Firms that prioritize, listen, and align position themselves for better long-term outcomes.
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By Rory Henry CFP®, BFA™
For CPA Trendlines
Phil Whitman, President and CEO of Whitman Advisory, works with hundreds of CPA firms and more than 230 strategic investors across private equity, family offices, wealth management aggregators, and publicly traded consolidators. He sees a profession undergoing unprecedented transformation, and Whitman has a front-row seat.
In this episode of Holistic Guide to Wealth Management, Whitman shares his observations with me from his unique vantage point.
Whitman points to 2021 as the inflection point for the profession’s transition. That’s when EisnerAmper became the first major CPA firm to accept private equity (PE) investment, followed shortly by Citrin and Cherry Bekaert. Those deals opened the gates for capital providers and ignited a wave of consolidation across firms of all sizes. The profession hasn’t looked back since.
Transaction activity has since accelerated, creating unprecedented competition for deals and pushing accounting firm valuations into territory the profession has never seen before.
“What used to be three to five times leave-behind EBITDA became four to seven,” Whitman tells me, pointing to the surge in demand for firms with less than $10 million in revenue.
Whitman shares several notable examples with me:
- A $35 million firm secured a $100 million enterprise value, which Whitman describes as “almost three times gross revenue” and a 14.6x multiple of leave-behind EBITDA.
- A $6.3 million firm, despite having no future partners or bench strength, achieved approximately $17.5 million in total enterprise value through a combination of closing cash, a promissory note, earnouts, and equity benefits.
According to Whitman, the market has stretched even further. “The highest we’ve seen so far is a multiple of 16,” he says. He added that in one case, outside investors entered an existing platform at 17 times earnings. “It’s almost like there’s a feeding frenzy. It’s very much FOMO,” Whitman asserts.
Beyond Private Equity: The ‘31 Flavors’ of Today’s Buyers
While private equity groups get most of the attention, Whitman emphasizes that there are many different types of accounting firm buyers. He likened it to Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors of ice cream:
- Family offices
- Wealth management firms buying tax practices
- Venture-backed platforms
- Sovereign wealth funds
- Foreign pension funds
- Publicly traded companies
Whitman encourages firms to learn about the different types of buyers before choosing a path. “You need to talk to an advisor before you figure out which ‘scoop’ you want,” he says, adding that there are just as many different types of deal structures as there are buyers.
In fact, one of the most surprising developments for CPA firm owners, Whitman notes, is just how flexible deal structures have become. Depending on preferences, he says partners can:
- Take rollover equity locally or at the top-company level;
- Choose different structures from their fellow partners; or
- Optimize for cash or equity depending on personal needs.
Another option Whitman explains is, “You could keep your name, your culture, and remain the leader of that firm.” In those cases, the buyer “will build the entire back office—HR, IT, finance, facilities, marketing—so you can focus on what a partner should be doing,” such as developing business and doing deeper client work.
Chemistry and Culture Still Key for Successful Deals
Despite rising valuations and increasing capital, Whitman stresses that the human element is even more important than the final offer price. “It comes back to good old chemistry and culture. The money’s going to be the money,” he says. If you’re a partner, “you don’t want to sell your soul for money and then be miserable in the last five years of your career,” he says.
Independence Is Still Possible with Alignment
While many firms are entering the deal market, Whitman says plenty still choose to remain independent. But those firms need discipline and alignment to stay competitive.
“You need to have a plan,” he says, stressing four essentials: “excellent communication, trust, alignment of partner goals, and accountability.”
Whitman often uses a facilitation model showing how partner groups initially point in different directions—“rays of light”—and how the work is to bring them back together toward shared goals.
Independence also requires capital readiness. “You need a capital stack,” he says. “Increase your line of credit. Deals are going to require cash down.”
2026 Outlook: The Year of the Tuck-In
Looking to next year, Whitman sees a shift in where activity will concentrate. “It’s going to be the year of the tuck-in,” he says, particularly for firms between $2 million and $15 million. With platforms established in dozens of markets, buyers will be focused on adding “bulk, girth, depth, and breadth” to their existing footprints.
