Matt Andersen – Intentional Growth: Building a Business Buyers Want

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Today ~ I am pretty excited.

I have Matt Andersen joining me,

and ~ Matt's background is a little bit different than our typical guest.

He specializes in mergers and acquisitions.

~ capitalization and and growing businesses kind of for the purpose of ~ exiting.

So Matt is a best-selling author,

a two-time best-selling author.

~ he's an international speaker.

He's closed over five billion dollars worth of MA transactions

and worked with many businesses,

large and small, to increase enterprise value.

~

prepare for that exit event and then walking them through that.

So Matt should be a wealth of knowledge of how we can best grow our businesses,

how we can capitalize our businesses.

And when the time comes, how we can prepare for an exit.

So Matt, thanks for joining us.

glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

I'd also say I I actually have had real operating experience.

part of that hit collective history was I ran a division of

a publicly traded company and then am fortunate to be an operator

for my own business. So yeah, it's kind of full full cycle,

yeah.

so to speak.

Awesome. Well, I will be excited to hear about that and we might pick your brain

a little bit of leadership and insight from your time running your

own business as well. So we like to start every show kind of going back

to the beginning and ~ learning about the the life that got you to where you are.

So going clear back to the beginning,

do you mind telling us a little bit about your childhood and kind

of early education?

Yeah, happy to do it. So I was kinda born and raised just outside of Chicago,

so the western suburbs, and spent kind of my my early years there.

for those that are Chicago Blackhawks fans,

if they saw Coach Q's house getting tepeed when the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cups,

that was the childhood childhood house I grew up in.

So it was a great, great upbringing,

great area to we lived on a pond.

We had a summer place kind of out in the ~ kind of more rural areas of Illinois.

So really enjoyed a lot of kind of both things that the city of Chicago

had to offer, suburban growing up,

and then ~ kind of more rural.

Rural

areas where I kind of found some of my passions in the sense of outside of work,

things that I did when I was younger,

I still enjoy today, riding horses and things of that nature.

Fishing's a big passion of mine still to this day.

And so yeah, it was a pretty well-rounded upbringing.

I played both golf and lacrosse on our high school team,

and I showed horses actually competitively through kind of my early 20s.

But that's kind of where

Life started for me even though I I now live just outside of Austin,

Texas.

that's quite a diverse background.

There's probably not a lot of Chicago kids that grew up showing horses.

So I my you know, my aunt on my mom's side was very into it.

And you know, having spent a lot of time kind of outside of the city,

you know, probably two and a half hours outside of Chicago.

And when you get kind of that far,

I mean, it you know, Illinois is fairly rural outside of just

the immediate Chicagoland area.

And so there was a a lot of kind of that sort of activity going on,

but yeah, just a little fur outside of the city.

And so and then when I was going,

~ you know, w when we were in the suburbs kind of you know for school

and things of that nature.

you know I there was several riding stables nearby and so I had the chance

to kind of continue

that's a a great hobby and really cool that you can share that with multiple

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So coming out of kind of your primary education,

~ did you pursue a college education?

What did education look like for you?

Yeah, I did, although because of the first part of my journey,

I really wanted to go to school to become a veterinarian.

so about a year in and and by the way,

I share this fairly op I do a lot of university talks and sometimes

the attendees are freshmen and sophomore.

And so I share with them if you're not a hundred percent sure of what

you want to do, ~ use my story as an example or case study for how things

can work out. It's okay not to know exactly what you want to do

at eighteen or nineteen years old.

So wanna be a veterinarian,

After a year of that though, I realized seven more years of school and

Probably accumulating some debt and then maybe working for not a lot of money

for a couple years after graduation wasn't probably the thing I wanted to do.

And so what I did was I kind of went on a little bit of a soul searching journey,

and I attended every talk that went on at my university.

If there was an outside speaker coming in,

I went to it. I did a series of internships.

The last internship I had before I picked a career in finance

was a somewhat interesting one.

I did an internship for a CPA firm,

and it was

Amazing. It was spring semester,

and there was gosh, there was just a lot of ~ you know great kind

of camaraderie around the office,

I would say, in January. And then sometime around April 1st,

I noticed a little bit of a dark haze that developed around the office.

For those that may not be familiar,

that's tax time, which for CPAs is highly stressful,

especially back then when a lot there was a lot of manual items going on.

And so I

Really enjoyed the internship,

but I kind of came to grips that that's may not be for me altogether.

And it was after tax season there was an office mixer.

And it was at that office mixer where I'd met somebody who was in

the ~ investment universe, if you will,

worked for a very large ~ US investment bank and investment firm.

And so I ended up doing an internship with that organization and from there

my career was kind of set forward.

I I started my career kind of in institutional investments and kind of went

on from there. But it was that kind of soul searching experience that that really

kind of led to the career path.

I would say out of all the talks that I went to from having outside speakers come

to my university that I attended,

there's there's one speaker in particular.

It was a gentleman who had scaled a business from kind of a couple couple million

to a hundred million. And again,

this is, you know, a hundred million,

this is back in the day, right?

So this was like when a hundred million was was real money.

~

You know, not not inflation adjusted.

inflation adjusted, that's probably a quarter billion today.

~ so so you'd scale this business up and one of the things that he said

and stuck with me to this day was about journaling.

And that's something I took away from that talk that to this day I'm

a very active journaler, but I'm really thankful for

The two experiences I'd say that had a profound impact on my life.

~ number one was that that talk that I heard,

there was more to it that I took away,

but that talk that I heard about journaling,

and then the internship with the CPA CPA firm that led to the internship with

the investment bank and investment firm.

Those were life-changing experiences for me.

man. Yeah, that's that's awesome that you can kinda roll back and have

~ a few pivotal moments that ~ made such a high impact.

That's that's cool to be able to incorporate that into your story.

Yeah, for sure. And so that's one thing.

Like whenever I'm talking with folks at universities,

I'm always encouraging them to,

you know, try the internships,

listen to the guest speakers, ~ take notes.

I've got a talk that I share with universities that ~ it's really called

the 11 tips for finding success in a career in finance.

Mostly I give that talk to university associations that are student-led.

I've given a couple that are ~ organizationally led by the university,

but most are gonna be like student-led organizations.

But it's one one of the things I share.

share them is is about journaling and how important it is to kind

of track progress over time. And again,

that goes back to when I was nineteen.

So which was yesterday. Right.

That was that was

Yeah. Yeah, that's great.

that's a a practice I feel like I could have benefited from or maybe s should still.

It was something I did not do well,

but I find it very helpful sometimes to to look back and see where you came from

and what you've come through as you're facing the the next set of problems.

it it's very helpful.

Yeah, I think it's it's super important.

And I I the one thing I share with somebody as they close out a journal

is to read back through it and to take forward the ten best ideas from your previous

journal into your new journal.

it'll let you kind of give closure to the old journal,

yeah.

but it also brings forward your best ideas and your best to-dos

and the most ambitious things that you want to accomplish forward into your

new your new journal. so that's something I do religiously.

that's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, ~ as somebody that ~ has some college and

is kinda in the more white collar space,

you brought up a couple things there.

You you didn't want to do seven years of school and and take on

the additional debt and postpone your working career that much further.

based on your own experience and kind of the way you look at the world now.

What advice would you have for a young person that's coming to the end

of their high school career or ~ maybe just rethinking things?

would you still push them into some college,

no college? Does it depend on where they wanna go,

what they wanna do? What are your thoughts on education?

Yeah, and you know, look, everyone's path is so unique.

I think especially today, it's very difficult to give a probably a

one size fits all. But let me share just a few maybe overarching thought processes

that I might have today if I was if somebody were to ask me.

And I guess number one is if somebody,

you know, has the opportunity to ~ maybe scholastically,

financially, they're able to go to,

you know, a you know university.

I I definitely would not discourage them from that.

But

But I would prepare them well in the sense that it's going to be probably

a great experience, but they need to supplement that kind of core curriculum with

what I would call more alternative education sources.

So kind of getting a better understanding of you know human psychology,

probably getting a better understanding of AI,

probably getting ~ more time and focus on communications,

both verbally ~ and non-verbally.

I think those things are going to be really,

really important, especially in a you know in an age where you can kind

of belly up to a computer and there's

There's a lot of questions that you can now ask things like ChatGPT,

Claude, and you can get some unbelievable responses to.

And so I think in in that sense,

if you're gonna go when you're gonna go.

It's important to make sure you're supplementing maybe a traditional education with

other sources. It's also really important to kind of again,

if there's speakers coming, go.

If there's internship opportunities,

take them. those extra add-ons around things that you can create yourself,

things that are brought to you through your university that you can be a part of,

and then things that you seek outside of the university through kind

of internship programs, that combination is what will make that

a very productive four years. ~ I think for some.

Who's maybe just you know,

kind of struggling to get that university fig,

or there's gonna be a lot of debt associated with the university experience?

I probably would encourage to give some greater thought to how they go about it.

And I'm not suggesting that they just bypass it all together,

~ but maybe be more creative. There's a lot of you know great colleges

out there that aren't super expensive.

There's a lot of things that you can supplement with online classes

in summer that are very low cost to speed up the process to go.

Go

from starting to graduation without kind of racking up ~ large amounts

of debt and kind of setting you back before you even get started.

~ and then for somebody who it's just not a pure option for,

I would just really be thoughtful about what it is that they're gonna go for.

