Have you heard the news? Last April 1, 2022, Summit CPA has officially joined Anders CPA + Advisors (Anders) with a vision to achieve their highest potential together. Anders is a Top 100 St. Louis-based CPA and advisory firm that has delivered full-service accounting, tax, audit and advisory services to growth-oriented companies, organizations and individuals for more than 55 years. In this special episode, Jamie Nau our Director of Accounting and host interviews Jody Grunden our CEO and co-founder and Robert Minkler Jr. Anders CPA + Advisors' Managing Partner to talk more about the merger and how it came to fruition.
" Just because things are going well doesn't mean they can't be better. So that's what we try to live by. " - Robert Minkler Jr.
The finer details of this episode :
Episode resources
Summit CPA has Joined Anders!
VCPA Success show – episode 58: Episode 58 - Summit CPA has Joined Anders! - YouTube
Jamie Nau: Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's special podcast. We have a very important guest on here. So, everybody that follows us on social —LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook—you have an idea of what Summit is doing. You’ve probably seen a big announcement that came out very recently that we are merging with a large firm out of St. Louis, Anders. And so, we thought it'd be a good idea today to talk a little bit more about this process and how we got there. I’m so very excited to be joined by two people that were a key part of this merger. So first, Jody Grunden, as always
Jody Grunden: Hey, Jamie, I'm pretty excited about this as well this is good stuff.
Jamie Nau: And Robert Minkler.
Robert Minkler: Hey, Jamie, thanks for having me today. Yeah, it's going to be fun to talk about this.
Jamie Nau: So, let's, let's start at the beginning, Robert, I want to get your perspective; how did you first of hear about Summit and how did this whole process get started?
Robert Minkler: Well, it's interesting. Well, of course you see Jody, Adam, and the crew's names at CPA trend lines and so forth. So, I kind of knew of the firm before, but we were specifically looking for a virtual CFO, a fractional CFO type services in a merger partner. And so, we had a consultant that we hired to kind of a knock on some doors, so to speak, to see if we could find somebody that that would come in and merge with us and be a part of the team.
Jamie Nau: Great. So was your first impression with Jody? Because I’m surprised that’s where we got to where we are today if that was your first impression!
Jody Grunden: You don't have to answer that!
Jamie Nau: Great. So now, Jody, let's, let's go to your side. Let's talk about your first connection with the underside of things and what your original thoughts were.
Jody Grunden: That’s pretty cool. Yeah. Cause you know, over the years we've been approached by many different firms. We've been approached by many different companies looking to get some insight to potentially acquire us.
We've always pushed back. You know, we always said, ‘well, we'll listen.’ But we weren't really ever truly interested. And when we met the team at Anders back in September or October, it really kind of gained some waves. Like ‘these guys are pretty cool.’
They're different than the typical accounting firm. And that was super important to us. And we thought, you know, ‘Hey, let's continue the conversation now.’ I really didn't have the idea that we were actually gonna do it. You know, it was one of those things, ‘Hey, this was great conversation.’
You know, maybe in a few years, maybe some other time, this is kind of a like a steppingstone. ‘Hey, this might work.’ If it doesn't work, then great for the next one, make it a little easier on the next person that comes looking. But they kept calling. They kept meeting with us.
We met with them back in November. I remember coming to the office in St. Louis was pretty cool. It was a pretty short drive for us, about six hours from Fort Wayne—that's where Adam and I both live. And we met the crew there, and they were extremely welcoming. And, and it, again, took more legs from there.
I started thinking, ‘well, this might happen.’ And we thought, before we even get even further on that, we need to see if the team felt the same way that Adam and I felt. It wasn't necessarily the money; it wasn't necessarily the size of the company; it wasn't necessarily any of that. It was more of the feel. Is this firm very similar to us where we would feel comfortable being part of that team?
And then, Jamie, we brought you and the rest of the directors and the few CFOs out in January to get your opinion. And, what did you guys think? I mean, obviously he didn't know anything about it because we couldn't tell you until that point. And then the news was, ‘Hey, we might be looking to merge with another firm.’ You probably had to “gulp” a little bit, I'm sure.
