Fiercely Independent Firms with Michael Hoover

Hello, and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I'm joined today by Michael Hoover, the Chief Growth and Strategy Officer at Bennett Thrasher. Welcome to the pod, Michael. Hey, Dom. Thanks. I appreciate you having me on. Yeah, my pleasure. I appreciate you taking the time, and we had a conversation before this as well, and I just appreciate your insights and your takes on the industry in general. You're a very interesting person to talk to, and so I'm looking forward to sharing that with the audience here. Well, thanks. I appreciate it. Kind words. You can debate with my wife how interesting I may or may not be, but I love this industry. I've got a big passion for it. We're going through a lot of changes, and so anytime I have a chance to express our point of view or my point of view, I enjoy doing it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that actually, your love for the industry kind of leads me to my first question, where you're in a growth and strategy role, which is something that I'm very familiar with from a tech perspective, my last job kind of being at a tech company, but something I'm a little bit less familiar with in the context of accounting firms. Would you be able to give us a breakdown of what that role sort of entails? Yeah. I agree. I mean, it's definitely a unique title for the accounting industry, but I think we're a unique firm, right? And this is one of the many ways Bennett Thrasher is just adapting to this rapidly changing public accounting environment. Is it more tech-focused in title? Probably. But I think if you look at my role in pulling that back, it's really focused on the overall growth of the firm, not just ensuring that we're growing, but making sure that it's the right type of growth and not just growth for growth's sake. What I believe right now are there are too many firms out there who are just grasping at various revenue streams to grow that top line. We're not interested in that kind of growth, right? We're not interested in growth that's going to compromise us in the future. And so the strategy piece is really understanding where the market is now, where the market's going and placing the right bets on that. So we're very attuned with everything that we're looking to do. We've got a strategy for 2030 that the firm's executing on, and part of that is my role. It's, hey, let's grow, but at the same time, let's grow smart. Let's grow the way that Bennett Thrasher should be growing in today's market. Yeah, there's a lot of emphasis on taking the right type of revenue in. Actually, in the most recent podcast, Jason Statz did a whole, he did a kind of a skit on that that I really enjoyed where he's making this analogy of like a gardener. And it's like, you know, if you just take in all the plants, like they're going to be growing all over each other and you actually need to be choosing the plants that you're bringing into your garden. And so it's very similar with a firm and the way the story goes, very funny. The gardener analogy, all of a sudden they're talking about EBITDA and whatever, but you need to be careful. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That sounds pretty interesting. Yeah. It's a very funny one, actually. And essentially it focuses on, yeah, you need to be bringing in the right type of clients. You need to be bringing in the right type of work for your firm, not just anything that comes through the door. Right. So that's right. So if you are going to invite new plants in, if you will, into that ecosystem, are you feeding them the right food? Are you watering them the right way? You know, not every plant, not every firm is created equal and not every service line for sure. So, you know, if you are going to make that investment, I think it's more than just, all right, we've identified a target. This is an interesting investment. Let's go get it. It's more the integration piece, which begins to really become a factor. And then you talked about some of the bets that you're making, planning for 2030. I'd be curious to know, like, are you able to share what some of those bigger bets are that you're kind of, you know, doubling down on? Yeah, probably the biggest bet, and this is really the crux of the conversation, is just remaining fiercely independent. We as a whole have just decided we're not interested in taking a majority PE stake. That's just not in the cards for Bennett Thrasher. We want to be fiercely independent, and that is kind of holistic throughout the firm. If you look at it, it's hard to get five people to agree on anything. But you know, in this case, we've got 50 plus very successful, very entrepreneurial partners who have all just said, we're not interested in going down that route. So that, if you look at where we're going to head our bets, that's one of the reasons, I think, or one of the areas. If you look at the service lines, that's really interesting to me, because our market has expanded. Our clients want us to do more. So I think the easy answer is, you know, let's look at client advisory services or CAS or outsourced accounting, whatever you want to call that. Sure, that's going to continue to grow, and I think that, to