My First Million: #61 - How to Buy, Manage and Grow Cash-Flow Positive Businesses + Corona Virus Impact on the Economy

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers.

And each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

All right.

We got a friend of the show here, Jordan Harbinger.

He's one of the guys who's been advising us on how to build this podcast because his

podcast is way more successful than ours and has been around.

He's been doing podcasting for like 12 and a half years, which Jordan, that's got to

be as long as podcasting has existed, right?

Yeah.

I think podcasts have been around for like 14 years and I've or 15 and I've been around

for 13 of those.

When I started, there was no way, there were no iPhones, so you couldn't get podcasts on

your phone.

You had to use an iPod to play them.

Yeah.

Straight to cassette.

That's how long this guy's been doing it.

So Jordan, I like your show.

I've been binging it while in quarantine because what else am I going to do besides try to learn

something new or improve myself in some way?

And I got to say, I like it because you do the interview style show where you go deep

with a guest.

I think, you know, you had it, I was listening to the one with Tony Hawk, which was pretty

awesome.

And I got to say, I like that you don't do the kind of surface level, you know, just

pitty patting around with the questions or trying to do inspirational fluff where you're

just saying, go, you can do this.

So with that episode with Tony Hawk, what was that like?

Because Tony Hawk's an icon.

How was it interviewing Tony Hawk?

It was great.

He's a really interesting guy, really open and fun.

And he told some pretty funny stories.

One, which was very apropos of what's going on right now is one day he walked into his

agent or some sort of marketing team that he'd hired, he walked into their office.

This is like at the height of video games where he's making, I don't know, 50 million

bucks off these skating games and these brands, and he goes in and he says, look, I got this

backpack that was made pretty shoddily and it's got my name and face on it.

I don't want any more stuff like that.

And as the agent, marketer, whatever is sort of nodding his head and understanding, Tony

goes, wait, what's that on your shelf?

And it was a roll of toilet paper with Tony Hawk's name, face and logo on it.

And he goes, what the hell is that?

And the guy goes, oh yeah, anything we put your name and face on does so well.

We were joking that we could put your face on toilet paper and we'd still be able to

sell it.

And he fired them on the spot because it was clear that they didn't value his brand,

which I thought was a funny story.

And he's got a ton of stuff like that that he talked about on the show.

That is epic.

You know, I actually met Tony Hawk, we went on a trip to Africa, a charity trip together.

And believe it or not, we were halfway up a mountain in Ethiopia where, you know, it's

a, like this is a mountain village and somebody saw him there and they were like, Tony Hawk,

you know, that's probably the only English word they said to us all day.

They identified Tony Hawk on a mountain in Ethiopia.

That's how famous that guy is.

So that's an amazing guest to have on the show.

Imagine being that famous that you get recognized in the middle of countries where like, nobody

speaks your language and they maybe don't even have skateboards.

Yeah.

We were there trying to give people clean water.

They didn't even have water, but they knew Tony Hawk.

That's how famous that guy is.

Amazing.

Awesome.

Well, if you want to hear more from Jordan, we're going to be having him on more and

more.

He's a friend of the friend of the house and you should listen to the show.

It's one of the podcasts that I would recommend.

If you like Tim Ferriss's stuff, if you like our stuff, you're going to like his stuff.

And so go check out the Jordan Harbor and get your show on iTunes, Spotify, wherever

you get your podcasts, you'll find them there.

What's up, everybody?

Sean here with Sam and special guest for this episode, Brent, Brent, how do you say your

last name?

Be sure.

Be sure.

All right.

Cool.

I've been trying to get you on for months.

I think our email thread goes back months.

The reason why is because I'm interested in the business of buying businesses.

I've been looking to do this myself.

So after I sold by company, I said, great, I got some cash.

I can either put this in the stock market.

I can do, you know, I can go gamble this on a riverboat or I can potentially buy a cash

flow in business.

That's a good solid stable business.

And so I started learning about that world, stumbled around and saw permanent equity.

And yeah, I've been interested in having you on the podcast since then.

So why don't you tell us, give us like, you know, the minute version of who are you?

And then also what is permanent equity?

Yeah.

So permanent equity is, we like to describe it as a family of companies that buys family

owned companies.

So technically we're a private equity firm now.

We were just a small collection of my own capital in the beginning I was an entrepreneur

and then accidentally bought a business about 10 years ago.

And that's what led into kind of what we do today.

But what does that mean?

You accidentally bought a business.

Yeah.

So I had a mutual acquaintance say, Hey, you should meet this guy.

He's in your, he's in your industry.

And he just got left at the altar for the second time.

And I took that to me.

I should try to buy his business.

Cause why else would you tell me that?

He had no idea.

He was just trying to connect two people that were, you know, in the same, in the same field

or similar fields.

And so I don't know.

I look about 24, 25 now.

I looked about 13 or 14 then and set across from the sky and told him I wanted to buy

his business.

And he, he laughed at me and said to two grown men tried to buy my business, how in the heck

do you think you're going to do it?

I said, I don't know.

I'll figure it out.

And we negotiated and he told me, no, thank you.

And then seven months later called me back up and said, all right, let's move forward

and get it done.

So what was your company before?

So I started a kind of collection of regional marketing companies.

We had started in 2007, kind of really got going in 2008 and nine, which were, as you

all know, interesting times, but it actually allowed us to grow and we adopted some video

technology and it becoming standard.

We think we were probably the first people in the, in the world to use it for commercial

purposes.

But what does this mean?

What's regional marketing?

You know, we were doing, look, we were doing like ad agency type of work.

We were doing media buying.

We were doing digital work, you know, trying to scrap and claw and sort of make a go of

it.

Yeah.

So you're just an, you're an agency just figuring it out.

Yeah.

We had some unusual talents kind of under that agency because being in Missouri, we didn't

have access to a lot of specialty groups.

So we started building out our own specialty groups.

So we built that research.

We did some mobile and app development as well.

And then some film work.

So those were kind of the three unusual buckets that you typically don't get into an agency.

And give us, yeah, give us a sense of the like level of success.

I think a lot of people, one of the things we hear a lot is from the audience is like,

they hate when we fast forward and someone's like, yeah, I did this thing.

And then all of a sudden these amazing opportunities opened up and they sort of are like, wait,

where were they before?

And so give us the before picture.

How were you doing?

How was that business doing financially?

Did it, was it a big business, small business, you know, what, what, what was that business

like?

Yeah.

So we, so let's see here.

So I'm trying to, it's been a bit awhile since I've thought about the numbers.

So we grew to 26 employees, I think at the peak of that kind of before we were, so we

were, like we were doing fine.

