Scaling with Soul with Springline CEO, Tim Brackney

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Big Four transparency podcast. I'm very excited today to be joined by Tim Brakney, the CEO of Springline Advisory. Welcome to the pod, Tim. - Thanks, Tom, happy to be here. - Yeah, yeah, my pleasure. We had a great discussion online about being online, but off the record a couple of weeks ago, really got to know you, really enjoyed that conversation, and I'm happy to be bringing this to the people here. So to maybe start us off, do you wanna give us a little quick rundown of what Springline is and what you guys are kind of doing in the accounting industry here? - Yeah, I'd be happy to. So, Springline Advisory is a buy and build, private equity backed by Embell, we're backed by Trinity Hub partners. So we are in the foundational phase of building what we think will be a new kind of firm. I like to say something built with something special. And it's thinking about taking traditionally middle market firms that are successful in their own right, have strong leadership, don't really need to do a transaction, but recognize that coming together and founding a firm together, will be something that they would wanna lean into so they could move faster on things that maybe they wouldn't be able to get to on their own. And so we're in the first phase of that journey of evolving into one firm, and we've done nine deals, and it would be a combination of CPA firms and advisory firms. And ultimately, we expect to be a national and a global firm that has all of the capabilities inside our four walls and our clients will need. - Right on. And how did you personally come across the opportunity to be the CEO of Springline? Because you're not like planted there by the private equity group per se, you previously were like kind of in the professional services realm. I won't say accounting specifically, but you were the president and CEO of RGB, and so yeah, how did you come across this opportunity? - Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting. I don't have the, even though we're private equity backed, I don't have what I would say is the traditional background of most private equity CEOs. This is my first private equity venture, and I chose it, I think the opportunity itself presented itself and I'll get into that in just a second, but I think the reason why this was appealing to me, because it was about an opportunity to build something and build a firm. So I think a lot of times the concept of private equity is to sort of pull things together and then flip them, like that was not what either Trinity had or what I was really interested in doing. But the way that the opportunity found it was kind of, it's kind of a serendipitous. I mean, I started my career at Pricewater House. I was an auditor and then I worked after business school was in, was doing advisory, mostly middle market, and mostly BPO. And if you know anything about those firms, middle market BPO, especially in firms that are run by, that were traditionally run by audit partners, was probably not the right place, if that's the sort of course that I wanted to travel. And so I really quick for the listener. Can you explain what BPO is? Oh yeah, yeah, sorry, like, that business process outsourcing, I think that like, what I was doing, it just will date me a little bit. It was relatively new, at least that it was definitely newer in the middle market. Now that sort of BPO business process outsourcing feels like a lot of people have done it and have gone through a course of it. So yeah. I left there and went to work, as you pointed out, for a publicly traded spin out of Deloitte called Resources Global Professionals. And Ted was to stay there for two years. I stayed for 20 and I was the president and a cheap operating officer. And the opportunity came up because I had a lot of interaction with private equity both in, they had approached us a number of times and I was at RGP, I joined the board of KKR backed services company and right around the time that the tower broke made an investment in Eisner and Ampner, I started to get more reach out from private equity to try to, the general process is, hey, we're gonna test our thesis by talking to as many people as possible, had a few firms reach out to me about the opportunity to either join advisory boards, boards, or come in and BCO. And when Trinity Hunt and I connected, we had what I would say is a long conversation was like an 18 month conversation where we were really making sure that this was gonna be a good fit because I'm not a serial private equity CEO and my desire was to build something. And they're not, their form of buying build really spoke to me in terms of like trying to build, foundationally build something that will be for the future, the majority of their, 98% of their exits are to bring in other investors, which is the journey that we're on. