It’s Not Too Early to Be Thinking About 2026

[Music] Hello everyone. Welcome to the 21 Hats podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Feldman. This week, David C. Barnett and Jennifer Karen say they're already making plans for next year, adjusting pricing, conducting employee reviews, and setting budgets. In the past, Jennifer has chosen to restrain growth to give her employees and her processes a chance to catch up. But this coming year, she says she's ready to unleash the hounds. And for the first time, she's planning to budget for profit first and then force her expenses to fit her margins. Unlike Jennifer, who conducts employee reviews throughout the year, David saves his evaluations for the end of the year. And as he looks forward, he's trying to figure out what the economy will mean for his business. He's seeing more companies in distress, but also more opportunities to help people with severance packages who decide to buy businesses. Plus, David and Jennifer share how they've been experimenting with Chat GPT of late. Even in good times, owning and running a business can be a lonely pursuit. Our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges. In fact, that's the whole idea behind the 21 Hats community, engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insights only another owner can offer. If you're interested in learning more, you can sign up for the Morning Report newsletter, which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and shows how owners are confronting challenges and seizing opportunities. Just search the 21 Hats Morning Report to subscribe. Joining me this week on the podcast are David C. Barnett, who is based in New Brunswick, Canada, and helps people buy and sell businesses, and Jennifer Karen, CEO of SB Expose and Events, an events management business based near Baltimore. The episode is titled, "It's not too early to be thinking about 2026." Welcome, David and Jennifer. It's great to have you here. As we head into the fourth quarter of a pretty wild 2025, I'm eager to hear if you've started to think about 2026. But first, it's it's been a while since either of you has been on the podcast, and I'm curious how you're doing. Jennifer, the last time you were here, you told us, of all things that your house had burned down. Um, I think that was a couple of months ago now. How have you been doing? >> Um, better. The emotions have run its course. We kind of have a new plan. We're in a rental and sort of planning next stages going through the insurance. Our insurance company has actually been incredible, wonderful, fantastic, which >> don't hear that every day. >> You do not. And in the beginning, I think until we got sort of the right people, considering how big of a um disaster it was, it was, you know, a little bit of a bumpy ride. And then we found the right people and they've been really fantastic. Um, and then the last couple days they've started to demolish the inside, take out the belongings, start to demolish the stuff. So, it's sad as you go through the the house is still kind of standing and you go through to try to pull anything that you can find of value. Um, so that's been sad the last few weeks, but I think um the strongest emotions are over. any small business owner knows your personal life has to sometimes take a backseat to your to your business your professional life but sometimes it can't I'm back to a little bit semblance of a normaly um and then trying to plan a new future but good and on the path to better >> glad to hear that you know Jennifer I remember early on when you joined this podcast we had an episode where we actually laughed a lot cuz we were talking about insurance and every time I remember this. It was over insured. >> Every time somebody brought up a different kind of policy, your reaction was, I think I have that >> great memory, Lauren. Wow, I forgot about that podcast. Um, >> is that what happened with with your home insurance? Is that why you had a happy experience with that aspect of this awful situation? >> Uh, yeah, probably. Yeah, probably. Uh, it's been great. I I'm kind of shocked the kind of insurance that we got. Um because there's insurance for everything with your house, just like a business. There's insurance that if you have to live somewhere else, they'll pay for the rental. There's insurance for your belongings. There insurance to redo the house. There's insurance based on if you had artwork, if you had jewelry with certain types of valuables. It costs now more than it did when we bought the original insurance years ago to rebuild. So the the escalator clause, it's unbelievable the different ways. Um, but uh, yeah. >> And you had all of it. >> I did. I did. >> Well, I'm glad that paid off for you. One thing you told us a couple of months ago when you were here shortly after the fire was that you had a an event coming up. I I think that week, um, a companywide retreat if I recall correctly. Were you able to pull that off? >> Yes. Surprisingly, it was a staff retreat. We had 30 people flying in from around the country and they said, "Jen, just don't go or cancel." Well, you can't cancel. This is once a year. The entire staff is counting on it. We've had plans. We've hired consultants. We've signed contracts. So, I had to go. >> You had only the clothes you were wearing, right? >> Absolutely. I had jeans and a t-shirt and flip-flops. I didn't even run out of the house with keys to my