Category: Authentic Deal-Making

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Authentic Deal-Making

Evolving With the RIA Industry

RIA-Industry

From an early age, David Selig was exposed to financial advisory because his father was a thirty-five year veteran of the stock exchange. But, after a significant life event took place that essentially forced his father to retire on the spot, Selig was inspired to pave his own way and help others avoid falling into a similar fate with no succession plan.

Before his interview with Pershing in New Jersey, Selig truthfully didn’t know what an RIA was, but despite mispronouncing the term and pulling terminology out of thin air to sound well-read, he landed the job. As Selig began his journey, he became familiarized with the world of RIAs, its opportunities, and its challenges. The RIA industry is extremely fragmented and there is a lot of difficulty surrounding the fundamental concepts of expansion, succession and scale, but Selig learned to navigate them while acquiring valuable lessons to take into the next chapter.

The Formation of Advice Dynamics Partners

After Selig left Pershing, he ended up in a consulting role for one of the industry’s largest aggregators, and the nine-month project forced a shift in mindset that would lead Selig to entrepreneurship. He liked the aggregator’s business model and the work he was doing, but he was faced with a huge window of opportunity that he couldn’t ignore. Selig started to look at the aggregator as his first client instead of his employer and was hungry for more; eventually, Selig would found Advice Dynamics Partners, where he is currently CEO.

The Evolution of the RIA Industry

At Advice Dynamics Partners, Selig has been focused on M&A advisory and succession planning from day one, and is approaching the eleven-year mark with undeniable success. Part of the reason for that it ADP’s ability to evolve in alignment with the evolution of the RIA industry. The statistics surrounding companies that have a viable succession plan has not necessarily changed during Advice Dynamics Partners’ lifespan, but what has changed is the number of options those businesses have in forging a succession partnership. The options for monetizing a business has expanded far beyond the banks and NFPs to include things like private equity firms with short or mid-duration investment timelines. In addition to bespoke M&A advisory, ADP has a specialty in helping large wealth managers navigate the complexities of evaluating financial sponsors to find the right permanent capital partner.

The buyer landscape has also evolved and afforded RIAs more choices, but with more complexity comes more challenges. Nevertheless, ADP’s job is to help their clients navigate the different options so they can articulate their value and choose the best partner for their business; the industry may have evolved but ADP’s fundamental function has just been adapted to match the changes.

There are a lot more options for external succession nowadays, but internal succession is extremely high on the menu for most advisors and their clients. However, there is a major gap as approximately 80% of businesses would prefer an internal succession plan while only 20% have the ability to carry it out. In order for internal succession to work, businesses need to have certain things in place such as the ability for the parties involved to compromise. There is always a tension between buyers and sellers when it is an internal context and the price becomes an issue, but it is still a lot easier to finance now than it was before.

Doing Deals in the RIA Industry

Aside from succession, there are some exciting things happening in the deal space of the RIA industry. A lot of entrepreneurial firms with younger management teams are seeking an outside partner to buy them and help them achieve scale. These deals are more attractive now because it is no longer a binary choice. Outside partners can enable these firms to achieve succession, growth, and scale while helping them accomplish their long-term vision. There are at least fifteen options in the investor category, and ironically, it is a lot more common for investors to prefer a lower-risk minority stake nowadays. The industry has matured as a whole, and it has been mutually beneficial for both the management team and the partner because the management can run the business with financial backing that will help them reach the next level.

Listen to David Selig’s interview on the Fueling Deals podcast episode.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Deal-Making

Deal Design: Creative Real Estate Strategy

Real-Estate-Strategy

Gary Wilson developed a passion for drawing houses and architectural floorplans at just eight years old, but as Wilson grew older he would discover a much stronger affinity for the wealth that could be generated by them. His business sense and entrepreneurial spirit have been there through it all, and Wilson was always inspired by the simple exchange of providing quality service and getting paid for it.

The idea that you gotta wake up and show up to get paid is what shaped Wilson’s work ethic and prepared him to be a dealmaker as an adult. Wilson made his first real estate deal within a month of graduating college by assuming the previous owner’s VA mortgage, getting a second mortgage to refinance the seller’s second mortgage, then giving him a third note for his portion of the equity – so he put no money down. It was a very creative deal that was anything but conventional, and Wilson was even able to rent two rooms which paid for nearly all of his other bills.

