Andy Stockett: Managing Money as a Fishing Guide

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 768 with Andy Stockett.

Catching Up on the Chandeleur Islands

Tom Rowland: Andy, what's up, man? How are you?

Andy Stockett: I'm doing well, Tom. How about you?

Tom Rowland: Great. I'm glad to have you in person here. This is fun. You've been fishing lately?

Andy Stockett: I have. Just got back a couple weeks ago from Louisiana to the Chandeleur Islands.

Tom Rowland: You love that trip, the Chandeleur Islands. Tell me about that, what you do and where you go out of.

Andy Stockett: We go out of Biloxi. We've been doing this trip with a bunch of guys mainly from Chattanooga for probably twenty, I think we figured it was twenty six years or so. The Chandeleurs are just a wonderful barrier chain of islands that run due south of Biloxi into the Gulf. They're actually kind of thought of as the barrier island that protects New Orleans from the hurricanes, which it's done, unfortunately, over the last fifteen years. A lot of them have had direct hits from Katrina and Ivan and all those things, so it's chopped them up a little bit, but it's still just a wonderful place. There's nothing out there except birds and fish.

Tom Rowland: And so as far as the fish goes, are you catching mostly redfish or trout, or what do you catch out there?

Andy Stockett: We usually go in the springtime and try to hit that window when the water temperature is going through the mid sixties or so. Hopefully we can get both redfish and trout at that time.

Tom Rowland: Nice. And over the twenty six years that you've been going there, how have you seen that place change? I remember driving by there years ago during the Redfish tournaments, and my friend Anthony pointed it out, we never actually fished it, but I've driven by. Then a couple years later it looked substantially smaller, like it had taken a hit. With your familiarity of it, has it changed a lot from the hurricanes?

Andy Stockett: Definitely. They've gone through, a lot of times when a big storm like Katrina comes in, it can cut new passes through the islands. The islands themselves are maybe four hundred yards wide in some of the wider places, with surf on the eastern side and grass flats on the inside. When they take a direct hit, the storm surge can cut a whole new pass, which can actually be good for the fishing the next year. But it can also push a lot of sand over the grass flats, and there's been talk recently about restoring those flats.

Tom Rowland: So much of Louisiana is like that. The last time I went, my friend told me where we were and I didn't even recognize the place, because so much of the marsh has disappeared.

Andy Stockett: Oh yeah, same in the Chandeleurs. Over twenty six years I've put a zillion waypoints on my GPS, and unfortunately some of those that used to be an island or a shell bar just aren't there anymore. But other things start creeping up, so part of the fun of going down there is figuring out what's new and where the new spots are.

Tom Rowland: Are you wading mostly, or fishing out of a boat?

Andy Stockett: When I was a little younger we'd hop out of a fourteen foot skiff and wade the flats. These days we're probably doing a little more drifting.

Tom Rowland: I gotcha. Well, that's a real pretty place, kind of the equivalent of Louisiana's Marquesas Islands, where there's no development. It's beautiful, a can't miss kind of place. You're going to have an awesome trip.

Andy Stockett: It's great. Even though you'll see other boats out there, it's not the kind of pressure you'd see inshore in Florida, so the fish may be a little dumber. A lot of us like to fish top water out there, and there's nothing better than watching a clumsy redfish miss a top water lure two or three times while your heart starts pumping.

Tom Rowland: When we used to fish those Redfish tournaments, somebody told me redfish love buzzbaits, and I took my old bass buzzbaits down there, they really do. It's a great bite. I'll have to get to the Chandeleurs one of these days. Are you staying on a houseboat?

Andy Stockett: It's not a houseboat, it's actually about a hundred foot boat, kind of like what would service an oil rig. It sleeps up to twelve people in six rooms with bunk beds, a couple of bathrooms with showers, and a big salon with a big screen TV and air conditioning.

Tom Rowland: Do you have a chef, or do you cook your own food?

Andy Stockett: They cook everything for you, three meals a day. The only complaint I have is this year I was having some construction done at my house, so I asked the captain if I could use the ship phone to call in, like I've done periodically over the years. He said, oh, we've got Wi-Fi and cell phone coverage now, which was a real disappointment.

Tom Rowland: It's like that car commercial where they keep driving around looking at their phone for service, and finally find a place with none, and they're relieved to stop. It's hard to find those places these days.

