ERP040: Mergers and Acquisitions with Chris Day

Welcome to Evolve Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. On the podcast today is Chris Day, CEO of Topdown Ventures. Chris is a well-recognized member of the MSP channel as a founder of IT Glue. IT Glue's remarkable growth curve and industry attention is unlike anything we've seen in the market. He recently exited IT Glue after selling to Casseya. Now he's working with SAS application entrepreneurs to provide capital and scaling strategies for their businesses. In our discussion, we catch up with Chris on his recent M&A activity with Glue and fully managed. The projects currently on deck at top down and we discuss the current M&A madness in the MSP channel. It's a great conversation, so strap in, get ready. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast from. Also, be sure to check out the web page evolvedt.com/podcast for show notes, links to my guests and to check out previous episodes. Now, let's get started. Joining me on the podcast today is Chris Day, CEO of Topdown. Welcome to the podcast, Chris. Thanks, Todd. Thanks for having me. Excellent to have you here. I think most people will recognize your name in from the uh the MSP industry. You uh put together one of the the most uh recognized brands and the one of the largest MSPs in Western Canada through fully managed. And uh people will certainly recognize your success in uh founding and developing IT Glue. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's been a uh it's been a crazy whatever that has been 17 years now. It's been a long road. Yeah. Well, uh congrats on all the success. I think um it it's interesting for people that don't know, maybe catch you up uh on what you've been up to. So fully managed your MSP was recently merged with uh Careworks. And uh you have also uh sold IT Glue to Casseya. So uh do you want to catch us up on on both that uh the sale and the merger activity that you you've been going through? Yes, sir. Uh yeah, so 2018 was definitely a very big year. Um I uh you know, fully managed, I started the thing in in 2002. Like like a lot of people that uh have started MSPs, it was just me at the beginning. Uh grew that over the years to uh to to become as you said, one of the one of the larger MSPs in Western Canada. Uh I've always kind of had a had a growth focused uh I guess mindset. Um, you know, maybe sometimes uh, you know, biting off more than I can chew for sure. But uh, you know, through the years it was able to to grow that business. Um eventually acquiring a business that uh uh involved Joelson with Packet Safe. And uh ultimately he uh after kind of working together for for many years, um took the helm as CEO, maybe about five or six years ago. Four or five years ago. Um and uh and then we, you know, we we kind of came across this opportunity of of, you know, are we going to continue to grow this thing organically, uh, we're going to expand geographically. Uh, are we just going to leave it as is? And uh, and so, you know, the opportunity came up with Mark Scott uh and Careworks. Um now Careworks fully managed, which is which is pretty cool to to kind of put the two businesses together. I think current count 230, 240 employees in that MSP combined now. So pretty pretty good size. That's bad. Yeah, national footprint. Very cool things that they're doing there and and part of the reason I I, you know, I wanted to do the deal um was was that I would continue to be involved at a board level with the company um post merger. And so, I'm pretty excited about that. They've got a a huge footprint in service now. Which is sort of like um, you know, connect wise or auto task for very mid-market companies and larger companies and basically a full ERP as I'm sure you know. Uh so I'm kind of excited to break into that industry because a lot of the tools that we're um working with are are ripe for that industry as well. So that happened. Um all the while over the last five or six years was was building um IT Glue. Obviously, as you said, became a huge a huge business. Uh uh like much larger than fully managed ever was and and uh I was uh I was pretty humbled by that experience. Uh had the opportunity to work with Inside Venture partners and ultimately um Casseya. They're one of their portfolio companies to to put put IT Glue together with Casseya. Uh and that kind of wrapped up in uh the end of last year. So, um I, you know, I think we built an amazing product. I've uh a lot of uh a lot of great feelings about the people and the team that we built there and and sort of the problem that we solve and I I feel like we've it's going to continue to have a a great future. But uh I'm also excited about, you know, moving on from those two things and and focusing on a few new things. Yeah, I think uh something to highlight is just the meteoric growth of IT Glue. Like I I um for those that don't know, we worked together uh at fully managed, I was working for you