← Confessions of an Implementer
Loading summary
Transcript196 lines
- [00:00]
A
I guess what I'm getting at is, like, how does a private equity firm know, like, when to say, okay, we. We put a lot of money into this one, and it's. We're not seeing it. Welcome to Confessions of an Implementer. I'm your host, Ryan Hogan. We share unique stories of EOS implementers and the companies they've transformed to give you a rare glimpse into the successes and challenges of the system in action. Let's jump in, man. Thank you so much for. For coming on. And I realized that when I sent you this, you were like, hey, why don't we do this in person? I know this place. And so this is the only second one that I've done in real life. So we're just gonna. We're just gonna kind of go with it.
- [00:43]
B
Let's go with it.
- [00:44]
A
All right, let's. Let's start here. So I was doing some research, and it looks like you kind of started off in the banking world, and then you got into the investing world. So either venture or we're going to talk, I think a lot today about search funds, which maybe for the audience, they don't know a lot about, but walk me through that, like, from right out of college into bank.
- [01:11]
B
Yeah, I was in a fraternity. Yeah. And one of the, like, smartest dudes in the fraternity was in the business school with me. And I was like. I was like, man, that guy's got his stuff together. And he was going into banking, so I thought I'd go into banking. And he was such an awesome mentor. He connected me with. With some really great banks that were interested in giving, you know, a shot to a kid in undergrad. And I found myself in interning in New York for Solomon Smith Barney and got an offer there, and it was a really cool experience. I was a Midwestern kid, so going to New York was a big experience. And I learned really quickly I wasn't a great New Yorker.
- [02:03]
A
What is? What is? What does that mean? What, what is? I'm not a great New Yorker.
- [02:08]
B
Like, I. I was genuinely a nice person, and I think people in New York are genuinely nice, but there's this edge to them that I just didn't have. So when they saw that I didn't have the edge. Yeah, it was. It was feast or famine, and I learned. I learned. So I. I developed the edge, but I didn't like it. I didn't want to be on edge all the time, and that's how I felt in banking in New York. I. I ended up going back to The Midwest and tried banking in the Midwest. And I just realized banking was my thing. I liked it. I learned a lot of skills, but the transactions just weren't that exciting to me. Yeah. So one of the deals I was on had some consultants in it. They invited me to join them in LA and become a kind of bankruptcy consultant and help private equity funds work out the deals that go bad. Yeah. And that was a ton of fun. I learned a lot about bankruptcy law and interesting. And private equity. And then again, like, I was. I was working on a deal and there was a wealthy kind of family office that had a deal that went bad. And I was on that deal and it worked really. You know, I worked really hard. We did some really great things to help them get out of being stuck. And they offered me a job to go work there. So I spent the next few years of my career working for this family office private equity fund. And that was a lot of fun because I got close to operating. Some of the deals that I worked on were in Central and South America.
- [03:46]
A
Oh, that's interesting.
- [03:47]
B
Yeah. I spent a lot of time in Honduras and Guatemala and living in LA and going down there sounded cool. Yeah. Like I was this finance nerd.
- [03:58]
A
Yeah.
- [03:59]
B
But I got to go to. To Hondo every once in a while.
- [04:03]
A
Honda, I haven't been. So I can't call it Hondo. I feel like I don't even think
- [04:07]
B
I can, to be honest with you. But. But Honduras was a cool spot. The only problem was the place where we own most of our companies was in San Pedro Sula, which was like the murder capital of the world at the time.
- [04:22]
A
Wow.
- [04:24]
B
Sometimes you just make bad choices. And the company was great, but it was in this tough environment, so I needed two bodyguards with me at all times. Wow. Freaked out my parents and my family. And then at one point it hits you like, do I really need to be in a place where I need two bodyguards? But the experience was so great. Some of our companies got so big, we started effectuating policy in some of these interesting. You know, not just on a kind of regional level, but like at a state level. So, yeah, we started talking to heads of state and I was all sudden, like, thrown into politics.
- [05:10]
A
You were a very important. That's why you called it Hondo, because you were. You were a very important. You were a dignitary down there.
- [05:17]
B
I was far from it. And I think that then I was like, wait, I really don't know what I'm talking about. So I went to business school at Michigan and And I got a foreign policy degree and a business degree there. Kind enough to give me scholarships for both. Nice. Really nice. People loved Michigan. But yeah, that was kind of the, kind of that part of my career.
- [05:41]
A
When you, when you talk like from the outside looking in or people that aren't deep into private equity, I think there's a lot of like sexiness around the industry. Like the things that you hear about are the, the roll ups and, and the successful exits regardless of which side. You know, you read Wall street and it's all about like this big private equity firm just sold its portfolio for something with a B at the end of it. Or, or a lot of entrepreneurs, when they get to a certain point and they're kind of beyond the SMB stage, it's like their only prospective acquirers are either strategics or private equity. So the, the perception of private equity, generally speaking might be very sexy. You said that when you walked in you were really dealing with a lot of the deals that it sounded like didn't go all that. What are some things that, that you learned about the industry where, you know, people from the outside looking in are like, oh, that's so cool. You know, I've heard, I've heard different statistics of like a very high percentage of deals actually fail. And so it's like you never hear about that stuff. So what are some of the things that like you saw where it's like, oh, I had no idea.
- [06:54]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I took a bit more of an academic approach to it. Right. So I think as you go into banking and all these things that you really try to get at core cash flow, you really want to understand like what, what cash is a business spitting off and you make all these assumptions and sometimes you're in the ballpark, sometimes you're not. And I think in private equity you have more of an owner's mindset. So now it's not just, hey, we think the business will do this, but you have a degree of confidence in how to drive to get there. And sometimes the leadership team is doing great and they just need some support because they're outgrowing their skill set. They need some people that can open up access to new markets, give them capital to grow, just be more strategic in their thinking. And I think that's when it works really well. You get a really nice partnership. Sometimes a PE fund sees value in a business and it might not include that leadership team or there might be some sort of a takeover or in our case we were buying distressed companies. So there was something Wrong. And we had a different view of that company and we looked at it as an asset. We said, hey, if this asset was kind of unfettered or structured differently, it might be able to grow. And when you do that, when you buy something at its lowest point and you grow it, you create a ton of value. Right? So what I learned was there's a lot of really great operators out there and there's a lot of like operators like founders, business leaders, leadership teams that were just doing great, but something hit them and they couldn't get out of their funk. And sometimes like the type of PE we were doing was a change of ownership and it just needed a change and we restructured it and all of a sudden the thing could grow for a lot of different reasons. But I think, wow, kind of big picture. I think private equity is, I think anything in finance is not always sexy, but I think it's a really cool occupation because you get to use your full brain. It's not analyzing, but it's also doing so. You're, you're kind of in the seat with the operator. And I think that's a really special place to be.
