WEBVTT

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just do what you do and do it well and do it for a long time.

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And it always takes longer, costs more, and it's harder than you expect it to be.

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But it's the expectation that was the problem, not your plan.

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Welcome back to the game. Two out of three businesses fail.

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Sad face. And since 2016, every business that I have found

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it continues to make money to this day. And so there's a process of building an unfockable

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business that you might not expect. And the first of those three steps is stop selling small

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customers. Let me explain. So many businesses stay small because they only serve small customers.

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Let me tell you a story to explain this. So there is a small gym CRM back in the day that approached

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me about investing. And I asked them what their turn was. So what percentage of customers

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were leaving between last month and this month. And their answer surprised me.

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It was a much higher percentage than I expected because I thought a CRM, they're processing

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their payments, they're here, they have all their memberships and they're like, this should be

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a very sticky product. And I said, so where is the churn coming from? And they said, oh, well,

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about a third of the gyms got a business every year. And I was like, wow, wait a second.

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So this has nothing to do with how good your product or service was. These businesses,

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in and of themselves, just stopped being in business. And so the formal language for that is

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called structural churn. It means it's like, it's based, it's baked into the structure of the

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market that you serve. Now, the question is, is that your choice to pursue that market?

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And the answer is yes. And so if you're thinking about your own business, there are many business

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models that simply aren't fit for smaller customers. And so I'll give you a different example.

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In the agency world, where you do some sort of advertising for any type of business,

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if you look at some of the biggest ad agencies in the world, you'll notice a common theme.

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They all serve the biggest customers in the world. Whereas if it were true that agencies would

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be best served serving small customers, then some of the biggest agencies would serve some of

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the smallest customers. But that's not reality. And so in looking at this, it means that just like

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the CRM business, and that's arguably one of the stickiest businesses you could possibly imagine,

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the agencies could not keep churned down with small business owners because small business owners

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in and of themselves are volatile. And so what happens is that there's many businesses like small

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agencies that do lead generation for small customers and continue to wonder, what do I need to do

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in order to make my business sticky? And they kill themselves trying to figure it out when the

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problem is inherent to who they serve is that they are volatile. And as a result, your business

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will be volatile too. It reflects on to you. Now, to give you an absolute hypothetical extreme here,

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to give you an example, Shopify is what most would consider world class or besting class for customer

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attention. But they serve by and large prosumers, meaning consumers who want to start a business.

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And let me give you a stat that might blow you away. 60% of their customer's daily year,

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but 40% leave. And that's the best in the world. And so in thinking about this,

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you'll typically need to have a business that has almost a zero cost of servicing the smallest

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business owners. If that's the game you want to play. If you want to be Walmart, then you have to

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orient your entire strategy on basically a zero cost basis for providing value,

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which works in software companies, or like Walmart, where the entire model is structured

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such that it creates the smallest cost to them. So their alternative is really not having it at all.

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Right? Now, there was one agency that did really well with this mutual acquaintance of mine.

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And what he did was that he basically provided marketing services, but for about $299 per month.

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Now, what he realized was this was a guy who used to charge a lot more than that. What he

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realized is that with this volatility, he had to price to their worst month. And so it's like,

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okay, what's the lowest part of this this volatile range, this wave of revenue that these small

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businesses are going to encounter? Okay, well, then I'll just put my price here. In that way,

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I'm so cheap that they'll never cancel. And the cost of them doing the services that he rendered,

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which was actually far less than the guys who were charging, called $1500 a month, which is probably

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like the industry standard for a small business or local, local business lead gen. All of a sudden,

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he's won fifth the price, but he just provided still more value than the $300. And so it still

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felt like a good deal here, because all you would do is you would optimize their Google stuff,

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get them a few leads, a few phone calls a month. And for them, they're like, okay, if I get a couple

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customers, it's worth it. This, it's so expensive relative to what they made that if you weren't

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saving the day every single month, the question they'll always ask is, what have you done for me lately?

