Pick five, edit fast.

We closed acquisitions #45, #46, #47 and #48 today. Four more MSPs. Four more founders. Four more teams. People see the acquisition count. What they don’t see is the work behind it. The years spent building a platform that makes integration predictable. The standardization. The alignment. The thousands of small decisions that make growth scalable. Most acquisitions create complexity. Ours are designed to eliminate it. 48 acquisitions in less than four years and we’re still accelerating. On to the next move.

📣 Big news…The 20 MSP has acquired four more MSPs, bringing our total deal count to 48! A Texas-size welcome to the companies joining our team… Assured Technology Solutions CTS Computers MashGrape Technologies NW Computer Solutions All four organizations thrived as members of our peer group, leveraging resources and knowledge-sharing to create more scalability and margin prior to exit. It's been a privilege to be a part of their growth journeys – and we can't wait to see what the next chapter brings! 💬 "With these four deals…we're welcoming proven leaders who demonstrated a lot of savvy and initiative as members of our peer group. That kind of quality trickles down and strengthens every part of your enterprise." – Tim Conkle, CEO  Read the blog for the full story. 🔗👇 https://hubs.li/Q04jJLGZ0 #msp #mspacquisition #technews

If you work in HVAC you have lived this call. Here is what homeowners and contractors both need to understand about the warranty process in this industry. Most people assume a 2 year old system is fully covered under warranty. Here is the reality. Warranty transfer has a 90 day window. If a homeowner buys a house and misses that window the warranty is gone regardless of how old the system is. TXVs are no longer shipped with evaporator coils by many manufacturers. It is now a separate part and a separate charge even when the TXV is physically part of the coil assembly. Out of stock from the factory means 2 to 4 weeks without air conditioning in Florida heat unless you want to pay $400 for rush shipping that still only guarantees 2 weeks. The total for parts alone on this call came to $4,016.60 on a 2 year old system with no labor included. This is not a rare scenario. This is a regular Tuesday for HVAC technicians across the country. Understanding how the warranty process actually works helps homeowners make better decisions when choosing a contractor and helps contractors set proper expectations with their customers before something goes wrong. #HVAC #HVACIndustry #Trades #ContractorLife #HomeServices #WarrantyProcess #HVACTechnician #Leadership #HomeImprovement #TradesIndustry #ClimateExperts #ETOMS #SmallBusiness #BusinessOwner

They work great until they do not. SharkBite fittings are one of the most misused products in residential plumbing. Designed for homeowners, DIY repairs, and temporary emergency fixes they are frequently installed as permanent solutions behind walls and under floors. And for a period of time they hold. The problem is the O ring. Over time and through repeated expansion and contraction cycles in Florida’s heat the connection degrades. When it fails it fails silently behind a wall. By the time the homeowner discovers it the damage is extensive. Mold, water damage, structural issues, and a repair cost that dwarfs what a proper installation would have been. Sweated copper fittings create a permanent metallurgical bond between the pipe and the fitting. There is no O ring. No plastic mechanism. Nothing to degrade over time. As a licensed plumbing contractor we have cleaned up hundreds of SharkBite failures. The pattern is always the same. A cheaper fix installed by someone who was not planning to be around for the consequences. Do it right the first time. Hire a licensed plumber. Climate Experts Air Plumbing and Electric. Licensed. Background checked. Serving Brevard and Indian River County. #Plumbing #LicensedPlumber #HomeServices #ContractorLife #FloridaPlumbing #ClimateExperts #PlumbingTips #HomeOwner #DoItRight #Trades Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric

Why do strangers sometimes support your business more than your own friends and family? You announce a business. Silence. You share a new idea. Silence. You post a major win. Silence. But when a celebrity launches something, everyone suddenly knows how to like, comment, and share. Here is the uncomfortable truth. Growth makes some people uncomfortable. When you start building, it reminds others they are standing still. When you start taking risks, it reminds others they are playing safe. When you start winning, it forces people to look at what they have postponed. That is why some of your strongest supporters may be people you have never met. Not because your friends and family do not love you. But because your ambition may challenge their comfort. Post anyway. Build anyway. Keep going anyway. The right people will find you. Have you ever noticed strangers supporting your goals more than people you already know? #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #Leadership #PersonalBrand

Appreciate Nicole Bergen and the Get Nerdy with Bergie podcast for having me on. If you are in home services and you are still posting Canva graphics and $49 tune up specials and wondering why nothing is working this episode is for you. We get into what is actually driving results for us right now. Give it a listen.

Running a home services company is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. It is also one of the most humbling. Between the field, the office, the team, and the customers, there is never a dull moment. And the messages that come in on a daily basis are a category of their own. This is a real look at what life in the DMs looks like when you run an HVAC company. If you are a contractor you will relate to every single one. If you are a homeowner you might recognize yourself in a few of them. We love what we do and we love the people we serve. But if you can not laugh at the reality of this industry you are going to have a tough time. This is why we show up every day and do it the right way. #HVAC #ContractorLife #HomeServices #Leadership #SmallBusiness #ClimateExperts #Entrepreneurship #TradesBusiness #HVACContractor #BusinessOwner

I run an internal podcast for my team at Climate Experts. This episode was a reminder. Last month we generated $30,000 tied directly to sticker placement and brand consistency at the point of service. Some of my techs still treat it like it doesn’t matter. It matters. Install it straight. Right location. Every job. That repetition is what builds trust in the home and trust is what drives repeat calls and referrals. As a leader my job is to set the standard and hold people accountable to it. The small stuff isn’t small. It’s the whole game. Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric

A video circulating on social media shows a contractor quoting $5,500 for a high efficiency furnace replacement and $3,500 for the condenser. He presented this as a realistic budget for the job. It is not. Here is what that number does not account for. The evaporator coil replacement which is required when swapping a high efficiency furnace. The duct transitions which must be compatible with the new system airflow requirements. The copper line set which should be replaced if it is aging or compromised. The gas fittings and sediment trap which are code required. The filter rack which is essential for proper system performance and longevity. And the permit which was apparently included in that $5,500 number somehow. If we are talking about a true high efficiency system in 2026 we are talking multi stage or inverter driven equipment. That equipment alone is not cheap before a single hour of labor is billed. A properly scoped high efficiency system replacement done right with a licensed contractor, all required components, a permit, and a final inspection is not a $5,500 job. That is not what it costs to do the job correctly and protect the homeowner’s investment for the next 15 to 20 years. The cheapest bid is not the best bid. It is just the cheapest bid. And the difference between a budget install and a proper install is going to show up three years from now when that system fails and nobody wants to stand behind the work. Get multiple quotes. Ask what is included. Make sure whoever is doing it pulls a permit. #HVAC #HVACContractor #LicensedContractor #TradesLife #ContractorLife #HVACEducation #HVACInstall #DerekCormier #EscapeTheOneManShow #HomeServices #HVACBusiness #Trades #HVACPricing #HomeOwner #ConsumerEducation #HVACReplacement #FloridaHVAC #BuildingTrades #QualityOverPrice #ClimateExperts

In 2000, Yale endowment manager David Swensen told institutions to go all-in on private markets. In 2005, he told individuals to stay out. Same man, same data. Opposite prescriptions. The interesting question is why. Most people assume Yale's success came from private markets, but Swensen knew the edge was in who ran them. By the endowment's own accounting, roughly 60% of the outperformance came from manager selection, backing exceptional operators and staying with them for decades. In 2005, the average investor had no realistic path to replicating that. Top funds often require millions of dollars. Private investments couldn't be publicly marketed. The best opportunities lived inside institutional networks. Even if you wanted to follow Yale's playbook, you couldn't get on the field. So Swensen told individuals to buy index funds. It was the honest advice for the market that existed, but that market has changed. The JOBS Act of 2013 legalized public marketing of private securities. Minimums dropped. Infrastructure emerged. Private markets grew from roughly $1 trillion in 2005 to more than $11 trillion today. I call it the Swensen Gap: the distance between what institutions could access and what individuals could. For most of our investing lives, that gap was wide by design. Now, it's closing. The question I keep coming back to is: what advice would Swensen write in 2026? This week's Wealth Stack Weekly breaks down exactly how the walls came down, and what the three-stage path into private markets looks like for accredited investors today. https://lnkd.in/eCvkcWHF

Last week, the new 007 game sold 1.5 million copies in its first 24 hours and received an 88 on Metacritic. As we followed the coverage, we noticed something interesting. Most of the attention went to the developer who built the game, and the distributor helping bring it to market. Very little attention was paid to the publisher. And yet, the publisher often plays one of the most influential roles in the entire ecosystem. It reminded us of something we see repeatedly in private markets: The people creating the product aren't always the same people shaping the economics. In many deals, multiple parties are involved, but one often sits in the middle, influencing incentives, ownership, risk, and ultimately who benefits most from the outcome. That's the role many people overlook. Today in Wealth Stack Weekly, we're exploring how this dynamic shows up not only in gaming but across investing, acquisitions, private equity, and business partnerships. Understanding this role may completely change how you evaluate opportunities and negotiate deals. Sometimes the most important person in the room isn't the loudest one. 👉 Join today and read the full newsletter and tell us: What's the most overlooked role you've seen in a successful deal? www.wealthstackweekly.com

The day my portfolio made $200K faster than I could save it, my old strategy stopped making sense. After college, I was saving 20% pre-tax, living frugally, avoiding credit cards like they were COVID. I had a personal balance sheet before I knew bankers had a name for it. But when I hit $2M, the math broke. A $2M portfolio with a 10% return generates $200K a year. The top 1% of earners in the US make $450K. Save 20% of that, and you've got $90K. At $2M, my capital had become a better earner than I. But crossing that inflection point didn’t feel like winning. Because at that level, the risks changed with it. Volatility, concentration, a lawsuit, a black swan, a bad year in the wrong asset class. The habits that built $2M, discipline, and frugality, had no tools for any of that. I'd optimized the saver's toolkit as far as it would go. What I needed was a completely different mental model: how to allocate and protect what was already compounding, not how to add more to the pile. I've watched high earners hit that number and keep running the same playbook. They keep optimizing for income long after it’s the right approach, and they wonder why it feels like pushing a boulder uphill. The saver's toolkit will get you to $2M, but it’ll have nothing useful to say about what comes next. walkerdeibel.com

Let's revisit investors and strategic equity partners. The risk isn’t adding a strategic equity partner. It’s failing to properly negotiate and document the relationship. Strategic partners are usually framed as additive: • more capital • more operating experience • more lender credibility • more certainty Often, that framing is true. But the partner also brings governance. Board seats, consent rights, reserved matters, budget approvals, debt restrictions, add-on approval rights, and deadlock provisions may all make sense individually. Additional governance layers require additional approvals. The tradeoff is not simply economics. It also affects a buyer's ability to execute the acquisition thesis. Governance provisions ultimately determine who controls the playbook after closing. That is particularly relevant in ETA, independent sponsor, and roll-up structures where future acquisitions, financing decisions, hiring, budgets, and exit timing often depend on governance approval rights. These issues are usually easier to negotiate before an LOI is signed. Post-LOI, the timeline compresses and the focus shifts toward getting the deal closed. I discussed this issue in more detail in a recent Search Fund Operate newsletter edition: https://lnkd.in/e_dgTsvF

Blue collar is having a renaissance. Microsoft President Brad Smith has called the electrician shortage the number one problem slowing U.S. data center expansion. Electrical work = 45-70% of total data center construction costs. To sustain growth, 300,000 new electricians are needed over the next 10 years. For context, apprenticeship applications jumped 70% between 2022 and 2024, and supply still can't keep up. The world's most advanced technology requires the world's most essential trades. While most are thinking about new “AI-solutions,” you should be spending more time focused on the supply chain. Ask yourself: What does every LLM, AI company, or wanna-be AI company depend on? Humans. -Electricians -Concrete crews -HVAC specialists -Fuel delivery drivers -Fencing contractors -Porta potty businesses -Dumpster rental companies You don’t necessarily need to learn a specific trade. But you should learn to buy one of their businesses. In the United States, there are about 73,000 electrical contracting businesses operate in the United States. Around 30% of union electricians are between 50-70 years old. Here's who's selling right now... His name is something like Dave or Gary. He started his electrical contracting business in 1987, built it into a solid operation with 10-15 guys, does $3.5 million in revenue, and has been running it basically the same way since the Clinton administration. He doesn't have a website that works on mobile. His estimating system is a spreadsheet his nephew built in 2009. He is 71 years old, his knees hurt, and he wants to go fishing. I hope I have painted a clear enough picture. This is the opportunity. ↓↓↓ I'll teach you how to buy a blue collar business in June: https://lnkd.in/gubmPaBM

I left six figures sitting in a money market account for years. Almost no interest to help it grow. Just inflation eating away at it. I am not alone. A Vanguard study on 401(k) rollovers found: - More than 50% of people parked the proceeds in cash - A third of women and a quarter of men still hadn't moved it seven years later - Over $90K in median balance sat untouched That’s me, I am that data. What eventually shifted my thinking was reframing what I needed my cash to do: 1. Expense shock coverage ($25K-$50K) True cash, HYSA, or money market has to work instantly under any condition. 2. Income gap ($20K-$80K) Four to six months of shortfall, rolling T-bills, or near-cash accessible weekly or monthly. 3. Opportunity reserve ($25K-$100K) Deal flow capital in ultra-short duration funds or munis, accessible within weeks. I began to think about near cash. Just like cash, it creates safety. And most of the tools that earn more than a savings account still keep capital accessible within a defined window. This week's Wealth Stack Weekly walks through how to map your liquidity, layer it by timeframe, and stop paying the cost you can't see on a statement: https://lnkd.in/eRa9t3T4

Really appreciated this conversation and the thoughtful write-up around it. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that buying a business is rarely as “passive” as people imagine from the outside. You’re not just buying an asset. You’re stepping into leadership, responsibility, decision-making, and uncertainty all at once. That’s why I’ve always believed acquisition entrepreneurship is fundamentally different from traditional investing. It’s built for people who actually want to operate, build, and carry the weight of ownership. A big reason we built Acquisition Lab the way we did was that we saw how many people needed support after the deal closed, not just during the search process. Really enjoyed being part of this conversation and sharing more of the thinking behind everything we’re building in this space.

Most businesses can recover from a single major issue. The difficulty increases dramatically when multiple issues emerge at the same time. That is one reason why diligence and transition planning matter so much in an acquisition. The below article is a good read for anyone under LOI. It highlights four risks that repeatedly appear in SMB and lower middle market transactions: • cash flow quality • customer concentration • owner dependency • leverage None of these risks are unusual. Most buyers identify them during diligence. The challenge is that they rarely stay isolated after closing. A customer loss can reduce cash flow. Reduced cash flow can create covenant pressure. Covenant pressure can limit liquidity needed to retain key employees or invest in growth. If critical knowledge remains concentrated with the seller, the recovery process becomes even more difficult. Many businesses can work through one of these issues. Working through several simultaneously is much harder. That is why effective diligence is not simply about identifying risks. It is about understanding how those risks interact and developing a plan to address them before ownership changes hands.

