Valuing Your Business With Melanie Russell | E020
Putting a price on your business.
In this episode of Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, talks with Melanie Russell, President of Kalex Valuations. Melanie Russell, is a business evaluator who does so to meet the needs of businesses for a range of issues like MNA and family law issues.
Episode Highlights:
● 01:16 – Melanie Russell, explains what he does for a living.
● 03:18 – What does the process of valuation look like?
● 04:56 – What types of metrics does she use to come up with a number?
● 07:00 – Valuation is ultimately a finance-driven study.
● 10:07 – How is valuation looked at differently by different roles that people play?
● 12:13 – What are some of the key factors that add to high valuations?
● 15:00 – How much education or push-back does she get when dealing with valuations?
● 16:32 – How does she go about normalizing expenses back into the cash flow?
● 19:26 – How much does sweat equity create push back during the valuation process?
● 23:36 – Melanie Russell discusses tax planning and estate freezes.
3 Key Points
1. Cash flow is generally what drives investors.
2. Liquidity is one the biggest difference between private company valuations and public company valuations.
3. Currently, the trend appears to be more capital-based sophisticated purchases versus just strategic ones.
Tweetable Quotes:
● “I am by background a legacy CA, CPA that specializes in the area of valuations.” – Melanie Russell
● “Valuations are business assets that are used for various purposes, whether it’s trying to sell as business, whether it is trying to transition to the next generation or to employees, whether it is a dispute.” – Melanie Russell
● “My value add is telling business owners or asset owners what someone might pay based on logical, rational thinking.” – Melanie Russell
Resources Mentioned:
● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact
● jasonpereira.ca – Website
● Linkedin – Melanie Russell
● Kalexvaluations.com – Website for Kalex Valuations
● Linkedin – Melanie Russell’s Phone Number: (416) 488-9590 Ext. 225
● Melanie@Kalexvaluations.com – Melanie Russell’s Email
Full Transcript:
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners podcast. You will hear about industry insights with award-winning financial planner and entrepreneur, Jason Pereira through the interviews with different experts, with their stories and advice. You will learn how you can navigate the challenges of being an entrepreneur, plan for success and make the most of your business and life. And now your host, Jason Pereira.
Jason Pereira: Hello, and welcome to financial planning for Canadian business owners. I'm your host, Jason Pereira. Just before we get started, just a reminder to visit JasonPereira.ca to sign up for my newsletter, where you'll receive notifications of all future podcasts, blog posts, and other goings on.
Jason Pereira: And now onto today's show, Today on the show I have Melanie Russell of Kalex Valuations. Melanie is a business valuator, which is a bit self explanatory. She basically values businesses and does so to meet their needs of a range of client issues, including MNA and family law issues. And with that, here's my interview with Melanie.
Jason Pereira: Hello, Melanie.
Melanie Russell: Hello, how are you?
Jason Pereira: Good. Thank you for taking your quarantine time to talk to us about the exciting world of valuations.
Melanie Russell: My pleasure, and it's very exciting that world of valuations.
Jason Pereira: Well, it can be. So Melanie Russell of Kalex Valuations, tell us about what it is you do.
Melanie Russell: So I am by background a legacy CA, CPA that specialized in the area of valuations. So valuations are businesses, assets are used for various purposes, whether it's trying to sell a business, whether it's trying to transition to the next generation, or to employees, whether it is a dispute and you're having a fight with the other shareholders or partners, or a family law matter where you have to determine what the values are.
Melanie Russell: So many different purposes of valuations. So we calculate the value under the assumption that everyone will pay for an asset pending on what the market conditions are, the future cash flows look like, what the risks of the particular asset are. It's basically a finance type of approach, is what we do.
Jason Pereira: Excellent. So, I mean, when you really think about it and I've had this conversation, several occasions, several people, it's actually a little bit bonkers that most business owners, their largest asset tends to be their business in itself.
