#86 The Review Issue

Hello, friends.

I’m excited about the new year. Sherry and I just unpacked from a 7-day retreat (sans kiddos) and it’s taken a lot of restraint not to jump into things before tomorrow. I told myself I’d wait until 1.6 to get back to work!

There are a plethora of things I’m excited about sharing with you in the next month. Doing so now would be a little too soon.

What I’m Learning/Doing

As I mentioned in the last NFTF, we spent part of our holidays talking about last year, the year ahead and setting our themes. Here’s where we landed:

Patience: This applies to every area, interpersonally, relationships, business, family, etc. We want to remove expectations and enjoy the journey.

Thy peace shall be in much patience. - Thomas à Kempis

Purposeful: This applies to our time and health. We want to stay intentional with what we put into and do with our bodies, minds and spirits.

Expertise is a process, not an outcome. - James Clear

Present: This applies to how we’re spending our time. We want to be enthusiastically attentive.

Wherever you are be all there. - Jim Elliot

1 Percent: This applies to all areas and especially personal growth. Tying into patience and being purposeful, we want to improve and learn a little each day.

Improvement happens from two sides: improving weakness and improving upon your best — like how an inchworm moves forward. - Jared Tendler

If you tried the exercise, I’d love to hear about your themes so I can encourage you through the year.

Changelog (2019 Year in Review)

Honestly:

  • In 2019, we worked with 25 different collaborators (teams and individuals) and paid them over $500k.
  • We had the privilege of serving 19 different clients.
  • We grew 66% in revenue and maintained a profitability of 18% (see below for an important note).

LOFT:

  • In 2019, we grew revenues by 1300% and profits by 200%.
  • We resolved 3451 tickets and supported over 60 applications, websites and mobile apps.
  • We hired our first two full-time employees (in addition to the dozen or so owners and collaborators working on LOFT).

CrewPay:

  • In 2019, we officially launched CrewPay in the spring, Quickbooks integration in the fall, and the 1099 service in December (Reach out if you’d like CrewPay to handle all your 1099 filings for 2019. And if you refer anyone, we’ll send you $).
  • We raised and closed seed round funding from First Launch Capital Fund.
  • $1,497,000 was paid to contractors.

Pttrns:

  • In 2019, we added 8,046 new members (953 premium)
  • We ended 2019 with 1241 active premium customers and 15,946 total Pttrns members.
  • Unfortunately, Pttrns had a down year on net revenue growth.
  • Things are looking up for 2020. We have a great strategy to turn things around this year.

A quick note about how we view profit. Across the companies, profit targets are important on two fronts. I say “targets” because it’s a range. Too low and an agency is inhibited in their ability to serve their clients. Healthy profitability means we can focus our best energy on helping our clients grow their businesses.

Too high and it could be an agency isn’t investing enough in the work product to maximize value passed to the client — like a restaurant that cuts costs instead of buying the best ingredients to make their dishes remarkable.

Until next time.

-David

P.S. Patient doesn’t mean slow. Here is are some examples of collaborations that came together fast: https://patrickcollison.com/fast

P.P.S. Another optimistic app trying to solve a common problem for remote teams: https://whereby.com/

P.P.P.S. Not a fan of the cold, but some of these images are magical: https://www.instagram.com/north/

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