Selling Smarter: A Deep Dive into M&A Advisory with Eric Crouse

Unlock the secrets of successful business sales with expert Eric Crouse, as we delve into the critical role sell-side M&A advisors play in maximizing your profits and aligning the sale with your personal goals. Together, we'll navigate the nuanced landscape of selling a business, highlighting how Eric's team serves as a bridge between business owners and their ideal outcomes. His insights into strategic buyers versus private equity groups and the necessity of a sale strategy tailored to the owner's vision are invaluable for anyone considering a business transition.

Ever wondered about the complexities of non-compete agreements in business transactions? Our latest episode is a goldmine of information, where we dissect these crucial contracts with precision. Eric shares the finer points of negotiations, how different states, like North Carolina, enforce geographical limitations, and the importance of having a solid advisory team by your side. The in-depth discussion on legal documentation and non-solicitation clauses is essential listening for anyone looking to protect their interests and ensure a smooth handoff of their life's work.

Considering hiring a sell-side advisor? Listen as we explore the optimal timeframes for initiating the sale of your business and the unique support boutique agencies can offer. Eric's commitment to client success shines through as he shares the importance of choosing the right advisor—one who not only has a stellar track record but also values building a lasting relationship beyond the transaction. And for those in the home service industry, Eric has an exciting tool to share—a no-obligation business valuation calculator that could revolutionize the way you view your company's worth.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:57

Welcome to the successful live podcast. I'm your host, fori Berrier, and I'm here with my man, eric Kraus. Hey, eric, how are you? Brother? I'm doing great, corey. Glad to be here. Good to have you, man. This is going to be a great conversation and before we dive into it, if you could just give us a little overview of a little bit about your company, what you guys do?

Speaker 2: 1:20

Sure, we are a sell side M&A advisor, meaning that we represent the owner in selling what typically is one of the largest assets they will have, which is their business. We represent a number of different industries in a size range from three, four million all the way up to a hundred million. But again, the important piece there is we represent sell side, we represent the owner in a transaction.

Speaker 1: 1:45

So perfect, all right. So if I'm an owner and I'm thinking about selling and I hear the stories about private equity and how they come in and they promise an X number of multiple and there's stories out there that maybe you don't get that, or there are some not great stories out there about P groups and I'm not saying P groups are bad, that's not what I mean at all. Just for context, could you give me a little bit more detail about the difference in your company and then one of these gigantic P groups that are two billion dollars and they're rolling up companies left and right, sure, so private equity is the actual buyer, private equity are strategic or private equity back strategic.

Speaker 2: 2:34

Those are the typical buyers of small and medium sized businesses. I hate saying anything small because I mean, let's face it, someone's business is big, no matter if it's got 10 employees or 10,000 employees. But for that lower middle market, and that's five to 50 million, the predominant buyers are a strategic, which is a competitor, and that's someone who already knows the business, a private equity firm which is a group of investment vehicles where high net worth individuals will pool money and put it in certain assets. The assets in this case are going to be that lower middle market company. And then you've got a hybrid too, which is probably one of the stronger buyers, which is a private equity backed strategic. So those are the buyers, our firm advisors we much like.

Speaker 2: 3:22

If you sell your house, you would think that we're like a realtor. So we help you prepare your house for sale, your business for sale, and we walk you all the way through. The process Could be anywhere from three months to a year it'd take to sell a business. So we represent the owner, we get paid on the transaction and then, after the transaction, that basically stops our interaction with that business, we move on to the next deal. So private equity strategic, private equity backed strategic are the buyers. We're the intermediaries. We represent the sellers. Sometimes there'll be a buy side intermediary will represent the buyers and then obviously the sellers are selling the business to that particular buyer set. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 4:04

Yes, it almost feels like you're almost a layer of protection between the seller and maybe a P group or the seller. You're kind of the layer between them trying to sell themselves. Right, you protect the seller in that you make sure you get the most amount of money that you can possibly get them for their business, because it's beneficial for them. It's beneficial for you. Is that safe to say?

Speaker 2: 4:35

Yeah, 100%. I mean, the reason why we're paid, what we're paid, is we. On average, if you take a we looked at a study a couple of years ago on average a sell side intermediary will produce about a 25% lift in selling price. So that's a nice piece. But the other piece is, I mean, look, this would be the first time, and likely the only time, someone will sell their company, and there are a lot of different tips and tricks to it.

