Private equity is a solution to many accounting firm problems — but not for all accounting firms. Allan Koltin of Koltin Consulting Group dives into who might be a good fit for PE, and what they can expect if they do.

Transcription:

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Dan Hood (00:04):
Welcome to On the Air with Accounting. Today, I’m editor-in-chief Dan Hood. As hot topics in accounting go, it doesn’t get much more incandescent these days than private equity, but in a lot of discussions of PE, there’s often a lot more heat than light. So here to shed some light on private equity and what it means for accounting firms is Allan Koltin. He’s the CEO of the Koltin Consulting Group. He’s advised on and seen the insides of many of the most prominent PE deals in the field, and in many ways, he’s the guy who introduced private equity to accounting and vice versa. Allan, thanks for joining us.

Allan Koltin (00:33):
Dan. Thank you so much. Great to be with you again.

Dan Hood (00:36):
Yeah, I should also mention that you are a co-chair of our PE Summit, which is happening on November 20 to 21st in Chicago. So if you like what you hear over the next 20, 25 minutes, Allan will be there to talk more. And if you don’t show up for the rest of the sessions because it’s going to be good stuff, there’s going to be a lot of PE firms and accounting firms and deal makers and advisors to help answer more of the questions that we’re not going to be able to get to today.

Allan Koltin (00:59):
I can jump in on that one. If you don’t mind. You better hurry up and get a seat before it’s sold out. I mean, I just want our StubHub and the prices are off. It’s like Taylor Swift’s coming to town only. It’s Dan Hood coming to Chicago,

Dan Hood (01:12):
And we will not honor scalped tickets. This is a Billy Joel type approach to things. We keep all the best seats reserved so that the scalpers can’t get ’em, but yeah, no, it is actually, it’s a good point. It is. Spaces are filling up, so make sure you get yours. It’s going to be a great event. And this is in many ways our talk today is going to be a little bit of a preview of that, right? Because as I said, you’re one of our co-chairs and you’re going to be talking there and sharing your wisdom, but here we want to get a little preview of that, and I kind of want to start with what may be a very basic question, but that’s what kind of accounting firms, when we talk about coming into the accounting profession, what kind of accounting firms should be thinking about working with private equity? What problems is PE looking to solve and what, so the firms are looking at ’em saying, Hey, I’ve got this problem or this issue, or I want to do this. Which ones make it right to talk to pe?

Allan Koltin (02:00):
So not everything comes in one size. There’s different wants and needs. I think a firm that has a great story to tell that needs capital to take their business to the next level, whether that’s the transformation of the services, it’s the technology platform. It’s a better way to attract, retain, and grow talent if they’ve got strong organic growth. PE loves organic growth. If they have great leadership, if they’re uber profitable, all of those things are on the, what I call marriage checklist of private equity. What they’re not looking for is to fix a problem of a firm that isn’t that good. When you look at all the deals that have happened now, and what is it, it’s been three years, three months and three days.

(02:55):

Most of those firms, as the saying goes, cleared customs. They were ranked by accounting today as the best place to work. They were ranked as a fast growing profitable firm. They’re on the accounting today. What’s the thing you do with the managing partners? The elite? Oh, the MP Elite. Sure, the MP elite. It’s a lot of best in class firms, and if they don’t do private equity, it doesn’t mean they’re not best in class. They’re still best in class. There’s not a one size fits all. So the opposite of what I’m saying is firms that aren’t profitable probably should take a pass because as you know, when you dummy this down, the way they come up with the enterprise value is they’re taking a portion of your compensation, you’re turning it over, it’s called excess profitability, and you’re creating NewCo and you’re getting rollover equity in a new business. If you’re not uber profitable, it’s not going to work. And oftentimes the PE firm will call me and say, Hey, Allan, we’re going to bow out on this firm because we went through their numbers and they think quartiles, they’re in the bottom quartile, they’re in the bottom. 50% of earnings per partner,

(04:10):

Probably not going to work.

