March 28, 2024 • 46 mins
"Conversations in Commerce" offers an engaging episode where hosts Andrew Alford and Alyssa converse with Roger Buck, an industry veteran in Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), about the realities and myths of the M&A world.
The episode begins with a heartwarming discussion on Alyssa's collaboration with Vanguard Direct, focusing on promoting mental health awareness amongst children. Then, the hosts launch into a profound interview with Roger Buck, during which he shares his inspiring journey into the world of M&A.
With humor, sound effects, and in-depth discussions, the hosts and Roger help dismantle negative preconceptions associated with M&A. They delve into the different motives behind selling a company, the true value of a company, and the importance of beginning the exit planning process well in advance for a smooth business exit.
Listeners will uncover insights on the sequence of events leading to a business handover and learn about the importance of cultural fit, geographic location, and customer base in this process. The episode wraps up with an exciting announcement about the upcoming BrandChain Leadership Summit.
Join in this informative and entertaining episode and get a closer look into the ever-changing realm of Mergers & Acquisitions with insightful M&A strategies, trendy tech, and impactful discussions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
I said it couldn't be done. What? We're back again. Who said what and why?
Just kidding. It was me. Okay.
Welcome to Conversations in Commerce, where we have candid conversations about
technology, e-commerce, print,
and the supply chain. And we try to have a little fun in the process.
I'm your host, Andrew Alford. And with me today is our co-host,
(00:22):
Alyssa. Hey, Alyssa, how's it going?
Hi, good. How are you? Good. I understand you've been really busy since the
last show. As a matter of fact, you've been working on a pretty powerful collaboration
with Vanguard Direct. Is that right?
Yes, I've had the pleasure of working with Vanguard on an article regarding
a project that they've done with the United Way of Connecticut 2-1-1 and the
Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
(00:45):
So essentially what they did is they had Gizmo, who is a therapy dog.
Here's a picture of Gizmo right here.
He's a therapy dog in Connecticut schools. pools.
And they created a kit with different products in it.
You know, some of them had like stress balls in them, a stuffed dog shaped exactly like Gizmo.
And all of this was to promote and to educate children on mental health care,
(01:10):
kind of, you know, get rid of that stigma, you know, the stigma behind it early on.
That's a really good application, Alyssa. When you think about it,
you know, when you think about children's health, you don't necessarily consider
their their mental well-being.
And a program like this is sorely needed in a world where, you know,
we're mostly concerned about the physical needs of the child.
But the reality is just like adults, they go through periods of mental health
(01:33):
crises and their own needs. So kudos.
That's a really great program. Kudos to the folks at Vanguard Direct,
John and his team, and United Way for pulling that together.
What an incredible process and program they put on.
So without further ado, do, I want to go ahead and introduce today's guest.
We have an exciting show lined up for you today.
(01:55):
Today's guest is the Managing Director for Corporate Development Associates.
He considers himself a millennial trapped in a baby boomer's body.
I'm going to talk about that in a little bit.
He is a husband. He's a dad. He's a grandpa.
He is a member of the Ben Franklin Honor Society, which is an incredible honor in itself.
He was the chairman of PER for years and years and years. And recently,
(02:15):
I had the personal privilege of awarding him with BrandChain's President's Award.
So without further ado, let's welcome to the show, Roger Buck. Hey, Roger.
Hey, everybody. Hey, Roger. So I've had the pleasure of working with you in
various different roles across the gamut.
I'd say, you know, serving across, you know, like serving on the same board together.
We've shared the same industry insights for the past, I don't know, 20 plus years.
(02:37):
It's been a minute. I don't want to date either one of us, but I'd be really
surprised if most of our viewers and listeners haven't interacted with you at
some point in their own careers or,
For those of you who don't know you, and to enrich the knowledge of the folks
that do know you, share a little bit about your origin story.
In other words, how did you get to where you are today, and what got you into the field of M&A?
(03:00):
It's been a fun ride because I actually started real young. I've been in the
printing business my entire career.
I joke with people and tell them that I started when I was five because my dad
was a printer for 33 years,
and he was working in this weekly newspaper shop and
he brought home a crate that was from a
letterpress that their company had purchased and they
(03:21):
let dad bring the crate home and it became my playhouse my
brothers and i play house in the backyard i've got a picture of myself when
i'm five and over my left shoulder it says heidelberg and five or ten years
later i was actually running the press that came in that and that started the
career i got into forms in 71 i worked with some really great companies over the next 45, 50 years.
(03:44):
And then in 2017, I wanted to stay in the business, but get out of what I was
doing out of the manufacturing side.
And I was attending a small distributor summit actually in St.
Louis and George Crump, I think you may know George, was doing presentation
talking about all the companies that he had started and sold and started and done things with.
(04:05):
And he made a statement, this was on a Saturday, and he made I made a statement
that said, it's hard to move forward if you have a path of retreat.
And I thought about that over the weekend and I went in Monday morning and resigned
and didn't have a job, didn't know what I was going to do.
And then a friend of mine who does M&A called me up and said,
you know, you know, a lot of people, you know, a lot of stuff about equipment
(04:25):
and processes and distributors and markets and sales trends.
Why don't you come try doing M&A? And so I started in 17, but doing it ever
since and just having a ball.
Well, that's quite a jump, right? From what you've done historically over to M&A.
And I know M&A often gets a bad rap. Matter of fact, I got a few things queued
up on my soundboard, right?
So when somebody mentions mergers and acquisitions, a lot of times the audience
(04:49):
does this little number here, right?
And say, oh, that's not fair.
And sometimes if you're a member of the company being swallowed by an acquisition,
you hear, oh, that's kind of nasty.
So obviously we don't like hearing those things.
And that brings us to the topic of our show today, which we call M&A, the Reaper, and You.
(05:13):
And so the goal here is to kind of dispel some of the negative myths and connotations
that kind of form around the topic of M&A.
And we really want to properly define find this for our audience.
So, Roger, I know a lot of folks equate M&A companies as the touch of death,
the grim reaper, and maybe some even call it the last resort.
And I think a lot of people blame it for industry consolidation.
(05:36):
And while not entirely accurate, it's definitely a viewpoint that a lot of people in this industry share.
So since it's not really a fair way to look at it, how would you respond to
someone that sort of has this viewpoint? What do you do to change their mind, these myths?
And maybe as a third here, while you're at it, maybe what other What other myths
do you come across in M&A in the circles that you run?
(05:57):
You know, it is a myth because when you think about it, you know,
any company out there, I don't care what it is, what they make,
what you sell, what you produce.
At some point in time, one of two things is going to occur.
You're either going to close or you're going to sell. There really isn't any other option.
We've seen companies run their business until, you know, the owner literally
(06:19):
dies at his desk or something like that.
And they have no exit plan and no succession plan. land.
But a company is going to do one or the other.
And so M&A is actually like a rebirth.
It's a way to take a company someone has built that they care about.
It's been their passion, their life, their dream. And it's a way to make that
(06:39):
thing keep going on, either with a new owner or merging with another company, whatever it may be.
So the idea that it's the end is not not really justified very well.
And, you know, when something like that happens, part of the process is people
don't buy companies to leave them the same, and they certainly don't buy them
to see them to go down. They buy them to grow.
(07:00):
So what normally happens is in an acquisition, someone gets acquired and that
company grows over the next few years.
You know, there's more staff, there's more equipment, there's new technology added.
There's a lot of cool things that can happen as opposed to the other option,
which is someone Someone throws the keys on the desk on the way out the door
and they lock it and they go away.
So, you know, it's not a good idea or a good thought that that's the end of
(07:25):
the world. It's actually pretty much more of a new beginning.
You know, the other myth that we run across quite a bit is when someone decides
they do want to exit is what the company is actually worth.
We always tell everybody that, you know, I can tell you what your company is worth.
You can tell me what you think your company is worth, but the market is going
to tell you what your company is worth. And those three numbers are never going to be the same.
(07:48):
We can have a pretty good idea of it. But one of the things that we do run into
quite a bit with people who do want to exit, they come talk to us,
is they have a misconception of what their company is actually worth.
And that's one of the very first conversations that has to take place.
And sometimes, frankly, that's not as easy as we like it to be.
You make a lot of excellent points, right? So I feel like you did a great job
(08:11):
of taking the edge off the conversation. Thank you for that, by the way.
We always have to start on that weird note and find our way through it.
So I guess I have to ask the question, why does somebody want to sell their company?
What brings them to this point? What are their reasons?
You know, there's generally three reasons. First and foremost,
it's generally retirement.
You know, someone's ran it for a long number of years. They don't have children
(08:34):
in the business, or if they do, they don't want to take over the business.
You know, they want to exit while the exiting timing is good.
Maybe there's buying going on.
Maybe they just reached that point where they want to travel more,
spend more time with their family, their grandchildren.
So, you know, first and foremost, it's usually I just want to enjoy my life
now, and I need to do that. I have to get rid of this because it occupies so much of my time.
(08:59):
You know, another time is, you know, sometimes people are just tired of the risk.
They want to stay in the business, but it's been rough on them.
Maybe they're in a market or a product line that's difficult to sell.
They don't have the wherewithal or maybe the money to do what they really need
to do to take the company to the next level.
So they sell mainly in order to get funding or some backing,
(09:21):
maybe for a private equity firm or something like that. So the company can continue
and grow and maybe they stay with it.
Maybe they don't, you know, and the third one is sometimes some people just
build a company to a certain level. They want to cash out and they're going to go do it again.
I've actually had the pleasure of working with two guys who are on their third
companies now because they build, they come up to a certain level.
(09:42):
They have fun, they sell it and they want to go start a brand new one because
their passion in life is creating. It's not running.
So they just take something, start it, build it, sell it. So those are the primary ones.
