Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - A HOT Chile business and what happens if you default on an SBA Loan - Acquisitions Anonymous 268

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

In this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous, Bill and Heather discuss a unique business opportunity involving a chili pepper business in Taos County, New Mexico. They analyze the listing, its pricing strategy, and the potential for growth in the e-commerce space. The hosts also delve into the dynamics of SBA loans and share valuable insights on transparent communication with lenders. If you're interested in small business acquisitions, financial strategies, and understanding the challenges of entrepreneurship, this episode is a must-listen. Big thank you to this week's sponsors:Acquisition Lab and their team have been longtime supporters of the pod.Created by Walker Diebel author of Buy Then Build: How to Outsmart the Startup Game, is an accelerator with a highly vetted cohort-based educational and support community for people serious about buying a business.Acquisition Lab exists to help people buy a business and navigate all the complexities of the process, as well as provide a trusted framework, tools, and resources to support you from search to close.If you are serious about buying a business, check out acquisitionlab.com or email the Lab's director Chelsea Wood, [e-mail].-------------CloudBookkeeping offers adaptable solutions to businesses that want to focus on growth with a “client service first” approach. They offer a full suite of accounting services, including sophisticated reporting, QuickBooks software solutions, and full-service payroll options.Subscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome back to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. This is Bill Dallisandro, and today I am with Michael Girdley and Heather Anderson, and we are talking about a hot chili business from Taos, New Mexico. They have a retail store in downtown Taos, a live cam of downtown Taos on their website, and they sell chili powder and salsa and New Mexico goods online as well at the back door. So it's a cool discussion about a local business, what I call a mullet business. retail in the front, e-commerce in the back. And then we also get into a really interesting discussion on the back half of the pod with Heather about kind of asymmetric bets of SBA loans and then also what to do if you find yourself in trouble on an SBA loan.

So a really good example of how we start talking about one thing and it can really pull out some gems from some good stories. So I hope you enjoy this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. Hey, Michael here. Want to talk to you about today's sponsor for the episode. which is cloudbookkeeping.com. So cloud bookkeeping is actually run by my neighbor, Charlie. So I've met him in person and can attest that he's a real human being and a good person. And what cloud bookkeeping does is offer a full suite of bookkeeping services all in the cloud

for you around QuickBooks and other technologies that you're using as a small business owner. So if you're interested in getting the bookkeeping part of running a business off of your plate and focusing on running your business, Charlie and his team are one to call. They can put together a bunch of other stuff in terms of helping you manage and grow your business besides just bookkeeping, sophisticated reporting, definitely helping you get your quickbooks online set up in the right way, and a number of things around payroll as well. So definitely know them and recommend them. If you want to find out more about cloud bookkeeping,

you can go to their website at cloudbookkeeping.com, reach out to Charlie. I know many of you have and see if he can help you make running your business easier and more fun by letting them help with a lot of the bookkeeping solutions. And when you call, mention this podcast. It would help us and help Charlie know that we're supporting him as well.

So thanks a bunch. and cloudbookkeeping.com as the sponsor for today's episode. Heather, thank you for bearing with me today. I have a cold, just like the whole rest of the United States. Yeah, I felt like you're just with everybody else. I don't know how I've managed to avoid it so far, but knock on wood, I have not been sick yet. So I'm super happy about that.

And I'm super excited. This is our early morning recording session, at least for me on the West Coast. And I am feeling better than ever because I got a new coffee maker, and the caffeine delivery is amazing. Are you like a fancy, like grind up your own coffee, like tamp it all down, everything? Is that you?

Well, I didn't have an espresso maker. I do always grind my own. I've been very picky about it, but it's been drip coffee. And so this is the first time I got an espresso, you know, a machine that does all that fancy stuff. And of course, this morning I wanted to do it was my first time trying it. So I tried several drinks. And so now I'm like, yeah, pretty hyped up. For you are lit up.

