Thinking of selling your Small Business? Don’t miss this episode of the Small Business Show – SBS 127

The small business show episode 127 for Wednesday, July 12, 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the small business show. The show by, for and about small business owners here in durham, new hampshire.

I'm Dave hamilton and in the san Francisco bay area, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

I'm good. Before we get started, you know, we talk about this a lot, but never right at the beginning of the show. So I want to tell you folks, I don't want you to stop listening and go there now, but Facebook group where we all discuss all kinds of things related to small business is at businessshow co facebook and then also.

Yep.

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What's the address again?

What's the businessshow co itunes?

Perfect. Yeah, that's good. That's good. I think that's great.

So you've had a busy week, my friend. Actually, you've had a busy couple of months, perhaps.

Yeah, yeah, it has been a busy few months as we, you know, made some dramatic changes in our. One of our companies, tech restore, and we just closed on the sale of the business. And I thought, hey, we might as well talk about the stuff today on the show. We're always grilling everybody else, so.

You.

Can put me in the hot seat. We can talk about it and see what I liked about it, what I didn't and what I learned. I learned a tremendous amount. It was super. I can only imagine educating in this business. I used to own a company called Mac Rescue that I started back in 95 and then 2004 left there and launched tech restore. And so, you know, I have a lot. A number of years into this thing. And so, you know, letting go and realizing that now was the time was. Was challenging, exciting and full of anxiety at the same time, you know?

Yeah, well. Right. So my. I guess my first question. And I know selling a business is similar in this particular way to selling a house, right? In that it only takes one buyer, but it takes. It takes the right buyer. Right. You're not. It's not like you're creating something that you need to, you know, sell to a hundred people over. It is literally one person that. Or one company that needs to be the right fit. And. And that always gets very interesting. So that my question is, how did you find this? Did you start looking? Did you start doing your Scott Adams, you know, I will sell my business by the end of 2017. Affirmations like, how did this happen? Yeah.

You know, it's funny. The first thing that happened to kind of spur me in this direction was a hard realization for me that in order for tech Restore to grow to another level or become the different kind of business that it needs to. In order to grow into the next decade, it needed another person to be in the seat that I've been in for the last 13 years.

Huh. That's interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, in a very. Take too much time. But in a short sentence, you know, I'm a deal guy, and, you know, I've always found deals made, you know, had relationships, bought and sold. And that has been the fuel for this business, whether it's Macs, iPads, phones, parts, whatever it is. And then we did all kinds of other stuff related to that, Repairs, refurbishing, and everything. But I'm not a very good systems person. And that's what I believe strongly that this business needs now, is not a deal guy that runs things by his gut, but somebody who's more analytical that can find. That can really increase productivity and find the logistics person.

Not a deal hunter. Yeah.

Yeah. Not a guy like me. So that took me, like, a year to come to the realization of that.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's the realization that the best owner for your business is not you.

It is not me. It was.

No, I get that.

And it got us to where we are today. It's been awesome, you know, a fantastic run. And then I got approached by someone who did not ultimately wind up, you know, buying the business. So I had the experience of someone from outside the industry kind of nibbling and telling me, you know, hey, we could have this great opportunity, and I'm interested in your company. And it was not a great experience. And I did not feel, you know, the warm and fuzzy about this. Could be a group that could take over this company and I'd be happy with it.

Right.

And about at the same time, I just started talking and sharing that story with a few of my peers in the industry. And somebody mentioned a name and said, hey, there's a guy out there right now you should talk to and you should talk to him soon because he's looking to start hunting. So I got connected with this person and after talking with him, you know, we spent a few hours on the phone just kind of going back and forth on what I was looking for and what he was looking for. And I realized that I had found the champion that tech restore needs. And it was like, it was just everything evolved around and it was. This guy had a like minded vision of how to make this company better and how to serve the customers better. We kept having these conversations and it was all customer centric and it was awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

And the other group that I was was all numbers and dollars and cents and how you could wring out, you know, another, you know, a few percentage points of this and that.

