ERP081 - MSP Insights Series 7

what I learned, as I said, is the fact that without consistency, you know, and without being deliberate about it, it just it falls apart with scale. Eight or 10 people, good intentions go a long way. At 100 people, it falls apart massively. Welcome to Evolved Radio, where we explore the evolution of business and technology. I'm your host Todd Kane. When it comes to delivering cyber security services to your clients, there's a lot to consider. Even more at stake. Firewalls and antivirus don't provide enough protection and adding more tools to an already complex tech stack is expensive and difficult to manage. The Field Effect partner momentum program and the award-winning security portfolio solve these issues by enabling MSPs to deliver complete cyber security protection, unlock new revenue streams, simplify operations and stand out from the competition. Learn more and connect with Field Effect team today by visiting fieldeffect.com/mspradio. Today we're continuing our series of interviews with MSP owners and operators. We peel back the curtain a bit to hear from the people working inside their MSP businesses. We focus on revealing the lessons learned and experiences in building a managed IT service business. Today on the podcast, I'm joined by Peter Melby, CEO of Greystone Technologies. Peter tells a fantastic story about how he grew his company from 800 bucks to cover rent and beer to a $10 million MSP powerhouse. Peter also shares his views on company culture and how that influenced his decisions in recent acquisition activity. Please enjoy the fantastic insights shared in my conversation with Peter. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. It really helps to spread awareness and bring more listeners to the show so we can share the message with more of the community. Now, on with the show. Peter. Welcome to the Evolved Radio podcast. Thanks, Todd. It's good to talk to you. I'm missing you in person, but hopefully we can do that soon. Yes, yeah, we'll see each other shortly at IT Nation Connect. Yes. Yes. Well, good to to catch up and connect. Couple of themes that that I want to get into to chat with you on. Um, if you maybe want to start things off and just give us a bit of a brief around your company, size, from a staff and revenue, if you're comfortable to share and years in business. Yeah. I'm the CEO of Greystone Technology, we're a Denver-based managed service provider. Just over 100 staff members. Revenue around 16 million, look at to, you know, get uh 2022 as our first $20 million year. So, uh it'd be a big jump, but the the the market's prime for it right now. So, it's exciting times for sure. Very cool. So, obviously in a relative scale, you guys are are a pretty sizable MSP. I'm curious sort of the the the growth trajectory, like were there were there sort of big bumps along the way that that had you grow or was it fairly steady organic growth throughout the history of the company? It's interesting, we we spent some time evaluating that in the past couple of years. And if you run, if you just graph our revenue over the past 20 years of business since our founding, it looks very, it's a very nice exponential curve. Which is not at all how it actually went, um, and not at all how it actually felt. So, the numbers are consistent. The journey, yeah, I I tell people when when I show them that that every little, you know, increment in that has a bunch of zigzags in it. So it it has been pretty consistent. But every inflection point, like we've talked about over the years, you don't just go from, you know, nothing to to 20 million, you know, evenly by doing the same things year after year. And so, a lot of mistakes, a lot of dead ends, a lot of reinventing wheels that we probably didn't need to reinvent. So, any highlights or things that stand out to you as, you know, lessons learned or things that either you would actively repeat or try to avoid in your in your sort of second time through this if you had to do it over again? The thing that I would repeat is also probably my biggest mistake. So there's some irony in that. And that's uh I quit college at 20 to do this. And people love to sensationalize the idea of the college dropout turned successful entrepreneur. Um, which it wasn't really the decision that I made. I wasn't qualified. I I didn't make the decision because I had a great view of what I wanted for this. I made the decision because I was tired of doing homework and I was tired of going to class and this was just a shiny object and an excuse. So, the other side of that is the fact that, um, I dropped out of school and I had to explain that to my college professor father. who doesn't really understand business and doesn't really like business, he's a scientist. So, over the years that occurred after that, I I say often sometimes that we make decisions and sometimes we make our decisions good. And the years after I quit school were very much me making my decision good. Just brute force to then justify the fact that that this was right. It wasn't right, but I learned a lot during those years. And a few things that that that I learned that were really critical to our growth. Number one is was a little bit of dumb luck in the sense that I was underqualified, but I also had very little life responsibility when I started. The time that I had to hire my first employee, which is the time that I had to, you know, make sure that I had, you know, 150%, you know, of the work that I needed and then hire somebody and try to then offload half of that to them and