What Andy Does: Boutique Investment Banking

Tom Rowland: So one of the things I wanted to have you on today to talk about, tell us what you do for a profession.

Andy Stockett: I'm what you'd call an investment banker, which is a term my grandmother had trouble with. She asked if that meant I made investments, and I said no. Then she asked if, as a banker, I loaned money, and I said no. So what does that mean? It's actually a term for people in our industry who help business owners with everything from raising capital to mergers and acquisitions and finding capital. We're kind of in what's called the professional services industry.

Tom Rowland: And that's Four Bridges Capital Advisors.

Andy Stockett: That's right, Four Bridges Capital Advisors. We call ourselves a boutique investment bank because we're not big like a Goldman Sachs. All of our people have worked at bigger firms like Raymond James or PricewaterhouseCoopers, but we're just six of us in the firm now, so we call ourselves a boutique.

Tom Rowland: Now, for people who are really interested in fishing, their eyes might glaze over thinking we're going to talk about investment banking for an hour. But I wanted to talk about this because a large portion of our audience are hardcore fishing guides who fish every single day, typically as a one man show with repeat clientele, and they may do that forever, or maybe they get injured, or decide they want to expand or sell the business. I want to talk about some things that apply to them. And of course we also have people on the other end of the boat, the CEO in the front of the boat, who might be thinking about expanding the business, and what that looks like, since a lot of people haven't gone down that road before. That's what you do. In fact, you helped us with that about ten or twelve years ago when we had ideas about expanding into other shows, like Saltwater Experience and Into the Blue, and even on the charter service side, figuring out how many boats made sense. You really helped us with that, looking at box economics and systems and processes. So let's start with when a CEO is thinking about taking on a partner or monetizing the business through a sale or acquisition, what does that look like from your side, and how do you help people do that?

Deals in the Outdoor Industry

Andy Stockett: Well, it's kind of like you said about the guides, we take the role of a guide in this, without getting too deep into the weeds on analogies, because it is a journey. When somebody decides it's time to make some kind of transition with their business, it's a complicated process. The good news is that there are a lot of options out there these days. Maybe fifteen or twenty years ago, somebody with a metal bending business they founded in their garage would be getting older, thinking about slowing down, without kids to take over. Back then they'd just call a business broker and try to list the company to find a buyer.

Tom Rowland: A business broker would be the equivalent of a realtor, they represent you and have contacts with different people, as opposed to what you do.

Andy Stockett: Right, business brokers typically work off a listing, they put it out on their website, and they might have contacts of people who've said they'd like to buy a business someday. But those tend to be smaller businesses, doing a million dollars in revenue or less. We tend to focus on companies more in the ten million dollar range, and at that size you can go after so called institutional buyers, bigger strategic buyers in the same business but much larger, publicly traded companies, or private equity funds that raise pools of capital from high net worth individuals or endowments. That kind of option wasn't really available for companies of that size fifteen years ago, but now there's a lot out there.

Tom Rowland: That's interesting, you've had success in the fishing and boating business specifically, helping other companies in that space.

Andy Stockett: We have. That's one thing I really like about my job, although I have a passion for what we call our hook and bullet practice, we also work across a lot of other industries: manufacturing, building products, distribution, specialty construction. But over the years we sold Gary Yamamoto to GSM Outdoors out of Dallas, which was a really fun deal. We've worked with Phoenix Bass Boats over the years, sold a local outdoor specialty retailer called Rock Creek Outfitters here in the Chattanooga area, and years ago did some work for Frog Togs, which makes outerwear and waders. We also have another client I can't name in the outdoor hunting arena that makes gear and apparel, we're hopefully taking that to market in the next few weeks.

Tom Rowland: When you see a deal like the Yamamoto sale, can you talk about why he wanted to sell? What was his motivation for getting out of the business?

Andy Stockett: I can tell you a little bit, though I don't get into too many specifics. Gary started the business back in the early eighties and came out with the Senko, which several people have classified as one of the top ten bass lures ever. He ran it pretty much as a lifestyle business, and by his mid to late seventies he had a ranch in Texas raising Wagyu beef. Over time he started getting approached by private equity firms and other strategics already in the business who liked the brand and wanted to buy it. He'd already had a couple of parties reach out to him, and through one of our referral sources he was told to talk to the guys at Four Bridges. We got involved and broadened the process beyond the people who had already approached him. Interestingly, the eventual buyer wasn't even on the original list, because they'd primarily been in hunting.

