Over 75 Acquisitions Gary Pudles CEO of AnswerNet.com 674 employees $100M to $500M in Revenue

All right. Welcome to the top M&A entrepreneurs. I have a guest today is uh Gary A Puddles. Gary has been involved in over 75 acquisitions. He runs a company called Answer uh Net, Jesus, present and hosted fantastic TPV.com, telemarketing.com, employment settingPros.com, winner of smart CEO of best run companies, uh, Ernst and Young, entrepreneur of the Year, uh, Antoinette was also on the 21st spot on the Inc 500, uh, so he also teaches at Wharton School of Business. He's been at Forbes, Wall Street Journal. Uh, it's pretty cool. So welcome, Gary. It's great to be here, John. Thanks for the invite. Yeah, so I gotta go back all the way back how you started, and I watched a couple of your other podcast interviews where you just started. I gotta tell you, where you said you were trying to buy these telecommunications company. I had no money, no job. Uh, I had a wife, two kids, and a mortgage, and like, uh, if I didn't get this job, if I didn't buy this company by this certain time, I had to get a job. So, I'd love to go back and talk to that, you know, very first start. And he goes, Why did you want to buy a company and run a company? I mean, what was in you that that did that? That's, that's a great question, John. The reason I wanted to buy and run a company is because I had the most fun in my career prior to uh starting my company when I was running um a uh franchise of the Muzak system down in Washington DC and I had a, I had a boss who was the owner of this franchise and, and it was interesting. I started during law school as the collections manager and law clerk, and after I left to get a real job, their local council passed away. And I started representing them and I hadn't even passed the bar yet, so I'm working as a, as a law clerk bringing work into this small little law firm. Then I, I get a job in, in private practice and I'm doing private practice and the uh president of the company passes away and the VP who I become really close with, you know, basically comes to me and I, I'll tell you, he took, takes me out to, uh, takes me out to lunch at the university Club in Washington. Starts complaining that the men can't swim nude anymore, and I think, I just remember thinking I never want to swim nude with you. Where is this gear like, where is this going? Yeah, so, but he made me an offer and he basically, he slid a piece of paper across the table from me and, and that was the beginning of my business and entrepreneurial journey. 3 months, 33 weeks after I got to this company, he had gotten ill and he um and I found myself running a business pretty much day to day. He was my mentor, he was my friend, but you know, he'd come into the office and hook himself up to dialysis and do dialysis right in the office. So the, um, so, so I did that and then, you know, when we sold the company, uh, we, we, you know, we, so we, so I had done acquisitions with him in that business and I had done acquisitions as a, as a young attorney and now. I had gotten involved in uh a pioneer, a pioneer preference winner. So after I left, I wound up with a company that had, uh, um, that had, uh, won a pioneer preference from the FCC. We built the 1st, 1st PCS, which is a wireless system, digital wireless system. Then I got involved in a real estate company as the general counsel. Again, acquisitions and acquiring leases and doing transactions was my whole life. I moved to Philadelphia for a job and I loved what I did, but I just didn't fit in the company, you know, there were good smart people. There was just, it just wasn't the right fit for me. So um I often say, did I quit or did I get fired on that day? I'll just say I collected unemployment. We'll move on from there. But there I was in January of '98 in a town that I didn't know a lot of people and I I, I, I didn't want to go back to work for somebody. I realized that if I was going to work for somebody, I wanted to work for myself. So I didn't want to start from scratch because while I had some savings, um, I had a wife, two kids, and a mortgage, as you pointed out, and I realized that, that I was going to be happiest driving. Driving my own business, um, and so what I did was I wrote down all the things let me ask you about that. What did you see in the businesses that you were working for as a W-2 that you just go, yeah, I, I could do this better, or I just don't like answering to somebody or what was it? So, so the culture of the firm that I was at before was, we were bringing people on, we were That we could afford, pushing them to the highest level that we could push them and then replacing them with someone better as the firm did better. That was sort of the philosophy. But for me it wasn't really wasn't about that. It was about, I've always believed, I'm, I'm a, I, I love telecommunications and communications. I love data. I love people management, and I like business to business services. I never I wanted to be around somebody who was, um, I didn't want to be around people who were at the worst of their life, and I'll never forget, you know, I was looking at everything. So I'm looking at all different kinds of businesses and at one point I looked at a, at a, uh, preschool franchise and my ex-wife started laughing like she didn't just laugh, gig go ha ha. Started belly laughing, saying there was no way that I was going to be happy running a business with a bunch of children running around, and she was absolutely right. So I needed to find something that had recurring revenue. So one of the themes in my career was recurring revenue, recurring revenue. The second theme was technology. The call center and the answering service businesses that I got into, like the Muzak business I got into before. And the uh telecommunity and the wireless system, you know, the wireless system uh company that I, I was with that was ultimately bought by Sprint, isn't it part of Sprint, now part of T-Mobile, right? So what I've been involved in up to that point in my whole career was not disruptive. Changes in uh traditional businesses, but I was really involved in helping uh traditional businesses change their model to fit new realities. So going back to Muzak during my Muzak days we had private radio, we only had 2 channels. We had 1 channel, music, then 