Elbow Grease to Exit & Internal Tool Spinoffs with Joe Manganelli

This week's episode of the Big 4 Transparency podcast is sponsored by Forwardly. Huge thank you to Forwardly for sponsoring the podcast, but also a huge thank you for what they do in terms of helping firms improve your operating margins. So if you are in firm operations, I would encourage you to take a look at how much your payment processing fees might be costing you currently. It may just be a couple percent here and there, but once your firm scales, we may be talking many tens or even maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars that are not going to your firm's bottom line and are not available for reinvestment in your firm. Forwardly helps you not only smooth all of these processes out with seamless AP and AR, but they also do so using ACH payments in an automated fashion, helping you save on payment processing fees. So make sure you check out forwardly.com for your business payment solutions. Hello and welcome to the Big 4 Transparency podcast. I'm joined today by Joe Manganielli, the CRO of Amalgam and former founder and CEO of Calculate. Welcome to the pod, Joe. Thanks, Dominic. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I recovered for bridging the gap. That's where I got to meet you. That's where I find a lot of my more interesting guests is I get to meet them at conferences and chat them up and pretty quickly, I was like, Oh, this guy is interesting. I like your style. I also like that you had hosted an open bar event for us to go to one of the nights. So thank you for that. Yeah, of course. That's a really polite way of saying that I don't shut up. So you're clearly have gotten used to this on air thing. So nice work. I mean, I'm, I'm right there with you. That's that's why you end up, you know, hosting a podcast is that I'm like, I didn't get to talk to this person a lot. And so I get to dig a lot deeper on air with everyone here listening. So yeah, and I think after a couple drinks, I was able to convince you that my college radio experience would lend itself well to this. So you know that maybe that put me over the edge for you. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about your journey. You have a fascinating journey where you, I mean, you, you built and sold an outsourced accounting practice. But you're actually an engineer. And then you ended up in FP&A. How does that happen? Yeah, for sure. So I for for for university, I went to Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. It's sort of a historic engineering school. And so I studied engineering there. And at the beginning of schooling, I really thought I wanted to be an engineer. But as I went through it, I kind of liked the business side of things more and more. And by the end of end of school, and I was graduating, I also noticed that all of my job opportunities were sort of in across the country, kind of out in the middle of nowhere at times. And I really wanted to move to New York. And so I had stumbled upon a couple finance opportunities, including a role at Goldman Sachs and was placed at Goldman. And you know, they were just looking for kind of smart driven people, which I apparently convinced them I fit into that mold and and and found a role at Goldman and got placed into their kind of one of their internal FP&A roles. So yeah, that's, that's kind of like a stepping into that that trajectory is how it went. And like, what was the learning curve like on that? Because I mean, not only was it FP&A, and I worked in FP&A previously, and I leaned very heavily on kind of my, you know, accounting and maybe like Excel knowledge and modeling and things like that. And not only were you in FP&A, you're also in FP&A at Goldman, which I imagine is a relatively kind of high pressure, high expectations environment on that. Yeah, no, for sure. I think that early on, I really noticed that I could learn the accounting and the the GL and those types of things. But some of the behaviors were a little bit different in the sense of just the pace of movement and everything like that. And I remember kind of putting together some early analyses thinking that like, my work needed to be get checked or like all of those science classes had taught me that number of significant digits and your formulas need to tie and I sort of submitted something to my manager and he just like took it and ran with it. And I thought to myself, wait, no one's gonna check this, like, are we gonna like double check that this is correct. And so I think the kind of level of rigor that comes along with engineering is maybe less evident in finance, but I think it gave me a really good foundation to pay attention to those little things because as you know, as well as anyone, those little things add up at scale. Yeah, there's nothing like moving like, you know, tens of millions of dollars around and you're like 25 and you're like, oh, yeah, I was just like on a bender last weekend. Like you guys are cool with this? They're like, yeah, sure. No problem. Yeah, I've I always found that really funny in some of those roles, for sure. And then what kind of compelled you to, you know, leave from that experience and go like start your own practice with Calculate? Yeah, for sure. So I sort of had this like monkey on my back that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and wanted to kind of start my own business. But I sort of jokingly say I never had an idea good enough to really get something going. And I had some sort of failed ideas that never got off the ground. But eventually after doing that for some time, I realized that I actually developed a skill there that was marketable. And so I sort of thought, hey, I can take my finance and accounting skills. And I was talking to some early stage companies who really were looking for like a CFO COO kind of role and realized they didn't really have