Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Meridian Point podcast, where we explore the intersection of disruption and innovation. I'm your host, Kumar Dattatreyan. Hold on one second. What is going on here? Oh, I see what's going on. Okay, sorry about that. I was hearing an echo and it was us going live.
So let's see, where were we? Today, we're joined by Glenn Poulos, a serial entrepreneur who has built and sold multiple successful companies throughout his career. Glenn is the author of "Never Sit in the Lobby." We're going to explore that book, and the title, of course, is very evocative. The book features his fifty-seven winning sales factors. With three decades of experience developing thriving distribution businesses, Glenn now brings his expertise to his newest venture, Prong USA, while mentoring business leaders. Glenn, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you on.
Hi, Kumar. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Of course. Yeah, it's a pleasure. You and I met maybe a few months ago where we started to put together kind of the framework for this talk, and I'm really excited to get going. I did read some of your book, and so these questions are influenced a little bit by the book that you wrote. I'll start with the first question. Your career spans three decades of building and selling businesses in rapidly evolving industries. What initially drew you to distribution and how have you managed to consistently spot opportunities while others have struggled with market disruptions?
Good question. And but with the just on the timing side. So with the decades clipping by here, I now on at twenty twenty five, I officially clicked over into the fourth decade or forty years in this game. So joining it in nineteen eighty five and now it's twenty twenty five. So officially, forty years in the sales game, always working sort of for a distributor or having started and ran and sold several companies and now working on a final. Well, I say final because of my age.
But the reason distribution - why my first job in sales was for a sales company distributing products, high tech electronic products from around the world in my territory of that time, which was Canada and specifically southern Ontario near Toronto. And, you know, it's a very well established business. You know, you approach companies from around the world, from Sweden, South Africa, Australia, Italy, France that need sales forces in your country. And you know, and they're not big enough to be direct. Right. And so they hire your firm and you, you know, typically in a lot of cases in the kind of world I'm in, you know, you're getting an exclusive in your territory, either industry-wise or geographical. Right. You know, you have all of Canada or maybe, you know, you have all of the telecom space or maybe all of the power utility space, something like that. Right.
And your job is to go and build brand name recognition for them like you were their direct sales force. And if they get any leads, they pass them to you and you buy, you import some places in order, you buy the products, you import them, you mark them up, you resell them. And it's very, you know, repeatable process. Right. And so I learned it in nineteen eighty five and ninety one. I went out and started my first company, sold it in the early two thousands, started another one, sold another company in twenty twenty two. And now I'm on my third leg of running a distributor that I own myself.
That's amazing. So I suppose when you're sort of building the brand for the companies that you work with, that is your bread and butter, right? If you're not able to build a compelling enough message then? Is that cost you incur solely or does the partner company?
Yeah, these are really good questions and they're sort of the whole go to the heart of what the business is, right? In the sense that your sunk cost is this cost of going out and making sales calls wherein there might not be any business in the beginning. But they're also giving you leads that you didn't otherwise maybe find, right? And so that's where sometimes arguments with some of these vendors might occur where they're like, oh, we're passing all these leads, right? And we're like, yeah, but we're also getting you into the government, the United States government or the Canadian government or some large, which takes maybe six months or a year and we don't get any payback, right? So these small leads that you're giving us help fund.
And so it becomes a balancing act. And so the manufacturer would participate in the area of maybe they do some advertising and either nationally, globally or what have you that spills over into your territory and you get those leads. They sponsor you and help you with trade shows. You co-op trade shows, you co-op ads, maybe in trade journals and things like that where you spend it split at fifty fifty. And yeah, it's kind of like a you know, a chicken pays for the egg and the egg pays for the chicken kind of thing. Right. And you're kind of sharing in it. And and that's really the the whole heart of the business is doing that.
And just when you're just there to fulfill orders or something like that, that's not the business that I'm in. That's more broad line distribution where it's about supply and credit and fulfillment. The market is already there. People want to buy your widget, your gizmo, you know, your quantum exasperator as I like to call it right and they're like I want to buy that and they need it broadly distributed right so they'll hire a very large distributor that also carries nine competitors they don't care which exact care which exasperated you buy they just want you to buy the one that's in stock. Right. Whichever one they get spiffs on. Right.
