How to 4x EBITDA in 3 Years Without Growing Sales

Today's guest had a phenomenal run buying a business using a traditional search fund, but his ownership started ominously. Soon after closing on the asset rental business with a supposed two and a half million dollars in earnings, Ned Tomasovich realized that in fact earnings were more like one and a half million dollars. We hear how that terrifying crisis affected Ned as a young first time CEO and how he pushed through. On the positive side, we also hear how a key insight unlocked earnings in dramatic fashion. In just three years, Ned grew EBITDA from one and a half million to six million. And almost all of that was in margin improvement, not new sales, which is to say a key change to the business's existing function quadrupled EBITDA without revenue growth. A great reminder that revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. Today, Ned is a search fund investor, and we spend time on his perspective from that side of the table. Listen for his caution that you should do search as an end in itself, not as a means to some other end, like becoming an investor. Here is Ned Tomasovich, former CEO of EasyRack, and General Partner at Searchers Fund. Webinars. When SBA lenders consider a searchers acquisition, they're not just underwriting the business. They're underwriting you. In a webinar today, Thursday, June 25th, leading SBA loan broker Heather Anderson will explain how lenders evaluate a buyer's background when deciding whether to approve an acquisition loan. Topics covered to include how SBA lenders evaluate buyer experience, how to frame your resume for lender confidence, common buyer weaknesses that raise concerns, in how lenders think about leadership, operations, and industry experience, or lack thereof. The webinar is transferable skills, crafting your resume for SBA lenders, and it is today Thursday, June 25th, new, and eastern. Link to register is right at the top of this episode's show notes, or on the acquiring minds homepage, acquiring minds.co. Welcome to acquiring minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs, and on this podcast, I talk to the people who do it. Running payroll, paying your bills, closing your bucks, and producing financials. These are critical tasks every business owner must do or oversee, but spending time on them distracts you from the leadership. In growth work, you want to do. So let system six do it for you, owned and led by a former researcher, Chris Williams. System six is a leading outsourced finance team for hundreds of SMBs, including over 50 search required businesses. Chris, Tim, and the system six team understand first hand the challenges, the opportunities of jumping into a business as its new owner. So whether you own your business already or have one under L.O.I. talk to system six about how they can give you time back and improve your financial operations. Mention acquiring minds and they'll provide a free review of your books in financial ops, a $500 value. Check out system six.com, link in the show notes, or email [email protected]. Ned Tomasovich. Welcome to acquiring minds. Thanks for having me. Ned, you body business as a traditional search fund entrepreneur. Had a great exit there. And today you invest in other traditional searchers. You are a traditional search fund investor today. We're going to cover both chapters of your career. Let's begin by going all the way back to before your search. Give us some background on you, please, Ned, and what it was that led you to by a business. Wow. All right. A little stroll down memory lane. Let's see. So I go on all the way back. I think a lot of searchers or folks interested in ETA. First generation American, Serbian descent and my family. Basically my parents, my sister were born in Serbia. I was the American of the family. Community was fairly entrepreneurial. So I got to see it. And my dad and my uncle were very much of the mind that I needed to study and go to school before starting anything. So that was always the mantra. It was just like study, study, study, learn, and then do. And I found myself curious about business. I went into investment banking first, then the student consulting and then got to work with a family office. I worked for a billionaire family here on the west coast and out of Malibu. And I learned a ton by doing. It was awesome. And it really planted that seed that I wanted to go run something on my own. I hate to say it, but I was a little arrogant. I was like, "Yeah, these guys can do it. I can definitely do it." And I went to business school. Jim Sutheran was kind enough to fly out and talk about search funds after I invited him. And that really lit a spark. I mean, him basically saying that I should really think hard about doing my own search, open the door for me. And then I started talking to all the folks who had done search. And like most of us, it just kind of warms its way in your brain and you can't get it out. And for me, after a number of calls, I couldn't think of anything else. It was just what I wanted to do. So I committed to running a search. And that was it. Please, for people who don't know who is Jim Sutheran and why is he significant? Yeah. So Jim was, if not the first searcher, one of the first few. And he run, he at the time invested individually and now through his fund-specific lake. And yeah, like he was really helping to build search. So we're talking, this is 2013 to '15. And he was one of the investors that was getting out on a plane talking to folks where they were. And that was a relatively new concept. And back then, I remember talking about search in business school and talking about Jim Sutheran. Like he was an important person or the other folks in search. And people looking at me like, what are you doing? Like this makes no sense. Everyone's either doing a startup, going to consulting. It just wasn't as popular as it is today. So you were the odd person out when you were talking about search back then. And where did you learn about search? I learned about it. I think probably the first time someone was pitching our PE fund on partnering or doing a minority stake in a deal. And they pitched it as like, oh, it's kind of like a search fund. And I didn't know what that was. And I got curious. And I think that planted the seed. And you know, just kind of going all the way back. I always knew, like I liked leading. And I was okay at it. And I felt like I kept getting better. I was pretty humble. So there's something about me that I just didn't want to be a spreadsheet minor for the rest of my life. Like I really wanted to be with people. And I wanted to change people's lives for the better if I could. That was really like how I felt back then. And I felt the most impactful way to do that was by running a business. Well, I feel like that continues today. You are a big part of your investing is also coaching. So the leadership is a through line there. And going back, Ned, to how you even in business school, back then, people looked at you like you had two heads when you talked about this thing. We were introduced through one of your business school compatriots, David Miller, who also said that he didn't really, at the time, understand what it was you were getting up to. But he's followed along your career. And of course, has been convinced. So pretty interesting. Yeah. I think back then, it's humbling, right? Because everyone is interviewing. And you're this weird person, calling people and learning about business models and what made them successful and why they fail. And they're working on case interviews. And I must have just been such an alien. I remember my friends being like, what are you doing? You're not taking any interviews. And I think the only interview I took was with the CIA. I thought that was pretty cool. And I'm going to buy a plumbing business or become a spy. Yeah, that's probably Apparently I wasn't to their standard. So plumbing business it was. Yeah, but then it's interesting because then I'm sure I felt a little arrogant back then, like, oh, you guys are all interviewing. And I wasn't. And then it's funny how life has a wave circling back, right? Because then in search, all you're doing is this interview. You're meeting all the investors and being interviewed. Then you're meeting thousands of business owners and being interviewed. And then you're on this life long interview of running a business and being in the arena and your employees are kind of interviewing you daily. Like, is this a place I should work? Your customers are interviewing you. So never really ends. Yeah. No, I'd never heard it put quite that way. I have heard, of course, that we're all selling all