car. I didn't run out with my purse. I ran out with a cell phone. So, I had nothing. Literally nothing. and my neighbors gave me some clothes. Um, some of my friends gave me I didn't have a suitcase. I was putting stuff in trash bags. I didn't have an extra set of glasses, so I couldn't find my glasses. And I thought, "Oh my goodness, I can't see anything." I did go. The retreat was about 5 days later. I tried very, very hard to not make the retreat about my personal tragedy. So, I started off I put one or two slides in my sort of CEO intro and then I didn't talk it about it again till 5 days later and then I I talked at the end. Um, but >> this was a 5day retreat. >> It was um 4 days but I had gotten there the night before to set up. >> I see. >> Yeah. So, it was 4 days of the retreat and it was, you know, I'm getting calls in between things. I have two kids. They're they're young adults now, but my daughter still lives with us. She's 20 and you know she's trying to figure out what to do and how to live and we got I got a lot of really generous requests like from the my industry. What can we do for you? >> Competitors or people you work with >> just suppliers and vendors and different people I know in my industry. And so some somebody said, "Jen, look, you got to come up with an answer. Everybody's asking what we can do for you." So I said, "Well, I need Uber Eats or Door Dash because I can't go to the grocery. I'm I'm living. We were in my husband was in somebody's basement. I was in my sister's house. My daughter was at a friend's house. Can you just get us so we can have some food cuz I don't know where we're going to eat. We didn't we didn't have a kitchen for 6 weeks. >> So, I got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars. It was really generous and and sweet. Mostly to give to my daughter, too, um because she was living out of friends couches, right? Um for for weeks. And then I I just uh I found some in my office which happened to not get burned. I had uh logo clothing from my company. I think I wore that straight for the first three weeks. I wore the pair of jeans I came out and then SB expose and events green long sleeve shirts and short sleeve shirts for the first three weeks. So it was uh I wore a lot of SB green during that time. But we got through it. The retreat was fantastic. I was able to compartmentalize and separate and then move on and then at that point then try to figure out, okay, where are we going to live for the long term? It's probably going to be two to three years. Um, and what to do, how to deal with insurance, how to just everything. I mean, everything. >> And have you been able to keep up at business? I mean, what what kind of impact has this had, if any, on your business? I think the first um three weeks I was probably working 75%. Um but now I'm back to 100. It's I've gone to industry events. We have a stable house. We have some stability. And look, honestly, we need the income. So I can't uh as anybody with a small business can't afford to not keep your business going. Um especially until I understood what was happening with insurance. We needed to make sure that the business um could support us. So I didn't really have a choice to be honest. Were there aspects of the business that you've kept to yourself that you had to delegate because of this situation? >> Um, there were some things I don't think I had to keep it to myself, but I had maybe held on too long to be honest. And this fire forced me to delegate, which was a good thing. So, that was a a silver lining. It forced me to give up some aspects of control and and realizing that I didn't really need it. So, that was really good. But there are some things that no one else can do but me. And it made me realize I have to figure out ways for other people to do this because it shouldn't all be stuck with me. >> Well, one thing we should say it's nobody was hurt in the fire, right? You were in the house, but everybody was okay. >> I got out. That's right. Everybody's okay. >> David, what's going on in your world? >> Uh, well, I've been busy traveling over the the last month. I Laura and I actually went to two different conferences. I went to one in the middle of August and I went to one uh just last week actually. I was out in Portland, Oregon for the first time in my life. It's a great town. They have a a little restaurant there that only sells s'mores. So, if you're a fan of of camping, you might want to go there for dessert one night. I I took some photos because I'd never seen that before. >> That's pretty funny. How's your business doing, David? >> Uh things are going well. the number of clients that we're serving and uh and all that kind of thing tends to be steady. Um and uh now we're getting ready for our year end series of things that I try to do every year. Um starting to uh you know plan for that and make sure that I don't forget anything. But the end of the year is usually a time when we do a review of all pricing. Uh and then we also have our employee reviews. And I've got a method for how the employees uh go through all their different tasks and areas of responsibilities and give their feedback about what they like, what they didn't like, how they how well they thought they did over the year, what they would like to see change for themselves. Um and uh and I'm starting to work on some things that I might change in that process uh for next year that uh that in part were inspired