Think Like an Owner

My guest on this episode is Trevor Flanagan, COO of Flint Group, a home services roll-up founded by Collin Hathaway. Collin's appeared on this podcast twice, on episodes 32 and 90, for good reason, and I highly recommend listening to those episodes as a primer for this conversation with Trevor. Trevor has a fascinating background as I'll touch on earlier in this episode. He started his career as a district manager for Aldi before becoming GM of Bob Hamilton, a home services business in Kansas City. He then left and co-founded Professional Chats, which offers website chat software to home services businesses, before selling it two years later. In those two years, he and his co-founder grew it from 3 to 150 employees and nearly $10 million in revenue. Soon after selling, he met Collin and joined Flint. Our conversation covers how great companies scale, how crucial of a role sales and hiring play in scaling, the role of debt, and everything in between. Like Collin, Trevor has an amazing ability to make hard problems simple and teach through storytelling and I'm positive you'll enjoy hearing his story. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Trevor on LinkedIn Flint Group Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross Episodes 32 & 90 with Colin Hathaway Topics: (3:40) - What's your career been like scaling companies across different industries? (10:24) - How were you able to land a job managing a grocer at only 22? (14:27) - What was the most common issue these different Aldi locations were struggling with? (16:54) - How did you set up systems when you co-founded your first company? (23:23) - Where did your growth in the first 18 months come from? (26:13) - How did you eventually get to Flint? (28:55) - What's scaling been like at the PE level? (31:07) - Of the companies, you've seen, is there a consistent theme as to why they don't scale? (33:21) - How do you adjust cultures as quickly as possible without breaking things? (34:37) - How do you figure out what KPIs are most important for certain roles? (35:54) - Once you have established a culture and KPIs, what's next to accomplish to scale? (38:00) - Do you have a case study example of a formula that works for scaling? (40:29) - Do you hire first before tackling marketing? (42:44) - What are some of the most challenging parts of the sales side of these businesses? (47:57) - How do you identify potential Salespeople and how do you design the training process? (49:27) - What's your philosophy for compensation and incentivizing Salespeople? (50:51) - What're your thoughts on scaling in terms of cash flow? (53:43) - What other impediments to scaling are top of mind for you day to day? (55:15) - What are you most excited about for Flint over the next 2 years? (56:05) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (57:25) - What characteristics of folks make them desirable to work for? (1:00:10) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guests on this episode are Paul Yanchich and Ryan Beaver. Paul is a co-founder of Arcadea Group, a vertical market software holding company that Paul and his co-founder Daniel raised $320 million to found 14 months ago. In this episode, Paul is joined by Ryan who serves as managing director of value creation and operations. Our conversation acts as a part two to our first episode with Paul and Daniel, episode 84, and breaks down learnings from 14 months of activity, lessons learned, where software acquisitions see the most improvement partnering with Arcadea, and evaluating management teams for the long haul. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Arcadea Group Paul Yancich On LinkedIn Ryan Beaver on LinkedIn Episode 84 on TLAO with Paul Yancich and Daniel Eisen The Outsiders by Will Thorndike Topics: (3:04) - What have been some early learnings as first-time investors and founders? (5:50) - In what ways are you efficient with Arcadea and where do you focus your resources? (9:42) - What do the first 1-2 years look like after closing? (16:38) - What are some other ways you create value and make it collaborative with CEOs that join you? (20:53) - What parts of a software business have changed and what's stayed relatively the same? (24:46) - When you look at software companies today, what are the most common technical best practices missing? (30:56) - What are some key learnings you've had from chatting with folks like Will Thorndike and Mitch Rails? (37:47) - What makes founders excited about Arcadea over other potential acquirers? (40:04) - Do you have any ambition to be a public company?

My guest on this episode is Juan Ruiz. Juan is the founder of CommunEtA, the first-ever student-led search investment fund. The goal of the fund is multifold: provide exposure and training for students wanting to build a career in search, provide a grassroots investment option for searchers, and spread the word about search across the country. We start off the episode discussing a few student-run funds on the venture capital side that inspired CommunEtA and round out the conversation with topics like building a team of students that are constantly joining and graduating, the power of search to transform someone's career, and how search might evolve in the future. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Juan Ruiz on LinkedIn Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Student Club Blue Road Capital Severance on Apple+ Topics: (3:32) - What models did you study for this dorm room-style fund for the VC world? (6:52) - What kind of oversight is there from the University staff? (8:15) - What's the process for creating systems around the fund given the high turnover of graduating students? (10:07) - What was the inspiration for the fund and the mission, vision, and value behind it? (13:36) - What was your background prior to your MBA at Harvard? (18:40) - What's the interest level you're seeing from students toward Search Fund Investing? (21:50) - What do you view as the main goal of the fund? (26:53) - What's the involvement of students in the fundraising process? (27:46) - What will your role be for Commune ETA going forward? (29:06) - What are some roles and jobs for students in the Club? (30:24) - Is there any conflict of interest with students helping to run a Fund while also pursuing Search? (32:08) - Do you plan to expand this club to other MBA programs? (33:22) - If this club was in 5 schools, what would the investment committee look like? (35:08) - Do students get paid? (35:25) - What are some of the different compensation models you look at? (35:55) - What challenges do you foresee with growing this club across other universities? (36:55) - How many students do you need to have quality output? (37:59) - Evangelizing Search (42:26) - What college class would you teach if it could be on anything? (44:43) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (46:52) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Alexis Grant. Alexis and I have gotten to know each other through our mutual interest in media and our two small but growing media companies. We share thoughts, ideas, and advice back and forth all the time, and I'm excited to finally record one of our conversations. Alexis founded a blog management company that was acquired by The Penny Hoarder, which then sold and gave her some starting capital for The Write Life, which she ran for a few years before selling that business too. Now she's founded They Got Acquired, a media business covering small online business exits with a growing newsletter and data product. We discuss all things teams, products, creating content, and one of my obsessions: the convergence of media and high-end products like data. Please enjoy this wonderful episode with Alexis Grant. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Alexis on LinkedIn They Got Acquired The Penny Hoarder AirTable The Hustle Ben Collins Google Sheets Training StyleBot.app Topics: (3:46) - Alexis' career journey (8:52) - Why do you think 'They Got Acquired' would be a more interesting business to run? (9:40) - What issues did you run into in previous roles? (11:01) - What is They Got Acquired? (14:16) - How have you approached building your team? (16:18) - How do you determine what tasks you'll work on vs. delegating to the team? (18:40) - Do you try to focus on revenue-generating tasks over content or operations-related tasks? (20:17) - What next task are you looking to delegate? (23:41) - What role will you fill for your first full-time hire? (24:28) - What would a full-time writer be able to accomplish that you can't right now? (26:04) - Is the research team for the database different than the writing team? (27:14) - How do you ensure the media and date sides of the business interact with each other? (30:04) - Are there any companies you find interesting that have a media arm alongside a high-end product? (32:40) - Have you seen a media business buying a company that sells products best suited for its audience? (36:05) - Have you thought about an event strategy at some point? (37:05) - How do you think about competition in your space? (41:52) - How do you balance what you want to do with your business vs. customer feedback? (42:21) - What are you most excited about over the next 24 months? (43:04) - What college course would you teach if it could be about anything? (43:43) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (46:37) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guests on this episode are Kurt Leedy and Kyle Coots, co-founders and managing directors at Miramar Equity Partners. Kurt and Kyle have an interesting vantage point in the search world being backed by a family office with an agnostic time horizon, allowing them to invest in the widest set of opportunities in search and parallel spaces. Our episode focuses on a concept they developed they call the three ways to make money, those being classic LBO, M&A-driven strategies, and organic growth. We dive into the characteristics of each along with a few examples from their portfolio. We also touch on how the intersection of two or more methods can create exponential outcomes. Finally, we discuss a few theses they find interesting in healthcare and software and how they develop a thesis on an industry. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Special thanks to our sponsor: Oakbourne Advisors Links: Miramar Equity Partners Kurt Leedy on LinkedIn Kyle Coots on LinkedIn Will Thorndike with Patrick O'Shaughnessy BPD Zenith Flint Group Swoogo Encore Infusion Constellation Business Breakdowns - The NFL Time Codes: (3:36) - How did your backgrounds help form this concept of "The three methods to make money"? (9:18) - Do you have a model of investing that resonates most with what you're looking to accomplish? (12:24) - Have Search CEO's been primarily focused on one of these three buckets in your experience? (15:51) - What are some characteristics & examples you've seen of the Classic LBO investing model? (18:36)- What questions or risks are you optimizing for when considering LBO? (22:13) - What are some factors that have correlated with a high retention rate in companies you've observed? (24:23) - Can you walk us through how you divide M&A Driven Strategies into its two subcategories: Roll-Up and Transformative? (33:46) - Is there some value in having M&A experience for a CEO & their company? (35:42) - Why do you think there is such increased popularity in the M&A strategy within Search? (39:00) - Which companies and characteristics fall under the Organic Growth Model? (46:00) - What are some examples of companies who have combined these methods and found success? (51:10) - What are your thoughts on Software businesses and any opportunities in that space? (54:40) - What are some ways you develop and validate different theses? (1:01:19) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (1:03:32) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Adriana Garcia Ceja who recently launched a traditional search fund backed by Footbridge Partners, Pacific Lake, and others with a primary focus on the healthcare industry. Adriana brings a ton of experience to her search, including corporate development at Home Depot and a head of special products role at Applied Concepts, a search fund backed company, during her gap year in her MBA at Harvard. We talk extensively about lessons learned at Home Depot, including the many mentors she's had along the way, how to be an entrepreneur in a big company, picking the right search fund model for you, getting hands on experience prior to searching, and how we can encourage more women to become searchers. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Adriana on LinkedIn Bolivar Health Applied Concepts Flying Magazine Topics: (2:37) - What are your considerations when looking at different options in your Search? (5:13) - What factors did you weigh when looking at investors? (7:33) - What advice did you get from people to help you prepare mentally for Search? (9:23) - What motivates you to be so interested in the healthcare industry? (11:05) - What was your experience like working at the corporate level at Home Depot? (18:14) - Being Entrepreneurial in a Big Company (20:19) - Where are the similarities you see in service, retail, and healthcare? (22:13) - What observations did you make in hiring, training, and management from Home Depot that could be applied in an acquired healthcare business? (26:07) - Where do you draw the line in a Search when it comes to a culture that might be too far gone? (30:40) - What was your experience like at Applied Concepts? (35:15) - What challenges did you encounter as a woman in a male-dominated industry? (37:44) - What will it take to balance the cohort of Searchers? (42:37) - Who are some female role models that you admire? (44:16) - What are you most excited about in your first year as a Searcher? (45:37) - What College class would you teach if it could be on anything? (46:27) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (48:42) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Mark Brooks, Managing Director of Permanent Equity. Mark leads Permanent Equity's post-close operations team, partnering with company leaders to overcome challenges and unlock growth. Mark is a really reflective person, which you can tell from his writing on Twitter. He's thought very deeply about management and creating transformative teams, and this conversation is dense with value and insights. This episode is a fantastic dive into all things management, including brevity and effective communication, creating an environment that encourages debate and disagreement, and why great teams are crucial to combat process depreciation. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Mark on LinkedIn Permanent Equity Mark on Twitter Margin call scene: Explain it to me as if I were a child Morgan Housel Ben Thompson Matt Levine on Bloomberg Topics: (2:58) - How important is brevity internally in business? (8:17) - When you think about writing key messages, how would you coach communicating via email? (10:10) - How do you share ideas across companies? (13:10) - How do you make sure your companies aren't reliant on one person? (17:13) - Is there a long term goal that operators should aim for in terms of the decisions they have to make? (19:37) - Healthy laziness in delegation (23:14) - How do you best shift the mindset of a new manager to think more about team performance vs. their individual performance? (26:40) - What are some common character traits of leaders who are great delegators? (28:23) - Building a team for space and for stress (31:45) - How do you evaluate a candidate's ability to build a team? (33:26) - When you bring in new managers, are there common behaviors or patterns that need to be adjusted? (35:59) - The depreciation of processes (38:38) - How do you create a culture where employees feel comfortable disagreeing with management? (41:48) - How do you try to pinpoint holes in your own processes and methods? (44:34) - Of the highest performing operators you've seen, are there any consistencies in their daily routines? (47:55) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (50:25) - What's the best business you've ever seen? (52:10) - Which newsletter writers do you really admire?