- [09:22]
A
Do you, you talked about, and I love the idea of distressed companies. I don't know if that's because like I'm an adrenaline junkie or what, but it just sounds like a very exciting kind of vertical in the private equity space. You said like you come in and you're looking at things differently and you see opportunities that the organization may not see and there's probably a certain amount of pretty rough changes that need to happen right out of the gate. And then the idea is, is like if you can unlock the value or unlock the growth, like the, the value delta between that and adding a few points to, you know, a company that's already a well oiled machine, probably a lot different. What's the most challenging part of that? Meaning like do you have to place more bets in the distress? Because like know to get that delta it's like well, you know, we're going to have a higher failure rate of the distressed companies we buy. Like I think of it like debt. So you go out and first you can qualify for like 24.9% interest rate and then you can go get some mez which is, you know, 18 interest rate and, and 2 points off the top. And I look at kind of the same way. So do you have to take more bets? Is it, is there more risk? Like what, what is the trade off for that higher upside?
- [10:37]
B
Way more risk and I think anyone who does distressed investing has a really significant balance sheet. So depending on how much they want to fuel the fire, they're putting money into something unknown. Right. It's. In some ways, it's very much like a startup. You're putting money into an idea. But in this case, you kind of, you know the industry, you know some of the players, you know how value has been created, so there's some form of a playbook there. And then you look at ways to minimize all that risk. So if the leadership team wasn't great, we can bring in some people who are great at turning around a business. Right. If the product market fit wasn't great, awesome. We can totally change that.
- [11:24]
A
Yeah.
- [11:24]
B
Right. So it just depends on the thesis for each business. And we've got cash that the prior company didn't have. And when you restructure it, you're kind of starting with a blank slate. So that's where it gets a lot of fun.
- [11:37]
A
Have you ever read Corporate Turnaround? Jeff Sands?
- [11:41]
B
Doesn't sound familiar, but it's just.
- [11:44]
A
It's one of the. It's one of the best books I've. Other than Traction. Traction, number one. Good to great. There's some. There's some great ones in there, but it's a great book from like, an operator's perspective because it talks about, like, the levers that. That you need to pull in a distressed environment. Sometime, like immediately raising prices. Sometimes it's immediately reducing cost, whatever the case is. And I'm sure it's a blend of. Of. Of a lot of different variables. But what was interesting or stood out to me in the book is, like, a lot of the principles. It's just good business strategy. And like, it's so interesting because, like, we're talking about turnarounds, and you probably come in and you're. You're like pulling all these levers almost immediately. And like, if it. They're just not common sense. But it's like things that should have been done already. And you guys just come in and you're like, hey, this is what needed to happen.
- [12:36]
B
Let's go. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes we come in and I think we have, like, a PE fund doesn't waste time. They don't mince words. Here's the strategy. We take feedback, right? And. And we have a point of view. And then you go. And then it's execution. And I was younger in my career, not to say that my motor is getting slower, but it's different, right. I used to just be able to run through A brick wall, add a problem, stay up all night for many nights in a row and figure it out. It was just intellectually interesting and there was just a, there's no way I was going to lose. Right. And that's the mentality of those teams. And I think when you have that a clear plan, you have some expertise and you have a lot of horsepower, you know that that is a pretty cool catalyst for change. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where PE phones do really well sometimes where they don't is they think they're right and they, you know, really screw up the product. They piss off the wrong customers. They're just, you know, not, you know, not open to certain types of feedback and it hurts them in the long run. But over time, most BE fund returns are pretty good. But as we're seeing now, some of them aren't as good. And there's other models to approaching business and private equity is just one lever you can pull to grow a business.
- [14:15]
A
Do you think some of the things that we're seeing now is, is because of how cheap capital was for lord knows how long and, and how accessible it was and it just got in the wrong hands? Like, is that what you believe the product we're seeing today is from.
- [14:29]
B
I don't know. I don't know. I think, I think it's a lot of different reasons and there's a lot of different methodologies on funds. Right. So in general, I think there is a segment of business that does need a change with a, a new investor and a new team. Right. And private equity is a good way to do that. There's a hundred other ways to do that. I've been involved in search funds which we can get into. That's a, it's a kind of smaller asset class and, and you're working with smaller businesses but like large scale private equity does some really great things. Like there's, there's some, a lot of value being created for some brands and companies that probably couldn't have gotten there with the founding team. You know, there's a flip side to every coin. So yeah, I, I, I don't, I can't really opine on like private equity today. But, but there's, there, what is different is there's so many different types of firms. Yeah. With different mindsets and different things that they bring to the table that wasn't there, you know, 10, 15 years ago.
- [15:42]
A
When you talk about a private equity firm coming into a distressed and, and you were, you noted earlier about like the access to Capital or access to resources. And I think you said horsepower. There's a lot that, that private equity can do when they come in. How's it set up? Is it, is it like. I guess what I'm getting at is like, how does a private equity firm know like when to say, okay, we, we put a lot of money into this one and it's, we're not seeing it like generally is it milestone. So it's like, you know, we will do XYZ and, and here's what we need to achieve and if we don't, we walk away. Like, what do you, what do you typically see from a strategic standpoint?
- [16:22]
B
Yeah, I mean at its most basic level there's some sort of investment thesis and you have to track to that thesis. Y. Sometimes you can be off a bit, right? Especially in the early innings of a turnaround. But those can be explained, discussed, debated. Right. And if we feel comfortable that the management team is doing their best and they're on the right track, you're going to get some more leeway to kind of figure it out. Right. At some point you gotta reach a beachhead or hit a part where a point in the investment where you can actually start seeing week over week, month over month, quarter over quarter, consistent results. If you're starting to see that and everyone's kind of agreed on that plan, then you're starting to work your way out of the turnaround. If you're not, then you're kind of in this hodgepodge of debate and discussion. Right? Like what else do we need to do? How much more money do we need? What are our competitors doing? There's just a lot of thought that then goes into how do we get unstuck, you know, And I don't think that's different than the way that most companies run their business. I think the difference is now you have stakeholders like the investment committee of the PE fund, you have the deal team of the PE fund. You also have the lenders, you have the board, you have the, the leadership team. So you have a lot of different perspectives there. Whereas, you know, a lot of mid small to mid sized businesses that we see every day, sometimes just the founder or just the leadership team. So their diversity of thought is somewhat stunted. So I think sometimes when you have these different opinions, you can come up with different answers, you can pressure test them in the room, you have a lot of different expertise that doesn't always get you to a great place. More often than not it's kind of a better path than I would say someone who's just kind of noodling it over in their heads. But then again, you have some like really amazing entrepreneurs that can kind of put on different hats in their head and think through problems really effectively. And more importantly, they have really great teams that help them unlock that value and go from there. So I think BE is just a rigorous group of folks who've seen a lot of businesses and they can bring all that information to bear really quickly and really precisely in a deal.
