jason klein thank you for joining me today on acquiring minds thanks thanks will for having me it's so great to be here thank you jason you acquired a flower distribution business in south florida you are a mid-career professional undertaking this venture so you've actually been a corporate guy for 20 25 years but as of june last june so you just passed june 2021 so you've just passed a year you are the owner of kawaii isle flowers which distributes 40 000 flowers a month to 600 stores so we are going to learn today how you went from point a to point b here start us off jason with a quick history on you condense those couple of decades of corporate life into into a couple minutes and we'll and we'll kick it off sure well i appreciate you first um uh uh characterizing me as mid-career so i'm currently 51. um gosh i hope i'm i'm well past mid-career but but but i appreciate uh i appreciate the compliment um sure so so a quick bio i uh i actually started out uh professionally in the military i was in the military for six years in the air force left that it was great enjoyed it and i loved it and loved getting out just as much and then left the military was actually a police officer and joined a tiny little healthcare software company and uh really stayed in healthcare it for for quite a few years the better part of the 20 to 25 years grew along the uh you know progressed through uh the executive ranks uh eventually made my way to senior executive positions stating health care uh almost exclusively the entire time so my my last sort of big stop was was that a a very significantly sized uh fortune 50 if you will uh healthcare company uh doing laboratory diagnostics work and um so it was a great it was a great career i i for the most part loved it but then reached a pivotal moment uh i think both with where corporate has gone nowadays uh and my age and things that i wanted to do and and sort of reached a moment where i had to make a decision and uh made that decision to to buy the flower company and what what where has corporate gone these days and what was this decision like what are you kind of alluding to yeah sure no um thank you for the follow-up so um the uh first i'll describe the moment that i had and then actually my wife and i had so in the midst of covid uh you know just like everyone else we were stuck at home and doing phone calls like this on zoom and um uh this particular company i was with we were we were debating vacation policy with with some m a that we had done and as those acquisitions came in you know uh vacations had to sort of be uh reconciled and and consistent throughout the the organization and gosh we probably spent no less than six weeks over and over again debating the same topic over and over and over again and it was it was my wife actually who looked at me and said how many times you're gonna discuss this are you are you serious that this is what your job is now and that was sort of the moment where i said you know it's just time to do something else and and as far as my comments about corporate you know from my experience the the major corporations now once you reach sort of mid-level management upper management your day is going to be occupied with 80 work day tickets you know just dealing with what i call the mayonnaise of of sort of any sort of corporation that's going to be 80 of your job and 20 is actually getting your hands into the subject matter that you that you joined or that you that you enjoy doing and and that just wasn't fulfilling for me at the end of the day it wasn't fulfilling to sit on phone calls and and sort of debate bureaucratic processes i wanted to get my hands dirty and do what i enjoyed to do so great thank you for that for that explanation you know um as i heard about when you described your early early career right out of the military as you kind of um glossed over it but you're a police officer uh so for military i'm military police okay okay well you're actually my second former police officer or military police officer in this case um who's bought a business and uh john hubbard actually also is in tampa so i don't know what it is about former police officers buying businesses in tampa but there you go um i'll look down up you should he's got a great story um but anyway it it sounds like you have done a big career pivot before now i don't know how long ago i guess it was about 20 years ago or plus that you did that you went from former military police officer to corporate guy um but you've taken leaps before in your career so i guess um maybe you have a track record of of big moves so anyway or care to elaborate i do and and i i'm largely not uh not afraid of some risk which i think is helpful in what we're going to be talking about today right i mean i i guess maybe the military or my family upbringing who they were all military as well you don't shy away from risk right so if you're going to enjoy life uh one of the sayings that i've always lived by is you get one ride on this planet you only get one ride so how you spend it and in my opinion you're gonna ride it you're gonna write the heck out of it have a good time be fulfilled be happy go do the things that you want to do because you only get one shot yeah i love it i i try to live that way myself perfect um tee up to this decision so you um you're you finally have reached your wit's end with the corporate mayonnaise and you you choose to buy business you could have chosen any number of things why buy a business and um as a follow-on why if you wanted to do something be a small business owner why not start a business from scratch great questions um yeah so we when we reached our moment when we had our sort of okay you know we've always sort of when i say we my wife and i um uh my wife and i linda we've been together for 30 years and so she's been with me by my side through thick and thin so there's no way i would have ever done anything without her uh being on board with it so it was it was a very much a an us decision to to go ahead and take the risk and and make the leap um and so we we had we had always sort of dabbled in the idea of like wow gosh wouldn't it be great to own our own thing do our own thing and um um you know so we so we reached that moment in incorporated so now okay great we're we're convinced it's gonna happen what are we gonna do um so the first thing that we we sort of reflected on is well we can't be miserable so you know we're not going to go buy something where we're not going to love what we're doing you got to enjoy what you're going to spend your day today back to your life philosophy and so i'm at a point absolutely absolutely forget it you know i'm not i'm not interested in doing anything that is going to you know i want to i love mondays yeah mondays are great for me um that you know it's it's it's a fresh opportunity to dive into a fresh week and and and do some some pretty cool stuff so you know you know so we had to love it uh and and for us uh you know we have moved quite a bit so we had this is our 12th home that we own so we had sort of looked at the idea of well hey maybe some sort of improv home improvement business um we we got very close to that um we explored it we looked at that opportunity i i enjoy it we we love to sort of dabble in the house and do some fix some kind of things and um sure you know so that that was a great business opportunity we live in uh we live in uh tampa florida and uh you know over this covered time frame there's a lot of people coming here housing has just been been great um so there's a lot of um renovation opportunity for us here so we saw the market it we enjoyed it we were very close the best opportunity for us would have been a franchise and once again the wisdom of my wife prevailed she said hmm franchise and we were close we were this close she said franchise interesting so you're gonna have a boss again and i said well that's one way to put it but you know there'll be freedom she's like yeah but not the freedom that you want i said you're absolutely right so the good news um the the blessing with that is it started to put us in the circle the circle of brokers the sort of put yourself out there that you're interested in buying a business you're interested in starting something and now you're in the network and sure enough we had stumbled on the right broker and uh he actually said hey take a look at this which happened to be um kauai isle flowers and uh you know at first uh you know flowers was something that we're we're interested we like to like to plant and landscape and and sort of do this thing who doesn't love flowers right so uh so we were we were sort of big fans initially of okay well the the genre certainly seems right but you know then there's this just thought of like okay well but flowers i don't really want to own a flower shop right so i really wasn't interested in the the you know let's open up at eight let's close it five let's make some bouquets and it just wasn't very interesting to us not that there's anything wrong with that the retail aspect it just wasn't exciting the retail typical mom-and-pop you know flower shop it just wasn't you know to me it just wasn't going to be an interesting enough uh business to jump into and then we saw you know so we we we asked our broker we said well how how much you know you know let's take a look at them some p l uh and and i started to look at the volume and i said my gosh this is a ton of flowers how what in the world do they actually do and um it it turned out to be a pretty cool opportunity