Business Update: Cash Flow, Cost Savings, and Coyote Acquisition Talks

But Clemson has this reputation of it's kind of like culty and there's a lot of pride there. Maybe TCU is the same way. I'm not sure.

No, it's not. A&M is the same way though.

They do this ring ceremony.

So A&M is the same way.

I think you're within 2 semesters of graduating or you have a certain number of credits, you can get your ring. So our daughter's getting her ring and it's like a big deal. It's almost like graduation. You have to go down there for this ring ceremony. So I'm like, oh geez. So, but Carrie sat next to somebody on the plane, uh, that had his Clemson ring on and he graduated like 15 years ago. It's like a big deal.

So totally. A&M is the same way. Like my whole family went to A&M except for me and they all wear their A&M rings.

Right. Yeah.

And they're just a little like that. Do they, do they put it at the bottom of a pitcher of beer and you have to chug it to get it?

I don't know about that. I guess we'll find out. I don't know.

You're gonna find out and you're gonna be really proud.

So here's the— we went— she's not 21 yet, she'll be 21 in December, but, uh, that's never like—

oh, that's never stopped a college kid before.

So, well, my, my daughter does, uh, but we were there and like, what should we do Friday night? So she texted us that this one bar that's downtown— there's a strip of like bars, wherever it might be. It's called micro wrestling. So I don't think you're supposed to say it, but they're midgets wrestling. So I'm like, well, sure, we'll go, right? So I bought tickets and we went to dinner before, and I see him setting it up, and we actually see some of the participants like walking around campus and stuff.

Or they were just regular little people.

Yeah, no, no, but, um, So I said to Carrie, we're at dinner, I'm like, I think we should bail. I think Claire can take her friends, but having a couple people approaching 50 watching midgets wrestle in a college bar, so we didn't, we didn't go. But she took some of her friends and she FaceTimed us, and it was that, it was all college kids chanting. One guy was 3 foot 6 and like 110 pounds or something like that. So, um, she was given all the stats of the whole thing, so Yeah, but anyways, it's funny, Carrie and I talk about this a lot. James, you're approaching, and JD, you're not there. Is we'll be talking to somebody and we're like, well, they're about our age, we're not that far off. And then you find out they're like, uh, you know, 37 or 36. I'm like, no, there, there's a gap there, right?

So, oh, interesting.

Like, Carrie will be 50 this summer, and it was before— it was like when we meet somebody when we were 36, 37 that was approaching 50, like, Jesus, 50 years old, that's old, man.

I noticed the gap between me and JD at 30 more than I do me and like my friends that are 45-ish.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

I don't know, just because JD's such a Gen Z freak. Like, yeah, he's really up on the trends.

Yeah, just, yeah, it's funny. He was on TikTok all day or something, right?

Yeah, I've got a whole screen of TikTok in front of me.

Yeah. Um, okay, so you're gonna give an update on your combination. Just two quick questions really quick on the cash forecast.

I thought we'd start with the cash flow forecast update because we blew it out 13 weeks today.

Oh, you did? Okay, this is what JD sent last week, so I bet it's not that— I don't know if it's that different, but JD, on the 26th of April, yeah, there's $41,000 of like other cash, and it seems like that's a catch-all for other things. I'm just curious what falls into that category if it's not payables. Let me pull it up.

Um, you're asking what the other cash outflows are for April. Is that right?

Yeah, exactly.

Sales taxes. Um, so we have, yeah, that's just a monthly payment on our like intercompany sales taxes.

Got it. And then the last one on your over 90 AR, is that 290, 291? Is that collectible? What was the risk there?

No, so this has kind of been a static number since 2023. Um, we were gonna go through and write it off. There's someone HDR that Garrett insists is collectible, um, that he's like in legal proceedings with that eventually we will collect. Um, and then the rest of it is just the way it pulls in from, uh, our Cars Plus rental management system. So What I— why I haven't pulled it off yet is I don't want to send one to the bank where our AR all of a sudden drops $200,000, even though it's all over 90, and them to freak out and be like, what's going on? Um, so largely no, we don't look at that as like bankable. It's more the, uh, better everything before the 90.

Okay, got it. Okay, so you're gonna make your next payment looks like We'll be good to go with the $430,000.

Yeah, I, I mean, a lot can change in 3 weeks, but from what we can tell, it looks like it's going to happen.

