The 3-Year Process of Prepping an Agency For a Private Equity Sale

Sean Weisbrot: Jeff Sauer is the co-founder of Profit School, which helps small teams implement better offers. Systems and products. He's also the co-founder of Measure You an online community and education platform that helps brands to get better at measuring the analytics in their business. In this episode, we talk about Angel investing and his experience with it as well as my own. We also talk about how he ran a marketing agency that he sold. And we talked about system operations and what founders need to know about it in order to be successful. Because as a first time founder, there's so much that you don't know. You don't know, and it's those unknown unknowns that can be the death of your business. So if you care about these things, you're gonna love this episode with Jeff Sower. Let's get to it. What made you want to become an angel investor?

Jeff Sauer: I had some money sitting around and I was trying to figure out what to do with it, and rather than, you know, playing the dice with the stock market, um, I had already had some real estate going on. I wanted to try investing in other companies. So I do believe that in that companies are the greatest possible return out there, um, especially when you believe in the founder and when it's somebody that you, you believe in the idea. And so I wanted to do some high risk, high reward investing, and then I also wanted to, to invest in people that I believed in.

Sean Weisbrot: How many investments have you made so far?

Jeff Sauer: I made about 20 and so yeah, 20 different angel investments, all different kinds of companies, um, from software startups, which is the most common one. And usually when you think of angel investing, you think of software startups, um, all the way through content websites fulfilled by Amazon type websites. Um, and, and a lot of things in between. I, I invested in a. A roofing company that was rolling up roofing companies across the United States. Um, and, and some of these things are in the middle of it, so I can't really say whether they've been successful or not, but some of them have actually got my money back and, and haven't had an exit from one of those yet, but definitely had the momentum and saying, uh, it was a, it was a worthwhile endeavor to do these angel investments.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, I'm glad you've had that experience because it's been a very different for me. Uh, one of them is still alive, pre-revenue. The other one is sputtering, along with a little bit of revenue. Um, another one failed immediately out of the gate because they got scammed by a service partner and lost all of the capital. So there's a personal guarantee on the CEO I'm trying to get back now, um, that I, I made him sign 'cause it was, there was a little bit of risk I knew going into it. But he made a bad decision. He went with someone I told him that I didn't trust and he did it anyways and lost the money. So, uh, yeah. And then two of them exited for less than I invested, so I got. A little bit less. I, I got a fraction of what I invested, and then the others are dead.

Jeff Sauer: Yeah, I mean that's, that's typical, right? When you look at the curve, I think, I think one of every 10 investments will, will make some money and you hope that, that, that one makes 10 or a hundred x the money you put in. And then a lot, you know, most of them will, will be just good companies, but not ones that are gonna give you a huge return on your capital. And then there's, you know, maybe half of them or a quarter of them will just outright fail. And that's, that's pretty much where mine is at, I would say. Although, um. I think I invested in things that just didn't really have a big chance outright failing because of a few factors. One is the, the market they were going into, the founder and then this like momentum, right? So I was coming in when they actually had some momentum. They had an audience, they had these, these assets that were already in there. Um, that's what really what the founder contributed their assets and their energy, um, their audience, that type of stuff. And then our capital is really to help with the build out and to help with infrastructure. And, and so that was. That does help out when, when they already have some kind of momentum, some kind of notoriety or history at their previous company, which is a big factor for me is if they've done it, um, if they've done it once, they can likely do it again. Um, although I don't always just say if they've done it once, they can do it again. Usually it's if they've done it once, but then they either got screwed or had some major learnings or they had only a small percentage of the sex. Successful company and they're looking to do it on their own. That's usually something that I think can be a pretty big, um, sign that they're gonna be successful. They're still hungry.

Sean Weisbrot: So when you give them the money, you said you'd help with infrastructure, so you use your company to also support their development or,

Jeff Sauer: the money that I put in is, is. Purely for them to, to build their infrastructure, right? So it's for them to, to hang or to pay for their infrastructure, to build it, to buy it. However, that would be in some cases I do, um, you know, I do collaborate with them as yeah, using the platform we have at Measure U and I'll do webinars with them. I'll, I'll mention them and a recommended tool. I'll do that type of stuff. Um, but only if it really makes sense in, in within those. So, um, you're right though. At first I thought that my unique skills would be really. Valuable as an angel investor, but most of the stuff's been at arm's length and there's not a lot of, um, Hey, my whole strategy is relying on Jeff to gimme that promotion. It's more like, oh, Jeff's the money guy. I'll give him an update once a quarter or however frequently they give updates onto what's happening.