I'm joined by Sara Heston and Peter Kelly. Together at Stanford, Sara and Peter, among other projects and teaching, assemble the Stanford Search Study that has been released every year on even years. The study is widely considered the go-to resource for learning about search funds and is often the first resource shared with folks considering the path. The first study in 1996 was only two pages long, and the 2022 study released in July is over 30 pages, reflecting both the growth in the Search Fund Model and the increased availability of data. Our conversation covers the purpose of the study, it's evolution since 1996, a half-dozen interesting trends they have observed among Search Funds, characteristics of ideal Searchers, and data sets they want to add to the study in future years. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Email Sara here: [email protected] Sara Heston on LinkedIn Peter Kelly on LinkedIn 2022 Search Fund Study Search Fund Primer Topics: (1:32) - What's the background and genesis behind this broad Search Fund Study? (3:28) - How has the audience changed over time and what are the goals of those reading the data? (6:28) - What are some decisions you've seen made by people utilizing the study? (8:02) - What's the methodology for putting together the study? (9:48) - What are some of the most notable things you've added to the study over the years as it's grown? (13:10) - Where do you get ideas for new data sets to add? (15:27) - What are some interesting trends you're paying attention to based on the study? (18:49) - Why do you think you're seeing a spike in returns? (21:58) - How much of the rise in multiples is due to the 10-year bull market we've had? (26:59) - Is there anything else notable you've noticed that's influencing Searcher equity? (29:22) - How have you seen exits evolve over time? (31:53) - Are there any interesting sets of characteristics that the best Searchers have? (37:07) - Do you see Searchers who feel out of their element building teams around them to pad weaknesses? (39:20) - What are your thoughts on Partnered Searches? (42:14) - What are some data sets you'd be excited to add to future studies? (45:53) - Do you have a sense of how large the self-funded Search community is? (47:39) - How can folks in the community help make studies more robust? (49:31) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (53:45) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guests on this episode are Jay Davis and Jason Pananos. Jay and Jason acquired Vector Disease Control, which provides vector borne disease prevention and lake management services, in 2011. About 4 years after acquisition, they realized serial acquisitions complementary companies could be a powerful growth lever. And 14 acquisitions later, they sold the company in 2017 for a very successful outcome. Following the sale, they founded the Nashton Company where they've been mainstay search investors and the last few years holding company investors. They're also co-founders of Compounding Labs, a partnership between Jay and Jason, Kent Weaver and Will Thorndike to invest in long-term holding companies. Our conversation covers their investing in holding companies, how they approached serial acquisition at Vector and how they advise other searchers in the strategy, sources of capital and deal pacing, and building deal teams and when to start that process within your serial acquisition or holding company cycle. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Jay on LinkedIn Jason on LinkedIn Nashton Company Compounding Labs Stanford Search Fund Harvard Business Study 2022 Topics: (3:17) - If you look at Vector as a play for acquisitions, how did it fit into your strategy? (6:41) - What actions did you take to prepare yourself for rolling up other businesses and acquisitions? (10:56) - What key roles need to be in tip-top shape before you begin acquisitions? (14:39) - What were some best practices you developed over the process of 12 acquisitions? (16:14) - How have your roles evolved over time? (20:53) - Have you noticed folks things being easier for serial entrepreneurs if they have a partner? (22:29) - What other types of investments have high returns in the early days outside of team-building? (25:24) - Are there any misallocations of time entrepreneurs have in the early innings of a serial acquisition strategy? (29:49) - Does the presence of Private Equity in a certain industry make it more attractive to you? (33:10) - What are some factors you weigh when looking at industries to potentially invest in? (35:27) - What characteristics do you look for in entrepreneurs? (37:46) - How does pace increase factor into your path as the team grows? (39:38) - How does the source of capital shift over time? (42:38) - What are your thoughts on Long-term holding companies and their increased popularity? (47:27) - How do you sus out whether an entrepreneur knows they're in this for the long haul? (50:51) - How do these long-term hold companies shift over time? (54:02) - How do holding companies shift your role when investing compared to a traditional search fund? (56:59) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (58:43) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Nick Haschka, back for a third episode to provide an update on his early ambitions of a holding company, which have taken a slight turn. Two years ago, Nick and his partner Anupam Sharma acquired a commercial landscaping company Vargas Gardening. They added a manager and grew the business, but realized the road ahead was going to be substantially more difficult and so made the decision to sell the business, earning a two-year IRR of 122%. Running a second business with a worse economic profile than Wright Gardener wasn't going to be as valuable an endeavor, and thus they renewed their focus on Wright after the sale. Nick has also been thinking more about search investing, having reduced his investment activity due to the declining economics he's seeing. We talk about this change of thought, his interest in investing in public micro-cap stocks, and deeper, more targeted industry theses. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Nick on Twitter Nick on LinkedIn The Wright Gardner Nick's recommended products, reading, and more! Connor Haley on The Fort Podcast Topics: (2:39) - Updates since Alex and Nick last spoke at the outbreak of the pandemic (5:35) - Nick's venture into acquiring a commercial landscaping company (9:49) - Selling the landscaping company (19:30) - What changed in your growth approach with this second business? (22:35) - How have the last few years been for The Wright Gardener from a growth perspective? (24:24) - Why have you slowed on investing in Searchers? (26:53) - Do you get the sense that terms have gotten worse or the quality of deals has declined? (28:45) - What's been your experience with investments since slowing down? (29:48) - What's your interest in Micro-cap stocks? (35:28) - How do you think about expanding your network from Search into Micro-caps? (36:28) - What's your long-term vision for this Micro Caps approach? (38:35) - What other topics or ideas are you focusing on?

My guest on this episode is Andy Cagnetta. Andy is the CEO of Transworld Business Advisors, one of the largest business brokers in the country. The typical guest on Think Like an Owner is an owner operator often running a business they acquired, although not always. And therefore, the buyer's side of a transaction is where we have spent the most time as a podcast. I wanted to hear the other side and learn more about a broker's perspective in the small business and search world. What do they care about? What do buyers do that is counterproductive, and how could they more effectively build relationships? We go over questions like this, along with what a good business broker looks like, why some listings never sell, how to impress sellers and brokers as a buyer, the perception of search funds, and how Andy himself is an acquisition entrepreneur who acquired Transworld and became CEO. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Andy on LinkedIn Transworld Business Advisors BizBuySell.com Closing the Deal by Andy Cagnetta Halftime by Bob Buford Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss Topics: (3:59) - Andy's background and career before acquiring Transworld (7:25) - What's the business model of a business brokerage? (9:24) - How do you find someone who is contemplating selling their business? (10:28) - What is your thought process behind growing franchises? (11:41) - What are some of the most common questions or concerns business owners have when you start working with them? (15:08) - What's gotten more challenging about evaluating and buying businesses? (16:41) - Do you find that sellers are consistently overvaluing their business? (19:33) - What types of listings have a tough time selling? (22:24) - What are some unique or vanity-play businesses that are tough to sell? (23:49) - What percent of listings never sell? (24:20) - How do you identify a good broker? (25:50) - What are some common miscommunications between buyers and brokers? (30:59) - What's the broad perspective of buyers from the eyes of brokers? (34:15) - How have you seen buyers distinguish themselves from a seller? (36:41) - What are some ways buyers derail the acquisition process? (38:44) - How much influence does the broker have over who the seller chooses to go with? (40:09) - How impactful is a track record of previous acquisitions when compared to a new buyer? How can new buyers make themselves stand out? (43:30) - What are some helpful tips for sellers to prep their business to be sold? (44:56) - What should sellers do after they step away from the business? (45:54) - How have you built relationships in different markets and communities? (48:43) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (49:21) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (50:04) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