the workflow or cash flow for a full time hire. So I thought, you know, I can I can bring them something and and I can kind of bring kind of that Fortune 500 level kind of rigor and that engineering rigor to kind of early stage companies who maybe aren't necessarily getting it from some of the mom and pop accounting shops. So that's sort of like a little bit of that desire to start something and then identity identifying that it was available and kind of I could market myself is sort of the foundations of Calculate. And so in early 2017, launched that full time as a sort of an outsource finance and accounting shop for emerging companies. That's cool. And where did those like early leads come from? Like where did you get that kind of initial client base to launch that up? Because by the time you sold, I think you said you had 45 ish headcount. Yeah. Yeah. We had probably 100 active 90 to 100 active clients. And then we had peaked at around 40 for something like that headcount when we sold in 2013 or sorry 2023. But yeah, initial initial is just elbow grease, man. It's going out there and talking to as many people as you can, telling them what you do and just building awareness. I think, you know, the biggest thing for me of any early stage company, whether it be a software business or a services or whatever it may be, is just like building awareness and letting people know what you're doing. And, you know, so I think for me, it was a lot of like elbow grease of letting people know what we're doing, doing some projects for free to just give people experience and converting that to paid under billing stuff, just like being really hungry in the beginning. And I think, you know, I probably have a different perspective than a lot of others around like how you get your first clients or how you price and stuff like that. But I think being really hungry, really eager to prove yourself is, you know, had worked well for me in that stage. Yeah. Interesting. I always ask that because some people have these like crazy stories of like, oh, you know, I subcontracted for the old firm that I was at to like make ends meet while I was picking up clients and here and there. And but you just kind of did the thing you went all in, just decided to kind of get out there and start sharing the word, I guess, maybe organically a lot in conversation. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I remember it was like, you know, I had I had gotten everything together. I had calculate all planned out. I had like a logo and stuff like that. And I remember I had like the end of year like bonus comp came out and like I was just ready to to quit. And I just like couldn't do it. And I was like, all right, I'm at the end of the diving board. Like I just need to jump in. And I remember thinking like worst case scenario, I fail in six months and I like get a job like this somewhere else. Like that was always an option. I felt like that really made me feel like, OK, what do I have to lose here? And then sort of jumping in the deep end and and yeah, going for it. I was so busy in my day job. I didn't have time to moonlight with this. So it was either all in or all out. And yeah, going to networking events where I remember like going and getting a hundred names and maybe only one of them was worth a follow up and things like that. So so really kind of that like, you know, the phrase I use is elbow grease. Just really, really going for it. Yeah. And how long into the calculate journey until you were able to, you know, maybe pay yourself a salary that was somewhat replacing what you were earning before? And, you know, at what point were you like, OK, this is like a real thing. And I think it kind of like scale this. Yeah, no, for sure. So I I don't think I ever paid myself the way I was getting paid before. So I was in I was in financial services and banking and and that sort of thing. But I also focused on building a company that had like really strong bones and I probably gave better benefits than I, you know, quote, should have or things to that nature. I really focused on having a really quality company in that sense. And, you know, a lot of times it might have been at my financial expense. So really like the first six months of calculate, I was all by myself. I didn't pay myself anything. By sort of October of twenty seventeen, I had hired in my first employee. I had started to pay myself a sort of modest draw and then sort of built it up from there. And so, you know, I would say I never really paid myself a salary the way I had gotten paid before. But but really just like loved building it so much that was kind of eager to pour those those those, you know, those monies back into the business rather than to myself. Yeah. Did you structure calculate as as a corporation or as a partnership? It was just a partnership LLC to start. And then I was the primary owner, but had, you know, a few people who really put their confidence in me, maybe took some, you know, took some lower pay to join and really like bought in on this. And they, you know, they were rewarded with some equity as well. But but, you know, one thing I would say, like I didn't structure it as like a true partnership where we had like a whole set of partners who are running things in that way. We had some folks who were important to the business and owned equity. But, you know, my sort of model was very much like driven off of me for better or for worse. Yeah, that's kind of like a new thread I'm pulling on of like a lot of the kind of fastest growing firms that remained independent for, I mean, until they were acquired or whatever that might be. I find like really had this different mentality of like, you know, traditional accounting firms is like everything is done in function of like, what are the partner distributions we can pull out? Whereas like some of these, some of these like kind of newer