The Exchanges

Q What is your contract? You can't give away a 2000 piece of equipment without locking them for some period of time, right?

A So we have three options. If you buy the piece of equipment, everything's month to month here. Um, if you decide to, uh, buy it upfront, it's month to month. Um, if you decide to do a payment plan, because we do interest-free payment plans for our clients, if they want to buy that, that's also month to month. But if they want us to contribute two, three, 4000 dollars to the location, we do ask for a 36 month term. But the kicker to it is, is all we're asking for in return is equipment back and half the retail costs that we contributed and done. Uh, while most companies will say, Hey, by the way, you're, you're going to owe us 15, 20, 25,000 dollars to cancel because that's the profit we would have made on your account. Therefore, you're going to pay us what we're going to lose if you leave early. And that's probably the bigger name you just mentioned.

AI assessment note: “if they want us to contribute two, three, 4000 dollars... we do ask for a 36 month term”

Q So if you, the reason you're able to give me the 58 cents number is because you're taking the average transaction value across all of your clients per month and millions of transactions and it comes out. So it comes out to like an average, what is that? What's the average ticket? It's gonna be like 35 bucks, 40, 50 bucks, something like that.

A About 20, about 25, 35 dollars across the board. Um, and that's, remember, that's taken all our programs encompassing. So that's the program that I just mentioned to you is our cash discount two point O. We have surcharging as well. That's legal in most states now that, you know, cost of the credit card when you walk in the upcharge at the register. And then you have regular basic interchange plus cost, which is cost plus our pricing. That's our markup. So on interchange plus pricing, we make substantially less. You know, cash discount, we make substantially more, but they save more. And in the middle of surcharging, we make in the middle of those two. So that's why it's an average across some places a lot more, and some places that we make substantially less, depending on the programs that they choose, but we give them the options to make the best decisions for their organization, not ours.

AI assessment note: “About 20, about 25, 35 dollars across the board.”

Q What is your contract? You can't give away a 2000 piece of equipment without locking them for some period of time, right?

A So we have three options. If you buy the piece of equipment, everything's month to month here. Um, if you decide to, uh, buy it upfront, it's month to month. Um, if you decide to do a payment plan, because we do interest-free payment plans for our clients, if they want to buy that, that's also month to month. But if they want us to contribute two, three, 4000 dollars to the location, we do ask for a 36 month term. But the kicker to it is, is all we're asking for in return is equipment back and half the retail costs that we contributed and done. Uh, while most companies will say, Hey, by the way, you're, you're going to owe us 15, 20, 25,000 dollars to cancel because that's the profit we would have made on your account. Therefore, you're going to pay us what we're going to lose if you leave early. And that's probably the bigger name you just mentioned.

AI assessment note: “if they want us to contribute two, three, 4000 dollars... we do ask for a 36 month term.”

Q Your team went out of their way in your bio to specifically say, quote, rural small businesses. Uh, why is that? Is this the key differentiator between you and Stripe, say? Or, or, uh, Square, sorry.

A Yeah, I mean, that's been kind of our differentiator since we started, and that's, I think, helped us excel to the next level, being bootstrapped from the beginning till today, is we are focused strictly on, you know, rural American communities, which we believe technology is passing them by, specifically in the payment space. You know, big companies, and you can probably name them, you know, a couple of them that are on the stock market or not, that their focus has to be in bigger companies. Cities where there's more transactions, bigger population, more payment processing, because they actually have people to answer to, to a certain extent, right? Well, that also leaves a lot of rural American businesses behind technology when it comes down to making their business more efficient. That's fair priced. That is not, that is simplistic, not complicated. Um, and that allows them to kind of go from that. I always say, go from that flip phone stage back in the good old days to get into a smartphone, right? Um, but within the payment space kind of concept. So we really go into smaller communities and, and that's where we have a lot of our boots on the ground across the United States.