Now there's four espresso's in. Let's go. Nice. Nice. So I have, I mean, this is like how lame I am. I'm not a, I drink coffee, but I'm not like a huge coffee person. We got a Nespresso, which you as an espresso person and now look down your nose at me because I'm using the pods.

But I love it. It has changed my coffee routine. It's really cool. I discovered that actually going on vacation. in Europe and all the little, that's what you get in your hotel room. And it's excellent. I think it's, I mean, for what it is, it's excellent coffee. Yeah, it's, and really, I also used to be a K-cup curry guy and now I realize those were

really trashed. Yeah, right. The espresso's way better, way better. Way better. Yeah, mine has a little like a fill it with milk and it like does it like frost the milk. Yeah. So I can't imagine what you're serious. I have like, I'm at the echelons.

Like, it's like incredible. I am living in a coffee shop now. It's amazing. Awesome. Eventually, we should do like a coffee machine business. I bet those are. Yeah, that would be fun. That would be fun.

Someone find one for us. All right. Well, speaking of businesses, this isn't coffee, but it will wake you up. We have a chili pepper business today, right, Tyler? Yes, this is a great one. We found this on Biz Buy Sell. You want me to go ahead and read it? Let's read it and I will put it up on the screen for our YouTubers.

All right. Okay. So the headline is ecom and on-site retail store. for Southwestern products. 1.3 million revenue in Taos County, New Mexico. Asking price is 2,274,998. Exactly. Exactly.

Cash flow is 227,831. And cash flow is 227,831. Gross revenue, 1,304. Business description. A following 20 years in the making with profit, growth since 2013. Backstory. Originally inspired by another successful SEO-friendly brand, this business brought the authentic Southwestern products people love into people's homes with a few clicks of a button. Since its founding in 2005, the business has become the number one online source

for New Mexico, salsa, hatch green, and red chili powder and salsa. It offers authentic, locally sourced Native American and Spanish arts, crafts, decor, and gifts from a beautifully designed website with streamlined, checkout, and payment processes. On fire and getting hotter. Ooh, I like it. Offering more products and more sophisticated CRM and profit analytics tools than its competitors, this business has seen gross profits steadily rise since 2013. Its latest T12 revenue came in at 1.3 million with cash flowing at 228,000. It boasts an average order value of $66.75 and return customer rate of 35% so far in 2023. Your transition. The owner who is planning their retirement is ready to pass on the beloved brand that they'll, that they've built up over 20 years.

They'll arm you with a detailed description of operations and make themselves available for you two to three months for two to three months as you get up and running. Then as for as long as you need thereafter. You'll inherit a full-time staff of four and 135,000 email contacts primed for the next big campaign ideas. Located in Tows County, New Mexico, the real estate is leased, and the inventory is included, which is nice to hear. We like that. Listed by Dylan Gans of Baton Market. What do you think, Bill? Okay. So I have a call today. I could really use some Chili's. I think. that would be good for me. So,

am I right that this thing is priced at 10x cash flow? Yes, that is correct. That seems like rich. Yeah, so they make $225,000 a year and they want to sell it

for $2.2 million. So that is obviously off market. I was expecting when I saw that multiple that there would be like a piece of real estate included or,

you know, something that was driving that up. but it says the real estate is leased. So I've got, you know, our friend Dylan Gans here from Baton Market who lists this business, not touching his face, not wearing a hat, but also not willing to be honest with his sellers about what their business is probably worth. He's shy, maybe.

Maybe he's shy. Yeah. Yeah, they definitely, this is one of those listings where it's just way too high out of the gate and they're going to let the broker's probably going to let the market teach the seller that that's too high and hope that they'll eventually come down. I have that conversation with a lot of buyers because when they first start looking, they think the list prices like what they should be paying and they're sort of getting sticker shock. And I just tell them, you know, unfortunately, most of the time, these businesses aren't going to sell anywhere close to what they're listed for.

