Investment Banker Trever Acers Reveals What Most Entrepreneurs Get Wrong About Selling Their Business (#411)

411 Trever Acers
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Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Trever Acers is a Managing Director at Objective Investment Banking and Valuation. Mr. Acers draws on 20 plus years of investment banking, acquisition, and strategy experience advising middle market companies on transaction execution and strategy. Prior to founding Objective, Mr. Acers served as a director at TGG Capital, where he led the firm's financial and strategy consulting operations. Previously, he was director at the Oxford Investment Group's Western US private equities activities and managing partner at Passive Venture Capital Partners.

Earlier in his career, he managed the post acquisition, integration, and continuing operations of three entities for EMC Corporation and led business performance improvements engagements for KPMG Consulting.

Mr. Acers has an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management with a finance concentration and a bachelor's degree with high honors in business administration from the University of San Diego. He holds FINRA Series 79 and Series 63 [00:01:00] licenses. And is a registered representative of BA Securities LLC, member FINRA SIPC. 

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Deep Wealth Nation, welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, Deep Wealth Nation, let me ask you this. Are you looking at how can I increase the value of my business that one day I'm going to raise capital, maybe even exit it, but when it comes time to do that, who's going to lead the charge?

What are some strategies that I wouldn't have otherwise known that can help me achieve all of this? So, let's dive in. Sooner than later. And of course you're saying yes, Jeffrey, that's a rhetorical question. Why wouldn't I say yes to that? So that said, that's what we have in store for you with a very special guest today.

So Trever, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. There's always a story behind the story and Trever, I am really curious because you have accomplished so much, so many awards and accolades behind your name. What is this story about Trever? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Trever Acers: Well, excited to be here, Jeff. thanks for inviting me. The story, yeah it's interesting. I wish it had this beautiful, purposeful arc because that's story we hear in the cocktail conversations. When we get real with people, we start to understand [00:04:00] The real story. I started in strategy consulting really trying to understand, fundamentally, how things work, why they work, how they, as they do, and how do we improve them.

that gave me a very different perspective. It made me a little bit of an outsider as I got into investment banking. So I went from strategy consulting to technology to private equity into investment banking. So a very odd arc not traditionally you'd see somebody grow up and they would start as an analyst in a large investment bank and then become an associate and work their way through this process.

So, as we look at our team, I'm the outsider. I'm the only group, person in our group that's not from Morgan or Deutsche or Houlihan or these big, large investment banks. But it provided the opportunity to look at our team. A sale process, and as an entrepreneur, building a business and thinking about exit in a very different way than the traditional path that is sort of laid out at the bulge bracket and then adopted in the middle market.

it's been a really interesting viewpoint. And I think that It gave us a real [00:05:00] opportunity to sort of question the norm.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I love the outsider coming in, and Trever, I'm right there with you. I was an outsider, really, in everything that I've done, coming into the industry, no experience. It's not always the case. A lot of times, though, having that, I'm going to call it ignorance is bliss. Not always, but sometimes it is, where you're not brought up with the regular norms or the expectations.

Was that the case with you? When you came into this, you just had a different set of lenses that you're looking at things, you saw things differently.

Trever Acers: Yeah, what we started seeing when I was at private equity was that So when you're private equity or buying companies, and what I saw was that these business owners were incredibly underprepared. and that's a wonderful thing for a buyer.

Because you're going to get a great deal, and you're going to get this business, and you're going to be able to do things that owner couldn't do. my view immediately came to the entrepreneur's perspective of how, boy, there's clearly a need here. And when you start looking at these traditional systems, what you recognize that, is that the advisors, are highly incentivized to create efficiency, not maximize outcome.

And so, what I mean by [00:06:00] that is, the business owner hires an investment bank, the investment bank is trying to do as many transactions that year as they can, and if they get the incremental dollar for that entrepreneur, it's helpful. But they're better off getting the incremental deal. They'll make a lot more money that.

So we see sort of suboptimal results. And when you look at that from the macro, you start to ask the question, why? So as we dig in, we really became a question around process. And so these conversations in our team is, you would talk to somebody, one of our team members who's been 25 years, worked at all the large banks, and I'd say something like, hey, do it this way, what if we did it differently?

What if we looked at, oh, we can't, the process is supposed to work like this. And then we actually start digging into it. And what you recognize that, boy, there's a lot of wisdom in the existing processes, but there's a lot of opportunity tweak them, to make them better, to get better outcomes. And that's what our mission is.

How do we, if [00:07:00] Google or GE owned an investment bank, how would they do it? And I think the conclusion is they do it a little bit differently.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, Deep Wealth Nation, I hope you're paying attention, and Trever, what you're sharing is not gold, it's platinum. And a shameless plug to our 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program, these are the exact points that we talk about in Step 3, Future Buyer, and also in Step 6, Advisor Team. So I want to peel back the onion, if you will, in a few things that you've said.

And for starters, Not all investment bankers are equal. Now, Trever, you and the team are really more than investment bankers. I'm just going to use that term loosely and generally. There's a myth out there, well, I just go to any investment banker, the one that perhaps I feel the most comfortable with, they're going to take me out to market and life is good.

But there is a story behind the story there, and you can say, Geoffrey, on base or off base, most investment bankers, not all, but most investment bankers, they're transactional, meaning that an entrepreneur, they're a one time hit. That's it, a one time wonder. And all is said and done, whereas they'll work [00:08:00] with the same buyer over and over, it's a book of business that over a career is billions of dollars.

So where's the loyalty? Most entrepreneurs think, well, yeah, it's to me, look, I'm paying the success fee, I'm paying the investment banker's fees, clearly they're loyal to me, and actually, no, they're loyal to the buyer, and we hear it time and time again. So I'm going to put a pause on it right there, and you can say, Jeffrey, you're way off base, or yeah, that's what's going on.

What's your perspective on that?

Trever Acers: Yeah I think that certainly there is a degree of that. When you're in a tech, we have six industry practices. our tech practice is selling a company, it's pretty often that we're talking to Microsoft as a buyer. And so you certainly don't want to upset Microsoft so that they'll never take your call again.

That being said, I think that most investment banks tend to be more loyal to themselves. than anyone else. They're trying to figure out, boy, do I want to get a deal done or maximize this outcome for the client? And that's where you start to see sort of this what I refer to as sort of the efficiency.

Them, they, knowing that they could do certain things to [00:09:00] help their client, but recognizing that it takes more time. And investment banking is about return on labor dollar. if I can get a deal done and increase my dollar per hour rate. I'm doing better. So that doesn't have anything to do with the client's outcome.

There are steps that they don't do. we talk about a number of things that that we do differently. And one of these ideas is this concept of what we call post acquisition economics. that's in a traditional market process. We're going to a global set of buyers.

We then take them and aggressively disqualify them to a small group. Sort of counterintuitive to what you'd think, but that's the right thing to do, is figure out who's really interested very quickly. What that allows you to do then, , you get these initial offers, and instead of immediately going and negotiating those offers, that's the traditional path.

