for sure what do you you were talking about what the business owner needs and how to advise them and how to think about the deal right and what they're offered what do you see is the difference in the way that corporate acquirers view a deal versus business owners when they're evaluating is it a good deal what's the difference between those mindsets

Absolutely.

Of course, a business owner knows his or her own business the best, right? He knows the efforts, the ton of work that went into it, the client relationship, the product, the service offering.

But when it comes to acquisition, both financial acquirer and a strategic acquirer are looking for what will endure after the transaction close.

And they want to evaluate how much of the success of the current business is really depending on the founders.

They want a team that is well built beneath the founder so that the founder is not necessarily, not every single decision is going to depend on the founders.

I would say that's the number one kind of a gap where the founders really need to start thinking about when they are looking to enter into a process.

One of the things that I'm curious, I love that you said patience, right? Because it does seem like it would be a harder deal to close than someone who has already made that leap in their mind of it is time to sell and already knows what it takes to prep their business because when they went on the market, that happened, right? So why lean into off-market rather than on-market? Is it because of the quantity that's in the market right now and you need to reach out to off-market? Or is there another reason that it's strategically better? I