Dan Hood (04:12):
So that comes to some of that’s that issue of right of people tend to think whatever a partner takes home is whatever they take home, but it’s really, it’s two things, right? A depart takes home a salary or whatever you want to call it, a draw, whatever, and then they also take home sort of retained earnings from the overall firm and with a PE deal, those are usually split out. I mean, that’s sort of what we’re talking about here is

Allan Koltin (04:30):
Frame that it might be so easy just to take a $20 million firm. Let’s say that their EBITDA is 15% of 20 million, that’s $3 million. Let’s say they’re in a great fast growing market. They have great talent, great leadership, all those things. A firm like that in a competitive process today is probably going to trade at a eight to nine multiple, and there’s exceptions to everything, but that firm could be worth 27 a million dollars, and usually half of that is going to be paid as cash and close. The other half though is going to be for the most part, called rollover equity. And what we as accountants just struggle to get our arms around is that other 50%, that 13 point and a half million of equity, their projection is in five years, that’s going to be worth five times that number. But if you take five times 13 and a half, that’s 60.

(05:39):

I can’t do math anymore. 67 and a half million plus the first 13, that’s an $80 million deal for a $20 million firm, and I know when you hear the following, when it sounds too good to be true, it usually isn’t. Well, three years, three months, three days into this thing, it’s more true than not. So they’re looking to get best in class firms. That’s what they’re looking for. If you’re not profitable, if you haven’t grown in decades, if you’re a lot of old partners whose better days have passed and you’re maybe in a market that’s just not growing, don’t even think about it.

Dan Hood (06:21):
Gotcha. Well, this is one of those things that’s worth always worth pointing out because I think even in the regular old fashioned m and a world of accounting, there were lots of firms that just said, well, we’ll just merge on the assumption that someone really wanted to come in and hand them a bunch of money to solve their problems. That I think that’s, so it’s worth pointing these things out because a lot of firms think, well, this is a solution for me, but it’s only a solution for you if it also works for the other side of the deal, right? If it works for the pe,

Allan Koltin (06:47):
Yeah, the economics are so superior to the world. We know that that’s what everybody locks in on, but you always have to remind the firm, look, there’s three boxes and you got to check every box, the cultural fit. You’re happy now. So if you’re going to go into a place where you’re miserable or you’re not going to feel like the entrepreneur, don’t do it. The second box is the strategic fit. It’s the one that is the most important, I believe, because why combining us and them together, everybody says one plus one is three. How’s about one plus one equals 11? What can we achieve together that maybe we could achieve on our own, but it’s going to take a lot longer. So you have to check the cultural box simultaneous to checking the strategic box, simultaneous to checking the economic box, and it’s a multiple choice question. Then the answer is D, all of the above, but these are partnerships and you’ve written one of the best articles you ever put out I think, is that this functionality, the partnership model in a 10 partner, $20 million firm, anyone can say no, but sometimes no one can say yes.

Dan Hood (08:06):
Well, I mean, I want to dive a little further on that. There’s sort of, as we say, firms are looking at it and not necessarily realizing that there’s expectations from the other side. Are there other things that accounting firms don’t know about deals that they should be thinking about? Are there aspects of ’em that often come as a surprise maybe to the firms you’re talking to?

Allan Koltin (08:23):
Yeah, and I want to be real careful on this because there’s just like, there’s great accounting firms and there’s good accounting firms, and there’s some, you sort of shake your head the beauty of public accounting, as long as you don’t do a bad auditor tax return, you can stay around for a long time, right? You just may not be a high performing firm for various reasons. I think private equity is very similar. There’s ones out there where they say, look, we have a day job. We don’t want to micromanage the crap out of you. We’re betting on your leadership. We’re a resource enabler. If you need capital, if you’ve got strategic questions about how to take your business to the next level, we’re really good at that, but we’re not looking to run a daycare center now, that’s one side of the ledger. There’s other PE firms. You know what? You’re giving up control. You work for the boss and they’re going to manage everything you do, and as the old saying goes, they’re spreadsheet junkies with Ivy League education, so they’re wicked smart. That doesn’t mean they’re not nice people, but as I advise my CPA firm sellers, if you’re thinking something but you’re not sure, don’t ask the question because if you ask private equity a question, it lends itself to a spreadsheet and an analysis, so leave it on a need to know.

