Episode 5 - Bruce Vann, CEO LuXout Products Incorporated

Bruce Vann is a self-funded searcher who has acquired 3 businesses since launching his search fund journey in 2019.

LuXout Products Inc. is a stage curtain company and he has vertically integrated it with subsequent acquisitions after first taking over in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

In this episode Bruce talks about building an employee culture of ownership and excellence and the self-determination that entrepreneurship allows after getting fired from 3 jobs in 4 years.

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Transcript

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00:00:02 NICK LALL
 Today, our guest is Bruce Van, a self-funded acquisition entrepreneur who has acquired three businesses after he started a search fund journey just a few years ago. The businesses that he owns now include Lux Out products, Incorporated and Blinds and More.

00:00:19 NICK LALL
Prior to watching his search, Bruce worked at Exxon Mobile and had an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. I had a chance to talk to you a few weeks ago and your story was really inspirational. We talk a lot about the financial benefits of search funds on this podcast and those are definitely there.

00:00:36 NICK LALL
But for some people it just really makes sense beyond that. So I think a great place to start would be to learn a bit more about where you were when you first decided that you wanted to launch a search and what, how you made that

00:00:49 BRUCE VANN
Yeah, so I was in

00:00:52 BRUCE VANN
my third job in four years and I was beating the bushes of my network and I went and talked with a gentleman named Kevin Wilson who was CEO of Buzz franchise brands in Virginia Beach. Because by this point, by the time I lost my third job, I'd come back to the area that I grew up in which is Tidewater, Virginia. And sending in his office and we have a conversation and at the end of the conversation he says, Bruce, you ever thought about doing a search fund?

00:01:22 BRUCE VANN
And I was thinking, oh, okay, well, no, because I just didn't think that that was something for me or something that was even possible for me to me that was just out of reach. But then I thought about it some more like just from that conversation and I had a dream about it. And once I had to dream about it, I was like, oh yeah, this is like I knew in my gut this was for me.

00:01:41 BRUCE VANN
And then I pursued it and that was January of 2019 and I bought my, I bought Lux Out products and cooperated in February of 2020. So that's how that

00:01:54 NICK LALL
And you decided to do a self-funded search. So what was the reason for that and how did that process go for

00:02:01 BRUCE VANN
So I mean, I talked, when I first decided to do that, like to go do a search fund, I talked with a bunch of people, like a whole lot of people. And I could kind of tell, and I'm not trying to be mean or judgmental when I say this, but I could kind of tell when I talk with folks that they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, cool your jets. You don't know what, like you don't have them thought about this or you haven't done that, this that did it.

00:02:24 BRUCE VANN
And this is, this is not that kind of business. And by that point, I was kind of just tired of that energy of anybody like anybody doubting what I

00:02:33 BRUCE VANN
Whether that was because of the way that I talk or because I'm black or whatever, I don't know. I was just tired of it. And I just said, well, all right, screw it. And if I have enough of my own to figure this out, I'm going to figure this out on my own. And so that's what

00:02:48 NICK LALL


00:02:50 NICK LALL
people say that the benefit of entrepreneurship or having ownership over what you do, that you don't have to deal with that anymore. That's awesome. Yeah.

00:03:00 NICK LALL
You knew that and you were able to do that. But given that that was a self-funded search, how did you, I guess people always say like the benefit of the traditional is that you get the mentorship and you get the investors who have their resources in terms of helping you with the proprietary search and all that. So how did you figure all that out on your own and how Steve was learning curve once you decided to start searching?

00:03:21 NICK LALL
The learning curve of which part? Like the whole process, whether that was like the outreach or the due diligence or it wasn't, I mean, the learning

00:02:58 BRUCE VANN


00:03:21 BRUCE VANN


00:03:29 BRUCE VANN
the learning curve wasn't steepen. The way that I just figured it out was like I had to do, I had to look at what I had in my end. So when I was at Darden, I took a class in entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial thinking and there's two camps of thought with it.

00:03:44 BRUCE VANN
There's the entrepreneurial thinking, or at least there was back when I was there, they're starting something from scratch. And then there's the entrepreneurial thinking of how you buy something of your own. I was only exposed to the one starting stuff from scratch, but one of the principles is the bird in the hand principle.

00:04:01 BRUCE VANN
You start with what you have right there in your hand and you figure it out from there. It's not, it isn't rocket science. It's nothing like that.