The Pitfalls of a One-Size-Fits-All Deal Structure

From that point on, Wilson was determined to forge his own path outside of conformity. There are many ways to buy real estate but Wilson’s success is largely attributed to using the right strategy, at the right time, for the right deal. A lot of people tend to shove everything into a universal deal structure and that can be detrimental to their progress because every deal has the potential to be more lucrative if you get creative.

The ability to create tailored deal structures is a necessary component to becoming a great dealmaker, but mindset plays an important role as well. Getting creative with your strategy and taking risks are not comfortable ideas for everyone, but Wilson has picked up on some key characteristics that define a dealmaker.

Transferable Skills

Every year that Gary Wilson spent in the corporate world made him more miserable because he had to suppress his entrepreneurial mindset until he got out. When he broke away from that lifestyle, Wilson was finally in a position where he could pursue the unquenchable desire for financial freedom. The ability to look at things creatively and the desire to make them work are what set successful entrepreneurs apart, and it is a mindset that Wilson brings to every opportunity in his path.

Those skills define business leaders and entrepreneurs across a wide array of different industries, so there is an open door to real estate investment even if you aren’t going to put 100% of your time into it. The skills, attitudes, and talents needed to run a business are the same ones you need to succeed in real estate, and when you have both you gain an asset to borrow against to keep leveraging your business and vice versa.

A Cycle of Abundance

It is an amazing combination that creates a cycle of abundance. So, if you want to get into it, the resources you want to have are as follows: a tax accountant; a solid general contractor or contact in the construction/remodeling business; a good attorney; an investor-agent. The investor-agent is a key player in your venture because they can go beyond listing services to find the best deals that aren’t even published. Off-market deals are crucial in this space and Wilson’s entire brokerage company was based on that practice.

This industry has a learning curve and Wilson has made his fair share of mistakes, but if you are diligent and self-reliant you can avoid simple, costly screw-ups. It should not be a deterrent because the same risks apply in all facets of entrepreneurship. If you approach this business with a concrete strategy, mentorship, and a strong team, there is no telling what you will be able to accomplish with your current business and new ventures generating income simultaneously.

Listen to the interview with Gary Wilson on the Fueling Deals podcast to learn more about Gary and how you can apply your dealmaking skills in the real estate industry.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Deal-Making Authentic Leadership

The Echelon Partners Deal and Dealmaker Summit

Dealmaker-Summit

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the Echelon Partners Deal & Deal Makers Summit, which was an invaluable experience as both a speaker and an audience member. Echelon’s summit focuses on doing deals in the RIA space, and it was kicked off by expert sessions with 30+ industry experts, enabling us to provide audience members with a half-hour to pick our brains, get to know us and explore any topic that piqued their interest.

Kickoff and Buyer/Seller Challenges

The expert sessions and the dinner that followed were great opportunities for the conference participants to get acquainted with the experts, speakers and each other and network. The next day opened with “Buyers of the Round Table,” featuring Rush Benton of CAPTRUST, Dave Welling of Mercer Advisors and Kurt Miscinski of Cerity Partners discussing the low cost of money and the growing volume of deals. The panelists talked about the challenges associated with evaluating cultural fit with a focus on getting a collective buy-in from leadership and the rest of the team. One of my favorite quotes from that panel is that “culture cannot be acquired or mandated, it must be embraced,” which highlights the problems many executives face with integration. Check out the podcast episode to find out who said it.

Other areas of focus included buyer and seller challenges. On the seller-side, the panel explored why people sell and how selling to a bigger firm can solve problems with time management, talent acquisition, and growth. On the buyer-side, they talked about whether or not it is a seller’s market, why sellers are leaving money on the table, and the impact of funded buyers with impatient capital who are overpaying for deals. The discussion of whether or not we are in a deal bubble in the RIA market and what is contributing to that capped off a well-rounded discussion.

