Ep 331: Risk Prevention Strategies in M&A Deals & Building The Right Team with Jerome Fogel

How do you protect yourself from the downside when acquiring an online business? Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause. I'm the host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast, and today I'm speaking with Jerome Fogel, who is known as a deal maker in the innovative and legal community.

He is a partner with Fogel and Podermenos, LLP, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, and represents successful venture and hedge funds, corporations, and sports superstars. In their company, it's a boutique transactional firm that provides sophisticated counsel for buyer-side and sell-side mergers and acquisitions, fund formation, capital raises, and off-field sports transactions.

He has a 360-degree view of deal-making as he represents emerging companies raising capital, venture funds, deploying capital, advisors, investors, and private companies in mergers and acquisitions.

Jerome began his career in real estate finance and law, then after that, he worked at GE Capital, and he's a graduate of the Haas School of Business and New York University School of Law. The experience that Jerome has is so, so valuable.

He's been doing this for a very, very long time. In this podcast episode, we talk about the risks of selling your business. What are the risks of buying a business? How important is the team? How can a team destroy deals? How can you destroy deals?

How do you finance these deals? What sort of sectors and price range of businesses is Jerome helping people buy and sell? We talk about how he advises people, and then we move into talking about how he works with some sports stars and helps them build out their family office and invest. There's a wealth of knowledge in this episode, and Jerome, I'm privileged and grateful that he shared it with us.

Some of the things he's been doing include helping people, facilitating deals, and preventing deals from falling through. Additionally, he shares how we can invest in great online businesses safely and smartly, with the right team and the proper steps.

So this is such a fun episode. Of course, we talk about due diligence a lot. Get my DD Framework if you haven't got it. There'll be a link in the description. It takes the guesswork out of buying a business. It's free, grab it.

Jerome, welcome to the pod. Thanks for your time.

Good to see you, Jaryd.

Mate, you've got a lot going on. How long have you been in the M&A space?

Gosh, co-founded this firm with Constantine Padamianos just seven years ago. So I've been doing this for about seven or eight years.

Cool, cool. And you're in three different sorts of sectors or markets, right? So, can you run through those again? Cause we were talking off-air.

There are only three: a corporate venture and sports. On the corporate side, we advise clients about 50% on the M&A buy and sell side. And then 50% is just general corporate as a concierge general counsel, where we handle corporate governance, partnerships, agreements, and compliance.

And then the second part of that is venture. So we do a lot of early-stage ventures and our clients, everything from standing up their funds all the way through diligence, portfolio companies, exiting, compliance, and SEC work. And then the third part is sports, which is off-field contracts for athletes.

Then, athletes want to get involved in business. And then wrapped into all of that, we have an IP practice that gets involved in the corporate and VC, and then the sports side practices like legal stuff.

Right. Like people want to protect their inventions, if they're going to register their patents, they want to register trademarks and their branding, they want to do copyright, trade secrets, like anything that's a protectable intellectual property asset, we can handle.

Yeah, cool. Cool. I want to come to venture soon, and then raise funds and all that sort of stuff. Sure. A portion of corporate online businesses that you help people on both the buy side and the sell side. What sort of market are we in in terms of price range?

Right to the price range?

Yeah, like selling multiple items, well, it could be multiple price points, like all your seven posts.

I would say right now, the investment bankers are burning the midnight oil on the multiples and figuring out factoring in with tariffs. So I think that's a huge component. Now, if you have a US-based supply chain or if it's a platform company, I still think it's kind of traditional 10, 15 X for platform and three to eight X for traditional companies.

But I would say that there's a holding pattern for companies that are impacted by the tariffs, and people are trying to figure that out right now. Think people are just waiting and seeing what, and with all the changes, it's kind of like turbulence.

You're ever in a plane and you feel turbulence and you think it's never going to end. I think that's kind of where we're at. It's going to end, and it's kind of slowed down a little bit, but we're kind of in that stage where there's uncertainty in the market.

