How to De-Stress a Distressed Business

[00:00:00] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks, welcome to The Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective and I'm joined today as I usually am by Taylor Holiday, who's our CEO here, Taylor standing proudly in front of his frames growth map and his brand new desk setup. Who actually, what's, what's that behind next to your growth map there? Who is that?

[00:00:21] Taylor Holiday: You know who that is.

[00:00:22] Richard Gaffin: I can't really see.

[00:00:24] Taylor Holiday: That's, that's a signed picture of Carmi.

[00:00:26] Richard Gaffin: Oh my God. Wow. I had never noticed that before. Signed by Jeremy Ellen White himself.

[00:00:31] Taylor Holiday: yes, signed by 

Jeremy Allen White 

[00:00:33] Richard Gaffin: when and how did this happen?

[00:00:35] Taylor Holiday: It was a gift from Deshaun 

for my birthday. 

[00:00:38] Richard Gaffin: Incredible.

Wow. The best, the best gift.

you could ask for.

[00:00:41] Taylor Holiday: So if you don't know Jeremy Allen White, star of the bear car, me, we, we use bear metaphors here at CTC for a lot of the work we do about setting the standard and use the sort of restaurant metaphor in creating amazing work.

And so, this was a gift from one of my employees that just as a reminder every day to, to hold 

the 

[00:00:57] Richard Gaffin: there you go. And here's a segue for you. Carmi works in the restaurant business and restaurant businesses are always in distress. And that's what we're talking about today. So, one thing we wanted, we wanted to get on the mic here and chat real quick about something that's been on your mind, Taylor, which is how to de stress a distressed business.

And of course, a lot of. Businesses probably feel like they're in that position. And of course we're going into this season or the time of the year in which I think distress becomes a lot more acute for a lot of businesses as well. So we want to kind of want to talk through a little bit of like maybe brand therapy or business therapy for those moments when you're in, when you're in that space. And so let's, let's kick it off maybe. Have you give us some background to kind of why this, this topic came to mind and then maybe defining a distress business a little bit. So, yeah, let's start there. How did this come to mind? So,

[00:01:44] Taylor Holiday: This week I have sat with founders for three, very well known successful, successful. E commerce brands to help them process significant layoffs and cost reductions to their organization. A lot of the work we do at CTC is about helping people get their business towards profitability and for a bunch of e commerce.

Brands that is about a significant reset in the way that their business operates coming out of an era COVID namely, where things worked differently, where the size of their business grew, their OPEX grew in correspondence with that. And now all of a sudden that revenue growth has plateaued or their media dollars are less efficient than they have been historically.

And they now have to make significant changes to their organization to do it. And these are hard conversations, emotional conversations, and there's an immense amount of stress. Carried. I've, I've been through it personally. We went through this here at CTC ourselves at the end of 2022. And I know this life.

And so I, I guarantee you, besides the ones that I talk to every day that are in this situation, there are people listening that have this problem that are experiencing stress because their business is distressed.

[00:02:55] Richard Gaffin: maybe I want to maybe figure out how to distinguish this from some conversations we've already had because talking about, I think. The the shift in the world state from COVID to now has been something that we've been talking about for a while. So what is it about this moment? You know, here we are end of August 2024 when this is being recorded. That brings this particular brings us to mind. I guess.

[00:03:19] Taylor Holiday: So I think you asked earlier about a definition for a distressed business. And I think what I would say is that a distressed business is one in The future cash flows go to zero. That as you look out at the present state of the business, is that every month your bank account decreases in size. With no immediate end to that pattern.

And that has been the case for some of these brands for, for many years. The problem now is they've already taken the loan. So there's no more debt available to get. They're already maxed out on debt and their business isn't worth anything. So they can't go raise money or it's worth substantially less than they would want to, to raise equity.

So there's no cash available. So now is the moment and impetus for change. Whereas before there was enough money in the bank account, either from historical success from debt financing or from equity raised to be able to survive through a bunch of poor performance. But now as they look out, there's no more money and the bank account is going to go to zero if they don't make a change.

And that's, and that may happen 90 days from now, that may be nine months from now, that may be a year from now, but they're looking out and going, if something doesn't fundamentally change, we go to 

[00:04:28] Richard Gaffin: Got it. Gotcha. That makes sense. So the, the storm clouds are finally on the horizon for a lot of brands after, after a period of time, I guess that makes sense.