So if you're going from high school directly in the workforce,

I do think kind of really preparing yourself.

There's so there's honestly never been an easier time

to self-educate through alternative education programs.

And so really being thoughtful about that,

whether it's you're if you're gonna go into welding,

I mean there's

You don't have to wait 15 years to be you know skilled at welding.

There's things that you can do to supplement your knowledge base.

If you want to go to work in an office setting,

~ there's things that you can do from an AI perspective to really

you know increase your skills or YouTube videos or podcasts like this

one to really kind of increase your works working knowledge.

And then if you wanted to start your own business in any one of these stretches,

I would just say it's never been easier to start a business,

but it's probably been it's getting

It's going to be getting tougher and tougher to succeed.

And I do think kind of one of the cores around this,

whether you're gonna go from high school straight in the workforce

or if you're gonna go from high school into a traditional four-year university,

is making sure you're building the accountability to outcomes in yourself.

And again, that's that's just one thing that ~ I think that kind

of universal kind of three-pronged view of of how to view university life

or or directly going to the workforce all underpinned with accountability

to outcomes is is

guidance that I would probably say would be helpful to a lot of people today.

there's a lot

of wisdom there. And I really appreciate what you were saying about

the supplementing that education.

~ that's something we've not really discussed here on the show,

but you know, I'm sure we all know those people that are highly educated

and very smart but don't function very well.

It it's not effective education because it they don't know how to apply it.

And I think some of those soft skills you're talking about,

getting out into the world, interfacing with people,

developing those soft skills.

going to seminars and talks and getting to see different perspectives.

that's what's really gonna make that education applicable and make

the difference between somebody that knows a lot and somebody that's really

successful. So I appreciate that viewpoint.

I think there's a lot of wisdom there.

Well, no, and and thank you for the commentary,

and I agree. And it's just one of these things over you think about

a traditional four year program and where technology is today and where it's going

to be four years from now, it's really almost hard to say,

but we can one thing we do know for certain is AI is the worst it's ever gonna

be right now.

And so the changes that are going to come are going to continue

to be fairly prolific, but things that won't change are

you know personal experience, the ability to connect with somebody,

~ your presence in front of somebody else,

specific knowledge that you have in terms of practical application,

~ you know, ~ tangible skills,

like you had mentioned, you you had a very successful build the sale

of a roofing company. ~ you know,

it it being a good roofer isn't gonna be replaced anytime soon.

And so there are things

That you can supplement your knowledge with that I think will be really important

to kind of marry up with a traditional,

even a non-traditional education kind of program post-high school.

Yeah.

Wonderful. Well let's transition a little bit.

~ you got your four year degree,

started working in finance. Can you walk us through maybe early career and

up to ~ running your own business?

Sure. So I got finished with college and went to went to work.

I I spent kind of the first 15 years of my career working

for three different companies with kind of progressive increases in responsibility.

So I started my career with kind of fixed income institutional sales

to banks and insurance companies,

and then I ran parts of companies that did that,

and then ultimately was operating a division of a publicly traded company.

And that last role I was in for about seven years.

That's

a role that brought me from Chicago to Central Texas back in 2007.

And it was a great role. I really enjoyed it.

It was a company that had gone from 10 million in revenue back in the late

90s to ~ over 2 billion in revenue kind of shortly after I had joined.

And so it was a really exciting journey.

it was I learned a lot during that seven years.

It was something that kind of left an imprint on me.

And I think if I look back at that first kind of 15 years of my career.

The first three companies I worked for,

I mean, one went from 14 million to 350 million in revenue.

It went public. The next one went from about 2 million in revenue

to about 125 million in revenue.

And the last one went from about 10 million in revenue to about 2.1 billion.

And, you know, kind of at the time when you're in the thick of it,

I didn't totally appreciate you know,

what those CEOs had done and what those management teams had done and what

I was doing to help create those unique outcomes.

And taking a step

Step back all these years later,

I really appreciate those experiences and learned a lot from what those companies

did to achieve massive growth over fairly short periods of time.

And it was, they were neat experiences to be a part of,

but with each one, I was able to kind of get successive layers

of management and responsibility.

And then ultimately, when the last company I was working for sold in 2013,

about 10 months later, I ~ decided to do something different with my life,

but

wanted to stay in central Texas.

And so that kind of ultimately led me to joining Westlake Securities.

But those first 15 years were were pretty impactful.

And I almost feel like in some ways every year that's gone by,

they've been almost a greater impact on what I do today.

Yeah, that's ~ that's quite the impressive pedigree there.

And like you mentioned, that's ~ to be in one company that blows up on that scale,

would be quite an experience. To have done it three or four times,

that's quite an education in itself.

It it is and one thing I share in a lot of my talks,

especially so I give these talks kind of internationally to CEO groups like WPO,

YPO, Vista, CEO, etc., ~ the alternative board.

The the one thing I share in those talks is you can have and you should want

to have big plans and those things can be achieved through big planning.

I would say if I learned anything from those first 15 years,

it was, you know, if you want to do something highly impactful with your

organization, with your career,

with a company, it's possible.

I don't I mean, I was working around a lot of very smart people,

I would say very capable people,

also very driven people. But I would say the one kind of consistent through there

was, you know, they had big plans and they were willing to go through

big planning and also to take massive action on execution.

I mean it you you know you

Can think big and you can kind of plan,

but you ultimately have to execute very well.

but those three things are just you know fundamental ~ ingredients,

I think, to achieving something like that.

And it was very consistent throughout all three companies.

But other than that, I wouldn't say that those organizations

had like ultimately totally unique angles on things.

It's just they really did, they walk the walk and talk the talk every day,

but their path that they were on was

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So ~ for a a young business owner,

a small business owner, i I'm assuming probably the earlier the better,

but at at what point in time do you start setting those big,

ambitious goals? And y you know,

I think a lot of especially blue collar business owners,

they they get into a trade, they're good at it,

they get frustrated with their job or maybe get get laid off,

see a better way to do something and they kinda

start on their own and it it's more this transition from practitioner

to business owner. At what point in time do they really need to

get serious about setting some goals and setting a plan of how do we get from

or wh where are we going and how do we get from here to there?

Yeah, so ~ great question. And we work with a lot of companies that I would

say do real things, right? So concrete.

Roofing, electrical, I mean, all those sorts of businesses are

the kinds of companies that we work with,

food manufacturing. And so I would say there tends to be a crossover to where,

like you mentioned, you go from an individual kind of practitioner

or professional to having a business.

And that sometimes occurs, you know,

it looks like something where you know,

there's a few hundred thousand a profit,

you're starting to have multiple employees,

you've kind of gotten beyond just yourself,

one other person in a truck.

to you know really having the crux of you know what's starting to look like

a business, maybe a physical presence,

a website, et cetera. And once that starts to occur,

we usually kind of encourage people to get to a certain level of success where

in one way it's feeling very easy,

and in another way it's feeling very difficult.

And when you've hit that moment and it's a little different for everybody,

it's starting, it starts to be the time to think about bigger pictures and planning.

And so the easy part tends to be like the business and

Of itself. So there was probably a part where a lot of people that we've worked

with, whether it was roofing, electric,

food manufacturing, the actual kind of product part,

you know, pretty easy. I mean,

they get it, they understand how to put a shingle on,

they understand how to connect wires,

they understand how to make a tortilla,

but the business starts to become more complex.

And the reason tends to be for that is they're working maybe too much

in their business and not on their business.

And when that crossover starts to come about,

that's really the pivotal point for.

For

a lot of people to start engaging with maybe the book I've got coming

up called Intentional Growth to start thinking about architecting what's next.

And there's different kind of life cycles in an organization where this concept that

I'm gonna talk about makes sense,

but this is one. Another one kind of tends to be for larger businesses that

are maybe trying to go from, you know,

a million or two of profit to three to five million of profit,

and then from 10 to 25 and 25 to 50.

So those are different kind of pivotal points where I think.

something like intentional growth can be really helpful.

But one of the first concepts we talk about in the book is this concept

of reverse engineering what you want to have happen.

And we talk about it in two different ways.

One is time and one is financial outcome.

And so it could be that the it could be that the the business really should have

a view towards a three to seven year kind of time window.

That's going to be a time window that we think is measurable.

From the perspective of, you know,

anything kind of less than three years is difficult to kind of plan for.

Anything more than seven starts to feel like,

well, just kind of too far out there.

So three to three to seven years,

pretty good. Five being a peg in the ground.

And then kind of picking a financial outcome that would be impactful

to the business. So let's say you've got a business,

you're getting started, you're a million of revenue,

and you start to say, hey, over the next kind of five years,

I'd really like to take the business from a million in revenue to five million.

revenue that would be an ambitious kind of financial goal that you'd

set and then what we start to do is plan back all the things that have

to happen over the next five years for the business to get to one to five

or from five to ten or from ten to thirty etc and you can kind of keep going that

way but that reverse engineering course is really pivotal to setting both

a timeline expectation and a financial outcome that we can really start planning

from. And lastly on this topic I'll say the the biggest mistake

People tend to make is either not planning or planning in small increments.

You know, a lot of times we sit down and talk about somebody like a maybe even

a budgeting process. They're really just kind of looking kind of what's

out ahead of them in terms of revenue or what's out ahead of them in terms

of maybe bringing out another hire.

But what they're not doing is thinking about planning a budget that's going

to keep them on track with a five-year goal or ambition,

and then working back through what would the business have to become in order

to hit that.

