Host: It's a numbers game. You hear this cliche applied to so many situations these days. Interviewing for jobs, dating, and yes, search. But it is an apt cliche. The more outreach you do, the more sims you look at, the more likely you are to find the right business to buy. Well, when a situation is a numbers game, you can often develop a system to methodically work those numbers. Today's guest, Chirag Shah did just that. A self described systematic guy, Chirag used Kanban to manage his deal flow. He time blocked the hours every morning when he'd do his search work and he refined his whole process on a weekly basis. I too think of myself as a systematic guy, so I spent some time with Chirag in the weeds of his process while ultimately his systems bore fruit. Today, Chirag and his wife own a dog training business that does upwards of $2 million per year and $600,000 of SDE. Here he is, Chirag Shah, owner of Sit Means Sit in Austin. Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses. My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs, and on this

Guest: podcast I talk to the people who do it.

Host: You've probably heard me mention SM Bash, the conference in Orlando for acquisition entrepreneurs, SMB owners and investors. It was such a valuable event. I met no less than 12 acquiring minds guests there in person, Hurricane hosts of other podcasts in this space. And if you're on SMB Twitter, it was a who's who of all the biggest accounts. Well, SM Bash is coming back around this time in Austin in April and I'll definitely be going back. I'm told by the SM Bash team that this year they're going even deeper on content relevant to search, including a focus on finding investors for your acquisition and inviting a lot of investors to attend as well. For serious searchers or those who've recently acquired, SMBASH is really the leading event. There are others associated with universities, but as far as I'm aware, this is the biggest and best indie conference for entrepreneurship through acquisition. Check out smbash.com six letters SMB a s h.com or click the link in the show notes. See you in Austin. Chirag Shah, thank you for joining me today on Acquiring Minds.

Guest: Yeah, great. Happy to be here. Longtime listener, so awesome.

Host: I love to have guests on who have been listeners before. Chirag, you and your wife recently acquired Sit Means Sit, a dog training franchise in Austin, Texas. In fact, really close to where you live. Although that was a coincidence. We'll get to that. Dog training to Me at least. Sounds like a really fun business to be in. Training animals has always kind of fascinated me. So this one feels like, you know, a business where the content of the day to day, the thing you're selling is really, really fun and attractive. So I'm eager to learn about the dog training business. Yeah, but let's start off with just the context. How about a little background on you, please? Shrug.

[3:24] Guest: I was kind of introduced to the idea of entrepreneurship as a small business underwriter. I worked at a community development financial institution at the beginning of my career doing 7A SBA loans. And that gave me a lot of exposure to kind of a broad swath of industries, company sizes, and most importantly, how to analyze the actual performance and sustainability of certain companies. So that definitely introduced me to just this concept of entrepreneurship. Well, I wasn't underwriter. I thought the next best step would be for some reason get an mba. So I went to Babson College, which is known for entrepreneurship. In that process I met a software engineer that was working on a kind of a small project. I kind of got myself a bit intrigued into what he was doing and asked him if I could help in any way aside from just introducing him to whomever. So he, being an engineer, he wanted to focus on a lot of the technical aspects of this thing. And I was like, okay, well I can support from a business development conceptualizing whatever it was. So we worked together to essentially build a small software as a service product, basically in the after hours care realm of medical service. So what that means is I give you where to call the doctor, let's say your pediatrician and their office is closed. Instead of like talking to a human operator who has no medical background, you'd interact with our technology which would make it faster for you to ultimately provide the doctor details. However, it was in a market that was somewhat, let's say technologically deprived. It just kind of fiddled out. So, but kind of took that experience and realized like, hey, I like this, this building thing and I like, I like working with software and I like working with engineers. So I kind of forayed into product management. I did that for four or five years. I liked that a lot. I think I excelled at it like at every, every place I worked at. Like I was either promoted or whatever the case. But the one thing that I realized was that I got pretty disengaged at every role relatively. I wouldn't say quickly, but after like a year and a half. So kind of taking that experience and then taking the SaaS experience, I was like, okay, what can I do next? This year was a really big, kind of monumental year in the sense that my wife and I became pregnant. And so at that stage I can keep working kind of towards this product management career. I'll get frustrated, I'll get disengaged, or I can, I can kind of reenter entrepreneurship. And considering my previous experience, I wasn't too keen on starting a new company. I knew that would take a long time. It was a lot of sacrifice and considering I'm having a family soon, I didn't want to, to do that. So I kind of thought about acquisition entrepreneurship. I was introduced to.

[6:53] Host: Had you, had you known about acquisition entrepreneurship before? I guess as a 7A underwriter, you must have seen it a lot.

Guest: Yeah, I saw it a bit. I didn't realize what those businesses were actually doing. I know for a fact that I read the book by then, Bill, which probably like everybody reads and I know there's like, there's a few other books,

Host: but you'd read it, you'd read it before, right? Before this year when you started getting serious about it.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: So yeah, go ahead.

Guest: Yeah, I've read, I read it in passing. I would just read a lot of, I read a lot of business books. Right. Just like as someone who likes to read and I think Buy Then Bill was kind of one of those books where it's like, I'm just reading for fun, just to kind of see like what, what's out there. But I met somebody actually last year around like in December that was going to, he's actually going to Harvard Business School. He was taking a class. But he told me his plan and his plan was, I can't buy a house. I'm going to, I'm going to access the equity from the house and I'm going to buy a business. I'm like, wow, that sounds like a genius idea. So after he said that, I was like, okay, I'm going to revisit this Buy Then Build book. I read it again and I was like, what's, what can I do? What can I do next? And what I Learned from my SaaS experience was like being in a like minded community of people is really important. So I was actually an accelerator when I, when I kind of built and then launched my, my SaaS company. So I joined an acquisition accelerator acquisition lab. And that kind of, that made that

Host: also, also Walker Goebbels.

Guest: Right, Exactly. So I kind of went from like an observer to like a committed serious investor by joining the acquisition lab to Be. To be frank, because when you're with those, when you're with like minded folks, you realize like, okay, they can, they're doing it, they're. They've done becomes a lot more real. And being that it's more realistic, it becomes a lot more achievable. So I mean, there were like thoughts in the process, like, hey, I can't do this, whatever, like, and, but again, like I would just kind of show back up, kind of interact with the lab, kind of revisit the content, just keep kind of my, my nose to the groundstone and just keep, keep moving. And it ultimately kind of led me to where we are today. So.

