All right, today's topic is how to have a highly productive and profitable partnership. Nicola and I are fortunate to be friends with and be in a business relationship with Harry Sendrowski and John Alfonsi. And they are going to share with us their best advice for having a happy and productive partnership over the years.

So Sendrowski Corporate Advisors, for those of you that don't know, is a premier accounting firm for working with high net worth family offices, high net worth families with affluent individuals. And their expertise is not only in helping these folks legally save the most money they can on taxes, it's also, they have deep expertise in valuing businesses for purposes of purchase or sale, as well as for the purposes of litigation or for the valuation work necessary for any expert witness testimony. In addition, they can help with entity formation and structuring so that tax exposure is limited down the road in the future.

Harry Sendrowski and John Alfonsi are two of the principals in the firm and they are joining us today. Welcome Harry and John. And I'd like you both to share your origin story about how, Harry, you can tell us how the firm came to be.

And then John, you can tell us how you came to be a part of the firm and the history and the background, why you guys decided to team up and who you have on your team and how your team came to form. So Harry, why don't you start, please? Sure, sure. So thank you, Dave.

So actually the firm was formed by a gentleman named Zach Sulecki and myself back in March 1st of 1983, a few days ago. And how we got started was interest rates were really high. Back then it was 18, 20, 21% children will remember those days like we did.

And at the time we were at a big accounting firm doing work for a major client called Taub, M-T-A-U-B-A-M. And they came to us because we were on a run to what's called a conflict because we were working on getting them refinanced, their shopping centers, but we were going to the alter not getting kissed. So we were running up literally millions of dollars of fees.

It was gonna be a conflict because at that time, Chooch was gonna have to withdraw from the account if those fees became a material amount of money. And so we were offered to do their work, go form our own firm. We could have other clients.

And that's how Jack and I got started. Jack was the partner on the account. I was his direct report.

And that's how we got started. So it was at the prodding of a client and then we had several other clients come with us at the same time. So that's the initial backdrop.

And then how did John Alfonsi come into the picture? Well, John was a lot five. He came from another accounting firm. John's been with us close to 40 years now, isn't it, John? June 27th, 1988 was that fateful day, Harry.

Right. So now John came to us as a staff person from another accounting firm. John, why don't you tell why he came over? Yeah, so my background was in small local CPA firms where we were generalists.

We were primarily auditors. We prepared tax returns. But I didn't know anything about tax.

I was lucky if I could spell it, if he spotted me, the T and the X. And at some point, I was done being an auditor. I didn't like that. I'm like, I wanna be a tax guy.

So I went through a recruiter, said I wanna be a tax person, find me a firm. And after many, many interviews with different firms, I interviewed with a couple people from Sandrowski, and I liked it. And somebody, my old firm told me, do you know what you're getting into? This firm is only five years old.

What happens if things don't work out? I'm like, well, pretty smart guy. I think I will know what to do, but I think these guys are gonna survive. I like what they do and how they do it.

And so the joke amongst the office here is that we got it when here. I was supposed to start the day after the 4th of July holiday. I put in my notice at my old firm.

And like a lot of firms, they said, thank you, you can leave right now. You're going to a competitor, have a nice life. And I thought, oh, great.

I got hold two weeks off. I was married at the time, no children. And I thought, this is gonna be great.

My wife was working. I can do whatever, be a bachelor for two weeks. After about three, four days, I was bored out of my mind.

And I called up the firm. It's like, can I start a week early? And they said, oh my God, we've got one here. We can't let this one go.

He actually wants to start working here earlier than what we offer. That's how I joined the firm. And it's just, I've made myself, I would say, I don't wanna say I'm indispensable.

I've been in an annoyance where Harry just couldn't get rid of me and had to do something with me. So after many, many years, it was what? Around 2000, we had a firm trip. He took me out with the other shareholders, the officers.

We went to New Orleans to celebrate where I got the great news. And he flew our spouses out with that. And so, it's something that I always wanted to do.

I love the firm. I love the work. There have been times where I've hated Harry and I'm sure there's times he's hated me, but it's never stopped me from coming back.

It was, I remember one in particular, if you flashback, Harry, it was the L5, L6 analysis on the bankruptcy with the NOLs. Had to get something. He's looking over my shoulder, yelling at me, change this, change that.

No, do this, do that. I had to be somewhere with my family. And it was like, I'm making the last change.

I got up and left. And the manager and the senior manager at that time, they told me when I came back after, they said, he's not coming back, is he? But it was the heat of the moment. And I realized that, I almost pulled, I don't wanna pull Larry David, his great story of Saturday Night Live, where he quit as a writer and realized he screwed up and just showed up the next day as if nothing had ever happened.

But it's just like, that's what people do. You put up with the bullshit and you roll with the changes. So that is my origin story and how I've made myself a nuisance to Harry.

