56:03
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, people, wealth management, book, deal, aaron, business owners, andrew, wealth, company, talk, great, damon, terms, helping, money, sell, linkedin, clients, year, sales, Business broker, Business value builder, M&A consultant.
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Adam Knihtila, Andrew Deutsch, Ira Bowman, Aaron Marberg, Andrew Cross, Kon Apostolopolous, Pete Alexander
Damon Pistulka 00:00
Music coming on. I’m going to get people on the stage. Get Aaron on.
00:09
on
Damon Pistulka 00:11
your on your mic. And there we go. We got Andrew, we got Troy boom. All right, everybody unrevoked Thanks for being here. We’re gonna go live on LinkedIn right now and get things rolling,
Ira Bowman 00:24
rolling,
Damon Pistulka 00:25
rolling, let’s get it going. Alright, everyone, thanks, once again for coming back and joining us for the exit your way Roundtable. It’s a happy to say, we’re into 2021 ready for the new year. Looking forward to things, lots of good stuff planned. Today, we’ve got a couple wonderful guests here, we’re going to learn some awesome stuff. First of all, I just want to say thanks for joining last year, you know, we we had, I can’t express the gratitude for the comments that people have have given us about, you know, just creating this and we had no idea that we were going to be able to get this kind of community built and allow people to build the relationships we have.
And it’s really been a lot of fun for us. And we we hope that you continue to enjoy it, we’re going to, you know, hopefully, try to keep keep this as a a place where you can come to learn, build relationships, and be energized and inspired. And if we can do that, you know, half the time how I’ll be I’ll be happy with that. But you know, we’re gonna be we’re gonna be here just as crazy and as enthusiastic as we ever have been. We got some good stuff coming up. We’ve got next week, we’ve got Dr. aelia, gorgeous Khan and Khan apostle opolis going to be talking about writing a book or writing your first book because these dudes did it last year, like six weeks wrote the seven keys navigating crisis.
And now that that the book is great, first of all, if you don’t have a get it, but second of all, just learning what they’ve gone through to do that is going to be really something. So we’ve actually got, believe it or not, we’ve got guests scheduled out right now all the way through the middle of February, we’re going to have some guest hosts, which I think is going to be fun, we want to bring some variety into it allow people to guest host and then they are going to be able to bring a speaker that that they want to think what the group would enjoy. And do that.
We’re going to continue with our once a month kind of networking event, we’re going to work on personal development or something else in that and keep that going. Really just try to keep building the relationships expanding the people that we can attract to this and can come when they when they have time and and just learn and build this community. But thank you all for doing that. And being a participant in here. And man, we love it. We love it. We have such a fun time doing it. Well, I do I don’t know, Andrew and Ira, maybe not so much. But I have.
So but and i don’t i don’t i don’t want to dwell on the next thing. But you know, I feel I’ve got to speak about it for just a brief second. You know, yesterday was kind of a shit show in the US, let’s just call it what it was. Whether you’re conservative, whether you’re liberal, you know, there are people that that went out and broke the law. And you know, when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter if your your liberal, conservative, conservative, liberal doesn’t matter. We are citizens of this country, we have laws that we need to follow. And peaceful protests is awesome. I love it. I love seeing it. Just the same way when I saw the riots this summer, or this this year in 2020.
I mean, that where people were wreck and stuff and doing all the kind of crap that we saw there. That stuff yesterday in my opinion was in this is my opinion only was no different. And I think the reason why I wanted to bring it up is a lot of us that watch this that are in here are leaders and we have to bring common sense and decency as citizens doesn’t matter political bs beliefs and good people, to the people that we can affect around us and hopefully in our circle of influence, create people that are more understanding and appreciative of diverse opinions and healthy discussion.
And without you know the the junk that we see once in a while now because I’ll tell you what I this is my opinion again, we are seeing on both sides of this the stuff last summer and the stuff yesterday. We are being influenced an awful lot by the people at the extreme ends of what I believe the beliefs are. That’s that’s my personal belief. The whole thing I want to say about this is we have circles of influence. We are, I believe good people at heart and good citizens. And we should try to, you know, just be good people and understand that.
Sorry, done with that. But I’m excited today, we’re going to start our thing off again, just like we did, just like we have before. We’re going to come up, we’re going to people are going to announce themselves, what they’re doing, how they’re helping people. And we’ve got the question of the day.
05:43
So the punster. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 05:47
you got the question of the day? Well, the question of the day, it relates to our our our event next week. And I may have asked us before, if you wrote a book, what would the title be?
06:01
Oh.
Damon Pistulka 06:05
So remember, this is a question of the day, if you wrote a book, what would the title be? So? Andrew, are you bringing the people up? Let’s see who’s on first. Let’s see if Adam. All right. Hello. All right. Adam, how you doing today? Man?
Adam Knihtila 06:21
I’m doing pretty well. It’s a little cool here. But at least it’s not, you know, six inches of rain. Like you’re getting out there.
Damon Pistulka 06:27
Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. You better.
Adam Knihtila 06:32
So I’m a man of many businesses right now. So I’ve got my virtual CFO practice that I’ve been running for the last year. And then I actually just restarted a new accounting practice to be able to do accounting, bookkeeping, payroll for businesses, again, to kind of be an add on or cross marketed service for each of those. So that is what I’m up to these days. The title of the book that I would write would be called Green Eggs and Ham. It’s a wonderful book. It has lots of illustrations. And it definitely wouldn’t have any black or silver included in it.
Ira Bowman 07:14
mistake. That’s a mistake. Yeah,
Adam Knihtila 07:19
that’s okay. We’re both hanging out at home for the next month, just like our teams are.
