August 29, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode, we sit down with Jeffrey Rich, one of the three partners at Touchstone, to delve into his journey from a proprietary trader on Wall Street to becoming a key figure in mergers and acquisitions. Jeffrey shares his experiences in the high-stakes world of finance and his transition into the M&A industry, highlighting the emotional and intellectual challenges he faced along the way. He discusses the philosophy behind Touchstone's team approach, the complexities of closing deals, and the factors that influence successful business exits. Jeffrey also reflects on his passion for working with business owners, the importance of thorough pre-market evaluations, and his personal aspirations beyond the financial sector. Tune in to gain valuable insights from a seasoned M&A advisor who is dedicated to helping clients achieve their business goals.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
See? We are back.
So tell me what,
what you likeabout working in the M&A industry.
What I like about working in the M&A
industry is,I think working with the business owners.
Each one brings a different story
(00:22):
of how they started their business,how they built their business.
Each one is a symbol,usually at at least one thing.
And that'swhat drove their success. Right?
I think you had,
Cosmo.
Cosmo's skill was
they were able they, they figured outhow to get in with Google early and grew
(00:44):
with Google and just rode that tidal wave
of appropriately managing their, their,
their Google AdWords growthand using that to drive sales.
Right.
For each business owner.
It's a different story.
Yeah.
And one of the thingsthat I really enjoy is understanding
(01:04):
what is that special thingthat they brought to the table.
It's something that intellectuallyI get to take away from me
and use with other business owners.
Right. True.
So you work with the 100, 150 business
ownersor founders or what have you, and you and,
learning the
difference between wisdom and experience.
(01:27):
Very true.
So, I really enjoyed that.
I love the opportunity to take them
and their life's work from here. Right.
They worked in it for 2030 for, you know,
five, ten, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 years.
If it's a multiple generation business.
And get them to that point
(01:50):
where they've wanted to get to hopefullyfor some period of time,
which is that actual exit and,that's really satisfying.
I think, you know, everybodyI know that works in other industries
that are adjacent to ourssays that ours is the best.
Everybody wants our job.
(02:10):
They don't know the best.
I was like, well, they mightchange their minds after a little bit.
They they don't understandthat, you know, you're flying.
You know, you're jumpingwithout a parachute sometimes.
Thing that we workoperate on a success basis largely.
You know, if you're
not successful, you're not going to bein this industry very long. No.
(02:32):
So you got to get people
to the finish line, not just down the pathbut to the finish line.
And like I enjoy every part of it.
I enjoy it so muchthat I didn't want to run touched down.
So that's true.
And then you joined usand you run touched on now
and we, you know, I like doing the deals.
(02:54):
I like, that that'swhere the to me, that where the fun is.
Excellent. Well, for those of you
that are just joiningus, Jeff just gave us a great segue.
We're doing a meetthe partner episode with Jeffrey
Rich, one of our three partnersthat I touched on. we.
May be.
(03:16):
so you enjoy this component of it.
What got you here in.
Are you saying, like.
Like, what's career path?
Because you didn't have,you know, you did do the the financial bro
component, right?
Like you came with the,the finance degree.
So out of college, I was hired by,
(03:37):
well, given a job offer by, yeah.
A firm on Wall Streetcalled Cater Fitzgerald.
I did not take that job.
I ended up, over the courseof a couple of years,
coming to work for it on Wall Street,but in a different role
as, like an independentand proprietary trader.
And so that's where you go to a firmand they give you
(04:00):
an amount of capital to steward,and you traded, very actively.
And if you make money,you get a percentage of that.
And if you lose money,no paycheck and fired for you.
So I kill or be killed.
So it's kind of the ultimate formof capitalism.
As a young person, I think it'sreally attractive because there's no cap
(04:23):
on the income that you can make,and you're surrounded with a lot of other,
you know, people that are in most cases
far more intelligent than I am,but really smart people.
And, you know,the ideas are just flowing and,
it's,it's it's the job that I wanted to do.
And I got to do my life's,you know, my life's
(04:47):
dream at 24, 25, 26, 27 years old.
That's pretty cool.That is pretty cool to do that.
No. By 32, I was really done with it.
It's a young man's game, I would say.
Not that there's not a lot of older
people who are really successful tradersor portfolio managers, but,
there's definitely a,
(05:08):
negative, emotional component on it.
Over time, the good days feel less good,and the days when you lose money
feel more bad and, it it
it, you know, I think it kind ofwore out emotionally on it.
And so by the
time I was in my early 30s,I was time for a change.
(05:28):
I also had a view about the marketthat was correct, but early and correct.
But early meansyou're going to lose a lot of money.
So it was 2007.
End of 2006.
I went and worked in the hold outthe recession
that I anticipatedwas coming in the insurance space.
That was good for a variety of things.
(05:49):
It definitely broadened me out.
It was also the change in pace was knowmarket from,
you know, from that high pace, highstress environment.
Now you're in, you know, allthe disasters happened extremely slowly.
Fair category.
It was really goodfrom a family perspective, etc.
I did not find itvery intellectually satisfying at all.
(06:13):
And I was looking for a change
and I found, the founder of touched on by Cammarata,
who, you know, had started to buildthe small mergers
and acquisitions companyin northern Connecticut.
And Mike took a shine to mebecause I reminded him of his son,
who went to the same college
that I went with, went to,but he couldn't work with this.
(06:37):
So that's very true.
And so I sort of became Mike'sputative son,
and so was kind of Mike and sonfor a couple of years.
And Roy joined us as you remember.