firms or faster scaling ones will, some of them won't even take that actual structuring like from a corporate perspective. They'll just be more like of like a corporation versus like a flow through entity so that they can build up that war chest and kind of like reinvest more and don't have like the flow through impact on taxation and things like that. I'm not necessarily convinced though that's the right move either. I think when I built my firm, I was very much against like anti-traditional partnership. But I think like having had calculate, sold it, looking back, I'd say like there's a lot of value to the partnership model. I think, you know, when you think about giving someone equity, it has to be because they're valuable, more valuable to you than elsewhere, right? So usually those people have the technical ability, they can do the work, they can manage people and they can also bring in business. Like that's worth trading a piece of the business for. So I'd say like, you know, I have a better appreciation of that now. I'm not sure the corporate model has sort of the longevity and staying power to that. Also, like how are we sort of incentivizing the next generation of leaders for the business? So if I'm a manager at a firm like that, like is this just a job to me or am I sort of marching on towards like a partnership ownership, like a bigger part of this firm, of this work, of what I've built here? So I think like, you know, those are definitely the questions I have as we're sort of in this phase of a lot of like PE money, a lot of holdco money, a lot of C Corp kind of structures and that sort of thing. Yeah. And then what was the kind of reasoning behind deciding you wanted to sell? Or was it just that like an offer came along and you were like, well, you know, maybe I'll, maybe I'll jump at this. I mean, there were some people who would poke around. I think like for me, I really loved building the business. Like when we were 25, we were building and like proving the hypothesis and maybe I'm just like a glutton for punishment, but you know, there was times we had 13 grand in the bank account and like payroll was in four days and we need, you know, there were some times where like, you know, and I sort of look back at that really enjoying it. I think for me, we got to a point in the business where we had, I was really proud of the business we had, but not necessarily excited to continue to build it by myself in that way. And so I ran a little bit of a process in 23, got, you know, probably had 30 conversations, you know, reach out to 30 people, 20 conversations and about 10 offers. So I feel really good about that for running a process myself. But, you know, ultimately looked at one that was like, looked at some options that were really like going to be able to help provide the kind of, you know, additional structure and that for the next phase of growth. And, you know, for me personally, I sort of missed that earlier stage, kind of more of the entrepreneurial build rather than kind of the operational march. Yeah. And did you find yourself at the time you sold, maybe still very like in the weeds or like, had you implemented anything resembling like an EOS or like a, you know, an operating structure like that? I would say a yes and a no would be my in the weeds, yes and no. So like, I wasn't really doing any client work. I was a point of contact and it was always really important to me that like the clients could always reach out to me if like something was wrong and I would make sure that would get fixed. But I wasn't like doing reconciliations or something. Obviously that's difficult. And so like, I think that part was always like, you know, so I wasn't doing that kind of stuff. But I think also like, you know, I didn't have that kind of partnership model. It was very much run through me. So like a lot of the decisions were run through me and things to that nature, which, you know, can be taxing from an emotional and personal standpoint and also can be, you know, the business moves faster, but then like kind of a lot of things run through you. So, you know, I think they're, they're, they're, you know, that's kind of my yes and no answer. But as far as like doing the client work, I had pretty much moved on from that for the most part. Okay. Interesting. But I did run sales. I pretty much ran the sales process. Like I think I did a pretty effective job of creating a sales engine. So like, you know, the vast majority of deals kind of came through me or came into the business or I like managed that process. So kind of like a, you know, part-time headcount of my headcount was spent driving the sales process. Okay. And then you basically built Amalgam quasi like as an internal tool within Calculate, it sounds like. Like this was kind of like almost like a spinoff of something that you had been doing internally. Totally. Can you talk us through like what, what was that process like? Did your firm hire like engineers to do this or, or was it just like you then later kind of did the software build out of like a bunch of processes you had internally or what did that look like? No, that's a great question. So it was kind of a perfect storm for us in the sense that like we were doing the work within Calculate and just noticing how inefficient it is to log into Stripe, like get a two-factor navigator report, enter the information, downloads, all that kind of stuff, just to get something. And we're thinking there has to be a better way. And one of the early employees at Calculate, Ben, who's now my partner in Amalgam, he had done some, he had sort of self-development, even though he was an investment banker previously, he had taught himself to code. So we just started writing some scripts to be able to like grab that data from Stripe or from Shopify or write some journal entries into QuickBooks. And it quickly kind of grew into something