AI for Growth: Lessons from Leaders Daren Hornig

Megan Driscoll: Welcome AI Growth from Leaders. Today with me I have Darren Hornig, and I'm really excited to talk about ⁓ how to create a bot for your business. ⁓ And so anyway, that's why invited Darren on the show today. And ⁓ Darren, I'm gonna let you kind of introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your business, ⁓ and then we'll get into your bot, Courtney.

⁓ Daren Hornig: Super. Thank you, Megan. Happy to be on the show. So I'm Darren Hornig.

I started a company a little bit over a year ago called Courts App. And what we are is essentially the expedia of racket sports that you could come on and book a court ⁓ for any sport: tennis, pickleball, paddle, squash, badminton, ping pong, and racquetball. And use all the search capabilities by location, time of day, sport, how long you want to play. And that's going very, very well.

We have ⁓ thousands of courts online. Already, ⁓ started in the Northeast and spreading throughout the country. But we created this amazing little bot that we call Courtney, hence the court in Courtney. And we were able to trademark her ⁓ that she will be the exclusive Courtney for racket sports booking throughout the United States and hopefully the world.

But as the world turns to AI, you know, you y you need a Racquet Sports agent. Right? Serena has an agent and ⁓ Alcaraz has an agent. Us regular players might well might as well have our own agent to help us book courts and get things set up.

Megan Driscoll: I love Love it. I love the story, and I love well, the name is incredibly cute, obviously. ⁓ but I do think that there's a lot of businesses who want to incorporate having a bot, you know, that is answering questions, doing things for for their clients, like fielding things. And I think that there's like a block.

Like you they want to do it, but they don't know how to do it, right? And so ⁓ it I thought it would be really beneficial to talk about, like I know why you wanted to do that, right? We get the why. The why is that this is gonna be incredibly Helpful to your business and eliminate a ton of manual work and automate the entire system, which is awesome.

So we got the why, but like the actual how. So I thought it would be really cool to just talk through like step by step, like how did you take this from your concept to fruition? And like, you know, I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions about it as we I might interrupt you and ask you bunch of questions, but let's just start with the concept. So you had the concept, you knew what you wanted to do, then what did you do?

Daren Hornig: So I had the concept and knew what I wanted to do. So I own some racket sports facilities. ⁓ and I'm pretty technologically advanced. And I just started trying to book courts at my own facilities and friends started calling me, can you get me a court?

Can you get me a court? It's raining outside, I need a court. I'm like, just go online and look for a court. And they told me that it just didn't exist.

⁓ and and I was actually dumbfounded. I'm like, how in this day and age with Doordash, Uber, right, Airbnb, Expedia, Open Table, right? I can name hundreds of marketplaces that this technology did not exist for racket sports, and twenty percent of Americans play racket sports, right? Sixty six million people play a year.

So it's a massive business. Megan Driscoll: And growing with pickleball fever, it's growing. Daren Hornig: Grow growing day by day. ⁓ so that was the impetus to start Quartz up.

but then, you know, obviously I follow AI, right? This is going back, you know, almost eighteen months ago. So a AI wasn't on the front page of, you know, every story of what's happening with ChatGPT and Claude and, you know, everything else, SpaceX and, you know, XP. And literally the initial reason why Courtney came about is I wanted to save money on my sales.

So I went on, I believe it was Upwork, and I searched for an AI person, a technologist, because I had developers, but I really wanted an AI specialist. I interviewed about two dozen people, found a great guy based out of Arizona. And the real reason it started was to make. ⁓ Make cold calls to facilities to convince them to use ⁓ QuartzApp.

So it started as an outbound call agent. And then as the outbound call agent started happening, I started having conversations with it as if I was the recipient of the call. And I just started asking questions. And I'm like, you know, holy crap, this is so much more powerful than the outbound call agent.

This should be the mode of my business. ⁓ Megan Driscoll: Okay. Right, like this can do way more than just dial the phone. Daren Hornig: Right.

Th this is the AI future in front of my eyes that I stumbled upon because I was using an outbound agent. ⁓ and then, you know, I spoke to the AI guy, I said, let's make an inbound agent, communication. We could link it with APIs and MCPs ⁓ to our court booking software, and away it went. And ⁓ interesting enough, her name was Dinky, ⁓ hence pickable you dink.

