and rustic thank you for joining me today on acquiring minds really looking forward to this well it's great to be here well i'm a huge fan of your podcast it's been a great learning resource for me thank you i appreciate that and you are the new owner of agency employment services which provides hr services staffing compliance peo but we'll get into more of what aes does later but you bought this business at 60 years young after a decades-long career as a managing partner of an illustrious canadian law firm that you helped build so i want to start with the obvious question which i'm sure you got from all your friends and family and colleagues why and are you buying a business or did you buy a business instead of anything else like riding off into the sunset of an early retirement that you uh really seem to have earned uh well it is a great question will and one that as you say everyone has has asked me so um uh so i guess i was um not ready to retire i mean i feel like i i love what i do i work really hard i'm not saying i'll never retire but i do feel like you know i i love the challenge of work and i wanted to keep growing and i wanted to to make a change for for myself so i had as you said um i had been actually at stake manali at my law firm for my entire career right out of law school and you know the last 20 years in this co-managing partner role in the toronto office um but you know i had done a bunch of different things in the firm i started out as a practicing lawyer as a corporate m a lawyer then i moved into my first foray into management was sort of as a in the talent recruitment space because we were really trying to revamp and you know upgrade what we were doing in recruitment to grow the firm and then that kind of naturally led to the co-managing partner role and you know i loved that job i loved what i was doing i would say the part i really loved was the growth journey i feel like i really excel in that stage of of guiding an organization through growth and my you know when i started it is of course i'm biased it is a fantastic leading canadian uh law firm you know when i joined it it was in toronto which is my city it was a relative newcomer to the toronto market and pretty small so um you know when i joined there were 45 lawyers were now like they are now um 250-ish and you know lots of growth but i would say for the past five years or maybe more my management role was not so much about growth i mean the firm is still growing still doing really well but you know i was doing more consolidating what we have you know building on you know existing um uh initiatives but not that really ambitious growth phase that i enjoyed so so i felt you know as i you know when i was in my 50s that i still had a lot of runway left i loved growing something i didn't have the idea of what that was going to be but i started to think about what would i do for my next phase okay great so um so you wanted to grow something you didn't know exactly what um but so but you you thought business or not necessarily it could have been i mean there's any number of things out there to gross a non-profit be i don't know a school i mean all sorts of things so tell us how that itch to grow something uh you know how how you how you went from there to much more specifically buying a business yeah so so it's a good point and i did think about you know when there's public service like governments exactly for me i felt like okay business i i do know that the the business world in particular i'll talk about this in a minute but the kind of service business i felt a lot of comfort with so i thought okay how i'm really good you know i wanted a nice balance of new learning new growth but also where i feel like i could really have an impact and add a lot of value and so i was thinking something in the in the business world i did start out thinking you know maybe i would start my own business something advisory you know uh consulting where i would start small and and and grow up from scratch so i kind of did a lot of uh thinking around that um when i sort of told my network and in particular my partners at the law firm which i did about a year ahead of when i was planning to to finish up you know lots of people came to me with ideas of kind of other larger organizations where you could do something you know you get calls from headhunters although they do tend to pigeonhole you into what you've already done but um so there was a a range of of of things that i was thinking about but i think what what kind of crystallized my thinking around actually buying a small business i think there were three things the the first is one of uh this sort of early in 2021 one of my um now former partners at the law firm mario nigro is a very well connected very um uh established practice in the in private equity mid market lower mid market he's got the full full spectrum he was doing work with some search funds and after the partners meeting where i announced to my partners kind of what my plan was in the whole succession plan and so on he called me right after that and he had lots of ideas for me but he said like ann you should buy your own business you would be great at it here's kind of you know what you should do and i i i kind of pooh-poohed it up first not to him but in my own mind because i felt like um you know it's risky i mean could i afford it and would i be putting all my retirement savings at risk all of that i just felt like you know that would be something that a really gutsy person without you not a