Sure, yeah.

And, and that's important, I get it. But again, that's not my strong point. And so this guy, you know, Jeff, his name, he, you know, he came in and just had a very similar view of the way you build success, that strong relationship with the customer, that. And that's what we've done here for the last, you know, 13 years. And so, so that's what really came together that made me feel the timing was right and to be comfortable letting it. Letting go.

You got to let go. Yeah. So, okay, so I know the answer to this question, but just so that people listening know how generally when a business is sold, the, the, the owner or, you know, the key personnel are generally required to stay on for some period of transition. And that period can be very short in terms of weeks or months, or it can be very long in terms of years. So for you and this particular deal, how long do you stick around?

Yeah, that was the thing that the, the first group that came to me, I realized they know nothing, you know, and it would have taken me years. You know, I would have been involved for, for probably, you know, they were talking one to two years.

Okay.

I'm saying, and that's not just so.

People listening know that's not out of the question. I mean, that's, that's very reasonable.

Very reasonable. Yeah. And the, so the team and the group that wound up, you know, buying the company have a, just a very deep breadth of experience and they know the market very well. They've had a deep, a different experience, but still related to the Apple market and service business. And so, you know, my involvement is, is only needed for, is a much, much shorter time. You know, it's a matter of months versus, you know, instead of years. And that being said, I, I anticipate I will be involved. Whatever they need me to do to help, of course, you know, because I'm just, I'm vested in this, the story I mentioned to you earlier, the story of TEC and being sure that I help. You know, I don't even know the right word for it, but during this transition and really getting it to them in the best possible manner and helping solve the inevitable problems that are going to come up when you have a transition transition and they're moving the business, you know, to another state and out of the area and you know, mainly focused on our mail order, educational and wholesale business. So there's a lot of stuff.

So they're going to make some changes. Sure. I mean, not, not just, not just geographical changes, but, but some, some logistical changes. And so they, they, they want to do that. Okay.

Yeah.

So that's, so that, that. So let me ask you this. And, and perhaps I shouldn't ask you this for the first time publicly, but like what. Every business has a whole variety of assets, right?

Yep.

And, and some of those assets are hard assets, like you know, chairs and telephones and then other assets are goodwill and customer list and all that stuff. So what was the, the chief or chief one or few things that, what were your assets that these people wanted to buy? Like what's the value for them from you?

Yeah, that's right. So one of the things I've been involved in some business sales and helping people sell their companies before and one of the things that I always saw both sides getting hung up on was the value of physical assets. The owners of the company tend to value them very high or they're on the books very high in the case of inventory. And there's always questions. And I actually had to go back, this was a long time ago, but years and years ago, and go to an arbitration and testify about how inventory was valued because the people that bought an entity thought things were not quite on the up and up. And so I made a decision that we were not going to, we were going to try to not sell, include any of the physical assets in the sale of this business.

Right. Okay. So for this particular buyer, they don't need your chairs and telephones.

Nope.

So what is The. And if you don't mind telling us, you said these people have existed in the Apple market. So that makes Jimmy curious. Would I have heard of them in any way or. Not really.

No, not really. They were in the back end of a few different large entities that they've worked for before. Got it and very successful and done an awesome job. And so they bought the name, the brand. We had spent a few years developing a suite of software applications that we used to run the company that was very, they were very interested in that. The process, the different processes that we use is very different than they were familiar with. So they were intrigued with that, how that worked and our, obviously our customer list and those relationships that we have with our customers. That was the, you know, the meat, if you will.

Yeah, yeah. No, that. That's the answer to the question. Okay. Yeah. Because. Because for, for your, your exact same company to a different buyer, there might be a whole different value structure.

Inevitably.

Inevitably. Right. And so that's that. It's just an interesting thing for anybody that's considering selling or buying a business. You know, you're really trying to match up just the pieces that fit and then there's going to be collateral that comes along with it just because. And that's okay. You don't have to. Don't expect that any one buyer is going to value everything that you have to sell. It's a package deal. They're going to understand that. But don't expect them to write a check that reflects every bit that you think you have in your business.

