Christy LS welcome to acquiring minds thanks well chrisy you bought a digital business I think it's fair to call it it's the sort of business that I envisioned buying myself when I first got interested in buying businesses so I'm excited to peer into your journey here before we do though let's get some background on you please Christie sure so I I spent a decade roughly um working in high growth tech companies software companies primarily cyber security oriented organizations I started my career there in human resources um working actually as an HR associate as as the lowest paid employee in the company and I know that because I had to pull all the compensation reports and what not so started at the at the kind of bottom Bottom Rung but working for um a really great company called Ping Identity um they're now quite large and have gone public and then private again and um just had an amazing growth trajectory I then took that kind of show on the road so to speak to a few other kind of startup companies um and did more sales enablement more sales operations lead generation etc for other cyber security organizations and you know I learned I learned a lot from that time in my life um I wouldn't I wouldn't trade those years for anything and so during all of this we're we're going to of course hear how you came to buy business but give us a hint during all of this was there an entrepreneurial itch what what was there any any inkling that the path you've now chosen would would eventually be the path that you chose at the time during those years of at at those software companies probably not I would say the the entrepreneurial itch came truthfully from my husband mostly he my husband Alex uh comes from a background in mostly private equity and and Healthcare a convergence of the two he ran a traditional search fund from 2018 to 2020 at the time valuations were pretty wild uh and then covid hit so he ended up shutting that down to move into a full-time role but he was kind of through that that time frame he's the one that planted the seed I guess metaphorically on what an entrepreneurial path might look like so I learned a lot from him just about Acquisitions searches what it would take to To Be Your Own Boss that was really the the the kindling of the entrepreneurial interest so you you liked what you saw even though all you saw was him searching which is usually not the fun part and he ultimately he ultimately didn't consummate a deal so you actually never got him to never got to see him be excited about the business that he bought or any of that and yet still it intrigued you yeah I think you know there's there's a story here if if I can if I can tell the quick story of course we so he was working in that role that full-time role CFO role that he took after he shut down the search fund I was working in high growth cyber security starting sales enablement and sales operations for a relatively maybe like one step past the startup stage and we hit this we hit this existential wall I guess you could say in 2022 both of us at the same time um speaking very candidly I had just gone through a long kind of abnormal miscarriage and at the same time we had an immediate family member with terminal cancer so we were faced with this loss component in our lives and then simultaneously we were both just truthfully we were just tired of our work um we didn't feel like we were growing much and I think we were both just bored quite honestly so our solution to that at the time was oh we're just going to move we're going to relocate we're going to try something new we're going to get out of Denver we can keep all these other things the same but just displacing ourselves into a new environment might help with some of these feelings of dissatisfaction that we have sure sure so we embarked on this road trip across the southeast so we did naal Charlotte and the Raleigh Durham area and neither of us had spent a lot of time in that part of the country you were prospecting for new homes new home cities new homes new cities just communities that we thought would be interesting to live in for you know maybe a few years and going somewhere that we both hadn't been we thought would be a good Rejuvenation into our life sure now we both graduated from inad their the executive uh MBA program at inad different years different campuses he was in Singapore at the time I went in France this will all come together I promise we had both taken a class uh by a professor named Neil Bearden and Neil had recently moved from Singapore to Chapel Hill so and we were in the area right we figured he's a pretty cool dude so Alex reached out to him randomly to see if we could meet up and say hi and I think what you need to know about Neil is that he's the kind of guy who can change your life in a single conversation let alone an entire MBA course he's this like brilliant blend of I think he has a PHD in like neuroeconomics and psychology he's like a total geek and he's also this philosophical like no existentialist okay and because of all that he has this cult follow following amongst the nced community and even beyond that so when we reached out we thought you know he probably doesn't remember us like nor does he have the time for us peons but let's let's try anyway and so sure enough a few weeks later we're in North Carolina and we're sitting on a patio with him and his wife and his 5-year-old daughter drinking beers and none of us really knew how that conversation was going to go I mean ultimately we're we're really strangers with a single like a sing commonality so it had the potential to be like a very awkward and probably really quick conversation but a couple beers later you know we were in it like in it talking about life and purpose and wise and loss and death and like all of these big questions that Alex and I were facing just in our personal lives and Neil very point blank as he does said you know moving it's not going to be a s for this discontent like he he recommended a book called um wherever you go there you are I think something like that the meditation book yeah and he's like well that's pretty much the gist of the book you don't really need to read it now you just he didn't know that one line um but really what he was getting at right was that we should pursue uh like we needed to pursue a deeper sense yeah of fulfillment and really sort through what we were experiencing at the time and you know again that go that went back to I think really facing like grief and loss and and addressing all those dissatisfied parts of us which included our working selves and the Endeavors that we were professionally involved in so that ultimately led us back to I guess a desire to own more of our lives and more of our time and to be able to channel our values into you know a company and and contribute to like human flourishing through business and then also to be challenged personally and professionally so we stayed in Denver and we bought a business and it took it took that entire road trip to figure that out basically the I understand the staying in Denver part um the buying a business there are there are many paths to entrepreneurship or many paths to self-actualization maybe that's too simplistic a term but whatever it was that you all were striving for that was missing um so there's still some dots to connect there I guess I guess uh buying a business was in front of your faces because your husband at that point had already done a search fund so that was kind of one of the obvious options on the menu yeah absolutely yeah I think and I think we also well I had also seen the world of startups with my work in technology and I had seen what it took to get a company from maybe like I came in like the not maybe zero but at one and to get it to a 10 you know just to grow it I had seen the effort that that required and pairing that with Alex's one experience having already searched and he says he failed I don't think he failed by any means there was a lot in in many cases I actually think it's very very good that we didn't acquire a business right before Co hit because who knows what that would have looked like um and just knowing his he comes from you know a family business and he's got sort of that experience of what it takes to run a small business so having that those parallel viewpoints led us ultimately to buying over building ourselves so do you do you then make that the decision do you come back from from your from your road trip to North Carolina and your your world shifting uh conversation with Neil by the way what's what's this gentleman's name for the audience Bearden Bearden yes go follow him on LinkedIn and you be disappointed okay so was it like uh High tailing it back to to Denver couldn't wait to get there and open bis by cell sort of thing or was there did it did the plan evolve you had hours of the car to digest this conversation so yeah well first of all we came home and we bought a puppy that was the first thing we did and then um that was not part of the plan but you know uh yeah I mean I think look it was a series of conversations is continuing to to mul over the decision to play out scenarios to really talk through who do we want to be in the world what do we want to put out there um what do