kind of, you know, figure out that balance. I can work 100 hours a week and I needed to make approximately $900 a month. Because I I had an apartment, I needed some food, I needed some beer. And that was pretty much it. Priorities, right? Yeah, my girlfriend lived out of town and uh. So, I I'd see her on weekends, but I just I I loved what I was doing. And so, a lot of of people that I talk to on the MSP journey that say, how how did you get from, you know, through your first few hires? And the best part for me was I didn't have to support a family. I didn't have to be, you know, financially accountable to anything in a major way. So it wasn't profitable, I didn't make a lot of money during those years. And which was important because I also didn't know how to make money at that point. So, what I learned over the the, you know, five, you know, eight years after that first, you know, stint was what profitability really means, you know, the math around growth, you know, and things like that. So, as I look back, people love to to, you know, congratulate, you know, me as one of those early prodigies when it was actually my incompetence that had, you know, and and just desperate need to make it work that that pushed me through some of those early early lessons. What is the what's the expression? Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Exactly. Yes. And and it's interesting because our MSP. You know, I have a business partner, you know, who was not actively involved in the business at the time, but he was a great, you know, financial or sorry, great uh just business information, you know, experience point of stability. But we we started with nothing, you know, and so it was very homegrown. But the thing that that we we realized over time is that we didn't, you know, we had a competitive advantage because we just looked at the market a little bit differently. And we don't see a lot of MSPs that start with a massive capital infusion. Or a big, you know, grand plan that, you know, especially back in the late 90s, you know, early 2000s, it wasn't the thing that we looked at and said, well, we're going to build enterprise value doing these businesses. And so, I honestly for the every year for, you know, almost 20 years, looked at it and said, well, I, you know, I guess I'll keep doing this because I haven't figured out what I want to do when I grow up. You know, and then at one point, you know, I just turned 40 this year and like, oh wait, I'm I'm grown up, you know, I'm I'm a grown up now. I can't I can't look at what I've done and say, well, you're successful for your age, you know, that qualifier no longer applies. So I have to consider myself a grown up and realize that this is what I do and this is what I'm going to do. So that's a it's a pretty stark contrast to say, you know, you guys are targeting 20 million in annual revenue this year. versus, you know, starting out with just trying to cover 900 bucks so that you could pay for your apartment and and and and buy some beers. You know, that that's a that's a huge distinction in in sort of where you've landed. Do you have a recollection on on along the way where you sort of reflected and like, holy crap, like this is really working, like this is a this is a business now versus just sort of something I'm trying to do. Do you have do you recall that? Yeah, so I I compare it often to raising children. In the sense that you don't you don't see day-to-day differences in your kids, but you look back at pictures and you realize, oh wow, this is significantly different. You know, what's the parable that, you know, the guy who picks up the cow every day, you know, and skips one day and then the day after that he can't lift it anymore. That's it's very much that that gradual thing, you know, was was the experience. But as I look back, there are a few major points. And you know, I think like most entrepreneurs, there there were mostly negative. There were probably a dozen things, you know, I remember the time that we bid, you know, a project for $20,000. And I remember thinking that, you know, if if someone agrees to pay us $20,000, we've got it made. I think we had one employee at the time, maybe two. And so we can do anything for 20 grand. Turns out, you can't. Spent about 80 grand in labor to deliver that $20,000 project, which is devastating. Oh, wow. Yeah. First lesson in profitability, right? Yes, the first managed services platform that we bought in 2004 was money we couldn't afford. We were so dedicated to the idea of flat fee services and proactive services. We bought a platform that just wasn't it wasn't ready. We weren't ready. And we wasted 20 grand that we didn't have on that, you know. And again, you know, the it was actually the the outflow of that that we looked at and said, all right, we spent our money. You know, and now we can't spend any more, but we still have to get to where we're going, so we had to get scrappy. And and then the the stuff that I think you and I initially connected on when we first met, culture. Is one of those things that we set out to be a people first, people focused IT business. Um the thing that I say now is that um we're a people focused industry entirely. Some companies realize it and some companies don't yet. But we're people who sell other people's time to people who happen to have technology needs. And so, that was probably the biggest thing. We we knew that in our heads and in our hearts going into to this. The reality of it and realizing how much you can't just rely on good intentions. You know, that it. So I I care