Okay. All right, James.

It's a pretty thin margin of error at the start of every month.

Yeah, it looks— that's what it looks like. Yeah. With— after you pay rents, then you got hit with payroll, and then you've got to make this payment.

Well, we basically go debt into rent, and then payroll can fall anywhere in that zone. And it's navigable. I mean, no one has sent us a demand letter yet. Well, that had any teeth. But I wouldn't— I would not, even though we did like, I think, 2.2-ish for March, maybe a little above.

Yeah, they were close to 1.9, but I was going to guide and surprise. We're going to be in between 2.2 and 2.3, but I think closer to the 2.3 side.

It's still like it's not the escape velocity that we would be able to achieve if we had several months at 2.3 or above.

Right.

With the biggest—

more not cost savings actions to take. I know that that's kind of an ongoing thing, but cost savings realization. So some action that you took 2 months ago that now is finally—

we are in progress on realizing about $40K in cost takeouts. JD's making up about $15K of that with the Accounting. Stepping down of our bookkeeping and this kind of general backend infrastructure. JD?

Yeah, just taking the company that we had hired to ensure that we'd be able to deliver a timely review to the bank. Now it's no longer necessary, so we hired someone from Latin America to kind of run the bookkeeping on the backend. I don't actually think there'll be too much of a change in deliverable, but during the, like, cutover period, we don't want to be worried about needing to deliver timely financials to the bank for a review or something like that. So, um, other company was like $28K. This person plus one other junior bookkeeper will run about $8K to $10K. So yeah, $15K to $20K of cost savings per month from a new team. Running the bookkeeping and the accounting and all that.

Well, that's great.

And then a non-cash— it's not really a non-cash charge, just a charge that we won't have to incur this year that we have in every other year— is stepping down from reviewed to compilation financials. Yeah. So that should do two things: reduce the just professional services cost and also pull forward, God willing, the timely delivery of K-1s, call that midsummer, midsummer actual as opposed to, you know, midsummer. But we should get the compilation here at the end of this month and then they will kind of tuck straight into K-1s after that and 6 to 8 weeks from there. Is when we can expect it.

Um, since we're talking about the business and Versatile, so the one guy you'd mentioned was kind of—

he went to rehab. Okay, we sent him to rehab.

Got it. So, but the business is still doing their $200 a month or what?

Yeah, anywhere from $180 to $250.

Yeah. Okay.

Um, I mean, we basically sent him to rehab and made partner in it step in and go fix a bunch of stuff and it's been working.

Good.

That guy will come back, you know, in May-ish and he has had to sign like effectively a morality pledge or like an ethics clause in all of his supporting documentation. Oh yeah, JD, the day that you guys were on with, um, Roy, Brent texted me and was like, can you get on with Larry right now? I was like, yes. So I get on and like, he was just kind of asking about the business, but he was like, how's Versatile doing? Like, what's going on with that sales guy? And I was like, he quit last night, but it's fine. Like, we'll get him back.

Yeah.

On session.

Okay, are you going to go into this, uh, sure, anything?