Tom Rowland: So that's why you'd hire an advisor, sometimes the best buyer isn't the most obvious one.

Andy Stockett: That's right. Again, it's a little like reading a trout stream, you have to figure out where the fish are going to be, what rock they'll be behind, and then figure out how to dress up the bait and present it, whether that's a nymph or top water. That's what I like about the business.

Building a Business a Guide Can Actually Sell

Tom Rowland: So another scenario, a fishing guide, an outfitter, a hunting guide, some sort of outdoor guide. A lot of people who listen to this podcast create that kind of business. It can be pretty profitable, a lot of hard work, but often a one man show. What I've seen with a lot of guides who move on or retire is they just walk away, they haven't built the business in a way that it can be sold or transferred. So when they walk away there's no value to it, because all their customers wanted to fish with them specifically. I wonder, for a young guide listening who could run the business a bunch of different ways, what advice would you give to build something transferable and valuable, instead of ending up with a great reputation and a bunch of tournament wins but nothing worth more than some old broken fishing rods and whatever the boat is worth?

Andy Stockett: Great question. You and Rich are certainly poster children for figuring that out, going from guiding backgrounds and the professional fishing circuits to figuring out what the next chapter looks like. That's what we enjoyed about working with you guys when you asked, ten or twelve years ago, what you could do to make the business sustainable and how to professionalize it. I'd say to the young guides out there, look, I'm in the same boat, we're all in the professional services business. If you're a guide, or an M and A guy like me, you've got clients you have to serve. Hopefully if you're young you start looking at it as a business and not just an "I'm out on the water" mentality, because the years go by pretty quickly.

Tom Rowland: So how would you do that? How do you look at it as a business when it might be easy to say that, given your background dealing with businesses all the time, but somebody just doing the guiding may not understand what that means. What should they be paying attention to?

Andy Stockett: So many of the businesses we deal with, even manufacturing businesses, run out of what we call a cigar box, meaning at the end of the month they look in the cigar box, and if there's money in it, it was a good month, and that's it. What I'd suggest to any guide, or anybody in the professional services industry, is to start running it like a business, create a P and L, an income statement, and look at what your revenues are coming in weekly, or at least monthly, and figure out how much money you're making and how much you can start putting away in savings or an IRA for the future. If you're a guide, you've also got fixed assets to deal with, a boat, a truck, equipment, and perishables like bait, line, and leaders. I'd just urge people to go find a good bookkeeper or CPA, it doesn't have to be a major firm, and say, I'd like to professionalize my business and start thinking about what I've got. From there you can think about other things to extend the business.

Tom Rowland: When you talk about getting a bookkeeper, or maybe it's just using QuickBooks yourself, what are they looking for as far as how to professionalize the business, instead of running it hand to mouth every month, learning to forecast and plan?

Andy Stockett: Can you do it yourself? Well, it's kind of like me saying I could go rent a boat in the Keys and try to catch fish like Tom Rowland does, but I'm not Tom Rowland. I'd tell guides to stick with their core competencies, which is being on the water taking care of customers, and get professionals to help with the rest day in and day out. If nothing else, having someone objectively helping you with your books each month means that when you decide you want to buy a new truck, they might ask you to look at your current income first, are you sure you want to double your payment right now? And by the way, how's your health savings account looking?

Tom Rowland: So what type of professional would that be? It could be a bookkeeper, or someone like yourself, what should a one man show look for if cost is an issue but they want that kind of advice?

Andy Stockett: I'd probably look for a local CPA, maybe a one man shop themselves. Talk to people you know, other guides, whoever owns the marina or the dealer, just find somebody. With the technology out there now, there are also a lot of virtual assistants you can get, and I'd urge people to take a look at that.

