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“5 Things I Wish I’d Done Before Selling My Agency”
Company: TobinLeff
Owner(s): David Tobin
Year Started: 2009
Employees: 1 – 10
Welcome to a captivating episode of “An Agency Story,” a podcast series that delves into the heart and soul of marketing agency adventures. Hosted by Russel Dubree, a former agency owner who turned his entrepreneurial success into a thriving coaching practice, this podcast offers an intimate glimpse into the highs and lows of agency life. In this special episode, we feature David Tobin, a seasoned M&A expert and founder of TobinLeff. David shares invaluable insights on preparing for successful agency exits, emphasizing the crucial early start and the strategic considerations that can maximize an agency’s sale value.
David Tobin’s journey from running his own agency to advising others on their exit strategies provides a rich narrative filled with expert advice. He discusses the importance of understanding value drivers, the intricacies of deal structures, and how to optimize financial outcomes for agency owners. His stories highlight the often overlooked aspects of M&A, such as the importance of clean financials and strategic growth through acquisitions, offering listeners unique insights that are both practical and profound.
Listeners will find humor and wisdom in David’s recounting of his transition from agency owner to M&A advisor, especially his anecdote about inadvertently becoming a telemarketing expert. His candid advice, “Start early,” resonates as a powerful takeaway for anyone considering their business exit strategy.
This episode not only enriches your understanding of the M&A landscape but also leaves you contemplating the long-term vision for your own agency. Whether you’re considering buying, selling, or simply curious about the process, this episode is a treasure trove of knowledge. Tune in to “An Agency Story” to explore these themes further and join a community that’s passionate about the art of agency growth and transition.
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Show Transcript
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up, the first big sale. Passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth here at all on An Agency story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I’m your host Russel. Stay tuned at the end of the introduction of this episode for an upcoming free webinar opportunity. On this special episode, we have David Tobin with TobinLeff, M&A advisors where David serves as founder and managing partner. Started in 2010 David’s firm has helped over 155 agencies navigate the exit of their business. Focused on both the buyer and seller side of the transaction. All partners at TobinLeff have owned and successfully exited their own business. In this episode, David answers questions about how to best prepare for an exit as well as other tips involving the M&A process. Whether you thought about selling your agency, want to buy one, or just curious about the process, you’ll enjoy this episode. I’d also like to share an upcoming free webinar opportunity. As I’ve mentioned several times in podcast episodes, I’ve founded my own agency over 17 years ago and exited the business after selling majority stake in 2017 for an eight figure valuation. And to think I could have done better. On November 8th at 12pm/noon Central Standard Time, I’ll be hosting and presenting a webinar,”Five Things I wish I Had Done Before Selling My Agency”. This will be a candid peek behind the curtains, into the sale process and insights on how I could have improved my valuation. At the end I’ll also be doing an,”Ask Me Anything” session for anyone curious about some do’s and don’ts when it comes to selling your agency for maximum value. To register, visit performancefaction.com and click the free webinar button in the top right corner. Now back to our special podcast episode with guest, David Tobin. Enjoy the story. CHIME Welcome to the show today everyone. I have David Tobin with TobinLeff M&A Group thank you so much for being on the show today, David.
David:
Russel, thank you for having me.
Russel:
My pleasure. If you don’t mind, start us off, what does TobinLeff do and who do you do it for?
David:
I appreciate the opportunity. We are M&A, mergers and acquisitions advisors. We primarily help owners of marketing and communications firms or MarTech companies.
Russel:
I’ve been better about more recently asking people what is the meaning behind their name, but yours is pretty self explanatory. So we don’t have to do that, but it sounds like if we go back before you started what you do today, you had your own agency. Tell us a little bit about your background.
David:
I did, I actually grew up in an advertising family, then I started, founded, sold two of my own agencies. What brought me to this point, part of the journey, Russel, my last agency, our client base, for the most part, were financial institutions. financial advisors who had the desire to put their agents advisors in front of business owners on a favorable basis. We came up with the idea that one of the great door openers, hooks would be to position the advisors as specialists. in exit planning, succession planning, and it worked. Those were some of the topics, ideas that owners wanted to discuss. So I actually built an agency around those concepts. My firm, when I sold it, there were 60 employees. I was away from the industry for a while, but I couldn’t help myself. So I’d meet a business owner and I’d say to him or. What’s your exit plan? And they wanted to talk about it. Because I have all this knowledge of studying the craft so that we can serve our clients. And so I was advising owners early on around exit planning. I finally said, I want to charge for this and started to get paid for it. And then, and this was in 2009 and then the progression, the evolution was we developed into an M& A advisory firm. So we do both exit planning for agency owners and then help them monetize their business interests.