And thenand then Steve joined us and, and others
along the way and,and you joined us and others since.
And so Mike really wanted to build a firmand but he needed somebody
(07:01):
to do the work of selling the companiesbecause you might want to do that more.
And so he built the firm.
I sold the companies,
and then he brought in more peopleto sell the company companies
that had sort of went from there. Yeah.
So I've been with touchstone nowclose to 15 years.
I guess I'm the longest dated.
I think you are.
I think I think you are.
But, I'm planning on being hereat least another 15.
(07:26):
You better be.
We're not getting rid of, you know,keep closing the deals.
So you are not only someonethat likes to close the deals.
You actually acquired a companyfrom someone else within the firm.
I did.
He regrets this.
(07:47):
No. Yes.
He was selling a small company.
At the time, I was looking for
a small company to buy, and yet,we bought it.
We owned it for about ten years.
It's been a really good investment for us.
I think we are.
If we were to exit the company,I think we would return something
like 30 times the, initial investmentwe made on it.
(08:09):
So that was that's a healthy growth.
Continues to pay dividends for us.
I also have,
a logistics startup, that we areworking on that I'm the majority owner of
and a, a couple other businessesthat I'm involved with as an investor.
(08:31):
Mostly in the sort of startuprealm, either software or medical devices.
Yeah.
So it's safe to say that you likeworking with owners because you are one.
I do think that there'sa little bit of the triad mentality.
I think most people or our owners
would not want to have to go backto working for somebody else.
(08:52):
I think there is an autonomy,from a decision
making perspective,that I think is important.
And one thing that I did realizeat the insurance
companies that I worked with,which were really, really big,
you know, companieswith thousands of employees
and really a bad fit for meis that I would always do my best.
(09:13):
When I was just talking with the decisionmaker at the company, either
the CEO of the company that I worked foror the, you know, the CFOs
or CEOs of the companies that, you know,we were administering insurance for.
It's just for mea lot easier to just come through
and speak directly,candidly, good, bad or indifferent and,
(09:37):
I like that,
you know, I, I do like,I think to get sort of beyond some of
the red tape and just get to the pointwhere decisions can be made cause
in the decisions is,I think, where progress happens.
That makes sense. That makes sense.
So one of the things that I've noticedworking both with you and with Steve
is that you read businesses differently.
Okay.
(09:58):
So you tend to comefrom a financial standpoint.
So talk a little bit about how
financials impact
planning for an exit.
Sure. It's true. I can't help it.
You know, that Wall Street background,
and CFA chartered holder background
(10:21):
does cause me to look at things probablyless operationally initially than you do.
Steve does it morefrom the financial perspective.
I will say that I can readan income statement or a balance sheet
and tell you many things abouthow the operations are running, including
probably how your organization,from an organizational standpoint
(10:44):
is set up, whether people are happy,whether they're not.
You can tell a lotjust from reading financials fluently.
But, yeah, I'mtypically more focused on the bottom line
and like, what it isand what we need to do to make it better.
And probably less astutewhen it comes to some of the, like,
(11:06):
we know that marketlike fair, fair, you know,
you know, I, me to be more focused on
what we need to doto drive the financials forward
and less on some of the operationalor softer sides of it.
Yeah. Very fair.
And that's one of the reasonsthat I touched on.
(11:26):
We work as a team. That's right. Right.
So you know, our advisors comefrom different different vantage points.
And pairing themappropriately gives the clients the best.
That was one of the things that I thinkwas a really important change
that touchstone made along the way
from going sort of as a solo entrepreneuron every deal.
(11:46):
Right.
Maybe supported a little bitby back office
to really bringing a team to the table.
I think that's somethingthat's important.
I think it's also a differentiator.
There's a lot of soul practitioners,who are really good.
But they can only be one place at once.
(12:07):
They might be one of those places,might be a needed vacation
or every nowand then, every once in a while.
And, I think allowing for some specialization,
you know, thinking of Joe from our team,such a unique resource,
in the finance space, correct.
Others, you know, to to allow people
to specialize somewhat,I think helps drive a better
(12:30):
overall experience for the business ownersthat are looking to exit.
Agreed? Agreed.
It's something that that we do quite well
is getting the right parties on the deal.
Talk a little bit about
the difficultieswithin a transaction time.
Where do you see hiccupsthe most frequently?
(12:52):
Okay.
Well, I do think that was at, conferencelast week.
With that,we belong with a lot of other M&A
and advisors and investment bankers,both nationally and internationally.
And one of the, one of our friendsthere said something that I think is
very true, which is it's harder than everto get deals over the finish line. And
(13:16):
it's easy to bring them in
and and to sign them up as clients.
Right? There's a lot of people,demographics, whatever.
There's a lot of peoplethat are looking to exit their business,
but so many of them are taken offtrack along the way
by either known or unknown
(13:37):
factors,right agents or endogenous factors.
And you can't do anything about the thingsyou couldn't plan for, like,
I don't know, Trump tariffs,which is definitely creating some issues
for it, is prospective clients or clientsthat would like to come to market
that are dealing with thoseyou can't deal with,
you can't do anythingabout what happened to us.
(13:58):
I think in 2011, where we had a closingscheduled for a business being acquired
by a Japanese company and the,
Japanesewere coming for to sign the paperwork.
They get off on the tarmac,at Bradley Airport and find out
they have to go backbecause there's been an earthquake.
And what turned into the Fukushimanuclear crisis?
(14:21):
You can't do anything about those things.
You know,there are a lot of things that you can.
Yeah.
Although I would say there is one thingthat you can do about them.
