This episode Fileforms Business Compliance Podcast features an engaging conversation between host Frank Tumminello and guest Christine Telyan, the founder of UENI, a platform dedicated to helping small businesses establish a strong online presence. Christine shares her insights into the challenges faced by small businesses in today's digital landscape and how UENI aims to address these challenges.
With over 700,000 small businesses served since its inception, UENI has made significant strides in empowering entrepreneurs to succeed online. Christine reflects on her transition from the energy industry to entrepreneurship and emphasizes the importance of relating to the needs of small business owners.
From local service businesses to e-commerce ventures, UENI caters to a wide array of industries, empowering entrepreneurs across various sectors. Christine and Frank discuss the diverse range of businesses UENI serves, with a mix of startups and established businesses seeking to enhance their digital presence and how they are affected by requirements of the Corporate Transparency Act.
Overall, the episode provides valuable insights into the journey of building a business from the ground up, the challenges encountered along the way, and the importance of adaptability in the ever-changing business landscape.
FileForms.com
UENI.com
Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting is Now Required in the US
File your BOI Report quickly and easily with our state-of-the-art software. Designed by licensed attorneys and CPAs, FileForms provides security you can rely on, unmatched support, and solutions tailored to your needs.
Sign up for your FileForms account today!
This episode Fileforms Business Compliance Podcast features an engaging conversation between host Frank Tumminello and guest Christine Telyan, the founder of UENI, a platform dedicated to helping small businesses establish a strong online presence. Christine shares her insights into the challenges faced by small businesses in today's digital landscape and how UENI aims to address these challenges.
With over 700,000 small businesses served since its inception, UENI has made significant strides in empowering entrepreneurs to succeed online. Christine reflects on her transition from the energy industry to entrepreneurship and emphasizes the importance of relating to the needs of small business owners.
From local service businesses to e-commerce ventures, UENI caters to a wide array of industries, empowering entrepreneurs across various sectors. Christine and Frank discuss the diverse range of businesses UENI serves, with a mix of startups and established businesses seeking to enhance their digital presence and how they are affected by requirements of the Corporate Transparency Act.
Overall, the episode provides valuable insights into the journey of building a business from the ground up, the challenges encountered along the way, and the importance of adaptability in the ever-changing business landscape.
FileForms.com
UENI.com
Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting is Now Required in the US
File your BOI Report quickly and easily with our state-of-the-art software. Designed by licensed attorneys and CPAs, FileForms provides security you can rely on, unmatched support, and solutions tailored to your needs.
Sign up for your FileForms account today!
Hello everyone, hope everyone's having a great week and welcome to this week's episode of the Fileforms Business Compliance Podcast. My name's Frank Tuminello, thanks for listening in. Today we're thrilled to have Christine Tellian on our episode. Christine has built a business from the ground up and has a very impressive background. I won't steal too much of her thunder, but Christine, welcome. Hey, nice to be here. So Christine, you and I is a business that File Forms is now partnered with. We're thrilled for a successful partnership ahead. And we'd love to just hear a little as we get started here on the business and how you work with small businesses. So maybe if you could just start us off with a quick background on yourself and then you and I, your platform. Yeah, sure. Really great to be here and we're super excited to be partnering with you guys. So I'll give you a little bit of context why you and I started. There are 33 million small businesses in the US and the staggering fact is that two out of three of them either don't have a website or don't like the one that they do have. And there are five million new businesses created every year. So there's a tremendous need. and a tremendous kind of audience here of small business customers that need a website and an online presence. At the same time, that audience is not being served very well. I mean, we work with customers with businesses that are solo, you know, sole proprietors, solo entrepreneurs and micro businesses. So think of the sub five employee kind of size of business and the solutions available to them are either do it yourself website builders. So. great tech platforms like Wix and GoDaddy. But the vast majority of those small businesses don't actually successfully launch their DIY website. Why? Because those platforms have become quite complicated. And the tech aside, you need to know quite a lot to get the job done. You need to know copywriting and SEO and information architecture, UX, all these things that a small business is not just equipped to do. So DIY isn't really the solution. You know, and so, okay, I'm gonna go get somebody to do it for me, but traditionally web developers, agencies and so on, they charge a lot upfront. And then you're still left with this problem of, okay, how do I keep my website, my online presence going? So, arrives