Our 2024 Wrapped

Hayden Lee

Welcome, everyone, to the Success Elevated podcast. As always, I’m your host, Hayden Lee, and I am joined this week by my co-host, Katie Harris.

Katie Harris

Hey Hayden, How are you doing?

Hayden Lee

Good to see you, Katie. I’m doing great. Katie has, joined me for a lot of podcast episodes this year, and we thought it would be super, super fun, to do a 2024 wrapped. I like it, which is a lot like, what Spotify does and what a lot of these like podcast and music places do and highlight.

Katie Harris

Our highlight our years. We wrap it up.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. Both. both podcasting and, I think just talking about, like, spot on solutions and all the fun stuff.

Katie Harris

I think this is my first time in our new digs up here.

Hayden Lee

This is sweet.

Katie Harris

With you.

Hayden Lee

We have an awesome, awesome videographer that, anytime we get him to film our podcast, instead of doing it over zoom, so much is so much better. As much as we I mean, zoom is great, and it connects us with all of our clients all over the country. Man, it’s nice and we get to do it in person.

Katie Harris

You know, that’s actually one of my highlights from the year is, we have in-house videography team. That has been on the road with us. Went to some shows with us, hit some clients, like super cool additions to our services in 2024.

Hayden Lee

Yeah, it’s been awesome. well let’s start. Katie, I don’t I don’t know if you have, like a particular podcast you wanted to start mentioning with or maybe let’s, let’s do this first. We’re going to do this is this gets people a peek behind the curtain. But let’s talk a little bit about spot on solutions this year. Like what has been I think what’s been the biggest change for you in 2024 versus the last 12 plus years?

Hayden Lee

working in this industry.

Katie Harris

Geez. Why don’t you start with a easy question

Hayden Lee

Start with a real easy one.

Katie Harris

Yeah, man, I thought we were going to talk podcast.

Hayden Lee

Well, we’ll get there. We’ll get there, we’ll get there.

Katie Harris

You know what? 2024 has been a year. It’s interesting to me because now this is my 13th year as business owner. Get found first and spot on solutions both and all along the way. You hit like plateaus. Yeah. Chuck feeling calls an entrepreneurial stall, right? Yeah. Where you just like you hit it. And I always know we’re coming right up on one, because for two reasons.

Katie Harris

Number one, some of them are predictable. Like you’ll talk to professionals, experts out there and they’ll tell you when you can predict you’re going to hit them and why. Yeah. but also it’s really interesting to me because, like, something gets so painful that you’re like, oh, crap, we gotta figure this out. Yeah. And this year, this year, we’ve had some big things to figure out as our team has grown and clients have grown, it’s like, okay, you got to figure stuff out.

Katie Harris

And, and I am a big believer that, like, what got you here won’t get you there. Yep. And so I think our team has been really good this year at just shaken up, shaken things up and having a whole new mindset to how we go about things.

Hayden Lee

Something as simple as like having enough space in our office for everybody.

Katie Harris

We ran out of desks!

Hayden Lee

Like like something as simple as that is like the I mean, people talk about growing their businesses and there’s so many other challenges. And yeah, you’re dealing with more clients now and more employees. But like the basic of like, do we have enough desks for everybody? Do we have enough computers for everybody? Something as simple as that. As like a challenge.

Katie Harris

Yeah, it’s good stuff, though. Nothing I’d complain about. But it’s interesting because it doesn’t matter how many business owners I talk to. it doesn’t matter where you’re at in your business. Like you’ll hit these same. You’ll hit you’ll hit things like this, or you’re like, oh, I gotta figure that out. That’s new. I’ve never done that before.

Katie Harris

So, we got to do that with a few different things this year. Some of them we weren’t expecting, like running out of seats.

Hayden Lee

Or like, running out of seats. It’s, I think it helps us. Well, at least it helps me. I don’t know if you feel this way, but it helps me. It gives me a greater appreciation for what our clients are going through. We’re not in the home service industry. We’ve worked in the industry for the last 12 years.