Russel:
And as we were talking, chatting before the, before we hit the record button, I was thinking of how beneficial it would have had someone like yourself in my own agency journey. But speaking from someone’s experience that’s sold their own agency. Based upon the work you do today, if you could go back and give yourself a piece of advice prior to selling your agency, what would it be?
David:
You can appreciate this. Start early. So many owners know if you start your company, you’re focused on building and cashflow. At some point. Every owner starts thinking about cashing out, monetizing. If you can start with that end in mind, it just puts you in a better position when the time is right to hopefully command a better multiple, which translates into a better dollar, better terms. So a lot of the work that we do, it’s helping owners 12, 24, 36 months away. From their target date. So it would be start with the end in mind. Focus on value drivers that buyers seek, buyers will be assessing. And by doing that, not only will you hopefully increase the value of your company along the way, it helps many companies be more profitable, which leads to a higher net worth for the owners.
Russel:
Often people ask me and about my own selling the business journey and I really always describe it the same way and say, it’s the same path and business for the most part. Whether you want to collect your mailbox money someday just while the business runs itself or whether you want to sell or whether you want to do something else. It’s roughly the same path because the business is the most valuable is what someone’s going to want to pay the most for, which is also the business you want to own. And so talking about those value drivers, for the folks listening at home, what are some of the key value drivers they need to be thinking about?
David:
We put them into categories, a buyer in most situations, unless it’s such a strategic need. They’re going to be assessing, is this company sustainable? Is it transferable? How much confidence do I have that their earnings, their net income will persist? Will it transfer to the buyer’s enterprise? Is it scalable? Is it growing? If somebody wants to command that a strong multiple of earnings of EBITDA, and if a buyer has to acquire assets or stock with after tax dollars, they’re typically only going to pay if they believe there’s going to be growth. So those are the general categories. When you drill down, certainly the financial metrics. Growth as a percentage, profit margins, net income as a percentage of fee income, is a key driver. Typically our clients, prospective clients, will fall into two camps. Those agencies that are consistently above a 20 percent net income slash EBITDA as a percentage of fee income and others that are not, they struggle to make 10%. If a buyer is going to put forth a good offer and there’s going to be some debt involved, they’re not going to be able to recapture their investment so easily unless there’s good margins. So the financial metrics, growth, profit, margin, consistency of net earnings. When you look to some of the qualitative, which again, your life experience is a perfect one. You told me a little bit about your company. The financial performance is one aspect, but then you look at what’s unique? What’s special? What’s that company’s unique value proposition. And there’s many ways to get there. It could be their capabilities. that are in strong demand. It might be a vertical that they have stake to claim in. The management team with incentives to stay. Those are some of the ones that are really important. Culture counts. There’s different ways to measure that. What’s also so important is dependency. Is there client concentration risk where that firm is overly dependent on one or a couple clients? Certainly that puts pressure. Is it overly dependent on the founder or selling shareholder to bring in new business? In those situations, buyers are going to say, look at the risk. If I’m going to buy that company and Russell’s going to be gone when he gets his wire transfer. So those come back to that sustainability transferability scalability. We have what we call value drivers assessment tool that includes from our experience Close to 60 plus value drivers put into different categories and your listeners could rank and we prioritize from our experience, which ones have a greater weight.
Russel:
Again, bringing back so many memories from my own journey. When you talk about that EBITDA on that profit margin. In my experience, that was always a huge driver in the valuation, what your X was essentially for that. What do you typically see in terms of how long a history of a certain EBITDA needs to be maintained and what multiples and how that all ties together?
David:
Pre pandemic, in most situations, buyers were assessing a three year average or a three year weighted average on that company. And, the trailing 12 months would be more important than, 36 months removed. So coming out of that, more and more deals, the buyers have assessed the trailing 12 months along with forecast projections moving forward. So having really tight projections, the month to month performance is always assessed. Firms that are performing well now, and they can explain, and 2021 or 2022. So we can put that in the rear view mirror and focus on the trailing 12 months and what’s happening tomorrow. So that’s a big part of it. I think you were also asking, were you also driving at the EBITDAs or more the timeframe to measure?