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This is one of the big misconceptions that business owners have. And I've made this myself,

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which is you see this, right? You see this delta that you create. You're like, look, you went from

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$1.92 to $2. All of this extra money was because of me. But the thing is is that if you make someone

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$10,000, right? In the first month you work with them. And let's say you charge them a thousand.

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In your mind, you say, oh, well, this 9K is because of me, which means I just bought another nine

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months of service with you, right? Because I've made you $9,000. I charged $1,000 a month,

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so I could basically just break even for the next nine months. But try actually having that

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conversation in reality, it doesn't work that way. What happens in reality is this, they pay $1,000.

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They make 10, they make the extra nine, and they say, oh, that $1,000 was worth it this month.

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And guess what happens next month? You started zero. Actually, you started negative $1,000

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because they've already paid you $1,000, and they haven't made any money yet. And so, again,

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it's always going to be relative to when they pay and what they get relative to that. This is where

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this volatility ends up becoming a trap for most business owners. And when you're starting a business,

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or even when you're a few years into business, you'll often sell the people that you relate to.

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And so, you'll sell out of your own wallet to solve your own problems. But the problem there is

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that those people will never become reliable. It's like building your business on a foundation of

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sand. It doesn't matter how beautiful of a castle you can imagine in your mind. One bad storm

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on a foundation of sand, and it's going to topple over. And so, you end up just getting in this endless

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cycle of trying to iterate your products, create different offers, all the stuff, but the fundamental

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issues you're serving somebody who's never going to, who's never going to stay in pay.

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Because of them, not you. Said differently, your business may fail, not because you are a failure,

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but maybe because the customers you serve are failures. So, for example, if you have a supplement

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business, it's unlikely that you're going to get very high stick if you're super expensive,

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and your product suite is only geared towards beginners, and beginners turn out. As in,

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they go to the gym, they stop going to the gym, they go to the gym, they stop going to gym. Now,

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if you had a business that was geared around the regular user, or somebody who already, let's say,

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takes protein every day, and you truly have a superior product, and then that entire base of

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people who takes protein shakes every day is willing to take yours and stuff someone else's,

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then you have a customer that is already a qualified customer who's going to continue to take the

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product over and over again. But when you target beginners, whether it's B2C or B2B,

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obviously the price differences are significant between businesses and consumers, but they are

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still beginners within that continuum. And so, you will have the churn in relation to how much

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of a beginner they are. And so, my preferred way to think about this is, if you think about this

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pyramid as representation of the marketplace, based on their spending power, right? At the base,

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you're always going to have the most people that have the least amount of money to spend.

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And so, whether it's B2B or B2C, like B2C, it's going to be base beginners for whatever it is

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that you sell. If it's B2B, it's going to be the smallest business owner. So, it could be,

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you know, consumers becoming prosumers, or prosumers becoming VSMB, which is a very small business,

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and then VSMB is becoming SMBs, which are small business owners, and then you have low mid-market,

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mid-market, and then you go all the way up to Fortune 100 companies, right? Now, my preferred way to

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structure a business model is to actually start at the top. And the reason for this is that,

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because there's little operational drag, because you have fewer customers you need to take care of,

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they're able to spend significantly more, they are going to be around a while, and they know

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their numbers, and they can stick with their commitment. So, if you have a contract, for example,

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and they say they'll pay you a million dollars a year, they're likely to pay you a significantly

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higher than the beginner saying he's going to pay you $10,000 over 10 months. Very unlikely.

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I would make that bet so much so that corporate debt is an entire investable asset class,

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based on the promises that business make to repay things. And so, the cool part about this

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from a branding perspective is that you learn how to service these much higher end customers,

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and with that reputation, then there are customers who are going to be underneath,

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who are then going to say, you know what, I would love to be able to work with somebody who

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works with the Fortune 100, but I can't afford that. You say, you know what, I can make it a little

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bit more affordable for you, but you're going to get a little less service for that. And you can

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work your way down. Now, here's where it gets really clever. Is that as you work your way down,

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you're consistently making more money. And at this point, when you go further and further down this

