The One Revenue Strategy Most Escapees Are NOT Using with Brandon Mateika

Brett: Welcome back to the Corporate Escapee Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Trainor. Today's guest is Brandon Matika. This is Brandon's third visit to the show, believe it or not, he first appeared back on episode three, episode three, way back in 2019. I'm like, oh my God, I've been doing this for four years and then episode 40 back in 2020.

So shame on me for, for having this. Space too far apart, and you'll see why when we get into the episode. But, so Brandon is the founder of Sales and Marketing Inc. Where he works with small businesses with their sales and marketing needs. How about that? A unique name that actually tells people what he does.

I believe this number is well over 50 businesses or maybe over 70 businesses at this point. Brandon, am I in the ballpark?

Brandon: Yep. Yep. We're right about 70.

Brett: Okay, fantastic. Volunteers at a local community college and the University of Iowa, which will let slide for the sake of the show, but that's all right. Um, also started a young entrepreneur program last year to help founders avoid costly mistakes in their business, and we'll dig into those two and.

Bit because he, this has actually been a really positive business development channel for him, and I really wanna understand how, how that worked. And last but not least, as we've talked about in the show all the time, diversifying your revenue streams, he's starting three new businesses in addition to , what he's doing with Sales and Marketing Inc.

So Brandon, welcome back to the show. Did I miss?

Brandon: No, it's perfect

Brett: All right,

Brandon: and thanks for having me again.

Brett: when you and I got caught up a couple weeks ago, I guess, um, you were talking about your business and how it's, it's really kind of a booming.

How it's moving. And then you got into the BizDev channels and talked about channel partners. And if you don't have channel partners or referral partners, then don't even do it. I'm like, whoa. All right. This is, this is a different angle, which again, we're all hungry for, you know, new business. So, so I thought I'd have you back on and just talk about your business model.

Um, cause I really do think it's, it's. Good, um, blueprint for, for folks to think about and consider as they're, they're starting to ramp up. So with all that being said, to get started, why don't you share with the audience a little bit about what you're working on today, what those businesses are, and then we'll get back into how that's evolved over the last few years.

Brandon: I'll make this a little bit of a longer story, especially for the listeners who'll probably find this interesting, You know, I'm a service company. I started my company when I was 26 and I was going in claiming, Hey, I'm an expert at what I do. I've been in the, you know, marketing since stuff 17, but when someone sees someone who's as young as me being like, I know exactly what to do, like your CMO doesn't kind of thing, there's a ton of doubt there.

So what you end up happening is you start talking to these businesses when you're 26 and they're like, well, I wanna see testimonials. I wanna see client lists, I wanna see referral lists. I wanna make phone calls to your previous customers. All this stuff, right? So I go through it, I'm like, there's, it's just my sales conversion rates were terrible.

People weren't taking me seriously. So I went through and I started talking to partners and I was like, Hey, you know, if you could add credibility to the new business name, you know, could you do that with me? You know, we'll do part partner projects together. You know, you'll be kind of my, my reputation.

Like you'll go out and you'll say, I can do my job. And then that started my very first referral partner structure, cuz the first, you know, two to three months of my business, I mean, we weren't getting anything at all. I think I had one customer first two to three months, but by month six I had like four or five just because of referral partner structures.

And then by the end of the next year I had worked with over 30 companies just because, and they're all referral partner structures or strategic partners,

Brett: well one, how did you even know, was it just intuition that you knew that there was somebody with business out there? And then two, how did you approach and then look to maybe not necessarily structure 'em, but how did you seek out the right, the right partners?

How what? What did that look?

Brandon: It was not super intentional at first, so again, 26. I really didn't know what I was. So like, I don't wanna like make it be like, Hey, I knew what I was doing. I really didn't. But I knew people in the industry, especially in the area. So I'm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and there's marketing agencies here already.

And I went to all of them and I said, I will take your worst projects. I will do whatever work you don't wanna do. And I, I am so like confident in my abilities, I'll take your worst projects. And they were ecst. They're like, absolutely. Uh, so I ended up having to work with, you know, people that were not easy to work with.

I ended up doing projects that were kind of a nightmare or really complicated or, you know, there were structured marketing sales structures that were just terrible and they were like, we don't wanna deal with it. Uh, like we won't make 'em money, any money on it, like profit margins aren't there. I was like, I'll take it.

And that's how that started. So almost all of my projects were initially were some sort of referral partner structure, and I would take over these clients.

Brett: Okay.

