← Confessions of an Implementer
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- [00:00]
Alex Hodgkin
Usually what happens in these situations is you're buying from a founder that's hit the ceiling and they're out of gas and they're kind of like, you know what, man? I've taken this as far as I can take it. It's time for me to monetize, you know, kind of diversify my retirement. And so you have these ETA operators stepping into businesses where there's ceilings everywhere. Right. As far as the way that we talk about Eos and how do I solve for those, they can be people ceilings, they can be all kinds of ceilings. But that's what you're stepping into on day one, for sure.
- [00:37]
Ryan Hogan
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.
- [00:50]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Let's jump in. Alex, this is you. And I had such a, like a really interesting kind of pre call to this maybe a month or two ago. But like one of the reasons I'm, I'm so. Well, there's, there's a variety. But like one of the reasons I'm so excited about this is like your background, experience and expertise with this notion of entrepreneurship through acquisition. And I can't tell you how many, how many conversations that I've had about this type of strategy. So welcome and thanks for taking an hour to sit down and, and go over some of this.
- [01:21]
Alex Hodgkin
You bet. The two marry up so well, Ryan. So it's a. I'm excited to talk about them both.
- [01:26]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
What? So just kind of walking into your background a little bit and then, and then we'll kind of like ease in. Into ETA and, and we'll probably do it more like ETA for dummies. And not that the audience are dummies, but there's. What I've discovered is that there's a lot of people that don't know about like, that form of entrepreneurship. Yeah. But let's start with your background because it looks like you got into banking like almost immediately and never look back.
- [01:53]
Alex Hodgkin
Yep. So out of undergrad, I did my first tour in M and A at Salomon Brothers. I was the last financial analyst class solly. And then I went back and got a degree in engineering at CU Boulder. This is where I'm from, Colorado. And then I did another tour in sell side investment bank at a firm called Headwaters. So sell side banking background to begin with for sure.
- [02:15]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yep, got it. And like, what, what was that? Like a. Did you grow up and you're like, you know what I want to be when I grow up? I want to be. I want to be an investment banker.
- [02:22]
Alex Hodgkin
Not at all. You know, I have a typical. Like, how do I make the most money when I graduate? Because I've got to pay back student loans and do all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, got decent grades and. And got into the program and then just got murdered, you know, just got. I don't know if you're familiar with the financial analyst tour and investment banking, but. But I lived it, you know, the 100 hour weeks and the waking up every morning looking in the mirror and just being like, my life sucks. But. But I learned. I learned a ton. I got really good at Excel.
- [02:51]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Ryan.
- [02:51]
Alex Hodgkin
I would say.
- [02:52]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think? This is just more of, like, a personal question now, like. Like, what do you. The. The days of. Like, at least it feels like it. I'm sure there's still, like, a cohort of people, but it feels like those days are kind of escaping. Like, whether it's like, working remote or some of these other things, it's like. Or maybe it's just a perception, but it's like most people coming out, like, don't want to crank for 100 hours anymore.
- [03:14]
Alex Hodgkin
No. That's the new generation, right? I'm Gen X, man. So, like, we're nose to the grindstone, you know?
- [03:20]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah, I. I don't identify as millennial, but they say. They say that's. That's.
- [03:25]
Alex Hodgkin
Well, I identify as millennial now.
- [03:30]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
I always say I'm mid 30. I've been saying I was mid 30s since I was probably, like, 30, and now I'm 41, and I still say mid 30s.
- [03:36]
Alex Hodgkin
Me too. Perfect never goes away.
- [03:39]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And what took you back to grad school? Is that kind of like the path? So.
- [03:42]
Alex Hodgkin
Oh, man.
- [03:43]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
No.
- [03:44]
Alex Hodgkin
So after my second tour in banking, I started a business appraisal format in my living room with a buddy from high school. And I ran that for a while, got it to about 15 folks, and then decided to bolster my brand equity. I'd go to umir Chicago Booth school business. They have a weekend program, actually. So ran the company during the week and then flew to Chicago for three years every weekend to get my mba. So it was a little bit of a different tour. It was. It was a blur. It was a blur. But that's where I got connected into the booth ecosystem and. And I've stayed a part of it ever since.
- [04:17]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah, there's a lot of People that talk about MBAs out there. My, my follow up question was, was going to be something along, along lines of, like, was it worth it? And immediately, like, you launched into, like, it's like deeply connected you into the ecosystem. Yeah, like, what, what are. You know, there's this whole notion of like, entrepreneurs, like trial by fire. And like, you just jump in and you learn and you figure it out. Business professionals as well, figure it out, work your way up. And then at a certain point it's like, do I go back for my MBA and maybe get a little bit more of a foundation?
- [04:46]
Alex Hodgkin
Mine was so different, man. Like, I went to business school. Well, frankly, the second tour I did in banking was with a firm that was founded by a couple Stanford guys, and they raised the money for that bank over a poker game, $10 million.
- [04:57]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And I go, wow, what that, we're gonna need that story.
- [05:02]
Alex Hodgkin
I go to business school.
- [05:04]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yes.
- [05:05]
Alex Hodgkin
So when I went, I was not a career switcher. I was really looking to build more of a network. And so that reflected in my experience there, I wasn't doing job interviews, preparing for a career transition, you know, and I found the best way to do that was to build an ecosystem on that platform. So I had a professor, Steve Kaplan, who allowed me to do that at Booth and created a network and an ecosystem there that served me ever since. Yeah. So different. Different approach than most, but. Well, not really. I mean, if you go to some of these business schools, that's what you graduate with in the end is, you know, a brand and a network and, you know, the other stuff is important, but less so as you get older. For sure.
