Leadership In Law Podcast

S02E83 Turning Founders into Multi-Millionaires with Gabriela Smith

• Marilyn Jenkins • Season 2 • Episode 83

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When your goal is growing a business to a successful exit, having the right legal strategy can mean the difference between leaving millions on the table or walking away with maximum value. Meet Gabriela Smith, founder of GNS Law and creator of the Company X-Ray program, who has mastered the art of turning founders into multimillionaires.

Gabriela's fascinating journey from Argentina to building a successful Texas-based law practice offers a masterclass in leveraging cultural differences as business advantages. Having experienced life in emerging markets before moving to the United States, she uniquely understands both sides of international business transactions, making her invaluable to American companies expanding globally and foreign businesses entering the U.S. market.

What sets Gabriela apart is her revolutionary approach to business exits. Rather than waiting until an offer arrives, she advocates for proactive legal planning years before a sale. "The more you invest in your legal and finance operations before the sale, the smoother your deal will be and the more money you'll take," she explains. Through her Company X-Ray program, she conducts comprehensive legal audits at strategic intervals (5, 3, and 1 year before exit), identifying and eliminating what she colorfully calls the "rats" in your business before potential buyers discover them.

This approach yields dramatic results. Clients who follow her methodology experience smoother transactions, better terms, and significantly higher valuations. By contrast, businesses that wait until receiving an LOI often face reduced offers, tougher earnout structures, and deals that sometimes fall apart entirely when due diligence uncovers unexpected issues.

Reach Gabriela here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriela-n-smith/
https://gnslawpllc.com
Exit-Ed podcast:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6sjzr2bRsxiPOJLnLBZ2nx
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/exit-ed/id1813911047
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Exit-Ed

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Leadership in Law podcast with host Marilyn Jenkins. Cut through the noise, get actionable insights and inspiring stories delivered straight to your ears your ultimate podcast for navigating the ever-changing world of law firm ownership. In each episode, we dive deep into the critical topics that matter most to you, from unlocking explosive growth to building a thriving team. We connect you with successful firm leaders and industry experts who share their proven strategies and hard-won wisdom. So, whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey as a law firm owner, the Leadership in Law podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law podcast. I'm your host, marilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guest, gabriela Smith, to the show today. Gabriela is an entrepreneur and attorney had founded GNS Law in 2014, a boutique law firm serving family offices, business owners and investment funds. Originally from Argentina, she earned her political science degree and Juris Doctorate, both summa cum laude, and founded her Texas-based firm when her children were toddlers. Gabriela is the creator of the company X-Ray and hosts the Exit Ed podcast, interviewing founders about business exits. She turns founders into multimillionaires. She has extensive board experience, including serving on international leadership of Texas Board of Directors, where she led the construction committee for the 30-plus charter school system, and leadership roles in various legal associations. She's known for strategic legal counsel in complex deals across technology and energy sectors and is a dynamic international speaker, presenting in both English and Spanish. Gabriela partners with her husband, tim, in multiple ventures, including GNS Law, an angel syndicate and an M&A advisory business, while raising two teenagers and too many trisnalgers. I'm excited to have you here, gabriela, welcome.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, marilyn, so good to be here with you today.

Speaker 2:

All right, excellent. I'm excited about hearing about your journey. So can you tell us a bit about your leadership journey, how you got to where you are and chose your field of practice?

Speaker 3:

Right. I mean it takes a lot of work, dedication and passion, I think, to reach a place where you not only you know have a level of success you know personally, financially, but also love your work. Of the issues with our profession is most lawyers hate what they do and feel boxed into a boring process which, by and large, depending on what you do, you could be stuck in a very boring place. But really for us it's always been working with passion, with really pouring our heart into what we do, so I think that's the key.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic, and how did you get to so? From Argentina to the USS, you work with international businesses and families that are in different countries and the business span multiple countries.