Hayden Lee

But, you know, we don’t own a restoration company or anything. So we don’t necessarily deal with the daily grind of having to go clean up a house or deal with that. But I think we do experience in some small way, like the just the struggles that our clients are also facing. And it helps me as somebody that has to talk to a lot of clients every day, like I maybe I kind of get some of your pain points and I get how you’re feeling at times, and I get the frustration of maybe not growing how you want or trying to hire good team members.

Hayden Lee

Like, I get that a little bit.

Katie Harris

And so funny because you say we’re not home service. I jumped into the home service industry as an owner this year. partnered up with some really great people, in a in a custom cabinetry business. Yeah.

Hayden Lee

Katie Harris

And so I do have some, some new insight and appreciation to what all that looks like. So yeah, it’s cool.

Hayden Lee

It’s very cool.

Katie Harris

Well, what stands out to you from 2024?

Hayden Lee

Oh, man. I mean, all the things you mentioned, I think the biggest thing and we’ve say that phrase so, so, so, so much to the point that it’s probably annoying for some people, but like, what got us here is not going to what is not going to get us to where we want to go. And specifically with 2025.

Hayden Lee

And we talked a little bit about this in one of our team meetings this last week, we did our quarterly planning, which is also because it’s the end of the year, was our annual planning. And I came out of that feeling like, if we want to hit our goals for 2025, we have to be different. And not only like will we grow and hire more employees like, of course, but

Katie Harris

Work with new great clients.

Hayden Lee

work with new, great clients. Our clients businesses will grow. All of that’s awesome. But like the people that are here in this building have to change. Like we have to be different. Yeah.

Katie Harris

you have to do more and learn more. Yeah. That you’ve done before and, I don’t know, on one hand, I think that’s terrifying a lot of times. but it’s also like, totally exhilarating and exciting to just know that there’s so much potential, so much opportunity. And and it’s just right there.

Hayden Lee

And it’s it’s, it’s freeing a little bit when you just kind of accept that when you’re just like, I at the end of 2025, I have to look back and be like, wow, I am a different person. And knowing that that’s got to happen, I think helps me like, recognize, like, yeah, let’s just go do it. Like, let’s not let’s not waste time.

Katie Harris

That’s why I love a new year. That’s why I actually that’s why I love quarterly Plannings because it’s like, oh, new stuff coming. That’s why I really, really love a new year. And being able to look on it, reflect, which I really think everybody should do. I think you should take some time and slow down. We talked about this in our quarterly planning, but so we get so busy trying to be better and problem solving.

Katie Harris

Do all those things that, sometimes we forget to just stop and celebrate the wins. And for the last few years, I’ve done something that I really like, and and I’ll just take a few minutes and, and, you know, in my journal, in a notebook, I will write like 20, 24 and I’ll just write all the things I can think about around it, like, what were the wins?

Katie Harris

What are the wins look like? We sometimes just forget to stop long enough to be like, dang, that all happened this year. And and so I hope, you know, people listening, just take a few minutes and go back over everything and you’ll realize I’m different than I was a year ago.

Hayden Lee

So cool. I think a big part of that, I think a lot of our growth has, impacted the podcast. And I think in a lot of ways the podcast has impacted us. I know it’s I know it’s helped me grow and be a better person.

Katie Harris

We talk to the coolest people.

Hayden Lee

Yeah.

Katie Harris

On this Podcast

Hayden Lee

We really do

Katie Harris

Like Cool, smart people that like, just, I mean, take time out of their life to come on here and share stuff.

Hayden Lee

Hundred percent. So as part of the wrapped, I thought it would be good to maybe just kind of mention some of our favorite podcasts. Yeah. So I’ll let you kick it off. What was, some of your favorites from this year?

Katie Harris

Oh, I’m going to totally cheat right now. Okay. So sorry. That’s okay. What? I’m cheating. we got to be like, we got a podcast from the Core Collective this year. Super cool. And it was really cool to we took several members from our team. we presented at the Core Collective. We set the podcast booth up, and then you just, like, lived in that thing and podcast and the whole time and I thought all the people coming out of the core podcast segment, I mean, you had I think you had Jeff Jones, you had did you have Michelle Blevins.

Hayden Lee

Michelle Blevins, Alex. Duda,

Katie Harris

Alex Duda. I mean, every time I turned around, you had somebody else awesome in your podcast booth with you.