Keynote Debate

The next session was the keynote debate between Pershing’s Mark Tibergien and Echelon Partners’ Dan Seivert which has been a staple of the conference since its inception. Regardless of whether or not Mark and Dan actually believed the stances they were taking, they conducted a formal debate of seven different topics such as “the ideal way to grow with recruiting vs. acquiring” and “sharing synergy value and how it is split.” After each debate topic, they opened it up for questions and discussed their real views on the same topics which provided a lot of insight into the way they see deals.

Additional Panels and Final Thoughts

Following a short break, the conference transitioned to a panel format with the first discussion being centered on working with private equity investors and included Jeff Dekko of Wealth Enhancement Group, Jim Gold of Steward Partners, and Larry Roth of RLR Strategic Partners. The next panel focused on recruiting and breakaway deals, and it featured Bill Willis of Willis Consulting, Jeff Bischoff of Old Greenwich Consultants, and Robb Baldwin of TradePMR. Last up was an interview format of Manny Roman of Pimco on the people’s side of dealmaking.

Next, Dan Seivert took over with a solo session on deal structures, valuation, and transaction trends. Dan discussed the net reduction of advisors each year, the stage where there are peak margins, and what private equity firms are looking for before they invest. We moved back to the panel format in which I was one of the speakers. The topic was the “Battle of the Outside Council,” where Ted Cohen, Chris Frieden, and Dave Mrazik and I conducted a negotiation of a purchase agreement live for the audience. It was a phenomenal experience in which we addressed topics including purchase price adjustment, non-competes, reps and warranties, and employee agreements. Each of us took one buyer-side and one seller-side issue and got into an actual negotiation with real-world scenarios. It was lively, fun, engaging for the audience, and we received great feedback and were told that it was a very highly rated session.

Finally, the last section was on financing options for fueling deals. The panel included Aaron Hasler of SkyView Partners, Ed Swenson of Dynasty Financial Partners, Dustin Mangone of PPC Loans, and Rick Dennen of Oak Street Funding, who talked about capital availability in the market, types of deals they fund and who they focus on.

The event was a tremendous success with great networking opportunities and quality speaker from whom the participants learned a lot. I would highly recommend checking it out next year, and if you haven’t already, tune into the latest episode of my Fueling Deals podcast for a detailed breakdown of valuable takeaways from the conference.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Business Relationships Authentic Deal-Making Deal-Driven Growth

Strategic Partnerships in Wealth Management

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When Lisa Rapuano was twenty-five years old, she managed to talk her way into an investment management position at a startup in Chapel Hill, NC. As the third employee of Franklin Street Partners, Rapuano wore many hats and handled everything from reception and IT to sales and marketing; the experience she gained at FSP unearthed a new passion for investment research, which quickly became her focus and paved the way for her future as a business leader.

Facet Wealth is an RIA that focuses on people with less than a million dollars in investable assets, and that is important to note because $1M is not a significant amount of capital in this industry. Their niche encompasses thirty-three million American households that have between $100k-$1M in investable financial assets, most of which are excluded from the traditional, holistic financial planning side of the business.

A Market-Cooperative Business Model

As CFO, Lisa Rapuano describes Facet Wealth’s business model as market-cooperative because they are driven by highly efficient, back-end technology that enables their financial advisors to provide a wholesome customer experience to lower net worth clients. As a result, peripheral partnerships are developed with other RIAs that focus on more complex investment strategies. Facet Wealth takes the segmented clients off of their partners’ hands to provide adjusted white-glove service without sacrificing the partners’ consumer relationships or causing them to use company resources disproportionately.

If RIAs make too many exceptions for less wealthy clients, their businesses won’t work because they aren’t set up for that. Too many advisors are trying to be all things to all people, but the most successful ones define their niche very clearly and Facet Wealth has done exactly that. Because financial advisors are inherently helpers, Facet offers a way for them to provide less profitable clients with a solution instead of segmenting and leaving them to fend for themselves.

Referral Partnerships and Revenue Replacement Opportunities

Deals are a driving force behind Facet Wealth’s success, and there are two primary types that they use to generate growth. The first is a referral partnership, where Facet pays for referrals if the prospective partner signs a solicitation agreement with them. This offers Facet’s partners a way to continually serve the segmented clients while freeing up capacity and resources to focus on their niche. The second way is a revenue replacement opportunity. This is also a sequential deal where Facet signs an asset purchase agreement with an RIA to acquire their client relationship, but Facet sets terms for how long the revenue will be replaced after the client transitions to them; this is the most transformative for advisors.