Yeah, as with all— as always, like, the caveat is who knows. Um, but we've made it to a place where we have presented a valuation framework to them and we have effectively collected all of the data points needed to construct an offer from a high level. It has been painstaking. Half of it is due to them just being a publicly traded company and just that. And half of it is more recently there is another group interested, Galpin, which is the dealer-owned kind of like competitor, crosstown competitor. The crux of it is really hinging on the REIT and its team gaining confidence that the go-forward enterprise is able to function without ongoing financial support. Our first high-level pass at the model resulted in about a $7 million EBITDA company, which is really just slam the two businesses together and then no revenue upside, that, that we all kind of felt was not— the juice was not worth the squeeze on that. And so we spent probably the better part of a month sharpening our pencils and coming together with a model that within the first year gets us to a run rate of about $18 million of EBITDA. Remember, they have no debt. And we have restructured debt, which is simulating like a $12 million— yeah, $12-ish million load. And so it's $18 million EBITDA 2027 with an asterisk of about $4 million in real estate realization, real estate consolidation realization costs, about $4.2, maybe $4.5. We'll pull that up here in a second. You don't need to write all this down. We feel generally— we feel genuinely confident that we would be able to go execute on this plan. Like, we can go build this company and it doesn't have some vaporware upside toggle where we're getting more market share or, you know, changing the business model as it would with Redbird. It's really just kind of like Here's these two with the— with a, with a very aggressive operating footprint and posture that, that put us in an area where they said we have reached the margin of safety or the buffer that they were looking for from an operating confidence standpoint. And now we are at a stage where we're really just you know, beginning to hopefully negotiate over purely commercial terms. The framework that we went to them with is a 90/10 split, 90% us, 10% them. They committed publicly on their earnings call in February to eliminating the Coyote earnings drag by the end of this year. That's a very tall order, if not impossible for them to do. As they are currently structured. So that kind of leads them to a path of— even if they were able to aggressively cut a bunch of costs, it still will not be break-even. And that's their goals. They might be able to get it profitable for a month, but it won't be consistently or sustainably profitable. They know that. Yeah, you know, the big points for them are lack of ongoing support required, ideally ability to stop reporting on it on a quarterly basis and participate in some future upside if there is any to have down the road. We initially were probing at they get 0%. They didn't like that. So we went in at 90/10 with an option to take out the first source debt in a preferred share class that would get them another 25, 20, 25%. Basically, they would take the $25 million-ish out and then we'd put it in a preferred share class, non-voting, that would get like a 10% coupon. Uh, they get some guaranteed cash flow, we get a more flexible capital structure with like a friendly partner, and, um, yeah, then the business is businessing. Um, but I would say the key The key element in this is the ruthless, like, operating footprint where we are in effect keeping just the Avon, the two Avon operating locations. We keep some cash trailer graveyard type leases. We keep New York because they have it and it's profitable. We keep Atlanta for now because it's there, but we run arguably $40 million of revenue out of the two locations that we currently operate today. And we go from a combined 360 people to like 150 on day zero.

Yeah. I mean, what's— I guess two questions. Uh, let's go back to the maybe the simpler one. This Galpin, like, how do they come into the mix? And are they one that would displace you, or how are they— how would they be part of this?

They have a billion dollars. They're the largest Ford dealer on the planet, right?

I remember their name has come up before because you talked about even stealing some talent at the time. From them. Yes. Right. But how did they get involved in this thing?

Well, it's no secret that Hudson wants out. Again, they claim that publicly, but I don't think that that's how Galpin got involved. I don't know. But the chain of events that happened where we were on a call with one of the senior team from Hudson, and I was asking for just like a temperature check. They said, well, you know, I'm sure we've mentioned this, but, you know, there are other conversations going along, but those are— the other group is not as sophisticated as you guys or as like advanced in the conversation. I didn't say anything, but I was like, that's a really fucking weird way to describe the other group. And I had no idea what it meant until the next day, a transport coordinator who's friendly with us texted me that Galpin— I heard Galpin is buying Star Wagons. And that kind of connected the dots about why someone would describe them as not sophisticated. And it would make total sense because they're one of the few that— again, you have to be in this sector to really be able to approach carving this thing out.

Right.

Um, in terms of its ability to displace us, it's just, are they willing to pay cash for something that is not worth cash? Um, and is the amount that they're willing to pay enough to unseat us, as far as we know, as the option which solves the problem comprehensively? It might not give them the most or maximum near-term value, but they've got a billion in cash on hand right now. So cash is not really like their problem as we see it. But, you know, cash is always better than an IOU or an earnout.

Sure. Um, got it. So here's the other— the next— that makes sense. The next question is, you put this model together to show, and certainly there I guess they're aware of how they can bridge where they are to where they need to be. What's preventing them from doing it other than you and JD are just geniuses, sophisticated, right?

Other than we're just very sophisticated.

Exactly. Yes. Um, short answer is the union deal, but they could find it themselves, couldn't they? Or no?

No, not in a conventional sense. And then the other thing is if you break that union deal, you have just completely alienated whatever business that you were hoping to keep on the other side. It's solving the problem of a hornet's nest by hitting a hornet's nest with a baseball bat. Um, I don't know, there's probably a better metaphor, but are you, are, are you having conversations with the ultimate decision maker party, or is it still— No, we have had— I have had several conversations with that guy, but I don't— I— the conversations I've had with that guy have not always been productive. And we've since learned it's because in spite of all the pain he's had to endure on these earnings calls, he's still the ever optimist that there— that this thing is going to work and that the value that he spent half a billion on is— he will be vindicated in that.