2. Well then we had 5, and now they had, you know, then the internet made it easier and easier, so we had to change the model we were working from. Didn't change the business. We're still providing sound systems, doing, doing sound contracting work, things like that, but we now had, uh, we now have to change the model and the economic model changed. Same thing with wireless. I'll never forget being in McLean, Virginia and, and somebody saying, you know, we have two cell phone carriers and, and they work fine and they got on their phone to talk to their spouse and their call dropped. And, and, and it was, I couldn't have written or scripted it any better. So, uh, you know, the fact was that the, that ubiquitous coverage was really critical at that time, um, and you know, we always likened it to imagine trying to build the highway system in America without the right of condemnation. Right, that's what we were faced with in trying to build these wireless networks. And again, we weren't turning the whole world upside down, but we were changing the face of wireless. I remember sitting at a Howard County, Maryland zoning meeting, no town council meeting where I had my laptop and I was going at 9600 bod wirelessly, which, you know, which is, you know, for, for guys of our maturity. Um, you know, that's when, you know, that's when you were here. Your AOL sound, OK, and I was sitting, yeah, and I was sitting in this meeting and people thought it was the coolest thing. Now I could maybe, maybe pull up one page every 10 minutes, but it was still the coolest thing and the same thing happened. In, in, in, you know, when I went to, when I came here into this business, you know, I bought a company that wasn't even where the agent stations weren't even attached to that, that fad, what was it called? Oh yeah, the internet. So it was, yeah, yeah, so, so the whole idea was I, I often say that I'm like the slumdog millionaire of call centers because my wireless experience, my music and data experience, my legal experience, you know, all of those added up so that when I got into the call center business, I understood it at a visceral level. That you could, you, you're putting like a pieces of puzzle together and you say, I know which way the industry is trending possibly. Exactly. So, so for example, they used to be mainframe type computer systems and everybody was attached to this mainframe. Well, as I remember those, the dummy terminals, right? So as, as you know, as we started putting agents on the internet, all of a sudden like there was a free dealer locator.com. So all of a sudden I had free dealer locator software that I could go to and I could leverage the internet. And, and so what we ultimately figured out, because by then at that time, originally, everything was premise based. Now as we connected these, as we acquired businesses and connected them to the internet, I worked with a guy, in fact, I worked with uh, ultimately I worked with a guy who I don't know if you may know his name, Jamie Siminoff, the founder of Ring. So, uh, Shaq invested in him. Yeah, well, Shaq actually was, Shaq was actually a, um, uh, sponsor as well, and we connected them with National Night Out here in Bala Kinwood, Pennsylvania, and that's how Shaq and, and Ring got involved. With uh the National Night Out organization. So it's really some really cool stories, but you know, Jamie was the president of a telecom company and, and had built some routing technology so I could route calls on a single for a single customer to multiple call centers and I use the internet to collect all of the data. And it made my little telephone answering services capable of doing so much more work. So we started in the traditional telephone answering service and It wasn't about what I saw that I could do to make it bigger or better. I understood, I, I, I like to say I understood Gezinta. What I understood was if this Gazinta that. And that goes out of this. I can make almost anything. I thought you were saying a Jewish term and I get like, no, I like like, no I get goes into that goes into that, yeah, this goes into that. And by the way, same thing, you know, we operate today. What we do is we live in a world we call the business of any, any communication path, voice, text, email, chat, you know, WhatsApp, any of those messenger. Connected to any business process software, accounting, CRM data collection, whatever, whatever system, anytime, anywhere on any device. So I've always had sort of a bigger vision. The other thing I learned early in my career as I was thinking about acquiring businesses is that. Every business can be managed at a high level focusing on 6 numbers, 6 numbers, 6 numbers. Now, and the call center business is probably 5, but 4 to 6 numbers is all any entrepreneur needs to focus on. Now, the devil's in the detail, of course, but what I mean by that is when you're looking at any business to acquire, you want to understand the big drivers of that business. Now I was very lucky. I, I During my journey to buy my first company in the space, I met a man whose company I would later buy 23 years later, but I. No, Bill, Bill was the first guy who believed in me, but this was, this was another guy named Tony, and Tony handed me an analysis of his business and 3 other companies in the space done by his daughter's Columbia MBA class. So it gave me all of the driving metrics, all of the understandings of the business. So when I ultimately did meet Bill, who by the way, was a friend of Tony's, when I ultimately I did meet Bill, um, who was one of the sharpest numbers guys I've ever met in my life. I mean, you know, it's pretty public that he and I had a pretty nasty falling out at the end, and that's fine. I wouldn't be where I am if I, if it weren't for him, if I'm honest, but this guy could look at a financial statement and it spoke to him like a contract speaks to me. I, I, I am in the same feeling that like if you, the Warren Buffett says, hey, send me your financials, and there's a story there. Right. Well, the story, where is this going? Yeah. So many people, and this is one of the things, one of the many things I learned, um, so many people don't understand that numbers tell the story. They tell the story and, and one of the challenges that that entrepreneurs often have is finance people think if I put all the