former lawyer not a not a risk-averse former lawyer yeah um did you did you know the model of uh that you know 10 or 20 down and then paying for the the the loan that you used to acquire the business out of the profits of the business were you yet familiar with that well not not in this context i mean i was from being up you know in my old life and in the law firm eating lots of that that's you know the private equity or for you know acquisition model but i didn't really apply it to my own um to to my own situation um but i did you know it was in the back of my mind and so then the second thing that happened was that amazon recommended walter dibel's book to me out of the blue and i it said you might enjoy and i uh i listened to it actually because i i i like and then i thought it was so great that i that i bought it and again like my conversation with mario it kind of demystified it i felt like yeah well i could do this maybe so sorry mario did we had a couple of conversations because he kept coming back to me saying and have you thought about this idea and he sent me some you know different opportunities and he but you know the the big thing he did he was sending you leads and did you did you realize how precious those were i know i feel you know what i feel so lucky because listening to you listening to other people in your podcast talk and i kind of think that search part is is really hard and i had some i think maybe one thing though possibly about being an older person and having a a big professional network that you've worked with over the years is that there might be more of those kinds of leads that that i might get than i would have if i had been a 35 year old saying oh i think this is something that that i could could do i mean i do think i had to establish my bona fides in a different way that you alluded to earlier like no i'm not i am serious about doing this and i want to work hard on it i'm not just looking for a little you know sideline project um so i did have to but i i feel like i i did have through my long years at the at the law firm and in the business community here in toronto have some different connections that they so people people your your competence spoke for itself or preceded you but people were a little bit suspicious of your actual motivation do you can somebody of your of your station really want to do this we had to convince them right yeah right okay so mario well i just have to point out um we all have the anecdote where we were having a conversation with somebody and then the internet starts advertising that thing to us so and usually it's just totally creepy and not life-changing but in your case i guess it still was creepy but it was it was positive and life-changing that you know low after this conversation with mario walker's book pops right up unbelievable alexa alexa's listening to us all it may be or it might have been but i mean i think i i do think i was looking for i did my because i'm a big reader that's how i learn a lot and i i think i might have looked at some books on business valuation and you know that kind of thing so then and you know i had earlier like when i was thinking about starting my i read the lean startup and i ordered that on amazon so maybe they were putting all those things together and saying she would like buy then build but i just it wasn't that was a bit of an epiphany like i felt like this is this is doable epiphany light bulb moment um whatever whatever cliche uh is just used here time and time again because we all seem to go through it no one realizes how it's possible and then they either read buy them build or hear about it some other way and it's like wow this is this is possible um i mean when i got so excited when my light bulb happened white light bulb moment happened and i started a whole podcast around it so i get it go ahead it's good well so the third thing and probably the the key the most important thing and the biggest stroke of luck that you'll say okay that was really really lucky is that i met jeremy you who is my now my search partner and co-investor in um in in aes and and jeremy so again connected to mario jeremy is so sorry before all of all of this i did not i mean i hadn't read the stanford model i didn't i wasn't all the stuff that you guys talk on your podcast like i was not thinking of myself as a searcher i mean a broader searcher after new opportunities but i didn't think of myself as this thing and um and but jeremy is in the bull's-eye of that you know search model and he was uh he has a search fund he was out of vancouver succession capital and he had been a self-funded searcher for for i think a couple of years and had really developed a great network done all the search all the really hard parts he was well down the road to acquiring a different company which he has now um acquired and he's running he has his lawyer was my partner uh marriage mario yes and with this opportunity to to you know put in an loi for for aes came to jeremy's attention through his professional search network and he was like oh i'd love to do this be talking to mario but you know i've got my hands full and mario was like well you know you should you should meet my partner anne and so i think jeremy was a little bit of what you said lakewood does she really want to do this but we met and matt virtually has everything happens uh now and we really hit it off like we hit it off personally he's a great guy but also um professionally like i feel like we have really complementary skill sets and