by some of the things I've heard on this podcast. >> Well, that's intriguing. I'll be eager to hear a little bit more about that. But uh tell me that's interesting to me that you you got this set process at the end of the year. You know, for example, you mentioned pricing. There's been a lot going on this year. Why do you leave it to the end of the year? Why isn't that something that you deal with whenever it's necessary to deal with it? >> Uh well, because there's a lot of work that goes into changing the pricing the way we do it. So, you know, our prices are integrated in a lot of different systems and processes that we do. and if we have to update our engagement agreements, it means uh setting up, you know, new contracts through online signature platforms and all that kind of thing. So, I I don't look at it as though I'm doing it late in the year. I I look at it like I'm doing it early for 2026. >> David, do you do all the performance reviews at one time? Is that what I heard? >> Uh yeah. Well, you know, they'll all happen over the course of a couple of weeks. Yeah. >> It sounds like that's not what you do, Jennifer. >> No. And and someone asked me if I should start doing that and so it's intriguing. I do mine based on when they were hired. So if they're hired in March, we do it, you know, in March the next year. But it's a lot of work. And someone said to me, why don't you do it all at one time? So it's intriguing. They they hear that. >> Well, I can tell you why I do it all at once because um we are a team of five, but on our org chart, we have about 16 roles. And so uh everyone on the team has their has their name in more than one box. And so when we do the review at the end of the year and I get feedback on on how people found their jobs over the course of the year, uh like last year for example, some of the people thought that they would do better taking on some of the other boxes and they weren't really happy about some of the boxes that they were charged with. They didn't really enjoy that kind of stuff. And so based on everybody's feedback, I move some of the names around on the org chart. And so so that's why I do it all at once in case I want to change how things are functioning. >> Okay. Jennifer, I think one reason a lot of people do them all at once at the end of the year is because they link uh the employee annual review with a salary discussion and the salary discussion is part of budgeting for the coming year. There are a lot of people who think that's not a great practice. How do you handle that? >> That's exactly why it was mentioned to me that it would be much easier to track compensation and raises to the budget if you did it all at one time. Um, we have 30 staff and I have five different directors plus myself who does the directors and it can be hard to balance across all of it for raises to budget, but it would also be hard for everybody to do it at the same time. And so I'm balancing employee bandwidth to do the performance review combined with the the work it takes to balance out for budgets. and I'm trying to figure out which one's more important. >> So, don't you run into the situation where you make a decision on somebody's compensation and it maybe it goes in a slightly unexpected direction and that can have a ripple effect on other people. >> Absolutely. And I think that's why Lauren, people have said to me, "This would be better if you did it all at once." And when they first told me this a year ago, I poo pooed the idea because I thought that's ridiculous. That's a lot of work to do it all at once. But I think as you grow, or I'm wrong because David Smaller and he does it all at once, is I was thinking it's it's problematic. It does have ripple effects financially. It has ripple effects on titles and and sort of equity across departments for compensation um to my budget. Yes, it does. And so I am considering whether I should do it all at once. >> David, do you have the compensation discussion? At the same time you have the annual review with employees. >> I do. In fact, part of the annual review is getting their input on their salaries and what they think they should uh we should be doing as far as adjustments and things like that. So, I I like to have the conversation all at once because they're giving feedback on how they felt they did at their job and what great uh you know projects or other contributions that they handled and were responsible for and all that kind of stuff. And I I find it's an easy time to to discuss that how their salary might change. >> I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer here. The the critique I've heard of doing it together is that if when you do it together, the only thing the employee really tends to hear is the salary discussion and other stuff can get lost uh or fall through the cracks. Have either of you experienced anything like that? >> Lauren, are you saying if you if you separate the review from the compensation >> Yeah. >> discussion? Uh >> I haven't ever heard of that honestly. That's interesting. I think there was a little bit of a boomlet for that, you know, maybe 10 years ago. I think for for the reasons I I just said that if you really want to talk about performance, it's better to just focus on performance and not make it be all about compensation, which can can happen. >> Interesting. Sure. >> But as David just said, you know, one follows naturally from the other. And you know, I'm not espousing