Welcome, Sarah.
Your marketing engine is already running.

Designed, built, and written — a Finken-branded template optimized for light and dark mode, with sections for new hires, anniversaries, birthdays, events, goals, promotions, and training. The draft September 1 issue is ready as your first send: the new sales system, the site launch, and the fall campaign.

Next: Open the September 1 issue — approve the look, and we load it into GHL with your send day and audience so every week after is fill-in-the-blanks.

Root cause found: Finken runs on-premise Microsoft Exchange, and GHL’s calendar sync only connects to cloud Microsoft 365 / Outlook.com — on-prem servers are unsupported, full stop. This isn’t a settings fix; it needs a bridge.

Next: three workable paths, in order of preference: (1) move just the sales team’s mailboxes to Microsoft 365 — the clean, Microsoft-supported fix, everything syncs natively; (2) the mirror approach — a lightweight M365 calendar per rep, kept in sync with on-prem Exchange by a bridge tool (CodeTwo or CalendarBridge), with GHL connected to the mirror; (3) stopgap — each rep’s GHL calendar published as a subscribable feed inside on-prem Outlook (read-only, works today). We’ll walk your IT contact through the trade-offs and set it up.

The 2026 calendar exists — it’s the seasonal promo engine in the campaigns section of this brief: spring event, summer water and AC promos, the fall furnace push, holiday and Cyber Week. The 2026–27 version is being built now.

Next: we need your event list and direction to finish it — send dates and priorities, and we build the full calendar across social, email, drawing follow-ups, and signage.

Live today: 13 Google Ads campaigns at about $104/day (≈$3.2K/mo) — service campaigns across St. Cloud, North Metro, Hudson, and Willmar covering HVAC, water treatment, and water heaters, plus competitor defense and Google Local Services. Angi captures marketplace leads alongside. Always-on SEO, organic social, and email run underneath. No paid Facebook at the moment — the Meta portfolio is built and ready when we choose to turn it on.

Next: we bridge your ideas into the Q4 calendar together — this brief plus the monthly update is your standing view.

This one is already half-built — see the Finken Training section above. The platform is live at finkens.com/training with the Safety First guides, and the six-part technician video series sits in the library on this page. October turns it into a real LMS: assign a course to every employee who needs it, record completion, remind automatically when past due, and give leadership one screen showing who’s current.

Next: October launch is on the roadmap. From you: the list of required trainings (OSHA and otherwise) and who must take what — we handle the rest, including the new-hire template so day-one employees get their courses automatically.

GHL handles estimates, invoices, and payment capture natively — payments run through a connected Stripe account, and invoices sync onward to QuickBooks.

Next: two things from Finken: the product and price list each division’s reps should build quotes from, and the go-ahead to stand up a Stripe account for payment capture (we’ll confirm whether your QuickBooks setup can take payments directly, but Stripe is GHL’s native path). Then we configure and pilot with one team.

The Spring 2025 plan priced and specced all three — digital billboards, radio, and OTT television — with creative built and vendor quotes in hand. In the end only the EDDM mail leg ran, which means the rest of that plan is sitting ready to be reworked, not rebuilt.

Next: Jive updates the Spring plan to current offers and Q4 timing — placements, schedule, pricing, projected ROI — packaged for you to present directly to Tom.

Live now at app.finkens.com — the site from our meeting, same login as this page: leads, pipeline value, and per-rep win rates in real time.

Next: we send the short GHL hygiene list (move opportunities through stages, log deal value, assign an owner) — that’s what keeps the numbers accurate and ongoing.

Explored before, and it’s honestly not a lock. WaterTight runs on-premise — its integration path very likely requires migrating to WaterTight’s cloud version first. FieldEdge’s API is private, so access happens through a vendor conversation, not a signup page.

Next: we set up calls with both vendors to map what’s actually possible — and what a WaterTight cloud migration would involve — then bring you findings and a recommendation before anyone commits to anything.

Jive covers the creative — sandwich board and flag designs sized per format, matched to the current campaign, for all eight locations.

Next: we deliver the design kit with print-ready files and recommended specs; printing, ordering, and placement stay with Finken’s local teams.

On deck — we’ll walk through what’s running for Magnuson today and where to take it (Teams/Zoom, you + Jive).

Next: Sarah coordinates with Cathy and Tom at Magnuson to set the date; Justin sends a short agenda ahead of the call.