Got it.

So to that end, I actually flew out to LA 2 or 3 weeks ago for 24 hours to meet with their— what turned out to be their investment bank that they had engaged to do some valuation work last year, with the idea of being like, that guy that we're talking about is going to be a tough nut to crack because this is not going to look— one, this is just special situations investing in general, which is a little foreign to them for opcos. Two, it's not going to be like a pleasant deal. Like from a headline standpoint, we can make the headline number look like whatever we want, but 90/10 is actually a pretty fair offer for what they're contributing versus what we're going to be doing and being responsible for on the other side. Yeah, we caveat that with we want to get a deal done. So 90/10, but we want to get a deal done.

And what are the next steps or what's the timeline here to kind of—

We, we, we brought this to them last Friday. The main driver on their side went out on spring break this past week with their kids and is back this week. We are owed, I guess, feedback on the framework. And we sent over, you know, another battery of questions in the meantime. To just keep things moving. But for all intents and purposes, there is only one next step, and that's find out if there are— if there's a set of numbers or equity split or structure that is competitive to both parties enough to put a formal LOI in place and get to work. There's a decent amount of diligence, but say it's operational diligence in nature that would have to still occur. But the path to execution is pretty clear once you have commercial terms that work.

The sharpening from the $7 million initial pass to the $18 million—

people and rent.

Okay. Got it. I mean, some of those, again, you're going to be dancing again as far as how do you get out of the rents, right? As far as terms on those leases.

Yes and no. They've got some natural expirations in the next 12 months that we would need. We have some natural expirations in the next 12 months that we will take advantage of. Um, and then there's really only kind of one big one that in talking with our real estate team, for lack of a better phrase, like they feel confident they could get it leased at around that cost within 12 months.

Yeah. Have you talked to anyone else on your team about this?

Who's my team?

Well, I would say like Ivan or something, like knowing that the potential is assets or anything like that, that would be there?

No, we've talked— I mean, Richard's helped us co-author this. This thing actually hinges on Richard. Both sides are— understand that Richard is the crux of unlocking the value that we have put forward in a model, just from the operational excellence. Yes, or ruthlessness, operational ruthlessness.

Got it. Okay. All right, so feedback this week and then continue to progress. And then, I mean, if it's done this year, this thing's gotta pick up.

I know, that's why I flew out, um, to try to get their investment banker to just like— I mean, we basically asked the investment banker to get a conflict waiver from them to try to represent both of us in making a deal happen here quickly.

Yeah.

The challenge is we don't really have a ton of leverage here to like make the thing go. And they have a fiduciary obligation to explore all offers. But we need it. Just to say it right.

All right.

It's a cool looking model.

Like, it would be cool. I'm sure JD did a good job.

Yeah. Like, everyone's equity position would, like, triple overnight. Yeah, you know, those paper games that everyone loves.

Yes.

Okay, JD, what else on the carve-out?

Yeah, I think the biggest, uh, benefit that they could offer is if they could take out all the debt. And just put us into a debt-free position, like the amount of flexibility that just provides the business, it would be a level of profitability that we've just never been able to, to hit. Because even though the business generates cash, it just all gets consumed by debt service. So like, yeah, it'd be great to have their assets, but if we can get them bought in on a 1/3, 2/3 split where they're taking out all the debt in the business, I think that's a pretty I don't want to overlook the benefit that can provide, especially if we go into like liquidation mode, even just to get all these assets to a right size. And we don't have to pay down debt as we pay these vehicles down, or we sell these vehicles or sell these trailers, sold trailers at all. Like the opportunity for some sort of like cash distribution or just some sort of, um, rock-solid balance sheet further from those vehicle sales is pretty important.

Yeah, I think, JD, I guess going back to maybe what James said about if they do that, I guess initially everyone's valuation goes up, what, 3x? And then through the introduction of this— that you said it was this C-share, James— I guess what's the, the new valuation or table look like? From an equity perspective?

Well, it depends. Yeah, it would depend on if they took a preferred share class where they wanted guaranteed, like, 10% coupon, I think James was saying, or if they did some sort of convertible where if they liked where the business was headed, they can convert preferred to common to get a bigger share rather than the 10% distributions. Yeah, it's all on paper, right? But I would imagine there's multiple expansion as well, not just EBITDA growth. So for 3x-ing EBITDA performance, but that justifies another 2 turns on EBITDA, the paper gains are actually more considerable than 3x.