So this, this, I feel compelled to discuss this. This is, I think, one of the most unethical pieces of broker behavior that I see often in the marketplace, right? And I don't know if our friend Dylan did this or not, but I have seen. other brokers do this personally. We were working with a seller. We were trying to buy a business that was off market. And we knew that in a certain e-commerce brokerage that I would really like to name, but I think they'd probably be pretty mad at me.

Not Quietlight, of course. I love those guys. But one of the Quietlytes competitors, in fact, I found out they were calling this lady and telling her that her business would sell for seven or eight times revenue. Or sorry, seven or eight times EBITDA. And we were not off. that. And she was basically saying these guys are telling me it's worth more than your offering.

So I had my Corp Dev guy call in to the broker and say, hey, I'm just trying to do a market check. What are, you know, we hear you're telling people in the marketplace, you know, seven times plus. Like, is that really what you guys are seeing? Like, if so, we'd like to sell some of our businesses, right? And the broker goes, yeah, well, you know, a lot of times we just kind of tell the sellers what they need to hear in order to get us signed up. And then we let the market sorted out. And I went, that is the most, I can't believe you just admitted that to me. Like, that's the most unethical thing I have ever heard. Because the way this works, right, is you're a seller, you sign a deal with a business broker. And they have a two year tail on the agreement,

which means if you sell a business at any price over the next two years, they're going to get a fee. So there's this incentive for the broker to promise the moon. And, you know, you, the seller, like, oh, well, this broker offered me the most money. I guess I'll just sign with him. And then the market, the bids only came back at 4X. I know we told you eight, but what do you want to do? And you're six months into a process. You're exhausted. You've already mentally checked out.

You know, maybe you already bought a new car, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then you take the deal and the broker gets paid. And nobody ever remembers that there were a couple other brokers who bid on the business and told you 4X right up front that were more ethical. But they didn't win the deal. Right. I see it all the time. It kills me.

Yep. It's absolutely terrible. It is one of the reasons why the small business marketplace is so inefficient. The ways that brokers use to entice folks to list their businesses is super frustrating for everybody and unethical. So, yeah, it is one of the main sources of problems that we have in our market being inefficient. But I always say this too. Our market is very inefficient, but it also leads to low multiples. And that's part of what the value is in buying us.

small businesses that we are getting these cash flowing businesses or these buyers are getting them at low multiples. That's right. You got to slog, you got to kiss a lot of frogs. But if you can get a deal done, and they usually trade it three to four times EBITDA, and you can get great returns. That's right. So regardless of how this business is priced, it's price too high at 10x EBDA.

So Michael just stealth joined us if you're listening to the pod. Michael just stealth hopped on. So welcome to the pod, Michael. Thank you. Oh, dude, I tried to build this business like 20 years ago, whereas I called it stuff. from home and I wanted to sell tortillas from San Antonio because people used to ask me to ship them tortillas. And I never made it work.

And look at these guys did. They sell chilies over the internet? Okay, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. So the business that made this work like at more scale is called Goldbelly. And Gold Bellies, yeah, so you know, so Gold Belly specializes, this is not sponsored by Gold Belly, but I do love it. They specialize in like local stuff.

I'll put it on the screen. So like specific restaurant drop ships you, their cinnamon rolls. or like cheese steaks from Pat's cheese steaks in Philly or whatever, right? They've got all this local stuff that they send to you. And I think they've built a really good business, don't it? Yeah, I think they did too because if you visit someplace and you, or you just know that they have this great food in a certain city that you can't get, you can order it from them.

And it's kind of fun. You can browse through it and find a lot of cool stuff. But this seems like a specific brand that somebody, you know, there's some logo here, there's some brand. And it's not just sauces and chili powders. it's like, didn't they say there's some sort of arts and crafts kind of stuff too? I don't know where the value is here. Is it in the food products or the other stuff?

