If you've chased a dream far from home or followed a dirt road to see where it goes If you've seen the sunset on the mountains alone then you know the lonely side of freedom When tomorrow is all that you trust and the road never seems to stretch far enough If you've looked out the rearview and only seen dust and you know the lonely side of freedom You can call it hope or agree to seek something better When you've got all your near and stop there's a better life for me But from the lonely side of freedom the dream far from home and left behind Everything that I've known for love I don't know yet for life There's the lonely side of freedom, lonely side of freedom Oh I gotta leave the lonely side of freedom If you've chased a dream far from home or followed a dirt road to see where it goes If you've seen the sunset on the mountains alone then you know the lonely side of freedom When tomorrow is all that you trust and the road never seems to stretch far enough If you've looked out the rearview and only seen dust and you know the lonely side of freedom You can call it hope or agree to seek something better When you've got all your near and stop there's a better life for me From the lonely side of freedom So I wanted to just take a moment to mention a couple things here about what we're doing together And really take an opportunity to make a distinguishing note about the different kinds of practices So there are lots of different types of meditation practices and mindful awareness practices And those can be formal practices and they can be informal practices Formal practices tend to be those we'll be doing some each day where we're using guided instruction and meditation and practice for mindful awareness So meditation is a very classic formal practice so you're doing something very specific for a set amount of time usually And then informal practices where we take these practices into our everyday life And we're looking for how to show up in our everyday life and find the opportunities to practice all the time So you can practice these individually but really the beauty is how they work well together When you have some formal practice that you do on a regular basis that you know how to get yourself grounded And then you carry that formal practice out into your everyday life Everyday life is what really informs us of the need for these practices And it really enriches the practice as we practice in everyday life And then the other thing I wanted to mention is primarily I am sharing practices from the Vipassana tradition And the insight meditation tradition So one of my teachers is Tara Brock and we are using a lot of the content in her book Radical Compassion She has a lot of resources and information and does lots of workshops and online training opportunities And has retreats once we can get back to retreats from the pandemic And I think there's just a rich body of information from where I'm teaching this acronym RAIN So I wanted to offer that to make sure you know those are available You can reach out to me on social media if you'd like to have a direct conversation I'm Beth A. Smith on LinkedIn and on Facebook So let's take a transition moment here So this is where we're anchoring, we were doing one thing and now we're going to shift to another thing And let's begin and practice together for a few minutes So we'll take about five minutes here to practice in a formal way So just take this opportunity if you're seated or lying down or standing up To locate your body Just see what happens when I make that suggestion Like how would you go about locating your body Coming into a direct awareness of your body And again if you're seated if you'll take a comfortable posture And that's an upright posture yet relaxed And checking in with our posture and formal and informal practices Is a really great way to take a moment to recognize where you're at Remembering that we have a body that has all kinds of sensation And can generate so much information for us Around our experience and what's going on for us And now just allow yourself to notice the body breathing And in this way you're requesting your mind to actually witness the body breathing A lot of awareness opportunity in the breath You may notice it as it expands and then contracts And the small movements that happen physically that helps the body breathe And if your mind wanders off from the practice of witnessing the body breathing That's just fine. So just with some gentleness and kindness Bring the mind back to the body breathing Breathing its natural breath You may also notice that you can follow the breath and the body breathing While you also have some mind activity The mind may be wandering a bit So you may be doing two things at once Just allow that to be as it is And then gently guide the mind back to the body Gently asking the mind to pay attention to the breath And if it's helpful just take note to any way that you're narrating your experience right now How the mind may be making an inner story about the breathing Just notice that And just for a few last seconds here Tending your focus, your attention to the breath And as you're ready you can begin to drop that practice and transition from that moment If your eyes are closed you can open them And what I'd like for you to do is just take a moment to look around the room As you come out of that inner experience And just look around the room and notice objects without really saying much about them Just sort of moving your eyes around So we'll be working this morning with the inner and outer experience that we are constantly having So with the rain acronym, recognize, allow, inquire and nourish We're starting today at the very beginning with R and recognize in the rain acronym And this recognizing is a really powerful practice Around this whole idea of waking up So I'm going to share an experience from this past Friday And I like to share from my own life just for many reasons I think it's good to have some practical application to concepts and practices And also to just share I teach as part of my own practice right And sharing the way that I wake up is one of the ways that I do that So on Friday I have a meeting every two weeks with my meditation teacher and mentor And I was sharing on Friday how much I'm struggling I have a lot going on, I have a lot of real life stress right now And I certainly have lots of tools to work with that And so sharing with my mentor, I just feel like I'm struggling And then I said, with some emotion, and here I am I'm going to go to Longmont Startup Week and talk to other people about the power of these practices And here I am struggling And as a great well-practiced teacher would say My teacher said, well, Beth, don't you think other people are struggling too That you might have an opportunity to talk to And I was like, ah, yeah, that's probably quite true So there's a lot of power and learning in this recognizing practice of how to name your experience And being able to name my experience on Friday And certainly being able to name that with another person that potentially is a practitioner or even a friend To say what's going on for you Can really shift things as we learn to practice being with what is happening in the moment to moment experience of our lives So I'm not struggling this morning, right? That was Friday and this morning I woke up early and I was so excited to have this time with you And also noticing that all of what we're experiencing is constantly moving But the trick of the mind, the tricks the mind gets up to is it wants us to believe that they're going to stay like that forever Right in those moments where we're like, oh, I'm struggling and oh my goodness, this is so hard And then in another moment it can completely fall away and we can laugh about something or cry And have that release of like the truth of what's going on for us So recognizing is about the skill of learning to name what's going on And in the naming we want to be really simplistic Because the other trick the mind gets up to is it likes to embellish everything, at least my mind does My mind likes to get really active like struggling and this and it's because of that And it just starts blowing all of it up with a lot of storyline So here in naming we're trying to get really precise and we're trying to just use one adjective to name what's going on How am I right now? And that answer is very precise And then yesterday as we practiced we asked ourselves that question, how am I right now? And we ask it three times So as you practice really waking up to what's going on for you You'll start to notice the first answer when you ask yourself how am I right now Might be very different than by the time you ask it with a little space in between How am I right now? You may be doing that right now And how am I right now? Usually by the time we've asked ourselves three times We actually get more close to what's truly happening And some of the reason for that is we've all been socialized in our culture to answer that question in a very habitual way In a very passive way pleasantries that we exchange with each other And we've learned to actually not answer that question with a lot of truth I know for me in the pandemic that was a question that I used a lot And as people ask me even now as the pandemic has been going on for 13, 15 months I actually say sometimes I don't know because that's actually the truth of that answer Someone says how are you? And I pause for a moment and I say I don't know Of course in engenders a very odd response often from the other person What do you mean you don't know? Can't you just say you're doing okay or awesome or great Or some of those ways that we culturally interact with each other But the other experience I have when I answer that question really honestly when I'm asked And it's not always appropriate to do that right? Sometimes it's appropriate to have the culturally appropriate like yeah I'm doing pretty good how about you When you're with a friend or someone that you trust that asks that and to have a practice to be able to share that Can really be an enriching moment of direct connectivity with another person To say you know I'm tired or I'm too busy right? I have a very busy life I enjoy busyness But in the last year and a half or so I've noticed that I answer that question that I'm a little too busy And so that helps me wake up to okay I can't change the busyness but I can change the way I'm in relationship to it So I can look for pauses I can look for transition moments and it really helps me keep the pace of my life rich and active Without taking myself out of my life it actually sets me right square into my life So I've been practicing for about 25 years and I wanted to share just a little bit about those early days of coming to an awareness that I needed something in my life and discovering these practices So on the external of my life 25 years ago everything really looked pretty good I had a really good job I owned a home I had great friends I was really active in my life But I started noticing that something felt just like all of that good externally in my life didn't feel like that internally It's just like I would describe it as feeling sort of hollowed out right that those things in my life that I had been able to Generate and be proud of somehow weren't creating perhaps the level of happiness that I had anticipated And so I a longer story that I can I won't share all the details but I discovered a meditation teacher that I worked with for six and a half years And pretty early in my practice I woke up to the habit I had around wishing things were different And certainly my meditation teacher was able to help me understand that that's an that's often an experience that humans have around Wishing that things were other than they are right even when things are really good we can wish they were different So I really started practicing with that idea of this wish for things to be different and how much suffering that was creating for me in my life And so the practice of recognizing is seeing when those things happen and recognizing helps us stay in direct relationship with what's really happening Rather than the story we tell ourselves about it right so wishing things are different like yesterday and I shared when I was in my talk I left my notes at home and the moment of oh my gosh I don't have my notes and then being able to stay in direct relationship with that reality And then be able to make choices as I was meeting the moment of like no notes right I always teach with notes so It starts to help us with the other practices around allow inquire and nourish But it doesn't always have to happen in a sequence right so you can you can come into any one of these four practices and specific however they show up for you But recognize can be really one of the more powerful ones of taking us out of this habit of actually not recognizing things as they are And then missing the opportunity to be in direct relationship with things as they are So in my early learning also the one thing and we're going to practice with this here in just a minute that my teacher started helping me see Is because I like to be busy I get in states of overwhelm at times and I'm hoping that you can relate to states of overwhelm And what will happen in these states of overwhelm is I feel like I don't have any space like all of my to-do list all of the pressures of life Work and personal social all feel like they're really on top of me almost smothering me And so this practice is about noticing that there's me and the reason we work with our physical body is this is me and my physical body There's space around me almost always and then there's everything else So being able to recognize how I am in direct relationship with what's going on often with some states of overwhelm then this is a great practice to help with that So we're going to take a transition moment and we're going to practice for just a couple minutes here So if you'd like you can close your eyes and it's also okay to drop your gaze if you don't like your eyes completely closed And I'm just going to practice with you if you want to watch me practicing that's fine and we're going to open and close our eyes during this practice So just be in a comfortable seated or lying down or standing position and come back to the awareness of your physical body And then with all your sense perceptors feel the air in the space that is around your body You may actually feel some coolness or tingling on your skin Again drawing your attention to the sensation of space all around your body 360 degrees space at your back space at the right and left side of you And space in front of you and now as you hold that awareness if you'd like you can open your eyes Holding the awareness of your body the space around your body And then you can move your visual cues around to just see all the things in the room Just things and then come back again to your eyes closed Remembering there's all kinds of physical things in the room There may be people or animals There may be tables and chairs Computers And now again feel the space between the objects The space around you the air around you Coming back to your physical body again We'll stay here with our physical body for a moment We'll actually engage with the breath here for just a second With three breaths So more actively than the natural breath Take a breath in Just a gentle breath in but awareness on that breath And then allow that breath to leave the body Breathing another breath in See what you notice in the body as you breathe and then allow that breath out And this time on this next breath notice that the breath can have a sense of being round Almost oval where the breath pauses at the base of your pelvis And then it has a sensation at the top of your head In moments and I'd like for those to be around