it's a niche business it serves um some of the uh the more underserved stores in in the realm of flowers and uh this this particular company um started 30 years ago and sort of had grown to a point where it needed some some fresh eyes on it and it just seemed ripe for what we were looking for wow it's big enough it's exciting enough it's got a great track record uh this could be the fit for us and so that's that's how we got there and then took the opportunity cool well i want to get into more about the business itself but first a couple other questions um i i am really struck by by your use of the word we and how you're you're you're collaborating with your wife on all these big decisions is she working in the business with you she is um i i would say she's sort of the the back office side of it so the the business requires sort of a front end right the the the flowers have to be we we acquire flowers from ecuador and columbia those all have to be brought in prepared shipped out there's a lot of distribution work that has to get done so we sort of call that the front of the house that's where i spend the bulk of my time and then there's the back of the house right so the back of the house is things have to get paid for accounts payable accounts receivable uh the books working with uh the accountant those types of things and that's where linda helps out and was she um doing something before this or when you were looking at businesses the idea that you would both be participating in the business yeah great great question yeah so so our children um we actually um let's see what was now about 16 15 16 years ago adopted two children from siberia and so that was her full-time job for quite a few years so so sort of another pivotal moment for us is we're we're soon to be empty nesters so um this was a great opportunity for her to transition from being a a full-time full-time mom to to now getting her hands back into uh uh you know typical sort of work i guess you would say great well it really does sound like a great fit for for the two of you the and then just the the question about starting something from scratch it sounds like you guys had kind of decided at the outset you'd buy something and was that is that kind of the the typical reasons that you wanted something that already had legs already had sde that you could live off of all of that stuff or were there other reasons i think so i i i think you know a big influence was you know having sde to work with we wanted something that that had had that was ready to be taken to another level that was ready to be invested in um the the idea of starting from scratch um it just wasn't going to fit our i'll say lifestyle yeah to be honest it just we wanted something that was already on the ground so jason on this the appeal of buying a business of course supporting a lifestyle that you and your wife already had um the sde is is the number you're going to be looking at first and foremost um can you share what uh what kawaii was doing when you were acquiring it sure so uh the the the business at that time was uh slightly over a million in revenue and uh i would say they were sde was around to 250 at the time um okay and so um that's that's where we started which which for us was was a good enough starting point uh certainly not where we wanted to be but um was was enough for us to get started okay and when you say it wasn't enough well first of all did you take a loan to acquire the business or did you what was the deal structure i did not i this this was a cash deal so as i had mentioned earlier in the interview i had been with some pretty large companies uh and had done uh uh conversely to where things are right now the stock market used to be a pretty good place and um and still will be still will be um uh but we did we did pretty well in the stock market and so so i i funded it myself oh wow oh that's great and did you consider an sba loan or did you just would rather have just it wasn't drawn to it i i did i did uh and then re-enter mayonnaise right so um so so so the unfortunate process with with an sba loan and getting a bank and and you know just going through the well like i said going through the mayonnaise is just just wasn't it just wasn't timely it just it's too long too slow and we wanted to move and had the money so just skipped it you know jason you had said earlier about when you were looking at the franchise deal and in doing this kind of outreach and getting to know the local network of brokers um that that that process kind of yeah it connected you to this network and one of the things that my guests actually sometimes struggle with is being taken seriously as as a buyer as a searcher you know if they're first-timers who many of my money almost all of my guests are um just because in the world of business brokerage there are a lot of tire kickers there are a lot of people who say they want to buy a business but aren't very serious and so brokers can be um dismissive can be not get back to you if you're a first-time buyer because they just don't want to waste their time with people they don't take seriously but it sounds like you didn't have that problem and i wonder if part of it was because you made it clear that you were a cash buyer because that's that's probably pretty unusual at this end of the market i suspect so i suspect that change changed things quite a bit uh because we did we did not experience that um and and at no time yeah you know when i during the process either with the franchise that we were looking at or or ultimately the business that we bought we we you know we sort of hedged our bet in the conversation as to how we would fund it it's a normal part of the conversation how you're going to fund this how are you going to purchase it well you know we're looking at a couple of options i might do a mix i might do this but you know hey by the way i actually have the cash i just don't know whether that's going to be the way we finally finance it and i do think that um having the cash and being able to prove it sort of changes everything you know the whole conversation just sort of pivots once they know you have the money and can get the deal done so yeah yeah exactly okay so it was doing 200 250 in sde and you felt that as a that would be a good start to support the lifestyle that you all had and reinvest into the business because it sounds like you were i mean most buyers are growth oriented but it sounds like you were particularly so um so i imagine you were looking at that sde number and allocating a part of that in your mind to reinvestment in the business talk talk me through that absolutely so so one of the criteria you know i sort of shared the first criteria the first criteria had to be something that we enjoyed doing that we wanted to get up every day and and sort of deal with i used the word deal with not in a negative context but we were not naive right you know with my age and my experience i know that there's nothing out there that that is in business that is just you know wake up and it's all rainbows and unicorns and lollipops i mean it's yeah you know everything it's why they call it work it's called work so so uh in order to sort of be motivated to get up and work you've got to love it you've got to enjoy it but the second criteria was that it was something we could take and grow um so so i am experienced i did go to business school i did want to do something so i wasn't interested yet yet i'm only 51 and as you said i'm only midway mid career i i was not interested in just putting my feet up so so i'm not ready to just sort of like have something generate sde i'm not really going to do anything that's not what we were interested in doing at all we wanted something that we could see potential in to say okay how do i take this grow it double it add customers you know increase revenue right so so i i didn't want something that's just like okay well you can figure out how to cut cost right i mean you can cut 10 20 cost that's sort of an easy thing to do but but was there something out there that we could that we could get a hold of where you know we could double triple quadruple revenue and yeah and we believe we found it okay and i want to i want you to explain to us why you thought this what potential you saw in this business but first um describe a little bit more about what the business does it's flower distribution pretty simple but just give us a little bit more of the kind of economics you said that it it's really serving um stores that might not otherwise be otherwise be served by flower distribution they're not florists so give us a little bit more color sure sure so here's here's the business in a nutshell so we import uh the same roses that you can get from anywhere else i mean pretty much all roses all fresh flowers uh come from either ecuador or colombia uh at least on on this side of the ocean so to speak we're not talking about europe we're talking about the united states so the the primary source for for most flowers is south america ecuador or colombia and and then second to that most of those flowers in the united states come through miami so our our we have a partner uh and that partner is in miami and we import the flowers from either ecuador or colombia right now it's exclusively colombia given all the unrest in in ecuador that's happening right now so those flowers are prepared and brought to our office in saint pete so we're headquartered our depot is in saint pete and then we distribute exclusively to convenience stores so all