How to Grow a Manufacturing Business | Bruce Vann Interview

Bruce fan welcome back to acquiring minds thank you for having me Bruce we talked in January 2022 so about 14 months ago you had acquired a stage curtain manufacturing business and I thought it would be great to have you back on to just tell us how things have gone in the last year or so first things first though Bruce please just remind us why you chose the path to buy a business and a little bit more about Lux out the business that you bought sure so long story short I started my career in finance in uh had ended up in a career rut for a little while so I was looking for a business to buy search for uh let's say six or seven months ended up finding Lux out products uh which is like you said a stage curtain and drapery manufacture stage curtains and shades um and really thought the business was great and was uh a durable business had been around for a long time since the 1940s operated in a nice niche so I bought it um started my search in January of 2019 and ended up acquiring on February the 14th of 2020 a month before the stuff hit the fan great um okay so so it's actually been three years that you've been in the business now you survived covid which is we spent a lot of time talking about last time um how are you feeling now three years in what how do you feel about your this path of buying a business and also about Lux out in particular the business that you bought I think it's very much akin to if you do anything if you do any job or you like it's just like anything like if you date a person you have this time of limerence and then eventually that kind of wears off and you're you're dealing with the the the the the wolves and and the throes of of dealing with that particular person and I think that's the same way with the job and I think that's the same way within acquisition um I I love them complete company dearly and I think it's done very well for me they're what what stands out in my mind are the ways that it uh that I would the things that I want to improve uh but still overall we've done fine uh We've we've grown in the pandemic we survived a time when nobody was on stages for several months yeah um and that was very very scary um and it's a buoyant little business just like I uh just like I wanted to buy so overall I'd say it's great and then it's allowed me also to afford to to purchase other companies which has been outstanding yeah and we're certainly going to hear about that two follow-ups to this so when you say that your attention is just drawn to all the things that are imperfect about it that you want to improve um and is that what's getting in the way of making those improvements is it just time change management or need more capital or why why can't you flip a switch and fix all those things tomorrow yeah it's a matter of it's not needing more Capital it's more than anything you have to have the right people and the right feedback loops in in the markets um that you want to play that you want to participate in and because my business has such a long sales cycle it's very difficult to know what's really going on at any given time it's sort of like it's very much akin to the what the job what the people do with the Federal Reserve or what these economists do because it just takes so long to really notice a secular change uh so that's one thing the and the other thing is just getting the right people on board some folks show up to jobs and or to work at a company and they give their all other folks are like okay well I'm just going to punch a clock and try to keep everything going and do the minimum until uh so no one fusses me out and you really want to get you want to attract and retain and reward the first category and you want to let go of the second category and I think especially given how tight the labor market has been over the three years that I've owned the company uh we I only in the three years I've owned the company we didn't we've never had I don't think we've ever had unemployment over four percent yeah and floor four symbols uh was was the uh that's the that's full employment in the economy so it's very tough to get people and keep them um in there but I think I have a pretty good plan going forward of of what we need to do um and and I feel pretty good about it and I've also really appreciate the team my folks who've stuck by us uh all this time both both my staff and my company and the third thing is just something always comes up like last this past Friday uh not to be too graphic but a totally clogged and there was literally sewage coming up out of the bathroom and I had to uh had they figure out a week to remove the toilet drill that down clean up and mop and all these different things like to stay extra or late on um on Friday just for that very reason so there's always something on top of the Strategic stuff there's always something from an operational standpoint that kind of stands in the way of you that tries to distract you from um the north star of what you what you really want to accomplish as a as a general manager or CEO of a business Bruce you called it uh I think you said the buoyant little little business that you had um that you envisioned that you'd hoped for so um just more specifically on that the numbers that you had projected and that you'd received from the seller three years ago those those played out or were there any I mean is it basically as profitable um as you had hoped and expected when you signed on the dotted line yeah good question it's about it's about his prop it's it's been a mixture so it was more profitable in 2020 than it than it was in 2021 and it was about the same level of profitability in 2022 so far this year is kind of too early to tell just because like I said of that long sales cycle uh but it's it's been overall it's been really great I mean I got a heck of a deal on this on this on this company um so yeah bibs there and um with the profitability the question of course is what what to do with that cash do you expand uh if you see growth opportunity in in this business and maybe if you don't see huge growth opportunities in the business you could put in an operator to do what you're