we kind of thought about how we would share this process from here with him kind of having done all the heavy lifting in terms of the search and the kind of the traditional search stuff and me kind of taking the lead on the kind of due diligence the acquisition piece and then operating operating the business but again for me so lucky because jeremy was like a few months ahead of me in the process with this other business and plus he was very well versed in all this stuff so i was you know i he i was like you know well what does your like tell me about your how do you what's your financial model look like or how do you do like that your commercial due diligence memo what like what's in it and you know he he he shared that with me so that and he you know gave me lots of feedback like no that is not like we don't ever talk about like that's not a search fun thing but here this you know you want to talk more about this and um so that was super helpful for me so so let me let me understand so jeremy was doing a self-funded search he had investors um and he'd been at it for a couple of years he was he was pretty experienced he had been earning his stripes but still hadn't yet bought a business um but he was down the road on now buying a business when aes came across his desk he really liked it but he was already down the road on this other business so he through mario gives it to you and so it's just so so he proceeds with buying that other business but he also gets involved in your acquisition and deal as it sounds like he's kind of advising you but also i assume he takes an equity piece so now he's also an equity owner um but you also have equity you're also an equity owner yeah so your co-equity owners and i assume there's also third-party investors maybe jeremy's own investors who are also in the aes acquisition deal is that all right yes okay interesting yeah it's interesting that a guy doing a jeremy doing a search would buy his own business but also then become basically an investor an advisor in another searcher before he's even done his first deal so now you know he's a searcher and successful acquirer and an advisor and investor in in your deal well maybe it probably seems maybe seems different to you to me i feel like that's like on a smaller scale maybe that's kind of like the private equity model like you have a fund and you have investors and you buy one business and you keep your eyes open for other businesses and you kind of develop a portfolio of of companies and kind of when i thought you know i just because i know that model you know i always when i kind of learned about the search model i felt like okay that is that same model except it's smaller and you're only buying one business i feel like jeremy is you know his his model was was to to to buy more than one more than one business opportunistically but but it's not it does seem kind of like a it may be his own growth strategy and talk to me a little bit about you if you whatever you can share about like your financial picture or financially what you envisioned like um of your own money or investors and size of business and all that stuff because i assume somebody who's been a successful managing partner at a law firm probably has a little bit more in her savings account than than than people who are you know just fresh out of an mba program or doing even doing this mid-career so just um yeah paint a picture for me so i was um so again well come back to kind of my my first discussion or second discussion with with with mario uh in terms of businesses he you know my thought was a business of one to two million one to three million maybe in ebitda would be kind of the target range and kind of how we you know how he kind of talked me through how that how something like that would work so like these are just broad brush numbers these aren't our real numbers but just to give you a a flavor so like if you said one million in ebitda mario's like so say your your your multiple is like three to five so let's call that four so your purchase price is four million um in canada you know we don't have the sba loans but you know he was saying like you get a bank loan given you know all the right um pieces in place you could get a bank loan for kind of two to three times ebitda so say you get 2.5 from the bank that leaves you with 1.5 million if your purchase price was 4 million that you need to raise otherwise from you might get a vendor take back for half up to half of that so say that's 500 so you're raising a vendor take back meaning a seller note seller financing a seller note yes yes yes and so kind of a million if my mouth my mental math is is right like a million in in equity that you know this is mario talking to me that you would put in or you know you would like to ten people in your world who know you and know what you can do about giving a hundred thousand like that would be that would be a way that you could could do it and i felt like and you know or all or any portion of that you know you friends and family or whatever yourself or however you want to do it so so um so that's how i felt like that that again that seemed doable to me like and i hadn't thought before i was like would i even be able to get a bank loan or you know how how does you know where does who are the you know where do you find investors but then when i started bringing it into my own backyard i thought i could okay that that that makes sense so that was kind of the ballpark that i was thinking of in terms of numbers and you know jeremy's