I can relate to all of that. I think ~ you you're kind of describing

all of the things I did wrong when I was in that stage.

So you you brought us up in your story through kind of working

in in finance and the company you were working for ~ sold,

which was kind of the the next pivot point,

the next point in your career.

You mentioned from there you went to work for WestLake can you tell us

a little bit about that?

Yeah, so

Really at that point in time, I knew I wanted to stay in Central Texas.

I had a friend who had founded Westlake Securities back in 2003.

And so he said, Well, hey, you you've been working with these large companies,

helping them acquire and integrate small smaller businesses.

Why don't you come to Westlake and help us organize some thoughts around helping

our comp client companies raise capital and and go through merger

and acquisition processes? And so I originally joined Westlake

as a managing director in twenty fourteen.

And then over time became a the CEO in about 2018 time period.

And then I acquired the company in 2019.

But the company dated back to 03.

So we've been around for about 23,

24 years. But then I acquired it in 2019 and been leading it as both owner

and operator since then. But it was a really fun journey for me.

There was an early transaction where I had joined in 2014,

kind of not totally knowing what to expect.

I was not a career ~ career.

kind of investment banker per se.

I mean investments, finance, leadership,

capital, MA, integration, operations,

yes, all that. But was a little bit of a career shift for me,

not a career change, but a career shift.

And so when I came in and that first transaction went through kind

of the restless history, it was a $52 million recapitalization

of a restaurant group.

And ~ after that enjoyed the business every day since.

I mean, I'm kind of one of those people that like Warren Buffett says,

he skips into the office every day.

And for me, I I really appreciate and enjoy what we do every day

in in several different senses.

I love kind of giving back to companies,

creating opportunity for employees.

it's been it's been a lot of fun and a fun journey.

that's great. So you you got to go ~ got to go shopping in the beginning

of your career for smaller businesses,

for your employer to buy and and finally wound up buying one yourself

and stepping into that role. I I'm sure that was an exciting time,

but also a little bit of a fearful time stepping into ~ that much liability,

you know, kind of being the guy at the top.

Can you tell us a little bit about the thought process there?

some of the excitement, some of the fears.

Yeah, so it was interesting timing.

So that occurred, I think, around September,

August of twenty nineteen. And then you think about what happened just

a few short months later, ~ March of twenty twenty,

right? So I would say in the beginning,

I was just so busy with all my ideas and thoughts that and and excitement

for what was next that I was just kind of busy kind of in the in the trenches,

sort of speak, for a few months.

But I will say shortly after in April of twenty twenty,

that's kind of when it hit me in the sense of,

golly, you know.

Sitting sitting there kinda thirty days into a a giant question mark over,

you know, what was really gonna happen and where things were gonna go.

~ that was kind of one of those

really ~ deeper soul searching moments.

I think for me it was kind of like around April 10th.

I was like, hmm, so now I understand all this stuff about,

you know, risk of being a business owner and what it really means and

how you may have to put back you know into your business before you

you get things out of it, et cetera.

So that was kind of definitely one of the more of those gut check moments,

although I would say it was pretty short-lived.

I, you know, was highly committed to what we were doing,

highly passionate about it. We

really kind of doubled down on activity.

I would say one of the things that kind of came out of that,

you know, very brief moment of ~ maybe questioning life a little

bit was throwing myself back into,

you know, creating value for others.

So we shortly after, around that time period,

we were just flooded with inbound inquiries from

college ~ folks who've had their internships canceled.

And so one of the things that we said,

hey, we're gonna we're gonna stay busy,

we're gonna give back, we're gonna be active.

~ we started a remote internship program.

And since 2020, we've had five or six hundred folks go through

it from five different continents.

And it's really been kind of an impactful give back for us.

So even in the kind of that brief kind of dark gray moment,

so to speak, I'm not gonna call it black moment,

but dark gray moment, we tended to kind of find something that

you know, kept us busy, kept us giving back and kept our name in front

of ~ the industry, so to speak.

So what was the most difficult step in that process of taking over Westlake

and and going from employee to owner and and being the guy at the top,

the guy in charge?

So I think the most difficult step was really just around prioritization.

I think whenever you step into an entrepreneurial setting,

there's so many things that you can actually do with a company that it almost

can be overwhelming and can be confusing in the sense of what

are the real priorities. And so for me,

that was definitely a moment where I had to think through what I really wanted

the company to become and then how to again just use.

This reverse engineering, I think one of the benefits you know I had

is I'd been using this reverse engineering strategy for years,

and so I applied those tactics to myself.

We apply it still to this day in terms of thinking through kind of what

do I really want to see happen,

and then what are the most kind of important elements that really needed

to come out of that? And so I did have a brief moment where I

was almost overwhelmed with, you know,

we could do the website, we could raise money ourselves,

we could go look for acquisitions,

we could hire people. There's all these different levers

Of growth started kind of flooding into myself,

and I had to take a deep breath and say,

okay, if we do them all, I'm gonna be fatigued,

our organization's gonna be fatigued,

and we're gonna start failing at multiple levels.

And so what we did was really take a step back and prioritize.

We we knew we wanted to build a brand,

and so that was something that we really doubled down and reinvested in

in terms of building a brand and building ~ a real you know recognizable face

to the company, so to speak. we knew certain things about we want to have

a business that wasn't

just about selling companies, but also about helping companies grow.

And so today our business is kind of ~ equally split between those that

are seeking growth and seeking liquidity.

And so a lot of the things that we are today,

kind of these years later, seven years later,

those little seeds and kernels were started to ~ form all the way back to 2019.

But I would say I, you know, had my own moment of of just almost being overwhelmed

by all the different directions you can go in and needing to kind of step back

and and that own kind of

reverse engineering path was actually helpful to me at that time too.

Yeah, you get to practice what you preach and ~ put it to work and i

it appears like that worked well for you.

Yeah, I I I would say so. You know,

a lot of the things that we set out to accomplish over the first five years

of the company, I'd say we did an excellent job at.

We have ~ I reset our next five year plan kind of going forward about a year ago,

~ where we've got even more ambition in terms of growth.

And, you know, I think it's it's been exciting for our team.

We've done some things that are pretty cool of late.

and so we've, you know, w won a industry award in Houston for deal of the year.

We next book coming out, we ~

the speaking is kind of really mushroomed from where it was ~ three years

ago compared to a year ago compared to right now.

and so just a lot of things that have been organizationally exciting to to see.

And I think, you know, one of the reasons why that reverse engineering

is so important is is and where I've seen it kind of firsthand is just kind

of cultural excitement for what it is you're doing.

And it really doesn't matter if again you've got a plumbing business,

roofing business, electrical, food manufacturing,

~

If you're making kind of imprinted t-shirts,

whatever it is that you're doing,

retail, online, et cetera, doesn't really if you've got people around you,

you've got employees, you know,

having a kind of a reverse-engineered plan and then celebrating some

of the wins along the way, you'll see what ends up happening is that your your

organizational culture will just continue to blossom and you'll start

to develop a culture of winning.

And I think that's one thing that our team is really kind of excited about

is like we I think we all like to win.

We like to close transactions,

we like to bring on new clients,

we like to set new milestones.

And so it's kind of organizationally fun for us when we achieve,

you know, one of those elements.

And again, I'll go back to 2019 early days.

that just seems so far off at that point.

But, you know, if you map that course and you're just consistent,

it just these things kind of tend to flywheel.

And it's hard to describe, but but victory brings kind of more victory

in lot of senses. And just like a sports team,

sort of speak.

Yeah, people like to be winners.

They like to be on the winning team.

The the more you win, the more support you get,

the more you win, the more buy-in you get.

And it definitely has a a kind of an immeasurable momentum,

I think. So well that that makes a great segue.

Yeah.

we talked about kind of your early career and how you were ~ kind

of uniquely trained to do what you're doing now with the experiences you have.

~ buying and selling businesses for other businesses and being part

of some pretty phenomenal growth.

And then you got the opportunity to put that into practice yourself as

CEO with you at the helm buying a bit at buying and growing a business.

so now my understanding is that is kind of exactly what you do for your clients.

Can you help us understand a little better?

I know there's a a lot of financial jargon,

~ liquidity and exits and

Mergers and acquisitions, and A,

you know, enterprise value, but kind of for the the layman in plain terms,

what are the services that you provide?

What do you do for your clients?

So great question. We do two things at its essence.

we have about half of our clients are

Folks who are seeking what we call intentional growth.

So they're seeking to grow their business over a measured period of time using

a predictable framework to do it.

So that's about half of what we do.

And then the other half of what we do is people that

are ultimately seeking intentional liquidity.

And that can come in either a smaller chunk or a minority deal,

or it can come from a larger, kind of either low majority all the way through

a full full exit scenario. And so that really makes up our clients as again,

people that are interested in growth.

People that are interested in liquidity.

For people that are interested in growth,

we really utilize the ~ framework from intentional growth to help them work through

a journey of getting from where they are to where they want to be,

using kind of that three to seven year time period and achieving

a financial outcome that would be motivational to both them

and their key stakeholders. And so we do that with a combination of you know,

advisory, consulting, potentially capital raising,

potentially buying other companies.

Companies, growing their business organically,

maybe greenfielding new locations,

products, or services. But we can really help them organize their thoughts around

how they can best achieve a great outcome,

maybe an outcome that's far in excess of the current trajectory of their business.