Hayden Lee

Some people that are now like our clients, which is really cool. Like it was cool to like, meet and network with some of the, like some really, really awesome people. We love the people at Core. they treated us super, super well this year. We’re excited to go back again in 2025. Yeah, I mean, in the space of 48 hours, we recorded ten podcasts.

Hayden Lee

Like it was so so cool

Katie Harris

because I remember I was doing a training, I was doing a breakout at Core, and I was talking to him about podcasting, and I was like, just get familiar with it, give it a try, see what it could do. And I invited him. Like, if you want to try it, you can log out in our podcast booth and jump in there with Hayden.

Katie Harris

And people did it. People did.

Hayden Lee

People did. Yeah, it was awesome. Core, I think, opened up my eyes to like the power of the and we’ve, we’ve, we’ve done this long enough. We’ve been doing the podcast for over two years. So we know that like the podcast has been cool and it’s impacted people and we’ve got to meet some cool people through it. But core, I think, was the first time that I really recognized like, oh my gosh, like, people like really connect with this and think it’s cool.

Hayden Lee

And it’s it’s helped us like, I think really kind of grow the share, which has been awesome.

Katie Harris

Podcasting is interesting because I’m seeing it more and more now across home service industry.

Hayden Lee

Yeah, more people are doing them.

Katie Harris

Where more people are picking up a podcast. And I think that that is because, number one, we all spend so much time listening to podcasts now that it’s just a good place to consume your content. and number two, Google’s algorithm update with the helpful content update, you can get a lot of content, a lot more stuff.

Katie Harris

It’s fun. We’ve talked to a lot of people who are setting up podcasts. that was cool.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. Super cool. I think another one of my favorites from this year was, we, repeat of something we did last year, which was the mental health awareness series. Yeah, I really, really love that. We got to have like, kind of our in-house counselor or our in-house, therapist and for lack of a better term, Ashton Holbrook got to come back on the podcast this year, and he’s awesome.

Hayden Lee

He’s here local. He, he now, has gone out and and owns his own practice now and works just down the road from us. Like, literally, I could throw a rock and hit his office, which is so, so cool to see. Like how his life has changed over the last year and a half.

Katie Harris

And that catapulted from coming on our podcast.

Hayden Lee

Yeah, super cool, super, super cool. So that was one of my favorite series.

Katie Harris

also coming out of that podcast, here’s what I love about the podcast. I really love when something actionable comes out of it. When somebody calls us up and says, I heard this and I’m doing this, or I learned this, and like, that is awesome. And, and this year, one cool thing was, I think, I think we were some of the first ones to start talking about mental health awareness in the industry.

Katie Harris

And that question landed on the state of the industry survey. Yeah, the restoration industry this year. And, I got to help write a little bit of an article as a follow up to that in CNR magazine, but it’s that, to me, is super rewarding when you can do things and start conversations that then impact businesses, impact industries, that’s that is maybe the most rewarding part of the year.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. So cool. I think another thing that I really love from this year, talking about like impact to the industry, and it really sucks because we’ve had other members of the team come on the podcast, but being able to do a podcast with Jeff Jones was awesome. He’s the man, and we got to do a couple with him.

Katie Harris

Oh my gosh, he’s going to hear you say he’s the man. It’s going to go like repeat. He’s the man.

Hayden Lee

He’s we’ll cut that. We’ll cut that part out. No.

Katie Harris

it was a great podcast, Jeff.

Hayden Lee

Jeff teased us. He’s like, you’ve had everybody else at my company except for me.

Katie Harris

And I don’t know why. Because when I came into this industry, Jeff Jones is one of the first people I met, and Bill and management was one of our very first clients and still is today. And so, man, shout out to Jeff Jones for coming on our podcast. That was a great we could have talked to him all day long.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. And and what Violand does in the industry is so cool. And the amount of businesses they get to help. And so yeah, Jeff’s was great. I think another that really stood out to me and we both talked about him before the podcast was Brad Camp House.

Katie Harris

Oh, yeah. Brad.