Jason Pereira: And from day to day, they have no true idea of what the market's going to pay for that. Maybe they've got some idea from transactions that have happened elsewhere, but they typically get in their heads, some sort of number they feel it's worth based on what it's worth to them.
Jason Pereira: I always say that this conversation usually goes one of two ways, depending on the context of why we're doing it. There's the when they want to sell, it's the trying to explain to them that not everybody's baby is pretty, and that maybe that's not the highest valuation you're imagining your head's not doable.
Jason Pereira: And then the counterpoint to that is when you're looking in the middle of a divorce, nobody wants to have a super high valuation because that's the case I literally had. I literally had some business owners say, "Well, if she wants to buy it for that," or vice versa, "if he wants to buy it for that he can buy it for that because," so it's a little bit contextual.
Jason Pereira: So let's talk about the process of valuation first and foremost. So when you go in, what's the process look like? What do you ask for? What do you get involved with? What is it you're looking at to find from business owners in order to slap a price tag on this thing?
Melanie Russell: Okay. So most of the time I'm acting as an independent valuator. And so my value add is telling owners, telling business owners or asset owners, what someone might pay based on logical, rational thinking. So looking at the baby, is the baby pretty, not pretty need some improvements, dressing up a little bit, but if you would put it on the market, what would someone pay?
Melanie Russell: So my role is generally is to act independently as if I was acting on the part of a purchaser and advising the purchaser and saying, "Okay, here's the asset. I need to get an understanding of it. I need to understand what drives the cash flows, what kind of risks that are related to that business, who they compete with, what the customer base is, what the supply chain looks, what the balance sheet looks like." So I'm really getting a, I'll call it diligence, doing a decent level of diligence, to try to get an understanding of what the future cash flows might be and what the risks of achieving those future cash flows might be.
Melanie Russell: And as if I would be going to potential purchaser and saying, "Here, I've done my work, I think you should be offering $10 million dollars or $5.00 or just walk away." So the general approach to this is collecting a bunch of information and looking, trying to do some due diligence and understanding the market overall.
Jason Pereira: So basically taking in income statements, balance sheets, other information, [inaudible 00:04:41] the business, looking at the industry. And then once you have all that, I mean, you mentioned cash flows already, is the primary method that you're utilizing discounted cashflow analysis, or are you looking at comparable sales, different multiples? Like what different type of metrics or foundational inputs can you use to come up with a number?
Melanie Russell: Okay, interesting. So there are lots of items and documents that will be requested. And just to throw a bit of a loop into this, there are different levels of valuation insurance, just like there's, different levels of due diligence someone can do. So you can engage a value, we're to do what I'll call a quick and dirty, which is a lower level valuation or a medium level or a high level.
Melanie Russell: So depending what level someone needs, that'll dictate how much due diligence and how many documents are obtained. Now in terms of what you do with those documents in terms of the approaches that you're asking, the general theory is that cash is what drives investors, right? So if I'm going to look at, or you and I are going to look at buying something in a rational or logical market condition, we're going to be looking at what is the cashflow we're going to generate as the owner going forward.
Melanie Russell: So I'd say discounted cash flow's a very common approach. Now the reality is for a lot of smaller midsize businesses, they don't necessarily have the ability to put projections together or budgets, and it's probably all in the owner's head. Putting it down on paper can be a little bit of a challenge.
Melanie Russell: So you often look, as you said, look at past results to try to use that as a guide to what might happen in the future. So valuators often look at past results, but in theory, if the past results are not going to happen again, we should throw those out, because we're really looking at future.
Melanie Russell: And obviously, as you said, if we can get market comps, wonderful. But the reality in most, if you're valuing a business or you're valuing a particular intangible asset piece of software, something, the ability to find a comparable asset is pretty challenging. It's not like looking at a couple of houses within a certain area and seeing a whole bunch of recent sales and just adjust because roof of one was done recently and wasn't on the other. One has a pool, one doesn't. It's much more challenging on the comparable approach for small and midsize businesses.