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a narrative, the kind of buying build narrative that you're talking about here, around private equity's involvement, specifically in public accounting, that I think is a little bit misunderstood by kind of the masses and the accounting professionals outlarges. A lot of people know what they know about private equity and like you alluded to, they think it's like a quick buy, consolidate, strip everything out, juice for cash flow, and then sell type of transaction, but that isn't really the thesis here for accounting. And like I'd be curious for your input on this, but it feels like the thesis here is really just like, that this is a sector where there's a ton of opportunity to dig deeper, to broaden the services that we're offering. And it's very much like a growth thesis rather than like a company in decline that you're gonna juice a couple of years out of, and then sell. And so I think that probably makes these opportunities far more interesting, right? Is that like it's a growth thesis and it's probably a little bit longer term too, than just benefiting from the multiples arbitrage of sticking a bunch of $10 million EBITDA things together and calling it a $200 million EBITDA business. In this episode, we're covering how private equity is entering the accounting space through acquisitions. But just because you aren't backed by a massive fund, doesn't mean that your firm can't participate in acquisitions as well. That's where this week's episode sponsor, Live Oak Bank comes in. Live Oak Bank truly understands the unique needs of your accounting and tax business and specializes in providing customized financial solutions to support firms like yours. At Live Oak, they grow with your business and want to be your firm's financial partner. Whether you're buying, building, or simply looking to grow your accounting and tax firm, they will design a loan package that supports your business goals. Their accounting and tax lending team offers numerous financing options nationwide. Ready to achieve your business goals? Visit the link in the podcast description today to connect with a member of their team, member FDIC. Now back to the episode. - Yeah, I think you're right. I think most of the plays are centered around growth thesis. That certainly ours. ours is not barbarians at the gate, come and do cost synergies and try to get a quick flip. And I don't think that there are many who are sort of in the universe of private equity investments here. I will say that there's probably, I mean, private equity is not a monolith. You know what I think? - Yeah. - One of the first things that you start to learn is you start to think about if people have their own view of what it looks like based on things they've heard or experienced. But there's different players with different ideas about how to get to value creation inside there. But you know, while we all might be on a similar paths, we have, there are different, if I mix a metaphor, branches on the tree that I think that folks are after. We're certainly about bringing folks together on a journey to build a firm. And I think there are models that are more traditional, where you're a traditional acquire and there are models that are more sort of a lion's oriented where it's a group that comes together or I've centered around a back office. And so we're sort of in the middle of that pathway, what I think about it. - Yeah. And what was the kind of beginning of that journey like? That's something I'm very fascinated by. It's okay, there's a private equity investor. They develop some appetite to be involved in the accounting space and then they have a conversation with you and correct me if this path is wrong. But okay, cool, we've got someone who's willing to lead this and we believe we have competent leadership to run this, but where you part of the selection of the first couple of acquisitions or what do those early days look like for setting the tone? Because I know there are a lot of private equity investors that I've spoken with who they maybe have some capital at the ready and they're ready to get moving on this thing, but they're kind of stuck at the first step. What are we doing from here? So what did those early days look like? - Yeah, I mean, I think again, even in the universe, there are people that approach it different ways. There are models where you bring an executive on board, you have an executive in residence and together, you guys kind of hammer through a thesis and then try to find an initial investment. There are plenty of folks who've done that. There are others who will pluck professional executive leadership from other portfolio companies and then utilize them as somebody to kind of come do that. I think in my particular case, it was, and by the way, I really appreciated this approach, right? Like Trinity Hunt is a middle market private equity company. For me, that was super important because I wanted to make sure that they're, that they of course had enough scale to be able to operate and pull off a big buying build and certainly they have that. But I also liked the fact that they were small enough that all of their investments really mattered to them and that's not to say that even bigger firms don't have investments that don't matter to them, but I feel like with the engagement level that I've worked with on with them, that I can tell the import of all their investments, including the one that they made in Spring Life. So the way it kind of came together, that way their, they operate was, is that during this sort of 18 month conversation that I had with them, we were, they were talking to me about their thesis and what they saw in the industry. And at the same time, getting to know each other and kind of going through a thorough vetting process, mutual kicking of the tires. And