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this rabbit hole, you're going to be able to spend the money. It takes to create the automated

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solution or the software-based or technological-based solution that's going to have a near-zero cost

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basis for you as a business owner, so that you can profitably serve this $80, $80, $80, $80

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dollar signs here without the headache associated with beginners. Fundamentally, if you sell to

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beginners, you're going to have to either sell a really big ticket one time that's based on an

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emotional purchase, and you're doing what I would consider a smashing grab business. Like solar,

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for example, is kind of what I would consider a smashing grab business. People go in, they sell the,

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they sell solar, and then it's on the roof, and then that's kind of it. And so it's really just

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massively just trying to sell every single person that exists, and that's all there is to it.

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Or you have to create something that's the price to value discrepancy is so absurd,

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because what's crazy about this is that the price to value for poor people actually has to be

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higher than it is for the people at the top. Because here's the part that people miss.

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Think about this, there are people who cancel the $12 per month Netflix charge.

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Like, what else could Netflix offer? They give you like every movie you could imagine,

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every new shows, they do everything, and still some people are like, you know, I'm not really

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sure if it's worth it for me, right? And so if you take that as type of the notebook trim,

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you could take the same thing for Spotify. How about I give you every song that is possible in

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the universe, and you get access to it whenever you want on your phone in your pocket?

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Ah, he bucks a lot. He bucks is a lot for that, right? I don't know, Mr. Spotify.

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I know many of you have these businesses and are wondering, looking yourself and be like,

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what more can I offer? It's not about you. You have the wrong model serving the wrong customer.

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And so you have to have a cost basis as low as possible with a crazy high price to value discrepancy,

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so the values up here, prices down here, this huge delta, so that even on their bad months,

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they're like, you know what? Even though I lost my job, structural turn, I'm still willing to pay

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the $12 bucks for Netflix. I talk about this at length in the $100 million offers book,

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this is how crazy it is. The thing you sell doesn't even need to materially change in order to make

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it ready and available for the highest end customers, all right? So let's say that you sell time

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management, all right? And you sell to all these people. Well, you're going to have to have a

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probably a $19 price point. See, very mass market, 19 bucks maybe. Now, the next level is like,

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okay, well, I want to do time management for sales professionals. Well, for sales people,

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maybe you'll be able to charge $99, okay? More because sales people were like, all right, well,

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you know, one sale might pay for this. Now, what if you then go up to time management for

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outbound B2B sales? So this isn't just people selling memberships or car washes or cleaning services.

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This is now people selling, let's say, enterprise software where they're making $2,000 of sale

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in commissions or whatever. So for them to pay $500, basically, it's a quarter of one sale.

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So they're willing to do that. Now, let's go all the way up. Now, we've got time management

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for outbound B2B power tools and gardening sales reps. So super specific and high ticket,

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you get super niche down and you could sell for $2,000. But fundamentally, time management is time

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management. And so the likelihood that the product that you're selling is really materially different

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between these different avatars is unlikely. But we're choosing to purposefully narrow down who we

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sell to so that we can make more money and have less operational drag and have less structural

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turn as in people cancelling for reasons outside of what we've delivered. And as a result,

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have a much more stable business that can compound year over year. A lot of business owners

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struggle on the business and they look at everything except for the most important thing,

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which is they messed up the pick. Chick-fil-A's head of people gives a great example of this when

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they talk about actually talent selection. But I think the parallel holds, which is most people

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lose in the NBA in the championships and wonder what they did wrong in the game when in reality,

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they lost in the draft as in they didn't have the right people in the team. And so if you think

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about your business as an ecosystem, the right people in the team has to be all the stakeholders,

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including the customers. By the way, I do have an entire extra chapter on this that I wrote

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between my offers book and my leads book called Your First Avatar. And it was kind of like a

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single that I produced between the books. I think you can get it for free at acquisition.com

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forward slash avatar. I think that's what it is. And if not, you can probably Google it and you

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probably find it. But it's free. Just pop in your email and we'll send it over to you.

