George Vallone on Buying Small, Scaling Fast, and Using AI

In this episode of Bought the Biz, I sit down with George Vallone, owner of New Veltys Apartment Turnover Services, to unpack the real story behind buying a small cleaning business in 2021 and transforming it into a specialized apartment turnover company operating across Nashville and Denver. George shares what it was actually like stepping into ownership with just one employee, brutal cash flow lessons after his close, why his biggest advice to searchers is simple: just buy bigger. We also dig into how George found product-market fit inside of the business, why apartment turnovers became this winning niche, and how he's now using AI to scale without adding headcount. You're not going to want to miss this. Bought the Biz is a podcast for ETA entrepreneurs who've gone from searching for a business to actually running one. It tells the real story of what happens after the deal closes— the day-to-day operational, emotional, strategic, leadership challenges that just don't show up in the highlight reels. The show is story-driven and practical, sharing real experiences from operators along with clear, actionable takeaways you can use in your own business today. I'm Garth Fossano. I'm Christi Loucks. Welcome to Bot the Biz. George, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to have you on here. This is a crazy blast from the past. Since we used to live together 15 years ago back in Boston, and now somehow we are both revolving around the ETA world. So I've been so excited to, uh, do this with you. Um, why don't you start off by giving everybody a quick intro about the business you acquired, a little bit of background on you, and then let's dive into what it's been like since you've become the owner and operator.

Awesome. Yeah, full circle moment. Thanks for having me, Garth. Um, huge congrats to all your success. I'm watching you from afar cheer you on. Um, so my name is George Vallone. I'm the owner of Nuveldi's Apartment Turnover Services in Nashville, Tennessee, and we have an operation in Denver, Colorado as well— your backyard.

Yeah, there we go.

And I acquired a small cleaning company called Nuveldi's in 2021. January 11th of 2021, we closed Um, it was a general cleaning company focusing on some apartment buildings, some residential, some short-term rentals, just the cleaning. Um, I quickly got into the business and realized that the most profitable and easiest customers were the apartment communities. So we doubled down on that. And then I further realized that there was a huge opportunity for us to move laterally within the apartment turnover process, which is in between when one resident leaves the unit and the community needs to get the unit ready for the next resident to move in. Um, there's a budget for that every single time. Um, and so they paint, they clean, they carpet clean, they do handyman work. And so we built out those other service lines focused on specifically that niche of apartment turnovers. And have scaled, uh, quite significantly since 2021 after making that change.

So, okay, I gotta ask a question about this, and this might be like skipping ahead 5 steps, but the classic search advice is get in there and don't change anything. And you just immediately said, well, I doubled down on this other service line and sort of pivoted the business. Did that happen as quickly as you just implied that it did, or did that happen sort of gradually over time?

It was the first, like, 6, 3 to 6 months I didn't touch anything. And then after about 6 months, I started to see this opportunity. And at that point I had kind of my tentacles into things and I could make those, those moves.

Okay. All right. So then let's, let's rewind to those first 3 to 6 months and maybe even a little bit about that first day. Like, what was that like stepping into this business? Also, I think you just said that you acquired it in January 2021. I think that was a pretty tumultuous period for probably a lot of us. Like, I came into my business in 2022, so was coming out of the pandemic a little bit, but I think you were like, that sounds like pretty in it still. Or, you know, how, tell me how that might've played into your process as well.

