From 200 Employees to Questioning Your Purpose - The Post-Exit Reality

[00:00:00] Speaker A: You know, every day when you have a thing, you have a North Star, you have a purpose, you have. And even if it gets cloudy or you're putting some interim goals in between, you have something generally that you're trying to work towards. And now it feels like there's nothing. But I'm expecting in short order that the mission will be to find the mission and I don't have to get too meta about it, but I don't know what's next. So I guess finding what's next is the thing that's next. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome to the off site podcast. I am your host, Jordan Gahl. This is where I team up with friends to catch up on our work and just as importantly, what's going on beyond the work, always. This podcast is brought to you by Rosie, the AI powered phone answering service for small businesses. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the off site podcast. I have with me today, my brother Asaf. Welcome. [00:00:48] Speaker A: Hello. Hello. Thanks for having me, man. Excited to be here. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Cool. And I know you said you've listened to the podcast, which is always funny to, like, listen and then be on the show. I always enjoy that whenever I do that with podcasts. So now you're the guest. [00:01:00] Speaker A: Yeah, but a full circle moment. [00:01:02] Speaker B: All right, so we have. We have some things to talk about. First of all, you and I have endless things to talk about because we talk constantly. [00:01:08] Speaker A: We're good at this. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, we are. You are also an entrepreneur like I am, and I wanted to get you on the show to be one of the people that kind of comes back regularly. This is the first time. But we do have an interesting bit of timing, so I want to just give a second to kind of explain the timing and then we can just kind of jump into the conversation. Actually, why don't we. Why don't we do it the other way? Why is this interesting timing, Assaf? [00:01:35] Speaker A: Because it is July 11th, as we record. So about two weeks ago, June 24th, I officially closed the sale of my business. I sold my business after starting it and running it for about 13 years to a private equity firm that was doing a roll up in the franchise space that I was playing in. [00:01:51] Speaker B: So I was going to say 10 years, but 13 years. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Amen. [00:01:54] Speaker B: I want to dig into that. I care less about the deal. I mean, maybe we can get into kind of like, you know, how it felt along the way and maybe any lessons that you learned along the way, all that. But generally a lot of us who are entrepreneurs look at something like an exit or a transition Period. It doesn't happen that often. Especially, you know, 13 years is. That's a. That's a big commitment. And you just finished. It's summertime, you're hanging with your kids. I just. I just want to know how does that feel? [00:02:22] Speaker A: I thought I'd feel more. It hasn't sunk in too much. I'm still trying to process it. But even that's like a funny word. Process. Is that like a checklist? Do you, like, go to a coffee shop and then quote, unquote, process it? So it probably comes in waves, but the first thing I feel is relief. That was pretty immediate. Communicating to the team who we'd re. We built some really strong, deep relationships over time was more emotional than I expected. So that. That was. That cut both ways, right. That felt. It made me happy to know that we did something real and that they felt it too. And it made me sad that that season was ending and they were going to go enter a different space with people we didn't know as well. I think it'll be great for them. It's a bigger, better opportunity, but it was more emotional than I expected. [00:03:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a trip. So let's back out just a touch and describe your business. What was it? And like, where'd you start? And where did it end up going? [00:03:13] Speaker A: I was a Crunch Fitness franchisee. We had six Crunch Fitness locations in Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens, New York. We were about to build number seven in northern Manhattan. So about 13 years ago is when I started the journey of I'm going to be a franchisee, but what does that mean? So I started talking to franchise consultants, started understanding the space, read, you know, 10 to 15 different FDD or franchise disclosure documents, and really tried to get my hands fully around what does that mean? And turns out there's many shades of gray of being a franchisee. After almost a year, picked Crunch Fitness. First one opened up in 2014, slowly built another another. We hit this little snag called Covid in the year, which was a lot of lessons learned and quite an experience in retrospect. And then we had the opportunity after that with a combination of employee retention, tax credit money and a bit of a discounted value. We had the opportunity to acquire three facilities from Crunch Corporate directly, what was called refranchising. So that that gave us a platform. And once we hit that status, we realized, okay, now it's an opportunity to either get growth equity and try and make it a bigger thing that we would sell eventually, or is this ripe right now for the consolidation wave that was currently happening and that was the option that we ultimately chose. [00:04:31] Speaker B: How many employees did you end up with at 200. 200. Yeah. And I remember the obviously being on the journey with you as a phone consultant slash therapist, going from the first location and the New York real estate issues and the build out and financing and then the second location and hiring, you definitely went through a pretty interesting learning curve and also like experience curve. Right. Going from. I remember when you first started talking about feeling guilty that you weren't going to the clubs anymore. And like, that was a transition moment where it's like, oh, I actually, I can't and I feel bad about it and I need to stop feeling bad about it. And that's actually my new role. [00:05:17] Speaker A: Yeah, that. That's very far in the rearview mirror. But yes, that was a. A part of the process. [00:05:21] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of this stuff forced, like, forced growth. [00:05:24] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you were a big part of it. I don't know if you remember, you know, coming to dad's office holding this little eight page PDF printout of the E. Myth Revisited summers. I read this book. It is the way it's going to change our lives. Don't read the book. It's redundant. Here, read this summary. I read it and was like, guys, this is. This is it. This is just so spot on about where quote, unquote, entrepreneurs might find themselves. How could it be that you'd feel bad about not being there? Well, because our human emotional, you know, intuition or our tendencies aren't necessarily crafted for small business ownership or entrepreneurship. So there was a lot to unlearn, a lot to relearn. And then part of it was just you're forced into it. When you have six gyms, you cannot go to all of them all of the time. So that's part of it too. [00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting what you're bringing up. There is some origin kind of points where. So Assaf and I used to work together in the family business. And at some point we realized it wasn't quite going to work in many ways that like E. Myth, like, hey, we need to figure out more systems instead of doing the work ourselves. We were in a weird trap. We had a business that we did the work, but it made a decent amount of money. And we kind of got ourselves like into a trap. Like, if it, if it didn't make enough money, then we almost would have no choice but to go beyond ourselves and hire and so on. And if it made too much money, then we didn't need to but we were kind of right in the middle of