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Foreign. Welcome back to Building Build Wit. I've titled this one Q1 Planning and 2026 Budget. As always, this is the weekly account of what the heck is going on behind the scenes at Bill Whitney. The question I'm asked number one is what the heck is Bill Wit? And hopefully this is an attempt to give you a better idea of what we're doing, what we're learning, the mistakes we're making, the wins we're having, so on and so forth. One of our values is transparency wins. And here we are once again for a little more transparency. First up, and this is the bulk of this week, we had our Q1 planning and when we embarked on our Focus journey last fall, 2024, triggered by the decision to sell the creative marketing business, we severely underestimated just how long and arduous the process would be. As a result, 2025 has been nothing other than a slog and we are certainly feeling it. And I have far less kind words for it. It's. It's not been a year. I was just joking with somebody on the phone before recording this. It's not been a year I want to repeat. It's just been, it's been tough. Like it's, it's, it's been one of those years where it feels like you're just working and you're working and you're working, but it, you know, the points aren't necessarily on the board but you're doing all the right things. And the scoreboard doesn't necessarily affect our effort, but we're seeing the benefits through focus in our planning first and foremost. And so I reported on our 2026 planning a few weeks ago that we held in Arizona as an executive team and our two goals for 2026, our two rocks are eliminate Churn. That's companies customers Bill with improve customers our training and development platform not renewing that is Churn. We don't want any more of that and we want to wow our customers. So next year eliminating churn and wowing our customers. So then with that established for 2026 and we've already been talking heaps about it within our company, we need to plan the quarter. So the question is what are the deliverables for the company for the quarter to ensure that we are getting closer to eliminating Churn and wowing customers and we came up with three rocks. That was the limit we were aiming for between two and three. And here are our three for Q1 2026. The first is successfully launch the the new BillWit Improve Home Screen and I don't know if this is conventional. I haven't seen anybody else talk about what's going on in the business week to week. Maybe we should make that a secret, but we are planning a significant update to the main screen to how most users interact with Bill Witten prove in Q1. A lot of it is driven by just how much content we have on the platform. It's hard to see what the heck is there and to explore. So we're making a big change in in regards to that. We have some new features coming that we want to include on that home screen, which is very exciting as well. And there's a bunch of other things that need to happen within that. It's not just the home screen. It's reducing friction for users. It's ensuring that companies can onboard very quickly, can manage their team's progress over time to track use, to drive use, etc. So there's a lot in there, but we boiled it down just big picture to successfully launching the new BillWit home screen. The top question I'm asked is what does Bill Wit do? Our purpose is to build the dirt world's next generation. The dirt world is the companies and people that building the critical infrastructure and supporting those who build our critical infrastructure that we need to live the lives that we do. Our business is much bigger than me. I run around the world building our brand. But the business itself does two things. One, we help develop the next generation through our product called billwhit Improve. It's a daily training and development platform that about 300 civil construction companies are using to not just make their people better workers, but better people. And of course we have the 2026 ARIAT Dirt World Summit, the best opportunity to develop yourself and your teams as leaders. So check us out. Billwhit.com, book a meeting with us and we'll talk to you soon. 2nd 2nd raw q1 tell our customers success stories. Stories are remarkably powerful and I would say we're pretty good at telling stories of other people. We do this on the podcast, if you've listened to our guest episodes. We do this through the YouTube channel. I've done this thousands of times on all different types of social platforms. We're really good at that and that's part of the reason why we're here. Dirt World Summit, the list goes on. But we haven't always been good at telling our story and talking about us, which again is is hard. This is something we've preached to contractors all the time. You've got to talk about what you do. And here we are not doing a great job of it ourselves. But that goes no further because in Q1 we will be focused on telling our customers success stories. It will be an ongoing effort, but we're going to get the ball rolling. And, and that means here is a great dirt world company using billwhit Improve to develop their people every day. And here's what