Ep. 38: Brian Adams

In this episode, I chat with Brian Adams, a mergers and acquisitions attorney based in Nashville. We explore his college journey and his experience being drafted by the San Diego Padres. We then bring the story full circle, discussing his return to college, his path to law school, and ultimately, how he established his career and roots in Nashville.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Encado Podcast.
I've got a guy here today that if you looked
him up online without putting anything else about it, man,
there'd be about, I don't know, five hundred thousand of
these guys and his TH's Brian Adams. And Brian Adams
works at Paulsonelli Law firm, and we met through doing
an M and a transaction just kind of I have

(00:41):
kept up with each other, so I appreciate you coming on, Brian, absolutely,
thanks for having so we Yeah, we did a transaction
together and got to see kind of your your acumen
around finance, which I thought was really interesting and until
I did somewhat of a deep bay because there's not
a tone on you out there, I was like, how
does this guy usually? When I'm in it many transactions,
I'm leaning the charts the whole way, there's no feedback,

(01:04):
there's no let's tie these documents to what you're doing.
And I remember on this specific transaction, you, whether you
use somebody else in house, you still understood what was
going on. There was this spreadsheet or not spreadsheet, the
slide of how this thing was gonna go, how this
thing was gonna get restructured, and then we did this
M and A deal together and I was like, okay,

(01:25):
and it was one such a heavy lift. So where
did where did where did that? We're gonna start here
and then we're gonna go all the way back, But
where did where did that part of you come from?
Of this kind of dynamic guy where you can kind
of you're over here on the law, but you're over
here in finance as well, and you're kind of mixing
the two together.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
No, I appreciate it, and that transaction was a lot
of fun. Like why I can say about you, it's
it's where that we have somebody that's on the outside
side of the table that can help us on the
financial side to make sure the documents makes sense. So
grateful for that. But now I grew up. Athletics was
kind of king for me and was fortunate to get

(02:05):
syncd up with the team with an individual that sold
his business and one of his grandson's.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Play competitive baseball. And the individual was fairly.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Wealthy, and so we had twenty three different uniforms, flew
kids in, had a house on site. It was a neat,
neat deal, but through that he was kind of a
mentor to a lot of us, and he said, if
you can be near the money, can be near the strategy.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
And so.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
From my standpoint, you know, when I got down with
Ball in twenty fourteen, you know, it was kind of
trying to think through how could I leverage my undergraduate
background and get into a role where could be involved
in the strategy. And so Kentucky was.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Great for me, probably for a lot of reasons, but.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Didn't come out immediately with jobs just jumping off the page.
And so had my cousin. She had graduated from law
school very recently and her husband was m and A
at King and Spalding and.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Got to talking with them. I thought this was a
good route for me to get to the table. So
that was the pathway to the all gotcha understood? So
where did you grow up? Because I don't are you.
I don't think you're quote unquote local guy. But where'd
you grow now?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
But it's by now these standers in Nashville. I'm getting
closed for seven years.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Now up north Atlanta, Okay, north of Atlanta. And the
travel Ball thing is crazy because I did the same thing.
We actually had not many people know who this guy is,
but his name is Casey Awood. He was a NASCAR
driver and he was from He was from Madison, Tennessee.
And we were on a travel team that was quote
unquote based same thing, all uniforms. We didn't fly anywhere,

(03:41):
but like traveled everywhere on his dime, stayed in all
kinds of hotels and stuff. So I remember the dean
it was. And if we didn't if we didn't at
least get to the championship game of every tournament we
were in, including like either it was Little League or
pony League or whatever whatever we can play, and it
was not good. We felt like failures.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, we felt like failures had to compete at a
very young age.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
That's right, That's right, that's right. And it's it's funny
that you know, the just the where all that's still
still at and it's gotten even bigger since I was
in play. But anyways, I just wanted to step back that. So, Atlanta,
you decided to go to Kentucky where you recruited for
football and baseball? Did you walk on? How did how

(04:27):
did you get to Kentucky? Yeah? Great question.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
So we ran a wing t offense in high school
and so I ran the ball a lot, and so
I got recruited for a number of different positions through college.
Kentucky was gracious enough to be the first school to
offer me a scholarship to play football, and so that
was really important to me, kind of be the first mover.
And so at the time they were showing some some promise.

(04:53):
After the two thousand and seventh season and thousand and
eight and so came up there and then you know,
real hate.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Football was my focus.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
And without getting in too much detail, my buddies had
convinced me to come back out and finish my senior
year in baseball. I had separated my shoulder of that
fall and really was trying to just focus on getting
ready for college and ended up joining the baseball team
back like midway through the season. We went to state championship,
an incredibly talented team. I hit a nine hole, rolled

(05:22):
the ball over the third base every time. It was
really run and funny enough, the Kinsey Royal scout was
close with the Kentucky baseball coach. It called him up,
and I think that's what put me on.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Kentucky Baseball's radar.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
And so then they reached out that summer and asked
I how people want to do both, and it seemed
like a pretty cool opportunity, so I walked on in baseball.
It was in scholarship football.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Nice all right, And so did you do both all
the way through? Eventually you had this split in the
road where baseball became probably the thing you didn't think
was going to be the thing, but it became the thing.
When did that happen?

Speaker 2 (05:56):
So I did do them all way through. My first year,
I had a blood cloth that it kind of kept
me out for the entire fall, so I didn't play
football in the fall, so kind of medical richer type deal.
But then that spring. The way it worked my freshman
year was, you know, I played baseball before spring football started,

(06:19):
and then in fact, when spring football started, I was
full time football, no baseball, and then rejoined the team.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
The following year I did both. So it worked out
of Kentucky was nice.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
We had football practice in the morning, and so you
get to the facility about five thirty for treatment and
you'd be done by eleven thirty twelve, catch a midday class,
come back to baseball practice round two or three, and
so that was kind of how it would pace out.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, and then when did you decide that baseball, Well,
I guess it was at what at what point was
it like, all right, we're probably baseball is where it's
going to be. When did you start getting kind of
attention from scouts and things of that nature.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, So I had been drafted in high school and
that was before the days of the you know, kind
of the capped rounds, and so you could get drafted
really late and get paid a lot more money. Right,
I kind of got to the point where football was
not trained in the right direction. We kind of had
some some turmoil internally and just struggled to get off

(07:19):
the ground, some injuries, and the guys were working hard,
trying hard, but just it just wasn't going in the
right direction.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
And so baseball is kind of the opposite.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
In twenty twelve, my jennior year, we started the year
off twenty three wins. That's number one in the country. Unfortunately,
fell short late in the year from a lot of
the goals we wanted to hit. But at that point
kind of knew that I was going to be a
top ten round guy. Just just where that was that
going to be? And he kind of felt like this
was a shot for me to pivot, and so I
left after my junior year to go to the Potters organization,