I can make a living doing it, make a good living doing it.

It wasn't, you know, the agency business is hard.

It's really, really hard.

And I think that's probably what I've learned in my career is I've made all the mistakes

and I've tried and tested a lot of business models and sort of taste and try something

and you're like, oh, didn't realize how hard that was going to be.

And you sort of, you know, move around.

And so, you know, I would say, you know, moderately successful regional marketing firm, nothing

special.

I mean, I would say, you know, when, yeah, when we bought the firm that we did called

Media Cross, you know, we were kind of co-equals is how I describe it kind of in the marketplace.

They were much more focused on government contracts than we were, we didn't have any

government contracts.

So it was really attractive about the acquisition and being able to combine those organizations

gave us a lot more cash flow than having them separate just based on cross selling different

products that we had and being able to fulfill a lot more of the, a lot more of the gross

profit through sort of the larger organization that they had been farming out some stuff.

So that was, that was kind of the nice combination.

Wait, so did you buy that first company under the umbrella of your, of your marketing business?

Yeah.

Yeah, correct.

Got it.

And so it wasn't its own entity?

No.

I mean, it was, I mean, if you want to speak technically, it was its own density, but it

was 100% owned by me and 100% of the other firm is owned by me.

So I mean, it's shared reasons.

Got it.

Got it.

So you didn't have a co-founder or any outside investors or anything?

Yeah.

So I bought it with an SBA loan.

Thank God for the SBA.

And so, no, it was, it was just a, it was SBA loan and rolled the dice.

And so just to give people a sense of where you're at now, I think permanent equity, you

guys raised a second fund, 248 million.

It's a 27-year fund, which I think is interesting and you can talk about that.

And you have a 10-year investment period.

And so, so the first fund, 50 million, second fund, 250 million roughly.

So what are you guys up to, explain what the model is here and why that should be interesting

for people?

Yeah.

Well, so if you think kind of from first principles, families got wealthy by getting

involved in a business and holding it for a very long time and then over time using

those cash flows to either fund new investments or opportunities.

And so we just have very much the similar mindset.

Private equity is kind of the main methodology of how people have bought and sold companies

in the past.

And it's a very short time clock if you think about it that way.

You're really, from the time you buy to the time you sell, it really needs to be probably

no more than four years or five years at most, and that's if you catch it kind of early

on in a life cycle.

Most private equity funds are seven years with three one-year extensions.

So up to 10 years maximum.

I mean, technically, if you can't sell the asset, you can go longer than that and never

one gets irritated at you, but you're expected to sort of have the capital returned.

And so what that forces is, you know, you just can't think longer than your time horizon

for holding the business.

And so when you combine that with a, you know, most private equity firms are trying to put

in as little equity as they possibly can and maximize the debt.

And so what you end up doing is you take these great family businesses that have been around

for a long time, you're sort of hitting them with a needle and trying to supercharge them

to grow them and get a higher multiple when you sell, and you're making just very short

term decisions by necessity, and you're opening yourself up, which is pertinent now, it wasn't

as pertinent three or four weeks ago, but now you're opening yourself up to a lot of

downside risk.

You just can't withstand nearly as much shock as you could if you didn't have any debt.

So we've just really taken the opposite approach and said, we want to own businesses like a

family would.

So we buy with no intention of selling the business, and we're typically using no debt

as part of our transactions, which in the private equity world means that we're the

weirdest duck in the world.

So how much, what's the total revenue of the collection of companies then?

We'll see.

So total revenue, gosh, I mean, 100 and, oh gosh, 180 million, something like that.

And then I imagine you guys try to run this super profitably.

So then if you have 180 million in revenue, I bet you have 40 million in cash flow.

Let's see here.

So hold on.

You literally put me on the spot here.

I've not done our calculations recently.

Yeah, I mean, we're highly profitable, and the organization does real well.

I don't know if we're at 40 million because we have some lower margin businesses.

We're lower than that, but yeah, we do real well.

And look, I don't own all that anymore, right?

So just from, like, I don't want this to come across differently than this.

We've got investors, the first fund owns five of those investments, and then I own four

outside the first fund that were the group that we put together before we raised that

first fund.

And then the second fund, we haven't deployed any of that capital.

And yeah, so we've got a bunch of direct powder.

I mean, obviously it's been extremely fortuitous for us to raise the time that we raised, and

I've been having lots of conversations with our investors, and there should be lots of

opportunity, lots of pain out there, which is unfortunate, and we've got to try to tow

that line.

We can talk about it between being a white knight and a loan shark, and that's an easy

one to tow.

And so let's just, if we just take a look at the portfolio as is, what types of companies

are you trying to buy?

So you're trying to buy, is it a certain price point?

Is it a certain business model?

Is it a certain type of owner?

What are you trying to buy?

Yeah, so we first want to buy something that we think is going to be durable and around

for a really long time.

So if you look at our current portfolio, we are in the swimming pool business, like digging

holes in the ground, shooting concrete.

We're also manufacturing in that space as well.

Another company that's unrelated in the backyard product space, so a bunch of different SKUs

that sell through mass retail.

We're a military recruitment firm.

That was the first firm that I acquired, Media Cross.

We've got a military recruitment firm.

So is that like lead gen for military?

Yeah, so we actually, so we work, I mean, we have a number of different clients, but

one of our main clients is a civilian branch of the Navy that resupplies the ships that

never come into port.

So it's called military seal of command.

And we're responsible for finding and onboarding all of their staff on a yearly basis.

So it's like a staffing firm for a ship?

Yeah, well, for a whole branch of the military.

So there's their staffing, I mean, there's a lot, you know, 14, 15, 1700 civilian mariners

a year into that division.

So it's a pretty large operation, but it's a digital, some of it's digital.

Yeah, yeah, we have, you know, online application products, but not mostly.

I mean, there's a lot of physical activities as well.

We have physical recruiters and it's, you know, online offline.

It's the not sexy where the rubber meets the road real deal business.

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Can that be huge?

Yeah.

I mean, so we want to find a leadership team that we can partner with.

There's so many, you know, it's so hard to grow a business, right?

And so a lot of the businesses we're looking at, we either call it has been right before

the line of professionalization or maybe it's just crossed it.

And there's this real interesting, you know, sort of in between gap where a lot of these

firms, they're too big to be small and too small to be big.

And the leadership teams kind of capped out, they're just brute forcing as much as they

possibly can, but they don't have the systems, the talent on staff to be able to grow larger.

And so a lot of the times we're trying to figure out from them, you know, do they want

to get bigger?