Probably the true adage within the M&Abusiness is that time heals all deals.
So if you're a tech business, right,and like people are more
attuned to it, I think in technology that,
(14:42):
if you're all the way everywhereand always in embrace,
and if you don't think you're in a raceyou lost, you just don't know you lost.
Right? Exactly. So but,
over a long
enough period of time,a bad thing will happen.
Torpedo would deal.
Either your it will happento your prospective acquirer,
or it will happen to you as the partylooking to exit your business.
(15:06):
So we've adopted this sort of measuretwice cut once.
Approach, as you well know.
And we go through and we're really carefulto try to go through and structure
and understand what the good isof course, that the business.
But what is the bad and the ugly, right.
Where are we a little bit under?
Where do we need to get ourselvesfrom the business perspective?
(15:27):
Is it, you know, to talk about financials?
Is it our financial reporting.
Right. Is it do we have a sales problem?
Do we have, an owner dependency problem.
Do we have a to you.
Do we have minority shareholderswho don't agree.
Right. Who could be a deal?
If they're not treated or,
(15:47):
you know, kept in the loop appropriately,there's a lot of different,
there's a lot of different factorsthat have to be evaluated.
And, you know,I think that if you do those,
try to address as many of thosebefore you go to market as possible.
That's the best way to try to avoidhiccups between, say, a letter of intent.
(16:11):
Right. Closing.
Yeah.
So how and we've touched on ita little bit, but how long do you see
a transactionlike actually happening these days?
Okay.
So I think it's getting longer overall.
I think buyers are very worriedabout making a mistake,
spending money on due diligencenot to get to the finish line.
(16:32):
What does the seller or their investmentbank or M&A advisor know that?
I don't know that information asymmetry.
Right.
But I think that they're more cautiousabout that a little more suspicious.
Generally feel like everybodyis a little bit more after Covid.
A little shorter with
(16:53):
you knowwith, with their I guess with their,
I guess with the sense of
grace that you give another teamthat you're working with.
But, I think it's a situation
where, it's just,
I guess the biggest issue that
that I see between the, the, the signing,
(17:16):
even the signing of letters of intenttakes a lot longer than it used.
We've all right.
You know, that's
one of the things where we always takea little bit more time than some people.
We really try to,we want to make sure we have a deal.
Right.
We don't just want to sign them upand then find out
two months later that there are all sortsof rats running around that.
(17:37):
All right, let's figure it out and realizethat this wasn't the right fit buyer.
The seller just not the right.
All right.
So we take more time than most,but even even that process
takes longer, I think for us, many timesthan it used to.
Lately I've noticed the same. Right.
Everybody wants to agree,but nobody wants to incur a cost to agree
(17:57):
and nobody necessarilywants to meet in the middle to agree.
They just want you to agree with them.
Yes. And I do think that buyers area little bit more I think they're pickier.
What true huge success for them.
And I think the buyer community is alsoa little more unyielding in terms of,
(18:18):
like I've always said, deals eitherclose or don't close
about whether people get jerkyover the last several percent of the deal.
Right, right.
Well, that was the very first dealthat I worked with you on.
And, we gave up.
Yeah, we gave up.
We got down to the finish line
and we were arguing over $1,000.
(18:38):
It was a no. It was a no.
We had gotten them to agree,
and it was down to itbecause it was a $3,000 bill
and they're like,Will each pay a thousand?
And I'm like, good, there's a third left.
So we gave up a thousandof our of our fee,
which was the peoplegetting the least out of the deal.
Right. Like, yeah.
(18:58):
And Iit changed the dynamic of the entire room
because we gave up a feeand they both felt quite silly.
And I thinka lot of times it does come down to people
getting emotionally anchoredinto their position and just starting to.
I think that's one of the things,the reasons, the biggest reasons to hire
(19:21):
an M&A advisor or an investment banker,whether it be touchstone or somebody else,
is to put on my old Bostonaccent to be the buffer.
Yep. You go bone on bonethroughout a transaction, you know,
like you're going to hate each otherby the end of it.
And God forbid they have one of them hasto stay in work for correct to happen.
(19:43):
So you knowI can think of a couple transactions
right now where my buyer and my sellerdon't necessarily
like or trust each other that much,but they trust us, right?
They trust that we're runninga fair process that we are going to be,
even though we're advocating,you know, traditionally on the South Side,
(20:05):
we're advocatingfor the benefit of our clients, as,
you know, as we have tofrom a fiduciary perspective,
that we're not just, taking everything to the brink, right?
That it's not like,that there's an understanding
that in order to win the war,you lose some battles, right?
And that a really good dealis probably one
(20:25):
where everybody walks away from the table,mostly.
Right, but a little bit unhappyabout certain things.
Yeah.
And then if you justdominate the other party,
even if you winand get the deal to the finish line,
the question is
what is the cost on the other side is thatis that seller
who got dominated by a buyerand just beaten into submission?
(20:48):
It's her deal. Fatigue or whatever.
Are they going to give you what you need?
Post-Closingare they going to you know, if you
if there's an area of expertise,for example, and you've paid them,
they may not bother to pay any attentionto you.
Right. Closing.
So I don't know. Yeah.
Yeah I agreed.
And I think we play a rolein avoiding a lot of those scenarios.
(21:14):
And, and it's why it's not unusual
for us to sell a business the first timeand then sell it again when?
Five, six, seven years. Yeah.
When they're ready for an exitthe second time.
You know, it's a good it's a good feeling
to know that the buyer trustedyou enough to come back to you.
Yeah, that's a great point.
