Accountant's Flight Plan

What the Influx of Private Equity in the Accounting Industry Means for Your CPA Firm

• Brannon Poe/Laurens Ball/Morry Brown

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Why has there been such an increase in private equity buyers acquiring accounting firms and what does this mean for the industry? In this episode of the Accountant’s Flight Plan Podcast Brannon dives deeper into the subject and what it means for your firm with accounting practice intermediary, Laurens Ball and California market leader, Morry Brown. Laurens has been brokering deals on our team for five years now and Morry, a member of our sales team, has a background in outsourced CFO services and global investment banking with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. In this episode, you will learn why private equity is here and how it could benefit the profession in the long run. 


Private equity has entered the accounting world primarily because they see the value that CPAs provide. With the staffing shortage in full swing, accounting and bookkeeping services are in high demand. This means that accountants have more pricing power than they realize. With the opportunity to raise prices and increase revenue, firm owners could increase topline revenue and cash flow creating more value in their firms.


Buyers with private equity backing see this potential and want to capitalize on it. With the knowledge and experience to implement or streamline systems while consolidating multiple CPA firms, private equity buyers could optimize firms effectively. While this potential is exciting and comes with the opportunity for selling at progressively higher multiples, it is important for sellers to keep their vision top of mind. 


Whether selling to a private equity firm or not, finding the right fit buyer is key. Knowing what the buyer’s vision is and how they hope to grow the firm after close is crucial to knowing whether or not the deal will be successful. Cluing into the non-monetary elements of an offer is vital to knowing whether or not it is the right one for you and your employees. 


Are you considering a private equity buyer or looking to learn more about how the current market increases your pricing power as a firm owner? Read our Private Equity Market Report to dive deeper into this topic and learn what questions you should ask when considering these types of deals: Private Equity M&A in the Accounting Industry


Time stamps:

1:55 - Overview of where we are with Private Equity in the Accounting Industry

3:36 - How do you know if a PE buyer is right for you?

8:22 - Private equity’s impact on pricing valuation

10:50 - Will private equity increase top-line revenue?