So that's the growth side. The liquidity side really has to do with when people

are starting to think about, you know,

what what what what does their business really start to translate

to them personally? And that may mean.

That somebody's kind of mid-career.

And so rather than selling the entirety of their business,

they may want to look at selling a third of their business to take some chips

off the table or to get some capital out of their business personally,

but then also to have more capital to reinvest in the business to grow.

And so sometimes a transaction like that could be,

you know, selling again a third of their business and taking half the capital

for ~ personal means and then the other half to to go on balance sheet

of the company, or it may mean all the way through a full exit.

And when somebody's ready for a full exit,

we really kind of work with them on the proper preparation to get

to a premium valuation. And that's really where,

you know, we tend to shine is helping companies better prepare

for a transaction that they're going to be truly proud of.

And that's about half our, you know,

half of our practice. And we've worked with a number of,

we've been fortunate to work with a number of really amazing companies over time

that have had sensational, sensational kind of exits or majority transactions.

And so that part's really fun for us too.

So the whole life cycle for us has really been fun,

but we feel like each business has kind of a unique kind of journey.

And so generally speaking, our growth journey is going to start maybe about halfway

through somebody's kind of entrepreneurial ~ journey,

potentially just on average, and then our kind of

intentional liquidity is going to start maybe three quarters or closer to

the end of somebody's kind of career journey.

So I kind of call it like we're back half of the career services.

So when somebody's gonna build a platform that's ready to scale,

we can help them do it. And when somebody's ready to take a scale platform

and think about what's next, we can do it.

man, that's perfect. Well, I know I wanna spend a considerable amount

of time here talking about kind of preparing for exit and that kind of thing.

I think something that's something that's really hot right now

in the industries that ~ our listenership is probably made up of.

But I want to roll back ~ one more question kind of about the the coaching

or growth side of your business.

you know, you said you typically kind of take people in

on the the second half of their entrepreneurial journey,

your services are probably more on that that growth and development,

not getting the business initially started or off the ground.

What would be some key signs for a business owner that they're ready

for that next step? That they kind of have their business established,

they're ready to start, focusing on growth or or maybe they need

the type of services that you offer.

Sure. So we're

For us, we're typically starting to see kind of a combination of people,

process, and system in place that you can really say,

hey, there's a there's a real business there.

And so generally we're gonna start to see some employees,

generally, we're gonna start to see multiple customers,

we're gonna start to see multiple stakeholders,

we're gonna start to see you know the beginnings of you know an accounting system,

we're gonna see some of the beginnings of you know,

employee processes, maybe a little bit on training,

things of that nature. So a little bit of financial.

Financial

scale, so we're really gonna start to see that the business has achieved

a certain level of performance to where its existence isn't in total question,

right? You've you've already got you know some things kind of working

for you where you've got people process systems in place.

From there, we we tend to scale up in terms of organizations.

That's about our starting place,

but a lot of companies that we're working with are really trying to

get from that place to being a place at a place where they would be ~ able

to have an

Institutional investor come in,

and that typically starts to move into seven figures of profit.

And then a lot of the times the companies that we're working with

are also companies that are much deeper into their life cycles where they're trying

to get from you know three million of profit to seven million or seven million

to twelve million or twelve million to twenty-five.

And so we work with companies kind of throughout that spectrum.

But for us, in terms of working with an organization,

we really need to start to see some of the semblances of like

a business that's that's really trying to get to scale.

Although I'll say the book and some of our online materials and things that

we have at our website will help companies from day one,

you know, in terms of thinking through some of these topics.

But in terms of like where we can be helpful to our organization

and start to interact with them one-on-one,

~ we're we're starting to see again some signs of like the the business kind

of really starting to look like ~ a business as opposed to a soul soul sole

practitioner practitioner.

And I w I would bet that you you know,

there's a fee associated with the type of assistance you guys provide.

And so there probably has to be a level of success that kind of justifies that

fee where y you guys are going to be able to provide the benefits that

~ outweigh that fee. ~ is there kind of a a baseline there that

you would recommend when it really makes sense to start paying for a coach,

paying for help and growing your business,

rather than, you know, grabbing

I guess I don't have a better word than cheaper,

but the more do-it-yourself resources like reading a book or listening to podcasts,

something that's more readily available.

Yeah, I think that's a great point.

And and you know, when you're early in a business,

the competition for resources and your personal compensation

is pretty real.

yeah, most business startups, cash is tight.

They don't have a lot of money to spread around.

So

Yeah, cash is tight. When cash is tight,

when your resources and your compensation are in competition for each other,

you really have to take advantage of all the things that are available,

like you know, podcasts, books,

et cetera, things that are high value,

low cost. So then what happens is you get to a place to where

the business has scale, and again,

you've got these people processing systems,

to where all of a sudden you start to see a little bit of a diminishing return

for low-cost elements.

Value in it, right? There's always value.

Like I buy books, I mean, I'll I'm the first one to go to half-price books

and I'll I'll buy a $7 book. I'll I'll go to you know Amazon or Barnes Noble

and I'll get a $30 hardcover brand new.

And you know, I'm the first one that will buy you know a book and and kind

of use it to help grow on something that is really a topic of interest to

me at that time. But at some point there tends to be a little

bit of diminishing returns to that,

in the sense of at some point you need in a lot of entrepreneurial journeys,

someone who's been there and done that who can.

Help shortcut getting from here to there.

And so, you know, a lot of times kind of ~ lower cost content is just

not going to ultimately get you there.

It may get you started in the thought process,

but it's not going to get you all the way there.

And so that tends to be where ~ organizations like ours can kind of start

to play a role. ~ I would also say CEO peer groups can also play a role in that.

There's some great you know organizations out there that aren't terribly expensive

but can give you ~ a little bit of a peer network to start to grow from.

But those sorts of things when all your financial resources start to grow

and you start to kind of place higher and higher value on your time and

you want to find short, ~ shorter paths to success,

that's really where like CEO peer groups,

firms like ours, consultants, etc.,

coaches can really come into play to help you,

know, short circuit kind of that that growth path.

And I know ~ clearly with y your guys' background,

your personal background, experience,

the success you guys have seen.

It appears you guys provide extreme value,

real value. But we we live in a time where it seems like almost everyone that gets

~ laid off or ~ downsized is all of a sudden a coach or a consultant.

maybe without the background and the experience.

What advice would you have for someone

that is that at that point where they need a little bit more specific advice,

they need some coaching, they need that shortcut.

how do they find and vet a a coach,

a consultant, a firm like yours that's gonna provide real value rather than somebody

that just decided being a coach was better than finding a new job?

Yeah, so I that's a great point.

And I do think you have to be a little bit of careful where you spend your time

and money and particularly your time,

especially almost at any stage of business,

time is our greatest asset and our most expensive ~ resource.

So where I generally tend to coach folks is you want to have kind of mentors,

if you will, or advisors, however you want phrase it,

somebody who's on your team, kind of at three different levels,

and each different level is going to be weighted towards where you're

at in your life cycle. So for

Three levels are theory, next is witness,

and last is the practitioner.

And so theory is somebody who you can learn from who actually has studied the topic,

they have put books out on it,

they may have classes on it, but they they're teaching in theory,

meaning they've studied it, they may have even had some relative experiences,

but they've never actually probably done it themselves.

And this is going to be the type of mentorship that's the easiest to access,

and it's probably

going to be the least expensive,

right? But it can be very helpful.

And that's available in different kind of formats,

all the way from traditional university,

all the way through non-traditional education.

Then you have the witness and the witness is somebody who really has been close

to somebody who's done it. And so that person that maybe got laid

off that started their own practice who was CFO for an organization

or somebody who was an operating executive

or partner inside of organization.

Maybe they weren't like the guy or girl,

but they they weren't, you know,

they're not far from it. They kind of witnessed what happened.

That's another form of mentor advisor you can get.

And that's going to probably ink up,

you know, eke up a little bit in,

you know, cost, but probably somebody who's a little bit closer to what it takes.

And then the last is the actual practitioner,

the person that's been there and done it.

And I really encourage people to anytime you're going to spend time

and money to think about where they fit in that spectrum.

and to make sure you're allocating your time and financial resources appropriately.

And so one of the biggest mistakes we tend to see people make is to

put too much time and money into mentors or advisors that are theorists

as opposed to you know actual practitioners.

You've got to weigh each one of those things with time and money appropriately.

That's a good way to break that down.

I like that. And ~ yeah, I c I can relate to those.

I think I've benefited from ~ all three types of advisors,

but I've never heard it broken down like that.

I'll sign up for all this stuff,

like I I I love it, but I am going to have a sharp lens for

Is this something that maybe I can listen to on my own time when I'm working

out or driving, etc.? And, you know,

use in that fashion, or is it something I'm gonna actually take?

If I'm gonna take an hour out of my day to do something kind of in the eight

to five realm, it's gotta be, you know,

it it's gotta be somebody whom I find impressive.

~ you know, outside of those hours,

I'll kind of wait different ways,

but that's kind of how I guard my time and you know,

financial wallet, if you will,

and that stuff is if it's gonna enter my nine to five or my eight to five,

it's gotta be.

You know, it's gotta be somebody who's been someplace and done something pretty

important for me to dedicate an hour during the day.

Outside of that, I'm a little bit more,

you know, I'll take a little bit of risk in terms of time.

