Why Pool Owners Sell (And What Buyers Actually Want) with Karl Toth & Garrett Welch

I was up for Instagram, Bolton here. Welcome back to the show. Hey, we're doing something a little different today. So we're going to be talking with Carl Toath, who's the founder of Pool Ninja out in the Sacramento area and then Garrett Welch. And one of these just acquired the other one. And so we're going to be talking about kind of buying, selling acquisitions in the pool space. So fellas, thanks for joining us today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. So let's start with, let's start with Garrett. All right. Give us a little like 30 second bio, 60 second bio. Who are you and what's your role in this pool world? Yeah. So my background is in finance. I kind of started in the investment banking and private equity space. So I got some exposure early on to buying and selling businesses, both sides. I've worked selling really large software businesses, commercial and industrial businesses, and then also later in my career, buying software industrial businesses. And then kind of pivoted my career path to focus on services. I was really interested in kind of essential services businesses and started my career in corporate development with big brand, tyrant service on California and basically worked with, you know, mom and pop business owners to help them sell their business. It's a pretty difficult process. So I've been trying to simplify it and make it as easy as possible and give, you know, folks an opportunity to, you know, exit, find a retirement plan into the next thing, or, you know, partner with an acquired just to get additional capital to grow. So that's my role here. I never green on the VP of partnerships and kind of help folks like Carl, you got your business. And for context, we on a previous episode, we talked with Kyle Peter, the founder of Nevergreen. And so if I remember correctly, they were just acquired. And so within the past year, so give or take. And so now continuing, it sounds like that's going to be kind of the platform company and the mothership. And so doing some of these additional add-ons and acquisitions from there. Is that essentially the thesis? That's right. Yeah. And we have kind of a menu of options. And Carl can talk to this. You know, we're looking to provide solutions to mom and pop business owners, whether they want to stay on and find a partner, or if they're looking to, you know, fully exit and transition out of the pool industry, we can kind of cater to that need as well. Got you. Alright. So Carl, give us your bio here, who you are. Yeah. So yeah, obviously I'm Carl and the owner of, or previous owner of Cool Ninja, out of Sacramento and prior to the pool service business or pool service industry, I was actually in the health and fitness world. So it's in the health club space. My buddy and I, we owned a gym in Reno, Nevada. And that was the last thing that I did. And then prior to that, I had worked with him on a club that he owned down in Southern California. And I worked for a couple of large chains down in the California area as well. So I've been in the gym business pretty much since I was 18 years older as my first job and got out of it when I got into the pool service business. So I was living in Reno at the time, was kind of parting ways with my business partner out there and met my wife here in Sacramento and was looking for a business to start. And I was pretty much over the health and fitness industry at that point. And I was looking to present the new home services, look super, super attractive. And so I just kind of started doing my research. This is a lot of people do. And yeah, and you know, notice that there's a lot of stuff out there, you know, everything from pest control to age back to landscaping and pool service kind of caught my eye. And I said, Hey, what about this? And yeah, just dove in and kind of snowball from there. Nice. And give us some sense of, we'll get into the transaction of the sale, all of that, all the parts. But when you sold, and kind of maybe where the company is today, in terms of number of pools accounts that you've got, number of people on the team, give us some, some sense of that. Yeah. So we had about 500 service accounts. And I think we had about, we were floating between like seven to nine staff members, got a dependent dependent on the week. And so yeah, cool. Awesome. Alright, so Garrett, you are in the market to buy you, you're ready to go shop in here. And so talk to us about like, how are you sourcing deals? What are you looking for? Specifically in the pool space. So it sounds like, you know, in the MNAP world that you've got a lot of experience with, it may depend on, you know, the industry in the market. But specifically in the pool space, what were you looking for? And why did pool ninja start to check some boxes for you? Yeah. I think, you know, we have an appetite for a lot of different types of pool business out there. So I think, you know, they're full rounds, which are largely single pullers, but there's also, you know, I'll call it more formalized businesses where, you know, Carl had a team of seven to 10 people, which is about 500 accounts. And then you have businesses that are north of that. I think, you know, what we're trying to do is educate the industry on what's most attractive for a sale and where we can have a good partnership and a potential transaction. And a lot of that is focusing just on, you know, how you run your business or your tracking data and things like that. And do you have the information available so that we can properly evaluate your businesses? And, you