Today I'm joined by Kevin Knoepp and Zack Seely. Zach acquired a healthcare software company called FSI in late 2020 with technical diligence help from Kevin, a software due diligence advisor and Trilogy operating executive. Our conversation doesn't discuss the attractiveness of software as an investment, which it very much is, but rather on how to properly diligence software and operate and improve the business once acquired. We review common technical issues in software companies, how much technical debt is acceptable, Zach's experience in diligence and operating improvements at FSI, and constructing a capable team to move a software business forward. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Zach Seely on LinkedIn Kevin Knoepp on LinkedIn FSI Martin Fowler - The Strangler Fig tree pattern Topics: (4:00) - Zach's experience at FSI at the acquisition point (6:05) - Zach's skills background & where Kevin fit into FSI (7:34) - Kevin's process for analyzing the technical side of software businesses (10:50) - What are some red flags you'll see in diligence? (12:22) - What's your perspective on Technical Debt? (15:03) - How did you structure your deals or build teams to adjust for technical challenges you found? (17:03) - How did you first set your priorities for what to fix with FSI? (22:22) - What are some must fixes before you can complete an acquisition? (23:52) - What sorts of gaps did you focus on in the first 18 months at FSI? (26:54) - How did you evaluate the technical team before the acquisition? (28:12) - What kinds of questions do you ask the technical teams to assess their abilities? (31:46) - How do you evaluate and mitigate risk on a technical team? (36:46) - What 2 to 3 changes did you make to the technical team right off the bat? (41:59) - What sorts of processes have you set up to make work more transparent? (45:11) - What are your thoughts on outsourcing vs. insourcing tasks or positions? (49:19) - Is it common for software companies to offer some sort of budget for outsourcing services to their developers? (51:27) - How do you evaluate if your team is utilizing capacity properly? (54:34) - How did you evaluate FSI's pricing strategy? (57:15) - What common parts of a pricing strategy could use the most improvement in software businesses? (59:19) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (1:01:30) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Freddie Bellhouse. Freddie and his partner Nick Ashford are co-founders of Fordhouse, a UK-based acquirer of small companies. In the eight years since they're founding in 2014, they've done 25 deals and are beginning to consider more fund-like permanent capital structures for future acquisitions. I was fortunate enough to meet Freddie's partner Nick in New York City, and we hit it off immediately. He'll be a future guest on here pretty soon. Freddie and I talk about lessons learned going deal by deal, building expertise in integration and organization building, and differences between the US and UK small private equity markets. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Freddie on LinkedIn Fordhouse EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) Topics: (3:30) - Can you walk us through some of the deals you've accomplished in your career? (7:24) - What are some nuances between the US and UK in regards to SMB? (9:55) - Have you met any people in_______ (11:12) - Are there any European companies that have multiples as low as the US? (12:02) - Why have you decided to raise a fund instead of raising deal by deal? (15:03) - What's an example of a company where you needed to build out the executive team function? (17:53) - How do you evaluate whether a team is ready for growth? (19:15) - Have you noticed that most of the compounding growth at a company happens at years 4 & 5? Why do people sell right before that? (22:13) - The scripted nature of acquisitions (24:19) - What are the differences in transaction costs between the US and the UK? (26:21) - What kinds of offers have you received for businesses? (27:45) - How intriguing is Fordhouse as an acquirer? (30:27) - What is the longer-term focus in your work? (33:10) - How do you think about keeping managers happy in terms of liquidity or dividends? (35:33) - What tends to go wrong when interests diverge? (37:39) - What causes a mediocre performance? (40:48) - Is there one company you've acquired that's vastly outperformed the others? (42:35) - Thoughts on integrating companies (43:45) - What are some of the example PCV's that you've enjoyed studying? (46:57) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (48:14) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (49:20) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Rob LeBlanc. Rob is a co-founding partner of Ambit Partners, a search investment fund founded in 2020 that invests in searchers worldwide in countries like Paraguay, Spain, Germany, and South Africa, where Rob is based. Together with his two co-founding partners, they have raised a $25 million fund with plans to back 50 to 60 searchers in this first fund. Today, they have funded 32 searchers in 20 markets with 5 acquisitions thus far. A recurring concept we discuss in the episode is that investing in search internationally is like going back in time to the early days of search in the US – competition was less, fewer owners were aware of searchers, and search tactics were more effective. Those are still true in most countries around the world today. Rob and I talk about finding entrepreneurs, themes that are similar across countries, and good and bad reasons to accept a given searcher in your cap table. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Rob on LinkedIn Ambit Partners [email protected] Discovery Vitality Topics: (3:47) - Which countries have features that make them attractive for searchers and which countries are on the come up? (8:52) - How is conducting a search in other countries like "going back in time?" (13:37) - What business models seamlessly transition overseas from the US? (15:06) - How valuable is it to have an investor from the country you're searching in? (18:02) - What are some "bad" reasons to have a certain investor on your cap table? (21:37) - How do you think about which companies where you want to be on the board vs. having a partner on the board? (26:39) - What's a situation where you wouldn't be a good fit as an investor? (27:53) - What have you seen with searchers struggling to fill board seats? (30:22) - What personalities are best for leadership roles in search as the industry develops internationally? (34:24) - Where do you typically find international searchers? Would you ever go overseas and try to find people who would be good fits in Search? (40:00) - Where do you see Ambit over the next 5 years? (42:17) - Where do most of the exit opportunities exist for international searchers? (44:20) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (46:18) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (48:41) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Brendan Anderson. Brendan started his post-banking entrepreneurial career by acquiring Stam, Inc., which manufactures custom bent tubing before founding a private equity firm called ScaleCo where he has raised three funds and acquired 21 companies to date. He built his career by being an operator first and learned to become an investor, a path that's given them a big leg up when talking to other CEOs and potential sellers. One subject I've wanted to study more deeply is building a team that naturally attracts great people, and this is a major topic of our discussion and something Brendan has given a lot of thought to. We also talk about the use of debt combined with long term investment time horizons, how they facilitate data and information sharing across the portfolio, and what the top idea on his mind is today. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Brendan on LinkedIn ScaleCo Patrick Lencioni Books Gino Wickman books Topics: (4:21) - Are there any market indicators you focus on that have broad implications for your portfolio of companies (5:31) - Where do your CEOs get most of their information? (6:37) - How are you bringing your companies together to share best practices? (8:40) - Can you walk us through the TAC method? (13:47) - Brendan's background and career (23:16) - What were some notable misses you've seen across your 3 funds and what did you learn from them? (27:16) - How do you find great talent locally in your area? (29:35) - How do you think about scaling your recruiting pipeline? (31:03) - How do you retain great people? (33:52) - What is the "fund route" you offer people? (34:52) - Are there career advancement opportunities for people working in your portfolio who may want to jump to another company under your umbrella? (35:49) - How does your mindset shift when you're operating with a long-term hold mindset rather than selling within a few years? (37:30) - What kind of freedom does someone at a ScaleCo company have relative to working elsewhere? (39:03) - How do you view debt within a long-term time horizon? (42:19) - What's the top-of-mind idea for you right now? (43:36) - What college class would you teach if it could be on any subject? (46:52) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (47:55) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

The 4th episode in our Trilogy Search Series features Kristen Glenn from Reverb People. Kristen is an HR professional with over 15 years of experience in HR Leadership and Business Partner roles. We also have Cyrus Symoom, the Co-CEO of Clariti Software, Clariti helps governments across North America with permitting and licensing solutions. Finally, we are joined by Jennie Ellis, who is an Operating Executive specializing in Talent Acquisition with Trilogy Search Partners. This episode is a deep dive into talent acquisition, sourcing, and HR function development. Each of my guests brings a unique perspective with their experiences in fractional HR for small companies, running HR as the owner of an acquired company, and talent acquisition. The last several years have been challenging for recruiting and retaining great people across all different kinds of companies and search funds. There are special challenges for smaller firms in hybrid arrangements, and each of my guests provides great insight into how companies can find and keep great team members. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Kristen on LinkedIn Cyrus on LinkedIn Reverb People Clariti Software Topics: (3:38) - Introductions, backgrounds, and thoughts on the current recruiting market (8:59) - What are some tactics you've seen companies do to adjust downward as the market turns? (11:30) - Challenges Cyrus faced in building Clariti (13:43) - What ways have you seen talent compound at Clariti? (15:41) - Is sourcing talent from companies that are going through periods of change an effective strategy? (18:00) - How do you determine whether a company has good HR fundamentals in a prospective acquisition? (23:05) - What was the HR function like at Clariti when it was acquired? (24:25) - When did you decide to delegate out HR? (25:28) - How do you coach people on developing their HR function? (28:38) - How does the HR function look as the company scales? (30:01) - What does HR at Clariti look like today? (31:12) - What do fractional HR clients need to do to develop stronger HR functions? (34:52) - At what stage do companies stop outsourcing HR? (38:20) - What do some of the best HR functions have in common? (40:36) - What metrics are most important at Clariti for recruiting and retention? (41:19) - Can you expand more on the interview process at Clariti? (43:47) - How do your periodic check-ins with employees differ from the initial interview questions? (45:32) - How frequent are your retention interviews? (50:20) - What are some best practices for retention in companies? (52:40) - Where else can CEOs remind their team that communication should be open and transparent? (54:11) - Where does Clariti need to improve the most in their HR function over the next 24 months?

My guest on this episode is Joe Heieck. In 2015, Joe acquired gWorks, a software company that takes geographical information system data from government cities and counties and helps them visualize that data on their website among other services. Since then, they have grown impressively well both organically and through acquisition and have recently recapped their investor base through an investment by BV Investment Partners to continue their strong growth trajectory. Joe was an officer in the Navy prior to his MBA program at Harvard and subsequent search. We talk about how different building culture and leading teams is in the military compared to private companies. We also talk about building family versus team-based cultures, building a strong M&A strategy, what risks to accept versus walk away from, and knowing when it's time to exit a business. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Joe on LinkedIn gWorks Topics: (3:46) - Why was the location of a business in your search so important to you and your wife? (7:17) - What other ways did you optimize constructing your life around the business you would buy? (9:05) - What enabled you to focus and get an acquisition done in just 6 months of searching? (15:42) - Did you aim for a software company initially? (18:52) - What would a government use your GIS software for? (20:45) - Do searchers grow more risk-tolerant as their search lingers and what risks did you feel were acceptable when acquiring your company? (25:04) - What did you have to change about your leadership style transitioning from the military into a civilian business? (29:22) - Building family-based vs. team-based companies (33:22) - How do you negotiate the balance of empathy in a team-oriented environment? (36:29) - Can you give an example of proper time management within your company? (39:08) - What's your philosophy on strategic acquisitions to roll into your business? (44:08) - How do you think about exiting a business? (48:12) - How do you know if you're the right person to keep running the business? (52:12) - Is there anything you would go back and do differently? (54:01) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (55:41) - What's a strongly held belief that you've changed your mind on? (57:24) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

The intersection of media and data has been the top idea on my mind for quite some time now. And my guest today, Craig Fuller, runs one of the best modern examples of this concept in action. FreightWaves, founded in 2016, is a media and data company focused on trucking, freight, supply chains, and all things logistics. To date, they have raised $91 million, will hit $42 million in revenue this year, split 55/45 between data and media, and have a valuation of between $300 and 400 million today. Craig's work building FreightWaves has been an invaluable model for my work at HW Media as Chief of Staff with CEO Clayton Collins and the rest of our team. Conversations like this one have been instrumental in our discussions on the future of HW Media as an all-things housing media business. But we, and especially myself, also believe this model, this intersection of media and data can be a replicable strategy across industries. The goal of my episode with Craig today was to better understand how media and data can work together to create transformative companies, and I'm grateful for Craig's willingness to share his experience and expertise. Throughout the episode, we talk about what data sets to focus on first in an industry and how to build around them, developing the product roadmap, the media data flywheel, hiring effective editorial and sales teams, and the investor perception of FreightWaves. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Craig on LinkedIn FreightWaves The Economics of Data Businesses by Abraham Thomas Topics: (4:31) - Why do media companies typically misunderstand 'data' and data companies? (7:13) - How did the Media & Data arms of FreightWaves impact each other as you built this business? (13:07) - When you think back about creating high-frequency data, how did you approach building it for FreightWaves? (17:54) - Where has the bulk of your capital gone in building the company? (27:24) - How do you think about expanding your data sets going forward? (32:12) - Who is involved in your product development process? (38:06) - How did you two sides of your business interact in the early days, and has that changed over time? (49:35) - How do you attract high-quality talent? (54:18) - How do you structure your sales teams? How do you think about pricing? (1:01:23) - What's the investor perception on businesses running on Media & Data?

