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Meet David Hern of Sofer Advisors

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Today we’d like to introduce you to David Hern.

David, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Our family’s story is steeped in the American dream, where a Polish Jew survived the Holocaust and immigrated to America with nothing and made something of himself as a tailor. He ended up marrying an Italian Catholic and they resided in NYC until his passing. The influences of Christian and Jewish faiths made for some interesting holiday parties where we tend to be those people at the restaurant who are overly loud because of our enthusiasm, which leads to a lot of stares. However, these influences also gave our family a healthy respect for education and giving.

I am a Georgia native whom grew up in Cobb County and spent many summers in Union City, New Jersey, which is a highly blue-collar commuter town. I attended suburban public schools largely in West Cobb County. My mother was a ‘home economist’ managing three crazy kids and my father has worked in various positions within the automobile dealership industry his entire career.

In 8th grade, my parents announced we would be moving, which devastated me as most of my friends were going to a high school that I would no longer be districted for. Little did I know this would be a mixed blessing. A teacher could tell something was wrong with me and I confided in him on how I wanted to transfer from what would be my new school district to the high-school I would of gone to or to another high-school where the majority of middle school peers were headed to. At that time, you could not play varsity sports and transfer without sitting out one year but my science teacher knew of a loophole. If you tested into a magnet program, you could go to an out of district school and play varsity sports. I got into a very accelerated college-prep program with completely selfish desires surrounding sports. Little did I know it would be one of the best decisions of my life. If it was not for the rigor of the program and the forced Advanced Placement (AP) or Magnet courses, I would of never been accepted into my dream school Georgia Tech.

I went to Georgia Tech intending to study computer science and become the next great programmer and entrepreneur. Somehow after four years, I “got out” with a business degree and wanted to be a Certified Public Accountant. A major additional bonus was that I met my college sweetheart and wife while at Georgia Tech. While I ended up making the decision to go become a CPA, it was really a coin flip between accounting and finance. Ultimately, I took a job offer with my tax professor’s public accounting firm, which was based in midtown Atlanta.

Much how college became a fork in the road decision between deciding between accounting and finance, another fork or pivot type decision was what kind of CPA. I settled on tax because I had an inspirational tax professor whom wasn’t your proto typical CPA and had a lot of personality. Two years later, I did achieve my goal in becoming a CPA. I had begun a Masters in Tax program at Ga State. Shortly thereafter, it became apparent I did not want to be the guy in the cubical everyday in tax software for my career. I wanted to be around our clients in a much more significant way and I was distraught that I should of chosen to specialize in audit or something else which would have been more client-centric. I immediately stopped pursuing the MTax program and applied back to my alma mater to get into their evening MBA program.

This decision was to solidify the pivot away from accounting and into finance. Concurrent with beginning the program, I was blessed to have an opportunity to join an investment banking group concentrating on the community bank industry. Immediately I could tell this type of career path was much closer to what I was seeking when I was in college. What is ironic is every single internship in college was a finance-related internship. I consider this a God thing and I guess I finally got the message. Little did I know this would become a pivotal time for me. I was starting my finance career, getting married to that college sweetheart, purchasing our first home and starting the MBA. Needless to say, it was one of the more stressful and periods of constant change that I’ve gone through. My only holdbacks from having the perfect job was that I was working for a tough manager, the work I was doing there the fewest is the work I enjoyed the most and I missed the diversity of client types from accounting.

After a couple years and nearing the end of my MBA program, I got approached by a boutique advisory firm to join them. The majority of his work was in the business valuation arena and this would be where I would find my career in valuation services. I’ve been in business valuation ever since. After working for big firms like RSM and Alvarez & Marsal as well as a boutique-like Taylor Consulting Group, I realized the market was yearning for a valuation firm that thought different. Ultimately got the entrepreneurship bug and Sofer Advisors, LLC was born. “Sofer” means scribe or storyteller and counter in Hebrew, taken together it means we are someone good with numbers. I thought it was a nice way to pay homage to my hero my grandfather. I became a “single shingle” February 2019. We are in our second year of operation and have grown the team from 1 to 3 in a little over 14 months. All three of us are Georgia Tech alumni and all three are Atlanta natives. We’ve had 2-4 college interns every semester since beginning predominately from Ga Tech, Ga State, UGA and Kennesaw State. We help business owners whom have an uncertain but material financial decision. Sofer Advisors provides the clarity and certainty the business owner needs to make right decision at the right time.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest struggles for me have been threefold: 1) maintaining work-life harmony 2) the e-myth challenge 3) recruiting. As a father of three (1 year old, 2-year-old and six year old), I want to be there for the most important communication points of the day with my kids. In a pre-covid world, this generally meant i) breakfast ii) commute to or from school iii) commute to/from activities iii) dinner and iv) bedtime. The first year the business demanded so much of my attention, it was hard to be there for the majority if not any of these activities. However, now that I’ve been able to scale and trust others, I’ve been able to be both present in the physical and mental for my kids. It was a struggle to time-block in such a way that the business didn’t all consume me, In life, I only learn when I screwed up and so this was no different. The quicker I screwed up the quicker I learned and have made adjustments.