that view. I certainly understand why people link them. >> We do regular one-on- ones between I mean basically in my because my company is so small, everyone reports to me and um so we do regular one-on-one calls and we're always talking about the ongoing projects or how something was handled or I give people feedback as as quickly as I can if I see something was slipping or or they'll ask me for input on stuff. So, I don't think that we're necessarily waiting until the end of the year to talk about their performance, but I I I think in the review I it's an Excel spreadsheet that I created that basically they can input all the areas of responsibility from our org chart uh into this spreadsheet and then they can make comments on the different things and and how they thought they did in the year. It allows it all to come together in one big conversation and and as far as I was concerned, it it was to feed the salary uh conversation. There's also the fact that my name is in the HR director box and I like to compartmentalize it and get it all done in as short an order as I can so I can focus my time on more valuable aspects of you know that produce revenue and stuff. >> Yeah, it's it and it's timeconuming to do these if if you want to do it right. We do the one-on- ones too and try to give feedback. But we also created a couple years ago a career matrix where sort of the job and whether you're a coordinator, manager, senior manager and expectations so that we can have criteria to evaluate on that's less subjective. And that's been incredibly helpful to give people honest feedback. It's also been interesting. Last year we put into the performance review smart goals and some people were surprised this year when we brought those back up and they didn't accomplish and others had accomplished them within the first couple months. And the line of where your career is at is you know it's a constant balance between the employer and the employee. as an employer who cares about her employees. I want to give opportunities for development, you know, professional development, challenges, training, but I also want the employee to take ownership of what they want and how to get there. Um, so that's a constant balance between the two. >> Have either of you learned anything about that face-to-face review process that's made it a more productive, more enjoyable process for you >> as a founder and an owner, you do so many different things, right? The 21 hats. And so when you your company grows, you lose flexibility when you grow. And it has been hard. When we first did the career matrix, I fought it tooth and nail, but it's been very helpful to others to have a matrix in which to gauge their performance. were never going to be a government with their steps and their, you know, whatever their GS4s versus GS15s, but to have some semblance of criteria and requirements that aren't vague that that aren't subjective. It's not how as a owner and founder you start the company, but when you have employees, they want that and they crave that. So, I found that process once we've had it, we have a pretty in-depth performance review that goes through technical skills as well as soft skills as well as technology skills and we rate them on it and then go through their goals from last year if they accomplish it and things. I like our process now because it's taken not all of it but some of the subjectivity out of it. It's taken a lot of flexibility out of it. Um, but I think it's been better for employees to see how they're doing. >> What have you lost by losing that flexibility >> a lot. But that's the part of growth is every time you want to grow, it's not two people. And so you can't say, "Okay, we're going to do this today." Right? I used to give out subjective bonuses all the time. Okay, you're going to do this for me? Okay, well, here's a couple hundred. Right? I've had to stop doing that. I've had to take out some of the subjectivity out of this process so that a staff of 30 can feel comfortable. It It's still obviously somewhat subjective, right? But to take out more of that than I would have liked so that everybody feels that they understand where they stand and where they can go. This year I tried to bring our clients into the loop of feedback uh for some of our employees, the ones who who work directly with with our clients. And so we introduced a feedback form that gets sent to clients when we deliver uh our consulting projects to them. And uh I had great hopes that people would fill in this small 10 question survey, you know, and that we actually linked some of the annual bonus to maintaining certain kinds of uh scores from the customers. But what unfortunately has ended up happening is uh we aren't getting enough people to fill them in. I don't know if there's a secret to this or what, but we're I'll give you a crazy example. We've had people tell us verbally how happy they were with the service or or how thankful they were that they worked with us and we helped them avoid something that would be problematic. I've had people send emails that make great testimonials, but they still don't fill in the form. >> Is the form directed about an employees performance? >> It's both the employee and the company and how they feel about us. And it's it's a a a simple 10 question form. And uh I'm not sure if the problem is the form or the way we're asking or what. >> Do you give away prizes? >> M. No, but I I I don't know