tim brackney: don’t blame private equity. blame the accountants | accounting influencers

tim brackney, ceo of a private equity-backed accounting and advisory firm, is challenging the widespread notion that private equity harms the accounting industry.

“private equity is not killing public accounting,” brackney tells rob brown in this episode of accounting influencers. “public accounting was killing public accounting.”
brackney says private equity could be the key to revitalizing a sector struggling with outdated models, a growing talent shortage, and the looming costs of re-tooling for artificial intelligence.

1. 1. private equity is not killing public accounting but rather offering potential solutions to existing problems.
   2. the accounting profession is facing a critical talent shortage, with fewer people entering and staying in the field.
   3. private equity is creating both turbulence and opportunities in the accounting industry.
   4. new structures and expectations are challenging the traditional partnership model in accounting firms.
   5. the combination of private equity and ai could drive efficiencies and change the focus of accounting professionals.

more about tim brackney

transcript
(not edited)

 

rob brown 

private equity has been a disruptor in the accounting world. continues to be so. so does artificial intelligence. we put king kong and godzilla in a room together. and there’s a lot going on.

 

tim brackney 

the animals in the zoo vary by shape and size. they vary by the species that they go after, the industries that they go after, and the way that and their path to profitable growth. and that’s the one thing that binds them all together.

 

tim brackney 

that’s false. private equity is not killing, not killing public accounting. public accounting, i think was killing public accounting.

 

rob brown 

we’ll go into that. would you say private equity is the white knight, then ,in public accounting, tim?

 

tim brackney 

i don’t know if i’d say they’re the white knight. i’d say they are a potential solution to a problem that exists.

 

rob brown 

we’re going to get into this. we’re talking about private equity in the accounting profession. i’ve got tim brackney with me. tim, tell us a bit about your world and why you’re equipped to talk about this.

 

tim brackney 

yes, well, i’m. i’m the ceo of a private equity back cpa accounting and advisory platform, and i started my career at pricewaterhouse, and it’s been in professional services my entire career. so i’m very close to this topic.

 

rob brown 

you’ve been through it. you’re on all sides. you can see it from all different angles, can’t you? what kind of state do you feel the accounting profession is in generally right now, too?  you know, i think, like the biggest issue the the profession faces right now is a talent shortage, and so that makes it in a kind of a critical state. i believe this is a noble profession that generally attracts very talented folks who feel bound to the, you know, to the auspices of the profession, and we’re attracting less of them, and they’re staying for a shorter period of time. so it’s a critical state right now.  we’re going to delve into private equity and its motivations for dirtying its fingers in accounting, but i just want you mentioned talent there as an issue. how is private equity affecting the recruitment for accounting firms? i heard his story just today, of one of the biggest uk firms outside the top four, and they’re having conversations to try and bring in lateral, strategic hires, and finding that the private equity shadow in the background is creating a lot of muddy waters and uncertainty about partners and their future roles and whether they should go or stay. it’s definitely creating some turbulence, wouldn’t you say?

 

tim brackney 

i think it’s probably creating some turbulence, but i’d say that turbulence is, is kind of necessary. one thing i would just say is private equity is not a monolith, and so there are definitely, definitely different types of firms with different approaches. but i would say, i would say, generally, the profession, the career path in a profession, has been the same for, you know, 200 plus years. and so anything that comes in and and creates a little bit of noise, whether it’s even if it’s a good noise creates creates confusion for a profession that’s based in professional skepticism.

 

rob brown 

well, you said it there. there are different animals in the private equity world. just, just delineate a few of those for us, because you’re right. a lot of people think private equity is venture capital, is private equity, and it’s all just one big monster. so give us a little bit of light and dark shade.

 

tim brackney 

well, private equity, i mean, there’s a bunch of different sizes, right? so, like, you kind of have the corporate brand private equities, the kkrs of the world, the blackstones of the world that everybody seems to know. and they’ve been around for a while, and they’ve had to overcome, sort of their own reputations in the past, to being barbarians at the gate. and then there, there are other there. i mean, there are other different shapes and sizes. so almost like a regular market, you think of, you know, big corporate, you think of middle market, and you think of those that are sort of family offices and small private equity. they’re focused on that, focused on small investments. so they that the animals in the zoo vary by shape and size. they vary by the thesis that they go after, the industries that they go after, and the way that and their path to profitable growth. and that’s the one thing that binds them all together. it’s the term ebitda. they all say it. they all say it at birth.