Speaker 2: 5:00

There are pitfalls, there are risks, there are things that you definitely do want to do, there are things that you definitely don't want to do, because this is literally all that we do. We can help a seller avoid the pitfalls hopefully, you know, not leave any money on the table and the most important thing is that the ultimate process revolves around his or her goals, and I'll talk about that later in the conversation. But probably the most important part of a successful M&A process is it accomplishes the owner's specific goals, and no two owners have the same goals, so is it safe to say the goal is to make as much money as business as possible, or is that not a safe assumption to assume that?

Speaker 2: 5:48

Well, no one really wants to sell their. You know what is the culmination of their legacy? Their career at a discount right Fair? I mean, unless it's to a family member, to a key employee. But even then you still want to make sure it gets top dollar. So, look, everybody wants the highest price. Goals vary.

Speaker 2: 6:05

I'll give you two quick examples. Let's say an owner wants to retire, owner A wants to retire. So we would set up a strategy around that owner's retirement as it relates to a transaction. Owner B has cancer and needs to sell the company to either take care of health or deal with, you know, an unfortunate, maybe pending loss of life. So those two transactions have to be revolved around completely different strategies. Now it's not to say one needs a discount and one needs a premium. It's just to say you have to approach those with two different strategies because the owner's goals are immediately different and it'd be the same thing if owner A wants to sell and go become a professional fisherman, or owner B wants to sell but become a lot, be a part of a large organization. So, depending on what the owner wants to do, then that's how we structure our strategies. That's a strength of an M&A advisor is, we can do different things that a seller on his own may or may not be able to do, and that's one of the main pieces we bring to the table.

Speaker 1: 7:09

So, if I heard you right, on average, if I go try to sell my business on my own or B, I bring you guys in to help me. We're, looking at it on average, about a 25% difference in what my take home is If I try to sell it. If I try to sell a $10 million business, then I'm going to potentially walk out with 750,000, jesus, 750,000 opposed to bringing you guys in and getting the full 10. Did I understand that math right?

Speaker 2: 7:42

Yeah, and it's. I can give you a quick metaphor for it. Sure, let's say you go sell your house. Okay, now someone can bang on your door and say I want to make an offer in your house and it could be a pretty good price, and maybe you'll get full price and maybe you won't. But you won't have the ability of a competitive market to show you what the real price is.

Speaker 2: 8:02

Now you look at really highly efficient markets, like eBay is a really highly efficient market. You look for a used fishing rod on eBay like oh geez, that's a pretty good one, I'll get that at a good deal. Well, the person selling it may say well, I would have taken $50 for it, but I got 500 bids and I got 150 for it, right? So having the competitive bidding situation usually results in a higher price but also a better deal. You get the right buyer, you get the right terms, et cetera. So let's go back to selling your house for a minute. So, instead of someone knocking on your door and making you an offer and you sell the house, let's say you go to the realtor. What's the first thing the realtor does?

Speaker 1: 8:43

They're going to look at your house, right, oh right, hey, do we need to put?

Speaker 2: 8:45

some paint over here? Does that roof need to get fixed? They're going to find little value drivers that incrementally will get you towards your ideal selling price or the highest selling price. So that's what we do in a lot of terms. So we look inside your house, inside your business. Let's see your financials, let's see your org chart, let's see your revenue, let's see your client concentration, let's look at your assets, et cetera. If someone says, okay, oh, I want to get ready for sale in a year, then we can provide suggestions on changes to find those incremental value drivers.

Speaker 2: 9:19

The second piece, and the most important piece, is this competitive bidding situation. You know, in selling your house, you don't really care who buys it. I mean, you might, but typically you're moving on somewhere else. Let's face it there aren't many horror stories of somebody buying a house and the seller having big time remorse about it. But in a business, however, you're going to want to know and like the buyer.

Speaker 2: 9:44

So if you're selling it on your own and you get an unsolicited offer and look, these are flattering to get right, somebody sends you a piece of mail or an email says, hey, I'll give you X for the business, that's very flattering. However, if you ultimately don't like that person. It's going to be a very protracted process and it might negatively impact your stakeholders you know your employees, your clients and your brand. A lot of owners have spent their whole career building those things up and they care about them. They can't really put a dollar amount on them, but they don't want to see their business falter or fail shortly after selling it. So that's the other thing that the competitive bidding process does, which an advisor raises the skids for and makes happen.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Do you ever find that a business owner sells and then somehow they make their way back into the business, rebuy it back, or does that ever happen?