we want to accomplish what do that mean for family for life for lifestyle you know and then starting to look at where the market really was in terms of business Acquisitions as I mentioned before when Alex was searching back in 2018 it was a totally different time and place than it was in 2022 post pandemic and you know valuations had changed and it was just a different world right so really trying to step back into let's understand what's out there and understand what the Market's doing and and decide if we can take that leap it's very clear that this is a collective decision The Experience uh of going across the country talking to Neil coming back uh um obviously was something that you and your husband were doing together but overall I'm just getting a sense that this is this project this search uh is is going to be a we thing so be explicit here did you and your husband decide to go buy a business together or one was going to do it the other was going to be supportive or what yeah it's funny to reflect back on how that's evolved um yes it was a Wei thing for sure and I think we didn't go in with a very specific plan of okay you're going to run this or I'm going to run this or um we just wanted to see how the cards sort of fell I would say my husband was primarily probably going to step into the operating role of whatever company We Bought With Me supporting but that didn't didn't have to happen it it was probably what we were leaning towards um I also I had I was doing doing some Consulting work just as a you know income um after I did quit that corporate job so I also had it had things going on that supplemented kind of our entrepreneurial acquisition that I could Flex a little bit more than Alex did so he was probably going to go into that operating role um yeah I think that was we never really talked about that but it was sort of the Assumption okay that that you both would quit and both work in the business yes but to what extent depended on the situation interesting okay yes well spoiler it the way it unfolded was was different than that uh which is why I'm talking to you I guess and not Alex uh so so tell us about your search once you've decided on this path what did it look like when you started when you actually got out there so initially were looking for I guess boring like unsexy businesses like power washing and tire recycling and all like completely different than the world that I had come from and mostly what we were looking for was retiring owners uh with some sort of Legacy business good cash flow we were looking for you know opportunity to modernize grow the business our search you know we were mostly looking around like a 1 million IA marker um there was some Flex there for sure the industry didn't matter so much to us as the quality of the business which is why we were kind of casting a wide net within this like unsexy business World well I have to say Chrissy that actually sounds like the search criter the most kind of traditional search criteria that there are which is fine 1 million SD if you can get it uh quote boring or or traditional business and industry agnostic yep probably kind of blue collery probably kind of a sweaty dirty business you mentioned tire recycling you mentioned power washing but not as not as stand-ins those were actual deals that you looked at so after these two deals fall apart what is that burn you feel burned by kind of traditional business land blue collar business land and that's why did you then eventually turn your attention to acquire. comom and tell people what aire.com is please yes yes I wouldn't say we were burned on those types of businesses I think it was just we had HIIT our head against the wall a couple times consecutively and so I thought well let me just try a different approach like let's just see what happens if we go a different route and I decided that because I knew sales I knew the sales world and I knew the tech World maybe I could find something a bit more in my wheelhouse that we could get across the Finish Line yeah and so I did start searching Mo actually mostly on aire.com which is a platform for entrepreneurs to go and list their businesses for sale it's a Andrew over at acquire. comom is amazing I'll shout out to him it's it's a great platform you do still have to sift through you know there's still stuff like fluff out there that you have to kind of get to the good stuff um but I ended up finding Revenue accelerator which is a B2B outbound sales agency specializing in kind of cold email and phone Outreach for clients and I found this and I thought okay well like I know that world I've lived in that world so maybe I'll reach out and get more information so I did and the and and prior you had been using bis by cell right yeah we we sort of took a blended approach to our search where we were looking for we were on all the platforms right we've got like trans World bis by cell which is a combination of everything individual sites we had been talking to our Network and Brokers and just sort of like spreading the word back out mostly by way of Alex's search Network that he had built here in Denver so we weren't just looking in one spot but certainly like bis byell and some of those other marketplaces for the more traditional companies um were high on the list and to be clear about how acquire. comom is uh different from thisis byell acquire. first of all it's a young business it's a few years old uh it's a startup itself and it lists businesses that are digital virtual kind of online in nature so you're not going to find a plumbing business on there as I correct yeah a lot of e-commerce lot of lot e-commerce sass exactly and Andrew gazi the name that you mentioned that's the founder of acquire. comom and Andrew is uh very visible on social media and and is known as a as a great guy and so yeah um plug there I think he'll come back around as you get into the story of actually now buying this business you said it was called Revenue accelerator yes or I have that on my notes I'm not sure you said it but Revenue accelerator okay so um you said you reached out but before before we hear about the back and forth or the actual deal process tell us a little bit more about specifically what the business does exactly what the business does yes so I mean spoiler alert I bought the business so I'm going to probably say this from like my sales pitch uh perspective but okay so Revenue accelerator is we're we're an outbound sales agency so really we are running the end-to-end process of cold Outreach so we are sourcing um data contacts for Prospect lists we're writing copy um and messaging for email campaigns we're launching those campaigns we're monitoring deliverability setting up the whole like it infrastructure backend that you need for like cold outbound um and then we're booking meetings for our our clients with interested buyers so we we manage the full endtoend really we're kind of an outsourced sales team for B2B clients and for cold specifically mostly email I heard you say uh phone as well yeah we do we do some phone sprinkled in there but I you know most people are quite frankly still living in their inboxes and screening phone calls which I know I do so so yeah primarily email and when you say B2B G give us an example of of a client yeah so we I mean truly our industry agnostic uh on the B2B side we work with business services like fractional CFO companies um we work with technology platforms we we've got a logistics and like Transportation client right now we've worked in the manufacturing space we actually we really can apply the concepts of cold outbound to I would say most Industries so a fractional CFO individual or firm would approach you and say I want you to reach out to small business owners to and Pitch our services and and you would do and then you would put together you would do a managed offering so you would not only send the emails which requires Tech it requires some infrastructure to do that at scale um but you're also in many cases going to help them actually write the copy and you know the entire the entire thing really end to end um and and then you are when you get responses from these emails how what's the very last step where you actually book calls for them um and and does that require manual like if people respond to the emails then does your team respond back or do the responses go to the CFOs firm or what what are the mechanics of that primarily our sales development team manages the back and forth responses um with our clients prospects and we train our team on how to handle those responses and answer questions and then assuming we can get that individual on the other side of the email you know interested enough to take a call with our clients we then book that meeting directly onto their calendars we kind of you know have the whole infrastructure set up to do that and then they take it and continue it down their sales funnel so our our service really kind of starts at the very beginning of just getting all of this stood up and it really is an effort especially for the companies we we work with which is you know like primarily around call it like two to five million in annual revenue so they've got enough of you know they've got a product Market fit they know