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Step one of making your business unfuck with a bull is that you want to have customers that

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can't be fucked with. You want customers that keep making money month after month after month

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so that they can be able to keep paying you month after month after month. And so the next

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question that comes up is, okay, well, maybe I'll have a product with them. But how do I ensure

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that I continue to keep the product as good as possible? Because if I just have it in the beginning,

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over enough time, my business will be fucked with the bull because I haven't changed. So step two,

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ask. Now, what do I mean by ask? So I'll tell you a quick story. So Paul Graham said this,

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and I remember hearing it and it just like got synched into my brain. He said, you can

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solve every business problem by simply talking to your customers. And I thought that was such an

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elegant answer and also true. It's easy to make a pithy response. It's hard to make it useful and

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valuable all the time. And this is one of those instances where it's both. And so I'll tell you

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story. So when I had Alan, which was our software company, which is the third company that I started

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after 2016, I originally made in my mind to serve gym owners. And once we spent a million plus

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dollars on developing this thing and actually rolled it out to gym owners, we had this big,

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obvious problem that came up, which is they said, oh, this is so great. This will work on my leads.

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By the way, can you help me get more leads? And I was like, oh, no, we completely missed the mark.

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And so what ended up happening is that in my mind, I could see that they had this problem that they

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weren't working their leads. But what I didn't realize is that there was only a very specific

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amount of customers that had that problem. And so then I had to think, oh gosh, okay, so I have

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two two two two possible scenarios. I can either only go after gym owners who already know how to

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generate leads consistently, which we're talking like a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny marketplace. And and

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here's the caveat that marketplace still can't pay that much. So bad market to go after small and

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has not a lot of money and shrinking. Yee, right? Not a good market. So I thought to myself, okay,

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well, what businesses always have lead gen? Well, the solution came to me when an agency owner

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actually reached out to me and said, hey, could I use this for my business to work the leads for

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the the leads that I'm generating for my small business owner customers? And I was like, oh, wait a

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second. Well, small business owners will turn in and out of the agency services, but the agency

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will stay because they will bring new customers in, use our software. And even if they turn out

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with them, the agency will stay with me. And so the agencies had much more reliable revenue

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than their base customers did because they could reliably sell, you know, 10 new customers

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a month to offset the 10 customers they lose or whatever. And so many of them were still stable

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businesses, even though they had lots of churn, which the fact that they couldn't necessarily

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have the skill set to grow their business wasn't necessarily a problem for me. So to the same

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degree with the CRM, there are some CRMs that are very successful, even that serve small business

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owners, but they have to match the pricing to the spending power of that small business. Shopify,

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for example, probably makes more than almost any e-commerce company on the platform. We'd have

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to fact check it, but it's probably pretty close. And so the platform itself actually makes more

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than the opportunity secrets it enables. So this is definitely one of the situations of selling

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the shovels rather than painting for gold. Once I realized that gym owners were not the customer

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and agencies were the customer, I was able to start asking agencies for the correct feedback. And

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that is when we were able to continue to iterate the product in a way that actually served the right

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customer. So fundamentally, when it comes to product or service-based businesses, there's,

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I would say, two schools of thought around product iteration. One is kind of the rank and build

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model, which is basically you ask your customers to just vote, upvote and downvote the potential

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things that all of them have asked for, and then the one that gets to the top that month, you then

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say, this is the one that we're going to build, and then you do the build cycle, and then you ask

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it again. And this is not a bad way to do it. It's a different way to do it, and what ends up

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happening when you have a business like this is that you keep building more and more things. And so

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this can result in kind of these Frankenstein-type businesses, but some customers are okay and want to

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have all the features. And so this is kind of like a PC versus Mac kind of product strategy

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difference. So the PCs is like, you have all the customization, all the different add-ons, all the

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features that has all these different ways you can use it, but can sometimes be more arduous in

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terms of UX or user experience, user design, than a Mac. Now if you're like, how does this apply

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for a service business? It's literally the same. It's just that the features that you're building

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are going to be around the services that you provide rather than the actual physical product or

