Dear Friends,
It’s hard to believe that we are kicking off our fifth year in business and sending our fourth annual letter to you all. It’s been a heck of a run so far, and it feels like we’re just getting started!
Looking back on 2023, it feels like a year of completion, transition, and maturation. In both business and life, our team experienced a lot of growth and change. After three years of hard work and dedication, Brandon graduated with a Master of Divinity, Leadership from Denver Seminary. Blayne and his family traded living in sunny Tampa for 10+ years for all four seasons of Maine. We added a full-time team member and deepened our relationships with other partners and small businesses to help us advance our vision and mature our processes.
And while we’re updating:
Kelly began taking on responsibilities as Charge Nurse and led three women’s bible studies while facilitating a marriage group with Brandon.
Jeni spearheaded the effort to sell a house, buy a house, and move our family…twice! And still found time to teach yoga, learn some guitar, and be an absolutely amazing mother.
Jaden completed One Station Unit Training (OSUT) at Ft. Moore and is stationed at 1/32 Infantry, 10th Mountain Division, Ft. Drum, NY
Dylan graduated from high school (a year early), started working, driving, and getting super strong. He’ll be off to college this summer.
Elli joined the AXO sorority, made the Dean’s list in the Fall semester, and enjoyed the beginning of the Coach Prime era for the CU Buffs!
Dalton is an official teenager, is crushing Florida virtual school, and continues to blow our minds with a skateboard or snowboard beneath his feet.
Penny is becoming a star, and she knows it. She loves art and music and is totally obsessed with Taylor Swift. We’re gonna have our hands full with this one.
We came into 2023 with some momentum and kept it going with a few awesome events to start the year, including a mainstage presentation at Thermo ImmunoDiagnostic Division’s National Sales Meeting, which was an absolute blast.
Something else that we did early in the year was a deliberate, no-kidding strategy meeting in Breckenridge, Colorado, that provided so much clarity on where we’d been and where we wanted the business to go. Brandon and Blayne spent a couple of days locked in a condo strategizing and planning and then spent a weekend skiing and snowboarding with Kelly and Jeni. After that, Applied Leadership Partners was on a course for an amazing year.
Our intentions coming out of the retreat were:
Continue to meaningfully but responsibly grow revenue.
Limit air and overnight travel to (2) trips per partner per month.
Generously share truth and love in a way that creates value beyond our clients.
Continue challenging ourselves and grow. Embrace nervousness.
Maintain freedom and agency regarding how and with whom we work.
Create a functional, professional business with a small, tight, agile team.
Here is a quick overview of how we did in 2023 by the numbers, and then we’ll talk a bit more about how it happened.
61 total client engagements (24 in-person, 37 virtual). We nailed it on travel days!
Revenue was up 63% over 2022 while maintaining similar profit margins. This is actually more growth than we were shooting for and certainly stretched us at times, but we’re thrilled with it!
We added Sarah Holzhalb to the team in April as Director of Marketing and Business Development. Her work has been incredibly valuable in shoring up the business and setting the stage for future growth. The numbers don’t lie.
Marketing Year Over Year growth by the numbers (2022 vs. 2023)
Total Followers - 133%
Page and Profile Reach (users) - 292%
Page and Profile Impressions - 311%
Posts - 476%
Post Reach (users) - 306%
Post Impressions - 288%
Video Viewers - 463%
We launched a monthly newsletter that we’d love for you to subscribe to and share with friends.
We’ve had a blast recording new episodes of our refreshed Applied Leadership Podcast. We aim to release two episodes a month, and you can listen and watch on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
We also sold and subsequently wrote a book! The manuscript is complete and is off to the publisher. It’s been a long, difficult, and rewarding journey so far…and we know that there is much work still to do. Please stay tuned as we work toward a big release in early 2025! If you’re interested in learning more or would like to purchase books for your organization, send a note to operations@appliedleadershippartners.com.
In 2023, our offering expanded but was also sharpened. We added some new content but also refined some of our most requested modules of instruction and found new ways to deliver them. We created and delivered:
Brilliance In The Basics sales skills training. Teaching the core, human aspects of effective selling. Participants learn and practice the skills needed to build genuine, trusting relationships and close business in the real world. This offering is suited for sales organizations that use an existing model but wish to increase sales effectiveness by improving their reps’ human dimensions of selling.