if if that kind of inducement would be apppropo to how we position ourselves. >> David, you mentioned that you're going to be looking at pricing. Do you have a sense where that conversation is going to go? What are your expectations? Oh, well, we do an increase of some kind every year and so it's just going to be a matter of of where I think it should go. I mean, you know, I intend to give all my employees raises this year and all my other costs have increased as well. And so, there will be an increase of some kind. Um, what I typically I I've got a a product matrix as it were, which refers to different products relative to other products. So, so I I I kind of get in there and I think, hm, you know, would this percentage increase in one of our most popular products make sense? What would the result of that be? And then it shows me what the other prices would be relative to that. And then I just massage it a little bit, you know, like if it gives me uh, you know, a number ending in 37, I might change it to 49 or something like that. >> Is there any increased urgency this year given the state of our economies? Uh you're in Canada as people will recall or is this just another year? >> Uh so far for us it's just another year. We're we're performing really well this year. I mean we we have an increase in revenue over last year. I'm not quite sure what's going to happen with the economy. I think that there was a lot of you know there was a lot of excitement and drama earlier in the year with news headlines and and things changing you know quickly from one week to the next. Um, I think that things are settling down a little bit, but there is definitely real change happening in the economy. I mean, I'm I'm talking to business owners now who are seeing declines in their businesses. We're hearing now about more and more layoffs, you know, and things like that. So, so there definitely is something happening in the economy. And, um, I I don't know how it's affected us yet. um because we work with people that are trying to buy or sell a business, u certain kinds of layoffs or job terminations can actually lead us to have more customers because some people will get some kind of severance from from their employer and they'll consider perhaps buying a business as an alternative to finding a new job. Uh that was my experience back during the big downturn in 0809. And so we're we're really in a kind of wait and see sort of pattern, but so far uh things seem to be pretty stable for our business. >> I went to a conference last week called Sears Predict Conference, and SEIR is the Center for Exhibition Industry Research. It does research. It's the largest one for exhibitions in North America. And they had four different economists give their different sort of spiels on what's happening in the economy, what's happening next year, and how it relates to exhibitions. And all of them sort of put in that between there's a 20 to 35% chance of a recession for next year. Now, not super high, right? but not also very low for the exhibition industry at least with trade shows just marking things down especially with attendance even more so than exhibits and sponsors but attendance marking that low and and I think many of us have seen some of the the articles about tourism into the US and international tourism specifically and that affects the trade show industry quite a bit and attendance so it's interesting you say that about severance and buying businesses cuz that makes a lot of sense. If you are laid off and you have that, it'll be harder to find a job, especially if you have a lot of experience and had a pretty high salary. That makes a lot of sense. Are >> are you seeing attendance levels at at trade shows and conferences go down? Because I I think it it's probably one of those business expenses that someone might feel is a pretty easy thing to cut out if they're if they're trying to be more lean with their budget. >> Uh, not yet. Not yet. Um, we have a lot of fall shows that are are doing well. Um, but talk to me in six months. >> I guess right now that money's already been budgeted probably. David, one have you heard about I've gone to a lot of different business uh economics speeches where they talk about the great depression of 2030 to 2031 so that you should sell your business before then. >> Um, I have not heard anyone speak about that. I' I've heard people sort of over in the personal investing space talk about sort of uh you know big cycles in uh in what's happening economically um you know that all that uh stuff inspired by the book the fourth turning and things of that nature. Um but I have not specifically heard anyone talking about uh sort of a a deadline to get out because the everything's going to you know have problems >> explode. Yeah, it's a forecast made by ITR economics. And that's what I was going to say. I've heard their presentation. >> Yeah, me too. Me too. And so I'm like, okay, maybe I need to sell my business December of 2029. I I don't know. >> They have for several years now been predicting a great depression, you know, with a D uh beginning early in the 2030s. I think a lot of it has to do with demographics, but yeah, it's a little scary. Jennifer, what's your process? How are you starting to think about 2026? I I have to say my company only did a budget last year for the first year ever. Um it was a formal process I did with my CFO. A little embarrassing to admit, but um we did it. We