about people. I'm decent to work with. You know, I I have, you know, I'm well meaning. You know, let's just, you know, culture should be easy. And realizing that actually it's very it's it's not. You know, the times that we've had people, you know, leave us, you know, employee wise because of misunderstandings, because of assumptions they made, you know, they're telling us everything's fine, but but it's not. Those are some of the hardest lessons to learn, but I think actually digging in and leaning into that. Rather than just getting frustrated with the fact that people aren't always honest and our employees don't always act the way that we want them to, don't always understand things correctly. But leaning into how to to embrace, you know, and engage that differently. Probably is our biggest differentiator in this space. And that didn't start, you know, it wasn't just the the intellectual knowledge and the fact that it's a people industry. It was the experience and a lot of the failures and a lot of the heartache that came from realizing that it's not easy as easy as it it seems like it should be on paper. Yeah, it's so the culture element is is, you know, something that I think is a real differentiator for you guys. And it's something I do want to dig into because I'm curious on your thoughts on this. I think a lot of people would assume or do assume that culture is sort of the the soft and squishy stuff that sort of happens in between conversations and and it's a bit more of art than it is science. I guess that your guys's approach to this is is sort of somewhere in between that culture does require some process, like to build it, it requires intention. So, you guys are very systematic in your in your people management process, what are your thoughts on sort of the the necessity of some of that art and science in building what you what you want as a culture? You I've never put that label on it, but I love that. Because it is that balance of the fact that. There has to be a talent, you know, for people management, for leadership, you know, and you know, soft skills, the intangibles, the intellectual humility that uh is is very important. But what I learned, as I said, is the fact that without consistency, you know, and without being deliberate about it, it just it falls apart with scale. Eight or 10 people, good intentions go a long way. Totally. At 100 people, it falls apart massively. You know, the assumptions that get made in a corporate structure. And like you said at at the beginning, we're a relatively large business. On the business, you know, on the scale of general business, 100 people is a lot. But in the MSP world, you know, it's it's it's significant. And the reason is because most, you know, MSP started the same way we did. They start without capital, they don't start with a growth plan, they don't, you know, it's. And it's a people business and that's and people businesses are the hardest ones to scale because it's not that automatic. And so, what we've tried to, you know, we we we have a few things that we've that we've built to try to, you know, create that consistency that will allow us to to scale. It doesn't scale it for us, but it allows us the information, you know, that we need in order to scale. And I say, you know, it's it's akin in some ways to the idea of measuring gut feelings. You know, I use that term a lot because I think a lot of people, you know, go off of their gut, you know, and their instincts and that's how they run businesses. And a lot of people just want only data, you know, and both of those things can get skewed pretty quickly. And so, we've developed, you know, a very simple process, you know, where with our our one-on-ones, you know, every employee has a one-on-one each month, you know, with their manager, which is not rocket science, it's not new. But I realized there's the worst way to begin a one-on-one with your manager or with your your team member is the way that most people start one-on-ones. And that's with the question, how's it going? Because the question of how's it going does not get any level of candor. You know, or any level of of reality. It gets whatever's on the surface. So in a half hour one-on-one, you spend 28 minutes talking about, you know, football and, you know, dancing around the issues and pretending that things are okay. And then it's time to wrap up the meeting and you either never talk about the real stuff. Or you try to just shoehorn it in at the end. Like, oh, by the way, I've been kind of kind of having this problem with this over here. I wonder if maybe you could help me with it. The meaningful stuff happens in the last minute and you're like, oh, okay, well, I guess this either needs to run long or something else, right? Oh, or by the way, yeah. I'm going to I'm going to turn in my notice now. Like, wait, what? We just talked about this for, you know. So, we're very deliberate in in the questions that we ask and answer within the organization. And so, every month, each team member, you know, comes to the one-on-one. Each manager comes to the one-on-one pre-answering, you know, some a few specific questions. And they're questions like, you know, asking the team member. What do you think you're doing well? What are you working to improve? You know, we've learned that that if if people are are just putting up, you know, trying to share the only, you know, what they're doing well and what they're doing right and hide the things that they're not doing well. I can't run my company. I I need to know where the problems are. You know, if if