Dealmaking for the Next Decade and Creating a New Asset Class with Tom Shipley

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It's all about the operators. In the end, business is tough anyway. And if you want to succeed, its question is the talent of the team around you and the core fundamentals of the business. And it's a massive universe. I choose to collaborate with people, even competitors, then view them as competitions.

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Hey, Ryan Deiss here. You know, it's been a while since I've run the day to day for Digital Marketer, the company that Roland and I are partners in. Fortunately, we have a great team and great partners who help us with all that nitty gritty stuff now. But the one thing that we focused on while I was there and the one thing the team still focuses on to this day is optimizing everything. I'm talking testing everything from the sales copy to the color of the checkout button. Testing like this can have a huge impact on your bottom line. But the truth is it takes a lot of time and a lot of resources and half the time we were just throwing stuff against the wall just to kind of see what stuck. But the good news is you don't have to figure everything out on your own anymore. And that's because our friends at Conversion Fanatics have optimized hundreds of sites in all types of industries from small startups to Fortune 500s. And now they can handle all your testing and optimization for you too. So if you feel stuck when it comes to optimizing your website, go and visit ConversionFanatics.com and they'll give you a list of custom suggestions to optimize your site 100% free. Once again, you can find them at ConversionFanatics.com.

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Hey, everybody.

Roland Frazier here with the Business Launch podcast.

And I'm super excited today to have my friend Tom Shipley here. And Tom follows my philosophy. He likes to stay off of the org chart. So he doesn't even have a company. That's how cool he is. He's got a bunch of companies, but he doesn't have one that he works for. So, Tom, welcome to the show.

It is really great to be here and really a privilege always spending time with you, Roland.

I love it. So you were, we were starting to talk and I was like, wait, wait, wait, let's talk about it on the show because I like the spontaneity of an actual conversation. So what, what was it you were getting ready to say?

I was going to say that the cool thing about what you're doing, and I know you're wearing a lot of hats these days, is you're actually changing the game. So there's, and I was talking a little bit to Ryan before you popped on about what I, your son and what is viewed as entrepreneurship. And there's this whole, you know, first of all, this thing is corporate life, what we should be doing in the corporate world and what's the right way to live life or what is the rules of the game. Then there's entrepreneurship, which is totally different, but Then there is what I'm going to consider, what are their different phase of entrepreneur entrepreneurship. Whether it is basically traditional businesses and you get into one business and you follow that and you try to maybe create a liquidity, liquidity event or diagnostic, diagnostic wealth. But there's that, there's that more traditional game and then I'm gonna. And then there's serial entrepreneurship, but then there is this new version of entrepreneurship which I say that you are being evangelist for and almost evangelical, which is not only the entrepreneurial operator, but it's the entrepreneur investor and the fact that you can do both and do a series of it and how you do that in parallel. And I'm going to say that, you know, I've always been the entrepreneurial operator and that's really what I've always found my strength into. And I've been luckily lucky enough to be able to build a Number of different 8 figure biggest businesses and be able to develop brands that became household names and sold several billion dollars or two billion dollars of products worth. But that's one game. And so what you helped open my eyes to as we started going into Covid was this whole concept of being an entrepreneurial investor and I don't have to control and manage and operate everything on my own. And it's been an incredible transition for me. But I see the way you're impacting thousands of entrepreneurs lives and changing the game.

That's really cool. I appreciate that. I'm thinking aquapreneur. What do you think about that?

I love that.

Entrepreneur together now. You've done some really cool things. I mean you've built as you mentioned, a ton of really, really cool businesses. And since we talked, and I also like this conversation because we had an equity deal that didn't work out because not all of them do. And it didn't work out in the best of ways because it turned out that you were able to have some people that came in and made a great offer before we could even get really started with the stuff that we were talking about doing. So I'd like to talk a little bit about that maybe, maybe that deal in particular because led like I like how it started. You had a part that partner ended up getting taken care of and bought out. You had a big fund come in, you've got and then you were able to position yourself to, to move out of that. We were working on doing something there, but this other stuff happened before we really got to do much of anything. And so hopefully we'll still have the opportunity to do some cool stuff here in the future. But. But would you mind telling that story? Because I just think that's a really.

Good, like a lot of cool things.

Happened in that journey on that particular deal.