Sean Weisbrot: I always wanted to be the guy that not just gives you money, but also is available to advise you, and I've found that they didn't want any advice. And maybe that's why they failed because they didn't want my advice. But you can't force someone to take that advice. Then again, maybe if they didn't want advice to begin with, they probably shouldn't be someone I invested in.

Jeff Sauer: Yeah, that's a good point, right, because it's, there's a few ways to get advice too. One is like a formal board, so that could be something where your, your money came with a board seat. It could be the amount of money you invested. If you're, if you're not a majority or a big amount, then they, you know, they, they give you that percentage of their time or you know, that percentage of what they're working on. But I agree, like you would think that. If you, you know, I know, I know a lot of you, what you do is help, help companies with this. And I help, help companies, I help individuals. You'd think those skills would be worth something. Um, but I haven't really pushed it, so I, I, I would expect that they would do that just like you. But I haven't really said, oh, yeah. Come and use me or I'll, you know, be like an empty thing, like an email. Like, Hey, you can use me anytime you want to, but ultimately these people are so driven that they're trying to figure it out on their own. So you sort of want that mentality in a founder, but then you're right. If if they don't listen at all, then that's a sign that they're probably gonna be, um, more on that risk side. Uh, and, and the chances of reward are much lower.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I interviewed a woman recently named Breen Sullivan. She's got a company called The Fourth Effect. And what they do is they connect, uh, founders to advisors. For the purpose of making it more likely that they're gonna succeed. And then they also have started building out an investment side so that they can help investors to see, these are companies you should be paying attention to because their founders recognize that they need outside help. And those outside help is compensated through equity or cash, depending on the situation of the company. Some, uh, some of the advisors do it pro bono because they want experience or they want the, the, you know, to use their time for something they appreciate doing. Um, and since I spoke with her, I started thinking about that much more heavily. It's like, yeah, most founders the first time around fail because they don't have someone that they can rely on to give them good advice whether they're paying them or, or not, but. I've also felt like if they're not paying for the advice, they're not gonna appreciate it as much. And so I've, I've joined several mentor platforms and I've given advice for free to many people over the years. And then I feel like maybe I should stop doing that because I know the value I'm providing. But they don't understand the value because they don't know what they don't know yet. So they don't know if I'm right. They don't know if I'm wrong. So they don't know if they can trust my advice. Plus they're in their own head space and so they need time to accept that. Maybe their idea might not be right and mine might be right. Um, but when you start to pay for something like that. Then you're much more open to making a change because you're trading something that you find valuable for something else that someone has. Um, what do you think about that?

Jeff Sauer: Yeah, I think there's a certain element to that for sure is, and, and I've, I've been in the same boat, you know? Um, and part of it is I think. People want money or they want advice. They don't, usually don't want advice with money or they don't want money with advice as a caveat to it. They want, they just want the money in that case per perhaps they, they just, they look at you as a money person. So that's their way of looking at, at the person is that I'm just getting money, but I, the advice is secondary. That's not what I ask this person to invest for. So it might, you know, might be a little bit upset that that's not how they're using you, but that might be how they looked at you. Um, and, and that's been, that's been the case with some businesses that I've. You know, I'm getting smarter with my investments. There was a company that I was gonna invest in, and as I was talking to him, I was like, what are you gonna do with the money? And he didn't really have a plan for it. And, and they, and I was like, well, what are you gonna grow? And he is like, yeah, we're just gonna keep on doing what we're doing. I was like, well, you realize that if somebody's an invest in your company, they have to have an expected return and you're not. Telling the investors that there's any chance of a return. So it's like, all I'm doing is locking up my money with you without really a big plan, and it's just gonna be stuck there. So I'm getting better at trying to understand and ask the questions about what they're gonna do with it. And then also is the, is there anything that I can do to give them leverage or, or make that, you know, I, I immediately make this more valuable.