uh when i guess when he and mario were talking about the aes opportunity mario kind of thought well that's in that ballpark that anne and i were talking about too so um so that's so that was my analysis yeah and so the uh that's another um raising money from friends and family or colleagues or professional network is another um advantage that somebody who's more established like you has over you know a 25 or 35 or 40 year old who um who don't have as much credibility and as wide a professional network did you anticipate that you would that call it million bucks in equity um did you anticipate that you would raise all of that or a piece of that or or or i mean did you work with investors i mean we know that you did but did you plan on doing so so well so my my again i'm going to say before jeremy and post before jeremy i was like i had my you know and i i did have a plan for reaching out to my network and some of them had reached out to me or when i was talking about doing this they were like well let me know because you know i'm i'm interested um but it but here here's something that i think is uh uh would be of interest to your to your listeners that really i didn't need to do that because jeremy had and he is a young girl person than me not that that's hard but you know kind of an early career person he has you know he has a great network within the the search and small business community and he had through his search built up a lot of credibility with different investors and so he raised most of it actually like i didn't real i did have a couple of um uh of of of my connections but i did that i did not have to do the the heavy lifting uh there but i re i mentioned it only because it before i met jeremy it did give me confidence that i would be able to to do that just kind of thinking through my own professional um network of of people just that i had worked with over the years yeah great and for let's just um revisit really quickly the bank loan piece because we are so spoiled um in in the us with the sba so what does it roughly look like in in canada you said so like if it's a forex business 2.5 x might come from uh might come you might be able to get a bank loan for that so what is 2.5 over 4 that's what 60 um so so you is that the thinking that you get 60 percent roughly you know they have did there's they have different thresholds of course and um uh but i i feel like i was looking at it you know thinking about it from two perspectives one is you know debt to ebitda ratio um so that was kind of that that's you know could three would be good it's you know maybe under the bed under three is again it depends on their as you know their credit analysis of of of the business and and and so on um uh what they would give you there so that was kind of the the the statistic that we were kind of that i had in my mind there and and are banks familiar with this the search kind of the search phenomenon in canada or is there like a go-to bank or two that that where they they do all the searcher business sort of thing i think um it look i think more the latter than that than the former um like anything it's it's probably maybe even less the bank than the like everything than the human being at the bank and again i keep saying this here's where i was very lucky with both mario and jeremy that they had like they knew who they were able to refer me to the human being at the these two banks and same thing with my quality of earnings report i was like who would do this for me um they had like here are some people that we've that kind of know this space they know that and that part was really really good okay hey yes so tell us about um aes tell us what you can about the size um both in terms of you know employees but also whatever financials you can share um so start there and then um tell us what you liked about and jeremy i mean it jeremy liked it too what you both saw in this business so it's just in terms of size just to give you a flavor so with 15 employees um and three 50 and one five um and uh three offices in uh you know sort of smaller um city centers uh just west of toronto so so commuting i'm in toronto two of the three are commuting distance uh for me i'm not i used to ride my bike to work and now i'm doing lots of highway driving so buddy that is giving me lots of opportunity to listen to your podcast right more traffic it's the perfect length um uh so uh and and so we we you mentioned this at the outset but we're sort of in hr um services peo services staffing outsourcing uh business so our clients are it's a it's a it's a real mix but our clients are um some are sort of small and mid-sized businesses local businesses in the toronto area or west of of of toronto that you know don't have uh uh the resources to have a full-time hr person or the employment expertise and so on so um for many of these clients they kind of outsource the employment relationship to us so we are the employer of record we do the payroll the government remittances the stuff that all sounds very boring to people who who aren't lawyers you know benefit provide benefits and benefits administration so the kind of the the very baseline um hr you know uh services that a small business might not uh have or be able to have someone full-time to do as part of that for many of these clients we also do temporary staffing so and it's really interesting the temporary staffing market is um as i'm learning uh there's kind of general labor and kind of you know ontario is that is you know there's lots of