Jamie Nau: It's a similar thought that I think a lot of people had; you know, I went to work for Summit for certain reasons. A lot of it was the culture. A lot of it was the team, and there's a lot of stuff that I loved about working with Summit. So anytime I hear, ‘okay, we're gonna make a change. We're gonna think about merging with a larger company.’ The first thought was culture fit. And so, as I went down to St. Louis, that was my first thought was, ‘Okay I want to make sure when I talk to their team and talk to their people, that this was going to be a place that I still wake up every morning excited about working for.’
Cause that's what it comes down to me for me. It's my fourth job since college and each job I enjoyed, but once I stopped enjoying it, that's when I moved on. And so, I wanted to make sure this wasn't that moment for me as—that I was going to stop enjoying working at Summit. And, honestly, it was the first night when we started playing dodge ball with zombies in the high-rise hotel, I was like, ‘okay, this, this seems like a pretty cool company to work for.’
So that works for me. You know, that's, what I was looking for here. I had a fun time that first night and started to get to know people.
Robert Minkler: Yeah, the feeling was mutual there. It's interesting, you know, Jamie, you mentioned earlier, Anders is a large firm in St. Louis, and I still don't picture us as a large firm.
In 2021, we did about 50 million, $51 million in revenue. It gets us right into the top 100, but we're just one office in St. Louis. We don't take ourselves too seriously. We have a lot of fun at work. I think you guys saw that when you were in our office, and I thought the culture meshed just really well— meeting all of you guys and just hearing the stories and some of the things we do, and then some of the things you do. I mean, it’s different because you guys are a 100% distributed, and we're, I guess I would call us, more of a hybrid office.
We have brick-and-mortar, but we've got a lot of people that work remotely, as well. So, I thought it was it was a really good fit. The culture was a good fit. I think you guys sort of determined this on your own, as we talked through things, we've always been willing to try different things.
We're not the rigid CPA firm, and we never really want to be. We always want to remain nimble and flexible and ready to tackle that next big thing, whatever that might be. So, it's just exciting, I think.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, I definitely agree. And yeah, I use “a big CPA firm” just because that’s obviously compared to where we are, and that's where a lot of people's minds went when announcement happened or even when we found out.
I agree. I think the nimbleness you mentioned is huge. I always joke with Jody about one of the first experiences I had at Summit. We were meeting with a client, and I had Jody and Adam on the call with me. They [the client] brought up this tool, and it looked pretty cool in the meeting.
And the next morning there was an announcement from Jody that we're using this tool for all of our clients going forward. That's the kind of nimbleness that I've got used to working with. My previous experiences with larger companies, that just doesn't happen. I think with all the conversations we've had, and, obviously, we're further down the road here and I'm on the steering committee, a lot of those conversations we've had have been very similar to that.
When we're talking about something, it's not an immediate, “no” … it's not, “Hey, let's think about that for the next six months.” It's, “let's start investigating it and see if it is right answer for us.” So, I think that nimbleness is going to be key going forward for a lot of people coming in from the Summit side.
Jody Grunden: Yeah, that was a big part of it really. Because change is really scary for accountants. They just hate change. I say that all the time. We kind of embrace change, and it sounds like, Robert, your team does as well. The change part is the cool thing because we don't change for change sake. We don't just do it to do it.
There's gotta be a good reason behind it and focus, But the ability to adapt really quickly and go from A to B and then B to C, and then C didn’t work, so go back to B. That's gotta be something that I think for firms of the future, it's gotta be something that they're ready to do, and they can really embrace it and go forward with it.
Robert Minkler: Yeah, I think historically, your typical CPA or a CPA firm, you're right, is slow to change. They got the “tried and true, this is working, it’s going well, so why change it? Don't fix it if it isn't broken” kind of a thing.
I just always go back to, Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, when he says, “good is the enemy of great.”
I think about that all the time. Just because things are going well, doesn't mean they can't be better. So that's what we try to live by. I think we're on the same page there, and it's obvious every day. So, it's pretty cool.