where you're waiting We wait a lot in our culture At the grocery line at a red light lots of waiting So look for those moments to come back and check in with yourself how you're doing See what you recognize And then tomorrow we're going to practice on allow We're going to hang out a little bit more on what we notice So I hope you'll be able to join us again tomorrow as we take a look at the acronym RAIN again I hope you have a great day. Thanks friends A dream far from home I followed a dirt road to see you where it goes If you've seen the sunset on the mountains alone Then you know the lonely side of freedom And tomorrow is all that you trust And the road never seems to stretch far enough If you've looked out the rearview and only seen dust Then you know the lonely side of freedom You can call it hope Or agree to seek something better When you've got all your need, oh stop There's a better life for me Far from the lonely side of freedom A dream far from home And left behind Everything that I've known For a love I don't know yet For life I ain't There's the lonely side of freedom I feel sick The lonely side of freedom I gotta leave The lonely side of freedom You've chased a dream far from home I followed a dirt road to see you where it goes If you've seen the sunset on the mountains alone Then you know the lonely side of freedom And tomorrow is all that you trust And the road never seems to stretch far enough If you've looked out the rearview and only seen dust Then you know the lonely side of freedom You can call it hope Or agree to seek something better When you've got all your need There's a better life for me Far from the lonely side of freedom A dream far from home And left behind Everything that I've known For a love I don't know yet For life I ain't I know There's the lonely side of freedom The lonely side of freedom Oh, I gotta leave The lonely side of freedom You've chased a dream far from home I followed a dirt road to see you where it goes If you've seen the sunset on the mountains alone Then you know the lonely side of freedom And tomorrow is all that you trust And the road never seems to stretch far enough If you've looked out the rearview and only seen dust Then you know the lonely side of freedom You can call it hope Or agree to seek something better When you've got all your need There's a better life for me Far from the lonely side of freedom I've chased a dream far from home And left behind Everything that I've known For a love I don't know yet For life I ain't lived all I know There's the lonely side of freedom I feel safe The lonely side of freedom Oh, I gotta leave The lonely side of freedom Thank you for all and I am so excited to be here with you guys this morning We have an exciting morning of recalibrate So we are going to kick things off the panel discussion On the future of entrepreneurship in America After that we are going into accounting And the essentials of forecasting And from 11 to noon We will talk about customer acquisition and retention And curating the right sales team So we have a good lineup today And I'm excited to be here with you guys Okay, so to kick things off this morning We have the co-authors of The New Builders Seth Levine and Elizabeth McBride And we have two, they're joined By two entrepreneurship for all entrepreneurs Adriana Paola Palacios Luna And Lauren Jenkins Okay, and so... Okay, sorry about that So Seth Levine is actually a Longmont local And a venture capitalist He's been working in the venture scene For the past 30 years And he's a partner at the Foundry Group in Boulder And he has also been very involved In the launch of eForAll in Longmont So I'm going to kick things off with him I think we're waiting a couple more minutes But in the meantime I will take advantage of this to tell you A bit more about eForAll eForAll is a non-profit organization That partners with communities nationwide To develop a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem We have been in Longmont Since January of 2020 And since then we have ran Four accelerator programs Worked with 42 local companies Which 74% have been women owned 66% BIPOC owned And 54% immigrant owned So eForAll is really Our mission is to turn dreams into businesses And we are really dedicated To helping everybody Make those dreams into reality So the new builders is a Great segue into the importance Of building an inclusive entrepreneurial community The new builders are And I will let Seth and Elizabeth Speak more to this from their book But they really outline The current state of entrepreneurship In America today And how in the past 10 years or so The word entrepreneurship Has really been turned into a Focus on high growth technology companies Which are very important Into the development of our economy But there's also the small businesses In all the communities across the US That are kind of the heart In the grassroots movement Of economic and social development And so I'm really excited For you guys to hear from them today And we will have an opportunity To, for people in the audience We'll have an opportunity to win a free book A free new builders book For those of you who haven't Had a chance to read it yet It's a wonderful, wonderful outline Of the current state of entrepreneurship And really focuses on how we are The need to support these entrepreneurs Okay, okay, great, okay So Lauren in Adriana If you guys want to turn your cameras on We're waiting on Seth and Elizabeth But we could go ahead And start with you guys Oh, welcome, so good to see you guys Thank you for joining us Hi Okay, so I'd love to hear Well, first of all, your first elevator pitch And yeah, introduce yourselves And tell us about your companies Lauren, you want to go first? Sure Sure, it's all good So yeah, nice to meet you guys I'm Lauren Jenkins, grew up in Longmont And I started a company called Many Money Management with my mom So she actually told me about money growing up By turning the house into an economy So I had to pay for rent and utilities and food And the big thing that I learned growing up Is that you get some money in, you save it You make sure you take care of your needs And you have fun with the rest And so we focus on teaching kids And actually adults about the basics of money Through a virtual learning platform So yeah, glad to be here Awesome, thank you Lauren Nagiana Yes, hi, good morning And my name is Adriana Paola Palacios Luna And I am the founder of Luna Cultura Art, Science, and Culture For thriving communities And well, Luna Cultura is a bilingual And intercultural space Where we provide services of training And consulting and research services In the fields of art and maker education And we do have this approach of intergenerational And collective learning We recover the tradition from our ancestors But we do a fusion learning With the new technologies and everything And we're trying to build leadership And a strong community of makers Moving forward to social and environmental justice And I'm very happy to be here, thank you Wonderful, thank you Adriana And just so everybody knows Sorry, just so everybody knows Lauren participated in our Accelerator program In our first accelerator program In Longmont And Adriana participated In our first fully Spanish Accelerator program In Longmont as well Okay, so it looks like Seth and Elizabeth are here, welcome guys Thank you for joining us How's your morning? Great so far We're a little ahead of you We're both on the east coast We've had more of a morning Sorry about the little glitch there No worries, it's all good We're happy to have you guys here So we were just presenting Lauren and Adriana And we will go back into Kind of describe the new builders And started going into that And so if you don't mind We can just go ahead and jump in And if you want to Go ahead and present yourselves first And then we can jump into questions Likeoro Fox to Okay, great so Seth's pointing at me Elizabeth McBride I am a coauthor along with Seth who's here as Well of the new builders Which is a book about It's really a book about of American entrepreneurs. And I'm happy to say that it is the rare small business book that's kind of poked its head into the national conversation. And we hope drawn some attention both generally to how tough it is to be a small business owner in the United States today and also to the fact that the new generation of entrepreneurs looks very different than the generations that have gone before. And, oh, I should say, I'm not only the co-author of The New Builders, I'm also a journalist for more than 20 years and the co-founder of Times of Entrepreneurship, which is a journalism website covering small businesses across the U.S. Wonderful. Thank you, Elisabeth. Thanks for being here. Hi, everyone. I'm Seth. Lauren, nice to see you. We met actually at the Yvral, I don't remember what we were calling it, but in Brad's bar and back when we used to get together in person more regularly. And Adriana, it's great to have you joining us. So by day, I'm a venture capitalist. I'm one of the co-founders of Foundry Group, which is, we say still based in Boulder, it's not really based anywhere anymore. We gave up our office in the pandemic and like half of us live in Longmont. So maybe I'll just call it a Longmont-based venture capital firms. I'm a big Longmont fan. And of course, along with Elisabeth, I'm the co-author of The New Builders. Also very involved with Eforall. We met David and Dash, who are the founders, founder and CEO and founder of Eforall through the writing of the book. But I've gotten much more involved now with Eforall as we brought it to Longmont and I've been working very closely with Carolyn about how to expand and how to make sure that we keep our programming as awesome as it's been. So excited to share more. I love these kind of hybrid online offline events. It's great. So, well, thank you so much, Seth and Elisabeth and Lauren and Adriana for everybody for being here today. So, this panel is called The Future of Entrepreneurship in America. And so one of the things that Elisabeth and Seth do so well, outlined so well in their book, The New Builders is first the current state of entrepreneurship in America. And so I would love to, if Seth or Elisabeth, one of you want to kind of kick things off with talking to us about the actual current state of entrepreneurship and how you speak about that in your book. Yeah, I guess I'll start and then turn it over to Seth. So what we write about, so maybe I'll tell a little bit of the backstory of The New Builders because for us, this book was a real journey of discovery and I hope it is that for readers as well. So what happened is that Seth and I decided we would write a book about entrepreneurs across the United States, not necessarily in Silicon Valley or New York, which were the worlds that we kind of knew the best from our careers as a venture capitalist and a business journalist. We decided to write the book up just about two years ago, almost exactly, I think, maybe a little over two years ago. But as we dug into the numbers, what we discovered is that entrepreneurship in America is on the decline. It's seriously on the decline. We say sometimes that it's dying in the United States because the decline has been pretty steady and pretty marked over the past 40 years and it's accelerated over the past 20. Now, we're seeing an uptick now, usually after recessions, during recessions, you do see a surge in entrepreneurship, but the long-term trend is definitely downward. When we discovered that, and I say discovered as in, this is pretty well known in academic circles and certain think tanks, but it just hadn't filtered into the consciousness of the American people and it really wasn't part of the awareness of powerful people in the United States either. I think that's because they had been lulled into thinking entrepreneurship was okay because the high-tech entrepreneurship is thriving. But when we looked at the numbers, we realized a couple of key things. One is that only about 1% of entrepreneurs take, of startups take venture capital. So that idea that entrepreneurship is thriving based on what's happening in the tech VC sector is just totally wrong, right? Because 99% of businesses face a far different reality. And we figured out a bunch of other things which I'll let Seth talk about, but what I'll say is that when we found that, we took that finding entrepreneurship is really in trouble. Small businesses are in trouble, startups are in trouble in the US. When we took that new finding of ours to our friends in the media world and the finance world, a bunch of them didn't believe us. They just flat out thought we were wrong. And we showed them the data, of course, and eventually we look at the dating, you figure out that that is indeed the truth. But that finding the fact we didn't know about it and the reaction from our peers made us think that we were telling a very important story. And so that's really what kicked the new builders into gear. And then I'll turn it over to Seth to talk about the other conclusions in the book, what we discovered as we went along and how it got even more urgent in the pandemic. And I think that the other conclusions are really important for an area like Longmont, as we think about sort of what's going on in Boulder and how we can better support entrepreneurship more broadly. So the other key trends that we uncovered as we did the research and wrote up the new builders is that the very term entrepreneur, our view of entrepreneurship has been overtaken by Silicon Valley in ways that are pernicious and really detrimental to the overall dynicism of our economy. And specifically we've narrowed our sort of terminology, if you will, around entrepreneurship to really mean just tech entrepreneurship, which is really unfortunate. And that's not what entrepreneur meant 100 years ago, right? Entrepreneur was a word that described the corner store owner, the farrier, the blacksmith, really everyone who was starting a business or operating a business on their own. And we've dangerously narrowed that definition. And if we have time, maybe we'll talk about some of the history there, which is kind of interesting. It was really Ronald Reagan who narrowed the definition, kind of used it as a diplomatic tool in the Cold War to really differentiate the United States and sort of the innovation that was happening primarily at the time in Silicon Valley, much of which was government funded as well. But in so doing, Silicon Valley sort of took it over and we think that that's problematic, right? Only about 1% of companies take money from venture capitalists, Elizabeth mentioned. And the vast majority of companies aren't high tech startups, although there are many are technology enabled, but most businesses are businesses, right? And the things, shops that you would pass on Main Street are companies that are working on community spaces like Audreana, and it's a much broader set of businesses than most people realize. And then related to that is sort of key theme number three, which is that we've somehow devalued businesses that sort of aren't scaling, that don't have this sort of massive growth potential. And we think that that relates to this sort of overtaking of entrepreneurship and the term entrepreneurship by Silicon Valley. There used to be lots of value that was ascribed to people that built small businesses because that was something, they were passionate about something and they built a business around it and they wanted to build a life for themselves. And again, as Silicon Valley has taken over our view on entrepreneurship, we've come to only value businesses that can scale, because that's sort of vernacular and the mode that they need to be in for Silicon Valley to be successful. But that's not really true across the broader economy. Silicon Valley likes to