Tom Rowland: That's the thing I see a lot, there are three hundred sixty five days a year, so you can only fish so many days, or do double or triple days, but you see a guy with a brand new boat and a brand new truck and wonder how that adds up. Maybe it's fine, maybe he's figured out a good deal with the boat companies, but for some people it's a bad choice. Getting advice from someone looking at how your year lays out, when you make a tremendous amount of money in tarpon season or tourist season and then it thins out, could be incredibly valuable, because getting in over your head on a boat or truck payment could end your whole career. I've never heard anybody talk about this stuff as it relates to one man shows and guides, you hear plenty of podcasts about selling big businesses, but not this. A lot of people get into this business because they don't want to deal with all that other stuff, but business is business, you have to run it in a sustainable way, and you're not doing your customers any good if you're a fantastic guide for five or six years and then can't make it work because you got over your head in payments or didn't have enough trips coming in. That same guy could have made the truck last a few more years and built something sustainable.

Andy Stockett: Well, you touched on it, take a step back and think about it like a business. When you get that boat or that truck, it's no different than a manufacturer buying a new piece of machinery, the day he starts putting product through it, it's depreciating, it's got a life to it. People do the same thing in their personal lives, buying a new car without thinking about it, and six years later the transmission goes out and they haven't set aside any money for it, so it becomes a fire drill. I'd say do the same thing for your guide business, recognize that your fixed assets are depreciating every month, and set aside money for that rainy day when an engine goes out or a livewell needs replacing.

Finding the Right Financial Help

Tom Rowland: What do you think are other really important things for a young person in this business to be thinking about?

Andy Stockett: We touched on dealing with the CPA, who can tell you what's going on in your business, your dashboard, your key performance indicators, or KPIs. Things like how many days of inventory you have for fishing in a typical year, and whether you're ahead of or behind your plan, whether you need more advertising or marketing, or whether there are strategic alliances you could make with boat manufacturers or others. That's one part of the business. The second part is the financial planning side. You probably think I'm loading you up with a bunch of professionals, but the fact is you're a business guy, so you need somebody to help pull your numbers together, and then personally you get with a financial planner who can sit down and ask, say you're thirty two years old with two young kids, where do you want to be in ten or fifteen years? What are you going to do for college for those kids? Start thinking about that now, because, and I think you've got somebody getting married here pretty soon, it happens in the blink of an eye.

Tom Rowland: Oh, it happened so fast. And one of the things too is how many states have incredible programs like the Florida Prepaid College Program, where you pay for today's rates. College tuition has gone up a considerable amount over the last twenty years, but you can lock it in at today's rate and pay a little bit every month. If you start when your kid's in kindergarten, you'll have it done easily, and when tuition is a hundred thousand dollars a semester in the future, you've got it locked in at twenty thousand. Those are really smart things to think about, because most people find themselves just married with a new baby, worried about feeding the baby and keeping everybody under a roof, and not thinking about twenty years down the road. It doesn't take a lot of money over a long period of time to make a lot of money, with compound interest.

Andy Stockett: There he goes, took the words out of my mouth. The compounding of interest on money is phenomenal, and that's something people should be thinking about.

Financial Planning and Compound Interest

Tom Rowland: And what kind of vehicle, what's the simplest vehicle for somebody to compound interest?

Andy Stockett: I'll stick to my core competencies and not get into the world of financial planning, but I'd say again, get with a good financial planner, because everybody's picture is different. Some people may be starting out with no assets, which means you first just put money into a money market account so you've got enough for six months of expenses in case you got injured or whatever, just an emergency fund. As that gets bigger, you can start thinking about investments in mutual funds, bonds, or whatever, but that's going to depend on the individual. That's why you need a CPA and a financial planner, you're effectively creating a kind of mini board of directors for your business. It may sound complicated, but it's not.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's what people do, and then those are your advisors. Even in a very small business, you're getting really good advice, and that can be incredibly important over time. So once people get into that frame of mind, okay, I've figured out how to meet my customers at the dock, take care of my equipment, keep everyone safe and happy and actually catch some fish, those things are kind of default for a lot of guys. Now it's, I want to think about creating a business that actually has value to it. That's a hard thing for a lot of people to wrap their heads around, that there could be something in your business, even as a single sole proprietor hotshot fishing guide, that's of value. Maybe it's your slip at the marina, you could buy or lease a slip for a period of time, and over time that goes up just like real estate.

