YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW

Interview with Mark Brimer, Owner of Office Supply Solutions

Steve Denny/ Mark Brimer

Our next You Don't Know What You Don't Know podcast episode is with special guest Mark Brimer, Founder of Office Supply Solutions where Mark discusses what made him decide to start his office supply business, what makes his business stand out, and how he has overcome challenges with finding the right employees. 

Office Supply Solutions saves businesses time and money on the office items they already purchase.  They have 30,000 items in stock for next day free freight delivery on all orders over $50.  Their selection includes both name brand and compatible items.  Their goal is to cater to their customer's printer cartridge, office supply and paper needs by doing all the research for their customers so they can continue with their job. 

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About Steven Denny: Steven Denny co-founded Innovative Business Advisors in 2018 and serves as a Managing Member of the firm. Steve has been actively engaged in M/A activities in a wide variety of industries for the last 14 years and has developed specific products to assist clients in growing their profitability and enterprise value. His specialty is working with established private companies in the lower middle market with annual revenues from $1 – 50 million.

 

0:02  
Welcome to the You Don't Know What You Don't Know podcast by Innovative Business Advisors. Successful business owners who have started, grown and led businesses share their journey and direction for the benefit of those traveling the same path. Today, we're talking with Mark Brimer. Mark's the business owner, founder of Office Supply Solutions. Mark is a fantastic networker and leader of a thriving service business here in Bridgeton, Missouri.

0:33  
Mark, honored to have you with us this evening. How are you doing today? Great. Thank you for the opportunity to come on this podcast. Oh, listen, I've been excited about this for some time, so looking forward to this Mark. I've known you for a while, and unfortunately I don't know a lot of your stories, so tonight, I hope to learn a lot more about that. So, tell me about the moment you decided to go into business for yourself. Well, long story short, out of college, I got into the purchasing side of the we'll call it supplies, hardware, computer industry for three years. Ended up on the wholesale side, selling to companies like the ones I own, the one I own now, and started out in purchasing for a short time, and most of the time was spent in sales. And after leaving the industry for a couple years just to try something different, I decided to come back and work for one of my former customers. And the money, the philosophy never worked so I was kind of sharing with friends that I knew pretty confidently, I knew what I was doing. They said, Why don't you open your own business? And I said, Why would I want to do that? So basically, out of frustration and stupidity, I took a month started a business, and here we are now. And here we are now. How many years later? A little over 12 and a half and growing. Wow. That's phenomenal, phenomenal. So you gained a little knowledge in this industry, and you knew what it would take to do it different and better than most folks in the industry, and decided to dive into the deep end of the pool and and show the world. That is what happened, I guess. There's-- Awesome. Well, tell me some of the things you saw in the, in the, in the industry, that you felt like could be, could be better, and things that you guys endeavor to do to set yourself apart from the others in the field. I mean, I look at it as, I mean, what we do isn't sexy. It's not exciting. It's not one of those things that people wake up and go, I want to buy supplies today. I mean, usually if you're buying supplies, you're either A, are the owner, or B, congratulations, you got the short straw. So when I was out of the industry I was in the construction world in sales for a little bit and watched my former boss do great business but would get tripped up with supplies and things like that. They'd have to run to the store and get something. And between seeing that and also knowing that when you go to a restaurant you expect great service, especially when you're paying 50 60 bucks a plate. But whoever expects that kind of service from an office supply company. And it's something that everyone uses and it either makes or breaks the day, because when you're out of paper your day can't be going well. So my whole goal was to just use that five star service, which we call rock star customer service, and bring it to people in just normal business so that they could be successful.