as they, as we had, we had a lot of agreement in sort of what the high level thesis was gonna be, but then the actual like kind of taking thesis to putting it to strategy and then executing on the strategy was going to be with the CEO and the executive team coming in. And so what they, what they tried to do was make an initial investment and then sort of time that so that you could have the investment and the CEO sort of started around the same time, which is effectively what I did. I was a public company officer, so it had to, we had to wait a little bit of time to sort of make the window work, right? But that initial investment came first. I was, I actually spent a fair amount of time, even before I accepted it offer, talking to the folks in the initial investment, which was a CPA firm in Kansas, Mark Snellson. So I met their CEO and executive committee, and I recognized really quickly, that culturally there was gonna be a good fit and I wanted them to get to ask me any questions and make sure that philosophically we were on the same, that we shared the same values and that they understood the journey that we would be on together. And that was for me was a phenomenal process because there's a great firm and it was a great people. And we got an opportunity, even before the die was cast to get to know each other. So once that was done, I came on board and we quickly did another deal with a firm in Indianapolis right after that. - Okay. And what's changed from like deal making, like at the very beginning of this, which would have been I guess in early, or in kind of mid 2023 to now, because I think at the time, like it was still, you know, private equity was happening and accounting, but it wasn't like as ubiquitous, almost as it is now, has the kind of deal making process changed or like the readiness of firms or even like the valuation and how of things evolved since then. - Yeah, I mean, it's a really great question because it doesn't feel like that long ago, you know, that I started on this journey even myself. And then I looked back and I if I kind of zoomed out and thought about kind of how the world has changed, there's like a number of things to point to you. I think one of them is like honestly, like I mean, I would say like in 2023 was very nascent. There weren't that many folks in and we're making investments. I think there was a lot of like what we talked about earlier in the conversation where people were incredibly wary of private equity and there were a number of questions including like are they just gonna come in and control me or they're gonna slash costs and all those things and so like I think about if I was talking to what the conversations I was having with sellers in 2023 was almost to sort of demystify private equity to start before we could even get to like the thesis and why like what we were trying to build and, you know, like those types of things. And I think that over the last couple of years just because of the amount of deals that have been done throughout our profession, you know, at the sort of the large national global firms to some of the smaller local firms, people have recognized a couple of different things. One is that most people who are in this space aren't doing the synergized barbarians at the gate. I'm gonna control you from afar and then sell you off to the highest bidder. And secondly, this isn't a flash in the pan. Like this is an actual structural change in the profession and there are a lot of benefits to be have for that. And as a result of that, you kind of have to if you're taking, if you, and mostly these firms have a strategic retreat, you've probably been part of those, right? Like those, you have to include that in your strategy if you're thinking about the future of your firm. And so what I found is that the conversations in general have gotten easier because people are more curious and they're less worried about private equity in general but trying to understand kind of what your journey and flavor looks like. And that's where you wanna live. You wanna be in that place where people understand it. They may have decided that they wanna stay independent, but they don't have sort of foundational questions or really trying to figure out kind of where, you know, in a world where there's horses for courses, like what do you represent and where do I fit it, you know? And that's the discussion you wanna be in because I think there's a lot of different options out there, a lot of good options, but there are places where, you know, like if you think about the three things that we look for, it's like, you know, you have to have an economic fit and a strategic fit. Those are generally pretty easy to figure out. But the most important one for us is we need strong leadership and we need value and cultural alignment. So we do like cultural diligence surveys and things like that because of, because we are actually founding a firm and so those groups that come together, we have to be able to, we have to be able to meld. - Yeah, that was a very, a very cool kind of analogy that you gave me last time we spoke when we were talking about, it's like the one thing I wrote down and like bold from our last conversation is we were talking about these cultural surveys and really taking the time to kind of test that where you talk about the kind of, you know, the Whole Foods diet approach, where