Brandon: They would gimme the clients, I'd give them 20% back on the initial contract. It was all men initial contracts. And then ended up going to where some of the partners saw my work, they saw I handled the projects and they're like, wow, you know, we should actually work together.

And then it turned into a strategic partnership to where we do projects almost 50 50, which is a majority of my projects now are, they're content writers, content developers, they go through and they do all the content generation stuff. And we can do that. I can do that, but I don't. It's just takes too much time.

It's not, it's not one of my specialties.

So they go through and, and they sell the project. Most of the time I get, uh, like a notification, okay, a new contract's been signed, uh, when can you start? And then I go and they do take care of the billing. They'll send me the billing. For me, it's a very strategic, when they grow, I grow.

If I get a contract that that's good for them. When I grow, they grow. And it's just a great way for us to build.

Brett: That's a super inter, I love that idea. It was interesting. For a while I was railing against being a subcontract. Are, this really isn't a subcontract, this is more of a partnership, right, where you're doing a certain task that they can't do and vice versa, or you don't want to do in many cases. So

Brandon: Yeah.

Brett: interesting.

And so is there, without getting into the details, is there still referral fees with it or is it you guys are just both benefiting it from, cuz you're both getting business.

Brandon: Almost all of 'em right now is straight 50.

Brett: Okay. Wow, that's

Brandon: of them, So it builds a lot of consistency. Now I can expect probably one to two new contracts every.

You know, on some sort of scale. And they're not always, we talked about this before. I love retainer models. Uh, so I, all my marketing campaigns, like all my projects, I plan 'em out over a course of a year that you can go to a company and go, Hey, this is what I would do if you're as, you're like Cmmo or A C S O or you know, whoever, and this is what I would do for a year and this is the steps that would take, and here's why I would take those steps and it's easy for them to.

And then I could help them execute that over the course of the year. And I'd like that cuz I could keep track of KPIs. You keep track of stats and I'm more involved. I can go through and say, Hey, you know, these lead generation rates are dropping, these are increasing. Stuff like that. Those. Phenomenal.

Love that. But almost half of these are also projects where I'm only working with them to two to three months. We'll do 'em, but they're not ideal.

Brett: Yeah. So if you think about it from the retainer, right? Because one of the things, talking about people leaving corporate, right? We've got different skill sets, we can do different things, and most of 'em are like, well, I'm not sure the the path, right? I don't wanna build a Google or a Facebook or a big company.

And you know what? I've, once I've shifted the focus of this podcast, more on these specifics, it's been amazing the number. Different paths that there is available for folks to take and, you know, from the fractionals to the consultants. And you're kind of doing a combination of two, the service business with retainers to, uh, to a hybrid.

So if I'm looking at your retainer model, are you acting as C M O or are you more of a, you know, a couple times a week checking in? How does, just in general terms, if I, if somebody's in the marketing space, thinking about that type of a deal, is this, you're just managing the program for 'em, you check in once a week.

Brandon: I prefer once a week.

Brett: Okay.

Brandon: If not, the projects tend to stall and task the tasks at hand tend to not get done. So usually try to do it once a week. Uh, usually the actual involvement, it depends if the contract was sold for me or not. It usually was up happening for sold for me. The company's managing, also the client Interac.

And I'm coming in as kinda like the development team, like I am the development team. I'm the expert team. I am in addition to that person who's sold. So they usually handle the client interaction. So half of these, I haven't even met the owner of the business yet. I'm acting as, you know, the backup for that person.

So usually the person who sells still maintains client interactions. They maintain the project, they'll take. For as much as they want, and I'll just, I'll sit and bend back and, and do what I have to do and I'll give them advice on what to do with the client, what to tell them goals and objectives, next steps.

And they can go, they can pitch that to the client as much as they want.

I would highly recommend a partner structure. Uh, almost every company is gonna run into the same issues of cred. So if you're a brand new company, especially in the service industry, which you're kind of in it, you know, you've been working at it for years, I've been working at it for years. Until you get to the point where you've been in it for years and you have that client base and you have those testimonials, you have those things, it's hard to go through and and start, and you're competing against people who have experienced and all that.

so if you're gonna go a service-based industry just like this, and you're gonna do a marketing program, just like. Going to reduce some sort of marketing service. The very first thing I would do is understand what you like to do, what you're really good at.

Also understand if you're gonna do a partner structure, understand what your partners are really good at and what they hate doing. It is so easy to go to marketing companies and other people and go, what do you hate doing? They will gladly offload leads. They will glad. It's one of those things to where if they even get a referral kickback on it, you know, 20% of the initial contract where the agreement is between the two of you, they will gladly do that.