Damon Pistulka 07:25
Asking it, that’s your Oakland Raiders reference there for people that needed the little help.
Ira Bowman 07:33
I’ll say this to Nick and to Adam and anyone else who wants to besmirch my Raiders, we got three in the shelf. And and it doesn’t matter how much dust is on the trophy in the shelf. It’s there forever. You don’t get to erase that. And three is still better than none.
Damon Pistulka 07:51
That is that’s true. All right, our choice. Thanks for being here today. love to see you’re here in the middle of the night for you. AJ is coming from the other side of the globe. so
08:06
pleased to be over here.
Damon Pistulka 08:07
Yes, yes. So how are you helping people now?
08:10
AJ? I’m sorry. Can you come again?
Damon Pistulka 08:15
Yes. So tell us what you’re doing today. And as far as your your work? And then if you were to write a book, what would the book be about?
Kon Apostolopolous 08:29
Hey, guys, this is AJ. Basically, I’m a business development manager in an IT staffing firm. So we I help my clients to hire requirements in according to their needs, mostly I just need within the IT sector like developers, admins, DevOps, these kind of things throughout the nation. Okay. So if I need to write a book, so probably I would be writing a book of thinking as a third person. So whenever we think as any third person, we have a solution for them. If and when we, when when we find a problem for any of your friends. We have a solution for them. But why don’t we think as the same way in our problems as well, then we will be finding a solution for everything.
Damon Pistulka 09:09
Wow. That’s really cool, man. Because that’s, that’s that’s awesome perspective. Thanks so much, AJ. Yeah,
09:18
that’s awesome. Thanks a lot.
Damon Pistulka 09:20
All right. How are you coming from Cleveland today?
09:25
I’m doing well. How
09:25
about you?
Damon Pistulka 09:26
Awesome, awesome, man. As usual, I do have to say that Andrew is going to be our first guest post in February excited for that. Tell us a little bit about what you do. Andrew, and what would your book title be?
09:41
I am this one I
09:44
you already know the answer.
Andrew Deutsch 09:48
Global global marketing and sales consulting we help people expand their businesses strategy first throughout the world or convert every lead every contact Every touch into a voracious advocate for their brand. And I’m actually still shopping a literary agent for my book called what we learned from shitty bosses.
Damon Pistulka 10:12
When I brought you up, I do your writing the book. And as soon as I said that, I was like, well, hell, he’s already got it. But
Andrew Deutsch 10:19
because the concept of the book is how do we learn from all the horrible experiences and shitty bosses we’ve had through our career, to use those negative examples for the purpose of being great as leaders. Yeah. In other words, how do you do the opposite? Or a different version that actually brings benefit to the, to the workplace?
Damon Pistulka 10:40
Yeah, by the way,
Andrew Deutsch 10:41
it’s some of the stories are really funny. 300,000 miles a year, getting these stories from the people sitting next to me was a lot of fun. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 10:51
Well, I’ll tell you, if you don’t follow Andrew Deutsch on LinkedIn and look at his cartoons. I know they’re cartoons that you’ve found in other places in the con, the text that you write around him, you need to man they’re funny as hell. You’re one. You’re the one today about meetings and and people with the phones and stuff is awesome. Oh, hold
11:10
on, Damon,
11:10
I got to get this call.
Damon Pistulka 11:15
All right. Thanks, Andrew, Brad grad, today. Tell us a little bit about yourself. And I’m sorry, but you may have written a book already. But if you’re going to write another one,
11:26
yeah, no, I haven’t written a book yet. But I have three brand new brain down if you would. So how I help people as I help them go to, from where they are to more revenue faster, accelerate their growth. That’s my whole. That’s my I love that.
11:43
It’s awesome. So
Adam Knihtila 11:47
the title of my first book is ambition. I am still working on the subtitle, something about character and why it’s required to be successful or habits, something like that. Any rate, that’s the first one. So I will be there next week for the for the meeting.
Damon Pistulka 12:06
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, me too. It’s like it’s the sales guys did something really special? on LinkedIn, we got Ken Wentworth, Mr. biz, if you haven’t followed him, he’s someone to follow he big on Facebook, too. He said, my first boss was awful. So I learned how not to be a leader. I think we’ve all had those. I go back to my first my first boss, honest to God, I had to put start putting my name on the stuff I wrote because he would I was an engineer ready to do a project.
And I would send him the project justification with all the stuff and he takes a and and if I didn’t put my name on it, I printed it out. He would say he wrote it and give it to the the owner of the company. So everybody has us, Kurt Anderson, my friend, the manufacturing ecommerce guru. How are you today? How are you helping people? And what would be the second book you would write the second book? So Happy New Year, everybody? Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Damon for making 2020 such a great year. Can’t wait to hear Aaron and Troy. Ira. Good to see you, brother.
13:14
This beautiful.
13:15
So, you know, my first book would be what happened to the hair but right
13:20
but the but
13:22
be honest with you. The title of the book would be on that lousy book. I’m the lousy boss at Andrews talking about
13:30
you might find your
Ira Bowman 13:31
TV to work, baby.
13:33
That’s right. So no Happy New Year, everybody. So now my title book would be blast, man. We’re just we’re all so blessed. You know so, so great to be here. Thank you. Alright. Thanks, Kurt. Dennis, how are you today?
Adam Knihtila 13:47
We’re doing good. Good morning. Happy New Year, everybody. Yeah. So let’s see. First question is what we do and how we help people, right? Yep. So we, we, we in our office, help people understand their insurance, and then help them make good decisions on what they need to do with their insurance. And then we carry them through the years of making sure that they’re protected properly.
