Ep. 1 - Exit Timing: Why You Need a 3-Year Head Start with Craig Jamison

Most business owners are sitting on a fortune they cannot actually spend. Their net worth is trapped like a mosquito in amber, visible on a balance sheet but completely illiquid until the right deal is struck. We sit down with Craig Jamison, a financial advisor and Certified Exit Planning Advisor, to discuss why having 80 percent of your wealth tied up in a single entity is a dangerous gamble and how to start the process of unlocking that value long before you are ready to walk away.

We get into the tactical differences between running a lifestyle business and building a value creation business. Our conversation covers the necessity of clean financial storytelling, the dangers of co-mingling personal and professional expenses, and how to identify "single points of failure" that scare away high-quality buyers. Craig Jamison shares his philosophy on de-risking, explaining why the best time to plant the tree of diversification was twenty years ago and the second best time is today.

The unglamorous truth is that many owners are too "superstar-dependent," making themselves the secret sauce and the primary bottleneck of their own company. If the business cannot function without you in the building, its value at the closing table will plummet. You will walk away from this episode with a clear framework for auditing your customer concentration and a blueprint for a three to five year exit runway that maximizes your final multiple.

If you care about building long-term legacy, regional growth in Northwest Arkansas, and transition planning, you’ll get a lot from this. Please Subscribe and Share this episode with a fellow founder. What is the one task in your business today that only you can do, and how soon can you delegate it to someone else?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Always consult with your professional advisors before making any business or investment decisions. The host of this podcast and Edward Jones have an existing business relationship. This event is not a testimonial of the services provided by Edward Jones financial advisor, Craig Jameson. If you're thinking about what's next for your business, remember the best outcomes are built well before a deal ever happens. So, everybody, welcome to the Owner to Owner Podcast, where Northwest Arkansas business owners learn how to build value, prepare for the transition, and understand how deals actually get done. This episode and most episodes will be brought to you in part by TransWorld Business Advisors of Northwest Arkansas. Your business may be worth more than you think it is. At TransWorld, we help you prepare, value, and sell your business the right way. Visit us at transworld.com forward slash Northwest Arkansas. I am your podcast host. My name is Cam Geiger. This is our very first podcast, and I picked the absolute best guest I could think of to be on the very first one we have. I'll do a quick introduction of you, Craig, and then we'll just talk a little bit. Look forward to it. So an interesting uh thing. Craig and I met through a networking group, and so we have uh built a rapport not only professionally but personally, which always makes doing business more fun. It also makes sure you do good business, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. That's our that's our motto. Um so my dead my guest today is Craig Jamison. He's a financial advisor for Edward Jones, a leading financial services firm which operates through North uh throughout North America, in the U.S. and in Canada. Craig works closely with individuals, families, and business owners to build personalized strategies for retirement, legacy, and other long-term financial goals. He helps business owners turn business success into lifetime income. And that's really the part of his remit that we're here to talk about today. And I'm super excited to have you here and kind of give um our uh our listeners and and watchers uh just some feedback on how to think about things from a financial planning perspective. Perfect. I look forward to it. Thanks for inviting me on. Yeah, yeah. This is this is gonna be good. Okay, so uh we'll we'll hop right into it. Um, first question for you is what is the biggest disconnect you see between a business owner's net worth on paper versus reality?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Uh fantastic, great first question. Um in real life, um the business owner's net worth is so often trapped inside of that business. Have you ever seen those rings or the jewelry that's made from, you know, it's the mosquito inside of the amber? Yes. You know, it's really neat inside of there, but it's not, you know, it's not actionable unless you can extract that value out of there. Yeah. You know, the the biggest disconnect is is that business liquid? Can it be sold for how much can it be sold? When can it be sold? Um, you know, those are the things that the business owner has to figure out how to unlock and and not just unlock, but how to unlock effectively, because the value of that business is dependent on that. You know, a lot of business owners, they see a big number. You know, we generate this much per year in our business. And so therefore, my business is worth a multiple of that when in reality that not that might not be the case. Um, you know, if as an investment advisor, if if someone's portfolio is highly invested in in one thing, one stock, we would say that it's over concentrated. Um, it's exposed to a lot of risk, but that's what the business owner does. Um, it is concentrated in their one business that pops out, may pop out fantastic amounts of dollar bills, but it's highly concentrated, and that's always a concern.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yeah, yeah. You know, it it's interesting. We've run across a lot of clients in the business that are quite frankly just surprised anybody would want to buy what they built. And part of the first hurdle that we run into is getting them to realize that they've actually built something of value. Yes, it's printing money for them, it's providing them income, but in many cases, they didn't even see it as part of a broader portfolio that they're managing with a financial planner. So, how should owners think about their business as part of their overall portfolio?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