Yeah. And let me just set the table up for people that especially don't know me. And that is at that time when we started talking, I was still running Atlant Coast Brands with my partner with Karen Ink, our woman's hero growth brand. Really dominate the niche of women's hairy growth from everything from retail to it's pure omnichannel, Omni Digital. And so that brand is doing well, the business doing well. But we knew we'd selling. We're selling the business. And that's when, you know, segue back into. When you first offered Epic. I watched the series and started changing things when you did your challenge. And what was really cool about that period of time is I was looking for what is the next thing. And I'm always looking for if we sell that business and starting something before we sell it off, what is the thing that is going to have this significant impact. And then I'm always looking at the second and third order impacts of what's happening in our world right now. And if you want to, we can talk about that later. But let me get to your. Your answer your question. So as we're doing that and trying, trying to identify what is that big opportunity. I love the aggregation plays. I think that aggregation is the way to go. And there's one thing doing acquisitions, but the other is aggregating platforms.

And I think, I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you watched what Thrasio and Perch were doing and kind of said, this seems like a really strong area that I can go into. That's just starting. We know there's going to be a ton of people that are copying that and. And you had a kind of a secret weapon in your ops and your partner's agency business to help with that, Is that correct?

Yes. And I'll just spin on that. Is that Brian and I started looking into the space of let's do a small aggregation play in E Comm. Then we flipped it to Amazon because his agency, Brian Burt's agency is Canopy is all built on Amazon. And then as we started researching this, that's when Thrasio closed their big round and had this crazy valuation of 750 million back then. Now there are 10 billion. And there were only four, five players in the space back then. And Perch was again Perch was just one of the names but you didn't know much about it. It was really in the early in the game. But to me is that meant that as an asset class I'm always looking for what a great new asset classes are as an asset class and for.

People so people understand what does asset class mean when you say that it.

Those are an asset is something where there it can be easily traded and there's a clear valuation on it. And prior to this it was difficult to get fund and especially where you can get funding off of it was very difficult to get funding to acquire an Amazon business. It was viewed at as very risky because you don't control the marketplace and.

Certainly not institutional funding.

That's exactly it. And therefore what Thrasio did is it changed the game there I'm going to call what Netscape did is broke the glass ceiling. And so suddenly what I knew at that time is well um, Amazon does all the heavy lifting with starting a brand and launching and scaling. What I knew is that suddenly institutional funding will become available for that. And let's pivot the business to. Let's focus on both and we could do E Com but also let's focus on Amazon business, especially with Brian's background. And that's when we spent the day with you and started just brainstorming what does this look like? What would the structure be of the company? How can we scale it? How can we bring in money? And we spent that day together and said let's see. See how we can pull things together. And then I just started reaching out for casual conversation just for brainstorming with. I did seven calls to private equity firms that I have casual relationships with, I respect the leaders of them and just said let's just talk about this idea. And without a PowerPoint done and without a business plan and I'm. I don't know how you do this and I've never seen anything like this in my 20 years. In in the. In raising and working with institutional capital is we had six offers out of seven meetings to between 50 to 150 million to fund this de novo concept of this aggregation of being able to build this platform where we go and buy Amazon businesses buying between two to a six multiple and then when you pull them together as this aggregator you have this multiple of between 12 to 18 to maybe we'll see if world gets up to 20 times multiple on this. And that's really the play.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's pretty cool. So then tell me about like now you you made those calls and they said, we're, we're very interested. What happens next?

That's a good question. So overall there's, there's, you're starting to go through a basic level due diligence on each other. They're getting to know more about your business, they're digging into the details on your. And again then you're fleshing out a business model they're talking to members of. Again, we assembled a quick team together and I looked at two, you know, two really great leaders and operators from within Amazon that had left. We pulled on board on the journey and Brian and I, and we started going into a lot more detailed meetings. But it's also the critical opportunity to understand the way they operate, the way that the private equity. If you're looking at institutional funding, but we were looking at, we, we didn't stop the dialogue there. We were talking to venture debt, we were talking to venture funds. We were really expanding out the rise and making sure we have the right partnership as well as creating a unique structure because again, this is such a hot market. We did not have to go into the traditional private equity structure and we.

Picked the, ultimately that traditional structure. And we had talked about that going in. It's like they kind of try to pigeonhole you into this 2 and 20 where they're going to get their money back and maybe even a preferential return plus they're going to take 80% of the profits. So it's, it's not a lot. I mean it's good and you can, you can make a lot of money doing that, but it's certainly a tremendous amount of work and a big bet and a lot of waiting before you really get any significant return.