[9:18] Host: Yeah, you know, it's funny, Chirag that you're. That you read the book by then build. And it didn't immediately grab you. You know, for a lot of my guests, it's, it's kind of an epiphany moment where like, oh, you know, the light bulb, the epiphany. I mean, you know, choose your figure of speech, but they immediately are grabbed by this path. And it's funny that. I mean, I'm sure a lot. I'm sure countless people read the book and they just put it back on the shelf and. Okay, that was interesting.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: But for those who actually ultimately do become acquisition entrepreneurs, I mean, those who I interview, like you right now, oftentimes it's love at first sight. And in your. It's. It's just funny that in your case it wasn't for you, but you took a second pass and maybe, you know, just didn't hit you at the right time, but funny that you didn't have that and yet still ultimately did decide that the path of buying a business was.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: What you chose.

Guest: Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think it was. It probably boiled down to it being like the most expeditious route to entrepreneurship considering like where we were financially and where we were familially. Like, there was actually a point during COVID where my wife and I were exploring like another sas. Like her and I were just like, okay, well we can. We actually were going to build like a. It was called Furniture Lab. I mean, this is kind of going off a tangent, but my, but my point is that like when you, I think when you have less time, you like, it kind. It creates a lot of clarity. And that's what happened with my wife when we were pregnant. I was like, I got to do something. So. Yeah.

Host: So you are in the acquisition lab. It's feeling real. You are in and out and Communicating with the community and revisiting the material. You're seeing other people who are on this path as well. And then so do you go kind of launch into a full time search at some point where you're. No, it's actually just hammering it or what?

Guest: Yeah. So I mean I didn't, it was actually, it was a part time search. So I was, I was, I would wake up, I had a full time job at the time. I would just wake up like, like in like abNormallyally early like 4:35. I worked from home so that was nice. I dedicate like 5 to 9 5am to like 9am Maybe doing a lot of outreach, interacting with brokers, lenders, kind of responding to emails, reviewing my deal flow and then throughout the day I'd obviously be committed to my job. However like if things did arise, being that I was working from home, I could attend to them. So if it was a broker call or a specific deal I wanted to analyze. I think one thing I'm personally very proud of is just like how I can manage my time and be able to balance. I think I do, I'm, I'm getting, I'm, I've got a lot better this, this past year at managing boundaries and so kind of having clear cutoff time and so forth. So I usually work from like 9 to 12 around lunchtime. Like I take a short break, respond to anything else again from like 1 to 5, do whatever and then at work and then from 5 to like 9 and come back at it. So but it was all, it was all part time and then I think on top of that on the weekends what I would do a lot is I'm a very systematic person. I would just tweak my systems and continuously try to automate and optimize. I had actually hired a virtual assistant at the same time to kind of help me with deal flow and so he could do some very high level filtering as well. I had, I had said I, my, my goal was ultimately to get full, think that this was like a Texas based and specifically Austin based search. I wanted to get, I want to get full exposure to just Texas brokers. And so I had, I was on a lot of email lists. I had a lot. I had probably built over a hundred relationships to some degree, varying degrees. So I had him manage a lot of like the more automated like the more like things I couldn't automate but like I could like delegate to him to some degree. So yeah I was fully.

[13:38] Host: Well this sounds, I'm, you know, I'm I'm intrigued by what you put together and how you iterated on it and how you're a self described systematic person. So can you give us a window into what your system looked like, including your virtual assistant there at the end? So, so anybody who's kind of, kind of lost with that, help them out.

Guest: Yeah, so, and anybody in the acquisition lab could probably like speak to this, I mean speak to me being systematic because I shared all of this with the lab and I think that like some folks like still might use it, but I built my system in Notion. And so I mean I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with notion. If they're not like it's a, basically a, it's a, it's a lot of things. It can be, it's, it's very flexible in the sense that like you could make it a productivity tool. You can use it for like document management. You can use it for a lot of things. I basically built like a deal review kind of hub, let's say. Right. So my process was really, it was not, it's not complicated. I signed up for all of these like email blasts. I built all of these relationships with brokers. And so as part of that I would just get deals on a daily basis. My job would be, and my job in my VA's job would be kind of like to review and kind of exhaust all of these emails, make sure that my inbox is basically at zero every day. And I was looking for my criteria. So my criteria was basically needs to be in Central Texas, ideally in Austin. And the way I define Central Texas was basically anywhere from Waco to San Antonio. There's a highway I35 and it's kind of this corridor. And basically it was like I'm going to drive like an hour. So. But I was also willing to look at like other Texas based deals just because that Central Texas corridor is not high in I'd say activity, let's say volume. So I kind of had to open up my eyes. I didn't want to be too constrained. So we kind of just reviewed these emails, whatever. But the key was if there was something that was like let's say compelling enough, we'd extract some of that data into notion. And so he would do it mostly manually. And basically what we would do is create like, I mean you call like a deal brief, whatever you want to call it. But there was a lot of things in this and this was actually based on my, I guess my education acquisition lab. So I would look at, I'll actually, I'll just actually speak to all of these, all this data that I would try to extract. So there was a fit score. So like how I felt about the business from like a instinctual level, like it was high, medium, low, where it was located, where I found it. And I'll get to like how I graded like the sources. Eventually I actually got to the point where all of the sources, whether it be like a website or a broker, I would grade based on like some specific criteria. And that would kind of weigh into like how seriously I might consider their, like their specific listing, what the SDE was asking price. I get a multiple from that. And then what I would do with all of that is that would kind of like enter this, like to review Kanban. I don't know, are you familiar with Kanban at all or like what that

[17:10] Host: that might mean conceptually, but I've never actually used it.

Guest: Yeah, I mean it's basically like just like a visual. It's like a visual way of managing statuses. So instead of like say like dropping things down, I'm like, whatever. It's actually pretty common in like, I think sales, right? Like pipeline management. Like if you're an opportunity, if you're like a lead to a prospect to an opportunity to like, whatever. So we basically replicated that in the sense of like in my Kanban. I had. So I'd have a backlog. Basically everything that was of interest would go to a backlog and then I'd make sure that I requested a sim, obviously, which it would lead to signing an NDA. Once I had everything, it'd go into review, go into analysis and then at that point that's kind of like the crossover, right, where I'd submit an LOI or I would no longer be interested. And there's also other columns for sold and due diligence. So basically what I could see at any moment in time is like, how many deals was I looking at? And this also like leads to again what the acquisition lab might suggest. I mean this is like an advertisement for the acquisition lab. So.