Speaker 3:

Correct. So I was born in Argentina and then I spent a few, most of my teenage years, actually lived in Bolivia, and that was after my parents split and there was the whole situation. We landed in Bolivia where my mom's side of the family was at the time, and then, in 2001, I had the opportunity to move to the US and I did and I met my husband and then we got married, very young and very happy, still happily married. I think this year's our 24th year and and so, yeah, I mean I think part of me is, is part of you know, I'm not I'm not saying proving yourself, because I'm not. I'm never trying to prove anything to anybody, possibly to myself.

Speaker 3:

But once you come to a country where you didn't grow up and you're learning from scratch like you're learning the cultural norms, the nuances, the language, all of that stuff it really does put you in a position where you want to. You just want to achieve more, and I think that's been a big driver for me and and just having fun, I mean, the US is the country, if anywhere in the world is, where you can really make your dreams, you know, come true and if you value that enough and you have the discipline to do it. I think you can do it. So that's really what we're leaving, I think. I think I can say I'm probably leaving the American dream. You know a little bit cliche, but I think it's it's pretty good.

Speaker 2:

It certainly sounds like it, absolutely so. You knew you wanted to be an attorney and you got into law. And what made you really want to focus on international leadership and helping business owners become multimillionaires?

Speaker 3:

Right. So that's two separate questions, I think. So developing the international side of what we do came natural to me Because, you know, being from Argentina, having lived in an emerging market like Bolivia for a few years and getting to see very contrasting cultures like between Argentina and Bolivia, and then coming to the US, now you're not in an emerging market, you're in actually, you know the first world, the top economy, the top. You know, even from the economic, from the philosophical. I mean, we develop in the US so many of the new ideas, from business, from so many different perspectives. You really are at the top.

Speaker 3:

We found that American businesses needed a lawyer who understood the other side of the world. And so for me, having done my upper education, my graduate and college education in the U S, it gave me that U S side of being married to an American. You know you're, you're, you're American boy, you know California person. It gave me an in into the culture. That was very valuable actually my professional life. So that allowed me to feel very comfortable moving in an international economic system and moving between countries. So for me, if my clients told me, hey, I'm going to invest money in, you know, in Ecuador, africa, you know some third world country, some part in Asia, I'm like, ok, well, you know, that's the emerging market. Like cultural things are different. The economy moves, you know, and you kind of get a sense as to have that side of that part of the world moves, and that that came very natural to me. Same if I had a foreign you know what we call a foreign founder or a foreign company coming in here. You know they bring their culture with them and I've been really good at, you know, soft landing them into what is it like to do business in the US. So the international came just really, really You'll find this funny maybe, but having started my career at a larger US firm, I don't think that was actually valued, because I actually got a comment once that said oh, you know, english is your second language, you know we're concerned about you, and which is total nonsense. It's actually another associate that told me that and I'm like what am I doing here? Why am I in a place where they don't value my cultural background, my language background, which I think prompted me even more to go on my own and, you know, hang my own shingle, as they say, and think of ways of how can I just do what I want to do and I'm passionate about and use my entire persona, my bilingual, my skin color, whatever it is and use 100% of that in an area where it would be valued. And so the international business became really a good part.

Speaker 3:

And then your second, I think, that we talked about we turn founders into multimillionaires, which is something that we do right. So from doing so much of this international work, you know, on the business side, you know, eventually our clients were like, well, we're selling our company, we're doing this. So we started doing M&A. And then, you know, we became lawyers that really, you know, work with founders and entrepreneurs who scale a business, business owners, and then one day they sell a company, they have a closing and the next day they have 15, 20, 30, 50, $60 million in their account. It changes their whole life.

Speaker 3:

So we started focusing a lot on those founders. We know them very well, we've been working with them for 11 years now in a GNS law, and so now we're really focusing on that, maintaining our international side, because a large portion of our founders are still international. We get to work with them and have a lot of fun with, you know, helping these people make those huge transitions from regular business owner to multi-multi-millionaire, so that's really fun and we just keep it spicy like that. You know, we keep it fun.

Speaker 2:

Nice. Now, when you're working with a company and I see that you do you know you work with the Angel Syndicate to the M&A. You're from start, from idea, literally to exit right.