Facet Wealth as a Partner

Facet also has a couple of different ways that they’re willing to work with financial advisors who are considering M&A activity on their own. One stage that they can help with is the preparation for M&A. If you enter a partnership with them before you go to market, Facet can acquire your smaller clients to create more capacity, raise margins, and improve the overall value of your business. Another stage where Facet is a great partner is for buyers in the midst of a transaction. Part of the deal might be very attractive, but if there are smaller clients that aren’t a great fit, Facet can help take them off your hands.

There is a lot of consolidation taking place in wealth management and investment management, and it is largely because of the natural evolution of the industry. But, advisors need to consider whether or not they are adding value to their clients, and if they are charging a fair price for the services offered. Personal service is expensive, but it is one of the current trends in this day and age, and companies like Facet Wealth are making it a fundamental part of their strategy.

Click here to listen to Lisa Rapuano’s interview on the Fueling Deals podcast.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Deal-Making Deal-Driven Growth

The Seven Figure Club

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Back when Julia Pimsleur was attending film school at La Fémis, she discovered an affinity for entrepreneurship while orchestrating international producer conferences on campus. Pimsleur took the initiative to manage all of the logistics, marshal resources, educate paying attendees, and ultimately reap the rewards of her events. It was an experience that enabled Pimsleur to discover a new skill set, and she used it to pave the way for her career as an entrepreneur.

Learning on the Fly

Julia Pimsleur’s first major role as a business leader was with her company Little Pim, a children’s language learning program that she was able to grow into a multi-million dollar company. It was a difficult journey with tremendous obstacles, but all of the challenges and failures provided her with an arsenal of personal experiences to bring her audience. Pimsleur is maximizing the impact of her lessons she shares in the Million Dollar Women book with her Million Dollar Women Masterclass, where she coaches female entrepreneurs and teaches them what it takes to hit $1M in annual revenue.

She didn’t go to business school or come from a finance background, so she was forced to learn everything on the job, but the success of the Million Dollar Women Organization shed light on the need to reach a larger audience with her lessons. Pimsleur created an online group-coaching program to make the obstacles she faced more surmountable for other women under similar circumstances. In four months, students can learn how to restructure their organizations, so that they’re doing less work, improving their close ratios and scaling their businesses faster.

Strategic Deals for Small Businesses

A lot of the work with women entrepreneurs is focused on mindset because there are major hurdles with mental conditioning that must be overcome to achieve success. After that, the MDW programs cover the following: finances; sales and distribution; making deals; raising capital; marketing; efficiency, being in powerful networks. Million Dollar Women rounds all of the bases and covers these topics strategically, but bear in mind that all of the content is coming from someone that lived through them. Pimsleur had to distill everything she came across so that she could teach herself effectively, and you don’t have to be a savant or a prodigy for these tactics to work for you.

Strategic deals played a significant role in rocketing Pimsleur past the seven-figure mark because she was always looking for opportunities. At Little Pim, she was able to partner with PBS to develop a language learning game that created a strategic alliance worth hundreds of thousands. This is the main reason ‘mindset’ is the pinnacle of Pimsleur’s program; doing deals means figuring out where you can be the missing piece in someone else’s puzzle. If you are not trained to actively seek these opportunities and prepare yourself for when they are presented, you will not experience success as a woman entrepreneur, and Pimsleur’s programs are determined to disrupt that.

Why Not Me?

Many entrepreneurs simply feel like they’re not ready, but Pimsleur encourages everyone to stop waiting and jump in feet first. When you get to see other people do it, it’s a lot easier to ask, “why not me?” and that is why it is so important to build the right network. Pimsleur helps entrepreneurs surround themselves with other business owners and dealmakers who will amplify their potential. It doesn’t take long to realize that everyone around you did not achieve success without a long list of failures, and once you start to accept failure as a part of the process, the hesitation and fear begin to fade away.