Yeah, by the time this pod is hopefully over, it will affect everything. I mean, it's not just the business itself; it affects lending too. And then the multiple, so much. I don't want to have a big conversation on tariffs or anything, because it's not evergreen.

Still, there are a lot of these things to consider when you're buying a business, not just tariffs, you're looking at elections, you're looking at the environment for each sector, and the niche, all the way down from the online portion of online businesses and corporate.

What sort of businesses are we talking about, e-comm? Are you talking about software businesses that you are helping through the buyer and the sales side?

Yeah, I think it's a lot of the consumer product side. So it could be anything from baby products. It can be hair care. It can be food and beverage, anything that you can really buy online. There, we do have clients who are involved on the software side. So we have a client that just did a tech acquisition.

Really they're in the, would say the data intelligence space. So, it varies, but I think the common component is that you know, these businesses are, they're not necessarily having, you know, brick and mortar locations.

Yeah, yeah. Mean, a lot of tech, what's the point now unless you want that like that hustle culture in one location, which I mean, there are pros and cons to that, right?

Yes, I think the trend is that smaller companies are trying to make it work, but larger companies are trying to shed their workforce. And so they want to return to work, they, or they want the training for the younger associates and younger team members, where you can't, it's harder to get online. So they want to do that sort of rubbing shoulders with each other.

Talking about like price range or valuation range, you mentioned anywhere from a three to eight multiple, and for tech, eight or more. What sort of EBITDA are you looking at? So we can get a rough idea of what sort of businesses you represent.

Yeah, I mean, I think it varies. Think you've got clients that are anywhere from a couple of million up to 25 million and above, and some more. Feel like the private market, the middle market is a good space for us, where we really understand the value.

Yeah, awesome. Love that. And so for people on the buyer side that you want to help buy, how do you help them raise funds for more than the eight mil? Yeah. Go to venture with your venture firm or?...

Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think there are a couple of different types of clients. So there are the larger strategies that we can represent, where they will have bank lines of credit. They will also they will issue equity in NewCo to the seller.

And oftentimes, if the seller is a private equity firm, which we're seeing a lot of now, where they're coming to the end of their fun life and they realize that they need to make distributions to investors. And so they're kind of trying to shed companies that maybe aren't their core, or they're trying to just get to a liquidity place.

They will take a significant rollover portion. So I would say the strategic, they'll have bank lines of credit in place, and they'll do some strategic rollovers for the sellers. And so they're taking care of, I would say, yeah, we do have clients that get involved in SBA. I think it's a lot easier if they've got a relationship with the banks, if they've got real estate holdings, because the SBA process can just be a labyrinth.

So if you already are banking really, really strongly with your current bank and you've got a relationship and both other things, I think it makes the SBA process easier. Cause even though technically they're not supposed to speak to each other, the two banking divisions will, kind of informally. So that's a good thing to have, too. And then I think on the fundraising side, we have clients that are going to go out and raise, do what's called a search fund.

And so they'll raise deal by deal. And so I think for them, traditionally for us, that our clients know how to, you know, they have the investor relationships. We can maybe provide 10 to 20 %, if that, with our relationships, but typically they've got the relationships.

It's our job really to negotiate an LOI that we think would attract an investor to have favorable terms where an investor would feel confident getting involved in the deal. So I think that's kind of where we can help, is structuring the deal, and then our clients really are the experts in gathering the funds, and obviously, we can help them negotiate those deals.

Yeah. Mean, it sounds like a lot of your clients are quite financially. They've got some assets and good relationships with banks, and they wouldn't be coming to you without knowing what sort of finance they can acquire and then go ahead and purchase.

Right. But if there are people in the audience who don't have their relationships, I do think that the public markets were generating a 25 % coupon every year, which is not the case where it will land. So I do think there's a case for private markets. And I do think that LPs realize that early-stage VC, early-stage PE, there's a lot of returns there long-term.

So I do think that getting with the right LP base and understanding what you're offering is key. I do think there are some opportunities there. So I think that there's this narrative out there that it's tough to raise. I don't think that's the case. I just think some LPs understand the value of long-term being in VC and PE in the early stage, because fund one, two, three, four, those are going to generate good returns.