There's some firms that we talk to and they say, well, even though I want to get bigger,

but the, you know, the CEO is answering 60 calls a day on his cell phone.

And I mean, there's just no way, right?

And so we're looking for a leadership team that I think has the base skills.

It's really, really excellent at what they do.

And we're looking for the company to have a position in the marketplace that is protected

somehow, right?

So, I mean, we're not looking to get into just commodity type businesses.

We want them to have something unusual about them that we can really build on and help

them grow.

And then, you know, this is going to sound like a, like a maybe a no brain or obvious

one, but we got to get to a price in terms that, that, that are acceptable to both parties.

And there's roughly 400 decisions that have to be made sort of during the acquisition

process.

I mean, it's 400 opportunities to not agree.

And it's very difficult and time consuming.

And so a lot of it is just trying to make sure that we think that a deal could be done

as well.

And, and so when you say the leadership team can, you know, what you want them, you want

them to scale.

So why are they selling if, if you want them to stay in place, so they're not looking to

kind of like go do something else or retire or whatever.

We want them to continue to operate.

And are they just looking for liquidity?

What is the kind of core motivation to sell?

And then do you have a problem where once they've sold, or do you structure the deal

so that they're still incentivized to, to stay on and do a good job?

Yeah, it's a good question.

So part of it is, so the leadership team and the, the ownership is not always the same

thing.

So some of the, the organizations that we get involved in, the owner is, is very much part

of our time and hasn't been directly involved in the business for a long time.

And so for us, it's actually, that's a, that's a decently good situation because we'd love

to just, you know, continuity of it, keep the leadership team, treat them well and,

and try to augment the talents kind of as we go along.

Some of the owners that, that, that we've got involved in have stayed on and, and it's

worked out great.

The second body, the Apple they get down the road be much larger than, than even their

first payment despite them selling a majority of the company.

So it really is, it's situation is, you know, specific.

I mean, I would say, yeah, for the most part, some are wanting to take chips off the table.

Some, you know, realize that they need help in scaling and growing.

So it's, you know, it's a variety of different reasons.

I would say that all of them have an exit somehow in their minds.

I mean, if you're in your, call it thirties or forties and you want to work for the next,

you know, 30, 40 years, you know, I don't think many people like that are, are selling

their business, um, at least in the size range in the style of businesses that we buy.

Hey, earlier, you said that one of the best ways that families have created wealth was

by having a business and owning it for a very long time.

So something tells me that you study like the wealth creation process.

I'm not talking about like just building a business that makes money, but like, like

creating like a true wealth and so I guess what I'm wondering is with these people who

are building these companies, like I'm looking at, I'm looking at like things that maybe

won't ever be like massive, massive, but can create great wealth.

So I'm looking at gain group.

I'm looking at selective search, which is executive search meets personal matchmaking.

That actually probably could be big.

Anyway, um, when you're doing this, like what, what are some of the paths I mean, like, because

in Silicon Valley, where Sean and I live, the path for most people or the soul Silicon

Valley stuff, which is sometimes bullshit, sometimes not, is creating something and raising

loads of money and owning a very small percentage and not truly getting wealthy until after you

sell it or not getting liquidity at least.

And their salaries will be a hundred to $150,000 a year.

So you can't like, and you're living in San Francisco, so you're not building it there.

But I have a feeling that you guys look at this differently.

Is that true?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, certainly the types of businesses, I mean, you know, we, uh, we have a rule we

don't buy from somebody who's not already wealthy, because if they didn't get wealthy

doing it, we're not going to.

So they're already, um, they're already doing well.

I mean, these people are the chairman of the country club, they're, they're, um, in the

geographies they're in, they're probably the people that, you know, the Chamber of Commerce

would point to and say they're a really vibrant, good local business, um, or they're a bigger

business, national business that's based in that geography.

And so, yeah, I mean, the, the, they're getting wealthy from cash flow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

These things make money.

You know, we're, we're typically, um, I mean, if we're getting involved now, the company's

making more than $3 million a year, uh, of real, you know, real owner earnings, what

it sticks to the owner.

Um, so, uh, look, anybody, and these are closely held.

So typically the owner will be one to maybe three or four people, uh, at most.

And so, you know, usually the, the one, two, three people that are, that are owning the

company are doing very well.

They take a lot of risk, um, which maybe sometimes is hard for people to see and they built it

over a long time.

I mean, yeah, they've, they've done well for themselves and, um, they're successful in,

you know, separately and outside of the transaction itself.

And so the, the owner, let's just walk through a typical one.

So, uh, I'm, uh, you know, hypothetical owner of a business that manufactures wheelchairs

were based in Oklahoma and I'm the owner, I'm the sole owner and I, I pull in, let's

call it $3 million a year owner earnings and owner earnings would be different than sort

of EBITDA in this case, right?

So you're, yeah, I would say EBITDA minus, uh, um, uh, operating interest, any, uh, sort

of necessary capital expenditures to keep the business on current trajectory and a normalized,

uh, compensation structure for the owner if they're in leadership of the company.

So it's like kind of, if you hired somebody to run the company for you and you made all

the necessary investments, how much would be left over for at your discretion where

you can either try to inject it back into the company and grow it further or buy a boat.

So fill in the blanks for me.

So if I'm making 3 million a year, what's a typical EBITDA then for that company, if

the owner's pulling in 3 million on the types of companies you look at?

Yeah.

I mean, probably EBITDA would be three and a half to four, something like that.

Okay.

And they like say it again.

So that was on 3 million and, and owner earnings would be 4 million and EBITDA.

Roughly.

Yeah.

Roughly.

I mean, three, three and a half to four.

I mean, it depends on the, the, the type of company.

I mean, we looked at an aerospace company, uh, a couple of years ago and they were doing

seven and EBITDA and owner earnings was like three and a half or four.

Why?

It depends on because of the investment.

So it just, they had, they just, they needed a, a large cash buffer.

No, no, they, they're having to reinvest in equipment to just keep their market share

and sort of stay steady in place to just, you know, um, all that cash flow would be

rolled back into, uh, buying new equipment, buying more inventory, you know, all the,

all the type of things that the cash would be sucked into.

And how are they getting the money out of the business?

I mean, uh, are they, is it, are they typically LLCs or?

Yeah.

Typically.

I mean it's a mixture.

I'd say probably 90, 10, maybe 85, 15 is, uh, LLCs.

Um, but either way, I mean, if, if they're a C corp, you'll typically see owners, you

know, paying themselves a lot to, to avoid that double taxation.

So they're just paying themselves big old salaries and just having to pay 50% tax.

Yeah.