the time, which is kind of another way of saying the same thing. I mean, we're all in the business of persuasion in every conversation. Whether or not we realize it. Yeah. So. Great, Ned. Okay. So, Oddball career decision to go off and buy a business and just to underline Jim Sutheran and Pacific Lake, of course, Pacific Lake today is one of the, if not the biggest name in search fund, dedicated funds. Yeah. Great. So, that's kind of the origin story or an early, early story of Pacific Lake. Great. What's about the search itself? I remember early on, there weren't a lot of us. There's maybe like 20 searchers, right? And as you're talking to people, you start to figure out like, what's their box? How did they do, you know, how did they search? What was their secret sauce? Like, what was working for them? And it's a pretty sharing community. So you're going to take what works and leave what doesn't. And early search was kind of tinkering, you know, getting in front of owners, being confident in how you talk to them. So early search felt like a lot of failure, right? It was just a lot of repetitions. And then you start to learn and reflect and what was really helpful. I think some of my investors scheduled calls with me and they was either like monthly or every couple of weeks or whatever, but it made me show up prepared. It introduced a little bit of accountability. But more than that, it really made me reflect on what I did. And the activities I did in the last few weeks or quarter. And then they would share their experiences like, hey, cool, you're trying to buy a business from a neurosurgeon. All right, here's my experience trying to buy a business from a neurosurgeon who's very involved and wants to have a lot of control over the business. And it's hard. So, you know, getting those, like the activity gets you in the door and then the conversations get deeper and deeper upon reflection. And you're doing a live with investors who have a ton of pattern recognition. So I'd say early years was figuring that out, skidding money, a bunch. Learning from these other searchers, I took a high volume approach back then. You know, you could get a lot of shots on goal by getting a lot of proprietary outreach out and then looking at broker deals. So I hate to admit this, but I think I was one of the searchers that like push the limits on how many interns you could have. I had like 20 interns. And for me, it was kind of like a dry run at what would it be like to run the organization. I had people doing different things and working together. But ultimately, what I learned was that my gift or the piece that I had to do was to build relationships with potential sellers. And that was a ton of fun. And yeah, I'd say early on getting to an L.O.I. was the goal. And then once I got there, then it was all about diligence and closing and all the rest of it. But I think I was one of the few, yeah, there's a few of us out there that actually enjoyed searching. I think I was one of them. Because of the interfacing you got to do with owners. Yeah. And I think it was just like I got experience from these investors who most of them were operators. And I could talk about like real case studies and real life stuff with them. And they were very raw and sharing. So yeah, I think the owner interface combined with learning. I mean, it was a ton of fun. Well, we're not going to be able to hear the ins and outs of the acquisition deal itself. This was a while ago now. And like I said, we want to hear the search story. And then also about you as an investor today. So let's jump to the business that you found and what you can tell us about it will go into your operations of it. Yeah. So I found it through proprietary search. I was looking in reverse logistics kind of this niche that I found interesting. And then I like to asset rental. And this had both. So it was a company that had a founder and a president. And the president happened to be from my hometown in Brookfield, Wisconsin. And we started chatting. They were really pleasant. They built this business together over time. And I really just felt like the American dream, like they started it from nothing and built it and grew it and created a really nice livelihood for them and their employees. And like you could tell they were really passionate about it. And the business was in the nursery. Horticulture space. Basically they owned racks that plant growers would ship their plants from their fields to home depot, lows and kind of retail are all around the country. And it was really innovative. Like before this company, a lot of growers were shipping in. They were just filling trucks with plants and they get damage and there's all these problems. So they solved that problem, the damage problem, home depot and lows were growing. So they need a lot of plants. So growers were expanding and they were shipping all around the country. And anyway, the business solved a lot of these issues by having this rack. And then the service layer wrapped around it was really interesting because they would ship, they would say a grower in California would ship to Denver. Well, you're not getting that rack back so they had a whole recovery network all around the country where they could get these things back and it was just really fascinating. The economics of it were really compelling. So yeah, I found it like really intellectual and interesting and I kind of bought into the story. So that was really how it got started. The team at Aspen HR recently published a short white paper targeted at searchers entitled a new CEO's guide to human resources. It lays out the key items you should be thinking about as you transition into CEO and owner of the business you bought. The link to download that is in the show notes. Aspen HR is a professional employer organization or PEO which provides HR compliance, flawless payroll, robust HR technology and Fortune 500 caliber benefits all for a fraction of the costs compared to using multiple vendors. Reach out to Aspen HR for your complimentary HR diligence checklist and benchmarking analysis. Go to aspenhr.com or contact Jenny Thear directly at Jenny at AspenHR.com. And how big a business was it? It was about a million and a half of EBITDA, a little under 15 million in revenue. So not too big. Not too big. Be considered smallish today and maybe even a little bit smaller back then because I feel like the criteria is loosened a little bit as searchers got more competitive today. Yeah, it's a couple of things there. We had about 15 employees. So about a million dollars of revenue per employee which was great. But I thought when I was buying it that it was about 2.5 million of EBITDA. Unfortunately, those really nice owners of the business and I had a disagreement on a balance sheet item and we ended up going to court over it and we settled favorably for us. But that was rough. So I stepped in the business. Got introduced to the company, met the team, sat in on a production meeting and then learned that there was this inventory discrepancy and immediately like my, like the folks in the room said I just turned white. And I knew the working capital adjustments by heart. I knew everything and I knew that there was something wrong here. So I called the owners, we talked about it and you could tell it was something was fish. So, unfortunately, that turned into about an 18-month lawsuit. And that was my first real big challenge. And the outcome or what you were pushing for was to claw back some of the purchase price, I assume? Yeah, it was about a 30% purchase price adjustment. So it was meaningful. And that size, and by the way, let's say what the purchase price was. Was the multiple that you bought the business for? It was about four times. Four times what you thought EBITDA was. Exactly. So are we talking, okay, so $10 million, give or take. And so 30% of purchase price is $3 million, $3 million is worth going after. And so that's always the calculation and litigation, right? Is it going to be worth the time, the distraction, and the money to even if you win your case. And in this case, that's a pretty easy yes. And by the way, on that point of distraction, as justified as it was, did you find that you were just spending an inordinate amount of time on this lawsuit in your early months of ownership when you should have been. Or would you ideally would have otherwise been focused on the business? Yeah, this was a huge lesson for me. So I mean, can I get a little kind of vulnerable and personal here? Like when when I when I found out about it, I was working with a coach at the time. I was just kind of getting started. And he happened to just call me. And I just talked to the sellers and he called me. He's like, how's it going? And I started telling him what had happened. And I don't even know what happened. I basically kind of blacked out. And also, I remember him saying, okay, let's start breathing. And I had a full on panic attack. And he got me to breathe again, brought me back in. He's like, right, what are you going to do next? And we started thinking through it. And that was the first time where I was just like, wow, like this is really meaningful to me. This is a big deal. There's pressure here. One of my investors called me when we closed. And he said, you know, the buck stops with you. And I think in that moment, I realized it, it really hit home. So I learned a lot. It's interesting that it's almost like your body recognized it before you did intellectually. Contest 100%. 