Where we are dedicated, we're not competing technically. We don't have technological overlap or competition. So in this particular slice of the technology space I'm in, I'm not competing with multiple brands. I might have brands like in my current company, I have ten lines, but none of them compete with each other. They all make completely different products. And there's no overlap and to go to an eleventh product is challenging eleventh line for me is difficult because I would start competing with line number one so it starts to there becomes a political problem because your exclusive.
You know, we have a saying in - it's, I'm from Canada. I'm living in Florida now, but I mean, a lot of my sayings, I revert back to Canada. Right. But we have a saying, you know, in Canada, the four oh one runs in both directions. Right. Which is the biggest highway in the world and four oh one. And, um, in Toronto, it's the largest number of lanes or whatever, but we say it runs in both directions, which means if I want an exclusive, I have to give you an exclusive. And if you expect me to be exclusive, I expect you to be exclusive. It's a monogamous relationship.
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. It sounds like a, it sounds like a win-win in that sense also, right? Because you are taking care of the needs of your partners and they are taking care of your needs in a way. How does the current economic climate affect your business with tariffs and stuff? I mean, you're based in Florida. I know you're from Canada originally.
Yeah. So now I'm in the US. So of course I'm looking at tariffs being applied to every possible supplier, except for maybe a domestic US supplier. I have one or two domestic suppliers I work with, but everything else comes from Europe and South America and Asia and all over. Right. And all of them have a tariff attached to them at the moment. And so, you know, total fear would be the way I would answer the question. You know, when he announced the ten percent Europe going to fifty, of course, I was like I couldn't eat. And I just like to me, I just like, of course, you know, they call them TACO. Right. You know, Trump chickened out again or whatever they call it, you know. And but I mean, in the moment, I was just like just consumed with total fear. Like, how am I? I'm not going to get a customer to be able to absorb a fifty percent.
Like when it's ten percent tariff, we're all participating in it. Most of our vendors, they've agreed to pick up a third. We're taking a third discount to the customer and the customer's paying a third of the ten percent. Right. OK. And so, you know, but when the tariff becomes a fifty percent, you know, the tariff itself becomes the customer's problem because I can't absorb twenty percent of it. Right. Like neither can the vendor, the manufacturer or myself or in the customers look then becomes looking at staring down the face of a fifty percent tariff. And then they have to look to either most likely delaying the purchase or sourcing something different. Not saying that they're going to find it cheaper in the United States. I'm just saying the sale itself becomes in jeopardy. And so the tariffs is making life really, really complicated.
I know the big beautiful bill just passed on the weekend right and so correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's gonna have five trillion in spending coming along with it and that may bring with it some although there's lots of you know people that are mad about some of the decisions inside the big beautiful bill there's there's a lot of quantitative easing or money printing in that that money has to go somewhere. I'm in the utility space now. I'm hoping that some of it goes to hardening the grid against cyber attacks and other things, and I can sell them equipment to help them, you know, bring their grids up to date. I mean, that would just be luck. But, you know, right now, in this exact moment, the business is very challenging.
And I suppose it's in the unpredictability of these tariffs because you don't know what they are. They go up, they go down. It's sort of at the whim of this person that's, you know.
He said that the ten percent Europe tariff was changing on July ninth. And I haven't heard anything to the contrary. Don't know what it will be or what have you. But and the Europeans, I think, have been the most sort of intransigent about being cooperative with the U.S. government, right? Other countries have been more flexible in their approach and they've come to agreeable terms quicker, right? So I'm just sort of praying right now and have to wait and see what it is over the next few days and kind of roll with the punches. But, yeah. There's been some talk of extending it out to the end of the month or beginning of August or something like that.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, who knows? Don't really know what's going to happen, but know that tariffs in some form or another are going to stay. But it's hard to predict when you don't know what the percentage is. And it's interesting that you and the suppliers are absorbing some of the costs when it's ten percent and not passing it all on to the consumer.
