Buying and Selling a Yoga Studio in 2021

On this episode Mitch McGinley joins me to talk about buying and selling brick and mortar yoga studios in 2021.

MITCH MCGINLEY

Mitch McGinley is a Business Broker, Consultant, and Advisor, specializing in the health and wellness industry. Mitch began his career as an Operations Manager with Omni Hotels, and went on to become the General Manager of a boutique hotel in Little Italy, elevating it to become the highest-rated hotel in San Diego on one of the world’s largest booking sites. He eventually left the hotel industry to pursue his dream of owning a yoga studio with his wife Karson. Together they owned and operated Happy-U Yoga Center for 6 years. During that time, Mitch became a MINDBODY Certified Business Consultant, engaging with hundreds of wellness businesses from all over the world. After successfully selling Happy-U, Mitch was moved to help other small business owners sell. He became a CA Licensed Business Broker working for FIrst Choice Business Brokers in San Diego. Mitch has a Master’s Degree in Business, and is passionate about helping entrepreneurs achieve their biggest payday.

Find Mitch at:       healthandwellnessbusinessbroker.com

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Michael Jay - Yoga Biz Champ 

Michael Jay, the Yoga Biz Champ, stands as the go-to Yoga Business Consultant, embarked on a mission to elevate yoga studios from mere survival to genuine thriving.

With a rich background as a yoga teacher, former studio owner, marketing expert, and yoga studio business coach, he possesses the insider knowledge necessary to elevate your yoga venture to new heights.

His passion for yoga, combined with a sharp business acumen and a sincere desire to see studio owners excel, encapsulates his professional ethos. Michael is not one to offer one-size-fits-all advice; instead, he's dedicated to providing tailored guidance, tangible outcomes, and supporting your studio to emerge as the next Yoga Biz Champ in your community. 

• Certified Yoga Biz Consultant • 
• FitTech Partner •
• Yoga Studio Launch & Growth Specialist

FREE RESOURCES AND BOOK A CHAT LINK
https://yogabizchamp.link/podlink

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Transcript

Michael Jay  
Welcome to yoga base camp. I'm Michael J. And my guest today is Mitch McGinley. Mitch is a business broker consultant and advisor specializing in the health and wellness industry. Mitch began his career as an operations manager with Omni hotels and went on to become general manager of a boutique hotel in Little Italy, one of my favorite places best market ever, elevating it to become the highest rated Hotel in San Diego. On one of the world's largest booking sites. He eventually left the hotel industry to pursue his dream of owning a yoga studio with his wife Carson. Together they owned and operated happy you yoga center for six years. During that time, Mitch became a mind body certified business consultant, engaging with hundreds of wellness businesses from all over the world. After successfully selling happy you, Mitch was moved to help other business, business owner sell. He became a CA licensed business broker working for first choice Business Brokers in San Diego. Mitch has a master's degree in business and is passionate about helping entrepreneurs achieve their biggest payday, and his website, he can be found at Health and Wellness Business. broker.com welcome it. Thank you, Michael. Happy to be here. Yeah, awesome. I met Mitch on the consulting program for Mind Body online. And I have to say, Mitch, out of all the consultants, you were probably the most generous with your information. Like I really, really appreciated how you just truly wanted to share and help other people become good consultants. So I want to say thank you for that you were very, very just generous in really wanting to share your knowledge and your experience with other people.

Mitch McGinley  
I appreciate that. I mean, it's honestly I love teaching. I love helping other people however I can. And that consultant program is, is relatively new and and is going through some changes, I think, but it's easy to help people who want to be helped. And you were one of those people that rose to the top and asked a lot of great questions. And so that's I'm grateful for you as well.

Michael Jay  
Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I did ask a lot of questions. So, so tell me a little bit about your, your journey to opening your studio with your wife was that that was in San Diego, right?