manufacturing and auto food processing that kind of thing in in in this region there's also a whole sort of it knowledge worker workforce a rep both around toronto and the university of waterloo which is where blackberry started and it's a you know it's a great um so the kitchener-waterloo area and google's there like there's a bunch of um knowledge workers there and so we have clients that use temporary staffing for general labor but also who are working with you know what i think of as gig economy workers i t service provider who are working you know as con as as contractors or um uh so so that is a that's kind of a uh supplement supplement to the broader uh service offering but something that is that that that we that we do a lot of and and as as i recall from our pre-call actually the business started in staffing and temp temp staffing and the the hr services um and peo services have actually been a later addition to that and that's where you see a lot of the growth and where kind of i think where you'll really focus and position the business but that's actually a newer piece of the business is that that right yeah i mean i i think it it kind of this the company started doing temporary staffing and then as part of that you that you would employ the company would employ the temporary staff and so then that seemed like a natural addition i i would say the other client segment that um i i feel like there's lots of opportunity for growth in is um not local businesses but um cross-border particularly u.s businesses that have a presence in canada but not a maybe canadian legal entity or not like enough of a presence that they have you know a full-time hr step but they need to manage their canadian workforce and so some of our clients have found us through that have come in through that door that you know they need some some help with their contracting or payrolling or whatever um uh so not small businesses large established businesses where we're working with the you know is it the hr person or the cfo kind of off offshore to make sure that things are set up um properly in canada and and you say i mean you're obviously learning um the industry um there's you're involved in that now um when you were evaluating the opportunity of aes did you how how deeply did you research the industry so that you know there's a spectrum often people who come into search who acquisition entrepreneurs who come from private equity backgrounds for example you know they're they're so well um they're so experienced in doing real hardcore industry research growth prospects i mean that's that's obvious but much more nuanced than that um and then there and then probably more people who are not as sophisticated as that i certainly put myself in that bucket who want to know you know yeah it feels like you know the world is becoming more mobile therefore you know x so very loose kind of sense of of of where and why an industry might be growing or not where do you fall on that spectrum and yeah how much analysis analysis did you do of what you thought the kind of macro prospects were for this industry that aes plays in so that's a great question so and i would say i'm both of those people so i i think my lawyerly side is you need to do a lot of research and you need to have a really really good memo written materials analysis numbers but not just numbers to to to give you confidence to to to move ahead um but i would say i'm you know more i that was to test my hypothesis that this would be a good business and i if i think about you know how i actually lean it was um uh you know i'm probably more like this seems you know i have a good i'm sorry this sounds bad i have a good feeling about this business like it's it there's lots of lots of opera just based on what i see and my own judgment and kind of what i've experienced in my you know world of dealing with people and hiring and legal employment issues like i think there are lots of opportunities so i probably came to it kind of thinking i'm interested in this business for this reason and then i'm gonna do the due diligence and the analysis and produce a big huge long memo with all kinds of detail in it to make myself comfortable as well as my investors comfortable that i'm not just doing this on a on a whim um well but the kind of that when you but but but when you say like people coming from private equity and that i don't come from there so i have no idea if what i did was you know i had i do have a friend who who was you know read some of my 70 was like this is very good like how did my husband how did you learn to do it did you do all these charts i was like yes i did them myself so that uh so so i did have a little bit of a that that that but i mean i would not say uh in any store by any stretch was i you know would i hold myself out as somebody who would have done the analysis well you you shared with me that where you saw potential for growth in this business on our pre-call and i don't know if this comes from your deep sophisticated analysis side or your or your gut side or both so elaborate on those if you would so so um kind of number one was kind of the sort of baseline human being business that people are in every business every business needs particularly now needs um uh help and uh focus on attracting talent retaining talent i just that never goes away and and so for to me that piece is is is only growing so that was number one number two is the peo service offering that's not well known in canada as it is in the u.s in the u.s there are lots