Marcos Moura: 00:28 Hey everyone! Marcos here with Amada Senior Care. Welcome to the podcast. Today I am with Chris Fowler of St Louis, Missouri. It's a really cool podcast today because Chris is at the time of this recording, smack in the middle of his first year, his first year anniversary is any day. Now we're going to talk about that. So he is in the middle, in the throes of building that business. And what we want to talk about today is this idea that entrepreneurs make decisions all the time and yet what they need to do is they make a decision and then they have to go make it right. There's no amount of due diligence that will ever take away the fact that you have to go work your tail off to make the decision you make right. So that is the topic of today. So Chris Fowler, welcome to the show.

Chris Fowler: 01:08 Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

Marcos Moura: 01:09 And Chris. So before we talk about the crazy decision you made about a year ago, just tell us a little bit about your background. What were you doing before Amada Senior Care?

Chris Fowler: 01:19 Sure, thank you. Well, I spent the last 10 years as an executive with Express Scripts, the largest pharmacy benefit manager here in the United States and based out of St Louis. I did a variety of roles with them in those 10 years. I lead client facing teams as well as product management teams. And my last role with them was really looking at the home delivery pharmacy and how to try to use the member experience and the website to become sort of the Amazon, if you will, of pharmacy. But then, like you said, made the crazy decision about a year and a half ago to part ways and started looking at alternatives, whether it be another corporate job with a healthcare organization or even not healthcare or go venture on our own and started researching some entrepreneurial opportunities and Amada was at the top of that list and we met you and others there at the Amada office and just really, really impressed. And here we are 18 months later and like you said, just in the throes of celebrating our year anniversary.

Marcos Moura: 02:19 Wow. So a year anniversary. So we talked about due diligence. Right. How long did it take you from the time you're like, oh, Amada. And the date that you signed a franchise agreement. Do you remember roughly how long that took?

Chris Fowler: 02:30 I think I first started talking to some of the folks at Amada in March and then I signed the paperwork and the agreement at the end of July. So a few months, a few months, few months of conversations, webinars. We didn't have podcasts then, but no, doing due diligence and then coming out and visiting. And here we are.

Marcos Moura: 02:50 And by the way, we find that on average it's about three months at most entrepreneurs, it's a conversation about three months, even if they inquired about Amada back in 2014 and kind of left it once we start engaging, it's about a three month process. And I don't know if it's not to put judgment on is that long or short. But you and I, before the taping of this, we were talking about this whole idea that no matter how much due diligence you do, you're still going to have to go make it. Right. Talk a little bit about that. What does that mean to you about making a decision as an entrepreneur and then having to make it right?

Chris Fowler: 03:21 So as you said, hundreds of decisions a day, some obviously taking more priority and having larger ramifications than others and some of them on the fly, some of them doing more due diligence. I think the best example I have, and I sometimes tell the stories to other potential franchisees when they call and we're talking about how my journey went and any recommendations I may have. I will always remember the day I actually signed the paperwork to purchase my franchise here in St Louis.