[18:27] Host: Well, happily they're a sponsor.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Host: So it works.

Guest: One thing that they suggest and I kind of augmented it for myself was like KPIs, right? Like, how many deals are you looking at per day? Which ones like, are actually. Which ones actually fit your criteria? So I just had targets, right? Like, okay, well I want to, like if I want to close by this day, I want to review X number of deals and I want certain number of these deals to be in certain stages. So. And that would kind of like elevate or kind of decrease my activity, let's say, like for the weekend or for like the day. Right. Like, I could sense, like, okay, I need to put more energy into this or I need to change my strategy. And that's where on the weekend I'd kind of tweak things because I'd be like, okay, well, like, I'm not going to hit this target if I, if I keep, if I keep acting like to kind of every week was kind of like a mini experiment, like a small experiment.

Host: So, and just, just to emphasize this point, so people who understand, you know, this is kind of the, the old cliche, like it's a numbers game. And if you, if you imagine like crossing the finish line with a business that you've acquired, that there's a funnel and, you know, you need to be filling this funnel all the time. And, you know, at the top of the funnel are, you know, X number of opportunities, 100 opportunities that are going to be whittled down and whittled down as you look more and more closely at them. And then ultimately there's just going to be one that makes it all the way to the bottom of your funnel. And salespeople, this, for salespeople and marketing people, this is very natural. They, they think in these terms and, and, but, but it's really useful because it's like, it forces you to think backwards. So it's like, okay, I want to buy a business. Well, how many? That means I need to have, you know, three, Lois, and 10, you know, conversations going, and 30, you know, 30 interesting businesses in 100, you know, listings that I'm at, you know, that I, that are a maybe and, you know, 500, you know, 500 actually listings hitting my, my inbox every month or something.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: And so, and then, so you say to yourself, like, okay, if I don't have those 500 coming in every month, then I know in 30 days I'm going to be really thin.

Guest: Right.

Host: And so it's just filling the pipeline and being numerical about it and understanding, like, kind of the steepness of your funnel and how much, you know, how much drop off there is at every stage. It's really, it's really, it can be quite like you said, I mean, it's a system and it can be actually kind of a puzzle and fun and, and it certainly can also give you comfort. Like, as long as I'm filling the funnel at this rate every month, you know, I know that I'm doing what I should to like at the end of the month, have some real opportunities I'm looking at because salespeople, again, we'll, we'll learn this the hard way. Young, immature salespeople and acquisition entrepreneurs like you can turn around and think you were working on three awesome opportunities and you're going to buy one of them. All three. Fall, fall, fall through. You look up and you got nothing right. You got, you got to start over from scratch, refill your entire pipeline.

[21:23] Guest: You had to like, do so many things in parallel and concurrently that like, you just, it's not a line, it's not linear. You just can't treat it as a linear process. And if you treat it as a linear process, you'll be stuck, you'll get stuck a lot more often than you, you, you could if you just treated everything in parallel totally.

Host: And, and the classic hazard is to be really down, far down the path on one business and be, you know, get your heart more and more set on it, get more and more invested on it emotionally. Imagine yourself in that business and then just leave the rest of your pipeline, the rest of your, you know, your deal sourcing to the wayside. That's the temptation and it takes a lot of discipline not to do that. And it's so important you not do that because of course, if you lose that business, which, you know, probabilistically you may, well then you're going to be, you know, you're going to be complete, completely dry when you lose that opportunity.

Guest: So yeah, absolutely.

Host: Chirag the, your virtual assistant. So this is somebody I assume offshore that you found on upwork sort of thing.

Guest: Yeah. So like I, I hired somebody in India. What he would do with this within the acquisition realm is just actually keep up with like brokers. So I know a lot of like this might go like against what, what a lot of acquisition entrepreneurs actually do or like searchers do, which is like using a CRM to build a very large broker network and then blasting them with automated emails. I kind of took the route of being a little more personalized at the beginning and see how that worked. And then my follow ups, I had him do all my follow ups and all my follow ups were kind of based on some of the data that I received from brokers. More initial conversation. So he would look at, I had a different table and a different, not Kanban, like a different view for the status of my broker relationships and he would review that and then based on like the status, like if it was, say I received a sim from them. Right. Or sent an NDA with them and like even. Or if I had no contact with them. Right. It would kind of lead to like that's kind of a condition. So then I would be like, okay, well if it, if I've had no contact with them, send them this like really simple templatized email reminding them of who I am. But if I received a sim, then I have had some like warm connection with them. So use this templatized email. So he's basically doing some form of automation, but it's like selective automation. And I know like I'm sure I could use some CRM to do some conditional stuff, but it was an easy way to work with him and to get that done. And then like he might, he might report back to me on if they responded and like what other like listings that broker might have and is. Yeah, it was basically a lot of communications.

[24:17] Host: Is he doing this following up with the brokers in your name?

Guest: Yeah. Yeah.

Host: Okay. Yeah, okay.

Guest: Yeah. In my name. Yeah.

Host: So it's keeping those, you know, those broker relationships warm. You had a whole set of conditionals. And by warm it basically means emailing them in some shape, way shape in your name.

Guest: Right, right.

Host: I want to share an update on the Acquisition Lab. As you know, the Lab is a highly vetted cohort based accelerator and community for people serious about buying a business. After going through the Lab's month long intensive, you have ongoing access to almost daily Q and A sessions with advisors, regular live deal reviews with Walker Deibel, author of Buy Then Build, Potential Deal, team introductions and a very active Slack group with other searchers on the path. Well, the update is that the Lab recently passed 60 businesses acquired and for well over $100 million in aggregate transaction value. Also, all members now enjoy lifetime access to the Lab because when you buy a business, it's often just the first of many. And the Lab wants to support you in every deal, not just your first. Lastly, check out my recent interview with Shane Ursum. Episode 105. Shane acquired a business with over $1 million in EBITDA in just six months. And he attributes a lot of his deal success to what he learned in the Lab. Check out acquisitionlab.com or email the Lab's director, Chelsea Wood. Chelsea Buy then build dot com. Okay, well we're just in your search now. All right, so let now tell us about finding the business that you acquired. So how did, how did you find it?