3:20  
Yeah, you guys really do a nice job in that regard. Talk a little bit about things you do differently in terms of delivering that service for you know, one of the things that impresses me is you guys deliver immediately, same day, if possible, next day at the latest, and that's it you personally deliver. Correct. A lot of people use courier services which get the job done, but it doesn't give you the the touch points. Like, for instance, I had a customer one time who actually he called it, per se, a complaint that wasn't a complaint about one of my drivers. And in the 12 and a half years we've been in business, we've had less than one complaint a year on our drivers. And his complaint was his receptionist was gone and our driver came in his building, which had a glass front door, put the paper where it belonged, and the and the customer saw the driver walking down the hall leaving the business. The customer called and said, I don't know what I'm complaining about but I'm kind of complaining because I didn't know your guy was in my office. I said, Okay, what, how should we handle this in the future? He said if he could just announce himself. He goes, by the way, how did he know where my stuff goes? I said, it's his job. I said, they know where everything goes because they don't want to inconvenience your staff if they're on the phone. They just want to make sure that you're taken care of. The same customer since we moved to Houston and is still a customer, since we do business all over the country out of our Houston warehouse. You know, and that's the phenomenal thing. I mean, you you started a local business, but now you have the ability to touch people anywhere. That's correct. One of the other things we do is, when people place online orders we don't just shove them through, we actually look at them and find ways to save them money, whether it be changing people from a name brands office supply to a house brand if we know they don't mind the change. Even had a local car dealership who wanted storage bankers boxes. And these were the real expensive kind. They placed an order for two cases that each case was over $100 and my director of operations at the time stopped the order that was placed online to let me know to call them, because if they got a third case we could save them $45 because of a bulk purchasing opportunity. So we actually called them, asked if they were interested in the third case, saved them $45 that they didn't know was even out there and still delivered same day for them. So the customer basically said, I can't believe you stopped your day to save me money. I said, that's what we do, and that's how we earn trust by valuing our customers' time and their money. Who does that Mark? I mean-- I guess we do. You guys do.

5:58  
Well, it sure has been good for your business, right? I mean, here you are 12 and a half years later. We're pretty lucky. We, thanks to the COVID situation, with not running out of toilet paper when the rest of the world did, we actually got caught up and averaged one new account for every business day for 10 years. Say that again, you did what now? We had, we we had fallen behind, but with COVID we delivered a lot of toilet paper to new customers who couldn't find it in the store. As a result, if you take the number of days in 10 business years, we averaged more than one account every day for 10 years. That's astounding. Thank you. That is unbelievable. You must have great systems, because just just getting new accounts set up and in your system and being able to, you know, service them properly, that takes time and effort. Well, we do our best. Awesome. Well, of all these things, what are you most proud of in the business? You know, this is gonna sound really silly, but for people who think they can actually start a business and do it all by themselves successfully, it's not going to happen. And recently, I got together with some friends and pointed out to them that all of the people in the room had either helped with my business in some way, whether it be a customer, helped with furniture installation as an extra person when needed, made a delivery. With, just it wasn't them, as all their kids, except for one family who lived out of town, had helped with the business. So it's two generations of my family and friends have helped with the business and helped make it successful. Not just me. It's a great team that I have and the people who are in my life who help grow the business for me in little ways whether they realize it or not, from my nieces coming in and doing a little computer work to we just moved our business. I had friends that came in and helped with that as well. So it's a lot of people who are kind enough to support the efforts is how we've made it as long as we have. Well, you're, such a giver yourself. I mean, if anybody personifies that, that go giver mentality that Bob Byrd famously coined, right, you're, you're the guy. I think you are among the best networking connector I know of, certainly in St Louis. I mean, you just, you just seem to know everybody and and are are in everybody's heart and bring a smile out of their brow when they talk about Mark Brimer. You're the, you're the red shirt guy that that everybody knows. Well they, I guess, I, that's sure. I mean, I just do what I, what makes sense to me. I mean, try to help people where I can, because I would love help whenever I can get it too. Well, and it comes around. As you said, you guys just expanded, moved into bigger and brighter new space, right? We had a bunch of people come out and help you. That's right. Had to be pretty exciting, moving pallets of paper and so forth, around into your new space, right? Actually, I'm very lucky. We happened to get a paper delivery the day we moved. So we, 

9:01  
we were able to make things happen very quickly as far as the big stuff. It was the small moves, the small items that really took longer than I expected. But we, we're pretty lucky. Awesome, awesome. Well, you know, there's, there's often a lot of challenges in building a business and somebody that's made it 12 and a half years you, you beat the odds, right? We know the odds are that about 80% of businesses fail within the first five years. So you, you beat the odds, you continue to thrive. You're adding new customers at the rate of one a day. I'm sure you've had some challenges during that period of time. Can you remember back to when you first started, what was, what was the biggest challenge you faced at that point? Kind of learning to be a business owner. As a gentleman we both know, Bill Pernatt said, he says he never went to school to be a business owner, and it was just kind of learning through experiences, failures, how, what to do, what not to do, how to manage people. Because I really never managed adults before. I've been a high school coach for years, but coaching kids versus adults is lead, trying to lead them and be a leader is a whole nother animal. So starting to be a leader and learning finances of a business and how to, how to make decisions as far as, okay, early on, you're not going to make money right away. You've got to lose money to make money in most businesses, especially when you have products involved. And how to keep that in check and spend money wisely and go from there.

