Think Like an Owner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timi Okah, CEO of Ravix Group and a participant in the Kingsway CEO Accelerator Program, shares insights from his unique journey. He discusses the transition from engineering to leading a business and the advantages of acquiring under a public company. Timi highlights the potential of leveraging Kingsway's net operating losses for tax benefits while navigating the complexities of public shareholder involvement. He also emphasizes innovative business models and the growth opportunities within outsourced HR and finance services. Exciting times ahead for Ravix!

Collin Hathaway, expert in HVAC and plumbing businesses, shares lessons from acquiring 12 companies. Topics include failed acquisitions, market trends, impacts of high prices, governance expectations, and building companies for employee growth.

My guest on this episode is Jason Jackson. Jason searched and acquired Unified Dental Care, a collection of dental practices in the Detroit Metro in April 2017. Jason is quick to share all the mistakes he made through his search and his time as CEO. But you can tell he's an incredibly resilient person with tons of entrepreneurial energy. Jason and I talk about the challenges of turning around a bad culture, trying to establish trust in your team, hiring for core values, the pressure that comes from being a minority searcher, and how running a business is just like boxing. This is such a fun conversation around perseverance, fighting through hard times, and building a better future for yourself and your family. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Listen weekly and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links Mentioned: Jason Jackson on LinkedIn Unified Dental care Think Like an Owner Sponsors Live Oak Bank - Live Oak Bank is a seasoned SMB lender providing SBA and conventional financing for search funds, independent sponsors, private equity firms, and individuals looking to acquire lower middle market companies. Live Oak has closed billions of dollars in SBA financing and is actively looking to help more small company investors across the country. If you are in the process of acquiring a company or thinking about starting a search, contact Lisa Forrest or Heather Endresen directly to start a conversation or go to www.liveoakbank.com/think. Hood & Strong, LLP - Hood & Strong is a CPA firm with a long history of working with search funds and private equity firms on diligence, assurance, tax services, and more. Hood & Strong is highly skilled in working with search funds, providing quality of earnings and due diligence services during the search, along with assurance and tax services post-acquisition. They offer a unique way to approach acquisition diligence and manage costs effectively. To learn more about how Hood & Strong can help your search, acquisition, and beyond, please email one of their partners Jerry Zhou at jzhou@hoodstrong.com.  Oberle Risk Strategies- Oberle is the leading specialty insurance brokerage catering to search funds and the broader ETA community, providing complimentary due diligence assessments of the target company's commercial insurance and Employee benefits programs. Over the past decade, August Felker and his team have engaged with hundreds of searchers to provide due diligence and ultimately place the most competitive insurance program at closing. Given August's experience as a searcher himself, he and his team understand all that goes into buying a business and pride themselves on making the insurance portion of closing seamless and hassle-free. If you are under LOI, please reach out to August to learn more about how Oberle can help with insurance due diligence at oberle-risk.com. Or reach out to August directly at august.felker@oberle-risk.com. Interested in sponsoring?