that was a really great product for us at Calculate. And we had additional productivity and were able to do processes kind of faster than other folks. And it was great. And we were thinking about this, like this is going to be a really great business. We've got a core solid services and then we've got a software business that goes along with it. So yeah, that's kind of like, I mean, I can talk for days about it, but I'll let you get your, you know, how you want to stream our conversation. But like, it was a really great product for us and it originally started. And then we said, we could probably sell this to some other people. And that was kind of the kernel of what got us to today. That's cool. I've encountered some businesses who tried to do that, but like maybe that was the plan from the start. And, you know, some of them have since pivoted, like had raised VC money to build internal software that they were going to sell and then ended up using that VC money to just buy other firms because they realized that it was not working super well. So, you know, I mean, I'm sure those VCs will get their money back, but it's, they're probably not thrilled about that per se. But like that does happen. And so like when you were running the firm, were you like successful in selling this externally already or you really needed to kind of go all in to be able to do that? Yeah, that's a, yeah. So I'd say first is we never took on any outside money. Like we had like a line of credit and stuff like that, like normal businesses do, but like we never took on any VC money. I mean, we shopped around for it a little bit, but our intention first was like that Amalgam, at the time we called the hub was a part of Calculate that we could sell. And so, you know, I think we underestimated the complexities or challenges of selling a software. I kind of like services sales came really naturally to me. People tend to trust me. I think I'm trustworthy by the way, but you know, kind of make people feel comfortable and kind of get you in the door and then do a good job, right? So like that was kind of the model, you know, selling a product's a little bit different. We hired in someone to kind of sell it. It wasn't going well. I think it was a combination of like maturity of the product, trying to sell it from within Calculate to other accounting firms was a little bit challenging and just like market awareness is always tough. So we decided to actually separate Amalgam from Calculate like mid 22 into 23. And so we spun it out as its own business and like a standalone thing. So it had its own brand, it had its own process. Ben also left Calculate at that time to then head up Amalgam. So he continued to run Amalgam. I continued to run Calculate. And then over the course of 23 into 24, I sold and then kind of moved to a consultancy and then like moved on entirely from Calculate. And then in the last year, we're in the middle of 25 now, like the middle of 24, I joined Amalgam with the really purpose to kind of run front of house. So there was no one really driving sales, no one driving marketing, kind of customer support. We'd had some success. We had some like pretty big accounts. Our largest customer was 300 users at the time, but like not a lot of depth there. So yeah, we've been able to like make a lot of headway. We've got multiple top 25 CPA firms are our customers. We've got dozens and dozens of others and we've got integrations with various systems that whatever NetSuite and Intact. And to be able to, I was working with a customer last week where she did batches of 5,000 lines of different months for her to load in journal entries into Sage Intact. So like to be able to do that kind of stuff is as much as anything. Interesting. That's really cool. Before we move on to like what you're up to with Amalgam and some of the details of like how it works. Sorry? No, I just get excited. I'm just a nerd. Oh yeah. There you go. It's weird to be on your show and he starts talking about, all of the like intricacies of a software. So yeah, go ahead. Before we move into that, I want to talk a little bit more about the sale of Calculate. So who were like these buyers that you, A, I mean reached out to like who made sense and who ultimately ended up acquiring? Yeah, so there is a few different types of buyers. Obviously the strategic buyers were really interested. I mean, the outsourced accounting space is pretty hot. Many sort of larger accounting firms are looking to build or deepen their bench around the outsourced accounting space. So I think they had an appeal. It's like, oh, we can bring in Calculate and like Joe would be a good kind of leader of that to like drive that. So those were a lot, but then there are also financial buyers, whether rollups or sort of that kind of thing. So yeah, so we had a couple of different deals we looked at. We ultimately went with a deal where we were acquired by a company called Highline who's backed by the Red Iron Group and they sort of had a business existing and kind of combined us into one firm and then Calculate really rolled up into Highline. So the firm is Highline, they're operating and sort of going forward. Okay, so like acquired by probably a PE backed firm, basically by the sounds of it. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly it. And in 23, were we seeing kind of the valuation start to kind of run up in the way they are now or do you sometimes look back and say, damn, I wish I was selling this in 2025 or kind of where were things at for that? So like, I would say it depends so much. I mean, in 23, I would say like, generally the rule of thumb I think is that valuations for businesses like that are kind of one X of revenue up until you get to like kind of larger businesses that are maybe in like the 20, $30 million or in terms of revenue. But generally that, and I saw that to be true. I got offers between like kind of 0.5 X to 1.5 X. So I'd say like that theme was true. And the deals varied. Some folks wanted to like PE money into the business and kind of run with it. Others were looking to incorporate or wanted to bring the business in and that would be like the jewel, if you will, of their outsourced accounting. Some were just like, hey, we'll take your head count and like roll you in kind of thing. Like there were definitely a variety. I think it's fundamentally different than it was 20 years ago, where the deals you're getting, just to use round numbers, if it's a $5 million deal, like all or most of that is probably equity and like earn out over time and things of that nature. Now, I think you're seeing a lot of deals that are maybe 100% cash or over 50% cash upfront and other cash is guaranteed over time. So definitely different structures, especially with the advent of PE money kind of coming in and acquiring businesses like this. I'm fortunate that I, you can tell I talk a lot and I talk to a lot of firms because I'm selling amalgam to them. And so I'm able to get some of the things that they're hearing on the street too, which is interesting. And I'd say like, yeah, there's a lot of demand. I might talk to, you know, for every 10 buyers or something, there's probably only one seller. So there's a lot more demand on the buy side now, which, you know, in any market is more drive up valuations. Yeah, it's pretty crazy now. But again, in 2023, I think it was already maybe like kicking off a little bit. It's a little bit different, but. Macro environment was a little different too. Then I think, you know, I was talking to a firm owner today, we're talking about amalgam, but then also we were talking about like where the things were. And I think, you know, the market kind of, kind of peaked in Q3 of 22 and then 23 into 24 was rougher, but I think we're feeling a lot more, a lot of stabilization now that we weren't feeling kind of in that time. Yeah, no, I definitely agree. And with like firms I'm working with, you know, they tend to be more buyers when they're kind of in growth mode and things like that. And I can tell that there's kind of this shift of like, oh, like we're maybe entering kind of growth mode. Like we're still, we're trying to figure that out. We think we are. So you and I both just hoping for that to solidify into something solid, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. And I think, you know, services can be tough, right? Like there's a lot, it's, I always jokingly say like a services business is like, when it's going really, really well, it's just okay. And when it's not going really well, it feels like it really sucks, you know? And so like, you've got like that to sort of manage too. There's a little level of that. So, you know, even if things feel like they're going well or your macro indicators are positive, like executing the work that we're talking about is still a challenge, right? You have to be on all the time. You have to be grinding. You kind of like, you're kind of the goal. You can't, you can't ever let your guard down. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, so let's talk about Amalgam now, because I think that's really interesting to have someone, I mean, you know, Goldman FP&A, like you were in the trenches of FP&A, like, you know, doing all that work and understand the needs and the pain points and all that. So what makes Amalgam unique and like, what's like the kind of short elevator pitch of like, why do people need to be using this? Yeah, for sure. I think a lot in the accounting space, particularly outsourced accounting, fund administration, tax, things like that, we're just using a lot of disparate systems for our clients and they typically don't talk to each other. And so what Amalgam does is allows you to connect to those disparate systems, even write information and data to them and it uses Excel or Google Sheets as an interface. So we're pretty proud of kind of how it's built. We're not asking our users to learn anything new. They're able to use Excel. We also don't store the data. It's the user who's actually going in and grabbing that data. So I jokingly say, if you ever get hacked, you're just going to find a bunch of code that tells you how to format an Excel report. So we're really proud of how it's simply built, it's effectively built, got the SOC 2, all that kind of stuff rolling. And then I think a use case might be, let's say you just have a consumer products business, right? Connecting Shopify directly to QuickBooks is a disaster. It blows it up, all these SKUs, all things like that. Amalgam allows you to, on one tab of your workbook, pull in the data from Shopify. And on your second tab, be able to link to the first tab and format a journal entry or a set of journal entries, or you can book like your net and gross revenue, your inventory, your cogs, all of that kind of stuff. So I don't have to log into Shopify, I don't have to log into QuickBooks. I can write my kind of monthly closed process right there. And then, oh, by the way, I can just make a third tab where I download the P&L and balance sheet and I can make sure that entries look good and I feel good about it, right? So you can imagine the amount of time I'm saving by not having to manually key in things or download CSVs and open them and all that kind of good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's like a big prompt I like give people in general. It's like anytime you need to have two screens open because you're just like keying in things from one to the other, like that is like your sign of like, hey, this is a process that you need to kind of like smooth out a lot. And so if I'm using Amalgam, am I just basically clicking like refresh on like a monthly basis and whatever and it's pulling kind of all the updated things in and just speeding up the close on that