But you know, during that window in particular,

I'm I'm you know, it's it's gotta be important.

you gotta have that value add and I I love that.

While you're driving, working out,

the podcast, the audio books, things like that are are awesome.

Very little risk, very little cost,

but to give up time that could be spent growing your business,

making money, that that's valuable and they better give you some value there.

Yeah, exactly. I mean I'll I'll go to the education buffet ~ you know before

and after work, but during the the main hours I I you know,

I want a particular meal served a certain way if I'm gonna give up an hour.

Yeah. That's meat and potatoes

time, not salad time. man.

you know that that steak medium and frites although they're French fries

I'm not sure why they call them frites but yeah that's that's the way I like it.

Yeah.

That's that's the only meal I want to eat between nine and five when it comes

to ~ education so to speak.

yeah, for sure. W well I wanted to move into the ~ and A side of things

and talk about that half of your business.

For the entrepreneur, the business owner that's out there that ~ is either ready

to start looking at an exit or is just trying to plan ahead that three

to seven years ahead, they know they're kind of getting ready for that,

entering that market. What sort of things can they do to best be preparing

to to have a a solid valuation and have a business that is buyable

So again, great question. And I'm gonna give a couple different answers here.

So one time I was asked what time frame should I think about if

I want full liquidity for my business both financially and time wise?

And I wanna be thoughtful and achieve a premium valuation.

How should I think about that timeline?

And I took a deep breath. Eight years.

And I think the the the guy that asked you the question almost fainted.

but but it really is a long journey in the sense of if you want full liquidity from

your business from a time and financial perspective,

and you want to do it in a premium way.

And there's all kinds of answers that I'll get to here that shorten this timeline,

but I want to give you the premium answer first.

So let's break that down. Eight years,

you know, typically one year for internal prep.

So that's team.

Right, do we have the right people on the bus process?

Do we have the right systems in place,

etc.? We want to make sure that we've got some of those things buttoned

up long before we ever go into a process so that we got history in terms

of them working. Secondly, once we get through that first year of internal prep,

now we're thinking about external prep and transaction.

That's going to be finding an advisor,

right, to help market the business,

help you get it sold. That's gonna be finding a MA attorney who really focuses

on ~ MA work.

And so again, I can share a little bit about that,

but it's really important to have advisors that focus only on MA and the type

of MA that you're looking at doing.

tax, I mean, when it comes to transactions,

tax is much different than just general ~ annual tax.

Even for business owners, it can be quite a bit different.

So you want to assemble that team,

you want to go to market, you're actually gonna transact.

So once you transact, now we're two years into this process.

For most CEOs, they're gonna end up kind of transitioning over a two.

To three year period, right? So either there's gonna be an internal candidate

or an external candidate. It's gonna take some time to bring that person

up to make sure that they're gonna succeed.

And then ultimately you start to see the first component of kind

of liquidity from time is maybe two to three years post-transaction.

And then you're you're gonna see.

So it when you transact it, most for most people,

~ they're going to have some sort of contingent consideration,

largely in the form of rolled equity.

And so when you transact again,

sorry, I'm gonna go back.

Back a little bit here. you're probably you may be asked to leave 10

to 30 percent of equity on the table.

you got that CEO transition,

so you've transitioned your role,

so your time's starting to drop off,

but you may still own 10 to 30 percent of the business,

and the next transaction may be five years after your first transaction.

And so let's kind of backtrack here.

We've got a Europrep internal,

we've got our team and transaction,

we've got three years of CEO transition and probably two more.

Years of kind of ultimate growth,

readiness, and final transaction.

And you add all that up, and it's it's eight years start to finish to

get a premium transaction done.

And a lot of times people they end up there,

but they don't realize they're going to.

And so we try to preach a little bit of message of awareness is start

to think about that earlier so that you're not you know tied up

in your business kind of time-wise and financially wise longer than

you may otherwise want to be.

And look, we we do transactions where you know somebody comes in and says,

hey, I'm ready to sell and I'd like to be,

you know, I'd like to conclude a transaction.

You know, we even have ~ that conversation going on right now where that somebody

would like to conclude conclude a transaction before year end.

~ but it just whenever we're limited on preparations,

that's going to potentially have some sort of impact on ultimate valuation

and how a process goes. And there's still likely gonna be ~ several months

or even years of kind of

financial and time ~ tied up in the business even post-transaction ~ even

if we start today transact at the end of the year so but it does i guess

in the in short it does take time to you know thoughtfully transact

and the number of transactions where we see people close and the next

day they're you know doing something else is pretty low there usually

is some sort of transition period from transaction to transition

I would imagine ~ you know, every transaction is a a negotiation.

there's probably a trade off with those two things.

is there kind of a generic relationship there between the the trade

off of valuation for you know a a two or three year time commitment

or that that roll over equity,

or is that pretty unique to each transaction?

You know, again, great question.

You came well prepared today. So I think ~ you know,

it's probably not a sharp,

you know, immediate answer or kind of go to.

What I would say though is generally helpful is when we're running a process,

if somebody's willing to roll a little bit of equity and to stay

on through a reasonable transition period,

what that do what that's doing is it's reducing risk to the buyer.

And anytime we're reducing risk for somebody,

they're probably willing to be a little bit more competitive in their offer compared

to if somebody is not willing to roll or they want to walk away from

the company within a month after the close,

what that is doing is positioning more risk in a transact transaction because

the buyer knows that the seller no longer has any financial incentives

for the business to continue to succeed,

and they're not really willing to put in any time to ensure the continued success

of the business. And so that

That

actually heightens risk and probably lowers the ability for that buyer

to be competitive with their offer.

And so and a lot of times it's not really the seen in the sense of,

you know, the buyer won't share with you,

hey, if you're willing to roll and stick around,

we're gonna give you more. And if you're not,

we're gonna give you less. It really is just almost implied in the valuations.

And I would say we see it and it we feel it,

but it's looking at kind of just pointing to a raw data point is pretty difficult.

But

If I were to, and again, you this is all kind of gut feel.

There's not like a lot of hard data,

given that this may live forever,

and I do want to caveat this. If we were to say the difference,

I mean, it can be as much as fifty percent difference in valuation from somebody

who's willing to roll equity and really hard charge and transition well

to somebody who's kind of coming to the table saying,

kind of I'm tired and I just want my money and I'm gonna be,

you know, out after the close,

it can be as much as fifty percent intuitively,

I would say.

Wow. I I would not have guessed that much.

~ as y you and I discussed earlier,

~ we just recently concluded an exit of our business and

we negotiated and entertained a number of offers,

a few structured both ways with some pretty considerable rollover

and time commitment and some that were kind of just a check and walk away

and and a few that had a a balance somewhere in the middle and we didn't

see that quite that big of a split.

That's a a number that surprises me a little bit,

but

For for the owner that ~ is in that,

Yeah.

you know, maybe they've waited too long.

they're just done, they're over it,

they're ready to get out. Is there any hope to have a successful transaction

if they're unwilling to leave that liquidity on the table or or that

~ rollover equity, or if they're unwilling to give that time commitment?

Yes, th there are things that can be done and well go back to one kind

of comment you said with disparities.

So I would say that was kind of the widest range,

you know, they can be narrower.

Yeah.

So I think that's and every process is unique.

It also depends on scale and buyer,

et cetera. And and so and also if you're involving strategics,

I mean sometimes a strategic in particular

So if you're selling your company into a company that's already doing what you do,

~ there may be kind of a reduced emphasis on the importance of the owner,

which can be helpful to somebody who's,

you know, wanting to kind of transition more quickly.

So again, those are some caveats,

but it can be as wide as 50%. It can be as narrow as,

you know, zero or ten percent too.

It just depends kind of across the board there.

So and then switching gears into your question,

I think there are a lot of things people can do.

One of the things that we start all of our

Projects start off with a QVG assessment that's a Westlake trademarked quality value

growth or QVG assessment where we really look at certain gaps inside

of the business from an investor's or buyer's lens.

And what we're trying to do kind of in those early days when we're working with

a company is to take the buyer's lens or investor's lens and really kind

of identify what they're gonna see and to try to shore up those gaps

as quickly as possible. And so one of the things that we could do if you're kind

of been at the business.

Business. we again I'll take a case study.

We had somebody who was in those exact shoes.

They were at the business in the business for a long time and kind of getting tired,

maybe had a little bit of health issues starting to go on.

And what we ended up kind of doing is starting conversations with

the number two person in their company in very early in

the process about potentially kind of rising up to be president

and then ultimately CEO in the organization.

And so by the time we got to market,

we actually had an identified

Leader

of the business who is a known quantity.

I think they had been there 17 or 18 years.

And so they had built a lot of historical operating knowledge.

They had relationships with all the customers and employees,

et cetera. They were kind of a natural go-to.

And so we really were able to tell a reduced risk story that even though

our founder may be going away shortly after the close,

we actually had this next person in line who is the natural leader fit,

so to speak. And so there's things we can do throughout the business

to communicate reduced risks that.

That you know, it ideally we'd have more time,

but if we don't, there's still things that can be done to present a better story

to a potential buyer.

that's great. And ~ my specific example,

~ the one firm we were looking at,

that was kind of their business model.

They actually they would not allow the owner to stay on.

They they ran an in house CEO training organization.

And so when they bought a business,

they had a CEO kind of waiting in the wings ready to go and the

old owner stepped out, the new owner came in and took over and and that

was kind of their business model.