talk about unicorns. Elizabeth and I like to talk about camels, right? Little less sexy, they're actually real. So that's helpful. But the workhorses of the economy and what we really need from an economic development perspective, the economy actually needs a lot of camels, not necessarily unicorns, because there's so few and far between and the failure rate of companies in Silicon Valley is something upwards of 65, even 70%. So those are the kind of the main themes. And of course, the big thing we talk about in the book is just that the face of entrepreneurs is changing. We've got two great examples of new builders who have joined us on this call. But the truth is the people of starting businesses today are much more likely to be female. They're much, much more likely to be people of color. The fastest growing group of entrepreneurs are black women. And actually Elizabeth crunched some numbers a couple of weeks ago and put it in a Forbes article that she wrote up. But we believe that white males are actually the minority of business owners right now. And the last thing which we'll touch on which kind of wove its way through the book that we wrote is this idea of community and the deep attachment that new builders in particular but entrepreneurs in general have to place and to their community. Wonderful, thank you, Seth. So, and thank you, Elizabeth. So Lauren and Adriana, I would love to hear a bit from you guys on your entrepreneurial journey and maybe some of the barriers that you faced leading up to starting your companies and relating that back to the idea of entrepreneurship and supporting small businesses and the importance of building that community that is supportive. Yeah, and I think we'll probably touch on this a little bit later. For me, when I was getting everything started up like that's why E for All, big shout out to E for All was like such a big thing for me is because I didn't really know what to do. I mean, I know I had an idea. I knew I was like, yeah, like this is something that I think I want to explore. Like I wonder what it would be like to start a company. And like you realize like there's just an ocean of information and you like kind of don't really know where to go. Like it's overwhelming. Like if you just Google how do I start a company or like how do I start an ed tech company? Like the amount of resources and like information that's available to you is amazing. But like where do you start? Like there's not really like, hey, make sure you have this, make sure you have this. And as you start to get into it, obviously those things become clear. But I think like just the fact of like starting a company is such an abstract like idea that I mean, it's nothing honestly, probably one of the hardest things is just like getting started and knowing where to go. Not in Adriana, I mean, absolutely. Sorry, it's a, that is something we hear from a lot of the entrepreneurs that we work with as there's just where do I get, where do I start, right? And a lot of it too, I think is being able to have that push to start, right? And being able to have those people who say, hey, this is a good idea. And this is how you run with it. And that's a big reason that we are really, really supportive of mentors and with any for all and building that kind of mentorship community. And Adriana? Yeah, I think something like very important in the whole process of building a business is like, how do you move from survival tool?  It's like, okay, I need to have incomes and things like that. How do you move from a survival mode to more like a thriving? And so that's have been like a very good experience with E for All because then it helps you not only providing you tools like how to start, like how to do like marketing and financial, all the financial support and everything, like how to even create a spreadsheet like with the whole information and things like that. But also like building a community of learning which supports you to believe in yourself and say, okay, we know that we may have some many barriers, structural barriers and many other things as they were describing like a very complex context for business and entrepreneurship right now. But when you believe in yourself and you start making all these connections and it actually helps you to build a community. I think entrepreneurship can be kind of like a lonely path but also it has to be a community path because you have to support each other and things like that. So I think that's a very, very good thing that I got from E for All, like getting to know a lot of people, all the mentorship and all the other business that I'm working with. My cohort was like only Latinx women, very powerful and that's like a very, very good experience for me. Wonderful. And Elizabeth and Seth, and I know you've worked with a lot of, if we'll throw out your book you interview different new builders and I'd love to hear about your experience, working with them and kind of maybe outline some of the ways that we can further support new builders like Lorne and Adriana. Beth, you wanna start on that one? Sorry, just getting over to my mute button. Yeah, so I mean, we talk a lot about this in the book, right? I mean, I think much of the book is just, the book is sort of split, right? We spent a lot of time telling, talking about the research and sort of explaining the state of affairs and then we spend also quite a bit of time just telling stories of new builders because we want people, it's why we are excited to be on panels where we're really featuring new builders because we want people to really understand kind of what the landscape actually looks like. What are people interested in building? What companies do new builders undertake? But there's lots of ways that we need to change our systems of support for new builders starting with finance, but also extending through mentorship, right? And I think we've already heard this a little bit in the stories that Lauren and Adriana have told about the power of being in community. And so it's probably the better place to start just given that we're on a panel that's featuring E for All, but one of the reasons that E for All, we're such big proponents of E for All and why it's been such a successful program is it's really important to have community and mentorship and access to advice and in some cases, just examples of other people who have gone before you. The tech world has done that actually quite well, right? And we sort of joke in the book that there's a lot of ideas that Silicon Valley has kind of usurped or kind of pretended like they came up with that really they got from somewhere else and they've kind of taken credit for. But one of the things that Silicon Valley didn't invent, of course, but really did perfect in a way that I think some of the broader economy could benefit from copying is this notion of mentorship and working together on these broad problems. And platforms like E for All, we talk about a handful of others in the book are just really critical to addressing needs beyond just finance. But that said, Elizabeth, maybe you wanna talk about kind of the finance side of things because finance is important, right? It's the lubricant that helps businesses both start but then also grow. Yeah, we talk about this. There's one really interesting example toward the end of the book where Catherine Finney, who was the founder of Digital Undivided, which was a support organization for women of color. Early in the pandemic, she took $5,000 she had been saving for her family's vacation and put it into a fund for and just started giving it out in I think $50 or $100 increments to women. And all they had to do, all these women founders had to do to get it was to show they had a website or a bank account, very minimal kind of proof of a business. So this money just went flying out of the door and then the response back was incredible where all the women business owners, it created an online community on Instagram. And they all started sharing about that tiny vote of confidence had meant to them. And I tell that story because it's kind of the transition between this idea of emotional support for entrepreneurs and finance. And those two things are just kind of inextricably tied because it's when someone writes a check, whether it's an investment or a loan or a grant, when someone writes a check, it's a really an emotional affirmation, right? And the idea then that that can be, that you have an ongoing relationship with that entity or that they will introduce you to a larger network of other people who have money and can support you both emotionally and financially. That's the incredible support system that exists for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and that is starting to be built piecemeal across the country for other kinds of entrepreneurs. And E for All is an example of that. But it's an uphill battle right now for small businesses who are in the broader economy because our system of finance for them has really collapsed in the past couple of decades. There used to be 14,000 banks in the country and now there are 5,000. And most of that decline has been in the world of community banks which are so critical to small businesses the banks that are capable of creating that ongoing relationship that entrepreneurs and small businesses need. In fact, when we were working on the book, this was what we call in like academia an emergent finding, right? We figured out as we went along that pretty much every new builder we interviewed eventually had made their way to a community bank or a CDFI, a community development finance institution. And they were just playing this critical role that most people hadn't even realized. And in fact, in Washington, right? They're writing rules that are forcing community banks to shut down. So it's like this huge disconnect between what entrepreneurs of today need and what's actually happening in the economy. Yeah, so I'll end there. Obviously Seth and I can talk and talk and talk about things. No, it's questions. It's so important. And so, it's so interesting. I wonder in Lauren and Adriana, if you feel comfortable talking about any of your financial barriers, I'd love to hear your comments on that. And if not, maybe discuss another big challenge that you've had to overcome and launching and growing your businesses. Oh, Lauren, I think you're on mute. Oh, yeah, sorry. So yeah, in terms of like finance issue, I'm like trying to think of one off the top of my head.  Like other than that, like general, like the definition of a startup, I think. And again, like it's one of those things. Like if you don't come from the business world and you don't have a big business background and your family wasn't like in business, like you would have no idea what the investment world was like. And I mean, like I probably spent the first six months of starting a company just listening to podcasts and listening about like how people invest and like watching shows and how people invest. Like there was never a crash course for me to figure out what an investment was. There's not really a crash course out there. For especially for early stage people about like, you know, what you would need to look for if you were looking for an angel, if you were looking for a VC, if you were looking for a bank loan. And so I think like the beautiful and also the tough part about being an entrepreneur is that it's just so wide open. And so like those funding sources are available. You just have to either know the right people or know where to look. And those are two things that aren't readily available to most people. Cause if not, you're just like kind of shooting fish in a barrel and you can apply to all of the money and the startups and the accelerators, but pretty much all of the financial traction I've had is just because of like based on like people that you know, but I was lucky enough to grow up in Longmont, which is where I was out of Boulder, which is like a tech hub.  Whereas, I mean, I've got friends and I've got people who are starting different accelerator or like different like companies and different accelerators and they haven't had nearly as much access to capitals as I have just based on where they live. And so, I mean, this is like, it's a problem and I've gotten lucky enough that I live out this way, but I got lucky, like I'm the exception, you know? Yeah. Adriana? Well, yes, all the financial aspect, I think it has been also, well, it has been for me a challenge. And also, I agree with Learn about the networking. It's like how important it is in this case. Like Luna Cultura is a for-profit business, but my model is like business to business to consumers. So actually my final consumer won't have to pay for the classes or for the trainings and anything. So because what I'm trying to do is like close the gap of accessing art and make your education for all the communities that I work with. So what I try to do is to connect with these sources that sometimes I get like, I write to get a grant and things like that. And then it has been like an alternative for me on the having funding. So that's in that supports what I'm doing directly with the community because then I'm able to provide like all the materials and everything. So actually the people that participate in the trainings because that sometimes for them is a big barrier like to have to pay for a art class or something. So I'm trying to search for a different ways of funding my activities in order to provide these services. Yeah, and I think that speaks a lot about you as an entrepreneur, you know, as you're finding other sources to fund those operations. And so, okay, so let's see. Elizabeth and Seth, do you guys have any final notes on the new builders before we go into Q and A? Notes, not well, I don't know. I think it has been really great to see the momentum building around the book and to see that we are at a moment in history that people that this combination of the pandemic and all of the inequality in our society that became more apparent. Like we just hit the timing of the new builders and it was very good to shed light on the people who are really the backbone of the economy. And so I'm just really happy that we've been able to do that and to push that narrative forward onto the national stage. So I feel really great about that. And also just wanna say, you know, it was hugely fun and like inspiring to meet people like Lorne and Adriana, you know, who are building these amazing companies despite all the extra barriers or maybe not at extra barriers always, right? Like Lorne was saying, sometimes it's an advantage, right? But navigating a complicated landscape. So that's been incredibly fun and interacting with small business people. I think everybody missed it during the pandemic. So I hope that emotional awareness translates into more support for new builders. That's what I wanna say. Steph probably wants to say a couple of things too. Well, I just, I would encourage people to go get the book and read it. I mean, you know, I, you know, we wrote the book because we care about and are passionate about the future of entrepreneurship and specifically this sort of broader vision that is the reality of entrepreneurship in America. And I think it's been, Elizabeth opened with this but the reaction we've had to it, you know, it's unusual for a book on small business to be successful. Certainly as successful as this one has been. And I think it's because people can relate to new builders. They walk up and down main streets and, you know, they have friends who started businesses. Like they, you know, everyone knows lots of new builders. And I think that, you know, really being able to dig into the statistics around them but also in a way that's very accessible and hopefully well-written, I don't know, but at least we're told it's an easy read in the sense that it's a delightful read and a storytelling way of writing about it. So I hope people will take the time to read it or listen to it now that the audio books out because it's such an important message and, you know, something that we're trying to share with a broader audience. Yeah, I will second that. I just, I honestly had so much fun reading it personally. So I definitely encourage everyone to do it. Everyone to grab a copy and listen to the audio book. And it's, you really get to hear those new inspiring stories and just like Lauren's story and Adriana's story. And yeah, it's, I'm very, very thankful to be here with you guys today. And yeah. So let's see. Going into Q and A. Sorry, I'm not positive how to do this. So one second. So just open it. Okay. Sorry. While I'm pulling this up, Lauren and Adriana, do either of you have questions for Seth and Elizabeth? Or we can go the other way, but Lauren's talking your mute, your, yeah. I just said shoot because I didn't have any questions right. I mean, I'm a journalist, so I always have questions. So I can ask you, you also have questions. But Adriana, do you have questions before I jump in? Well, considering that you have researched all these like all the context and specifics, like everything, like what would be your advice on like, in order to actually make more successful business? Yeah. Well, I can tell you that what, I can tell you what entrepreneurs have and small business people have told me over and over again over the years, that the key turning point comes, but this is farther along, I think than either of you, but the key turning point is when you can turn over kind of the day to day stuff to somebody that you've hired. And that's when your business really starts to scale because you can devote time to thinking more strategically about it.  