Ayr chairman David Smith admits he has barely slept a wink in his pursuit of the club's new boss.
The owner hopes to unveil Mark Kerr's replacement tomorrow as the Honest Men bid to stabilise their season.
And Smith confesses the importance of his first big call as new owner is one not lost on him.
He said: "It’s been a tough couple of weeks, the toughest I can remember in my career.
"The responsibility weighs pretty heavily with me because I’m a fan and I know how important it is to the club.
"I was a bit blown away by the amount of candidates we got and the calibre as they were coming through – there were a few times I raised my eyebrows at some of the names because it was incredible."
Former Morton boss David Hopkin has been strongly linked with the vacant role but Smith insists no deal for a new boss is done.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland at Kirkcaldy last night, he added: "We're not there yet, we are reasonably close and would like to think we could maybe in a position to make an announcement on Thursday.
"Lachlan [Cameron] and I agreed a long-term strategy that I could take over in a few years' time but with the pandemic it needed managed and led on a day-to-day basis.
"The club is a business but I won’t make any money from it, I don’t intend to.
"We are planning some buildings around the ground and improving the ground, improving our fan experience and get our income streams up a bit.
"All that will go back into the club so I don’t expect to make a bean out of it.
"If I don’t lose a fortune I will probably have done quite well.
"I have been coming to Somerset since I was five, I’m in the very fortunate position of being quite successful so I can do it.
"I’m passionate and I like to think I've got a reasonable business head on so in a couple of years from the business side and accounts side of things the club will be in a different place in terms of the balance sheet, profit and loss and all that kind of stuff.
"But it’s the playing side that gets the blood going."
Smith added: "I don’t think we have any God-given right to beat any other team in the league, we work hard and try make the right decisions for the club and that’s what we try to do.
"I’ve hardly slept a wink all week to be honest, I’ve had more sleep in Las Vegas in a weekend than I’ve had in the last week.
"The aspiration is the Premier League but we need to steady the ship a wee bit and just become a really dependable Championship team, get all the building blocks round about us, get a management team settled in for a year or two and go for it.
"I have never seen Ayr United in the top tier of Scottish football so I would love to see it.
"That’s the drive, that’s the push but I am not going to throw hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds on a playing squad.
"I'm prepared to invest in the infrastructure to get all that stuff right first."
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