Successful Exit Through Collaboration

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:06

Welcome to the Growth + Exit podcast where owners of privately held middle market companies talk about founding, scaling and exiting their businesses successfully. Learn how to maximize and monetize your business on your own terms. Let’s get started.

Heather Bennett  0:31

Hello, I’m Heather Bennett, your host for Growth + Exit the podcast featuring middle market owners and experts talking about founding, scaling and exiting businesses successfully. I am very excited for this episode. I This guest, I think, has a lot to share and a really unique story about a Mid America company that was a definite turnaround situation. So this will be a great, great conversation. Just a reminder, this episode is brought to you by Newport LLC, a team of seasoned C suite executives who help CEOs of privately held companies grow de risk and exit their businesses successfully. To learn more about us, visit our website at www.newportllc.com and all this information will be, of course, shared in the show notes before introducing today’s guest, I wanted to give a big thank you to Susan Kearney for recommending Kevin as a guest, specifically about his experience as a CEO. So Kevin is an experienced CEO, CFO CEO and board member. He is also a partner with Newport. He has a long and consistent track record of building company values, skillfully orchestrating business turnarounds, and we’ll learn more about one of those today and transformations, as well as ultimately monetizing at high valuations for these companies with former experience as a partner with E and Y, Kevin has a strong business strategy, operations, technology, M and a finance and team building background. He is also the former CEO of Loyale, a healthcare company focused on improving the experience patients have with the financials of medicine. Thank you so much for being here, Kevin. We’re delighted to hear from you today. My pleasure. I’m happy to be here. So we had mentioned specifically talking about Loyale Charlo. Did you become involved with that company? And maybe give a brief description of what it is. I know I described it, but I’m guessing you have a better way of talking about what Loyale Loyale is and does.

Kevin Fleming  2:49

Yeah. Well, I got involved with Loyale principally as a favor to a friend, acquaintance, that business associate that I knew through San Francisco Bay Area alliance of CEOs. That was a group of where CEOs would get together and talk about their many challenges, potential solutions. So met the founder of this company, and he Loyale was designed to be a follow on act to a very successful company called Cash net, which my friend, Dan, very successful serial entrepreneur, had started. And Cash net, many of you may probably know that name. I mean, it grew to dominate the higher ed, college and university space for students, patient payment of students payments. I mean, you might already slip there. You might feel like a patient when you pay college tuition as a parent. But anyway, it was when if you paid tuition, your odds are you paid on this cash net system. So highly successful. So, so this was a, you know, let’s do that again, effort in the healthcare industry. And the idea is that you know the same basic problems exist. It’s not easy to pay bills, not easy to understand them from healthcare providers. So why don’t we provide a service where we can stand up a website collect patient payments using credit cards, debit cards, electronic checks and so on, and do it again, in effect, this time in a different industry, but this one had a different beginning to it. It was a real problem. The company got some traction, but it could, could never get to positive cash flow. You know, the the owner, the founder, and others were cutting checks left and right, adding additional capital to it. So when they came to me and said, hey, you know, we need some help, I just couldn’t say no. So I I decided to jump into the pool and and try to try to fix it.

Heather Bennett  4:57

And how did they determine you would be? CEO, as opposed to another C suite, C suite role, or board member role. What was the deciding factor for how you were going to help and why that was the right place to

Kevin Fleming  5:12

put you? Well, I actually started out, you know, on a consulting assignment with them, as you know, a de facto, CFO, so it was very much so finance focused. And then the more we interacted. And then, of course, I naturally started to bring in, you know, the bigger picture topics in in to play, like competitive dynamics, commoditization, of, you know, eroding price points, the where, where is the company going to be in three to five years? You know? How would it be successful? How would it scale? So, you know that that conversation just naturally evolved into more of a CEO agenda, and then they actually came to me and said, hey, you need to be the CEO now. Let’s, let’s make that happen.

Heather Bennett  6:03

Okay, excellent, that that works. So what were those early days like?