So

I thought that was a unique business model.

That's not something you see all the time,

is it?

No, you know, but again, the the wonderful thing about this environment today

is the universe for buyers has expanded so much that I would say ten years ago,

rules of thumb were a little bit more applicable.

~ and you could speak to maybe,

you know, eighty-five percent instances.

I would say today a lot of times when we're speaking,

we're kind of if we're giving a general generality,

it's probably only sixty-five percent,

you know, applicable. There's just another third of the industry that's doing

all sorts of different things.

That maybe they weren't doing 10 years ago.

And so it's kind of an exciting time to be a seller because there are

a little lot of different flavors in the ice cream shop of MA,

so to speak. It's not just vanilla and chocolate anymore.

There's you know pistachio and ~ coffee nutmeg and all sorts of different flavors

of ice cream in the MA ice cream shop,

so to speak.

That's a great analogy and that's exactly what we found.

We negotiated offers with I think five different individuals or firms

and every one of them was extremely unique in the the structure of the deal,

the payout, the time commitment,

rolled equity. ~ you know,

they were they were all very unique.

It was eye opening to me that it wasn't just a a cut and clear process

or cut and clear formula, but ~ it it was like everybody just making it

up as they went.

So I've heard the statistic that ~ seventy-five percent of people that

try to sell their business are unsuccessful in that endeavor.

~ could you speak to that statistic a little bit?

That that sounds like an alarming statistic.

is it something that's maybe misunderstood or w what are the pieces that really make

the difference there?

Yeah, so I think that's probably right.

And I think a couple things that I would recommend to increase those probabilities.

Number one is having a strong intermediary on your side can be hugely helpful.

And so I do think that's something that you know we generally advocate

for is having an intermediary with you,

but making sure that they're qualified.

There's a lot of difference between

You know, the the upper and lower range of the the investment banking,

and then you go below that and you've got business brokers.

But there's a lot of difference between you know firm to firm

and individual to individual. And so I would do a lot of betting before

I selected someone, but I would probably encourage you to have somebody because what

it will allow you to do is to have somebody who you know does transactions

for a living on your side. It's gonna allow you to spend your time working

on your business as opposed to working on your

business and your transaction,

even though at some point you'll also be working on your transaction,

but it can be a helpful kind of time saver,

~ time leverage, if you will. Those that that right there in and

of itself will increase your odds of getting a transaction done.

Going from there though, what I would say is,

you know, being kind of thoughtful in terms of preparation.

Again, if you've selected an advisor,

it's giving you a prescriptive path to,

you know, being able to make it through a diligence process,

follow it.

So one of the things that ~ we like to encourage our clients to do is

to get some financial diligence done and out of the way early on.

Financial diligence is the number one bust contributor of all deals,

meaning a person goes to market or a company goes to market,

their financials are not in line to go through a diligence process,

and the buyer is just left with,

you know, what do I do with this?

We can't get there. And so the buyer will either walk away or they'll retrade

the seller.

Which oftentimes also leads to a bust.

And so I think two things if you get nothing out of this podcast that you

can do to increase your odds is selecting a high-quality intermediary.

Okay. Preferably if your business is doing over a million of profit,

you want somebody that has a securities license,

and there's all sorts of reasons for that.

but then number two would be to make sure your your organization,

your your company is is diligence ready from a financial perspective.

That's really, really important.

Again, that's gonna that's gonna increase.

I that's some good advice there.

And I know w we did have a an awesome broker kind of helping us walk through

it and we had a great and A attorney on our side and that diligence process

was still I I had no idea that ~ you could go that deep into some of our records.

It it was a eye opening experience for me and ~ I think I would

willingly sign up for a number of prostate exams before I went through that again.

It was not a fun experience.

Yeah. Yeah,

it's like a it's like having a procedure with no anesthesia at times.

Yeah, yeah. And

~

~ i at the time we were growing and the reason we ~ had caught the

eye of some buyers was because we were growing.

So trying to keep running a growing organization,

trying to maintain growth and then also go through that process.

~ it was like working three full time jobs at once.

That was it was not a fun experience,

but

Well, you were in such a you know hot space roofing.

There's just so much going on there right now.

it's and there has been for some time.

So it makes a ton of sense. And you know,

the the other thing I would just say is like making sure

the business performance and the industry interest is timed well.

So again, kind of the internal,

external. So for instance, if your business is growing well,

that's gonna be highly contributed to getting a successful transaction done.

If your industry is very active.

in terms of MA, that's going to help.

so conversely, if your business is you know underperforming or kind

of sliding off and you can kind of see it in the monthly numbers,

just know that it's gonna be fairly difficult to transact or to transact

at sort of market multiple, so to speak.

And or if your industry is starting to see some declines in interest,

kind of same thing. So you do there are some things that you can look

at and just say, you know, is this going to be a good time or not?

So if the business and industry are going up,

it's going to be a much better

Time than if the business and industry are going down.

I mean, I I know it sounds simple,

but sometimes people like overlook that or they think,

you know, the business and industry are going down,

and now's the time I'm going to sell and get a premium multiple for their company.

And that that just you know really doesn't happen.

It's not probably realistic in a lot of instances.

Yeah.

I think there's just a a lot of luck involved there of kind of timing

the the market right, especially on the industry side of things.

You might be more in control of the success of your business,

but ~ the the market activity and your particular industries,

there's just a lot of timing and a little bit of luck involved on that side

of things. I know you you and I were discussing previously that you know,

you mentioned roofing and kind of the the trades

service industry as a whole is extremely hot right now.

~ you mentioned maybe somewhat unprecedented the way that industry is moving.

~ what are you seeing kind of in the market and how does that affect the

the and A world right now?

So great question and I'll go back to you know the luck commentary.

I think, you know, that's

Probably true in the s bigger picture sense of like you're lucky,

~ we'll use your instance if that's okay,

your example. So lucky to pick have picked roofing.

But when it comes to like specific industry activity,

there's actually a lot of data out there.

And so one of the things I would kind of encourage people to do is to,

you know, find some good data and just be aware of what's generally going

on in their industry. And you don't have to kind of keep up with it monthly,

but I do think like a check in every quarter or six months to see what's going

on with

With activity in your space is pretty important as a you know founder and owner.

Look, for a lot of us, we're doing this entrepreneurial entrepreneurial journey

for a number of reasons, but you know,

financial outcome is probably part of that,

right? And so having a little bit of pulse on what's going on in your industry

is important. And there's several industries that are experiencing all-time 20-year

highs in terms of both activity and valuation.

So roofing, ~ HVAC, anything with utility services,

food manufacturing, there's a number

number of industries and they're all industries that are doing real things,

but they're industries that are seeing a real kind of renaissance

in terms of valuation and views of valuation.

The other one is, you know, asset management or wealth management.

That's another one that's seeing kind of all time highs in terms

of where valuations are. And so for folks that own those sorts of companies,

any of the ones I mentioned, and there's probably several others,

I mean it really is kind of an interesting time to at least understand what your

company is worth and or potentially consider you know

how you might want to view the asset and potential kind of turning that asset into

~ liquid liquid capital because there are some cycles to all this stuff.

I mean they in a lot of instances the valuations don't just kind of keep going up.

They kind of cycle and then they kind of return to some sort of mean

and then cycle again and cycle again.

But those are some industries that are experiencing kind of 20-year all-time highs

Yeah, I know that

from the data.

the the roofing industry is very hot right now,

but maybe in HVAC is ~ even far exceeding that.

I'm talking to people and and hearing stories of,

you know, twelve X, thirteen X EBITDA exits.

as a someone that's maybe more on the investor side of thing

and looking at investments right now,

that just

It it seems almost mind boggling to me ~ to invest in something with that much risk

at that multiple. Could you help us understand why that is?

Why is that industry so hot right now and what justifies those multiples?

So

There is some level of justification,

although at certain points in time I,

you know, tend to question a little bit of the sanity of it,

right? So it's it's hard not to to some degree.

When in particular there's another industry I'm thinking of right now

is talking to a company they got an unsolicited offer for seventeen times EBITDA.

Now, if you think about seventeen times EBITDA,

and this is a different industry than than HVAC,

but it's another one that's kind of peaking.

You think about the number of years after tax it would take to earn

that purchase price back. The individual would ask,

you know, what should we do? And I said,

Hey, you know, we always come from a position of advising the way we'd want

to be advised. And so I'd love to run a process for you,

but

Maybe we can just help you get this this exact unsolicited offer done.

I mean, at 17 times, you're really kind of taking enough chips off

the table to ensure family security,

individual security. You're probably kind of getting pretty darn close

to a peak multiple. It's hard to kind of sit there and say you shouldn't just kind

of run at that. ~ and so for HVAC,

what's gone on there is you've seen a number of kind of platforms that

are private equity owned.

And as they've continued to scale,

their platforms are going up what we call the EBITDA ladder in the sense

of the platforms multiple kind of continues to tick up.

And so as the platforms multiple continues to tick up,

it allows them to pay more for companies that they're acquiring into that platform.

And so what that means is if you've got a platform that you think is worth

20 times EBITDA.

If you're buying a company for 10 times EBITDA,

it's kind of a no-brainer, even if 10 times seems expensive.

And why is that? So if my company is worth 20 times EBITDA,

let's say my platform HVAC company over here,

I think it's worth 20 times EBITDA.

