Selling Your Business with David King

M&A in Financial Services with Herb Morgan

May 04, 2022 David King, Herb Morgan Season 3 Episode 1
Selling Your Business with David King
M&A in Financial Services with Herb Morgan
Show Notes Transcript

We're joined by Herb Morgan, the founder of a Registered Investment Advisory firm that was acquired by a major Wall Street Invesment Bank. Herb is the Sr. Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer of Efficient Market Advisor and one of the financial industry’s recognized experts in the area of exchange-traded funds. Herb shares how he founded his firm in 2004 built the business organically and through acquisitions, how he attracted interest on Wall Street and engaged in a 16-month negotiation, due diligence, and complex sale transaction.  Herb is an ace in his financial services and money management, and he followed sound practices to close a great sale with a sophisticated strategic and financial buyer. Prior to founding EMA, Herb was Senior Vice President at Linsco/Private Ledger Financial Services, and as a Senior Vice President with Dreyfus and ING Funds group. Herb is involved with philanthropy in education, including serving as Chair of the Investment Committee of The Foundation Chapter of Theta Chi Fraternity.

Selling a business is the American dream, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the reward for years of hard work. Successful entrepreneurs make countless sacrifices in hopes that they would someday reap the benefits of their labor and live a new life of vacations, recreation, and prosperity.

You only exit your business once, so you should feel confident passing this milestone. A successful business exit reflects the preparation done beforehand. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

The owner of a privately held company has several alternatives on how to exit their business. In the absence of an exit strategy, events will inexorably dictate the final exit plan. A costly involuntary exit may be caused by death, disability, divorce, disagreement, or distress.

Selling Your Business with David King will help you take control of the sale process and make it positive one.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to selling your business with David King. I'm David King, and I'm the author of selling your business. Begin with the end in mind. It's available on Amazon. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe to this podcast and please give it a perfect rating today. We have the immense pleasure of being joined by herb Morgan. Herb is a registered investment advisor. Herb. Welcome

Speaker 2:

David. It's good to see you.

Speaker 1:

Herb is the man the myth, the legend about town in San Diego. He is known by one name herbi. So when it comes to herbi and managing money, this is the guy. So if herb, tell us about yourself, tell us about your, your background, your education, how you got, where you were today.

Speaker 2:

Well, uh, let's see, grew up here in San Diego native. Uh, my wife also grew up here. She's a native it's kind of rare. Uh, went away up to, uh, university of California, Santa Cruz back in 1984, spent four years there, major in economics. Had the time of my life, uh, went on to graduate school for a short period of time, uh, to work on a doctorate economics. Uh, didn't didn't end up completing that doctorate got out and, uh, PR primarily for financial reasons, uh, and ended up going to work on wall street. Thought I would go, you know, maybe a year or two, then go back and finish that doctorate here I am at age 55, no interest in finishing the doctorate, uh, been working on, on wall street, various capacities, uh, for the better part of 30 years now, enjoying every minute of it, love the markets. Don't know what I do with myself. If they ever tried to make me retire.

Speaker 1:

<laugh> that's a sad commentary on what we become met over over time. Isn't it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it is. You know, you'd think I'd, I'd say I wanted to go hike. The Andy play golf, travel the world. But what I really love doing is crawling inside my Bloomberg terminal.

Speaker 1:

Ouch, ouch. I feel for you, I feel for you, man. So your, your business today, your practice te tell us about what your registered investment advisory does for clients.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we, you know, as a registered investment advisor or RIA, we are, uh, money manager. So we manage money on behalf of other people sort of operationally the way that works. They come to us, they sign a contract that allows us to make investment decisions with discretion in their own brokerage accounts. We don't commingle people's assets in a pool or fund or anything. They have individual accounts at a custodian like a TD Ameritrade or a Charles Schwab. Those are the ones that we use. In fact, Charles Schwab has purchased TD Ameritrade, um, about the vast majority of those clients come to us through what's called an intermediary. So a financial planner generally is, is more of a generalist and a financial planner works with clients to determine, Hey, what are your goals? What are your objectives? Then they say, well, we need this money to do this. So let's put it with this money manager. This money manager would be me and my team here, uh, in LA JOA in San Diego, California. Um, we launched the firm back in 2004. Um, and same people, pretty much. We have a lot of long term tenured employees have been with us a long time, enjoy what they do. Um, and that's it.