Kevin Fleming  6:09

Well, you know, it’s the old adage, you know, be careful what you ask for. I mean, although I, I had an inkling, but the, you know, the negative cash flow situation was more severe than than I knew going in, but, you know, we did an analysis, and we probed around the edges of every potential efficiency play that there was, including challenging conventional wisdom that, you know, some price points just couldn’t be improved, and and that ultimately proved to be the winner. You know, we were collecting as a payments company, in effect, a FinTech payment processor within we collected a certain percentage of patient payments and then had to pay interchange fees, you know, back. And those are very large. And the, you know, conventional wisdom was that can’t be changed. You know, that’s automated. It’s but you know, as the more that I dug into it, the more that we analyzed it, challenged it, we discovered it could be changed. And in fact, could be changed dramatically by accumulating more information at the point of sale about the patient, their credit card, their credit rating and so on, that de risked the transaction for the credit card companies and processors and greatly improved our price points. So it reduced our cost significantly so, and it took effect fairly rapidly, about six months. You know, we went from being a negative cash flow to a pretty strong positive cash flow, you know, which is, of course, a whole new ball game. There’s nothing like, you know, organic Cash Generation to fuel business expansion, and it took a little while. But you know that that’s one of the big lessons learned here, don’t you know, Givens are not a given, you know, until you challenge them, and most of the time there’s room for improvement.

Heather Bennett  8:09

That’s really good advice to challenge the status quo. Especially, I find that when I get into a new industry, it’s a great opportunity when I’m learning the industry to push on what those status quos are and and what the industry thinks can’t be changed. It’s the perfect time to do that. So you’re really smart to do that. You know, you and your team on the onset to really push back and say, Wait a minute. We we can’t just assume this is why it’s going to look going forward. So yeah, and that made all the difference, which is great. So once you did this amazing financial turnaround, and that’s such a short time period to be able to do something so dramatic, it’s very impressive. What came next for the company?

Kevin Fleming  8:56

You know, as we looked at strategic alternatives, it became increasingly obvious that this industry was becoming commoditized, you know, in other words, you know, much bigger competitors were competing on price, and they had much deeper pockets, you know, they they so their ability to cut price, you know, consecutively and whatever It took to gain market share was far greater than ours. So we needed a competitive advantage. We needed to do something big that made us more than than just a website and a payment processor. So we came up with a concept of, you know, patient financial and great engagement is a term in the healthcare industry, and it’s, it’s about engaging with patients. Frankly, it’s a lot of it’s about collecting from patients, because hospitals, little known fact, write off almost 50% of patient receivables. But, but also to maintain their trust and loyalty, you know, I mean, it’s, you know, one of the. Dichotomies of a health care, you know, the, you know, the healers heal the patient, and then they get the bill, and things turn 180 degrees, you know, and so, so we decided that, gee, as a concept, if we could come up with a way, wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could for an episode of care, say you had a orthopedic event, maybe fell down, hurt your ankle, broke a leg, whatever that all the provider bills the your primary care physician, your orthopedist that you were referred to, the MRI radiology, the Ambulatory Surgical Center, the surgeons bill the anesthesiologist, who nobody actually sees or remembers. I’m a surgeon, you know. So, I mean, all of those are actually coalesced together into one bill and and we had a highly intelligent system that could interact with you. It’s, you know, Heather Bennett as Heather Bennett, you know, it knows enough about you. Now, we didn’t have artificial intelligence power. So that’s kind of the next generation in all of this at that time, but we did have business intelligence power. So we were accumulating a lot of information about patients, profiling them and then interacting with them differently depending on what their financial situation was. For example, people that were maybe closer to the poverty line, would receive significant discounts right off the bat, you know, and at least the system had, would have that kind of flexibility in it to where you could fundamentally engage differently. Instead of receiving 20 bills, they’d receive one, and then be able to deal with it holistically and with a friendly face and strong customer service on the other end of it. So so we decided to build that. And so we started a project with community hospitals. We were working with smaller entities at the time, and developed a conceptual model, and I call low end working framework, but we needed a lot more money and a bigger strategic partner to really pull it off. So we went out in the market fundraise, and fortunately, that not only provided money, but it provided, you know, a critical strategic partner in all of this. HCA, which is the country’s largest healthcare network, very advanced, uh, shared a lot of cultural values. I mean, we wanted to get this right. It was, you know, it was as much about doing right by the patient, you know, helping providers to deal with an issue and and certainly for the company to be successful. But nobody had anything like that. So it maybe labeled a little bit of a moonshot. Some days, it felt like a pretty big moonshot, but, but we embarked on that mission, you know, which was a fundamental turn in the road to transform the company into an enterprise software SAS player that would enable us to also harvest significantly more patient payments. So it would not only provide a new business model, a new revenue stream, but would also significantly enhance our existing

Heather Bennett  13:12

business. Yeah, I wanna back up just a second and talk about the commoditization, because a lot of industries are facing that. And there were a few things that you had mentioned on how to stand out in that type of a competitive framework. I think one was the customer service aspect. But what you know and really making sure you got to know the individual customers, and with AI, I think we have the opportunity to really customize that experience, which improves it. But what other ways do you think companies can compete in commoditized industries or competitive sets?

