Laid Off and Served Papers. Then Bought a Business

On this episode of Bought the Biz, I sat down with Raj Kankaria of Lone Star Attorney Service to talk about his transition into business ownership. He has quite a story that starts with being served divorce papers and getting laid off at the same time, but he turned that story into quite an opportunity. Um, in this episode, we talk about people decisions, implementing EOS, and running a business with gratitude being front and center. So Stay tuned. This is a really unique story.

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, and 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 Bought the Biz. Welcome to another episode of Bought the Biz. Today we are here with Raj Kankaria, who is the president of Lone Star Attorney, and he has quite a story for us today. So we are going to dive into his search and ownership experience, and we're just really excited that he's here. So thanks, Raj.

Thanks, Christi Loucks. It's so wonderful to be here with you today.

Yeah. So I think you have a fascinating beginning to your search and acquisition. So I'd love for you just to kind of give us a quick intro of who you are. What kind of business did you buy and, and sort of tell your, your story?

Yeah, absolutely. I'll just start from the very beginning. I'm originally from Houston, Texas. After high school, I went to West Point, served in the Army for 5 years as Army engineer officer. Um, after my obligation was complete, moved back to Houston, got a grad school degree, and then worked as an investment banker doing oil and gas transactions for a few years. I got picked up by an LNG project, um, and this is kind of where the story begins. Worked there for about a year. Um, that project failed, the company shut down, um, they axed the entire Houston office, and, uh, I was out of a job. And then to add on to that, I had an upset wife because I'd been working 9 AM to 2 AM every day for the past 3, 4 years. So she wasn't very happy. So she filed for divorce. And so my net worth was about to get cut in half. I had gotten accustomed to living the life of a banker, so I needed to figure out a way to make money relatively quickly until I found my next role. And so there's a guy that showed up to my door to serve me divorce papers. And I asked that guy in that moment how much he got paid for doing so. "How much do you want to pay me?" He told me a number that was a lot higher than what I had anticipated because ultimately, I was responsible for paying those bills anyways. I asked him. He said $100-something. So I was like, "Oh, I can do about 10 of these a day and bridge the gap, pay the bills until I find my next role." I got a process server license and contacted a few local companies and started serving papers around Houston, literally going door-to-door. Serving people lawsuits. I got really close with one of the owners of a company called Lone Star Attorney Services, a company that I was contracting with. They were giving me a lot of papers and I developed a very close relationship with the owner there. He would ask me for business advice every now and then and we'd meet up and I'd go into the office, we'd chit-chat. And I came to find out about 18 months in that he wanted to exit the business and he needed someone to grow and scale it. So he asked me if I wanted to run the business. I politely declined and then, and instead made him a counteroffer to buy the business from him. We came to terms. Phenomenal, phenomenal deal where both of us came out winning. And now I'm the majority owner of Lone Star Attorney Service.

Oh my gosh. I mean, this— it's just such a plot twist on—

Yeah, huge plot twist.

What could have been— I mean, it was ultimately like a really hard time, I'm sure, to go through, like job loss and divorce. But I mean, kudos to you for turning that into opportunity.

Yeah, I mean, they were two best things that ever happened to me.

Yeah, yeah. It's hindsight's 20/20, too, right? Okay, so it was like you said you were there, what, 18 months in, you realize that he wanted to sell. So you met him. You had like built that relationship up with him. Yeah, over the course of time.

That's right. Yeah. I'd built that relationship with him over the course of 18, almost 18 months, almost 2 years.

Okay. And so did you, in that process, were you learning his business too, or were you just kind of exposed to it because you were working with them?

So I was learning the operational side of the business, not really, you know, what was going on in the office. So I was learning how process servers serve papers. I was just incidentally exposed to it from conversations that I, that I was having with him. So I wasn't, you know, he didn't take— I wasn't like in the office learning the business. I was just working as a process server and having conversations with Patrick.

Mm-hmm. So then, so you actually stepped in as majority owner at what point in this timeline, like around the 2-year mark?

About around, yeah. So at about the 18-month mark, we had started the process of We had started the transaction and then closed 2 months later. So between 18 and 24 months.

That's amazing. So by the time you stepped in, did you feel, did you feel knowledgeable? Did you feel like you kind of knew the business or what did you have to learn at that point?