Speaker 1:

How did the firm grow over the past 18 years, I guess, has it growth or

Speaker 2:

Been almost 18 years? You're right. Uh, you know, when I launched the, the, the firm, you know, anybody, who's an entrepreneur knows it's an incredibly scary thing to do, especially when you have a good job, you know, and you're not risking your capital. And you know, your medical is paid at least in part and your social security is matched and your Medicare is matched and all that stuff that an employer provides to you where you don't have to risk your own capital. Still. I was in my mid thirties, I had that entrepreneurial bug that desire, that sort of American spirit of being an individual where you want to go out and say, well, I, I can do it. I can go against big names on wall street and I can compete, provide a service of value and make a living doing it. So you take that chance, right?

Speaker 2:

And, uh, and you launch and, you know, the stats, the stats, aren't good. 70% of folks probably won't make it. A lot of ideas are DOD from the start, you know, some businesses easier than others, but, uh, we took that chance. Uh, I was the first account. So I have to put my money where my mouth is. I open an IRA account for myself and we have, you know, we number the accounts internally in addition to their custodial account numbers. My IRA is account ID number one. And, uh, my, my wife marries IRA is account ID number two. So, um, we like to say, we eat our own cooking. Our accounts are managed in the same portfolio strategy as our investors. And they have been since 2000 and, and four and slowly in, in the early years, we went out and got new customers, word of mouth marketing. I had been in the industry for a while. So some folks found me, uh, and because we manage for people, we don't know through these financial advisors, I talked about, we had to go out and we had to establish relationships with those financial advisors. We call those selling agreements or solicitor agreements. So they're soliciting clients on our behalf. Um, our first one was the credit union out of Arizona. And then it just sort of grew from there today. We have hundreds of different agreements with firms, uh, around the country.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting. Is RIAs go, is this a very common business model or are you kind of a pink elephant?

Speaker 2:

Um, a little of both. I mean, there, you know, are there are thousands and thousands of registered investment advisors? Sure. Most people retail people and the public would think of it as their local financial advisory firm that they go to that's in registered investment advisor, which of course is different than being a broker dealer. There's a fiduciary duty versus just a duty to not intentionally harm and be suitable. But, um, you can be a registered investment advisor that provides direct, you know, to client services. Um, a giant mutual fund company like fidelity is a registered investment advisor. That's a different business, right? A giant hedge fund company might be a registered investment advisor, a company that provides advice via a newsletter. They could be a registered investment advisor. And so there are, there are multiple firms. It's not a, the biggest part of it. So it's an elephant.

Speaker 2:

Maybe it's not pink <laugh>. So, so, uh, uh, that, that do what we do. We call ourselves a whole, really more of a wholesale investment advisor. Okay. Of course, within the, within the San Diego community, we, we naturally end up with some direct, uh, clients as well and, and, you know, all over the country really, but mostly here in San Diego, friends and family, people call us, we don't market, uh, per se anymore, like we did 20 years ago. Uh, but we're, we're still in business. So we don't turn down people in the phone rates, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative>

Speaker 1:

Now over your career, you've been involved in mergers and acquisitions. Let's say a handful of times. What, what were you saying? A few.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. You know, we've, uh, early in my career, I was sort of, uh, the junior man on, on, on multiple deal teams. Uh, we acquired, uh, several mutual funds and fund companies. This is 25 years ago. Um, we then had a business that I was, you know, a partner in and, and we sold that to a larger financial services conglomerate, uh, started this firm along the way. I made two acquisitions, uh, as we grew this to the level it is, uh, now, before we ultimately sold it, uh, back in 2017. So I had a fair amount of transaction experiment experience. I'm not a full-time transaction deal guy, as some people like to be. Uh, but I feel, I know my way around enough and, and I enjoy that process. It's kind of fun. Uh, cause it's a lot of work for one final day. You know, that, that, that closing day is, is, uh, pretty exciting.