Our competitors, a lot of our competitors are passing it all on. It's becoming the talking point and a bone of contention in some regards where if there's a competitive at play, it stands out quite readily in the presentation of the pricing that the shared approach is there. And then they're saying, well, the other supplier is actually not, you know, it comes out that they're not absorbing any of it and they're trying to pass on the whole thing. And the whole and then also the other argument is is that it's ten percent on the cost right it's on the landed cost so there's a little bit of jiggery-pokery that can go on with people as well because I mean let's say they're buying a ten thousand dollar item well the landed cost is much less than ten thousand because you're importing it and you're marking it up and selling it so maybe you're buying it for six thousand or maybe seven thousand or maybe five thousand it depends on the business that you're in for your gross margins but the ten percent would be on the six thousand dollar price which means it would be ten thousand plus ten for plus whatever amount of six thousand but the vendors can't really they don't want to so some of them are trying to even charge ten percent on ten thousand which is like wow disingenuous really gouges the customer make a buck here while you can.
Yeah. And blame it on tariffs. Yes, exactly. That's not good business practice. Speaking of business practices, I want to shift over to the book, "Never Sit in the Lobby." Tell us a little bit about the title and I painted an evocative image when we last spoke about the title and sort of what prompted the writing of this book. I'd love to have you share that with our audience.
Yeah. So the title, first of all, wasn't my choice. I got overruled by the first editor and said that was my title. I don't remember what it was, was lousy. And so, and it was a lady and she said, you know, she pointed out that one of the chapters called "Never Sit in the Lobby" would make a wonderful title. And then added some elements of my original title into the sub thing, you know, fifty seven winning factors, etc. Right.
And so the whole idea behind the "Never Sit in the Lobby" and all the other rules in the book were basically the rules that I learned sort of getting black eyes in the field. And as I say, learning how to get and stay in front of my customers and to be a pleasure to do business with always right and really placing an emphasis on being a pleasure to do business with which the alternative is being a pain in the ass and being dislikable right and I don't like that approach and none of us do when it comes to sales people and one of the you know and so I wrote over the years I constantly wrote down these rules I learned from other people.
And one of them that I learned myself was actually "Never Sit in the Lobby." Right. And so, and what I mean by that is, is that, you know, show up on time and then once you're there and you've announced yourself and you're waiting, do not sit down, do not engage in your phone. Don't pull out anything, you know, to play around with. Don't be staring at like plaques on the wall and reading the magazine or making phone calls or doing anything like that. You just want to be focused on the moment that person walks through the door. And, you know, there's a rule that follows right afterwards, which is always have something in your hand and something in your mind, right?
And the, you know, the something in your hand is something to give to the person, hand it to them. A lot of times my way in the door was they asked for a quote, they asked for literature, you know, and they asked for something from me. And they said, oh, just send me a quote, right? And I'm like, well, I'm actually there on Thursday. Can I drop it off? And they're like, oh, well, I'm really busy, but you can drop it off. And I'm like, okay. And so I show up. I never sit in the lobby. And when they come, they forget. And by that time on Thursday, they forgot. They told me they were too busy to come down and get it. And they usually come down and get it. Right. And so I have something in my hand, something in my mind.
And, you know, that's one of the and, you know, the the whole idea about not sending them the quote is another rule in the book. One of fifty seven, which is "Never Fax the Fax" and "Never Ship the Shit," right? And so, which means whenever there's an opportunity and it's geographically available, do not ever send or email or ship something to the customer. Always hand deliver it. Because you're never gonna be given a better invite into their world, right? And so these little package of rules are all about getting in front of the customer. And then I build on it with ways on how to stay in front of the customer and how to act in front of the customer. And yeah.
How have you adapted your approach in an increasingly disconnected world where you may not have the advantage of geographic co-location, so to speak, right? You're dealing with people across the world, for instance.
Yeah. I don't know if this is controversial or not, but what I will say is that whatever we think about that is that every time you're not in front of the customer someone else is and that's why they got the order you didn't and so you can say like maybe like SaaS companies and things like that they do everything remotely and it's a whole virtualized I don't sell that kind of product right I sell a product that is bolted into your network or it's plugged in the wall and it operates and functions and performs measurements or acts as instrumentation or network elements or something like that. Right.
And so typically the customer would want to trial your product, test the product in the network, make sure it does the job. Maybe it's a production test thing, maybe it's the network. And so to think that it can all be done remotely is a fallacy because they going to need to try your product, which means to do what you're saying is I would be shipping the shit, which is a golden rule not to break. Right. And you're saying, well, what if you're geographically unavailable? Well, it depends on the sale, right?