convenience stores small grocery chains mom and pop grocery stores so this is not you know we're not taking flowers to the traditional locations of say well here in florida it's publix publix grocery stores you know costco sam's or um you know your normal mom and pop florist we don't we don't do that we we serve the convenience market and and small grocery chains and so that would be 7-elevens i think you mentioned in our pre-call um so so both mom and pop but also larger franchisees of like a 7-eleven and then just yeah your corner bodega sort of thing exactly right yeah 7-eleven uh 7-eleven and circle k are our two biggest customers and do you have relationships with corporate at circle k and 7-eleven or or do you and or your your predecessor did they go out and and develop relationships with each individual franchisee how does that work yeah great question so uh you know it's a little different for each chain um so uh if you we'll talk about 7-eleven 7-eleven primarily operates with the franchise model so most of 7-elevens out there are not corporate owned stores they are franchise stores and you that that's exactly how it works it so you know they have they have groups or consortiums in different regions where you develop a relationship there so you harness the relationship with those regions word gets out word of mouth and then you're in those stores circle k conversely is primarily a corporate uh owned store most stores are corporate owned and there you have category managers who decide the products that go into the stores and so there you develop a relationship more at a corporate level and and manage the relationship that way so and then of course mom and pops are exactly how they sound their mom and pops so you're on the street and you're visiting those those stores directly and hearing what they want as a customer and and providing them the same service great um well obviously there's a lot of what you bought is the is the the the relationships a lot of the value of this business that you acquired is in those pre-existing relationships and so what did you and your wife see that in this business that you thought what made it so growable ah great question so the firs there were two things uh one when we bought it that was a predominantly 7-eleven uh customer base and so we knew right away gosh there's a lot more convenience stores out there than 7-eleven uh so so we saw the potential to reach out to other organizations uh the other was that it was regionally confined mostly to central florida so um really in between i'll just call it daytona and daytona beach which is on the atlantic side and tampa which is on the gulf side and sort of that stretch in the middle orlando being there and so there was both opportunity to add additional customer relationships as well as grow into other regions and so that's exactly what we're doing so so we actually added uh circle k as a customer uh and then um i guess i'll announce here on your show uh that next month we are going to launch our second location up in uh near the jacksonville area so that we will go and capture the same customer base up in i call it northern florida because right now we are limited you know roses are a perishable product so you're somewhat limited in in the areas that you can distribute uh by how fast you can get a car there so you know i can't drive from st pete to atlanta so i have to have depots that are close enough uh to distribute the flowers and um as i said we're launching our second location in august um and we've already got we probably already have another uh over 200 customers waiting for us to get up there so we're excited wow excited about it yeah that's awesome wait so so help me understand the sales process here so well first question is just to get a lay of the land like so if i'm many i feel like many distribution businesses um the pie isn't necessarily growing correct me if i'm wrong so in your case are are you seeing a lot of kind of green field opportunities where there are convenience stores that do not are not currently selling flowers and you can just go right in there and say hey start selling flowers with me or are you having to eat some other guy's business and take the relationship from a different flower distribution sure a little both a little of both um in in in one scenario we have displaced competitors uh and i'll explain the the advantage that we have um uh in in others there there's a tremendous amount of convenience stores that are just not being served so it is not typical or traditional to have flowers inside of convenience stores so there is still a tremendous amount of greenfield opportunity as you said for us to go out there get on the street and get flowers into these organizations and so what's helpful is we already have it so it's very easy to do i say easy but when you already have the established route and you're already passing some of these stores you know it's it's not too tough of a cell to go and say hey listen we already passed you we're already here we're in 600 stores of your competitors we'd love to put this in your store and you know if it works out great it's a win-win if it doesn't work out you know we're here every week so we deliver the flowers weekly and if it's not a good fit or doesn't work out then it's okay you know we move on so it's not a particular difficult cell um given the way that we're we're already sort of in place and established in such a wide network um yeah yeah yeah i'll and and get and getting the decision maker like if you you know you walk in to a convenience store to do the sale to kind of make your pitch is getting the decision getting the the attention of the decision maker difficult or yeah yeah it's it's it's kind of a double-edged sword uh with what's been going on in the economy with the economy being as tough as it is a lot of these convenience store owners and managers are having to actually work so they can't get they can't get staff and so the absence of that staff meaning they're in the shop they're actually running the store yeah and so they're available to us so they're there um now um the the of course the downside is you got to hit them at the right time so um yeah you know they're typically there wanting to open up the store at 6am and you know they'll usually work a day shift so so you've sort of got this window of time that you've got to be there and you can usually get the decision maker that needs to uh that needs to be there the other nice thing with with convenience stores is they are typically not just owned one person doesn't own one store you know typically they own a network of five to ten stores so when you do land that person you sort of make that relationship uh he or she is typically yeah yeah and i have five of these other stores go ahead and take all of them too so so you land the one and it's gonna get you a network of another five to ten stores which um so i was going to ask about these 200 locations waiting for you in a in a market that's brand new to you how do you have so many locations waiting for you is it because you talked to the 10 right people and they each own 20 stores or what yeah great question it's um as i mentioned remember there were two types of relationships one the 7-eleven franchise model the other circle k which is a corporate model uh in this case the bulk of those stores that are waiting for us are circle k corporate so you make you know we reached out with our success that we had here in central florida i sort of piggybacked on that built a relationship with the category manager in the northern parts of florida up near jacksonville and she was welcome to it she's like great here here let's have you know here's the network of this region of stores let's get the flowers in all of them and of course once word gets out to 7-eleven or other competitors that you're coming in and you're going to put flowers into circle k well now they're interested and they're saying hey you know we got to get these into our store so we went up and did a show with uh 7-eleven and um and had plenty of folks sign up as well so um it's it's it's a very interesting network it's a very very small you know you hear this all the time about how small the world is or how small the network how much everybody knows everybody is really true so once you're in there now don't mess up right because it can equally it can equally go away right so if you're if you're not providing good service so i don't i don't mean to to sort of suggest it's it's easy you get a relationship and it's just you know like you know just do it um it's it's not you have to maintain your service levels the flowers have to be good you know they have to know that they're getting taken care of um we can talk about valentine's and mother's day and what that means you know because they're there are sort of two super bowls that happen you have to be there for the customers um so so yeah it's it's for me in my experience over the last year it's less about getting the customer it's more about keeping them well and just about about getting the customer i'm just struck you're you're i i feel like you're right in your your comment that it's not typical to sell um flowers at convenience stores but um it's also not completely novel because i can i can just envision the kind of plastic wrapped single rose like kind of pl flower pot of single roses you know that are for sale at the counter it's often a spot by i guess or yeah at you know uh uh you know a sheets gas station in virginia or sorry sort of thing so i