14:15 - Knowing the buyer’s vision can indicate success

31:59 - Market knowledge & the non-monetary elements of an offer

35:00 - Wrap up and - book recommendations 


A lot of accounting firms are just not delivering business clients what they need. And so they open the door for someone who's going to run these CPA firms a lot more like a, like a business. You know, they're not they're they're going to run them in a way that's going to really optimize those firms. Brandon Poe and this is the Accountants Flight Plan podcast, where you can enjoy engaging conversations about mergers and acquisitions and accounting practice management. Listen in on strategies to build a more fun and valuable accounting firm. Welcome to the Accountants Flight Plan podcast. I'm excited to have two team members on today to talk about a subject that's, very interesting. In the profession, it's about private equity. So before we kick it off, a little bit about our guests. first of all, I'm Brandon Poem, the founder of Group advisors. And, we have Lawrence Ball and Maury Brown on, Lawrence. How about give a quick intro before we get started here? All right. Hi, I'm Lawrence. I have been working in business development for over 15 years, starting in New York and will sell home decor, also worked in the drone industry and now been with the group advisors selling CPA and accounting firms for the last four years. and Morrie, tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure. I'm Maury Brown. I spent about 15 years working in, institutional capital markets in New York. at, investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. I've also spent, a number of years in the private markets, primarily facilitating transactions, selling a couple of businesses to publicly traded companies. And then since 2021, I've worked at Ho Group advisors, leading the California market. All right, guys, thanks for that. And, yeah, this is an exciting topic. It's, one we've got a fresh white paper out. We'll put that link in the show notes. but I want to get right into it. And give people just an overview of where we are in our industry. And this is going to be a cycle. I think you're going to see a cycle of consolidation. And we don't know how long that cycle is. We've kind of studied some other industries like financial services, veterinarian, dental practices, and those have kind of gone through a wave of consolidation prior to our industry. I would say we're 2 to 3 years in, you know, our experience at POA Group is we started to see private equity really making an entry into the smaller practice market. last I heard, I think over 25% of the top firms are already taking private equity money. So, it's really hitting the larger firms, but it's we're seeing it come, down into, into even smaller firms. I don't know how long the cycle lasts. My best guess is 5 to 10 years, and we're probably 2 to 3 years in. So, yeah, there'll be a lot of consolidation. I think there'll be, you'll see, increase in valuation. You'll see increased demand. you'll see some messes being made. You'll hear of some failures, and you'll probably see some awesome firms, come out of this, you know, with, with a really winning strategy. So it'll be an interesting time for our industry. Lawrence, I got a question for you. And that is, you know, you work with clients, at looking at all sorts of different buyer types. And I think there's already a little bit of a negative bias around buyer entertaining buyers, that are backed by PE. And so we're pretty, you know, we we want our clients to have a good fit and a good experience. and PE is not for everybody and we're pretty clear about that. So can you speak to that a little bit about what your kind of conversations you're having with clients around that. Yeah, I would sell I think PRS right for certain types of sellers and what they're looking for. I think when a seller's thinking about what they want, you know, do they want to stay on long or do they want to maybe keep a little bit of equity and, and be part of like the ride with private equity growth. and so, so the majority of our sellers, it's they feel like it's not the right fit. And I think really what you want to see is, you know, what type of private equity firm is it? How are they going to help benefit you? What do they offer? And really, do you also like enjoy working with the buyer, too? I think, you know, we've you really want to focus on fit and what's right for your firm yourself and especially employees and clients as well. Yeah. And what you said about just the fit is even a bigger consideration when it's private equity. If the seller is going to stay on for a couple of years, you got to think not only okay, is this exit right for my clients and my staff, but how is that relationship going to be post close? Am I going to enjoy working with this person? and are they going to treat me fairly on the on the final exit too? All those things are come into play, right? Yes, because I do see what the majority of I what ideally private equity wants is that a buyer stays on for like 3 to 5 years. It's not always the case, but that's a lot of times what they're looking for, to be a part of the growth and journey. Yeah. And you know, you've had a couple of deals where you've got multiple partners and sometimes maybe 1 or 2 partners is really ready to exit, and the remaining partners want to stay on longer. And so that's actually been a pretty good fit for PE in some case. Yes, definitely. I think like if you know, you have especially with sellers, when there is multiple partners, each person wants different things. So finding that a, you know, group that is going to help them get to the next level, and especially someone who's very energetic and wants to continue expanding and can really I think a lot of