Family Business Audiocast | Episode 35 | Robert “Bobby” Stover Jr | Ernst & Young

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About Our Guest:

Robert "Bobby" Stover Jr. is a prominent leader in the field of family enterprises and family offices, serving as a partner at Ernst & Young and leading the Americas Family Enterprise and Family Office Business. With over 30 years of experience, he advises family businesses on succession planning, governance, legacy preservation, and philanthropy, helping them navigate complex challenges. Recognized globally, Bobby has been named a top FamCap 50 Advisor and a top 100 Family Influencer, with his insights featured in publications like Family Business Magazine and The New York Times.

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[Transcript]

R. Adam Smith: [Intro] Welcome to the Family Business Audiocast on LinkedIn. I am R. Adam Smith, creator of this audiocast series. As an entrepreneur, investor, founder, investment banker, and board leader the last 25 years, I am fortunate for my many experiences within the family firm industry. 

A warm thank you to our live audience on LinkedIn today – and for those listening in the future.

A brief comment on why I created this broadcast: private companies are a passion of mine, having grown up in a family of entrepreneurs, and having engaged for two decades in deals, strategic transformations, investments, and boards, with an array of fascinating family enterprises, family firms, and family offices. I founded this series to offer a useful platform for listeners to hear from veterans, academics, and leaders in the vast family firm ecosystem. Whether you are a family business owner, building, running, or advising a family office, or just expanding your family office activities, I hope these conversations are useful and enlightening. And now, it is time to turn our attention [01:00] to our accomplished guest on today’s episode.

I am very pleased today to host Bobby Stover of Ernst & Young. Bobby, it's great to have you today on the audiocast.

Bobby Stover: Thanks for having me, Adam. I really appreciate it.

R. Adam Smith: I'm looking forward to it. I know you're very busy and [we] have a lot of ground to cover. So, I want to talk a bit about you first, and then we'll get into it.

So, today our guest is Robert “Bobby” Stover Jr. He is a distinguished leader in the world of family enterprises and family offices and one of the leaders in the space. He is a partner at Ernst & Young where he serves as the leader of the Americas Family Enterprise and Family Office Business.

With over 30 years of experience, he is a trusted advisor to hundreds of family businesses, helping them navigate the complexities of their lives, their companies, and their transactions, including succession planning, governance, and legacy preservation. And his experience lies specifically in addressing the challenges faced by family enterprises from [02:00] sustainable growth to structuring the offices themselves and also philanthropy.

His work has earned him significant recognition, being named a top FamCap 50 Advisor in the world, and also a top 100 Family Influencer by Family Capital Publishing. Bobby is also a highly sought-after speaker and educator, and his thought leadership has been featured in esteemed publications such as Family Business Magazine, the New York Times, and others. Of course, at EY, he is part of a global, very large organization committed to helping a better working world. We'll talk a bit about EY on the call. EY, of course, is one of the largest advisory firms in the world, covering over 150 countries.

Bobby's academic foundation includes a bachelor’s in business administration and accounting from [University of] New Mexico Anderson School of Management, where he's from. He's now in Dallas, and he is a CPA in both New Mexico and Dallas and is active in numerous professional organizations.

So, [03:00] look forward to joining us today as we delve into his incredible and vast expertise and exploring how he's shaping the future of family enterprises and creating value for his clients.

All right, is that good, Bobby? Should we kick it off?

Bobby Stover: That's great. When somebody reads that, I'm always a little embarrassed of those things, but thanks for all the kind words. Hopefully, you know, we’ll get down to some more practical items, but thanks for all the kudos, Adam.

R. Adam Smith: You're welcome.

Okay, in your leadership, you've often stressed the importance of designing succession plans [that] withstand external crises, like we've had recently in the economy and supply chain and COVID—we can call them black swans. And let's talk a bit about the importance of planning. We've talked about next-gen and communication and transparency, trust, and governance extensively on the audiocast the last year or so.

How does your approach to succession differ for families navigating, let's say, [04:00] industries with high volatility versus other industries [that] are lower beta and more steady? So, I'm just curious about your approach to succession planning and next-gen in general.

Bobby Stover: Thanks for the question. I think it's a great one. And what I would say is our approach is the same for both. And really, when we step back and we look at multigenerational families—those that are third-generation or beyond—you know, if we look in the US, the US is still relatively young. There are only 250 years of history here. So, when you look globally, people look to us because of our academic rigor around family enterprise, but we're still relatively in [our] infancy.