numbers on the piece of paper. I don't necessarily have to order them in a way that anybody's gonna understand because I understand them, so everybody's gonna understand them. Well, that's just not the case. So, so, you know, to your point, you know, it was the, you know, the 4 numbers in the call center business are people, right? People represent the largest expense, so people would be benefits and, and salary and, and all of those pieces. Technology costs, right? How much are you spending for internet, for telephony, for, you know, for the technology, because in the call center space, your cost of goods sold are people time and system time. That's what you are selling, OK? And then, um, you know, so that's, those are your two biggest, then your sales and marketing expense and your facility expense. Well, during pandemic, it's been a very interesting time because Facilities have sort of gone away. We still have some, but in many cases, facilities have gone away, but wages have gone way up, and you know that has been, that has been a stressor. So when I'm looking at a business to buy, I'm looking at, you know, a number of things, and again, very simple, starts with a uh uh uh a multiple of cash flow. So you're gonna start with a general multiple of cash flow or IEDA. And there, there's nothing. If somebody came to you with a communications company, you'd say, look, here's the cops. This is what I'm gonna pay. You know they do it there's no above it, no below it and goes, I don't, you know, even if you have some kind of spiffy, uh, you know, software, it's just, it doesn't make, yeah. Well, there's 65, you know, there are 65,000 call centers in America. 4.5% of the US population work in call centers. And And the average call center is not that 600 or 1000 seat place, 75 seats. So if you think, do the math, 75 times 65,000, you know, you, you realize very quickly that you're talking about 4.5% of the population. call centers do all kinds of really cool things. Yeah, I mean that's where Verizon or Geico or all of it, yeah, now technology is here and that's a, that is a big thing, but the what that's gonna do is, is just drive your percentage of, of, of, you know, your, just drives your ebida up or down and, and the technology firms a little different in terms of value, but the, but to your point, you know. As one of the things again, being who I am, I started out as a, as a collector, a collections and bankruptcy lawyer in Maryland. So having, having been able to get that as a background, doing, you know, buying turnaround service businesses made all the sense of the world, and, you know, I'm sure that many of the people in your audience, uh, struggle because um when they go out to start a business, everybody thinks they have to start from scratch. Well, if you are a uh a parent or you have, you know, you're not a young person, you know, how many of our friends, John, you know, reach their late 40s and early 50s and find themselves out of their jobs. Oh, that's today, that's even more. Who's employable after 55, like trying to find a job. And so there are tons, there are hundreds of thousands of businesses for sale. My favorite site is a site called and this is where I first saw the telephone answering service was biz byell.com, BIZ. Yeah, there's a guy that just bought that. He just, yeah, that was really where I got, I started my entre. Apreneurial journey on that site. That's where I started my entrepreneurial journey back in '98 when I, you know, when I lost that job and I needed to, to get to my next place. So it's, um, you know, when we think about, um, when we think about that, you know, we talked about, um, in, in your emails, you talked about, you know, how do you finance it and how do you, how do you, how do you do that? Well, I was very lucky, um, you know, I, I. I read about this guy Bill, and I told you about him, but what I, what I ultimately, my first step was I was gonna buy them and go out and raise money, right? I was, that was my plan. I was that's what everybody, everybody that pings me on LinkedIn says, hey, I need to raise money to buy this. And, and that was my original plan and I was very lucky. I met, I met um a bunch of people, but the, the, the, the two people who really sort of set me on my way. One was a woman. The name of Liz Lambert, who ultimately and she was a, she's been a banker around Philadelphia. I haven't seen her in years, but she had done a big tele a big telecommunications deal, so she understood cash flow lending, OK, because nobody's gonna lend, you know, you can't, you can't, uh, um, securitize people, you know, in, in some places they call it slavery, so you can't securitize people. So you have to, you know, you have to have a bank. Who understands service company lending or what's called air ball lending, and she worked for a bank that was run by a guy named Kirk Wiikoff, who's very, very famous in the Philadelphia banking circles and, and the non-bank subsidiaries were run by a guy named Steve Hobman, who's now a principal in New Spring Ventures, which is a very well known uh uh firm here in, here in Philadelphia, and for whatever reason, you know, They believed in me, like they were really behind me and I had gotten a company under term sheet and we were gonna put it into the non-banking subsidiary of the bank, and that was my original plan. Well, when I got into due diligence. Let me ask you about that. And did you, how much did you want to own of that? I mean, what was it, what did it look like on the cap table? You 50, 60, so the deal was we were gonna go dollar for dollar and then we were gonna carve out a piece of equity for management. Uh, and I think we were going to do 20 or 25% for management and then for the rest of the 75%, they'll, they would let me put as much of the money up I, I wanted to, and they were going to put up the rest. That was, that was the plan. So whatever we put up in equity, that was the deal that you got to put skin in the game to get yeah, yeah, but I was gonna put in a little bit and I would get, you know, I get enough equity and you know that was still better. The no equity and that was my plan. Well, that plan didn't work out, you know, what's the old saying? Every time you think you have a plan, God sits up there and laughs at you. Well, yeah, punched in the face. Yeah, so I'm, I'm, I'm