Yeah, got it. Okay. What's the timeline looking like for you, James, for number 3?

Any day. But doctor said we're hanging out until possibly the due date. So we're just kind of twiddling our thumbs. It's a It's funny because we slept till like 7:30 this morning. The kids slept in till 7:30. Bose is on spring break and Hodge, who cares when he goes to school because he's 3. But like after we woke up and had like a leisurely breakfast, I was like, this is possibly the last day for the next 3 years that I ever have this again. No, because we're going back to the start.

Yeah.

You're running a marathon and you said, you know what, 5 miles in, let's get back to the beginning.

I'm going to take another lap.

Yeah. You know what? Let's start fresh.

Yeah.

I do not envy either one of you.

So how's it going with you guys? Whatever happened with your life care planning thing?

Nothing. I had a call, internal call with the group. Kind of a check-in. Was it last week or the week before? And it went as every other call has gone, like very combative and very, uh, hesitant to provide any information. So great. Yeah, it's still an open question. Is this a— we need to milk it to pay down the associated debt, or is there a real growth strategy here? So we have a salesperson, but there's no real She's playing off relationships and referrals, but there's no real strategy to her activities. So it's an open item. So I haven't done anything with it.

Well, what else? I mean, it's finally starting to get— I don't want to say consistently nice weather because it's 38 degrees out or 45. But have you started golfing yet?

Yeah, when you— I mean, are you gonna have a pass here in the next, uh— we'll definitely go out. I guess if you do it, if it's in the middle of the day, Joanna can't give you shit because it's like work, right?

Right, exactly.

So yeah, so we'll have to do some workouts. I play— I obviously not this past weekend, but, um, prior weekends have gone out. I mean, if it If it's above 40, I'll go. Not too windy.

So, JD, you brought up something just now that I can't— something about we should go through their fleet list on the truck side and tag likely disposition trucks, um, just to get an idea of how many we would want, because that number would translate to, to your point on it being cash, like the ability to do a cash distribution from just that piece alone. That's an interesting feature, right? That would matter for them as much as us.

Okay, I can go through that and just get an idea. I mean, it'd be an estimate. Obviously, we don't know the condition of these vehicles, but—

but on that line, how do you fund the high severances and everything else that you're going to have to take care of? Day one.

They happen before the transaction. The REIT is already out there paying to dismantle this business. Like, they defaulted on one of their locations 2 weeks ago and are planning to pay $6 to $8 million to early terminate it on a $12 million obligation. Well, so they're already like, they've got a billion in cash. They're already out there paying to make the bleeding stop. For this piece of it, because it's such a complex little, you know, rat's nest, they can't just pay to make it go away. They need to— like, they spent half a billion on it. It's high visibility. So they need something. And that's where I'm— we're not sure that even $25 million for part of the business that Galpin might want to buy really does it for them, right? Like, um, so, um, yeah, we'll see. Keep you posted.

Yeah, good luck. Interesting. All right, well, I don't have anything else, so keep grinding away. Hopefully Garrett's doing okay.

Yeah, he discovered Claude code.

He's building a new rental software for us.

Got it. Got it. Have you guys done much of that yourselves? With these different AI tools that are out there?

I've done, I've done a ton of stuff with it.

Um, like app building or, uh, applications or just—

Yeah, uh, I built a dashboard for the company just to get like, uh, reservations that come in for the day and then, uh, orders that are going out for the day. So you have like a dispatch dashboard and a reservation dashboard because we have 3 different rental management systems right now. Um, that was pretty easy. You just point it at an API and tell it what you want. If there's publicly available information, it'll figure it out and build you— I mean, you need to be specific. It'll take liberties if you don't specify, but it is very nice.

Uh, what's it APIing to? Your rental software or some third party?

Um, So for one company, there's just API documentation for RentalWorks. For another, for Cars Plus, I had to set up an email. I had already had like email reports that got generated every like half hour to keep us updated on what reservations were coming in. So then I just pointed at that email and increased the frequency so you can get a more real-time update on what's going out every day. Uh, yeah, so it's like these disparate systems all coming together.