Sean Weisbrot: I've worked with companies that were venture backed and, and they do have some of that advice built in with the money. Like they have, you know, they have founder council, so they'll have the CEOs all get together from the different companies and share what's going on, and maybe they assign more credibility to that because of. The nature of it because it's the credibility behind a, uh, venture capital firm. But you gotta think that somebody who's an who's, who's choosing an an angel investment is doing that because either they're not ready for the VC thing or it's the idea's not ready for it. Right? So at, at that point, I. Wouldn't our advice be extremely valuable to go along with the money? Wouldn't that already give them something of value? Could just be we bet on the wrong horses. Could be that they don't, that they don't see it because they don't look at us in that level of credibility. Good question. I'm not sure if I, if I fully have the answer, but I'm guessing they just don't think of you as somebody who, they don't think of you as an advice person. They didn't give you as a money person,

Sean Weisbrot: you had a marketing agency and you sold it. Right. We're taking a step back. That's how you got the money to invest in these startups. What was the agency doing? How long did you run it for? How did you grow it? What was the sales process like? For, for exiting,

Jeff Sauer: I was a contractor for this marketing agency. It was, it was three people or four people back in early, mid two thousands. And we worked so well together that I joined them as an equity partner, minority stake in it. But I was a basically director of marketing, uh, and or VP of marketing slash owner of the business. And it was. We worked with Fortune 500 companies. We also went in the vertical field of going after like home improvement and going after certain vertical markets to, to work with a lot of local companies and roll them up in that way or, or roll up the services And I. It went really well. So, so we, you know, one client would tell, two clients would tell three clients and suddenly we were just, we were sending contracts once a week with, with people who would replace the windows on your house or, um, sometimes with big companies they just come through and be like, Hey, we're, we wanna work with you. And so, um. We went from like a, a half a million dollar, little bit less than a million dollar business. When I, when I was contracting with them, um, when I joined the first full year together, we were at like 1.8 million. Then we were, you know, five years later we were at seven and a half million dollars. And it was, it was pretty remarkable to see that ride. And it was really just, um. One riding a wave of, of new services. Like this is when Google Ads was really early. So we were just, you know, we were the, the ads agency that people went to, um, analytics, all these different digital accountability, digital marketing, accountability and optimization services. We just kept on adding them and that's, we added revenue both, um. Vertically across or horizontally across clients. We'd add new services and that would bring up their revenue. And then we also went after new markets and, and just brought on new clients. Um, and I. It, it was great. Um, but I also got really burnt out on it. So I left the day-to-day, my day-to-day role in the business and just remained an investor for another eight years after that. And then while we, you know, as a shareholder and, and that, um, we started prepping the business for sale. And that business looked a lot different than the business that I left because of, there's different things that you do in a growth business that you do in a business that's looking to get acquired. And, and so what I mean by that is when you're a growth business. You're just throwing bodies at a problem, trying to build some process, trying to build some, some equity. But oftentimes, instead of hiring the most effective person for the money, you hire a senior person to get to build that thing out, to build infrastructure, to build onto your assets. So we had a lot of. Heavy hitters, a lot of really expensive people on our team to build out while we are growing to, to try to bolt on some kind of infrastructure to handle the growth, um, infrastructure, meaning like operations systems, behind the scenes stuff. And it worked like it. We, we were able to, to keep on going, but the profitability was, was insanely, um, well, uh, the, the payroll was bloated and the profitability was the opposite effect of that, meaning that we were making, you know, a net of like two to 5% at the end of the year during these high growth years. I. Even though we are growing by a million or $2 million, we spent all that into payroll. Our cost of goods sold were pretty insane. Um, and so then when you get ready to sell, you have to sort of undo that and say, okay, well we are, you know, we, we are comfortable with our growth, but we need to be focusing on profitable profitability. So we went to, you know, 25% net margins. Um, in the last few years, we, we got everything in order, like changing how you pay bonuses, changing how you compensate. Your executives, your people, how do you run expenses through the business? What don't you run through the business, basically like a two year period of getting the books in order and profitability there. Then you start working with brokers and have them, um, introduce you to opportunities. Uh, you know, you might get into a letter of intent that, that, you know, maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't. I think we had three letters of intent, and I think it was the third or the fourth one that ended up actually working. Um, but, but ultimately you, you sort of, you make that shift from high growth, uh, drinking from the fire hose, getting to top line revenue to then optimizing for your bottom line revenue. Now, are those things exclusive of each other? Probably not, but that's, that's how, that's how it went for us.