AI assessment note: “that's been kind of our differentiator since we started”

Q Your team went out of their way in your bio to specifically say, quote, rural small businesses. Uh, why is that? Is this the key differentiator between you and Stripe, say? Or, or, uh, Square, sorry.

A Yeah, I mean, that's been kind of our differentiator since we started, and that's, I think, helped us excel to the next level, being bootstrapped from the beginning till today, is we are focused strictly on, you know, rural American communities, which we believe technology is passing them by, specifically in the payment space. You know, big companies, and you can probably name them, you know, a couple of them that are on the stock market or not, that their focus has to be in bigger companies. Cities where there's more transactions, bigger population, more payment processing, because they actually have people to answer to, to a certain extent, right? Well, that also leaves a lot of rural American businesses behind technology when it comes down to making their business more efficient. That's fair priced. That is not, that is simplistic, not complicated. Um, and that allows them to kind of go from that. I always say, go from that flip phone stage back in the good old days to get into a smartphone, right? Um, but within the payment space kind of concept. So we really go into smaller communities and, and that's where we have a lot of our boots on the ground across the United States.

AI assessment note: “that's been kind of our differentiator since we started”

Q Yeah. That's a big expense. So I mean, so let's say 10,000 clients, they have two POSs per location, like in the location, right? So that's, that's 20,000 POSs at two grand a pop. I mean, that's forty million dollars of hardware expense right there. How did you come up with forty million? Are you guys, are you really profitable? Where do you get forty million bucks bootstrapped?

A Um, well, remember there's two types, right? There's, there's a POS system that cost two to 3000, right? And then there's basic smart terminals that are a couple hundred bucks. You know, about 90%, a little bit about 90% of our clientele don't need a POS system that's two or 3000. It's mainly for restaurants and bars and retail locations that have a lot of inventory, but a lot of them are, it is the basic terminals that, you know, level them up from the, the good old days of, you know, the, the 2000, you know, six or four, right? When I came in the industry, We're trying to get them to a smart terminal, actually a smart terminal screen, kind of like an Apple phone, et cetera. But that's substantially less money.

AI assessment note: “about 90% of our clientele don't need a POS system that's two or 3000”

Q That's wild. So at 1.7 billion in volume at 30 bucks a pop, that means you processed almost like fifty seven million credit card swipes across 10,000 installed customers. Is that about right? Fifty seven thousand million customer swipes?

A Well, you're probably, you're probably very close, close to 60, I think it was. But, um, it's crazy because when we first started in 2000, you know, 17, it's crazy. Our revenue that year was 96,000 dollars. You know, in 2021, it was 12.7 million. This last past year was close to eighteen million. And this year we're projected to do close to thirty million and growing. And that's all bootstrap. Now, uh, you know, I think we've, we, we've shown the process works and we've shown what we've done as works and we're building out technology today with our FinTech team. Uh, so we're doing unique things. We just happen to be growing slower because we're not focused on big markets where their average transaction in a month volume wise is almost twice as what we get in rural America because We're in a non aggressively popular areas that like big, big dogs are like toast and all those guys.

AI assessment note: “you're probably very close, close to 60, I think it was”

Q That's wild. So at 1.7 billion in volume at 30 bucks a pop, that means you processed almost like fifty seven million credit card swipes across 10,000 installed customers. Is that about right? Fifty seven thousand million customer swipes?

A Well, you're probably, you're probably very close, close to 60, I think it was. But, um, it's crazy because when we first started in 2000, you know, 17, it's crazy. Our revenue that year was 96,000 dollars. You know, in 2021, it was 12.7 million. This last past year was close to eighteen million. And this year we're projected to do close to thirty million and growing. And that's all bootstrap. Now, uh, you know, I think we've, we, we've shown the process works and we've shown what we've done as works and we're building out technology today with our FinTech team. Uh, so we're doing unique things. We just happen to be growing slower because we're not focused on big markets where their average transaction in a month volume wise is almost twice as what we get in rural America because We're in a non aggressively popular areas that like big, big dogs are like toast and all those guys.

