Intro (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Creative Agency Success Show, the go to resource for agency owners looking to scale their business. Join us every week to stay ahead of the curve and position your agency for future success.
Jamie (00:00:14) - Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's show. This is a special day because we have one of our awesome CFOs on here. So, we have Hannah Hood, who is, does her own podcast, but I stole her because I wanted to talk about the industry and some industry specifics. So, as always, welcome to the show, Hannah.
Hannah (00:00:32) - Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I hope that I can help bring some value to our listeners in this. So, thanks for having me.
Jamie (00:00:41) - Yeah.
Jamie (00:00:42) - Awesome. So, so just. Yeah, as I mentioned a second ago, we're going to really talk about kind of the state of the industry in terms of the agency world and what we're seeing in terms of our clients. And just for those listening that don't know, the agency world is one of our largest verticals.
Jamie (00:00:57) - so we have about 70 clients that, are a marketing agency of some type. So, we have quite a bit of expertise. And Hannah is a CFO that not only serves these clients but also hears other CFOs talking about it. So, we have a meeting every Friday where we sit down and kind of talk about what we see in the industry. So, I thought Hannah would be the perfect person to kind of let the world know what we're seeing in the industry. So why don't you start there, Hannah, and let, what are we seeing? What kind of market our clients working in?
Hannah (00:01:25) - Yeah. So as a little bit of contextual background for our listeners, if you don't already know, as a part of the suite of meetings and services that we give our clients, we are in what we and lead what we call our pipeline meeting. We have that meeting once a month where we really take and we analyze the data of our clients pipeline. So, while you may think pipeline and accountants like how does that even like that's marketing.
Hannah (00:01:46) - Yes and no. There's data around the analytics that come out of these pipelines as well. So, what I'm seeing trending across the board for those meetings, what I'm hearing in our CFO meetings as well, probably the number one pain point right now is the extended sales cycle, that people are feeling in their sales process currently. And what's interesting to me about that is for one of my clients, we really drilled into this sales cycle, and we looked at it by stage. And one interesting thing that we found in looking at how many days a deal stayed in stage, in each stage on average, is that for this particular client, things were staying in the from the proposal to the sell delivered stage was about 30 days. And whenever we drill down and looked at that their VP of sales, she was like, that's unacceptable. Like that's unacceptable. Like why is it staying that long? So by analyzing
the data, we were able to see a place where she could drill in and she could make some immediate improvements in their follow up process and, and how they were able to then follow back up with the client to hopefully deliver the sale, or market closed, you know, one or the other, in that process.
Hannah (00:02:58) - So I think more than anything is, you need to know your data. At the end of the day, you absolutely need to be looking at your data, knowing your data, knowing the story that your data tells you about where you're at currently. would I think, make leaps and bounds of improvements on what you're feeling from a pain perspective.
Jamie (00:03:22) - Yeah. And I think that's what having, you know, one of the, one of the reasons we do pipeline, as CFOs is because I feel like pipeline is something that often is looked at from only one perspective. It's looked at from a sales perspective. Okay, how are we going to close this deal? Where is this deal at what's going on with this deal? What kind of deal is this? Right. So, I think those are the conversations that happen in pipeline meetings. And we feel like the pipeline meeting needs to really have multiple facets to it. So, if you have someone in there from finance, so if you have a finance lead or your CFO in there, they might be able to ask some questions about putting some metrics behind these numbers, putting some numbers on what does this mean.
Jamie (00:03:59) - And then also having people from operations in there. You know, right now if your pipeline is really slow, the operations, people might be able to make some decisions about some employees that might not be performing well or about, a project they want to work on. And so that's to me, the biggest part of your pipeline meeting is not just having your marketing team sit there and talk about, or your sales teams are there and talk about all the deals you want to make sure you have multiple people involved asking the right questions. So that way you can have some positive solutions around, oh, we have a quiet pipeline or oh, deals are closing too slow. You know, the more people you have involved in those conversations, the better it's going to be. Which is why, you know, it's one of the things we lead as a service is, hey, let's get a pipeline meeting together. Where there's your CFO, your sales team is there. Or if you have a large sales team, maybe it's just your sales lead is there.
Jamie (00:04:44) - But someone who understands all the items in the pipeline and then someone from operations, if you get those three working together when it comes to the pipeline, it's your business runs much smoother.
