Devin Shurtleff

Bootstrapped or VC-funded? Ooh. Bootstrapped as long as you can until it chokes growth. You If your growth rate stays like this, then go get some external capital to get the slope of growth higher. But, if you can get the slope of growth like this with bootstrapping, bootstrap. Yeah. Yeah, I'm in that camp as well. But, I I do like VCs that also offer something beyond cap or beyond capital, right? So, like if they if they can offer you some sort of connection or in or something like that and they've got connections to some sort of market you're trying to go after, take the money. That's a That's a great plug for Startup Ignition Ventures. Yeah, so like we're we're we're pre-seed venture fund, but what series A funds we we get in in trenches and help people at early stages. I think we're pretty good at it. But, where series A funds are good at is helping you build the next layer team past the founders. When you need those real rock stars to take you from 2 million to 10 million, they have the network to also help find those kind of managers that would never join you when you're at 50,000 revenue, right? But, at 2 million, they come in and bring you to 10. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we have a I mean, we just raised our series A in December last year of a of '23, right? So, it's been a year and a couple months, but I mean, they immediately put in um uh a VP of finance for us. Game changer. Absolutely game changer. I mean, in those Yeah, like And you needed it then, but you didn't need it 4 years ago. Welcome back to the Startup Ignition podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We are your hosts, Tyler and John Richards. We are here to share stories. We are here to help with trends. We're here to help with validation. We're here to help with anything on your entrepreneurial journey. We hope you're getting a lot out of it. We're having a ton of fun doing this. So, today we have on our podcast a special guest. We are so thankful for him coming by. And I want to introduce him real quick. So, Devin Shurtleff. We are honored to have him. He's the newly appointed CEO of Opinion, yet been the founder of Opinion for how many years now? How long? Eight years. Yeah. Eight years Opinion has been around for eight years. Um and we'll maybe let Devin tell a little bit more about the newly appointed That means it's in it's in section 1202 territory, which we like. Good job. I plus by the way heads up on that. Listeners and viewers, if you don't know what section 1202 is, you need to find out cuz it's going to make Devin very happy someday. Uh and already has. It already has. There we go. There we go. There we go. I mean the definitive back story. Um but so, you are the CEO of Opinion. Um and you were co-founder of it, right? So, Co-founder. Original co-founder. Um we will maybe step into this a little bit now with your with one of the passing of one of those co-founders just recently and that's why you were newly appointed the CEO just recently. What was that? That was last It was in October. October. Okay. So, you you're enjoying that CEO role? Uh it's been a lot of work. It's been a lot of work. been uh it's been fun. On some I mean a lot of challenges on others and you know, meeting and being with you know, Justin all day you know, every day. You know, we say that, right? But like are we ever like working 24/7? Uh yeah. But uh but yeah, I mean being with him I I don't think I fully understood Yeah. everything that he did. Like the role. Like the 14 hats you wear. Yeah. I mean and a lot of it, right? Like we always split our business as like the front half of the business was uh sales marketing like he kind of led that, right? And uh and I was always the back up of the business. All the all the fulfillment, the products Operations. Operations, CX, like all that side. And so, that stuff's not new to me, but all like the front end and how to manage our metrics. And we've also got, you know, a new investor. Investor relations. Yeah. And so, um which which has pressed us a little bit more on getting a little bit more granular on our metrics and stuff like that. So, not only did, you know, I brought in this big role, but I'm also getting a lot of pressure coming down from from our investors as well. I I think your journey has a lot of insights into leadership, adaptability, and just the power of digging deep when it when you need to dig deep, which I'm excited to dive into today. But before we dive in on Startup Ignition podcast to have one of his doozies here. Yeah, here we go. We always do an icebreaker. I hope this is okay. Okay. So, and and an icebreaker, we just like set the tone of the podcast. Everybody sinks into their chair, gets comfortable, and it's just something fun. We always play like a little game with our guest. So, is that okay? Let's do a We're going to do Sure. We're going to do an icebreaker, and I'm going to do a rapid-fire this or that, okay? Okay. And I'm going to I want you to participate, too, okay? Yes. We'll We'll cut it if it's embarrassing, right? Yeah, if it's embarrassing, we'll actually keep it. That's even better. This is a safe space. Yeah, there we go. Remember. Okay, so the rapid-fire this or that, you ready? So, I'm going to say two things and you say which one you like or prefer or want or do over the other, okay? It's going to be easy at first, ready? Energy drink or coffee? Energy drink. Yep. I I I don't drink coffee. I drink I I neither for me, but I do an energy drink first, yeah. Okay. Early bird or night owl? Uh I'm both. Really? Yeah, I get up early and I stay up late. So, yeah. I don't need much sleep, either, but I'm definitely a night owl. Yeah, you are a night owl. You What How much sleep do you get? I need so much sleep. Uh I'm like 5 to 6 hours. Oh my gosh. Yeah, my my reason I'm 6 to 8. My reason for night owl in my entrepreneur career was just this, I can I got to get something done. If I went to bed and said, "Oh, I'll get up early and get it done." I worry that it won't work. I'll wake up late. I won't get it done. So, I just go until I get it done, then go to bed. And if I only get 4 hours sleep, I only get 4 hours sleep. Yeah. Okay, equity or salary? Oh, equity. Equity. Equity. Equity. What are we doing? Give me a zero salary, I'll clean the toilets, and give me a big equity option package. Thank you. Um and then also with a big salary, you probably wouldn't do great jobs. I mean I mean I'm just saying even though you have a very high salary job and a very low equity or no equity, like there's a lot of things you wouldn't do. Yeah. The bottom line principle is here, and we say this all the time, it's always good do teachings. When you take a salary and work for the man, you are renting your time to someone else. When you're an equity holder, you're got a piece of the rock, and you can have a life-changing event. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. I I mean I think uh you know, salary and equity, too. I mean it comes at a at like a stage, right? Like in the beginning, you've you've at least got to cover your your bases, right? You got to get your nut every month for you and your family and what you need to cover, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I mean even a story about that, we have a you know, one of one of my co-founders, like he um uh not to get into your this or that, it derailed a little bit, but Oh, well, I'll get back into it. But but in the beginning, I mean he talked about um he's like, "I I got to have a salary, Yeah. uh coming into this." And the rest of us, like we weren't taking anything. And we were just putting it all back in. He's like, "I got to have it right." He ended up taking a lower equity package because of that. We were all going to you know, split it pretty evenly. He's taking it now, and it has cost him so much. millions of dollars. Yeah, and and and and and and and the point is this is that nowhere in the world can you get this kind of risk-reward ratio. Take Take $30,000, $50,000 less salary, and get more equity. And sure, maybe it doesn't work out, and you've taken a hit on salary for a year or two, but the equity trade, if the company does make it, is like you just said, millions of dollars. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, next, this or that. Not to cut off the stories, cuz I love the stories. String cheese or protein bar? Uh I'm a string cheese guy. String cheese or protein bar? If it's a protein bar I like, cuz I'm very picky on which ones I like, but I always love string cheese. just trying I was trying to think start startup foods. String cheese or protein bar? Do you like the Built Bar? Um Uh-oh, Nick Greer, are you watching? I I like protein uh the Built Bar, okay. They're just a little bit sweet for me, in the way they are. I'll back up Nick. Nick, we have tons of Built Bars in our house. can't They're candy bar. My wife buys them on repeat. Yeah, so I like a little more chocolate covering on mine, Believe it or not. Okay, here we go. We got to go a little quicker. I have 10 of these guys. We've only done We've only done four. This is supposed to be rapid fire. Okay, work from home or office work? Office. Office. Yep. Yeah. Um office. Office. I think there's so much you can do in the office that you can't do. The little nuances from working by people. Oh my gosh. Yep. I always used to set that tone when I was building my startup. was in an operating company, 100% office. Yeah. Yep. Later in life, it's kind of nice from home sometimes. Yeah. Okay, summer or winter? Uh summer. Summer. Summer, 100%. Yep. Uh Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos? Uh I like what Elon's doing. I I Elon Musk? Elon Musk. We're Elon fans over here. Jeff Bezos is coming around, though. He's coming around. But, Elon Musk just I just listened to the All-In podcast, read the most recent episode, and the guests were the um founders of Stripe, and all of them were sitting and talking about six or seven major companies Elon Musk is doing simultaneously, and game-changing in all of them. It's unprecedented. Yeah. It's so it's so funny not to derail this conversation again, but I I was watching something and they were talking about how Elon Musk is technically the hardest worker in the world because he's the richest man. And if you just if you equate working hard to outputs, like it's like from from 2020 to 2022, like he like, you know, became the richest man in the world. And they're just like, "Okay, technically Elon Musk is the hardest worker ever." Yeah, and just like It's just the leverage that he has, right? like, you know, I'm a I teach entrepreneurship and mentor people and help them a lot and academically look at the reason why things happen. What he did with Tesla was genius. Like, his first market was going to tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Why was that so genius? It's because he didn't try to make a family car for the soccer mom. He tried to say, "Tech entrepreneurs, I'm making a cool computer that drives. And there's going to be lots of glitches and weird things at first. I might not have the range down. The battery might not be perfect. But it's a cool computer that drives." Who the only patient market for that would be gadget freaks in Silicon Valley, right? Yeah, the tech heads. Then he figured out the range and the battery and got everything figured out. This it just That's great entrepreneurship. Yeah. Well, yeah, and you wouldn't have thought at the price point he came in at, right? I mean, it was like 100 grand for for a Tesla back in the day. I got mine in first one in 2017. Oh, you were early. I was an early adopter. I would come out of stores and people would take pictures of it. Yeah. Now you see them everywhere, right? I remember when he got the Tesla Plaid, it was the first Plaid version that came out. And it was like everyone was gaga over it. I remember people would come out of the grocery store and just like, "Is that a Plaid?" Cuz no one had them. No one had them. Yeah. Um okay, next one. Stealth mode or big public launch? Stealth. Yeah. Um Yeah, let's say you're working on something new. What are you doing? You stealth modeing it or are you doing some grand opening or some big public launch? My my thing on PR is literally I like to win on the field of competition and manage expectations. PR builds up expectations. I just win I tell entrepreneurs just go win on the field. You don't need to win in the newspaper or the media, right? Well, I'm not I'm not like a very loud person. Like I don't have a very loud personality and so we've always just kind of coasted under the radar. Do your talking on the field. I like it. Throwing touchdowns says a lot, right? Yeah. City life or country life? Country life. Yeah. Um I definitely don't like hardcore city life. I'm kind of a suburban life kind of in the middle to be honest with you. Yeah, I guess. Well, if I had to pick between the two, absolutely, but I'm more of that, too. I don't want to be so far from the groceries. You know, and doing stuff. But But I hate like You're not in the butt crack of Utah on your five acres of land, are you, right? So, you like the middle ground. Okay, middle ground. I'm on an acre in Highland, isn't Gives you the land there. Okay. Bootstrapped or VC-funded? Ooh. Bootstrapped as long as you can until it chokes growth. You If you're growth rate stays like this, then go get some external capital to get the slope of growth higher. But if you can get the slope of growth like this with bootstrapping, bootstrap. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in that camp, as well. But I I do like VCs that also offer something beyond cap or beyond capital. So, like if they if they can offer you some sort of connection or in or something like that or they've got connections to some sort of market you're trying to go after, take the money. That's a That's a great plug for Startup Ignition Ventures. Yeah, so like we're we're we're pre-seed ventures. Fine. But what series A funds we we get in and trenches and help people at the early stages. I think we're pretty good at it. But where series A funds are good at is helping you build the next layer team past the founders. When you need those real rockstars to take you from 2 million to 10 million, they have the network to also help find those kind of managers that would never join you when you're at 50,000 revenue, right? But at 2 million, they come in and bring you to 10, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we have a I mean, we just raised our Series A in December last year of of '23, right? So, it's been a year and a couple months, but I mean, they immediately put in um uh VP of finance for us. Game changer. Absolutely game changer. I mean, and those yeah, like it's And you needed it then, but you didn't need it 4 years ago. Yeah. Absolutely. So, okay, that was a great this or that great icebreaker. I feel like we're all comfortable. We're all in game mode. a good icebreaker cuz there's a lot of teachings in there. Yeah, yeah, it's great. It was great. So, okay, rewind a little bit and going back to what where your intro was and I don't think for the viewers' sake, we never even discussed what Opinion does. So, Opinion is it automates the process of gathering feedback and reviews and specifically for resident complexes or or Yeah, for multi-family Tell me Tell me what Opinion does. Yeah, so we are we want to measure and manage the resident's experience at every step of their journey, right? From the second they learn about a property all the way until they move out, we are measuring the experience of the resident there in big multi-family apartment complexes. So, we work with um the nation's largest management companies. We have about a million and a half units that use our software on a on a monthly basis to be able to gather feedback from residents. And um and then understand like what they can improve on. So, um so yeah, so we aggregate that data, we analyze it, and then we give it to the property managers so that they can figure out what they're doing this quarter or uh this week or this year to optimize their resident experience. the biggest KPI of all for those management companies saying are occupancy rates? Is that a huge thing that you're helping them have great occupancy rates? Yeah, I mean, even further than that, it comes down to NOI, net operating income. All the way to net NOI. Yeah. Yep. So, but yeah, occupancy rates absolutely drive that. Um yeah, satisfaction drives that. If you have great reviews in your property, everyone wants to live there. You know, you can drive higher NOI. Yeah. I think I told you when I first got affiliated with you, which was at the very beginning, that I invested in this property around Phoenix and Scottsdale. And the highway 101 was interesting. They across the street was Phoenix, the other side of the street was Scottsdale. So, they built it on the Scottsdale side of the street. And that alone just saying that and what I you know, apartment dwellers a young single upwardly mobile professional saying, "I live in Scottsdale." They want to say that. So, that's like a marketing thing. And so, you know, and that's something that was just interesting about how important it is when these young professionals say, "Where am I going to live?" That they when they look up a multi-family residence or multi-apartment that they're saying, "Oh, it's in Scottsdale. What are other ratings? What do the people say that live there? Do they like it?" And that's what you help lift all that up, right? And it affects the profitability of that complex. So, Totally. going back to