times where PE does help is taking some of the admin work off and the ownership role, that sellers a lot of times are ready to start working on that, stop working on that and really focus on more like growth, business development, not as much the IT problems, the recruiting, things like that that private equity can help with. Yeah, yeah. And they're not all the same. I think there's a lot of variation in private equity firms. They have different approaches. They have different team members. It's really you have to evaluate those buyers just like you would any other individual buyer. Right. Like there they're not all the same. But by any stretch, you know, and definitely I think some want to there's some that want to buy and hold and they want to keep the name. And then there's there's that in 3 to 5 years that probably, you know, flip it to a big her private equity company and so are you. Do you want that for your firm I think is a question as well. Yeah. And I know we're going to get to valuation, but I want to want to mention that since since you talked about the, the whole selling to another private equity firm, a lot of the driver in this is that these firms are consolidating and they're making a larger firm, and that is the value that they're adding into the marketplace. In a in essence, because a larger entity is going to be more stable, it's going to be more predictable. And that way it'll it'll kind of be more marketable to larger private equity firms that are looking for firms in a in the next level, if you will. which is a great segue for my question for you, Marie, because, you know, you've worked with transactions, for public companies and larger, even billion dollar companies and those transactions, how are you seeing similarity? how would you compare those transactions to what you've seen in the CPA industry? Yeah, I mean, I think at the core, regardless of the size of the transaction in the in the end, if you take, you know, a business to market, with the intent to sell, what you're doing is you're creating, a market, for the seller. Right? And you're bringing a number of buyers to the table. what that process does is provide price discovery, so we can get preliminary estimates and talk through kind of what we, you know, we think valuation is and we can look at comparables and all of that. But at the at the end of it, a firm is worth what someone is willing to pay at any, any particular time. Right? So the the process involved is, is similar. obviously you have differences in the, in the level of diligence and, and the exact setup with the process. But, in the end, it's, it's trying to accurately, you know, value a business and result in a scenario where, you know, the seller is happy with their outcome because they get the, you know, the, the, the cash they're looking for. They get the fit, ideally that they're looking for, and they have some incentive to stay on in the case of private equity, because again, that does tend to be one of the things that matters is, is looking for a retention of, in the 3 to 5 year, you know, time horizon. So those parts I think are similar. I think you do get into situations sometimes depending on which firms you're working with, right, where, you can have fit issues, because if you have a private equity firm that's, that's looking at it from the standpoint of, hey, we're going to diligence this like it's an institutional deal that's, you know, $1 billion deal that's not really, realistic. Right. When you're talking about a smaller firm. so I think you do get into some of those kind of, you know, quirky elements. And I, you know, I think we can talk a little bit about that more when we get into the in into talking about fit between between the buyer and seller. Yeah. Yeah. We've definitely seen some due diligence lists that were pretty overwhelming. yeah. Those are good points. And what do you what do you think is the, you know, the essence of the roll up strategy? Is it do you think some of them are just almost laser focused on, hey, we got to scale and get to a certain earnings level, certain revenue level, so that they can then have another exit and, and, have a liquidity event. Sure. So if you think about how they, operate in general, right, they've pulled together a large amount of capital from, you know, large investors, and then they take that amount of capital and they go into the sector, what they're seeing, in the accounting practice world is highly attractive, you know, cash flow dynamics. And so they feel like the value is there. So it starts with a value approach. as you go to roll up an industry and there's, you know, numerous examples of the roll up strategy that's, you know, gone on for, for decades. at its crudest form, you're just building scale and you're adding no value other than scale. Scale itself is a value, of course. Right. Because you do get efficiencies. You can negotiate better deals with vendors. You can streamline operations. There's a lot of efficiency. So scale on its own does add some level of value. I think if that's the only thing the private equity company is doing, they're leaving a lot on the table. Right. And so, I think the more informed ones and the smarter ones, what they're looking to do is to go is to make the, the hole better than the individual parts. So you can imagine, let's say there's, you know, a tax practice out there, and they don't do any bookkeeping. Right. Well, if you've got a core there and then you put it together with somebody who does do bookkeeping right now, you've got more than just the financial metrics of the two involved. I think when you start talking about synergy, that would to me tell you that you're talking and I'm talking about revenue synergy. first, before we get to the cost side, I think you're talking about, you