Hannah (00:04:54) - I totally agree. Another thing that we are seeing as well is it feels as though there are slower lead generation and new client acquisition is, I think, probably going to be forever be a pain point no matter what the state of the economy is, depending on what type of clients that you're serving. But again, where that pipeline meeting can. Come into factor in that particular pain point is that in that meeting, we are able to track and identify the source of our leads as well and put some metrics around where those are coming from. Is it existing business that we are upselling, or they came back to us a second time, or we are extending the project or whatever that is like we're able to understand the percentage of where these different types of leads and potential project revenue are coming from. So that way then we can make better, more informed decisions on what particular outlet we can go target and spend more time in, or maybe one that we're not tapping into enough that we need to particularly look at.
Hannah (00:05:56) - Or maybe a particular event was really productive in terms of giving us new leads. And it's like, hey, maybe we need to spend more time in that community so we're able to have those conversations as well. Again, based around the data and based around the metrics as well. Another thing, Jamie, that I know you brought up in a Friday meeting that I think is incredibly valuable as well, is a whitespace analysis that I think that sometimes maybe you've done in the very beginning with a client or for yourself, if you're a business owner listening to this, that I think you should go back and reevaluate for yourself. So, Jamie, I'd love for you to talk more about that and the value that it could bring.
Jamie (00:06:34) - Yeah, this is one of my favorite tools that I'll talk to people about is, you know, everybody understands who their current customers are. Right? So, if we work with these 15 businesses, these are the 15 companies we work with. And everybody understands all the services you provide.
Jamie (00:06:48) - You know, we provide these five services to our clients. And so, what you do is you list all of your clients on one side of the spreadsheet, all of your services on the top, and then you just fill it in. Okay. For this client one, we're providing service one, two and three. Next client we're only providing service one and five. And you kind of go through the whole spreadsheet. And then what you do is you color in all the X's and what you're looking for is white space. And so basically, you're trying to make sure all of your clients are aware of all the services you provide. And that's the big thing is awareness, right. So, we have a lot of a lot of your customers might not know that you provide a service that they're looking for, right. And so they're either using someone else for it or they're using, they're not even they're doing it in house or whatever. The reason is, is they might not know you provide that service.
Jamie (00:07:31) - And so really, it's the first step is making them aware of it and then making sure they know, hey, if you bundle with us, you might be able to get a discount, or this is going to help you out. And so, the more of that white space you fill in is, you're basically using your current customers as, as your pipeline. Right? So, like let's evaluate what we're providing for our customers and what we're not. And I've, I have found that to be super effective. And I've found that sometimes that will, you know, grow revenue by 50%,grow revenue by 40%, and really be a big growth, because, again, a lot of it is just awareness.
Hannah (00:08:01) - I think one thing to that that can really speak to is maybe if you're in a position where you're like offering a ton of different things to your clients and you're just really, really broad, this could give you an opportunity to niche down in the sense of the types of services that you are offering to your clients as well, because maybe you're spread too thin and you're offering way too many.
Hannah (00:08:20) - Or maybe that evaluates for yourself like a service line that you are just killing it at. And maybe that's really, really where you need to put more focus into, for your audience as well. And I think that, again, also translates to how you market your services, the story that you tell. I think we all know that we as a society have a much shorter attention span than we used to have ever. So, we have to really make sure that we're very, very clear on what we're selling, how we're selling it. I know we've talked to Jeff Bartsch in the past, on this podcast, Joey and on The Young CPA. I've talked to him as well, just about the value of storytelling and really engaging our audience. and that and I know I've done a webinar with Kelly Schuknecht, our Marketing Director, as well, that has some really awesome tips for business owners in that. And then we just did one with Logan Lyles as well. So, I really want to point you all to those resources that really focus in on the marketing aspect as well of how you communicate your services to your audience, because I think that is also incredibly valuable that you spend time making sure that you are really dialed in from that perspective.
Jamie (00:09:31) - Yeah, I know we'll talk about this a little bit later on, but I think that understanding your marketing strategy is, is something that needs to be done during these slow times. And so, I'll dive into that a little bit later. But before we dive into that, I wanted to hit on one more point that we're seeing. So, Hannah mentioned two of the things we're seeing with companies pipelines. So one is that sales the sales cycle is too slow. So, your pipeline looks great, but things are just pushing back another 15 days, another 15 days, another month. So that's number one that we're seeing. The second one we're seeing is just quiet pipelines is we're not getting as many leads as we have been in the past. What's going on here. And so that's kind of the second one we're seeing. And then the third one we're seeing is companies that want more and want to pay less. Right. So, they're coming into you like we love what you do. But can we get a 50% discount on that, or can we get an 80% discount on that? And we all know how hard that is, especially with how much we've increased our pay to employees over the past two years.