Kevin Fleming  13:57

Well, like the you know, the relevant factors for us were, you know, fundamentally a better patient or customer experience, a much better experience. And in fact, that’s how we came up. We rebranded the company. It was previously e pay. So we, you know, did a high end marketing study, which, you know, we had a business dinner and sat around a conference room table all night, and came up with the name Loyale, you know, because to convey that loyalty factor. So for, you know, the value add proposition for our customers, the providers flipping to that side of it was much higher patient financial engagements, you know, meaning patients would actually pay attention. I mean, we accumulated a lot of statistics on this. They wouldn’t. We sent them communications. We sent them out consolidated bills. They paid attention to it and they took action. Typically, you know, which is the ultimate engagement, making a payment selecting a payment plan, accepting a big discount. You. Know. So you know that, you know, it reduced patient write offs. So, you know, our healthcare provider clients made more money. It made the whole situation manageable for patients and and far less of a of a hassle ridden it experience, which it still is today in a lot of the healthcare industry. So we really played hard on the value proposition elements, both to the patient and to the provider. And so you got to find a way. I mean, if you just compete on price, I mean, it’s always, in my humble opinion, it’s the price to value equation that matters the most, not just price. So, you know, if in middle market size companies, it would be very typical that, you know, it’s, it’s hard to compete against. I mean, we’re talking about much bigger, multi billion dollar players that we were competing against. And, you know, it was a, you know, classic David and Goliath kind of, kind of a story, but, but we were able to jack up the value proposition to the relevant constituents and and do something, frankly, that nobody else could do, but that came with the help of our you know, because HCA was not just a customer and an investor. They were a co development partner. So that was the deal that we struck with them. You know, that they would help us to bake in best practices. You know, they’re, you know, they’re somewhere in the 60s or 70s, and, you know, Fortune 500 so this is a big company, but but a very strong company culturally, you know, you know, they want to get things right. You know, do right by the patient, which was, was clearly a mission, vision and values, alignment with us, you know, with with Loyale so, yeah. So those are some of the things I mean that, you know, get the value proposition hard, beat the competition on that, figure out a way to do something they can’t do, and then don’t compete on price, because you don’t have

Heather Bennett  17:08

right and I think being like you said, you’re competing against the much larger companies. There’s something nice about being a small, agile company, or, you know, even a middle market size, comparatively, you can make decisions faster, like you said, you talked about that, being around that dinner table and having those conversations, sometimes that can be the most impactful decision making process. I would think your experience in the boardroom as well. You’ve seen that happen. It’s something where you can sit down at a table with people and discuss. It allows you to be much more effective, make better decisions and be able to get the outcome that you’re looking for.

Kevin Fleming  17:50

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, I previously my career, I had worked with Ernst and Young as a senior partner with electronic data systems. What a large, multi billion dollar business unit. So, so, yeah, you know, I wouldn’t call Fortune 500 companies, particularly agile. You know, some of them are better at it than others, but nothing like this, but, but that also increases the table stakes. Right when you’re in a company and you’re you’re making decisions, and you do have the ability to, you know, literally change on a dime, and at least make the decision quickly. So you got to make the right decision. So, you know, it’s, it’s still important to do due diligence and make sure that you’ve thoroughly vetted your you know, strategic direction, in this case, a fundamental redirection, you know, transformative agenda, make sure that you can actually pull it off.

Heather Bennett  18:47

And so talking thinking back about working with that larger HCA, what would you recommend for middle marketing companies who are going to be collaborating with a larger company, what do they need to keep in mind during the process, so that the collaboration is successful?