Guest: Yeah, so I mean this goes back to like that Kanban view, honestly. So my wife And I were going to go on. They were, they were, we were going to go on vacation to Greece. Well, we were actually the next day planning on going and at that point I was going to put my search on hold obviously because I'm going to be on vacation. So I went back to my view and I was like, okay, there's some, there's some deals here that are like in review, right? Or like let's say I think it was. I, I submitted an NDA and I got no date and I got no sim. So okay, I got, I sent in the information. Why haven't I received anything? So this specific deal or this specific listing, I guess I got like an early notification, like a pre public notification from a broker and I responded to him. I had actually never spoken to him before. It was actually just like a blind sign up on a website. And I reached out to him and like basically he didn't respond to me. His, he had a virtual assistant who responded to me and that assistant was like, hey, this, this listing or this business isn't on the market yet. But we, you can send an NDA with us and when it is available we will send you the sim. We just wanted to get I guess like an early flavor of demand. But anyways, I submitted an NDA. It was like a week, I didn't hear anything and I was like just again I was about to go on vacation so I was like okay, there's a few deals here that I've submitted NDAs for. No SIMs. I'm just going to reach out again. So I reached out again and I reach out like on a Monday night and then on a Tuesday morning they responded to me like hey, the sim is ready, you can access it here. I was like okay, why didn't, I was kind of, kind of disappointed because they didn't tell me and I expected them to. But that's the, that's the reason you follow up.

[28:10] Host: Exactly.

Guest: And, and so it was really, this is like where it gets really kind of like, I don't know, serendipitous in a way because I opened the listing and it was actually a dog training company that my wife and I had considered literally using for our most recently adopted dog. We fostered a dog that we really loved and we wanted to get him trained. And it was funny because when we were reviewing this website we were like, oh wow, how great would it be to be these owners look so happy on the website? And so, and just like a really fun, fun company. And we were, we were going to inquire after our vacation. And so when I got this listing, I opened it. It was this company. It was unbelievable.

Host: Wait, wait, you were going to inquire about the business? You.

Guest: No, we were going to inquire about training. About training.

Host: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Right. As customers?

Guest: Yeah, yeah, as customers.

Host: But. But you had already looked around the website, submitted a form or whatever, and, like, and said to yourselves, huh, wouldn't it be interesting to own this business? These. These owners, I think, are having a good time. What a coincidence. I love it.

Guest: Yeah. And I don't know if other, like, surges go through those, like, those, like, not mind games, but, like, those, like. Like those simulations to themselves. Like, hey, like, and they go some like, oh, this is a cool business. It'd be cool to own this business because, like, yeah, you can like, just sense, like, oh, like, there's a lot of activity here. Like, if you're. You have any financial sense, like, okay, this is probably pretty profitable and knowing. And I knew their price points. Somebody was like, yeah, this is a pretty profitable business. Like, they're doing well and they had a lot of scale in Austin, so. Okay, well, they're probably one of the, if not the better, best one here. So. Yeah. So again, like, serendipitous, like, amazing coincidence that it was this business. And. Yeah. So actually that.

[30:08] Host: Are you a superstitious person? Because, you know, if you were, you'd be like, this is a sign.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: No, you're systematic.

Guest: You're not superstitious. Yeah, but.

Host: Come on. But, But I mean, how. How does one deny the feeling of, like, well, this is a sign?

Guest: Yeah. So that was a two. We were going on vacation on Wednesday. That day. I was, like, very aggressive about getting a seller interview. They need to sell. I need to sell interviews, like, now, like, today. But I couldn't get one until that Friday. And we were actually already on vacation, so I took this out. We were in Greece. I took the seller interview, but it went really. It went well. So. And what was always even, I guess more of a coincidence, is that the seller was a product manager. He used to be a product manager. So he, he, he. As a franchise. He started, like, this specific location 12 years ago after becoming disengaged as a product manager. And so, like, immediately him and I hit it off. Like, he was like, I gave him my spiel. He was like, this is unbelievable because he just. He just saw a lot of himself in me, in the sense, like, I was younger than him. Like, I had a technical background and so like we resonated immediately and even to this day, like, even we can get into like how things are, we'll get into how things are going. Like, I can reach out to him with like technical questions. He'll respond because he knows that like I know what I'm doing when it comes to like the systems that he's built. Like I'm. And like it's kind of his legacy. Right. So.

Host: Well, that must have not only given him, him kind of an affinity for you, but you comfort in your decision, your potential decision to buy this business as well. Because, you know, a lot of searchers I think, and my guests are like, you know, especially if they come from corporate or tech or something, it's like, wow, am I really going to get off the traditional train here and go run a doggy daycare or, excuse me, doggy dog training or whatever it is.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: And you know, there's that nagging doubt because it is kind of unusual. And in fact how I found you is on LinkedIn. You had made the announcement of this acquisition and I think that was kind of like your opening line. Something like, you know, I've been doing something traditional and now I'm not. So to see this guy who you might buy a business from, who similarly like was on a tradition, I guess was a product manager on some sort of traditional path and then got off that train and on this one and presumably has felt, felt that it was valuable, must have been kind of, must have reinforced your own decision to pursue this path.

Guest: Yeah, yeah. I mean, and what, what's great is that like, and we'll get into the franchise network too is what's even more validating is a lot of the folks who own different locations are coming from like white collar professions. Like actually like one of the, like a few of the close folks that I network with in the franchise network there used to be like sales executives or attorneys or they'd work in tech, for example. So they understand that not only this is a fun business, it's a lucrative business because they're moving from a relatively maybe high powered but at least well paying position to start this business and they understand the risk and so forth with it all and they're very comfortable with it. So yeah, absolutely. That definitely was validating.

[33:28] Host: Cool. So he likes you, you like him and you come home from Greece and the negotiation gets underway.

Guest: Give, yeah.

Host: Give us some parameters of, of the business. How much was it doing? What does SDE look like? Like what kind of, what does a dog training business franchise look like, and by the way, so is this a single unit or is it a territory? How are the franchisees sold? They get.

Guest: So it's a territory. Yeah. And I'll take a step back, but

Host: there is a physical location.

