The Inside Baseball of Buying Companies With No Capital with Perry M. Anderson
In this episode we bring on Private Equity expert Perry Anderson to share the fascinating inside baseball of buying companies with no capital.
Perry M. Anderson is a Canadian Private Equity investor, lecturer, and author. In 2002, he founded Private Equity firm, Quadra Capital, and has completed over 30 investments across a diverse range of sectors, including Avigilon, a Canadian security surveillance company that Perry exited from that was sold to Motorola for $1.2 Billion. Perry also lectures globally and runs a tactical M&A Workshop that teaches entrepreneurs how to do deals and grow their business via mergers and acquisitions. Perry is also a recent author of the book Red To Black: The Art of Corporate Turnaround.
Quadra capital, small boutique
Sub 20mm in Revenue
Established track records
HQed in Vancouver, Offices in London
11 of people on the team
Entrepreneurs and deal makers, not stodgy bankers
SME M&A - Buying companies without a lot of your own capital
Completed over 30 deals since 2002
Taking two companies public, raised quite a bit of capital through private and alternative finance markets
Target companies
Stable balance sheet
Low debt levels
Industry agnostic
Play in the gap between SMB buyer and bigger PE firms
Two big macro tailwinds for lower middle market M&A
All the baby boomers are retiring, huge bevy of deals coming to the market
Disproportionate amount of capital available for acquisitions
Doing deals at higher valuations & how to you think about valuation?
Key question is less than just VALUATION but also HOW DO YOU DE-RISK IT?
Seller financing, earn-outs
Typical deal is them 50% cash down on closing, 50% back end earn-out/seller financing
Have the seller take some risk
Funders like to see the deals de-risked with differed comp like this
Rough valuation metrics - 3x-4x EBITDA , could scale down on low barrier to entry, no recurring revenue, could scale up to 5x-7x or more for stronger MRR
How do you think about deal structure?
Find the WHY that's driving the seller to exit and tailor the deal structure to resolve that.
Tailor the deal to what the seller is actually looking for.
Lower middle market deals are very emotional, not logical deals. Succession planning, selling their baby, etc are all major considerations.
Ask the seller: What's important to you in the deal?
Money usually ranks number 3.
#1 Their Brand / Legacy is going to continue.
Don't want to sell to a competitor that is just going to roll them up.
Looking for a safe pair of hands that will navigate the next stage of growth
#2 Staff is going to be safe.
PE firms typically slash and burn the staff.
Staff is like their family or even may actually be their family.
#3 Money.
Brand, integrity, legacy, and staff are all things that are very important sellers in the SMB/Lower Middle Market world.
Build a win-win structure around their deals that gets the seller what they want.
As long as the deal is some kind of deferred comp, funders don't typically have a strong preference for seller note vs earn-out
What's your approach to capitalization?
Not a fund, by design.
Made a lot of mistakes using conventional bank financing and his own capital to do deals.
Being a fund comes with a lot of obligations, receive capital, deploy capital, exit and return the capital - lots of moving parts, lots of administrative overhead, lots of factors pressuring you to do deals and to exit deals.
Why Perry doesn't use any conventional bank lenders.
Moved totally away from that. Typically use family offices, senior / mezz type unitranche fixed price debt.
30-50% cash down as fixed coupon debt and the rest is deferred compensation
There's a much larger secondary market to capital that will take a more aggressive approach to companies with decent cash flow and balance sheets.
Nontraditional lenders / alternative finance markets focus less on YOU and more on the asset you're buying.
Cash Flow
Balance Sheet, etc
How does Perry resolve the "skin in the game" question around doing equity light deals?
Lock the seller in with deferred compensation.
Alternative finance partners treat deferred compensation as buyers equity
Through his workshop Perry gives people a list of funders who like these types of structures. Perry is not a huge fan of using capital brokers and placement agents.
How do you generate deal flow?
Perry doesn't do a lot of sourcing, he's been in the space for so long that deals just come to him.
He is not a big fan of business brokers.
The best strategy is look at your contact list, look at your own cell phone, and see who you have relationships with.
"Whos uncle is looking to sell their business right now?"
Look to your current relationships, tell them you want to buy businesses, and ask them who they may know that's selling.
Approach sellers from a very collaborative standpoint.
The best deals are always very relationship driven, the best deals are always a function of the quality of relationships you're able to build.
The deals that close are the ones, typically, where you've built the most rapport with the seller.
BEST STRATEGY: Tap Into Your Own Network.
Ask people who they know that might be selling, and ask for an introduction.
Business brokers make deals harder to do, they fill their seller's heads with unrealistic expectations.
Intermediaries are a solid sources as well.
If you introduce us, we will be likely to use your legal, accounting, etc services.
How do you think about management?
PE Firms typically handcuff the seller to the business. In the SMB space, that often defeats the purpose of a seller looking to get out of the business.
Handcuffing a 70 year old to the business is not a great approach, and frequently they need to get out of the business sooner.
Listen to the seller on what the REAL drivers of the business are.
The handcuffs in this case are different, it's not requiring you to stay with the company, it's via seller financing. You can relax on the beach, but we still need you to risk share with us.
The more they want out of the business immediately, the longer and more deferred compensation there will be.
Typically they don't use headhunters, they typically leverage their existing networks and relationships, or pull talent from within the business whenever possible.
Tie existing management in with pay raise, equity incentives (potentially) and reasons to stay with the business.
You can also get these management folks bought-in to doing a deal, if they know they are going to get equity, better comp, etc they will be more likely to lobby the seller to do a deal and help the deal cross the finish line.
Headhunters - by and large most of the deals you want to leverage the existing staff and the continuity there before you try and pull from a headhunter. Promote someone who has been there for 20 or 30 years vs the fancy MBA, CFA etc. Path of last resort.
How do you handle broken deal costs and diligence expenses?
Risk share with vendors
Give vendors equity for doing the work, be collaborative.
Reduce diligence spend with more effective deal structure
Have a very collaborative approach, share the upside with the seller, the deal team, the management etc - have a very flexible approach to making the economics work for everyone and make it work for all parties. It's not binary, it can be win-win-win for all parties.
Homework: Identify what's important to you, STICK WITH IT, and PUT IN THE TIME. You have to decide the path you want to focus on and really SPEND TIME ON IT. Jump in the pool and get started. Start having meaningful conversations with people.