like, okay, this is good but like we need more. And that realization and the E myth and that part of it is kind of what led to the breakup of the family business for sure. Yes, yes. [00:07:00] Speaker A: The amicable breakup. [00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, that's right. I went toward the Internet and blank canvas. I always found it interesting, I think it is interesting to ask you about. You didn't go toward the blank canvas. And I remember you, you had like interaction with your, with your in laws around that. And then it took a little bit, you know. Can you, can you talk about that? [00:07:20] Speaker A: Sure. I mean first, this is pre kids. So this was an opportunity where on Sundays you could say I'm going to go to a coffee shop and think. And so I would, I'd read Success magazine, I would, you know, ask myself questions and try and journal. And so I think inside I just started to point at the recognition that I'm more of a color by number kind of guy or you know, from a franchise perspective. Give me an operations manual and you know, get out of my way, support me. But I, I have energy to deploy. I just need to know where to put it. The VC or bootstrap, you know, blank canvas route doesn't really resonate with my DNA. And then simultaneously mentioned to my in laws who had a pretty significant restaurant franchise business. I'm considering this. And then I spoke to a gentleman who gave me some testing and like personality testing and it was almost like blinking, blaring arrows pointing at franchisee. So that kind of corroborated my, my thinking already. And seeing them have success in that it all kind of started swirling around. Okay, this, this feels like a good opportunity to understand more. And they had just finished building on the real estate side a Planet Fitness and came to understand that that was very successful. And so why don't you start looking into this? That was my, my first foray into understanding franchises. Reading an ftd, going to see a space, talking to people and finding that whole world that if you go to the Internet and go to a site that belongs to a franchise group, somewhere out there it says open a franchise. You click on that link, it takes you to their website dedicated to pulling in leads to understand if it's the right opportunity for you. So there's a little world trying to see if you're the right fit. [00:08:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's interesting because the, in the franchise business model there's the franchisor and there's the franchisee, like very, very different it's all part of the same effort, but it's almost like they are geared toward different approach, different personalities, just different in general. The franchisor is using the franchisee model, but has to come up with it themselves in some ways, whereas the franchisee is kind of like, I want the blueprint, I want the proof, I want the track record, and I'm willing to pay for that certainty. [00:09:17] Speaker A: Right. The track record thing is interesting because it's like when someone's applying for a server role, but you have to have been a server before, and you're like, well, where does someone get their first shot? You know, how do I get this track record? How do I get to a thousand stores if everyone wants me to have a thousand stores open to do the next store? It's an interesting world out there, but it's very effective. It's a strong business model, and there's many. There's a very big distribution curve of what kind of opportunities exist in that business model. You know, you could spend a few thousand dollars and get a business card and bang, you're a franchisee. Or you can spend multimillion dollars on a Quiznos and have to get like one of the toasting ovens and stuff and have to have 50 employees to start and everything in between. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Okay, let's talk about the deal for a sec. The experience of it. What was the saying? Used a deal. What was it? How many times does it die? [00:10:03] Speaker A: Oh, I forget the exact number at this point. I blacked out a lot of it. But it definitely feels. What is it? The night is darkest before the sunrise. I'd say, yeah, it's not done until. [00:10:14] Speaker B: It'S done from start to finish. The saying I was thinking of was like, a deal dies three times before it comes to a close kind of a thing from start to finish. How long was it? [00:10:22] Speaker A: 10 months from the point at which I'd seen the first LOI, and then like seven months from signing the LOI that we. Because we had multiple LOIs from different companies where we signed, we agreed and started doing the diligence period in good, full faith. We had some snags along the way that slowed it down a little bit and some other crossroads that they had to get through to determine which other deals went first. But at the end of the day, it all ended up in a great place where we thought it was supposed to be. [00:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah, but 10 months is kind of an intense experience. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Well, it's intense because the moment you see the loi, you think to yourself, two things. One, don't picture what it's like when this happens. And two is what's it gonna be like when this happens? And it's very challeng challenging not to think about, you know, life 2.0 and the management of your expectations throughout that is probably the hardest part. [00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah. This reminds me of a podcast that Rob Walling did that you're familiar with where he talked about the process of selling Drip and the roller coaster and actually the danger to the business itself that an acquisition offer can kind of just roll out a grenade into the middle of the room. And it is, it's dangerous because it can really, it could screw you up, it could screw up your relationship with your co founders, with your employees. You have to manage it properly. I remember when Cardhook got acquired, I almost screwed that thing up. And I tried to be smart about when to tell everyone. And it's impossible to tell what's quite right. Everyone ends up erring toward, what's the term? It's not cynical, but like you're really better off just keeping things to yourself and not sharing and all of that. And then all of a sudden you find yourself, well, it's your business, you have a bunch of people working there, but you're the only one that knows. And all of a sudden you're working on this thing that's outside of the normal business. [00:12:13] Speaker A: Right. You have two full time jobs, Right. You run the company like you're supposed to and then you run the process selling the company, which is in and of itself, you know, a very thorough, obviously, depending on the scale of the deal. A very thorough, like, mind bogglingly thorough process. Yeah. And that there's a prevailing wisdom like you just alluded to, that you shouldn't share it with anyone. And that's there for a reason. Right. Because it just, it doesn't give that much benefit and it greatly enhances risk. It's so, so it's so disproportionate. It really just makes sense at the end of the day not to communicate. But, but I did, I broke, quote unquote, the rules. And I shared with my, my chief operating officer, a guy that had been with me, my main man who's been with me the whole time since we opened up our first gym, who's come up in the ranks from, you know, opening the club at 5am to being a manager, to being a general manager, to a regional manager, to having a stake in the business. And I said, you know what? I don't want to, I don't want to Put this down in front of them and say, this is what I signed. That's not the relationship that we have. And I don't want to do that. And I don't care that other people said that I shouldn't. I appreciate their perspective. And I'm still going to make a different decision, which that dynamic in the first place is something that I had to get developed to. It's hard for me and my DNA and I think anyone in a position like this