Speaker 3:

Yes. So, yeah, we do absolutely, and that's part of what we're trying to do at my firm and I was sharing a little bit with you is, while we do, you know, look for that exit and the clients that are trying to exit, really the work starts, you know, much, much earlier. Ideally, you should be talking to your M&A lawyer really at least five years before you're ready to sell. So we do start like we have examples of clients that have, you know, speaking of the international, we have examples of clients that have come to us like in 2017, 2018, where would they just we're just now starting in the US market and then they came to us. We helped them scale you know the legal systems, the contracts, the processes, that all this stuff in the US and then they sold. So we have beautiful scenarios and cases where we've actually helped them sell from, you know, from scale from day one, forming the LLC, forming their corporation, doing their basic papers.

Speaker 3:

And I love to see, actually, once you know the deals that we end up doing, where we actually help the client from day one, I love to see our paperwork get approved by the buyer side, right, because there are so many things that can go wrong in a deal and for some of the clients we've done restructurings in the middle.

Speaker 3:

You know, two, three years before the sale we say, well, let's put the assets in different places, let's change this thing, let's restructure the employees, let's get these papers. All of that stuff ends up in somebody's due diligence. You know data room when they sell and you know it's usually going to be a fifth year associate. You know, at a top 20 law firm in the country, I just love when my dog breeds are getting tested by by the buyers and I love to see that they're working. You know that they like yeah, yeah, this is right. You know we've known some pretty complex restructurings of entire companies and I love it when you get the the approve, a check Mark from the big law firms. They're not easy. They're actually easy. They're pretty tough.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's incredible. So you're you're so in the. You know, if I was starting a business in, say, argentina and Panama or whatever and I wanted to expand to the U? S market, that's something that you could help me do and then we can prepare for M and A. So that's something that's doing really well overseas and you can help me cross, border it and bring it in and structure correctly so that now I'm set for yeah, so typically I mean so we get, say, company out of, and I can think of so many.

Speaker 3:

I mean so many like, let's say, hypothetically right, a company out of Spain that is a manufacturing company very successful in Spain and they have a special technology and they say we want to start our affiliate or our subsidiary in the US, we want to sell it to the US market. My type of company would typically come to us and we'll look at what they have in Spain and we'll look at what they want to have here. We go through the planning. We work obviously with the CPAs to find the most optimal you know tax structure and then we help them from you know the entity formation to hiring the first employees. You know we've had clients that, oh no, we don't need a lawyer to hire until, like, we send them our guideline it's called Welcome to GNS Law and we show them a blueprint for running your business in the US. So these are the checkpoints that you should be looking at and this is when you call me. So we actually have a ton of prepackaged information that we don't charge. We just want them to have it, want them to have our information, and then come back to us, so we so, with that type of client, we would typically onboard them and again form, form their legal entities, help them, hire people, teach them. We love to teach our clients because we want them to understand. Obviously, we don't need them to be lawyers we're there for that but we do.

Speaker 3:

I am huge on making sure our clients understand. This is why you have this indemnification clause. Or, if you don't want it, this is what could happen, and we're not fatalists like, oh my God, you need to have this. You know, ultimately, as a business owner myself, as an investor myself, my job is really to tell my clients you know the education piece, which is best case scenario, but you know worst case scenario, but you can walk the line on whichever side you want. I'm not ever going to say no, you're crazy. Clients understand. They're pretty smart, so they know.

Speaker 2:

I love that you. You give them the outline. So, instead of them coming to a mystery of this is what I want, and I'm not sure. Even before retaining your firm you're like, here's an outline of what has to happen.

Speaker 3:

Correct.

Speaker 3:

Okay so and honestly, you know, again, it's part of giving people value. Right, I don't want to, I don't want to be a taker. The legal relationships is very much I take, I take your fee, I take your money. I take your money, I give you a document, I take a lot of your money. So you know, and I think that's one of the wrong things, the things that culturally, you know, we're known for that as a, as a, as a cool. You know in the movies how lawyers are portrayed and and then people come to that. People come actually looking for services, you know, with some expectation that they've seen in the movie and, and so part of us giving them information is education and a little bit of rewiring. You know what is truly a law firm. I'm actually about to put.