And I'm gonna pay, I'm gonna buy somebody's company doing ~ a million

of EBITDA and I'm gonna pay them 10 times for it.

The moment I bring that million of EBITDA into my platform company and

it seasons a little bit, that million of EBITDA is now worth

$20 million. And so by doing a transaction for $1 million

Yeah.

of EBITDA at 10X and bringing that million of EBITDA into my platform company that's

worth 20 times EBITDA.

I've actually made about $10 million as the owner of this larger organization

at close. And so that's kind of what we're seeing going on in the HVAC space:

you've got these large-scale platforms that have very large even multiples,

and they're able to afford to pay more to bring in additional companies into their

platform through acquisition.

Gotcha. Yeah, I think that's what I was seeing in roofing as well.

Just ~ you know, I'm I'm just a lowly roofer here looking at what I

see on the market, but there's five or six,

well, really probably three, three massive national companies with two more kind

of biting at their heels that are competing over you know,

the the largest spot in the industry.

And they're buying up, you know,

hundred million dollar a year companies at ~ twelve or thirteen X.

And so then you have these smaller companies or the private equity that looks

at that and goes, okay, well, if we go buy five twenty million dollar companies

at an eight X, now we've got a hundred million dollar company we can sell

at a twelve X. And and the next level of investors down the next level

of private equity looks at that and goes,

Okay, well, I can go buy four five million dollar companies at a six X.

and have a twenty million dollar company to sell at an eight X and it

it just keeps laddering up like you were describing.

It have you seen cycles like that?

Have you seen that anomaly occur previously in your career?

How at at some point in time that has to come to an end.

What does that look like?

So I definitely have seen this before.

And what I really refer to this back to is the Ebida Ladder.

So let me kind of walk through that really quick and we'll talk about

how potentially this journey goes for these different industries.

So the Ebita Ladder basically starts off at the bottom rung.

And the bottom rung is going to be what we kind of call for,

let's just say, industries and businesses that do real stuff.

It's going to be two guys in a truck,

right? Or two people in a truck.

And essentially that's going to be kind of an individual practitioner

or a very small business. And those tend to trade for maybe two to three times.

Times profitability. And it's really EBITDA at that point's not a total measure.

It's really more of like seller discretionary earnings or kind of profitability.

As you scale all the way up to the top of the ladder,

you may hit a publicly traded company with full share of liquidity for investors.

And that EBITDA multiple, maybe,

you know, 20 times. Okay. And so you go from the bottom rung of let's

say two times to the top rung of 20,

and everybody else is slotting in the different rung along the way.

And so you might start to see in this example.

A business at 5 million of EBITDA is going to start to trade at seven times,

and a business at 25 million of EBITDA may start to trade at 12 to 13 times,

and then you may see something even more scaled at 15 times,

and ultimately you get to that very large,

maybe a brand that we even recognize kind of trading at 20 times EBITDA,

full liquidity on the New York Stock Exchange.

And so these organizations are going along that journey of the EBITDA ladder.

And so where this kind of ends,

if you will, ~ will likely be with.

Several of these companies IPOing into the public markets so that they ultimately

achieve that top rung of the ladder.

And so what you've seen is kind of these platforms being pieced together

at four and five times EVITA, and then you know eight to ten times,

and then probably low teens, and then ultimately those organizations

are gonna be scaled to a point where they've got hundreds of millions of EVITA,

if not a billion of EVITAB, and then ultimately they'll IPO and probably trade

it around 20 times and they'll continue acquiring.

And why is that? Because they're gonna be trading at 20 times,

they're gonna have

Full liquidity of their shares and they're gonna be able to pay maybe eight

to twelve times for companies that they buy.

And again, they're using that even a multiple arbitrage as a

way of increasing shareholder value.

Okay. So this is not necessarily a cycle with a a dead end at the end of the road.

It it may continue.

Well, so that's the good picture,

and there will be companies that get to that,

no doubt in my mind.

The tougher picture will be not everybody will get there.

And unfortunately, somebody will over-leverage and underoperate,

and you'll see a flame out. And we've seen this in industry,

industry after industry, time and time again,

where is where somebody I call it over-leverage and underoperate,

meaning they borrowed too much money to build their scale.

And as they were building scale,

they were not putting in place the right people systems and process

to keep everything growing in a uniform and healthy way.

And ultimately ~ performance will go down,

leverage is too high, and you know,

we'll see a flame out for sure.

And so I've I feel fully convinced we'll see ~ a really wonderful scenario,

or maybe multiple wonderful scenarios where

You've got these companies at IPO and create unique opportunities

for stakeholders along the way.

And I feel pretty confident we're we'll see,

you know, an organization or two kind of flame out and and you know

be some tougher stuff and have to reorganize itself and it'll be some tougher times.

But those things are natural. It's part of the scaling journey.

And I will say though, overall,

it does create some really unique opportunities for stakeholders across the board.

It really does. If you think about where valuations were for you know,

roof.

electrical companies, you think about fence,

rental, you think about a lot of these industries that have seen some renaissance

periods of of ~ valuation. You think about where they were 10 years

ago compared to today, it's still it's still pretty good times.

You know, it's still still there's still been some benefits

to this valuation renaissance,

if you will.

Well you just ~ mentioned one of my key questions I wanted to ask.

is there kind of a a rough generic valuation model that people could apply

to their businesses that transcends most industries?

I know ~ you know, as a business owner,

i that's a huge question. Is what what is my business worth?

What does exit look like? And what what does the future look like as we plan for

the next generation or retirement or that kind of thing.

Is there a a rough generic model that we could apply to get a a rough idea

of valuation?

So I'm gonna give a very general answer to that,

and I'm gonna give a very specific answer to it.

So the general answer is think about that evida ladder.

We spent some time kind of talking through that.

So a business that's maybe early or small,

so again, very you know owner-centric,

if you will, maybe two employees not making a ton of money,

let's call it low six figures.

that business is gonna you know generally be two to three times profitability.

And again, that's assuming that the business is diverse and it's actually got some.

Underpinnings of a real business.

As you start to scale, let's say you get to low seven figures of profitability,

you're gonna start to see that four to five X range.

You get to more of an institutional level.

So we kind of call that around three million of profitability or EBITDA.

You're starting to become more institutional in terms of ~ private equity funds

themselves will buy you as a platform company,

and that's a probably a whole hour in of in and of itself defining what

a platform company is. But you start to be more institutional,

that can be anywhere from five to six times.

Even seven. And then when you get to 10 million of EBITDA,

that's really when you start to see the high single digits.

And depending on your industry,

as we talked about, maybe even low double digits.

And so for most of us, that's going to be kind of the path that's most

of you know of most importance.

And then again, at the top end of the ladder,

you've got publicly traded companies that are you know in the mid-teens,

high teens, if you will.

But that's maybe a good way to think about it from a broad perspective.

From a narrow perspective, you can dial that in in two ways.

Number one is the size and scale of the business,

and secondly, is your industry multiple.

And so there is quite a bit of a difference between ~ maybe being a roofer

and maybe being a general contractor,

for instance. And so we can kind of narrow those ranges down within a pretty good,

you know, kind of zip code, if you will,

of valuation by having both industry and range.

And we publish.

A lot of data. We just actually sent out an email today for Q1 statistics are in.

~ And so we actually publish a lot of data of where multiples are based

on size and industry. And if you have those two variables,

you can get a pretty good sense for what your business is worth.

Things that will make it worth more or less will vary from company to company.

So they're fairly obvious. So if you have a million-dollar profit,

three million, five million dollar EVIT of business,

and you've got you know half of the business is tied up with one customer,

your business is gonna be worth.

Less than somebody who's got a lot of diversification of their customer base.

And so, and there's just some kind of intuitive things that you know they're gonna

strike you as you know being fairly self-explanatory as to what would make

a business be worth more or less.

But those sorts of things can impact kind of one layer deeper.

So size, number one, industry,

number two, the actual business being kind of a the third kind

of dial-in factor along the way.

Okay. Well thank you. That's very helpful and answers a lot of questions

for a lot of business owners 'cause that's kind of a a key part of that,

you know, s eight year preparation and sales cycle and that three

to seven year planning cycle is looking forward to that exit and knowing what

to expect. So

Awesome.

Yeah,

no, it's ~ it it's it's you know all important stuff.

And I think and again if you think about the reverse engineering,

one of the things that we do is actually take the current valuation

and the forward valuation so that we can have a sense for what it

is that we're really going after and how important that is to the individual.

And a lot of times it's really that what motivates somebody is kind

of understanding what that forward value is too.

So not just today, but also thinking about you know,

if you were to grow and succeed,

what that forward value could be too and what that would mean for

Or you know yourself, your employees,

your investors, potentially, family,

etc.

Yeah.

Well, I know you mentioned you guys handle kind of two types of liquidity events.

One ~ a hundred percent liquidity or moving towards a hundred percent liquidity,

a major stake. And the second being just kind of taking some chips off the table,

you you threw out, you know, selling thirty percent to get ~ some capital liquid

personally as well as reinvestment in the business.

what

What would motivate someone to do that second option?

Why why would someone want to sell off a minority stake and and how would that help

them eventually reach their major goals?

Yeah, so there's really three core reasons why they would want to do it.

Number one, they are desiring some level of personal financial flexibility,

but not wanting to sell the company.

