316 Carl Lundberg

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life. 

But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time and your hard earned money wasted. 

Of the quote unquote "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it. 

I should know. I said "no" to a seven-figure offer. And "yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. [00:01:00] Two years later, I said "yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal. 

Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event? 

Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it. 

After all, how can you master something you've never done before? 

Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal. 

At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

Carl Lundberg is a seasoned professional in corporate finance and transaction services. As a partner at Gerald Edelman LLP, Carl has gained extensive experience advising clients ranging from new entrepreneurs to large multinational businesses offering a wide range of business advice to nurture and promote their success. Carl has expertise in entrepreneurship through acquisition and search funds, company acquisitions in the UK, [00:02:00] due diligence, debt funding for UK acquisitions, and management buy ins.

With a background in forensic accounting and expert witness services, Carl has advised clients on matters such as valuations, fundraising, and M& A. He is a qualified chartered accountant and an associate member of the Academy of Experts, regularly engaged as an expert witness in his area of expertise.

Carl is passionate about dealing with and providing his clients with a commercial mindset to solve their problems. He's not just an accountant, but an all around business advisor who genuinely cares about his clients and their success.

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. You know, At Deep Wealth, we have a saying that we absolutely love. I wish we invented it. We didn't. John Maxwell, when the team works, the dream works. And that's exactly what we're going to be talking about with today's guest. He's all things M& A, but from an accounting perspective, but not just accounting, accounting plus, I'm going to say, I'm going to put a plug in it right there.

Carl, absolutely delightful to have you on the Deep Wealth Podcast. There's always a story behind the story, Carl. What's your [00:03:00] story? What got you from where you were? To where you are today.

Carl Lundberg: Hi Jeffrey, yeah really great to be on and great to be recording this podcast with you. So I suppose my story is, I am, in fact, if you, I mean, there's a longer version, there's a bridge version, I'll start from the beginning, but I won't take too long because I don't want to bore you.

when I was younger, I wanted to be a pilot, funnily enough, and I went to university and I was studying a course, that in that course you've got your private license and at the beginning of the kind of the, midway into the first year, I remember speaking to the person that led the course and saying, what's the route to become an airline pilot out of this?

And he basically said to me, look, if you've not got 80 to 120, 000 pounds when you graduate, which most, students just coming out of university day, they said, or if your parents aren't going to give it to you, you've got no hope of becoming a pilot. So I thought, okay, right, let me rethink. And so I decided I'll become an accountant.

So got a training contract and trained and qualified, and that was back in 2010, I started when I qualified, I was in a, the firm I'm at now, which is Gerald Edelman, [00:04:00] based in London. And when I qualified, I thought, you know what, I actually really like it here. And I'd quite like to be a partner at Gerald Edelman, but I thought, It's the only place I've worked in this profession.

So let me go and see what else is out there. So for a while, I went and worked at Deloitte. I thought, we're about number 50 in the top 50, Gerald Edelman. And I thought, there's not much point in going somewhere of a similar size, it's going to be broadly the same, I imagine. So I thought either go big or go into industry.

And I wasn't really interested in industry. I've always liked working in practice and advising people. So I went to Deloitte and I got some really, really good experience. one of those things where I think no one's ever going to tell you to stop working so many hours and and I maybe got a little bit carried away well, except for my then fiancée, my now wife who did quite firmly and I think she probably would never have become my wife if I had stayed at Deloitte I returned back to Joel Edelman and really at that point, I was employee one of the Transaction Services Team.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Right at the start. Nice.

Carl Lundberg: so we [00:05:00] used to do some transaction services, financial due diligence, a little bit of valuations, if and when a client happened to be making an acquisition. And they were quite few and far between. And as I returned, I thought, actually, what we need to do is formalize a department. And. and actually go out build a business as opposed to being passive and kind of waiting for something to come in that's not any slight on Management of the time, it was just part of the evolution of the firm, right? The firm would come from being a much more traditional and a smaller practice. And it was just, part of its evolution. Gradually built that department up over the years. And by 2022, we had also brought in a another partner into the team who leads the kind of the deal advisory side.