Most people do not have a money problem. They have a priority problem. A few weeks ago, someone asked me for financial help. Then today, they told me: “I’m taking the holiday weekend off. I need to recharge.” Recharge from what? You’re behind on bills. You’re stressed about money. You’re trying to survive financially… …but somehow rest became more important than results. And before people get offended, understand this: There is a massive difference between burnout and comfort addiction. When I was broke, holidays meant opportunity. While people watched the Super Bowl, I worked. While people relaxed, I learned. While people slept in, I built relationships, made calls, studied marketing, and sharpened my skills. I delayed gratification so I could eventually live life on my terms. That’s the part social media rarely talks about. Everybody wants freedom. Very few people are willing to earn it. Michael Phelps trained for years staring at the bottom of a pool. Tom Brady sacrificed more than almost anyone around him. Most elite performers become elite because they were willing to do what average people refused to do consistently. Success is not magic. Success is often repetition, sacrifice, discipline, and refusing to stop when excuses become convenient. You can absolutely have balance later. But balance before momentum is usually disguised procrastination. You can have almost anything in life. Just not all at the same time. And sometimes the hardest truth is this: You are not tired. You are distracted. You are comfortable. Or you quit on yourself too early. Agree or disagree? #Entrepreneurship #SuccessMindset #Discipline #Business

If you have not sold a business in the last 18 months, you have no idea how much diligence has changed. Per the KPMG 2026 M&A Outlook, 76 percent of dealmakers now use AI in their due diligence process. Per Deloitte, 86 percent of dealmakers have integrated generative AI into their M&A workflow, with 65 percent of those doing it in just the past year. 83 percent expect AI to drive their post-merger integration plans. What this looks like on the buyer side is something every seller should understand. A buyer's analyst no longer spends three weeks reading your data room. They run AI agents against your contracts, financials, and customer files. The system surfaces every clause that does not match market standard. Every revenue recognition policy that looks aggressive. Every supplier concentration that exceeds threshold. Every customer agreement with a change-of-control trigger. Every off-cycle expense in your P&L. What used to take an analyst a month to find now gets surfaced in 48 hours. For founders, this is a double-edged sword. On the good side, diligence moves faster. Deals that should close, close sooner. Buyers can underwrite with more conviction. Information gaps that used to kill deals can sometimes get bridged. On the hard side, your messy data room is no longer hidden by sheer volume. Every inconsistency between your P&L and your customer contracts will get found. Every gap between what your sales team is selling and what your master service agreements actually say will surface. Every related-party transaction shows up. Your data room is now your sales pitch. Build it like one. Reconcile your contracts to your revenue. Document your customer concentration honestly. Surface your add-backs before they get found. Get a sell-side QoE before the buyer's AI does its own. The era of "we will explain that in management presentations" is over. If it is in your data room, it is in the model. If it is not in your data room, the buyer assumes the worst. Prepare for the way buyers actually work now, not the way they worked five years ago. #MergersAndAcquisitions #ArtificialIntelligence #DueDiligence #PrivateEquity #BusinessExit #LowerMiddleMarket #DealMaking

A big thank you to Family Business Magazine for hosting an outstanding Family Business Advisor Roundtable last week. The discussion brought together advisors from a variety of disciplines to discuss findings from recent Family Business Magazine surveys involving more than 1,000 multigenerational family business members. The conversation was practical and filled with insights that family business owners, advisors, and investors should keep in mind. One finding that stood out was the impact of family councils. Only 47% of respondents reported having one in place, yet engagement with the business increased when a family council existed. The discussion also reinforced a broader point: governance is about far more than documents and organizational charts. Governance serves the important function of converting unwritten assumptions, family history, and institutional knowledge into a process that can survive changes in leadership and ownership. As ownership expands across generations, fewer family members were present when many of the foundational decisions were made. Without that institutional memory being captured, major decisions can quickly become debates about what prior generations intended. Several other statistics were equally noteworthy: • 57% of families are unsure whether the next generation will join the business • 47% do not have a succession plan in place • Nearly one-quarter are discussing outside capital as part of succession planning • Families with a formal written succession plan were substantially more likely to expect a smooth transition The discussion also highlighted how family businesses evaluate decisions through a different lens than traditional financial buyers. Legacy, employees, family cohesion, community impact, and stewardship frequently sit alongside valuation and liquidity considerations. There are deeply interconnected issues within family businesses, and progress in one area often supports the other two. Thank you again to Family Business Magazine and the other participants.

Climate Experts Air, Plumbing & Electric is growing and we are looking for great people to grow with us. We are hosting a Hiring Event at our Melbourne FL facility on Tuesday June 3rd from 5PM to 7PM. All positions are open and we will be conducting on the spot interviews throughout the evening. 📅 June 3, 2026 🕔 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM 📍 4270 Dow Rd Suite 209, Melbourne FL 32934 What to expect: Open interviews for all positions Shop tour of our facility Refreshments and prizes We are one of the fastest growing trades companies in the state of Florida. We offer top compensation, full benefits, world class training programs, and a culture built around people who take their work seriously and enjoy doing it. If you are an experienced tradesperson or someone looking to build a long term career in HVAC, plumbing, or electrical, come meet us in person. We believe the best hires happen face to face. We look forward to seeing you there. #NowHiring #HiringEvent #TradesCareers #HVACJobs #PlumbingJobs #ElectricalJobs #MelbourneFlorida #ClimateExperts #HomeServices #ContractorJobs #FloridaJobs #CareerOpportunity Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric

This is a huge opportunity. Reach out if interested (a few intership spots remaining).

A founder I am working with right now is in late-stage talks with a PE-backed strategic. The buyer is great. The price is fair. The strategic logic is real. I asked one question that changed the temperature of the conversation. Which fund is the capital coming from? The 2017 vintage or the 2023? The answer matters more than most sellers realize. Per Akin Gump, 16 percent of all PE exits now go through GP-led continuation vehicles. These structures used to be niche. They are not anymore. More than 70 portfolio companies were transferred to continuation funds in 2025, up from 54 the year before. Almost three quarters of the largest PE firms in the world have done at least one. Here is what that means in plain English. When a PE fund hits the end of its life and has portfolio companies it does not want to sell at current valuations, the GP can move those companies into a new vehicle, often run by the same GP, with new LPs. The asset never actually changes hands in the operating sense. Same management. Same thesis. New paper. For a founder selling INTO a PE-backed buyer right now, this is critical context. If the platform acquiring you sits in an aging fund with no clear exit path, you are not just signing onto a five year thesis. You are signing onto a structure that may need to extend, refinance, or transfer the asset before you ever see the back end of your earnout or rollover equity. If you are taking rollover equity, ask what happens to your position in a continuation vehicle scenario. Ask about pre-emptive rights. Ask about drag-along treatment. Ask about how independent the valuation will be. The best PE buyers will answer these questions cleanly. The ones who dodge them are telling you something. Selling to PE is not selling to PE anymore. It is selling to a specific fund, with a specific vintage, with a specific liquidity situation. Know which one. #PrivateEquity #MergersAndAcquisitions #LowerMiddleMarket #ContinuationFunds #DealStructure #BusinessExit #DealMaking

Being rich is awesome. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Life is just easier up until you make about $100k, then it gradually evens out. Go unapologetically chase your first $100K. ↓↓↓ Every week I write about how to free your mind and build your bank account: https://lnkd.in/e7DSWqMT

Summer is when people finally refresh the sunglasses they’ve been wearing on repeat. I’m no different. There’s something about stepping into the sun with a fresh pair of sunglasses that makes you feel more put together. But the best pairs don’t just look good. They fit well, feel comfortable, and actually support how you spend your time outside. This is the season where eyewear becomes part of how you experience everything around you. The right pair completes your look and changes how the day feels. #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #Eyewear #Sunglasses

Great article from Jordan Slater. It is a strong reminder that waterfall structures are not just accounting mechanics. They are governance and incentive systems. The waterfall concepts discussed here apply across a wide range of transactions: family office direct investments, independent sponsor deals, search fund acquisitions, committed capital vehicles, and other long-duration private investment structures. The relationship between operators and capital providers often lasts far longer than the transaction itself. That is where waterfall drafting starts to matter operationally: - hold period incentives - refinance decisions - capital call dynamics - promote crystallization - clawbacks - exit timing - long-term alignment between operators and investors A significant number of sponsor disputes years later trace back to economics that appeared aligned at closing but were never modeled against realistic operating timelines, capital needs, or exit scenarios. Worth the read for anyone structuring long-duration private investment relationships.

One of the most interesting investing statistics I’ve seen recently: Years after rolling over their 401(k), a large share of people still leave the money in cash. No growth. No allocation. Just idle. And honestly? I get it. Liquidity feels safe. But cash can quietly become one of the most expensive assets to hold long term. This week in Wealth Stack Weekly, we break down the liquidity spectrum and why more cash doesn’t always mean more protection. Sometimes a portfolio holding 1% cash is actually safer than one holding 7.5%. Join 500k+ subscribers. www.wealthstackweekly.com

Looking forward to reconnecting with the independent sponsor community in Dallas on June 11th ! If you are an independent sponsor seeking the latest insights and looking to make the best equity / debt connections to fund your next deal, no bigger and better place than in Texas. #independentsponsor iGlobal Forum Louise Obadia Roger Kowalski Steve Brown Hannah Dolan

Innovation in eyewear should begin with a simple question: does it make the experience better for the person wearing it? Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 frames reflect where eyewear is going, but more importantly, it shows what happens when new technology is designed to feel natural, not forced. People do not want something that feels like a gadget. They want something that fits into their routine and gives them a reason to reach for it. That is where MyEyeDr. plays an important role. Innovation has the most value when it is paired with expertise, fit, and personalization, because that is what turns a product into something people can actually use and trust. The future of eyewear will not be defined by technology alone. It will be defined by how well that technology works for the person wearing it. #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #EyewearInnovation #VisionCare #ConnectedEyewear #RayBanMeta

*How Private Equity Hires Special Ops Veterans for Chief of Staff Roles* ▸ Why Portcos Need a Chief of Staff ▸ Military Speed as a PE Advantage ▸ The Military-to-Civilian Shift ▸ Translating Military Skills Into Business Andrew Nelson is Chief of Staff to the CEO at Waste Eliminator, where he helps drive strategic initiatives, operational execution, and growth across the company's expanding footprint in the Southeast. Before entering the private sector, Andrew spent six years in the Army with 3rd Ranger Battalion, completing five deployments across Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He transitioned from the military in 2022 and later earned his MBA from Emory University. Andrew is a member of 51 Vets 501c3, a non-profit that supports transitioning veterans from elite military communities on a trajectory to become the next private sector leaders in investment banking, private equity, venture capital, consulting, and defense tech. 500 members 75% have an MBA or currently pursuing 50 members are currently looking for jobs and internships Hit me up if you want to learn about Chief of Staff talent like Andrew!

I made a $275,000 mistake outsourcing, so you don't have to. Everyone's racing to build AI right now, but they’re missing something... You can't vibe code infrastructure, compliance, or security. That stuff requires meticulous underwriting, and if you outsource it wrong, it'll bleed you dry. We learned the hard way managing an outsourced tech vendor, so if you’re thinking about outsourcing, read this first: NEVER OUTSOURCE THE LEAD Outsource the team if you want. Fine. But the lead has to be yours. Ours was part-time and offshore, so there was no skin in the game. He was phenomenal at readouts, but couldn’t execute. BE DIABOLICAL ON READOUTS This was a small slice of a bigger business, so I took my finger off the pulse. Big mistake. Now I require daily scrums, a written readout of what shipped that day, and a weekly Loom walking me through all the changes I can actually see. AGENCIES CAN COST 2-5X YOUR OWN TALENT Offshore, onshore, doesn't matter. Most run 2-3X the cost of hiring in-house, and some even hit 5X. You might be better served bringing one killer in-house, than passing it off to an unreliable offshore team. INTERROGATE THEIR CLIENTS FIRST Before you sign, talk to a handful of their actual clients, and ask the uncomfortable questions. What did they ship on time and on budget? How were they managed? What was the oversight process? And how much did they actually spend to ship it? BUILD IN YOUR OUTS Thank god we went milestone-based. The second those benchmarks went unmet, we walked away. Never sign one lump-sum contract that traps you with an agency that isn't executing. GRADE THEM EVERY WEEK Score them 1 to 10, and make their fulfillment depend on hitting at least an 8. Our catch? The contractor doing the grading went too soft. Way too many 8s. So put someone INSIDE your company on grading. ONLY HIRE AN AGENCY IF YOU'LL MICROMANAGE THEM Engineering agencies need hyper-specific briefs, ticket creation, and constant oversight. They're juggling a dozen other projects, not just yours. And honestly? It's way easier to do all this with a team you actually manage. $275,000. That's what this lesson cost me. Yours is free. And if you want to learn more lessons like this, check out Main Street Millionaire Live on June 18th. During this 3-day virtual event, you’ll learn everything you need to know to buy a business, and how to avoid some seriously costly mistakes. Check it out here → https://lnkd.in/eNMBsEs9

It’s easy to overlook your eyes until your vision starts to change. Routine eye exams help you stay ahead of changes you may not see or feel yet. It’s a simple investment in your long-term eye health. I get it. If you can see clearly, it’s easy to assume everything is fine. But it’s proven that those small, consistent check-ins can reveal far more than your vision, from early signs of glaucoma to indicators of diabetes and high blood pressure. During Healthy Vision Month, it’s worth remembering that staying ahead of what you can’t see yet is one of the best things you can do for your health. An hour once a year is a worthwhile investment. #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #EyeCare #EyeExam #EyeHealth

Just held a live webinar today with Maxio on the AI trap for finance. Despite what socials want you to think about AI use in finance, here's how finance leaders are using AI today. How do I know this? I formed a private community of 500+ tech finance leaders. Here's my process for implementing repeatable AI in finance. Layer 0: Homework + System Design - Start with the question, workflow, source systems, and target output. Layer 1: Data Structure - Build on clean, connected, well-labeled data. Layer 2: Formulas + Deterministic Output - Define your metrics, formulas, schedules, and reconciliations. Layer 3: AI + Repeatable Workflows - Use AI to explain, summarize, answer questions, and accelerate the process. How are you using AI in finance and accounting in a repeatable way? Not one-off prompts. #SaaS

A board director leans in and asks six words: "Is AI actually making us money?" You open the financials. And you realize you can't answer it. Not because your business isn't working. Not because you don't have metrics. Because your books were never built to show AI economics. AI inference and tools are scattered across COGS and OpEx, so you can't isolate the spend, tie it to revenue, or compute a margin. On June 24, I'm walking you through my AI framework. Three moves to make your chart of accounts AI-ready: classify, tag, structure. Then the one metric that answers the board question directly: the Inference Efficiency Ratio. No theory. The actual plumbing with templates. Save your seat: https://lnkd.in/eByt6waS Wednesday, June 24, 9:00am PDT. Free to join. Many thanks to Maxio for sponsoring my educational webinar series. #SaaS #CFO #AI

Seller Financing Sounds Smart, Until You Own the Business

So thrilled for this announcement and to be working with this dynamo again. We've been building a best in class team on our path to curating the single most efficient, valued ecosystem for lower middle market fund managers, allocators/LPs, backable independent sponsors and boutique investment bankers and this gives us a lot more fire power. Christy will own a big part of the growth strategy for both the Independent Sponsor Forum and Small Business Investor Alliance. Love this team! Ron Lippock Alexandra Arnsberger Kris Korfonta Allie Kownacki Christy Dancause Let's go!!