But the real one that really hits what we see most of the time is people just
want to exit because they've reached that point in life.
They want to enjoy what they've made. So it sounds like retirement is probably the most common.
(10:07):
I was about to make a bet on maybe the serial entrepreneur because that actually
sounds like a pretty exciting and exhilarating path for M&A.
But so it does sound like it's folks looking to retire.
Maybe they can't hand their company over to one of their kids,
for example. That sounds like one of the primary reasons.
Mm-hmm. That truly is. And sometimes there's kids in the business,
(10:31):
but the kids just don't have interest in owning the business.
They're happy there. Maybe they like it. Maybe they would like to exit as well.
But that's wanting to retire and, say, enjoy the fruits of your labor.
And of course, that means you have to do something with the company and you
want the company to survive as well.
So that's when the discussions have to start taking place. I gotcha.
(10:53):
Now, I know for owners that are looking to sell, it's a really tough decision, right?
This isn't something that they just wake up one day and say, hey, I want to do this.
It's got to be a strong mix of emotions, right?
It really is. In fact, we try to encourage people that they need to start thinking
about this several years before they intend to do it.
(11:14):
You know, if you have a if you want to retire when you're 65,
then puts a note in your calendar that when you turn 62, you need to start thinking
about an exit plan because a good exit plan takes a long time to really formalize
and strategize if you want to do it correctly.
So, you know, that and it is a very emotional thing you're talking about,
(11:34):
you know, somebody selling their baby. You know, it's something they've created. They've grown.
They've probably got employees that have been with them 15, 20 or more years.
You know, that's like family, you know, and they're worried about them.
They want to cash out. They want to take their money, but they want to make
sure these people still have jobs.
They want to make sure they're taken care of. You know, they want to make sure
their benefits stay the same and gets really tough.
(11:56):
And then you've got the guys or girls like this is what they come to work every day.
So one of the conversations that has to take place is, OK, it's now closing.
It's a day after closing.
What are you going to do with your life? You know, if you don't have a good
answer for that, you might want to rethink selling.
Maybe this isn't the time until you decide there is something else out there.
(12:17):
That really, really great points. And while I'm not in that point in my career,
meaning I can't imagine being in the position, I do have the utmost respect
for owners that are struggling to make that decision.
You know, you worry about your people, you worry about your customers,
you worry about the longevity of your business once you sell.
And even if the time is right, those emotions and feelings are still there. there.
(12:38):
So let's say we have an owner that that's come to terms with his or her reality
and they're ready to move forward.
I know that there's a process, there's, there's some sort of system,
right? That you take them through. What does that look like? What does that process?
You know, one of the first things we like to do is we obviously have to get
a value on the company because as I said, people will come to us and say,
(13:01):
well, I think I'm worth so much.
And the first thing we say is, okay, how did you pull that out of the air?
And most of them will tell us, well, I pulled it out of the air.
I think that's what it was worth in my mind, but they don't have any financial justification of it.
And buyers only are going to look at finances and your P&L sheet,
your balance sheet, history.
(13:23):
That's what they're going to make a decision on. So one of the first things
we have to do is we have to talk about valuation with people.
And we have to do our own valuation.
We have to make sure that they agree with that is within a range that that they would accept.
And sometimes they don't. Sometimes we have to come back to them with the bad
news of they think it's here, and we're saying the market's going to tell you it's here.
(13:45):
I can try to offer you a house at a million dollars, but if it's a $500,000
house, you're not even going to get an offer.
So is that step one then? So let's say, yeah, because I guess people have that
misconception often about what their company is worth, right? You just said it.
Yeah, very much so. That's the first thing that has to be decided in the process.
(14:10):
We do the valuation. We make sure that everybody's upon agreement.
Then what has to do is obviously you have to think about who's the best buyer.
You know, you don't want to blast an email out to a thousand printers out there
and say, hey, does anybody want to buy a company that does X,
Y, Z that does five million dollars in revenue?
(14:32):
You know, you just don't want to do that because, one, you're going to get a
whole bunch of tire kickers.
What you want to do is you want to look at the company. You want to define a
profile of who the best buyer would be.
You know, we want to look at the culture. We want to look at the geolocation.
We want to look at the markets. How do they go to the market?
We want to look at their customer concentration. We want to look at the age.
(14:53):
There's a lot of factors that we take into consideration that you say,
okay, the best buyer would be someone like that, that, that, that, that, that, that.
And then what we want to try to do is go out and find five or 10 that,
that, that, that, that, that.
You know, then you've got people you can bring to the table.
Once we get somebody interested in it, you know, of course, we have to share
information about the selling company, which is always done under NDAs, things like that.
(15:17):
You know, we talk to people, we get some conversations going, we get interest.
That generally includes some site visits and some more conversations.
Zoom, of course, is a great avenue. It gives us a chance to let people talk
about cultures without actually physically going into a facility just yet.
You know, and we we go through all of those steps and then we get to the point
where a buyer says, you know what, I want to make a run at this.
(15:41):
And at that point in time, they give us what's called an LOI,
which is a letter of intent or letter of expression of intent.
And it basically lines out, I like the company.
This is what I'm offering. This is the way I'm going to pay you.
This is the way the deal structure would be worked out.
You know, when I'm going to buy inventory, what you get to keep off the balance
sheet, all the details of it.
(16:02):
And we submit that and, you know, to the the seller and we say,
okay, is this acceptable?
And it either is or isn't. Maybe we bring in a couple at the same time.
The LOI gets accepted. Then you go into the fun part, due diligence.
And this can take several months because after a letter of intent is signed,
basically the seller has to open his doors a lot more to where the buyer can
(16:25):
come in and really take a hard look at the company. They can look at the equipment.
If it's digital equipment, they have to look at the number of clicks on it,
the age of it, or the end release, all the other details come out and your attorneys get involved.
That takes up a lot of time. And once you get past that stage,
you get to the asset purchase agreement.
(16:45):
And that is the final legal document where someone's going to sell the company.
That generally takes several revisions. And then, you know, it's decided upon,
you get a target date for when you're going to close and everybody moves toward
getting all the the paperwork done, get it closed on that day.
And that day comes around, funds are transferred. Next morning,
(17:05):
everybody wakes up with new ownership.
Wow. It sounds fairly simple and it sounds fairly stair-stepped,
but it is very, very complicated.
I was going to say it actually sounded like a lot, right?
So let me see if I can recap from memory what you said here.
There's the valuation, there's profiling the buyer, there's the hunt for the buyer, right? Right.
(17:27):
There's those those conversations that take place to affirm whether or not this
is going to work. The letter of intent, due diligence.
There's your purchase agreement. And finally, after it's all said and done with
closing, did I get all that right?
You got it right. Wow. OK, so there's a ton and there's there's no wonder there's
a need for an advisor to help you through a process like that.
(17:47):
If you were to take a deeper dive into this process, Roger, what are some of
the key points or metrics that you specifically look for that really help make the deal?
You know, first and foremost is the culture.
You know, it's very important that a company, when they're selling,
particularly and very important to the seller, the owner, is that as little as possible changes.
(18:13):
Changes you know it'd be nice to leave everything the
same that's probably not going to happen because obviously again
the buyer wants to buy it to improve it and grow it so
something's going to change but it's going to be on the positive side of things
so one of the first things you know that needs to be done is you you have to
look at a cultural fit you know you want to make sure they're in the kind of
in the same markets they sell the same channels you know you can't put a company
(18:35):
that sells direct and try to put them with the company that sells through the
trade you know It's a class.
They're going down different channels. So you have to look at the culture.
Second thing we have to look at generally is the geolocation.
Sometimes a company that is for sale, we'll say one in Kansas.
We need to find someone that wants to acquire something in Kansas.
(18:56):
That might be someone that's over in Missouri.
It might be at a border state because they want to make an acquisition relatively
close, say within driving distance.
And then there's other people who might be on the east or west coast that say,
say, you know, I'd love to have something in the middle of the country and have another,
You know, I don't have to ship over the Rockies at the end. He's like, I can work with that.
(19:17):
So, you know, geographic location comes into play. We have to look at the products
in the markets and how they go to market.
You know, you don't have to do the same product line, but it probably needs
to be a complementary product line.
You know, like right now, say a digital printer is probably not going to buy
a commercial printer because he doesn't want to go into offset. set.
(19:37):
You know, a digital printer that's doing black and white and color work and
flyers and postcards might buy a digital white format shop because it's still
digital and it's still promotional in nature.
So we have to look at those things and make sure that there's complementary
products and block trains in place to really make it look good.
We want to look at the customer concentration and what types of customers they
(20:00):
are. You know, if they're selling direct, the the customer base is going to be different.
We always tell people that there's two ways to look at your house.
You want to look at your financial house and your physical house.
Physical house meaning what's the shop floor look like.
Financial house is what does your P&L look like?
You would be surprised when we get financials to look at how crappy they are.
(20:21):
We got line items that make no sense. We got duplicate line items.
People pay in their condos.
We got condos out in Denver. We got Corvettes. That's like, okay,
you've got to clean all that stuff up.
Yeah. So, you know, one of those, that's something that has to take place.
And then, of course, we have to look at the size of general revenue.
And that helps us define, again, you know, what type of buyers that might be interested in that.
(20:46):
Whether is it, are we dealing with a $2 million company or $20 million?
Okay. So one of the key points that you hit on really resonated with me because
I've got a lot of personal experience in being on both sides of the M&A fence, right? Yeah.
I want to accentuate how critical culture is to the whole transaction.
So you can have everything dialed in, like you said. You've got the right product
(21:09):
mix. You've got great customer synergies.
I mean, everything is working really well, but the merger is not going to be
successful if the culture aspect doesn't play all the way through.