So it was Dinky for like the first week. Megan Driscoll: Yeah. Daren Hornig: And I was literally lying in bed one night and I'm like, Dinky just doesn't work for tennis, dinky doesn't work for a pedell. And I'm like, what works for quartz?

What works for quartz app? What works Courtney? And I literally woke up at three o'clock in the morning, went on GoDaddy and bought hey Courtney.ai.

Megan Driscoll: Mm. Daren Hornig: ⁓ immediately wrote the spec and got it trademarked. ⁓ and away we went. But it's it's been, you know, a work in in process.

⁓ a big part of what we did. You know, you get a lot of stuff off, you know, the internet, obviously, eleven labs and you could clone voices, etc. etc. ⁓ and then one day I got I got a call from an AI outbound agent, it was the same voice as Courtney, and I'm like, No go, no go.

So we hired a voice actress and ⁓ she came into the studio and we helped her pronunciate words and say things like YOLA that most people say Jula because it's J O O L A. ⁓ so we really cleaned it up and specified it and have really focused around the racket sports industry, you know, which is a twenty to thirty billion dollar business and growing both on the court and off, right? Between rackets, paddles. So not only is she gonna be on Quartz app.

But she will be the front desk operator. since we started the company, we've made twenty-nine thousand outbound human calls. Nineteen thousand of them have gone unanswered. Megan Driscoll: Okay.

Daren Hornig: 19,000. So 65% of calls that go to a facility, they don't know that we're calling to sell them courts app. We could be just looking for to book a court or get a lesson. They just don't answer the phone, right?

And and they're busy, right? They're cleaning the courts, they're cleaning up a mess, they're giving someone a towel. So we Courtney will be the front desk operator integrated into the court booking systems, which is a whole nother level of AI. And instead of paying, you know, twenty dollars an hour, they could pay less than twenty.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah. Daren Hornig: dollars a day and she can answer eighteen hundred calls a minute ⁓ and she never takes time off she never gets sick and she's twenty four seven so it's really amazing. Megan Driscoll: I mean, I think the the the the sheer ability to have somebody answer the phones in an organization, like if we just had Courtney to do a court a Courtney for the businesses that I work with that small businesses just had someone to answer the phone, like I think that's their there's so many leads missing.

There's so many missed opportunities when nobody answers the phone. So I I think like that's in and of itself. So tell us so So beyond just like you went on upwork, okay, you interviewed people, what what tell me what you were asking them to do? I know, well, I know you were asking them for an outbound sales agent.

So you what you went into upwork with, which was was a different thing than what you ended up getting. But if you were to go do this again, like let's say now you have the knowledge that this is way more powerful and you're trying to build like an actual Courtney, somebody who could again book courts, sp answer phones, things like things that you're you're having your your current AI bot do, what would you go to AI, what would you go to upwork and ask for? Daren Hornig: I'd be happy to hire the same guy we have.

So Cooper, I'm giving you a shout-out, because he's great. ⁓ But I'd be more Megan Driscoll: I'll take Cooper's name because I got lots of clients that need ne need this. So I'll definitely offline you'll have to give me Cooper's information. Daren Hornig: No, he's he's he's full time now and ⁓ he's very happy what he's doing and we're co-parents of Courtney, so you c you can't take my ⁓ significant digital other away.

⁓ what what would I ask for? That that's a good question. I mean, I would want someone who's built a bot who understands the interconnections, the the MCPs. ⁓ Megan Driscoll: Okay.

Mm-hmm. Daren Hornig: Which is the language protocol that communicates behind ⁓ AI is imperative because now Courtney in some perspectives we've integrated her with Chat GPT, we've integrated her Claude, she'll be integrated with Gemini. So it's not actually her from a communication standpoint, but it's her brains talking to their servers that if you go into Claude and you say, I want to book a pickleball court in New York tonight at 7 o'clock. clock Claude will show you the reservations of Quartzapp.

all through the MCPs that we built that hence ⁓ created Courtney. So th there's a lot of layers of how AI is built, right? Like, you know, obviously Nvidia's making the chips, we're using some parts of ⁓ ChatGPT and Anthropic. we're using Eleven Labs, we're using Live Kit.

So you use bits and pieces, right? Think th think about a restaurant, right? A restaurant you go in and you get your favorite dish. Megan Driscoll: Mm-hmm.

Daren Hornig: They're buying those ingredients. Some of them are fresh, some of them are just flour, some of them are eggs, but they're taking the ingredients and the best chef will make that ingredients taste better and look better. That's what's happening really in AI, right? There are so many tools out there.