Dan Hood (09:54):
Now, I think for some accounting firms, some accountants will say, well, that sounds great. I like a spreadsheet, but I think they use spreadsheets in a very different way than

Allan Koltin (10:04):
To answer your question about what the accounting firm needs to know, this is different than accounting firm on accounting firm. When we do due diligence, the accounting firm, an accounting firm deal, we’re making sure they actually do audits. We’re making sure they do tax returns, that it’s quality. It goes through a process. There’s a control over client acceptance. The people actually get along. They like each other. They have a great culture. Integration planning is technology. It’s the time and billing system. It’s the tax and audit software. When you go to due diligence with a PE firm, they bring in the outside third party, an independent firm that is going to kick the craft out of the numbers,

Dan Hood (10:49):
And

Allan Koltin (10:50):
They’re going to challenge the assumption we made in signing an LOI, which was proceeded by the IOI to me, which is sort of a back of a napkin at a high level. It’s like a compilation in accounting. We took information you gave, we put it together, we put our name on it here.

(11:08):

So the first sort of customs you have to clear is to get your partners on board that they’re willing to go for change and a lot don’t want to change. The second is we’re going to ask for blood. We’re going to ask for money. You’re comp, you have to give something to the cause, and some even have a menu for every dollar you give. Here’s what you, it’s the first cut of beef, here’s what you get back, and if you’re still standing after that, then you got to go through this Q of E, this due diligence where they’re going to look at every single piece of information they get their hands on and they may come back to you and reduce the offer.

(11:50):

Well, you said it was 3 million of EBITDA. We think it’s to which the managing partner says, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, I already got the bullets. My partners have their deal sheets. They’ve already spent the money. They bought the house. You can’t reverse this. Some call this re-trading, some call it bait and switch. I don’t know that any of these firms intentionally do that because I think reputationally, they’d become known as those firms and people would stay away from them. And then you get, if you’re still standing after all that, the fourth Libra you have to clear is the partnership agreement is silent on the sale of a business. How do we allocate it? Is there an ownership structure? Does capital matter if there isn’t? Are we taking one’s comp divided by the total comp? Are we looking at seniority years of service? And all too often the answer is yes, all of the, so some have a very specific allocation mechanism and some don’t. We call it blue ocean, it’s the wild west. Let’s go figure it out. And then sometimes even though we have a specific cap table, it would give to disproportionate a number to maybe some of the founders or exiting people, and we have to sort of coerce them a bit to give something back, make this good for all

Dan Hood (13:19):
I, all of that’s going to be right. Every firm’s going to be different in terms of how those deals work in terms of the numbers that they’ve got, their numbers, and then the numbers that the PE firm’s due diligence turns up. But then also their structure and their cap table and all that sort of stuff is

Allan Koltin (13:33):
At the end, it’s a chain letter. It’s almost like the accounting firm has to help the private equity firm, the people leading the engagement from the P firm, they then have to take it to their investment committee and get approval there, and then the investment committee is going to take it and they may have other limited partners coming in. So in anticipation of that, they ask every question you can ever imagine. I remember sitting in a meeting with, call it a top 15 firm, and the PE firm was asking questions about 2008, what happened in 2009 and 10? And we’re like, really? Well, there was a recession, right? I said, oh, no, no, no. We know that We just have to be able to answer the question in case somebody asked. So I would’ve thought there’s a statute of limitations, like if you want to go back three years, I’m fine, but 5, 10, 15, come on.

Dan Hood (14:33):
Right?

