Optimizing Your Firm’s Future with Ira Rosenbloom

Hello, and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I am joined today by Ira Rosenblum, the founder and CEO of Optimum Strategies. Welcome to the pod, Ira. Thank you for having me, Dom. It's great to be here. Yeah, my pleasure. You're one of these kind of very interesting people that I, you know, we had a conversation last week or maybe two weeks ago or so where we're just kind of chatting about what you do and all that. I find some of these kind of consulting firms to CPA firms, it's a little bit difficult to perfectly define, you know, your particular flavor and what it is you do. So maybe to start us off and give us some context for this whole discussion, if you can maybe talk about the services that you offer and some of the kind of projects that you've done over the last year or so. Well, I appreciate that opportunity, and I'm sure a lot of what I say will resonate with your listeners. You know, I focus on making firms stronger. Where are the advantages that they're going to be able to put to good use? And oftentimes they've got advantages that could be put to good use if they merge with somebody else. And it would be a shorter pathway to fulfilling a lot of the potential for those firms. So a fair amount of what I do is triggered by what's in the best interest of that firm and how most pragmatically can they get there. So I start relationships quite frequently by doing an assessment of the firm. What are their strengths and weaknesses and what would make them happy as far as perpetuating their business? What would make them happy in their personal lives? That's not something that I touch, but it certainly affects how they run their business. So it starts with an assessment, and in many cases people are not ready for an alignment. They're ready to make their firm stronger and better, and I work with them on how they can be a more profitable firm. How can they reduce the tension level within the firm? And that's not about serving ice cream every day and doing exercises. It's really about running a firm that's making an impact, that's bringing gratification to people, and that allows people to feel good about how they're spending their professional life. And it takes a big discipline to do that because so many firms are programmed to be in a product business. And we move out tax returns, we do trial balances, we charge X dollars a month, and that's what we do. Well, that's part of the process, but if that's all you do, it doesn't lend itself to the kind of gratification that certainly younger people are looking for. So I spend a lot of time helping people figure out, you know, what is going to make their firms better, and how do they enjoy the benefit of having younger staff if they have them? Clearly, depending on the size of the firm, recruiting is a very big struggle if you're a small firm, and retaining people is a big problem no matter what size firm you have, which of course you're quite familiar with. So it's really all about what do you do that's going to put you on the best path and do we all have alignment around what that best path is? And if it's merger, great. And if it's not merger, then are you prepared to take the steps that are necessary? Because this is a very challenging time period. We've got a lot of tools and toys, but that's not going to solve everything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just thinking about guests on this podcast, I could probably riff off about a dozen of them who, in speaking about their firm experience, really there's a before and an after chapter, right? Where, you know, there's a period of where it's just grow, grow, grow, and you sort of are unintentional maybe about the type of firm that you're creating and doing that. It's really the focus is all on just at the beginning, keeping your head above the water, to be honest. But then after that, it just becomes about pursuing growth. And then a lot of these firm operators will kind of eventually wake up and be like, wow, this is not the business I want to be running. And then there's a period of transformation, right? So for some people, that is involved implementing EOS. For some other firm operators, this is involved them, you know, what they'll describe as graduating from an entrepreneur to a CEO, for example, or from just an accountant to an executive operating an accounting firm, right? And there is often this need to kind of pivot the firm in order for there to be continuation in it being something that they actually want to operate, right? But in your description here, you talked about like a whole bunch of different areas of like, should we combine? We're struggling with recruiting. We're doing all that. Is being able to advise on all that kind of all from your lived experience? Because you, you know, you're not just some outsider walking in saying, hey, let me help you. You were a managing member of a firm. And then I believe that firm got merged in. Is that correct to J.H. Cohn? Yes, they're absolutely right. Which, of course, today is Cohn Resnick, one of the largest firms in the country and a great firm. Um, so, yeah, what what I do is, is, is a reflection of my own personal experience. As a matter of fact, I'll tell you that when I decided to leave J.H. Cohn and wanted to start my own company, I sat back and I said, what was I missing when I was in practice as a managing partner? What wasn't I being able to get my arms around? And what I realized was that I didn't have a sounding board to go to that I could trust and respect who had been in the trenches, who had actually worked with clients, who had worked with partners, who had worked with staff, who could talk to me comprehensively, in particular, about the future if we did align. We, we worked with lots of brokers who introduced us to lots of great firms, but none of them had any perspective, at least that they would ever share, about the things we should think about as you consider such a monumental decision. And so when I, and, and I had a very, you know, successful tenure at J.H. Cohn, but