There you go. And we do that independently. A book and Andrew Harmon Damon and I’ve talked about it a couple of times, but a book that I’m has is on the table is called a pirate mentality as it relates to sales. That sounds weird doesn’t know if you know man any longer Jimmy Buffett fan and so I’ve got to be a parrothead and a pirate to go along with that. But piracy is basically some types of sales in some fashion. So
Ira Bowman 14:58
that’s my career. Dennis. All right. Hi. I’m a raider fan sales professional. Come on. There. You’re
Damon Pistulka 15:05
there. Yeah. There we go. There you go. Dennis. Thanks a lot for being here today. Awesome.
15:16
Mr. Jacob.
Damon Pistulka 15:21
Got something set up on stream yard. So now I got that right. Thanks, Ken. So yeah, Jacob. Glad to see you today. It’s been a long time since we talked like, even so, yeah, we’re just gonna go. Yeah,
15:39
yeah, it’s like, dang it. I thought that one went into this one. So,
15:44
ya know,
15:44
my name is Jake born. And we help simplify technology while helping companies realize revenue potential that can be generated from that simplified technology. So that’s what we do to help people for a book, and Damon knows this one, it’s about how would you in today’s world, if you held out for as long as you could, and taking your business virtual, it would be on how to take a business, virtual and business reasons why it makes sense to digitize to make different aspects of your business available digitally.
Damon Pistulka 16:23
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Now a little bit about that book. So great. Thanks, Jacob. Gavin, good to see you again, man.
Andrew Cross 16:33
It’s been a minute. Happy New Year.
16:37
So we I’m Kevin Williams.
Andrew Cross 16:40
Currently, I do some
Adam Knihtila 16:43
business coaching, especially for DTC, DTC sales. So helping companies that haven’t been accustomed to selling direct to consumers, sell direct to consumers. I sold my company back in June. Now last year, so yeah. And I’m looking to acquire another company or build another one from scratch. I’m excited to get going.
If I were to write a book, while I’m actually putting an outline together for a book, my shtick right now is how to go from concept to revenue in the shortest imaginable time. And I the first step was to actually do it. So I drove a concept from idea to first dollar of revenue in 47, man hours, including intellectual property, filings, everything else that was involved in it. So now breaking that down into something that’s meaningful for people, I think could be a lot of fun. I mean, it helps to have a deep skill set to do that. It’s not something the street could do.
Damon Pistulka 17:43
Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I’m working on. Oh, awesome. Wow. 47 hours.
Andrew Cross 17:50
Yeah, I trapped it, I have a, I have a dodecahedron timetracker. So each side of this twin tracker has a different type of task. And anytime I was working on this particular project, I would put it on one of the sides of the tracker to track it. So it’s tracked right down to the minute for where I spent my time. You know, the real trick is we hit revenue at 47 hours, but to hit real revenue that hasn’t happened
18:16
yet. So
Ira Bowman 18:19
to clarify to you said man hours not not allowed to start.
Andrew Cross 18:24
Time is more like three months, three and a half months.
Ira Bowman 18:28
To understand. He didn’t say that he just did it in less than two days.
18:31
Yeah. Yeah. You can’t find out.
Andrew Cross 18:35
Yeah, no, you know, and then so it doesn’t count waiting for, you know, my tax license to come back from the state of Utah. That’s Active Time. In, you know, everything that was involved. Any minute of my time was trapped. And I really did I get right down to the minute.
Ira Bowman 18:50
That still is very impressive. I’m not Yeah. It’s a whole different statement. The two statements aren’t the same,
Damon Pistulka 18:55
though. Yeah. All right. Well, glad to see it. Kevin. Khan, apostle opolis. Man, I’m so excited to see you. You’re getting good at getting good at what I can even spell it now without looking it up.
19:13
That is awesome.
Ira Bowman 19:15
It was my last name. I don’t know how long it would take me to learn that but with this, like, will they be graduate
Kon Apostolopolous 19:19
managed to like spell properly? Good stuff. Alright, so the questions, let’s see. Okay, so what am I doing? Alright, so to simplify it, I help individuals and organizations, navigate change, hit their performance goals. And I do that by focusing on purpose, process and people and making sure that I can support them either through training and development initiatives, through coaching or consulting, because that’s the sweet spot. I think that many companies say their people are their greatest asset. I help them treat them that way. And make sure that that talent gets maximized to the best of their abilities.
In so far as a book, well, I think you’ve already brought it up, Damon, we already did write a book with Dr. aelia. But let’s say we were going further beyond that to me. The next area that I’m exploring right now is the stories that I learned from coaching kids soccer. So that a lot of things when I coach a lot of my executives right now, I bring stories from the kids, and from teamwork, from their leadership abilities. Because as we say, in Greece, if you want to learn the truth, ask a crazy person or a kid. So that’s what generally you get the truth from. So that would be my next book. So if you don’t have access to
Ira Bowman 20:43
kids, you can talk to me anytime.
Kon Apostolopolous 20:45
There you go. Somebody’s old child. Like, there you go. Ira Bowman.
Ira Bowman 20:51
Yeah, crazy. Crazy like a fox.
Damon Pistulka 20:54
There we go. There we go. Well, thanks, God. Glad to see you here is excited to see you.
Kon Apostolopolous 20:59
Like what
Damon Pistulka 21:01
are we doing today?