For most business owners, um they have to think of their business as part of their portfolio, not as the portfolio. Ah, big insight there. It's important that there is a diversification. Now, while they're running the business and it's bringing those dollar bills in, you know, take some of that cash flow, translate it in some other type of asset. That's where I come in. Um, but but to make sure that it's not the entire portfolio. Um, concentrated risk is a scary thing. Yeah. Um, and it's a big deal. Um, you know, there is this beautiful thing in this free enterprise system in this country where you can come up with an idea, you can start to build a little business, which might become a large business, which might pop out an incredible amount of money, or or at least just provide a great lifestyle for you, maybe even lower stress, maybe not, often not. Um but under the right conditions, you can also extract big value at the end of it all. Um, that's a beautiful thing. But according uh there's an organization that I follow closely with. I'm what's called a certified exit planning advisor. It's through an organization called the Exit Planning Institute. Um, they have a statistic that is pretty alarming. Um 80% of the business owner's net worth is often tied up inside of that business. 80%. Wow, that's a lot. So then the question comes is that business worth money? How much is it worth? And and really, can it be worth more if you do things a little bit different?

unknown 6:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yeah. So preparing for an exit well in advance is something to work out. So I guess if you think about this, if you're running a small business today, you're thinking about the income that you have and it's providing for you. But it's kind of important to be thinking about maybe it has value beyond that. So if I sell the business, I've got money either to reinvest in another asset, another investment, something else in my portfolio, that there could be life after that. Uh, and maybe that's uh something that a lot of business owners aren't really thinking about.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Well, you know, and that's part of my job. You know, I I don't want to say life coach as part of that, but part of it is what am I going to do after I sell this business or after I'm no longer doing this thing 50 hours a week? Because both of those um are very real things you have to figure out. So, yes, what can I take the value of my business if I go to sell it and can sell it and in and receive the amount of money that I'm pleased with? What I'm gonna do after with that money, another business, you know, some lifestyle in retirement, but it also uh comes back years before that and says, Can I pull out some of that cash flow, redirect it somewhere else so that my portfolio isn't just heavily my business, even if it makes a lot of money. And how can I come alongside it? And and sometimes even pulling the money out of the cash flow creates tax advantages so that you get a bigger piece of the pie now. And even if you do it right, you get a bigger piece of the pie later, which, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about that here.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah, we will. Um I I want to I want to focus on this portfolio thing, just take another go at it as well, because what it sounds like is over the course of running the business, you may be posed with the opportunity to either reinvest money that you're making in the business or possibly pull it out and do some, you know, um, like you said, diversification of the overall portfolio. And that could be potentially buying or building another business. And that could be portfolio, or it could be investing in the market, things like that. But having more than one business, maybe not tied to links so they don't fail, you know, uh or succeed together. Or real estate. Yeah, or real estate.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

You know, another business, or um, you know, some some kind of um, you know, spin-off of what you already do and you expand your offerings, um, or into the market. You know, I just invest my money to let it grow in in more of a passive environment. There are a lot of different options of what you can do. The important thing is that you're doing something other than just the business. And and here's one thing that I hear a lot of business owners, they they they tell me they're like, okay, so if I put it in an investment in the market, I could expect a reasonable return at this range. But if I hire another salesperson, I can get this. Yep. And so that's part of the process, you know, for me as the financial advisor is to to walk that path with the business owner and say, if we do this, you know, you may see more dollars pop out, but you also still have concentrated risk. Or we do some of this, or we do a little bit of both. Um, part of it is the the strategy, multiple steps before you have to make that decision to look at it from every angle.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah, that that's good. And if if nothing else, uh, hopefully the the folks are watching this podcast realize that having the conversation with you, with their financial advisor along the way, uh, can provide them with a lot of options um to consider.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Absolutely. Um, to see things. There's always this statement I heard of this years ago, is that it's always valuable valuable to have some outside insight.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

