Today, our guest is Alex Drost. Alex is Managing Principal of Connection Builders, which I love the name, we’ll talk about that a little bit here. Alex has been around the financial services and the accounting profession for nearly 20 years now. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Alex in person a handful of times, at least twice I can remember, and it’s probably more than that, but usually at a conference. And, the last time was in the fall of ’24 at actually, the Accounting Today Private Equity Summit, I think is what they called it. So Alex, welcome to The Unique CPA.

Oh, Randy, thank you for having me today. Looking forward to our conversation. 

I am too. And I should have said, I think actually, was it the first time we met? No, we probably met in person first, but you had me on a podcast you were doing a few years ago, I think, and that was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the conversation.

If memory serves, we met in person briefly at a conference a couple of years back, and then we were just talking before we jumped on recording here. It’s funny how small the accounting world can actually be. 

If I remember this correctly, I was speaking at Winning Ways on a panel, actually, and I literally had to get off the stage and run to the airport because I had a flight leaving, I think, less than an hour after my presentation, but I made it.

Were you speaking with Brandon Hall that time? 

I was with Brandon Hall, and David Toth was a moderator of that. I don’t remember the topic, honestly, but I remember having fun, so, alright, so let’s start this podcast. Although we can just keep talking about all the places we’ve been and the fun we’ve had, but I gave you a quick intro, you’ve been in investment banking, you’ve seen private equity going on in different industries. Why don’t you give a little background of who you are and how you got to what you’re doing today?

Yeah, so I’ll try my best to tell the story in a way that makes sense: Background was financial services, worked in, within investment banking, did a mix of sell side, buy side, and capital raise work. In particular, the two areas that I had the deepest unique experiences, one was leverage finance, and really what I would call buy and build or growth capital—it was financing strategic acquisition plans. And then the other area, and this is what’s really unique and has kind of played a role in where I’m at in the accounting industry today, is I have a lot of sell side experience in particular with physician practice management, healthcare, partnership model based businesses. 

Fast forward into the accounting industry, I’ve kind of hung my own shingle a little over five years ago now, right before COVID, and so it’s been a little bit of a very unpredictable ride, if you will, along the way. But where I found myself today and where, driving value within accounting firms is bringing in some of the knowledge of partnership models in both in how to maximize the value, if you are looking to transact from a private equity standpoint, but really more importantly, what does it mean broadly the industry, and how does that affect folks that are making a decision about what to do and if they’re staying independent, what do they do from there? So that’s where I find myself today. 

Well, it’s probably a pretty good place to be because there’s a lot of transactions going on or discussion of transactions, every single firm, if I’m exaggerating, but in the industry, feels like they’ve been contacted at one level about, we’re looking, are you selling? We want you. 

I don’t think every single, and maybe not all the way down, but I think “almost every single” is a pretty good explanation at this point.

Yeah. Well, like I said, you and I met at the, I think it was called the Accounting Today Private Equity Summit, I think that was the name. 

PE Summit.

That’s what it was. And so there was a lot of buyers there for sure. And there was a lot of curious potential sellers there as well. But there was things that, you know, with what, almost three years into now this whole cycle of private equity, you and I were talking ahead of time, and you’ve seen private equity in other professions as well, and I was asking you if there have been horror stories, is there something that we need to, you know, be aware of, is there things, because right now everything’s all, you know, “Hey, everything’s great. Partners are making lots of money. They’re going to flip, they’re going to make more money.” But I personally have heard some, I don’t know if I’d call it horror stories, but people not being as happy as they expected to be in these deals. So I don’t know, we went into one industry earlier, is there, if we try to equate that to what’s going on, I want to give us an idea of what happened and some of the maybe drawbacks, I shouldn’t say horror stories, but there are probably some, but some drawbacks of what has happened in other professions and see if there’s a way we can figure out, is that something that we need to be concerned about going forward?

So, maybe, let me step back and give a high level, “here’s what’s unfolding,” and then let’s talk about what that ramification could be. 

Perfect.

So what’s unfolding, and this is macro across the economy, not just in accounting, but we have an aging population of business owners, the Baby Boomer generation, that is aging to a point of needing succession. At the same time we are continuing to have increases of investable capital that is being allocated to private equity funds. And so it’s what’s called dry powder, the desire to invest that capital. And so those factors are broad. And what we’ve seen over time is an increasing number of particularly middle market sized organizations being private equity or institutionally backed from an ownership standpoint. 