Mitch McGinley  
It was Yeah, in Ocean Beach. It was always a dream of ours. My wife's mom, Jan st. JOHN owned and operated a fitness, including yoga studio for the past 30 plus years. So my wife Carson grew up with it and She got to, you know, grow up with a parent who owned a small business. And she got to go and participate and started teaching classes from a young age as a as a teenager even. And my wife's a phenomenally talented performer, artists, dancer, singer, yoga teacher, Teacher, teacher, it's easy to do stuff with her. And so it was just a dream that we always had, you know, when I worked in hotels, I worked extraordinarily long hours. And we wanted to have a family. And so we just felt like the dream was to have our own small business. And luckily, the opportunity presented itself perfectly. It was our favorite yoga studio, it was where we practiced, the owner approached us about buying it. And so it was established. Yeah, it was established and been around for like, 10 years. And we had said something to her before it was it was like three years before, we just dropped this little hit. We're like, hey, if you ever think about selling, let us know. Like, we never want to compete with you, we'd never want to open another studio, in ob like, but if you wanted to leave, we'd be really interested in taking over. And we never spoke about it again. And three years later, she called us out of the blue and said, Hey, I'm ready to sell and I want to sell to you. And luckily, at that moment, I was kind of mad at my boss at work. And it just made sense. And we, you know, her parents believed in us enough to let us borrow the money to purchase it. And it turned out great. You know, we paid on time and ended up selling it for a decent amount more.

Michael Jay  
And do you believe that your business knowledge helped that business going into it? Oh,

Mitch McGinley  
there's no doubt no doubt. Yeah. I mean, the number one thing that I learned from Omni hotels that I'm most grateful for is is customer service. Yeah. And I feel like that's always been one of my strengths as a as a person. And that's I was, I was the guest services manager, like I was the person that they'd shove out in front of the angriest customers happy. And that's very different in a hotel than, than a yoga studio, right? Like, you'd work in a hotel, like some things can go terribly wrong. yoga studios, not too much. But you know, simple things like adding a person at the desk to do the check ins instead of asking the teachers to do it, and write, you know, responding to emails and having a little bit better pricing strategy. Things that are just systematic, but unless you do it and do it, well, it's it's gonna show.

Michael Jay  
Yeah, did you? Did you know? Because I mean, I'm a big believer in putting systems in place. That was probably one of the operational successes I had with my business. And what I'm seeing with what I'm helping other studios do as well, did you already know what those systems were? Or did you kind of learn as you went along? Are they all were they given to you by the previous owner?

Mitch McGinley  
Well, it depends on which system so when it comes to something like accounting, I brought that with me. Yeah. When it comes to something like mind body or marketing emails, or even to do pricing strategy, like there was there was a decent amount of learning that needed to happen. And luckily, places like mind body I mean, going to mbu. Just mind body University and spending a weekend listening to experts was was actually really critical and in our success.

Michael Jay  
Yeah, I agree with that. I went to mind body bold conference, and I came away with all people, there are people with business mindsets in this because I think when I first started, like a lot of studios, you kind of I ran it on gut instinct for the longest time. Luckily, I had good gut instincts. And I also had a marketing background, which really helped. But as far as the business things, I think, until I went to that conference, I didn't really realize that you could actually make a business out of it. It took me a little while to figure that out.

Mitch McGinley  
It's true. And And honestly, what I've come to realize, that I share with everyone is that everything is business. You know, there's, there's nothing that's not business and so, it doesn't matter what you're doing, you have to support yourself. You know, whether you even if you do it purely for trade, like you still have to work out a deal where you're able to sustain yourself and so it's everything in life comes back to some of those sort of basic basic business print. Sports. And it's, for some reason, I feel like the yoga industry in particular, has this aversion to business, or making money or something along those lines. And that's just silly. You have to be able to pay the bills for it to be sustainable. And so if you can't sustain yourself and the business, it's never gonna work. And, you know, it doesn't matter how how, you know, Fufu, you want to be in terms of offering yourself and everything to the world for free, and you have to be able to take care of yourself. And so