Listen to the Fueling Deals podcast episode featuring Julia Pimsleur’s interview about The Seven Figure Club.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Deal-Making Authentic Leadership Deal-Driven Growth

Entrepreneurial Freedom

Entrepreneurial-Freedom-2

As the CSO of Popdog, Niles Heron embodies an entrepreneurial spirit driven by freedom and the ability to control his own destiny. He has witnessed successful careers built under the restraint of golden shackles, but when the going is tough and failure is imminent, Heron finds comfort in the fact that his decisions yield the final outcome. Wealthy and untethered is the name of the game, and Heron has lived by that notion since he started his first internet radio business at fifteen years old.

Popdog is fundamentally focused on content creation and consumption in the world of live streaming, and they provide services and technology to some of the top content creators in the esports and video-on-demand spaces. This includes analytics tools that better portray their value to brands for sponsorship and monetization, and management services for nearly the top 40 content creators in the gaming industry.

Organic and Inorganic Growth in the Startup Space

Heron’s experience with accelerator programs in Michigan gave him a lot of access to early-stage startups where he found inspiration in nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs, but a lot of businesses try to raise money to solve problems without finding a proper product-market fit. This led Heron to realize that his true passion was not in raising capital, but in helping people make their products work. As a result, Heron shifted his focus to consulting and built a powerful resume that paved the way for his future endeavors.

“If all you need is money, you can go to the bank, but what you need is proof that your business works.”

There are many types of deals out there and organic growth has to be the foundation, but once you’ve found the actual customers for your actual product, you can start augmenting. From this position, you have the ability to force growth in any number of directions, but if you go in all directions you will grow much slower. If you’re trying to scale, you need to pick one direction and understand that this is where investment really matters.

The reason you need to have one customer is so you can comprehend why you don’t have two customers, and if you can’t answer that you might as well have zero. The whole point of the partnership is to expand your customer base by deepening the relationship with existing customers or finding new ones. Demand limit is important to consider but if you can’t figure out why you’re not acquiring more customers, the partnership grows frail.

Doing Deals vs. Adding Value

People don’t go and seek deals because they often don’t understand the problem they’re trying to solve when they get the deal. The reality is that you can’t do deals if you’re not willing to be extremely self-critical. On the other hand, if there is no natural limitation set, deals become arbitrary since your focus should always be getting more customers. Unfortunately, that is not the way most businesses work since the markets have become over-saturated.

Before this episode, Niles Heron never saw himself as someone who does deals, but he always identified as somebody who seeks to add more value by any means necessary. Whether he is helping someone generate organic growth or finding a partner that can provide the means, he stresses that anyone trying to “do deals” should really be focusing on how they can add value. This requires time, but if you strive to accomplish something a “deal” is just the facilitator.

Click here to listen to his Fueling Deals podcast episode.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Deal-Making Authentic Leadership

Dealmaker DNA: Identifying Your Internal Body Work

Internal-Body-Work

n every Fueling Deals episode, I talk about different types of deals to cover a full spectrum of large scale mergers and acquisitions and smaller deals you can do without significant capital. You know by now that there are a lot of myths surrounding your ability to do deals from a company point of view, but there is also a lot of misconceptions surrounding your ability to do deals on a personal level. Who is a dealmaker and who isn’t? What defines a dealmaker?

At its core, I believe that a dealmaker is someone who is willing to learn – and it really is that simple. This antiquated idea of the door-to-door salesman type who is always greasing palms and lubing deals is no longer effective (if it ever really was). In this day and age, authenticity, transparency, and coming from a positive place where you can make an impact is the new gold standard, but risk-taking is still an extremely important trait.

The Decision to Start Doing Deals

The difference is that if you are an entrepreneur, you’ve likely already taken a risk and embraced this trait to the fullest extent. There is risk in every deal and likewise, there is risk for every company that opens its doors. Business owners are already risk-takers and they constantly take ownership of the consequences of their decisions, so the only entrepreneurs not doing deals are the ones who haven’t decided to do so.

All of your decisions are just decisions. There are processes you have to learn if you haven’t done something before, there are resources you need to put in place, mistakes you’re going to make—it’s the same thing with deals because there is just another learning curve and something you haven’t done before. Every skill that you need to do deals are the same skills you need to run a business, so if you learn the landscape, the industry, the available opportunities, and make a decision, you’re going through the same steps you use on a frequent basis.