Why wouldn't they? They're getting rid of, of a, a hor horrible project. It adds to your credibility cuz you're getting a, a contract and you're gonna go through and you're gonna learn what it is to work with difficult clients right away. It immediates your credibility. Is it the easiest route in the world?

No, but it's a great way to get that infrastructure. Because until your, I mean, your website, if you're a brand new company and you have, let's say you've SEOed it to the Max OnPage seo, off page seo, you've done all the things, you're probably waiting six months to a year before that even starts pulling in really good organic leads consistently.

So until that time period happens, you're gonna have to, you're have to, you know, the hunter and the farmer, you're gonna have to be a hunter. Then you're gonna have to just take what you can get. So go through, get as many partners as you can. And then I also went through and I built my network as drastically, quickly as I possibly could.

So I went to all the U local community colleges, went to the local uni universities, you know what? University of Iowa.

Brett: why don't you dig into that a little bit? Cause I think it's an interesting, cuz we all have community colleges and universities around where we're living and so how did you, what was, what was your approach there?

Brandon: so Kirkwood Community College here. Teamed up with the small business development Center. So the S spdc and the S SPDC goes through and they provide, I wouldn't say free, they're not free resources to businesses. Well, I think that the client is free, but you know, they actually do pay us counselors. So we go through and we will donate our time.

So we get paid like $50 an hour to go through quote unquote, and donate our time. So what they do is the university or the local community colleges, SBDC, will get all these businesses like, Hey, we need. , we don't know what to do, and then whoever's running the S SPDC will then go to all of our counselors and go, Hey, we have a business that we think are fit for to help.

Will you donate some time? So I would go through and I was working with, you know, four to five different S SPDC clients at a time, donating four to eight to 12 hours of my time to get them on track. Going through and doing that. At the end of, you know, the duration, depending on how structured the company is and how much financial, you know, infrastructure they have, they can request to work with you when they're done.

So whether it was four hours or eight hours or 12 hours, if they were in really bad shape, you'd give them 12 hours for free. You would just keep extending it and adding more duration, cuz they can't, they can't afford it. Other. But if they could, after four day, four hours or eight hours of free time, they would go, I wanna work with them on a paid engagement.

We would both sign a contract and then from there we would go and we would start working together.

Brett: Interesting.

Brandon: So, you know, your first year you're getting re, I'm getting referral partners, I'm getting projects that they didn't want and I'm gonna SBDC and I'm donating my time to work with these businesses that are also in really rough.

Again, not easy projects, but their projects you're going through and you're helping them become stable again. And then the University of Iowa, they have acceleration programs. So same thing, you have all these young, young businesses that are making mistakes. They don't know exactly what they're doing yet.

And then you'd work with a team of, you know, up to 10 different counselors all in a room with 10 different businesses. And we'd all break out and you'd all work with each other, you know, one-on-one and talk about how can we make this business better. So I did all that first. It was all first year laying the groundwork and trying to become stable.

Brett: Some really interesting ideas. Again, as you're thinking about non, I don't wanna say these aren't non-traditional, but not many people talk about this, right? This is such a better way. Cause I'm always like, leverage your network. Why not go through network?

And if your network's not big, then start growing your network. And I think you've given some really good ideas of where to start. Cause I'm guessing every state, I think we've got the, it's not the S B D C, but it's a small business

Brandon: Something similar. so there's a lot of business structures too that just, they just meet every week. They have like lunch or breakfast

Brett: Yeah, networking events. Sorry

Brandon: networking events like every day or every week, every day, whatever it is.

Join those like, obviously I'm making it sound like this was like all super easy. I had tons of conversations that went.

Brett: Yeah, for

Brandon: You have a million business meetings that you're like, I don't like that person, and you're not gonna work with that person. However, again, it, it's, if you're gonna hunt for customers, if you're gonna go hunting for that and actually put the time in, start with partners.

If you're starting a new business and you don't have partners, it's gonna be very difficult.

have no backing, you know?

Brett: I think you're right. You're gonna get some word of mouth referrals from just your network that people know you may jumpstarted. But you know, that's why I think you're, the timing with you talking about partnerships in there, it just, it just makes sense.

I think we're gonna. More and more of that. And the sooner we, if the audience can take advantage of it, you know, you'll, I don't wanna say first mover, but you'll have a lot more opportunities at some point. It'll get a little more, condensed. Awesome. Awesome. All right, so I know you had also talked about the young entrepreneur group that you had started, and maybe just, it sounds, I think I know where this is going based on the other volunteer, but explain a little bit, you know, one, how you got that started and, um, kinda the benefits of, of doing that as well.

