Yeah, you c- you can't come in and go, "Oh, well, not with that attitude," right?

Right.

[chuckles] We had to, you know, we had to put some systems and a lot of systems and processes in place that, that we already had on one side of the business, just not the other side of the business, right? So, I mean, we had...

We were doing all the things as it relates to ISO, right? I mean, all the stuff, whether it's, you know, tracking metrics, whether it's, you know, calibration of your inspection equipment, traceability, like all those things that, that you need and have in place on the machining side, we had to slowly but surely implement those things on the, on the welding side.

I...

It did take a couple of years, um, but, you know, fast-forward now, I mean, we just in the last couple months have gone through our AS 9100 certification and received our cert in the past couple weeks.

S- and that's of everything, so that's the machining side, the fabrication side.

That routing preference does not live in your ERP system.

Um, in the future to you know pour some gas on the fire but nevertheless very successful company so um mike i would love to kind of know right out of the gate here walk me back to the moment someone at the firm decided that offering just accounting wasn't enough what did that conversation sound like the the client situation or the problem that you know kind of was like you finally made, you know, it was like the penny drops, like we got to bring on more services.

Yeah.

So I'll have a different perspective than the firm owner, Toby Comer.

He started this firm 10, 12 years ago.

He started by buying a CPA firm.

He actually bought a bank around the same time.

And so I think early on, he had the same vision that I had when I started Boss Advisors nine years ago.

When it comes to the acquisition side of things and the organic growth, typically where have you seen the better clients come from?

So talk about the, the birth of the name of the organization.

Yeah.

So when I first started out, I met with the state bar.

I met with the Arizona Board of Accountancy.

And then I found every JD CPA I could find on LinkedIn.

I had a pretty small network at the time, but I talked to three or four people.

The practitioners gave me the advice of, hey, just pick one hat and wear it.

How did this whole process come to be and how did you end up with the firm you decided on?

What are you thinking about now when you're going?

Okay, so like I say, my fascination with buffalo, I ...

It's not even just hunting them.

They, you know, it's a bovine.

So different times of the year are gonna tell you different things about your hunt.

If it's an early season hunt, there's lots of grass.

You gotta get onto that buffalo early.

Tell us a bit about the past of the area, Mike.

What does what did life look like for you at that right before you sold? Like, was it Were you one of those leaders that was not as involved in the day-to-day and living that dream lifestyle where it's like you're not working a crazy amount of time? Or were you working a lot in the business, on the business? What did that look like on a work-life balance?

Yeah, so I got to a point where I basically got to the point where I had a complete breakdown.

That was about two years, two, three years into starting the firm.

Um, because I was still doing the work.

Yep.

I was getting up earlier and earlier every day.

I'd get up at five and work for a couple hours, go get the kids ready, go back and work for another 10 hours.

Like what does that process look like? I feel like a lot of people might be curious about that.

What prompted the exploration or initial conversation to start thinking about selling the firm?

Yeah, so we kind of stagnated in a way.

Got to $2 million in revenue, stayed there for a couple of years.

got to the point where I could see this multidisciplinary model that we had been running for probably, well, since I started the firm, right? And a quick history.

When I started the CPA firm, it was end of 2017.

I left EY and I started a CPA firm and a law firm side by side.

And so I was doing multidisciplinary services before we were allowed to do it under one roof, before I was allowed to have a non-lawyer partner join the law firm.

And so post-transaction, what's been the integration like, you know, 30, 60, 90 days after it closes? What's changed, if anything, about your day-to-day?