now, I'm now months in, as you've talked about, you know, I'm now months in and I, you know, I lost my job in January and my, my ex-wife, and I had an agreement that if I didn't have a company by August 1, uh, you know, I was. Going to go out and look for a real job. Uh, so, um, did you really mean that when you said that, you know, look, I, I entrepreneurs have this problem with this addiction. He goes, no, I just do the next one, right? It's the next one. I get at a golf shot or something. See, but at that point, I wasn't really yet an entrepreneur because I had never, the real to me, the real definition of an entrepreneur is one who takes risks. OK, so I had been with a startup, uh, probably the best funded startup in the, um, in, in American personal communications, which was the wireless startup that we ultimately, that, that was ultimately uh partnered with Sprint, but the reality was I wasn't senior enough. So I ran the Muzak franchise. Muzak franchise Iran was one of the oldest franchises in America. So there wasn't a lot of, there wasn't a lot of startups, and while the owner of the franchise let me do some new and interesting things, the reality was is that it was, it was the same business that they have been doing since. General Squire had founded it in 1929, and you know, most people know the story of the franchisor ultimately went bankrupt, sold to a company called Moond Media, which was a Canadian public company, and then they took it private and it's been there. So, so, um. And then I went to this to Sprint and then I went to the startup rooftop management company in Philadelphia and again I was right under the owners and while I was going to be earning a piece of equity, it was not, I wasn't at risk, you know, I took a lower pay, but To be fair, I didn't put my money up and take a real risk the way the founders did, the way, the way the investors did. So the leveraged buyout, yeah right. This was my real first foray into my own path. And so when we got into due diligence and we couldn't prove the numbers, the bank went, the bank went looking for, for an exit, and during the process, I met that guy Bill and You know, I'll fast forward through the whole story, but, but essentially, when I went to tell the, uh, the seller of the first business that I wasn't gonna buy his business, I then went to bills and thinking I was applying for a job. So to your point, no, I, I was a pragmatist, you know, I, um, I got bills to pay. I had a mortgage. I had two children. I had, I had an ex-wife who, you know, who had been, you know, quite patient up to that period, and, um. And when I went to him, he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. He, he offered to sell me half of his company. And um he allowed me to put basically my life, you know, as the story goes, so what happens is he offers me an opportunity to buy half of one of his companies, but it was late on the day on Thursday. So he said tomorrow I'll send your financials. Come back Saturday and we'll see if we can do a deal. Now one of this guy's superpowers is the ability to make fast decisions and to, uh, and, and, you know, to see if you could as well, you know, uh how would you get paid like a salary from the royal? So, so our deal was everything was equal. Everything was equal we put up. So what happens is he offers, he, he sets the price. So he sends me the financials on Friday and I go in and we talk for 2 seconds and I already had my brain with the highest price that I would pay. He, we're in the meeting 3 minutes, he says the exact highest price. I said that's a very high price because that's your cost of admission. And I said, you know, so, so what was I getting besides just a business, getting a mentor, a guy who had already built one of the biggest businesses in that space. I was getting, um, I was getting immediate credibility and, and I didn't realize it at the time, and, oh, and by the way, he said, if I'm not happy in 6 months, he'd give me all my money back. OK, which is highly unusual, and so I said, OK, what, you know, I'm getting, I'm getting that and all this other stuff, and um, did you, did you place any value on the mentorship part of it, not, not in dollars and cents. I knew that the number was high. And I, but I mean, again, at that point, I mean, I was gonna go from being a small minority owner to I went to a 50% owner. He financed, he took, he, you know, I told him I didn't have that kind of money. He said how much you got? I told him, he said, I'll take that and I'll give you a note for the rest. And the note was personal. So what really was cool is a week later he walked in, so and he was incubating the company. So my corporate office was in Princeton even though it was an hour drive, and the company I bought was operated out of Valentin, which was an hour drive from my home. So I had, I had a mentor. I had a corporate office separate from the operating office, so I never really had to work in the business. I got to work on the business, which is, as you know in talking to entrepreneurs who are buying existing businesses, that is, that is such a benefit. And so, so fast forward a week later, he comes into my office and he tells me that there's a company in Portland, Oregon that's also for sale. It was actually bigger than, so the first the company in Allentown was doing $50,000 a month, and the company in Portland was doing 60, and so did you accept the company that he offered? So what, so what happens is he said, you know, my other partner had because he was, he would help entrepreneurs, he would, and this is what the article that introduced me to, he would help entrepreneurs. Well, one of his other entrepreneurial partners didn't have the money to close on a term sheet that they had signed. Um, something I'm very proud I never did, right? I, every term sheet that I have signed unless there was a problem in due diligence I've closed on, but this partner of his could didn't have the cash. They'd run out of cash. So I said, Well, give me, give me some time. So I pick up the phone, I call the bank that was going to be my partner. I said, You're never going to believe this. I got into the business a week ago. I have a balance sheet that's completely clean. I have 3 years of operating history. And I have an opportunity to buy another company. And, and, but I need a half