we're going to support and move through those things. So asking very directly, you know, rather than telling them this is what I see you not doing very well. Being able to say, hey, what are you working to improve? Because the the thing that we realized is that most people in the organization, they know what they're not good at. And rather, you know, and so they they posture around it as opposed to embracing it and trying to either work through it, manage around it, you know, create a plan for it, things like that. And so, by asking them the simple question of what are you working to improve and getting inside their own, you know, self-reflection. It creates a level of of candor that we can do something. Then on the other side of that, you know, making sure that the leader's answering questions, you know, about the employee that are also authentic. So, we we definitely want to to tap into the positive side of things. Where are you seeing growth, what successes are you seeing, you know, in my work? But every leader, every month answers two questions about every one of their their employees or every one of their team members. And it's what do you need me to adjust? And am I succeeding in my role? And those are two questions that most people don't, most employees. Don't have the the security, you know, the psychological safety to be able to ask, you know, directly. They're certainly not going to do it every month. But when we create that consistency of it, then it brings a level of of candor. And to your point. I'm not trying, you know, we're a people, you know, we're a people company and that's our our number one focus, but we can't we can't be, you know, just turn it into a counseling center. You know, we can't spend all of our time in all of the soft, you know, spaces providing therapy to all of our employees. And the whole, you know, and and digging into every personal problem, you know, and things. So there has to be that balance of getting through the reality, but making sure that we're we're keeping the task at hand first and foremost so we can move forward. I really like that idea of of basically normalizing some of those those tougher questions. That like you said, they can be a bit uncomfortable, right? Like people don't often want to reflect on on whether or not they're failing their staff. But I think that that's an incredibly relevant thing for them to understand from the position of the staff, right? And similarly, I sort of believe like you shouldn't focus on the things that you're bad at and making yourself good at them. But there's a distinction there in that you should absolutely be aware of what you're good and bad at, right? So that then the manager is better enabled to say like, do you see these things? Like, like what are you actually working on for for some level of improvement or at least compensating measures to make sure that these things don't blindside you and and cause some impact in in in sort of your productivity or your position in the company, right? Exactly. And there are times we look at it, you know, if we if someone's not good at being accountable for their time card. Like, I'm sorry, you got like that's yours to fix. You know, that's that's we we can help you, but I'm not going to have I'm not going to hire someone to come and do your time card for you. But if you're not good, you know, one of the things I say is that often times people who are good at one thing actually precludes them from being good at something else. So, I I started at, you know, you know, as a developer, you know, when you know, into into computer science in college, which is one of the reasons that I quit is that I love what what can be done with code and I'm a terrible developer because I can't sit and and all day long, you know, create and pay attention to the details and the exceptions and all of these things. I just want things to move and work. And so, so the people that we hire that are phenomenal developers, they're so detail oriented that they fundamentally don't naturally think of the big picture, you know. And so, so there there are some of those incongruencies that rather than saying, hey, be everything. Like, no, no, honing on on, you know, what really matters. And it's one of the biggest selling points of, you know, for MSPs is I I we go to organizations all the time and say, you hired one person to try to do things that are fundamentally incompatible, you know. And rather than, you know, having a program with multiple skill sets. And and that's so that that realization has been good for us and also good for our position in the market. Right on. So, your position in the market, obviously growing and a component of that, um, was a recent M&A activity that you guys have been a part of. I'm curious, I know that our conversation sort of leading up to this is that you were very intentional about what this would look like and because you're uh you had a very strong vision for the organization and you were obviously very protective of the culture that you've built. So, I'm curious sort of what was your thinking around that M&A and activity? What were the things that you wanted to make sure were in place and how did you uh ensure that that deal was going to deliver the things that you wanted to to to to provide for the future of the company and the future of the staff? It's kind that you, you know, say that that it was intentional. It very much was, but it came across, you know, in the years leading up to this as pretty brash in some ways. that I was I was very outspoken. I have been very outspoken