If you have an existing skillset that you can bring to the table, use that as a bartering tool to get yourself into the deal or get a piece of equity (Roland Frasier strategy of consulting for equity)
Consulting is a great way to position yourself as the logical buyer when the time comes to sell, especially if you are able to get a minority stake in the business.
Use your skillset as a currency to get into a deal.
Thank you so much for listening!
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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research
General
Perry’s Website
Media
Business Matters Magazine - “Getting to Know You: Perry M. Anderson, CEO, Quadra Global Capital Corp”
CEO Today Magazine - “Are We Addicted To Entrepreneurialism?” by Perry Anderson
Insight Success - “Perry M. Anderson: A Global Investor Who Encourages Poverty Alleviation Through Mergers & Acquisitions”
Crunchbase Profile - Perry M. Anderson
[Press Release] Canadian CEO of the Month - Perry Anderson
Books
RED TO BLACK: THE ART OF CORPORATE TURNAROUND by Perry M. Anderson
Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet, bringing the world’s top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fabel.
[00:00:17] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet, with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over 100 countries. In this episode, we bring on private equity expert, Perry Anderson, to share the fascinating inside baseball of buying companies with no capital. This episode is more from a business listeners. But I have to say, I know Perry personally. I've actually taken his workshop, and it's awesome. I think this is a really cool conversation and I think you're going to get some fascinating insights out of it.
Are you a fan of the show, and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our email list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time For What Matters Most in Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting, and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you're on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R, to the number 44222.
In our previous episode, we brought on former Buried Life star, Ben Nemtin, to discuss one of the most important questions of our lives, what do you want to do before you die. Definitely check that episode out. Now, for our interview with Perry. Perry Anderson is a Canadian private equity investor, lecturer, and author. In 2002, he founded the private equity firm Quadra Capital and has completed over 30 investments across a diverse range of sectors, including Avigilon, a Canadian security surveillance company that he exited when it was sold to Motorola for $1.2 billion. Perry also lectures globally and runs a tactical M&A workshop that teaches entrepreneurs how to do deals and grow their business via mergers and acquisitions. He's also the recent author of the book Red to Black: The Art of the Corporate Turnaround. Perry, welcome to the Science of Success.
[00:02:24] PA: Hey, Matt. Thanks for having me. I appreciate your time.
[00:02:26] MB: Well, we're super excited to have you on today. The topics that we're going to talk about in the field that you come from are topics that are near and dear to my heart, so I'm excited to jump in. To start out, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you got involved in the private equity world and really what your approach is today.
[00:02:42] PA: Yeah. I guess my background, so I'm Canadian by nationality. But I sort of identify as a bit of a global citizen, so I sort of split time between homes in Vancouver, BC and London, England. Yeah. I started a private equity firm kind of in the loosest sense of the word back in 2002 called Quadra Capital, a relatively small boutique. We focus on sort of the lower end of the M&A market, so companies that are typically doing sub 20 million in turnover. Not focused on kind of the bleeding edge tech companies but sort of all of the companies that are sort of established and have long sort of track records of profitability.
Small team at Quadra, so we headquartered out of Vancouver. I have an office here in London, which is where I'm at today. Yeah. We’ve got a footprint in kind of the US, UK, and Canada. So 11 of us on the team, everybody comes from fairly blue chip backgrounds. Everybody sort of has worked from sort of the likes of Goldman Sachs to Rothschild, PwC, Carlyle Group, etc. We don't see ourselves as sort of stodgy bankers. We're sort of entrepreneurs and dealmakers that are out sort of looking to do deals and hopefully craft meaningful exits. That’s sort of what we do sort of 90% of the time. Probably other 10% of my time is I also sort of lecture globally on the topic of SME M&A, so people that are out sort of looking to go out and potentially do their own deals and go out and acquire a small to medium-sized enterprise and are typically without having to go and use a lot of your own capital in order to transact.
I guess in my own journey, I've sort of made a lot of mistakes in walking into banks and having to personal guarantee things and put up the house as collateral and give pints of blood and give the kids away and all these good things. But I've kind of come to realize that there's no smarter ways to transact. So we've got fairly good in roads into the capital markets and sort of spent a career and sort of raising money through the capital markets. I guess we've completed about over 30 deals in the past, I guess, since 2002, and bought and sold several businesses. We've taken three companies public and, again, kind of raised quite a bit of capital through the private and alternative finance markets. We're fairly comfortable in that space, and it kind of underpins what we're doing. So I do this and sort of eat my own cooking on a full-time basis. But, again, sort of happy to sort of share knowledge to people that are looking to do deals themselves as well.
[00:05:01] MB: That's so interesting, and I want to break down and get it sort of specific on some of these things. Broadly speaking, you said under 20 million in revenues, the target that you guys look at. Do you have rough EBITDA metrics that you'd like to focus on, and are there industry verticals that you typically play more and, obviously, you said maybe cutting edge, and the high tech stuff is not necessarily of interest? But are there sort of industry segments that you find most interesting?
[00:05:24] PA: Yeah. So we're [inaudible 00:05:24], aside from we're not looking at kind of bleeding edge companies who figured that they're not making any money per se, or they're hemorrhaging cash. But yet, of course, they're going to sell to Google for gazillion dollars. So we're not looking at businesses like that. We’re looking at basically anything else, anything else with sort of a stable balance sheets and sort of a history of profitability and low debt levels. Size wise, again, sort of sub 20 million. That's pretty much by design because larger private equity, they don't want to look at small deals. They just can't make the economics work of going into that space. For sort of a micro investor or a small business purchaser, they usually tend to look at stuff that they can sort of rationalize and that they can figure that they can do in line with what they understand. So somebody that have $100,000 in cash in their jeans, they're probably going to buy something that's in line with what they've got. They're going to buy 100 or 200,000 dollar business.
There’s a real gap between sort of the small business buyer and large private equity. We sort of play in that space where there is not a lot of legitimate business buyers in that market. So we're kind of living in really interesting times right now. I guess on one side of the ledger but all the baby boomers that are now retiring, and so it's the largest macroeconomic shift that's been going on sort of in the history of the world. It’s really interesting. We’ve got people that it's not a want to retire. It's a need. So they're either looking – They need to get out from they're just getting old or sick. They’re tired. They’re dying. They're getting divorced, whatever the life circumstance. But they need to get rid of this business. The kids typically don't want these businesses. The kids want to go out and do the startup that's going to hopefully sell to Google for gazillion dollars. So kids today don't want to learn run them and dad's widget manufacturer. But there's more and more of these coming to market all the time. That’s one side of the ledger.