The accounting profession is undergoing a once-in-a-generation evolution. Whether a firm chooses private equity, strategic partnership, or independence, the options have never been greater—or more nuanced. From Whitman’s perspective, the best-positioned firms will be those that stay informed, stay aligned, and approach the future with both strategic and human clarity. There is no single path. There is only one path that fits the firm’s goals, culture, and vision for the future.
5 Advis-ROR Takeaways
- Multiples continue to defy expectations. Whitman notes the shift from three-to-five times EBITDA to four-to-seven, with standout deals reaching double-digits, some as high as 16x.
- The “31 flavors” of deal structures create real flexibility. From cash-heavy options to rollover equity, local-level ownership, brand continuity, and Topco participation, firms now have more ways than ever to tailor a transaction to their goals.
- Strategics and patient capital are reshaping the market. Family offices, wealth management groups, sovereign wealth funds, venture-backed platforms, and foreign pension funds are now active acquirers. Their longer time horizons and flexible mandates introduce new opportunities beyond traditional PE structures.
- Independence is still a viable choice—with alignment. Whitman stresses that firms can remain independent if they have a clear plan, strong partner communication, shared goals, and accountability. Independence isn’t passive; it requires intentional relationship alignment and operational readiness.
- Culture, communication, and clarity remain decisive. Whether it’s private equity, strategic partnerships, or independence, firms that prioritize culture, listen deeply, and align around their values position themselves for healthier growth and better long-term outcomes.
More About Phil Whitman
As president and CEO of Whitman Advisory, Phil Whitman leads the nation’s largest advisory organization for CPAs. He leverages extensive contacts in accounting and private equity to help firms find acquirers or, for those remaining independent, provides talent and profit solutions. Whitman’s specializations include succession planning, M&A, strategic talent acquisition, and practice management consulting. A 25-year public accounting veteran, Whitman previously served as COO for a Top 30 CPA firm. His management experience ranges from a three-partner firm to a national firm with nearly $100 million in revenue. He maintains relationships with leaders at many Top 100 firms and over 250 others. Whitman is an active NYSSCPA member, serving as immediate past Chair of the Management of the Profession Oversight Committee, a member of the Large and Medium Firm Practice Management Committee, and former Chair of the Human Resource Committee.
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Transcript
(Transcripts are made available as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
[00:00:44] Rory Henry: All right. Hello, everyone. I’m excited to be joined by my next guest. He is the president and CEO of Whitman Advisory, which is the largest advisory organization for CPAs, where they help firms with succession planning, M&A, talent, and profitability. He’s not only an M&A advisor, but also a private equity advisor and helps firms with operational improvement. So without further ado, let me introduce our guest, Phil Whitman. Phil, welcome to the show.
[00:01:11] Philip Whitman: Thank you so much, Rory. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.
[00:01:14] Rory Henry: Yes, pleasure to speak with you. We always have a good time speaking. I know you have a rebrand that just occurred here. Do you want to share with our audience about the transition from Whitman Transition Advisors to Whitman Advisors?