It's kind of a backdoor way to get it, but that works, right? Interesting, right?

Um, and then yeah, some of the like month-end stuff has also been easier too because I can point right at the QuickBooks APIs rather than having to do it in Excel. So now there's like a model that just pulls it all through, which has been nice. Saves a lot of time in the month end.

What, what are you using for that, for the analysis? Are you using just ChatGPT or are you using something else?

So Claude built the tool and I just like, I uploaded our budget. I uploaded, um, last year's numbers. Actually, it's pulling last year's numbers from QuickBooks. And then there's like a financial model where it's like, do you want to look at the year over year? Do you want to look at versus budget? Um, is there any adjustments you need to make? So on and so forth. And then it kind of just pulls the financial statement together.

Pretty cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it's very powerful. Um, it's surprising, like, how creative— like, each— it's the limitations. There's a lot fewer limitations than you expect. Like, you— I'm surprised by what it's able to do.

Yeah, I did an analysis just on a reconciliation for one of our accounts that has 16,000 transactions a month, just to try and create a summary view. Yeah. It took me a little bit as far as the prompting, like making sure I was saying the right thing. Um, but it sorted it out. It was crazy. Right. I was super impressed. But more what I'm struggling with, JD, is going from ad hoc to where it's just part of the routine workflow on a weekly or monthly basis. Right. So, um, yeah, I've experienced— I feel like I'm starting over again, right? Like every month I got to do the same prompts and they're more refined because I know it worked, but I'd rather just open something up and it's there and the summary's there.

So, so you can build— I, if you ever do want to learn how to do that, because you can build— I'm happy to help— you can build like context windows and like these like overall prompts inside of projects where it retains all that information and what you're trying to accomplish. And then you can even set it on a schedule and be like, every week do this, every month do this, X, Y, and Z. Like Yeah, there are ways to do it, and they're coming out with new, like, ways to do it all the time, um, that are more, like, user-friendly, for lack of a better term, because I'm not— I'm not a programmer, but it gets more and more like just normal interface, um, every time they release something.

How's your ops asset that you hired going?

Well, I didn't end up hiring him. He came in, did interviews, and then It was, it was kind of weird. He's kind of a weird guy. Um, you remember Derek? You know the name Derek Block? That's the guy I worked for, right?

We know Derek.

Yeah, and this guy worked for Derek as well, even before I started at Touchstone, and I was telling the story. But anyways, yeah, no, he was like all in, met with 4 or 5 of the people here, more from a buy-in perspective. I just didn't want to do it on an island just because he was going to be injecting himself into all their businesses. And then I called Monday. That was a Friday. Called Monday, hey, are you good? Yeah, I'm good. And then he texts me Tuesday and he's like, I don't, I don't know if I want to do it. And he continues to text me. I keep calling him like, hey, let's talk about it. And he texts me. I'm like, okay, this guy's— I don't know. So I haven't talked to him. That was like a month ago. So yeah, I need somebody, James, just because there's a lot of things and The light bulb's gone on in the organization that software development internally doesn't solve it. Amazing, right? So, okay, just what are our processes? What are we doing? And then kind of go like— we're still going down this path with AI, like Larry's pushing AI, which is the right thing, but they're using the solution as the starting point versus understanding why. We're doing something, right? Which maybe it works out the same way, but you're not asked the question of like, hey, I want to increase my capacity or I want to increase earnings or I want to do something. Got it. Then start asking questions and then find a solution to how do you solve that versus I'm just going to start using AI because Larry said we should start using AI. So, so Larry got frustrated on a call two weeks ago because they were talking about the use of AI and it's $20,000 a year. It's 5 cents a page. It's like 2 million pages we're looking at every year. And Larry's like, well, what's the return? Like, are we going to make money on this or what? And they didn't know the answer. And he's just like, well, what do we do? Like, why are you even evaluating this even further? So, so yeah, but they're like everywhere there's needs, like these simple projects, not simple, but things that JD is doing. There's probably 2 or 3 of those in each of our businesses that we usually look at what people are doing day to day that they don't necessarily have to be doing, or someone else could be doing it for them, right? Everything's overly manual. So that's where you and I've talked, just a lot of low-hanging fruit to go after. So yeah. So you, maybe you could be, if this thing doesn't work out, James, you could come over here since you're now local. You could be our operational specialist.