spent a lot of time on it from the revenue forecasting and expenses. And on the good side, we stuck to that budget pretty close. Our our forecasting was right on track. Our expenses were right on track. So that was great. This year I'm involving others in it, but I'm doing something called a road map, which is basically just goals and objectives um that will help tie into a budget sort of from the the CEO level down to each department level that we can all be aligned on the goals and the budget for next year. So, I'm working on that right now. I just finished my part of the road map sharing with my senior leadership team in the next few weeks so that we can have a budget by the end of November. This part is important as you grow. It is not fun. This is the part like anybody who starts a small business is like uh but the road map is more fun rather than the budget. The road map is kind of exciting because it's taking your vision, your ideas, your enthusiasm for the future, but turning it into objectives that your other leaders can actually look at, come up with ideas that that flow into that and um rather than constantly explaining yourself, you can disseminate the vision and they can align themselves with you with their own objectives. So, that part I'm pretty excited about. goals and objectives along the lines of adding more clients or new lines of business or what else? >> So, we have a very unsophisticated business development and marketing system and that was one of the things that's still on my shoulders a lot. We have a person on staff, a senior director who's great at estimating, but um a lot of the business development is still on my shoulders. So, I just hired a a a fractional chief revenue officer to help getting that system next year more sophisticated specific um goals each month, a a cadence. Um we have a cadence to social media, but tying that into a marketing strategy and following that, watching our services and tracking that it's more haphazard and ad hoc. That's my goal for next year to make it a more strategic thought through business development marketing. We also just launched a whole new set of services just a few weeks. So, right after the fire, I have a retreat. The week after I have to go to a big trade show to launch our brand new services. It was in California. I've ever been so exhausted in my life emotionally. And my booth, my exhibit booth was damaged in the fire. So, within those two weeks, I had to hurry up and get a brand new booth and ship there. Um so we launched these brand new services and they're doing really well. >> What kind of services? >> We do um trade show sales and management and we have this is customized work over multi-year. So an association will hire us and we become their outsource department and we're we're ingratiated into their team whether it's through trade show sales or meeting logistics or registration. Well, that's very customized, a lot of handoffs, um, multi-year, a lot of responsibility. We happen to use a certain event technology that we have, we are not agnostic to event technology. We have chosen the one that we think is the absolute best. It's called the cadmium event technology. We love it. We think it's fantastic. We've become a partner with them for years. We've launched a whole new set of services where we are doing implementation and auditing and on-site support of this event tech. So if you think about Salesforce, they have a million of those type of partners out there um who will do, you know, consulting, onboarding, um whatever you need to support that rather than doing it yourself. We've started this with Cadmium Event and it's really taken off. I already have the the staffing to do it, but it's separate from a business perspective because of the the standard pricing, the short-term, the the handoff. So, I'm I'm very excited about this the future for this. >> Jennifer, is this like the app you would use if you're an attendee at a conference to to navigate. >> Absolutely. Yeah. You may not know there is a lot of technology behind the scenes rather than just the app. The app is what every attendee sees, but um David, have you ever exhibited at a trade show? Um, not for a really long time, like 15 years. >> Okay. Well, have you ever spoke? Are you a speaker? >> Yes, I have spoke. Yeah. >> Great. Great. So, there's a lot of event technology that manages speakers, right? So, manages taking your session title and putting it into a website and the app so people can see it. Getting your biography, getting your photographs and what session where you're going to, all of that technology. Um the app is sort of the tip of the iceberg that people see, but there's a whole world out there of event technology. Um which is mostly databases, right? But then registration forms, how do you register? Um and then how do you sell exhibits and sponsorships? We are very tech forward and we happen to choose this one platform that I absolutely love. >> So Jennifer, I think you said that the roadmap part of this is the fun part. It's the vision, imagining, being creative. The painful part is translating that into a budget. Is is that you know thinking about how much revenue it's actually going to produce and >> No, that's not that part. It's it's getting into the nitty-gritty of like, okay, to get to I I've never worked backwards from a net profit. I bought that book profit first. Does have you either one of you read that book? >> Oh, yes. >> I