Transforming and Selling Businesses with Alexis Sikorsky

This week, Dan sits down with Alexis Sikorsky, founder of Knight Scale Partners, to unpack how to build, transform, and exit companies the smart way. Alexis shares the strategy behind “moving like a knight,” a crisp 3–4 year planning window with one-month reaction time, the metrics he watches, and the story behind selling his banking software company—why he took 85% cash / 15% earn-out, and how the earn-out ended up paying more. If you want a practical playbook for scaling value without losing your mind (or your house during a crisis), this is it.

Show Highlights:

• Why the knight? Strategy behind Knight Scale Partners—anticipate, “play with the whites,” and win by moving differently. [00:03:02]
• The planning horizon that actually works: 3–4 years…with a one-month reaction time for pivots. [00:06:12]
• What to measure: start with TAM, then track LTV/CAC monthly—keep the dashboard simple. [00:11:05]
• Start with the founder’s goal: the surprisingly universal number is $40M and why. [00:17:23] (derived from the transcript section referencing “40 million”)
• 2008 hits: lost 75% of revenue in a day—and the seven-year grind back. [00:26:23]
• The deal that changed everything: 85% cash / 15% earn-out up front… [00:30:44]
• …and why the earn-out paid more than the cash. [00:31:10]
• What great PE actually brings: cost discipline and world-class sales; why “no sales team” is a PE dream. [00:32:02]
• Alexis’ two superpowers: leadership and turning complexity into five actionable steps. [00:56:27]
• “Black Dragons” (a.k.a. Black Swans): build 9 months of war chest and design for agility. [00:49:56]
• What Alexis reads for complex thinking: The Three-Body Problem (and The Dark Forest). [00:56:49]
• Cashing Out: Alexis’ simple method to go from ~$10M to $100M valuation; audiobook now available. [00:56:58]
• The Virtual C-Suite: fractional, high-caliber execs as an unfair advantage; early traction & LTV/CAC math. [01:07:03]

For more updates and my weekly newsletter, hop over to https://betterquestions.co/

To learn more about Alexis Sikorsky, check out the websites below: 

https://www.knightscalepartners.com/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-sikorsky-consulting/?originalSubdomain=uk

Transcript:

[00:01:55] What's up everybody? This is Daniel Barrett [00:02:00] and I am here with Alexis Sikorsky. He is here from Knight Scale Partners. That is Knight with a k scale partners.com. Alexis, thank you so much for being on the show, man. I, I really, really appreciate your time and I'm looking forward to speaking with you. 

[00:02:15] I thank you for having me.

[00:02:16] It's an honor. 

[00:02:17] Oh, well I appreciate we, we were talking before I, I say this every podcast, but we were talking before we hit record. I was having such a great time. Now I usually what I'll start with is I start by saying, Hey, for people who don't know what you do, how do you describe it? I do want to get there, but because we just introduced you with night scale, so we talked about night scale partners.

[00:02:38] This is actually one of the questions that I had, which was, I noticed throughout a lot of different things you have this knight imagery and in fact, on your personal website you even have like the, the knight from chess in the background. And I wanted to ask like what that means to you or why you chose that name?

[00:02:53] Is there a story behind it? Does it, is there some kind of deeper significance there? Does it just sound cool? How did you make the decision to go with night scale? The, 

[00:03:02] the idea is. We, we live in an, uh, enterprise world that's getting more and more strategical. Um, and what I do, right, in general, I do lots of things, but general, what I do is to talk to founders and help them grow their company to a point where they can reach a hundred million valuation.

[00:03:26] And that's require a bit of strategy. So the, the chess part, the night is basically expressing, like trying to, I, I, I often use this expression with, with my client, uh, play with the whites. Like don't react, but anticipate and have a like 3, 4, 5, uh. Shots ahead strategy. So, and also the night is the one who moves weird, and I'm a kind of guy who moves weird, right?

[00:03:59] Like I'm, [00:04:00] I'm not very often in a straight line. So it's all this imagery around the chess game. 

[00:04:05] All right. I, I love that because that, that I was like, I wonder if it's because it's the one that moves weird. Yeah. Yeah. Because I, I really like that, that idea of, you gotta kind of zig what everybody's gonna zag.

[00:04:17] So, okay, so let me, let me take a minute and just talk about the idea of strategy because you say, okay, part, part of it is being proactive and sort of trying to be a little ahead of the curve. This is a question that I often have, particularly now in this, this sort of current business climate that we're in, which is I've never felt less certain about what's gonna happen, ever.