[00:04:35] Taylor Holiday: That's right. And, and there's a, there's a very real process that I can imagine is probably something like dealing with a terminal diagnosis or something that Business owners go through, which is like, there's a long period of denial. There's a period of just sort of not wanting to look a period of not because actually entering into that space and accepting that reality is actually really challenging.

It required, it's embarrassing. It's a sense of personal failure. There's a lot contained in that space. That you have to process and be willing to go through as an individual founder in order to get the business where you need to go. And that, and there's some people that are sort of like can courageously run into that for other people.

It takes a little more time, but it's a hard, hard thing to go through.

[00:05:21] Richard Gaffin: Okay. So then I want to talk about this from, from two perspectives, right? So the, the, like the practicals of de stressing the business, which we sort of talked about a little bit before we hit record, like the very specific tactical changes that you can make to relieve some of that pressure pressure. And then just like digging into maybe from your experience too, and a little bit from mine as well.

Like what actually de stressing yourself. In the midst of this, because I think that's obviously like the, the way that you have to sort of personally comport yourself to make this happen is obviously absolutely critical

to this. So let's let's start with the practicals. Just kind of walk us through the steps that you took maybe with these businesses to 

[00:05:58] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you three steps to. Destressing your distressed business step one is obviously going to be around cost reduction and it's specifically, you're going to try to bring your OPEX into relationship with your returning customer contribution margin. Okay, so let's talk about and define a few of these things.

OPEX at CTC, we would define as all fixed costs below the line on your P& L that are not inclusive of digital marketing spend for the sake of driving revenue. So your Facebook spend, your Google spend, your Pinterest spend, your TikTok spend, take that out of the OPEX number. Don't include your cost of goods.

Don't include your shipping and fulfillment expense. Don't include your payment processor fees. Every other fixed expense is in OPEX. That number we want to bring into relationship with your returning customer contribution margin. So if you were to look, break your revenue for the year into new customer revenue and returning customer revenue, how much marginal dollars Exist every month from your returning customers.

If that number covers your OPEX, so returning customer contribution is greater than OPEX, you then can get new customer acquisition to neutrality and you can survive as a business. So in theory, if you turned off all advertising. You would still survive as a business. And this gives you a constraint on how you should grow your fixed costs as relative to the growth of your existing customer revenue.

Now, for some of you, that's going to be really, really lean for some of you. Oh, we actually have a lot of that. And so it's not going to be as big of an obligation. But that number is really, really important. And this is true for 95 percent of businesses. I'm going to caveat that there are always businesses where their LTV is basically zero and every month they have to go get all new customers.

And so I'm going to set, I'm going to acknowledge that there are exceptions to this general rule. But the question of how far to cut is often contained in this answer, because part two of this problem is we can't just cut our way to health. Eventually we have to grow, which means we have to be able to invest in new customer acquisition.

And we have to be able to do that at neutral break, even on new customer contribution or a slight loss, even to restart the growth engine and get the business back to future health too. So to do that, we need to get as lean as possible on the OPEX. Thanks. And what I'll say is this is like an Elon Musk principle time delete until you've deleted too far and you have to add something back.

If you don't find yourself having to add something back because you've cut too far, you have not cut enough.

[00:08:36] Richard Gaffin: Okay. Well, let's, let's, so let's keep rolling down the, actually maybe it would be interesting to ask like, what is, what's the biggest barrier to making those cuts? Now I can imagine one of them is psychologically having to lay people off,

but I mean, is that the biggest one or are there other like maybe unexpected

[00:08:56] Taylor Holiday: there's more. Yeah. 

So laying people off is an obvious one. It's painful. These are people you care about. There's a lot of emotion contained in it. It's a declaration of your own failure to them and a promise that you made to them that made them show up and trust you with their life.

That's a big deal. It's hard. The second one though, is you have to probably go back on your word. What do I mean by that? You've signed contracts likely for. 12 month commitments to software or vendor agreements to do a production in the future that you need to go back and say, I can't do this anymore.

And you need to renegotiate every term that you can, or in some cases say, I just can't pay you. I'm sorry. I, I I'll intend to in the future, you can work out a payment plan. We can work at a restructure. We can work at a buyout, but that's a lot of people who you probably made a commitment to when things were awesome and you were cool.

And it was great that you have to kind of go back to humbly and say, I'm sorry. We're not in a position. I can't fulfill this obligation anymore. Can you work with me? Can we adjust it? Can we get to different terms on those agreements? And that is just like repeatedly calling and doing that with a bunch of vendors just sucks.