Right, that's, that's correct. And again, it's the amount of return and we like, I like to be rewarded based on results, period. And so we were able to create a very unique structure and by working with several different private equity firms. We actually picked one firm and got to the last minute. And there's. In every deal structure there are always things that happen last minute. Question is, is can you figure a way through it or not? And unfortunately, with this one firm that I just, we loved, it didn't work out, even though they invested $850,000 into a study by Bain to prove our thesis. So they can, to their investment committee and whatever, which was great data for us to leverage. And what that did is that opened the door. When that fell through, they, he basically, Dennis said, I want to dish you to Someone I used to work with here and I think they're the right fund for you. I paired them together with another private equity firm that are really great brand builders because when you're bringing private equity you're not bringing in just money. You're bringing in network and really knowledge and expertise in order to grow the business. And that's how it happened. That happened in that.

Well that deal was, was interesting too because if, if it's the one I'm thinking about and I think it is you, you had an advocate within the firm and then there was a disagreement in the leadership and ultimately the person that was the contact ended up saying if this is how things are going and this is how we're thinking then I'm going to go do my own thing. Right that. And so then it kind of, it was like okay, so the, it's just like we were down to the, the five yard line and somebody moved the.

Whole field right down the five yard line and they stopped all in vet consumer investments for a period of time because he ran the consumer group and we're talking, you know they have 115 billion in under assets so we're talking a very large one. They froze all investments in their private equity firm while they did this transition. So basically the deal died right there. And so we then look for go. I went back to the, the one partner, he new group he invested, he introduced us to plus I paired it together with one of the six other people we had term sheets and that's basically how we pulled it together. Unfortunately, the legal process is the most painful thing that you're going to go through dealing with private equity. Therefore if you can start businesses not through private equity, you're a lot more control and it's a lot less painful. However, starting a business and having the faith of investors of putting a hundred million dollars behind you on a brand new concept says a lot about them and the relationship and therefore there's a lot of respect that has to go both ways for that to happen.

Absolutely. And you ended up getting funding from one of those other options, right?

A hundred percent. Yes. It took us the commitment happened very quickly after that and then we. But it did take us 90 days to close the hundred million dollars in funding mostly because of just the attorneys. And then, then we were off off to the races and by then is in this field of aggregation of Amazon. We've had a lot of people pop into it. It's a very hot space. It's very interesting. But the other thing that was interesting Is that the deal we did is they wanted to as we did some pivots in this deal structure. They wanted to bring in a. The person who has a capability and the desire to take us public, the CEO. So we changed the deal structure where I can be an entrepreneurial investor and my role was put together the team, put together the C level, the strategy, the foundation and then also bring in the work with the private equity firm to bring in the right CEO. And my job was done on October 3rd. So essentially from while we started this in April of two the concept in April of 2020, we actually got funded in March and in October 3rd I became what Roland Fraser classifies as an entrepreneurial investors. So my equity is writing and starting in October 3rd I started looking is what is the next transformational opportunity or opportunities I'm going into and what's my 2022 looking like? And that's where my last share any.

Of that or is it. Is it secret now? Because I understand either way I'll share.

High level and detail. So essentially. And I'm kind of opening up my kimono here, but that's. That's fine as far.

Well keep in mind that anybody and we can talk about it offline because if you because count on anybody hearing this saying that's great, I'm gonna go do that too. So you. You potentially open yourself up to competition. So if you don't wanna share, it's okay. The biggest example of that is at traffic and Conversion one year we talked about going into the survival business and there were about 300 people from the audience within a month that went into the survival business.