Hayden Lee

Brad. Brad. Super cool. And I know you’re you’re getting to work with him on a lot of different aspects and pieces, different businesses and opportunities there. But getting to talk just about like, his story was incredible. And again, the fact that he’s local and we got to record that here locally with him was so, so cool.

Katie Harris

I also really loved that. That was Brad’s first podcast he’d ever gotten.

Hayden Lee

Yeah, yeah.

Katie Harris

And I would have never guessed that about him. But since then, man, he’s he’s recording stuff and yeah, he just jumped all in. And it was cool when Brad came on. I don’t know if you remember, but we down. We weren’t in this cool setup. You’re downstairs and we were recording and all of a sudden people, like, started coming around the corner and listening.

Hayden Lee

Like, listening in like, like.

Katie Harris

Like, caught their attention. What he was saying. And that’s just that’s Brad,

Hayden Lee

you know it’s good when our videographer, Tanner, who films our podcast and when we’re doing them in office.

Katie Harris

He’s our number one fan, is.

Hayden Lee

He is writing down notes as Brad is talking. You know, that’s a good podcast. When our videographers like, let me turn away from my camera to write something not like it was super, super impactful. The idea and the concept of like in a mindset, mindset and visualization, I know that’s like those are kind of buzzwords that a lot of people in business just use and throw out and don’t really mean well.

Hayden Lee

And I think that’s it.

Katie Harris

Sometimes you think they’re a little fluffy. Yes. Like a little frou frou, I don’t know, vision board, whatever they are Brad makes that crap cool.

Hayden Lee

And I know this about you. You are all bought in enough that you put the visualization thing that he talks about in your calendar. I see that in your can I go to like look for what you know. Me and Katie need to meet today. Let me see if I can schedule some meeting with her. And there at the top, the first thing on her calendar every day is that visualization thing that Brad talked about.

Hayden Lee

And so, people need to go listen to that episode. If you’re if you’ve got big dreams or big goals or want to be that kind of person, Brad is your guy.

Katie Harris

He’s your Guy.

Hayden Lee

And the fact that he’s this big giant, you know, teddy bear, Teddy bear is like the coolest thing too.

Katie Harris

So he’s good. He’s a good guy

Hayden Lee

What else? What other any other podcasts that really stand out? We I mean, we could talk about everybody.

Katie Harris

you know what? He’s been a regular since day one, but, I always love having Kinyon Martin. He’s a. Yeah, he’s a home town restoration owner. And he had big things happening this year. And, he merged his company with another company. And man, I, I love listening to Kinyon talk. He is like a down to earth.

Katie Harris

Yep. Real guy that, I would say is living in the trenches every day of what it’s like to go be just a really caring, generous employer, right? Like he cares about. Yeah, he cares about his people. He cares about his customers, cares about his family. And to watch that process this year and talk to him about merging with another company was really interesting to me.

Hayden Lee

Yeah, we hear a lot. I mean, we’ve had clients of ours that have been and he wasn’t like acquired and it wasn’t private equity by any means. But like we have clients that get acquired or their business gets bought and we see kind of the stresses and the challenges of that. It was really cool to be like here, really close with someone that’s been a close client of ours for a long time.

Hayden Lee

That’s a friend of ours also kind of go through this process.

Katie Harris

It’s a it’s a hard emotional road. Yeah. And it was a good conversation

Hayden Lee

And he navigated it really well. His team navigated it really well. And I mean as, as smoothly as a transition like that can go. They did it. And like they had a couple giant jobs come in in the middle of that transition.

Katie Harris

of course because thats just how it goes

Hayden Lee

And and they navigate it all incredibly. And it was it was super cool to be a fly on the wall for that to me.

Katie Harris

You go back and you look at our YouTube channel or you go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you want to get your podcast, but you can just it is like a masterclass in success. And, and it’s not sugarcoated and it’s not everybody just putting on their best face, right? Like it’s real life Stuff.

Katie Harris

And I just, I feel like 24 was a masterclass in business all throughout the podcast.

Hayden Lee

Makes me excited about what 2025 is going to be like. Like we have so many cool things coming up this year and cool people that we want to talk to. we’ve changed a little bit about how we operate with the podcast. We’ve really focused on, you know, we’ve been so consistent over the last two years. Now we’re kind of taking that consistency and really trying to focus on the quality.

