Getting Unstuck by Buying a Business | Christian Bateson Interview

Christian Bateson welcome to acquiring minds thank you for having me Christian I'm excited for this interview because you are so excited about this path the path of buying a business yeah I don't think it's an overstatement to say that buying a business saved you from misery so let's get right into it Christian please start us off with a little background on you sure yeah so uh I'm one of eight kids I grew up in a big family in uh Southwestern New Mexico uh very much like a kind of a blue collar upbringing um and worked a lot of crappy jobs in my teenage years worked on Farms for four bucks an hour in the 110 degree heat and and that was kind of the theme of my you know that that's a theme that I think about a lot is that everything that you've done in your life gives you perspective and gives you gratitude for what you have now so anyway we we'll we'll touch on that various points um when I was 15 I got a scholarship to go to Philips Academy Andover which is like you know the best high school in the country basically um that was a big lifechanging event for me um so I was this you know kind of redneck kid went to Andover Mass in 1991 then that opened the door for me to go to Dartmouth College um and you know that was that was just sort of all great things happening to a small town boy um Christian let me stop you how'd you get that how'd you get that um that scholarship to endover so I had one older sister I'm the second oldest of eight kids my older sister got a scholarship to go to a school in Connecticut um and it was just kind of like you know I come from a family of smart people both my dad's parents went to Stanford and you know my parents took a different path which took me out of these you know sort of coastal population centers where this thing is more comp you know where education is more valued but you know we were grow grew up in the small town there was not a lot of educational opportunity there so they encouraged her to go off to this other school and and so then didn't work out for her she came back after a year but then I kind of was like well I want to try it so I just you know I bought this guide book like the guide to secondary schools and uh my parents really wanted me to go to a Catholic School all boys Catholic School um but none of those offered any scholarships and Andover basically offered me a full ride where not only they paid tuition they paid to fly me to campus and home for you know Christmas and Spring Break and summer they put money in my account every week um just for you know sunry uh expenses and so yeah I mean it was incredible you know for it was so different than anything I'd experienced um or or that most people have experienced but good for you that's amazing it yeah it was so I was like living in the dorm you know at the age of 15 kind of could do whatever I wanted to and um I've always thrived on you know just kind of being very independent and and more of a loner you know in a good way like my sports were wrestling and Tennis you know I was never a team sport guy um I don't have any Partners or you know outside investors in my businesses now I just kind of like to do it myself so um so anyway yeah yeah so I was I was I was at Andover I went to Dartmouth um I studied economics and I I always wanted to be a business owner I realize this now I think back to this um from a young age I always wanted to own my own business but then I kind of got seduced by the Wall Street money um a lot of guys from my fraternity went to Wall Street and I'd go to New York City for the weekend and hang out with them and and see the life they were living um and it was a great way to get to entrepreneurial money without taking entrepreneurial risk um so I ended up doing that out of college I did three years as an m&a analyst at be Sterns um which was a really very very useful experience in terms of analyzing and diling businesses um and so you know having that that hard Finance background is very very very useful and and I use it you know I use those skills to this day um in running my businesses we're going to we're and we're going to return to that theme um but Bear Sterns in the as I guess 99 to 2000 well so I did well well ahead of 2008 yeah so I well I worked there for three years as an investment banking analyst and I took a year off I had this crazy roommate and one of my best friends still who had this idea that we would do a yearlong Around the World trip so we spent a year planning this thing thing uh we got a a ticket from British Airways around the world desk you basically pay by continent so we did five continents um and after three years we took our backpacks and traveled you know mostly southern hemisphere Africa South America you know New Zealand Australia southeast Asia um and that was amazing um what was the most the place that most impacted you I I give top five or one of yeah I mean it's very you know like top five are probably Thailand uh South Africa um Australia Italy and Spain um so those are those are just so anyway I did this I came back to New York and I was crashing on my now wife then girlfriend's couch looking for a job sort of casting about and I was networking and I still knew people at be Stern so that was how I ended up getting back on the on the derivatives desk at be Sterns um and you know just kind of got instead of going to business school I got like a a job that they would offer to someone with a newly Meed MBA but I I never went to business school I traveled around the world for a year so um so I did that job for five years and I got was getting promoted I was making good money um you know for a guy in his late 20s early 30s I was making a lot of money and it was fun what's a lot of money Christian if you don't mind like I made almost a million bucks in 2007 and I was 31 years old yeah wow yeah and how and how common or not is that that was that was pretty common I mean the thing is like you never know on Wall Street how much anyone else is making but it's a business where it's like Tech you can make a lot of money very young it's not a seniority based business it's really based a you know it's it's more of a a meritocratic you know and it um you you you generate economic value and you get paid for it and you get paid sums of money which to most people seem obscene and so you then you learn not to talk to people in your family for instance or your you know whatever your your childhood friends about how much money you're paying because you get these looks and you're like oh I guess not everybody you know not everybody Christian anybody outside of Manhattan Finance you can't to I mean th those are obene amounts of money but go ahead but there's always somebody making more than you that's the funny thing you always hear about so and so you know who's who's making more so you know you it's it's just yeah it's very much it's an insular world and it's easy to rationalize that you're worth it and you know and it is a meritocracy it was also a bubble right and this is the this is the the unfortunate conclusion of that part of my career was that be Sterns went bankrupt The Firm was taking you know risk and basically borrowing short lending long they got in liquidity crisis um and so I was asked to join JP Morgan for like a cup of coffee basically six months my boss and I um were brought on board and they took all all our risks on board and figured out what they' bought when my particular group and then they fired us both un unceremoniously in November 2008 so uh I was 32 I had a pregnant wife pregnant with our first kid uh there was really no bid for my job skills at that point um Christian let me stop you no um first of all is The Big Short how accurate is The Big Short the movie and and in the scene ins I know you weren't probably in in the room with the CEO but you might have a sense of of how accurate that was what I I I I have a confession to make I've never seen the movie I've read all of Michael Lewis's books including I just finished reading going infinite but I'm much more of a book guy than a movie guy people people you know like like um Moneyball people like I love that Moneyball movie I'm like I read the book I don't know okay but but having read several accounts of be Sterns and Leman Brothers I mean yeah uh so I don't know maybe you you could you would have to describe the scene for me in the movie for me to do we'll do that offline or maybe it's wor 10es YouTube yeah like I was I was sitting on a trading desk right so I had like four screens and I have my Bloomberg terminal open and I'm just watching the market basically crash like I'm watching the Meltdown and I remember watching Goldman Sach stock and every tick it was like down a dollar like every time like a tick would it would it would repopulate the graph after every five seconds it was down like a dollar and I'm like this is it like this is you know this is the you know this is the Meltdown um and you know you were right and it was there I remember when uh Bruce lisman who was the head of stock trading for allive Bear Sterns climbed up on the trading desk and he was like don't listen to the rumors just keep working keep calling your customers and when the guy gets up it's like the opposite you know like when the guy says all is calm and then we just knew it was over so and it was over yeah so wow yeah it was it was cool thing to live through yeah it was well and well except then you thought you had kind of landed that plane with your JP Morgan coffee then offer then job but then they unceremonious unceremoniously gave you the you and your boss the boot your pregnant wife and and and you finished by saying no prospects for your particular skill set how is that how that guy making a million bucks that the a year the the value uh you can't find value for your skills at when you were flying so high just a year earlier what what we were doing was this very esoteric we basically were Levering up investors in fund of hedge funds by creating derivatives so like let's say you want to lever up to buy a house you get a loan from the bank but if you lever up to buy the the to Via a loan there's certain tax implications and if you lever up by buying an option let's say an over-the-counter option or an over-the-counter swap you get the leverage with better tax treatment and so we were borrowing from the firms um like in-house treasury at like liar plus 50 or something and lending out at liar plus 150 making 100 basis points spread and we're doing that on a big number so making a small amount on a really big number and then after the subprime Meltdown it wasn't possible to borrow money basically for free and invest it in really illiquid assets the the world decided that wasn't a good thing and that was what I knew how to do uh really well and so all those and all those trades still existed but firms stopped putting Capital into it and um as a result they were just sort of like in windown mode so okay and you know I interviewed for other jobs but I mean you have to remember all the firms were cutting jobs then you know I remember interviewing at Bank of America but then they bought Merill I mean it was just it was just a blood bath on Wall Street um yeah you know so by the way this this esoteric product that you were selling or or trade that you were offering I recall I think it was Warren Buffett who said that derivatives or weapons of mass destruction cuz that you they're hard to truly unpack where the value is was he talking about instruments like the one you were he was talking about securitized products like CDs MBS um which I mean that was at the root of the financial melt stuff yeah yeah yeah yeah so um securitized products with underlying being mortgages or loans or you know other other Financial assets so okay okay um Carry On what do you do so so then I take some time I travel I go to Hong Kong and see my buddy the guy I traveled around the world with I came back had to find a job um so I I finally finally found a seat at a firm called imperial capital which is like a small Scrappy distressed Boutique um and they said we'll make you a Salesman so I had no experience as a Salesman um I had no experence trading any kind of you know distressed debt or or anything like that so you know that was very very difficult um they basically put me on a draw where I was I was you know like we'll pay you minimum of $85,000 a year and then if you earn above that we'll pay you commission um and so it was just a Commission job and at one point I was about to get fired because I wasn't doing any trades because I didn't have any customers cuz I didn't know how to get customers cuz nobody ever sat me down and said this is how you do it they just were kind of like you know look either he'll figure it out or he'll blow himself up or he'll just go away um so I figured it out you know I kind of got to where I was making a decent living you know maybe you know 20 25% of of what I was making in 2007 um and just grinding you know just grinding just like I developed grit through those 10 years I did I basically hated that job but I did it for 10 years and um you know supported my family and I I learned how to sell you know I really learned how to sell um and and more importantly and this is like you know everything that's happened like I was very unhappy for a lot of years you know I mean I I felt like I I have more sympathy than ever with like the child actor who you know makes it big at a young age makes this gets the fun money and fame and then they fall