So all partnerships, personal and professional, require work, right? We have to be able to get, we spend a lot of time together. You're going to have bumps in the road. You're going to have wonderful moments together.

So it's no surprise that you went through that. And partnerships in particular, as a structure, tend to be a little bit more personal than other business structures. So let's go back to just some of the early goals that you had set up for the partnership.

And I mean, by the time kind of John was there and already integrated, what are some of those early initial goals for the partnership and then tell us how that evolved over time? Yeah, so one of the, so when Jack and I, John was here, one of the things that we did is, Jack and I were the two partners at the time before John and Maureen came on. The one thing we always did is we never signed each other's checks, even if it was a reimbursement check or anything else. So if you start off with a matter of trust amongst the partners, everyone always knew what was going on.

And I think that's a great foundation then as it relates to our goals at the time was to make sure not only that our clients were being serviced properly, but we were allowing people to grow. And because of the type of clients that we had and complexity, our goals were to bring on additional great people like John and other people that we have working for the firm. So, but the goals back then, remember, you're talking about the late 80s, how we got new clients and things of this nature completely different than you did today because most of those came through referral sources.

You really weren't, a lot of firms weren't out there quote unquote marketing. You marketed yourself when you were working on transactions. And then that's how those people actually got to saw you in action.

And John, I don't know, John, what your percentage is, but a lot of the long-term relationships we have with the lawyers and the business people have come from when we've been on the other side of transactions. Oh, absolutely. Like the way that we conducted ourselves, you know, things of this nature.

So that goal was, you know, part of that. But our other goal was this. One thing we've always had at our firm is that we treated the file clerk like we treat our partners.

You know, we don't have hostile environments. You know, we don't, you know, we treat people well because we think you just can't turn it on and turn it off. That impacts your staff, that impacts morale.

It also finds can serve that. So, you know, the overall goal is to treat everyone with dignity and to make sure that, you know, we have the right, you know, integrity as we were, you know, changing the firm and growing. John, you have a... Yeah, no, I just wanna stress that one point that you said about allowing our employees and our people to grow.

When I started at the firm, I wanted to be a tax guy. I never envisioned doing business valuations, doing litigation support, testifying. And along the line, Harry identified it as a business line and said, are you interested in doing this? Like, yeah, that sounds great.

It sounds very, very interesting. And, you know, it allowed me to go through the training program, getting the designations, baptism by fire on certain cases. And, you know, it's letting people grow in an area and let them do what they do best.

And that to me was critical. And he obviously realized that and said, okay, geez, this guy's got, he's pretty good at this. Let's let him run with it and see where it goes.

And it's worked out, you know, he and I both. So I think that allowing, identifying people's strengths and weaknesses and working towards their strength and providing support on their weaknesses is absolutely necessary. The other thing that I would have always said is that even before I was a partner and even as a partner, communication is always key, letting everybody know what's going on.

And the other is if we were working on clients together, realizing who had the relationship versus who was the technical expertise, I treated Harry as my client. I always went into every assignment that said, I'm gonna make sure Harry looks absolutely the best he can in a meeting, even if I'm not gonna be there, because that's a reflection on the firm. I don't need to be that face guy all the time.

I don't need to be the one that gets all the accolades. Harry comes off looking like a champion and doing, you know, coming up with the great ideas and running with that. I am happy.

That's the way it works. And I think we all kind of do that with each other. And now, John, you already started touching on this about your particular role.

And you said you shifted from really wanting to go into tax into more evaluations and the expert witness work. Do you have defined roles for, you know, most of the people in the firm? And was that something that was established early on and continued? Not really. Harry is fond of telling people that I'm a cross-dresser, not in my personal life, but at work, in that I'm still involved in the tax practice.

And I think that's, you know, going to Sheldon's point of, you know, the competitive advantage. In any business transaction, that tax thread weaves its way through everything. Every transaction, every deal, anything you're thinking about has a tax implication or a tax impact.

Even on the valuation side, even if it's a non-tax valuation, there's issues that are tax related. And so being able to address both the tax and the technical, the valuation side, makes sense. And so that's what, we've got a few people that are strictly tax.

We have a few people that are strictly valuation or litigation, you know, dispute advisory. And then everybody else does what they do best. If I need somebody, if I need somebody to analyze a general ledger account, I don't need a forensic accountant.

I've got people that are good at data analysis, whatever role they do that in, whether it's dispute advisory, valuation, tax, they're good at that. And so I will utilize them because that's their strength. I'm going to go to the people that fits best.

So we don't try and peg people into a certain role or a defined position or what you're otherwise going to do. The idea is you're going to work at the firm and work on firm clients, whatever that is. Obviously, when you come across a resume that somebody that looks really, really good in a particular niche or area, yeah, you're going to do that and define that to them.