- [18:59]
A
When, when you did you grow up in an entrepreneurial family?
- [19:05]
B
So I'm first generation from. My family's from Serbia. Nice. And my sister and my parents were all born there. So I was kind of the American of the family. And my, my immediate family wasn't necessarily entrepreneurial, but we were in this community where it felt like everyone was an entrepreneur. So it definitely made its way to our table. Like when people are visiting and really tight community. So you always have people that you're breaking bread with from the community. So I saw all these people start with nothing and you know, build truly the American dream in front of my eyes. So that, that left a really early impression on me. Got it.
- [19:49]
A
Yeah. That's why. Sorry for the hard turn. There I was, I was trying to figure out like where, where this came from and that makes sense. So now at the private equity firm, it sounds like you had a lot of autonomy, like a lot of, I don't want to say decision making authority, but like you had a lot of room to do things, I'm assuming sometimes
- [20:10]
B
like in the context of the, of the deal thesis. But yeah, I mean, you're wearing a lot of hats. So in one company I was like interim controller cfo. In another company I was basically just a therapist to the CEO.
- [20:25]
A
Every CEO needs one.
- [20:27]
B
Totally, totally. Really? In, in another company I was, I was truly just kind of on the deal team. Supporting. Yeah. And I was another voice helping, helping them go. So the aperture and how you lean in to a, to a business is, is really different. But yeah, you get, especially when things are going well, you get a lot more autonomy. When things aren't, you're. I mean if, yeah. When you're on the tipping point of bankruptcy, there's not a lot of, not a lot of freedom.
- [20:56]
A
I was, I may have been there once or twice and I, I agree with you. The stakeholders start to get very focused on the decision making process and things like that. So.
- [21:11]
B
Yeah.
- [21:13]
A
Okay, so that makes sense. So, so kind of raised entrepreneurial, observed it solid. And then private equity Was kind of like the, oh, this is like problem solving and figuring things out and oh,
- [21:26]
B
like, how, how did I get there? For me, I knew that the entrepreneurs I saw early were struggling. Like it was costing their fam. Like, I could see the cost, the toll that it took on people's lives. Like they were, yeah, they were doing well, but it was always like two steps forward, four steps back. Right. And not always, but like, it just seemed hard. And as I started to see my friends, parents that were kind of more American. Yeah. They had time for their families, they were able to kind of be successful and it just didn't look that hard. And you started to look like, okay, where are the really kind of, where, where are people doing the best with the least amount of effort, the most fun? And it seemed like finance was, was a really interesting place. And I remember my uncle, he built an insurance business from scratch, really successful. Wow. But he also nearly bankrupted it a few times. And I remember once he told me, go learn from all these guys, Go find the smartest people, learn as much as you can, and then when you're ready, go do your own thing. And I think that always stuck with me. Yeah.
- [22:49]
A
When. How old were you when that, that
- [22:52]
B
was probably like high school.
- [22:54]
A
Wow.
- [22:55]
B
Wow.
- [22:58]
A
So then after, after private equity, you went back to grad school and I saw you studied a little bit of entrepreneurship as well.
- [23:05]
B
Yep.
- [23:05]
A
And then, so now, now the world is your oyster. So you've, you've gone through graduate school, you've done the, the private equity, you've done family office, you've done, you've done banking, you've done all these different things. So you've kind of experienced and, and seen like, what businesses are, what they struggle with and now what? So are, are you, are you debating with yourself, like, do I want to start my own company? Do I, like, where's your head at as you're coming out of grad school?
- [23:30]
B
It wasn't even a question. I, I knew. I, like, I was broken for corporate America. Yeah. Like anyone who knew me at the time, like, my friends joke, they're like, you were, you were either doing a startup or finding some way to be a CEO. There's like, I didn't even interview.
- [23:48]
A
Yeah.
- [23:49]
B
I think the only interviews I took were for like the FBI and like a weird multi level agency that. I still don't even know what that interview was all about. But I just took things that were interesting and I, I created my own opportunities, I looked at starting companies and I'd heard about this thing, search funds, while I was in private equity. And I really wanted to explore it. Yeah, the startup seemed really cool. That was. That was kind of where the. The energy was going at that time. And in consulting, banking, consumer products. But I had already ruled that off. That was not on my plate. So I tried a few startups. I really put a lot into it. And what I found was that sitting around a table with some really smart people solving problems but without the infrastructure of a company was my brain just couldn't get there. I was having a really hard time starting something from scratch and. And I don't know what it was. Maybe it was just kind of harkening back to the early, like, entrepreneurial experiences. It felt almost like a hustle or kind of phony. I couldn't be me. And when I was in a business and the experience I had in PE showed me that, you know, you can. You can kind of build any business if you do some of the basic stuff. You're in the right market if it's kind of already growing, if, you know you're selling a good product or service into the market and they really like it. Like, there's some real basics that. That if a business has that, you can. You can kind of take it anywhere.
- [25:37]
A
Yeah.
- [25:38]
B
And that felt right for me. That fit me. So by trial and error, I realized that this kind of search fund thing was interesting. I called as many people as I could that could talk to me that had done it before, and they were so cool and so supportive. And at the time, there was only like 10 to 20 people doing these things a year. And even the people that weren't able to buy a company or had a quote, unquote bad experience, you could just feel the energy from how they were talking about it and how much they learned from it and how it got them to where they are. I was like, man, even if the worst thing could happen, like, if I couldn't find a company or. Or worse still, I, like, had a poor investment that I made there. There's bounce back in this and there's a lesson in me. I never, at that point in my career, I'd never really failed.
- [26:36]
A
Wow.
- [26:37]
B
So, like, it was a weird thing to say. So, like, I just fully bet on myself. I was like, all right, well, let's see how far I can take this thing.
- [26:44]
A
Yeah. What? When you were looking at some of the different options, and I think you and I talked about this yesterday. Cause I had looked at the search fund. We also happen to know this thing, your Eyes world's colliding after like four weeks of an introduction from a random person has been pretty, pretty incredible. But I had done a lot of research on the search fund and I was looking at that, I was looking at just a typical go and acquire a company using some sort of SBA loan. You could buy a larger company with some private equity money. Like I guess. Well, here would be the, the question. This is the one thing I couldn't reconcile was the amount of effort and energy and, and work that goes into building a business, running a business, operating a business and having a. Anywhere between you're, you're going to probably correct me on this. I read the paper a long time ago. It was like somewhere between 15 and 25% based upon different wickets. And if you had a co founder or partner in it, how did you reconcile the amount of effort, energy and work that would go into it and the minority equity position that you would have?