So, but what generally the advice is that as much as you can, you've got to connect with other people. That's what we said before, right? But not only for the emotional support, I think it's looking for partnerships that might not be obvious in the beginning, but partnerships that can really propel two businesses forward at once. So maybe that I've heard that definitely from small business owners over the years. Okay, great. So we have a question here for the panelists. How has the pandemic impacted entrepreneurship? Want to go, Seth? Sure, Elizabeth alluded to this, but you know, and this is not uncommon. I mean, often in times of crisis, people turn to themselves, right, to entrepreneurship to make their way. And so we've seen a drastic uptick in new, at least as measured by the applications for new business licenses since the pandemic started. Not uncommon, we see these sometimes when there is a shock or disruption to the system. Unclear how, what businesses people are starting and it's unclear what, whether that's a sustained trend. We hope it is, right? I mean, we think that would be a positive outcome to what has otherwise been a really challenging time. One of the other things we noted, there was a great upshot article in the New York Times, maybe a month or two ago, essentially asking the question of whether these stimulus checks that people got, turned them into entrepreneurs, right? And it turned out that people were taking that money, even though it was on a business scale perspective, wasn't a lot of money. We're talking kind of $1,000 checks here and used it to start businesses. And of course, Elizabeth and I thought it was such a rhetorical question. And of course they were. And so, you know, it really, to us begs the question of if people become incredibly entrepreneurial because you hand out $1,000 checks, what happens when you turn them into entrepreneurs, when you direct that money a little bit more specifically to people with business ideas and make the checks $10,000, right? Or $100,000. And so, you know, that is what we think the opportunity is. By the way, there were also some federal programs, the Idle Program in particular, to some extent the PPP program, although that was more of a loan forgiveness program than it was sort of a true small business loan program. But so many businesses took money under the Idle Program. And I hope have provided maybe a little bit of a roadmap for how we can do a better job of financing our entrepreneurial economy. We only, Elizabeth mentioned about 1% of businesses take money from bank or from venture capitalists, only about 17% of businesses take money from banks. And that really is the gap that we need to solve for 82% of businesses are left on their own. And they raise money from friends and family. They take money out of their home, home equity lines or they start their businesses essentially without any capital. And so closing that gap, finding innovative ways to fund those businesses, not necessarily big amounts, right? I mean, to my story about $1,000 stimulus jacks, you know, 10,000, 25,000 goes a long way when you're starting a small business. Perhaps the Idle Program will be a bit of a roadmap for how to do that. You know, I think that there's some silver linings here to the pandemic. Absolutely, and that's something we, with eForAll we do provide small amounts of seed funding to entrepreneurs as they go through the accelerator program. And it's always great to see, you know, what type of, what type of ask, excuse me, what type of ask these entrepreneurs are making, right? It's, you know, if it's a, it could be something for a piece of equipment. It could be funding to design and launch their website. Kind of those things that are in the beginning very, very necessary, but do have those costs and have to be able to cover those. And so, yeah, I absolutely agree on being able to build and discover other ways of providing finance, financing to these companies. Okay, and let's see, we have one more question here. What are the three qualities every entrepreneur should have? Beth, I'm curious for your thoughts, and then I have some too, but you go first. I'd love to hear also, Adriana and Lauren, maybe answer that question first, and then more in the French. I'll say the first thing is you gotta be able to take a punch. I always tell people like, you gotta be tough as nails to do this because you're gonna have people tell you it's a bad idea. You're gonna have to tell people like, I wouldn't do it this way. And I think like, if you can just kind of weather those storms, you could be an entrepreneur. Two, you gotta care about it because you can't weather those storms if you're just in it for the money. Well, you can, but you gotta really, really be in it for the money. So you either gotta really be in it for the money or you gotta really care about what you do. And then three, you kind of gotta be a little crazy.  I think I could do this better and just take the leap. So yeah, those would be my three. I think also, I think you have to love what you're doing because you actually gonna sleep with it. So, and also like being aware of taking care of yourself because it requires like a lot of energy and time that something you say like, well, I have to do it and because you're starting, you're almost by yourself and you have to be aware of taking care of yourself. So I need to that awareness. And yeah, I agree, a little bit crazy, maybe. Those are great. I think those are, I think it's so interesting to think about how those would differ if we were talking to tech founders or more of the more traditional like white male business people of 20 years ago because I think that what you need now is a little bit different. I do think it takes more courage to start now. So I think you need courage. And I think you need the ability to network. I think that ability to connect with people is more crucial than it has been because if you're starting out with not a lot of money, you have to be able to do the other piece of that, the networking piece.  And that's what we love about new builders and about entrepreneurs, right? Is that optimism? Is that persistence? It's that like a little bit of crazy. We talk a lot about, we described it as grit in the book but we talked a lot about the importance of grit, the importance of persistence. And I don't think we went in thinking about the importance of optimism but we certainly came out of it feeling very optimistic despite the fact that we truly wrote the book in COVID. We did the research ahead of COVID but then we started writing essentially right after COVID hit. And one of the reasons we wrote so quickly was because we realized that COVID was affecting new builder businesses more than the average business. And I think we were a little worried as we checked in with all of the companies that we had highlighted in the book at the end of the pandemic, right as we were going to press, which for us was sort of February of this year. So the book is very current, right? And we really truly finished writing it. Like as they were printing pages, we were like finalizing it. But it turned out that people were, despite some many hardships and people having to close their businesses and having to lay people off and sort of make things work, they were incredibly optimistic. And I think that optimism rubbed off on us certainly as we describe it in the epilogue to the book which is the last thing we wrote, which was February. We really felt I think more optimistic, frankly, than either Elizabeth and I sort of had felt during the pandemic because new builders are so optimistic it really rubbed off on us. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. And thank you for those answers. Absolutely agree. And working with entrepreneurs is a crazy time. It's a wild ride. And I absolutely love it. So thank you guys again for being here. And don't forget to get your copy of the new builders. And that's it for the day. Thank you so much. And we, next up we have, we have a 10 minute break and then we have a panel on accounting and forecasting. So thank you guys so much. Thanks everyone. Next time in person. Yeah. Thank you. Very nice to meet you. You've heard the saying, dance like no one's watching. It's easy to blend in and go unnoticed. But what if you let go? What if you march to your own beat? It takes guts. It's uncomfortable at first. But for those who have done it, they'll tell you it's freeing and it can take you to places you've never been before. Isn't that why you do what you do in the first place? The time has come. To dance like no one's watching. To lead, not follow. To ignore the status quo. The time has come to go boldly. Little sun, you keep me warm. You get a little cold sometimes to leave before the storm. I ain't ever built a life for. But I found a place I can't go on. Love it is, love it is, little life it is. Makes me feel smaller, makes me feel alive. Mountains in the west, there's a big old jet plane in the sky. I can't keep my eyes on the road. I'm driving down I-25, but I'm glad I found a place I feel alive. Moon don't you ever let me walk? They told me once, when I was young, you don't know the places you could go. I ain't ever built a life for all of my own. But I'm glad I found a place I can't call home. Yeah, I'm glad I found a place I can't call home. But I found a place I can call home. Little sun, you keep me warm. You get a little cold sometimes to leave before the storm. I ain't ever built a life for. Love it is, love it is, little life it is. Makes me feel smaller, makes me feel alive. Mountains in the west, there's a big old jet plane in the sky. I can't keep my eyes on the road. I'm driving down I-25, but I'm glad I found a place I feel alive. Moon don't you ever let me walk? They told me once, when I was young, you don't know the places you could go. I ain't ever built a life for all of my own. But I'm glad I found a place I can't call home. Yeah, I'm glad I found a place I can't call home. But I found a place I can call home. You get a little cold sometimes to leave before the storm. I ain't ever built a life for. Love it is, love it is, little life it is. Makes me feel smaller, makes me feel alive. Mountains in the west, there's a big old jet plane in the sky. I can't keep my eyes on the road. I'm driving down I-25, but I'm glad I found a place I feel alive. We are excited to present you to Brian Ormsby, who will be discussing the essentials of forecasting and accounting. Brian is, sorry, Brian, sorry, Brian. Brian is the founder and the CEO of Pantheon Solutions. Pantheon specializes in providing compliance accounting and contract management for businesses that work in the government space. Pantheon is a partner with the Boulder Small Business Development Center to assist all small businesses with issues with accounting and finance. So Brian, we will kick it over to you. Yeah, thanks Caroline. So yeah, let me get started. Let me share some slides here. I can find the slide deck and we will get going. So we'll put that in presentation mode. Okay, should be good. All right, so before I start, I wanted to let you know, I am a lead consultant with the Boulder SBDC as well. And I wanted to kind of give an advance to the Boulder SBDC. We'll be offering leading edge entrepreneurship series beginning Tuesday, September 14th. So if you're interested in this 10 session series, please go to the Boulder SBDC website and sign up. It helps assist participants with building business plans and start and growing their businesses. So with that out of the way, announcement requirements, let's talk about accounting and essentials of forecasting. So first what I wanna do is talk about the whole financial concept, which is personal finances, business finances, how these things run together. I also want to talk a little bit about credit score, borrowing power, and then we'll talk about cash flow. And then finally, we will talk about forecasting. So one of the things that's really important in a small business is understanding that your business doesn't stand alone. Your small business and your personal finances are symbiotic. So if your businesses has in trouble financially, you're having trouble financially and vice versa. So we need to make sure that we understand our business finances, long-term goals, your exit strategy in your business. And when we talk about exit strategy, this is kind of an interesting thing because most people when they start a business don't think about how they're gonna leave their business. It seems counterintuitive, but it actually is very important with what kind of business are you going to run? What are your goals? How long do you wanna be in business? What are you gonna do when you're not in business anymore? Do you want to build your business up to a sellable entity? Do you want to run your business until you don't wanna run it anymore? And then when you're done, you close the doors and it's over. So exit strategy is very important. And it's extremely important because it sets the tone for your long-term goals. Personal finances, how they affect your business. So remember when you go out and you see that shiny new truck or the new boat that that may or may not put a strain on your personal finances that your business is going to have to handle. So consider these things together. What is your retirement strategy? Is your business playing into that strategy for you? And is your, I wanna talk about this term lifestyle, which is on the slide. It means two different things. So on a personal financial level, lifestyle is how you are accustomed to living. So you wanna make sure that your business finances are set up to be able to allow you to keep up that lifestyle. The other lifestyle I talk about is the kind of business. So I think about a business in terms of, is this something that we are going to build and grow and become perpetual, maybe at some point sell. Maybe I turn it over to another principal partner. Maybe I sell it to my employees at some point. That is a