[00:01:28] Philip Whitman: Sure. Sure. And thank you, Rory. So when we first started, we were Whitman Business Advisors, and we grew for six years. It was just me and a stay-at-home mom. And then I brought on a partner, and he’s really been instrumental in helping me grow. I’m the outside guy, love business development, love opening doors, closing transactions. And he helps with structure and strategy and all that. In 2022, we merged in our largest competitor, Transition Advisors. And at that point in time, it was very easy to go from Whitman Business Advisors, well, kick business out, put Transition in. Let’s pay homage to their 20-plus year history of being one of the top M&A advisory firms for CPA firms. So we became Whitman Transition Advisors. And when the pandemic started, we figured we were sitting on some tremendous relationships with CPA firms, and we said, you know what? We can do a lot more than help the CPA firms. We can help them help their clients. So we started building other businesses, and we built it under the C-Suite Impact brand. So we built a fractional CFO business, and not to compete with CPA firms, but in the case where independence was impaired and they didn’t want to go to another CPA firm, well, we don’t do audit. We don’t do tax. We’re not going to steal any of that work from them. So we built a fractional CFO business. We built a funding solutions business. We had a business where we would do buy-side, sell-side, and capital raising, and all with the eye towards generating additional bottom-line revenue for those CPA firms. Well, we’ve been in it with C-Suite now for five years, and one of the things that we found is it’s real challenging to manage multiple brands. We had marketing folks talking about our five recruiting companies and our three offshoring companies, and we finally just decided, you know what? The best known brand that we have and the relationships that we foster are with Whitman. So we said, you know what? Let’s change the name. There were a couple of different things we thought about, but ultimately we said, let’s keep it simple, Whitman Advisory. We collapsed everything under our brand, so I can now say we’re 52 people strong. We are helping CPA firms in so many ways. Everything from, we’ve now got Whitman funding solutions, we’ll help firms get long-term credit, we’ll help them refinance their debt, acquisition lines. We’ve got three offshoring companies, one in the Philippines, which I’m really proud of. We power five top 100 CPA firms, and two of them actually offered to buy the company from us. I just kicked a wire and I almost did a Houdini act.
[00:04:58] Rory Henry: You’re back. Yes. Well, speaking of Houdini acts, private equity appeared on the scene a couple of years ago and has caused a seismic shift in the profession, Phil. Let’s dig into that because I know our audience is probably going to want to hear and get the latest snapshot as we’re wrapping up 2025, heading into 2026. Can you kind of give us the lay of the land in the world of private equity accounting?
[00:05:24] Philip Whitman: Absolutely. This is on the heels of last week. We had the PE summit in Chicago. What I can tell you is, I think seismic shift, the way you described it, is very accurate. In 2021, as most people know, Eisner Amperell was the first to take an investment by private equity. Then that was followed by Citrin and then Cherry Becker. We very early on did a transaction with Eisner Amperell. We merged in a small $6 million New York City-based practice, very high-end practice. Like most firms, their challenge was they couldn’t get enough people. They had so many opportunities, but they couldn’t expand the firm because of the talent gaps. They did a transaction. They had an opportunity to do a transaction with a top 100 firm that wasn’t key backed. Ultimately, in the long run, the money probably would have been more, but he wouldn’t start receiving the money until he was seven years into the transaction. Then he would get paid out over 10 or 15 years. Whereas his wife said to him, go for the gusto, take the money. Imagine this, you got a $6 million practice and you close a transaction and you’re sitting on $5 million, really unlocking the value. After I did that deal, I studied the deal documents, the way that Eisner was doing their transactions and I worked with Citrin and it was very similar, just changed a couple of names like what is the ball of equity called? Is it units or is it PPCs or whatever they were calling it, PPUs, Preferred Participation Units. In any event, it was very, very similar the way they were doing transactions. I said to myself, this can only be for the largest of firms. Look, fast forward, here we are today. There are private equity groups I met with someone and I actually saw them. They came to the conference. If there’s a CPA firm out there, he said to me, we’ll take firms 500,000 to 2 million. I said, of EBITDA? He said, no, of gross revenues. Imagine this, I think for the sole owner of a practice where he’s doing 500,000 in revenue, probably making 50, 60, 70% of that because it has low cost, low overhead, there are folks out there that will put cash to buy those practices. The smallest deal we’ve done, it was like a $1.8 million firm and it wasn’t a token. Equity left it as a standalone firm. The initial transaction value was like 2.5 million. It’s got rollover equity. So ultimately when the PE group transacts, that’ll lock another, I forget if they did it, 20, 30, or 40% rollover equity, but the proverbial second bite of the apple is going to create significant wealth, even for a small firm like that, whose mindset was, well, if I could get one times gross revenue, that would be great. And four years ago, if you got one times gross revenue, that was par for the course. Yeah.
[00:09:13] Rory Henry: Well, let’s break down what the current figures are looking like with EBITDA, right? Because I seen numbers out there that 3.5 to 5 times EBITDA now, sometimes 4 to 8. Is it getting higher than that, Phil?