Jamie (00:10:23) - And so it's like the comp, our costs are going up and our customers want more for less. And so that's kind of the third thing we're seeing in the pipeline is there's a lot of that. So, any kind of solutions around that area and what we could do in kind of the analysis we need to be doing around, around that price, part of that, the pipeline.
Hannah (00:10:41) - Yeah.
Hannah (00:10:41) - I think one thing for yourself internally is you have to really make sure that you're communicating your value well to your clients and to your prospective clients as well. So that way you know what you're bringing to the table. But one thing that came to mind whenever you're saying that is making sure that you understand if your product is priced where it needs to be for the market that you're serving. And that is one thing, again, that we look at in that pipeline meeting to see how many sales were winning, like what are win percentage is of our pipeline? Because odds are if you're winning too much in your pipeline, maybe your product is underpriced.
Hannah (00:11:16) - And if you're not winning enough in your pipeline, then maybe you need to have a conversation about is your product price too high? So that is another piece that we can really help keep a close pulse on and, and provide some, some metrics around and track that over time.
Jamie (00:11:33) - Yeah.
Jamie (00:11:33) - And I think because this industry is so technology based, I feel like we're in a kind of an interesting time for, for this industry is I think a lot of people buying the product don't really know what the industry means, what all this technology changes mean, or what is AI going to do for us? Is AI going to be able to take certain aspects of this project and then we can do it cheaper in-house. So, I think that's kind of why that third point is happening right now is I think there's just a lot of buying customers that aren't sure what the product is anymore. So, I think that's something that we as an industry need to be doing a great job to finding. Right? This is our value because, I mean, I think, you know, you think about it, your value is not the hundreds of hours you put into building something.
Jamie (00:12:14) - Your value is the expertise you bring and that. Okay. Yeah, AI can do some of the legwork, but they can't bring in our understanding of your website or understanding of your marketing strategy. You know, whatever your value that you provide is. But that's what you need to understand. You didn't understand that value versus the hours. And so, I think this is a great time to start having that conversation with your clients.
Hannah (00:12:34) - And I think we were a little bit spoiled by all the money that was floating around in the economy, like post-Covid. We had a lot of people. We had a lot of fear, see? So, people, we got really comfortable in that, and that was a very easy space to get comfortable in because sales were closing faster, people had money to spend, decisions were being made very quickly. Current clients were spending probably more money with you. And now we've seen some of that being held closer to the chest, given just the state of a lot of where we're at in the economy in general.
Hannah (00:13:02) - So like you said, now's the time, while it's slow to dial in and focus on this, because naturally in the cycle of the economy there will be an upswing. This is this is not forever, hopefully. And you will have another season where you're feeling like you're winning and you're winning faster. So having this stepped out in what you can is, is of the utmost importance while you have the time.
Jamie (00:13:26) - Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think that this kind of gets us to our next point. So, we've already we've already defined that the pipelines for a lot of companies are quieter than they want to be, or they're not bringing as much work as they want to be. So now you're faced with the problem of, okay, we have we have too much capacity. So, my team looks like this. And I am only able to keep our utilization at 50% when I'm normally at 62%. So, the question is, what do we do? So, I that's I'm gonna throw that over you.
Jamie (00:13:53) - And after the first thought, if you are leading a company or a client that has, just low utilization and let's just say because we're talking about some awesome responsible companies, let's say we have our cash reserve in place. Let's say we have a six-month cash reserve in place. What type of advice are you giving your clients? When pipeline is low, everything is quiet. What's the first step we should be working on?
Hannah (00:14:13) - I think the first step that I'm looking at is also evaluating what size business that I want to be like, who do I want to be whenever I grew up, and how big of a house do I need in order to support that? And then also analyzing then the size of my team in terms of looking at, because maybe that's changed. I think I've seen that throughout some of my businesses of like post-Covid, they were an 8 or 9, maybe $10 million company, and or pre-COVID they were eight or 9 or 10 post-Covid. They're like, you know, I think I really want to hang out here at the 5 or $6 million stage, but the size of team that you need for 10 million versus the size of the team that you need for 5 million is there's a very big gap there between the two.