against a lot of the M&A activity in the MSP space. And I think that's appropriate. Like, actually, let's not to interrupt you, but I think let's pause on that because I I do think that that's worth expanding on and why you felt that that was the case. Because I think we have some alignment on everyone just sort of saying, looking over their shoulder and saying, everyone's getting bought, maybe I should sell too. And I think that's a very dangerous sentiment. It is and and the spoiler is that my views haven't changed. But digging into that, if you look at, you know, most of us didn't come into this with the idea of, like I said before, of how do I build enterprise value? I didn't know what enterprise value was as a 20-year-old. It was how do I build something that matters? How do I do something that creates benefit for me, benefit for other people, benefit for customers? And so, all of a sudden, you have this money on the sidelines, you know, in various places. Combined with the fact that running a very small MSP is not fun. You know, having to do everything, having to be on call all the time. Like I said, I I had the wonderful fortune of doing most of that when I was in my early 20s. But the reality is is that if we look at the landscape now, there's a lot of money on the sidelines. Private equity money, family money, you know, just investment dollars, you know, that that need to go somewhere. And people look at MSPs as tech as technology companies, which is always, you know, kind of that next, you know, that that that that next gen stuff to invest in. That's fundamental flaw number one is looking at MSPs as technology companies. We're professional services companies. You know, technology changes. MSPs would love if technology never changed. You know, people won't admit that, but I have to change my business model every time technology changes. So, we're a lot more like accountants and lawyers in in terms of the way that the business world sees us. So, investment groups looking at it and saying, well, it's it's a technology company with recurring revenue, it's perfect. We just take two of these companies and smash them together and 2 + 2 = 5. And and in the enterprise value game, you know, you take five $1 million companies and put them into a $5 million company and you get a bigger multiple, you get an immediate return. And on paper, putting those $5 million companies together is as easy as just, you know, putting five spreadsheets on top of each other. But the reality is is that we're we're unsophisticated businesses the way that they're looking at product-oriented businesses and things like that. We're relationship businesses. You know, even with 100 people and, you know, you know, you know, you know, eight me and $20 million in revenue. We are still and and we promote the connections with our individual team members. And so, rather than looking at it and saying, well, eventually we're going to scale out of this being a personality driven or personal connection driven business. We've actually scaled into it. So, you talk to most MSPs, you know, of a certain scale and when someone gets acquired in their market. It's a feeding frenzy and it's wonderful. Because I know that I'm going to have the pick of employees. I'm going to have clients calling me because no one when you start making those purely financial decisions. The people that don't benefit are the clients and the employees. The ownership can, you know, but especially when the investment group doesn't understand the core components that go into driving the business. So, it's not that all the investments are failing, but most of the investments are failing the things that that the premise that we build our our companies on to begin with, which is the clients and the employees. Yeah, I think you're right. Like they it's more the motives and the understanding of the market and what sort of drives these things. And I often joke like in this industry, we all generally have the same business model. We approach the the product delivery and the service delivery in a very similar fashion. The odd part is is you compare any company in this industry and no one does it the same way. And I think that that's the difficulty in merging companies is is the investment groups don't necessarily see that. They say, well, you guys are all doing this managed service business model and, you know, maybe your PSA is different. That's fine. We can smash these together and and and figure this out. But it's way more complicated than that, which isn't really evident unless you've spent a lot of time in the operations of these businesses, right? Exactly. And and you talk to the people who have been on the front lines integrating, you know, MSPs at scale, even just, you know, two, you know, the people who have integrated far more than that. And they are exhausted. Yes. And the people around them are exhausted and the eggs that get broken, you know, and making the omelet kind of a thing, you know, is is it's just assumed that that's all right, that's the way it has to be. And and, you know, yes, to scale, you know, requires overcoming challenge. But some of these are self-created challenges by the way that we've gone into the investment, you know, side of things. So, that feeling though doesn't and those opinions don't absolve us from the the potential benefits, you know, of money being in the space. And for us, obviously, there's the the idea of of, you know, wanting to benefit, you know, from the the institutional value, you know, that that, you know, has been created. But also then