I mean, if you live in California.

And so, so let's, let's keep going for a second.

So let's say you're at, uh, three, three and a half to four million EBITDA.

And when you guys go to buy these businesses, what type of multiple, of course it depends

on industry and it's very dependent, but what's a range?

Is it one X, two X, three X, four X?

Is that lit?

Is that the sweet spot of kind of the bulk of your deals?

Yeah.

I would say kind of three and a half to five and a half would kind of be the, be a normal

range.

Um, I mean, we, maybe we'd go higher for a really high quality asset, but I would say

that's a pretty normal range in our segment, which is, you know, kind of our strike zone

is three to $8 million of owner earnings.

Um, so in that range, I mean, on the upper end, you can get into more traditional private

equity territory and, and, um, you can see some, some, well, you used to see as a three

weeks ago, this is again, I got to reorientate myself to the new reality, but, um, um, yeah,

I would say three and a half to five and a half times.

And then there's usually a component of that that's held back, uh, earned out or downside

protected in some way.

So we're typically paying two to kind of two to three and a half times cash and close and

then the rest kind of on, on the upside, depending on what happens.

Gotcha.

So we have a, let's say $10 million price tag, uh, for the cash at close and then plus

maybe four million, three million bucks, uh, that's, that's earned out.

So now you go to SBA and what you were saying is that you guys don't do debt.

You guys are no debt or you, uh, use less debt than a perm, uh, a typical private equity

firm.

Yeah.

So, so the SBA was on the first transaction I did and you don't do SBA money that we

have no, we have no involvement with banks, uh, or the SBA or anything like that now.

So you guys just do cash deals.

You say, here's 10 million bucks.

We're done.

And why don't you use debt?

Yeah.

Well, so, um, debt's one way to take a good company, make it a fragile company.

Um, you know, the, the more debt you're layering on and the, um, sort of the wider, the variation

of outcomes that you expect to happen, um, and obviously pandemic risk is something

that was not on a lot of people's radars, us included, uh, until recently.

Um, but it's a, you know, it's a good example of why we think that, um, not levering these

companies, especially in the beginning, when you're starting to get to know them.

Uh, I mean, until you own these companies, you just don't know what you're getting really

until you get, you know, underneath the hood and there's always more risk there than you

think there will be.

Right.

So, um, you know, our, our mentality has been going with, with all equity, no debt, um,

try to keep them very, very, uh, robust, uh, on the balance sheet and make sure, and we're

buying these with full balance sheets attached to them.

Right.

So working capital is all included.

So the net worth of the company will be, um, you know, fairly robust going into the transaction.

And then of course, as we, over time, as we build cash into these companies, um, then

we can decide what to do with it.

Um, but working capital bucket is kind of like the, you got to fill up the bucket first

before the owners can get anything out, right?

Cause you got to keep the, the, the machinery lubricated.

And when you buy a company, what is the first three months, six months, are you hands on

with that?

Is it, uh, do you have, you have an operating partner who does that?

How do you guys make sure that you, when you buy an asset, you don't, A, destabilize it

and B, you actually start to grow it, which is, I assume while you bought it in the first

place.

Um, so, so our, our philosophy, there's a lot of, uh, private equity firms out there

that have these like, you know, 30 day, 90 day, 120 day plans, right?

Um, we don't do that.

Um, what we try to do is, is take a humble attitude towards it and say, look, we, we,

we know some things, we have some talents, but, but we want to learn and, and, and, uh,

come alongside them.

They're the experts.

They've been doing it for a long time.

Um, so there's a team of 16 of us.

So, so it's not, certainly if I don't get the impression, this is just me, um, there's

people far talented, more talented than I am on staff.

Um, and they're, um, we, we have a dual hook and structure post closed.

So our financial team hooks into their financial team and creates feedback loops.

And then we have a, um, we call this portfolio partner.

They're kind of a board of directors in a box that, um, uh, is overseeing kind of the

executive leadership, um, helping make very high level decisions.

Um, I mean, these are autonomous operating units.

I mean, so there's, these are, these are not, we're not injecting these people into the

companies to run them, but they're in touch with the leadership teams all the time.

Um, doing, you know, a variety of different types of, uh, calls and meetings throughout

the year.

And how many companies are there?

There's nine.

Um, that you guys own.

Yeah.

Got it.

So that seems manageable.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's, so for every kind of three to five companies we, we acquire, we got to

hire one high level financial person in one portfolio partner.

Um, and that's kind of their, their grouping of companies that they're kind of running.

So we're almost creating like a fractal.

If you want to think about it that way down into the organization so that it scales as

is sort of linearly in that way.

So Andrew from tiny, uh, Charlie and I are friends with him and we, I just shoot the

shit with him every once in a while and he emailed me.

He like tweeted this thing and he sent me the tweet of how he met a guy who had a cool

furniture store and he goes, Oh, this is neat.

You need to put that on Shopify and okay, I'll partner with you.

Let's do it.

Now I own part of it.

And he also did the same thing with like a local news outlet in Victoria where he just

like, it seems like he's spinning up stuff so fast.

I'm like, Andrew, I don't know how you track all this.

This is crazy.

Uh, tracking nine is easier than tracking nine is hard, but it's a little simpler because

it appears from the outside as though he has got 40 different things.

Uh, how does, how does that compare?

Do you think with what's up in like tiny, uh, and does, does, does keeping it on top

of all this?

I mean, uh, that seems really hard to focus on where to put your focus.

Yeah, I mean, I, I know Andrew a little bit.

I don't know him super well.

I mean, it seems like he's been successful.

Um, I think they're getting involved in, in, in for the most part more internet based,

uh, software based type companies.

Um, so it's just a very different model.

Um, uh, so I would say, um, I have no idea how they're organized internally.

I can tell you from our end, um, is it a lot of work?

Is it difficult?

Of course it is.

Right.

Um, anything worthwhile is going to be hard.

Um, you know, internally, how we've created that structure though, it creates a very

manageable, um, focus group.

Right.

So you can, you can allow, uh, a small group of people to be highly focused on, on certain

outcomes as opposed to being all over the place.

I mean, I, if it was just me and a partner of mine, like that we were trying to ham and

egg this thing, like I'd go nuts, there's no way, especially right now.

I mean, with all the turmoil that's happening, um, there's just no way you can keep everything

separate and you know, watch legislation that's coming out and watch legal and accounting and

meet deadlines for audits.

And I mean, it's, it takes a full team.

And so, um, yeah, I mean, we're obviously blessed to have that earlier.

You talked about the, one of the things you buy a company, I, you, okay.