The thinking is sometimes that, in the later stage, funds, managers may not be, not saying they are not, but they may not be as hungry to deliver returns when they've been successful for 10, 20 years.

Yeah, I love it. Somebody that's sort of in that seven-figure range, and they're starting, and they may be using SBA, or they can get some of their, they've got their LP. I've got two questions. What are some of the mistakes that people typically make? And then what is some, have you got an example of somebody that's done well and made their life easier with this great acquisition? What's the difference between the two?

Yeah, I think post M&A integration is one of the most challenging things. Think when the &A deal is done, that's when the really hard work begins, is how do you integrate these companies, the team, the operations.

As an acquirer like you, talking about building a holdco and acquiring multiple, not just one.

Right, right. Well, like saying, when you make an acquisition, now integrating it into your platform or current teams, or if you're going to take it over and run it yourself, I think that's one of the, it's one of the more challenging things to do. And so I think to do it right, first off, there's gotta be some kind of a meeting or a dinner where you invite out all the team and you kind of say, we come in peace.

Here's what our plan is for the company, and we invite your ideas, your feedback, and just being honest with them. And I think just like setting the thing at ease, think oftentimes people rush into a deal and everybody's signing their employment agreements, and it's very stressful.

But I think if you can have some kind of event where you sit with all the employees and you tell them about your vision and you get them involved and try to get them excited, not everyone's going to come along, but I think that goes a long way. So building those relationships, they're your greatest assets.

I think one of the things that I've noticed about institutional PE, not in all cases, but they think that they know how to run the companies better than the founders. Just there may be certain knowledge that you may have, but I think that there's a lot to be gleaned from the current controllers, the current operators, and you can learn a lot.

And then you can take that and make it your own. I think that learning from them as much as you can is key. And I think that's a mistake that I've seen where I've been on the sell side, where clients have said, if they had just listened to me, I could have helped them avoid this mess that they got into.

But then on the contrary, I've seen clients who they've kept the key people they're building on the foundation that's already been laid and taking it to the next level, but they're involving key people from the team to help them get there. So they don't just think, Hey, we know what's best right off the bat.

Exactly. Love that point because up until when they sell the business, and maybe live a bit after the key management team and the owner or the CEO who sold that business is the main expert in that business. It doesn't mean that new owners are the experts straight away.

There's so much to learn from them. So thinking that you can do it better without even knowing, like you said, what works, what doesn't work so well, and how to manage the team. You know, that's probably your assumption because the new owner doesn't have relationships with the team yet.

Yeah. Right. So I think it's also a great thing to do to showcase that for the team that they can see a vision that, with the new owner, they can be reinvigorated and excited that they've got some job security there. And then also, like you mentioned, to add to your buying another business and thinking about a merger or an acquisition that runs parallel.

That's right. Speak to the team to have them even bought into that vision to build out a buy box with the team that makes sense where there's portions of the business that you didn't consider in your buy box, like just through the operations and what they could add operationally to the other business and vice versa.

Absolutely. Think you unlock the potential of your team, and you unlock the potential of the business.

Yeah, I love that. What is the biggest thing that slows down deals in the seven-figure range? And then is there a difference in the eight-figure range as well?

I think that it depends on whether you're talking about the buy side.

Think with sell start as well, I think with sell start, it's the seller not being prepared and not having everything they can provide for either DD or financials to the lenders.

Yeah, I think sometimes with the seller, if you're the buy side, if it's their first rodeo, the first deal, they may not have the sophistication, and they may not think they need to because they've run the company their way for years. They haven't had to answer anybody or be accountable.

And now you're asking them to do X, Y, Z, and have this set up. And sometimes they don't want to do that. And so I think that can be a challenge to get what you need to make the right risk-based decisions. So I think that's one thing, like if you have a founder who's controlled everything and it's not what it puts to work.

