346: 4 Steps to Creating Equity Value with Matt Andersen

https://youtu.be/RI_6ZvdjVuE Matt Andersen, CEO of Westlake Securities, LLC, is driven by a mission to create value that changes lives by helping business owners follow the 4 Steps to Creating Equity Value, intentionally grow their companies, maximize enterprise value, and achieve successful liquidity events. Through strategic planning, disciplined execution, and a purpose-driven approach, Matt has helped companies achieve significant growth while empowering entrepreneurs to build businesses that create lasting financial and personal impact. We explore Matt Andersen’s Reverse Engineer Your Outcomes Framework — Define Your Financial Goal and Timeframe, Design a First 100-Day Plan, Build an Annual Plan, and Adjust and Reset Quarterly. Matt explains why business owners should reverse-engineer their desired financial outcome before creating a growth strategy, how a focused 100-day plan builds early momentum and accountability, and why quarterly adjustments keep organizations on track toward long-term goals. He also discusses how thought leadership, educational content, internship programs, and AI-powered client experiences have fueled Westlake Securities’ growth while helping entrepreneurs achieve private equity-like results without giving up ownership of their businesses. — 4 Steps to Creating Equity Value with Matt Andersen  Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Matt Andersen, the CEO of Westlake Securities, LLC, the number one lower middle-market investment bank in Central Texas, focused on advising companies seeking to intentionally grow or obtain liquidity. He’s also the author of Intentional Growth, as you can see behind him on the screen. Matt, welcome to the show.  Hey, Steve. Thanks so much for having me. I’m super excited to be joining you on today’s show.  Yeah. I love the title of the book and the cover. This is exactly what you want to do with companies, right? You intentionally want to grow them, and then you want to grow their value and create great exits, which I’m sure you have a lot to tell us about. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Our business model… Taking a quick step back, I’m CEO of Westlake Securities, as you mentioned, a lower middle-market investment bank. A lot of the companies we work with, we’re really helping them grow. That’s about half our business. The other half of our business is folks who, once they’ve grown and achieved a certain position or value in the organization and have gotten to a certain point in their career, might want to start thinking about liquidity, or maybe an ultimate exit plan for liquidity—not just for their financial tie-up in the business, but also for their time. So that’s the other half of what we do. We help people think through that next step.  Yeah, because you need both, right? If you have a lot of money but no time to enjoy it, that’s not really good. If you have a lot of time but no money, that’s not good either. So you need both.  That’s right. So yeah, the business fits really, really well. For a lot of our folks, we’re with them on very long-term journeys. In some instances, it’s been six, seven, eight, nine, even 10 years for them to grow the organization to a value that’s truly exciting for them, and then help them think about how best to monetize that once the organization has hit a goal based on size and time. Okay. That’s fascinating. So let me take a step back and ask you: what is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in this business?  Yeah, that’s a great question. I think about it this way. A lot of companies have mission and vision statements. We actually do something a little different. We have a purpose statement. That purpose statement is: We create value that changes lives.Share on X At this point in my career, if you define careers as you would maybe a sporting event, I’m probably in the third quarter of my career.  One of the things that gets me excited every day is a transaction, for instance, that we had about two weeks ago. There were about eight people who had a truly life-changing experience in a positive way. That’s really neat. In addition to those eight people, there was a group of four people who became shareholders for the first time in this organization. It was really neat. Those sorts of conversations are really fun to have. So creating value that changes lives is really important. We tend to think about that holistically too. For our team, we've been fairly blessed with growth.Share on X  Then, if you think about the full cycle back to the community, we typically pick one charitable organization each year, and we try to make an impactful donation to that one charitable organization. So I think, from client to team to community, that holistic vision is what gets me skipping into work every day.  Yeah. I mean, if you can change your clients’ lives and you change your team members’ lives for the better, that’s very powerful. That’s very empowering. Yeah. And then to see that roll through the community is even… Yeah, it’s pretty neat. It’s pretty neat to see.  So that’s the third leg of the stool: the clients, the team, and your community.  That’s right. You’re really embedded in there. My question is, how do you do that? Do you have a framework for changing these lives? Obviously, you wrote a book, so maybe it’s the spine of the book that you might share with us, or maybe another framework. This podcast is all about frameworks.  So what is a three- to five-step process, or maybe three or four ways to look at something, that informs you or your clients? Or it can be anything that helps you streamline things in your business and make things simpler, which our listeners might benefit from and interpret in their own way.  