if you're looking to lose weight, you can lose weight quickly by dieting and eating two candy bars a day or you can kind of like make a lot of very health conscious kind of substitutions and maybe you won't lose weight as fast but it might be a little bit more sustainable. So yeah, like talk to us about that journey of, maybe like not grow, you know, particularly from the inorganic growth side of things, the growth by acquisition, but like the decision there that like we're not gonna go buck wild and acquire everything we can, right? We're gonna take a little bit of a more measured approach. Where I mean, it's not nothing, like nine acquisitions in two and a half years is still a good amount but like certainly you hear of many places with the scale of Springline who are doing, you know, one or two acquisitions a month. And so like what was that kind of discussion like? Like was that something that was agreed upon ahead of time or did you kind of come by that by, you know, some level of experience that you've had where you wanna be a little bit more cautious on that front? Because I think that that's interesting but from a private equity back or standpoint, like that's probably not an easy sell, right? Like where they maybe are like, listen, we wanna get in, get out in five years for some portfolios and that may not be the case here with Trinity Hunt but like to take the kind of slightly more measured approach. Like how did you kind of all get on board with that? - Yeah, I think it's a great question because you know there is like a, you know, when you put together a thesis, you attach financial goals associated with it. But then you know, you kind of go back to the candy bar thing. It's like not everything to reach a number is equal and we just know that we're on a long journey. We're not on a five year journey in five year, in a five, if you thought about the journey in five year increments, we may be bringing on different investors who are invested in building our overall, what we're trying to build overall for our clients and our colleagues. And so that, I think that was really the thing was to make sure that we were like, because that was what we were doing. If you thought it, if you made it to, you know, I'm a person who loves analogies. If you thought about it as a house, like we're pouring a foundation and we're building like the first floor and probably as important we're building the architectural drawings for, you know, for the next floors as well. And so as we start to think about who might the next investor be for us, it's important for us to be able to have a long runway so that people could understand what our value creation plans were and use that as a way to unify. And so what would you think about the one way that you can slow down the overall growth or get gummed in the works is to have a deal if you're coming together as one firm where it doesn't really fit. And so you're spending all of your time, you're not getting like, we use the term co-create because a lot of the things that we're doing is a co-creation process. And to be able to co-create, you need to have strong leadership who are invested in in making sure that we're taking steps forward as an enterprise and kind of growing toward that. And if you have, it's almost like if you make a bad hire, it can set you back. Imagine if you made a bad acquisition. And I think we all locked arms around the fact that in a people business on the journey that we're on, that you want to be very intentional about who kind of comes into your mix. We're not somebody who can fix broken firms right now. That's not what we will eventually want to be able to do things like that, but really what we're looking for, it makes the considered set probably a little bit smaller, is that we're looking for firms that are, like I said, are successful in their own volition that don't need us, but choose to join and be a part of this journey. And so that makes it smaller. It makes the process a little bit longer, but I think for us, it's a little bit of the slowdown to move fast. And this really, really important form of faith, you want to make sure you've got the right folks in here stacking hands and moving forward. And I kind of look at it and say that, like if we decided to move faster, we'll move as fast as we can without compromising our principles and making sure that we don't push past something that inserts somebody into our culture that doesn't fit. Yeah, I think that's a great approach, honestly. And then beyond that sort of maybe cautiousness in that process, you alluded to each kind of private equity backplay, having their own unique kind of flavor and journey. What would you say the unique flavor of Springline is? Well, I think early on, I said that because we're building a firm and we're trying to build a different kind of firm, we use the phrase we scale with Seoul, like the whole principle of joining, and especially if folks who are going to join in any of these private equity plays, one of the big reasons is access to scale, right? But I think many of us have been places where the access to scale comes with a heavy penalty or a trade off, right? And so in some ways, if you build the lens scale with Seoul, what you're saying is we put the humans first. And so we consider the humans and the decisions that we make to were transparent about the decisions that