off and like it's almost better to never have had it you know I mean I I had made so much money and had so much success at such a young age that to get back to reality it was just it was hard you know yep and Y to work with people who were making a lot you know some of my colleagues just who had the good accounts and they knew how to trade they knew how to sell they made a lot more money than I did and I'm sitting here like you know like it just felt very unfair um but that but that was kind of like the lesson that I needed to learn at that point in my life right I mean I wouldn't be where I am now if I hadn't had gotten slapped down by life and and just had to kind of grind until I could get to the point to where I could see what the next move was I can relate to this Christian on the thing about learning to sell is there I'm sure that's a podcast unto itself but um was there a an epiphany moment or was it just gradual that you just got better at it little by little yeah is there anything you can share what's that no I mean it was just practice I mean it was just mostly learning by failure you know I always tell my kids you learn more from failure than you do From Success sure um I think you learn much more valuable lessons and so you know I was sitting on a desk with guys all around me and I could hear what they were doing and I would ulate what they would do um as much as anything what I learned is that you know I'm not cut out to be a Salesman and and my wife when when I first got the job offer she said she said I you said you were going to take this job as a Salesman and I was like oh this is not going to be good um and you know I I did okay I made a living but you know a good salesman when they get on the phone with their customer or when they're with their customer is they make that person feel like they're the only person on Earth and like there's nothing more important than what that person is saying I just can't do that I just I don't like people that much I like some people a lot but you know getting on the phone with someone every day and telling them about their weekend and whatever like I just I don't know I was just bad at it you know okay yeah so I had I had a few customers who I I had a really good relationship with and they were you know they valued this the i' pitch them ideas whatever and take them out you know we'd go play golf and you know we we I I had a few good relationships but it was very hard you know it was a grind like some guys you you meet some guys and you're like you're a natural-born Salesman you You' kill it and and I was not that guy so um you know it's interesting it sounds like what you think as a natural born salesman is in fact the kind of archetype that we think of the charmer the extrovert um and that as I said that's the archetype but I you know you'll you'll see now articles floating around online or whatever conversation online about how like you know actually you know the next level salespeople are introverted or are reserved it's not what you think it is it's not the the Glad hander and the backs slapper any quick reaction to that well yeah I mean I think it depends on yeah I think I think having that personality is definitely a useful tool to be a good salesman but I think that you know that's not the F the you know that's not the the whole picture um I mean I don't know you know yeah I'll tell you there some of the best salesmen on our desk were definitely not that glad-handing kind of guy they were just you know the I think the the one thing that they all have in common is that they you have to be smart you have to be you have to really understand the product and what value you deliver to your customer and that's about a lot more than just being a likable person you know anyway so we moved from New York we got out of New York moved to Los Angeles um and that was great in as much as you know I had a house and a yard and but but I was getting up at 3:30 in the morning every day and getting to work at 4:00 um and so that made it that that brought up this whole other like level of stress right and perpetually underslept I had little kids um and we just felt like my wife and I just felt that we were sort of drowning in La you know it's we were we were house poor and um you know I had a look I had a lot of problems I had a lot of substance problems and alcohol problems and you know I was kind of like this that was like The Darkest Hour of my life you know where I just I couldn't see a way out of it and I remember thinking you know I'm 40 if I could just grind for like another 20 years just put my head down and grind that I can retire and you know like I I was like being happy is not that important you know I mean what's important is to do your duty and and support for your family provide for your family and and uh you know and so like I died a little bit inside right yeah and then that manifested itself in a lot of of other problems um at so what's that at home at home yeah at home yeah but also personally like I would go out with you know like I I remember I had a customer and they had this um this customer event in Florida uh they called it the marblegate Winter Classic where they'd fly in their sales coverage and we'd like go play golf and um you know go out and on a big Boozer right go and so I got so hammered at this thing that I like passed out at the table and another one of my competitors took pictures of me and sent them to my colleagues at work like look at this look how he's behaving and I remember at that same that same time that same day another one of my competitors that was there at sales coverage and he and uh he asked me where I was I said oh I'm at I'm at Imperial and he was like oh like he was like I'm sorry to hear that or something like that and I remember that it hurt it it hurt that like but I knew it at the same time right like I needed to hear someone else verbalize that was the perception of this place and it was a very toxic culture you know um it was a very difficult place to live uh to to work um so say more say more about that because you had shared some kind of watch what you witnessed your boss at that firm do has also taught you something important you've carried with you yeah no yeah I mean we I traded a big piece of Bank debt and there was you know look the thing in in the finance industry it's all about money and it's very easy to rationalize doing the wrong thing to get more money and I saw my customer do that where they were trying to get information out of me about the identity of a seller of this piece of debt and so I didn't tell them but my but it created this brewhaha at the end once my customer found out who the seller was CU they were an Insider and and so I was sort of in the middle of this and I didn't I mean I knew that I had to just follow the rules and not disclose anything but you know it was uncomfortable so after they do this postmortem my boss has the it guys listen to the recordings of my calls and they determine that um you know something had been done wrong or that there was some plausible reason that um you know that they didn't have to pay me the commission so they didn't pay me the commission and I mean that money was lifechanging to me at that point in my life right I had you know I was struggling I was just starting to make money and he was like I'm not you know we're not going to pay you because XYZ and you know it was a situation where the money made no no difference to the owner of The Firm made all the difference to me so and so you thought he was just basically squeezing you on a technicality yeah yeah it was purely opportunistic and there was no I just felt it was unreasonable you know yeah to deprive me that of that money that I needed so um look I mean I I've Le I've had phenomenal bosses and I've had terrible bosses and I've learned plenty from from both of them um and uh so what did you learn from that guy don't be a dick yeah yeah what what I what like we'll get into this later but I I consider myself above all a student of human nature and and that means understanding your own tendency to rationalize the wrong thing just as much as everyone else's you know and sort of realize when it's happening um that you're oh wait a minute you know like having perspective on on um you know and money and nothing leads to rationalization of bad actions more than money does so so anyway I'm in you know I'm grinding I'm grinding I'm unhappy and then my good friend Ed Dugan sends me this mentions to me one day that he's looking at buying this paintbrush business in New Jersey which could get government contracts because it was domestic production of paintbrushes so I'm like what are you talking about so he sends me uh a link to bis byell and I and I start looking at this business and I and then I start looking through bis byell more and more and more and more and I was like holy you can buy a small business for three times cash flow like what like so so to go back to the things I got out of that job for 10 years when you're trading distressed debt you're trading the the loan of a company at 50 cents on the dollar something bad happened to that company your loans don't trade 50 cents on the dollar unless either management messed up the market turned against you there was a technological change there was some kind of secular shift whatever so like every day was an object lesson for me in what can go wrong in business um and so and the other thing that I learned was that almost all these businesses that were trading at distress levels had 8 to 10 times leverage on them and so I just figured that you know if you're buying a business of any size it's going to be you know trade for 8 to 10 times cash flows um so on bis by sale now I'm learning I can buy a a liquor store in you know Aspen Colorado for three times cash flow and I could pay myself $500,000 a year and live in Aspen like oh well that's so then I start looking at you know so then so then like the the world start you must have still been drinking at this point in your life don't worry I never sto that okay um but you know all things in moderation or more so um so so then you know so then it was like at that point it was like I know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life I'm going to buy a business uh and it was just a matter of like what business and where um so yeah so then as part of all that chis what did you have any hesitation about like these multiples seem too good to be true there must be a catch they must be crappy businesses that I must you know it must mean that you know I'm going to be working 80 hours a week at a liquor store like you know there must given how good the economics seemed to you compared to what you were used to seeing they must have seemed a little bit too good to be true or or no I mean at that point I was so miserable that I thought you know look if I have to work 80 hours a week doing this thing that you know that is stressful at least I'll be making money at least you know cuz at that point I was working really hard but I wasn't actually I was taking entrepreneural level risk I wasn't even making entrepreneurial level money so MH it was kind of like all downside and no upside um okay so no I mean but yeah I mean the as much as it was it it was like it was too good to be true right but that's why the aha moment that's why CU I kept looking and I kept looking and seeing more and more and more of them and I realized that there was something I just had been completely unaware of um so did Ed Dugan buy that paintbrush company no he's still grinding in the business like almost all the oldtimers that I you know worked with in high yield who I've told my story to and they all say you got balls and I'm happy for you and I'm just going to go sell some more bonds so anyway well good for you Christian well I guess I guess what differentiated you from them was what you're aforementioned loner sensibilities or the depth of your misery thought I thought about that a lot so look I had I had an unconventional upbringing you know my parents moved around we moved from Oregon to New Mexico um my dad but did a bunch of different things like my parents they were they were like Catholic hippies in the 1970s right and then they they joined this group and they moved from Oregon to New Mexico and they just never worried about money they never worried about just you know like convention I mean they just said you know like the line the line from the Bible you know it' be like the flowers in the field but though God takes care of them whatever and so um I just think I always had some like different things in my youth and then and then leaving to go away to boarding school that was a huge risk right I mean how many 15-year-olds would leave New Mexico go to Massachusetts I didn't know a single person in Massachusetts I just went there kind of figured it out um you know and and so on and so forth so but but yeah let's be honest I was very miserable I I was I remember sitting on my on my desk looking out the window over over centry City and just saying it can't be worse than this right if I buy a business and it goes bankrupt and I have to file bankruptcy like I I won't feel worse than I do now so what the hell you know I have no downside yeah yeah that's basically exactly that's basically a no downside kind of argument yeah really I mean you were already you were already at the bottom so it couldn't couldn't have couldn't have sunk further okay uh well I love that because that's um I I I have said about buying a business I said it in a