That said, we've come up with four key pillars that we believe have to work like four legs on a chair, Adam, and all be thought of together. So, one is a growth strategy to grow a more valuable enterprise. What we find in our own research is larger, more valuable companies have a greater chance of succeeding [05:00] to the next generation. You hear “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves,” you know, in three generations, only 3% make it. Larger, upper middle market companies, companies that are 250 million or more, tend to have a 40% chance of making it beyond that.

The second pillar or leg of the chair is company capitalization. So, how am I going to fund that growth? And, you know, throughout history, families have shied away from debt. PE is a big player now in family enterprise, and you've seen some significant families sell. But really, do you really understand your company capitalization and your options? That's a really big one that, during the disruptions, those that did not have a good finance function or did not have a good company capitalization strategy felt stress. So, really having that strategy outlined ahead of time supports longevity.

The third is shareholder liquidity. And as you can imagine, Adam, that was a huge stressor during the pandemic. So, think of it as capital needs of the business balanced with capital needs of the family, [06:00] including lifestyle, including estate taxes. So, we keep really good balance sheets in our business. We don't keep really good balance sheets on all the different liquidity items that we need for family members. Also, as an example, let's say we have a family with, you know, 5G3s, and all of a sudden, all of them had two kids, well, that's, you know, 10 G4s. And if they all want the same lifestyle, we have to be able to grow that company to be able to provide that and/or have policies so that they understand what that is.

And then, the final item is a generational transition strategy, which I think we have a unique view on, Adam, in that generational transition should be good governance over the operating businesses and investments. So, think advisory boards, fiduciary boards, investment committees, qualified management, and then good governance over the family, family councils, shareholder councils, and next-gen development. But those two things have to work in parallel.

So, in summary, those four key strategies, if you have those [07:00] four legs and those are well developed, they're all intertwined with each other. But if you have all four of those, you're generally going to be able to sustain these ups and downs that we see in this disruptive world that we're in.

R. Adam Smith: That's good. We have covered that in the Audiocast in different ways in terms of preparation at the family ownership level, but also at the governance level, and it can be tricky to maintain the original legacy and mission of the family enterprise as it flows through the generations.

[I] particularly covered this with next-gen recently with Chelsea Toler and Jason Ma and Emily Bouchard, and previously, again, with Jim Grubman, talking about the transition and succession planning issue and next-gen—super tricky.

Love to hear your thoughts on the continuity of legacy and purpose and how that also factors into, let's say, the planning by [08:00] EY as a global accounting firm helping your clients to prepare for a significant sale. So, walk us through that process, let's say, from EY's perspective of, you've got a family’s G1 with a billion-dollar company and they want to sell, [but] maybe the kids are not really interested or able or willing to run that company. What is that process like for you?

Bobby Stover: So, I'll just say, Adam, I tend to be biased. So, I'll just say that to the listeners. You know, in family enterprise for EY, our goal is to help family enterprises stay together and intact long-term, and we use the word “enterprise” specifically due to what you just described. So, previously you heard the words “family business” or “family office”; we kind of backed up from that and said, in our complex world, it's really a “family enterprise.”

So, your specific question on a business—what we really try to do is, using those four key strategies [09:00] we talked about, do you really understand the growth strategy and the capitalization strategy of that business and are you weighing that against the capital needs of the family? If I do those two things, then it becomes [an] optionality of, can I keep this business, put qualified management in it, and will it have a higher rate of return for me and a higher, more steady cash flow than if I exit that business and now am sitting on, as you mentioned, a billion dollars of cash that I now have to redeploy into the public markets or through private equity into other operating companies that I probably don't know as well as my business?

So, you know, we're biased to try to keep the business, but we go through a very definitive process using those four key strategies, and then saying, what's the optionality? And the one thing I will say, Adam, is when it comes to growth, especially middle market companies, really digging into what growth strategy is coming out of the pandemic with the S-curve, the J-curve, [10:00] and generative AI; those models are being disrupted on how you need to think about growth, your adjacencies, and where you could use your internal knowledge to go into different markets.

And then, the final item I would say, Adam, is a lot of times we turn to families and say, why not just redeploy capital? So, same billion-dollar company, is there a way we can look at it with our capitalization strategy, maybe do a recap through debt financing, take half a billion dollars, and put it into a new entity that now takes some pressure off the family, allows us to have some liquidity for lifestyle, but then we redeploy that capital into other areas that are not adjacent to our business?