me, becomes really interesting because it can feed other areas of the business. But then you look at the specialization, transfer pricing, the world is becoming smaller. You know, if you look at the international tax piece, you know, which goes kind of hand in hand with transfer pricing, that's an area that will continue to double down on. Anything advisory related, we've got a great risk group here. And so that risk group is anywhere from traditional kind of SOC reports and different things like that, to now doing, you know, full blown SOCs type work. And also getting into larger clients. Those are areas that become interesting. And so I think that the needle to thread here for us or firms like us is, you've got to grow that annuity business. You've got to continue to invest back into your audit and those compliance type activities, which are recurring in nature. But you also need to really look at, you know, some of these higher margin, traditional advisory or specialty tax type service lines that will increase your margins. And quite honestly, that's what clients are asking us for. So we'll continue to put money, investments, our bets in those areas. No different than probably a lot of firms. I just think it really comes down to the execution. Mm-hmm. And operating with certainty, right? Like having a group of people who are able to kind of buy in and say, this is the avenue we're going down. Distractions will come up. Shiny objects will be spotted. But like, we're just going to keep going, right? Well, as you can imagine, I mean, we probably see a couple of deals a week that come our way. And some are really interesting. Some are very adjacent to what we're doing. Are they on strategy? That's a major, you know, bone of contention is, you know, we have a very specific committee within the firm that looks at these opportunities. Not only to say, hey, is this a good deal? Because the economics are just out of whack on some of these. But also, is this on point? And then I like your, what you said, shiny, tiny. Shiny objects. Yeah. Kill you, right? And that's just, I used to use that phrase with a few businesses that I started and exited was, be core to who you are. Don't chase a ghost, right? I used to say, yeah, hey, you can go chase a ghost. But guess what? It's not real. And you're going to spend a lot of time trying to discover that. Or, hey, there is a shiny, tiny object out there. And that looks really interesting. But what's the opportunity cost if you begin to go down that road? Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard to do even at a micro scale. I was sharing this with some people recently. And I work with a business coach. Because I'm early, right? I haven't like experienced everything in a business of one. And it was like, yeah, I had this PE group kind of approach me being like, hey, we'd like you to make intros to us for a firm that could be a platform firm. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And then I was talking with the coach. And he's like, no, that's not what you do. If you come across it, sure. But you can't pivot your business to being introductions for PE firms. Absolutely not. You have investors. And they've invested in them. And at a firm of your scale, I'm sure it's that, but 20-fold, right? And you being in charge of the strategy, you need to be the one to steer the ship. Well, good for you for having a business coach. I think it took me a long time in my career to understand that a business coach was not a crush. It was actually anything but. It was a conduit to recognizing success faster. So good for you. Yeah. It's always great to get independent kind of third-party coaching where you can. And I would agree with you. I mean, it sounds like your coach is sending you in the right direction. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit back to your sort of background. So you actually came up sort of like the recruiting stream, correct? I did. It's a long story. I won't bore you with it. I didn't go to law school coming out of undergrad. And that's the direction I thought I would go. And ended up working for, at that time, what was the beginning of kind of staff augmentation in technology. And so probably a good place to be from, but not a great place to be at, if that makes sense. And apologies for the incorrect grammar there. But it was just, it was a great launchpad. And sometimes you get lucky. You choose something that ends up making a big deal on your career. And that was it. So yeah, recruiting is in my DNA. I was able to get out, work with a very fast-moving technology company. I saw my own career advance to doing some pretty interesting integration work over in Europe and came back. And 9-11 happened, which was terrible. Kind of put a damper on many things here in the US, businesses in particular. And so I had to reinvent myself. And that's how I ended up getting into accounting and finance. But really, I mean, that's it. That recruiting has always been in my DNA. It's in my blood. It's a great way to learn how to do sales. You got to have cornerback mentality. You get beat. You lose. Sometimes it's on you. Sometimes it's not. But yeah, that's really guided me through a good part of my career. And from the growth