(07:50):
and so I did that for a few years.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
It's a good ride. So I always like to talk
about that because we've had several professional quote unquote a
couple of coffee guys instead stuff like that. And one
of the guys we talked to, he he went around
the minors for like ten years, got up to the
Nationals twice, but then just he's like, I just don't
want to get a regular job. We had another guy

(08:13):
that was highly drafted, uh, and then his ended up
being he was having a great, you know, high a season,
but there was another guy lower draft pick that they
paid more money and they had to pick one of them.
So see you later. But I as good as some
people don't like talk about it. Some people are okay

(08:33):
with it. But what was that experience like getting drafted
and then going through the system of because everybody's got
a different perspective on that whole that whole thing. Yeah,
I was really fortunate.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
You know, Pat Murphy was my manager my first year
and was just a phenomenal leader. He's had a lot
of success obviously with the Brewers organization of late and
I still text with him from time and and get
his insight on what he thinks about particular things that
may be coming up. But we were we were based
out of Eugene, Oregon, and so University of Oregons baseball

(09:09):
teams are kind of home field, and we were set
up at a western downtown Eugene, and so it was
a pretty nice setup. I can tell you about my
first minor league bus trip if you want, kind of
a little.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Bit less little, you know, picture, but.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
We uh and the second year I was in Fort Win, Indiana,
and so another great experience, a little bit more kind
of probably the typical minor week experiences you'll hear about.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
I just struggled to get it out. Would have some
highes and loves.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Throughout the year, but overall, you know, great staff, teammates,
a lot of which have gone on to make it
to the to the next level, and something that you
thought would that never did. And so it's it's funny
how it all shakes out. For me, it was a
great experience, but I knew after year three that it
was going to be, you know, if I was going

(09:56):
to make it. I was one of those ten year
guys that you alluded to, and it just wasn't interested
in getting trapped, and so I decided to make a pivot.
And I was getting married to my wife, and so
you know that was that was the play gotcha.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
So you come out of the UK with the finance
degrade and you got all the Mega Kuma Lotties and
all that stuff, so we know you're smart. What made
you pick finance inside of in college? It was at
your first? Was that your first? Like me, it was like, okay,
I was the management major in the accounting office recruit
to me and I'm like, okay, they kind of told

(10:31):
me what was coming with your recession. So I'm like
they're right. I was glad I did it. But did
you start out as a finance guy as a numbers
guy or did you kind of morph into that I did?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
And as I alluded to that that you my sophomore year,
which really was kind of my junior year of college.
If I think about it, sometimes from athletics of where
I was, but from I didn't go to a lot
of class, right, I mean, if you think about my
schedule for college baseball, you travel leave on thirdday, come

(11:00):
back Sunday, and you got a game Wednesday, so you know,
there wasn't a lot of time to go to class, right,
I catch a mid afternoon you know, an online class or.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
A night class. Right, that was kind of what was
would work. And so I did flip.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
I started finance and I went to management the counting
three hundred with my tail. You know, when you miss
a lot of that class and then you try to
catch up on it just doesn't work. And so but
when I came back to school that would have been
the fall of fourteen finished and spring at fifteen, I
flipped back to finance because I knew that was going
to be the best to help me understand.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
And go to the kind of the next level what
I want to do work wise, I understood, So you
came back. That makes sense. So you you left your
junior year, went took some time to go play baseball,
and then you came back. You got it because I
always wonder because I played like a sniff in college.
A lot of back injuries, and it wasn't very good
at a little NAIs, little Culture Vecca which is now

(12:01):
I think Division two. But there was like it was
like impossible to be an accounting finance major play baseball,
like they told us that. The professors would tell us that,
they're like, there, you can't come to class. You gotta
come to class. You're not gonna be able to pick
this stuff up. It's a different language. So I was
interested on how you pulled that off. But it makes sense. Yeah, yeah,
I would come back.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
I tried my mom all growing up, which is, you know,
hammered academics and and grateful for that, but you know,
never made a C. In college. I did make a
D and the D was accounting three hundred. They whipped
my anyway, it was one of those scenarios where I
was only taking twelve hours. I wanted to drop because

(12:41):
I was like, there's no way, but I couldn't because
I had to run up.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
So I was like I was just.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Gonna rock and a hard place. I was like, I
was just passed.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, so yeah, no, I understand. And then you come
back to your finance degree, and then what's what's it
like coming out of school? What are your what are
your thoughts? What are you trying to do?

Speaker 2 (13:00):
What?

Speaker 1 (13:00):
What? What was that experience like? Because generally you don't
see guys come back that quickly from when they're playing
sports like I my wife has a cousin, you know,
saying it's like I will get back to it, and
then some stuff happens, you know, all that stuff. But
I think you were married by then, right when you're
finishing up.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, my poor wife, she's phenomenal. But yeah, we got
married in the fall of fourteen, and I moved to Lexington, Kentucky.
We had day long distance, and so she moved there
and I think she saw her first, you know, real snow.
You know that that weekend she had been invavable, so
she had seen it. But as far as like living
in a day in and day out, you know, it

(13:42):
was an eye open experience for both of us as
newly weds. But yeah, I just knew that ultimately I
needed to pivot. I needed to pivot quickly. And from
my perspectives, we talked at the outset. I really wanted
to be involved with strategy and help people accomplish their goals.
And you know, from my standpoint, it spent some time
in athletics. You know, you see a lot of guys

(14:05):
stay in it. I had really heavily weighed being an
athletic director and Mitch Barnhart was a phenomenal ad for
Kentucky and which was gracious enough to spend some time
and talk about his career and what kind of he
thought was the intangibles that needed to lead those types
of organizations for me and where we were at that time.

(14:26):
You know, I knew for me to go that route,
I was gonna have to jump around a lot, you know,
because it's it's based on where the availability is. And
so knowing that that was going to be challenging for Charlie,
decided to go to more of a stable role, which
was law school Tennessee, and then you know, to wait
to a law firm where I knew I could kind

(14:48):
of be in one place for a while, and I
felt like that gave me enough wiggle room at down
the road. It didn't plan out the way I wanted
it to that I could go back to being an
athletic director, because I'd seen some people make that jump well,
particularly from m a attorney to a d and so
from my perspective, it was a good kind of fail
safe type plan to start to speak. Obviously a lot

(15:10):
of work, a lot of things had to fall into place,
but it's it's been a good ride.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Now, there was this interesting thing I read about you
about the you were involved with. You had a unique
experience at Kentucky regarding facility upgrades and some stuff like that. Yeah,
let's talk about that, because again, there's all these pieces.
Everybody on the outset's like, all right, he's an in
and a attorney. But there's all these little pieces that
like the guy you were talking about that at the

(15:36):
beginning with the travel baseball, like, all these little pieces
make you who you are and they all just come together.
So let's talk about that experience. Whether it was dull
or not, I think it's pretty cool that, you know,
I don't know it just it seems like you're you're
you're beyond your years to be involved some of the
stuff you were involved in to be able to come
back to college to finish up this facility's upgrade talking
to the A D whatever, YEA, what was that? What

(15:59):
was How'd you get involved in that?