The accounting industry, and we’ll talk now what makes accounting an appealing investment is, again, we’ve got the partnership dynamics, we just talked about aging, we have to have succession in a lot of cases. We also have an industry that is rapidly changing through the, both the transformation that technology’s having in how work is done, workforce-labor augmentation, AI, that just, that shift in how delivery is ultimately happening of the product, and then you also see an industry that is a partnership model that in some cases, in many cases, has firms that operate with a very sizable number of decision makers in a relatively low propensity for risk, wanting to have relatively low risk investments or kind of strategy in what they’re doing, and that makes it right for disruption. It’s fragmented. There are, especially as you get farther down market, we all know that there are thousands of players if you go very far down market, but even at the top, there are hundreds of sizable players. And so those create opportunities and it would be in any industry that I described that around, but that’s obviously to accounting.

Now what happens? What does that mean for the industry? One, it inevitably means that you will have a consolidation of players today, and we’ve already seen some sizable mergers in the last couple years, right? Think about Forbis didn’t exist four years ago, right? And then CBiz got a heck of a lot bigger recently. And I assure you, if you look at the top 50 firms, there are, call it 20 that are PE backed that are, somewhere, one of those are going to end up morphing together. I don’t know who it is, but, some of these $300, $400, $500 million players might very quickly join up with someone else and become a billion dollar player, or does a billion dollar player leap itself to a two billion, right? And so, that end of the market is going to continue to get very big. But even farther down, the quickest way to growth a lot of times is general acquisition, right? How many smaller, $10, $20, $30 million firms or even smaller in many cases, have we seen rolled up and consolidated over time? And so inevitably the consolidation is going be supercharged through the injection of capital from private equity. 

The other real material shift, and this is the one I have some thoughts of how it’s going to play out, but I don’t think anyone knows the exact answer yet, is how do these organizations, these accounting practices, work in a non-traditional partner model? And what I mean there is, take today a firm that has 30 partners, and each of those 30 have roughly the same vote in their opinion about certain decisions, versus that same firm where those 30 partners represent one third of the vote, and then a single investor represents the other 70 percent of that vote, now you’re in a very different profile of how that business operates, both from how you incentivize the partners that are there, but more importantly, the willingness to invest capital and pull dollars in to invest into the business to grow. And that’s where you’re seeing rapid acceleration of these firms that have a PE backer that can grow and consolidate at an unbelievable speed in comparison to their non PE backed folks. And that’s, you think you’re, how easy, anyone listening who’s in a firm that size, right? And you know, that just gets harder the farther you go up that scale oftentimes. 

I want you to keep going, but I want to stop. I’m going to interject something on there because I, I, what you just said is this whole, you know, 30 partners and, you know, the decisions are all, you know, they’re 1/30th of each decision and whatever, but that makes it hard to make changes, to do new things, to say, let’s change because not everybody can follow that same path. I’m not opposed at all, to having more of a, you know, CEO type model in accounting. I think a county needs the change of structure anyway. I’m not sure if the private equity model is obviously the perfect model for everybody, but that part of it, I think is least in my mind, is some positive change. “Let’s start treating this more like a business and act that way.” So I just, I don’t know if you have comments on that. Otherwise I want you to keep going. 

I think you’re actually hitting a really important point here, so I strongly stand by, and as someone who’s spent most of their career around private equity, M&A, and not only have I spent, professionally worked in it, but a lot of my friends and social circle are in that community, and so it’s a topic that I certainly talk around or spent a lot of time around. And I genuinely believe that it is an industry of smart, astute investors that are looking at how to run a better business that is worth more to increase the value of the investment they’re making. That said I also know that they have primarily, a single metric that drives what the win rate is. That same metric makes a lot of sense in a corporate finance, investment standpoint—it also can have perverse incentives. It can also create areas where short term thinking overrides long term thinking. And we all know the stories of where that is. And so that’s where I don’t believe it’s an elixir. I don’t believe that it is right for everyone. I don’t believe that everyone will be widely successful just because. I also believe they will be successful. It’s just, it’s not the only pathway. 

Yep. Okay. Alright. So sorry, I interrupted—I’ll let you keep going. 