we're making and why. And you have to have that lens that if you bake it into your cake early, it'll become one of those things that becomes the defining piece of what you're doing. And that's also one of those things that is the thing that allows us to determine the velocity of the journey that we're on and how wide the aperture is in terms of the people that we want to join. Most of the people who are considering joining us, they're grappling with kind of staying independent versus they've made a decision to join and then they're talking to a bunch of different people. There's of course, we're part of those processes as well and there's many great firms to be had from there. But like, generally, that's what, that's kind of what you're looking for is like, you're looking for those, you're looking for that firm that says, hey, this speaks to me. What's important to me are my clients and my colleagues. Those are my stakeholders. When I'm making a decision, it can't just be for purely for financial, you know, as an example. It has to think about the opportunity for our people and has to think about increased capability and service for our clients. And so with these firms who are grappling with that, right? And that's like, basically every firm who hasn't done a deal at this point of like, oh man, like, yeah, there's independence and then there's what will unlock here. What is it that you're finding that usually ends up kind of tipping the scale ultimately in the deals that you are winning? - Yeah, I mean, there's a few things. And I'll say a couple of things and some of these may be unique to us and some of them may be things that others are doing as well. I think the first thing is, when you think about what we're doing, we have, we're very clear up front that, that while we're merging to one firm that we recognize that there people could be on different journeys. And so for instance, you know, if you're in a market where it's important to have your, keep your mark for a long time, I'm like, keep it as long as it makes sense commercially for you, right? Like we'll decide later on that that shouldn't be the issue, that shouldn't prevent you from wanting to join, right? So you try to make sure that you keep the main thing, the main thing, like we're not militant about saying, this is the playbook that we have. And by the same token, you don't make everything bespoke, but you're very clear up front and being very transparent inside of like, hey, come join this journey with us and here's sort of the decision points that you have for yourself. Number two, I think the concept of, we have what I think is a really important body for myself that I work with very closely, which is an advisory council of the, usually the leaders of the scaled firms are a big part of the decision-making apparatus that we have, particularly for making big strategic moves in the velocity and pace of that change. We know that we're going to be, you know, coming together, so there's things that are gonna be common, right? But we also know that the rate and the pace of that change and how that's rolled out can be really important in terms of making sure that you minimize business disruption and bring everybody along on the journey. So that group works closely with myself and my team to make sure that we don't get over our skis on that because we are trying to, we're operating at the same time as changing, right? Like, I mean, that's an important distinction. The other thing I would say is, I think, and this was, this was for me one of the key reasons to, one of the reasons that I also joined and worked with THP was because I know the importance of ownership mentality. And I think it's sort of old capital structures, that capital structure mostly is, you become an equity partner at a certain point. And then that's when you get access to information and other things like, we give equity out to the level of director and senior manager and hope to open it quickly to the level of manager. And the idea is that we want more people to understand and be able to draw straight line from the things that they do every day to the things that the enterprise is doing. And so in service of that, we give out, we give out SARS annually, and it's based on the recommendation of the partners of those firms that goes through advisory council and I'm working with our chief people officer and CFO. And as part of that, and I thought I'd gotten away from this being a public company officer, doing investor calls quarterly, we do my CFO and I, and maybe a surprise guest or two, we'll have a session twice a year where we're going through results and talking about share price and taking questions. And we also release results quarterly and share price quarterly because we want people to come along and understand the journey that they're on. So anybody who has, anybody who's a shareholder has access to that information. - Yeah, I mean, many of the things that you've come by just by talking about this are, I think you've just divulged half of what I presented on that the private equity summit, right? Is like move transparently, talk about your strategy, be open with people about it. Like we're accounts, we're not stupid. We know that like we're building towards this thing and actually having an understanding of the path ahead, I think is a very, very underrated thing to let people in on. And