Yeah. I’m a big framework fan, which is part of the reason I was excited to join the podcast, because I think about things that way. Especially if you figure out what works over time, the goal is to replicate that. Just like a manufacturing facility figures out how to make everything from a microchip to a pair of shoes, and they keep doing the same thing repetitively, I think frameworks in business, if they’re given enough flexibility, can be hugely powerful.  I’ve written two books. Completing the Deal is my first book. “Intentional Growth” is my second book. Intentional Growth is really about organizational growth, and the book is full of great frameworks.Share on X But if I were to share the one I believe is the most impactful—and it’s also fairly simple—it would be this: Reverse-engineer your desired outcome upfront.  So often, businesses we come into contact with know they want to grow. They know they want to achieve certain things. But oftentimes, they haven’t done a great job of defining two things: The timeframe they want to do it in, and the level of achievement they want to get to. One of the things we tend to see in business is that people will make a budget, for instance. They’re going to pull in a sales backlog and a CRM report. A customer did X last year, so we’ll just add 4%, and they’ll do Y this year.  We’ll hire a couple of people. That can be a way to budget. But I think the better way to approach budgeting is, once you’ve reverse-engineered the course, to say, “Over the next five years, we’re going to get from here to here.” Then really think about that as a stair-step process, almost like the path behind me. If we need to go from here to here, year over year, how do we actually grab that growth out of the marketplace? How do we make sure that we’re on the right path?  One of the things we spend a lot of time on with companies we're helping grow is this reverse engineering.Share on X It’s a great framework. There’s a lot about it in the book. A couple of really important takeaways, probably the most important one I can share is the timeframe. What we’ve found is that three to seven years is the best timeframe. Anything less than three years starts to feel like there’s not enough time to actually see the seeds you’ve planted bear fruit. Anything longer than seven years…  Well, Steve, seven years is just a long time. It’s hard to predict cycles and things of that nature. By default, absent another driving force, we tend to think in five-year increments. Kind of split the difference. Five years. The other framework we really focus on is picking a financial destination that’s truly impactful. A lot of times, when people think about the stress of business growth, part of the reason it’s stressful instead of exciting is because they’re worried about growing 8% to 10%, or maybe 12%. That’s good growth. It’s nice.  But it’s not exciting. To me, that feels more like a burden than excitement. If you went into your business planning thinking, “Over the next five years, we’re really going to 3X the size of the business, 4X the size of the business, maybe even 5X the size of the business…” Then, in order to achieve that, we need to hit Y growth over the next 12 months.  That really reshapes what might otherwise be a stressful scenario based on anecdotes into something much more exciting and engaging. Those are the two main frameworks: Time and a financial outcome that would truly be exciting. That’s the premise the book starts with, and it’s something we use all the time, every day.  So that’s interesting. If I were to translate it into a three- to five-step framework or process, what’s step number one? Is it defining the financial destination, or is it the timeframe?  So, number one, those two things are probably going to go together. Timeframe and financial outcome. From a framework perspective, first we’re going to set that destination. Then we’re going to move into the other pieces. Step two is likely going to be creating a 100-day plan. Why do we want a 100-day plan?  Because we want to make sure tomorrow is going to be different from today. Again, it’s one of those things where a 30-day plan is too short, and a six-month plan is too long. A 100-day plan is a way to jump-start a growth plan, and we really want to see a few things from it. One is some early wins, because we’re all wired that way. The more we win, the more we want to play the game, right? Yeah. So you do want to have some early wins.  You want to have some visibility. Organizationally, we plan to communicate the goals and objectives of our destination and outcome, what our 100-day plan is, and then accountability. Accountability to outcomes. Those are the three main things we want to see from that 100-day plan, even though there are a lot of details. Step three would be a one-year plan because we really want to say, “Okay, we’ve got this timeframe. We’ve got this destination we want to get to. We’ve got a 100-day plan to jump-start it.  Now we have a one-year check-in.” From that one-year point, in addition to things like KPIs or Rocks—or whatever an organization uses to manage accountability to outcomes—we want to reset the sails every quarter to six months going forward. But the 100-day and one-year plans are really important to making sure we’re off to a good start on our journey to get where we want to be in five years.  Love it. So that’s interesting. It’s more of a bottom-up approach. Some people preach a top-down approach. You do have a top as well because you have a financial destination three to seven years out. That’s fascinating. You also follow the private equity idea of a 100-day plan, so it aligns with that approach too. One of the things I like to talk about with clients is, how can we create private equity without private equity? How can we get private equity results without having to give up a chunk of the pie? So that is fascinating.  