It's called a two step auction process, and almost every middle market investment bank will run that process. So instead of immediately going and negotiating that, what we do is we figure out. Who's, who are the highest fit buyers? And we lean in. So instead of efficiently trying to, how do we get [00:10:00] this signed?

I use bone on bone negotiation. I get you to sign it. We move on. Instead, what I'm trying to do is reframe the value. So the buyer looks at it, they come from it from the perspective of, I'm going to look and analyze your historical financials and critique everything about that. And then I'm going to create an estimate of value, essentially my offer based on a multiple of your historical earnings. And so when I'm, when you come in and you offer me seven times for our company and I want to push and I say, hey, I we want, nine or something or you have to improve your offer. What I'm doing is at that point in time is just bone on bone negotiation. You said three, I said four we're pushing.

There's very limited progress in that. What you can do instead is take a little bit more time and start to talk with the highest bid buyers about their synergies. Okay, if you're going to buy my company let's talk about what Monday morning looks like. You're going to buy my company, you're going to sell your products to my clients, I'm going to sell my products to your clients.

So maybe you're not getting my ten million dollars of EBITDA. What you're actually [00:11:00] getting within 18 to 24 months is something like 20 million dollars of EBITDA if you take in consideration those synergies. And so the first thing we do is we call it characterize, quantify, and validate. So the first thing we're going to do is characterize those synergies.

And when you ask the buyer, do you know why you're buying this? They always say, oh yeah, Trever we know exactly why we're buying the company. We're going to get this synergy. And they do. They understand the synergies at a PowerPoint level. What they don't understand is the next level because usually the buyer hasn't given them the insights, sorry, the seller hasn't given them the insights to understand are those synergies real.

And so that what we want to do is we want to look at it from that buyer's perspective of, boy, if I had a better level of confidence and a real good quantitative understanding of what those synergies were and I validated that I could achieve them. I'm probably willing to pay more versus what traditionally happens is this guessing game where I don't know if I'm going to get these synergies or not, so I'm probably going to hedge my bet a little bit.

So by taking this extra time, [00:12:00] we're increasing their understanding of the synergies they're going to get, and then we are increasing their confidence, effectively reframing. The negotiation conversation away from it is a function of my historical financials to on a hot day, how much are you willing to pay for a glass of water?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, so really, you're doing what we talk a lot about as entrepreneurs that we need to do. And we always need to tune in to the world's favorite radio station, WII. FM. The what's in it for me, but not as us, as the stakeholder that we're speaking with. So when you're working with prospective investors or buyers, you're doing a very deep dive on, information that they probably don't know from the seller.

You're learning about them, of what their motivations are, and then you're extrapolating of, hey, I know your projections are showing this, but did you think about this and that, that goes from 1X to maybe 2X, 5X, whatever the case is going to be. How am I doing so far? I'm BassOffBass.

Trever Acers: That's exactly right. So think about it this way. You say, I'm going to, Trever, you're going to buy my, I'm going to buy [00:13:00] your company. And I say, great. And you figure, well, I know that I'm going to sell some of your products to my clients. What I want to get in there is, okay, let's talk about, product by product, exactly what you think the attach rate's going to be in the first 12 months, 18, 24, 36, what that price point's going to be, what that gross profit, the incremental profit contribution's going to be, such that, Debra, when you look at my, buying my business, you now have a really strong degree of confidence.

And I'm, then I'm not only getting that 10 million of your organic earnings, but I'm going to be at 20 million within 24 months, as long as I execute on these synergies. And then you're going to go back to your management team and say, Hey, what other questions do you have that would help us validate that we can do that?

And so it's this, disconnect. And this is one of the largest, most consistent mistakes that entrepreneurs make when selling their business is that you tend to have this hyper focus on the historical financials, but both buyer and seller don't do that. Really should be incentivized to break, peel back the onion a little bit deeper [00:14:00] and help the buyer understand exactly what they're going to achieve.

The seller feels like, boy, maybe don't want to give that information. I'm scared. So we certainly have to have a confidentiality strategy as we're doing this tailored to each buyer. This is the disconnect. If you're at a cocktail conversation, you're asking about the sale of their business, this is the number one way to figure out did they maximize value.

How deeply did your buyer understand the value that they were getting, the synergies that they were going to achieve in the next 24 months of ownership? The deeper that understanding, the more likely that person maximized the value in the sale of their business.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. And before I go into that point, I also want to circle back to something interesting that you said. And again, it's a big myth most entrepreneurs don't understand or never even crosses their mind because again, and you're going to say, Jeffrey, you're on base or off base, not all investment bankers, but most investment bankers, it's all about the deal turn.

And what I mean by that is, Hey, I only have so many hours in a day. My firm, my bank [00:15:00] can only take on so many deals a year, as much as we'd like to do it all. We simply can't. And so I'm gonna go for the safe deal, not the best deal. And I'm just gonna make this up, gonna use some round numbers here. If the absolute best deal has an additional 30 million dollars, 50 million dollars in it, but it's no guarantee, it's risky, the deal could be lost and it's gonna take longer.

Most investment bankers, again, not all, but most are going to take what's on the table, the safe deal, even though they're foregoing a larger success fee. And I know entrepreneurs are thinking, well, wait a minute, of course, they're going to take the larger success fee. That's what I would do. Why wouldn't they do that?

But they don't get that. Can you give us some insight, some commentary on that?

Trever Acers: Yeah, that's interesting. It's kind of at the heart of our business. So we named the company Objective because our belief is that you know, having worked in the last 25 years entrepreneurs whole definition of success is really a function of the entrepreneur's, the owner's, [00:16:00] objectives.

Those are different every single time. So the, transactional investment banker is that prototype, right? That's most investment bankers. Hey, what's your EBITDA? Let's talk about sale. Let's, here's the sale process. Let's go. The real questions that we then have to ask is, okay, why do we have this massive self reported failure rate, right?

Entrepreneurs are basically saying that sell their business surveyed two years later. There's a bunch of surveys out there, but the net of it is that greater than 80 percent of them say they felt like they failed in their transaction in at least one material way. If you look back at the data, it's all over the board.

The root cause of it is they did not know what they wanted when they went into it. So if our client, we have one right now, we're running a very large transaction, and we're going to end up selecting a buyer that is more risky. in their offer than some of the other buyers. It was very weird when we did an interview with our client and really got to understand what are we solving for?

What does success look like? The actual easier way to figure that out is what does failure look like? Really effective tool. [00:17:00] They have a vision and they realize that this partner is going to be more effective at achieving that vision than the others, and so the investment banker says, well, man, let's just take the money.

Let's take the sure bet. That's what the Transactional Investment Banker, a good advisor, someone who's in the business of helping entrepreneurs make really good decisions. That's what sort of our commitment is. When you're in that business, you listen a lot. What does that feel like? What is that going to be like if you're choosing this role?