- [27:49]
B
Yeah. So just to, just to clarify, so we're on the same page, the way a search fund works is you take a newly minted MBA or entrepreneur who wants to go run a business and typically they, back then they went to a kind of upper tier school and, and they had some experience but had never run a company. The idea was that you would surround them with other entrepreneurs who have run companies that would be their investors and their board to help make sure they didn't screw everything up. Kind of put some guardrails in place but also allow them to learn and mature as a leader so that they could eventually take a small business and turn it into a medium sized business or a large business.
- [28:36]
A
Yeah.
- [28:37]
B
And that's kind of the base concept. And what clicked for me was talking to these people and as they were talking about their struggles that they were having with the business. But at the same time the like optimism and the joy of like operating a business, that's what I saw in the portfolio company CEOs, the one that had been doing it and I was kind of in the seat so I had felt some of that. Yeah. And I think once you feel that you want it and you want to be part of it. And honestly there's one, there's one guy who was running a company. He was just a good dude, smart guy, didn't go to like a lot of college. He was a, he was a, one of the portfolio companies in the private equity fund that I worked in and he was so smart in so many ways and I really like this guy, but he was so dumb in other ways. Yeah, and I hate to admit this, but I was like, man, if that guy can crush it, we all do it. I can do it, right?
- [29:42]
A
We all think that like when we're getting into someone we see somewhere like, listen, I'm not, I'm not trying to like, I, but at that guy, one
- [29:50]
B
guy, and, and I really like the guy. He did some really great things and you know, I'll, I'll call you later if by some miracle he saw this. But, but yeah, it was just like a little bit of, you know, getting over the hump of whatever it is to get over the fear of being an entrepreneur. Part of it was like I just needed to get the confidence up. And I talked to, you know, 40, 50 of these people. I talked to some investors. I felt like I knew it and I, and I knew the journey. I knew what it looked like. I knew a failure looked like, I knew what success looked like. I thought and I thought I knew what was in between. And so yeah, once I'm kind of a high fact finder. So once I had enough facts, facts and the confidence was there, then I could, I could go do it.
- [30:37]
A
Nice. What, what number are you on fact finding?
- [30:39]
B
Almost seven.
- [30:40]
A
Go you. I'm like a three. So it's is not good around these parts. I think a 339, 3395 or 2395, something like that.
- [30:49]
B
Yeah.
- [30:51]
A
You, you made a comment on, on the things that you saw from the CEOs for the portfolio companies for the private equity. And I just wanted to back up on that real quick because we also talked about like startups or founders and it's a much different, Sometimes it's much different, especially pre product market fit. Were your, were your observations of private equity? Portfolio CEOs, portfolio company CEOs, what was it this idea that like, not that, not that anybody has limitless resources, but and also like they were in a position in which they weren't stressed that they were going to go bankrupt the next day. They had, they had the support and the resources kind of externally and was that the mindset that you saw from them that you were trying to go get or what, what was it? I guess maybe I should have started there.
- [31:47]
B
The idea that you could build something and that you could have enough money to buy yourself some freedom, right? Freedom from want, freedom from fear that you're gonna lose the things in your life. Freedom from like corporate constraints. Like I saw a lot of really smart people just kind of get on the corporate ladder and just Kind of suck their soul. And I saw some people do great. I'm not anti corporate. I could tell for certain folks being in that environment was not positive. And I could tell for me it wasn't going to be positive. Yeah, I wanted more creativity, more. I'd rather make decisions and live with the consequences than not be able to make the decision at all. And I liked leading, like when I had a chance to be out front and, and think through a strategy, build it, build consensus, build a team around it and, and just going forward with what I believed in and what we believed in, I don't think there's much better than that. So for me, I had seen these teams hit their goals, like set goals, hit them, look for the next goal and like take over parts of markets, industries, things that they didn't think were, you know, completely possible and then do the impossible. Like that seemed, that's, that was giving me a ton of, you know, good feelings and that's what I wanted to go do more of.
- [33:26]
A
That's awesome. So then, so then you went and did it. So you graduated and then, and then what? Went and raised your first search fund and then that's the first. Just because there's some people that probably don't understand how this works. Real quick, can you, can you just tell us how the search fund kind of process works and the, the first batch of money, the second batch, those things?
- [33:49]
B
Yeah. So the searcher raises some money in order to go look for a company to buy and pay themselves. A salary, insurance, you know, whatever the living expenses are. And that's also their diligence fees. The lawyer, the accountant, any special entities that they have to bring to diligence, you know, the customer, the team, etc. The product, the software, whatever it is. And that's, that's how much they have for about two years to look for a company to buy and close and buy that company. So that's your first investment. So investors, somewhere between 8 to 15, or in my case like 20 investors give you a little bit of money somewhere between 20 to 100k each, depending on the size of the fund, you raise about 500 to 800,000 to look for a company to buy. Sounds like a lot, but it's really not for two years to go and buy this company and you can do it solo or with a partner and you either buy a company or you don't. If you don't, you're, you know, you're on to the next thing. If you do, you buy the company and you Run it for typically, you know, about five years, give or take a few years, and then you exit and sell. And that model has been around since the 70s and it returns, you know, somewhere around three times your money.
- [35:31]
A
So you did this as soon as you graduated? Did you go right into it? Go right into raising?
- [35:36]
B
Yeah. When I was kind of a semester away from finishing my foreign policy degree, I. I had already started searching. I was at Michigan. I was searching in Michigan.
- [35:49]
A
Nice.
- [35:50]
B
One thing I had to solve for is I never sourced a deal. So that was kind of scary for me. Wow. And. And I did that in Michigan and I got over the hump. I started sourcing some good deals. I really knew the model well at that point. So when I went to go invest, it went really well. And I brought in one of the first searchers. His name was Jim Southern. And Jim came, gave a talk at Michigan. There's a hundred people in the room. Got everyone all excited. And I was like, oh, wow, my classmates are gonna go do this and I don't know if I will. They're really smart. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do this. And sure enough, I think I was the only. Did it right out of undergrad. But there were some other folks in that room that ended up doing it later after they. Through consulting or whatever. But yeah, so that's typically the journey for searchers.
- [36:43]
A
All right, quick break, friends. Do you find it impossible to hire and retain top sales talent or worse, are you paying insane recruiter fees who are all using outdated hiring processes? Yeah, I was too, at Hunt a Killer, we were spending hundreds of thousands on recruiter agency fees. And after I sold that company in 2025, I started Talent Harbor. And the whole vision here was to make sales recruiting accessible to small and medium sized businesses. Because the organizations that can hire and retain world class people are the ones that ultimately win. Most organizations rely on things that like ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn and they get hundreds, if not thousands of resumes. But we find that the best salespeople are already perfectly placed somewhere else. And that's why our approach is to go after them. And we do that through a business model called recruiting. As a service, we do not charge commissions, we do not have success fees, we don't have contracts, we don't have long term engagements. And we become an excellent extension of your team as expert sales recruiters. If you're tired of the same old recruiters and want to actually grow your sales team, check us out at Talent Harbor.