And so corporate finance as a whole. By 2022, it was about 20 people. And in that time, I kind of moved into the partnership. In 2017, I became a partner and then in 2020 I became an equity partner. In fact I had to obviously buy into the firm and I did that about. [00:06:00] A week before lockdown, which was a little bit scary I kind of, made a fairly, significant for me, at least financial commitment to the firm, and then everything shut down, everyone went home and, it looked like it was the end so that wasn't, it turned out okay and what I've done as well, I think, which has been pretty key, so To the progression of the firm, the department, but also my own progression is to build a structure around me within the firm, which means that I've been able to effectively delegate pass things down because without that and without kind of making some tough decisions about people.

Who you might like and who maybe have really good characteristics, if they're not what you need for the business and to support you at the time. The right thing to do sometimes is to make a change that, isn't always the easiest thing to do. And so that's enabled me to progress in my own journey within the firm, but also to build the firm up.

[00:07:00] So we've got to a point now where actually the department is. Very well established, we've got great processes in place, and I'm actually moving from the 1st of April to be co CEO of the firm,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Nice. Congratulations. That's wonderful.

Carl Lundberg: yeah really, as I say, it's evolved and it's a structure that we've built.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So Carl, let me ask you this, because you're smart, you've been around the block a few times. What are you seeing out there, that as business owners? Founders, entrepreneurs, it's really a blind spot for us if left unchecked maybe puts it out of business. Or if we're going to have some kind of liquidity event, raise some capital, take some money off the table, it's holding us back.

Are there, I always like to ask, Pareto's Law, 80 20, are 20 percent of the same issues causing 80 percent of the problems that you're seeing? And it could be in any area, Carl, that you choose. 

Carl Lundberg: Yeah, I mean, there's probably, given the firm and kind of where we sit in the market in that we're kind of mid tier, [00:08:00] we see really small businesses, but we also work with, some businesses that turn over, hundreds of millions. So there's obviously quite a big range in terms of internal controls and systems but what I would say is that I think it's probably underestimating the need for management information.

And thinking, we're not big enough for that. don't need that. We'll just look at the bank account each week or each day or each month or whenever. And the reality is actually, and one of my partners used to run a seminar called this, what you could measure, you can manage, right?

So you don't know what you don't know. And if, until you have good management information, you can't effectively build and grow and manage that business. And that to me is the biggest thing that can make such a significant change to a business.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And speaking of information, what's interesting with you, Carl, you are a forensic expert. I mean, you see the good, the bad, the ugly. And the good is always nice, but sometimes not so interesting to talk about on the not so [00:09:00] great side. Any insights that you can share, any lessons, any takeaways for our listeners of perhaps something that you've seen over and over again, or even something recently?

Hey. Don't do this. Or if you're thinking about X, stay away from it, do Y instead.

Carl Lundberg: Yeah, think it probably comes down to almost step two, if step one is management information and that means, good financial information, but also measuring non financial metrics that are relevant. You know, Look I've spent most of my career in professional services. And so for us, there's some, the traditional metrics that are measured, which is, staff productivity, work in progress, time recovery, and so on.

But I think, if that's step one, step two is probably controls. And that goes towards the ultimate goal, which is, to make sure that you're working on your business and not in your business. And the way to do that is to put in place processes. To have processes and have a business run on processes with controls that will tell you if that process [00:10:00] has been missed or, Incorrectly applied that's really the next step.

So I think really just having controls, a layer of controls, and that could mean different things to different people in different size businesses and in different departments, but having controls and to the extent possible, automation. And it, it's now automation probably means a different thing to what it meant 10 years ago, but it's all the same.

Ultimately, it's all the same thing.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Best practice or best practices. So let me ask you this because you sit in really both sides of the table. You're working with businesses who are selling, you're working with businesses who are buying. So let's take the position that you're working with a business who wants to sell. And you're on the other side of the table.

What are you looking at, Carl, that's having you say to your client, hey, nudge nudge wink wink Jeffrey run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. This is just not going to happen, at least on my watch, no chance, no way. What has to happen for you to say that?

Carl Lundberg: And sorry, in that scenario, am I acting on [00:11:00] the buy side then for,

Jeffrey Feldberg: acting on the buy side and you're looking at, yes.

