Why Results Matter – John Lesnik, Lending Science DM

John Lesnik

William Bissett: [00:00:00] Uh, thanks again. So, uh, crazy. As you all know, when you start something, it doesn’t always take off right away. Uh, so this is, believe it or not, our one year anniversary of doing Charting Opportunities. Um, so the first time we did this, we had Rob Snowden, who is a valuation expert. Come to our office and talk about valuations, and we decided that we were gonna do that first one online.

And so we broadcasted out to the entire universe. Um, I think we had three employees and one client that, uh, tapped into that, that very first opportunity. So it’s nice to see it kind of continue to grow. Um, the goal here with charting opportunities is [00:01:00] to deliver. Uh, topics that we believe based on our conversations with our business owner, clients are important for business owners to hear.

Um, we know the struggles that business owners face, and so to the extent we can introduce speakers, topics, ideas that are beneficial to run that business, that’s our goal with these. So anyways, with that being said, um. Since we do have a broader internet audience today, I’d like to say welcome to our YouTube live audience.

Um, it’s great to have you here on board and commemoration of our one year anniversary back at the back on the table, on the bar. We have wonderful, uh, Portus Wealth advisors co-branded with triple C brewing glasses. Um, please feel free to take one. Or if you like to drink with two beers at the same time and you double fist and you want to take two, um, you’re more than welcome to do that as well.

You Sharpie or you can sign that. Uh, we don’t have the sharp, I I’ve got this, but it last well lot long. Yep. [00:02:00] Um, so anyways, and that also goes without saying, uh, struggled with location for a long time. Um, and Chris here, triple C has done. Um, an awesome job with this building and has been very kind enough to let us use it, um, for payment.

Um, but anyways, it’s a great event space. Um, so for anybody that’s looking to do events, I think it holds 250 people. It’s a wonderful event space as well. So you can contact triple C, uh, for, um, for, for those if you’re interested. And then just the housekeeping items. So we will go today. John and I will talk back and forth about ESOPs and private equity from up four 30 now till 5 15, 5 20.

We’ll open up for question and answer. We’ll hang out here afterwards, probably till 5 45 or so, and then we’ll matriculate. Next. Cool. Um, so it’s a little bit more casual. There’s some picnic tables. If you wanna come next door, have a drink with us, uh, we’ll probably order a pizza, some wings and stuff like that.

So if you want to hang out for a little while [00:03:00] and then I’ll drop John to the airport. We’ll probably leave here around six 15 or six 30. So housekeeping, um, again, thanks for coming, um, and being an active participant. So, John’s been a, um. A friend of ours for over six years now. Um, and so as y’all know, the topic for today was John and his business partner, uh, ended up selling to an employee stock ownership plan, uh, rather than what is popular these days.

That selling to a strategic buyer, um, or a PE shop. And so I thought that was an interesting, um, conversation to bring here to, to us today to talk about why did you end up selling to an esop. Before we go down the, the process of why y’all chose ESOP and all of the different things that we’ve talked about, a 45 second overview of what an ESOP is.

Without getting into the complexity, 

John Lesnik: okay, lemme think of the easiest way to say this in 45 seconds. Um, [00:04:00] so essentially a company can convert, you know, typically we deal with LLCs, scorp, C-Corp, et cetera. But there’s also another option that’s an ESOP among others, right? There’s other op, um, and an ESOP environment.

What you do is you convert the company into a, to an esop, right? And then you sell your shares to that esop and then those shares will vest to the employees over a period of time, uh, based on all kinds of different rules, ERISA sets. Sets those rules. I don’t wanna get too much into particulars of that.

Plenty of YouTube videos on it. An insane amount of literature out there. Um, in essence though, what enables what it enabled us to do, which is one of the reasons that we did it, which we’re gonna get into in detail, is enabled us to cash out essentially. And. You know, get good value for the stock and the company that we built, but at the same time be able to maintain our culture.

Um, and as far as the structure is concerned, a lot of folks always worry about payout and that kind of thing. How does that work? I don’t wanna get into the nuts and bolts of it, but it, you know, in essence you’ll see a similar, you. Total timeframe of payout similar to what you would see in some strategic deals and, uh, very [00:05:00] similar to what you might see in some private equity deals.

You know, typically you’re gonna be paid out over a five year period, give or take that. Uh, there’s all kinds of levers on these things so you can structure that. In all kinds of different ways. Um, you can shorten it, you can lengthen it, et cetera. But for us, I think anybody here who’s built a team, you know, the hardest thing in the business that I ever did was build the team.

Right? And so I wanted to make sure that we preserved a culture for. For that team. And then we also benefited them. Every deal we were presented with. We had a strategic opportunity. We had multiple private equity deals, uh, and then we had the esop. The primary shareholders would’ve been fine financially out of those, but like we were looking at the bigger picture, how do we create lasting wealth and, uh, really a legacy business for our, for our employees.

They’re the ones who are, you know, sacrificing, you know, life and limb to get workout. They’re the ones who are staying late, spending time, time away from their families, et cetera. So we wanted to. That and we, we ended up going the ESOP route because of that. So. Awesome. [00:06:00] So, um, they always say, begin with the end in mind.

Um, right. Um, unfortunately, I think a lot of business owners probably start off just trying to create income for themselves, and then the business takes off and next thing you know, you have employee a or. Employee one, employee two, employee three. And next thing you know, you have a sustainable business.

Um, but not every entrepreneur, every business owner thinks about exiting. Um, but eventually it starts to creep into mind. How, how did y’all know it was time to sell the business? Yeah, so our business, we founded it. Well, to give you guys a little bit of lay of the land, so I started, I was one of the co-founders of a company called Lending Science dm.

Um, we’re a database marketing and analytics agency in the financial services space. We help fintechs and InsureTechs acquire customers. Basically, we do very advanced level. Marketing. We interrogate huge databases with billions of records, um, [00:07:00] and identify ideal audiences. And then we kind of wrap marketing around that and deliver customers essentially to fintechs and InsureTechs.

Um, so founded the company in 2006, the agent that was an analytical consulting company. Uh, in 2012, we launched the agency side of the business, which was kind of the, that was the market. You can hear me? I need to speak up. Okay, cool. The agency, uh, side of the business was what we built the business on.

That really is kind of our. Our modern business model. Um, so you know, our business, like any business, you know, you look at a look at any stock ticker, it was kind of like this. But we hovered in a certain area of revenue and I don’t wanna get into specifics ’cause I have some non-disclosures and other things that I have to abide by.

But we hovered in a certain area of revenue that we kinda plateaued at for a little. 2019, we launched a, uh, new division. It was our InsureTech side of the business. And, uh, it took off really faster than we ever could have expected. Um, in 2020, our revenue doubled In 2021, we grew by another 50%. [00:08:00] Um, and then it just kept going.