100%. And I find that a lot. Like we'll get into what I do today. But when I'm when I'm working with CEOs, like that, that's a huge connection is where do you feel stressed in your body? Right. Like your body will tell you before your mind gets it for sure. So as a rookie CEO, this is a terrifying thing. And you already have imposter syndrome. You have all these things. And now you've, you've gotten your investors into into a, you know, a bad deal. So it feels terrible. That was the lesson, you know, kind of first lesson was how to regulate and manage through stressful situations. The second was, I remember writing down a list of all the things I thought I needed to do. And I looked at that list. And at the end, when I got on the other side of this 18 months later, I looked back at that list. And had I done those things like 90% chance we'd have been in bankruptcy. And I'm a pretty, I'd like to think I was a pretty smart guy with some experience. And I guarantee you we would have been back. Actually. And I think the key learn there was some of my investors had already been through this. And they normalized it for me. And we took the emotion out of it. And once I realized that the focusing on the business and like really helping that thing get back on track and growing EBITDA had a much bigger impact than the balance sheet dollars I would get back. So like $3 million potentially is meaningful. But if I grew an extra million of EBITDA plus a multiple that value creation is worth way more and potentially more than that. Who knows, right? So that mindset shift came from Dave Dodson, who was one of my early one of my investors teaches a Stanford runs food aloof who. And he had been through some of this stuff. So again, he just normalized it for me, talked me through it. And hand, once I got on the other side of that, it was like a mindset shift. And as a CEO, one of the biggest things you can do is maintain presence and a clear mindset. And that put me in the right in the right mood. And it was like, OK, that happened. Let's go. But you did do the lawsuit anyway. Had to. Yeah, that's that's your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders. But I didn't over invest in it. I didn't like sit there and no pine about what I should have done. It was just like, OK, this is what we're doing. And then I learned from the investors. Kind of the playbook of what works and what didn't and I knew some guard rails and obviously have to manage through it. But it wasn't the way the world on me. I've recognized all these other successful people had been through this. And this just kind of part unfortunately, some people experience this. And then what was cool about it is on the other side of that, I became like the, you know, the person that when these deals go a little sideways, people would call. And I could help the word and the CEO kind of manage through some of that stuff. So that that felt like a, you know, it felt like it had a lot of value for me. And not just monetarily, but also just being able to get back and make sure other people don't freak out because it can be tough. Yeah. Isn't it annoying that it's you got you got to go through hell to get all that value on the other side. You know, like yes and right. I'm on the other side of it. If you'd have called me back then, I probably would have been saying a little bit of woe was me and all that. But I think looking back like every entrepreneur I've ever worked with has some thing in their journey that they're going to grow from. Everyone's got this like, you know, heroes journey they have to go through and that was just part of mine. But I think that's what this thing is all about. Like you don't get out of it without paying a cost. There's going to be something time family, other aspirations, whatever you're going to have to pay a cost to lead. And you know, hopefully on the other side, it's worth it. But usually it's never the money that's like the money is nice. Don't come here on. But usually it's a season tangibles that allow you to allow you to do other things with your life. Sorry, I got a little preacher there. No, not at all. I just have a couple more things I to follow up all of that way. First. Do you know Jason Jackson at FudelooFood? I do. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you probably already know where this is going. Yeah. But Jason has been on the podcast. Jason bought a and his partner bought a dental practice of some size, discovered seller fraud. Yep. And we're deciding and had David Dodson as an investor. Jason now works with David at FudelooFood. We're deciding whether or not to litigate. And David basically said the same essentially the same thing. And this is kind of like the takeaway from Jason's interview is the energy that you're going to invest in this lawsuit. If you can take that energy and just grow EBITDA by this much instead, you will have corrected the financial pain or the financial damage you will have corrected it in more so. Oh, yeah. And more than. So just always be thinking when you're trying to correct when you're trying to minimize or damage or claw back some lost dollars. And ask yourself, how hard would it be to grow EBITDA this much, apply the same multiplier that I bought the business to. And what is the value creation I can do? So if I bought the business for 4x and I can grow EBITDA by half a million bucks, that's $2 million of value creation. And it might be easier for me to grow EBITDA by half a million bucks than it would be to spend two years in a lawsuit sort of thing. Yeah. It's a great and it's so obvious when you say it, but it's such a great clarifying analysis. A couple things. Jason probably told his story way cooler than I did. And David probably said it like he says it so eloquently. That's what makes him a professor. So those guys are great. I remember talking to Jason after it happened. And it's just I think at the end of the day, you have to devote time to it. Right. Like there's no way around it. It's part of that. And I think that's what teaches you some prioritization and time management. Right. Like you're always going to have things come in at you. This is just another one of those things. So how do you manage it? Like we start thinking about, you know, importance and urgency and all that. A lot of CEOs, I know really think about the size of the prize and the amount of effort or likelihood of success as you think, you know, we're all we've all been consoled. So we all two by two this thing, but the hard part is actually doing it like actually spending your time on those things. And that takes some time. So for like rookie CEOs and ETA and search. Like these things sound scary like a lawsuit or whatever, but there's just another thing and going through it really hardens you on these core basic managerial and leadership principles. So they're scary and they suck, but they really make you much more objective as a leader. Great. And Ned, before we move away from this painful chapter, just that balance sheet issue as you put it was that a is there anything to learn from that itself? Like was this a diligence miss? Yeah, or was this seller misdirection intentional misdirection or what? Yeah. Look, as as I went back over and replayed in my head, I think I think what I come away from is you're going to do the best job at diligence as you can. And you have to make a great relationship with your sellers. And if you ever have that feeling in your gut, that something's not going right. And even if you're in the final endings of your deal, you gotta just like take a breath, talk to your investors, talk to, you know, your legal team, whoever, and just get another read. It's always worth it. And I'd say in my case, I did that and I felt really confident like I talked to our Q of E people, one of my investors interviewed the sellers before and like, we're like, all right, maybe there's some lack