Building a Business That Has Value Beyond You

Tom Rowland: How important is it, as you're developing the value of your business, to be thinking about assets that could be transferable, a second boat, a second guide, your website, things somebody could use to start a business, where your customer base may be leaving with you, but the business itself can still run without you? That's what you guys have told us so much, you've got to figure out how the business can run without you, which is really hard when you're the star of the show, when you sell the show. But you've got to figure out how you could step away and it would still be valuable to somebody. With a fishing guide, that's what people struggle with, it's just me and my boat. But does it have to be just you and your boat, or could you develop other assets? Could your website be worth something? Could your location at a certain marina be worth something? Certain marinas are the difference between one guy working two hundred fifty days a year and another guy down the street working a hundred, just because of the traffic at that marina. If you had any kind of ownership or contract on that slip, wouldn't that increase the value of your business?

Andy Stockett: Oh yeah, you're thinking in the right direction. There are a lot of professional service models out there, whether it's a stockbroker or a financial planner, that person builds up a loyal client base every year doing a financial plan, coming in and assessing how things are going. A successful guide, I know a guy I was just out with in Montana in March who said probably seventy five percent of his trips are repeat customers, has built up a book similar to what a financial planner has. So the question is how do you monetize that over time. What financial planners often do is bring in somebody younger so those clients, and their children, get comfortable with the new person. The analogy is similar if you're able to bring a partner in, which can be tough, I know you and Rich were on your own for a long time before you decided to partner up, so it takes a certain combination that works. But it can help if a guy brings in somebody younger, introduces them to his clientele, they click, and then as that generation peters out, the business transfers to the next one.

Tom Rowland: That's hard to get your head around, if I bring in this young guy and introduce him to my clientele, maybe they just end up going with him and there's nothing to transfer. I guess you'd have to protect yourself from that, but it's probably no different than what has to happen in any regular business, figuring out what the transition looks like and what value you're offering the person you're bringing in, and what value that brings your customers, whether it's having more people to fish with or spreading your knowledge further than just you. Those are definitely things guides need to think about, especially young people getting into the business.

Options for Business Owners Ready to Transition

Tom Rowland: Let's talk about the other end of the boat, the CEO in his forties or fifties who maybe doesn't have a family member to take over the business. What does that process look like as you advise somebody?

Andy Stockett: The first thing we do is sit down and ask, it's a kind of worn out expression, but, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you like to see happen? Every situation is different. Are you at the point where you'd really just want the best offer you can get and head to the beach? Or is it more that you'd like to slow down a little, take some things off your plate, but still enjoy dealing with customers without having to handle insurance renewals or personnel issues every year? We really have to find out what's going through the client's mind.

Tom Rowland: What about another scenario, somebody who's always wanted to grow, never had the money to do it, and is looking for a partner to help build out the business? Is that also a reason people want to sell, merge, or be acquired?

Andy Stockett: Definitely. There are a lot of private equity funds, as I mentioned, that look for opportunities like that, somebody who's still got some gas in the tank but maybe is uncomfortable borrowing and personally guaranteeing debt to grow. In that case we help them partner with a private equity fund, who put money in to grow the business, and the owner is able to take some chips off the table while still owning a majority of the company. Most of the time we call it getting a second bite of the apple, they might sell seventy percent of the business to a private equity fund and roll equity into the new company, so they stay on as CEO but with some breathing room, some chips off the table that they can diversify, and, back to the financial planner, not have all their eggs in one basket. The private equity folks bring capital, you don't have to guarantee debt, and you've got a board of directors to bounce things off of. A lot of our clients grew their business from scratch as a one man show doing everything, and now they've got people sitting around a table. We've seen situations where after that initial sale of control, they stayed with the company and it sold two more times, and they made more money off those later transactions than the first one.

Tom Rowland: And they're not doing much with the business at that point, they spent all this time building it, and end up making more off a sale they have very little to do with than all the work that went into building it in the first place.

Andy Stockett: Yeah, we had a client in the physical therapy arena who stayed with the acquirer, which has been sold twice, and he was able to climb the corporate ladder, going from treating customers to being a regional manager and a kind of fix it guy, his role changed too. It's fun to see some of those outcomes.

How Businesses Get Valued

Tom Rowland: How often do you see somebody come to you saying, I don't know if my business is worth anything, and then you show them it's worth a lot? Or is it more common that somebody thinks their business is worth millions and it's actually not that valuable because of how they've built or run it?