I had to learn the process of— I had to learn the front end process of how papers are received in the office, how they're processed, how the servers are managed from the office. What steps are taken from start to finish, because I was only exposed to one part of the business, which is, um, paper goes to server, server serves them. But I needed to learn what the interaction was between office staff and attorney, um, how the papers are then kicked out to the process servers, how the process servers are managed, um, and on the back end, how everything is billed and how we keep track of, um, the income and expenses.

Okay, so you had to step into like a large part of the operations side and learn it. Okay, and just for context, like how big was the company when you acquired it or stepped in as majority owner?

Uh, when I acquired it, it was doing about $950,000 in revenue and had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 employees.

Okay, and where is it today if you can say in terms of general size, general growth?

Yeah, so we're at about, um, let's see, 100 and about 2 point— or sorry, $1.5 million in revenue and, um, 10 employees.

Okay, amazing. So you stepped in, started growing it pretty quickly, it sounds like.

Um, yeah, I mean, yeah, Patrick— so Patrick had been of great help to me in running the business because he's also still a part. He rolled some equity in, so he's been a great partner. In helping me learn about the business. And also, he incidentally, the other business that he runs is very synergistic with our business. So he's helped out with that. And then I was lucky enough to, I was fortunate enough to have such a good partner that I could really focus outside of the business versus in it.

Gotcha. Okay. So then, so you, and I know you mentioned kind of when we chatted briefly before this, like you felt like you had good people around you quite quickly in this whole process, right, in terms of transitioning from, you know, into that ownership role. So can you talk just a little bit more about, you know, advisors? Like, how did you set yourself up for success from the get-go?

So, um, having a great relationship with the seller really helped because he helped me understand the business, like, well, I mean, he still helps me with um, with strategic decisions about the business even now, 6 months after the transaction, which is pretty rare. Like, I think I got very lucky with that. And then, um, I began dating a woman who was also an entrepreneur, um, and her— comes from a family of entrepreneurs. They own and operate multi-family apartments. And so she introduced me to something called EOS. Um, she was very straightforward with all the advice that she gave me. I had to make a I had to make a termination very early on in the business, and she kind of gave me the tools to be able to do that. I was introduced to a gentleman named Clayton Smith, who's also an entrepreneur, and he gave me some advice on how to pitch the seller financing part of it and just some challenges. And he's been able to talk me through some of the challenges that I've had. I've been fortunate enough to be introduced to a really good Vistage group. Vistage is basically a You get paired— It's a group of peer advisors, so other entrepreneurs, and you can bring your issues to every meeting and they'll kind of help you sort them out. It's just a group of people that have been exactly where I am, but 10 years ago, right?

So kind of like EO?

Yeah, exactly like EO, but a little bit more buttoned up. So EO is also another great group that I've been exposed to. I think that, yeah, Vistage was just more my cup of tea than EO is. But same concept though. YPO, EO, Vistage. So just having that group of advisors around you, I think is super helpful as well.

Yeah, that kind of peer network to bounce ideas around. Yeah, exactly. So let's— okay. Yeah, there's so many things. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about— because you just sort of— you mentioned like a few different things within that. Last little bit too that I think is interesting. One, how did you come in and make those people decisions quickly? How did you weigh those decisions? How did you figure out like, okay, I need to change this thing about the team, or can you just kind of talk through that experience and how you handled it?

Yeah, so it's twofold. One is I was just like, my gut just told me that this is not someone that should be in the office. She was just kind of not really accepting the change that was coming. She was not making the experience enjoyable for me. And the whole point of buying a business is to grow something that's suitable to your personality, right? And so, If I'm walking into my own office or my own business every day and I'm not having a good time, something needed to change. And she was also kind of holding the company back from really growing. I think it was an EOS, they call it right person, right seat, and she was not the right person for that seat. And so that decision had to be made quickly so that the company could continue its growth trajectory. And so I didn't know how to let go of someone. I didn't even know how to deal with the emotions that would come with it. And so I talked with Anjali, my partner, and she coached me through that process. I talked to a therapist to figure out what it would, you know, kind of dissect what the emotions would be like on my end and her end. And just as soon as it, like at the end of after, as soon as it happened, it was just a huge relief, like a burden off my shoulders. And the mood and the vibe in the office completely changed afterwards.

