E: #17 Top M&A Entrepreneurs - Vinnie Fisher, Author and Chairman of $45M company

Welcome to the podcast, Vinny Fisher. How are you doing? Great, John, thanks for having me. I, uh, looking forward to the show today. Yeah, I, I gotta tell you, so the first we started out, I, uh, attended one of your workshops that Roland Frasier put up, and that's the uh At the course, and then you gave away these books, which was false prophets and the CEO mindset, and they're great, great reads, and they look so professional too, man. Awesome job. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, really, that's very kind of you. I hope that people read them and they look pretty and so actually, you know, what's funny is, um, you certainly don't make a career being a writer, and I'm thankful to be a bestselling author in a couple categories, but what I, I'm a marketer too, so what what I did is I went and looked at the categories that I would be in and found rep like, what were some of the themes of the bestselling books in those categories? And I modeled coverings around that, which is why then people like, oh, I really like the way this looks. It works. It works. They look really professional. I've seen a lot of books out there that just like, hey man, I didn't spend any time on the cover, and the cover can make or break somebody buying it and put in their uh card for Amazon. Yeah, I'll tell you, I read a, uh, when I started our first book, which is not one of those two, I um I remember reading an article that talked about a stat that 9 out of 10 people absorbing the front and back cover of your book believe they've read the book. That's a big stat. I'm like, whoa, OK. And then 1 out of 10 get into the book, and out of those 1 out of 10, only 1 out of 10 of them finish the book. Well, I'm not gonna pay them 10 cents per page, like I pay my kids to read, so exactly. Or maybe I will if I just paid my daughter $37 for uh what I learned from that is is that you can't really bank. The value of your book on whether or not people go through it all, cause that's really on the actual reader. A lot of people just don't read anymore. We're a sound bite society, so you gotta find some external outline value of what it is you're trying to help people do, and the ones who do it do it and the ones the road is still very few traveled, right? Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about your M&A journey and how that started and where you're at. I mean, yeah, how many, I mean, you talked about this uh on our previous phone call, you said that your or texts, he said, you know, how many businesses did you acquire over the last 20 years? You know, so I'm thankful to have acquired businesses, but one of these people don't realize about me is I'm an M&A lawyer, right? So I've actually started my career as a business attorney and, you know, I learned the operations of businesses because I was brought in as a kind of like that general counsel to companies and probably had the privilege of helping sell somewhere between 50 and 100 of them before I even started being in my Business career of doing it for myself. So, I don't know, north of 100? 100? OK. You've been in the process. I, I got a question for you. I got a buddy that's does bankruptcy. He's a bankruptcy attorney, and 99% of the business he does works for our restaurants. Wow, that what you saw and when you're selling a business. Well, what were the top trends you saw when you saw, you know, you were involved in 50 to 100? So, I live in a little community just south of Cleveland called Akron, Ohio. And so Northeast Ohio as a category would be, you know, it makes up 40% of the GDP of Ohio. The reason I'm telling you this is of that, the majority of the GDP that it produces is in manufacture. So in my early days, the clients I represented would have been large manufacturing firms. And so, that would have been my first run, would have been nothing in hospitality or retail, would have been all in, but I live in a world of consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, and tech-enabled companies. So I play in a different space for the businesses that I do, and so the portfolio we have, we buy, we sell, we curate is in that e-commerce tech enabled the digital space. Yeah, when did you make that transition to this? I mean, uh, M&A tax at a tax lawyer for many years. When did you start making this journey? I mean, that part of that story is in false profits and CO mastermind. Yeah, yeah, I like, let's let everyone in a little bit. Yeah, so I was, uh, as a young lawyer, I, I, I met a whiz bang internet kid who was doing an internet business and needed help, and I was our firm. was helping him with stuff. In the middle of all that, him and his partner broke up with really bad breakup, money stolen, all kinds of junk. Well, when the dust settled, he asked me to be his business partner. And so I started to learn the internet as early as 2006. And I've been off to the run ever since and fell in love with the industry and the category and have been by selling and building ever since in that space since about '07. Yeah, what do you make it, I mean, the buy selling that process of You know, there's two kind of rules, and I've worked this out. Either you are going to bring as much. Profits out of the business as possible, like all the carve-outs, or number two is you just give