Allan Koltin (14:33):
Lucky it was a bad time for everybody. Let’s not get into

Dan Hood (14:36):
It. Well, I mean a lot of these things, what you point to, you talk about that one person is going to look at as bait and switch. Another person just looks at as this is our due diligence process. PE firms do this all the time kind of thing. And I think that’s an interesting thing to bear in mind for accounting firms is that when you merge with another accounting firm, even though they may be very different, they may be much larger, they may be call more successful, but they may be bigger and have all kinds of other things going on. They may be somewhat different from you, but they’re still an accounting firm. Whereas when you’re merging or selling to a private equity firm, they’re an entirely different industry with an entirely different set of norms. And it’s fascinating because I’m curious about this, and this is what want to go into for my next question is how does this, when you’re working with an accounting firm, you merge up, you expect to still be working kind.

(15:26):

It was an accounting firm. You don’t expect big changes. Your tech may change, some other things may change, but by and large, you’re still working for an accounting firm. How does it change when an accounting firm gets bought by a PE firm? I’ll give you an example of the sort of things we talk a lot of people about. They talk about the alternative practice structure where they’re splitting up the firm into a test and non attest, and the vast majority of firms you talk to will say the day after that happens, no one notices it. Everyone goes to the same offices. They work in the same way, they report to the same people. It’s basically a paper change. It doesn’t change anybody’s day to day, but there’s got to be some aspects of these deals that do change people’s day to day, whether it’s the change in compensation for the partners, some of it’s now equity, so your take home should be significantly different. What are the kinds of changes are there that an accounting firm that makes a deal should expect?

Allan Koltin (16:14):
Yeah, and Dan, it’s a great question. I would say for the line, the typical line partner that’s not in senior leadership, 92% of the world they knew before is going to be the same world after they suit up every day. They try to bring in business, they try to serve and own clients. They try to be technically razor sharp to be productive, to grow people. I mean, they were doing that before and they’re doing that after the senior leadership is probably the ones that deal directly with private equity. And there’s going to be a bit of a culture change in terms of budgets are no longer soft. Budgets are real. We set a number and we expect to get to the number, and we’re going to be doing continual check-ins on how we’re doing, what are the action steps, what are the integration things we should be doing to achieve that goal? There’s more discipline, as we like to say, we’re going to run the play that’s called. And for some, if they don’t really digest that coming in, it’s a little bit of a shock to the system.

(17:22):

So there’s a structural change, but the reality is everybody is still one big family. It’s no different than when you had a wealth management business in an accounting firm. It had to be a separate legal entity. It could be an RIA, it could be a broker dealer. I’ve got a separate set of business cards. The engagement letters are unique to that entity. The way we bonus people out or the way we allocate compensation is different. It’s a new entity. So I don’t want to use the term overrated, but I think when people are sort of new to understanding this, they immerse themselves in the alternative practice structure. And you say, look, they were doing audits before. They’re still doing audits after I feel the structure, which is over 25 years old and there’s never been a material breach because of the structure, good audit gone bad. For me, it’s a simple thing. When integrity meets economics, there’s integrity Trump economics, and when I talked to the CEOs of the LLPs that run the audit business, no one was going to tell them to look the other way in the old days when they had their firm, and no one’s going to tell ’em to look away in the new days until something happens. I’ll lean in that really integrity of the audit leader and their core values drive everything.

Dan Hood (18:53):
I mean, that’s an important thing. I mean, we’ve heard Barry Melanson, the AICPA has talked a little bit about this and sort of said, it’s really important that we make sure that stays because there’s no reason for PE to that industry has not been based on those public mission, public integrity questions. So it’s important for accounting firms to remind them of keep that front and center. But it sounds, as you say, it sounds like it hasn’t been a problem. Just something to keep in mind going forward. And I will say, I think, again, this isn’t to make PE deals sound bad or anything like that, but as you say, that accountability that comes with it, accounting firms are famous as we talked about, the problem with the partners, right? Famous for not being able to hold each other accountable. So when they find that someone else is more than happy to hold them accountable, I say it might be a little bit of a shock, at least at first.