So you said that there's their, your sweet spot is in between like it working out, like

it working and it being professionalized, right?

Yeah.

Um, and I think that when I, so, uh, I started the company that I have, uh, I started when

I was 24, it's, it's a good business now.

But what I learned the hard way was that actually to make something more valuable, you need to

take yourself out of the equation as opposed to like, you know, this Mark Zuckerberg thing

where you're just going to super, superman this thing into like existence.

It's actually far more valuable.

Even if that means you have a lower revenue number to have it where it's like a machine

where people can be, uh, where you have put people in place and it's not just on the shoulders

of one person.

Sure.

Um, can you, and, and I learned this from David Hauser.

Sean, you know David Hauser?

I don't.

Okay.

This guy named David Hauser.

He's one of our little, he's, we, we, we waste a little bit of money.

He's one of our investors.

He started grasshopper, which it was like, uh, you know, grasshopper.

Okay.

He started that.

Okay.

So it helps entrepreneurs.

It gives small businesses, uh, uh, a phone.

So it's like Google voice on steroids.

And he sold it for, I think $300 million really successful.

And he wasn't even the CEO.

He started it and owned the company and hired a CEO to run it.

And he taught me how to do that.

And I think that's fascinating.

Can you talk, but, but that's different than one of our, a lot of our listeners probably

think about, they think about, if they're going to start it, they got to be like running

the show.

Can you talk about where you've learned this process and, and why, and, and I guess the

companies that you've bought, how have they successfully navigated that to where the owner

is no longer like the person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, for, for us, I mean, well, one, I knew my own limitations.

I knew that there was no way that I could just brute force this thing on my own.

And I mean, I think always subscribe to the bring, bring people that are far smarter and

more driven around you.

So that's how we build the organization.

I hope in three to five years, I'm completely useless and they just give me my ball of yarn

and let me play with it.

So, but in the organizations that we look at, we call this founder remote.

So this is probably the biggest danger of acquisitions as you buy a company that is

that largely all of the good will is tied up in the relationships, expertise, drive of

the founder.

And there's just no really way to transition those separate from maybe coming alongside

them and over a very long period of time, making that transition happen.

So for us, we try to select against that.

We want to see repeatable processes, we want to see a healthy layer of non-owner management.

We want to be able to see that we always call it, you know, hit by a bus risk.

So if anybody in the organization can get by a bus and destroy the value of the business,

that's just a no go for us.

But tell me what you've learned on these people.

So how do I want to make my company like that?

How have you got, what, who, how have they done it best?

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think that the methodology that we've seen work the best is take the things

that either you aren't good at or you don't want to do and start giving them to other

people.

And then over time, as you sort of continue to offload and offload and offload, you just

kind of move up until eventually there's nothing much for you to really be working

on.

I mean, if you have a lot of free time and you have a lot of flexibility, we always talk

about if you have the optionality to get involved or not to get involved.

A lot of these owners, you being a good example of that, could probably add a lot of value

if you chose to get involved, but you also know that the thing's going to work out fine

if you don't get involved.

And so that's always ultimately the test now.

We also have a lot of owners that we talk to and they say, oh, I'm not needed in the

office at all.

I, you know, this thing runs itself.

And we say to them, oh, that's great.

When was the last time you took a vacation?

They're like, oh, I think three years ago, I went on a weekend, get away with my wife

and yeah, you know, and you're like, really?

So there's that balancing act of self-awareness as well.

Is there any resources that you turn to or have turned to to learn this or that you can

tell me and our audience to turn to in order to learn how to do this successfully?

Gosh, I don't.

It's more just, you know, getting hit in the face over and over again, the hard knocks.

Where are you finding these companies?

So are you, is it a broker network?

Are you, are there websites you use?

Is it inbound because you do a lot of content or, you know, what is the, explain how you

find the companies that you end up looking into and potentially buying?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're fortunate now.

We do a lot of content out there.

Actually, podcast is one of the things that's been helpful for us.

So thank you guys for having me on.

But we have, it's all inbound at this point.

So we're not going outbound to anybody by the way website.

Oh, there you go.

I got your book.

If you're listening to the audio version, which you almost certainly are, I'm holding

up the messy marketplace, which is Brent's book.

I bought this like, I don't know, six months ago.

I bought it right after we sold our business.

So it wasn't really applicable.

I was kind of like, oh, what did I do wrong type of thing?

But yeah, it turns out just timing was good.

You know, getting in before the whole world descended into chaos was a good idea, a good

time to sell, but I didn't know that.

But you put out this book and it seems like you do more content than, than I would say

the typical kind of buyer or private equity firm.

Yeah.

I mean, so, you know, I owe most of my career to just ripping off venture capital is in

reality.

So you just look at how did all the, you know, Fred Wilson's, Brad Feld's, Schuster's,

Andreessen, all those guys, how did they break into the world?

And it was basically by pulling back the curtain and helping educate people.

And so, I mean, that's what we've taken that to heart and we started very early on.

So we've been producing, like producing content, talking to people for probably seven or eight

years now.

It's gone back a long time.

And so, yeah, over time, that compounds right in the beginning, you're just shouting into

the darkness and no one cares.

And then over time, you know, you sort of get people's attention.

Our goal is just to be the first stop for anybody who wants to sell their business.

And we also try to be helpful on the back end.

So all of its inbound, we have a scout network, which is common in Silicon Valley, but very

uncommon in private equity.

So we have about 700 people now that scout opportunities for us, which is fantastic.

And we obviously pay them when we are able to consummate the transaction.

And you have a capital camp, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So Patrick and I, yeah, so we were complaining one night about how all the events in finance

were terrible and how it'd be fun to get like a cross-section of people together.

Because there's typically, you know, VC events, private equity events, there's very few events

that get sort of a broad cross-section of people doing interesting things together.

And so we complained about it enough.

I said to Patrick, I said, well, why don't we just do something about it?

And so, you know, I partnered up and we hosted the first one last year.

It was fantastic, about 250 people from 11 countries, five continents came in.

And that was great.

We had a wonderful time hosting Columbia, Missouri, my backyard.

But it was, you know, I think there was one other guy from Missouri there.

So it was very, not a regional crowd, if you know what I'm saying.

And unfortunately, this year, we had a postponement due to the virus.

So we're pushing into September, hopefully that we are able to flatten enough by then

that we can have it hosted then.

Give us some predictions about the virus and the way the sort of what's happening to businesses

right now.

You know, on one hand, you said your timing was good in the sense that you raised your

big fund before all this, and now a bunch of businesses are going to need liquidity.