My guest on this episode is Poppy MacDonald. Poppy is the CEO of USAFacts, a not-for-profit data company founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to gather, organize and share data about the US government at the federal, state, and local levels entirely for free. Many of you will know about my fascination with media and data companies, and this episode with Poppy is a continuation of that strong interest. But not only is Poppy's story about running a super interesting data company, but also about growing an organization from 5 to 47 employees in less than 4 years. The company is very much a startup with everyone wearing multiple hats and driving to the same goal. Through our conversation, Poppy and I talk about why government data can be so hard to find, building a data-centric, non-partisan organization, growing pains, the long-term vision for USAFacts, and why the company was compelling to her when Steve offered her the job. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Poppy on LinkedIn USAFacts Topics: (4:03) - Poppy's background and career (7:29) - How did your experience in media at Politico transfer over to the world of Data? (10:54) - What channels are you using to share and gather data? (12:54) - What are your visions for further disseminating information to the broader US population? (17:51) - As you work down from federal to county size to gather data, does it get harder as you go smaller? (20:45) - How do you help governments & agencies gather their own data? (25:12) - How does your team need to grow and evolve? (28:28) - Where have you had growing pains when going from 5 or 6 to now nearly 50 people? (33:25) - What team has been the most challenging to build within the company? (35:33) - The importance of having patience while building USA Facts (37:21) - What 5-10 year growth and marketing goals do you have for the organization? (42:03) - Do you think your company could ever have a media side? (44:53) - Are there any comparable companies to yours in other countries that you can learn from? (48:06) - What's been the most interesting or odd piece of data that's been hard to get a hold of? (50:09) - What college class would you teach if it could be on anything? (51:28) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (52:35) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Ujwal Velagapudi. Ujwal has acquired nine small companies, pieces of real estate, and other investments over the past few years and has stumbled upon quite a number of unique companies. He's invested in a vending business, virtual assistant business, commercial real estate, a sports bar, and several others. This episode is about getting started and is a departure from our usual episodes about larger businesses in order to focus on small incremental deals running efficiently. Ujwal is really thoughtful and claims to not be a great manager or operator, but I advise you not to believe him. We talk about all things amusement vending, re-investing profits, close calls, what he is interested in today, and his changed views on debt. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Ujwal on LinkedIn HiByron Topics: (4:20) - Ujwal's acquisition off of Microacquire and other businesses he's bought (10:06) - What did the business do when you acquired it and what have you grown it to? (12:05) - What did you do before you decided to start buying companies? (13:31) - How are you getting the capital for these deals? (16:49) - Do you still live off of $1500 per month? (17:26) - What stands out to you now in a potential acquisition vs. when you first started? (18:45) - What businesses do you stay away from? (19:35) - Can you share more information on your vending business? (21:28) - What types of machines are the most profitable? (23:41) - How does the operations structure for the Vending business work? (25:10) - How many employees are in your portfolio? (25:44) - What have you learned about management during this journey? (28:15) - How do you onboard new employees at your companies? (30:58) - Where do you see things needing to improve? (32:56) - What's the growth plan? (37:15) - How much would the average machine earn in net profit for the restaurant on a monthly basis? (41:46) - What are some mistakes you've made that could have been "nails in the coffin" for your business? (45:53) - What college class would you teach if it could be on anything? (47:37) - What's a strongly held belief that you've changed your mind on? (49:38) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guests on this episode are Tom Klein and Roland Lessard, Tom and Roland launched a partnered search after running a background screening business together and acquired a language service business focused on intellectual property in 2016, which they sold last year in 2021. In both companies, growth through acquisition was a core to their playbook and we spend a ton of time diving into best practices and things to avoid in doing so. This is one of the best episodes of the podcast for understanding M&A, synergies, and change management, and if any of these topics apply to your business, you'll want to tune in. This conversation covers all things M&A, shifting teams, understanding culture and structure, effective leadership, and integrations with new companies and teams. We got on such a roll near the end that I entirely skipped my closing questions to make room for more discussion, and I think it paid off. By the end of this longer-than-usual episode, I hope you're in agreement. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Tom Klein on LinkedIn Roland Lessard on LinkedIn Morningside Translations Topics: (3:58) - Tom and Roland's Backgrounds (13:03) - How many companies within the industry did you speak with during your search? (16:35) - What was the company you bought and how did you plan out growth? (20:02) - Where were the biggest pains during your massive growth from $5mm to $30mm? (26:25) - What strategies did you use to get up to speed with everyone's role when making changes? (32:08) - What's your philosophy and experience with M&A? (42:51) - What are some Do's and Don'ts of tuck-in acquisitions? (58:07) - How do you implement synergies and change management when you've acquired one of these companies? (1:12:45) - Additional commentary on synergies

My guest on this episode is Michael Arrieta. Michael is the founder of Garden City and has raised $51 million in permanent capital to acquire family-owned businesses across the country. The raise was completed in March 2020, and already they have three wholly-owned companies and minority stakes in two. Michael came highly recommended by Brent Beshore, and I can see why from our conversations. It's clear that Michael is a student of business and has mental models of hundreds of companies floating around in his head. He also has a remarkable sense of empathy and mission at Garden City, a mission which we discussed throughout the episode extensively. During our conversation, we talk about raising without a private equity background, how to involve investors in your portfolio companies as mentors, how they recruit, the technology and systems they implement at their companies, and all things Chick-fil-A, a business Michael has studied extensively. Please enjoy my episode with Michael. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Michael on LinkedIn Garden City Companies Why it only costs $10k to own a Chick-Fil-A Franchise Topics: (4:42) - Michael's background and career (7:27) - What was it about VC that caused you to hesitate to pursue your career in that world? (8:59) What memories stick out from your time as a chief of staff that have helped you in your current role? (12:00) - What's the thesis behind Garden City? (13:39) - How did you go about fundraising? (17:12) - What started to become possible once you saw an increase in capital interest and were there any tradeoffs you had to make in order to secure more funding? (22:14) - Where are you seeing your deal flow come from? (24:55) - What are some of the companies that you own? (28:52) - How do you approach implementing technology in your acquisitions? (31:42) - How do you find great people to bring on to your companies? (34:11) - How much advice do you get from your investor base? (36:25) - What do you view as your role within Garden City? (39:21) - How do you build relationships with leaders in the companies you acquire? (41:26) - What companies inspire you? (47:46) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (48:25) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (49:41) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guests on this episode are Caroline Matthews and Connor McCarthy, a husband and wife team running an investment firm called Canyonlands Funds that acquires youth summer camps from Maine to Florida. Both are extremely passionate about the outdoors and met on a trip to Bhutan while getting their MBAs at Stanford. After working in private equity for a few years after graduating, they decided to become entrepreneurs in the outdoors and have acquired two summer camps to date. Their strategy is one of the most unique and interesting I've maybe ever come across as I haven't heard of anyone else investing in used summer camps. Their business model is pretty interesting, and naturally we spend a lot of time diving into how it works. We also talk about challenges in running summer camps, how they decided to raise capital and find great investors, strategies for finding and building great teams, and why Levain's Bakery in New York City makes the best cookies in the world. Enjoy the episode. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Caroline on LinkedIn Connor on LinkedIn Canyonlands Fund Levain Bakery Topics: (3:56) - Caroline & Connor's background and starting Canyonlands (7:43) - What made you decide to pursue private equity & tech before building Canyonlands? (9:33) - What were some skills you developed before starting Canyonlands? (11:35) - What business models did you consider when developing the company? (13:19) - What is the financial model backing the company? (16:35) - What are some ways you've leaned on your board for feedback? (20:17) - What is the business model for a Summer Camp? (27:23) - How do you find a great Camp Director? (30:37) - How are you measuring results through qualitative data from campers? (33:55) - What is the hardest data to track? (36:47) - How difficult is it to buy a camp and install a great reputation and values if it doesn't already have them? (39:08) - What are some levers and options for growing a camp? (41:29) - What have you learned about pricing in your business? (42:47) - Do you have any plans for a punch-card or subscription type model? (45:31) - How do you go about sourcing camps to acquire? (51:03) - What's the dynamic like being business partners and married? (54:35) - What college class would you teach if it could be on anything? (55:55) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (56:46) - What's the best business you've ever seen? (58:18) - How would you describe Levain Cookies to non-East Coast people?

My guests on this episode are Ayo Phillips and Peter Lohmann. Both operate businesses and property services and management and also run Traction EOS in their companies. EOS rightfully gets a lot of attention in the small business world for providing a structure to grow and being what Peter calls it as a culture in a box system. But every operator uses EOS in slightly different ways, and I wanted to hear from two operators using it to hear how they've customized the model for their businesses. This episode is a breakdown of why they decided to implement EOS, choosing between self-implementing versus hiring an implementer, benefits they've realized from using EOS, how EOS impacts company culture, and their advice for other operators considering us for their businesses. Also, Ayo's previous episode, episode 56 on Think Like An Owner, was a very popular episode for good reason. Ayo has quite the story to share, and I highly recommend book-ending that episode with this one for a great story and more background. And now enjoy our all-things EOS conversation. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Peter Lohmann on LinkedIn Ayo Phillips on LinkedIn Traction by Gino Wickman TLAO #56 w/ Ayo Phillips Perfect Surface Inc RL Property Management Vision Traction Organizer Who by Geoff Smart Topics: (5:08) - Ayo Phillips' & Peter Lohmann's backgrounds (7:17) - What prompted you to implement traction? (11:20) - What were some of the lightbulb moments from Traction? (18:17) - The decision to self-implement EOS (25:32) - When did you notice that the implementation was working and a culture was being developed? (30:11) - How much movement had to happen within your teams to successfully implement EOS? (35:49) - Building the base layer of EOS (38:59) - How do you think through picking "Rocks" and setting goals? Did you ever have to refine any of them? (44:31) - How have each of you personalized EOS to best fit your respective companies? (52:28) - What advice would you give to operators considering or struggling with EOS?