And so I'm going to share a little bit of my experience. I'm not going to name
names here, but we'll just say that there were two, at one point,
there were the two largest transactional document printing companies in North
(21:30):
America that decided, hey, we're going to merge.
And so they came through and they did this merger. And while the merger was
great, the marketing was great, there were a few things.
We still, internally, we still acted like company A and company B.
Matter of fact, the company had two presidents. presidents, President A and
(21:50):
President B. I won't name names.
But the reality is it was so hard to let go of the way things used to be.
And matter of fact, that was the sentiment.
Well, this is the way we used to do things, or this is the way we've always done things.
And it was a real challenge to get people on the same page in terms of,
well, let's stop thinking about the way we used to do it. Let's think about the way we should do it.
(22:15):
And it wasn't until we started having that conversation that the pieces started
moving and things started working together.
Because I'll say it took us at least six months to a full two years,
really, to properly integrate in terms of culture.
And, you know, about the time that that company was eventually acquired away,
some of those cultural issues were still hanging out there, Roger.
(22:36):
And so that's just my own personal experience with it.
And I can name quite a few others where the culture just wasn't the right fit.
Like for example, one transaction had a basically a customer facing entity purchase
a for trade only company with the expectation that they would be able to,
you know, take over that part of the market as well as dealing with direct customer sales.
(22:59):
And you know, in this world that that doesn't fly.
And so it, again, it was not a failure, but man, it was, it was really tough.
I know exactly which one you're talking about and you're right.
You know, and, and it brings up a very good point because, you know,
when you've got two entities, you know, let's, let's say we're past,
you know, most of the conversations and we're maybe even into a letter of intent.
(23:23):
You really got to have those conversations with both parties to say,
okay, we think we like each other.
We kind of do things the same. Let's talk about what's going to change.
Okay. We're not talking about firing customers or anything like that,
but let's just talk about what processes are going to take place.
What would the new world look like? Who's going to be in charge of that new
(23:46):
world or various segments of that new world?
And let's make sure that all those personalities don't immediately have a conflict.
Because if you're talking oil and water and you haven't even got into the due
diligence stage, you better put on the brakes.
There's, there's, you know, something's not going to go very well,
or you're going to, you're going to create a deal in a marriage that is not
(24:09):
going to be very pleasant for either party later in the day.
And you got to remember that, you know, a lot of deals, it's not just the guy
gets a check when he sells a company and rides off into the sunset.
A lot of these deals, there's an earn out based on multiple years.
And that means that that company has to not only survive, it has to grow.
If that oil and wire, if that's a bad mix, that can affect the guy's paycheck
(24:33):
over the next couple of years.
So, you know, those conversations, they really have to take place early on and
you've got to make sure you've got that cultural fit.
That can burn an organization down in nothing flat.
Man, I couldn't agree with you more. And I think there's some other elements
we could talk about out here too.
So, you know, we talked about how critical that internal adoption is for culture,
(24:56):
but, and what about the customers, right?
So they're typically the innocent bystanders in this whole thing.
They didn't ask for this, right?
They get attached to their supplier and the brand that's part of that supplier
that they've known and loved for a long time. There's a real emotional bond there.
And I suppose it's impossible to maintain 100% maintain 100% customer retention.
(25:16):
That's just unheard of ever, right?
I mean, how can you keep a customer confident and happy during the process?
Or is collateral damage just to be expected?
Unfortunately, it's probably the latter to a degree, but there's things that can be done.
Here's one of the biggest challenges when you're doing this,
and this is whether we're working or any broker is working with a distributor
(25:40):
or a manufacturer or a supplier, is the level of confidentiality that has to be maintained.
Because when you're going into this, when you're talking to these people about
getting evaluation, you're talking about, okay, we're going to put a memorandum
together. We're going to offer your...
For sale. At that point in time, the majority of the time, the only people that
(26:03):
are in the loop are the owners.
You know, their staff doesn't know this is going on. Their customers certainly
do not know what's going on. And neither one can know what's going on.
You know, most of the deals we work with, that's one of their concerns is how
do we keep this quiet in the industry?
And you know, our industry's a relatively small world when you get down to it. It's not so quiet.
Yeah. How do you keep this quiet in the industry so nobody knows about it?
(26:27):
Once you get the deal close to being done and they do notify their employees,
then part of that planning process and due diligence needs to be,
how do we address this with the customer?
You know, for sure, the top customers probably need to be visited prior to closing,
if at all possible, and if not, immediately after closing.
(26:49):
You know, the old guard needs to take the new guard in. They need to do introductions.
They need to do a nice transition and a nice handoff. A lot of times the owner
will be asked to stay on for anywhere from three to 12 months to aid in that
transition process to make sure that nobody gets lost and we don't lose any
of the customers, particularly the big ones.
(27:09):
Now, again, you commented about, you know, retention. Do you keep 100%?
No, because there's always going to be somebody back there that says,
you know, I've bought from Bob for 40 years.
I'm not buying from Bob now. I'm buying from Pete. Pete's a nice guy,
but I like Bob. You know, I also know Tom.
Tom's been a guy, a friend of mine for 20 years. I'm going to start sending
(27:30):
my volume over to Tom because I don't know Pete.
You know, there's going to be some of that. But if it's handled right and it's
handled as part of the process, then you're not going to lose very much.
It can be managed very well. So those are amazing points. And I agree with every
last one of them. Again, having done quite a few of these myself.
So Roger, let's say that the deal is done. Merger complete, synergy savings,
(27:54):
all of that is in full swing.
What happens next? What does life look like post merger or acquisition?
You know, that's, it's funny because, you know, that is the last step and it's
one of the first conversations we have because a seller needs to understand
what life after closing is going to look like.
(28:16):
You know, they may be part of the transition period.
They may not, you know, it all depends on what they want to do and what the
buyer wants to do with them.
I've had cases is where we closed on friday and at four o'clock the owner walked
out and nobody ever saw him again,
you know so those things have to be discussed and
and owners need to understand what their role is going to be moving forward
(28:40):
if there is going to be one and if they're not what is your role going to be
in life you know what are you going to do with your family do you have an idea
they those things need to be considered because it can get pretty lonely the
day after closing if in three months you're no longer needed.
You know, you wake up in the morning, you don't play golf, you fish,
and your wife's saying, don't you have somewhere to go?
(29:02):
I've heard that story, that same story so many times from folks in the industry
that have managed and successfully sold their business.
Man, you couldn't be closer to accurate about that.
But I mean, it sounds like there's a ton of variables at play in all of this.
And I'm just, I'm curious, do you have any parting thoughts on this.
I think our next segment's about to start.
(29:23):
So I want to make sure we're able to kind of close out the thought topic here.
You know, the thing I would encourage everybody to do is, first of all,
if at all possible, you know, think way in advance, you know, at least three years.
Again, if you think at some point in time, because of either age or a rational
reason, or you're in a dying market and you think there's a cliff coming,
(29:46):
whatever that reason is, back that up about three years and start talking to people.
Talk to people who have sold. Talk to friends in the same space.
Talk to a couple of different brokers. Get an idea of what is the market like?
What do you need to do to your company to improve the curb appeal?
Because that's one of the first things that I think I've got to take a look at.
(30:10):
If I've got a year and a half to really make my company look nice so I can sell
it, then let's get to work on that.
Let's hire some people to come in, and tell me what I need to do.
And there's people that will do that.
What I need to do to my company, both in the financial space and the structural
space and the physical space and clean this up so I get the best.
You know, think about it in advance, plan for it, and then just execute the
(30:32):
plan and work with a good advisor.
I would highly recommend that. I've talked to a lot of people that try to do it themselves.
And as you saw in from conversations for the last 40 minutes, it's complicated.
It's a lot more complicated than people think. So, you know,
hire an advisor, get some advice on it and make a plan, work a plan.
So it sounds like I need to get a before I sell anything, I'd need to get like
(30:55):
the equivalent of an auto detailer for my company before we just go straight into it.
M&A practices. Clean the car up before you put it on the parking lot.
Vacuum it out a little bit. That's good to know. You might want to wash the
windows. Wash the windows. Okay, got it.
So it looks like it's time for our next segment here, which is called...
Supply Chain Chatter. Supply Chain Chatter. There it is.
(31:18):
So Supply Chain Chatter is where we just kind of talk a little bit about what's
going on in the industry.
And I think, Alyssa, we've got a little bit of news coming up here at the beginning
of May, if I'm not mistaken. mistaken?
Yes, we do. So Liftoff will be attending this year's and the final Brand Chain event.
Ooh, final. Yes. This is, I believe, a leadership summit, the Brand Chain Leadership Summit.
(31:40):
That will be taking place March 6th through 8th this year in Clearwater, Florida.
So Roger, I hope, are we going to get a chance to see you in Clearwater?
Oh yeah. I would not miss that. Also always attend those if at all possible.
They're great meetings. Well, I'm going to urge all of our subscribers,
everybody that's listening, everybody that's watching.
If you've never been to a Brand Chain event, you have been missing out for the
(32:04):
past however many years we've been doing these shows.
They are the most incredible shows that it's a very awesome networking event.
It's honestly where I keep saying this, I feel like on every episode,
but, you know, we started our business in Brand Chain back when it was PSDA, DMIA.
And and so we you know without brand
(32:25):
chain you know we wouldn't be where we are today we wouldn't have the
success we have today and you know really excited
to see you know brand chain you know working now with printing united alliance
and really eager to see where that goes but back to the show in may you got
to go to that show even if you're not a member find a way to get there look
us up we can't wait to see you there let's see do we have any other news on
(32:47):
on our front or Roger, do you have anything you want to share news-wise?
You know, I just throw in a quick blip on that because, you know,
I've attended that meeting forever.