there. And uh I saw you building IT Glue and working long hours in in the demo space and gorilla marketing. Really really uh it was it was kind of you and a few developers uh really kind of putting that together from the ground up. And and you know, four or five years later, it's one of the biggest brands in the MSP space. So I I can't I can't think of any other brand or or or product that grew so quickly and attracted so much of the market. Yeah, it's insane because I um, you know, I I think it exceeded whatever whatever expectations I had. And by the end of it, I mean, I was pretty close and I still remain close with a lot of the other big companies in the MSP sector. You know, Connectwise, Autotask, now Dato. Um Solar wins, uh etcetera. And um obviously Casseya. Uh but the the number of logos that we were adding and the amount of business that we were adding in a single month. Sorry, my last month in November, I think we we onboarded more than 400 MSPs in a single month. Like that is like ridiculous uh ridiculous growth. And so to be able to to achieve that is uh something I'm pretty proud of. The big thing and and something that's I think is kind of interesting is as easy as you can get, you could get value from IT Glue quickly. It it's still a kind of a transformational sale, you know, you're you're you're getting someone to do something that they've never done before. Like document properly. And so to be able to get that kind of traction on a product that requires, you know, a fair bit of onboarding and and implementation and transformational change within the the companies that you're selling to, uh is is pretty incredible. So, yeah, it's been it's been insane. So we'll see uh see how that goes in the future, but I I feel like I left it in a in a pretty good spot. Awesome. And just to underscore, you're you're not involved in IT Glue anymore, you've you're uh you've sold sold the business and not involved. But you are still remaining involved in in fully managed Careworks in a in a board position then, right? Yes, exactly. So, um, you know, part of part of why I I was I, you know, I've I've got a lot of um equity tied up in in the combined brand as well. And so part of why I did that is I see a big big future for for Careworks fully managed. Um they've got, you know, the the uh the MSP, SMB MSP division, like the the traditional uh managed services. But they've also got a senior care division, which is the technology around around senior care. And then they've got a service now consulting division. So there's three kind of large divisions all with great leadership. Um and so I'm excited to kind of participate and and kind of break into some some new stuff that I've never personally been involved in before. Yeah. So uh we'll I think it leads into uh a pretty hot discussion lately is the M&A activity. Both on the tools side as well as the uh the primary vendors like Casseya and Solar Winds and Connectwise, uh everybody's out buying somebody. Uh any thoughts on sort of your your view from uh being involved in that M&A activity and sort of the fever pitch that it's reaching right now? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I I was kind of waiting for the for for the thing to taper off. But it sort of still hasn't showing any signs of uh of slowing down. I I think I saw yesterday, it was a $35 or $38 million raised um by venture capital uh for an MSP, which is which is very new to me where where where they're going. They're they're it's growth capital. Um not private equity buying it out, uh which is what we've been seeing a lot of. So, I mean, I think it's it's got to be near the top uh in terms of the heat. The the multiples that people are are are demanding on on good solid MSPs have never been higher. Um, you know, I think there's there's plenty of demand. Uh I still think the MSP market is is tough. You know, it's not a it's a business that not a lot of companies figure out um how to get the margins right and how to scale uh well. But um but certainly that, you know, people are starting to recognize the value of those businesses and the recurring revenue that's there and the the relative um stability of that revenue versus a lot of other, you know, like pro services type businesses and var businesses, etcetera. So, Yeah, I don't see any signs of slowing down, um and I and I think, uh, you know, not just the MSPs, but all the MSP ecosystem tools, obviously me being personally involved with one of one such tool and one such acquisition. Um, you know, the money's out there for the right tools. Um, but, you know, they're they're pretty stringent on on what they're looking for. It's not an idea. Uh the idea, uh very few people are putting up money for ideas. And and, you know, I've I get a lot of ideas that come across my plate too. And um I I like to see traction first because uh it's one thing to, you know, have a great product, it's another one entirely to actually, you know, get people to