Yeah. And that’s a big part of it. Anyone who’s looking for that message is really going to gravitate to this book. What I do tell people is, you don’t have to sell to grow, but you do have to plan. This is a great framework for doing that, based on 27 years of personal experience and 23 years of firm experience. I’ve personally helped 40 companies achieve seven-, eight-, and nine-figure growth in enterprise value, and we’ve closed $5.7 billion in transactions. All of that feeds into this book, which I think people can use to find a better path—and a proven guide—toward growth without having to give up control.  Yeah. I love it. So tell me, Matt, what drives growth in your business at Westlake Securities?  I think there’s a few things that have been helpful to our growth. Number one, we’ve been fortunate to be in markets that are robust. So we do have a bit of a perfect storm going on right now. There’s a lot of capital available. There are a lot of tools available. And we’ve got an aging demographic of business owners. All of those things are creating this perfect storm of either growth or liquidity.  These conversations are happening more now than they ever have in the last 27 years of my career. It’s unbelievable. These conversations went from things people talked about maybe once a year to, for some organizations, getting outreach every week from somebody who wants to talk to them about a growth investment or buying their business. These topics are coming up more and more, and I think in a much more impactful way.  So number one, there are a lot of favorable market dynamics. Number two, we have the history and track record that’s helpful when a business owner is asking, “Can this company really help me grow?” or “Can this company really help me sell?” We’ve got a great track record for that. That track record is built on, number three, our team.  A lot of our people have spent time with Fortune 1000 companies. They’ve worked for major banking organizations, run brands for Fortune 1000 companies, worked in private equity, or worked for other investment banks. So they bring tremendous experience. And then, last, is our process. Part of the reason for creating the two books is to be very transparent about what our processes are and to lead our advisory work by example.Share on X  We want to be transparent in how we think about helping companies either grow or obtain liquidity. I think those four legs of the stool are the reason we’ve been able to grow so much over the last few years.  You say the market is good because of the Silver Tsunami, as some people call it. Yeah. It’s kind of a cliché. And also the abundance of capital. Private equity has a lot of money to spend, as do strategic buyers. So I get that part. I also understand that you have great assets inside the company—your track record, your team, your processes, all of that. Then what happens? Do those people just find you, or do you actually have to intentionally do something to drive the growth?  Well, that’s well said. Just like we preach, we have to practice. Some of the ways we’ve been able to attract companies to our organization are through our digital presence. If you check us out on LinkedIn, we post a lot of great content there. We provide a lot of data. We do a quarterly deep dive by industry on where transactions have been. We share growth tips very openly. We provide downloadable resources.  The books have been helpful. The books have led to speaking opportunities. I speak internationally on the topics of capital raising, growth, and M&A. Lastly, joining awesome podcasts like yours has become one of our 2026 initiatives, and it’s been a lot of fun. It’s been amazing to see the response. Inevitably, somebody emails and says, “Hey, I saw your conversation with Steve. I thought it was pretty cool. Here’s something about my business.  How can you help, or what do you think?” For everyone, we’ve got something. For our ideal client, we obviously have our core services. For folks who are a little smaller, we’ve got a whole suite of workshops that range in cost and time commitment. Then, all the way down to a $17 or $25 book, which we feel is within everyone’s reach.  Part of this—and I’m sure you’re wired the same way—is just a pure passion for helping others find their own form of success. Whether it’s a $17 book, a multimillion-dollar capital raise, or a $300 million sale of a business, everywhere in between, we can provide someone with some element of value if they’re interested in engaging with us in a conversation. So that’s been helpful too.  Yeah, I love it. It’s very smart. You basically have a long-term view and a long funnel. You can connect with people at any stage of where they are and then support them through increasingly intensive ways.  Can I share with you the funniest one that I ever saw coming? Of course. We’ve always been big believers in giving back through university talks and internship programs. That’s been going on for some time, and it really took the next step in 2020 when all the internships were shut down. We were one of the early firms to launch a virtual internship program.  Now we’ve had over 1,000 interns go through our various internship programs, completing them from five different continents. Now those people have graduated. Several of them have been out of school for many years and are building their own careers. It’s been amazing to see that an experience they had when they were 19, 20, or 21 is now paying dividends five to ten years later. That’s one I never saw coming. We always did it as a way to give back. But it's been interesting to see it become a long-term brand-building exercise and a positive way of giving back to the community that has honestly created more opportunities than I ever would have thought.Share on X That’s amazing. So you created all these ambassadors, then, that I think will bring you clients.  You know, that wasn’t probably the intention when we started. But we’ve had people come back and tell us, “Hey, that internship changed the course of my career.” We’ve had parents whose kids got their first job out of school after doing an internship with us say, “Hey, I can’t guarantee you’re going to get the project, but I at least want to offer you the opportunity to participate because I appreciate what you did for my son or daughter during that internship.” So that’s been really cool. Again, it’s this kind of karma, give-back mindset.  