recent episode that one of my favorite features of this path is that when for a lot of people including yours truly when when you feel stuck this is a this can this path can be a way out of of feeling stuck um and and it's just and part of the reason why I like to evangelize it because um it it is not one that's obvious it's becoming more and more known but it certainly isn't wasn't obvious to you wasn't obvious to me um and yet when you when you stumble upon it it just it's like the universe cracks open and all this light shines and you're like wow look at all the possibilities here um not easy lots of pitfalls everybody not saying not saying everybody does this is successful and gets rich but uh it's it's pretty compelling and and you're going to you're going to be uh proof positive of that carry on okay so uh my wife and I decideed we're going to leave La uh we had we ran a process we ended up in Atlanta Georgia um so I will say that there are certain places where it's easier to do business as a small business and Georgia's definitely one of them and California is not one of them so you know I think it matters a lot specifically for certain types of businesses um so we moved here um you know the cost of living is much lower it just takes the pressure off right when your mortgage is not $10,000 it's $3,000 you don't have to start working and and earning money right away um so took basically took a year uh looked at a bunch of businesses I looked at a a tree service business that was doing three $3 million of Revenue about a million do of IA um you know put in an Loi and flew out here and met the guy and you know it was a it was a fast growth story which gave me pause and you know he had a good digital marketing apparatus but still you know I was I was nervous about paying full you know full boat for a fast growing business so somebody else bought that business he ended up getting recapped still had to stay in and manage it but he took some money out of it um then I looked at a a landscape business um sort of moow and blow and and new design install um that guy was waiting on another buyer to come and put a bid and I just got tired of waiting and you know I met the guy for lunch got kind of a weird feeling and just kind of was like no this is not the one for me um along the way I was signing lots of ndas I was looking at lots of businesses um not as much talking to to owners but talking to Brokers um all on bis by sell so you know I didn't do the Outreach I know a lot of people do the uh you know create a website and and call on business owners and I think that that works very well um for some people and I think it probably work great for me it's just the way my journey happened you know I I was you know I found my my business on bis byell um and you weren't other other than Ed Dugan putting this in front of you you weren't plugged into the ETA Community tuck being being dartmouth's business school you had no connection there and to to yeah okay yeah you're loner as a self-described laner so someone had mentioned to me that Harvard Business Review had written this book about how to how to buy a small business so I I I listened to the Audi book of that and it seemed just very self-evident you know again it was like everything came back to that aha moment that I had on bis by cell like of you know so every every subsequent fact I got from the Audi book Etc just sort of you know reinforced that and nothing contradicted it um so anyway I I found on bis by cell this business that I ended up buying that was a had been started in 1999 so it was at that point a 20-year-old business that was cleaning new construction so come in at the end of large commercial construction projects and and clean everything up before it gets turned over to the owner and the guy had started it and made a lot of money and bought uh himself a home home in Charleston on the water and he was out on his boat all the time so he was sort of tired of coming back and forth to Atlanta every weekend to go back to work and had his brother running it for him so then the brother was like oh my brother's making all this money maybe I'll do that so the brother had started a business and so you know had said I'm I you need to be I'm not going to run this for you anymore so I met uh I met Gavin McCormick he was the guy who started at my business called Resolute construction cleanup services um and you know good interaction um we had a we had a difference of price he wanted 2 million bucks for the business which would be uh 1.5 million for the Enterprise Plus 500,000 for the accounts receivable the business was doing about $500,000 of cash flow so it would have been three times for the business plus another turn for the AR and um I just said like I'll just pay you a million and a half and I want the AR to travel with the business um and just to back up a little bit when I was deciding what kind of business I wanted to buy I had a certain criteria which were informed by my experience trading distress debt so I I was like always thinking about the downside right like what's a business that can go bust and how to stay away from that kind of a business so like I didn't want anything technology related because I don't understand technology and Technology can change quickly um I didn't want anything ret ril because I just saw how Amazon had like devastated small you know retail businesses um I didn't want any kind of a bad lifestyle where I was going to be getting up early or staying there late you know um I wanted like regular daytime hours and then I wanted something where I could be physically active and be involved in it where it wasn't just a desk thing so that's why I was drawn to like the tree service business like I could see myself learning to climb trees and getting up there with a chainsaw if my guy was hung over and didn't show up or I could see myself you know out there walking someone's property with them and because I love flowers I love gardening and and all that stuff um so why did you want something physical after a career behind the desk precisely because you'd had a career behind a desk and you wanted to change or what yeah I mean I'm I'm an outdoors guy like okay I love camping and being out in the mountains and you know here I was in New York and La for 20 years kind of just you know in the biggest cities in America so I just you know I really wanted something that would get me outside more so now now I play golf instead but anyway we'll get to that so um so yeah so I so I had found this bit so so all those criteria really gravitated towards service businesses right you have you want a stable business that involves managing people managing customers and managing employees not managing technology not managing inventory or Capital but just dealing with people all the time um which is difficult and you get paid well for it you know um those service businesses tend to have high Market margins they tend to be more stable so I give the guy my bid 1.5 million and we negotiated um over the course of you know six months um and this is one thing that like one thing that I really like about bis by cell or about broker inbound broker inquiry in general is that you have someone who's told you they're a seller of their business yeah and this and this goes back to when I was trading bonds and something that I learned in my previous job is in a negotiation if you have the leverage you're much more likely to come to a favorable economic economic outcome so I give you example from the world of bond trading if a guy is short bonds and they're going up he has a short squeeze he is losing money with every dollar the bonds go up so he will almost always pay the price to buy the bonds rather than sit there and negotiate so in other words you know if someone's covering a short that they're just going to buy um more aggressively than someone who's deciding whether to be a buyer or or not so y anyway so in the case of business you know I knew this guy Scott was a seller he had been listed he had listed the business probably six months before I met him and there was no other buyer right so I know I'm the buyer I know that if I keep repeating my price he's going to come down to my price and that's exactly what happened um I mean I I didn't know that but I you know it seemed reasonable and and um that's the way it played out so Christian that is all well and good except that you know you do have something of your own timeline excuse me Runway that he may have perceived which is you're unemployed you're not getting a paycheck and so you that you can't hold out forever and ever um maybe you had enough savings that you could comfortably hold out for a long time but care to address that because a lot of people listening you know having a pretty tight well- defined Runway is a feature of a lot of pe people's search they can't just kind of search indefinitely so they feel like they just have the I can wait out a negotiation sort of Leverage that you seem to have had no and and and in fact uh I I think that most people I look at like private Equity firms right they have a seven-year fund they have to invest all the money and then sell and be out in seven years you get a lot of bad outcomes when you have a defined time frame and and I that's just something that I know some people have um as I continue to buy my businesses I just am always in watching in waiting mode but I I would never want to um you know commit myself to a time frame because you're just it's just that much more likely to to like you know have a a unfavorable outcome but okay in my in my own case yeah my wife was working full-time you know we we sold our house in LA and done well on that so I mean we were pretty liquid um and when we moved here the cost of living was much lower so I felt like no Financial pressure at all if anything it was just eagerness you know I'm like I see this thing I want to do it and I'm I'm not the most patient person so um and Christian what of in your assessment of the business and risks and you know your your your years of training to fixate on downside construction uh being tied sounds like you were tied to new construction multi multif family construction or also commercial also excuse me office any kind of building any kind of yeah so we're on a number of big jobs right now one of them is the biggest one's a data center actually uh we clean data centers we clean warehouses so yeah so we've sort of pivoted from you know there's not a lot of new offices going up now it's it's a lot more but people are still moving to Georgia and they need a place to live um and that goes back to what I was talking about jurisdictions to do business in if you're in a place where people are moving like Texas or or Georgia or Tennessee it's just makes it that much easier in a service business because there's always new people that need places to live they need a new cleaning lady they need to find someone to come mow their lawn you know they need whatever you know they need a place to board their dog so if you're in a growing with a secular growth story it just makes it easier well and so is that how you so what I was going to say is just being tied to construction is is by reputation very cyclical yes um and so how so that's a weakness when you're when you're characterizing a business did you overcome that with what you just said that basically Atlanta is has a a long-term secular trend of growth yeah I mean I think the number one way that I addressed it was with price that you know if I'm paying three times cash flow for this thing and if the business declines by 25 or 30% which it we'll get to that but it it did but you know it it still generates enough cash to cover the debt to service the debt um and you know and to pay me and then you know everything else is additional additional delevering or additional generation of cash is is sort of gravy um but yeah I had this conversation with a number of people about Construction you know it is more cyclical um but I talked to the owner of the business and he I mean I I think he was honest with me I just said what happened here in 2008 2009 what happened to your business and he said yeah it slowed down but it didn't slow down like it did other places because people are always moving here and you know that there's just a there's just a big sort of like it helps that the government of Georgia whether it's at the state level at at the local level is very Pro development all all governments of Georgia are very Pro development they want to whether it's Republican Democrat whatever they want to grow the tax base they want construction they want you know economic growth and so you know I think look I think if I live in if I had bought a construction cleaning business in in New York or California I might be I probably would be singing a very different tune so maybe i' just been lucky you know yeah and well I just want to call out a recent interview um that we have aired a couple weeks but prior to this one with Alan Lockridge who bought a hardscaping business and in Charlotte outside or in Charlotte outside Charlotte and said the very same thing you know when I asked him about because residential construction project based construction people's backyards um would be one that people would be Searchers might be very wary of and his point was that uh one of the ways that he was comfortable with it is that North Carolina's a continues to see a a lot of growth similar to similar to your neck of the woods so um two recent guests saying the same thing carry on okay so