It just, it feels like, you misled a bunch of people and nobody likes being that person.

[00:10:07] Richard Gaffin: Okay. So we laid out one and two, I think. So let's jump into our third.

[00:10:14] Taylor Holiday: Let me, let me give the 

last one. In the OpEx 

[00:10:16] Richard Gaffin: Oh, sure. 

[00:10:16] Taylor Holiday: you ha you have become accustomed to a lifestyle. You're 

probably going to have to let go of.

[00:10:21] Richard Gaffin: Yeah,

[00:10:21] Taylor Holiday: So a lot of that is an office. I'm watching people give up beautiful office spaces. We gave up a beautiful office space. Part of that was COVID, but it forced us into it, but that was a space.

That meant something that was a visual representation of something you had created that now I remember when I, like, I was really depressed when I was in a, we work office eight years into my business. Like I, I manufactured energy, but I felt like a total, like, how did I end up back here? Like, this is where I started.

How is this possible? And that definitely is, is a lifestyle adjustment that like, once you've. Something at the higher level is really hard to go back to the early days, but it is it is the only 

[00:11:03] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Right. But it's a fascinating thing of human nature at that. Every comfort added becomes the potential for a discomfort later when you lose it. And yeah, exactly. All right. Okay. So let's keep, let's keep rolling down. So we mentioned relationship between your existing customer revenue and then your op ex.

2nd was around acquisition and how to kind of repair

that. I think, do we finish talking through that?

[00:11:25] Taylor Holiday: no. 

So the second thing is that you have to reset the organizational expectation that you don't lose money acquiring customers. And Every one of these organizations that I've seen, what happens is it's like boiling a frog inside the organization, which is the belief that that's no longer a viable outcome, just sort of slowly becomes accepted.

And we slight, we slowly accept slightly worse, slightly worse, slightly worse, slightly worse for us, for us, for us, for us, to the point that we're losing tons of money acquiring customers. And some of them may be net, never profitable. It is absolutely profitable in every e commerce business category to at least break even on first order.

With the main exception being subscription. Businesses where you're trying to sell someone a recurring purchase. It's very difficult to do that in first order profitable, but every other product category should demand if you have a cash crisis and are a distressed business to get your first order, your new customer acquisition back to break even, and that boundary in many of these cases, this is all about re re instituting a new set of laws that govern the organization.

And what I'll tell you is your people's behavior will reorient, they'll resist it, they'll fight it. Some people might need to go because they can't accept it, but you will find people who accept those new laws and work within them and you will watch your behavior change. And what that change usually looks like is you start ruthlessly pursuing inefficient things.

Dollars being spent. And that leads to the third thing. The third step of de stressing a distressed business, you're going to do way less 

things. 

[00:12:53] Richard Gaffin: hmm.

[00:12:54] Taylor Holiday: What do I mean by that? One of the biggest suckers of profitability that I see is channel expansion, the amount of e commerce businesses running unprofitable international business units in Canada and the UK and Australia, and spending tons of time and energy trying to prop up these tiny little markets that are actually negative.

Contributing is a lot. And I get it. International expansion is sexy. It sounds fun. There may be a time for that, that we go after it later. But today, if it's negative contributing, it's gone. Amazon marketplaces. This is another thing. I see people roll out into Amazon with no sense of what is the plan between.

com and Amazon, how they're going to work together. Are we going to look at these things combined? Are they different as one taking from the other? They've never done any geo holdout on the impact of their meta dollars across these channels. So they have no clarity of action. It's all confusion. When you aren't clear, you cut it.

Yeah. One of the big changes that people have to go through is when we come in, they'll say like, well, before we cut that channel, we should do a, a holdout study to find out if it's actually working. And I'm saying, no, no, no, that's not, that's not how we work anymore. In order to spend the dollar, you have to have proven that it's working.

You don't need to prove that it's working to keep it on or to turn it off. It starts off and then you run it and find out if it's working and then turn it on. But if it does, if you don't have validation, it's gone. Then you reconstruct from there and that, so around all of those ideas, that's going to, that's going to be reduction of distribution channels, namely international marketplaces, that small, that retail office, you might have open or the retail storefront you might have open the cart that you're selling in the Grove, whatever it might be.