doing the day-to-day operations and step out and go look for your next acquisition or Adventure um this is probably going to play into you know the the acquisition that you did make that the answer to this question but how are you thinking about what to do with the cash that the business is generating yeah that's that's a good question that's actually the question that keeps me up at night because I'm the type of person where I'm not the goal is not necessarily to make money my goal is to manage well I want to the hand that I feel like I've been dealt I want to play the hand really really really really really well and if you have some cash and you're not using it it's not going to work and I feel like I'm not playing it well um the question of how to expand is unfortunately it's kind of two-sided so for the base business it's the only way to really expand is to go into new geographies and or to hit the geographies that you're currently in harder and get the right person to hit hit those geographies harder um so that's really like a people-centered kind of problem uh for the shades business uh the best way to expand is to have a solid digital product and we've been working on that for three years and that's been extremely challenging matter of fact there's a gentleman in um in well not easy I wouldn't call them a gentleman there's a scoundrel in New York who who's uh uh a con company and my predecessor and and me out of a decent amount of money uh uh to to build a new website um with the functionality that we would need in order to better service our customers there and to really kind of Hit the growth trajectory that the previous owner envisioned and that I definitely buy intimacy is extremely like very low hanging fruit if we can just get there um the other thing um in terms of your question about whether to put an operator in I wouldn't want I wouldn't feel comfortable putting an operator in until I feel like we're at the scale like at the proper scale and have the proper operations necessary to uh for someone to come in and do that because there's a lot of a lot of this is though a lot of this is operational a lot of it is also strategic a lot of what I do requires being strategic and trying to look at the numbers and figure out the story that they're telling you and whatnot and not everybody has the skill set to to read the tea leaves so to speak and understand exactly what's going on um and how to Pivot and adjust as an organization so once we get there um then maybe I will maybe I won't we'll see so and so just so we understand your business stage curtains are of course the the heavy tall big fabric curtains that you'll see at a stage at a an auditorium in a school or a church or a theater um so that's one core piece of the business and then you refer to the shades business as well so shades for consumers or for what is the shades piece of the business yeah that's a good question so the shades piece of the business we've built Lux out Shades um as uh where we focus we try to focus on designers and being the go-to uh shades for um interior designers that market is a little hard to go after and it would be significantly easier if we had the proper digital product so what I would like for everything to happen made from the way I want everything to work there's uh someone goes and says hey I want this this this and these fabrics and they go click on the website and they figure out the sizes and the type of shade that they want and they get their quote they can go buy it seamless it just seamless from the end to end what we have right now is very there's a lot of touch there's a lot of human element to it it's very kind of antiquated uh with the way that we do it and we're trying to uh move that forward but if we can do that we should be fine I would I would be that realistically the shades piece of the business can probably out become bigger than the stage curtain piece of the business which is the bread and butter of the base business right now does that answer your question and so that that's interior designers who do custom shades in kind of fancy houses yep yeah you think about it like in some of these places people can spend a hundred thousand dollars on their Shades alone in their house yeah and that's that's nothing to thumb your nose at if you can get a bunch of those all at one time so yeah yeah yeah great now tell us about the acquisition that you did yeah so the the blinds one and then we'll go to the machine the Machinery one okay sure so the acquisition was that was actually a pretty cool story so I was doing what I knew best which is talk about things to random people when I was talking with the gentleman and he uh he wanted to do uh was was interested in doing the search and then he ended up doing one and hit one of his interns found blinds and more um it was a little bit too small for for them uh but he said hey Bruce I came across this you may want to check it out he sent it my way I didn't think it was going to be uh something that I would end up buying uh because obviously at that time I was also trying to get something larger also but uh but it worked out and ended up being great and we had a great transition and I got it at a solid multiple and I'm um if I'm fortunate I can I want to try to buy some more um that are in this space uh the same space these drapery stores because they they they're they're nice little businesses and I think they're kind of poised for someone to come in and consolidate and hopefully that's someone's meat well I I want to um dive into that thesis a little bit but first tell us more about uh about the business blinds and more first of all is that a franchise it's a franchisee location good good question he's not a franchise um so the the strange thing about the the window treatments industry is there are a lot of these like sort of mom and pop um window treatment stores that are for sale and they're owned by people who are getting rid of retirement age and so they it actually some of them are they have to retire um but a lot of them are dealers of these companies call like like Hunter Douglas or Norman or Graber a lot of these window treatment stores and some of them are they only sell