Yeah, things were still kind of closed down then. And, um, but I still consider 2022 the same ETA class as many as 2021. And also shout out to all the listeners and viewers that the, the pandemic era ETA people are their own breed of crazy with all of the unknowns. But yeah, basically we, I was making, I had a thesis that, that was at the height, height of, especially when I was going through diligence and everything, that was the height of the craziness and a lot of unknowns. And I effectively formed a thesis that the economy is going to rebound pretty quickly. I think this is going to be just like a speed bump. And in the meantime, there are going to be some struggling small businesses that are probably scared to death. So let me go find one of those, hopefully buy it for a discount, which I did, and then steer it out of the pandemic into whatever is beyond the pandemic. Part of my thesis as well was I was noticing in 2020 that there was a massive migration of people from from the Northeast and from California and from places where it was particularly closed down with lots of work-from-home mandates and those types of things. I figured, and I was kind of anecdotally hearing that a lot of people were moving to states with no income tax, because if you can get paid New York wages but live in Tennessee or Alabama with no income tax, it's basically 15, 20% more into your pocket. So I was seeing this migration happening and I said, why don't I focus on those states with no income taxes? That seems to be a demographic trend. And the more people that move to a place, the more things to clean effectively. So that was my mindset. Yeah.

All makes sense. So you're calling us a special breed of crazy for getting into this. All right. So what was your plan for day one in that transition? I think that this is a really pivotal moment for a of searchers. And so that step into the operator shoes and what did you prepare? What was that day like? I know it was 5 years ago now. We should have done this way earlier, but what do you remember from that?

It was a small company, only 1 employee. So we have a 1099 contractor model where we have today, we have our office staff, we have about 10 employees on W-2, and then the actual labor is a 1099 model. Um, so I inherited one singular employee as part of the acquisition.

That also sounds kind of scary. It sounds like easier. Oh, this transition is going to be that hard, but also kind of scarier because it's kind of you and yeah.

Yeah. And a very big key man risk. So, um, we can, we can bookmark this, but I have, uh, a good conversation point would be what would I do differently for the, if I had to do it all over again. And so if you want to get into that, we can, but I guess I can answer it.

I want to know right now.

Yeah.

So lay it on me. What would you do differently?

Buy bigger. Buy bigger.

But like you're the poster child of buy small and grow the heck out of the thing like that.

True. Yeah. So the counterargument is you buy small and then you build a ton of equity and value in the business and, you know, your debt's low and all that stuff. But it's been such a grind to get to a point where I have enough cash flow to reinvest into the growth of the business that if I started from day one with the cash flow, I could have accelerated the growth much more. So it's the same amount of headache, I think, to buy a $500,000 business as a $2 million business or something like that. But with a $2 million business, there's less, less key man risk as, as we just discussed with, with my singular employee. Um, so I think there's, there's more resilience of a, of a larger business and then you just have more money to, to play with, to, to grow the business and accelerate your growth plans. So the first couple of years was literally me crawling out of that. Cash flow deficit, if you will, or not having enough cash to reinvest into the business to get it to a point where it is big enough where, okay, now I can start really reinvesting in meaningful ways in the business.

I mean, I remember when I was searching, everyone— not everyone, but a lot of people said, hey, buy bigger. And I was like, that's kind of scary. I want to buy smaller. And I think I bought 3, 5 times bigger than you did, but still sub-$2 million price point. And I think my advice going back to myself would be to still buy bigger because I think you still have key man risk, you still have a lot of those risks. I did have cash flow to, uh, invest in the business, and I used that to pay down debt a bunch over the first 2 years. But, um, but yeah, I think, I think going bigger will alleviate a bunch of those I mean, you're going bankrupt if it fails either way, right?

Especially if you put a personal guarantee on the business. If it fails, you're going down to zero either way. So take a bigger swing.

That is one way to think about it. I still have a hard time encouraging that approach, but I still probably would recommend to myself to buy bigger and I probably would still do exactly what I did.

In hindsight.

Okay. So, so doing things to do differently, you would buy bigger. What about like the way you actually manage the transition given that you did buy smaller, like with one other employee? What did that look like? Did you just kind of, did you, they know beforehand that this was happening? Did you come in and announce that and sort of go out to lunch and, you know, talk about the future or like, how did that even work?

So this, the single employee was the sister of the previous owner.

Okay.