Russel:
Effectively the timeframe to measure and I don’t know what standard is, right? So only mostly having my own experience and some other stories that I’ve gathered from folks, but right. It’s, you get a higher multiple if you’ve got a longer trail history or maybe to your point, if you’ve got a better projection but right, multiples and even in my own experience the lowest valuation of the highest valuation of serious offers were entertained was 300 percent difference. Just that wild difference there is speaking to what multiple can people expect based upon given scenarios.
David:
Yes. And if I may, just to clarify, when you and I, of course, you went through it. It’s typically a multiple of EBITDA, but it becomes adjusted EBITDA. So your listeners, when it’s time to start thinking about an exit plan, of course, they’re going to get educated. EBITDA is the normal earnings, interest, taxes, depreciation. But a lot more goes into that. Typically, you’ve got to adjust EBITDA based on what would the earnings have been if the owners paid themselves fair market comp. So I just encourage your listeners to really appreciate what will drive that EBITDA calculation. And the other part, which you lived through. How the balance sheet comes into play. That becomes so important as it relates to what is the walkaway number. Many owners believe their balance sheet that’s theirs. If my assets and liabilities, that’s not how buyers typically see it. Cause if a buyer’s going to pay a multiple of earnings, they expect the seller to deliver a company that has adequate working capital. That’s typically a couple months of operating expenses. There’s plenty of data out there on our site and others. That I’d be encouraging owners to get a good sense of their KPIs through the value drivers. And there are steps that can be taken to really get a balance sheet ready to help that owner maximize his or her net income upon the sale. One other value driver I don’t want to lose sight of. It goes back to the dependency on the seller. Size. If somebody owns an agency and their billings are a million dollars and a million and a half, the perception from buyers, it’s not always the case, is that company is heavily dependent on the seller. And it typically is. It’s usually that person drives new business, is involved with the strategy level. When you reach a certain size, it’s not necessarily just because size drives up the multiple. It’s the ramifications of size. It’s not as dependent on the founder. There’s an organization in place. There’s a machine to generate new business other than just the relationships of one person. That’s where size becomes important..
Russel:
Good thing to bring up and, going back to the books and accounting, right? Some owners want to run as far and fast away as they can from anything that sounds like accounting and some might have learned either the hard way or just naturally that they need to embrace that more. How much should someone factor into how they’re recording their books and doing their counting relative to the idea of selling? And again, speaking to my own experience we had to go through a normalization of books. What made sense to us might not make sense to the general marketing buyer. Did we do it the right way or should we have been paying a lot closer attention to how we were running our books long before we were thinking about selling?
David:
That’s also a good example of how to prep, prepare for a sale. Just this morning. I was on with a prospective client. We were talking about her business and she said She’s been managing the business to reduce taxes Not anything illegal, but just managing the business to reduce taxes There’s a price to that because if you’re thinking about selling, our experiences, manage the business to make it attractive, to drive that adjusted EBITDA. Stop running all those expenses through the business. Now, yeah, you can make a case that there should be ad backs, but that’s not where you want the story to be. You want the story to be that your financials are gap compliant. You’re not running personal expenses through the business. You really want it to be clean to say the third party took this over. Here’s what the financials look to be maximized. And you do want them to get to become gap compliant. You don’t need audited or reviewed statements. You just really want to make sure it’s consistent with accounting principles in your CPA would help you with that..
Russel:
It makes me think of if you’re selling a house and a buyer comes through, you don’t want to give them the impression that you covered holes in the walls with furniture and did some other things that, that might give them a nice curbside appeal. But if you peek not too deeply in there you’ll find some issues per se, or even maybe not even big issues, but it’s just even the appearance that maybe not everything is up to snuff.
David:
Yes.
Russel:
Okay that gives some good insight into some of the things to focus on is, as you mentioned, value drivers some of these have naturally come out already, but what are some of the not to do’s or not to focus on or common mistakes you see when it relates to the idea of selling.