know, Carl was in a good position. He started implementing Schimmer and had a lot of the technology foundation. We've worked with businesses that don't have anything in place. So I think a lot of our focus is just, you know, businesses that are strong operators that have a customer focus mindset, and also take care of their team because that's our focus is making sure we have good employees that can come on board with us. We don't have a bench of employees. We just drop in day one. And then, you know, they're treating the customers right, pricing appropriately, and then also are starting to bend towards that monetization of the industry. How did you find Carl and how just not only just with Carl specifically, but in general, like how are you sourcing deals right now? Generally, it's kind of relationship building. So I think the poor industry is really unique in that, you know, everybody's pretty close to it in the industry. People talk, they have clicks and small groups. And that's kind of how we kind of made our way. So Kyle has been in the industry for eight years at this point and met some folks like Carl and had conversations. And, you know, that's kind of been our focus is on those relationships. And then, you know, I'll go out and build additional relationships through that network or just reaching out based on, you know, things we've heard, you know, somebody will recommend a business to us. And that's kind of the impetus for reaching out and starting conversation. I saw online the other day of, um, whenever it comes to an acquisition, just this bin diagram of the number of things that have to happen and just kind of all line up for a deal to take place in terms of, you know, just the number of boxes that have to be checked on both sides, you know, Garrett, you may be super interested at a time when Carl's not or vice versa. And so you really need all the stars to align. So Carl, when this starts to come on your radar, had you been thinking about selling? Was this something you had considered? Were you outlooking? How did this start to come about? Yeah, I never, I never actually went out and was looking in. I will say that, you know, it was something that I had, it had pursued me for a while from not just never being by a couple of other, uh, uh, firms and even local businesses. Um, and, uh, yeah. So it wasn't on my radar for a while. And then I started talking to Kyle a little bit more. Gosh, I give him, I, I guess, Kyle, kind of, I started having conversations maybe about two years ago. Um, and he kind of told me, you know, uh, kind of what his plan was. And, um, yeah. And so I guess, I guess, I guess, uh, the very first, uh, uh, talks of, you know, of, of, of maybe, uh, never green acquiring, uh, pool ninja were probably about two years ago. And kind of like you said, a lot of, I think, what has to happen for this set, for something just to go through is the stars hat kind of have to align, right? And, um, and so I think in that, in those, in the, in the, the first part of those couple of years, it just, it just wasn't right for me just yet. And so a couple things, uh, you know, changed over time. Uh, I know we were talking before we started recording, you know, in terms of like things went on with like my family life. Um, uh, also, you know, there's the personal competitive side of you that, you know, kind of wants to get to that certain number, um, you know, and you want to, you feel like you haven't, you're not quite finished yet. Um, and then of course, you know, there's all to that. I think what a lot of guys, uh, I would assume feel is you kind of have a little bit of an ego when it comes to your own business, right? It's like, hey, this is, you kind of find some identity in your business. And so it's kind of hard, I'm not going to let this go. I've built this thing from the ground up. And, um, and so, so yeah. So I think in the end, when, when all the stars aligned and the only thing left was the ego, that's when I knew that it was, it was probably a good time because if you're, just hold it on to it for pride and for, for ego, um, you know, those are, that's, that's the wrong reason you got to think about everything else and everybody else. When you curl, when you made the decision to sell and you're like, okay, the timing's right. Uh, you know, the stars are starting to align. Was your thought process of, hey, I've already built this reform relationship with Kyle. I want to work with Kyle or nobody or did you go out and shop it? Did you hire anyone? How did you think about it? Yeah, I never, I never shopped it. Um, I did, like I said, I talked to a couple of other, um, there was a P firm or two. There were some local buyers, business brokers, approached me. Uh, I never really felt great about any of them. I think a big part of why I, and this is once again kind of back to the stars aligning, you know, and one of those major stars aligning is the right buyer, right, among other things. But just knowing Kyle over and evergreen, knowing what he's done, and knowing how he treats his employees, and his customers, you know, his company's probably one of the other companies, in town, where we would actually do, quote, and if they said, oh, we had nevergreen out of the pool service and didn't work out, then we knew, oh man, it didn't work out with nevergreen. It probably isn't going on. It's not working out with anybody. Yeah, because they have, they have a really good reputation, and then, you know, and we have, we've talked to just, you know, customers in the area, and everybody seemed to be happy with them. So we know they treat their customers, right? We