Latest / Exit Algorithms / What Private Equity Looks For Before They Buy with Wayne Marhelski (#79)

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What Private Equity Looks For Before They Buy with Wayne Marhelski (#79) · Exit Algorithms

• Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Welcome to Exit Algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations, and prepare your business for a high-value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera, and today I'm joined by Wayne Marhelski. He's a private equity operating executive with four successful portfolio company turnarounds under his belt. He's a US Air Force veteran and three decade operations leader. Who specializes in turning operational complexity into real EBITDA? Wayne is super excited to have you here. Welcome the podcast. Wayne Marhelski: Thank you, Pete. Thank you for the invitation. Glad to be here. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Absolutely. Can you share for listeners a a little bit about yourself, your you know, your background and maybe some of your your career highlights? Wayne Marhelski: Sure. So, you know, I started I started right out of high school going into the military, which for me was a you know, a a great choice. it kind of opened the door to the world of manufacturing. You know, after my tech school I got I was fortunate enough to be stationed in Japan for for three years, and as part of that, I was voluntold how I was going to become a trainer on TQM for the squadron, which you know, I've never turned down free training. And so, you know, part of that free training was hey, you get to go visit Toyota and see how Toyota and other companies in Japan adopted all of Deming's philosophies. And, you know, it what resonated for me, you know, with going into Toyota, not having a lot of knowledge as far as a Japanese language is that it still made sense. You know, and that was like my big takeaway. Like just walking out on the floor, you know, I I I had a a sense of how the material was moving, you know, where it was going, where it was coming from. And that's always kind of resonated with me. So, you know, even as I I exited the Air Force and was going to, you know, school, and then eventually, you know, stepping into manufacturing, it was something that really always kind of stayed with me is, you know, we may make complex products, but it doesn't need to, you know, mean that we have to be doing it in a very complex way. Like we should always look for simplicity. So You know, I've I've experienced some recessions, you know, in my in my career, you know, from the telecom industry to the Great Recession, you know, in two thousand eight. done some turnarounds on the way. But, you know, most of my background has kind of been based on an engineering mindset of an individual that's moved into operations and supply chain management. again, you know, taking those principles like from the Toyota production system and and implementing them. And, you know, and I I really like principles, you know, over people that say, Hey, well, we have a playbook. Because if that something changes, that playbook may not function as well. But the principles will still carry forward. You know, so things like concepts like flow, you know, visual management, things like that, you know, they hold true no matter what you're doing or or where you're doing it in the world. more so than just having a playbook that I have to go through and check boxes every step of the way. So you know, hopefully hopefully I've got some insights that that people will find useful and you know of interest. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: I love that that focus too on on principles that have kind of carried you through throughout your your whole career. W were there any things from you know from early on that you still apply regularly in your in your work life? Wayne Marhelski: I love walking factory floors. You know, I'd rather walk the factory floor instead of sitting in and looking at a at a slide deck. Because I think, you know, that's reality. That's the story out there. and you can look at all the pages and in slides and PowerPoint, but a simple 20, 30 minute walk kind of tells you all you need to know. let's take for instance the maintenance, you know, maintenance is not sexy in a you know in the world, in a business. But if you walk into a maintenance area and that maintenance area isn't well maintained and cleaned and organized, then right away that raises the question: what are you doing with the equipment that's out on the floor? How are you taking care of the capital investment? And that actually holds pretty true. You know, in the restaurant industry, it's usually, you know, you go and you look at the at the at the the restrooms. And if the restrooms are a mess, you know, that says a lot about the back of the house. And there's a strong correlation there to both of those. But, you know, even just walking through, you know, where where is inventory sitting as either whip or raw materials or finished goods? Those are opportunities that that says a lot about how the factory is operating or what their strategy may be. You know, whip, whip and large piles of whip are work in progress if somebody isn't familiar with that. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Wayne Marhelski: You know, that could be an indication that the upstream process is overproducing, or the downstream process is having, let's say, a mechanical or quality issue and they're not consuming it. So that's an opportunity without any slide deck, without any Excel sheet that somebody should be focusing on. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: what are some of those those things that you look at in in the first thirty to days you know, take a private equity acquisition example. Wayne Marhelski: Yeah, so so number one is trust in God, everybody else bring data. That is typically something that's that's usually very lacking. and you know, and I think this is also something, even if it's not a turnaround, but you know, I've seen in some founder, you know, founder owned companies, you know, and and we'll say, you know, let's say sub thirty to fifty million. it's not uncommon. But you know, the data that you would typically want to see or or need isn't readily available. You know, so that actually kind of creates a bit of a challenge because you have to go validate, find it, then validate it, versus having it readily available where you can actually expedite that improvement process or the analysis process. I'm a big believer, you know, the financials kind of drive it. so you know, there there's areas within the financials that you you know, material costs, you know, for manufacturing, it's not uncommon to see material costs up around, you know. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Wayne Marhelski: 48, 50%, you know, that's the single largest budgetary line item. If if they don't have control of that, it could be easy to see why they're, you know, their their their on-time delivery is poor, you know, their their margins on their products. I've seen instances where, you know, the costing was out of control. you know, and I've walked into scenarios where, you know, at one company, 60% of the products we made were at loss. You know, we wrap dollar bills around everything we sent out the door. you don't need to be a super operationally focused individual to realize that, hey, that doesn't really work. You know, eventually that's a problem. you don't need anything fancy, you know, you don't need a massive MRP, you know, an expensive MRP to tell you this. it it that's really just fundamentals. You know, and I would encourage everybody, you know, start with the financial statement. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Yeah, no, definitely. A are there certain things you you would, you know, focus on? I or does it just depend on the business? Wayne Marhelski: Again, for manufacturing, I'm always gonna I'm always gonna look at, you know, what's in, you know, that cost of goods sold section. You know, is it is it materials? Again, you know, if you make a 10% improvement on the let's say the d direct labor, that's minimal compared to let's say a two percent that could be on the material side. So understanding, you know, where you're gonna get the biggest bang for the buck. you know, with the turnaround, the the trick is it's it's kind of like Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Wayne Marhelski: an emergency room technician, you know, or or doctor. You know, you have to stop the hemorrhaging and in order to get the patient healthy, you know. So don't worry about the splinter. You know, worry about the tourniquet that's sitting on there. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Yeah, good advice. during integration, what are some things have you seen examples of it going wrong? does it take to make a good integration work? Wayne Marhelski: you know, again, I'm gonna go back to, you know, you know, having if you if you can educate people first, you know, a lot of times they're like, hey, we're gonna we're gonna smash these companies together, or you know, one company may be very mature, one company isn't so mature, or you know, you take a you know, a found again, I'm gonna pick on a the founder led businesses, you know, smaller scale, who may not have, MRP system. You know, they're they're profitable, they're being successful, but they don't have necessarily the access to the data or you know, sometimes people, you know, they kind of grow up with the company. And that's great. You know, I'm all about promoting people and growing people. But if those folks didn't get exposure to let's say how standard things kip typically operate, you know, and and let's let's let's let's pick on MRP or ERP. You know, the the backbone of that hasn't changed since it was first conceived. You know, the structure of calculating, you know, when material is needed and when it should be delivered and when it should be ordered, it hasn't really changed. You know, you can do it with three by five cards, you can do it with an Excel sheet. The ERP system makes it easier for you. But if you're not having been introduced to those concepts of MRP planning, it's tough to expect people to be successful with it. You know, I I use the analogy. It's it's hard to explain what good looks like to people if they've never seen it. You know, somebody that's been in, you know, the same job or the same industry for, you know, 20, 30 years, you know, they've got a lot of experience in that industry. But if they've never seen anything else other than, you know, inside the same four walls, they don't have that concept. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Yeah. Mm. Yeah, no that Wayne Marhelski: So, so with integrations, that's tough. It's it was an educational piece, a systems piece. And then I think even just a process piece. You know, ask, ask folks, you know, hey, do you have a process for this? And if their response is, well, Joe kind of takes care of that, or Sally kind of takes care of that, okay, that's not really a process. That's tribal knowledge, and it serves a purpose. but that also means that it's somewhat dependent on how Sally or you know, Tom or whomever are feeling that day. Or if they're even out on PTO, then who does it? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: as a you know, business owner potentially selling to to private equity, are is there any advice you you might give someone in in those shoes, you know, to whether it be mindset or like what what it makes a successful sale? Wayne Marhelski: I think for business owners to really get the best value, you know, out out of their company. I think that the sellers leave value on the table, to be honest. You know, so if you you want to think about, you know, two to three years before you think you're gonna exit is the time to really kind of start building those again, the systems and you know, the processes, putting that that discipline infrastructure in place. getting your financials in order. You know, the the PE groups are still gonna kinda wanna massage it and look at it the way the way they they typically look at it. you know, and do a little research. You know, do some research into who your potential sellers may be. If it's private equity, understand what private equity looks at, how they operate. There's a bit of a sense out there in some ways that that people look at private equity as being a you know a dirty word or somebody to stay away from. And it's like everything else. There, there, there's there's firms out there you should actually absolutely stay away from. But there's firms out there that are really good people, really smart people that actually, you know, they want to take your business to that next level. You know, th they're not corporate raters. You know, they want to grow the business, they want to grow the profitability of the business, you know, and As a byproduct, that means that you're going to be hiring more people, getting better systems in place, et cetera. So the the majority of private equity is really good folks, smart folks too. so understand that. Understand what that nuance is, you know, how they think about it. familiarize yourself with some of their concepts of like EBITDA. You know, if if if you don't know what EBITDA is and you sell the private equity, you will learn very quick what EBITDA is. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Ha ha. Wayne Marhelski: you know, they kind of live and die in that. You know, look at how your cash conversion takes place. you know, how you're managing cash, you know, you how you're managing, you know, your your days of sales, you know, your days of inventory. and again, these are just disciplinary type things. spend some time and clean up the operation. it's it's really indicative of. you know, if if somebody's taken a business, built it from the ground up and grown it to, you know, 10, 20 million dollars, you know, kudos to you. Kudos to that person. You deserve to get all of the financial benefit out of that. You know, all that sweat equity, time and and effort you put into it. Don't don't let somebody else just walk away with it. So it's it's not, and again, these aren't things that, you know, are complex or difficult. They just require kind of a little bit of a different shift, maybe less day-to-day, you know, being and sowing the weeds or firefighting and just kind of carving out some time and being like, Look, it's a two year journey that I wanna I wanna position the company for the best sale possible. you know, if you haven't bought any new equipment and you haven't upgraded anything, you know, in in several years, you're gonna you're gonna pay that penalty. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Wayne Marhelski: And it's not to say go out and buy a bunch of new equipment and say, Look, look, this is what we've got. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Wayne Marhelski: But again, they want to see that the business, you know, they're not gonna have to come in and spend a bunch of you know money or put a bunch more money into the business to capitalize it better for growth. You know, show that it's already on that progression. And, you know, reach out. You know, I I would encourage, you know, to to develop those relationships early with some of those PE firms and have some of those discussions. And not every PE firm is gonna be right for you, whether it's just, you know, personal. differences or different industries. you know, there are firms that will, you know, they'll buy from you because it's a it's a great price. But I would say, you know, look to sell somebody who's kind of got experience in your sector. You know, they'll they'll appreciate what you're doing. They'll understand any nuances better than somebody that's agnostic. and if you're going to be, you know, selling to a strategic, I think it kind of comes back down to the same thing, you know, Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Wayne Marhelski: Have your house in order, have the discipline, have the processes in place. it's never gonna hurt you. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Definitely. Well said. those foundational principles will you know dramatically increase the the value you're able to command the multiple EBITDA you're able to command when you go to sell. Wayne Marhelski: Exactly. Yeah. don't don't wake up one day on a Monday and be like, hey, you know, we're gonna we're gonna go sell and you know, you haven't done anything really with the business for for a year or two. You you again, you it's gonna impact that multiple pretty easy, pretty quick. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, a lot of good tips you said too around finding the right the right buyer, planning ahead. I wanted to pick your brain also about you know, building a right team. no you've had to kind of go in there and and sometimes evaluate the the existing leadership at right in in some of those turnarounds. What is great talent Wayne Marhelski: Yes. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: you know, look like in a in a high pressure operational environment like that. Wayne Marhelski: that's a really good question. you know, I I want to say, you know, those folks that have, a good work ethic, and and again, you know, I I I take the approach, you know, most people come to work because they want to do a good job. They care about what they're doing. you know, turnarounds are actually unfortunately, you know, some of those good people, you know, suffer because of it. Because you know, you may have to make some reductions and and headcount changes just because you want to reduce the break-even point to make the business healthy. but what you really want to look for is again, is is those people that really care about the business? And I've all whenever I've gone into a company, I've always asked like, like, who's the biggest complainer in the company? You know, who is the person that's gonna bitch and moan about like everything and anything? And and I usually get this look like, well, why do you want to go talk to them? And I'm like, because there's I I've what I found is about 70, 80% of the time, you know what, everybody else is kind of shut down. And so they just stop speaking out. That person still cares enough. Now, they may not always speak in the most polite manner, or you know, might be a little rough around the edges, but what they're telling you has merit. You know. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Wayne Marhelski: What they're saying isn't incorrect. They may just be saying it a little more harshly, a little more brashly, maybe, that than than they could. but they care enough to still speak out. So I I firmly believe, you know, and I've seen this from my consulting experiences, most of the answers are already in the company. The people know. You know, people that that want to say, hey, well, those folks don't really understand this. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Wayne Marhelski: You know, as you know, the executive team says, hey, the the the folks on the floor won't really understand that. They understand a lot more than are they're given credit for. you know, they understand that the business is not doing well when they see the fact that some of the customers that used to come through aren't coming through anymore, the volume is down. they see it, they know it. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Wayne Marhelski: so you really kind of got to get engaged with that. you know, I I'm a firm believer, you know, you roll up the sleeves, show them that you're gonna do a little sweat equity with them. You're not just there to kind of, you know, kick them in the rear end or punch them in the nose. turnarounds are as successful as the team you can pull together. identifying the people that have set specific experience. Not everybody is always in the job that they're best suited for. maybe they got pushed over somewhere and they've been they've been in a position for like a year or two years because they didn't have anybody else and they had been there the longest and they were familiar with it and they could kind of learn it. But they may not still be they may just be fumbling their way through it. So, how do you take that person and put them back where they're gonna be a superstar and let them be successful? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Wayne Marhelski: the biggest turnaround I did, I walked in, you know, on day one and there was a hundred and three people, day two or I'm sorry, day forty five. We were down to fifty one people. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Wow. Wayne Marhelski: Right. So it was it was dramatic. I did all of I did all of the layoffs myself because I think you got to take the ownership of it. Don't let people do your dirty work. and immediately the afternoon I pulled everybody every main remaining employee together and I said, Look, this is why we did it. These aren't all bad people, but we have to do this for the business to survive. And it's tough, right? You know, you have to look at a lot of people, that's gonna impact their lives. But sometimes a doctor has to amputate a limb to save the patient. And that's kind of the how I kind of keep it straight. And I kind of explained out the vision. So you can't just do the cuts. You got to be able to then immediately pivot and say, this is where we want to go. You know, here's the vision, here's the strategy. You folks are part of it. I've been involved in four turnarounds. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Okay. Wayne Marhelski: But I had a great team in each of those turnarounds of folks that lined up and did some of the hard work as well. you know, in that particular one, you know, we ended up growing up 36% year over year on revenue, which is pretty substantial. we added two people. Yeah. Yeah, we added two people. one of them was much smarter than me. You know, I needed an engineer, you know, much smarter than me. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. With half the half the workforce. Wayne Marhelski: I don't want to be the smartest person in the room, where that's a failure. and you know, we were growing at triple digits on the bottom line, which kind of shows how the business had been underperforming, and it'd been neglected. And, you know, this was this was a business that in 17 years as a it had just been run as a cost center and never made a profit. And so, you know, that first six months we actually finished out the fiscal year. and I I think. We made a profit of about $385. But you know what? 17 years of loss, one year making $300, you know, somewhat dollars, that's a win. And that's that's a win for the team. You know, you celebrate that. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: I love your perspective on things. I th I think it's really valuable the you know, the turnaround perspective gives a lot of practical insights for companies that are just, you know, that struggling to grow as well. Wayne Marhelski: It forces you, it forces you to get into the weed sometimes. and it forces you to learn a lot. You know, I I don't necessarily encourage people to say, hey, just go look for turnarounds, right? Because it it's tough. you better be willing to put in the hours, you bet because you have a finite window. and some of these turnarounds I've walked into, you know, I've had a mandate of, you know, do a review and make a determination whether it's you're gonna you're gonna wind it down. Or you're gonna make a go for it. and if you're gonna make a go for it, what's your plan? So I've never actually wound anything completely down. I've always made a go for go, you know, go of it. I give a lot of credit to some of the folks because I don't necessarily know the industry, I don't know the customers. but again, I understand the principles and the elements that we need to go change or fix. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, another major theme of this show is implementing AI and technology for for growth and scaling. I've kind of a twofold question here for you. you know, how are you personally leveraging AI? and also how do you see it affecting your industry? Wayne Marhelski: I have this mixed emotion with AI. On one hand, it's a great tool. I think Notebook LM is is super useful. you know, I would encourage everybody to check it out and even use it for setting up internal training programs on on topics. You know, it's it's a great tool where you can dump in your resources and now you've got a you've got a resource for supply chain for people or a resource for you know, industrial engineering for people. and you know, for for minimal cost. So in in many ways, it's it's a great tool. You know, the the challenge I have with AI is is I I hear people saying, hey, we want AI and we want more AI. And yet they can't they they can't clearly enunciate what it the problem they're trying to solve is. Right? You know, if if if you're just gonna chase chase it, And you don't really know the problem you're you're trying to solve, AI may give you a bad answer faster. Or so so there's a real risk there. I found out over this year when I got my summary from ChatGPT, I was like one of the top three or first three percent of people to really utilize it. I don't I still don't think I'm any smarter with it in many ways, but for me it's it's a simplifier, right? You know, I've built workflows. I've kind of delved into that, you know, just from my engineering mindset, you know, I kind of like understanding that a little deeper. but I still think for businesses the challenge is going to be like, what problems are we trying to solve? You know, I think there's a lot of opportunity to leverage it in the supply chain world, especially as it looks at like, you know, demand forecasts and demand planning. Great tools, you know, you can dump those data sets in, let it kind of do the number crunching for you. especially if you've got a you know, more let's say more of a basic MRP system and not something like an Oracle or an SAP that might have that already embedded into it. So, you know, without going out and having to invest you know millions of dollars on a new MRP, you know, you can leverage the AI for that. I think you know, proposals and quotations. I think I think those are perfect areas where I think it's going to grow. but again, you know, I think there there needs to be that educational process. and I've seen this, right? You know, I've seen people kind of just go in there to kind of use it just as a chatbot and not really build the tools or you know, the markdowns that they can utilize and upload every time for consistency. You know, AI will always give you a response, it will always give you an answer. But for business, consistency sometimes is the best answer. If you know, if you want to use it to generate a slide deck, but every slide deck looks different. All the charts are always different every month. You know, it's tough to get that constant, you know, that that continuity. So you have to do a little due diligence, you have to train it, you have to educate, educate it, you know, garbage in, garbage out. So again, the old computer principles don't change. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Wayne Marhelski: You know, reviewing documents, reviewing contracts, I think it's great. I still think you need to have somebody kind of review it. but again, I think right now at this stage where AI is, it's still about education and using it to educate yourself more than just trusting what it puts out. You know, I've gotten spreadsheets out and I'm like, well, that that math just doesn't look right. And I have to go in and dig in, you know, dig into it. And when I fix it, I go back, you know, I make sure I follow back up and say, hey, this is not right for this reason. You know, can you validate it? Or am I wrong? it's a growing thing, you know. it's not gonna go away. So people that want to bury their head in the sand, I think, you know, you do it at your own peril. I think it's only gonna become more connected into you know, where it's whether it's warehouse management systems, MRP. I think it's great for HR. It's it's a great HR tool to help generate reviews and and you know, you can upload those reviews, you know, over periods of time and see trends in folks, trends in supervisors, you know, how well people do. yeah, big believer, but also cautious. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Well said. Yeah, a lot lot of good insights there. You got you definitely gotta train it, you know. It's like almost like an employee. Wayne Marhelski: Yeah, you know, pick don't don't hop on the newest system just because somebody came out, AI. Right? You're better you're better working within two or three consistently. You know, they learn your voice, they learn they learn how you look at things, how you want to do things. you know, and I I reference markdown documents, which are kind of the instruction sheets you can kind of use, but that You know, ChatGPT will look at that markdown sh sheet and interpret it differently than Claude or Perplexity. So it's good and it gets that framework, those guardrails, but there's still gonna be nuances and differences. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Yeah. W what do you typically include on a markdown document? Wayne Marhelski: I actually create my markdown sheets helping, you know, with the AI. So once I kind of have what I want, you know, I kind of go through that and say, you know, how would you replicate this? even to things such as color, style, tone. there's some really great references out there, but you know, again, if you use Chat GPT a lot. Then work within ChatGPT to give you that markdown. You know, so the next time I want to have this c topic or this conversation, I'm gonna I can just upload that sheet. you know, markdown sheets are actually very, very lightweight. So I would I would actually encourage anybody too, if don't be uploading the PDFs, you know, upload take a PDF, change it to a markdown sheet and upload it. It somehow seems to read it better, easier in many ways. It's cleaner. It's cleaner for the software. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. No, that's really good advice. giving it something that will allow it to generate a consistent outcome I think is really critical. Wayne Marhelski: Yeah, otherwise it's gonna do what it thinks it it's gonna it's gonna have to fill in the blanks. You know, and you don't wanna sit there and write out, you know, a a three page prompt every time you go to do it. So that becomes the instruction set on how to and on on how to handle that discussion or that next series of of prompts. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, great. Really good, useful tip there. I have one final question for you. If you could give one practical tip for business owners who want to tighten their operations and increase their company's value right now, what would it be? Wayne Marhelski: Take a walk. I don't mean to you know knock any business owners because I know there's a lot that are fundamentally in the business every day. But sometimes it's easier to get caught up in the firefighting to where you kind of step away the heart of the operation. You know, and that walk could be into the engineering department, the supply chain group. again, as a business owner, you know, which let's say if you're the CEO, think of it as an inverted pyramid. You know, your job is to make sure the people that report to you have the tools, the knowledge, and the resources to be successful. So you're kind of the bull in the china shop. You're the person that's going to knock down those barriers for them. And just, you know, take a walk, kind of take yourself out of a like this is my baby. how would a third party look at it? And again, if you're gonna look to sell, I I would encourage to have start having those conversations. Sooner rather than later. you know, it just a conversation with a PE group doesn't mean you have to sell. But get the nuance that they would be looking for. Right. I I I don't think anybody would turn you down. You know, I think they'd be more than happy to sit there and say, Hey, let's have that conversation and when the time's right, give us a ring. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Well said. great great advice this episode. Wayne, thank you so much for all your your insight. where can listeners find find you? Some of your content. I know you post a lot on LinkedIn. Wayne Marhelski: free feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. you know, I also do a Substack where I in some cases I do longer form content. you know, and that's at the operational edge. So, you know, my my bio is on there as well. So a lot of the stuff I'll do on LinkedIn, I'll also reference a link to that. So LinkedIn is probably the easiest, but if you don't want to you're not a big LinkedIn fan, then there's Substack. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, sounds good. I'll leave that in the show notes. Thanks so much for your time today, Wayne. It's great talking to you. Wayne Marhelski: Thank you for the invitation. I appreciate it. Enjoyed it thoroughly.