to hear other people around you who you think know better tell you what you should do and still make a call to cut the other direction. Some maturity that that takes. [00:13:35] Speaker B: Right. And then, and then self doubt until it actually works out. [00:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Call self doubt, my dear friend. Yeah, this chick right here. [00:13:44] Speaker B: Oh, yes. So you, you got through it and you closed and you transitioned and you talked to everyone in person and all that. And now what, what a. You know, it's a pretty rare situation. I was really looking forward to a transition period between Cardhook and Rally and it just, it just didn't work out that way. So I didn't get a transition period. I started Rally while running and owning Cardhook and then raised money for Rally and then sold Cardhook a year later. And there was absolutely no break whatsoever, unfortunately. So a break being pretty rare. What do you do with that? What balance between enjoy the break and take advantage of the break do you find yourself in? [00:14:27] Speaker A: You know, I, I listen to enough podcasts where you hear people who have much more significant exits than mine. This was, this was good. But you know, it's not going to be in the papers or dramatically life altering. But you hear people who have those exits and they say, you know, it's not about the money, it was about the journey. And you think to yourself, I mean, you say that because you have the money now. Yes, but even mine, which wasn't such a dramatic scale, you quickly think, man, like now what? I thought this would be more exciting. I thought this would be more dramatic for my, you know, like, I'm going to Disneyland. I wasn't. I went to Crown Heights. I didn't go to Disneyland, I went to Brooklyn and I talked to people about it and, you know, I'm with my family and I'm enjoying myself. But that's all to say, you know, life is the journey. Anytime we look up and go, when is, when is this going to end? When am I going to just finally not have anything going on? It's like, you don't want any. What do you Mean, what are you going to do with nothing going on? The figuring out of all the things going on, that's. That is life. That's the marrow, you know? So, yeah, this also gives me that moment to say, well, in this season of Life where I actually get to just not have to care if there's anything in my inbox. You just get to enjoy the kids. You look at yourself and I'm so blessed. They're kind of annoying, but like, what a blessing is that, that I'm frustrated with my kids. That means everything is good in my life, that I get to just, you know, have this to be the thing taking up my attention, really soaking up time with my wife, starting to maybe feel a little bit proud of myself and happy about what happened. And then I'd say probably in pretty short order trying to re. Establish what the mission is, what the purpose is. You know, every day when you have a thing, you have a North Star, you have a purpose, you have. And even if it gets cloudy or you're putting some interim goals in between, you have something generally that you're trying to work towards. And now it feels like there's nothing. But I'm expecting in short order that the mission will be to find the mission. You know, not to get too meta about it, but I don't know what's next. So I guess finding what's next is the thing that's next. [00:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Fair, fair. There's no, no need to rush into that. The timing worked out. It's summer, the kids are off, you get, you know, you were. You were just at camp with them. It made me very happy thinking about you at camp with the kids in like, you know, the most care. Look, I'm going on vacation next week. Yeah. I'm not fully on vacation. [00:16:38] Speaker A: Are you? [00:16:38] Speaker B: I'm not. No, it's okay. [00:16:40] Speaker A: It's not bringing my laptop on vacation. Why? Just in case. [00:16:44] Speaker B: So it's not. It's not resentful. It just kind of is what it is. You have responsibilities, you have this thing so to think about you on vacation with. Actually, no. You know, none of that weight is great. So. Regan, right. My. My wife and I, we have encountered too much freedom, specifically where we live, so we can live anywhere. And that's a weird kind of situation because then I think it's like dating in New York City when you're in your 20s, there's always like, well, this is great, but what about this other thing? [00:17:16] Speaker A: The grass gotta grant somewhere else. [00:17:18] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. So we've kind of gone through that. We traveled all over the place. We lived in Portland, now we live here. So it's pretty difficult to kind of come to terms with, hey, guess what? Nowhere's perfect. There's no sense in looking for perfect. You prioritize and then you, you know, do a little score thing and then you make your decision. You're in a bit of a similar position where, okay, now you can go off and start anything. How in the world do you, how. [00:17:43] Speaker A: Do you approach that parameters? It's funny that you say that though, because for a little while, as I started to feel like this was going to close and we were going to consummate the transaction and have a transition, I'd go to biz buy, sell or other like business broker websites and start to see, okay, what's out there. You know, there's a big wave of entrepreneurship through acquisition. And you don't have to start something. You can acquire something and scale it or do whatever you want with it. I'd look around and go, man, I think my thing's the best thing here. Oh no, was I wrong? But, you know, who knows? There's a lot out there. Yeah, so I'm definitely, you know, I shudder at the idea of the complete blank canvas. And so I think putting some, you know, an XY axis on it and a boundary over here and saying what energizes me, what degrades my energy. What about the crunch franchise journey was something I'd love to see replicated. And what about it? If I could do it over again differently, would I try to avoid? You know, these are big boxes with big build outs, very long term lease obligations, personal guarantees, 50 employees, you know, give or take a bit, a thousand workouts a day. And then you see if you got the right location, maybe there's a different way. And it can work, and it can work super well. But maybe next time I either do something smaller or something more flexible. Something maybe more. Yeah, flexible is a good word for like, if you got it wrong, you could pick up and move down the street and it wouldn't be life altering. You know, Jeff Bezos talks about like one way and two way doors. Sometimes the crunch thing felt like a one way door. [00:19:16] Speaker B: 20 year lease, millions of dollars, big investments in equipment. Yeah, it's kind of heavy in that. [00:19:22] Speaker A: It'S hard to get it wrong. [00:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I guess you're pointing toward business model to some extent, but not just like business model, how the business makes money. It's like the overall model of like how do you expand? How do you start? How do you. What investment is required? What does it take to. [00:19:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:37] Speaker B: Who your customers are. [00:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Who you hang out with, who you spend time with. [00:19:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's right. In software. I mean, maybe not just in software, but in my approach to like advice to people or advice to myself, I think of it as characteristics. So if someone says to me I want to start an E commerce business and I'm like, okay, here's the deal. $100 average order value, right? Recurring. [00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:00] Speaker B: And low shipping cost. Like if you, if you don't have those, don't, let's not, don't do that. So that's, that's. [00:20:07] Speaker A: But how'd you get there? You said pain. How did you end up in that