Hannah (00:14:54) - So evaluating the size of our team, the performance of our team, also the type of work that we have for the people that are on our staff as well. This is one thing that we're really I'm really evaluating with the client currently is based on the amount of services and the types of services they were selling last year, their sales mix has shifted coming. Into this year, so they are heavy on one piece of their team that they're not selling into. Currently that they were in the past. So, making sure that you're keeping a very, very close pulse on that. Now, the fact that you have that this theoretical company has a cash reserve allows you to take a step back and analyze that and make those decisions, from a data driven perspective, instead of just a like, oh my gosh, reactionary. Like, I've got to make a decision today because I can't make payroll in the next month, given the size that I'm at and where the pipeline currently is. So that is super important in this.
Hannah (00:15:49) - But there's multiple factors going into this. Again, like we're analyzing the pipeline. We're seeing that it's continually going to be slow and not necessarily going to support. But then also once you've rightsized your team, say, you know, your pipeline does start to pick up, maybe the conversation needs to be that we need to lean into contractors more so than hiring people on, because this is just temporary for the time being, based on what we, you know, are seeing trending wise, that's much safer than hiring somebody on long term given the volatility of the pipeline currently.
Jamie (00:16:21) - Yeah, I think that that that first point is great is as long as you have the cash reserve in place and you have a little bit of breathing room, this is the perfect time to evaluate what you want to be and who you want to be, and not only from a revenue standpoint, but from a service standpoint. From a marketing standpoint, like this is the perfect time to have those conversations, right? So, like, you know, it's like you're going on a road trip and, and you get detoured for some reason and you're like, oh, we were planning on traveling for five days to Disney World.
Jamie (00:16:48) - We're going to spend five days in Disney World. Now we only have two days to spend. Do we still want to go to Disney World and just spend two days there? Because that's our ultimate goal is to be in Disney World? Or do we go somewhere different, a little bit closer and then get a couple extra days of vacation? So that's what you have to decide is maybe you you're looking at it and you're like, you know, I still want to be a large company. My goal is still to be a $20 million company someday. And this is just a bump in the road. And we had to figure out how to survive this bump. But then you have a different long-term plan than the owner that says, you know, I feel more comfortable at five. I just want to stay at five. So, it's knowing the direction and knowing where you want to go makes planning so much easier. So that's the first thing you need to evaluate during these times of quietness is okay, what is my ultimate goal? Is my ultimate goal is still the same.
Jamie (00:17:28) - Or maybe I need to revision my goals. And so that way you could build a different plan. And that's ultimately what business comes down to is having a plan and knowing what to do when those steps aren't happening the way you want to happen. And that's what we're trying to define here is, is okay. What? Yeah. Is this just a bump in the road or is this where our new direction is going? Because as a CFO, I'm going to manage both of those companies completely different, you know? So, I think that's what we need to know as a leader and as someone who's in the making those decisions.
Hannah (00:17:56) - One thing I've heard somebody say, is it's really hard to run your business when you're looking through the rearview mirror constantly. And I feel like a lot of times whenever people come to us, that's what they've been trying to do. They've just been looking backwards. They've been looking at historical. They've been trying to make decisions solely based on historical data, when realistically, like we want to be driving our car, looking through the windshield, not the rearview mirror.
Hannah (00:18:19) - And that's part of what we help facilitate and guide and do is help our business owners really make sure that we know the path forward. And then also, like you said, like we can plan for those detours, we can plan for the bumps in the road, we can plan for when maybe we get a flat tire on the path to our destination. We are prepared for those things. So, making sure you have all that in place for yourself is going to be absolutely key in this time of slow, slow business ultimately.
Jamie (00:18:49) - Yeah. And I think the other thing that you can be working on is so that is definitely number one is evaluating where you are, who you are, and who you want to be. But then after that, it's also a great time to kind of look at your weaknesses and define how to fix those weaknesses. Right. So, you have a little bit of extra capacity. Do you need to fix one process in within your deliverable that just needs to be streamlined and done more efficiently, or do you need to relook at your marketing strategy? Is there some way that you can redo your marketing strategy? Do you have a marketing strategy, or do you just go try to sell stuff? Right? So, I think when you have capacity and you have cash, this is the time to say, okay, when this lull ends, what do we want to look like on the other side of it? Do we want to be a more efficient machine? Do we want to have a better sales process? Do we want to have a whole different leadership team? Like what are those changes you can make during this time when you have capacity and just focus on those and just know these next four months, we're going to have maybe a loss and we're going to eat into our cash reserve a little bit.