No, okay, when you think about where the industry and some of the impacts that are likely to come out of this is a couple things. What it means to be a partner is going to look different going forward. I think there’s no question behind that whatsoever. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because I think in some cases there are folks that didn’t want to be partner and so they’re no longer within whatever or the organization they were in which is negative right this might help keep people because that you redefine that role. On the inverse, there are also many partners that are called partners that maybe shouldn’t be called partners—that somehow are there because they were Survivor and they lasted on the island longer than anyone else around them. And that’s not that’s just saying that in general what it means is that for many of these organizations, I joke that most firms have some kind of a comp model or partner model, the Excel distribution they work off of, and you can typically tell how old the firm is by how wide the sheet’s gotten because you just keep adding names to it, right? It was three names, then it was seven, then it was fifteen, and what that means is that In many cases, the idea that everyone is kind of equal at that point is not—that’s not necessarily the most effective way to run the business.  So, it will change what it means to be partner. 

What it will also change, fundamentally, as an employer, as a professional working in there, is what is my earning potential, and how does my earning look as an owner, as a true equity partner? And I don’t know, it’s going to be different for every firm—I suspect there will be an increased need to better distribute earnings more broadly, and to make a greater amount of reinvestment into the business to continue to fund growth. And that means that partner comp isn’t going to always grow at the rate you want it to, and there may be some ups and some downs and that’s more like true, traditional ownership of a business versus the current model where it’s more like you just have a nice salary that runs along the way.

I think that traditionally, it’s people like to know—we’re accountants, we want certainty in things—and “Hey, I know I’m going to have a $500,000 a year salary, and I’m comfortable with that, and so I’m not going to worry about the rest”—but in this model, maybe mindset’s changing that, hey, you know, I’m going to, one, I’m going to get a nice payout when they come in, but two, I’m going to probably get less on a yearly basis, but I’m investing in the future, and now the next time they flip it, I’m going to, I mean, we just saw this with Citrin Cooperman. I mean, the numbers were three times the original investment or something? I don’t even remember, but something like that. And so, so maybe there’s a mindset change there too, that people just start looking at more of the business, which is probably not a terrible thing, but it can go too far, I suppose, too.

I agree with that. One of the areas where, well, I know that not everyone’s going to want to work for a PE backed firm, and I know there’s absolutely space in the market, and probably quite a bit of space in the market, for independent firms, meaningful sized independent firms, both for the buyers of the services that they want to work with a truly independent firm, but also for the staff, the team, the folks out there that don’t want to be part of a more of a corporatized type model. So I have no doubt that there’s space out there. What will be interesting to see how this plays out is the difference of a PE backed organization versus a truly independent firm today, is likely the willingness to invest capital—true capital, big dollars—to fund and fuel growth. And so I think that’s, if I was sitting in that seat right now, that would be the biggest thing that I would be thinking is going to change over the next couple of years.

And we hear it talked about all the time in trying to get an deal done. And if, 10 years ago, or 5 years ago even, getting a PE deal done, you could get a decent sized deal done for pretty much no down payment and, we’ll finance it out over a period of time, and today there’s an expectation that you bring some kind of cash to the table, especially if you start stretching that into different types of business acquisitions or, that’s not even talking about technology investments or acqui-hires or, different things that you do to invest in a practice that I’m certain you’re going to continue to see PE backed firms going. And this one important point here is there are a number of investments made at all different levels of the market today, and I’m sure we’ll see a couple more, but at this point we have 25, 30 plus platforms out there that exist that are moving and are playing in most markets. It’s hard to find a space where there’s no action or no activity. And so I think it’s inevitable that most CPA firms, in the market they’re playing in, are going to see some effect or some change from it. 

What that exactly is, is going to vary a lot based on where you’re at, what service line you have, what level of the market you’re playing in. But I also am certain anyone listening to this right now who runs a firm, you probably have a competitor somewhere  either directly in your market or tangentially, that is now PE backed, that is now changing the way they’re coming at the market. And remember that we’re in the first inning of this. This is going to continue to change over the next 5 to 7 years, in a pretty rapid clip. I don’t know exactly what the changes will be, but you can’t expect things to not, the status quo, to remain stable for the next 5 to 7 years here.

Yep, and let’s talk, because you just mentioned, and I’m just curious on the, you know, things not staying the same, which is not a terrible thing, I think we’re too often, you know, rely on the selling method, same as last year, and this is different, which is, different is not bad at all, I don’t mind different. But one of the things I do mind, or get concerned about, and I’m going on a tangent here a little bit, but you just talked about change in culture, and the impact on the culture and the people within the organization, because now I’m sure we were always motivated for profitability and all that, but it wasn’t the number one overriding factor all the time. And to me, for private equity, I mean, I might be wrong, it is. So if that becomes the overriding factor, how do the people get affected? How’s the culture? Because I feel a great culture is going to fuel a firm, or I’m not sure private equity looks the same way. Do you have any thoughts on that? 