10:34  
Yeah, it is an amazing thing. You know how to become a business owner, right? How to actually do the business. You had a sense of, we can do it better in this industry. We can improve this industry. We can have five star service, right? We can, we can just do it so much better. But knowing the blocking and tackeling of being a business owner was, was your initial challenge. Yeah, I probably would have, would never do it again if I'd known I was getting myself into. I always say I lost a bet with myself, and here I am. Did you end up working for a good boss or a bad boss? I kind of resign every day, but when I call my cell phone number from my phone it's always busy. I don't know what the problem is. He's too busy executing, he's too busy doing it making it happen. I don't know, I think he's dodging me. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. So after you kind of got over this, I kind of get, you know, how the, at least the basic skills of being a business owner, what was the next biggest challenge you had to face in your business? You know, finding sales people that could sell anything is the biggest challenge. I mean, a lot of people say they're a salesperson. I jokingly say there's a lot of people that are as much sales people as I am a heart surgeon. I can call myself that but at the end of the day, I have to throw in the remaining parts and sew it up and hope that it didn't cause too much damage. Because, I mean, I've been fortunate enough through networking to  
add multiple accounts a week, and I've never, for a long period of time, been able to find a rep who could do that. I mean, it just baffles me, because it's not like we're selling something that's only a few people use. I mean, printer cartridges, toilet paper, office supplies, copy paper, everyone uses that. It's just having a conversation and building a little bit of trust. I mean, you're not taking over someone's finances, you're helping them with a low trust opportunity. All you have to do is be friendly and they'll probably give you the chance at least once, if not twice. So really, finding salespeople. I one time had someone say, you're looking for a really good salesperson? I said, I'd love a really good salesperson, but I'd love a mediocre one too.

12:49  
Yeah, one of the things I learned from somebody else earlier this year was, you know, we, there's a lot of press out there about hiring the superstars, right, find the superstars. Hire the superstars, right? Upgrade your talent. Get rid of the bottom 20 and, you know, replace them with better. Go into pre agency occasionally. And this guy, this guy told me, he said, you know, very wise older guy said, you know, when you think about it, that's probably the worst possible thing you can do. He said, what you really want to do is design a job that the average person doing average work in that job, you would find it to be wholly acceptable, right? And your clients would find it to be wholly acceptable. So if you give the average Joe the opportunity to do the job, and if they just do an average job, that's fully acceptable to your organization, your clients. He said, That's the home run ball right there, right? Yeah, people that actually show up every day. Yeah. Have a little pride in themselves and put their best foot forward for you, themselves and your business and the name of your business. Yeah, amazing. You know, I know for a fact you've got a pretty darn good system of networking too. I mean, you've got, you know exactly where you're going to be, what you're going to, what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, and which day of the week you're going to do what, right. So that should be a, I would think that'd be a relatively easy system to teach. You know, you can teach the when to do it, but it's how to ask the right questions to get the information out of people, because you can sit across from the same person as somebody else and have totally different conversations and results. Because if you don't share the information correctly, you can't help someone correctly. Because, I mean, again, I could always say, if someone says, What do you do for a living? I can say, Well I sell stuff for your office. That isn't too descriptive, but if I share exactly what I'm looking for is, I'm looking to provide printer cartridges, office supplies and furniture to lawyers, CPAs and car dealerships, those are the same things, per se, as far as an answer, but very different in results I'm going to get.