You know, you see the business, Mr. or Mrs. Business Owner. Um, you see it with the blinders on because you're living it within the context of that business. And sometimes it's valuable that you have those trusted advisors. I stay in, and I'm sure at the beginning of this podcast, you're going to have a disclaimer that's read about, you know, I stay in this financial and planning lane, but what I do also is I I'm also the quarterback for the business owner of saying, hey, what does your estate attorney have to say about it? What play is there in that? Or your CPA or your tax planning attorney or your exit planning advisor. In in this exit planning, there are what's called value advisors or the business broker, you know, to bring in all of these trusted advisors for there to be a master plan.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Ahead of time. Yeah. You know, not reactive but proactive long before you ever get ready to exit a business.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Which brings me to my next question. I'm interested in your answer. I kind of got to answer uh myself as well. But at what point should a business owner start exit or transition planning from a financial standpoint?

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Years before. You know, they want to quantify it. Every business owner wants to quantify how many years ahead of time. You know, what I say is I say at least three years ahead. At least three. You know, often I'm coming across business owners, we don't have three years. Yeah. Um, they burned out, um, there's a sickness, they're just ready for transition. They're tired, you know. Um, that's not always the case. But if if I got to say how long before you are ready to exit your business, do you start putting together the exit plan five to 10 years ahead of time?

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Yeah. You know, it it's interesting because uh we love to talk to clients that are three years before they want to sell their business because there's time to look at how they're running, time to optimize the way that they're operating in their business. So it is worth more in three years or five years than it is today. But you could almost say if you're going in to build your first business now, you should almost build it with an exit in mind. Think about if you are a buyer, what is a buyer going to be looking for? Buyers typically uh come to the table and they want to buy your business A because they think they're smarter than you and they can run it better, but also they're buying cash flow. They want to, they want to see something that has been run credibly, transparently. Um they can track track and trace what money is being spent on and where the revenue is coming from, and they feel like they've got something repeatable. So you almost want to do that from the beginning. But to your point, ideally you're doing it at least three years in advance that you start to think about what that exit strategy is really going to look like.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Well, and and and going right along with what you're you're saying about that business, business owners built one of two types of business. A lifestyle business. Hey, it provides me the amount of income that I'm pleased with for the lifestyle that I want. You know, time or control of your time is also a factor. You can have a lifestyle business that makes considerable money, but possibly might not be worth very much. Or it may be, but a lifestyle business. Or you can have what's called a value creation business. I am building this thing as an investment so that someday I can exit from it and get the highest multiple possible for that. And that is that requires some very intentional, proactive steps. Not one year before you sell it, but back it up multiple years so that you can build it out. And and more than anything, here's what I tell my business owner: if you are running a lifestyle business, if you have enough time, you can turn that big ship around and create a value creation business. Because the investor says, does it feel scary or risky? Is it telling a clean story according to the numbers and the operations? If it is, you're gonna get more fish to bite. That's right. Um, so the more time we have to build the right kind of operation or the business owner to build that right kind of operation, the better.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

It's never too late to have the conversations, but there are better times than others, and that's as far out in advance as you can possibly do before you get burned out because everybody gets there. Um, but but before that.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

There's one thing I tell um most of my clients because they come in and they they say, Hey, I'm getting ready for retirement. This isn't even about the business owner. Yeah. Um, they say, you know, I'm 15 years away from retirement. And then inevitably, so many clients say, and I don't feel like I have saved enough money or put enough away or have enough working for me. And I always give this illustration. And this is also for the business owner. You know when the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. Yeah. The second best time to plant the tree is today. Today. So let's do this thing today. Let's make it what we can starting at this moment, moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

So, what financial mistakes do you see are reducing business value or potentially kill a deal?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

When personal finances and business finances are equal. Ah. Because it doesn't tell a clean story. Yeah. Um, you know, hey, I need a little bit of, and you just, and I see it often. I see it from very successful businesses where there's a commingling. Okay. Now, the reason it's important is that when you go to sell this business, yeah, you can take value out of the business. Um, you know, there's implications on commingling everything, right? Piercing the corporate bill beyond my pay grade. I'm not the attorney, won't even talk about that. But as a financial mistake, we're talking about that exit. When you want to sell the business for the highest multiple, there's got to be a clean story that gets told. Yeah. Which is, you know, very multifaceted. Yep. But one of them is the finances of the business. Can I take that balance sheet, the profit and loss? Can I take the numbers of that business? And does it tell a linear, clean story? And then there's the other parts of it. Right. About, you know, is there an operations manual? Can I open it up and say, in this circumstance, with that person within the business, they do this this way every single time, right? Right? Plug and play. That's the reason you can have one McDonald's or you can have 50 or 100 or 5,000 McDonald's. They're all the same. Open the manual, how do you do this thing? When you have somebody looking to buy your business, they want to see that there are processes and systems in place to say, how do I do it?