Yeah, so here, I do, I agree with you 100 percent in the importance of culture, and this is a people-based business at the end of the day. You need the people, they are the assets. The PE investments that will be most successful are, especially particularly in the long run, maybe not just in the short term measurement of economics, but the long term successful investments are going to be those that are truly injecting growth capital to help unlock potential that exists inside of a firm today, and the ones that say, “Look it, we see all this opportunity, here’s a way to bring some capital, we’re going to help you get to the next level.” There are inevitably going to be dissatisfied people in any organization, just like it happens today, but we’ll come back to that in a minute. But I think there’s no doubt that the ones that are focused on culture will be more successful. 

What I don’t know yet, and what’s to be seen, is how do I attract and retain an adequate talent base longer term, to service the evolving needs of clients, coupled with the evolving way that technology affects the product delivery or the service delivery here. That’s where I think in some cases, and that’s not saying at all, throw culture to the wayside, but that is absolutely saying that there are ways to accomplish that today that are different than what’s being done. And let’s be honest, in a lot of firms today, part of the way that the incentivization of the culture happens is, well, if you stay long enough, you’re going to make a lot of money, so just stay. and so that’s not always the best thing either, right? I mean, we can see there’s probably some not so great culture at the top of certain organizations. 

But that’s where the real value here, you said, you made alluded to the idea that private equity focuses on profit, and they focus on cashflow, they focus on the value of the asset of their investment, but profit tends to yield cashflow, so I, I am cost conscious and I always want to grow my revenue. That’s like every business. I also think that a really big difference, and this is, it’s more of a sophistication oftentimes of how you think about money in saying, well, what if I invest it in building a training program to help elevate the next layer of my staff, and it’s going to cost me a million and a half dollars to do it the next couple years? In a traditional firm, maybe you get that done, maybe you don’t. In a PE firm, if they think it’s a valuable investment that proves a return, “Let’s go do it. Let’s go make that investment.” And so good and bad. 

At the same time, you’re going to have folks that say, you know what, I bet we could cut this or I bet we could cap their earnings. I bet we could change this formula and still keep them here. Because things like that, where there’s good and there’s bad about it. But at the end of the day, the core thinking is how do we increase the value of the business as often measured by EBITDA, but really cash flow of the business. 

Okay. And then that brings me to an idea that when you just said that, because we want to increase the value, want to increase the bottom line, we want to increase the cash flow and all, because it’s their short term investors for the most part, right? I mean, and so what they’re looking to do is they making their big money on the next round of new private equity coming in. So in that scenario, is cost cutting a big part of it? Because if we’re going to invest a million and a half dollars in these people in training, and we’re flipping in three years—which is probably a short number, but that just did happen, and less than three years, I think—are we going to be more concerned about reducing costs than, and the increasing the training or whatever it is within the firm? And how does that, you know, mindset of flipping affect everything within public accounting? 

So, let’s talk the flipping for a minute, because I think that’s an important concept here. As you mentioned, we’ve recently seen the first trade or retrade from an investment, it’s inevitable that we’ll see more, and the primary reason is PE investors and their funds are typically structured where there’s an outlined definitive hold period and they have to eventually return capital to investors. That doesn’t, you know, a lot of firms do have certain options that allow them to extend it or to put it into a separate special vehicle. There are also family office investors that have a longer term hold period, but a key concept here is typically the way you value or get your investment back out of an asset is you sell it. You buy a home you live in a home for a while then you sell the home and that’s when you get your dollars back out of what you invest in it for example. 

And so the resale the flip will happen typically you’re going to see a lot of consolidation along there your question around the cost cutting and where does that happen? Yes and no, if we look at historically in private equity, not just in accounting, but typically, where we see some of the more negative private equity stories, I’m trying to think of a good one, I think Chuck E. Cheese was one that had a pretty negative story around it at one point, but we see organizations that are over-levered with debt put on the balance sheet and are relatively mature organizations where they see an opportunity to gut out some of the cost structure, the operating structure, and they usually lever up the balance sheet pretty heavily. And that’s where sometimes it doesn’t always go great and there’s, there’s usually fallout.