know, with a, with a private equity buyer who at least has a strategy that is beyond just pure blunt force scale. And I think the likelihood of of that vision playing out is, is is stronger. Right. there could also be, you know, any number of other angles that they could bring to the table. Perhaps they're experts at digital marketing, and they just feel like if I've got the backbone right, I can just plow out digital ads and really increase the revenue. you know, maybe they have that capability, maybe they don't. But at least they have a strategy around how to how to do that. Right? I think it would be very important if I'm a seller to understand what that vision is. It doesn't mean that everything they say is going to come true, that it just at least means that they have some vision, that it's not just, if all you're doing is putting up scale and then just cutting the cost to the bone, you know, that's probably not going to be a pleasant place to work, right? Yeah. So I think the way that they're approaching it, are they trying to grow the topline at all, or are they only focused on how can we cut cost all the way down? I believe that will kind of give you a little bit of an indication of, of where they think they can add value, because that's what they're going to do is they're going to turn the screws where they can add value. And the more that's revenue focused rather than cost focus. if I'm a seller, I think the better headspace I'm going to be in working there. And, you know, the whole idea of knowing the buyer's vision, I think, applies to any buyer and what I've, you know, and I've been selling CPA firm since 2003. And I can say without a doubt, the buyers that have a really clear vision that they can share that with the seller and the seller is aligned with that vision. that's usually when deals are just sort of, a really good fit, I think. And that vision is, is important. And now a lot of these private equity firms, I don't think they've quite fleshed out their vision yet. You know, I think they're still learning. Right now. We're at an early phase in this cycle where there are a lot of people out there that are, just figuring all of this out and figuring out the industry, getting an understanding of the industry. A lot of these buyers, from outside the industry, really don't understand the industry very well. well, and and to your point, the way that the money flows, right, is that you raise a fund and you have sort of an objective. So let's say, I raise $100 million to go acquire, you know, or get commitments for it for that to go acquire CPA firms. Right. I've got to deploy that capital because I've got return hurdles. Right. And so they're always thinking about how they're going to make money for the portfolio because, you know, they only get paid on, on, you know, percentage. Right. So, that money has to start going out. And to your point brand and I think that can sometimes happen before the full strategy is is very well articulated. the way that would impact and impact a seller to me is also evaluating, you know, are you are you being acquired to, to be sort of like the core operation or backbone? Like, do you have a really efficient practice. Right. And so they're going to bring you in and say, hey, you're the backbone and we're going to expand these best practices out to others, okay. That's that's one situation right. In that in that place, I'd say the seller is in a very attractive position because they get to sort of, you know, with the mothership of the private equity firm, they get to sort of impose those, you know, those practices onto the other businesses. However, if you've got a practice that maybe is light on cash flow, percentage relative to the industry or has some other kind of operational inefficiencies, then you've got to be honest about that with yourself, and you've got to understand that those are probably not going to be tolerated, under a private equity ownership. Right. So that means that they're going to be applying somebody else's best practices to you. And, you know, you've got to be okay doing that. If you're in that position or you got to say, you know what? My my practice, you know, isn't, ready for that. And maybe private equity is not the best fit if I'm not, you know, flexible to incorporating other people's practices into my business. Yeah, I think and I think also, too, like, there are so many new people coming into the industry that I think as a seller, like asking those type of questions. Like, as far as number one, what kind of structures and systems does the private equity already have built like and do even have they figured out who's part of their team and investors? Because we have actually seen where sometimes buyers like actually who the partner is changes and that they're not even stable and figuring out what is their vision, who are they working with and all those things. And you really want to make sure, you know that they have that in place, and you can get a very good sense by understanding more about their process, their vision, what is their plan, and who are they working with? There's an element of what you just said. That's like a board of directors. In a sense. If the board of directors of any large institution is, you know, cohesive and has a shared vision, then things can operate very, efficiently. Right? But you're absolutely correct to the extent that that vision is not fleshed out to the extent that they have different, you know, different LPs coming in and out. You know what, what capital, do they have committed? What's in the fund? What is what is sort of committed after that? How firm are those commitments? there's a lot of topics like that as you go through the, you know, the fit, part of the conversation that, that, that really do matter because, once you're