Brian Smith

And, you know, when I look back on my experience of ARG, the greatest weakness I had was my lack of financial knowledge, right?

I was an accountant, sure.

But finance is not the same as accounting.

Right.

Accounting is what happened last year.

Here's the balance sheet.

Finance is forecasting what am I going to need over the next one, two, three, five years, right?

in a company that was growing pretty fast.

So I was always in a position of the sales exceeding my ability to finance the production.

And the more sales you get, the bigger your problems get in supply.

And I never really understood that.

My accounting thinking was, we just sold a million dollars worth of product, we're broke.

What's the answer?

Oh, we'll sell two million next year and think we'd have more money, but you don't.

You're twice as broke.

That's correct.

Yes.

I was always trying to get financing from someone who had cash.

It wasn't like a well-thought-out business plan or anything.

And always in September, October, where I had these humongous orders to fill and no product.