And then you support your entrepreneur and being thoughtful about it, making sure they understand the facts, but really being committed to that set of objectives. And that's one of the things we talk about how to pick an advisor. I want somebody who understands My situation who goes beyond just the financials and asks me things like, what are we talking about in terms of legacy? What I mean by that is hey, how does it feel if they buy you and kill your company tomorrow, right? you know, do you care about your employees? I've never had anybody say they didn't care about their employees, but boy, if your employees all got terminated within the [00:18:00] next year, how does that feel?

There's no right or wrong answer about that. But these are the, what happens if your company is moved to a different country? What happens if your clients come back to you five years later and say they weren't served as well as they were when you owned it? All these questions, these are the things that really impact people.

We know a ton of entrepreneurs who we didn't work with. who have these stories, and it comes back, boy, yeah, I got a lot of money, but people in the industry keep telling me how bad my company is now, and it really destroys me, right? We're solving for fulfillment at a lot of levels, so that basis of objectives to us is critical.

Our key metric is how do you feel at 2 a. m. two years after the deal. You get up to go to the bathroom, you look yourself in the mirror. It's the most honest time we have with ourselves. And all I want to hear our entrepreneurs say is, that was a good decision.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, my goodness, there's so much out there. And Deep Wealth Nation, you've heard me say before, it's worth mentioning again, here at Deep Wealth, the vernacular, Trever, that we're using for investment bankers, your transactional investment banker. This is your typical investment banker, and they sound great at the [00:19:00] surface.

Jeffrey, I really know your industry. In fact, I know most of the buyers. I have them on speed dial. I can get you in market, out of market very quickly. And by the way, I really know your business as well, because this is all I do. This is my specialty. And from the surface, it looks great. And they're not lying.

They're telling the truth, but what they're conveniently leaving out. I'm not going to get to the best deal. Yes, I have a buyer on speed dial. So again, I'm loyal to them, not to you. And then the other type of investment banker, it's a rare breed and Trever, you and the team fall in this category. They're an advocate and you're an advocate supreme in the sense that you do sell side only.

So you're only working with entrepreneurs who are selling the business. You're not working with buyers. And so not that you want to burn a bridge, but if you have to upset a buyer, That's okay, because

Trever Acers: the clients all that. Yeah, exactly. The client always comes first in that scenario. There is our philosophy is humans do very few things world class. And so, we only, our M&A team only [00:20:00] focuses on sell side, that's all they do all day, and then we work only within our six industry practices and the area of expertise within those, because you need to know the really need to know the industry.

But you hit on two things. I want to bring up the, it's interesting that, Our belief is that most entrepreneurs, when trying to determine, hey, A, should I work with an investment bank, the first question is, hey, the value proposition of an investment banker is bringing that buyer, and our perspective is that Value proposition that used to exist has been highly eroded.

That the investment banker's really value proposition is no longer bringing the buyer because everybody has LinkedIn and Google, and these buyers, there's been a normalization of M&A, these buyers will take anybody's call at this point. So if they may be my best friend. But it doesn't matter, they're going to take your call just as quickly.

So that, I know your buyer isn't so valuable, the real value is can you maximize price, and can you maximize probability. And so this is interesting, when the first question [00:21:00] when you talk to someone about should I hire an investment banker, I'm I'm going to hire somebody, the first question they ask the investment banker is tell me about your industry experience.

Which is great, because in today's age, you need to know your client's industry inside and out, right? You need to know the concepts, like if you were, we don't do construction, if you're going to do construction, union versus non union, huge issue. Or in healthcare, you need to understand concepts like payer systems or revenue cycle management.

You also need to understand like, value drivers, right? In software, it may be understanding ARR and retention implications. And e customer, e consumer, e com, it may be lifetime value, CAC, ROAS, things like this. You need to know you want to hear the bankers say the things that, oh yeah, you get my industry.

But what they kept doing is they think that this is a deep hole. versus a checkbox. Industry expertise is somewhat of a checkbox. Do you know my industry well enough to represent me, understand who the buyers are, the trends, tell my story well, check the box. So if you've done 10 deals in that [00:22:00] space, that's great.

There's no value in having done 100 deals in the deal, comparatively to 10. It's a checkbox. What I really want to get to very quickly, as soon as I ask that question, is a better question, which is what are you uniquely going to do to maximize price and probability? And if you ask the investment banks this, what they're going to say, well, we run a two step auction process.

You'll say, well, okay, well, everybody runs a two step auction process. Well, we know your buyers. Oh, okay, well, guess what? If we look at 10 investment bankers buyers lists, they're all going to be the same. Within five percent. We all have the same databases, relationships, what have you. So what do you do uniquely to increase purchase price and probability?

And it's crickets. You don't hear anything. Because they don't. They say, well, is the root of their effectiveness, of their efficient process. And so that's what I want to hear when I interview an investment bank. Tell me what you do uniquely well. And I want to hear things like, wow, we engage buyers in this way.

tailoring [00:23:00] your story to every single high fit acquirer. We're tiering the buyers to come up with a heat mapping strategy around how we can be best at finding the people who are willing to pay the most. These things like post acquisition economics to help reframe the purchase price to set us for a maximum.

Or we're doing deep data models to be able to pull out the diamonds in your consumer or SaaS data. This is what I want to hear, and that's the question that's never asked. And to me, it's an 80 20. industry experience is a must. But it's The 80 percent of the outcome is really determined by process.

And that's because investment banking process is not different than any other process in the world. It's a function of what you do and how you do it that ends to impact outcome.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Trever, I am nodding my head, Deep Wealth Nation, you can't see me, I'm nodding my head, and I promise you, Deep Wealth Nation, Trever and I have not spoken until today, I have not given Trever these answers to give. Trever, you're never profiting your hometown, as the saying goes. But I want to go back to something, I want to [00:24:00] expand on something that you said, because at Deep Wealth, we have business owners coming to us, you know what, I don't even think I need an investment banker, to your point, I know all the buyers in my industry, they're probably my competition, or I know who they are, and I'm just going to approach them directly, and fundamentally, we don't agree with that, because hey, if you want to get the worst deal, That's the perfect recipe, go and do that, but I know you don't, I know you care about your legacy, I know you care about financial freedom.

To me though, and I want to circle back another differentiation point of what you're doing, the value of an advocate. So an advocate comes onto the scene and says, Jeffrey, I do not know your industry. I haven't either done any deals, or maybe I did one or two deals, but it's not necessarily My forte, and I don't really know all the buyers that are there.

It's going to take me some time to compile that list, to get out to them, and then I'll run that process. And again, from the outside looking in, wow, that sounds so much worse than the transactional investment banker. Yeah, I'm going to get you out there quickly. I know all the buyers, but the point is, you're casting a wide net.