underneath their umbrella, it is very much like a corporate environment where, you know, if you're if you're a VP or an SVP or, you know, even if you're a C-level, employee at a, at a, at a large institution, you know, you're not in it. You're not necessarily, making the decisions if, if, depending on how the board operates. Right? So they form that layer. And I think that's an element also that any seller should, you know, should should think through as they decide whether or not to get involved. Yeah. And there are, there are firms that can help the seller exit pretty quickly if that's desired. You know, so you don't have to necessarily work a 2 or 3 year, work out period. there are PE firms that have the capacity to take a seller out more quickly than that. So, yeah. And in some cases, they could just be looking for the bulk of business, right? Particularly if it's an adjacent sector. So let's say they do, you know, they've acquired practices that focus on real estate. Right. And then you have a particular subset of real estate. Like maybe this is just particularly if you are a, you know, if you're a developer who does hotels and they see a practice that has that, but that person doesn't want to stay on for more than, you know, a year or so, those things can often work, because, again, if you once you start getting into revenue synergies, I believe that's kind of where the smartest private equity people tend to play. Yeah. And there are some really smart ones out there. you know, I asked the question, Laurens, about, you know, it's not for everybody. And there's kind of a little bit of a negative, impression right now, I think, in the industry. And I have met personally some really, visionary leaders in PE that I think are going to do really wonderful things for the firms that they acquire and the firm that they ultimately build. And I think it'll be good for it can be good for a player staff, and it can be really good for, business clients that aren't getting what they need from the CPA industry now. And that's one thing that, I've observed, you know, is a lot of accounting firms are just not delivering business clients what they need. And so they've opened the door for someone who's going to run the CPA firms a lot more like a, like a, a business. You know, they're not they're they're going to run them in a way that's going to really optimize those firms. Hey, accountants flight plan listener, are you thinking about selling your practice or curious about how much your firm is worth? Having sold firms for over 20 years, we've seen eight key factors that come into play when determining the value of a firm. Download our free valuation key Factors report to assess your firm's value today. You can find it by searching Group advisors, valuation report or visiting group advisors.com. Thanks for listening. And now back to the episode. One thing that this is all impacting is it changes the supply and demand equation in the industry. So you've got more demand for practices right now with private equity coming in. And so we're seeing valuations, go up. So Lawrence, you probably have seen some of the most surprises on our team where we've priced deals at a certain level thinking, okay, we're really pushing the envelope here. And sure enough, they sell. And so we're still I would say we're still in a market that's moving. yeah. I mean, definitely this year hit some records as far as multiples. And even compared to the spring, we're hitting higher multiples than we did even six months ago. So it's it's definitely a moving target. I think we're definitely seeing even, in multiples go up. Same with revenues. Again, every firm, there's so many factors that we look at. so that plays a big role, including like owner hours. do you want to stay on what is the cash flow? What are your employees look like? But yeah, even some of the prices we've been getting, I've been surprised by, so it definitely makes it a fun and interesting ride. But I think for a seller, like, really, what you what you want is to have multiple buyers, multiple types of buyers so that you have kind of the option and also negotiating power to increase not only the terms, but also be able to pick who you really feel like is going to be the best person for you and your team. Yeah. Well, and and if I could react to a little bit to the, the valuations kind of even moving higher from the spring to the fall. Right. when you see those types of things that don't sort of, you know, make a pure economic sense. Right. the valuation of something has very little to do with any sort of fundamental analysis. It has, very much to do with how much capital is chasing, you know, that sector. And so it is not that CPAs are fundamentally worth more today than they were to two years ago. It's just that you have a lot of pooled capital coming together to go chase those assets. So right now, if you're a seller, right, you're, you know, you're the attractive house on the block, right? Because we're we're in a sector that has positive, you know, fundamentals. And so that, that, you know, the capital is chasing that. And so you will see scenarios. And I would say, you know, in every sector where there is this sort of consolidation, there is also a cluster around the very, very top in firms that get a premium. Right. So think of what's happened to beachfront property over the last 20 years. Right. it's the same thing if you have a very, very high quality practice that has, you know, metrics that are that screen high versus, competitors. And if you've got a high revenue base, you know, you're in the single most attractive part of the market. you know, they tend to focus on kind of five plus million dollar deals. we have seen some deals done, you know, a little bit below that as well. And they're increasingly