am surprised it's it kind of seems like it would either the industry would have taken to the concept by now or not so i i guess i'm repeating a previous question but just that that the greenfield opportunity exists surprises me because it doesn't seem like it's an entirely novel or foreign idea to sell individual stem roses at a community store yeah it's interesting um and we just for for clarity we don't just sell single stem roses we'll sell um we have four products that we sell we sell single stem roses uh we sell a three rows bouquet and then we sell what's called a seasonal bouquet which is just really anything that you can imagine it sort of varies through season and then we sell a uh a rose a real live rose that is encased in a glass bubble filled with a preservative and it's sort of a decorative item and so we sell those those four products um and and i think you're right it's it's not a total foreign concept to to have uh uh flowers in a store like that uh i think what's what's different about us and what has typically been the trend is small mom-and-pop florists it's it's where you can touch it's the region right so so small mom and pop florist would sort of say hey you know these five or six convenience stores are right near my flower shop let me go in and see if they'll put my flowers in we're um we're able to to provide uh the same consistent product to the whole network uh i will tell you the other sort of secret item that we have i guess or a secret to our success um is we are we are one of very few florists that are uh willing to do what's called scan based trading and scan based trading is is is really where you make a difference in the convenience store setting that they will that gives you a huge edge in getting your product in the store and i can elaborate on that a little bit if you yeah tell us tell us what that is so so so back in the day or the traditional model let's just say you sold chocolate and so great the will smith chocolate bar is debuted and will smith wants to go into a store and say hey i've got these wonderful chocolate bars here have a hundred i'll sell you for a dollar a piece well the typical transaction for a convenience store would be you would expect them to give you a hundred dollars for your hundred chocolate bars and the transaction is done and then they will add their margin and they'll sell them for a dollar fifty and so the world works that way most of the time right so convenience stores uh quite a while ago uh came out with a new model called uh scan based trading which now let's take the same chocolate bars now instead of handing will a hundred dollars what they're going to tell will selling his chocolate bars is you know what will we do like your chocolate bars we think they're amazing we're going to allow you to put those chocolate bars here on our shelves and every time somebody buys one you'll get your dollar and we'll get our 50 cents that just changed the entire cash flow model for the convenience stores right they're not giving you're not handing out they're not taking in risk so they're not handing you 100 they're gonna every time one sells that's when you get paid so that's how actually how our roses work so our flowers are all scan based so i don't collect it i put them into these stores completely at my risk so i only get paid when one sells so and well i was just going to say ask the obvious question like how are you able to absorb this risk where your competition isn't and you know and did you make this change or did you inherit the scan based model from your from the original founder owner i inherited that i inherited that was the other sort of thing that we saw that was like you know that was sort of the third the third piece so so we we we saw that there were competitors not served we saw that regions could be expanded upon and we saw that it was scan based it was an actual differentiator so we're like ah now we've got an opportunity here this this sort of meets all the criteria to sort of go in and conquer the world and so um we we learned a lot about the relationship there's a third party involved with uh sort of monitoring keeping everybody honest with the scan based uh nature of things watching their point of uh point of sale system and and they take care of the payment so so that um that was a real game changer for us when the acquisition came around we're like aha that's going to be the way to do it and so yeah is there risk absolutely there's risk right i'm taking all of the risk so how do i offset that well i um one of the things that our drivers do so in the case of let's go back to will's chocolate bars yeah so so how's will you know will's gonna you're gonna say well my gosh i'm putting these chocolate bars in there how do i know that they sell or don't sell well you're gonna watch that point of sale so it's all analytics so so i have a system and so i would go into the store i would drop drop off your 100 chocolate bars and i'd say hey i dropped off a hundred put that into the system and then i go in the following week and i'm gonna take returns of those chocolate bars that didn't sell because they're not going to be fresh forever i'm going to say hey i dropped off 100 last week and now i'm picking up 50. this is not a good store this is not a good store we need which we we don't need to drop off 100 anymore so i do the same thing with my roses so each store i monitor through the analytic systems that we have and i'm able to sort of watch and monitor how well the sales are performing on each route so each driver goes in and does that data entry for me and then i can i can scale down or or move up right that's the other thing too right this is you know 100 wheels chocolate bars didn't if they all sold out well they need 150 they need 200 so i do the same thing with the roses as i will i will increase or decrease based on those analytics yeah and and i assume after just a few weeks you can really get a sense of i assume sell through is pretty consistent outside of your two super bowls outside of mother's day and what was the other one valentine's valentine's day outside of that it's probably pretty consistent or at least consistent within a season so in the summer it's you know it's at a certain level in winter it drops or whatever but um yeah i mean yeah after four or six weeks you can probably tell what a store is going to pretty reliably tell what a store is going to do you should be delivering to it you you absolutely can uh and one of the nice things is is uh there were there were analytics in place it was a data set that already existed with the previous owner so we're able to see this now i will say this the the major caveat right now is that's all true everything that you said except nobody's ever lived through what we're living through right now in this business right so you know with the price of gas going where it's going the the the recession work getting used um we are seeing some variability that we had not seen before so we're starting to see some just i don't know interesting data it's it's funny that um you know usually it is consistent now there's a lot more choppiness to to the analytics um and so we're we're i think you know the consumers are are you know they say much of this whether recession is true or not is largely driven by attitude and we're really starting to see the attitude and of course roses are a disposable income product so i can see as the attitudes are moving i can see that reflected in the sales when you diligence the business how how far back um in the in the p l's did you look was it did you go back three years three years okay let's talk a little bit about the um the team and employees that you inherited uh and also about uh change i thought it was really interesting your your approach to change really clean and and um effective sounding um and also just a reminder to folks you said you kind of glossed over it but at the top you said that you had been involved in fact your mayonnaise moment and corporate was dealing with an m a situation so you'd seen m a in the corporate world and you knew how important and delicate change management is anyway how big was the team uh that you acquired and then what how did you um you know deliver the message of your new that you're the new owner and assuage their concerns about what that might mean great um yeah thanks great questions i i you know early in my career gosh what seems like a hundred years ago i remember being on the the a side i was we were acquired and at the time i was a young manager and i remember this executive coming in and you know the typical process where where the acquisition has finished and now the the new executive team comes in and they sort of have their little meet and greets and and coffee talks and firesides and and this one particular executive said listen we bought this company because we loved it there will be no changes and of course over the years i have learned that is the stupidest thing to ever tell anybody especially a group of employees who are full of anxiety of course there's going to be changes of course there's going to be change change is going to happen whether the acquisition happened or not because outside forces change so of course change is going to occur and um to say that you bought a company and you're not going to change anything well then why did you buy it i mean come on of course you're going to want to influence it and do different things so so having learned from that and and being a part of of corporate america i sort of learned a