Jamie (00:19:46) - And that's the important thing. I know I've said a thousand times on this podcast, but I want to make sure everybody hears this comment is, remember, cash is the starting point. The next point is investment, right? So, if you have enough cash in the bank, the next thing you want to do is invest it. And when people hear investment, they always think, I'm going to go buy stocks. I'm going to go by mutual funds. All a stock or a mutual fund is putting cash into a company. Right. So why not put that cash into your own company? So, if I have $750,000 in cash, you know, if I decide I'm going to have four months of losses and I'm going to eat into my cash reserve 250,000, but I'm going to come out of it on the other side with an awesome marketing plan. Guess what I just did? I just invested $250,000 into my company's marketing plan. That's going to help my company grow, just like any investment you have.
Jamie (00:20:34) - So that's how you have to think of your company as an investment. And how can I make it better?
Hannah (00:20:40) - I was at a client's annual planning meeting a few weeks ago, and at the table was one of their board members who's very involved in their sales process. He is also in the entertainment industry as well. Like he's had his hand in some of that for a long time. And he said that he and his team were pitching a show to the president of CBS. They were all at the table for whatever reason. Their accountant was with them, too. The president of CBS was not buying it. There was just one piece that he was just like, I just don't know, like something just doesn't feel right. The accountant spoke up and said, what if we changed this about the main character? And the CBS, president said, yes, that's it. That's exactly was the missing piece. And the show went on to air. And I think I say that because during this time as well, you could also be evaluating for your team, making sure you have the right people in the right seat, that you're tapping into people's hidden potential as well, that you might have under the covers within your team.
Hannah (00:21:42) - Because maybe you've got somebody who is working on your design team who might have this really awesome marketing strategy that they've been a part of in the past or have this big idea that they want to share with your team. So, taking time to have those conversations as well, I think, would absolutely behoove you to see what you've got hidden just right under, under your nose for your team and what you could potentially be taking advantage of.
Jamie (00:22:11) - I hope this doesn't mean that, Hannah, you're going to start like pitching shows with companies now as like, you see, this is your hidden potential.
Hannah (00:22:17) - Maybe I did have an idea. So, Jamie, we did shark. You know, we did Shark Tank at our last retreat. They started talking about, just wanting to bring everybody to the table when they're doing solutions for some of their clients. And I was like, hey, we did this Shark Tank thing. It's really cool to bring the solution there. Like seeing the accountant speaking up with the idea.
Jamie (00:22:37) - And it was like, sometimes the cops can be creative. So, at our next at our next retreat, we're playing Family Feud. Just to give you a little bit of a preview. So, we're not we were going to try to have Shark Tank at One Retreat and Family Feud at the other one. So, we're, we're bringing in the reality television.
Hannah (00:22:51) - Okay, well, I'm going to try to go two for two at this.
Hannah (00:22:54) - So I can't wait.
Jamie (00:22:55) - You rock Shark Tank for sure.
Hannah (00:22:56) - That was awesome, right? Yeah.
Jamie (00:22:59) - No. And I think the other part with that too, I think, and we'll kind of wrap this up. But the other part I want to make sure you think about is, is, you know, if you're not having your operations team or your delivery team talk to the sales team about ideas. You know, I think you're, you're missing the boat because I think oftentimes especially, you know, when a client's going really well, I think oftentimes we do it with when clients don't go well as we kind of do a debrief, okay, what went wrong in this client? But if a client's going really well, talk to the ops team.
Jamie (00:23:25) - Talk to the have the sales team in the ops team talk about what's so great about this client. Why is this client working so well? Because it might spark some ideas about. Oh, yeah, we should do that with all of our clients. Or maybe we need to sell that as a deliverable. Or maybe that's something we need to put higher up on the slide deck versus the bottom of the slide deck. Little changes like that sometimes make a huge difference when it comes to sales. And for the people who are delivering the products, sometimes they know that stuff best. And so, I think the big key there is, is every client should have some kind of internal evaluation at the end of the project, in the middle of the project, what went well, what didn't go well. So, we can have the sales team involved in that meeting.
Hannah (00:24:00) - Yep, I totally agree. Again. It's all about communication. And it sometimes I've found like you said like in that pipeline meeting like we have somebody from operations in there, we have somebody from sales.
Hannah (00:24:11) - And then we have finance. And the conversations that we're able to have that I feel like are so incredibly productive just because we have everybody in the room at the same time talking about the same thing, is it's awesome to see what comes out of that meeting every single month.
Jamie (00:24:27) - Yep.