buy it. And so I I think that's uh I I personally come run across a lot of MSP owners that that would love to be in software and I I don't blame them. Software is a a great place to be. Um, but it's also, you know, it's it's one of those things where a lot of software investments as we both know, just become vaporized. And and all that cash just disappears. So thankfully that didn't happen to me with IT Glue because I spent a good, you know, I remember sitting in the corner, like you said, working on working on IT Glue with the candle lit and a bunch of developers pounding away. And uh I think I would have lost a little piece of my soul if it uh if it never took off. So. Yeah, I think in that in the development you were quite cautious as well. Like I remember through the the sort of the year, first year that you were in development, you were considering kind of going to IT Nation and kind of unveiling the cover, but you you held off and said, no, I I want to continue to tune this and make sure that I get it right before we really start to pound the pavement and bring people in. I think that that's a it sort of goes exactly to what you're suggesting is uh you can have a great idea, you know, ideas are cheap, execution's a lot harder. So getting it right, I think is uh is critical in that aspect for sure. Yeah, execution, man. I I mean, I think I'm pretty sure I know that I think that exists in our top down uh mantra there. Growth by execution. And I I 100% agree. It's uh it's the it's executing the idea and and often I think a lot of people get wrapped up in it's got it's it is just the product. Um but I think what most entrepreneurs struggle with in my experience in this ecosystem and and beyond is the go-to market. How am I going to get so, yes, I need a minimum viable product that people will buy, but then how am I going to get them how am I going to price and package and promote that thing so that people will actually buy it? Um to allow me to afford to add all the stuff that I know needs to be there that's not there today. And that's a a good segue. You mentioned top down, I introduced you as uh the CEO of top down. And people may not be familiar with uh the company. So let's uh let's switch from what you've done to what you're doing. Want to give us a run down on what you're up to now? Yeah, so top down, I've had it uh for for a long time, like way back uh as a company it existed uh in a holding format for for for 17 years. But um in the last uh three years, I've started to develop that into a kind of a hybrid um uh private equity slash um active partner uh management strategy. Uh so an example of of we're currently invested in four companies. I'll talk about the three today that that uh are software related that are sort of on the same trajectory as IT Glue. One of them, I think everybody knows pretty well, the warranty master uh platform. So that uh warranty master's got, you know, 20, 25 people now. Um it's scaling hilariously. It's uh it's got a similar number to partner of partners to IT Glue, uh so it's in the range around the 5,000 mark or maybe 5,500 partners now. But we we achieved that with zero sales people. Um so, you know, where whereas IT Glue sales team was 30, 35 people to get to get to that point. So, uh a little bit of a different animal. Um obviously a much lower cost product. Um but it's uh it's not a transformational sale. So I've been involved in that company since it started. Um my brother Anthony is the the president CEO of that that business. Um what we've done at top down is we've said, hey, these companies at that have 20 or 25 employees or five employees or two employees. Um but have a great product, they they're pretty, you know, no offense, pretty poor at the execution and pretty pretty poor at go-to market. So everything from the financial aspects, um to recruiting good talent and just managing HR. Because people are, you know, like an MSP, people are really the key to scaling these businesses. Um to like sales prowess to, you know, marketing skill. And and not just, you know, a graphic designer, but what's the plan to get this thing, you know, get our leads from like 20 a month to 1,500 a month. And, you know, which is where we were at, you know, at IT Glue when I when I left. So, uh I feel that we're uniquely positioned to provide direct like instant value to to these entrepreneurs and say, listen, we're going to get you. You know, another 5,000 customers in a very short period because we know exactly what to do. We've got the playbook. We know which events to go to. Uh, we know where to invest, where not to invest. Uh, we know what kind of people are needed, we know we have job descriptions for every possible sales role and marketing role under the sun. We have a pool of developers and talent that we can access and so on and so forth. So it's it's pretty it's pretty cool. So that one was uh was a no-brainer obviously, uh we're helping we're helping warranty master to