I decided I was ready to be back as the entrepreneur where in a large firm you can be, but it's just, there's a lot of bureaucracy to go through. And I wanted to be less involved with bureaucracy. And I said, what is the need that I'm going to satisfy? And I said, you know what, if I had had somebody, I probably would have thought things through differently. Doesn't mean that I wouldn't have made the same decision, but I would have been smarter about certain things. And so I created the company for that reason, because I didn't have anybody to go to. And it's, it's been a wonderful experience for me to share my actual examples of things that I saw. And then how do I put that to good use in terms of guiding people through some very, very big decisions? There's no question about it. If you want to talk just about the M&A decision and forget about PE, let's just, you know, deal with the old fashioned situation where a smaller firm is merging into a large firm. There's a ton of fear, there's a ton of anxiety. And, and how do you get that less problematic? And what I learned was, you know, the more defined something is the more you're able to relate to it and address your fears. So a thing that I really stress a lot is job descriptions, because when you're a partner in a small firm, oftentimes you do everything. You may be unhappy about it. You may be very happy about it, but when you go into a bigger firm, you're not doing everything. And so you don't know what's right and what's wrong. You need a job description up front and you need to understand how you're going to be held accountable and what is going to be expected of you and how are you going to be, you know, monitored in what you do. You got to spend the time doing that. And if you do it, then you can make an intellectual decision instead of an emotionally grounded decision, which is I'm not ready for change. All these things are bad. Well, what are those things? Well, now we've defined this stuff. Is it still bad? And if it's still bad, you're right. Don't do the deal with these people because they, they can't deliver what you want. They can deliver the money, but there's more to this than just the money. So that was a real by-product of living through, you know, an experience where you needed to have more clarity and you needed to have, and would want to have commitment, et cetera, et cetera, and title, et cetera, et cetera, which, you know, I think is really necessary to help people get through their anxieties. And it worked well when we did negotiate with J.H. Cohn, our partners had that. And as I say, for me, bureaucracy wasn't what I was interested in, but it's helping me in terms of guiding other people. So it's really very, very essential to have that transparency and clarity, especially on the M&A side and the P&E side, PE side, it's a whole different story. And then if you're two firms of comparable size, then you can really have a field day with everything, you know, responsibility, compensation, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Speaking of the kind of staying in and dealing with some of the bureaucracy and stuff, we've had Frank Longobardi on before, who would have been CEO of Cohn Resnick. And he kind of spoke about some of that and some of that process. Whereas I, you know, I maybe relate a little bit more to some of the decisions you made on that front. But certainly what you talk about here of having that sort of external sounding board and external, like, you know, in some facets, you're almost operating as a coach to some of these firm operators as well. I had some coaching when I was in a transitionary period trying to, you know, take this thing full time. And sometimes it's just a matter of, A, the person needs to have the expertise, but having someone who's not so deep in the weeds who can look at your business and what you're doing from a different altitude. And I've had someone ask me a series of very simple questions that I just was never in a position to ask myself that, like, completely changed the frame of mind. Right. So and for me, it wasn't even someone who was exactly in the space. Like I had coaching from Graham Barlow, who he, you know, he runs a very large agency of, you know, like a developer agency. But just he's been through all the phases I've been through and a bit of a serial entrepreneur. And he was really able to distill everything down into these super simple questions to get to the bottom of me unlocking the answer for myself. And it it's surprising. It's very, very surprising how much value that extra person can add, which I think is is really cool. So also for a little bit of context here, what type of firm are you are you typically working with? Because I imagine there's often a sort of threshold that which people start to ask themselves these more like existential questions or like where they want to reinvent their firm. So what stage is that normally? Well, I think I would answer the question with particular attributes. One being former practicing CPA, I'll give some data attributes. And that is that I find that firms that have 20 to 50 people are the bread and butter type of situation for me on a day in and day out basis. I work with firms that have 50 to 150 as well. But it's in that corridor that you begin to really get extremely uncomfortable and you need to figure it out before something hard happens to either your firm because a client can't be serviced properly and it's a great client and it's not a small client or you can't retain your people or there's a life circumstance that somebody can't deal with all the tension that goes into it. So I think to the credit of technology, there are so many ways to be more efficient and to be more responsive. But those firms in that 20 to 50 space, they can't get out of their way to do the implementation in a way that is going to be properly effective for them. So it's not that they don't rationally get it, they actually do and they sit back and they say, this stuff is all great, but is it practical for us to do this now? That's the ideal situation where somebody sits