Michael Jay  
yeah, I just went through before this call, I was on a call with a yoga studio. And the last call we had was me making her do what she had wanted to do, which was dive into her numbers. And, you know, because the numbers don't lie. And so today was very different call after really, truly looking at those numbers and the, the, that's the real picture of the business, right. So it's, it can be eye opener, and I'm finding a lot of people go through just wanting to pay enough, just pay my way, instead of building something profitable, and sellable. Eventually. So I had to talk with another consultant the other day, Terri Frye, who she said that when she opened her studio, she opened it with an exit plan in mind, knowing that she was going to sell it one day, which he recently did through you, with you. And so I thought that was such a great thing, because she came into that, because mindset, most people don't.

Mitch McGinley  
That's correct. And and if I'm a huge fan of the, the seven habits of highly successful people who ever read that book, there's an eighth now, I guess, but one of them is begin with the end in mind. Yeah, and it's the right way to begin. And some of my favorite conversations are when I come to meet a business owner, and they say to me, Well, I want to sell in two years or three years. And we actually have time to make some meaningful changes that are going to really change the trajectory of their valuation. You know, because if you get a couple years of runway, you can really make some decisions to make your financials look different. And one of the things, I'll go ahead and say this and share this, you know, I want everyone to know this. When you're looking to sell your business, it's counterintuitive from how most small business owners file their tax returns. And the so sorry, let me back that up a little bit. Most small business owners write off every expense that they possibly can. And that's smart. It's part of being a smart, small business owner, it's a reason to own your own small business, you can write off your car and your cell phone and your meals and your continuing education and your travel like that yoga retreat. And Billy's like, yeah, that was a business expense, with the goal of showing no profit so that you don't have to pay any taxes. The problem is that when you go to sell, somebody is going to be looking at your taxes to see how much money you made. And if you don't have anything to show, it makes it a lot harder to sell or you won't be able to sell for as much. And the the number one way to really get a lot out of a sale is to have your business pre qualify for an SBA loan. And the only way that you're going to be able to do that is if you show enough profit to support a debt payment for that loan. And so what I mean is, if you want to sell for $300,000, one day, someone needs to be able to go to a bank and get a loan from the SBA for $300,000. So they can buy your business. But it's not just the person that has to qualify, it's the person and the business. And so if the business doesn't show enough profit, to pay both the owner and to pay the monthly debt payment on that $300,000 loan, you're not going to be able to get an SBA loan. And that immediately is going to make it way more difficult to sell your business because you're gonna have to find somebody with cash. And there just aren't a lot of cash buyers in the yoga industry.

Michael Jay  
So that would mean for some studio owners and we know that this happens is that they have little deals with people Oh pay me cash and put that in my pocket. You know, that's quite a common common thing. Oh, don't pay don't pay tax. You know, let's just keep this between us. But The ends up is not showing the sales in the records, and you need to have your record showing that you're making money. You do? Yeah.

Mitch McGinley  
Yeah. So it's like buying a house, you know, it's like, you. Same thing. It's like when you when you write off everything that you possibly can in your life. You go to get a mortgage, and they're like, wait a minute, you didn't make a whole lot of money last year, you're like, No, but I did I just hit it well. So it's just one of those things that comes back to bite you. That way when you can plan for it, at least you know. And then it's like, Okay, well, I've taken advantage of all of those write offs and everything for however many years, but now I'm two years away from selling. And so I'm going to commit to showing as much profit as humanly possible for the next two years, bite the bullet, pay the taxes, and expect that I'll get a multiple of tax expense back

Michael Jay  
when you sold your studio was that what took you on this path of becoming a broker in the health and wellness field? then yeah, it

