MFREE 120 Full Episode with Marvin Karlow: How Do You Build Value That Actually Holds Up at the Finish Line?

In this episode of the Multifamily Real Estate Experiment Podcast, hosts dive into mergers and acquisitions with Marvin Karlow, a seasoned M&A expert with extensive experience in business ownership and exits. Marvin shares key insights on maximizing business exit value, the importance of having a leadership team, achieving efficient operations, and navigating the complexities of due diligence. The discussion also uncovers valuable tips on identifying the right buyers and preparing mentally for selling a business. Listeners will gain a comprehensive understanding of the strategic and emotional aspects of exiting a business successfully.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Overview

02:05 Marvin's Business Philosophy and Mantra

03:57 The Two Phases of Deal-Making

05:50 Marvin's Career Journey and Problem-Solving Approach

09:04 Valuing a Business: Key Variables and Multiples

14:17 Importance of Leadership and Efficiency in Business Valuation

17:23 Understanding the Commercial Function

17:28 The Importance of Sales in Business Growth

18:22 Preparing Your Business for Sale

20:07 Identifying the Right Buyer

21:07 Valuation and Market Realities

24:41 Surviving Due Diligence

29:02 Emotional Aspects of Selling a Business

31:31 Rapid Fire Questions

32:44 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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hutch@hsquaredcapital.com