back and says, we need someone to help us sort it out. And when you're in that sphere of firms, you will. And especially if you're at that 50 person firm, those firms are getting phone calls all the time from bigger firms about acquiring them, because at a 50 person firm, you're well over 10 million or you better be over 10 million in volume. And that's like the platform firm that these big firms want. And oftentimes, they're forced to be provocative that way because they're getting these calls and most CPAs, they'll take conversations, they'll take, you know, because it's a learning experience and their attitude is, if they're willing to throw a ton of money at me, why am I not going to talk to them? And, you know, that's a good reason to take the meeting. It's certainly not the right reason to do the deal. So I think that that is the right contour. And in the smaller size, they actually can be more nimble. They can actually make things happen differently. We're at 50 people. It's hard to be as nimble. That's when you require, you know, some infrastructure that specifically would address your HR piece. And it's got to be bigger than just recruiting. It's about career development. It's about career growth and interactivity within your own internal community and really creating a fertility that can get people functioning as a team and wanting to be there at 20 people. There's a limit to how much of that infrastructure you're going to build because the economics may not be there, but you actually have more flexibility, I think, on the service model than you do at the 50 person level. So that's where I would say, you know, is the ideal situation. And then the bigger ones, you know, there's just so many things that they have on their roadmap. They're much more focused because they do have the infrastructure to keep them focused. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the areas that I definitely want to kind of double click on here, my area of focus being what it is. But, you know, where you talk about compensation, I think particularly for like a deal going through, like for an acquisition perspective, you know, there's there's many different compensation philosophies out there. So, like, how do you coach firms through assessing a fit when it comes to the acquiring firms models compatibility with with the firm culture of the acquiree? So it's it's very complicated. And I'm not saying that to make me look good. It is very complicated. And, you know, you can relate to that. You live and breathe compensation. But we have to look at this in several different tranches. There's the compensation for the partner group or the owner group. And then there's the compensation group for the next tier. That's the aspiring group or the group that somebody hopes will aspire to become, you know, a leader in the firm. And then there's the rank and file. So and realistically like that aspiring partner group is, you know, you could assign a lot of the deal value to them, because typically when you're when you're trying to establish these deals, like having succession who can realistically take over and continue the growth trajectory. So not just succession in terms of the execution of the work, but succession in terms of business development, leadership, training, things like that. I think a lot of the deal value goes to them. So, like, they're a group that, yeah, you definitely need to make sure you're you're dealing with properly. So let's now let's go to the you know, the favorite topic of the last couple of years, which is PE. And when you look at your prototypical firm and let's say it's a partner group that's got somewhere between five and and eight partners in it, you know, the right group that somebody some PE organization is going to want to have is going to have at least three younger partners in there. And, you know, probably, unfortunately, three partners who are close to retiring and then something in between. And so the fly in the ointment for these transactions are those younger partners who aren't seeing the kind of future that they would like to see. Now, that doesn't mean that the current firm situation is ideal and they would tell you, no, let's keep it the way it is. But they can't see the compensation and the upscale as being the right thing for them. And the PE firm wants the clients, but they need those three younger partners to stick around. So this is where you have to be able to create a bridge that's going to be a good working bridge. And some of the PE organizations have it and some of them aren't prepared for it. You know, it's not something that their background has supported when they've gone out and acquired manufacturers and distributors, et cetera, et cetera, and dentists and doctors and whatever. This is a very different model. So the PE one in particular is a hard one for these younger people, especially the PE ones that are solely PE roll up generated versus the CPA firm that already has PE infused. Now you're going to see comp systems that have a flavor of what it was when the larger firm stood on its own and they begin to create a model with their PE partner that will make that younger generation say, wait a minute, that's good. That's something I can relate to. That's something I've always told my partners we should have, but we don't have. So I think on the comp side, there is some advantage there. And that's not to say I'm weighing one way or the other, but there is some advantage in that history and clarity, um, for those younger people and for the partners who are the more senior people, look, they're going to get a ton of money. That's the, the exciting motivation. And, you know, for the next several years, they're going to take a haircut, but they figured it all out and they're much better off. It's that younger group of people. So on the PE side, you definitely have to keep the younger people and on the non PE transactions. Now you can be much more creative and, and deal with the things that are going to incentivize and motivate. So long as the younger person thinks that they are legitimately going to