You're bringing in people who you likely wouldn't have thought of on your own, [00:25:00] and at Deep Wealth we say it's never the entrepreneur's job to figure out Well, who's the buyer going to be? No, no, No. That's for your investment banker to figure out. But you're doing something a little bit different. You are casting a wide net, but to your point, you're then going through that list with your own analysis that's very different than most investment banks.

So can you go into a bit more detail? Let's go behind the curtain on that because that's a huge point for enterprise value to increase it, to get not any deal, but the best deal.

Trever Acers: yeah, and this is where I think at some level the outsider view is helpful. I will admit, I will probably be accused by some of my team members business partners of being very careful with my money. I'm very careful. About how we spend money. So is when entrepreneurs look at an advisor and they say, boy, I'm going to have to give you X percent of the success fee, that seems like a lot of money.

How do I come to terms with that value proposition? I understand. I get it. Viscerally. The idea here is that, boy, here is a person that does this every single day. They [00:26:00] become exceptionally well. And while CEO, as CEOs, we certainly do deals and transactions of types on a daily basis, a really good investment banker knows how to significantly impact an outcome.

So if they're charging, 3 percent on something, boy, if they can impact the transaction, By a 30 percent increase in purchase price, that's a pretty great deal. I don't think every deal requires an investment bank, but they can make significant impacts. The other thing that's interesting trend wise is we used to only hire an investment bank when we were ready to go to market, talk to a large number of buyers.

Something has changed. With the normalization of M&A, we're seeing a huge amount of buyer outreach. Buyers are calling our clients on a daily basis. Hey, we see you guys are doing great things. We'd love to know more about your company. And sometimes these are BS emails, but some are real, right?

Microsoft calls. We've been watching you for a couple years. We're really excited about what you're doing. Love to have a call. Half of our [00:27:00] clients now are companies that have gotten that call. we may or may not run a market process. We're looking at, they get a call from Microsoft, or the strategic in their space, or a private equity firm that they're excited about, and it's, hey, I want to, I already got an ROI.

I already, they already gave me a verbal offer. Let's get in there and figure out how we maximize value. Do we just talk to them? Do we talk to a few? Do we talk to the world? But again, about half the time, we're just talking to that one buyer. And so that the, now that really focuses on, can you max price?

Microsoft Can you max probability, as opposed to the only hiring an investment banker when you want to do that full market process. And I think that's a real change that's occurred, and it's a shame when you hear somebody who gets a deal and says, Well, I don't want to talk to an investment banker yet, because I'm just going to see if I can get it done with this buyer.

And you go, Oh, so you want to see if you can get a, the first buyer that shows up, see if you can get a moderately okay price with them, as opposed to trying to see if they'll pay a market premium. And it's a really common mistake. [00:28:00] Now, I see attorneys who don't, not aware of this, still making that mistake as well of not advising them to, to get professional support of maximizing price.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And by the way, Deep Wealth Nation, what Trever's saying is spot on. As talented as your attorney or lawyer may be, even if it's an M&A lawyer, and there's a difference between a business lawyer and an M&A lawyer. If the lawyer is saying, hey, I'm going to quarterback your exit, your capital raise, your liquidity event, who needs an investment banker?

I want you to run Deep Wealth Nation, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. It doesn't work like that. The good M&A lawyer, the great M&A lawyer, that's all that they do. And that's all that an investment banker does. So Trever, let's dive into something here because Not always, but typically we say here at Deep Wealth that the unsolicited offer is the best offer for the buyer.

Some of the points you already mentioned, there's no other buyers on the scene. They know that they're going to have their way with the seller. They're going to probably have terms that are there. And I use the example [00:29:00] of I'm buying a home. If I'm not the only buyer on the scene, if I'm doing a walkthrough of the home, and I know there's 10 other bids that are coming in tonight, well, you better believe my bid is going to be competitive.

Maybe I'm even going over the asking price, and I'm going to have a quick close, no conditions. Versus, I'm the only buyer for that home, the home's been on the market for a little while, I'm not giving the same offer. I'm going to have a lower price in terms of what I'm prepared to buy. I'm going to probably have some conditions, a longer closing, and So you're saying, well, not necessarily if I'm getting an outreach from, you mentioned Microsoft.

So Microsoft has reached out, they've given us a letter of intent, an LOI, maybe we don't go to market. So what's going on with that? That tends to buck the trend of unsolicited offers.

Trever Acers: Yeah, no, I think your first assessment is a hundred percent right. So I'll give you an example. two nights ago, I was with a a private equity firm and they were talking about how the good they've done and one of the things they said is, boy, we've done really well in the last couple of years, Trever.

You know how we don't like to, pay full price when buying things.

And I thought to myself, and [00:30:00] that's why we don't show you very many things anymore because you always come in with this low price. And what they're telling me is, they also told me is, boy, most of the deals we've done were unadvised.

There was no investment banker involved. And so what they're saying is, hey, as a buyer, we got really good deals by going to people who didn't have any professional advice. Of course. Of course, that makes a ton of sense. Why would they not? So, these buyers that come to you when it's Microsoft or somebody else, yeah, especially private equity firms they don't have to pay a maximum price, they won't.

So, you have to create a dynamic. Embark the default, get out of the gravity of that default and start to figure out how do we create a dynamic that encourages them to pay max price. And so when we're talking to one buyer, you have to set this up, right? And that that what the buyer needs to feel are two things.

One is a fear, fear of, hey, unless you pay a premium price, we're either going to go to market. Or we're going to just [00:31:00] keep operating. Net Net, you're not getting this company unless you pay us a premium price. And so that's where that investment banker can create that competitive threat.

And it's very common. you're not being a bully or anything to that. It's very, very common. Honest hey, we're here to advise our client that unless you pay us a premium for the deal, we're gonna, we're gonna take it out to market or just keep operating. The second factor is this, the post acquisition economics of, while you're doing that, you also need to give them really good logical rationale for why they need to increase their purchase price.

Boy, we've looked at this, you guys are gonna make X hundreds of millions of dollars by buying us. Thanks. So why are we still talking about this number? What I'm telling you is, unless you pay a significantly better number, we're just going to go out to market, or we're just going to keep operating. And so you have to create that dynamic.

And if you are, if you do a really good job of being transparent to help the buyer, Understand the full value you're going to receive. It's not a manipulative [00:32:00] process. It's a partner ish process. When Microsoft realizes and feels very confident they're going to make hundreds of millions of dollars by buying your company, they're actually okay with paying a little bit more.

They can go back to their board and say, you know what, I know this seems like a really high multiple. We just paid 17 times ARR. But look why it makes so much sense. The board's going to say, yeah, let's do it. Everybody wins in that case. Microsoft's going to have a great deal. My client got two to three times what they thought they were going to get.

So, yeah, there can be a real opportunity to take advantage of that buyer interest. But you have to be really thoughtful about how you set that. Two things that come up when you say that. One is, Clients ask us, Trever, Microsoft called, or the buyer, Private Equity called, and all they want to do is talk about my historical financials, guess what, that's all they want to talk about. The number one thing you can do in that first call, when they call, switch the conversation. Here's my financials, yes, let me be, let me disclose some high level information. talk about what insights can I give you to help you understand if [00:33:00] this is a good deal for you? What you're really trying to get is that, tell me about the synergies you're trying to achieve.