The shortest path from first meeting to commitment is 9 months. Most take longer. During that window, how your firm shows up online becomes part of diligence whether you intended it to or not. LPs notice whether: - your messaging stays consistent across all touchpoints - you sound differentiated - your insights feel thoughtful or generic - your online presence reflects the quality you pitch in the room Most firms think marketing starts after the fundraise is successful. In reality, it often shapes perception long before the first commitment happens. A portco case study video on your website is not going to close a fund on its own. But when an LP sees that you took the time to document a founder’s story, explain the investment thesis, or show what value creation looked like in practice, it signals a lot of things: → you’re thoughtful about how you communicate → you back conviction with context → the way you talk about companies in a meeting is the same way you talk about them everywhere else Over time, repeated and credible signals help LPs build trust in the people behind the firm. #PrivateEquity #InvestorRelations #Fundraising

You're not supposed to do anything the day before a Ironman race except relax and do minimal walking. Our Jacksonville trip with the 👧👦👶👶 was going to be different 🎉 2am arrival Friday in the minivan 4am crying twins in hotel room 6am take kids outside so Jing Li could sleep Complete athlete check-in Take kids to park Hand off kids then do bike check-in Dinner Bed by 10 7 miles walking by EOD 🤣 Saturday 4:30a eat in the dark while family sleeps 7:30a swim start Swim 2.4 miles in 1 hour 🏊‍♂️ Transition Bike 112 miles in 7 hours 🚴‍♂️ Transition Run 26.2 miles in 6 hours 15 min 🏃‍♂️ 15 hours in the Florida sun I absolutely broke down at mile 10 of the run when I saw the family. No pain. Just cooked. Balling my eyes out from the weight of the day. It was too much to handle. After a few minutes, I gathered myself and kissed the family, then kept trucking along. Today was definitely not going to be a PR. My longest training rides should've been 3-4 hours...I could only get in 90 minutes. No training week was more than 6 hours, if that. Reality is that too much was happening with family and business. After beating myself up on the course, I looked the shirt I had on, "1% Better." The motto from Chris Nikic, who is the first person with Down Syndrome to do an Ironman. I didn't need to set a personal record. We, as a family, just needed to show up and get 1% better that day. It's mental health awareness month. If something feels off, just focus on ONE thing to get a little bit better every day 🙏 None of this would be possible without the love and support of Jing Li ❤️

I have a friend who is 40 and damn near a billionaire. A few years ago, I asked him for advice on investing... and here's what he told me: 1. Most of wins in life land on the edge of controversy. 2. Be careful what you read, it becomes the way you think. 3. Anger is useful in physical fights but a killer of logic. 4. Having a strong opinion is a mark of intellect but having the ability to change it is THE mark of true intelligence. 5. Share your MVPs - every time you produce a product or idea, more come back ten-fold. 6. Anytime something is common practice, check if it’s common sense. 7. Strong beliefs paired with little knowledge is a dangerous spot to operate. 8. Your skin regenerates itself every 72 days completely. Your ideas need an equal level of velocity and regeneration. Challenge the old ideas and let them be reborn into something better. 9. Shortcuts and get-rich-quick schemes will get you lost. 10. Read widely, voraciously and continuously. Don’t have a wealthy friend to give you advice? No problem. I’ve hosting a 3 day virtual event for people who want to own something real, earned, and in their control. The best part? You probably already have the skills you need. So stop forcing yourself to be a spectator in your own life, and choose your hard. Tickets are at their lowest price we’ve ever offered, because I want you to have this opportunity to change your future. Main Street Millionaire Live, June 18th - 20th. Completely Virtual. Grab your ticket here → https://lnkd.in/exRQKZWa

"Men only want one thing... and it's disgusting." Men: "A cashflowing business, babies and a happy wife.” ↓↓↓ Come learn how to buy one with me at our next 3-day live event. June 18-20, fully remote, with all of the smartest business buyers I know. Hope to see you there: https://lnkd.in/gubmPaBM

There is no better time to be a builder. ↓↓↓ Curious to know what ownership is all about? Come to Main Street Millionaire Live June 18-20th. It’s my annual live event teaching ordinary people how to buy a business. It’s not for everyone…but maybe for you: https://lnkd.in/gubmPaBM

Thinking about offering Outcome-based Pricing? New post tomorrow on the architecture of outcome-based pricing. I'll walk you through a 12-step guide to build the essentials of your OBP framework. One year ago, hard to find examples. Today, there are plenty of examples to choose from. Subscribe to my newsletter via my profile to receive tomorrow's post. #SaaS

Never too late.

Uncomfortable truth.

"Tell me about your childhood." I made the mistake of saying that to a psychologist over dinner. I was at an entrepreneurship accelerator. We were out for a group dinner, and I ended up sitting next to the psychologist who had been running sessions for our cohort. Trying to be funny, I looked at her and said it. Instead of answering, she asked about my DISC profile. No problem, I thought. I’m DISC certified. I’ve used it with employees, in sales conversations, and on myself for years. I rattled off my results: high D, high I, high C, very low S. She nodded, then said: "Three traits above the line tend to show up in people who spent a long time trying to prove something to someone." The whole table went quiet. She smiled. "Tell me about your childhood." My response was immediate: "I feel very uncomfortable right now.” We both laughed. But it landed. A lot of what looks like ambition is really the need to prove something. That motivation can be incredibly powerful. Until one day you win. You built the company from a garage to three locations. You make more money in a year than your parents made in a decade. You have nothing left to prove now. Then you're left with the question ambitious people never plan for: now what? At some point, proving people wrong stops being enough. The ones who stay in it figure out how to love the game itself.

Warren Buffett bought Coca-Cola stock. Jimmy Buffett drank it with rum on a beach. Both built billion-dollar empires. And for a long time, I felt conflicted between those same two worlds. Durable businesses and compounding capital on one side. Creativity, storytelling, media, and identity on the other. My career reflects both instincts, from English lit and film production to investing, operating, and media-driven businesses. Over the years, people told me to pick a lane. But eventually I realized the most valuable businesses usually compound on more than one input. Warren compounded capital through discipline, consistency, and long-term ownership. He still lives in the house he bought in 1958 and has eaten the same McDonald’s breakfast order for decades. Jimmy turned a single song into restaurants, resorts, retirement communities, casinos, a Broadway show, a SiriusXM channel, and an entire lifestyle brand, starting with one cafe in Key West in 1985. He built a lifestyle people wanted to belong to. Different inputs, but same outcome: Durable ecosystems that people kept returning to. What I love most about the two Buffetts: they respected each other's approach. Jimmy owned Berkshire stock, and Warren showed up to the opening of Cheeseburger in Paradise in Omaha, where he was served the first burger. They formed a friendship that lasted decades. They even took a 23andMe test together once to see if they were actually related. (They’re not.) Warren’s advice to Jimmy was simple: "Management in place." Capital compounds. But so do trust, audience, brand, and culture. The biggest outcomes come from knowing your own instincts deeply enough to keep compounding them for decades. What lane has compounded the most for you?

A content creator with no HVAC license is advising homeowners to purchase their AC equipment from online distributors and bypass the contractor entirely to save up to $10,000. There are several significant issues with this advice worth addressing. First warranty and parts availability. Local distributors only warranty equipment purchased through their own supply chain. Equipment purchased online is not eligible. When that unit requires a repair the homeowner is waiting weeks to months for parts to ship rather than having access to same day local inventory that a licensed contractor maintains relationships to access. Second equipment selection. Before any HVAC system is purchased a proper heat load calculation must be performed. Line set sizing, ductwork capacity, equipment type, regional climate requirements, electrical compatibility, all of these must be verified before a unit is selected. Purchasing equipment online without this diagnostic work leads to undersized or oversized systems, efficiency losses, and premature failure. Third pricing. Online equipment is sold at full retail. Licensed contractors purchase through distribution relationships at significantly better pricing. The actual savings gap is far smaller than presented before accounting for warranty limitations and parts availability risk. Fourth equipment quality. What is typically available through online channels is builder grade equipment. It is not the same product a licensed contractor specifies and installs for a residential customer. Please do not take HVAC purchasing advice from unlicensed content creators. The consequences of getting this wrong are expensive and the homeowner bears all of the risk. #HVAC #trades #contractor #homeservices #homeowner #hvacbusiness #qualitymatters #tradesbusiness #hvacinstall #contractorlife #homeownership

Every picture tells a story! Best comment gets a free 1-1 with me!

CFO's, are you tracking token usage by customer? It's time to dust off the statistics textbooks. I'm creating the next lesson for my AI metrics course. This lesson focuses on AI margins and AI subscription pricing. If you are offering AI on a subscription basis, you must understand the usage patterns and your distribution curve. With this data in hand, you can model pricing and margins. What cohort of customers is providing margin, and what cohort is destroying margin? You need customer usage by month. And what models are being used, and the model cost. Then you can run some interesting analysis. We've got to get our new AI financial framework ready for 2027 planning. #SaaS

Ankur Jain (CEO of $11B powerhouse, Bilt Rewards) thinks raising venture capital in your first 2 years is one of the worst things a founder can do. Here's why. When you take a check from a Silicon Valley VC, you're not just getting money, you’re signing away a piece of your soul. Because when you spend VC money, you have to chase VC metrics. In 2014 it was mobile app users, in the 90s it was eyeballs, and today it's "AI" stapled onto every pitch deck. The metric of the month changes, but whether those numbers matter to your actual customers becomes irrelevant. Ankur made this mistake twice in his first 2 companies. So when he started Bilt, he did the opposite. He bootstrapped everything, then took the first checks from real estate owners, the people who wanted to use his product. They invested because if Bilt worked, they won. That capital structure let him do something pretty insane: 18 months with zero revenue, fighting the Department of Housing to make rent payments count toward mortgage credit. A traditional VC would have killed that bet by month 2. But his customer-investors waited, because they wanted it to work and understood what he was doing. Here's a line from his mentor I can't stop thinking about: Never trust a salaried investor. They're not operating, they're not building, and they have no skin in the game. They get paid whether you live or die. So try to choose investors with something on the line. ↓↓↓ P.S. The full Ankur conversation is one of the best founder breakdowns I've heard in a long time, and you can watch the whole video here: https://lnkd.in/edtxaRpf

You can be right and still lose. You can win and still lose. That is the part of the legal system nobody tells entrepreneurs until they are already trapped inside it. Yesterday, OpenAI and Sam Altman beat Elon Musk in court. The case was about whether OpenAI moved away from its original nonprofit mission and became something very different. Musk argued the original charitable purpose had been betrayed. OpenAI won because the jury found Musk brought the case too late. That is the brutal lesson. The court does not always decide who is morally right. The court decides what can be proven. What was filed. What was signed. What the statute says. What the timing says. What the jury believes. And if you are an entrepreneur, that should scare you. Because most business people walk into deals thinking logic will protect them. It will not. Being right does not mean you will win. Winning does not mean you will collect. Collecting does not mean it is over. There can be appeals. There can be delays. There can be more legal fees. There can be years of stress. I know this personally. A few days ago, I won a case against someone I lent money to. The loan was attached to property. They tried to scam their way out of it. It took 5 years. We won. So even when you win, part of you still loses. That is the cost entrepreneurs underestimate. Not just the money. The emotional tax. The distraction. The opportunity cost. The meetings. The documents. The lawyers. The stress. The energy taken away from building, scaling, selling, investing, and winning in the real world. This is why I say partnerships are one of the most dangerous decisions in business. A bad partnership does not just hurt the company. It can destroy the company. It can destroy wealth. It can destroy families. It can destroy reputations. That is why Chapter 3 of my first book Business Is War is called: To Partner or Not to Partner: Is Your Partnership Destined for Business Divorce? It may be one of the most important business chapters I have ever written. Because the best time to protect yourself is before the relationship goes bad. Before the handshake. Before the money. Before the ego. Before the optimism blinds you. Before the person you trusted becomes the person you sue. Elon Musk may be one of the richest people in the world. But even he had to sit in court, testify, fight, lose, and now decide whether to keep fighting. That should tell every entrepreneur something. If your business depends on a judge, jury, contract interpretation, or someone else’s version of fairness, you are already in dangerous territory. Build smarter. Document better. Choose partners slower. Protect yourself earlier. And never assume being right means you are safe. What do you think? #BusinessIsWar #ElonMusk #SamAltman #Partnerships

Lamborghini or Ferrari? If I could give you 1 car, which would you choose? Most people will answer based on emotion. That is the lesson. Ferrari and Lamborghini are not just car companies. They are symbols. Ferrari makes people think of speed, status, precision, heritage, and winning. Lamborghini makes people think of power, boldness, rebellion, attention, and success. That is what great branding does. It makes people feel something before they ever touch the product. This past Saturday, we had our most viewed Saturday virtual ever because entrepreneurs finally understood the bigger lesson. The mistake is thinking: “What can I learn from Ferrari or Lamborghini if I am not in the car business?” A lot. If you want more attention, credibility, influence, status, and money, Ferrari and Lamborghini have already written the playbook. That is why, by demand, I am doing it all over again this Thursday at 5 PM Eastern. 17 Business Lessons on Brand, Power, Attention, Influence, Credibility, and Money. I will break down how Ferrari became a symbol of status, how Lamborghini became a symbol of boldness, how both created desire before the sale, and how you can apply those same lessons to your business, your brand, your positioning, and your income. And who knows? We may even have a special guest appear this Thursday. If you missed Saturday, this is your second chance. If you were there Saturday, come again. The first time gives you information. The second time gives you implementation. Check the comments. Which one are you choosing? Lamborghini or Ferrari? #Branding #BusinessLessons #PersonalBranding #Supercars

Most acquisition agreements still do not contain meaningful AI provisions. That may be one of the biggest drafting gaps emerging in technology transactions. As AI becomes embedded in operations, diligence questions are starting to move beyond cybersecurity and data privacy into ownership, training data, confidentiality, and compliance issues. Buyers increasingly want to understand: • who owns AI-generated content and outputs • whether training data was properly obtained • whether confidential information is being exposed through AI tools • whether AI use complies with applicable laws and contractual obligations Today, these issues often fall within traditional IP, data privacy, and compliance diligence. Over time, they may become standalone diligence and drafting categories. Worth considering if you're evaluating a business that relies heavily on AI tools or AI-generated content. 📰 Additional thoughts here: https://lnkd.in/gqayxM7B ⚠️ Note: These issues currently arise most often in software, technology, and AI-enabled businesses. The trend is significant enough that AI-related representations and disclosures were incorporated into the NVCA model financing documents in 2024, signaling increased attention to AI risk allocation and diligence.