grow. These companies actually we we've got an office in in downtown Vancouver, they actually sort of are embedded with us. Which is kind of a unique model. Um you know, the incubator or accelerator concepts that that exist. I guess we're kind of like kind of like an accelerator on steroids in a sense. A lot of accelerators or incubators are like, okay, you've got your product and like get out. Um we're kind of like, no, let's like we'll we'll have you here along with all of our our our executive team with top down. Until you literally can afford all the pieces of the puzzle and then we're going to kick you out. Yeah. That's that's interesting because I I was I was going to ask. Or what is incubator or accelerator a fair description of of what the company is is doing. But I I think you're right, the an incubator gets you to market. Whereas you're kind of assisting companies that are basically already in market, but to, you know, quadruple them or or 10x as they like to say in Silicon Valley. Absolutely. Yeah, we're we're 10xing them like as quickly as we can. And it's kind of unique, like we had a we have weekly executive meetings with each company. I'll tell you the other two in a minute, but uh and and our team participates in those meetings, so we've got our our um director of HR virtual. Our our uh VP of finance virtual. Our uh sales VP virtual. They they can't afford any of these roles, but in the weekly meetings, we we meet we're sitting with these entrepreneurs and like giving them that high-level strategy. Like these are the things we need done that are going to help them. And they're like, in my experience, just like tell me more. Like give give me more, tell me more, right? And uh so it's pretty cool. Um, and then yeah, as soon as they, you know, they need it, we're the first to say, well, get your own marketing team or get your own finance team or whatever. So, um, I think warranty master probably is in within the next year is going we're going to kick them out of here because they're taking up too many desks already. So, Um, yeah, there you go. That's that's one. Uh the other two, pretty excited about as well. Um, so one one company I think more and more people are are getting uh to know, backup radar. Uh Patrick Leonard, um great guy from New Orleans. We we bunt into him through the years and uh and just started chatting and and uh, you know, he's a busy guy and he's got a ridiculously cool product. Um product that I'm excited about as well because it's not it's not really an MSP only product, although it integrates to all the MSP tools, of course. But it's uh uh it's like a a product for any IT manager or any IT administrator that manages backups. And so it has a very broad TAM, total addressable market, um much broader than I think IT Glue has in its current state, for example. So pretty excited, low cost product, extreme value of just consolidating all your all your reporting across many different backup platforms into one pane of glass. It's one of those like no-brainer, like you turn it on, you're like, oh my God, I wish I had this like three or four years ago. Kind of products. And um yeah, we're helping him helping him to scale and that it's going going really well. Yeah, I'll I'll pause on this one. I I I really like backup radar when I when I first heard about it and looked at it. I was like, oh, okay. Uh, you know, another backup uh software. And then I I kind of dug around and I was like, oh, consolidation of logging and information from all of the disparate platforms. Okay, this makes a lot of sense. Yeah, totally. Because you and I had a lot of conversations about about consolidation of of tool stack. As sort of a an accelerator for for your MSP business. And making things a lot simpler in your backup platform is a great idea. But in execution, it's really impractical for a lot of different reasons. It's not that you, you know, you can maybe wave a magical wand and standardize on a particular backup platform. But that is not going to always be everything that you have on that single platform. So I I thought this was a a great idea just that um, you know, you don't want people logging all of their backup alerts and having a service it through tickets and, you know, coming through your RMM or at worst going to five different platforms to ensure that all those backups are happening. Single pane of glass and away you go, right? Yeah, and and I mean, I remember. And and I it's still a problem, things like, okay, we're moving a lot of workloads to the cloud, obviously, a lot of stuff in Amazon and Azure and whatnot. And like, okay, we're doing, you know, backups in Amazon, like how the heck do I but then I've got this data stuff or this, you know, VM stuff and like, how do I get efficient managing all three of those things at the same time? There's literally no solution that I'm aware of that that a single MSP has got running on everything. It's just not possible. I've got lots of uh