Like there might be a situation where I might have to ship something because I'm in like Virginia or something. And the guy's in Seattle. Well, obviously, I'm not going to drive to Seattle to hook it up, but but for the most part like in my company I have now I have guys all over the US there's well there's seven of them I mean they're not everywhere but you know and they're all within reasonable driving distance of the pockets of my most biggest opportunity and their job is to never fax the fax right and um.
And so the point is, is that if you're not there and you're trying and thinking that you're doing it remotely, you're actually just fooling yourself, in my opinion. It's my opinion. And that I believe that the guy who's getting the order most of the time, you wonder why you didn't is the guy that actually showed up because if I ship it to them or I'm not there, how do I know the competitive landscape? I will never get that from the customer over a Zoom call. It's not going to tell me about the competition.
But when I'm there and I'm in the lobby right now, I had something in my hand. I gave him the quote. I gave him the literature that he asked for. Then the next rule is always ask for a mini tour, right? And a mini tour is a tour that's mini, meaning just give me a quick look around. Where are you hooking up my stuff? Where are you putting it? Can you show me that just that and only that I don't need a whole tour of your entire building or your company history.
And when you're in the building, once you get past the lobby, that's when you start to see the coffee mugs, the mouse pads and the water bottles from your competitors lining people's desks. And you can see what other products that they use that you didn't even know that you sell that you can mentally write down. And sell to them later and maybe get names of other people that buy other things that you sell that you didn't even know your customer used.
But really what you want to find out is, hey, am I delivering something that's going to go into a greenfield application where it's brand new and I have a better than even chance? Or do they have nine of my competitors already installed and the boss told them, call Glenn because we're going to keep the competitor honest this time. He's ripping us off. So they're bringing me in to keep the competitor honest because if he's got nine of the competitor he's not gonna buy my box right.
Yeah and that's where my next rule comes in which is I'd rather be last than second, right? Because second is the first loser and he didn't get anything except steak knives, right? And so, you know, the winner's the one that gets the Cadillac, right?
And so what do I mean by last and second? The moment I realized unequivocally that I'm not going to get the deal, right? Like it has to be unequivocal and it can be at any point in the cycle. But whatever that point comes, I will immediately recuse myself and stop selling that customer. And my next action is to get in my car or wherever and race to my next opportunity and try to win that before the competitors that are wasting their time at that location, you know, light on to the next deal, because why would I want to waste my time when I know I'm going to lose?
I'm not saying I give up early. I didn't say that. I said when I know unequivocally, like, for instance, guys have told me, hey, you got great stuff, but you're not going to get the deal because we have a contract with Hewlett Packard or IBM or whatever, right? And I'm like, oh, okay, fine. I mean, why didn't they tell me that? Well, we just want to keep these guys honest. I'm like, okay, well, thanks for letting me know. And then the guy later says, hey, can I get a demo? And I'm like, well, I can maybe get you one in a couple of months. And he's like, well, this deal is going to be done in a week. And I'm like, well, I'm sorry, our things tied up. And so I'm polite about it, but I'm not going to like waste my demo. And remember, I want to have, if I give you a demo, I'm going to deliver it. I'm not going to ship it. So it's time for you. That's right. Yeah. So that's why I'd rather be last because it's, I saved the most amount of money, right? I lose first. Yeah. Right.
These are all really very insightful, especially for me. You know, everyone's a salesperson, right? I mean, we have to be. If you have your own business, you're selling something. And it's always been a weak point for me personally, the selling aspect of it. Not because I... I guess I'm just not very good at it because these rules are really insightful. They make a lot of sense. But a lot of what I sell isn't widgets that you install. It's services. I'm selling myself to a large degree and the services that me and my partners provide in coaching and consulting and things like that. But I can see the value of meeting face-to-face, right? So face-to-face communication still trumps anything that you can do virtually, in my opinion. It's just hard when you have clients that are around the world. And so we end up having to send things over email. a proposal or whatever, and I wish I could go there and present it to them in person. Here it is. Let's talk about it.
Yeah, that's definitely a pickle for you. There's no question. And also the challenge you face selling services of a coaching or consulting kind of a nature. But just like selling hardware or whatever, one thing that I learned a long time ago, and it is talked about in the book, I'm not sure I have a rule and a name for it, but is that the best way to sell to a customer actually is to become an absolute expert on how the customer literally makes money. And some people like they...