Carl Lundberg: normally there are things that You know, red flags. And it's not often that we provide that piece of advice to a client where, which is so damning that basically we're saying, look, I don't think this is a deal that should be done, but it has happened. It's come up. And I think generally it tends to be, instability or unreliability in financials and performance because again it comes back to that point if you can't measure something accurately or if you've been presented with something but then it doesn't stack up with other things that you've seen

The easiest thing to do there is to say look We need to walk away from this.

Now, sometimes, if it's a great deal, actually, it can be worth the effort to try to understand it, but more often than not, if things don't stack up it's very challenging to try to dig right down. And I think, you use the word forensic Really that's often the only way, is effectively to reconstruct [00:12:00] things from scratch and that, it can be worth it, but ultimately, you can spend that time constructing things from scratch to find out, actually, yeah, this is a dog. I don't want to buy

Jeffrey Feldberg: hmm. Absolutely.

Carl Lundberg: I think that's probably the key.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. It's interesting. And I would imagine there's probably shades of gray. So if it's not, Hey, run the other direction as quick as you can. Okay. It's a nice deal. If the index of the deal is a hundred could be anything. It could be a hundred billion. It could be a million, anything in between.

Because of what I'm seeing, it's not going to be on a hundred. Let's put it to 70 or 80. We're going to penalize it. And where I'm going with this, Carl, is most business owners, when you share this with them, the eyes glaze over and, you lose them. I'm busy, we don't have time for this. And I'm really trying to make it impactful for them of, hey, this is where the rubber hits the road.

And the irony is, if you prepare well in advance, working with someone like yourself, having that accountability, having your own forensic auditing behind the scenes to go into all this, you won't run into those issues. And in fact, I would [00:13:00] suspect, and this is my next question. And it's probably just the reverse of what you said.

What gives you confidence to tell a client, yes, this is a good deal, even such a good deal to pay either full price or maybe a bit of a premium because of what I'm seeing. I really like this.

Carl Lundberg: Yeah, I think it is broadly the opposite of what I said, which is, you know what? When you go into a business and this, look, this is an intangible thing and it's not really something you can formally report on, but you can get a feel that this is a well run business and I think, most business people who have seen These, The inner workings of various businesses, you can sense that fairly quickly.

And I think if the numbers stack up against that, it's doing something, and you think, hang on, is this too good to be true? And then you look, and you think, actually, no, it's just a well run business. Then that's something where you think, you know what, this is great. And there have been deals that I've seen recently where I've said, Wow.

This is a no brainer. can't believe the deal they're doing. I've seen people buying 3 million EBITDA businesses at 3X. And which they could [00:14:00] probably sell the next day at 6 or 7X. And often it's because Yeah, the seller is probably poorly advised and also because the seller doesn't necessarily need more than. what that bid might be. And say, look, there are opportunities out there. And generally, yeah it's just looking at things where things stack up and we know that there's some value there.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yes. Once again, you're going back to preparation and the better prepared you are, the more you know, the more likely that you'll be able to get. So let me ask you this. You mentioned a week or two before lockdown, you invested significantly in the company. Lockdown happens. Not great timing, thankfully we're through it.

Has anything changed post pandemic? Any foundational kinds of things, any trends that you're seeing?

Carl Lundberg: I think on the in the transaction services side, which, we mostly work with buyers on that side because we do a lot of due diligence work. We do a lot of valuation work. We've been really busy and I think that's And, in fact, grown quite significantly. I [00:15:00] think that's owed to a couple of things.

One, we work with a lot of Acquisition entrepreneurs who are being very active at the moment and it's a growing, trend and a growing approach to M& A in the It's obviously far more established in other jurisdictions including the US, Spain, Germany, but it's growing in the UK.

And also we've taken market share in other M& A areas.

But deals are still happening. What we have found is that actually post COVID or during COVID on the sell side, there was this period of rapid M& A activity where there were a large number of deals done and completed. And since then things have been And I think that has been, it was there anyway, but then we had obviously some acute economic issues. Around this time last year when we had a, autumn statement that was, catastrophic, I would say, probably for the markets and that's led to a worsening of inflation And then significant increases in [00:16:00] interest rates, which obviously makes a buyer very quickly reassess a value on a deal because funding will dictate that, but sellers are obviously much less quick to say, okay, I'm going to take less for my business because they think, well, it's not worth any less than I think It was yesterday, just because interest rates have changed, it's the same business, but of course a buyer can't fund things in the same way.

