This episode is brought to you by Warren Coughlin, CEO Coach and founder of JumpStart Coaching. Warren focuses exclusively on coaching CEOs running SMBs, and has been doing so for over 20 years. One of my biggest regrets across my 7 years as a CEO was not hiring a coach, and to the best extent possible, I want to prevent others from making the same mistake. For listeners of In The Trenches, working with Warren is effectively risk-free: If at the end of the first three months you're not happy with the direction of your business, he will give you your money back. If that doesn’t say confidence, I don’t know what does. On top of that, Warren is offering $3,000 off of his coaching program for listeners of In The Trenches. Just go to warrencoughlin.com/trenches to learn more. 

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This episode is brought to you by Cayne Crossing. Cayne Crossing helps prospective SMB purchasers with all aspects of financial due diligence, including producing the Quality of Earnings report.  Unlike any other QofE provider that I’m aware of, Cayne Crossing also co-invests alongside their buyers, aligning their interests with yours in a way that I simply haven’t seen anywhere else. Cayne Crossing is offering a special discount to listeners of In The Trenches: Just go to caynecrossing.com, and scroll down to the “contact form” on their homepage. Enter the offer code “trenches”, and you will get a full $2,000 off of your QofE engagement with them.

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This episode attempts to directly address many of the questions that I’ve been asked over the past 6 months related to the current state of the debt markets: How pricing has changed, how credit availability has evolved, what risks banks are no longer willing to underwrite, how their diligence processes have changed, how non-price terms have evolved, and so on. To help me better understand the current state of the debt markets, I reached out to Cory Kaiser and Tim Eaton, both of whom work at TD in their commercial lending group: Cory is Vice President of commercial banking and has been with TD for over 21 years, and Tim is an associate vice president, who has been with TD for 23 years. Over the past two decades, their focus has been (and will continue to be) on lending to lower-middle market private companies, not just to finance their acquisitions, but also to finance growth, working capital, and recapitalizations, to name just a few. I hope this episode helps to clarify some of the questions that you might be wrestling with yourself. Please enjoy!