[00:04:43] And one of the questions that I, I often have is like, well, how far ahead should I try to think? Because if I overcommit and then things don't go the way I expect, then I'm, I feel like I'll be stuck If I under commit and I try to keep all my options over the open all the time, then I don't end up investing enough in any one direction.

[00:05:03] And I know that's kind of a general question, but how do you think about how far ahead to think and how far ahead to plan, particularly with your clients, who are these enterprise businesses that have a lot going on? Does that make sense? 

[00:05:16] Uh, it makes so much sense. You can sit and relax because I can talk for an hour and a half.

[00:05:21] This is what I want. I try not to, I promise I, first of all, a concept I love, right? Um, people are an engine and a steering wheel. A lots of people you meet have a fantastic engine. They work days and night. They have, they are brilliant people. They have tons of ideas, but they run like headless chicken because their steering wheel is not.

[00:05:46] Mm. 

[00:05:47] So that's my job. So to, to be the steering wheel or to help people find their own steering wheel, right. Um, to answer more directly to your question, the, the answer is four years. [00:06:00] And I'm gonna tell you why four years? Because first of all, more than that, and you, you are just daydreaming. Uh, man, man makes plan.

[00:06:12] God laughs, right? Mm-hmm. So your five years, 10 years plan, like yeah, sure have a 10 years plan. Um, but within 10 years, the market will change, the technology will change, your customers will change, and in more likelihood, you're gonna have a major global financial crisis that's gonna completely fuck up all your plans and anyway.

[00:06:34] Mm-hmm. So four years, because less than that, then you don't have time to really put stuff in place. So I'd say between three and four years is the perfect plan, but. You pivot, you pivot all the time, and if something doesn't work, your reaction time is a month. It's not six months, it's not 12 months, it's a, it's a month.

[00:06:54] So, but I always, I almost always put in place, there is very rare case where, I don't know, if you build a nuclear reactor, then you'll need more than four years because the actual construction is gonna take 10 years. Right. But it's not my clients. Right. You So usually three to four years planned, one month reaction time.

[00:07:13] And that's have lot of implication. For example, you cannot have a one month's reaction time if you don't get your numbers every month. That's very simple factor. Right, right. Does that, I was, I was actually gonna 

[00:07:28] ask about, let me lemme stop there because I, I want to ask about this. So, yeah, so, and I, I wanna keep going on this thread because I'm very curious about what you wanna say.

[00:07:36] Of course I cut you off because I'm an idiot, but, okay. So. This one month pivot time. One, one of my questions is always, okay, how much data do you need in order to make a decision to quit something or to pivot, right? So like, because you're, you're talking about, I, by the way, the engine and the steering [00:08:00] wheel thing is amazing and I love that so much.

[00:08:01] 'cause I, I think I'm all steering wheel and like only like a hamster and a hamster wheel for my engine, right? So it's like I will tend to overanalyze, overanalyze. One of the things that I often get stuck on is if I'm getting negative data back that something isn't working, I'll be like, well, there's five other ways I could try to make it work.

[00:08:21] And this is just a reflection of, this one didn't work, but I could try this one, this one, this one, this one. And then I end up a year in and I'm like, oh, the whole idea was bad. The entire context was wrong to start with, right? So. How much data and what kinds of data do you sort of require from your clients in order to really look at something and say, you need to hard pivot from this.

[00:08:43] Um, versus what we need to do is tweak rather than change. Does that make sense? 

[00:08:48] It makes a lot of sense. So basically, first of all, every time I talk to a client, uh, and when I, when I accept a client, because I accept somewhere between five and 10% of people who get in touch with me, uh, because I need certain criteria and certain parameter.

[00:09:07] First, first criteria I need is I need the business to be a growth business. If you are a lifestyle business, fantastic, I love you. I think it's genius. It's just I bring no value. I don't know, uh, lifestyle, business, it's all about operational excellence. It's about tax, tax excellence, all the stuff I know nothing about.

[00:09:29] So I bring no value to this client. So first of all, I need you to. Tell me, okay, I want to reach that number in that amount of time, because that then give us a plan, right? If your company is worth 10 million. So let's say, just to keep it super simple, you make 1 million profit per year. Your company is worth 10 million.

[00:09:48] You make 10 million, your company is worth a hundred million. There is a thousand different variables. But basically that's a very simple and, and and easy way to, to assess a company. So you said, my [00:10:00] company is, is, uh, worth 10 million. I want to bring it to 104 years. So now easy, we have our plan, right? So year one we do 1 million.