So, we're seeing a lot more of that, of families keeping that operating company using the excess cash to redeploy and build other assets and asset classes within their family enterprise.

R. Adam Smith: Absolutely. Let's run with that a bit [11:00] on the multi-family office structure. We have academics and experts that cover the single-family office, of course, and then we have experts covering the multi-family office. So, for example, on our calls, we've had some pretty extensive discussions on the structuring and benefits and, let's say, the fit of the multi-family office with Alfredo De Massis and also Peter Vogel from IMD. We talked a bit about that also with Valerie Galinskaya, your comrade over at Merrill Lynch.

So, we covered the multi-family office, but then, let's say, with the experts on single-family office, which is much more of a direct organization, Angelo Robles and others, Ron [Ronald] Diamond, are really focused on the efficiency and elegance of the single-family office.

So, just for those that are interested in the subtleties, [12:00] what is going on with the expansion of the multi-family office market, first of all, and what are, let's say, the more cutting-edge elements of the multi-family office these days?

Bobby Stover: Great question. So, thanks for asking, Adam. So, I would argue that we really have a hybrid of both in the market today and it's really being driven by technology and managed services. So, if you look in the world, who can do it better, faster, and cheaper for things that are important but non-critical, and then what are the things that are critical where I think I can create organizations that can outperform?

So, if I think multi-family office or single-family office, I think those lines are blurred. And then, it really comes down to, what are the services or activities, what's the importance of how those are delivered, and then what's the cost matrix for how those are delivered? So, think of it as my ability to control the service, what's it going to cost me, how much risk [13:00] am I taking on, and then how much privacy do I want? And that kind of lends itself to whether I use a single-family office or a multi-family office.

Where I see the big leaps in the multi-family office space is in the technology realm.

R. Adam Smith: Yes.

Bobby Stover: If you look at the major financial institutions, the major professional services firms, and others—and you've seen a lot of private equity flock into both CPA firms, RIAs, and wealth managers—it is all around technology and providing a faster, more digital experience to you. So, as EY, we do consulting or auditing or tax with about 40% of what we call the FSO. So, banks, financial institutions, RIAs, brokers/dealers.

What our research tells us is those clients want better, more digital experiences. And so, that's where the RIAs are placing their bets. So, I think of it as just, can I get everything I want on my phone, Adam, [14:00] when I want it? as the standard. And so, I think the large institutions, because of their capital, will win that race first. And then, as a single-family office, can you plug into a platform to use that versus building it yourself? And then, are there things that you wouldn't want on that platform that you'd want to keep, you know, within your four walls of a single-family office?

So, in summary, technology is going to, you know, win the day. Number two, the line is getting blurred between multi-family and single-family in a way that's, what's highly critical that I keep inside my four walls, and what can somebody else do better, faster, quicker, and with less risk outside my four walls?

R. Adam Smith: Okay. As you know, I have a background in private equity—

Bobby Stover: Yes.

R. Adam Smith: —and M&A and family office, and I find it fascinating to see the evolution of the multi-family office because the model is really ranging between the wealth management model and the non-wealth management model or the proprietary principal model.

So, [15:00] I'd like to hear your thoughts on, let's say, a group of families working together as a holding company or a group of family members—let's say, look at the Pritzker family or the Perot Group or the BDT, for example—coming together as a collective of families, not as a wealth management organization, but as a collective of families. And that potential to drive more scale, more capital, more collaboration as private business partners, almost like you see in private equity and clubbing coming together, I think this is a significant development in the trusted circles of families working together; [it’s] partly working with private equity and also disintermediating private equity, and therefore, disintermediating also the public markets in a way.

Can you talk a bit about that?

Bobby Stover: Yes. Obviously interested in others’ thoughts. I caveat this, Adam, that I am a CPA, and I've sat on the tax operations side. So, think of it as [16:00] the G&A side of the house versus the investing side of the house. I spend a lot of time putting good systems into the investing side of the house, but if I step back—

R. Adam Smith: Yes, just broadly speaking.

Bobby Stover: What I think and what you're saying is, what does any one of those particular organizations bring to the table? So, if I think about private equity or I think about partnering with somebody, can they bring expertise that I don't have so I can accelerate my learning and/or get access that I couldn't have before? Do they bring additional capital that allows me to do some things or take more bets? So, you know, if I'm a real estate family and all I know is real estate, can I take some chips off the table, accelerate with somebody who's in a different vertical, and they can bring capital too to where I don't have to get totally out of real estate to go into that new set of capital? So, we're seeing that accelerate a lot.