So Michael was not here, and he is here now, but he was not here earlier. And so I was doing my best to perform my best Michael Girdley impression and sleuth out which business this might be. And I think I found it because they committed one of the biggest tells, which is since it's founding in 2005, which is a specific year. So now I've got, you know, Taos County, Hot Chili's, 2005, founded, et cetera. And that led me to these guys made in New Mexico.com. And they have, if you just go to kind of their about, they've got a store in Taos.

But they also sell all of these different, you know, chili powders, chili seasonings. It doesn't look like very much of it has their own brand name on it, made in New Mexico. It seems like they're a little bit more of a retailer, but they've got everything. It's not just food. It's cocktails and barware like soda. They've got home bath and decor that they also sell from New Mexico. So I think this is basically like a New Mexico gift shop essentially. Yes, that is.

I mean, for sure, the business you found that is what it is. Now, if that's what the listing is, then it does kind of seem to match up. It's less of a food business. We got excited about the picture of the Chili's in the listing. So, I mean, good job to the broker, at least on that, right? He got a good picture. They got us excited. I'm probably the Chili's aspect.

Yes, yes. But it does look like it's more of a gift shop. And then what's the e-com? Because that was in the headline, too, Bill. Like, is this really, when it's a local, you know, made in New Mexico, is that really a great e-com business? I have seen businesses like this where, you know, they have a local retail presence, but 80% of sales are out the backdoor on Amazon or eBay or whatever.

Because there are a lot of brands, a lot of product brands that will not sell to you wholesale unless you're a retail store. Because they're, and now this, if the brand ever figures this out, sometimes they get mad. Some brands get mad. Some brands don't care. But they'll buy, they'll go, look, we are real. Like, this is a picture of our shop and taos. You know, we're a retail store. We're going to put your product to retail.

Great. And then the brand goes, man, they must. do a lot of volume on that little storefront in Taos, right? But actually, it's going out the back door on Amazon or eBay or Etsy or a combination of both. And I've seen a lot of businesses that do really well with like the token storefront. The problem though, of course, is the token storefront is required, right? You can't, you know, a naive business buyer would come in and go, why my panel is rent. I just look at it. It's losing money hand over fist. The econ business is the good part. Let's close the store. Right. And they come in and do that and they don't,

realize that over the next year, they start losing all of the products that they were able to carry. That made them unique. This episode of Acquisitions Anonymous is sponsored by Acquisition Lab. Acquisition Lab and their team, they've been longtime supporters of the pod, and they provide a really great service for people who are looking to acquire a business. So it's created by Walker Dival, who's become a friend, the author of Buy, Then Build, how to outsmart the startup game.

So Acquisition Lab is an accelerator with a highly vetted cohort-based, education, and support community for people who are serious about buying a business. So a lot of our listeners like you, you tune in every week to our deal reviews. You want to get in on buying a business. You know, you're on this podcast because you're trying to learn how to buy a business. But if you're not quite sure where to start, acquisition lab is a great place to start. So they exist to help people buy a business and to navigate all those complexities of the process, everything you hear us talking about on the show. They provide a proven framework, tools and resources that support you all the way from search to close.

They do it. There's a whole bunch of educational material and support. So if you're serious about buying a business, check out AcquisitionLab.com, or you can actually email the program director Chelsea Wood directly. Her email is Chelsea at buy then build.com. Interesting. And it's less than a 20% margin. So like what should the margin be on the retail versus the ecom here?