And she probably didn't feel like she was in the right seat either if she was like that miserable. I don't— I used to work in HR. I spent 5 years in HR. I, um, one of my very first jobs, uh, I was all of like 25 years old, maybe. Uh, I had to fly out to Boston, Massachusetts, sit in an office with one of our sales leaders. It was a tech company that I worked for and just fire people all day long. We were doing a massive reduction in force and it was just, you know, business decisions, not necessarily personality or like, you know, necessarily wrong fits. We just had to cut the roles. But I remember one being so massively drained at the end of that day, just from the emotions of like watching people lose their jobs. It's, it's, it's not fun no matter what. And then to your point, like managing the emotions of all of the employees who were losing their jobs because people reacted so differently. I had one guy yelling at me, he would not leave the office, he was like refusing. We had some people who cried, some people who were just completely stoic about it. Like you just didn't know what people were going to do. So that, like, that I think is something that's so important for people to find some emotional awareness on because it, it's, it's a lot to handle sometimes.

Yeah, for sure. No, it is. Um, you're literally, you saw a therapist.

You talked to a therapist.

I had to. Yeah.

That's amazing.

I talked to a therapist.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, that's like, I think that shows a lot about your leadership though too, just to say like, oh yeah, I need to be prepared to handle this well. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I did need to be prepared. Um, cause I, it was new to me. I didn't know what emotions would come with it, but, um, One of the, you know, one of the biggest things that I hear from other entrepreneurs is that they wish that they made those decisions faster. And so I really just didn't want to delay it and move on.

Yeah, I think that— I mean, I think that's wise. And especially too, because there's so much that you're— there's so much potential you're losing, right, with the wrong people in those seats.

Yeah. And everyone else's performance dramatically improved. Just the vibe in the office dramatically improved and I think that was like, that's one of the best decisions you can do. Like, if your gut tells you that this person is not a good fit, I would just go with it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People decisions are hard too, because, you know, you know, it's people's livelihood. But at the same time, you know, you're there to run and grow the business and you have to make the right decisions, obviously acting with a level of humanness, if that's a word, to get, you know, do right by people. But yeah, I agree. It's holding on to people for too long is not a good decision. I've done that before and it's never served me well, let's put it that way. Okay, the second thing I wanted to kind of go into, and you mentioned it even just a few minutes ago, is like EOS. So this comes up a lot across, I think, the search world and just in conversations about how to like grow and scale a business. Most people, I think, know what EOS is, but I think it's always interesting to hear how people sort of implemented it or integrated it, whether it was like full bore, we're going all in, or we're going to drop some pieces in and like build towards it. So can you just sort of talk a little bit about your experience there?

Yeah, so I bought the business in June. We started implementing in August as soon as we had the right staff in place, and we went full tilt on it. I think that, um, it doesn't really— I personally feel like it doesn't work when you try to piecemeal EOS together or do it yourself. So we hired a proper implementer, spent and invested the amount of money it takes to really get it implemented properly. We had our focus day, we had our two vision building days, um, and now we're on the quarterly meeting part of it. So we're in the execution phase of it. Um, and By far, it has been the best business investment I've made to date. Like, all the money that I have put into it so far has come back twofold. I can't correlate it directly to EOS, but I mean, clearly the business has grown. And it's probably because I get to work, you know, because of EOS, I'm able to work on the business versus in it. Everyone knows their role in the business. Everyone knows what they're going to be held accountable to. And it's just such an efficient way to run the business without, everyone kind of flapping in the wind.

Had you been exposed to other kind of management methodologies before? And did you know about EOS coming in?

I did not know that there was any type of entrepreneurial management system. I had worked for the Army and then very large corporations where these type of programs, I mean, they, I don't know, they just didn't, they just didn't, like every, like these were large organizations that had their own frameworks, right? But EOS is a good plug-and-play one for small business. And there's several others too. I mean, there's Scaling Up and some other ones that I can't really recall the names of. But basically, it's so important to have some kind of accountability framework in place and some kind of mechanism to show— to share your vision with the employees and guide everyone towards a common goal.

Yeah. How did you, how did you share some of that vision setting? Right. Like, how did you communicate that to the rest of the organization? Like, what were your strategies or like conversations that you had? Do you do all hands? Like, how did you kind of plan that out too, just to take everything you were building operationally and like communicate it?