front? Yeah, I think that's a good little one. I kind of say there's three major kind of use cases. I think one's around the monthly close. So let's say I have a monthly close template or I have my schedule. Every month I go in there after the month is done. I make a copy of that last month's file. I update the dates, update the reports and then kind of like upload my journals or my invoices and all that kind of stuff. So reducing the time to close the books too is around just reporting. So a lot of our customers like just prefer the dashboarding and flexibility that you can build with Excel. So being able to pull across multiple systems to populate my monthly dashboard, like reducing time there. And then the last, which is my favorite, is really around like data transformations or rebuilding books. So you've got a client that has cash accounting, you want to move them to accrual or someone is moving from some arcane system into NetSuite, we allow you to basically bulk edit that information. We find on average that those processes are cut in about half in terms of the time it takes. So, you know, sometimes there are 100, 200 hours. Imagine cutting that in half, you're able to get a lot of scale in your processes. Yeah. Well, so I very specifically when I worked in FQ&A was at a type of place that like probably kind of needed something like this where, you know, we had GitHub dashboard, Shopify dashboard. We had like every single one of these things and it was just, it was a lot and they, you know, we had a data team and whatnot, but there was some like infrastructure issues and every once in a while they'd get pulled into question and they would just say like, you know, the CEO would say like, oh, I want like a manual reconciliation this month. And it was like, it was an absolute disaster. And my thing is for those like occasional instances, like I wouldn't necessarily want to move everything to a whole like, you know, next gen FQ&A platform. Like I was a Google Sheets guy. Like I wanted to work in Google Sheets and I wanted to do my thing. And so, um, I definitely see the value in that 100%. Yeah, and I think further to it, like, you know, there's tons of smart, capable, interesting people in our space. But like the challenge with our work at times is either if we're working within a company or working for a company, rarely is that work the primary reason that business exists. And thus, it's rare that you get prioritized, like quality, like technical resources to be able to build something, right? So it's like, Dominic, go figure this out, right? Like, for you to be able to go grab a tool, and within 10 minutes, have it connected to your systems, and you're pulling information into Excel, like, that could have saved you a tremendous amount of time or, you know, whatever it may be. But I think like, I think that's a value too, in the sense of this is an area that doesn't get the best resources in terms of internal development. So how can we work with that confines and sort of get stuff done? Yeah. And as someone who's like, run an accounting practice yourself, and is now selling into accounting practices, like, what are some of the best practices there? Like, where are you? Where are you finding people? Where are you finding success in terms of this might just be me shamelessly trying to like, rip off your, your sales knowledge? I'm, yeah, I've not invented anything new. Yeah, no, I think one of the biggest learnings for me, is that, you know, the accounting space is really crowded. accountants are generally people who are cheap, even when it's not their money. That's not a bad quality, but just like, you know, but I also think that many of the people I'm selling to who make decisions are also selling themselves or the partners in firms or principals at companies. And so I think really teaching, taking more of a consultative kind of relationship based approach to sales is is something that works for us. And I've been more comfortable doing I think more of the transactional nature of sales is something that doesn't work well for for this audience. And so I know there's a lot of sort of classic software salespeople who would disagree with me of like the, you know, a fast no and like, you know, get get to a decision quickly. But, you know, I've had instances where I talked to people for 12 months, and then they come on and they have a use case. And it's like, it's not much for me to do. to keep up that relationship over time, but being present, continuing to raise awareness and sort of respecting the fact that like, these people are used to selling in a relationship way. And so let me sell to them in a relationship way. Interesting. Yeah, I, I agree with that take for sure. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Joe. Thanks for sharing your journey and sharing what you're up to now. For Amalgam, like who who should get in touch and where should they reach you? Yeah, I mean, anyone who's leading generally an outsourced accounting fund administration type business, where you're dealing a lot, a lot with those disparate systems and want like a really easy way to increase productivity, we're talking like on average 20 hours per month per user. So you can imagine that kind of lights up. But, but yeah, just reaching out to me. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, but always my email joe at amalgam dot me me is a is a is the easiest way to find me and I'm sure it'll be attached to the to the podcast here. But you can tell I'm pretty talkative. I like to talk shop. So even if you're lukewarm about the lukewarm about the software, I'd always love to get new perspectives from folks. Awesome. Thank you so much, Joe. And like you hinted to, I will make sure I include all of those in the podcast description for anyone who's interested. Thank you very much. Yep. Thanks. It's been a pleasure. Transcribed by https://otter.ai