Welcome And Theme Of Transition

Announcer 0:01

Entrepreneur, founder, author and financial advisor, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. At March Forward, Marc and his partners and associates think out of the box to partner with their clients in regards to their visions for their lives, their businesses and their legacies. And through his innovative work with the Forward Focus Forums, Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that help to fuel their success. Founders’ Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, revealing the stories behind their successes, and the lessons they’ve learned. Join Marc and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a bit of fun! Now, let’s dive in...

Marc Bernstein 0:46

Good morning, America. How are you? This is uh we are broadcasting here today from Babcock Ranch, Florida. Series of shows we're doing from here. The weather is beautiful. And I hear the weather is beautiful up in Philadelphia, where many of you will be hearing this radio show. And we have in the studio today our guests, and I'll formally introduce them in a minute in a minute, but Chris and Amy. And our topic of the day is going to be transition. And this particularly applies to Chris, who's the guest on this particular show, and Amy is the co-host. So, Chris, you have, we're going to talk about it, but you've gone through some transitions. How do you how what is perception what is what is your perception of transition? What's that mean

What Transition Really Means

Marc Bernstein 1:31

to you?

Chris Donnelly 1:31

I, you know, in reflection on on this question, preparing for the show, I feel like my entire life has been transitioning from one thing to the next. Um, you know, I went to Catholic school for my first eight years of school and then transitioned to a military school, which may seem similar, but it's not. Uh, and then I transitioned from military school to the actual military and and then from there into college, and then from there into uh investment banking and then into entrepreneurship. And there's always these like roles and identities that you have to accept when you move from one place to another. And sometimes that can be um it can be easy or it can be difficult depending on the circumstances. And so uh I think that that uh that I guess knowing where you want to go and then nailing the transitions is a is a good way to be successful through life.

Marc Bernstein 2:16

Interesting. Amy, your thoughts about transition.

Amy Wicks 2:20

I think transition is really um an interesting thing because also, much like you, I've transitioned a lot throughout my career. Um, even where I started, I don't think it was my intent um to jump into transitions and everything early on. Um, whereas you felt like your whole life was a transition, but throughout my career, same thing. Like we've really transitioned, you know, the way I think about things, the way I do engineering as an engineer, and even um how I'm I'm approaching my company now. So um transitions is just a natural part of life, um, but also really goes a lot into entrepreneurship.

Chris Donnelly 2:56

Yeah, for sure.

Marc Bernstein 2:57

Having said that, and everyone in this room is an entrepreneur of sorts, uh one sort or another, and it really is helpful to be able to transition well when you're an entrepreneur, but not everyone transitions well. My wife is an example. We talked about this a little bit. She does not like leaving her comfort zone. You know, we're talking about moving our physical house, our primary residence in Pennsylvania. It's not that's not such an easy thing for her. I have a son who doesn't, who's in military school and had trouble with transitions. Um, so but I but I think so they find different kinds of roles in life that are that are set up more comfortably. In our environment, though, transition is extremely important. And I think that's kind of a theme of the show that we talk about a lot. So let's introduce Chris and get into it. Chris Donnelly is a galvanizer who removes barriers to agency for mid-market CEOs. After selling his business in 2023, he's navigating his second curve, which the second curve of many, I have a feeling, from operator to advisor, right? Serving as a vistage chair and strategic advisor. Chris helps stuck CEOs in the $30 to $200 million revenue range escape operational quicksand by building systems that solve problems without them. Drawing on frameworks from psychology, strategy, and power dynamics, he transforms decision paralysis into decisive action. He's proof that your next chapter can be more meaningful than your first. So welcome, Chris. Thank you. And also let me briefly let me just say that Amy Wicks is CEO Wicks Consulting, a um engineering firm, and we'll hear much more about her on her show, which will also be recording today. So welcome, Amy. Thanks for being here. So I um so Chris, start, let's start out with so out of we'll go. I will I know way back, I know about military school and all that, but maybe after college you started a career. Why don't we talk about

Navy Lessons And Career Pivots

Marc Bernstein 4:58

that?