that looks like. And here's the benefits they're seeing as a result. It's really exciting stuff. They're awesome stories and I cannot wait to tell them. And finally, we have learn from Churn. If we want to eliminate our churn, we have to really understand why certain why, why, why the churn is occurring. And so we're gonna make a serious effort in Q1 to dig in on that front to really understand why companies are churning, to get ahead of that churn and then to implement those lessons learned throughout the remainder of the year. Now, I did say measurable rocks. These are not exactly measurable. They're pretty big picture. What we then did was, and I know this isn't all like super conventional from an EOS standpoint, which is the operating system, that's where the term rocks come from, and Q1 planning, et cetera. It's not conventional, but we actually, we presented these to the teams and then we told each team, hey, come up with your between one and three rocks, no more than three, that drive each one of these forward in a measurable way. So the media team has their rocks to accomplish this, the product team, the customer success team, sales team, etc. We all have our corresponding measurable rocks to make this happen. So I think this was by far our most effective quarterly planning to date. It didn't take us very long. We're seeing the benefits of that focus. We just need to do one thing next year. It is build a great software product that helps to train and develop and improve the frontline individual that's making it happen in the dirt world. That's on the shovel, that's in the machine, that's leading the crews that are building and maintaining our world. That is what we're about and I am so happy to be on that journey. And then everything else we have is to drive trust to facilitate that further that again, that's the podcast, that's what I do. Traveling around, that's the area Dirt World Summit. Everything else is in service to our training and development platform built improve. So really exciting stuff. I can't wait to get into Q1, I am so fired up for next year. Everybody is a little tired. I do feel a little bit beat up, but I love this time of year. I go full send. I cannot wait to go through the holidays. The holidays are a great time to think about everything and to just debrief. And then come beginning of January, we will be like a bat out of hell, as they say now. Also in the big news category for this week was the rollout of our 2026 budget to our team, our whole team, along with our new 2026 bonus plan. Transparency wins is awesome. Now, there's a lot of companies that preach transparency. It's very rare and it's always been a value of ours. Transparency wins since the beginning, it's really hard because there's no middle ground. And so most companies I've noticed operate on lack of transparency, which I envy a lot of times because it is easier. You don't have to explain yourself. You can keep decisions private. And oftentimes there are some things you do have to keep private, like, I don't know, a lawsuit or something like that. There are some things, but most everything doesn't necessarily need to be private. However, if you do make it public, if you do believe in transparency wins, you've got to share everything. And as you share, you've got to educate. We have not always done a great job at this, but I think this year we're going to do better than ever. So being able to share our finances with the team, share our budget with the team, here's what we want to go in, here's what we want to go out, and then we'll have a corresponding dashboard in real time that we'll be reviewing with each team, which each team member every week of the year so they know exactly where the score is. Financially, that's damn cool. And it's taken years to get there, but, boy, I cannot wait for everybody to really understand where we are financially as a business, because I think that's how we get to the next level. So that's one. It's the first time 2026, we'll give our team real. A real live look at where we are financially. And then second, it's the first time we've been able to offer our team a real bonus plan, which I am so damn excited about. This is something that I have wanted to do for a very long time. I. I will never criticize people for making their money. Whatever. You can go buy nice things. Great. I'm all for it. Do I want a plane you bet I do. They're not cheap. So, yeah, I want my money too, but it's never sat well with me to see an individual, a family, a small proportion of a company make a vast proportion of the money with everybody else working for a wage that's oftentimes not all that great. That, to me personally, just doesn't make a lot of sense. I understand you need operating capital. I understand there's a big picture, shareholders, etc. I, I, I, I get that. But I think in the construction industry especially can do much better to ensure that the people building our world don't just have a wage that like kind of takes care of their family, but that they're good to go, that they're, they're sacrificing for something worthwhile. And, and sometimes that is the case. There's some great ESOP models out there like Emery Sapp and