They're going to need, you know, somebody who's a stable capital partner to come in

and buy them.

What do you guys think?

What's your prediction on how this is going to play out?

Both for you and for the economy, I would say.

Yeah.

Well, so for, well, let me think broader, I think what we're predicting, and of course,

no one has any idea, right?

We're trying to do this.

We can't triangulate information.

We think it's going to be a pretty long, if you want to think about it, a good analogy

I heard is a blizzard, a winter, an ice age, right?

It's kind of the three stages probably.

You know, I think the blizzard is going to last for another at least six to eight weeks,

probably longer than that.

And then I think we're going through a period of, it's going to be hard to restart a lot

of these businesses.

So there's, in theory, it sounds, oh, there's economic problems.

It's no big deal.

You just kind of go into hibernation and come back out of it and everything's fine, right?

In practice, there's a lot of start-stop problems.

I mean, you guys have run businesses, you know, if you had a mothball, everything and

try to restart it, I mean, you're not going to be able to do it, or it's going to be very

difficult to do it.

And so my guess is there's going to be a lot of pain and suffering.

So in our portfolio, you know, because we don't use debt, we have good balance sheets

and obviously we have a financial firm to back it up, you know, more than we find.

I mean, a lot of the businesses we're involved in have been doing better than we expected

probably two weeks ago.

With that said, you just have no idea where demand's going to go.

And I mean, we're bracing and we have plans for, you know, depending on what level of

pain and suffering happens, what the plan is, and we're going to try to get the things

back up and running as fast as we possibly can.

You know, the government intervention that just came out is interesting in how it's

structured.

So the CARE Act just got passed, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes ago.

And you know, it is, it's better than nothing.

It's going through the SBA and the SBA is to be generous, like the DMV of the finance

world.

And so it's not going to be an easy thing to get all that money deployed.

Also the SBA lenders that we're talking to that are at these banks and we're not using

the SBA, but obviously if it's forgivable loans, then it'd be insane for us not to participate

in that.

And they don't even know what the rules are, right?

And so they're trying to get triangulated on what things are.

So I think there's going to be a lot of confusion.

I think it's going to take a lot of time to get the money into people's hands.

I'm not sure it's going to actually stem the tide as much as they think it will on unemployment.

And so I fear that unemployment could go to 20, 25, maybe even 30%, which is great.

Do you think that's realistic?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fuck an A, man.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

To put that in perspective, the Great Depression was what, 18 or 20?

I think it touched high 20s.

So I mean, it's a peak.

And like I said, I mean, look, I hope I'm wrong, right?

Let's just say what it is.

I mean, I hope that that's not, but this is not a good environment for us, actually.

I mean, this is an interesting, we can talk about as being a firm that has a lot of cash

right now.

I don't think this is a good environment for us at all.

I would much prefer a 2008, which was much more shallow downturn recession.

The violence of this is basically rendering all information available like a non-issue.

You just can't, there's nothing predictive about what's happened in the past and how

it goes in the future.

And demand curves, I mean, we don't, no one knows, no one knows what the demand curve

looks like.

What are you betting for a 20% or 30% unemployment rate?

Well, I'm not betting on it.

That's why I think it's going to happen.

But I think that you think that's going to happen.

I think we'll probably touch 20%.

I think we could touch 30%.

Yeah.

And I think we'll see it in the next six weeks.

We'll be when it really comes down.

My guess is I called jobs, the jobs number, the unemployment number that came out.

I had said previously, I thought it was going to be about 3.5 and ended up being about 3.3,

which was wildly higher than what the sort of consensus was a million.

And if you're involved in small businesses and you said there was a million people filing

for unemployment, like I said, that's a good joke.

Of course, it was going to be way higher than that.

There's no way it couldn't be way higher than that.

I mean, what we're seeing is, I had a buddy this week who laid off 4,000 and 5,000 employees

this week, had another friend who laid off 585 to 600.

And that's just me.

Were they in the hotel industry, or was it just an industry that?

Yeah.

Food service is one, and construction was the other.

So it's just, it's a tough, I mean.

Why do you say this is not a good time versus 2008?

What is the core difference there?

Yeah.

So the core difference is the violence at which this has downturned is basically, you

could see in 2008, a nice trend, right, line.

Like you could see it's kind of like a soft, you know, in private businesses, right?

I'm not going to talk about the stock market.

Stock market and private businesses are totally different.

But in the stock market, it was, you know, you sort of had a violence to it, and then,

you know, kind of peer down and had another violence to it.

And this happened in fucking eight days.

Right.

Right.

I mean, obviously a Lehman and all that stuff come crashing.

Oh, no.

I'm talking about right now.

Oh, but yeah.

Right now.

That's what I'm saying is right now, in private businesses, it is worse in private businesses

than it's reflected in the stock market right now.

Right.

I mean, it's hard to know what's priced in and what do you do with monetary policy when

you're basically an unlimited bid.

I don't know.

Right.

But I mean, when you look at it from the businesses that we interact with, it's carnage everywhere.

I mean, you maybe have, I would say 90% of businesses have been adversely affected.

5% are probably, you know, sort of unaffected, and then maybe 5% have some sort of tailwind

that's weird because of this.

But 90% are just, it is suffering.

I mean, I, it is unbelievable what's happening right now.

And I remember, I mean, Sean, like four weeks, no, wow, only two weeks, whenever you sent

me that link, Sean, or you go, the MBAs canceled.

Yeah.

I like a few hours before that I'd booked a flight to Germany.

And because I was going to a conference, so they paid for it, but I like gave him my information.

I was, they're like, yeah, the conference is on.

And then Sean sent me this link on at seven or maybe five o'clock at night and he goes,

the MBAs canceled.

I was like, oh, you mean like they're just pausing it for like five days?

It's like, no, no, no, like it's done for the year and then, and then the next, the next

day it was like, oh, my flight's canceled.

Everyone's flights.

Like it was like, that was only two weeks ago, Sean.

Yeah.

That's insane.

I remember people thought I was crazy.

I started working from home the week before everybody did because I was like, hey, I think

there's like this once on a hundred year virus out there.

I'm just going to start working from home.

We did one podcast together and I was like, yeah, I'm not doing anymore in person stuff.

I'm not coming into the city.

I'm not doing any of this.

And then it just felt like day after day, it's like escalation, escalation.

And now I think the, the sort of the data is outpacing the fear even at this point.

I think that the, I think that the situation is worse than people realize even now.

And because it's growing exponentially.

And so, so I totally hear you, Brent, you know, my, my sister owns schools.

My brother-in-law owns gyms and my father, my father-in-law owns nursing homes.