AI assessment note: “you're probably very close, close to 60, I think it was”

Q So if you, the reason you're able to give me the 58 cents number is because you're taking the average transaction value across all of your clients per month and millions of transactions and it comes out. So it comes out to like an average, what is that? What's the average ticket? It's gonna be like 35 bucks, 40, 50 bucks, something like that.

A About 20, about 25, 35 dollars across the board. Um, and that's, remember, that's taken all our programs encompassing. So that's the program that I just mentioned to you is our cash discount two point O. We have surcharging as well. That's legal in most states now that, you know, cost of the credit card when you walk in the upcharge at the register. And then you have regular basic interchange plus cost, which is cost plus our pricing. That's our markup. So on interchange plus pricing, we make substantially less. You know, cash discount, we make substantially more, but they save more. And in the middle of surcharging, we make in the middle of those two. So that's why it's an average across some places a lot more, and some places that we make substantially less, depending on the programs that they choose, but we give them the options to make the best decisions for their organization, not ours.

AI assessment note: “About 20, about 25, 35 dollars across the board.”

Q Well, if you need seven million bucks, we would love to fund that one day at Founders. Awesome. This is good stuff. Let's wrap up here with the thing. Actually, before we wrap up, I didn't give you any time to really talk about future products. Is there any future product releases that you're really excited about? You want to make sure you get some exposure here on the show?

A Um, you know, there's a couple things we're doing. So, you know, Clover is something we decided to partner with. Instead of spending the millions upon millions that they have spent over the years to become the dominant, you know, software they are, we decided to partner with them because we're with Fiserv. Fiserv happens to own Clover, and we are building out applications. Kind of like thinking about your iPhone, you can download apps, you pay money for us, these whole works. But Clover does the same thing. So we are building out applications on the Clover device that not only can be used if you process with us, But could be also be used if you don't process with us for the programs that we focus on, which is cash discount and dual pricing and, and, you know, inventory management, the whole works. So we're building those apps for our fintech team. Um, so now we can be exposed not only just to clients that are processing with us, but we can also be exposed to clients that are not processing with us too for another line item of stats fees. Because, you know, we would charge monthly for those apps, right? So we have done that. I think that's something that's key. Um, and then, you know, one other thing that's key is tying our whole business or managing You know, sales reps, w two, 10, nine clients or works into a CRM that we've, you know, have been building for many years and real…

AI assessment note: “we are building out applications on the Clover device”

Q Well, if you need seven million bucks, we would love to fund that one day at Founders. Awesome. This is good stuff. Let's wrap up here with the thing. Actually, before we wrap up, I didn't give you any time to really talk about future products. Is there any future product releases that you're really excited about? You want to make sure you get some exposure here on the show?

A Um, you know, there's a couple things we're doing. So, you know, Clover is something we decided to partner with. Instead of spending the millions upon millions that they have spent over the years to become the dominant, you know, software they are, we decided to partner with them because we're with Fiserv. Fiserv happens to own Clover, and we are building out applications. Kind of like thinking about your iPhone, you can download apps, you pay money for us, these whole works. But Clover does the same thing. So we are building out applications on the Clover device that not only can be used if you process with us, But could be also be used if you don't process with us for the programs that we focus on, which is cash discount and dual pricing and, and, you know, inventory management, the whole works. So we're building those apps for our fintech team. Um, so now we can be exposed not only just to clients that are processing with us, but we can also be exposed to clients that are not processing with us too for another line item of stats fees. Because, you know, we would charge monthly for those apps, right? So we have done that. I think that's something that's key. Um, and then, you know, one other thing that's key is tying our whole business or managing You know, sales reps, w two, 10, nine clients or works into a CRM that we've, you know, have been building for many years and real…

AI assessment note: “those two things I would say are the biggest things we're working on”

Q So this is fascinating. So Austin, talk about how much, how powerful you feel because you don't have a board and you can make quick decisions and you haven't raised a hundred million bucks in VC. What does that allow you to do?