Yeah, yeah. And don't, you know, you should lay it all out there. Of course you're underestimate what you think, oh, this is not a big value. Well, you don't know.

True. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You. Something that doesn't necessarily strike a chord with you.

Yes.

Like, like, and I don't know this, but perhaps your software. Right. You're like, well, that's just this stuff that we've developed over the years. Right. It's this thing, you know, we're, I mean, we have this. IT backbeat. And at TMO too. Like, other people come in and see that and they're like, this is awesome. And I'll tell them, oh, no, this sucks because this part doesn't work. And this is held together with bailing wire. But you know, it's this. But it does work. That's the reality. And like you said, people can come in and see that.

Even things like your, like your supplier lists.

Well, that's goodwill Right.

Very valuable. Yeah, that's, it's your goodwill. And you know, interestingly enough, it didn't take long after we kind of. The sale closed at the end of June, and we kind of announced it after like on the, I think the seventh or the ninth, actually. And so it didn't take long until I had a few calls from other people, dealers that were, hey, can you tell me where you buy X now? Can you tell me where to get this? And I said, oh, you know, I can't. I'll give you the name of the new, the owners and if you'd like to work with them and that kind of thing. But those were part of the assets that we had sold.

Right, Right.

So it's not just client relationships, but it was all your, all your vendor relationships too. So.

Yeah, so. So in, in essence, and, and again, this is just a good lesson to anybody that's, that's listening. In essence, the goodwill portion of this is perhaps the most valuable part that you sold to this particular buyer.

Yeah.

Or at least one of the valuable things that you sold. Yeah, yeah.

And, and the other thing is that I, and I learned a lot about it because I didn't really know much about this was that when you' those things, it's very important how you allocate the overall purchase price because there are dramatic tax ramifications to the, the type of tax you will pay.

Really?

Yeah. And I just, I was like, you're kidding me. Really? Oh, yeah. You know, so you need to make sure you get advised by a good accountant that could say, look, if you sell the business for X, you know, you only, you want to make sure you value this at a reasonable amount, not too much on this side. And they'll give you. You have to be reasonable about what?

Yeah, exactly.

There's certain rules that you use and valuations, but you need to get advised because some things are valued as ordinary income, which is very high.

That's taxable.

Yes. And other things are valued at return on investment, which is typically much lower, as much as half.

Right? It can be. Yeah. You treat it as essentially capital gains, right?

Yeah, capital gains. So you need to look at that. And so what are some of the.

Things that are capital gains type things versus income type things? If you could just give an example.

The, some of the, like blue sky and opportunity things and some of that goodwill.

Yep.

Those are, you know, you're getting a return on your investment.

Okay.

And the other assets like software or your, your brand logo, you know, all these things you've you've kind of built over time.

Yeah.

That can, that can generate ordinary income, but it's very, you know, it's very kind of specific and certainly no experts. So when you do this, you need to talk to an accountant and say, hey, I'm thinking of selling my company for X number of dollars. What's the best way to value it? And that needs to be in the purchase agreement because both sides need to agree on that.

Yeah. Because the tax.

Yeah. Because they're going to claim it one way and you all have to agree. So that's a whole nother negotiation because there's some benefit to them on the other side. So you have to kind of go back and for just one more thing that, you know, I was like, wow, I had no idea. So isn't that.

And even once you agree on a price, deciding how it's structured, not even, even if they're going to write you, you know, one flat check, which is a whole other thing. Right. Because sometimes when you sell your business, you know, you, you might get nothing up front and it might be paid out over time or it might all be paid up front or a mix of both.

Yeah. And one of the things that worked really well for us, what I realized as we began working and the first part of the whole thing, and maybe they always go this way, but, you know, we, we met, we talked. We. I knew that this was the person. I think he felt, hey, this is the business for me.

Sure.