that they could get Revenue in the door but standing up an entire outbound function is really costly you've got to buy all the tech you got to have the people you've now got to have this it infrastructure because big brother is out there watching every email that comes across you know the server and so that's a very expensive um function actually to start so so having that full process and then the handoff to continue your sales process like it's a really big lift that we're able to come in and help clients with and and so everything that you just described is that something that a larger organization would build themselves I mean assuming you know they they do decide to build it internally rather than Outsourcing it to a firm like yours is that something that b basically any firm that eventually wants to have some sort of regular outbound process would need to build in short yes the way you build it I would argue doesn't always need to be 100% inhouse we also work with clients that we're a supplement to their internal team so we work alongside their internal outbound sales team and just amplify the efforts into maybe a specific Market or industry or you know however they want to slice and dice their total Market um we can come in and run parallel so I would say we've like it's been interesting for me to see how the Outsource model can very much complement the in-house model um and I I've mostly seen companies buildin house that's usually the first uh step that people think they need to take but I've also been I mean now being CEO and like running this business I'm I've seen how efficient and effective the agency play can be too so I think it doesn't need to be all one or the other depending on where you are in your business so going back to the the infrastructure piece and the tech piece from my days in in this world which are now 5 years ago names like SAS tools like Outreach and sales Loft were big big names and those are basically SAS tools that that allow you the or the organization to send out emails these cold emails um but I guess they're they would resist this characterization but I guess they're quote dumb tools I mean they're mostly they're mostly the ability to send the emails put people on cadences set up templates and so on um so are you guys kind of like use are you kind of a built- on top of out reach you're actually you know you you'll run you have like an Outreach or sales Loft underneath and you're running on that or you have you effectively built your own internal equivalent to a sales lofter an Outreach so there's been an interesting transformation on with those platforms too just with the deliverability um components of cold outbound that have changed really fairly recently so I think you know an Outreach or sales off those can be good if you're not doing a ton of volume you can still get away with you know managing your whole kind of process within that system but the difference between us and one of those types of platforms is we're we're doing a lot more scale and we're making sure that every piece of the of the outbound engine is firing as it should be which takes a lot more um rigor and attention than what an outreach.io or salesloft can do so um you know the best example I can give you is maybe on the deliverability component if you're launching thousands of e if you're sending thousands of emails from your primary domain to prospects and using certain words that sound a little spammy you're not varying your copy enough you're not you're not acting more like a human and you you're sounding more and more like a Spam engine you're going to get flagged into spam like you're not going to even make it into inboxes so what we do is we set up on behalf of our clients subdomains not even subdomains they're actually separate completely separate domains that point back to the primary domain we launch everything on those domains so that we don't degrade the integrity and the health of the primary domain and within those domains that we set up we're rotating emails we're watching to see if certain email addresses get slotted into spam for some reason because things just change randomly that's the kind of work that an out like an Outreach won't give you that level of detail so you all have had There's real Tech here I mean you've had to build some some real kind of pipes or at least processes to make all this work yes it is a it is a um an engine with many different parts that we've trialed and tested and truthfully still have to trial and test because like I said things things shift pretty rapidly in this space um but we've got the tech and the infrastructure at all points from data to launch to domains deliverability yeah exactly we've got everything we need across the entire the entire process well chrisy I don't want to get too far away from your story um so we're going to return to that in a second but you you just use the SW word spam say no not that s word spam and so so I guess two questions here one is like let just hear I know you you know you're going to be talking your book you bought this business so um but address the objection that is in the Audi the listener's mind or in your prospect's mind hey isn't this just a glorified version of the swword um first second when you were cons well ask that and then I'll ask my follow-up address that and I'll ask my followup please okay okay um I like I like the word so so truth so if I would to be very very candid when I even looked at Revenue accelerator I asked myself the same exact question like is this just a Spam engine and how do I feel about that you know going back to the the values conversation like what do I want to put out into the world and do I feel good about at the time it was like do I feel good about just blasting emails out into the ether in the hopes that somebody it lands right and like am I just contributing to noise or am I doing something meaningful so I had to sit with that same question and I have been continuously humbled by the outbound world and what I what my conclusions are at this stage are if you want to grow as a business especially at that like call it2 to five million doll Mark where you've got to achieve economies of scale but you may not have the resources to do it in internally outbound is one of the ways you need to try and expand your your company I would never tell someone as a business owner or having my experience in sales that I do that it is the only tried and true way it's just that you do have to have that engine running in the background of trying to gain new business that maybe is outside of your circles that you have access to so knowing that knowing that this is important for especially the companies that we that we work with I do think that we are a piece of their growth and we've seen that with our clients and we get I mean one of our clients we booked a ridiculous like set of logos for them with Ikea Carnival Cruise Lines Bass Pro Shops this is all in the last like three months um huge Enterprises that they're now just this little company doing work with these Giants and that's like awesome to see companies grow in that way I don't feel that it is just a Spam engine I think with intention with rigor and discipline in the process it can be a really effective way to to grow your business what I also think you learn on the flip side and this is where I've been a little bit humbled is you also learn what doesn't work as a business owner and we you know as Revenue accelerator like we have quote failed for some of our clients we haven't been able to get traction we haven't been able to find that market fit and and amplify it but we have been able to say hey this is everything we've done here where we here's where we think there are some like issues that you need to go focus on it's not trying to displace like blame right or anything like that but the sometimes we have clients with really like true message Market or product Market fits and we see that when we try and reach out and we get feedback from by with those responses and so I do also think that the insights that we can provide there again with intention with with that level of discretion that we apply it can also like we're trying to help people understand like this is how you should be structuring your go to market outbound or not this is what you need to focus on this is the message that works this one doesn't don't use it yeah like or at least not right now yeah so so I think with all of that being said I don't feel like it's just a Spam blast um because there's that the insights and the true growth that we've seen our clients have well chrisy that was a great answer oh great it wasn't either it's true it's funny we had one client if I can just really fast we had one client they were with us for like five months call it and um I think we truthfully we booked one meeting for them and they left so happy because they were like we're rebranding we realized that our website isn't right like they had all these insights from a failed engagement with us and they they've got a quote a testimonial quote up on our website and like so that's the kind of stuff that I also hope is valuable and not that like it's not we fail for you but um it's not a great pitch but but I do think that there's