A Um, you know, it's crazy that you mentioned that because I watched that happen in my career with organizations I was part of. And I just remember that feeling of culture, uh, diminishing very quickly. Um, and then basically you can almost feel like power being taken away from the people and even the leaders. And I didn't want that feeling. So I said, proof of concepts where we're going to have to start. So if we ever look at that, it's our way. It's not someone else's way. Um, and that's, if we ever look at it down the road and do I feel powerful? I mean, we're in a big space, you know, excuse my language, but I think, you know, we're bitches compared to these big dogs. Right. You know, they got a lot more money and a lot more manpower and a lot more, you know, people, but what we do have is we're like a speedboat. You know, we could pivot at any moment. Um, these guys are like the Titanic, man. They're pivoting. They got to watch out for icebergs and they can't go quick enough. Um, so ours is a janitor to CEO thought process of what we focus on, which is culture first, you know, transparency and being the voice for small business owners. And believe it or not, we have a mindset that's different than probably what the stockholders would want if they did have, we did have P money, which is our clients aren't number one. Believe it or not, they're, they're not number one. And by …

AI assessment note: “we're like a speedboat. You know, we could pivot at any moment.”

Q Yeah. That's a big expense. So I mean, so let's say 10,000 clients, they have two POSs per location, like in the location, right? So that's, that's 20,000 POSs at two grand a pop. I mean, that's forty million dollars of hardware expense right there. How did you come up with forty million? Are you guys, are you really profitable? Where do you get forty million bucks bootstrapped?

A Um, well, remember there's two types, right? There's, there's a POS system that cost two to 3000, right? And then there's basic smart terminals that are a couple hundred bucks. You know, about 90%, a little bit about 90% of our clientele don't need a POS system that's two or 3000. It's mainly for restaurants and bars and retail locations that have a lot of inventory, but a lot of them are, it is the basic terminals that, you know, level them up from the, the good old days of, you know, the, the 2000, you know, six or four, right? When I came in the industry, We're trying to get them to a smart terminal, actually a smart terminal screen, kind of like an Apple phone, et cetera. But that's substantially less money.

AI assessment note: “about 90% of our clientele don't need a POS system that's two or 3000”

Q when you go back and look, Austin, and please correct me if any of that is wrong after I asked this question, When you go back and look at what assumption cells you put in your, in your forecast model beginning of last year, which assumptions were wrong? Was it really, really just people-based like you just said, or were you projecting 50,000 installed POSs and you only hit 10,000?

A Um, I think it was a mixture of both. Right. Um, and you know, every year that's gone by, we've been able to be more and more granular with our projections. Right. Um, and what I mean by that is I think that sometimes you get, you look at a kind of a high level, broad number, like let's say, you know, a number of, you know, what's, what's revenue divided by number of accounts. And that's, that's kind of what it is. But reality, that's not what it is when it comes down to what we make. Right. So what we had to look back at and say, well, we missed it by the mark of assuming how many sales we're going to get. I want to come down to number of bodies we have, and we overextended, and this is something that, hey, I'm not afraid to admit it. We overextended the number of bodies we should have hired, which ate right into not only, you know, our, our, our, our, you know, losses, um, but it also took a lot of time and, and, and, and, and like really good time of our people here To get the people that were really doing well and doubling down and get them to, you know, double their sales.

AI assessment note: “I think it was a mixture of both.”

Q when you go back and look, Austin, and please correct me if any of that is wrong after I asked this question, When you go back and look at what assumption cells you put in your, in your forecast model beginning of last year, which assumptions were wrong? Was it really, really just people-based like you just said, or were you projecting 50,000 installed POSs and you only hit 10,000?