know the employees are treated really, really well, and then obviously I knew the founder, and I had a good relationship with him. We kind of started roughly around the same time. And yeah, so I believe in Kyle, I believe in nevergreen, I believe in what they were doing. And so that was the final piece of the puzzle that I really, I guess, kind of, you know, hit the pot. Yeah. And so Garrett, from your perspective, as you are looking at Carl amongst others, you know, variety criteria, what would you say are the things that are like nice to have versus must-have of, if they don't have this, this isn't worth it, because in the, in terms of acquisitions, you know, it's kind of like, if you're fixing up and flipping a house, you know, there's going to be some like, holy crap, we've got to do a crap, it'll work. And something like, I don't know, man, we'll put some pain on it and, and hold on to it for a minute till the timing's right, and then we sell it or, you know, whatever may be. So what were you looking for that are nice to have versus, you know, maybe deal breakers? Yeah. I think most importantly is just having a strong customer base in a geography that we want to be in, right? I think, you know, there's a wide variety of pricing models in the pull industry. You can look at other markets like Arizona and Texas and even Sacramento. And just trying to dig in and understand for us, you know, how are you pricing? Are you pricing in a way that's profitable or are you largely taking a loss on most of your customers and not not running a profitable business? I think for us, that's most important. And I think we can get through that through a lot of the unique economics of just looking at, you know, what are your base rates? Are you charging for filter cleans? Are you charging for specialty cans? Those are the must-haves and the basics and there's obviously thresholds and parameters and I think that drives valuation, but for us, that's very important. I think the other piece, you know, and this ties to business acquisitions is just having really strong employees that can help service those tools. You know, like I said, we don't have a bench of full service tax we can just drop in. So a lot of what we are acquiring is, you know, the employees too. And if you have, you know, repairs having a repair tech on staff is key for us because, you know, subcontracting all that work out is not necessarily our business model. So I would say those are the must-haves. You know, a lot of folks may not have a true like warehouse location like Carl did. They may be operating at B.R., we can manage that piece depending on the location. They may not have like skimmer or pool brain or some sort of modern software. We're totally fine working through that as well. So I think we have playbooks for different types of businesses that we can help to like integrate and modernize the business into the kind of our business operating model. But the key focus for us is going to be pricing and how you interact with customers. Any deal breakers that you look at and you're just like, eh, we could make it work, but the juice probably isn't worth the squeeze. I would say largely, I mean, if it's significant attrition, so if you're losing customers a year over year or a year, you know, kind of low-blown price, you're charting $120 a month for a chem only service, you know, our focus is going to be on providing customers full service and not just like dropping chems and then leaving. So, you know, the water chemistry matters, how you're managing the pool matters, and I think a lot of that ties into kind of your pricing model and overall operating model. Got it. Carl, from your perspective, talk to us about how did everything really start to come together? Because it's one thing for you and Kyle to talk two years ago, I'd be like, I'd be kind of cool. Like maybe someday this will happen. It's another thing to eventually get to a point of like, all right, I'm interested. It's like this dating dance of I like you. Do you like me? I don't want to, you know, be the first one to show interest. And so, how did you start to think about that when you came to the decision of like, okay, I think the timing's right. Well, I'll say that it wasn't, it didn't, it wasn't a decision, it didn't happen right away because I think I signed three yellow eyes with the nevergreen total. So, the deal did get kind of squashed a few different times and it had nothing to do with nevergreen. It was just mostly having to do with me and my readiness to move forward. But in the end, I think what really kind of, I guess, made me say, you know, this is, this is that is just kind of what we talked about earlier, all the pieces were coming together. And then, and then Kyle started introducing me to other members of the team that were on his team. And yeah, it just, I guess it's slowly, I can't say that there was necessarily like a line in the stand that we crossed, it was kind of like a low brew. And yeah, and before you know it, I was talking to Garrett and we were, we were moving. What happened with the previous yellow eyes that fell through? You mentioned it sounds like it was, it was me and not them. So what was changing in your, your world? You know, I had some things going on personally, the wife, there was a lot up in the air with my wife, which she was applying to different schools so we didn't know where we were going to be if we stayed in Sacramento, it probably wouldn't have sold and we didn't know at the time. Got it. And so, and then there's the possibility of her going to Southern California. And then the possibility of Las Vegas and Nevada