a million dollars and the company was doing $600,000. I said I need $500 million and or I need $600,000. I wanted to fully finance it. So they called me back a few hours later and said, well, we can do $500,000. And you know you're gonna have to come up with 100. So I went back to my partner Bill and I said, Bill, OK, this is what they said, and we put, I mortgaged my house to put up another $250,000. Remember, I'd already given him my life savings, so I mortgaged my house. He, he was very well off. This guy, this guy was a very successful entrepreneur. I mean, uh, he had. Hundreds of businesses, he had years of experience, you know, he worked with Bill Levitt from Levittown, Long Island and Levittown, Pennsylvania. He was, yeah, so he built my bill was Bill Levitt's fix it guy, fix it CEO. So Bill Levitt had a turnaround situation. And that's where I learned all about turnarounds too, besides my bankruptcy career again, the slumdog millionaire of call centers, all of these disparate experiences coming together to give me the experiences I need to do, what, what ultimately I could do. So, uh, so we do, I, I mortgage my house. I get the my 250,000 or 300,000, and he writes his check and we close on that, on that deal, uh, less than a month after I did the first deal with him. And the bank liked the numbers and they just went through, right, the bank was, the bank was amazing and, and we were off to the races, um, you know, and, and that's, uh, and, and we did have some sales effort, but 18 months later, we did a turnaround of what was then the largest company in the space. So 18 months after we started, we went from a $4 million run rate to about a $26 million. So now he has you like doubling his efforts, you know, he has me doubling his efforts and, and, and I have like I never would have gotten that opportunity if it weren't for him, OK? So now again. Those were the good days, you know, there's an old saying that nothing is really for free. So I, you know, I mortgaged my house 3 or 4 times over the next few years to buy companies and grow the business. I'll never forget I was in a pitch meeting with an investor and he said, What's your burn rate? And I looked at him and I said, What's that? You know, because I was buying profitable businesses at reasonable prices and, and running them through the cash flow to pay for the acquisition costs. I, you know, I had a partner who had a, you know, there was no check I was ever going to write that he couldn't just go write the check and, and match me. You know, he had, he had, you know, at one point I know we, uh, um, for, for unknown reasons, you know, for reasons not relevant, you know, we figured out he was worth well over $100 million in our partnership. So, um, you know, he had, he had no trouble writing checks that caught that required me to go mortgage my house, but it's, it was a, it was a very cool time and as I said, I mean, even in that 1st 18 months we did. 7 or 8 acquisitions. And, and a couple that I didn't want that didn't fit me, I helped and did for him. So, you know, it's uh. And he took a part of all your acquisitions too, or we were partners until we were, right? And then we had a falling out and, you know, and, and as as want to happen, you know, until that point. You know, ultimately we wound up, uh, splitting the company. I took half, he took half, and today we're 3 times bigger than we were after the split. So it's been, you know, it's been a huge ride, and I know, um, you know, we talked, this is a M&A entrepreneurs. So in the last, uh, in the last year I did 11 acquisitions in 11 months. It's been the craziest, so, so, so let's, let's fast forward to where we are today. What happens is. We're coming out in 1999, we had done a couple of large acquisitions in, in um in 17 and 18. And coming into 19, I had to write the um I had to write size the IEA um and fix the company and, and I'm really, I'm really lucky, you know, the um president of my bank, a guy named Tim Abel, um, knows just when to kick me in the ass, and he did, um, and he needed to, and, and, you know, uh, and, and so, uh, 19 was a year where I focused on, you know, executing, you know, really getting the best and, uh, you gotta start. Getting stuff at the first cafeteria and putting it on your plate, you've got to start eating right. And you have to eat it correctly and you, you know, you have to do all that. So, so we focused on that in 19 and, and coming out in 19, last day in 19, I lost my biggest customer and I was, you know, bummed. Now the good news is for most of the business, you know, when I get beyond, there are, we have currently about 10,000 clients and After the top, say 30, so let's say the top 30 represent probably 40 to 45% of the business, no client represents, uh, no client represents 15% of 1% of my overall revenue. Did you fix that? I mean, that's. Always a challenge with entrepreneurs going, hey, if they ask you, uh, well, I've got, uh, this one client 75% of my business. Like, dude, that's just too much. The risk assessment on that means you can go to cash, your cash flow burn rate is 0% if he leaves. Well, it is and it's not. So here's the cool part of where we are as a company today. We've built this model. To be a very much variable expense model. So with the ability to go remote and with the ability to use SAS products, I can, I can flex and unflex at will. Oh, this is kind of like Uber just she's like, are you available availability rates, yeah. So, so, so it is a really cool model because all my stuff is in the cloud. And all my technology is in the cloud, so now we still have physical locations, don't get me wrong, and that's a different model, but you know I have the ability to turn on call center seats in hours, not even days or weeks and hours. So it's a complete flex model now. Now it wasn't back in the day, you know, we one point we had over 50 locations. Now, you know, now we have 30 locations and we just had a meeting yesterday and the question was. What are we gonna do with the real estate? Right, right, right, right, that's right, and in conversations with my leadership team, I, it, it, you know, that's when you know you're an old man, OK? That's when you know that you are seasoned because I, you know, if somebody would have told me I would have gotten everybody home in 2 weeks and I had, you know, I had