Mitch McGinley  
was cool the way that it happened. The the company here, first choice Business Brokers, who kept reaching out to me, and Allison, our office managers is fantastic at this. But she knew that I was trying to sell, and she knew that I was trying to do it, myself. And she just very calmly, like once once a month, or like every other month be like, hey, just checking in, how's it going? And I kept being like, I got it, I got it, I don't need your help. Thank you Good. And luckily, like I've been through this several times, part of kind of what I did with hotels was buying and selling with a commercial real estate broker. And I felt pretty confident. And not a lot of people have that. But it's, I told them, I was like, if it doesn't work out with this buyer that I have in my back pocket, then I will call you and you can list it publicly. And we can go through what I do now. But luckily, it all worked out. And so when she reached out to me like right after we had sold the studio, she was like, Well, congratulations. That's amazing. I'm so happy for you. What are you going to do now? And I was like, I was gonna take a year off. You know, I took to like frozen cocktails. Yeah, you know, it's worked so hard for so long. It's like, I'm gonna take a vacation for a long time. And, of course, that did not happen. Literally two weeks after we sold a studio and she was like, Well send me your resume. And we'd love to talk to you about doing this on a more regular basis. And I laughed into the phone, and I was like my resume. You know, and so I was like, Okay, well, this will be a good exercise. Like, I'll update my resume and go do a job interview like this will be funny. And I went in and I met with with the guys who are now my group, and I just I loved them. They're all wonderful people. We're all same age, our kids are the same age. And it's, you know, we're independent contractors. So technically, I don't have a boss, I'm allowed to work as much or as little as I want. And that has been incredibly helpful, especially in a year like the past year that we've had. But yeah, so they recruited me and I went and got licensed, it took me a couple months to get my license. And then I officially started and I guess it was June of 2019. So coming up on two years.

Michael Jay  
And I think in the mind body world in particular, he you're the go to guy for buying and selling I think you've really carved out a niche there in this industry. And I think you've carved out trust as well with people. And I know when I sold my studio, I wish I had somebody like you I did it so low. And it would have been so nice to have a buffer person in between me and the buyers and I had two potential buyers when I wasn't looking at selling. And I found that to be the most emotional process to go through because it's like being I mean your basic basically being grilled on your business. And I mean, luckily I had all the bookkeeping intact and ready to show. But each person that was interested in buying my business had different requests, like they had, you know, different financial needs. So it's like, both times, it's like you felt like you're starting the whole process from scratch. You thought you had all the information. They're, so basically I did it with myself on my lawyer, and ended up not selling the one person that was so close to came in, and she's like, oh, the Buddha statue will have to go, I'm nondenomination, the Buddha statue will have to go. And it was going to be a good price. But I knew that if I sold to her, the community would hate her. And so I literally stopped it. And, and I just stopped the selling process. I was like, okay, you are not the it needs to be the right fit for this, I created, I gave birth to this place, I need it, I need to sell onto somebody that's going to keep what we've created this amazing community, and ended up being one of my instructors that didn't want to lose the community. And he's imagining that that's quite a, a familiar scenario.

Mitch McGinley  
It is. And that's, I think it's an ideal scenario, for the exact reason that you just laid out, it's, you want someone who's connected and attached to your community to continue it in the manner that it's been existing. You know, it's nobody who has a gentle yoga studio wants someone to come in and turn it into a hot power studio, you know, and vice versa. The reality is that you're lucky to have had that choice. You know, a lot of times, sellers don't have that choice. And it's, it's just whoever's willing to pay you enough to make it makes sense. But yes, you know, it's people from the community teachers in particular, sometimes it's clients. Always make for the best prospective buyers. There's one issue that we constantly run into with with that, and that's that most yoga teachers don't have, you know, 10s, or hundreds of 1000s of dollars sitting around to buy a studio with. And so that goes into one of the other things that inevitably always end up talking about what your seller carry notes. Which is to say that, a lot of times these deals get structured in a way where, let's say the, the purchase price of the studio is $50,000. And a teacher is buying it, but she's only got 10. They'll put that 10,000 down, and then pay the seller the other 40,000 in monthly installments.