So I think there's just been this disconnect in this kind of expectations gap between buyers and sellers. And I think that this has been, partly a result of COVID. A result of things that have happened as a result of COVID, as well as other, geopolitical issues that are going on, Ukraine and other things like that, but shipping issues and other matters, but that's been a fairly significant shift.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, it's interesting. So I'm going to over exaggerate somewhat with my question, but there is a truth to it because there is a line of thinking with certain [00:17:00] business owners. And here's the over exaggeration. Well, my best friend's uncle's brother is our accountant from day one. We get a terrific rate, knows the business.

And we're going to put them into the M& A process, maybe even represent us at the deal table. And so for that kind of thinking, I can have a whole series of what's wrong with that. But that said, for those business owners that are saying, well, yeah, I got my accountants are pretty good.

Why go out, perhaps step it up a little bit. Someone who has a larger firm, more experience. Carl, what are you seeing of what the differences would be? What could you illuminate for us?

Carl Lundberg: This is massive. And we've seen we've been on the buy side so many times where the sellers have used their accountants. And as you say, it's their accountant that they've been with them from day one. Often they're actually not even qualified. Maybe they're just, bookkeepers.

And what they probably should say is put the hand up and say, look, I'm out of my depth there. I don't feel qualified to, or experienced enough to [00:18:00] advise you on this. But I think that there's also this relationship and this kind of Reliance on each other in that, the business owner feels that they rely on the accountant because they've been there helping them from the beginning and the accountant thinks, well, this is my client they rely on me.

But also I rely on them being there to provide me with fees and other things. Right. And what we've seen though, is that it just causes such difficulty. One, the word preparation that you've mentioned a couple of times and I've alluded to they don't. Help them to get ready, because they don't know what ready looks like.

And two, they don't necessarily, and look, in some cases they do, but often we find that people don't really understand how an M& A transaction works. And when you're getting to things like normal levels of working capital It's very difficult and frustrating on the buy side to be explaining things sometimes to your client, and then having to get on a call and explain things but of course the seller's thought, because you. They don't act for them. And so there is a massive difference between having someone [00:19:00] who is well advised. And when we come across a deal where the seller has got a proper M& A advisor, and ideally has been through a process and a run up to going to market, actually it makes our life so much easier because, which are, you know, the prep. They may have done some vendor due diligence, which is fantastic because it means that as you say, they've already identified those issues and they've had the opportunity to rectify them. And it's in everyone's interest that the business is in the best position possible because the buyer doesn't want to have to rectify them.

And if the seller does rectify them, there's not going to be a price chip. Right, last minute. So an example that you've used that you said was fairly extreme, but if I'm honest, it happens more often than I would like it to.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so the flip side of that, and you've begun to talk about that, of doing some preparations, some diligence. So I'm a client and I'm saying, okay, Carl, we want to go to market, pick a time frame, two years from now, five years from now. What are you walking us through? What's your secret sauce here, Carl, [00:20:00] that's really going to make the difference for us?

Carl Lundberg: So it's a questionnaire. It takes about two hours for the client to go through the business, but it uses yeah, formulate the, we'll then throw out. be done to put the company in the best position. A very basic example is things like, have you got employment contracts in place for your team?

What have you done about, GDPR, for example, but there's way more to it than that. As I say, it takes a couple of hours to complete it, but then it... It gives a very useful, practical reading of how ready am I to sell my business now? And then a list of things that actually, these are steps that we need to take to get there.

So as well as that we can also say, well, actually, let's look at our earnings because we know that if we can make an impact on earnings, if we're selling at 5X, say, if we can add a couple of hundred grand onto the bottom line. That's a million. That's a million pounds, consideration, right?

Actually, if there's some... Efficiencies we can make or [00:21:00] actually what we find quite often is that the easiest way to add profit is to add revenue,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure.

Carl Lundberg: which sounds obvious but people often go hunting in overheads, right? But, so sometimes you can think, well, actually, how quickly can we add some revenue on and what's the impact of that?

Margin wise on the bottom line, so it gives us the opportunity, one, to have a diagnostic and walk through that, and have a checklist of things that we can do, but also to say, right, are we financially in the best place, or can we in this period while we're getting our ducks in a row, also work on growing earnings, because One, you'll have a higher earnings to which the multiple will be applied.