Um, and she was involved in all of the diligence conversations, so she was aware of what was going on. Um, I think there was a little bit of, you know, an introduction and winning over the, the contractors who are as much part of the team, you know, as, as the employees effectively. So there was some convincing to do with them. That, you know, you're in good hands. I made it pretty clear that it was going to be a new business. We're going to do things differently, but that I would have respect for, you know, their working SOPs to date. The immediate transition, I think, was, was, was Fairly easy because the previous owner was very much just still running the business in that first 30 days. I had a pretty significant seller note on the business, so she was aligned that this needed to go well so that she could get paid her seller note. And so effectively the first 30 days I was just shadowing the, the seller. And it felt, you know, pretty stable. It felt pretty much business as usual. We went around and made introductions to the key customers with, with the seller. So there was sort of a handoff with the key customers. And we transitioned all of the paperwork over all of the, you know, insurance, the banks, all the boring stuff. So I think the first 30 days it didn't even hit me. I think the real chaos started happening as the seller started to step away and as I started to really feel some of the kind of nuances and problem areas of the business fall more heavily on my head rather than having the seller be able to handle problems.

I want to get to that, but first I want to go back to— you mentioned winning over the contractors and sort of your new team. Like, what tactically did you do to do that?

I sat down with every single one of them.

Okay. Was that like one-on-one or was that, you know, a big group setting? Was it a like group? Because I think the reason I'm asking this is because as a searcher becoming an operator, you are going to be heads down, due diligence, getting the deal closed, and then all of a sudden the light is at the end of the tunnel. You sign the paperwork, and then the next day basically you go in and step into the business and hopefully you've given it a lot of thought. But what I want to do is help provide examples of what people have done. And so that's why I'm asking this sort of pretty tactical question of how you handled that, because you sort of hid the fact that this was a much larger team than just one employee because you did effectively have these contractors supporting your business.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's I think you have to really sell yourself as why this leadership transition is a good thing for them.

Yep.

And so, and that's not a one-meeting sale and close. That's multiple touchpoints. And I think the first couple touchpoints is you have to be listening to them and you have to be asking questions. What's going right? What's going wrong? What do you care about? Where's your motivation? And then you have to formulate— it's going to vary situation by situation— what is your pitch to these people as to why they should stay with your company, why they should be loyal to you, why they should be motivated. Then you need to design the carrot and the stick from scratch according to what your vision is for the, for the, for the company, the new company, and then slowly roll that out, but also, you know, be able to get emotional buy-in from, from the employees. Like, I think a leadership transition— I'm sure everybody has, has seen, um, the difference between a good leader and a bad leader. And like, I know I have in, in my career. Um, I've been at companies where we've had, um, you know, a great CEO and they leave for whatever reason, new CEO comes in, it's kind of a flop and you just see morale and productivity and motivation tank. And then I've also seen the opposite where we had a bad CEO, a new CEO comes in and it's like everybody's got this energy about them. And the difference is the leadership. It's that simple. So swapping out a leader in an organization it can be like pouring gasoline on that organization, or it could be like putting a wet blanket on the organization. You obviously want to be the gasoline type of leader. So I think it's all about listening and then designing those carrots and sticks that have emotional connections with, with the people that you're leading.

Yeah, I, I think also a really important thing you said early on is that you're not— it's not a one-meeting close. Like, this is going to take time, and I think that That's because you're building trust and, you know, that is something that can take a while to build and you can destroy instantly. And so I remember during some of these moments was just really sort of going back to what my core values were and what I believed in and sort of just trying to be a good person and using that as a lot of my foundation. Because I think as a new leader of a small business where you do have a PG, you're going to get hit with a whole bunch of things that that seem sort of wild that you won't have been able to anticipate. And I think that's— so I imagine some of the questions that you got in those one-on-ones were probably like you had never had to encounter a question like that in your career in the past. And so figuring out how to answer that, not just creating incentive models, but like, what, what does this— what are my values as a person, as a leader, and how do I want to represent myself, and how do I want that to sort of manifest through this company? So I think having some grounding in that will be super helpful as well for those conversations. All right. Then you started to say the seller started to exit the business and then some— I'll use my words— some cracks started to appear and you started to realize what you were into. So tell me a little bit about that. What were some of those moments and what were you realizing as they transitioned out?