Most homeowners assume a parts warranty means the repair is free or close to it. The reality is significantly different and the HVAC industry has done a poor job of explaining how this actually works. The manufacturer covers one thing. The major failed component. Everything else required to complete the repair correctly is the responsibility of the contractor. That includes the filter drier which is required every time a system is opened. Copper fittings and line. Brazing rods. Nitrogen for line purging and pressure testing. Oxygen and acetylene for brazing. Armaflex insulation. PVC drain fittings pipe and glue. And in many cases refrigerant to recharge the system if the failed component caused a loss of charge. None of these materials are provided by the manufacturer. None of them are optional. We are also not the manufacturer. We have no special financial relationship with the brand on your equipment. We are an independent contractor that sources parts at market price pays for them upfront picks them up processes the warranty claim documentation and holds the failed component for up to 30 days in case the manufacturer requests it for inspection. If the manufacturer inspects that part and determines the failure is not covered under warranty they deny the claim entirely. The contractor absorbs the full cost of the part with no reimbursement. We carry that financial risk on behalf of our customers because it is the right way to operate. This is not comparable to an automotive warranty where the manufacturer owns the dealership and controls the entire process. Understanding this distinction is important for any homeowner navigating an HVAC warranty repair. We believe in being completely transparent about how our pricing works and what goes into every repair we perform. #HVAC #HVACBusiness #ContractorLife #ClimateExperts #HVACWarranty #HomeOwner #Transparent #FloridaHVAC #HomeServices #Trades #HVACEducation #DoItRight #ContractorEducation Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric

I’ll never forget the moment Angelita Garcia realized she didn’t have to keep working. Because on paper, she was the exact person you’d assume could always go get another job. Stanford computer science. Years of technical experience. Recent training in AI. But in 2022, when she tried to re-enter the software engineering job market, she wasn’t getting any traction. “We’re interested,” recruiters would say. Then nothing. No interview. No phone screen. Hiring processes that stretched for months. Conventional advice told her, “Just find another high-paying role and work another decade.” But her situation exposed the assumption underneath it: that you can always turn income back on whenever you decide to. After discovering Build Wealth, Angelita asked herself a better question: → How quickly can I generate sufficient income without a job? My team shared private fund return profiles, introduced her to operators, and Angelita ran the numbers on her assets. Here was the surprise: She thought she needed another decade of W-2 earnings to be financially independent. Turns out, she already had enough capital. It just needed to work harder for her. So she built a plan around that reality: She used private credit as the income engine. Cashflowing real estate as the core. Energy cashflow and upside. And PE for pure appreciation. Today, she can choose to work. She picks the clients she wants. She’s there for her kids when they need her. Her advice is simple: “Run the numbers. You won’t be able to see what’s possible until you model it yourself.” We’ve been taught to diversify our portfolios. It makes sense. Now, it’s time to diversify your income that funds that portfolio. This week’s Wealth Stack Weekly includes the two-metric stress test Angelita used to answer one question: how long can I go without a paycheck? https://lnkd.in/gJaruG2D

My AI Metrics course is now captioned in Brazilian Portuguese. Well, at least I hope it is. Claude, don't let me down. I had a request this week from a company in Brazil. If you'd like any other languages, just let me know! Overview of the Course: Module 1: AI Economics for Software Operators Intro - The 4 Layers of AI Work Measurement - What's Coming Next in the Lessons - AI Finance Readiness Quiz Module 2: The 6th Pillar: AI Economics for Software Operators & CFOs - Why AI Changes the SaaS P&L - What's Included in AI COGS - AI Unit Economics - Pricing AI Without Destroying Margin - The Board-Ready AI Economics Dashboard Module 3: AI Metrics Deep Dive - Inference Efficiency Ratio - More coming soon! You can learn more here: https://lnkd.in/eUwCEz-Q #SaaS

What are the odds of making $1 million a year? Almost nobody does it. Even in America, IRS based reports show that less than 1% of people earn $1 million or more in a year. So the question is not: Can you make $1 million a year? The better question is: What skill gives you the best odds? I have been making $1 million a year since I was 24. But the lesson is not how I did it. The lesson is how you should think if you want a real shot at it. Most people ask the wrong questions. What business should I start? What product should I sell? What niche should I pick? The better question is: What skill is the market about to desperately need that very few people can actually do? Right now, I believe there are 3. 1. AI Implementers Companies do not need more AI talk. They need people who can walk in, find the leaks, fix the follow up, improve operations, reduce wasted time, and turn AI into real business results. 2. AI Employee Designers The next wave is not just using AI. It is designing AI employees and agents that do the work. Sales. Follow up. Customer support. Content. Recruiting. Admin. Operations. If you can help a company save $100,000, $500,000, or $1 million a year, what are you worth? 3. Trades HVAC. Plumbing. Electrical. The world still needs people who can fix, build, wire, repair, install, and solve real problems. Now combine trades with AI, better marketing, better follow up, better quoting, better scheduling, and better operations. That is not just a trade business. That is an AI powered service company. Making $1 million a year is rare. But the odds get better when you stop chasing hype and start chasing demand. AI solves expensive problems. AI employees solve expensive problems. Trades solve expensive problems. Want to do it with me? Link in the comments. Which one gives people the best odds? AI Implementer, AI Employee Designer, or Trades? #AI #Entrepreneurship #Millionaire #BusinessGrowth

Sunday note. I have watched a lot of founders sell their companies. Some are out of the building a week after closing. Some are still around three years later, working through earnouts and transition periods that never seem to end. What I have learned is that the founders who do best are not the ones who got the highest price. They are the ones who understood the difference between selling a business and exiting one. Selling is the transaction. It is the LOI, the diligence, the negotiation, the closing wire. It happens on a calendar. You can plan for it. You can prepare for it. You can hire people to help you get through it. The selling part is mostly mechanics. Exiting is something else. Exiting is what happens to you when the company you built for fifteen or twenty years is no longer yours. It is the identity piece. The "who am I now" piece. The phone that stops ringing because you are no longer the decision maker. The team that has a new boss. The customer who you can no longer fight for. Most founders dramatically underprepare for that part. The financial advisors prepare them for the money. The lawyers prepare them for the contracts. The bankers prepare them for the process. Very few people prepare them for the morning after, the year after, the five years after. The founders I have seen do this well think about the exit long before the sale. They build new identities outside the business while the business is still theirs. They have something to walk toward, not just something to walk away from. The founders who do this poorly chase the next thing to fill the gap. Start another company. Take a board seat that does not fit. Make investments they should not make. Selling a business is a closing. Exiting one is a lifetime. Plan for both. Have a good Sunday. #BusinessExit #FounderJourney #MergersAndAcquisitions #Entrepreneurship #LifeAfterExit #ExitPlanning #LowerMiddleMarket

Let them hate you. Let no desire to be loved stop you. Let no focus on likability dissuade you. You are not here to be liked, but to create that thing inside you no other can. You are not here to make others comfortable, but to make the world a better place. Stand in the truth of what your two hands have toiled for. Actions scream, words whimper. While those who have known you as "quiet" try to push your voice back inside, remember: you playing small serves no one. Who cares if they hate you? Grow anyway. You are not everyone’s cup of tea. That’s good. If this resonated, you should stick around.

If you are a SMB searcher, preparing to search, or ETA curious: register below for our summer webinar series with a co-host lineup that is stacked with experience and war stories. If you’ve joined us before, you know our webinars are deep, highly technical and tactical - this is NOT your “passive listening” webinar series. PS- we’re announcing a bonus session shortly to fill every technical gap you may have in your ETA journey.

Being rich is awesome. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Life is just easier up until you make about $100k, then it gradually evens out. Go unapologetically chase your first $100K. ↓↓↓ Every week I write about how to free your mind and build your bank account: https://lnkd.in/e7DSWqMT

It's been exciting to tease out a few valuable nuggets from our ground breaking independent sponsor performance returns study examining and benchmarking the returns of 846 independent sponsor deals in collaboration with the Institute for Private Capital's Gregory Brown. The full reveal will come in mid June. Meantime, we've shared a few key insights in Houston and Chicago this past week. Grateful for the partnership of a few key investors and advisors who encouraged us ... maybe challenged is the better word ... to take on this ambitious project. Thank you Grant Kornman Max Dezara Erik Ginsberg Sylvie Gadant Stay tuned!

Congratulations to the Enceladus Partners team - thrilled to see another successful investment close ! Russ Spieler John McKee Joshua Bucher #familyoffice #deal #closing

Most junior associates can build a model, Claude aside. Far fewer can tell whether the numbers going into it are real. That's the gap I hope to close with a new hands-on program, specifically for software deals, where "ARR," "retention," and "gross margin" all hide more than they reveal. This is a case study driven with data room docs. You'll work a full deal end-to-end: reconcile reported vs. real ARR, classify a revenue mix, test margin quality, and write the IC memo. One case study, start to finish. For IB and PE associates moving into software. Launching soon. Follow along or comment below, and I'll send you the waitlist form. #SaaS

For the past 7 years, I've been fortunate enough to build Apex alongside some of the most talented, committed people I've ever met . Somewhere along the way, we stopped being just colleagues. We became teammates and friends. Real ones. The kind who show up not just for the wins, but for the hard days too. The kind who care as much about the mission as you do, maybe even more. At our core, Team Apex is not just a company, but a team committed to something bigger than any of us. Transforming the trades. Building a business the right way. Taking care of the people who make it all possible. So today, when I say we're welcoming Apollo Global Management, Inc. and Munesh Advani as a partner, we view it as adding a new teammate. One who shares our values, believes in our mission, and wants to help us keep going down the same path we've always been on. Good news about our mission? It doesn't have an end. Transforming an industry is a forever mission, and honestly, that's what gets me out of bed every day. To my Apex teammates: this milestone is yours. Thank you for everything that made it possible. We're just getting started. #JustGettingStarted #TransformTheTrades Apex Service Partners

Why is your air conditioning always running and your electric bill consistently higher than it should be? In many cases the answer is not the equipment. It is the installation. This video breaks down a real world example of an undersized return air opening on a 3 ton air handler installation. An 18x18 inch return grill can only move approximately 900 CFM of air at proper velocity. A 3 ton system requires 1200 CFM to deliver full cooling capacity. The result is a system that is mechanically a 3 ton unit but functionally delivering only about 2.25 tons of cooling to the home. The homeowner paid for 3 tons. They are receiving 2.25. And in most cases they will never know the difference until their energy bills tell the story. Properly sizing an HVAC system requires far more than a square footage calculation. A Manual J load calculation accounts for window measurements, insulation R values in walls and ceilings, ceiling height, duct leakage, infiltration rates, and return air sizing. Every one of these variables affects system performance and efficiency. Skipping any of them means the homeowner pays the price in comfort, energy costs, and equipment lifespan. This is why the details matter. This is why we do it right at Climate Experts. #HVAC #HVACBusiness #ContractorLife #ClimateExperts #ManualJ #ReturnAir #HVACInstallation #FloridaHVAC #HomeServices #Trades #HVACEducation #DoItRight Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric

The Secret to Investing? There is no secret. Most people think investing is about finding the next hot stock, timing the market, or getting lucky. It’s not. The greatest investors in the world mastered something much harder: Patience. The ability to stay calm while everyone else is emotional. The ability to hold while others panic. The ability to think long term while the world obsesses over overnight success. In the early stages, you are not investing in a company. You are investing in people. Their character. Their obsession. Their ability to solve problems. Their willingness to keep going when nobody believes in them. Later on, the game changes. You are investing in the founder’s ability to pivot, adapt, double down, and survive pressure. Because markets change. Technology changes. Consumers change. And the founders who win are usually the ones who can evolve the fastest without losing conviction. The biggest returns in my life did not come from chasing hype. They came from believing early, staying patient, and giving great people enough time to compound. Most investors quit too early. Most founders give up too soon. Most people underestimate what 10 years of consistency can become. What do you believe is the #1 trait of a great investor? #Investing #WealthBuilding #WarrenBuffett #LongTermThinking

Three years after acquiring North Texas Trailers, revenue is up 30%, and Shane Ehrsam is tripling his location count. Here's how he got there: He started with 15 employees. He added 9 more. He gave everyone health benefits, a 401 (k), and incentive-based pay. No outside capital. All these changes came from operating cash flow, while carrying acquisition debt. Most see that on a spreadsheet and think “risk,” but Shane spent years leading large teams and understood something fundamental about culture. When your lead tech has 35 years of trailer experience, and your service manager knows every customer by name, losing them isn’t just a headache; it’s an existential threat to the business itself. Culture built in year one is the foundation on which everything else scales. The employees you retain in year one are the operating leverage on which the entire business depends. That doesn't mean ignore the P&L. It means knowing the difference between getting lean and starving the business. Those two things look identical in a budget. They produce completely different outcomes over a three-year hold.

AI does not replace great people. AI exposes weak people. High performers love credibility because it scales trust. Low performers hate accountability because it scales the truth. Here is what nobody wants to admit: If your team is solid, AI becomes an amplifier. Faster execution Cleaner handoffs Fewer mistakes More time back for leadership If your team is weak, AI becomes a spotlight. Vague tasks get rejected Missed deadlines get logged “I thought you meant…” disappears Excuses die when proof is required That is why the loudest fear around AI is rarely “job loss.” It is “performance transparency.” The winners are already using AI like an internal compliance monitor: it enforces SOPs, demands proof, and escalates before the founder gets dragged into cleanup. If that makes someone uncomfortable, good. Discomfort is the sound of standards returning. Question: If you installed an AI compliance layer tomorrow, who on your team would level up - and who would get exposed? The picture of me dying while filming a Hollywood movie #Leadership #Operations #ArtificialIntelligence #Accountability

Most ETA buyers do not just need a target company. They need the right acquisition model. Traditional search funds, self-funded searches, independent sponsors, committed capital vehicles, holdcos, and family office acquisition models can all pursue similar lower middle market businesses. But they do not create the same buyer. Each structure affects: • seller credibility • investor expectations • control • governance • financing certainty • economics • post-close execution That matters because many emerging searchers start with a future vision: “I want to build a platform.” “I want to do a roll-up.” “I want to create a long-duration holdco.” Those may be valid goals. But overbuilding the structure too early can create unnecessary legal expense, investor complexity, governance friction, and fundraising pressure before the buyer has even closed acquisition number one. The right question is not just: “Where do I want to be in five years?” It is also: “What structure gives me the best chance to close and operate the first deal well?” This week’s edition breaks down the major ETA models, how they differ, and how their economics typically work. Worth reading if you are evaluating entrepreneurship through acquisition, raising capital for a search, or thinking about which acquisition model actually fits your strategy.