MSPs that have standardized on their favorite platform, you know, for like on prem backup, for example. But usually that's like, you know, maybe that's 70% of of their backups are on that and then there's still the other 30%. So, Yeah, it's it's pretty exciting. And the other thing I love about backup radar is the name. You'll notice like every company I've ever been involved in, the name is like what it is. Fully managed, fully managed. IT Glue, glue IT. Warranty master, master the warranties, radar backup, backup the radar. You know, like it's all it's all the same, so I don't know why, but I seem to be connected with these companies that the name is what it is. Yeah, you've always been very particular about branding, so that makes sense. Yeah. So the other one, uh I'm quite excited about. We'll going to lead us into uh to to the the third one you'll disclose. Yeah. So the third one is a is called Socket today. Uh it's a uh it's being rebranded imminently like in the next couple of weeks to month-ish type time frame. Socket soon to be known as quarter, Q U O T E R. And uh that is uh as you might imagine, a uh a quoting platform for. Not just for MSPs, but initially for obviously for MSPs. So, Um, great vision for the product. Uh a totally I hate to say be cheesy and say paradigm shift, but a a real paradigm shift for the way the sort of the incumbent tools uh address backup. Uh it's not going to be for everyone, there's probably going to be 10, 20% of MSPs. It's say I need, you know, super complex uh stuff that is maybe beyond the scope of a nice simple cloud-based app. But it does have all the integrations that are needed, the tech data and the Ingram micros and connect wise and auto task and all that stuff. So. So this would be a a competitor to Quozol and Quote Works then. Correct. Yeah. Um and and a little bit of a disruptive model, um and and more will come out on this soon. But the idea that everybody in the entire company should be able to quote product. Um, what does the customer see? Well, that, you know, we can manage that through specific routing and and approvals and different things. But the fact that, you know, a technician on the service desk, someone's, you know, has an opportunity at that moment in the service call to say, you know what, you should probably get a new computer. Would you like me to fire you a quote right now? Um, you know, talking about getting the the right quotes in the in the hands of the customers as quickly as possible. That's something that we believe in. And it's been prohibitive with all the other solutions that are out there, you're $50 to $100 per user per month. Yeah. For quotes. Of course, you're not going to pay that for a technician that's going to do, you know, maybe a quote or two a day or one a week or whatever. But all of the. We're going with unlimited users. Right. That's awesome. I think it's it's an important point because I I see the the implications of this with the companies that I work with. Where, you know, they have one or two licenses that a lot of people share and it creates a lot of impracticalities around the use the usage of the tool, but I don't really blame them considering the cost and how much they use it. So it it can be really cost prohibitive. And I I agree, I think this is a a space of the the MSP market in particular that is ripe for disruption. And we've we've had this conversation in the past that Quote Works, it works fine, but it looks like it was written in the 90s and the UX has never been updated. And uh Quozol is great, it's visually very pretty, but it it it's also really cumbersome and it's it's it's getting a bit dated. So I think um I'm I'm always a fan of of competition, even when when you were working with IT Glue and people would ask me, you know, what do you think of IT Glue? I said, it's the best platform and they're like, well, what about others like IT Boost and the other platforms that are coming up? I said, great. You know, the the competition benefits the consumer, right? And I think it's important that that all of the vendors continue to stay on their toes. So I'm glad to see you kind of throwing a wrench in in sort of the current dynamics of the quoting industry right now. Yeah, you know, it's uh I I've I feel the pain of of uh sort of the incumbents. And and, you know, to to a large extent IT Glue. You know, the the larger the company gets, the bigger the engineering team gets, the more red tape and process and, you know, technical debt happens, it it becomes really challenging to be nimble. And uh, you know, it's going to happen to all the the new guys coming too. It's it's just a a sad reality. And so, you know, I think I think like I said at the beginning, there there's platforms that have like tremendous robust capabilities that that maybe we won't have. Um and that's okay. We don't need to be, you know, the the market needs disruption, the market, there's probably a lot of people that could be quoting