00:04:09 BRUCE VANN
It was just out of necessity. I said, okay, well, I'm probably not going to be able to go to a bunch of investors and say, hey, look, I need you to invest a total of, I don't know, let's say $350, $200,000 in $350, $400,000 in me to live for two years based on to get the option to buy something later on. And I wasn't in the place to be able to do that.

00:04:36 BRUCE VANN
Not even have the best alternative to negotiate a degree. So I tried at that time to get on board with one of these accelerators because I thought it made sense even from like what I was exposed to all of this, even back then I was thinking, all right, it made sense to me to try to do, to have one or fewer conversations for investors because just getting the dies- bank on board, getting the seller on board. If you have a broker, getting that broker on board, getting, if you're using SBA funding, getting the SBA on

00:05:08 BRUCE VANN
board, coordinating all of that is like courting cats and to do that and compound it with, let's say you have 10 sellers, I mean, 10 investors, that's challenging. That's really, really challenging and time consuming and it can be very frustrating. It can make a very challenging and frustrating transaction that much more challenging and frustrating and I'm a simple guy.

00:05:29 BRUCE VANN
So when I looked at it through that lens and I didn't get in, I didn't, the body accepted me into, into the accelerator program. I said, okay, well, I just have to scrape together my own capital and figure this thing out and that's what it

00:05:45 BRUCE VANN


00:05:47 BRUCE VANN
And as far as I'm sorry to your other point about the mentorship and all of that, I mean, I can see that depends on the business and the industry that you're in, but for businesses that I wanted to go after, I like stuff that's simple, that's been around a long time, that I'm not going to try to change and revamp or anything like that. I like stuff that's, it does not, I don't like complicated businesses that require a lot of, well, you have to do this this way and you have to do that that way.

00:06:16 BRUCE VANN
No, I want it very, very, very structured and I like things, the systems to already be in place. And maybe I can tweak it and add a little bit of value, but even if I don't add value, I'm still going to come out ahead just because of investing over time, time in the market of owning a business basically. Does that make

00:06:36 NICK LALL
Yeah, it does. I guess the follow up that would be, it seems like you knew basically the sort of business that you were interested in. I was wondering when you were searching for a business, if there were any parameters other than just one that, like for the attributes that you just mentioned and then also how long it was like about a year before you closed on Luxado's wondering how many businesses were ones that looked like the good offers before you looked at them and why it was Luxado the one that, yeah,

00:07:04 BRUCE VANN
yeah, okay. So your first question is like what my search parameters were, if I remember correct, if I'm hearing you correctly, I wanted to get something that, I was looking at businesses, let's say less than $2

00:07:19 BRUCE VANN
for their asking

00:07:22 BRUCE VANN
Early on, I would try to go in and look at businesses that I like and then low-ball them, not that I was trying to low-ball them, but I was just like, I'm trying to protect my multiple so that in case something goes really wrong, I am still covered, right? Well, what I found was you really just frustrated, you waste your time and you frustrate yourself and the seller and the broker. If you do that, so toward the end, what I was doing was only looking for businesses that had an asking price to an SDE ratio.

00:07:51 BRUCE VANN
Really, I'm not even so much SDE, but SDE is what you have to go off if you're looking at brokers. But using SDE is a proxy to guess EBITDA, really trying to get down to EBITDA as a relates to asking price to pay what I felt like was an acceptable multiple from the business. So then I went and looked at just businesses that met that criteria and it took the pull down from like thousands of businesses to maybe like five

00:08:22 BRUCE VANN


00:08:23 BRUCE VANN
And then once I have those five or 10, go and meet with the brokers and the sellers. If I had the chemistry and this business still looks good and everything like that, I'm putting an L-O-I in immediately. It's like not wasting any time.

00:08:34 BRUCE VANN
That's how it was toward the end. So I was industry agnostic, but I wanted to make sure that I was very careful about what sort of fixed costs, especially that service fixed cost I was taking on with these businesses. And that was really it.