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Transcript

Track 1: 0:04

Wah Gwan all you multifamily enthusiast. Welcome to another episode of the Multifamily Real Estate Experiment Podcast, where we explore mindset, mechanics, and strategy that helps you own more, of America through real estate, business ownership and intelligent wealth building today's guest is one of the most uniquely qualified M and A experts we have ever hosted. See Marvin Karlow. He's a former small business owner. He's a p and e carve out specialist, large company, C-Suite executive and an equity investor. Listen to this man resume. He has bought, operated, scaled, merged, and exited multiple companies. Completed deals ranging from private, small business transaction to large public company acquisition, launch, and rehabilitated distress assets, orchestrated mergers to create super original players. He sold one of his company to AZZ Inc. Which is the New York Stock Exchange, AZZ. He's built business units at, Lexi Nexi, choice Point, JP Morgan Chase, and Texas Instrument, and today uses all his experience to help business owners like yourself exit at maximum value right through the rain catcher. And today we're gonna ask the question. How do business owner maximize their exit value and avoid the myth that destroys wealth? Marvin, welcome to the podcast episode today, brother. Hutch. You know, when you read it, it sounds way better than it, seems like it should be in real life. I really wanna know the guy you're introducing. Like, can you introduce me to him because he sounds way cooler than me. All right. Let's get to know him a little bit deeper. All right. Do you have a mantra or a quote that really drives your approach to business and leadership? I don't know if it's a mantra, in my experience, the people that just never quit, right? They never give up. Yep. Win. My daughter's a freshman at University of Texas, don't hate me if that's not your team. But what we've told her since she was born was, look, it doesn't matter how smart you are, how good looking you are, or how rich you are. The people who do the work always beat the people who just showed up smart or talented or whatever. So just do the work. And, in small business, I think what that means is being willing to do whatever it takes. That was kind of our mantra when we owned businesses, it didn't matter whether we were negotiating a new contract with the biggest client we'd ever had, or, one of the employee toilets had backed up. You just do whatever it takes. Yeah. And just be proud. Man, that, that is so cool, man. I call it a sticktuitiveness, right? I tell my kids the same thing too. Don't quit, don't die. No, and that's exactly right. And you know what? Actually that's a good point that I make when it comes to doing deals. One of the few things that people probably get, tired of hearing me relate, is this idea that if, Hutch, if you and I decide we want to go climb Mount Everest together, right? First two bald guys to ever summit Mount Everest together, that could be our thing, right? Most people would think that our goal is to summit Mount Everest, right? That's how we talk about it. Hey, we're gonna go climb Mount Everest, right? But what do your kids actually really care about? They care about whether daddy comes home. So the real goal, and you know this as a marine, right? The real goal is not only to go complete the mission, but it's also to come back home safe. Yes. Right? 100%, yes. Okay. A hundred percent. So think about that in deal terms, right? I break a deal up into kind of two phases. The first phase is by, Finding a buyer and getting to a letter of intent, right? This signed agreement that I'm gonna buy your company, right? The second half is getting from there through due diligence and all of the things that involves to actually getting a wire transfer when the money shows up in your bank, right? You've got a apartment complex. The first half of the deal is finding a buyer. The second half is actually having them complete the transaction, right? Well, if you put that in mountain climbing terms, right? The LOI is getting to the summit. That's really great. You plant the flag, you celebrate, ah, man, we're gonna sell our company or our apartment complex, or whatever it is. Yeah, no. If you haven't done crap yet, you've gotta get back down the mountain to base camp at home. Well, where do most people die? Climbing a mountain. Coming down. Coming down. That's exactly right. It took'em too long to get up. They made mistakes, they ran outta oxygen, whatever it is, and they actually die on the way down. Same thing with deals. Deals don't die. Finding a buyer. A few deals do, like there's some things that just can't be sold right? Or the price isn't right or whatever. But they die in the quality of earnings, right? They die in negotiating the purchase agreement. They die because you got something wrong in the letter of intent and. Now when you've gotta renegotiate that the buyer walks, they die because there's something that you didn't disclose either intentionally or because you actually didn't know it. That comes up, right? So you, your que one of your questions is. how do you maximize your value on exit? All right, before we get there, okay, let's keep that hanging right there. All right. So now you've gone from, physics, PhD to Fortune 500 leadership, serial entrepreneur and successful exit, to helping all them maximize, the, their business, how did those transition happen and what pattern do you see across all business? that you've built, bought, rehabilitated, and sold. That's a big question. So, and how that ties into your origin story. Like how do you get from your origin story? Physics, PhD. Yeah. yeah. Well, I firmly believe that every investment banker has a PhD in physics. Right. It must be true. It's the obvious path. They don't go to Harvard Business School, they all get PhDs in physics. The common theme for me, and I think this is true for a lot of business owners, Is I really like solving problems. Okay. So physics all about solving problems. My first job out of graduate school was at Texas Instruments where we were building a new wafer facility. Right. Well, that, that was multiple problems every single day.'cause we're trying to do it fast and blah, blah, blah. All the things right. Then, business is just all about solving problems. Especially, once you get out of kind of that entry level position and into some