Brandon: It started very naturally, like organically. Uh, essentially a lot of the people I knew, a lot of the friends I have here in the area were like, Hey, I'm kind of interested in starting my own company. How would I start? And you know, I tell them and then they'd be like, well, you know, okay, that's step one.

What's step two? And I was like, yo, I have a whiteboard. I was like, all right, let's come over to my place. We'll write on a whiteboard. And then, you know, after about a, you know, we met every. After about two months, you know, we had a group of like six people, and at third month we had a group of like 10 people.

And then, you know, after the fourth month, fifth month, then you have like 12, 15 people per week, you know, to show up. Then you'd go through and depending on where they were, their business model, where the, you know, business stage you'd go through and I would try to dedicate time to each business and explain, you know, this is what you're doing, this is what you should be doing.

Here's next steps. This is what you should look out for, all that stuff. And, and so we started calling up. Yep. Yep. Yep. So the Young Entrepreneur program. Yep. Group. So every summer. So, you know, probably starting in spring depending on how, you know, my own business growth goes with the new businesses. We'll go through.

And if I have the time, I'll probably start it again. So the whole program is, if you're brand new, you're a young entrepreneur, it doesn't mean you're like young either. Like you can be any age, just a young entrepreneur, you're, you're young in your journey becoming a, a corporate escapee, something like, How do you start and how do you avoid the mistakes that almost every business makes when they first start?

That's there's a reason why the failure of business rates are, you know, they're so high, it's like 95% over that. I mean, a lot of these businesses, these guys would start their business or these young, you know, guys, girls would start their business and they would have no idea how to do financial. They have no idea.

I have no idea how to forecast financials. You know, if I made this many sales, how much money I would would I make? But what would my expenses be their minds aren't working like that yet? You know, how do I grow clientele? How do I do my website? How do I do my branding? You know, why do I make my logo look a certain way?

Why do I pick certain colors versus other colors is you're all brand new concepts, right? Like, how do I reach my target market? How do I understand my target market? How do I understand that pain? These are all new concept. So the goal is essentially take, you know, a, business school, you know, four year, two year program and squish it down into a three to four month program, and that's the Young Entrepreneur program.

Brett: again, you donating your time or is this So for fee program or

Brandon: do it, just straight. Do it any time.

Brett: See again, another theme with this is, you know, look at all the time that, that Brandon has donated back the value that you're giving right. To give, to get, cannot be understated enough. And yes, what? You're getting it all back, right?

It's, it's coming back. It took a little bit of time to to, to lay that groundwork. And The other little thing we talked about offline before is not only do you have this going, you've decided, you know, 2023 is a year, you're gonna start three more businesses outside of it.

Which again, I'm a huge fan of multiple revenue streams. Make a lot of small little bets, right? Get the core of your business taken care of. Pay the bills, do that, but then explore, that's kind of the beauty of going on your own in solo, um, right, that you have. So why don't you talk a little bit about . Why three?

Is it just the opportunities presented themselves? Or how, how are you thinking about this?

Brandon: I was watching a video and then it was some sort of investor and he was like, if you want to go through and, and be financially stable for yourself and your family, so you know everybody. I usually need about seven revenue streams. So like seven, like that was the number I saw.

And I, and I remember the context after or before that video, but I remember the, the number seven, like seven revenue

Brett: I've seen that too.

Brandon: So I went through, I was like, I'm looking at this and I'm like, you know, I, sales and marketing is doing phenomenal. Love it. Great. But even I was like, I'm extremely limited by my time.

You know, if I want to make more money, I have to work more. And that is exhausting. You know, it's so easy to burn out in a service-based industry. Cause you're like, well, I wanna make more money, but then I'm not spending time with my family. And it's just, I hate that trade off. I hate it. So I'm going through it.

I'm like, I don't wanna do this forever. You know, if I, I wanna be able to brag about how few hours I'm working a week instead of how many I'm working. You know, I don't wanna be like, I work 60 hours a week. There's no value in that to me. I want to go

Brett: I'm with you,

Brandon: right. I, I wanna be like, I work 10 hours a week. Like I wanna be able to brag.

So I went through and I was like, you know, what would be the best way to do that? And that led to, you know, let's start coming up with new business models. Where I would go through and I build the infrastructure of the business, and then someone else actually does the work kind of thing. So the very first business is actually my wife, Cassie.