00:08:50 BRUCE VANN
I was going to buy something. I mean, I went to search as far as ways Kansas, literally went to Kansas. It's been some time out there trying to close on a business that was out there. And there were other ones, there was like a landscaping business that I was looking at. There was a hot tub dealership that I was looking at. So there's all kinds of companies that I was looking at. No, didn't really care about the industry. I really just cared about those

00:08:36 NICK LALL
I

00:09:15 BRUCE VANN


00:09:17 NICK LALL
Yeah. And you were mostly just looking using brokers and you weren't doing a

00:09:23 NICK LALL


00:09:23 BRUCE VANN
I started out into proprietary search, but then I realized in the proprietary search, everybody thinks that baby is way more

00:09:30 BRUCE VANN
The benefit of a broker is that the seller has already had the come to Jesus moment where they're like, okay, you're not going to get seven and a half times of EBITDA on your business. That's not that's that has no growth over the last four or five years. That's just not, nobody's going to come along and save you and write you a big

00:09:52 BRUCE VANN
business. Maybe if you had grown it at 20, 25% a year,

00:09:57 BRUCE VANN
maybe somebody would consider doing that. But institutions and companies all over So that's the benefit of a broker in a proprietary search. Everybody thinks, oh yeah, my business is worth a whole lot in reality. It's a market humbles

00:10:10 NICK LALL
States and they don't only have knowledge, That's really interesting because I think sometimes people say the proprietary search maybe you can get better deals that way because there's not so competition. Maybe you

00:10:19 BRUCE VANN


00:10:21 BRUCE VANN
unable to crack the crack maybe somebody else has the skill set to do with it. That's not to say that people shouldn't do the proprietary. I've heard of some really great proprietary outcomes for purchases. I just never I just didn't have any

00:10:37 NICK LALL
with it. Sure. Yeah. And then for a lux out or the other business you were considering buying. How did you go about building the relationship with the seller and like how much of a role did

00:10:52 BRUCE VANN
a bigger role than I like to say, but I don't know how whether I did a good job of anything. The only thing I could say that I did was I was honest and I was principle and if I said I was

00:11:04 BRUCE VANN
I did it and I tried to do it quickly and sellers really appreciate that the other thing that really I think set me a bit apart was and I didn't understand this at the time, but I think being close geographically

00:11:18 BRUCE VANN
Put

00:11:22 BRUCE VANN
You may be as a buyer just like, Hey, look, I'll go and move to Kansas. I'm okay with that. This is not the other. But if you are from that part of the country or you're already living in the part of the country where the business is they're going to believe you're more likely to close and engage you more than

00:11:44 BRUCE VANN
that lives

00:11:47 BRUCE VANN
I think that's what I think that helped and this plus I just also had a great I just had a really great seller. I can't say that enough. He was great and he was just as much.

00:11:59 BRUCE VANN
He was he and I are built from the same cloth in some sense because we're very much like all right, if I'm going to go do this, if I say I'm going to go do this, this is what it is. I'm going to go do this. I'm not going to him and all I'm not going to try to complicate anything because business and operating the business is complicated enough and dealing with people and and their challenges all that is complicated enough. I'm not going to complicate

00:12:23 BRUCE VANN
transaction and if you have a motivated seller that has that sort of attitude and you can get the business under terms that are acceptable to you is

00:12:33 BRUCE VANN
what that's what I'll say

00:12:34 NICK LALL
what I'll say there. That's great. How was the takeover process did this seller help out much with that and what was were there any big surprises or challenges moving from being someone that previously had been in industry and now you're a business

00:12:49 BRUCE VANN
that

00:12:52 BRUCE VANN
So he trained we bought I bought the company on February 14th, 2020 right before the pandemic hit so and he had a cross training period of 30 days with me. So the middle of March, he cross train me and I was like, okay, I got this figured out I kind of understand not this into the sense that I knew all the nuances and nuts and bolts still don't really know all the nuances and nuts and bolts of the business, but I know how to manage it. So I'm going to make decisions that move things forward

00:13:22 BRUCE VANN
in the company. The biggest challenge and surprise was absolutely the pandemic. And this is fundamentally a stage curtain company that I bought right before nobody was in stages or on stages for a good 15, 16 months, something like that.

00:13:41 BRUCE VANN
And I was very in challenging. Fortunately, like I said, I bought an old, old boring business that had been around for such a long time and has such a long sales cycle that I was okay in the midst of all of that. But that was definitely the

00:13:57 BRUCE VANN
The second biggest challenge or surprise, excuse me was I'd say a labor shortage. Given the distance of blue collar

00:14:08 BRUCE VANN
depend on and moving curtains and track for curtains is just heavy installing it is heavy. It's I've done in myself. It's, it's really, you really go out there and you earn your paychecks.

00:14:21 BRUCE VANN
When you do that, it is, it is not forward. It is not for the week. I put it that way. everybody is going to be willing to do that. So when the pandemic came and there was this shortage of blue collar labor and this shortage of labor that would folks who would particularly of men who would go out and do the hard work that needs to be done in society, the heavy lifting,

00:14:45 BRUCE VANN
and figuratively, that kind of makes our society go. That was very, very challenging to deal with, very challenging, but we got through it. A grace of God.