And then, I think, Adam, the real question that's still out there is, what is a long-term hold [17:00] and what are the incentives attached to how we're investing in companies? And, you know, you could probably have a whole podcast and debate that with really a lot smarter people than myself, but are the incentives of the deal teams and who we're bringing together aligned with the long-term outlook of a family? And then, how do we think about long-term outlook?

And, you know, like we said, there are things being disrupted. If you were in the newspaper industry and you didn't think ahead, we know there are lots of families that were hurt by that. I think you will continue to see those disruptions, where if we go back to my comment earlier about family enterprise, it's not about owning a single company; it's about owning great companies that have great attributes and not having to sell them to realize value long term, as long as they meet the attributes on growth, capitalization, and liquidity that we need going back to those four key strategies.

R. Adam Smith: Right. So, since you're the global tax expert [18:00] and not so much the deal guy, I don't want to push you too hard on the deal junkie side. We can do a whole other series with EY, and if we do that, we'll probably be doing that for like 10 years given the range of the company, so we can do a couple of them together.

Bobby Stover: There you go.

R. Adam Smith: But, on the tax side and equity side, let's talk about that incentive opportunity and challenge in the next-gen within the family enterprise with the family members or non-family members, the distinction between giving equity, giving, let's say, profits, interest, or equity, like you would in a private equity GP. It's much trickier in a family office.

Can you talk about that complexity? Not really the alignment, but the more practical way to give equity to next-gen family and non-family members within the family enterprise and how that relates to the less urgent and less likely ultimate outcome of an exit of that asset [19:00] in which the equity is held.

Bobby Stover: So, the interesting thing is, in the United States, probably one of the most complex tax codes that there are, which drive a lot of our decisions to use planning trusts and other vehicles to not have a 40% partner, which is the federal government. Interestingly enough, when you go around the world, there are lots of jurisdictions that don't have those constraints of a federal tax code or a transfer tax, and they struggle with the same kind of questions, Adam. So, I would say, when I think globally and as a tax person, I am surprised when we deal with multijurisdictional and multinational families, these issues come up anyway, regardless of if we have a complex tax code that says, stick your things inside another vehicle.

Back to your point, one of the things that we're seeing: if you look at US planning, and US estate planning especially, you know, there's a whole group [20:00] of families that in the early 1920s started forming trusts to hold assets, one for asset protection, number two for a lot of other reasons. At the time those trusts were formed, they were in the early 1920s, trusts could go for “lives in being plus 20 years,” [sic]. So, the average human lives 80 years, so I think 80 years plus 20, the average trust could go 100 years.

So, one of the interesting things happening in the US is [that] a lot of those long-term trusts are terminating between 2020 and 2030 because they've run the rule against perpetuity. So, you have a lot of capital going out to a bunch of family members and those families are working to say, what is it that's going to keep us together and make us cohesive for everybody to elect to come back together?

So, we're using that learning of something that's happening that we had no control over and applying it in the family governance context. And, Adam, what we're finding is, the further I get away from an operating company, or the more [21:00] it's held through various structures like trusts and other things where somebody else controls it and I don't really feel like I'm an owner, I tend to be disinterested. So, a lot of the work we're doing is yes, we need to do good estate planning and put assets into long-term trusts and make sure we don't have a drag on the company because of estate taxes that could, you know, devastate operations or employees. But at the same time, can we give a share or shares in the company to next-gen family members, especially those that are active, so they have a tangible feel that they're part of something, part of a legacy, part of a vision that we've put forward in this company and that they actually physically own it?

There are probably a lot of estate planners that are cringing at that and we're not trying to create—

R. Adam Smith: Well, there's the challenge of the family office and the holding company versus the OpCo.

Bobby Stover: Correct.

R. Adam Smith: Number one. Number two, there's the C-corp versus the LLC and the tax flow-through, and then most importantly, there's the [22:00] possibility that as a common equity owner, there's no cash yield, so the only way you're going to make that money is if it actually monetizes. So, let's say you wanted to start a ten-billion-dollar family office or family enterprise, and you had a next-gen team and family members and staff, and you wanted to give the equivalent of a private equity fund. Let's say, the house has 20 points, and the staff has 10 points, have 50%, let's say, or even 5 points of the 20 points, or let's say 25% of the equity in common equity.