[00:10:09] Year two we do two and a half year, three we do four, et cetera, et cetera, right? So it it, it, it's a plan. So then you measure yourself to that plan. So that's one dimension is how am I doing with my revenue, my, my ebitda, my profitability, my cost, et cetera. That's really the job of A CFO, right? When you have the plan every month, you, you measure yourself to, to, to that plan super easy.

[00:10:36] And then what data do you need is very dependent on your market. Let's take an example because everybody's doing that right now. Let's take an example of a business that actually sell Brain power, a coach, uh, uh, like, um, brand, like personal brand thingy or a, a, a social media expert thingy. Like, because that's, I feel like 80% of the market is in there right now, 

[00:11:04] right?

[00:11:05] I get phone call from these people all the time. Then you measure different stuff. You, you measure your total addressable market because that's the first thing you measure. I hate this metric. It's, it's a fucked up metric, but you need it. You need to know, okay, I'm selling coaching service. My example, I'm selling service to company that do between five and 20 million of revenue.

[00:11:29] And I'm selling only in the us, in the uk, in France, and in Switzerland because two of them, I speak the language us. I have somebody there, uk, I have somebody there. And also that's enough because we're not a big company. So how many companies are we talking about and what's a reasonable number of we can achieve?

[00:11:49] Can I talk to 1% of these people? 10%, 20%. So all that is first. You, you, you know your market, right? That's very, very important data. And that's not [00:12:00] gonna change massively. It's gonna change, but not massively. It's not something you need to measure every month. And then you have all your, your like stupid metrics like lifetime value of a customer, how much a customer is going to bring me, cost of acquisition, and then C to l, t, V ratio, all that stuff that are the numbers you need every month.

[00:12:21] And then you know actually why what you're doing is not working, not just is not working. Give you an example. You want to sell your coaching business so you know that. By the time somebody gets in touch with you to they actually sign, you're gonna sign one person, right? Mm-hmm. So for one client, you need to have a hundred leads.

[00:12:47] So what happened this month? Did I get my a hundred leads and I didn't get my client? Or did I get my thousand leads and didn't get my 10 clients? Then that's, it's a sales problem. It's a conversion issue. Or did I didn't get my 10, my thousand leads? Then it's a marketing issue. So that's how you narrow down what you need to change, and also you don't be sure you don't panic.

[00:13:10] Again, don't run like a headless chicken, uh, one month. Uh, okay, so this month we didn't have this. We didn't hit that number. Let's try to know why. Try to adjust a little bit something, see if we are going in the next direction next month, so you don't change your whole business model every month. 

[00:13:31] Yeah, 

[00:13:32] it's, 

[00:13:32] so, okay, so let me,

[00:13:37] I wanna ask one more super broad question then. I, I kind of want to get into your background because I think the, the way that you think through these problems is like very, it's like, you know, it's like a drug to me. I'm like, yes, more of this, more of this talk, you know what I mean? Um, so it sounds like the, the general approach we were gonna abstract it out, [00:14:00] is you have a goal and a sort of timeline to reach the goal, right?

[00:14:04] So my goal is to have 5 million in five years, that means it's 1 million a year, right? And you can sort of, I always imagine like you've got like the waterfall chart, right? Where you've got your actual plotted against what you expect. So how often do you see with your clients or, or have, maybe you've seen in your own life where you realize that you are on track to hit the goal, but the goal was the wrong goal.

[00:14:31] Because this is something that I, I often get into, if I run into difficulties, I often find myself saying, well, was the goal mistaken in some way? Right? Like, what are my baseline assumptions off about how the world works? And so then I get caught not working on my marketing funnel, but I get caught, you know, in an existential crisis about, I don't know, maybe people don't like coaches anymore or, you know what I mean?

[00:14:57] Right. So how often do you allow yourself or allow your co or the people that you work with to go back and think about the goal? Or is it just you're on that month or three year cycle and that's when you're allowed to do that and otherwise you should be worrying about execution? 

[00:15:18] Um, so far never, because first of all, if your goal is wrong, that's mean I failed you.

[00:15:25] Mm. So it will happen. So far it hasn't happened, but the first thing, like surprisingly, the first goal, it's not a company goal, it's a personal goal. Mm. So then I'm gonna ask you your goal. How much do you want to sell to sell your company for? That's the first question I ask my clients. How much? And you now you're thinking in your head, oh, that's very personal dependent, lifestyle dependent country.