Jason Pereira: How much of this has to do with the industry that they're in? I mean, we see just absurd valuations, for example, in the software industry compared to say, someone manufacturing a widget. When I say absurd, just relatively speaking, multiples you see, even public markets are just enormously different. How much of that has an impact?
Melanie Russell: That's an excellent point. And that's one of the big issues for valuators. Valuation is ultimately a finance driven study. And we often look to the public markets to say, "What are all these investors doing?" Because it's such a deep market and there's much information as opposed to looking at privately held businesses.
Melanie Russell: The problem is there's a lot of differences between the small, midsize businesses, and the public companies. So one of the differences in the multiples. The obvious one is going to be that if I buy private company A, I can't just sell it the next day, if all of a sudden I say, "Oops, I need some money to pay off the debt because the pandemic hit and we have some challenges." I have to get some liquidity. It could be very, very long process.
Melanie Russell: So one of the big differences between public and private company valuations is the liquidity or marketability aspect of getting access to your money.
Melanie Russell: But yeah, back to your question about industries, yes, industries have a huge, the particular industry has a big impact. And often you'll see transactions in one particular company then at one particular industry and they are absurdly high, and there's another industry isn't. But if purchasers are out there in that industry, paying those absurd multiples, then it's hard to rationalize that one particular business should be a lot different than what activities going on in that business industry.
Jason Pereira: Have you found like in your experience that like you've had cases where people have anchored on maybe the wrong industry. I mean, I'll use, for example, like enterprise software, SAS software, like you're talking like 10 X multiples of revenue, not cashflow.
Jason Pereira: I've had bricks and mortar people I've talked to who like, "Oh, I don't know. I think it's worth that." Right? I'm just like, "wow." Unless you figured out how to deliver that service online, repeatable with no human beings, I don't know that, that's right.
Jason Pereira: Have you found that, that's been as, especially as business [inaudible 00:08:52] expanded, has that been a bigger issue going forward?
Melanie Russell: It is, and often that's because you have limited information, and you hear that so and so sold their business for X. And you say, "Well, my business is like that or will be like that in five years, for sure. No problem, just wait."
Melanie Russell: But that may not be the reality, because someone buying the business now is going to assess the business as it is right now. They're not going to say in five years. The other factor is that you can have a business where someone comes in and looks at it and says, "This is a nice tuck-in or this is a great strategic purchase, and I'm going to pay a little bit more for it." So there's also those differences. So every transaction, every purchaser in theory will pay something different.
Jason Pereira: So speaking of that, let's talk about different types of purchasers, right? Some ones I'll throw out there. You'll have a strategic buyer who maybe wants to basically buy that business because, hey, it's completely scalable. They can just take the client list, add it to their business, take no overhead.
Jason Pereira: Or it'll be strategic in that it's a complimentary or same business. So they're buying more market share, or they're going to sell to the same customers. They have both sides of the product.
Jason Pereira: And then you have kind of like investors, outside of that. So can you talk to how these people, these different types look at valuation differently?
Melanie Russell: Yeah, that's a great question. So, I went through valuation courses and the standard thought was, "Well, if there's only one special purchaser, that person is not going to add or offer anything extra over and above the sort of financial or intrinsic value." The reality is when you have purchasers and vendors who have full information, or they all do their due diligence, the vendors may have an idea of what the purchasers are going to do, and with that asset, they might have some insight into some extra benefits realized.
Melanie Russell: The other thing, years ago, when I went through the program, the idea was that financial investors would not pay more than someone a competitor, for example, who might be able to instead of just bring in that customer list and not have any additional costs.
Melanie Russell: Whereas you or I buying as a financial investor, we'd have those step bottom line costs, and we're not going to achieve as much. But with a lot of the financial engineering over the past 10 years, that reduced cost of capital to financial investors, sophisticated financial purchasers, that's a synergy that can be more valuable or at least as valuable as some of the operational synergies that a competitor might [crosstalk 00:11:12].