Michael Jay  
That's what I did. Yeah. So I did and it was an ideal scenario for taking a couple of years off.

Mitch McGinley  
Which is great. Yeah, it works. Okay. The problem is everyone who I know who was in this scenario, when COVID hit, stopped getting paid. You know, and so for someone who, who financed a big chunk of a deal, like one was 180 of $270,000. Oh, yeah. And they haven't they haven't gotten the dollar in over a year, you know, because the the space is closed, it's in California, California has been especially strict on small businesses in a really hurtful way. And so it's, you run risk when you agree to a seller carry note, because you're, you're making your payment contingent on the performance of your buyer. And, and sometimes people don't make great owners and even if it's somebody that you really like, who's a good person? Does it do great with with running the business and they don't make enough to make the payments and there's very little recourse because it's, you know, if they had something that you could go after, they would have used it to buy the studio. Like if somebody owns a home or something like that they can borrow against their home to buy the studio, but, you know, it's you, it's very rare to get some kind of significant collateral in a seller carry note.

Michael Jay  
So what would you be solution to be that to do the loan to the bank?

Mitch McGinley  
If you can't, yeah, if you can't, yeah, but it's always just a question of options. It's, it's pretty rare for yoga studios to to be pre approved for an SBA loan. Oh, okay. It's not coming. I've only done two deals that had SBA loans attached to them, and they were the two biggest deals I've ever done. Because the buyer only needs 10% of the cash, which makes for a great investment. And SBA is doing amazing stuff. Right now they're covering the first six payments for free. They're usually 10 year loans. That's literally 5% off your purchase price for free from SBA, which is an amazing incentive. But if you can get pre approved for that, you know, you'll have a lot more offers,

Michael Jay  
right? What do you think? So speaking of COVID, you know, it's weird times right now for a starting buying selling studios. But I know when I'm walking around right now, when when I go on my walks, there's a lot of places for lease. And I know, there's one area close to where I live with, there's no yoga studios around me. And I keep looking at this place. Good. Oh, my God, that would make the perfect yoga studio, good Park and great location. And then I go stop, Michael, you've done this before just help other people. But so imagine that right now for getting leases, it probably is pretty good. First,

Mitch McGinley  
depends. Yeah, yeah, I've got people, you know, I'm lucky I'm able to work all over the country. And so, you know, I've done deals from from Boston to Maui. And it's always very different. You know, and every landlord situation is very different to, for example, like, I, you're right, I think in general, it should be a pretty good time to negotiate with landlords, right? That's a rational thought. Landlords aren't rational people, or they haven't, they have a different motivation or, you know, reason to want different things. And so as an example, like, I've got a landlord who is trying to refinance the building for himself. And so he needs every dollar of rent, that he's getting to stay consistent so that the bank approves his refi, which means he can't negotiate at all. And so he's been strict as can be. And the tenants are all really suffering. But their interests are not aligned. And so basically, what he's saying is like, you can just stick with me for a year till I get this refinance. I'll hook you up, then, you know, into somebody who's not making any money because of COVID. Right now, they hear that and they're like, that doesn't help me at all. Like, what do you? Yeah. So it depends, in general, landlords are one of the most difficult parts of everything that I do.

Michael Jay  
Yeah, I did want to talk about that. Because I know Well, I had a very difficult, landlady very, very tough, but I kind of stuck it out because I had a great rate, a great location, beautiful, 100 year old building. At the air when I was selling, though, the, my lease was due in about four months. And I knew throughout having a lease that it always felt like a noose, like the lease was always just, you know, you were just bound by that lease. So what I ended up doing was, I kind of didn't want to get in the middle of, you know, I needed to just sort of end my, my time in that lease. So I ended up just hooking the potential new buyer directly with the landlady. Again, I didn't have a broker, but I, I let them kind of work everything out before deal was made.