kind of, you know, us 10 years ago, seeing this market and, you know, that was really the problematic in front of us. And we set out to create UNI. Basically what we do is, you know, we'll build any small business, a fully functional website in seven days for under $200. And our solution was really born out of the fact that micro businesses want an expert to build their website, but they have modest budget and they want human support on an ongoing basis. So for us, the challenge was how can we create a technical solution that is actually a delivered solution while scaling service. Because to deliver a professional website at this kind of price point is a big challenge. And that's really what we've been working on for a decade. That's amazing. And just out of curiosity, how many businesses do you work with today? Yeah, we've helped over 700 ,000 small businesses get online since we started. So, and you know, we're only scratching the surface with all the new businesses starting every year. Yeah, certainly. And were you always in this line of work or kind of can you speak to what life was like before you and I? How did you get into this business? I had a very different career before. I was in the energy industry for about 10 years, most immediately before this. I was working for a big energy company, but I did get the experience of working on some very entrepreneurial projects. And that, you know, that made it clear to me that I could do this. I was kind of relentless enough and, you know, kind of had the stomach for it. So yeah, a big career shift 10 years ago, but for me it was absolutely the right thing to do. That definitely resonates with me, kind of working in a very corporate role for many, many years and then starting a business from the ground up is certainly a pivot, but I think it's very gratifying and the opportunity to work with many, many businesses is great. It's amazing you've been able to build such significant scale and 700 ,000 businesses served is tremendous. You know, all those entrepreneurs, helping them through critical stages is super important. Do you find that the fact that you are an entrepreneur yourself helped you relate to other entrepreneurs that you serve daily? Oh, entirely. Yeah, it's a really good point. I think, you know, my co -founder and I were business people. We're not engineers. So we had to look at the problem from a results point of view rather than from, I'm going to architect something very elaborate and beautiful. Technically, we thought about like, what is the experience for the customer? And I think that was, you know, if you think about what the market is, big companies like Google, Facebook, and then the website builders, they have built amazing tech, but it has always been platforms that are essentially self-service. So who gets left behind? It's the micro businesses, it's the small business owners who don't have the time to invest, to learn, to use the tools. And so that really was a problem that was in front of us. How do you help? these small business owners that tech is supposed to enable but actually are being left behind. So I could really relate as being a non-technical person to that being in that position and I thought well certainly there's a better way. Definitely. And given that you started the business from the ground up, can you just speak to some of the challenges, early days and how difficult or maybe easy it was to get the business to where it is today? Just those initial phases. Obviously, Fileforms helps businesses stay compliant at each phase of their business. I would love to understand your perspective as you started UNI and have grown it to where it is today. Not easy, absolutely not easy. And it's been an absolute adventure. At the beginning, I think that one thing to remember, and I think this is true for any entrepreneur, the problem you choose to solve and the market you choose to tackle determines a lot of the experience you're going to have and how difficult, how large the opportunity, how much impact you're going to have. And I think we chose a pretty hard problem. I mean, it's like the big tech companies basically said we don't do service. And... We said, okay, we're gonna build a technical solution that scales service while still being a competitive business. And so I think that that was probably the first and that's remained kind of the biggest challenge. Like we set out to solve a really hard problem. And then I think beyond that, it's like, how are we going to, what's gonna be our model? How are we going to effectively do this? So 10 years, you can imagine we've had some iterations. And UNIV1 was actually a marketplace. It was like an app, two -sided marketplace where customers and consumers could look for the cheapest, nearest, best rated, whatever, local service. We were focused really on local service businesses at the time. And that was hard because if you don't have kind of endless marketing money, building a two -sided platform is challenging, especially that demand gen is really hard. But what we discovered was, some very efficient ways to help digitize the businesses. So working on the supply side. So we also learned from the Yelp model where they really focused on the supply, so the business side and kind of working to digitize them. So that was kind of our first pivot. And then along the way there have been a lot. I mean, we were working on a freemium basis for some time because we really, our mission always has been we want to digitize millions. of small businesses. So we wanted to give everybody access. And doing that in a way was really great because it pushed us to how could we be absolutely as efficient as we possibly could be. Because, you