one of those products or some of them like blinds and more sell all of those different products uh but it's not exactly a franchise but but the model is it's kind of franchise-esque if you will in that of the these the manufacturer like 100 Douglas would try to come to you and say hey look okay put up fifty two hundred thousand dollars and start your own store um and you can make x amount of dollars and this is what we and you can put it in these locations and this this this this this this this so that's so like a DJ it can be kind of a dealer model exactly yeah it's a dealer model and what I like and really like about it is you know from working capitals perspective it's fantastic I mean you get half of your money up front you carry no inventory hey that's great yeah so yeah and so how big was it you had mentioned that this business you thought it would probably be too small for you but then you ended up liking it give us some numbers around this blinds and more business sure Revenue roughly around a little bit more than a million that puts you that puts you there and then in terms of ebitda depending on how you would calculate ebitdatza well we'll say more than more than 100 less than four yeah okay okay and um and so is are these and it's all retail right so you're selling to Consumers yes uh mainly I mean there's a few contract customers but it's mainly to Consumers yeah okay and does given that it's as you said window treatments is this is there any overlap or Synergy with your with Lux out with the existing business yes if I can get everybody to play to play nice in the sandbox together um so for example what we one of the things that we immediately started to do was uh work promoters right like so custom drapery uh was being done was being sold out of blinds and more uh and and this the source was another company uh what we've done now is this I've given Lux out the first dibs uh for that and then I my gut says once I kind of get our Shades to the our Shades website to the level of the user experience that I wanted to to be at I think we'll be in a much better place to um to try to get these uh folks who are pretty much likewise and more to to do exactly what we want them to do which is shop with us for our Shades I think we have a very competitive uh product there so we're getting there it's just slower than one had hoped and that one um and did you buy blinds and more as an individual or did you did Lux out buy blinds and more good question I had uh Lux out purchase all the shares of the company oh okay I did and why did you why did you do it that way out of curiosity yeah good question um well I tend to like stock uh sales better than asset sales that's just me um and I think you can also get a better multiple and have a better outcome you also it's also easier to get the working capital if you do a stock sale uh if you do an asset sale and you start parsing things out in all these different ways you just kind of you to me I see a risk there of running out of cash and my obviously my biggest concern whenever I'm buying a business is in that first 90 days I cannot run out of cash that just cannot be a scenario so that's the reason I did that so those two businesses were done with stock sales the other one was done with as an asset sale um and on blinds and more so even though there's some overlap and kind of the window the the large umbrella of kind of the window treatments industry it's a retail business which is a very different type of business so do you have and I assume for kind of a smallish business like that the owner seller was somebody who was actually at the store pretty often or not necessarily what is a who who's in that store um day to day and I because I assume there's some key man risk here a little bit I mean I think so and what would sort of absolved that that concern for me was the previous seller who built this business uh from from nothing uh essentially she started it in 2007 uh by the time I bought the business she had been she had already moved out of state for several months so it was it was running on its own uh with with the staff that's here so there's there are two uh front desk uh ladies uh there's one full-time sales person and then we have part-time installer and then some third-party installers also so it's a pretty lean operation and then so tell us a little bit more about what you this opportunity that you see in all of these retail blinds businesses that are pretty small but lots of retiring owners lots of them nicely profitable maybe not that individually not that very interesting as by businesses by themselves but aggregating a few of them together gets gets pretty interesting pretty quickly so what what was your discovery there yeah I mean My Discovery is that this is a great way to expand and probably and uh a fairly seamless path to do so um so for my the the one of the major differences in between uh Lux out and blinds and more with the way that we do with the way that they do business and the way that they install is that blinds and more would only install mainly in a smaller geographical area let's say the south side of um of Hampton Roads uh whereas Lux out will go much further Lux out we will go uh pass Baltimore all the way into South Carolina uh if we have to for and that's just the Mid-Atlantic that's not encounting the other states that we're we're in like Florida and Texas uh so they the geographic footprint is much larger so my thought oh my this is just my thesis is if I can get stores that are in some of these places that are further out and reach a little bit I can cut down on the Travel um and and uh and use the installer bases that are in uh in these locations and hopefully have something um something good to show for it at the end of it so that's that's my my big hairy dream if I can get my wife on board uh is to have uh several of these we'll say I would love to have about 15 20 of them and if we could do that both both ends of the business would be kind of hitting on also and there's and so so I understand so your curtains and shades when you sell them the installation of them I imagine yeah installing like a theater curtain is fairly complex and Technical so