 

rob brown 

that’s the question i wanted to ask you, is, if they are so diverse, what unifies them? so what interests private equity when it comes to accounting firms? well,

 

tim brackney 

i think, well, private equity, i think, is interested generally, in industries that are fragmented and graduated. and the private or public accounting is very much that way, where you have, you know, if you think about the us, there’s some 40,000 plus firms. and you know, 80% of the 80% of the market, the revenue market, if you look at it that way, it’s dominated by four firms. and even more so when you sort of delve down into the top 50. and so you look at that, and you say, there’s an opportunity to provide scale for some of these smaller firms do who bump up against a glass ceiling and have them have the ability to serve their clients better. and so they look at that as an opportunity to deliver value and then create an opportunity for an exit.

 

rob brown 

there’s something about the elegant business model in accounting with monthly and annually recurring fees that’s attractive, isn’t it, to a buyer.

 

tim brackney 

i think that’s very attractive. but i would also say that, you know, by nature that that’s first of all yes, the answer that is yes, full stop, that that does make it attractive. but i think the thing that goes beyond that is really the depth of relationship that accountants as trusted advisors, have with their have with their clients, and the knowledge base that they get in terms of learning what their clients are looking for, what their models are, and so that gives an opportunity to be able to help them in different ways and and in the in the eyes of a financial sponsor, expand wallet share,

 

rob brown 

we have a private equity firms looking to drive efficiencies and squeeze ever more profits out of that. so they must be looking at accounting firms and seeing the opportunity to make them much more profitable, much more efficient. but they’re pretty well run already, aren’t they?

 

tim brackney 

i think they’re pretty well run, but i think the you know, the the business in the profession, most, most of them are structured as partnerships. and so partnerships are fundamentally run differently than than traditional businesses, in that the model says you run to a certain level of profit and then you have money left over that’s just distributed to the partners. and so where you get into trouble is when you decide, hey, how do i kind of expand beyond this, and do i invest something that would be distributed back into the firm to be able to expand beyond our initial horizons? and that’s where, that’s where i think the trade offs take place. well,

 

rob brown 

i’m glad you brought up the partnership model, because a lot of people say it’s dead, and we’re making way for different ways of setting up a firm. do you think it might be the undoing of maybe some of the big firms?

 

tim brackney 

i think that’s a really interesting thing to think about. and i like, what i would say is that i think the big firms have some advantages. of course, they have, they have big brands, and they have a lot of money, and they’re established. i think, i think what’s happening right now is sort of a tectonic shift. and i’ll start back with talent. so talents looking for a different way to operate. they want more flexibility. they want more ownership. a partnership, traditional partnership accounting partnership, is lockstep progression, and you sort of pay your dues, and your and your your payoff is deferred, and it’s deferred even beyond the level when you make partner. and so i think that that model, coupled with the fact that most people are living longer, and that partners who retire count on folks coming up to fund their retirement, almost in a flywheel. if you don’t have people progressing up, i think you could get in trouble. so i think, i think is these, these firms have enough money to see if they can solve their problems, but i think their issue is structural. it’s sort of interesting to see if they start to shift some of those things around.

 

rob brown 

we talk a lot about recruitment, retention, attraction in the accounting world. and do you hear stories like we do tim that there’s a lot of partners in firms that want to get out but they can’t. their equity is locked up. there’s nobody coming through to take it up and pay it off for them and release them. so they’re almost courting private equity money to come in and take over and release them. does that happen?

 

tim brackney 

i think that definitely happens. and i think that definitely happens in some of the smaller in the some of the smaller firms of mid market and smb type businesses, but that golden handcuff, i think, if you’re a partner, this is just another vestige of the partner model. it’s, it is a golden handcuff. it’s so the so the deferred payoff, and that payoff relative to retirement and having that funded by others is is endemic to the entire industry. so if you’re a smaller firm, you do get to a point where, if you haven’t managed succession, or if you haven’t managed if you don’t have a business that creates expansion and opportunities for others, you could be facing that. and so we see that in the field, and we’re not, we’re looking for firms that are successful, not firms who are looking to fund succession. so there’s, there’s definitely, there’s definitely, all of them out there, a whole, a whole, a whole, whole range of the continuum.

 

rob brown 

should the small medium firms be scared by this whole private equity player you talked about? consolidation is extinction a possibility?