Jamie Nau: Great. So, the next area I want to go into, I don't want to sugar coat this because I think it is important. Obviously, this relationship, this merger, would not have happened if there weren't benefits for both sides. So, I want to hear from both of you about how this merger is going to benefit each side and how we'll help the organization grow in the long run.
So, Robert, let's start with you. As you were going into this and you were looking at Summit, what benefits did you see for bringing us in?
Robert Minkler: I think there's multifaceted benefits, and it's not just the obvious things. The virtual CFO offering is what initially attracted us to Summit.
But as we peel back the layers, there were just a lot more benefits that I started to see in this combination. So, I don't think it's a secret to anyone. The efficiencies your firm's been able to develop in delivering this service, in what I'll call an alternate billings philosophy, service delivery, and technology stack, as it relates to virtual CFO services is a definite benefit.
But then, I started seeing, how can we take some of those things and apply them to different areas of our firm’ because we have traditional tax and audit services, we do a lot of that stuff, but then there's other advisory services that we offer, too.
So, some of the things that you've gone through the pain of learning how to do it are going to benefit other areas of the firm. Another benefit to me is, these last couple of years with a pandemic has just thrown a lot of offices, every office, on its head. We had to morph and do things that you guys have been doing for eight or 10 years.
So, you just went to work the next day, and everybody else had to figure out how to do it. And so, we started; we made some mistakes. We work hybrid now, just accelerating everything a few years, I think, there's still a lot more; that pendulum has swung all the way back yet.
And so, you guys have tried things and learn things that we haven't even thought about yet. So that's going to be, as we move into the future—like I said, we're a single office St. Louis firm, but now we have 50 offices, you know, if you want to think about it that way. And it's actually more than that because we have one staff person who has been in Cleveland for 10 years.
So, we have some of that, but we haven't really gone to the extent of specifically recruiting without borders. If somebody contacts us and says, ‘Hey, can I work from a different city?’ We'll certainly consider that situation and see if we can make that work.
But we haven't intentionally done it that way. And I think that's another thing—it just broadens our ability to hire not only in the VCFO realm, but other parts of the firm as well. So that's the main things that I can think of.
Jody Grunden: Robert, you know, kind of the same thing. When we met back in October, we weren't really contemplating seriously about making any kind of merger. Especially of nature. The big thing that I can see when I reflect back is that, at Summit we've accomplished a ton, did things a lot differently from the very beginning, from the way that we bill to working remotely, to doing this virtual CFO service, that nobody thought could catch legs back in 2004.
And working the remote thing and actually keeping the culture and all that kind of stuff we've accomplished, the profitability was there. A lot of CFO firms have struggled profitability. We figured that out, too—a highly profitable virtual CFO firm, which was huge.
Retention was great; we don't lose clients, which is nice. We have a 94% retention rate. And we have a team available throughout the United States, For me personally, I hate to say it, but I got bored. And it's kind of weird. It's like, ‘well, we accomplished everything.’
So now the next goal is just to double in the next three years. And we've done that every three years, since 2010. So that wasn't really a different goal. So, it was like, ‘Hey, let's first get to the 5 million; let's now let's get the 10 year. Now let's get to 20 million. So, what does 20 million look like?’
Well, we'd probably make another goal and say, ‘well, let's get the 40 million.’ That type of thing. Cause again, it's that rinse and repeat. I don’t know who it was, one of the PE firms, contacted us before and said, ‘Hey, we're going to be a $20 million firm in three years, high five, you know, we're, we're at 9 million this year, and we'll do 11 million at the, by the end of this year. And we'll be at 20 million in three years.’
And they're ‘like, can you get the 50 million in three years?’
And we're like, ‘Well, 50 million? Wait a minute. I thought 20 million was cool, and they said 50 million.’
I'm like, ‘Oh yeah, we could probably do 50 million.’
And then, then it's like, ‘Well, how are we going to do 50 million?’