But even when they come to workforce, then when they get exposed to the other work that we do and they find that very, very interesting, Arie and I right now, we have a manager that works remotely in Canton, Ohio. She was a valuation person. She doesn't know much about tax, but she has an interest in it, not that she's ever going to be a tax compliance or a tax consulting, but it's finding out that, geez, some of that stuff is very, very interesting and taking that and kind of running with it and giving people the opportunities to grow in those areas.

Long-winded way of saying, Nicola, no, we don't pigeonhole people. We look for, using a sports euphemism, I look for the best athlete. And really, John, I mean, allowing people to work in the areas of their strength is what enables people to really enjoy what they're doing and it really helps with retention.

So, and it's no surprise to hear that from you too, because of the firm that you build, that it's really allowing people to do what they're best at and what they really enjoy. Yeah, I mean, when we interview employees or we're going through their review, I'll ask them, you know, what kind of a specialty would you like to develop? Is there something that interests you? As long as it fits within, you know, what the firm wants to do, absolutely, I'm going to encourage that. But go ahead, I'm sorry to cut you off here.

Yeah, no, no, I was gonna say what we try to do too is broaden their experience, because the more they know, the more that they can identify issues for clients and then that just kind of builds up their professional base and their confidence in dealing with clients. So, you know, the more we were able to give them other assignments, just not the one or two that they were working on before, just makes them better professionals and we sent their better professionals. Everyone, it's a win-win for all of us.

So let me- It's always fun to say, check your ego at the door. Well, and related to that, let me ask you this. So for me, I worked in big companies for almost two decades.

Then I went out on my own for seven, well, nine years, including the two last years of the pandemic. And it took me connecting with Nicola, working with Nicola in a voluntary capacity and then on something that we thought was just gonna be a fun side thing like the podcast to realize that we had shared values yet complementary strengths. So in other words, our individual qualities were different enough where, and polarizing difference enough where we could deliver value on two different aspects of a continuum to clients, but our shared values were identical.

And it might be because I'm dense or it might just be because that was a unique situation, but it took me working with her on a week-by-week basis on a volunteer thing and then in the podcast to really understand that we had the same values. It seems like the people that I've met from your firm, you all have the same value system. So how do you guys understand, how do you come to appreciate that people have the same values that you have, that you want as part of your firm? How do you assess that in a way that it doesn't take you, well, for me, like 30 years and then two years of meeting and knowing Nicola to realize that this might work, this might be a good fit.

Like how do I shorten that process up, right? Well, you try to do it first of all through the interview process to see what, you gotta have your five or six magic questions, but on a day-to-day basis on the value principle, what we try to gauge with people about what is their value system and what they're doing, because we tend to deal with a lot of complex matters. There's usually some type of time constraint and we have to know whether or not we can rely on what those people are telling us that's in the file or what a client said and things of this nature. So that's where you really get into that whole value proposition about trusting people and things of this nature.

And once you get to that level, then you can start building on that process long-term. But it takes a while to get there because unless you're working with somebody, like working with John or working with the other partners, I mean, we're all here to protect each other. Our biggest thing that we do about clients is it's our client intake.

And that's just huge to us. And that's where the value comes in because anything I do is an impact on everyone else in the firm. So I value everyone else.

I don't want to do anything with a firm that would ever harm anyone else by taking down a client that we don't want to be associated with or doing something stupid. So I mean, that's to me, part of the value principle. John, I don't know if you... Yeah, it's through working on client matters projects together where you get to know somebody.

We had an employee one time and it resonated with me. He was doing something and it wasn't right, it was wrong. We're not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was a relatively smaller amount, but it still made a difference. And he said, how right does it have to be? And it's like, oh my God, that tells me everything. It's like being pregnant.

You either are or you're not. How honest should I be, John? Yeah, it was like, what do you mean? How right does it have to be? Right, but you know what? I will tell you in all fairness, that is how an auditor thinks. An auditor thinks in terms of materiality.

In our business, there's no such thing as materiality. So even within our profession, there can be that might not be a bad way to look at it, but what we do, it is not the greatest way to look at it. So here's a question that I get.

I must get this question twice a month, if not every week. And I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are. So I'm not throwing anybody under the bus here, and I don't mean anybody on this call, but there is a generation that is younger than I am.

Okay, I'm just gonna phrase it that way. There's a generation that is younger than I am that does not have the same mentality that I was raised with throughout the Marriott organization and then going into professional services. And that mentality is, you know, look, if I have to work until midnight this week, I'm gonna work until midnight this week because those are the demands of the job, and that's what I signed up for.

If the client drops something on me and I absolutely need to address it, I will do what I need to do to address it. And then, you know, if I have to make up the time that I was going to spend outside of work at another point, I'll make up the time at another point. What I'm saying is I don't think that there are people coming into the workforce today or two or three generations into the workforce today that have the same level of urgency and the same degree of prioritization that we were taught when we were coming in.