Chris Donnelly 4:58

Yeah, I think it's fundamental or it's instrumental to talk about how I got there. Yep, because uh coming out of college or coming out of high school, you know, I lived in this rigid structure of military boarding school where every minute of every day is. And and leaving that and going to college was like going from one extreme to another. And and that was a that was a difficult, right, a difficult transition for me. And I found myself in this spot where I was like, well, I'm not doing anything else. And I my my father's business is based in or was based in Lansdale at the time, and directly Caddy Corner from there was was the recruiting station. And so I remember one day riding my bike into Lansdale and and walking into the recruiting station, interviewing all the recruiters, and uh and the Navy guys like would drive me around as like an incentive to like get me to sign up. And I didn't want to leave right away because I was in college and I was hanging out with my friends, and and so we we we had decided that I would leave in February. So I February of 1998, I enlisted in the Navy, um, went on that journey for five years, did two deployments to the Gulf, I lived in Sicily for two years. It was a wonderful experience. And then coming out of that, I then went to work in the family business uh while I went to college. So I'm going to school full-time, I'm working full-time for my father, I'm learning his business, doing these things. Um, and and it wasn't quite like what I wanted. And I arrived at this place where where I was going to school for um was effectively investor relations or public relations, and I ended up teaching myself accounting at night and on the weekends, and I said, I'm either going to be a CPA or I'm gonna be an investment banker. And I just happened to go to a career fair and I and I got into Citigroup in an operational role and then worked my way into investment banking from there. And it took me several years to make the connections and to get into the program. And um, and so I guess through 2006 through 2013, I was fully focused on working with big corporates, international businesses, at a lot of foreign companies that I was working with. And so I got to see a lot of um high finance at uh an interesting time within the financial crisis and coming out of that and Dodd Frank and um all the rules that were that were in place and and how people were resistant to mortgages and building. And and so it was an interesting time to be alive in finance. Um and that was really where I where I where I grew up and learned, you know, that most of life is really how hard you work and what your network looks like. And I carried that with me when I when I left Citigroup. What ended up cutting my citigroup career short short was um my my mother ended up coming down with pancreatic cancer in 2013. And uh, and that was, I guess, July of 2013, and then she passed in September of 2013. And my father at the time, you know, he had he had already had some health challenges of his of his own, and he had decided to make this business a lifestyle business because he had had, you know, a small mini stroke and he had had some heart issues, and and so it was sort of this thing that they just had that they that sustained their lives. But now with her passing, he didn't he didn't have anything, anything else beyond this business. He didn't know what he was gonna do. He knew he wanted to retire. And at the time there was no market

Grief And The Pull Home

Chris Donnelly 7:59

for uh residential plumbing and HVAC business. And so the business sort of needed me more than I needed it. And uh, I guess in late that year he uh he asked me to come back, and so I I I took the leap from from from Wall Street back to Main Street.

Marc Bernstein 8:13

And how did that transition feel? Because that was a big change.

Chris Donnelly 8:17

Yeah, it was tough. It was it was hard. I was traveling to to New York City, and you know, we my office was in Tribeca and I worked on the 35th floor. I looked at the Empire State Building every day. It was like it was magical. And uh you're in Lansdale. And now I'm in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, like driving seven miles from my house to uh to to this office that's that's in a not so nice area of Lansdale. And so so like just the environment itself was a was a transition. And then the people, you know, you're going from working with people that are you know coming fresh out of Harvard Business School or Stanford Business School, and um, and now I'm working with tradesmen. Totally different cultures, totally different cultures and totally different types of people, and and and so having to adjust from from working with you know um uh college educated people to to to blue-collar people, uh, not in a bad way, but just like just different people. Uh and so I was seen as an outsider, you know, even though I grew up in in the trades, I worked in concrete when I was in high school, and I was an electrician in the Navy, and so like I had the fundamentals, but it's like didn't have I had a totally different experience. And so it was fitting in with these with these people was uh was definitely a challenge.

Marc Bernstein 9:22

By the way, before we go on, I should say this is founders forum. It's usually for founders of businesses. Amy's a founder of business. You're not technically the founder of this business, but when I heard your story, you kind of are because you recreated the business, and that's what we're going to talk about to a point where you were able to transition again. So that's that's the meat of the story, I think, here. Yeah. So let's talk about how what happened then.