But two, it shows growth and you might get a higher multiple if you're clearly growing as well. So are so many reasons why you should properly plan it. And I know often people, and particularly out the back of COVID, but people have just thought, I just want to get out. I've been through this.

It's been really stressful and painful and [00:22:00] tiring, and I don't want to have to do it again, and I just want to sell. And that's great for certain buyers because they're going to get a really good deal. But if you want to maximize the liquidity event that you're going to achieve, a mapping out a process and then doing it in a measured and controlled way.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. Carl, you are taking a page right out of our book. We do exactly the same thing with our nine step roadmap. Let me ask you this, Karl. On the scene with buyers, it strictly domestic? Has it become more international interest? Any new trends going on with that?

Carl Lundberg: At the moment, we're seeing a fair amount of inward investment in the UK I think because, it's relatively cheap because Sterling's not its strongest at the moment. So obviously, you have buyers with, cash in foreign denominations buying Sterling. We have worked on quite a few deals where, there's been a cross border element to it. So we're doing some due diligence actually at the moment for a US based entity. Obviously, what we don't do there is tax because, I was tongue in cheek. I was [00:23:00] talking to someone earlier. I said, we could guess, but, probably not best. So we'd always, they'd always appoint a local tax expert to do the tax DD, but the financial due diligence will often do for overseas deals.

In fact we worked on a transaction not so long ago where there was a Lithuanian. back office, and a US sales office and operations and stock and everything else. And there was nothing in the UK, just the buyer. And so we had tax but we didn't have due diligence of the whole group. We asked... Seeing a reasonable amount of cool stuff as I say, more probably inward investment than outward but also we see a lot of investor in the search type deals that we work on who are based in the U S and in Spain and in Germany as well.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, it just really hammers home the point as really business owners, it's not our quote unquote job to find out who the buyer is going to be. We leave that to a very talented advisor and you'll go out there, you'll do it, you'll hit a home run in that area. And, bring that home from wherever it's going to be, from around the world, locally, somewhere in between.

And so let me ask you [00:24:00] this you mentioned tax. And yes, tax between different countries, absolutely. But generally speaking, again, a lot of business owners are, well, you know, I don't really do tax planning. Maybe when I decide to sell the company, right before I look to raise some capital, I'll do some planning.

Again, for those business owners, what would you tell them of why that's really not the thing to do and what they're missing out on?

Carl Lundberg: I'll first of all say, Geoffrey, that you can't expect to have a conversation with an accountant without him bringing up tax. So it was always going to happen, I'm afraid. So I was at an event a couple of weeks ago and I'd been in the room for about, Four minutes and someone came over and we were already having a conversation about tax and I was like, look, I didn't start this conversation.

I had to look, someone asked me a question, so yeah, I do, I have to often apologize when we turn on to tax, but terms of tax planning, there is no better time to do it than now. And that sounds really like sort of cheesy as a statement, but what I mean is you can't do it yesterday because it's gone, [00:25:00] but you need to do it as soon as possible.

 and actually often what we'll do when we've got someone who's looking to make some acquisitions, like we've got some people we're working with who are planning to make two or three or four acquisitions in the UK under a self funded search type model, but they've said, look, I want to structure this in a way, here's what my intentions are, here's what I expect an exit is going to look like, and here is what I want to do with that cash when I've realized that exit.

And we can put in place for them, obviously lots of advisors can do this around the world, depending on where you are but things like family investment companies, for example, or even structuring things with pensions to say, well, actually, is it worth doing something here? Well, we've got some involvement with a pension, or whatever it might be, you know, do we want to put some share classes in place that allow children to Gain benefit over the years and gain voting rights when they get to a certain age or whatever it might be, but it gives you a really good opportunity to structure things now that mean that actually you're [00:26:00] future proofing the tax structuring of it.

 Because often these things come down as well to thinking about inheritance taxes, really as the ultimate piece, right? It's the final tax you'll pay. We don't like talking about that. It's not, you're talking about the time that, you might die and you're gonna have to pass things down, but actually if you don't plan it can be a real harsh hit. I'm not sure quite how bad inheritance tax in the US but in the UK it's 40%. Over a threshold you'll lose 40% of your net worth to inheritance tax if you haven't planned it.