- [05:46]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Just for the. We'll just do this one for the, the military, transitioning military folks that are thinking about school. Like, is your, the advice that you give to certain people or to people that are close to you in your life when they're thinking about, like, are you like, if you're going to take the time and invest that much money into an mba, like, you have to go to like one of these five schools? Or are you like, no, you know,
- [06:10]
Alex Hodgkin
I think it's a lot about lifestyle design. You got to, you know, kind of forecast out what your 10 or 20 years are going to look like. And then if you're like, hey, I want to go into corporate America, I want to have job security, I want to be on the ladder, I want to make a lot of money, you know, it can be a good route. ETA has evolved as another option and it's, you know, gotten more robust as an option over the last 10 years, but for the most part it was really. That's how I encourage people to think about it. Is what do most post grad MBA folks do? And is that what I want my life to look like? Does that make sense? You know what I'm saying? And the answer certainly can be no. I know probably I would say my most successful friends very well could have went to a top business school and just decided not to. They just decided to keep going. And if you're ex military, it really depends, you know, I will say that, you know, if you go to certain schools you want to pursue eta, that it can really equip you for that, both with the know how on the network, but you don't necessarily have to do that anymore either. You know, it's really, it's really kind of up to you.
- [07:12]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
What would just kind of like off the cuff, what would those top schools be if you want to go down the ETA path?
- [07:18]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah. So I mean, the ones that are really known for ETA are Stanford and Harvard and they've been doing it for a long time. And then there's a number of others that have emerged as having robust ecosystems and support, and that would be Kellogg, Booth. You can still pursue it at many other schools. Duke and Virginia. Texas has got a program now. Rice has a program. MIT is starting to develop a program. So you're starting to see ETA support systems pop up in a number of different schools in addition. But it's really your kind of your. Wharton has a phenomenal program. Jim Vesterman teaches the ETA curriculum there and he's phenomenal. So. But those are kind of your top schools.
- [07:56]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Got it. I did want to launch into the poker story, but I. But like we're already now. So we're just, we're going to move. We're going to see if we have time at the end for the poker story, but we're just going to. We're already talking about the ETA now.
- [08:07]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah, they actually. They fit together. They fit together, yes. The investment bank was started by two Stanford GSB grads that were part of the original search fund mafia at Stanford, which was this group that funded the initial search fund entrepreneurs. They went on to make boatloads of money that kind of filled the coffers for everybody. And you know, and I said to myself, if that network does not exist at Chicago, Booth, maybe I'll help build it. And so that's exactly what I did. The inspiration for the ETA ecosystem, Booth, was directly connected to my experience and exposure to the Stanford Search investment group.
- [08:42]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And did you go like, are you an ETA guy or did you stumble into this business model and you're like,
- [08:48]
Alex Hodgkin
I just, I just want the network, so I'll just build the ecosystem and inherit the network along the way.
- [08:53]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah, you know, love it. And you did an amazing white paper because I think I've read a lot of things. I've read the Stanford paper, so I had considered going down the ETA path. So ETA for the audience. Entrepreneurship through acquisition. Yeah, Search fund. Alex, going to explain all this in one second. When I went down that path, I read the Stanford paper and so it gave me just like an, like a crash course in like what is it, how does it work, how does it operate? I thought your paper was really interesting because yours was more, was less about theory and more about like what practically happens, especially to search time or first time searchers. So just at the very basic level, what is eta?
- [09:33]
Alex Hodgkin
The very basic simplified level. It's you buy a small business and you run it post closing. That's it, that's eta. There's a wide variety of fancy mechanisms that you can pursue to achieve that, but that's what ETA really is. And you know, Stanford, long time ago, they had this, you know, harebrained idea. Some of the alumni that, hey, you know what I want to do? I want to buy a business. But however, a couple things. I've never run a business before. I'm going to find one where I'm not familiar with the business model. I'm going to move to a place that I've never lived and I'm going to take millions of dollars of investment from people that are going to entrust me to grow and transform that business. And it worked.
- [10:13]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Everything you just said there was crazy. And then except for the very. You're like, wait a minute, what?
- [10:17]
Alex Hodgkin
And then it worked. So like, you know, yeah, that's, that's where it all began.
- [10:21]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And when you say small business, like, like what, what's the range in businesses in which search fund folks are going out?
- [10:27]
Alex Hodgkin
Well, so I would also say this. ETA has been going on for decades. There's lots of people that have, it really didn't start at Stanford. People have been going out and buying small businesses since time immemorial. So it's not like a, there was just a, a codified system, an investor network that supported folks that wanted to do that at Stanford first. But people have been buying small businesses forever.
- [10:51]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
I thought it started with Cody Sanchez, but I guess, I guess, I guess. Oh, are we live streaming oh, crap. No, I'm just kidding. We'll be okay.
- [10:59]
Alex Hodgkin
I love it.
- [11:00]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Okay, so, and I did want to talk about some of the. Because the thing that, that was fascinating during our last call is like all the different types of mechanics and different sizes. So like the, the ETA that we're speaking to right now is, is that search fund.
- [11:15]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah.
- [11:15]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
When is there, is there a, like, can I go buy $100 million company with that? Does it have to be a million dollars?
- [11:22]
Alex Hodgkin
As long as you can get the investors and the, you know, the, the selling shareholder group to agree to sell to you, you can do that. But I'll say there's a couple different mechanisms. I'll explain them in plain English. There's buying a very small business. Call that like, you know, 100k to a million and a half in cash flow. A lot of times people do that with SBA 7A loans and they come up with the equity on their own or with a small, very intimate group of investors. You move up from that above the million dollars in EBITDA up to about $5 million in EBITDA. And EBITDA is operating profit. And then you need bigger equity checks, you know, anywhere from 2 to 10 million in equity. And there's a group of investors that will support that. So kind of going from what we call the self funded model, which, by the way, they encourage, the professors at Harvard teach this and encourage their students to go that direction. They have a book, the two professors, called Think Big, Buy Small. And then there's the search fund mechanism, which is larger businesses. And the difference really between the two is oftentimes with smaller deals, you become the business owner. So you're not just a CEO reporting into a board that can get fired. You, like, own the whole thing, or at least a really sizable part of it. And then when you pursue the larger businesses with a traditional search model, you become the CEO reporting into a board and you have an equity stake, but you can, they can let you go if you're not, if you're not, you know, achieving the milestones and growth and things like that that they, that they're envisioning for the business. So those are the two real big ones. And then the other one, when you go way upstream from there, and it starts really at search funds, is you can go in house to an investor group which can be either a private equity fund or a family office that will support you in the same type of endeavor. But they're the sole equity check provider. Does that make sense?