The other side of the ledger is there's a disproportionate amount of capital that's actually available for acquisitions. So going out and doing a startup, everybody's out, including their dog is out trying to sort of go do the startup right now. Those are very difficult to capitalize, and failure rates are off the charts. Michael Gerber, who wrote the E Myth, which is a really interesting book, he mentions about circa 94% of our evolved sort of startup business has actually failed in the first five years. That's very dramatic. So I think there's a smarter way to be able to go out. We’re living in really interesting times because there's a lot of capital that's available. Again, hard to capitalize a startup, but there's a lot of cash that's available for businesses that have long operating histories and decent balance sheets, and they've got their cash flow positive and relatively low debt levels. Those are relatively easy to do, and so lots of capital available for them, so sort of playing in between both of those market dynamics is kind of an interesting place to be at the moment.
[00:08:13] MB: Yeah. There’s just some really positive macro tailwind supporting kind of lower middle market M&A right now. As you touched on a really interesting component of a lot of these deals, which I don't know if you're familiar with Walker Deibel or his book, Buy Then Build, who also kind of talks about this same idea of it's actually much less risky to just buy a company that already has revenue, customers, profits, track record, assets that you can leverage, as opposed to doing a startup. Yet 95% of people gravitate more towards the startup side of the puzzle, and there's a tremendous and growing number of businesses that are being forced into the market by baby boomers that are currently selling. So very interesting dynamics out there right now.
[00:08:52] PA: Yeah, 100%. It is a great time to be able to do this and, again, because of a lot of capital that's available for this. So I've got a good friend of mine who actually is US-based. He runs a fund and their fund is – They will put up sort of upwards, just to give one example. They'll put up up to 100% of the capital required to go out and for somebody to buy a business. There's a lot of these shops that are just sitting on way too much capital at the moment. From somebody on one side of the fence is where am I going to get the money to do this. People on the other side of the fence sort of in the capital markets, they're saying like we're sitting on a ton of cash. This last year sort of has obviously been a bit of a black swan event with COVID and all the ramifications from that. But it's been somewhat problematic for these companies, the finance firms, to be able to deploy all this capital. So there's a lot of pent up demand, and they're really looking for smart homes to deploy this capital into. So, yeah, timing is great to be in the space.
[00:09:46] MB: I'm very curious about your perspective on valuations right now, in terms of especially in the lower middle market. I guess, one, where do you guys typically like to transact? I'm sure it varies by industry segment a lot but just sort of rough metrics. Where are you trying to kind of land from an EBITDA multiple standpoint? Then what are you seeing from a valuation standpoint of deals that get funded by institutional capital or institutional LPs or whatever? Where do you typically see them being comfortable with evaluation versus being uncomfortable?
[00:10:18] PA: Yeah. In terms of them being comfortable or uncomfortable, I think it's more in terms of how do you derisk the transaction. We’re derisking that, but these are not new businesses. These are very well-established businesses. Again, as I mentioned before, long history and long track records of profitability. So we're derisking it from nobody's going to give a seller sort of a bag of cash on closing and sort of walk off into the sunset. We’re typically raising sort of a typical deal structure for us is putting down circa 50% cash down on closing, and then the balance is going to be some form of deferred consideration or an out on the back end sort of round off the transaction and, again, to kind of derisk proposition.
Funders like to see that. They like to go into something that's derisked where the seller is going to be taking some risk through this, through the deal. So it's a multiyear deferred or multiyear sort of burn out. So they tend to get comfortable that they know that, hey, look, even if the seller is going to be sort of sitting on a proverbial beach next week, I mean, he's going to be tied in and handcuffed from a standpoint that he's got to take some payments over time. So that's what we're kind of seeing in the capital market side of things. From a valuation or an EBITDA multiple perspective, I would say, by and large, sort of the sub 20 million non-bleeding edge tech company, they're kind of trading for between sort of 3 to 4X EBITDA, something like that. Obviously, it's sort of leavers down if it's a low barrier to entry business that doesn't have the clients on contractual recurring revenues, etc., etc. Then vice versa if they have their or their clients on contractual recurring revenue, and they've got very high barrier to entry business, etc., etc., the multiple sort of scale up.
But I would say most of our offers are going out the door sort of circa 3, 3.5X EBITD. We’ve closed four deals this year and we actually bought a film production company recently. That ended up sort of completing about three times cash flow. So that seems to be sort of give or take. The rough metric for these sort of, again, non-bleeding edge tech companies in sort of the lower M&A market.
[00:12:27] MB: Very interesting. On the deferred compensation piece of the puzzle, do you have a – I mean, I'm sure it varies by specific transaction. But do you have a preference or do you see funders typically having a preference for stuff that skews more towards hard traditional seller financing versus earn-outs? Do you think that they're roughly – I mean, they're very similar but they're not exactly the same thing. How do you think about which of those is more optimal, and why would you choose one versus the other in a particular transaction?
[00:12:53] PA: It’s interesting. I guess the one thing that I've sort of learned I guess in sort of the deal making process is some people, they've got a lot of PE firms, a lot of investments or shops, I mean, they've got the process of they try to shove a deal down someone's throat, and they say, “Look, here it is. Here's how we transact. Take it or leave it.” We’ve adopted a slightly different, more collaborative sort of process. We’re not out trying to shove the deals down somebody's throat. We're out – We’re trying to find the why and what's driving the seller to actually be exiting out of the business that they're sort of looking to get out of. Everybody has – Their perspective is very different. I mean, we've worked on deals from a gentleman who's actually in a hospice dying, and he's obviously trying to get his estate in order. So, I mean, that's his driver. We've dealt with people that are getting divorced. We've got people that are just burnt out and just completely tired. They've got second, third businesses. This one's just a thorn in their side. They just don't want this anymore.
That driver are all slightly different. So what we would do and our processes is we'd rather try to tailor something around what they're actually looking for, as opposed to sort of, again, ramming it down their throat. We find that that's a much better way to approach a transaction. Because, look, if you're dealing with large sort of corporate M&A, you've got a board talking to a board, there's not a lot of emotion that's sort of tied into these deals. Two boards will make a decision, how much for the horse. They hammer it out and kind of a deal gets done. But the sub 20 million space, the SME business, is the complete inverse of that. So these are businesses where it’s a lot of times the family-run business. There's a succession plan that needs to happen. This is almost like a child that they've raised in their family for X amount of years. So they want to make sure that, yes, obviously, prices is something and the value that's going to be attached to that. I mean, of course, that's important.