[00:15:55] It's actually is not, it's kind of a universal number. I'm [00:16:00] gonna tell you the universal number. Okay. But like, please answer that question. How much do you want to sell your company? 

[00:16:06] So, all right. So if I could sell my company and I did actually try to sell my company and I had to back outta that process.

[00:16:13] Um, so if I could sell my company for any amount, but keep it within real realistic and. I'm assuming it's the company that I'm running right now and not a nuclear reactor company or something. The number that comes to my head would be somewhere between 10 and 20 million. That's kind of a number I'm pulling outta nowhere.

[00:16:34] But that's what I thought when you said there's a universal number. That's what came to my mind. Yeah. Is that in the ballpark? No, 

[00:16:43] but that's a very common number. Okay. Because for people who does not come from a wealthy background. Yeah. Uh, which is very often the case with founders, people who have been grinding because the founder's job is fucking hard.

[00:16:59] Like, don't let people tell you it's easy. It's hard, it's long hours. You probably make more, less money by the hour than you cleaning lady. So it's a hard job. Yeah. So you live in a dream that's with 10 million. You are like uber wealthy and you don't have to work. And in your, in your life right now, I'm gonna tell you the number, the number is 40.

[00:17:23] 40 million. Okay? Yeah. And I'm gonna tell you why this number. All right. You have kids, Dan, right? I do. I have two sons. So one of the reason you get up early morning and go to bed late at night is because you want to leave somebody to your kids. You want them to have a good education. You want them to have a roof on the head, and if possible, when you die, you leave them something.

[00:17:47] So the assumption I take is the money you get, what you sell, your company is what you leave to your kids. You get 40 million, you die, you get, your kids get 40 million. Your wife is probably younger than you. So your wife [00:18:00] gets a bit, both of your kids gets a bit. So that's how you plan. So that mean you have to live on the interest of your 40 million, right?

[00:18:09] Oh yes, because you wanted 

[00:18:11] the core, you still want it to be there when you know you or whatever. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:18:16] So 40 million on average in a good, uh, conservative, not crazy, uh, portfolio will bring you 5% per year in US dollars. So you're gonna make 2 million per year right. Out of your 40 million. Oh, right.

[00:18:32] And the tax man will take half of that. So, so you're living on a million a year, essentially. Yeah. And a million a year is a good number to never have to worry to pay school for the kid to go on nice holidays. To not have to count in a supermarket to go in the just be, be, let's be clear, that doesn't get you in yachts and private plane.

[00:18:53] Right? Right. That's not what we call talking about. It's, uh. Comfortable, wealthy ish lifestyle. When you don't have to count, like you want a new car, you go. You buy a new car like you, you want to buy a toy. Um, uh uh, I don't know, a ski, a motorcycle, whatever. Rock your boat. You want to go on a fancy golf, golf trip on a fancy diving trip.

[00:19:14] You don't have to. Okay? That's too much money. So that's why 40 is a pretty universal number. Now, I talk to people. I'm like right now working with a client. He wants a hundred million. He has personal reason. It's not on the money. It's a way of counting score. I sold my company for over a hundred million, so he wants to be.

[00:19:36] Like me, he wants to sell. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. We'll get him there in four years, we'll get him to a hundred million because his business makes sense to that. So the goal is, the first goal is what do you need, you personally, as a founder, do you have co-founders? Do you live in a, unfortunately, sadly for you, you lead live in a country that has capital gain tax.

[00:19:58] So the tax man is gonna [00:20:00] take a third of your money on day one. Mm-hmm. Which I, I didn't have when I sold in Switzerland, there's no capital gain in Switzerland. So that's one of the conversation we are gonna have. Like, are you okay giving a third to the tax man or are we moving you somewhere, uh, for the two years That's before and after the sales, all that kind of of question.

[00:20:20] So the goal is, and then like we assess to together, if that goal is realistic, like if you are a company that I don't know, um. Is very local. And yeah. If you have the local restaurant, getting you to a hundred million might, might be impossible. So you might have a discrepancy between the goal and the feasibility of your, of your company.

[00:20:46] Right. But that's my job to like every customer's goal through, uh, painful initial assessment phase. That's like a colonoscopy pretty much. So yeah, I want to know everything about your company. I want to know everything about you. Yeah. By the time we work together, I know how many kids you are, how old they are, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:21:08] Like, because I, I need to have a sense of what your goal is, your personal goal, and then we see, can the company accommodate that goal? And if I say yes, and if in a year we say, oh, we have to reduce our goal, then that mean I, I, I failed you. Right. The initial diagnostic 

[00:21:27] process Yeah. Was off. 