picture, how much of that conversation is centered around talent these days? Because I saw a stat, I think it was from Wolters Kluwer, where 68% of firm owners are stating that access to the right talent is actually the biggest thing holding back growth at their firm, not demand, not anything else. And so when you're having these growth conversations, how much of them are centered around talent specifically? Well, talent's everything. So when I came on board here, I did something different. I took talent out of human resources because I believe that, as you just said, talent or the ability to acquire the right talent is a major drag on growth. For many firms, it's as simple as succession planning. And that's where you're seeing some of these firms get rolled up because they just didn't have the right talent and probably, quite honestly, the right environment to keep people. And so talent or people, if you will, are the backbone of anything we do in this business. So no matter what you do with technology, the people element is going to be there. No matter what you do with offshore, nearshoring, onshoring, it all comes back to people. And people in our business cannot be replaced. A lot can. And we'll see that with AI. But talent is really all the way from your campus recruits all the way up to your partners. Those partner hires are critical. And that's going to be a big part of our strategy moving forward. But if you don't have the right talent, you pay the price for it. And I would venture to bet that a lot of firms aren't that great at hiring. They can find the people. They can technically hire the people. But are they the right people, both for their culture and then for the future of their firm? So yeah, I mean, it's huge. I think that's the backbone of our industry. It's funny to me. Most firms don't invest in that area. They tend to view recruiting as a sunken cost. It comes out in the way that their own internal recruiters go after the market. It comes out in the way that they look to hire and add people to their talent acquisition team. And so to me, that's been a woefully underserved area. In most of the larger firms out there. Yeah, I mean, I know kind of firsthand from dealing with a lot of the firms that I can definitely attest to that. So it's cool hearing it from someone like yourself, not just kind of my own experiences as well. You're right. You're right. I mean, that's it. And I think some of the things you're doing in particular, the real-time kind of crowdsourcing piece of your business is extremely interesting to me. And I think it's cutting edge. I think that's where the future is. You know, talent is not stagnant, but we treat it the same way. Many of the firms are doing what they did 15, 20 years ago. And that's just not going to cut it. Yeah. And to be kind of clear for folks who are listening who maybe don't have as much context, what is it that most firms are doing on that front? Like, I know there's kind of like the Mercer surveys and, you know, that's kind of like the legacy thing or Mercer or other, right? But it'll be like 30 firms submitting their payroll information, and then it just kind of gets redistributed among the firms. And it's just saying, like, here's what other people are doing, right? And some of the risk of that to me is like, you end up in a bit of an echo chamber. Right. But beyond that, like, it's also just, yeah, it's not a great diversity of data. And it's often kind of quite delayed by the time you get the data, right? And you're getting it once a year. And that's always been my big thing with data is by the time you get it in a big study like that, and they spend a ton of time doing that. And I think there is a lot of value to look at those trends in these big studies. But oftentimes, by the time you get that data, it's outdated, especially in our business and the way things have moved over the last 24 months. So, you know, real-time data is critical. And you see it on the front line, you see it when you put offers out to candidates, and they're looking at multiple, you know, choices in the market. And there's definitely a diversity out there of offers, you know, from a cash standpoint, from an overall benefit standpoint. I think the other interesting piece is, you know, if you look at our business, public accounting is morphing roles out. You know, we're getting roles that we may not have ever looked at in the past. And so you've got a lot of kind of adjacent roles or new roles in the industry that we're looking to hire into. And those blanket surveys just aren't going to capture those people. And so, you know, if you look at crowdsourcing, which, again, I think is really great. I think what you're doing is great. To me, that's really cutting edge. That flexibility, scalability, real-time data is what everybody's after. And I'm not sure you're always going to be able to get that with some of the larger studies. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Why do you think it's the case that, like, there's been this kind of like unclog over the last, you know, 24, I would say maybe even 36 months? Like, why do you think everything has been changing so rapidly in the accounting space lately? Yeah. Well, I mean, multiple factors, right? PE is kind of like the big elephant in the room. And I know we'll talk about that at some point, but, you know, the reality is I think COVID shifted a lot of mindset. You know, everybody's aware of the talent situation that we have right now. We have fewer people going in and getting accounting degrees. I know the AICPA and some of the larger firms, the big four in particular, are trying to work on that 150-hour piece. That was really detrimental in many ways to our business. If you look at the advance of technology, you know, it's here. It's doing a lot of very interesting things. You know, it's just a rapidly changing environment. What did I read in the Wall Street Journal not too long ago? That I believe 300,000 people ages 25 to 45 are getting out of accounting, not getting out of public accounting to go into industry. They're just getting out of accounting. They're going to go start a bike shop in Denver, right? And they're just out of it. And I think you've got more people retiring. You know, there's some weird stat that came out. 75% of all CPAs today will retire in the next 15 to 20 years. I mean, think about the numbers. So you've got all these intersections happening right now. You've got, you know, automation. You've got the workforce leaving. You've got a greater demand than ever for these services. The world's getting smaller, certainly, right? So your talent pool does increase. But yeah, it's a really interesting time right now, for sure. Yeah, so changing gears a little bit. Yeah, you kind of addressed it that we will talk about PE a little bit. So your last role, you were at a very large firm that did a PE deal. And that kind of deal going through sort of coincided with your departure. And so I'm curious how much that deal had to do with your departure. And if it did have to do with your departure, why did it kind of drive you towards that decision? Yeah, 100%. I mean, it was a catalyst for me leaving, without a doubt. And so tough decision, but the right decision for me. A lot of really good people there. And so what I noticed as we were gearing up to take that investment, we just, small things, you notice the small things first. It's somebody quit, they don't replace that person. Somebody is making more money than they probably should be at a certain role. Let's cut them because it's going to get our finances looking better. It began to really drain on the culture. And for me, I just made a decision, it wasn't the right spot and so ended up leaving. Now, I've been fortunate because my previous firm was really a great, great firm for a long time. Here I've been at Thrasher. I mean, I could not have asked for a better opportunity. In many ways, this reminds me of certain aspects of my prior firm where it was very entrepreneurial, where we were able to make our own decisions based on our market, where we weren't kind of a monolithic firm that treated everything the same, you know, that we were able to be kind of independent and autonomous in our markets. And so being at Thrasher has a lot of that. We control our destiny. We have a partnership that's fiercely committed. Yeah, that ability to be independent, I think is hugely underrated. And for me, it was a large, and you know, I left as, you know, it would have been like an incoming senior. So it's not like I was a C-suite person leaving. But I think that that was ultimately what kind of led to my departure, where like I had a team that was amazing. I loved the partner that I worked with. I loved the people that I worked with. I loved the people that I worked with. I had a team that was amazing. I loved the partner that I worked with. And he was trying his hardest to find something that kind of fit for me, where it was very clear that like, I was very strong, a lot of the kind of fringe things. And I was good at the tax work as well. But it was just not what like got me going. And so he was trying to be like, okay, let's get you on like the tax pitch teams where we're trying to like sell, you know, sell new work. Like, let's support all your business development initiatives you want to do and stuff like that. But then at the end of the day, when it was like evaluation time, that was not under his control. And he didn't have the say because it was, you know, such a large firm, such a large system. And so it was just like, oh, like, why did the other analysts have like higher billable hours than you? And I was like, oh, if this is like all everything's going to boil down to. Yeah. Like, I think that's not for me. Because it's just not like, you know, I don't want my work to be defined by like, did I pick up that extra tax return at 945 p.m. Right. Versus, you know, going home and then texting a bunch of people and like, hopefully generating new work for the firm. So I think having that flexibility really allows a firm to like differentiate. Right. So. Well, it does. And it sounds like that was a good partner. I think that's really the case for most partners in these larger firms. You know, they care about their staff. I don't know whether you're your PE backed or not. I think there's a lot of affection and affinity for the people that work on your team. Unfortunately, when you manage by spreadsheet, right, or you manage by P&L, and that's all you look at, people like you, unfortunately, get pushed out of most firms. And I don't think that's. I don't think that's good for our industry. I get it with scale. Right. When you get large, there have to be certain metrics. And those metrics need to be reasonably uniform. But we end up losing a lot of talent. People like yourself who just get out of the industry because they don't fit into a box. And we've got new generations coming up, and they're definitely outside the box. So it should be pretty interesting to see how the industry adapts to that, because the brain drain has just been phenomenal in a really bad way. And so that's led to a lot of these changes. But yeah, as an aside, I did not know you were a tax professional. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, I did quite a bit of tax. And when I talk about the issues in the industry, I frame it that way a lot, where I was like, I was in the best situation possible. My coach and the team that I worked with, it was like the wonder kid of Deloitte, Canada. He was coming up with the new tax plans. National Tax Office was hitting him up, being like, hey, does this make sense to you? And so because of that, I got to work on every single one of the best things. And yet it didn't work out for me, where I'm like, okay, there's an issue there, right? I get handed the best thing. And ultimately, I say, actually, I don't want this. And necessarily, there's hundreds of people who got less good situations than me. And it's like, well, you're definitely pushing these people out, right? Like if I got pushed out, or not even pushed out, but like if I decided to leave, what chance do some of these other people have, right? Sure. I mean, you have this frustration that dismounts over time. And I think as an industry, we've got to figure that piece out. It can't just be about the number of hours, because what happens, and you've seen this, I'm sure on your teams, more and more people get stacked with too many hours. And so you've got a dichotomy between people who don't have enough hours. And if you're going to be measured on that, then you automatically are put into a failing situation versus people that have way too many hours for them to ever complete. And they probably get dinged from a quality standpoint. So it's a really nasty catch-22. Yeah. Yeah, it's tricky. And so when you're talking about Bennett Thrasher still feeling very, very independent, you're a scaled firm. Bennett Thrasher is a very, very large firm. So what are some of the concrete activities that allow that to happen and allow strong decision-making to still be happening? As opposed to, Alan Colton, I believe it was him, wrote this article of the partnership model doesn't work at scale, because you have all these entrepreneurial people who want it their way, and then it becomes hard to make decisive decision-making, right? Yeah, and you're right. We are a good-sized firm. We've got just under 600 people. We have a very big office here in Atlanta. We've got two offices that are investments, one in Denver, one in Dallas. Both of those are within 24 months, extremely accretive to the practice. So they're growing quickly. Partnerships can be challenging. There's no two ways about it. But I'll throw this out. So can taking direction from somebody who doesn't know this industry. And so you asked me, how does Bennett Thrasher remain independent? Why are we allowed to do some things that maybe other firms can't? It's going to sound hokey, but it goes back to Rick Bennett and Ken Thrasher, the guys who started this firm, 45 years, going into 2025. So we've had a nice, long run. But their DNA is on everything that we do here. They left one of the big four. I think it's big eight at that point, but they left and they started this. We've always been a tax heavy organization. About 56% of our revenues will come from tax. We've got a very good audit group here. We've stayed away from public companies, which has been a really good business decision for us. Scrutiny is not there. Quite honestly, we're probably better adapted or adept at these large privates than we are these small publics. I think we just made a good decision to stay away from that. More than anything else, we've got a really entrepreneurial culture. It talks about culture. The culture work can get thrown around a lot. Again, we've got 50 plus partners who've been extremely successful, who have all agreed that we are going to remain independent from PE. How do we go about that? How do we stay independent with the world around us just going crazy? How do we invest in tech? How do we invest in offshore and nearshoring? How do we make some decisions that probably are not as digestible as some of the other partnerships? So I think there's been a few things. One is, several years ago, Ben and Thrasher decided to invest in a C-suite of outsiders. People like me, right? People who were not traditional practitioners. I've seen it time and time again. Most firms are going to be reluctant to bring in outsiders, right? They don't want the influence. They don't feel like people know the business. They don't want other people guiding their firm. So they recycle partners. Oftentimes, what happens, you