Pete Alexander 21:03
Good morning, guys. Hey, appreciate pulling me up. So Professor Alexander, so I help leaders protect their health and handle challenging situations with grace. You guys know that I published the book a couple years ago, actually now, like in your day, fast, easy and effective stress relief for when shit happens. So what I would do with the next one, and I’ve actually been cultivating This is, it’s off of the podcast that I host.
And, you know, it’s a seven minute podcast, and the business leaders share a real nugget of gold each time. And so I’m going to once I’m, I’m over 200 episodes right now. And once I’ve got at least a year, so either 365 400 roughly, I’m going to publish a book of just an it you know, a business insight each day. Wow. Gonna be and it’s gonna credit each each guest with their insights. So like Damon, Ira, both of you have been on the show. So you guys will be in there.
Ira Bowman 22:19
Tell me I’d like I would buy.
Damon Pistulka 22:22
Yeah, get it? Ah, you are a hardcore podcaster. Dude, you got up to 200 it was that was that was all last year. Right. Right.
22:33
Exactly.
Ira Bowman 22:34
Did you actually hit 220 20?
Pete Alexander 22:37
Yeah. In terms of publishing? Yes. Yeah. So I did so but the the 200th went live. Like, I think it was January 2 or third. So
Ira Bowman 22:48
you’re in the Can you that guy?
Damon Pistulka 22:52
Yeah. Awesome work, man. And if you haven’t looked at Professor Pete stuff and his interviews, go check them out. Check him out on LinkedIn, check them out on you watch him every day. Yeah, he doesn’t matter every day.
23:03
I watch him every day. I love them.
Ira Bowman 23:06
Yeah. Although that sound it’s funny because it starts out with this hypnotic type of for some reason on my sound system. It’s like super loud. So I gotta like, turn it down, and then turn it back. You know, it’s
Pete Alexander 23:18
part of that part of that TV advertising kind of thing. Yeah. placements are always
Damon Pistulka 23:27
been a marketing person you’ve evolved really followed out. They start on purpose, then you got it. Awesome. Well, great to have you, Pete. Ron. How are we doing today? Doing great. How’s
23:41
everybody? So welcome back, and welcome to the new year. It’s great to be here for our first 2021 gathering. I was looking forward to it.
Damon Pistulka 23:49
Yeah,
Ira Bowman 23:50
I have a suggestion for Ron’s title. It could be soaring above the shit.
23:56
Cuz he can fight
23:59
it, I’ll make that another working title. First, I’m Ryan Hagen. Most recently, I was the CEO of a small company. I’m trying to do some fractional clo work these days. But mostly I’m looking for my next opportunity. Love operation. So I am looking for something where I can work with all operating functions of the business to get the company moving forward. In terms of a book, so I have been I actually have a mind map of a book on leadership out. I’ve been working on for a while and one of the chapters is ironically, exactly what Andrew brought up.
Sadly, throughout my career, I think I’d probably 51% of what I’ve learned through leadership is through probably bad examples, you know, learned what not to do. So that’s a Andrew I cannot wait to read your book when it comes out. So but of a more serious note, I’ve got a working title for a book. It’s actually called Well Spoken, and it is, you know, sort of would address some of the things that are going on today in terms of, you know, racism, right.
So for me, you know, people say, Hey, you know, would you tell a person a black person? They’re well spoken that that is not a compliment, right. And so I get that a lot. Right. And I think I can spend a book explaining, you know, sort of why that is not a compliment, right. And so I’ve got a lot of stories to sort of go along with that, including a hiring manager who stopped in his tracks when I showed up for an interview, because it’s like, wow, you don’t sound black.
25:35
Good enough.
25:38
And interesting. It, didn’t. He and I got it. I actually got to be close, because I kind of called it out. It’s like, because I looked at him. I was like, yeah, you didn’t didn’t know. I was like, did you? Anyway, so I get that a lot. There’s some things that I can talk about, just to make people aware. Yeah. But some of the fact that my journey through through this life has been different than people in the majority.
Damon Pistulka 26:00
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, great to have you here today, Ron, and wonderful info.
26:08
Thanks for having me.
Damon Pistulka 26:09
Yeah. Great. Great. All right, Andrew, does that mean, we’re got everyone? If you haven’t been up, let us know. If you haven’t gotten up, let let Andrew know, we’ll get you up. But without further ado, I’m going to have to say we are going to have to say goodbye to the people on LinkedIn. reason why is because we have a couple gentlemen that are going to be talking about some things that are great. First of all, so I’m dropping in the comments on LinkedIn if you want to join us, but they are also sec registered and work for companies that that matters. And they’ve got all these kind of good things that they need to follow.
Ira Bowman 26:54
Ja Rule.
Damon Pistulka 26:57
We’re gonna make a compliance people very happy. So we want to keep going, I guess dropped the link in there. So you can join us and ringmo. But thanks, again, for joining us on LinkedIn live. happy that you’re here. We got tons of good stuff coming up this year. We’re done for now on LinkedIn live are going to remote direct and having some fun here. All right. Well, let it stop it stop. So guys. Troy, Aaron, so glad to have you today. You know, it’s in our interactions, both personally and in business. I tell you, I think that wealth management is something that people don’t think about.
In a special especially when, over the past five or so years that I’ve been exposed more and more to ultra high net worth people and and just really some of the wealth management challenges that you guys are dealing with on on a daily basis, probably almost with things like how do I minimize my tax obligations? How do I you know, how do I give my kids a lot of money? Without them just turn it into? I don’t know what they don’t want?