sort of management role. Hear people say it all the time, Hey, my job as a leader, if you believe in servant leadership or whatever like that, my job as a leader is. To, remove the roadblocks, clear the wrecks in the road, provide the resources necessary for my employees to be successful, right? If you're an officer in the Marine Corps, that's your job. It's to make sure that the people who work under you. One of the best books I ever read, just a little plug, was called the Marine Corps Way. If you haven't read it, it's two, har former Marine, officers who went to Harvard, I think, and they wrote this book and it was really the first book on leadership that I ever read. And it's a fantastic book. if if your listeners haven't read it, they should go out and get it and read it. It is really, truly a great book on leadership. But one of the things that I'll really impressed me in that book was just this idea that, hey, your job is to make the job of the people underneath you. Easier to do, more efficient, whatever. and then shoot, you buy your, you buy a small business, the process of buying a business is a whole exercise in solving problems. And then you show up on day one and you don't know the first thing about what the business does. And that's a whole exercise in problem solving. And then, you lose a customer that's problem solving. So for me, it's, I think that it, you've gotta love. Solving problems. At least that was the thread for me. And then I just chased whatever the, I would just, pop my head up once a year and go, what's the most interesting, problem on the horizon? And I'd go chase that. And so, my career looked like the most random walk you've ever seen. Like, I did all sorts of wacky stuff as obviously, and now that's the deal here, right? as an investment banker getting a deal from. That first call with a prospect through to, they got a wire transfer for what you know could reasonably be considered maximum market value for their business. Okay? That's just a whole series of problems that you gotta solve creatively, and it's just fun. Let's get tactical with this woman. Let's get go into a tactical deep dive with this. So, so most business owners have no idea what their business is worth. Tony Robbins talk about this quite often, right? He said, when you build a business, you build a business that somebody was willing to pay, willing to buy, right? It's kind of, it's said the idea of creating an exit strategy or exit plan, so. And, many business owner also overestimate, by two x or three x, you know, can you break down for us, how do professional actually value business and what are some maybe the three to five, valuables that really move the valuation up and down? Variables. Yeah. Variables, yeah. that, it's a complicated question and you can literally spend thousands of dollars with right, tens of thousands of dollars with firms and people who have, lots of letters after their name to come up with these very complex valuations. And I'm not saying that valuation can't, or isn't complex it, it certainly can be okay. But. In the low, what we consider the lower middle market. So if you have net income, ebitda, profit sellers, discretionary earnings, whatever term you like, the cash that you're putting in your pocket is a small business owner on a yearly basis below$10 million, certainly below$5 million. It's a relatively simple exercise, okay? Except for the outliers, tech companies and some stuff like that. But you have a regular business. your business is gonna be multi valued as a multiple of earnings ebitda, seller discretionary earnings, net income, however you like it. I, the term I use is free cash flow, right? So that's everything that you as the business owner or netting out of the business. So sit down and figure that out, however you do it right. And then the question becomes, the first question is always what is the multiple that we're gonna apply to that? Okay. and the thing is that there are zones, right? So if you have a hundred thousand dollars of ebitda, you're going to get a smaller multiple than if you have a million. And if you have a million, you're gonna get a smaller multiple than if you have three. Or five or 10, right? So there's these zones, okay? So rough, very roughly speaking, below a million dollars in ebitda, your range is two to two to five, okay? So if you have half a million dollars in EBITDA and you get a four times multiple, that's a$2 million enterprise value. Okay? if you get above a million and you're sort of the million to, to 3 million range, then your range is sort of, I don't know, three to seven. And I understand these ranges are wide, and we're gonna talk about where you land in that range in a second, right? Okay. But this concept's important. If you get in kind of that three to six range, then maybe it goes up to four to eight, right? And then if you get above six, you know, six to 10, then maybe it's. Five to nine, right? Okay. Or something like that. Now, the range of multiples does depend a bit on industry, right? So technology companies have a slightly different range than plumbing companies that have a slightly different range than portfolios, property management companies or portfolios of real estate or what have you, right? Okay. But there's always a range. and finding out what the range for your industry is simply just ask chat GPT. It'll give you a pretty reason. Okay, seriously. So the first two things you can get, so I'm talking just as a, just to use an example, right? I'm talking to a gentleman who has a metal manufacturing company. He's got two and a half million dollars worth of ebitda. And when he asked chat, GPT Chat, GPT told him four to seven. Well, we got a valuation back from our valuation people with comps and all of the other things, 5.5 times, which as it turns out, is right in the middle of four seven. Okay, so the first two things are not super complicated. Figure out what your EBITDA is. Ask chat GPT, what the range is, and then. That's gonna be kind of 95% correct. At that point. It's gonna land somewhere in that range. And to your point, that's where people start lying to themselves. Oh, my business is special. Yes, sir. Every single business is special. They are all absolutely unique, but is it unique in a way that makes it outside of that range? Chains are pretty good. It's not right. Okay, so now what moves you around inside of that range? What moves you around inside of that range is kind