Speaker 3:

I just drafted a blog on what is the lawyer's role, like really, yeah, what is it? Because people will come to us like even you can see some of the way people approach you, you know, and especially with the international clients, the approach is a very hierarchical and respectful. I sure I love that, you're, you know, but at the end of the day, let's meet at the human level. That's where I want to meet with my clients. It's like I'm a human, you're a human, sure, I'm an attorney. I got a paper that says license, whatever, but I'm a human, you're a human, sure, I'm an attorney, I got a paper that says license, whatever, but I'm a human. And so I like to come at that level with at the firm. We all like to come at the human level with our clients, which, ultimately, is what leads to the stronger relationship.

Speaker 2:

So so, yeah, I agree, I find that that's one of the things with my clients when I'm helping them do you know different things, add value, do videos, something like that. People do business, they know like and trust right, and a lot of people in the US I don't know so much about overseas, but attorneys are. It feels like you're unapproachable and you want to be that. You want to be someone they can talk to because you can save them so much money and make them so much money.

Speaker 3:

Right, and you know that's a great point that you touch right, like, and one of the, I think, value systems that we use and it sounds very self-serving, but I can show you it's almost like a scientific like, it's really I can do probably scientific data on this. So you know. I said you know I'm about to draft a blog what is the role of the attorney? The role of the attorney, obviously, except if your litigation is too late, right, like, the role of the attorney there is, yeah, save me. Right, like, save me. But the true role of the attorney really is planning and strategy. Right, it is not to draft documents. It is not, especially with AI Now you have AI, ai to draft documents. It is not, especially with ai now you have ai, I can draft documents.

Speaker 3:

But the true role of the attorney at least how I think it's been evolving and it's going to continue to evolve is planning and strategy. Yes, so clients say often you know potential clients, yeah, I'll call you when I need it. Honestly, you need me right now, like, if you own a business, you need me, period, because you are great at building a business, you're great at the idea, you land the idea. You have manufacturing solutions. You're great at selling, but you were not trained as a lawyer, right, and so you especially enter the new market.

Speaker 2:

I go into into the M&A yeah exactly so.

Speaker 3:

You're not trained as a lawyer and there's a lot of information that I have that you need to have, and it doesn't relate to me drafting a paper or getting this contract ready or you know these a lot. It obviously we do all that, but really there is a conversation that should be happening between you and your attorney that you're not happening. And then let's put that in money money terms, right, the less conversations that you have with your attorney about the key strategic points in your business, the more liability you're going to occur. I mean, I can almost tell you that is almost scientific and I can't say here's data. I probably have the data in my system, which is I probably need an AI sentient to go in and dig it up, but we do. We do see the clients that are more proactive, the ones that ask us to continuously audit their systems, to review their contracts before, especially big ones, right, like little contracts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

But sizable companies here we're talking about sizable companies that don't have an internal attorney, right, I'm talking about people who are actually doing commerce. You know I'm not talking about, you know, restaurant business. I'm not talking about that kind of thing. I'm talking about, you know, like lower middle market and middle market, especially when they don't have an attorney, just to be clear. And so when you're active, reactively to your legal issues, then you're going to leave money on the table, like you're leaving money on the table because you're bringing legal issues, it doesn't matter what. There's very few situations, because people just generate legal problems constantly. But if you come to me and tell me I am about to do this, let's get on the call. There's a few questions I'll ask you. Let's say, if you're a service provider to another company, I will ask you is that, what service are you going to provide? Is your client regulated? What does that mean? Is it a bank? Is it an insurance company? Is it a hospital or is there any other regulation that might apply to them? And then trickle back to you because of how maybe the contract will be structured? And then, if you're pushing liabilities to you on a regulation, should you push back? And then we measure what's the business case for, maybe assuming it or not assuming it? Hear me out.