- [13:08]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah. Yep.
- [13:09]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah. So Those are the really the three what we call ETA mechanisms.
- [13:13]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
If you were going down the search fund path and you weren't hitting the metrics and some other things were falling apart, you get fired. Does that search fund operator still keep a piece of the equity or is it all gone?
- [13:23]
Alex Hodgkin
They sure do.
- [13:24]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Uh huh. Yeah.
- [13:25]
Alex Hodgkin
Okay, so in the traditional search parlance, they usually get three tranches of equity. The first one vests at closing and that's for finding the business. The second one vests over some time period and this is in the Stanford search fund study, people can Google that. And then the third part they get if they achieve certain investment milestones, hurdles for their investors at exit. And so there's really, and usually it's 25% is what they get as a whole for those three different components.
- [13:53]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Got it. And if someone's thinking about search fund, I've seen some people, they go and find another half, a better half. Maybe some people just go at it solo. Like what have you seen as far as like two people going after it or one person?
- [14:08]
Alex Hodgkin
They both can work. They both can work. So I would say 20 years ago, 15 years ago, there was a very, in the search fund layer, there was a very strong preference for partnered searches for two folks. And, and over time I'd say that's evolved to solo search. But you can do either. The key being if you can do a partnered search, you really have to know who's going to sit in what seat. If we could, we could start to, you know, segue very easily.
- [14:36]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
We're already in the OS now. Holy crap. We're only 14 minutes in.
- [14:41]
Alex Hodgkin
But there's, there's all kinds of fun segues you can make between ETA and eos, but that's certainly one of them.
- [14:47]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
When you see people carry co CEO titles, are you like adamant that behind the scenes, like they're both not in the visionary and there's some sort of differentiation 100%.
- [14:56]
Alex Hodgkin
So I'm wearing my EOS gear here, I'm representing. Right. And, and you know, I'm a purist, so I'm strong believer that you got to have one button, one seat.
- [15:05]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
How do you. So let's say you're a search fund operator. Let's say, let's say you're a solo search fund operator and you go out, you find this incredible business, you buy it, you raise the money needed, you close. And on day one you're like, there's changes that are needed and they're needed now.
- [15:22]
Alex Hodgkin
There always are, Ryan, always. Usually what happens in These situations is you're buying from a founder that's hit the ceiling and they're out of gas and they're kind of like, you know what, man, I've taken this as far as I can take it. It's time for me to monetize, you know, kind of diversify my retirement. And so you have these ETA operators stepping into businesses where, well, there's ceilings everywhere, right? As far as the way that we talk about eos and how do I solve for those, they can be people ceilings, they can be all kinds of ceilings. But that's what you're stepping into on day one for sure, man.
- [15:56]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
You know what someone should do is they should put together a fund because it hits ceiling. Put together a fund and like fund people to go buy businesses and then implement eos. Turn around.
- [16:04]
Alex Hodgkin
And I love that. I love it.
- [16:07]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
So it's almost where you're at today. So let's say there's an entrepreneur or someone that like doesn't want to start it because there is a big difference. And I know you know this and like I've gone through this. There's like the 0 to 1 people and then there's the 1 to 10 and sometimes being able to like fast track past that 0 to 1. There's already product market fit and just kind of optimize through levers. That's the place when an entrepreneur is thinking about this and they're like, okay, I want to go buy a business. Like, is there, is there things that they can do to think through, like which option or which path is better and what would some of that be?
- [16:46]
Alex Hodgkin
It's, it's the same thing I would say around lifestyle design. Like, you know, buying a smaller business is tougher because usually have a more shallow leadership team. And so you might have a 13 person company where you know one of them is a foreman. If you're looking at home services and they leave and you're like you're installing attic fans.
- [17:09]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
This is not what I signed up for.
- [17:11]
Alex Hodgkin
This is not what I thought I was going to sit in the C suite and direct people and strategize. That being said, over the long run, if you're in control and you're the owner, you can really create a business of your design over a longer time horizon. In a search situation where you're the CEO, you're usually collaborating with your board on a strategy and a value creation plan and serving in that CEO seat as opposed to that business owner seat and they both can have great outcomes, but you really have to rewind from the 10, 20, 30 year life plan and say what's going to make the
- [17:44]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
most sense for me when I was going down the track of like a new operator walks into a business, let's say they went the search fund, the search one path and the first thing they see is like changes needed. What, what authorities do they have to be able to affect change? Like is it free reign? You got this brand new MBA whippersnapper, he just jumps in and like just starts like changing everything. Or do they have to get permission for everything?
- [18:11]
Alex Hodgkin
No, they don't. But I would say again, so many beautiful segues to EOs. EOs can be an awesome chassis just in terms of creating a really good governance system between your board and your investor group and the CEO and the leadership team to kind of say, hey guys, let's agree on all the components of Eos and then let us go execute. And I'd also say in either scenario, search or traditional, the folks typically have more of an integrator orientation than a visionary. Visionaries are so good at sales, they're really good at sales, they're good at recruiting, they're good at raising money, they're good at doing all kinds of things. But ETA is so much about execution. So much. And so a lot of times I would say, you know, you want an integrator orientation if you're going to do eta.
- [18:57]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah, I'll leave it there because that's, I think that nails it on the head and that kind of goes back to our. Zero to one is like zero to one, you need the crazy people that are just all over the place. One to ten, you need the executioner.
- [19:09]
Alex Hodgkin
That's right. A lot of times in ETA situations you don't have a visionary. So the visionary might look like the owner's box or something like that. But you know, you can have disastrous situations if you have a pure visionary step into a business that needs a lot of execution, you know.
- [19:27]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
So yeah, you're going to hate this next question, by the way. I already know it. Yeah, does, does that mean that the board is like the panel of visionaries or like the. Is like that your guiding competency.