the seller their price and not worry about it because they, you know, the difference between a 3.0 multiple and a 3.2 multiple on a $5 million business, it's just a couple months. Uh, yeah, I think each deal has its own little um rounding the edges to it, and so I think it depends. Like, if, if you're, if you're putting all the cash up and taking it all out, then what promises have they made to you that, you know, you've made sure are correct. Sometimes. You know, you don't really have a crystal ball, so how do you look backwards? So the difference between 3 and 32 might not be a big deal, but the difference between 3 and 2.0 might be a big deal. You might have paid a whole time multiple greater than what it what the enterprise value really was worth. And so each deal is, you know, tricky like that, you know, there's a reason why only so many businesses have since successful sales transactions, um. You know, one of my most successful deals that we acquired into, we acquired half of a health nutrition company with no money into it, but took over growing it, and we have since quadrupled the size of this business, um, and we invested all of our operations, experience and expertise and taking the whole thing over, you know, we put a lot of risk into the capital resources of that thing. Now we look like rock stars, but in the process, You know, I, I mean, that was a risky proposition. Sometimes just writing the check might be less riskier than putting in all the operational resources. Yeah, was that the, is that the fight tech laboratories? Yeah, yeah. What, what kind of uh product is that? So the reason I asked that because I had talked to uh Joe Valley of Quiet Li, and he's funny, he talks about he had a colon cleansing uh product. Yeah, so supplementation, so we live in the uh elderly care crowd above 40, right? So our two big players there are uh ear ringing, right? Tinnitus, which is a ringing in the ear. So a supplementation around taking around the um outward effects of what, how that impacts your ringing in your ear, irritation, lack of sleep. Uh, and then we have a couple of things like nerve pain, toe. We don't live in super mass market categories, we live in the next niche down and, uh, probably the market leader in 3 or 4 of those products. That company's probably gonna do. 45 million in revenue, when we took it over was doing about 15 million in revenue. Wow, that's amazing. And uh That because of what? What did you look at, say, hey, we, it can be 45 when you saw it or just a it was a great opportunity the guy wanted out or they needed help. So I'm, that is what I'm trying to get at with a lot of people I talked to, it's like, why are you buying this business? I mean, what do you bring to the table to get it to 45, like, that's what you see it. Yeah, so I've had the privilege to scale before this 3 businesses into the mid 8 figure category, so I knew what it took to get there. OK, but we know the health and nutrition space. We had already had one of our own in the mid 8 figures that we ended up selling. And so we knew the space. And so he sought us out as an opportunity. We didn't seek him out. So this deal was knowing that we could help get it there. Uh, and then when we got kind of like expectations, right? You know, we took the risk. The beginning was hard. That 1st, 14 months kind of fixing the mess was, uh, it, it, it's everyone wants to be excited about where it is now, but no one ever wants to talk about that 1st 18 months. Yeah, was it profitable when you took it, started in on it? Razor thin, razor thin? Was it, did you come in as a non-controlling interest, under 50% or higher? So we have 50% of the company, but I, no matter what the equity looks like, if we're coming in and taking control, we have full control. Yeah, so that was kind of a Marcus Simona, you know, even though if I own 5%, I'm in 100% control, right? There's a reason the business has got issues. We need to fix those. You have multiple chiefs. So our team, we put one chief in place. I'm the chair. Chairman of the board. I don't actually have an operating role, but our, we, we, we quickly put our own COO in and um the other business partner would have been in charge of all the kind of back office finances of it, and we went and did what we do, which is once an offer, once offers are converting, your problem isn't it. The problem is the business itself and its operations and we went and address all of those things. Yeah, when I'm just curious about the relationship with this guy. Obviously he was looking for your help. Was he also, did he take a back role and just start saying, hey, yes, whatever you say suggest we do, or was there a lot of head. Knocking while you did that process. You know, the funny thing with like coming into a business deal, even that that deal is no different than any other deal. You, you create habits as a leader, how you run things. So George is his name, who's the other owner. Uh, would have had habits of being the guy who solved and created all of the problems in the business. So he was used to doing everything himself. So we had to work through a position and transition time where he would just run fast and make decisions versus like putting structure and systems in place. And so, that's why I said that 1st 1218 months was tough. Like, he'd go out and make a bunch of decisions that weren't