Speaker 2 (16:01):
No? As as I mentioned, I mean, there was so
many people at Kentucky that you know, came into my
life and played it, you know, critical role in each
season of my development. And you know, Sandy Bell, I'd
come back to campus and really was just saying hello
to them and you know, just letting Nills.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Back on campus.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
And they offered to pay for my school and I
already had the padres were paying for it, and so
they were like it worked out where San Diego paid
for it and then Kentucky just reimbursed me. I could
have that order wrong. It could have been the other
way around. It was whatever was was feasible. But saying
and talking with Andy, He's like, well you should go
work in fundraising, you know. And Candace who led that

(16:41):
group was phenomenal and Elizabeth Briggs and you know, so
they put me in the suites and so I get
into the suites and you know, it's a whole different experience, right,
I mean, you're like doing a game day experience, and
so you're getting up there on you know, Friday and
get everything ready and then you're working the games on Saturdays.
And so through that learned a lot about you know,

(17:02):
our donors and and what they were passionate about and
what they needed versus the game, but also why they
invested so much into into the university and whether that
was football or basketball. That was really neat And then
you could see on the backside of like how those
investments really kind of shaped the capitol projects that we
had going on and the messaging they went around that.

(17:23):
And so you mentioned the facility upgrades. I mean, we
reseeded Comonwell Stadium, and you that was a tough experience
because I mean, Kentucky fans it hadn't seen a lot
of winning in a long time, and so we were
taking I mean, seats were just gone, right. It's not
as if they were like and so you had to
recede it. There wasn't a you know, an option, so

(17:44):
you receed it based on points. Well, a big driver
in your points is the dollars you give to university.
There's other ways to get points, right if you got
tickets to more ancillary sports, right, But at the end
of the.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Day, the quickest way to go up the ladder is
just to give. And I'm telling you, those were some
tough phone calls.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Some people were thrilled and excited because they were getting
great seats, and other people, you know, they have been
in those seats for years, and you know, usually it
was a great lesson in how to because I worked
the phones up front and so I was the first
line of defense, right, and so you know they would
call and you know, you would be able to talk
to them and hear them out.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
And then of course, you.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Know sometimes people that just wouldn't they were still hot.
And so then I would say, well, hey, I was
part of those bad teams. I'm so thankful for the opportunity.
And you know, nine times out of that ten that
would get somebody to kind of like, okay, let me
get you right.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
But then one of teham was like, oh, you were
part of those teams, let me tell you.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
So it was phenomenal experience because he just learned, you know,
how to engage with people who you know, we're going
through a tough situation unless the caller dees right. I mean,
it's to get to a football game, but you know,
as you know, for a college athletics it's a big deal,
and so trying to find a way to get them
to make them hold right, and you know, we had

(19:00):
a whole seating grid, and you know, you were able
to say, well, what do you like in the game,
and I've got these pair up here, these four over here,
and so it was a lot of fun. Again, just
the interactions with the fan base to see how kind
of the sausage was made, so to speak, and the
opportunities within athletics was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
So that that was where I always wonder too. It's fascinating.
We don't have to go into it, but just teams
that aren't very good at one sport, like Kentucky's probably
a lot easier. It's a whole different well, it's a
whole different set of situations. But the football side to
you know, do all the stuff, all the upgrades, even Vanderbilt,
all the upgrades they're doing, And you're just like, why

(19:41):
do people care this much about a bad football team?
But they do, they do, and it's like a community thing.
It's like all this stuff. So I've watched, as you know,
living here, living right down the road for Vader, but
watching it go up you and watching the pain and toil.
But then then being in Alabama, You're like, this matters
a lot to people, It goes back generations, like it's

(20:01):
all it's deep.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
No, it is very dewhere. I mean, I just you know,
I'm probably biased because I went to the UK and
I'll follow us closely now, but you know, Mitch is
just and everybody. A lot of people other than Mitch
set some pretty bullish goals for the university from an
athletic saandpoint, and you know, it's been fun to kind
of watch those play out. I mean, Markstrops done a

(20:23):
phenomenal job with that organization. Sure they had a really
bad year last year and didn't do what they wanted
to do, but you look at the last five to
seven years and where they're at, like, that's what made
me want to go there in two thousand and eight
and nine, That's what you know, their Scruts was doing right,
It was kind of building something and so but those
investments take time to play out, and so you know,

(20:44):
being able to to stay the course, to weather the storm.
Understand that emotions are high, especially in college athletics, but
that speaks a lot to life, right Natrance.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Actually, there's a lot of noise.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
Going on, and if you listen all that noise, you'll
never get it done. But if you're able to kind of,
you know, lay out your goals and why you're accomplishing,
you know what you're trying to accomplish, then you put
a team.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Around you, it's going to make it happen. Are so you,
you're done with you get your finance degree, and then
you decide what made you decide to go into.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Wall Yeah, so really it was, you know, cold it is.
I applied to Caterpillar work here and they said thanks,
no thanks. You know, it was a really nice rejection letter.
You know, I had looked at Boston consulting group. You know, listen,
I played two sports of college as my only baseball player,
had good grades, and uh really felt like I could,

(21:39):
you know, if I got in the room, I could.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Convince somebody to give me a shot.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
And you know, it was was humbled pretty quickly to
realize that wasn't as easy as I thought it was
going to be. And so the law was just a
way to bolster the resume, to give me the door.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
You know.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
It's really more of a pathway than anything.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
And so you go to arrival, you go to ut
and we're welcome. When you were you were in Knoxville, Yeah, okay,
right in the right in the middle of it, right
in the middle of it. How was that experience going there,
living on campus, completely different fan base, different set of
people everything. What was that experience like switching from this
to this and and oh, by the way, we're here

(22:18):
to you know, get a law degree.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
No, it was all listen, there's really nothing, in my
opinion like the SEC and you know, passionate fan base,
especially Tennessee, and they had had some tough years. I
had the benefit of playing for T Martin, who I've
had a lot of success in ut and so I
knew what I was getting into a little bit. My wife,
I don't think, did you know, she's a diehard Razor

(22:40):
back and uh was I think welcome to to Knoxville
a little bit more abruptly than she would have liked.
But that's saying you know, it was a lot of fun.
You know, a lot of my classmates were huge Walls fans,
and and so mixing up with them a little bit
is always good.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
So we we did pick for a while.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
We were like, you know, which is gonna sound crazy
For Kentucky guy, I was like, you know, I am
I like Rick Barnes. I think I can. I think
I can cheer for them, you know, And so we
were you know, Charlie has actually has a Tennessee Volunteers
basketball jersey.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
She would kill me for knowing that I'm saying this publicly.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
And she was a big fan of them for a while,
and then the Tennessee noise just got too loud and
they were talking trash about her, you know, sacred razorbacks.
And so now that that Jersey doesn't come out of
class anymore. But it's good, it's good understood. And then
prospects coming out of law school, what what was that?
What was that search like figuring it out?