 

tim brackney 

i think everything’s a possibility, you know. and i think if you’re you know, depending on your like, every individual firm has sort of a different that’s. sort of a different fact pattern. so there, there are definitely some firms where extinction is a possibility. and that would have been a possibility whether private equity was in it or not, because they would have, they would have gotten to the point where they were looking for somebody to take on their firm, and then there were just been less partners to be able to take them out. i think, i think the firms, firms who come in and have are reaching a point where they’re like, where they’re continually looking at the horizon and thinking about what’s next and how to expand and how to attract and retain talent. private equity money, the right partner is a good boon for that, because it allows them to get scale that they might not have had access to without merging and sort of completely losing their identity.

 

rob brown 

yeah, we’re coming into accounting right now, starting your career bottom of the ladder. would it attract you more if there was private equity in that firm? or would you go to the partnership model to start your career?

 

tim brackney 

that’s a really interesting question. and so, like, i’ll answer it personally. and i have a, i have a 14 year old and a 12 year old who are going to be entering the workforce, not to not. i mean, the time goes very

 

rob brown 

they want to be accountants.

tim brackney 

i’m not sure if they want to be accountants or not. i’ve tried to teach them both the ins and outs of businesses through the lens of the t account. sure, we’ll see. hopefully that doesn’t scare them. but yeah, like, i, i don’t like i, i think private equity, you know, and again, i’ll just go back to say there are many animals in the private equity zoo. yeah, if there, if you go into a firm, and this is something that we’re doing is trying to build a flatter structure and offer ownership at levels below the level of partnership, to sort of truncate the time, time frame through which you feel like you can get access to the brass ring, then i think that can be a boon. i think there are others who are others who are taking private equity money, but they’re not fundamentally changing some of the ways that they think about how they run their business, or that pathway to success for somebody entering the firm they so they may struggle. we’ll see how this plays out. it’ll be very interesting

 

rob brown 

if we don’t embrace the partnership model and say, look, we’ve had it for 1000s of years. we’re going to keep going with it, or you want to change the structure of your firm. if that’s even possible, what are the alternatives?

 

tim brackney 

i mean, i think the traditional corporate structure is a way to do that, and that’s a big change from an existing partnership. so that’s not something that you could do overnight. and the biggest place, the biggest place where i think it would, where would require the most change and change management would be at the partner levels, and those who are right on the cusp of partner and so it is possible, the way the business is run and the incentivization structures are slightly different, but can offer more upside at an earlier part in your career. so i think that’s the that’s the benefit.

 

rob brown 

i had a great quote from mark koziel, who heads up the allinial group, a lineal global he spoke at an international accounting conference. he said the partnership model is dead. and the reason why is that the managing partner role is dead? and the reason why is that partners cannot be managed. they’ve all got their own agenda, haven’t they? tim, they’ve all got their own construct, their own way of looking at the world, and they all do it in their own way. they have such power.

 

tim brackney 

i think there’s, i think that’s a great quote, and it’s very, i mean, i don’t know that i subscribe to it in totality, but i understand the direction of it, yeah, because the fundamentally in a partnership, what you have are a collective group of owners who are running their own businesses, and as a managing partner, you’re trying to corral that for the greater good. so i think that that that can be challenging. on the other side, i think that the benefits of having a partner mentality is really having an owner mentality and sort of thinking about the broader benefits, you know, of your sliver of the business and how it impacts the pie. so depending on the culture of your firm and the and the strength of your managing partner or your executive team, you can, you can really leverage that in the right way, and i’ve seen that, but i very much understand that quote, very much

 

rob brown 

talk to us about the difference between a pe acquisition and a standard m and a acquisition. so if you’re an accounting firm, would you want another accounting firm to take you over, or would it be better? a pe backed concern taking you over. what are the considerations?

 

tim brackney 

well, i think, i mean, i don’t know if it’s better or worse, or if it’s kind of just what lane you feel that you fit in, you know? so if you, if you get bought by another firm, especially if you get bought by a larger firm, and there’s a lot of that consolidation that’s happening in the industry. one of the benefits you get is certainty, because you know the next day you are that firm, right? and so the question is like, where are you on the continuum of, you know, pride and independence, and you know what kind of brand recognition you have, and some of those things. so you, you step through that, but you’re, you kind of click the lego pieces together, and you’re the next firm. if you’re taking an investment, a direct investment, from private equity, you just fundamentally have to understand, you just, we just talked about the, you know, the the joys and and pitfalls of the partnership. there’s a very different structure when you, when you report to a board, and you and you have, you have different governance levels and other things that you need. take, take into account. and there’s, i think there’s definite benefits for those. and again, it comes down to do, did you get the right partner, and do you align in terms of what that what your horizon view is, and what your thesis is for how you create value? and i would tell you that those, there are very different paths there. and so you have to be very careful about which partner you select. be careful who you get into bed with. for sure, i’ve heard some people cynically call accounting firm sheep, because they they look at what everyone else is doing, and they jump on the bandwagon and say, right, if they’re going into private equity, then so am i.

so do you see firms looking to join the club? because they see so many other people doing it?