Identifying Your Internal Body of Work

Like anything else, you can start small, build your skill level and increase the size of your deals as you get better, but to accomplish this you have to disconnect from your limiting beliefs by addressing an internal body of work. At whatever point in your career that takes place, you must look at what is coming up internally and preventing you from doing deals do accelerate inorganic growth.

The first thing to do is to identify the internal gap to see exactly what steps must be taken to get where you want to be. Whether it is fear, insecurity, lack of confidence, or anything else, identifying the internal work clarifies that gap and allows you to see the roadmap to move forward. In this solocast episode of Fueling Deals, I share a collection of insights that shed light on how you might be excluding yourself from the dealmaker’s table and how to break through and become a dealmaker.

Click here to listen to the episode, and visit www.fuelingdeals.com for more informative episodes on how to grow your business inorganically through deals.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Deal-Making

Overcome the Hand You’ve Been Dealt

Overcome-The-Hand

Cindy Watson is the founder of Watson Labour Law and more recently, the creator of Women on Purpose and pioneer of the Art of Feminine Negotiation Program. She is keeping the momentum flowing with a scheduled book release this year where she will be launching The Art of Feminine Negotiation: How to Get What You Want From the Board Room to the Bedroom.

One of the things that prompted Watson to pursue this journey of Women on Purpose and the Art of Negotiation was her experience growing up in a rental apartment complex in a tough neighborhood. When she was young, Watson developed a strong passion for creativity and the arts. The only problem was since she came from a family of low financial status, there was a lot more pressure for Watson to capitalize on her strong academic performance and pursue a traditional career path that would guarantee a higher income.

Climbing the Ranks

Now she is based professionally in Toronto as a practicing lawyer, with her own firm close to the town she grew up in. Law is the first field she ever started a business in and Watson claims that “sometimes ‘not knowing’ is the greatest gift we can have.” Although she knew essentially nothing about running a company, her blissful ignorance allowed her to leave a job she was unhappy with to start her own firm. Looking back it seems like a preposterous idea, but that leap of faith ended up serving as a foundation for many great accomplishments to come.

Luckily, everything fell into place because Watson was able to own her value. A lot of people coming from the background she has are either really driven or feel like they’re not enough. Factors like, background, gender, class, race and other things can have a significant impact on what people can accomplish, but most people don’t realize that they can form a conscious decision to fight the circumstances. Women, and particularly women of color have so much more in terms of generations of conditioning, and they are set off with a distinct disadvantage even as early as kindergarten.

Step Into the Arena

When women step into their natural, feminine, intuitive negotiation styles, they can be more effective negotiators than professionals who use typical, masculine negotiation tactics. It can be a real advantage since most people don’t expect women to be good negotiators, especially when considering the expectation that negotiating is all about the bark and the bite. This connotation causes a lot of women to believe that they cannot be good negotiators because they lack the strength to be aggressive and assertive. But assertiveness is only one factor in negotiation among other key components like rapport building, empathy, flexibility, intuition, trustworthiness, and the list goes on.

It is not a question of capability, it is a question of mindset because most of the key successful negotiation attributes are traits that are traditionally considered to be feminine. There is no benefit to overcompensating so you can fit into a perceived “man’s world,” and luckily we are starting to see a generational shift in our society where this is changing. There are two types of negotiations: One will be the start of an ongoing relationship, and the other is a one-off situation that affects your reputation and karma because it is a small world. Real power is being able to use restraint when you don’t have to use it and that is the mark of a mature and experienced negotiator.

In this episode of the Fueling Deals podcast, Cindy Watson joins host Corey Kupfer to tell her story and talk about some of the negotiation wisdom she brings to female professionals through her conferences and book.

Click here to listen to the episode, and make sure to visit fuelingdeals.com for more informative episodes on growing your business inorganically through deals.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Deal-Making News

Business as usual for Schwab?

deal-driven growth and negotiations

In Keith Girard’s article on RIABiz, “What to make of a $239M-AUM RIA dwindling to $191M then suing Schwab for $100M as the alleged cause of the asset hemorrhage,” RIA custodian Schwab fired RIA Ed Butowsky based on a contract allowing undisputed firing and Butowsky’s firm got caught in the cross-fire of politics and alleged “fake news.”