David:
Don’t take it lightly. You went through the process and it is a process. If somebody is going to sell their business, hopefully they’ve selected the right M& A advisory firm or business brokerage firm that would minimize. It’s another job during that time period. You really have to be prepared, not just your business. And because the do it right our experience has been you don’t want to rush the process you don’t want to try to sell your business in 90 days. Because, most likely if somebody owns a service firm there’s going to be an earn out component or rollover equity. Meaning some portion of the selling price will be contingent on future performance, where some portion of the selling price will be equity in the acquiring company. Under both of those scenarios. You really want to make sure you’ve picked the right dance partner. So we strive, as any good M&A group would do to try to bring multiple opportunities to the table, multiple letters of intent, but then really take your time to get to know those prospective buyers. You only get to sell any company you own one time. Mistakes would be. Prepare for the process, prep your company, be efficient, and be organized, but really take the time to find the right M& A group. Take the time to plan the communications plan with your key employees and your stakeholders. Look to institute incentives for your key employees to participate in the liquidity event through a phantom stock plan or a change of control plan. Buyers love those. So really thinking about how will I include my key employees? Some owners take the position, I’m going to try to keep it as confidential as I can until we close. Others will say in advance of the process. I’m going to include my key people I’ve witnessed in both ways, but those are examples of really putting time, energy, thought process into the process.
Russel:
I think that’s a good point you bring up and I can certainly appreciate it. I do speaking engagements and just kind of part of the storyline I show our revenue over the course of the business and for the most part, over the course of the decade, there’s one dip in the entire line of revenue. And that was the year we sold the business. And to your point, it was such a process that it just took our eye off the ball and we suffered a dip in revenue. Nothing cataclysmic by anything, but again, a 10 year run and the one dip is the year we sold. Is that something you see is pretty common?
David:
It’s so plays off of your question on advice to sellers that if there’s anything a seller could do during the process, it’s keep their business strong. Run it the way they have been. We have experienced situations where what you described happened and the purchase price went down, it’s during due diligence. And it wasn’t that the buyers were trying to reduce the price, but yeah, they’re basing their offers on a certain level of earnings or a certain level of billings. If it dips, it causes concerns.
Russel:
Full transparency on my end. At the end, it forced a conversation where they were considering actually pulling out of the deal. A deal we’d spent almost a year working on. A deal that we had signed to deliver. Honestly, probably one of my most stressful points in the entire business. We were able to work it out, but it could have made a completely different story from my end, quite honestly. That’s all very helpful. I guess let’s flip the script a little bit. And I’ve talked to a number of agencies lately, they’re looking to grow by acquisition. So let’s talk more on the buyer side and what should folks be looking at or thinking there?
David:
There’s 12 people in our group, Tobin Love. Two of our partners have done a lot of buy side work, so I can’t speak from experience. On the buy side, we’ve represented large agencies, smaller agencies that wanted to grow through strategic acquisitions. We’ve also helped clients with acquire smaller groups. Where they are able to acquire, for the most part, talent, but that talent comes with a block of business. What I’ve so come to appreciate. If somebody wants to make it a strategic growth initiative, Grow throughout strategic acquisitions. It’s a commitment, a big time commitment. It’s not, let’s see if we can go out and just buy a company. To find the right fit to identify a company that strategically fits. vision, values, capabilities, either supplement or complement. It’s a true process. You’ve got to talk to a lot of prospective sellers that not only fit your criteria, that seller is motivated. You’ve got to talk to a lot of people, so When some of our, prospective clients and they’ve come and say, we’ve tried to grow organically. I’ve hired a salesperson multiple times. It didn’t work out. I’m ready to try acquisitions. You don’t just do a one off acquisition. Sometimes you’re lucky because you might have a relationship. That’s different. We’ve helped companies that might be working together that they’ve already identified, but to really go through process it’s time consuming, and you’ve got to really assess the investment. Groups like ours will do the sourcing, the negotiating, and so forth. You’ve got to pay for the M& A group. You’ve got to acquire the company, legal fees. If it’s the right acquisition, you’re typically doing it because you can buy a company at a lower multiple than you’re trading at. So if somebody’s thinking about selling their company in a few years and they’re hoping to get six, seven, eight X because of their value proposition. There’s been some good success stories to say, let’s go out and buy companies for a multiple of four or five. They become part of our earnings and we’re going to leverage, get that arbitrage. There’s some really good success stories. It’s just, it’s expensive. It’s relative to other ways that you’re going to grow. You own a performance growth. You witnessed this with your clients, Russell, all the different ways.