A Um, I think it was a mixture of both. Right. Um, and you know, every year that's gone by, we've been able to be more and more granular with our projections. Right. Um, and what I mean by that is I think that sometimes you get, you look at a kind of a high level, broad number, like let's say, you know, a number of, you know, what's, what's revenue divided by number of accounts. And that's, that's kind of what it is. But reality, that's not what it is when it comes down to what we make. Right. So what we had to look back at and say, well, we missed it by the mark of assuming how many sales we're going to get. I want to come down to number of bodies we have, and we overextended, and this is something that, hey, I'm not afraid to admit it. We overextended the number of bodies we should have hired, which ate right into not only, you know, our, our, our, our, you know, losses, um, but it also took a lot of time and, and, and, and, and like really good time of our people here To get the people that were really doing well and doubling down and get them to, you know, double their sales.

AI assessment note: “I think it was a mixture of both.”

Q Austin, how do you do that? I talked to so many founders that are software that they are so fed up trying to do anything with their local bank because the local bank won't loan against a software company. Did you have to use the hardware PUS systems as collateral to put up against that 1.5 million dollar loan to get the bank to understand how to underwrite you?

A Well, I, I, it's, it's, it sucked to be honest with you because there's a lot of education part, right? We went to a community, like literally it's a community bank, right? I have no clue what we're doing, right? So we had to sit down with them and with their board, the whole works and say, Hey, this is who we are as an organization. This is what we're doing. This is what we're focused on. This is where we gain our revenue through residual base, through hardware, through, you know, long-term relationships with clients in these communities. And this is our, You know, I, I think proofs in the pudding is important. Like we knew the year one and year two, year three, like there's no way a bank would even look at us twice, right? But when you're talking about bigger revenue numbers of 10,000,015 million, well, they tend to look at you because they're, there's two hopes, right? They're gonna make money on the interest and, and, and high five if you make it. They're gonna want you to be one of their clients, right? Um, so we had to basically showcase the bank that, you know, our residual growth Based on processing volume is increasing, not decreasing. And this is what we get from it. And they eventually understood it. And then once they did that, they, they got an appetite and, and don't get me wrong. They didn't want to write a fat check for 1.5 million and say, go get them tiger.

AI assessment note: “we had to basically showcase the bank that, you know, our residual growth”

Q So this is fascinating. So Austin, talk about how much, how powerful you feel because you don't have a board and you can make quick decisions and you haven't raised a hundred million bucks in VC. What does that allow you to do?

A Um, you know, it's crazy that you mentioned that because I watched that happen in my career with organizations I was part of. And I just remember that feeling of culture, uh, diminishing very quickly. Um, and then basically you can almost feel like power being taken away from the people and even the leaders. And I didn't want that feeling. So I said, proof of concepts where we're going to have to start. So if we ever look at that, it's our way. It's not someone else's way. Um, and that's, if we ever look at it down the road and do I feel powerful? I mean, we're in a big space, you know, excuse my language, but I think, you know, we're bitches compared to these big dogs. Right. You know, they got a lot more money and a lot more manpower and a lot more, you know, people, but what we do have is we're like a speedboat. You know, we could pivot at any moment. Um, these guys are like the Titanic, man. They're pivoting. They got to watch out for icebergs and they can't go quick enough. Um, so ours is a janitor to CEO thought process of what we focus on, which is culture first, you know, transparency and being the voice for small business owners. And believe it or not, we have a mindset that's different than probably what the stockholders would want if they did have, we did have P money, which is our clients aren't number one. Believe it or not, they're, they're not number one. And by …

AI assessment note: “we're like a speedboat. You know, we could pivot at any moment.”

Q This is really interesting. Now you've mentioned no fees and stuff. You've mentioned you give away the hardware for free if they sign up for a 36 month term, but Austin, how the heck do you make money? What's the revenue model?