Speaker 1 (23:34):
You you're Atlanta to Lexington, to Eugene, Oregon, back Fort Wayne,
back to Lexington. Now we're in you're in like the
you know, oh yeah, I gotta cover yeah, and now
we're in Knoxville, and you can go anywhere at this
point generally, you know, law school will take you anywhere, internships,
something like that. What what was that experience like trying

(23:55):
to figure out where you were going to go? Internships? What?
What what was that experience like coming out law school? Yeah,
so we knew.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
You know, again, the benefit of talking with my cousin
is that, you know, if you're a top twenty five
law school, you really can shoot wherever you want. And
it's not to say that you can't somewhere else, but it's.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
A little bit harder.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
And so Tennessee placed really well in the state, and
it was affordable. They placed really well in state, particularly
in Nashville, which at the time was a halfway point
between my parents and hers, you know, small town girl
who really had no interest in leving in Atlanta. And
so from my perfective Nashville is the best of both worlds,

(24:36):
and that we could be kind of what I call
like a mid market city that had some opportunity for
me to do what I wanted to do and to
provide for our family and trying take that burden off
of her which she had been carrying for a while,
to also not being too big where she felt like
it was overwhelming, and so we knew we actually selected
Tennessee based on the fact that it did well in Nashville,

(24:57):
and so that was kind.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Of what drove that. It's played out really nicely. Yeah,
the Nashville has become a big SEC melting pot, which
I kind of I kind of like that. Yeah, my
wife went to Georgia and a lot you know, we're
we're we grew up here, but you know, I'm this
rinking Notre Dame fan. So but I'm like, you made
the comb out SEC earlier and I'm like, yeah, there's

(25:19):
sec is just a different Yeah, no, it's I mean,
it's it just runs, it just runs everything.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
It was a lot of fun and that's been a
phenomenal experience. And so to be here and to see
the growth of the city has been fantastic, you know,
both professionally and personally.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, it's wild, it is. It is a different place.
We moved down here in the nineties and it was
just yeah, it's like unrecognizable. But you you come out
of law school, you and what was the recruiting process
like to to get to to where you're at as
far as you know generally And I don't know. I

(25:54):
say generally, I make generalizations sometimes I have no clue
about so let me just say I have no clue
about this. So it's all good. But literally, when I
talked to people in the law space, they're like, all right,
well I did my internship here and I flew out
here to do this. Yeah. Yeah, what was that process
like or did you just find your spot and that's
where you've been? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (26:12):
No, So it was a little bit of a you know,
I did to the law school generally, right is on
campus interviews heavily based on your first year grades, particularly
your first semester. I was fortunate to do both, to
do well in both of those semesters. But effactly, you know,
you'll have law firms will come on campus do interviews

(26:33):
for sometimes your first summer, but most is your second summer.
And that's not the end all be all. There are
other opportunities to get in and a lot of people
that are my friends have done well outside of this route.
But that's kind of the normative approach. And so I
had been fortunate to work at a smaller firm, Cremer
Racing in Knoxville. They had a business group primarily more

(26:57):
so like on the employment side, they had some insurance
to fence work. But then it kind of arisingly kind
of what I called general like real estate, small business
type advising work and great firm, great people, probably thirty
five or so attorneys. I just really liked that feel.
They were really close with their staff, they had great clients,
and they.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Were kind of well respected in the community.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Again, though, knowing we wanted to kind of get to Nashville,
was you know, a poll that sent me a different direction,
And so we were fortune to work with a firm
frost Grown, Todd here in town and Frosted.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
It was really intentional about the recruiting.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
They kind of engaged to you.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Know, it's like a consulting firm to kind of try.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
To remove some of the things that we all see sometimes, right,
which like I really like that person, you know, they
seem like they'd be a good fit.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Well what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Right, Like drilled down a wire victory, right, and ask
questions that go to that, and they really took approach.
They also unline most firms are a full ten week
summer as opposed to splitting it, which you know has
its benefits and drawbacks. But for me, I liked because
it was able to kind of give you a more
fullsome picture. Otherwise, in six weeks, right, your first week's orientation,

(28:08):
your last week, you're shutting it down, so you really
only got four weeks at work, whereas.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Tany can really kind of see more about what's going on.
And so I worked for them. It was a great firm.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
They're really strong in Kentucky and which with my background
and being athletics, like that made a lot of sense.
But I kind of got the sense that I was
eventually going to have to go back to Lexington or
to be successful within their framework. And that's not to
say that they haven't done well in Nashville, it's just
that was where the kind of their starer was. And
so I had linked up on an individual named Colin

(28:39):
Holliday who was at another firm at the time. He
liked me, had a background in athletics. He had been
a player and a coach at Lipscomb. And we just
had lunch and I was just telling him. I was like, hey,
exact told us you a great firm, great people, attention
to detail what they're trying to do. I was like,
but I feel like for me to really be successful

(29:01):
and eventually you make a move, you like what you
thought about us and us was personality. And so I
interviewed there kind of the last week in my internship
with Frost and and uh, you know, just took a
shot on personellity. At the time, I was the seventh
attorney that got hired back in twenty eighteen. We're now

(29:22):
over forty attorneys over one thousand across the platform, and
it's been a phenomenal move for me, and it's been
a whole lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah, and and and I don't know again my my
My generalities are generalities. But when you got the pulsonality
and then you kind of came on the map. There's yes,
there's other there's other attorneys there. But for what you
do in the space, you do it, and you've you've

(29:52):
mixed networking into it. Yeah. So so for instance, I
had never heard of that firm until I'm at you,
and then I meet you, and then it's like, oh
now I'm hearing every you know, it's like when you
see some some car on the red car and then
you're like, I see every red car. It's like everywhere
I looked. You know, you you had these three firms

(30:13):
that everybody would just here's here's three firms, here's three
tag firms. And then all of a sudden it was
well Brian Adams personality, Brian Adams polstellity. I'm like, uh, well,
who's you know? And then obviously we linked up. But
you you you kind of wedge your way into that space.
And then obviously you've done really really well in some
of these networking spaces. So what was it about the networking?