My guest for this episode is Kaustubh Deo. Kaustubh recently acquired a tree service business in Seattle through a self-funded search after working in private equity in New York. I've had the pleasure of getting to know Kaustubh over the last two years and have found him to be one of the most insightful thinkers in the search space. A good portion of our conversation focuses on concepts like risk-reward and making transitions, topics he has given a lot of thought. Throughout our discussion, we talk about the differences operating in large private equity compared to in small companies, loosening his deal-breaker list, effectively investing his time learning the new business, and YouTube strategy for the tree service industry. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Kaustubh Deo on LinkedIn Blooma Tree Experts Guilty of Treeson on YouTube SingleOps & the Green Industry Perspectives Podcast Topics: (4:24) - Would you ever get on YouTube? (5:43) - Why don't tree-climbers gravitate toward W2's? (8:21) - What's your main recruiting base? (10:49) - Are you seeing any tree service content creation outside of YouTube and Instagram? (11:48) - How did you end up in the world of tree services? (14:02) - How did you decide to focus on the Seattle market? (17:31) - What was your deal process like? (19:13) - Thoughts on Deal-breakers in search (22:40) - The deal experience in private equity vs. small business acquisitions (26:15) - What are some ways you tried to learn about the company's culture without interacting with the employees? (31:12) - What are some ways you are looking to improve communication with customers? (37:34) - What's your transition been like actually running the business? (41:15) - How helpful has it been seeing customer interactions first-hand? (43:10) - The differences in operations for private equity acquisitions vs. small businesses (46:40) - Do you have any advice for people in Search? (48:42) - What were your personal preferences when you started your search and how did those change over time? (52:30) - What growth goals do you have for the next 10 years? (54:58) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (57:08) - How do you determine the risk vs. reward balance in a decision? (58:59) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (1:01:51) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Alex Mears. Alex started his career in investment banking and consulting before leaving for the Navy and eventually returning to private equity at the Carlyle Group. Two years ago, Alex launched a non-profit called Search and Acquire to support veterans pursuing search. And he just recently announced a search investment firm he's co-founded called the Brydon Group to invest in searchers from all backgrounds. I've really enjoyed getting to know Alex over the last few years. I always appreciate his ability to take concepts from the military and large-cap private equity and apply them to our own lives and careers. He's a wealth of knowledge, and I've been excited to record an episode with him for a while. Alex and I kick things off by talking about the causes of failure in search, why you should always invert due diligence, best practices from large-cap private equity, and how to run software and government services businesses. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: The Brydon Group Alex Mears on LinkedIn Topics: (4:32) - What are some major causes of failure in Search? (10:17) - What are some interesting strategies you've seen used to maintain a healthy pipeline while in a live deal? (11:52) - Phase 2 failures & the period of greatest risk in a search transaction (15:56) - Alex's background and career (18:11) - Why did you join the military? (20:12) - What were some of your learnings and best practices from working in Large Cap Private Equity? (24:56) - Why are you investing in government services businesses? (27:13) - How do you pair government services with your search model that emphasizes customer diversification? (30:09) - What are some KPIs in government that Government Services Business CEOs need to pay attention to? (31:58) - How do you find out if there are tailwinds and what the government will be spending more money on? (32:56) - What is inverting in due diligence? (34:50) - What are some of the best and worst traits in veterans as business leaders? (36:19) - Are there certain business models veterans outperform in? (37:23) - How can Brydon be a better supporter of Searchers? (41:29) - What has been the investor appetite for Search over the past 5 years? (43:15) - What were the values you spent a lot of time working on? (45:03) - Brydon's Entrepreneur & Residence Program (53:23) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (55:22) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (56:55) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Tony Layne. I met Tony and his wife Cassi at SMBash in February after several folks strongly recommended I talk with them and I'm glad they did. Tony and Cassi are lifelong entrepreneurs in various ventures, but by far, their most successful venture is Senior Dental Care, now called Aria Care Partners under private equity ownership. Senior Dental Care started as a mobile dental services company for senior care homes and evolved to partner with insurance companies to pay for their services on behalf of patients through Medicare, meaning it didn't cost patients a dime to get dental care. Once the insurance aspect clicked, this business exploded, and it's created life changing financial results for them both. Our discussion is very story-based as we go through Tony and Cassi's journey, which is fantastic as their story is anything but dull, boring, and smooth, which brings me to a point about challenges. At the end of the episode, Tony said he was concerned that he'd talked about too many near death experiences in their business, but I feel these stories are perhaps the most important to share. When we hear stories of successful entrepreneurs today, they rarely share failures and hardships endured during the path to success, and that makes other growing entrepreneurs think that they're failures when they hit a rough patch. Sharing near death experiences in entrepreneurship is incredibly important as it demonstrates that hardship is normal, even for those that become successful. I hope Tony sharing his near-death experiences encourages others on this podcast and others to share the same. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Tony on LinkedIn Lynniam Farms Topics: (6:07) - Tony's background and career in Real Estate, construction & dental health care (32:50) - Being extorted by the state of Florida (37:08) - Butting heads with the board (40:39) - Growing their business and growing their family (44:31) - Acquiring an 1,800 acre property that would become Lynniam Farms & selling off the dental business (54:22) - Stepping away as CEO and getting into the transactional side of the business (56:31) - Setting up a Family Office (58:46) - Do you want to spend more time working with traditional searchers? (1:00:13) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (1:01:28) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (1:02:46) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Tom Birchard. Tom has spent a great portion of his career managing service and operations teams for Ingersoll Rand and Trane, and as of March 2022, has taken a president role with a family office to acquire home services businesses. The family office is Whitney Wilder and it's technically a multifamily office based in St. Petersburg, Florida, that operates like a private equity firm, but without a fund, giving them lots of flexibility, investments, and timelines. The office was formed after some successful real estate investments and their next move is acquiring home services businesses with Tom leading that new effort. Tom and I discuss managing projects and teams, getting to know a new team and designing successful transitions, how to handle having an iPad thrown at you, and involving family more in your career, among other team management topics. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Tom's Blog Whitney Wilder Family Office The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins Brent Beshore Buy Then Build by Walker Deibel Searchfunder.com The Effective Manager by Mark Horstman Topics: (4:44) - Tom's career and background (6:36) - What does IR & Train do? (7:59) - Tom's transition into family office & different roles he's held during his career (10:23) - What were some common themes you saw in successfully managing teams of different sizes? (11:42) - How would you define the management role as the size of the team differs? (13:44) - Are there nuances in managing teams with different missions? (16:16) - How do you think about improving as a manager and getting feedback from your team? (19:30) - How do you encourage teams to give genuine feedback? (22:07) - What have you learned about managing difficult transitions? (24:21) - What are some effective ways to build relationships with key team members early on in a new management role? (27:15) - How do you start working on the early wins to build trust with your team? (29:53) - How do you approach a team member who isn't pulling their weight and determine whether it's a firing vs. training solution? (32:04) - Where did you get your interest in SMB? (35:38) - How did you bring your wife into these decisions? (38:38) - Do you involve owner's families when potentially acquiring a company? (40:45) - What college class would you teach if it could be on anything? (41:41) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (43:41) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Ryan Turk. Ryan raised a traditional search fund in March 2020 and closed on Radiation Detection Company only nine months later in December 2020. Prior to searching, Ryan served in the Navy aboard nuclear submarine USS Michigan as an officer managing their onboard nuclear power system. Ryan used this experience to launch his impressively short industry focused search. Ryan and I talk about the pros and cons of being from the Navy prior to becoming a CEO, his thoughts on industry focus versus broad searches, establishing credibility and building relationships in a new team, and how his board has been helpful along with other advice to folks working with boards. Enjoy. Links: Ryan on LinkedIn Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin Radiation Detection Company Topics: (5:26) - Ryan's background and career in the Navy before RDC (9:28) - What were some key sales skills you learned working for a startup? (10:58) - How did you go about the process of developing your Cap Table? (12:50) - How did you decide your industry focus? (18:13) - Once you had a targeted industry focus, how did you reach out to different companies? (20:13) - How fast was it from Fundraise to close? (20:26) - What does RDC do? (21:57) - How did you build relationships with the most influential people on your team? (27:27) - Were there any challenges with the fact that you were taking over a 3rd generation family business? (30:18) - What have you found is most helpful in communicating that painful growth is best for the employees in the long term? (33:24) - How did your time in the military affect how you look at job progression and giving people more responsibility? (38:32) - What were some blind spots you developed while in the military? (43:44) - How have you leaned on your board? (45:43) - How did you develop your board? (48:13) - What advice would you offer to searchers looking to create a board? (52:35) - What college course would you teach if it could be on anything? (54:56) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (57:01) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Preston Holland. Preston is the COO of FLYING Magazine, which was purchased in July 2021 by Craig Fuller and has been going through a broad transformation to a modern media business. Preston and I became friends over our mutual love of aviation and media, and our conversations are always wide ranging and leave me with a new idea or view of the world. I'm very excited to share today's episode on niche media and publishing. Over the course of our discussion, we talk all things print publishing, why your favorite magazines aren't what they used to be, why the print is dead narrative is misleading, FLYING's fly in community plans, how to grow an editorial team, and aviation puns. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Preston on LinkedIn Preston on Twitter Flying Magazine Watch: Flying into Oshkosh Alpine Airpark Topics: (5:03) - Preston's career leading up to Flying Magazine (7:15) - Are you a pilot now? (8:51) - What's the culture like at Flying? (14:28) - What was the process like of acquiring Flying from Bonnier? (17:45) - What were some new directions Flying needed to take to become a more modern publication? (23:31) - Why isn't print publication dying out? (30:07) - How did you think about the different products that Flying could offer? (34:32) - Is there a plan to build more of these fly-in communities? (41:10) - How did you transform the Flying team since the acquisition? (44:34) - What have been some challenges or growing pains you've experienced? (46:37) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (47:48) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (49:34) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is David Dodson. David started the second ever search fund after being a Stanford case writer, purchasing Smith Alarm Systems in 1989. Over his career, David has been the CEO or executive chairman of five companies, has and continues to invest in search funds today through his firm Futaleufu Partners, and he is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching classes about search and the management of small companies. My conversation with David starts with his time as a case writer before launching his search fund. We talk about peaks and valleys in his search career, including some very hard conversations. We dive deep into the topic of transitioning from a contributor to a leader of a small firm and important leadership skills. We also talk about how the search fund world has evolved over time and where it might continue to change in the future. Finally, we talk about the relationships searchers have with their investors and how to foster better ones. I've been really excited to have David on the podcast for quite a while, and I hope you enjoy our wide-ranging conversation. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: David on LinkedIn Futaleufu Partners Topics: (5:26) - David's background and career (9:21) - What sticks out to you the most when thinking back on getting someone to write you a check? (12:11) - Once you had the capital, what did you do to search for companies? (13:43) - What were some of the more stressful calls you had with owner/operators? (15:03) - David's experience acquiring & running Smith Alarm Systems (19:06) - How did you approach your first 18 months as the new owner? (23:50) - The 5 skills of Leadership (29:11) - What are some examples of early prioritization as a leader? (31:42) - How do you advise making the transition from being a contributor to one organization to being a leader of your own organization? (34:46) - What are some common struggles folks have when they become a manager of managers? (38:48) - What have been some "near-death experiences" in your career? (45:16) - Are there any exercises you try to do to put your mind at a pause when you're making a critical decision? (47:41) - What are some ways you've seen the Search Fund world change throughout your career? (51:11) - Are there too many searchers? (53:00) - What advice do you have for searchers to build relationships with their investor base? (56:26) - What college course would you teach if it could be on anything? (58:22) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (1:00:15) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Glenn Gonzales. Glenn is the founder and CEO of Jet It, a fractional share private jet business with a unique model serving customers across the country and in Europe. Prior to founding Jet It, Glenn was an F-15 pilot in the Air Force and sold private jets on behalf of Gulfstream and Honda. This episode is a deep dive into all options available for business owners who want to fly private. If you want to explore private travel options, fly private more frequently, or even buy an aircraft directly to make your business and personal travel more efficient, this episode is for you. We talk about high level benefits to flying private and what factors to consider when evaluating your options. We walk through each of the four core private travel models – charter, jet cards, fractional ownership, direct ownership – along with their pros and cons and what kind of person or business each is meant for. After diving into each model, we talk about how Glenn's company Jet It fits into the private travel ecosystem and where that ecosystem is headed in the future. Finally, I ask him what it is like flying an F-15. I hope you enjoy this episode and find it useful for deciding how you and your business can utilize private travel in the near future. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Glenn on LinkedIn Jet It NetJets Topics: (5:04) - Glenn's background in aviation and military career (6:41) - Do you have any favorite memories from your days in aviation sales? (8:27) - What are the different breakdowns of customers who would buy a place directly? (10:22) - Where does someone get started in exploring private aviation? (12:54) - What are the broad pros and cons of flying private? (18:25) - Glenn's rule of them for business owners considering flying private (20:29) - Private aviation models: Chartering & Jet Cards (24:26) - The state of Jet Cards as an industry (25:41) - Costs within Chartering and Jet Card (27:07) - Private aviation models: Factional Ownership (29:32) - Pricing within Factional Ownership (33:48) - Yearly income needed before considering direct ownership of a plane (35:12) - How does JetIt fit into the ecosystem of private aviation? (39:05) - Does JetIt help arrange transportation after landing? (40:31) - Have you faced any near-death experiences in building your business? (42:17) - How do you hire and recruit folks? (43:46) - What do you think the private aviation landscape will look like in 10 years? (46:03) - How can private aviation become more affordable? (48:05) - How much does an electric plane drop the cost of a flight? (51:01) - What college class would you teach if it could be anything? (51:37) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (53:32) - What's the best business you've ever seen? (54:10) - Who are some aviation entrepreneurs that you admire? (58:26) - What are some differences between flying a Honda Jet and the F-15?