Speaker 1:

So fast forward to, uh, it was a couple of years ago, right? 2018, 19, maybe that,

Speaker 2:

Uh, well you talking about when we sold,

Speaker 1:

Right. When you were acquired, when, uh, we,

Speaker 2:

We closed in Feb of 17.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

But we started talking late 15, early 16. So it can, it can take a while

Speaker 1:

<laugh> yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So you sold to a buyer that both a strategic buyer, because it's another, it's an investment bank. It's in the financial services sector. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and, but they're also a, a financial buyer because they're sophisticated wall street guys, they're investment bankers, and they're gonna add bells and whistles onto a deal that you're not gonna get with just kind of a straight garden variety transaction with, uh, say another manufacturer. So tell us about this. This is a unique and, and complicated situation. Tell us how the whole deal happened. How, how did you get approached by, uh, this bank,

Speaker 2:

You know, uh, good old fashioned cold calling, not on my part, but on their part. Um, the firm that acquired me is, is a, is a, is a large global, highly respected financial services firm. So when I got the call, I thought they were maybe soliciting me for trading or something like that. And they said, no, no, no. This is the head of asset management. And we've done our due diligence. We wanna be in your little corner of the world of asset management. And at the time I wasn't seeking a, a to sell, but I knew well that I had taken the firm as far as I could personally, in terms of the capital I had. And I think they had to go out and raise around like an institutional round, find a partner that could take time. That could be very expensive. There's not a lot of capital just sloshing around our space.

Speaker 2:

So there's quite a bit more today. Uh, and they said, no, look, we're, we're very long on distribution, which is as an asset manager, it's an important thing. You wanna be able to distribute your products and get scale, uh, and what we're short on product. And we really like your, your, your offerings. We liked your track record. Uh, we've done some basic research on you as a person. And would you have any interest at all? And he said, well, I hadn't really thought about it, but given the nature of who that you are and the nature of who I am in terms of size and scope and capital, I'd be, I'd be a fool not to take that, that call and, and have that conversation. And so that's really how it started. They were literally, they had identified a list. They just started going down that list, calling to see if anything would pop, uh, just be old fashioned, you know, beating the bushes. And that's how we, we met.

Speaker 1:

So 2015 to 2017, maybe not the full two years, but that's, that's not exactly a Vegas chapel wedding getting the deal closed. You guys did not run to the justice of the piece. You had to meet Papa and grandpa and, you know, tell us yeah. About this process.

Speaker 2:

Well, it was about 16 months. So it from start to finish, you know, you start with, okay, let's, let's just get together and talk. Right. So, uh, you know, we're in San Diego, they're in the world financial center at the global financial center of the world. They say, well, okay, great. Why don't you come on out? So that's, that's two or three weeks, right? They, they gotta come out, you gotta meet, you gotta get to know each other. You talk about the business, you play golf. Um, okay. They go back, you know, we, we, we wanna do something. We're gonna get you a, you know, a letter of intent, right. Well, you know, that could be four or five, six weeks in a, when a big company's acquiring you because they've got approvals, they've got levels. They might have a committee, uh, it's a capital allocation, right.

Speaker 2:

To just spend that money, um, yeah. Terms of the letter of intent have to go back and forth. And if you have a great lawyer on your side, uh, he or she is going to help you and advise you and, and there's gonna be some strikes and some underlines and all of that, um, that ended up probably being, gosh, like four months now, I think that's longer than normal. Um, but that's a little bit of a nature of, of, of a, the company that was acquiring me. They don't, they're not fast movers and B the nature of me, I'm, I'm, I'm I like to, you know, I like to negotiate slowly and see how serious somebody is and that, that, that happened to, you know, kind of, kind of work out. So we, we didn't get serious probably until, you know, spring of, of 16 before we started even getting, you know, past the letter of intent stage.

Speaker 1:

Well, herb, you hit on one key thing there that people can do, right. When they're gonna do a transaction. And it sounds like you did do it correctly. Go ahead and get your attorney involved in the letter of intent stage. We get it, that people are still negotiating the deal terms, and that's not what the lawyers are gonna do, but there's a lot more than that. That's in the letter of intent. And if a lawyer, you know, people say, oh, it's, non-binding, you know, great, but that's still the only deal you're gonna get. And unless it gets worse than that for a lawyer, you walk in the letter of intents already signed everybody. It's kinda like walking into an operating room where you didn't see the person ahead of time. You just told, this is what you're gonna go do. Great. I'll go do it. But boy, I might have been able to contribute a little bit if I'd have looked over the patient. So Bravo and note that to all the other business owners, let your attorney let, let your attorney look at the letter of intent and get involved then.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah. It it's critical too. And it's just so it's, it's a fine investment, right? I'm an investment. What do you, what value do I get for engaging a professional for the letter of intent, uh, early well, um, you might avoid a lot of problems and you might, you might not even be able to get to the end. Right? You may find that there are differences that just aren't ever going to be surpassed that you can say, okay, well let's just end it here. And then your only cost was that letter of intent. You didn't actually get into the deep due diligence or the, you know, definitive purchase and sale agreement. Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So tell us, say the due diligence process and, you know, kind of having to bear all and, uh, you know, sharing them, selling your business to the buyer.