that aren't. And so we think we'll we'll change the dynamic a little bit and, you know, obviously our our story being that we're we're kind of funded and backed by top down. Um it is part of our our value add to to the entrepreneurs. By the way, the the founder and CEO of that is Mike Walsh. And I don't know if a lot of people know, but Mike Walsh was the the guy that I worked with like the two of us. Uh built IT Glue um at at the very beginning. And so he had his his separate company and um software development outsourcing firm basically based here in Vancouver. He's since dropped that um and him and his partner in that business, now that we're invested, are going all in on on the quoting product. And so, it's sort of like a full circle kind of a kind of a neat opportunity for me to invest in his in on him and previously he he was in us kind of thing. So. Yeah, that was that was how I that was how I sort of put together like what you were up to when I was surfing around on on those platforms. I was like, I recognized the name from when you were working with them at IT Glue and I was like, oh, okay, okay. So I drew a few of the threads together, yeah. Well, it was funny. I I mean, this is just a totally aside. But I uh I sat down and I remember Mike saying, you know what, we we've got like probably six months or 12 months of work to do before we can get this thing, you know, to MVP to be able to sell to MSPs. This was like, you know, two months ago. And I said, okay, well, give me the full demo because I've only had, you know, cursory look at everything and and so I said, give me the full demo. We sat down for almost two hours and he walked me through everything and I said, dude, this thing is ready to go. Like, there's nothing missing. You have the you have the connect wise integration, you have uh the auto task integration. You have the tech data and Ingram now, you know, the I think the approvals piece is is is like a game changer. It's coming out in the next couple of weeks. With those pieces, you've got your MVP and I I'm telling you like, yeah, it doesn't do group line items, subtotals and it doesn't do like tax for every state. And I go, you know what, none of that's going to matter. I'm telling you right now, people are going to love this thing. And so he was like, really, I thought I just thought it was kind of a funny anecdote that, you know, engineers are never satisfied, um, but uh, but I, you know, looking at it for me, from an MSP's perspective. It's like, wow, this thing is like killer compared to what I'm used to. Right, yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll we'll link to all of the the products in the in the show notes as well. If people want to check those out. Um, I I do want to get your perspective on on sort of the the the MSP industry as well. And uh any any thoughts that you have around um, you know, what lessons that you've learned through your growth of the MSP and your conversion to uh the the software industry. Which is somewhat parallel for a lot of people. A lot of people as you noted, kind of have those MSPs, they find a need and a niche and they start building something off on the side to serve their own needs. And then they spin it out to a product. So any thoughts on the MSP industry as a whole? Yeah. You know, I've had I've gone through this with a with a couple of great um entrepreneurs that have started MSPs. And um and and I I always kind of I guess like I said at the beginning of the call, like I've always been growth focused. I always had in my mind, I'm either going to like grow this and make tons of cash off of it on a on a recurring basis. Or I'm going to grow it and sell it or, you know, or or I've had a vision of like, I want this to be a a national brand or or whatever that mean, whatever that is, I've always had something like that that's driven me. Um, but, you know, you go through a lot of these companies and you realize. Not everybody has that kind of a vision, right? I mean, you're your story is probably different than mine. You know, we we want to build a a sustainable business that has long-term viability and it's it's good for my family. And I enjoy what I'm doing. And and I've found some great businesses uh like that, like I've example, um my IT. Which we're as much as I'm sort of I'm out of the fully managed thing somewhat, I'm on the board. Well, part of this deal with Patrick, who also owns my IT in in New Orleans is is we've become a financial partner in his MSP. And when we started digging into, you know, the particulars, the all the metrics, uh, you know, gross margins and um staff retention and and uh and uh customer retention and all that stuff. I went, man, this is so different than any other deal that I've seen. Like there there's like for the staff retention was like the 90 something percent of staff had been there for the last for 15 years or something. And it was like, that is impressive. So, and I looked at it and I