She's wanting to start her own, uh, like it's called Made retro, which you could probably assume what the business is about. She makes retro style clothing. You know, we go through, we buy, you know, different types of clothing, different t-shirts. We design our own designs, or we get contractor design designs and we go through and we, we put those on t. And that opened up the door for us to get our own printing equipment. I'm sorry, own t-shirt printing equipment, which also led to us being in this space cuz you, it's an industrial size t-shirt, pretty machine. And then we have to be in a place zone for it, you know, commercial. So we went through and we're like, well, with that, with that machine that we have over there in that room.

We could then also do custom prints. So we could go through and we could offer, you know, if any company wants like a polo or a t-shirt, they want, you know, something printed on any T-shirt or a sleeves cozzies, you know, anything fabric related. We now have a machine that can print for any design you want.

Does it matter how many colors it is? How you know? Batch size? It's not screen printing. It's called direct to film, you know, for all those who probably know, and it opened up multiple revenue. So going through this, you know, one machine opened up two businesses right there, and we're hoping to launch both, you know, websites within end of the next month.

So things are probably gonna get really busy with those, hopefully. Uh, the third one is gonna be my buddy specializes in human resource data collection. So think of like recruitment. Uh, how do we go through and build recruitment programs like in-house recruit? But also make it as super efficient. You know, cuz the amount of resumes you need versus the amount of hires you get is astronomical.

Like for, especially if a really key hire, you're looking usually about 250 resumes to a good key hire. But if you go through and you, you optimize that process, you cut that number in half. again, there's a whole thing about it, you know, making sure everything's done right.

It's actually very similar to a marketing campaign, making sure you're targeting the right people. So then you have recruitment, then you have retention. And especially in the call center space, which I know you and I both have a lot of history in the call center space. Their employee retention numbers are unbelievable.

Like turnover could be as high as 200%. I mean,

Brett: On a good, in a good year,

Brandon: Yeah. Even, you know, on average I think it's around 300%.

It's unreal. And if you could go through and, and actually show human resources, metrics and how to lure that number, I mean, that could make a dramatic change for most businesses, especially in that space. So that's the next one. So that's called management training incorporated. And the whole thing is how to train management.

Like just the name, you kind of see a, a team here with my names and what, how I, I name my businesses, uh, train management to take care of their employees.

Brett: there's the common theme across it, right? So it's not like you're just going off into the wild west and starting something that brand new, it's at least at the core, it's something that you already are good at and know how to do and can apply it against these, these businesses.

And And again, you can start to place your best, right? So you can start scaling back sales and marketing because you've got some, something that's more scalable going in those other, and that's what I tell people. I just get started, get the momentum, get the bills paid, and work towards that freedom and the, the flexibility, right?

That we, we all want, we don't wanna work 60 hours a week or 80 hours a week. It's, um, finding that path, right? Balance. I'm definit. Few years older than you. But I mean, it's, I think that's one thing, again, at least with this podcast and when I talk to to folks, it's much less the financial independence is important for sure.

But, you know, I used to have the, the three apps, it was the Freedom, flexibility, and Financial Independence. But you've actually mentioned, uh, a couple more I think, where I've added, uh, fulfillment, right? So are you energized by what you're doing with this and then fun. You gotta have some fun. Um, fun seems like the odd one out there, but you know what, I think if you've got those four and you don't have the fun, you may burn out.

Right? You gotta have that, that piece of it.

Brandon: Oh yeah. it's kinda like this whole thing with my wife, right? Like honestly, the journey started, you know, years ago. We've been trying to have kids for years and we haven't been able to, and it was one of those things where we were like, you know, let's do something together. You know, even if we can't have, you know, our own kids yet, you know, which, you know, obviously, We're still working on it, but if we can go through and create something together and really grow together, like how much like better our personal lives would be, how much more fun we would have if we are working late, let's at least work on something together, then that is why we started made retro.

It's something to where I love designing things and you know, being a designer and being creative and all that and she loves going through and making things and mean crafty and all that stuff. Let's do something fun together and if end ends up making, you know, a decent amount of money, well that's great.

But the initial goal is to, you know, do something fun together. And you know, when you get to the point to where you're working this many hours and burnout is right around the corner, having something fun look forward to makes a world of difference. So, yeah, that's made retro, you know, that's, you know, other printing company we're starting, it's called Fancy Fox, and it's just like, let's do fun business names with fun color palettes and, you know, fun business models.