[00:21:28] So 

[00:21:28] what I'm, I'm.

[00:21:30] Curious about people's, and this is a, this is a thing too. You'll, you'll find out these podcasts, they're really just me asking questions that are actually about me, but I disguise them to make them like they're, uh, like the audience, right? That's what we all do. That's what everybody does. So look, so let's say, but, um, so one of my, one of my sort of mental ticks, right, is I learned very [00:22:00] young.

[00:22:00] I, I took a class in college that was all about cognitive bias. And I, I internalized very early in my life that you can't trust your, your brain, which is perhaps not great for me because I could probably use more trust in my own brain. But in any case, one of the things that I'm curious about is with your clients, how often when they come to you, so before the diagnostic process and before you get to work with them, how often is there, are their expectations different from the reality you see in the business?

[00:22:32] Like, do you see a lot of people saying, my business is a hundred million dollars business when actually it's a $20 million business? Is there often a big gap there, or are entrepreneurs pretty data savvy in general and they usually have kind of a good assessment of, of where they're actually at? 

[00:22:50] Yeah, so the answer is every single time.

[00:22:53] Okay, but not, but not in the direction you think, really? Yeah, 90% of the time. Um, and I'll explain, I think I know why, but I'm not sure 90% of the time people under evaluate the value of their business and their own value. I think the reason why is people who over evaluate themselves or their business tend to be assholes.

[00:23:21] And assholes don't really ask for help. Oh, I think when you think, oh, my business is worth a hundred million, you first, your first reaction say, oh, let's talk to that guy. He's been there, done that. Let's see if I'm right. They, they don't tend to do that. People who are so convinced of their value, usually they, they, they don't ask for help.

[00:23:46] And I need to work with people who can ask, actually ask for help. And it's not obvious. It's not obvious. One of the thing I measure, one of the criteria I have on my piece of paper when I talk to a new prospect mm-hmm. It's will this [00:24:00] guy actually listen? Doesn't mean I, I mean, I always tell them, at the end of the day, I'm an advisor, you do whatever you want.

[00:24:08] Right. And I'll adapt. And if you don't agree with my strategy, we'll change it. I'll adapt. But you need to listen. You don't have to agree with me all the time. You need to listen and you need to do your homework. If you agree to do something, you fucking do it. Yeah. Like you don't want to do it. You tell me I don't want to do it.

[00:24:25] Fine. I'll find another way. Yeah. Like you say, yeah, yeah, I'll give you that in a month and you don't have it, then I'm pissed because I'm wasting my time and, and that's something I don't enjoy. 

[00:24:36] No, it's, nothing is more demoralizing than feeling like you aren't being heard. Right. So what, like you said, it's one thing to disagree.

[00:24:45] So, okay. I have a million different questions I wanna ask you. Like what, what was your entry point into what you are doing now? You've had a long career, you've worked in a lot of different places, but. There's clearly a very specific kind of mental map that you are bringing to these processes, right?

[00:25:07] You're, you, you're viewing it through a very specific lens, a really analytical lens, but also like your, you know, I've read through your social media, like you don't really view yourself as like the numbers guy. 

[00:25:18] Not at all. I have number guys. I'm not the number guy. 

[00:25:21] Yeah. So I'm so curious, like what, what, what was your entry point into what you do?

[00:25:28] Do you bring it, like was there a specific philosophy of business or something that had a big impact on you? Yeah. 

[00:25:34] Let me tell you real quick, the, the path, uh, I walk to, to get there, right? So year 2000 after, uh, a life of many, many, many mistakes started a company, um, banking software company, 2000 to 2008, start from two people in my basement to a 10, 11, 12 million, um, revenue company [00:26:00] doing two, 3 million, uh, ebitda.

[00:26:02] The king of the fucking world. Nothing can go wrong. I'm like, I'm hiring right, right, and left. I buy expensive stuff. I spend all my money. I think I'm very, very smart at that point. So keep in mind, I'm, I'm like, I'm 30 at that point, right? It's easy to think you're smart when you're 30. Everybody think they're smart when they're 30.

[00:26:23] And 2008 Global Financial Advisors. I'm a company that sells software to banks, so on and on a given Tuesday, I lost 75% of my revenue. 