Why is the direct investing model transforming private equity? ✳️ experienced deal makers are leaving PE / investment banking / consulting and launching their own independent sponsor firms ✳️ roughly 75% of isponsor deals are in the lower middle market (LMM) with enterprise values of $10 million - $75 million. ✳️ these targeted LMM companies (often founder / family owned under $10 million EBITDA) are the sweet spot for most isponsor deals -> offering opportunities for outsized returns through professionalization and organic / strategic growth. ✳️ success is based on finding attractive deals on a proprietary / semi-proprietary basis, coupled with the isponsor’s own industry expertise (and/or that of their operating partner, CEO sourced for the opportunity, etc). ✳️ robust capital network of SBICs, family offices, UHNWs, and HNWs provide the capital for these deals. The ability to underwrite a specific deal is a huge attraction, alongside the alignment of interest created in the isponsor / investor waterfall. ✳️ the direct “deal by deal” structure also allows extensive flexibility, including deciding to structure as Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) -> and reap the extensive federal / state capital gains tax benefits ✳️ essential for the isponsor to choose the right trusted advisors (legal, accounting, etc) familiar with independent sponsor deal structures and related nuances. Inquire as to the number of isponsor deals they have closed, the depth of their team, the value prop they offer, etc ✳️ see attached article for a comparison of investing by committed PE, independent sponsors and family offices ✅ as always, please feel free to reach out for complimentary brainstorming on latest PE / isponsor direct trends. Lippes Mathias LLP is honored to be ranked a “leading law firm” in the PE direct / independent sponsor space (1 of only 3 firms to be so ranked). We have a dedicated team of 32 attorneys supporting our clients’ direct deals, offering latest insights on market terms and tax efficient structures, providing a fantastic value proposition (often meaningfully lower cost than our direct competitors), and making complimentary connections to capital and others in our robust network. #independentsponsor #direct #familyoffice #privateequity #deal #directdeal #dealbydeal #QSBS Ed Stubbings Louise Obadia Roger Kowalski Stephanie McAlaine Ron Lippock

In 2022, something interesting happened: The stock market and job market stopped moving in sync. For years, strong companies usually meant strong hiring. But now? Markets can go up while companies automate, restructure, and reduce headcount. Companies are rewarded for trimming with stock gains. Your portfolio is benefiting from the same efficiencies that may eventually replace jobs. That’s why diversification today isn’t just about owning multiple stocks. It’s about diversifying your income sources. This week in Wealth Stack Weekly, we break down: • Why becoming an allocator matters • How to think about your balance sheet differently • And how private assets can create income outside of your W-2 500,000+ readers. Free every week 👇 www.wealthstackweekly.com

New essay on unexpected friendships, messy dinner tables, and the value of inefficiency.

This company has 150 years of brand equity, a fresh 2024 rebrand and is in a market growing at ~9% CAGR. Project Heritage is a rare find: two premium mixer brands with proven distribution, 25%+ margins, and real shelf presence. Contact Cameron to request an NDA and get additional details: cburress@sellsidegroup.com

Most ETA deals have a real estate issue. Even when no real estate is being acquired. Many buyers assume real estate only matters when the property is part of the transaction. In reality, occupancy and control issues show up in a surprising number of deals. Common examples include: • lease assignment restrictions • landlord consent requirements • zoning and permit issues • occupancy rights • related-party lease arrangements • below-market rent that inflates EBITDA The business may have operated successfully for years. Then diligence starts. The transaction introduces enough scrutiny, lender review, and operational friction for those issues to surface. What initially looks like a real estate issue often becomes a financing issue, a valuation issue, or a closing issue. Real estate problems rarely stay in the property bucket. They tend to spread throughout the transaction. https://lnkd.in/e48RDCV8

Parents everywhere know this is one of the busiest times of year for youth sports! From sports complexes and athletic facilities to community recreation spaces, PSG is proud to help create safe, secure environments where athletes, families, and fans can focus on the game. These projects play an important role in protecting facilities, organizing traffic flow, and maintaining the spaces communities rely on every day. We love being part of projects that bring people together! #PerimeterSecurity #AthleticFacilities #WeArePSG #PSG #PerimeterSolutionsGroup

A few great days in New York with the team. I always leave moments like this feeling grateful for the people around me and excited about what we’re building together. We had the chance to preview some incredible brands and styles coming to select MyEyeDr. locations this summer, including Cartier, LINDBERG, Saint Laurent, and Gucci. So many beautiful collections, fresh trends, and exciting things ahead. Every decision we make is really about the people we serve. It is about offering eyewear that feels special, supports great vision, and gives people something they are proud to wear. #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #Eyewear #LuxuryEyewear #VisionCare #NewYork

We’re going to witness the biggest small business boom in history. Even with all the AI doomerism, the ones who buy a small business over the next few years will set their families up for generations. ↓↓↓ Want to learn a bit more about what ownership is all about? Come to MSM Live and I'll teach you everything I know: https://lnkd.in/gubmPaBM

Ash Marsh and I shared Main Street Summit with the folks at FDE. I continue to personally learn God loves a heart of repentance. It’s a huge part of my walk in life and with my amazing wife. Hope this adds value! Thanks Brent Beshore and team for amazing events like Main St. you guys are a blessing!

Summer is a season when many people think about sunglasses as a style choice. In reality, they are an important part of protecting long-term eye health. Quality sunglasses do more than complete a look. They help reduce UV exposure, limit glare, and lower the risk of conditions like cataracts and other sun-related eye damage. Whether you are driving, traveling, or simply spending more time outdoors, sunglasses are an important part of protecting your vision every day. MyEyeDr. offers sunglasses with the right protection and options to fit your needs and personal style. Stop by today to find the right pair for you! #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #EyeHealth #Sunglasses #UVProtection #VisionCare #Leadership

AI Employee Designers and AI Implementers may be the best business opportunity in the world right now. The companies that know how to build AI employees, AI agents, and AI systems are going to dominate the next 5 years. Right now, businesses everywhere are trying to figure out the same thing: How do we use AI to make more money, save more time, reduce overhead, automate repetitive work, and scale faster without hiring more people? That is where AI Implementers and AI Employee Designers come in. And here is why this opportunity is exploding: Most business owners know they need AI. Almost none of them know how to actually implement it. Inside our own companies, we are building AI employees, AI agents, AI workflows, and AI departments that operate 24/7. Not only are we using it ourselves, we are helping other companies do the same thing. The demand is becoming massive. Businesses are paying huge premiums to people who can: 1. Create AI employees 2. Build AI agents 3. Automate operations 4. Increase productivity 5. Reduce staffing costs 6. Improve customer response times And the craziest part? NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. You do not need to be a coder. You do not need a tech background. You simply need to understand how to apply AI inside real businesses. You can learn how to implement AI into your own business or build an entire business helping others do it. I truly believe this is becoming one of the highest paid and most valuable business skills in the modern economy. If you want me to show you how we are doing it, and how you can do it yourself or as a business, check the link in the comments. #AI #AIEmployee #AIAgent #AIImplementer

Big thank you to White Oak Fund Services, LLC for stepping up as an accounting services corporate partner to support 51 Vets. Founded by Joseph Bondarenko, White Oak brings decades of experience in private equity fund administration, outsourced CFO services, and institutional fund operations to private equity clients of all sizes. Joe and his team are deeply committed to service and community impact, including support of the September 11th Memorial & Museum and 51 Vets. We are proud to partner with White Oak - a team that believes success means giving back.

Private Credit Is Reshaping the Fixed Income Market

The $2 Trillion Shift Happening Inside Finance

Mike Silva on the early days of his career: → Borrowing against future commissions → Watching his bank account drain → Going deeper into debt every month → Trying to convince people to trust him before he'd ever closed a deal He kept building his pipeline anyway. One Sacramento listing later — lowest cap rate, highest price per square foot in the area — his career took off. Takeaway: Persistence matters most when nobody is validating you yet. Anyone can stay motivated after a win.  The harder skill is to keep going when there's zero proof it's working. In the early stages of any career or company, that's exactly where you are. Putting in effort before the returns show up.  Building relationships, skills, and credibility before the market rewards you for it. It’s a good reminder that success is rarely linear. Sometimes the only thing between you and the breakthrough is staying in the game long enough for the work to compound. Full episode with Miguel Silva: https://lnkd.in/e-VB3vps #InvestorsAndOperators #PrivateEquity #EmergingManagers

Watch/listen to Ben Sasse's recent interviews and ask yourself if you've ever witnessed a freer man. Despite a death sentence and tremendous pain, he living with an unmistakable joy, peace, and levity. Deep wisdom rolls out of him. It begs the question, "Why?" I want that. I want that for you.

Watch/listen to Ben Sasse's recent interviews and ask yourself if you've ever witnessed a freer man. Despite a death sentence and tremendous pain, he living with an unmistakable joy, peace, and levity. Deep wisdom rolls out of him. It begs the question, "Why?" I want that. Here are the ones I've listened to: https://lnkd.in/dw7wZ99h https://lnkd.in/dKU5m5gk https://lnkd.in/dqSgC-ca

"The question I keep asking myself is why I’m waiting. Why do we wait? Why does it take a diagnosis, a crisis, a detonation, before we let God do the work He’s been wanting to do all along? Sasse said God smashing idols is a blessing. He’s right. That’s the book of Ecclesiastes. That’s what my friend David Gibson calls “living life backward.” But what if we didn’t wait for the sledgehammer? What if we started handing them over now, while we’re healthy, while there’s still time to live in the freedom that’s on the other side?"

The biggest LPs in private equity now hold close to $1 trillion in PE assets. And somehow, magnificently, they all seem to have discovered the same ten managers. Every one of the top 10 backs Blackstone. Nine of ten back KKR. Apollo, Carlyle and EQT show up across more than half the list. This is not stupidity. It is institutional logic. When you are CalPERS, ADIA, GIC or Temasek, and you need to write $500m cheques without accidentally becoming the investment committee’s next crime scene, the list of managers who can absorb the capital is not very long. So the same names keep winning. Not always because they have the best strategy. Often because they have the largest machine, the safest brand, the deepest reporting package, the cleanest institutional plumbing and the lowest career risk for everyone involved. That last bit matters more than people admit. Nobody gets fired for allocating to Blackstone. Plenty of people get remembered for backing the clever emerging manager who turned out to be a PowerPoint with a Patagonia vest. This is the great irony of private equity. The “alternatives” industry is now funded by an incredibly un-alternative group of LPs, writing increasingly large cheques to an increasingly concentrated group of managers, who then explain diversification in 40-slide annual meeting decks. The asset class started as a way to access differentiated ownership, differentiated information and differentiated returns. At the top end, it now looks a lot more like an index with better tailoring and worse liquidity. That does not make the mega-firms bad businesses. Quite the opposite. It makes them terrifyingly good businesses. But it does make the word “alternative” do a lot of unpaid labour. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #LPs #AssetManagement

LinkedIn has turned rejection into content and called it courage. Every week there is a new post from someone who got rejected from 47 jobs and is now a CEO. Or got ignored by 112 investors and built a unicorn. Or got dumped by the market, doubted by peers, laughed at by recruiters, and somehow emerged with a better personal brand than they had in the first place. It is LinkedIn’s favourite genre. Failure porn. Not failure as something painful, confusing, or genuinely destabilising. Failure as a beautifully packaged narrative arc with line breaks. A bit of rejection. A bit of grit. A bit of public vulnerability. Then a triumphant ending where the algorithm can reward both suffering and success in one convenient post. It is all very moving. And also incredibly formulaic. The point is rarely to say anything interesting about failure. It is to convert failure into status. The rejection is only there to make the success look more cinematic. The pain is carefully edited so it still feels inspirational. Nobody posts the version where they were miserable, embarrassed, slightly bitter, and had no neat lesson to offer by Thursday morning. That version does not perform. So instead we get the polished mythology. I was rejected. I kept going. Now look at me. Wonderful. LinkedIn loves this stuff because it flatters everybody. The poster gets to look resilient. The audience gets to feel inspired. And the platform gets another highly legible morality tale where adversity always leads to a better title. Real failure is usually less elegant. It is boring. Messy. Financially stressful. Bad for your confidence. Bad for your relationships. And often devoid of any obvious meaning until much later, if ever. But that is not a genre. So LinkedIn keeps giving us the cleaned up version. Just enough pain to feel human. Just enough success to feel aspirational. Just enough structure to make sure it can be consumed between two posts about culture and somebody announcing they are humbled to have been named to a list. Authenticity, apparently. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

Google has just changed the internet and most board decks will notice sometime in 2028. Yesterday at Google I/O, Search stopped pretending it was still ten blue links and a polite little box. Google announced an AI-powered search box, AI Mode at over 1 billion monthly users, information agents that monitor the web for you, and generative UI that can build custom search experiences on the fly. That sounds like a product update. It is actually a business model update. For twenty years, companies built digital strategy around a fairly simple bargain. Rank well, get traffic. Get traffic, convert some of it. Convert enough of it, call the agency and tell them they are still overpaid but marginally useful. That bargain is now being rewritten. Google says AI Overviews already reach more than 2.5 billion monthly users. TechCrunch reported that AI Mode has passed 1 billion monthly users. Digital Content Next found that most publishers in its sample saw Google search referral losses between 1% and 25% after AI Overviews. A 2026 academic study estimated AI Overview exposure reduced daily Wikipedia traffic by roughly 15%. So the issue is not whether AI search will reduce clicks. It already is. The bigger issue is that your company may still be measuring the wrong thing. Ranking first matters less when the answer is assembled before anyone reaches your site. Website traffic matters less when influence happens inside an AI-generated summary. SEO matters less when the customer journey starts with a synthetic answer, an agent, or a generated comparison that your analytics stack never sees. Most companies are still running the old playbook. More content. More keywords. More landing pages. More agency reports showing impressions up and leads mysteriously down. Lovely stuff. Very 2017. The new game is different. You need to know whether your brand is being cited, summarized, trusted, compared and recommended inside the AI layer. You need actual authority, not 900 blog posts written by someone called “the content team.” You need clean product data, structured proof, credible third-party mentions, customer evidence, technical hygiene and a brand people actually search for by name. The lazy version of this will be called GEO. Naturally, everyone will sell it by Friday. The operator version is simpler. Build a business Google’s AI can understand, customers already trust, and competitors cannot out-bland with another “ultimate guide.” Search is no longer just a traffic channel. It is becoming the interface between your market and your company. And if your entire growth strategy depends on renting attention from a page Google is actively replacing, that is probably worth discussing before the next quarterly marketing review turns into another séance for missing leads. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation #AI