Sean Weisbrot: It's interesting that you did that because. A lot of potential acquirers, from my point of view, would love to see you not have those things in order so that they can take advantage of that potential growth by fixing the problems themselves 'cause they pay you less for a business that has far more potential and profitability in it that the founder didn't realize.

Jeff Sauer: Yeah, there's some of that, right? But that, I think that's not really a good strategic partner and, and if you're doing that, you're ultimately screwing over yourself and your partner or your, and your employees and everybody else, and your clients even. So we really didn't want that to be our story. But I, I totally understand what you're saying is that for some people. Uh, an acquirer, they don't look at it as a strategic thing. They look at the acqui acquisition as a ability to, to make the off efforts. Now, we were rolled up by private equity and they, they saw that value, but they, they, I think that honestly, until your evaluation is over eight figures, you're not even gonna get to talk to those people. So I think that if you don't do those things, you're gonna have a lower class of acquirer and that lower class of acquirer is probably gonna nickel and dime you and try to ma manufacture their money that way. Versus private equity is like, oh, we'll double this no matter what we do if, as long as this thing meets certain standards. So we had to do all that stuff in order to meet the standards to get into a higher class of acquirer.

Sean Weisbrot: And when did you sell the company?

Jeff Sauer: 2021. So it started the, the conversation started, you know, the year be, the years before that. It was probably 18 months of, of being. Uh, open to acquisitions before the acquisition closed. The merger.

Sean Weisbrot: So it was almost four years from We wanna Sell to Sold. Because you said you took two years to prepare and then when you finished preparing, they're like, all right, let's talk about selling the company now.

Jeff Sauer: Yeah. It is probably more like three years, but yeah, exactly. Yeah. You have to start to, to work on these things because some of these things were happening in parallel and then also having it taking 18 months just made the valuation higher. I bet you the valuation went up by, um. $7 million as a result of getting those, getting the effects of the profitability. 'cause ultimately they're buying you. I mean, a lot of people say it's like a valuation on a bta, but there's a lot more to it than that. Um, it's not like they just say, Hey, you're five XA bta. It's ultimately the strength of your contracts, the strength of your client list when you're acquiring an agency. And, and those things factor into it. And then it's, you know, just taking a turn on that, that revenue that's coming in. Um, strategic team members. So that's, that's really the. The thing that goes in between that three x of beta and six x of beta is actually the strength of your business. Not so much what the market is, although the market we, we sold in 2021, which is one of the best times ever to sell a business. So would that same valuation have been there, um, a year later? Probably not. It probably would've gone down by a certain amount. Even with the same vitals and the same metrics.

Sean Weisbrot: What did you learn from that experience?

Jeff Sauer: You can have a business that generates cash, you can have a business that generates wealth. Try not to confuse the two. And what I mean by that as a cash business ultimately is it makes you money every year. Um, and, and you just, you use it as a way to make yourself rich, um, in the, in the short term. Um, and not rich. I mean Rich as in like you are cash rich, not that you're like. You know, and, and, and the opposite is wealthy, right? So versus if you have an asset based business, if you're trying to build an asset that you sell, you still wanted to spit out cash because that increases your valuation. But ultimately you make different decisions if you're trying to build this, this wealth business. And, um, and then ultimately the only way you get wealthy is when you sell it. So if you have a cash business, you can actually just ride that thing in for a long time and make the money yourself, um, and just have money. And then you can reinvest it like I did as an angel investor, um, that type of stuff. Or you can, you can sort of tie everything into reinvesting, investing in your business and, and you gotta aim small, Ms. Small, if you don't, if it doesn't work out, you may not. You know, you, you might have spent your whole life thinking that you were building this wealth, and it never came to be because of the market, because of all these factors outside of your control. And so to me. I think the best thing anybody can do in business is not confuse one for the other. Don't, don't hire all these expensive people because you think that's the key to you having a more valuable business. Because I'm here to tell you that the expensive people actually, we didn't make any money those years, and at the end of the day, those expensive people weren't even there. Because they once, once they left or naturally we didn't replace them, we replaced them with somebody who was less expensive and less, um, impactful on the bottom line because that got our valuation up. And so it was interesting. Thinking that way. But, but as soon as you can think, you could think that way today, you don't need to, you don't need to just flip a switch and go unprofitable or barely profitable for five years and then te five years of maximum profits. Like you could actually do that now. Um, and you can do that by having investments in systems and, and investments in the backend of your business, the operations of your business.

