Dear Friends,
We are thrilled to report that Applied Leadership Partners is beginning our sixth year, and we are doing it with more momentum, optimism, and enthusiasm than ever before. That is largely, if not completely, thanks to all of you! Your trust, partnership, and encouragement are what our company is built upon and we simply could not do any of this without you - so we need to begin this letter by expressing our deepest and most sincere gratitude. We are incredibly blessed to do this for a living and we will never take that for granted. THANK YOU!
The past year, 2024 kicked off with a couple of prevailing sentiments, the most visceral of those being pressure. We started January with a number of very real commitments that we needed to deliver, and deliver with our very best. We had several client engagements, including a couple of big keynotes that we really wanted to nail. These stretched us to build and execute high-impact presentations for audiences already familiar with us and expecting something BIG. Simultaneously, we were wrapping up the final manuscript of our book, Perseverance > Endurance, which was due by February 1st! Over the course of about 10 days, we reminded ourselves that “pressure is a privilege” about 5000 times, which apparently worked because we pulled it off and closed out January feeling extremely proud, accomplished, and exhausted.
By February 1st, we were already smoked, and this feeling of exhaustion out of the gates definitely informed the rest of our year. When we finally found the time to look back on 2023, we realized that we had achieved all of our stated goals for the year. And while growth and development is always at the forefront, an honest assessment of our situation revealed that modest 2024 growth while publishing a book, delivering excellence for our clients, and honoring our family commitments was a big win!
Here is a bit more detail on how it all played out:
Our team led a total of 80 live engagements with clients around the country. Of those, 23 were in-person and 57 were virtual.
Revenue grew for the fifth year in a row, but much more modestly than in previous years.
About 63% of our total revenue came from leadership development workshops, with the remaining coming from a combination of advising (22%) and keynotes (12%).
Nearly 75% of revenue came from existing/previous clients with 25% from new clients.
Roughly 80% of our total revenue came from what we call “blended engagements”, meaning we support the client over multiple sessions, often both in-person and virtual, and sometimes through a combination of workshops, advising, and keynotes.
We stayed within our viable capacity to integrate business and family and were able to pull new presenters up onto the podium and conduct split operations when the situation dictated.
Our new social media followers were up 20% from the previous year.
Social post impressions and likes rose 34%.
Post video views rocketed 306% percent!
Recorded 23 new podcast episodes, with 3,252 all-time downloads.
Our newsletter subscribers grew by 67%.
Speaking of family, here are some highlights:
The Smiths - The Smiths continue to love living in Maine and being outdoors whenever possible! Dylan started college; Dalton began high school, and Penny is singing, skating, skiing, and growing up too fast. Jeni’s got a new full-time gig with a media company, and we’re all doing our best to stay fit, have fun, make friends, and manage our calendars!
The Holzhalbs - What a year! Family vacations to Japan, Maine, Nashville, and more around the country to see family and attend concerts and sporting events. Andrew and Lucy are doing great in college, working, and being fine young adults. Rory is thriving in Kindergarten, loving books like her parents, and doing all the arts and crafts she can get her hands on, and lots of jiu-jitsu training and yoga for Matt and Sarah. Life is good!
The Youngs are still empty-nesting like bosses! Kelly started a Doctorate in Nurse Practitioner this year, and Brandon is perfecting his dinner menu! Brandon also had a powerful reunion with thousands of Ranger Buddies at the 50th Anniversary of the 2nd Ranger Battalion. Jaden carries the torch with 1/32 Infantry, “Chosin”, of the 10th Mountain Division. Elli decided she would graduate from CU Boulder a year early to start a grad school program in her fourth year. Daisy is still the best, and Brandon is in love with her.
Here are a few things that we noticed in our travels throughout 2024:
A LOT of uncertainty - There was a lot of uncertainty swirling around throughout the year. Certainly, the election and variety of geo-political concerns contributed to this. Across a range of industries, this uncertainty created stress for leaders at all levels and across all industries.
The world kept turning - This is worth keeping in mind. Everybody had to keep working and trusting that the sun would come up tomorrow…and it did! We are proud of so many leaders who could keep their teams focused and have great years despite the challenging environment.