you need specialized talent to do that and currently you have to send your own people expensively out to the customer destination to do that and versus if you had an on the ground team in the form of a blind store you could train those people up on installing recordings and and shades too I guess yeah because the the thing is when you're installing they're installing stage curtains is they're really just big draperies so and they're much more forgiving than than other windows like than traditional window treatments like Shades and uh and smaller curtains and all of that there because they're so much bigger they have to be more forgiving um but it is it does require a certain level of training and understanding and familiarity with them in order to know how to how to uh install them and bring them move them forward the other part of that is the other part of that Geographic constraint is the measuring of the curtains um to select some of our competitors if they would get an let's say they got a a call from someone in Idaho right and such a nice product they said hey this this school in Idaho or this theater in Idaho says hey look we need new curtains we have this we've had this theater for a long time this curtains are 20 years old your tattered and they have lead weights in them and we don't want light around people we need we need new ones uh that that place may call someone else and they may try to walk them through over the phone how to do the measurement uh we would I'm trying to get us to the place where if where we would enforce with a trip charge uh but we will be willing to go out to wherever the customer wants us to go and measure the stage for them um and just have the suit the nuts experience for it that's that's really where I want to bring the culture with my of of my team to and the availability of the of the reach of the business and so if you had a blind store in Boise uh then then you wouldn't even have to fly people out they'd be right they'd be in state already exactly I mean they say from an operational perspective it's Tim wood and that first one is in Tim wood is and this is from business school it's travel uh so if you can cut down travel you can cut down a lot of waste yeah do you think that the your your concept for buying up retiring owners or blinds businesses is interesting for people who don't already own uh a stage curtain and shades business and I mean because you're you're you're envisioning a um you know a Synergy that you can take advantage of which is like his real strategic Synergy for you um are these blind stores interesting in their own right I think so um it depends on so it depends on who you talk to right like so a lot of the folks that probably listen to you will want to go after larger targets for the most part um and that's kind of the bias of people in the search community in general I think there's a lot of value this is just me I think there's a lot of value in going for these places that have um uh mid to low six figures of ebitda and just getting a whole bunch of them um even if you don't have it even if you weren't in the position like I am to have a stage curtain company I just think there's a lot of value in that um because if you can do that and having have that in an industry you can then become an effective tart I mean a an attractive Target um for a much larger organization which is kind of what everybody wants anyway so it's you got to think big by thinking small in my opinion well speaking of which are there bigger fish in the stage curtain world that would acquire you or is it too small an industry to have some really big companies in it they're definitely bigger fish I don't know if they would be in a position to acquire us the the stage curtain industry is kind of all over the place I I've seen uh basically I'll say this I've seen companies that are much larger than us and then have the exact same profitability that we do um which is wild to me but I've seen I've seen that so I don't know if there's anybody who has like a really good I don't know I I don't have a really good answer to that what I do know is I I I'm I I think I'll put it this way I think I should uh if someone wants to sell to me in the industry uh we should have that conversation but if someone else wanted to buy um I there may be some room out there to have those conversations I just don't know if they were really under I don't know if they really understand this the secret sauce of what makes uh Lux out Lex out great yeah and I don't mean to talk your head off about it but it's just I just know the way we the way that we execute for all the challenges in the feast or famine in the business the way that we execute is just way better than everybody else that I've ever heard of in my industry and you can see it from the customer reviews we just do a really good job and is that to your credit or is it that to the previous owner's credit or both uh I wouldn't say it's so much mine well some of it is the only part I would say is mine is that I get reviews I mean I I hammered my team to say hey look get reviews from your customers get reviews for your customers doesn't matter what we say about ourselves it only matters what the customer says about us uh but I think more than anything it's just the folks that we have on the ground there my hat is really off to the team uh at Lux out um sales plant manager is really great um that the folks who work in the workroom cut so and Surge and pack the curtains all of it uh the the way we do the coordination in the back office coordination all of these different parts do an excellent job um overall and I think we do significantly better than anybody else Bruce we're wrapping up here but I wanted to ask a couple more questions you just touched on the feast or famine nature of the business so this this is obviously um particularly on the stage curtain side well what in terms of Revenue what is the split between stage curtains and shades uh about 80 20. okay so it's mostly stage curtain uh-huh okay maybe 75 25 but yeah around there okay so stage curtains have a life span of 20 years more maybe um so so anyway no recurring revenue and uh and certainly in covid when and it's