the like the founding story of Opinion. How did it like come to be? Cuz you you mentioned at the very beginning you had multiple co-founders. Yeah. That's pretty unique in itself. Usually you don't have like three, four, five people along the story of a company coming in and co-founding it. So, start from the very beginning. How How did it start? Cuz 2017 you said. Yeah. So, take us back to 2017. technically started like just dabbling in 2016. But 17, you know, it was more of an idea that like I put together and Um yeah, and and basically anyways, my college roommate, uh his name's Morgan. Um he uh he was working for Dealer Socket like up there at you know, kind of point of the mountain area. Well, I guess like just right there in Draper. And he was a CSM for them just working with dealerships and um just hated his job. So, he uh So, one day he called me just kind of defeated. And I you know, I think he probably had a bad day on um talking to some dealer owner or something like that. And he just was like, "Man, I just I can't do this anymore, you know?" And uh And so, I was like, "Well, you know." And I think this is largely just to like get him feeling a little better, but I was like, "Well, give me an idea. Let's do it." You know? And he was like, "Well, I don't know." I'm like, "I am not getting off the phone until you give me an idea of like what we're going to do." And he's like, "Well, you know, I was I was working with a dealership who was like trying to drive more reviews. So, he had set up an automation within DealerSocket to ask for a review and just send them the link uh out of DealerSocket. So, that's He's like, "Yeah, but it's super janky in the way they were doing it. Like the the guy was really specific about it. I think I think we do it like way better." And um and so, I said, "Okay, I'll call you back." So, 30 minutes later, I I uh I called him back and I had built out of a bunch of WordPress pages and I was working with um a texting component at the time and I built a form they would put information in and it would send a text and an email to a person to ask for a review. Yeah. He's like, "Oh, this is great." You know? And And uh so, anyways, I um uh I went out and started just calling some people that I knew and trying to see, "Hey, you know, can this work?" And uh you guys know Ryan Grover? He owns a HelpCloud over there. Um Uh-huh. Yeah, they they do uh they're off of they're out over here, actually. Um uh in Orem. But, they uh he was uh our first customer, you know? And uh and he still uses our software to this day. But, um Yeah, we ended up turning on reviews for him and got him like hundreds of reviews in the first 30 days. And he's like, "Man, this is incredible." Right? And so, uh so, that's how we started. Uh at the same time, I was running a a company that did like uh skin care and supplements and stuff like that online. And so, it was uh um so, it wasn't like the time for me to just like start a new startup, right? Um and at the same time, we had Alex uh who had kind of called me and was like, "Hey, I need to uh He's like, "I'm looking for something different. I want to go sell." And so I was like, "Well, we've kind of got this half-baked software that we were maybe doing a thousand bucks a month in revenue. And uh so Alex is like, "Well, I want to see it. I'll give you a shot, you know." And so What's What's your buddy from Dealer Socket like a a technical guy? He He could Yeah, he was He built the software. So Yeah, so we it? So I built the first version of it just in WordPress and like I mean it wasn't really like built, Yeah, you cobbled together some free stuff. Yeah, just a bunch of stuff like put together. Yeah, maybe it cost me 50 bucks a month to like run all the stuff that we were doing, but you could just duplicate the pages for all of these different clients. But once they had a client, they had to actually put it in the form, hit submit, and that would ask for the reviews. And so um so as we showed it to Alex, Alex was like, "Hey, this is great." Um and we didn't really hear from him for like a week. And then he calls me, he's like, "Hey, how do I take a credit card?" I'm like, "Well, I don't I just got to put it together and figure it out cuz we were like doing paper checks and like, you know, we hadn't really figured it out. And um he's like, "No, no, no, I need to take a credit card like right now. I'm just sold one." Oh, wow. So the three of us started running with this. Alex was selling, Morgan was doing the fulfillment, and I was kind of checking in with these guys. And And as we started to grow in revenue, I realized, "Hey, we we need like a CEO. We need someone that who can come in and and really run this thing." And so uh Justin and I had known each other for a while. He had just left Degreed. So at this point there was three of you and then now you're talking to Justin. Yeah. And that's Justin Bingham. Justin Bingham who we're going to talk about in a little bit a little bit more. Okay. And so, you know, I I went to Justin and I was like, "Hey, uh any chance you want to go run a startup?" And he was like, "Maybe. Like what do you got?" You know, and so kind of showed it to him and he did the same thing. He went out, business to business to business. He was trying to figure out talked to a bunch of friends and everything like that. And he comes he's like, "All right, I'll do it." And so one of the guys he talked to. Yeah. know if you know that. Yeah. Is that how you guys got connected? Yes. Yeah. I remember distinctly Justin, and we met at the Starbucks by University Mall in Orem, and just sat down in there, and he was saying, "Should I do this? Is this something I should do?" And all that cuz he was coming off of Degreed Yep. with David Blake. Yep. And uh and he and so and I and of course my answer was, "Yes. Yes. Yes." Yeah. So uh so yeah, Justin Justin came on board probably mid um mid to late 2017, and uh we ran it just four of us for about a year. Um ended up raising some uh like our first seed round of funding. to let you know, I just I'm going to say cuz the roots a little bit, a Startup Ignition Bootcamp attendee was also slightly working with you guys a little bit, I think on it, that came to Startup Ignition Bootcamp independently. Justin took me aside, I oh, that sounds like the company that this other guy was dabbling in a little bit, too, and so that was the connection, too. And it was and that could lead to an interesting story, too, on that. But um that but that's just so fascinating, those early days, and that and I met you through Justin. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, we ended up uh yeah, we ended up just like running for for about a year, uh raised a little bit of capital, uh which was great. We raised 750,000, um and uh that put us on track for the next like couple years of growth. And so um yeah, and then uh a couple years in, we were selling to salons, spas, medical offices, chiropractic Yeah, funny story, I used it at DevMountain for like Justin Justin got me to to sign up and use it and pay and Yeah. And I and I think you guys that I think right when we started, like about 6 months later, you kind of hyper-focused on like the multi-family marketing, and that that's maybe kind of a path I want to go down. Like, how did you realize, okay, did you were doing all these different verticals, and you're like, okay, this is where we want to go. Cuz I feel like that's what That's when the company started taking off really was. Totally. So, multi-family is still like 70 plus percent of your customer base, right? Something like that? 95. 