- [19:43]
Alex Hodgkin
Usually the board plus the CEO become the visionary and they can be a supercharged visionary in many regards. Because if you're doing search, you should have a synergistic board, you know, some of which were operators that had run similar businesses, some of which are various student investors with broad and deep networks that can bring visionary type stuff to bear for the benefit of the business. So not always. I mean, sometimes you can have, you know, an ETA operator that has visionary components and they report formally into an owner's box, but either of those configurations can work. And we're getting into like, we're getting into like Eos, you know, advanced EOS here. But you're the EOS man.
- [20:25]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
So I just play one on two. Yeah, no, this is, and I think the audience will appreciate this as well. I mean, to be frank, like, this is probably one of the first times that EOS has like naturally weaved so fluidly into the conversation. And it does because of what, what you said, which is like ETA is basically set up for a company that like has hit the ceiling.
- [20:48]
Alex Hodgkin
Yes.
- [20:49]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And now there's no other option for the founder or whoever's still in that seat is either cash flow the business or sell the business. And like they can't get it beyond.
- [20:57]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah.
- [20:58]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And that's not to become the EOS spokesperson, but that's kind of the purpose of eos.
- [21:02]
Alex Hodgkin
You'd mentioned it in passing, but the white paper that I wrote with A.J. wasserstein, who's a professor at Yale, and Matt Littell, who's a professor at Kellogg, talk very specifically about how EOS can be an incredible tool for first time CEOs pursuing the ETA path for all the reasons. But I do recommend that the listeners tune into that particular piece if they want to learn more. For sure.
- [21:25]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Can you look at something? Not look, but like, can you have dinner with someone and immediately be like, ETA Path is not for you. Like, go down the entrepreneur. Go, go start a company.
- [21:35]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah. It's so funny you say that because search investors have been trying for decades to figure out, you know, the alpha in choosing operators.
- [21:45]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah.
- [21:45]
Alex Hodgkin
So they're still doing that. They're still, now they're, now they're crunching data to look at all the past successes and which operators and how they were different, things like that. And the answer is they're still figuring that out. You know, they really are. I would say one thing, ETA is not for the faint of heart. And it reveals the deepest characteristics of an operator early in the journey. So it's, what do you do when your back is pushed up, pushed up against a wall and you've got to solve 100 problems? You know, how are you going to, how are you going to navigate that? Right. And some folks that, it's sort of like, you know, you can't tell who a Navy SEAL is going to be like, you know, you're like, is that guy going to make it if he goes to Navy seals.
- [22:26]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah.
- [22:26]
Alex Hodgkin
Some folks are like, there is no way. There's no way. And then they turn out, you're like, oh, wow, you made it okay. Yeah, I guess we got a few things to learn about what makes for a successful Navy seal and what does it.
- [22:37]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
It's like, I. And usually it's the big. I'm not speak. I. I'm speaking as a naval air crewman, whatever that means, or a surface warfare officer, not as a Navy seal, but everything like, you read and study, like, generally, it's not the biggest guy in the room. It's not the person that, like, has been doing all the things. It's. It's the person who's like, the mentally strongest out of the group.
- [22:55]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah, I, I would say it's very similar here, Ryan. Yeah, a hundred percent.
- [22:58]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Have you seen board dynamics through a search fund where the seat, like, things are just not working? Like, have you. Have you seen instances of that throughout your experience?
- [23:08]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah, and this goes along for any investor group integrating with a, with a leadership team. But there are times when the investor group wants to get more involved in the business, maybe, and so there's bundles of responsibility and authority that go along with serving as a CEO or business owner. And sometimes investor groups can step through that and the leadership team and the rest of the company starts to get confused. They're like, well, is the investor group running the company or is the CEO because the investor group is making decisions around evolutions in the accountability chart and what, what rock should be focused on, or are we even using eos or the chassis as the central organizing force? And so, you know, when those situations arise, it's, you know, that's usually dysfunctional.
- [23:51]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
You know, what was so interesting about what you just said is I figured you were going to jump right into the, right into the search operator, like, right into. Like, you just gave a really unique perspective of, like, usually it's overstepping from the investor side. Like, do you ever see it go wrong on, on the operator side as well, where they're just like, out of control or generally speaking, it's for sure
- [24:15]
Alex Hodgkin
they, well, they can get overwhelmed. And, you know, in situations where they're just not doing the right things or focused on the right things. And I've heard, you know, I work with ETA operators and I also have relationships with the investors. And so I kind of hear perspectives from both sides, you know, and sometimes the ETA investors are like, man, they're just, they're not focusing on the right things and we really need them to go over here and do that. But they're going to, they're going to assert their will and sort of make sure that we're pushing on these particular initiatives or whatever instead. And those are not the right things to focus on. So it can go both ways. For. It's a, it's a, it's a dance.
- [24:49]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
What do you think? Like the most effective path to. And like this goes beyond. This goes beyond like search fun. This, this really kind of gets into like board and CEO dynamics. And candidly speaking, like I see. Are we at two years yet? No, we're not. So I'm limited in what I can talk about. But like, I, I will tell you, there were some really interesting things as you speak to like overstepping that happened that like really created some dissonance inside of the organization.
- [25:17]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah.
- [25:18]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And so like this is, this is more broadly for just companies that are on some sort of governance that has a, has a board when, when there is a misalignment in strategic priorities or like, you know, the CEO who is boots on the ground looking at it, closest to the customer, closest to the team, they've got all the data and they're going. And there's a, there's a misalignment between the board and the CEO. Like what, how can you fix that?
- [25:47]
Alex Hodgkin
Are you ready for an EOS tool?
- [25:49]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Oh, what's it, what's it called?
- [25:50]
Alex Hodgkin
It's called same page meeting. Yeah. So let's just say that that board integrated with the CEO is the visionary. Okay. And what you're going to have is you're going to have a same page meeting. The CEO can sit kind of in both seats, but you're going to have a situation where, hey guys, listen, we've got to get synced up on all the EOS foundational tools in the vto. And we're going to do that, you know, sort of like in a same page meeting construct to make sure we're totally aligned. And I'd say in a healthy situation, they'll get alignment there. And those can require same page meetings. And then they say, okay, CEO, we're going to give you a couple of gifts.