Yeah, I love it. That is very valuable. These days, internships are really challenging to come by, so they can be a really valuable building block for young people. So let me switch gears here and ask you another question. What’s one thing that you’re trying to figure out in your business right now?  That’s a great question. We’re laser-focused on a couple of things. I would say one that a lot of businesses are going to share in common is AI and implementing what I’m calling the light side of AI. I feel like there are really three views of AI in the marketplace. One is a group of people who are still asking, “What does AI stand for?” We’ll put them off to the side for a second. Then there’s the light side and the dark side conversation going on.  The dark side is more about automation leading to job elimination. The light side is really about how we elevate the customer experience or the client experience. How do we elevate what our people are doing and delivering every day? That’s really the area we’re focused on. We have a strategy inside our company as it relates to AI, but the simplest way I can describe it is that we're going to be customer-centric—client-centric—in what we do with AI.Share on X  We want to create the best experience for those who engage with us by using better technology to do it. That’s really a major focus for us in 2026. The other focus is making sure that Intentional Growth gets off to a great start. It’s available for pre-order right now. It’s debut week for pre-orders. It hit number one in four categories. It officially launches in October. The book, speaking, workshops—the whole growth initiative—is really important for our firm, but also for the people we come into contact with.  Who wouldn’t want to grow their business and increase its value by $5 million, $10 million, or $50 million over a reasonable period of time? I think most people who decided to go down the entrepreneurial path did so with the hope of creating abundance. The only way to create that abundance for themselves, their customers, their employees, their vendors, and all their key stakeholders is to grow the organization. So AI and Intentional Growth are our two main business challenges and opportunities for the year.  Yeah. That’s great. And hitting number one in four Amazon categories on pre-order, that is actually very rare. So you must be doing something right there. Either you have an amazing PR machine, or the book is just very, very good. Well, I’m hoping it’s the latter—that the book is going to be that good. I do think the first book created a nice foundation. There are thousands of copies in print. It got a lot of great feedback on Amazon. It’s been used by universities, industry groups, and others. So I think there’s a nice nucleus of potential readers for book number two.  I’m really excited because Intentional Growth is going to be much more interactive than the first book. It’s going to include downloadable forms and AI-powered interactive tools at the end of each chapter, so readers can take what they’ve learned in that chapter and immediately translate it into practical tools for their business.  My hope is that it gets into the hands of any business owner or organizational leader—from someone at an early-stage company to someone running part of a large publicly traded company. If they have a real desire to grow and are looking for a better path to do it, my hope is this book ultimately finds its way into their hands. Yeah, definitely. So if people would like to connect with you, obviously they can go to Amazon and buy Intentional Growth by Matt Andersen.  Yeah.  Definitely do that. And where else can they find you?  There are a few places. Book-wise, Amazon first, then all the major retailers—Barnes & Noble, Porchlight, and others. Both books are available now, and Intentional Growth will ship in October. I would encourage people to find us first and foremost on LinkedIn. I do a lot of personal posts there. We also host events. Westlake Securities has a strong presence on LinkedIn as well. Again, we share a lot of events, free content, and free data.  We spend six figures a year purchasing proprietary data and organizing it in a way that’s useful for business owners to understand trends, valuations, what’s happening in the capital markets, the cost of debt, how much equity was invested in private companies last quarter and last year. There’s a lot of great free information available through those two resources. I also do quite a bit of speaking. If you’d like to attend a talk, I speak internationally on capital raising, growth, and M&A.  That’s amazing. So definitely check it out. Check out Matt’s LinkedIn, especially the quarterly market reports. Those are going to be very interesting. I’m sure you’re using your six-figure database to produce some great charts. So check that out. Buy Intentional Growth, and see how it can help your business. I love your framework—the reverse-engineering idea. You really have to know where you want to get to, how much time you have, and then figure out what it takes to get there.  What’s going to be that above-10% exciting growth rate that’s going to 3X or 5X your business? So thank you, Matt, for coming and sharing your wisdom. And if you’re listening out there, make sure you follow us on LinkedIn, subscribe on YouTube and Apple Podcasts, and leave us a review, because every week I bring you an exciting entrepreneur who’s growing their business. So thanks for coming, Matt, and thanks for listening. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate you having me. To everyone listening out there, best of luck until we interact next. Let’s grow. Important Links: Matt’s LinkedIn Matt’s  website