I think the second thing is that if you're buying from let's say private equity or VC backed, they have their own tax and corporate structures that they're going to be insistent on, that you're going to want to have to work with. So you want to have sophisticated counsel that can help you navigate through those tax and corporate hoops that you may have to go through.

So I think that's one thing. I think the third is just I like an &A to like three phases. The first phase is that both parties are really excited, and they're excited to go on this journey. Everybody wants to do this. And the second phase is what I call the valley of the shadow of death, where you're in the middle of the deal.

There are hundreds of little bits and pieces that have to fit together. And it just seems like, why am I doing this? Why am I involved in this deal? Why did I get, why did I do this in the first place?

And then the third stage is you're on the mountain top, the deal is closed, and you say, I can't wait to do this again. So it's in that second stage where, if you've never been through it before, it's just really staying calm and going piece by piece and like being able to negotiate through all of that.

Cause there are hundreds of things, and whether it's a purchase agreement or whether it's ancillary agreements or it's an escrow agreement or, you know, there are just hundreds of little bits and pieces that need to all come together to be negotiated. And so I think those things can get slowed down.

You can get, you can put a document out there. It could take two to three weeks for something to come back, or you could find something in your management review that you didn't know about the company, and now you've got to figure out how to reprice, change the escrow, and transaction.

There's always going to be bodies buried in the deal somewhere. And that's one thing that we were experts at figuring out, where those bodies are buried. But I mean, there's just, it's unpredictable. Every deal is different and unpredictable. So you never can know what is going to happen, but something always will go wrong. Something always will blow up.

Something always seems to make things go sideways, which is why it's so important to have an advisor to steady and stabilize the emotions of the buyer or seller. Because, like, if they're too caught up in it, they can get emotional and just run away. That's why a team, not just the advisor, is important, but other parts of the team are really critical as well.

The document takes two weeks to get back. Is it because the document needs a lot of work, or is it because the person who's handling the document on the other side is just slow? Right. And that's huge. My question to you is, how critical do you see it? What are the most critical people in the team for the transaction alone? And what mistakes have you seen in buyers employing the wrong people?

Yeah, no, it's a question. I think in the M&A world, M&A &A contracts form drives the deal. What I mean by that is it's really important upfront to understand the tax implications and to ensure that you have the corporate legal structure when you are making an acquisition. Is the stock appropriate? Is a reverse merger going to be appropriate where you set up a new code, you set up a merger for a massive 50k range, right?

Basically, for voting reasons. Is the asset purchase going to make more sense? So there are all these different things, so I think in that phase, the tax advice and the legal counsel are really important in that first phase.

Now, when you're making the offer, you need really smart accounting and finance folks who can do quality of earnings, who can really assess the numbers to ensure that they're accurate and ensure that they accurately represent the company. So you need people who've been in a lot of deals and know where the buys are buried from a finance side.

So I would say, like tax, finance, accounting, and legal. And then I think investment banking can be really helpful because they're, they're looking at the big picture, and they have a lot of. Investing bankers are different, but in my experience, they understand a lot of the negotiating. They understand what the market is. And I think they can be very helpful. And I enjoy working with investment bankers. But sometimes it's strategic.

They don't have an investment banker because they know who the players are. But I think if it's like, if it's more one-off transactions or you're looking for specific deals, you may want to use an investment banker.

So I think that's a critical piece. I think on the personal side, I do think that estate planning can be helpful. So I'm not saying it's a must, but I do think some estate planning can be helpful in terms of tax avoidance. No, there's just a difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion.

Tax avoidance is like finding the legal vehicles to minimize tax versus tax evasion, which is like evading tax you do, but estate planning can help you with some of that tax avoidance piece.

So I would say those are kind of like the main pieces that I would look at. And you asked me, like, what goes wrong. I mean, I've had clients tell me like they've been arguing with their attorneys about what's right for them.

And so I think that you don't want an attorney who's trying to win every point. I've had people tell me they did this like that. That's a big one. I think they have your attorney and they're working for you, and then some points can't be negotiated, and you're willing to accept those. It can't be negotiated with the buyer or the seller, and they're just like, No, we need this. Like that can just really wreck the whole experience, right?

