Why Buyers are Searching for Your Professional Service Business

**Eric Brenner** (0:00)
Right now, the industry is about it. For every eight advisors that are going to retire, there's three coming in. So it's still a real need for younger G2 advisors to be coming into the field. Well, I think personally, being an entrepreneur and growing up in an entrepreneur family and I had relatives that were entrepreneurs, there's no better game in town. You control your own destiny.

**Jacob Oros** (0:29)
Welcome to M&A Talk, the number one Podcast on Selling a Business brought to you by Morgan & Westfield, a boutique M&A firm specializing in the sale of small to mid-sized companies. I'm your host and president of Morgan & Westfield, Jacob Oros. If you're considering selling your business and you'd like to work with me throughout the process, you can schedule a free consultation at morganandwestfield.com. Or if you'd like my team and I to perform evaluation of your company for a one-time fee of $1,500, visit morganandwestfield.com or see the link in the show notes. And today we're going to talk with Eric Brenner. He's the owner of a wealth management tax and accounting firm. And we're to talk about lessons learned from 11 or 12 acquisitions at this point. Eric, welcome to the show.

**Eric Brenner** (1:19)
Thanks for having me.

**Jacob Oros** (1:21)
So you have an interesting background. And you bought 11 businesses. Tell us a little bit about your background.

**Eric Brenner** (1:27)
Yeah, so the last 32 years have been a financial advisor owning a financial planning wealth management firm. And over that time period, I actually grew up in a family business and we sold those. And then I got into this business. And over the course of my career, I've bought and sold a couple off, but mainly acquisitions within the field. And then a few years ago, we started a tax and accounting business. And so I've acquired a couple of those as well along the way.

**Jacob Oros** (2:01)
What types of companies have you acquired? Obviously, tax and accounting. If you broke down the 11 or 12 that you've done, how would you break those down?

**Eric Brenner** (2:10)
Yeah, so a majority of them would be in the financial services business.
So that would be a majority of them of different sizes for different reasons. People wanting to retire, advisors wanting to retire, get out of the business, make a transition. They didn't want to run the day to day anymore. They just wanted to work with clients. And so kind of a multitude of reasons.

**Jacob Oros** (2:35)
What size deals have you done?

**Eric Brenner** (2:37)
Oh, anywhere from small, a little over 100,000 to a couple million in the millions.

**Jacob Oros** (2:45)
What have you learned from those? It was 11 or 12 deals.

**Eric Brenner** (2:49)
Yeah, I mean, I've learned a lot over the time. Years ago in our business, that didn't really happen. So somebody that was getting ready to retire or retired, they would basically turn over their business, kind of turn their book back in. So back then, I really had to do a lot of learning around what does it look like, how you go about it. And our business has just drastically changed.

**Jacob Oros** (3:17)
How has your business changed?

**Eric Brenner** (3:18)
Well, private equity has definitely made a difference. So private equity is, you know, like in a lot of spaces now is becoming a big player in our space, massive player in our space. And people now know that they, you know, if they've done a good job, that they have equity. And so there's typically 45 to 50 buyers for every one seller. And so that's really changed the game.

**Jacob Oros** (3:50)
When was the first deal that you did?

**Eric Brenner** (3:53)
It was probably about 20, 23, 24 years ago.

**Jacob Oros** (3:57)
2002 or so?

**Eric Brenner** (3:59)
Yeah, yeah, around 2002

**Jacob Oros** (4:00)
How is deal making changed since then?

**Eric Brenner** (4:03)
Well, I mean, valuations of the way we value company, that has changed. The way people take payouts, that's changed. You know, we almost all had to either have it do seller financing or some down payment, seller financing. And banks wouldn't even look at it because they were used to loaning money on bricks and mortar, machinery, equipment, those kinds of things. They were not comfortable at that time on giving money or loaning money to something that they couldn't touch or feel. And so that really has changed now. There's quite a few large players in the space that play a major part in financing. So sellers used to take more over time. That has changed.