of knowledge here, whatever, but we felt comfortable moving forward. So look, I'm not going to spend the rest of my life eating myself up over diligence, but I learned a lot over that experience. And I know I did it with my, you know, all our best intentions and I felt good about everything, but I'd say, if I were more experienced and I've done deals since where if my spoty sense is tingling back to the body brain thing, right? If you just know something doesn't feel right, I'm way more confident and comfortable talking about it because I've been through that repetition. So I think first time searchers, it's just going to be hard. It's just you're not going to have that built up like pattern recognition to go back to something that like might feel slightly okay or slightly off might be a bigger thing than you think. But I would just say, hey, stop dig into it, explore it. And hopefully, you know, hopefully it doesn't sink the ship. Well, it's so hard because the cliche is there's, you know, no perfect business. So any business you buy is going to have some problems with it. Yeah. And so there's that. So you know, how big a problem is too big a problem because there's going to be some problems. You know that you that you go into knowing about or expecting that there will be problems that you don't know about. I mean, this is going to be messy and perfect and hard, no matter what. So it's how to know if if if if the doubt you're feeling is above the threshold of the doubt you should be feeling. Yeah. The other thing is you're you're almost certainly going to feel doubt because this is just such a big decision. It's like, you know, how can you not have have a little bit of your, you know, little feel a little shaky going down, going to the closing table. So very hard. So, okay. Now, talk to us a little bit about an asset rental business model. Just just kind of broad strokes pros and cons of the business model. It's a common one, but we haven't we don't spend a lot of time unpacking it. Let's just have just a quick primer. Yeah. Yeah. So let's see. I like large asset rental for long periods of time. If I can actually so the downsides are typically there's a cat X investment. It's challenging to think about useful life like the useful life of the asset. There's a lot of assumptions made on useful life. Those are those are kind of the two big levers that that are challenging to think about. Maybe the third is like custody of ownership, right? Because you don't, you know, you're you're renting it. So it's it's leaving. Leaving you at someone going out in the world. But the advantages are, you know, really sticky customer dynamics, right? If it's mission critical or there's an asset that that that a customer really means. You're you're a core part of their operations because if they don't want to buy it, they're renting it from you for a reason. Typically, you can extract a like a higher economic value from it because there's levers that you can pull with pricing time. Right. Think about going to like a budget rent a car. Right. Like you think you're paying $40 for something per day to rent a car. But in reality, you're probably paying 80 or 100 because of all the additional fees and whatever. That's not always a great experience that that kind of that fee experience. But as an owner. You can choose to show the customer those you can be transparent. You can be less transparent. So that gives you as a business owner. Some architecture and how you want to go to market. And depending on the customer base, you can be fully transparent. You cannot most of your customer, most of my customers own some of these assets. So they understood the dynamics, which I liked because then you get to have frank conversations and you can tell them, hey, you actually don't want to invest here or you don't want to you don't want to rent here. Here you might want to invest in your business, etc. And you can be really open book and be a true partner to them. And most of our customers have been around for 15 plus years. And I feel like that relationship has value. So an asset rental. You have some interesting choice architecture with pricing and I'd say the last piece is kind of this customer service mindset. I think the service layer around asset rental is really great. It can be incredibly sticky. You can upsell. You can You can solve their business problems and extract value from it. So when I think about asset rental as a business model. For those that really want to dig into it, it can be really attractive and interesting. But those downsides are there. Right. Like you can lose your assets. You can not get you cannot recover your assets. You can Overpay for cat backs. You know, there's some things there. But for folks that really like kind of financial engineering, you can nerd out all day on trying to maximize your return on your investment with an asset rental business. Well, and I was waiting for you to say utilization or capacity. Right. Because that is the that is the game. Getting the asset that capital asset that you bought that you're now going to rent. The more you rent it, the better you do it. The faster your generating profit off that asset. It's all about. Yeah, it's all about utilization in turn days. So that's when I was talking about the economic model that that's really what it is. How how how many times can you utilize the asset before you have to replace it. In this point of being like helping solve your customers problems and kind of being more of a solution solution provider and quotes that because you because often they're renting something that is really Actually intrinsic to their business. They're renting something from you that is intrinsic to their business. So you become quite embedded with them. Which of course is a great position to be in. And then the oversimplifying question. So is this recurring or reoccurring or neither revenue. When we first bought the business, it was all repeat. So over the first three years, we moved to longer term contracts. Which again, like adds a ton of value as a searcher. I think we, you know, as a CEO that that limited our downside risks. It improved the quality of our revenue, which was great. Some unintended consequences is like some of our larger customers wanted to really have their great like think about a plant nursery at scale. All they're doing is negotiating every single thing freight rates, seed, water, all these things. So they're really great negotiators. A lot of them are like culturally Dutch and they've loved to negotiate. So it was a fun. It was, you know, I got kind of a second MBA and negotiations there. But. But where I'm going with this is if you can extend the life of the contract, the customer also has a lot to say then, especially with our larger customer and they know your cost to some degree. So it kind of opens you up to a more broader protracted negotiation if you're not ready for it. So again, that's one of those things where as a CEO, a rookie CEO in ETA or search. You're probably going to lose some of those negotiations in the beginning, but over time you get really good. You know, your walk away and you get a lot better. But, but yeah, it becomes a. Unfortunately, some of the long tail asset rental becomes a master class of negotiation. of the Jeff Bezosism, your margin is my opportunity. It sounds like how some of your customers, your longer term big customers would see these negotiations. - That's exactly right. And there's that fine zone of agreement that you gotta get into. And this is also a hyper seasonal business. So we ultimately diversified from our seasonality, that was a big risk in the business, was, we make most like 80% of our EBITDA in 100 days. And we needed other things to do for the rest of the year. So we started recovering other assets, lawnmower, tractor parts, motorcycle, like Harley Day that's in crates and cages. And that was really what continued to build value for us. It was taking the core knowledge of asset rental and utilization and then applying that as a service for much larger asset pools. - But totally in different industries, then you're now you're outside of - In different industries, but similar core use cases, where something is left at a third party, a dealership or some more where there's assets piling up and someone needs to consolidate them, create efficient routes back to the manufacturing sites. So it became this really fun challenge of, you know, supply seasonal supply chain management. So you could really get a PhD in supply chain management and our business and economics. If you ask owners in the ETA and search community, which insurance broker provides highest quality work, great outcomes and has a