Guest: Yeah, there's two physical locations. And so I would also say that like, it wasn't just him, it was also his wife. His wife is kind of like, I would say, like involved to the same degree. My wife is in that, like, she's influential and not so much like the technical aspect of the business management, but from like the people and cultural aspect. And so I think I resonated well with both of them. And also considering like we. They told me very frankly, like, they wanted someone who like dogs, like love dogs, because that's a big part of being a really good owner here is like having a lot of empathy not only for the human but also the pet. Yeah, right, sure. So it really actually had my, my wife, I think she was in on the seller interview just like not so vocal, but I think she was on it. So it was kind of like not just me and him, but it was like the two of us. And so I think that kind of helped a little bit as well. So. Yeah. So going back to your question about what a dog training company does in terms of financial performance. So 2021 was a banner year for this company because of COVID puppies. So they did around 2 million in revenue, like around literally 1.95 or something. And their, their SDE was around 600k. That was pretty good. Like, I mean like for considering where they were. And they had taken a significant step back in their business in 21 as well. They, they hired a general manager and so they were, they're kind of like, I wouldn't say they weren't passively owning it. They were still like, like semi active in it, but. But they themselves were starting to think about retirement in the next step. So they're okay. What can we do to. To really systematize this and pass this on relatively seamlessly. So that was the.

Host: Also. Also cool that. So that 600k SDE is post general manager, so you don't have to allocate some of your SD to a general manager.

[36:07] Guest: Yeah, that's great, right? Yeah, yeah.

Host: So this is a nice, nicely profitable business.

Guest: It's a, it's a great, like so many perspectives. It's a great business. Yeah. The manager and like, like again, like this. I really respect this seller because like he's, he was so like again, like strategic in in the hiring as well. He has all of his employees do I think it's the culture index test or survey.

Host: Yeah.

Guest: And, and like, and keep in mind these are like, these are dog trainers. Right. They're not like you're not hiring like a sales professional or like a white collar employee. He's really looking for fit and so I really appreciated that because the employee we'll get into like the employees like any level of attrition, which there's been none. And these employees like are just awesome fits for this specific like not like this specific company but like they're really good fits for this culture. So. And this manager was a great fit. He's awesome. And so, and like he's, he's the opposite of me. Like I'm like kind of like a pretty, let's say like I don't know, like a growth oriented and innovative person. He is very tactical and I mean I can be tactical but he's like very tactical. So we make a really good team. But yeah, considering, considering everything that like came with the business. The SD is, was awesome. I was really surprised by. But actually 2021 was a good year. 20 and 19 are probably, I wouldn't say better representations but they probably balance it out. So they did around like 1.7, 1.8 those 2 years and their SD then was around 500k so like you could say the average is around 525, 550 rather than like 600 over like the past. Just considering last year. Because last year was just. It was a great year.

Host: Well, it was an up. It was an up year Shrog. But it wasn't like, you know, you hear about these Covid. Some Covid businesses that like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what, 200 over so 10, 15%. Yeah, 10 15%.

Guest: Nothing crazy. Yeah, yeah. And so like I think what came with that too, which might not be in all of the numbers is like the, the migration, the mic. And like this is kind of what I'm not. I would say to some degree I'm betting on this is being in Austin. There's been like a migration of affluent, like more, I say a more affluent population migrating Austin. So with that, with that they typically can afford these types of services. But that's like another topic to some degree. But yeah, I mean I don't think it's going to go back to like 2020. I think it'll stick around like where 21 was. So yeah, it's pretty good.

[39:07] Host: Let's round out the deal. The transaction and then let's talk about both the franchise nature of this and more about the business of dog training. So round us out on the transaction. Was it, was the negotiation pretty straightforward?

Guest: His documentation was great. Like there was nothing like no gotchas or. I mean, I guess I'm still unearthing any gotchas at this point, but there hasn't been any surprises, let's say. But yeah, it was clean. Like we had a, obviously like a data center and he was extremely responsive and so forth and kind of providing all the information. Um, so that was it competitive? It was so it was like I asked him like towards the end, like after we were past due diligence, like were there other buyers? And there were, but they weren't. They were more so like I'd say like strategic buyers or buyers that he did not resonate with. I just wanted to buy a business for the, for the sake of buying, which is fine. I mean, I think it just depends on the seller and like what they want in a buy. I think that's actually one thing that should, should be emphasized in a lot of cases is like there has to be a really good buyer, seller fit. And in this case, like it was great. And actually like we didn't, we didn't talk about like a. I think we met, might have talked about this in our first conversation. But I had a previous, I had a previous LOI that was accepted, but that buyer and I had, but that seller and I had a terrible fit. And so any case. Yeah, so yeah, it went well. Negotiations were straightforward. I did, I mean there was like some sticking points. Like in terms of the, like, I'd say like the trailing 12 months wasn't exactly where the bank needed it to be. So the. Actually this is a big part. The seller actually had to take an unexpected seller note. Pretty sizable seller note. Like I think it was like 20% of the, of the sale price and he was okay with it. The actual acquisition price was around 1.71 and of that like 300 something K is in a seller note and the remainder is, is financed by the sba. The seller note is. Is it.

Host: Wait, sorry, it's just seller note and sba.

Guest: And I mean I had my own equity injections.

Host: Oh, okay. Yeah. And how. Okay, so that was 10%.

Guest: 10%, yeah, yeah. And that was made up of. I think this is a good point too, is like I accessed my HELOC for this. So I had the. There's three parts to my equity injection. It was basically all my real estate Assets what my real estate assets had generated in some form or another. So I have a small residential portfolio and I've generated around like 50, 60k in profit I'd take the past 2 years. Plus I made a pretty wise decision on a personal home and that appreciated pretty greatly. I acquired a heloc and then I raised a small amount from my family. And so those three parts were my equity injection. So I came to the table with around like 200. But really, when you think about it, my only contribution was that I would say that real estate investment portfolio saving, like capital, but it was just capital that was going to be redeployed anyway towards some asset. So it was. I don't know. You can look at it in a lot of different ways, but personally, I didn't put a. Put in a lot of capital, but yeah, that was it. That's kind of the, I guess the

[43:06] Host: deal makeup and the 20% seller note was just to make it work with the bank. So it wasn't. Okay. Okay.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: Great. And let's see. So 1.71. So just what is that, like a three and a half multiple? If we assume 550.

Guest: Yeah. Great. Great. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's like, it's fair. I mean, and I, I looked at. I mean, it's like probably at a premium, to be honest. But, like, I think we might have mentioned, we talked about this. One of the locations is like a stone throw away. So, I mean, I can't really, I can't beat that, like, in terms of like my commute or so. That was nice.