The Revenue Shock That Forced Change

Chris Donnelly 9:43

Yeah, so we we had um very early in in my tenure there, we I realized that we had you know one guy that was like 30% of our revenue. And and he was a nice guy and he was he did did well. And and I think we got into an altercation about, not an altercation, but we got into a discussion about something that I felt might have been an integrity violation. And uh, you know, it was civil, and we had a had a uh some some words about it, and uh, and he ended up quitting. And so my father very quickly was like, Well, that's like that's a lot of revenue from the business. Right. And so we had to figure out what we were going to do, and and we sort of looked at each other and we were like, Well, I guess we'll start an HVAC business. And so within the within the plumbing business, uh, we had some semblance of HVAC, but I I I figured it out. I I pulled together my resources and learned residential HVAC as a system and as a business. And in the summer of 2015, we started that. Um, we started that officially um and then grew that over the next several years to be about half the business.

Marc Bernstein 10:44

And and now in the midst of all that, you're changing the business, you're changing the um the culture. And so, in fact, Amy might have a question about that because that I know there was a culture change that went on.

Amy Wicks 10:57

Yeah, I'm just interested in as you were um going through that shift and everything, and especially losing that much revenue just up front, and somebody that had all of those relationships, how did you use that then to bridge that gap and kind of adjust that culture that you had going on in that company? Because that's that's something I feel like everybody kind of struggles when they're going through some of those big changes.

Chris Donnelly 11:19

Yeah. Uh it's a great question. And I want to bury the lead. Like, I'm no longer afraid of losing revenue because of a person or a client or whatever, because of this instance, because you always sort of figure it out. But fundamentally, anybody that's buying a business or even taking it over a second generation business, or even businesses that have been around for a long time where the owners have had some level of success, like that's gonna naturally move to be a lifestyle business for that person. And and so whenever you come into a lifestyle business, like that's really based on comfort of the owner. And so sometimes the standards and the rules and the culture gets relaxed around, you know, being comfortable and doing just do just do your best and and uh and and we'll get by and we'll figure it out if problems come up. And really it's about maintaining status quo, particularly for the ownership group or owner, so that they can have consistent cash flow and they can do what they want. And so when you come into a business like that and you're like, well, well, this is not my vision for for what I want this to be, certain things have to be different. And fundamentally, that starts with the culture.

Building A Culture Of Care And Performance

Chris Donnelly 12:22

So I always like to use the analogy that we that Donnelly's was like Mary Poppins, right? We're very caring and we wanted people to be good and to feel good about what they were doing every day, but at the same time, we're very performance-oriented. And so being a CEO in an environment like that or creating a culture like that really makes you balance those two things, which if you plotted them on a graph, would be at extreme ends of the spectrum. You know, extreme performance on one side where you don't care about people's lives and what they're doing, versus extreme caring where that's the only thing that matters. And really nailing that that midpoint between between balancing those two things. I think it's a difficult task.

Marc Bernstein 13:00

Were you at this point, were you were you building to sell at this point, or were you just trying to redirect the business at this point?

Chris Donnelly 13:06

I always had in my mind that this was a this was a a I'll use the term flip, that it was like this was a business asset that I could buy that I would eventually transition. I didn't know when that would be. You know, when I like I said before, like when I bought the business, there was there was no market for these businesses. No one was buying these businesses. And it wasn't until you know 2017, 2018 where consolidation through private equity really started happening.

Marc Bernstein 13:30

So so you could you kind of fixed the culture, you expanded HVAC. What happened now that that brought you along on the journey towards um towards selling?

Right Seats, Systems, And EOS

Chris Donnelly 13:42

So I think fundamentally the biggest step that founders and and young CEOs can take is to really focus on the roles that are needed in the business, but not today. The roles that are needed in like a year or like three years, and create that work chart and figure out what all of the um what all of the the key responsibilities and key functions those roles need to carry out. And then look for people that are naturally inclined to fulfill those things, right? Because that reduces the friction for when people come into the business. If you have a great culture and you're finding people that fit naturally with the roles that you have available for people, like those people are going to be intrinsically motivated to do a good job. And that lowers your barriers to having to manage people and to do these other things and really opens up the door for inspirational leadership and to help people understand what the vision is, what the mission is. And you know, we talk about sustainability, and it's like if you're hiring people that all believe in sustainability and they all have great engineering skills, there's gonna be a lot less friction to to to to how that business proceeds in its arc than if you're hiring just engineers and you're gonna try and teach them about sustainability.

Marc Bernstein 14:53

Yeah, so so you were really did you this sounds a little like EOS as an example. You're familiar with EOS. I am, yeah. And it sounds a little like did you have any coaching or help with all this, or is this all coming from what you knew about business from corporate America?