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yep. It's it's interesting. As a business broker, one of the things we do upfront whenever we're talking to a client and we're going to list their business for sale. The two things that kill a deal are transparency and price. And what we're really talking about here is transparency. And a lot of that comes down to how you manage the books and the story that it tells, being able to have that clear separation between personal and professional. Even if your business is paying for some things personally, if it can be pinpointed, it can be added back to the value of the business. You can take that out, you can, you can handle that correctly, but you've got to be able to do it. The transparency piece also comes into providing that information as far up front as possible so the story is consistent. Where things break down in a deal is where you find out later in the game that the story isn't consistent. There's something missing, or uh there's something that doesn't add up, or or that. And lack of transparency late in the deal kills the deal late. And that's the worst time to kill a deal is the look the closer you get to closing and it hasn't happened. And that typically happens because um it just you didn't tell either the whole story or the story you told just didn't uh include everything that that the the buyer needed to know.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Uh that's exactly right. Uh the hard numbers and the soft fundamentals. Yep. Um hard numbers, inconsistent, unclear financial statements. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Owner compensation that is fuzzy, you know, needs to be cleaned up. Um, it's not normalized, it can't easily be explained. Um, personal expenses running through the business, which is how we started this whole conversation. Um, and and no clear plan for uh taxes, liquidity, um the the future idea of what is that owner going to do after the sell of that business. Um, you know, those issues make it difficult for a buyer um to be able to understand the true cash flow of the business. And if a and if an owner can't be comfortable, um they will either want a discount or they'll walk away from the business.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Or they'll walk away. And the closer you are to closing, the more the tensions rise and the greater likelihood they just walk away. Uh and so getting all of those things that you just mentioned uh right, it it it's important that your answers to the questions make sense as well. And the clearer things are up front, the easier it is to explain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

That's exactly right. Um you know, the those the hard numbers. And then, you know, let me uh kind of take a little bit of a detour here. There's also the soft fundamentals. I call them the intangibles. Yeah. Um there are things that are difficult to see until they're brought up and exposed, and then they're very easy to see. Let me give you some examples. Yeah, yeah. That's okay. Um here are here are deal killers in a business. Customer concentration. Yep. Does one customer bring in over 5% of the revenue? That's scary for the buyer. Re reduce risk is the goal because if you have a scary thing that's a sour taste to the buyer and and they get scared, they want a discount because they can understand it, or they're exposed to risk. They don't want to be in a risky situation. Um, owner dependence. You would think that the superstar owner is the secret sauce of the business and that's a value. And it is maybe to run the business right now, but for the buyer, yes, Mr. or Mrs. Buyer, they don't want to see a superstar owner. They want to see a business that can run separate from the person that currently owns it because they want to own it next.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah, your secret sauce today turns out to be um your detriment in the future.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

It does. It does. Lack you lack up documented processes. I know I mentioned that, but um can you open up the operations manual? Do your salespeople do or say this thing? Do they document it this certain way every time? Yeah. Um, how is everything done? Plug and play. Um, I can open it up and understand how the business works. Have you ever had instructions when you order a piece of furniture and it comes in a lot of different pieces? Yeah. And it's not a clear path to putting together that furniture. Um, frustrating. Businesses are the same way.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Yeah, it really is. It's got to be now to be fair to people who are selling a business, buyers sometimes have a very unrealistic expectation on what they want to buy. Every buyer wants to walk in, be able to look at the business, and basically buy the business and then just have the check mailed to them every day and then not do anything. Well, if it worked like that, then you probably wouldn't want to sell your business in the first place. You just keep it. I want that business. We all want that business, right? And that's the thing is part, again, of the whole process is making sure that you have the right buyer and that buyer has realistic expectations on what it is to manage a business. And and people that have owned or run businesses before typically have gotten over that hurdle. It's the newer people that you run into. But yeah, that's uh those, I think that was a really good list of things that the kill deals. We'll talk about pricing in another episode, but there's a lot of things to think about there too. Um so how do you help owners think about risk concentration in their business? You mentioned it a little bit. You mentioned 5%. A lot of the things you talked about, if uh, you know, at Trans World. We do a lot of work also with the lower middle market of private equity. And so that's that's a whole arena that in private equity they call quality of earnings. And they will spend a ton of time, if you're working with a private equity firm, really breaking down where does your revenue come from and where are the risks. So let's talk a little bit about that risk of concentration.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