Speaker 2: 11:03

It certainly does, depending on the structure of the sale, let's say. I mean you hear the stories about someone selling it to their junior partner or a younger person in the firm and then the seller uses a basically a loan right. They loan the buyer the money to buy the company and the payments for the loan will come out of future profits. And then two or three years down the road it's not quite as profitable and then ultimately the seller has to take the company back. So there are those situations for sure that happen. They happen more often than not when a seller represents his self or herself, I mean, frankly, just through inexperience and not quite knowing the best structure for all parties in a deal.

Speaker 2: 11:48

Certainly people do sell their business and then get back into that industry later on in life. I mean one thing that we are careful about are non-competes right. So if you sell your business, the buyers typically are going to ask you to sign a non-compete which we ensure is not only fair but reasonable in terms of length and geography et cetera. But yeah, I mean some people look, they have a, let's say, an HVAC owner's got the buggy, loves the business, he sells it. Two years later he's like I don't really like retirement, I want to get back in. So they are those situations, but we try to avoid them as much as possible. In the event the owner says, look, I'm retired, or I'm done, or I just want to move on to something else, we make sure that those situations are avoided at all costs.

Speaker 1: 12:34

So I'm curious, when you the non-compete, like, what kind of geographical parameters are typically around? So I'm in Raleigh, north Carolina. So if I sold a business in Raleigh, north Carolina, are we looking at the whole state of North Carolina or are we looking at 50 miles Like what does that look like?

Speaker 2: 12:55

Yeah, that's a really good question. So the first thing you have to ask is where does the business generate revenues? Right, is this business generate revenues nationally, regionally, locally, et cetera? State courts are the ones that enforce non-competes and, depending on the state you're in, some states North Carolina in particular really leans on a geographical non-compete. So if you generate your revenues in and around Raleigh, for example, and you sell your business, yeah, the non-compete's enforceable in Raleigh and typically in the non-compete it should have a geographical limitation. But if you want to open up another business let's say you want to retire to Florida but you want to open up an HVAC or a plumbing company down there then you may be able to do that based on a proper writing of the non-compete that not only is fair but enforceable and understood by all parties.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Okay, so give me a ballpark. If I'm a local HVAC business, Indy City, are we looking at more than 50 miles? Let's just say that my service area is within 25 miles of my location and that's the only areas that we service around the business. Then what would that geographical limitation be?

Speaker 2: 14:21

That would have to be negotiated with the buyer and what the buyer feels comfortable with as well. So some buyers may say look, if you want to move from Raleigh down to Wilmington and start a new HVAC company, I won't care, please don't poach my employees and please don't poach my vendors or whatever. I'll give you a good example. And it's not a certain mile limitation. But we sold a company November of 2022 and there was a pretty strict non-compete, but it was limited to five states.

Speaker 2: 14:55

The seller had no interest in going back into the business but you know, through the proper application or application of the law, we had to limit it to the number of states where she really had nexus or a presence. Fast forward six months, she and the buyer get into a dispute, which ultimately was resolved, and she said look, I could just go start another business in another state that's not listed. And the buyer says I'd hate for you to do that because I want you to be a part of my organization and sit on my board, etc. So it was kind of a carrot and the stick for both parties. It was fair, it was clearly written, it had geographical boundaries that they both agreed upon.

Speaker 2: 15:36

Ultimately, that non-compete helped resolve the other conflict, because both the buyer and the seller didn't want to compete with each other, so that drove, in essence, a resolution of a conflict. So there is no hard and fast answer, corey. It would have to be negotiated, and a lot of it's up to what the buyer will allow you to do and what you can negotiate. Some are two years, some are three years, some are five years. Again, it depends on what you can negotiate with the buyer, sure.

Speaker 1: 16:05

Okay. So do you ever and I'm sure you've run across this do you ever run across guys that want to sell this business only to go start another business outside of that geographical area? And then that should be a pretty short answer. What is to prevent him from saying, hey, mr Right Hand man, I'm going to move into Virginia. So to speak, we're not limited to Virginia. What's to stop him from taking that employee? Anything?