of peo uh service providers and it's an industry and people um are familiar with it in canada certainly those services get outsourced to different pockets of of service providers but there's less i won't say there's not but there's less of the kind of peo as a as a as an industry so kind of we really felt like there's an opportunity to to um uh to to to grow there looking at the u.s experience which we in canada so often do oh they did that we should be able to to to to copy um um to copy them them and then the third piece for me was kind of thinking about you know i talked about the fact that the hr services that we offer are quite you know baseline employer compliance legally focused but i do have lots of experience and and um uh insights i would say into kind of maybe moving up the food chain in terms of other hr service offerings that are that are that are um that an hr person would need or a company that doesn't have an hr person but needs to deal with a difficult employee issue would need and i feel like we're really well positioned we are providing some of those services already but kind of just as kind of as an adjunct to kind of the other services that we're doing and i think that we could potentially market ourselves with more premium level hr uh services so those are three again i'm learning and it's kind of we're testing all the hypotheses and i've been meeting with clients and the team and kind of you know getting it it's still early days so getting a sense but those are the those were probably the three topics that um uh where we kind of thought that that there are some really good growth opportunities well uh durability you know is the first box you need to check and so you have that with people business so that's um great and then if you can layer growth potential on top of durability you got nothing but upside we hope yeah let's hope let's hope that's right you you uh you met the folks at aes um and that was a big part of you getting comfortable with the acquisition talk to us about that so yeah that's a great point will because i you know during the time when when my colleague mario was sending me sims for different companies i just felt like i was in this chicken and egg thing because i would read that sim and it was always very persuasive and you know i was help super helpful because you know i looked at numbers and kind of okay these are the kinds of things that people are looking at and um but i felt like okay but it's gonna so much depend on what i this team that's described in this would i feel like i could work with this team and would they like to work with me and i feel like that is just impossible to determine from the page but yet you can't beat them before you you know do the reach out of the letter of intent and and whatever but i so so so i met jeremy obviously met the sellers during the letter of intent uh process i met them shortly after that and i would say they were i got you know again got a great feeling from them they were you know very practical business people they were open about that that all the topics that you would want them to be open about they were very you know one of the things that that that really appealed to me was they were one i think one of the reasons they chose uh our offer was they felt like we would they wanted to keep the team intact and not have you know what they felt like we would we wanted to grow and we would do that so i i felt like that had a good um augured well for the for the culture and the team environment and then early on in our due diligence process we did a site visit and there are four um managers uh so there were two owners and then four managers one thing i think the owners did an excellent job on that gathered doesn't always happen is that they had brought the the um the managers into the loop on not the rest of the team but the managers that they were um uh planning to to do this and so we met all four of them and they took us it was that was super useful like each of them separate meanings took us through kind of what they do and that gave me you know i felt like okay i'm in my in my comfort zone here talking about all these processes and how this works and so on so i felt like these are are good people and it also gave them the chance to ask us like you know but we said like so we've been talking to you like kind of why do you have questions for us and of course they all were like well what's your plan for the business and our you know i think when we were able to say we want to grow and we really want to build and we're interested in your ideas i i felt like that that gave me they made their eyes seem to sparkle i mean you never know if they're just being polite but they seemed to all of them to find it that a good you know answer and so those are all intangibles will and as i would be the first to say you can always be wrong with your and you can't trust your instincts and gut too much on these things but at the same time that's to me is like so important that you have to have that you need to verify you need to do a bunch of other stuff but but that to me was a really important piece the you had mentioned that one of the things that made your offer competitive you thought was that you were eager to grow the business and and there therefore keep on everybody um if and add to the team presumably over time were you competing with other loi other offers on the business do you think so yes yes yes okay okay um and i i don't think that you gave us the um any financials about the business