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The Gold Mine Podcast

The Gold Mine Podcast

Written by: Auburn Business Ventures
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About this listen

 The Gold Mine Podcast is an audio show hosted by Auburn Business Ventures (California) where the guests are local entrepreneurs and business owners. The episodes serve to publicize the stories of their local businesses and the lessons they learned along the way in building them.Copyright Auburn Business Ventures Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales Self-Help Success
Episodes
  • E37 Budgets, Margins & Marketing | Francesca Thornley | Thornley & Knight

    E37 Budgets, Margins & Marketing | Francesca Thornley | Thornley & Knight
    Sep 19 2025
    Stop running your business from your bank balance. In this Gold Mine Podcast episode, we sit down with our own bookkeeper, Francesca Thornley—founder of Thornley & Knight—for a practical, no-jargon playbook on money management that actually supports growth, sanity, and smart marketing.

    Francesca shares how she built an all-remote team (many homeschooling moms) over 11 years, why clean books beat “bank-balance accounting,” and how simple systems—owner pay, profit buckets, and autopay—turn chaos into clarity.

    What you’ll learn:
    • Profit First (in plain English): paying yourself first, setting percentages, and using multiple accounts so decisions get easier at a glance
    • Owner pay that sticks: how to pick a reliable number now and step it up over time—without missing payroll or taxes
    • Clean separation: why mixing personal and business spends can pierce the corporate veil (and how to avoid it)
    • Autopay + AR: why automatic billing is a non-negotiable, and how ACH/credit cards impact cash flow more than the fees scare you think
    • Margins and pricing: how to spot products/services that quietly lose money—and fix them
    • Marketing budgets that work: setting a sustainable % (vs. vibes), building a 90-day runway, and respecting the “flywheel”
    • Reports that matter: P&L vs. balance sheet, simple rhythms, and the “reverse budgeting” mindset
    • Red flags to dodge: late-tax fantasies (hello, IRS), “throwing good money after bad,” and running ads without a sales/process backbone

    Guest
    Francesca Thornley is the founder of Thornley & Knight, a boutique bookkeeping firm built for real life. Her team helps owners get accurate numbers, readable reports, and systems they can trust—so decisions get faster and stress gets lighter.

    Resources mentioned (no affiliates)
    • Profit First (framework)
    • P&L and Balance Sheet basics
    • Autopay/recurring billing (ACH + cards)
    • Margin analysis for pricing If this was helpful, subscribe, drop a comment with your biggest takeaway, and share it with a business owner who’s ready to get out of money fog and into momentum.
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    57 mins
  • E36 From Isolation to Insight | Machen MacDonald | Pro Brilliance Leadership Institute

    E36 From Isolation to Insight | Machen MacDonald | Pro Brilliance Leadership Institute
    Sep 18 2025
    In this episode of The Gold Mine Podcast, coach and Vistage Chair Machen Macdonald (Pro Brilliance Leadership Institute) joins us to unpack how real human connection and true peer advisory can create clarity, accountability, and momentum.

    We dig into what actually happens inside a Vistage group: morning workshops with national experts (marketing, HR, AI, cybersecurity, finance), lunch and community, and an afternoon of issue processing where members surface the real problem before solving it. We talk mindset, clean operations vs. noisy “growth,” and simple tools like askformations that shift you from reaction to creation.

    What you’ll learn:
    • Why peer advisory is not a leads group—and why that matters
    • The five buckets most owner challenges fall into: decisions, accountability, isolation, growth/exit, and the unknown unknowns
    • How “issue processing” prevents you from solving the wrong problem
    • The power of clean operations (reducing waste and busywork) to free profit and energy
    • Askformations vs. affirmations, and a simple question that unlocks tough personnel decisions
    • The “three buckets” of control and how to stop letting emotion run your calendar

    Guest:
    Machen Macdonald is a leadership coach and Vistage Chair serving business owners and CEOs in the Gold Country. Through Pro Brilliance Leadership Institute, he helps leaders make better decisions, build capable accountability, and scale with sanity.

    Resources mentioned:
    • Pro Brilliance Leadership Institute
    • Vistage
    • The E-Myth (Michael Gerber)
    • 2 Second Lean (Paul Akers)
    • Motion task-scheduling app If this episode was helpful, hit subscribe, drop a comment with your biggest takeaway, and share it with a business owner who needs a spotter.
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    57 mins
  • E35 Faith, Focus & Freedom | Paul Galushkin | Eastok Realty

    E35 Faith, Focus & Freedom | Paul Galushkin | Eastok Realty
    May 8 2025
    In this episode of The Goldmine Podcast, we sit down with our friend and entrepreneur Paul Galushkin for a wide-ranging and inspiring conversation. Paul shares his journey from immigrating to the U.S. from Ukraine as a child to building multiple successful businesses with his wife and partner, Tatyana. We explore the pivotal moments that shaped his mindset—from working with his hands as a teen to launching a real estate brokerage, flipping homes, and most recently, opening a wellness center.

    The conversation digs into themes of faith, family, fatherhood, personal responsibility, and how entrepreneurship often requires resilience, stress tolerance, and choosing the right mindset even in uncertainty. Paul also opens up about his Christian upbringing and how it fuels his sense of purpose in business and in life.

    Whether you're a business owner, aspiring entrepreneur, or just someone seeking to live more intentionally, this episode offers wisdom and perspective on building a meaningful life—one decision at a time.

    https://www.eastokrealty.com/
    https://edh.arcticelevation.com/widget/service-menus/service-menu-edh
    https://www.arcticelevation.com/
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-galushkin-014a084a/
    https://www.instagram.com/paul.galushkin/?hl=en
    https://www.facebook.com/galushkinpaul
    https://www.youtube.com/@sacramentorealestateguide

    The Gold Mine Podcast is an Auburn Business Ventures production.
    Website: https://www.auburnbusinessventures.com/
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/auburnbusinessventures
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auburnbusinessventures/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/auburn-business-ventures/
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    1 hr and 9 mins
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