15:03  
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt, very targeted and very different results, right? Yep. Ask, seek and knock and it'll come to you. Outstanding. Well, that's kind of the midway through your your business ownership, you learned sales people, that it's hard to find really good salespeople. What's, what's one of the challenges that you're facing currently in the business? You know, really, it's, it's just finding good employees. I mean, we all know the job market has changed since COVID, and it's just finding people who want to show up and work for a reasonable rate. I mean, yeah, we'd all love to make a million dollars an hour, but that doesn't keep a business open. So it's finding the right people. I'm lucky that I have a very nice staff and I could always use a couple more people, but finding people who are willing to show up to work and work. And not have to be told, put down your phone, show up on time, do the basic things that we know we should do, but sometimes the basic things aren't so basic to a lot of people. And it becomes more of a supervisory role, slash babysitting them, a boss with employees, and it's just sad that we've gotten to that point. But sometimes someone breathing is better than someone who's not breathing. So true. And you know, regardless of the business industry, lack of training required, you know, every business owner I've talked to, across the entire spectrum has said the same thing today. And it makes you wonder, where, where have, where have all the people gone? Where are all the workers going? I have a theory, but I won't put it on video. We'll, we'll just say that the work ethic that my my dad grew up with and my grandpa grew up with is not quite that of those who are in the early 20s, late teens, mid 20s age at this point. It's more of a, What will they do for me versus what I can do for them, is the, will be my politically correct generalization for you. Yeah. And again, it just, it doesn't, it seems to cross all socio economic skill set, crosses all barriers. It's just a universal, universal lack of drive these days out there. It's just sad when you walk in a place and they expect you to do their job for them. Yeah, I'm in, I, I spent 30 years in the, in the facilities and food and beverage business, and I've spent the last 20 years, you know, trying to escape from it, if you will. But even, you know, even now I go into a facility, and I just am amazed at how the skill sets have changed over over the last 20 years, and how far down the down the rung of ladder we've fallen. You know, it's unusual to see good service these days, and that's why, that's why you guys are doing so well I think because, when you've got drivers that take the initiative to walk the paper in and put it where it's supposed to be in the, in the supply room, when the receptionist is too busy to to contend with you, that's, that is a level of over and beyond that people would not normally expect in a, in an office supply deliver. Well, I mean, on day one with our drivers, the rule is, if someone says, when you ask, Where should we put this and they say, leave it here, you say, No, no, where do you really want it is the expected answer. They say, leave it here. Then you say, Okay, thank you. I'll put it right here. But usually when you ask that question, over 75% of the time they have a different answer, which is, Oh, do you mind bringing it back here? No, we don't mind, it's my job to do that for you. It's like, you really want to carry this 50 pound box of paper across the office when I've got it on a dolly, and I can wheel it back there for you? And it's just like rotating the paper, making sure that they don't have the same box of paper on the bottom of the stack, or we even deliver drinks to customers, and they know they rotate the drinks to make sure that the freshest drink is up, or the freshest drink is in the back so the oldest one is up front so something doesn't go bad. Well, Mark, that's going to keep you guys at the top of the heap as you continue to train that in and it's cool that you're doing that from day one with your folks. They're willing to believe in the mission. Yeah. I know, in 12 and a half years, I, I'm, I'm sure you probably had some failures, and over that period of time. Anything, anything come to mind that didn't work out for you the way you thought it would? Yeah, I'll never forget as long as I live. I, one of the industries that we love working with as I mentioned a little bit before was car dealerships, and I had a former driver, actually, who started selling cars, and we got an opportunity, and we did a horrible job as I I would have told people I would have fired myself, and I blew a chance for probably over $120,000 worth of the business because we didn't execute this order the way we normally do. We didn't provide rockstar customer service. We just, we did a horrible job, and we try not to. We're not perfect. Most of our deliveries go as planned, but this one didn't. We blew our one chance and it never came back. Wow. What, what did you learn from that? I learned that I needed to make sure that when people aren't fully trained, you need to make sure that you assist them and teach them and train them up, versus trusting they're going to do what you think they're going to do, because if you don't give them the knowledge, they're not going to do it right. And I trusted somebody who didn't have the training, which was my fault as a leader. I didn't lead correctly, and as a, as a result, I fell on my face and cost my business, my family, our success, huge amounts of money, sales and profit, and probably didn't help our reputation much for that one situation, because reputations can go up and down.