Sons, Sargent Corporation, that, that I think are doing that and I wanted to do my part in that as well. So we have not really had the means to make it happen, but this year we do. And so we have key metrics and Randy did all this. I didn't do any of this. Randy was the mastermind. We have key metrics to meet for revenue and profit, so we're ensuring that we're retaining the capital we need for future growth, of course, but from there, whatever remains, if we hit our revenue target and our profit target, whatever remains goes to our team and it will go to our team in a combination of cash and in stock, which is hopefully significantly appreciating over time. So not only will they get potentially a very large bonus this time next year in a cash standpoint, which is a really big deal at the end of the year going into the holidays, but they will also get stock within the company. They'll become quote, unquote shareholders. It's a phantom type program, so it's not legitimate stock, but it functions as such. And they will then, you know, continue to, to participate in the company's success. So they make it happen. I've made a lot of promises to our people for a very long time. We have a lot of great people that have stuck around for a very long time when they honestly probably shouldn't have because there's been a lot of chaos, we've made a lot of mistakes and, and people have been in the crosshairs of, of those mistakes. But I told everybody on this call, listen, don't listen to my promises anymore. This is the plan. We just need to execute this plan. And here's what you get in return. So don't. You don't need to believe my words. You don't need to listen to me at all. We just need to execute. If we execute, everybody is going to be in a damn good place come this time in 12 months, which we will be. It's just a matter of time. So really excited there. Again, Randy was the mastermind behind this, but I'm just grateful we have board alignment, executive alignment, that this is the right thing to do as a business. It was, it required no discussion internally, which was to me the coolest thing. Everybody just believes in, in rewarding our people and you know, again, assuming we, we hit the targets for next year, which we will, it's going to be awesome. So I am far more excited about getting our people money than me personally. Money I do want to get taken care of. I'm not this holier than thou. Oh, I'm not. It's not about the money, whatever. I do want money. But what's more exciting to me right now personally, especially with no family, is allowing our team to take care of their families more and more and more as time goes on. So that's a little bit about rollout of budget and bonus plan to our team. Very exciting. And then two more. The first version of our customer health score is now live, enabling us to track the trends of each customer and their users. On billwit Improve. Our customer success team can now be far more proactive, working with each company as they reinforce daily training. So we have established some core metrics, we can now measure data in real time and we can see where each customer is trending. And if a customer's off track, we can get involved more quickly to get them back on track or to help them reinforce that daily learning culture that we're after. So that's a really, really big step in the right direction of again lowering churn and then finally this. The podcasts are a little bit delayed, but by January 1st, we'll be over a thousand Dirt World Summit tickets. Area Dirt World summit tickets for 2026. The best part of this, the trend that's been very cool for our fourth year at it, is that a majority of companies are bringing five plus, which is where I think they get the most value at this point. You know, each company is sometimes, sometimes companies have gone all in, which I really appreciate. Sometimes companies though, have sent, you know, an executive to feel it out and see if it's worthwhile, which, again, I respect. I understand that. And then now that They've felt it out though, over a few years and we've delivered. They're bringing groups, which is awesome because then you don't just have one person talking about it within the company. You've got a team all having learned the same stuff. They can talk about it and work on it all year, which is really where the magic happens. So very exciting there. I think we'll sell out in Q1. That's what I'm pushing for. I want to get the event sold out for the first time so that we can focus on making it absolutely world class. That is where we are going. So that is everything for this week. As always, I really appreciate you listening. I do give out my email on this episode. Someone the other day, they said, I thought it's, you know, so funny you give out your email to. Is that really your email? Do you check it? I'm like, yes, I do. Or I'll message somebody, they'll be like, wow, I can't believe it's you. Is this your team? I'm like, no, it's me, damn it. I don't have anything better to do. I've got no wife, kids, no dog, nothing. I just work. I love it. So feel free to reach out anytime. Aaronillwood.com would love to hear from you and we'll see you on the next one. Stay dirty.