Yeah, right off the top of my head. I don't have one that just jumps right in my mind. But a lot of people think they know what the company does, but they think of it at a sort of more of a surface level, right? Rather than understanding that, hey, this is what pays the bills at XYZ Corp, right? Yes, they sell Kleenex or something like that, but maybe they make a specific cloth that they sell to the medical industry that makes a billion dollars of profit and the Kleenex is just what they started with and what they're known for.
And so you're thinking I'm selling them something to help them do the marketing on Kleenex or whatever it is. But the point is, is that the more you can learn about the customer and how they make money, the better you can tailor your presentation to them getting the result that they need rather than you touting the benefits of your products, right? Because that's what most people do, right?
So on my website, there's a thing called the punch perfect pitch and close right and um and it shows you how to present your products using one of the things from the book called the Goldilocks principle the power of three and how what I call the punch perfect pitch and close and it's you know and it's a technique of first of all figuring out what you need to be doing and then the punch is where you change their state right and you can do that remotely by over zoom by showing them typically you would want to figure out what is the end result this guy needs and then show them someone else getting that result in some sort of an emotional packed video. You know what I mean?
And I don't know exactly what your consulting is, but think of showing the change of state of a prior client as a video and don't tell them about, oh, we got ninety five years collective experience with nine MBAs and four PhDs. Nobody cares about that. No one cares. Right. Like they're already half the rooms already left. They're mentally and they're thinking about groceries for the wife and, you know, or what they're doing on the weekend. And and so, you know, and then, you know, and then you follow up with showing them how you're going to change their state into the into the state that they just witnessed. And at the end, you know that you won. You don't have to close them because if they don't ask you how much it costs, then you didn't do a good job. And they close themselves. Right.
Yeah. No that's that's really sound advice and certainly something that resonates very well with me and I'm sure a lot of the listeners here that are that are either selling physical or or you know sort of more service-based products if you will um the need to connect with them and really make it about them and really understanding what they do and how they do it and how they make money and so that you can you can serve them appropriately or at least you can you can uh provide a pitch that really resonates with them because it's what they need, not what you want to sell necessarily. So I really like that.
Yeah. You've, you know, obviously you've sold, you've built and sold a couple of businesses in your career and you're on your third one now. What lessons have you learned about adapting to change that could help our listeners navigate through their own disruptions?
Right. So, yeah, well, one, when you're selling your business, the most important thing is who's buying it. Right. And so and what is the other side of the deal look like? Right. So that's just one little snippet about selling your businesses and stuff, because and I mean, these stories could take a little while, so there might not be time for it. But I mean, when I sold my first business, I sold it to a public company. I became a multimillionaire, but it was all share deals. It was a hundred percent share deal. I only got a very small amount of cash. And in the first eighteen months while I was on an insider trading hold, that company went bankrupt and the shares went to zero and I lost my life savings and I lost everything. And I had basically given away my business, which is why I started the second company. And because I had to, I didn't have a job and I'd lost everything. Right.
And so and I thought this was a household name in Canada that bought my business. But household names can go bankrupt. They just just did. Right. And the oldest company in a four hundred year old company in Canada just went under. And and so, you know, the thing about, you know, you're asking about change or whatever is the biggest thing is taking that step, right? It's the final step is the most difficult one, but it's the most important one. And really, it's what gets you from being scared of taking the step to being scared of failing after taking the step. And so the point is, and until you've taken that final step, you're just running up against a wall that prevents you from moving forward but the moment you've taken the final step everything in your power goes towards being successful in your new choice right.
And I mean your question was kind of broad and what you asked me so I'm answering parts of it but also like if you're selling your company also what I would what I've learned now after having sold two businesses and having to stay is limit your aftermarket stay time to as little as possible like sell the business and get out, right? Like you're going to have to do your, your earn out, whatever that is, but make it as short as possible. Don't go for the, don't go for the three year like I mean, I could double my money if I stay for three years and I do this and that, like take the six month one. Maybe it's a bit less money or whatever and take the lion's share up front to your six month or no and be gone and go do something different because the new owners have it. They're the owners now. You're not the owner and you will culturally, you know, there'll be dissonance there between you, how you would do it. And, and they would do it with the new, as the new, you have to divest yourself of that emotionally as well as from a business standpoint.