So that's, that's, that's, that's a more complex question than, than. Yeah. So So first and foremost, my, um, my vision is to become the largest process server company in the world, um, the largest and the fastest, right? And so I, I worked backwards from there, um, to kind of build out what it takes to get there. Um, most important thing is to get the, you know, to get the job done quickly, um, every single time. And so rather than, you know, putting much thought into it That became our purpose, to get the job done quickly every time for fast transactional legal service. Legal service, what was it? I don't know. For fast, for whatever it is, but we get the job done quickly every time is our purpose. And then our niche was for legal services. Then we came up with the values that were suitable. We built out the values that were suitable to our personalities. So we emphasize speed, consistency, a culture of excellence, and consistent quality. We kind of just worked backwards from the end state to what was required to get there.

Interesting. Yeah. Then did you find that the team was on board with that? Any pushback, any opinions that arose?

No, I mean, I don't think that they'd ever worked under any kind of framework. So now that they had a clear purpose of where the company was going, I think that that was actually motivating to them. We have a very young staff, so they valued speed. That's one of our values. They value things going right and providing great service, so a culture of excellence was pretty easily adopted. And like consistency, right? We don't want to do a lot of custom white-gloved work. We just want to get through these papers as quickly as possible with the processes so that we're consistent and fast. And so all those values kind of, yeah, they served as more motivating than Like, I think that the personality types of everyone in the office also were suitable to those values. And, you know, it's a vision that everyone bought into relatively quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. I, um, if other entrepreneurs are coming in and wanting to like implement EOS and like kind of set, do that vision casting or, you know, bring in whatever methodology, like what would your guidance be? To them other than do it because it's helpful? Like, you know, in terms of actually like rolling it out and standing it up, like anything else that you think would be helpful for people to take into consideration?

Aside from EOS, I think that the key is to just determine the end state and then work backwards from there, right? And so that's how you develop the purpose and the vision. And then the core values, um, those should be centric to what the owner's personality is and what the personality of the staff is and what kind of people you want to run, um, a successful organization to get to that end state.

Yeah. Yeah. I, when I, um, acquired, I stepped into a business that was running EOS already and doing a good job, I think. I think one of the things that I really learned though was I stepped in, they had the whole system in place, and I think I waited a little bit too long to like, I don't know how else to say, like make it my own a bit. Like it was still very much the former owner's vision and even like scorecard, like it was all good, right? But it was I should have taken a little bit of a fine-tooth comb to it earlier than I did. But that was one of my kind of lessons learned.

Yeah. And I find that a lot of newer entrepreneurs are intimidated of the business they're buying and let the business run them before making it their own. And I think that that mindset, you kind of just have to go in with the mindset that I am going to make this business mine because the whole point of becoming an entrepreneur is doing something that I enjoy.

Right. But it's such a balance, right? Because you have to come in with the level of like confidence to say, okay, I'm going to make this my own. I— it needs to look and feel like me ultimately. And I have so much to learn, right? Like I don't even know all the like skeletons in the closet or, you know, like the secrets that actually keep this business going. So it's such a balance, I think, of like humility alongside that confidence and like conviction.

Yeah, for sure. Um, and I was like, yeah, and I was lucky enough to have, um, worked at the ground level of the business for a long period of time, and I found that to be such an important factor in, in the success of the business because, um when you know how the business operates and when you know the key tasks that make the business successful, you can easily earn the respect of the people that are doing the actual work. And you can troubleshoot any issues or challenges that arise as well. And so another piece of advice that I have is whatever business you want to buy, you should spend some time learning what the business does. So for example, if you want to buy a landscaping business, go mow some lawns. If you want to, if you want to buy an auto body shop, learn, learn how to fix a car, right? Um, you can't just, can't just go buy a business that you know nothing about.