It kept going and going and going. Uh, and really, I mean. The first time we went to market, the reason we decided to sell was because, holy crap, this thing’s worth a lot of money. And it’s time to, it’s time to really cash out and take advantage of some of that. You know, I know all of you are probably heavily vested in your business in there, right?

I know what that’s like. And then there’s a, there’s a lot of weight that comes along with that. So, um, uh, yeah. First time we, uh, it was because the money, the second. And third time, which I’ll explain, we kind of real ran two parallel paths. Um, uh, it was really about more of, it’s kind of interesting. I was asking, uh, a, a kind of a, a, a business buddy of mine, uh, who’s he’s been through.

I asked him how many transactions he’s been through, 60 transactions. In his life. The guy’s, the guy’s done really, really well. And, uh, but he was asked like, when, when do you know it’s time to sell a business? And it was interesting, his answer because I was like, bingo, I’m never asked that question. That’s what I’m gonna say.

He said, because I wasn’t having fun [00:09:00] anymore. Right? Like, I mean, every day’s an adventure, right? You’re, you’re out there, you’re in the trenches, you know, you’re taking, you’re taking shrapnel, you know, you’re dodging boulders, et cetera. And for me it was just kind of that time where I was tired, you know, especially after our first process, which we’ll get into.

Um, you know, the other thing too is, and this is for me personally, I can’t speak for everybody. Um, I also knew I was a bit because of that, I was a bit in the way, you know, we talked about like passion and drive and all these things that we have to have as an entrepreneur is to, to really excel and do what we have to do.

’cause it is a job that demands kind of all of you, if you really wanna do it. You know, you, you have to really put at least a lot of yourself into it. And if you’re not willing to do that, at least for me, I felt like I’m in the way. I need to get somebody who is willing to do that now, you know? And I was burned down on it.

So, um, another thing too is you and I have talked about this with, for me, I feel like the skill set to get a business to where we got it from. You know, the next tranche up for that [00:10:00] might be 250 million in revenue, might be a goal or 200, you know, that that’s a even a hundred million in revenue. That’s a different skillset to get it from a hundred to two 50 than it was to get it from, you know, zero to, you know, where we ended up getting it to.

And, uh, so yeah, that was a, I also am aware of that. You know, I’m the guy, you, you put me in a startup environment. I thrive in those environments, right? I can get it scaled, I can build it and get it, get it to a reasonable amount. But you, you know, you start getting me into a, you know, a Fortune 500 enterprise and I’m, you know, that’s not my jam, you know, so.

Um, it became less fun, way less, way less fun. Um, I took some of those phone calls. Um, so as you came to the conclusion, you hit the revenue target, right? As you talked about? Yeah. Um, in, in that late 2020, early 2021 timeframe. What was the process like of going to market for y’all? [00:11:00] Right? So, um, you’re hiring an m and a firm.

Yep. You go out, like what was that process like for y’all? Yeah, so we, because I think y’all, I mean, y’all did it very strategically and I think it’d be helpful for everybody to. Hear how systematically y’all fall through those things. Yeah. We, we built to sell, so from the beginning we structured the company.

I was very fortunate too, my business partner, you know, it’s really rare to find such a, like a, it might sound weird, but. A perfect relationship. His blind spots were, my, my strengths, his, my blind spots were his strengths. And I was fortunate too. He had already had a prior exit. And so when we went into this, we kind of structured it.

I had, he had that knowledge at the time. I didn’t, you know, but we, uh, we built it to sell. And so, um, and we structured it that way. So when we went out, you know, we were already relatively, we had a clean. Clean business. We had good books, we had, you know, good financials. Uh, we made sure we kept those up to date.

Um, didn’t get into QE at that point yet, but we did do, when we started to [00:12:00] come up with an idea, okay, we need to sell this thing, or anytime we would do, um, transactions, like we might do promissory units, some. Ways or something to have them buy in. Uh, we would do valuations of the business and we kept those up so we knew what we were working with.

Right. And we had a five year, if I remember correctly, it might have been a two year plan or a three year plan. I don’t remember. ’cause this was in 20 19, 20 20. But we needed to hit a certain number and uh, not only did we hit that, we beat it by a considerable amount in that timeframe. We really, the company, it was exponential, you know.

And so we surpassed that. So when we hit that number, we’re like, okay, it’s time to sell. So we went and we started investigating m and a firms and um, there’s a lot of ’em out there. Do your due diligence there. Take time. Find the right ones. I don’t know how many we talk to. It was a bunch of groups and you’re immediately gonna be able to, they all talk a good game.

They really do. These guys are impressive. Their, their accounting chops are unreal. Their ability to analyze p and l and that kind of stuff, it’s, it really is next [00:13:00] level. However, a lot of ’em are full of it. And so like, investigate ’em, find out what kind of transactions they did find out. Um. Uh, have they sold businesses like yours?

Have they sold businesses with similar value to yours? Do they understand the dynamics of your business? Do they understand the valuation aspects of your business? Like, what are things worth out there in the market? What other transactions have been happening like yours? You know, if they’re selling liquor stores, they got no business selling a tech company or something else.

You know, they might not have any business doing that, or retail chains or whatever it happens to be. Uh, so we like in our space. Uh, Ft. Partners is a popular one. We talked to them. Uh, we also, we ended up going with Crofton Bender in, uh, Atlanta, Georgia for our first, first swing at bat. Um, we, I mean, I don’t remember how many talked to, it was a lot, but it was, it’s, I can’t stress having dealt.

Multiple ones and talk to a, a bunch of them and seen some things work, seeing some things not work. Get a good firm, start identifying ’em now, [00:14:00] even if your plan is selling in five years, start making those relationships and hey, what do we need to do to start like preparing the company for that so you can get the maximum yield out of whatever, whatever it is you wanna do.

You know? Yeah. So, um, you go through the process, you start to identify m and a firms. Yep. You interview Sid m and a firms, you make a decision, you go to market in spring summer 2021, right? Is that right? Or was it earlier? Spring was early spring maybe. Um, what was the go-to-market pro process like for, right.

Yeah, it was complicated. Obviously they had to do a bunch of cleanup on the books. Um, well, I should say a bunch of. If they had to understand what stuff was, they recategorized some things accordingly, you know, some things that they saw that, you know, I guess we were doing it correctly. Um, that we also had to do like things like quality of earnings reports and all that.

We didn’t, we weren’t spending the money on that until we decided to sell. Once we started that process, we kept those up annually. Uh, did [00:15:00] valuations. Bunch of different ways to figure out what the company’s worth, transaction analysis, all that kind of thing. Uh, we created, we took our time and created really good, uh, what’s called a sim or a confidential information, meran memorandum.