[00:09:33] Philip Whitman: So I think at this very moment, here we are the day before Thanksgiving, 2025. I think here’s what we saw. What used to be 3 to 5 became 4 to 7. And that’s for firms that I would say sub 10 million and with less than 2 million of leave behind EBITDA. I’ll share a wonderful story. And this is sort of an outlier because I don’t know how many listeners, there aren’t a lot of $35 million firms out there. The $35 million firm ended up with $100 million initial total enterprise value, almost three times gross revenue. And that wasn’t the largest offer. There was a bidding where there was another group that came in and offered them $110 million. But for whatever reason, they decided they liked the cultural operations and the culture of the one that offered them $100 million. That multiple at the time, and I had a conversation with my good friend, Alan Colton, and I said, Phil, there hasn’t been a higher multiple than that. They had 7 million of leave behind EBITDA, 7 million of leave behind EBITDA. So you look at that, and that’s almost a 15 multiple, it was like 14, 14.6 multiple. And this was a transaction that closed about a year ago. So let’s come down a little bit, because that’s almost three times gross revenue. I can also share a $6.3 million firm. And this one really blew my mind. Love the managing partner of this firm, built a great business, 67 years old. And he has one other partner, a 63-year-old. No future partners in the ranks. So no bench strength, all right, 19 loyal soldiers that were getting up there in age, but none of them future partners, few of them CPAs, but good folks that could grind out the world and deal with clients. Here’s how that story ended up, 6.3 million of gross revenue. They got 7 million at closing. They got a $5 million promissory note, paid over five years. So we’re up to 12 million now. They got a $3 million earn out, which is going to be very easy for them to achieve. So we’re up to 15 million. And then the PE group, just to be nice, guy said, you know, instead of paying you and your partner 1.1 million a year for the next five years, we’re only going to pay you 600,000 a year. Everyone might say, what? You’re going to pay me less. They took 500,000 times five years, another 2.5 million. They put it in total enterprise value. So now that’s 17.5 million or $6.3 million firm. And they made it instead of compensation, the firm partners ended up getting capital gains treatment because it was part of total enterprise value. Increased our fee a little bit as well, which wasn’t too bad, but imagine that a 6.3 million now, a very profitable firm. And they were putting like 50% to the bottom line. So to achieve that sort of multiple, almost three times gross revenues. And I would say it was probably, if you added everything up with 2 million of leave behind EBITDA to get 17.5 million out and said, okay, it was a $15 million deal. That’s a seven and a half multiple for a firm with no bench strength, no future partner, great clients. So it’s amazing. Now I think what we’re seeing right now is a little bit of a lull. We have transactions that have just closed it. We’ve closed at a multiple of seven and a half. I believe we took them to market now. We would probably get an eight and eight and a half, a nine. But we have been seeing a little bit, like I know of a transaction I was on a call this morning where it’s 2 million of leave behind EBITDA. The CPA firm owner said, what do you think in terms of multiple? And before I could say eight, he said, we’re offering them an eight. So I think multiples are sort of leveling off. I think if you’ve got more than 2 million of leave behind EBITDA, you could be expecting multiples of nine, 10, 11, 12. I think the highest we’ve seen so far is a multiple of 16. Now that being said, one of the PE groups that we work with took on additional investors. It wasn’t a turn, it wasn’t a flip, wasn’t a second bite of the apple, but those investors came in at 17 times earnings, which is kind of amazing. So how high does this go? Time will tell.
[00:15:19] Rory Henry: Time will tell.
[00:15:20] Philip Whitman: But it’s almost like there’s a feeding frenzy going on.
[00:15:24] Rory Henry: People- It’s very much FOMO, right?
[00:15:26] Philip Whitman: Yeah. Fear of missing out. And how long is this going to continue? I mean, the thing that I tell people, it’s not even a full year since Blackstone transacted with Mountain and took over Citron. So we know they’ll be in for at least three to five. And we have new PE groups coming to town every single day. It’s amazing. Yeah.