So that's great. And I'll. And I'll share with you is it's not that tight of a niche from that perspective. And the way I also view the world is as I was in the skincare and HA for 15 years. And if you talk about a bloody marketplace and you're up against significant capital as well as fly by night people that don't follow rules online. So. And I view it's all about the operators in the end business is tough anyway. And if you want to succeed it's question is the talent of the team around you and the core fundamentals of the business. So I'm really not that worried. And it's a massive universe. I choose to collaborate with people, even competitors then view them as competition. So I'll just. That's my foundation. So first of all I want to spend two thirds of my time on one business and I want partnerships for the rest of my, for the rest of my time where I'm dealing with great operators as well as other people that are like you, Roland, that are just have so much value network and brilliance to bring to it, where we can actually take ideas that are good business ideas and good core businesses and add zeros. I don't want to, with an exception, I don't want to be dealing with startups except for one or two exceptions. And I'll share that. First of all, I'm looking at, I believe if we thought that the last decade was about aggregators, we've seen nothing to what the next decade is going to be. I believe it's the decade of aggregation. It's the decade of pulling together businesses that are nice steady growth rate businesses but are independent and grouping. These could be boring industries together, especially in the B2C or B2B service sector and pulling them together. And then you have platforms and you have concrete unfair advantages by doing this and accelerate the growth and achieve just.

Just for the audience. Do you have a differentiation in your mind between what a roll up is and what an aggregation is?

No.

Okay, same thing basically.

Yeah, same thing, same thing. And again there's different flavors, there's light integration, there's heavy integrations to that depending on what you want to do. But I view the roll ups and aggregation as the same.

Okay, cool.

Though if you have a different opinion, love to hear it.

Not off the top of my head, but as you were saying it, I was trying to think of is an aggregation play different, like thinking specifically about the Amazon space. So they're basically going out. Maybe the roll up is more often it's exactly the same business and aggregation is that it's the same business model. So that in the aggregation play, if we were looking at the Amazon thing, we'd say, well, as a fund, an aggregator in Amazon doesn't really care what the people are selling. They only care that it's somebody that's using the fulfillment I Amazon platform on Amazon to sell goods. But the goods could be anything. Whereas a roll up would, would be more like I sell, I sell Coke, you know, Coca Cola. And there are independent distributors of Coca Cola. And so I'm going to roll up, I'm going to acquire multiple distributors so that I can get economies of scale and what they call merger synergies by providing the same bottling services to everybody or something like that. That might be a distinction worth exploring.

Yeah. And I view that everything is about the synergies. So the more light you can do to make the complex simple and then really enjoy the economies of scale the better you are in a model even in the Amazon aggregation spaces. Instead of buying everything across the spectrum of all products. If you can narrow it down, it gives you a strategic advantage from sourcing customer bases. Everything else also buyers.

Right. I mean because like you're more likely to find a buyer of people that sell heavy blankets, like I own 60% of the heavy blanket market on Amazon than you are to say I've got heavy blankets and, and Manuka honey and copper cups.

Yes, right. Yes, yes. And people more likely to solve. There's so many strategic advantages of doing that. And I, as I look on this is. And I, if you notice what I said is the service business and not product business. I've only been, I've been. I can't say that I've been primarily in the product business in my past. The product business has its significant complexities. There's margin complexities there. There are margins issues and compression issues there. There's also the media channels which ultimately what I know about every media channel, every media channel over time will decrease in effectiveness and increase in cost. And so there's some real complexity involved there. Therefore I like service businesses as I'm looking at different aggregation plays that are out there.

Interesting. So the, it's kind of like to get your take on this because in the product business one of the big challenges is cost of goods sold and the need to buy inventory. And so capital can be. Particularly during growth, capital can be.

Hey business lunch listeners. We're going to get right back to the show, but Roland wanted me to invite you to a brand new training that he's doing on acquiring businesses with no money out of pocket. It's something that he's talked quite a bit about on the show, but he's doing a free training where he's going to walk through the entire process. So if you want to get access to that, go to businesslunchpodcast.com epic that's businesslunchpodcast.com epic and you can get signed.

Up tight and you might have to wait a while before you get to the point where you're not in that cycle of buying more inventory and then buying more media and then having more people in fulfillment facilities so that you can buy more inventory and, and so on. But in the service business there is frequently a scale issue in terms of labor and people and finding the people who have the skills to provide the services. So in that generally if it's aiable or it's, it's non skilled workerable. Like, like that's a kind of a key component in services. Because if you're, like, if you're trying to scale an accounting firm, there's only so many skilled accountants that you'll be able to find even if you've got a ton of business. So how, how do you address that in what you're thinking about?

