Welcome to SMBash 2025

Good morning. A bunch of entrepreneurs that don't listen to instructions. There's no bosses in here. Welcome to SMBash 2025 in Dallas, Texas. If you're a searcher, operator, investor, or service provider, you're in the right place. We're really proud to have our largest attendance ever. We're going to have 175 people from this community, and I think it's a testament to the growth of our ETA and self-funded search community. So thank you for being here.

We're here to get real stories, real tips, the real stuff, not the stories you hear at the university events or on the internet. This is going to be real live conversation, some fun, and we're really glad you're here for the next two days.

Sam said 175 people. We have three countries represented and nearly all 50 states, so a really good sample of the ETA and small business community here. Before we get started, there's a few thank yous I want to give out to the people that made this event happen. First and foremost, Tara Henderson. A lot of you guys met Tara last night. Tara, please raise your hand. Tara has put essentially all of this together. She's exceptional at what she does. We truly would not be here without her. So once again, give it up for Tara. Unless something goes wrong today, in which case that was David's responsibility.

I want to say thank you to United Midwest Savings Bank for helping with the happy hour last night, and to the staff and crew at the Rail Underground here. This is going to be a great home for small business in America for the next two days. It's probably the best venue we've ever had, and I'm incredibly excited to share the stage with some great people.

I want to thank all 35 of our speakers this year for coming here, choosing to be vulnerable and open, and telling us the real stories and the real advice to help us grow on our ETA journey. So give it up for the 35 speakers we'll have today as well.

Huge thank you to our sponsors this year. Our best sponsor response yet for SMBash, and we couldn't put this on without our sponsors, starting with the happy hour last night. Everything you're enjoying is in large part due to the sponsors, including significantly reduced ticket prices this year. We were able to reduce ticket prices from the cost of two dozen eggs to just one dozen eggs, which was a huge benefit for the year. That was my one joke. I worked all night on that. I may have been a couple margaritas in though.

I want to give a special shout out to the gold sponsors. I took some notes to make sure I don't miss anyone. Huntington Bank, a leader in SBA lending, fantastic partner. Thank you so much for your support. Axial is here today. We'll hear from Peter a little bit later. First Internet Bank, just look for the cowboy hat and you've got at least one of our guys from First Internet Bank. Jared, thanks for being here with your team. Of course, there's a law firm that some of us have heard of, SMB Law Group. You may be familiar with them. Huge supporters of the conference. And the SMB Bootcamp that Sam runs has put a lot of resources into the conference as well. We couldn't do this without you guys. So to our gold sponsors especially, huge thank you this year.

Backed by popular demand is the dual track this year. The two tracks are going to take place at almost every hour. Every non-keynote hour will have two panels. The operator track will be here on the main stage. The searcher track is in the Gamma Room upstairs. Remember, you didn't select a track. You can mix and match. Most of us are entrepreneurs who love to break the rules.

Another popular setup that Tara brought this year is the sponsor hub upstairs. If you don't make it to searcher track events, please do make it upstairs to the sponsor hub.

Another addition this year is some breakout sessions. In the afternoon, we understand you might need to go home, go to the hotel, do some work, but if you want to stick around, we're going to do some more tactical sessions. For some reason they put me on a main stage to teach financial modeling on this crazy screen. So things like that.

We're going to have some happy hours in the evenings, and then chair massages and headshots for those of us who are still using our high school photo where we had hair, Eric, sorry. We will also have a couple breakout happy hours this year happening up in the side lounge. Tonight is the Women in ETA, the first ever Women in ETA private happy hour. Feel free to make your way up there during the normal happy hour session. Get upstairs to mingle with some of our sponsors and other people, growing your network. Really make the most of it and have a great time.

Just to wrap things up on the intro, we talked about sponsors, we talked about speakers. Of course, huge thank you to everyone who's supporting the content. But ultimately, we don't pull off a successful event like this without all of you who are here attending to learn, to teach, whether you're on stage or not. We're all here to learn together. We're all here to grow together as entrepreneurs. So make the most of the time. Feel free to share what's going on here. Tag SMBash. I think we're SMBash on pretty much every platform. Feel free to share what you're learning. We would love to shout out the speakers, would love to shout out the sponsors. But most of all, participate, raise your hand, ask questions, share stories, and let's all learn together.

To kick things off, we're going to start with operations this morning with our first keynote speaker. It's my honor to introduce someone who's become a good friend of mine, Josh Schultz. Many of you may know him. He knows a couple of things about what happens after you sign purchase agreements. Once you close your first deal, your fifth deal, your 20th deal, everyone in this room should know that that is just the very beginning of your journey. Josh has spent years scaling and selling business-to-business companies, especially in the manufacturing space. Through that experience he has literally written a playbook on operations. He's here to share some of his wisdom. Whether you're already running a business or thinking about running a business, I think everyone's going to learn a ton from Josh. So with that, let's kick things off with our first keynote speaker for 2025. Welcome to the stage, Josh Schultz.