So, what if all of the assets are purchased and they're never sold? There’s a theoretical line, but there's no cash. There's no cash distribution.

Bobby Stover: Correct. That is a problem. I would say, if you deploy to full growth, ten-billion-dollar portfolio, that may not be prudent if all it is is invested in growth companies. So, going back to the growth strategy and the company capitalization strategy, Adam, that I talked about is, [23:00] am I buying good operating companies that will appreciate but also have good cash flow to fund some of these things?

So, I think it's portfolio construction and allocation with a lens toward, what is the growth strategy, what's the capital strategy, and then, you know, what is the shareholder liquidity strategy I need to think about?

So, what we found is, there are lots of great operating companies that have way more cash than they need on their balance sheet. One of the big ones is S-Corps. So, in the United States, I'm amazed when we meet with operating companies that are S-Corps and you talk to them and you say, hey, do you ever intend to sell this? And they say, no. And then, you look at their tax return. And now I'm going to, you know, for those that aren't tax people, there's a thing called AAA that sits on an S-corp return, and AAA is earnings that have already been taxed but you have not pulled the cash out of the company, right?

And the number of S-corp clients we talked to, Adam, that if they just did a little bit of restructuring on the balance sheet, they could pull all that AAA out, tax-free, [24:00] create some liquidity for the family for what they want to live on, but also redeploy that capital into other asset classes or other opportunities. But there's kind of this tax thing of, well, never take out the AAA because you might sell someday and that'll be basis.

Okay, well, we should challenge that premise of, even if we didn't have basis, if we took it off the balance sheet and redeployed it, aren't we better off long term, you know, in other asset classes that have different attributes than our core operating business?

R. Adam Smith: Yes, it's super complicated. I think what I'm getting at is, you know, leveraging all the expertise that a leading platform like yours has in so many categories. But today, there's more of an institutionalization of the family office, of the family enterprise.

Bobby Stover: Correct.

R. Adam Smith: And therefore, that drives scale and that drives sophistication, also bumping into the competition of private equity. And then, there's the human capital element. There's the governance element. And so, ultimately, even though there can be equity given, [25:00] it seems like, in my experience in family office and covering family offices and looking at this scale issue, is that it's not just enough to hire really smart people and to give equity, but also to have a little more collaboration to look at that portfolio construction and the structure of the equity and the vesting of it.

But really, I guess I'm getting at—and I'm kind of stuck on this topic with you as an expert—which is, okay, if you're building a family office or enterprise with a team, and that team is not in the lucky, you know, Silver Spoon Club—they have to earn it as opposed to having it—then, it's really important to make sure that that incentive plan, let's say, the equity plans, has a cash flow distribution element to it.

I'd like you to talk a little bit more for those that are really building family offices, next-gen, let's say, 30- or 40-year-olds, or even the sons and daughters. [26:00] How do they look at what's reasonable to structure for cash or distributions? And then, are there other ways to do it as well, maybe like revenue sharing, for example?

Bobby Stover: So, [there are] lots of different ways to do it, as I'm sure you would imagine, Adam. When people talk about the family office, sometimes it gets confused between the investment office and the administrative office. So, there are, you know, offices that do the tax, the legal, the administrative concierge of families. Those are a little harder to think about, how do I create a carry incentive or something? Maybe that's just a cash bonus based on performance or KPIs I hit.

Then, you're exactly right. If I'm redeploying capital and trying to create value, how do I incentivize the talent, but then how do I incentivize others? And there are a lot of different ways to think through that, both from tracking stocks, synthetic equity, a lot of different items that really come down to, as you said, Adam, modeling and portfolio construction for where we're going to [27:00] get that cash and how we're going to get that cash to incentivize folks.

And then, some of it may be, hey, when we construct the portfolio, there are pieces of the portfolio we're going to turn. Even though we are a family office, there are industries and things where we're going to capture value and provide liquidity to the family versus some long-term holds.

So, you know, I feel like I'm dodging the question a little bit. It's just so complex. And when we look at these for families, there are multiple models and analyses that are put together, Adam, as you said, with the group of advisors that are around that family: the external financial advisor, the PE team, the trust and estates team, the CPA, the lawyers. And really, that modeling scenario planning leads to a better outcome. And when we do that, we have a whole lot less surprise.

R. Adam Smith: Okay.

Bobby Stover: And we can dial it in.