This relates to my second challenge that the book the ‘E-Myth” talked about. Most people start businesses because they’re good technically at whatever they do. For me, that meant being good at financial analysis. However, being a successful business owner means you must be good at your entrepreneurial hat AND your managerial hat. It was easy to get all consumed in the technical part of my job and under love the managerial and entrepreneurial side. Adding personnel has afforded me the opportunity to focus on high value add activities that I, as the owner, must be doing in both the managerial and entrepreneurial. If I don’t dedicate any time to the latter, then moments like COVID could be the moment that show we can’t pivot or survive. We have to stay ahead of the curve if we’re to be the next great boutique advisory firm in Atlanta.

Lastly, recruiting, finding and retaining talent is always a struggle. There is a skills gap out there and a disconnect a bit in what schools are training and what we look for in practice. In addition, we had a lumpy experience with a few interns because we weren’t vetting them enough nor consistent from candidate to candidate. After a few cycles of recruiting, we learned we had to get more formal in our hiring practice. This required us to do a qualitative interview, a technical interview, personality test, then an excel test with professional reference given and verified to make sure we’re getting a thorough look as well as ensuring what they’re saying is backed by what they’re able to do.

Sofer Advisors – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We help business owners whom are facing a MATERIAL and UNCERTAIN financial decision involving their business. We use valuation and financial insights to provide the certainty they need to make the right decision. We specialize in business valuation and exit planning advisory services. We help businesses ASSESS, AMPLIFY, and ACHIEVE.

What sets us apart is 1) our purpose and 2) education. We believe our profit fuels our purpose and the more purpose we have the more profits are fueled. We believe doing good is good for business. Through the fruits of our services, we engage in the local community. A wise executive director of a board we sit on says to be blessed in abundance so you may be blessed in abandoned. We try to live that way with the business. Our strategy is to teach our clients and their advisors in order to harness the power of being understood. Too often, our competition produces valuations that our clients do not understand. We must have the heart of a teacher in order to enlighten and educate them not just to dictate the results. If they cannot understand the results, then they cannot be confident they are making the right decision with their hard-earned dollars. Obviously there are other items that we must deliver on like agility, superior execution, customer service, collaboration and community/connection. All of these factors serve as the components of our flywheel that help us to be set apart from the competition.

I am most proud that our business has been able to get involved and engaged in the community. We’ve been able to serve on boards at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Because One Matters, the Good Samaritan Health Center of Gwinnett, Leadership Gwinnett. Further, I have been able to be there for MANY of my two son’s firsts such as first steps, first words, first crawls, etc. that I missed as an employee when we had my daughter. These are moments that I will cherish when I’m old and gray and I’m so blessed and thankful to of had the opportunity to start a firm to give me and my team the flexibility they need to be there for life’s “firsts” that shouldn’t be missed.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I’ve had two sisters who have been divorced three times. It has what led me to want to do more business valuation surrounding divorce matters. It’s such a difficult time for spouses to collaborate and agree on big decisions in the middle of such a difficult psychological time. Emotions are volatile. A woman was referred to me by a family law attorney whom was a home-economist (formerly known as a stay at home mom) whose business owner spouse had an affair. The offer seemed very low with the few facts she knew about the business. My mother was a home economist and so I could empathize what she had gone through on turning over the financial decisions of the marital unit so she could make the child-rearing decisions. We took her on for vastly below-market pricing as charity. We were able to get her original $30,000 offer of settlement up to $300,000. This was money her and her kids would badly need to live going forward as she would now have to restart a career. It was one of the proudest moments of my career to see how my “opinion of value” can not just lead to actual money moving hands but truly make a difference in peoples’ lives.

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