get an audit partner who was a great audit partner, did everything that he or she could, carried a big book, grew their people, made a bunch of partners underneath them. For all intent and purpose, they were the ideal audit partner. All of a sudden, that person gets selected to become CEO, right? Or gets put on a board or gets in front of some committee that is shaping what that firm is going to look like. And that can be good. But the reality is, every other business in America brings in outsiders to look at their business, I think, with an unbiased eye. They take stock and accountability for what the firm is and its what services do we offer, but they put a different lens on it. I think that's been huge for us. So that's one thing. Going back to the entrepreneurial piece, what I've noticed with a lot of these firms, too, is the larger the firm, the more administrative partners you get. If you look at us, everybody from Jeff Call, who's our managing partner, down, carries a book of business, a significant book of business. And what I've seen over time with firms is it tends to be a lot of the administrators, partners who probably couldn't go out there and develop business as well as what we're expecting, but we're great team players and to grow people and all that, end up moving higher and higher and higher into the ecosystem that makes a lot of these decisions on which way the firm's going to go. And they're great people. They really are. In many ways, they're the best of this business. But I don't think those are necessarily the right people to be running the future of the firm. And so we made that decision, again, a while ago, to bring in some outsiders. And I think that's really helped us. Now, we do work for the partnership. There's no two ways about it. But at the end of the day, we've got partners who are committed to the same vision. We've got a C-suite that hopefully empowers them to remain independent. And then we've got great brand equity. And I think you look at that and just by way of where we play, we're in a really good spot. And we won't go down the piggy rabbit hole too much on where I think the market's going. But we've had double digit organic growth for the past decade plus. So we have industry low turnover rates. So you've got an interesting piece. You've got a growing top line. And you're not constantly replacing. So you're reinvesting back into people. And that's created a really good brand permission. If you look at our net promoter scores, they're two to three times what the industry has. So we're building over and over and over. And that's really been a big piece for us. Interesting. And yeah, to me, it feels like having those outsiders feels like one of the main positive points that I would point to out of these PE deals, right? Oh, yeah. Because it's like, okay, well, now you get these outsiders in and they understand from their own backgrounds, they understand the need for tech implementation versus just doing whatever to increase this year's partner distribution. They understand reinvesting in the business. They understand this. Whereas if you have all these partners who are kind of, they've come up all the same way, you have this lack of diversity of ideas. So I do feel like that could be one of the great things that has been decided for Bennett Thrasher, right? As you get these outside experts and you get a strategy person who's really the best strategy person, who was a fantastic auditor tax partner and then had a couple ideas and then took over that role, right? So. That's right. That's right. And I think that's a big part of it. Now we do, I mean, our C-suite works for the partnership. There's no two ways about it. You mentioned PE and that being a strength of PE coming into the industry. I couldn't agree with you more, right? I mean, there's a lot of good reasons for PE to be successful in the industry. I just haven't seen it. But the idea of having an outside view, bringing in a lot of different experience from other businesses into this business, I think is a win all the way through. Yeah. And for those firms that are doing PE deals, what is it internally that you think is driving the decision to do that? You having been on kind of both sides of it, right? One place where they did decide and one place where the decisions to remain fiercely independent. It's a great question. I mean, I've thought about it over and over. We've talked about it ad nauseum as why would we not do a PE deal? There's a myriad of reasons for doing it. I think sometimes it comes down to you're paying for the sins of the past, right? You didn't invest in technology. You didn't put a good succession plan in. You did not look at bringing in outside people, which we just talked about right there. And so you're going through kind of the definition of insanity. You're doing the same thing over and over and you're expecting a different result. And it's just not going to get there. You touched on what Alan said about partnerships just being inherently flawed. I don't disagree, right? I think that it's a real challenge within partnerships, mainly because of the way firms distribute at the end of the year, their earnings back to the partners. And if you've got a big dichotomy between