then the kind of equity piece, I find that really interesting plus the conversation around, or sorry, phantom equity basically, but anyways, it's substantially the same. And then having open and honest conversations about that and treating staff almost as investors. So you alluded to senior manager and up getting these SARS and then potentially that including managers in the future. When you're communicating these internal results and doing those kind of like almost public company, quarterly earnings, discussions, are you sharing that only with that group of people who hold the SARS? Are you sharing that with the entire company to allow it to be aspirational to be like, oh, if I stay here, I'm going to start benefiting from this. - You know, I think this is interesting because I learned this from, I think in our last discussion, how we have done it right now is just had it for, had limited it to shareholders, but I think as a result of our discussion, I started to think about this too. I mean, like, and by the way, I'm very used to full transparency. If you're a public, if you're a listed company, it's like, it's all out there all the time. And, you know, like I like the idea of people having access to the information. What I want to make sure of is that we're giving people information in the right context. And so, you know, our goal would be to have everybody who's inside the four walls of Springline be come along for us on this journey, whether you're a shareholder or not. And to your point, aspire to be a shareholder and for us to open up more pathways for people to be owners. And so, the trick is to try to do it without being, where it's still meaningful. And so, you know, like, 'cause you don't have a, an infinite supply of equity, obviously. And you want to make it meaningful for the next generation leaders. And you want people to have a goal to try to achieve being one of those leaders so they can get it. But I also think it's, it is important. Like right now, right now it's limited to, you know, to recommendations within that sort of considered set. And we look to open that up more and then open it up, open up probably one more time as well. - Yeah. Yeah. I mean, exciting for me to hear that, like that got the gears moving a little bit for that. Because again, something we spoke about previously, but like in previous jobs when I was kind of picking where I really wanted to work, I was almost doing it on the basis of like, when you're picking what you're gonna put your money in in the stock tap. Like I was very much like, what do I want equity in at the current stage? And that was a little bit of a driver behind my decision of where I actually wanted to go work. Because when I was getting that job, like I was very much in a position of like, what I've got going is fine. Like I'm not, I'm not, you know, worried about paying my mortgage here, like where I gotta, like just find whatever the next job is. I actually had the kind of, you know, the ability to choose a little bit more of like, okay, this is actually where I want to be investing equity in it. And I think in the future, there will probably be an element of that for employees of accounting firms, which I think is really, really cool, where people can then make an investment thesis in their employer beyond just like the basic of like, I need a job and they happen to be hiring for that. It can actually be like, okay, you know, these people are taking this approach, these people are taking this approach. I think this might be more sustainable and therefore I'm gonna go be a part of that. Whereas, you know, it really just changes the kind of mentality around choosing where you want to work. And I do think that communication is gonna be a very, very key part of that going forward. - I could agree with you more. And like, I mean, and it actually like, it was a little bit of a, you know, when we hung up last time, I was like, this was the, you know, this was the direction I wanted to go anyway, but I think you gave me a little bit of an inspiration to even move faster on that. So I started a discussion with my executive team around that. And I'll say this to you and I think you know this. But like, having worked with these firms is that like, you know, you have, every firm was, most firms were pretty closed with their financial information generally, right? Which I honestly wasn't used to as a firm, spent, you know, two decades at a publicly traded company. I just kind of got used to having our business out on the streets at all times, right? And so, you know, like, you know, there was a little bit of an adjustment period to make sure that like, because I, because I'm the kind of person who would be like, let's, let's everybody can look at this all the time. I don't, I don't have a problem with it. There's nothing to hide here. And I want you to understand what we're doing. And so we, like, we recognize we wanted it, you know, kind of get out there. But the other thing that I would say, and I think this is, I think this is a, you know, an important consideration too, is that, like for us and our firm, the shareholders, they have, they have, they have shares in Springline. Like, we only have one class equity, we're paripathy, that means anybody who's a shareholder has it in Springline overall, right? And I know that I'm on each of the sub entities. It's not like split