- [26:26]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
We.
- [26:26]
Alex Hodgkin
One is eos, one is a peer group. Okay. Preferably a peer group that's running on eos. All right. So that you're talking to other people that are using that. And thirdly, that you've got a really good executive coach that's sort of given you a broader support system as well. Mental health is a big One, but just conflict resolution, leadership, all those things. So we're saying, hey listen, let's give you the EOS chassis as a gift so that we can get to alignment. There's. And then let's get you some folks that you can sort of collaborate with and then let's get you that coach and then you go execute and let us kind of step back and let you do that. Does that make sense? And the same page meeting can come in really effective in getting alignment on the EOS apparatus.
- [27:10]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And what do you think when you think about same page meeting? Like what do you think about the frequency of that? Is that, is that outside of the. The construct of your quarterly board meeting? Board meetings.
- [27:20]
Alex Hodgkin
Board meetings. You may have an operating. You may have one of the board members or several that are serving as what we call operating partners. So a lot of times they're like, I ran a business just like yours and I grew at 3x that and I have some very strong ideas about where you should be focusing. Rockswise, accountability, chart evolution, so on and so forth. But instead of me stepping into your EOS meetings with leadership team lets you and I go off and have those same page conversations and then come back, codify those with the board and move forward.
- [27:53]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And tell me if I'm wrong on this. So I'll give the structure real quick on how this typically goes down. You tell me I'm full of poo poo or it works. And then, and then I'll talk about kind of the board when, when a search fund person, my understanding is you go out, you raise a small fund and that's kind of your admin execution calls for, let's call it two years to go actually find the business. Yes, find the business meets the thesis. And then you go back to those people plus more people to go bring debt and additional equity through the door to close on the transaction.
- [28:22]
Alex Hodgkin
Yep.
- [28:23]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Okay. When what's really interesting about this is like boards, in my experience, I've stood up over long periods of time. So like first, my first experience with this, it was just the two co founders. It was me and my partner Derek. And then we were like, you know, be good to get this type of person perspective. So we went out, we found someone, we put them on the board, found someone else over a long period of time. But this is like, it's like Insta Board.
- [28:46]
Alex Hodgkin
Like it's Insta Board now. Now, yes and no. Your equity investors come from your search syndicate, typically the ones that are funding your search. But you will collaborate with them pre Closing on whatever business you find to assemble a board that is at your direction mostly like they're, you're going to have a couple of investors that are from your syndicate that will sit on the board and then you'll say okay guys, who else would be super synergistic for us as board members? And I mean that like lending industry perspective networks like that can really help. Right? Like what you don't want is a board of folks that are just pure financial investors. They want, the only thing they care about is are we tracking budget, you know, like all those things you want. And this is how the Stanford search fund model worked out so well in the early years is that you had a very supportive board that had, that had domain expertise that could step in and help you in a very sort of constructive way.
- [29:42]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Has this stuff evolved over time like through best practice or has like once
- [29:47]
Alex Hodgkin
they documented okay, yes, board construction is a big deal. Like by the way, AJ Wasserstein, my co author on the paper has written a number of pieces on how you actually assemble a board for a search or an ETA backed company. Best practice there. So there is content that can help guide folks in what, what good looks like for sure.
- [30:08]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And then I'll give VOS a quick plug like that might be one of the, one of like the biggest evolutions where like now there's a, you can walk in and you don't have to do your vision, mission, value, like whatever business school taught you. Like there's an actual framework that already exists that you can just plop right
- [30:22]
Alex Hodgkin
into the business and it's so good, you know, it's like they don't know. First time CEO learning a new business in a new geography with an inherited leadership team and a departing founder needs to reinvent the wheel when it comes to an operating system. They've got something that's been around, run through, you know, tens of thousands of companies. As we say it's, it's simple but it's not easy. Right. So then you give them this wonderful chassis to then use in transforming the business. It's like it was, it's like it was made for, for eta.
- [30:55]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah. After I sold Hunt a killer, like I was going down kind of all the different ETA paths and what that would look like, self funding, debts, search fund, private equity, things like that. And we fumbled our way to 5 million bucks and we got to 5 million. And then I had joined a Vistage group because my first company bankrupted and I was like if I ever find product market fit again, like I'll find a group of humans that could help. Joined a vistage group, fumbled our way to 5 million. And then of all people who I know now but didn't know him back then. Dan Wallace comes through my Seattle VISTAGE Group presents EOS Life changing. Read the book. Implemented. And so post exit, all I could think about was like, I'm just going to go like start rolling up companies and just implement eos because like what better? Yeah, it's just like a huge growth strategy there.
- [31:42]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah. And Dan by the way, is an enormous asset to the ETA community. He's worked with a number of ETA operators. Operators. And what a gift, you know, to, to step into a business and then have someone like him riding in the cockpit alongside the first time operator using something like eos with precision. Yeah, so that was, that was a good name to introduce into the conversation.
- [32:03]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yeah, Dan, Dan's, he's, he's a stud. Okay, one, one last question on private equity. Then I want to get to your white paper like and, like I want to get generally and then I want to get kind of into the details because there's, there's some, there's some raw stuff in there which I, I find fascinating. But real quick, just for people that are listening and, and I'm asking you the questions that I wish I would have known that, that there's like three different options and here's the things, here's the pros and cons. If someone's like no, I'm a true operator and like I'm going to go buy a bigger business and they're going to go down that private equity path.
- [32:35]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah.
- [32:36]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Like where, where does, wait, do they just knock on the door at their local private equity firm and, and say hey, or they can, how's that work?