People are doing their best - We didn’t come across anybody that was getting up every morning and deciding to suck! Business is hard. Leadership is hard…especially if you care. And we consistently engaged with people who were simply doing their best, in earnest, if imperfect.
Execution matters - While strategy and planning definitely matter, execution matters more. The great teams we worked with were able to remain oriented on their mission and values while adapting their tactics along the way.
Be committed together - Finally, all of the above is made much easier by working and staying TOGETHER. The most successful teams that we worked with were committed to each other and supported one another through both good times and bad.
With some time to reflect on the year, we are satisfied with the results, and here is why we are so optimistic about 2025:
Though revenue grew modestly in 2024 (only about 4%), we deepened relationships with existing clients, while beginning relationships with some new, long-term clients as well. In fact, we have about 90% of last year’s revenue already booked for this year. That’s an awesome place to start from!
We took a lot of time in late 2024 to dive deeply into our business and create a very clear strategy for the way forward (more on that later).
Our book (have we mentioned our book?) is set to launch next month, and we are absolutely pumped to share it with the world. We're excited to see where it might take us.
We were able to continue investing in nonprofit partners, with $5,000 donations (matched 2:1 by our friends at Public Trust Advisors!) to the Armed Services Arts Partnership and Gallant Few.
We are healthy, happy, and rested. The team is focused, engaged, and, frankly having a lot of fun right now. And that tends to yield very good results, for us and those we serve.
So, while 2024 looked much like 2023, we are starting 2025 in a very different place than we began 2024. And that brings us to our theme for the coming year: Major League ALPs.
Back in 2020, we decided to turn pro, take our business seriously, and conduct ourselves accordingly. But simply turning pro doesn’t automatically get you the bright lights and big bucks. We had to start our leadership development careers playing single-A ball just like every other aspiring big-leaguer. Over the years, we’ve developed our skills, been afforded bigger opportunities, and have grown our business to a point where we are ready for the call up - we’re ready for the Major Leagues. But in order for us to make good on this moment, we have to commit to a couple of principles, blended into a mantra, BOLDLY BETTER. Here’s what we mean….
Let’s first talk about what it is for us to continue getting better. We strongly believe that we won’t grow our business through scale, but through excellence. We are laser-focused on quality at every step of the process and intend to get even better in 2025. From our initial interaction with a potential client, to our preparation and pre-session communication, to the delivery of a workshop and post-session follow-through, we are committed to providing the best possible experience to those we serve. Our amazing teammate, Sarah, will be leading a lot of this work and we’re excited about all the ways that we will get BETTER in 2025. Major-leaguers don’t rest on their laurels. They stay sharp and improve by being consistently brilliant at the basics. The core of our business is strong; we will grow our business by radiating from that core.
So what’s all this about being BOLDER? Winning at the highest level isn’t about being given a big shot; it is about taking big shots. To that end, we plan to truly show up in 2025. We have the wheels in motion to deploy a more robust social media strategy that will allow us to reach more people more often while continuing to offer genuine, useful content. We also intend to promote the heck out of our book to reach more people and bring them into the ALPs community. It is a ton of effort to write and publish a book, and whether it sells 100,000 copies or 100, we will sleep well at night knowing that we gave it all we had. We’re really proud of the book, and we’re going to do our best to share it with the world.
The upshot to all this is harnessing the confidence to be BOLDER - to unapologetically share what we’ve learned with anybody who would benefit from hearing it. That may come in the form of light touch, low and no-cost interaction, or it may look more like a high-impact keynote from a big stage. Still, in any case, we will create opportunities to grow our impact both up-market and down-market, while continuing to focus on our core leadership development business.
For Applied Leadership Partners in 2025, it all boils down to this: Do great work. Share it generously. And when people find us, be sure that we have a way to welcome them in. Whether you simply read our blog and listen to our podcast, buy a book, hire us to support your leaders, or bring us in for a big keynote, we want you to know that we care about you and want to give you our very best.
We hope that your new year is off to a great start, and we look forward to seeing you on the trail. If we can ever be helpful, we stand ready!
Cheers,
Brandon, Blayne, Sarah, and the Applied Leadership Family