so we negotiate um I made a mistake initially I decided I was going to do an asset purchase instead of a stock purchase because that's what people said um and so I was down the road with a law firm we had a asset purchase agreement drafted and then as I was sort of simultaneously doing my due diligence and understanding the business I realized that Resolute had large contracts with very large General Contractors that in some cases have been doing business with Resolute for 20 years and they knew Resolute and if Christian Bateson former Wall Street guy shows up and says oh I own Resolute now uh but I have a different name will you novate this contract over to me then their first question is going to be well who are you and what do you know about construction cleaning to which I would have to answer I don't know anything and then they would say actually no we're not going to do that or there was a material chance that would do that right that's what I would say I would at least be asking questions and maybe trying to change the contract you know get a little squeeze a little extra out of Christian Bates and so about halfway through my process I was like I'm going to have to do a stock purchase or I I decided that it the greater risk was not to do a stock purchase even though it was going to you know cost me more time and money and Etc so and that there was some risk of like Legacy liabilities that come with a stock purchase but anyway we switched over to a stock purchase um and we closed the deal finally about 6 months after I signed an Loi and um as of tomorrow it will be 5 years exactly since I closed on my purchase of resolute skipping ahead and then we'll and then we'll rewind back into the story how's it going it's it's much better than I would have expected I uh I have a I have a friend a friend of a friend um who gave me a great piece of advice before I bought which is that he said you can always you will always tend to overestimate how much change you can effect in one year and under estimate how much you can affect in 5 years because of the the compounding effect of you know doing things the right way it just it just takes time so yeah at the five-year Mark uh we're you know we're like 4X our revenues in 2018 this this current year so it's yeah great so so short answer is it's going really well and I want and I want to spend some time there so let me put a pin in that but let me just close the loop here on your deal $500,000 in sde um he wanted 3x plus the 500 in AR yep and you talked him down to no you know the AR is is basically going to be your working capital um so you said no I'll just give you 3x basically for for the business um you waited him out he said yes the revenue of that point did you tell us what the revenue was of the business it was it was about uh two and a half million in 2018 um okay so it's a 20% margin yeah two and a half million right yep and what did your what did your uh deal terms look like um SBA SBA yeah so I I didn't have any outside money um I just you know basically back to that theme of being a loner um I you know didn't have any any Partners or anything um SBA I did a 10-year SBA at prime plus 2 and a half which at that point was like 8% now it's 11% um and uh so you put a lot of equity in as I I put I put like 411,000 of equity in um the loan was 1.24 million and um the you know it was one and a. half million to him and then there was some fees Etc I think I had a $50,000 holdback for accounts receivable because I was I did buy 100 I did buy 500,000 of accounts receivable for him so I had a hold back on the the deal um price to him which was held in escrow for a year all the accounts receiver ended up paying and so and there there was you know there's never been any Legacy issues to that needed to be addressed by holdback or any of the Reps and warranties excellent and when you said the equity that you put in what percentage was that it was uh about a little under 30% 25 to 30% okay which is which is going to be a little bit bigger than than many people listening will do or your typical SBA purchase was that just to give you more room less less owner de payments yeah I mean so a lot of SBA lers because you could basically you I mean you had the balance sheet to to afford it sort of thing right I mean a few things so first of all from the get-go I just I was always about thinking about the downside which I've said before and and trying to be as as to drisk as much as possible pre uh proactively um but an SBA lender is going to look again at Christian bason and say why should we lend you money to run a construction cleaning business you're Finance guy you know like and so I I it helped a lot to get the deal underwritten to have that extra you know extra equity in it and and there's obviously other ways to address that like they said you could bring in a partner who owns 20% and they have you know actual direct experience but I I didn't want to do that so you said something to me in the preall about um there being a lot of SBA lenders out there and that's something to to keep in mind what did you mean when I was sort of negotiating this deal um and I was just sort of networking people advisers you know lawyers accountants and and lenders and the lawyer who I ended up working with referred me to an SBA lender um and that guy and there was a there was a a difference of opinion in terms of what should be in the collateral and he there were some Assets in my wife's name and my wife was very very uncomfortable with this whole thing like all these years that I'm miserable in La she's like just suck it up and don't be a like go to work and like she she she's like you're not taking Financial Risk you're not putting our family at risk you're not giving a personal guarantee just suck it up like yeah you're unhappy that's life right um the drinking she didn't like so much but anyway so so so as part of our negotiation to get to be able to buy this business she was like you know I can't have all of our assets be collateral for this personal guarantee for this loan so I said okay well this is in your name and and I made it a sticking point with this guy that you know look this loan's well covered by my stocks by my bonds bu my home equity by my cash whatever this is my wife and it's not in in as part of the deal and he was like no it has to be so um I have this buddy Tim Clark who is a he's actually the guy that got me on search fund.com initially but um I was like Tim what and he he was like my Rabbi through the whole process like he started buying businesses in 2004 and uh and he and I caught up recently and he's just you know he's done he's done very well um so him on the P here yeah yeah um so anyway I called Tim and I'm like explaining the situation and he's he's like dude screw that guy if he doesn't want to give you the terms that you need find another lender he's like there's a there's a thousand lenders out there that want to do business with you they don't get to dictate the terms to you if someone's trying to dictate terms and that's not the terms you want then find somebody else so it turned out the selling broker on the business that I bought had already sort of had it soft underwritten with another SBA lender um where he had a personal relationship and that's how I ended up using um to you know for the financing for my deal great so takeaway is as Tim Clark put it there are a lot of SBA lenders out there and they all work for a bank whose you know boards or advisory committees or whatever I don't know the right language decide on various criteria various types of loans they're willing to uh underwrite and you know what their various thresholds are and what's required what's not and it there is a lot of variety across across this universe of SBA lenders so don't assume that the answer that you're getting from lender a is going to be the same that you're getting from B from BC and D yep absolutely let's now turn to the what you've done in these five years so I said we we would return to it uh it's gone well maybe but maybe give us a picture of say you know the transition year one how did it go ini and then let's zoom out and he kind of how the entire project has been yep so year one was great I mean it was definitely drinking from a fire hose just learning all the people all the who does what and this customer and that it's just it's just a massive amount of knowledge to assimilate um none of it's very complex but you know I had the the guy the brother of the owner I had him on payroll for three months and I was in his HIIT pocket just learning and and then I started kind of going out and doing it on my own um after two months I was basically doing everything on my own and I would pop my head and ask him questions um and I mean I just can't I just still to this day I get excited thinking about just like how empowering it was and the way I would describe it to people was that when you have a boss and your boss tells you to do something and you don't want to do it you think it's stupid you don't and you're tired of explaining to the boss why it's stupid so you just do it but you die just a little bit inside you just die right and like that part of you like and I was like I never feel that way anymore if I'm going to do something I do it like 100% A+ Christian Bateson style or I just say I'm not doing it you know and either either is a good is a good choice right and so you get so much agency in your life it's it starts out professionally but then it starts to at least for me it starts to manifest in all these other ways in your life where you're like the way that I run my business is the way that I try and do all the things that I do um so anyway 2019 was a great year we made money um in fact we started we got so busy that um our $100,000 cash in the bank was insufficient because there was a mismatch between me writing checks to my employees every month every week and me getting paid by my customers after the 6090 days so my accounts receivable went from like 500,000 to almost 900,000 and I had to go to my wife and say honey we need to put more money into the business because it's doing so well and that was she wasn't very happy about that so we sold some stocks and we took some money out of this and that um and uh you know it was it was great we were Off to the Races um then Co hit and all of a sudden construction basically ceased um so now I have you know 35 employees who like don't have jobs and are calling me and you know it was so that was very very difficult um the good news is that all of our accounts receiv that had ballooned all all turned into cash and so I went from you know I had a bunch of money in the bank all of a sudden which was a good feeling in a time of extreme uncertainty um but you still got to be payroll well I mean if we're not working then people aren't working they aren't getting paid right so I mean that's that's one of the benefits of this business is that the the variable costs is almost all I mean like labor is 90% of my cost you know or or higher than 90% so my customers don't want me cleaning construction then no one's working and you know I mean it was it was very disruptive and I think less so here than maybe some places but still I mean because of the types of jobs we were doing so if you're cleaning you know a high-rise a high-rise office building the outside skin of that building with like the curtain wall isn't like they're not like going to the local glass store and buying glass and bolting it on these are pre-manufactured components manufactured in China at Mass scale and shipped all over the world so when the supply chain gets disrupted and shut down that means that construction basically stops and so you may have a contract and they may have a timeline to get the cleaning of that curtain wall done but you know when their ships don't come to Port then everything just so everything just got very delayed so 209 2020 our Revenue was down you know 30% versus 2019 um that was very stressful got some SBA money or some uh some PPP money um and there was also SBA um assistance for people with SBA Loans and then 2020 it started to come back 2021 started to come back more 2022 started to come back um even more and then last year you know we were up 70% over 2022 and this year we'll be up you know basically double what we were last year so phenomenal can you can you put some some um specific numbers behind it yeah so last year we did like 3.75 million of Revenue um and I'm going to become a material taxpayer for the first time in my business's life because we had you know we had all these uh amortization um amortization of Goodwill as well as Nos and so that's all kind of get going to work through the system this year and um I'll be yeah I'll be writing some some tax checks um and give us more on that give us that what you for assume somebody doesn't understand what any of that meant so I bought the business for one and a half million okay of that 1 and a. half million 500,000 was accounts receivable so there's basically a million dollars of of Goodwill Goodwill is just the value of the business not that's not a hard asset so you can uh if you buy a business you can amortize that over 15 years so that's I think $67,000 a year call it that goes against your you know your pre-tax profit um and then um you know we switched from book accounting to cash accounting and so if you're a growing business um cash accounting gives you better tax treatment because you basically to the extent that you're because your revenue is based on money that comes in