practice dedicated to searchers and acquisition entrepreneurs, one name comes up again and again. Oberly. Oberly risk strategies has worked with hundreds of searchers over nearly a decade and is in fact led by a two time successful searcher, August Felker, which makes Oberly a specialty insurance brokerage for searchers by a former searcher. And if you've got a business under L.O.I, Oberly will provide complimentary due diligence on that business's insurance and benefits program, an easy no risk way to get to know August and the team at Oberly. To take advantage, check out Oberly-risk.com. That's O-B-E-R-L-E-Hyphen-risk.com. Link in the notes. Going back to the core business. So they had developed a proprietary metal rack, metal rack system, a racking system that got a lot of traction. I mean, did it sort of become a standard even? Or that's probably too generous, but or did it? Yeah, and its core became a bit of a due opally. So we had, the company is called EasyRack. And it was a pallet-based racking system. And then, which was great for heavy plants, like trees, shrubs, the one behind you in your office there. The later stuff is more grown in a greenhouse. So those get chipped on these cart systems. There's another company that controlled that part of market. And it's most simple as form. It was a due opally. And then you got to really understand what, you know, kind of what, yeah, due opally economics look like. What co-opitation looks like. Any one of these ETA-based businesses becomes enlightening because you get to apply these concepts that you learn in school. But now you get to bring them to these, you know, small, medium-sized businesses. So there's always like a friction of, you know, delivering the service the way it's always been done. But then also really thinking through changing the business to a, in a new direction. And what I love about ETA and, and search is that, typically you're just kind of learning the business for the first two years. You're trying not to, you know, not to break anything. And also, I'm going to year two or three you're starting to make your bets. Well, in my business, because I, you know, I had to start running it right away. I had like a one year, like really tough cycle. And then I actually got to start making some bets earlier. And fortunately, those paid off because we went from, you know, essentially like a 15% EBITDA margin to close to 40 and went from a million and a half of EBITDA at almost six and three years. So you're, you're, you're getting to kind of learn and make changes quickly. Quadrupling EBITDA in three years is, just a fantastic outcome. And, and just to not, not, let the, let the episode go too far on with the outcome was, you came in at 4X and you exited at what multiple? 8X. I got six million EBITDA. 8X 6 million. So that's 48 million. And we know that you paid about 10 million for it. So $38 million of value creation. Yeah. And three years. Yeah, with some debt paid down. But yeah, I mean, yes, raw, raw. Right. Yeah. Of course. Just phenomenal, then. So, and so let's hear some of the bets that you placed. You've already told us about the seasonality and getting into other asset utilization markets. Were there other two or three that are worth calling them? Yeah. A lot of them was just operational. Like it was interestingly a lot of what the business was already doing or wanted to do, but they just couldn't kind of organize themselves to do it. There wasn't real clear accountability in the business. So having a new leader that didn't have any the legacy baggage, I could kind of come in and really help them clarify conversation. So a great example, as I stepped in and we had one of our first meetings, I bought the business under the economic assumption of what is a rack, right? It's a certain number of components, a corner post, shelf, et cetera. And I then dug in deeper, right? When we're in these production meetings, operations saw a rack as a certain number, you know, 28 components. Sales was selling 36 components. And finance was accounting for 22 components. So you had this like massive mismatch in how we did business. So what did that really mean? Well, sales is making a promise to the world that you're going to get this many components. Operation is delivering something else. And finance at accounting is accounting for something totally different. So now like getting your stories straight was wild. And the net result was we had a lot of shrink. So shrink of asset loss or just inability to know exactly where things were at a certain given time. Because we were seasonal, some of that would flow back in. So over a two or three year period, it kind of looked OK. But you could never really get a death grip on inventory. So what I did was we just locked everyone in a room and said, all right, what's a rack? And I just let them argue it out for two or three hours. And we went to lunch. Everyone was fully exhausted. We came back. And I said, what do you guys think about this number? And then we debated it. And we finally came up with what a rack was. So we went from about 15 to 20% shrink annually, which is a big number to 3%. And then it stayed at around 3%. So some of that stuff, I didn't need an MBA to do that. It was just looking for misalignment in the company and seeking to gain clarity wherever I could, and then just driving a freight train through that. OK, cool. This is what we're doing now. Let's update all our processes and procedures. Let's update our marketing. And I think in checklists a lot, so then it was like, all right, cool. That's done. Now that we've agreed, let's move forward. And what's the checklist to getting misdone, rather than in a new business, I see this a lot where a leader wants to just say, OK, cool. Now you go figure it out. And they delegate the problem to someone who's already been wrestling with it. Clearly, hasn't made us all of it. And you're not given them any tools. So I just tried to go in and simplify as best I could. And you did that work pretty well, but every use case was different. So to me, it was more like, I could say it was like operations, an operation solve that got us the value creation. But I think a lot of it was really just management, like basic management. But Ned, that as powerful as that solve seems to be, that seems like how you would capture more margin. So you took your margins from 10% or 15% to 40%. But that doesn't explain net new revenue, new sales. How did you quadruple sales? We didn't. We didn't call it a sales day the same. So EBITDA went up, not revenue. Revenue crept up slightly. So we-- like, this was an operations case for the first three years. Right. Because I guess if margins are 10% and then they're 40, that's four times. I couldn't. I couldn't park the code on sales. We grew a little bit, but no faster than the market. you know, then. Yeah, the growth rates I had assumed. So this is actually a pretty common thing for ETA and search. Folks like me with my background, these heavy finance backgrounds, we're really comfortable figuring out all these little niches. We're not great at listening to the customers and translating that in a value right away. So it took me a while to unlock that. And I'd say a pattern as an investor now, that's kind of a pattern I see and I'm much more vocal earlier with like private equity or banker background people because we're comfortable. That's our jam. We can go and figure out how to make things more profitable. Growing revenue, go to market, changing all those motions, that's really different. That's a different skill set. So anyway, I don't want to detract as too much. But the operations lever was the one I pulled and we couldn't quite crack revenue at that point. Took us a few more years. Okay Ned, so I want to get to your investing chapter now. But you quadrupled ETA by quadrupling the margins and sold for an 8x, 6 million of ETA 48 million. Who did you sell to? How does that chapter end? - Yeah, we sold to a private equity fund out of Chicago, a middle market, PE fund. And we went, so from when I bought the business to when I ultimately we sold it again to our largest LP. We went from 15 employees when I first started to 250 at the end. Along the way, we diversified into different business models. We built our own software, we had some wins, we had some losses managed through COVID. But Ned, it was a great outcome. And once I was done and transitioned to the new CEO, I took a year off and really thought about what I wanted to do. - And let me pause you there. So as a search CEO, you grew the quadrupling of the ETA was a three year run, an incredible three years. And then you sold it to the middle market private equity firm and stayed