came up and, and that's where she ended up getting accepted, but, but so, you know, there were, there was those things, because like I said, if I stayed in Sacramento, I would have just continued operating. And then, you know, there was the part of me that was also, well, you know, I think I can do this on my own if I just, you know, want to run it remotely, I can do that. And so there was part of me, you know, that, what kind of apprehensive to move for because I was kind of thinking, you know, I don't think I'm done yet, I think I can do this. And then, and then of course, you know, you know, when it comes to the, the dollar amount, you want to make sure that it's enough like kind of what you said earlier, the phrase you use, the juices work to squeeze like what I'm giving up here, you're going to actually be able to provide some significant change in, you know, my life and my family and, you know, like I said, we've been talking about it for two years or two years, and a lot of time to, to grow that, that foundation and to, you know, to be able to create a bigger valuation. So, totally. So yeah, did that answer your question? Absolutely. So yeah, whenever it gets to a point of going, all right, Kyle and Carl have been dating for a minute. And now they're like, all right, let's bring in our third party here who can help get us to the finish line. What do you tip in? I recognize like, because the deal just closed like two weeks ago, am I understanding correctly? Super fresh. All right. So we're still like moving in together, still figuring out who's who, that sort of thing. So I know there's, there's only so many specifics we can talk about, but, but Garrett, what are you typically looking for? What's an ideal structure for you in terms of seller financing or cash at close? Or, or earnouts or like, what's, what's the ideal set up for you? Yeah, I think the answer is it depends and that, you know, part of what the conversation that me and Carl had was, let's find a solution that works for you, right? So, you know, I understand his situation. He had a lot of, you know, personal things to work through. So we kind of put things on pause and then started the conversation back up again. But it was largely solving for, you know, what his needs were. And I think that's, that's what is unique about Nevergreen and kind of the capital backing that we have as we can provide flexible solutions. So, you know, there's some considerations to think through an ideal like, you know, how much cash do you want to take up front? There's tax implications, obviously. It's in most of these folks are in California, so we can kind of work through that. And we do have ways to help structure and think around that. Typically, it'd be some portion of cash down, some portion of seller finance, you know, and there's other ways that we can kind of sweeten the pot, depending on if, you know, the owner wants to stay in the business or exit. But it's highly just dependent on the individual situation and the business. Their needs in terms of what they want to take out and cash and kind of the tax implications. So I would say there's not any one structure that we pursue. We kind of approach it where we have an open conversation and we're happy to bring in their CPA as well and kind of find a solution that works for us. And my goal is kind of like this intermediary is to make sure our team is comfortable with that. And the seller has also come from comfortable with the structure. So, that's the ultimate goal, I know it's not a point of answer, but it really is very dependent. Totally. Yeah, and can I can I come back on that and that's something I should have brought up that was another huge thing for me to on round number three of the L.O.I. was after that it just it did seem like they really wanted to work with my situation and their their flexibility was it wasn't just it wasn't as cut and dry as maybe the previous to L.O.I.s and or or as it wasn't as cut and drag a lot of the other offers I had they were really were really really. We're willing to work with me on like Garrett was saying you know how it's funded in terms of positioning me for the best possible outcome both from attacks and you know cash standpoint so yeah that was big it was kind of like every time I said hey well you know I don't know what do you think about this like Garrett had a solution okay well how about we do this and so that was it's kind of like every time I thought of a you know reason why it could go south you know he was able to be super super flexible so yeah and practically speaking we sat down for what an hour and a half Carl and just kind of shot around ideas try to figure out what would be best for you yeah that's how we solve it right so it's very much you know a collaborative effort not a prescribed deal. Got it. Now Carl once all right we got an L.O.I. signed and now the sudden they're they're turning over rocks they're looking for skeletons anything that you wish you had known or had been better prepared for at that time. You know I don't I wouldn't say that I wish I would have known I didn't know how it is a process you know because obviously the people are investing a lot of money in your business so yeah they're going to turn over all the rocks and look for you know any issue. But it was it was pretty smooth there was a lot there was a lot of things going on but they make it really easy for the seller in terms of being you know hands off and I think a part of what probably helped my situation as I was pretty well established and quick books online I had a good bookkeeper so it was kind of like I would just you know essentially