Is that a tell too, what the overall margin? is? I think it's probably roughly the same because the problem here is because it's not their products, they're buying it probably at Keystone, so 50% off retail. So you start with a 50% gross margin, which is just not that great. And then a lot of these things are selling with these price points, 1095, 899, like that's just really hard to make work because you've got five bucks of shipping in any order. You know, so like I'm sure this is really good stuff. But like this is why food on the internet is just so hard. I would, if I were looking at buying this business, come in and say, put I turn this into what I'll call the mullet e-commerce business,

the retail in the front, e-com in the back type thing, right? So a lot of this stuff, their website here, I just don't think is ever going to do major volume, but where they could do major volume is Amazon or Etsy or eBay. So I would go through the whole catalog here and say, these products is not really available on Amazon. And then I would start listing them on Amazon. I would do some keyword research on Amazon to see if there was decent search volume for this stuff and then say, oh, there's a real opportunity here. We could double this business by getting the catalog on Amazon. And after 20 years, only being at a million three in sales, what does that sort of tell you? I think it tells me their e-com is not that strong and that this is mostly a retail

operation. Yeah, that's what it would seem to me. I bet it's stable, though. I mean, if it's been around for almost 20 years, they got a lease on Main Street and Tows or whatever. Yeah. You know, I bet it's stable and they probably just haven't been able to grow e-com. I mean, just looking at their e-com, like, yes, it is on Shopify, but this, the template, just the execution here, like, I've seen a lot better. Yeah. So it's really more of a retail that's kind of trying to do some e-com, but, you know, margins aren't great and the volumes just kind of, you know, they've taken them 20 years to get to them, and three in sales. So it might be nice for someone who lives or wants to live in that part of

New Mexico. Oh, yeah. You know, it's a simple business, somewhat simple, I guess, to run. Maybe not overly simple, but, you know, a lot of different skill sets might fit in here. But certainly, you know, what kind of multiple should we be paying for something that's only throwing off 227,000? Spoiler alert, it's not 10. Right. I mean get my calculator. You might as well buy some T bills and kill the risk-adjusted return on that one.

Yeah. Right. Yeah, you got to pay a low price for this. But here would be my case for buying this. If either you are you live in Touse or you have another business in Touse, right? So you've kind of got some overhead that you could take out or that you're already doing business in the town. And if you've got like a thesis on turning it into a mullet business and scaling some of these things. if during the diligence you see that they've got a lot of skews,

they're not available on the internet. Putting those skew that have good followings and that move through the store, I just say, like, what are your top 50 sellers at the retail store? And then I would go through one by one, look at the keyword volume for each on Amazon and Etsy and eBay even, and then say, can I also run some Facebook ads to people who have recently been in Touse or liked house or location-based to people who are in-house right now, right? And you could even just dabble a little bit.

And even if you grow the net from 225 to 400, right? And if you don't mind being in a house, it's a great deal. Yeah. If you pay what multiple, though? Well, yeah. Yeah, you can't pay $2.2 million for this. No, you have to pay a lot less. This to me is priced at the, this is the remaining balance on my mortgage, or this is how much

money I need to retire, or whatever it might be. Like, you see this all the time. Like, this price makes no sense for this business. It's also, like, oddly specific. It's 2.2,074,998. Like some financial planner has said, if you had this money in the bank, you would never have to work again. And they're like, oh, well, then I'll just sell my business for that amount of money.

Well, it doesn't quite work like that. But I see that pricing strategy, strategy, in quotes, all the time. Well, it could be an interesting small deal for somebody. And as if they, you know, if you could get this at the right, price, a low, you know, I don't know, maybe a million dollars at the most, you could just definitely get an SBA loan. Definitely. That's a small SBA loan. You put, you know, your 10% down. You have a little bit of a seller note. There's lots of lenders who actually find it much easier to make small acquisition loans. I find that interesting because actually the data suggests,

or not suggest. The data tells us that small acquisition loans actually perform more poorly than large because small businesses, the smaller you are, the more risky it is, and the more, you know, a small bump in the road can actually be devastating. But it's interesting, you know, just the human nature, a lot of lenders and banks still just feel better with a lot of small loans than larger loans. So it wouldn't be too hard to get an SBA loan on this. Yeah. I mean, to me, if I'm going to be an SBA borrower, I want to go buy a business that if, you know, If a million dollars is going to put me into the poorhouse, if the business fails, I might as well buy $5 million because the poor house destination is still the same thing.