Chris Donnelly 15:08

I had two two or three three fundamental lessons that I learned. And uh I I worked with a with a with a Swiss gentleman named uh Aukelienstra when I was at Citigroup, and he was fundamental in in teaching me this one key thing. And I remember we were doing a deal, and he he said to me, you know, leadership is is you knowing where to be when you're needed there most, which is an art to getting that right. So that's number one. Number two, um when I went to business school in the Penn State uh MBA, and and when I went to business school, I learned a lot about implementing change and affecting change through um through culture and through putting the right people in the right places. And then operationally that was really hammered into me because I did hire an EOS implementer when I had the business. And that's a key uh function of EOS is putting the right people in the right seats.

Marc Bernstein 15:59

Interesting. So what what what other challenges were you having? We just have a little bit of time before the break, but what uh what other kind of challenges did you face as you're building towards the the sale?

Chris Donnelly 16:10

I think most of the challenges are are are typically with personnel. Uh really about um professionalizing leadership and management. Um a lot of people become very loyal to the people that they have in their businesses as they grow. And uh and and that's wonderful, and that can also become a hindrance to the growth of the business because you know really nice people typically don't have the right leadership and management skills to be able to scale a business. And so this process of professionalizing management is something that I think all CEOs and all founders need to be uh engaged with. And I I have a friend that told me this uh best once. He said, you know, I have this horse ranch that I go to and I hang out on this horse ranch and I take care of the horses. And he's like, and the only thing I do when I leave the horse ranch is I go and I try and find people that are smarter and better at their jobs than I am and the people that we currently have on the bus, and I convince them to come work with us. And so I'm always trying to build the next level of leadership team within the organization.

Marc Bernstein 17:04

So right after our break, Amy's gonna follow up with you on more questions about leadership. And with that, we'll take a short break and we'll be right back on Founders

Sponsor Message

Marc Bernstein 17:12

Forum.

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Marc Bernstein 18:29

We are back on Founders Forum with our guests today, Chris Donnelly and our co-host Amy Wicks. And Amy, I know you had a follow-up question about leadership for Chris.

Amy Wicks 18:38

I do. Um I'm absolutely fascinated, especially as I'm growing the company and your leadership discussion. But what I've heard so far is how you can identify and hire some leaders, but also how you lead. How do you grow those leaders internally to your company to make sure they're moving up too and there's some consistency in the

Growing Leaders With Weekly Coaching

Amy Wicks 18:55

company?

Chris Donnelly 18:55

Yeah. I think one, it's through intentional focus. Like you as the founder, you as the CEO, that has to be your priority. A lot of people I find are um, I won't say distracted, but maybe sales is their strength or that they've fallen into that role because that's the thing that they feel like they that they can provide for the business the best. But if you're really interested in in having a business that I'll call autonomous or that works without you, um it's an intentional practice of of working with people and keeping a one-on-one schedule and being consistent and being disciplined. And it's it doesn't take it doesn't take uh a lot of like rocket science trade to do this. I think it's it's it's a bit of coaching that's consistent, that compounds over time. Um, most people want only 15 to 20 minutes of coaching a week, but these people want a part of your time as the CEO and the founder. And so one of the gifts that you can give them is your time to be there to listen, to not give them solutions just to listen to them. And I think that's foundational. Two, it's then being consistent with it. Like a lot of people will set a one-on-one schedule and then they'll just abandon it because priorities, because oh, we have to go talk to this client, or we have to go sell this thing.

Marc Bernstein 20:07

Like you have to make an intentional uh or because they think everything's okay now and then they're yeah, or they get or they think everything's okay, right?