And then when you guys came along, I think the big issue with us is that we had limited ourselves with hiring new people—having a bench We're so worried about being highly profitable and all that kind of stuff. In order to get to 50 million, we really have to have a bigger batch; we have to have more people on the sideline that's at a capacity so that we can really grow.
And then when you guys came along, it's like, ‘this could be the perfect scenario on getting that.’ Because the traditional accounting firm is always looking for new people.
So having people on the bench to me seems like that'd be perfect for them, cause I'm sure we can utilize people in a lot of different ways. And with that, I thought, we could truly get that $50 million mark and a very quick pace if we had somebody that had the same, philosophy, ideals, and core values that that we had. In order to grow that and weren't so worried about the billable hour requirement all the time—somebody that was open to the way that we bill. Value-based billing is a great way of billing. Sometimes you're super profitable, sometimes you're not, and you have to accept that.
A lot of firms have an issue with that or have a problem with that; it’s just inherent because they've always billing by the hour. We had to get through a lot of different stereotypes that a typical firm had.
When we met Robert and the team, it was like, ‘this could be something that we could actually get there.’ Something that's challenging, something that's going to make it exciting for me.
And, and it was kind of funny because they came back and said, “You know what, let's give you a three-year deal and guarantee your salary for three years and, and we're going to do profit. And then we want to lock in for three years.”
I'm thinking “Three years? Why the heck would I want to leave in three years? Let's make it five years.”
Let's guarantee salary for five years and work on a five-year goal. Cause I knew three years, we could possibly hit it, but it's gonna take a little bit of people. We're gonna have to have invest in people in order to get there. And it's like, I really thought that the really big turn is five years. I'm throwing things out there and, Rob, you're going to probably kill me for this, but I think we can double the size of the firm in five years—I really do.
And a lot of it, not only from adding the virtual CFO side to it, which I think is a huge component, but if we can have the rest of the team start adopting some of the principles that we put in place, just with even the virtual side, the base of the flat-fee billing, get kind of moving away from the hourly. All those different things that are stereotypical accounting, if we can move away from that and really develop a culture where the team isn't working more than 45 hours a week throughout the year, that'd be kind of cool.
And it's not heard of in big firms at all. And it would be kind of neat to be able to do that. And really, as I mentioned in my introductory talk to the team at Anders, it'd be pretty cool to be on the west coast at a conference and someone asked me where, where I work and I'm like, “oh, Anders.”
And they’re like, “wow, Anders, that's pretty cool. How'd you get that job? You know, that's the premier job.”
To me, that would be a high five. I've succeeded. That's what I would call success after five years—having a conversation like that east coast, west coast, maybe even in Montreal. “How did you get that job?”
That would be pretty sweet.
Jamie Nau: Just going to jump in here real quick and let you know, Robert, that because Jody's on these podcasts, we do have a great editor. So, if there’s anything he just said that we need to edit it out, we will. We'll make sure to take care of.
Robert Minkler: You kind of qualified your statement on doubling in five years, and the numbers that are in my head, I think, it’s not only possible and doable, but I would be disappointed if we don't.
So, you're not, you're not shocking me with that. I'm independently thinking that. I did think about another benefit just while you were talking, Jody. So, I do want to throw this in here. And you mentioned culture. I just want to go back to culture real quick.
That's the number one fear, I think in traditional CPA firms; in the remote work environment, how do you maintain your culture? Or, if you go to the traditional way of expansion, which is brick-and-mortar, in a different city, how do you maintain that culture?
I've sat in on enough of your meetings so far that you've had with your team that we're starting to combine now. I mean, what is this? Like a 5-day-old combined firms? So, we're, we're getting everybody integrated now, and it's just really cool how you guys keep the culture going with a remote work environment.
And that's just something that I think people grasp at or don't do it because they don't think they can maintain it. So, I think that's a huge, huge benefit.
Jamie Nau: I think the big thing about it is, when you're distributed, and I don't think this is alone a distributed issue, I think it's impossible to happen if you're not doing this, you have to be intentional about culture when you're distributed.