Speaker 2:

Well, due diligence is, you know, can be, it can be broad. It can be simple, or it can be incredibly detailed, uh, into minutia that maybe you as a seller feel is too much minutia. Uh, but if the buyer's asking it and they haven't yet written you the magic check, then you sort of, you sort of play along. And, you know, in our case, I was selling to a very sophisticated buyer, uh, who was very smart about assessing the risks that they might be getting. One of the things the sellers is say, well, that's an asset sale. You're not taking the liabilities. Uh, so why do you care? But really a lot of buyers really do want to care because those potentially, even though as an asset purchase on their side, some of those liabilities can come back to haunt the business down the road.

Speaker 2:

So in my case, my buyer was very sophisticated. They had a very significant deal team that did the due diligence. Uh, the due diligence went on for a very extended period of time. And a couple times I, you know, me being, I, I, I thought it was done. And I, I remember getting the call like, Hey, well, we're ready for the deep dive. Now. <laugh> like, what? The deep dive. Um, but you know, nowadays with technology, data rooms are key, right? And so you have those data rooms, they're all set, everybody's got their part fill and the checklists, and, uh, there'll be some more requests everybody should know about that. You're gonna go through it, but, but it is pure. Uh, I guess the expression is open kimono, right? If someone's gonna buy your business, they absolutely deserve to see and know everything. And it is just critically important that you give 'em everything because you don't want any surprises after the fact you're going to, um, you're going to attest, right? You're gonna sign a lot of things at the end saying, Hey, this I've given you everything. There's no additional stuff. Um, and that's, I think that's just important. Just give it all to them. It, it, it helps you in the long run as a seller,

Speaker 1:

You hit on a key point there, again, that even within asset sale, the only way that you can make it an asset sale and be free from all the liabilities, all the claims that anybody might have against an ongoing company that say, you know, had 12, 15 years of operations, the only way to do that is by having a thorough agreement that rips those liabilities off. So they don't go to the buyer. So it's just, it's never easy. And that objective achieving that requires some, uh, some thorough, careful drafting, which issues did you feel like? You know, these are, you know, complicated. This is requiring the most kind of thought, the detail complexity sort of terms,

Speaker 2:

You know, just, just generally speaking over all the deals I've, I've been involved with some, sometimes as a business person, you say, well, the value of this potential liability, uh, let's say I'm gonna make something up the remaining term on my water cooler contract. Okay. So let's say this is a Domi value. Yeah. So as a business person, I'm going to say, well, that doesn't even matter because it's $28 a month and there's 12 months left. Right. It's an irrelevant potential liability to the buyer in some way. Um, I think buyers in general sometimes just don't, they don't look at the value of it. They just look at the fact that it is a liability and our marching orders from our capital are, you gotta drill, you gotta drill. And so as a seller, you can get into this frustration mode. Um, and I would, I would tell everybody, you, you know, it's just part of the deal. You just gotta keep going. Yeah. As you're marching towards, you're marching towards that close and that finish line. And if, if they want that water cooler contract by golly, you get it to 'em and they need three days to review it, have at it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly. Just play nice. Get along, get the deal done. It's not worth it over something piddly like that. Yeah. Even though it's frustrating. Right? So you still work at your registered investment advisor post-closing and you have been since then. So a lot of people get to the end of the road. They take their chips off the table and they're not playing anymore. Hands you on the other hand, got the opportunity to sell and to keep playing. So that's from a, from a financial standpoint, that's optimal. A lot of times people are in a situation where the buyer comes in. We're only gonna have one person sitting in the corner office, giving orders, and someone else is coming in and taking your place. You obviously are still there. You still get some independence. Tell us about that.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, our, our business is, is such that, well, this particular choir on this particular deal said, listen, you know what, what's the asset and the money management firm. Well, it's, it's, it's, what's between the years of the, of the portfolio manager. So, um, they haven't, they haven't got rid of me yet. I guess I'm still doing a, a, a reasonably good job. And I, you know, I love money management and I love, uh, I love, uh, making the decisions there. Um, I'm do I really love the finance doing finance and accounting, legal compliance, human resources, um, state filings, you know, all the stuff you have to do. No. And that was, to me was made it attractive. It was listen. We want you to continue managing the money. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. We would like to invest in your business, right. To give you the growth, take a lot of the things off your table that you don't really love doing.