Speaker 3:

In that little combo I said nothing about whether you can market your service, whether you're your service might be the best. What I just told you is something that I guarantee you no founder business owner you know at that, you know revenue level would really think about. Is that business regulated and are they pushing any regulation liabilities on my business? That actually happens all the time. If you're a service provider to a Fortune 500 company right, fortune 500 company is lawyered up to here Number one and you're not, if you don't have an in-house counsel, you're dead in the water. I mean, now you're negotiating with, you know top trained attorneys and their top big law firms behind those companies, and here you are a little bit naked, going into a two, three, four million, 10 million dollar contract. I don't know. So think about that and I've seen so many people just, I don't need it.

Speaker 3:

I call the lawyer when I have a problem. No, I just showed you an example. You call me when you're about to do a big project. You call me regularly, once or twice a year, and we talk about the trajectory of your business. What are you doing? What are you not doing? So see, this is, this is what lawyers are for. They're not, in my view, at least in the practice. You know, in the, in these contract commerce, you know transactional side, we're really more than drafting contracts. It just goes way, way beyond that.

Speaker 2:

Well, I absolutely agree with the strategy part. I do think that one of the things that people don't think about, especially in the older business I have a contract, everybody's on contract, but as tax law changes, as regulations change, everything has to be revisited. I was chatting with someone the other day that has contracts that have been on the table for 17 years and then revisited with some of their oldest clients. Oh my God, yeah. And so now they're like OK, now we have, we need to bring all those up. Especially if you're thinking of an M&A. You've got to bring everything because that's value or not, or value reliability to the buyer.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. And since you bring the M&A, we actually created a program and I think we're the only ones, the only M&A sell side firm, that actually does it. We actually created the company X-Ray right Because after a few deals where we saw where a client would come to us years in advance and say, hey, Gabby, I'm running this business, here's my revenue usually several. Gabby, I'm running this business, here's my revenue, usually several million dollars, and I'm thinking about selling my company in about three, four or five years. I want you to review it Literally. I've had clients say I want you to review my entire legal situation, all my contracts, my structures, and I want you to tell me if I'm doing things right.

Speaker 3:

Okay, the clients that did that actually sold in pretty smooth M&A transactions. Where they in any M&A, there's going to be some issue, right, Of course. But the issues that have come up were minimal, minimal Sometimes and, honestly, mostly they relate to tax. You know you didn't pay taxes in that state. You know that that's more of a cpa thing than it is a legal thing let it be fixed, yeah yeah, and then the terms of those deals actually tend to be more favorable to the sellers.

Speaker 3:

Because if you have a messy company, then the buyer will actually, you know, money increasing. You know reps and warranties. They will, you know, have tough earnouts. You know I'm going to pay you X millions but you need to be, you know, earn them over the next three years with these insanely, you know, insane, you know requirements and all these things. So this, the more you, the more money you invest in your legal and finance operations prior to the sale, the smoother your deal will be and the more money you'll take we and then that totally makes sense because they're going to charge you for the potential liability.

Speaker 3:

It's no different than taking a and retrofitting your your kitchen, yeah you're talking about, and then you know, and then we've seen the flip side. We've seen clients that have come to us at the moment of sale. They say, hey, help me sell my company, okay, I got an loi. So they give us the loi. This is the first time we meet them, you know I've got an loi.

Speaker 3:

You've been in business for five years. I know nothing about you. And then once we dig, it's the, the rats. The rats are right there Now, the rats in your business, or you can call it your dead bodies the buyer's going to look at that right. And so, even from a buyer intuition perspective, the more rats that you have under the hood, the less confidence you're giving to your buyer.

Speaker 3:

And think about this. Put yourself in the buyer's side for a minute. If you're a private equity firm about to dump you know $20 million in this founder and you open the hood and you're like, wow, it's rotten, it's good, you still have the contracts, it looks beautiful, right, it looks beautiful from a financial maybe. But then you have, you know, all kinds of legal rats hidden's going on. And then we've seen the lawyers getting tougher because now they're like, okay, well, we asked them this information. They gave us crap, they don't have it or it's invalid. Then we asked them for this other.