You guys will do it if you’re ever gonna sell. Uh, it’s, you know, it’s the teaser basically. Uh, package that you’re gonna be sending out. Uh, we identified strategic buyers and private equity firms that would be good, what we thought would be good fits. Um, we had 383 companies that we marketed to and that we contacted.

I took some notes here. 166 buyers out of those 383 signed NDAs and took Asim to, to review us. I couldn’t find the number on iis. I’m taking a guess at. Iis an indication of interest, like, Hey, we’re interested. This is loose. It’s kinda like a soft LOI. This is loosely what we pay for it. I think we had 63, but I’m guessing.

Yeah, it was a tremendous interest. And you guys can imagine as a business owner, you have, you have 63 iis. How many, [00:16:00] how many of you think you got the business sold at that point? Like, or you’re gonna sell the business? Am I the only one right. Um, we ended up with seven, I think Lois at that letters of intent.

Um, and they were good. They were good. So, um, we narrowed, we went through, we interviewed all of ’em. Went through, like, looked at their books. Um, as far, when I say books, I’m talking portfolios. If they were a PE firm, if they were strategic, who are they? Why? Why do we think they would want us? Why would they want us?

You know, what other companies. Like I said, they bought and integrated into their, into their fold, and we ended up going, uh, we narrowed it down to three buyers. There was one strategic and then two PEs. But the PEs that we selected, what we would consider strategic PEs, you know, the typical PE firm wants to come in, buy you.

You know, whatever, they’re gonna heavily, heavily leverage you and, you know, expect you to grow and all that. To if they, if they weren’t in our space or they haven’t bought companies similar to us and they, they didn’t have a strategic reason to buy us, we weren’t [00:17:00] really interested. So we narrowed it down to two strategic PS, and I’m sorry.

One strategic buyer and two strategic fees. Okay. Um, we, sorry, private equity firm. Yep. And we ended up going down the path, uh, out, do you have another question? No, no. What? I can’t, I, I don’t know if I’m allowed to share that or not. Uh, again, what? PP. Things. Yeah. Private equity. Private equity firms. Yeah. So, um, we ended up going down the path with a strategic, um, big public company that wanted to buy us several meetings, negotiated the price.

Literally like this is a done deal, you know, all the higher up. So the, in the, uh, in the US corporation, um, everybody was super excited and it fell apart in the 11th hour apparent. I don’t exactly know how the structure works. Public company, they had an Indian parent. Um, and the, uh, [00:18:00] entity in India went a different direction.

And so the whole, the US entity wanted us and it fell apart. So after, who knows how much work that, you know, we invested into this money, et cetera. And, you know, you can imagine how that felt. So, because that takes time a lot, it takes a lot. So that whole LOI process, remember they started in 2021. Who remembers what happened at the end of 21, beginning of 2022, federal Reserve starts raising interest rates.

Everybody gets scared, money runs in hides. Um, so you’re sitting here, you had, uh, three firms that you’re going through the process with. You went down with one, um, and then you rushed back out to the other two, and they both said yes. Nope. They both said we had, well, we would’ve loved to, but we already went in a different direction with this and we went a different direction with that.

So there we were. I remember I, the last call that I had with one of those firms, I turned my phone off and I screamed out loud after. I mean, like when you guys go through the m and a [00:19:00] process, it’s a second full-time job. I don’t mean that figuratively. It’s a second full-time job. And you may put more hours into it than you do your actual job.

And so we went through basically a year of, of that and, uh, yeah. So no sale, no deal. It’s a happy ending of the year. The story is happily right. Um, but so, um, I mean obviously nothing really went wrong with that process, but through the process, I mean, obviously you’re bat a square one, right? Like you’ve gotta grow the business.

2022 is a mess. Um, so you’re back and growing the business. What, um, what did you learn about the business? What did you learn that you then took to apply to get ready for the next next transaction? Right. Yeah, so, you know, we, I, we needed a break from that. We had to focus on the business temporarily. Like, you know, we needed to be able to stop.

Okay. What, like, you know, if you haven’t been through that. Process. It’s very fast paced and there’s a lot going on. You’re running a gun and you’re trying to maintain [00:20:00] revenue, trying to make sure you maximizing all your numbers and everything else, you know, and, and holding onto every little thing you can.

But we needed to stop, assess, okay, damage control. What’s going on in the business right now? What do we need to do to, to fix any, you know, plug any holes that may be in the business. And then let’s analyze what, what happened in that. Process. And what can we do to, to either fix problems, right, that we had or, um, you know, what tweaks can we make to get more EBITDA multiple, or whatever it may be.

And so, uh, our biggest challenge that we had, and we you still, it’s a common problem in our space, is we get customer concentration. You might see that in software too, or tech right? Is probably see a lot of that. Um, so 40% of our revenue at the time came from a division of a Fortune 500. Um, you know, as a.

As an entrepreneur, if a company wants to give you millions and millions and millions of dollars, you know, you’re not gonna say, I’m not gonna do that because it’s gonna throw my customer concentration above 9% or something in a given category. You know, you’re gonna take money, right? And so we did, and we really expanded that relationship and it was a really strong.[00:21:00] 

Relationship, um, and maintained its strength for a long time. But, um, we needed, we know we needed to work on customer concentration. And, uh, so our business, we uh, we operate kind of in four, we do two things, which is marketing and risk management, but we operate in three industries, and that’s traditional personal loans and that’s all kinds of shapes and sizes and colors and shades of personal loans.

And then we work in debt consolidation loans. And then we also work, well, we work in mortgage too, but then we also work in insurance. And so when we went to market, our spread was probably like, and, and these numbers may be slightly off, but you know, somewhere around probably 50%. Um, in personal loans, 10% in debt consolidation loans in.

40% InsureTech. When we went back into market, which is coming up, we were basically 33, 33, 33, so we worked on that. And then our revenue and insurance, probably nothing made up more than 20% or [00:22:00] so of the total, total revenue in that, which really helped. From a customer concentration standpoint, uh, and it help from a valuation standpoint.

’cause, you know, if you have issues with customer concentration, customer, your potential suitors are gonna be looking at that. And that’s a risk to them, right? What happens if this customer goes away? And so, uh, we, you know, we are aware of it and, uh, we address it, um, to the best of our ability. It’s not as perfect.

It wasn’t, nothing’s ever perfect. So we were talking about it earlier. Um, one of the other things y’all figured out in that process was different lines of your business got, um, had different multiples applied off of it. So, um, the InsureTech business, was it, I mean, I don’t know, theoretically InsureTech is better than personal loans or whatever, right?