know, if you're offering the base product for free, you have to be. And I'll tell you, this was pre -COVID at our peak when we were in freemium and we were quite international, really focused on a lot of markets. We were building 3000 websites a day. And there, it was a bit of a crazy, crazy time, but it allowed us to learn a lot. But at the same time, we learned from the freemium model that, you know, people, you know, it's always the perception of the value of a product if it's free changes, right? And so we saw that the customers weren't as engaged. So we decided to say, okay, look, we want everybody to have access, but we're going to create a small barrier here. And so it's pay to access now. But as I said, you get a beautiful website for under $200. Virtually every small business can afford this. And we said, but look, we want this to be risk free for everybody. So, you know, if you're not happy within the first month, you get your money back, no problem. So we went through kind of an evolution here. And I think that's, you know, but it's tough in the doing, right? Like when you're going through it, it's tumultuous. But the one thing I'll say is that, I think maybe the hardest thing at the beginning is if you're trying to do something different, it's about that balance between maintaining your conviction and what you're trying to do and adjusting to data you get, feedback from the market, other valued opinions and adjusting your path accordingly. I think that that's maybe the single biggest thing, particularly at that heady beginning of a business. And... You know, it's interesting, we did maintain conviction kind of being an outlier in the market offering this scaled service because, you know, there are a handful of agencies globally that will build more than a thousand websites in a month. I mean, it's really a very, very, very small group. And, but we were committed to it. And, and I think that conviction has proven correct and a bit prescient. I mean, last week, GoDaddy inked a deal with Upwork. for the Upwork freelancers to basically help with fulfillment of building websites on the GoDaddy platform. So it is exactly the point. I mean, the small business needs a delivered solution because they struggle to do it themselves for a variety of reasons, right? So I think those are some of the things I think about as, you know, when I look back at, you know, early times and what the challenges were. And it kind of makes me think, given you have this such a relatable experience with your clients that you serve, are typically the businesses that you're serving startups or newly formed businesses, or are they more so established businesses that might have just been too preoccupied to ever really create a digital presence online? Yeah, it's a fair mix. So we have about a little bit less than half, 45 % of our customers self -identify as new. So just started to about one year old. Another 30 % are in this two to five year mark. And then the balance, 25 % are older than five years. Now, part of that is because there is this mix because you do have those people who never had an online presence. But. more than 40 % of our customers come to us with a pre -existing website. So they have had some experience and they need a revamp. This is the fact. Now, as far as some of the other kind of key things about our customers, we serve over a thousand categories of business. So it is really kind of the long tail. About two thirds are local business. And then we have, you know, 25 % that are e -commerce. With post 2020, e -commerce kind of really grew and where our heritage was in service sector, we really worked to accommodate this important segment. And then the balance are like informational sites, nonprofit portfolio and so on. But we really run the gamut, but a lot of the professional services, accountants, notaries, tax advisors, in addition to other kind of local service businesses are kind of our bread and butter. I can speak first hand, growing a business from the ground up as a startup. There's just so much to do. Everything between building a website, to staying compliant, to filing licenses to do businesses in specific states. I think having vendors that you can rely on who provide a high value service for a reasonable price is super important and just having the ability to relate. We've worked with vendors that you know, only work with huge businesses and they struggle to relate to us. And then we've worked with other vendors that, you know, don't have the expertise in our specific industry because obviously our business is built around a new law. So I think having that very worldly perspective, being able to relate to, you know, the folks who just aren't tech enabled and are looking to become tech enabled or are just starting out and need to learn. Every component about their business, especially bringing it online, is I think a critical piece and characteristic of your business that has probably really helped you scale to where you've gotten in such a short amount of time. You kind of touched on it a little bit, but I'd love to just know over the course of the COVID pandemic and everyone being home and on their computers and... you know, reading the news and trying to stay up to speed on where the world is heading. I mean, did you experience a pretty significant lift in folks looking to pivot their businesses online given the nature of everyone being in lockdown? some extent it was a mixed bag because you had like countervailing wins here so definitely like e -commerce right went nuts but local service businesses right they you know they had to think about what are we going to do maybe home delivery you know how how we could organize