place? [00:20:12] Speaker B: Right? Because you gotta, you gotta acquire customers and that's not free. And therefore you need margin. And if you need this. So it's like, you know, it's from lessons and pain and watching other people and their good experiences and bad experiences. [00:20:23] Speaker A: I think the trick or one of the tricks is to double check your assumptions on those things. And see, I would sometimes refer to scar tissue. I wanna make sure it's not scar tissue and that we're like building in the wrong direction because of this. So, you know, the Crunch gym thing is great. So maybe, maybe Capex is actually is okay to deal with. But people would look at our, you know, like pro forma or our business model and say, you know, this, this feels amazing. I say, yeah, yeah. But then in year six, you've got to put like six or eight hundred thousand dollars back into refurbished equipment that you've just barely paid off. And then in the franchise world dynamic, you know, God bless them, it was an amazing journey and Crunch did a spectacular job on so many pieces. But one of the things that becomes their job in managing their brand and evolving their brand is, might be a different logo or a different color. That means you're going to get a phone call and go, you need to change the logo outside. But that's like $40,000. And they're like, yeah, yeah. [00:21:18] Speaker B: How many gyms you have times, yeah. [00:21:21] Speaker A: Was that going to get me more members? Like, no, that's what we are now, you know, and that's, that's part of the deal, right? When you drive by a Dunkin Donuts, you see a brand new America runs on dunk. And you're like, that's a nice sign that that person had to buy that sign because they told them to. [00:21:34] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. So you have Pros and cons. [00:21:36] Speaker A: But then you also pull off the road to Dunkin Donuts, not to Jordan's Donuts. [00:21:40] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. My donuts would be amazing. Just 100 clear. [00:21:44] Speaker A: I'm sure. Yeah. Boston Cream virtual. [00:21:46] Speaker B: Yes. I have a lot of food related ideas actually. Maybe it's because I live in the Midwest and the food's mediocre. Challenging. [00:21:52] Speaker A: It sounds challenging. It scares me. [00:21:53] Speaker B: But yeah. What the food business or living in. [00:21:56] Speaker A: The Midwest, speaking of the Midwest makes amazing people. Come on. I'm an honorary Midwesterner. No, just you know, to noodle on the business model thing and kind of write off food in, in the, the list of parameters or this rubric that I try to assemble a filter for for what business might exist in the future. I think. Is Amazon going to ruin this? Is AI gonna ruin this? Right? I'm gonna go get a haircut later. I'm probably gonna get a haircut no matter what AI does. And food, you know, food happens. Maybe something will deliver my food for me. But like we gotta eat last mile stuff still matters, right? [00:22:27] Speaker B: But, but H and R block franchisees, little scary right now. [00:22:32] Speaker A: Do my taxes. Please enter. [00:22:34] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Yes, that's right. So like, I guess that first I want to make a comment about something you said a bit ago in terms of the making sure you're not governed by your scar tissue. I think about this regularly and I laugh at it regularly because the business I'm currently running is an allergic reaction to the prior business. It is everything. The opposite. It is complex software. Yes, complex software. Simple software. Enterprise sales. Self serve, High cost, low cost. It's like really like, oh, that when I put my hand on that oven, it was hot and it burnt and let me. [00:23:08] Speaker A: Yeah, like thou shalt not do that again. [00:23:10] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Hopefully that works just fine. Okay, so. So back to what you were just saying a second ago. I was going to ask you about trends. One of the things about this transition period is you have an opportunity to think. And thinking really, really matters. And when you are running a business, your thinking shrinks down to like, you know, a smaller and smaller percentage, the busier you get. And then you try to get to a point where the business is less reliant on you so that you can think more. [00:23:40] Speaker A: Because thinking is, it becomes my differentiator as I'm. [00:23:44] Speaker B: Yeah, same, same. And it's, it's, it's the tough thing for me to experience because we're a six person company and I can think all I want. I also have to do. But my favorite time in a business is when there's a lot more thinking available to me. So now you have. You have. Thinking is like your superpower right now. You have a lot of time. How much of that is spent on, well, where is. Where is the future going? Where should I be given what I actually think is happening? You know, do you think that way? Sometimes I catch myself. I'm like, I knew about so many things early on. I knew a bit about bitcoin a lot earlier. I knew about Tesla earlier than most people, but I didn't connect it and I did. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Well, the dot will only connect in. In their rearview mirror. So. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah, but. But do they have to? Because it feels like it would be. [00:24:31] Speaker A: Better, I guess, to kind of answer the question is I'm more trying to understand what's currently out there, and I'm more trying to understand what I think will continue to exist in the future as opposed to what may exist. I'm not a technologist and I'm, you know, not a first mover, and I defer to you for what's really happening out there. But, like, my reference to the haircuts thing, you know, one thing I am thinking to do with my. My freedom and my time is I'm gonna get on airplanes. I'm just gonna go see what's happening. I'm gonna go fly to visit a franchisee buddy of mine in San Diego and then, like, walk around San Diego. I all. I know, I don't just know New York City. I know my, like, neighborhood in New York City. Even if I went to the Lower east side, I'd be like, wow, what's happening? [00:25:14] Speaker B: This is nuts. [00:25:14] Speaker A: You know, I don't. I see my 10 blocks. So, you know, go see what's going on near friends in the Midwest. Go see what's going on in the south sticks somewhere. You know, I, I want to get into real estate. It's like, why would I get to real estate in Brooklyn? Why don't I go to somewhere two hours outside Omaha, Nebraska, where I can actually afford it? So I want to see what's out there and maybe think about what will remain. Like warehouses. Trucking Rousey. I, I don't want to buy a trucking logistics company, but whether it's autonomous or human driven, there's still going to be a big thing moving stuff to people. That's more where I'm thinking, as opposed to what is AI gonna create and pave the way for that we don't even know yet. [00:25:51] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. So if, if I'm being a jerk, I call that defensive, but it's not really defensive. [00:25:57] Speaker A: Look, we could do an ayahuasca retreat. [00:25:58] Speaker B: And try and figure out the future. [00:25:59] Speaker A: But my mind just doesn't go there currently. [00:26:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's not defensive. What's, what's the right, you know, word or, or definition of that? It is maybe longer term thinking or maybe it's just lower on the, the risk reward curve. Yeah, around. Well, I don't want to make a giant crazy bet that that's a thousand or zero. It's more around. No consistency. And I guess a lot of your experience with crunch was if you execute well, you can make good things happen as opposed to I'm going to execute well. But this idea may or may not hit, and if it hits, you get a multiplier on your execution. [00:26:36] Speaker A: It depends on how capital intensive. I've referred a lot of times to what we did as a very big ship trying to turn in