So looking ahead, you know, what do you see? What emerging disruptions do you see coming in your industry distribution industry? And how are you preparing for those with your current venture?
Yeah. So one, I'm trying to figure out ways of using, of course, AI to automate whatever parts of the business that make sense and that that can, you know, so obviously at the beginning right now, it's on lead generation and a little bit of content creation and helping with all that. You know, can I get a robot to go and make the sales calls and do the demos? I don't know. Maybe. And hopefully I'm retired by then.
But the, you know, that's the biggest challenge right now is figuring out how to use these advanced tools and in a way that's actually getting me, you know, quantifiable results and stuff like that. Right. And so but we still we're not using like AI automation on the phone call side, but we do use a lot of automation to get the names and numbers and potential targets. But we get real people to make the phone calls still drive leads that go to our inside people that are still real.
There are people that are touting that they can make the calls for us and stuff like that. So far, I haven't quite been convinced and, uh, but it is close. It's coming. I've had a conversation with at least one that I know was with an AI agent and I was remarkably impressed, but it was in a very structured, I can't remember what it was, but it was like a software tool. Like I think it was maybe like a credit checks or something like that. And, and yeah, you know, you're able to curate the conversation, I'm selling hundreds of products from dozens of suppliers around the world with massive technology, it's impossible for how do I train an AI like, yeah, very difficult, right? So you'd have to create possibly a custom, large language model that is trained on all of your the products that you and the thing is, you're bringing new products all the time. So you'd have to. You'd have to do something very specialized for what you do to be able to train an AI agent to be able to take sales calls. It'd be an interesting project, I should say.
So we're getting sort of towards the end of our time together. What have I not asked you that you'd like to share?
Well, the one thing that I'm learning, you know, so because my last company in Canada, Gap Wireless, that I sold, we started in two thousand seven. I had a partner. We grew it to eighty four million dollars in turnover and sales when we had sold it. It was quite, quite successful and it was really interesting or whatever. But now I bought a small business in the United States and, you know, it's about a it's about a three million dollar company when I bought it. With a few people. I've expanded. It's growing now a little bit here and there.
But what I'm realizing, you know, in just looking back over the eighteen months that I've owned it and what have you, is that, you know, the analogy I tell myself is it's not about the on my watch or the clock it's not about the minute hand or the hour hand or whatever it's actually about the second hand and just showing up and you know to this small business and doing the next right thing over and over and over again you know click click click the second hand moves I'm gonna you know for this hour I'm working on the newsletter then I'm gonna like I have to call a customer who's upset about something and then I have to help a guy do something else then I have to basically race to the back and help someone pack a large box or whatever and but always doing the next right thing and the and you look back over the over the days weeks and months and you realize hey the business just in these many months has grown significantly by these small steps right and it's not the large things it's not about you know it's about showing up and doing all continuing to do the next right thing and I mean that for me it's the funnest part and um I think the bigger the company got before the more less I liked it and um I like sort of having my hand in everything.
But but I mean, the yeah, I mean, it's just been it's just been valuable kind of awakening that I've been having seeing this. You know, it probably happened the same way in two thousand seven when I started the last company. It was very similar dynamic and size and whatever. But I don't remember back that far. And but now in real time, you know, and, you know, I'm not even though I've done it before and I've had, you know, higher level positions in bigger companies and stuff like it's not about that now. I'm just, you know, I'm just here to do whatever is required. And and, you know, it's rewarding when you see that it's had an impact, you know, and that the business is bigger. And yeah.
I think that the challenge is sort of as you scale up is to still maintain that connection, I suppose, of all the different parts of the business, the marketing side and the people that are doing the packing and shipping and the sort of the vendor relationships and the customer relationships. As you, as you grow, right. I would think that's, that's what my clients, the people that I work with, that's, that's a challenge is, is the startup phase is very exciting. You're sort of doing a lot of things that, uh, bring a lot of joy, those small improvements that you, you, you talk about the small things that you do, the next right thing that you do that builds the business slowly. Of course, over time, it can be a huge change, right? Because those small improvements, they add up. But then as you scale up to your point is being able to still have sort of a more holistic view of how the business is running and be able to jump in.
Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. In our last business, the way we handled that was we implemented EOS and there's other competitive systems out there, but that was what let us go to a process led business and take, you know, and free up. So the finance people did the finance, the ops people did the ops and whatever,