No, it’s, it’s more of the services offered in those, like in our business when we’re doing database marketing, like you have service, you might have a four to six x multiple on ebitda. Um, but for certain things like ip, you know, custom [00:23:00] scores, databases, things you own, things that aren’t necessarily service delivery based, those can have massive, you know, adjustments or you can have a massive multiple on even, you know, I’ve seen data companies in our space sell.

You know, 1620 x of ebitda, which is significant. I’ve seen himself more than that, you know, and so, uh, in our categories, we like risk models and some of our models, they’ll be evaluated a little bit differently and data will be valued a little bit differently in service type objectives, like marketing services and that kind of thing.

So we, we work, we’re working hard and we still are working hard, even post-transaction to always be maximized, like trying to figure out, okay, we can grow by revenue. Can grow by multiple. And so how can we focus on each sector of the business to maximize its value? Where like until then we’re kinda always focused on revenue, you know?

And so it’s kind of a different mindset and we’re, we’re still very doubted with that, even post transaction. So it was just, um, obviously, I mean, again, I talked to John a number of times. And, [00:24:00] um, throughout the process. But in talking and getting ready for this, the, uh, like the research that they did on the m and a firms, um, and they identified like in advance, like these, these are the top m and a firms in our space.

Like these are the ones that we want to be hungry for us. Um, and then also like the multiple aspect, like, um, the understanding of the, of the work that y’all did to prep it to get ready for sale was very impressive. Yeah, it’s a lot of work. Yeah, it’s a lot of work. So, um, yeah, it’s work worth doing. If you’re gonna sell, it costs a lot to sell a company.

Go ahead and do your valuations. Make sure you know what you got coming into. Um, reputable firms are, they’re, they’re motivated, like you are. If you have an m and a firm, they wanna get the maximum valuation too, you know, but like we, after that, uh, somehow I was talking to William last night, after that transaction fell apart, we maintained our Q of E, we maintained our valuations every year.

We were doing the, you know, so we knew what we were working with going into it. We knew like [00:25:00] when somebody, we were able to speed up transactions if, uh, you know, if, if a suitor came along, yep, here’s a valuation. Here’s our books, here’s our Q of e, everything. Like take a look, let us know if you wanna give us an LOI, you know, I had a question because you had said that when you were working with the m and a firm, they, um, they looked at valuations in different ways, and I thought that was fascinating because, you know, so can you share a little bit more about the different ways they, um, looked at the valuation process to get, get to the final number?

Yeah. Well, there’s there, um, you’ll probably, I don’t remember all of ’em. There’s discounted cash flows. One of them. Um, there, there’s all kinds of ways they did it. Yeah. Uh, so there were three different ways they were measuring things, but then when you go and actually do the valuation, you, you’ll meet with the valuation firm and they’re gonna ask you all kinds of questions based on all sorts of stuff like this, revenue, what is it, where it come from, what is it?

How do you develop it? Um, is it something you own versus like, you know, is it something that you’re just doing? And they’ll value. The, [00:26:00] like each revenue TROs, if you will, or each category may have a different value associated with it. Then there’s three different ways, and I don’t remember what they all are, um, that they would kind of analyze and blend together to come up with a, with a fair market value of what the organization is worth.

Did that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That was super important. It really is. ’cause there’s simple little tweaks I’ve seen, like in our business, there was a big one that I, I can’t. Can’t talk about it. Uh, ’cause, um, NDAs, I’m still there and all that, but like, there’s a, a really easy tweak we could have made to the business.

I don’t know what its overall impact would be, but it, you know, it would’ve had a significant difference in multiple if we would’ve started, it would’ve been easy to implement. It would’ve taken about two years. And I’m like, oh. Big difference. So, Eric, did you have a question? Yeah, curious. When you were looking at the m and a firms, how much you valued or weighted the pricing of the deal structure with those MA firms versus the value believe they would deliver [00:27:00] came down to common options?

Um, that’s a great question. They all kind of came in around the same Yeah. Loosely, you know, like there were, there were discrepancies and that kind of thing. Um, we wanted the right people. Yeah. We wanted the right people. You know, like in a, a large transaction, if you pay somebody X versus y, if they’re 10% off, who cares?

Yeah. You know, I shouldn’t say 10%. They’re, they’re 10% off on their fees, not 10% of the total transaction volume, but it’s like. It doesn’t matter. But they all structured their proposals pretty similarly. Very similar. Yeah. They, they weren’t all the same, but they were, they were similar. Yeah. So we you get what you paid for, man.

Yeah. You know what I mean? It’s like, it’s kind of, I want, you know, if I’m going into, that was a huge decision for us. So like, if I’m going in, you know, if I’m going into. A medical situation, like a health problem. I want the best surgeon, you know what I mean? I don’t care if he costs more money, as long as, you know, again, they, none of ’em were like [00:28:00] radically different.

Right. You know? So, so the, sorry, so the decision to sell the company in X person was, you know, based on money or was based in the right place? Oh, no, I mean, it’s based on money. Like, like no matter what. Um, and we’ll, we’ll get into like, you know, why the ESOP versus the others, but you know, the, uh, yeah, no, I mean, without question, like we, you know, we built it to sell.

We weren’t going to, we weren’t gonna compromise in any area, is really what it came down to. So we held a line hard with every potential buyer, with, with everything. But we weren’t gonna, the, the reason that deal fell apart. Um, with, uh, the public company, it wasn’t ’cause of money. I mean, I guess it was in the grand scheme of things, but they, they, they had gone in a different direction strategically.

So, so 2021 falls apart. Um, we can’t sell a business in 2022 because, well, we just couldn’t sell a [00:29:00] business in 2022. Um, you go back out to market. Yep. Um, and ultimately that market going back out to market leads you down to kind of parallel tracks, right? Yep. You’ve got an ESOP track, um, and then you’ve got, you’re going back out to strategics or to private equity again.

Yep. Just talk a little bit about. How that came through. Yeah, so we went through a second process, a guy on our board, um, we talked to Croft and Bender again, great firm. Can’t recommend ’em enough. They’re awesome. Um, really know their stuff. Um, but, you know, some of the challenges we had is there’s sunset clauses, there’s all sorts of conditions and that we had with agreements with, uh, them and others.

And so, uh, we went, we decided, you know what? Let’s, we have so many connections in the strategic space. Maybe, you know, there was always the opportunity, like maybe we could kind of sell it on our own or like, at least identify the prospects and then get somebody to represent us on their own. There was a little bit of that in the back of our [00:30:00] minds.