Yeah, it's, uh, it's interesting. We— so one of the businesses that I kind of own and operate right now is we're We're helping searchers actually do like proprietary off-market deal flow. So we're reaching out to small business owners and one of the biggest things that we have to do is communicate, okay, this is your background as a searcher, here's what you've done, here's your experience, and how do we tie that into the business that you said you want to buy? And often what we see is like, there it is a stretch to say, okay, I've worked I'm on Wall Street and I want to buy a pest control business. And it's like, it's because they've never— they've— and it's okay that you haven't done it, right? But it's like, but then you need to go find ways to get exposed and like, yes, learn it. Um, we have one searcher right now, I commend him for this, he is joining a bunch of associations and offering to volunteer just to learn these industries that he's that he wants to acquire, and he has no real, like, experience with them, but he's like, I'm going to go into this association or this, you know, nonprofit or whatever and just pick up experience and knowledge, and, and then I have something really to talk about, and I meet people that way. And so I think, just to your point, it's like, it's so vital not only to get business owner conversations going, but then also If you do step into that business, like, you better get your shit together fast because you're responsible now.

Yeah. And I mean, there's— searchers seem to have time between the start of their search and acquiring the business. And, you know, my question to a lot of them is why not just go, you know, go work for a business that you're interested in buying? A lot of times that experience can often turn into a transaction even. So if you want to go buy a pest control company, find a local one that's owned by someone that's of the age that's looking to retire and go spray bugs for a bit.

Go catch some mice.

Yeah, go catch some mice, spray bugs, catch some rodents because those are the type of businesses that you can't run just from a computer screen. You have to know how the business operates in order to earn the respect of the workers. Really understand what problems they're going through, you must, you must do the work that the business requires you to do. That runs the business.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I would agree with that. Even the businesses I'm running right now, like, I do a lot of grunt work because I want to know how it works. I hate it. I hate doing some of the detailed work, but like, it's important.

So, but it's so important. It's so important.

Yeah. One thing, one question I have for you, Raj. So I— okay, so efficiency, speed, and like repeatability is super important to your business. As you were kind of defining those values and like looking at the processes around what you're doing, did you find— like, how did you find inefficiencies? How did you address maybe any gaps that you saw? Like, what was your decision process there?

Um, that's a good one. It was a lot of trial and error, actually. Um, so, uh, we would have our L10 meetings and, you know, we would find some kind of bottleneck. So, um, a good example of this was our job volume was increasing significantly, right? But revenue wasn't revenue wasn't increasing. And so it was just— we, you know, that was one of the issues that I put up on our L10 meeting. I was like, okay, our jobs are going up, we're serving more papers, why is this not translating into higher revenue? And so we went through our process and then figured out that it was because, um, our finance manager was so busy paying process servers that she didn't get enough time to invoice. And so we had a backlog of jobs that she just wasn't able to touch because there were so many more process servers that we had to pay for the jobs that they were doing. And so we ended up hiring a woman in the Philippines to do all of our billing and invoicing, and that revenue quickly caught up to the jobs. And the funny thing is that our accounts receivable weren't going up either because the accounts receivable on the dashboard goes up only when you invoice. And so I was like, what is happening? Are we just like not charging enough for like, like what is going on? I couldn't, I couldn't understand what the issue was until we had that L10 meeting. And until she was honest about why the revenue wasn't catching up to the new jobs entered. So that's, yeah, that's kind of how we troubleshoot inefficiencies or, you know, there, there was an instance where we have as part of our dashboard, the number of overdue jobs. Um, and that number of overdue jobs just increased significantly one day. Um, and so, um, I found out through an honest conversation at one of our L10 meetings that it wasn't because the jobs weren't being done on time, it was because the software system was designed such that our customers through InfoTrack can't change the due date. So jobs that were actually getting done on time were still being shown as overdue. even though they were like well into the billing process because the customer just hadn't paid their bill and closed out the job yet. And so that's a conversation with the software provider to, yeah, to like not look alarming on, on our dashboard.

Yeah, that's where the, the EOS stuff comes back in, right? Like those L10 meetings, the issues logs, like all of that stuff is so helpful in just figuring out like where things are broken. That you didn't even realize where or why.

Yeah, and having an environment of, or having a culture of open honesty, not making people feel like they're doing a bad job just because we have an issue, it's pretty important. It's pretty important to running a successful business too. A lot of times my ideas are shot down too because employees will have a different take on what's going to work and what's not going to work because they've been in the business much longer than I have. Maybe I might have an idea that I think will work well, and they'll just say, no, it's actually a terrible idea. We should definitely not do that.

