Tracy Alloway

And then suddenly they're a hundred or $200 million of EBITDA.

And they say, wow, I'm a big company.

I should get a double digit multiple.

And oftentimes that works.

That's not how we make money.

We make money on, yes, buying companies at a lower multiple than we raise capital at.

Then integrating them, optimizing them, improving them, making yourself more valuable to the customer, making yourself a real exciting place to work for the employees, making a real good long-term business plan that creates value for everyone in the ecosystem.

That's not what these smaller roll-ups do.

These smaller roll-ups are really simply playing the arbitrage between what they buy on small companies and then aggregating them to get a higher multiple number.

You know, I asked you if the synergies were a euphemism for layoffs and you quickly shot that down.

You know, one of the things that Warren Buffett said from time to time is like, people who, like family owned businesses, some of these smaller businesses, they like selling to Warren Buffett.

They felt like, okay, this company that I've worked with and built,

for a long time, it's going to be in good hands.

Maybe it'll give Warren Buffett a slightly better price than the other guy who came knocking.

Do you feel like from your perspective, it's important that the would-be seller, they like you, that they feel that this thing that they work to build is going to be in good hands?

And is that part of your long-term strategy?

Yeah, I do.

I do.

When you're selling a company, it's kind of an emotional thing.

I mean, you're not going to sell a company for like 20% less just because you like the guy, but you don't necessarily go with the highest bidder every time.