoot and then come back two weeks later, two weeks later, two weeks later. And that's how all the episodes came together stacked because it was in real time. You're seeing the progress for each of the businesses. And so we had the first two scenes of every episode in the can, as we say, and then March of 2020 hit, and that was the first season that was nominated for an Emmy, like a real Emmy. And I think I think it was because it was almost a journal entry into what small businesses went through during that time. Like a timestamp. Yeah. And we also had to figure out like how to like film a television show from our basement. In the basement. Um, how to make it creatively and visually interesting, how to capture the stories without we could not safely go back for a while. We filmed a bunch of episodes in a big warehouse over here in Minneapolis where where Ty Pennington was my co-host that season, he was standing here, I was like eight feet over here, the bit, you know, the business owner was eight feet over there. I mean, we had to have these huge cranes and it was just wild, but it was kind of fun to figure out, you know? It was a panel. And it gave us, again, to talk about purpose, it gave my team and I something to focus on during that time where you could see how disproportionately it was affecting small businesses.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

And we could do something real to help and create this kind of roadmap for other businesses to learn from. Yeah. We were doing a lot of social content at the time in real time. Like, here's an idea about curbside, here's an idea about how to pivot this and pivot the word of 2012.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

Oh my gosh. Dials, cranking the dials up to the case. It gives you like a little uncertainty. I do find that it is sometimes like a little bit triggering to watch stuff and like watch shows that I mean, you guys filmed and there were some, you know, many drama shows and all that that were filming. They were doing like mask episodes, and it was hard. It's hard to watch sometimes because it just takes you right back.

SPEAKER_02 58:02

It absolutely does. For for any of your listeners who want to watch the Small Business Revolution, um, after I left Deluxe, we they did not continue with the Hulu relationship, but it is season six is still available actually on Sun Country Airlines. But all of the seasons are still available on YouTube. YouTube. Okay. And if anybody watches episodes from season five, there is a distinct moment within all the episodes where you literally the first two scenes are in person and they're like pre-time. And then all of a sudden you just have this like you can just hear the tin of a conference call, and and we have all these like this footage of like the Ferdonia Main Street, just like ghost town, you know, like basically tumbleweed, you know, coming through. I just got chills. It takes you back, it takes you back to that time and you can hear news reports. And even I it even still it yeah, it gives you a certain feeling.

SPEAKER_00 58:48

I still haven't watched any documentaries about COVID. Oh, you haven't? No, it's just like it's feels a little traumatic because when we when we were in, you know, 2020, we can't do what we do from home. And what we do is all based on people getting dressed up and working.

SPEAKER_02 59:05

Going to go places, they gotta go someplace.

SPEAKER_00 59:07

So it's like for us, it's like we we didn't even know if we were still in business or not for almost an entire year. So like that those types of of things to watch are like really triggering for me. And uh yeah, yeah. Anyway, um, my question was along the along the line, two questions actually. One, I want you to define what your what your definition of the word scale is because you've said it multiple times now and you're you're talking about it in in terms of some of the small businesses from the show and and other things. So I want to hear your definition of scale. And when you say, you know, is it scalable, for example, like what does that mean for you?

SPEAKER_02 59:43

It means can you take that same idea and deliver higher volume on that idea? Can you reach more people with it? Like scale in my space would be I took my keynote, which served the, you know, the rooms of 2,000 people at a conference, and now I can scale it, meaning reach more people or anyone, because it's an online course available to anyone, whether or not they're at the conference. So like I took a product, I suppose, or a service in this case, and figured out how to scale it so that it wasn't just limited by the room or the conference meeting planner hiring me for this keynote. Scale can also mean I use it sometimes in the context, certainly, of growth, but you usually need to be then selling more things. So just taking whatever it is you do well and profitably and then getting it to more people in a way that should should increase your margin because now you have volume underneath it and you have power of purchase and everything else. So yeah, that's what I mean by it.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

Um, the other thing I was gonna ask you is as far as like content goes, have you like read any great business books or listened to any awesome podcasts or things that you've and and sometimes I know we're all in different industries, and so we have to kind of be selective and pick and choose like things that apply to us and things that we can well my favorite podcast is uh this new one is called By Appointment Only.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:08

I've heard uh I've heard mixed reviews reviews, you've heard. No. Um, but other than your podcast, I really enjoy Guy Raw's. Uh, he has a podcast called How I Built This. That's a good one. I mean, it's I think it's a classic one in the entrepreneurial space. But the reason I like it is, as you know, he interviews entrepreneurs you have definitely heard of. But when you hear their origin story, again, talk about affirmation. It's like these are not trust fund babies whose parents gave them a million dollars to go start a business. These are like, it's Sarah Blakely who like cut off pantyhose and like had to like figure out how to like grow spanks in her spare bedroom. You know, I feel like there's a lot of power in hearing these entrepreneurs we look up to how hard it was at the beginning because we do this with everybody. We do with influencers or celebrities where we're like, well, that was an overnight success. Right. Yeah. And most of those people will tell you is like, yeah, it was a 20-year-old in the making overnight success, you know, because you don't see the hard work ahead of time. So I think he does an excellent job as a journalist and as an interviewer, helping uncover different learnings throughout those early years that maybe can be very helpful to an early entrepreneur to say, okay, phew, if you know, if the guy who started Sam Adams struggled with those things and had to go bar to bar with beer bottles in his briefcase to get them to carry it, I can keep the slogan too.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:26

Yeah. That's interesting that you mentioned those because when you say the Sarah Blakely, I I I can put myself back in shoveling my uh sidewalk at my house and the Sam Adams one walking around the park near my house. Like I've listened to both of those and I know exactly where I was when I listened to those episodes. If the answer is no, that's okay. But is there a specific industry that if someone's thinking about, oh, I want to start a business in this industry, you would say be really careful about that industry in particular. Oh. And the answer might be no. I don't know. I mean, I haven't thought of one. I mean, I know I know restaurants are notoriously difficult. Um, you know, but notoriously rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:10