(21:35):
I'm thinking of,
a complimentour team got from a, publicly traded
foreign companythis past year in a transaction.
We did, and we loved the investmentbankers on the other side.
They were great people, and I thinkthey did a great job with their client.
But, the we got thethe comment afterwards that, you know,
(21:57):
we could not have gotten this deal donewithout touchstone, that, you know,
your fairness, your diligence throughout,you know, understand taking the time
to understand all sides of the issueand then try to help diagram a solution.
You know, was really unparalleled.
And we look forward to hiring youto do a deal.
(22:18):
That's fabulous.
I don't want to take away from myour rights, by the way.
At this other investment bank,you did a great job.
But I think, you know, when the other sideis complimenting you on
what a good jobyou did to manage a difficult deal.
And, you know,
some of these are almost like giving birthto these deals is really hard.
(22:38):
Yeah.
Some of them a little bit, you know,some of them go relatively easily,
but some of them are.
I'm not sure I think any of them like,I don't maybe,
maybe they all have their ownidiosyncrasies.
They definitely do.
And but there are patterns. Yes.
Personality type.
There are patterns in termsof how a deal's going to go.
(23:00):
Different sectors have Jim Stylesas to how the deal may be constructed or.
Right.
And I think that's one of the advantageshere.
If you're a business owner,maybe you've had 1 or 2 other exits,
but what you're an expert onis running your business.
What shirt on is selling it, right.
(23:20):
That's our business 100% or 500 times.
We've seen all the movies before.
We know how they all that.
Yeah.
And honestly,if it's something we haven't seen before,
intellectuallyit's like we will figure it out.
But surprise and say,can I do it this way?
Yes, yes I can.
So you are kind of king of that.
(23:43):
You will sell a business that
can't be sold.
I am the patron saint of businessesthat are difficult to sell.
Yeah.
What keeps you goingto get to that point?
Like, you keep going past the point thatmost of us would have stopped the check.
(24:05):
Makes all this moneyafter every rational human would give up.
Yes, yes.
Okay.
So getting back,I think it sort of gets into personality
types.
Somebody that chooses to do trading
without a parachute, right, with no salaryand take a job and like, risk their job
every single day isprobably somebody who a has confidence,
(24:29):
maybe too much in common capabilities,but also has,
an intellectual curiosity.
And likes to do hard things.
I think there's some of that for me.
There's also an element of service, youknow, without getting into my background,
you know, I'm one of those peoplethat wasn't supposed to live this long.
(24:52):
And you know, when you do that,you sort of have to figure out
why are you still here?And what are you here to do?
And one of the waysthat I've come to terms with that is that,
you know, I'm here to servejust like you're here to.
And one of the big ways that I serve inlife is through the medium of finance.
Right.
It's the mediumthat allows me to serve people.
(25:13):
And so I'm not going to say it's like probono work.
No certainly.
But that's not the goal though.
But you know when we do work, you know,there are times that we take on
businesses that it might be easier to say,you know,
I don't thinkthat we're the right fit for you there.
You know,you can't take on only impossible
(25:35):
or mostly impossible right, to sell.
But I think there is a, component of thatthat is service oriented
because there's only so much timethat we have.
Right.
So I think there is some of that.
But also I think
when somebody tells you, like,we had a client
this past year who had, their businessburned down, right?
(26:00):
And we sold them in four weeks becausewe had to because they they needed it.
We've been at market for themhad been a really long transaction.
Couple different buyershadn't worked out and they
he said he said, I feel sorry for me.
And of course we did too.
But I feel sorry for youbecause you and Joe worked so hard on this
(26:22):
and it's not going to close.
And I said, yes, it is.
And we had a deal done
in four weeksnow, obviously wasn't at the right price,
but we had a dealand an exit for a gentleman who was 70,
78 years old and and neededto exit his business, it was time.
So I mean,
what could be more satisfying than thatwhen they tell you it couldn't be done
(26:46):
and you get it done for them,that that that's a blessing in life.
It's always great when they come back
and you find out thatthey are actually happy with it as well.
You know, that's that'skind of the warm, fuzzy feeling.
But I mean, you look atwe spent a lot of time typing emails,
(27:06):
looking at spreadsheets, building sims,
going through buyer lists,which is a huge yes for us.
But to actually, the human side is not to be lost.
No. Definitely not. Definitely not.
I think it's kind of a key areathat touchstone brings to, to our clients.
So in a wrap up conclusion,
(27:27):
we, we do this every day.
Let's sayyou weren't going to do this every day.
And you weren't going to go back to trading because you didn't get any younger.
So so what career?
What would be your career path?
Well, I have three screenplaysthat I want to write.
Okay.
Based on three peoplethat I've met in my life.
(27:50):
And, I'm totally convinced thatat least two of them are Oscar winners.
So I do want to do that.
If I had never livedthe life that I lived,
the alternative lifethat I think I would have lived.
Now you see it, you know, because nowwe have phones and smartphones and.
Right, you know, video logs and stuff.
(28:11):
But I would have wantedto travel the world
and be like a writerfor National Geographic.
I'm a really good writer.
Okay.
And I would like a travel writer,a travel writer.
But really what I would have likedto use that to springboard on.
And you can do it now, you couldn't reallydo it back then is to go around
and kind of what you seepeople like Anthony Bourdain
(28:33):
or people like that doingwhere they go out and meet with people
and they're they're in a countryand they're doing something,
but they're really understandingpeople's lives.
I would like to write about people'slives, meet interesting people
around the world and write an interviewthem and write about their lives.