And then it was all numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers over and over and over and over. And I was kind of on the sideline because that's not my, you know, big strong point. And I thought, you know, and I called out and I said, look, we need to start having regular phone calls just about this business and about what, you know, my, the history of it and what you want to do. And so we, we talked multiple times every week for about two months. And it made a world of difference in all these negotiations and the, the how the, how the deal was structured and everything. It was great. But along the way, you know, we had these different ways the deal was going to be funded. And one of the things I, I made a conscious decision about halfway through this was, look, we need a plan B in addition to the plan A that we all agree and it's the best case scenario and it's fantastic. But if that doesn't come together, I needed to know that this deal was going to happen.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah. I was at a point where it's like both of us, we kept talking. We're like, you know, it's almost like we're at the end, but we don't know are we going to really make it to the end, because is plan A going to come through? So we developed a plan B.

Okay. So we're talking about how the buyer is going to fund the purchase, how.

The deal is going to fund it.

Okay. So similar to buying a house, you know, what's the mortgage going to look like? Right, Exactly. And if they can't get the mortgage that you both hoped for them to get, well, then the deal doesn't happen. Yeah. Unless you have a plan B. Yeah.

So this plan B was, you know, it wasn't the ideal for either of us, but it was like, hey, if the ideal can't happen, we're all okay with this.

So.

And that will. That what that allowed us to do was really put our foot on the gas. And if we didn't have a plan B, then I think the deal probably would have taken another two to three months to put together.

And as we have learned both, sort of collectively or generally, and you and I, very, very specifically, time kills all deals.

Yeah.

You got.

Things are coming together. You've got some good synergy. There's good opportunities on both sides. You know, everyone is feeling like, hey, this is a good thing for all of us. You know, we've. Everybody's feels good about it. You need to strike while it's, you know.

Yeah. You need to strike while the iron's hot. Yeah. And you're right, that's not just true for you as the seller. I mean, it's easy to be sort of put blinders on and see it that way, but the same is true for the buyer. That's right. And what I'm referring to here is Shannon and I had a company called Deal Brothers, actually deals on the web at the time, and we had a publicly traded company come in. We went through all of this process right here and three days before, maybe not even three, it might have been one.

Yeah.

I think it was one day before the deal was supposed to happen. We got what, a one sentence email from the CEO of this company saying it was Alan Meckler, who you can research the guys. Great guy.

Oh, that was awesome.

You want to talk about a deal guy? That's him. But it was. Yeah. We've had something else come up and we can't fund the deal.

And we learned a lot of crap.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah. We learned how hard it was to not get that check. But at the same time, we learned a lot about timing and how things all came together. And so, you know, I'm sure some.

Of that translated into what you did this time. And just in terms of, you know, the general sort of due diligence and that sort of thing.

Yeah, I kind of felt like, you know, we had this opportunity and we were so close, but if we were going to get hung up in the details with. And if you were for a bank, please forgive me, but bankers, you know, can really mess things up. And they don't get the culture of your business and they don't get the excitement of what you've built, and they don't get to see the impact you've had on your customers lives, your employees lives, even your supplier. They don't get it. So, you know, if you're relying on them to close the deal.

Oh, they will kill the deal. I was just gonna say bankers and lawyers will kill all deals. All deals. And I mean, we've that deal with whoever it was, Jupiter Media at the time, our respective lawyers, our lawyer and their lawyer almost killed that deal. Like, I had to step in and call Alan directly and say, okay, look, our lawyers are fighting and this thing's falling apart. Are you and I cool if we do it this way? And he was like, yeah, that's fine. Like, perfect. I wish we could save the thousands of bucks that we just spent on our attorneys, but at least we didn't kill the deal. And then, of course we did.

Well, you know that it's beyond our control. But.

But right.

Things like purchase agreements, you know.

Yeah.

Your attorneys can try to grind the other side into nothing. So. Excuse me. You know, getting involved in kind of having real world language and stuff in there.

I mean, that's exactly right. Yeah.

It's not an. It should not be, in my opinion, an adversarial relationship when you're trying to either buy a company or sell one.

No, it should be. It should feel almost like a partnership. It should.

