LeAnn & Pat Richards, McDonald’s, and Mize

Pat: My parents were in McDonald’s before, and we bought them out. We’ve actually been in McDonald’s for 40 years now.

LeAnn: Yes.

Pat: We were actually … My parents were with Cobler, and we owned part of the business back then.

LeAnn: No, but they did a really nice job transitioning generations for us, making sure both generational points of view were represented well. They did a really good job without causing any family strife with just an objective point of view that it could’ve been messy, and it really wasn’t because of that.

Pat: No, it was fair to all parties.

LeAnn: And the nice part about Mize is it’s not just the accounting firm. We have financial planning with them. We do pretty much a digital office — I call it a virtual office. We have 12 restaurants and one office person that’s not a high school graduate. Why? Because Mize is my virtual office.

LeAnn: So, we probably made a bad financial decision once because we thought we were doing really well, and we were, and made an investment in something we probably shouldn’t have. And at the time, what Mize did for us was create a team of advocates on our side that we were able to go to. We came out of it really, really well. Right?

Pat: Yeah.

LeAnn: And they were able to bring in the resources and the expertise that we needed to help guide us through that. And so, since then, we really don’t make a decision without that team behind us.

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