lot of good lessons about what not to do and so when i came on board we finished the acquisition we we got introduced to the team one of the commitments i made to to the employees right away was i will make no changes for six months and that was the truthful caveat i said i will i will you know i said unless it's an outside force of which we could have done nothing about anyway um i won't i will commit to not changing anything for six months my job at the time as the new owner in my opinion was to shut up and listen and learn and do every job that i could do right so i learned how to um prepare the roses i did the purchases i drove on routes i delivered to customers i i you know whether it didn't matter what time of the day it was you know i did the job um and that was imperative i i had to learn what were good things that existed what were what were bad things that that needed to go what all had to change but i wouldn't touch it for six months and so that was important it was important that i kept my word to the employees because of course they're you know they're anxious they don't know what's going to happen what am i going to do are they all going to you know everybody sort of immediately goes to disastrous thinking you know he's going to lay everybody off he's going to bring in his own team and of course i didn't i didn't do any of that i have i have most of the employees that i acquired i still have today most of the drivers are all still the same drivers um and so um that was just an important approach to change and i highly recommend it for for for those that ever you know want to make an acquisition be a part of something new number one don't tell them you're not going to change anything of course you are they're not they're not stupid and and number two do give them some time you need to learn you need to learn what's working and what's not so don't just go in there rip it don't feel obligated i think as as a new owner well i'm going to change everything to be my way i'm going to make it the way i want it to get done resist that at first your time is coming you're the owner you don't need to sort of prove yourself you've already bought the business now just relax learn and then implement the changes over time they'll appreciate you for it a lot a lot and community and communicate that very clearly at the outset that you won't be changing six months that particular bit of communication assuages the anxiety a lot i assume it does it a gets rid of the anxiety and then what you'll find here's what you'll find what i found uh during that six month time when they see that you're not gonna do it and that you're gonna leave it alone there is no there's a line at your door of the things they want changed they will come to you they will start telling you oh this has got to go this has got to go we don't like this he's got to go she's got to go you know all of this stuff sort of sort of bubbles to the surface yeah you know now that they see that you're just going to wait and listen they're more than happy to talk to you and psychology there it was it wasn't by design it was just you know it's just it's fascinating what happens if you actually shut up and listen well and to this point about um saying that you won't change anything for six months um you i think you also said that when you when six months and a day six months and a day occurs and you are going to start implementing the changes that you'll involve them in the changes i recall you telling me so what was that bit of the message exactly um so so that's the other thing don't do anything in isolation don't do anything because no matter how smart you think you are you're not you're not as smart as you think you are and it's so tremendously important to understand the ripple effects that are around the corner and five ripples away from the decision that you're about to make and you think it's wise but you you want to have them on board you you want to exercise the change you you you want them a part of the decision so you want to you want to pre-medicate i call it pre-medicate your team okay guys i've listened it's six months in a day i've heard your feedback we don't like so in our case we used um um uh one of one of the changes that that was a pretty significant one in our business was we we carried around these little printers that you see like in a rental car uh when you return the rental car you know and avis will rip off a little ticket for you yep we we had that uh and uh we we use those for for almost all stores even if they were scan based now of course realize when they're scan based they don't you could put a hundred flowers and put a thousand flowers they don't really care how many put in there because if they're not taking the risk and so and here we are delivering tickets to them and so there was just all this flurry of all this ticketing going on and of course the staff the team is looking at me going like we hate these tickets we hate these tickets nobody wants to do the tickets you got to do a ticket you got to wait in line then you got to get the store to stamp it sign it all this kind of stuff so we ended it we just ended it we said look if you're a scan based customer get in do the change on the computer you don't have to print them a ticket and but i i like to test things yeah so so what i will often do is i will choose a driver right so so another change that i did was the workflow on the computer but i don't just roll that out right so i choose someone i say hey let's test this you're gonna be the only guy who does this run this through let's see a couple cycles of how that works for the customer how that works for the analytics how that works for you as a driver if we like the change we'll roll it out to everybody but when they feel like they're a part of it you know it gives you um you don't look like a tyrant first of all um if if you do and you will make mistakes but when it's a mistake it's all our mistake so then it's you're not alone you're not alone like wow you made a boneheaded decision um but then they all feel a part of it you know and and they'll embrace it and so if you do mess up you go hey guys we all made this decision it didn't work out and they're like okay they're not going to throw rocks at you you know so just it's important i think especially as a small business team is everything yeah i mean you know i can't deliver all the flowers right there's 600 stores it's it's 10 000 a week it's it's i can't do that by myself i need that team and they have to feel a part of it so so i am i not only involve them in the changes i think i do one other important thing and i highly recommend this to everybody give them skin in the game i give them a bonus i i bonus them every quarter so every quarter i look at how well we've performed and i make them a part of it so that they all feel like they're part of this business together and um we we we're gonna make it together or we're gonna we're gonna die together so so again it's just just constantly sort of reinforcing the concept of team i think will serve you serve you well as a small business entrepreneur and that uh new bonus structure is is net new net new salary for them or compensation for them or did it correct wow so that well that was a happy change when you delivered that news it is now i i do tell them it's um it is discretionary first and foremost it's the performance of the business sure right so if the business is impacted and it's starting to get tough you know gas has you know doubled since i bought the business so it doesn't you know we're not always going to have really big bonuses sometimes we'll have small bonuses but i'll do i'll do the best i can to always share in uh in our rewards and it's kind of a typical kind of profit sharing program it is it is although it's completely discretionary uh by me so i don't i can't say that i have a a a formula that sort of works because there's always so many exceptions to these formulas we've tried to figure one out but um with the team with the team as a change you know i said hey let's let's openly and transparently work on a formula together we never really came up with one that we all liked so so i said okay well then i'll just decide and everybody's been comfortable with that so far and how many employees were there when you acquire the business so when i acquired there were six seven eight there were eight and does that does that include the seller that does not include the seller it would be ten if you included the sellers okay so eight husband and wife team husband and wife team and so there are eight and then and then you did as i recall from our pre-call you did have to let a couple of people go i didn't talk about that yeah so um as we started to um you know the the first six months got under our belt we're now working on the year um i can see growth not only happening we're starting to work on the um the north the jacksonville area extension that depot so i can sort of see around corners now of like wow our volume's going to go from you know 10 000 a week to 15 000 a week to possibly 20 000 flowers a week that we're going to be distributing which is great so now one of the things you got to think about is scalability well can you scale it and does this work where are all the choke points in the process one of the things that we were doing uh was we were actually sleeving the flowers ourselves so we were actually you know taking the roses would come in raw you know they'd come off the bush they'd package them up we would get them in pretty