Speaker 2:

Um, and, and it's what it's for me is it's allowed me to focus more on the part I love, which, you know, I'm looking at you on one monitor, but I've got three more it's fed meeting day. I got the graphs, I got the charts. I'm a nerd. It's fun. The red, the green, uh, for me, it was sort of the best of both worlds. Right. I get an exit. Uh I'm I'm not old, but I'm not young anymore. So when I finally do say it's time to hang up the spurs, it's great. The, the company's in institutional hands, you know, when you're a, when you're a proprietor, you know, there's people always say, well, what happens if, if something happens to you, right. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I, you know, I think at the point I was at, we were, you know, over a billion dollar firm and assets. Um, I think it was the best thing for my customers. Right. You wanna be in a, in a, in a strong hand that if, uh, you know, herbi takes a fall on the ski slope and hits his head.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Uh, there's a lot of resources here behind, I mean, I have younger portfolio managers in here, uh, as well, but, um, just made sense.

Speaker 1:

Now you've taken a whack on the nogging before, right. You mean a really big hits <laugh> prepped on your head a few times, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It explains a lot.

Speaker 1:

So as an RIA, and you said you've got some direct clients, um, do you work with them and, and do you know, people, you know, that are they're in kind of the same situation, they also own a business. Um, and maybe they're talking with you that, Hey, I need, this is where I am today. Financially. I may have a major liquidity event working with them through that transition.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I get, I get it a lot actually. And I, I just finished working with, with, with a client who sold his business for the second time. Uh, you know, he, he started it, he sold it to a, you know, con conglomerate and they, they doubled the size in five years and then they just sold it again. And each time like me, he gets to go and continued to be the CEO mm-hmm <affirmative> of that business. And they call me, uh, a lot saying, Hey, we know you did this, you know, you know, what are some of the important things they tend to try to ask me tax advice and legal advice. I keep telling 'em, I'm neither. Right. You know, I can't give you those things. Uh, but here's some questions you might ask your tax advisor and your legal advisor. Um, and then, and then hopefully they have that big liquidity then, and then we're able to manage the, their wealth for them, obviously in a preservation mode. You know, we always tell people, Hey, look, you, you took all your risk, your big risk owning a, a smaller mid-size company. You have a lot at risk, a lot at stake. Now we need, it's all about preserving it and growing it, hopefully at a FA at a rate that exceeds inflation right now, inflation's been, been a little hot for the last six months or so eight months or so

Speaker 1:

That's another great tip that you're giving 'em there. Ask those tax questions to your tax advisor and ask them early. And the only dumb question is the one you didn't ask. And usually you get to too close to closing. Great. I could have helped you maybe a couple years ago, but the ship is sailed for doing something that could have been helpful. So right now you imagine that how many monitors you got up and it's the market is brutal at the moment, and there's a high level of economic uncertainty out there only to the extent that you're comfortable and able. I mean, what, what do you observe about this market? What would you share with us today?

Speaker 2:

Well, Hey, look, today's May 4th, 20, 22 worth 27 minutes currently away from a, from a fed decision to raise interest rates, 50 basis points. And I, I, yeah, I may not be perfect. I may not remember this perfectly, but I don't think there's been a 50 B hike in about 20 years. So, um, I think there's this consensus that inflation is going to be out of control. And that narrative is fueled by a lot of sort of online kind of goofy reporting. I think in reality, the federal reserve of the United States of America has the tightest guardrails of any central bank in the world. Back in the late 1970s, Congress gave them this mandate of price, stability, um, you know, in full employment, it's a dual mandate. Now that's in addition to the original mandate, which was don't, let banks fail, be, be the lender of last resort.