- [37:55]
B
Dot com.
- [37:56]
A
That's Talent Harbor. T A L E N T H A R B O R dot com. Let's get your next sales superstar hired. And how did you go about. I was actually going to ask you. Sourcing on the, the private equity front as well. When it came to distressed companies. It sounds like you didn't do that or any of those, any of that part when you were at the private equity, which meant you were starting from scratch. Sourcing with the, with the search fund. What, what does sourcing look like? Or what does good sourcing look like?
- [38:30]
B
Man, when I started to. What it is today are two totally different things.
- [38:34]
A
Interesting.
- [38:36]
B
Conceptually you're really looking at two different areas to look for to, to get deal flow. One is proprietary. Whatever you are doing to generate leads from business owners that want to sell their business. So that's email outreach, letters, phone calls, talking, going to weddings, talking to, you know, networking wherever you can. Right. I mean, just a quick side note, like I wrote hand, hand written letters.
- [39:07]
A
There you go.
- [39:08]
B
And at one point it was too much. My mom was visiting, she was like, you know, I just retired. I'm kind of bored. I can do this for you. So she wrote these handwritten letters for me and it was, it like, it really touched me and I was like, oh wow, I'm doing something special.
- [39:25]
A
Yeah.
- [39:25]
B
If even my mom wants to be part of this. So that was, that was really cool. Not effective, but very cool.
- [39:33]
A
It was the, it was the thought and effort that counted.
- [39:35]
B
Not totally.
- [39:36]
A
Not the effectiveness like all parenting. True.
- [39:39]
B
So, so yeah, we, so that's the proprietary side. Do whatever you can to bring in your own deal flow. And then there's a broker side where folks are engaged with an intermediary like a business broker or an investment bank to sell their company. You get on all those lists, you get to know the brokers. If you have an industry focus, you get to know some of them really, really well. And you look at those deals and you try to stand out amongst the other buyers so that you can, you can buy the business.
- [40:10]
A
Okay. And then, and then you bought your first business.
- [40:13]
B
I did. I think I, I signed something like 20 plus Lois letters of intent.
- [40:20]
A
Is that really what it takes?
- [40:22]
B
It took a lot. Yeah. And I was, I wouldn't, I don't want to say I was spray and pray, but I was, I was very active. Like there was no, in my mind, there was no way I wasn't going to buy a business. I was, there's no way I wasn't going to Buy a great business, because you can buy a business, but to buy one that's already growing with a really great product or service, reoccurring revenue, kind of these hallmarks of the search fund model.
- [40:48]
A
Yeah.
- [40:49]
B
Not in distress. Right. And you really understand why the owners are selling. It's hard. And I really want to buy a great business. So yeah, I signed a bunch of these, Lois. And early on I was signing stuff just to kind of get into the deal and it wasn't the right approach. As I got more experience, I was, I was really signing deal that I wanted to buy. Searched out of Manhattan Beach, California. Nice. But I was, my wife and I were ready to move to Dothan, Alabama. You know, all these kind of interesting parts of America and we, we definitely would have done it just so happened I ended up buying a business here in la.
- [41:29]
A
And so typically it takes two years. You said you were, you were kind of pre sourcing deals and stuff like that. Did you, did you run the very normal. Raced your first 500, 750. And then, and then how long did it take?
- [41:43]
B
It took me about a month. Oh yeah. For the raise or for, to raise? Like I had talked with so many people so they knew me. Yeah. So when I said, hey, I'm going to raise, I was already searching.
- [41:54]
A
Yeah.
- [41:55]
B
So instead of like, hey, how are you going to do this? Like I was showing, hey, here's 10 deals I'm already looking at right now. And they all fit the search fund criteria.
- [42:04]
A
Yeah.
- [42:04]
B
So it was different. And all those people I talked to, it's like an extended interview. So remember I said I didn't really interview much in business school. Yeah. Life has a way of just coming back to you. Right. Because I didn't interview in business school. So my classmates who maybe had 50 or 100 interviews. Right. I had with each of those 20 investors. You have two or three calls with each of them. Yeah. Then when you raise the fund. Right. You, not all of them say yes. So you're, you're having like, I don't know, couple hundred conversations with just investors. I ended up doing kind of getting to a pre loi stage with about 800 companies.
- [42:50]
A
Wow.
- [42:51]
B
And I contacted 20,000 companies.
- [42:54]
A
That's a, you know when you said your mom helped you write some letters? I didn't, I didn't realize you had her writing 20,000 letters.
- [43:02]
B
That's a, like through all my outreach. Right. Yeah, she, she definitely put a dent in it. But, but yeah, it was, it's, it was a high output approach. But like 800 companies you're on an extended interview with. So. And then you have to get a lender. You have to talk to all the lenders. You have to. Not all of your investors are actually going to invest in the deals. And you have to interview with the other vendors or other investors. So by me not doing 100 interviews in business school, I probably did well over a thousand over the next few years. So it always comes back at you.
- [43:42]
A
And did you have a. One of the things that I read was there were higher odds of success, which I guess translates to why there's more equity carved out for. I mean, plus there's too. But there's a higher probability of success when you have a partner in the deal. Did you have a partner? Did you do this solo?
- [44:01]
B
I really wanted a partner and it was just timing. Right. Like back then, there's only maybe 20 of us that did this a year.
- [44:09]
A
Yeah.
- [44:10]
B
Maybe a little more. Right. Somewhere around there. And you had to find someone who was as excited as you. Someone who didn't want to do it solo and understood what partnering looked like. And then someone that you jived with and really wanted to work with.
- [44:25]
A
Yeah.
- [44:25]
B
And that was hard. There were some people that I really pushed to like getting right there. And then once I got them there and we were starting to put together our private placement memorandum, you start to learn they weren't in it as much as I was.
- [44:45]
A
Yeah.
- [44:45]
B
And that imbalance is toxic. So I learned early. Like, you got a Cup 8. And we had some tough conversation. I. I had tough conversations with some people I really cared about. And I'm so glad we did. Like, their trajectories went awesome places. Mine went to a really great place I'm super happy with. But who knows? I. I think if we would have forced ourselves down a path, I don't think it would have been great.
- [45:14]
A
And so. So how long did it take? It took. It took about a month to do the raise. How long did it take to like find the company?
- [45:22]
B
About 16, 16 to 18 months.