raw form we'd have to pick the stems pick the um the leaves off so to speak you know any thorns that were sort of out of whack and the petals and sort of get that rose to look very beauty and the beast like and so um and then once it was there you had to put it inside of a barcoded sleeve well imagine doing that ten thousand fifteen thousand thirty thousand times because you know mother's day comes around valentine's day comes around now you double the flowers so you know there we are in our holidays doing 30 to 40 000 roses in a week's time so it was it was it was you know at the size of the business at the time it was sort of a funny thing to be watching i mean there's just there's flower petals everywhere there's leaves everywhere it's just it was chaos and so you know on one on the one hand you can sort of laugh at go wow this is just a beautiful disaster uh but on the other hand you sort of like but how am i going to do this if i grow the business i can't i can't grow the business um so i i had to reach out to some different suppliers and say i need this volume and i need these things sleeved when they show up at my door so i need these things bar coded and prepped and ready to go in colombia and that's what we did so so we made the decision to go ahead and have that done in south america so that when i got it i did not have that choke point and we could just get these things loaded up and sent out and that's what we did oh so that unfortunately you know it's it's the right change for the business and i stand by it um the drivers are extraordinarily happy um because they're not there's no choke point that they're waiting on but it did unfortunately mean the end of two very good two very good employees we had to let go and you provided a severance to them how did that work i did so i uh one of the one of the the employees had been with us um probably oh i think she was 15 to 17 years so she'd been with us for a very long time and all she did all day was this process of of rapping correct correct i've done it for years and um she uh and but i felt they deserved respect and appreciation for what they had contributed to the business and uh i severanced uh a couple months uh salary for them um so that they had what i call the soft land right so so that they were able to transition successfully to to to another role so i just thought that was important it's not only important i think for it's the right thing to do for the employees themselves but it is equally as important that your current employees see how you treat exiting employees so they know how they're going to be treated right so so it's important to me that they see how how i treat control um so that they're not you know concerned or worried that if if something happens and and they need to you know their position goes away they know that i'll do the right thing uh you know jason as you talk about that process of of sleeving flowers yes it sounds like just really laborious and messy um on the other hand what you often find with businesses is that like um they'll at a certain size they'll want to go up or down their own value chain to capture more of the value so in your case going up val going up the chain would mean you know basically just buying raw flowers and doing the packaging the sleeving yourselves like presumably there was um value capture there by your business more more profit to be had um and so you know i guess that's that's kind of classic vertical integration it's like if you can go all the way up you know and grow your own flowers you're fully vertically integrated and so your business um was kind of going a step in that direction you still had a long way to go presumably to grow your own flowers but um but anyway it just strikes me that you you were you were kind of disintegrating your supply chain with this this decision um more than integrating your supply chain which is you know the reverse of what i usually hear when it comes to decisions like these sure sure well i'll i'll just i'll throw on a a couple additional variables about flowers that might be interesting in in what you decide to capture on the value chain let's go back to your chocolate right so so chocolate doesn't perish at the same rate as a flower so there might be more opportunity for will's chocolate bars for you to capture different pieces one of the things to keep him very very important to remember about flowers any flower is it's a dying product yeah it's dying the moment you have separated it from the bush so you're on the clock right so so there might have been or there might be opportunity one could make the argument there is opportunity for me to keep that piece of the equation but anything that you do that risks the time affiliated with getting you you want to keep as short as possible the moment that thing comes off the bush to getting into the hands of the consumer and anything that you do in between that disrupts that time or extends that time it's a detriment to yourself so it's not really value so it's just something to keep in mind with a perishable product that's sort of different than say other types of products that you don't have the clock on you as much as you possibly do with with roses and so that's that's what i was forced to look at is is yeah should i give up you know i would also say that in business right you're constantly robbing peter to pay paul making these decisions about what the right ones are and the wrong ones are in our case i was exchanging time i'm exchanging time i need i need i'm i'm i'm giving up a little bit to in in exchange for shortening that time window to get the flowers out there great um it's just yeah you you're you your business is just kind of lit living under the like the tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick of of a time constant you're on the clock you're on the clock it's it's it's dying when they cut it yeah uh jason a few more questions for you um kind of all over the place um give us a sense of a single location i know it varies you know from a big convenience store with tons of traffic to you know a tinier one but can you give us a sense of ballpark a range of how many um how much revenue per month a single location a new location would represent for you um let's see a as you said you're you're right i mean we have stores that that struggle to sell 10 a week um you know that that it's tough for them sometimes it's about where they're located sometimes their location is is a struggle for them uh in other cases it's you know there's construction or or something happening at the store um others are absolute gold mines it's it's unbelievable we we have stores that sell as high as um i think our top performing store is is 80 plus flowers a week um and and so it's kind of interesting the the more the more rural and out there a store is it's interesting that these these convenience stores become the grocery stores of of the communities right so if there's if if your location's not if your area your community is not big enough to be a kroger or a publix or a food line whichever i don't know where all your viewers are but the publix is the big grocery chain here um then you know the the small mom-and-pop convenience store becomes the grocery store and it's not unusual by the way we've we've seen some locations have plumbing supplies and they become little tiny home depots you know it's a home depot it's a grocery it's a gas and it's flowers and so they sort of have to to so so it does sort of run the gamut if you if you um if you average it out i i would say the average um the the average store is about 15 15 flowers a week that i sell right so that that i can count on uh gets sold so just you take all the tens and all the 80s and sort of amalgamate it and and that's what you get is is on average about 15 flowers and that would represent uh that would represent about 40 40 to 45 dollars of revenue okay and then your profit on that is six is about 33 a third maybe correct yep yep a third to about 40 so somewhere between there now the reason i'm giving a variable is my prices are different depending on different stores and uh the the prices vary on seasonal bouquets three rows bouquets singles single roses but generally speaking that's correct great thank you for that the um one of the things that that people looking at buying a business um acquiring mines listeners think about a lot is how big a business to buy uh and there's there's some kind of conventional wisdom that for a certain type of search you're a little bit different but for a certain type of searcher a business with 700 000 sde up to a million is the sweet spot it's big enough it's it's too small for private equity so you're not going to be competing against really you know deep pocketed serious players um but big enough that with 800 000 in sde you have first of all these folks are all taking sba loans you weren't so they have debt service so that 800 000 in sde immediately drops to let's call it half caught 400 sde and then from that 400 they want to pay themselves a you know a salary competitive with what they could get at a corporate job so 100 let's call it 150. that's 250 left over to reinvest at the business um but and but some really nice cushion there as well where they can really on day one just be working on the business not in the business um right and so your business is quite a bit smaller than that but you also didn't have the debt service so that changes things considerably correct um but any just any immediate reaction to that in size of business