Um, but at what point were you like, "I'm gonna go do a different thing"? Because your new concepts are, are, are different.

There was never a point where it was like, "Hey, I wanna, I wanna break up, you know, from my business partner and do something different." It just naturally happened.

Um, we, you know, we just started to, like, go different directions in how we wanted to operate and what we wanted to do, and we just thought, "You know what? Let's just, let's just figure out a way to pull it apart and do it in, like, the most respectful way possible." Um, and the way that that made the most sense, because everything was so intertwined, was I would step away.

And as soon as I did, immediately I was like, wow, I've got a freedom to do anything.

Whereas before, having so many restaurants, but the bandwidth wasn't there to put into anything like a passion project.

Um, it was all of, like, oh, if we're gonna do a new restaurant, how are we gonna make money? How are we gonna...

You know, what is our impact gonna be on the community? How are we still gonna be a, a part of the other restaurants? Um, so for me, with that newfound freedom, Somac just seemed like the natural, the natural next step.

Um, when you bring in leadership, when you're bringing team members, those are also really important as well.