the door so because we've been growing I've had more money going out the door relative to the amount of money coming in um because I'm writing checks on like a weekly basis and I'm getting paid you know 60 to 90 days later so those have been a couple of things um that have helped um and and so so why that yes that was great thank you but going back to the now you're going to have to start paying taxes yeah why at your whatever this is going to be I guess year six I thought you just I think the big tax benefit is the amortization of the Goodwill the million dollars over 15 years so why is your six significant I missed that it's it's just it's it's not necessarily it's just has to do with the magnitude of the pre-tax income that we generated last year and that we will generate this year because the business is so like if my you know my salary so I have I have my employees who are Frontline workers and I have me and the other office staff and then I have rent and insurance and all that other stuff and this latter bucket which are sort of my fixed costs have been pretty stable but now our revenues have gone up so much above that that it's created this excess you know sort of cash flow um excess pre-tax and we haven't done 2023 tax return yet great so you were at 3.75 million in last year 2023 Y and and just let me just do the numbers for everybody again so you buy it it's 2 and a half million the year before you bought it uh which was 20 2017 numbers I guess 2018 2018 numbers then it dips down to 1.7 million in 2020 covid so you said that was about a 30% Decline and then by the end of last year it's by last year it's come back up to 3.75 million um looking good and then this year you're projected to do what probably about 7 and a half million and where is all that coming from how are you doubling like that we got we basically won like you think about you know the guy the old man in the sea where the old man like hooks the enormous Marlin and now he's like oh like how do I how do I how do I keep this on online so we won this enormous contract that's the game changer um it's to keep a data center clean you know normally construction if you go on a commercial construction site it's trashed and we come in at the end and we get it looking amazing right and it might be trashed for two years well this job they want to keep it looking amazing for the entire two years so this company has bought out the basically a small army of cleaners to keep this data center looking really really good throughout the entirety of the construction and we've never worked with this customer before um they're you know a really big contractor that does really big jobs and you know we we want it we started it at the end of November so we're 3 months in now um it's going great it's been very difficult so you know this this whole thing about stable businesses that all these these hbr and other things emphasize it's a real thing managing a stable business is is a lot easier than managing a declining business a declining business is very hard for certain reasons a growing business is very hard for certain reasons too I mean it's it's been so difficult to get people just to get people on on site and you know um just it's been I it's been a good learning experience but it's been very challenging uh and what do you mean just the labor constraints it's still hard to hire people or something else we had to have we had to have a um some there's been a lot of first so we had to basically get a a high a high forklift on site so this forklift has to be able to reach up to the second floor of the data center take off these um trash dumpsters and then truck them across this construction site so it has to have big knobby tires and has to be able to reach up high so it's called a low lift right we never had manage one of those or or operated one of those we had to get a driver for that as well so now we finally we're trying to find a driver we have cleaners we don't have forklift drivers we finally find a guy and he's not the guy he's causing all kinds of problems he's pissing off the Ladies by the comments he's making and you know so then we have to find another guy um and I mean I don't know if you've tried to hire anybody lately but if you go on indeed you'll get a flood of resumés you might email 100 people who submitted their resume you might actually hear back from 10 of them and then of the 10 that you hear back from like one of them might show up for the job interview yeah and that's the person you hire because they actually want a job right yeah so wild um and and so just to be clear about this particular this big contract which is going to be transformative for your business um so generally construction sites you come in at the end and clean it up and for the dur the prior two years as the building's being constructed the construction site is a mess with pla plastic sheeting and piles of junk and whatever I mean it's just it's a construction site yeah like it looks bad um and they want what they want is as they're building this data center things to look and span mid construction that's an interesting need what's just curious what's the story there I mean I I've been told for some that it's by some people that that that's what these data centers are more like although that hasn't been my experience doing other data center jobs um I think it's this particular operator I mean they have so they have all it's a huge site first of all and so at this point and at that point you have like restroom trailers and you have all these amenities you have like a big huge tent with like refreshments and stuff because it gets hot in Georgia and a lot of it's outdoors you know it gets hot in the summer so like people can stay hydrated Hydration Stations and whatever so you might have five Hydration Stations and two restroom trailers and they want to have one person just sit there and keep those clean all day long on a loop like it kind of reminded me almost of like the exper expences of my friends traveling in mainland China where you go into a store and there's like five people behind the counter like smiling at you like like this just kind of like the Full Employment Act so I don't know I mean and I told the guy from and I was like you guys are you guys are crazy to to need this much labor and they just kept saying that's what they wanted that's what they needed so I just kept refining my numbers and um yeah so we'll see um it's been great like like I said the the thing that that I've realized is like how many customers we know never did business with because of the way that the business was managed previously which is that the brother who was running it he he was like wanted to be out on the job site in his truck and like you know wearing his boots and talking about hunting and fishing and stuff with these superintendents on these job sites and he wasn't in this he wasn't at his desk constantly bidding constantly trying to refill the pipeline he he sort of saw that as like an afterthought so I've had this amazing partnership with my field manager Brandon who when I bought the business I said I don't know about cleaning construction but you do and I know how to I know about numbers and I know about selling I know about you know executive stuff so let's just have a partnership and I said I will back you up I will give you autonomy but I will I will have your back all the time and he was like sounds good let's grow this thing he's like you know I I got it so when we would have an issue like one of our ladies would be dissatisfied with something or other in the old world Brandon would tell her you're behind schedule we're over budget on this job it's supposed to be 60 hours per floor you're doing it an 80 that 20% is our profit margin like you can't do that and he would be hard on them and then they would go to Gavin who was the brother and Gavin would say oh you're doing a great job like it's okay right so he it was kind of like two people doing the same job that were undermining each other and no one mining the store so now we just have like Brandon's running runs things in the field and I just I have his back you know um and and I give yeah so and and that's kind of the culture that I built is that like like one of my very favorite um um business books is shoe dog by Phil Knight when he talks about building Nike and he would hire somebody and he would he would say tell them what to do but don't tell them how to do it just like make people figure things out give them autonomy um and then if they mess up then you figure out what went wrong and you try to make sure they do better the next time but um Brandon is very good at that and and I'm good at what I do and so you know it's been a good partnership and Christian what about the fact that I you said a few times as you were taking us through the negotiation and acquisition process you know you put yourself in the shoes of everybody else in this transaction and like seeing Christian Bates in former Wall Street bro former Wall Street guy um so that probably still is the perception of of the employees and of your of your everybody in this world that you're entering into uh H have you had to manage that that you're this Wall Street guy coming into a construction business how's how has that disconnect or not been yeah I mean I think the first thing is just to be aware of that right I mean if you're aware of how other people perceive you then you're able to say certain things or not say certain things do certain things not not do do certain things so and and there's always this like internal debate I have is like should I be working on my weaknesses or playing to my strengths and the answer is I mostly play to my strengths so my strengths are in the office um I'm very good at communication like I'm the master of email right so if someone emails me I'll email them back within an hour I read the email before I send it like I really really put a lot of time and energy into communication because I think that so I think a lot of people are not good at communication and I think particularly when it comes of small businesses having Master having real communication skills is like a you know a a key Edge to success um but I don't go on the job site much you know because when I when I do I feel out of place you know I mean you got these grizzled guys wearing boots and you've got you know you don't have a lot of people on there that look like me um and so you know that's Brandon's job again um you know and I do have I've had I've had people like make comments to me about my my sort of personal style of you know of like phone conversation where I can be impatient and and so you know I work very hard on like not responding to to emails or to you know not engaging in in situations where that can be like a negative or that can be a liability you know that perception of could be not be a liability and and really what it is is I I I feel like I try to be a student of human nature and especially of my own nature and to always kind of see like what are my own biases and how is this going to negatively impact this outcome um and and just be humble you know I mean and and and and make light of the fact that you know yeah I'm like the whitest guy out there you know and I have a whole a whole labor force of Hispanics who speak Spanish you know so when I meet with them I think a lot of times they look at me and they're like and I speak fluent Spanish too so that that makes it even better um yeah so that's something wa wait I thought you they look at you and just feel completely alienated but so wait so that does the Spanish help or not must um it it does help the problem or just confuses them further you're saying yeah I think I think the confusion is when they've talked to me on the phone and they see me in person and they try to match like the The Voice they've heard on the phone with the face they see in front of them the the problem with that is that as as we're growing more and more I don't really want to have as much like one-on-one contact with a lot of the the the Frontline workers just because what to them is like this huge emergency that they just want to scream and be upset about and quit over to me is like a nothing so a lot of times I have a hard time just even kind of relating to and and because of a lot of them are crazy and they they do get crazy about nothing things but give me an example what you yeah give me an example so so um you know I pay them for the previous week and I'll give them I'll pay them for all their hours and I might give them an allowance for gas and I I might have put $25 instead of $35 for a day for gas and that's like a huge thing to them you know and again it's it's good for me so in in managing my business I've tried to keep a lot of things very manual and not automate them because it forces me to stay more like have my fingers more like on the pulse so to speak of the business and part of that is like that these are people that are making you know that that they have a they have a very different life than I do right they don't make as much money they struggle to put food on the table or they struggle to support their families whatever and so like I it's it's important for me to be reminded of that and if that means that someone's calling me on Saturday saying I got my paycheck and it's $10 low and they're like screaming at me it's like oh like okay yeah they're a little crazy and they could probably find a better way to convey that but like this means so much to them which which then just it just inspires