Allan Koltin (19:43):
I’m trying to articulate so I can give a specific example. I think in the old days, if you want to join a country club, if you want to go golf, if you want to belong to some young CEO group or whatever it is, you just sort of did it. You were a partner, you had this entitlement up to a point to do what you want. Now you got to sort of prove point of purchase. Okay, that’s an investment, but what’s the ROI on it and why are we doing this? And they’re not doing it because they don’t trust your judgment. What they’re doing is let’s really put a plan around that to make sure we increase the probability of succeeding on that initiative. What’s the old adage? Ready, aim, fire. Most entrepreneurs and local, regional, even national firms, now it’s fire first. Then we’ll adjust our aim and then we’ll sort of put a plan together. At the end, it’s more process, more systems, more discipline.

Dan Hood (20:46):
But as you say, that’s all about guaranteeing a better outcome. The success levels should increase. So as I say, this is not a bad thing, it’s just something to be aware of.

Allan Koltin (20:55):
I get to serve as sort of the residents shrink with a lot of these larger CEOs and they’ll call me and I’ll look. I’m like, oh my God, it’s 10, 15 minutes and they’re just venting. And I’m like, oh my God, I feel terrible. I feel like I got you into this mess. He goes, whatcha talking about? I said, I don’t know. You sound really frazzling. You sound frustrated. Well, I am. I mean, it’s a whole level of stuff they want to ask and do I go, should we not have done this? He just, are you crazy? Of course we should have done this. It’s just more accountability, more proof of purchase that what we’re going to do is going to stand up.

Dan Hood (21:36):
It’s amazing. It’s fascinating stuff. I want to move away. We’ve been talking a little bit about how deals, what deals will look like, what will the impact will be on firms. I want to take a step back and look at sort of the overall landscape, but first we have to take a quick break. Alright, and we’re back. We’re talking with Allan Koltin, who’s, like I said earlier, in introducing him, he’s been on the inside of huge proportion of the biggest PE deals that we’ve seen and sort of the guy who brought PE into the accounting profession in the first place. We were talking about all the ways it might impact individual firms and the individual partner on their day, but I want to sort of take a step back and look at the profession as a whole and its impact there. You talked a little bit about PE firms going after the cream creme de la creme, right? The top firms, the best firms, the ones that really got their act together. And we, at some point in a different conversation, you had used the metaphor of at some point it’s going to look like the supermarket the day after Thanksgiving, right? The shelves will be bare. Nothing there is that, do you see that approaching a moment where say PE firms go, okay, yeah, you know what? There’s plenty more firms, but these aren’t the ones we want to buy.

Allan Koltin (22:44):
Yeah, so technically I call it Sunday night at the produce section. At the produce. There you go. Okay. Day after Thanksgiving better, but I can’t imagine somebody going to the grocery store the day after Thanksgiving. It’d be two full. Wouldn’t that Maybe the Saturday? I don’t know. Yeah. So the question is, there’s been a lot of what I’ll call low hanging fruit, Uber successful firms over the last three years. I mean, there’ve been over, I don’t know, what do you think over a hundred PE M&A deals. If you add in all the tuck-ins and everything that’s gone on, and then you look at the top 2, 3, 4, 500 list and you say, at what point does the music stop up till now? It’s sort of like the circle of life. They’re repopulating, but at some point there’s going to be a saturation in the market.

(23:41):

At first we had, as you know, the bigs on the bigs, top 25 PE and top 25 accounting. As you know, within the next six months, more than half of those firms will be owned. And I want to be really clear here that there’s going to be some firms that are never going to be owned and they’re going to be uber successful. There’s not one way to run a business, just you may have a different way of creating capital, that’s all. But now you’ve got the middle weights coming in. You’re starting to see some of these deals with firms that are a hundred million to 300 million, and now you’re seeing what I’ll call the welterweights private equity firms coming in, talking to firms of five to 50 million. And as you know, we’ve talked about this. You have on one hand the mothership concept, big firm, get the capital tuck in smaller, but you also have, as I call it, the roll-ups and come join us.