But the soft things that I've actually found that are actually really interesting, and I've sort of been speaking to business owners for almost the last two decades, and it's been really interesting. I've been sort of keeping tabs on and I tend to ask sellers like, “What's important to you in the deal?” I always thought sort of growing up that it can't be anything aside from the money component. I was actually dead wrong, and money is actually – It actually ranked sort of number three in the hierarchal food chain. Number one, the most important thing when somebody's selling a business is that their brand and their legacy is going to continue. So they don't typically want to go out and sell to a competitor who’s just going to take the sign down and sort of fold them into a division. They’re proud of what they've created. They want the legacy to continue. So they're really looking for a safe pair of hands that's going to be able to sort of navigate them to the next stage of the business's growth. That was actually the most important thing that they're looking for.
The second thing is they want to make sure that their staff is going to be safe. That's interesting as well because if you sell to big private equity, which a lot of businesses do, what does private equity do best where they come in, and they swing the axe on sort of day two, and they call it optimization. But they immediately go and just sort of lay off a bunch of people immediately. So understand they have to do that. But this is not what a small to medium-sized business owner wants. They want to make sure their staff is like their family. Or in a lot of cases, it is their family. They don't want to see somebody just coming in and swinging the axe. So those two elements need to be addressed in sort of the SME deal space. It's not just the money. Yes, money is sort of the third thing that's important. But, again, sort of brand integrity, legacy, and staff are all things that sort of come ahead of it.
We sort of try to wrap a deal structure that's going to be able to address all of those things. I think the paradigm shift for me happened was I used to go out and sort of try to hammer a deal down and say, “Look, this is kind of how we see it.” Sort of more of a take or leave it type attitude. But I think as I've sort of I guess matured into what I'm doing, I mean, we sort of have the opposite approach, is that we really just want to see what's important to somebody and want to build a structure, sort of a win-win structure around our deal. I think if we can do that, if we can derisk it, if we can get the seller what they want, we should find a way for ourselves to be able to take care of it ourselves. Usually, funders are typically happy with that, as long as the transaction is going to be derisked.
[00:17:04] MB: That's a great insight and the perspective of positioning yourself away from the PE firms or strategics that are going to be either slash and burning the staff or subsuming the brand and rolling it in. It’s a great perspective, a really good way to make yourself more attractive to a potential seller from digging down on the capital partner side a little bit more. Where do you typically see capital partners landing? You touched on the idea of maybe 50% of the consideration being deferred. Where do you typically see them landing in terms of, or do you see much of a preference between seller financing and earn-outs around that piece?
[00:17:40] PA: I would say there's not one size fits all. We got pretty good access into sort of the North America and UK capital markets. People look at this from a different perspective. I think as long as the deal is derisked, so there's going to be some form of deferred, some form of burnout. Perhaps it's a blend. Perhaps it’s one of the other. Funders and financiers are typically not completely fussed about how much of each is going to be weighed. As long as the overall deal makes sense, as long as you're paying a fair price, as long as the debt can be serviced, and again as long as they can see this transaction being derisked from that standpoint, then it’s yeah, however. So it slices and dices this one.
[00:18:17] MB: That makes a lot of sense. How do you think about or what's your approach at Quadra to your capitalization structure? Are you a funded PE shop? Are you more of an independent sponsor? Do you have a hybrid model? How do you think about your broader capitalization?
[00:18:34] PA: Yeah. That's a really interesting question. We get in a lot of thought. So we're not a fund. That has actually turned out to be by design. So I started my career as an entrepreneur and actually got a slightly different career journey. I've actually never had a job before. I've gone right into entrepreneurship at a very young age and sort of promised my mother that if – Let me start with one at a young age. If it completely fails, I promise to go back and get a job. Fortunately, I haven't had to do that. I just sort of kept rolling. But always in the back of my mind, I was thinking I might have to go back to my mother one day. But, first of all, I haven't had to do that.
But, yeah, so we get a lot of thought about this actually internally. So we are not a fund actually. This has been by design because when I started out my career doing deals, I was sort of cobbling together some of my own capital and going out and try to find either investor or bank debt to be able to close on and kind of doing it that way. I made a lot of mistakes going down that path and using sort of conventional bank financing and all this. We’ve sort of evolved that we had some conversations probably almost a decade ago, talking about do we want to go down the path of becoming a fund. We actually sort of ruled against it because being a fund comes with a lot of obligation. You've got to obviously be able to receive capital. You've got to be able to deploy capital. You've got to be able to exit your investment and repatriate the capital. So there's a lot of moving parts to that and there's a lot of demand on having to get a deal bought or sold.
That’s tough, I mean, especially moving into uncertain markets. If you've got three, four, five-year time horizons, things obviously change. So I'm fairly lifestyle-driven and I sort of tried to – I don't want all that pressure to be able to do that. I don't want to have to do a deal or not have to do a deal. So we've sort of gone against going out to become an actual fund. We are a fundless sponsor, however, and we've got sort of decade-plus relationships with sort of key funders in, again, kind of UK, US, and Canada that we sort of go to for capital for various deals. We’re not really in a position that we have to do a deal, which is actually, I think, an enviable place to be. We don't have to do anything, and so we just sort of do things as they come up and however they make sense and however, whatever feels right. However we can call that a win-win scenario is kind of the way that we kind of view the business.
[00:20:59] MB: How has your approach changed away from traditional bank debt and personal capital to – We touched on some of the deal structure components earlier, but where are you sourcing funds from typically, and what do those funds look like? Are you pulling from family offices? Are you pulling from SBIC lenders? Are you pulling from still some traditional banks, nontraditional lenders, debt funds? Then is that typically more in the form of equity, mex, senior financing, etc.?
[00:21:26] PA: Yeah. We basically veered away completely from sort of the conventional bank. I mean, a conventional bank, they've got zero entrepreneurship to them. I mean, they're all about give us three times the collateral, and maybe we'll give you back sort of one time in terms of a loan. I’m not in the business of sort of putting up all these, my house or children, to be able to pledge as collateral. So, yeah, we've completely veered away from that. We’re typically – Yeah, we do use a lot of family offices. We've got a lot of contacts. We've also got kind of senior/mez groups that like to participate. So they'll put in sort of more aggressively priced sort of fixed price debt, if you will, to be able to sort of close off these transactions. Again, usually our structure is we're typically putting in sort of 30 to 50 percent cash down by way of coupon debt, and then the rest is going to be carried as, again, kind of deferred or [inaudible 00:22:22]. That kind of rounds off the transaction.