necessarily good. Or bad, but just decisions and some of them good, some of them not so good. And, and so we had to work through that and learn how to be each other's partners and trust each other. And so then there was a guy like me who stood on the wall for the three partners and said, Hey, this is the way we're gonna get there and keep reminding them of how we get there and, uh, and, and, and, you know, and trust each other. We went in. In this knowing we could trust each other and so I'm thankful to have been down the road with a large teams, and so I was able to guide both of them through it. So, uh, and, and here we sit, uh, later with very profitable company, um, that I think it's gonna hit 9 figures. Wow, I have $45 million. Uh, how many boys do you have? Uh, 27, 27. That's, do you outsource a lot of that or just words that they're all, they're all full time on our team, yeah. And is it uh is that through Amazon also, or just strictly through your website or a mixture of both? We have very little Amazon. We use Amazon as a more of a pickup strategy than we do as a primary strategy. Uh, one, because of our, our talents.2, quite honestly, we probably are ones who buy into the theory that if they change their algorithm, do you have a business? And so, um, we like like the marketplace, but it's not a primary tool for us. Yeah, you know, the, the reason I asked that, I was buying some uh supplements, just some whey protein and the number one. Uh, protein seller on on Amazon comes up to the Amazon provider. Amazon makes it, right? It's private label Amazon. What I encourage people, if you actually have your own channels, and you have your own shopping cart, and you have your own way to attract customers, Amazon's a great pickup strategy. So, you know, if you follow direct response statistics, you know, to get an offer to convert, you're less than 2%, right? So 1.84% of all offers convert. Let's assume you're competitive and you have one of those, then Of all of your conversions, 2 out of every, uh, 2% actually make it through the order. So, 2 out of every 100 get through all the way through your shopping cart. That means 98 people fall off along the way somewhere. And so Amazon's a great pickup strategy for some of those 98, and you can add 10% lift to your drop off, which means you You're picking up another 4 customers through your drop-off experience. And so that's a big deal when you're looking at those numbers. So we use things like Amazon, uh, and other marketplaces as a pickup strategy. Yeah, interesting. What kind of business would you, are you looking to acquire more businesses in that uh nutraceutical to supplement space? Uh, yeah, we, you know, uh, we're, we're actively, we're actively in I guess pre LOI of what we call tkins, uh, there's a company that's got a product that I think we like. It's a more of a light isomal, and if it works out, I think it makes sense for them to um to come in underneath us and Uh, I think, yeah, we're, we're, we're looking at that, you know, we're, I think if you're in the buy-sell category, you're always, um, looking to buy and looking to sell. So somewhere along the way, even fight age will be acquired by somebody and whether or not we're known for the ride with them or they. Completely take us out. It's a function of math and opportunity. So when you're in both sides of it, you're, you, you, you've gotta, you've got to be growing a business to the point where you'd be willing to buy it from yourself. Or why would you think anyone else would be willing to buy it? Yeah, yeah, well, it seems like that would be an attractive target for what you have right now, $45 million for a private equity firm. Absolutely. Uh, yeah, I mean, I probably don't want to get into too many details about kind of like some of our, um, bedside folks, but, you know, fight Age has got some wonderful opportunities in front of it. Uh, and so I think before long we might have some other capital partners and some big things ahead. So, uh, yeah, I'm I'm excited for that team, for its future, and I'm really honored to be its chairman of the board and what I offered to that. So I, I, I love what they're doing over there. Do you, um, do you, are you an employee of that company as chairman of paid, or do you take a distribution of profits, or how, how, how does that, are you just waiting for your equity to grow at in, you know, whatever 5 years when when it's sold? I think there's a massive mistake in the marketplace that people don't get paid twice. I think this, I think this idea that you forgo profit for some future equitable payout is an unfortunate, uh, thing in business. So I, I believe in the philosophy of getting paid twice. So I believe we should run a business to be profitable, and because of that, it should have a net asset value or a market share value that someone else would want. So, we, we, we do pay, the, the company pays a stipend for me to be the chairman of the board. Uh, so I get paid to serve in that role. Uh, in addition, I'm also a partner of the business along with other partners. We get paid on the bottom line, right? There's an expectation to get paid and then later on, when someone buys it from us, hopefully we get paid again. Yeah, so that's actually 3 times. Uh, well, you know, someone's gonna be someone's gonna, I'm serving in a role there. Someone's gonna serve in that