Andy Stockett: We see both. We've had situations where somebody wants a valuation done for a partner buy sell insurance policy, just to see what it's worth, and when we come back with a number they realize maybe it's time to sell or take some chips off the table. On the other end, somebody hears at the country club that a business sold for ten times cash flow, so they assume theirs is worth that too, but there's a variety of things that go into what a business is worth, and we can give people a realistic picture, circling back to the financial planner, because if somebody thinks their business is worth X and is counting on that nest egg for retirement, and it's really only worth half of that, it's better to know sooner rather than later, and also to identify what they can do to improve it if it's not where they think it is.

Tom Rowland: That's really important, because you can think your business is valuable, or think you know what people will pay, and it may not be true. If you ran it differently or focused on different things, you could build something that's actually worth more, without it being that much different day to day, as opposed to building something that just looks cool or that you enjoy doing. And in a lot of cases people might realize they didn't even like doing that thing anyway.

Andy Stockett: We like to find buyers who view our clients' companies not as a nice to have, but a got to have. If we run a process properly, we advise clients on things that sometimes business owners don't think about. We did a transaction last year where I first met the CEO back in 2006, longer than you and I have known each other, and stayed in touch over the years, talking about things they could do to improve the business. For example, if eighty percent of your revenue is based on one customer, that's what we call customer concentration, and it's a ding on value because a buyer worries that customer could just go away. What do your facilities look like, have you kept them upgraded, or will a buyer have to sink money into your equipment? That's a valuation ding too. And what does your management team look like, if you want to cut back, who's there to run the show? There's a human capital aspect to it as well.

The Guide's Paradox: Fewer Customers, Less Value

Tom Rowland: It's interesting, when you said that, I thought about when I was guiding really hard. I went from having a new person every single day, to having a new person every week, where a guy books a week and then says, same week next year, so now you have fifty two customers instead of three hundred. Over the years, a lot of guides get to where the same person comes three or four weeks at a time, so maybe you have twelve customers, and then one of them really likes you, buys a house where you are, and starts fishing with you a hundred days a year, and now you have six customers, then five, then three, and you're fishing more than you ever have, but your business has become less and less valuable, because those three people are getting older and older. You've taken yourself out of the advertising mix, those three people know how good you are and would do anything to fish with you, they even bought a house down here, so how could that become less valuable over time, when your reputation and your fishing skills have gotten better and better? Because your customer base has gone down and down, those customers are getting older, and they don't want to tell anybody where they're going or who they're going with, because they don't want anyone else to have your time. You've actually started to torpedo your business even though it's exactly what you wanted, for me it was, I don't want a new relationship every single day, I don't want to have to introduce myself and make a good impression until people have confidence in me. You want to go with people you've already been with, a comfortable relationship, almost like family, better than family, because they pay you.

Andy Stockett: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: But it's interesting to look at something like that and realize you've just gone down and down in value, and I'm sure big businesses are the same way, you have that customer concentration, and it seems great because you only have to deal with one group and you're making more money than ever, but what if they go away, or technology changes?

Andy Stockett: As long as you've assessed it properly and you make that choice, that's okay, you're thinking about what chapter two might look like. But as long as you've got in the back of your mind that there may be a so called day of reckoning. More importantly, I want to be that guy who fishes a hundred times a year, I want to be the client.

Tom Rowland: That's what I'm trying to do too, move sixteen feet from the back of the boat to the front of the boat so I can be the one fishing all the time. That'd be pretty awesome. When people sell their business, that's a lot of times what they can do, move from back of the boat to front of the boat. Or the other way, move from front of the boat to back of the boat, because what they really want is to not have the pressure of running a big business, and just be a fishing guide, out there fishing every day. So you could move from front to back and call that success, or from back to front and call that success too.

Andy Stockett: I'm glad you brought that up. One thing we tell clients at the very beginning of the process, and these processes can take six to nine months from when we get started to understanding the business, positioning it, going out to market, answering questions, and doing all the legal documentation to close a deal, is, what are you going to do? Have you really thought through whether you're going to be a fishing guide if you throw the keys? There's only so many rounds of golf you can play. What are you really going to do, get involved in philanthropy? Really think through what that's going to look like, because it's a game changer. We sold a company, an electrical contractor called Funderburk Electric up in Knoxville, and what was gratifying is that Jack Funderburk was sixty nine years old, and when he sold the business I asked what he was going to do. He said he was already spending about a month a year in the Philippines building churches and seminaries, and now he'd be able to concentrate on that full time. It was nice that we gave him a liquidity event so he was set financially for the rest of his life, and he was able to plow a lot of those funds right back into that ministry.