Jason Pereira: So they come in and they have access to capital at rates like low single digit because they've got large profitable enterprises or large stack of cash. Meanwhile, the manufacturer, or whoever it is maybe borrowing at rates of 10 to 15%, just being able to provide capital that business increases the net cashflow, strategically, right?
Jason Pereira: So I mean, yeah, that can be incredibly powerful if you can get, in that simple example, it's a 20% cost of carry versus the previous. I can see how that would magnify the gains. So interesting. So that's a developing trend, then you see more capital based sophisticated purchases versus just the strategic ones.
Melanie Russell: Yeah. And I saw that. That's really what private equity is all about, right?. That they can borrow at cheaper rates and you leverage it up. And everybody knows that leverage is a great thing to a certain point, but once you over leverage you can get in trouble. And when things like COVID happened-
Jason Pereira: As many are finding out now, yes.
Melanie Russell: Exactly. So leverage is not the, be all and end all. You still have to be very careful with it.
Jason Pereira: Yeah, absolutely. So what are some of the key factors that lend themselves to higher valuations versus lower? I mean, the bottom line cash absolutely makes perfect sense. The bigger that is the bigger the multiple's going to be.
Melanie Russell: And the sustainability of that cash flow.
Jason Pereira: Okay. So things like, so I mean, one of the things that, interestingly enough, every SAS software company, I see try to play, they try to get you to sign up for two year contracts, right? Because recurring revenue is king, right? I mean, not having to make a sale every month definitely helps. So that's clearly one that helps the sustainability.
Jason Pereira: What other factors, basically, if we're going to reverse engineer this and try to get the highest value for any business, what do you want to see to say "yes," not just the cashflow. This is a solid buy for someone.
Melanie Russell: Well, I think ultimately it all leads to the cashflow. So if you peel away the layers of the onion of each particular business you're looking at, to understand what drives that cash flow and determines the sustainability. That's the important part. So for some companies, as you said, it's going to be customer contracts, customer relationships, longterm customer relationships. For some companies, it's going to be the employees that are there, or the high level employees or the skilled labor. Some it's going to be the supply chain, having access to good product at a reasonable price or product competitive product that you can reduce the input costs.
Melanie Russell: And of course, another aspect is what does the balance sheet look like? So when you get companies that have strong balance sheets versus weaker balance sheets, you're going to have a little bit different risk assessment on those. And of course, a pandemic hitting for a company that's a little bit on the weak side on the balance sheet side really shows that increased risk, as opposed to a company that had retained some capital, working capital, kept something in the bank, just to make sure that they could cover a few months, six months of costs.
Jason Pereira: So talking about the cashflows in particular, I mean, one of the things I often, especially in my industry, because I've done some MNA work in my industry, but I think it's not that uncommon. It seems to be the business owners when I asked about, "Okay, so how much do you make?" The overall response is, "Well, the business ended up making this and I took it all," right?
Jason Pereira: There's a real kind of lack of understanding that there's really a normalized salary that should really go into the calculation as to how much a business makes. And as I've said to them, "There's your return for working in the business, and there's your return for earning the business and you're lumping him into the same thing." How much education or pushback do you get on that concept when you're dealing with valuations?
Melanie Russell: Yeah, that's a very good point. So for a lot of business owners, "Who cares? It's take what I need, take what I can, based on how the company has done. Take what my accountant says is a good mix between dividends and salaries."
Melanie Russell: But one of the things we look at, valuators always look at is, as I said, "What is the future cash flow going to be?" And its future cash flow to the investor. So if you or I were going to buy shares, the theory is that we buy shares in a company. We're going to pay everybody a fair salary. We'll pay all of our costs. And then whatever is left at the end of the day becomes our return on capital.
Melanie Russell: So the presumption is you're going to, even if the owner manager stays around with some equity or some management contract, you're going to have to pay that former manager, or owner managers reasonable salary to keep them motivated and keep whatever contacts helped the transition over.
Melanie Russell: And it's really important. So if you have a business that the owner has been taking nothing, because he or she has been putting money back into the company to keep it going, when you or I look at that on behalf ourselves or a potential purchaser, we're going to say, "Well, gee, that owner manager is not going to take nothing forever."