That’s been quite interesting as well from a personal standpoint because I sort of didn't realize that it was possible that you could go out and do deals without using any of your own capital. Probably the first half a dozen other deals that I've done kind of growing up as a youngster trying to figure this out, I didn't really have a mentor per se. So I was sort of going through all the setbacks and failures and the struggles of kind of having to piece this all together myself. I didn't think that there was another way to do it, except for going to the conventional bank. But what I've actually come to realize is that there's a much larger secondary market of capital that would take sort of an aggressive approach. As long as a company has got sufficient cash flow and a decent balance sheet, they would certainly be willing to advance against that to be able to complete a deal.
The spotlight, if you will, tends to come off of yourself. When you go to a conventional bank, it's all about you and what's your credit score and how much money you have in your bank and prove yourself to us. But when you're actually going out to the alternative finance markets, the spotlight comes off yourself, and it's much more geared towards the asset that you're looking to acquire. So they're more concerned about, again, the cash flow that that produces and what does the balance sheet look like. So, yeah, a lot of these deals can be structured. We’re typically not even using any of our own capital to be able to go out and transact. So that's been a little bit of an epiphany on my journey because I didn't realize that you could not go to the bank to fund the transaction. There’s a whole another world out there kind of behind the closed door. It's a big space, and there's a lot of capital, but we'll take a view on a lot of deals with this.
[00:24:01] MB: How do you answer – Maybe you don't even encounter this because you have some legacy relationships that have proven this out. But how do you typically deal with the sort of skin in the game argument of, hey, you need to have X amount in this deal to show that you're vested in it and that you're not just going to walk away from the loan?
[00:24:19] PA: Yeah. I mean, part of it is legacy relationships. But the other part is obviously locking the seller in to a deal as well. Again, as I mentioned earlier, the last thing that we want or a financier wants is giving somebody a bag of cash, and they're sort of walking right out the door and onto the beach. We're making sure that the deals that we're doing where the seller is actually going to be locked in to the process. So it's either they're going to be locked in or there's going to have a layer of management beneath them that's going to be locked in to ensure that the transition is going to happen smoothly. As long as they know that there's incentivization on behalf of the seller to remain with the business and to make sure that they're going to be on contract to be able to stay with the business for an X amount of time and as long as they're going to be locked in, funders will take a view on that.
[00:25:11] MB: Asking the question in a different way, do the nontraditional alternative lenders and capital partners that you're typically working with, they're okay with very equity light deals and they don't say, “Hey, we're willing to put up.”? Even if they're only at, say, 50 or 35 percent or whatever LTV, they say, “Hey, we'll essentially treat the deferred compensation as your equity contribution.”
[00:25:32] PA: As equity. Yup. Correct.
[00:25:33] MB: Okay, got it. That’s awesome.
[00:25:37] PA: Yup. It’s a game changer because – I guess that's how I sort of – Another epiphany I had was I guess several years ago, I ended up buying a chain of retail stores. It’s a small deal but it was – They’re doing about just under two million a year and they're profitable. The guy was sort of netting out about 10%, and it’s just kind of something that fell into my lap. So I ended up doing a deal where I bought the whole company out sort of lock stock and barrel, and I did it for – I bought it for a dollar, and so that was a bit of an interesting situation, as well. The way that the deal was structured made a lot of sense for the seller to do. I completed several deals like this. Somebody once asked me. They said, “Look, is it possible to go out and buy a business without using any of your own capital?” I said, “Yeah, sure. I’ve done it several times.” They said, “Well, how do you do it?” I was kind of explaining this to somebody, and they said, “That's really interesting.” They're like, “How do you – You really need to tell somebody about this.”
A bit of a light bulb moment went on. That’s sort of why I started doing these little workshops on the side to kind of show people how to go out and go source deals, and how to structure them properly and derisk them, and then how to raise all the capital in the close. Then sort of how to negotiate and a whole bunch of things and a few sort of wealth hacks and tips and tricks that I've learned over the past kind of two decades in doing this on the back end. Yeah. I put sort of several hundred people through the program, and it's been interesting. Some of them – I had a young fellow exactly from Edmonton, Canada that he went out last year, and he was debating about going out to go to school and go get a conventional job. He kind of went through the program, and I kind of end up losing touch with some of these people that end up coming. You don’t know who sort of takes this material and who does well with it.
But he actually came back to me and kind of rang me up and says, “Perry, I’d love to chat.” I said, “Sure. What's going on?” He says, “Listen.” He goes, “I bought two businesses last year. I'm using any my own capital doing exactly what you kind of laid out in your workshop.” So he's kind of off to the races. For me, this was absolutely brilliant. So he's outdoing it himself. Now, he’s close to [inaudible 00:27:35]. He’s kind of working on his third now. So, yeah, I kind of give people a bunch of different frameworks how to be able to go out and do deals without typically using your own capital.
[00:27:43] MB: Very interesting. For someone who doesn't have some of the capital relationships, obviously, you've developed over the last 20 years of being in private equity, how do you feel about resources like capital brokers, placement agents, etc. to help you source that capital? Or how would you recommend approaching finding those capital partners?
[00:28:03] PA: Yeah. I think the “broker” in all aspects is pretty difficult. So I would – I don't try to rely on business brokers in terms of sourcing. On the capital side, I don't typically rely on brokers either. Actually, through the workshop, I ended up giving everybody sort of – We’ve got a pretty robust list of funders in US, UK, and Canada that will step in and fund these deals, if they're structured sort of properly, and, obviously take the technical criteria that we're looking for. I show people on the program how to actually structure these according to what the funders want, and then actually give them the funders and their direct contact details and everything. So they can kind of go out and present them with a deal, and these funders will find if it's structured properly, and the deal sort of makes sense.
But, yeah, I think outsourcing that stuff is hard. I think from a deal sourcing perspective, you're much better off to source deals yourself and from a financing standpoint. It’s like anything. I mean, you got to build relationships and I think you're much better off to tell the story, as opposed to a third party trying to tell the story on your behalf.