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software that you're building, but it works the same way. The Mac style of this is trying to take

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every single thing that people want, right, up and down, up and down, and then trying to go from

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the ultimate experience at the end, and then reverse engineer it into a elegant solution

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that purposely removes some things because it interferes with the other experiences. And so when

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you do the kind of rank and build model, there's lots of kind of conflicting contingencies,

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like different customers want different things, and some of the things that you both want

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customer might actually impact negatively another customer. And so when you do that, all of a sudden

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you can lose. Now here, the downside is you're not going to be able to serve all the needs of

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every customer because some of those specific, if you're really specific about stuff, then you might

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want to have one of these solutions. And so basically the customer base that buys Mac stuff is

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unsurprisingly different than the customer base that buys PC stuff. And so for example at school,

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our product strategy is much more based on this, which is how do we create the most elegant,

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simplest solution so that we can help people who are starting out, build a business online.

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And so if we have all of this customization and things like that, you might serve somebody who's

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like, I want a white label, I want a whatever, right? Now to be clear, these businesses can obviously

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still get wildly big and successful. Apple is a $3.8 trillion company. Amazon, which also kind of

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follows this model, is a, you know, also trillion dollar plus business. They are different strategies

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that you need to decide which one you want to pursue, but both of them work. You just can't

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do both. So there's two questions that I fundamentally like to ask when I'm trying to go through

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this product iteration cycle. So set of questions number one is if there was only one thing that was

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left after I deleted every other component of my service or product, what one thing would you want

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me to keep? The second version of that question is the equal opposite. If I kept everything except

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for one thing, what thing would you not care at all about? And then you delete that thing.

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And you see who complains. And to be clear, you don't announce that you delete it. You just

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delete it and then see what happens. And then if you get complaints, you ask yourself the question,

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are these the types of customers that I want to keep? Because sometimes the people who complain

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are the ones that you don't want, in which case win, win. For more info on this, I cover this

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ad length in the referral section of $100 million leads. In the referral section, I talk about how

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do you get more people better results? So this is fundamentally product iteration. The idea here is

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how do we increase the perceived likelihood of achievement? So I have our action steps, right? So

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you survey customers to find the ones who get the best results. Step one, step two is you interview

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them to find out what they did differently. All right, so this is a behavior thing. So on one level,

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you want to look at demographics. Do they look different? The second is, did they have a different

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user path? Did they come in a different way? Did they have a different promise?

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Number three, and this is the one that we're referencing here, is did they take actions that not

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everyone necessarily took? Then we look at those actions that only those people had in common.

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And then what we do is we take those actions and we force new customers to repeat those actions

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on purpose that the best customers did by accident. And then we measure the improvement of the

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average customer based on those new behaviors that were incentivizing towards or at least pushing

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them towards. And then what we do, if you want to get really fancy with it, is you can match the

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conditions of your guarantee to the actions that get the best results to get more people to do them.

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Said differently, if you realize that the best customers, for example, import all of their

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contacts into your CRM when you're starting the CRM, then you would then try and create the

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onboarding experience. And a guarantee says, hey, we will guarantee that you'll have some

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improvement using our software service product as long as you export and import all of your contacts

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into our CRM within the first 30 days. And so now we have shown our hand to say this is very

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valuable to us and it will be valuable to you. And the nice part about this process is that,

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I'll say like this ask process can fix any department that's customer facing. Obviously you can

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fix IT, but it can fix marketing. So if all of a sudden your ads aren't doing well, show your ads

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to customers and ask them what's missing or what's what's not working. Why would they not respond

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to this? What ads did you find that resonated the most with you? Because I want more people like you.

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Product, you're saying, okay, what's wrong with this picture? What show me what's difficult? What's

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users actually interface with your product or services so that you can understand the friction

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points before, during and after. And so I like to use the three term contingency before

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during after to think through any kind of change that I have for a customer. What's going to happen

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immediately before they buy my product? What's going to happen immediately before they use my product?