Welcome to the first episode in our trilogy search partner series with great entrepreneurs and investors from the traditional search world. Today, I am joined by Nikita Sunilkumar and Kush Das who both search and acquired home healthcare businesses through the traditional search process. Kush acquired Ennoble Care and works as a CEO today. Nikita acquired Crown Health in June 2020 and, in fact, just recently sold in early 2022. Both Nikita and Kush are fantastically talented entrepreneurs, as well as being friends which will be apparent as you listen to the episode. Their combined experience offers a great lens into what acquiring and operating a healthcare business looks like today and how to succeed. During our conversation, we talk about search interest in healthcare, different subcategories of health care, value-based trends, challenges and diligence, talent management, changes from COVID, and so much more. Please enjoy this first trilogy search episode. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Crown Health Ennoble Care Nikita on LinkedIn Kush on LinkedIn Planet - Daily Satellite Data Topics: (10:07) - Nikita and Kush's Backgrounds (14:05) - Nikita and Kush's businesses: Ennoble Care & Crown Health (18:10) - Can you explain what value-based care means and the implications for both of your businesses? (21:40) - Are there challenges behind running a value-based healthcare company? (24:38) - What are some challenges running this kind of business model without the scale behind it? (26:29) - What is the team management dynamic like in your businesses? (29:33) - What does it take to find really great people to plug into your company? (33:13) - Have there been any challenges or benefits with increased remote patient monitoring since the pandemic? (40:21) - How have you approached Revenue cycle management? (43:29) - How have you seen Health Care in Search become more or less popular? (47:35) - What are some challenges or mistakes searchers make in diligence health care businesses? (52:53) - What were some pandemic-related changes you saw in your respective businesses? (58:13) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (1:01:30) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (1:03:22) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guests on this episode are Michael Curry and Keith Burns who together have acquired 11 diagnostic radiation and other physics services businesses since 2014 through their platform Apex Physics Partners. This episode is loaded with wisdom and insights. I had a number of alternative titles I considered based on quotes for the conversation like "the CEO of Delta doesn't know how to fly" or "putting out fires with your face." Ultimately, earning the right to lead felt right as we talk extensively about their experience being first-time CEOs in an industry they had no background in, but through it all, they've managed to build an impressive track record at Apex with an ever-growing team. Over the course of this episode, we discuss the concept of the messy middle between the start and ultimate success of a business, signal versus noise and learning about the company you've acquired, how to know you're a good leader, letting go of control, and building a culture that grows. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Keith Burns on LinkedIn Michael Curry on LinkedIn Apex Physics Partners Seneca Creek Kruger Gilbert Health Physics The Hard thing about Hard things by Ben Horowitz Topics: (5:07) - Michael & Keith's backgrounds (11:19) - What does a medical physics business look like? (15:19) - Learning about what you actually bought vs. what you think you bought (20:17) - Earning the right to lead (22:33) - How did you figure out where you needed to invest your efforts in repairing relationships with the team? (28:07) - How do you interpret the "messy middle" of acquiring a business? (33:14) - Are there key memories where you felt like things were turning in your favor? (39:33) - Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. (42:34) - How do you let go of people who aren't a good fit yet are embedded within a small company? (48:27) - How did you approach hiring people who were smarter than you and giving them control? (56:14) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (54:45) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (59:40) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guests on this episode are Lori Harrington and Bruce Vanderzyde. Lori launched a search in October 2020 and recently acquired Bruce's company Anterra Tech at the end of 2021, which offers business intelligence software for the construction and real estate industries. This episode is a great discussion of how building a better relationship with a seller, negotiating upfront, bringing great advisors, and emphasizing strong and frequent communication can lead to a successful deal. Whether you're buying or selling a business, this conversation has a ton to offer. During the episode, we go over how their first meeting went, how they made their due diligence process easier on each other, the power of building a strong relationship, and their advice both for searchers and owners looking to sell their companies. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Anterra Tech Lori Harrington on LinkedIn Bruce Vanderzyde on LinkedIn Traction by Gino Wickman PEC Safety (now Veriforce) Buc-ees Topics: (4:36) - Lori & Bruce's Career backgrounds (10:00) - What has become more difficult as the company became larger? (11:18) - Why made Lori's offer more interesting than others to buy your company? (14:33) - What was it about meeting with Bruce that made his company more attractive to buy? (16:10) - How did meeting with Lori increase your confidence in the deal? (18:51) - What parts of the process did you focus on to make the transaction as smooth as possible? (22:45) - The importance of constant communication during an acquisition (23:36) - Bruce's experience balancing due diligence while still running the company (26:38) - Thinking about life after selling your business (29:02) - Thinking about life after completing the search process (30:10) - How do you look to the board for guidance? (31:09) - What did your first 30 days look like in terms of communication, especially with a remote team? (35:07) - Are there any compound benefits to running a remote company for 6+ years? (36:00) - Dealing with letting go of control of your company (39:09) - How do you discover best processes from a company you acquire? (40:02) - What advice would you offer to searchers and sellers? (45:45) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (47:53) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (49:33) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guests on this episode are Justin Burris and Tim Ludwig who together have co-founded a new search investment fund named Majority Search. Majority Search aims to be the preferred buyer of small companies while giving searchers the chance to own the majority of the companies they operate. This is a brand-new model they've spent the last year working on, and I'm so excited to see it finally become public. This episode was recorded live on February 4th at SM Bash in Orlando, Florida, in front of over a hundred attendees, my first podcast ever in front of an audience. We did have a few microphones snafoos here and there, and the overall quality was affected some, which I apologize for. Even so, this is a fantastic episode that I hope you thoroughly enjoy. Over the course of the conversation, Tim and Justin share their inspiration for Majority Search, the keys to being a better buyer, great investors they both admire and learn from, and advice for building great relationships. If you want to learn more about Majority Search, reach out to Justin and Tim at majoritysearch.com. Please enjoy the first live conversation of Think Like an Owner. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Majority Search BDT Capital Partners Constellation software Waste Management AB-Inbev BizBuySell Y Combinator Topics: (4:12) - How Alex came into contact with Justin and Tim (5:29) - Introducing Tim Ludwig (6:24) - Introducing Justin Burris (7:44) - How Majority Search builds upon the traditional search fund model (9:53) - The inspiration behind Majority Search (13:32) - What types of buyers have you studied when building Majority Search? (16:00) - What are some of the challenges of designing a search firm? (21:57) - What goes into being a perfect owner of a company? (23:44) - How close is Majority Search to modeling how a high-net worth individual would behave investing off their own balance sheet? (25:57) - What would you advise operators who don't have access to capital do when searching? (30:56) - How do you think about building a Berkshire-level cache of businesses from scratch to build a reputation as a buyer? (32:44) - What college course would you teach? (35:11) - What's the best business you've ever seen? (36:40) - What mechanisms that give YC its distinct notoriety? (38:48) - Wrap Up

This week is a bonus episode. We are cross posting a guest appearance I had on John Wilson's Owned and Operated podcast. I'm a big fan of John and enjoy his podcast immensely, and I wanted to share it with you all. In this episode, I share more about my philosophy behind the Operator's Handbook and all the ins and outs you want to know about podcasting. Near the end, I manage to turn the mic around on him and learn about his idea of bloating before optimizing and growing Wilson Plumbing and their other acquisitions. I hope you enjoy this Owned and Operated episode with John Wilson and myself. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Owned & Operated Podcast My First Million Podcast Think Like An Owner Ep. 47 with John Wilson Peter Attia's private podcast Knifepoint Horror Podcast - Apple Podcasts & Spotify Grant's Interest Rate Observer The Economist Harvard Business Review BizBuySell How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis Topics: (1:36) - Introducing Alex & discussing podcasting (5:08) - Alex's background, starting Think Like An Owner & The Operator's Handbook (9:34) - When did Think Like An Owner shift from being a hobby to a business? (12:03) - The podcasting business model (19:07) - Building The Operator's Handbook and why Alex chose a print format (31:20) - The process of creating one issue of The Operator's Handbook (35:39) - Subscriber growth from the first issue (37:05) - The team behind The Operator's Handbook (39:16) - What's the process like of bringing on a team? (40:43) - Acquiring & growing publications and media outfits (50:39) - John on growing his service businesses (53:57) - Bloating with an imperfect process (57:32) - Alex's search for a media acquisition (59:43) - Wrap up

My guest on this episode is Greg Geronemus, co-founder and managing partner of Footbridge Partners, a traditional search investment firm. This is my second episode with Greg, the first being episode 17 back in April 2020, where Greg shared his experience acquiring and operating his search company SmarTours and launching Footbridge. Well, two years later, Greg and his partner David have raised that fund and are halfway through their investment period with a budding portfolio of searchers. In this second episode, Greg shares his view on the role of a search investor, misconceptions in traditional search, the risk in buying at larger multiples, and a few wild stories from his time running SmarTours. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Footbridge Partners Greg's first appearance on TLAO SmarTours Forest Park Capital The Skin Center Topics: (4:45) - Greg's Background and career (6:43) - How much did the experience of running smart tours help in your advisement to searchers? (8:40) - Is there a specific experience from your time with Smart Tours that you reference often with searchers? (10:21) - Greg's experience cancelling a season of Ukrainian river cruises (11:11) - Have you invested in any companies that have the same exposure as Smart Tours? (12:19) - Are there any themes you've noticed in the investments you pursue? (14:10) - What is your perspective on the role of a search investor? (18:10) - Can a hands-on investor approach be scaled across 60-70 searchers? (19:53) - Common misconceptions about the world of search (25:35) - What risks do you see in searchers buying larger and larger businesses? (29:30) - What are some interesting changes you're seeing on the self-funded searcher side? (33:23) - How can a self-funded searcher or search investor protect themselves during the process? (37:33) - As an investor, What sorts of numbers, metrics and reports are you looking for from searchers either quarterly or annually? (40:13) - How frequently do you communicate with searchers? (42:16) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Mehtab Bhogal, co-founder of Karta Ventures. Karta is a Canadian based e-commerce acquirer investing primarily in e-commerce turnarounds, a corner of the world I didn't even know existed but that is incredibly fascinating. This episode is one of my recent favorites because of Mehtab's ability to share high level insights and then, in the next sentence, dive deep into obscure e-commerce details. If you enjoy conversations with seasoned operators who love to get their hands dirty, you will love this episode. During our conversation, Mehtab describes the dynamics within turnaround businesses, the risk return profile of each of them, which mimics venture in many ways, how he finds companies, and some incredible stories about what he's discovered in declining e-commerce companies. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Mehtab Bhogal on LinkedIn Karta Ventures Diapers.com Josh's Frogs Josh's Frogs on YouTube Topics: (5:06) - Mehtab's background and career (7:14) - Dropping out of college to flip guitars full-time (8:40) - Launching a search vehicle (9:54) - What kinds of deals did you find via Reddit? (11:02) - When did you get the sense that you were on the right track with DTC brands? (12:48) - What are the dynamics of a turn-around business? (14:24) - What are the main reasons an e-commerce business will become a turn-around business? (15:59) - What companies in a turn-around situations do you steer clear from? (17:02) - Why are you able to do due diligence so much faster with these types of companies? (17:52) - The nuance between product issues and marketing issues (19:15) - The low cost of entry for these businesses (20:30) - Risk-return vs. Venture (21:59) - How do you find these companies and choose the best ones? (24:12) - What happens day 1 after acquiring the business? (26:00) - What are some easily identifiable expenses that you find and cut? (28:50) - How do you evaluate managers? (29:59) - What do you do to shift companies into growth mode? (31:22) - What changes do you make on the product, sales and marketing side? (32:34) - A discussion on Lean production (33:50) - How do you evaluate whether a product is a breakeven bread product? (34:25) - Are you able to see what order items are added to someones cart? (36:58) - What are you surprised by that's missing or not done well at these companies? Any wild stories? (40:56) - What college class would you teach if it could cover anything? (42:28) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (42:59) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Sam Shepler. Sam is the founder of Testimonial Hero, a company he bootstrapped that helps companies create more effective video customer testimonials. Sam and I spend much of the episode talking about how to create great testimonials for your company and what the driving reasons are for using video over text or other mediums. In addition to being focused on a really interesting part of a sales process, Testimonial Hero itself is an interesting case study at what a bootstrap services company grows into overtime. Over the course of the episode, we talk about hiring a great team, using software and technology in your business to automate processes, and we spend some time near the end discussing time management and productivity. Enjoy. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Sam on Twitter Testimonial Hero Gumroad Andrew Wilkinson: Lazy Leadership Topics: (3:31) - How do you think about investing yourself and your professional development? (6:45) - What are some of the biggest changes you've made in your routine as you've grown in your career? (8:05) - What are some learnings you've had from working with coaches? (10:02) - How did you build Testimonial Hero? What were the early days like? (12:12) - What research have you found in the comparison of effectiveness between pull quotes and video reviews? (14:15) - What kinds of companies are best suited for video testimonials? (17:16) - If a company doesn't have a content strategy or video testimonials, which should they pursue first? (18:16) - Were video testimonials always the main product at Testimonial Hero? (19:11) - What's been your journey as a founder? (21:01) - Was there a tipping point that launched your growth? (22:15) - What did your day as a CEO look like in year 1 vs. now? (24:40) - Was there a moment where you realized you needed to bring on a General Manager? (25:50) - Tracking a CEO's time (27:53) - What college course would you teach if it could be on anything? (28:35) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (29:24) - What's the best business you've ever seen? (30:53) - Are there parts of Gumroad you've tried to emulate?