This one is, it might be very specific to multifamily in general, but I'm going to try to make it useful for in general. The, so there's a difference between your P&L modeling in Excel versus how it happens in real life. And it's every, every business has its own nuances. I'll bring it into my business as an example, but we can apply this, I think, to most businesses, which is— so we had an insane cash flow issue those first 6 months because I didn't understand all of the steps that were required in multifamily for them to pay us as a vendor. So, you know, we're booking jobs, we're doing jobs, we're doing, you know, our accrual numbers look great. But at around month 2 or 3, it's like, well, the money's not really coming in as I modeled it in my beautiful Excel spreadsheet. So, so why is that? And so then I needed to go investigate. Oh, we're not in compliance with this property or this property management company is still sending money, you know, to the other, to the, to the seller. So many different little examples of just like one little detail being off and the money not being sent to us. And that adds up over time, right? Especially when I'm paying my contractors every 2 weeks and my standard payment terms with properties are 30 days if they're perfect. None of them are perfect. So usually it's 45 or 60 days. So I had to untangle and figure out, I had to just trace, trace it directly to why the money wasn't coming to us. And then solve a bunch of just very nuanced problems, very specific to each property. Um, so I think the, the general lesson that can be applied to somebody who's taking over a new business is do that beforehand. Do that before you close with the business, have a complete map of, okay, I need to switch over, um, these, you know, remittance addresses to my bank account. Here's how I do that. Um, I need to switch over these, these portals or these compliance or these payment portals or whatever into my name. Here's how I, how I do that. Um, and do that stuff like the first week with the seller. Um, cause they'll, they'll be familiar with how to do all of those things and make sure that you have a direct line for that money to get from the customer to your bank account as fast as possible. Map this all out before you close the business. Don't try to do it like I did 2 or 3 months after you close.

So how long did it take to get out? I mean, basically it's a like working capital and, you know, accounts receivable kind of issue. How long did it take you to get out of that? So I imagine like you find the problem, you've got to map these out, you got to go map, let's say like 30 of these different processes and fix each one and then wait to get paid. So I imagine like hopefully there was a line of credit involved to bridge that gap or, you know, some some mechanism to support that.

Yeah, there was, there was my personal life savings line of credit. Um, so yeah, yeah, so yeah, I, I made a loan to the business that didn't get paid back for I think 2 years or something like that. Um, but yeah, you know, it was— I think we had our money starting to flow in in a steady way probably around month 4 or 5. So, um, I had to basically float the business for, you know, we did have some money coming in, the easy customers that I was able to fix, you know, in the first month or two. Um, but the bulk of, of our, of our AR was coming in around month 4 or 5.

You know, I did an episode recently where I went back in time and I found my pro forma financial model and I shared it. And I dissected it on this podcast. And amazingly, I think year 1 was like the revenue number was dead on.

Really?

Yes. It was bonkersly close. I just couldn't believe that I actually got it. The way we got there was different than what was modeled, but we got there.

Yeah.

I think the bottom line numbers were pretty close too. Uh, yeah, so that was, that was pretty cool.

I'd have to dig mine up. Yeah.

Yeah, it was an interesting exercise to go back and look at like, how true was this and how, where was I wrong and where was I right? And I think that that's sort of the point of these spreadsheets is that, you know, they're not going to be entirely right. You're trying to get, you know, cut through a lot of the noise and find the signal and make sure it's directionally going the right way. But I think the thing that you brought up is sort of working capital and cash flow. That is like the classic ETA error in the transition. Uh, for in so many ways, like underestimating the, you know, terms for payments and how does the cash come in, when does the cash go out, um, in the deal, figuring out what's work in progress, what gets attributed to the seller, what gets attributed to you. All of that is, is very nuanced, and I think a lot of people make mistakes there. I've had a handful of other people on this podcast that have made a similar mistake too.