And I'm not saying that I'm Sheldon Pond and I walked uphill to school both ways. I'm just saying that it's, you know, we're not, this is not, like, do you both find that it's hard to find people who are even in their 30s and 40s now or younger than that who are willing to put in like a 70-hour week this week so that the client work can get out the door and then maybe take an extra day off like a month from now or something like that? Is that, am I, is it just me? Or, you know, are there, is it, you know, do we have that problem and what do we do to fix that? I think we're running into that as well, Dave. The way I, at least I handle it during the interview process is being upfront with everybody that there are going to be times where I need you to work weekends.

I need you to stay late. You need to put in the hours. Is that acceptable? And, you know, I never want anybody leaving the firm because they said we lied to them or, gosh, you never told me that that was gonna happen or that I'd have to work that hard.

I wanna be completely upfront. I will try to manage the process as much as possible to make sure that, yeah, you know, you're not working 80 hours this week while somebody only has 30 hours of work on their plate. But, yeah, there are gonna be times client demands, you know, demand it and I will be upfront with them at the beginning.

If they go through it and say, geez, you know, I had somebody that said you were absolutely right, I just didn't believe you. Then, you know, maybe that's not for them but I don't want somebody coming in here with the wrong expectations. We are gonna be completely upfront with people of, you know, it is hard work.

You're gonna have to put in the hours at times. It's not a constant, you know, 70 hour, 60 hour work week. We try not to do that.

But it is, it comes with the territory. You wanna be in public accounting. That's part of the process.

You try, like I said, to manage it but it's just setting expectations for people at the outset. And, you know, I'll tell you, I see this with, I see this in remote environments and, you know, Bill Byers is with us. I see it at his firm and I also see it, my wife works for a company that is 100% remote but they have, you know, 680 employees and in the remote environment, especially if you have a bi-coastal or an international company, there are some times when there are meetings that are like, you know, my wife has a standing meeting every week that's from eight to like nine at night on a Wednesday night because her company's based on the West Coast.

And it's a double-edged sword. You want to be in a remote environment. That means that you may have to take a meeting that's convenient for your colleagues in Singapore that has to be at nine o'clock, that has to start at nine o'clock at night once a month.

And I feel like we, setting expectations is critical but having people understand as well, our company is unique in that we work across seven time zones. And because we work across seven time zones, if we land a client in Australia, it will be more convenient for them once a month for you to conduct a session that begins at 10 p.m. and ends at 12.30 p.m. And you have to be willing to do that. And I just have found that people are, you know, I think we're giving, as a society, we're giving the wrong impression to people as to, hey, listen, you know, work can be fungible and it can take place whenever you want.

And there's this myth that the four-hour work week is possible. And in professional services, I don't think that exists. And that's what I wanna, how do you convey that to somebody? It's so hard to find new accountants, right? There's no newly minted accountants.

The accounting factory is closed. So how do you, when you guys find a new accountant that falls out of the accounting tree, how do you say to them, listen, you know, you're an accountant and it's between January and April and you're gonna work a lot. Like, how do you teach these new accountants that they're gonna give you their lives during this time period? How do you convey that to them and get them to accept it? Yeah, it's, our business model is a little bit different, Dave, is that we don't recruit directly out of college.

We're looking for people that have experience that are those two to three year people at a minimum so that they've been through this already. So somebody else's battle scarred them and now they're looking for something that says, geez, is there something different out there? Yeah, we're a different kind of a firm. We do different type of work.

We're not a, you know, a traditional CPA firm. And so we're able to provide that to somebody but with the caveat that says, yeah, you're still gonna have to log in the hours. The second firm that I went to before I joined Harry, we had a minimum of 54 hour work week from January through April 15th.

Next firm I went to after I left them was, they said, how does a minimum 64 hour work week sound to you? And I thought, eh, it's 10 hours a week. That's not too bad, 10 extra. Well, you do that for 13 weeks straight, it will wear you out because it was a minimum 64.

We were working, you know, more like 74 to 80 hours, you know, seven, you know, 12 hours a day, seven days a week near the end. And it's just, you burn yourself out. You make stupid mistakes.

But the idea is that, yeah, I'd been through that. Shame on me for not realizing how much more 10 hours a week was gonna be in the long haul. But yeah, I don't think you're ever gonna find anybody coming out of college now with a degree that wants, first of all, good luck trying to find somebody that wants to go into public accounting.

They might be an accountant, but they wanna go into private because they don't wanna put in the hours. But if they do, yeah, nobody wants to, you know, work that, you know, that much, which is, it's difficult. So yeah, you try and find somebody that's been through that but needs something a little bit different.