Hold periods got longer. Most value creation plans still act like they did not. Private equity has a duration problem. Hold periods have stretched. Everyone knows it. Fewer exits. More waiting. More assets sitting in portfolios far longer than the original model expected. And yet a lot of value creation plans still read like the business is going to be sold in the same neat window people were underwriting five years ago. Year one, fix the basics. Year two, accelerate growth. Year three, show the story. Year four, exit beautifully. Lovely. Except now year four is often year six. Sometimes year seven. And the original plan was never built for that reality. This is where a lot of firms get caught out. The plan was designed for a shorter hold. Quick margin moves. Commercial clean up. A bit of digital lipstick. Maybe one or two add ons. Then hand the asset to the next buyer before the harder questions start arriving. That is much less workable when you own the company for materially longer. Because eventually you run out of quick fixes. The low hanging fruit is gone. The margin story has already been told. The add ons have been added. The commercial improvements that were easy have been done or attempted. And the business starts needing real operational depth rather than another round of cost management dressed as transformation. Most value creation plans are not designed for this. They are designed to deliver enough change in three to four years to justify a higher exit multiple. They are not designed to answer the question: what happens when we are still here in year six and the business needs a fundamentally different kind of investment. That is a hard question to answer with the original playbook. Because the original playbook assumed you would be gone by now. Which means firms that find themselves holding assets longer need to go back and ask different questions. What needs to be rebuilt, not just patched. What management changes are required for a longer run. What investments were previously deferred because they did not fit the original exit clock. What starts breaking in year six that nobody cared about in year three. That is the real issue. A lot of PE firms are still running short duration playbooks inside longer duration ownership. So by the time the hold extends, the business is often out of easy moves and full of postponed decisions. The board keeps talking about value creation. The company keeps recycling the same initiatives. And everyone quietly realises the original plan was a sprint strategy for what has become a marathon. Longer holds are not just a timing issue. They require a different operating plan, a different capital plan, and usually a different level of honesty about how much real transformation is left in the asset. Otherwise you are not extending value creation. You are just extending the wait. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

Five firms. Five strategies. One trillion-dollar identity crisis. For years, everyone called these businesses private equity firms because that was the original costume. The market has moved on. Some of the firms have too. Blackstone became an asset aggregator. The private equity heritage is still there, obviously, but the earnings story is now recurring fees at enormous scale. In FY2025, roughly 89% of distributable earnings came from fee-related earnings. That is not a carry business. That is an institutional capital machine wearing a very expensive gilet. Apollo became something else entirely. The spread business is now the centre of gravity. More than half of FY2025 distributable earnings came from insurance and spread-related earnings. Calling that a private equity firm feels increasingly like calling Amazon a bookstore. KKR chose the more balanced version. Fees still dominate, but Global Atlantic gives them a serious insurance engine without making the whole company feel like it swallowed an annuity platform and woke up with a new personality. Ares built the cleanest fee machine. Almost no insurance. Almost no carry. Just credit fees compounding relentlessly for a decade. Boring, repeatable, wildly effective. The sort of thing everyone pretends to admire while secretly wishing they had built it themselves. Carlyle stayed closest to the old model. More traditional private equity exposure. More carry sensitivity. More cyclicality. Also the valuation discount that comes with the market having the patience of a toddler in airport security. The market has already made its preference fairly obvious. It likes recurring fees. It likes spread income. It likes scale. It likes earnings that do not depend on waiting for exit windows to reopen while everyone pretends the 2021 marks were perfectly sensible. The awkward bit is that the firms most people still describe as “private equity” are increasingly being valued for how successfully they became something else. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #privateequity #assetmanagement #valuecreation

Locking the editorial plan for the Q3 edition of The Operator's Edge this week. Quick ask for the PE operators and operating partners reading this: What's the one thing you're wrestling with right now that you wish someone would write honestly about? Cool thing is: we tap into the growing network of Ascend execs + PE partners to crowdsource wisdom. Drop any ideas in the comments so we can give the people what they want. Operator's Edge is a briefing we send a couple times a year to PE execs and operating partners. 10 practical takes on relevant topics. If you want on the distro list, drop a comment below and we'll add you ↓↓

The home services arbitrage is still alive. Buy the local operator at 4 to 7x EBITDA. Tuck in the smaller add ons at similar, sometimes lower, multiples. Build the platform. Professionalise the call centre, CRM, digital engine, pricing discipline, branch performance, technician utilisation, procurement and reporting. Then sell the platform at 10 to 18x. Everyone in PE knows the model. The useful bit is seeing the receipts in one place. Terminix went at 19.3x pre synergy. Champions Group at 18.5x. SRS Distribution at 16.1x. Beacon Roofing at 10.8x. TopBuild at 8.5x. Meanwhile, disclosed bolt ons sit mostly in the 4 to 7x zone. The boring bit of the chart is the entire point. The money is made in the gap between buying messy, local, under-instrumented businesses and selling scaled, professionally managed platforms. A few caveats, because apparently some people on here read footnotes and ruin everyone’s fun. The bolt on dots are range averages, not single deal multiples. Synergy assumptions can make the headline multiple look very different. Terminix, for example, was 19.3x pre synergy and closer to 13.9x post synergy. And disclosed deals skew toward strategics and distribution because sponsor-to-sponsor transactions rarely disclose the good stuff. Those multiples are probably lower than the shiny dots. The more interesting shift is what Blackstone is doing. Champions Group was bought into BXPE, its perpetual capital vehicle. No neat little five-year hold. No forced exit because the fund clock is tapping its watch in the corner. Just a scaled home services platform sitting inside permanent capital. That tells you where the playbook has gone. Home services roll ups started as a multiple arbitrage trade. They are increasingly becoming permanent capital infrastructure for residential demand. Still fragmented. Still operationally ugly. Still full of local businesses running on duct tape, founder instinct and a CRM last updated during the Bush administration. Which is precisely why the arbitrage still exists. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation #HomeServices

"Proprietary deal flow" often means the banker started with you for a reason. In private equity, "proprietary deal flow" is one of those phrases that sounds much more impressive the less you examine it. It suggests access. Edge. Relationships. A secret pipeline of opportunities unavailable to the rest of the market. What it usually means is the broker called you first. And very often, the reason they called you first is not because you are uniquely brilliant. It is because nobody else wanted it. That is the part the deck tends to leave out. The deal was too small. Too awkward. Too messy. Too weird. Too cyclical. Too operationally annoying. Too dependent on one customer, one product, one founder, or one heroic story nobody fully believes. So now it is "proprietary." How convenient. Sometimes a genuinely proprietary deal is exactly that. A real relationship. A founder conversation years in the making. A business identified before any process existed. Actual insight. Actual timing. Actual sourcing work. But a lot of what gets called proprietary is really just lightly intermediated leftovers. The banker starts with a small list. You happen to be near the top. The process stays narrow. Everyone congratulates themselves on sourcing edge. No, you just got first refusal on something the broader market did not sprint towards. That can still be a good deal, by the way. Sometimes the best investments are the ones other people find too ugly, too boring, or too inconvenient to underwrite properly. But that is not the same as pretending access itself was the moat. Private equity loves language that flatters itself. Proprietary. Thematic. Differentiated. Relationship led. Fine. But if your proprietary deal flow depends on an intermediary deciding who to ring first, that is not really proprietary. That is just being early in the rejection cycle. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

I wish somebody had pulled me aside earlier. Not with theory. With the actual rules. When I first got around private equity, I knew how to run a business. I knew how to lead people. I knew how to grind. But I didn’t know the game. I didn’t know how buyers really thought. I didn’t know what made a company worth more. I didn’t know how rollover equity could turn one payday into two. Or three. Or five. So I learned it the hard way. Boardrooms. Acquisitions. Mistakes. Exits. Real money on the line. That’s what Empire Builder Academy is. It’s not me talking about the old days. It’s me taking 21 years, 58 acquisitions, and $2.5B in exits and handing the playbook to the founder who’s about to make decisions I had to make without one. The 31-year-old version of me would have moved a hell of a lot faster with this. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

11 uncomfortable truths more PE-backed execs need to hear: → Culture isn’t HR’s job. It’s yours. → Ditch the 100-page board deck. → Asking for feedback ≠ getting honesty. → You’re likely underpaying your A-players. → Top talent craves ownership, not oversight. → If your vision isn’t on paper, it doesn’t exist. → The fastest way to build trust? Say, “I messed up.” → If no one on your team challenges you, that’s your fault. → Time doesn’t fix leadership issues—it compounds them. → No people plan? Your value creation plan is already at risk. → Talent retention issues are almost always leadership issues. What else?

Private equity firms have been studying founder psychology for decades. They know your motivations, your blind spots, your negotiation patterns before you sit down. You have not studied them back. That asymmetry is where value leaks out of deals. Not in the headline multiple. Not in the reps and warranties. In the gap between what PE knows about you and what you know about PE. I sat on both sides of 58 acquisitions. I've seen how the scouting report works. The founder who walks in speaking PE's language gets a different conversation than the one who shows up with a good business and no playbook. I built Empire Builder Academy to close that gap. The preparation happens before the meeting, not during it. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #mergersandacquisitions #foundereducation

I left home at 17 with $150 in my pocket and a duffel bag on my back. No trust fund. No Ivy League acceptance letter. No family business waiting. I enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent the next four years as a Sergeant repairing classified AN/MPQ-49 Forward Area Alerting Radars. Air defense systems. 1982 to 1986. That is where I learned the things business school does not teach. Discipline. Teamwork. How to lead people who are tired, cold, and not in the mood. How to fix something complicated when failure is not optional. Every CEO seat I have held since, every acquisition I have closed, every exit I have signed, traces back to those four years and that duffel bag. I call myself a blue-collar CEO for a reason. The path is real. I walked it. I held every job a person can hold on an org chart. And when I teach inside Empire Builder Academy, I teach from the dirt up, not from a case study down. You do not need the pedigree. You need street smarts and the reps.

3 days. That's a good number for forecasting your schedule. It gives you time to: - Increase ad spend - Send email campaigns - Launch SMS blasts - Adjust pricing An SMS campaign can be sent in 10 minutes and fill tomorrow's schedule. A 3-day call board turns forecasting into action.

The skills that built your company will eventually cap it. Early on, I was the one closing deals, fixing operations, managing culture, and chasing growth all at once. It worked. Until it didn't. At a certain size, the founder who plays every instrument becomes the bottleneck. The music stops scaling because one person can only sit in one chair at a time. That is when the job changes. You stop being the player and become the conductor. The conductor's job has four sections. Culture. Economics. Growth. Acquisitions. Each one needs its own talented player. Your job is getting all four moving in time. Not playing the notes yourself. I ran three national PE-backed companies over 21 years. 58 acquisitions. 9 PE sponsors. $2.5B in exits. None of that happened because I tried to do everything. It happened because I learned to direct the orchestra and trust the chairs I filled. The hardest shift for any founder is not strategic. It is emotional. Letting go of the instrument that got you on stage in the first place. I built the Empire Builder framework around this exact transition. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #ceo #acquisitions

At 31, I didn’t know how the game worked. I knew how to work. I knew how to lead. I knew how to figure things out the hard way. But I didn’t understand private equity. I didn’t understand rollover equity. I didn’t understand how buyers think. I didn’t understand how to stay in the seat after a deal and keep compounding. I learned it the expensive way. 58 acquisitions. $2.5B in exits. Five multimillion-dollar paydays from one company. Empire Builder Academy is me taking what 61-year-old me knows now and handing it to the founder I used to be. The one building something real. The one who knows there’s another level. The one who doesn’t want to guess his way through the biggest financial decision of his life. You can learn the game by trial and error. I did. But trial and error is expensive. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

Most smart PE folks recognize that a portfolio company's culture can directly impact PE returns... but many don't know what to look for. Here are ten warning signs of cultural issues that could put a company’s success (and PE investors' returns!) at risk: ⚠️ Difficulty attracting great talent ⚠️ Excessive negative customer feedback ⚠️ Weak or declining employee engagement ⚠️ Debate and challenge are not encouraged ⚠️ Silos or competition among internal teams ⚠️ Higher-than-benchmark employee turnover ⚠️ Insistence on following a chain of command ⚠️ Infighting or finger-pointing among leadership ⚠️ Slow decision-making or unclear decision rights Assess these in due diligence, and keep your antenna up for them post-closing. * * * * * If this post resonated with you... ♻️ Please repost to share with others 🔔 Follow Dan Cremons for more like it.

When we launched Ascend 2 years ago, it was a bet on something pretty simple: To keep up, PE firms would have to become more intentional about developing port-co execs. Hold periods were lengthening Plug-n-play executive talent was harder to find Yet few sponsors were programmatic about developing the bench It's been fun seeing this play out. But there's another catalyst I didn't see coming: AI. The more AI shows up in the day-to-day, the more these execs are craving the things AI can't give them: → Real peer connection → Real convos with someone in the same seat → Trading advice on how to navigate this VUCA world If you've got portco CXO who you want to help to level up and go farther faster, enrollment is open for our Aug cohort. Info in the comments ↓↓

A lot of contractors are spending serious money on aggregator leads…then waiting too long to respond. Speed-to-lead is becoming one of the biggest competitive advantages in home services. The companies responding faster are booking more jobs without increasing lead volume. On May 26 at 1 PM ET, I'm teaming up with Tyson Chen of Avoca for a free live session breaking down: - How operators are using AI to respond to leads instantly - The follow-up automations improving booking rates - How to build scalable lead-handling systems without adding headcount - Why delayed response times quietly destroy marketing ROI If you run an HVAC, plumbing, or electrical company, this one will be worth your time. Grab your seat here: https://lnkd.in/dAkm5fXr

Reminder: repetition drives better sales conversations. At The Wilson Companies, we have been running weekly sales training for nearly a decade. Not quarterly. Not only when numbers fall. Every single week. That consistency matters because sales skills fade fast without repetition. Objection handling, financing conversations, option building, and customer education all require constant practice. The best teams repeat the fundamentals until they become automatic in the field.

The skills that build a company to $10 million are the exact skills that will stall it at $30 million. Nobody warns founders about this, and it wrecks more good companies than any competitor ever could. In the early days, your job is to do everything. You're the best salesperson, the best operator, the best problem solver in the building. You control every decision because you should. At $0 to $10 million, that intensity is your superpower. You are the business. Then you hit a wall. Usually somewhere between $10 and $30 million. And the founder's instinct is to do what always worked: grip tighter, work harder, get more involved. It's the exact wrong move. The thing that built the company is now the thing capping it. Because you've become the bottleneck. Every decision routes through you. Your best people wait for permission. The business can only move as fast as you can personally touch every part of it, and you have run out of hours. This is the gear shift. You have to stop being the first-chair player in every section and become the conductor. Your job changes from doing the work to leading the people who do the work. From managing transactions to managing process. From being in the business to being on it. Most founders cannot make this shift. They've built their entire identity around being the one who does it all, and letting go feels like losing control. So they stall. The company plateaus, the best people leave, and the founder burns out wondering why working harder stopped working. The ones who make the shift unlock the next gear. $30 million and beyond, where you partner with capital and build something far larger than you could ever run by hand. Your business outgrew the way you run it. The hardest part of scaling isn't the business. It's outgrowing yourself. This is the wall I help founders break through every single week. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #leadership #CEO

Before you hire any business coach, ask one question. Did they write the playbook — or did they read someone else's? Because there is a fundamental difference between a coach who studied frameworks and a coach who built them. One can explain the theory. The other can tell you what happens when the theory meets a $20M company with three PE board members, a broken integration, and 90 days to show results. Every framework I coach on, I built in the field. The 30/20/10 Rule? I used it to evaluate 58 companies before acquiring them. Managing the T? That's how I ran three national companies — one SLT meeting Monday morning, one-on-ones the rest of the week, the full block of knowledge by Friday. The Value Creation Plan? I wrote one for every hold period I ever operated through. Multiple arbitrage? I bought 8 HVAC companies at 5x and sold the consolidated platform at 14x three years later resulting in a 4x MOIC and 50% plus IRR for investors. None of that came from a course I took. It came from 21 years in the CEO seat with real money on the line and real people counting on me. That's what you get in a coaching relationship with me. Not someone who studied private equity — someone who lived it across nine PE sponsors and $2.5 billion in exits. Not someone who teaches M&A from a textbook — someone who's personally integrated 58 acquisitions and can tell you which ones worked, which ones didn't, and why. The playbook exists. I know because I wrote it. Four #1 bestselling books, a 21-lesson Academy, and thousands of hours of one-on-one coaching with 100+ founders on 5 continents — all built on the same operating system that produced the exits. The question isn't whether the playbook works. It's who wrote yours. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #leadership #CEO

Your core values are one thing on a piece of paper (or wall) and another thing lived. We live them at The Wilson Companies.