Yep.

That's just the way it goes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You live, you live, you learn.

All right. So that was sort of where the crack started. And then you said 6 months in, you started identifying this opportunity to focus on multifamily and apartment buildings and turnover. So tell us a little bit about how you uncovered that, how you moved the business towards that model, and then we can sort of get into where you guys are today.

Sure. So, you know, I think I started to realize that we needed a repeatable, scalable model, operating models to deliver these cleans, right? Because so, and I started to realize that every residential clean or every short-term rental clean that we did was unique versus these apartment cleans where they were vacant apartment units with generally the same layout, same general size floor plan. A 1-bedroom at this property is the same as a 1-bedroom more or less at this property versus an Airbnb. They would be asking us to put the pillows back on the bed in a certain way and stack the silverware in the cupboard in a certain way. It was— there were too many details to manage. It was non-standardized. And so I didn't think that that was very scalable. So that was my first sort of hint. And then I started to really think about Just the macroeconomic situation of the country. I was thinking that there would be potentially a big market correction coming out of COVID I think that's where everybody was at mentally in 2021, 2022. And so, I said, "Okay, what's going to survive if we have a downturn? Is it going to be people like luxury services, cleaning for houses?" No. "Are people going to be using Airbnbs?" No. "Are they going to be renting apartments?" Yes. So I thought that that would be more of a recession-proof sector to focus on. So I really started paying very close attention to, to apartments and how can we scale this and what other lateral services can we add?

Was this an easy realization or was it like, as I'm trying to play back when I came up with ideas in my business and I, and in hindsight, it sounds like, oh yeah, like this is happening. That's hard. I'm going to go this way because it's easier. I imagine though it was more like, oh no, like I've bought this business that's got this incredibly complex operating model with Airbnb cleans. Like so many details, is it going to be hard to scale? Like how am I— and then that was the challenge. And then over time it wasn't like this magical epiphany instantly, oh, we're going to go to turnover. Or was that easier than it sounded?

I think you said it, it's, it's you be like water, right? Bruce Lee, like flow, like where's the river taking us? It's like, oh, these Airbnbs are really hard and I'm getting yelled at a lot by these customers. So I'm going to veer away towards the, the customers that are happy with what we're doing, that are paying. Um, and, and there's a ton of opportunity there. So I think it was, intuitive at the time. I don't know, this was 5 years ago. I'm probably, I have rose-colored glasses, but it's, yeah, I mean, in hindsight, yeah, it was just the way that I think the business was directing me almost. I was almost listening to the business. Yeah.

That's good. I think that's helpful for people because I think as you see some of these challenges, it's in hindsight, it seems like, oh, here's the problem, here's the solution. Those things weren't— didn't come hand in hand, but you are guided by what is making sense, what's working well. And so it's, it's not like you're in this glass tower making these strategic macro decisions. It's a little bit of a combination of all that and then bringing in your perspective from your prior career to help make these decisions and, and maybe accelerate it and get that happening faster. But I think the big news is that like your focus on apartment turnover has been fantastic for the business and now you've expanded into new markets. So give us a little bit of the update of where things sit today and where you're headed and what you're up to.