I’ll just say that nicely. And also, how do I kind of make sure that if I want to leave money for philanthropic purposes, how do I maximize those kinds of things, and a myriad of things that I don’t even know about? So I’ll let you guys kind of take it from there and explain what you do. And then some of these situations that you help people through because a lot of us on on the call here. I mean, we’re we’re intending that, eventually, one day, we’re going to be ultra high net worth people. So hopefully, it’ll help us or our clients that we work with. So I’m pretty excited about it, guys.
28:51
Thanks for having us, really. Except that happened, Bridget, Aaron.
Ira Bowman 29:04
I see what you did there. Troy.
29:07
Hey, listen, this is this is a great opportunity. Thanks. I love this group. And so it’s nice to be able to share and have conversations. You know, Aaron and I work at Bernstein. We’re a global firm. Our film was built out of the spirit of entrepreneurship. And one of the areas that Aaron and I really helped focus our clients on is how to maximize things that they can do, you know, prior to the sale of their business, you know, to avoid money going to the government, because there’s only four places your money can go right.
You can spend it, you can give it away to charity, you can transfer it to your family or you can pay it to the government in the form of taxes. And so, Aaron, I do a lot of work with business owners, helping them to avoid money going to the government and instead allocating that to things like capital to think Like charity and in family?
30:03
Yeah,
30:04
cool. super smart. Yeah,
Aaron Marberg 30:07
yeah. There’s a fifth bucket I’d add to just got it cuz things Kevin mentioned it right. Or you can use it to fund a new venture. Yeah. Right. But yeah, but ultimately, it’s going to go to it’s going to go to one of those five destinations and which one, it arrives that is ultimately a subject of how you plan how you plan ahead.
Damon Pistulka 30:28
Yep. Yep. So when you guys are doing this now, how many times do you sit down with a client for the first time? And they’ve got no freaking idea? They haven’t done anything. Right. And they don’t have a lot of money already. I mean, how, how many times is that happen when they, you know, they, they, they live down a little bit, they’ve got a little money here, and there invest in different things, but they really never thought about this much.
30:56
I just had it happened last week. So I got, we got introduced to a potential client who’s selling their business, somewhere between 165 and 180 million. Oh, my goodness. And they’re trying they, they haven’t done any planning around the transaction. You know, this is typical of a business owner, they spend most of their time in their business, they know their business, inside and out. But when it comes to investing, you know, they might have an IRA, they might have some type of 401k. But everything, everything goes into their business. And so it’s, it’s, it happens, actually, quite often, I would say
Andrew Cross 31:40
90% of their net worth all tied up in their business. Yeah, for the time.
31:45
Oh, good. Yeah,
Andrew Cross 31:47
yeah, I just wanted to know what these guys, you know, working with, with Aaron and Troy, you know, on clients we have that are selling their business are in transition, too. And one of the reasons we really like to get them involved up front is because it helps get the deal done. That, you know, that’s good for everybody. But, you know, so many times without that kind of guidance, you know, business owner coming into it, you know, 165 million like that.
Even that, even though with that much money, you think that’s great, but a lot of will back out of the deal, because they don’t understand how they’re going, you know, they’ve been making taking cash out that business for their whole lives. Yeah, and now it’s going to be gone.
Yes, 65 million is a lot, it’s a lot, but I’m going to be living for the next one, they think they’ll live to 100. And don’t really understand how to how to do that. And a lot of them, that’s the cold feet thing that happens deals, you know, they’re done, you know, I sell it, you know, you’re you’ve worked a year to do that. And, you know, so that’s why we love working with these guys bringing them in to talk to clients really early in the process before, you know, years before we sell the company. So that the client is the seller is understands what they’re going to look like, after and
Damon Pistulka 33:02
yeah, and everything goes good. And you guys got a great tool for that, too. I mean, you sit down with them and show them, okay, you’re getting, you know, $20 million. And it’s, you know, you get to put it in these kind of investments, and here’s your lifestyle and all that. And, and that’s what I really appreciate. Because as Andrew said, if you’re setting there as the business owner, and even as you said, and this is this is hard to imagine, but it happens you guys see this a lot, a lot is that that person could be getting $100 million. And they’re like, I don’t know if that’s not.
33:31
Yeah,
Aaron Marberg 33:33
yeah. What I was, I was gonna say to that point about planning early. You know, I mean, look, wheels, we appreciate the notion that, like, if you’re an owner running a company, it’s the single biggest asset and you know, in your on your balance sheet for good reason, you’ve been focused on it. But the idea of trying to think about that exit and plan for it early, it’s not only having that plan in mind, so that you can move forward when the time comes, you can actually add value to the deal by planning ahead.
I mean, it’s, you know, that, you know, Damon, you mentioned charity and the family legacy, right, there are things you can do well in advance of a deal. Yeah, you know, structure wise around charitable intent and fully in your state plan that actually can save millions in taxes. So it that planning early is actually it can produce a sizable benefit. That’s why we try to get ahead of that.
34:26
Yeah. Well, and keep in mind, it’s also you know, beyond that one of the main reasons we get involved in deal activity well in advance because we’ve created the system, you mentioned Damon that actually can simulate the sale of a private company. And what it does is it it looks at the it can trade off different deal terms. It took to Aaron’s point in an after tax environment based on how the family structured the business, how the business may be held through through different generations.
We’re often referred to these business owners. Bye. Bye, you know, Damon, and you guys, but in terms of Hey, you know how In a pre experience, if you have the different planning ideas that may include things like transferring shares in the next generation taking discounts in terms like that. So it’s, you know, I was involved in a deal recently that had a business owner had three or four different ello eyes letters of intent. And they had no idea which deal was better, because all the terms were completely different. And we can kind of help walk them through that.