Tom Rowland: That's cool, he already had it all planned out. If I had more time, I know exactly what I'd do. That's really important for somebody, to know what that is. I had one customer who would come down, the first year, maybe three days, and he said, I have a goal, every year I'm going to add a day. So the next year it was four days, and I told him, man, you're a big orthopedic surgeon, you could just add a week if you wanted. He said, well, I have five kids, it's not that easy, so adding one day a year could be pretty awesome. That's been twenty years ago, and now he spends a month in the Keys. He's been able to just add a day a year to his trip, starting at three days. It's kind of cool to think about little goals like that and how they can make a big difference, going from three days to twenty days is a lot harder than just saying you're going to spend a month in the Keys or Montana or the Philippines, but if you do it incrementally, you've killed it.

Andy Stockett: That way. I think one thing, when you think about being a CEO who's made all the trains run on time, and then all of a sudden you're quote retired, there's an old retirement joke about the husband and wife: I married you for richer or poorer, but not for lunch every day. So you've got to find something to do, because your wife's going to want you out of the house.

Wrapping Up: Fishing Plans and Farewell

Tom Rowland: That's cool. So if somebody wanted to look you up and find you, obviously you have a great fishing knowledge, you're an easy person to talk to, you can actually take clients fishing rather than just playing golf, and you know what you're doing. If somebody was interested, what would the process look like? Say they don't necessarily want to sign a contract, but would like to have lunch, or go fishing, and talk about their business, what does that look like?

Andy Stockett: I've been doing this a long time. I also took a detour out of the deal business to help grow a restaurant company from scratch up to about ninety million dollars in revenue, which we then sold to a private equity firm, so I know what the process looks like from the other end too, kind of like a successful guide. If we go through this process, it's a six to nine month process filled with emotion, highs and lows, big offers that come in and then change. During that time we're basically living together, kind of like guiding somebody for three days, you want to make sure there's some good chemistry there. So we like to spend a lot of time with people up front, before signing any kind of engagement agreement, finding out their objectives and whether we'd be a good match. People can look us up at bridgescapital.com, we have materials there people can download that explain what a sales process looks like. Last I saw, that guide had been downloaded by about thirty other investment banks like us, so it must have something good in it.

Tom Rowland: Alright, cool. What about fishing this year, any other trips coming up?

Andy Stockett: My youngest daughter's getting married in Montana in September, so I'm trying to figure out all kinds of reasons to go out there for pre wedding planning.

Tom Rowland: Hopefully there's a million reasons. I think the best time is probably right after the river clears from the snowmelt runoff, give it a couple of weeks, and then you can really bear down on the wedding planning.

Andy Stockett: It's hard to ignore what we have going on here in East Tennessee, too. I've got a good friend who does a lot of fishing up on the South Holston and the Watauga, we hit the cicada hatch out there last year, and that was a ball.

Tom Rowland: That South Holston River is the coldest river I think I've ever put my leg in. It comes out from the bottom of that dam, and it's just freezing cold, I've been all over Alaska and everywhere else, and that river is the coldest I've ever felt. Great fishing though.

Andy Stockett: Great fishing. Like you, I grew up here in Chattanooga, but it wasn't really on my radar as a kid, I'd go to the Hiwassee a lot, but the Holston and Watauga are great fisheries. We're blessed to have those.

Tom Rowland: With smallmouth too, the Watauga has a lot of good smallmouth fishing, and there are other great smallmouth areas right around there. That's what my son's interested in, he wants to get into that shoal bass kind of fishing.

Andy Stockett: Shoal bass, that's pretty good fishing too. A lot of guys love floating those beautiful little rivers and catching those fish.

Tom Rowland: Pretty awesome. Alright, Andy, well, thanks, man. I appreciate you coming and giving us some advice. We'll do it again.

Andy Stockett: Cool. Thanks for having me.

Tom Rowland: Alright, see you.