Lance Hood:               When you started talking about asking the seller to explain the sales process of what happens from taking an order to fulfilling an order, that made so much sense to me because I can see how that will really give you a great idea about how well the transition will go because not all companies have their procedures written in the books. And for that matter even have a written flow of how everything works. And sometimes the company will just hire someone to do a job and no one else knows how to do that job. And in some situations those people can be very stubborn. Whether they do it passively or aggressively sometimes they'll absolutely refuse to backup their job duties and procedures because they view that as job security. In fact, I've even seen where some people are even willing to quit their job if they know that their job procedures are going to be backed up.

                                    So to me that really lets you know very quickly what areas need attention and what you might be getting yourself into.

Richard Parker:           You bring up such incredible points. They're so astute. Your observations are dead-on correct. Getting to the guts of the business, and understanding the business, and digging into it, and understanding sales processes, are critically important. And I think people will be stunned, absolutely stunned, to learn how many businesses are void of all those important criteria again, like policies and procedures.

                                    Small businesses very often just evolve over the years and the seller has done nothing. Many times that I've asked sellers, "Why do you this, that way?" And so often the answer is, "because we've always done it that way." Well that doesn't mean that that way is the right way. And what's important to understand is why that way. Not just saying, "Well, we've always done it that way." There has to be rationale for arriving at a strategy and a way of doing things.

                                    And just to say, "We did that," oftentimes, that's where all the gold lies in the business where someone new with fresh blood and full of zest for the business is going to attempt these changes. Not radical changes that are going to put you out of business, but just normal business operating procedures. And you sometimes do get some resistance from employees but the goal is to tell employees when I got into a business, and I work very hard and tell our clients it's very important in certain businesses where there are key employees, and every employee's important but if you're buying a Subway place, the sandwich maker, it's not important that you meet them before the transaction because you're going to turn those over pretty quickly. But if there's a key manager in place, for example, you can meet these people in an office environment, et cetera.

                                    But I always ask the employees to do the following exercise for me:

                                    I want you to write down everything that it is that you do. And then I want you to tell me, what can be put into place that is going to make your job easier? And with that in mind, what can be put into place to make this company bigger, better, and faster? But tell me most importantly, how can I make your job easier? And don't just tell me hire more people. Don't just tell me upgrade all the computers. Tell me why we need to hire two more people for that position and what the results of that are going to be.

                                    I want to make your job easier. I want to make your job more enjoyable. I want to make your work more profitable for this business. So tell me. You know your job better than anybody else.  Tell me what I can do, or what can be done to make your job easier, and to make you better at your job, and to connect the dots for me how that's going to lead to us being a better business.

                                    And you know what? People love that. Because no matter how much someone may be jaded related to their job and how much they don't like it, and most people hate them, as we've talked about at one point, people want to know that something is going to be implemented, potentially, that's going to make their job easier, more enjoyable, better, potentially more profitable for the company, that in turn will lead to more money for me, the employee, et cetera, et cetera, but you've got to get them involved.