95 now? 95% So, so a couple years in, uh I mean, we had Merry Maids uh like cleaning service. We had the whole franchise of them. We did Sport Clips Haircuts, which you know, we we had the whole franchise. Like we were authorized to sell there for a bit. Um and uh anyway, so we ended up uh like kind of servicing all these service customers and um Jed Milburn. Is that name sound familiar up in Salt Lake? Uh Milburn and Company. Sounds familiar, but And so, anyways, big real estate guy. Uh Justin knew him somehow. He knew everybody somehow, right? And uh and he's like, hey, our apartment reviews suck. They're so bad. And uh he's like, do you think it would work for that? And uh Justin's like, well, I don't know, we could try it. So, he said, I'm going to connect you with my manager. Uh they're at AMC uh property consultants. Still a client of ours today, but uh we went met with uh Jennifer over at AMC and we said, hey, we want to do this and she said, that'll never work. Uh but maybe. And um so, we turned the software on for one property of Jed's and we got 30 reviews in 24 hours. Yeah. And she called us and said, I need this in all of my properties. And so, come down, meet, let's figure out a price point there. Cuz we were working with Jed specifically. Uh like on pricing and everything like that before. And so, uh that is how we started. We didn't know at the time that AMC was the third largest in the nation uh for property management. Wow. How long did it take you to roll out to all of their properties? Uh we're still doing it. Yeah, how many We have Yeah, they have uh what, six, 700 properties and we probably have I mean, we have uh a lot of them now. Okay, so you kind of started throwing up spaghetti on the wall, seeing where you could grab some land and get customers and get traction and This is actually advice from your dad. Oh. Um Uh was I don't know if you remember this. We were at the mall. We were sitting there in the food court of the mall and you said, "You should go sell five five companies in all these different areas and figure out which one like really resonates like back." And so we had done I mean up to that point like on our service based customer we were a million million and a half in ARR and we were on our way and and we had a whole whole sales team like churning that we were we were growing. Um but almost 100k a month at that point and then this property management side came in and um our biggest problem is that we we went to market with we're going to automate the process of getting you reviews. And that's a lot of integrations, right? Especially with this spa uses this CRM and this uses this. I mean cuz it's pretty fragmented on the CRM side. So we looked at property management and uh my my background being finance marketing, right? So I have a a master degree in finance and so I was looking at the numbers and going, "Well, these properties are way more lucrative." Like on a on a churn perspective than than our service based clients and so uh we just So basically what it is is you need it was a little bit of a red ocean in trying to cover all SMBs, small and medium businesses. Okay, a lot of companies coming in to do that. And so you wanted to sharpen your competitive angle by hyper focusing on a vertical and you need to go test which vertical literally had the most hair on fire use case plus was the easiest and best for you to make a profit on ser- servicing, right? Totally. And that's what you did and then you discovered that and found it. That's the process that you go through. It you know, if we they call it um uh split the market. In other words, if you are in something where there's a lot of general players, you can hyper focus and split the market up into a hyper focus category and do really well and you Opinion is the embodiment of that principle. Totally. Yeah. So, uh yeah, there there's two things. When you have a horizontal strategy and you're trying to get in all these different businesses, there's all like even the way that you speak to those customers can be different from a salon to a CrossFit and how they think about how they address their their users, right? Cuz some are like, "Oh, they're our athletes." And some there are um there are patients and some, you know, they're customers and some, you know, So, you've got like all of these different things and when you have a horizontal strategy, when you really go vertical specific, uh they call it the riches are in the niches, right? And so, uh and that's exactly what we did. And so, that changed our entire strategy from, "Okay, we're going to sell to everyone." to, "We are just going to sell to property management." We found an investor who was specific to property management. Mhm. Uh RET Ventures that are up in Park City. yeah. I remember that. And you know, and and now they're, you know, a couple hundred million-dollar fund. Um and so, we raise we raised money from them, but the the unique piece about that is that their LPs um or their investors are property management companies. So, they're eating their own dog food a little bit. like that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, they're just happy to to to implement it in all their properties. Yeah, abso- absolutely. So, a third of our business right now are from our LP connections. Um and because yeah, they they go, "Hey, invest in us, we'll invest in software companies that'll raise the valuation of the capital you just put into us." And it's just like this big loop back and forth. So, That's That's amazing. That's amazing strategy. Um so, you felt like you could leave behind every other vertical and hyper focus. What year was that with that you guys hyper focused on multi-family residential like complexes? Uh it was 2019. It was right before COVID. Okay. Yeah. Ooh, right before COVID. Yeah, about 6 months a year out of COVID. When did you So, when did you raise that money from RET? So, beginning of 2019. 2019? Yep. I remember some of the I I Tyler, I'm not sure if you're fully aware of this, but I all this time I'm on their advisory board. And probably the senior advisor that helped you coordinate the advisory board, if I remember right. And so, we're having these advisory board meetings, and then what really happened is sit down with Justin and Devin, and we talked about you you need to now focus on your performance and really kind of engineer your sales and revenue traction, and show this 10% month-over-month growth, so that you can be on the driver's seat for the next investor, right? And that's what you guys did, and you guys started nailing it. It was awesome. Well, I I like the strategy of hyper-focusing on the multi-family, too, because it was like it kind of differentiated you, because I do feel like even today, and probably even 5 years ago or 7 years ago, you know, there's a lot of technology companies or software companies that were doing this. It was kind of the hot market at the time, which was like this feedback loop and this like review, you know, uh categorizing, and, you know, this SMS or email campaign to get clients to give feedback, right? And, you know, even in the day where my company before was using it and utilizing it, and so it it's kind of you weren't trying to serve all all masters. It was like, "Okay, yeah, let's let's let's hyper-focus on this one." and you can be the dominant player. But, what's also the point I was making, too, was just that you also then said, "Hey, we want to be good entrepreneurs and a great business independent of the vertical we chose, or even the market we're in." And you started also then managing the company really properly and getting great traction. And it put you in the driver's seat, and it was really awesome to see you're not just focusing, "Okay, here's our product. We're hyper-focused on this vertical, but we also know how the game's played, cuz you're a highly scalable venture." And this is a principle for the listeners and viewers, a highly scalable venture is probably going to need external capital to fuel the growth. Yep. And that's what you guys went through that period, but to land that fuel, to get that fuel, you have to paint a really good financial picture. It's you It's just not "Hey, you got to trust me and believe me it's going to happen." You got to show you've got trajectory that they can believe in and that's what you guys did a really good job on. Yeah, yeah, I I appreciate that. Yeah, coming coming from the outside. I uh Yeah, and and you were a big help along the way. I mean, even even our financial models were I mean, sourced I think from you with Mark Mark Elder. So, I mean, he's the base of the model that I ran our business on at least on the finance side from uh up until 2022. Is this Do you run a lot of those those inner kind of financial workings and making sure all your ratios are right and expenses and you know, revenues were on track on the projections? Was that you? We didn't have a finance guy until the beginning of last year. Yeah. Yeah, so And just just a really uh you know, I know every founder feels oh man, this is it's chaotic, it's crazy, but literally you guys were doing really a lot of good things and you were really managed well. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm I'm just impressed by your financial prowess because like Hey, he's a master in finance, he said. Oh. Yeah, that's right. So, you were comfortable in I ran a lot of models, yeah. And specifically in venture, too. So, that was like the emphasis of my program up at the U. And so, a lot of financial models, a lot of cap table, like a lot of that stuff. What Give the viewers and listeners a little bit of strategy or tips because I'm I'm constantly getting in front of like budding entrepreneurs and speaking to newbies and people who are trying to get into entrepreneurship and even people who have their ideas and uh you know, are actually trying to get trickles of revenue coming into their businesses and I I constantly tell them like you have to be financially aware. Like you literally cannot be an entrepreneur and run a business without having basic It's one the hallmarks of what we teach. Yeah. You have to have basic business finance. Yeah. going to be a CEO or a co-founder and have a major role, you got to understand business finance to some degree. But now, even myself though, I I get befuddled sometimes when it gets to very complex models and understanding, you know, the inner workings of like this dynamic workbook and this whole financial you know, thing that's been built, you know, it's hard for me to get in there super deep. But I do feel like I do have the basic necessity that an entrepreneur needs to financially be aware. What what Like what do you What tip do you give to the financial to the entrepreneur who's maybe not super financially minded? Yeah. And is maybe a salesperson or someone who can go and make and generate business, but doesn't have that financial awareness. What? Yeah, and some of the principles that like I have used on the finance side, I think are different than some other entrepreneurs, right? But the biggest one for me is always knowing when your um uh cash flow positivity date is going to be. Yeah. And if you don't have one, you're in trouble. You mean You mean like that that J curve? Yeah, well, and even like where your expenses are going to match your your income, Yeah. right? And so, if that date never moves, right? Like let's say it's September of 26 of next year, right? Yeah. And then the next month you run the model, it's now in October and now in November. It's not real, Yeah. right? And so, you've got to manage towards that date. Uh every time we raise capital, um we have been hyper focused on making sure that our modeling is correct. On our hires, typically your your uh um your head counts where your expense comes from. Yeah. Yeah, your biggest expense is HR. Yeah. And so, especially in the software side, right? Like your your big your big biggest expense is there. And so, what we would do is every time we raise money, and the principles that we try to live by are for every dollar that we raise, we're getting a dollar in ARR, right? And that's very, very, very hard to do, but we have constantly done that. Over the time that you're spending the dollar you raise that you're matching that with a dollar of ARR. in ARR. Yeah, that's a great rule. until our last round of funding, um we had uh yeah, that was the principle that we had, which was uh every dollar of raised capital becomes a dollar of ARR. That's a great rule of Um and so a lot of that you're investing in sales, right? Or you're investing in something that's going to give you some sort of return there. Um don't squander your capital on stupid stuff. Don't go buy bean bag chairs and balloon animals and like all this other stuff. That's a lot of like software companies like we want to be the cool place to work and it's like you will find people who want to work for you. Hey, I've seen your new offices. I saw the picture on LinkedIn. I saw the ribbon cutting that this guy knew posted on LinkedIn. Blood, sweat, and tears for that but yeah. Yeah, but but the new office and I I'm just going to share this, they're doing it the right way. It's they just got into that kind of office and they're getting it earned the right to get into something like that. Yeah. because of the commercial office space situation, right? You guys are not going out and wildly spending on office space. You're actually getting a killer deal. We'll make sure Jordan puts that picture from LinkedIn on the podcast somewhere here so the viewers can see it cuz it's a cool picture. So some other advice like on the finance side is um is always run your model to break even so you're never raising in a position of desperation on your next. So treat your treat your capital raise as if you're never raising another dollar. Yeah. So if you're raising a million dollars one Well, you have to show projections that you are going to get to profitability at some point with every raise. With every raise. So a lot of people are are saying okay, well I I raised 5 million bucks, right? But over the next five years I'm actually going to lose 10. So it puts you in a situation where you've got to go raise another 5 million dollars uh to be able to to continue on and the problem that becomes is when you're negotiating with a venture group, uh you're negotiating uh from a position of desperation. Yes. And if and but if you're at break even, which we have never raised money until we were at break even, wow, ever. So you're literally getting the dollars to pour gasoline on the fire that's already going. Yes. Yeah, not to play catch-up. Cuz in that position, let's say the market turns, which it did, right? Or the Or you're not getting the terms that you want, you want someone who wants, you know, the participation and all like all this other stuff, you're just not getting the terms you want, you don't have to take the deal cuz you're not in a position of desperation. And so these are principles that I think everyone needs to advise like for every dollar you raise, a dollar of ARR, and always run your model to break even. So I hope the viewers and listeners are paying attention. You want to go in raising money where you're in a position of strength and power or at least stability and not in desperation. So also, that means you don't start 3 weeks before you're running out of cash. If you want to have a problem, or you want to get hosed, do that. Yeah, our last raise took us 7 months. Yeah. So if the And and uh Yeah, and I think that's probably about average when you're doing a Series A. Yeah, and you And you like when you have that strength and you start early, you're going to get multiple term sheets, so you're going to have multiple interested parties, and that's how you get the best deals. Yep. Yeah, I was at a summit this uh the last couple days too up up in Scottsdale or down in Scottsdale, I guess. And um yeah, Or it's cool to live in a multi-family complex. Yes, across the street from Scottsdale across the street from Phoenix, yeah. Um but yeah, I mean they were talking about right now how it used to be revenue growth was like the biggest driver of of value, and now it's GRR, gross revenue retention rates, right? And so get your GRR there, even if it's a sacrifice on the gross side because you're giving a lot more attention to your customers. Mhm. Um your your retention rates right now are are more important than anything. Yeah, churn is the enemy of SaaS. We like to say that the great symptom that tells you you've got a problem is churn. Yeah. Too much churn, and you know something major is broken somewhere. You got to fix it before you do anything else. How has your turn been over the life cycle of of Opinion? Has it been pretty good? Yeah, we Yeah, we have a 92% uh GRR. Yeah, that's good. And our And our net revenue retention rates are are in the 130s. So, Yeah, I mean, we uh we have really hyper-focused and continue to hyper-focus just on on the um on the customer journey and making sure that the customers have a really good really good experience with the product. So, I I want to go back cuz I I do want to loop Justin into this whole story here, and but I want to go back to your thinking at the founding of why you thought I need a CEO, and why you or one of the partners involved at that time couldn't have stepped up into that role. Like, take me through that thinking and the reasoning behind that for a second. And then, why was Justin the one to to fill those shoes in the early stages of of Opinion? Uh I think when you look at a at you at least what we needed, I needed someone who was really confident, right? And Justin is the most confident guy I know. And so, um and I was very I I was very lucky to actually kind of get his eye on um and and even get any interest from him because I you know, candidly thought like I was there's no chance, right? Um and you know, not talking about my other partners, they're just not the eternal optimist that he is. to toot your horn here, but you're pretty confident, capable, good-looking, and energetic. So, why not you? Well, uh cuz my other business was doing doing well. So, And so, you didn't want to step away and be distracted by Opinion at the very beginning. Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm not going to leave a company that's doing, you know, 8 million bucks in revenue a year to go to a startup, you know? And so, and hindsight, uh you know, I'm I'm glad for the way that that we did it, right? But I didn't know. You never know, right? And so, this other one's, you know, paying me. I had partners over there that were doing stuff, too. So, I couldn't leave them high and dry to kind of come to this side of thing and so Justin seemed like a good fit. He also seemed um a lot of entrepreneurs like kind of go back to like this like equity or salary. Uh he was one that didn't need a salary at the beginning either. Like he was a was a leader. He had his financial situation was um Taken care of. Yeah, it was it was okay at the time, right? Um Justin Justin's a doer. He gets stuff done and he he's analytical but also compen- competent enough to trust his gut and do stuff. I mean he just he gets things done. I mean I could he's attracted. It was a great fit between you and him and the rest of the team. Yeah. Yeah, I'm much more of like a data driven person. He is much more like a an optimist and just relentless at uh I'm going to sell this deal. I'm going to get this client. I'm you know. There's a magic E called enthusiasm and a lot of entrepreneurs need to understand somebody on your founding team needs to be that person who radiates enthusiasm. People buy, customers buy, investors buy, employees you're trying to recruit buy enthusiasm. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And so Justin was then appointed to be the CEO and did it obviously a very great job. Got to you guys to where you were all the way up until this last year of his passing and maybe this is a great time to share that story just real quick with the viewers so that they understand that your partner had had This is where it's going to get a little tender. Yeah. Well, because you got a box of tissues around here or something. So, I mean I I you know just for the crowd listeners as Devin shares this um and if I get a little choked up or if I just get a little somber it's just I consider Justin Bingham kind of an entrepreneurial son to be honest with you. Um he before he he got together with you, I mentored him through from BYU days to through other things and all the stuff. You met him as a student. Yeah, and just and just as a young guy and he just took to me and I took to him and I I was helping to make life decisions before he decided on opinion and how he's doing his career and all that and so and he's just I I just really liked him. He's a great guy and I miss him a lot and I you know, when you tell your story and what happened and all that I just cannot believe it still. I'm still in shock. Well, let me let me set the stage just a little bit here because for everybody listening and watching Justin tragically passed away last October, right? Um while he was canyoning in Zion's Park. Um I don't know the full details, but basically he was canyoning or repelling and the gear gave away and he and he and he fell, right? Correct? Super experienced at it. He's a He's a extreme sports kind of guy. Yeah. Yeah. He even challenged me one time. Yeah, we uh lost very hard. Um What was that in? Uh pickleball, weren't you? We played with you, didn't It's a legendary story in around the Opinion office, I think. But uh it this goes back to also another great advisor who was a good friend of the company and all that was Warren Osborn who tragically also died of ALS. So back in the day you and Justin, Warren and I would be in meetings together, you know, and figuring out the company and then one day Justin and Warren who were both athletic, right? And you know, little old me they say even though we haven't played pickleball, we could whoop you. Okay. And I go I played for a lot of years. Are you sure about that? And we played tennis. We're good at it. And I said, okay, great. And then so anyway, we did a $100 bet and we set up the game and Nolan came with me. Your brother-in-law. And so Nolan and I played those two and it was over 100 bucks. And so I think we said best of three. So we win the first game. They didn't like it. We win the second game. They didn't like it. They said best of five. So we won the third game. They go, okay, best of seven. So then we win the fourth game and they're realizing, hmm, maybe you need to know a little something about a sport before you challenge people. And then I said, you know what? We get we won our $100. Our wives are over there. Why don't you play our wives? Yes. And the wives beat him in the wives beat him in two games. Difficult job. And Ed Justin did not like that. For the next few years he wanted a rematch. Uh Ed Ed every moment would bring up a rematch. But go ahead. Tell the story of Justin and your relation with him and all that. So. Yeah. I mean and you kind of touched on it but I mean that guy lived his life at a million miles an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Always. Right? And um he was always doing something. He was just you know speed flying, you know, climbing, uh you know, doing trips, extreme sports, backflips off a cliff like And so uh every year he would go down uh for his birthday and do uh which is on the 5th of October and he would do a canyoning. Oh, that was like an annual thing that he always did. Yeah. Yeah. It done it for years. And so um and I think he was getting a little pressure from his wife to kind of slow down um and you know, also the friends that are like, "Hey, you know, we're getting guys are getting over 40. Yeah. And and and they're just like, you know, and a lot of friends are like, "Yeah, I can't make it anymore." And you know, and and we got kids and life and all this other stuff. And so um so he even told me he's like, "Hey, this is like this is probably the last year I'm going to do it, you know?" And um and yeah, he ended up uh doing a two-day trip um and on the last rappel down it's about a 300-ft rappel, 270, 280-ft rappel. Um yeah, he got down about 70 ft um and the gear failed on him. He He had a device that kind of the rope kind of wraps through it a couple times and um and one of the wraps popped off and you know, and tried to get it back on and just couldn't. So. So he yeah, he he fell about 200 ft Oh my Yeah. Passed away there at the um I think they actually got him out. Uh I'm not sure if it you know, if he passed away right there at the foot of the of the cliff or um after they they life flighted him out, but um but yeah, that was a not not a call I thought I would ever ever get, especially from him. Someone so experienced. on a Saturday and Monday morning I woke up and had a text about it and I go, "What in the world?" Yeah, I remember I called you and I said, "Is this real?" Tell me this is not real. And you go, I didn't believe it. John, I'm still dealing with it, but it's real. And then I said, "I'm here, whatever you need." But I just It just was a shocking. Yeah. Such I mean, cuz as Lindsey, his wife said to me, he's just, you know, bigger than life type of personality kind of guy. Well, it was just crazy because you you you and Justin are investors in our venture fund. And we had just gone through all of that. I think I remember our lunch at Costa Vida telling you about the fund and you and Justin just go, "We're in. Whatever it is, we're in." Well, it's like it was so crazy that, you know, fast forward 2 3 weeks and I get that text and it was just utterly shocking. so satisfying in 2024 in the summer to fall is you and Justin after having been with you for all those years, I I so many young entrepreneurs I say, "Here's how it can work and what's going to happen and someday you're going to receive the fruits of your labors and you're going to have life-changing experiences and your family's going to be secure and it's going to be amazing. And you guys had just realized finally all of that dream. And you know, and congratulations to you on that, but also to Justin and his family. And then to have Justin right as he literally reached the summit of that experience and then to for him to be taken is just, you know, I just it you know, it's not fair. It's not, you know, it's not the way life's supposed to go and all that and uh we feel for his wife and family so much. And for you, I mean, he was your friend and you know, shoulder to shoulder for years. So condolences to the whole team still and I'm a still got a spirit of sadness around it, so. Yeah, I also sorry, just took over drink here. But uh I I also just remember um interacting with your team at the funeral and going around and just how sad they were and how close they were. It just shows the type of leader that Justin was. He literally was like best friends with even the lowest person at Opinion or the lowest person on the street. Honestly, that's just Justin. And so it was just again, just so shocking and yeah, condolences to the I want to say this to you. He treated me with such respect as an older guy and after you got and you have to go what did you think of John the first time you met him through Justin? But and and but then You're like, "Who is this guy, Justin?" like the funniest thing was when Justin and Devon would funniest the most fun thing was when Devon and Justin would say, "Hey John, can you come right over at the office? We got to talk about something right now." And I'd zoom over there and you guys would be so respectful and nice and then you you'd ask some questions and we'd talk about what we're going to do and I just it was very rewarding. I mean, you guys are one of my favorite founding teams I've ever invested in or been a part of or been advisor of and just and mostly because you're super strong, but you're also teachable and listen to advice and you take out of it and take action. It was just such it's such a great experience and Justin was a huge part of that and it's super fun even in you're a huge part of it. I just really impressed. I guess I'll stop showering you with all that, but it's just I miss Justin and you know, if Justin, if you're somewhere listening, we love you. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I think man, I miss that guy every day. Yeah. Every single day. And I didn't um I mean, we were like close, right? Yeah. I mean, building a company with some your brothers. Like literally. And I think that's like, you know, something hard to kind of grasp, too, that's like things are fundamentally different about what we're doing. And um there's a little bit of comfort for me cuz in the early days, he and I very much disagreed on a lot of things, right? And but I loved that because it meant that we were getting all the opinions in the room. Yeah. Like, if we always thought the same, like, you know, it wouldn't it wouldn't have been good. Founding teams should not be clones of one another. Yeah. Diverse They just need an echo chamber. Principal researched founding teams that are diverse outperform homogeneous teams Yeah. every time. Well, I I No, go ahead. Go keep going, Devin. No, I I mean, and but every time we would disagree on something or it was never personal, ever. And but he'd and he'd always end it with uh you know, I love you, right? And like, damn it, I love you. He's like, I love you, right? But I love you. And uh and I'll be fair, like, you know, there's a lot of times where I'm like, I don't want to do that. I'm not doing it. I will support you and I will do it, but I don't want to do it, you know? And uh but it was but it was never personal. Things always worked out um there. And and if I'm honest, like, I'm struggling on is it working out now, you know? Like, where do I go from here? And there's a little bit of comfort that I was starting to say is the last year, he and I have not disagreed on anything. Yeah. And uh and so that that brings me a little comfort of like, what I'm doing now, I still believe that Justin would be doing the same Yeah. thing. Yeah, and the other day, there was a one of my team members, uh you know, was talking about what career looked like for you. Like, what's your path? Like, what do you want to do, you know? And he starts listing off um uh hopefully I don't get super emotional about this, but he starts he starts list listing off that he's like, I never want to be a CEO. And uh he has the chops for it. He's like, he's brilliant. Um I want to be like a president CEO. And uh and he said, that's the route I want to work my way up. He's got incredible finance background, super smart the way he thinks about things is awesome. And uh he said because you get all these protections from the CEO, like you don't have to make some of the weird decisions, the investor relations, and all this stuff. And I, in front of one of my just started bawling. And it was like you know, and he's like, "Are you okay?" And I'm like, and I was like, "I just I what you were saying is the exact thing that Justin did for me, right? He protected me. I hate doing I Oh. You're facing Yeah, I mean, the investor relations stuff is um it's fine. It's not my favorite. I am an operator heart. I want to move the numbers of the business. I want to make decisions that actually make money and actually um make change or create retention or that that's what I love doing, right? And the CEO ends up becoming kind of this intermediary between like investors and the public and some of the sales and getting on, you know, client call and and that stuff I just I never necessarily wanted to do. Um Yeah, but I can tell you from the outside looking in, and you know, I'm a shareholder and and uh been around this whole time. My opinion of the new CEO of Opinion is that you had this thrust on you and you're doing a great job. Seems like you're taking the bull by the horns. And in my my check-in calls with you, I've only had a few and all that, I just feels like, you know, you've you knew this you it was unexpected and this all fell on you and I think it's not easy, but you're doing a good job. My My last question to wrap this up is when that all happened last year in fall, did was was it hard on the business or have you guys come out of that or you know, like not just financially in revenue and traction, but like, you know, the morale and like the actual cohesiveness of the employees and just the environment of working at Opinion. Like, how how has it come How have you come out of it? What What's the end result? Yeah. Um immediately when it happened, right? Like that Monday morning, I mean, shortly after I got off the call with you, uh I told the whole team. Yeah. And that was the hardest probably one of the hardest conversations. called you before you told the team. I just had to see if it was real or not. Yeah. And and and uh everyone thought in that room that we we were getting bought. Like they all thought that we were getting purchased. That's why I gathered them together. And just to watch like their faces just change was just uh I mean, it's like heartbreaking, right? And so So, coming out of that, I mean, you get a lot of questions of like Where do we go? next? What are we doing? Like and they're like "David, like what are we doing?" Right? And so um so a lot of that was just like playing kind of clean up. It was a lot of media calls like, you know, cuz it made national news and people magazine and all this other stuff. And so um so the team, you know, saying and half of them don't really know him all that well because like we've grown by 100% in the last 18 months, right? Like on our head count. So And some of them like don't know him that well. Know obviously who he is and all that. Um and then the other half of the team has, you know, been with us 5 years. And so in tears. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, and so, you know, we we kind of just told people like, "Hey, we're going to we're going to remain open. But if you need time, you need time off or anything like that." And the way the team kind of rallied around like like pushing through and helping you know, and we got to just keep going and we had a record sales year the end of the year. We had the biggest Q4 we've ever had. Um and That makes me so happy. bought in. Our ENPS score almost doubled. Um everyone just put their kind of heart and soul into into the business. And and I think in you know when you come through kind of a tragedy like this everyone plays a role like in it whether it's direct or indirect. Um you know I am playing a direct role like with Lindsey, right? And making sure that you know Justin's wife Lindsey Yeah Justin's wife Lindsey yeah. Um you know playing a direct role there saying okay how do we manage like the shares in the business that he still has how do we do that kind of stuff. She's got issues she's got she's asset rich with the stock Yeah. but she's lost her husband's salary Totally. Yeah. Well and yeah and yeah we paid that we paid that for a while yeah. But But um but yeah so so we had that where there's like kind of a direct role, right? And then but there's a whole bunch of indirect people saying like what do we do, right? And my uh I guess advice to them was double down, you know? And uh and so we've we've come out of that. I mean it's we have kind of Justin memorabilia all around our office. Yes yeah. He's in our DNA. I kind of I kind of told you that. So a few weeks you right before this happened you were imminent to actually get a new office space and you wanted to get one. And one of the things you did was you said I'm going to finish this project for Justin and we're going to get a great office space. And I was invited to the opening grand opening that office and I went out there. Things were still really raw but the word I think of when I had that experience being there for that grand opening and ribbon cutting and you invited me to come stand behind the ribbon and all that I just felt family. Everybody there felt like a family. Lindsey was there she was still really tender and and she probably still is of course but I'm just saying I actually felt the reaction was very supportive of you knowing this was put upon you and what was going on. I it was you know there's a lot of ways things could go after something like this and I think you guys for whatever reason which is a testament to