(30:35):
And it seems like you're pretty intentional about what you're
doing on the networking side. Uh, what what was that about?
What made you decide to get in the specific things
you're in, because that is I think that's been a
huge way for people to know who you are and personality.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Actually, no, absolutely, and listen, Nashville. What's really neat about
this town? It is incredibly collaborative. There's a lot of smart,
hardworking individuals that work here and that want to help.
And so from my standpoint, I just tried to rely
on that heavily, right. And so a lot of people
that have been on your podcast are people that I

(31:11):
know and that I've had the benefit of getting to meet,
both personally and professionally, right, And so from my perspective,
You're right, I am very intentional about it. I kind
of look at it and you know, our firm does
a lot of healthcare of an A and so over time,
I've just had the benefit of the twenty twenty through
twenty twenty two sprint of just doing a lot more

(31:33):
deals than.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Most people have.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Right, I've worked a lot more hours and I was
required to do with the idea. You know, you kind
of hear that ten thousand hour rule was that Frost
are like, well, if you can work work two thousand
hours a year as opposed to you know, eighteen hundred,
and now, all of a sudden, like by the time
you get to your fifth year, you're almost gonna you're
gonna be a whole year ahead, right, And so I
really kind of you know, took that and me being
who I am, trying to do more than that, and

(31:57):
I was fortunate where the market was enough for around
and so I focus heavily on the health carera NA
leaders Healthcare has been a great organization for me, which
is kind of a subset of National health Care Counsel.
And then with that, right, you're able to say, Okay,
you know, as a thirty four year old, it's going
to be challenging for me to go out and land
a healthcare powerate equity fund because those individuals are going

(32:18):
to have deeper relationships with people that are more senior
than me. And so how can I leverage my skill
set from the healthcare and aside to go into some
of these were non regulated.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Spaces and.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know, with a little bit of Southern charm, get
that work right. And what's been fun about Nashville is
you're kind of starting to see a little bit of
an evolution where you have these individuals that have really
great success with their businesses say hey, we're doing really
well in this space, but let's use this other vertical
right next to it that we think we can do.
So they kind of build up this a little bit

(32:53):
with family office more, right, and they need a lot
of corporate support, a lot of corporate structuring that equity raises,
M and A transactions, and somebody that can be practical,
right and understand that, Okay, a five million dollar deal
for you know, a privately held business looks a lot
different than fifty million dollars home mouth and hospital transaction, right,

(33:18):
but can still have the same level of thought.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
And attention to detail and get it done.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
And so that's what I've done, and so the ways
I attack it outside of healthcare, ACG has been great
for me.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
It's a little bit of a older base.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
We've had a lot of growth with ACG and so
that membership basis kind of spread out. But the Roaring
twenty event is fantastic. You know, it's got a really
good cross section of people and that a lot of
people there, So I'm more targeted with an ACG and Okay,
this event does really well for me or twelve for
my calendar, and I'm going to go attack that as
opposed to trying to.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Do it all right, then you've done a lot with XPX.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, so it's again just just targeting these different pieces.
I wanted to because this is this is the part
that like I was jones in to talk about is
M and A. I love talking about M and A
because a lot of people only know M and A
from what they see on TV or what they hear
about from so and so or whatever. But I yeah,

(34:13):
I just just wanted to chat it up on M
and A because I'm like, all right, I'm gonna I'm
a CPA on the M and A side, you're an
attorney on the MA side. I'm like, what better time
to sit here and talk about so as you have
you and some of this is off off topic of
you specifically, but just your in depth knowledge of what's
going on. As as we were kind of moving forward,

(34:35):
we had this M and A just burst like you're
talking about everything's going on, that's that's not expensive. Let's
just every deal just seems to work. You can make
it work with at BAX then we had inflation and
all this other stuff, and I don't know what that
did to you, but it definitely Luckily, I think what

(34:56):
you're talking about about doing the hours and all that stuff,
you do enough that there comes a point in time
where there's a moment if you reflect well enough, where
you're like, gosh, I'm glad I put all that work
in because now it's now. Now it's a little more difficult.
Maybe no hard, but it's a little bit more difficult.
So as that as that has happened, and I haven't
seen really any inflation my entire career, because I came

(35:18):
out in nine and it was like, ooh, massive recession.
And then by the time all that got cleared out,
here we're walking into eighteen nineteen in the pandemic, you know,
and it's just like and then all and then all
of a sudden, everything costs more. Now you're seeing people
that make six figures struggling with inflation. You're seeing business
owners that you know, had three or four year plans

(35:40):
and those plans are coming up now and here they're
asking us how do we get over the top. So anyways,
just a generality, what have you kind of seen as
as the market has changed and things are things, there's
a lot of noise out there. So what I've noticed
is that besides the debt changing, a lot of of
the inside stuff that I do is pretty much stay

(36:02):
the same. But I don't know if that's for everybody.
The status quo is the status quo. People that want
to sell are figuring out ways to do it, and
then people that want to buy or figuring out ways
to do it. But what I've seen is there's a
bigger from my exposure, there's a lot more buyers out
there than I've seen before, paying people to find them
businesses to buy. And I've only seen it on the

(36:24):
sell side where there was a commission piece. Now I'm
seeing it on the buy side. So anyways, any type
of trends you can share with the audience about because
there are several business owners that are in that space
of like should I sell, should whatever? And they just
want to understand kind of the guts of him and
a little bit better.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah, there's lots of unpack there. So you've hit a
lot of the major trends.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Right.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
We were seeing a lot of activity from twenty to
twenty twenty two. The cost of capital was low. You know,
there was an incredible desire to close deals and close
them quickly, and so you had you know, competitive processes
where people an't even going to rink through exclusivity. They
felt like if they didn't close and close on time,
they were going to lose it to somebody else.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
And so with that, naturally.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
There was less you know, ability or maybe even appetite
to do due diligence. I think you fast forward. You know,
cost of capital was one thing, right, it became more expensive,
But I also think that a lot of the transition,
you know, service arrangements and things that we had built
in on the legal side to kind of band aid,
some of those quick processes had burned off, and CFOs

(37:27):
were getting a lot of pressure to say, hey, we
were expecting X and it's not hitting that. And so
it kind of changed where yes, people pointed the cost
of capital, but it also became how does how are
we going to integrate this business and what are the
roadblocks for us being able to do that? And so
you see a lot more thoughtfulness around due diligence and

(37:47):
integration planning, which leads to a longer m and a process. Right,
I think sixty to ninety days is more normative now
we were at.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Fifteen to thirty.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
And so from my person effective, you're seeing that there's
there's been industries, more pockets of where you're seeing some activity.
You say, for example, physician practice management, those were really
active deals. You were seeing a lot. We were doing
fifteen to twenty of those a year. When cost of
capital shot up, those kind of came to a screeching
halt unless you were like in Duram. You know, mets