Well,

Jeffrey Feldberg: All the more reason, you know, a liquidity event, it's not how much you get, it's how much you keep. So Carl, me ask you this, we can go down so many different rabbit holes, but are there any questions or topics that I haven't asked, we haven't really addressed? Is there a message, a theme that you want to share with the community?

Carl Lundberg: I think, Geoffrey, listened to a number of your podcasts the general theme, that, and also from reading stuff that you've put out is that of course there are there are [00:27:00] sellers out there who are leaving value on the table.

Okay. And actually where I tend to operate. Is mostly on the buy side and mostly working with searchers. And a lot of searchers will do a proprietary search and a proprietary outreach. And that's how they identify deals, where you've got a seller who's approaching retirement age, who actually, is from that Kind of the baby boomer generation in the UK, maybe bought a house in the seventies that is worth, a hundred times what they paid for it or whatever it might be, right?

They've got a holiday home in France. comfortable. The business is ticking over nicely, but they've never gone, they've never built a proper website and they've never done any digital marketing. my clients look for those deals, right? Because they know. What value is on the table there?

And, it's not about, doing a deal to the detriment of the seller it's still striking a deal with them that they're happy with but, if they were to [00:28:00] speak to an M& A advisor and say, right, how much can I realistically get from this business? Someone could actually say to them, it depends when you want to sell it.

Because if you want to sell it now. This is what you're going to get, but if you're happy to wait for a year or 18 months, there are a series of things we can do with you and your business that will actually make it worth so much more that it's worth investing that time and investing a bit of money paying advisors.

And I think Jeffrey you've been there and done that yourself, right? the deal perhaps but got a far better deal. And I think that really is key message that I see it every day. I see my clients buying businesses with value on the table because that's what they want. the other side of that is that there are sellers out there who are not picking up all the value that they could.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And it just goes to show perhaps the unsolicited offer is not the best offer, at least for a seller, maybe for a buyer, for all the reasons that you're sharing. Absolutely. But there's always two [00:29:00] sides to a coin.

Carl Lundberg: Exactly. Yeah. and in fact were actually running an awards event in London tomorrow. So it's the 2nd of November, 23. it would have been in the past by the time this is aired. But what we're doing there is we're celebrating entrepreneurship through acquisition in the UK.

And we've got some deal of the year awards. I've kind of founded this awards event to celebrate, the industry and, the deals that are done and yeah, the overall strategy of, entrepreneurship for acquisition, which I find fascinating and I, think is brilliant.

But when I was thinking about the awards and who we should give awards out to and what for, there was some reservation because people are saying, look, if you've got the deal of the year. What you're really saying is you've got a great deal, but the seller obviously hasn't, right?

And so the way we are measuring what's a good deal is we have said good deals are about win.

Yeah, actually if the seller gets too much, the buyer's not got a great deal, but they are about women, and we're very clear about that, and I think that really is a [00:30:00] major ethos the search space, is that actually we need to find a place that everyone wins, and often that means that there's some role of equity by the seller, and continue on in the business, and so where you've got maybe a younger A person coming in with some fresh energy, who's keen to do the things that maybe the seller didn't want to do just because of the stage they're at in their career.

Or maybe the fact that they say, I don't have the business acumen for this. I'm good at, making widgets, but I'm not an international business person or whatever it might be. They get the opportunity to come with that buyer in that next phase and have another exit where they can sell what retained stake they have, but at a far greater value.

So everyone wins, and that's what's important.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. A nice win win win for all involved. And Carl, you've mentioned entrepreneurship through acquisition a number of times. So what's going on with that? Where are things at? What are you doing that's perhaps different than others?

Carl Lundberg: My colleagues will tell you that it's it's all [00:31:00] I talk about really. So I just find it fascinating. I do, I love it. And don't know much you know about it, but I mean, I know it's a far more popular thing in the U S but, it's a concept of the, well, the concept of a search fund, I think was developed by Stanford Business School back in the seventies. These are eighties popularity still in the UK. I know that in the U S there's the SBA loan scheme that kind of enables people to go and acquire small businesses. But we haven't got that kind of. Support in the UK from the debt side. So it's kind of, we're, we're reliant on, private lenders funding these types of deals, but it is growing in popularity and there's traditional search funds here where we've got people raising that part of search capital upfront.