- [45:25]
A
Were you at all during that time? Were you starting to get nervous that
- [45:28]
B
like for most search. So now I'm an investor. I'm in about 50 operating companies.
- [45:34]
A
Wow.
- [45:35]
B
And I typically invest in five to 10 searchers a year. So I see this pattern where about the one year mark and the first year, if you didn't find a company. Okay. Like, it's still fun. You have a lot of energy. You get into year two, that one year mark, all of a sudden you can't sleep. The clock's ticking in your head.
- [45:58]
A
Yeah.
- [45:58]
B
Like it, you're on the back half. And that's when it starts to get real. Huh.
- [46:04]
A
What, what happens? This is a, this is a throwaway question, so I apologize in advance.
- [46:08]
B
I love a good throwaway.
- [46:09]
A
What, what happens? So you go out a half million, 750. And what happens if it only takes you 12 months and.
- [46:17]
B
Awesome.
- [46:18]
A
Wait, where does the money go?
- [46:20]
B
Oh, it goes into the deal. Those investors that gave you the first slug of capital, they get what's called a step up because they're taking a risk.
- [46:29]
A
Yep.
- [46:29]
B
So let's say I put in 50,000 in your deal and you buy a business. I would actually get 50,000 plus another 25, got echo in equity into the deal.
- [46:43]
A
Okay.
- [46:43]
B
So it's a stepped up capital. It's like a little sweetener for taking on the risk of investing in a person.
- [46:49]
A
That makes sense. Okay, so now 16 months, we've closed, we've got our company. What's the company? And. And then we're going to get into the journey of that.
- [47:00]
B
Yeah, yeah. It's called, it was called Easy Shipper Racks. And it was this really cool business that was a blend of logistics and rental assets. So we rented these racks that growers of flower nurseries would put their plants on and then ship them to Lowe's and Home Depot and, you know, thousands of locations around America that sell plants.
- [47:30]
A
Nice.
- [47:31]
B
And we would contract with third party logistics companies to help pick up all those racks, bring them back, and then rent them.
- [47:41]
A
What does that look like on day one? So day one, are you, are you standing in front of the entire company calling all hands and you're like, I'm the, I'm the new, the new head cheese, the new, the new Hondo. Like, what does that look like?
- [47:54]
B
Yeah, no, it's, it is like that. Right? Like ideally, you're kind of choreographing it with the founders, the sellers, and yeah, it's this really awesome moment where you get up there and you get to talk about, like, why you bought the business, how you feel about the business, what you want to do with it. And ideally, you're setting a tone where the team understands that you really care.
- [48:21]
A
Yeah.
- [48:22]
B
And that you're in it for the long haul and you're kind of bringing their fear down a little bit because they probably heard about the transaction, whether overtly from the sellers or just because information gets out.
- [48:35]
A
Yeah.
- [48:35]
B
And there's just an element of fear whenever there's change. So your, your job is Just to be you and get up there and tell people why you're there and what's, what's going to happen and that they're not being fired tomorrow.
- [48:48]
A
Yeah.
- [48:49]
B
And even when you say that 10 times, they still don't believe you. But then you just get started and then after that you're kind of doing this 90 to 100 days of confirming your diligence and then making sure that you're getting in the seat by meeting everybody, hearing them. I think it's a best practice to, to meet with as many employees as you can, get their feedback on what's working and what's not working, document all that, and then start compiling all that into a list of like, okay, here's all the stuff that we have to do and here's some of the, the interesting things that, that maybe aren't being surfaced to the leadership team. And after that 100 days, you now start to get into that, like, monthly, quarterly, rhythm of the business and you start managing from there.
- [49:43]
A
How do you balance the idea that like a search fund is basically a flip and it sounds like it's a four to six year flip? Would that, would that be fair?
- [49:52]
B
I dislike the term flip because it implies like, flippantness, like lack of, you know. Right. Like care. Like, you have one person who's putting all of their, like, professional and a lot of their emotional eggs into that basket. And this is truly a journey that they're going on. Yeah, right. And they could have done a lot of other things, but they chose to do this and they're going to, they're going to learn a lot about themselves as a new leader and with the team. Right. So like flip maybe. Right. But you do want to sell at a certain point. Most investors are kind of targeting getting their money back at some point, but I'd say the search community is really evolving. Like, there's no. It's not like private equity where you have to do it. Like, I'm an individual investor investor. I don't have a timeline.
- [50:52]
A
Yeah.
- [50:53]
B
I would rather not create a taxable event. So keep on running that thing.
- [50:59]
A
Especially living in California.
- [51:00]
B
Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, as long as it's a really great business and you feel like there's more Runway and more market to go after. Great. Let's keep going. There are some funds in the space that have some mandates to get out. And you know, there, as the space gets bigger and more attractive, you have more professional investors coming in. Some of them have funds and they have a time horizon that they have to get out of. Those are kind of artificial and I don't think those are in the best, in the best interest of the business. Definitely not the kind of customers and employees. But there also is something, there's some seasonality to a business, I think having run one for eight, nine years, you know, so I've seen some CEOs just be able to like continue to reinvent themselves and continue to bring rigor and energy into it. If I'm really honest with myself, Covid took a lot out of me and I went into it with a lot of energy and I knew where I wanted to go. But towards the end I didn't have the same kind of energy. And I don't know if that's good or bad. I just thought differently. I think I was maturing as a leader. But, but I think when you have some of these checkpoints, let's call it like, hey, in five, six years, are we ready to sell? I think it's a great conversation for a board to have. Yeah, I think every company should be, you know, sellable at all times for the right price. But, but I think it's really up to the board and the founding team to think about where this thing could go. All the stakeholders that they're, they have a fiduciary responsibility to. And you know, there's a lot of off ramps for investors. Some investors can get recapped out early, some can get bought out. For those that want to keep going on the journey, there's ways to do that.
- [52:58]
A
Interesting. That was actually going to be. My next question is like, do they. Because they're. It sounds like there's a lot of investors in the deal and making sure that like it's not all or nothing, I think is important. So that makes sense that there's a whole bunch of, of ways for individual investors to liquidate. How do you keep, how do you keep. How do you keep a senior leadership team motivated through that? And, and I guess my experience has really only been the military and which like, you know, there's a, there's a sense of purpose and passion in the military, so you don't really have to instill much. And then the other is entrepreneurship where you're just constantly giving up equity. So it's like, I need this person, I need them here, I need them to stay. And so I'm going to incentivize them with equity. How do you keep, how do you keep a senior leadership team engaged? Maybe it's the same way, but yeah, boy.
- [53:52]
B
Early in my leadership journey I would have told you incentives and cash comp and being ahead of market and doing, you know, solving really creative problems. And I think that's all part of it. But I think now that I've been more seasoned, I think that's a much smaller part than people think. Huh. I think what's really motivating is, you know, really being able to do something you love with people that you care about around you.