the ocean. And sometimes every now and then, you know, food for you hear about like ships running into each other and you're like, how can't you see? Like, how could you bump into each other? Well, the process of trying to turn takes a really long time. So like, pickleball became a huge craze and it's, oh, cool, let's sign a 15 year lease and clean up and pave a 30,000 square foot location somewhere in Manhattan. Because people totally love pickleball right now. But in two years, if they don't love pickleball anymore, everyone starts taking out their ACLs and you're like, no more pickleball. How do we repurpose this space? I don't want to try and, you know, jump onto something that's hot now and then, not know where to turn it. I'd rather drive by and go, I see a Laundromat everywhere I go. High end, low end, in between. People live in places where they don't all have washers and dryers in their homes. And they've got to go to these places where they give money to these machines. They just rent these machines over and over and over again. I don't know that I want to own laundromats, but I look at that, that's more where my eyes catch. [00:27:43] Speaker B: Okay, okay, Fair, fair. Do you have like a time frame in mind? You know what I mean? [00:27:50] Speaker A: I've been telling people lately I'm gonna do something and I'm not in a rush. You know, I don't. I think the timeframe I have. My mind is more like, I think that the straight up vacation time is already kind of done. I, I don't really, you know, do well in just an adirondack chair for 12 hours at a time. But now I'm gonna start to slowly do things that would expand the surface area of my luck and where the opportunities can stick. You know, have conversations with people, go for a walk with people, have coffee with people and see what they're up to. Because so much of this is what, you know, what you've seen. There's a zillion ways people are enjoying themselves and profitably that you don't even know about. [00:28:26] Speaker B: Yes. I love those. I mean, everyone kind of loves finding those and hearing about them. Yes, yes. It's so, it's. [00:28:31] Speaker A: So you have a business that cleans Porta Potties. You're number one and number two, like, how is that the. It's the best motto I've ever heard. [00:28:41] Speaker B: I do, I think all of us, when we come across some like, magical formula business situation, like, you know, it gives us hope that there are these, like, beautiful businesses out there where someone can really enjoy what they're doing and do really, really well financially and it does well, like all this stuff. So I liked what you said about airplanes because when I get on a plane, it opens up my mind immediately. And then I come home and I'm like, I got to do that more often. [00:29:15] Speaker A: And that's even just literally the same exact experience. [00:29:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, yes, do. Yeah, right. You go to a conference, like, I don't want to go to this conference. You come home, you're like, there's a big world out there. It's bigger than I thought. There's like, there's more out there. That's while actively running a business. And so everything gets filtered through. There's a big world out there. There's a lot going on. And here's how it relates to my business. Going out there. More open ended feels a bit like, like you're running your own little personal private equity company where you're like, where should I invest my time and my money and let me go meet different opportunities? You're not actually meeting people as an opportunity per se, but every, every bit of learning, like, doesn't get filtered through a business that you're currently running. It gets filtered into like this big mix. [00:30:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like another just dot and then there's another dot over there. And then you can either connect them or you're like, oh, as a constellation. Like, it Was just a weird cloud of stuff. I. Now I can make sense of it. You know, the more you see, the more you bump into and you back up a little bit. I think there's a picture here. And also on the airplane thing, I think for me, interestingly enough, like, not even 10,000ft in the air yet, and there is forced perspective. You look out the window and you're like, huh, that neighborhood that felt so big is literally so small. Like, the problems I had down there are. They're so small. And then you go further and further and as you go across the country, see that these, like, squares and these shapes of these farms. Oh, my God. These are farms that produce, like, stuff that goes and it gets shipped. Like, this is. It's just. It's so hard to. When you're in on the ground level, to be thinking about all these different planes of where you can operate. Being on a plane actually makes me think of thinking at 30 or 40,000ft up, that's a great place to be. [00:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it brings me pretty often to Adam Smith where it's like there is no way to describe it, but an invisible hand. There is so much going on, you can't even describe it. [00:31:13] Speaker A: The invisible hand thing is a great reference. And I found myself in the last couple years in my business not just because of what we were experiencing, but I had the good fortune to be in this arena with these other exceptional franchisees. I mean, really spectacular leaders coming in and just showing what. What we thought was a high point of success was a bad day for some people. They're just really pushing and building a spectacular enterprise. And one of the things I found was the invisible hand of incentives and compensation. It is a. It is a wonder if you get that right, if you really put people in a position in your organization and, you know, you wrap it around a really great culture and a set of values and give them parameters and a clear why on what we're doing and the way we want things to be done and how we want people to feel at work. But you also add the invisible hand that guides of. And if we get to these places, this is how we can all share in it. It's like one of the most powerful forces of nature, right? Like inertia is a really powerful force of nature and incentives and getting compensation structures. Right? And setting people free, giving them autonomy and a space to go and achieve on their own and share in the victories, is a wonder to behold. [00:32:26] Speaker B: Huh? So. So I've. I've heard you talk about, you know, Some of the characters that came into the franchisee network that you came across that kind of elevated expectations and surprised people. What, what I didn't know or we haven't really talked about or connected is, is that part of it? Now? The gym business is tough because out of, out of the 200 people that were in your organization, how many were on the front lines working in the gyms? [00:32:53] Speaker A: Basically everyone, right? [00:32:55] Speaker B: Almost everybody. When you say aligning incentives, that usually does not connect for me to someone who works the front desk at the gym. Is that what you're saying? Like extending all the way down there or like management structure? [00:33:09] Speaker A: It doesn't need to stop. I mean, well, once you get to like true front line, you need to have a score, you need to have a number, you need to have. Okay, if you do this every day, like if I ask you today, did you win yesterday? And you can't just tell me yes or no and exactly why then, then there's room to be optimized in the organization. Everyone trickles down to, you know, if you, if you book this many appointments, that's all you've got to do. The threshold's 10. If you got nine, you lose. It's not yellow, it's just red or green and you know it's. And if you got 11, I don't care how many showed up. If you just keep doing that every single day, I know it will work out. And everyone can have their own number throughout whatever role, but particularly in the management. And when these leaders came into the organization and they brought with them the resources to grow, right. Imagine