Host: And just, I don't think we've set the timeline here, Shrek.

Guest: Yeah. So Loi was at the end of July. Acquisition was around, obviously early October. And. Yeah, now I'm. Yeah, around. Is it four months or three months?

Host: No, it's three. And by the way, the pregnancy came to pass and you had. Your son was born on November 19. So lots of changes in the Shah household. Very exciting.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: Okay, Shrog, I want to talk about the fact that it was a franchise. So these are themes that I'm hitting a lot now. I'm talking to a lot more. More and more people. And at the intersection of franchise and eta, you know, one thing. So we all know that franchising feels a little bit more restrictive. Some people don't like that. And I will highlight the fact that you said of yourself that you kind of have an independent streak. That was kind of part of the reason that you would kind of exhaust yourself after 18 months. In your PM roles and just feel a little, you know, you chafe at the oversight and the lack of creativity. And so square that circle for me because franchising has. That, has that reputation.

Guest: Yeah, yeah. So, so as part of my strategy to kind of exhaust the state of Texas, right, in terms of like coverage, I started to, as part of it, consider franchise resales. So I interviewed, I interviewed a lot of franchises in a sense of like what their system was, what they offered, what they expected from me. And so as part of that, I basically learned a lot about franchises and their different models. There's obviously like a model that's very prescriptive, right? Like they're like, hey, like, this is our technology, this is our service model, this is our pricing, this is our marketing. Your only job is to deploy and oversee like a specific territory or geography. With that said, sit means sit is a franchise in the sense that the delivery model is somewhat prescribed. And by that I mean the dog training method is prescribed. Like we actually do use an E collar to train our dogs. However, when it comes to the business practices, there's very little prescription. So what that means is you can package the training in any way you want, you can price it in any way you want, you can market it relatively flexibly. Like you, you do have. There are some boundaries, but the boundaries are natural considering the type of training that we offer. And so there are fit means sits that offer training like day training, like during the day. They offer boarding overnight and they might offer grooming and also like, even, even some type of like day boarding. Right. We don't, we don't offer all of that, but it all just depends on your market. So when it comes to like the business practice of profitability, like it ultimately is dependent on you. And that even goes so far as to the system as well. So all like, there's kind of, there's a few camps of technology stacks within the franchise. We specifically use Salesforce like our, the previous owner built a very, let's say very robust salesforce instance. And it's proprietary to dog training for our franchises. So we use it and then we actually re sell those licenses to other franchises in the system as well. So it's, it's, it's a really, it's really open from that perspective, from like a systems and business management perspective. And they, and again, and I think that one thing that I, I did not mention is the, the fee structure. So I would say the more prescriptive that you are, the higher the royalty fee and other types of Fees in this case being that they are less prescriptive. The only fee that I pay is like a territory fee and it's like a few hundred dollars a territory and that's it. Like there's nothing, there's no ruby.

[48:09] Host: That's it. That's your only franchise fee?

Guest: Yeah. There's no royalty fee. There's nothing like that. So.

Host: Wow.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. So my fee is around $1,000 a month. So that's. Yeah, so that's why like, that's another reason why like I was attracted to this franchise. I interviewed a lot of franchises, I spoke to like a lot of home service franchises, automotive franchises, and kind of just tried to kind of build a mental model of all of them. And this sits at like the end of the spectrum where it's the most profitable type of franchise or you can make it extremely profitable.

Host: So had you, had you actually talked to sit means sit corporate before this opportunity came in your life?

Guest: No, no, no, no, no.

Host: Okay.

Guest: No, but they're great. So actually one thing to keep in mind too is that like ownership structure matters a lot. So like a lot of franchises, as you probably know, by private equity firms or like second, third generation owners. And so this simulated owned by the founders and you have direct act. If I, if I pulled out my flood right now, I could call either founder and he'd be willing to give me some type of feedback. So. And that's awesome. Like just having that level of, of access and like intimacy to things and they're very open and so it's, it's actually interesting.

Host: And it's a, I think you told me it was a, it's a 25 year old business. But the actual franchising, it started franchising only in 2019.

Guest: Yeah, like late 2000.

Host: Late 2000. So it's a. So as a franchisor it's 12, 13, 14 years old. So not super mature, but also not too young.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: And did you like look at the, what other research did you do about the franchise? Did you look at the fdd for example?

Guest: I did, yeah, I looked at the fdd. I mean, so as part of my due diligence, I entered conversations with the, with corporate and as part of that, like we had an initial interview. It went well. The series of questions, they answered them punctually and thoroughly. And so yeah, I mean, and there's nothing in the.

Host: And they provide the ftd, I assume

Guest: they provided it immediately.

Host: So. And I want to ask more about Sit means sit. But before I do that, just as an aside, when you did your research into a bunch of different franchises, were there any that you were attracted to that you'd like to just call out and put on people's radar?

Guest: There's a home service one, it was budget blinds. And sure they. So I was just.

Host: That's so funny. I was just nosing around budget blinds last year.

Guest: Yeah, they have a really good. So actually this is the interesting part with private equity and private ownership or like familial ownership, they were owned by private equity and then private equity sold it, I think to a family. And there's been a significant change in the dynamic between franchisees and franchisors because of essentially the attention and care that this family is giving this specific brand. Because when you have like a private equity firm that owns multiple brands, they don't. They don't. They treat them like what we would treat them as like a portfolio of assets. Which is, if you're on the flip side of that, it sucks because they're just treating you as like a kind of like what the numbers state. So budget blind has I think improved dramatically and I think the past two or three years because of that trans. That was actually what the franchise representative was explaining to me. And they do a really cool job actually. They're, I'd say cross pollination among the network is really good. They have a lot of resources for new prospective franchisors and then once you're in it, I think they have a relatively good network of folks who are willing to help each other out and simian citizens like that too. We don't have the right. Our resources are good, they're good enough. But our technology can be a little better in terms of knowledge sharing. Budget blind is good if you're going to check them out.