business acumen that is different than what I call a lifestyle business. A lifestyle business for me is the kind of business that you want to keep very simple and you want to run it as long as you can do it. And then when you're done, when it's no longer suits you, you stop doing it and potentially you just close the doors. That is a lifestyle business. So we talk about your lifestyle in terms of finances. We're talking about the way you're accustomed to living. When we talk about a lifestyle business, we're talking about a business that will exist and then not exist when you're no longer doing it because it is based on you and you alone. So those things are important in kind of setting up that whole financial concept. How we want to look at this as we go forward. So the whole financial concept is also very interesting because we have to think about things looking forward, trying to stay ahead of the game. We don't want to get trapped. And when I say get trapped, I'm talking about these first two major bullets which are credit score and borrowing power. So if you're going to make in your business what you consider a business decision that may have risk, you want to make sure that your borrowing power is at its fullest prior to making a risky decision. If you need to pull a line of credit, if you need to make a loan, if you need to do anything, maybe on your personal side, your car is 15 years old, it's got 300,000 miles on it, you know you need a new car. These are the things you need to consider before making a risky business decision. The reason is because once you make a risky business decision, your borrowing power has dropped. So when you go to a bank or a lending institution, if everything's roses, it's easy to get money. When you go to a bank and things look a little risky, it's really hard to get money. So consider these things in advance. You've got to stay ahead of the game. Think about your credit score. What will doing certain things do to your credit score? On a business side, you're done in Bradstreet. Do you need a done in Bradstreet? That's a whole different conversation, but if you're in the government space, yes you do. Now, a done in Bradstreet number is required in the government space and because it is required by the government, the done in Bradstreet number is free. You just have to tell them when you apply for the done in Bradstreet number that you're in the government space. So, but a done in Bradstreet number may or may not even be necessary for you as a business owner, but it is a credit score for your business. Most small businesses, when you're dealing with sole proprietorships, LLCs, which are the most common businesses, your personal FICA score is going to make the difference because you're gonna be personally guaranteeing everything you do along the way. So, consider the decisions you make and what is that going to do to your score. The higher your score, the cheaper money is to get. Now, doesn't mean that if you have an 800 credit score and you've just made a crazy risky business decision that you're gonna get a loan, but it does mean that if you get a loan, an 800 credit score may save you a quarter to a half percent in interest. So, these are things that are very important when considering your whole financial concept and how does this work for your business? So, when we start, we talk about looking forward, a key to this is cash flow. Cash flow is vital to is your business, is your personal finances, is this symbiotic relationship going to work out? Because if you're tracking cash flow and you're hitting, you could have money in the bank. You know, a lot of people, they manage your business by, well, I've got money in the bank, I must be good. Well, if every month, the amount you have in the bank becomes a lower number, then you have a negative cash flow. And eventually, that's going to prove out to be a bad thing. So, I mean, this is common sense, but remember, when we're tracking cash flow, we need to know is a negative cash flow situation going on in my business right now, is that something that is going to continue? So, we'll talk a little bit about that when we get to forecasting, but what we need to understand before we do this is these relationships of when are you going to do what? How are you going to make your decisions? How are you going to stay ahead of the game and try not to go after funds when they're the hardest to attain? So, after you've made a business decision that you have decided is risky, and then all of a sudden you say, oh my gosh, I need money. You should have said, oh my gosh, I need money in the front. Get a line of credit. If you don't use it, it doesn't cost you anything. Make sure that you've got that set up before you make risky business decisions, because once you make that business decision, getting the money is going to be very difficult to attain. So, consider these moves before you need to make them. So, now let's talk about forecasting because forecasting is the key to how we are going to figure out all of the things that I just talked about. So, when we look at forecasting, we need to predict our revenues. We need to predict our expenses. The difference between revenue expenses is cash flow in the end.  Now, that may or may not be a good story for you depending on what you have to do with that $20,000 on a personal level, but it does tell you something. So, what we want to do with forecasting is we want to look forward and try to figure out what is going to happen in the future.  So, when we start looking at forecasting, we need to first look at the next 12 months. Once we can figure out what the next 12 months look like, then we need to look at months 13 through 24 and we need to keep that going, which means that we don't create a forecast every fall. We don't create a forecast every spring. We create a forecast and we maintain a forecast every month. So, it's a very difficult thing. If you're a pre-revenue company, then forecasting is extraordinarily hard. It's a lot like when you create your business plan for the first time and they say, so what's your five-year revenue look like? And you're like, I have no earthly idea. So, when we start looking at forecasting, the idea here is to ground yourself and then start looking forward. The further you look forward in your forecast and the more data you collect on a monthly basis, trying to kind of bring that forecast to fruition, then the better off you're going to be and every month your forecast is going to look a little better. So, let's talk about revenue predictions first. Revenue predictions are, sometimes they're easy because you have things lined up and you can see them and you know exactly what they're going to be. Sometimes it is a total crazy guess and you're trying to figure those things out. And I say, well, what we want to do is we want to reduce the wag wild guess out of the revenue prediction forecasting. So, how do we do that? So, we try to come up with actuaries. So, if you're a pre-revenue company and you don't know how things are going to go, let's figure out what's an actuary that if I put so much effort into the game, how much should I expect back? So, this is part about research. This is part about learning your business environment, learning your competitors, your customers, the whole gambit, right? So, we'll get down to how you used to work for a simulation firm and I'll use this as an example. We would submit proposals to the government every quarter when the announcements came out. And our history told us with every number of proposals that we submitted, we would win a certain percentage of those proposals. So, that is a good way to predict revenue. So, if I know I'm gonna win one in five and I submit five proposals every quarter, then I can expect four wins a year. And those four wins a year, depending on the proposal I'm writing and the value of the contract I'm proposing to, can give me a revenue prediction. So, think about that in terms of how do you do this? So, everyone is different in your space. Now, I think in almost immediately, consider the government space when I'm thinking about predicted revenue and stuff because that's where my experience base is.  How many customers are gonna come through your door? What's the average ticket? How many days are you open? How many hours a day are you open? These kinds of things are predictive of revenue. I do caution you when you start putting these things together to really pour the revenue model through. So, I'll give you an example. Years ago, I used to be in the indoor tanning business. So, my wife and I decided to buy a tanning salon and we looked at buying new tanning beds and the tanning bed company sent us a revenue predictor saying that there were 20 minute sessions and if we had three people per hour per session and we were open 10 hours a day that then we would see 30 people and our revenue would be this. Now, that was a horrible revenue model and the reason is because you can't put three people per hour in a 20 minute session because they have to go in, they have to get ready, they have to put the, when they get out, some people are putting on lotion, they're doing, so there's all kinds of reasons why you can't turn people in this cattle call the way their revenue predictor had said it would be. So, their revenue prediction was completely off base. In fact, it was very difficult, we found, to turn two people an hour just because of the prep time for someone when they got into a tanning bed to get into that mode of tanning, to get back out of that mode, get themselves ready to meet the world again. So, when we think about revenue predictors, think about the common sense, actually walk through the process yourself and see can this happen? For example, if you are a restaurant and you say, okay, well, we have got capacity for 100 patrons and if we can meet a 75% capacity and we can turn those clients every 30 minutes, what would our revenue be if the average ticket for four people were $60? So, when we look at that model, think about is it reasonable that we could reach 75% capacity all day long? It may not be, there may be hours of the day in the month where 75% capacity is completely unattainable and there may be hours of the day of the month where 75% capacity is way under what's going on. So, we want to come up with this rhythm of maybe three o'clock in the afternoon, your capacity is 10% but six o'clock in the afternoon, your capacity is 95. Can we turn people in 30 minutes? Is that reasonable or should it be 45 minutes or should it be an hour? So, when we think about revenue predictors, we have to think about the rhythm of your business, whether it's my indoor tanning example or a restaurant example, it doesn't make a difference, it's your rhythm and your business. So, that's what you have to look at. For example, another good one is a brewery. What's a healthy number of beers for someone to consume? If someone stays in there for two hours, you don't want to count them for 10 beers, that would be a really bad model for you and your business in general anyway. So, we have to consider what makes sense in terms of revenue and revenue prediction. Okay, so I think I've kind of beaten that one pretty hard here. But again, think about your business, every business is different. How is this revenue gonna come in and what makes sense? Now, when we're building the forecast, every month we have data allows you to create a more finite process. So, as a month goes by, we can look at that revenue prediction, we can decide is that a good number or are we going to grow? Or did we have an incredible month because it was our grand opening and now we expect things to kind of settle back to normal or like in and out burger, is there gonna be a line around the corner every day? So, let's think about those things when we talk about revenue predictions. Now, let's talk about expenses tied to revenue. So, for every sale, there is a cost of sale. Now, you may or may not in your accounting system have cost of sales or cost of goods sold depending on what kind of business you are, but it doesn't make a difference. There are certain expenses that are directly proportional to your revenue.  As your revenue goes down, those expenses will go down because they're symbiotic. So, we need to look at those expenses, try to figure out if you're a restaurateur, you understand this because you have what they call labor costs and food costs and beverage costs and those things.  So, when we think about these revenue predictors for businesses, we also have to think about the expense predictors against that revenue. So, that part sometimes is easy, but again, as we forecast and we get further and further down the road, we will get a percentage that we can count on, that we know that this is how business is done. But we can use the model. I think about, I think it was Taco Bell, but I may be wrong, stopped handing out straws except on request. And then they found out corporate-wide across all Taco Bells in the world that saved them over a million dollars just by not handing out straws until someone asked for it.  Think about how much revenue that's costing the company because they haven't defined that process. So, when you're running your business, you have to think about everything. Think about all of the little things and how does it save you money to maybe just don't serve it unless they ask?  Well, now maybe that water, you don't think causes you any expense, but those glasses have to be washed. There is an ice machine. There is maybe a straw. There is the water that comes out of the tap that hits on your bill. If you think about what that costs, as opposed to putting a sign that says water available upon request, these are things that are cost to your business and it's good for the environment. So everybody wins. So think about these things and revenues tied to expense because just because it's tied to your expenses or tied to that revenue doesn't mean it has to exist. So there are some reasons and some ways to streamline that process that can save you money. Now, fixed expenses are the next thing. Fixed expenses are things that do not change until you change the nature of the expense itself. So we think about rent. Think about a company car, things that no matter what you do, the rent is always going to be the same or will be the same with some level of escalation year to year to year. So fixed expenses are a little bit easier to predict, but they also create a level of risk because they're not tied to your revenue. If your revenue goes down the percentage of fixed expense to what's total going on in your business is much higher. So we have to kind of look at these fixed expenses, although they're fairly easy to predict, they can be very difficult in terms of profitability. So, and they also become the biggest risk when we start talking about decision making. Do I go to a bigger space? Do I, you know, want to get a car for one of my executives? Things like that really can hit your bottom line and it all sounds rosy at the time when your revenue is great and then something happens, your revenue dips and all of a sudden the fixed expenses are eating you alive. So in your forecasting, fixed expenses, although they're the easiest to forecast, they can be the riskiest when it comes to is your business profitable? So we talked about, I mean, I've done this kind of understanding the relationships and I've hoped that I've kind of talked about that as we go through and I want to kind of go into this revenue model. Now I have a revenue model that I am glad to share and I will give to the presenters of this meeting so that people can request it and we'll hand out for free. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about my revenue model and you won't see it, but when we do, if you do request it, it'll make sense. Now, if you use my revenue model, which is very basic or any other revenue model, honestly, it doesn't change the concepts of, and I say revenue, it's really forecasting. The concepts of forecasting are the same. So we'll have a tab in there that talks about revenue predictions, which we've talked ad nauseam about. We'll have a tab in there that talks about expenses tied to revenue. We'll have a tab in there that talks about fixed expenses. There'll be another tab in there about major purchases so you can sit down and say, well, we're gonna buy a new grill or we're going to need a vacuum seal machine or we need some kind of vacuum former or we need a heater or there's so many different fixed assets that you could buy, depending on what kind of business you have that you need to make sure that you account for when you're going to buy that and when you expect to buy it. And there's two ways that we have to look at this when we go forward. So obviously, how you buy a fixed piece of equipment, whether you are going to pay for it and in full when you get it, whether you're going to finance it, either lease or some kind of purchase arraignment, either one of them is going to have some type of expense of interest tied to it and payments going forward. And then how is that going to depreciate? Because one affects cash flow of how much money is actually coming out of your account when and then the other affects depreciation which affects your taxes, which in the end will affect cash flow again. So we have to look at fixed assets and look at both ways that they're accounted for in your system. So and we talk about forecasting, let's talk a little bit about your accounting system. So how you account for things in your system is what makes sense to you. And I like to talk about this a little bit just because I see small businesses will look at bigger businesses and their accounting system and then they will try to duplicate or emulate that system. And that's not necessarily a good move. You should keep your accounting system as simple as you possibly can, but with enough detail that makes sense to you. So if you, for example, you could have a line on your accounting system that says utilities. Utilities could be gas, water, electric, phone. It could be a whole number of things and it could be gas for the car for all that matters. It really depends when you're tracking utilities, does it make sense to know how much your gas bill is, vice your electric bill, vice your water bill, vice the gas that you put in your company car, so on and so forth. Only put that level of detail into your accounting system if it makes sense to you. Because you're gonna forecast the same way. So you forecast a level of detail that makes sense. If these bills are not generally important to break out, then don't do it. Now, bigger firms break out lots of things. They have accounting staffs, they can do this and whether or not they use it or not really doesn't make any difference. It doesn't cost them any extra money to do that because they already have five accountants on staff. Well, small businesses don't have that luxury. So let's think about your accounting system and keep it simple. And in that, it will also keep your forecasting simple. Okay, so I'm gonna see what my next slide is. So my next slide is a wrap up and it seems awfully early. So let's go back and let's talk a little bit through this wrap up about some of the things that we talked about. So let's talk about this whole financial concept. The whole financial concept, what's important in your personal finances, what's important in your business finances are symbiotic. So we have to know that in my personal finances, anything that I do, anything that I buy, I want a new house, a car, so on and so forth, potentially put a burden on the business if the business is how that I get paid. So in your business finances, if your business is profitable, not profitable, so on and so forth, are those things going to affect your personal finances? So unless you're independently wealthy, which I don't know very many people who are, these things we have to look at together. Talk about our credit, our credit worthiness and when is it important to get money and funds? So money and funds are extremely important to every business and it's always a good idea to line these things up way in advance and make sure that we have plenty of funds on hand to use when something happens and not make a risky decision and then try to go find money. So that borrowing power aspect we have to look at when is the most important part of that? And then cash flow and forecasting and we'll go into a little bit more about this. So as we're doing our forecast, as we're predicting our revenue, every month we go through, we predict revenue. So I always say start with the next 12 months. So if we're gonna start a revenue calculation right now, we would look from August to next July. We would take all of the data that we have from zero to maybe you've been in business for five years and we can go back and look at five years worth of data. But the nature of this being startup week, I would say that there's probably no one listening to me that's got five years of data. So we wanna take all the information that we have. If we have no information, then we need to do research. We need to look at like businesses in our space and figure out what can be predicted from that and try to create a revenue model. So if you're pre-revenue, this is extremely difficult, but keep at it, you'll figure it out because once we do this August to July forecast, then we will get August done and then we will have a September through August forecast and we'll have some data. And then September will happen and we'll have an October through September forecast and we'll have more data. And as the data streams in, the numbers will get smarter. So that's rule one, 12 months forecast. Rule two is 13 through 24 months forecast. We need to make sure that we are not just looking at the next 12 months, but we're also looking at the 12 months after that. Now the information is gonna be fuzzier, right? We won't have as much data to go by and it will probably be more about futuristic planning than actual numbers. But every month, update our forecast, we continue to slide those months out to the right. So the next 12 months represents a little further down the road when we're thinking about today. And then the 13 through 24 months should get clearer and clearer and clearer. So it allows you to then make business decisions because now I've got a plan that says, what do I think it's going to look like 18 months from now? How am I going to get to that point? And I don't know, throughout my entire life, everyone always told me, have short range, long range plans. And most of the time, I would just kind of go, yeah, whatever. And, you know, because yeah, short range plans, yeah, I know what I wanna do tomorrow and next week and that's really not short range plans. Short range plans are what are we gonna do for the next 12 months? And long range plans are what are we gonna do from the 13th month to the 60 months or retirement? So how are we going to get there? And this forecasting, if we only do one year of forecasting, then the long range plans are never considered. So going back to making sure our forecast goes out at least two years, it would be okay if it was three or four or five because a business plan should go out five years. And then looking at our personal finances, well, how do we get to retirement? How am I going to put my feet in the water in the beach on the golf shores? Maybe that's my retirement dream. How am I gonna be drinking my ties in Cancun? Maybe that's my retirement dream. So we have to figure out how we're going to get there. And, you know, if you're my age, I don't have a whole lot of long-term plan on that anymore because I'm a lot closer than I ever thought I would be. Now with that said, had I done planning 10 years ago or 20 years ago, I'd be in a much better place than I am now. So this is the importance of this planning and forecasting not only for personal life, but for business life. So now what I want to do, even though we're in this wrap up, I kind of want to go through a few scenarios with the different styles of businesses and talk about how that would roll through forecasting. Maybe those examples with the kind of business you're in will ring true, hopefully. And if not, you can hit me at the questions phase and then we will discuss your particular situation. So let's go back to the first business I ever owned, which was a tanning salon. And I'll give you a little history on that. I was extremely bored. My wife was extremely bored. Both of us had just left the military and we were looking for challenges. And so I had a friend that had a tanning salon that was getting ready to relocate and was trying to sell it. And my wife and I just had a wild hair and we bought the salon. And so from that, that tanning salon business, when we bought it, we sat down with our friend and we looked at how many customers they had. We looked at how many hours they were open. We looked at how many beds they had. We tried to do a predictive model of how much money we would make and we were so wrong. So this, in terms of when I talk about getting a new business, is how is this forecasting gonna work for you? Well, in a new business, it's tough. Because we, even though it was a friend of mine, I mean, I think he was trying to put rose-colored glasses on us because he really wanted to sell. So we found out that just because you had 500 customers in your customer log and you were open 12 hours a day, didn't mean that you were going to have any revenue. And quite frankly, when you get in the middle of November, a week before Thanksgiving, you can sit in a tanning salon all day long and no one's gonna show up. So we found out the hard way that our revenue predictive skills were quite lacking. So what we decided to do was to kind of create a predictive model. And so we did, like I'm talking about now, is tried to come up with initially a one-year plan of what revenue was gonna look like. And we talked to manufacturers of tanning equipment and looked at their revenue predictive models, which I gave an example of earlier, of one that was given to us that was just, totally optimistic and not attainable. We looked at our actual numbers. Unfortunately, one of the things in being a new business owner is we didn't get a lot of revenue data from the person we bought it from, which was a huge mistake on our part. You should be getting that kind of information by the person that you buy from, making sure that you have some real numbers to go by. Like when you buy a house, you should be asking them, hey, what's your average utility bills? Can you send me your last 12 months of bills? Same kind of thing when you buy a business is find out what kind of revenue did they achieve in the last 12 months before they sold it to you. If you can get two or three years of revenue, even better, because now you can find out whether that business is growing or declining. And maybe declining is the reason that they're selling it. So in the case of trying to create a revenue model for this business, of course, my wife and I were crazy go-getters. We're trying to figure out how to generate more revenue. So what did we do is we branched out into more things that even cost us more money. So you look at these models and you think in desperation, because we didn't know what we were doing, we decided that we would develop our own tanning lotion brand. So we contacted a chemist in Chicago who made us three different lotions. We contacted a graphics artist and created a design for a logo and got with a bottling company and got bottles and bought an apparatus where we could fill the bottles ourselves. So now my kitchen was a manufacturing lotion facility and we continued to lose money hand over fist because we had no idea what we were doing in that business. We had no revenue predictive model. We had no idea how we were gonna take it to market. And it was a wholesale disaster. So when I look at these things and I look back in my experiences, I guess that's why I'm standing here is because I can relay some of these personal, they weren't tragedies, they were very trying times. And the fact that my wife and I are still married after all that is probably the most trying. So considering how this works through, we have to come up with this revenue predictive model. So think about your business, think about where you're going and how that's going to work. Now, I am going to wrap up and go for time for questions because I think I've hit my moment. All right, thank you so much, Brian. That was so interesting and so great to hear your personal stories as well. It's wonderful to be able to learn from others. And so first question here, we have an anonymous attendee asking, how do you handle revenue forecasting when your historical data from last year is significantly skewed from the pandemic? Yeah, and that's the same thing. It's almost like pre-revenue where you have to try to do a predictive model based on what you think it should be. Remembering that the pandemic is a great lesson for us to learn because no one thought it could get this bad. So no one predicted this in their revenue. So consider, when I have a company that actually does three revenue forecasts, they do an optimistic, a baseline, which is what they really think is going to happen, and they do a pessimistic. And the pandemic has changed their pessimistic forecasting dynamic entirely. So it's really hard because the pandemic gave us many, many things that we didn't see coming. But that's something that you need to look at. Should we put together a revenue based on what we think would happen without the pandemic? And should we also put together a forecast if the pandemic were to continue? Because we've got new Delta variants and things like that. Maybe this goes on for a lot longer than we think. What does that look like in our revenue predictions? Okay, and this, well, this second question is when conducting revenue forecast, do you do a low, a higher just average? So if you want to. Yeah, no, I mean, again, what I'm saying is I think it's probably a good idea to create a baseline revenue model, how we think this is going to happen, the most realistic possible case forward. And then now you've got a spreadsheet that's fully populated, so you can make more copies of that. You can do an optimistic predictive version of that, a pessimistic predictive version of that. You could come up with what if our revenue was 10% more? What if our revenue was 20% more? So you could make as many models as you want. They could all be linked together. So when you change one, all the rest of them change and then you have all the data to look at. All right. And thank you for offering your revenue model. I will definitely be asking for that. And so just building upon that, apart from Excel, are there any other tools that you recommend for new small businesses or entrepreneurs? Well, I mean, I think a spreadsheet-based revenue predictive version makes the most sense. And because you don't have to go out and spend money, I think everyone has a version of some spreadsheet, whether it's Google Sheets or Excel. So that makes sense to me, so you're not spending money. I mean, there are many, many companies out there that do forecast models for a fee. You know, if you've got the cash, there are some fantastic systems out there.  