on as CEO. - Yeah, stayed on for about five years. - For about five years. Okay, so you were eight years in the business. Okay, gotcha. - Yep. - So great. And eventually at the end of that eight year tenure, the business was at 250 employees having started at 15 when you bought it eight years earlier. Wow, okay. Great, what a run, what a run. - Yeah. - Okay, thank you. So you have this great exit and then you probably have when the business exits again and your CEO with a private equity firm is second by the Apple. And then you, I heard you say you handed it over to a different CEO and you take a year off to contemplate your next steps. Okay, let's hear how you thought about that. - Oh, well, my wife was a great partner and she was amazing. I was like, I thought I'd take three months off and then start running a business and I was just thinking about what kind of business and she was like, look, you've done this. Like, what, I'm thinking about what you really want to do. And I was like, all right, I'll take some more time. So that three months turned into a year and well, it was amazing. Like, you get these offers to go run things that blow your mind. And I didn't have a framework for thinking about it. So I talked to kind of my old mentors and investors and I got up again, just got kind of feedback on how people approach this. And ultimately I came up with, all right, let me kind of come up with like five things that my next, my next journey and whatever my next thing is, has to have. And I won't share them with you 'cause if anyone finds value in this, I think the idea has just come up with something for you. For me, it was creating some impact, some financial things and some life balance, things on how I want to spend my time at this point at three little kids and it was meaningful for me to be around them. So, it was wild. Like, I was getting offers where I would run back to my wife and say, oh my God, like, this is great. I'm so excited that I get to run this massive business and look at this pay package blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then she's, and actually one of my best friends kind of helped me accountable. And we'd look at it and I'd have to answer it against these five criteria. And there were times when it only met one, but in my mind it met all five. And it just really showed me that my ego was driving me. Like I still had some stuff I had to deal with because I wanted something and I didn't know why. And in a lot of ways I'd kind of won the game from where I thought, what I thought winning looked like. So I had to do some inner work and really think about, all right, what do I truly want? And why can't I see? Like I wrote it on paper, but why can't I see it? So that was-- - That's so interesting. - That was wild for me. - And so how did you finally reconcile this? - For me, I had to figure out where my drive was coming from. And once I got my hands around that, I felt like I could do anything. And interestingly, the things that started to speak to me were the things that I love to do. So, okay, well, I love being around operators. I don't really want the burden of running something right now. But how do I stay around operators? How do I, you know, share knowledge? How do I help them on their journey? What does that look like? So that was a driving force for me. And then ultimately, I landed on coaching. I ran my business on EOS. My coach was amazing and really nudged me in the direction of coaching. And I had a personal coach who also encouraged me. And I was like, all right, I'll give it a shot. And like right away, I drank the Kool-Aid and I was fully in. And I loved it. And I'd always been investing in search funds along the way. But honestly, I felt a little disconnected. I was an individual investor. And I'd say in about a third of the deals, I was really engaged. I was either on the board or speaking with the entrepreneur pretty regularly. But another third, a few times a year or whenever they needed me. And then another third, I didn't really hear from them very often. So I was just to check. And I didn't really like that. I wanted more full contact. I wanted more. So I had to rethink how I wanted to invest. And by this point, I had invested in almost 40, between 40 to 50 operating companies. And I just got really clear about what I wanted to do. I wanted to be people's best board member. Whether I was on the board or not, I just wanted to be that Dave Dodson, right? Or the board members that really impacted me. Like M.K. O'Connell, search fund partners. Tom Kessett and Dave Loseur. These guys just meant so much to me. And I wanted to be that for someone else. So I created a fund with other operators. And then we mentor and help CEOs that do traditional search. Just help them run a great business. Run a great life. And I just don't think business should be that hard. So we're really direct with them. But we're there for them. We have compassion and empathy for the journey. Ned, so-- but you had invested in a few dozen deals as an individual investor. Oh, yeah. Why did formalizing into a fund close the gap between what you weren't getting as an individual investor and what you wanted? I think it was weird to be like, hey, I'm Ned. And here's my buddies that we're going to help you out. Because I knew from a capacity standpoint, I couldn't bring full energy to every opportunity that I wanted to be in. So there was a mismatch. And in a fund structure, people understand it. And while I didn't want to be a typical private equity fund, I didn't need the benefits of the structure to link it all together and really just define the rules of the game, how we invest. I think the core ethos of any fund or any investor really has to be out there. And people have to understand it. And for me, I don't really don't want to invest in someone just to be in their search deal. I want to be in their life deal. I want to know-- I want to be able to help them get through this part and then whatever they want to do next. And honestly, that's been the most fun. There's a kind of cliche saying in EOS, like do what you love with people you love. And the older I get, these cliche is make more sense to me. So I get to be around people that I got to see go through there from when they were searching all the way true. selling, getting married, having kids, some of the uglier points of life too and being there in the tough times. And then I get to see him do the next thing. And some people go into a real estate or they start up an idea that they had or they take over a family business. And maybe I get to be part of that. Maybe I get to be part of that story. And that's a lot more fun to me. And so the coaching, the EOS, the formal EOS coaching and then maybe more informal just being a great advisor, being on the board or being the best board member who's not on the board. All of that is the, would you say that that's kind of the brand, the differentiator of, and what's the name of the fund? Oh, it's called Searchers Fund. Again, driving you and marketing was not my thing. So it was pretty direct. So I thought, I'm not sure what I was talking about. I'm just talking about the searchers. I mean a lot of people that just aren't really ready to do this. They haven't mentally prepared for it. They maybe don't have all the skill sets yet. And that's what I mean by time. Like this, you might be curious about it, but it might not be your time to do that. So what I love is that people can get all these different points of feedback, whether from traditional ETA investors, traditional search investors, that they're getting a lot of feedback and a lot more constructive criticism that allows them to be better. So I think this is a wonderful time to be in search. What I also wanted to hear was the skills that you sometimes see lacking in would-be searchers. Oh. Because they're not at the right time in their careers yet. But I'm going to press you in. So what are some of the skills that you see that would be searchers sometimes lack? Like more most commonly, I know it's case by case, but is there any sort of trend to be observed? Yeah. Look, I'm a traditional search fund investor exclusively. I've invested in other things I've just learned. This is what I'm really good at. And I want to go deep in this segment. What I really think about this in three dimensions, like do people really understand search? A lot of times, people may be listening to the podcast, but they haven't really talked to people. They haven't interned. They haven't really like, there's so many ways to get involved. So when I'm meeting with someone and let's say they want to invest in a surrogacy business, but they haven't talked to any of