- [32:43]
Alex Hodgkin
Oh for sure. So there's a couple different routes. Now we're getting some very nuanced stuff, but the, the listeners may appreciate it. They can go to private equity firms and approach them with businesses that they have under what's called letter of intent, which is that it's called an loi and that's you're in real conversations with the business owner or shareholder group about buying the business. And private equity groups love that stuff. So if you, you have a company under loi, they will absolutely take your call. You can also create what's called an independent sponsor, which is a situation where you become in some ways the private equity firm and you raise the capital sometimes even from private equity and you're sitting in between acting as the Pseudo private equity investor along with being the operator. So those are both options for bigger businesses.
- [33:30]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And do you generally hold on you as in the operator? Do you generally hold on to the same amount of equity or is the contract construct different for pe?
- [33:38]
Alex Hodgkin
First off, finding a good business to buy at a good price is extremely difficult. So if you can get that right, there's, there's, there's incremental economics that you can capture and you can capture that through finders fees. Like so you get a private equity firm and say, hey listen, I want the CEO package that you generally award to your CEOs when they're running a business. I also want incremental economics with regards to a finder's fee. Or if you create an independent sponsor, you can say, I want incremental equity as well. So there's ways to negotiate additional upside for yourself if you find yourself in that situation.
- [34:16]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
All right, quick break friends.
- [34:17]
Ryan Hogan
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.
- [34:35]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And after I sold that company in 2025, I started Talent Harbor.
- [34:38]
Ryan Hogan
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 like zip, recruiter 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 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@talent harbor.com. 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.
- [35:39]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
All right, let's switch to your paper. Let's, let's start with like, broadly speaking, like why, why, why did you write the paper? What were you seeing? Seeing where you were like someone's gotta say it.
- [35:50]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah. No. So I'll tell my EOS story a little bit. So when I started my company, got it to 15 people, I recapitalized it and brought in some external investors somewhere in the ETA community. And I became the CEO reporting to a board and it was a founder on business before and founder owned business is great because you can do whatever you want to. Right. So we had a true, you know, money comes in, money goes out. Do we have enough money to pay payroll?
- [36:14]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Awesome.
- [36:14]
Alex Hodgkin
Let's go to the beach for two weeks and whatever.
- [36:18]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yes.
- [36:18]
Alex Hodgkin
And then it's like oh, okay. Now these guys want their, they want a return on this equity and they want, you know, they want to do certain things. So I found myself as a first time CEO of a 15 person business reporting to a board and charged with the transformation of the business to get to certain equity hurdles. And I quickly realized that I didn't know what I was doing in that context. So I had constructed this network of ETA operators, traditional search backed, some self funded and I found that EOS was already being used in mass in that community. So I actually adopted EOS at my own company and started using it and used Lisa Gonzalez, who's actually an implementer in the community, she real process. And so I was really able to benefit from EOS and learning about it from the ETA community itself. So I was speaking with AJ Wasserstein again. We're colleagues as professors. I teach a course at Booth called Value Creation in Small Business which is really about the post close operator's journey in effectuating different things that can increase the equity value. I sort of said I would love to collaborate with you on a paper on operating systems. And he's like, well you're not the first person that said that. He's like, I've started to get that from a lot of people. And so I said great, let's do it. And AJ is absolutely brilliant, a phenomenal writer. And so we developed a piece and recruited Matt Littell, who's the professor Kellogg, who's also a strong advocate of eos and uses it in the companies he invests in. So that was the, that was the, the catalyst for the paper.
- [37:51]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Got it. And you, you talked to 60, 57, 61.
- [37:57]
Alex Hodgkin
That's a different paper. There was a different paper where we polled folks in a context relating to stepping into a private equity ownership constellation as opposed to ETA search constellation for businesses that were sold. But for this one we really just collected a lot of best practice from our own experiences and conversations ad hoc with folks in the community. So. But a lot of wisdom there. A lot of wisdom in that paper for sure.
- [38:22]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And like what, what would you say? Like the biggest kind of Key takeaway for the paper.
- [38:28]
Alex Hodgkin
Well, first of all, just to have something that is a thought leadership piece that first time operators can grab onto and be like, okay, like I'm not doing this in a vacuum and here's a, here's some content that's branded that supports me doing this and by the way, also sharing it with the leadership team and be like, guys, I'm not just kind of, you know, pulling this out of my ass. Like, this is something that is done across the ETA community and here's kind of what it looks like in terms of the benefits, the best practice and the pitfalls. And so those are the three kind of real areas of focus in the paper. And it allows, it allows you to accelerate adoption across leadership as well as the first time CEO reading it themselves and be like, yeah, I really do need to do this.
- [39:11]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
When you think about an eta, you're going out, you're buying an existing business and so there's a lot of, well, this is how we've always done it, probably tight mentality in that business.
- [39:21]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah.
- [39:22]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
What, what have you found? So you go out, you've like validated it yourself that this like process works and then you co author a paper sharing it with the world, like scream from the rooftops, this works. Like if you're looking for a path, this is the path. Yeah. What are some things that you believe that the operators should know up front? Like maybe it's a disclaimer of like, you need this, but just know this or this. Sure.