enter into the security landscape that we're in now and that changes daily. Because a company that I, you know, my partner and I looking at holding the bag entirely, you know, on like the bigger the company gets, the more the individual pressure of liability gets. And so that was something that that was actually the the driving point for us in early 2020 to say, all right, we need to take a a look at this from a holistic perspective and say, there are things that we can't do because, you know, we're still, you know, inching forward, you know, hand to mouth kind of a thing. There are decisions that we're making because, I mean, that that are more fear-based than they probably should be because of our own individual exposure in these things. And we started to, you know, explore some things in the market. And like everybody, we I think we got 400 outreaches in in 18-month period from people who wanted to, you know, talk about buying our our MSP, you know. Wow. I don't know how many of them were legitimate. Even if it's half, that's still a lot to sort through. It's still a lot. It's still it just it's it's indicative of the crazy amount of momentum there in right now. And so, we we deliberately but cautiously explored a few options. And I told our, you know, a couple people on our leadership team at one point. I said, we're looking for a unicorn. So we partnered with New Charter Technologies, funded by by Oval Partners. And New Charter is a a portfolio of specifically MSPs. And we were we were company number six. We knew some of the original companies. Mitch Morgan, you know, is the the CEO. I've known him for a long time and, you know, we've connected on a lot of these things that we just talked about. The challenges, you know, of M&A. So we shared a lot of ideas around that. And the premise, you know, of New Charter and, you know, we're about to close, I think we'll be 16 companies by the end of the month. So, it's it's moving fast. But the idea is that you leave the soul of the company in place. And the soul of the company is how the organization embraces their employees and their clients. So it's it's culture and its service delivery and because of that, it's also market position and brand. You know, and we we consolidate the things that are are not, you know, the unique strengths of the organization. So, there are uplifts that we that that every MSP in the portfolio gets in terms of marketing support, you know, HR, you know, accounting support, you know, things like that. So we have it's a low integration model, but it's a specific integration model where we look at it and say, well, let's integrate the things that are going to help. Yes, there's going to be pain in, you know, putting together accounting systems and getting on the same payroll system and things like that. But it's not the pain that your customers and employees are going to say, why are we doing this? This doesn't serve us and we hate this. And the naysayers in the market look at it and say, well, you're not going to get the uplift, you know, that comes with being on, you know, on the same systems, having the same service model, you know, all of these things. And and that that's true. We know we're missing out on, you know, on some points of gross margin. But in the growth world that we're in right now in terms of MSPs, I mean, a lot of these rollups are organically growing at, you know, two, three, 4% because they swallowed, you know, or or going down because they swallowed all of their momentum with the integration process. And all of their their effort, you know, is going into that. And our our portfolio, you know, our companies grew by average 22 and a half% in the last 12 months because they're free to grow. You know, they're they're able, you know, we're all able sitting in our markets saying, how do we make sure that we are best positioned to serve our market? And, you, we've got a company in Joplin, Missouri, we've got a company in New York City. Those are not the same market. Like the same service model doesn't apply. And so over time, yeah, there'll be opportunities to consolidate things. There'll be opportunities to, you know, to bring things together. But I'd rather do it after we get to know each other than, you know, decide to get married and then go on our first date. Right, right. So the alignment comes later, but the the the core value matching up front as a part of that portfolio makes more sense and then you can figure out the details later, right? Yeah, and the other thing that's that's critical to it is that we're only interested in companies where the owner wants to stay and wants to reinvest, where the owner's not out, you know, or at least the primary leader of the organization. Because we're remaining independent, so no one's taking over. But the financial model is critical and that's where Oval Partners is so unique is that we're all we're all class A share. We're all looking at what this means for for the future, how we continue to build value, but still with the premise of the value has to be built with our employees, you know, and clients at the forefront. And so, the ability to do that and still be entrepreneurial and not look at it and say, well, that was that was a nice exit. Thanks. You know, is is also critical. And that that's what precludes, you know, some organizations from being the right fit is that if you're looking to cash out, your company's probably not going to perform the way that it would if you were around. And so, having that that gradual, you know, plan of how we we move on. Some are, you