35:24
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Cross 35:26
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think, you know, working with that, too, because it’s not, you know, it’s not always the highest price. It’s all about those those terms. So clutching that to so huge,
Aaron Marberg 35:40
but I just there’s, there’s nuances, you know, that there’s, there’s opportunities, I think that a lot of people aren’t aware of like there are, there’s a deal, I was working with an accountant who was pulled me and introduced me to a client, they were they were helping with the tax work on a deal they were getting done. And as I started sifting through all the terms, and getting all the gathering all the Intel around the deal, I had asked about a qualified small business stock, which I won’t get into Google, I won’t go into the details here.
But effectively, it’s it’s a really, if it works, it’s a very attractive way to save a pile of income taxes. And this deal was already being done signed, literally, if they had put off the closing, I think it was for six weeks, it would have saved them about 2.3 million in taxes. Yeah, just that nothing else needed to happen. Just close the deal six weeks from today. And they did the deal was already done. So, you know, it’s just there’s opportunities out there that you know, you can get it again, it gets back to something a broken record, you can get ahead of these things.
Damon Pistulka 36:44
Yeah, well, and that’s, I think one of the things I’ve learned working with, with you guys and in different deals is that, you know, if you start planning these things, five plus years ahead of time, as a, these events, right, like you’re talking about, it is literally millions of dollars to someone when they do this, because you can, like you said, gifting transferring wealth to the generations ahead of time or setting your business up differently. And, and then knowing when you go into the deals, like you said, Aaron, just the things that you can do, are critical to that. You know,
Andrew Cross 37:25
but I think to that, one of the things that was really interesting, with the way Aaron and Troy work too, is setting up the clientele really look like, you know, help them understand what it looks like when they’re not in the business anymore.
But, you know, there’s an opportunity lost to being, you know, a lot of business owners feel pretty comfortable, because they’ve been successful, and they’re going along, and they’ve been doing this 10 or 15 years or 20 years, or however long it’s been, you know, making consistent cash flow, but their big investment, their 95% of their net worth is tied up into one business, one bad term, one downturn in the economy, you know, aerospace companies right now, who would have thought, you know, a year ago, that was a really steady place to go with an aging fleet and everything else.
And one year later, after COVID, you know, me to help them understand what could that money be doing? If I did exit? Right, and we come in on the deal and go, yeah, you’re but you’re currently is worth, you know, we can sell it now for this right. So what can we do with that? You know, and, you know, understanding that your business is not liquid. You know, it’s, they’re creating cash.
But, you know, if you know, when you liquidate it and go into other forms, you know that you’re not making that revenue as you go along. But so many clients who go on going well, I think I’ll just take another couple 100,000 out of my business for the next few months. Before said they don’t they just understand the cash that comes out of it on the capital, do not understand breakpoint
38:55
and really think about, I mean, business owners, most of us here on this on this forum deal with business owners and business owners don’t put a value on their business at 4pm every day like they do on the markets, right? And so, you know, to your point, we can help an answer. Help them answer how much risk they need to take in an investment portfolio to live the lifestyle that they want post sale of their business. You know, we think of that, in terms of two primary buckets. One is core capital, and that’s the amount of money that they need to endow their lifestyle.
So we think about this in a way to sustain and achieve a dichotomy and being able to one eat well, and that’s get good investment returns, and then to sleep well. And that’s not sacrificing their emotional stability while being invested. So when they finally sell their company, we want to be able to quantify what that number is to define their core capital.
And you know, that’s also going to help us to identify how much risk they’ll need to take in their asset allocation to reach their goals. Then once that’s defined, there’s a bucket of money, the remaining dollars called surplus capital. And then that’s the money that can go to family, go to charity, you know, go to those additional expenses, investments in a new business, things of that nature.
Andrew Cross 40:15
Yeah, well, I think it was, what’s cool about it, too, if this isn’t just something you can do, you know, I mean, so many advisors will come along, and it’s all about numbers, and you know, getting more cash and all that kind of stuff. But what I noticed by you guys, that was great is you, you get quite a bit more personal, and really understanding the client’s real goals, you know, and understanding, you know, what their, what their dreams are at the next stage, or, you know, what, what do they want to do for good, you know, and really kind of get into it.
I don’t think a lot of people bother with that, you know, it’s just about, you know, X amount of dollars. But, you know, like I said, I’ve, because I’ve seen it happen, you can get to the closing, and they got 40 million coming in, and then they pay it out, because it’s not enough, right? Because we’re not understanding what you know, the real question is, what do you want to do after you sell it? Or not? What do you really want to do?
Aaron Marberg 41:06
That you want to that is, so that is so unbelievably accurate? I know, Damon alluded to it earlier. And you know, it’s, this isn’t this isn’t true for everyone, but for the most part, you can boil down almost everyone’s passions to how do I fulfill my philanthropic goals? And how do I not fuck up? My kids? Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 41:26
yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
41:29
I mean, really?
Andrew Cross 41:31
Right. I mean, I talked about this, you know, previously, a lot, you know, these are lifestyle businesses, these are not, you know, publicly traded corporations, with, you know, you know, shareholders that you have no faces or anything, you know, families involved life size of all things that they need to do things that they, you know, they got relatives, they got to take care of, you know, they’re, you know, huge responsibilities. You know, it’s lifestyles involved in these small meals. That’s, that’s the interesting part of it. That’s part I’m fascinated with too, because it makes the wheels turn, it’s, it’s a plus and a minus. As far as business
42:07
goes, point. Also, Andrew, I appreciate you bringing this up. We do ask a lot of questions to them. I’ve got some of these cards here. So you know, what are their dreams? What do they think about in terms of risk, education, in terms of their family on their investment value?