Russel:
To the whole point, what I’ve say to folks, there’s no silver bullets. If this was easy, everybody would be successful, exited agency owners and, or business owners outright. I see, maybe on the buyer side is people get. You’re naturally, maybe it’s maybe married to a deal on the seller side, but on the buyer side that become too enthralled with an idea and can’t walk away from an acquisition. Is that something that you have to talk your clients. Which is honestly disincentive from how your economics work. But yeah, is that something you have to do on an occasional basis?
David:
We just want to make sure if somebody is committed to it that they really appreciate the investment, the economics, a couple of keys. If I may, to your question on my side. Any owner is going to compare an offer to what if I just kept the business? And so you’ve really got to put forth something that is exciting to them. Now, some owners want out. There’s an exception to that. They’re tired, they’re burnt out, they don’t have other options. But I’m not talking about a distressed company. I’m talking about if you want to acquire a company that has energy, that could really… You’ve got to come with a vision and be willing to step up to the plate, meaning a respectable amount of cash at closing, an earn out, if there is an earn out that’s doable, that if somebody is going to have an earn out, you want to make it that they can achieve those benchmarks and exceed it, and or there’s equity in the acquiring company. Because I have gone through this, we learned the hard way, we took on client engagements, and our clients were just trying so hard to buy that company with the seller’s money. Meaning small amount of cash at closing, earnouts. It’s a waste of energy, because you’re not going to get the quality companies that will do that. But here’s where leverage comes into play. So flip to the paradigm for a minute. It’s a quality company. This company’s growing. They fit your value proposition. If we make this acquisition, so this is back to that arbitrage. You’re big. You’ve got a story. You might be trading at seven or eight. You don’t have to pay that. You put forth 50 percent of the target purchase price. You come with cash in closing, but it doesn’t have to come off of your balance sheet. If you’re a growing company, this is the buyer. Banks will lend you money. There’s plenty of places to go. So let’s just, quick at math, quick example. You’ve got a target company doing it. Million dollars of EBITDA. That company is trading at six million dollars. It’s quality you wanted. You could buy that company with three million in cash. The balance is either equity in your company or deferred earn out payments and up to three you could probably borrow two million. So you really are, think about the leverage on that million dollars you put forth. You acquire a company that has a million dollars of EBITDA. You bring your cross selling opportunity, synergistic savings. It could really be a win. You have to have the risk tolerance, and you’re going to assess it. But you can get good leverage if you believe that company will sustain, transfer, and grow, now you could really make something happen. And get the sellers excited because they finally can cash out.
Russel:
It just makes me think of if there’s a cheap deal, there’s a reason why it’s cheap and it’s got to be part of a bigger strategy. Let’s talk about post sale. If a company’s merging what are some of the things to look out for on that side of the process when you got two companies coming together?
David:
Good point. And that’s where when we discussed a moment ago about really taking your time to make sure. Don’t rush to sign a letter of intent because there’s so much at stake. You want to make sure the seller wants to make sure they’re going to hit their earn outs or the rollover equity will really turn into something. All the integration, a communication strategy, not just with employees, but clients. There’s a lot of thought process and planning that goes in to making sure this is going to be a smooth transition, the integration will go, and it takes time. When you design earn outs, you’ve got to allow back to your point when you went through the process, your top line depth, even before you sign the LOI, and then it’s all the distractions trying to integrate the companies. You lived through it.
Russel:
The lucky thing for me is we got bought by private equity, so there was no merger. It was literally, truly business as usual from the day before to the day after. But that’s what I. don’t have the experience of is if you had to merge with another company, right? To what you’re saying, that’s a whole nother ball game and game plan to have to account for. That just doesn’t end when you sign on the dotted line.