I think I've missed one since I've ever done them.
Kind of like the M&A thing, a lot of people are thinking, okay,
it's the last leadership conference for BrandChain. Oh, my gosh,
everything's dying. It's not.
(33:08):
You know, BrandChain's being merged in with Green United.
This is a fantastic opportunity for both organizations. organizations.
Granted, this is the last event that we will have under brand chain,
but this is going to be a great marriage.
There's a lot of good stuff coming out. It is a great meeting.
I'll echo your comments about the networking.
By far, that is the most fun and most amazing.
(33:30):
The session. You know, the fact that it's in clear water and we're going to
have a glass of wine while we walk out over the ocean.
Okay, that's all right. It's work. It's work, Roger. You can't call it anything but work.
I just love those 14-hour days on the beach. Heck yeah, heck yeah.
Well, we're going to look forward to seeing our subscribers here.
We're going to look forward to seeing Roger there. It's going to be a great time.
(33:53):
Oh, and hey, it is now time for our next segment, which is called Memorable
Merch. This is where we take an opportunity to let our guests kind of talk about
something that's happened in the industry or something that they're familiar
with that's been very impactful to them.
And, Roger, I understand you've got something kind of cool to talk about on today's show.
I did, and I apologize for not having it. I've been traveling.
(34:15):
I'm at literally the merch I wanted to show is at another location,
so I wasn't able to bring it with me.
But what I wanted to talk about or I was going to show was a jacket and a coffee
maker. And that's going to sound like, okay, what's so blasted hot about that?
But, you know, one thing I've learned about Merch, and I've been,
like I say, in manufacturing and on the side of working with vendors for,
(34:38):
you know, 50 plus years, I've had a lot of stuff handed to me over the years.
I've got more coffee cups and what they used to call trinkets and trash than you care to see.
But I go back to what did somebody give me that I retained that always made me think of them?
It doesn't necessarily mean it had to have their name on it,
but I never forgot where that came from.
(34:58):
And I got a jacket. I got a jacket in 1983 from Appleton Papers because I helped them do a survey.
That was it. Just a survey. It was detailed, but it was a survey.
Took me 30 minutes maybe to do.
I got the nicest jacket. Yeah, it says Appleton. I got the nicest jacket.
(35:20):
I still have that jacket in my closet and I still wear it in the winter.
It's a great jacket, but I got it because I helped another company out that was in our space.
They sent me a premium piece, not just a coffee cup.
And that's always meant really good to me. The other one that did the same thing was from Zykon.
(35:41):
They go to the big digital company. Back in probably around 2010.
I was invited up to their headquarters up in Chicago to view a brand new piece
of equipment that they were getting ready to launch. And I went up and I went
through the day tour and they showed me the equipment.
And when I got back a few days later, I got a Keurig coffee maker delivered to my front porch.
(36:02):
And I called the guy up that does the marketing. I said, why are you doing this?
You know me. I'm a consultant. I am never, ever going to buy his icon.
He goes, yeah, but we appreciate your input. We listen to what you're going
to say. We know you're going to talk to other people. We want you to have this.
Now, both of those items are relatively insignificant. significant.
Maybe they cost a little bit, but it was a fact that it was given to me when
(36:26):
it really wasn't going to generate a sale.
And it just really struck to me that if you want to create memorabilia and you
want to create a memory, make it worthwhile.
Don't do a coffee cup. No squeeze balls, right?
Yeah, exactly. That's always hit me. I've always remembered those two things.
So it's funny. So branded merchandise is incredibly powerful.
(36:49):
It can either be what Danny Ross and one of our friends over from brand fuel
calls brand fill like landfill.
That's funny. Or, or it can be extremely impactful.
So you, you just said, what was the year? 1983, Roger from Appleton.
Is that right? right? 1983.
She'll have the jacket. So what is that? That's 41 years ago.
That piece of merch is still around 41 years later and is still creating memories,
(37:14):
right? It's still there. It's etched in your brain.
That's powerful marketing. Yeah. Branded merchandise doesn't really get the
credit it deserves, but the fact is you have all this stuff that sits on your
desk, on your shelf, on your wall, wherever it is.
I mean, I've got this kind of stuff right behind me. good
lord it branded merchandise is king when it
comes to you know to brand and and and that that emotional
(37:37):
feeling yeah yeah you know what i think what's
made makes the difference is some companies
understand why you give out branded merchandise they understand the value of
it they understand that it's an investment to the future and it needs to pull
it needs to pull people into you it needs to connect you with a customer or
a potential customer Too many companies consider branded merchandise as a have-to,
(38:02):
and they hand them out like candy,
and they have no expectations of getting anything in return.
Well, if you don't expect a return, you're not going to get a return.
Pay attention to what you're doing. Give out less. Less items give out more and better items.
You'll have far more impact of it. Most companies don't really think about it
when they're doing their brand. That's why they need to work with brand experts.
(38:24):
So, Alyssa, take some notes. No more copycats. No more squeeze balls.
This is actually exactly why I've been trying to convince you guys to do liftoff.
Liftoff pizza ovens. I'm all over that. I think that's where we need to go next.
So 41 years from now, somebody's going to have a liftoff commerce pizza oven
is what I'm hearing. Roger approves.
(38:46):
I love it. I don't know where we're going with this show, but we always have fun. I told you we would.
So unfortunately, we've got to keep moving. It's time for our next segment.
And before that, before we give Roger a parting gift, we're going to talk about Tech Trends.
Tech Trends is the segment of the show where we talk about all the cool things
that might be going on, either technology related or who knows,
efficiency, innovation, all of those things kind of fall under that umbrella.
(39:11):
And Roger, I understand you've got some trends that you're kind of seeing kind
of nestled in with the M&A space. Is that right?
Yeah, definitely. You know, we have a lot of people ask us, you know,
what's hot? You know, what trends are out there right now?
And, you know, there's a big space. You know, you've got business forms,
you've got commercial printing, you have digital printing, you have dye sublimation,
(39:34):
you've got promotional products out there, wide format signing.
You've got this massive gamut, you know, labels, flexible packaging.
That spectrum is, you know, here to here.
I mean, it's massive. And what we've noticed is a definite trend toward the
newer technology, the digital, the flexible packaging, digital imaging on flexible packaging,
(39:56):
digital imaging direct to substrate, not going through another middleman process of some sort.
Those are really drawing a lot of interest.
Interest one of the ways we gauge that is by how
many calls we get from private equity firms and we get a call a week
from private equity firms saying do you have a company that
does this or is in this space because they're
(40:16):
these guys are really looking hard at the printing and promo space
right now they're getting very anxious about it so you know what we've seen
is probably what a lot of people expect some of the the printing segments are
you know still retreating they're declining in nature and everything but there's
a lot of new stuff coming up it's still going to make the print and chromo and
graphic space a wonderful wonderful place to be in for the coming years.
(40:39):
Those are really good points, too. And I know we talk about technology and M&A,
and I know this isn't a trend, but it's something that you just made me think about.
When you're buying another company, it's very common for them to have their
own ERP, order management system.
Sometimes it's a homegrown system. Sometimes it's something they bought off
the shelf. And, I mean, we didn't necessarily talk about that in the line,
(41:02):
but I think it probably fits into culture somewhere.
What do you see nowadays, you know, with folks buying other folks?
Are they targeting companies that are leveraging the same systems or are you
finding that it's just kind of across the board? What insights do you have for us there?
You know, when it comes to distributorships, I would say there is a trend toward
(41:24):
trying to acquire someone that's on the same system.
You know, that, you know, I see that or they're at least acquiring someone that
can be transposed over their system very quickly and very easily.
And that and of course, that means the system they're using has to be,
you know, it has to be new.
You know, you're not going to find someone on a very old system doing a lot
(41:47):
of migrations over to an old system. So some distributorship that has a relatively
new platform can assimilate the old platforms on fairly easily or certainly
the same platform on easily.
Manufacturers, not so much. They all want to stay on the same system over time.
But they also know that if a $100 million manufacturer buys a $20 million manufacturer,
(42:11):
that transition might take a year.
And they're okay with that slow process because what they want is the revenue. They want the revenue.
They want to grow the business. They want the product line. They want the customer base.
That's more important than the ERP system is the necessary change that has to take place.
So what the other company has doesn't always necessarily come into play that much.
(42:34):
You wouldn't be surprised how many companies we have come to us of size that
don't have a good system. It's amazing.
You know, I feel like we could probably craft an entire show just around the
topic of the acquisition and merger M&A part of technology.
Honestly, there's so much that gets kind of folded up in there.
(42:56):
Oh, do you guys hear that?
Oh, you know what that means. It's time for Cash or Swag. All right.
This is the segment of the show.
I think this is my favorite segment of the show where we get to award Roger
a cool prize for being such a wonderful guest on our show.
Roger, what are you betting for? Do you want some swag? Do you want some cash?
(43:20):
What are you hoping to get off that wheel? No, I want swag.
I'm for the swag because there is one thing that I probably left out.
Is, you know, it's not always what you get, but it's who you get it from.
And as you well know, Andrew, I have tremendous, tremendous respect for you
and what you've done with your company in the industry.
(43:41):
I guarantee you, whatever you send me will be utilized, just out of my pure respect.
Oh, man, I think we need to give Roger everything on that wheel for that comment.
All right. So here's how it's going to work. Eric, you just count down from
three and Alyssa will spin that wheel as hard as she can. All right.
That's not necessarily very hard, but. All right. Give us a countdown,
(44:05):
Roger. Okay. Three, two, one.
Where's it going to land? It is a $50 gift card.
Well, guess what? We're going to bundle that $50 gift card with some swag. How about that?
We will make sure you get what you came here for.