So you sitting down and working through your forecast, and I keep saying revenue in terms of forecast, but no one knows your business like you do. So doing your own forecast makes the most sense. Paying someone else to do it, while that may be fantastic, and they may have a fantastic tool, they don't know your business like you do. So are you gonna get what you're looking for? And quite frankly, most of them are pretty expensive. Okay, thank you. And what is the most frequent mistake that you see small businesses make in regards to forecasting? So we use a term from Winnie the Pooh. So Winnie the Pooh has two famous characters, Rabbit, who's very optimistic, everything is gonna turn up daisies. And we have Eeyore, who is just the world is coming, the sky is falling, Eeyore is oh gosh, it's going to be horrible.  So if you are that kind of person, then be both. So what I'm trying to say is we want to find this middle. So if you create an optimistic rabbit style forecast, and then an Eeyore style forecast, reality is somewhere in the middle. So the biggest mistake I see is people either bring their pessimism or their optimism. Most people who are small business startups are optimistic. So don't be overly optimistic, try to be realistic. Okay, and well, sorry, there's a question here about getting a copy of the revenue model and getting the slides. So we will send those out afterwards, correct? Yes, I'll provide that to the group here and then you can get that from them. If for whatever reason that system falls through, my email is right here, you can contact me and I'll send it to you directly. Okay, great. Okay, and then we have a question here about credit score and how can I better build my borrowing power? Well, I mean, borrowing power is based on two things. Credit score is part of that equation, but the other part, and I say this, and it's a pessimistic thing to say or maybe cynical, is that if you need money, go to the bank, you'll never get it. If you don't need money and go to the bank, they'll give you a loan tomorrow. And that's why I use this in my presentation and I stress it so much is don't go looking for money when you need it, look for money before you need it. But the whole credit score is based on how long have you had credit, how much credit do you have? What is the percentage of debt to credit and have you missed any payments? So you have to really kind of live a good life in the credit world. Okay. Okay, and so on the one more question here coming in, we have, so you said to build your forecast 12 months out and to do monthly check-ins. Is this something that you are typically also checking on a daily basis? No, don't overthink it. If you do it too much, it'll drive you crazy. It's kind of like watching the stock market, right? So if you watch it every day, it will drive you crazy and your forecast is the same way. What you want to do is you want to keep a good set of accounting records. You want to close your books every month and then you want to update your forecast based on your last month's close. All right. Okay, well, thank you so much, Brian. I think that is the rest of our questions. So thank you everybody and we will, any follow-up for the revenue model, we will get that to you and up next, we will take a 10 minute break and up next we have a discussion on customer acquisition and retention and curating the right sales team. Thank you again, Brian. You're welcome. Downtown Longmont boasts innovative craft breweries, cideries and distilleries, nationally recognized restaurants and one-of-a-kind shops and boutiques. All comprising a Colorado-certified creative district and a national historic district. Downtown Longmont is your destination for small-town charm and moderate urban bias. With unique small businesses, tangible history and Colorado's best craft culture, Downtown Longmont has something for everyone. So come explore downtown, take a stroll, make a memory and discover what's waiting for you just around the corner or just inside the door. Well, it takes a little time to heal, I know it now. Hard times come and they go like all the rattle rain. So I'm leaving tonight with a poem to prove only dust in the rearview mirror I choose to ride under a sky full of stars tonight. Leave it all open wide, it's a cup of teas, you know, it takes a cup of broken wheat past the pain to a life built to fall apart. Well, it takes a little time to heal, I know it now. Hard times come and they go like all the rattle rain. So I'm leaving tonight with a poem to prove only dust in the rearview mirror I choose to ride under a sky full of stars tonight. Leave it all open wide, it's a cup of broken wheat past the pain to a life built to fall apart. Well, it takes a little time to heal, I know it now. Hard times come and they go like all the rattle rain. So I'm leaving tonight with a poem to prove only dust in the rearview mirror I choose to ride under a sky full of stars tonight. Leave it all open wide, it's a cup of broken wheat past the pain to a life built to fall apart. Leave it all open wide, it's a cup of dust in the rearview mirror I choose to ride under a sky full of stars tonight. A cup of teas, you know, it takes a cup of broken wheat past the pain to a life built to fall apart. Downtown Longmont boasts innovative craft breweries, cideries, and distilleries, nationally recognized restaurants, and one-of-a-kind shops and boutiques, all comprising a Colorado certified... Welcome back, everyone. We are so excited to present the next round of speakers. This session will be on customer acquisition and retention and curating the right sales team. We have two presenters with us for this session and first up is Eric Hostine from SMP Alignment. He's the founder and CEO. SMP Alignment helps business leaders achieve revenue goals by using simple and effective tools to align the company's sales, marketing, and product functions to a market-centered purpose, vision, mission, or strategy. All right, Eric. I'll kick it off to you. Hello. I had some instructions. This is a... You haven't seen yet. This is a very formal studio. And I need to first share my screen on Zoom, right? Shoot. PC. Where'd that go? It's awesome. It burns time. All right. Looks awesome. All right. So thanks for tuning in today. Title of the talk is Customer Acquisition and Customer Attention, Theory versus Practical Reality. So we're going to sort of build up sort of the theoretical way things work and then talk about real life examples about where things go. And notice that the retention here is called out in the title and that is because retaining customers is far less expensive than acquiring customers. So it's important to focus there. So going in reverse order, of course, the goal here is to retain customers. Question is, which customers and why? Prior to retaining customers, they have to, of course, make the decision to buy the very first time. And this is often where we think about sickening the sales team on them. And then before that, we have to go through the consideration phase. And this consideration phase usually takes longer and involves more people, the more expensive the product is and the more risky the decision might be. And before that, there needs to be awareness, not just only of awareness of your particular product, but awareness of the problem that it is they're solving. So we typically flip this upside down. This is the first round of marketing jargon and we call this the, typically we call this sort of thing, the funnel. And it moves from awareness through consideration, decision, and then retention. Some people like to see this left to right and that will often show up that way and let's say a CRM system. But I have a particular client that's trained me that we need to draw the funnels vertically because gravity helps. And we need every little bit of help we can when it comes time to moving people through. So it also noticed that the shape of the funnel is like a funnel, not horizontal or rather vertical because otherwise we'd be calling this the tunnel. And what happens is there's leaks in the funnel. So you think about this process much like maybe like a manufacturing process and along the way we're going to have yield or losses that move along that happen along the way. And then the way that people actually go through this funnel is what we usually call something called the buyer's journey. And unfortunately it's never really linear and straight like the arrows suggest. So we have to get those out of the image and what happens in fact is it's usually a very messy process where customers will become aware of the problem that they're having and aware of the solution that you offer and sort of bounce around their hem and haw for a bit. They might move to the consideration phase where they're thinking about changing but then might ghost on you for a little while and disappear. And this whole thing is really sort of messy. And many times business owners or startup founders find this to be pretty frustrating because she's why my product is so amazing why can't people just flow through. And I consider ask you to think about a corporate buying decision that you may have been involved with in the past and think about how many times it's moved smoothly through the system or a major significant purchase in your own world. How many times you've thought you were close to buying said product but then going back and doing more research or talking to more friends or deciding that you want to try out some other things before you go through. So all of this is really quite frustrating. And that's just sort of the way it goes but there are things that we can do as founders and commercial teams to set our companies up for success. But just to drive this point home I want to share a story that demonstrates how difficult our jobs are as company leaders to move people through our funnels. So some more jargon, right? So many times in the startup world we talk about things like the total available market sometimes called the TAM or SAM or some cool sounding acronym like that. And we think boy if I could just be in front of my customers when they have a triggering event and boy if this triggering event were so serious like oh let's say my life is in jeopardy and oh let's say I have a product that will is pretty sure to be significant in helping save said life. Oh it wouldn't be great if the price was right oh maybe free. Maybe it would be awesome if the inventory was in place. We didn't have any supply chain issues and so much so that that product is already available and literally right between your legs. Boy wouldn't it be just so easy to be able to sell this product. So here's a clue. Flight 1549 which was the famous Captain Sully flight that took off from LaGuardia Airport in January of 2009 had 150 passengers on it as the total available market. All of them had just gotten a product presentation about the the life vest you know blow here pull on the straps we've seen it all before. And all of them took off remember that both engines went out and it was known by all the people on the plane that the airplane was not going to make it back to the to the runway and in fact was going to have to live in the land in the Hudson River and no one knew that Sully the famous Captain was going to save the day and and therefore we're not sure if their arms and legs were going to be able to work and they'd actually be able to swim in the eventual water evacuation. How many passengers of the 150 took this took this life vest with them off the plane? The answer is 33. So nearly eight out of 10 people had this amazing product at their fingertips that they had just seen a presentation blah blah blah blah blah and didn't take it with them. So this is the this is where the theory and the practical reality come crashing together and we have to deal with these difficult realities. So what do we do with do about it? Let's go down and we're just going to quickly break down the funnel into the into the four pieces and talk briefly about some of the key elements. So this first part is is awareness and this is what the cool marketing people usually called the top of the funnel and will abbreviate it as tofu and it has nothing to do with your favorite soy product. And this is where we have to really start thinking about who our ideal customers are and we do this by building out specific personas and also by building out a market segmentation schema that identify exactly who those customers are. And once we've got that figured out we have to start doing some marketing. We talk about sometimes doing inbound versus outbound marketing and this is always sometimes confusing. So here's a fun little story that will help you figure this out. So let's imagine you're single for a moment. Maybe this is real.  And let's say for example you also are only like two kinds of music both country and western and jazz rock and those sorts of things just aren't all that interesting to you and you're deciding that you know if you want to find a bear you need to look in the woods. So I'm going to get myself ready and go out on a Friday or Saturday night to my favorite country and western bar to listen to some music and find a suitable partner. So the pre-work all has to it's all the same no matter whether you're doing the inbound or outbound work. You know you have to think about who it is that you're trying to attract. You have to think about what your unique value propositions are.  So inbound marketing would be as if you were to get yourself all ready and go sit at the bar and hope for your ideal mate to come and start a conversation with you. But you know that might be risky because this person might be a little bit crazy. On the other hand outbound marketing would be going through those same activities and deciding that you are going to find someone out in the in the crowd and go start a conversation with them. That would be like the outbound email but in this case you buy extra pap spool ribbon and you bring it over to the person that you'd like to start a conversation with and you get go and you start that dialogue. Now here you run into a similar risk one the person still may be nutty or this person may not find you attractive at all and may not want to have a conversation. But the point is is that there's all of this the odds of finding the person that you might want to get to know more the odds always go up when you leave home and go do something about it. The next stage of the funnel is the consideration phase and this is where what happens here? Oh this is where change has to happen this is where people have to start contemplating whether or not they're going to the problem that they're aware of and the solution that you're offering that they're going to have to go through this sort of internal dialogue and change analysis to figure out whether or not this is something that they might want to do. And this is always difficult I like to pick on my good favorite physicist Sir Isaac Newton who his first real law is that an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an outside object outside force but in the world of business I've changed this to say a business that rest stays at rest unless acted upon by a crisis and the if you've been through any sort of therapy sessions before you may have heard of this these six stages of change and this first one is pre-contemplation which is where people are not at all ready to make a change they get into the contemplation stage or they start thinking you know maybe this is something I ought to do and then they go through the preparation stage of things where they really start making the to prepare to make these changes and they actually take action and then at the end they go through this maintenance phase where they're actually maintaining that change now we know in reality that people will flop up and down through this through these stages of change much like they will in a sales funnel but it maps pretty closely to this idea of first awareness then consideration and then ultimately ending in retention where that change is locked in and then they are staying with you for the long haul next phase of the funnel is decision the decision-making phase and I want to warn