role, whether it's me or someone else. So I don't know that to do your job is part of your equitable event as being an owner. Uh, so I think that's just. Serving in a role and so I take my job seriously as the chairman of the board, but I'm not an employee of the company. That's a, a board's position. Um, and, you know, someday if they decide they want someone else in that role, uh, I think the uh ownership team could make that decision as well. Yeah, fantastic. I gotta ask you about siteTrust. Now why did it, how does siteru, how did you get involved in this? This sounds like a 100% software where it just checks the credentials of the software, the IP address. What, how did you get involved with that? I created it. You created it. Oh, OK. Yeah. How many users does it have now? Oh, you know, so we've parked some of that. It, it's great. I love what it does. I, I actually, when I originally started that, I own a web hosting company, and we had all the big data analytics flowing through and so we built the bones of that thing, but I always envisioned that one of my kiddos in our legal world would take that and run with it. So it's kind of Sitting there incubating being used as a free tool, and if one of my two oldest want to jump on that, kind of letting it there be like um open source, and if we ever decide to go build some bones around it, I kind of have the tech enabled piece for one of them to run with it. Yeah, so let's talk about uh fully accountable because this is The service that you do for, and you're strictly working with e-commerce firms, right? So we say consumer package goods, e-commerce and tech-enabled companies, right? So we live in that digital world. Yeah. And it's the size of the company should be, doesn't have to be, you know, like your ideal customer is. 2 million, 3 million. If you're doing at least a million in revenue as a product company, then, then you're too, then you're not, you're pre-ready for us. You need, you have other issues you need to worry about. But I'd say our sweet spot, uh, starts nor, I mean, every company has its things, but I'd say the fastest growing sector for us is between 3 and 20 million. Uh, if you look at our client base, but we serve anywhere from 1 million to 50 million. We have a couple of unicorns that are doing north of 50 million too in the nine figure range, but they kind of grew up with us, and we serve certain components in their business, and so they just don't want to get rid of us. Yeah. How, how does that work? that you're providing this service, which is definitely in one lane, but you've got expertise to grow a $45 million company and plus it's like, oh well, if you need us for anything else, you know, does that always, do you guys have that conversation with uh lots of your customers or at some point? No, we don't. So I, we, we, we own a portfolio of businesses, right? Those are they stand on their own. So like fight age and even inbox experts and Uh, siteru and like they would buy services from fully accountable, fairly, no different than anybody else. So that's true, right? We don't just kind of double dip and provide our stuff. It's a fair arms length transaction, so that they get treated like a client, um, but we don't really dangle fully account about there for other stuff. We just, we just wanna, each business needs to stand on its own feet. Yeah, yeah, that's it's kind of where I was getting it cause it sounds like you're you're you're in your lane and like. Uh, you stay in the lane and do your best about that. So what does inbox experts do? I obviously it's a very descriptive name, if you, you can manage inbox type information and then your responses because if you're in marketing, you know, the faster you respond, the more likelihood of getting a sale. Yeah, so it's all third-party monetization. So, well, they, that company does list management for companies that have large email uh uh subscriptions, but primarily, that's uh more of a lead gen so that the relationship that's really built is third party, which is non-branded mailings of your asset list to other promotions. So help you make up revenue that you otherwise aren't making as a company. Gotcha. I mean, that's uh J Abraham's 3 immutable laws, so they're not doing that, they're missing out on profits. Yeah, so lots of businesses in our world aren't doing that. So we're just thankful to be in a position where that team who does that, uh, you know, kind of built its own little proprietary process of how they get that done really well, and, uh, that's like one of their value adds as to how to offer that service to other people. Yeah, and how did uh Roland? Was Roland working with you before or knew you before before he started asking you to coach and on the calls, the epic calls? Yeah, so Roland and I, we were, uh, we were one of the original classmates of this thing called War Room that Perry and Ryan created. Gosh, it was early as 2009, 2010, and so Roland and I is the only lawyers in that group, uh, kind of became fast friends and, and I really love intellect and Roland. In every room is the smartest guy, right? I, I took to Roland quickly and realized I just loved being around his intellect. And we both dream up business ideas all the time. And so he, I think, became friendly with me because of my depth and acumen of dealing with a lots of businesses, both as a lawyer and growing, uh, my own. So, we just became buddies. And then along the way, started looking at deal flow and kind of send people each other's way and You know, it's, it's just been a relationship, you know, that we've cultivated and we quite thankful to have that with him. Yeah, are you still in the war room, mastermind? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. How much value do you place on uh just synergizing, talking to other people that are successful and working businesses? You know, I think the reason I ask that is like, you know, every time I talk to Adam, he goes, man, he, Adam will tell you, yeah, I, I didn't have the money. I paid for it, but it's made me 10 times back. So I, I, I think that, you know, one of the benefits to being in a, in a group or to be accessible to people who are doing big things is they help you think bigger. And sometimes you got to pay to be in that room, and I think it's worth the investment. I don't think enough leaders spend money investing in themselves and helping to be and think bigger than they currently are. And so I'm thankful for groups like that that allow me to look under the hood and be around women and men who are doing big things, and then I'm able to have the permission to dream bigger for the things I do. Yeah. I, I, I love it. I'm in a mastermind with, of course, the Epic Group, then also a mastermind with Alan Weiss on the consulting. I just, they do get you to think bigger cause you could spend all your time focusing on one little things, and they just give you this different perspective you're like, oh my God, that was just a complete waste of time. Yeah, I mean, I know that everyone doesn't have access to Roland maybe the way I do, but I mean, I'll be in one dinner conversation over a glass of wine, sharing kind of some abstract ideas, and he'll throw out an idea or two that are different than I'm thinking, and the next thing I know I'm like, Why wasn't I thinking like that? You know, it's it's amazing how one conversation compressed with some of the right people can unlock uh things you're thinking about and, and, and help you clear up maybe a wrong strategy with a right strategy. So I think of that book, good strategy, bad strategy. Well, being around people who are thinking, even if they're thinking of other businesses, can help you clear up strategy, and so I love that part of it. Just a different perspective. Are you in any any other masterminds, kind of war room stuff? Yeah, I used to operate and, uh, curate my own, and then I kind of stopped that because of our portfolio of companies and our teams that I needed to invest in. But I'm a, I'm in, um, Founder's mastermind with Max Finn. I'm in War Room, obviously. And I like kind of a, um, I, uh, uh, a facility. or guests and some masterminds where I'm kind of the old guy now, like Roland. And so I get invited into these groups, uh, to kind of be somebody that like, uh, helps to offer value to the group. So I got a handful of those that I go to, that I wouldn't say I'm a card-carrying member, but I'm, I'm, I'm a regular in, in the group. Yeah. Now, your kids are following you in the entrepreneurial world. My oldest is. Yeah. How old are they? Sophie is uh 20. She, she is actually launched a successful not for profit, uh, called Stop the Demand where she's doing uh kind of influencer work in human trafficking, and that thing is just doing quite well. Just opened up a store to kind of self liquidate and fund costs for that. And in the process, she decided that she wanted to open up an agency where she's doing social and traffic management for other people to kind of help provide uh liquidity for her as she goes into law school. Wow. How much time did she spend with you to, to hear, you know, whatever the conversation is at the dinner table? She's, that girl's, she's a beast, man. She knows how to just constantly be around dad and ask her questions. She's like, Dad, people like, pay a lot of money to be around you. I get you all the time. I'm not, I'm gonna not forget that. She's always, I constantly asking questions. Now, we have certain parts of our personality that are similar, so we're always kinda knocking heads a little as I'm kind of pushing her to critically think. But that little Kiddo is, is on it, man. I, I wish I had uh some of the tenacity that she has at her age. I wish at 20 I had a better view of myself and not some of the wounds of shame because she's a beast and uh she's she's doing great. It's a blank slate. I kind of, you know, I've had those thoughts myself, like, man, if I started out entrepreurly, just starting a business or buying a business when I was at 20. Versus much, much later. I mean, think about where you would be. I mean, just in a different category of Maslow's hierarchy and needs. So I, I spent a lot of my time as a result of that and where I am in my career, you know, Deb and I, we've, we've probably as poor kids have out kicked all kinds of cover. So we're, we're this like legacy phase of our life, John, like, where I'm building up uh other leadership. And so I'm in this like subversive phase of my life. Like, what's happened is like, I'm stopped trying to win stages and put an influential light on me and I'm building the teams around me as well as legacy of leadership. Yeah. That's right, so you're being a mentor to others. Is that, I mean, it's official or