Hayden Lee

It’s why we have people like Tanner, our videographer, helping us do this. Like we really want to like go out and talk to and interact with some really, really cool people. And I think take our podcast even that much further this year at least that’s that’s kind of how I see 2025 happening.

Katie Harris

I better say one more podcast or im gonna get in trouble. But Eric Sprague.

Hayden Lee

Oh yeah, well.

Katie Harris

His episode, where he talked about the first chapter of his book. I thought, yeah, I’ve said it over and over again. I was super blessed to be able to coauthor a book with Eric this year.

Hayden Lee

So good.

Katie Harris

and I’ve said time and time again, if all you do is read the first section of that book where Eric talks about having a heart attack at 49 and what that led him to, on his. That’s my favorite moment. That’s my favorite moment of the podcast all year. Is him just letting down his guard and talking about that?

Hayden Lee

Yeah. Well, in in the fact that you guys got to do it together at a Violand planning retreat.

Katie Harris

That’s right. We were actually.

Hayden Lee

Yep. At you were in Florida.

Katie Harris

Business planning in Florida, recording that podcast. You were the one on zoom? Yeah. We were sitting there together and.

Hayden Lee

And I hadn’t I mean, I had read his chapter in the book, but to hear him talk about it again, it’s just so, so cool. And yeah, the book you guys wrote again, I mean, we’ve we had a podcast about that. I know you guys are doing your quarterly, trainings where you get to interact talks.

Katie Harris

So about it is when people hear him tell that story, it hits home. Yeah. With owners, managers. Right. They’re just like, that’s me. That’s where I’m at.

Hayden Lee

Yeah. Maybe they haven’t had the heart attack or the real serious health problems, but they’ve all been like, oh my gosh, I have worked myself to death, you know, and.

Katie Harris

And there’s, there’s a path, there’s a map for it. And so road to seven figures. that honestly is a roadmap to success. And anytime I get a, you know, share a room or a podcast with Eric is really an honor. And and we do we have people flocking to Ogden, Utah, to come in and sit in a room and work on some of that.

Katie Harris

And so that’s that was a true highlight of 24.

Hayden Lee

I love it. And he, what are you hoping we can do with the podcast in 2025? Katie I’m gonna put you on the spot again. I started with a tough question. I’m gonna finish with a tough question

Katie Harris

I know you usually send me questions in advance, so I’m kind of prepared for. Yeah. probably what I’ve always hoped to do, which is just, make business a little bit easier for people. I love that, you know, we get to you to be in it every single day. Yeah. but everybody’s we’re all kind of fighting the same thing, right?

Katie Harris

We’re all trying to be successful. We’re all trying to figure out the same problems. How do I hire? How do I fire? How do I set up systems? How do how do I get cash flow like every single entrepreneur is trying to solve all those same things. And for me, here in other people’s stories, whether they’re the hard stories or the success stories, there’s just lessons in them.

Katie Harris

So, I mean, that’s my hope for the podcast this year. We touch as many people as we can, and we help as many businesses grow or at least inspire you to have a great day that day.

Hayden Lee

Yeah, I love it. Amen. I agree, I think 2025, what we’re set up to do some really, really cool things and I’m just I’m excited to see where where the podcast goes and where spot on solutions and our clients where where we all get to grow and change. So well.

Katie Harris

I appreciate you being our our host every single time for the Success Elevated podcast. I always have people tell me how much they love sitting down with you in a conversation. you make you make it easy and and I know that’s because you genuinely care about people and you are great at getting the stories to come out so.

Hayden Lee

Well, it’s it’s, it’s it’s easy to do when it’s as fun as it is. And, I seriously, it’s it’s one of my favorite things that I get to do. And. Yeah, I love getting to meet and talk to, to cool people. So you included Katie so, so much.

Katie Harris

Well, that’s a wrap for 2024. We are done.

Hayden Lee

Yeah, this is going to be our last podcast for the year. And yeah, looking forward to next year. So thanks for listening. And, we’ll talk to you next time.

Katie Harris

Happy New Year.