Excellent.
Well, I think I just helpedyou find your retirement plan.
(28:55):
Well, don't wait too long.
Oh, excellent.
Well,thank you very much for coming today.
I hope that that our owners enjoyedgetting to know you and, Me too.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
All right. Thanks.
Meet. Him.
(29:15):
Maybe it.
Means we.
See? We are back.
So tell me what,
what you likeabout working in the M&A industry.
What I like about working in the M&A
industry is,I think working with the business owners.
Each one brings a different story
(00:22):
of how they started their business,how they built their business.
Each one is a symbol,usually at at least one thing.
And that'swhat drove their success. Right?
I think you had,
Cosmo.
Cosmo's skill was
they were able they, they figured outhow to get in with Google early and grew
(00:44):
with Google and just rode that tidal wave
of appropriately managing their, their,
their Google AdWords growthand using that to drive sales.
Right.
For each business owner.
It's a different story.
Yeah.
And one of the thingsthat I really enjoy is understanding
(01:04):
what is that special thingthat they brought to the table.
It's something that intellectuallyI get to take away from me
and use with other business owners.
Right. True.
So you work with the 100, 150 business
ownersor founders or what have you, and you and,
learning the
difference between wisdom and experience.
(01:27):
Very true.
So, I really enjoyed that.
I love the opportunity to take them
and their life's work from here. Right.
They worked in it for 2030 for, you know,
five, ten, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 years.
If it's a multiple generation business.
And get them to that point
(01:50):
where they've wanted to get to hopefullyfor some period of time,
which is that actual exit and,that's really satisfying.
I think, you know, everybodyI know that works in other industries
that are adjacent to ourssays that ours is the best.
Everybody wants our job.
(02:10):
They don't know the best.
I was like, well, they mightchange their minds after a little bit.
They they don't understandthat, you know, you're flying.
You know, you're jumpingwithout a parachute sometimes.
Thing that we workoperate on a success basis largely.
You know, if you're
not successful, you're not going to bein this industry very long. No.
(02:32):
So you got to get people
to the finish line, not just down the pathbut to the finish line.
And like I enjoy every part of it.
I enjoy it so muchthat I didn't want to run touched down.
So that's true.
And then you joined usand you run touched on now
and we, you know, I like doing the deals.
(02:54):
I like, that that'swhere the to me, that where the fun is.
Excellent. Well, for those of you
that are just joiningus, Jeff just gave us a great segue.
We're doing a meetthe partner episode with Jeffrey
Rich, one of our three partnersthat I touched on. we.
May be.
(03:16):
so you enjoy this component of it.
What got you here in.
Are you saying, like.
Like, what's career path?
Because you didn't have,you know, you did do the the financial bro
component, right?
Like you came with the,the finance degree.
So out of college, I was hired by,
(03:37):
well, given a job offer by, yeah.
A firm on Wall Streetcalled Cater Fitzgerald.
I did not take that job.
I ended up, over the courseof a couple of years,
coming to work for it on Wall Street,but in a different role
as, like an independentand proprietary trader.
And so that's where you go to a firmand they give you
(04:00):
an amount of capital to steward,and you traded, very actively.
And if you make money,you get a percentage of that.
And if you lose money,no paycheck and fired for you.
So I kill or be killed.
So it's kind of the ultimate formof capitalism.
As a young person, I think it'sreally attractive because there's no cap
(04:23):
on the income that you can make,and you're surrounded with a lot of other,
you know, people that are in most cases
far more intelligent than I am,but really smart people.
And, you know,the ideas are just flowing and,
it's,it's it's the job that I wanted to do.
And I got to do my life's,you know, my life's
(04:47):
dream at 24, 25, 26, 27 years old.
That's pretty cool.That is pretty cool to do that.
No. By 32, I was really done with it.
It's a young man's game, I would say.
Not that there's not a lot of older
people who are really successful tradersor portfolio managers, but,
there's definitely a,
(05:08):
negative, emotional component on it.
Over time, the good days feel less good,and the days when you lose money
feel more bad and, it it
it, you know, I think it kind ofwore out emotionally on it.
And so by the
time I was in my early 30s,I was time for a change.
(05:28):
I also had a view about the marketthat was correct, but early and correct.
But early meansyou're going to lose a lot of money.
So it was 2007.
End of 2006.
I went and worked in the hold outthe recession
that I anticipatedwas coming in the insurance space.
That was good for a variety of things.
(05:49):
It definitely broadened me out.
It was also the change in pace was knowmarket from,
you know, from that high pace, highstress environment.
Now you're in, you know, allthe disasters happened extremely slowly.
Fair category.
It was really goodfrom a family perspective, etc.
I did not find itvery intellectually satisfying at all.
(06:13):
And I was looking for a change
and I found, the founder of touched on by Cammarata,
who, you know, had started to buildthe small mergers
and acquisitions companyin northern Connecticut.
And Mike took a shine to mebecause I reminded him of his son,
who went to the same college
that I went with, went to,but he couldn't work with this.
(06:37):
So that's very true.
And so I sort of became Mike'sputative son,
and so was kind of Mike and sonfor a couple of years.
And Roy joined us as you remember.
And thenand then Steve joined us and, and others
along the way and,and you joined us and others since.
And so Mike really wanted to build a firmand but he needed somebody
(07:01):
to do the work of selling the companiesbecause you might want to do that more.
And so he built the firm.
I sold the companies,
and then he brought in more peopleto sell the company companies
that had sort of went from there. Yeah.
So I've been with touchstone nowclose to 15 years.