kind of bringing the, the, the, the lower level into more into play. and as Lauren said, there's, you know, there's a lot of different factors that are also not purely quantitative. Right? The, the depth of the bench, you know, at your firm that's going to matter. the quality of the firm owner. Right. There's the private equity, group. Do they see this person as a leader in some way? It doesn't have to be in one way. Right? Is it a leader in possibly biz dev? Is it a leader in being a manager of people? Is it a leader in, you know, an expertise in a certain niche, of accounting that most people don't have? Like there's all sorts of ways to add value. And again, I'm going to say fit, which we're going to probably say 100 times on this, on this video, you know, it comes down to really being honest about what your own skills are as a seller and then making sure that that fits with the vision of the private equity firm. I will say, the one thing I think that is a little bit different is I think that owners do have more of a pricing power that they did even a couple of years ago. Right? There's just not enough CPAs coming into the industry. And I think that's part of the reason why private equity is realized that, like maybe even before certain owners like you can go up and prices ten, 20% like an even higher in a lot of cases, if you're not doing that consistently because there's just not enough CPAs in the industry. So I do think cash flow can very easily increase without having to even get new clients. You just work on focusing on some of your current clients, ideally offering additional services like tax advisory, and they the value really can increase pretty quickly. I agree with that. We've seen that with our counterparts, academy members who've gone through and experi ence what it's like to have that pricing power and most CPAs that we've helped, increase their pricing have been really surprised at how little you've had pushback where they're like hundreds of thousands of dollars more a year on the bottom line. And then we're also getting hundreds of thousands more in in the asking price. Yeah, that's within six months to 6 to 12 months. So it can happen even very quickly. Yeah. So yeah. And I think the smart PE firms are going to test that pricing model. And they're going to push that pricing model. And to your point, they're going to increase cash flow and revenue in a pretty easy fashion. And if you're a CPA that's not ready to sell, that's something to think about. Is, is, you know, optimizing your firm before you want to sell. let's talk a little bit about some of these offers that we've seen and more. You've, kind of likened some of these offers to like NFL contracts. There's a good kind of example that people are familiar with. You want to expand on that a little bit? Yeah. So I like to think of it like that, because you'll often see a headline of like a $100 million deal or something like that, say with a football player. And if you look through the details of it, though, it'll be like, you know, 15 or 20 million guaranteed. And then the rest is subject to, you know, continuing to play for a certain number of years, certain incentives, metrics. And then, yes, if everything aligns, you get you get 100 million. Right? I think very much the same way in private equity. What they will tend to do is to, you know, to give you, an offer that says a very, very high headline number. Right. So let's say you've got a $5 million practice, they might send you a $15 million offer, and then that sounds pretty good. But if you look into it, it's very much determined by how much. How much? cash. Do you get it close. what what type of employment agreement are you looking to work out? there's a fixed, income, fixed compensation component of that. There's a variable compensation component to that. There's likely an equity compensation component to that. the thing that's positive about those, those the, you know, the future earnout items is that given what we've just talked about, the supply demand, characteristics in the, in the space are very positive. And I would assume that, you know, rates continue to move higher because as the sector continues to consolidate, you know, more and more will be moving higher. and because of the recurring revenue nature of the business, you know, that can be positive. but it's important to sort of make sure as you're going through those offers that you're evaluating apples to apples, right? Because, it could be that the, you know, smaller headline deal that has more cash guaranteed is going to be a better fit for you. So it all comes down to what your goals are. And and I would say those are often outside of the monetary side. Right. If you're honest with yourself about the non-monetary goals, I think that then it makes it fairly easy to look through the numbers and kind of get to, to to the right fit for yourself. Yeah. At Lawrence, you've had a couple of clients, you know, have some of those big headline offers and they've ended up going with other other buyers because of just what more I would say. And it was like when they when they. Yeah. when we talk with sellers, we definitely like what is the guaranteed amount versus because there are usually can be components of here's an earn out. Here's a what if here's if you grow 20% every year for the next five years, then this might happen. So we look at that. But really what we're looking at is the guaranteed amount. we're also looking you know, I think a seller should really look at like, do they have a proven track record of doing that? how long have they been in the industry? You know, but really it's what is like the guaranteed amount. And again, when you're talking to at least multiple buyers, then you can go back to them. And a lot of those have actually like