Yeah, I know Garth, he's not— he wasn't able to join today, but Garth has a story kind of like, you know, he came in and wanted to rip a bunch of stuff out of the CRM and like reconfigure everything. And, you know, basically his team came to him and said like, no, you're gonna break literally everything if you change, you know, these 5 fields. Um, And that's the kind of stuff too. Yeah, it's like, especially when you step into a business, a lot of it is, I want to say like Frankenstein together, but certainly kind of pieced together over time in many ways. And so one thing that you did two steps ago now impacts the thing you're building next. So you have to take all of that into account.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. And yeah, just being able to give people a voice. To express their opinion on whether something is gonna work or not is, is super important and not, you know, not making people feel like they're doing a bad job just because we have an issue.

Right, right. Yeah. Um, so I think, you know, my, maybe kind of one of my last questions, and so we can certainly touch on anything else you want to, but like the place where you started this journey from seems to be very different than where you are today. So I am just kind of curious, like, what are, you know, personal and professional learnings along the way? Like, what's this whole journey been like for you stepping in as the operator in this business?

Um, I think there's been a lot more personal development than professional development. Um, you know, that whole experience taught me the value of relationships, gratitude, being a helpful person, you know, doing without expecting. And I think that those key lessons are what have kind of brought me to this point today. You know, because when I was offering Patrick help, it wasn't with the expectation of buying his business one day. I was just doing it to be a helpful person. You know, and having those type of conversations and building those types of relationships and Just helping people out without expecting anything in return has been a personal lesson for me and, you know, transformative to my business success now.

Yeah, because you probably— I mean, you carry that forward, right? And everything you do now with the— with your business, that just bleeds into all of your decisions and, you know, it's a trickle-down effect. Yeah.

And then just living life with gratitude. My personal relationships have dramatically improved after I started living my life that way. I owe the most gratitude to my former spouse. Had it not been for her, I would not even be here today. So I owe her a great debt of gratitude. All the people that have kind of helped me get to this point and just living life that way and being grateful to be on God's wake-up list every day has has been super helpful to me too. So I think that it's those personal lessons that I learned through life failures that have carried forward into, you know, whatever professional success I have, which is almost immaterial to the success I've seen on the personal side.

I think, yeah, those quote life failures, like if I've learned anything about entrepreneurship, it's that you hit a lot more bumps in the road than the highs. Let's put it that way, right? Like, the highs are great, and when you have success, it feels great, like, it's awesome. But really what has built my character up is all of the things that have been hard that have led me to where I am. And that's like a very trite thing to say, but I really do think that it's— I wouldn't be who I am or where I am if I didn't have all of the hard things in my rearview mirror.

Yeah, absolutely. And now I almost, I kind of almost expect failure now. Yeah, I kind of just anticipate that things are going to go wrong and then I'm pleasantly surprised when things go right and grateful when they do, you know, and it's just takes a great deal of resilience to, to, to be an operator.

There was the concept of, I don't like a failure resume. Like, here's all the things that has like gone wrong. It's way longer than my like success resume. Smite. But I think that, you know, it's— there's so much more— it's so much more common. There's so many things we actually all share as entrepreneurs that, like, things just have not gone the way we wanted to, but wanted them to. But it's ultimately led to, I think, a better place. And I think that's something too, like, I don't know, at least I see a lot of searchers with great hope in what they're about to do and acquire. And I, I think that that's wonderful, and I, I encourage people to have that hope and have that vision. But I also think, you know, like there's a dose of reality to say like you're also going to have a lot of things go wrong and to just be ready for that and expect it to be a pretty long list. And that's okay. That's normal, I would say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And a lot of the most successful entrepreneurs I've met actually got into it out of necessity. There's two, there's two, you know, there's two types of entrepreneurs. The one that the ones that get into it as a result of privilege or the ones that get into it as a result of necessity. And when you're in a place where failure is just not an option and you have no choice to succeed, there's something about the human will that just makes it happen.

You figure it out.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, thanks, Raj. Any other parting words of wisdom?

No, I think we covered most of it, but, you know, happy to help anybody, you know, one-on-one or whatever. If, if, if that— if anybody needs it, I'm always willing to have a conversation and, and help out any way that I can.

Perfect. People can find you on LinkedIn.

Yeah, LinkedIn. Yeah, LinkedIn, our company website, www.lonestarattysvc.com. I'm available on LinkedIn and always happy to have a conversation with an aspiring or current entrepreneur.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Raj, for being here and sharing your story. Much appreciated.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was such a pleasure.