And then, the final thing I'll say is, you know, a lot of people [28:00] ask us, what's the right dividend policy? I'm amazed at how many people haven't really looked at and put together a sensitivity analysis on what our expected growth is, what our expected free cash flow is, and then a sensitivity analysis. If we start taking that out versus redeploying it, you know, if we said we're going to grow at 10%, we take out seven or two, what does that look like, and then how can we do sensitivity analysis around that?

That really supports the conversation with the family and really supports the conversation with the management teams, and I'm surprised how much that isn't done.

R. Adam Smith: That's good. I would like to talk to you about a series of talks with you and your team across the different elements of constructing a family best practices [in the] family enterprise. We can definitely do that next year.

Bobby Stover: Excellent.

R. Adam Smith: That'd be good.

So, Bobby, you were recognized as a global leader at the FamCap 50 as a top advisor around your innovative approach to family wealth planning and family wealth management. So, talk a bit about [29:00] what's distinctive at EY or your approach to the family enterprise best practices.

That would be interesting.

Bobby Stover: Yes, so, I think the biggest thing, one, I already talked about, Adam, is this four-legged stool that we think you have to have those four strategies for long-term success, and each one is complex.

The second item is the breadth and depth of our team. So, you know, I'm a co-leader globally with Desmond [Soo Kwang] Teo and Lauri [Oinaala]—Lauri is out of EMEIA, Desmond's out of Singapore—and we try to share best practices globally. But then, in the US, if you look at our team, we're really bringing expertise in growth and in strategy and in tax and using a lot of our younger people. So, I think another distinction, Adam, is if we're supporting a family on governance, you know, I'm vintage 54 right now—I use vintage instead of age. If I walk in the room to a 20-year-old and start discussing governance, [30:00] it feels like their father is coming in to lecture them.

We spend a lot of time at EY training our young professionals, getting them up to speed, and having them have skills so that when we're dealing with governance or dealing with these issues across a family, the family is facing off with their peer group. A very well-trained professional is what tends to ease tension, create better dialogue, and allow us to create alignment more effectively.

And then, I think the other thing is, we've gotten into more experiential engagements with folks, Adam. So, instead of going back and forth in a PowerPoint tech, taking you out of your environment, bringing you into our environment to rapidly prototype and get alignment on major issues so we can get roadmaps to go forward and not be stuck.

So, I'd say those are the key items that I think differentiated us in the market.

R. Adam Smith: Well, it's working, EY is pretty big and it's not going anywhere. [31:00] So, I'm blessed to have had your comrades, as you know, at RSM with Karen Costa. After Tony Wood passed, she came on the show, which was nice, and she's doing great over there. And also, Valerie from Merrill Lynch was wonderful. And Emily Bouchard, before she left running the business at Hawthorn.

So, really fortunate to have leaders such as yourself here talking and educating. And you know, people reach out to you. So, they'll probably reach out to you as lawyers, family office investors, governance, or tax planning on LinkedIn. Is there another way you'd like people to reach out to you?

Bobby Stover: No, LinkedIn. I think my email is there: bobby.stover@ey.com. Adam, I really appreciate it. As you and I prep for this, EY feels very fortunate to be in the family enterprise space. [32:00] It's something that we're passionate about and want to give back to, just like a lot of the family enterprises that are in the space.

I really appreciate you reaching out and giving us the opportunity to come on and share some insights. And thanks to all those who joined live, I didn't even know you could do that on LinkedIn. So, there's a first for everything and constantly learning, Adam. So, appreciate it.

R. Adam Smith: That's great. I'm excited to know you better and we'll figure out some ways to work out with you and your team some more exposure and conversations around family enterprise structuring. Also, I'm sure that next year will be better for the Dallas Cowboys as a long-time fan.

We didn’t talk about them this year, but at least they were not at the other side of the Detroit Lions quarterback last week.

Bobby Stover: From my prior podcasts, or when I've been on podcasts, as you know, Adam, I tend to be a Tennessee Titans fan. So, other than it's great to go to Nashville and listen to country music, it's painful right now to go watch the Titans play.

So, we're in the same boat, and hopefully next year [33:00] for both of us better, more rising tides.

R. Adam Smith: Exactly. Well, this was a treat today. Thank you. Congratulations on all of your success and on EY's continued excellence in the market.

I would like to thank our Family Business Audiocast attendees today and in the future and our esteemed guest Bobby Stover. This is R. Adam Smith signing off. Stay tuned for the next episode of the Family Business Audiocast on LinkedIn.

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