I guess I'm the longest dated.
I think you are.
I think I think you are.
But, I'm planning on being hereat least another 15.
(07:26):
You better be.
We're not getting rid of, you know,keep closing the deals.
So you are not only someonethat likes to close the deals.
You actually acquired a companyfrom someone else within the firm.
I did.
He regrets this.
(07:47):
No. Yes.
He was selling a small company.
At the time, I was looking for
a small company to buy, and yet,we bought it.
We owned it for about ten years.
It's been a really good investment for us.
I think we are.
If we were to exit the company,I think we would return something
like 30 times the, initial investmentwe made on it.
(08:09):
So that was that's a healthy growth.
Continues to pay dividends for us.
I also have,
a logistics startup, that we areworking on that I'm the majority owner of
and a, a couple other businessesthat I'm involved with as an investor.
(08:31):
Mostly in the sort of startuprealm, either software or medical devices.
Yeah.
So it's safe to say that you likeworking with owners because you are one.
I do think that there'sa little bit of the triad mentality.
I think most people or our owners
would not want to have to go backto working for somebody else.
(08:52):
I think there is an autonomy,from a decision
making perspective,that I think is important.
And one thing that I did realizeat the insurance
companies that I worked with,which were really, really big,
you know, companieswith thousands of employees
and really a bad fit for meis that I would always do my best.
(09:13):
When I was just talking with the decisionmaker at the company, either
the CEO of the company that I worked foror the, you know, the CFOs
or CEOs of the companies that, you know,we were administering insurance for.
It's just for mea lot easier to just come through
and speak directly,candidly, good, bad or indifferent and,
(09:37):
I like that,
you know, I, I do like,I think to get sort of beyond some of
the red tape and just get to the pointwhere decisions can be made cause
in the decisions is,I think, where progress happens.
That makes sense. That makes sense.
So one of the things that I've noticedworking both with you and with Steve
is that you read businesses differently.
Okay.
(09:58):
So you tend to comefrom a financial standpoint.
So talk a little bit about how
financials impact
planning for an exit.
Sure. It's true. I can't help it.
You know, that Wall Street background,
and CFA chartered holder background
(10:21):
does cause me to look at things probablyless operationally initially than you do.
Steve does it morefrom the financial perspective.
I will say that I can readan income statement or a balance sheet
and tell you many things abouthow the operations are running, including
probably how your organization,from an organizational standpoint
(10:44):
is set up, whether people are happy,whether they're not.
You can tell a lotjust from reading financials fluently.
But, yeah, I'mtypically more focused on the bottom line
and like, what it isand what we need to do to make it better.
And probably less astutewhen it comes to some of the, like,
(11:06):
we know that marketlike fair, fair, you know,
you know, I, me to be more focused on
what we need to doto drive the financials forward
and less on some of the operationalor softer sides of it.
Yeah. Very fair.
And that's one of the reasonsthat I touched on.
(11:26):
We work as a team. That's right. Right.
So you know, our advisors comefrom different different vantage points.
And pairing themappropriately gives the clients the best.
That was one of the things that I thinkwas a really important change
that touchstone made along the way
from going sort of as a solo entrepreneuron every deal.
(11:46):
Right.
Maybe supported a little bitby back office
to really bringing a team to the table.
I think that's somethingthat's important.
I think it's also a differentiator.
There's a lot of soul practitioners,who are really good.
But they can only be one place at once.
(12:07):
They might be one of those places,might be a needed vacation
or every nowand then, every once in a while.
And, I think allowing for some specialization,
you know, thinking of Joe from our team,such a unique resource,
in the finance space, correct.
Others, you know, to to allow people
to specialize somewhat,I think helps drive a better
(12:30):
overall experience for the business ownersthat are looking to exit.
Agreed? Agreed.
It's something that that we do quite well
is getting the right parties on the deal.
Talk a little bit about
the difficultieswithin a transaction time.
Where do you see hiccupsthe most frequently?
(12:52):
Okay.
Well, I do think that was at, conferencelast week.
With that,we belong with a lot of other M&A
and advisors and investment bankers,both nationally and internationally.
And one of the, one of our friendsthere said something that I think is
very true, which is it's harder than everto get deals over the finish line. And
(13:16):
it's easy to bring them in
and and to sign them up as clients.
Right? There's a lot of people,demographics, whatever.
There's a lot of peoplethat are looking to exit their business,
but so many of them are taken offtrack along the way
by either known or unknown
(13:37):
factors,right agents or endogenous factors.
And you can't do anything about the thingsyou couldn't plan for, like,
I don't know, Trump tariffs,which is definitely creating some issues
for it, is prospective clients or clientsthat would like to come to market
that are dealing with thoseyou can't deal with,
you can't do anythingabout what happened to us.
(13:58):
I think in 2011, where we had a closingscheduled for a business being acquired
by a Japanese company and the,
Japanesewere coming for to sign the paperwork.
They get off on the tarmac,at Bradley Airport and find out
they have to go backbecause there's been an earthquake.
And what turned into the Fukushimanuclear crisis?
(14:21):
You can't do anything about those things.
You know,there are a lot of things that you can.
Yeah.
Although I would say there is one thingthat you can do about them.
Probably the true adage within the M&Abusiness is that time heals all deals.
So if you're a tech business, right,and like people are more
attuned to it, I think in technology that,
(14:42):
if you're all the way everywhereand always in embrace,
and if you don't think you're in a raceyou lost, you just don't know you lost.
Right? Exactly. So but,
over a long
enough period of time,a bad thing will happen.