- [39:52]
Alex Hodgkin
So a couple things there. Number one, it's hard. Like using EOS is hard and it takes a long time. So like just showing yourself some grace in the timeline of adoption. So, you know, sometimes you'll have first time CEOs go, I'm going to jam Eos this thing and then we're going to crush it. You're like, well, it kind of doesn't
- [40:11]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
work out,
- [40:14]
Alex Hodgkin
this is going to take a while and you're going to install it in pieces over a certain, you know, usually several year time horizon to get to having the whole business, the organization embracing all the different facets of EOs. So I would say out of the gate things that are really, really helpful is just getting on the same page with your investor group and your board, in your leadership team. And by the way, also you're selling shareholders who sometimes roll equity and you know, the founders that want to know that that's going to be well kept that saying, hey man, this is where we're going and this is how we're going to get there. So creating alignment across, across those constituencies through the VTO can be huge. The second thing is there's always going to be evolutions and adjustments to your accountability chart, right? So 99.9% of the time you're going to have, some folks are going to get off the bus. They just, this is not what they signed up for. So they're, they're legacy members of the leadership team or the employee base and say, hey, listen, this thing was growing at 5%, now we're growing, going to grow at 25%. I didn't sign up for that. So, you know, so just having those transparent, open, honest, vulnerable conversations around how their roles can evolve and whether they get one and have the capacity to do those roles is super important. And then the final thing I would say is that you are going to have a subtle adjustment in the organizational values. So you're inheriting a business that has values and a culture already. Already. It's already there and it's been used with some success. But you're going to have to inject probably a few values that may not have been there before. So there's some great value extraction methods that we have at EOS to say, well, here's what's great in terms of the values and the culture and here's a couple things that we need to pivot on. Right. And so using that, the core values and the people analyzer and things like that to drive incremental adjustments to the culture so that you have a growth oriented business is really important when you
- [42:06]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
think about the core values and the shift. I love that. And some of the things that I've observed through this is like when you buy a business that's hit the ceiling, there's not much like growth mindset in there. And the only reason that you're going through, the only reason you're going through a DTA is because you need to grow it. When we talk about values, like values generally take on, usually it's the visionary, but let's just say like it's the operators, whoever's kind of sitting at that, at that top seat. Regardless if like there's a board and a mix and the other stuff at the top. The exercise that you generally use in EOS is like, close your eyes, think of three people inside the organization. Now kind of list them. What are those behaviors? Find the commonalities. Is your recommendation to run that in the absolute purest way?
- [42:52]
Alex Hodgkin
Yes. So here's usually what happens. The founder was the one who created the values in the first place, they often sit in the visionary seat and that's where it comes, comes from. Right. And so the apparatus by which EOS establishes values is wonderful because it says founder departed. Okay, value system still in place, needs adjustments. Let's look into the organization and see what's still present and what everyone agrees is important. And so that value extraction process can help you achieve that because it's outside the leadership team, but people still in the organization that sets the best baseline for your core values. And then the integrator, the incoming integrator, first time CEO will then also say, you know, here's a couple additional values that I think we should contemplate, like growth mindset that we can layer on to sort of say we're going to keep what's, we're going to keep best in class, values and culture here and we're going to tweak it just a little bit so that we can get on this new growth trajectory.
- [43:51]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Love that. Because like I, I would. The hardest part for me would be when you're the founder of the company, you're starting from scratch. Like you're generally surrounding yourselves by people that already, like, it's just, it's just, it's just what you do. Like your, your founding team or the people you surround aren't going to have misaligned values. And so like coming up with values in the early days is very easy. I could just see how much of a struggle for me personally that would be of like walking into an organization and it's like, hey, these, these need to change. We're going to run this process and figure out who internally like has the values that are driving the success.
- [44:22]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah.
- [44:23]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And then just like hope that they align with, with mine, you get the voice, right.
- [44:28]
Alex Hodgkin
So everyone's voice is heard and then you get to introduce maybe a few new ones. And in that process, subtly you're co creating those. Right. So you're not coming in saying, here's the new values, we're throwing the old ones out the door. And that's a way. And EOS is so good at this in so many different situations. But whether it be the co creation of rocks or the VTO or the value system, but you're co creating with your leadership team so that they feel like their voices are heard now, always the integrators, the tiebreaker, so they can kind of say, all right, well here's a whole portfolio of things regarding anything I just mentioned, but here's tweaks to that that we need to pursue and so people's voices are heard and they get that role in co creation.
- [45:09]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Real quick to the timing part that you talked about. Like, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to implement this framework and then I'm just going to sail off to the beach business going to grow itself. You're like, wait a minute, this, this takes, this takes a bit of time. Us Pure says two years in and out, like full implementation by two years. What's, what's your philosophy? What have you seen? Like, is your recommendation to ETA operators that like, if you've got a great implementer, that's a voice in the room, it's a set of eyes. What's your philosophy on that?
- [45:39]
Alex Hodgkin
So I think it can be different. I think it's situation specific. Some businesses take longer to transform using eos and others shorter. It's, you know, it depends on your leadership team buy in how much of it needs to actually be turned over. There's all kinds of different contributing factors to, you know, what's going to, what the ideal timeline looks like. I'd say, unfortunately, I wish I had a better answer for you than that. But that's. And as you know, you know, a lot of times they'll step into it, they'll do the first three sessions, you know, they'll install eos, they'll do a couple quarterlies, like we got this. And then you go through all the components, you're like, well, are you done with the process component? Has everything been sort of like systematized? Are you hiring, firing, reviewing and rewarding using your core values and your get it wanted can do it apparatus and your people analyzer across the organization? Well, no, we're not doing that either. Okay, well you go through it and they're like, boy, I guess we still have a way to go. And there's this whole EOS toolbox that we have not even scratched the surface on. The perfect EOS implementation can take a very long time.
- [46:45]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
You've talked a lot about like investors and getting the alignment and like being able to implement the framework EOS and the success it's had. Have you ever found yourself or seen situations where like you've had to convince the investors or the board that EOS was right or did your white paper do that magic that you needed and like everybody's on the same page.
- [47:04]
Alex Hodgkin
There has been a benefit, man, I
- [47:08]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
see what you were doing there.
- [47:10]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah, I see what you're doing there. No, I would say, as often as not, I'm actually brought in by the investor. Yeah, or some group of the investors. Because the first time CEO doesn't know what they don't know. And so you know, they're focused very much on the search phase first and they step into it and they may not have even heard of EOS yet. But, and if they have, it's very surface level now there is, there is a, there's also obviously a referral flywheel going on from CEOs to CEOs and searchers to searchers. But it, it is often as not comes to the investors as well. Very supportive in the ETA community.
- [47:45]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Okay, I, I feel like we need to get to you in this as well. Like what, what are you up to nowadays? What are you doing? Where are you at? And, and then I, I want to make sure we one, share that and then two, like what are you looking for? How people get a hold. But let's, let's start with like what you're doing today.