kind of for them through their website kind of delivery at the door curbside delivery those became new features that we had to consider. But a lot of businesses struggled. I mean, it really wasn't a boon, right? A lot of them had to shutter and the amount of closures during that period was staggering for service sector businesses. But you did see kind of the rise of categories like life coaches, business consultants, that really could operate virtually anywhere. So it was a mix and... Part of our responsibility was also how could we help our businesses because a lot of them were really struggling. And so, you know, like we put a, you know, a pause on subscription fees for a while. Like, you know, we worked with them to help them get through it because, you know, Amazon did amazing, but, you know, every, you know, mom and pop and solo entrepreneur wasn't doing amazing. Yep, yep. And I love how it seems you do right by your businesses. Because you have that relatable experience, you understand kind of the hardship that they're going through. I mean, you don't choose this customer and then try to pull a fast one, right? The whole mission about the enterprise is always about this demographic and doing right by them, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. And what kind of impact have you been able to see serving these customers, maybe either the startups or the legacy businesses who have never had a website before? Can you kind of just speak to any high level statistics on sales growth or customer growth or any kind of key performance indicators that you all like to hang your hats on as, wow, we drove that impact at UNI? Yeah, I mean, we could always put numbers behind it. I always caution that because we cover so many categories and so many geographies and anyone that does digital marketing that doesn't honestly say, hey, this all depends on your situation, how competitive your industry is, how concentrated your market is, right? Like a lot of that depends on the very particular factors. So, you know, we have all kinds of case studies, but I always caution that with, hey, you know, Let's be real here, everybody's situation will be different. I will say that there are a few things that we can generalize. The first thing is, you know, the biggest, I think, impact on the businesses is that it sets them on a good path. You wouldn't imagine the, okay, they go through the process. They sign up for our service, they fill out a form, and in seven days they have a website that's delivered to them on a call. You've paid $200 and you have a professional website for you. That's a very disruptive experience for a lot of our business owners because they go from frustration and fears that that's a kind of a previous experience, you know, or fear of the unknown to something that is like a little bit magic. So, you know, the word we often hear from our customers is I feel empowered and to think that like a website would empower them, but that's how they feel because, you know, things that otherwise were closed to them. How would I ever access this? How would I ever do digital marketing? Now they kind of have an avenue to do it. They see how things are possible. So I think that's the biggest thing, right? Then there's, yeah, there's the commercial results. And, you know, what I would say is this, customers that get stuck in, they share their website, they work with one of our growth advisors, you know, on our growth plan, which is a, you know, very affordable digital marketing. plan we offer, our team will write 2 ,000 words of content for them every month. Like if you go to the growth meetings with our advisor every month and you request that service, which is included, you get results, right? The ranking happens, the leads happen, the appointments happen and the sales happen. They just do. It doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen. And so I think that, you know, it's not that you and I is some magic, you know, you take a magic pill or something. It's not that it's a path and kind of a set of accessible tools and a really good user experience where they can get there. And so we enable all those kinds of things. You've never done email marketing, we'll do it with you. Give them tools where like anybody who just met with a client can with two clicks send them a little notification on their mobile to leave a Google review for the business, right? And so we put... for our business owners like in your first month, the 10 five -star review challenge. Everybody can do it. You're meeting with clients, everybody can do this. And it's a transformational thing to go from I'm invisible to I have five -star Google reviews, right? I'm real. When people Google my business name, that's what they see. And these businesses are coming to us. Yeah, they're coming to us to increase their leads and their bookings and their sales. But... I think even above that, because we always ask them, like, what is your objective when you come to us? It's about, I want to look professional online. And very often, you know, they don't have a brand identity. It's just not something they've done yet, right? Many of them don't have a logo. We create that for them. So it's a process, but that's what they come out of it with in a very short amount of time. So, you know, on our website, we have all kinds of case studies and stuff like this, but I always kind of try to stay away from that because every case is different. but obviously we put them on a good path to start getting good results. I mean, I will say like there are some cases that stand out, right? So I love the bakery who, you know, they started with us in COVID and then two years later they were