(38:20):
Fosts were incredibly hot. So we're still seeing activity, right,
and there's other examples as well. But that's all that
to say that we've had pockets over the course of
twenty three and twenty four that have still done well.
Going into twenty twenty five, we've been incredibly busy. Are
in both not as much with year end deals, but

(38:41):
a lot of activity. We're Q one. I'm expecting a
lot of closing and so from my perspective right now,
I think it's a great opportunity for you're seeing that
M and A both in the by suicide people come
back to the middle where you are going to run
a sixty in any process, there's going to be some thought.
But honestly, it's in a typical transaction, right if you
look at like a rollover equity situation, if your management

(39:04):
you want somebody give us some thought, because that's your
value on the backside, and you should be asking questions
to hey, tell me about your platform, tell me about
your financials, and do some more reverse due diligence around
that role of investment. Because it's ten to fifteen percent
of the purchase price, which is one way where it is,
and depending on you know, what the ev is, that's

(39:26):
a significant investment. You should look thinking about that, right
as opposed to yeah, well it's just roll over. I'm
going to get you know, second by at the Apple.
Well that's great, but there's you know, it's ten million dollars.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
You probably get some thoughts.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yeah, we are definitely seeing that and so excited about
what is to come. Of course, you've got significant you
know issues. I mean, obviously you're you're pleased to see
some of the the Middle East tensions starting to somewhat
calm down. But you got I mean, Russia, Ukraine, I mean,
there's a lot, I mean, and there's talk people lost more.

(40:00):
Maybe we can talk about these issues My point is
there's like macro issues out there that have just kind
of been looming that don't seem to give much attention,
that could throw a wrench and all that. Where things
stand right now really kind of starting in October of
last year, we really started kind of seeing things really
picked back up.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Understood And are you seeing are you working more inside
the state or are you all over the place now
just kind of wherever it comes up.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, we've been kind of all over the place, and
so in healthcare in particular, I'm more kind of national.
We were fortunate our clients an announcement right after I'm Okaday,
bright Spring signed a purchase agreement to self their community
living business, and so it's with national reach, and so

(40:45):
we're excited to have that transaction go public and be announced.
Obsously working through closing on that. We've had some other
transactions going as well. We have some a client in
the insurance space. They do a lot of medical stop loss,
property and casually kind of more for a niche products
you think builders risk and other things of that nature.

(41:07):
And then you know, we've got a couple of self
side transactions we're excited about kind of HVA CVO down
in Georgia.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
We got a kind of.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
A business services type of arrangement for product were fund
here in Nashville that we're helping to close in the
next few weeks. And so it's a lot going on.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yeah, I understood. And as you're as you're getting deeper
into your career and especially in this M and A space,
it's it's it's it's from from what my experience. Let
me just talk about my experience. It's very hard. Like
we talked about the very beginning, someone that can understand
the numbers, the thought process. I do think there was

(41:51):
this norm of everybody was in the rat race, even me.
It's like, we got to get the deal done, we
got to get diligence done. They want to close in
what ten days? Okay, thanks, ready to go, you know,
And now it's like everything's different. Everything's so I always
say the cream rises to the top. So all the
expertise and all the work that we had put in

(42:12):
over the years, it's now all rising. But the problem
is there's only so much bandwidth for a person, right,
So then there's this sense of like, well there's you
need a team around you and all that stuff. So
how have you as you've become more known, as your
skill set has become greater and more things are streaming

(42:33):
your way, how have you been able to say, well,
I can't do it all anymore.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
No, it's a I'd be lying if I said I'd
figure that out right. I mean you always wanted professional
services for the answer, yes, and so finding me a
way yes. And that may look differently in different transactions.
But from my standpoint, you know, really fortunate to have
a great team around me that's across the country and
you know, being thoughtful about out Okay, who what are

(43:02):
these individual strengths where, what are their personalities?

Speaker 1 (43:07):
And do these match with the client?

Speaker 2 (43:10):
And that is what I've found is the most challenging
is listen, I can find people that can help do
the deal.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
The key is can I find.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Somebody that understands this individual that we're interacting with on
a day to day basis, on the transaction, how they think.
Some people want a memo, some people want an email
with the bullet points, and some people want a phone call.
And attorneys are incredibly risk averse, and so the default

(43:40):
is the memo with a lot of caveats. But as
you know, that's not actionable all the time. Sometimes the
memos need it right to help people understand their risk.
But you've got to equip your clients with, hey, what
am I dealing with? What's the universe? And what are
the different levers I can pull to make a decision.

(44:01):
And so from my standpoint, that's been just hammered in
me from a very young age, both at this firm
and just you know, my dad being sales growing up
like just one actionable type of data, and so we've
focused a lot on that pretty intentionally. But to your point,
it is really challenging because what I found and you've

(44:21):
seen is, you know, you have a lot of success
from your practices you have, and which is a blessing.
It becomes harder to be the quarterback, yes, because now
all of a sudden you're to do it well, you
got to delegate to a team member, and how do
you maintain that touchboard with the client that service that,
because that's why they're they're picking you because you met

(44:44):
with that correct right, And so that that is a
challenge and you can't know everything right. And so I
had a transaction recently where I don't do a lot
of real estate work my firm does. And so I had,
you know, a client that is doing in a real
estate transaction, and I was able to loop in the
colleague that can can dominate that process. That's got to

(45:05):
stay on the way, But i got to be on
the phone call and I've got to communicate that, Hey,
I'm on the call, not building for my time, but
I need to be here to fill in the gaps.
And as you know, right when, I'm not going for
my time, and that means I got to find some
other time to build for my time, you know, not
necessarily with that client, but otherwise your days get longer,

(45:25):
your weekends get a little bit more compressed.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Is how do you manage that at home? And how
do you manage And that's where you kind of go
to the bandwidth point exactly no, And that's that is true.
And then my biggest thing has always been how do
I how do I get the same quality of work
coming up to me to review to send out that
I'm used to doing. Yes, and that is I'm still
dealing with that. I've been doing this full time for

(45:49):
five years now, and I'm just like, how do I
get the And I was telling you kind of what
my business mid I've done everything. I've hired ten people
real quick, and you know, I've gone part time, done
this and that, and you're just like you're just constantly
trying to figure out what is and then you'll get
like three or four months you're like, I figured it out, yes, yes,
and then you'll lose a big client and something happens,

(46:10):
and so but I want to speaking of something happening. Yes,
I wanted to talk about just how how okay you
take the law out of it, the m and a
piece of it, the documentation, all that other stuff, you
take the numbers out of it. At the at the
root of it all, you're dealing with a different a