Torpedo would deal.
Either your it will happento your prospective acquirer,
or it will happen to you as the partylooking to exit your business.
(15:06):
So we've adopted this sort of measuretwice cut once.
Approach, as you well know.
And we go through and we're really carefulto try to go through and structure
and understand what the good isof course, that the business.
But what is the bad and the ugly, right.
Where are we a little bit under?
Where do we need to get ourselvesfrom the business perspective?
(15:27):
Is it, you know, to talk about financials?
Is it our financial reporting.
Right. Is it do we have a sales problem?
Do we have, an owner dependency problem.
Do we have a to you.
Do we have minority shareholderswho don't agree.
Right. Who could be a deal?
If they're not treated or,
(15:47):
you know, kept in the loop appropriately,there's a lot of different,
there's a lot of different factorsthat have to be evaluated.
And, you know,I think that if you do those,
try to address as many of thosebefore you go to market as possible.
That's the best way to try to avoidhiccups between, say, a letter of intent.
(16:11):
Right. Closing.
Yeah.
So how and we've touched on ita little bit, but how long do you see
a transactionlike actually happening these days?
Okay.
So I think it's getting longer overall.
I think buyers are very worriedabout making a mistake,
spending money on due diligencenot to get to the finish line.
(16:32):
What does the seller or their investmentbank or M&A advisor know that?
I don't know that information asymmetry.
Right.
But I think that they're more cautiousabout that a little more suspicious.
Generally feel like everybodyis a little bit more after Covid.
A little shorter with
(16:53):
you knowwith, with their I guess with their,
I guess with the sense of
grace that you give another teamthat you're working with.
But, I think it's a situation
where, it's just,
I guess the biggest issue that
that I see between the, the, the signing,
(17:16):
even the signing of letters of intenttakes a lot longer than it used.
We've all right.
You know, that's
one of the things where we always takea little bit more time than some people.
We really try to,we want to make sure we have a deal.
Right.
We don't just want to sign them upand then find out
two months later that there are all sortsof rats running around that.
(17:37):
All right, let's figure it out and realizethat this wasn't the right fit buyer.
The seller just not the right.
All right.
So we take more time than most,but even even that process
takes longer, I think for us, many timesthan it used to.
Lately I've noticed the same. Right.
Everybody wants to agree,but nobody wants to incur a cost to agree
(17:57):
and nobody necessarilywants to meet in the middle to agree.
They just want you to agree with them.
Yes. And I do think that buyers area little bit more I think they're pickier.
What true huge success for them.
And I think the buyer community is alsoa little more unyielding in terms of,
(18:18):
like I've always said, deals eitherclose or don't close
about whether people get jerkyover the last several percent of the deal.
Right, right.
Well, that was the very first dealthat I worked with you on.
And, we gave up.
Yeah, we gave up.
We got down to the finish line
and we were arguing over $1,000.
(18:38):
It was a no. It was a no.
We had gotten them to agree,
and it was down to itbecause it was a $3,000 bill
and they're like,Will each pay a thousand?
And I'm like, good, there's a third left.
So we gave up a thousandof our of our fee,
which was the peoplegetting the least out of the deal.
Right. Like, yeah.
(18:58):
And Iit changed the dynamic of the entire room
because we gave up a feeand they both felt quite silly.
And I thinka lot of times it does come down to people
getting emotionally anchoredinto their position and just starting to.
I think that's one of the things,the reasons, the biggest reasons to hire
(19:21):
an M&A advisor or an investment banker,whether it be touchstone or somebody else,
is to put on my old Bostonaccent to be the buffer.
Yep. You go bone on bonethroughout a transaction, you know,
like you're going to hate each otherby the end of it.
And God forbid they have one of them hasto stay in work for correct to happen.
(19:43):
So you knowI can think of a couple transactions
right now where my buyer and my sellerdon't necessarily
like or trust each other that much,but they trust us, right?
They trust that we're runninga fair process that we are going to be,
even though we're advocating,you know, traditionally on the South Side,
(20:05):
we're advocatingfor the benefit of our clients, as,
you know, as we have tofrom a fiduciary perspective,
that we're not just, taking everything to the brink, right?
That it's not like,that there's an understanding
that in order to win the war,you lose some battles, right?
And that a really good dealis probably one
(20:25):
where everybody walks away from the table,mostly.
Right, but a little bit unhappyabout certain things.
Yeah.
And then if you justdominate the other party,
even if you winand get the deal to the finish line,
the question is
what is the cost on the other side is thatis that seller
who got dominated by a buyerand just beaten into submission?
(20:48):
It's her deal. Fatigue or whatever.
Are they going to give you what you need?
Post-Closingare they going to you know, if you
if there's an area of expertise,for example, and you've paid them,
they may not bother to pay any attentionto you.
Right. Closing.
So I don't know. Yeah.
Yeah I agreed.
And I think we play a rolein avoiding a lot of those scenarios.
(21:14):
And, and it's why it's not unusual
for us to sell a business the first timeand then sell it again when?
Five, six, seven years. Yeah.
When they're ready for an exitthe second time.
You know, it's a good it's a good feeling
to know that the buyer trustedyou enough to come back to you.
Yeah, that's a great point.
(21:35):
I'm thinking of,
a complimentour team got from a, publicly traded
foreign companythis past year in a transaction.
We did, and we loved the investmentbankers on the other side.
They were great people, and I thinkthey did a great job with their client.
But, the we got thethe comment afterwards that, you know,
(21:57):
we could not have gotten this deal donewithout touchstone, that, you know,
your fairness, your diligence throughout,you know, understand taking the time
to understand all sides of the issueand then try to help diagram a solution.