I mean, talk about living in service. Like, I think that's the whole meaning of life. Is like we're here to be in service to each other in whatever way we're uniquely positioned to do so based on our skills and our interests and our journey in life. And restaurants are like the ultimate service, service, service. And so, yes, I think restaurants can be tough. I think it's interesting. I think you know, people are really worried about the creative space and AI. Yeah, but AI can't come up with ideas. Like, you still have to have a human brain come up with an idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:41

Some of the ideas they come up with, like so bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:44

Cuckoo bananas. Like it's crazy. Like it's it's a real nutty robot. But oh, do you guys do this when you talk to either your AI or like your phone? I'll always be like, I'll be like, hey, Siri. I shouldn't say it too loud, or she'll turn on. She's gonna go. But like, yeah, so and then she'll say something and I'll be like, Thanks, girl. Like I'll like thank her, and she'll be like, You're welcome, Amanda.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

You talk to Siri like you talk to yourself and your voice notes.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:06

I don't want to ever be out of the they say that you actually aren't supposed to like thank Chat GPT because even the response requires water. But what I find disappointing about that is I don't want us to get out of the habit of thinking, even if it is a robot, even if it isn't a real person on the other end. I don't want us to get out of the habit as humans of thinking.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:23

Anytime I'm asking chat something, I always say please. I do say thank you, but that's actually good to think about.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

I do sometimes I'll say to chat, like, um really great try. Like I'm just very, I'm always very, and it's like, I just dang it a man. It's not a computer. It's doing great. Yeah. I really appreciate your efforts. I still talk to it like you know, copywriters and art directors I used to work with in the ad world. Like, don't hurt its feelings. But sometimes AI and different tools and any technology throughout the evolution of technology helps us reach more people more efficiently. And that healthy scale means that you're able to reach more with the lowest amount of output and the lowest cost. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:00

Valuing your time is a great lesson, and it is one that you have managed to nail. It is one that we've, you know, we preach and we practice it too. I want to value your time. As we wrap, I'm curious if you want to just leave listeners with one final piece of wisdom, advice. You have a tendency to give good wisdom and advice. So I want to give you another opportunity to just kind of like leave people with something that they can chew on as they think about this episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:27

Yeah, thank you for asking. So this year at my Purpose Pursuit live event, I shared my core principles of purpose, and I'll do that every year. And then every year I'll share things I've learned in the last year. And this year I talked a lot about the concept of contentment, which is something I really struggle with. I I think when you're a when you're a striver, when you're a driver, I think it is very hard to like sit in the joy of these beautiful lives that we have built. We're always like, we we always say, like, oh, we'll be happy when we reach X revenue, or we'll be happy when this project is launched. The arrival fallacy. A hundred percent. And then you get there and then you're like cool, cool, cool, cool, cool for like twenty minutes, and then you're like, move the goal. And you just you never sit in it. And I think we talk a lot about pursuing happiness. And I'm trying to be really, really, really focused on pursuing uh contentment. Because contentment happiness is actually an emotional response to a mental state that is contentment. Like you actually feel happy when you feel happiness when you are content, when you realize what I have is enough, what I have is wonderful. It does not mean complacency. You should always still have goals and be driving and self-improvement and all this stuff. But to tell ourselves we will not be happy until we reach it is just robbing ourselves of the experience of our actual lives. We can be sleepwalking through our actual lives because we're always waiting for this one day. What are we in such a race for? The finish line is death. Like let's take your time. Yeah. Um, do you swear on this podcast? Oh, absolutely. Let it let it read. So I the name of my book will be CTFO, which is chill the fuck out. Like we need to just calm down and figure out how to be content. We need to figure out how to see purpose in the day-to-day life, how to enjoy these beautiful lives that we have built. Because what exactly are we waiting for? So that is my advice. I think that I will leave people with is like, how can you seek more contentment? Especially if you've built a business, you've done a remarkable thing. Enjoy the journey too.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:28

Love that. I love that. That is that is absolutely the purpose too of appointment only. And we're we're trying to encourage ourselves, anyone listening to enjoy the business they're running and not allow their business to run them. And that's exactly it's that's exactly what you're saying in contentment. It's possible, and it's so good when you can wrap your mind around that idea. We're a new podcast. We would love your love in the form of reviews, ratings, uh, subscribe, follow, all the things. We're so grateful that you've stopped by. And Amanda, we are so grateful that you've stopped by.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:06

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:07

Our very first guest episode, and what a banger it was. It's all downhill from here.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:12

Oh no, I don't think that's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:14

Just give us a five-star rating and subscribe, and then you can unsubscribe and you can take your rating away because it's all downhill from here. No, don't play. Don't do that. No, no, you know. You're gonna want to be coming back for more. But listen, Amanda, thank you so much. We are so appreciative of you. It's showing up to the podcast, but also just in general. Thank you. And everything that you have poured into small business owners, including ourselves. So thank you so much. Information about Amanda uh in the show notes. So you can you can head over there and you can check out everything that she's got going on on her website and her her course and the purpose pursuit and all that good stuff. Thank you so much. Your appointment's over. We'll see you next time. And that's that. Today's appointment is over. This has been appointment only. Your time is valuable, and we're very appreciative of you spending some of it with us. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for being on time. Thanks for being receptive to what we have to say. And if you have a question you'd like us to answer here on appointment only, please shoot us a DM. We would love to hear from you. We would also appreciate a five star review. We'd love if you'd follow along, follow us here however you're hearing this, and follow us on Instagram at Appointment OnlyPod.