coming in and saying we are going to build 10 stores per year or 10 film, whatever it is, we're going to grow by this percent per year. And then you do just makes this belief strong. And then you do it again. And now you can go to the outside world and say, I need you to move across the country with your family because you're exceptional, you're the best person, not the best person for the role in our area, you're the best person for the role. And you're willing to move to Oklahoma to help us get this going because you now believe next year we'll open up 10 more and the next year we'll open up 10 more. And then you'll be part of this giant, many million dollar organization that's going to create a lot of opportunity for you and your family and a lot of other people. [00:34:38] Speaker B: Interesting, because that's, it's not ownership incentive. It's, I guess it's Management incentive. [00:34:44] Speaker A: Well, you can, you can make compensation act like as if you were an owner without the downside dealing with actual equity and those implications. But you can have profit sharing plans in place and you can have. Some people even had managers buying in, which was mind blowing to me. But you research and go, you know, Outback Steakhouse did this years ago and they called them managing partners. And, you know, you may have heard that phrase before. It feels incredible to say, are you, oh, you're a general manager of the store? No, I'm a managing partner. I have a stake in the business. I've invested in this business. And so what happens is they sound like an owner and they act like an owner. And if you have someone there day to day acting like an owner, it will be better than if you didn't. [00:35:26] Speaker B: Yeah, very interesting. So, so I think here's where we start to come across the wide gulf of difference between your business and your business experience in the general economy. And my weird universe of software and startups and small teams and equity as compensation and stock options and these like lottery tickets of being a founder and owning 30% of a business and what, you know, what that can do and what you read about. I think maybe both sides can learn a little bit from the other. [00:36:03] Speaker A: Sure. [00:36:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:04] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. I had a really powerful moment where I went to like a program and it was like Harvard Business School case studies. And the first one was Planet Fitness. And Pete Moore, my investment banker and very good friend and great guy generally, and great guy in the industry, was leading this case study and he's like, look, before we do anything, before we talk about this business, you gotta understand the game that you're in and who's playing the game and how you play the game. Right? Are we playing checkers? Are we playing chess? And so when you go all the way back, you go to money and you realize that there is an ocean of capital out there. Right. He used, I think, like the California Teachers Endowment as an example. And let's say they have like $200 billion. 200. I mean, what are we even talking about? [00:36:49] Speaker B: Yeah, so much. [00:36:50] Speaker A: And how much they have to generate just to fulfill the obligations and promises that they've already made to generations of people. They have to make like a 6 or 8% return to not go backwards on the obligations they already have. So that means there's this ocean of capital that needs to go find a return. Some of that will go into Coca Cola stock, some of that will go to muni bonds. But then where else does it go and you reference like the efficient frontier. Some of it's going to go to real estate and REITs, some of it's going to find its way to venture capital. And there's going to be people who are, who are, they are allocated these resources and they're told, look, go try and win. We know most of the time you won't, but when you do, it'll be enough of a return to make up for this whole thing. And then it finds its way to private equity. And so you're out there fighting your fight. You're like, man, how come they opened up another location? Well, I don't know how they're funded. I don't know what's going on. I don't know how they're connected to that ocean of capital. And they might be playing a very different game than I'm playing. So, you know, recognizing which game you're playing and why it's important to understand because you may be playing checkers while people down the street from. You're playing chess and that's, that's a losing battle, right? [00:37:58] Speaker B: And, and you're comparing yourself to them or they're, it's like, yeah, it's a, it's not talked about very often in our industry and it would be better for people to understand more of that larger capital flows and capital requirements level of things. I feel lucky that I worked in an investment bank for a year. I didn't like it, but it helped in terms of perspective and understanding. People in the software industry are a bit confused. They look at venture capital as this like self contained thing. Here are these VCs and they have all this money and they think this way and it's not fair and no one gets a shot. And everyone's like. And because they're not seeing where that sits in the stack that the vc, the VC is a deployer of someone else's capital and it is advantageous for venture capitalists to accrue status, but they only deserve a part of the status. Right? It's literally not their money. And the decisions that they're making are in the context of their incentive structure. And if you don't know more of that going in, you can kind of get a little lost. And people, people get a little tribal around. We're bootstrapped and we do it this way and their venture and they do it that way. And this is fair, this is not fair. Why does this person who's questionable in morals and ethics, how come they can keep raising money? All this stuff is kind of confusing. And it's not great on the software front because there aren't that many options, there aren't that many games to play. I mean, sure, there's like a wide spectrum of versions of it, but you're. There aren't that many sources of capital that make sense for software, right? You can't go really go to the sba. You can't really go to a bank. You don't really want to get a loan. That's usually not healthy unless it's some, like, bridge. You're kind of left to either fund it yourself or go after vc. And then VC is this very unique model where the reason that the California T Shirts Union gave the VC money is so that they would gamble it as if they were at roulette. [00:40:14] Speaker A: I was trying to raise money or sell my business and I heard the phrase, the check's too small. First time you hear it, you're like, make it bigger. I mean, I'll take more. But if you think about it, like, look, there's a private equity firm out there somewhere who's raised a billion dollars, okay, from a variety of sources. From wealthy individuals, from sovereign wealth funds, from Softbank or whatever it is, from this California Teachers Union Endowment. They have a billion dollars. How many portfolio companies could you manage? How many, like, they have to write 10, 100 million? Like, if they wrote a $5 million check to a company that they're going to have to think about and deal with and be on the board for, you couldn't do it. So that, that's. That helps give some perspective. I'm thinking right now of like, maps and like two dimensional maps. And then you look at like a. I don't know if you've ever seen. There's like a map that kind of tries to show you what Antarctica really looks like. And you're like, what? Yeah, you're like, why is Alaska here? Isn't Alaska over there? Like, well, because it's 2D. You don't really get it. Or like a Russian map that. [00:41:17] Speaker B: That big, right, Happens to be so graphical. [00:41:20] Speaker A: You're like, oh, yeah, this one has mountains and this one doesn't. This is jagged. This is crazy. Well, like, if. If you only knew that you were frustrated and that