That can happen in smaller scales, but the truth is too that a lot of the value and positioning the value of these businesses isn’t just—it’s EBITDA, the cash flow that you generate—but it’s the multiple, the other side of that, and the multiple is typically driven by the size, the scale, the depth of infrastructure, the caliber of management team and bench that you have, the things that say, I invested in putting a CPO in that built out an L&D program that is designed to help lower our attrition rate and our turnover on talent and increase our retention. If you have metrics to show all of that, it’s not about cutting that cost, that will drive value by expanding your multiple and making you a more attractive asset on the exit. There could be cost cutting, no doubt. I also don’t think that’s the main place that, thinking of the operating infrastructure right now, given the business structure that’s there today, I just don’t see that being the core place to cut.

And I think you’re right. And I think that, I don’t see, I haven’t seen, not that I’ve paid that much close attention on it, but that happened. And I think it’s more of the, they see an opportunity and one, add no services probably that you already have an existing client base, two, create efficiencies because that 30 person partnership firm may not want to spend $5 million to upgrade all the technology that is going to create more efficiencies because they’re all 55, they’re going to retire in the next five years, so I’m not going to spend the money now. So I think from that standpoint, it’s a positive. So I see the efficiencies and the technology integration being a big part of why they see this as a valuable. Are there other areas there or are, am I accurate on those?

I think you’re spot on there, and I think the consolidation, M&A acquisitive growth will absolutely be part of the playbook for all of these firms. I think in today, partnership models in a traditional setting can be very challenging to do true M&A growth, either because you have to figure out how to mesh two partner groups together, and someone has to come up and write a check to make the whole thing happen, and no one wants to take the risk to write that check out to begin with. PE, I do believe will have some success there, which can certainly, just scale alone can make a huge difference in what you’re capable of doing inside of your business and what seems reasonable. 

The investment side of operating infrastructure, technology, people, processes, not all PE, not many, will roll up their sleeves themselves and get deep there. They may have some folks on their team that do help with some of it, they are likely to have operating partners or other advisors within their network that they’re going to want to help with that, but what they’re really going to do is unlock and empower the organization to go do it by taking some of the risk aversion off of the partners from having to make that investment solely out of their pocket: We’re making this investment, you’re sharing a part of it, but we are, as the primary shareholder, you’re, they’re going to be the primary ones underwriting the capital that’s being deployed there. 

The inverse of that, and this is, I think, a net positive in the most part, but what PE is likely to do, and some may disagree with me and many won’t want me to say this, but they’re likely to cap what the upside looks like for most partners going forward. And I don’t necessarily mean that as a true locked in cap, but what I do mean is that how the model works today in most firms, is that the most senior partners take out an excess portion of earnings as their dividend, their ownership of being in the business, and that no longer is theirs because that’s now the PE investors’. And that may be a good thing because the truth is, there are a lot of firms out there that have a lot of folks that are earning at a very high level that is more because of them being owners than it is particularly because of their direct individual expertise. And I think we’ll see some alignment of that created through that, and that ultimately changes the longer term outlook for people in those roles.

Alright. I’ve got two questions. I’m going to say them both now, and we’ll see if this makes sense to go down this path. One is, okay, so hey, you know, all this private equity is out there, and they’ve been, for the most part, larger firms. There are some private equity, they’re doing the five to ten million dollar deals or whatever it is, but let’s assume I am that, you know, $5 million, $10 million, even $50 million firm that wants to position myself for maybe being rolled up into one of these deals already, or maybe that’s the way to look at it, because what would I want to do internally, running my company privately now, you know, we’ve got a handful of partners, and I think you’re a big fan of niche. I assume if you’re a niche practice, that is going to differentiate you, and some of these ones where you get rolled up and like, okay, that’s not a niche we’re dealing with right now, and we come with a ready made firm that might be very appealing to us. Is there scenarios like that? If you want to be prepared for a deal that you should be looking into? 

Yeah, so I’d say, and, I guess I’ll call this a shameless plug, call me and we can talk about it now. But no, in all seriousness, here’s what’s important to know. I’ll talk specifically about accounting and answer your specific question a second, but at a high level, the value of an investment, a capital asset is the present day value of your future cash flows. And so what that means is future cash flows discounted at an appropriate risk rate back to today. The reason I start there is that when I think about what drives value, it’s about how do I either show greater cash flow or lower risk? What are the two things? And so, the things that drive greater cash flow is the level of expertise, exclusivity, the challenge of breaking into a customer pipeline, the depth of knowledge that all help you push up your price point, or address a certain market that exists out there. So yes, a niche absolutely can be that if there’s deep expertise, and if that addressable market, whatever you’re serving, is large enough without a ton of other competitors there, then from the increased revenue and ultimately cash flow can be very nice. 