is that just being in groups like Epic or or World War? Oh yeah, you can't hire me to be your mentor, you can't like hire me as a coach. I do that for our organizational stuff, right? So all my time goes to my executive teams, as well as uh to the young people in our organizations. Yeah, yeah, that's a beautiful statement. That's uh given back. Well, I'll tell you something. You, you, we've only got so many numbered days as our buddy Kent Clothier says. So, you know, uh, if, if one of the metrics is money, then, you know, I feel like, yes, that's, that's one of them. There's other ways to measure wealth, and I'm, I'm discovering and investing in some of those as well. Yeah, where are you at in this stage? Do you feel like uh cashing out or you just want to keep going is the way you're going right now? I'm, I'm too youthful in my mind to think I'm in this situation that cash out feels a little bit like a retirement phase of life. So I'm probably a little youthful for that. Plus, I have children that are recycling into adulthood, so I don't have as many downward constraints of little people. So I've got a lot of energy for business. Um, I, I'm excited about the next 1520 years. To be honest with you. Uh, I, I, I have my health, my energy, my creativity. So I'm not any, I, I want to recognize value as to when a business is appropriate for cycling, but I, I'm as much in as I am, uh, not in, in some of those things. So, uh, I'm, I'm having a blast, actually. Yeah. Hey, I got a question for you that you may be able to answer. Because of your expertise. Are you familiar with, uh, Peter Thiel and that recent news about him having a Roth IRA with $5 billion in it, because he, it's self-directed, and he was able to put some PayPal and some of their Plantier and some of his Facebook stuff in it, and it just taken off. You know anything about that? No, but I know the strategy. When I was a young lawyer, I was the one advising on that strategy, so I'm not one bit surprised, and, you know, uh, Deb and I would have assets that are structured like that, just not as substantial as he was able to pull off, but totally love the strategy. So, not fami familiar with the specific story, but I understand the strategy. What's the question? Yeah, no, I was just curious if you were familiar with how to do that, could you do, uh, you know, acquire a business and put that into your IRA? Absolutely. So, um, really, I, I, I like a structure a little better than that. I, as, you know, so when I look at our overall master structure, you hear things like family back office, right? So, Deb and I have our own family limited partnership, right? And inside our limited partnership, we would have a structure where our children have a legacy trust as one of the partners of that. And so we would be investing in uh uh assets that we're trying to grow and trying to build generational legacy with our family. In addition, Deb and I would use things like self-directed and retirement benefits as a way to defer taxation. All of these are deferral mechanisms and how do you grow wealth without paying tax, right? And so I, I would look at that as one of the categories and it'd be pretty shameful for a tax lawyer not to be thinking about those things, right? So, uh, I, I, uh, I do a lot. that. So, real, real like generational wealth building uh requires you to uh to head on tax deferral strategies. uh, Warren Buffett likes to call it a compounding interest, the magic of. I totally agree, and I'm thankful to have been not only educated with the opportunity to practice it for myself. That's beautiful. So what's next for you? Uh, more books, uh. Just, you know, we love the coaching stuff on Epic for sure, but, uh, acquiring other companies just I know you got an LOI or you're working on it. Uh, what's that I'm staring at it right here actually it was before our call, um. Uh, let me, let me go back to this. How much Uh, uh, energy do you direct to making sure that LOI is a conceptual agreement that in place because I put all my energy right here, John. This is the business deal. Everything else past this is, uh, is a framework of executing on that business deal. So I live on top of this. A lot of people sign these things and blow them off and then put their energy into the asset or stock purchase agreement. I put a lot of My energy right here. And so, because this is the playbook for what the deal is gonna look like. I, I'm in agreement, man. If you talked to, uh, a friend of mine, Joe Valley at uh Qu I I'll just talk like if, if you don't have it in your eye, LOI and you're not talking about it, it's gonna be up for renegotiation at Leonard Point. Yeah, the only thing that should be up for renegotiation is when you get back your quality of earnings report, and whether or not your targets are right and where your seller discretionary earnings are right and your target and multiple are right. That's all valuation stuff, but that's gotta get figured out as you go. If you spelled out how to do that in your LOI, then everything else is a function of, of an understanding. And if it's not in here, then I would argue, uh, that probably represents. The immaturity of, of deal flow, and that's, you know, we've all made mistakes on it. It's not like you gotta be perfect on it, but I, I, uh, I care about those words cause those words, we're gonna have to fight about them