And I think that's why it's so important and it's worked out so well for us. If I wanted to go a whole day without talking to some, I 100% could. And Jody and Adam wouldn't notice, and Jody and Adam wouldn't even deal with it. But my job is managing the team, and so, I make a point every day to pop in someone's office and just talk to them about how life's going, how work’s going, how I can help them.
I think it is an intentional thing; in order to be distributed, in order to have a good culture, you have to think about it every day. And, you have to have, not just me, not just Jody, not just Adam, but your entire team thinking about every day.
I think that's why it's worked. And I think that's not much different than a brick-and-mortar, but if you don't do it, you're destined to fail. I think there's plenty of companies that are in a building where they can survive a little longer without that intention of culture.
So, I'm also going to touch a little bit on what Jody mentioned about the people side of things. And I think the interesting thing, I think this is pretty important for a lot of our audience is, people say you can't time the market. And I think that's kind of how it goes with people as well. We've tried these things in the past.
We've tried, ‘Okay, let's spend the next six months hiring a head. Let's get two extra CFOs at capacity. Let's get two extra seniors at capacity. Let's have this extra capacity and let's try to do it that way.’
And it never works. And the reason it never works is because who knows what's gonna happen over those six months? We could get 10 new clients a month over those next six months.
And then we're, we're behind on capacity that quickly.
Or, those next six months, we could have no clients; we could have zero clients come through. We could be in a dry spell and then we're burning these costs that these people are just brought in. I think, as I was listening to Jody talk, as someone who's very involved in delivery, in order to really make this work, which is something Summit’s never been able to do, you have to have the mindset of ‘this is going to be a long-term result for us as we're always going to be a little bit heavy on the bench in order to make this work.’
Because those months that we do have those 10 clients or those 15 clients come in, we're going to have to be able to, first off, staff them without any problem. And then, quickly quickly, quickly rebuild the bench right back up because we just took half our capacity.
So, I think that's the long-term play that I'm excited about with moving to Anders—that we're going to be able to do that and really be able to not have to worry about trying to time the market.
And say, “okay, these are the six months that we're going to get ahead.” Because we've tried that, how many times, Jody? And it's just never worked.
Jody Grunden: I wouldn't say never worked, but it's not a consistent thing for sure—100% agree. And we don't pick up 15 clients a month, just so everybody out there knows that! We pick up about four!
Robert Minkler: I was just going to jump in and say real quick; I think one of the benefits of the combination is that, with the sharing of resources, there's different aspects of what we do for our clients that maybe don't really fit into the VCFO model as you guys have built it. But there’s still valuable services to clients that we can train people on and that kind of thing.
And so, we can utilize some of those resources, so it smoothed out some of the bumps in the hiring up. And so. We never take our job postings down, especially today's day and age. And, probably, a lot of the listeners that are CPA firms on the podcast would say the same thing. In today's day and age, it's tough to find and keep good people, but that's another benefit that's going to come out of this—we don't have to be so regimented about hiring just at the right time. We just continue to keep that pipeline open. And I think it's going to work well.
Jody Grunden: Yeah, which is definitely music to Jamie's ears. I'm sure.
Robert Minkler: And then the other thing is having a firm, like we already have had situations even before this, where someone is in the tax department, and they're just kind of done. And they want to try something else, or audit, or whatever.
They might go to our outsourced accounting group, or they'll go to our business valuation and forensics group and do something else. Maybe healthcare consulting (maybe not so much IT consulting because that's a completely different skillset), but I see that really working well with this service as we grow.
We're probably going to have people, who look at that and go, “okay, well that would be kind of cool to go and try that.”
And so, we'll have even more slots and more people to fill those slots and be able to create capacity that way, too.
Jamie Nau: And I know from the Summit side, I'm super excited about that as well. Jody and I could probably count names of people that we've lost before. And, we’re like, “Dang! That's the person that, if only we would have had Anders. You know? How many people come to us and said, “I just miss tax?” Which, I don't know how people say that, but we've had people come to us doing the tax work and getting it, getting their fingers dirty, and just getting into it.
I think that we've had people say to us that they missed audit. They’ll say they want to just try something at a bigger company or bigger firm. And so, we've had so many people come to us and say that’s where it'd be great if we could have kept those people and say, “Hey, here's some options for you.”