Yeah. And this felt so good. And I was like, man, we really have to protect this right now. And so we. I just kind of threw this option out there and everybody, I think, kind of breathed a sigh of relief, like, oh, hey, that's something worth considering. And again. And it allowed us not to be focused on what some committee, faceless committee decision made that we had nothing to do with and allowed us to go down another route if we needed to. And it's worked out great. I mean it.

So you did enact Plan B, is that correct?

We are. Well, as of now, it's. Yeah, kind of, sort of. We're kind of in the middle, and we have a. What we did is we built in a, you know, a little way, a window, if you will, to give us the opportunity to go with A or B. And we're in that window right now.

Oh, I got you. Okay.

So either way it happens, it's going to be fantastic, and everybody's happy with it.

That's great, man.

It just allowed us to move the.

You get to keep moving forward.

Yeah, moving forward. So now that the deal's closed, you know, we're really knocking things off the punch list, and there's just so much you can't do until you've really closed. And then you're like, okay, here. Here's everything. You know, let me explain all this stuff and all that stuff, because you're kind of holding things a little closer to the vest.

Yeah. Until the papers are signed.

Yeah, until the papers got signed. Until there's some money in the bank. That kind of stuff. So I just would encourage people to be open to if they felt the need to. It's worked out well for us.

No, that's smart, because, well, that way you almost get to commit the sale earlier in the process.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. I like it.

I could just feel it. I could feel everybody involved going, okay, this is really going to happen. And I told Rene, I told my wife, I said, this is happening. We're not. Because we kept kind of talking a little about it, but we just weren't sure, you know, because you just don't know. It's like selling your house. Like, it's a great analogy that you said earlier, you know, it could fall out of escrow two days before it's supposed to fund, you know. Of course.

Yeah.

And in order to have a successful transition of knowledge to a new buyer of a business, man, you have to commit. I mean, we were just doing massive data dumps, you know, every time, and, you know, I felt like I'd hang the phone up and I could unplug the cord from my head, you know?

Yeah.

And we, you know, we created all these tutorials and how to do different things that we do, different stuff, and so. So it worked out well for us. I'm happy with it.

That's pretty good, man. Congratulations.

Oh, thanks. I'm very happy.

You should be. Yeah. Well, several times through this, and even when we got together tonight and first started talking, you kept saying this phrase, the story of tech restore and it's interesting. I've told friends, in fact, I had somebody, he just so happened this morning, called me and said, hey, have you guys ever done an episode on pricing and selling your business? And he does. He's got a. It's a small company, but it's not that small. Sure. You know, and he started it not that long ago, but he's built up some clientele, and some of his competitors, it sounds like, want to buy him out of the business. Right, right. Which is great, because they can see the future. They see he's got the momentum. They want to stop him. You know, essentially, that's what it is. Right.

They want to grab onto that.

They want to grab on. Yeah, exactly. And really, you know, capitalize on it. So, you know, but I said, you know, the time to sell is often not when you feel like you must sell. In fact, that's probably not the time that gets the worst. Right. A buyer's not going to show up when you don't want to sell. And so I said to him, you know, you're going to. There is going to be an emotional component of this. This. Because how could there not be? I mean, you built this thing at a whole clock. Right. And with you, the emotional component to this is the story of Tech Restore, clearly.

Yeah.

And your employees. I mean, it's all these people. That's right.

It's their story, too. And that was very difficult for me to deal with and to manage that, especially because they're relocating the company and we had some folks stay with the business, which is great, but not everyone. And it's challenging. It's very tough, but it is. The story is really important, and it's wrapped around me really closely from my standpoint, and I need it to be a successful thing, even though it is successful now. And I know it's going to continue to be. This will be another chapter in it, that a whole new part of the story will go on with somebody else. And I will be a part of that because I helped start is challenging. I mean, it's. You know, everybody kept asking, oh, bittersweet, bittersweet. And had it. Had the right person not come along, I probably would have been much more on the bitter side. But, you know, for me, it's been just, you know, finding that person that could embrace it and get excited about it as much as I've gotten excited about it. And to look at the value in a unique way that only someone who really is into this business would understand. It's awesome.