selling only online and then two years later they send us pictures of their storefront, right? So like this is the thing. Or this morning, I don't know, I was just on LinkedIn and. One of our customers that had pinged me, she had connected with me. I saw she was on Good Morning Chicago, right? Talking about her coffee business. So, this is, those are the, you know, very gratifying moments and that's really why we do it. That's fantastic. So you've seen actually businesses go from digital only to brick and mortar and then vice versa. Wow. Very interesting. And I'm sure after you serve these clients and they have such a terrific experience and see the results of the hard work of you and your team, do they naturally look to ask you for other things that could potentially continue to propel their results? And if so, what exactly are those things? and sometimes we ask them. I mean, we do actually as a matter of course ask them because we want to understand kind of how we can help. You know, our idea has always been how can you and I be a trusted partner? So we start with these elements, website, digital marketing, but like what are the other building blocks to help them with their business? And they tell us consistently marketing. So marketing has been a big thing that we do, but also tax, legal, accounting advice. financing, so how to help find grants and loans, point of sale devices, business insurance, bank accounts, those are all things that they say, hey, I would need help with. And you know, when I was just reading about obviously the new legislation on the compliance side, you know, for me, that's why I reached out to you, Frank, because I thought this is possibly a gap, right? It's a... It's like an unknown unknown for a lot of our customers that they don't have the time to be proactively thinking about where are my compliance gaps. And so if we can, and that's obviously not our expertise, but if we can partner with experts in this area as we do in the other areas kind of I mentioned and deliver kind of some curated solutions to education and service to our customers, that's a huge value add. Certainly. And I suspect like also social media, for example, there could be, you know, needs there. I actually found it interesting. I took the time over the weekend to look at FinCENSE, who's the regulator of this new law, the Corporate Transparency Act. I took the time to look at their website and their social media platforms. They might need some digital help because they actually only have... I believe it's 14 ,000 total followers across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. So, you know, as you think about 33 million businesses, probably more than that, needing to file this new BOI report, you got to think how are these businesses going to find out about FinCEN? It's clearly not something they're going to be looking for. but it's kind of a head scratcher and I just thought that was like a really interesting statistic when that was noticed. totally, I mean, why when they go to file or through their filing agent, why aren't they getting SMSs letting them know, I mean, everybody reads an SMS, right? Like it is the single most read channel. So, why aren't they not receiving that as an auto update because this is, they need it. So, you very kindly, Frank, offered to do a bit of education to us. our customers and I think it's great because I think a lot of people will be in the dark otherwise. Definitely. I guess, obviously, you and I as a global organization, any trends that you've been able to evaluate over the various geographies? I know you have a large presence that you're serving in the United States, but any takeaways from either the digital needs that folks need or hardships that business owners face in the different geographies that you serve? That's an interesting one. I mean, the businesses and the channels they use are very different across the different geographies. Today, we're mostly focused on the US and the UK, Canada to some extent. And there, I think, as we're building sites and doing digital marketing, I think it's more around the kind of content. And then also, you know, making sure that the content is true to that business category. So that's where we put a lot of time and attention, like how do you know, how do you know, a notary or an accountant in the UK versus in the US will need different things, right? So that's, I think that's where we put a lot of attention on our side. And you mentioned working with a lot of these professional services firms. I must ask, how many professional services firms would you estimate you've worked with over the years? Well, professional services is a huge category. So, I mean, there it's like going to be tens of thousands for sure. I think in the, yeah, for sure, for sure. And we really run the gamut. I think some of the biggest on the professional services side categories that we serve are around business consultants, the tax advisors, accountants, notaries, coaches. Those are the big ones for us. Yeah, and obviously historically those businesses have been, you know, more, more so labor intensive businesses, kind of manual processes. Obviously, you know, it's a, it's a hands-on service to do taxes. There's, there's kind of, you know, very few opportunities that where it's very rinse and repeat. I think TurboTax provides a great product. We've, we've always liked Intuit's products, but I imagine many of those folks are, are really establishing their initial digital presence by using your services. Is that, is that a fair assumption? Yeah, yes, absolutely. But we do, I mean, we have a very healthy group of customers that are looking for the revamp, the redesign. Because