Speaker 3:

And suddenly everybody starts getting on the paranoia like People will go to the worst case scenario Is this company even good? So that, little by little, is diminishing your value, because it's just a lot of business too. It's like do I trust you, yeah, so having those rats actually cost you a lot of money, and that's where we come in. We need to want, we want to get rid of the rats. The tough part is you know when a business owner is running their business and it's all good, it's is. You know when a business owner is running their business and it's all good, it's all good, I have no problems. I don't need a lawyer, I have no problems. Well, the question is what are the hidden problems that you don't know? Do you want to find out about those?

Speaker 3:

problems with a buyer at the same time that the buyer is finding out. Right, you want to find out before we get rid of them. And then the buyer doesn't see them and the way we get rid of them is we redo your thing, we redo that contract, we renegotiate with that client, we reach out, you know we're about to terminate, we have a termination of employee process where it's not going to create, you know, liabilities for retaliation or whatever situation. There's a lot of stuff right, and so that's why we have this company X, or just to bring it back, I diverted a little bit that the company X-ray does exactly that, which is we do audits. We audit you. At least. We want to see you five years before before you want to sell. Then we do it again in three years and then the year before we keep adjusting, we leave you beautiful. Buyer comes in, sees clean under the hood. You know, if anything, maybe there's a little dust. We're just going to put this thing, dust it off and we're good.

Speaker 2:

Right, I love that you do that five, three and one years Because you know. The thing is that you know you come in with an LOI and you find out that your contract is a problem. You need to go get a new contract with every client you have. How many clients will you lose every client you have? How many clients will you lose If you started that five years before your exit? Then you have time to replace those clients that maybe a new contract's a deal breaker for them. So I love that your company, x-ray, is unique to you guys and that you can find those hidden problems that will come up and help people clean that up.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And the other funny thing is, yeah, we actually put the clients under pressure. If this isn't a go get the, you know we give them a data room, we give them a document request, we mimic a sale, because it will also put them under pressure, like the buyer will like when you start due diligence. It's not like, hey, go and take a vacation, come back to me in six months, no, in a week, buyer wants to see all your costs, all of the things that they want, like everything you know. And so I tell my clients in a week, I want to see that and you will. You have no idea, from a psychological perspective, the value that that is bringing. And I had a client tell me, gabby, I realized all my agreements and certain agreements were in writing, so I had to scan. Tell me, gabby, I realized all my agreements and certain agreements were in writing, so I had to scan everything one by one.

Speaker 3:

And I'm like you're welcome because you don't need scanning documents until 3 am when you have, you know, an LOI to buy your company for 40 million, and time is of the essence. You don't want to have to worry about that. You need to be worried about talking to, you know, the buyer, keeping them happy, keeping the conversation and anticipating their next questions, not documents.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic. Wow, it sounds like you definitely are the person to come to whenever you're in the beginning to think about either starting work in the U? S or starting to think about selling in five years. I hadn't heard the five years I I had heard three years prior to M&A, but five years certainly gives you time to get everything in the road.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, the reason, though, Marilyn, is because when you get a due diligence request, some might be three years. So, looking three years back, some may be five years and some might be seven years.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And it depends on the law firm that is auditing or doing due diligence on behalf of the buyer.

Speaker 3:

Okay, and then and I just want to throw a nugget here, because again, what, what clients? And actually in our company, x-ray, you know material, we, we tell our clients here. Here's the contrast that we see you've been building your business for, let's say, 10 years. You're, you've sweated for this business. You've, you know, you may have missed your kids event. Now you're, you're giving your life to this business, you know everything about your business.