you're bootstrapping and these other guys. Or even worse, if you didn't know we were in E Commerce and we were like, oh, cool. Hey, Needle just did this thing. We should do it too. It's like they could burn a $10 million a month on purpose. And we have to balance our checkbook every night. So you got to just recognize the game you're in and the best way to play that game or if you need to go, shift to a different game. [00:41:49] Speaker B: Some of our conversations over the last few months, as you were anticipating the close of the transaction and starting to look beyond it and what to do next and so on, some of our conversations centered around what, where to aim in the stack. And one of the things that I found really interesting in your experience and it. Right. The analogy in my experience is that I realized, first of all, raising money is hard, but it's not that hard. There's money out there. So if you kind of, you know, play that game and go out and get it, you can get it on your side of things. Just playing with bigger numbers might be healthier. [00:42:24] Speaker A: Mm. [00:42:24] Speaker B: It's very hard to get into those rooms and conversations, but it still might be healthier to go to go for bigger numbers. Generally, the ground floor, the starting a business is pretty damn high risk. [00:42:39] Speaker A: It's so hard and it can suck and the reward's not there and it's hard to get a team because they might want something bigger. I agree. Saying, hey, why don't we put some resources together from, you know, yourself and friends and family and another ring past that and then, you know, really learn out what's out there. Not just the sba, but an SBIC and different channels for resources to flow to help create jobs and opportunities and seek a return. And they know, clear eyed, like, we're trying to seek a return and you don't always get the return that you're looking for, but if everyone's clear eyed about it, you go try and take a bigger swing. I don't want to say it's easier, but like, if you find a way to finance and buy your way into 40 stores of something, you know, if someone gets fired tomorrow, it's not the end of the world. If you open up a UPS store and hey, I only have three employees and one of them quits, it's a third of your workforce is down. That's hard. [00:43:31] Speaker B: I see people often finish a company and then start from zero and I one, admire it and two, I don't think I want to do that. So when you see what you just did, 200 people, six locations, expanding into other locations, complexity around finances, management, all this other stuff, does it make you want to go do that again or do you almost see that as like, well, now that's my floor and. And then how do I Kind of go into this next level or a different part, strata in. In the stack. [00:44:03] Speaker A: Yeah. My current thinking is that starting like I referenced earlier, that one of the most powerful forces in nature is inertia. Right. And that's if something's moving, it will be inclined to stay moving, but if it's not, it's inclined to not. So the process of building momentum and inertia on the first thing or the first store or the first sale of your software is not an energy I'm looking to expend, I would imagine, trying to get on. And now here's another kind of, you know, exit ramp I'd take here is I watch this happen where we just got acquired and another group got acquired and they're all being assimilated into the same organization. And it's, it's not seamless, it's not without friction, it's not without pain. At some point has to be the realization, I think for everyone, the grass isn't greener, nothing's perfect. Even if there is some sort of weird magical dream that you hear about someone who's just nailed it, they've nailed it for them and their DNA and their brain and their EQ and IQ and their family dynamic. Like maybe that life with your specific children just wouldn't be right. So everything has warts, everything is hard. That's where the value gets created. If it was easy, everyone you know, was it Derek Siffer say information is all we need. We'd all be billionaires with six pack abs. Right. If every business or there's businesses out there that'd be easy, then we would like all do them and we'd all be successful. But everything's got some yucky, Everything has days that suck. [00:45:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:29] Speaker A: And we've got to do our best to find the stuff that somehow at the end of the day can energize us or connect to a passion. [00:45:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Some. Something more. Let's back out a little bit on the business stuff. You mentioned airplanes and travel and going out and seeing the world and that sort of thing. The impact that travel has on me is very different if it's domestic or international. Because when I go to San Francisco or I go to, I don't know, you know, LA or something, Miami, whatever. It does open my mind up to realize, whoa, the world's bigger than I thought it was and there's more opportunity and I should get out there and there's so much money and like, how do we. But if I touch international, it blows. I can't Even wrap my mind around it. And then I'm like, oh, I'm still thinking small. I'm still a small ball. I'm still, you know, too sheltered and don't have my eyes open. Do you see that in a similar way? Do you? Are you planning on incorporating that? Right. We're from Israel. It's a lot. A lot of interesting stuff going on there. You go to Europe, less interesting stuff going on there, but still a lot. Do you have any plans to kind of open up that aperture all the way globally? [00:46:37] Speaker A: I'd love that. I'd answer that in two ways. I have a notebook next to me, literally, and the first page where I'm trying to journal is planes of thinking. Just like, you know the phrase there's levels to the game, right? Yeah, there's on the money making front or the trying to make money front. It's. At some point, it could be just described as a game, right. And I remember when I started playing lacrosse when I was younger, they would be like, all right, we're going to be in a two to two. I'm like, what is the two that they are talking about? I don't know. All I see is people running around. Right. Or the first time you see football, like X's and O's, you're like, I don't know what the hell they're talking about, but if you went up on the balcony or if you were in the box with the glass, you'd look down and go, oh, I see the lines. I get it. There's like, there's levels here that I didn't know before. And there's levels beyond that, too, right? There's like, oh, this. There's an owner, and they're thinking about why that manager should be in place, that manager thinking about the coach, and the coach isn't even on the field. And, you know, there's all these levels. I'm trying to make sure I'm even in the same space of thinking about the different levels and what levels I don't know about and trying to engage with people who are playing at different levels. So I even get exposed to it on the travel front. And what that brings, I think, interestingly, on the national front, it's an economic thing for me. You're like, wow, I was in Palm Beach. That place felt amazing and weird, and I'd like to get there one day, you know, and then I go to Italy and I'm driving in a rental car in Tuscany with my wife, and I'm thinking, we could Be here if we want. We could, like, chill. We could, like, slow down and, like, drink wine at noon. Like, we don't have to be in. In the race. We live in New York City. I feel like I'm in a race. [00:48:07] Speaker B: Just about to mention that. [00:48:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, I'm in. You know, I'm in the Hamptons right now. It's like I'm in a race. But you could just, like, not be so international. Gives me more of a. Oh, you could just, like, you could pick a different way. [00:48:20] Speaker B: Yeah, you can decide. Yeah, that's a. That's a. For a Manhattanite, that's a problem. [00:48:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:26] Speaker