some real like true value that comes from well you know what it reminds me of again my own my own um involvement in this side of the world this part of the world cold email is falls under the bucket and organizations of sales but it's really marketing actually it's it's it's closer to marketing than it is to sales because it's top of it's totally top of funnel um and so anyway but and so what you just described there you're kind of at the front lines of the marketing effort for your clients and so you can deliver news back from the front lines data back from what you've seen is it's it's something akin to what you'll see like very early stage or maybe not so early stage businesses do where they dump some money into Google PPC and just with the expectation that they'll lose the money just to try various messages and and try various landing pages and see and basically basically try funnels messaging and and and click funnels from ad to landing page all the way down to the CTA and see what works and what fails and that quote failure data is just as valuable as as the what works data I mean it's a process of elimination to to to land on the messaging and so on that works so um similar I feel like yeah absolutely and I you know we've even in sales conversations I've told people like I want to I want to succeed for you as fast as I possibly can like we all want that but I we also with the infrastructure and the process like we can also fail faster than you can so if you're also willing to spend money to fail faster than maybe other areas that you've tried like and simultaneously I think find success and they're not mutually exclusive necessarily yeah I I I I I do think that's I think that's valuable I I really do and I think it's often overlooked um in the sales and marketing we just want leads we just want meetings just get me in front of people that's important but man those intangibles are also really important well the follow-up question to all of this chrisy is one of the very appealing things about a power washing business or a tire recycling business and so many of the businesses that my guests buy and that people who are in ETA or drawn to is the longevity and the relative the relative stasis of of these industries and businesses and and you and and so being in Tech uh or anything online scares people off often because it is so Dynamic it changes so quickly and particularly it sounds like in in your little corner of the online World um so was that not something that concerned you as you evaluated this business and then we're going to and we are going to hear about the the deal because there's there's so much to learn from the deal that you put together did that not concern you as a risk oh it was certainly a risk 100% that was one of the big risks um was just the Ever Changing nature of both the tech industry and the outbound sales function right and by outbound sales rate I'm including like it's the cold it's the cold Outreach cold email cold whatever um I I I had been I had lived through that shift in technology I was there when the we hired our first sales development Representatives at Ping Identity and I was there when covid happened and all of the SDR one costs were cut and then two email changed like overnight because we were all sitting at our home desks trying to get a hold of each other and so like I saw that whole shift happen is in real time and I knew that going into this deal that I was going to have to help the company adapt um as things were were changing and as they will change in the future what I'm not worried about is outbound dying there is a lot of noise if you're on LinkedIn and you like follow certain hashtags or you follow certain people there is so much chatter out about dead cold calling is dead blah blah blah yeah sure it's not true where do you spend most of your time every day me personally are you are you asking yeah true if you don't give me the right answer I'll say the right answer and yes unhappily in my inbox I guess yeah yeah I mean it's we're online like we're on email we're on LinkedIn we're doing these things and so and it because of the display St of our work now where everyone's working from everywhere it is the way that we communicate and so as long as that exists we will use we will use these platforms to drive business now the way in which we do that changes potentially and and there's you know you've got AI coming on board and you've got all the not even coming on board well established at this point um there's so many factors that are changing but as long as we're all on our computers and as long as we all want to grow our businesses outbound in some way shape or form will exist yeah we just have to change as it changes yeah that comfort that you have with being able to adapt to the changes that are going to be necessary probably speaks to the fact that you have experience in this world so this this is the part where you coming from this world and being really you know having experience in it being a buyer of such technology and a practitioner or a a user of the very technology that you're now selling I assume maybe you weren't a direct user but close yeah yeah um probably gave you comfort in a way that many of the listeners wouldn't have comfort uh in in going after business like this maybe not um I mean we all we all we certainly all understand cold Outreach and we all are in our inboxes all day well let's hear about the deal the negotiation in the deal so can you give us some some numbers some bullet points on this business I sure can so first and foremost this was a crossborder deal uh which brought some fun and frustrating um learnings with it but in terms of so in terms of the deal itself uh we bought the business for 2.75 million Canadian which like these are a little bit rough numbers um Call It 2 million USD okay the looking back you know like 2022 revenue for Revenue accelerator was you know 1.4 Canadian um or like 1 million USD so your multiples a little change depending on what currency you're using there and and I you know this is painting broad Strokes the seller discretionary earnings um this was a little lower than what I had originally said in terms of what Alex and were looking for but again we had just pivoted so much at this point that we still felt it was a really strong deal so um SD I think like 20 21 2022 was like call it 750,000 Canadian which is like again roughly 550,000 call it USD and at the time this ladies and gentlemen is why we like digital businesses look at those margins yeah 63% gross margin average great yes carry on um so the those were the you know those were the I guess primary numbers that we cared about obviously going into this I can talk a little bit about the the deal structure if that's helpful defin it's going to be very helpful but one just one followup there Chris TV what was the age of the business and yeah kind of the age and history of the business and then how many employees and where are they paint a picture of that because that's also really um different than a traditional blueco collar business yes so the age was but call it between six and seven years old at the time um started by the seller he he founded and grew the company which is awesome to get it to you know from zero to a million um at the time of acquisition I think there were maybe 14 15 employees across you know going back to the remote nature of of our world today across the globe so um the team is Canada US Spain Ireland India and the Philippines and are these folks all on some sort of W2 or they basically all they're obviously certainly wasn't a W2 because it was Canadian uh but were were they are they all just kind of contractors that are pretty flexy yeah long-term contractors though much of the team has been with the company for gosh you know three plus years even as as contractors so uh we don't have high turnover even though they're not you know I don't know what the Canadian equivalent of W2 is but whatever W2 um but very long-standing tenure in fulltime full-time they're full-time yeah long-term contractors interesting okay okay great and what what of the founder um I assume it's a youngish person it is Young it is it is yeah he would love it if I said he was a youngish person yes youngish youngish yeah yeah he um yes so his name is Gabriel um we're friends he's great guy uh he is he has young children and this was not going to be his last Rodeo maybe that's the best way to put it um he um yeah what else do you want to know about him just why why did he want to sell because one of the things that we like so much about traditional and blueco collar businesses is so often there are Legacy businesses where the seller owner has a very good reason to sell I.E retirement and this as I've started uh getting into the the investor side of the table is actually a much more important Criterion than I than I realized the a real good incentive to sell because other wise you say if if it's such a hot because that that basically neutralizes the question of well if it's such a good business why is this person selling it got it great so Gabriel was not of the same mindset as the retire the retiring uh people that we have been talking to previously for sure he I don't know if I'd call him a Serial