My guest on this episode is Robert Graham. Robert worked in management roles at Eaton prior to attending Harvard Business School, after which he worked in investment banking and private equity. Eventually, he decided to search for a business after seeing his HBS classmates do it, and today Robert is Managing Partner at Pillar Health Group, the holding company for four healthcare businesses he acquired together as a searcher. He's also a partner at Search Investment Group, which advises searchers on finding and acquiring their dream business. Search Investment Group also invests in self-funded searchers and has launched a new funded search program that functions as a hybrid between self-funded and traditional funded search. We discussed this program, its goals and feedback they've received from searchers in the episode. During our conversation, we also talk about what managing large manufacturing facilities with hundreds of employees is like, why Robert didn't want to acquire a manufacturing business as part of his search, running two businesses at once with Pillar Health and Search Investment Group, and time management as a CEO. Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: Robert on LinkedIn Harvard Business School Search Investment Group Pillar Health Group Topics: (4:07) - Robert's journey into Search (5:32) - Could you have launched a search fund directly after attending HBS? (6:38) - How did your experience prior to Harvard Business School help prepare you for searching? (7:40) - Robert's experience running operations in manufacturing facilities (13:37) - Did you ever come across any SMB's that would've existed as suppliers within manufacturing plants that interested you? (16:43) - Running Pillar Health Group (18:51) - The explosive growth of the three branches of Pillar (20:30) - How similar are the three businesses? (22:46) - What does your current day-to-day look like? (25:33) - What adjustments are you looking to make in your role for 2022? (27:31) - Do you do any exercise that helps you decide what needs to be delegated? (29:37) - Thoughts on grocery delivery (30:57) - Search Investment Group (32:17) - SIG's program for funding self-funded searchers (35:25) - Is there a step-up in any expenditure you make when helping the searcher (36:45) - What's the reception been like from searchers? (37:53) - What personality tests have you found to be most effective when interviewing potential searchers? (41:12) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (41:44) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (43:32) - Have you found any correlation between a searcher's experience in an industry to their success in that industry? (45:55) - Warren Buffet's annual shareholder meeting (47:10) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Eric Friend. I reached out to Eric after seeing him talking on Twitter about his family's printing business Friend Paper, which was founded in 1908 in Zion, Illinois, by Eric's great grandfather. As a print publisher through our quarterly publication called the Operator's Handbook, I was curious to hear what ideas he had on using print as a content medium. It turns out he's an even bigger print publishing nerd than I am, and we hit it off immediately. I forgot to hit the record button during our first phone call, but Eric agreed to be on the podcast to share more about his family business and print as an under-loved medium. Eric shares his journey from investment banking to his fourth-generation family printing business, challenges inherent in family businesses, the rebranding effort, and how companies today can use print to stand out from their competitors with customers and create unique experiences. We also spend quite some time nerding out about print publishing and the business cards from the movie American Psycho. Enjoy. Listen weekly and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: H.A. Friend & Co., Inc (Eric's Company) Eric on Twitter The Luxury Strategy by J.N. Kapferer The Best Made Company x Duluth Trading Co. Topics: (4:02) - The Catholic Church Story (10:14) - The timelessness of print media (13:36) - Eric's background, his career in Investment Banking, and moving into the family business (31:36) - What are some ways you want to see other companies use high quality print products? (39:14) - What are some ways to communicate luxury through print? (42:49) - Challenges in the business across generations (49:31) - What are you most excited for over the next 12 months in the business? (52:27) - What college class would you teach if it could be anything? (54:20) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (55:31) - What's the best business you've ever seen? (59:27) - Wrap up

John founded a professional services company in 1984 focused on energy conservation, inspections, and design work for large companies. He eventually grew the company to 43 employees and $13 million in sales and sold to Eclipse Combustion for $10 million in 2011. Since selling the business, he has taken on specific consulting projects to keep himself active and in the loop. I met John at a happy hour gathering in Akron, Ohio, of small business folks on Twitter and around Ohio. We shared a beer and chatted all things building a team, growing a business and life after a sale. His journey of being a founder and selling his business is the other side of the table from many of our podcast guests who acquired the business they run. John's story is filled with all the trials and triumphs of growing a business from scratch and creating a life changing outcome for your family. And I had a lot of fun recording this conversation. Over the course of the episode, we talk about reinventing yourself repeatedly, creating a saleable business, courage as a muscle that can be developed, and a few horror stories. Listen weekly and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links: CEC Consultants Honeywell Combustion Safety Sales Concepts Course John Puskar Books John Puskar on YouTube John Puskar on LinkedIn Topics: (4:11) - John's background and career (12:05) - What does an energy conservation audit look like? (13:11) - How long were you working before you could bring in a team to help you? (15:09) - Was there a point where you could accelerate the growth of your team? (24:29) - How did your day to day and the perspective of your business change when you hit that period of hyper growth? (29:03) - Courage is a muscle that can be developed over time (33:26) - John's Pivot into creating a Sale-able business (41:32) - What changes occurred in your life after selling the business? (48:52) - Horror Stories of the business (53:59) - What college class would you teach if it could be about anything? (55:31) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (56:59) - What's the best business you've ever seen? (58:10) - Wrap up

My guest on this episode is Jordan Evans. Jordan grew up in an entrepreneurial family in California. His parents started a language translation and interpreting business when he was two years old, and it grew over the course of his childhood. It grew enough that he actually acquired it from his parents in 2019 and has since been growing the business organically and through strategic bolt-on acquisitions of other language companies. I love episodes of family businesses. I've become more interested recently in roll-ups, so this was a really fun episode for me. Over the course of the episode, we talk about how his parents started and grew the company, childhood with entrepreneurial parents, best practices in running a fully remote team, and developing and growth through an acquisition playbook. Enjoy. Listen weekly and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links Language Network ScanSnap Topics (3:48) - Jordan's experience growing up in a family business and his ultimate decision to buy it from his parents (5:07) - Jordan's previous career in software (7:08) - What options were you weighing when you were let go? (8:31) - How old were you when your parents started their business? (9:09) - Was there a moment when it clicked that your parents were entrepreneurs? (10:40) - What was the overview of the business when you took over? (12:34) - What do customer relationships look like? (14:50) - How do you organize your team to handle so many different relationships? (16:50) - How did your parents optimize the business around lifestyle and what changes did you make to prime it for growth and bolt-on? (20:57) - What was the most difficult part of going paperless? (24:32) - The process of hiring and developing a sales team (28:01) - How do you manage a team of 1500+ freelancers? (30:45) - What was the transition like from an office to fully-remote? (32:36) - Why did you decide to start acquiring bolt-on companies? (36:58) - What's gotten more difficult as you do each acquisition? (40:21) - Where do your deals generally come from? (44:02) - How do you structure deals with sellers? (46:50) - Have you used SBA debt at all? (48:23) - What are you most excited for over the next year? (50:07) - What college class would you teach if it could be anything? (51:42) - What strongly held belief have you changed your mind on? (53:26) - What's the best business you've ever seen?

My guest on this episode is Chris Williams. I was introduced to Chris via Justin Vogt about a year ago. And since then, Chris and I have talked monthly about his search, thoughts on running a small company, the podcast, and all things work and life. I've really enjoyed getting to know him, and I'm thrilled to have him on the podcast finally. Chris recently bought a bookkeeping and accounting outsourcing business in California called System Six, which had 24 employees and around a million dollars in EBITDA at the time of acquisition. As Chris has spent more time in the CEO seat, it's been fun hearing about his ideas, challenges, and new growth plans for the company, and I'm excited to share them on the podcast. Over the course of this episode, Chris and I talk about why he chose to buy a small company versus continuing in private equity, the daily life of being a CEO, building a team around flexibility, and growth opportunities ahead. Also, Chris is looking to build a specialty in searcher owned companies for bookkeeping and accounting. If this is an area you need help in, definitely reach out to Chris at [email protected] and tell him you heard him on Think Like an Owner. Listen weekly and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links SystemSix Alpine Investors Emporos Systems Topics (5:27) - Chris' background and career (7:15) - Was there a specific moment where you realized that you wanted to run a business yourself? (8:28) - Did you find PE to be focused less on People? (10:36) - Were there any opportunities for PE firms to recruit you to work directly within portfolio companies? (12:32) - Chris's search and the emotional journey (17:13) - Are there any high-level takeaways you would share with other searchers? (19:30) - What is the business you bought? (21:29) - How much interaction did you have with the owner during the process? (24:43) - What kind of questions did the owner's wife ask you? (26:23) - How has the team received you? (28:20) - What are the biggest differences in your day to day compared to your time spent in PE? (31:24) - Is there a specific moment or memory you've had since operating that has made it all worthwhile? (33:44) - What's an operating rabbit hole you're going down right now? (36:12) - Profit Sharing (39:28) - SystemSix's interesting flexibility offerings (42:50) - What are you most excited for over the next 6 months? (44:34) - What college class would you teach if it could be anything? (48:00) - What's a strongly held belief you've changed your mind on? (49:36) - Have you found any interesting or reliable ways to experiment with different paths? (51:02) - What's the best business you've ever seen? (52:51) - Is there a reason you didn't focus more on software businesses during your search?