changed their offers and made all cash offers. because the demand is much higher for these firms and we're able to bring multiple buyers to a seller. So, yeah, you definitely have to break down because the big headline number, when it's I mean, we've even gotten offers that are 3X1 are asking prices. But then when you break it down, it's, it's a lot. Not so much. Well, and I think that's a really great point to talk about, Lawrence, in the context of having options. you know, I've, I've heard you know, sellers talk about, oh, you know, I'm talking to a private equity firm, right. And and kind of, you know, they've made an offer and, you know, if you ask them what the offer is, what they will tend to do if if you are not, working with a broker and they feel like they can kind of see what what you're willing to do is they will often again offer you this headline, large number, and then it might be 10 or 20% of that at closing. Right. So they're asking you to take on a lot of risk. And the the reality is they have far more market information than you do as an individual seller. And so to negotiate with them one on one is a very, very challenging thing. if instead, though, you've got, you know, a pool of possible buyers to, leverage the information against, now you are the one who is in control of the information, and now you have more information than they do because you get other parties to the table. And so that allows you to just immediately rebuff offers that are ridiculous because the private equity companies, if they're going out there, you know, again, they're looking at it from a portfolio approach. Right? They they don't always, care so much about the individual practice so much as they care about the whole. So if I, if I'm a private equity, investor and I go out and I make an offer to ten different CPAs, right. It's it's 10% cash at closing. Everything's on earnout. I'm taking no risk. You're taking all the risk, right? If I make that offer to ten people and 3 or 4 of them, jump at it, and the other ones turn me down, I've already won. Right? So they're playing the information asymmetry game. And so it's really important if you're if you're negotiating with them to make sure that you have other parties at the table. So you're not, at a disadvantage. And also some of those, like I've had where I've told some of the buyers, like this is actually the worst offer. And when we have multiple offers, they've then changed their offer or what they typically do to actually be the best. so for the right firm, they will change their offers, even though they would not do that individually and often. That's that's because the seller steps to them with good information, right? Because they now have market knowledge and they can say, oh, that's not that's not what I'm hearing over here. Right. And as soon as you step to them with that now, they have now now in their head, they've removed you from the box of an unsophisticated, you know, seller to, oh, these people have information. Now, I got to actually make a market deal. I always tend to think of it a little bit of like trying to sell your house on your own versus working with the realtor. Right? You just open up that scale of how many people are viewing and who viewing information and who you're talking to, you know, ideally getting multiple offers. so it just gives the seller more the power. Yeah. Well, with that, I think we've had a really good chat about private equity. We'll probably going to do some more of these, these chats. the market is changing. We've got, a new whitepaper that, should be out by the time this gets published. so look for our to our blog for that. We'll put a link into the show notes. also, I want to close off with, I always do this on my podcast is like, what are people reading? So think about what what you want to recommend. If you've got a book or two that you're you're currently looking at, I'll share mine. So I did a presentation in Detroit this summer, which, was an interesting place to visit. And we went to the Motown Museum and I picked up Berry Gordy's book, his autobiography, To Be Loved. And it's really incredible. He's a very entrepreneurial guy. You know, he started Motown from from scratch. who wants to jump in on any book recommendations? I can I can jump in. I have not been, I have not been reading much the last six months. I've been, slammed with a number of things. However, my favorite book to recommend is also music related. and it's Keith Richards autobiography. It's called life. and it's it's, if you like music or the Rolling Stones, it's amazing, but it's also awesome. it's an awesome generational differences because some of the things and like, just imagining any of those things happening, you know, from the 60s and 70s happening now, it is just shocking to to read the differences in society and how much differently it's organized now versus then. Yeah. It's good. I would say, one I'm actually like rereading it, but is Shu Dog by Phil Knight, which is about Nike. I just always find that a fascinating story and just the ups and downs and you know, you see these big companies and always think that it's always been a success. So it's nice to kind of hear like how many times it almost failed and all the different problems. but it's the it's a very easy but fun book to read. And it was Phil Knight was a CPA, and most people don't realize it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all right, all right. Well thanks, guys. Thanks for joining. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the accountants flight plan podcast. You can keep the momentum going by subscribing and sharing your thoughts with us. Visit our website at Po Group advisors.com for more resources and tune in next time for more exciting conversations like this one.