Well, Roger, I want to thank you so much for being an incredibly wonderful guest on today's show.
(44:27):
You've shared so many incredible insights about the world of M&A that,
you know, even though I've done a few of these, just it really helps bring all
these things to the forefront.
And I really hope for some of our subscribers that are listening to your advice,
that they seek you out, contact Corporate Development Associates.
If you're just thinking about selling or buying, Roger and the team over there
at CDA are absolutely top notch, guarantee it. All right, well,
(44:50):
thank you for everybody.
Thanks for watching our show and we'll see you next time. Thanks everyone.
I said it couldn't be done. What? We're back again. Who said what and why?
Just kidding. It was me. Okay.
Welcome to Conversations in Commerce, where we have candid conversations about
technology, e-commerce, print,
and the supply chain. And we try to have a little fun in the process.
I'm your host, Andrew Alford. And with me today is our co-host,
(00:22):
Alyssa. Hey, Alyssa, how's it going?
Hi, good. How are you? Good. I understand you've been really busy since the
last show. As a matter of fact, you've been working on a pretty powerful collaboration
with Vanguard Direct. Is that right?
Yes, I've had the pleasure of working with Vanguard on an article regarding
a project that they've done with the United Way of Connecticut 2-1-1 and the
Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
(00:45):
So essentially what they did is they had Gizmo, who is a therapy dog.
Here's a picture of Gizmo right here.
He's a therapy dog in Connecticut schools. pools.
And they created a kit with different products in it.
You know, some of them had like stress balls in them, a stuffed dog shaped exactly like Gizmo.
And all of this was to promote and to educate children on mental health care,
(01:10):
kind of, you know, get rid of that stigma, you know, the stigma behind it early on.
That's a really good application, Alyssa. When you think about it,
you know, when you think about children's health, you don't necessarily consider
their their mental well-being.
And a program like this is sorely needed in a world where, you know,
we're mostly concerned about the physical needs of the child.
But the reality is just like adults, they go through periods of mental health
(01:33):
crises and their own needs. So kudos.
That's a really great program. Kudos to the folks at Vanguard Direct,
John and his team, and United Way for pulling that together.
What an incredible process and program they put on.
So without further ado, do, I want to go ahead and introduce today's guest.
We have an exciting show lined up for you today.
(01:55):
Today's guest is the Managing Director for Corporate Development Associates.
He considers himself a millennial trapped in a baby boomer's body.
I'm going to talk about that in a little bit.
He is a husband. He's a dad. He's a grandpa.
He is a member of the Ben Franklin Honor Society, which is an incredible honor in itself.
He was the chairman of PER for years and years and years. And recently,
(02:15):
I had the personal privilege of awarding him with BrandChain's President's Award.
So without further ado, let's welcome to the show, Roger Buck. Hey, Roger.
Hey, everybody. Hey, Roger. So I've had the pleasure of working with you in
various different roles across the gamut.
I'd say, you know, serving across, you know, like serving on the same board together.
We've shared the same industry insights for the past, I don't know, 20 plus years.
(02:37):
It's been a minute. I don't want to date either one of us, but I'd be really
surprised if most of our viewers and listeners haven't interacted with you at
some point in their own careers or,
For those of you who don't know you, and to enrich the knowledge of the folks
that do know you, share a little bit about your origin story.
In other words, how did you get to where you are today, and what got you into the field of M&A?
(03:00):
It's been a fun ride because I actually started real young. I've been in the
printing business my entire career.
I joke with people and tell them that I started when I was five because my dad
was a printer for 33 years,
and he was working in this weekly newspaper shop and
he brought home a crate that was from a
letterpress that their company had purchased and they
(03:21):
let dad bring the crate home and it became my playhouse my
brothers and i play house in the backyard i've got a picture of myself when
i'm five and over my left shoulder it says heidelberg and five or ten years
later i was actually running the press that came in that and that started the
career i got into forms in 71 i worked with some really great companies over the next 45, 50 years.
(03:44):
And then in 2017, I wanted to stay in the business, but get out of what I was
doing out of the manufacturing side.
And I was attending a small distributor summit actually in St.
Louis and George Crump, I think you may know George, was doing presentation
talking about all the companies that he had started and sold and started and done things with.
(04:05):
And he made a statement, this was on a Saturday, and he made I made a statement
that said, it's hard to move forward if you have a path of retreat.
And I thought about that over the weekend and I went in Monday morning and resigned
and didn't have a job, didn't know what I was going to do.
And then a friend of mine who does M&A called me up and said,
you know, you know, a lot of people, you know, a lot of stuff about equipment
(04:25):
and processes and distributors and markets and sales trends.
Why don't you come try doing M&A? And so I started in 17, but doing it ever
since and just having a ball.
Well, that's quite a jump, right? From what you've done historically over to M&A.
And I know M&A often gets a bad rap. Matter of fact, I got a few things queued
up on my soundboard, right?
So when somebody mentions mergers and acquisitions, a lot of times the audience
(04:49):
does this little number here, right?
And say, oh, that's not fair.
And sometimes if you're a member of the company being swallowed by an acquisition,
you hear, oh, that's kind of nasty.
So obviously we don't like hearing those things.
And that brings us to the topic of our show today, which we call M&A, the Reaper, and You.
(05:13):
And so the goal here is to kind of dispel some of the negative myths and connotations
that kind of form around the topic of M&A.
And we really want to properly define find this for our audience.
So, Roger, I know a lot of folks equate M&A companies as the touch of death,
the grim reaper, and maybe some even call it the last resort.
And I think a lot of people blame it for industry consolidation.
(05:36):
And while not entirely accurate, it's definitely a viewpoint that a lot of people in this industry share.
So since it's not really a fair way to look at it, how would you respond to
someone that sort of has this viewpoint? What do you do to change their mind, these myths?
And maybe as a third here, while you're at it, maybe what other What other myths
do you come across in M&A in the circles that you run?
(05:57):
You know, it is a myth because when you think about it, you know,
any company out there, I don't care what it is, what they make,
what you sell, what you produce.
At some point in time, one of two things is going to occur.
You're either going to close or you're going to sell. There really isn't any other option.
We've seen companies run their business until, you know, the owner literally
(06:19):
dies at his desk or something like that.
And they have no exit plan and no succession plan. land.
But a company is going to do one or the other.
And so M&A is actually like a rebirth.
It's a way to take a company someone has built that they care about.
It's been their passion, their life, their dream. And it's a way to make that
(06:39):
thing keep going on, either with a new owner or merging with another company, whatever it may be.
So the idea that it's the end is not not really justified very well.
And, you know, when something like that happens, part of the process is people
don't buy companies to leave them the same, and they certainly don't buy them
to see them to go down. They buy them to grow.
(07:00):
So what normally happens is in an acquisition, someone gets acquired and that
company grows over the next few years.
You know, there's more staff, there's more equipment, there's new technology added.
There's a lot of cool things that can happen as opposed to the other option,
which is someone Someone throws the keys on the desk on the way out the door
and they lock it and they go away.
So, you know, it's not a good idea or a good thought that that's the end of
(07:25):
the world. It's actually pretty much more of a new beginning.
You know, the other myth that we run across quite a bit is when someone decides
they do want to exit is what the company is actually worth.
We always tell everybody that, you know, I can tell you what your company is worth.
You can tell me what you think your company is worth, but the market is going
to tell you what your company is worth. And those three numbers are never going to be the same.
(07:48):
We can have a pretty good idea of it. But one of the things that we do run into
quite a bit with people who do want to exit, they come talk to us,
is they have a misconception of what their company is actually worth.
And that's one of the very first conversations that has to take place.
And sometimes, frankly, that's not as easy as we like it to be.
You make a lot of excellent points, right? So I feel like you did a great job
(08:11):
of taking the edge off the conversation. Thank you for that, by the way.
We always have to start on that weird note and find our way through it.
So I guess I have to ask the question, why does somebody want to sell their company?
What brings them to this point? What are their reasons?
You know, there's generally three reasons. First and foremost,
it's generally retirement.
You know, someone's ran it for a long number of years. They don't have children
(08:34):
in the business, or if they do, they don't want to take over the business.
You know, they want to exit while the exiting timing is good.
Maybe there's buying going on.
Maybe they just reached that point where they want to travel more,
spend more time with their family, their grandchildren.
So, you know, first and foremost, it's usually I just want to enjoy my life
now, and I need to do that. I have to get rid of this because it occupies so much of my time.
(08:59):
You know, another time is, you know, sometimes people are just tired of the risk.
They want to stay in the business, but it's been rough on them.
Maybe they're in a market or a product line that's difficult to sell.
They don't have the wherewithal or maybe the money to do what they really need
to do to take the company to the next level.
So they sell mainly in order to get funding or some backing,
(09:21):
maybe for a private equity firm or something like that. So the company can continue
and grow and maybe they stay with it.
Maybe they don't, you know, and the third one is sometimes some people just
build a company to a certain level. They want to cash out and they're going to go do it again.
I've actually had the pleasure of working with two guys who are on their third
companies now because they build, they come up to a certain level.
(09:42):
They have fun, they sell it and they want to go start a brand new one because
their passion in life is creating. It's not running.
So they just take something, start it, build it, sell it. So those are the primary ones.
But the real one that really hits what we see most of the time is people just
want to exit because they've reached that point in life.
They want to enjoy what they've made. So it sounds like retirement is probably the most common.
(10:07):
I was about to make a bet on maybe the serial entrepreneur because that actually
sounds like a pretty exciting and exhilarating path for M&A.
But so it does sound like it's folks looking to retire.
Maybe they can't hand their company over to one of their kids,
for example. That sounds like one of the primary reasons.
Mm-hmm. That truly is. And sometimes there's kids in the business,
(10:31):
but the kids just don't have interest in owning the business.