Um, but then, uh, we ended up going with an organization that was referred to us from somebody on our board. It was a company called KCA Capital, uh, and they’re an m and a firm, but they, uh, they went out and we kind of went down the path of like, you know, if you, if you can sell it. We will pay you. And we had some exclusivity arrangements, but it was sort of non, we didn’t guarantee, you know, that we’re gonna stay in that process for a given period of time and lock all these things up for a given period of time.

Um, again, we would, you know, we up, we constantly kept our valuations updated. We kept our quality of earnings reports updated. Um, and we had, we, it was kind of interesting, we had some, some challenges in our second go around with revenue. We had a big revenue dip that happened from a Medicare. Um, regulation change, which that was like, perfect Timing is perfect timing, right?

As we go to market, there’s this, like, we have a big Q4 because in Medicare there’s certain selling seasons. They have the annual election period, which is, uh, [00:31:00] basically October through December, and then they have another, uh, open enrollment period from January through March. And there was this big regulation, uh, change that like stopped that industry.

So it was like, ugh, couldn’t, couldn’t have been a worse time, you know? But, uh, luckily, you know, in our books, we were able to describe that to people, uh, that knew kind of what we were going through. And it surprisingly, just as a encouragement to you guys, have you ever run into something like that? It wasn’t that big of a hurdle, I thought it really would be.

I thought it was gonna really impact us, but because it impacted everybody nationally, but were able to kind of work through it, you know, um, and all the potential suitors kind of, uh, kind of knew so. So you kinda, uh, we’ve talked, talked about it this morning. It’s almost like, um, open sourced m and a structure that y’all went through.

Sort of, sort of. Um, and then, but yeah, but I don’t remember the stipulations we had with KCA, they, anyway, they were awesome too. They were great to work with and, and, uh, very easy and appeasing, if you will. But at some point, and it goes [00:32:00] back prior to, right? So at some point the idea of, hey, we can sell to employees.

Comes to the table. Yep. Rather talk about, ’cause that goes all the way back to 2020, right? 2019. 2020. Possibly before that, I remember somebody told me like, Hey, have you ever thought about selling an esop? And I was like, what? I was like, what’s an esop? An E, what? And uh, it kind of, you know, it kind of blew over my head.

I didn’t really understand what it was. And, uh, so when we, when we started really investigating, you know, our options and weighing different things that were out there, things we could. You know, either, you know, selling to an m and a firm, or I’m sorry, selling to a PE firm or a strategic ESOP kept coming up.

So we did talk to a bunch of really reputable firms about them, and they explained like tax advantages of ’em. They explained something called a 10 42 exchange, which I’ll get into later. Um. And there, there were some really appealing things about it. I, I have to admit, when I kind of dove into it, I, I really didn’t fully understand it.

And so I was making, I was, I was making a bad decision because I was using, I had incomplete information. [00:33:00] And ideally, what I think all of us want is, you know, you sell to a strategic, you get paid all cash a hundred percent up front, and you’re cut the day you, the day you sign the document, right? That’s kind of what most of us dream about.

Um, even though I don’t think in the long run, that’s actually what most of us want, but that’s a whole other subject. Um, but, uh, yeah, we, we had multiple firms that we had talked to already during the second process. You know, we’d been out there and our, our sim was going around from that first process and the, you know, in places that, uh, that, you know, that sim needed to be floating around in.

And we were, we were fortunate because, um, our transactional value was enough to get the, get on the radar of some of the m and a firms, you know, out there that really wanted to go after kind of the mid-size market cap companies. And, um, so long story short, lazier capital had reached out to us. I don’t remember if they, uh, they had, they had been kind of courting us.

Uh, and for those who don’t know, lazier is like the ESOP group. Like they are the ESOP m and [00:34:00] a firm out there. Um, and they’re awesome. They’re really good. But they kept, they, uh, had kind of courted courted us and, hey, you know, we know who you guys are, we know what you’re doing. Um, we think we can get you what you’re looking for from a private equity firm.

Or from a strategic, you know, or at least similar structure. And we think there’ll be some other advantages to it. And so we, we kind of went down that path a little bit with them, but we weren’t willing to fully commit to it. ’cause we had already gone down this path and we had a bunch of interests from some strategics and a lot of private equity firms.

And, um, so a common problem in the ESOP space is you’ll have a lot of companies, um, that really didn’t, they’re not built to sell like their. You know, whatever service based companies of any type that are really good at what they do. But you know that when they’re, as far as like how they create or how they built their business, they didn’t have all the right infrastructure in place.

It was a little sloppy. So they tend to get lower valuations. They didn’t, they always focused on revenue, not margin, which is fine. You know, I’m not knocking any of that. [00:35:00] Um, we didn’t do that. So we made sure we held lines and all these kind of various, you know, KPIs in our business. And so, um, you know, we had ended up.

Getting to a certain point, I’ll call it 30 per 20% down through the process, 25% done with that ESOP process to really get an understanding of what it is. And so it was kind of sitting in the background like, man, that’s, that’s really good. I see a lot of advantages to this over selling to a private equity firm and including value.

Including value. Yeah. So, um, while we were going through that second process. Lazier conducted something called a feasibility analysis on us. And they looked at, um, they looked at all our books, they looked at our financials, we went through, um, you know, I’ll call it like LOI light type stuff, you know, where they’re really dialing into the business and figuring out who you are, what you do and, and, uh, what you’re really made of.

And when they came, the feasibility analysis basically says. This is what we think we can [00:36:00] get you in valuation. And I don’t remember what the confidence interval was. It was something like 90% confidence interval kind of thing. This is, um, this is how much we think we can get a bank to fund. This is what these structures, payment structures to you would look like over the life of the, over the life of the ESOP or the life of the, you know, here’s five, one year, three year, five year kind of thing and ongoing.

And, uh, you know, we’re very confident we can, we can get that. And we’re like, man, that’s. That’s pretty compelling. We can do all that and maintain our culture. You know, we’re not gonna have this pe overlord looking down on us, or we’re not, we don’t have to worry about 30 or 40% of our staff getting cut by some strategic or some private equity firm that wants to come in and consolidate things and roll us in and, you know, gain efficiencies that way.

So, still didn’t do it yet, but, um, yeah, but that’s kind of. That, that, that analysis really proved a lot of things out and answered a lot of questions for us. And I, we were surprised by it. So you understand the ESOP now, [00:37:00] um, and a third of the way down the road with the esop, but you’re still, there’s the, there’s the private equity money that Yeah.

Continues to get dangled in front of you. If that’s gonna win, that’s gonna win. Maybe it won’t, maybe it will. So you keep going down that road, um, just like you did previously. You had a buyer. We did. Um, and what happened? So went down path. We had three P firm, we had a bunch of p firms interested in us and you know, but we ended up going down the path.