And I think that's what we have to offer. Yeah, that's, so what I'm taking away from that is just be a better place to work for experienced people. That's your, be the competitive advantage, be the better place for experienced people to come where they're not gonna get beaten over the head every day and don't recruit out of college.

Recruit people who are used to working a lot but want a better environment. That's what I'm taking away from that. Yeah, that second firm that I worked at, everybody that stuck around there were people that they recruited directly out of college that had never worked anywhere else before and never knew any better.

The people that left were people like me and other people that work somewhere else that says, this isn't right, this isn't the norm. We gotta find something different here. But Dave, the other thing that we did too, that I think to keep our people, and part of this is also traction, is for a number of years until before the merger, we basically paid for 100% of all medical insurance.

We always had a great 401k contribution where the vesting period was very, very short. And when people needed to take off because the child was sick or they needed to go take care of their mom or something, we just ask people, just tell us where you are from a safety standpoint. So if someone calls, you need to know where you are.

But we know they're professionals. They're gonna make up whatever time they need to make up. So when you don't ask for people to tell you exactly what's going on, in 99% of the cases it'll work.

You're always gonna have that one employee at some point in time who's gonna not do the right thing. But the odds are pretty high that you're gonna have the culture that the other people of a firm will wanna make sure that everyone's following the rules. Getting to Peter's question here in the chat, and I'll let you address it as well, Harry, since it's more directed at you.

To me, it's more of a gut feeling, Peter. You can ask somebody certain questions. It's how they respond.

You can tell, is somebody telling me something that they think I wanna hear or do they actually really mean it? To me, that's what I try and pick up from people. I don't know about you, Harry, but. Yeah, in an interview process, you mean? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's why you can't do them on Zoom. You gotta do it face-to-face. You gotta see what their body movement and their facial expression, their hand expression.

But you can normally tell if they're both gonna do pretty much based on what their body reaction can be, let alone their words. Yeah, for instance, I remember interviewing somebody, telling me all about themselves. We're telling them about the firm things.

Do you have any questions for us? First question out of his mouth was, what holidays do I get off? That was the red flag for me. If that's the most important thing to you, this isn't gonna work. So I think something critical you already mentioned, John, is setting those clear expectations.

And to do that, that requires good communication. So I'd like to move into just how you maintain good communication within the firm, with employees, with your partners, with everyone internally. Yeah, I think that's something we work on every day.

Part of that communication comes down to not only talking about client manners, but also finding out how people are doing, what's going on. Are they okay? Does it need some help? So it's a big process, actually, because I need to know the tenor of what's happening. Whether somebody's having a bad day, a good day, following up on projects.

Sometimes I just go down there and just wanna say, hi, what's going on? And that's the big thing there. But it has to be embodied in the day-to-day to find out where that communication is. And frankly, if we fall down in communication, we're gonna have some very unhappy clients and unhappy staff.

So you've gotta work at it all the time. And obviously at different levels. But it's the constant push on that, because once you lose communication, you're dead, in our business, at least.

I don't know what you think, John, but. Yeah, no, it's a great point. And one of the things is, Harry and I, we will have, I don't wanna call it common clients.

Everybody is kind of staffed. Harry is the relationship guy for the majority of our clients. If he's going to a meeting, and he'll let me know, I'm gonna go meet with Dave.

Is there anything that I should know? I will tell him. I'll give him an update of what's going on, any conversations Dave and I have had. Same thing, I will tell Harry.

Hey, I've got a meeting with Nicola next week. Anything that I should be aware of or know, and I'll do that with my staff people as well, that are working on the client, is keep me informed about what's going on, so we don't look embarrassed in the meeting. Like, oh, didn't so-and-so tell you that? And the other thing is just, what Harry mentioned is, I don't need to be everybody's best friend in the office, but I literally like to take a vested interest in what's going on in my staff people's, in our employees' lives.

Hey, what are you gonna do this weekend? What's going on? Take note if someone says, yeah, I need to leave early. Oh, I got something interesting going on, or just, as Harry said, popping into their office and say, hey, how was the weekend? Anything interesting? I went to the movies. Oh, was it good? He recommended it.

It's not just paying lip service to it. It's taking a genuine interest in their lives that they feel, oh, geez, somebody really cares about me here at the office, and what's going on. I don't want surprises.

I don't want somebody just up and leaving and saying, you guys abandoned me. I felt like I was on an island. So yeah, it's making that effort of having communication, not just with your staff, but with your partners and let them know what's going on.

We had just a nine o'clock meeting this morning amongst the partners every other week, just to kind of update everybody of what's going on. Those are very, very helpful. Sometimes there's not a lot to talk about.

Other times we have to schedule more time, but it's just letting everyone know what we're doing. It's obvious from hearing both of you speak that you are really listening to your employees, that you have good lines of communication with them. And as we do that and we accept opinions and we incorporate them into the work that we do, no conflicts can arise.