So in creating a higher value in your business, we I talked about secret sauce in a different context. The secret sauce of higher value in a business, that's a X for multiple, is de-risking your business. There are parts of improving your business that will cost you money. One of the things that can be done that isn't necessarily the most expensive thing to do is de-risking. Okay. And here's the reason it's so important for the business. If the same event can hurt your business, your income, and your retirement, that's concentrated risk. Uh that is a scary, scary place to be.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

What a business owner. Say that, say that again, because I think that was a really, really important statement for people to think about.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

If the same event can hurt your business, your income and your retirement, that is a scary concentration of risk. Yeah. So what we need to do, Mr. or Mrs. Business Owner, is what can we do to minimize that risk? Or in the context of uh, you know, what I often do or talk about with the business owners is de-risking. How do we remove or reduce that risk? What we're looking for is we're looking for single points of failure within that business. And I do this along with the value advisor because I stay in the land of financial advisor. But, you know, as a business owner and as the person that works with the business owners in this context of financial planning, we look for those weak spots. And we look to minimize, mitigate, or remove those weaknesses. Yeah. Um, so here's the question, Mr. and Mrs. Business Owner, where do risks overlap? Look for those things. If if there's a downturn in the market, you you really need someone like a Debbie Donner to say, what if, what if, what if, what if, you know, a downturn in the market or the industry shifts, or there's regulatory changes in your business is highly regulated, uh, or even health events for the owner.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

You get sick, Mr. or Mrs. Business Owner, and you can't run your business effectively. What happens? How have you planned for that? That's really what happens next. Find that point of failure, that weak spot, and say, what can I do about that? Yeah. That simple conversation in so many areas of your business, that is also a beneficial way, uh time to bring an outside in an outsider into the business, you know, to get some of that um outside insight because they see your business uh from a context you don't. Right. Um, and they can see risk in a way that you don't. But if anything can hurt you personally, financially, professionally, all at the same time, you need to figure out a way to minimize that risk. Um, it it's not the goal to eliminate it completely because that's an impossible task. Just find those ways to reduce those single points of failure that affect everything. Yeah. Um, because they can become really catastrophic. Yeah. Um, let me give you. Do I have time to give a few, for instance?

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Real quick, and then what we're probably gonna do, because this is such a rich conversation, is we're gonna break this into two segments. So let's let's have this give us this, and then we'll we'll break, and then uh I'll promise the uh the the listeners and viewers that we'll come back and we've got several other questions for you, and we'll do that in the next episode as well. But go ahead. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yeah, perfect. Here's how de-risking shows up in real life in practice. Um, how can I make my business less fragile? Here's some thanks. Personal financials, this is for the business owner, not entirely dependent on the business. If the business goes south or has a dip, you personally are not affected. Um, completely, not catastrophically. Um, reduce owner dependence. Um, how can the business owner um put some of the tasks on the team, have a management bench that can help carry the load?

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yep. We see that um with with a lot of the businesses. One one of the first indicators we have, we go is can the business owner meet with me in the middle of the day because they have a management team that's running the business. Yeah. Have they gotten through that hurdle where every time there's an event that's happening at work in the business, that they don't get sucked into it. Somebody else is taking care of it.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

This is the reason I love to talk to you because you are, you know, at a different point in all of this planning than I am. Yeah. Um our conversations are always deep and rich because of this. Revenue and customer mix. Um, do you have too much money coming in from one customer or one thing? Um plan for the what-if scenarios. Yeah. What if I get sick? Yeah. What if I go through divorce? What if my key employee goes across the street and starts to compete with me?

SPEAKER_01 27:27

Which we've seen all of those scenarios um in the last three months with clients of ours, where we've we've seen whether it's divorce, it's competition. Um, even for a restaurant, if if you're if you're banking on footfall coming in, traffic coming in, and you don't have the ability to maybe do some uh catered events or something else like that and have another income stream, those are things all of us to think about is how can you diversify where your your your revenue is coming from?