the people in traditional search that have done it. Do you really get it? Like the power of the network is that you can actually have access to these people. And they don't even know the models. And I feel like they really have to get it. You have to do your homework. I feel like that connects you to this. You have to really want it. And that's the tough thing to think through. You really have to, there has to be some drive, something about your story or why. That has to just exude from you. Like I've got to feel that I'm going to want to work with you, not just for a short period of time, but honestly, for the rest of my life. And whatever your driving force is, I really want to understand that. And if you can't communicate that to me, how are you going to convince a seller to sell me, to sell you their business? Like you're dedicating the next three, five, ten years of your life to being a leader. And if I can't understand why you want to do this, there's something wrong. And usually sometimes a person just hasn't understood that themselves. They're running away from something, running away from a job, running away from something that they've done. And this feels like the right thing. But it's often not. So the people that are really clear about why they're doing it, those tend to be successful. And then the right capacity to do this thing, like do they have the right skill sets, do they have the EQ and IQ? You're not going to be perfect at everything. So just being aware of what you're not good at is half the battle. I want to hear about that. Like I can't grow a revenue. I don't even think I can today. So all right, how do you, you know, how are you going to, how are you going to compensate for that? All right, well, I'm going to get a partner. And here's what they're really good at. And here's what makes us great. Okay, cool. Like I think the mental exercise into the, like what is going to make you great? I think people are lacking. And that's why I think it's a time thing. So it's a, if someone really wants us, you can get it. But now might not be your time. Maybe you're, maybe you're coming in at a lower level than you'd like on some of those dimensions I just talked about. But those are all things that you can, you can put work into and increase. Even if somebody is willing to let go and, and go off for a few years and fill whatever gaps they have to be a good searcher, traditional searcher, future CEO. Isn't there a risk that I'll age myself out of this window that you the search investor community likes to see? Totally. Heck yeah. I mean, yeah, but I appreciate, I appreciate your care. If it took you five years to get there, you know, like maybe, maybe traditional searches in your jam, maybe an event sponsor or something else is or going to work for one of these funds or, you know, that's okay. That's just life giving you feedback. Like that door might close for you. But it might not. If you built those relationships and I've known you and I've watched you work like hell to get there and you kept in contact with me. Yeah, I guarantee you I'm going to be your biggest cheerleader. And I'm going to help you figure out how to, if you really want to make a traditional fund work, search work, you're going to, you're going to put one hell of a shot at that thing. And that's what this is all about. Like if traditional is good for you, if that's really what you want, you can go get it. It might not look like the newly minted MBA. It might look different. But you can get there. And I think that's that like the willingness to do this is the willingness to run through a wall to get there. Like the best searchers are the ones like in the beginning, like you talked about like difficulty and like how hard this is in the beginning and it is hard and not everyone should do it. But hard is a relative term, right? Like sometimes we make things hard on ourselves by not making decisions or maybe we don't have the experience and learning is ugly. When you learn, it's not always a straight line. Like all businesses don't grow from A to B on this like beautiful curve. They're like a stock ticker. They go up and down. And when they go up and down like that in search, that's learning. And in the first few years, really great searchers and search investors understand that. And we're going to have that conversation. So we give you some space to hopefully incubate and go from rookie to franchise player. And then once you're there, we're helping you be great. But I think some people make it a zero sum game. I have to do search now. This is my time and they're rushing it. And hopefully investors are thoughtful and we're all voting with our dollars. No one's giving them all their money. So they've got a raise and they've got to go through the process. And in an ideal world, if they're not able to raise, that's the world giving them feedback that this isn't for you right now. And then get curious. Figure that out. Okay, what am I missing? What do I really? Those searchers that go back process that feedback and come back. Those are some of the best transactions, some of the best CEOs I've been involved with. Like the ones that just like, hey, I finished grad school. I'm raising a search. I'm going in the search and all of a sudden it's just a rocket ship and I'm done. That's rare. Like that doesn't really happen. You're going to learn something along this thing. It kind of goes back to the, you know, this is going to take a cost out. And you're going to get hit along the way somewhere. So you just don't know where. One example net of people kind of a pattern that you've seen where. That would be searcher might might not be ready or they might not really want this as you put it. Is that they're doing a search to become an investor. Yes. So their goal really is not being a small business buyer owner, grower CEO, but is to be an investor. And this is just the step to get there. Say more about that. Yeah, I have not had luck with this profile of searcher. And I think my anecdotal experiences, they, there's something missing with an investor mindset and like relating to people, customers, etc. There's some manager or leadership gap that even through the maturity process, they're not quite getting. And I don't know what that is. It's unique to everybody. But if you are totally motivated by being an investor, you're not totally motivated about being a leader. And at the end of the day, you're leading people, processes, systems, this whole thing. This isn't, you know, there's some people that go to business school and then they become consultants in order to be something else. They go to Bain or McKinsey or whatever. Okay. Search isn't that. This isn't come here, get your stamp and then go to the next thing, right? Like the things called search at the end of the day, we're looking for companies, we're looking for ourselves, we're growing, we're maturing. Like there's this whole thing and it's not a, it's not a check the box. The really successful ones don't, don't seem to work out that way. So I think that it's a mindset shift and switching less from how do I get to this point in my career, but how do I actually lead well? It is, it serves people better. And you said to me that you actually, when you look at a searcher and a deal, you're really more investing in the searcher than the deal. Obviously, I'm sure that's a oversupplication if it's a terrible deal. Although then you might argue if a searcher brought me a terrible deal, then the problem is still the searcher. Yeah. They should have known better. But, and you know, in the investing cliche, this is investing in the jockey more than the horse as it goes. So is there anything to elaborate on that? Is that just a kind of a crystallization of what we've heard you say? I think it's more of a crystallization, but what I might add is if I'm committed to you as a searcher, it like I owe you. Like if you're bringing like B or C deals consistently and I'm not giving you hard feedback and I'm not telling you, like what's wrong with this? And I'm not sitting down and like helping you sharpen the saw to get better and better. I'm not a good investor. Like I'm not showing up for you. So like that's our job is to help you learn and mature. I'm not expecting anyone to be great at search. I just expect you to be coachable and willing to take in these data points and process them all and reflect on and get better. That's what it's all about. But if you're not getting better and it's just you, it's not working like the likelihood of one finding a company to getting investors to back in three being successful goes way down. One of the reasons that people are don't want to do a traditional search and