20:52  
So is, is that when you resolved to start, you know, training your drivers on day one how to handle responses from your customers and so forth? Or was that, did that just reinforce that training is something you cannot sacrifice in your company? Training is something that, I mean, I'll admit, training isn't my strength. I mean, one of the other, I guess, more comical lessons I learned in business was by my niece at the time, who was five years old and she came in with my brother who is helping me with something, and she want, all she wanted to do is help. And I asked her to stack some cartridges and have all the labels facing her. And she came so proudly to get me when she was done, and said, Uncle, Uncle, how did I do? And I had this look on my face and she says, Did I mess up? And I said, No, I messed up, because every label was facing me, but they were facing in all four directions, up, down sideways, because I didn't do a good job of explaining to her what I wanted, but she did exactly what she was told. That was one of the most valuable lessons as far as being a leader of a business. If I don't give someone good information I can't expect them to do what's in my head, because they can't read my mind. Taught to me by a five year old. So true, so true. Got the lesson of the five year old. I was, I was reading earlier today a management consultants top 10, top, top 10 pieces of advice that he had dished out to his clients over the course of the year, and that was among them, be be clear and concise, right, in your instructions in that regard, that was excellent. Yeah, that's excellent. So, you know, it's such a glamorous business selling, selling printer cartridges and paper and staples and paper clips and all that good stuff. You're jealous, aren't you? Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm and I'm sure there's probably no price pressure at all. You probably have an opportunity to price your products any way you want. You know what? We have a company policy. We're glad to meet your expectations by raising the price however you'd like us to raise it over what we offer you. You can set the limit.

23:03  
Putting the customer in charge, right, where they actually are. No, it actually is. I mean, we try to be fair. We don't do like a lot of people do where they have things on sale, because I look at sales as they only think you're special in the days of giving you something for a better deal than every day. We just feel that if we price things fairly every day, you don't have to worry about playing the games because we're all too busy these days, doing more jobs, having more responsibilities and less time than we ever have before in history. So why, why play games? It just doesn't make sense to me. One of the things I learned from you recently is that you also track your revenue and profits by customer as well. Correct. I actually, the last day of every year, I take the, run a report showing the profit that we made for the year, and then pull against that every customer and figure out what percent of our overall profit each customer provided to make sure we have a balanced portfolio of clients. Because in our industry, you never know when someone's going to close, leave you for whatever reason, good or bad, and if I have too much of one, too much percentage of one customer as my profit center, I'm going to be in trouble. So like I actually, unfortunately, had a friend recently who their family closed their business because they had one client that was too big of a part, and they got fired, and it was over just like that, one phone call. So we actually had a law firm that I worked for 18 months to develop into a more than just delivering paper. After about six years, they got acquired by another firm, and they were my number four account, 2% of my profit, and they disappeared. It stung a little bit, but it didn't affect how we did anything every day, because they were a part of it, but they weren't, we weren't dependent on just them, which is a, I guess, a comfort to all of our customers, or should be, because one person can't put us out of business.

24:59  
You know, Mark, that, that is, that is so astute. You are so much, so much more wise than you recognize in that regard. We see, you know, we see clients all the time that come in and get valued and the, one of our favorite stories is a guy that came in who was producing a million dollars, plus, in excess of a million dollars a year in annual cash flow profits in this business. And we told them, you know, they came in to find out what it was worth, and we told them, this business wasn't worth anything. And he just went, you know, ballistic. How can you say that, right? This business produces a million dollars on top every year. How can it be worth zero in the marketplace? We said, well, simply, you have one customer, and that one customer is known to, known to be having significant financial issues, you know, in the in in the local newspapers, in the local TV. You know, they're on the, they're on, in the media all the time. And sure enough, couple weeks later, his customer filed bankruptcy and locked up, the majority of his assets got locked up in that, you know, in his facilities, and it took him a while to extricate himself. But, you know, effectively, he had to shut down as well for that same reason. One-- That's a shame. Yeah, that, that customer concentration is, is a key value killer. You can have a great business but if you're overly concentrated in one customer, you're, you're literally at the mercy of that one customer, and it just, it just bleeds all the value out of your business. So I applaud your awareness of that. Thank you. That's, that's incredible. That will, that will serve you very well into the future. And speaking of which, you know, you built this great business. You've taken a, you've taken this glamorous office products industry and developed a bunch of rock stars and people that thrive on providing rock star service for your clients, and your clients are growing quite rapidly. What's your vision for the future of the business after, after you decide to step away? So my, I call it my legacy, is currently a combination of eighth grade, fifth grade and 19 months old. So I look at my business as going to either I have eighth grade twin nieces as well as a stepson, a 10 year old niece and a one and a half or 19 month old daughter. Yep. So if any of them would like to learn the business and take it over so I can work the hours I wish I was working now of couple hours a day here and there, and keep the old man busy once in a while so the wife doesn't get mad, that'd be great. And if none of them show an interest by the time my daughter gets to that college age, I'll probably then look to sell it or find some other path for it. But it'd be nice if one of them thought it was something they wanted to be part of, but no expectation. It's all up to them. I mean, in the meantime, I, I'm proud that I get to teach them work ethic, because all of the aforementioned. Other than the little one per se, has been in the business helping. I had my, one of my nieces was in yesterday and is coming in tomorrow to work on it, on a database project for me. And they all have done projects for me. So they, they're involved, but they've learned about earning money and the value of money which a lot of adults don't get. Luckily, my brother's done a great job teaching my nieces about saving. My 10 year old niece had come in and earned $15 doing some work, and she said, without even asking, she says, uncle, I know how I'm going to spend my $15. I said, Tell me about it. She said, I'm going to put seven in my investment account, three in my savings account, and I'm going to spend five. God bless her. I said, that sounds brilliant. I said, you need to spend that five on whatever you feel is right. That's a great choice.