There were three that were like legit interested, Hey, we wanna buy you. And uh, we ended up going down the path with one in Little Rock, Arkansas. Again, I’m not gonna mention their name ’cause I don’t know if I can, they were great guys, really well put together. Not your typical PE firm that, um, and I have nothing against PE.

But they were cut above the rest. Like these guys have been involved in some serious transactions, um, in their, uh, career. And, um, anyway, knew a lot of people in our space. They had a lot of people in [00:38:00] our space that actually were on the board of the PE firm. Uh, we negotiated, uh, a, a price, right, a fair selling price.

The structure wasn’t quite what we. Um, thought it would be, it wasn’t bad in any way, shape or form. These things come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Um, but, uh, yeah, so we, we came to an agreement on structure. So structure being cash upfront. Payout. Cash upfront. Yeah, payout. Um, versus, you know, rollover equity.

Any private equity firm is gonna come in. They’re gonna wanna buy a portion of the company, a majority of the company. And leave you with rollover stock. And then their goal is to help you grow that company into something much bigger. Bolton, sell it and then you’re out, you know, and everybody makes money together.

Um, and again, I absolutely believe they could have done what they said they were gonna do. Like they’re, these guys are rock solid, really smart guys. Uh, and good guys, like they’ve done it before. They have a very consistent track record. Um, but I knew no matter what, man, this is [00:39:00] gonna change the culture of lending science and our culture is what got us here.

I, I can’t, I cannot say like, you know, I got us here, me and Tim, our leadership skills. You know, I suck as a manager, you know, I’m really good at certain things. I’m really good at delivering. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, but I’m really good at delivering certain things in our business. You know, I have a sixth sense for certain types of things that are, you know, natural talent can’t be denied, but like, it’s not, I’m not, you know, Steve Jobs or some innovative business thinker or business mind.

You know, our team did it. And so, um, yeah. And that, and that 11th hour we, I’ll call it the 10 30 hour, you know, we, uh, we walked away from the private equity deal and told ’em, no deal. We’re gonna, we’re gonna go with esop. And so, so easy to walk away. You got, I mean, big, big pile of money. Yeah. But, um, yeah, no, not, not easy to walk away at all.

But, uh. [00:40:00] Something I learned in this, uh, William and I were talking about this earlier, is, um, you know, when you’re presented with all these options that you can’t really lose and, um, I guess you can lose in some of ’em, you gotta be wise in your decisions. But you know, when you’re presented with big options like that, make a decision and go with it.

Like, take the information that you have and make the best decision you can and then roll with it and just. Stick to it, you know, and see it through a lot. ’cause I will tell you this, you know, it probably killed that first deal more than anything. Time, time, time kills all deals. It really does. So like there, there just comes a time where you have to be decisive no matter what.

There’s always, the grass is always greener. There’s always somebody who’ll pay more. There’s always somebody, you know, whatever, who’ll be a better fit man. Just, just make a decision. It’s like you have an opportunity here to set yourself up, to set other people up, do it. Take it. You know, you’re only gonna have so many of those in your life, you know?

So I have [00:41:00] two more questions. Yep. You know what I’m gonna end on. Okay. Um, but before we go to that, um, we talked about this over lunch. Um, in hindsight, what do you wish you would’ve known in 2019? That you learned from 2020 to 2024 first, obviously you just said that time kills all deals, right? Yeah. Um, certainly an important component.

Um, anything else that you learned through the process that, I mean, obviously you wanna share? Um. I knew customer concentration, I wouldn’t say I learned it. It was a problem we had, but it’s like, I’m not gonna turn the customer down. I wanted those most dollars. It’s like huge amount of money. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna say, no, don’t pay us.

We can’t do that. It’ll screw the balance up of our, you know, of our EBITDA mix for an m and a firm or for a potential private equity dealer or whatever. Um, but so I didn’t really learn that. I knew it, but I really do wish we, uh, so two things. One is, uh, value maximization of our ebitda. And like small tweaks that [00:42:00] we can make in our business that I can’t stress that enough.

Guys having gone through it, um, analyze your business, pay to have valuations done, or understand at least like where your revenue’s coming from. What’s it worth, where it’s at, and how do I get it? So like I can make simple tweaks to, to bump that multiple up. It make, it can make a huge difference, like massive, massive difference in some of the things, like even some of the things now, and I can’t talk about the specifics of it.

That we wanna do in our business. I mean, you know, some of them won’t really cost anything. It’s just changing the way you do things and maybe making some subtle adjustments and there’ll be some cash flow issues with the model changes and other things. But, um, subtle adjustments that we can make in, or that we did make in some ways, but could have made presale, would’ve made a massive difference.

And I don’t regret anything like that we did, but the, like, I would focus on that. And, and stay focused on that as you’re growing your [00:43:00] business. Um, the other thing too, with an esop, there’s something called a 10 42 exchange that they’re gonna use. If you talk to somebody about an esop, they’re gonna talk to you about how you can do a like kind exchange like in real estate, where you take whatever you know, x, y, Z in value and you can then transfer that value into a stock portfolio and you won’t pay taxes on the sale.

That’s a lot of money that you’re gonna save, right? Here’s the problem is. Let’s say you get in your first, at the day of transaction, you sell a hundred percent of your stock, right? You may only get 30, 40% of the total value if that, of, of the cash up front on that first day, right? That means you have 70% that you have to come forward with cash to buy stock and loan yourself in exchange for the stock that you just exchanged.

Does that make sense? I didn’t have that kind of money sitting around. You know what I mean? And so, um, I opted not to do it anyway because it got really complex and I’m like, man, my life is so complex. I’m sure everybody else [00:44:00] as a business owner is already there. I’m like, you know, why do I need a lawyer and accountants and all these other people to like just review my taxes?

You know? I want to be able to like go to h and r Block eventually and just do it. Have William do it on TurboTax. Yeah. Ruined that a long time ago, John. Yeah. But um, so I wanted to keep it, I wanted to keep it simple and opted out, but that was. That was, I don’t wanna say it was misconstrued to me, it wasn’t probably either explained as well as it could be or I, I’m, you know, I’m a cranson construction paper kind of guy, you know, maybe I didn’t understand it, you know, as well as I should have, or maybe I shouldn’t have been multitasking while it was being explained to me or whatever, you know.

But, um, I didn’t fully understand that, so I thought there would be some tax advantages, uh, that I wasn’t able to participate in, you know? But that’s okay. I don’t regret it. So the lesson I learned from that when you were talking about it earlier was, um, become an expert in everything that somebody says.

Um, ’cause you hear a thousand different things from NM m and A people and everybody else through the process. Yeah. Um, and you’ve gotta understand what they’re saying or else you’re gonna miss what [00:45:00] they’re actually saying. Um, which makes it difficult ’cause you’re being asked to be an expert in a billion different things in the process of going through it.