42:24
If we think about family engagement, Aaron, and I get involved in this a lot, we have an entire practice that helps bring together the intersection of wealth management, financial knowledge and values of the family, and to become stewards of the wealth when g one generation one is no longer living, right? How do you continue with that? And it’s simply through, you know, just going through what you what do you think about the impact of your wealth? You know, what’s the next phase of your life? What do you think about legacy and your lifestyle? I mean, just simple stuff with these cards can answer a lot of questions for us and the families we work with.
Damon Pistulka 43:01
Yeah, and that’s a that’s a good point. I know, I’ve talked with you and Aaron about this before, and I had never even thought about it is educating the subsequent generations on wealth management, and understanding what that really is, because, you know, what’s, what’s, what’s a kid to do if they’ve if they’re just suddenly have $10 million in?
And and I know, you don’t do it all once and stuff, but how do they really understand about money? So they’re not like the umpteen sports people you see that get that $10 million payment at the beginning of the year? And, and five years later, where they’re not sports anymore? They don’t have anything? Yeah, and or the other thing they’ve done made some life choices that have put them in really bad situations. Yeah,
Andrew Cross 43:52
yeah. Well, on a per people level, you know, what are the things is the owner, the founder, which is always you know, I’m always fascinated with that, and their stories and how they got there, there’s a great deal of satisfaction of building something like that. And, you know, there are a lot of personalities are built around that. And it but you know, and I feel, you know, for that transition, when it goes to the children is they don’t they haven’t built it, you know, they don’t get that satisfaction. So, you know, and that manifests in a lot of different ways. It’s hard psychologically, that, you know, actually transferring businesses to children is pretty rare.
Aaron Marberg 44:33
Yeah, it you know, whether it’s the business or wealth, it’s a tough transition, because it’s not only transferring that wealth, but it is transitioning those values. So it does it requires a lot of conversation, right? You have to invest a lot of time to really, you know, like, like Charles Tom about as far as you know, knowledge, wealth management and values, you have to spend time filling all of those buckets so that there is this you know, point of intersection where you feel like the kids are smart enough have the right values where they’re not going to go make bad decisions when they do suddenly In here, and but and also, by the way communication to,
I’ll never forget, there was a story out of one of my colleagues in our Florida office where two adult grown children in their 50s father passed away, never talked to them about his wealth at all passed away, he had $20 million in is a state that was going to them.
And they were they were irate they were ticked, because they were both independently very successful. And now they were gonna inherit this money, they didn’t need it. And now it created this biggest state planning mess for them. Because there was zero communication. Yeah, right. So we, like Troy mentioned our family engagement practice, we lead, we lean on that group to facilitate conversations that, frankly, are more of a psychological nature, right. And it’s, and it’s to dig deep to make sure that you know, the family’s talking about the right things. And everybody’s on the same page.
Andrew Cross 45:51
It’s, yeah, yeah. Well, one of my, one of my best friends, he’s the eldest son of 810 children. And he was the CEO of the company that his father founded at four or five companies big, a big company, and his his dad was a dynamic guy, who, you know, pretty much worked all the way to the end, you know, wouldn’t let go semi retired them back in back out. And I remember that none of the other siblings worked in the business.
But you know, Scott was sitting there one day, and it’s Father’s Day that said, I’m finally retiring. I’m gonna make, you know, CEO, cardigan all over you and Scott. Wait a minute, I’m planning on retiring out. Yeah, waiting on man. Well, stuff, I thought you just handle on it? Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 46:51
Yeah, it is something though. I mean, because you look at that, and that the, the business owners that have those larger businesses, a lot of times they try to insulate their families from them, just because of the stress and the, and the challenges that they get to deal with on a daily basis, not a lot of us are on the call of duty to that ever on, you know, on our It doesn’t matter if you’re working a job where you’ve got a business or you know, whatever you’re doing,
but I think when you when you talk about something like that, where the family doesn’t really know, what the business is worth, they I mean, my family, we’ve got, you know, you can have a pretty large business and your family has no idea what it’s what it’s what it really is. And that that, like you said, I can imagine there’s some some real challenges there, if they’ve just been in there running their business, and all of a sudden, they’re gone, especially if they pass away still in the business, it’s got to be really some some monster problems, he has run into
47:52
a good point. I mean, I mentioned the family that I’m talking to now who’s selling their business, they, their kids have zero idea how much wealth will come to their family, post sale. And so understanding the values of the family of the husband and wife and what they want to pass down to the kids and, you know, and how much they want to leave their kids, right.
It’s a it’s a big discussion, some kids, or some, some families, you know, don’t want to leave too much, because they want their kids to understand the value of money, the value of working hard to earn $1 and not just giving them, you know, a pile of cash when the business is sold. And so these are sometimes really, really intense discussions, we
Damon Pistulka 48:38
have no doubt.
Andrew Cross 48:41
Well, I don’t think it has to do it. That’s just not something that is just for wealth management, right families, too. I mean, just working class, nobody talks about money. And I think that’s why you know that why that is. So it’s so hard for people to talk about money, like trying to
Ira Bowman 49:00
manage, yeah, that’s, you know, having kids and it’s one of the things I’m trying to do before they all leave, like you understand what money is how it works card and credit cards, and bills talking, all of it, you know, so that they when they get out into the real world, and they’re paying their own way they’re not
49:18
yet or,
Damon Pistulka 49:20
yeah,
49:21
I think
Ira Bowman 49:23
money is a tool. They don’t understand how it works.