- [48:00]
Alex Hodgkin
So I did the tour CEO and in the CEO seat from the recap to my departure. Not departure, but transition is a better way of saying it. I grew the company about 500% on their top line and from about 50 to about 55 and then transitioned to the board. They were ready for new blood and I was really thinking about what I wanted to do next. Right. And because I had such a good experience with the os, I'm like, this is going to be the perfect fit for me with regards to how that fits into my involvement in the ETA community as well. So I wear three hats at booth right now. I'm an entrepreneur in residence. I'm a senior advisor to the ETA program and I'm an adjunct professor. And the latter one is a new course we started teaching last year, which is again, it's mostly about the post operator. The post closing operator journey in the context of what private equity often alludes to as value creation. So it's how do you actually increase equity value for your investors during the life of an investment? So that's really the two things I do right now is I do eos because I love, by the way. So private equity investors, and they wouldn't argue with this at all, they're really good at coming up with brilliant value creation plans. They look really nice on PowerPoint decks in financial models and things like this. And then they hand those to the operator and they go, now you will do this. The operator goes, well I got to swap out Sally, who's the controller. I got to do all these things. And how am I going to do this, the EOS implementer role. I can actually sit in the cockpit with them and say, okay, let me come along for the journey on that so that we can effectuate that value creation plan with you in the business in the day to day firefighting aspects of it. So those are the two things I do now as EOS implementation and I teach at Booth. Yeah. And that's like, that's it, man. This is the deal. This is, this is the thing you're
- [49:52]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
at, you're at one of the firms too, aren't you?
- [49:54]
Alex Hodgkin
So I'm with Meritage. Yeah.
- [49:56]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Okay.
- [49:56]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah.
- [49:57]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And so give it, give a quick, give a quick brief on Meritage. Yeah, sure.
- [50:01]
Alex Hodgkin
So Meritage is a collection of EOS implementers. Jack Tankers Lee is kind of the founder, the central founder of the firm. His son Jay Tankersley and Bart Loreng are the, are the sort of the co founders in that. All of which are phenomenal expert level EOS implementers that work almost exclusively with companies that have taken on external capital. So whether that's venture, private equity, family office. Jack founded a very successful private equity firm in its own right previous to doing EOS and actually learned about EOS and was so impressed by it as an investor, he decided to become an implementer himself like 12 to 14 years ago. So very much a visionary in that regard. They're based here in Denver along with me, so it just made a tremendous amount of sense for me to join that team. There's also a growth equity component to it. So Meritage has a growth equity fund investing exclusively in EOS run companies. So there's that as well.
- [50:59]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
And just out of curiosity, because you live in Colorado but you, you teach at Booth. Are you, are you doing like a lot of.
- [51:05]
Alex Hodgkin
I travel there so much, so Chicago is literally my second home.
- [51:11]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
So what you're telling me is you're a United guy is kind of what I'm hearing here.
- [51:14]
Alex Hodgkin
I'm a Southwest guy, Ryan. I'm a South.
- [51:17]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Okay.
- [51:17]
Alex Hodgkin
Because. Because I like Midway a lot better. Midway. So much more convenient to fly into than o'. Hare. Yeah. So. And that makes sense. I, I don't even want to say how many trips I've taken to Chicago. It's. They don't. I wish, I wish they had the United benefits for frequent flyers for Southwest. But alas, that's not the case.
- [51:39]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Well, you probably have that. My, my co founder is a diehard. I'm a die hard Delta. I did, I did cheat and go to United for about two years. That's that's a whole nother story for another day. Yeah, but I'm back at Delta, but my, my co founder partner is all about Southwest because out of bwi, like Southwest is basically the airline. It gets you anywhere, direct flight. And she's flown so much that she's got this free seat that's like forever. So if she wants to go, she can take anybody she wants with her.
- [52:08]
Alex Hodgkin
I can do that. So I've got the companion pass that.
- [52:11]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Yes, it's that. Yeah, that's what I figured. You've got the Forever benefit.
- [52:16]
Alex Hodgkin
Yes, yes.
- [52:17]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
What do you look for in clients?
- [52:19]
Alex Hodgkin
Yeah, so I love ETA operators, man. I just have a special place in my heart for these crazy people that do this, you know, so, like, I really do. And you know, like I, I had a, I had a session about a month ago and you know, it's a, it's a great business. It's located in a very remote place and you know, right after the session, the first time CEO kind of looked at me and the leadership team had left the room and he's like, man, can we, can we just, can we just go grab a beer, please? Yeah, you can do that. We can do that. You know, like, and so like, I really love self aware, talented first time CEOs that are stepping into ETA backed businesses. That's my, that's my sweet spot. 100%. Yep.
- [53:02]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Love it. And you'll jump on an airplane all day long. They don't have to be in Denver.
- [53:06]
Alex Hodgkin
No, and a lot of times they're not, unfortunately, because these companies are all over the country and oftentimes in your major geographies, they're very heavily competed for. The valuations are high and, and a lot of these ET operators are finding places in secondary tertiary, you know, markets that are, they're just, they're, they're not, you know, major metropolises.
- [53:26]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
It was that hypothesis you talked about earlier. You were like, pick up and move to somewhere you've never been before in the middle of nowhere. And. Yeah, okay, so the last question is like someone just heard that and they're like, oh, I'm an ETA operator. Like, I just, I need to get a hold of Alex. I've got something. Yeah. What's the best way for them to get a hold of you?
- [53:42]
Alex Hodgkin
So you can email me at Alex Dot Hodgkin at EOS Worldwide.
- [53:48]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
There it is, There it is. That's it. I, I appreciate the time. This was, this was like, this is like my, my j. Like I love talking about entrepreneurship and especially the acquisition model, because I. I think if I would have known about that earlier, I probably would have went down that path and maybe. Maybe have been better at that than the.0 to 1. But I love talking about this, so I. I appreciate you taking the time.
- [54:09]
Alex Hodgkin
Absolutely. The honor to be on the podcast.
- [54:11]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Ryan.
- [54:11]
Alex Hodgkin
Thank you for inviting me.
- [54:13]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
Sweet.
- [54:13]
Ryan Hogan
Awesome.
- [54:13]
Ryan (Co-host or Interviewer)
All right, we'll talk.
- [54:14]
Alex Hodgkin
Okay, buddy. Sounds good.