00:14:58 NICK LALL
one of the hardest periods to take over business. Reason memory, I'm sure. Yeah. Great that things are so one strong now after having to deal

00:15:04 BRUCE VANN


00:15:10 NICK LALL
not sure if this is too personal, but how did you

00:15:16 NICK LALL
some of your own money to close on the business? Did you, was the rest who like bank debt or sell a financing, or how did you do the acquisition? Yeah, it

00:15:26 BRUCE VANN
Yeah, it wasn't, I mean, that's not too personal. So I had some savings because after you get fired in the third time, you're like, I'm not spending money on anything. Just in case these people, these new folks

00:15:39 BRUCE VANN
would don't like my black

00:15:42 BRUCE VANN
third time, I had some savings. And so I just put did like basically a roughly 10% down. I think I did closer to about 11 or 12% of my down payment. And the rest was financed through an SBA note. I did no seller financing, which I think was also attractive to my

00:16:04 BRUCE VANN
I think a lot of people in search, like there's like, there's certain cookie cutter things you want, but people want they like, okay, I have to have a business with recurring revenue. And I have to have seller financing. And all of that, I don't think you necessarily have to have either one of those two. I

00:16:18 BRUCE VANN
it's great to have a recurring revenue. And I think if I could have immediate equity in the business instead of seller financing, I'll take the immediate equity any day, any days, if I can get it in a attractive multiple. But that's different people have different things in ways that they make this decision. And it's like every deal is like a

00:16:16 NICK LALL
think

00:16:44 BRUCE VANN
mix of inputs that bring out the output of exactly what that particular deal looks like, even for that person, like even all three of my deals a bit

00:16:55 BRUCE VANN


00:16:55 NICK LALL


00:16:57 NICK LALL
could talk a little bit about the the subsequent two deals that you did after. Sure. First one, like what was the approach any different those times? And were there any learnings from the first one that you applied to the second two?

00:17:01 BRUCE VANN


00:17:09 BRUCE VANN
wouldn't say that there were any major learnings

00:17:13 BRUCE VANN
maybe a little bit, maybe so. So it was all vertical integration. So the first one was a stage curtain and shades manufacturing company.

00:17:23 BRUCE VANN
second one was a ribbon weight machine that was an input of ours. So basically we were sitting there just going about a normal course of business and my plant manager said, Hey, look, this supplier says that they're going to sell off this, basically sell off this business. That's in Georgia and they're trying to move the coast to Rika.

00:17:45 BRUCE VANN
so they sold it to me. And that was great. We have that on our plant right now in Richmond, Virginia.

00:17:52 BRUCE VANN
And then the third one was I had a conversation. This is why I'm always willing to have these conversations with folks, but I had a conversation with a prospective seller. I mean, it's our perspective of a searcher. He took me to get an Italian dinner in Richmond's guy. Brilliant guy works at McKenzie. He's real polished. He's doing great things even right now. But he worked at McKenzie. I don't

00:18:17 BRUCE VANN
anymore. But he was talking about going traditional versus self-funded and weighing that

00:18:24 BRUCE VANN
me. And we just sort of built a rapport. And so then a couple months later, he sent me an email, Hey, Bruce, you may want to check out this business.

00:18:32 BRUCE VANN
for sale in Virginia Beach, which is about two hours away from Richmond. That's in your industry. And it has a fairly decent multiple. I

00:18:42 BRUCE VANN
at it and it was perfect. Like it was like it fits. It fits so well. It fits so well. It's a small, it's a window treatment store. Blides and more. And the lady who founded it, her name's Teresa. She was great. She was like, she moved to Florida. And even as she was trying to sell me the business, because the process of selling it took longer than what she had hoped and expected. But by the time I bought it, she was already

00:18:47 NICK LALL
It

00:19:11 BRUCE VANN
the business was still doing well, basically doing what it's doing right now. So

00:19:19 BRUCE VANN
say that I had any major learnings that from one versus the other, but it was good. So the first one I bought with the buy out, I mean with SBA debt, the third one I bought with SBA debt, the second one I purchased in cash. I paid for the the written weight machine in cash. So

00:19:36 NICK LALL
yeah. Definitely. And just based on that, it sounds like you're doing a lot better financially than you are when you start the surge. Maybe talk a bit about how

00:19:47 BRUCE VANN
life. It's impacted in a lot of ways. So I'll tell you the story, man.