[00:15:52] Rory Henry: Well, let’s talk about those new groups. Because I know when I spoke with Alan Colton, he talked about sovereign wealth funds. I know there’s family offices in the space with patient capital. Can you kind of talk about some of the other strategies coming to the space?
[00:16:07] Philip Whitman: Yeah. So it’s not only, and I use private equity as a generic, you’re right. It is. It’s family offices. It’s wealth management groups. We have a number of wealth management groups that are buying tax-only practices. Obviously, they’re buying the tax portion. They don’t want to have anything to do with the audit. Exactly. You have firms.
[00:16:31] Narrator: Yeah.
[00:16:32] Philip Whitman: And for the most part, when all of this started, the message that everyone was receiving was, we want little audit. We want little audit. And for the most part, that’s true. But there are groups that love audit, if you’re doing it well, and it’s profitable because it’s recurring. And there are PE groups that are buying audit practices. There’s family offices. There’s venture funds that’s now gotten venture-backed folks that are out there. And the family offices and even the venture are a little bit more patient capital. There’s so much flexibility, even with some of the PE-backed groups that we’re working with. There are sovereign wealth funds. There are pension funds, foreign pension funds. Let’s not forget publicly traded companies. I was on a call this morning. I’ll give a shout out to James Jordan’s corporate development at Seabiz. Seabiz is a publicly traded company. Most recently, everyone thinks about the Markham transaction that they did. But Seabiz is absolutely, I call it, it’s like Baskin Robbins, it’s 31 flavors. And they truly are. And Rory, I’ll send you, I have a PDF, a one-pager of here’s the 31 flavors. Here’s why you need to talk to an advisor before you take, figure out which scoop- Which flavor.
[00:18:05] Rory Henry: Yeah.
[00:18:05] Philip Whitman: Because even if you pick the same flavor, there are so many nuances. I mean, everyone says to me, what’s the mold?
[00:18:12] Rory Henry: You want two scoops?
[00:18:13] Philip Whitman: You want one scoop, right? Yes. That’s right. And what do you want on top?
[00:18:18] Rory Henry: What do you want on top?
[00:18:18] Philip Whitman: I want guacamole, butter scotch, hot chocolate, or strawberry.
[00:18:24] Rory Henry: You’re making me hungry, Phil.
[00:18:25] Philip Whitman: Yeah, I know. Wet nuts, warm nuts, whipped cream. I mean, there’s so much. Yeah. But in any event, there’s groups out there now that are tremendously flexible. So, what does that mean? Do you want rollover equity? And rollover equity, by the way, they buy 60% of your funds. firm, you got 40% that you’re going to hang on to. Is that at your local level where performance only depends on how your firm does? Or do you want it at the top co at the same level that the private equity and other firms are sitting at? And some people like it at top co others like it at the local level. And there are groups out there that if you and I were partners, Rory, you could take it at the local level, and I could take it at top co. And you know what, if you want more cash up front and less rollover equity, you could take more cash, less rollover equity, I could take more rollover equity, less cash, the flexibility, and it’s almost and I’m not talking about the big, you know, the cherry backers, and the citrons, obviously, they have their way of doing a transaction. But for the smaller firm, there’s you have so many choices, because you could go into one of those big ones. And you’re done, you don’t have to worry about HR, IT, finance, facilities, marketing, business development, all that, they’re going to take care of that for you. Or you could be a foundational firm, that’s part of one of these constellation models, where they’re putting flags in different geographies across the country, you could keep your name, you could keep your brand, you could keep your culture, you could remain the leader of that firm. Is that what you want? Now, they will build the entire back office, HR, IT, finance, facilities, marketing, and they’ll be helping you with all of that stuff. They’re going to unlock additional time, so that you could do what a partner should be doing. And that’s going out there and developing business, going out there providing additional services to your existing clients. Because the one thing I know, the more services you provide to a client, the stickier they’re going to be. Very frequently, there are these companies that come in and they do, you know, you know, net promoter scores, and that’s great to do that. But some of them what they do, while they’re doing it, they’re unlocking opportunities, because you have clients that don’t know that you have the ability planning, valuation, you know, fraud, forensic, all that stuff, because they only know you as their tax guy.