[00:29:01] MB: Let's dig into the deal flow side of that a little bit more. You mentioned some very interesting stories earlier, whether it's people going through a divorce, in hospice care, etc. How are you sourcing opportunities like that, and how do you think about – You touched on not really being a huge fan of business brokers. How do you think about generating deal flow, especially if you're starting from essentially being flat-footed or not having some of the legacy relationships that someone like you might have?
[00:29:30] PA: Yeah. I've just been at this for a long time. My answer is not the right one because we don't do a lot of sourcing. We have people kind of feeding us stuff sort of all the time, just because we’ve just been in the space for quite a while. But I think somebody that's starting out, I think we give a lot of sort of tactical strategies on actually going out to source deals. But I think probably the best one that I could recommend is really looking into your own contact list and your own cell phone and who inside there do you have a relationship with. If you sort of – Because just by virtue of this macroeconomic shift that's going on in the world right now, everybody's uncle right now is looking to sell or get out of their business. If you sort of tap into your own network of people that you know and say, “Hey, I'm looking to buy a business. Can you actually introduce me to somebody?” Well, chances are somebody in your 20 closest contacts or your friends or whoever is going to be able to introduce you to somebody that's selling the business right now.
The beauty of that is you're actually getting introduced as a credible individual. Come talk to my uncle. I want you to meet Matt. Matt’s a great guy. Definitely, he's interested in buying a business just like yours. So when you, Matt, walk in, you've already come introduced. You're not a complete stranger to them. This is all about an exercise and rapport building. You've gone out and you're coming there validated. So you're meeting somebody. You can start having a bit more meaningful of a conversation. It’s not about positioning yourself where the private equity firm that's looking to do a lopsided deal with you and offer you 10 cents on the dollar. No. This is all about approaching them from a very collaborative standpoint. Like understand you need to get out of this thing and you're a safe pair of hands, Matt. How can we figure out a way to make both sides of the equation work? This is all very relationship-driven. The best deals work as a function of the quality of the relationship that you're able to build.
Just looking back in my career, I mean, there's a direct correlation with the businesses that I've been able to do deals with are the ones where I've spent a lot of time, and I've built great rapport with these people. The ones where I haven't built as great rapport and I haven't spent as much time, I haven't been able to get them over the line. There's a real correlation attached to this. Again, this is a function of the space that we're in. We're sort of looking at the small to medium-sized enterprise, and those are very sort of unlike the large sort of corporate M&A transaction. These smaller deals, they're very relationship-driven. So I think going back to the question about sourcing, how do you source these or how do you find them? There's lots of things you can do. But I think the best one is to tap into your own network. Contact your 10 or 15 closest contacts and say, “Look, who do you know that's selling a business right now? Can you introduce me to them?” Chances are then they will know somebody and chances are, hopefully, you've been a good friend, and they're going to introduce you as a person of substance and credibility and a safe pair of hands.
Start these conversations. Start having these conversations with sellers because you'd be surprised, once you actually get into conversations with the sellers, what they actually want and what they're looking for actually changes. If you go to a business broker, you're going to get one side of the story, and you're going to get a narrative that's been produced by a broker. A lot of times, it's based on very unrealistic expectations. The broker is going to say, “Oh. Come sign up with us. We've got sellers that are going to pay you a gazillion dollars for your business, and they're going to give you all cash on closing.” Then if you go down that path and you bite the hook, I guess, and you're dealing with a brokered business, a lot of times the expectations are out of line. So if you say, “Look, we're going to pay you circa three times cash flow for your business,” they're going to be like, “Well, no. The broker told us you're going to give us 10 times cash flow for our business.” So it just sets the tone off on the wrong foot. I think you're much better off to be able to go out and just establish relationships with your own network.
Right now, we're just living in a time where, again, large macroeconomic shift of people looking or not even looking. They need to sell their business. The baby boomers, they need to find an exit. So it's a great time to be doing this.
[00:33:40] MB: How do you think about things like intermediaries, whether they're lawyers, CPAs, accounting firms, etc.? Do you think that that – Do you typically source opportunities from folks like that? Or do you find that to be not a really valuable source of deal flow?
[00:33:56] PA: Yeah. I think anyone who's not sort of too financially benefited from making that introduction is probably a good source. Unlike a broker, yeah, I think if you know the lawyer, I think great lawyers got a lot of clients. They can always find you somebody who's looking to sell. I think accountants are great. Accountants, obviously, have a big book of business. They can tell you who's getting ready for retirement. If you're approaching an accountant, the one thing I would probably say to them is I would say, “Look, I'm looking to buy a business. Is there some way that you could introduce me to a seller? Keep in mind, Mr. and Mrs. Accountant, that we want to continue to retain your accounting services if we're successful at making a transaction happen.” That’s sort of I guess the biggest fear as an accountant is that you're going to buy the business, and their sort of clockwork revenue stream is going to stop if you bring their accounting elsewhere.
But if you sort of are upfront and just say, “Listen. We want to – If you can make an introduction, we're absolutely going to retain you and keep you engaged as the accountant on this deal.” As long as they know that they've got – You’re not cutting off their reoccurring revenue stream, then we should be typically happy to make some introductions. So, yeah, I think counselors are better placed than brokers.
[00:35:03] MB: Changing gears a little bit, how do you think about management at a lot of these businesses, especially in lower middle market, SMB space? You have very disparate management pictures. In a lot of cases, it's one person holding the whole show together. Some instances, the sellers actually built somewhat of a management team. What's your approach to solving the management piece of the puzzle?
[00:35:28] PA: Yup. If you're a large private equity firm and you're going to do a transaction, you're going to be handcuffing the sellers to the desk. I mean, they are – PE shops are usually kind of the smartest guys in the room, especially when it comes to these deals, and they know that probably some component of cash and some jam tomorrow that if you hit such a hurdle, you're going to get more cash as you go. They know exactly how to hit the bar. A lot of times, the seller sort of never gets that. But what they're going to do is they're going to absolutely handcuff the seller to the desk. They're not going to let them get away. That really defeats the purpose kind of in the small to medium size world of the seller that's actually looking to get out of the business. Handcuffing a seven-year-old person to the desk is not sort of a great way to do this.
