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As you know, Ariat is the official Dirt Talk podcast sponsor. And at this point, we've talked plenty about their footwear, their workwear. But now it is winter, and, boy, is it cold. It was 17 degrees this morning. I had to warm the truck up. But just because it's cold does not mean the work stops. So to get the job done, you need the best, warmest workwear possible. And Ariat has a long list of outerwear, amazing jackets, pants and other goods available now. You can shop at their website, ariat.comdirttalk that is ariat.comdirttALK for the first time ever, I am thrilled to say we have an official spot for the Dirt Talk podcast, and that's Ariat. I've worn Ariat boots on every job site I've visited over the years, traveling in them across five continents. More importantly, I have yet to find a single project where working folks, unlike me, are not wearing Ariat boots and workwear in every condition imaginable. And there's really good reason for that, and that's because it's phenomenal stuff. And the more I've learned about Ariat and the company, the more I've loved their brand. So with this, Arriet is offering any dirt talk listener 10% off their next Ariat order at ariat.com dirttalk that's 10% off boots, jeans and workwear@arianat.com dirttalk or at the link in this episode's description. With that, let's get to the show. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Dirt Talk Podcast. Monday edition. We are going to talk 2024. I put together a newsletter recently. I sat down, first and foremost to write about last year and to reflect. End of the year, it's just a good time. Take inventory. How'd I do this year? What did I learn? And how can I implement that stuff for next year? So I sat down and wrote, brainstormed what I learned, and I came up with seven things. I published this again with a newsletter, but this episode, this podcast is dedicated to the lessons I learned last year, personally and from a business standpoint. So to get right into it. To get right into it, 2024, number one. 2024 was the first year I did not play business. I thought I knew what I was doing in the previous years, but this was a total joke. I shook that nonsense off and it served me well. Appearances don't matter. Fundamentals are the only game. We spent quite a few years. I spent quite a few years doing what we now call playing business. I thought I knew what the heck was going on. I had my attention here, there, everywhere. We were spending money on things. We were leasing this office building out, this office. I bought a skid steer. All kinds of stuff happened. And then the realities of a business came knocking, which is hate. You'd need the business to work financially a few years ago. And that put us on a very different path, one that's got us to a much better place and got us to a place where our business does work, which is the goal of every business. It sounds silly, but it's easy, as I found, to slide into a very scary place as a business. And over the few years before 2024, 2022, 2023, I had to eliminate everything that wasn't foundational, wasn't essential to ensuring the future success of the business. Like, for example, the skid steer. Why do I have a skid steer? It goes, why am I living in a nice place? I need to go downsize. From a apartment standpoint, you know, why are we spending money over here? Is this excess there? Everything was cut. And it was really nice to get back to the fundamentals last year and eliminate anything that was just for looks, which is, at the time, doesn't seem like a lot, but it can be a lot. And there's a lot of bullshit in business, I've learned. So eliminated the bullshit within our business and focused only on what made a difference, what delivered value for our customers, what delivered value for our people, and how to make the business work. From a financial standpoint, we saw great, great, great, great results. So sounds simple. But last year, learned that fundamentals are essential. Number two, I spent more time with my mom than ever as an adult. A few years ago, my father stopped talking to me, giving me an enormous new appreciation for time with my mom. I've learned to soak up every moment, which I've been terrible at for most of my life. Yeah, this says it all. I've really struggled with being present with family, especially my mom. We've had our challenges in the past growing up, but once I was able to get over those challenges years ago as an adult, and once I started to realize, hey, I'm. I don't have that much time with her. I. She lives in Arizona. I live in Tennessee. I'm in Arizona three, four times a year. So I have like, you know, a week a year with my mom, and probably not even that much. And so when I do have that time, I really soak in that time, and it's probably the most present I'VE been in the recent years, I've really, really, really come to enjoy it. And it's helped to assign the reality that is, I will not always have this. So while I do have it in whatever fashion I have it in, I better take full advantage of it. And it has been so enjoyable. So it's been really fun. My mom had a accident, freak accident last year. She was in the hospital. But it was odd because I spent four or five days with her in the hospital, from breakfast to dinner. And it was just the most unencumbered time we'd ever spent together I'd ever spent with her in my life, maybe. Yeah, I think, ever. And so it was hard. She was fine, ultimately, thank goodness. But it was hard not to feel grateful for it at the end of it because it gave me that time with her I wouldn't have had otherwise. So that was a really big deal. Last year, number three, I publicly spoke to thousands of people. And similarly to the first point, 2024 was the first year I stopped trying to prove myself on