Speaker 2: 16:36

Well, probably a non-solicitation agreement as well. I mean, they'll be either part of the non-compete or part of an employment agreement or part of a separation agreement. Non-solicit is typically a one that will be included that not only they agree not to compete with the company, but they also agree not to take clients and employees. I'm sorry. Yeah, clients and employees. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Okay.

Speaker 2: 17:01

So this is. It kind of goes back to like, if you're doing this on your own, there are a series of legal documents and agreements that have to be negotiated, agreed upon and then ultimately followed long-term. If you're doing it on your own, it's like you know when's the last time you bought or sold a house. I mean, how thick were the documents you had to sign In-law? A lot of them are digital now, but I mean you're talking a lot. You know it could be four, five, six inches thick of documents and that's just a house. I mean, that's an inanimate object and a house is likely not the largest asset you'll ever own, but a business is so similar to that.

Speaker 2: 17:36

You want to make sure you have really good representation. You understand everything you're agreeing to. You're going to have to represent in warrant. You're going to have to make representations. That will have to be true not just in short-term, long-term. I mean there are a lot of obligations to get into and what our role is to make sure that you know we avoid the situation that we call the Las Vegas wedding and the California divorce right, something that's easy to get into but hard to get out of. So again, that's the strength and the power of an M&A advisor, along with the rest of the deal team, which would include your accountant, any type of tax accountant that you may have, any type of M&A attorney or real estate attorney. I mean, those are part of a deal team which, if assembled, we'll make sure you have a really, really good process. You don't leave any money on the table and you never look back and say, damn, I wish I would have done something different.

Speaker 1: 18:31

Yeah, I'm sure it happens. I'm sure that does happen a lot, because people believe they know what's best. Because they're business, they built it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's kind of like you know, it's kind of like being, I guess, the best way to say it. It's almost like when you build something on your own. When you build a business on your own, you are oftentimes married to the ideas in the business and you think not you personally, but most people think that they know everything there is to know about the business. I bet my guess is, when you guys I'm sure you've had conversations around with owners that do think they know what's best how do you mitigate those type situations so you don't get into a? How do you vet, I guess? How do you vet the people that you work with to know that they're going to be a good fit?

Speaker 2: 19:38

Oh, great question. So let's kind of take that in three pieces. A big the hardest part about a small again a hate using word small, but lower middle market, privately held mergers and acquisitions. The hardest part and I learned this from a faculty member at Columbia University's grad school program named Donna Hitchrich, who's a thought leader in M&A, and I did a postgrad program with her and she said the easiest transaction in the world is about a you know $2 billion public transaction because all of the data is public, all of the records are known. You know, if Apple wants to buy Amazon, apple knows everything about Amazon virtually before they even make an offer. Right, they have to make all of their information public, the financials are audited, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 20:24

The hardest deal is about a five or six or eight or $10 million private deal because, not, you know that information is not public. Right, it's private, it's privately held. We don't have to file reports about our financials or our you know statements of financial condition publicly. So you have to find that out through a little bit of you know pre-offer due diligence. But really it's after the offer is accepted, in the due diligence period, and you have a short window really for the buyer to find out all of the things about the seller, and it's not just about them personally, but the buyer is going to want to know. Okay, do all of your clients have contracts? How are the contracts written? Let's talk about your org chart. Let's talk about the nature of your clients, right, are these three hard to deal with? Are those three like the growth opportunity? Are this set of assets need to be replaced? Right? It's hard to figure out all that information in a short period of time and that's what makes it hard. It's called the asymmetry of risk, right? The buyer knows virtually nothing about the seller, has to learn everything really quickly and hopefully in a good due diligence process. They do that.

Speaker 2: 21:36

Now let's get back into knowing each other the buyer and the seller. 100% of the time. The best deals come from and the highest prices are paid when the seller and buyer like one another and it's a good fit, culturally, professionally, personally, et cetera. When you focus on fit first, like I want to find the perfect buyer for my business and then we'll work on the price later, that process has a way better chance of being successful than the one is okay, I just want to find the highest price and I don't really care about knowing or meeting or liking the buyer, and the same thing.