My brother owns a concert promotion business.

Right.

And nobody prepares for zero revenue overnight for two months.

You can't, you can't plan for that.

Yeah.

We were talking about our revenue.

I mean, I, you know, I again calculated in my head, maybe we're going to be 160 this

year.

Let's say under normal.

I mean, we may be 110 or 120.

I mean, we have no idea.

I mean, it depends on how things go off the cliff.

Right.

I mean, it's, it's literally no one has any idea what's going to happen.

What we know is that it's not good.

If you look across our business, I mean, our, our military business is very robust and obviously

we want to keep people, you know, employed in that.

But I mean, if you look in construction, there's a longer lead time, the, the, the sales cycle

is longer, right?

So you'll have a longer tail to it, but that's still, if you're shut down on this construction

site, we were working, one of our companies was working on the wind casino.

They just shut everything down.

I mean, there's like nothing to do.

And so you have all the materials you bought.

You have all the labor that's right there.

Everything you're coordinating it and what do you do?

I mean, it's like, I said it was like prohibition except for everything.

So where's the opportunity here?

Well, I mean, the opportunity is there's going to be a lot of these family businesses that

are very durable, you know, business under any sort of normalish circumstances.

We know would have easily gotten through a 2008, which everyone would consider to be,

you know, a detonation prior to this that are going to need help and they're going

to need capital to get through this.

They're going to need capital to restart the businesses if that's what it takes.

And as well as just taking some chips off the table.

I mean, you know, if you're, there's a lot of people we've talked to that are holding

on for sort of last couple of good years and then they want to sell.

And you know, we had these conversations two or three months ago with an owner who he's

like, look, I'm in my seventies.

I certainly can't go through another 2008, but man, business is really good right now.

Like I'm just going to hold on for another couple of years.

That changed.

You know, it's tough.

And by the way, I'm not saying that it was the right thing for him to sell then either.

Right.

I'm just saying is like, it's always a bet.

And you know, one of the things that is maybe nice, it's not, you know, if there's any silver

lining in this is I think people had gotten certainly not immune, but had gotten a pretty

good resistance built up to risk in general.

And I don't think most people were seeing it.

I mean, I, you know, most of the people we're talking to is, Hey, there's nothing on the

horizon.

There's no contagion that could cause things to go down.

I mean, I would hear people say this all the time.

I mean, what could it be?

Student loan debt?

Maybe.

That's going to be contained.

Could it be, you know, the bubble in private equity?

Oh, that's going to be contained.

You know, gosh, we had no idea what was getting ready to come down the price.

I think that's what Mark Andreessen or maybe Peter Thiel was talking about once, which

is that when everybody keeps asking you if thing X is a bubble, that's not the bubble.

When we're all aware of it, we're all talking about it.

That's usually not the actual bubble.

It's something that a very few, you know, a small set of people are sort of saying, wait

a minute, we've removed too many of the Jenga blocks here.

This thing is about to tip and, you know, it's a sort of ignored minority.

Yeah.

I mean, this wasn't a bubble driven thing.

I mean, I, you know, it's a war.

It literally is a war.

Like that, I mean, I think that's the best analogy for it.

I think this is closer to Pearl Harbor than it is to 2008.

Yeah.

Oh, I would, I mean, I would absolutely agree.

And the issue is that, you know, for Pearl Harbor, obviously a lot of people went over

and fought, but it never come onto, you know, home soil.

I think this is the thing is everyone's fighting a war in their backyard.

And I don't think that's ever, I mean, look, you don't know, you don't know what the death

rates are actually going to turn out to be.

You don't know what the infection rates going to be.

You know, I certainly don't want to be comparing it to things that are horrible traumatic events

that affect generations and generations, maybe, and God help us if it turns into that.

But at the very least, I mean, the economic side of it is just absolutely unprecedented

in every way right now.

And anybody who thinks this is going to be a short, like the recovery where it's going

to just pop right back out of this thing.

It's never been in a business.

And those are most of the people that I hear that are investors saying stuff like that.

They never operate in a business.

I mean, you guys know.

Well, if this makes you feel any better, Brent, I feel horrible right now.

I called the hospital to get, I call, I try to get a test and they're like, don't waste

it on yourself, but it sounds like you have it.

And so they think I have it, but it's not confirmed.

It sucks.

It doesn't suck that bad.

But for a 30-year-old, it stinks, but it doesn't, the way I describe it, it just yesterday

crossed a threshold to where I would stay home from work and not exercise.

Really?

So you think you have it?

Yeah.

Well, me and the doctors, but it's not confirmed.

Pretty sure he has it.

Yeah.

I mean, like breathing sucks, but it's more annoying than it is scary.

And yeah.

I am so sorry, man.

I had no idea.

I mean, I'm...

Well, I know.

But no, my point is not to get sympathy.

My point is to let you know, maybe for most people, it's not the worst.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's great.

I mean, and look, I hope that's the case.

I hope we can get back to some semblance of normal life.

I think that the, unfortunately, the economic damage, even if you waived the magic wand

and brought everyone back to these businesses right away, I think there's a lot of damage

has been done, depending on how long your lead cycles are and all that stuff.

But I mean, it's just, it's tough.

I mean, it's tough as demand dries up.

I mean, you got to think about the supply chain all the way back.

I mean, people aren't ordering stuff from factories, right?

Because their demand's dropping off on the other side.

If the fact, if the store said, no, no, no, we want, you know, all of your inventory

now, they'd say, we don't need anything to sell you.

Right.

Right.

Because everyone's preparing for winter.

And so, yeah, the stop-start problems are just going to be tremendous.

Wait, Sean and Brent, you guys are both, I mean, we are all, I have no idea where people

are, but we all are people who probably aren't poor.

Have you guys cut your spending?

Oh, yeah.

For sure.

I did, the first thing I did was I cut the, I cut my exposure to the stock market, which

I think is going to drop like a rock now.

And so that was the first, that was the first thing I did, because that's more than spending

is just wealth destruction.

And so I wanted to avoid wealth destruction first.

And then the second thing on, your monthly subscriptions, I didn't, I didn't go through

that yet, but we have sort of like me and my wife now before we do something, we're

like, yeah, do we really need to, and so we're, you know, it started to creep in, but we haven't

gone and audited and said, hey, necessary, unnecessary, necessary, unnecessary.

But yeah, you know, probably should and probably will.

Even though like I have plenty of money to last for a very long time, I'm like, I don't,

I'm one of the generic brand of this food.

We're still spending on food, but we, I mean, if you look at our bills in the past has been

a lot around travel and yeah, we're not doing that.