stage. Instead of worrying about myself, I've obsessed over leveraging my experiences to give every audience maximum value. For whatever reason, associations, companies, et cetera, have asked me to come speak over probably four or five years, I think. I had my first speaking gig like six years ago, and it was horrible. So bad. But it's really picked up over the past three years, I would say. And the first two years were me just trying to get through it and trying to prove why people should listen to me, which is super flawed because it's all about you. It's not about the audience. It's what I think I had to do to learn how to do public speaking in the very early on in my experience. But once I started to understand that it wasn't at all about me, it was entirely about the audience, which again, is very obvious. Duh, you fucking idiot. Of course it's about the audience. But my message wasn't about the audience. I wasn't designing everything wholly with the audience in mind. I was still concerned with what people thought about me and still trying to justify why I was on the stage. And once I stopped doing that, it just got so much better and so much more enjoyable. And I think this applies beyond public speaking as well. When you bear the audience in mind, whether it's the customer, the people you work around, your children, I don't know who it is. When you bear the audience in mind, when it comes to your messaging, you can be so much more effective. So this was a brilliant, brilliant lesson learned. And now my speaking, while still a little nerve wracking, has become a lot more enjoyable. So much more enjoyable. And I'll do more of it this year than ever before, which is extremely, extremely cool. Number four. Many ask how I spend so much time away from business and not stress. The answer is a kick ass leadership team with different superpowers and clear lanes. At the beginning of 2024, we clarified our roles and responsibilities, which helped us move way faster. I wholly trust our other four leaders to do their jobs and they trust me to do mine. So when I'm halfway around the world on a mine site, I'm always asked, well, how is it stressful to be away from the business? And I always answer, absolutely not. Because I know Randy, Jason, Dan, Cara are doing their jobs back home. And if they're doing their jobs, I can be on that mind site and I can do my job, which helps grow the business. I think I have two jobs. One is the CEO of the company, the other is growing our influence. But the more I can spend on influence, the less time I spend on other things within the business, the better for the whole business. And we always had our lanes and we kind of knew what each other's superpowers were before 2024. But because we implemented EOS, we brought in a implementer and she helped us sit down for a day and really hash out what our roles and responsibilities were. And once we had our clear lanes and once we've helped each other get into those clear lanes and stay in those clear lanes, everything has moved, I think, so much faster by defining them because once we have those bounds, cool. This is what I'm responsible for. I will do this to my fullest abilities. And if you need help over there, I'm there to help. And we help each other out. We step in, we cover and move. But the more I can run where I need to run, the more they can run where they need to run, the better off we are. And I could not ask for a better group of people to work with. And I have never been more grateful to work alongside these individuals. We've been able to do some pretty extraordinary stuff and I feel like the best is way, way, way yet to come. I cannot wait for the future. It is so much fun to work with these people. And now that I just love those I work with, I never want to go back. So we defined our roles and responsibilities, which sounds obvious, and we thought it was obvious before we did it, but once we started to really Work through it, we made way more progress. The fifth lesson learned, I don't control outcomes, only effort. This year, two significant events marked an insane effort, ending our second fundraising round, which was 15 months later than planned. And 1,000 leaders. Over 1,000 leaders attending our second Ariat Dirt World Summit. I abandoned trying to control each process and instead gave maximum effort. Thanks to my effort and more importantly, the work of our brilliant team, both worked just fine. I wanted to make these things work so badly. It's just not how it works, though. Closing the round and when we were going to do it was out of my control. All I could do is my best. And I focused on doing my best every day. If I did my best every day, if I did a little bit every day, did what I needed to do every day, wrote the right emails, made the right calls, talked to the lawyers, got the right documents, squared away just a little bit every day. I knew eventually I would get the result, but I just didn't control when. And it was the same with the summit. It is not an accident that we got over a thousand industry leaders at our second event. It was a lot of work across the board. And on my end, I really appreciated the little bit every day. If I made my 10 phone calls today, cool. It's going to take care of itself. It's going to take care of itself. And because I did just a little bit every day, I was able to contribute to the result that was ultimately well over a thousand leaders attending. So I have tried to abandon the fact that I am going to make something happen by a certain date. And I've really tried to focus on what do I need to do today to ensure that I have done my best. And so at the end of the day, done what I needed to do. I've done my best. Cool. We've won the day. Let's go to tomorrow. And if I just stack those up, we are going to make shit happen. And last