B: I remember when we decided to leave New York, a lot of it was because the noise of the race was so loud. It was difficult to even, you know, concentrate. It was difficult to just have a little bit of space to think about what we actually want. We were living in this beautiful town, you know, Westport, and the race there is full on. It is roaring and what it made us. [00:48:52] Speaker A: Even the losers win that race. [00:48:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, yes, but then even if you're, quote, a loser, and you're at the, you know, apex of the pyramid, but there's a little bit above you, so that's where you look up to. [00:49:05] Speaker A: Yeah, there always is. [00:49:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. We got worried that we were playing a game that we didn't actually want to win. It was just. We were already in the game. So I guess you play it. I think I've chilled out a little bit on that. [00:49:17] Speaker A: Part of. It's maturing. You mature out of it. You're like, oh, you want to talk about that? I'm just going to take my drink and go to that table. [00:49:23] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. [00:49:24] Speaker A: Unsubscribe. [00:49:24] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. You're that proud of that? I'm actually really proud of the way my kids are turning out. So I'd rather talk about that. Yes. Well, look, we're going to start. To finish up here. What do you got planned? What do you got going on over. Over the next few weeks? What are you trying to do? [00:49:37] Speaker A: I'm going to. I'm going to try and read a little bit. I just started the hard thing about hard things. I'm going to try and expand my reading a little bit. I bought myself a little guitar. I'm going to keep up with my lessons and try and practice my scales and just, yes. Spend time in that space. There are a few movies I hear I need to catch up on. I still haven't seen the Godfather. I'm getting a lot of grief on that one. [00:49:58] Speaker B: Okay, so you do see some type of marker. Well, I got a little more time on my hands. Yeah, let me make sure I'm using that, you know, to a higher quotient of joy and fun. [00:50:09] Speaker A: And you got to take the wins, you got to play the hand you're dealt. You got to enjoy it when you can. No guilt, no shame. Play the hand you're dealt, play it as well as you can. One time my brother in law said like that win, take the win. It's gonna power one more strong stroke across the ocean. Right. If I'm gonna get back in the game in some sort of way, I'm gonna need to be energized for it. So just like when you're on the plane they say put the mask on yourself before you help other people. I gotta get to best so I can give my best. So this is about getting to best, chilling out, assembling, processing it so to speak is like what are the lessons learned? What are the things to replicate? What are the things to avoid? The big scale, not just like the day to day management, leadership tactics and how to describe things to people but like, you know, who do I want to be around? How do I want it to feel? So that when we do it, we do it as right as we possibly can, knowing that we're going to get something wrong. [00:50:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Cool. And you're going to be here in a few weeks? [00:51:02] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:51:03] Speaker B: Yeah. That'll be fun. [00:51:03] Speaker A: Zombies Descendants World Tour I think I'm the most excited about the kids. Zombies 4 just came out. Man, I'm dying. [00:51:10] Speaker B: So my kids have age out of that almost. So our youngest is going to be. Because she's still there. What do we have going on? Today's the last day that we're on our own. Our kids get back from camp tomorrow. [00:51:23] Speaker A: Nice. [00:51:24] Speaker B: So it's been a cool two weeks. We couldn't help ourselves, did a bunch of stuff around the house, redecorated one of the kids rooms, you know, two of them had their rooms had already been done. And so the youngest one, we thought it'd be really fun to have her come home to her totally redone room, you know, that sort of thing. And I have two vacations coming up. One to the Outer Banks in North Carolina and that one I feel like I need to be somewhat connected because we have a lot going on right now. [00:51:49] Speaker A: Connected to the business. [00:51:50] Speaker B: Yes, yes. At Rosie right now we're slowing down to speed back up and what that really means is I, like, pulled the plug on a lot of our momentum because I thought we needed to improve a bunch of things first. But getting the momentum back requires, like, force that. I don't know how else to say it. It requires energy and force and momentum building just comes from the top. [00:52:14] Speaker A: Look, it's. It's like a. That's the Navy SEALs things, right? [00:52:17] Speaker B: The. [00:52:17] Speaker A: The slowest smooth and smoothest fast. Or on the guitar thing, if you're gonna like. I want to learn this song. You don't learn it fast. Sometimes you gotta say, you know what? I think I need to slow down, get it right, get it clean, and then when we go faster, it's not full of mistakes. It's. It's right. [00:52:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I'm in the middle of that right now. It's not even the end. I think it's right in the middle. But then I'm going away to Europe, coincidentally, to Croatia, and there I'm not bringing the laptop. I don't plan on being on the phone. So a little bit of balance on those two fronts over the next few weeks. [00:52:50] Speaker A: What's your communication strategy with your team members when you go to Croatia? [00:52:54] Speaker B: The dynamic we have in the company is half of us are in Europe, and the Europeans take their vacation seriously, and we allow them to, and that has helped generally with the culture in the company. Take vacation seriously. We respect it. And I'm definitely not going to ignore Slack for eight days. Not going to. But I plan on bringing the brick with me. I think I told you about that little piece of hardware that. [00:53:22] Speaker A: I got one, too. Yeah. [00:53:23] Speaker B: Yes. Okay. So I use that, and specifically on vacations is when I use it most. Because what happens is on vacation, you leave your hotel room or your Airbnb or whatever it is, and then you go out for the day. So the way I use the brick, that hardware that you click your phone onto and it shuts down certain apps, is I'll wake up and I'll do some email and I'll do some Slack, and then before we leave for the morning, I use the brick, and then I leave that there. I take my phone with me. So I, you know, I got music and I have Google Maps and whatever else, but Slack is blocked out and Twitter is blocked out, and therefore, I can go into my day with that removed as an impulse. [00:54:03] Speaker A: Love it. [00:54:04] Speaker B: Saf, thanks for joining, man. It was fun. [00:54:06] Speaker A: Jordan, thanks for having me. This was good times. [00:54:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the first one, you know, I want you to come back and you're my brother, so I can guilt you into it whenever I feel like 100%. And you don't have that much to do now that we know. [00:54:17] Speaker A: Semi retired. [00:54:20] Speaker B: Cool. Thanks everyone for listening. Saf, where can people find you? [00:54:23] Speaker A: I need to make myself on the Internet at some point. I took myself off Twitter to save my mental health a little bit. I don't really do much else, so I'll find my way out there sometime soon. [00:54:32] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:54:33] Speaker A: LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. [00:54:35] Speaker B: Yes. There you go. Cool. Thanks everyone for listening the off site podcast. We're on Spotify. Wherever you listen to your podcast. We're on YouTube like and subscribe. Yes, we're early on. That's what you need to do. [00:54:46] Speaker A: Please do. [00:54:47] Speaker B: Thanks everyone for listening.