entrepreneur but he has this um he likes starting he likes building he likes the the the beginning stages of of companies in a way that quite frankly I are not M my favorite um so he did that with Revenue accelerator he built it he found he solved a lot of problems trying to grow it he I think was intellectually and professionally challenged by that endeavor and by the time you know call it seven years rolled around he was tired and wanted to do something else and um I think what he did was awesome having this company go from I'm going to speak in USD but zero to a million in USD with covid thrown into the middle of that is extremely remarkable um and now he's ready for whatever comes next so it wasn't any um dis being disgruntled with the business it wasn't it wasn't any of that it was just ready for change and I think when you're a found I mean it's hard man like that is that is grunt work to go from zero to a million yeah and I and I also think that it's more common in digital style businesses yeah that a Founder seller is gonna not have held the business for 30 years like a the owner seller of a plumbing business might have correct and so so it doesn't it's not the same yellow flag as it might be no not a traditional business not at all okay so deal terms deal structure how the heck did you buy Canadian business this was a journey so in terms of the deal structure we did a combination of a private loan a seller note and an equity raise so because this was a crossborder deal we were unable to capitalize on an SBA loan uh completely not an option so I mean if you want to if you want talk about things going wrong in a deal and having to Pivot quickly this was certainly an area of learning for us on the lender side what we found was even outside of an SBA scenario your typical Bank the T it was a typical bank that we were working with that did small business loans they came in that the last 11th hour and said we can't do this deal for various reasons that to this day I still am not entirely sure um we then had to Pivot very quickly to a private lender that acquire. comom had partnered with actually so we ended up going through aire.com to this lender to get the deal done but I would I would say looking back the financing piece of this as a crossb deal was surprisingly more difficult than we thought it was going to be and by that you mean just finding somebody who is willing to finance it or the logistics of moving a big slug of cash across a border and doing all the currency conversion I think all of it okay I think all of the above um yeah I think it was it was multiple factors cuz you know the financials as you mentioned before like financials looked great yeah like there really was no question and everything checked out in our quality of earnings everything checked out in our due diligence like there was no issue there I think it was just it was the nature of it being cross B that people were hesitant on and so what I wish I would have done was I wish I would have had more or we had I guess kind of shopped it out a little bit more I think we thought that it would be as simple as just a a quote normal Us North American whatever I guess just us deal and it just ended up not being that simple there were a lot of questions asked so that would be like just one thing if you're doing a crossb deal just make sure that you've got your bases covered and you understand your options and you're having a lot of conversations with lenders about the deal well this is one of those chrisy where I feel like you and your husband's naive was was an asset cuz you probably just wouldn't have even attempted it if you had known what you were getting into and in fact I feel like a lot of people are that way it's like oh it's it's in Canada or oh it's not in the US for the Americans the American buyers it's like I'm not even going to try just too complicated easy enough to just move on to the next deal also huge hugely important it disqualifies the use of the SBA loan which is of course instrumental for so many listeners and buyers yes um so so can you be more specific or maybe any like um explicit examples of things you learned that the audience can skip over but use your pain and skip over and buying a business in Canada yeah so you're gonna need to hire two sets of attorneys um yeah what does it look like thank you sorry to interrupt but what does it look like exactly who are all the players what does your deal team look like when buying something cross border yes so we so I'll start out by saying Alex is my husband is dangerous enough to have done some of the initial quality of earnings work um so by the time we hired our team we we did have a pretty good understanding of what things looked like so I'll maybe start there and that was just Alex is awesome in that sense and he's brilliant and could just really quickly do like an initial check once we had that check done on the quality of earnings we did hire a formal a firm to do like a formal qov um especially with all the currency conversions and whatnot we're like all right like we really look at this um we did hire we had our attorney here in Denver that we've worked with before um that we listed right away to start getting you know going on the APA and the seller note and and all of that and then we also had to hire a Canadian law firm to make sure that all of the international components and requirements were accounted for in that APA and then they also had to bring in a tax specialist to help us with the crossb tax um issues I guess you could call them that we had to contend with so it was a bigger team than we normally would have had for just a us-based acquisition simultanously we were working really closely with the sellers attorneys as well so we had like a lot of lawyers on one call trying to to navigate all of these different um stipulations and making sure that regulations were you know being abided by hitting requirements and all of that so it was a pretty big team for the size of the acquis position but I would not change that because I feel like we had the experts around us to get get everything checked off the list and your lawyer there in Denver knew crossb stuff because this strikes me as something that you know a firm would specialize in it would be their Niche crossb deals or even Niche within a niche specifically Canadian deals and and and and it just like you know wanting to work with a lender who's who who's done a small business acquisition before uh or a uh an attorney who's done a small business acquisition before you know it's its own beast and so you want people who have seen this seen this before and and I would I would think you know doing a crossb thing is probably so complex um Maybe not maybe but maybe it's so complex if you've never done it but for people who you know attorneys who do it all year long it's pretty straightforward and so so anyway what do you say to that yeah I so we had I mean we talked to a lot of different law firms and attorneys on kind of before deciding what our team was going to look like we we knew our attorney here in Denver he does small business stuff he's he knows how to get deals done so we felt really comfortable shout out Jim um we felt really comfortable with him and then we just needed him to kind of coordinate and collaborate with the Canadians Council to make sure that that they informed us of how things work in Canada and what we need to accommodate for and all of that so I did feel like separately they both were great at the small business acquisition side of it we just had to have that like the communication across the teams to make sure that all the te's were crossed and eyes were dotted where it did get complicated I mean my like I blew a few fuses in my brain trying to understand it um was on the tax stuff that was huge well I'm not going to ask you a followup on the tax please don't ask me about the tax because it doesn't sound like I don't know if I can tell you what we had to do anymore okay all right okay and so and then what of the financing piece so you just said that you had a bank bank pulls out at the last minute you find a lender who's associated with or a financing business company vendor associated with acquire. comom maybe you don't want to name them um so but it was not an SBA situation so you're basically doing this deal without an SBA but with the intention that you eventually will because spoiler you now do have an SBA law on this business so walk through we're working on it we're working you're working on it okay yeah no it's um yeah there's been some fun learnings there too so please walk us through all that okay so we went with the we went with the private lender that we found through acquire. comom um it was less than what we were expecting to get out of the the debt portion of this deal so to that end um we had negotiated a seller note simultaneously um that covered like call it 20% of the cost of the deal um and then we had an equity raise so the equity raise became more important once that lender pulled out and we had to Pivot a little bit so we had to raise more Equity um to make up for what we weren't getting out of the debt piece I'll pause there so um can you say how much Equity yes so we raised so kind of the way the numbers broke