 

tim brackney 

i would tell you that i think private equity turns lots of industries into sheep. so i don’t know that it’s sort of just just just to the to the to public accounting, but i do think that the concept of fomo is real, you know. so if you, if you start to see, if you start to see one or two things happen that sort of makes you interested. and then as you, as you start to see more of a more momentum. there people who may not have considered it before are at least open to the concept of it. and then, and they get more sort of inured into what the you know, what the actual movement is.

 

rob brown 

presumably, everyone has a price, right?

 

tim brackney 

there’s some, there’s some, there’s some truth to that. but i would tell you that like so i’ve had hundreds of discussions with cpa firms, and the firms, the firms that we’re targeting have strong leadership, are successful, and so what they’re really contemplating is, do i want to stay independent, and do i have what it takes to be to remain as a successful independent going forward, or do i want to kind of get it on the ground floor of something? ground floor of something, and build something together? and you know, what i found is, is that a lot of those firms are still in that mode. i mean that and that, and so for us, it means that’s a longer sales cycle, because we’re chasing successful firms. but to me, that’s still a positive thing, but, but they’re they’re while they’re seeing the things that are going on around them, what they’re doing is taking in more information and sort of understanding their different paths, but they’re not jumping. and so i think, i think there’s, i think there’s sheep in every industry, and professional cpas are are no different, but i don’t think it’s any different than like other dynamics i’ve seen in pe roll up industries,

 

rob brown 

but we are seeing some firms taking the cash and running rather than perhaps staying in business a little bit longer, staying independent a little bit longer, and finding the right partner to acquire them, or the right pe partner to come in. we’re seeing a little bit of that, aren’t we?

 

tim brackney 

i believe. so, you know, i don’t, i don’t know all of the financial dynamics behind every firm, but i want to tell you, just seeing some of the things that are out there, i have to believe that that’s the case. i think most people in professional services and certainly in public accounting, they’re very people first, and so the when somebody makes a quick decision to kind of take the money and run, it begs the question as to whether how strong their culture was or how big the hole was that they were trying to fill. and as a buyer, i would wonder, am i going to have those assets stay with me based on that dynamic? so that would be probably a little scary for me. i’m going to give you a weird analogy. now, private equities being a disruptor in the accounting world continues to be so. so does artificial intelligence.

 

rob brown 

we put king kong and godzilla in a room together, and this, there’s a lot going on. so how do you envision the pe and the ai and blending those strategies and capitalizing all of those? how is that going to shake things out?

 

tim brackney 

well, i mean, they are analogous and also completely different. but they have, they sort of, they sort of, where the where the circles overlap in the venn diagram is around efficiency, you know. and i, like, i, i look at ai to me, it’s very exciting to contemplate how that could make things easier in a in a in a field that’s very data centric, and that requires sort of a lot of, a lot of a back and forth and analysis of data and interfacing with clients to be able to get to the right answer. and are there ways to shorten that step or to make those questions more informed? to me, that’s that’s going to be an incredible usage for ai i don’t like to be public accounting and consulting in general, is it’s the ability to sort of look at a fluid set of circumstances, things that are dynamic, and be able to make decisions based on that, where what we’ve seen from ai is more looking using historical data that’s more static, to be able to help predict the future. now, to the extent that some of that changes, i think that will help to that will help to determine what the different use cases are for ai, but in the short term, that i think that efficiency lane, which, which, by the way, i think that will also help with the talent, with attracting talent, and being able to give them access to cutting edge technology, and also to not have them sort of walk through the 10 miles of snow. to get to school that people like me had to do, sort of carrying around paper files and things like that, like the ability to kind of get in and and utilize rational thought that sooner, i think, will also help our industry.

 

rob brown 

i’m just gonna wipe a tear from my eye for how tough it was for you. tim, back in the day, i’m just sensing a problem with what you’re talking about. ai is driving efficiency and automation. private equity equally is is demanding cost cutting measures, standardized processes. i’m just wondering how far off we are for commoditization versus the need for more bespoke advisory services. that that’s a an interesting dynamic. yeah.