have the opportunity to achieve, then they will do well in these more creative and more definable compensation systems. The problem that many of the larger firms have had in terms of their dialoguing with the younger people is there's a comp committee and the comp and it's closed comp and which is good that because that makes a lot of sense. But at the same token, is that comp committee articulating to the younger partner what they need to do? So next year they make 20% more or 15% more that that's where the younger people who oftentimes are not involved in the negotiation have to be involved in the negotiation because that understanding how that's going to work, even though the comp committee will rotate, there's always going to be somebody around there for a longer period of time. Even if it's the managing partner who's normally, you know, on a longer tenure, these younger people have to have that opportunity to understand it and to weigh in with it. So in a typical deal structure where you're not talking about PE, you're just talking about a larger firm acquiring a smaller firm, it would be common for the larger firm to say to all the partners, look, for the first two years, your comp is going to be defined. You don't have to worry about the comp committee because you're going to say they don't know me, et cetera, et cetera. But how are we going to define that? Is it if you do the same volume you did last year, we'll pay you what you did last year? Is it got to be, if you do what you did last year, plus 10%, then you got to do that? Or is there going to be a bonus pool for you guys? And how well will you reward us? So even if you define our comp for two years, and let's make it simple, you did 5 million last year, and you took out $2 million, we'll pay you the same too. What if we do five and a half million this year? What if we do four and a half million dollars? How is that going to translate into what happens to that ownership group? Spending the time to define that is really important. Should the acquirer have some level of discretion? There's no doubt about it. But at UC Ferguson, the people who are selling need to have some defined element to it so that they're not caught off guard. It's not a matter of fairness. It's a matter of business smarts to do that, because now you're going to motivate people to do what you want. So take the time up front to do that. In a traditional transaction, people may be getting some money up front, but they're waiting a good number of years to get the rest of their money. So compensation is critically important to them. And compensation ties back to authority and responsibility, which gets back to this concept of what's my job? What am I going to be doing? In some situations, it's a piece of cake. Somebody says, we're bringing your firm in and you've got a great firm. But one of the reasons we're bringing your firm in beyond the fact that you've got a great firm is you're the smartest estate planning guy we've ever met. And we're going to put you in charge of estate planning for the entire firm. And because of that, this is what could happen to you. Well, that's an easy situation. It's the more aligned person who may not have those unique features, which are more common. Offices don't have specialists who are the best in everything. So you have more people who are in the average to a little bit above average. How are they going to do better? And I think that that's critically important. And structuring stuff for the younger group, very important. So they can tell the aspirants, this is going to work out for all of us. Because if the aspirant hears it from the most senior partner, they're going to question it. They're going to say, you know what, you've got an edge here. You're doing this so you can be sure you got your exit. But if the younger guy tells it to him, who's not going to have that exit immediately, now you've got the ability to build the retention, which is really, really significant. And this is where I think the younger partner group has to have a say in conversation as to how you're going to be building compensation for these aspirants as they move forward. And that doesn't mean the firm should change its policy because they just picked up a three million dollar firm. What it means is they need to understand that three million dollar firm that they just picked up or about to pick up. And this is where not enough time goes into the transaction. Yeah. So they study realization till the cows come home. Yeah. So ultimately, like what needs to happen is like the acquiring firm, I mean, a needs to actually properly position themselves to be a proper acquirer. Right. Like one of the one of the big complaints I've had over partner comp at a lot of larger entities is it's a bit of a black box. And if it's like I'm a CPA firm partner and I'm having trouble understanding what you're trying to tell me on this compensation, like that's not good. A not not only am I like maybe not understanding where. things are going to lie and whether this is a good thing for me or not. But B, like the whole point of compensation is to drive a behavior, right? Is to create an incentive structure, to create alignment, to create the behavior that you're looking for. And so if you don't even understand the behavior that's expected of you to drive compensation, then that's going to be a huge issue, right? So I think on the, on the lower, like on the more junior partner side, or even like, you know, senior manager managers who are on track to become partners in the future, that's a big piece of it. And I like what you said about giving them a voice at the table, because oftentimes that's not really happening in these deals, right? It'll be like the senior partnership group, the like, we control, whatever, call it two thirds of the votes anyways. So we can green light this deal without necessarily looping in some of the other people. And so we're just going to go ahead with this deal. And that might compromise a lot of things on that front. So I think we've covered the kind of junior partner or partner aspirant