So I would definitely, I don't know. It's a very meta conversation about it, especially with the numbers that you talk about, Heather, like if you're going to go all in, like go all in for the biggest potential upside and the biggest quality business typically because the loan is bigger. Yeah, the business quality is absolutely night and day from the really tiny ones to the big ones, the tiny ones are by a job. And actually, the transition risk to buy a job is a lot worse than are more difficult than the transition risk to buy a team and, you know, kind of step into the executive role. So there's a lot of things to consider, but it's just human nature. The lenders

think this way sometimes and the buyers think this way sometimes that it's safer to go small. It might be, but, you know, statistically on average, it really isn't. And Michael, you're saying that if you're going to default on a million dollar loan or a $5 million loan and declare personal bankruptcy either way, you still end up with zero and the bank rights off the loan, but there's far more upside and buying the bigger business. Go balls to the wall. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, just game theory wise, you should do that. I mean, the very first choice is don't default on the loan. I will do that. If you're going to borrow money, pay it back. Yes, do that. If you end up, things go horrible, you know, then, you know,

If you're going to go bankrupt one way or another, you might as well swing for the fences while you're doing it. But anyway, pay back your loans, people. That's point number one. Please, if you're going to take away anything, do that. And they do, by the way. I have statistics on my website. I'm just about to refresh them.

I finally got my new data, but it's still low. I've got a whole blog post on the SBA default rate just for acquisition loans, where we separated them out from all the other SBA loans. And it's like currently it's 1.35%. So, wow. That is really low. How does that compare to typical Main Street lending? So, I'll give the comparison.

The other, the general SBA pool is 1.95 currently. So the acquisition loans actually have a lower default rate than all the other SBA loans that are used for real estate and some, a little bit of startup. But honestly, there's really not a lot of startup lending in SBA. Most lenders don't do it. So, yes, the acquisition loans are safer. And I know this gets debated a lot on Twitter and people tend to have a negative impression that all these people are buying businesses, that they don't have experience or whatever it is. The reality is they are safe loans and they are safe bets. And it all goes, you know, frankly to me, down to the multiples.

At these multiples, that amount of leverage actually does work safely. And it doesn't mean, of course, people are making a ton of money. It just means they're not defaulting. That's the other side of the argument. Like how many of those that are not defaulting are not doing great, they're struggling or whatever? That I couldn't tell you. You know, there's no statistic for that. I could just tell you anecdotally, a few, you know, sure, but I don't think it's widespread that most of them are struggling.

Are the SBA real estate loans also personally guaranteed? Yes. Every SBA loan has a full personal guarantee, at least one person. Are the SBA real estate loans a higher loan to value than acquisition loans usually? No, they're about a little bit higher. Like they'll usually be 90% loan to value, but the DSCR required by the lenders is lower. They will take more risk as a lender because they have collateral. So if you default, they're not going to lose everything.

They're going to go ahead and liquidate your real estate and come out pretty much whole. So they'll go in with a lot skinnier DSCR than they will on a, uncollateralized acquisition loan. And I would also imagine that if you're the lender and you know there's hard real estate and you know it's worth it, you go, screw it, let's foreclose, let's liquidate, let's end this thing. But if it's an acquisition loan, you look at it and go, if I foreclose, what do I have? Like if I foreclose, I go to zero. Like, it's much better to work out with this person and keep them out of default, et cetera, right? Right, but not only to a point. The SBA actually

forces lenders in the program to give leeway and not just pull the plug. We don't have covenants. We don't have financial covenants that, you know, they can just call it a day. You have to really be not paying for at least 90 days on whether it's real estate or business acquisition before the lender can actually commence the liquidation. And most, with acquisition loans, they'll usually give you another 90 days, like you said, to kind of work it out, to give you some chance. Yeah. I feel like that's the thing that people like borrowers don't understand. People are like, oh, if I miss one payment or if I even flinch that, you know, I can't pay it, the bank's going to take my business in my house. Like it almost never works that way. Like some default rate

or some workout rate, like it's built into your pricing. It's always better to go to the lender and go, I can't pay. I need a six-month payment holiday. I need to restructure my loan. I need to do something so I can have some breathing room to turn this thing around. Right? And people don't realize that's the case. Like, they will probably make you feel like a bad person, but at the end of the day, like, you're built into their model. Yeah, absolutely.