So, okay.

It's been great.

So I mean, obviously I'm not going to ask you to talk specifics, but. Yeah, but the concept of valuing a business, especially a small business, is very hard. It's a movie. Yeah, it's very nebulous. So, I mean, is there a general, I know there's a general rule of thumb that you use. It's either, you know, multiple of your gross earnings or your profits. But even like the word profits, like, you know, we as small business owners, we try to make that number zero.

Well, we talk about, you know, living a charmed life on this show all the time.

Yeah.

And what I, you know, what we mean by that is, you know, maximizing your lifestyle with your, with your business. And that can often mean that on paper, some years or maybe depending how often you do it, multiple years. Your business on paper is not the whole story. We had business broker on the show here last year talking a lot about one of the main things he does is help small business owners restate their earnings. And that's very difficult because you have to go and, you know, pull everything out of your financials that are not essential to running your business on a day to day basis.

Like if you happen to have a company car that might be something that really, to a buyer is something you can present as profit, even though you can totally present that to the IRS as an expense.

Yeah. And so again, where you need a good accountant because the accountant needs to dig through your financials and go, what's this? What's this? And how did this come about? And did you guys, you know, you had your board meeting in, you know, Chicago, San Lucas, Mexico? That's right. And that's perfectly fine.

Look, those things are, I call those the not my rules.

That's correct category.

Right. You say, and when I say you, I mean the irs, you say that I can have a board meeting in Mexico as long as I have people there from my company that are part of the board. Well, guess what?

That's right.

You know, if my wife happens to be on the board, that's also okay.

Yes, that's right. So going through that and now, you know, it's another thing that the guys at the bank, they don't like that.

Right.

They want, they want you to book all the profit every year and pay all the taxes every year. And you know, my philosophy is a little different than that.

Same. Look, you can't run a successful small business. I've always said, and I maintain this, that your margins exist in your ability to properly Navigate the tax code.

Yeah, a lot of it.

Not my rules.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, especially if you have a company that has inventory. Well, at the end of the year, you know, if you've got a half a million dollars in profit and your accountant says, well, you know, do you have any inventory that you'd like to write down that may have, you know, changed value, lost, well, you can lower your taxable income perfectly legally, you know, of course you want to do that. You know, if you sell that inventory later, you're going to book 100% of the profits because you've written it down to zero.

Right.

But that year, your taxable income is going to be much less. So that restating of the earnings is very, very important.

Well, it's the only way a buyer can see what you actually have in your business. Because we don't run our books to look attractive to buyers. And the good news is, business people who are going to buy a business totally understand this, because guess what?

They do.

They run their business the same darn way.

Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the multiples are really different in every business, but it's kind of okay, you know, what'd you make last year? What'd you make the last three years? What kind of multiple can we do? And a lot of it depends on the payout and how long you want or you have to stick around. And what are they offering you up front? Well, maybe, gee, if you stayed for a year, we'll pay X. If you stay for, you know, two years, we'll pay y. All that stuff is open to negotiation. In my case, we just tried to keep it as simple as possible. And now that we've closed the deal, we're going back and saying, hey, here's an inventory list. If you're interested in these parts, let us know. And they have the choice to buy them for their stock or to pass. And that way it keeps everything that's clean very easy. And then you don't argue about.

Let you get the deal done.

Yes, yes, exactly, exactly, exactly. And I've just seen it before where some guys are, well, my inventory is worth a million dollars.

Great. Find somebody else to buy that.

Yeah. The buyer's like, well, how's that worth a million? What is this? And you've had this inventory for five years and this and that. And it can really get difficult to navigate that. So we just said, well, you know, we do have a ton of inventory, but hey, we'll either sell that to somebody else or we'll sell it to you. And if you'd like to buy it, if it is a value of you, and of course, then you can negotiate the price. Price. And come up with something that works every. You know, so all this stuff, it's all negotiable, but keeping it simple, I think, is really critical. We had a very simple purchase agreement. We really tried to strip it down, protect one another. And like you said, Dave, it did feel more like a partnership once we, you know, really got to know each other and got together and, you know, had a few beers. It always helps.