Melanie Russell: So we're going to have to carve out some of that cashflow that we're projecting to pay that owner manager or a replacement to do whatever they're doing. So it's probably that one of the most significant and most sensitive components of the valuation. And I find some owner managers will say, "I know my buddy in this company is paying his senior people X, or he used to work at a big public company competitor for Y."
Melanie Russell: So they might have some metrics, but if you come through the entrepreneurial ranks, you started your own business, you probably don't have a great idea of what your market value for work performed, as opposed to building the business. And that's a really important thing to separate out.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. On a similar note, I mean, two similar notes there, one, basically business owners will typically write qualified expenses through the business as well. So that is a negative impact to the cash flows of the business. How do you go about normalizing those expenses back into the cashflow?
Melanie Russell: That's a great point. So as you said, this contrast between your bias, whether someone who's trying to sell and get the highest price possible, or someone is divorcing and they want to get the lowest amount on their net family property statement as possible, you may have a different story. But in theory, what would you want to do is cleanse the historical operating results or normalize them as we call for all the remuneration and all the unusual non-recurring related party stuff.
Melanie Russell: And then say, once you've cleansed that now going forward, what do we actually have to pay someone to do what is needed to keep this business running and keep it going as it's going? So it's an interesting area because for a couple of reasons. One is there can be some challenges when you're trying to sell the business and you were telling the potential purchasers that, "Yeah, we basically run a bunch of stuff through. But trust me, trust me here. Now it's 10,000 a year, 100,000 whatever it is. Trust me, I lied to CRA, but I wouldn't lie to you. I promise,
Jason Pereira: Trust and verify is what I say.
Melanie Russell: Exactly. So you have to be careful with that, and what I always advise someone who is thinking of selling a business is clean that stuff up long before you get to the point of having to disclose your books to your purchasers. Because it just, they may ultimately believe you, but they may also say "The risk here is just not worth it. Either I'm going to walk or I'm going to pay a lot less before I'll buy shares, for example." And you're going to lose your lifetime capital gains exemption, because I can't trust that CRAs not going to be coming back and knocking on my door.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. And I'm not seeing any of the other side where potential sellers have turned around and said, "Well, I mean, this deal is not worth it to us, because I mean, they've factored in our salaries, but geez, what about all the other stuff we run through here?" It's like, "Well, you've been running it through there. The businesses isn't making that. They don't know that it's going to make that afterwards."
Melanie Russell: Exactly. Some purchasers will get, depending on size of the deal, they might get something like a quality of earnings report from a valuator and that some of the things that are taken into consideration. And it requires objective evidence to prove that, "Yes, these are things that you have been charging through and are really a return to equity holders, as opposed to business expenses."
Jason Pereira: The other thing comes to mind and it's a similar vein. How much, especially, I guess maybe in newer companies, do you get pushback on valuations because they'll say things like, "No, that's not valuing the time they put in to get it here," right, like the concept of sweat equity. All too often on Shark Tank or Dragons Den, people come up with this concept, "Well, I invested this much time and I forwent this much salary." And the typical response is, "That was your choice, like I'm not paying for that." How much do you get push back on that where people say, "Well, geez, based on what I've done it's not worth it."
Melanie Russell: Yeah. It's a big issue. And it's sort of the vision between the person that's married, that entrepreneur that's built this up and has put all this sweat equity. This may be his or her favorite child. They may have many children, but this is the favorite child. So, and why can't anyone else see that, right?
Melanie Russell: So their vision might not be the same as a potential purchaser's vision. And that's the problem. And so when you're at that point, the reality is it's probably more worthwhile for you to continue on building the business. So then you can get to the point where you can prove to potential purchasers or investors that, "Yeah. See my vision was right. I'm not just telling a nice story that you're not going to be willing to put your money behind."