Absolutely. And I think as counselors, we're counseling clients and advising them of their risk. And then it's their decision whether to take the advice. I have found, for the most part, Jaryd, that a lot of the business clients instinctively have a really good sense of the deal. Where I can help them is that I can see around corners that they don't. But I think by and large, the harder they deal, the harder the deal, the better.

But what we can do is really help them reduce their risk on some of these contingency scenarios that could happen, and then we can help them. But ultimately, the client's got to decide on what risks they're comfortable with. I think that's important.

And then I think the sophistication of tax advisors makes a big difference because, especially when you're dealing with a private equity or VC-backed company, they're going to have their own tax and corporate advisors. And you want to have people in your corner who can go toe to toe with them. So I think that's important as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Mean, that's probably the most important part is that they say a buyer understands that and the relationship between the buyer and the seller, they both connect and they both get it and they both understand that this is, we can make a good deal between us. Let's work out the intricacies of risk and just the things to make it.

Soup, like make it fair and make it get across the line. But I think if the relationship is strong, then there are little things that can be accepted or not accepted, a nd they can work together whilst they try and have their legal counsel come to the party as well.

Yeah, I think some of the most, there are different ways to skin the cat. But to your point, I think one successful way is to, once you've got the definitive document, once you've got the documents and you've gone through the first pass, you get everybody in a room together.

You get the client, you get the attorneys, because then decisions can be made right there. Client, what do you think? And then like, for more sensitive things, you can go offline, but you can right there make all these decisions, and maybe it takes two hours, two and a half hours, but you condense all these other discussions that would have long tails, and you can have that half a short period.

So I think those are important. And you have the weekly cadence, if you can, where you're always having a call. So the attorneys are always talking, and then hopefully the clients can come in when needed. But then you have that conversation.

And then the buyer and seller have like a bat phone where if something's going sour, where the attorneys can't make it happen, the buyer and come together and you can just tell your client, hey, can you reach out to the other party and talk about this because the attorney is not budging on something for some reason. So I think those are important.

Yeah, absolutely. When you're talking about like, obviously, we as advisors, we can make the deal happen, but it's our job to sort of like de-risk certain parts of the business for them, and in terms of how we structure it and the valuation. What are some of the, can you have some examples on like, is it not just in sell a note, but like some things that like with, say for example, there's like tariffs or like environmental things, single source dependency, performance clauses, like what are some of the things that some of the ways that you or most common ones that you would help to protect your buyer?

Yeah, there's probably 80 to 100 things that you look at. That the reps and warranties are a big piece because that's where a lot of action is. That's where there's going to be an escrow holdback, and your access to that is going to be dependent upon, as a buyer, what reps the seller has made. So it's key to hold the seller's feet to the fire in terms of what they're representing about the company.

Now, on the other hand, the seller is going to want to limit some of those things. If you're dealing with an online business, for example, with claims, you may have consumers claiming all kinds of things.

So you're going to have to rep. Buyers are going to want you to respond to all the claims that have been disclosed. The seller is going to want to say, Hey, all material claims have been disclosed or litigated or whatever it is.

So I think there's going to be this dance. So I think number one, when I'm on the buy side, I want to know all the product liability. I want to know all the litigation. Want to know all the employment issues?

I want to know all the tax issues. Want to know all the regulatory tariffs? Want to know the tariffs? I want to know the supply chain for tariff purposes. Now I want to know all of those details because then when we construct the reps and warranties, the data privacy, all that.

We can have a robust rep and warranty coverage in place. Right. So I think that's probably the first important place. I think the second thing is if you're on the buy side, structuring the transaction in a way that is going to benefit you as the buyer, and also the seller.

If there's an earn-out or if there's rollover equity, you want to make sure that it's very clear on how the seller is going to earn that. You want to have, you don't want to be writing litigation into your agreement. What I mean by that is you don't want to have this loose definition that can be manipulated, so that the buyer or seller is going to come back to you.

Like you want to have things clear. And I think it's to your benefit. I do see, see, I see buyers doing funky things, some private equity buyers, and we represent institutional investors as well. But I'm saying there are some things where it's very questionable how earn out all of a sudden is not owed, and there's kind of some interesting accounting, let's say, taking place.

So to that point, I just say as a buyer, like make it clear for the seller to show them how they can win and help them participate, mention the reps and warranties. And then I think right now there's a lot of negotiations around what a material adverse effect is.

So if you're buying a company, let's say, and you're in a tariff environment, but you like the deal, you could say, hey, like, we're going to exclude tariffs as being a material adverse effect. We're going to say, this is just normal.

The seller is going to counter and say, Well, we want to carve out if we're having a disproportionate impact on our business. So there's going to be a lot of negotiations around that. And I think that's a place where I think it's really important to negotiate in this environment.

Then I think IP is really important. Think restrictive covenants, like making sure the seller just can't start up this business again. So you want to have strong, you want to be able to restrict them from being in commerce for a certain period. So I think there are probably a lot of things, but those are the things that come to mind.

Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's so deal-dependent. It's tricky to be very general when there's intricacies in every single business that require or have more risk than maybe say another one that in a very different fashion, a very different way that needs to be tackled or handled or viewed at from a different standpoint with the right counsel because that's what a job as an advisor is to foresee these, these know so many deals, know so many certain risks and understand that this is a possibility that could happen and the buyer or the seller not know that and anticipate it and then have measures in place to ensure that if it does play out, you're protected. And it's so deal-dependent.

I think that the &A field, there's just so much variety. I think that's what makes it interesting. As a practitioner, every deal is completely different. There are some similar notes to make a music analogy, but the song is different every time. It's just, it never fails. So I think that there's a variety in people, there's a variety in businesses, and there's a variety in structures.

So there's just a lot of complication, and it's not like buying and selling widgets. Every deal is tailored; it's custom. You're not just buying something off the rack. And that's why I think what attracts people to this field is that you get a variety of clients, experiences, opportunities, and deals. And each of those different deals requires a different tool to solve the problems. No two deals are exactly alike.

No, not at all. And that's the beauty of strategic acquisitions and mergers: you can find what you need. It's not just like cookie-cutter things where you have to try to make an acquisition work. You can get quite specific if you can find the right one.

Right.

There's a lot of creativity. There's a lot of creativity involved. And I think that's, there's a field of law that involves a lot of creativity and deal-making and negotiating. And sometimes the deals are just limited by the party's imaginations, like the kind of things that you get involved with and the kind of structures and provisions. Like, it's just limited to imagination sometimes, so that's what I think makes it interesting.

That's a good metaphor for life. Okay. Yeah. I want to talk about sports, what you guys do in sports. Tell me more about that just before we finish up. Because I'm pretty fascinated that...

Yeah. Sure.

Yeah, right.

Eight years ago, I was approached by the family office of an athlete to work on some of their corporate and IP. And that turned into a continuing relationship now where our firm has become the general counsel to the family office. And so from there, we gained the capabilities, understanding the sports world, the broadcast world, the partnerships, and the memorabilia world.

The TV world, the product world, means speaking of everything that an athlete touches. So we kind of have these fresh eyes for what it's like to be in the eyes of an athlete. So what we've come to learn is that athletes have really made a significant amount of their income on the field. And now, coming off the field, they're deciding what to do, sort of in their second half of life.

And many of them want to get involved in business. Many of them want to get involved in a venture. And so our firm provides a platform that we provide our corporate platform, our venture platform, to help these athletes get involved.

And so some athletes want to get involved in investing in private deals. Some athletes want to start their own companies. We've got an athlete who wants to start, who has a consumer product company that is used by athletes, and has one client who is an investor and advisor in many different sports web companies.

We have one client who is a general partner at a venture capital firm who played in the professional leagues. So really, what we're doing is essentially what our capabilities are in our corporate and VC practice. But it's just that we have, we understand better the mind, and we understand the motivations of the athletes who are now the ones doing that.