Speaker 3:

And then you get an loi and then the buyer brings their lawyer at the level of like, at the anywhere between 10 and like 75 to a hundred million dollar exit value, the lawyer appointed to your deal would probably be at a mid-level. You know, like a 29 year old kid sitting in the 50th floor in New York, dallas, la. You know, palo Alto, whatever. Kids never run a business. Kid doesn't know what you know. It doesn't. Maybe it doesn't even have a kid. It doesn't know. And the kid is asking you for some document, like you know. Give me, you know, the contract signed by the employee that left your company three years ago and show proof that the employee turned in the computer. And you're literally going to lose your sleep over that because at the end of the day, they hold the keys and they have the ear to the buyer, to the business people on the buyer side. So, again, an M&A transaction is just much more complex than I'm. Going to sell my business, I need to get a lawyer, blah, blah, blah. It's like it's an entire project.

Speaker 2:

It can last months, and so getting ready really, really in a responsible way, should be done much earlier and it's, and it's more than just a pnl, and it's more than just getting your numbers and in order you need to have. Yeah, it's more than having your quick book set up everything comes together.

Speaker 3:

I mean again, I just want to invite you know, any business owners listening right, like, put yourself on the on, on the on the side of the buyer. Think about the time you bought your first home You're like, hmm, what's in this house? I'm going to get this house inspected. I'm going to call the plumber because there's something going on. This doesn't flush well and maybe like a tiny thing. But when we're buying, we're picky and we should be. Yeah, it's no different when, especially if you got a $50 million deal on the table, it should be picky. And they will be picky and they will pick and they will make you frustrated because they will pick on the things that you think don't matter. But this is why I'm here to tell you now, five years, three years and one year before they do matter, because it matters to them, it matters to you.

Speaker 3:

So I want you to do that X-ray. You need it Like you're going to be in a much better position. And then you know, kind of a funny but not funny. You know you won't end up divorced and you won't, you know, get you know sick in the middle or you know not sleep because we'll get up. We put you in a such, such a better position that you're going to go in with confidence and if you do an X-ray, you actually have already pseudo, done a due diligence Then we're going to put you under pressure, like we're going to show you why don't you have these documents? What is this? These documents signed on one side, is not signed on. What is this Right? Why, right? Why? Why do you have any documents? What? Why do you? What is this? What? What's your onboarding process? What?

Speaker 2:

all kinds of stuff, all kinds of stuff I love that, that you have your your finger on the pulse of international m&a and growth and moving over here it just sounds like, especially with your company x-ray, your as your company is one to definitely go to if you're looking to exit anytime soon, or even open over here and be prepared for that Absolutely, I would say that, all right, fantastic, I love it. So I know that our listeners might want to reach out to you, connect with you. How's the best way to reach out to you?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so we have a website JaniceLoaPLLCcom. Anybody interested in working with us can certainly go into the contact form. Fill out the form and we have team members will reach out to you know to talk to us. And if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, we have Gabriela Smith in. My tagline is turning funders into multimillionaires. We do have a few Gabriela Smiths on LinkedIn, but not too many, and then obviously I'll make sure that link is there.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I think we need to talk about our podcast. It's also a great way not just to connect but also hear from other founders, and we interview founders from all over the country and the world. We've had people from the US. We've had people from Spain, central America. We're going to be interviewing different people who have sold their businesses here in the US. We've had people from Spain, central America. We're going to be interviewing different people who have solar businesses here in the US. So that's a great way to get in touch with founders and we're creating a community where they can talk to each other. But for now, you know we're launching our very. We did our first episode. It's an intro to the podcast, and then our first founder interview will be posted here in a few days. Oh, fantastic.

Speaker 2:

Well, awesome, we'll make sure that those URLs, including the link to your podcast, is including the show notes today. And, gabriel, this has been very exciting, very interesting chat and I wish you great luck and thank you so much for coming here.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, marilyn. Same to you. I love the work you're doing, so keep going, thank you.

Speaker 4:

Thanks for joining me today for this episode. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take the next step with a digital strategist to help you grow your law firm, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to lawmarketingzonecom to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, thanks for listening to Leadership in Law podcast and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode on this journey.

Speaker 1:

There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the same success. Head over to our website at lawmarketingzonecom. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources and stay up to date on the latest episodes. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep leading with vision and keep growing your firm.

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Marilyn Jenkins

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