-: To back up for a second.
I think one of the the things I come across
is a lot of folks are in system CEOs like yourself,
are a little reluctant to enter into these types
of relationships is a lot of a significant relationships.
Most a lot of employees and personnel,
and can be quite a long process to work through.
Talk to us a little bit about the timeline
and just how that transpired from your initial interest
in doing something like this,
to you know where we are today.
-: Totally, I think the entire due diligence process,
as well as through our negotiations
took about nine or 10 months.
It felt comfortable throughout the entire time.
I think the best advice I would give to anyone
sort of exploring this, is to engage very early
with your board and make sure that we pull
in the appropriate representation from that perspective.
But also, I think one of the best things that we did
that helped accelerate the timeline
was to pull in our leadership early on.
And I'm talking about the leaders that were,
overseeing these key functions on the Bassett side
prior to their transition.
Their buy-in, their expertise,
their support for this conversation
was absolutely critical in this.
And without question there were some early concerns
and, you know, reservations.
But as we continued you know cultivating relationship,
as we continue due diligence process,
you know often being open to and available to us
to answer a lot of questions that we had.
We were able to really accelerate the conversation.
And I think, well, I know we landed in a very,
very good place with 95% of our leaders
and people transitioning over.
So, you know, could we have done it faster?
Maybe, but I think it was a very comfortable timeframe
and looking back now, I think it was very successful
and well thought out designed land.