um like were were you for example looking at was 250 sde like your hard number or were you looking at a wide range did you have that dialed in even or were you just kind of open to all opportunities or what right so i mean i mean first and foremost of course you you got to live right so you know you examine your your lifestyle and you you you look at you know how much how much do i have to be bringing in every year to uh you know to live and to eat um so so there's your starting point you know forget everything else you got to make sure you're okay um and so so so we did that yeah you're right we were in a different place we were in a different um spot given that we were going to use our own money um so so i think what to answer your direct question when people think about how big um i i'm i'm i'm hesitant to suggest that sde is the right measure so i'd be careful with that i'd be careful certainly it's a piece i mean you know the numbers should be positive for starters and the numbers should be enough for you to you know that there's enough you got enough nickels left over at the end of the month that you can you can make a living um but first and foremost it's it's some of the same principles that i shared right you got to love what you do and and you better first make sure above all else i don't care how much the money is can you handle it can you handle it right and by handle it is you know a lot of people want to jump into this yeah you know small business ownership medium-sized business ownership you're everything i mean i i've uh you know all the cliche things are all true right you're the chief bottle washer you know i've i've done it all you know there's nobody cares about the business more than you do so you've got to first make sure that everything all the moving parts you're capable of handling because i don't care what sde is sde is not going to be there if you can't keep the ship floating so you've got to be able to do operations you've got to be able to do sales and marketing you've got to be able to understand accounts payable are you losing money is is you know do you have theft going on not not anything intentional necessarily but do you have leakage uh you got to be able to detect all those things so if you don't have all the right pieces in i really don't care how big of a business it is you've got to be able to to to handle it um so um i would just be i i don't know i i think i'm a little more wary than others of just sort of using financials pnl is not everything um because you you'll hate it in six months if you can't keep up if you if you're if you're putting in 10 12 hours a day and you're still not keeping up and you don't have your arms around the business and you can't manage things on a pinch i don't know man i don't care what the number is well and and actually that's a great um point because one of the one of the arguments that i failed to make for a larger business is that usually that's usually a good proxy for a business having a management layer so if a business is doing a million dollars in cash flow right it's likely to have some some management that's not going to be just you on day one um so fair enough fair enough and i'll and i'll i'll validate your point um uh and and talk a little bit about the success that we've had so um we um we will probably be at if if all things stay on their current trajectory we'll be at about 700 of sde this year it's great and so cool we're thrilled with it we're really thrilled with it and i've added another manager so i've had to add another video so so you're exactly right um that you've you've you've got to be wise enough to know okay this is getting bigger than just it you know i'm i'm going to have to to to eat my own food here right is is what i said is true you gotta make sure you can handle it and i recognized that i can't right i recognize that okay a second location is gonna require some help i can't be at two places at one time i can't yeah you know i know what is involved and what it takes to do one location and so now i had to hire on uh in this case of a very dear friend who's who's probably been with me for for over 10 years um so somebody that i trust but but absolutely so now now i have a chief operating officer somebody that's going to help me with with operations of a second location and so it's kind of funny that you said you know right around that number that's when you got to start to add a management layer and you do it's true it's true this is just just enough moving parts that you've got to have it with you so um and and but your day-to-day let's say prior to opening jacksonville um would you would you say you're working in the business or on the business uh you know that that distinction can be over sure uh overstated some but like you know actually on our pre-call uh you may recall you were you were actually sitting in one of your route so you are definitely working in the business at least sometimes although i realize that was an exception right but talk to give us a sense of your day-to-day um at a business of this size yeah i would say you know i'm not going to count the first six months of course that's the first six months you're in way in if you're smart you're in as far deep as you can making the decisions because you made the deliberate decision to get in there and learn every absolutely i wanted to know everything and by the way i've done that even in my corporate jobs if you go back when i was doing laboratory diagnostics i did every job i was legally allowed to do right because i didn't think you could be a good executive how in the world do you participate and make decisions if you don't actually know what it takes to unpack a box or move a specimen or drive a forklift so i did it all um and so so there's no difference here um so so i i um i did uh all the roles so the first you dismissed the first six months because you're just in these last six months on on average on net i would say it's about 80 20. i'm i'm 80 working on the business 20 in the business so that's because i have a great team i have a great team you know i've sort of made all the decisions that we've made retained who we've retained uh and i've got a really good team and set expectations with them that i need them to sort of step up and do different things but the 20 the 20 you know a lot of our business is distribution so you're gonna spend a lot of time making car decisions so you're gonna be doing a lot of stuff about flat tires and oil changes and these types of things but um the uh um i would say i said i would spend about 20 there and a lot of that too is sort of self-inflicted i do that so that i stay in touch you know yeah i think it's important important that my my folks see me involved in the business and uh that i always keep my hands so that my finger is always on the pulse of what's going on makes me a better to that po for sure and to that point are you folks um all seeing each other at the depot is there an office what what's the just the lay of the land there there is um there we have an off we have an office slash depot slash warehouse walking coolers that type of thing with all the flowers in it um and so everybody sort of comes and goes from that from that place that location and so we all see each other in passing it's interesting uh one of the nice beautiful things about convenience stores is they're open 24 hours so i have some routes you know one of the ways i i retain and sort of attract drivers as opposed to like amazon or somebody like that is i offer flexibility so i have i have drivers that leave some start their routes at 11 at night and they're done five in the morning i have others that start at five in the morning and you know they choose to drive during the day so so they choose their schedules i don't tell them what they have to do it's great they got to pick their hours they get to for the most part pick their days i just have one sort of overall demand which is once a week your flowers need to get dealt with for your customers however you choose to do that is how you do it and and they love that they love that flexibility aside from flowers specifically you know fundamentally yours is a distribution business what would you tell other people out there who are thinking about buying a distribution business how do you find it sure well i think i think you you said it right where it's it's flowers but flowers are almost about 10 of of what we do you need to be prepared in the distribution business you are in the car business make no mistake you're in the car business right and you better understand oil changes and tire rotations and how long tires last and how long vehicles last and it's a real challenge now with the chip shortage so the chip shortage has uh by default caused a vehicle shortage so our the best vehicle for us in our case are the small vans uh the sprinter vans so so not quite the size of an amazon van but a little the next sort of version down um well they're not they're gone i mean you can't you can't get any more so it puts you in the used market and in the used market you're paying new car prices so that's just sort of a reality but but even under so so even if you normalize it you're still in the car business you're you're very much you're your day-to-day your week your month is going to be spent making sure that those vehicles are okay and i mean that's your that's your lifeblood of the business is making sure the cars now in my case you know there's all sorts of distribution businesses but um in my case i have to