because you could you share is there anything you could share there well so so i mentioned that kind of my my target was kind of one to two to two in ebitda and so we're in that range like probably say lower end of that range but that would be kind of the the ballpark for us okay that's great that's you know just for for the self-funded searcher for the kind of non-traditional search fund searcher that's that's just just above the sweet spot but in a good way like you know being north of a million just north of a million or wherever that is um you had said something to me going back to your motivation i should have got this in earlier but i want to make sure i do get it in uh when rbg passed away um there was you you looked at her career and said to yourself what well that was kind of my um my we were talking about being an older person in this and and why are you not kind of just moving on to retirement or slowing down and you're in your nice office that you already have but to me i i felt um i had been thinking as i said that i wanted to keep working and you know make an impact um but it was a real catalyst for me when ruth bader ginsburg died and i i remember you know there were all the um profiles of her and i realized that when she went to the u.s supreme court she was i don't know a year a couple years older than i was at that at that time and i'm certainly not comparing anything i'm doing to what she did on the us supreme court but i felt like that is so amazing because everything that we know or everything i know about she had a great career of course before she went to the u.s supreme court but the impact that she has and everything that we know about her and the you know the career um impact that she had is all post 60 and i felt like that is something that i i want i don't want to you know i and i i feel like we should not have this attitude that okay well once you're past 60 you're slowing down and you're winding up like you can do that but you know you don't necessarily need to feel like i'm i'm not relevant anymore and i don't have something to contribute and so so i did take inspiration i mean i admire her so much but i did take inspiration from what she did at my age and felt like well i could do that too yeah not go to the supreme court but do something right right but but but that the the the peak of your career is is still well ahead of you um really right i love that that that observation and that message um we're wrapping up here anne but uh a couple things i wanted to get in in no particular order um we talked a little bit about i mentioned americans we have the sba common uh feature of so many of my guests search um in canada uh you don't um are there any is there anything else that you kind of would want to tell or any tips you could share first the canadians listening anything canada specific um aside from the loan stuff or or not um well i'm not sure this would be an interesting insight to anyone other than a lawyer but our our model is much more share purchase as opposed to asset purchase which is is you know as you know more liability and trickier for the um for the purchaser so that is something that you have to be um uh aware of uh you know of course good i'm sounding loyally different regulatory environment uh in terms of of uh but you know as i think many of your guests have said you just need good advisors good lawyer good um accounting firm to to help you but i i would say there are nuances in the in the in the um uh in how it works but i would say the overall model seems very similar and i think that's one of the reasons that our you invest u.s investors most of our investors are you know we have a couple in canada but most are in the in the us and they seemed very comfortable with the the the structure and the economics and and and models so i think it's quite similar great but lots of opportunity in canada like i do think that that uh it you know there's a lot of businesses in uh in in the canadian market that that we we see lots of interest from you know private equity firms and acquirers not just in the us but you know a lot of our business uh is is cross-border probably far more than than than for you in the u.s so it is a it is a it is a great market for your searches to consider i think well and um kind of the point you made earlier about how peo is really established here and less so in canada and you know there's there's at times a pattern of of some big thing taking off in the us and and then um canadians looking down and seeing it and and bringing it to canada um i wonder if searches is if there's a similar pattern there where where capital s search um isn't quite as known yet in canada so maybe it's it's still maybe it's less competitive maybe it's an even more exciting frontier for um a would-be canadian searcher than an american searcher do you think i think for sure there it's less it's less advanced and there are fewer fewer people doing it in the canadian market than the us market i think that is that is right and you had mentioned the american investors i want to make sure that we um that we mentioned juan who actually introduced us juan juan ruiz at um at hbs um what can you tell folks about his um his investment group so uh juan has um an investment group of i believe it's all harvard uh business students but i think that there are some branches of the similar funds in in different business schools um called uh community so i'll put you need to kind of spell it out to to to to knowing i always feel like i'm