know about it. I have not read it. >> Oh, so I just read it over the summer and I've never put the budget where I put the profit first. So putting the profit first. let's see how this works out this year and working backwards and I'm like uh okay what we have to change this change I don't like these details I want to make decisions and honestly Lauren I had never really thought about the road map is the creative side that's very that's a great observation by you um I hadn't really linked that into my head but yeah going from profit first and going backwards into the nitty-gritty of expenses and revenue to get that profit that's not fun that's why CFO is fantastic fantastic. I love her and she's she's helping me get through this painful part. >> I assume she's kind of doing the heavy lifting. >> She is she's fantastic. She's a fractional CFO that's been with me since the company was I don't know couple hundred,000 and um has helped build the entire infrastructure and she's she can also speak my language so she she knows when I'm reached my limit and I know where she's like, "Okay, stop being creative. Let's get down to the nitty-gritty." Jennifer, you said at various times that you've done things to kind of restrain growth because you thought you were growing too quickly and you wanted to improve processes. What are you thinking for 2026 in that regard? >> Unleash the hounds. That's why I went this business development system. Um, we've built the systems. We've done a fantastic job. Um, the infrastructure there. We invested a lot of resources into a new HR platform and new systems with our financials. We had a very good accounting, but we've done a better job of systems. Fantastic job of operations. So, we're ready. We're ready. So, now if I can go hog wild on these sales, I I think we should be able to manage it and not like we did a couple years ago where we grew 145% and I almost killed myself from exhaustion. How dependent are you for that vision on the economy as a whole? Can can you have a good year if the economy is down? >> So, one good thing is associations unless there's a global pandemic almost always have their convention and trade show, right? >> That'll never happen, >> right? Um, they almost always do, even if there's less people, they almost always have their event. This isn't where, for example, if if you have a luxury item, people might cut back or if you're at a restaurant, people might cut back on how often. They're still going to have the event. they just might be smaller or get less money. So, it's not recession proof. I'm going to knock on wood. Absolutely not. But, I have more margins of error for that. So, I'm not as worried um for that. >> Last thing I wanted to cover with you today, uh there's just been so much talk about AI. I know you both have given it a lot of thought. Have either of you done anything recently that you're excited about? Any new use cases? Well, uh, Lauren, this is what I wanted to say that we're going to be doing new for next year that was partly inspired by this show. >> Oh. >> So, I created a strategic advisor project within chat GBT and I gave it all kinds of information about our company history, products, the way we serve clients, etc. So, I could brainstorm with it. And then I thought, hm, maybe I could give it information about us on the team. So, I had the employees resumes from when they were hired and I just changed them so that it would just be their initials, so not their full names, but I put that in there, too. And so, then it started to brainstorm with me and give me ideas and then tell me about how the people on the team might be a part of these different plans or ideas, etc. So, this year when we do our annual reviews, I'm pretty sure I'm going to do this. I haven't quite, you know, made the final decision, but I think I'm going to create some sort of resume update where people are going to detail, you know, with the information from the review, sort of the the things they've done over the last year, the projects they worked on, that kind of thing, so that I can have more up-to-date HR information in this strategic advisor chat. >> And how are you using it? Are you having conversations with it and with those personas that you've created for your employees? >> Well, not with the employees, but with the with the advisor itself that that is the chatbot. So, I'm if I have an idea when I'm out for a morning walk, I'll come back and I'll just type it in and I'll say, you know, I was thinking about doing this. How do you think this fits in with the rest of what we do? Uh, and it'll it'll just sort of generate a list of ideas, cons, pros, cons, concerns, etc. I'll give it a website for example for a conference I might attend and then I'll say you know what do you think the fit is between me attending this conference and what do you think the advantages might be for our company if I go and and so it's just it's interesting to see what it turns out and I've got to say about half of what it says is easily dismissed because it just it doesn't make sense at all or have much credence but other things and here's the key it's not that I'm seeing these things from chat GB PT and then I want to do them. It's that these other things are then sparking other further ideas in me. So it's it's just kind of like a I don't know like a a brainstorming session that people will do together. You know, I'm doing it with the machine. >> What is the