[00:21:13] Rory Henry: Right.
[00:21:14] Philip Whitman: And most CPAs, you know, unfortunately, they do this around their client, because Rory, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know. And I don’t know the first thing about, you know, valuations. And how do I know you’re not going to screw it up. And, and that’s going to taint my relationship with this great client. And that’s just, you know, you and I talked earlier, scarcity thinking, yeah, mindset, you know, I think, I think everyone needs to be open minded.
[00:21:44] Rory Henry: Yeah.
[00:21:44] Philip Whitman: And explore. If there’s opportunities, there’s no commitment, but you need to be educated. So that when somebody calls you, you don’t listen to that first call and say, wow, this sounds great. You jump on the bandwagon. Because there are 31 flavors. I mean, I could have two firms out there that did exactly what I said. And then I have a conversation with them. And they’re like, Oh, I didn’t even realize that. You know, that, you know, the abundance of opportunities. So yeah, and then you don’t need to rush into it. Right? Not like a hammer and nail. Let’s get this thing closed. Let’s get this. No. Usually, I’m going to show people four or five, six, seven different opportunities. They’re all going to be slightly different from one another. And it comes back to the good old number one, chemistry, number two, culture, is going to be the money. You don’t want to sell your soul. Yeah, money. And then in the last five years of your career, be miserable, miserable.
[00:22:53] Rory Henry: Yeah. And that’s, I mean, I think we’re cut from the same cloth, Phil, and doing a more consultative approach, and really understanding, you know, the firm’s wants, desires, their culture, and then, you know, hopefully, guiding them in in a way that improves not only, you know, the the bottom line, but more importantly, well being, it’s always talked about the return on relationship, right? Like we measure everything quantitatively many times with that bottom line, or those multiples, right? But there’s other aspects of well being that we need to take into account when any business relationship or in relationship in general.
[00:23:33] Philip Whitman: 100% and while I can talk a good clip, as everyone can see, you know, I always remember, we have two ears and one mouth when it comes to our clients. The one thing we’re amazing at, we listen, you know, we listen to what your goals are. And that’s why, you know, we don’t have our tagline, new tagline up there. But it’s your goals, our impact. So we listen to our clients. I think the reality is we are in the business of changing lives. Yeah. You know, I think everybody comes out better for it. And in most circumstances, weren’t aware that such opportunities ever existed for them.
[00:24:20] Rory Henry: Yeah. I talk about, you know, just in general, going from a transaction mindset to that transformational mindset, and, and really understanding the human behind the numbers. You were in the book, Phil, I’m sure you read the book, right? Talk about really understanding the wants, needs, goals, fears, aspirations of our clients. And that applies to CPA firm owners and, and their transactions and how they want to build their firm. It’s really understanding that human and and helping them get to where they want to go in life.
[00:24:54] Philip Whitman: And that and that’s really what’s key. You’re, you’re absolutely right. It’s not about the transaction. I can point to so many folks that I’ve worked with. And the one thing I tell everyone up front, we may not transact.
[00:25:08] Rory Henry: Yeah.
[00:25:09] Philip Whitman: And that’s okay. And I’m not going to get mad. I’m here as your Sherpa. Yeah, take you up the mountain. And you know what, if you want to stop at base camp, and you know, you don’t feel that it’s appropriate for you to, to go to the peak, then you know what, we’re gonna camp out and we’re gonna have a great time in base camp. You know what, if we never transact, that’s okay. Because life is long. And I truly believe as long as you treat people well, you know, and, and you don’t be a hammer, you don’t be a hammer and nail. The solution to everything is in, you know, you got to do this deal. We help firms remain independent. I mean, the week before the PE summit, I was like Miami at a BDO, Southeast Regional Conference, and I did a very brief talk 15 tips on remaining independent. And you know what, if that’s, if that’s what your journey is, and that’s what your goal is, we help so many firms that way as well.
[00:26:15] Rory Henry: So what are the top five, Phil, to remain independent? Can you give? I know I put you on the spot here. Do you have a top five for us? Top five? To remain independent? Yeah. No. Top five. Independent. Yeah.