And I think that would be a huge benefit for us as well.
Jody Grunden: Yeah. The cool thing is that now we can really, you know, we typically don't recruit for texts per se. We have our tax team, but we don't, we're not recruiting all the time for it.
Now we can. Now we can recruit all throughout the United States for tax or, for those individuals that are looking to completely work remotely, we have that capability now.
And can bring in and absorb those into a traditional tax practice outside of the virtual CFO service. We do that already with benefit plan audits. We've done that for years, but now we’ve got a bigger benefit plan audit side; we’ve got the combined Anders/Summit practice has about 400 audits a year, so that's pretty significant when it comes to 401K audits of that nature. Now we can recruit all over the place and really kind of build the team throughout the U.S. Canada, North America, anywhere really, and really build a solid team with that. So that's exciting for sure.
And working that remote environment, I'm looking forward to seeing how that really accelerates our growth, with just having that capability.
Jamie Nau: Great. So, the next question I want to go down the path of our listeners. I'm sure there's listeners on both sides of this conversation. Some that have thought about being acquired and what that would look like, and what they should be thinking about. And some that are thinking, “Hey, maybe I should grow through acquisition into this path.” So, Jody, I'm gonna start with you on this one. What tip would you have for that listener who’s like, “Hmm … wonder if I should think about going down this path?” What would your advice be for them?
Jody Grunden: Probably to run!
Robert Minkler: Toward it or away?!
Jody Grunden: That's a great question, Jamie. I would say always having an open mind. I think Adam and I have always had that; we're going to actually listen to things, not be so close-minded minded to say, “Hey, the other side is, you know, you got the forest and you got Star Wars type action; you don't want to be on the dark side there, I guess.
And that's not true. There are great firms out there that would be great partners with really any firm. If they're open to it. And so, I would say keeping your eyes open and your ears open and really keeping your mind open to what can be a potential if you did merge with another firm. And, with that, losing power is probably one of the biggest things that a lot of smaller firms have.
Cause now they've got to share power versus having it all by themselves or sharing with one or two people in a smaller firm or whatever. Now, they've got to share it amongst others. And so, I think it's important like what we did, really do your do due diligence in the way that. Is this firm a really good fit personality wise? Are the people that you're going to be working for or with, is that somebody that you're cool with meeting with every single day of the week?
Because like they say, a job is like a marriage; you typically see your people at work more than you see your spouse, you know? And so, is that going to be a long-term relationship? Can I go and have a beer with that person and feel comfortable? Can the conversation continue without big, huge pauses? Like, “Now what I'm going to say?” type of thing.
Those are the things that, for me, really makes a merger opportunity worthwhile, important, and successful. It’s having that ability to simply hang out with somebody and feel comfortable with them—no different than if they were working with you in your current firm.
Jamie Nau: Great. Great answer. How about you, Robert?
Jody Grunden: I thought it was a great answer!
Jamie Nau: I know you did!
Robert Minkler: You probably fed them these before!
I can’t say a lot of those things better than what Jody just said. I would just preface it by saying, my assumption on this question is, the principles of the partners are going to continue to work in the business as opposed to, they're looking for a succession plan.
Like they don't have that figured out—that would be more of a financial transaction. So, what I would say, if a firm is looking to possibly considering merging, we call it merging up, everything that Jody said is right.
If you're trying to chase dollars, initially, it's probably the wrong reason to merge. But, if it gives you more capability and allows you to offer enhanced services to your client base, those are good reasons. Really what Jody was talking about is culture fit, and that's really key.
And the leadership of the acquiring firm, what kind of structure do they have? Jamie, I'm not sure if you and I have talked about this. I know, Jody, you and I have talked about it, but we get calls all the time from larger firms, national firms, and regional firms to sit down and they want to add us to their firm. We've been pretty much just like you guys have been all those years. We’ve been pretty resistant. I always say, ‘never say never,’ and, Jodie, I share your thoughts that you always can have conversations.