49:26
Yeah, yep.
49:29
Yeah, here,
49:30
there’s a lot of fear.
49:31
There’s a lot of fear, not only with money, but there’s a lot of fear that these business owners have with the market. Yeah. You know, because they, as I mentioned before, they are not used to putting a value on their business. But the market does every day at 4pm. What did the Dow do, what did the s&p do? You know, I don’t understand why is economy look a little bit different, you know, the economy is so poor right now.
We’ve had COVID you know, 10 11 million people are still out of work, but the economy or the markets doing great, you know, the Dow and the s&p just hit new highs again. Why How does that happen? Right? And so it’s a big education process for a lot of these, you know, people that we work with whether they’re going to selling the business for over 100 million or whether whether, you know, they’re just, you know, someone little bit less than that. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 50:15
yeah.
Andrew Cross 50:17
Yeah, yeah, well, that’s exactly right. We, you know, we try to, we want to exit your way we want people to look at their business and, and regularly check in on their value, that’s what you would do, if you were selling the stock when, when do I want to sell Mike, you know, when you want to sell your stock, I want to sell it when it’s high. I find who knows, when that’ll be, you know, sometimes we do sell it high.
And, you know, we buy low, sell high, when we do sometimes we miss and it keeps going up, sometimes we’re lucky and we sold it, then you know, and that kind of thing. Same with your company. But you can’t, can’t do that, if you don’t know what your company’s worth, and many of them don’t bother to look at it, they just, you know, I
50:59
love the work that I do. And I love the work that you and Dana do. Because, you know, when you’re working with these business owners, it might not just be about, you know, selling when it’s time it can be, hey, let’s not only sell at this point, but maybe maybe you put some deal terms in there that they’re going to be able to see some additional revenue for a period of years, right, depending on how you guys negotiate the deal terms. And so I think that’s really important to
Damon Pistulka 51:25
it is I can’t I can’t tell you how much it helps when you have a someone in a business that understand an owner of the business that understands their number. And I never realized the importance of this, working with the private equity owners that I did, but they always talked about the number, they always talked about the numbers, we got to get the value to x, we’re here now we got to get the value to their, their investors, they treat it like an investment.
And when you start working in a in a privately owned company, and and I don’t mean that they were Republic companies I was working with, but when it’s not investor owned, it’s a much different feeling. Because those owners get you know, I’m making enough money, I’m really comfortable, I’m really, really comfortable. Okay, that’s all good stuff. But they don’t focus back into the value that does ultimately that number ultimately, lets them know that, hey, I reached the goal line here, at least or, or the point where I can now safely move on if I want to. And that’s what you guys helped do with with the wealth planning.
And the other stuff is that should be done really early. Because again, as Aaron, and you alluded to, there’s millions of dollars of consequence in this from a taxation standpoint. And now let’s talk about that. It’s not just to reduce the amount of taxes, because a lot of the people that you work with those millions that they save in taxes, go to philanthropic causes.
52:58
Yeah.
Aaron Marberg 52:59
Yeah. Yeah, it does this, by the way, I was gonna add to it’s about like, trying to talk about the idea of core capital and understanding what that number is. The other thing so important about that number as well is that if you have if you have a framework for how much you need, right then when you start entertaining offers, you know if you can accept them or not. And this all circles back to the notion of the lack of liquidity in private companies, right?
We saw this in the credit crisis, where people didn’t know their number, you know, and in 2007, they said, Well, I’m gonna wait till I get one more turn on my multiple before I exit. Well, there was no rhyme or reason to wanting that extra turn. And unlike stock, right, which you can sell the next day doesn’t matter. People got stuck in their businesses for 567 years. Right. So yeah, knowing that number and knowing that if you get an offer on the table, you can take it if you want to, and it’s going to endow your life that is such a powerful thing to have in your back pocket.
Damon Pistulka 53:52
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Cross 53:55
Well, it’s part of it it’s it’s treating it like your business if you treat it like your investments and your stocks you know, you have to have a disciplined approach. Right and when it’s time you know, hey, you know, you put your you ceiling on it, you know, we’re gonna sell when we get here you know, cuz that was the plan. You know, I made that plan. You’re going to be strategic about it. You don’t second guess it. Yeah, that is a common scenario too. There’s a bit of ego of course we’re dealing with people who are very successful and high powered but you know, you got to if you were disciplined investor, you got to get the ego out of it. Yes, you will chase that rabbit. If you’re looking for.
Damon Pistulka 54:37
We’re running out of the top of the hour here and I just want to say thank you for coming and stopping by and sharing some of your knowledge here because it always helps me to talk to you guys I learned something every time and and I hope the people on here if you somebody you know. has these kind of things.
I can’t tell you I’ve been in such a With a number of people with these guys, both of them, they do an awesome job, just informing them about some things. So thanks so much. Thanks, guys. First of all, if you’re in, if you’re not connected to these guys on LinkedIn or you want to talk to them, you can you can reach them on LinkedIn, you can talk to them after the event here. Andrew, take it away. Thanks, everyone, for attending our first of the year. Thank you, guys. Thanks,
55:33
everyone. was great. Yeah.
55:35
Thank you,
55:37
everybody. Yeah, well, we
Andrew Cross 55:38
will be going back to the tables. I do want to talk to these guys a little more about how the market goes up. You know, 450 points yesterday with the
55:46
captain storm.
Andrew Cross 55:51
This makes no sense at all. But anyways, great stuff, guys. And we’ll be here. Last week, we’ll go back to the tables.