a former, uh, uh, a former VP of ops was available just at the time I needed them, right? And my, uh, my COO, but the woman who's now my COO who who would, who later became my VP of ops, um, you know. She, she was, she was in she kept things rolling as he was moving us home. It was really, I mean, and we had a great IT organization to make it all happen and so it's become much more of a variable rate deal. But as we come out of 1990, 2019 and we lose this big account, we started laying off in February of, of 19 and then I don't know if you know there was this thing called the pandemic that just happened. Yeah, yeah, I actually read something about this that uh you did something pretty incredible during the pandemic work with bankers to save companies by hiring. So yeah, tell me that story, yeah, yeah. So so what happens is we get a call from the state of New York. And the state of New York calls us and says, OK, I need, uh, I need 100 people for, for this project to schedule coronavirus testing at mobile testing sites. That's how hard it was to get testing if we remember at the beginning of the pandemic and And as I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna staff 100 agents, they then call back and, and they just push the number up. So I get a phone call from uh my, my banker, uh, a woman by the name of Beth Packle, and Beth calls me and she says, listen, um, uh. You know, how are you doing? and you could tell she's just gotten the, the snot kicked out of her for, for hours and she's calling clients and they're trying to figure out how do I change my business model, how do I do what I have to do in order to, to make, you know, make my company run, and she told me the story of a client, a client of hers, 90 year old, um, uh, trophy and awards company that was. Because what I didn't know then was a uh was marketing royalty here in Philadelphia. Inside of this guy's business was the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame, OK? And the guy knew everybody. I mean, I, you know, etc. but she called me back 10 minutes after because I told her I needed, she goes, would you consider, she told me the story, would you consider hiring my friend's, uh, employees? And I realized that I needed to onboard a lot of people fast. I said I'd make it do one better because you, you know, the bank was who they were. I'll hire the company. Let the people keep their jobs, benefits, all of that, and I was able to do that for about 7 other companies that that. That not by my own, I, I don't mean to brag, but by their statements we save their companies. So we were able to save like 7 companies, but this goes into our growth story. So instead of being down 20%, which I was figuring that was what it was going to be in 2020, we wound up doing that, that deal and then having another deal with Deloitte. So we, we created this relationship with Deloitte and we started doing government work with Deloitte. And they're a wonderful partner. They were just terrific. They were smart, and they were, they were, they were driven and it was really a wonderful partnership. Well, all of a sudden we're, we're, uh, you know, we're growing. Well, then, then we come down to the end of the year and I know because, you know, I'm smart like this. I knew that the pandemic could never last into 2021. That's just silly talk, right, right, so wear a mask. No, yeah, right, yeah, so, well, I was gonna wear a mask for this, for this podcast, but I, I figured I couldn't get you sick. So, um, so the last two weeks of December 2021 and the first two weeks of, of, uh. of January 2020, I'm sorry, 2020 and 2021 was the longest year of my life. All of a sudden the vaccines were coming, all the states needed a needed vaccine scheduling teams, and what was insane became complete insanity. In order to solve all of that, we had grown, you know, so we had grown 30% in 2020 and I'm sitting there trying to figure out, OK, how am I gonna manage all this? Well, we created an entirely new level of management in the company, um, a director level if you will, of people in the company and And February and March, our revenue for February and our revenue for March, equaled the revenue I had for a year in my original business plan back in 1998. Um, I couldn't believe it. I mean, I was pinching myself. I was waiting for somebody to tell me it wasn't mine. I realized that I had never worked for a company as big as the one I was now owning. So it was, you know, you know, put whatever crazy superlatives you want, but. It became obvious really fast that the drugs chains, CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, were doing a much better job of distributing vaccines in the government. So I knew that business was going away. Who would have thought? Um, now, I could tell you that I then planned it all out and I, and that just sounds like you were the right place at the right time. I was in the right place. So all of a sudden I get starts with, I start getting phone calls, you know, people are worried that the administration is changing. They want to get out, you know, in one case, one, in one case there was a guy who, uh, there was a guy who um uh had bought a big company. And he had a division of the company or two that didn't fit. Um, and he, he asked me if I wanted to buy them. I had a software company vendor of ours who just wanted to retire, so he sold, and, you know, we got into a couple of new verticals during this period, but we acquired, uh, we had so, so we acquired 8 companies and 8, and now I'm telling people it's almost Thanksgiving, we've done 8 and 8 and my now I'm because a good entrepreneur. I always thinking about the story the numbers tell. See how we're bringing all this way back to the very beginning of this podcast, right? It's all about the numbers and the story that the numbers are telling. So what happens, um, I say, OK, here's my story. We grew in 2019, we grew in 2020, we went. We went sky high in 21 and then we matched 20. So even though I had COVID work in 20, we were gonna, based on what, where we were and we did the 8, I'll be fine. Uh, that's the story I can tell. So as I'm getting ready, I'm now, I'm now crazy, crazy, OK? I mean, you know, I, I have satisfied my, my, my current urge to acquire and I, and, and what was really cool was we did it all out of the profits from COVID, so we made it out of the cash flow out of the cash flow, we still have no partners, we still have no investors and the bank had been, you know, super supportive. Well then. I get calls from two people who I had spoken to earlier in the year. I had made offers and the buyers that they had lined up. Both of them walked and would I do the deals. So I did those two deals. Now you're the guy with the gravity. Now I'm the guy with the gravity and, and that's exactly what happened. So one of the deals, which was the biggest of all 11 deals, I closed in 3 weeks. 