I'm going to say this, Roland, that in special Forces, we learned that a good operator is one who improvises. And so that's what we learned back then. And I found that in entrepreneurship there's a direct relationship between. It's not about your resources that are available to you, it's your resourcefulness. Is there a key thing? Yeah. So there's always, if you, if you ever give me a specific situation, you put a couple really creative minds. There's always ways around it. You mentioned whether it's outsourcing off source, Source sourcing. Sourcing. Whether it's taking a certain level expert, that has to be done by a certain level. And then, and then delegating down, delegating out. There's recruiting, recruiting strategy. You know, I talked to a gentleman who was looking at even aggregating the car wash business. To me it sounds painful for a lot of reasons, but he's, but even there is. Okay, so labor. How do you. That's a real labor intensive business. How do you solve that labor business. I'm gonna say there's some recruiting strategies that you can do to bring in the right level of talent, even at that level. But again, it's about creativity.

Yeah, you're singing my song. I love that.

And then it's templates. And then when you figure out once to one location, then you do it to your multiple locations or you aggregate your resources. So. And that's just fun.

Hey, business lunch listeners. We've been talking about Roland's process for buying a business with no money out of pocket for a while now. But what if you could actually have him walk you through it step by step and he can give you the exact strategy that he's used to acquire dozens of businesses? Now, if that sounds intriguing to you, listen up because it may already be too late. Roland is starting a challenge on March 16th where he's going to help people use the same growth lever that the top 1% of business owners in the world use. But the challenge starts on March 16th. So if you're interested, go to businesslunchpodcast.com epic. That's businesslunchpodcast.com epic to sign up.

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Okay, so. So you're looking at service. Go, go, go on, tell us the rest.

Okay, so that's why I said this is the next decade is about the aggregation play. It doesn't matter whether you're looking at what I've just brought. The example of Car wash, I'm not passionate about that one. But there's, there's other services whether it's H Vac. We just saw a massive roll up by number companies in the veterinary space. But there's so many beautiful niches that are out there. That really is the opportunity. One that's at hand which I have very strong partners that I'll be working with and a string of operators that will be supporting it is in the. Is in the agency, marketing and advertising agency space. Not just digital across the board, creative analytics, you know, again across the whole spectrum. Boom. So there's a great opportunity to aggregate groups and then sell off different groups or create super groups. So it's a model that's there, the team is fantastic and one of the partners in it that you know well is one of the more I said talented, brilliant people that I know in Programmatic M and A which is the, which is the foundation. How do you take complex things and make them boring? But then how can we take this business model and then apply it to other industries and then how can we scale that across industries so there's significant opportunities. So that's one of my plays that I'll going to commit to two thirds of my time to the other things that I'm looking at is. And again it's diverse and we're. Lynn, whenever you have a business you're looking at, you have your filter and your criteria. It has to meet. Yes. It has to make sense from a cash flow perspective and long term wealth. It has to for me it has to have a certain ability to certain scale because startups I don't do startups. They're just too painful for me and there has to be an exception to the rule and there has to be intellectual stimulating. And I also like different things that have impact in one way I can have impact. One of the. And I'm looking at diverse things to open up my mind. So one of the plays that I'm looking at is in the NFT space. Now I say this, I don't want to, I don't want to arbitrage pictures of clowns and unicorns. That's not my thing. Okay, Let other people play that game.

And although apparently there's hundreds of millions of dollars in that.

Yes, you're 100. Correct. But. And roll I think we spoke about before first order and second order and third order impact. So you know, as we, you know, as we looked at the automotive industry and we saw the third order impacts of suddenly there was given freedom America's Henry ford, Ford Motor Co. The mass production. But then that led to the chain of gas station across the United States. Second order impact. Third order impact is they traveled so far there wasn't enough. There wasn't bed and breakfasts back then about boarding houses. So that's became a national chain of motels that led into hotels to what we have now. Third order impact. NFT is the same question. NFT and light blockchain technology technologies. What are the second order and third order impacts? What's going to be there to change our lives and change it. So looking at different plays from that, from different marketplace initial people that are winning that place are going to say we're the technology folks. But quickly entrepreneurs are popping in on how do we control niche marketplace is very fascinating. So that not, not all transactions or most transactions will happen in OpenSea Marketplace. It'll be happening in niche, niche marketplaces. For whether we're talking about commercial real estate, whether. And when I'm talking about digital real estate, I'm talking about physical real estate. Different IPs will be traded. So but there'll be niche marketplace. In my prediction. The, the thing that I'm looking at is okay, so let's look at charities. Now Thropic has an interesting model where they're giving a percent of all transactions to charities. That's great. But I'm looking at another play which is a. It's an actual DAO marketplace controlled by the people that actually are buying the NFTs themselves. They get to vote on where they're going to invest their money, what charities they're going to put into and sponsoring certain projects. So again, it's a different level of entrepreneurship where clearly you're giving and having impact, but also your NFTs have value which are growing over time and therefore there's an opportunity to make money, have impact and create this fund that basically you control. So again, there's a different plays in that area but intellectually that's stimulating. It gives back to the world and has the opportunity for significant scale. It meets my criteria. I agree.