keep the flowers cool so i get away with air conditioning but but air conditioning is very important other distribution businesses need refrigerated vehicles which you know now a small van a small refrigerated vehicle you're looking at sixty to seventy thousand dollars just to get a nice used one so so yeah make no mistake whatever you're distributing whether it's will's chocolate bars or jason's flowers uh you're in the car business well and and you're also in in the driver business uh right sort of thing so and how have you been dealing with labor because you know we all hear about the trucking industry or maybe this is a year or two ago but for a while there everyone was talking about trucking and how difficult it was to find truck drivers um have you found it difficult to on that on that front uh i i have not uh i i would say i would say a couple things one is you you drive good drivers drivers with clean records important to have clean record right because your insurance costs are going to be highly variable if you have a driver who's been in accidents or or had a previous dui or anything like that then you're going to pay for it in your insurance so it's something to be very very careful about as i mentioned earlier what what i offer that is that is a bit unique i think to to some industries is a complete flexibility so so it it i allow the drivers to decide i i actually there's two two wonderful things about the business uh to the driver from the driver's perspective one it's the same stops every day so it's not like amazon or anything like that where you come into work you pull up your computer you don't know where you're going all right yeah i don't know who are you you know my drivers have the same 30 to 40 stops they get relationships with the customers that they need so it's the same thing every every week the other is it's completely up to them so it's totally up you want to deliver monday tuesday wednesday you want to deliver monday wednesday friday um you need to shift the day it's no big deal you need to leave at 11 at night five in the morning whatever you want to do you know just get it done you got 24 hours to make it happen yeah so that flexibility has has i think really given me an edge uh in fact i'm i'm right across the street from uh you can see from my from from where we're at the the amazon uh sort of launch area where they keep all their vans so and it doesn't doesn't intimidate me at all jason the um you know it seems like you've actually a lot of people say that small business and corporate life are just two different universes and i i suspect you agree um but it does seem like you've actually really been able to leverage a lot of your corporate experience in this business that you really are drawing on a lot of a lot of certainly you know the the transactions the the acquisitions you were involved in um incorporate while they were probably a lot larger than your own personal acquisition it seems like there are some some principles carried through um so so would you say that your corporate experiences how helpful would you say your 20-plus years of corporate experience were to this endeavor sure um i would say they've been they've been helpful i i'd be unwise to to sort of dismiss all of the experiences that i had and by no means am i anti-corporate or or or do i think you know it's just it's just not a fit anymore right it's just you start to you know you know the as as companies have evolved and and you know that 80 percent i talk about just isn't attractive to me anymore and i i'd be at risk in my own company you know and i'm starting to see a little bit of it you know that mayonnaise start to encroach in so i have to be very careful about not becoming a victim to the very thing that i didn't want to be a part of um but but i'd be foolish not to to leverage the the experiences that i had uh and lessons that i've learned right i mean and they were very large organizations smart organizations wonderful people wonderful teams um good experiences bad experiences um and i've i've i've taken from that um uh you know i paid attention in business school so i leveraged business school you know university of maryland was great um i i i i would say uh you know i don't it's hard to put a number on it but but i would say very much i've i'm leveraging what i've learned over the years um you know i didn't get these gray hairs from nothing and now would you um have done what you're doing now earlier if you'd kind of if you'd known better or known different yeah it's fair i i would say i i remember telling linda um my wife linda i said you know i think i now i've long sort of prided myself on never having any regrets and i think i have one right i should have done this 20 years ago 20 years ago i should have scratched the entrepreneurial itch so to speak i'm loving everything about it you know like i said mondays are still exciting so i'm i'm ready to go um yeah you know it's not not like everything is is wonderful there's 10 that's sort of irritating but um no i i wish i had done this much much younger um i think i would have had a far better time um but um i don't know and i'm still working on that as to whether it's officially a regret or not because at the same time i had wonderful experiences in my previous career as well and so um who knows it might not have been as successful as this is had i not had those experiences so exactly i mean part of the reason you're you're feeling so good is that you're crushing it and part of the reason you're crushing it may well be that you had you know 20 years of wisdom accrued correct correct and you know learned learn some mistakes on somebody else's dime right right you know i could have been bone-headed and silly on on my dime and that would have uh made for a different interview possibly yes yeah okay well jason just to to um take us out so let's just recap your growth again uh in one in one answer so tell me do i have this right um you why why don't you do it for us again so you've revenue was in a million dollars when you bought it 200 250 sde that was 13 months ago where are you now yeah so um right now in the first uh six months were over 700 000 in revenue and um i expect uh and well and and right now in the first six months we're over 300 000 in sde so you can so we're doubling that out more than a doubling of revenue and yeah you can plot that out for the rest of the year yep phenomenal yeah so so long as i don't know so long as their uh gas doesn't go down crazy on us here right and inflation stays somewhat in check uh we should be okay well it's a really neat business it has to it attracts me i like distribution businesses for reasons i can't put my finger on but they just draw me for some reason i just find them neat and fun um and you know at the risk of inviting competition you know if somebody if somebody's looking at a business like this in in seattle or some other region that you're not gonna you know go go conquer anytime soon um sounds like this this phenomenon of kind of there being a lot of green field for this um is your impression that that's the case around the country or do you know i do know um we i did a show uh i did a show in orlando gosh about um three or four months ago and i was approached by uh multi-unit owners multi multi 100 unit owners who wanted me immediately to head to new jersey and chicago and i just i'm out of gas i mean i can't you know my growth is sort of set um i'll spill to you as well here at the end that um in august it is for sure that we are opening up near jacksonville um i have in the pipeline to open up locations in north carolina virginia and miami so so i could be i would say within the next 12 months operating out of five locations so is it out there yes it is out there um and uh and i don't mind competition that's phenomenal and and last question really why do you think your previous the founder owner didn't you know this thing was so primed for growth why didn't they why didn't they see it or you know what what was the story there yeah uh fair question i think uh they had run the business for 30 years so i give them a tremendous amount of credit they they built this you know they they built it they put all the right steps in place um and uh you know there's some personal circumstances and uh you know i i i would guess that um you know when you do something for 30 years you're just kind of done you're ready to to do something else and um you know they have they had a set of personal things that they were wrestling with as a family and um they um they had done it for 30 years and so i think that just everything sort of lined as equally as it had lined up for us it had lined up for them to to to move on to something else well how fortunate that you know just right time for both for both parties and it's been it's been great and we remain great friends and we we talk uh as often as as possible i see them from time to time they're still they're still uh they spend a couple months out down here in florida and and the rest in their new state but um yeah so we're still in touch and they're they're they're very happy about the growth for everybody yeah yeah i imagine cool well jason a hearty congratulations on the growth that is that is quite an impressive um first year in a business uh and it as i said a really neat business to me so really really cool to hear hear from you in a year and how many locations you're in at that point oh it'd be great i'd love to do it great all right jason thanks for your time sir all right thanks will