Vince Nardo

It's literally a strategy of short-term growth.

harmonize systems, harmonize processes, build, add more value, and then flip it.

The challenge we saw was we were part of the, you know, the, the leverage buyout or debt infusion of private equity in our space when interest rates were very low and the business was on an upward swing.

So you acquired debt that's inexpensive, but then it flips to being very expensive.

This was not an arm.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

That wasn't planned.

There was no contingency factor for that.

And then you tack on top of that, we were all experiencing increase in marketing costs.

We all experienced a little bit of a slowdown a few years ago.

It's coming back now.

And so you put those together and you have a perfect storm for a hard to manage business.

And what happened in our case was literally the debt service became too great.

And ultimately, the senior management didn't know what to do because they weren't from the industry.

They didn't understand this business.

You know this business.

This business is like playing the slots.

You've got to be willing to walk up to that slot machine when times are rough, dump $100 into marketing, pull that lever, and hope you get a return, right?

You do it strategically, but you hope you get a return.