Um, so we’ll finish with the, um, we’ll finish with passion. Um, so we oftentimes hear right as business owners go to sell their business, um, oftentimes business owners have spent their entire lives. Building their business. And most of the times, um, I think the statistics are 74 to 77% of the time a business owner sells their business.

They regret it within a year. Um, and it’s because that’s kind of, sort of become who they are. Um, and you found. A way to get past that. Um, and so John founded a nonprofit. Um, so you wanna walk us through, uh, you struggled as well, right? Like you sold the business and I mean, I remember taking multiple phone calls from John.

I, I’m depressed. I don’t know what to do. It’s not the same [00:46:00] business. It’s not Right. Like, I mean, I remember those conversations and you went through that period for two to three months. Yeah, so I, I had a bunch of mentors. You know, and, and, uh, help me get where we did. And I, I would always ask him like, Hey man, what am I gonna experience when I sell this thing?

You know? And I thought I was gonna experience financial security. I thought I was gonna experience the monkey getting off my back. The weight of leadership. Hey, here, here’s the baton. Go run with it, boys. Good luck. You know? And, uh, I didn’t experience any of that. In fact, it was kind of interesting. Um, we closed.

And, you know, the check’s clear, you know, wire transfer’s clear and everything. And, um, you know, I, I thought, I thought I would, I, for a day, I felt, you know, remember you guys remember what it was like when you graduated high school? You kind of had like, I just did that and all the weight of like, you had like all the promise of the future, right?

I, I felt like that for a day. One day. It was the day we sold, [00:47:00] which was weird ’cause the clo at the closing table. I told them about this earlier. I thought it was gonna be like this elaborate process. We all hop on the Zoom call and they’re like, all right, we’re done. And I was like, wait, what? What do you mean?

They’re like, yep, all good. Congratulations. Good job. All right, see you. And it was like, literally was like, that call was maybe five minutes long at the most. Um, but uh, so anyway, I, uh, I got through that and um, I’m either happy or I’m frustrated. Those are my two personalities. And, uh, I’d spent, and I’m a big gold chaser.

Like that is who, that is a big part of me. That’s why I love the startup thing. And, um, I found myself depressed and it wouldn’t go away, and it wouldn’t go away. So, a little bit about my personal life. I’m a Christian, I’m a husband, I’m a father. Um, and, you know, I always kind of ranked like my purpose and my identity with like, lending science or you know, all that, you know, the business side of me down [00:48:00] here.

But I was surprised at how much that impacted purpose in my life. And so I, uh, I got depressed. It wouldn’t go away. Took some time off business partner’s like, man, we’ve been burning the candle at both ends for a long time. Go take some time off. I did. I’m an avid fisherman for those who don’t know, um, have a commercial captain’s license.

The, the whole thing, you know. And, uh, anyway, I, um, I went to the Keys. I came back from there. I went to The Bahamas. It’s not that far from where I live. We run over via boat all the time. And, uh, wouldn’t go away. And I, uh, I’m driving down US one in Sebastian, Florida, near where I live, and I had it, I have it out with God.

I’m like, what is going on? Just praying. And I, I’m telling you, I heard it. He, he put it in my heart. He said, uh, your healing will come in the healing of others. And I knew what he meant in that. So I’m, I’m also a cancer survivor. I didn’t talk about that at all. And so I know how important hope is when you’re dealing with debilitating circumstances when you’re sitting in a room with people who are going through.

You know, life threatening [00:49:00] illnesses and you’re seeing some of ’em win, some of ’em lose, you know, you’re seeing, you’re seeing the impact that faith and hope can have on people in those scenarios and then in those situations. And so I knew what he was telling me to do. So, um, that night I went home and I started an organization called Hooks of Hope and um, and it’s really just taken off.

So a good friend of mine, Fred Galvin. Uh, I don’t know how much you guys know about the special operations community in the military, but he was, uh, he stood up MARSOC for the US Marine Corps, which is their, uh, it’s the, the Marine Special Operations Command. It’s their JSOC unit or their, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s like a Navy SEAL equivalent, or, and I’m probably, they’re not gonna like me saying that.

Um, but just to explain it to non-military folk, it’s a JSOC unit special force. It’s an elite special forces unit. And, uh, amazingly, Fred never lost a guy in combat through all their combat, and that’s all they do. Yeah. But, uh, up to any company that he managed anybody on his teams that he managed, he never lost anyone.

But in a brief period of time, there was a, uh, there [00:50:00] were six Raider, Marine Raiders or Marsoc Raiders. There were six Raiders that committed suicide. And, uh, I told my buddy Brett about hooks and I, that’s, I started talking to Fred about hooks and I, when I started diving into the, there is a suicide pan, a veteran suicide pandemic in this country.

Yes. Where 22 of these guys are committing suicide every single day. 44, if you include drug overdoses and alcohol related deaths, right? There are two and a half times greater likelihood. Just being a veteran makes you two and a half times greater, have a two and a half times greater likelihood of committing suicide.

And a majority of these people who are committing suicide or war fighters. And so, um, you know, we, we formed hooks and we developed a. A process to help heal these guys. And it’s a lot. We, yes, we take them fishing, we build out these fishing retreats in South Florida where we rent out a resort. We fly operators in from all over the country who are struggling, and we bring in expert led educators on things like traumatic brain injuries on physiology, functional medicine, hormone dysregulation, which a [00:51:00] lot of these guys have.

Everything tends to get bucketed into PTSD in this space where a lot of ’em actually have physiological problems that are causing. The emotional issues that they’re having. We also bring in experts on post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m not dismissing that. We bring in psychologists and clinical counselors who specialize in this stuff.

We also bring a lot, uh, we bring in people to talk about biblical identity, spiritual identity, spiritual renewal. We bring in people to talk about relationships. A lot of these folks struggle. They have a lot of, there’s a lot of, a lot of collateral baggage that they bring in. Uh, to the military. A lot of ’em come from, you know, it’s very common to see broken homes or military homes where there’s performance based dynamics in their relationship.

When these guys latch into the military, that feeds that, right? The more you work, the more love you get. Uh, the challenge is when you get out, that doesn’t work in the, like, from a emotional dynamic that doesn’t work in the real world. Same thing. If you come from a broken home, you don’t have a lot of that agape love and grace.

Well, when you get in the military, it feeds that, right? All of a sudden you replace all [00:52:00] that agape love with, uh, brotherly love. And so you work hard and you, the more you work, the more you get. Well, when these guys get out, they’re all banged up, beat up. They have traumatic brain injuries, their testosterone has hit the floor.

