The Dream Outcome: From $300k to $5m EBITDA

And so you just kind of help them grow into their own, you know, their own kind of problem set and solution set. And, you know, it was great.

I think the only time that it was figured out was I remember one of my managers, we were going out somewhere and, you know, he said, hey, you know, the, you know, our CEO, our owner, he's, you know, he never really listens to us, but ever since she came on board, like, he's a lot more receptive to the ideas like this one. And then another guy said, wait a minute, that wasn't his idea. That was…

And so someone said, hey, do you, do you own the company? Like, do you like, what's going on here, right? And so by that time, there was a year and a half, and it's like I invested with the owner and we're still partners today.

Actually, he's one of my best friends and father figure to me. And, you know, he's. He's one of those guys who, you know, didn't have a formal education, but it's one of the smartest business people I know.

And so, yeah, and, and I, and I still give that advice to people today is, I know you want to get the old owner out of there quickly, but there's so much tribal knowledge stored in there that if you can keep that person engaged and extract as much information as you can, that's only going to benefit you, right?

That was. There's so much there, Linh. But just to follow up with a few things. First of all, on the way that you were guiding people to kind of embrace technology, you know, step by step by step, little by little, it sounds like you approached it that way not because that's your, you know, quote, leadership style, but because they saw you as a peer, so you couldn't really mandate.

That was the only way that you were going to make changes. Because. Because from their perspective, you were just the IT guy, so you couldn't tell them what to do. Kind of interesting.

And I guess over the 12 and 18 months that you were working kind of shoulder to shoulder with them and, you know, not scared to be in the trenches. In fact, in the very. In the trenches very much with them, you were earning trust.

But there, there is the obvious question of, like, you had been undercover and so when this reveal happened that, oh, actually Linh is owner or part owner of this business, do you think that there was a cost and trust to that? And, and, and, and follow up to that, would you advocate searchers do a similar thing about the being the underco?

So, to be clear, I never lied. No one ever asked me, right? And I always told myself, when someone asks me, I will say it, but no one asked me.

They just assumed that I was the IT guy. And so I would say never to go in and lie, but I would definitely say that, you know, my advice is always to go in there and say, this is a partnership, right? Like, you know, if was coming in there and Will, you're at the company, Will, I.