I mean, we did, we did spring by the way, the best investment I've ever made.

I've got three girls under six and we just bought a bounce house and having the backyard.

And by the way, that's the best, it's the best $300 I've ever spent my life.

There's a business, there's a business you should buy that sounds not sexy, but interesting

enough.

Exactly.

Bounce houses for viruses.

Yeah.

Okay.

So your Brent is this, your, your 25, 30, 35, and you currently like, let's just imagine

you are, I have no idea how old you are, but let's say you're young enough to like start

deep.

Okay.

Well, let's say you're, you're, you're starting your career, you're in the middle, early part

of your career now, knowing what you know about what makes valuable companies and what

builds wealth, what are some businesses that you'd want to start right now and what would

you optimize for and what metrics would you try to optimize for?

And how?

Yeah.

I mean, I think it depends on what you're, what you're trying to optimize for if you're

just trying to build wealth.

I'm asking you.

Well, I'm asking you for, for me personally, I mean, I, I, I really find value in, in balancing

home life and work, right?

So family is super important to me.

So my answer would probably be a little bit different for me and I want to live not in

a big city.

And so that's okay.

I want to hear what you would do.

Yeah.

So starting over today, I would probably start something in the construction space or home

services space, office services, I want to get in something that's, that's, you know,

I like competing in areas where there's not a natural selection of people into that, right?

So you don't want to be in the winery business because everyone in Silicon Valley that exits

a business goes and buys a winery, right?

And pumps a bunch of money into it.

Like, I don't, I don't want to be in the film business because everybody who, you know,

every son of a billionaire, you know, makes movies, you know, owning restaurants is really

difficult.

I mean, separate from all the stuff we're going through now, because everyone, you know,

that makes me money, thinks it'd be easy and wants to own their own restaurant.

So I like to things that sort of have a natural selection biased against them.

Like nobody drives by somebody building a swimming pool in Arizona in the summer and

says, you know what, I really want to quit my job in the air conditioning and go dig

a hole in the ground, right?

So we want to, you know, get involved in things like that.

I would try to take something probably that is small and partner with them, that they

already have the infrastructure in place, the sort of the technical side and the systems

there.

And then I would really try to spend some time, you know, how can we use, you know, latest

technology to make us more efficient, try to build something that's scalable sort of

beyond a geography and get a model down, a billing model, a sales model down that we

thought was replicatable.

And it really had some sort of mode around it.

And then I would try to scale it over time.

Hey, what specifically, yeah, anything specifically?

I think it would depend on largely on what I could find in the geography.

I mean, here in Columbia, I mean, there's, there's a fantastic HVAC service company

that's still fairly small, but they've got great systems, they actually develop their

own software.

And it's something like that that I want to partner with and say, okay, look, look,

you know, I want to get my hands dirty, I want to get involved in, I mean, I'm not

an investor by heart, like my, I mean, I'm an entrepreneur.

That's what I love to do.

And that's how we think about our business is being operators and entrepreneurs.

And so I wouldn't necessarily get involved in finance.

I mean, finance to me is a mechanism that allows and enables entrepreneurship and, and

you know, running real companies, it's not trading paperback and forth.

So I would probably get far more involved in, in sort of non-tech entrepreneurship, which

I know you guys are in Silicon Valley and this can fall in deaf ears.

No, I, I, I like, I like what you're saying, but you, so you said HVAC, you said pools.

Yeah, pools, lawn service.

I think, you know, I like lawn service.

Yeah.

Like lawn, like lawn and garden care type stuff.

I mean, have you ever tried to get somebody to call you back?

It's, yeah.

You want to hear something cool?

We had a, so Brian, you know who Brian Scudamore is?

Scudamore.

Uh, 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the guy owns, the guy who owns it, his name's Brian, he's Canadian, he's friends with

me and Sean.

Um, I shoot the shit with them every once in a while.

It's like a, what is that Sean?

Like a $500 million a year company.

He owns all of it.

And he, um, we either me or someone of us asked him where opportunity is and he goes, man,

if I had to do the same thing, I would do 1-800-GOT-JUNK, but I would do it for lawn

care or for irrigation.

Yep.

Yep.

That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

I mean, there's, there's, there's all these like strange, I mean, niches that you can

get into.

What I would do is probably take my time and go and talk to a lot of people who are already

in business and say, what is your biggest problem?

Like who's the supplier that you're most annoyed with?

Um, you know, what's the customer that you have that's just killing it, that type of

thing.

Um, and then I'd probably go try to snake my way into one of those, uh, one of those

businesses.

And then just, it's really just about getting a foothold, right?

And that's what you need is you need a foothold and then you can start building on it from

there.

But I mean, the problem is if you've got a, if you've got a boat that you're trying to

row that's rickety and, and it may look pretty on the outside, but it's just not going to

go anywhere.

It doesn't matter how hard you row it.

And I think that's an, you know, early in my career when I was involved in, you know,

more of the agency business.

That's how I felt.

It felt like, I mean, I could just row that thing as hard as I could and I maybe get an

inch further.

Um, and that's where I just want to get out of businesses that are like that.

Right.

All right.

Well, we should wrap it up.

Uh, Brent, thanks for coming, man.

Um, if, if you're listening to this and you want to get ahold of you, what's the best

way for people to follow you, you know, keep, keep, keep tabs, become a scout, whatever

you want.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So permanent equity.com is the, is the website.

Um, and I'm on Twitter at Brent B. Shore, uh, on LinkedIn.

I mean, just hit me wherever, um, try to be very available and if I can be helpful,

let us know.

Um, yeah, it's been wonderful to have you guys on, man, I, man, I hope you get, I hope

you feel better.

That, that, uh, that doesn't sound like any fun.

I'm not, now you're terrifying me.

So, um,

Well, no, look, I, I, my point was the opposite was to not terrify it.

Look, do I seem sick to you?

I mean, I, I, well, I, I, I'm sleeping in.

So I got, I didn't get up in bed.

I, I didn't wake up until about nine 30 or 10 a.m. this morning.

Cause I, I was like, I'm just going to sleep as much as possible.

I'm drinking a lot of water.

Uh, I would not exercise today.

That's how bad I feel.

I would not go to work today, but I definitely would not even consider going to a hospital.

I, and normally I wouldn't even gone to a doctor.

Oh, all right.

Well, so this is how I'm trying to paint this as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as, as,

as in a positive way as, as best as I can.

Well, Sean, don't, don't you get sick?

All right.

You can't get it through zoom.

So we're good.

All right guys.

Hey, take it easy.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks.

Take care.

Thank you.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.