And so a lot of times in those ~ what we call them like minority recapitalizations

or basically just selling something less than fifty percent of your business,

number one, they're gonna want to see a little bit of personal liquidity.

And and this is kind of common.

I mean, a lot of times people put 20 years into their business and they put

a lot of financial resources back in.

To it and so getting something back out but without selling can be

a number one driving motive motivation.

Number two, they want to have the opportunity to grow the business,

but again, not wanting to use their own capital.

And so if you think about taking some money out and putting some money

on balance sheet the business,

you're getting a bit of a double whammy.

Okay, so you're you're not only getting some capital back out of the business,

you're also not putting money back in in order to grow it.

And so a transaction that provides both

Opportunities can be you know of interest to a lot of people.

And then lastly, is you're typically gonna get a partner who's been there

and done that, who can kind of show you the ropes a little bit,

and then the theater system of the capital markets will actually be

a credential to ~ maybe when it comes time to sell the business ultimately will

be a credential on that part of the journey.

And so personal liquidity, personal imbalance sheet benefits,

and then lastly is having a partner who's maybe been there,

done that, and again, not without not without giving up control.

that makes a lot of sense. Well,

I know you mentioned just a moment ago you guys put out a a quarterly report with

some great resources in it. ~ I know you're a a multi-time best selling author.

You have a book coming out, either just came out or is coming out very soon.

~ if someone wants to take advantage of the resources that you have available

or if someone is interested is ~ coming on board with you as a client.

What's gonna be the best way to get a hold of those resources or get

in touch with you?

Well, we welcome all the above,

and we are really happy to provide a lot of data and industry information that's

available through our website,

so Westlake Securities.com. Our LinkedIn profile,

which we're pretty easy to find,

both Westlake Securities and Matt Andersen.

Andersen spelled with me at the end.

the two books that I have Completing the Deal and Intentional Growth

are available on Amazon. completing the deal is a great resource for those

who want to learn more about

transaction activities and what transactions look like,

preparing for preparing for a transaction,

what may be involved after a transaction is a great resource for that.

Intentional growth, which is available for pre-order and will come out October 20th.

Another great resource for those that want to grow and scale businesses

of all different sizes. I think this is a great resource for anyone who's

got a business from a million in revenue to ~ you know a billion in revenue.

I think it's a if you want to grow intentionally this can be a great resource

for a much

Wider audience of potential business owners out there.

And we give back a lot. This is the books have been a major give back for me.

If you've studied anything about author royalties,

you'll quickly realize that there's not a lot of ways to get wealthy writing

a business book in particular.

So for us, this is a bit of a way to kind of get more information in

the hands of business owners and really to provide a give back.

I also give a number of talks,

masterclasses. We have a workshop.

Our next workshop is coming up towards the end of June.

You're actually going to be able to hear from it's a very low-cost way

to hear from people who are actually in the trenches doing this every

day and can take your business and apply real life strategies and tactics

to help you get from where you are to where you want to be.

And so those are all great ways to reach out and to get involved with what we're

doing. But we give back a lot,

whether it's free data, whether it's low-cost books and low-cost content

or free content or low-cost workshops.

We're doing like we're doing an event at the university.

At Georgia next week. We've got an afternoon plan with some great speakers.

The admission for that event is very low because it's in partner with partnership

with the University of Georgia.

It's going to be a $50 admission.

So we've got kind of elements that can range from free content all the

way to our full-on consulting services,

advisory services, and everywhere in between for kind of almost any budget.

But we really feel like after 27 years personally and 23 years

of personal and business success,

we want

We want to give back to the business community,

and so we've got something, some piece of content or some piece of advice that

can be given across any budget.

Awesome. Well, I really appreciate that as a a business owner.

And yeah, I know those that content that can be very beneficial.

so from all of us small business owners,

thank you. And I'll make sure we get all those links in the show notes here.

Your LinkedIn profile, Westlake Securities dot com,

and a link to those ~ books on Amazon so our listeners can ~ just hit

the show notes and click on those links to get right to you.

So

Awesome, and I'm really excited about intentional growth.

We've gotten quotes and feedback from Salvatore Ferragamo Jr.,

who's the CEO of El Boro winery,

which is the Ferragamo family winery,

Charlie Amado, who's one of the owners of the San Antonio Spurs

and chairman of SWBC, ~ Abby Millot,

who's president and publisher for the Austin Business Journal.

I mean, I could keep going, but we've had a number of just really,

I'm almost like honored as to the quotes we've gotten back from these industry

leaders that are in support of the book.

It's really kind of meant to provide an unlock and a proven guided framework

for those that are on this business journey with us to have a better path to growth.

And so it's ~ again just been an honor to see some of the comments that we've gotten

back and quotes I've gotten back from business leaders that have kind

of been there and done that, that have viewed the book and said,

hey, there's something here.

That's fantastic. Congratulations.

Well, this next question is a question I ask of every guest.

Yeah.

~ are you a person of a particular faith tradition?

And if so, how has that affected your business journey and your leadership?

Yeah, so happy to share. ~ so I am definitely a a believer in in Christ.

I believe he is my Lord and Savior.

And so along the way, you know,

that I think part of that is kind of keeping him an open mind.

So we've had folks of all different kinds of religious beliefs

and big believer that, you know,

people can and should see you coming before long before you get there

in terms of your works, deeds,

and activities. And that's kind of where we really focus from a day

to day business perspective is leading through example.

But when you think about our

company in terms of advising the way we want to be advised,

being a relationship first firm,

being focused on outcomes and delivering results,

toughing it out when it needs to be toughed out.

All those things I think are kind of deeply rooted in some of what I think

are core tenants of my belief system.

But it's something that's you know been very important to me.

~ I've been

None of us is perfect and but a better practitioner over some days

and years versus others. But if at the end of the core,

at the end of the day, those are things that really matter to me.

And I think they shine through in the sense of we don't really go out there,

we're not very public. In fact,

this is one of the few public pieces where you'll hear me actually say that,

but you asked the question, so I'm gonna answer it.

so we hope that what we do is able to be seen through our work product

and how we interact with people and

That they would understand that long before.

~ we we we answered the question in terms of seeing kind of our our good deeds

so to speak. we're big believers in giving back.

We raised several hundred thousand dollars this year to help

a homelessness organization. We've helped all sorts of organizations over

the last kind of decade and it's a really important part to what we do

in terms of our purpose statement being delivering value that changes lives.

And so when you think about the companies we work with,

we've had some fantastic outcomes.

Our folks at work in our organization have had some wonderful

nerfful personal outcomes with their time with us at Westlake,

all the way through our community in terms of give back.

And that whole cycle I think is kind of reflective of a core belief system that's

important to, you know, myself and probably a lot of folks in our organization.

Fantastic. Well, thank you for your ~ openness and vulnerability there.

I appreciate that. I know early on ~ we talked about podcasts,

we talked about going to the the discount bookstore and getting books.

you've talked about mentors and and we had a discussion about coaching.

What have been the best resources to grow you as a leader?

So another great question. I think a couple things I would really point to.

I've been a ferocious reader. I've consumed thousands of books throughout

my adult life. I've been a ferocious journaler,

which means accountability to outcomes in my mind.

~ and then all like and not just business wise,

personal. I've got things that I've kind of written down,

I track over time, and I really try to hold myself accountable.

And that's in all aspects of life.

And again, not every day is perfect,

not every month's perfect, every year's perfect,

but I do think that those are two core areas that are hugely helpful.

I also really do prioritize. Look,

there's times I unplug and unwind this,

that, and the other. But if you're on this business journey,

I think the sacrifices that we go through

You know, it's important to continue to personally develop along the

way because in the end, that's what what makes them all worthwhile.

Because as we create more value in ourselves,

that's going to translate to our business.

We're going to bring more value to our stakeholders,

like our employees, et cetera,

even our customers, vendors, suppliers.

And so that self-education is really important.

I've gotten more into, you know,

podcasts. ~ Audible, I've kind of gone back and forth with over time,

but I really like podcasts. I'll listen to ~ great,

like I think this is a great podcast,

man. You've been there and done

Done it, right? You're bringing people that have been there and done

it to your audience. And so this is a type of podcast that I would listen

to is I want to hear from somebody who's actually been in the trenches

on a particular topic that I have interest in.

And I want to get that knowledge as best as I can.

But I would say first and foremost,

books, secondly, journal and accountability to outcomes personally

and professionally. And then ~ lastly is probably consuming podcast content from

people that have been there and done that.

man, well that's a a great way to wrap it up.

I think ~ just speaking with you,

the time that we have, I think we share a lot of similar values.

And I I could ask questions all afternoon,

but I know we're kind of up against the time limit because again,

you outlined the three types of mentorship or the three types of coaches,

and you fit into that third category.

You're somebody that's getting it done,

doing it, and and you've got a meeting to close a big deal this afternoon.

So we want to honor your time and make sure we get

you to that on time. So Matt, thank you so much for joining us.

~ I really appreciate your wisdom and your knowledge.

like I said, we'll get those links in the show notes so our listeners

can get in touch with you ~ or at least get a hold of your resources.

I really do appreciate the time.

Thank you.

Well, thank you. And as a quick reminder,

intentional growth is available on Amazon for pre-order.

Check out Westlake Securities.

I really appreciate the time we got to spend together this afternoon.

Thank you.

This has been fantastic. And thank you guys for joining us here on From

the Ground Up Show. Again, help me out.

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