Jim Fowler

And so they wanted to announce it as low as possible.

And our earn out was a layup.

I mean, that was the way they said, hey, would you consider an earn out?

I said, if it's a true layup, great.

So it was $25 million in earn out and $150 was the purchase price.

It is.

In fact, to your entrepreneurs that ever do sell your company, my board was concerned about it, as you can imagine, because usually companies don't make earn outs.

Yep.

If things go wrong, you lose control.

We luckily were in a position where we could bargain very, very hard on that, and we did.

It was a layup, and we ended up making the whole earn out.

Everything changes after your company gets bought, and you lose control.

My recommendation is avoid them whenever possible, but most acquiring companies want them to keep everyone's interests aligned.

Well, we almost got bought a year and a half before that, but that deal broke at the end of 08.

We were two weeks away from closing that deal.

Yeah, you know, and that's the other thing that I'll tell your listeners as well is the deal is never done until it's done.

Just, you can never get yourself in the mindset that the deal is done.

You can't start counting the money.

You can't, you're got, you have to make sure your people know that, hey, this deal is

is never done because it can be really disheartening.