And then it's also going to be media channels. TV, the harder to prove ones that you're like, I think it's working. My survey data says, no, no, no, no. We're going to introduce a root ground truth around incrementality. That says, if we don't have validation that this channel is creating incremental contribution margin, it goes off until we can create that validation and then it can be turned back on.

And so that's process of reduction, because remember you're about to have a way leaner creative staff too. Because you're going to have to reduce off X. So we got to be able to focus on one thing in one channel, probably maybe two between email, SMS and meta and Google. Like usually it's getting back to the core, getting really good and clear on the goals and expectations.

They're getting to first order profitability or breakeven. And then asking ourselves, where do we go from here?

[00:15:15] Richard Gaffin: So let's what I'm curious about is for both points two and three, one about the sort of ruthless efficiency of acquisition, and then one pairing down to what works let's talk about like, what are some of the psychological roadblocks or counter wins that would create a situation, let's say, where on paper, if it's like, let's be ruthless about efficiency, you would think that everybody on the team would be like, yeah, great. But in practicality, what are the things that create that sort of like, maybe Unrest or whatever in your, in your team for both of those things.

[00:15:45] Taylor Holiday: Cause they've been trying it for a long time and it's never happened. And so they don't actually believe it's possible. 

You say first order break even, and they say,

yeah, 

right. Like, you're right. Can't be done. Right. And so you look in the Meta account and yeah, they've tried a lot of different things and a lot of different bidding strategies with all different.

And then you're like, why is this on? And then you're like, well, what about this P max campaign? What's the target? And why? And what you discover very quickly is that in all of the trying, there's total lack of clarity about the decision making framework where we come in and it's like, okay, contribution margin is the rule of law.

AMER, that is a non violatable principle that your ad spend is subordinate to. Then you need to create an in platform causal relationship between this target and that AMER. And we're only going to move if we have those things in order. And the clarity of the decision and information hierarchy and how we decide things is the most important part.

Because what happens is everybody has a validation for every decision. Because if I, if I'm on the line for the TV spend, That I'm going to work my ass off to find data that validates the decision. And if I'm on the hook for the performance of this meta ad campaign. And so what happens is you see all these tools, there's survey data, there's North beam, there's the platform there's, and somebody can make a case for everything all the time, even in a business that's losing money.

There's very rarely a thing that everybody universally goes, yeah, that's really bad spend. Of course not. Because somebody chose to do it. And so they're going to have thought really hard about how, when this moment comes, they're going to validate that decision. Well, we have these 10 influencers, but this one, the quality is different.

And like, and so you're going to meet, if you allow for how we make decisions to be. On any different parameter, you will never make a decision because everyone will be able to validate everything. So you have to bring all the decision making subordinate to one truth. And here's the thing it's not, you will never actually get to a place where you can objectively say that you're a hundred percent, right?

That that's the truth, but that's, that's not the important thing here. The important thing is get to best available truth. I think the gold standard is incrementality geo holdout. Okay. That's would be gold standard. Second from there would probably be some sort of short term click optimization in channel would be secondary.

If you, if you love, you know, your North beam MTA one day click. I don't really. Care. I mean, I do care, but I'd be willing to allow everything to be subordinate to a universal truth somewhere is the most important thing. And then no one's allowed to bring me survey studies. No one's allowed to bring.

Don't bring any other cases right now that we only make decisions this way and we reallocate and narrow accordingly. Because somewhere there's an opportunity cost to the dollars. Like there's no way all those channels are reporting the exact same incremental return. So we're narrowing the opportunity cost.

We have to get AMER back to break even. And the reality is right now it's not. So I don't care about what anybody's case is for this 

media mix. It's not working. Full stop. New customer break even. That's the rule. We're going forward against that principle and we're going to rebuild against it. And part of this is like the, the, the easy part of being the external person is that I carry none of the responsibility for the failure that's thus far.

So I can walk in really easily and say, I'm willing to put myself hook up. On the hook for the future. I'm not actually really interested in judging anyone, but here's the new set of parameters go forward. And so in many cases, this is why external groups are brought in for this, because you can't actually, there's too much at stake for everybody to suddenly turn around and go, you know what, none of this is working.

We have to stop because that would likely mean you failed in some way, which is very risky for people to, to declare like I, and I, I don't actually think that we should have a reasonable expectation that people stand up and take responsibility at the risk of their own life. Like, I just, I don't think that's actually human behavior that if you knew there was the death penalty that you would walk into the police station and be like, it was me.