SPEAKER_00 27:57

We watched that during COVID. Yeah. The whole world had to change in one quick moment. And those that survived could pivot, and those that couldn't didn't.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yeah, and and we we actually saw some pretty big names of restaurants in Northwest Arkansas, just right around us, who closed that we would have thought that would have never happened. But it was because they they either made a conscious choice or an unconscious choice not to pivot.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Yeah. And the heartbreaking part about not planning for the possibility of risks and trying to mitigate or minimize those is that often in a business, it's not a car crash in the end. That's right. It's a slow bleed. It is. And it takes a long period of time. Um, I've seen what that does to someone personally and professionally and financially. Yes. And so de-risking is the process of trying to find those weak spots. Yep. And trying to account for them. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Great. Okay. So we're going to pause on the questions now, uh, Craig. Thanks for joining us for this first episode. We're going to finish this in the second episode, so don't go anywhere. We'll just uh we'll just keep going. Um, but before we wrap up, one of the things I want to do in each of uh the podcasts is kind of give the the listeners and and viewers just three things, no, not a whole laundry list of things to be looking out for in Northwest Arkansas, things that are going on. So here are three things Northwest Arkansas business owners should be paying attention to right now. Uh first one is that Northwest Arkansas is now the ninth fastest growing metro in the United States. Population is up 2.4% year over year, and that growth is being driven largely by people that are moving into the region. Now, that might sound like an obvious observation, but sometimes metro areas are growing because population growth, there's a lot of babies being born, or um it's uh financial growth and the markets growing, it's not necessarily uh tied to headcounts. So uh it's it's important to call out that we are seeing a large influx. As a matter of fact, if you look at the size of our metro market and you you take that size into into effect, and you say, okay, what's the ratio of people moving out versus moving in? We have the highest ratio of people moving in versus moving out of anybody in the country. Um yeah, it is very interesting. So for business owners, that means increasing demand, a deeper labor pool, um, and upward pressure on valuations over time as well. Second one, um, we have had a Fayetteville developer that's um planning a $1 billion mixed-use project called Drake Farms. Uh, is designed to house roughly 5,000 people with over a million square feet of commercial space as well. And this reflects continued confidence in long-term regional growth. And so for owners, um, this creates new demand pockets for retail and services and future exit opportunities as things mature. As we were talking, Craig, about diversification. Um, let's say you own a small franchise doing something in health and wellness could be another potential location for you. It could be, hey, you know what? I'm seeing that there's going to be a growth trend here, and the business I'm having isn't going to be part of the growth trend. You might decide your diversification is to start up a business that's going to cater to this. And these mixed-use developments that we're seeing, you know, even here in the Pinnacle Hills area, a lot of them do have that opportunity. They present a great opportunity for folks. Uh, last one I'll mention in Benton County residents are pushing back against a proposed Northwest Arkansas Regional Industrial and Technology Development Authority. I just heard about this one over the last couple of weeks. It's it's pretty cool. It's a it's an authority which would finance and develop large-scale projects to attract businesses and investments to the region. Now, the concerns are this is a basically a government uh type of authority. And the control um by the government and the potential use of eminent domain, which is a big issue for people, we're seeing a lot of bypasses go in. And a lot of times government agency will go in and say, okay, we're going to put the road right through your property. You don't really feel like you have any choice, and you really don't. And so as this creates a new authority, does this authority extend that uh that use of eminent domain? So for business owners and investors, it's a reminder that growth comes with regulatory issues and community friction, um, and that can impact projects and timelines. So if you've got a concern about one, being informed, going to city council meetings is an important thing to do. But also look at it that typically when these things are proposed, they're proposed for the greater good of the area. And without us putting some of these things in place, we will never be able to basically grow into the population that's moving here. We won't have the mechanisms to move quickly enough, make the investments, attract the investors that are needed. So it is definitely one of those things that you you've got to kind of see all sides of it. Bottom line, Northwest Arkansas continues to grow rapidly. Capital is being deployed at scale, but policy friction is a factor, and how growth plays out will be something that we will all live through as uh consumers as well. Okay, so um let's let's uh wrap up this this particular episode. Uh thanks for listening to Owner to Owner. If you're thinking about what's next for your business, remember the best outcomes are built well before a deal ever happens. See you next time. And that's a wrap for this episode. Thanks for listening to Owner to Owner. If you're thinking about what's next for your business, remember the best outcomes are built well before a deal ever happens.