of how you compare to other businesses, okay? In your industry, right? So this is where you can start moving the needle because obviously, four times, two and a half million is a very different number than seven times two and a half million, right? So how do you, it is, how do you move around? Okay. And these are not in any particular order because different buyers value things differently. But the things that are almost always in the conversation is, do you have a leadership team? Does the business run without you? And the list litmus test for that is not, can you go on vacation for a week? It's can you go on vacation for a month? If you can go on vacation for a month, you've got a leadership team. If you can't, you probably don't. All right. So that's one thing, and the more of a leadership team you have, the longer you can leave for vacation, the more you kind of skew towards the top end of the range. Then you start talking about margin, right? How does your margin compare to other businesses in your industry? Why is that important? Because it talks about efficiency. It talks about sort of systems and processes and all of the things, right? And you can't compare between industries just because your buddy has got a grocery store that has a 5%, EBITDA margin, right? And you're running a landscaping business with a 40% EBITDA margin doesn't mean you're doing great. It just depends on. How do other landscaping businesses in your market do? Right? That's what matters. So the better you compare, the more you skew towards the top, right? So, all right, so those are two main points that I would, I don't want our listeners. To miss. Right. You talk about having a management team. Why is that one so important? Right? And then I also wanted to, what is to dive a little bit deeper into efficiency because we know a lot of folks like, Warren Buffet identify the performance, but also the potential of the business, right? So if they're doing things, if they have, if they are maximizing efficiency, right? Does that, is that a good thing to look at as a buyer? or do you want to look for the inefficiencies with a good management team to be able to add some value just like we do in apartment complexes? So those are two really great questions. Okay. So, let me tackle the second one first. Okay. So one of them, because,'cause the other part of your question was myths, right? So, one myth that business owners firmly believe that is not true. Is then my business has to be perfect in order to sell it. Okay. It doesn't, it absolutely doesn't. First of all, there's no perfect business, right? Second of all, those inefficiencies that you see, that you think are gonna keep buyers from buying are in fact the things that a lot of buyers are looking for in order to, have some meat on the bone, to have some upside for their investment, right? This myth that your business has gotta be perfect is not true, right? However, the other side of that sword is, the more perfect it is, the better a multiple you're likely to get. Why is that? Okay, so this is sort of the answer to your first question, which is, and I, you know, I heard, I was listening to a podcast yesterday and someone said this very eloquently, And the net of it was, look, within private equity, the vast majority of value creation comes through the commercial function. Right? Okay. Not through finding efficiencies. Everybody always talks about the finding efficiencies and they help for sure. but Right. So, you don't, so we don't lose myself and our listeners. Yeah. You say co commercial function. Oh yeah. I'm gonna explain that. Yeah. Explain that for us. Yeah. Yeah. So, commercial function, so that's sales and marketing. Okay? Right. So where would you rather spend, not rather right, where are you gonna get more value out of spending time in your business, right? Moving your efficiency, you know, moving your margin from 20 to 22%. Or going out and getting 10% more business. The value creation comes from the commercial function from going out and selling. Got you. So my view when I, occasionally I'll work with business owners on their business, you know, kind of as a, an advisor or whatever. And my view is that you've got to get. Out of, the inside of your business and into selling as quickly as possible, because that's where you as an owner make the most money, right? And so this all circles back to when someone's buying your business, if you've got a leadership team in place, right? If you have a reasonable, top, if you've got a sort of satisfied, the 80 20 rule on efficiencies, Then we can focus on growing the business. And that's the, that of all the levers, there are lots of good levers, but of all the levers, the longest one. The biggest one, the thing that makes the most movement is just generate more revenue, right? Just go out and sell more. That's why, that's why businesses that have the efficiencies, that have the scalability already built in and whatever, are more attractive to buyers than the businesses that don't. Because, if I'm buying your business right, and I have to go spend the first year putting the efficiencies in, building out the platforms, adding the systems so that I can scale well, that takes me a year. Before I can really go sell versus Hutch, if you've done that all in your business already and I buy your business, well I can hit the ground running selling on day one'cause you're ready to scale. So that's why you slide around within that range. Depending on how the business is operating. Man. Those are two great points, man. I really appreciate you and I have several questions that I really want to dive a lot deeper'cause I wanted to give our listeners maybe a masterclass on, what you have to offer, for the sake of time, we, I got you for about another 15 minutes. and I still have shoot, maybe six questions to, to dive into. Ah, let's just, let's do rapid fire. I'll keep my answers short. All right. When We might not gonna get through to all of them. You sold private equity strategy, large public companies, and, h how does business owner identify the right buyer and the right buyer? One who would pay the premium price, right. That has the right, so even a position for a strategic buyer, financial buyer a rollup group, or a competitor. A private investor or just maybe it's a cultural and operation that may have a cultural or operation fit. I know it's a long question, but Yeah. Okay. So how do you put this so y So you know the right, I think the business owner's gotta define what the right buyer is. Okay, so I'm gonna confine my answer to the right buyer is the one who will give you the most money for your business. And actually close. Anybody can offer you anything that they want, but can they actually get the deal done? Okay. Same is true in apartment complexes as well too. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. Okay, we talked about valuation at the beginning, right? Well, I think I pretty clearly demonstrated it's an opinion. And you can get lots of different opinions. And my opinion's not any more or less valuable than anybody else's. What? What opinion, what facts matter? The only facts that matter is what the market says. Okay? And the only way to find out what the market thinks is to go to the market and ask the question, Hey, I have this business. What do you think it's worth? Okay. The problem that I see for most small business owners when they go to sell is. Either they try to do it themselves, right? Or they try, or they just do a deal with kind of somebody that they know. Or they engage a business broker who just sort of lists the business kind of like you would a house on MLS or a, an apartment complex on Crexi. Or whatever. And they just sort of wait for the phone to ring. Then they kind of take the first offer. That sounds good. okay, you're in the real estate market. What would you rather do? Right? Would you rather list, a piece of real estate on MLS and wait for the phone to ring? Or would you rather have a broker and agent open house on Sunday where the house is all staged and the lawn looks great and you've got music playing and cookies and punch and. Take 15 offers that afternoon and let the homeowner or whatever pick the best one out of that group. Yeah, right. So like a great tra great strategy. Absolutely. Yeah. And as if you flip the script and you say, as a homeowner, right? In which case do I, am I pretty sure I got the best, the highest value for my house? Well, it's clearly the second one. Very, few brokers in the lower middle market do that. If you go to the middle market, like if you've got$150 million business to sell, right? That's the process. Well, so at Raincatcher what we do is we bring that middle market process to the lower middle market. And one zero of the businesses that I've ever sold at Raincatcher has ever had a price tag. 100% of the businesses that I've sold at Raincatcher have had a valuation that we keep private, that we use as a gauge for those offers that come in. But we run a an a, a bid process. It starts with just kind of an indication of interest. Then we take people through the interested buyers through management meetings, where they get to meet the company and the principles and whatever, and then we get letters of intent. We negotiate those letters of intent. What you see in these processes is that typically business owners will end up with two or three or four pretty equivalent offers, right? That have been designed to meet whatever their view of the right offer is, For their context. That sounds very familiar. And then they pick. Okay. So, and if you don't do that, I just don't think you know anything other than, oh, I gotta deal die. Yeah, no, I'm with you, man. That sounds exactly what our brokers do, right? For apartment complexes, they have this, secret buyer's list or this off market deal that they go out and they identify what the market would pay for it, right? So who would pay the highest? Who's the best fit for the deal? You know what I mean? And who has the most likelihood of Closing based on, Prior, experience or prior acquisition with them. Or just their track record, you know, so this is the part that I really want to dive into a little bit man, because no one really talks about this and it's how to survive due diligence. You've said that many times that deals don't die on price, they die on due diligence, you know, so. Give us the truth, right? What actually happens in due diligence. What breaks the deal and, what should the owner do now, maybe months or years in advance of selling a deal, to make due diligence smooth, and survival. Because we've seen a lot of mom and pops who have owned properties for, tens and 20 years that property have been in the family for several generation, and they have never really got around to improving deficiency or even just. Improving the documentation of income, so and so on and so forth, to make it to where whenever we, get a LOI, we can get through to contract in a very timely manner, right? And also survive due diligence without any re-trading, during the process. Gi give us the truth, brother. Well, I mean, I think you've touched on most of the key points, number one is financials. I just can't really stress it enough. You just really can't get a deal done if we can't get our hands around how the business is performing financially. So if you don't do anything else, get your financials in order, right? The whatever money you spend on a bookkeeper or an accountant or whatever is going to come back to you, a hundred fold in terms of a deal, right? And then. You, and you've gotta understand the process, right? So other than someone who's just gonna come in and pay you cash and not actually do any due diligence, right? Right. At the end of the day, there's going to be a lender involved, right? And that lender is going to do financial due diligence. And that financial due diligence is gonna look like your bank statements, your credit card statements, your financials for the business, and then your tax returns and all that stuff's gotta tie out, okay? So the simplest thing that a business owner can do is get confirmation that all that stuff t ties out. And that's kind of one of the things we do at Raincatcher before we go to market, is we go through a sell side due diligence process. And one of the pieces of it is we pretend we're an underwriter at a bank, gonna give a loan to a buyer on this business. Well do we have all the stuff. Does it all hold together? Okay. that's far and away, in my opinion, the first thing. And then the second thing isn't really a thing. It's equally important, which is anything else. Almost anything else can be overcome so long as it's disclosed. So the second thing that blows deals up is I find something in due diligence that's important. You didn't tell me upfront. So it looks like you're lying, whether you are or not. It erodes the trust in the deal. And