We created our Front Line Leader Program, which is designed for front line leaders, especially those newer to management roles. The program is delivered through engaging videos and an accompanying workbook. It is self-paced and able to be scaled across an enterprise. The program is ideal for companies in service industries, retail, and hospitality.
We focused more keenly on Advising leadership teams, deepening our relationship with key partners, and serving leadership leadership teams who are navigating growth, change, and uncertainty. Being in the same foxhole with these incredibly talented and committed leaders is a gift we do not take lightly.
We also upped our game in Keynote speaking and had the privilege to speak from the main stage at a number of conferences, kickoff meetings, and events.
While we worked with several new clients last year, our business is mostly growing deeper. We have some wonderful, long-term partnerships where we feel truly part of the team and are able to really understand the organization, the people, and their needs. We absolutely love having these kinds of relationships and feel that we can add so much as real partners to an organization.
In the coming year, we aim to continue doing more of the same while growing meaningfully and responsibly. We are having a great time with this work; we love the people we work with, and the primary goal is to keep it going. This business is our infinite game. We’ll do that by deepening relationships with our long-time clients, by reaching out and establishing new partnerships, through the expansion of our Front Line Leader program, and by (slowly) bringing some new faces to the podium. We’ll continue working behind the scenes on our book to ensure that it comes to life in a way that will deliver as much value as possible to everybody who reads it.
We’re also very proud that our business and teammates are making good on our commitment to servant leadership. Over the past year, Blayne served as the chairman of the board of the Armed Services Arts Partnership (ASAP) and helped them to serve over 1100 veterans and military families members through their amazing programs.
Brandon has recently joined the board of directors of Gallant Few and will be working to support the Army Ranger community. Of note, we also made $5,000 contributions to both organizations to help support and advance their missions. This is huge for us, as we started this company with the goal to be generous and give back, and it feels wonderful to be in a place where we can do this. Ideally, there will be much more to come.
Finally, we want to leave you with a few broad thoughts on the year ahead. In the way that 2021 was the year that everyone couldn’t wait to start, it feels like 2024 is one that a lot of folks would prefer to skip altogether. We know that many of you are rightfully concerned about the state of things socially, financially, and geopolitically. It seems that almost no matter who you read and listen to, they’re predicting, or at least alluding to, some form of calamity before the year is over. For our part, we can’t offer a look into the crystal ball. We don’t know what will happen in Ukraine or Gaza, and we have no clue how the Presidential election will play out. We’re not sure if inflation will get worse or better, and we can’t tell you what will happen with stock prices or real estate. Here is what we can offer, and we hope it’s helpful.
Pay Attention and Participate. Do your best to stay engaged in what’s happening in your community and the world around you. Do so in a way that gives the space for sanity and reflection. Be informed without being consumed. Take small actions where you can. Help a neighbor, vote in a primary election, go to a school board meeting, raise money for charity, volunteer in your community, or whatever makes a positive contribution, while allowing you to live your life.
Prepare. Prediction is a fool’s errand. We cannot predict an uncertain future, but we can prepare for it. Consider your circumstances and some of the variables at play, then figure out what you, your family, and your business can do to either weather difficulty, or seize an opportunity. This might look like saving a few bucks or getting healthier or repairing a relationship. It may turn out to be a rough year, and it may not, but you’ll be prepared either way.
Press On. We can’t sit on our hands and wait to see how it all turns out. Please don’t just mail it in this year. If others want to do that, fine. You’ll just be that much further ahead come 2025. Continue to invest in your skills, your team, your projects, and your family. If you’re paying attention and prepared, you can confidently move forward, knowing that you’ll be able to adapt or adjust if needed.
We’ll close this year’s letter by simply saying THANK YOU! Too many people to mention have offered their belief, support, and encouragement to us over the past 4 years, and our business and lives would not be nearly as fulfilling without it. We’re off to the races in 2024, and we can’t wait to see you out on the trail!
All our best,
Brandon, Blayne, Sarah, and the ALPs family