A Well, it's easy. So, you know, uh, owners aren't, aren't accountants, right? Uh, most of the ones we deal with are they're not rural America. They're rural America. They don't have big CFOs. They don't have people looking over their shoulder every five minutes to tell them where, you know, rates and fees can be. So it's unpredictable. Um, so what we did was we found a way that's not unpredictable that allows them to get ahead of the game instead of stay behind the game. And that actually includes processing fees into their pricing, um, instead of, Uh, you know, instead of like, for example, think about like cell phone bill, light bill, labor, that's all in their pricing of costs, right? They don't put, they don't sell it to you and I for costs. They sell it to you and I where they profit on top of, right? So for, for many, many years, most places don't include the processing fees into their pricing. And then we, they leverage the technology that we have to basically isolate that and remove it every single, you know, transaction. Um, but we make sure that it's, uh, high enough for these individuals that they don't ever have to come back to the, You know, we don't have to come back to the well again and say, Hey, by the way, we have to raise rates. We have to do this now.

AI assessment note: “leverage the technology that we have to basically isolate that and remove it”

Q So that's amazing. Okay. So that's your first customer. I guess fast forward to today, what's the total transaction volume you processed over the past 30 days?

A Um, uh, well this year, so it's unique because this changes that, but depending on, you know, whether like wintertime slower, marinas aren't opening, et cetera. We have a lot of deals throughout the Midwest. Um, but you know, this year we should process well over two billion dollars of processing volume. Um, so it's hard to use this last month because we just came out of a holiday, but you know, it's, it's crazy because the first four years that we, we started, we didn't even do two billion collectively until the fourth year, you know, this year alone. Which is going into the sixth year. Uh, we'll do well over two billion in this one year. Um, which is exciting for us to see because it took us that long to get there. Now we can do those things in one year and actually more than that.

AI assessment note: “it's hard to use this last month because we just came out of a holiday”

Q So that's amazing. Okay. So that's your first customer. I guess fast forward to today, what's the total transaction volume you processed over the past 30 days?

A Um, uh, well this year, so it's unique because this changes that, but depending on, you know, whether like wintertime slower, marinas aren't opening, et cetera. We have a lot of deals throughout the Midwest. Um, but you know, this year we should process well over two billion dollars of processing volume. Um, so it's hard to use this last month because we just came out of a holiday, but you know, it's, it's crazy because the first four years that we, we started, we didn't even do two billion collectively until the fourth year, you know, this year alone. Which is going into the sixth year. Uh, we'll do well over two billion in this one year. Um, which is exciting for us to see because it took us that long to get there. Now we can do those things in one year and actually more than that.

AI assessment note: “it's hard to use this last month because we just came out of a holiday”

Q ramp? And sometimes most founders are too aggressive with this. Well, they think it's going to ramp. It's going to take six months. It actually takes 12. They think one sales rep can hit a million dollar quota. They can only hit 500 K quota, right? Were there like, what were the bottlenecks for you where the, the, the, the Excel model didn't pan out how you thought it would?

A Um, it came, it came down to like how we look. So we have a couple of different ways of actually getting sales, right? So we have inside sale, which is in house that focuses on, you know, marketing efforts to get people to call us throughout these communities. And we have a 10 nine nine channel that are boots on the ground that are independent contractors that can work anywhere. Um, and then we have a w two model, right? And the w two model is what we invested in for the last couple of years, 2022 1023. And how we look at that is the w two model is more of a controllable thing because there's a lot of great individuals that don't want to be an independent contractor and be that entrepreneur, right?

AI assessment note: “So we have a couple of different ways of actually getting sales, right?”

Q Okay, so like you personally, will you put money in yourself?

A You, you could. Or, believe it or not, there's ways out there to leverage your current company's, um, you know, uh, you know, valuation or your cash flow, your growth trajectory, and you can partner, like we, we partner with a local bank, That is a community bank, and we showcased to them, hey, instead of taking PE money and getting and losing equity, let's go in debt instead a little bit, right? So we took a little debt to actually allow us to fund some of that and those gaps, which has helped us out substantially. And when I say debt, I don't mean let's go out and let's get a hundred million dollars in debt. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about getting enough money to bridge gaps that we knew that were going to happen, which we did have to have happen. Um, and then this year.

