Outcome Academy

09/16/2026

09/16/2026

🎙️New Business Mountain™ Podcast Episode Alert!

If you're busy all year but can't say for sure which of your services is actually making you money, this one's for you.

There's probably a service in your business that fills your calendar and keeps your phone ringing. You'd tell anybody it's the thing carrying the whole operation. So here's my question: have you ever actually checked?

In this week's episode of The Business Mountain™ Podcast, I walk you through why busy doesn't always mean profitable, and why your P&L can't tell you which half of your business is carrying the other half. You'll learn the one number that tells the truth, profit per hour touched, and a simple five-step exercise to find it for every service you offer. I'll also show you how a $1,200 job can pay less per hour than a $60 one, why some low-margin services are the front door to your best work, and the four decisions every service line deserves.

I also made you a free Profit Per Hour Worksheet with all five steps, a checklist of the hours that hide, and a place to rank your services.

Grab the link in the first comment and dive in!

09/14/2026

I have a favor to ask from all my amazing business owners who follow this page ❤️

If you could take just a minute to help get the word out about all the cool stuff available for small businesses through Outcome Academy, it would mean the world to me and it would help your business friends!

A lot of heart and soul goes into producing our weekly podcast episodes and they are loaded with free tips and almost every one of them comes with a download to expedite an important business process. All for free!

Just click on the hyperlink for the Outcome Academy business page above and:

• Click the 3 little dots on the page
• Hit “Invite Friends”
• Select all your friends who have small businesses
• Done

It only takes a minute and it gets the word out so more people can get help during what we all know is a major feat... The journey of business ownership!

Thank you all so much for the support. ❤️

09/11/2026

BEFORE YOU BOYCOT A BUSINESS FOR AN AI FLYER, READ THIS:

An AI-assisted flyer tells you how a business made a flyer. It doesn’t tell you how they treat their customers.

I’ve been bothered by some of the comments I’m seeing directed at small local businesses.

Someone posts a flyer for an event or an ad for their services, and the conversation turns into “Well, I’ll take my business somewhere else.”

Then come the assumptions. They must be lazy. They must cut corners. Their product probably isn’t any good.

That is a lot to decide about someone based on a social media graphic.

There’s some context worth considering here. AI already plays a role in many of the businesses we use regularly:
👉🏼Google uses it to help interpret searches.
👉🏼Facebook uses it to help decide what appears in our feeds.
👉🏼Amazon uses it for recommendations and warehouse operations.
👉🏼Walmart uses it to help manage inventory.
👉🏼Netflix uses it to personalize recommendations.

These companies document those uses themselves. This has been happening beyond the chatbots and generated pictures we now recognize as AI. Ask yourself: "Am I boycotting every company using AI, or just the small, community, local businesses?" [Spoiler: if you boycotted every company using AI, you could never google something, make an online order, Uber somewhere, use Canva - which is a popular suggestion - or visit the MVA...and the list goes on].

Those uses aren’t all the same as generating artwork. You can have concerns about one application and feel comfortable with another. That’s a reasonable conversation to have.

But I struggle with watching a local business owner get publicly torn apart for using an affordable tool to get a flyer finished.
I work with small business owners. I also am one. And, it takes a lot of time, heart, and soul to run a local business with integrity.

The person creating that flyer may be the same person answering the phone, ordering supplies, scheduling employees, serving customers, cleaning up, and figuring out how to make payroll.
They still need to let people know they exist.

For an owner with limited time and money, help with a first draft or a promotional graphic can make room for something else that matters.
✔️Calling a customer back.
✔️Training an employee.
✔️Learning more about their craft.
✔️Taking the time to explain something properly.
✔️Bookkeeping
✔️Building something
✔️Fixing something
✔️Volunteering in their community
✔️Or getting home in time to see their child on the soccer field.

Of course the owner is still responsible for what they publish. The information should be accurate. The advertising should honestly represent what they sell. A generated picture shouldn’t be passed off as a real example of their work.