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What's going to happen during the time that they use the product? Like what are the interactions

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they have? And then what happens immediately after? Right. And those are the places that we are,

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that the closest and strongest leverage over the ultimate customer results and the value that we

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provide. And same thing with sales. Like if people are getting on the sales calls and they're not,

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they're not buying, then you ask customers, what about my offer? What about the way that we're

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presenting it is not compelling to you. And just as valuable, sometimes more if you can get them,

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is interviewing the people who said, no, and say, why not? One of the best things you could do is

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just pay them. Like I'll pay a hundred dollars to open a phone call with me and just tell me

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what we could have done better. And you know what's crazy is that a lot of times like you just even

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doing that does give you a second child at the sale, which is by no means the objective. You just

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want to get the information because that information is so much more valuable than the hundred dollars

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and maybe the hour that you'd give. So number one, once we've picked the right customers who

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aren't going to have structural churn based on the business model that we have to, we have the

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the thing that that type of customer wants, well, we need to keep improving that product so we don't

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get out competed in the marketplace by new entrants or new businesses who are trying to

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take our slice of the pie. The third thing that we have to do is not pretend to be something

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we're not and you're like, what is that even mean? So success, this is by Shane Parrish. Success comes

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down to doing the obvious thing for an extraordinary period of time without convincing yourself that

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you're smarter than you actually are. And I love this quote for a number of reasons. First off,

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because it's so true. But secondly, let me tell you a story to illustrate the point. So there was

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a solar company that I was talking to that at 400 sales guys. So a big solar company that did

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very well. And the founders were young, enterprising guys, super ambitious. They came to me and said,

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hey, we want to have a monstrous valuation for my company. And I said, I think you already do have

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a monstrous valuation for a company. And they said, well, we know that software companies get valued

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significantly higher than kind of the transactional sales nature of solar. And I said, you're right.

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And so what? And so they were like, well, we have this software that we have that we use to recruit

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salespeople and make them more productive. And that's why we have such a big and productive sales team.

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And so what we're thinking about was taking that software and then licensing it to other solar

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companies. And I told them that I thought that was a terrible idea. Now, why would I say something

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like that? Well, in theory, if you had a software company that had the same revenue metrics as your

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solar sales company, then you would have a significantly more valuable company. But number one is for

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you to get those same economics, you're not selling $30,000 or things. The likelihood that you'd be

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able to get even close to the amount of revenue per customer would be significantly lower.

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Number two is the amount of people that can buy solar roofs versus the amount of solar companies

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is way smaller. Third, neither of these founders were software people. And so what they wanted to do

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was kind of like pretend to be software and just say, like, oh, we'll just sell some people into

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this thing. And then we're going to get a software multiple on the entirety of our revenue.

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That's not how it works. You have to remember that the person who's writing a 100, 200, 500

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billion dollar check is smart enough to have a 100, 200 or a billion dollars to spend. They know the

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difference between a solar company and a software company. And so if you put a little bit, you spring

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a little bit of software into your service business, it's still a service business, right? And so if

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like 90% of your revenue comes from service and here's the tricky part, if 90% of the value comes

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from the service, they will still determine that it's a service-based business. And arguably,

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the likelihood that you will get the economics that a software company has with the service

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businesses low. So let me say this differently. Software companies and companies that get extraordinarily

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high multiples don't get high multiples because of the name or the label that's associated with them.

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They get those extraordinarily high multiples because of the nature of the revenue and the quality

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of the revenue that they have and the potential for growth profit in the future. And so if you have a

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service-based business that has the exact same economics as a software company, you will get software

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like multiples and enterprise value. You want to solve for the things that matter, which is you

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want to solve for revenue retention, you want to solve for incremental margin, you want to solve for

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logo retention over meaning number of businesses that are staying on your platform or on your

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inside of your business. You want to solve for being able to onboard low value people to be able to

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provide high value services. So this is where like a tech enabled service can be more valuable than

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a traditional service because a tech enabled service might be able to take one person and have

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them serve 50 customers rather than one person and have them serve five. But it's not because it's