given the credentials and they can go in there and they found everything that they needed and. Luckily on my end everybody did their job and it looked good to them but yeah I would say I was a little surprised in how much went and how many how much how much recent how many resources they have to. They have to provide in order to like get these deals go through I know that you know if you're just selling a route you're just dealing with a route broker in a seller and you're pretty much done. I mean we had we had compensate calls with you know attorneys you know bookkeepers CPAs it was I wouldn't say it was intent but it was it was involved but they did like I said they did kind of make it easy and kind of dumbed it down for me on my end yeah so yeah. And get you well know that if someone wants to sell pool business or otherwise it's not a I make a decision on a Friday and then I listed on a Monday sort of thing like you really don't need to start thinking about it a year to multiple years in advance to really start getting your ducks and row what are the things for someone who's maybe maybe listen and go and like maybe interested in selling at some point what are the things that you're like all right if it's on the radar here's two three four things you got to have in place you got to start thinking about you got to start making sure that these things are tight and buttoned up. Yeah what I would say is I've worked through it all I've worked through paper and pencil and businesses and then more sophisticated businesses so we can work through it all but I ideally to get the best value you you have kind of the information tracking and the data tracking so you start to do that with I think like a route management software which would be similar or full brand or the like and then just making sure you can have your books in order which may be bringing on and outside bookkeeper to kind of manage that for you but a lot of folks that have quick books online it's out full or some sort of online cloud software makes a lot easier so you know I loaded to my past which is like working through very sophisticated deals and then you know you're you're doing in the full industry and there's certain requirements we have to hit in order to invest significant dollars in these businesses and a lot of what I done is simplify the process and I think Carl saw a lot of that through the process we work for we work through with him and it's just outsourcing everything that I can and taking it off his plate I will do myself or have folks on our side do so because he had quick books online we could jump in and grab all the information so I would say that's like a key infrastructure that you should have is online accounting some sort of pull management software and then just making sure you're like keeping track of your documents so if you have supplier agreements or anything like that which most people typically don't have in this industry you're just keeping track of those documents and saving them somewhere so that when the time comes a buyer has access to that information but I would say the crux of it is you know between your customer information and you're putting your accounting information I would start to get that stuff in place and make sure you're making the right adjustments tracking that information appropriately got it. The fact that you two are here right now means I'm assuming you're on good terms it seems to be that case or you wouldn't be here but were the times throughout the negotiation during the process where it felt like I don't know either side it could this could fall apart at any moment like negotiations selling a business it's hard it's stressful it's emotional it's tiring you like each other today but were there moments like I don't know if I like that dude after all not for me on my end yet I felt pretty comfortable throughout the whole process so yeah I can't I can't say enough good things about everybody over there so yeah I've had no bad experiences yeah I wouldn't say it was ever contentious we never try to be contentious or I mean ultimately like it's a mutual partnership and a mutual fit so you know prices one piece of the puzzle but I think you know crossbook to this a little bit as well it's like you know timing for him making sure that the employees feel comfortable that we're a good operator and can take your best customers and one of the things that we do and we've implemented is you know we want to make sure that the sellers have a good experience so we do surveys post-close to make sure you know what were the items that were difficult for you for you through the process and then refine that for the next person so every single transaction we do our goal is to just improve and make it easier so you know Carl was a little bit of a guinea pig and certain effects because he's kind of in the in the early stages of it but for the next you know business owner it should be an easier process given some of the learnings that he has through you know the acquisition. Let's talk through integration for a second so paperwork signed again two weeks ago we have our celebratory dinner we have you know hugs and kisses all around then what what happens next announcements transitions talk us through how that went. Yeah so so on my and it was it was basically just you know make like you said making the announcement to the staff in a meeting introducing Kyle from nevergreen and real quick let me jump in Carl what were were any of your team in the loop leading up to this or is this was a surprise to everyone. And it wasn't a surprise it was a surprise that most people I had a couple of