Ed Butosky became embroiled in a financial and political scandal based on Rod Wheeler’s lawsuit against Fox News and Chapwood Investment Management and subsequent press stories by National Public Radio, including the radio report “Behind Fox News’ Baseless Seth Rich Story: The Untold Tale” and “The Man Behind the Scenes in Fox News’ Discredited Seth Rich Story.” It’s not so simple a question as to whether Butowsky was let go for political motivations or for normal business purposes.

“It wouldn’t be shocking to me if the controversy made them look more closely at what [Butowsky] was doing,” said Corey Kupfer, a New York lawyer who works with breakaway advisors. “All the custodians make decisions on who they are comfortable having on their platforms based on their own needs. They don’t have to accept anyone.”

“I think the interesting question here is whether this is a somewhat of a routine decision that’s just heightened by the fact that we’re in these political times, or whether that even played a big role,” Kupfer adds. “My guess is maybe that was a trigger for them to look, probably heightened by the times, but it could also be just a business decision that Schwab made.”

Read the entirety of the article here.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

Categories
Authentic Deal-Making

No Margin, No Mission

No-Margin-No-Mission

When Dennis Miller was growing up, he dreamt of coaching a college football team to The Rose Bowl, but you might say it’s because nonprofit consultation and training wasn’t necessarily a booming industry at the time. Fifteen years ago, he started a business doing exactly that and lives out his coaching dream in the medical field instead of on the turf.

Dennis wanted to do something new but he wasn’t sure what it was until he was approached by someone from the regional American Cancer Society who asked him a lot of ‘how-to’ questions about building his board and brand etc. Miller had twenty-five years of experience in the healthcare industry and eventually oversaw two large medical centers where he further developed this skill set. A light bulb went off after that conversation and his new endeavor as a consultant began.

The Nonprofit Search Group

Dennis Miller’s company, The Nonprofit Search Group, specializes in executive recruitment for nonprofit organizations that are seeking presidents, CEOs, and other candidates for high profile positions. Miller has a lot of experience as a CEO with his first title at only thirty-seven years old, so he acts as a coach for clients across a wide array of industries to help them facilitate and achieve their strategic vision. On Miller’s end, this is primarily accomplished by increasing performance on the board level and C-level so that they can have a bigger impact on their community.

Deals in the Nonprofit Space

There are plenty of deals that go on in the nonprofit space, and Dennis Miller encounters these regularly. How you ask? One example would be Miller stepping outside of his label as a recruiter. If one of his clients is looking for a CEO because they are struggling financially, Dennis might recommend that they consider a merger to become an affiliate of another organization with a stronger financial standing. Then he helps facilitate this deal with the two organizations, and continues his search for a CEO. This puts all three parties in a stronger position to succeed, and it is a pure means of inorganic growth.

Mergers and Acquisitions, affiliate agreements, strategic alliances, and arrangements between for-profit and nonprofit organizations are some of the most common deals you see in this space. The reality is, “no margin, no mission.” A lot of nonprofits are starting to recognize the importance of operating more like a for-profit business, because although everyone means well you have to bill and collect to have the means to make a difference. There is a stereotype for nonprofits but it takes real business skills to make one of these organizations successful. Nonprofit is your tax status, not your business.

Down, Not Out

Take it from someone who went from being homeless to one of the youngest, top hospital executives. Dennis Miller was not a good student and he grew up with a lot of hardship and adversity in his household. He couldn’t get into a college and after facing a massive downward spiral, he eventually self-admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital. When he finally started to get on his feet, Dennis’s dad had a bad day and threw him out of the house where he ended up at a dead-end job, living in a boarding house.

After writing every college in the state, Dennis Miller committed to Rutgers, graduated top of his class in two years, then went to Columbia. Miller’s perseverance and determination to charge through obstacles are at the core of his business practices and clients have told him that “you can see our future before we can.” In this episode of Fueling Deals, Dennis Miller shares his story and talks about nonprofits as a business. Click here to listen to the episode.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

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