Sean Weisbrot: Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are, I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work, and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story, and what we do requires so much love. So that we can bring you something amazing and every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show. What is CSOPs?

Jeff Sauer: Well in, in our, in our profit school brand, we, we try to organize a business by offers, products and systems and, and pretty clear what offers are. It's, it's your money making engine, making sure that people are aware of your services or products and that you're making money off of it. Products and services are pretty straightforward. It's what you, your deliverables and then systems are what are generally what generate profit for you, what generate efficiency and what make it so you can do this thing over and over again in a sustainable. And scalable way. And to me, so sysops, cis ops, it's not a term that I use all the time, but in, in, you know, in this sense it's basically your systems and your operations that help you scale, um, and help you do it in a way that that will increase your profitability because you're not throwing bodies at a problem. You're throwing process systems, whatever you want to call it, at the challenge. And, and, and ultimately what it allows you to do. Is to get the same amount of productivity done with fewer people. I call it the minimum viable resource. So you can get more done with the minimum viable resource as opposed to, um, super expensive resources. Uh, it allows you to use offshore resources, for example. Now we're just getting so heavy into ai. You can use AI to do some of these tasks that were done previously by, by humans, by by tactical workers. And so it, it, you know, the whole idea of this is that that is really where the margins come outta your business. It's where a lot of the satisfaction comes, and it's where a lot of the, the. Sexiness and having your business be sold comes down to that. And so it goes hand in hand with, with your valuation, with your profitability. The more, the better and the more ingrained systems are into your business, the the chances are that you're going to be more profitable and happier with what you do. 'cause you don't have all the burden on yourself. You're not just this, this. Monolith in your business or what we call a wagon wheel, where you're sort of in the middle of things and everything comes to you and you just feel like you're spinning in a circle instead of going forward. Um, systems are what help you go, you know, help you drive. Like if you're, if you're, you know, if you're a single wheel, you'll just, it'll just go down the hill until it falls over one way or the other. But if you're a car with a pit crew and you have people filling the gas for you, changing the tires, you know, doing all that stuff. You're a race car, you're going as fast as possible. And so that's ultimately what the systems element is in the, in the overall business.

Sean Weisbrot: What do founders typically do horribly in this regard?

Jeff Sauer: Yeah. Generally a, a founder is like a hero, right? Like they think that they think of themselves as a hero's journey, and they're the hero in this whole thing. And oftentimes a hero is the first one to go into battle. They're the one who, who you know, is like, Hey, I'm gonna get the, the biggest sword, the best gear, and I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna hack and slash and, and I'm gonna set an example for the team. I'm the rah rah speech guy. I'm William Wallace. I'm, I'm Maximus from the Gladiator or whatever. Um, they're the, the, that, that type of person versus, um. Most businesses actually, like a CEO is more the general, they're the one that's on the hill. They're the one that's, that can safely get away. They're commanding from afar. They're not on the front lines. And so I think that a lot, that one of the biggest challenges for anybody who's an entrepreneur is how quickly can you go from being that frontline person to being the, the person in the back who's, who's directing things and then has, uh. Platoons and, and different, different levels like, you know, more of like a general as opposed to a foot soldier. And so systems to me is ultimately the way that you can have, you can be commanding from the top or from afar and still make sure that the result happens that you wanna have happen. And that's usually an entrepreneur doesn't possess those skills right away, but they know they need it. And then the faster you develop it, the faster it ends up being, um, that your business takes off as, as long as you're stuck in that wagon wheel thing where everything has to go through you as opposed to delegation and trusting, you're just gonna be stuck

Sean Weisbrot: if first time founders don't know what they don't know, but somehow they become aware that this is a problem, but they don't know how to get out of the problem. What's the first thing they could do to kind of move towards the knowledge they need to take, the action they need to do to get themselves outta the problem?