Jason Pereira: So, I'm curious too. How much do you get involved in the conversation around working capital? Because a lot of times people will say, "Okay, well, business is worth whatever, but hey, there's like $250,000.00 in cash in the business. Yeah. I'm taking it with me." Failing to realize that's not necessarily an option.
Melanie Russell: That is number one issue. So in terms of post deal disputes, that is probably the hottest contested issue. And what we're talking about here is, in the closing in a deal, they say, "Well, we're going to close August 31st. And at that date, you have to have $200,000 of working capital or you have to have a 1.5 to one working capital ratio."
Jason Pereira: Just to clarify working capital, it's basically cash and receivables minus your payables, essentially is what we're looking at. So basically the money that you have or is coming to you, minus the money that is obligated to go out already.
Melanie Russell: Right. Good explanation. So the owner says, "Run this business." If you, the purchaser to kind of hit the ground running, as soon as you take this over and close on August 31st, all you need is 1.5 to one or 200,000 working capital, whatever it is. And so therefore on closing, if working capital is actually 300,000 and we put in 200,000 to the purchase and sale agreement, you have to give me an extra hundred thousand above the purchase price.
Melanie Russell: Or if it's only a hundred thousand on close because I pulled out money or a debt collections didn't come in, then I have purchase prices reduced by a hundred thousand. Valuations, we always have to pay what is that market or optimal working capital level, because that can also be very big number. And you get into first, issues of what is really the right number or ratio. But then how do you measure that?
Melanie Russell: So I've been involved in disputes where you really get into accounting issues. So you say working capital sounds easy. As you said, current assets minus current liabilities, okay. Then there are different accounting policies that say, "What's a current asset and what's a current [crosstalk 00:22:07]?"
Jason Pereira: Yeah. Inventory may or may not count towards it. There's, all kinds of things. And then also like, what do you do about receivables that are past say 120 days? Are they counted or not? How do you factor in what's collectible, what's not? And hence why there's typically adjustment periods and escrow amounts and clawbacks.
Melanie Russell: Or earn-outs, and I guess one of the things, earn-outs in theory, it's a great bridge where you say, the purchaser and vendor can't come to an agreement or they have different views on the value. And they say, the vendor says, "I really think it's worth five million." And the purchaser says, "No, I really think it's four. But if these things happen, I'll give you an extra million," however you define that.
Melanie Russell: So that kind of gets the risk out of the transaction. There's a lot of other issues related to it, but you can deal with those kinds of things by saying, "In the future, if this happens, come with me. If it happens, then you'll get an extra million, 200,000, whatever it is."
Melanie Russell: So there's ways to do that. And I think sort of the way deals have been going lately in the pandemic, that there's been a lot more of that, "Let's do more earn-outs because we just can't measure this risk. It's just too big of a threshold."
Jason Pereira: Yeah, I get that. So speaking of the pandemic, there's a bunch of things that are going to, I mean, your business, I think is about to flourish for two reasons. One great, one not so great. Well, I think it's both not so great.
Jason Pereira: The first is divorce, unfortunately because I've already seen statistics on an increasing spike there. So, that's going to lead to a greater number of valuation needs. The other one in general is tax planning and estate freezes. And I had previous episodes, we discussed the estate freezes and passing on future growth to the next generation. But let's talk about why it makes sense now, versus a little bit more than it did a couple of months ago, depending on what business you're in.
Melanie Russell: Well, the idea of a freeze is to say, "Let's fix the value." And in general, when one generation wants to freeze, they're trying to transfer the future value over to the next generation or the next group that's going to take over. And the higher you can freeze it at the more you're locking in value, and it'll affect the future tax bill.
Melanie Russell: So if a current owner can freeze at a lower amount, than the tax bill on, unfortunately on death will be a lot lower. So in events like this, we create uncertainty and obviously concerned about future cash flows and risks for a lot of businesses, the values probably have gone down for many businesses.
Melanie Russell: For some businesses, they will have gone up. Some will maintain value. So it's going to be very industry, company situation specific and date specific. So most of the time it's better to freeze at a lower amount. And I think it's safe for a lot of industries to say that values have gone down.