I'm pretty transparent with everyone. We talk frankly. I just tell people, we don't really have an appetite, but I'm happy to talk. We always learn something and want to make relationships.
The firms that would want to acquire firms like ours are pretty established, mainstream firms. Not that we wanted to go down this rabbit hole, but, Jody, you also mentioned PE. I've talked to a couple of PE firms just to get information and see what they want to do.
But that adds a whole other level of accountability, too, because now you've got these outside investors that want a return. How do you make a return? Well, you take it out of partner compensation. It's just interesting. We'll go back to Jamie your question.
I just think it keeping an open mind and making sure whatever you've built is still allowed to flourish in the new situation. And I think that's key. If your thoughts are, ‘we're going to continue to grow this and provide opportunity for your people.’
Jamie Nau: Yeah, I think that's, that's really key. And again, I think we're talking a lot about culture here, but it is probably the number one thing. And one of the things that I told Jody going into this was that I'm, I'm not gonna trust Jody because Jody and I are very similar. We took an EQI test prior to starting at summit.
I think I'm in 99. I think Jody's 100. So, like when it comes to those optimists, the optimist are the people that you can’t trust when it comes to this type of situation. So that's why I'm glad we have someone like Adam, who is a little bit more of a pessimist and is going to ask a thousand questions.
If you are a firm that's thinking about going down this road, make sure you have people with those strengths and you know where to lean on. And because I didn't trust myself when it came to this either. Like I said, once we started playing dodge ball with the zombies, I was in! I'm like, ‘yep, this works for me!’
And I know Jody has that similar mindset where he can find positives in any situation. But someone like Adam, who is a much more critical thinker and much more like, ‘okay, I'm going to pick up every rock and ask questions about where each rock came from and how we got it.’
And he's going to be very detailed when it comes to these type of things, so I think it's really important to know who you have coming into the relationship. Because, again, I don't think Jody and I hardly talked about this at all, where I was in Adam's office every day and being like, ‘Hey, tell me what you've been asking. Tell me what you're thinking about this.’
That’s the person that you got to lean on when it comes to this. And then, if you're on the opposite side, if you’re the pessimists coming into it, then obviously you're gonna spend a lot more time with Jody. You like, ‘Okay, Jody, tell me the positives you're seeing here. What are the things you’re excited about? Because I do think it's important to know your partners and know your partner's personalities going into this.
Cool. So, we are right up on time here. I'm going to give both our guests one final thought. I know I'm excited about this and where we're going. We’ll have to have this podcast again in another year or so and asked that same question.
What advice do you have for our listeners? Because I'm sure the answers will be a little bit different, but hopefully still just as positive, but let's start with you, Robert. Any final thoughts for the listeners?
Robert Minkler: We’re still in the honeymoon stage. I think we've just signed the paperwork last Friday. We’ve got a lot of hard work to do, but the future is so bright; it's really going to be fun. Now we're shifting gears into seeing how this common combination is really gonna allow our combined groups to grow and grow faster than either one of us could've dreamed before it. I know there’s a lot in the future that's unknown, but having a blank slate is kinda nice, too, cause we can draw it however we want. So that's good
Jody Grunden: Yeah, definitely. Well put, for sure. My excitement is that I've already had a couple prospect calls. I had them with a few of the folks at Anders, and it's been pretty cool to see the reaction that they've got when we're meeting with prospects and kind of the different approach that we take with things to make it a win-win situation for everyone.
It's kind of exciting and refreshing to get some confirmation that, ‘Hey, I think we did the right thing.’ This is definitely good to be accepted amongst their teams and they're excited to see what the future can bring with us. So, I'm super excited, super, super excited about it. I'm looking forward to the definitely bright future.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, I think the second that the clients we sent email communication to our clients and the feedback we got was positive, as well as our team; our team is super excited about this and ready to see where this brings us.
I think that's the key—I think all the parties are, like you said, in that honeymoon phase but ready to see where this takes us and everybody's starting the hard work; this is the fun part. All right. Well, thank you both for joining. And I think this will be a well-listened to podcast.