side of things really well. One of the things that I find super interesting on the senior partner track is this kind of change in valuations that's happened, right? So we spoke about this offline before recording, but like, how often do you see deals get tripped up by legacy deferred comp or retirement obligations? And what are the questions, you know, firms should be asking about those before signing on? Particularly as it pertains to the senior partner group, right? Because they may have some predefined type of internal valuation for partner buyouts to occur. And there may have been a buyout the year before the deal happens where a partner took that predefined package of, you know, 1.2 X revenue that they're responsible for times their ownership stake or whatever that is. And there could be a lot of sour grapes there, right? So this is not an uncommon situation at all. Um, and let's break it down a little bit. One, let's go with a fellow who merged his practice into a bigger firm. And three years later, the bigger firm sells off to some giant and the dollars are not insignificant. And like you say, he sold it off for 1.2 times and now there's two times, three times some insane multiple that's going to be there. The world has become so much smarter now because of all the PE stuff that's going on, it's pretty common that when the smaller firm is negotiating that first transaction, there's a provision that says within X number of years, it's not open-ended, it could be two years or three years. If, if this acquirer sells to the giant within two to three years, then we participate in the further ups that took place because the valuation was higher than my valuation. And the question is, what's that negotiated number? It wouldn't be Perry pursue dollar for dollar, but it's going to be something that is going to give them the opportunity to ride on the escalator. That is not an uncommon thing. And if you're not getting that kind of guidance, that's very unfortunate because that's really important because there's just a growing community of PE and family offices who are hungry for opportunities who are going to pay big dollars for it, whether it's worth it or not. So in that case, the fellow merging in needs to, or the group merging in, I should say, needs to provide for it in the deal document for a two to three year window. That's one thing. Then you have the situation where let's say they, there was no interim transaction. I retired two years ago. I'm a partner in the firm and now the firm decides to merge into whoever it may be. And I'm locked into a deal that, you know, it's, it's, if it's a old and cold partnership agreement, the guy's out of luck that that's really what happens. He's locked into his agreement. Now will the acquirer come to him or her and say, we might like to pay you off sooner and, you know, make that whole thing more intriguing to this, this retired partner that could happen. And I won't tell you what doesn't happen because oftentimes they don't want that debt. They just want to say to the group, we're going to give you this money. Let's arrange for a, a payoff. And that could make somebody very happy. And sometimes they'll work through it as being a capital gain transaction versus, um, a deferred comp transaction. Cause at the end of the day, the current partner group has an obligation to this guy. They don't really own their, for their whole piece, their pieces sort of, you know, leveraged by, by the, the other person. So I will tell you that that is not an uncommon thing, but there's no, there's not an obligation to do that at all. Um, and so these are the realities that go on. Now, if I were creating a partnership agreement from scratch and, uh, having to counsel somebody, you got to do it based upon the world we live in. And it should allow for something that says, Hey, no different than the guy who merged in and there was a stage transaction. I've agreed to these terms, but if you're not going to sell this off to somebody else and you're going to make more money, I want a piece of that. That would be a smart thing to do, but you have to be prepared. Well, let's say the firm doesn't do so well and you have to sell it off and the firm is less valuable. Yeah. Now what you can't have it only one way. So if you're going to get the ups, you got to take the downs. And so I imagine a lot of this kind of discussion around sort of partner comp and all that, I mean, with private equity deals, we're usually seeing rolled equity being maybe a little bit more of an answer to some of these issues. But like, is this all a new problem or did this just take a different shape maybe back in 2010 when you were early, uh, you know, when you were starting kind of with Optimum? I think that what we're dealing with right now is the unknown of the new player. In 2010 and 2015, there, there was no PE player out there. There was the conventional CPA firm doing it and each conventional firm had their own way, but there was no unknown. It fit into a certain box when it came into, um, partner comp and the deal terms, whether you were in the left corner or the right corner, all these pieces fit into some box. Now you have this PE player who hasn't been around long enough to win the knowledge factor and there is a level of guardedness, you know, they, they each compete with each other to get these CPA firms and, and they don't want the other one to know what's, what's making their plan more unique and I get it all. So I think that the PE side has created all kinds of conversations. And when you take the role of equity, forget about all the economic consequences and the tax conversation. You're, you're really saying, I believe, I believe that the next step is going to work and we're going to ride this, et cetera, et cetera, and it's going to just continue in three, three flips from now, who knows who we own, where if you're now, if you're doing a deal, if a $2 million firm is going into a $10 million firm, could it happen? Yes. But in the old days it was like, no, there was no question. I always know that my check was going to come from XYZ and that's the way it is. And we were good. So this, it is a more unique, uh, type of thing to the current time period. But I will say this. I think that we are now at a point where there are plenty of firms saying no to PE because they have question marks in their head, but they recognize that they need to grow and they're going to grow through acquisition or through creating some tuck-ins into their own firms. And they are going to use compensation to get people excited and motivated. And build the independence with a wider group of people who can have a lifestyle that they didn't have prior to. Let's be very real here. There's going to be an amazing number of retirements in the CPA world over the next 15 years. And it's a great business for so many reasons. And younger people are going to want to redefine how the entrepreneur component works. And part of that is going to be that we work less. We work less hours. We may make more money. And I see this whole cycle that they are now in control. They have the ability to define an economic climate, and that's going to require a whole different concept of compensation. Very different. PE will never compete with that. And control means a lot and flexibility means a lot. And you get there when 10 of you are making that decision, not when some board is telling you that. It doesn't mean it's not a good decision for certain firms, but younger people want to have control and they want to have more breathing space. And I think this is so exciting for the future that we're going to see a new breed in a new way. The toys and tools, the products, there's still going to be tax returns and financial statements. Um, and somebody teaching us how to, you know, follow the flow of information, but it's the way we behave. And in turn, the kind of client, because the clients are going to be younger too, that are going to want that in their accountant and in their advisor. They're not going to want to have somebody who can't relate to them. So I think we're on the cusp of some major transformation. Um, and I'm, I'm very bullish on this profession. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think like private equity coming into the space has maybe caused the realization and like raise the bar of, of investment, uh, requirement within a CPA firm. And I think that that's very interesting where you talk about this new breed. And I think there is going to be a little bit of a trade-off here now between the historical normal of operating a firm, which is optimizing everything around partner distributions between now, I think we've introduced enterprise value to the equation. And so there's going to be a little bit more reward for things like balancing compensation while potentially building a war chest to be able to participate in some of this firm consolidation and acquisition of smaller firms. I think there's going to be reward for firms who are willing to place bets basically, and, and be a little bit more aggressive, maybe, maybe consider some debt financing to acquire firms and things like that. Right. I think, I think again, we've, we've sort of introduced enterprise value as a metric, which I think previously maybe was not the case. It was all about partner distribution. So I think that's very interesting. And, you know, for people who are looking for help navigating through that IRA, uh, I think you, you are a great option for them. So let us know. I mean, I'm going to link all your contact information in the description, but let us know, like who is the ideal person who should be getting in touch with you here? I think number one, the ideal firm would be firms that have anywhere between 20 and 75 people that that would be number one. And it would be a firm that is very focused on return on investment, that they recognize that people's time is very valuable and that they want to be able to create a world where people can feel gratified by what they do. So I think that those are very telltale pieces of information. And I think that the right person or the right firm is the firm that wants to have a sounding board who is aware of what's going on and who can give them state of the art information to be sure that they really have options, that they're not doing something because they think they're forced into a corner. Oftentimes I start a relationship with somebody who thinks their only choice is to merge because of some difficult situations and it ended up not being their choice. Was it their best thing to re-engineer the firm? That's exactly what we'll do. We'll re-engineer it and we don't have to put ourselves in the corner because there were some really good stuff there. So I, I say that these are people who are not satisfied with the status quo, who understand that these are complex decisions and it's not something you do by reading a book and taking a checklist. It's a conversation with an expert who eats, lives and breeds it, who can cut through all the stuff and make sure their eyes are open with 20-20 vision. That's what I'm looking for. Somebody who really wants to get the right perspective so they can make the best decision they can. There's no, not about making the right decision or the perfect decision. It's about making the best decision. Very well said. And yeah, I'm a firm believer in the perspective of outsiders. Like I think there's a little bit of like an 80-20 rule in place there where, you know, like you've spent decades and decades and decades, uh, becoming someone who's been through all this, understanding the landscape, understanding the levers that actually work. And so, you know, while you would be a very costly hire, they can get a good chunk of the value at the critical moment where they need it for much less than the price of, of, you know, trying to onboard like a full-time partner who's been through these before. Right. So, um, yeah, I'd highly encourage people to get in touch if this resonated with you and I thank you very much for taking the time to record today, Ira. I hope we can do it again soon and I'm very appreciative. You're terrific to talk with. Thank you.