me to like do a better job to win more jobs to grow the business so I can pay people more and you know and be like a positive factor in their life that's great Christian and and and by the way this is not something that's come up very often although it will in a recent interview it did in a recent interview speaking Spanish with a Latin uh Workforce what what do you think uh so if if let's say you didn't speak span I mean just talk more about about the fact that you do speak Spanish yeah so no I I mentioned my all my crappy jobs growing up so I had I worked uh with primarily immigrant like Mexican worker migrant workers when I was in high school and so not only did I take Spanish in you know eight years for high school and college but I would like spend 70 80 hours a week working on these Farm jobs and so I just got a lot of chance to practice it like yeah out there all day and so I mean I you know and then I um my you know I I would encourage anyone to study Spanish as opposed to another language because it's the most useful as an American um yeah I mean there's definitely been situations where it made you know it was the difference in in terms of getting to the right outcome keeping the customer happy because you know I have and I have um Brandon my main my main manager doesn't speak a word of Spanish so he sort of like will speak English and the person will nod and they don't really know though they they nod and say yes I understand then they'll go do the wrong thing so um I always thought that I would like use my Spanish and go live in Argentina and and be like an Emerging Markets Trader or something not be you know managing a you know a hundred cleaners but um we just hired our first Spanish-speaking manager he's a Mexican he immigrated to the US when he was 17 so I finally have successfully gotten someone who's a intermediary between me and and uh and my employees who who can speak Spanish better than I can so and and more on this point about having an intermediary I'm hearing I'm hearing um both that you want to remain close to the business I think as you put it do things manually so that finger on the pulse keep a finger on the pulse and the value of that on the other hand as you said you're you're an executive oriented you know person a business-minded person so you understand the value of working on not in the business and you are doing working on the business type things like hiring this intermediary um so which is it h how are you striking that balance to work on versus in so because there's value in both one thing that one piece of advice that someone gave me at my last job when you're when you're involved in a big trade it's uncomfortable you want to you so you can tend sometimes to hurry forward to strike a deal and get out of that feeling of discomfort that comes with with uncertainty and so they said it's about being comfortable being uncomfortable and I try to put myself in uncomfortable situations more and more I'll give you an example um I serve on the Board of Trustees at my son's school and the whole like it's a school for kids with learning differences and so a lot of the parents and a lot of the staff are just very different people um and it's uncomfortable for me being in this environment like but and and so I keep committing myself to like more and more things and getting deeper and deeper because and like this podcast is uncomfortable like you know I feel nervous um and so I like doing good man oh thanks no but I I mean I I feel like I'm come across as very nervous I feel nervous no but like I I I like doing things that make me uncomfortable because that's where personal growth comes from so right so so it's both so at the one hand I do like to play to my strengths um but you know I'll go out to the field and go walk and and I learn more from you know being in that uncomfortable situation than I do being in my comfort zone you know I I'll I'll press you a little bit on this Christian because you've you've talked about yourself as a loner a few times I have those Tendencies as well have you ever challenged that about yourself and and and putting yourself in situations where you can be less of a loner yeah I mean I do so like this is kind of like one thing that I all alluded to in our email before we spoke but that I think that a very very important part of being a successful business owner manager is having some kind of a like a spiritual you know life whether it's seeing a shrink or whatever um it's having that awareness that comes from like getting out of the day-to-day bustle and hustle and so like my faith practice is like I meditate right and so meditating is meditation is the ultimate loner activity and and you know it's I do it every day it's phenomenal it's one of the most important like productivity and efficiency enhancing things that I do as well as being good for the soul but like I also go to church on Sunday with my family even though I'm not a believer of the religion that my wife takes my kids to and I sit there and I and I perceive all these people are here and they're all like singing these songs together and saying these prayers or whatever and I'm like it seems weird to me but I real but I I've had like this sort of epiphany that I think that's a big part of what religion is it's a social activity yeah it's about God but it's also about being with other people and you know so it's I certainly don't enjoy going to church it's uncomfortable for me I kind of view it as like I go in every time saying what am I going how can I get something positive out of this um and then you know so uh yeah so the the um this the philanthropic part like being on my on on these boards it's very hard like I love my business because I see something that needs to be done and I do it and then if you're on a board you don't get to do that you might sit at a meeting and like have strong thoughts but you you struggle for the right way to disagree with others and you feel like I feel so much responsibility for the outcome with very little like authority to influence the the outcome right so that's very uncomfortable and and that's kind of like why I'm doing it I mean I think I can help and and offer perspective that they need but that's pretty uncomfortable well just to distill this theme I mean I I love the phrase in fact I think I've heard it um to to learn what was it be comfortable and discomfort or uh learn to be learn to find comfort and discomfort something like that yeah it's it's such a good one um and I and I I'm a Believer I like to think that I've maybe not done that super hardcore but um I there there's an element of of that in my personal philosophy as well um this is awesome Christian I'm just keeping my eye on the time because um I want to hear about your I want to share with everybody your second acquisition yes which which hasn't been quite the uh the success story of the first three things two of which we've we've already touched on the value of Finance so you come from this hardcore Finance background MH um you know I want I want I'm very cognizant of having a lot of Finance former Finance people on the podcast because those who don't have that background become are discouraged because because you um for the obvious reason that they feel like oh if I don't have a finance background can I buy a business you know businesses are fundamentally at the you know the internals of a business are really the the flows of money around uh which is finance so and and you have you know said very forcefully I can't remember if you already said it today or you said it to me offline you know the value of having a finance background can't be understated so how so maybe say share your thoughts on it but what would you tell Mo most importantly what would you tell people who don't have a finance background should they not do this so I think that first of all I think that this this ground swell of ETA is great but I think that the skills that it takes to successfully run a small business as much as anything like you you're well well served having some gray hair and like I posted this on a search funer Chat and this is not the finance thing but this is you know someone was talking about how hard it was and you know whatever and I had a guy tell me that they spoke to a Navy SE a guy who was a former US Army Ranger that said running a small business was the hardest thing he's ever done harder than being in combat in Iraq yeah I've had guests say exactly that yeah and and you know I think the more life experience you have and the more you like get beaten down like I my my thing on this I post on search funer was like get married and have some kids like raise a few kids that will humble you that will give you gray hair and beat you down and like it's having that humility and patience that life teaches you that is so like important in terms of for at least for me at least for me and and I I'm always trying to like be aware of me and how I'm different than other people because you look at you know all these young hot shot you know Tech guys that build enormous businesses in their in their 20s so maybe maybe I just needed life to smack me around enough to be you know to to be a better business owner but um yeah I mean I think look it comes back to you can strengthen yourself where you're weak I think if you can there's probably a lot of good online courses um but to the extent that ultimately businesses are about money right like Revenue costs profit and if you if you if the number don't work you don't have a business and I think that's probably why most of them go bankrupt is that you know mo most business startups fail is because the numbers just don't work and So the faster you can identify the like like I would I would sign an NDA get a write up from a guy on bis by cell I could look through the the the p&l statement and I know instantly if it's a good business or not just because like I speak that language so um but on the other hand you know I'm not great at managing people um I'm great at managing my managers but I'm not great at like you know dealing with these uncomfortable emotional situations and so you know I have managers that are good at that and I have good relationship with them and I say I'm going to delegate that to you because that makes me uncomfortable and I'm not good at it and that's not the highest and best use of my time so I think you can do the same thing with Finance you just you know you have to have someone who you you know who you really trust yeah well and just to weigh in here I would feel that you have to have some comfort with certainly a little bit of math I mean you can't run screaming from arithmetic yeah um because because fundamentally there is math at work here however like you know seventh or eight seventh grade math is probably or sixth grade math is probably probably enough because it's mostly adding in subtracting there are instances where there are you know the effects of compounding and some expon stuff and some fractions and that's going to come much more naturally to a finance person who has been swimming in that for years and there can be a little of that and you should audience member educate yourself on that stuff there are plenty of finance courses that you can take you don't need to take a 25-hour finance course though you can probably take a two or three hour one and just like Christian said get comfortable being uncomfortable so this isn't first of all if you're somebody who just runs from discomfort you probably shouldn't be on this path anyway period exactly so what wherever you're uncomfortable if that's enough of a something that you just can't handle then you probably shouldn't just be on be on this path um but so lean into it somewhat but you don't need I feel that you don't need to be a a finance jockey to do this and like Christian you just said there's Outsource help fractional CFOs are now a thing for example so that's kind of where I land um I think that's right I think that's right okay okay okay and then just more about compounding I said we we' we'd return to this uh you're happy with you're frustrated with the because the little changes you make it feels like you don't get anywhere you're treading water and then you look up five years later and holy crap look at all this change I've made I basically just take the words out of your mouth or is there more to say no I I think I think that's exactly right but I don't think it's oh crap I think it's like I have I had think I've been very good to my managers I've made an effort to always do the right thing and pay them more than they could earn at another job but also give them more responsibility so like Brandon I mean he basically runs things sure there's customers out there that thinks that that Brandon is the owner of resolute um but like when I have anything that needs to be done I don't say and this is really hard there's a tendency for a lot of business owners I think and managers General to feel like they need to be involved in every decision partly it's maybe just feeling responsible maybe it's ego it's you know this thing's going to happen and I need to be part of it or I need to have my stamp on it I need to have credit for it I need to some you know and I just do the opposite like I I I read a lot about the history of World War II Okay the reason that the world us won World War II as much as anything else against the extremely wellt trained Nazis and Japanese troops is that our milit AR is like a kind of like a metaphor for our society which is that responsibility is pushed down