Mitch McGinley  
Which you have to? Yeah. Right. I mean, no, no buyer would come in with only four certainty. Yeah, yeah. But it's great that you were that they were able to work it out. And yeah, to an agreement. And that's, you know, it's I think, in general, it's pretty safe to say that most landlords want tenants to stay in place. And so if you're thinking about leaving, they would much rather you sell to someone else who's just going to keep it going. You know, vacancies are the bane of landlord's existence. So you know, they should be at the table and accommodating the truth is that everybody in this country is hurting in in different ways right now. And one of the things that I've really come to believe in practice, is that it's tough, but landlords are people too. And, and they can be really hurting right now. And so if you approach them with some understanding that even if their interests aren't aligned with yours, but you treat them kindly, you'll get more of that in return. And so I'm a big fan of, you know, not ragging on landlords. Yeah, too much anyway, but um, but really trying to work with them because you need their support. To do a deal like this. You have to have the landlord support. There's no way around it. And so, you know, the ideal scenario is it's just a lease assignment, where the buyer comes in and effectively just takes over your lease. It's like a one page paper that says, you know, Mitch is taking over for Michael. And all the terms are exactly the same. But if you're reaching the end of the lease, obviously, you have to figure out what comes next. And then it you know, liability, like you said, it's, it's the noose around your neck, it's the biggest liability in yoga studio or has because years of rent, you know, if you default on it is can be hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And so, you know, it's really tough. And one of the things that I that I always recommend, there's, there's this one specific clause in every lease on assignment and subletting. And I would encourage every single studio owner to go and read that little paragraph and their lease, it's usually towards the end. And it starts out with something that says, like, you cannot assign this to someone else, like I have to approve it. But there's usually language in there that sort of lays out how it's supposed to work if you sell your business. Okay. And so the most common is that, you know, the buyer has to apply and the landlord has to approve, and that's sort of the basic parts of it. A lot of times, I'll see some really restrictive language, though. And the thing that I'm always most afraid of is one specific sentence that says, despite by assigning the lease, the the seller slash owner will remain liable for the duration of the lease. And so what they're, they're just trying to keep the original personal guarantee and add a second personal guarantee. And if you're trying to sell your business, like that defeats the whole purpose. You're like, I want out, out Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's good to know, if you've got that in your lease to be aware of it. And then, you know, especially if you're going to extend your lease or sign a new lease, then maybe that's something that you can negotiate out. And just tell your landlord that's down and not acceptable. The whole point of selling is to get out of that liability. So yeah,

Michael Jay  
one of the, the pricing structure within, you know, a yoga studio, you talked a lot on the training about changing the pricing structure of punch passes and memberships. And I know that was a big thing for me, when I built my business was I had tons of punch passes, 25 passes, 50 couples passes. And I had two consultants come in and help my studio and the first one was on pricing, and she just looked at it, and when you have way too many liabilities on there. And so I don't think a lot of businesses think about their punch passes as being liabilities. And so what we mean by that is that when you go to sell your business, that money is owed back to the clients, right? And so that or when you can build that into the, to the selling process that the new bill new owner assumes those liabilities.