 

tim brackney 

i mean, i think there’s, there’s probably pieces of our profession that already feel commoditized. and so are there, you know, for instance, individual 1040, returns. i mean, almost every firm that i talk to, they have a swath of those types of businesses, of that type of business that they’re trying to either offload or find a more efficient way to do. and there’s, you know, there’s a couple streams, offshoring and using technology to do that. what i what i think, actually, i might take the opposite tact of that premise and say that the commoditized pieces of the business, which includes pieces of bigger projects can then be done more efficiently through technology, which would make private equity happy, but it allows the it allows the partners and senior managers or directors to be more focused on interfacing with clients and doing business development and spending time on that, as opposed to overseeing staff who are, who are who are utilizing, who are doing sort of more commoditized and mundane tasks. i mean, that’s that. that’s the tact i would take now, almost with anything like, could you get too far into one side or the other? yes, and, you know, you wonder, there will be somebody who comes along who basically says, our whole firm is, is ai and offshoring, and, you know, we’re just 10 people, and they’ll see if they can make that work. i just, i just don’t see in a people based industry how you lose that interface with clients and just assume that everything that happens behind the curtain is commoditized. i don’t see it, but there have been plenty of things that have, probably, that have, that have happened to folks in professions that probably weren’t anticipated. so i don’t rule it out.

 

rob brown 

another one of our sister shows is the accounting answers podcast. we asked 110 influencers the same five questions and got loads of interesting answers. question one on that show was, will the next generation of accountants be any different from their predecessors? you’ve hinted at it already, but i want to give you a quick true question right here. the increasing involvement of private equity in accounting is negatively affecting the career prospects and job satisfaction of accounting professionals. true or false?

 

tim brackney 

i think that’s false. i think that’s false. i think maybe there’s some of it, tbd and again, like, i don’t want to give you 1000 caveats, because everybody’s model is slightly different, but i think, i think that we’re, we’re sort of at the seminal point in the industry where, where, where labor has power and labor has mobility and labor has optionality, and they’re choosing not to come into the industry. and i think that some of the changes that private equity is looking to bring about changes in capital structure, you know, a flatter pyramid, you know, bringing in investment in technology and other things that probably couldn’t have happened in a distribution model and a partner distribution model, i think will actually help that. now that doesn’t mean, you know, private equity, again, is not a blank slate. so they’re going to be places where there’s going to be some some, i think, some negativity around the models that that private equity backed firms bring about. but i think broadly, i don’t see it as a negative.

 

rob brown 

your kids, your kids, if they come into accounting, they’re going to want different things, perhaps to what you did, the young generation, upcoming generation. they they do have a different perspective on life. it sounds emotive, but has talent forsaken the accounting industry permanently? i hear stories of less and less people doing accounting majors, taking accounting degrees. people are getting disillusioned by the grind, the lack of work life balance that the turbulence you talked about. i’ll ask you again, has talent forsaken the accounting industry permanently? are you seeing it going that way?

 

tim brackney 

i don’t think it’s permanent. i don’t think, i mean, and i’ll admit, it’s injured. it’s taken a hit.

 

tim brackney 

it’s it’s taken a hit, for sure. and i, you know, i think, and i think what, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of people looking at this, at this issue. i know the aicpa is looking at it. i know the other other professional bodies are looking at it. and i’ll admit that my answer is somewhat emotive and has a bias to it, because, listen, i think this profession is a great profession, and it’s it’s done well by me, and i think that there are some things that like. where if you, if you don’t change and you don’t innovate, like like, things will forsake you. and in our industry, those assets are talent right now, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t innovate and you can’t listen and find ways to bring them back, because this is a necessary profession. it’s a great entree into the broader business world, but it’s a just a great profession overall. and so there this is, i look at this as an opportunity and a, you know, point to where we can impact the industry in a positive way, to bring folks like my 14 year old son, bannon, into the accounting world. i’d love for him to follow, follow in my steps.