And going and trying to find things, but also there's a lot of self funded searches now as well. But these really are the people that have kept M& A going in the UK, in my opinion. And from my experience over the last couple of years, because as I said, there were this kind of disparity in [00:32:00] valuation sellers and buyers who were maybe already in the market and looking and traditional P.

E. maybe and, and larger kind of sellers who were looking at trade deals or P. E. deals, but the searches are creating. Innovative solutions of succession with things like this role of equity that actually enable the deal to be done without the seller saying, well, I don't want to sell at this price. What they'll say instead is, okay, I'll sell some at this price and you can take control, but I'm going to come with you in the rest.

And they might have a vendor note, but they'll probably also have some equity left in. to enable. so I find it fascinating, but it's also something in my opinion, has kept M& A going in the UK and yeah, and it is right in the sweet spot size wise for us as well. A lot of the deals kind of between 5 and 30 million.

So we work on a lot of those types of deals.

Jeffrey Feldberg: You have to love that entrepreneurial spirit. And speaking of spirit, I have the privilege, the honor, Carl, for every podcast to ask them this question. And so here we go. It's a fun [00:33:00] one. 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 Carl, the fun part is tomorrow morning, and you look outside your window and there it is, a DeLorean car, not only is curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do, and you're now going to go back to any point in time. Carl, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time that would be, what would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom, or hey Carl, do this but don't do that?

What would that sound like?

Carl Lundberg: I think the reality is, this is a really tough one, because I think the reality is, I would, Probably most people who have children and a family would say the same, right? I wouldn't change anything. Nothing's perfect, right? But of course there are things that you think, oh, I wish this hadn't happened, or I wish that happened, or I had a really bad day.

Our chairman Joel Edelman and really he's been a professional mentor to me, said to me once, I had a, one of my team resigned, but it knocked me a little bit. I I walked [00:34:00] into his office and I said, I'm really surprised, I didn't see that coming. And he said to me, well, if you didn't have bad days. You wouldn't have good days. They'd all just be the same, right? And so, whilst I could go back and I could definitely, give myself a bit of a shake, age 16, 17, and say, come on, you need to focus, right?

I think that things would have panned out differently, very differently. whether for the better or not, difficult to say, because I've kind of got where I am through a series of, Nox, and different challenges, and some changes, I'm not sitting in a 747 at the moment, right, as the captain, thank God, I don't really like flying, if I'm honest to say, it's probably quite good, so I think I would like to go back to probably, look, 16, 17 year old Karl have a little word in his ear.

but I think ultimately I would probably leave things as they would be. And in that case, I'd go way past when I was born and I'd like to go meet Einstein.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yes, take a number. I'm right there with you. [00:35:00] That would be a lot of fun. And you know, Carl, you are really, there's one thing that comes out of this question. It's exactly what you said. Hey, Jeffrey, you know what? Enjoy the journey. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I wouldn't change a thing because who knows.

Where that would be, and you're in some great company with that. Carl, for someone who has a question, they want to reach out online, maybe they want to become a client, and they want to speak to you, where is the best place online that they can do this? 

Carl Lundberg: the best way to do that is to go to our website, which is geraldedelman. com, which is G E R A L D E D E L M A N. com. On there, you'll be able to. Browse through the partners and you should be able to find my page my email address as well as clundberg at geraldederman. com.

So C L U N D B E R G at geraldederman. com. I'm also on LinkedIn. You should be able to find me on there, but anyone wants to reach out to have a chat about anything that. Kind of related to finance or accounting in the UK, especially transaction based stuff but anything else, really, we've got a full service firm covering all of the usual accountancy and [00:36:00] taxation areas.

But if anyone wants to reach out and have a chat about business or about search or, ETA, anything like that, please do. I'd love to have a chat.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific, and for our listeners, it is point and click, it's all in the show notes, it does not get any easier. Well, Carl, it's official, it's a wrap, congratulations, as we love to say here at Deep Wealth. May you continue to thrive and prosper while remaining healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Carl Lundberg: Thank you, Geoffrey. It's been great to be on. 

Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to [00:37:00] light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting [00:38:00] close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit [00:39:00] www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

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