Eric Van Dam
speaker
94 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Eric Van Dam’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I think it's really important to make sure that you have a law firm that is active in the mergers and acquisition market. So we see a lot of business owners that may have a very good corporate attorney that may not be an expert in mergers and acquisition.
And that corporate attorney can still be extremely valuable in the process, providing support in the history on some of the contracts and some of the background on the business. But it's really important If you're selling your company, think about the private equity firms are going to have law firms from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles that are extremely active, extremely quick.
And you need to have a law firm that can help you if there is a tax issue that comes up, if there's an employment issue that's going to come up, if there's something else that comes up during the process, you know, you're going to want their advice and you need to understand what is market terms and what is not so that you can really focus your resources on getting a deal done on the best terms for you.
Rob's exactly right. And groups want to see that there's a really good culture. And that's hard to define. How do you define what is a good culture? But you can look at, you know, what is your technician turnover? What are your ratings on Glassdoor?
What are some of the things that you're doing inside the organization to empower your people and get that excitement out of them and get the best out of your employees? Are you going bowling with the guys? Are you playing in softball games? Are you creating awards and all sorts of incentives for them that fire them up and get them excited at the end of the day?
But what are you doing to really instill a good culture inside your organization? And that's what groups want to see.
Well, that's what I mentioned earlier. Not all private equity firms are created equal, and there's a lot of differences among them. But it's important to run a process where you have a lot of different options. And what we encourage our clients is, especially the management presentation process, it isn't just the private equity firm interviewing you.
It's as much about you interviewing the private equity firm and asking them questions around, give me an example of when a situation went wrong and how you handled it. How are you adding value to your portfolio companies? But really doing a lot of due diligence on your end on that private equity firm.
And even when we get down to the final two or three groups, we'll even ask for a list of references of former business owners, former CEOs. And we let our management teams reach out to them and talk to those individuals to really understand, you know, what is that private equity firm like as a partner?
And so it's important to make sure that you're doing due diligence on the next group too, to make sure that your goals and objectives are going to be achieved with the right partner.
Yeah, I mean, succession planning is always important. I mean, kind of thinking around, like, what is your time horizon? But really assessing your team and the depth of your team. You know, if you ever get hit by a bus, who's going to take over, right? And that's an important question, even for your family, that...
could be inheriting your equity ownership for the business, but really making sure that you're growing the next layer of the team, even directly beneath you, but even directly beneath that next person too.
Yeah, build the bench to get those individuals going. And if you're not doing that and maybe not having the right conversations, if you have an awesome nut number two, but they're not sure when it's going to be their turn to take over, you don't want them leaving to go to a competitor as well. So it's always, I think, important to make sure that you're building the team,
you know, helping them understand like what is their career trajectory and what is that going to look like?
Yeah, I mean, so I think each of the subsectors, you know, it's a little bit different, but I mean, in certain markets, you know, permitting and getting the right licenses for your taxes is an important part of the process. In the roofing space, there are certain markets where it's okay to utilize subcontractors and, you know, outsource your install crews in certain geographic markets like
the Pacific Northwest that you have to have W-2 installers as well. So it really, like each of the different subsectors, it's a little bit different across the board, but I think most business owners are kind of aware of what are some of those key threshold items that they need to be on the lookout for.
Yeah, I think the only thing that I would just build on to Rob, which I think is exactly spot on, is we love what we do. And we have a ton of enthusiasm for our clients. And we've been fortunate to work with some of the best of the best. But one of the reasons why I love my job is because I get to work with so many successful business owners and really understand how do they compete?
How do they differentiate themselves? And one... One area that I think we've had a lot of success helping our clients achieve some of the highest valuations in their industry is really understanding what is their secret sauce. And for every company, it's a little bit different. Is it your sales process? Is it being more sophisticated with your digital marketing strategy?
Is it being an employer of choice and really owning the labor in your market and having a better relationship training center than anybody else so that you can grow your capacity? Is it being an acquirer of choice and having a better value creation playbook on how you're going to grow the business?
It can be anything you want it to be, but really understanding and diving deeper into those companies and really understanding what sets them apart and what has made them successful. And we're fortunate. We've got to work with some of the best of the best, but that's what gets me up every day and just gets me super excited about our job is just understanding how are those companies winning?
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