Yeah, I am fond of that space as well. That's really cool. That's awesome. So, and how about I should ask this too just because we're doing a lot of these these days. Do you have anything that you're kind of pursuing now in the terms of an equity deal where you're going to provide your advice or your genius, your operational skills or expertise or resources in exchange for ownership or ownership like interests in companies?

Great question. So one of the deals I have that, that I'm really have for two years, enjoy my time is with Josh Elite from Josh Snow that people know him by Snow Snow Oral Care where he's pivoting his business to roll up the, the oral, the premium oral care market. And so it was an equity, it was an, it was a equity plus some compensation along the way deal and we've been having a blast growing his business. But he's an entrepreneur fire. And I'm looking and yes, there's room for two more of those where there's equity participation. But to get my again my network, my knowledge, the reg, you know, and what we can do is really scale a business and I haven't found any business that I can't scale the and I don't care about revenue scale the EBITDA and the market valuation to create liquidity events whether they want to execute it or not. But make it, make it basically its own asset, asset class. And so I'm looking for two to three opportunities and that's what I want to fill in that 2/3 of my time doing nice.

Well, for anybody that would want to get ahold of you and find out more about you or maybe explore the possibility of working with you. What's the best way for them to do that?

Tomshiply.com is my email and they can go to tshiple.com tshiply to learn more about me.

Awesome.

Cool.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here today and I'll look forward to seeing what you do and hopefully having you back.

After the next deal and also looking for that magic opportunity for you. Roland.

I like it, I like it. I appreciate that. Awesome. Well, thank you for being here today and thank you guys all for tuning in. We appreciate you doing that. If you enjoyed the show, please give us a five star review. We would really appreciate that and also subscribe so you don't miss out on anything. For today. That is it and we'll see you next time.

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Hey, quick question. Do you know someone who's looking to grow as a leader? Maybe their team is growing a little faster than they expected, or maybe their new role requires them to work a little bit more through people? If the answer is yes, I want to recommend a new podcast by the Scalable Media Network called Ready to Lead. It's hosted by Richard Lindner, one of Roland and Ryan's business partners, and Jeff Mask, who's one of the top executive coaches in the world. They cover tactical strategies on how to improve as a leader and also their biggest failures they've had throughout their career. You can find the show@readytolead.com or search for it wherever you listen to podcasts.

Ever wondered how some people build real wealth through acquisitions while others just sit on the sidelines? Well, I'm here to tell you it's not about luck. It's about having the right system, the right deals, and the right guidance. And that's exactly what we give you in the EPIC Deal Fast Track. If you've been thinking about buying a business, but you keep getting stuck, whether it's finding the right deal, structuring the financing, or negotiating with sellers, you are not alone. Too many people waste months, even years just thinking about acquiring a business while the real opportunities pass them by. The EPIC Deal Fast Track is not another course. It's actually an implementation program and it's designed to get you from the idea to the acquisition in just 16 weeks or less. We work with you one on one to help you find, fund and close your first or next deal. And once you do, we're going to plug you into our elite EPIC board community so that you can keep scaling through acquisitions. We install three powerful systems in your business. The first is the Deal Flow Engine so you always have high quality off market deals coming to you. Number two, we give you our offer and funding system so that you can structure offers that get accepted and fund them creatively many times with no money out of your own pocket. And number three, our closing and integration system so that you don't just buy a business, you actually successfully run and scale it once you have acquired it. Plus you'll have direct one on one support from an epic deal advisor every step of the way. And that's people that have actually come up through this system and done these deals themselves. That's the only way to become an epic deal advisor. And if you're serious about acquiring a business this year, don't just sit on the sidelines. Just text I'm in to 334-458-9034 and we'll get you in. So text I'm in to 334458. 9034 will get you in. No fluff, no wasted time, just real deal making from people that are actually out there doing deals right now. I'll see you there.