every 18 months to two years, you need to reevaluate kind of what is your messaging, what is your service offering, and a lot of platforms also need updates, technical updates, and then are you keeping your SEO fresh? So, It really is a healthy mix of people who are coming, you know, kind of the uninitiated, but also looking for a revamp. Yeah, that makes sense. And then serving businesses in the US, the UK, Canada, it's interesting because the new law in the US, which is the Corporate Transparency Act and the need to report beneficial ownership information, that level of reporting is something that certainly has existed in Canada for a few years, certainly has existed in the UK. Would you say... UBO or BOI reporting in the UK is something that's pretty well known, given that it's something that's been in existence for some time. I couldn't, I don't think I would comment on that one. Yeah, I would defer to you on this Frank, on the compliance side. fair enough. We've always heard from the folks who have helped pass this legislation of the Corporate Transparency Act that it's really the fact that the US has never had these reporting standards before, which has led to unfortunate financial criminals using the US as a safe haven to hide assets, use these shell companies that are basically anonymous to... to shield their assets from reporting to their foreign governments or the US government. We've worked with quite a few businesses that are internationally based, though have an operating presence in the United States. Thus, they need to now comply with the new law in the United States, which is beneficial ownership information reporting. It's been great to actually speak to people and have them understand that this is a real thing. This is something that exists. It's part of running a business. And specifically, the family offices or the large investment funds that do have a global presence similar to you and I, it's nice that they have the perspective, the experience, and kind of the processes in place and the data handy.-hmm. disclose their BOI information now in the US because they've just done it for many, many years. So it kind of parlays us nicely into the question that I always scratch my head on is like, do you think most of the clients that you're working with are aware of all of their compliance needs or are they just so busy kind of building their business from the ground up or? or looking to revamp their business that they might overlook potential compliance requirements that could have some pretty significant liability. I think that's a likelihood. I mean, unless they're working with an accountant who's going to ensure that they're aware. I think it's very unlikely that on their own, right? And I mean, does that resonate with your experience? Certainly. I get this question pretty much daily where it's like, Frank, if we didn't connect, how would we have ever heard about the Corporate Transparency Act or the Beneficial Ownership Information Report that's required by the end of the year? I hate to say it, I don't have a great answer because I just don't know. We are... Here at file forms where we're tax nerds were legal professionals were financial services you know experience folks and we've been following this law since it's passed in twenty twenty one and even before that when it was getting drafted into law. So we we've always had an eye on on this regulation and you know we we obviously built a business around it before you know the law the law got passed in twenty twenty one it didn't go into effect until January first twenty twenty four. you know this year so uh... there was there was kind of a period there were we believe the u .s. government could have certain certainly been creating more awareness around the law and uh... you know it seems it seems they did is as much as they could do presumably uh... though though there still is a huge gap uh... in in awareness agent, these incorporation companies, they're not disseminating the information to their clients. You know, I think they're doing the best they can. You know, we found that a lot of registered agent businesses and corporate services firms are, you know, a little bit less digitally oriented than one might assume. You know, perhaps they could be good customers of you all at some point. But, you know, I think a lot of these businesses are local businesses that, you know, have existed for for decades and in their communities and, you know, very hands -on, very consultative, but just haven't pivoted into the digital age, but always looking to do right by their clients. So in that light, I believe they listen to the new laws and they react and they want to do right by their clients, but might just not have that team of, you know, either website designers or content creators. or developers to build a user experience that's scalable, that could serve. So I think that's where Fileforms is able to fill a void because we are a technology company. Exactly. And we want to serve them not just in BOI, but in any other lines of business that they have because we have an onshore development team that's highly sophisticated, that's worked at large national businesses in the past. And You know, we believe that we're able to, you know, take, take our BOI product and pivoted into serving the partners that we've created in, you know, the short amount of time that we've been in business, but we've been able to scale quite significantly with now over 300 partners. And, you know, I think we want to, we want to assure that, you know, compliance is top of mind. It's, it's so unfortunate, you know, when, when fines get. levied on small businesses, where every dollar counts. Fines are