Rick Ruback & Royce Yudkoff - Think Big, Buy Small - Ep.231

Ep.231: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Rick Ruback and Royce Yudkoff.

My guests today are Rick Ruback and Royce Yudkoff, both Harvard professors for entrepreneurship through acquisition and co-authors of the most popular and well-known piece of content in search, the HBR book How to Buy a Small Business which I would consider the bible of the search fund world. It’s one of the first resources I recommend for folks wanting to learn about search, besides this podcast of course. On top of the book, Rick and Royce have now launched their own podcast titled Think Big Buy Small that is a great primer for search funds, especially self-funded models, and I highly recommend giving it a listen.

Rick, Royce, and I talk about their careers as professors, case studies on small business they often reference, common threads through case studies and advice for new CEOs, ways search has changed, and the mission of their new podcast.

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Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

Links:

HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business

Think Big Buy Small Podcast

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:02:18) - What made you decide to write the book?

(00:07:17) - How have you become a more effective teacher?

(00:12:29) - What cases or scenarios have been most challenging for CEOs to work through?

(00:19:03) - What are some reasons searchers buy cyclical businesses?

(00:25:06) - What recurring concepts are you trying to teach or questions CEOs ask?

(00:28:32) - What are your favorite cases to teach?

(00:33:16) - What’s changing or evolving in the Search space?

(00:40:56) - What are the missions and goals of the Podcast?

(00:46:11) - What would you add if you wrote a new book edition?