go, you know what, they've created a great culture in that business and it really works for them and and it works for the owners too. Um, but then you have other guys who are really want to spin up a new a new project. And Patrick was was fortunate that we were able to work with him and and so now he's kind of got both. Uh and I've advised two other guys, by the way, that were thinking about um selling. That I said, why don't you hold on to it and and and work yourself out of the business while you work on your other ventures that you've got queued up. And like if that's a mindset that you have, you can make it happen. So I think a lot of people think, well, I should divest. Um when they could look at this and say, you know, there's a lot of people that sold MSPs, by the way, that wish they'd kept it and done exactly what I said. Like because the thing is like a cash machine, it's a recurring ATM. And um, you know, it it's hard work, but how do you fix that? You just uh, you know, don't do the work yourself. Yeah. So. This is an interesting point because I I think this is a great uh sort of learning lesson. This is something that I've I've feel like I've had conversations with people a lot about lately. Because there's almost like a FOMO feeling, a fear of missing out feeling in the industry where there's so much M&A activity going on. Everyone's like, well, maybe I should sell. And then and they put themselves up for sale and they potentially get undercut on value. And then the first question I ask people is like, okay, if you're going to sell, what are you doing next week? Right? And they're like, uh, well, I don't know. You know? And like there has to be a purpose towards it and I think it's important that you touch on this is like understanding what you're trying to build and why you're trying to build it. Is probably more important, you need to answer that first before you figure out what the strategy is and whether or not it's actually valuable for you to go and sell your business or just to continue to work on it or go out and find a partner, right? Yeah. So there's countless, I've been in um I was in EO uh, you know, eight or 10 years ago and and uh a couple years ago I joined I joined YPO. Uh which has a, you know, some a lot of the world's most successful people are in this network and you would be you probably wouldn't be shocked to hear that a huge percentage of people that that sell their businesses. Do have a uh sort of an identity crisis immediately following. They're like, I've got all this money and I've got like, what do I do now? And in some cases, you know, maybe the money's not enough to last them a lifetime. So you got to start again. And um, you know, so, you know, if it's a this is retirement money and I'm done and my family's taking care of for for ever, then great. I can imagine. Uh but I've even those guys, they say that golfing gets very boring when you're doing it like seven days a week. Um, you know, that's like and and there's only so many beaches you can lay on. Uh where you go, okay, I need to do something. And so, um I think that is that is a real problem in my case, I and I for my own personal experience, I had so much going on other than my MSP. That it was like a blessing for me to just like, you know what, I would almost like I I just need to get rid of this thing because I I just don't have the bandwidth. Um, and so and and I didn't. And and and the money wasn't wasn't really the primary driver for me. Um, But on the flip side, you know, there's great money to be made, um, you know, Careworks and fully managed, uh, they're going to be on a tear, you know, there there's going to be some major M&A activity uh through that through that business. And so I'll I'll enjoy being a part of that uh from the sidelines. Um, and I think there's plenty of deals to be done, so if if there's people that have other passions, you know, um, certainly I've seen people pivot into all kinds of different stuff. Like marketing consulting, um, you know, MSP consulting, uh, different things that that that maybe are are uh more aligned to to what individuals want to want to work on. So. Another trend I think sort of fits into this same vein as well is is uh what I've I've kind of termed a draft effect. Where there's so much M&A going on at kind of the $10 million, even the $5 million level that the people that are kind of one and two million are kind of trying to uh cobble together a cohort to be rolled up and sold. Yeah. Uh do you do you see that trend continuing any any uh feelings on whether or not that's a good strategy or or cautions on that? I think it is. I think if if um if the strategy is to eventually get out. You know, one of the things that um a lot of guys fail to to realize, I guess, is um or gals. Um you put two companies together, they're doing $2 million each, um and maybe that's a bad example at that scale. But like you're you're a $4 million company with 10% or 15% Ebitda is