might tend toward a self-funded search instead is because of the perception of being the see, the conventional format in a traditional search, conventional, kind of corporate format where you are a CEO and you have a board behind you who are in some sense your bosses, you're reporting to these board members. And for the very autonomous oriented types, they might, they might shape it that. But of course the answer to that is if it's a healthy relationship between CEO and board, it's a very value-add relationship in both directions. But at least the board should be offering you a CEO value, kind of like what you just said about helping a searcher, coaching a searcher along and giving them feedback. So what do you, how do you react to that? What do you see is the value of a board kind of convinced the skeptic who wants to do a self-funded search so they don't have to report to anybody? Is this skeptic that does self-funded so they don't have to report? Yeah, I mean, it's just, the premise is wrong, isn't about reporting or having a boss. You're always going to have a boss. There's someone that you're holding, that's holding you accountable and it could be anyone, it could be your customers, it could be the bank, it could be your spouse. Ultimately, hopefully it's just you. You're holding yourself accountable for what you want. Look, I drank the cool aid on traditional, I did it. What I love about it is for all its faults and what we can debate that all day and that's not really why I'm here. For all its faults, these investors really care for the most part. I'd say they know how to play in the same sandbox together, 80% of the time. As a researcher, I found a ton of value in knowing who they were or at least their reputation. And when things went the wrong way or they went outside of that, I could challenge them and say, "Hey, I thought you were this kind of investor. It seems like this is out of shape for you. What's going on here?" Now, there's some comfort in that. There's value in that, right, being able to know who you're investing with and in and how they react in that relationship. What I've seen when I invest in other forms of search, broader ETA, for me, I just don't know all the investors. I don't know the board members. I don't know how they react. Some of the decisions that I've been around just haven't always made sense to me. And then it's honestly for me, just a lot of noise. I have to go meet this person, figure this out and go through that. They're created more friction versus what I was already doing. So I don't know if they're better or worse, but I think as a traditional researcher, there's value in the experience from the investors. There's value in the community. It's up to you as the researcher to unlock that. But there's also some kind of rules of the game and ways to play. And I honestly think that's helpful. That choice architecture being limited allows you to really be great at what you do. A couple more questions for you, Ned, then I'll let you go. Let's zoom out a little bit and just kind of consider a lower market or small business investing broadly. The opportunity in AI, you are excited about. What is your take on that? Look, I have a feeling that someone's going to come back to this and be like, "Oh, there's what Ned said at this point." Like, I don't think anyone can really predict exactly where AI is going. But I do look, there has been this oversunami. There's this baby boomer retirement. Search is rising to fill that gap. And has been AI, I think, enables a rookie to great CEO with more tools. And I think leaders can do the things that they want to do. I think in my cohort of searchers, we talk about it like mind blowing. Like imagine if you could have been the product manager in your business back then. What would that have looked like? Like creating minimum viable products, working through things so much faster than we could have going through traditional leadership structures and all that stuff. And I think a lot of things are going to break, but I think we're going to fail faster and learn quicker. And I'm really excited for that. If I really hand back the macro, like America has given me so much, like there is this massive age gap. And like, this is kind of an opportunity for a lot more people to live the American dream. And whether that's through traditional search or broader ETA, I think there's just a lot more knowledge and awareness around this. And like whether AI is a force for good or evil, like, well, I'll park that. But it's going to make really strong CEOs and leadership teams even better. And I'm excited about that. And I think, like, as an investor, I want to invest in people who already knew we're going to be great. Now they have better tools. Let's go. That sounds awesome. That's a great way to be thinking about it. Basically great searchers, great CEOs, enabled with better tools is essentially what this is. What's not to be excited about. Ned, you just mentioned American dream. And that was something that a theme that came up in our pre-call. And we were riffing on how ETA is maybe, if you zoom out a little bit, a lot of what's going on here is really just another generation of people getting re-excited by small businesses, essentially. And I do think of that way with acquiring minds more and more thinking about it a little bit more expansively that this is about small business entrepreneurship more than it is about the way in that you bought a business, what model, et cetera. And you, son of immigrants, have a particular kind of emotional resonance with the American dream. So how do you think about where ETA is? intersects with the American Dream? Yeah, I really enjoyed our last conversation on it and I would encourage you to expand your aperture because I think it could be really cool and the service you're doing to this community in just entrepreneurs is awesome not to pander but I've really enjoyed it. Look at the end of the day, it's not just wealth creation, right? There was one of my employees that a couple years in operating came up to me with tears in his eyes and he's like, "Hey, I want to let you know I'm buying a house and that's because I'm confident that I'm going to continue to have a job here and I've never had that." Like, that ability to help people move through stations of life is a lot of what this is all about. So, you know, not having to worry about basic needs and being able to follow your passion and be really great at something or choose to be a role player, whatever that looks like. But if we could all have time for our passions and for our work, how amazing would that be? You know, if we could be more balanced humans, we could put a real dent in the universe as a leader just by amplifying the impact that we have through our employees, through our customers, etc. And I haven't met a lot of like bad people in search. I think these are genuinely really good people that want to do something good. And they want to be great leaders. And sometimes we talk about running a business that it doesn't have to be hard, this hard run a business. Sometimes it gets hard and sometimes they get scared and they don't have the confidence to make great decisions and they might not be the best version of themselves. But I really think that as you go through this journey, you become a really cool version of yourself. And if that multiplies, I don't know, maybe a little kumbaya here, but like, that's a pretty good message for America. And that's the America I want to live in where people are less stressed, have time for their passions and they're excited about what they do for their vocation. Like, why not inject that into, in a search? I think that's a big part of that. What a perfect message to end on that. I love that last point so much. So thank you for answering it. And thank you very much for coming on acquiring mines and sharing both your search journey and your investor journey. Really a great, great perspective and a great run you've had in early days yet. So lots more to come. Well, it's been a pleasure. Hope you enjoyed that interview. Don't forget to subscribe to the acquiring mines newsletter. We send an email for every episode with an introduction to the interview, a link to the video version on YouTube. In soon, key takeaways, numbers and more essentials from the interview for those of you who don't have time to listen or watch it. Subscribe at acquiring mines dot CEO. You'll also find all our webinars there on the website, both those we have coming up and recordings of past webinars. At this point, there are over 30 webinar recordings, a wealth of information on all the technical nitty gritty of buying a business. Acquiring mines dot CEO.