Chris Donnelly 20:15

And they they they they move on to to doing other things, and you're sort of leaving people behind when you do that. And you know, you this concept of like of of growing leaders within your business is great. And I think as CEOs and as founders and as business owners, like we have this this this we constantly have this make or buy decision that we're making about about what we're gonna do, whether it's with parts, whether it's with supplies, and and and it's also like, are you gonna hire people or are you gonna train people? And I think it's a mix of both that you need to do. It's sort of like building a professional sports team. You need to make a lot of good draft picks and you need to invest in hiring professional coaches and leaders to train those people. And you also need to find one or two free agents that are gonna be A players from outside the industry that really bring offsetting skills that the organization doesn't have. So if you're really strong in engineering, but you're not really strong in in HR or sales, hiring an A player might be the key to like unlocking the rest of the organization. So you're trying to balance, like you're always looking at like what are my strengths and what are my weaknesses. And if you can't necessarily like through your own will and effort and patience, grow leaders into those things, they're not naturally inclined, then that's where you'd be bringing people in to supplement what you need in those in those skills. And then it's and then a lot of your time then becomes building the team. And you're you're the coach, you're the leader, you're the person that's putting everybody in the in those roles, sort of directing those roles, architecting the plays, making sure everybody knows the plays. And it's and it's sort of endless when you get into this because it's like I had a business school teacher once that uh that really opened my eyes to this because I'm very impatient. So I'm like, I want things to work, I want to work now, and I never want to have to go back to it. But this professor said to me, uh, he said to the whole class, he said, you in this room today, as managers, as leaders, as CEOs, You have to come to terms with the fact that your job in this business is to repeat yourself in new and different ways forever. You have to really come to terms with that if you want to be successful in this. And and I took that to heart and I just and I'm a good storyteller, so I I found ways to just repeat myself endlessly about culture and about behaviors and about the things that mattered and making up stories about why it's important. And the more you can do things like that, it sort of reinforces the lure of the business. And that lore is why people keep coming back and they keep staying.

Marc Bernstein 22:36

It's something I knew intuitively, but I'd never heard it said like that.

Chris Donnelly 22:39

So it's very there's heroes and there's legends in every story, and like and like your business today, like you're building those stories about about those people.

Marc Bernstein 22:48

I want to move on because time runs fast on the show. I want to get to so you're built the business, now revenues are growing, your your infrastructure is in place, your employee culture is good. Um how did you come about to sell? And then we want to talk a little bit about what you did after that, what you're doing today.

Selling For Scale, Capital, And Training

Chris Donnelly 23:05

Sure. The the brief story about the sale is that um I had hired uh key leadership. So I had gone outside the the business to hire key leadership. I hired a really great uh professional manager who was able to bring the team together and do a lot of the things that we were talking about. And him and I worked really well together to try and affect the culture. Um he was also a great manager of resources, and so he was able to bring some things together that I couldn't do. Um I that freed me up then to look at the market to see what was going on. And now we're in the 2021 time frame.

Marc Bernstein 23:35

So just stepping back for a second, you started to be able to focus on your unique abilities. Right. And one of that was finance and figuring out right.

Chris Donnelly 23:42

And I had bootstrapped this business since I bought it. And so it was like we were growing, we had gone when I came back, we had 12 people, we know it's 65. And it's like, how do you fund all this stuff? And it's like that becomes a uh becomes a drain when particularly when you're reinvesting in people, reinvesting in people. There's long, long payoff cycles on those things. And uh, and then three things happened that we really needed to address. One, uh consolidation was rampant at this point in 2021. Uh, and so most of the businesses in our area have been consolidated. So unit cost pressures existed. So people were buying equipment supplies for much less than we were able to. Two, we needed a capital injection to be able to do a lot of marketing because uh when you're in uh home services, you're looking to do, you're looking to be top of mind and then be able to respond fast for people when they need you. A lot of that is TV advertising, which in Philadelphia is expensive. Uh and then the third thing is we needed to move, we needed to get into a bigger building so that we could build training space to do technical training. And the technical training is like one of my key misses from like 2014 when I first came back. Um but those were the those were the three things that we needed to solve for. And so because I had built the leadership team, because we had built the culture, I had time and space to then go out and find and market the business, create, you know, created a financial model, took it to market, interviewed partners, looked for the right people that I thought were going to be um that were gonna be sustainable and carry the name forward into the future. What was the whole uh time frame of all this? It took me about 10 months. Um took me about 10 months to to to find the final four.

Marc Bernstein 25:12

But from start to finish, from when you came in, it was only like about a three-year period.

Chris Donnelly 25:16

Oh no, so I bought so I bought the business in I started working in the business in 2013, I bought it in 16. Okay, so you bought it. And we sold it in 23. Okay, so it was a 10-year project. Yeah, it was a 10-year 10-year project uh overall. Um and and only the last year of it was spent on on you know access to capital and and financing.

Marc Bernstein 25:36

How did it work out? Because I I hear a lot of mixed stories about selling the private equity. How did it all work out for the from my perspective?