Mitch McGinley  
Yeah, can go a couple different ways. It's definitely a variable, I wouldn't say necessarily that, that it has to be that way. I personally am of the mindset that when when we do evaluation for a studio, it's based on cash flow, and income. It's not based on balance sheet stuff, which is which is assets and liabilities. And so for me when I do evaluation that a studio made $100,000 last year, general rule of thumb, simple starting point is to multiply it by two, two is the most normal multiplier that we use in this industry. It can go up and go down, but that's just a good starting point. But if the studio made $100,000 last year, I'm gonna say that studio is worth $200,000. Maybe they have a bunch of outstanding class packs. But those are also current customers and people who are going to keep coming back to use those class packs and talking about it and telling friends you know, it's to me, I personally don't think that they should really be included. I've seen it go both ways. Most common is that there's some sort of negotiation around it depending on what exactly was sold. And so like the one that comes to mind the most is if you if you're one of those people that sells an annual like yeah, hate annual for like $750 or something like that, and you run a sale of those like the week before you Sell your studio, which is incredibly sheisty. And I don't recommend it. That would, I would fully expect that to be a credit for the buyer. Right? Because that that buyer is going to service that guest for the whole full year, you should get that money for someone who's on a 10 pack and has three or four classes left like I don't really yeah, that matters. Well, so we usually do is end up kind of negotiating, but there is that what's the report called in mind body, it's outstanding series report. And you can run that and it'll, it'll actually tally up everything that's outstanding, and there can be some pretty intimidating numbers on Yeah, we've seen some some six digit.

Michael Jay  
Well, my strategy was to minimize those paths. So I literally cut all of those are, except for a tankless pass, and I got rid of all of them. But then I focused on the monthly membership, I have to say that that saved my business, and built it to be profitable. And also gave me peace of mind that I knew that on the first and the 15th of the month, I had this much coming in that was going to cover my bills, it was going to cover the instructors, the lease and all of that stuff. So I think that was probably the best strategy I had. And then to be able to pass that on. But during that period, also, I put systems in place. And so when I sold the business, I think that that was a massive asset, to being able to sell the business because I was able to hand over an upper a complete operation manual. This is how the business is run everything hiring manuals, Operation manuals, just all the systems so that when the person took it over, it was just seamless. I did build in six months of my time as well to to support the studio, new studio owner afterwards. But just how important are those systems and sort of goodwill that you do in the community and your brand? How important are those when it comes to selling?

Mitch McGinley  
incredibly important? I mean, goodwill, as a tax code word, is usually 90% of the value of a business. Yeah, and a yoga studio specifically.

Michael Jay  
You know, there's very little equipment, speak of blocks, bolsters, blankets, you know, maybe a desk and a computer like not.

Mitch McGinley  
And the statue of Buddha statue, which is definitely staying, you know, and so it's it usually is like goodwill as a category and taxes usually comprises the majority of the value of business. Yeah, that's obviously slightly different meaning I think, then you're saying like, the goodwill of the brand and the community. Yeah. But they're all very much intertwined. Right. And so you know, your, your brand recognition, how many clients you have your your member list, your total email list, all of that stuff is your reviews on Google, or Yelp

Michael Jay  
or whatever? Yeah. You know, are all all really important? Maybe get back to one other thing that you said real quick.

Mitch McGinley  
You gave you said you had six months where you you assisted with transition. And that's incredibly generous. Yeah. more normal, I would say is, is between two weeks and a month. Knowing you I'm not surprised yearning. And I think truthfully, you know, as most people who you know, it's your baby and you care, you want to make sure that it goes well. And the transition goes well and

tip my hat to that, but that is six months is a long time. Usually i'd cap it at like a month and then get you paid for the five. Yeah.

Michael Jay  
And I am Yeah, it is. It, it felt like they put the right thing to do because the new owner didn't have kind of the skill set that I had and as far as marketing and what have you. I also still teach there, and I'm connected to the community but there is a downside to it. And that is things are not done the way you did things. And so it can be really, really, really hard to still be in there and watch it can not be done the way that you did things. Yeah. Oh,

Mitch McGinley  
yeah. To put it mildly. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like I've seen a lot of drama between buyers and sellers after the sale? Yeah. And and what I've come to find is that the the seller doesn't enjoy watching somebody else do things wrong with their business, you know, and the buyer doesn't enjoy having the seller around because they can't make it their own. Yeah, yeah. You know. And so if you've got a client who's mad about something, and they're going complaining about it to the previous owner, you know, there just gets to be this like negative energy. And so I usually encourage sellers to step away.

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