down was the debt was 800,000 USD the seller note ended up being like roughly 415,000 USD call it and then we raised roughly a million Inon USD and our Equity yes so a million dollar in equity so this is a highly equitized acquisition 50 fully 50% basically so roughly call it $2 million the USD value um not it was a Canadian price but USD 2 million so half of it fully half of it was Equity okay more or less yeah and so what are the implications of that because that does not happen very often with my guess it means that you own less of the business presumably a a lot lot less than it would be in the in you know a 1010 10180 SBA deal um on the other hand of course a lot of equity also means less debt means a lot more room so it's it's much more comfortable in terms of meeting your your debt payments how did you think about it um you know that's a good question so what you know what ended up happening too just on the ownership piece is like Alex and I both we also pitched in more on even like the equity side while once that loan fell through so we had to give more of our money in the form of equity so on the ownership piece that wasn't as big that wasn't like a concern I guess for us because we we did end up putting in decent a lot of your own money of that million you guys put in a lot of it we we put in a piece of it we we still we were still we were probably like 200,000 of it okay towards the end to make up for that loan that changed okay you know truthfully what it came down to is couple of things one this is how we could get the deal done yeah like this is how it was going to have to be structured y um so I think you know I don't want to say we were boxed into that but it was it was the path that we saw to get the deal done two you know of that Equity raise it's it's friends and family like we this was self fund like self-funded self search self-raised whatever you want to call it I get I don't know what the right terms are here equitized um so but you know these are friends and family and so we also wanted to provide people who are invested in us personally the opportunity to capitalize on the business opportunity and and our hope is that I mean the pressure is on me um to give give them a return and and we' got amazing friends and family that were excited about that opportunity and supportive and wanted to to pitch in so there's also I guess for us an element of kind of a personal element on that Equity side that was sort of dri sort of driving the reason for for why we structured it this way so you you kind of liked the friends and family presence in your deal because you felt like assuming you deliver no pressure Christie uh you liked you were kind of sharing the wealth with your family and you know and and they're invested in your success I mean it's it's kind of really good alignment because it's not just economic alignment but sort of emotional relational alignment too yes that yes yeah that's yes better words than I had okay um well just just clarifying okay okay and so and then we're I'm watching the clock here Christie and I want to make because there's a still more of your story that I want to get to yeah but you once you buy the business do you have a plan to leave everything as is I tease the the SBA loan possibility so so what was the vision and what is it what does it look like now yeah so we again really interesting learnings on the SBA side um we were not able to refinance it as quickly as we wanted to because of SBA rules and the way they categorize um acquisition like new business Acquisitions versus refinancing versus like there's without getting technical we we ran into some blockers when we initially tried to go get it refinanced kind of out the gate so we're pausing on the refinance um until we have just we we just need a little bit more kind of history history yeah we we need more financials we need just for everybody to feel comfortable and that that's fine eventually we will it's it's on the docket um but I would say patience is key on that okay but but the plan had been that you were going to assemble this Capital stack to buy the business out of Canada Y and then Qui immediately so not going to happen but the plan was immediately then to refinance it into an SB a traditional SBA style 10180 or 5185 or whatever well I guess there wouldn't be a seller note then because you'd be your own seller so it would just be yeah it would just be the SBA debt and your equity and so if if that plan had come to pass the idea was that you were going to immediately pay back many of your investors or make them whole or mostly whole yeah yeah yeah the the payback would certainly change um you know at this point it's looking like it's it's definitely going to be a longer payback period just because of that's theba thing yeah yeah um and that's you know again like having people that support us both personally and professionally and that are willing like they understand that and they yeah you know we talk with them all the time about this that I think that maybe there's some breathing room there which is nice um but yeah you know the SBA thing was interesting we we did try and go to the SBA um they wanted tax returns then we had to wait and then it was like questions of well do we have enough financial history and so it's not been as clearcut yeah and just so I I'm assuming or I'm kind of what I'm hearing is to do a SBA 7A loan there needs to be the business that's being acquired needs to have some Financial history and yours has none because you just formed this entity within the last whatever year it was to import Revenue accelerator so there's just not enough history it's a brand new relatively very very young business entity correct okay yep that's 100% correct okay and sorry when did you close we closed last August early August 2023 okay well I guess the takeaway for the audience is there there's a way to buy a business a Canadian business yes if you're if you're American is for of course my American listeners and that is but this idea that you can quickly you know kind of assemble a capitalist stack that you know 90 days later is just going to become a traditional s SBA loan probably not going to happen but you're still holding out hope so maybe with some Financial history in another year or two or three you will be able to kind of do that scheme for lack of that plan um but in the meantime you did find a source of financing that I assume is probably high the yes so one of your reasons for buffer that in buffer that into to your uh yes and that was that was uh not what we wanted but we could still get the deal done and the and the financial still made sense just based on the margins that we were working with which is great um yeah but I would say that that was you know factoring into future cash flow a a ridiculous interest rate um over a shorter term we had to really build that in and see if it would work so I like if you're modeling this out I would plan on the term being shorter and the interest rate being higher and just you have to be able to make that work most likely most likely unless you've got a sweet deal somewhere well this would also be where it it it it pencils because yeah High margins in the business and because there's a lot of equity in the deal yeah those that sure helps that math okay all right Chrissy let's return to the story I want to just make sure we hit on um so Circle us back now to you and your husband as partners in this project is he there full-time or what how what does that look like today and and who whose project is now yeah so I will start by saying this deal would not have gotten done without Alex he was the dealmaker and my Guiding Light in all of this so I'm speaking now as like the CEO of Revenue accelerator but truly he was he did so much of this and I wouldn't be here um without his support and his brain quite frankly so I'll start by saying that the second piece of it is Alex knew he knew the deal making piece of this equation I knew the the business operations piece of this equation so as soon as the deal was done um I don't want to say he stepped out because he's still done a lot of backend financial and kind of legal work that I didn't have time to do because I stepped straight into running the business so he took a big step back as soon as we closed and I took the step into the CEO role for really from I guess the remainder of 2023 call it he was still semi involved in the business um trying to help where you know I needed him on on certain pieces but he's slowly transitioned out and it's primarily me running the day-to-day with kind of some Consulting hours for my husband here and there um and that's worked great and did that Evolution just happen naturally or was it because it was like he decided that this business wasn't for him or he didn't have a lot of value to add on a full-time basis like when he when you need him he's there but that's only a few hours a month sort of thing yeah so the the details of what happened is you know he you know we have this vision of of kind of building like a a portfolio of small businesses that we own in the long run so as soon as we closed and we kind of got things like stable and me operating and and all of that he actually continued the search for another