Yeah, so we have a full sort of turnkey apartment turnover offering right now where all you have to do is say, hey, I got my residents moving out on the 5th, the next one's moving in on the 12th. I need these services and you have one phone call to make, one invoice to get. Our customers absolutely love that. It's pretty unique to the Nashville market, is, is one vendor to use for the entire turnover. I know there are some other businesses doing it in other markets, but it is unique here, and I think it makes us really sticky. And, um, you know, our customers are, they're property management companies. They're, um, they— I have a lot of empathy for our, for our customers. I have to, right, as a business owner, generate, developing a service for, for people. I think that would be a good takeaway for listeners, is to get inside the mind of your customers, develop empathy. What are their pains? What keeps them up at night? What do they get comped on? You know, like a lot of our property managers get comped on decreasing the vacancy time in between residents. So if we can get all of the units in a 300-unit building, if we can reduce the turnover time from 8 days to 5 days, that has real bottom line impact for them and they can, they usually get bonused on that bottom line impact. So how can we develop a service that fits within that incentive structure for our customers? So it's been, it's been really sticky, I think, because we, we take really good care of our property managers. We want to make their lives easier, not harder. And I think we're pretty unique, at least in Nashville and Denver, in that we're, we're super reliable and we operate like a modern company. I think a lot of our competitors can be either mom and pop shops or too big to care about any specific customer. I think we're sort of right in that sweet spot where we're big enough to act like a modern company, but we're small enough where we can have personal relationships with with all of our customers. Yeah, so we've— today we're operating in about 150 communities, about 20,000-25,000 units that we, that we kind of oversee the turnover process for. National Apartment Association has turnovers occurring in 46% of an apartment building's units on an annualized basis. So if you have a 100-unit building, 46% of those units are going to turn over in one year. So it's helped that it is very sort of predictable and repeatable recurring revenue for our company, and that's enabled us to continue to sort of lay the tracks down for our growth as we, as we drive the train, if you will. So yeah.

Yeah. What, what has that growth story been like? You went from 1 employee, now you said there's about 10. And so like, what was your first next hire to make your life easier? How did that, or, you know, how did you build that organization?

Okay. So I'm gonna, I might embarrass myself a little bit on this, but I think it's, it's, I love this now. I think it's it's worth the, the, the sophisticated buyer of a business will know this. Okay. I was not a sophisticated buyer when I first started. So the, the seller actually hid some stuff in their seller discretionary earning. Sorry, SDE, seller's discretionary earnings number. Which was that the husband of the seller was doing a ton of work and not reporting it. Um, so in other words, the, the SDE looked like it was $350K. It really should have been $350K minus his salary, which would have been $80 grand, $90 grand, something like that. Um, when I bought it, so the first person that I hired was to replace the husband of the business. So that was an unexpected expense, but it was necessary to run the business. It was essentially a, um, a, a field operations manager. So somebody that was out, um, inspecting units, um, after we had, we had done a job, um, trying to catch quality errors, um, before, hopefully before the customer did.

Yep. Yep. Makes sense.

Yep. And, and that was necessary because I, couldn't, I needed to be in the office solving our cash flow issues, working on the roadmap and stuff like that. I couldn't be out in the field. So I was like, I just need to bite the bullet, hire somebody to just be my eyes and ears out in the field. Um, for now. Um, so that was the first hire that I made.

Yeah. And what does the org look like today across those 10 people?

So we have, um, we have a Yeah, we have an office staff, so they field scheduling, customer support. We have a contractor sort of coordinator, so that's somebody who's sitting there all day long helping our contractors out in the field. Like, I'm locked out of this unit, I need an extra, I need to put in for a scope change on this job, yada yada. We have 3 people out in the field now doing quality assurance. So they drive around all day long and they inspect units after we've completed a project. They're looking for quality mistakes. And then we have a really robust system of sort of tracking those, those errors, tying them back to the original contractors, and then using that to train the contractors. So we're constantly trying to level up our contractors by training them on mistakes that either our QA team finds or that the property hopefully doesn't find, but sometimes that happens. Um, uh, then we have a VP of operations, um, overseeing sort of the, the general day-to-day. Um, and then we have 3 out in Denver, um, with a similar model, but we, we, we have a, a shared sort of centralized back office in Nashville to do the scheduling, customer service, invoicing, uh, those types of things.

Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. Okay. This is, I think, might gonna be my last question, kind of wrapping us up a little bit, but I think a lot of folks in the small business ETA space, whether they're an operator or a searcher today, are thinking a lot about AI and technology, what's coming, what industries are gonna get disrupted. Um, tell us a little bit about how that is affecting you or not affecting you and what your thoughts are about that.

Yeah, it's an interesting topic. Obviously it's changing so fast right now. I think it's a great time to be an owner of a business because this is transformational stuff that if you can be on the front end of it, you can really use it to drive growth and beat out market share, really to win market share from other businesses that aren't using it. The way that I'm leveraging AI right now is to decrease our sort of fixed operating cost. So I think with AI, if I wanted to scale this business, you know, I have a personal goal to triple the business in the next 5 years, right? And so in order to do that without AI, right, I would have to linearly scale my office staff and sort of the support services that go around the actual service that we do.

Yep.

I think with AI, we will, we're working on a project right now, complete sort of tech transformation. We're literally in the trenches installing it right now. So going over every single workflow in the business, mapping it to this new tech stack that we've built, which is heavily involved in using AI. With this new tech stack, I won't have to linearly scale headcount to scale the business. I think we probably, We'll be able to support 3 times the amount of business with the exact headcount that we have right now. I really think that that's the magnitude of impact that it's going to have on our operations because decisions are going to be getting made without a manual touchpoint. And that's really what it comes down to is we have about 300, we're doing about 300 jobs per week right now, which it's the slow season. We'll get up to about double that in July, August when we peak. And each, you know, each of those jobs is, could require a manual touchpoint, whether it's, hey, I'm locked out of this unit. Can you get a code from the property manager? You know, whatever it is. So it's all about automating all of those little manual touchpoints so that decisions can get made without a human being involved.

That is amazing. So you're, you're in it too. Like you're building this yourself. That's That is awesome. I think my advice to a lot of people is very similar to what you just said. Like, if you're not in the game, you don't ever participate. You don't, you don't get to participate in this transformation. If you're in the game, there are many opportunities to play in some way or another. So you could be, you could take the angle of like, I'm afraid of this, things are going to change. Or you could say, well, obviously things are going to change. I'm going to be a great person to lead a company through this transition. I think that's a really powerful, fun idea. So if you're able to triple the business and keep your headcount, basically you're going to— I mean, maybe this isn't quite right, but you can pretty much 3x your gross margins. That would be wild because you are effectively a services company, but maybe you're going to start to think about this business in a different way in a couple of years.

Yeah, I think so. I think it's a tech-enabled service. Business that we're doing right now. There could be a world in which we, you know, white label this for other companies or franchise or license our tech stack to other companies. But that's, that's, I also fear a little bit about overexpanding my focus. And so I really, I actively every week have to be like, okay, don't go chase those things, focus on what we're what we're doing here, what we're good at, what our niche is, and focus on delivering valuable for the value for the customers. So one of the big things that we're focused on with this initiative is improving the customer experience even more. But yeah, I think that that is directionally where we're going is to really increase operating margins. And growing top line and keeping sort of our fixed costs as flat as possible with this.

So I love the vision. That's amazing. And this is the time to be doing it. Anything you want to wrap us up with, George?

Just shout out to the ETA people. If you're thinking about doing it, you can contact me if you need advice or anything like that. There were a lot of people that I talked to when I was going through the process that helped me out. I think I want to return the favor. I highly encourage people to go down this path, especially with AI and all of this disruption that's happening right now. I think being an asset owner, the owner of a business, is one way to hedge against some of the maybe labor changes that are going to happen in the future. So I highly encourage it. It's changed my life financially, personally. It's the most rewarding career step I've ever made. So if you're thinking about doing it, think really, really hard because it is something where you can't half-step it. You're either all in or all out. But if you do decide to do it, I think there's a good chance that it's going to change your life too. So happy to help if anybody needs any help or has any questions out there.

Plus one to everything you just said. That's amazing. Thanks so much, George. Thanks for coming on.

Okay. Thanks. See ya.