And local designers bring skill and judgment worth paying for. I want those businesses to thrive, too. For example, I've paid sign companies to decal our trucks and put signage on our building, I've paid a branding photographer for photos of our team, and an artist to design logos. But, I also use technology to help me generate a first draft of something I'm writing, create dashboards for our business meetings, summarize transcripts, and review financial documents for opportunities to save money.

There is room for that complex conversation without declaring that someone’s entire business must be terrible because we dislike how they made an ad.

Before we tell our neighbors to take their money elsewhere, can we consider the actual business?
❓Do they do good work?
❓Do they keep their promises?
❓Do they treat people well?
❓Do they make things right when something goes wrong?

Those are the things I want to know.

You don’t have to like AI-generated flyers. You don’t have to use AI yourself.

But the person behind that post is still your neighbor, and a little grace belongs in the conversation.

Signed,
Ginny Seeley, Founder, Outcome Academy
(Someone who cares about the environment, and our future, but also wants to see good people win at business...because when good people win at business, we all win.)

P.S. I hate AI phone answering just as much as you do, but I still can't bring myself to hate someone for using it while they figure out how to hire their first team member (that's a feat in itself!).

09/07/2026

Here's something worth sitting with as you start your week.

Some of the most unpolished videos online are the ones that get the most views, and that isn't an accident at all.

People are tired of content that anybody could have made. They're tired of the same three tidy reasons and the same call to action with the same exclamation point on the end. What they actually want is a real person who shows up, does honest work, and treats them like they matter.

That's good news for you, because it's the one thing a competitor with a bigger budget can't simply buy off the shelf.

Your voice is the only one you have, and it's the only one your customers can't get anywhere else.

If you'd like some help getting yours down on paper, I've put the free brand voice guide in the first comment for you.

09/04/2026

Here's the one rule I want every business owner to write down before they use AI again.

Never let it invent a customer.

Ask AI for a social post about a great repair you did, and it will happily make up Sarah from down the road, whose washing machine you saved the day before her daughter's wedding.

Sarah does not exist. And if you post about Sarah, you just put a lie on the internet under your business name.

In the trades, your reputation is the whole asset. You can replace a truck, and you can replace a tool, but you cannot un-post a made-up customer story that somebody in your town notices is made up.

Write the rule down, and then keep the rule.

The full episode walks through all four layers of context AI needs from you before it writes anything, and I've dropped the link in the first comment for you.

09/03/2026

I've got a true story from our own business for you today.

Google Business Profile once decided, entirely on its own, that Cavalry Appliance Service repairs sewing machines.

We do not repair sewing machines.

We found out because the phone started ringing with people asking us about sewing machines.

So consider this my public service announcement for the week. Check your Google Business Profile at least once a quarter, because these systems will fill in blanks you never asked them to fill in, and you'll be the last one to know about it.

Has anybody else had a platform invent a service you don't actually offer? Tell me about it, because I need to know I'm not alone here. 😂

09/02/2026

The newest episode of The Business Mountain Podcast is up, and this one is for everybody who tried AI once, got something that sounded like a robot wearing your company shirt, and quietly gave up on it.

Here's the thing. When you open a blank chat window and type "write me a Facebook post about spring maintenance," that tool has no idea who you are. It doesn't know your town. It doesn't know your customers. It doesn't know your prices or your policies or the way you talk when you're standing in somebody's kitchen explaining what went wrong with their refrigerator.

So it gives you the average of every business in your industry. And the average sounds like nobody.

In this episode I walk through the four layers of context you have to hand it first. Who you serve. What you sell and what you don't. How you sound. And your rules.

Have you tried using AI in your business yet? What happened?

Link in the first comment.

08/31/2026

You're probably not going to love every one of these numbers the first time you look at them.

I didn't.

And I'm telling you right now, a number you don't like is still infinitely better than a number you don't have. Because the number you don't have is running your business anyway. It's just running it without your input.

That's the part that changed things for me. Not looking doesn't protect you from the answer. It just means the answer gets to make the decisions instead of you.

Go find one number this week. Just one.

What's the number you've been quietly avoiding?