Like we're not having someone create it, but we're using those tools that are sophisticated enough to understand and communicate in the realm you're within. Right? Like if we if we had to be restaurant. The tools would be probably the same, but the communications would be different.

Like a reservation is different than a court booking to some degree, right? You're saying different things, the nuances are different, the agentic patterns that you teach your AI agent are specifically different, right? And and it comes down to the tone, right? Like if th I mean in in a in a sad way, if you call the restaurant, the tone of that AI agent is different than a a court booking and is different than a funeral parlor, right?

So all that needs Megan Driscoll: Right. Mm-hmm. Daren Hornig: to be teached in the behavior on the backside of what we do from prompting and communication. Megan Driscoll: And do you feel though that you could have I mean you ended up with a great person who you ended up partnering with in in a major way?

Cause you're obviously not just using him as ⁓ like an ⁓ like an contractor, you actually are including him in your business full time. do you feel confident? I mean, I'll I'd give you my answer, but do you feel confident you could go to Upwork or Fiverr or whatever, whatever contractor ⁓ you know, of choice online platform of choice. Could Daren Hornig: Yeah.

He he's full time. Megan Driscoll: Do you feel confident that someone could go in and say, Okay, I need to have someone build me a bot who can answer my phones twenty four seven and book meetings for me because I can't be at the front desk the whole time and I need somebody to be able to do this. And you can go into Upwork and you could put that in there and you would be able to get a plethora of people that you could then interview to see if they could do it for you. Daren Hornig: ⁓ I would say unequivocally, no.

you cannot believe how many, I'm not gonna say the companies because there's a plethora of them, how many of these people who say they're doing what they're doing are completely full of crap. And they're and they're using AI to answer the questions. Right? It's mind-boggling to us.

Right, 'cause we're always looking for developers, be it mobile, be ⁓ Apple and you know, Google, etcetera. Right? You need good engineers. And there's tons of great engineers around the world, which is interesting also, 'cause now you can work on different time zones and that's a whole nother story of how we multiplex time.

But you need to be really careful. Like people have literally voice synthesizers taking in my questions, right? And then having the AI produce it. Like, how are you coding?

And they read it back. Right? And then you you ask, you know, go on video, why do you need to see me? What do I need to see you?

Right? And and they'll take multiple jobs at one time. So you gotta be really careful. You know, that's part of the challenge of remote work.

⁓ is that Megan Driscoll: Totally. Daren Hornig: They may not even be working for you. And we we've experienced that. Like we just think people are not working full time.

Cause how how you know the accountability isn't the same of being in an office from eight to six. ⁓ so you gotta be listen, you gotta you gotta be careful. ⁓ you know, I'm the founder and CEO. I have a vision.

⁓ I'm pretty strict on how I want things done. Obviously everything doesn't go perfectly. That's life and that's business. ⁓ but I I think you have to, you know, and based on you know lessons from leaders, I think is the right title, is the leadership needs to have the vision of how the agent communicates and where it's going and what it what its tone is and how it's what it's answering and what's most important, right?

Like AI is a wonderful tool and it will change the world. It's already changing the world. ⁓ and the amount of money being invested. but it needs to be focused on the utilization that's at hand.

Right. Megan Driscoll: Yeah. But what so what's your suggestion though? So if you can't go to Upwork or Fiver and put in there, I would like to create a bot to answer the phones for my business, what do you suggest someone does?

Daren Hornig: No, I I'm not saying they can't. I'm just saying you gotta be careful, right? It's the same thing, going to a restaurant and asking them just cook me whatever I want. You have to know what you want.

Right? So obvious obviously it can be done because I've done it and other people did it, right? It it's har it's hard. Like same th once again, I'll keep using the restaurant analogy.

If I want to open a restaurant, I gotta find a cook. Megan Driscoll: Yeah. Yeah. Daren Hornig: Right, like a cook can't be remote, clearly, because you need to ha have the food delivered.

So what does that cook make? How does he know how to prepare it? How what's that chef, you know, prepare? What's your dessert, you know, chef prepare?

So I think it needs to have the right mindset and you need to be careful. And you need to look of what is their past work. You know, there's enough history out there now to say, what have you built? ⁓ a f Megan Driscoll: Yeah.