Chris Donnelly 25:44

And I and I still talk to the CEO of the business today, the guy that I hired is still the CEO of the business today. Nice. Um, which I think is really that's a strong signal, and it's been you know two two and a half years. And um and and so from what I hear from him, they're doing exceptionally well. So the business is thriving, they've moved into a new building, they advertise on TV now, um, they have more meeting rooms and training space than I ever could have imagined. Um they have national level deals with equipment providers. So all three of the problems I was seeking to solve got solved and solved quickly. So so from my perspective, like I I I think is a win for for for me because like I achieved my objectives. But the business I believe is almost doubled at this point. So I believe that for the new owners, the business has achieved achieved its objectives. Uh and for the people there, most of the people in the management team is still there as well. And so I think that that's a win-win-win for for everybody.

Marc Bernstein 26:38

So far, a happy ending, which you know you shouldn't hear all the time. That's great. So, what so what happened? You sold the business, you made a big transition, came back to Pennsylvania from New York, totally different kind of culture, and now you no longer have a business. What happens

After The Exit: Identity And The Wall

Marc Bernstein 26:52

then?

Chris Donnelly 26:52

This is so this is the hard part is that once you like you complete the entrepreneurial cycle of like buying, building, and then selling, nobody really tells you that like you sort of hit a hard wall at the end of that. And it's like, who am I?

Marc Bernstein 27:04

Right.

Chris Donnelly 27:04

Yeah, you're all of a sudden you're like you're like now I have to answer all these questions that maybe I've been avoiding for the last 20 years. And so it's been a journey of self-discovery, and and I, you know, I I I I I feel like the the the project that I'm continually working on is me now, and and what are the things that that that that I want to see in my future and how do I want to live? And so I've finally had a lot enough space to be able to look at who I am and say, what do I value and what does that look like to live like that? And how do I live like that every day? And that's a process, and that takes time, and there's a lot of science around um um post-exit uh founders and post-exit CEOs, where there's a there's a learning curve, there's a deep depression that happens. Um it's it takes two years to go through that curve. And then um, and then I've learned from other people that that in midlife there's another curve that you have to that you have to address. And oh, I'm I'm on that curve now too. And so so I'm dealing with like multiple things at once, and it it sounds like uh no, it's green. I think I have two two green ones.

Marc Bernstein 28:06

I teed that one up for you. Yeah, the the so uh what so where are you um so where but what are you you are working professionally? No, no, I am. I so let's

CEO Coaching Work And 10-Year Vision

Marc Bernstein 28:15

talk about that.

Chris Donnelly 28:15

So so I I I enjoy my I enjoy golf, I enjoy my time, I enjoy working with CEOs. I I really I really love talking to people and hearing their stories and and as vistage chair. As a vistage chair, and even just sort of personally, just talking to entrepreneurs and talking to business owners. Um but I have a uh my vistage chair, I launched my vistage group. Um Vistage is the world's oldest and largest CEO coaching and mentorship organization. Um I have Formally Tech. Formally tech, yes. Uh and I I uh I uh I have a group that's 11 CEOs, about to be 12. Um I'm very pleased with that. Um I have plans to grow that group this year. Um look I'm really looking for for CEOs that are either founders, second generation, first-time CEOs, first-time presidents, family businesses, people that are going through transitions, either from lifestyle businesses to growth businesses or personal transitions from you know uh family member to owner or something like that.

Marc Bernstein 29:11

We have very little time left, but uh just a quick question your 10-year vision. If we're talking and it's 2036, you and I were on the golf course, and I say to you, How'd you do the last 10 years? Yeah, Chris, what would that look like for you?

Chris Donnelly 29:24

2036, I'll be I'll be 56. And uh and I have visions of like living in a place like this, right, on a golf course and where it's warm most of the year. We're gonna talk more about that in a second. Yeah, and uh and I when I sold the business, the guy the guy who bought the business, he was like, What are you gonna do? And I'm like, I don't know. And he was sort of pressed me on it, and I was like, Well, I'm gonna do cool stuff with cool people, and that's how I left it. And he was like, All right, and so here we are, cool stuff with cool people.

Marc Bernstein 29:49

I have to tell you, we are out of time. Time flies so fast on the show. Thank you, Amy, for being here with us and co-hosting. Chris, thanks so much for being a guest. Thank you all for listening, and we'll talk to you next week on Founders Forum.

Announcer 30:02

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