later if we don't discuss them now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you spent a lot of time, how much time do you spend with as the chairman of the board of that $45 million dollar company? About an hour a month. Uh, that's amazing. God, I remember like 3 years ago when I was trying to sell my e-commerce company, which was a hearing aid company, so I know a lot about tinnitus. My brother has it, uh, it's kind of sucks cause he's really loud in the morning he came up to visit me and he was really loud in the morning. You just can't hear what he's doing, right? Uh echo in his ear, and so yeah, the rigging just like yeah, um. But when I tried to sell it, you know, I, it looked OK in some of the processes, but when I put it up to, I think it was Empire Phillippers and through quiet Light, they said, well, how much time do you spend on that for a week? And they said, I told like 40, 50, it's like, that's too much. You got a lot of businesses out here where people have systems in place where they're spending an hour a week, so you need to fix that, which is all about uh putting the right people in the right places, putting systems in place. Yeah, you know, you can't, you can't, you have to accept some of the consequences that go along with having more than one job, and I I don't, I've learned through some businesses that I've built and broke that you can't run everything. And, um, in, in my overconfidence, some might call arrogance, I thought I could do and run more things and be the lever puller. Well, the more lever puller you are, uh, the more likelihood that there's greater single points of failure in that business. And so I work real hard. Maybe it's because I'm inherently lazy, maybe for other reasons, but I, I wanna build up teams that are running. who care and wake up as much or more than I do to the going concern and it running. And so I'm thankful we've been able to do that. How, how did you discover that breaking point where you can't do all of that or make all those decisions? I, I actually, I openly discussed in the CEO's mindset, I broke that company that I wrote about, but I realized that I was the lever puller, so I broke a 40+ million dollar company, um, learning. I got a PhD in learning that, uh, you need to grow a business beyond your shadow. And I was the lever puller in that business. And when I stepped away, that's what broke it. And so, uh, it was an expensive lesson, and that's why I wrote a book to see if hopefully I can help people make a less expensive versions, uh, uh, of that same mistake. Yeah, you remember about that story about Michael Dell, like, like, uh, when he was a $50 million company and somebody came into him asking for, get a refund on the Coke machine. And he goes, why are you asking me? He goes, well, you're the only one with the keys to the Coke machine. And he tells that story and is Michael Dell direct from Dell. Yeah, I, I get it. And so I stepped away and handed the CEO's roll off to somebody else, and he just wasn't prepared for it, right? And that's on me. That's why I broke that business. And, um, uh, I, I'm thankfully, I, without doing that though, I wouldn't be nearly the uh leader I am today. Yeah. Well, I look, I appreciate you writing the books, the CEO mindset, the false prophets. I enjoyed them, and I, I know you could have a lot of other things to do, so I appreciate you being on this podcast today. Vinny, thank you so much, sir. Uh, John, thanks for having me, buddy. And, you know, uh, if there's anything I can do for you, and if any of your listeners want, You know, they can just write in a request. We can create a way for them to get all of our resources. We want to help more people. So, you know, if you wanna create a fully accountable.com/sh you name it John or uh name of the show, we could create a place where people can sign up and get our resources that You know, we don't want them to pay for it, but we want to help more people. So if that's valuable to them, we'd love to do that. Yeah, so I remember having a conversation with somebody on your staff, and I don't remember who that was, but I will talk to them and put an offer in, you know, whatever post I do about. That'd be great. We would love to do that and help more people and, you know, if that does, great, you know, I Uh, whether or not I'm building up crowns in heaven or whether or not it leads to more workflow, all of it is at the end of the day. We just, we don't really believe, you know, hiding information that can help people win. If our mission is to double the profit margin of 10,000 companies, we're not gonna do that just by our service. We're gonna do it by giving you all the tools to do it yourself. Yeah, so where are you at with that goal? 10,000 businesses. You know, we're somewhere short of 500, and so when we get the 1000, uh, paying clients, we're gonna be this huge thing and we're still only 10th of the way there. So the other part of that is helping businesses do it themselves. And so they read our books, take our stuff and do it. I, I don't have a real way to track that part of the metric, but I gotta believe it's hundreds if not thousands, we've helped at this point. Beautiful. Well, I love it. I'll put that offer in any post I do on this. I really, I appreciate the time you spend with us. Yeah buddy, thanks for having me. All right, thanks. Take care. Bye.