AI assessment note: “You, you could. Or, believe it or not, there's ways out there”

Q grew to 21.5 million instead of twenty seven million. Look, in my head, who cares? You still grew and your economics are still good. But how do you manage sort of that With your team at the end of the year. Hey guys, we wanted to do 27. Good job. We got to 21.5. Here's what we want to do next year. How do you sort of manage that gap?

A Um, that's a great question. Um, and, and that's a question, you know, we, we've talked about a million times over, uh, just because naturally you're like, well, well, shoot, we, we, we, we fell short, right? Now, I think the biggest thing about, you know, starting a startup and, and building it the way we have built it through Bootstrap is, you know, we got to find a lot of positive and sometimes negative situations. And one would say that, hey, gosh, you know, we missed the mark by a huge amount, man. You all suck. We all suck, man. Let's, let's close the business down, right? Or it's not going to work out. We got to fire everyone, right? But that wasn't the case. The case was we grew by 19%. We went from 18 to 21 and a half, and all we had to do was say, all right, well, why, why was there a gap? Where, where did we fail, but not really fail, but we can learn from so we can make 2024 a better year to get closer to the goals we want to reach, right? Um, so we had to look back, and we had to look back at the mistakes we made, because we're not perfect. Um, I think when you're Starting a company from scratch, no matter which way you look at it, you don't have a bunch of big wigs that can call you up and get advice from you got to figure out yourself, you know? Um, and with our company, you know, one of the biggest things we've done to kind of, um, you know, start our organizati…

AI assessment note: “all we had to do was say, all right, well, why, why was there a gap?”

Q grew to 21.5 million instead of twenty seven million. Look, in my head, who cares? You still grew and your economics are still good. But how do you manage sort of that With your team at the end of the year. Hey guys, we wanted to do 27. Good job. We got to 21.5. Here's what we want to do next year. How do you sort of manage that gap?

A Um, that's a great question. Um, and, and that's a question, you know, we, we've talked about a million times over, uh, just because naturally you're like, well, well, shoot, we, we, we, we fell short, right? Now, I think the biggest thing about, you know, starting a startup and, and building it the way we have built it through Bootstrap is, you know, we got to find a lot of positive and sometimes negative situations. And one would say that, hey, gosh, you know, we missed the mark by a huge amount, man. You all suck. We all suck, man. Let's, let's close the business down, right? Or it's not going to work out. We got to fire everyone, right? But that wasn't the case. The case was we grew by 19%. We went from 18 to 21 and a half, and all we had to do was say, all right, well, why, why was there a gap? Where, where did we fail, but not really fail, but we can learn from so we can make 2024 a better year to get closer to the goals we want to reach, right? Um, so we had to look back, and we had to look back at the mistakes we made, because we're not perfect. Um, I think when you're Starting a company from scratch, no matter which way you look at it, you don't have a bunch of big wigs that can call you up and get advice from you got to figure out yourself, you know? Um, and with our company, you know, one of the biggest things we've done to kind of, um, you know, start our organizati…

AI assessment note: “all we had to do was say, all right, well, why, why was there a gap?”

Q ramp? And sometimes most founders are too aggressive with this. Well, they think it's going to ramp. It's going to take six months. It actually takes 12. They think one sales rep can hit a million dollar quota. They can only hit 500 K quota, right? Were there like, what were the bottlenecks for you where the, the, the, the Excel model didn't pan out how you thought it would?

A Um, it came, it came down to like how we look. So we have a couple of different ways of actually getting sales, right? So we have inside sale, which is in house that focuses on, you know, marketing efforts to get people to call us throughout these communities. And we have a 10 nine nine channel that are boots on the ground that are independent contractors that can work anywhere. Um, and then we have a w two model, right? And the w two model is what we invested in for the last couple of years, 2022 1023. And how we look at that is the w two model is more of a controllable thing because there's a lot of great individuals that don't want to be an independent contractor and be that entrepreneur, right?

AI assessment note: “So we have a couple of different ways of actually getting sales”