 

rob brown 

that would be something, wouldn’t it? i i’m just thinking of i mentioned the grind there. obviously it’s an emotional word. some firms get culture right, and they do promote work life balance and allow people to have a life outside of work, but there’s so much an accountant needs to do these days. almost everyone you talk to is overwhelmed. they’re overburdened that perhaps burn out the busy tax deadlines. but on top of that, is keeping on top of all the regulation and the complex changes with all of that on the horizon, i just wonder if that makes accounting more or less attractive to the private equity money. that’s

 

tim brackney 

that’s a great question. i mean, i think i actually think that more regulation and complexity actually would actually makes it more attractive. oh, really, because, because i listen no, no firm like and i would just tell this every, i mean, every, every big regulation that comes out firms big and small, need help figuring out how it impacts them. and so to me, there’s, there’s an element of that that actually makes it more attractive. on the sort of demand side, but, you know, the downstream of some of the structural things that we’re dealing with relative to the things we’ve talked about earlier in this discussion, both around structure and career pathing and bringing more people into the industry, it will make that a little bit more challenging. and so, you know, i think culture is kind of used as a panacea for for everything, but like, what i would say is, like, if you just took the one issue that you talked about here, which is work life balance, that is something that can be that can be impacted, and we’ve seen it. like most of the firms that i deal with are middle market firms. they get right to the heart of the matter, and a lot of the talent they get are from people in larger firms coming down because they can’t go see watch their son play soccer on a monday night because they’re doing something crazy. and so there are ways to do this, but you, but you really, but you really have to listen. you can’t sort of put a salve over the top or give people a few more bucks, like, i mean, it’s a it’s a bigger it’s a bigger issue than that. and so if your economic model doesn’t allow for you to do that because you’re really focused on getting utilization from the folks who you’re paying the least, you’re going to have a harder time doing that.

 

rob brown 

tim, this has been a fascinating conversation. i just want to ask you, to leave us with perhaps a couple of predictions. what do you see coming up over the next few years in the private equity in the accounting space, if you if you had to put it all on black or red, or i’ll put your house on it. what do you think’s definitely going to happen?

 

tim brackney 

listen, i think i’ve been in this, i’ve been in my role for exactly one year, almost, well, i shouldn’t say exactly when you’re 50 weeks, right? in that 50 weeks, i’ve seen tremendous change already, just both in the amount of private equity. you want to talk about sheep, if you have private one private equity comes in, you’re going to have more private equity come in, right? so there are more opportunities for firms to to have discussions with private equity. so one thing i would say for sure is that private equity is here, and private equity is here to stay, and it’s going to, you know, if you went out 10 years, the amount of firms that are that are private equity backed, or were having private equity backed, will be beyond probably what you and i can comprehend right now. i think the other thing, and i’ll give you something, you know, i mean, you’ve got c biz, that’s a pub, that’s a publicly traded advisory firm with an accounting arm, i think you’ll get to a point where private equity has these larger firms, and to get an exit, they can’t just sell to each other. so you only have a few places you can go. you can go public and go esop, you can sell to another, larger, strategic and so i think, i think at some point, i don’t know how this will work, but i think you’ll see sort of a, you know, more publicly traded public accounting firm, which, when i started years ago, i never, i could have just, i would have thought that was an aftermath.

 

rob brown 

what advice would you give tim just in closing to your regular cpa, your regular accountant out there, that they’re listening to this and some of it’s above their pay grade. they’re perhaps not equity partner, they’re not in the in the boardroom, but they’re just going through the day to day, serving the clients, doing a wonderful job, having that duty of care, and all of this storm is raging around them. what would you say to them?

 

tim brackney 

it’s a great question. i mean, i would say this to almost anybody. so i’ll give you. i’ll give it kind of the, it’s kind of a two, two part thing. the first thing is, think about yourself and your family first. i mean, the. yeah, the firm’s firms are believe in their employees, but they’re loyal to themselves first, right? so like as an employee, you need to think about yourself and your family first. so tim brackney llc, but the second thing is just be open to change and be open to have if you have, be open to asking questions of the leadership groups that you have around you and find out if they’re contemplating pe and like what, why they are, why they’re not. and if you have a good culture and good leadership team, they’re going to engage with you, and they’ll be open with you and say, we’re thinking about it. and you’ll be now, you’ll be part of the discussion and feel more informed.

 

rob brown 

tim brackney, this has been passionately insightful. if people want to talk to you, find out more about the great stuff that you’re doing. why would they reach out? listen, i think

 

tim brackney 

i am a, i’m an atypical private private equity back ceo. i’ve only, i’ve only worked for pricewaterhouse and deloitte.so what i’m, what we’re really focused on, is building something that’s people centric in this industry. so if you want to learn more about that, it’s sort of a different path than being acquired by a big company, and it’s different than sort of being a standalone and inside a inside an archipelago. what we’re doing is something different. i’d love to talk to folks about that. and you know what? i’m very passionate about this profession. i talk to anybody who who kind of wants to pull on the threat of private equity.

 

rob brown 

iit’s been a pleasure speaking to you today. thanks for joining the show.

 

tim brackney 

thanks, rob. it’s been great.