That's a wonderful partner question, and the entrepreneur should immediately shift from, here's my historical financials, ask me a ton about my company, to let's talk about Monday morning. How are we going to operate? Together. the second thing they need to do is be really thoughtful about that when that first offer comes in, there is an opportunity to lose millions of dollars.

This is possibly one of the most costly mistakes. Our tech group was giving some guidance to Intel Capital and their portfolio, and this is one of the things that came out of that conversation was, Boy, you go and take a leadership's team and six months of their time in pursuing a transaction that doesn't close, the cost isn't the cost of the advisor or the attorneys involved.

The cost is you thought you were, let's take a, an EBITDA basis. You thought you were going to achieve 5 million of EBITDA. Instead, because of this distraction, you achieved four and a half. This [00:34:00] cost you half a million dollars of EBITDA, which, let's say we're selling the company for ten times.

That means that's five million dollars of enterprise value that I destroyed by not knowing that this buyer wasn't going to go through. So one of the strategies we talk about is, as a company is growing, which calls not to take? We don't take generic private equity calls for most clients when they're building.

We might take the highest fit strategic calls and private equity firms that have a portfolio in the space. I might take those calls and have a quick call, and it might be something like, hey, we're not for sale right now. We're building. We have a three year plan. at least need to get X in order to sell the business.

I'm trying to give them a buy now price. It's typically a very high price and it's a floor, not a ceiling. We're not capping ourselves in price. We're just saying, hey, I effectively, you're acknowledging from a market perspective, I might be worth 10 million today, but I'm not going to sell the company until it's worth 50.

So I'm giving you a buy now. If you want to come in and buy me great for 50. That's the price, that's a great way to get [00:35:00] people off the hook. Get them out. I don't want you to take more and more of my time. I need you to understand where I'm going and what my goal is. I'd like to establish a little bit of a relationship.

If you're a high fit buyer, let's keep talking, maybe quarterly, maybe six months, keep on your radar, but I want you to go away. Because I want to avoid the cost of sinking that time, and we hear so many stories about clients who eventually come to us and they said, boy, I've gone through a sale process two or three times before, and I, well, how long did you spend with that buyer?

I spent four months with this buyer, six months with this buyer, thinking, man, so distracting for a leadership team. How many millions of dollars have we lost because we didn't have a plan?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Exactly. And what doesn't even show up on the P& L statement, the lost opportunity cost. You, the team, you're in these meetings. You're not doing business development, new opportunities, client renewals, all the bigger picture things or the bigger whales that you want to land and bring in there because you're tied up in a meeting that's ultimately going nowhere.

And Deep Wealth [00:36:00] Nation, are you picking up on why the advisor, in this case, an investment banker that you choose, is so critical? And in SEP's six advisor team, we do a deep dive on this. Trever, I liked what you're saying, and it's a little bit of a management consulting approach meets investment banking in the following sense.

If there's a large sum involved, there is usually a board that has to give the approval. And for the people that are on a particular deal, to go back to the board, yeah, we're going to pay. Yeah. X more, it could be 1x, 2x, 5x more than we normally would. They're not going to likely be able to sell it to the board.

They're going to take who knows how many days, weeks of meetings trying to condense it into five minutes. They don't know all the information about the seller. As the middle person here, you've done your deep dive on the buyer, you know the seller, and now you're producing charts, data, spreadsheets that are both showing and telling what the future could look like.

Of course, they're going to vet that information, but you've done the work for them, [00:37:00] and so you now take it to them, and in many ways, it's saying, hey, here's what it looks like. Yeah, sure, it's 2x more or 5x more, but look how much more in accretive value that we're getting. It's a rounding error. We should move forward with it.

Otherwise, we're going to lose this. And it may even be saying, hey, remember that last deal where we said no, and look at what that company did. We said never again. Well, we're not going to do that again. So let's get this approval. Let's get that going. And so I love how you're acting as that bridge, really for both parties.

to paint a very bright and prosperous tomorrow. And we're really in sync here at Deep Wealth because we're always saying, listen, the right buyer, they know what you've done yesterday. They know what you've done today. They don't care about that or they shouldn't care about that. What they really want to know is what is the company going to do tomorrow and beyond when they're running it, when they own it.

And that's exactly what you're doing. But in a very creative way, it's thinking out of the box and adding a lot of elements to it. How am I doing with that?

Trever Acers: love that. It comes back to the fact that when we're doing transactions, we're just people. We're just people trying to [00:38:00] achieve objectives, and if I'm trying to sell you something that's in a box, and I don't show you what's in the box, but I just give it to you and ask you to give me a price for it.

That's kind of what most companies do, right? I'm showing you the financials and the outside, but you really don't know what you're getting. When I open up the box and I show you product, and I let you handle it and figure it out, You're much better at understanding what the value of that is, how much you're willing to pay.

That's all we're doing is there's a confidence gap. The buyer has limited confidence prior to due diligence. Typically what happens is they establish that confidence in due diligence after the price is set. That doesn't help the seller. What the seller needs to be doing is increasing that confidence level prior to finalizing price.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. Yeah. there is so much there. Now, let me ask you, because we're talking about what you do, how you're working with the buyers, what the buyers are trying to do. I would be remiss if we didn't really look in the mirror and take stock of ourselves. So as entrepreneurs, the glass is always half full.

We're the eternal optimist. But let's be [00:39:00] honest here, and we love saying this at Deep Wealth, how can you win at a game you've never played before? How do you master a game that is brand new? You don't even know the rules, and the short answer is you really can't. And do you really want to be the guinea pig on yourself when your financial freedom and legacy is on the line, or do you want to have some kind of a system or team that can really help you with that?

So generally speaking, you've talked earlier, and I love the Pareto's Law, the 80 20 rule. Do you see the same 20, I'll call them mistakes or mishaps that entrepreneurs are making that are creating 80 percent of the issues? Are there some patterns or trends that you're typically seeing out there that as entrepreneurs, we are just not prepared?

Trever Acers: Absolutely. No, you see a lot of the same. If you look at success stories, and it's hard, the challenge from the success story is you can't tell from the outside if a transaction was a success. You really need to dive in. And when you're at the cocktail party and someone says, this was a tremendous success, half those people aren't right.

That's their transaction probably didn't go that well. The traits that you see that people are consistently actually successful, [00:40:00] they usually have really good advisors around them. And the reason is it's very simple, right? If I were going to go sell my house tomorrow or do anything I've never done very many times, I'm a smart person.

a lot about this, but having people that do something on a daily basis. It is a very different situation. So when you watch an entrepreneur who has a really good M&A attorney, not someone who's done 10 M&A transactions in their life, you see this very often. Oh, wow, they're half the cost of this other M&A attorney.