key employees who I actually have have good relationships with that thought for them it might be better to give them a little bit of a heads up it wasn't yeah maybe a couple of days in the band that pulled them aside and so that was a good move for those key players because obviously they've put a lot of hard work for me and I mean you're trying to get by it. Yeah and but yeah other than those those couple key employees then it was yeah it's pretty much an introduction to the rest of the team all on one day in a meeting and yeah Kyle was there and yeah I think everything everything went really well the team members were really receptive. It was a big win for for them so it wasn't a hard so you know they're there they're there only benefiting from the change before you know I wasn't able to provide benefit for them. Now you know no 401k no health coverage so you know move like this really kind of puts them ahead gives them more room for growth in the future so that it wasn't that hard to get him get him to buy in this was really really good for everybody it was all it was a win all around some. Got it Garrett when you come in in a situation like this the announcements made the inkstri what are the things that you start implementing changing day one week one versus like and we're going to let the desk that a little bit more before we touch that. Well I think the key focus is just making sure that we have the ability to service the customers and pay the employees so that that's really the two changes that we focus on at the outset which is. You know as part of the transaction we have to make sure we move all the employees over to our payroll system you know one of the things we do from the get go is call them on the day on the first payroll they make sure we got paid right that's a big deal for them. And then on the customer side you know we just have to switch over billing to make sure the you know revenue is collected to never in so part of the transition is just. Moving the customer information from in this case it was Karl skimmer since over to ours so that is something that we do preparation for prior to actually closing the deal so you know stand at the instance work through it all so it should be relatively seen as close close and then anything else. We kind of push out to a later date because those are those are the key aspects that matter right like making sure we take care of the customers and the employees and. There's some like work flow and process changes that we go through with the employees but it's it's usually pushed out you know they're going through it now right three weeks after the deal training them making sure they have like ways to communicate so we use slack as well which. Pullman Joe was very involved in Slack. So it was an easy transition for them. So I would say largely there's not a huge amount of changes we're going through in the integration process. It's just mainly employee onboarding and customer billing as the two key aspects. Were there anything that in terms of how they did billing and how they even just charge and pricing that that they offered? They're like, "Ah, we actually do it this way," and similar with like on the employee side of, you know, the company we just acquired, whether it's Carla, whoever, we just acquired, you know, they do hourly and we'd pay per pool and they do performance pay and we don't, you know, was there any of those type of issues with either customers and pricing or with employees and comp that were adjustments? No, not really. I mean, like we're not coming in and changing pricing, we're just changing the billing. So it's largely just collecting information and making sure we can charge customers on the employee side. So we come in and our goal is to make sure we, you know, pay every employee the same if not more. And then also like, you know, Carla was talking about give them benefits. So, you know, 401k medical dental vision, all that kind of good stuff. So I wouldn't say that there's a ton that we're changing or mixing up any challenges that we've seen in the acquisitions that we've done. Is the plan to keep pool ninja as its own standalone brand or is it eventually going to kind of fold completely into Nevergreen or what's the thought process there? That far we're kind of still working through. I mean, I think, you know, ultimately, there's probably value in a uniform brand at some point, but that's not a decision we have to make it right now. And to say, Nevergreen is the right brand, like what we want to do is just make sure that the employees feel they have like one culture, one team, and that the, you know, the customers see, you know, one brand or like a market of brands that are all unified. So I think at some point we'll make that that decision, but for now, we're going to kind of just continue on with, you know, pool ninja and every business so far. Gotcha. What, um, Carla's wrap up with this. What do you know now that you wish you knew then when you started this process? And we're getting someone who may be listening in a similar spot who may be thinking about it or maybe in the process of it, um, and go on, man, I wish someone would have told me this two years ago, positively or negatively. Yeah. Um, gosh, I guess, uh, yeah, I'm trying to think what, uh, so two years ago, what do I wish I would have known that I know now? Um, well, I guess, uh, yeah, I guess, um, I'm going to probably say, yeah, you got me kind of stomach hair. What do I wish you would have known two years ago? I'm going to buy you some time here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me, let me ask you, Garrett, for