Speaker 2: 22:18

If you're on the buy side, right, I really only want to buy companies, especially if I'm rolling a bunch of them up. I want to buy similar companies that feel the same way about their employees, for example, that have the same attitude about their process, how they treat customers, how they bill, et cetera. I want a lot of harmony there. Right, it's like a band. Right, we want everybody in the band to play the same type of music, and that is the piece where the buyer likes the seller and the seller likes the buyer. You can only find that through a competitive bidding process or through an advisor or a lot of research on your own. If you want to spend a couple of years doing it but vetting each buyer to make sure the seller likes them first and foremost, and then everything else will fall in place.

Speaker 1: 23:08

Perfect, so all right. So what if let's just pretend that you're looking at an entity and once you start digging that's what I'll call it digging there's some, you know. Let's just say that their books are not as kept up as they could have been. Therefore, you see the potential, but it's a little bit messy behind closed doors. What do you guys do to help that seller get to a point to where it's not so messy? Or is that something you do? You do that? Do you do have any part of that? That makes sense.

Speaker 2: 23:51

Only we only do that 97% of the time. Okay, most times in the companies we work with do not have audited financials, right? Unless you know you've got a big. Some firms do pay for an audit, but audits are expensive. I mean an audit could be for $10 million business. You could outlay 40 grand a year for an audit. It has to be continually updated. Very few owners will pay for that and they don't necessarily have to have it done.

Speaker 2: 24:20

I mean, what we're trying to find is books that A can be explained and examined and B are a snapshot of how the company is going to operate in the future, right? So what's the buyer buying here? The buyer is buying an entity or a machine that can pump out profit going forward. That's what they're buying, right? They're not really buying a lot of potential. They're not really buying a lot of, like, future growth. I mean, there's a little bit of synergy priced in, but ultimately the most buyers are focused on something called a payback period. So if your company is worth $5 million and it makes a million a year, I'm going to pay that investment back in five years, and that's just kind of how buyers look at it. So we want to present them with a financial picture that shows over the last three to five years. Here's how the company has performed.

Speaker 2: 25:17

Now in our world, right, we've got kind of this dichotomy of financials. The tax code is incentivizing us to show the smallest profit every year. Right, because that's what we're taxed on. When it comes time to sell, we want to show the highest profit. Now we try not to do too much you know financial engineering, as it's called but we try to do what the books will allow. On our team we're very blessed we have a former audit partner, vernston Young, who's on our team, so he will go through the books along with the internal finance and accounting team of the business and any accountants that they use on a regular basis, and we will recast those to remove any we call them cars, bars and cigars, right.

Speaker 2: 26:05

Any discretionary expenditures that the owner may have or has had. Any one-time events. If you have, let's say, somebody slipped and fell on a job site and you got clipped for a $50,000 lawsuit, that's a one-time event that comes out. Any you know one-time charges that are virtually, you know, not repeatable will take those out and they will present to the potential buyers a financial picture again that represents the realistic view, as if they owned the company and they could choose where the discretionary spending was.

Speaker 2: 26:43

Not all books are perfect for sure if they're not audited, and that's okay. You don't have to have perfect books. You have to have clean enough to where, if someone looked under the hood and examined them and matched your books to your bank statements, they can say okay, we think the company made a million last year and we saw that a million was deposited in the bank. So we're pretty good with that and I mean that's over simplistic. But we prepare the company to be able to withstand the rigor of a quality of earnings test, the proof of cash test or an audit. Typically those are very, very few and far between.

Speaker 1: 27:19

Okay, that makes sense. Okay, so about how long? Let's just pretend that you know your next company that you deal with. Let's say it's mine, you're gonna buy my company. It's $10 million, or that's what I want out of it. And I know you mentioned there was a do I think you said due diligence phase of about 60 to 90 days. What realistically, could a person, from soup to nuts, plan to if everything is pretty much in order? What is that whole process? What's the length of it from sale to when they get paid? You know, from beginning to end.