to the lowest chain so you have a field team a leader of a you know machine gun team and if he sees the opportunity to take the initiative he would take it that's how you win battles right you don't whereas the Germans will be more likely to go back up the chain of command and ask for approval from you know the general to do this thing right and so having that flexibility in the field in the moment of fire is is was like maybe the key thing that won the war for for us in World War II so that's how I try to run my business so I say I'm going to hire you I'm going to put you down at the ground level and just make decisions and if you if you really have a question then call me and ask me whatever but like don't call and say I could rent this scrubber for 100 bucks or this scrubber for $110 just make a decision like I'm focusing on other things and then that so then you're a manager working for Christian Bates and in every job you've ever been at before your manager told you what to do and told you you were doing it wrong and they've never had faith in you and and given you like autonomy and paid you for the for making good decisions in in a situation of autonomy and that's what I do I say look don't like just figure it out you know if you really have a question call me and then again people make mistakes so I have one of my managers so he's taking it too far so when there's a problem he doesn't tell me he just tries to solve it so I had to be like no no no this approach works like in normal situations but when there's a customer problem someone's upset something went wrong then you have to involve inve me because not that I don't trust your judgment but I just want to make sure that I agree with you um and so then like you know so now he's learned that he can manage 98% of stuff but then the 2% of times when there's a problem um so that's like one example and that so you give people more and more and you can see as that they can as you see that they're capable of managing you give them more responsibility and more responsibility and then you pay them and so that's why I have you know I have now four managers who basically run my business for me um and I can devote all my energy to my customers right to to and when I say my customers I don't mean like the the guys on the ground on the job site I mean um you know the guys in the office the guys that are making decisions about whether to hire Resolute or another cleaning business I can give A+ effort on every single bid for every single customer and that's how we're we're growing our market share with existing customers and we're adding new customers who like hey I hear resolute's doing a great job you should get a number from them you know for this thing awesome you know what you said about the US military it's so funny I I just myself learned this and the explanation was so close to what you just characterized from World War II you know because I it was somebody in the search community and I said you know the the civilian my naive civilian view of the military is that it's all taking orders taking orders taking orders and yet so many uh so there there's such an over representation of vets veterans in the ETA World um you know because they get you know the the phrase is you know all this leadership training leadership experience in the military but I said I finally said you know but my sense is that the style of leadership there or you know your experience there would have been just following orders and obviously that's not when you're the owner of a business what it is and and and then they explain no the culture of the US military is different and and uh unique in this way that there's this extreme auton you yeah of course you have you know a chain of command yeah um but at your you know your you have a mission and within the parameters of that mission yes you as leader have a ton of autonomy and I and it it's just such a crystallization for me I didn't know as an American that our you know that that our military has this this feature um it's really cool it's a really cool Insight um so yeah and and I I was goingon to mention earlier I know we're running short on time I was going to mention earlier um jao willink's book extreme ownership and like if I could tell anyone three books to read to as a small business owner one is shoe dog one is Extreme ownership and then you know meditations of Marcus Aurelius but like um extreme ownership talks about the mission and I have to tell myself all the time I'm like I'll be struggling with something and I'm like no this is you're making it about you it's not about you it's about the mission you know and I'll tell that to my employees too it's it's it's about the mission so yeah you made a second acquisition we're just about to hear a very abbreviated version of that story but but but before we do give us the context of what your bigger vision is for the rest of your career now that you've bought one business and clearly have aspirations to buy more yeah no I mean I want to I want to have a business that generates $100 million in revenue and you know generates $10 million in cash flow and you know when I'm 70 I can decide to sell it for $100 million or I can you know keep it have my kids run it you know I mean I just want to keep because I keep learning different things as I progress that like like when you get to the false Summit of a mountain then you can see where the next Summit is on the next Summit so you have to keep climbing for these Vistas to open up and that's kind of like what continually happened for me um and that's that's kind of a good tie into your your um to to the second acquisition which is you know during covid I'm sitting home my kids are home doing online learning and the business was slow but it was basically running itself and I was like just bored and I decided I was going to buy another business and replicate this success of my first business um and so I found it it was a my experience with the maintenance cleaning business the sort of janitorial business but it was a tougher nut to crack much more competitive lower margins um but I found this business on Biz by cell the founder was uh French West African she grew up in Paris but she was moving to Sagal so her kids could experience you know kind of more of the culture that she grew up with she had grown this business very rapidly during Co which I should have realized that Co was a big driver of the growth um but you know she was she was offering it for $650,000 it was advertised at $185,000 of sde but when I ran the numbers through this earnings model and I figured out all the things that I could take out the costs I could take out I figured it was more like $250,000 of sde um and so at $625,000 that would be you know 2 and 1 half times um wrote an offer letter we negotiated um she was at 650 I started at 600 we we had a deal at 625 um so so there were a lot of red flags which I which I ignored because I wanted to buy this business one was I sent Brandon down my field manager I said go spend some time with Jamila and tell me what you think of this and he and he called me after he said look she's very involved in this business she's out there she's she's out at all the jobs she knows the customers she knows the ladies that are doing the cleaning she's the key driver of this business and this business is located an hour and a half away on the south side of Atlanta I live on the North side of Atlanta so he was like you know we have all these big contracts we're winning with Resolute like I'm just you know it could be a bit of a distraction and so of course I just disregarded what he said and and then then my SBA lender took a look at the numbers and they because they have to give a business valuation they said this business is worth 550,000 not 6 25,000 so rather than saying oh here's another reason for me to pump the brakes I just did a side letter with her and said you know I'll pay you this additional amount after XYZ which I'm paying now and trust me every month that I have to send her that money it just makes me feel sick to my stomach um and then Christian why why were you so hot and bothered about this business cuz it was growing I thought this business could go from so when I bought it it was 800,000 of Revenue and call it you know 200,000 2,000 of cash flow I thought within 5 years it could be a $5 million Revenue business I just basically took the the the last three years of growth and extrapolated forward um without thinking about what was involved in driving that growth one covid and everybody who owned a business just was willing to pay anything to have it perceived as being clean by their customers and two that you had this high energy really friendly outgoing charismatic person that was building it from the ground up and you know she would tell me oh Christian I went to Africa for a month for vacation and the business ran itself and I was like oh okay well this sounds great right so she caught me leaning and you know it's just the I think I think this is one of these lessons that have to be learned over and over and I mentioned earlier my friend Tim Clark who has 20 years experience doing this now and and we have these conversations and he's like yeah he's like I have all these rules for myself but I break them all the time because I just decide that I have to have the business you know and and that stuff washes out I mean he he's gotten himself into bad deals or what he thought were bad deals that turned out to be amazing deals because it just worked out um so anyway I closed on the business oh here's another thing don't ever buy a service business unless it has a manager so this business did not have a manager um and I said well I can take one of these like top-notch cleaners and Coach them up and turn them into a manager so so candidate number one comes in and uh I said hey know you're doing a great job cleaning I want to promote you to manager I'm going to pay you $50,000 a year you're not going to have to clean anymore you're going to be able to go around and make sure that all the work's getting done well at all of our customer sites and you know restock supplies and stuff so she says um well I I always wanted to make $3,000 per pay period which is every two weeks so that would be 78,000 and um you know but it sounds like a lot of work so I probably need to have like an assistant to drive me around so I was just like oh okay well you don't understand at all like what just happened but I do I was like okay next then I had another one of the ladies and she would call me and email me and text me all the time she didn't know how to manage people right I just have figured that managing people was just like cleaning and it was just completely wrong um she made herself miserable she made me miserable um by just generally like lording it over the other ladies like she'd been elevated and now she she was just mean to them and she didn't know how to how to manage it so anyway um finally Jennifer so one of my managers Jennifer who you know I had hired and she was Resolute at Resolute yeah she was she was an Army vet Jennifer like served in the Army she she drove um heavy Earth moving equipment at a waste management like um uh site and I mean she's a little rough right um but but hardworking and very loyal and and she's like I'll step in and be the manager of this business so now she's working running Resolute running all the office stuff and she's the manager for Sr so I was like all right so now so now she went from making 60 Grand a year to making you know like 100 Grand a year um and so that's kind of back to the same thing and I didn't tell her how to do it she just kind of figured it out we had conversations when there were issues but um you know we've lost a lot of customers we lost probably like 30% of our Revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 once Co was officially over um and you know we're working on adding those customers back um but it's not you know I mean the nice thing about it is I don't pay myself anything uh you know um have a full-time manager and we're covering our debt and we're generating cash and you know I'm kind of I'm kind of like just keeping it on the back burner you know it's it's steady and and to really get it to grow I I haven't cracked the code yet right so here we are we're a year and almost two years in uh I haven't cracked track the code on how to really Drive growth in that business like I have with Resolute and why is the answer not what you where you spend a lot of time at Resolute namely kicking ass and sales because kicking ass in sales in that business means going into people's offices going into the doctor office and handing out cards which means not being in my desk but being in my car driving an hour and a half through Soul crushing traffic of Atlanta down to where all these customers and and all the employees are and actually doing it in person um whereas Resolute again plays to my strengths it's all it's all online like I get a email from a software platform that manages the bid process for all these different customers and I can go in and do it all at my desk and look through the plans put together the bid you know send all the bids out on time if there's an issue it's all email communication or cell phone communication I don't have to be there in physically be there what do you think the learning is on the business other than the obvious that you were kind of there were there were red flags and you just plowed through them because you somehow got emotionally invested in