partners that are closer to retirement age than you do young partners, people act in their self-interest. And in that case, we're not going to hold back funds for expansion. We're not going to hold back funds for technology investment. We're not going to bring in other people because we just don't understand that cost structure and the ROI on it. And so in many ways, I think firms are taking PE because they're too far gone in many ways. And so they believe that PE can get them back to it. Yeah. The other thing is, I mean, let's be honest. There's a massive windfall for partners who are in firms to take private equity. And so I'm a capitalist at heart all the way through. If you can get that money, you should do it. But I also think there's a business side to it that you got to be really, really smart about how you take that private equity money. And you look at it where you've got people who have committed to the business. You've got people who have spent years and years working and building that organization on the premise that at some point they would participate at the end of the day in some sort of financial windfall. And so that's been taken away in large part. And so don't discount the cash that these guys are making. More and more millionaires are coming out of these private equity deals. And again, I'm a capitalist. I'm a capitalist at heart, and I think you should do that. But there's a right and wrong way to do that from my perspective. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I've had some discussions around ways that seem relatively palatable, right? I spoke with Tim Petri, who did a deal with Ascend, and he's talking about, yeah, we saw this as an opportunity. A lot of people who maybe even weren't on the equity path, on the partner path, we were able to give mid-five-figure equity grants to out of what is now effectively an employee stock option plan versus being like, you need to buy in as a traditional partner and all that. So, yeah, there's a give and take there where it can be done palatably, but it can also be done in a way that just feels like the rug being pulled. That's right. That's exactly right. So again, some firms are doing it differently than others. I think when it's an all or nothing, in the sense that the partners make all of it, and the non-equity partners or the managing directors go down the food chain, right? Senior managers, managers, all these folks are not able to participate in that. That's a really tough pill to swallow. And now, are they given equity? They're given equity that earns out over time, phantom stock, right? And most of that is going to be based on, yeah, what does that exit look like? And we've not seen an exit yet. We don't know what that looks like. Now, I think there will be some very successful exits, but at some point, those exits are going to get further and further between each other. It's going to be a longer cycle. And I think there's going to be some market pressures that maybe don't allow certain firms to even take that exit. And therefore, that equity is not worth anything. I'm a little conscious of time here. I want to make sure that we wrap up soon. But when you talk about that exit, and you might be a little bit more informed than some people are, do you have a sense of who the second buyer is or what that exit looked like? Are we going to see a ton of IPO'd public stock accounting firms in 10 years? What do you think that's going to look like? It's been talked about. It's interesting. I don't think our business is sexy enough right now to go through an IPO where you get the big lift in the interest of, let's say, a tech company like Palantir or somebody on the AI side. I don't think you're ever going to see that. We do offer a nice annuity, which is always a big piece of it. I'd venture something completely different. I do think there will be continued consolidation within this space. But at some point, I think you're going to see firms breaking apart. Larger firms, I think you're going to see a decoupling of service lines into their own practices. We've got this really interesting relationship, this brother-sister relationship in these PE firms right now that essentially you've got advisory and tax on one side, they own the audit firm on the other. What happens when there's a big blow up? What happens when there's a really bad PCAOB score that comes back on one of these? Do they decide that the risk isn't worth the potential upside? I'm not sure. There's a lot of this story that's left to be told. Could it be IPO? Sure. But on the flip side, could it be just a complete change in this industry where you're beginning to break up these larger firms into separate consulting firms? We can't even fathom at this point. Interesting. I appreciate your perspective on all of this. It's a huge question, Mark. I've spoken with some people in that side of the industry, and they're not even sure themselves. It's cool to have some discussions around that. Just in general, I really appreciate you taking the time, Michael. I really appreciate the discussion we were able to have here. You got it, Dom. I always enjoy your posts, your blogs, and your new endeavours. I certainly wanted to take a look at. Thanks for your time.