Speaker 2: 27:59

Yeah, the industry standard will say it takes you about a month to go to market, it'll take you a month to negotiate, it'll take you three months to do due diligence and it'll take you a month to close. So that's six months. That's kind of on the longer end. You know super, super fast. We could probably do something in 90 to 120 days. But you know, if you've got a sizable company of you know five to 10 or 20 million you probably need to look at, you know kind of budget for that. You know 100 to 150, maybe 180 days from start to finish, depending on how prepared you are going in. You know if your books are clean, you've got out of the financials, your org charts solid, you've got you know good assignable contracts with all of your work. You know if you have everything like totally teed up and you're someone or you're a business that will attract a lot of interest from buyers, then that's done, the shorter end right. Then you probably do something in 90 days.

Speaker 2: 28:59

But depending on the time of the year it's typically four to six months. You know if you start something after Labor Day it's going to take a long time because you've got all of the holidays. You know all the various kids out of school time and then at the end of the year, let's face it, you know attorneys and accounts are hard to get in front of that time of the year, so it takes a little bit of time. But I mean, they're probably the best time to do a transaction in between now and, you know, july 4th. That's really good time. We're pretty focused, other than taxis, and accounts are fairly open. Any attorneys are all wide open this part of year. So now's a good time if you want to shorten it, but going forward, corey, it's probably four to six months realistically.

Speaker 1: 29:46

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It sounds like you do kind of walk people through this process on a, you know, a very personal level and I'm just curious how that differs from maybe a larger organization. I mean, my guess is they probably don't and I could be totally off here, but my guess is one of the maybe a larger organization they don't do as much handholding, as much intimate relationship building as maybe someone like you guys. Does that sound correct?

Speaker 2: 30:26

Yeah, I mean I don't want to point the finger at larger orgs but certainly you know, the bigger the factory right and the further they are from the people. You know it's interesting, corey, my business partner, richard Comet, has been at this 20-something years. We're all former owners of companies. You know he still meets former clients for dinner in Las Vegas or go skiing with them. And you know I have some some of my really really good friends or clients that we represented and you know I'm involved in in. You know them personally.

Speaker 2: 30:57

Someone's business is pretty close to their heart, right, because I think we are former owners. We we respect that. We don't take on everyone who asks us to represent them. Either it's not quite the right fit or they're asking for some things that are outside of our, I guess, strengths or capabilities. So we just try to make sure when we're working with someone, we really respect the fact that this is the largest single asset they likely will ever own in their lives. It represents retirement, right, Nest egg, kids, inheritance you know a lot of different things on top of being the culmination of their you know their work product for 20, 30, 40 years, right, it's their brand, it's very close to their heart and we are a boutique agency.

Speaker 2: 31:42

We take you know, a handful of projects on at a time and if we get to a certain point we say you know we don't have the time to fulfill our you know kind of quality in that one, we won't take it on. But I think you hit the nail on the head that you know if you choose the right sell side advisor, you're going to choose someone that you're going to like doing business with. These processes are incredibly time consuming. I mean there are hundreds of questions that go back and forth. I feel bad for the person trying to do it on their own and trying to continue running a successful business. It's virtually. There's not enough time in the day to do both. So we're right there with them all the way from start to finish and then often maintain relationships for a long time after. We're very blessed. We've had some you know, some great transactions that have culminated in some great lifelong friends.

Speaker 1: 32:32

So, overall, you know, just, I'm just curious like how much? When you say and I can't remember how long you said you guys have been doing this, but kind of you know how much have you done, how much have you sold businesses for, Is there like a like the total? Like I mentioned before, there's, you know P group that I'm aware of, that they're. They do about well, they do two billion a year. They're worth two billion, something along those lines, or maybe they've acquired two billion. I can't remember, but it was a pretty large number. Two billion is a pretty big number. So, like overall, what's that look like for?

Speaker 2: 33:15

you. Let me jump to it real quick. Okay, I don't think we've ever added up the total market value of all of our transactions. Sure, that's kind of like not our style. I mean, our success is our client's success the client's first and foremost. We do a bad job at tuning our own horn. I guess you could say I will give you a statistic that we have never signed a client, signed an engagement agreement with a client and not sold them. And that batting average. That batting average is unparalleled in the industry.

Speaker 2: 33:48

Part of that is we don't take everyone right. We'll say to somebody look, we think you're worth about $5 million. You want $20 million, I can't help you, right. And some people come and they have, let's say, a business that is failing. We say we probably could get you somewhere else, but you're probably better off fixing the business first and then come back and we'll sell you and we have a lot of potential clients in our incubator. As you would say, we don't do a lot of consulting. We're going to do a little bit more in 24. But if someone's not ready, we're going to be honest with them and say there's not much we can do for you at the time. So we're really, really good at identifying how we can help, when we can help, and then what we can ultimately do.