[00:26:31] Narrator: Yeah.
[00:26:31] Philip Whitman: Um, so what I can tell you is, now I got to switch to the other side. Sorry. No, that’s quite all right. So number one, you need to have a plan. Okay. And, you know, it’s all about partner alignment. I talked about four things. Excellent communication, trust, alignment of partner goals and accountability. And it takes those four things to build a world class firm. If you don’t communicate really, really well with your partners and with your groups, with one another, there typically is an erosion of trust. Trust needs to be really high. And alignment, I frequently walk into a room. And you know what, a bunch of old guys, they want to merge up a bunch of young guys, they want to stay independent. Yeah. Everyone has their different goals. You need to be fiduciaries of the firm, firm first. Now, I always say family first, and that comes to health and all those other things. But when it comes to, is this good, because I’m going to gain personally, that should come second to what’s the best thing for the firm. And I frequently walk into a room. And I think it was Caner who wrote the book on facilitation, Sam Caner, I walk into a room and if each of my fingers was a ray of light, yeah, okay. We’re all going in disparate, you know, different, different directions. You know, we come in and we speak with the firms. And that’s this part right here. And when we’re done, and we walk out, now, it looks like the other way, again, rays of light, all coming to a common goal, or what we call alignment. So you want to go from this. And I know, obviously, for those that are listening, I’m holding up my left hand. And I’m taking a ray and putting it through each finger. And it’s Star Wars like, and it’s going in all different directions. And now I’m putting up my right hand right next to it. And obviously, it’s the inverse of that. And all those points of light that we shoot through my fingers, into my wrist, and we’re going in the same direction. And that’s, that’s what we call alignment. So again, excellent communications. And I think, you know, especially in this environment with private equity with very deep pockets. Yeah, one of those top five things is also, you need to go out and you need to get an acquisition line of credit. Every deal you do from now on, and you can’t just grow organically, you have to have a combined, inorganic growth. And that could just be bringing in lateral partners with business. That’s what Eisner, Eisner did. 36 of them Charlie did before he ever did a merger deal. And the merger deal with Amper was pretty much their first merger transaction. So but I do think you need a capital stack, go out, increase your line of credit if you have one, because deals are going to require cash down.
[00:29:46] Rory Henry: Yeah. Well, speaking of deals, I know, we’re running out of time here. 2025 record number of deals again, what are we looking at as far as P deals? And then can you give us some outlook into 2026? Phil?
[00:30:01] Philip Whitman: Yeah, so. So to date, this year, we’ve closed 26 transactions now. And four of them were traditional CPA firm to CPA firm. The other 22 with different flavors, it was with 12 different strategic investors. It wasn’t all going to one. You know, there does happen to be, you know, one group that a lot of this was stuff that leaked over should have closed in 2024, but closed in 2025. So you know, one group we probably did six deals with, but everyone else, you know, two deals here to do, you know, very, very spread out amongst our group of, of client private equity and other investor clients. To date, I’ve met with 230 strategic investors that are interested in the public accounting arena. We work with about 40 of them. And of those 40, I’m going to say right now, probably 22 of them have not yet transacted with their first CPA firm. They’re aspirational. We’ve got about 18 that we’ve closed deals with. So I love it. I love it. All right. I think for 26, just real quickly, yeah. More of the same. Although 26, rather than seeing a lot of larger firms, at least in our client base, you know, it’s not going to be the $35 million firms or $25 million firms. It’s going to go down here with a tuck in, it’s going to be firms, I’m going to say, two to 10, two to 15 million, all these platforms that have now established in 20 or 30 different locations, they’re going to be looking to add bulk, girth and additional depth and breadth. So that’s my prediction.
[00:31:58] Rory Henry: Great. All right. I love it. Awesome, Phil. Thank you so much for coming on. If someone wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do so?
[00:32:06] Philip Whitman: Yeah, I call my cell phone, 212-983-0035. Shoot me an email. You can also text at that number, obviously. But my email PW, my first and last name initials at WhitmanAdvisory.com.