the audience to avoid this sort of false character of the mythical decision maker and that is you know many times sales teams are marketing so we just need to get to the decision maker but I would argue that it's insulting to people in the decision-making process because all of us are in fact decision makers I chose to wear this shirt today you chose to come and watch this session you might be regretting that but nevertheless there were decisions that were being made I also have a story of a CEO that I worked for in a company several years ago I was sitting at his table at the holiday party and he was saying you know I always wanted to be the boss I want to always be the CEO so I could make decisions and then here I am CEO of this publicly traded company and I've got 12 bosses and this number 12 happened to coincide with the number of people on the board of directors of which he had to convince most of them that his decisions were the right ones I also had a scenario in my own practice where I had a CEO tell me you know we're going to start working together and we're going to start next week you know next week rolls around I'm like okay I'm going to show up what's going on what are we going to do and it comes to find out that he changed his mind and upon reflection on my sort of post postmortem of what happened I remember him saying during the discovery phase that there was one particular member of the board who had it out for him and I needed to you know I took that as my own responsibility and one of those hard life lessons that just because you're working with the CEO who you might think is the decision maker title and the title and who actually are the bigger influences on the decision making process there they're not necessarily not necessarily connected and then finally we get into the retention phase and this is again where you know customer success or customer service depending on the industry you're in are incredibly important because you've gone through all of this time and energy and effort and expense to get people through the funnel to be customers and this is where a lot of companies screw up because they don't have the operations in place to make sure that people are having an enjoyable experience once they've come and certainly we know that when we do have bad experiences we tend to tell our friends more about that than the good ones so it's incredibly important to have strong customer success delivery operations in place in order to make sure that this funnel has as few leaks as possible so some summary points remember that we are dealing with a funnel it is not a tunnel so we're going to have yield and loss yield that losses along the way this one is really really powerful is that recognize that marketing and sales activities are probabilistic functions and not mechanistic functions meaning you can do all of the things right and smart and you're not going to necessarily get the one specific blue M&M that you're looking for and the vending machine to drop even though you put in the right money and turn the crank the right way the buyer's journey is often chaotic very few people move through very few people or companies move through the journey in a linear smooth way it's our role as a commercial organization to help facilitate that process think of it as being like a deal Sherpa just like people that are climbing up the top of Mount Everest the Sherpa doesn't actually carry them but does make things easier for them along the way but ultimately it is on the buyer to move themselves through this particular journey and given all the things that are completely outside of your control in this process it's incredibly important to identify those things that are within your power and focus on those things and with that I would say thank you for listening and if there are questions I'd be happy to address them all right thank you so much Eric and we are going to do Q&A after our next speaker and so thank you thank you a lot Eric that was super interesting and I think I have never heard as many analogies on the funnel and I loved it so thank you again okay so up next we have Lori Raymond Lori is the regional market manager for specialty appliance Inc Lori manages the Fort Collins and Louisville showrooms and leads the charge for their sales team having spent most of her career in the appliance and building industries Lori is passionate about the design community she works with she currently serves on the executive boards for the American Society of Interior Designers and the Home Builders Association of Northern Colorado and Lori with that I will kick it to you all right thank you so much one second here some technical difficulties as well here we go sorry you think I would know how to do all this after all these zoom calls we've had over the last year and a half but again thank you so much for having me my name is Lori Raymond I am with specialty appliance what a fun platform to be able to talk about just you know the business and kind of the culture that we're living in here and just excited to be here on behalf of specialty appliance as Caroline said I am the the North Market Manager for specialty appliance I do lead two sales teams both in our Louisville and Fort Collins showrooms and this was a job a position that I kind of was promoted into last fall so kind of during a COVID environment and a lot of times you know today I will be talking about curating developing and what kind of curating means and how to develop a sales team but I was just thinking about listening to Eric's conversation sometimes we have various personalities we work with and it's our up to us as far as managers to be able to curate those personalities that are on our team and develop those sales teams so they work most effectively so let's go ahead and jump into that here basically what I wanted to start with is talking about what curate means as probably most of you hopefully listened yesterday to Maggie Sivak's presentation from Arc thrift stores we were talking about some marketing buzzwords and what curate means and it basically is to take charge or organize so when I'm trying to curate a sales team or curate a right person for a sales team I need to pull together and kind of select various personalities and so forth to have the right individual but in business to curate is the act of examining a number of items and selecting what you consider to be the best of the bunch so again you're going to have various personalities in a sales team and it's to look at those attributes of those individuals so kind of simply put we're going to talk about today as curating means to identify the key attributes and traits of what most important to your business culture because what might be as far as individual that I'm looking at as far as potential sales person may not be the same in your business so let's kind of talk about a little bit what that means today and how we can go about finding that right individual to continue to build your sales team all right so it's kind of from where you could start for example is look internally especially appliance kind of just the back story we've been around for 20 years now it is a locally business here in Colorado our founders the two gentlemen that actually worked for big box stores back in the day and wanted to kind of branch out and start a business of their own as far as on the installation side and then from there we have these showrooms both in the down in the tech center and then now in in Lewisville and Fort Collins and we well as have various warehouse locations all over the front range area but we have a lot of internal candidates that we have looked at over the years and been able to promote from within so you really as far as looking at a sales team maybe have people that you worked with in the past or have folks that have helped you as far as on the admin sign admin sign of your business that want to possibly move into sales and so forth so you can look internally I know we have a great sales gal now out of our Greenwood Village showroom down in the tech center that started out in the in the accounting side in the admin side of our business and three years later now she is a really successful sales person and doing great working with builders and designers and clients in our showroom so she's a great success story I actually have a new sales person starting in our Lewisville location next week that he's been one of our installers been in the field and been in on job sites for the last several years and he wanted to change and kind of want to develop within his career and he's coming over to us next week in a sales role so really excited to have that again we'll talk a bit a little more about it as far as culture and so forth but these individuals know the culture and they're moving into different roles within the company so it's really exciting next thing as far as employee referrals you could have friends and so forth we actually do have some family members and some friends of friends that have worked in various industries good candidates are out there especially now I know that there's a huge workforce as far as GAAP right now but looking for as far as changing careers a lot of times your current employees might have great referrals and we do as far as especially do have a referral bonus program so you may want to talk about possibly doing that within your company it's a great way to get good people and to retain and develop those people as well within the company and again big thing that we do we work a lot with manufacturers so we network with our suppliers customers colleagues and other social contacts so really you never know as far as people moving in and out of the metro area it may have come from the same industry in a different part of the country or have worked for a very supplier I know personally I have been in and out of the appliance and construction business for years but I actually got back into appliances with specialty over three years ago used to work with my boss now currently used to work with him years ago for a different company so you never know who you might come across it might be a great benefit to your team down the way so something to always think about and network with you know industries you may be involved with professional trade associations as Carolyn had mentioned I'm very involved with kitchen and bath association we work closely with them in our business as well as home building associations and so they have great great referral bases as well to get good employees maybe a folk that's been in the field maybe want to go and more of a sales route and so forth so you always can network with those trade associations and we have had we've hired and had very successful salespeople that have come from being a designer in the past or used to work for a builder so it's all kind of interconnected and really we'll talk about it a little bit as far as sales development it's really a relationship business so you can really get great great candidates by people that you may work with day in and day out that may be interested in a job change and again we can always look to as far as online we do a lot of LinkedIn a post and so forth I know that indeed is a big source as far as advertising job posting so forth but again there's a lot out there so I would actually look at the ones we talked about earlier as far as looking internally and looking at various employee referrals and so forth but advertising is always a good option and then lastly the sales force that's coming out of our local universities and colleges is a great avenue to get some good hungry recently graduated employees that want to start out in the business I know that they've got some great skillset we actually recently just brought in a new marketing who came from a new marketing assistant who came in from a local university just graduated not too long ago so someone who's new and like kind of hungry and looking to start the career and join a great team that's something we want to look at as well and then you can even talk to you know kind of go back to the employee referrals you may have friends or co-workers that have kids that are recently graduated from university or college but definitely it's a great avenue to look at for potential sales sales sales people so kind of to dive in a little bit as far as the key attributes and traits you may want to look at again this is not a tell-all but just some things that I have felt that in my experience you really want to look at as far as a team member and as far as getting the right salesperson and bringing them onto your team is their their experience of course you hire someone out of college I almost kind of think then you can groom them to where you want them to to be when your organization how to mold them but as far as past work experience they come from a different industry you want to look at that you want to look at their background and any sort of other industry experience they may have a big thing that I really like not only experience because I think sometimes you may have a candidate that doesn't really have a personality and they have some great experience but they're not going to be the best fit within your organization so I think a personality traits really looking at those is a big thing again you want to look overall at your team I know that my Lewisville team for example is a little different from my Fort Collins team and I know kind of the mix that maybe certain individuals couldn't work in either location but they do work well together and when I'm looking at new new hires I want to make sure they're going to fit into the the team dynamics like it's good to have a balance for example of introvert versus extrovert I know for example I'm very much an extrovert but my counterpart that covers the south region with our company he's more of an introvert so we balance each other out we also kind of battle it out sometimes but in the end we have the company's purpose and the goal in mind so it's really important to think about that in your team too you want to have a mix of extroverts and introverts but of course in a sales environment how to pick a good candidate in sales being an extrovert being able to talk to people folks that are coming into our showroom for example or meeting our clientele we want to have that outgoing personality but there is you can have a mix as well in that so a big thing too you know you don't we'll talk about it a little bit here as far as interest but what I really try to get to the kind of a nut of an individual the core of the individual of what kind of keeps them motivated in a sales role if you are hiring for a sales person I really think it's important to have a motivated individual you know a big thing is you know we want our sales people to make the most money they possibly can I'm here to support them in my role but we need to kind of find out those things that are going to trigger them as far as motivation whether it be income as far as income potential or teamwork and sometimes you know we have a lot of sales people that just need to have a that-a-boy or that-a-girl throughout the day or throughout the week or throughout the month to kind of keep them encouraged and so forth so I really try to find out kind of what their interests are what motivates them and kind of help that also keep them moving forward and developing in the sales process and kind of a big thing I wanted to talk about I'm going to talk about this a little later as well but when I'm looking at candidates as far as on my team I want to see how they're going to be a part of our culture and the culture what I mean by that is both my team as far as in my Louisville location or Fort Collins location but also overall company culture we're a very family oriented company have like I said have gone from very few employees 20 years ag