up that way. Yeah. And really, intentionally for that, because if we're coming together as one entity, what we want is for people to, we want to make those pathways easy for people to draw straight line to the enterprise. So that means if you and I both sold our firms, we'll have a chance to work to, we want to have a chance to work together quickly because we're trying to move the enterprise along. And that is our stated goal is that we're going to, you know, we're trying to build what I can think is it can be a special kind of a firm. So I think there's, there's that piece. And the other piece is, like, and this is another way of like trying to discern kind of who your type of, who your type of seller is, which is, like in our deals, we typically give out a fair amount of roll over equity, right? Like we, you know, like we want, we want, we want that through to be able to share on the upside of what we're doing as an enterprise and to like come together in a partner meeting or in some of the ways we have communities to practice and other things and quickly try to figure out like how to build those ties that bind, you know? And so like I think, I think if you have those things and if you have transparency and to your point, if you have transparency, broader through the organization, now you're talking about mobility, you're talking about alignment around enterprise values and goals, it just helps you to, it just helps you to kind of move to that, to that, to that, to that place where you can, where you really see your neighbor as your colleague, right? And eventually those borders, the walls are lower and then they go away, which is what we're, we're contorts. - Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit self-evident based off of what I do, but I've like developed a deep, deep interest in incentive structures beyond just like compensation and the numbers, but like, you know, in my last job, I got to like design sort of top to bottom the new sales structures and everything. And you're thinking every step along the way of like, what does positioning the thing in the way A versus the way B, what behavior is that gonna drive? And if I'm someone who's always looking to gain the system, the game, the system for my own gain, how am I going to behave as a person, right? And I think that like you can create a little bit of a broken incentive structure sometimes by doing the sub-firm equity because ultimately then you're a little bit more driven towards like, I want my business unit to do the thing versus the other business unit. And that might come at the out of cost to the greater entity as well as to the client, right? Where like, if I've got like a B minus capability in salt, and we get like the biggest salt project ever and it's like this huge, you know, conglomerate entity and like everything's upside down and we're gonna fix it, well, I might sick my B minus team on it, whereas like, spring line may have acquired an entity who are the best of the best of the best at doing that. And so it's like having the the role equity in the mothership basically versus kind of within these things. I think creates a better incentive structure for the best outcomes for everyone around, right? So I think that's definitely the right way to do it. - That's how we think about it. I mean, I understand there's no such thing as a perfect incentive system. So you could take somebody who has the other way and they can talk about some of the advantages there and I can, and I understand that. It just like for what we're doing, we wanted to make it, like we wanted to make as frictionless as possible, it is as easy as possible to join together. And so to do that, you have to have commonality of goals, you have to have a shared lexicon, you have to have those types of things. And so that's just, that's the way that we looked at it. And like I, you know, I think, I think again, if you are, if you are coming together as one, it's hard, it's hard to not have compensation goals that align with that journey, that evolutionary journey. And so for us, that's how, that's how we looked at it. And it's also, it's also kind of a screening mechanism for folks who want to join because if you, if you're joining and you maybe don't, you're worried about somebody free riding or something else, like that you're probably not the right fit for us. And but it also puts a, it makes it puts a burden on us to make sure that we're bringing in high quality firms, right? So they're out there. So I get it, like I mean, there's, like, like, and you, you're an expert in this. So you understand there's no such thing as a perfect compensation system. But if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're incentivization is aligned with your, with your global goals, you're going to be better off. And so our global goals are coming together as one. So that's what we, what we do it that way. - Yeah, yeah, that's the thing is everything has a second side, but you can, you can set up rules and regulations around the other side, but what do you want to happen naturally, right? And, and so that's kind of where you're landing, which is really cool. One last topic before I let you go and you're very uniquely positioned to speak about this, coming from a public company. But like a lot of people are talking about, you know, oh, who's private equity are you going to sell