Jason Pereira: Well, if you're in travel or hospitality, I'm willing to bet that no one's going to raise a stink about that one.
Melanie Russell: No, exactly. But you also have to be very careful, because you have to have something to support it. As you know, you can't just go to CRA and say, "Well, pandemic hit, and now the company's value has gone in half."
Jason Pereira: Sorry, owner of Zoom, that's not true. That's the extreme example, right? I mean, yeah you want me to shut down for a month or two and then pick me up right where you left off, there's not an argument that your valuation needs to be reduced by two out of 12.
Jason Pereira: It's a one year blip versus all the cashflows look perfectly fine thereafter. However, you being case in point you bring a travel agency. There is short of a very big swing back in the opposite direction. You're probably going to be looking at an impaired valuation. So it makes perfect sense. And again, I think CRA might agree with us on that one.
Melanie Russell: They might.
Jason Pereira: I never know with them.
Melanie Russell: They might. I mean, and they're not looking at things right now, but definitely you just need to be aware that at some point they will be looking at that.
Jason Pereira: As I always say, it's interesting people will be like, "Oh, I don't need the valuation. Can I just come up with a number?" So you can do whatever you want to do. That's not the issue.
Jason Pereira: The issue is when they come knocking at the door. There was an interview with Donald Trump, or it was a testimony with Donald Trump where he talked about his own personal value. And he said, at one point it's like, "We all have feelings, how I feel on the day." If you're basically, if you feel good about the business and you decide to pick a high number, that's just not acceptable.
Jason Pereira: Having an independent valuator, such as yourself, only helps build the case that you did all the right steps, that the valuation is honest. It's true. And I'm willing to bet that CRA gets to know who their valuators are over time.
Jason Pereira: So if they constantly are auditing your stuff, they might just say, "Well, enough of these. Can we get your files and see everyone you've audited, because clearly something's going on here?"
Melanie Russell: Right. But one thing you have to remember is that if you're doing something for tax purposes, if you're doing it now during the pandemic, CRA is not going to be looking at it for a while. So they're going to have the benefit of hindsight, and for good or bad, nobody knows.
Jason Pereira: That's very true.
Melanie Russell: But things seem much more obvious when you get there, then when you're in the midst of it. So just be aware of that, that it has to be sort of founded on good support with evidence, because it will be looked at with hindsight in mind.
Jason Pereira: So in some cases, it actually makes sense to not necessarily do that in the doldrums of what's going on right now, but to maybe wait a little bit. If there's some question as to the degree of the bounce back, you're going to have once this is all over, which I'm sure there's some question everywhere, but it's going to mean, basically, maybe waiting a little bit.
Jason Pereira: But overall, still a good time to be talking to your professionals about doing an estate freeze, if that was already on your radar.
Jason Pereira: So thank you very much for taking the time to explain all this Melanie.
Melanie Russell: My pleasure.
Jason Pereira: Where can people find you?
Melanie Russell: They can either reach me by phone at 416-488-9590 extension 225 or my email Melanie, M-E-L-A-N-I-E @Kalexvaluations, which is K-A-L-E-X V-A-L-U-A-T-I-O-N-S.com.
Jason Pereira: Perfect. Thank you very much.
Melanie Russell: Thanks Jason.
Jason Pereira: So that was my interview with Melanie Russell Of Kalex's Valuations. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you found it informative and will from here go on to figure out how to maximize cashflow in order to maximize enterprise valuation.
Jason Pereira: As always, this has been Financial planning for Canadian Business Owners, and I'm your host, Jason Pereira. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever's your podcast. Until next time, take care.
Speaker 1: This podcast was brought to you by Woodgate Financial, an award winning financial planning firm, catering to high net worth individuals, business owners, and their families.
Speaker 1: To learn more, go to woodgate.com. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and SoundCloud. For more episodes, go to JasonPereira.ca. You can even ask Siri, Alexa or Google Home to subscribe for you.