00:19:54 BRUCE VANN
I was so when I first started the search, I had a Ford vehicle. What was it like it was like a little I don't know it was a little Ford Ford in I mean four doors to day, but I forgot what the kind of car was focus. I had a Ford focus and When I lived in Houston like cuz I'm funny about this.

00:20:13 BRUCE VANN
will ride a car I'm not like big about getting a flashy car But I will ride a car until the wheels fall off and never have a car payment I heard this statistic today the 85% of Americans have car payments and I think that is the first place That and getting these luxury apartments like are the worst things you can do for in credit cards All through in carrying a credit card bounce on it to say all three of those things are the worst thing a person can do for themselves If they want to go

00:20:41 BRUCE VANN
to sell funded route. They want to build wealth to be able to do this So when I first started I had a car I had lost my second job in Houston and I had a car They got in that accident and the whole under part of that car got gutted because this tire just gutted that that Ford And I had a white bumper. I got it fixed, but it took a bunch of my savings Even at that time for 2016 and I kept that white bumper on my car all throughout my search And so then

00:21:06 BRUCE VANN
to buy Lux out and I'm like well I can't show up to work as president and owner of this company with the hoop ride Let me go ahead this this bumper actually painted so it looks it looks acceptable Like an acceptable car for for somebody to drive and so that before right before I was going to start That's what I did. Maybe like a week or two before I did because I was that unconcerned with With with pending unnecessary money. So I mean, I did that. I

00:21:34 BRUCE VANN
back in with my parents and rented a room from them So Which is I don't see any problem with doing that to cut your own expenses, but it was it was worth it when it was all said and done and And my net worth went from I put it this way my net worth from what I can tell went from Below if I did the math right was right below or right around 200,000 when I started searching and now that like I say it's still by the grace of God But now it's it's in the

00:22:08 BRUCE VANN
multiple millions. I won't say exactly what it is right now But I mean this is applying of four times EBITDA Multiple on the valuation of my business which it might be worth more than that. Maybe worth less I think it I think for us fair. I think it's worth it

00:22:24 BRUCE VANN
to think of things conservatively, but even conservatively. I'm in the multiple millions And I'm cold as to get to be mostly. I don't really have a goal. Exactly

00:22:34 BRUCE VANN
that's pretty cool What I will say is the downside of that is what you don't think about is the headaches that come with management and all the great areas that you have to deal

00:22:48 BRUCE VANN
culture and as you lead people that

00:22:53 BRUCE VANN
and the stuff that they bring to work the Childhood issues that people bring to work in a small company that you don't necessarily think about like in the headaches and how that Mashes with your own childhood issues and what not that that part is a lot So the money gets cool the money's cool at first You're like, oh great. This is more money than I ever made. This is wonderful just that the other and then the stress of Trying to keep to hold all of that together Very quickly overshadows that in your own mind at

00:23:25 BRUCE VANN
least for me and I'm like well Money is not the thing that makes me happy It's it's it's cool that it's there, but then the problem is okay once you get Pilots of money then you have to find a way to deploy it and make it work for you And you have to also make sure you're managing your people the right way and optimizing the hand that you're you've been given

00:23:47 BRUCE VANN
that becomes the new the new problem and the new stressor After after you've acquired successfully acquired

00:23:56 NICK LALL


00:23:57 NICK LALL
I mean that's pretty amazing for just three or four years ago

00:24:00 BRUCE VANN
say I'm sorry?

00:24:01 NICK LALL
pretty amazing You that in like three or four years like you have yeah the financials in terms of the organizational culture and dealing with

00:24:12 NICK LALL
different issues employees might have us wondering how that has how you manage that when they're

00:24:19 NICK LALL
one small business now building three it has the scale change the way you approach that at all or Are there I mean it just you if you'd speak in general

00:24:30 BRUCE VANN
I would say that's changed is I am more quick to fire a person than I was in the beginning If somebody does not fit culturally they show signs of like

00:24:40 BRUCE VANN
Sort of dishonesty or they they don't do this right or they don't do if you just don't fit I am much more likely to just say okay, well this person doesn't fit. I need to find somebody else and

00:24:54 BRUCE VANN
part part of life and let's keep it moving in the beginning I think because I have been fired three times I was very slow to fire people and I still am pretty slow slower than most bosses, so don't give me wrong. I'm just saying I'm quicker now to say, okay, that's it. That's the line. I'm not

00:25:13 BRUCE VANN
But that's really biggest thing. We have a

00:25:17 BRUCE VANN
system that is structured based off of everybody's performance in the company and if everybody hits their targets, they get a good chunk of the profit of the company. If they don't hit their targets, they don't get it. But what that does is it culturally keeps everybody very focused on exactly what they need to do to do the job in excellence.