once the trust starts to erode, deals just tend to unravel. Yeah. They would start, it would start re-trading. Renegotiating and re-trading. Or they just walk away. Oh, walk away. Or they just walk away. Because here's what. Here's what you have to understand about buyers. If you think about yourself in situations when you're buying the question, either, top of mind or definitely in the back of your mind is, what am I missing, right? What am I missing, right? Why is this person selling this is too good to be true, right? That I'm. No one would sell this, right? If I own this, I would never sell it. So why are they selling it? What am I missing? And the minute you find something that you feel like you were missing the, you just can't get this thought out of your head. What else am I missing? Right. What else? What else? And no one wants to have a buyer's remorse, right? So you definitely wanna ask those questions. Look, I really do like, you know, what you're talking about because in most cases, business owners are thinking like owners, right? However, if you are positioning your business as if you are a seller, right? And you want to maximize the outcome of your exit strategy. Then you can, it's important that you get into the psychology, of an exit, right? So exiting the business, Marvin it can be somewhat emotional for business owner, right? A lot of time it's their identity is their family legacies, their pride, you know, and they all get tied into to the deal at some point, you know? So what emotional trap do owners fall into and How do the best sellers mentally prepared for letting go of a business we're getting towards the end right now? That's a great question. I mean, I do feel like I spend about 50% of my time as a completely unqualified psychiatrist. Listen, it is a very emotional decision, right? Imagine and. Another thing that that frustrates me, and, it's one of the reasons why I, I became an investment banker and kind of run things the way I do, is okay. that, you should be working with someone whose goal is higher than just getting a deal done, right? Work with someone whose goal is to get the best outcome for you. Even if that's not a deal at this point in time. Because, and that's hard to find because as transaction professionals we only get paid if a deal gets done. So really being in the mindset of Hutch, I want what's best for you, even if I don't get paid. That's a hard mindset to get into. It's a hard mindset to stay in, right? Yeah. But I think that, I think that as a business owner, you've gotta start with, why am I exiting 10 minutes? Okay. Why am I exiting? And then you have to be sure about that, and you have to keep it front and center. I'm exiting for these reasons. And then what I tell all, what I tell everybody is, look, you've gotta be prepared to, to walk away until the wire transfer clears the bank. It's not done until the wire. And if you wake up the morning of and you think, crap, I'm, if you're wise, not true anymore. Be ready to walk. It's okay. Yeah. That is phenomenal, man. Yeah, that's phenomenal. So, business owner, if you listen to this, get really clear on, on why you're building a business. So some of us, we will inherit, companies or apartment complexes or whatever those assets over the years, from generations, right? We wanna keep it for sentimental value, at some point it's important to understand what are you protecting? And also if you grow in a business, what are you growing towards? It started prep, prepping itself emotionally to exit. So Marvin, I wanna get into this fire round. Very short answers. We call it a focus round. Sure. What do you do for fun, when you're not helping owners navigate exits? I do endurance sports and I have a really fast boat. That is awesome. what opportunity changed the direction of your life? meeting Jesus Christ. Ooh brother. My dad told me recently, like, son, don't ever forget God. He talks about two things. The grace of God. And in Jamaica we always say manners and respect. Yeah, that is awesome, man. So what communication skills is essential to m and r? Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Love that. Tell the truth. So what is one thing you wish you've said earlier about buying or selling a company? Oh, so many things. We could be here for years. Yeah. I guess just that it's possible. Okay. That's awesome. It's possible. So after all these roles, executive, entrepreneur, investor, how do you define success today, Marvin? professionally? that my clients get the outcome that's best for them out of the engagement that they have for me, whatever that is. That is awesome, man. Listeners, if you own your own business or if you plan to exit the next one to five years, you want a valuation or you want to expert guidance, reach out to Raincatcher and Marvin, if a current owner is thinking about exit in the next one to five years and they want to reach out to you, man, what is the best way to do that? Just email me. you can find my profilePage@raincatcher.com. It has my email. It's just, you'll put it in the show notes, but it's just marvin dot Karlow at gmail dot or at raincatcher.com. You can use the Gmail one too. But marvin.Karlow@raincatcher.com. and listen, reach out, right? it's never too early to sort of figure out what your business might be worth. I, for, for your listeners, we'll just do it for free. Reach out. We just get a little bit of financial information under NDA, and we put together a nice model and, you know, it does one of three things, right? It either says, man, I'm ready to sell right now, or I've got some work to do to get where I really need to be, and I kind of know what it is. Or I may never sell this thing Right. But at least you know, At least you know, man. So, and we'll do it for free. Thank you. Thank you, Marvin. Now, listeners, today's episode was a blueprint. You know, for a side of wealth building, most people never really think, right? So, you know, real estate builds wealth. Business ownership build wealth, but knowing to exit correctly, multiplies that wealth, you know, sometimes. Into millions, so Marvin shows that selling a business isn't just a transaction, it's a strategy, a negotiation, and it's, you know, for you who maybe will build the business or may have inherited the business, it is a legacy decision. So until next time, keep experimenting, keep investing, and keep finding smart ways to own more of America. I'm Hutch Marine Investor Out.