Speaker 2: 34:33

Again, we're boutique, we're small, we're seven people. The strength that we have is you get that personalized service but at the same time, we know the market, we know our processes and we're probably better, we're probably more well-rounded for a small firm than most firms are. We have an attorney on staff. We have a former auto partner, for instance, and young on staff. That's very unusual. We have two MBAs and we have a handful of former business owners. So we get it. And the most important thing is not necessarily if you're looking at a sell side advisor, it's not necessarily how many have you done or how much have you done, or all of this. Probably the best thing to do is say let me speak to three or four of your clients and let them tell me how good you are.

Speaker 1: 35:21

That makes sense. That makes total sense, because I mean you know 100% that makes sense Because if you did do a great job for them, most likely probably wouldn't be recommending them. Yeah, of course you have to believe what your happy clients are saying, opposed to what you're saying, even you know. It's just like if I tell my kid to eat broccoli and you tell my kid to eat broccoli could be two different outcomes, right? I mean totally. You know, as frustrating as it may be. So it's the same thing here, right? It's exactly the same thing.

Speaker 2: 35:55

Yeah, our biggest compliments come when a former client of ours refers a friend or a family member to us to sell their company and that happens. You know we're very blessed that it happens from time to time and again, you know, we've got a family that we represent. We sold two of their companies, we're going to sell a third and then they've sent us two more pieces of business. So you know that for us is proof that our hard work pays off long term. You know, richard has a great saying that it's a small world and a long life, and I think that's how we go about it Again just trying to treat each owner and their asset with the utmost care and compassion that we can. That really leads to the best outcomes really for everybody. You know, all stakeholders the buyer, the seller, the employees, the clients, the vendors, etc. Just if we take our time and transactions and do a good job, we have really good transactions and everybody looks back and says, hey, you know I get everything I wanted out of that and that's the most important thing.

Speaker 1: 36:56

We're sure. Well, this has been great and I think this is great information for you know, the listeners to hear, because it's just a different, a little bit different spin than bringing on, you know, somebody from a big PE group or you know. I just think, you know, I didn't even know people like you existed, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on, because I think you are a happy medium between the stress of trying to sell a business. It almost feels like you you're I'm not sure what the word I'm looking for. It's almost like you're the confidence that people probably would like to have when they're selling their business, but but not in a not not in a threatening way, I guess.

Speaker 2: 37:47

You know, corey, a lot of times your business is your baby right. At some point in time the buyer is going to tell you that your baby's ugly. Now we would rather have them tell us the baby's ugly and we'll use different words. But we can get through that where if a buyer tells us, hey, you know, as babies it's ugly, that makes it for a tough. You got a pothole in the transaction right there. So if only for the fact that you know they can tell us and not you that the you know the baby's not as attractive as you think it is and it'll be worth it. But you get what I'm saying. I mean having the intermediary in intermediary. Look if it's us, wonderful. If it's not, I just suggest to everybody in this podcast please don't go it alone. Right, you don't have to go with us. We would love that. Just find and use a good intermediary. I promise you you're going to have a better outcome and likely you're not going to leave any money on the table.

Speaker 1: 38:45

Yeah, I love it. Man. Where can people? If people want to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that?

Speaker 2: 38:51

Our website exitvaluepartnersexitvpcom. I guess we could circulate our contact information with you as well. We're based in Raleigh, north Carolina. We have operations in Wilmington, north Carolina, around Philadelphia area. We're pretty well found on the web. My name is Eric Krause C-R-O-U-S-C. I'm active on LinkedIn. There's some free tips and tricks that we put out there, and then just feel free to reach out with any questions. We will give you a no obligation valuation for your business. Matter of fact, we're working on a calculator where you can just go to our site, plug in your details and it'll spit out a valuation range for home services, hvac, plumbing, electrical companies. That will be up probably by the time this podcast releases, if not soon thereafter.

Speaker 1: 39:42

Perfect Eric. Thank you, my friend.

Speaker 2: 39:46

Awesome, corey, thank you so much and appreciate you having me.

Speaker 1: 39:49

Yes, sir.