You know, was really unparalleled.
And we look forward to hiring youto do a deal.
(22:18):
That's fabulous.
I don't want to take away from myour rights, by the way.
At this other investment bank,you did a great job.
But I think, you know, when the other sideis complimenting you on
what a good jobyou did to manage a difficult deal.
And, you know,
some of these are almost like giving birthto these deals is really hard.
(22:38):
Yeah.
Some of them a little bit, you know,some of them go relatively easily,
but some of them are.
I'm not sure I think any of them like,I don't maybe,
maybe they all have their ownidiosyncrasies.
They definitely do.
And but there are patterns. Yes.
Personality type.
There are patterns in termsof how a deal's going to go.
(23:00):
Different sectors have Jim Stylesas to how the deal may be constructed or.
Right.
And I think that's one of the advantageshere.
If you're a business owner,maybe you've had 1 or 2 other exits,
but what you're an expert onis running your business.
What shirt on is selling it, right.
(23:20):
That's our business 100% or 500 times.
We've seen all the movies before.
We know how they all that.
Yeah.
And honestly,if it's something we haven't seen before,
intellectuallyit's like we will figure it out.
But surprise and say,can I do it this way?
Yes, yes I can.
So you are kind of king of that.
(23:43):
You will sell a business that
can't be sold.
I am the patron saint of businessesthat are difficult to sell.
Yeah.
What keeps you goingto get to that point?
Like, you keep going past the point thatmost of us would have stopped the check.
(24:05):
Makes all this moneyafter every rational human would give up.
Yes, yes.
Okay.
So getting back,I think it sort of gets into personality
types.
Somebody that chooses to do trading
without a parachute, right, with no salaryand take a job and like, risk their job
every single day isprobably somebody who a has confidence,
(24:29):
maybe too much in common capabilities,but also has,
an intellectual curiosity.
And likes to do hard things.
I think there's some of that for me.
There's also an element of service, youknow, without getting into my background,
you know, I'm one of those peoplethat wasn't supposed to live this long.
(24:52):
And you know, when you do that,you sort of have to figure out
why are you still here?And what are you here to do?
And one of the waysthat I've come to terms with that is that,
you know, I'm here to servejust like you're here to.
And one of the big ways that I serve inlife is through the medium of finance.
Right.
It's the mediumthat allows me to serve people.
(25:13):
And so I'm not going to say it's like probono work.
No certainly.
But that's not the goal though.
But you know when we do work, you know,there are times that we take on
businesses that it might be easier to say,you know,
I don't thinkthat we're the right fit for you there.
You know,you can't take on only impossible
(25:35):
or mostly impossible right, to sell.
But I think there is a, component of thatthat is service oriented
because there's only so much timethat we have.
Right.
So I think there is some of that.
But also I think
when somebody tells you, like,we had a client
this past year who had, their businessburned down, right?
(26:00):
And we sold them in four weeks becausewe had to because they they needed it.
We've been at market for themhad been a really long transaction.
Couple different buyershadn't worked out and they
he said he said, I feel sorry for me.
And of course we did too.
But I feel sorry for youbecause you and Joe worked so hard on this
(26:22):
and it's not going to close.
And I said, yes, it is.
And we had a deal done
in four weeksnow, obviously wasn't at the right price,
but we had a dealand an exit for a gentleman who was 70,
78 years old and and neededto exit his business, it was time.
So I mean,
what could be more satisfying than thatwhen they tell you it couldn't be done
(26:46):
and you get it done for them,that that that's a blessing in life.
It's always great when they come back
and you find out thatthey are actually happy with it as well.
You know, that's that'skind of the warm, fuzzy feeling.
But I mean, you look atwe spent a lot of time typing emails,
(27:06):
looking at spreadsheets, building sims,
going through buyer lists,which is a huge yes for us.
But to actually, the human side is not to be lost.
No. Definitely not. Definitely not.
I think it's kind of a key areathat touchstone brings to, to our clients.
So in a wrap up conclusion,
(27:27):
we, we do this every day.
Let's sayyou weren't going to do this every day.
And you weren't going to go back to trading because you didn't get any younger.
So so what career?
What would be your career path?
Well, I have three screenplaysthat I want to write.
Okay.
Based on three peoplethat I've met in my life.
(27:50):
And, I'm totally convinced thatat least two of them are Oscar winners.
So I do want to do that.
If I had never livedthe life that I lived,
the alternative lifethat I think I would have lived.
Now you see it, you know, because nowwe have phones and smartphones and.
Right, you know, video logs and stuff.
(28:11):
But I would have wantedto travel the world
and be like a writerfor National Geographic.
I'm a really good writer.
Okay.
And I would like a travel writer,a travel writer.
But really what I would have likedto use that to springboard on.
And you can do it now, you couldn't reallydo it back then is to go around
and kind of what you seepeople like Anthony Bourdain
(28:33):
or people like that doingwhere they go out and meet with people
and they're they're in a countryand they're doing something,
but they're really understandingpeople's lives.
I would like to write about people'slives, meet interesting people
around the world and write an interviewthem and write about their lives.
Excellent.
Well, I think I just helpedyou find your retirement plan.
(28:55):
Well, don't wait too long.
Oh, excellent.
Well,thank you very much for coming today.
I hope that that our owners enjoyedgetting to know you and, Me too.
Yeah. Thank you very much.
All right. Thanks.
Meet. Him.
(29:15):
Maybe it.
Means we.
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