Most founders sell like the left side of this image. Disorganized. Reactive. Scrambling to pull financials together because a broker called last month and said "I've got a buyer." Sticky notes instead of systems. Hope instead of process. Figuring it out deal-by-deal because they've never done this before and they're too proud to admit they need help. The right side is what preparation looks like. I wrote The Exit Strategy Playbook because the gap between those two sides is worth millions of dollars. Not theoretically. Literally. The difference between a prepared seller and an unprepared one, selling the exact same company, can be a 2x to 3x difference in outcome. Here's what prepared looks like. You understand the universe of buyers — strategic, financial, alternative — and you know which type wants what you've built. You've isolated your real estate into a separate entity with arm's-length leases so it's not dragging your valuation down. Your financial reporting is clean, audited, and tells a growth story, not a hockey stick projection. You've assembled four advisors — tax, legal, accounting, and an investment banker — before you ever take a meeting. Here's what unprepared looks like. You take the first offer that comes across your desk. You negotiate your own deal because you've negotiated everything else in your life. You don't know the difference between a stock sale and an asset sale. You don't understand rollover equity. You leave your real estate inside the operating company and wonder why the multiple came in low. With 80% of all deals now going to private equity, the buyers across the table from you do this for a living. They will know within minutes whether you're prepared or winging it. And they will price your company accordingly. 198 pages. The full playbook for selling smart. Not fast. Smart. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #CEO

When my clients win, my soul smiles... One of the great joys of this chapter of my life is helping entrepreneurs achieve outcomes they once thought were out of reach. This week, a member of Empire Builder Academy closed her first acquisition. Not just any acquisition. A high-quality accounting firm with a high-quality owner. The acquisition nearly doubles the size of her company. The purchase multiple was so attractive that the bank provided 100% SBA financing. And based on the value creation potential, this single transaction could add more than $10 million of enterprise value at exit. But don't take my word for it. Jayanthi Ganapathy's note to me says it all (used with her permission). "I wanted you to be one of the first to know, because your guidance through Empire Builder Academy has been a genuine force behind this milestone." "The deal had its share of complexity and curveballs, but the frameworks you've shared — how to think about value creation, how to stay focused when things get hard, how to build with intention — carried me through." "This is the first acquisition for FinAccurate. It won't be the last." — Jayanthi Ganapathy What makes me happiest isn't the transaction itself. It's seeing an entrepreneur realize they are capable of far more than they imagined. Buying a business. Creating shareholder value. Building an empire. I've spent decades buying companies, scaling them, and exiting them. Today, my greatest adrenaline rush comes from watching others do the same. Congratulations, Jay. The first acquisition is always special. Now the fun begins. Whose next? See you inside Empire Builder Academy (link in comments) #MergersAndAcquisitions #AcquisitionEntrepreneur #AccountingFirm #BusinessGrowth #EmpireBuilderAcademy #Entrepreneurship #ValueCreation

Better sales processes solve a lot of problems fast: higher average tickets, stronger cash flow, better marketing ROI, and more profitable growth. In this week’s newsletter, I’m sharing three podcasts packed with sales lessons, training strategies, and real-world tactics operators, like you, can apply immediately.

Life’s too short to buy fixer-uppers. That was always my rule. Find a good company. Run by good people. Give the founder a liquidity event. Then make them a rollover investor so we’re aligned. That’s the part people misunderstand about private equity. At its best, it is not “sell and disappear.” It is partnership. The founder gets diversification. The PE firm gets a motivated operator. Everybody is working toward the second bite. That alignment is what makes the playbook work. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

"It's a smaller company. How hard can it be?" Famous last words from the big company exec stepping into the private equity jungle. I've seen this movie before. Regional VP of a F500 jumps into PE-backed role with a new C-suite title. Their confidence is sky high. They'll run circles around this sleepy middle-market business. Yet by month 9, they have "the stare." 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳*𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗷𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻'𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: The "90-day listening tour" ends at day 45. By day 90, the sponsors expect execution (not a fluffy PowerPoint with ideas). There is no M&A Director, no Strategy Director, no Comms Director. There is you and a CFO who is also the FP&A team (and potentially the founder's stepson who cannot be fired). Board questions demand specificity, a clear plan of action, and direct linkage with the value creation plan. No vagaries like, "things are trending up," or "we're well positioned for Q3." There are no committees, approval chains, or strategic offsites. The decision is yours and you need to make it quickly, without complete information (and if it goes wrong, it's on you). The exit clock is always ticking, and the sponsors know each year will gobble up IRR. There is no "we'll fix it next cycle." (Get it done or get replaced). Mentioning how you did things at your former F500 company won't impress anyone. It will actively piss people off. The middle market is not the minor leagues. Don't let the smaller P&L fool you. It's the jungle. And the jungle doesn't care about your pedigree, your F500 playbook, or how many direct reports you used to have. It only cares whether you can survive it.

Entrepreneurs find success early by being detail focused control freaks. They are the first chair players in every section of their orchestra. This works until it doesnt. Eventually most run out of bandwidth and inevitably growth stalls as a result. Entrepreneurs that learn how to shift gears and manage process instead of minutia break through that barrier to become Empire Builders! They become conductors of the orchestra and their SLT become the first chair players in each section. Philip Golinsky, DC and Phoebe (Thuy) Casey are conductors! They have busted through the ceiling and have become Empire Builders! It’s been fun to witness the explosive growth of RxWellness Spine & Health from the boardroom. Local to Regional to National. Differentiated and Unstoppable! Coming to your town soon! #leadership #EmpireBuilder #mergersandacquisitions #growthengine #privateequity

Most founders sell their company once, take the check, and walk away. I sold the same company five times and never left. The exit isn't the finish line. It's a checkpoint on the wealth-creation highway. Here's how it works. When you sell to a PE firm, you don't have to cash out completely. You take a meaningful amount off the table, then roll a portion of your equity into the new deal. You stay in the seat, keep running the company, and keep a stake in the next chapter. Then the firm grows the business and sells again a few years later, usually at a higher value. Your rolled equity gets a second payday, often bigger than the first. Then you roll again. My record is five separate multimillion-dollar paydays from one company in 13 years. My worst rollover returned 2x. My best returned 11x. If I'd taken the first check and walked, I'd have made a fraction of what I actually made. The compounding is the whole game, and it only happens if you stay at the table. The coins don't stack when you cash out. They stack when you stay in and let the next owner build on what you started. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

I got bored running one company at a time. That’s the honest answer. I had made the money. Built the companies. Done the deals. But I wanted a new challenge. Now I work with PE firms to evaluate investments and identify risk. And I work with founders to eliminate that risk before the PE guys ever show up. That’s the game. The less risk they see, the better the company sells. It’s not complicated. Build the business so a sophisticated buyer can say yes faster, with more confidence, at a better number. That’s what I do now. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

EBA is not a course. I know that’s how people try to categorize it, but it misses the point. A course gives you information. What founders actually need is a lot more than that. They need to understand the game. They need a strategy that fits their business. Then they need help executing it. That’s why EBA works the way it does. Education. Strategy. Execution. All three. Because information by itself doesn’t build a better company. Applied judgment does. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

This is the playbook. Not theory. Not a whiteboard exercise. I bought 23 small companies at around 5x earnings. Put them together. Created operating leverage. Grew organically. Improved margins. Made the strategic pivots. Then sold the platform for 14x. That is the math. For every dollar of earnings I bought for $5, I sold it for $14. And because the cash flow of those businesses serviced the debt, the arbitrage created hundreds of millions in profit. That script is being run every day, in industries all over the world. Most founders just don’t know how it works yet. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

A private equity-backed CEO told me last week there are roles his company will need to hire for in 6 months that don't have titles yet. He has no idea what they are. He doesn't need to. His Chief People Officer (CPO) is figuring it out. So how do you build that kind of partnership? I sat down with Kelley Castell, CEO of ProfitSolv, and Finesse Blumenthal, his CPO to learn how they built it. 7 months after Finesse joined, eNPS was up 40+ points, Glassdoor had lifted meaningfully, and they'd hired 76 new employees across 11 acquired companies. That kind of progress in 7 months is fast, but this is the pace PE demands. Kelley and Finesse walked me through how they pulled it off without the wheels coming off. The numbers are real, but they're not what I took away from the conversation. What stuck with me was how Kelley and Finesse operate together. There's real trust between them, and almost no ego in the room. They argue when they disagree, move on quickly, and don't get territorial about who owns what. For Kelley, People isn't merely a support function. It's how you drive integration, establish AI-readiness, and protect enterprise value. And Finesse isn't a traditional HR executive waiting to be told what to do. She thinks like an operator. She's anticipating risk, she's tying workforce strategy to EBITDA, and she's in the room when decisions get made. That's what the CEO-CPO relationship should look like in PE. 2 people with shared accountability for where the business is headed, with enough honesty between them to get there. Most companies I see are reactive on talent. They notice the problem when someone quits, when integration stalls, when the org chart stops making sense. By then they're playing catch-up, and in PE catch-up is expensive. Kelley and Finesse have built something different and have the numbers to prove it.

Private equity firms are still asking what it takes to make data work at scale. On Investment Management Operations, Scott MacDonald speaks with Adam Ciborowski, CPA of RCP Advisors on building infrastructure across fund operations, document workflows, and AI-powered private equity monitoring. https://lnkd.in/exQyq-Ym With thanks to Carta.

A career across value investing and middle-market private equity became the foundation for a different kind of firm. Erik Brooks, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Ethos Capital shares the lessons on risk, betting on people, and what led him to build a firm that does one deal a year — on purpose. https://lnkd.in/ejAahYCX With thanks to AlphaSense, Bipsync, and SRS Acquiom.

I overheard an LP grilling a GP at a Dallas country club. They were talking about portfolio management. It got uncomfortable fast. *** Let me set the scene. The gentlemen at the table next to me had just finished their meal. It was clear they were talking about private equity by the nature of the convo. LP: "What does your portfolio leadership assessment process looks like." GP: "What?" LP: "'What' ain't no process I've ever heard of. They do assessments in 'What?'" GP: "What?" LP: "SAY WHAT AGAIN! I DARE YOU! I DOUBLE DARE YOU M*** F***! SEE IF I COMMIT CAPITAL!" GP: "W-w-we... we assume the Big Box search firm does that and then we..." LP: "Go on!" GP: "We... we get good vibes at dinner with the deal team..." LP: "Does that look like due diligence to you?" GP: "What?" LP: "DOES. THAT. LOOK. LIKE. DUE DILIGENCE?" GP: "NO!" LP: "Then why'd you try to pass it off as a rigorous process when you asked me for Fund III?" **** On a serious note, Leadership assessment is not the same thing as executive search. Nor is it an online quiz administered between interviews. It is a PROCESS led by a PE-fluent business psychologist.  And the output should not be a bloated report full of jargon. It should be grounded in the value creation plan and tell you (in plain English) how a leader measures up against the mandate, operating environment, and future targets. It should clarify: (1) Where they are genuinely strong.  (2) Where their derailers and blind spots will surface under pressure.  (3) What support they need to be effective in the role. 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘃𝗲, 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗟𝗣𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆.

The people best at making things work are the worst at letting things go. Walking away isn't the failure. Staying is. That's the trap Erik Brooks named on the latest Capital Allocators, and it's one I've watched smart investors fall into for years. The instinct that makes someone a great operator is the same instinct that keeps them grinding on the wrong thing for six months too long. 🎧 Full episode linked in comments below!

How do you manage $6 billion by doing one deal a year, and sometimes zero...? I've interviewed hundreds of allocators and managers. Very few are willing to do less on purpose. Erik Brooks left a firm he loved to build one that almost no one else would build. Listening to him explain why, I kept thinking about how often conviction gets confused with activity in this business, and how rare it is to meet someone who's drawn the line on the other side. 🎧 Full episode linked below in the comments!

Joshua Steiner's mistake was front-page news in 1994, but he made a bigger one in the next 25 years. He argues every mistake is a three-act play: Act I - stems from early developmental actions. Act II - The mistake itself. Act III - Living with it. Josh spent decades fixated on Act II, but what he missed was that Act III where the real damage compounded. Refusing to talk about it. Refusing to unpack it. Letting it own him long after everyone else had moved on. Most people relive the moment of the mistake, but the more useful question is what they did with it afterward. 🎧 This episode all about making mistakes is not only free, but available wherever you stream your podcasts. Linked below!

Top quotes from this week's conversation with Erik Brooks of Ethos Capital.

No one feels anxious about falling into a pit of vipers. The danger is too remote to register, but hand a child a snake at a birthday party, pulse spikes, and room changes. That's the real definition of anxiety: wanting something and fearing it at the same time. Joshua Steiner argues that every compelling investment carries the same DNA. The reason to buy is wrapped around the reason to walk away. 🎧 Full episode with Josh is available now wherever you stream your podcasts!