So how do you manage sometimes when there's a difference of opinion or a disagreement that arises out of this open communication process? Well, it depends if it's a technical conflict or a conflict on scheduling, but I think there then we just have to say, okay, what are the priorities? Sometimes it can get a little tense depending on who promised what to clients, but not having the communication and people probably is not gonna get you anywhere. So you gotta find a way to work through it and make sure everything happens because if John promised something to somebody two weeks ago by a certain date and I need something for tomorrow and he just found out, then I might have to go back and tell the client saying, look, I thought we had capacity here, but I'm gonna need a couple extra days. And if you go back to a client and tell them that and you don't do that all the time, they're gonna say, fine, that's not a problem for us most of the time.

But you have to communicate that way too because I would rather do that and come back to them and not give them the product they were looking for or the right answer. That's just a non-starter. Yeah.

And I think amongst the employees, from a scheduling perspective, if Harry goes to a staff person and gives them something to do, there's this general thought that, oh my God, it's Harry, his name's on the door. I gotta do this and drop everything. And what I tell people is when I'm giving them something, tell me what it is that you've got going on.

Can you fit this in? Just don't do it because Harry gave it to you, I gave it to you. Legitimately, let me know when you can get to this because that's gonna help. And if there is a conflict, then Harry and I can deal with it.

If I need something, I can go to Harry that says, hey, I need so-and-so on this. I gotta get this done. We're going to court tomorrow.

But they're working on this for you. Yeah, that's fine. And they'll tell them that that's okay.

So I think scheduling conflicts, don't put the employee in the middle of all that. That should be handled amongst the people that assign that type of stuff. If there's a conflict or a difference of opinion between us as partners or as a partner group, this isn't a, I always like, Harry always uses the example or the story that he's got the Pope vote, which is no matter what we vote, his vote counts more than everybody else's.

But we can live with that, but he's soliciting our opinions. I appreciate that. I don't expect that every single time he's gonna do or we are going to do what I think is correct.

But as long as I have a voice in that decision, okay, that's great. I remember one time that with Harry's blessing, he actually offered me up, interviewed with a client one time. And the CFO said, what's worse, not making a decision or making a bad decision? And I said, actually, if somebody makes a bad decision every single time, that's obviously bad.

You don't want that person. But doing nothing is the worst thing that anybody could do. So I would rather somebody take a position, give me your reason of why you think that's correct.

And then let's talk about it. So having a voice in that decision process is key. And at some point we've all agreed with, we've lived with what has to be done.

If it's an absolute non-brainer, I'm assuming that one of us would say, no, I absolutely can't do that. I will not do that. And this isn't gonna work.

Hopefully as a group, we all take that into consideration and say, what's more important, making that decision or having an unhappy partner that's going to be a problem going forward? So that's the way I do things. And you know, John, you do such a good job of anticipating exactly where I'm going. I had to ask about conflicts at the partnership level.

We have some connection there. You always lead right into it. Inherent with all partnerships are the potential for conflicts.

They just happen, right? So, and you already touched on this, John, one way that you look to resolve those is giving everybody a voice and at least hearing what they have to say and appreciating that opinion before making a determination. So maybe, let me throw it to you, Harry. Let's set aside the Pope vote for a moment.

And there has to be a deciding factor, right? If we have a deadlock, we've got to have somebody else to say, okay, this will be the deciding vote on the subject. But aside from that, is there something else, Harry, that's part of this process when conflicts do arise that allows you to effectively resolve them as a firm? Yeah, so I think having open discussions amongst four or five partners, what happens is even though I might have felt one way or another on something, I'm then better educated on the different views. And then we might modify whatever decisions we were going to make.

But just getting the benefit of that, because we have very smart people here that are all partners. Without doing that, then I could end up making a decision that's too narrow and probably not in the best interest of the firm. So these can be very good from the communication, debating an issue, different points of view with different client, maybe input.

I think if you don't have that, even setting aside the Pope vote, which has not been used all that often, but the idea would be is that. I mean, it was kind of like when we decided that we felt we wanted to go ahead with the merger is everyone had input, everyone had to move forward, but made the decision that I was gonna make a lot of interim decisions but just because of speed and time. It was always in everyone's best interest because we're all tied at the hip, together economically and business wise, but sometimes you gotta do certain things just because of expediency.

So let's get into that. Let's talk about that process. I've heard you, you described it to me privately and you shared somewhat at our last master's group meeting.

But for the folks who are here today, explain how that process went. And then I'd like John's take on that process. Like when did you loop him in and what were his thoughts as the process was unfolding? So Harry, start by describing the process and then let's bring John in to get his thoughts on what that process was like from his point of view.