business that he could step in to as an operator again heartbreak um got really close really great conversations Loi due diligence all of that stuff with um uh almost like an ATM business but slightly different I won't go into the details because it's kind of confusing and that fizzled just Di a slow painful ambiguous death and so he decided we decided but he um he had an opportunity kind of fall into his lap to be um the CFO for a local Orthopedic Group which kind of plays on his Healthcare background and just you know there's some learnings here I think we have you know we're building a family um we're expecting in August congratulations I have yeah like I have I have maybe more risk on the revenue accelerator entrepreneurial side pairing that with a stable job right now that Alex can have is actually great for us and kind of going back to like my like Corporate America versus entrepreneurship I don't think that one is right or wrong or good or bad it's just what makes the most sense like I loved my corporate time and right now it makes sense for Alex to have a corporate job and it doesn't mean the like full dream of Entrepreneurship that we have is dead it just means right now in this moment you know we've got to make things work for our situation and that's what he's doing so um so he stepped into that he's really enjoying it what a team really you know it's it took a lot of conversations though because kind of going back to that like who do we want to be in the world what do we want to put out there we were so committed to we are committed I shouldn't say past tense like we are committed to building the life we want entrepreneurship is our preferred and primary path but we also have to be smart about it and understand what's our risk tolerance based on these other factors going on in our lives and so you know it's not 100% what we would have liked I guess but it was a good situation and it's what we had to do and it's working great so Chrissy you you might be my first pregnant guest really well you're about my third woman no I'm exagger but you're probably probably had less than 10 uh I might be forgetting some people but probably not um so how are you thinking about maternity leave so you're dueing August uh and are you so not only are you having to transition this business although August 2023 is yeah so babies do uh one year into do almost a year to the day from when we closed on this deal man there's 's a a metaphor symbol in there somewhere there's something there um so so you're not only transitioning this business you're also thinking to yourself how is this business going to keep running when I'm on maternity leave um what are your thoughts there well my thoughts waver between oh and everything's going to be fine basically just bounce ping pong between those two um and this has been this is I'm navigating new Waters here right like this is my first child I I'm a new CEO I'm a new business like all of these things are new so in terms of how I'm thinking about it one we have an awesome team at Revenue accelerator and they will be completely fine without me I 100% um like I said a lot of them are long tenured they're smart they know what to do probably I don't even need to be in half the meetings that I'm in because they've just got it under control and that was one thing that yeah I really I saw that in the business um even when we were kind of in the diligence phase and initial month or two um extremely impressed by the team so I do feel really that's such an asset I I'm glad you surfaced that because I didn't get it earlier that's that's so valuable amazing people truly so those those are the moments I'm like okay everything's going to be fine but you know like like honestly I'm it's all new and it's scary to step out of a business that now I feel so invested in um to take care of a baby which I have no idea how to do and like all of that is like oh my gosh you know how is this going to look and feel and it's completely new territory and quite honestly I I don't know what to expect there so there's a little bit of honest ambiguity that I just have to be okay with and working being the boss being the owner you you don't have to you know go to your employer with your hand out and say what you know what maternity leave can I have uh is is being offered you get to decide that sounds like you're not deciding that in advance you're going to play it by here and see how things go A little yeah I I I will I will unless there are major issues and healing that needs to happen I will likely not be out for the standard three months um of maternity leave that most people take I will you know I have to find the balance of taking care of myself and adapting to a completely new life as as a mom with easing myself back into the business and being available for big you know issues and conversations and all of that and helping out but I don't know 100% what that looks like and and I'm G to flex with it and just sort of see how it plays out for all I know it's going to I'm going to be six weeks out and then like itching to send an email and like yeah get in there you know or I'm going to be like I can only have I only have time for like two meetings today and I got all this other stuff to do so we'll see yeah I have some thoughts I have some preferences but you never really know how it's going to all play out well Christie you the ambiguity uh you're you're doing really well with it um you seem I'm serious you seem really like you're just absorbing the ambiguity well um it doesn't seem which is which is you know H how somebody should approach uh uh lots of changes going on what you don't see is the like 2 am pregnancy insomnia like freakouts like what I what am I going to do oh so I'm catching in a good moment I'm glad we're not having me interview at 2 a.m. yeah let's don't don't have this conversation a 2 a.m. when I'm not sleeping and freaking out okay well speaking of freakouts Before I Let You Go I I I do want to hear about some of the transition bad points because it it wasn't um you've had some moments tell us about those moments so that know that this hasn't been um unicorns and rainbows yes yes um so the the lowest point um cumulatively is that in the first really so August to December call it um so the first five months or four months whatever of of owning the business we lost 55% of our clients yep that's my face too and that was a very strong moment of contention for me the reason we lost 55% of our clients primarily had nothing to do with the transition but some of them did have to do with the transition and we expected we expected some turnover just kind of natural new owner it's a break in time that people can they reevaluate do I still want to do this so we we expected some churn I did not expect 55% of our clients 55% and does that Loosely mapped to also 55% of Revenue mostly yes oh gosh okay yes so that was that was a real low Point um realizing that we were losing a lot of clients at in a very small time frame and especially for a company that you know we had analyzed client retention and it was you there's always turnover in this business that's fine um but it was relatively sticky so it it came as a surprise to have that many people people leave so we then had to you know I had to turn my focus immediately not on growth but on stabilization and so trying to win back that Revenue in terms of new client acquisition just to maintain what we were doing in terms of Revenue so that was a uh not expected and very stressful we were able we actually were able to replace all of those clients and then grow on top of it so by by February of this of 2024 we had replaced and then stacked on top so I'm really proud of that because that was really hard and scary in the moment good for you wow it thanks yeah well and I have to ask I mean all congratulations Chrissy but but I but I also have to say if you were able to out of absolute Terror admittedly but if you were if you were able to grow the business by basically 100% right so if it drops 55% call it 50% for easy math and you get back to where you were that means you g you doubled from where it had fallen so if you were able to double the business in what three months is call call it four let's get let's yeah it out four months the obvious question is well if you do more of that for another four months and four months in four months can we keep doubling or can can we keep you know at least you know the same amount whatever that quantity of 50% represented can you do that again and again and again or was this just like a a oneand done you couldn't you couldn't just keep repeating that I think that we have a so it's a nuanced answer um if economic conditions were not changing probably the way they are right now I think that we could we could play that out over and over again um I also had a lot of people like from my network that were interested in what we were doing with me as a new owner so like I did pull in some new client Acquisitions from that yeah um just general interest and network and all of that I think now what we're seeing I mean we're still on a growth path but people are just holding their dollars a little bit closer and so but we're just losing on to budget constraints more or less um so I would