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tech enabled. It's because you have now 10x the value that any individual employee can provide

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and lowered the skill barrier for somebody to provide that value. And so that translates into

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higher gross margins, lower cost of requiring talent, and higher percentage of customers that stay

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over year, which means that the business will compound year over year over year. And so you can

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wash away all of the labels that people have scraped to business and simply boil it down to the

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metrics and the unit economics of the business to then ascertain fancy word, figure out what the

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enterprise value multiple of the business is because it's only going to be a discount off of

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how big and how likely that bigness is to occur in the future for an investor. So a lot of small

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business owners entrepreneurs want to get the maximum amount of money for their business in the

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future. And that makes sense. You should do that. But the way you do that is not by trying to

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pretend to be a different type of business. It's not by taking your lawn care business and trying

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to say actually we're a surfer business. And one of the mistakes that I honestly see all the time

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is where people will take their service say I'll give you the service for free if you use the

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software. But here's the problem. The revenue will look just like service revenue. And so just

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because you bill through a software system, if you still have the same churn as a service business

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and the same margins as a service business, then they will still value you like a service business.

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You'll get valued based on a multiple of bottom line, which is fine. It's just not going to be a

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top line multiple or some big number on top of that because that's not the nature of the business

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you're in. And that's okay. So I think just leaning into who you are and what your business really

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is rather than wasting a tremendous amount of time trying to be something you're not would serve a

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huge percentage of business owners. They think because the grass is greener on the software side,

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man, they're getting 10x value multiples. Well, do you know how hard it is to get 80% of people to

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stick on a software and do it in a way where you're making that kind of money. But it's at $50

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a month instead of $5,000 a month. Well, in some ways, it's like they kind of deserve it. All of a

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sudden, it's like it's really hard to get 5,000 customers to pay $1,000 a month for B2B software.

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Really tough. Is it nearly as hard to do some sort of service at that level? Probably not.

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And so when we think about it from that perspective, the differences between

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valuations actually equalize. I'll tell you one more story about this. So I recently invested in

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a treatment center and we were talking about the business model. And so basically there's two

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there's more permutations, but this is said simply. There's two kind of models in the treatment world.

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So model one is you stick with primarily insurance and you get people to, you know,

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the insurance companies send you people who need to, you know, come off addictions detox, etc.

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And you get paid a fixed kind of rate per day based on the insurance that the person comes in with.

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The second type of company is more private insurance and cash pay where people are just paying

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out of pocket or they're paying with, you know, as a premium insurance is where they could pay

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somewhere in the neighborhood of like $3,000 a day. So way more money per day than maybe the

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insurance-based detox business. For example, now which business do you think gets higher multiples?

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The insurance-based one because the likely that the insurance pays is high and the likely that

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you're going to keep getting customers from those insurance or Medicare companies, things like that

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is high. And so it becomes a reliable business, but the margins are lower and you have to do with more

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volume. Now on the alternative side, on the cash-based side, you might have call it half the enterprise

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multiple value. So instead of getting a 10x, maybe get a five or sixx on the value of the business

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in terms of bottom line. But if you can charge two or three times more, return on effort might actually

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be the same or even better in the cash pay. You don't want to try and build for some label that

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you think someone's going to ascribe to you. You just want to build for the ultimate enterprise

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value, which may just be doing better with the thing you have, which is more times than not,

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the right move. Success comes down to doing the obvious thing continuing to build your business

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for an extraordinary period of time, much longer than you think, without convincing yourself

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that you're smarter than you are. Without actually changing the label your business, trying to

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pretend to be a software company, trying to pretend to be a platform, trying to pretend to be

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tech-enabled, just do what you do and do it well and do it for a long time. And it always takes

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longer, costs more, and is harder than you expected to be. But it's the expectation that was

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the problem, not your plan. And if this was valuable or a wake-up call on maybe some of the things

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that you are doing or should be doing or should stop doing, it would be the world for me if you

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sent this to anybody else who would benefit from it. That's how this show grows and it would be

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the world to thank you.