They're happy there. Maybe they like it. Maybe they would like to exit as well.
But that's wanting to retire and, say, enjoy the fruits of your labor.
And of course, that means you have to do something with the company and you
want the company to survive as well.
So that's when the discussions have to start taking place. I gotcha.
(10:53):
Now, I know for owners that are looking to sell, it's a really tough decision, right?
This isn't something that they just wake up one day and say, hey, I want to do this.
It's got to be a strong mix of emotions, right?
It really is. In fact, we try to encourage people that they need to start thinking
about this several years before they intend to do it.
(11:14):
You know, if you have a if you want to retire when you're 65,
then puts a note in your calendar that when you turn 62, you need to start thinking
about an exit plan because a good exit plan takes a long time to really formalize
and strategize if you want to do it correctly.
So, you know, that and it is a very emotional thing you're talking about,
(11:34):
you know, somebody selling their baby. You know, it's something they've created. They've grown.
They've probably got employees that have been with them 15, 20 or more years.
You know, that's like family, you know, and they're worried about them.
They want to cash out. They want to take their money, but they want to make
sure these people still have jobs.
They want to make sure they're taken care of. You know, they want to make sure
their benefits stay the same and gets really tough.
(11:56):
And then you've got the guys or girls like this is what they come to work every day.
So one of the conversations that has to take place is, OK, it's now closing.
It's a day after closing.
What are you going to do with your life? You know, if you don't have a good
answer for that, you might want to rethink selling.
Maybe this isn't the time until you decide there is something else out there.
(12:17):
That really, really great points. And while I'm not in that point in my career,
meaning I can't imagine being in the position, I do have the utmost respect
for owners that are struggling to make that decision.
You know, you worry about your people, you worry about your customers,
you worry about the longevity of your business once you sell.
And even if the time is right, those emotions and feelings are still there. there.
(12:38):
So let's say we have an owner that that's come to terms with his or her reality
and they're ready to move forward.
I know that there's a process, there's, there's some sort of system,
right? That you take them through. What does that look like? What does that process?
You know, one of the first things we like to do is we obviously have to get
a value on the company because as I said, people will come to us and say,
(13:01):
well, I think I'm worth so much.
And the first thing we say is, okay, how did you pull that out of the air?
And most of them will tell us, well, I pulled it out of the air.
I think that's what it was worth in my mind, but they don't have any financial justification of it.
And buyers only are going to look at finances and your P&L sheet,
your balance sheet, history.
(13:23):
That's what they're going to make a decision on. So one of the first things
we have to do is we have to talk about valuation with people.
And we have to do our own valuation.
We have to make sure that they agree with that is within a range that that they would accept.
And sometimes they don't. Sometimes we have to come back to them with the bad
news of they think it's here, and we're saying the market's going to tell you it's here.
(13:45):
I can try to offer you a house at a million dollars, but if it's a $500,000
house, you're not even going to get an offer.
So is that step one then? So let's say, yeah, because I guess people have that
misconception often about what their company is worth, right? You just said it.
Yeah, very much so. That's the first thing that has to be decided in the process.
(14:10):
We do the valuation. We make sure that everybody's upon agreement.
Then what has to do is obviously you have to think about who's the best buyer.
You know, you don't want to blast an email out to a thousand printers out there
and say, hey, does anybody want to buy a company that does X,
Y, Z that does five million dollars in revenue?
(14:32):
You know, you just don't want to do that because, one, you're going to get a
whole bunch of tire kickers.
What you want to do is you want to look at the company. You want to define a
profile of who the best buyer would be.
You know, we want to look at the culture. We want to look at the geolocation.
We want to look at the markets. How do they go to the market?
We want to look at their customer concentration. We want to look at the age.
(14:53):
There's a lot of factors that we take into consideration that you say,
okay, the best buyer would be someone like that, that, that, that, that, that, that.
And then what we want to try to do is go out and find five or 10 that,
that, that, that, that, that.
You know, then you've got people you can bring to the table.
Once we get somebody interested in it, you know, of course, we have to share
information about the selling company, which is always done under NDAs, things like that.
(15:17):
You know, we talk to people, we get some conversations going, we get interest.
That generally includes some site visits and some more conversations.
Zoom, of course, is a great avenue. It gives us a chance to let people talk
about cultures without actually physically going into a facility just yet.
You know, and we we go through all of those steps and then we get to the point
where a buyer says, you know what, I want to make a run at this.
(15:41):
And at that point in time, they give us what's called an LOI,
which is a letter of intent or letter of expression of intent.
And it basically lines out, I like the company.
This is what I'm offering. This is the way I'm going to pay you.
This is the way the deal structure would be worked out.
You know, when I'm going to buy inventory, what you get to keep off the balance
sheet, all the details of it.
(16:02):
And we submit that and, you know, to the the seller and we say,
okay, is this acceptable?
And it either is or isn't. Maybe we bring in a couple at the same time.
The LOI gets accepted. Then you go into the fun part, due diligence.
And this can take several months because after a letter of intent is signed,
basically the seller has to open his doors a lot more to where the buyer can
(16:25):
come in and really take a hard look at the company. They can look at the equipment.
If it's digital equipment, they have to look at the number of clicks on it,
the age of it, or the end release, all the other details come out and your attorneys get involved.
That takes up a lot of time. And once you get past that stage,
you get to the asset purchase agreement.
(16:45):
And that is the final legal document where someone's going to sell the company.
That generally takes several revisions. And then, you know, it's decided upon,
you get a target date for when you're going to close and everybody moves toward
getting all the the paperwork done, get it closed on that day.
And that day comes around, funds are transferred. Next morning,
(17:05):
everybody wakes up with new ownership.
Wow. It sounds fairly simple and it sounds fairly stair-stepped,
but it is very, very complicated.
I was going to say it actually sounded like a lot, right?
So let me see if I can recap from memory what you said here.
There's the valuation, there's profiling the buyer, there's the hunt for the buyer, right? Right.
(17:27):
There's those those conversations that take place to affirm whether or not this
is going to work. The letter of intent, due diligence.
There's your purchase agreement. And finally, after it's all said and done with
closing, did I get all that right?
You got it right. Wow. OK, so there's a ton and there's there's no wonder there's
a need for an advisor to help you through a process like that.
(17:47):
If you were to take a deeper dive into this process, Roger, what are some of
the key points or metrics that you specifically look for that really help make the deal?
You know, first and foremost is the culture.
You know, it's very important that a company, when they're selling,
particularly and very important to the seller, the owner, is that as little as possible changes.
(18:13):
Changes you know it'd be nice to leave everything the
same that's probably not going to happen because obviously again
the buyer wants to buy it to improve it and grow it so
something's going to change but it's going to be on the positive side of things
so one of the first things you know that needs to be done is you you have to
look at a cultural fit you know you want to make sure they're in the kind of
in the same markets they sell the same channels you know you can't put a company
(18:35):
that sells direct and try to put them with the company that sells through the
trade you know It's a class.
They're going down different channels. So you have to look at the culture.
Second thing we have to look at generally is the geolocation.
Sometimes a company that is for sale, we'll say one in Kansas.
We need to find someone that wants to acquire something in Kansas.
(18:56):
That might be someone that's over in Missouri.
It might be at a border state because they want to make an acquisition relatively
close, say within driving distance.
And then there's other people who might be on the east or west coast that say,
say, you know, I'd love to have something in the middle of the country and have another,
You know, I don't have to ship over the Rockies at the end. He's like, I can work with that.
(19:17):
So, you know, geographic location comes into play. We have to look at the products
in the markets and how they go to market.
You know, you don't have to do the same product line, but it probably needs
to be a complementary product line.
You know, like right now, say a digital printer is probably not going to buy
a commercial printer because he doesn't want to go into offset. set.
(19:37):
You know, a digital printer that's doing black and white and color work and
flyers and postcards might buy a digital white format shop because it's still
digital and it's still promotional in nature.
So we have to look at those things and make sure that there's complementary
products and block trains in place to really make it look good.
We want to look at the customer concentration and what types of customers they
(20:00):
are. You know, if they're selling direct, the the customer base is going to be different.
We always tell people that there's two ways to look at your house.
You want to look at your financial house and your physical house.
Physical house meaning what's the shop floor look like.
Financial house is what does your P&L look like?
You would be surprised when we get financials to look at how crappy they are.
(20:21):
We got line items that make no sense. We got duplicate line items.
People pay in their condos.
We got condos out in Denver. We got Corvettes. That's like, okay,
you've got to clean all that stuff up.
Yeah. So, you know, one of those, that's something that has to take place.
And then, of course, we have to look at the size of general revenue.
And that helps us define, again, you know, what type of buyers that might be interested in that.
(20:46):
Whether is it, are we dealing with a $2 million company or $20 million?
Okay. So one of the key points that you hit on really resonated with me because
I've got a lot of personal experience in being on both sides of the M&A fence, right? Yeah.
I want to accentuate how critical culture is to the whole transaction.
So you can have everything dialed in, like you said. You've got the right product
(21:09):
mix. You've got great customer synergies.
I mean, everything is working really well, but the merger is not going to be
successful if the culture aspect doesn't play all the way through.
And so I'm going to share a little bit of my experience. I'm not going to name
names here, but we'll just say that there were two, at one point,
there were the two largest transactional document printing companies in North
(21:30):
America that decided, hey, we're going to merge.
And so they came through and they did this merger. And while the merger was
great, the marketing was great, there were a few things.
We still, internally, we still acted like company A and company B.
Matter of fact, the company had two presidents. presidents, President A and
(21:50):
President B. I won't name names.
But the reality is it was so hard to let go of the way things used to be.
And matter of fact, that was the sentiment.