28:59  
And for her to come up with that on her own, after a little training, of course, that she's going to save 10 out of the $15 versus most adults will take that 15 bucks and go grab lottery tickets or go out to an extra nice dinner they can't afford, or spend $25 and put the $15 down, $10 on the credit card. I mean that to me, is one of the great joys I have of owning the business, is I get to teach that work ethic, whether they're in the business or not to help them be successful and whatever, whatever path they choose through the business. Because a lot of people their age don't get that. Well, you know, the secret is, Mark, the odds are in your favor, because two thirds of businesses do transition to either family members or key employees in the business. So you're pretty wise in terms of identifying them early. Give them an opportunity to come in and help teach them a little bit about the business. Make, make the learning fun as you're describing and you probably will have a successor that comes up in the business. Never know. Yeah. You never know. What, don't know, wouldn't put, wouldn't put a bet on Vegas on any of it, but it just, you know, it's a great tool to teach life lessons while supporting a family so. Yeah, and-- Obviously. Yeah, and you get to spend time together, you know, doing, doing what we end up spending the vast majority of our life doing, which is, which is working, right? Yeah. And in your case, serving others in that regard. That is true. In your work. That is true. Yeah, awesome. Well, listen, if people want to learn more about Office Supply Solutions, and Mark Brimer in particular, how can they get in touch with you? Well, I'm pretty easy to find. I'm on LinkedIn, M, a, r, k, b, r, i, m, e r is how you spell my name. My email is spelled the same way at office supply solutions with an S on the end, llc.com. Our website is www.officesupplySolutionsllc.com. Or you can give us a call at 314-227-6771.

31:20  
We're lucky that we have local warehouses in over 30 cities around the country through our suppliers. So just because we're local in St Louis doesn't mean that that's the only place we do business. We even have 50 fast food restaurants we serve in Southern California, a lot of customers in Kansas City and all parts of the country. So if we can help out in any way, we love to be a local alternative. Help a small family business grow, versus the big giants. Get another, another vacation home for someone who's not going to support your business, because we love giving referrals to those who support us. Yeah, you guys do marvelous work. We highly endorse you as well. And I don't know how you do it, but I think the vast majority of your products are on your website. So, you know-- Only 30,000. Only 30,000 SKUs. Yeah, you do have to register to get access to our site, just so you know, because we want to know who we're working with, we don't just work with anybody. We want to make sure that we they're vetted, and they're people that we want to be associated with. Yeah, but your system is pretty darn, pretty darn efficient, so you get folks set up pretty quickly. I can say that first hand as well, right? If you're having an account, an account a day or more, then you know it works well. Well, we're very lucky to have a lot of people who entrust us with their referrals and and their business. So we're very fortunate. Well, Mark, listen, thanks for sharing your wisdom. Lots of key nuggets in there this evening. There are a lot of people that are on the path. Entrepreneurship seems to be making a resurgence, right? There's more and more people that are opening businesses these days, so it's kind of nice, and I hope that people invest the time to to spend 30 minutes listening to some of the challenges that you faced and overcome and how you persevered, because you really built something that's unique and different in a channel that's that's known as as being pretty, pretty well commoditized. Well, thank you. Just try to do our little part in the world. So if we can help anybody along the way, we're glad to do our part. Outstanding. Well, Mark, we wish you all the best. Thank you very much for giving us your time this evening and go out and have a good day. We'll talk soon. Thanks Steve for the opportunity.

33:31  
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