So, sorry, is the— this thing you're talking about there the Avon HDR Versatile Three-Headed Hydra?

Yes.

Got it. And then the me coming over there, that's me going and becoming a process engineer, correct?

Yep. We get you a cubicle somewhere. You choose the spot in the building.

You've got the room.

That's true. We're redesigning this area back here, so it's under process.

So I feel like you don't need the— it sounds like what you actually need is the ability to go execute on the low-hanging fruit. Like, do you feel like you have the ability to just go pull a trigger?

From like a what? From a, um, like authority or autonomy perspective, or from, or what? I guess I need, uh, I think of the way I position to you is the capacity, just like a PM, right? Like I know there's something over there, like go after it, right? Not necessarily you have to do it 100%, but get in there, right?

So, so what it is that you need is someone to just basically capture something as is and then be able to quantify what it's worth, what a potential change would be worth to the business, right?

With, with the understanding of maybe to JD's level or a little bit more as far as what the potential something could be. That's always good, I think, because if you do go external from a consultant perspective, that you can keep them honest, right? Of what? Like, well, I could do this myself in Access. Well, you're telling me it's going to take 6 months to do this project. That seems obscene. So. Right. But there's a lot. There's a lot to go after.

So, yeah, we have bandwidth.

The two of you?

Do we?

Yeah, I mean, we have incremental bandwidth. I wouldn't say that we have like work full-time on it bandwidth, but like if there is something that we can do that is helpful to you, let us know.

Well, I mean, if we're completely transparent, part of the Verity Group thing was, uh, from your guys' capacity to get it done.

What do you mean, that it was going to take 6 weeks?

Well, you found you guys are doing a lot of things, right? So how do you incorporate this into your day-to-day or have time in order to spend on it?

We schedule it. I mean, we are pretty diligent on our calendars. A lot of it was mostly parsing data. And pulling it into a deliverable. I would say the most time-consuming thing would have been like deliverable construction and chasing down the qualitative interviews with people. But I think once you have those two things done in that first part, it's really just honing the deliverable from there.

You share that Attitude, JD, since you'll be doing a lot of the lift?

I, I wouldn't say you think I don't do anything here.

I don't know. I mean, but I mean, I'm, I'm not—

you're right, but I don't know why you think that.

Uh, I would say that if you told me like tomorrow you need to do this, like, that finding the time for it is difficult. But if you're talking about like into the future, being able to like, like James said, like schedule out what needs to be done. I think it's more realistic. Um, I think that's why there was the timeline that there was just because maybe it wasn't going to be able to be done in the moment, but we knew that we can make sure that the bandwidth was available because things just like pop up. Like right now I'm very busy during the transition from the old accounting team to the new accounting team and being the bridge there and just making sure that is smooth. So that's taking up a lot of time. But like, once that is kind of more set, something will come up that I'll begin like really putting a lot of my time into. So I guess it's more like a, in the future there will be time. Is there some right now? No, but there's always time in the future. We just have to prioritize it.

Got it. Okay. And so that was one concern. And on the other, my other concern was we wouldn't get to a deliverable that was worth anything. And not by— not because you guys aren't capable, it's just more it's a niche business and it's just like, yeah, we couldn't find anything. It's— it is what it is, right?

So I think we'd have to extrapolate from some tangential data. Like we— and I agree, by the way, I think your deliverable would be a lot of extrapolating, like qualitative proprietary kind of sources and then quantitative tangential datasets. So expert witness consulting and/or like trends in these either source or like these feeder or like customer sectors, you kind of have to extrapolate between those two. That was what I was planning, which is why we were trying to like reiterate so much like, okay, is this what you want in the deliverable? Because there is no like, here's every— here's lifecareplanningdata.com. So you're extrapolating it to expert witness consulting and trends that are occurring in the personal injury sector or insurance sector. But we get it.

Yeah. All right. Well, I got to do something just because I even had a conversation again this morning with Sherry and just like, you got to— it's one or two paths with this business. A, like I said, milk it and pay off the debt and then generate enough cash that it's worthwhile for the short run until this one customer goes away. Or two, we think this can turn into a $12 million business and that's where we attack it. So, but no one seems to have the answer right now. It obviously seems more like A versus B.

Yeah, all right, keep us posted.

Yeah, all right, see you guys, have a good week. See you, bye.