Well, this is the way we used to do things, or this is the way we've always done things.
And it was a real challenge to get people on the same page in terms of,
well, let's stop thinking about the way we used to do it. Let's think about the way we should do it.
(22:15):
And it wasn't until we started having that conversation that the pieces started
moving and things started working together.
Because I'll say it took us at least six months to a full two years,
really, to properly integrate in terms of culture.
And, you know, about the time that that company was eventually acquired away,
some of those cultural issues were still hanging out there, Roger.
(22:36):
And so that's just my own personal experience with it.
And I can name quite a few others where the culture just wasn't the right fit.
Like for example, one transaction had a basically a customer facing entity purchase
a for trade only company with the expectation that they would be able to,
you know, take over that part of the market as well as dealing with direct customer sales.
(22:59):
And you know, in this world that that doesn't fly.
And so it, again, it was not a failure, but man, it was, it was really tough.
I know exactly which one you're talking about and you're right.
You know, and, and it brings up a very good point because, you know,
when you've got two entities, you know, let's, let's say we're past,
you know, most of the conversations and we're maybe even into a letter of intent.
(23:23):
You really got to have those conversations with both parties to say,
okay, we think we like each other.
We kind of do things the same. Let's talk about what's going to change.
Okay. We're not talking about firing customers or anything like that,
but let's just talk about what processes are going to take place.
What would the new world look like? Who's going to be in charge of that new
(23:46):
world or various segments of that new world?
And let's make sure that all those personalities don't immediately have a conflict.
Because if you're talking oil and water and you haven't even got into the due
diligence stage, you better put on the brakes.
There's, there's, you know, something's not going to go very well,
or you're going to, you're going to create a deal in a marriage that is not
(24:09):
going to be very pleasant for either party later in the day.
And you got to remember that, you know, a lot of deals, it's not just the guy
gets a check when he sells a company and rides off into the sunset.
A lot of these deals, there's an earn out based on multiple years.
And that means that that company has to not only survive, it has to grow.
If that oil and wire, if that's a bad mix, that can affect the guy's paycheck
(24:33):
over the next couple of years.
So, you know, those conversations, they really have to take place early on and
you've got to make sure you've got that cultural fit.
That can burn an organization down in nothing flat.
Man, I couldn't agree with you more. And I think there's some other elements
we could talk about out here too.
So, you know, we talked about how critical that internal adoption is for culture,
(24:56):
but, and what about the customers, right?
So they're typically the innocent bystanders in this whole thing.
They didn't ask for this, right?
They get attached to their supplier and the brand that's part of that supplier
that they've known and loved for a long time. There's a real emotional bond there.
And I suppose it's impossible to maintain 100% maintain 100% customer retention.
(25:16):
That's just unheard of ever, right?
I mean, how can you keep a customer confident and happy during the process?
Or is collateral damage just to be expected?
Unfortunately, it's probably the latter to a degree, but there's things that can be done.
Here's one of the biggest challenges when you're doing this,
and this is whether we're working or any broker is working with a distributor
(25:40):
or a manufacturer or a supplier, is the level of confidentiality that has to be maintained.
Because when you're going into this, when you're talking to these people about
getting evaluation, you're talking about, okay, we're going to put a memorandum
together. We're going to offer your...
For sale. At that point in time, the majority of the time, the only people that
(26:03):
are in the loop are the owners.
You know, their staff doesn't know this is going on. Their customers certainly
do not know what's going on. And neither one can know what's going on.
You know, most of the deals we work with, that's one of their concerns is how
do we keep this quiet in the industry?
And you know, our industry's a relatively small world when you get down to it. It's not so quiet.
Yeah. How do you keep this quiet in the industry so nobody knows about it?
(26:27):
Once you get the deal close to being done and they do notify their employees,
then part of that planning process and due diligence needs to be,
how do we address this with the customer?
You know, for sure, the top customers probably need to be visited prior to closing,
if at all possible, and if not, immediately after closing.
(26:49):
You know, the old guard needs to take the new guard in. They need to do introductions.
They need to do a nice transition and a nice handoff. A lot of times the owner
will be asked to stay on for anywhere from three to 12 months to aid in that
transition process to make sure that nobody gets lost and we don't lose any
of the customers, particularly the big ones.
(27:09):
Now, again, you commented about, you know, retention. Do you keep 100%?
No, because there's always going to be somebody back there that says,
you know, I've bought from Bob for 40 years.
I'm not buying from Bob now. I'm buying from Pete. Pete's a nice guy,
but I like Bob. You know, I also know Tom.
Tom's been a guy, a friend of mine for 20 years. I'm going to start sending
(27:30):
my volume over to Tom because I don't know Pete.
You know, there's going to be some of that. But if it's handled right and it's
handled as part of the process, then you're not going to lose very much.
It can be managed very well. So those are amazing points. And I agree with every
last one of them. Again, having done quite a few of these myself.
So Roger, let's say that the deal is done. Merger complete, synergy savings,
(27:54):
all of that is in full swing.
What happens next? What does life look like post merger or acquisition?
You know, that's, it's funny because, you know, that is the last step and it's
one of the first conversations we have because a seller needs to understand
what life after closing is going to look like.
(28:16):
You know, they may be part of the transition period.
They may not, you know, it all depends on what they want to do and what the
buyer wants to do with them.
I've had cases is where we closed on friday and at four o'clock the owner walked
out and nobody ever saw him again,
you know so those things have to be discussed and
and owners need to understand what their role is going to be moving forward
(28:40):
if there is going to be one and if they're not what is your role going to be
in life you know what are you going to do with your family do you have an idea
they those things need to be considered because it can get pretty lonely the
day after closing if in three months you're no longer needed.
You know, you wake up in the morning, you don't play golf, you fish,
and your wife's saying, don't you have somewhere to go?
(29:02):
I've heard that story, that same story so many times from folks in the industry
that have managed and successfully sold their business.
Man, you couldn't be closer to accurate about that.
But I mean, it sounds like there's a ton of variables at play in all of this.
And I'm just, I'm curious, do you have any parting thoughts on this.
I think our next segment's about to start.
(29:23):
So I want to make sure we're able to kind of close out the thought topic here.
You know, the thing I would encourage everybody to do is, first of all,
if at all possible, you know, think way in advance, you know, at least three years.
Again, if you think at some point in time, because of either age or a rational
reason, or you're in a dying market and you think there's a cliff coming,
(29:46):
whatever that reason is, back that up about three years and start talking to people.
Talk to people who have sold. Talk to friends in the same space.
Talk to a couple of different brokers. Get an idea of what is the market like?
What do you need to do to your company to improve the curb appeal?
Because that's one of the first things that I think I've got to take a look at.
(30:10):
If I've got a year and a half to really make my company look nice so I can sell
it, then let's get to work on that.
Let's hire some people to come in, and tell me what I need to do.
And there's people that will do that.
What I need to do to my company, both in the financial space and the structural
space and the physical space and clean this up so I get the best.
You know, think about it in advance, plan for it, and then just execute the
(30:32):
plan and work with a good advisor.
I would highly recommend that. I've talked to a lot of people that try to do it themselves.
And as you saw in from conversations for the last 40 minutes, it's complicated.
It's a lot more complicated than people think. So, you know,
hire an advisor, get some advice on it and make a plan, work a plan.
So it sounds like I need to get a before I sell anything, I'd need to get like
(30:55):
the equivalent of an auto detailer for my company before we just go straight into it.
M&A practices. Clean the car up before you put it on the parking lot.
Vacuum it out a little bit. That's good to know. You might want to wash the
windows. Wash the windows. Okay, got it.
So it looks like it's time for our next segment here, which is called...
Supply Chain Chatter. Supply Chain Chatter. There it is.
(31:18):
So Supply Chain Chatter is where we just kind of talk a little bit about what's
going on in the industry.
And I think, Alyssa, we've got a little bit of news coming up here at the beginning
of May, if I'm not mistaken. mistaken?
Yes, we do. So Liftoff will be attending this year's and the final Brand Chain event.
Ooh, final. Yes. This is, I believe, a leadership summit, the Brand Chain Leadership Summit.
(31:40):
That will be taking place March 6th through 8th this year in Clearwater, Florida.
So Roger, I hope, are we going to get a chance to see you in Clearwater?
Oh yeah. I would not miss that. Also always attend those if at all possible.
They're great meetings. Well, I'm going to urge all of our subscribers,
everybody that's listening, everybody that's watching.
If you've never been to a Brand Chain event, you have been missing out for the
(32:04):
past however many years we've been doing these shows.
They are the most incredible shows that it's a very awesome networking event.
It's honestly where I keep saying this, I feel like on every episode,
but, you know, we started our business in Brand Chain back when it was PSDA, DMIA.
And and so we you know without brand
(32:25):
chain you know we wouldn't be where we are today we wouldn't have the
success we have today and you know really excited
to see you know brand chain you know working now with printing united alliance
and really eager to see where that goes but back to the show in may you got
to go to that show even if you're not a member find a way to get there look
us up we can't wait to see you there let's see do we have any other news on
(32:47):
on our front or Roger, do you have anything you want to share news-wise?
You know, I just throw in a quick blip on that because, you know,
I've attended that meeting forever.
I think I've missed one since I've ever done them.
Kind of like the M&A thing, a lot of people are thinking, okay,
it's the last leadership conference for BrandChain. Oh, my gosh,
everything's dying. It's not.
(33:08):
You know, BrandChain's being merged in with Green United.
This is a fantastic opportunity for both organizations. organizations.
Granted, this is the last event that we will have under brand chain,
but this is going to be a great marriage.
There's a lot of good stuff coming out. It is a great meeting.
I'll echo your comments about the networking.
By far, that is the most fun and most amazing.