Kevin Fleming  19:09

Well, my first bit of advice is, don’t hesitate for a second about, you know, interacting with a very large company. I mean, some middle I mean, I even encountered a little bit of this on Loyale it was like, oh my god, can we, you know, can we handle this? Can we deal with, you know, we show up for a meeting and there’d be three or four of us, and there could literally be with it, groups involved, 50 or more of of HCA, you know, I mean, you’re, you’re seriously outgunned in terms of number of people, but it meant you had to come to the meetings prepared so, so you got to do your homework in advance. You need to do some homework on the company you’re interacting with, understand them. Understand what their problems are there. I like a SWOT, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. So, you know, do a high level what’s their SWOT look like? Like, I know what mine looks like, but you know, so actually understand, how can I help? And then, you know, if you introduce ideas in that framework right away, you’re in the same way, right? So there’s, there’s got to be that bridge that, you know, you’ve got your interest, they’ve got theirs, but it’s got to be our shared interest. So learn how to learn how to be a good partner for them, and generally, that works in reverse, automatically. The thing is, be careful what you sign up for, because your your to do list can quickly become overwhelming, you know, like we had CO, you know, development. I mean, we got tremendous ideas, you know, and bake them in into this enterprise software, patient, financial engagement, you know, really cutting edge stuff, but it required a lot of technological acumen and implementation skills and capability and just a lot of work. And so, yeah, always do a reality check on, you know, because you don’t want to miss deliverables. I mean, once you commit my My motto is my My word is my bond, and I will, I tell you I’m going to do it. I will do it. And so don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t fall into the trap of becoming overwhelmed. You know, be be honest. And that’s part of an honest dialog with a partner like that. You know, in the end, they’re people, yeah, we’re all people, you know. And I know that sounds corny, but they are, and so treat them as such, and be honest and forthright and perform, of course. And if you have problems, don’t hesitate in a skillful way to to air them out, you know, and and then, typically, they’ll help you to find, you know, find answers so but by all means, do it. I mean, that was the big turning point in our trajectory. It was, you know, we went from what I call lower left quadrant, you know, smaller market commoditization to high end enterprise, largest healthcare networks as customers and targets, you know, and very little commoditization, you know, ability to price fairly

Heather Bennett  22:16

nice, nice. And then as part of that process, you talked about a lot of the two cultures being aligned. What, what do you do to evaluate culture when you’re working with a new company, when you’re working with a new client, when you’re trying to bridge the gap in an industry between multiple partners? What, how do you evaluate and maybe describe those cultures to see where a good

Kevin Fleming  22:46

fit is. Yeah, well, that story with ACA had interesting beginning. You know, we were we had hired an investment banker. We were doing, and you know what it would be? The equivalent of a Series A fundraise with, for the first time, external investors and and so HCA popped up, and I happened to be in Orlando at a business convention with one of our customers, and they stuck me in one of the Disney, the old Disney hotels, and I was out by the pool, you know, and there, you know, it was springtime. I think it was spring break, and there were a bazillion kids running around and screaming, and I had to do the web meeting, the introductory meeting with them, you know, in my computer, in my hotel room, with all that noise in the background and a weak Wi Fi signal to boot. But yeah, and so I just explained them. Look here, this is my circumstance. So you know, you might hear some kids going down the slide, but, you know, then so, but right away, you know, they interacted positively with me. You know, we started talking about our families, and so I think it’s important to take the time to interact with somebody up front, personally, you know, get to know them as individuals, because that enables the more candid business discussions and sharing, and where you really understand the culture, the values of a potential business partner. And then I have, I like to have a series of, you know, just natural flow conversations, you know, like, you know, tell me about some of the people we interacted with were extremely, you know, well, up the food chain, senior executives. So tell me about the board meetings. What are they like? How do you guys deal with contentious issues and, you know, and so on. So you learn a lot about a company, anyone really, individual company, any entity, about I mean, how do they deal with adversity? You know, challenges. You know what? What is their vision? You know? I mean, nobody can be complacent with where they’re at today. It doesn’t make any difference who you are. Nvidia, you better not you know better not stand still because. A surely tomorrow, things are going to be radically different. They could be out of business. I mean, that’s, that’s the world business, world we live in. So, so, yeah, so you don’t take it the chance. I mean, actually go through a process, know, the people have some questions that open up to you. Hey, this is, this is who I’m dealing with. This is their culture. This is, you know, the type of organization it is, and, and then have a gut check. Is that a good fit? I mean, fortunately, this was, like a, like a match made in heaven. I mean, we were, you know, even though we were at opposite ends of the spectrum, size wise, culturally, we were highly competitive,

Heather Bennett  25:39

wonderful. No, that’s the really good things to keep in mind. You know, as you said before, business is really people, working with people, and you need to focus on that first and foremost before all the business gets done.

Kevin Fleming  25:55

Well, big, big companies in particular, remember the, you know, they’re like, you know, turning around a very large ship, or, you know, something that, you know, it takes a long time. They’re looking for innovation there, you know, if anything, that might be a weakness of theirs, despite all the money. I mean, they have vested interest their technology. They’ve got multiple business units, you know, global presence. They’ve got a lot of lot of things that are, are good, but they’re they also are an impediment to change, you know, to innovation. So that’s a really strong value proposition that a smaller, middle market size company can bring. But you got to make sure you got that idea with the, you know, the real kernel of an innovative spark to make it happen.