[52:23] Host: Okay, circling back now. To sit means sit. So really interesting about this, the fact that they're really not very prescriptive and the thing that they're intent on is that you use their method. So I guess the founders came up with their own kind of proprietary method of training dogs is the idea.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, to some degree. Yeah. Like I mean like we, like I mentioned, we use an E caller remote caller to. And it really, it's attention based training. So we're trying to get. And so I think the one thing the, the objection that we receive a lot is that we are shot collar trainers and in reality we're using the collar very differently in the sense of we're trying to get the dog's attention and then to some degree direct them towards the behavior that we want them to do. And then we reward them, right? We reward them with, like, praise. We reward them with whatever they might desire. Right. So it's basically just form of conditioning. And I think one thing that's very critical about our. Our actual training method is our. Is our collar is very adjustable. So it's actually, it's adjustable in the sense that it is somewhat dependent on the environment. So, like, as you know, like, we all live in a world full of distractions and so do our dogs. So there's less distracting environments. And that level, like, we don't. It's very easy to get their attention, but if they're, like, at a noisy street corner like in New York City, you might need to get their attention a little bit differently. So we basically do that just to make sure that they realize that we are their, like, leader. We have, like, a proprietary collar, proprietary e collar that we have. We have an exclusive partnership with Sportdog. I don't know if you're familiar with sport dog at all, but it's actually for, like, sport dogs, like working dogs. And we apply that same technology to pets, and it gives a dog. It gives the owner a lot more control and then ultimately confidence that. That their dog is reliable. So. So, yeah, so, yeah, like. Yeah, so that's kind of like. It's interesting when. When you go to. I had to go to Sit Mean Sid school, they teach you these. These like, methodologies, but it's like any framework, right? Like, you kind of mash it together, it becomes your own. So that's kind of what they did.

[54:46] Host: Okay, well, but so, okay, so they have this. This method that they kind of say is there is their signature method, and they expect all the franchisees to use that. That's the core. But then every. A lot of everything else you can kind of do on your own. Very interesting. And I imagine that that for you in particular was as a great fit because as you. As you said, like, you like building systems, so you have the freedom to, like, all of the kind of business operation, or at least a lot of the business operations, you can use your creativity and your systematic nature to build stuff. But what you would have lacked, like how to train dogs, that's what they give you. So it seems like a great.

Guest: Yeah, exactly.

Host: Kind of fit for you.

Guest: Yeah, for sure.

Host: One of the things that is a theme and at the intersection of ETA and franchising, again, is like, rolling up franchises. So there are a lot of kind of legacy or mature franchises where the. The original or previous generation of franchisees are now retiring boomers like, like independent businesses. And so while an independent, like, like a single location of a franchise might not generate very much ste, maybe just 100,000 SDE if the playbook is to aggregate them and you know, quickly, you know, take a, you know, like a fragmented franchise network. But, you know, you, you kind of look at your geographic market and you see that there's 20 different. Whatever it is, and, and you know, there. There's 20 different owners or 15 different owners. There's a path there to, you know, buy one, the first one too small a business in its own right. But for that toehold, for that, that entree into this, you know, into this network and then from there, you know, hope and expect to then rapidly acquire a bunch more in your market and then emerge with 7, 10, 15 franchise locations and then you have a quite a sizable business. And each of those acquisitions is actually quite seamless in a franchise network because the integration is, Is. Is really easy, depending on the franchise, of course, but in many cases it is certainly more than. Than buying 15 independent businesses and integrating all those together. So from that perspective, did you think about that and what did it. What did SIT means sit look like from that perspective?

[57:02] Guest: Yeah, I definitely thought about that. This, this seller actually started to do that, oh, a little bit more, a little bit prematurely. But he was started there and then realized that Austin was just a cash cow and the other location was distracting him. So he owned San Antonio and he owned Austin. I think he actually scaled up even to Seattle. And so he, He. I don't think he had the right systems at the time. So it's probably a little bit more challenging to. To replicate the success. But yeah, definitely, Like, I mean, like, there are Being that sit means it is like a. Is a younger and growing franchise. Like, there's still a lot of geographic opportunity. I mean, even in Austin, for example, like, I own. I own two territories, however, like, there's. There's territories around Austin that are. That are growing and that are unowned and that I could, I can gradually enter as well. So. So, yeah, definitely. I mean, that's something that we've definitely considered. I think the thing that, like we mentioned earlier was that like, one location might generate like, say like 250 or 300 in SDE, which is nice. So like, we might need to roll up less or like scale to like a, like a fewer number level, but still scale a bit. So. So yeah.

Host: Yeah. Cool. And how do you think. How, how should one think about like. So this is a, let's call it a 13 year old franchise. And like I did a Google map search for sit means sit in my market, the D.C. metro area. And there's just like one like north of Baltimore. So in the D.C. metro area, like that's far and pretty remote. And so point being like it clearly hasn't really penetrated. I mean it barely exists here.

Guest: Right.

Host: So, so it's not like a franchise that just is like in every market. Is that something to be like concerned about or is it just like dog dog training? You know there, there isn't the, isn't there's not going to be the demand for dog training that there is for you know, gyms or you know, the next quick service restaurant. It's just like a, you know, a smaller market. So therefore there's not going to be.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: As many of them or how do you like, how do you think about that and interpret that? That.

Guest: Yeah, I do. I actually agree with your latter perspective or opinion in that like Austin is a metropolitan area. However, we do have a lot like it's not as densely populated as certain areas. And so because of that like people are more prone to having dogs and larger dogs and taking those dogs out for like off leash activities. And so there likely will be a higher demand for dog training or just like a different type of dog training. Whereas like a metropolitan area like you might, you might still have dogs but they're maybe in a more controlled environment. There might not be as many opportunities to like take them hiking let's say or like take them to like so many other like interactive like activities. I mean they probably have dog parks and so forth. But I think that's probably one way of looking at it. It's an interesting, interesting point. I do think you need more space ultimately. I mean that's one thing too is that our facilities require space. So yeah, so our facilities are like 4 to 5. Can be anywhere from 4000 square feet to like 8000 to whatever, however large we want them to be. I mean there's definitely limits and like reasonable limit. I believe sit means it also started off as like a, almost a mobile dog training company. Right. They'd come to you, they'd train your home and so forth and there would be no facility. However, I think that the folks who have, who have facilities are much more profitable because they don't need to travel. They can, they can scale up in a central location a lot faster. So there's probably more of a movement that's a really good Question asked, like, why. Why is dog training more available or I don't know, like more successful in other markets than others? But at least that would be my opinion.