again, someone who may be looking, um, at, uh, either on the by side or the cell side, um, what any advisor or final words of wisdom you'd give them. Yeah, I think it's just preparing fans and start thinking through your options. I think, you know, a lot of folks have looked at private equity negatively in the space, uh, just because they've heard stories or whatever from other industries. What I would say is, you know, it's, it's now hoarding folks a lot of optionality in terms of what they can do, um, if they are ready to change things up, retire, look into go into other industries and whatnot. But, um, yeah, I think like we talked about, it's kind of thinking through, making sure you have the right infrastructure in place, you know, customers are demanding more, they're demanding better service, higher quality of water chemistry, and more communication. And I think that's the really challenging part is they're becoming very demanding animals like that instant gratification on hearing back from, uh, there are service providers, especially when it relates to the home, right? So, you know, a part of the challenge that we're seeing in the pool industry, I think, is, you know, you have this, this old, like, former way of working and a lot of folks have get to modernize and, you know, for now it works, because in the pool industry, if you're busy on a summer day, like, good luck getting a hold of another, another pool industry operator to come and service your pool, right? Like, the busy, using this is really busy and a lot of them aren't answering the phones, um, because they're out in the field and actually actually doing the work. Um, but I think at, you know, at some point, like, there's going to be an option to leverage, you know, technology to limit the amount of, you know, interaction you have to do with the customer, right? Um, and you can kind of manage that process, give them next day scheduling, make sure they're taking care of, uh, and I think you have to leverage technology in order to do that. Yeah. Carl, what do you got? We'll give you the last word here. No pressure. Yeah. I guess, uh, I guess it would be, uh, I guess, uh, going back a couple of years ago and maybe, uh, even beyond that, I know, I'm assuming we're a lot of other operators are when they, when they do view private equity, I think a couple of years ago, I probably would have said, you know, private equity, bad, you know, uh, pret, pret, you know, private seller, you know, private buyer good. And now I think I've kind of got the, I kind of got the opposite mindset. And I think a lot of that has to do with, um, just the industry as a whole. I feel like, um, I feel like this was just such a good move because I feel like, I feel like private equity kind of raises the bar for everybody in the industry because when, when private equity comes in and, and they're running things, they're running things the right way. And when you run things the right way, uh, it just kind of elevates everybody, right? Um, and obviously they're coming in, they're going to charge the, you know, they're going to charge the correct rates to be profitable, right? Um, they're going to, uh, they're going to brand correctly. They're going to have nice vehicles. And this is stuff that really everybody in the industry should be doing. Um, so by them coming in and, and implementing that, I think it's really good for everybody. Um, you know, it, it just, it just raises bar in terms of quality of service, what we can charge in the industry. Um, and then of course, just the reputation of the industry. You know, I think even seven years ago, when I started, the private equity, the private equity really wasn't a big thing. Uh, it was mostly independent operators. And, you know, everybody viewed the pool industry as, you know, just a guy with a pool in the back of his truck and a jug of chlorine. So I think by bigger businesses getting involved, um, it, it's going to change that and it's going to create more opportunities for people that actually want to career in the industry because I, I can't imagine how many people have been in this industry that I've had a really good potential that, you know, as employees that have left to go do something else because they just hit a dead end and, you know, they had nowhere to go. Um, so this just I think creates better opportunities for, for everybody. Um, so yeah, now I say private equity good. And, and everything else bad because, um, yeah, it's, I just think it's really good for the industry. That's good. Uh, gentlemen, thanks so much for the time. Super insightful, super helpful. And we appreciate it. If people want to find you, uh, anywhere online, you guys, uh, make your rounds on social media or anywhere we can, we can look you up. Uh, if anybody wants to email me, that's a private, uh, a private seller that's, um, maybe thinking about it or it doesn't feel comfortable, you know, going to Garrett directly or one of these other guys, they can think and email me and I can, uh, you know, of course, help Matt a little bit. If they have questions, uh, Carl Andrew LA with a K at gmail.com. Um, uh, but I'd, I'd, uh, I'd encourage anybody that wants to reach out and especially if you're in northern California and give Garrett and Kyle call over and never green. Yeah, and you can reach never green at nbrgrn.com. Um, that's never green without valves. We don't like valve. Some reason. Uh, and then you can also reach out to me directly at partnership at nbrgrn.com. Um, I will personally respond to all those and give you a call back. Awesome. All right, boys, appreciate the time. Thanks. All right. Thank you.