David:
You mentioned private equity. Do you mind if I just take a moment and talk about that? Private equity transactions, I assume what you went through, that’s the opportunity for owners to have, here’s an overused cliche, two bites at the apple. There’s two liquidity events, they typically sell their company. Liquidity event one is a combination of cash and rollover equity in either their bid. Or they’re an add on and the story from the buyers is the rollover equity with the buyer’s resources and capital will turn into something very valuable. Most private equity groups or family offices, if they invest their capital or their investors capital, their objective is to get at least 3x on those dollars in a reasonable period of time, four years, five years, six years. The seller, the agency owner, takes some of… their purchase price and puts it into rollover equity. They’re hoping that portion is three times the number. So the reason I bring that up more and more of our client transactions. It’s that very structure. Three of our last four recently transactions were strategic operating companies backed by a private equity group. Even though they weren’t big enough to be a platform meaning it was the original company. These were nice add ons to an existing strategic company, but because they were backed by a private equity group, our clients were able to get respectable percentage cash at closing and rollover equity in the larger platform. And that we’re seeing more and more of. Five or six years ago, I was contacted periodically by private equity groups and they would say, here’s our criteria, even though at least 5 million or more, it’s such a different market today. I am in my partners at least weekly, we’re being contacted by private equity or family offices. They’ll typically, via email, tell us their criteria. The EBITDA threshold’s much lower today. Because there’s so much capital looking for quality companies. If somebody has EBITDA of 2 million, 3 million or more, they might be able to be a platform. If their EBITDA’s a million or more, they might be an add on. A few years ago, it was way below thresholds. And that’s been huge opportunities for agency owners over the last year to two years.
Russel:
I’m sure the pandemic has caused shifts that a lot of times owners don’t get privy to is talking about with some owners today. And we’re all saying, yeah, we know what we know, but we also know a lot that we don’t know. So this has all been extremely helpful to that end. Obviously this is not a quick solve this is, as you’ve already said, a lot of planning and preparation goes into this. So we could probably have this be a 10 part episode and not even cover everything at that point. I’ll give you one final stab at, anything else that’s just dire important before we wrap up that folks need to know.
David:
I mentioned taking your time, going with your instincts, so much of it’s about relationships. When you went through a Russel, you probably spent an awful lot of time with your M& A advisor or investment banker. You’ve got to really respect and like them because it’s so important. Go with your instincts. Owners know when it’s time monetize.
Russel:
I want to just give a second stamp on trust your advisors. I think that was one other gap we had in the process is how our legal representation ended up not being probably who we would have naturally gone with, but made some wrong decisions on that path. And it ultimately almost bit us really bad. It only ended up biting us a little bit, but I probably honestly couldn’t stress that enough. Last big question that I ask everyone on the show and doesn’t tie to this, but I’ll ask it anyway. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
David:
I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life. I’ve owned four companies and my father was an entrepreneur. I think there has to be something in your DNA and something can bring it out. Can be the trigger, but if I had to choose between the two, I would say it’s in the DNA.
Russel:
I love it. You mentioned earlier, but just to reiterate if folks want to know more about TobinLeff and the work you do and have questions about stuff you’ve covered today, where can they go?
David:
Certainly on our website, TobinLeff. com, we’ve worked hard to put resources up. I think there’s some white papers and podcasts that your viewers may find of interest. Your viewers are welcome to call me or any of my partners. If they go to our website, certainly if they put questions into our contact section, we’d love to respond. We don’t charge for introductory meetings the same way your viewers. And they’re trying to cultivate relationships. So feel free to talk to us if they want to talk about the M& A marketplace and some of their thoughts.
Russel:
Yes. Great. There you have it, folks. No reason not to reach out if it’s not even been a twinkle in your eye, it’s worth getting some more information about your own business. Thank you so much for being on the show today, David. Absolute pleasure. Brought back so many memories and so many good nuggets of wisdom that I know can be really helpful for folks. I really appreciate you taking the time to share with everyone today.
David:
Thank you for inviting me.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast, where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast at performancefaction. com. An An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction. com. SCRATCH
David:
I mentioned that I owned an agency one of us, which was a direct marketing and telemarketing firm. How that came about. I had a coupon publishing business. This was in the 80s. I kept reading about the growth of telemarketing at the time. I didn’t know anything about it and they said, but let’s just see the interest. So we were exhibiting at a trade show for a publishing business. I put on the trade show booth. We offered telemarketing services. And that’s what most of the attendees wanted to talk about. I didn’t know how to price it. I called another telemarketing firm. It was in New York at the time. And I asked, how do you price it? They told me. And then I sounded like an expert. All because we put a sign on. I then sold the publishing company and started a telemarketing firm. It was the most expensive education that I ever had. That company, I think we lost money every month for five years, not knowing. And it all started because I tried to be brave. To put the words, we do telemarketing on a trade show booth. So that was my graduate school education.
Russel:
We all have to pay our dollars to the school of hard knocks. Some just pay some pay more than others for their tuition. But it sounds like it sounds like you would learn some lessons at least.