Also, an athlete is a high performer. It's got to be fun working with a high performer and their mindset around, like, I've done it in sport. Like, I'm going to do it with the rest of the things in my life as well.

And it just relates to like, they've made the money, the finances, and finances can be a competitive game, and I'm sure they love it. And they're probably pretty creative and want to do some cool things.

So it must be fun to, I mean, I've helped an athlete buy a business and then also start another sort of media part of the business. Quite well known, and was able to use his name and brand in the media. Yeah, there's like media would be a huge piece of value for an athlete.

Interesting.

Yeah, I think it's a double-edged sword because on the one hand, high performers are very successful, and they're used to the adrenaline rush of playing in front of large crowds and being successful in training.

On the other hand, it's understanding who they are and who their team is around them, to help them accomplish it. And so I think that you've got very prolific athletes, who get involved, but they end up not being as successful in the business and investment world. And I think in part because they don't have a really good team around them.

And you've got some outliers who are just incredibly gifted and can transition to business really well. I think it's a function of the athlete enjoying it, wanting to learn just like they did their sport, putting time into the craft, and having the right team around them. I think, for example, the athlete who worked with you.

You got the right team member to help them, and they probably were willing to learn from you and ask questions. And that was a successful partnership. So I think for the most part, I think athletes finding those right people, as sometimes the agency can be that, sometimes some athletes with a family office, they may not have the agency.

They may do it on their own. So it's their advisors, it's their lawyers, it's the business people, the business managers. I think that we can be successful in this, the talent managers too. So.

It's really having that right team around you because you only have so much time. Think athletes are used to just showing up and just performing. But then, when you're in a business, there are so many different things because you know, you have an athlete who has the equipment managing and the ticketing, and it's like, you have this huge enterprise.

Now in business, it's a really small team. And so I think that the athletes don't realize how under-resourced they are. And so I think it's partnering with the right people to help them figure out like, what is this athlete's strength and help them just focus on that and delegate the rest, and also just preserve their wealth, like they don't need to hit home runs.

They can hit singles and then maybe you have a portion of your wealth that you're going to use to home runs and that's fine, but not use all of your wealth to hit home runs not try to feel like you're starting from the ground floor in business and you got a point to prove.

I think the right people on your team should be able to help you sort of see, like you're brand new to this business game. Like maybe you just put X percentage into it and then have some other assets in real estate or whatnot. But then I think with the same advisors having the same team sort of allows the athlete to bounce ideas off and more bounce ideas off the athlete to find something that can draw them into business, to have them love it. And if they don't love it, then just buy real estate and put some boring assets or something like that.

I think an athlete has been successful. They've dedicated their whole life. They've made this incredible opportunity for themselves. And now I think the boring investments are going to win the day for them. They don't need to clip a huge coupon. And then they can allocate a percentage for venture or entrepreneurship.

Then I think with the right financial advisor, the white multifamily office can help them plan around that. So they can have this to... And also, athletes can get investors so they can limit their risk that way.

They can start ventures and get investors, and that can limit their financial risk. The other risk you have is that when you have investors, you have to do your duties. So you need to make sure that the flip side of that is making sure that now you've got to take care of your investors, too.

Perform again. Right. Yeah. Also, think about if any of that comes out in the meat, like that you don't want them to tarnish, they've retired from sport, right? You don't want to tarnish their brand because they made a mistake in business if it gets out publicly.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there.

Yeah, yeah. Jerome, thanks so much for coming on.Appreciate you. Where can we send people to check out more about what you're up to?

No, thank you, really love being with you. You can go directly to our website. It's fpgeneralcouncil.com. That's fpgeneralcouncil.com, and you can find me on there. My email is jfogle at fpgeneralcouncil.co, and I'd be happy to connect.

Awesome. Thanks for coming on. Looking forward to staying in touch and maybe doing another one in the future.

Thanks very much for listening. I'll speak to you on the next one.