know, I'm sure some owners, you know, are looking at it, you know, in the the five-year, you know, spectrum and some are looking at it and saying, yeah, I've got unlimited runway. Let's keep doing this, you know, as as long as we can. But we're not using that transaction as the exit point, which is critical. Right. Yeah, I think and I think that to me that's one of the most important things that people need to be intentional about if they're looking at M&A and activity is I have to sort of pose the question to people when they're considering selling. I'm like, okay, so you do that and you leave, what are you doing in six months? And it's it's surprising to me the number of people that have not really thought about that that that far down the line. They're like, well, you know, I'll go golfing. I'll get like, okay, you you've just spent the last 20 years of your life like burying 60 hours a week trying to build something. You think you like golfing's going to fulfill you after six months? Like you're going to be bored, right? Exactly. Well, and there's the other side of it too. In terms of these are our identities in so many ways. So true. And so, as we were looking at different options, including just, you know, staying independent. So, well, I'm sure there's an amount of money that someone could pay me in order for them, you know, for me to be okay with them taking what I I spent my life building and destroying it while I watch. Right. There's a number. I I won't pretend that there's not. I never found it. And so, you had lots of offers to consider that. There were plenty of offers from people, you know, who wanted to destroy what we had built. They weren't willing to pay us enough. And uh, is there going to have to be a lot of people that would be made whole, you know, in in that immediately that wouldn't have what they have, you know, or wouldn't have on the other side what they have now. And, you know, but realizing that you're exactly right. The the money is blinding and also for, you know, MSP owners who are burnt out. You look at it and say, oh, I can take a big, I can I can get a bunch of money, take a deep breath, you know, move on, life's going to be grand, you know, I I'll be less stressed, all these things. Those things don't happen. Like because it's not that simple thing that we can just walk away from. Again, like that's where our personalities and our our our capabilities are so intertwined with our organizations that you can't just extract yourself from that and be okay with it. And so, I think that that's but but it is blinding when you look at it and feel like you can, you know, as as the result of a transaction. That's where I think that there's a lot of people who end up really disappointed in that space. They're like, oh, I didn't know it was going to I didn't know that was going to happen, you know. And yeah. Okay. So I would say that that's a a pretty good point to sort of end on as uh sort of parting words of advice. Be be thoughtful about what you're going to do if if you're entering into this activity and and have the end in mind, I guess is is maybe a good way to phrase it. Any other sort of parting words of advice for people either building their MSP practice or starting to build their MSP practice? Yeah. I mean, I I think prioritizing action over in action, you know, has been critical for us. Not waiting for things to be perfect, but still continuing to move forward. But aligning this this wraps up a lot of what what we've talked about and it's another way of summarizing what you just said, which is if you look at the values and the value proposition of what you've got, you hear. You know, what what has created success. Then when it comes to, you know, investment, when it comes to growth plans, when it comes to whatever the future is, like you can't lose that. You know, I says, we've changed a lot. You know, I've changed my mind on a lot of things, but I haven't changed my mind on the fact that the people are the most important aspect of this. So if that if that remains our beacon, you know, if that remains the lighthouse, you know, that that's guiding us, then then we're we're in good shape, you know, we're we're going, you know, to make more right decisions than we are wrong decisions. And in them and that has to be key as well. So, you know, the two things over the years that people want to talk to me most about when they look at Greystone, you know, is culture because we've talked about, you know, those things and presented conferences and and then the M&A stuff because they're surprised when we we made that that investment decision and recognizing like those things have to go hand in hand. And for us, it was the culture that drove that decision. So find what what makes you successful and make sure you're not going to lose that in whatever future plans you have. Excellent. Great advice. Peter, really appreciate your thoughts and your insight on this. Uh I think this is valuable for for anyone in the industry, uh especially with all the all the changes and the growth plan of where you've come from and where you where you've arrived, I think makes where people have come from and probably where people sort of hope to end up as well. So, great lessons in that. Appreciate your time. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on and I'll uh I'll see you in November. I'll and we'll uh as we we fight for attendees for our session that happens to be at the same time. So. All right. We'll uh we'll grab a drink afterwards at least. Perfect. Can't wait. Thanks, Peter. Awesome. Thanks.