Like, I think you should expect in most people, if they think that's the consequence, they will run. They will hide. And I think that's the same is true in their job and that you shouldn't actually expect different.

[00:19:43] Richard Gaffin: No, that makes sense. Okay. And so, I mean, it sounds too that the, like then the psychological roadblocks for the roadblocks for the business owner for number three, which is of course pairing down the amount of distribution channels is gonna be really, really similar in that somebody's responsible for like international distribution or whatever, and it's their lifeblood. And you're saying

[00:20:00] Taylor Holiday: That's right. 

[00:20:01] Richard Gaffin: And they have to cut it

[00:20:02] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. They're not going to come to you, the CEO one day and be like, Hey, you know, this job you've given me bad idea. Thanks for everything. It's just like, you should never expect that that will occur. So I think that's where sometimes the, the, the using an external party to help you make those decisions.

And it's candidly someone to challenge you. Like I'll, I'll kid a lot of times. I know the emotional psychology of a CEO having been through this cause I've been through it myself. And so I can sort of say, Hey. I think you're justifying right now. I don't know that that's true. I think if you got rid of that cost, you actually might find out it's not as critical as you think it is, or I can go, okay, cool.

You want to keep that one? What about this one? Oh, shoot. Well, one of them has to go. Which one do you like less? You know, and, and that's sort of like Marie Kondo, like, 

Someone that's sort of hold up and force you to like, we're getting rid of one of these two things. You can choose, but we're getting rid of one of them is just a process that people need because otherwise it's like the clutter in your house.

You'll just gather it because it's like, no, one day I'm going to wear that shirt. I just know I am. I have this t shirt that I bought from Shereen from 

Shereen's brand. And it's like this. Picture of when Tiger Woods got a 

DUI. And it says like, I'm D I'm down 

bad. It's like this, it's hilarious. And I'm like, I can't wait to go to Vegas.

Cause I'm going to wear this shirt. And I haven't been to Vegas in years and it just sits in my closet. Right. And so it's like that we do that same thing with software or different, or we do it with all people. We do it, all sorts of things. So, 

[00:21:22] Richard Gaffin: Gonna say, I have a shirt from her that features a deep fried image of an Arby's beef and cheddar. And I really haven't found the perfect opportunity for it yet, but it's, 

[00:21:32] Taylor Holiday: but it's coming. Yeah, Exactly.

Exactly. 

[00:21:34] Richard Gaffin: So you dug into this a little bit, like just how much of a, of almost the therapeutic process this is, or how much of a psychological process this is. So talk to me a little bit about. So the maybe another definition of de stressing, which is like, how does one, as the person that's responsible for these decisions, handle the stress, like, given as you've been somebody who've been in the situation before, like,

what, what are your tips for, I don't know, how do we adjust your mindset to be able to face these types of things?

[00:22:03] Taylor Holiday: I watch happen is as soon as it's like, they all knew it was there. And it's, and then all of a sudden when they realize that there's a plan that might get them out of it, the amount of energy that I watched literally restore into their body is transformative. It's like, oh my gosh, I've named my boogie monster.

And now there might be a way out. It's a lot of what I imagine. People go through when they get like discovered for an addiction or things 

like that, where all of a sudden it's like, it's actually freedom and energy that I might not any longer be trapped in this thing. And it is cathartic. It's like a giant weight comes off.

And even though the work is still to be done, these people are all really capable of doing that. Work. It's not they got here because they can work really hard skin. There's no one's afraid of that It's literally the emotional toil of someone saw my PNL they know that I'm not this amazing person that maybe I had wanted people to think I am like And when you get through that, though, and you realize you're okay, and your people are still kind of standing by you, and maybe we could do this different, and hope starts to return, it's like, it's a really powerful idea, so getting to clarity of the plan and then you still have to walk through the emotional door, the next hurdle is really usually around the people thing, and that's one of those things that what I, what I've learned is that's also hubris in that, like, I think people need me more than they ever have, like, Most of the vast majority of the people that have been let go from CTC are thriving.

They're killing it. Some of them, some of them better than they were here, you know, in a way that they're really talented folks that are have in demand skills that I'm sure that's not universally the case, but I'm not that important. Now there's a broken promise and that's still worth acknowledging and you should be gracious and kind and to the best of your ability, offer them care and whatever way you can.

But. They're going to be okay. And most likely in our industry. And so I think there's a lot of confidence in that that you can, you can take hold of.