[1:01:15] Host: Well, and actually shrag, to be clear, there are dog training companies, dog training businesses, just not. And I guess. I guess one of the other. Yeah, just not SIP means it. I guess one of the other franchises or corporate efforts at dog training is Woofs. There's a Wolfs I've seen. Do you know. Do you know this brand?

Guest: I've never. I've never heard of Wolfs. Okay. I think it's maybe, maybe it's still a very. I think maybe dog training franchising might be still pretty fragmented then. And that could also be another case is that like, there's no. Like, we claim we're the largest. We are. I mean, I think nationally we do have the most locations, which is great. Like, it's a great selling point. However, like, it. It's still not like, so sizable that, like, we own the market. You know, like, we might be like 1%, 1% of the whole.

Host: Yeah.

Guest: And we might be another percent. Right.

Host: Yeah. Well, Chirag, I want to, I want to wrap us up here, but to do that, let's just hear a little bit more about kind of dog. Dog training business, just broadly, not necessarily the franchise aspect of it. How much does it cost to have your dog trained? Like, what is the. The LTV of a customer in dog training land?

Guest: Yeah. So our programs range anywhere from 800 to 3,000. And that ultimately depend on your dog's behavior. So it honestly varies just because like every dog varies like it's a human. Right. So they come with their own temperament, their own background, etc. And so, and the, and the kind of. The average contribute, I kind of based on contribution margin is around 70%. So which I think is really healthy. So let's say, like, if it's around $3,000 package, we'll probably. We'll keep around 70% of that, which I think is 2100. And that's after labor. That's after, like inclusive of. I think what we include in there is basically like the service cost. It's almost like a. It's almost like a service unit cost that we include there. So it's labor, our collar that we have to use and then does not include operating expenses, obviously. So. Yeah. So, yeah, 70% is pretty good from that perspective.

[1:03:30] Host: Yeah. Wait, that's really good, isn't it?

Guest: Yeah, yeah, I think it's really good.

Host: And so, so then, I mean, after that you don't, you don't have a lot of other expenses. Like you don't have a lot of over. You have your rent. Yeah, big rent on it. 5,000, 8,000 squares square foot place.

Guest: Yeah, we have rent. We have like, I mean you got

Host: your GM for, for, for two locations. So that.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, I pay myself, I pay myself a small salary. I have my office staff who basically like customer take. It's a customer success or customer service specialist and they do a pretty good job of like scheduling and coordinating like and so forth.

Host: So and how much but with all of that overhead or it's not so much but with that overhead. How much capacity do you have there? Like could you launch another territory and not have to do much additional hiring? Like you already, you could already handle it with the capacity you have.

Guest: We would need to do more hiring the way, the way that like actually the seller described to me how he scaled in from like one to two locations was. And he does this already. We do this already. They rotate like trainers. It's not like a trainer is dedicated to a specific location. I mean there's a preference for one and we'll try to meet that preference. But they might be like we have north and south. So they'll maybe north four days and south one. So let's say like we open up like the east. It might be like 3, 1 and 1. But yeah, I mean we're somewhat constrained by our actual capacity but not significantly. We basically right now we could open one. I would like to hire like one to two more trainers. It's strange, I'm like try to be systematic and scientific about my next step. But I think when it comes to opening the location it's a combination of a gut and also okay what makes sense in terms of the people that we have and then the demand that we have. So right now I don't think our demand is because we just ended right. Or we're ending our holiday season around Q4 tends to be not the best for service based business. And specifically like discretionary, you could say this is semi discretionary. So like our demand is just meeting our supply right now, which is good. So we can get, if you want to train your dog today, we can get them trained probably the next like two weeks. But like I'm imagining in the next two quarters that kind of change significantly. Demand's going to far out, far exceed supply. And so like we'll need to and we are going to be hiring. So at that point then it makes sense to be Consider a new facility and so forth. I haven't seen the data yet, so I don't want to make that. Make that judgment or, or take that step yet. So.

[1:06:16] Host: Yeah. You said you're paying yourself a small salary, so.

Guest: Yeah.

Host: Is that just in an abundance of prudence or. Or.

Guest: Yeah, kind of. I want to make sure that I can, like, live like, well enough pay, Pay my mortgage, have like, a decent lifestyle. And then I, I think we might have discussed this in our first call is I follow profits first, I think has been really helpful. And so, like, I do have, like, a pretty healthy owner's discretionary bucket that I've just kept. I mean, I could, I could access it and distribute it to myself, but I'm trying to figure I want to keep it more so to reinvest and if there's like, larger expenses that I have to. I have to have, then I will withdraw it. But, I mean, there's no need to right now. So. Yeah, it's not a stick and I'm making a lot less than I was as a pm but it's okay. I'm having a lot more fun.

Host: Well, it's also presumably not always going to be that way. You're in year, year one, right. And you're being conservative and getting a lay of the land.

Guest: Right, right, right, right. I'm being. And like, I'm an extremely. It's like, I'm pretty aggressive when it comes to, like, experimenting and growth and like, trying to move it, move the ball forward, but I'm very conservative when it comes to, like, estimating expenses. And like, I, I will always. I always overestimate. I'm always going to add buffers. It's just, it's not just natural. Like, I don't even have to, like, account. Like, it's not like, I don't have to think about it. It just happens naturally for me.

Host: So.

Guest: No. Sounds like a good way to be

Host: conservative financially, but kind of risky with your experimentation and things that maybe don't cost as much money. Cool. Well, this has been great. We covered a lot of territory. How can. As I said, I found you on LinkedIn.

Guest: You.

Host: You posted when you made this acquisition, so I was thrilled to see that and connect with you. So I'll. I'll link to your LinkedIn. Are you active on Twitter?

Guest: I do write a bit. I mean, I kind of took a pause on that also last year. It's just my first and last name. Chiragshah IO. Yeah. I mean, feel free to reach out to me. Always open to helping others kind of get there. So.

Host: Well, encouragement to you to participate in SMB Twitter. If you were already comfortable in one re twit, you should get on SMB Twit. And people would love to follow your journey there. It's an. It's a really helpful, awesome, collaborative community. Lots of people doing lots of interesting, fun things. And lots of my guests have come from there. So. Yeah. But I'll link all of that to the show notes and yeah, look forward to reconnecting later this year, seeing how things are going. Thank you very much for coming on. Chirrock.

Guest: Yeah, no, yeah. I really appreciate you having me. Thank you. Sam.