Maybe I should hire them. No. Now, what I need is somebody who does these transactions regularly. So when an issue comes up, they already know the ten ways to bridge that gap. They know how to address this issue. They know how to, from a legal perspective, mitigate different liabilities or tax optimize.

I don't want to be in a situation where I'm saving a little bit of money, but I'm hiring someone who doesn't know what the hell they're doing. The other thing they say is they tend to have a really good investment banker. And that investment banking relationship is collaborative. The investment banker doesn't have all the answers, the business owner doesn't have [00:41:00] the answer, the attorney doesn't have the answer.

It's a collaborative situation where, okay, now the captain's seat and I have other people giving me some guidance. Hey, maybe we should think about this aspect. Here's how to think about this term. And now together as a team, We can make much better choices. When you tend to see one person step up and say, I have all the answers, it's a real recipe for disaster.

Be it the attorney, the advisor, or the business owner. When one person's leading and they're not listening to anybody else, that tends to be a disaster. We love to see a very educated, very collaborative relationship between those people.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And the key that you also said there, Deep Wealth Nation, again, I really hope you're paying attention to this. You can be speaking, so, oh yeah, Jeffrey, I've done deals after deals. I'm an investment banker. What they're not telling you is, yeah, my last deal was 1986. Well, the world has changed.

So it's not just how many deals you've done. How frequent are the deals? When's the last deal that you did? Is it within this calendar year? How many deals this [00:42:00] calendar year have you done? And then all the other points, Trever, that you're saying, it is so spot on. 

Trever Acers: The best way to ask them that is the process, just dive into process because they'll tell you all the deals that their team did or their company did. Walk me through your process and if you ask three or four investment bankers that question, you'll hear levels of sophistication.

Some people will be very thoughtful, other people will brush over it. You're like, well, could you go back there in detail? And you'll watch, well, I, we kind of do this and that. Tell me about, how does that work? How do you maximize price using that? And that's where you see the breakdown. And it's just as CEOs, we hire people to do different things that we don't know anything about, like marketing or this or that, right?

It's it's the same thing. We're hiring someone. How do we figure out if they're smart and thoughtful? We ask them to get deep into the next level of the thing they do and explain it to us.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So terrific with that. Let me ask you this, Trever, I'm going to put you on the spot and some of your colleagues may want to maybe look at you the other way or throw some eggs and tomatoes at you, but I'm going to throw that out there anyways. Are there [00:43:00] tell tale signs when we're speaking to an investment banker that they are red flags?

Maybe very subtle, but red flags nonetheless that we should say, thank you, but no thank you, I'm moving on.

Trever Acers: So I think there's a couple. One is if the investment banker truly knows nothing about the space, and they've had at least a moment to know that you were gonna have the call. That's a problem, right? When you start talking to someone who doesn't know anything about microchips or knows nothing about life sciences, especially in industries that really require like those two deep industry insights, that's a great red flag.

Hey, and what the good advisor should do is say, wow, you've got a great company. I don't think I'm the best advisor for you. That's what a really good advisor does when they realize this is a space that they aren't the best for. So that's the first thing we want to see is we want to see that red flag of you don't even know anything about X Factors.

Microchips, and you didn't take the time to research, you didn't show me that you can get up to speed because I don't need you to be a 40 year expert in microchips but that's what, that's one of the elements of [00:44:00] it. The second is not having an answer for how you're going to maximize price. When they say, oh, I'm going to, basically, you hear them saying things to the effect of, I'm going to take this offer and I'm going to negotiate it. Okay, what does that mean? How do you do that? I'm going to ask them for more money. Okay. There's certainly value in that, but that's a limited amount of value.

Bone on bone negotiation only gets so much. I want to hear throughout the process two things. What are they going to do? What numbers of different things are they doing to maximize price? And then what are they doing to maximize probability? I want to have, I want to know that they are thinking about risk mitigation.

How do I assess buyers? How do I make sure that I'm not going to wake up two years later and feel like, man, I'm one of the 80%.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. And let me ask you this. I'm going to flip it now. So. Is there one particular strategy, and maybe there's more, but is there one particular strategy, a low hanging fruit that most entrepreneurs, if they only knew this well before you worked with them, it would make a world of difference in terms of a more saleable company, a higher enterprise [00:45:00] value, maybe even helping them create a market disruption, anything that comes to mind for that?

Trever Acers: Yeah, so there's, I guess, two things. One is, have a plan. And when I say a plan I'm an entrepreneur. I build businesses in addition to being an advisor. And having a plan is hard, right? We're in the middle of trying to grow a business. So to take time and think about where I'm going with it. is very challenging.

So I don't say that, tritely that, hey, everyone should have a plan, but we really should have a purpose. What am I doing this for? Am I doing it because I really love it and I never intend to sell it? If I'm intending to sell it, where am I going with it? What do I need to get to?

And that's sort of a after tax cash number. After tax cash, that's what we put in our bank, that's the only number that matters. And then we can gross that up to the number. It says something like, boy, you know what, I've, after doing some analysis, spending some time with my financial advisor, maybe my spouse, the other people in my life that are important, I realized that what I'd like to achieve is a 50 million sale. And I want to think about that within the terms of, what's the cash I'm getting versus stock versus earn out or what have you. But I really want to think about that after tax [00:46:00] cash at closing number. That's a great point to have. What else needs to be true in order for it to be successful?

By defining these objectives years before we're ready to sell. We can start shaping our business. Boy, you know, I want to do this for the next ten years, and I realize that if I sell today, the new buyer, I don't know if they're going to employ me, so maybe I'm comfortable continuing to operate and grow because I don't feel the pressure to sell.

Maybe I want to look at all the range of other options, but really having a plan so that I understand why I'm doing it, I'm really purposeful, saves you a ton of time, ton of heartache. I'm amazed at how many entrepreneurs don't, right? We get there. And someone's made an offer on their business and thinking for the first time about this.

And it really puts them at quite a disadvantage. The second thing that you talk about, Jeffrey, is the idea of if I have a plan and I'm deciding, hey, I'm going to sell my company and I really want to get 50 million, now we can start digging into the value drivers. Okay, so What drives that?

I think I saw one of your podcasts talking about [00:47:00] pricing, like a great opportunity for optimization. I'm a software company, I charge not only a subscription, but by the way, I have a large setup fee and maintenance fees. Okay, well, guess what? I get paid one times revenue.

on maintenance and setup. And I get paid six to ten times on subscription. So maybe I want to think about changing my model where I take these costs and I roll them in to the subscription costs, increasing that a little bit because I'm getting six dollars on that, or six times on that versus one times on maintenance.

So for every industry and every company, there's a number of things you can do to be thoughtful. Now I'm solving for exit. Maybe I want to think about diversifying my supply chain, You know, depending on one factory in China or three factories all in one country, like China, maybe I want to think about diversifying my supply chain because I know that buyers care about that, but am I not?