all dependent on people the stage curtains exist in communal spaces where in theaters where people are going to watch something stages um so that was obviously extremely vulnerable during covet um but in reflecting back on the business that you bought in the in the Feast for famine nature of it versus what of course everybody would kind of ideally want recurring do you is it fine is it like you know this is just I just Factor this into my my model my financial model that there's going to be thin months and then there's going to be awesome months or is it is it a nagging constant concern because I I often just kind of feel about this argument for recurring revenue of course we all understand why it's appealing but at the same time as long as it always feels to me like as long as you model in that you're going to have swings then you you should be fine as long as you're planning for that um so maybe disabuse me of that or is in fact that how you feel I think it is I think it's overall fine it doesn't feel fine when you're going through the the famine Parts um but but it but overall it's fine the the reason that it's feast or famine in my business is just because well one is because of the long sales cycle two that's because of uh because it can take so long like because that sales actually really that's just really the reason it's really the long sales cycle if if you order something today it may not be we would place the order for the materials today and then what's the today where we're talking in in March that thing wouldn't get installed until maybe June or July and everybody in their cousin wants everything installed before school starts so that's that's really the kind of the nature of it so it's it the same thing that saved me during the pandemic is the same thing that gives me worry during the times of famine but overall it's it's worked out really well and I think you just like you said you just factor in um the math the other thing is if you if you acquire something with recurring Revenue you're probably going to pay a more aggressive multiple because everybody and their cousin wants that uh so if if you can get something at a lower multiple uh that does not have that uh but that's and then there's still some part of what we do that is a little bit recurring like for example some school districts would come to us and say hey look we know we're going to do X number of schools per year and we want you to check them out we put it in the budget uh we want you to check them out in order for us and those are like really great customers we if I could have those customers everywhere that'd be wonderful so it's a it's a mixed bag but overall it's okay I hope yeah I think the point that you've now made a couple times about your long sales cycle is actually a really um a really valuable point to harp on a little bit because so many Searchers the kind of the underlying thesis not some industry thesis but the underlying thesis of almost like search itself is that there's a lot of improvements to be made um in a business that you buy because the seller founder whatever hasn't been proactive about their business or isn't Tech forward or whatever it might be and so you know Searchers get in there and they're eager to improve the business and of course delivery of the product or service is is what the business does and so if if you have this long sales cycle you get so many less at bats per month per per year to iterate and and figure out where the low hanging fruit is figure out where those efficiencies can be can can be found that that's a really interesting point and so so maybe one a criteria that people listening should consider is in addition to recurring or not recurring is how long that sales cycle is because if you've got a six month sale cycle versus you know a plumbing business where you're you know you're you've got multiple jobs per day you've just got so much more input that you can work with to figure out how to how to refine and improve the business versus a long manufacturing and sales cycle it's really not interesting and I would add to that to the point that also have made the tangential point that I made earlier if you can have a long sales cycle and you can collect some portion of your Capital up front then from a working capital perspective you're in a much better place because it gives you a certain level of of safety because say for example someone Orchard orders forty thousand dollars worth of stage curtains from us and they're a new customer we never heard from them before and my sales person tossed them into putting half down all right so we get twenty thousand dollars I don't have to pay on whatever pieces were ordered for that job for like another I don't the stuff may come three months later and then I don't have to pay until 30 days after it comes so that's like four months so for so I got basically a no interest loan for twenty thousand dollars for four months um in that and because of the long sales cycle and end of that of the uh of that so that's that's one of the other things the things that kind of can be attractive if you don't have recurring Revenue uh with the business yeah great great point Bruce wrap us up with your second kind of quote-unquote acquisition I mean it is an acquisition but not of a business of a of a what yeah of a machine so we purchased a ribbon weight machine uh it is the only one machine yeah so at the bottom of stage curtains you have to have what stage cards generally will have weights they would either be chain weights like iron or steel chain or lead weights you don't they used to use lead and a lot of if you go into um hotel rooms and you check the bottom weights in your hotel room if you can bend it it's lead uh and you don't want that that's you don't want that near anybody honestly but you especially don't want that in your kids uh but our alternative is to have this fabric that's folded in half that has little steel weights in there and and the the fabric is is kind of fused uh once it's folded in half and those ribbon weights uh we sell them we use them ourselves but we also sell them to other um stage curtain companies um around the company around the country and we're