Speaker 2:

They bring you their loans, you loan their money. So nobody has to shut down. And so the fed has always started to raise rates as inflation was rising, but before it got to their 2% target, mm-hmm <affirmative> this time around, there was so many jobs lost because of the COVID shutdown, which was an ill conceived strategy from an economic standpoint, which we could go talk about hours about why that was wrong, right. Or go Google. I was on CNBC saying why it was wrong and all that my podcast. But, um, the re the reality is we, we destroyed all these jobs. So the fed came and we never had a drop in aggregate demand in our economy. Every other recession has been a drop in aggregate demand. And so we're trying to stimulate to bring back demand. We didn't have a demand problem, and we over stimulated and then caused a supply shortage.

Speaker 2:

So we had high demand. We stimulated, we got more demand and we shut down supply. Well, that's gonna cause inflation right from, so translate that to the, to the equity markets today. You know, they're, they're down roughly 20% from their all time high. I always remind people unless you invested one time at one time, only in your whole life at exactly the all time high, you bought a hundred percent stocks, and then the market dropped and you sold it all on that day. You didn't lose 20%. So stop, you know, tossing and turning. You invest over the course of a lifetime. If you have a little extra cash, probably a good time to put it to work. Uh, you know, right now probably decent, um, was the market gonna turn around tomorrow or next week? Or it might even turn around this afternoon. I don't know, but the stocks were a little overvalued.

Speaker 2:

And now they're about, I think about where this should be. And I think that the, the, the reality is we are in this stage of the secular growth and technology is driving that, you know, Moore's law, the con the semiconductor, the internet web 3.0, you know, web 3.0 is a huge, huge deal. Blockchain, robotics, artificial intelligence, uh, and the companies at the forefront of that for the vast, vast majority of the opportunity set are listed in the United States of America. That's a great thing. So we're lucky to have easy access to these exchanges, the best regulated with the most transparent accounting in the world to me, volatility is my friend. It's my opportunity. You know, qual Qualcomms down, whatever, 20, 30% great company, meta, Amazon go Google, what do they call it now? Alphabet, alphabet. And yeah, these, you feel, you know, you gotta love these companies at, at these levels, apple computer they're they're, they, they dominate the world, apple computer, you know, makes about $300 million a day in profit. Why, why would I sell that ever? <laugh> right.

Speaker 1:

God bless America. That was actually great news. I feel like inspired, man.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I mean, if you, the, the percentage of the people in the world, it's the highest percentage population ever in, in the history of the world, right? And you remember back when we were kids in the seventies, population was less than half what it is today. And we were overcrowded. We were gonna run out of food and water, but we have more than double the people, the highest percentage ever have access to healthcare, the highest percentage ever have access to clean, safe, drinking water, the highest percentage ever have access to food. Backing out the temp. When I think our temporary effects of the COVID spiking, the death rate, we have the, the longest longevity in history. And one more great statistic, the level of death by armed conflict. This is including what's happening in Ukraine right now. Mm-hmm <affirmative> is the lowest level in the history of the world.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

So what, what is required for capitalism to flourish and raise the standard of living of the poorest among us? Well, it's capitalism. It's doing that for some reason. We like to fight in our, in America a lot. It's who we are, it's our culture. And, and we don't give, thanks enough. We have the greatest system. The world wants our system. It's, it's creating wealth and elevating human beings out of poverty and into health and wellbeing at a rate that's among the highest it's ever it's ever been. It all started with this, you know, the wealth of nations, Adam Smith, 1776, coincided with the American revolution, the great experience, the great experiment, uh, you know, the greatest Republic ever creation of wealth is not going away. And as much as our lives have changed in the last 20 years with our smartphones, remote healthcare, it's kind of a, you ain't seen nothing yet. Yeah. So you, you wanna own these companies.

Speaker 1:

Well, herb, this is optimism. And honestly, it's refreshing to hear this sort of thing. You've been a wonderful guest and you are living the American dream. So congratulations on your successes. You've deserved them well, and I hope I can have you back on selling your business with David King.

Speaker 2:

Hey, thanks, David. And my podcast is called slaying bulls and bears. I hope you can subscribe.

Speaker 1:

There we go. Take care folks.