(24:35):

We’re going to be a federation of firms. Ultimately. We’re going to try to bring the band together, but it’s a bit of a softer landing and maybe you’ll have a little more autonomy for some level of time, and it’s a different vibe and it’s working. You got one that’s going to be 300 million already in two years. You got one that’s 165 million. You got two that are going to break the a hundred million. You got another one or two that are going to be 50 million. If I do my accounting today, top 100 math, you’re going to have, oh my gosh, 4, 5, 6 new names on that list as top 100 farms. And we’re just at the beginning of that cycle. So the big difference for me, Dan, is if I think back 25 years ago when the consolidators came in HR block, American Express, even CB to some extent, although they’re the lone survivor, it didn’t really touch the industry that deep. But this one, I believe when we look back on it, it will be deep penetration of many firms. And people say, well, where’s it going in five years? Well, it’s actually, it’s already starting the flip as we call it.

(25:52):

We’ll have our first major one in the next three to six months. We’ll probably have a second one a year after that, what was supposed to be a five to seven year journey. These early precincts, if I can call it, they hit the five to seven year plan in three years. And private equity is saying, you know what? I think we’ll take some chips off the table and do something like that. So when you look at other industries, and this is really important. When you look at insurance brokerage and wealth management and consulting and advisory and outsourcing, the flip, they’re in their third, fourth, fifth flip. That could be 15 to 25 years from now.

(26:33):

It’s hard for us mere mortals as accountants to think beyond that. So we’ve evolved from lab experiments, lab experiment, sort of working lab experiment, really working. Now, here’s the biggest caveat, and I hate to say this because I hate to be a bit of a downer. They’re not all going to be home runs. The first couple ones, maybe they’re grand slam home run, we’ll have some home runs. But if you are betting on firms, and this is whether you’re a mothership firm or a roll-up, and you’re average at best, just putting capital in an average firm’s hands doesn’t transform the asset test is still the same. One great accounting firm with great private equity firm with a great strategy alignment of the spend and investment and alignment of the goals. We’re all in this together. We own the same shares, let’s go do it. I’ll bet on that one all day long. But if there’s a fatal flaw coming in, maybe they have good organic growth, but they’ve never left home, they’ve never tried to expand beyond their geography. Maybe they’ve never done m and a. Maybe the legendary leader is actually in the final year, and can the newbie really take over? Does the next generation have the kind of game that the first generation, so let’s not drink so much of the water that we think every single one of these is going to be a home run. They won’t.

Dan Hood (28:01):
Well, that’s going to be interesting. I’m glad you brought the flip because it is, as you say, it’s coming up soon and there’s a lot of questions about who are they going to sell to. I think the only example I’ve ever heard of anybody in terms of flipping an accounting firm was in Europe, and the vague rumors were that what had happened was they kept half the PE firm kept half their investment and sold the other half to another PE firm. But it’s fascinating. We’re all sort of watching that. What’s going to happen with those flips? Lots of other people who might well be interested in owning a stake in an accounting firm, but don’t have the energy to go out and do what PE firms are doing. We’ve talked in the past about pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, and you can think of lots of other people who would find it an attractive investment to own, but don’t want to go build it themselves.

Allan Koltin (28:50):
Yeah, it’s sort of undefined. I mean, with the alternative practice structure and the ability to bring non CPA ownership, I don’t know, maybe Elon Musk is buying an accounting firm at some point, maybe Microsoft’s getting in, maybe some tech company we’re not even thinking of. I’ve given up trying to predict the future as we’ve talked about every day I get out of bed and what do I say? Never saw that happening, never saw that before. Each day has its own surprise of things we said, not humanly possible, and boom, they happen.