Again, this comes back to the soft things. They sort of need to get out of the business. So the way that we sort of take a view on this is we're here to listen as to what's the real driver of the business. Some of them say, “Look, we're happy to stay on for another one to three years.” Great if they want to do that. If they don't want to do that and they want to sort of kind of be on the proverbial beach, that's fine too. However, the way that the handcuffs are going to work, they're not going to be a short pair of handcuffs. They’re going to be a long pair of handcuffs. So, yes, they can sort of sit on the proverbial beach, but they're going to be carrying a fair bit of the seller financing of that deal. That’s how we're sort of hooking them in that if something starts to go sideways in the business, and we fell in them for a bit of advice or experience in what we need to kind of get from them, they're going to take our call because they want to make sure that they're going to get the next payment.
I think the way that that we would typically take a view on this is sort of the more that they completely want out of the business immediately, I think the third consideration or the earnout is going to have to be slightly longer, as opposed to somebody that says, “Look, we just want to crystallize an exit and know what that looks like. We don't have to be out today but we're happy to kind of phase out over the next kind of one to three years.” So that's fine. I mean, as long as they're going to be there, we got to make sure that the business is going to be able to operate. Then the other thing is, as well, is kind of the layer of management below them is going to be really important.
Typically, the a couple of ways to be able to kind of do that, one, some people go out and source kind of CEOs or whomever to run the business to bring them in from the outside. Yeah, I can do that. We've got kind of relationships with headhunters and such, but that's typically not what happens. Usually, what happens is we get to know somebody, and because it's all relationship-driven, and then it sort of happens to be, “Okay. Well, who's the next sort of key person in this business?” It’s, “Oh, well. Bob's been here for 24 years. He knows everything about the business. He's our key guy.” Well, guess what. Bob just got a promotion. So Bob is going to be now the man. He's going to get the corner office and he's going to have the authority to sort of make some decision making. So it's easy for the seller to sort of phase out, as long as we've got Bob in there, and we're going to sort of tie Bob in with sort of potentially an equity package and giving him sort of some ownership in the business. So you have an alignment of interest. We're sort of happy to do that, and Bob's going to be happy because he gets a pay raise, and he gets a corner office, and he might have some incentive to be a part of the business.
That usually kind of mitigates the risk in the seller leaving. The side fringe benefit from that is if Bob sort of knows that there's a deal happening on the periphery, and Bob may be able to get a piece of equity in the business or some ownership, you want him to know that because he's obviously going to lobby for the deal on your behalf, because Bob wants that corner office. Bob wants that equity. So if you build up some rapport with Bob as well, getting to know him, he's going to lobby for you to the seller because he wants to make sure that he can reap the rewards of his 24 years of service that's been after business. So, yeah, he's going to help sell the business for you as well. It makes you look like a rock star getting into the business because you're paying a fair price for the business and you're letting the seller get out without sort of being handcuffed to the desk. You're also taking care of the staff. So not only are you not firing Bob. You're empowering Bob, you're giving Bob ownership, and there's going to be continuity of the business because Bob's been there for a long time. Bob knows the business probably just as well, if not better, than the owner himself.
[00:39:51] MB: Is there a disqualifying framework where you think about that if there's just not a certain amount of Bobs or level of management in the business that you just pass on the opportunity? Or how do you think about things that have a thin management team?
[00:40:07] PA: Yeah. I guess we wouldn't be looking at companies that are probably micro deals. When I say micro, I'm sort of kind of – Typically under kind of a million would probably be no because the smaller the business like that, the more risk there is. The lighter the management, typically a single owner operator, they're not going to have that depth and breadth of sort of a layer of management beneath them. So we're typically looking at companies as a minimum that are kind of doing a couple million of kind of turnover. I'd say probably two to 10 million of kind of revenues is sort of our sweet spot because, to your point, I mean, they have some at that level of business. Although these are relatively small businesses at that level, they're going to have some infrastructure below them that if Bob needs to sort of get out of the business, there's going to be people there that can step into the business.
[00:40:59] MB: Tell me a little bit more. You touched briefly on headhunters. How do you think about that as an arrow in your quiver? Is it a last resort? Is it a helpful approach? When you need management help, do you find that to be something useful?
[00:41:13] PA: Yeah. I mean, it definitely could be. But I would say, by and large, most of the deals are there's going to be continuity from the existing staff to take over because I'd much rather have somebody that's been in the business for 10, 15, 20 years. They've been there. I'd rather have that as the person that's now taken up the corner office, as opposed to the MBA, CFA, CFO, lots of designations to come into the business. Yeah, he's qualified. But, I mean, he doesn't know the business as well as sort of the incumbents. So I think that I would say the headhunting is sort of probably the path of last resort. We'd much rather elevate somebody from the existing staff.
[00:42:01] MB: How do you think about broken deal costs and diligence expenses, especially as more independent sponsors skew? I guess, with your model, maybe the diligence requirements may be lighter, but how do you typically think about managing those expenses, especially for somebody who's just getting into this game?
[00:42:20] PA: Yeah. So great question. Actually, I've been burned a bunch of times on when I was kind of starting out on deals that didn't complete. I was kind of writing my own checks for lawyers and accountants, and trying to get a deal over the line. Yeah. You risk your time. If you can't complete that, that's unfortunate. But I think what really is unfortunate is two weeks later, when you get a legal and an accounting bill in the mail, a couple weeks later for paying for a deal that didn't complete, and so that's not a lot of fun. Out of sheer necessity, I guess, if you will, I sort of developed something that I kind of share with people in my program about how to ensure that you're not going to be stuck out of pocket and having to pay sort of lawyers and accountants on deals that don't complete. Obviously, if the deal completes, it’s the company that picks up those costs. But, yeah, I do have some actual strategy around that that I sort of share with people in the workshop. I give them sort of a specialized, small little agreement that I get people to sign up too for that.
But, yeah, kind of I think like as entrepreneurs, we're risk takers. We’re people that are investing our time for, hopefully, an outcome that makes sense on the back end. So we're risking our time, but I'm really of the opinion that there's a lot of ways to sort of derisk the actual hard checks that’s attached to it. I think as my career sort of evolved, it was I was the guy that was putting sort of my equity on the line, and I personal guarantee it, putting my home on the line and doing all these things and kind of paying the legal and accounting bills on deals that didn't close. That was not a lot of fun, and so I've sort of evolved from necessarily having to use any of your own capital to do these deals. It’s been kind of interesting because I think the farther I have gone in my career, the less actual hard equity that we've been having to use.