(33:30):
The session. You know, the fact that it's in clear water and we're going to
have a glass of wine while we walk out over the ocean.
Okay, that's all right. It's work. It's work, Roger. You can't call it anything but work.
I just love those 14-hour days on the beach. Heck yeah, heck yeah.
Well, we're going to look forward to seeing our subscribers here.
We're going to look forward to seeing Roger there. It's going to be a great time.
(33:53):
Oh, and hey, it is now time for our next segment, which is called Memorable
Merch. This is where we take an opportunity to let our guests kind of talk about
something that's happened in the industry or something that they're familiar
with that's been very impactful to them.
And, Roger, I understand you've got something kind of cool to talk about on today's show.
I did, and I apologize for not having it. I've been traveling.
(34:15):
I'm at literally the merch I wanted to show is at another location,
so I wasn't able to bring it with me.
But what I wanted to talk about or I was going to show was a jacket and a coffee
maker. And that's going to sound like, okay, what's so blasted hot about that?
But, you know, one thing I've learned about Merch, and I've been,
like I say, in manufacturing and on the side of working with vendors for,
(34:38):
you know, 50 plus years, I've had a lot of stuff handed to me over the years.
I've got more coffee cups and what they used to call trinkets and trash than you care to see.
But I go back to what did somebody give me that I retained that always made me think of them?
It doesn't necessarily mean it had to have their name on it,
but I never forgot where that came from.
(34:58):
And I got a jacket. I got a jacket in 1983 from Appleton Papers because I helped them do a survey.
That was it. Just a survey. It was detailed, but it was a survey.
Took me 30 minutes maybe to do.
I got the nicest jacket. Yeah, it says Appleton. I got the nicest jacket.
(35:20):
I still have that jacket in my closet and I still wear it in the winter.
It's a great jacket, but I got it because I helped another company out that was in our space.
They sent me a premium piece, not just a coffee cup.
And that's always meant really good to me. The other one that did the same thing was from Zykon.
(35:41):
They go to the big digital company. Back in probably around 2010.
I was invited up to their headquarters up in Chicago to view a brand new piece
of equipment that they were getting ready to launch. And I went up and I went
through the day tour and they showed me the equipment.
And when I got back a few days later, I got a Keurig coffee maker delivered to my front porch.
(36:02):
And I called the guy up that does the marketing. I said, why are you doing this?
You know me. I'm a consultant. I am never, ever going to buy his icon.
He goes, yeah, but we appreciate your input. We listen to what you're going
to say. We know you're going to talk to other people. We want you to have this.
Now, both of those items are relatively insignificant. significant.
Maybe they cost a little bit, but it was a fact that it was given to me when
(36:26):
it really wasn't going to generate a sale.
And it just really struck to me that if you want to create memorabilia and you
want to create a memory, make it worthwhile.
Don't do a coffee cup. No squeeze balls, right?
Yeah, exactly. That's always hit me. I've always remembered those two things.
So it's funny. So branded merchandise is incredibly powerful.
(36:49):
It can either be what Danny Ross and one of our friends over from brand fuel
calls brand fill like landfill.
That's funny. Or, or it can be extremely impactful.
So you, you just said, what was the year? 1983, Roger from Appleton.
Is that right? right? 1983.
She'll have the jacket. So what is that? That's 41 years ago.
That piece of merch is still around 41 years later and is still creating memories,
(37:14):
right? It's still there. It's etched in your brain.
That's powerful marketing. Yeah. Branded merchandise doesn't really get the
credit it deserves, but the fact is you have all this stuff that sits on your
desk, on your shelf, on your wall, wherever it is.
I mean, I've got this kind of stuff right behind me. good
lord it branded merchandise is king when it
comes to you know to brand and and and that that emotional
(37:37):
feeling yeah yeah you know what i think what's
made makes the difference is some companies
understand why you give out branded merchandise they understand the value of
it they understand that it's an investment to the future and it needs to pull
it needs to pull people into you it needs to connect you with a customer or
a potential customer Too many companies consider branded merchandise as a have-to,
(38:02):
and they hand them out like candy,
and they have no expectations of getting anything in return.
Well, if you don't expect a return, you're not going to get a return.
Pay attention to what you're doing. Give out less. Less items give out more and better items.
You'll have far more impact of it. Most companies don't really think about it
when they're doing their brand. That's why they need to work with brand experts.
(38:24):
So, Alyssa, take some notes. No more copycats. No more squeeze balls.
This is actually exactly why I've been trying to convince you guys to do liftoff.
Liftoff pizza ovens. I'm all over that. I think that's where we need to go next.
So 41 years from now, somebody's going to have a liftoff commerce pizza oven
is what I'm hearing. Roger approves.
(38:46):
I love it. I don't know where we're going with this show, but we always have fun. I told you we would.
So unfortunately, we've got to keep moving. It's time for our next segment.
And before that, before we give Roger a parting gift, we're going to talk about Tech Trends.
Tech Trends is the segment of the show where we talk about all the cool things
that might be going on, either technology related or who knows,
efficiency, innovation, all of those things kind of fall under that umbrella.
(39:11):
And Roger, I understand you've got some trends that you're kind of seeing kind
of nestled in with the M&A space. Is that right?
Yeah, definitely. You know, we have a lot of people ask us, you know,
what's hot? You know, what trends are out there right now?
And, you know, there's a big space. You know, you've got business forms,
you've got commercial printing, you have digital printing, you have dye sublimation,
(39:34):
you've got promotional products out there, wide format signing.
You've got this massive gamut, you know, labels, flexible packaging.
That spectrum is, you know, here to here.
I mean, it's massive. And what we've noticed is a definite trend toward the
newer technology, the digital, the flexible packaging, digital imaging on flexible packaging,
(39:56):
digital imaging direct to substrate, not going through another middleman process of some sort.
Those are really drawing a lot of interest.
Interest one of the ways we gauge that is by how
many calls we get from private equity firms and we get a call a week
from private equity firms saying do you have a company that
does this or is in this space because they're
(40:16):
these guys are really looking hard at the printing and promo space
right now they're getting very anxious about it so you know what we've seen
is probably what a lot of people expect some of the the printing segments are
you know still retreating they're declining in nature and everything but there's
a lot of new stuff coming up it's still going to make the print and chromo and
graphic space a wonderful wonderful place to be in for the coming years.
(40:39):
Those are really good points, too. And I know we talk about technology and M&A,
and I know this isn't a trend, but it's something that you just made me think about.
When you're buying another company, it's very common for them to have their
own ERP, order management system.
Sometimes it's a homegrown system. Sometimes it's something they bought off
the shelf. And, I mean, we didn't necessarily talk about that in the line,
(41:02):
but I think it probably fits into culture somewhere.
What do you see nowadays, you know, with folks buying other folks?
Are they targeting companies that are leveraging the same systems or are you
finding that it's just kind of across the board? What insights do you have for us there?
You know, when it comes to distributorships, I would say there is a trend toward
(41:24):
trying to acquire someone that's on the same system.
You know, that, you know, I see that or they're at least acquiring someone that
can be transposed over their system very quickly and very easily.
And that and of course, that means the system they're using has to be,
you know, it has to be new.
You know, you're not going to find someone on a very old system doing a lot
(41:47):
of migrations over to an old system. So some distributorship that has a relatively
new platform can assimilate the old platforms on fairly easily or certainly
the same platform on easily.
Manufacturers, not so much. They all want to stay on the same system over time.
But they also know that if a $100 million manufacturer buys a $20 million manufacturer,
(42:11):
that transition might take a year.
And they're okay with that slow process because what they want is the revenue. They want the revenue.
They want to grow the business. They want the product line. They want the customer base.
That's more important than the ERP system is the necessary change that has to take place.
So what the other company has doesn't always necessarily come into play that much.
(42:34):
You wouldn't be surprised how many companies we have come to us of size that
don't have a good system. It's amazing.
You know, I feel like we could probably craft an entire show just around the
topic of the acquisition and merger M&A part of technology.
Honestly, there's so much that gets kind of folded up in there.
(42:56):
Oh, do you guys hear that?
Oh, you know what that means. It's time for Cash or Swag. All right.
This is the segment of the show.
I think this is my favorite segment of the show where we get to award Roger
a cool prize for being such a wonderful guest on our show.
Roger, what are you betting for? Do you want some swag? Do you want some cash?
(43:20):
What are you hoping to get off that wheel? No, I want swag.
I'm for the swag because there is one thing that I probably left out.
Is, you know, it's not always what you get, but it's who you get it from.
And as you well know, Andrew, I have tremendous, tremendous respect for you
and what you've done with your company in the industry.
(43:41):
I guarantee you, whatever you send me will be utilized, just out of my pure respect.
Oh, man, I think we need to give Roger everything on that wheel for that comment.
All right. So here's how it's going to work. Eric, you just count down from
three and Alyssa will spin that wheel as hard as she can. All right.
That's not necessarily very hard, but. All right. Give us a countdown,
(44:05):
Roger. Okay. Three, two, one.
Where's it going to land? It is a $50 gift card.
Well, guess what? We're going to bundle that $50 gift card with some swag. How about that?
We will make sure you get what you came here for.
Well, Roger, I want to thank you so much for being an incredibly wonderful guest on today's show.
(44:27):
You've shared so many incredible insights about the world of M&A that,
you know, even though I've done a few of these, just it really helps bring all
these things to the forefront.
And I really hope for some of our subscribers that are listening to your advice,
that they seek you out, contact Corporate Development Associates.
If you're just thinking about selling or buying, Roger and the team over there
at CDA are absolutely top notch, guarantee it. All right, well,
(44:50):
thank you for everybody.
Thanks for watching our show and we'll see you next time. Thanks everyone.
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