Justin and you and what you built before, it was just almost like perfect the way it had to go to have a great continuation of what you're doing. Yeah, and I know and I know, you know, we probably got to wrap up here soon, but I uh so what right after this happened, you know, I'm get I'm on the phone with the board like that very next morning and um and I found out maybe two three hours after he passed away and and uh the board basically just said, "Hey, you know, you got to make it clear that you are like the interim CEO, that you're the place they've got to look for right now. It's going to be a really rough roll on you. And then we'll kind of revisit that. Um and about a week after that, um they basically asked like, "Hey, do you want this? Like do you want to do this or should we cuz no one's going to fault you if you walk away tomorrow." Yeah. Like no one's going to fault you for that. Um and uh and so it wasn't until probably November that um I was kind of serving in this like interim capacity and um and uh made the conscious decision that like I needed to finish this out. Yeah. Um I mean, because leaving Opinion was on the table for me. Um Prior to the No, like after this. I mean, our investors basically said, "If you want to walk away, you can." But I, you know, I I don't think that um bringing someone else in would have been the right thing to do. No way. Yes. I think this is completely the right move. Yeah. And you're completely capable. Uh we support you 100%. I do it speaking on behalf of an outside person looking in. So, I think it's great. I think you've got all the skills and talent. So, before we wrap it up, where do you go from here? What What are you excited about in the future? Like what what's on Opinion's radar? What's on Devon's radar for the next year, three, five that gets you going, gets you excited, gets you up in the morning. Um yeah, I think this event has changed the way that I look at things, right? Um I'm a I'm a hoarder when it comes to like security and cash and all that. I just um I'm not very um flamboyant when it comes to to that stuff and so I've uh you know, personally spent a little more, you know, a little more money, a little more enjoyment, take the trips, make sure that I'm doing the stuff that I've always kind of said like I'm doing later. I just bought a new house on Monday. Oh wow, congrats. Moving tomorrow, so um I mean, doing things like that that I I don't think I would have normally gone outside my comfort zone and and extended myself to do stuff like that cuz I'm I mean, my my house I live in now that we're moving I mean, so much paid off, right? I can I I'm that type of guy that's like I'm very conservative on that side and so I think like on a personal level living life a little more. You never know when's your last. Like that's become abundantly clear to me that like tomorrow could change. Um build the relationships that you have, that relationships are those that I um value a lot more and want to make sure Personally and business. Personally and business. Um and so those are kind of things I'm focused on kind of on a personal side. Um on the on the business side, it is game time. Yeah. we are we're growing right now. We'll grow another 50% this year. Uh we are hiring like crazy. Uh we'll double our headcount again this year. Um But revenue growth is the goal is 50% jump from last year. Yep. So um yeah, I mean, we are we're hiring a lot. We got a big space to be able to do that. We're traveling a ton uh with clients. Um we are for the first time ever looking at acquisitions, right? And have a war chest uh with our uh financing partner to to be able to do that. And so we're things are things are exciting. It's awesome. Yeah. And so um yeah, I think up and out, you know, eventually. But uh but yeah, we are in we're in a high growth mode right now. Selling a lot of selling a lot of a lot of accounts, putting on a lot of ARR this year and yeah, I mean I think 2025, do you feel like it's the year? Do you think economically, the macro economy and everything's lining up, stars are aligning for you opinion and for what you guys want to accomplish? Uh yeah, I do. There's a lot of excitement in the market. Yeah. There's uh I mean a lot of capital. I mean we're based on like a lot of property sales, right? So a lot of acquisitions are kind of gearing up to to sell or even to be purchased by other things. You know, we're hoping interest rates come down, which really affects the way that that our business is run. Uh we're pretty excited about that. I mean, you know, when it comes to us, uh we we bought a ton of software last year that we implemented. Last year was groundwork, like foundation year. Yeah. Get your hires in, get the right software in place, don't hack it together, get the gold standard on stuff, pay a little bit more for the software to get there. like to say that's the stair step to our listeners and viewers that are entrepreneurs. The hockey stick curve is not a straight line. It's actually a stair step up and on the horizontal landing of the stair is where you're doing what you just said. You're setting the stage to go to the next level and you have to set the table and build the systems and infrastructure to go to that next level cuz if you try to jump up to that next level without doing what you just said you just did the last year, you will have chaos and things will break. And so what you've done, it sounds like is you've set the table to have a great 2025. When you got to and you got to map you got to map that stuff out and be aware of it. It doesn't just fall in your lap. Yeah, I mean we grew by 50% last year, but we planned that in '23, and we planned some of that in '22 and '23, and now we planned last year we said, "Okay, we've got to get our our revenue in place, like our revenue motion in place to be able to there, but we've got to build all these kind of foundational items." Entrepreneurship's not a whimsical activity where you just spray and pray and get lucky. It's literally science. Yeah. I mean there's some luck to it, right? You got to time it right. Yeah, depending on that. But actually, again, just like you like to say, Tyler, it's when, you know, preparation meets opportunity. Yeah. And that's luck. And you're prepared you can't have the experiences you've had of growth the last few years if you didn't prepare for it. It just doesn't fall in your lap. The example I always give is if you're at the Jazz game or the BYU game or any of these sporting events and they're throwing out balls, how do you ensure that you get a ball thrown at you? You have to put yourself in that situation say, "Hey, over here. Throw me the ball." rather than folding your arms sitting on the chair. You have to be prepared to get and meet that opportunity, right? It's same thing in business. So. All right. So how are we doing? Yeah, I think we're almost at time here. I just want to wrap things up and just emphasize to the viewers that Devin's journey really underscores the importance of resilience, community, innovation, and stick-to-itiveness. Like it's a great example to hear from you and the insights that you've dropped on this podcast today. And I know I'm going to embrace a lot of the the the the little tidbits of information that I've heard today, especially about, you know, enjoying life to the fullest. I think all of us can really gain some insight from that those comments. I want to give my thanks to Tyler. I just want to say I Devin, one more thing. Thanks for doing everything you're doing. Thanks for over the years. Thanks for taking on this role and choosing to continue in that senior role with the company cuz I think it's the perfect choice. And I just thanks for opening up on the podcast here today. Just, you know, a little tender moment to talk about Justin all that for you and me both. And I just want to thank you and, you know, we're here for you. If you ever need me still like as I've always been there. I'm here for as long as you need me. And Devin's just a stand-up guy. He's just a good guy. Yeah. Come be his friend. If there if they've got a a of job openings and if you're in the Utah market, you want to move to Utah and get a job at Opinion, you should be contacting this company cuz they're they've done incredible and they're going places even more. So. Yeah. So. I mean on the you know, on my side of things, thanks for having me on. And you know, anything in your guys' portfolio companies too, I'm happy to chat with them or be a resource or anything. Thanks. That would be awesome. We'll take you up on that. Hey, that benefits you as well. Being an investor absolutely. Yeah, eating my own dog food here. I know. I did Thank you. Thank you. We're signing off. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. 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