worth more. Um on a pro rata basis than a $2 million business at the same Ebitda level. So your multiples go up the larger the business. And and certainly when you get to 10, 20, $50 million in in revenue. You know, the the multiples go up. So, you know, I when I I think to my own personal experience of putting fully managed together. The first merger that I did with with um uh with my partner Charlene in uh in Edmonton at the time. And that was like, I probably aged 10 years in in 18 months. Uh it was the hardest thing I probably ever went through. But it created, you know, it it created the legacy for me, it it it jacked our values and allowed me to do all the other things including start IT Glue that I would have never been able to do. Um without, you know, without the scale. And so I personally believe that um, you know, the problems get bigger, the bigger the bigger you scale. Um, but those you also have more people to help you with those problems. And um, you know, so so I wouldn't I wouldn't hesitate to to answer your question of if I was one or two million. To put two, three, four, five people together and say, well, now we're eight or $10 million and we have 20% instead of 100%. I guess that's that's sort of my question though. Is that if you take a few businesses, cobble them together, you hit on it exactly that the culture integration and the technical integration of those businesses is can be a little traumatic. Oh, totally. And does that bring down the Ebitda in in in a short period and the I guess the process is you have to recover it. So you have to figure out like what the long-term uh metrics of the business need to be. But my I guess my caution is is people they they maybe jump into this too quickly just to throw a few businesses together. And then found that they've kind of tanked their profitability in the result. Yeah, well, we made that mistake and I think that's probably why I aged so much in those two years. But where we said, hey, we're so excited about this merger and uh starting tomorrow, you're going to call into Vancouver instead of Edmonton. And we said we like literally that's what we said. Like here's an email, you're not going to deal with the people you dealt with yesterday. Now you're dealing with new people. And like the staff were like, we hate you and the customers were like, we hate you. And like, okay, we screwed that up in every every possible angle. So, you know, if I were to do it again, I would say, we're we're putting the two businesses together. But they're going to run independently for quite some time. And um, but from a outside investor coming in. They go, at least your shares are all in one pile. Um even if the things run the same way. There's definitely going to be some efficiencies gained like finance and HR and um, uh some op stuff, uh even if you just leave all the service to totally separate. Even if all three you put three companies together, they all use different backup tools. As long as you don't try to immediately do it, you you can gain it, but it takes some patience. And entrepreneurs are not always that patient. So. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So uh we'll look to wrap up here. Any uh spots that you would suggest actually, I guess one thing would be is if um people say think that they have a hot product that could use uh uh incubation in top down. Are you accepting uh entries or looking for businesses? Is that a something that people should be considering? Yeah, absolutely. I I think um, and and even just to give guidance, we're happy to do that if the product, if you just have an idea. And and, you know, just to start an early conversation. Happy to always provide some thoughts. Um, you know, we're we're probably going to place we're our target is to do one investment per year. Uh and so, um, you know, we're we've we've got a we haven't done our 2019 one yet. Uh so so we've got uh an opening there and probably do do one a year for, you know, the next couple years and then we'll see how that goes. Um but yeah, absolutely. Reach out to me. Um LinkedIn's probably the easiest, you can find me on LinkedIn. And then uh we can definitely have a conversation. We've got a team here that now, you know, talks to talks to entrepreneurs, gives them some guidance. A lot of times it's like, here's what I would do if you're really passionate about this idea and or maybe even say we think that's a terrible idea, um or this is what you would have to charge to make that work. We're we're more than happy to give guidance on on some of those things. So. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Well, we'll link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well. So, uh we'll again. We'll look to wrap up. Appreciate your time, Chris. Um any parting words of wisdom or ask of of the listening audience? Go get it. That's all I would say. Get after it. All right. Awesome. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Todd.