Show me the examples of what you've built and the customer reviews to prove it. And that's what I was gonna actually say. Like, I think you have to be incredibly careful, particularly because Upwork gives you access to people all around the world. And not to say the people all around the world are taking advantage of you, but there's a lot of people trying to take advantage of you.

I have gotten myself personally into so many situations with people that I've been like, do I know more about this than you do? Cause that's kind of a problem. Cause I'm hiring you to do it. I don't want to do it.

I want to tell you what to do, but I don't want to actually build it. If I could build it, I would be doing it myself. So I do think that there's you know, there's it's ⁓ strongly emphasize the let me see an exact project that's similar to what I'm asking you to do and let me see the review of the person and then actually go and follow up on the website, double check that what you see is actually working there, right? Like I have had I have gone to a website to see what someone has built to only find out that it's not on their website, which basically means it didn't work.

Daren Hornig: Right. You can no doubt about it. Megan Driscoll: You know, and they had to take it down. So, I do think that that's like another step.

Like I I do believe you can find good people to do this kind of work on Upwork and Fiver. And I just think you have to be careful. So so then once you ⁓ you got in touch with Cooper and you and he obviously are jiving in terms of like him following along with what you wanted and and him clearly understanding what it is that you're trying to do, what are some of the obstacles that you had to overcome as you were building Courtney? Daren Hornig: I I think the biggest obstacles in building Courtney, right?

So AI and AI, and I think a lot of people don't understand this. AI agents are a communication tool that needs to be taught and learned and connected, right? So you just assume, right, ChatGPT and Claude and the other LLMs. They are connected to the internet and they've searched these databases and searched websites and compiled billions and billions and billions level of code and intelligence.

When you build Courtney, she was a newborn, right? Like literally, she had no level of intelligence. And that was surprising to me, because my assumption was she was born with a Harvard education, and she was born like a newborn. Right?

So we have to you have to teach her, you have to train her, you have to connect her to the components that you want her to learn. Right. And she can learn anything because there's enough MCPs and enough connection points to get there. But teaching her the skills and the knowledge, like I said, just a simple pronunciation matters.

Right. And then, you know, you wanted to have some, you know, some sarcasm and some humor to it, just like another person would say. So I think teaching her the behavioral ha habits, ⁓ teaching her the level of intelligence she needs, I did not realize that. And I think a lot of people just assume everything's ChatGPT, you plug in play and it goes, but it's not like that at all.

and then the other big component is we have to connect her, you know, we had to make it an MCP connector to our API, right? Because when you say, hey Courtney, I want to book a court at five o'clock at Sporttime Port Washington for tennis on a hard court. There's a lot of information that you and I as intelligent adults can decipher, but she as a computer program needs to go into the database and see where that is and search those lines of code to then come back and articulate that to the consumer, to the player.

⁓ Once again, I just took that for granted. Not the API side, the API side I knew obviously not, but the intelligence layer is not there. ⁓ and now we're introducing her to like Yola and Franklin Sports to help them sell their paddles. Right?

So now the intelligence layer of which paddle you would buy, right? If you've been playing a month, it's different than me. We've been playing six years. Right.

So those components and that intelligence had to cipher the information ⁓ is going to be an evolution. I I don't think it's going to get fixed day one. And I think a lot of these agents are going to learn and they're going to get smarter. ⁓ and you got to use historical knowledge base ⁓ to manage that.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah. and how long did it take you? So from you starting with Cooper, I mean I mean, post you realized that sh di dialing wasn't gonna be what you wanted to build and you ended up deciding you're gonna build this bot that's gonna do a lot more than that. How long did it take you to get Courtney like operational where you felt comfortable putting her kind of out there to the public?

Daren Hornig: ⁓ about a year. Megan Driscoll: Okay. So you had the so you had Cooper working on this behind the scenes about a year before you felt comf confident it could go live? Daren Hornig: ⁓ to to go live on our website.

Like if you want on Quartzapp right now, quartzapp dot com. She's live. You could talk to her. She could book courts for you.

Right? Then there's the whole, you know, component of you know authentification for processing credit cards, whole nother level, right? That's a whole nother level of requirements by, you know, the government of storing credit cards. That's still being done vis-a-vis the website.

Megan Driscoll: Mm-hmm. Daren Hornig: interconnecting Courtney within an app, right? Because we're on the Apple and Google store. We haven't even done that yet.

⁓ that's a whole nother level of once again sophistication and code. How Apple lets you have a live AI agent is is not so cut and dry. It's new for them. Right.