love to say we could repeat that over and over and I do think we can keep growing um at a good clip I don't know if it's going to be quite at the same percentage rate but but the opportunity is definitely there when you lost half your business uh in the first few months did you I mean how bad did it get emotionally you just talked about being up at 2 am because of this impending pregnancy wh what's which which nights were more sleepless the ones you're having now or the the ones back then uh I don't know they're equivalent um okay I guess let me reframe chrisy like so you and I talk in the preall about how business acquisition is painted uh rosily it's very kind of you know um lots of great stories out there including from this podcast but that the reality uh is often not quite so Rosy yeah I I think that Alex and I both we well we both knew and I he had a very acute understanding and I had a good understanding that coming into this was going to be a lot of work it wasn't going to be sunshine and rainbows and there were going to be things that went wrong and um I was braced for the effort which helped with Stress Management I would say yeah um I wasn't prepared to have I don't think I scrambled but I wasn't prepared to have to work that hard to replace half of our business that quickly yeah um that was a surprise and then the other piece that I would say kept me up at night so to speak and probably literally um was just trying realizing the Investments I had to make in the business very quickly because and this is not a knock on the seller so don't take it that way um he just had he he wasn't as invested personally he was ready to sell he was ready to leave and so there were just gaps in in the business that we needed to fill that needed to be reinvested in and we needed to spend money and and so I don't think I expected to have to come in and spend as much both in terms of personnel process Tech all of that so when you're losing when you're losing your clients and you're realizing this is massively underfunded or underresourced on in these four places that's a scary place to be yeah um and so navigating that that was the hardest part was the whole context of the situation now fortunately I have Alex who I'm the emotional one in the relationship and he's like steady logical like consistent guy and so I needed his voice to help help me focus on the long term and not just what was in front of me immediately write out the gate as a new CEO so I don't know if that answers your question um it does but yes good job husband Alex good job husband go Alex go Alex Christy anything else I think the only other thing and this sort of piggybacks on even me mentioning the difference between Alex and I um as individuals and and the balance in our partnership is I got emotionally attached quickly to every deal that we looked that we got close on I should say right the ones we were really invested in I would get really emotionally attached and Alex was way better probably because he had had more repetition in this he was much better at just being objective in the search now part of that's also personality like I'm the one who like I walk into an open house right if I'm like home searching and I'm like oh this could be beautiful and like I see the vision and I like can see myself you know like living there and painting this room that like that's my that's the way my brain works um so that certainly played out and I think that for me though in some way that was a really good thing and drove me in my urgency and Persistence of wanting to buy Revenue accelerator and pushing through some of those like real crossborder Hang-Ups and moments where it's like oh my gosh now we got to find new funding really fast we got to raise more over here and like those moments of Reckoning I guess having that emotional attachment was important for me and I think that I don't know that I think people are really scared of getting attached do you see that in like your conversations or it's really interesting I would two reactions to that chrisy first is there's a sweet spot because you don't want to fall in love with a deal that could be a bad deal um and because your emotions got the better of you you find yourself buying a bad business only thing worse than not buying a business is buying a bad business right so that is a a Peril an emotional Peril on the other hand because getting a deal across the finish line is so difficult and protracted and particularly when you're when there's this other layer of doing it cross border it was just really bound to be very fraught as in indeed it was and so you also on the other hand you do need your excitement enthus and enthusiasm to fuel you during those moments where it's like ah eff it we should just walk you know so so it's it kind of like you can it can like like many emotions you can it can work against you or work for you and knowing how and when to deploy it is important the other um thing I would say is that probably like I mean to repeat what you said Alex probably it's personality it's probably a personality thing and an experience thing that he knows not to get too attached to deals but what's so it's so interesting is that you see it as an asset which and you and you've explained it well because mostly on the podcast we just talk about it as apparel that you don't want to fall in love with a business because you don't want to buy that bad business and so on and so um and so and yet even still a lot of people are like you where they get excited and they do get attached and even though they've heard a hundred podcast episodes where and they and it's been drilled into them they shouldn't um fall in love with a business and that you need to keep objectivity um they're devast ated when when the deal falls apart anyway even though you know they they knew better than that it's just really hard to control your emotions as a human yeah so anyway those are my two reactions I forgot what your question was to me but hope that was helpful was kind of curious yeah because I think Alex was all Alex is and was always very um cautious of getting attached and I I that's part of the reason why we're married as we're like really good counterbalance here yeah um but just finding that finding what appreciated about getting emotionally involved um and and the the fuel that that provided yeah paired with the discipline to walk away because we did walk away from a lot of deals yeah um and I'm glad we walked away from each of those so like finding that balance I would say like that's where I found the sweet spot as opposed to just trying to be like pure objective in this whole entrepreneurship thing because it's it's just not that simple well that that's the word right balance that is the word is is and and it does sound like you guys have this great pairing of um and you know forgive me I hope I don't get canceled but like it also just it's perfectly gendered yeah 100% the male is the rational one and the female is the emotional one 100% okay so we know that it's fact it's fine yeah um and most people don't have that you know most people are just have one or the other and and going back to the the the your um emotion and enthusiasm being an asset I also do think that something isn't talked about a lot on the podcast but here and there is this X Factor so rather there's there is it's very hard to quantify maybe it's unquantifiable but there is value in in getting excited and being being excited for the business you buy you like ra it's it just it shouldn't all be just this quantitative analysis there should be an X Factor that's like that uh you know that just has you motivated I mean that's why you're doing this you know that you're doing it you're you're doing it to do something that feels good in your life and to take your life in a Direction so it should it should it should it should make make you get out of bed yeah um so so I don't think that that so I think that that's a a really important um feature of your deal that should should be in most people's deals just just into your feelings all you all all the guys are that are listen yeah lean into your feelings yeah also also telling that this is the first conversation I'm having like this on the podcast when my guest my guest happens to be uh happens to be a woman but um yes but hey I'm an I'm an emotional guy so I I I like uh I I do think that um my species could benefit from a little bit more emotion uh we men interesting digression what else chrisy what else you know I we can talk about the meaning of life and existence and all of that too but um how can people uh reach you Christie if they have questions I would probably LinkedIn is the best I'm I'm active on there um shoot me a message just say that you heard me here because I also get a lot of messages there um but that's that's probably the easiest all right well we'll leave it there thank you very much for coming on chrisy congratulations on an acquisition a crossboard acquisition and uh uh new addition to the family in August and just all the many things you got going on in your life and uh hello to Alex uh who's who's uh what's the expression his ears are buzzing or whatever all right chrisy thanks a lot 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