[00:23:55] Richard Gaffin: I mean, fascinating that it like, that the, the main thing here is the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem

[00:24:02] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, it's right. 

It's, it's so real.

So many 

parallels, so many parallels that I think are, are 

[00:24:08] Richard Gaffin: Okay. Well, so let's draw one more parallel kind of here at the end then, which is that idea that like once, once you've kicked the addiction the first time, there's always obviously the, the issue of relapse.

And this is one of the reasons that an addiction science abstinence is always sort of is often recommended because you're at

the highest amount of control over it when you're not under the influence of it at all. Right? So, Once you're in that position, let's say, where you've been able to, let's say, execute properly on the three things that you laid out, how do you avoid falling back into the straps?

What are the things that you can put in place? To make sure that that kind of thinking doesn't start to slip back in.

[00:24:45] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. So I think we could continue on this metaphor, right? If you think about, you have a sponsor, you have meetings, you have these very defined boundaries that you repeatedly participate in because you're sort of declaring that like left to my own devices, I probably will go back. Right. And so I think one of the roles that we play in these relationships is helping people define the constraints and track progress against them every single day.

So what's going to happen is every day, we're going to look at your AMER in the same way. Maybe every day you're going to call your sponsor. Like there's just this thing that I violate all the time. I'm going to have to show it to somebody every single day and we're all going to look at it and we're going to say, did I achieve it or not achieve it?

And if so, we're going to course correct immediately. So there's because really the problem in this realm is like persistent bad decision making in the wrong direction. Direction, you're, you're never going to be perfectly efficient with your spend every day, but how quickly can you course correct? And I think that is some of the beauty of the system that we've developed.

Is it, I was on a call this week with the founder of a really well known legendary e commerce brand. And he was like, Oh, so you build the railways for my team to operate on. And I was like, yes, I feel heard and seen. Is that like, and if you think about the metaphor, like the train can't go off the 

tracks, it doesn't get to choose where it drives, right?

Like. It, it has a laid out path and it only moves on that path. And so I think in some ways a system like our profit system is intended to help people that maybe need a little less leeway in how far they're allowed to go left and right for a period is that, no, we're going to define the parameters or we're to move together, move an entire organization in one path.

[00:26:18] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. That's interesting. Well, I think like that idea of like providing, providing parameters. It sounds like in some ways, this is like the tape, the takeaway for this whole conversation. I've think about one time when I was it's like just out of college and I bought a 9, 000 car for 6, 000 negotiated them down, And I felt great, but the reason I did is I only had 6, 000. So I knew it, like, I knew that that was my

restraint. And I said, I'm walking unless I could pay this much and they give it to me. Right. And

that was, that was the most powerful thing that I had was that I had that restriction. Right.

[00:26:49] Taylor Holiday: That's so good. And I think that in a lot of ways, the danger is the credit cards and debt facilities is that we never actually force that boundary. And so it actually is the bank account that ultimately forces people to do exactly that. You go back to the vendor and you just say, I literally can't pay you.

I don't, I don't. So what are we going to do together? But yeah, that's good. Constraints, they can be manufactured with helpful people around you. Hopefully before they exist in reality. But what is, what is the phrase? Consequences are often a signpost to 

reality. Those are usually what bring people into this is that there's some consequence where they've looked out and they'd go, I'm going to die if I don't make a change.

And the good news is there's hope and there's possibility and you can make it happen because a lot of these businesses are actually really still great brands that people love the product and there's a lot of revenue there and so there is, there's a possibility for change 

[00:27:35] Richard Gaffin: That's right, folks. All right. Well, if, again, if you would like to talk to us about this, we're here for you commonthreatcode. com hit the hire us button. Let us know that you want to chat and we're happy to talk about it. But

[00:27:45] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. And look, I would say I am amongst a group of people in the world that have uniquely been through this and walked with a lot of 

people through this. So the emotional weight of it all, like, even if you just want to DM and talk and think about, I know like buying another thing sounds counter to the idea of what we're talking about in the middle of all of this.

But I'm here, my DMS are open and I would love to process with you. If, if you're looking out at your business and it feels sort of hopeless. I think, I think we could be of use in that 

circumstance. 

[00:28:10] Richard Gaffin: Cool guys. All right. Well, Thanks so much for listening, everybody, and we will chat with you again next week. All right, take care. 

[00:28:16] Taylor Holiday: this experience is