Dan Hood (29:26):
Right, right. Well, with that in mind and fully aware of that caveat that you’ve just given, you talked about 15, 20 years down the road, and no one will hold this to you. We won’t make you responsible for this prediction, but do you have any sort of thoughts PEs long-term role in the profession? I mean, is it going to be around forever or is you talked about the roll-ups of the late 1990s. CBIZ is the only one still around. Well, I guess UHY was one of those first alternative practice structures as well, but by and large, the accounting profession has sort of emerged from that relatively untouched. Do you think, are we looking at a similar thing here, or is it more likely to have had a real serious long-term impact on the field?

Allan Koltin (30:07):
Yeah, so you just asked two questions, Dan. So I’m going to split ’em out because they’re both so important and I’m going to push CBIZ out of the equation because I love CBIZ . But damn, those first five years were not good. There was a stock that was at 18 and all of a sudden it went to one in 2001 and almost got delisted. And today it trades at $70 a share, a mini Wall Street wonder within our profession. Took ’em a lot of years to figure that out. But they did. The others all went away and took losses on the sale. American Express took a loss when they sold the HR block. HR block took a loss when they divested of RSM and R, RSS M brought their firm back. The biggest difference, these PE firms had an approaching, this was one thing, and it’s bigger than anything. Why will this be good for the kids? Why will the 30 and 40-year-old want to do this?

(31:06):

And that’s what’s really playing on the big stage, is those younger kids are saying, if we stay like we are, we’re going to have to come up with the capital. Where does capital come in? An accounting firm? Either go to the bank and borrow the debt and mortgage your house. No one’s doing that. We’re not risk takers like that, but they are going to get the multiple bites of the apple over a period of time. So let’s fast forward 15, 20 years. Annual will be on a beach somewhere drinking mai tais or collecting our Social Security checks and what will look like private equity will still be in, there’ll be bigger private equity. What I will tell you is in the next three to five years, maybe even in the next one to two, some of these will be IPOs. So you will have publicly traded accounting firms. CBIZ won’t be the only one anymore. I would guess if we’re on this call in five, six years, a half dozen accounting firms that are owned will have gone the way of some type of IPO. So the future is beyond imagination. Wow.

Dan Hood (32:21):
But it’s fascinating. I mean, you say CBIZ is sort of an honorable exception all over by itself, but so you have half a dozen of, suddenly that’s, that’s not an exception. That’s a model that people can pick up on. It’s fascinating, as they said, we won’t hold you to that though. I may look at you at the beach and be like, Hey, where’s those IPOs you promised me 20 years ago? But otherwise, it is a fascinating topic. I wish we could talk a lot more about it, but we’re almost out of time. So I want to thank you for coming in and sharing all these insights. It is fascinating stuff, and we look forward to seeing what more to come.

Allan Koltin (32:52):
Dean and thank you. I want to thank you just for being you. I mean, you do so much for this profession. You advance our thought leadership. Anytime I can catch an interview, a podcast, hear you speak, whatever it is, and you’re always thinking, you’re like Wayne Gretzky, you’re not. Where the fuck is, you’re thinking where it’s going to go. And kudos to you and your whole team on everything you do for our profession.

Dan Hood (33:20):
Well, thank you. We appreciate it. Most of what we know we get from talking to folks like you, so it ends up being easy. We just have to listen more than we talk, and that works out well. But also, I would say, again, just a reminder, if everyone wants to hear more of what we’re talking about, more on more from Allan will be in Chicago November 20th and 21st for our Accounting Today PE Summit. We’re going to dive into a lot of topics we talked to today and some we didn’t get a chance to dive into because there’s so many different angles to this issue. But again, you can see Allan there. And for now, thank you again for joining us. We’ll see you hopefully late in November. This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today, ready to review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accounting today.com. Thanks again to our guest, and thank you for listening.