(46:30):
different person every single time, and you're dealing with two
different people and they're all it's all high tension. And
it really is like when I get on some of
these calls and in so many situations, I'm like, I
literally think all the time, this could be a movie.
This could be a movie. This could be a movie.
Like people watch this, they would watch this unfold and
you know, yes, lawyer's risk adverse and but at the

(46:53):
same time, somebody that's why you you know, people will
call you know, lawyer's bulldogs or even me in some ways,
and they're like, gosh, you're you just always seem like
you're confident and you're just like straight to the point.
I'm like, that's not exactly how I would like to
operate all the time. But this thing calls for it.
It calls me to get uncomfortable, which I think is
good for growth. But in these deals, what have you

(47:16):
found to be the most helpful or the most interesting
about these deals? And there there's nothing, No two deals
are the same, and they're they're always just like you
go home on a Friday night, you have a great
call with both parties, and then you come back Monday
and somebody's talk to their wife, their ex wife, their brother,
their cousin, their business partner, their EO for them, and

(47:38):
it's like a whole different number, whole different set of
circumstances and different caveats. And I'm walking if I don't
get this, And You're just like what what just happened here?
And I'm talking to guys like you on you know,
on the wall side, and I'm like, hey man, we
got that fifty page purchase agreement you as made. Yeah,
apparently that's scrap. I don't know. And then it'll be
it'll be over the weirdest stuff. Like you know, I've

(48:01):
seen deals over you know, money and product, and it'll
be over the price of the product and it's off
by a dollar and it's twelve grand and it's a
million dollar transaction. But this guy's ticked off that but
he feels like he got it over on him. I'm like,
it's twelve thousand bucks. I'm like, and I want to
always say, just take it out of my fief. I
don't say that, but I want to because I just

(48:21):
wanted to get done. But anyways, I want to talk
about that a little bit from your perspective, because the
lawside's completely different than mine. Of gosh, it's just a
roller coaster ride, No, it is.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
And so what we like to do right is to
if you can right. And this is where it's tricky,
is just depends on where you're getting the.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Client and the life cycle.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
But you know, say you're starting m and a process
with somebody you've never worked before. You know, it's getting
on site with them, sitting down saying, hey, what's most
important to you concerning this transaction? If you could draw
it up coming out of this deal what would you
like to have, right, and having some really thoughtful conversations

(49:04):
around that, because these individuals that we're working with are competitive,
they're driven, and they want to win, and that's why
they've been successful. And so sometimes what can happen, right
is you get into them an aid process and all
of a sudden you get down in the weeds and
you're winning points that three weeks ago you didn't even

(49:25):
know existed, and so that you have to as an
advisor remind them of that, right, And so there there's that,
and then the other hard part, you know, looking internally
at myself is one of the biggest challenges, just.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Putting your pride to side.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
I mean, because you know, I kind of thought I
can get somebody to yes, you know, you know, arrogantly
so and whether that's a client or whether that's the
other side. I just feel like I'm a reasonable guy,
you know, well, you know, I'm sure ibody feels that way.
And so being in a position where, yeah, you know,

(50:05):
that indimification package may not be how I would have
drawn it up, but after educating our client with it,
they're comfortable with the business risk and it may not
be market right. You know, you get that turn around
a lot. That's okay if they're comfortable with it right,
as opposed to no, I'm going to win this point
because you know, I've done X number of transactions, so

(50:25):
here's how it's supposed to be done. And these people
don't know what they're talking about, and you know, you
hammered down with it just it doesn't Again, that's me
want to win, which is good when when tamed. And
so that is one of the harder parts, as you
allude to, is it is ever changing as the course
of the transaction happens. There's new things that come to light.

(50:46):
You want to close fast because of the hosts of reasons.
But that's been one of the things that we really
trying to focus hard on. It's trying to get a
feel for what are the clients objectives and then putting
our product side and saying we're going to focus on
those objectives as opposed to, Hey, we think that you
should also be focused.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
On how are you guys doing it? I guess and
the most efficiently. That's I think that's a big thing.
How do you get to the nuts and bolts, because
what I've started doing is same thing. It's like, how
serious are you? Before I get the lawyer's involved. That's
what I always say, It's how serious are you? And
then two what when you ask what they want? Which

(51:25):
is a great question, I'm like, how much do you
think your business is worth? And that tells me everything generally,
not just whether they're on or off, you know, without
some outrageous valuation, but it also tells me how educated
they are on actually what they're getting into right, and
a lot of times people aren't. They've watched Shark Tank,
like and there's none wrong with any of this stuff.
It's good educational stuff, but it's the market changes. The

(51:48):
belly of the market changes constantly, and I've watched over
time where like, you know, five years ago, you would
have just never conceived somebody buying a business to million
dollars out of ten percent interest rate, but we just
did want, you know, and you're just like, you know,
so you're having to you're again, it goes back. It's pride,

(52:10):
but it's also our experience is we're we're kind of
going into maybe not, but I feel like we are.
We're kind of going to a new frontier where it's
going to be a mix of inflation and non inflation
and these macro things you're talking about, and we're gonna
have to be more dynamic and what we're doing in
order to get things done. So the question is coming

(52:30):
back to that is how do you do that efficiently?
And how have you what have you found? There's worked?

Speaker 2 (52:36):
No, that's right, And it depends where it's going on
the buy or sell side, right, I mean, the conversations
are dramatically different, very much on the table you're on.
And even when I was on the buy side, we've
seen these search funds. I mean it's a buy side client,
but it's more of a sell side psyche, yes, because
it's got a limited time frame to executed deal. And
so there's some of that sel sidynamic that you feel
as well. So it is it is so fact dependent,

(53:01):
but to be efficient with it, right, I mean it's
really leveraging that experience that you allude to, right, all
those transactions and the themes that come out of those,
and being able to kind of talk through those of
the outset, right, And you know.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
We've put together kind of a deck that's pretty helpful.
You know.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
I think it's like ten slides, but it just kind of
walks through the.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Entire and a process.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
And you know, sometimes we're involved very very early, right,
if you know what I said, like the sim phase
where you're like building that out. Other times it's like
Yellow Eye's been signed with completely financial diligence and we're
ready to not see the first sacreement. And so you know,
we still have kind of that deck that says, Okay,
here's where you've been, here's where you're going, and you know,

(53:42):
here are kind of things that we commonly see come
up over the course of these transactions. How do you
want to navigate them?

Speaker 1 (53:48):
Right?