- [54:17]
A
Yeah.
- [54:18]
B
And I think you have to be compensated fairly. That's just a given. But I think teams want. They. They really, truly want to be something, be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to know where they're going, and they want to have a healthy way to talk about issues and feel valued. Right. And I think when you have that, people want to stick around when. When they really believe in what they're doing and they're having fun doing it, that's pretty easy. Motivation is tricky. I. I think that the idea that I'm going to motivate you to do something you don't want to do, I used to think that was possible. Now I don't. In fact, I believe the exact opposite. If I'm trying to motivate you to do something that you really don't want to do, and I've worked with you, I've trained you, I've shown you the way, you still don't want to do it, that's it. There's really nothing else I can do. It's not. I can't expect you to go do the thing that I want you to do. If you're a salesperson and I want you to lead a sales team, but you don't really want to lead a sales team, how effective is that going to be?
- [55:29]
A
Not very.
- [55:29]
B
Not very. So I think what I've found is I'm much more comfortable being direct with people. Here's the role. Here's where we're going. Here's how I see it working. Let's have a discussion about it.
- [55:41]
A
Yeah.
- [55:42]
B
And if you don't feel comfortable here, I love the concept of being a good leverage. Hey, great. That's not a fit for you. We care about you. You live our core values of this company. We hired you for a reason. This isn't the right fit. This also isn't communism. You can go work somewhere else. Let's help you leave and go somewhere else. Be a good lever. Help us train the next person, whatever. We'll give you some time to go interview. And I'll be. I'll write you the best recommendation humanly possible. And in fact, I'll help you. I'll even, you know, if someone's really great, I'll. I'll personally go help them find a spot that I think would really fit for them. So, to me, this concept of motivating someone doesn't work. And I think what I'm explaining is like an idealistic place. But sometimes it's tricky. Sometimes people don't want to leave, and they're not ready to accept the fact that they're not motivated at their job. There's fear, right? Hey, I've got a house payment. There's a. There's. Your identity is tied into your job. There's a lot of things that I don't think managers fully understand. It's definitely not just come.
- [56:48]
A
Yeah, I love that. And I love what you said about, about a good lever. I've never heard it called that, but I 100 agree. And we used to go out of their way, and I think. What. Maybe, maybe not. But there are many people, I believe, that underestimate the amount of eyeballs that are on the organization, on the leaders. When a. An event like that's going down and everybody talks, like, this whole notion of, like, you know, what you're paying people and they're not having conversations and text threads and other things, like, I think that's a very naive place with the new generation, a naive place to live to think that all of that stuff's not being shared and traded. And just as much as that is, like, when. When you terminate someone or let someone go, like, everybody's watching. How are you doing that? And it doesn't matter whether it's a riff or it's four calls or whatever the case may be, but this, this whole notion of, like, you know, we have these values, we talk about these values, we maybe we have the values on the wall, but the minute that we terminate somebody, like, those values don't apply to how this went down. I don't know if there's a question baked in there, but I just think, like, it's underestimated the, the amount of, like, observation and judging that's happening during, during those events.
- [58:02]
B
Yeah, I think. I think what I'm hearing you say is that if a company lives its core values, they should kind of continue all the way through the life cycle of an employee there. Right? Yeah. And I think that's where it should be. And I'd say that's where really great businesses are. Oftentimes managers are pressured, right, by, like, time, money, you know, Whatever. Right. There's some external factor that's happening, and they kind of lose that little bit of humanity.
- [58:37]
A
Yeah.
- [58:37]
B
And I think that's where you need really good coaching from senior leaders, from other folks to remind people that this is a human. Any business is a human enterprise. And all we're really doing is taking this group of people and we're aligning the human energy of this business to some goal. Yeah. And that's it. That's really all we're doing. And if that energy wants to flow out of the business, great. Some people are going to do it in a toxic way. Some people aren't. All we can do is be in control of our actions and how we treat those people. And if I. I've probably terminated over a thousand people in my career, I hate to say that, but what I've learned is all I can control is how I treat that person. And sometimes I didn't treat them great. I wasn't the one training them really well. I put them in that wrong job because I wanted them there. Those were hard ones for me, and I had to learn that lesson. But the ones that were really easy were the ones where I did what we talked about. We had discussion. We said, hey, if we don't get to hear it, we're probably going to need to think about, like, changing roles or whatever. But that doesn't mean that I'm. I'm going to fire you tomorrow. That means that here's what it looks like. And I think a lot of managers just don't have the vocabulary they don't have. They didn't have that coach, they didn't have that experience. They didn't have that mentor that helped them understand that, hey, you can, you can be a great version of yourself even when you have to let someone go. Yeah. So I, I like to be that for people and help remind them that, like, this is a human experience.
- [60:09]
A
And you talked a little bit about, about the toxic nature of company cultures and things like that. Like, did you at the company that you bought? Because I'm sure you've experienced a wide range of things on the private equity and distressed side. And usually when a company's distressed, like, people aren't talking very much about the values they're talking about. Is the sun going to come up tomorrow? The company going to be around tomorrow?
- [60:37]
B
Were.
- [60:38]
A
Were the values at your organization ever tested through the duration of your leadership there? Or did you, did you. I, I mean, things can still go sideways no matter the. The best intention. But, like, did you Experience those things or did you have that stuff locked down out of the gate?
- [60:54]
B
I don't think you ever had lockdown out of the gate. What was really interesting to me is I bought this business and there was kind of two parts to the business. And the founder had one set of core values and the he was kind of president. And then there was a CEO that had another set of values.
- [61:15]
A
Wow.
- [61:15]
B
And on their walls were both values.
- [61:19]
A
That's wild.
- [61:20]
B
It was wild. And immediately that should have been more of a red flag to me. But I was, when I was young, I was in problem solver mode. I was like, oh cool. You know, two different things. I'll bring them together. Well, you know, this would be great.
- [61:34]
A
We had two threes, now we got six.
- [61:36]
B
Let's roll. Exactly. That just wasn't our. And it took took years to unpack all that. Wow. And I gotta admit, I used to give kind of core values and all that stuff. Short shrift. But as I matured, I realized that like that's what it's all about. Like this. All you're basically saying is this is what we value here at this company. These are the basic rules of the game. And if you can't meet these basic rules consistently, then we got a problem. And if you're failing at that, we got to support you. It's on us as a company to call it out. Hey, you're not showing up, how can we help? Not, you're not showing up, what are you doing, you're bad, etc. Right. We are a training organization that, you know, has to. The, the biggest resource in every company is its people. I can't think of many. Obviously there's some more patents and all that are worth a ton. Yeah, but those patents didn't get created overnight. They were created by people. So at some point the human energy had to create something that created value. And I think we lose sight of that sometimes.