advantage of having told it about your employees and giving it the initials of those employees? How do you use that to your advantage? Well, when I when I sometimes make queries to it, it'll come back and it'll say if you are able to pull this off or if you wanted to do this, then this person has experience in this area from a previous job that could be applicable to this new initiative. It'll try to relate the people on the team and how they might fit into something new that we might do, a new product, service, uh, event or or thing that we might try to do. Jennifer, the last time that you and I talked about AI on this podcast, you told us about how you had asked Chat GBT to identify your blind spots as a CEO. >> I do remember that. That was awesome. >> You thought they were pretty on target. >> They were. They were. Um well we did something recently is we hired a a director and we used chat GPT to help us sort through we input the resumes of our finalists along with um we did strength finders which is an assessment and then um we asked them some um questions specific to our work and asked chat GPT to rate the finalists um based on what we needed in our job description and tell us which you know person would come across best and it was interesting. It gave fantastic feedback. Um, really great feedback. We did the hard work of getting to that, but it helped us really narrow down our choice. We hired somebody fantastic, wonderful, great choice, and it it helped, I guess, to David White sort of have a conversation with and and point out things to us. It it was really valuable. >> Have you eliminated your blind spots as a CEO? >> Oh goodness, no. One of them, the top one was basically work to exhaustion and death since the fire. I would love to say that that has gone away, but it has not. So, no, I think um I think >> I think you work you work to ignition. >> Yeah, I like that. That sounds much better. I think there is something about founders and owners that drives us past the point of madness. And honestly, I can't figure it out. I don't know. Is it the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Is it some desperate need for external validation? What is it that drives us? Why are we doing this? I don't know sometimes. But no, it has chat GBT has has pointed a mirror at my blind spots and and I have yet to change. >> Have you? Well, I'm guessing you've probably made some adjustments. Um, of course, absolutely. I just remember the one about exhaustion. It it I think what it did did is it put a stake in the ground that I had to confront some of those. You can kind of ignore them and be in denial. It said, "Look, you really have to re-evaluate some things getting to your company to the next level." And and so maybe I haven't changed yet, but maybe I'll see the change in over the year, next year. How about that, Lauren? An annual check-in and we'll see if if all of us still have those same blind spots. Well, the thing that made it worthwhile for you that not everybody can do is that you had been using chat GPT very regularly and it knew a lot about you before you asked it to identify those blind spots. >> It absolutely did. And I think what I'll do is I'll go back to that. I think what I'm I'm going to do a six-month check in it and I'm going to go back to the where it said that and ask it based on my because I I probably talk to chat about four or five times a day and I will say what do you have you seen change? have you seen and and goodness it's now my therapist I guess and see that that's a really good point Lauren to go back to that >> we'll be eager to hear about that >> okay >> David you've told us that you uh I think while you're driving like to have conversations with chat GPT have you asked it for your blind spots >> I have not I I tend to uh to get into brainstorming sessions where I I talk about business ideas or things that have just been you know bugging me at the subconsciously or whatever and just I I find it's a different interface when you're talking to it. Um it it it's interesting how it presents stuff. And um I'm finding it's it's becoming a a more preferred way to pass the time in the car than listening uh sometimes to podcast or music. >> Can I get you to commit to asking it for your blind spots and then sharing them with us? >> I I can do that. I can let me write it down on this piece of paper. >> Thank you very much both of you. I really appreciate your sharing and taking the time. My thanks to David Barnett and Jennifer Karen. One thing before you go, everything we do at 21 Hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together. If you get something out of listening to these podcast episodes, consider joining the conversation. You can do that by joining the 21 Hats sounding board, a Slack channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom forum where you can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast. You can sign up for both by subscribing to the Morning Report. If you have any questions, you can email me at lauren21hats.com. And if you get something out of this podcast or out of the morning report, please tell a friend, tell an enemy, tell every business owner you know. Your word of mouth owner to owner will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us. Thank you. It means a lot. This episode was produced by another entrepreneur, Jess Stubberon, founder of Blank Word Productions. Thanks for listening, everyone. [Music]