It’s been a bit of an epiphany, and I think that a lot of people maybe just aren't – It’s conventional wisdom, I guess, that if you need money, you go to the bank. But I guess banks are kind of the worst places to go if you need capital. There are other alternatives and there's ways to sort of derisk a lot of this stuff. There's a lot of frameworks that can be done, so you're not going to be having to use a lot of your own capital or very little to be able to get a deal done. Certainly, you know, when it comes to fees and diligence costs and all that, we definitely have some strategies on the back end to try to mitigate that as well.
[00:44:42] MB: Would you say, broadly speaking, those approaches are primarily more in the bucket of risk sharing with the service providers? They’ll catch up on the next deal. Or would you say they're more broadly just reducing the overall diligence spend because the deal structure itself is very derisked?
[00:45:00] PA: Both. Again, it really depends on the deal. It depends on the seller. It depends on what we've got going on. So, yeah, we've got sort of in-house legal counsel in a fella by the name of Martin. We actually closed a deal about a month or so ago, and we bought a film production company here in the UK. Yeah. I piece Martin into the deal. We just gave him some equity for doing some of the work. That approach of being collaborative I think is a great way to do things where it takes sort of a community to raise a child, right? I think if you can align yourself with like-minded people that can all kind of pull an oar in the boat and to share in in the ownership, I think that's a great way to do it. Not just sharing in the ownership with your own, call it, ideal team. But I think also sharing in the upside with a seller is also a great thing to do.
I think our view of deal making, again, it's much less of here's the deal. Take it or leave it. I think it's kind of sitting down with a seller and whoever you're pulling into this thing, like how do we make the economics work for everybody and how do we all benefit and how do we all kind of share in some of that risk? So, yeah, it really depends on what the drivers are. But, I mean, that's kind of how we do things. I mean, business wins. It’s not binary, where someone wins and someone fails. We truly believe that everybody has to win from these deals, or it just doesn't make sense, and it's really hard to get those deals over the line.
[00:46:23] MB: That's a really great perspective and a collaborative, flexible, win-win-win approach. It seems to be a really strong position. I'm curious, for somebody who wants to start to implement this in their business or their lives, what would be the first action step or a homework item that they could begin implementing immediately after listening this conversation that you would recommend?
[00:46:46] PA: Yeah. I think, first and foremost, look, you've got to be passionate in what you're doing. I think it's important. I think there's – I've been at this for a long time and I love sort of the deal making process. For me, it's a ton of fun. This is what I think I was just built to be able to do. So you meet a lot of people that they got the shiny new object syndrome, and one minute they're buying and selling properties, and the next minute they're trading cryptocurrency, and the next minute they're wanting to buy a business. But they never stick with anything long enough. I think you've really got to identify what's important to you and what do you want to do. Then I think once you establish that, you've got to put in the time. If you put in the time, you're going to get good. If you get good, the reward should follow. But I think you've got to decide that you sort of want to go down a path like this, and then you've got to sort of learn, I guess, some of the different ways and frameworks of being able to do a deal.
I think the best way to do a deal is just to jump in the pool and get started. I think it's start having meaningful conversations with people. That’s a paradigm shift because I think a lot of people have this idea that business building is all about let's chase the next client, and Let's chase the next invoice. That puts people on a hamster wheel of that flow. It’s the hard slog to kind of grow that way. You're always sort of chasing the next buck. But I think if you change the way that you're sort of having conversations with people, and if you look at it from a business ownership standpoint, if you look at it from a deal making perspective, I tried to broaden the depth of conversations that we're having. So it's not just about becoming a client necessarily. It's about how can we work together to become, to collaborate, to make something better? So whether it's a merger, whether it's an acquisition, I mean, how will this make the both of us better?
I think if you have those sort of higher level conversations with people, you're going to be surprised that actually what comes back and where the flex points are and what sort of people are looking for. One thing that I kind of talked about a little bit about in terms of doing a deal as well is everybody thinks they got to go in, and they got to buy a sort of 100% of a company right off the bat. Everybody listening to this has a skill set. Everybody has something that they can bring to the table. So whether you're a sales guy, a marketer, or whatever you're great at, use that as your bartering tool. Use that as your currency to get yourself into a deal. If you're a great salesperson, you go to a company, and there's a lot of them out there that just they're not good at generating sales or they need more sales, if you position yourself as, “Look, I've been doing sales for years, and so how do I help you with your business?” Instead of sort of fee for service, get your foot in the door by taking equity. So get some ownership in the business. Perhaps it’s a minority stake or whatever you can negotiate. Get a foot in the door, bringing your value to the table.
There’s a couple things. So, one, you've traded off your time for ownership in the business. Number one, you have a stake. Number two, you're going to start to build some rapport with these people because now you're working together. The third thing is when it comes time for them to sell the rest of the business down the road. You've already have the rapport built. They can see how your work. Hopefully, it's been a good experience, and so who would be the logical person to buy that out? Well, it'd be you because you've been into the business now for a year or two years. From a financing standpoint on sort of the scale of easiest to difficult, that's an easy narrative to finance. It’s sort of somebody already has a minority stake, and they just want to buy out the remaining shares of the seller. That's probably something that financiers can really wrap their head around.
That’s another way in terms of somebody getting started that might want to look at doing deals is use your skill set in life as your currency into a deal. Get yourself a – Instead of trading time for dollars, trade time for getting a stake, and then sort of go from there and build some rapport and figure out how to sort of buy out their remaining shares down the road.
[00:50:38] MB: Perry, where can listeners find out more about you and your workshops and all of your work online?
[00:50:44] PA: I've got a website called perryanderson.global. Perry Anderson with an O, S-O-N. global. Yeah, you can mostly find me there. If you want to peruse our firm, it’s called Quadra Capital. That’s where you can find me.
[00:50:56] MB: Well, Perry, this has been a fascinating conversation, some really great insights into the behind the scenes of the private equity world, how to finance transactions in a nontraditional and very interesting way. So I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing all this wisdom with our listeners.
[00:51:12] PA: Hey, Matt, it’s been my pleasure. It's been a great past hour. Thanks for your time.
[00:51:16] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created the show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an email. My email is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I'd love to hear from you, and I read and respond to every single listener email. I'm going to give you three reasons why you should sign up for our email list today by going to successpodcast.com and signing up right on the homepage. There are some incredible stuff that’s only available to those on the email list, so be sure to sign up, including an exclusive curated weekly email from us called Mindset Monday, which is short, simple, filled with articles, stories, things that we found interesting and fascinating in the world of evidence-based growth in the last week.
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