just in in owning this thing yeah is is there another learning or maybe that's the learning I think no I think the main learning is that in in buying a business you're going to you never can tell how good it or bad it is until you buy it I mean you not not really you can you can do your due diligence when you buy a good one a really good one um you can still screw it up and when you buy a bad one you can still fix it um you just you know you just have to kind of keep on grinding um and you know just never give up right I mean I think I have I have now that I'm in this community I've talked to a lot of people that have bought businesses and some have better experiences than others right yeah and and um I have a buddy who bought a moving business and he he was like people would know show and he wouldd be out there driving the trucks himself and it was really hard it was so uncomfortable for him and I'm like yeah I know it sucks right and now he used that as fuel to like grow it and to get it to this point where you could hire someone and now from a $500,000 Revenue business it's like a $2 million business two two years later you know and so like your your your fate is never written right we always have the chance and like if I decided that I was going to take my new business and really make it A+ that I wasn't going to play golf and I wasn't going to like do all the other things I do with my free time I was going to be down there every day I could drive that business I'm making a choice but I'm like you know my life my lifestyle balance and you know other things I choose to do with my time are more important to me than you know than that business and and plus my other business has grown so much so it kind of like took the emphasis off of it thank you for the for the story on business number two I want to close with a couple of questions that are kind of um personal but tie it all together one is what just on the heels of what you just said about you know having balance in your life you also said you want to get to $100 million you're giving yourself whatever 20 30 years to do that um but do you think that you can realistically get to $100 million in Revenue $10 million in IA um having a basically Balanced Life well the jury's out um I mean I think I think that let's say if I went from you know one business that did 2 million of Revenue to now having two businesses that'll do you know 8 to 10 million of Revenue this year in five years um you know the the the kager is definitely there I think a lot of it is just I'm not out actively pursuing business opportunities I think there's probably a good chance that to get to that number I'm going to have to be more active I think as my kids get older and they're out of the house um that will free up you know some time and energy but I also just think that I'm sort of waiting for opportunity to knock in terms of getting a call because I I hear these stories so and so called and they wanted to sell their business um that hasn't happened to me at all um yeah but you know look there are there are there's a huge pie of of residential cleaning right everybody's looking for a good cleaner for their house and and like that that's a business that I think I could scale up very quickly if I found the right one of those um but no I mean and this is a debate I'm having with myself all the time right this is the debate I had after Resolute worked out well is like oh I want to buy another one but I'm like but then do I want to you know to to do I I guess it's hard for me to handicap the likelihood that I can grow to that level and maintain my life balance but so far it's been working well the other thing is for uh to put it back on you philosophical guy that you are you know this hund hundred million1 million uh EA nice juicy round numbers completely meaningless why not 8 million not 5 million why not 4 million I mean uh I get it I mean obviously like there's there's something um very um uh what's the word magnetic I guess about nice round numbers so we all are if you ask anybody what their number is it's probably going to be something round um but it doesn't need to be and why does it need to be so big you yourself said Atlanta is not a very high cost of living area you don't you no longer have to compete with you know the finance CEOs in on Wall Street for net worth I don't know I mean you're you're asking like a fundamental question about human nature I mean why do people you know why does why does the you know why do people make so much money so they can like go down and sit on a fishing boat when they could just move down and you know be a fisherman be you know a fishing boat charter guide um sure the the old fisherman right go ahead go yeah no no but I mean I think for me like look I took me 20 years of my career to figure out something that I'm really good at I'm really good at running these running these these cleaning businesses right so now because I'm really good at it I enjoy it a lot and so because I have fun doing it um I want to keep doing it but it's like the money isn't really you know and this me you hear people say the money is just like a way to keep score right I mean I don't need I could I could retire now and be very happy but like I love what I do and people say you know oh yeah you should you know you should sell it and you should buy this other thing and I'm like I don't want to sell it like I like running it yeah um I like like I have these phenomenal managers who able to you know make they enjoy their jobs more they're making a lot more money they're happier it's positively life-changing for them I would couldn't do that if I sold the business to somebody else because the first thing that business the new business owner is going to say wow XYZ is making $150,000 well the market value of that job is 80,000 so there's there's some Synergy right yep and what they don't realize is that this person is capable of doing more than that standard job description which they do for me which is why I pay them more and that's why I have all this free time so so you know um you know look I I I remember when I first started on Wall Street in 1999 and everyone had a number right my number was like 10 million you know I was like if I can get to 10 million I'll be I'll retire and be out and then it's like the mountain thing as you get closer to that number the number just just changes to a bigger number um but I think you know I just want to keep building this thing because it's fun you know and the money is nice and it's it's after 10 years of grinding to like support my family it's nice not to have to worry about what things cost anymore it's nice to get a new car it's nice to fly first class when you go on you know family vacations and stuff um but yeah maybe maybe it's maybe it's 8 million maybe it's 20 million maybe it's you know who knows right yeah exactly I mean I I I I I when I said the number was arbitrary I immediately started notching down but you know maybe your number is 20 million why why are you aiming so low Christian no I mean I I just finished reading this book uh David goggin's book can't hurt me and and he's there's this moment where he's like what else am I capable of right I mean his own his own like limitation was I think I can only do this but then he starts thinking then he starts doing all these incredible things and that's kind of been the story of the last five years for me is like you know there's really nothing I can't do it's just a question of trade-offs you know how much Financial Risk how much time how much energy whatever well thank you that was one of the other personal questions I wanted to ask what does wife feel now about this path given that she was resistant she she doesn't talk about it so much anymore that's kind of like her uh her acknowledgement that it's been a success um no I mean she uh look she's happy I mean I think I'm happy people always ask that question and you know how how are you guys doing and I'm just like we're we're great you know but I I I feel like I have to tone it down because I feel like everyone asked that question and then I there were times in my life when I was not doing great right when I was like pretty unhappy and I'd be like oh we're great you know so you just kind of say that as a rote response but I mean my wife is you know she's happy I'm happy and she this is actually great I talked to a buddy one of her former colleagues who she saw in New York last uh last month and we um and he was thinking about buying a business he's a consultant and he wants to buy a business and so he so we did a call and I do a lot of these calls and and he was like yeah I talked to Connie and she was like Christian's doing so great his business is doing so great he's so happy so to hear it she would never say that to me right she would never be like you're doing so great you're so happy I'm happy for you she's just like more of like a Dream Crusher she's a whole poker that's what she says so it's good that we balance each other my enthusiasm and her uh whatever balance out but it was great to hear from him that that was her story at this cocktail party that I was doing great so yeah yeah although I got to say Connie you know these these are the things that U people should be sharing with each other directly rather than the Great Vine but what do I know um where do you slot in Christian going all the way back to the top uh in your family I'm just curious from a couple of uh coming from a couple of Catholic hippies as you put it which by the way seems like a contradiction in terms and one of 70s man okay and one of eight I'm just curious where you fit where you know capitalist although maybe a more wholesome capitalist today than you were when you were on on Wall Street yeah um where do you slot in with the overall picture of the Bates and the bats and clan um I mean I've got a number of siblings who are who are teachers my dad was a teacher uh before he became a principal so I have a number of siblings who are who were Educators um I'm the only person in business I had a brother who dropped out of college and worked for the forest service for 15 years now he's doing construction I have I did have one brother who sort of followed my path and did the finance track um but yeah I mean it's been interesting to see the different outcomes of of All My Siblings from you know basically the same genetic stock and same upbringing um I'm you know I'm the only one who kind of really went the hardcore um you know finance and and business track and uhep as a result I think I've always kind of been the black sheep in some respect um like my my parents growing up they would never say we're really so proud of you for making Straight A's it was more like we're disappointed in you that you don't want to come to church like they were very religious almost in like an over-the-top kind of way um and I just was like I'm getting out of here you know like it wasn't for me and then I just never really came back um and I think that's it was that taking the being willing to take a series of leaps like that in life you know that and it's hard I mean I I don't it's like one of it's like the who knows what makes you who you are and and leads you to do the things you do I sure wish we knew that last question for you Christian it's been the underpinning of this entire uh episode but I I just want to ask you for a direct answer because in our emails you've expressed how enthusiastic you are about this path yeah it's something that you enjoy talking about so take us home yeah I mean I think if some if you're willing to to take a risk on the most positively lifechanging career thing you can do then you know small business ownership is is for you and it's just a question of you know are you at that point in your life where you know you're not worried about the downside of of business ownership it's it's more about on your deathbed are you going to look back and say I wish i' done that thing right as opposed to gee I wish I had like not Taking Chances and I mentioned this too when we spoke my brother Jordan passed away at 40 years old of ALS and and like you know he so whenever I get nervous like even you know like doing this podcast or going to speak to groups I'm very uncomfortable in group speaking I think about him and he's like he would have been like what are you afraid of you know like what like what's the worst that's going to happen in a thousand years no one's going to know we were ever here so you might as well live life to the fullest and and grab on to it while you're here amen thank you Jordan beautiful words to end on yeah Christian you uh you've said you take calls you you like talking to people offline oneon-one about the path uh how do you prefer they reach out um uh I'm on LinkedIn um and then um so they can they can certainly get me send me an email on LinkedIn I'm on search funer well this has been excellent Christian um I really appreciate it not only your story but your kind of uh philosophical angle on things your your self-examination great attribute thank you very much for your time and um congratulations on on uh you know clawing your way back out of the misery black hole and into a life now that clearly fulfills you thank you very much and it's you know very nice speaking to you and seeing you I hope you enjoyed that interview make sure you subscribe to the acquiring minds Channel below we are now publishing twice a week so tons of new interviews and stories to come stories that will help you along your own path to acquiring a business