And I hear this very often. I worked at the factory for 20 years. Of course, it won't be a problem. Well, yeah, it is a problem because I'm depending on that one relationship [00:48:00] you've developed over 20 years. That's a problem. for a buyer. So thinking it through those lens really helps us figure out value drivers and you only know that by having the plan.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wait a minute, Trever. What are you saying? That luck is not a business model? Did I hear that correct?

Trever Acers: Luck is the worst thing in M&A. The reason I say that is every once in a while someone will come up to you and you'll hear their story and you're like, you're the outlier. And they look at you, what do you mean? You are the worst example out there. Please don't go tell your friends about your success because you didn't do a lot of things, but it worked out amazingly for you.

We call these lightning strikes. It does happen, right? If you think about that normal curve of outcomes, there are people who are on the far end of that normal curve. That's just not repeatable. So we don't want to be training people and teaching people about things that aren't repeatable. We want to talk about that thick part of the normal curve around, hey, these are the things that consistently lead to success.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And circling back to what you said earlier, the statistics [00:49:00] are terrible for us as entrepreneurs as sellers because up to 90 percent of exits or liquidity events fail. But what's even worse, I'm speaking to my buddy, Hey, Jeffrey, I hit it out of the park. I sold the company for X, Y, Z dollars.

Well, what they don't know, so they can't tell you, and they wouldn't tell you even if they did know, yeah, they sold it for XYZ dollars, but they left XYZ times two, maybe even three, in the buyer's or investor's pocket, and they don't even know it, and that is the sad reality of it all, and hey. Look at me, Trever Offline, I was sharing a little bit of my background, had I said yes to that seven figure offer, I would have been saying no to a bonafide, nine figure offer, it was there, I just didn't see it, I created it, and by the way, it wasn't luck, but it was around the corner, over the bend, over the hill, I just couldn't see it at the time, I just had to figure out how I could really position the company in the right way, and what to say, what not to say, and that's where the Deep Wealth Mastery System came from.

But we just can't really, it's not that we can't trust what people are saying, we just can't always take it at face value because [00:50:00] the person who's saying it doesn't really know themselves. Thoughts about that?

Trever Acers: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. It's interesting. So I saw a really good proxy of this when we talk about this, it sounds very theoretical and the entrepreneur at home sits there and says, well, how do I apply this to my business? And this was a wonderful example outside of our industry.

We were talking to one of the largest landowners in Napa Valley, and he revolutionized pricing of the grapes coming out of Napa Valley. It used to be a commodity approach. And what I want to use the proxy here as a commodity approach is the same as somebody looking at your EBITDA or your ARR and saying, well, industry standard says I should pay you X to Y.

That's the thing. What he did is he said wait, what I want to look at is how much Money, you were selling the bottles of wine that you're making with my grapes. Let's base pricing on that. And that's what he did. He shifted the pricing model so now when they're selling grapes from these specialty vineyards, they're saying, for every ton of grapes, we want a hundred times the value you charge for a bottle of [00:51:00] wine. Totally changed it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that Trever, because it goes right to the heart of Deep Wealth and our system, because what we work with our clients, where we have them strategically place themselves. Let me just take your example of the different vineyards and the grapes and they're selling. Well, it's so easy to say, well, hey, this vineyard down the road just sold for this and that's the multiple, so that's what we're going to give you.

But with what you're saying here, this example, well, actually, if this vineyard is selling 10X and that vineyard is selling 2X, you can't put me into that 2X box. And it's the same thing with a liquidity event. How do you put your company into its own category? We did that with my e learning company, Embanet.

We created our own category of one, and we were able to back that up with the data, the facts, and a very powerful narrative. But that's where the magic happens as opposed to accepting, well, this is the industry multiple, this is what a similar company did, and that's where your value is. Value, to your point, is really it's in the eye of the beholder, and it's what you share that narrative with the beholder of what that could look [00:52:00] like.

And before we go into rapid mode, I have two other questions. I've had valuators on this podcast, and they say, Jeffrey, before I look at the financials, I'm looking at the narrative of the company. If it's a really exciting narrative, if it gets me excited, that's 80 percent of the company value. Yes, of course, they need to have the numbers and the data and all the facts and everything else to check out.

But a good narrative, 80 percent of the value. Trever, put you on the spot with that, on base, off base, where are you on that?

Trever Acers: Yeah, you said something that hits just a home run. It's the idea of if you are a commodity, you are going to get commodity pricing. imagine this default and it's like a planet that has gravity. You're going to be sucked back into this range. The only way you break out of that is by communicating unique value to the buyer.

So there's two things, right? The buyer is sitting there and saying, boy, I really want to buy you. You start negotiating and they say, What you've done so far is create a framework that says I'm best served by finding, if you're a commodity, going, finding the next person down the road that has a very similar company, because [00:53:00] if you don't sell it for me for 10, I'll go buy theirs for the same price, for 10.

So, that's the issue, is we need to, it is a horrible negotiation position to be perceived as a commodity. Have to create, not only a unique value proposition, but here are the things that are unique to our company, that you can't go find elsewhere. And then the next piece of it is, you need to be able to help characterize even further to that buyer, how those unique elements specifically impact them, quantitatively.

And it's, imagine, thirsty person in the desert comes up to this person who's selling lemonade. When we're selling a company, I want to help that person that's thirsty understand how thirsty they are. Boy, if I sold you this lemonade, it took me about 35 cents to make this glass of lemonade.

That's not the frame through which I'm assessing value. Now I'm thinking about, how thirsty are you? How many days have you been out here? How would this part your thirst? Those are the questions as a seller we need to be helping understand. And hopefully we don't have ten lemonade [00:54:00] stands all next to us that all look the same because our pricing power.

It's destroyed. We need to be talking about how uniquely incredible our lemonade is and really help them validate that comparatively to all these down the street. That's what creates really good pricing power.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, so well said, very eloquently, yeah, said, love that, Trever. And before we go into wrap up, let me ask you this, I have so many questions I did not ask, but is there one particular question I did not ask that you want to share or get out there, even a topic that we haven't covered, or even a message to Deep Wealth Nation?

Trever Acers: Yeah, the number one thing I'd tell you is I can imagine that Entrepreneurs talking with investment banks or attorneys or what have you, right? We're in our office, working on our business on a day to day basis, and suddenly I'm going to make this call. I've got this idea when I think about selling my company.

I'm going to make this call to an attorney or an investment bank, and there's a lot of intimidation. Boy, I'm not ready to sell today. I don't know exactly what's going on. I feel like I'm going to be wasting their time. I'm going to feel foolish. I'm going to all these fears. want entrepreneurs to hear is there are [00:55:00] attorneys, really good attorneys.

And investment bankers out there, they would love those calls. And the reason they'd love those calls is they understand where you are. They understand you're too early. They understand you haven't thought this all the way through. But they'd love to be able to share with you their insights. And the reason they're doing this is, A, they're probably good people, if you're picking the right people.