the only one of our kind with it and I the machine I don't mind telling you what I've purchased for the machine for but see because I mean it was kind of industry wide knowledge what it what uh what the guy was was selling it for uh but I talked them down on the price I got the machine for uh less than 300. um and it cost me a couple tens of thousands to move it uh what that that thing is replacing that is would be somewhere around uh definitely somewhere north of one and a half million if I had to replace it so I gotta I like to think I got a pretty good deal um and also I've kind of built a a little bit of an economic mode around my business yeah yeah that's interesting that's such a kind of um manufacturing business phenomenon where you know a large piece of Machinery can be this big strategic um move it's it's not something that I'm super well versed in um but it was a million and a half dollar machine new you got it for 300. it was in Atlanta as I recall and you had to move it up to Richmond um which was costly and complicated uh and and were were you a customer of this uh the business who owned the machine in it before yes yes I was and um real nice guy built it with his son but uh uh some years back and then he ended up uh he and his wife ended up moving out of the country and really retiring and this was the last Peg before they uh they retired so I purchased three businesses from from three retirees now yeah the the silver tsunami is real people yeah um the um and so are you now selling to some of your competitors because they need they need this the the ribbon what did you call it the ribbon weight yeah what was it called yeah it's called a ribbon weight you got it the ribbon weight oh okay yep okay yeah we still be sell to competitors and the the window treatment industry in general is like it's kind of it's it's interesting it's not like as Cutthroat as other Industries like people will help competitors will help one another out and buy supplies from each other um for example when we buy when we sell our track one of our main competitors is Rose brand out of New Jersey we tend to get our tracks from a company they own called ADC out of Pennsylvania um so it's it's not uncommon in this industry to have stuff like that happen it I it was weird to me when I first got in the industry but it's less weird now well it bodes well for if in fact you you know you you joked that there's not a big fish out there to buy you maybe you should be buying you know you you would be the buyer in this industry if you develop good relationships with your competition Maybe right matter of fact why don't I ask you because in our first conversation you did mention like it's a small enough business industry that there's like you in Virginia and then there's like not somebody else until Pennsylvania maybe that's who you just were referring to and then again south of you not somebody until the Carolinas or like South Carolina um and do you think there's an opportunity for yourself ever to buy one of those businesses or does it not strategically make sense or what I would absolutely buy one of them if I could get them at a solid uh under solid terms acceptable terms to me I would absolutely buy one um yeah I think they the hard hard part part of that is that it's just that when people sell their businesses initially they they think they're valued too much they think you can get eight nine times Eva da for business it's not growing that's that's that's that's the first thing and then you kind of come down to earth over time uh but if if anybody's listening in the industry or any Brokers that know anybody that's uh that's selling in the industry uh please feel free to reach out to me because I'm absolutely interested yeah as long as it doesn't happen for until maybe next year because um yeah Bruce has another uh new business on the way with his wife uh and so she is pumping the brakes on you you making more business moves uh until that baby comes congratulations yeah thank thank you man that's that's the other thing a lot of people don't think about is having your significant other and family on board with you in this search journey and even and if you're gonna do it continue to do future Acquisitions like it's it doesn't end with the one I think my wife kind of had the expectation that okay well you've done one okay now you've done two okay well now you've done three can you slow down and in my head it's like no I can't slow down because I have to allocate the capital but uh but we're figuring that out cool yeah that's great Bruce anything that uh you would want to tell the audience that I forgot to ask and the only other thing I would I would say is um there's a whole lot of crap going on in the world and there's always going to be something that happens there's always going to be some pandemic or banking crisis or something something big and scary that makes you say oh okay I'm not going to take the plunge and whatnot I I think if somebody wants to go and do this you can make every excuse not to do it you can make every excuse to do it if it's really in you so I would encourage folks to just go after it and um and to just let the chips fall where they may and see what happens because fortune favors the bowl awesome note to end on Bruce fan thank you very much for coming back on Sir oh and for people who might want to reach out what's your preferred method of communication I'll link to it all in the notes sure it's uh just email it's Bevan with two wins at Lux out Lux out.com any anyone wants to reach out I'm more than happy to talk great and also a plug for a couple of threads that you put on have put on search funder one of your early ones or I don't know if it was early but the first one that I saw of yours was why we connected in the first place it was like your five or seven learnings from first week or first month the CEO is awesome yeah it just gave a window into what it's like to transition a business um but I've I've seen subsequent posts that you've made as well so people on search funders should look up brucevan two ends Bruce until next time thank you sir all right thank you will 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