year was a really, really good reminder of that. Number six, I eliminated alcohol in 2024. Not drinking allowed me to be healthier, sleep better, and build a greater sense of confidence. I have no plans to go back anytime soon because it is way too awesome. Talked about it on the podcast. Some did not, do not have a great relationship with alcohol because it was very negative in my childhood. I've seen alcoholism very close and personal, and I feel like it either drives you toward it or away from it. And that experience has just scared the shit out of me because I know that could be me and I Don't want it to be me. So I didn't drink in high school, which sounds obvious because you shouldn't drink in high school, but everybody drinks in high school. I didn't drink in college before I could drink legally because I just didn't want to partake. I don't really know why, but it was a really good exercise to not do what everybody else was doing. It just wasn't a good thing. And I wanted to stay away from it. So I stayed away from it for the first few years of college while, again, everybody else was partaking. And not that I'm the only one, but at least the environment I was in, I was the only one. And then later in college started to jabble. Had my nights getting completely fucking obliterated as I became an adult. Drank here or there. I've never consistently drank. I've never drank all that much in a year every once in a while. But it just got to a point where if I would have a drink, it would make me feel bad the next day physically. And I'm moving too fast for that right now. I don't and can't feel bad physically if I'm doing it to myself. Like, I can't be. I can't be degrading my performance intentionally. And I just didn't want to feel like that anymore. And it just didn't become. Or just. It became less appealing over time. So I thought, why don't I just not drink for the year? And I didn't drink for the year. I drank very beginning, like, first day of January, and then didn't drink since and haven't drank since. It's just been. It's been really, really nice. Really nice. It's been a personal decision. There's a lot of people that drink. It's great. I honestly still like it. Like, I love the concept of beer, Love the concept of going to a bar. Love the concept of whiskey. Love whiskey. It's so tasty. But for where I want to go, it just doesn't serve me. And for the past I've had with it, it definitely doesn't serve me. So made that decision, and I'm really happy with it. I don't know if I'll drink again. I haven't ruled it out, but I haven't found a good enough reason to yet. So that's where I'm at. 7. While we notched well over half a billion views on social media, our achievement of 1.7 million hours, which is 194 years of YouTube watch time was most exciting. Consistency plus humility is a winning formula. It took us years to crack this nut, but focusing on constant improvement and teamwork brought it together for us this year. YouTube has been a fucking thorn in my side for years and I thought I knew what I was doing. Years ago I had no fucking clue what I was doing. I was not a student of it. It's really important for us because it's the largest video platform in the world and it's a great place to distribute and tell stories about the dirt world in long form. And long form is really important. People say, oh, people's attention span is so small, this and that, it's dog shit. They don't know what they're talking about. Long form podcasts are most popular, long form video is most popular. Yes, there's still the bite sized thing, but to think that that is all that matters is just a huge miscalculation. So I've always known YouTube is valuable. I just didn't become a student of the process and didn't focus on constant improvement like I was doing in other categories. I thought that was the one category that was an exception. One thing that was an exception. It wasn't. And this year or last year, I became a student of the platform, of the process, helped build the team, tried to do my part in learning how to put stuff together in a more cohesive way. And we saw a massive uptake uptick last year in viewership, which means and watch time, which is most important, which means, hey, we're doing our job and man, we have some cool shit ready for this year. So, so, so, so, so cool. So that was a really good reminder. Consistency, learning a little bit every week. Just one base hit, one base hit, one base hit,. All there is to it and having the humility to say, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, I better sit down and start figuring it out. That was really key for me and it was a great reminder. I'm a huge believer in consistency elsewhere, but that was one is like, hey, I need to apply it everywhere and here I have not applied it yet. Once I applied it, everything worked out a lot better and we have a great team. Tj, Jack Harrison involved as well. From the podcast standpoint, Jessica involved on the scheduling standpoint. They've helped me make it a reality and with their help we've made something really, really special. So those were some of the things I learned, lessons learned I previously previous years I would talk about all the cool stuff I achieved, places I went so on and so forth. There was a lot of that. But I really, this year tried to focus more on what did I learn. Here's what I learned, here's what's worked for me. If it's helpful for you, fantastic. But that's it. Appreciate you all listening. Appreciate you all being a part of the podcast this year. 2025, we've got some phenomenal stuff in the works. Just can't wait to get more of what we have planned out. If you have ideas, send us. Send Send them your way. Send your ideas our way. Dirt talkillwood.com maybe I'll learn how to talk in 2025. We'll see you on the next one. Stay dirty.