pronouncing it it wrong but essentially um uh a group of student investors who want to invest in in search fund so i was jeremy continuing theme jeremy juan was in jeremy's network and and you know when when i met juan and doug his colleague i was i was super excited i felt like this is i i love the idea that students again you know this and that was kind of newer to me that students are so interested in in this area and then they i think you know they were going through our materials with a fine-tooth comb and they had quite you know they they were all over the model and so i feel like it was a really they had lots of questions for me trust me and i felt like that was a good that was a really good learning experience for for for both of us so i think it's just i i we're so excited that they um that they invested in us and i think it's a really good um thing for students to to get involved in if they're interested community ta community ta commute like community but commune like eta uh for the listeners out there we'll and we'll have that in the show notes um but yeah yeah why but the t is capital or or the e it's like there's a different anyway uh and then and then uh jeremy sounds like quite a guy so maybe i'll have to have uh him on to hear about his his acquisition and did he buy was it in vancouver the business that he bought no it was not in vancouver it was he was based in vancouver which um uh and but his business is in manitoba mortgage library in manitoba which is just north of minnesota i believe although do not quote me on my u.s job so it's a bit of a different urban center uh but i think he's you know i think he's really enjoying it so okay well and anything that we didn't touch on that you want to make sure uh folks here or are we well the only thing that we talked a little bit about at the beginning in our pre-call that i wanted to say again is i have i was just so impressed listening to a number of the women that you've had on your on your podcast um one thing i would say my observation and maybe this is different and can't and not that i know it but they're far more men in this space than than women and um you know i i i would not have had the confidence i think to do what everything that we've just talked about when i was in my 30s and and and even 40s particularly when my kids were young and a number of your women have said oh you know when then i had the baby and i alright two babies while i was doing this like i feel like i just loved that i feel like you know those are it's a great opportunity i think that there are lots of the women should should not think okay well this is a man's world and and you know i i wouldn't do it um i feel like if i if they could kind of take the demystifying out of it and feel like okay this is something i could do both women and maybe later career people if they're interested i i don't think you need to feel like it's a young man's game um although i say this a couple of months into it but that that would be that that'd be the only thing i'd add to what we've already oh i'm so i'm so glad you remembered to bring that up i i wanted to ask you about that um such a such a good point uh and just a quick plug we're going to be doing a um uh kind of a panel of women searchers here in the next we haven't recorded it yet but for the listeners interested in that um stay tuned in a month or so it'll air um but and just on that point and did you find i mean after 35 years as a as in in the world of law i'm sure you've bumped up against kind of testosterone-driven business dynamics a lot so you were probably you're probably used to that but is there anything that you want to comment on about the search and and being a woman in it other than you just said like did do you think that um it informed the process at all being or was different for you than for others no okay i i don't think so i i mean i think i i'm i i didn't feel like i wasn't welcome or i didn't that i people weren't taking me seriously like none of them maybe that's another part about being older like i think that um you know in my younger days maybe people were like who is she um uh but i didn't find it sort of male dominated in a bad way that it's all about testosterone and i i just noticed that i was it's been a long time since i've been the only woman on a deal or the only woman in a one of them one of our sellers was a woman and that's that was really great but other than that it was pretty but but nothing i'm not saying that at all in a negative way it's just who seems to gravitate to this field seems in canada anyway to be mostly yeah for sure in here as well for sure and what a pleasure this has been congratulations on aes uh and i just i'm really inspired um by um people who reinvent themselves or take themselves on new adventures when they when they don't have to or when you know they already have so much success so i think you'll you'll inspire um all of us men and women alike how can what's the best way to reach out uh to you if people have questions or if or if canadian listeners want any you know uh some names maybe or some lender names or whatever it might be yeah so i'm i'm on uh linkedin so um my linkedin uh and also um you can reach me on my uh my aes work address which is ann with an e at agency employment dot ca agent agency employee sorry and at agency agencyemployment.ca yes great all will be in the show notes anyhow and thank you so much this is this is great really thank you will it was a great conversation i i love being on your podcast thank you