My guests in this episode are Austin Hall and Palmer Higgins. A few months ago, I ran a survey with Think Like An Owner listeners to get feedback on the direction of the podcast. And one of the questions I asked was on new episode formats. One of those formats that received great feedback was facilitating conversations between two owners in similar industries that they could dive deep into their own businesses in a way I can't since I don't operate a business like theirs. I reached out to Austin and Palmer, who both lead lawn care businesses in Chicago and Maine, respectively, and are great friends. And they work to test the format with me. This wide-ranging conversation between the two of them covers what they're struggling with within their companies, pricing, materials, hiring and training, tractions, EOS, implementation, and everything involved in scaling a people-intensive business. Please let me know what you think of the format. I'm posting this episode specifically to get feedback on the format. And if I should do more episodes like this one or not. Send me your thoughts via email to [email protected]. On Twitter, where you can find me at @aebridgeman and finally via my website, alexbridgeman.com. Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts. I hope you enjoy the episode. Think Like an Owner has teamed up with the podcast app Clever FM to provide show-specific features like searchability, sorting episodes by tags, episode transcripts, and the ability to highlight and annotate episodes. Do us a favor and download Clever FM on Apple or Android and tell us what you think and what other features you would like to see. Listen weekly and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

My guest in this episode is Ryan DeCaire. Ryan joined a private equity firm called Ashbridge Partners in Toronto Canada and became president of one of their portfolio companies, Geroline, in February 2019. Geroline is an industrial safety products company that sells ice cleats to companies in the energy, aerospace, mining, transportation, and construction industries among others. Geroline has a pretty incredible growth story from the time of acquisition in February 2019, when it had low double digits revenue, Ryan and his team doubled the size of Geroline and sold for 10x gross return to investors only 16 months later. The story of how they did it with sweat and tears will have a familiar theme to anyone in a growing small company. Ryan and I discussed building systems and a growing business, hiring for culture, creating an incentive structure for their team, going to 55 trade shows per year, and all the work needed to handle those leads and the challenges of being a business with only one or a small handful of products. Think Like an Owner has teamed up with the podcast app Clever FM to provide show-specific features like searchability, sorting episodes by tags, episode transcripts, and the ability to highlight and annotate episodes. Do us a favor and download Clever FM on Apple or Android and tell us what you think and what other features you would like to see. Listen weekly and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links Mentioned: Ryan DeCaire on LinkedIn SureWerx Official Website Think Like an Owner Sponsors Live Oak Bank — Live Oak Bank is a seasoned SMB lender providing SBA and conventional financing for search funds, independent sponsors, private equity firms, and individuals looking to acquire lower middle-market companies. Live Oak has closed billions of dollars in SBA financing and is actively looking to help more small company investors across the country. If you are in the process of acquiring a company or thinking about starting a search, contact Lisa Forrest or Heather Endresen directly to start a conversation or go to www.liveoakbank.com/think. Hood & Strong, LLP — Hood & Strong is a CPA firm with a long history of working with search funds and private equity firms on diligence, assurance, tax services, and more. Hood & Strong is highly skilled in working with search funds, providing quality of earnings and due diligence services during the search, along with assurance and tax services post-acquisition. They offer a unique way to approach acquisition diligence and manage costs effectively. To learn more about how Hood & Strong can help your search, acquisition, and beyond, please email one of their partners Jerry Zhou at [email protected]. Oberle Risk Strategies – Oberle is the leading specialty insurance brokerage catering to search funds and the broader ETA community, providing complimentary due diligence assessments of the target company's commercial insurance and employee benefits programs. Over the past decade, August Felker and his team have engaged with hundreds of searchers to provide due diligence and ultimately place the most competitive insurance program at closing. Given August's experience as a searcher himself, he and his team understand all that goes into buying a business and pride themselves on making the insurance portion of closing seamless and hassle-free. If you are under LOI, please reach out to August to learn more about how Oberle can help with insurance due diligence at oberle-risk.com. Or reach out to August directly at [email protected]. Interested in sponsoring?

My guest in this episode is Sandro Mina. Sandro is a co-founding partner of Relay Investments, a search investment fund based in Boston. Prior to Relay, Sandro and his partner, Martin launched their own search fund after graduating from Stanford's MBA program in 1991, acquiring and eventually exiting three companies. Sandro delves at the company he ran called Camera World and explains what this world of search funds looked like in the early Nineties. During our conversation, we discussed the history of search funds, how searchers should think about transitioning ownership from the seller to themselves, and how searchers can construct and utilize a great board for their company. Think Like an Owner has teamed up with the podcast app Clever FM to provide show-specific features like searchability, sorting episodes by tags, episode transcripts, and the ability to highlight and annotate episodes. Do us a favor and download Clever FM on Apple or Android and tell us what you think and what other features you would like to see. Download Clever FM now on the App Store or Google Play Store Listen weekly and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links Mentioned: Sandro Mina on LinkedIn Relay Investment Think Like an Owner Sponsors Live Oak Bank — Live Oak Bank is a seasoned SMB lender providing SBA and conventional financing for search funds, independent sponsors, private equity firms, and individuals looking to acquire lower middle-market companies. Live Oak has closed billions of dollars in SBA financing and is actively looking to help more small company investors across the country. If you are in the process of acquiring a company or thinking about starting a search, contact Lisa Forrest or Heather Endresen directly to start a conversation or go to www.liveoakbank.com/think. Hood & Strong, LLP — Hood & Strong is a CPA firm with a long history of working with search funds and private equity firms on diligence, assurance, tax services, and more. Hood & Strong is highly skilled in working with search funds, providing quality of earnings and due diligence services during the search, along with assurance and tax services post-acquisition. They offer a unique way to approach acquisition diligence and manage costs effectively. To learn more about how Hood & Strong can help your search, acquisition, and beyond, please email one of their partners Jerry Zhou at [email protected]. Oberle Risk Strategies– Oberle is the leading specialty insurance brokerage catering to search funds and the broader ETA community, providing complimentary due diligence assessments of the target company's commercial insurance and employee benefits programs. Over the past decade, August Felker and his team have engaged with hundreds of searchers to provide due diligence and ultimately place the most competitive insurance program at closing. Given August's experience as a searcher himself, he and his team understand all that goes into buying a business and pride themselves on making the insurance portion of closing seamless and hassle-free. If you are under LOI, please reach out to August to learn more about how Oberle can help with insurance due diligence at oberle-risk.com. Or reach out to August directly at [email protected]. Interested in sponsoring?

My guest in this episode is Timi Okah. Timi is the first CEO in Kingsway Financial CEO Accelerator Program, having acquired an HR and accounting business called the Ravix group in October this year of 2021. There's several interesting wrinkles within this search model. One of the most interesting being that Kingsway is a public company and Ravix was acquired as a subsidiary of Kingsway. On top of this, Kingsway has significant NOLs or net operating losses on their books, which offers a unique tax opportunity at Timi and Ravix. Over the course of this episode, Timi and I talk about his engineering background and switching to business, choosing Kingsway's program, pros and cons of buying on behalf of a public company, some nuances of working with public shareholders, and what he's excited to build within Ravix over the coming years. Enjoy. One more thing before the episode, if you've ever wished you could highlight podcasts, Kindle-style, and share specific moments you can now do so using the Clever.fm app. Think Like an Owner has teamed up with Clever to create show-specific features within the thing like an owner show page. In addition to the ability to highlight and annotate episodes, you can now filter episodes by tags, search across episodes for industry's names and keywords, transcribe my episodes live, and click on links like books, articles, or definitions. As you listen along, download the app on iOS or Android by going to Clever.fm and listen to Think Like an Owner for an enhanced podcast experience. Listen weekly and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links Mentioned: Timi Okah on LinkedIn Timi Okah on Twitter Think Like an Owner Sponsors: Live Oak Bank – Live Oak Bank is a seasoned SMB lender providing SBA and conventional financing for search funds, independent sponsors, private equity firms, and individuals looking to acquire lower middle-market companies. Live Oak has closed billions of dollars in SBA financing and is actively looking to help more small company investors across the country. If you are in the process of acquiring a company or thinking about starting a search, contact Lisa Forrest or Heather Endresen directly to start a conversation or go to www.liveoakbank.com/think. Hood & Strong, LLP – Hood & Strong is a CPA firm with a long history of working with search funds and private equity firms on diligence, assurance, tax services, and more. Hood & Strong is highly skilled in working with search funds, providing quality of earnings and due diligence services during the search, along with assurance and tax services post-acquisition. They offer a unique way to approach acquisition diligence and manage costs effectively. To learn more about how Hood & Strong can help your search, acquisition, and beyond, please email one of their partners Jerry Zhou at [email protected]. Oberle Risk Strategies– Oberle is the leading specialty insurance brokerage catering to search funds and the broader ETA community, providing complimentary due diligence assessments of the target company's commercial insurance and employee benefits programs. Over the past decade, August Felker and his team have engaged with hundreds of searchers to provide due diligence and ultimately place the most competitive insurance program at closing. Given August's experience as a searcher himself, he and his team understand all that goes into buying a business and pride themselves on making the insurance portion of closing seamless and hassle-free. If you are under LOI, please reach out to August to learn more about how Oberle can help with insurance due diligence at oberle-risk.com. Or reach out to August directly at [email protected]. Interested in sponsoring?

My guest in this episode is Collin Hathaway. You might remember Collin from Episode 32 back in October 2020, which quickly became and has remained the most popular episode of Think Like An Owner. Collin joins me again to more deeply discuss lessons learned through his career of buying and building HVAC and plumbing businesses across the country. Just like last time, this episode is filled with great stories, all centered around learning how to understand and work with people. Over the course of our conversation, we discussed Collin's first business acquisition in Utah that went south fast, the current market for HVAC and plumbing businesses, consequences of higher prices for those companies both to investors and those operating, governance searchers should expect from investors, and how to build companies that enable talented team members to advance their careers. Enjoy. Listen weekly and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links Mentioned: Collin Hathaway on LinkedIn Collin Hathaway on Twitter Skylight Capital Think LIke An Owner Episode 32 (Collin Hathaway - Investing and Operating in Home Services) Think Like an Owner Sponsors Live Oak Bank – Live Oak Bank is a seasoned SMB lender providing SBA and conventional financing for search funds, independent sponsors, private equity firms, and individuals looking to acquire lower middle-market companies. Live Oak has closed billions of dollars in SBA financing and is actively looking to help more small company investors across the country. If you are in the process of acquiring a company or thinking about starting a search, contact Lisa Forrest or Heather Endresen directly to start a conversation or go to www.liveoakbank.com/think. Hood & Strong, LLP – Hood & Strong is a CPA firm with a long history of working with search funds and private equity firms on diligence, assurance, tax services, and more. Hood & Strong is highly skilled in working with search funds, providing quality of earnings and due diligence services during the search, along with assurance and tax services post-acquisition. They offer a unique way to approach acquisition diligence and manage costs effectively. To learn more about how Hood & Strong can help your search, acquisition, and beyond, please email one of their partners Jerry Zhou at [email protected]. Oberle Risk Strategies– Oberle is the leading specialty insurance brokerage catering to search funds and the broader ETA community, providing complimentary due diligence assessments of the target company's commercial insurance and Employee benefits programs. Over the past decade, August Felker and his team have engaged with hundreds of searchers to provide due diligence and ultimately place the most competitive insurance program at closing. Given August's experience as a searcher himself, he and his team understand all that goes into buying a business and pride themselves on making the insurance portion of closing seamless and hassle-free. If you are under LOI, please reach out to August to learn more about how Oberle can help with insurance due diligence at oberle-risk.com. Or reach out to August directly at [email protected]. Interested in sponsoring?