Sure, so when we identify the potential firm and I get my initial discussion with Jeremy, who's the managing partner, we then, we had a meeting after that saying that we really wanna do this because we've had several people before approach this. So as a group collectively, we talked about what would be the benefits of doing this and what type of firm were they? So the nice thing for us is that, John has a specialty in valuations, dispute advisory, et cetera, et cetera. They didn't have that really.

So they were just mainly doing what we do is mailing on the family office, ultra-high net worth, tax planning, structuring, you know, they do have an M&A division. So we were at least aligned there from a conceptual standpoint. And then as we were going through the letter of intent process, everyone had input.

That was, you know, everyone got a copy of it. They might not have liked the timing of us, so we had to return it and get back. But we were very clear about what the communications, you know, were and what we were doing.

And it was only after we signed the LOI that we'd have to take a little bit different tact than many agreements and making decisions on an interim basis. Because once we got over that letter of intent, because our letter of intent was very lengthy, I think I mentioned to you before, where we had all of our rabbis in there, then that communication, because of expediency, understand that going through due diligence is like, you know, going through a pathology exam. Understand the due diligence firm went through five years of every single check of our firm that we wrote, every single client, you know, receipt, things of this nature.

So you're explaining things, so it's impossible to include everyone in that process without impacting the firm negatively. But go on, John, maybe give your view of what happened. Yeah, no, it was, so even before the firm that we merged with, we've always had people interested in us.

And there was one that came directly to me that we had discussions, I obviously looped in Harry at the very beginning to let him know, you know, it was kind of a, hey, we're interested in you, you know, you wanna come join our shop, like, you know, unless you're willing to buy the whole firm, I'm not just gonna leave. So I brought Harry in and we just kind of talked about it and we both felt that, you know, that wasn't the best fit. It was a little bit different than the firm that we're with.

They were a valuation dispute advisory firm that really wasn't sure or knew a lot about our tax practice. Different side on this, when Harry looped me in and said who this firm was, it was like, oh, this is interesting because I've actually done work for this firm twice. The managing partner actually hired me for one of their clients to do some valuation work for gift tax purposes.

So I was familiar with the firm, I knew Jeremy, I was comfortable with him, obviously, and understood the firm. So it just made it more of a natural fit. At some point, yeah, Harry shared everything with us as a group and then, you know, obviously we had to pick a point person and naturally Harry gravitated towards that.

He was gonna be the one that was gonna negotiate. He was the one that was going to communicate all of our issues, questions, things like that. But it was, you know, hey, do you guys have any questions on this? Or, you know, what do you want clarified or need clarified? So it's again, Nicola, that day, that having that voice in that process that Harry took into consideration and communicated.

So it was a natural thing. There was nothing that said, God, no, this is a horrible decision and I, you know, I'll go along with it just because it's in my financial best interest. I think we were all on board that it made sense from the people that we met and how it went forward that everybody felt comfortable with it.

Not necessarily that we got the staff people involved from day one, but, you know, we kind of took it upon ourselves to feel that what we felt was in the best interest of the staff people was in their best interest. And, you know, to Harry's credit, he's always said, I wanna make sure that everybody is taken care of. And I've told him numerous times as we went through this process, I appreciate that, but do what's best for you.

I will land on my feet no matter what. But Harry was that person that said, no, I wanna make sure that all of the people that have stood by me in these 40 plus years are gonna be taken care of. So yeah, I trusted him.

Actually, I'd like to pick up on that because you had, John, you mentioned that, you know, with respect to the staff, they couldn't have known at this point in time where all these conversations are going on and you two shared this with us, at least Harry, you did at the master's group meeting when we were talking about this, like how to balance that, that makes sure that there's kind of that, the conversations are going on, but the staff doesn't perceive that anything is happening so that you maintain that trust with them and they don't become uneasy. Talk to us a little bit about that. Well, we, you know, because of the type of work that we do, it's not unusual for the partners to get together on major transactions and work closely behind closed doors, things of this nature.

But the idea here was we had to have a very close group who knew about this only. So we were very careful about what signals we were sending out. I'm not saying it was easy, because it's not, because you are doing things differently.

There are a lot of questions that are being asked and people aren't stupid either. You know, they might've known something was going on, but they just couldn't figure out what it was. But, you know, we did have requests before we merged for the firm, you know, wanted to, you know, possibly interview some of our seniors and some of the people below partner.

And we just said, that's a non-starter. You know, once the, you know, once the ink is there and the money's transferred, then we can talk. And we absolutely refused to do that with one of our rabbis, because we've all been to closings in our life that didn't happen.

And we were not going to risk a failed transaction with our staff. Did you like the way we've incorporated the Pope vote and a rabbi all in our same conversation here? Yeah, you're covering the entire spectrum, which is great. All right, I have just one last question for the two of you, and then I'll turn it back to Nicola to wrap up, and then we'll take questions from the crowd.