They love helping others. That's a key metric. Not so, you don't hear that very often in investment banking, but those are the people you want, people that love helping others. But the other reason they do it is, They want to prove to you that they are exceptional. They want to earn your trust and respect, and that's over time.

They don't expect you, when you call the investment banker, don't call me unless you're going to hire me tomorrow. They recognize that these are years relationships. Often it's three to five years before a company sells that we start that conversation. Just giving them some general guidance, starting to establish that relationship, that trust.

We were on a call this morning. They're probably thinking, Five years away from selling their tech firm. But we're giving the guidance of, hey, think about this, you think about that. [00:56:00] When you're ready to do this, you're starting to give them resources. And hopefully, what they're saying is, boy, Trever, when this gets closer, You're someone that I really trust.

I'd like to really get you involved because over the last year, two years, you've been giving me really good advice. So I'd ask entrepreneurs, don't be scared to make that call. The attorneys would love to give you a half hour of their time. The investment bankers would love to give you some time. you're not stealing from them.

They're not going to think you're a fool. They're going to be giving you really good guidance because, again, when you can have a plan and when you can start looking at these things five years out or even two years out. You're in a much better place than you are. If you haven't thought about it and your best buyer calls.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely, and Trever, a story from the trenches, I'm going to put myself under the microscope. I was Pennywise Pound foolish, as the saying goes. I didn't make that call initially. For a whole number of reasons, a lot of which you had mentioned, had I done that, exactly what you're saying, in Deep Wealth Nation, had I reached out to the investment banker as an example that I ended up working with ahead of time, well, number one, they would have gotten [00:57:00] to know me over that period of time.

I would have gotten to know them. I would have been able to check out, does the chemistry work, what's that but they probably would have brought me more business because they knew me. That didn't happen Trever. So when I began to work with the investment bank, like any good investment bank, they had to make sure that I was a real deal and they spent a good number of months on their own coin of diligence on my company before they were really on board to take us to market.

I could have saved all of that and had the benefit of a bigger book of business from working with them and inside connections in a positive way, above board way, all those good things that go along with that. So some terrific advice.

Trever Acers: Yeah, and I tell you that, you know, that, fear around spending money and being a fool, right? I'm really sensitive to that idea of I don't want to be a fool and spend money on someone that's not needed. good investment bankers, the expectation should be that they're returning about a least a 10x return on their fees.

we have a spreadsheet that quantifies this, but essentially, it's the easiest thing to look at is can they increase purchase price, right? But can they increase probability? And there's a number of other areas of networking capital and a bunch of other things [00:58:00] they can impact. But purchase price and probability are probably the biggest things.

10X return. So if I'm getting a 10X return on my money, it sort of dulls some of those fears that I'm going to be a fool by spending so much money with this advisor. Because I know that for a good advisor, I'm going to get a great return on my investment.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Exactly. Well said. And speaking of well said, it is wrap up time. Sadly, I could go on and on with questions. It's a tradition here in the Deep Wealth Podcast, Trever, where every guest, I have the privilege, the honor of asking the same question, and it's a really fun one, so let me set this up for you. When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time.

So imagine now, Trever, this is the fun part, is tomorrow morning, you look outside your window, not only do you see that magical DeLorean car, it's curbside, the door is open, waiting for you to hop on in, which you do, you're now gonna go back to any part of your life. Trever, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be, what would you tell your younger self, in terms of life lessons or life [00:59:00] wisdom, or hey, Trever, do this, but don't do that?

What would it sound like?

Trever Acers: Yeah, that's interesting. I spend a lot of time with young entrepreneurs, and I tell them a number of things. One, don't worry about profits early in your career. We're solving for big. what we need to be solving for is experience. So, we talk a little bit about that. That's one thing I would tell myself is, hey, and I think I did a nice job following this is experience is the goal that you're going to be leveraging.

That's what you need to be focused in. I think the second thing I'd talk to entrepreneurs about is starting businesses earlier. This is, we don't have to wait. there is a society, and I think this issue, this concept is being eroded, but there's this concept that somehow businesses have to be a certain size to get acquired.

They have to be. Very well established. And the reality is we're seeing m and a occur earlier and earlier in the life cycle of companies. So starting a company early and being a little bit more aware of, Hey, this is something that I can build and I can go in a lot of different directions in one of which is sale, but starting earlier.

I [01:00:00] think that's something that I definitely would tell myself. And I share that early a lot with entrepreneurs.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Love that advice. So let me ask you, if you had to put that into one sentence for your younger self, how would you combine the two? Because they're both solid in and of themselves.

Trever Acers: Yeah, I think it comes down to fear. I think there's this big, there's a easy perception that that we have to be doing everything right. I think as entrepreneurs, one of the benefits that we have is the opportunity to violate these norms. and not be hemmed in by our perception of this is the right way to go about it.

I think breaking those norms is is what I would whisper to my young self.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that. Break the norms, feel the fear, go out there, do your best. There is no perfect way to do it. Just do it. And that is absolutely terrific advice. And Trever, as we go into wrap up mode now, if a listener in Deep Wealth Nation, they have a question, they want to speak with you, the team, they want to get some insights, where would be the best place online to reach you?

Trever Acers: Yeah, so, Objective Investment Banking has [01:01:00] a website Objective IBV love to, they can, tons of resources there, both in terms of some tools for entrepreneurs and then a bunch of stories around work that our team has done they can get in touch with me at Trever. Acers, at ObjectiveIBV dot com, a lot, and I tell you I, We love these conversations.

We love having someone saying, hey, I'm three years away from selling at least. Here's what I'm dealing with. What do you think? We spend a half hour to an hour talking about, great, let's diagnose what your objectives are, and then let's give you some guidance for where you are. That's a great call, all the way to, hey, just got an offer from somebody, what do I do?

I love those calls too, because now it's immediately actionable. How to create a strategy that achieves your objectives through this process.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Excellent advice. And Deep Wealth Nation, it's all in the show notes. It's point and click. It doesn't get any easier than that. And you know, Trever, as we're sitting here and we're talking, I can easily see why you're named CEO Visionary by LA Times. Your vision, how you're [01:02:00] approaching things, very different, very unique.

Absolutely love that. It really moves the dial. So that's it, Trever. It's official. This is a wrap. Congratulations. And as we love to say here, Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Trever Acers: Take care. Thanks again. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

The dramatic pause. I'll just wait a moment. Drumroll, please. Subscribe. Please subscribe to the Deep Wealth podcast on your favorite podcast channel. When you subscribe to the Deep Wealth Podcast, you're saving yourself time. Every episode automatically comes to you, and I want you to know that we meticulously craft Every one of our episodes to have impactful strategies, [01:03:00] stories, expert insights that are designed to help you grow your profits, increase the value of your business, and yes, even optimize your post exit life and your life right now, whatever you want that to look like.

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. 

Thank you so much. 

God bless.