to? I mean, some people just say another bigger fish in private equity. But like one of the ultimate outcomes is that we may in the future start to see a lot more publicly traded accounting firms, basically, right? So we might see some of these in a five to 10 year horizon hit the public markets. I'm curious to hear, you know, based off of your experience both in, you know, private as well as in publicly traded professional services firms. Like, what are the unique kind of advantages and disadvantages of being a public company in that space? Because, you know, there isn't a huge sample size of public accounting companies. But like from some of the data that we collect, like job satisfaction has not been necessarily a strong suit at some of those publicly traded accounting companies. So I'm curious to understand via your own lived experience. Like what are, yeah, what are some of the benefits in the drawbacks of that? - You know, what we talked about, one of the benefits. Like I think, but I think this is something that as a leadership team you can bring, which we're trying to do. But like having full transparency, I mean, it's regulated full transparency, you could argue that the intervals to which you're reporting maybe doesn't make sense because you feel like, you know, like I always felt like we, in some ways you're living quarter to quarter even, even as you're running, you know, a longer race. But I do think that there are benefits to that and to everybody understanding and like having, and understanding what your results are and what some of the drivers are and having regular access to management to hear them talk about both short term, medium term and long term goals. So I think that's a positive. I think all the reasons that people went public in the past, maybe not the same, you know, from, you know, decades ago as they are now, was access to capital. I feel like there's plenty of access to capital in the private markets. It was prestige. I feel like if you get to a certain size where you've run out of people who want to invest without doing going public, you probably have reached the size where your brand has that kind of cachet and prestige. So I would say you don't need to go public to do that. And so, you know, unlike this may sound, you know, take this with a great assault from a, you know, a jaded ex president, chief operating out of sort of public-ly traded company that was sort of thinly traded and with a small cap, is that I think there are benefits to go in public, especially if you're going to do a big expansion and you want to bring more investors into the fold. And I think so down the road that may make sense. I'm just not sure that when in that journey, it really makes sense because there's a huge cost both in dollars but also time and time is money, as we've always said, that like, you don't, that it may not be, it might be something that you're going to push off as long as you can. And you see it even with the biggest companies in the world now, many of them, many of the biggest companies by market cap are private, right? They've had no issue getting capable. So I do think that at a certain point, like for us, you know, there will be large enough investors to be able to do to be able to do the things that I think that we want to do on our journey to becoming a global firm. But at some point, you get to a point where you're like, "We're big up now, we can control our own destiny." Does that mean public markets, does that mean doing an ESOP, if an ESOP made sense and doing some of those things? And I do think at a certain point, you get to that decision point. If you are a large national firm who's taken on private equity money and you're growing really quickly, you might get to that faster, you might, because there is a smaller pool, and you might want access to those markets faster. And I think that we'll see something, somebody do that. I know we have, you know, Cbiz and Markham, that's similar to that. But I think we'll see somebody natively IPO here in our space. And I think it'll be before five years. I think it'll happen the next two or three years. Interesting. Cool prediction. Yeah. Yeah, well, I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing. Like that's a unique insight. You know, there's probably three firm leaders out there who have the kind of lived experience that you do to be able to actually weigh in on that from a real lived experience and knowledgeable standpoint, because there's a lot of speculation about it and what it'll mean, but until you've been through it, I think there's a certain, there's a certain difference in feel that's hard probably to kind of put into real words. So I mean, I put a lot of weight on what you say there. I think that that's really interesting. Well, thank you very much Tim for coming on and being so generous with your time. I appreciate you sharing. And, you know, for anyone who thinks that spring line might be the right flavor for their firm as well, you know, I'm sure there's some listeners out there who might at least be curious. We're going to link all of your contact information there in the podcast description. So, but yeah, thank you so much for taking the time and coming on. That was fun, Dom, and I hope you'll have me back sometime. I enjoy these conversations. Absolutely. Thank you. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]