No, it does. No. Well, you gotta. Got to get to know these people, right?

Exactly. You're gonna be working with them for a long time. I don't care how long. Yeah, it's a month or a year. It's going to be a long time.

It's going to be intense.

Yeah, yeah, it is intense. It's. It's mentally intense going through it. And I feel really, you know, honored that we've got this team in place now that's going to, you know, really put the gas on certain aspects of the business that we hadn't done before and as well as maintain the same, you know, awesome level of service that. I mean, it's a cliche, but it really is what built the company.

And of course it is.

You know, and all these people that we said, hey, this is what's going on, and they all just came right over and it's been. It's fantastic.

That's great, man.

Yeah, that's great we're having on the show. I told him halfway through, about a month into it, I said, you know what's going to be great? About a year from now, I'm going to have you on the small business show and you're going to tell your side of the story. Story.

Oh, yeah.

And we're all going to learn from it, you know, and so it's going to be cool.

That's cool. No, I think it's great. And really, I've never heard. I'm sure. I'm sure other people have done it, or maybe they haven't, but this concept of building that core deal that's very simple and gets the balance shifted from it being your business to it being their business. Right. And yeah, you might have some inventory and you might have some chairs and tables or whatever that they either might want or might not, but the. The core, that shift over is not dependent on that stuff. And that. That's very interesting. I like that.

It worked well for us. And, And I Have not heard about it kind of. No before. I mean, I know about just selling certain assets and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just, you know, we, we just wanted to move.

But you, you, but you didn't just sell off assets that you then would keep running your core business. You saw, you sold the core and then you have these other assets sort of. I don't want to say they're left over, but they are kind of left over.

They're kind of left over.

Yeah.

I've got, you know, I'm looking at them right now. I got a lot of chairs, I got a lot of this, I got a lot of that, you know, and.

And so like that stuff is easy to sell to somebody else.

Yeah, well, we've got, you know, several other companies that we own that.

Right, you can, you can leverage that. Yeah, yeah.

Our warehouse is full of that stuff and so we'll, we'll are full of different stuff and you know, we're always busy.

That's really interesting, man. That's SM smart. That's good. Like you said, you prioritized making it happen as opposed to getting, you know, perhaps, you know, it all sold with the stroke of one pen or whatever. Whatever.

And not trying to squeeze every last penny out of everything.

Right.

You know, it, it, you can't, you can't do it. And what happens is you all wind up, you know, pissed off at each other. Yeah.

And no, it's adversarial and then it sucks.

Yeah. And this way it was a real give and take and, and I think, think in the long run and it will be one of the things that really made the deal successful.

That's awesome, man. Very cool.

Thanks for letting me come up and talk about it. I'm always. If you have any questions, people want to take it offline. Feedbackusshow co. I'd be glad to give you some more details on it. It was a lot of fun. And I'm now building something new and I can't wait to sell that one down the road.

Yeah, exactly. Right, right now. Yeah. It does change your mindset a little bit about. Okay, now, now that I've been, you know, all the way around, okay. I would build, I would build the next one slightly differently so that. Yeah, yeah.

As long as business, you know, my philosophy now is the next company is anything without a plug in the wall there, you know, anything that doesn't plug in the wall. So it's no electronics. All the soft goods.

Very interesting. Yeah, well, you've done enough with electronics, man.

Yeah, exactly.

I'M curious how you feel about that particular concept in about 17 months, but. Yeah, we'll find out. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, it's what, you know, that's the thing. It is so.

It is what I know. It's going to be interesting. Yeah.

It might come back around. Never say never. There you go, folks. Thanks so much for listening. Give us those itunes reviews at businessshow. Co itunes. Keep living the charmed life. Have fun. And there we go. Go.

Thanks, everybody.

Congrats, man.

Yep. Thank you.