Speaker 2 (53:49):
And we can be as robust or you know, as
limited as we need to be. Right. We can do
reverse due diligence to help you build out the schedules,
or you can prepare them on your own. But just
know that when you're bearing these and if it's you know,
and they're incorrect, you know, or you don't get them
done quickly enough in time, you know, it leads to

(54:09):
lack of feal certainty or callbacks later. Right, And so
to educate them on when they're going through that decision
of hey, it's a and we like it because I mean, listen,
we're not cheap at all or really good at what
we do, but you know, the law firm dynamic and
the rate environment has gone up dramatically.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
I think I was talking to call you the other day.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
We're kind of one of the few professions right now
that I feel like has weathered this really well and
our time's coming right. I mean, you know, investment banking,
how it in twenty three when there wasn't as much
deal flow the counting professions had to lay. Look at
the headlines, you just haven't seen as much in the
legal setting. You're starting to see people combined and that's
a product of that where people are starting to feel

(54:50):
the pressure. But overall, it hadn't made its way into
the news yet and so it'll it'll it'll hit us eventually.
But from my perspective, just thinking through all of the
things that we've done, and how do you educate your
clients on where it can be a resource where we
typically see things pop up and we try to do
that through a deck, but again to your point, every

(55:12):
client's different, and you know how you to communicate that varies.
Some people are never going to open an attachment to
an email how do you make sure they understand the deal.
It's hard, right because you know, especially if it's a
newer client, they may forget in two or three weeks,
not because they're bad.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
People like I didn't know this right, Well, we didn't
talk about it, yes.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
And so naturally, going back to that risk version, some
people were like, well, I want to point to this email. Well,
if you write emails like you're doing Cey every time,
people probably not gonna hire you, you know, And so
that's a adodnam with you.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
It is tough. And I always tell people that are like,
what's the hardest part of any m and A? And
it's it's when a buyer or a seller doesn't remember
a conversation you had and you have documentation to show
you how the conversation, and you must now try to
figure out how to tell them without making them feel stupid. Yes,
And I'm like, it's the hardest thing in the world
for me to do. And I'm just sitting there going, Okay,

(56:10):
we've talked about this five times, you know, I have
a little pep talk with myself, and I'm like, all right,
I've got to go tell them. And I can't make
it feel stupid in case your tone's terrible, your mono tone,
You're very blunt, like how are we going to do
this ironically? And it's gonna sound crazy. I started using
Copilot to help me try to figure this scrap out,
because I will just blurb what I want to say

(56:32):
and I'll have Copilot rewrite it. And I don't use
exactly what copoloys sound like me, but it's it's crazy
what AI is kind of doing in different spaces now
where I'm like, Okay, how do I be more to
more people? And I'm having to adapt And it's just
crazy how much I'm having to adapt. Because if I
get as someone who's local and knows Tennessee, and it's

(56:55):
like I got no problems, but I'm dealing with people
in Long Island, I'm dealing with people in Vegas, Florida,
and they just different strokes for different folks, and if
they hear a hint and draw or anything, you know,
it's like it's just always overcoming. So I've always thought about,
you know, I always have this dream of like, right, well,
what if I just went and worked for one company

(57:16):
and just did one thing and didn't have all these
things all over the place, and my wife stops me
and she's like, you'd be bored, you know, what to
do with yourself. But going into going into kind of
winding down, I want to know what do you do
outside of work? What kind of keeps you motivated? Do
you have any hobbies outside I struggle with hobbies because
I like, I do like working, I like working deals.

(57:38):
If I didn't have a wife and kids and a dog.
You know, I got a colleague's over in Sweden and
he'll always say, you know, a single guy, and he'll
be like, well, when you're going out with your wife
tonight and I'm want to cut up with this business
plan and we're just gonna have a great Friday night.
And he's like, and I'm like, that sounds awesome. Actually,
as weird as it sounds. You what are you kind

(57:59):
of doing to kind of keep your psyche in a
good place, keep your movement going, keep your education up,
the evolvement of the human being.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Yeah, No, those are all great questions. I like you
probably slant heavier too, pouring into work and so realizing
that there's, you know, other things outside of that.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
I really enjoyed spend time my wife. We were in
Arkansas this weekend, went to Fayetteville. It's got Gym.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
NASIX meeting on Friday night and went to the basketball
game on Saturday, and so we'll do that from time
to time.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
We love to travel. So the great thing of my
job is we can work from anywhere.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
It's also one of the downsides about the job that
you can work from anywhere. We travel good amount until
we love the beach. But one of the things that's
been a kind of on my list, we'll see if
I can execute it on them this year or not
is fly fishing. So we went to Montana in the
fall for our ten year anniversary and flyfish for the
first time and had an absolute blast. And so my

(58:57):
brother sister Wag got me kind of like a little
flyfishing beginner guide. And so we've got the Heart River
in our backyard back in College Grove, and uh, just
going out there and you know, right now at this
with it's just kind of a normal rotten reel and
there's a lot of small amouth ass back there. But
I did catch one trout last year on a don't

(59:21):
you know, I'm not rotten reel and I'm not trying.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
That's the goal. I like that. No, it's all I.
I literally have been told to find hobbies and things
to do, and I but I got so tied up
for a while there. And if it if it was
a personal asset, it was a personal asset. But if
it was time, it needed to be associated with a dollar,
you know what I mean. And so well, this playing

(59:46):
golf is not making me money, it's actually costs blah
blah blah blah. Yeah, I've really I've come through all
that psychologically. Now it's like, well, finding something I can
really dig into. Yes, And so I'm saying I'm on
the hunt, just like all right, because I'm either all
in or all I'm not doing it that sort of things.
I've become obsessed. And then my wife's I should have

(01:00:08):
never introduced you this, and you know you wanted me
to have a hobby. Hobby that's as I with my kids, though,
I'm kind of just watching and I'm like, all right,
what are they interested in that I'm interested in? Right now?
It's the legos, my oldest ones and legos. So we're like,
you know, every project is like, well let's just do legos.
Let's do a Lego project. So it's it's getting into

(01:00:29):
those things and watching kind of although and that's been
fun because you just, I don't know, when you're thinking
about the other person or other people in your family,
it's it's easier to not be so driven by whatever
you got going on. Things going on. And I always
tell my wife I would I wouldn't leave, you know,

(01:00:49):
this little area of Nashville and in her have to.
But my wife is taking me all over the place,
out of the country, and she's got me like in
traveling to I just don't like how expensive these days.
I hear you, I hear you. It's it's a definitely
can be. So that's what we've done. Yeah, no, understood, understood,

(01:01:10):
listening great man. I really appreciate you coming in getting
the dry I know. I'm glad we did it early.
So Y's sitting on traffic, no doubt.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
I appreciate you having me on and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
It's been a pleasure to work with you and watch
what you've done over here. And it's the same same.
Look forward to doing some more stuff together. All right, guys,
that's another episode of the Encounter podcast. Thank you for
the support. We'll see you on the next episode.