So all these listen, we're we're on the cutting edge. Megan Driscoll: Mm-hmm. Okay. Right.

Daren Hornig: Right. So I'm not I'm not gonna sit here and say, you know, w we're colonizing Mars, but using an AI agent to book tennis courts and pickleball courts, you know, I'm I'm pretty sure we're the first people, you know, on planet Earth to do that 'cause it's just not done. Megan Driscoll: Right, which is kind of cool. I mean, in some ways.

How much do you so what are you w so if I were let's say I I didn't you know, you're building a very sophisticated agent, obviously. let's just, you know, most people are looking for something much like, you know, one of the things that I do is I im help c small companies implement CRMs. And so my favorite is go high level because it's just easy and it can grow with you and all all the things. and you know, it's like it's like a a small business isn't gonna implement Salesforce.

Daren Hornig: That's cool. Megan Driscoll: Right. Because it's just like way more power and too confusing. They don't need it.

So I help companies implement things that are at like the right stage. Like go high level can really is it good for a solopreneur and it can get you to probably 200 employees. You know, I mean it's it's pretty robust. and so one of the things that I I feel like it would be helpful for our audience to know is like, let's say they did want something less sophisticated than what you've built, but someone who Let's just use the example.

I need someone to answer the phone because I do think it's unbelievable how many str how many places don't have somebody answering the phone and you end up going to voicemail, which is so frustrating. It makes me want to like scream because it's so much lost business. Cause I'm just like going to the next person. Then you don't answer the phone, I'm going to the next one.

I'm not going to wait. so what do you think in terms of cost? Because I can't compare it to Cooper because you're doing something much bigger. But what what what what do you think a small business would could can safely assume it will cost them to build some something like that that would just answer the phones and and book book book mi and if it was something bigger, obviously leave a voicemail, whatever, but if they could book something, put it on the calendar, whatever it is, what do you think that would cost?

Daren Hornig: Listen, you could use, you know, live chat or Zendesk or some off the shelf. You know, the problem is it's not customizable. And they're not, they can't really they they could schedule something in a calendar, like a calendary or there's OLLI, things like that. ⁓ but that's just booking.

Like book book book me a five o'clock appointment and you're just showing up and whoever's there. If you want to get specific Megan Driscoll: Calendly, yeah. Daren Hornig: of real time availability, right? Like at these tennis centers they have four courts to twenty courts, right?

And then you have indoor or you have outdoor or you have a hard court or a clay court. Like it it it's hard to do that at scale. And then Megan Driscoll: Right. Daren Hornig: to integrate with their customer management systems is challenging.

Right? So, you know, you you're not seeing much suff ⁓ right now, I mean, it may happen and you know AI will probably train the next agents to do these things, you know, and have the integ connection. but the same way you could find, you know, automated assistance, you could find it off the shelf and it's probably a few hundred dollars a month. But we're not much more than a few hundred dollars a month either.

⁓ you know, we're not we're not Megan Driscoll: Mm-hmm. Daren Hornig: We're customizing it around the club, but we built it and it cost me millions of dollars to build it with the back-end technology and the the sophistication to get there. ⁓ but for a club for for her to be the automated system, it's gonna be $250 a month. So we built it to scale.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Daren Hornig: Right. So, you know, if I if I get a hundred clubs or a thousand clubs, you know, you could do the math.

It's a nice business for me, but the individual entrepreneur is never building this for their one racket sports club. It makes no sense. The same way they're not building the software to do that or Salesforce or HubSpot, you buy it off the shelf. So we're we're gonna be the off the shelf component for the racket sports industry for Courtney.

Megan Driscoll: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. Great. I mean that's kind of what I do too. I try to customize using a CRM like like like go high level and then customizing it for the person with their specific automations, things that they want to do.

And so, you know, making making it ⁓ feel like it's really their business, you know, and they have their own flow and their own, ⁓ rather than just getting a HubSpot free and, you know, it basically doesn't do anything for you except collect your emails. Yeah. Ultimately. so okay, that's really cool.

So I think that's ⁓ very helpful for people to kind of like understand, you know, how they can actually do this. So in terms of like where you so right now she's not even like as op fully operational as you want her to be. When do you what's your timeline? When do you think she'll like done where you can really like roll her out into all the places that you want her to go?

Or is this just gonna be like an ongoing over the every year you're gonna add and add and add? Daren Hornig: every year? How about every minute? You know, l listen, with the advancements of AI, especially with agentic AI, which she is, right?