The risk side or the how do we make that more lucrative revenue is one, if it’s niche enough in there is some deep expertise built around it, you can usually leverage up and get some wider margin than someone who doesn’t have a true niche or specialty because you built the expertise around that, the systems, the know how. So I’m expanding my margin, increased cashflow. And then, diversification of customers and then the reoccurring demand and nature of that will reduce my risk of that cash flow. Is it sticky? Does it come back to me again and again? How hard is it to sell once I sell it? How hard is it to sell it again? How often do they need it? And those are all questions, again, not necessarily specific to accounting. That’s any business, any product, any service. But if you apply it to niche accounting services, generally, yes, that’s a pretty, some niches are better than others, there’s different parts of that, but those are all factors that drive value. 

Then the negative to it is customer concentration or service concentration, depending on, because at the end of the day, if you’re doing some type of, and I don’t know the deep of your business, so I’m just going to say, you’re doing tax credits or some type of tax something, and if we, the last couple of weeks, it’s been a little unpredictable of what’s going to be regulation, right? And so if all of a sudden, there’s just no need for your service anymore, then your whole business goes up in smoke pretty fast. 

Oh yeah. 

Or if you’re serving an industry that just kind of ceases to exist pretty quickly, then you could have some challenges there. Those are the biggest negatives in a niche. Outside of that, niche specialty is usually, it is appealing—your buyer will look different because you have to find someone who likes that space, that specialty, because it’s not as broadly applicable. But what I would say, and even just beyond, and not just drilling down to deep niche players, but if you build a business that has true focus, whether that be, we service this industry with these broad couple of services, or we service these couple of narrow services to this broad industry, but where there’s real focus and not what many firms are based off of, which is, do you want me to do the work? Will you pay the bills? Yes, I can do it. I get that’s the scarcity mentality that builds that, or even just the pure revenue growth demand that kind of builds that book of business. It doesn’t mean there’s always a buyer out there, but they’re less desirable than trying to build something where like, look it, the, that what we have is, we know this piece of the market, We can do it better than anyone because of this and this, and here’s how we sell it and who we sell it to, and here’s our process. Because that’s a story, that’s a business, and you’re like, okay, that’s a business, versus a collection of people that are just servicing work and sharing, you know, kind of a back office, as many firms say tend to be.

And so, this is going to continue. I mean, it’s not going away, I’m guessing we’re still at the beginning. You said it earlier. We’re in the first inning. 

I think maybe the second inning now. 

Second inning now. That could be. So, Alex, this has been great. I always enjoy the conversations with you. We didn’t even get into your business much, so I want to make sure everybody gets to take a look at that. So at the end, we’ll make sure they go look at you, because you are in this, you’ve been, you’re very passionate about what’s going on and and you’re helping people with deals as well. So I appreciate that. But before we wrap up before we get to your your contact information—and everybody gets this question—but we’ve been talking about all this business stuff but personally, what do you enjoy doing when you’re not out helping people with private equity deals or consulting with them? What are your outside of work passions?

So, I love riding my bike, love mountain biking, and they say it’s not real, not true road biking, but, biking around the area here. I love drinking beer, I, my body doesn’t as much enjoy it as I do, but I really enjoy it. I’m passionate, I read a lot, and I love listening to music, so.

 

And then maybe a super dorky, geeky part of me, I wouldn’t call it a passion, or maybe it’s a passion, it’s kind of a hobby. I really enjoy databases and building, custom little database things, so I build a lot of weird trackers, and that’s my kind of work, but also, creative type focus stuff, so, that’s my, a little other part of me.

Nice. And you’re an Eminem fan, as I heard beforehand, you were on with Scotty Scarano recently, and obviously he does his own rapping. So, and then if anybody wants to hear, and honestly, I feel like I didn’t give you enough time to talk about Connection Builders, but it’s a great organization. So if people want to find out more about you and what you’re doing, where would they look? 

Listen, you can head over to the website www.connection.builders, but probably the best way to keep up with me is LinkedIn, search me on LinkedIn, Alex Drost, and shoot me a message, happy to connect with anyone, you know, I would say for anyone listening that either wants to learn more about PE or what to do, happy to be helpful there, but in particular, those firms that either are trying to figure out how to navigate this or are really starting to say, okay, what do we do over the next couple of years, that’s where I can be in the particular, where I can be the most impactful and add the most value. 

Well, thanks, that’s great, and I would encourage anybody to reach out to Alex, he’s a great guy and I’ve always enjoyed, like I said, conversations with Alex. Well, Alex, again, thank you so much for being on The Unique CPA.