significant when it comes to federal and state compliance. I can attest to that firsthand. I've started many businesses over the course of my lifetime. And I've certainly forgotten to file my annual report before. In the state of Florida, I believe the fines $415 if you forget to file your annual report, which honestly, I think they're coming due pretty soon. So, you know, that's obviously a big chunk of change. It's very punishing. And the penalties for not filing with Vincent, the BOI, they're staggering. staggering, it's actually $591 per day, per day, per entity too. So if you have a business that might have an operating business that exists under an LLC, but then maybe a separate LLC that owns the piece of real estate that your business operates in, now you have two fines of $591 a day accruing each day until you file this report. So it makes you think, wow, you know. businesses are going to probably be blindsided by these fines. And it's interesting as well because the business is starting in 2024 and they only have 90 days to file this report. So the businesses formed in January of this year are potentially well into those penalties that might have accrued over the course of April, depending on when they started. So that's why it's so important, we feel, to kind of use... platforms like podcasts and partners like like you and I to really try to try to help as many business communities as we can large business communities to really get the word out and you know if they choose to do business with file forms and filing their forms that's fantastic but at least we did our service as a mission driven organization similar to you all to spread the education at a minimum because like we said. you know, FinCEN is just not well known amongst small business communities. yeah, and I mean, if you think about, I mean, I remember so well the stats during COVID, you know, the amount of businesses that had less than 30 or 60 days of cash on hand, and then just the stats in the US, right? Something like, maybe I'm misremembering, but it's something like 40 % of, you know, individuals cannot afford a, you know,$500 emergency. So, I mean, you know, these are our... sole proprietors, right? Like they're not outside of these statistics. So I think that this could constitute a real emergency for them if they were caught on the wrong side of it. So yeah, I think it's urgent that all the communities that can learn about it do. So yeah, glad we're doing that session next week, Frank. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to highlight that before we wrap up here. So you and I in Fileforms will be hosting a webinar on May 8th at 3 p .m. Eastern Time. And we welcome folks to join. I'll be presenting and showing glimpses of our product and how we can help everyone, entrepreneurs to establish businesses that need to file their BOI reports by the end of the year. File forms provides the service to ultimately file their BOI report in 10 minutes or less and saves hours of time and provides peace of mind because this new regulation is complex. It has a bunch of defined terms. If you're not a legal or tax nerd, the defined terms might come off as somewhat intimidating. Obviously, the fines are very significant. So we want to instill the necessary knowledge education that we've established and distilled into very easy to consume formats such as a digital experience on our website to serve the masses in a scalable way, in a digital way. So doing that with digital players that are highly established like you and I is excellent to partner and we're very excited for that event coming up and just our partnership overall. So please do tune in on May 8th. We'd love for you to participate and we'll do some Q &A as well. So obviously here on a podcast, we can't necessarily solicit questions, but we wanna get those answers into the right hands and assure that folks have strong peace of mind, confidence, and really can just get this BOI report off their to -do list. We can speak firsthand to the fact that any given day business owners have a laundry list of to -dos. And BOI is just another thing on that list. So we want to ensure that we can help all the business owners out there cross BOI off their to -do list and get back to running and scaling their businesses. So. that's amazing. And I think the fact that we're very like-minded in the kind of offering a service and an efficient done -for -you kind of experience, that's why I think it's great. So really great fit, excited to have this for our audience next week. Excellent. Kristi, any remarks or closing statements before we call it a day here? I guess the only thing I'd say is that for your audience, maybe there are some organizations out there that also work with a small business audience. And if anybody is keen to learn more about UNI and maybe bringing it to your members, I'd love to chat. We work with a variety of great partners that offer valuable services. And we often do kind of the, you know, cross promotion because there's a good fit usually when we find a partner on both sides. So you can always reach out at partners at ueni .com and yeah I'd love to hear from them. Excellent, excellent. Definitely encourage our listeners to reach out to Christine and her team and get into the digital age if you're not already or get refreshed into a nice modern. hard. It doesn't need to be scary. Not at all. So excellent. Well, thank you everyone for joining. Christine, thank you so much for participating on a Friday. And yeah, looking forward to our next event on May 8th. So I hope you have a wonderful weekend and thanks everyone and tune in next week. Thanks, Frank, great chatting with you. See ya. take care, bye.