Jamie (00:24:27) - It's one of my favorite meetings. And I know when we do the you've seen us present before, it's the area I always present and I always get super excited about it. The hard part is sometimes it's saved for the end. I only have like four minutes and so I'm already a fast talker as you've played notice from this podcast. But I was I zoomed through it sometimes when it's my it's my favorite part of our deliverables is, is the pipeline. So so with that said, and I think, you know, we do this, but at the end of every one of our episodes, we do a fun question. so, we try to let our listeners know our guests. And so, the question I have today goes back to the reality television since you, since you brought it up.
Jamie (00:24:59) - So what is your current favorite reality television show that you're watching? And I'm talking I'm not necessarily talking like I want. I'm talking like game show type reality.
Hannah (00:25:09) - Oh.
Jamie (00:25:10) - Shows.
Hannah (00:25:10) - So just maybe you could consider it a game. And show love is blind.
Jamie (00:25:14) - There you go. That's game show. That's a challenge.
Hannah (00:25:17) - Exactly. It totally is.
Hannah (00:25:19) - However, I did see a, a advertisement this morning for password. Like, they're like, redoing the game show password. And I'm like, yeah, I love like I love watching like the old version of password. But yeah. Like, love is Blind is my like, trash TV. Like, I just need to.
Hannah (00:25:37) - Like, just absolutely.
Hannah (00:25:39) - Laugh at somebody else's drama. It's great. It's really interesting to watch as well. So.
Hannah (00:25:46) - Yeah. What about you, Jamie?
Jamie (00:25:48) - My wife and I did watch the first season of that, but we have not watched it since then, so...
Hannah (00:25:51) - You need to watch the newest.
Hannah (00:25:52) - One I heard better. I heard that some drama. So much drama. So much so.
Jamie (00:25:57) - We are currently binging. And again, I think I don't know if everyone knows this, but I am a survivor nut. So, I've, I've always loved survivor and I've tried out for the show a couple times like, unfortunately, and I don't know if Jody and Adam would be too happy if I got on anyways, but I would love to be on survivor. But that's not the show we're currently watching. We're actually watching Deal or No Deal Island, because one of the main characters is Boston Rob, who's like a survivor legend and my favorite survivor of all time. And so we've been watching that, every Monday. And just like it's one of those shows that I can't turn it off because he's such a fun character. And so that's been our show that we've been watching.
Hannah (00:26:33) - That's awesome. Yeah. I'm gonna have to go back and watch that now. I rarely sit down and watch TV, honestly.
Hannah (00:26:37) - Like, my kids keep me so busy in the evenings that, like, it has to be something that I can stream, like on Netflix or, you know, something like that in order to watch it. But I am absolutely going to go watch because I love the original Deal or No Deal. So, I'm really interested to hear this concept of Deal or No Deal Island.
Jamie (00:26:53) - Yeah, it's it's a fun concept and it's been fun for us. We were saying we obviously super busy. I coach and we're every night like, but we make sure we have at least like 15 minutes to watch something. And sometimes it means we watch a movie over like two weeks because we watched it like 15 minutes at a time. We have to have our time at night to just wind down and watch a little bit of TV. So, cool. I definitely appreciate you coming on the show, and I know this is going to be a popular episode, because this is what a lot of our clients are feeling.
Jamie (00:27:18) - I do want to give you a chance at a final thought. So final thought about pipeline and things that our clients should be working on or our listeners should be working on.
Hannah (00:27:26) - Yeah. I mean, I think the common theme throughout all of this is data, data, data and conversation. Having conversation and really diving into what the data is telling you the story behind the data as well, making sure that you have your arms around that. And if you feel like you can't get your arms around that, reach out to somebody like, let somebody help ask questions, look for resources. They are there and they are willing to help, but you have to put in the work for that in order to really be able to take the most advantage of it.
Jamie (00:27:57) - Yeah. No, I my final thought is the same. I think you can't have one without the other. A lot of people lean too hard into the data but don't have enough people involved in the conversation or vice versa. They're having lots of conversations, but there's really no data behind.
Jamie (00:28:10) - The conversations are happening. So, I think the two really need to work hand in hand, and you need to have as many different thought patterns in the room, right? You need to have as many people thinking about different things in the room, so you can come to the best answer, not just the right answer for that group. So, I think that's exactly where I would go with my final thought as well. So, I think, again, I appreciate you coming on, Hannah, and hopefully we'll have you on again soon.
Hannah (00:28:31) - Yeah. Awesome. Thanks.
Jamie (00:28:32) - Yeah. Yep.
Outro (00:28:33) - Enjoy this podcast. Visit our website SummitCPA.net to get more tips and strategy for achieving business success. We're here to be a resource in this ever-changing industry.
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