00:25:38 BRUCE VANN
And one of our key, like we have four operating principles and they're very straightforward. It's like we take care of the company. I'm sorry, we take care of the customer. We take care of the company. We take care of our employees. We do everything in excellence.

00:25:52 BRUCE VANN
I try to do, every decision that I make and that I hope my staff makes operates around those four, those principles and what by the system that we have going, it's a force principle doing everything in excellence. It's a lot easier for us to attain it. So I think we outperform, not even I think, I am certain you can look at our reviews versus other state

00:26:16 BRUCE VANN
We significantly outperform everybody else in the way that we operate. And I hope that long term that becomes a

00:26:26 NICK LALL
for us to grow. And giving the employees that sort of form of ownership of getting the quarterly bonus, if you've seen that that leads to better performance, at least than operating in excellence as

00:26:38 BRUCE VANN
If somebody can make a long term decision, right, the challenge is the goals are stretch goals and most people, the thing that, I mean, I'll say this just with lucks out specifically. If a person can stick around for more than a year, we probably, and they get the system, they get it in their bones, they're probably going to do pretty well. The challenge is getting them to stick around in that first year because their first start is like, most people walk in the jobs and they think, okay, well, it's not going to be that hard.

00:27:09 BRUCE VANN
It can't be that hard. And then they get in and they start to do it. Like, oh my gosh, this is that hard. But if they stick

00:27:17 BRUCE VANN
and better and better at their jobs. And then it's over time, especially as they get more experience. And the rewards are there over the long term. So what I like to reward is long term performance. Not, oh, you had a great month or you had a great quarter or something like that. You can get a little bit of benefit from that. But over the long run, I want, it's how the person performs over the long run that really

00:27:37 NICK LALL
Sure. Makes sense. You said you don't really have an ultimate goal, but do you have a personal why or reason that something that brings you to work makes you want to run these businesses acquire

00:27:51 BRUCE VANN
man. My personal

00:27:54 BRUCE VANN
be real frank with you. My personal

00:27:59 BRUCE VANN
my

00:28:01 BRUCE VANN
over to this country on slave ships, like as property. They couldn't even own themselves and had to deal with all years of oppression and all these different things. And you got people like Martin Luther King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I went to his grave and saw his grave and it's really soaked, soaked in the reality that the freaking US government killed

00:28:26 BRUCE VANN
and he wasn't even going to be violent. Like they'd set here and killed this man. Like

00:28:32 BRUCE VANN
is my why. It's like nobody else in my bloodline got to do this and live this life. And I'm doing this for them and I'm doing this for my progeny, like for my kids.

00:28:41 BRUCE VANN
So then nobody else that no other vans have to go work for somebody who doesn't see them as a full human being. And if anybody doesn't see people, like I try to treat everybody in my organization, I build that into them a culture. You're a full human being.

00:28:53 BRUCE VANN
And I'm going to try to treat you like a full human being. There aren't levels of value of people. You're just as valuable as I am if you pat the stage curtains as I am the president of the company. Doesn't mean our compensation is the same, but in terms of your intrinsic value as a human being, you're just as valuable. So that's my wise. I don't want to make the most out of the hand that I've

00:29:18 BRUCE VANN
I don't want to die on my deathbed when I'm preferably an old man. I don't know if I make it to old age. I think I will.

00:29:26 BRUCE VANN
But I don't want to sit there and have regrets. Like oh, I didn't go for this thing or I didn't go for that. That would either way it mean I would really be sad and depressed at the end of my life.

00:29:35 BRUCE VANN
If I look back and I was like, oh, I could have done this and I didn't go for it. I could have swung for the fences here, but I didn't go for it. So that's really my why.

00:29:48 BRUCE VANN
That's what I want to get up to try to do. I want to manage everything in excellence. The byproduct of good more multiplying on itself. It's not the goal, but the byproduct is, I mean, of it is that. And so that's what keeps me going. I don't mean to ramble, but that's really my answer.

00:30:08 NICK LALL
is making No, it's beautiful. I think that's an amazing way to place it into it. So thank you

00:30:14 NICK LALL


00:30:15 SPEAKER_01