You look at these folks and they’re like the epitome of physicality, you know, 6 2, 200 7% body fat, and they have testosterone like a 75-year-old male. You know, and it’s ’cause of all the, the combat and the stress and everything else they’ve been through, they get out and you know, the next thing you know, not only have they lost purpose, right, like I just talked about, right?

They’ve lost their family. Right. And the next thing you know, they’re going to the va, it takes them months to get treatment. They get the wrong treatment. And before, you know, they’re mixing, you know, mixing psychoactive agents with alcohol and other things, and then they commit suicide. You know, we actually had a participant call the VA who was suicidal.

He had this slack pulled out of a Glock 19 trigger in his mouth. That’s how [00:53:00] bad he was. And they told him it’d be two and a half months so they could get him out, you know? So, um, we’re committed to, uh, that’s the war we fight, you know, and it’s been tremendous. Uh, we’re, we’re partnered with Operation Barnabas, which is a much larger 5 0 1 in our space.

We’re part of their outdoor network. They have another organization called Spirit that does something very similar to what we do. And, um, US and Spirit together will run 316 guys through the program this year. So it’s been an amazing thing. We’ve interjected in a bunch of suicides, helped these guys get back on track.

Um, we’ve, we’ve, uh, had a bunch of guys give their lives to Christ at these events. Pretty amazing. Uh, we’ve baptized guys right there in the, in the Indian River Lagoon, you know, outside. It’s, it’s been an incredible experience and I’m, I’m diving into that, that is my, my passion. And it’s been, it’s been real.

I, I promise you though, like I didn’t think I had this association, like I’ve always believed financial security is a myth. It doesn’t matter how much money you [00:54:00] have, um, no matter what, in the end, it won’t fulfill you. I promise. I’ve, I’ve gone down that path. And I, I found at the end the, you know, the thing that fulfills you is, um, really it’s two things.

And I believe this. It’s loving God with all your heart might and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself, right? And how do you, and loving people our relationships that is lasting, that can have an impact, that can change the world, you know? And it also is gratifying, like money can make you happy.

And I’m not, I’m not saying money’s bad. I’m not saying any of this stuff is bad. I’m not saying gold change isn’t bad. It’s good. It’s good. For sure, but I didn’t realize I was kind of making that, I was putting too much priority on that in my life at the time. And because of it, when I, when all of a sudden that goal had been achieved, there was a deficit, there was a hole there that wasn’t filled with what it needed to be filled with.

And that really is loving people, you know? So I, I do encourage you, no matter what you do, man, chase your goals. Go after those things, climb those [00:55:00] mountains, reach all that ’cause it’s a good thing. But at the same time, don’t neglect. Your emotional health. Don’t neglect your spiritual health. Don’t trade it for relationships.

I know so many guys who are CEOs and they have tons of money and they’re on their fifth marriage and all these other things, their kids hate them. What for? Why would you sell your life? You know? And at the end, I got to the end of that finish line and it was kind of empty. So like, you know, just know that I’m not trying to distract or dissuade.

But don’t neglect those other things. ’cause I didn’t even realize I was, and I, if you would’ve asked me, you would’ve asked others. I know he’s not, he’s a good family man and all these things, but man, it really hit me. So, purpose, again, purpose. And it’s meaningful though, like most of us, we, we think we want happiness.

What we really want is contentment. Happiness is fleeting. It’s an emotion. Right. I go buy a Ferrari, rip down, you know, 85 and, you know, yeah, it is fun. [00:56:00] I’m happy, you know, like when I’m out there, you know, running on my boat offshore in The Bahamas, I’m ear to ear, you know, but it’s, it’s actually not satisfying.

As weird as it sounds, and like real satisfaction, it’s not gonna be in the sale of your business. It won’t. I wish it was, it’d be easier. I wish everybody, you know, could do that. ’cause it would be, it would, it would be an easy path to it. But the real, real contentment in life is gonna come in serving others, I think is what I found.

Yeah. So. Sorry, I’m, I’ll get off the pole. Put, you know, my soapbox here, but hey, obviously thanks to John. Um, so, um, I mean, learned a couple different things in the co Um, I mean, again, I’ve known John for six years. Um. I mean, the thing that continues to jump out at me is just in our conversation over the last couple months leading into this is how well prepared they were going into each step of selling the business.

And I mean, look, I mean, the crazy thing is, is as prepared as you were the first time it didn’t work right? Um, and so no fault of their own, so to speak, it just sometimes. You can be as [00:57:00] prepared as you’re gonna be and the, the, the chips still don’t fall the way you want ’em to. Um, but understanding, you know, the different, uh, revenue metrics that different services we’re creating.

Yeah. Understanding who you wanted to target from an m and a perspective, um, and how y’all tackle the sale. Just, I mean, you know, as we grow businesses, you, you oftentimes think about like, you know, what’s, what’s next? How do I do this? How to optimize, how to optimize, how do I make it better? Um, and when you go to sell the business, it’s, I mean, it’s quite apparent in talking to you, it’s the same thing, right?

Like, how do you optimize to sell the business? Yeah. Um, so certainly learn that. Um, learn that we need a microphone. Um, so, uh, we’re gonna work on that one. Um, so it’s written down on the bottom of my piece of paper here. So, uh, figure out the microphone. Um, stop thinking small is the other thing I wrote down, um, from the conversation.

Um, but anyways, again, we’ll stick around for a few minutes over here for q and a. Um, and then we’ll step next door for anybody that wants to join us at the picnic tables. [00:58:00] Um, and, um, and then John and I will take off to the airport around 6 15, 6 30. So, um, uh, and then thanks for the, uh, participants online YouTube that stuck around for us figuring out our, our microphone problem.

We at least figured out y’all’s microphone problem. Um, we’ll figure out the microphone problem for the in-person folks next time. So, um, next month, uh, we have m and a person come in and talk about, uh, the process. So it’s November 12th, is that right? Is that my Wednesday, November 12th? Um, JT Schroeder, uh, m and a shop out of, um, Atlanta.

Coming in to talk about what they look for, what the process is. Probably expand a little bit more on some of the things that you talked about. Yep. Um, in terms of being ready, um, hiring two to three years in advance, being part of the process, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so anyways, excited for that. And then we have another client.

Um, who sold his business a couple year, actually in February of 2020. He will be here in December that we’ll talk about what the process was like. He actually sold to a [00:59:00] strategic buyer, rolled equity in, and had a successful roll in of his equity. And so we’ll dive into that a little bit with Barton as well.

Um, and then we’ll have Christmas. Um, and then we’ll start all over again next year. So thanks again for coming out. Biggest crowd online and in person, so, and John. Thanks folks so much for making it up outta steward. How.