It's just, let's have a good fucking time,

Brett: And do it together, man. Yeah, I'm, I'm with thinking back through my journey when I left management consulting and you know, my wife had said, man, I didn't, what was the matter with you? I'm like, cause at the time I'm like, it was a good job, right? The kids were all in good.

I mean, get starting to move towards the empty nest, but everything on the surface seemed fine. I was just unhappy with it. And I think over the last two years, As things have evolved and I've kind of find, found a path and, you know, some of that balance and, but what really snapped it together was getting her in alignment with, with what I was doing.

Now she's not the business person. She's not, but. I had all this, I was doing it myself, and she just wasn't a part of what was going on. So now we've actually figured out how to make, so we'll do quarterly update meetings with, with her just to make sure, hey, are we still on the same path? It's been unbelievable in the sense of how, um, Better, right?

We've had a lot of changes moving towards empty nest, those types of things, but having her and I back on the same page, right? When you have little kids in the different stages, it's easy to be on that same page. And then over the years you just kind of start doing things so it adds the fund back to it and.

It takes one more, uh, or one of the potential stressors off the table,

Brandon: But anyways, if you could do something for somebody and help them fulfill a dream like that, do it.

Brett: Yeah, no, I mean, again, the, the whole point of this podcast is to show people what's possible, right? And the, and, like I said, I love sharing your story, Brandon, because it's one that gave us a different path, right?

Different options and just shows what's possible. Um, and again, the one thing we try not to do on the show is just say, yeah, it's all rainbows and unicorns and whatever. It's, it's not.

Brandon: no means,

Brett: Whatever you're working on, you're working on for you or the, the us in, in what you're.

Brandon: if there's like a last thing or like even a little snippet, there's so many people out there who are willing to help a new business.

There's so many people out there that are willing to give time, resources, advice. I mean, like, whatever it may be, there's so many people out there that will help young business entrepreneurs, business people who are actively wanting to learn and get better. same thing. If you have a bunch of new listeners listening to this and they're thinking about starting their own company and they have questions.

I have the Young Entrepreneur program for that reason, it's donated. I will answer questions for you. If you have a new business idea and you don't know how to get started, like Don't be afraid because like there's an unknown, like if you look at any social media platform you look at, you know, TikTok videos, Instagram videos, anything like that, there's tons of people like, I wish I knew this, or someone would've told me this, or I wish there was someone to help, or someone give me advice.

We're out there.

Brett: But you know, you know what's interesting though, is the number of people that either don't think they need help or don't want to ask for help. So I think appealing to the folks that need help and are willing to ask a hundred percent. There's no, absolutely no shame in that. You know, I, I posted something the other day about, you know, self-improvement and, and finally getting help.

Cuz when you're in the corporate world, again, you weren't in there as long, you are a corporate escapee. You, you paid dues, but you figured out sooner than, than many of us. And we just don't, we spend money, but we don't spend time on ourselves. Or how do we get better? Either between volunteers or actually paid coaches in some cases or programs.

Um, that was game changer for me a couple years ago when I finally started doing that. And it just opens up the world to, you know, more resources. You don't have to do this on your own. Right.

. So, any, any parting thoughts? I thought you just left us with a really good one.

Um, and then two, where, where can people find you if they want to connect and learn more?

Brandon: The easiest way to find me would be website sales and marketing us.com. Fill out a contact form. I get all the contact forms. if you. Want to reach out to me in other means. Again, LinkedIn's also probably the best one. Uh, same thing. I don't check LinkedIn nearly as often as I should.

Uh, but I will, I will respond. I'll, I'll check at least once a week. Uh, last parting thoughts about all this is, you know, kind of going through and, kind talk about the corporate escapee, If you're really listening to this and you're have a, you know, with the intention of becoming a corporate escapee, doing your own things again, there's a lot of resources out there.

A lot of people are there to help. Uh, doing your own thing is extremely fulfilling. I highly recommend it. Going through and, and being your own boss, having your own schedule, you know, you will likely end up working more hours than you are at c. , but it's different. You're wanting to do it. Uh, if this is a really big dream of yours, it's really passionate of yours to do that, then yeah, you should do it.

Brett: A hundred percent on board, right? Life's too short, not too right. Let's go through the motions. I think we've learned a lot post pandemic about what's important to us. Right. Especially some of us that just went through those motions for years, so. All right, Brandon, well really appreciate it.

Um, we'll catch up with you in the, the not too distant future and appreciate your time.

Brandon: Thank you, Brett.