3 weeks we changed the nature of the deal. I, I had to borrow money from the bank. I, everybody was just, I mean. Any entrepreneur who's gonna play the game the way I've been playing it cannot do it alone. My internal team, my bank, Um, oh, and, and did I mention in the middle of all this that my accountant of 25 years passed away in the middle of all of this growth and I had to hire a new accounting firm for, you know, to do my audits and taxes for 2021. Always a challenge in front, isn't there? So, so unfortunate events, yes, right. And, and so I did those two deals, so I was at 10 and 10, and then I got a phone call from somebody I've spoken to who's This is the worst thing that can happen. And you sit here as an entrepreneur and, you know, you say there, but for the grace of God go I, you um uh they'd gotten hacked and it took down their entire company. OK, you know, when you, when, you know, you can protect yourself so much that you can protect yourself, let's not kid ourselves. If Google can get hacked, if Amazon can get hacked, if Yahoo can get hacked, everybody can get, uh, LifeLock can get hacked. You can get hacked, yeah exactly. So we were very lucky, um, but this guy had the same situation. He was trying to rebuild. He thought he had, you know, a partner to rebuild with. It didn't happen. So that was number 11, and we've closed that one and, uh, we closed that one at the end of February on the, you know, on the last day of February, and that was my 11 by 11 and um and now we're projecting to beat last year by 5%. Yeah. OK, so, so again, You know, when I think about my, uh, you know, my COO Corey and my, my, my whole executive team, I mean, you know, we just, and we just, and you know, you caught me at a great day. So earlier this week, we had our first in-person annual meeting in 3 years. Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and, and for, for a guy who loves people, which is pretty good, if you're gonna be in the call center business, liking people is a really like people. Yeah, and, and, and so, and, and, and uh, and a guy who was a hugger, I'm gonna tell you something, it was, it was inspiring and it was, um, you know, just, uh, uh, and we've been doing it for 23 years. We did 2, we did 2 virtual annual meetings, clearly not the same. Yeah. Um, and, and it brings up all of these other things. The other big difference in the acquisition arena is that Of the 11 companies. Only 3 or 4 of them had physical locations. Yeah, that is amazing. Yeah, that's, yeah. Right. So, so, so that number 4 on the back, which is facilities, is not even an expense anymore. In a lot of cases, it's not. And that's sort of the, uh, that's the, um, you know, the sort of the story of, of, of how we were able to grow for uh uh you know, our care over 5 years is 26%. Yeah, let me ask you about the uh technology costs because when you make a position, it could be a different technology. Do you bring it over to yours, what you like, or do you uh uh stay with what they're using? So that's a great question. And when it comes to technology. Um, you try to run if they own the technology and the cost of, uh, the cost of maintenance is reasonable, you can keep them on that technology, but almost none of them had technology that they owned anymore like where. I mean they're and so, so if I'm gonna have a SaA I might as well use the one I know. That's just people in the news, right? And, and, and part of our model has always been because I came from wireless, part of our model has always been that, um, that, uh. Um, uh, any technology, we have our own MSP. So all the technologies we use, we offer anyway to our competitors. We've become one of our sort of one of our sweet spots are we're the call center's call center. So, so you've got the technology to offer to other call centers, which is nice, and we have a team that supports the 24/7 anyway, so it, it makes a lot of sense because when I'm adding seats in our technology, all I'm doing is adding. Uh, adding, uh, you know, extra seats into my Amazon cloud or into my Azure cloud, we happen to be on both, you know, we don't, we don't discriminate between Amazon web services and Azure, OK, we, we like them both, you know, we're very inclusive that way. Did you have that in mind to say, hey, this helps our, I mean, let's say if you were to, uh, I'm looking at an exit and going, look, we've got the so for technology that helps our multiple, it's a reoccurring, we love that. It, it, it does and it does cause it helps me get my software for a little less than money, but um. It was more because I, because we started in the answering service business, I've gotten to the point where I was bigger than my vendors. I was bigger than the software vendors I was looking to support me and I, and I decided that it was best that. I didn't have other people who could take me down. I didn't want to have to rely on, on what I thought was overpriced software, you know, look, software vendors are very talented, but there's so much software out there that I didn't want to have a situation where I was running the same software as everybody else, because I, there were certain technological things that I wanted. So the reason and the reason I offer it to my competitors is because. I believe that if I, if I'm running it and I, if I'm running it, um, I can make money from it. I need to support my 30 by 30 locations and 15 remote teams anyway, 24/7. So if I have another 20 or 30 or 50 clients, what does it matter? I'm still running the same team, maybe with a couple more people but. I'm running the same team and that's why I did it, um, and that's, is it a, is a white label that you take the software and load it onto Amazon web service and they use, or is it connected because I've just had a curiosity is