- [62:40]
A
Yeah, that's. And for some reason that, that can be hard for people to either get over. Understand that like it's not good or bad. Like for instance, one of our, one of our core tenants at Talon harbor is this is go givers. Like we just ripped it straight from the book and we just give the book out as a part of our onboarding process so they can understand like really what we mean by, by being go givers. And if someone's not like a go giver, it doesn't make them a bad person. Or we have growth mindset, which for us the definition of growth mindset Is like there's a certain tolerance or, or open mindedness to fail because in failure you learn and in learning you can improve. And it's this continuous cycle and not everybody can tolerate or accept failure. And it's not that like you don't go to Talent harbor and look at the wall and we have failure as like one of our, you know, one of our goals. We just say that like we know there's going to be failure because of how hard we're going to push and not everybody is comfortable in that. And that doesn't make them a bad human being. It just means that there's probably a better home for them other than, than Talent Harbor.
- [63:47]
B
So maybe. Can I ask you a question?
- [63:50]
A
Yeah.
- [63:50]
B
Yeah. So let's say being a go giver, really important. So for that value, how do you support that value at the company? Like what do you do today to make sure that everyone really understands it and what does it mean to like fully live that value?
- [64:08]
A
Yeah, it's a, it's a good one. Well, first we give them the book. So that's number one. That's number one. I like I'm a, I'm a big believer in two things. One, one, it's like show, don't tell. So it's this idea of, of like living it day in and day out and, and when we go above and Alana and I, my co founder in, in Talent harbor, like when we go above and beyond, not that we do it like intentionally in a public setting but, but people see it. They can see how we treat our, our customers, they can our clients, they can see how we, we trust our team and we live and breathe it. So for instance, yesterday we onboarded a new recruiter and I spend 30 to 45 minutes with all everybody that comes through the door and, and support them in any way. And one of my questions to them before they ever, before they leave is like what's your personal goal? Like, like you're, you're at a pit stop here at Town harbor and we're going to support the, you know, we're going to love on you, we're going to support you. We're anything you need, like, like we're here for you. But we also understand that like whether it's 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, like eventually you're probably going to move on and, and we want to make sure that we're supporting you so that when you do move on, you have, you have grown professionally and you're moving up. And then I would Say the last one. And I don't know if this is a good. A good response yet, because, like, go Giver sounds like. Yeah, but the. The last one is, is we talk about this stuff every single week. And my last company was a company called Hunt a Killer, An Immersive Murder Mystery Experience. And we did the same thing. So during the pandemic, you know, everybody except for the warehouse team, which we had probably about 40 people, so the entire organization, except for those 40 people, started working from home, so nobody had to come in anymore. And we were trying to figure out ways to, like, keep the continuity and. And keep the. The connective tissue of. Of the organization. And so we went into weekly zoom calls, and. And every time we opened up the call with core values, and we would spend 10 minutes. And we do this today, every single week at Town harbor as well. We spend 10 minutes on core values. And there's three different components. The first is almost like a cult. We recite them. And I've been asked before, at the last organization, did I just join a cult? Like, maybe. So we recite them, and then we pick one to talk about and, like, really talk about, like, what does this mean? And then the third, which I think is the most important one, is we recognize somebody because when there are words on the wall, like, those words can be interpreted much differently. And then when you read the explanation, you can be like, okay, like, now. Now I can. Now I understand it. But I think you have to actually, like, see it to be able to visualize and embrace it. And so what we do every single week is we call somebody out and we recognize them, and we recognize them specifically for an action decision, something that they did that was in line or a demonstration of a core value. So that's what we. A lot of education, I guess, would be the. The way.
- [67:11]
B
I love that. So it's like part of your hiring. It's part of how you meet.
- [67:15]
A
Yeah.
- [67:16]
B
And it is evolving. It sounds like a living, breathing thing.
- [67:20]
A
Yeah, it sounds.
- [67:20]
B
That sounds really cool, man.
- [67:21]
A
We'll see. I. You know, I'll let you know in a couple years how. How. How it goes.
- [67:25]
B
Can I offer something up?
- [67:27]
A
Yes, please.
- [67:27]
B
It sounded like, like your face didn't jive with what you were saying a few times. Like, you could tell there's parts where you're, like, not just thinking, but maybe not happy with what you're doing. Yeah, I might sit with that and just journal for 10, 20 minutes and figure out, like, what's in there. There's probably some really Cool. Unlock that. You haven't really given yourself time to think about.
- [67:47]
A
I. I love that. Have you done the. The artist way?
- [67:51]
B
The artist way.
- [67:53]
A
It's. It's a. It's a super interesting book.
- [67:55]
B
Oh, read Rick Rubins, the Creative Act Different.
- [68:00]
A
Oh, is it creative? No. I think. I don't know. We'll make sure. Whichever. Whichever one. The show notes, we'll post them both and give it. But it's just this notion of, like, every morning you wake up, you. You write three. Okay. You write three pages. I've since stopped doing that. But there's something that, like, comes from writing where, like, I. I don't know. Like, you obviously do know, which is why you were like, you should journal that. And, like, I would never tell.
- [68:26]
B
You should just. Are. You shouldn't. All over me. I would never. Something you might want to. Might want to think about. Yeah. Yeah. I think. I think creativity in business don't always naturally go hand in hand, but I think that, like, Rick Rubin, right, produced the Beastie Boys, Chili Peppers, George Clinton, all these amazing folks, right? And he wrote this book about kind of the creative act. And he really breaks down what it's like to do something creative in a way that I've never really heard before. And I found it to really touch me in, like, how I led and how I work with CEOs and boards and teams now, because we really are extremely creative people. And sometimes we think we put ourselves in this box of, like, oh, I'm.
- [69:18]
A
I'm.
- [69:19]
B
I'm just being a leader. I'm just doing finance, etc. But I think there's real beauty that you can bring to what we do. And. And. And I think even something as simple as just, like, how do we. How do we live our core values? I've seen companies do amazing things that touch people's lives and, you know, make the impact that they want just by, like, sitting down and thinking about it a little longer. So that's kind of where that all came from.
- [69:44]
A
I. I love it. We're gonna. We're gonna have to do a part two. We're gonna have to do a part two because, like, we're not even. We have just started the journey on. On the business. But, like, I'm dying to know the journey, like, after you bought the company and what that looked like. All right, Ned, thank you so much for coming out. I appreciate it. And we are going to do a part two now.
- [70:07]
B
Awesome.
- [70:07]
A
So.
- [70:07]
B
All right. It was really fun.
- [70:08]
A
All right, sweet. Let me. Let me send this out.
- [70:12]
B
Nice job.