Like r right now she's able to say, you know, you booked a court, do you need a can of balls? Right? Like Megan Driscoll: Yeah. Daren Hornig: Th th those elements.

You know, she's gonna say, ⁓ you booked a court, do you wanna have your racket restrum? ⁓ you know, there's a sale on the new Nike, you know, Agassiz sneakers, do you wanna get a pair of them? So I don't think it ever changes. ⁓ I think it's, you know, ongoing and tech is always ongoing.

⁓ but she's live now and can book courts, but she's not ready, you know, to do all the things she will be doing in a year from now. Megan Driscoll: Right. Daren Hornig: Right. And she'll be able to find you a player to play with.

You know, ⁓ my my friend just got sick, he can't play. I want a four roll player to show up six o'clock in Sayasa. And she'll go through the database, find that person, call that person, email, introduce us. So it it's really limitless what it's gonna do.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah, it's really cool. What is your exit plan? I mean, I assume you're building this to sell. Are you building it to sell or what's your plan?

Daren Hornig: No, I you know what I i in some business well not businesses, my real estate business, there's always a plan, an exit plan. ⁓ I'm building this, I'm having fun. You know, people have knocked on our door and I said no. You know, we're we're talking to some very six sophisticated strategic investors.

⁓ I'm having a good time. You know, listen, if s if Elon knocks on my door or a big guy knocks on the door. you know, puts a check, but you know, I'm not retiring. I'm I'll be fifty nine this summer and I'm I'm going as hard as I can go for as long as I go.

It's fun. I don't Megan Driscoll: Yeah. Great. And what do you think ⁓ w How d well ⁓ backing backing up, just in as we're talking about finances, did you bootstrap this idea?

Like did you get investors for this idea? How did that go? Daren Hornig: So I I bootstrapped it ⁓ for the first six months ⁓ to get it going and show what we have and then and then it's it's friends and family. So we're going f we went friends and family to get here.

And now we're talking to some big strategics about ⁓ integrating. Cause it's a two-sided marketplace. So it's getting the courts and the facilities, we're doing and it's happening. Now it's gonna be a function of what percentage of the sixty-six million racket square players do I get.

Megan Driscoll: Mm-hmm. Of your concept. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Daren Hornig: right and the frequency of their play. So I think we'll get a few million of them.

Do those few million people play once a month, twice a month, ten times a month like I do, or more? That that that's what's interesting, right? Like Doordash wants some everyone on their app, but are you eating from them once a day, twice a day or three times a day, or once a month? That's that's the behavioral patterns you need to try to, you know, manage over time.

Megan Driscoll: Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Super cool.

I mean, I just really love the ⁓ I love the concept. I d obviously I think and I love that you're kind of like first in the market to do it, which I think is really exciting. And I love the idea of what Courtney can do over time and I think you'll end up selling for I don't know, hundreds of millions of dollars. I think it's gonna be kind of fun.

You're gonna have to come back and and let me and let me know what happens because I I'm interested in the in the PE journey that you'll be on. Daren Hornig: No. We'll we'll we'll definitely stay in touch. You know, I I I enjoyed this and listen, it's it's fun.

You know, but I I don't know. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, I mean it's it's racquall, it's racket sports. So at a baseline it's fun. Daren Hornig: Yeah exactly.

⁓ like I said, I've been to hundreds and hundreds of real estate conferences talking about debt service coverage ratios is not that exciting. Right? I was in Columbus last week at the MLP sitting with the owners of the teams. It's a lot a lot more fun watching Annalee Waters, you know, win every match, you know, than than someone talking about ⁓ you know, equity requirements of today's PE world.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah. I Hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah.

I keep telling people to small businesses, like, focus on what brings you joy. You know, like if you enjoying what you're doing, it's it it's gonna be so much more successful than if you're doing it because you need a paycheck or because you know, right? If you can combine that you can make some money and you love something. And I think far far too many people get stuck in this, like, I'm doing this, I've been always doing this, I'm gonna keep doing this, and they lose the opportunity to s take all the knowledge that they've learned about business and apply it to something that they really love.

So, you know, I think ⁓ I think you've you're a case in point. So ⁓ well thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And it was great talking to you.

Daren Hornig: You too, Megan. Really appreciate the time and ⁓ hope to come back soon again. Thank you very much. Take care.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah, please do, please do.