like, uh, you offer to competitors, they go, well, what if we upload all of our data about our customers and you have access to it. Well, I'm very, you know, I'm one of the biggest honors that I have ever received is an award called the Tom Ryan Integrity Award from one of the call center associations that I'm a member of, and that I think is, um, that I think says it all. I mean, you know, the reality is if, if in business we've been, we've been very well respected by our peers, um. You know, I A lot of people shared with me when I got into the business and have given to me, including my original partner, right, so I try to give back and I try to give people the best experience. The other thing I did was I didn't like the way most software companies did business and so I tried to build a company, meaning we have a stack of uh tools in our call center offering. You can either take the whole stack. Or you can just take any piece of it and we'll, we'll host it for you or you can host it yourself. So you know, I, I try to give people choices. The other thing I do which makes everybody nuts is I post my prices online because. you know, I was not happy buying from, uh, software vendors where you're made to feel like you're buying a car or a house, call for pricing, right, exactly, you know, you know, here's what it costs. You, you don't want it, you don't want it, no worries. You want it, you want it. And what's really been interesting is where we have clients we share the software with them and then handle the overflow when they're not, uh, when they're not using it. And that's cool too. So again, it's about that, um, you know, I just, and I learned this because when I partnered with Bill back in the original day, Bill had other companies and other partners, and one of the things that I noticed early on where all the partners would. Always offer to bring everybody to the table. I knew I could never bring everybody to the table. I came out of franchise where each individual owner, and even though Bill wasn't a franchisor, he had a number of partnerships and each individual owner was um. was uh independent hack. He loved strong independent people. That was his, that was his jam. The stronger you were, the more independent you were, the, the more he, he liked being involved with you. So that was, you know, I knew that I couldn't bring it to everybody, but if you want what I have, so what I would do is I would go to a vendor and say, OK, this is what I need, and these are the relationships, but I'm not promising you any of them. And then I go to them, this is what I have. You want, you want in, you want in, cool, you don't, but that way I was sort of being nice to him. And by offering what I was uncovering to his peeps, but if they didn't want it, it was all good because I needed it for myself. Let me, let me ask you a question. We're running out of time real quick. How, how do you, you said you had a falling out with the bill or the, the earlier, how do you create or do you just avoid partnerships altogether? Like, how do you create a Warren Buffett Charlie Munger partnership or You just avoid that kind of, well, I don't avoid anything. I, you know, you know, you've got a rule for it or something like I, I know what you're who you are, you know, I've done a lot of partnerships. Some have been good, some have been bad. Sometimes I'm the bug and sometimes I'm the windshield. So one thing I would say is there's a reason why investors tend to get out in 5 or 6 years. Because in business people's. Direction change. Life happens. Well, and, and, and, you know, and, and, and to, to the point, Bill was 30 years my senior. So, you know, Bill had been doing it for a long time and his, his wants and needs and desires changed, plus, Um, you know, so, so I often say, um, you know, there's a reason that 5 years, 6 year partnership is a good thing. So every partnership I go into, I offer a way out for partners, uh, you know, if they need it. That's a, that's a, that's a big part of it, you know, I, you know. I've gotten out a lot of good things out of partnerships, so I would not be, I would not say to you don't do partnerships, but I, I would say that the agreements that you enter into need to be specific, like one of the problems I have is I wrote an agreement with Bill and it was written by uh by my then lawyer and she didn't know the legal impact of something, you know. It which is fine, and I a future event that you would likely occur but didn't she didn't have the known unknowns correct and, and, and so it ultimately was part of the, you know, part of the undoing of the partnership, but, but again, you know. I, I think I started out before we got on recording. I'm one of the luckiest people on the planet, and, and, you know, and, and, and, you know, this entrepreneurial journey has been. The most exciting thing I could do and I could tell you about all the rotten stuff that went on between he and I at the end, but I'd rather say I wouldn't be where I am without him, and I'll be forever grateful. And, and as I said to you about my, my friend who owns a trophy company, he's a, he, you know, he's one of the, one of the people most that, that does more, uh, is more grateful about things. Anybody I know, so I'm gonna practice humility as much as I can, you know, for a guy with a big ego, and I'm gonna, but I am so appreciative of everything of my family and of my business colleagues and, and, and everything that I have got to do and, and for fun I play rock and roll music and. Yeah, I saw that you uh you did uh fun song. is in bucket ban Philly. That's right. And, and so check out our, our Facebook page, um, our pages, and, and, but here's what is not there. So my keyboard player is my chief of staff in bucket band, lead singer is, uh, is my vice president of sales, and my bass player is also the, uh, the general manager of the first place I bought in Allentown, PA. Oh, that's great. Yeah, you gotta created a great network then, and I'm out of time, so I, Gary, I wanna thank you for being on top M&A entrepreneurs. Thank you for having me, John, and, uh, you know, um, it's, it's gonna, you know, I love the, I love the uh podcast and I look forward to hearing this one and, and continue good work uh in helping spur entrepreneurialism. Thank you so much. Great story. Take care. All right, take care.