Heather Bennett  26:41

So at the end of all of this, there was an exit. Can you talk about the decision that, you know, the decision making, maybe, like behind the scenes of the boardroom, like, what, what was going on to make that decision?

Kevin Fleming  26:56

Well, you know, we successfully went through the transformation. We implemented some very large healthcare networks. And sure enough, we started to get copycat competition. Although this wasn’t that easy to copy, you know, it was. There’s a pretty good competitive mode around it, but you can see that the days for this were, you know, they were finite, and we were going to have to do another next level, and in order to do that, was going to require a lot of money, you know, to, you know, in and so we went through an exercise, and we looked at the market, which was pretty strong, you know, in terms of financial values and multiples. I have a lot of acquaintances in the investment banking community, and, you know, people that I value and trust to tell me the truth. So it was a pretty good time financially, to monetize, to exit company was, you know, getting good competitive traction in the new markets with enterprise software next generation, and that’s critical, by the way, and when you’re looking to get enough valuation, it’s the old proof of the puddings in the eating. So you can’t just talk about potential future revenues. You need to actually be starting to realize them. We looked at the size of the fundraise and the sources of capital and valuation, and concluded that that would be a highly dilutive event, you know. So we didn’t have a lot of dilution on the cap table. So, you know, exit is a very personal thing, you know, when it, when you look at it from that standpoint. And we had, you know, some compensation plans and so on, where there were a number of people that would participate, where this would be a life changing event for them, you know, to cash in. So, so we, we struggle with this, right, say, six months. And then we decided, You know what, this is the time. This is the time to do it. And we launched a full road show with an investment banker, and went through a very arduous process. And even though it’s, you know, to this day, I probably lose a little sleep over. I mean, we, we didn’t sleep a lot So, but, you know, it was, it was tough, but we were ready to go. We had our story, we had our financial models. We had answers. We had a good strategic plan and vision. We had HCA on board, you know, moving forward. So, so we press the trigger and we sold the company. And even that was an interesting twist at the end, you know, we sold in February of 2020, and so I stayed up literally. I mean, you know, the thing that you learned with financial we were selling to a strategic that was backed by a $20 billion Chicago based private equity fund that was very good at at skillful negotiation and renegotiation. So, um. So be ready for that, you know, and so that you don’t have to cave on your your ultimate purchase price. But you know it. So I stayed up 48 hours immediately before just going back and forth on every issue, including go forward. We helped out afterwards, and we stayed on as executives. And then actually that was a very good experience in the post acquisition environment. But we closed that deal at midnight on, you know, effectively on February 28 and the very next day, very next day, March 1 was the day that COVID became a global threat that everybody acknowledged, and the market started to crash, and our valuation would have been much lower. So I guess that’s where the old saying, I’d rather be lucky than good. But, you know, there was always something. So that would be another thing I would tell people, you know, pay it. There is, there was something that was telling all of us to, you know, it’s important to do this now, you know, we could have drug it out. We could have stopped, said, now we’re gonna negotiate a little bit more. And that would have been a horrible decision, in retrospect, that, yeah, get ready for that. And that final stretch run, it’s, it was Yogi Bear. I used to say, It ain’t over till it’s over, so until the money is literally being transferred. You know, you’ve got to, got to stay on top of the deal and Work it. Work it. Work. It to completion. Unfortunately, we had a very strong professional team with a lot of experience,

Heather Bennett  31:37

yeah. And I found that having that strong team around you during the process is and really the right people advising you is absolutely vital. I And I love your expression. My expression I use is success is where hustle meets luck, because you can do everything and prepare everything, but if you don’t have that one moment of luck to really push it over the finish line. You know that that’s really what gets you those great successes. What a great story, what a wonderful success. And I love that you talked about the post transaction as well. You know what? And I know that’s always part of the negotiations of the transaction is how long the leadership team, or the like the key employees are going to stay. Is there anything that middle market companies should keep in mind about that, like really writing in how that post transaction is going to look like? Yeah. I