[00:26:36] Wow. Just through client churning or Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:26:40] The clients basically all call me, we love you. You're super fantastic guys. By the way, we're not buying anything anymore.

[00:26:46] That simple. Wow. Like I, it was not a, a recurring revenue model because at the time it was not that popular in software business. So I was heavily relying on getting new customers. Hmm. 

[00:26:58] Uh, 

[00:26:58] so basically my, my business model was 25% recurring, 25%. Service generated and 50% new customers. Uh, and this one was gone and the service was almost gone.

[00:27:13] So basically I had to live with the 25%. So it was not really a client churn because you don't leave your banking software supplier unless you go bankrupt, or, or, and it's not time to buy anything new. So I was not losing customer, just losing project and didn't get any new customers. And that lasted till 2015.

[00:27:35] So the seven years of absolute grind Wow. Having to acquire three quarter of my company and all these guys were my family. They were my friends, they were my family. I'm I'm, I'm that kind of guy. Like yeah, my grandfather was a Jewish carpet dealer in Alexandria. And I, I, I, I kept this like my company is my family, so it's really, uh, I had to [00:28:00] mortgage my house.

[00:28:00] I had no more money. So it was financially, humanly. A very, very tough times. Get us to 2014, 2015, we got to the point with some creative accounting, we could say we were breakeven. So we were on the verge of being breakeven. And I get the phone call from a private equity. So when you are a company, if you are a little bigger than a tiny teeny company, you get the phone call every week.

[00:28:32] Hi, I am X, Y, Z, private equity. I want to buy your company. You don't answer because you're too busy. And this one, for some reason, because they were French, they were culturally closed, they were people from software. Uh, I was working with my brother at the time and my brother said, let's talk to these people.

[00:28:49] Mm. And they came, they came to Geneva from Paris. And I've been super, super honest with them. I'm, uh, you have to be super honest with private equity by the way, because if you lie, they'll know. Um, immediately. And I told them, I said, listen, I'm interested. I'm exhausted. I am at the end of my rope, so I'm interested, but not now.

[00:29:16] I said, you need to give me two more years because right now my company is worth zero because I'm not profitable. 

[00:29:23] Yeah. 

[00:29:23] But in two years I'm gonna be profitable and I promise you, I'll call you. I will not do a whole competitive process. You'll be my first phone call in two years. Say, yeah, yeah. Thank you very much.

[00:29:34] But we're not gonna do that. We are gonna do something a little different. Said, you're gonna go, you're gonna take a week, you're gonna create a business plan that tells us exactly where you are in two years. And we come next week and we look at that. 

[00:29:49] Okay, 

[00:29:50] so got my brother, who's the number guy. He's the Excel spreadsheet guy.

[00:29:54] He actually knows how to use Excel, which is very impressive. And we do a [00:30:00] two years business plan. That was, how can we put that nicely? Very optimistic. Yeah. That you're allowed, you never lie. Even $1 in the past, you are allowed to dream. You're totally allowed. And I think we went with something like, yeah, in two years we're gonna have 3 million ebitda.

[00:30:20] Now we had zero for seven years, but in two years we're gonna have 3 million ebitda. Right. They came and they said, okay, this is our deal. We are gonna buy your company now. We are gonna pay you the EBITDA you promised in two years, and we are gonna pay you 85% cash and 15% earnout. And that's when I start calling my friends to see if somebody was doing a practical joke on me.

[00:30:44] And I, I thought, these guys are crazy. Right? These guys are completely out of their mind. So obviously I signed the deal. Yeah. Get my 85% cash. Uh, I wa um, I sold 77% of the company kept 23 and two years later I made more money with the earnout that I made with the cash. 

[00:31:06] Wow. So more than the buyout, the, the immediate bulk of cash that you got.

[00:31:10] Yeah, because the 3 million that we promised turned out to be, I don't remember, five or six. 

[00:31:16] So I have to, I have to break into this point 'cause I'm so curious Yes. About that transfer. What do you attribute that to? There were market forces at play. They saw that or predicted that, and they just, they were like, this is the low point it's gonna come up.

[00:31:34] And so we're making a bet that that's gonna be the case. Or was it because it changed things for you and you just approached the business in a different way because now you have this plan, you're more optimi, you'd been digging out of a hole for seven years. Digging out of a hole feels very different than building something that's exciting.

[00:31:56] Was it both, was it one or the other? Like what, what do you attribute that growth 

[00:31:59] So a [00:32:00] hundred percent