The last question that I have for the two of you is each of you now, what is the one piece of advice that you would give to yourself, say 20, 25 years ago, the one thing that you know now that you wish you had known back then, what's the one piece of advice you would give to yourself? And I'm not asking you to go back to the beginning of your career, 25, just 25 years ago, what would you tell yourself today so that you're prepared for something 25 years from now? I, you know, the way I would say that, Dave, the one thing I've learned over time is, and this was, you know, I was a big, this is my fault, we tried to tackle on too many things at one time, and so I would, instead of just looking at the quality on three or four things, I would try 10. You mean practice areas? Yeah, practice areas or major projects or whatever the case may be. And so, you know, unfortunately, in a couple of those situations, what I was doing is like when you buy a gym membership, you know, you don't get into shape unless you go to the gym, and it's just stretch things too thin.

And over time, I, you know, I learned a little differently, but that would be the one thing, Shondell and I were talking about this in our breakout, you know, less is more, and it can be a lot more, you know, done right. So that would be the one thing, but that would have been one of my major faults by far. Okay, John? From my perspective, I'll give you kind of a cheesy answer, Dave.

I don't think there's anything that I would have changed because what I went through made me the person I am today and the professional that I am. I had to go through all of those bumps, the hiccups, the Harry yelling at me and walking out on him, me, you know, making him, you know, helping him on whatever it is, all of those made me who I am today. So I can't say if I had known that way back when I would have done it anything differently.

Sometimes you just, you gotta go with the flow and take your lumps and figure it out and make sure that you make the best decision. And I think I've done that. All right, let me put it to you this way.

What would you reassure yourself 25 years ago? What would you reassure yourself that you're looking ahead and you're thinking to yourself, pick one thing and you're thinking, I don't know if I could get through this. What would be the one thing that you would reassure yourself that it's gonna be hard, but you can absolutely get through it and you'll be better as a result? Um, hitching myself to Harry's wagon when the firm was going through some major changes. I would have told myself back then, and I did it, which is, you're gonna get through it.

You trust Harry, you trust his business judgment. I know I'm a good professional. I'm gonna be able to make, you know, get through this no matter what happens.

We are going to be stronger because of everything that's happened. I am not a worrier. I let my wife do that.

She worries and panics about things that are outside of her control. I'm the one person that says, if I can't control it, then there's nothing that I should be, you know, getting upset about and getting worried about because it is what it is. So I would reassure myself that if you trust, truly trust, who you think is right in making these decisions, you're gonna be okay.

I've trusted Harry so much. I asked him to marry my daughter, not marry him, she's already married, but to oversee, to be the minister at my daughter's wedding. To officiate, you asked him to officiate.

Thank you, that was the word I was looking for today. I get it. Yes.

That's how much I trust the guy now. Well, we'll edit that part so Harry's not into that sort of thing. We'll fix that up.

Devin will kick his ass if he tried to marry my daughter. Go ahead, Nicola. All right, final question for both of you.

And this will be short. You have been together for a long time. You have a great partnership.

What's your one piece of advice to each of you for those who are early on in the partnership journey? You're gonna have bumps in the road. You're gonna have good days, bad days, but you have to remember you gotta be loyal to each other. You can't talk about each other.

That's the one thing you just can't do. You gotta be supportive. And that supportive can come personally, professionally.

And the one thing that I think is important, you gotta be able to be loyal to your partners outside about bringing them up. So when you're out at events, you talk about John, what he's doing great on the evaluation or our clients. So that's what you really need to do.

You've gotta be supportive of each other, but it's like a marriage. You're gonna have good days and bad days. You gotta stick through it and be truly loyal.

I would say listen and be open to other people's opinions because I'm not always gonna be correct. Harry's not always gonna be correct. Maureen's not always gonna be correct through whoever else you want into that pot.

But if you truly wanna be somebody's partner and you trust them, then whatever decision is made, you're going to support it. You're not gonna try and do something to undermine that person. I don't know if you call it, Harry.

We had a management consultant come in one time to talk to us. And one of the things that he said is if partners don't disagree on certain things, then you guys just aren't communicating. You gotta have some, I'm gonna call it disagreement, not animosity towards people.

But you're not just going to go along with it because then, yeah, you're not doing anybody any good by not having an opinion at something. So yes, you should have some differences of opinion, some bumps in those roads. But whatever decision ends up being made, I'm gonna support Harry.

He's gonna support me. We're gonna support the group going forward. And I think that's what's made for me a, what now? Almost a 37-year marriage actually work.

Thank you, John. Thank you, Harry. That was such great advice.

We always enjoy having these conversations with you. And that will do it for our Insider Secrets to a successful partnership. So we will be back here again next month with another meeting.