Kevin Fleming  32:38

mean, it was interesting, because I used to run a large mergers and acquisitions practice at Ernst and Young and I, I built a whole practice that was based on post merger integration and the fact that so many deals fall apart, you know, the wheels fall off. They, you know, the pre deal thesis. You know, this is why we’re doing this synergies, infamous synergies list. They’re they’re not realized, because customers leave the wrong technologies are selected as survivors for the wrong reasons. Politics and jobs comes into play and so on. So yeah, what we what we wanted to do, and it was the right thing to do for us. And the acquire was to we had a lot of deals that were in flight, and to have us just leave would have been highly disruptive technology upgrades, the relationship with HCA and other strategics that we had had picked up along the way, and frankly, the future of our people, you know, our loyal colleagues, that it was important To me that those that were staying on with, you know, the surviving entity that they that they landed in a great place, and they did, you know, but, but because we were still there and participating in all those decisions, including the go forward technologies, you know, because that’s, That’s one of the classic battlegrounds, post merger integration that technologists and, you know, they see their their jobs are tired. They’re tied to, well, is, you know, revenue cycle system, A or B, you know, and certain people are tied to a, and other people are tied to B. And so it is an important decision for him to get the business decision right, but, but there’s a people decision that you know in effect is made also. And if you’re a smaller entity being acquired by a bigger one, you’ve got a you got to speak up, right? You’ve got a you’ve got to go through that process and and make sure that a fair airing occurs and that the right decision is made. And it was, you know, and that was, you know, you know, so that that’s where, if, in a lot of middle market, smaller your colleagues, your employees, I mean, they’re your friends also, right? It’s, it is personal, and you want them to have great opportunities. Going forward, you don’t want them to be redeployed and axed, because the you know, it didn’t go so good. Which, which is the norm, frankly. But this one went great. You know that businesses in the fast lane accelerating growth, even more so than ever, with the business models that we put in place, the people that we put in place. So it’s, it’s very rewarding. I mean, the money is, money is great, but, but that part of it, frankly, is just as rewarding, or more so wonderful, knowing that you help people that that matter to you.

Heather Bennett  35:37

That’s great. This is just such a good story and such a good success. I do have one last question, but before I ask it, I wanted to make sure that people knew that they could reach you, primarily through LinkedIn or through the website, the newportllc.com website, so very quickly, having gone through this, and especially with your experience in M and A and Eddie and why, and with other companies, you know, what has this taught you about the life cycle of middle market businesses, from founding To exit like, what? What are some big overarching lessons for middle market companies as they think about starting and then what the eventual and or next phase will be? Yeah, well,

Kevin Fleming  36:36

always challenge your your strategic plan and your business plan and including implementation execution. So constantly be dust should never accumulate. You shouldn’t have to dust it off because, you know, your fingerprints are all over it, or your digital prints are all over you know, because this is such a fast moving business environment I’m in, I’m involved now, you know, in a artificial intelligence company that’s in the computational biology pharmaceutical and and healthcare. You know, really seeking to revolutionize pharma and healthcare delivery and but that’s AI is pervasive. You know, three in every industry, every facet, literally, so, so now you really can’t be complacent at all. Yeah, I mean that it’s a huge lever, you know, an asset, if you’re on the right side of it and you’re fast enough, so velocity matters. And you know, I think the days of the so called Lifestyle companies, you know, where people would just build a solid model and then go off and play golf and harvest big cash flow and dividends. I think that’s over. I mean, sure, there are a few of those, but, you know, artificial intelligence is a real it’s a fundamental game changer. So in particular, in this business environment, and we’re right now, I mean, it’s accelerating so fast we’re way past the beginning, you know. I mean, it’s moving towards a middle level chapter, and then probably multiple evolutions and revolutions on top of that. So, so as a middle market company, make sure you’re on the right side of that, that would be my biggest, you know, most relevant advice, solid, strategic plan, stay liquid. I mean, we’re, you know, we’re in an environment now with, there’s a little bit of potential recessionary chop out there, but hopefully it doesn’t happen, but it could. I mean, I’ve always been amazed by, I mean, all the prognosticators, yeah, I saw the saw the big correction coming in 2008 and nine. Well, guess what? 2008 or nine, they didn’t say a darn thing. No idea. Yeah. I mean, yeah, hindsight is 2020 but it’s more about foresight now, and as make sure that biggest advice, make sure artificial intelligence is part of your game plan. It can be a tremendous lever for or against you, so strongly recommend you make it an asset.

Heather Bennett  39:12

Excellent, excellent advice. Kevin, I can’t thank you enough. This there. I have so many more. I literally I keep writing questions. So we’ll have to talk offline sometime. There’s so much more I want to hear about this story. Thank you so much for sharing about all of this, the success. Really, really appreciate it, and I know our listeners and followers will as well. Have a great day. Thank you for being

Kevin Fleming  39:39

here. Same to you and everybody out there. Take care.

Outro 39:48

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