Jeff Sauer: Phase one is thinking that you don't need a team and that you can do it all on your own, probably 'cause of the damage in your life at some point in time, whether it was from school or whether it was from your old company, and thinking like, what are these people even doing here? Thinking that you're the smartest person in the room because you have to have that belief In order to be a founder, I think you have to really believe that you're the smartest person in the room, otherwise, like what's gonna get you going through night or at night when things don't aren't easy. So that that unwavering belief that you're the smartest person in the room. Is, is going to get you to start a business, but thinking that you can do it on your own or that everything, that any, any business did it on their own. Like you have to get over that first. So it's a team effort and you need a team. Now, you might not have the money to build out a full team. That's fine. That's how it's supposed to be. You gotta be hungry, right? So how do you build out that team? Well, you make enough money. So you can hire that first person and you reinvest and instead of living comfortably off that money you made, you reinvest into the business. Then you reinvest in the next position. Um, you hire, well, I. You get people, maybe you, you convince somebody to be your co-founder with no money whatsoever, and you find that that's actually usually the best first employee is somebody else who, who you're not paying to do something in your business can be there. But, and then, and then once you get, once you start having the semblance of a team, you want, you know. I would say you want to have, you know, if you can find that a player, that person can do way more than you could ever do in that role. Now, I, again, with, with our profit school system, we, we basically think there's really three functions in a business until you're at 15 plus employees, and that's offers, products and systems. So when you're doing it yourself, you're, you're making the offer, you're making the product, and you're developing the system. That's what I was at, the data-driven business that I had before I merged. And guess what? I'm pretty terrible at systems. Um, I recognize when they're good, but I'm not good at creating them from my, from my own. Um, I'm good at making offers and sales, but at when I'm delivering the product, I was only selling half the time. So what I realized is that you need some kind of specialties so that. Wouldn't you rather be able to have the product being worked on year round? Wouldn't you rather have sales being worked on year round? Well, that's how you get consistency in your business, and so you find that, oh yeah, I need to bring this role in, which one is the one that I want to do, and which one would be the best for the company if I can find somebody else to do it. That's usually why a company has a marketing and a sale in a product. Co-founder or like the technical co-founder and the the schmoozer co-founder. Like there's all different versions of it, right? It's all pretty much saying the same thing is that you wanna specialize in these functions. You need to have them in your company, and if you're doing them all, you're gonna rob from yourself to pay back yourself or to pay back your clients, and it's not gonna go very far. And so ultimately, systems is the glue that, that, that just keeps on raising that bar and raising the watermark as you go forward. Is is that piece now it's usually the most forgotten because it's, it's both the easiest to hire for, or at least expensive to hire for, but also the one that if, if it, if it goes wrong, it can be really wrong systems. And what I mean by that is. You can, like salespeople are expensive, they know it. Product people can often be expensive or developers like that's going down. Now if you have ai, write the entire code. But somebody who can do the systems, like there's a lot of people out there who would do that. They're usually not, they don't always have to be an equity person in your business. Um, and oftentimes making them an equity person in your business is a mistake because there's not equity to go around to these other power positions. But if you don't have that. Operations or that systems in place, uh, it just all falls apart. And so you need it, but you don't know if you wanna invest in it. And so it's just this weird dynamic where you're like, yeah, I could use that, but it's not actually making me money and it's not something that I can afford right now necessarily. And so, um. That's why a lot of companies don't get it right or where they just stay in that same spot. So like, you know what? I'd rather invest in making money. I'd rather invest in my product. They don't ever think about investing in operations of the business yet. Every major business, every Fortune 500, what's the power dynamic? It's chairman, which is often chairman, CEO. Then it's their chief operating officer. It's the number two person in the day to day of an organization. So it's that important. But usually we don't think about that because we don't really have anything to operate on. We need to get a product going. We need to get some sales. Um, so making that transition, it, it makes sense somewhere in your first 15 to 20 employees to get that going, if not sooner.

Sean Weisbrot: Is there anything I haven't asked that you would feel remiss to not speak on?

Jeff Sauer: Everything that you do should be measurable and accountable? Um, that, that, that, to me, that's a big thing. And so if you can, if you can measure it, you can do it. Um, sometimes it's a little bit more nebulous in a, in a startup type environment or an angel investor environment, but that this is another systems thing, right? So the idea of systems and cis ops, it's all about how do we do this better next time? So think to yourself, um, do I have a function in my business that is ask, asking that question, and then do I have an answer for that? How do I make this better the next time I do it? How do I make this repeatable? How do I make this scalable, sustainable? 'cause ultimately getting that in place is usually the way that you get out, that you get satisfaction in your business, knowing that's taken care of. And if it's not for you, then, then go out there and try to find somebody or take some training to get to that point.