And some of them don't even make you feel like a bad person. It's really not as daunting as people make it out in their mind. If you just are honest with your lender, hey, I'm having, even before that you can't make the payment, where you can just start to see the problem developing and you communicate with the bank, it's going to be much easier. You're going to get a leeway that you need most,

almost all the time. So yes, absolutely, don't go hide or go into denial. Just talk to your bank. It's always better. I talked to a bankruptcy attorney probably six to nine months ago. And the guy shared, most people do the exact opposite of what you're talking about. Like things start to go wrong. And instead of being transparent with the lender, like they're like, they keep it a secret and like start bullshitting them and like start like not.

sharing what's going on. And he said, look, the thing that every borrower should be doing instead, assuming you're dealing with a credible, like, lender, there's these vulture lenders who are people that loan to own, like, they're a different story. They're more like loan sharks than they are real lenders. Real lenders don't want to own your business. Real lenders don't want to foreclose on it. Real lenders just want to get their money back plus interest, and their job is often to work with you. And I've had banks just say, like, look, we just don't want to take a loss on this. That's what we're optimizing for. And that's what they mean.

They just want to get paid back. They don't want to be in the business of owning an online chili sales e-commerce thing in Taos. They have no interest in that. They just want to clip their coupons and go from there. So there's a takeaway from all this. It's like, look, just be transparent with your lenders, be totally open. And if you do that and are proactive about it, you'll get much more leeway than you think.

There's no reason to keep stuff a secret. Yeah. You're right. And most people, the human nature is just, there's a denial that tends to happen. But I think the banks are a little bit responsible for that. To your point, Bill, sometimes, you know, if they employ really harsh-speaking special assets managers instead of kind of cooperated ones, it does scare people off. That's not, it's not in the best interest to do that.

It's in the best interest to make you feel okay about coming forward. And I think more and more I see people like that, you know, in the special assets groups. and they are not scary like they kind of used to be. Well, the best strategy is don't get into the distressed. Don't get yourself into that group and your banker and folks like that. They'll work with you. Like, I've just seen it over and over again. Absolutely.

But if you do, don't do anything rash or horrible just to reach out to your lender. Yeah, exactly. I feel like this part of the podcast should have the NBC thing where it's like, the more you know, the thing from the 80s. They give for listening to our lecture about borrowing money. Well, I'll mention in the intro so people know to hang around through our chilly discussion to get to the public service announcement. I mean, at some point on the podcast, it would be fun to have a discussion about

the irrational way many people approach the concept of debt and how some people don't understand the difference between good debt and bad debt and how debt can be used, you know, in good situations. It can also be used in dumb situations. And I think some of that is just like the Dave Ramsey religion. And I understand why Dave does what he does because it's good radio to just have a very hardcore view on stuff. And also most people can't understand how debt can be good and bad at the same time, just like they can't understand that your house can be both an investment and a cost center at the same time. But people are not good at at holding two concepts in their mind at once. But anyway, maybe I just had the whole discussion with

myself and I agree with me. So thank you guys. I'm glad to agree with you. That's terrible when you don't. Yeah, I think I'm like, yeah, thank you. I'm consistently agree with what I have to say. All right. You guys want to wrap this one up?

Anything else? No, I have a few more rants about debt. And yeah, do you want to hear what I think about organic food next? Let's do an organic food business next time. We'll tee right up. All right. Thanks. Thanks for listening.

and Acquisitions Adonymous. We will see you next time.