The funniest thing about private equity is how little of it is actually private anymore. Not because firms suddenly became transparent. Calm down. Let’s not get carried away. Because underneath the industry now sits a shadow cap table of minority GP stakes, fee streams, carry participation, balance sheet bets and very polite strategic partnerships that mostly mean: “we would like a slice of your management company without having to run your Monday morning investment committee.” Blackstone Strategic Capital. Blue Owl. Petershill. Hunter Point. Behind nearly every supposedly independent PE firm is another asset manager quietly clipping a piece of the economics. Leonard Green. BC Partners. Vista. Silver Lake. Clearlake. Francisco Partners. GTCR. Sixth Street. Permira. L Catterton. General Catalyst. Some of these are disclosed. Many are not. Most stakes are minority positions, typically in the 5 to 20% range, which is just enough to be economically interesting and not enough to make anyone use the word “control” in a meeting with lawyers present. The point is not that GP stakes are bad. The point is that private equity has become a fee stream ecosystem wrapped in an independence costume. LPs commit to funds run by GPs. Other firms own slices of those GPs. Insurance capital, permanent capital, GP stakes funds and balance sheets all sit behind the curtain. Everyone is still calling it alignment, because apparently “beautifully layered fee extraction machine” tested poorly with pension trustees. The firms that bought these stakes understood something simple. Owning companies is hard. Owning the people who charge fees for owning companies can be much cleaner. Less heroic, obviously. But quite a bit more profitable. And wonderfully private. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #GPStakes #ValueCreation

Most operating partners fail because the firm set them up to fail. Operating partners do not usually fail because they lack skill. They fail because nobody gave them authority, air cover, or a mandate anyone in the business actually respects. That is a very different problem. Private equity loves the idea of the operating partner. It sounds serious. Hands on. Value creation oriented. A sign the firm is more than just spreadsheets, leverage, and opinions in a conference room. Then the OP arrives and reality kicks in. No real budget. No clear decision rights. No direct line to the sponsor when management starts resisting. No explicit backing from the board. No clarity on whether they are there to advise, push, inspect, or actually change anything. So they end up in the worst possible position. Expected to drive change. Not empowered to enforce it. Management senses this immediately. If the CEO thinks the operating partner is just a helpful suggestion in human form, that is exactly how they will be treated. Polite meetings. Selective listening. A lot of nodding. Very little movement. Then six months later everyone says the OP "wasn't effective." Maybe. Or maybe the firm sent someone into a political system with no weapon, no cover, and no serious mandate, then acted surprised when influence turned out to be harder than the website implied. This happens constantly. The operating partner sees the issue. Knows the fix. Can tell where the business is drifting. Can spot the weak leader, the broken process, the fake metric, the commercial problem management keeps dressing up as market softness. But seeing it is not enough. If the sponsor will not back the intervention, if the board will not reinforce the message, and if management knows there are no consequences for ignoring it, the OP is basically there to narrate the decline in better language. That is not an operating failure. That is an ownership failure. Good operating partners need three things. Authority. Air cover. And a mandate that survives contact with the CEO. Without that, the role becomes theatre. A smart person saying sensible things in rooms where nobody has to listen. Private equity talks a lot about value creation. It should spend more time asking whether its operating people have the power to create any. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

Year 2 of teaching Value Creation in Small Business at Chicago Booth is in the books. Last night was final presentation night, and I walked out blown away... Glad I'm not competing with these 65 students for a PE ops or EtA job. The quality of thinking, pragmatism, and appreciation for the messy operating realities of SMB value creation was crazy impressive. 2 years ago, Alex Hodgkin, CFA invited me to do this with him. It's been one of the hardest and most gratifying things I've taken on in a while. A few reflections on teaching from year 2: → Way more work and way more joy than I expected. → I'm at my best around smart people who want to learn. Turns out that's the whole gig. What a privilege. → Teaching is a full-body workout. Reading the room, steering Q&A, keeping the energy up, all at once. Like walking and chewing bubble gum for 3 hours straight. → It's one of the best ways I know to stay sharp. You never really know if you understand something until you have to teach it. → Behind every great class is a great TA, the unsung hero of the whole thing. Montgomery Miller was simply exceptional. → Failing is part of the gig. Some things we tried flopped. We asked for feedback, adjusted, kept moving. Mostly though, just feeling grateful: to Alex, Montgomery, the epic lineup of guest CEOs who joined us (who have created billions of EV combined), and to the room full of students who showed up and brought it every week. Udeaku Zack Jolene Sumair Michael Ross Wander Samriti Fiona Henry Dennis Gabe Rit Shingo Matthew Jay Zachary Michael Muhammad Iqbal Ibrahim Aarzoo James Yuval Selena Farisa Brian Baba Cael Nathaniel Owen Stuti Ned Diego Fernando Ryu Michael Yasir Alex Upesh Ryan Bhadri Thomas Gordon Casey Michael Rohan Suhardeep Piyush Michael Jack Noor Casey Jackie Imokhai Nickson Kimberly Jay Dorothy Joe Joey CJ Grant Janet Melissa Elena

Dad hack: brought each of my kids a hotel keycard from my last work trip. Called it a "Boston Key." Saved me $25 in Hudson News junk. And triggered the kind of reaction I'd expect if I had shown up with a pony. Fellow traveling parents of young kids: you're welcome.

I taught a class session at Booth on Talent recently, and organized it around what I think is a super clarifying concept: maximizing eLTV. Here's the idea: Talent feels squishy. So in most value creation plans, it lands in the soft-stuff column because it's inherently less quantifiable. Something to figure out later. Yet any PE person with half a brain recognizes that having great, fit-for-purpose talent is critical to value creation success (a "meta-lever" as I referred to it in Winning Moves). eLTV (employee lifetime value) is the bridge. Every person on your team produces a curve like this. → Negative on day one. → Ramp. → Peak output. → Eventually they leave. The shaded area (eLTV) is the total value they create. And your job as a value creator is to expand it. Three ways to do that: → SELECT well. A better starting point. → ACTIVATE faster. A steeper ramp to peak. → MULTIPLY harder. A higher peak that lasts longer. It's a better way to conceptualize & quantify how talent impacts value creation... especially for the left brain folks out there.

Carlyle is a useful reminder that most private equity firms are still private equity firms. That sounds obvious, but it matters. The biggest alternative asset managers have spent the last decade making the model less dependent on the traditional private equity cycle. Insurance. Credit. Permanent capital. Spread earnings. Balance sheet scale. All very clever, all very useful, all slightly funny when the industry still calls itself private equity with a straight face. Carlyle sits closer to the older model. Management fees grow. Carry comes and goes. Exits matter. Market windows matter. Fundraising matters. That is not a criticism. It is the normal shape of the business. The chart is clean because the business is still relatively clean. Fee-related earnings have grown steadily, reaching roughly $1.2bn by 2025. That is the part public markets like. Recurring, visible, understandable. The dashed line is the more traditional private equity bit. Realized performance revenues spike when the exit environment is good, then fall back when it is not. Which is exactly what carry does. It is not broken. It is just cyclical. Like pretending every company in the portfolio is “resilient” until the first refinancing memo lands. The strategic question for Carlyle is not whether this model works. It clearly does. The question is whether public markets will keep rewarding firms that look like classic private equity when the largest platforms are increasingly valued on earnings streams that look less like carry and more like financial infrastructure. That is the real tension. Carlyle stayed closer to the model most firms still live with. The giants are the exception. Not the rule. #PrivateEquity #AssetManagement #ValueCreation #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity

Ares built the boring machine. No insurance balance sheet. No synthetic spread income. No great mystical sermon about permanent capital while someone quietly bolts an annuity book onto the back of the firm. Just fees. From 2014 to 2025, Ares took fee-related earnings from roughly $150m to $1.8bn. Over the same period, realized net performance income stayed tiny by comparison. Even in the better carry years, it barely changes the story. That matters because most alternative asset managers have spent the last decade trying to convince public market investors that they are less dependent on the thing that made them famous. Carry is wonderful when it shows up. So is sunshine in Yorkshire. The better business is the one where earnings do not require exits, marks, perfect timing, a benevolent Fed, and three investment bankers pretending the buyer’s “strategic rationale” justifies the price. Ares has become one of the cleanest examples of the modern alternatives model. Credit-led. Fee-heavy. Scalable. Less theatrical than the mega-cap alts that now look like private equity firms, insurers, asset managers, retirement platforms, and small nation states wearing the same fleece vest. To be fair, the insurance model is not wrong. Apollo and KKR have made that argument very well. Blackstone has built its own version through perpetual capital and retail. Those are real businesses. Ares just took the simpler route. Raise capital. Manage credit. Compound management fees. Keep carry as upside rather than the main course. The caveat, because someone in compliance will otherwise develop a facial twitch: the pre-2020 carry figures are directional estimates because Ares changed reporting definitions over time. The shape of the chart is the point, not whether 2017 was off by a rounding error large enough to buy a nice house in Greenwich. The lesson for PE-backed companies is painfully obvious. The best businesses are usually not the ones with the sexiest upside story. They are the ones where the revenue engine keeps working when the market stops clapping. Predictable beats heroic. Sadly, that does make for a worse conference panel. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #AresManagement #AlternativeAssets

In earlier chapters of my career, when work got especially demanding, I'd make the same mistake every time: I'd throttle up, work harder, and drop everything that brings me joy. → Stop reading. → Skip workouts. → Postpone trips. → Cancel dinners. I'd convince myself it was the responsible thing to do. "Embrace the grind culture." It felt productive. But I now realize... it wasn't. Took me embarrassingly long to realize: fun and recovery aren't distractions. They restore your perspective. They reset your nervous system. They remind you that life exists beyond the next deliverable. The tougher things get, the more you need them. Not less.

A few weeks away can give you a different kind of clarity. After traveling to Japan and Korea, I found myself reflecting not only on the beauty of different cultures, but also on the discipline, intentionality, and attention to detail that can be seen in the way people move, serve, build, and lead. As an operator, I notice those things. The systems behind the experience. The consistency behind the service. The thoughtfulness behind the smallest details. It reminded me that growth is not only about moving faster or doing more. Sometimes, growth comes from slowing down long enough to observe what excellence looks like in a different environment. That is something I want to continue bringing into the way we build at RxWellness. A stronger patient experience. A more intentional team culture. A deeper commitment to doing things well, not just doing more. Travel has a way of reminding us that leadership is not only shaped in meetings, decisions, and strategy. Sometimes, it is shaped by what we pause long enough to notice. #Leadership #OperationalExcellence #PatientExperience #HealthcareLeadership #RxWellness

In today’s newsletter, I break down how the best (and most successful) sales teams in home services are not relying on natural talent or one-off motivation. Instead, they are running repeatable systems built around training, role play, accountability, and customer education.

Join Jack Carr and me for a free live session where we break down which roles in HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies should stay in-house, which can go offshore, and how to structure your team for real scale and profitability. Save your seat here -> https://lnkd.in/eVBR_A7m

Thrilled to announce my debut book: EBITDA, Pray, Leverage: One GP's Journey Through Middle-Market Private Equity. I'm a business psychologist who specializes in executive interrogation. I've seen/heard things most people wouldn't believe. Now, I'm pulling the curtain back on how private equity firms select portfolio leaders. The raw unfiltered truth. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀: "I felt personally attacked on every page." -- Vice President, Gorgonzola Capital "Mr. Salazar has never worked at McKinsey and it shows." -- Current strategy consultant "Glad to know I wasn't the only one who trusted our Operating Partner's golf buddy as PortCo CEO." -- Managing Director, Priapus Partners "Wildly inaccurate. The junior associates running our CEO searches aren't 23 years old. They're 25." -- Big Box Search Firm Partner "I laughed. I cried. And then I updated my resume." -- PE-Backed CFO in year 8 of the hold period. "I wish I'd read this before I rolled my equity. -- Former PortCo CEO, Currently in Therapy. "We look forward to seeing Mr. Salazar in court." -- Attorney, Suckman & Gluckman LP Coming never to a Hudson News near you! To celebrate, I'm giving away signed copies to the first 20 people who comment "EBITDA"

Small businesses typically do not require revolutionary changes to grow rapidly. They need disciplined execution of the fundamentals at a higher level. What does this look like? I share my thoughts in today's newsletter...

George Orwell paid close attention to private equity. He said the industry had, "more euphemisms than the Soviet Union." All jokes aside, Private equity has built an entire vocabulary around portfolio leadership that sounds rigorous but means nothing. PortCo CXO turnover is commonplace, mostly unplanned (55%), and overwhelmingly PE-driven (92%). And at every stage of the hiring process, the language masks the sloppiness. "𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻" = a recycled job description with the company name swapped out. No clear mandate. No success outcomes. No alignment between board and operator on what winning looks like. The CEO shows up day one and has to guess what the job is. "𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁" = pick one or more of the following: A search firm write-up by a 25yr old associate. A 45min interview by a deal partner who read the resume in the Uber. A $150 online quiz completed with ChatGPT open in the next tab. Maybe a case study? None of these are assessment. And yet, all of them get called "assessment." "𝗢𝗻𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴" = a firm handshake and "call us if you need anything." No transition plan. No governance clarity. No early warning system. The CEO is dropped into a burning building with a value creation plan (that they had no input on) and a wish list. 14 months later when things fall apart, the euphemisms kick in. "The fit wasn't right." "We're going in a different direction." "It was a mutual decision." And the crown jewel of PE doublespeak: "𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻." As if the CEO simply floated away on their own. A natural phenomenon that simply couldn't be avoided. They'll tell themselves they followed best practices. And the cycle resets for the next CXO search. As George Orwell famously said on Joe Rogan, "For private equity, the language does the dirty work. The words exist so the people behind them never have to answer for anything."

Private equity conferences are great for exactly one group of people: the organizers. (Here are 5 reasons why). Before people come at me with pitchforks and torches, let me be clear. I am NOT making fun of anyone who attends a PE conference. Meeting people face-to-face is still valuable and needed more than ever in a virtual-first world. But the organizers have been getting away with highway robbery! 𝟭. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝟵𝟵% 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀. Walk the floor and count. Consultants, AI solution vendors, search firms. All hunting for the 4 GPs who showed up for the open bar. Let's call it what it is. You're at a trade show where the buyers didn't come. 𝟮. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 "𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴" 𝗶𝘀 𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗿𝘀. 200 service providers exchanging business cards with other service providers and calling it "pipeline". EVERYONE is pitching. NOBODY is buying. And the whole thing feels like speed-dating with people who think that they're out of your league. 𝟯. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗨𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮. Every panel sounds like "Navigating Value Creation in an Evolving Landscape." Every speaker delivers the same sanitized talking points they posted on their firm's blog last quarter. You paid $4K for a live reading of a corporate whitepaper with the most "no shit" insights imaginable. 𝟰. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗗 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀. The "thought leaders" on stage bought their speaking slot. They're running a 45min infomercial they paid $25K for. Everybody knows this, but somehow drawing attention to it ruins that shared fantasy. This is corporate LARPing. 𝟱. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀. The content is curated by whoever wrote the biggest check. So you get a panel on "AI-powered talent solutions" presented by the company that sells AI-powered talent solutions (Go figure). This model has a name. The "pay-to-play" model was outlawed by the FCC in the 1960s when record labels were paying DJs to play their music (Google "payola"). But when it applies to thought leadership, we pretend it's not a problem. Sorry for the long rant... See you at next year's event!

I've interviewed some of the best investors in the world. The ones who raise the most money aren't always the smartest in the room; they're the ones who are best at making other people feel like they are. John Kim spent three decades raising over $70 billion and distilled it all into one insight: most of us are wired to treat people the way we want to be treated. In sales, in leadership, in parenting, that instinct quietly undermines us every time, and the best fundraisers figured out that the opposite is true. 🎧 Full conversation with Kimmer is live now wherever you stream your podcasts.

Ted Williams would regularly let strikes go straight through the strike zone. Fans would lose their minds. Coaches too. The pitch was RIGHT THERE, but Williams had studied his successes and knew the game he brought to the field. He knew exactly which strikes he could hit out of the park, and which ones would get him thrown out. So he'd just watch them go by. John Kim told me this story when I asked him how the best fundraisers handle objections. $70 billion raised, and yet the discipline is not to swing at half of it. 🎧 Full episode with Kimmer is linked in the comments below!

Failure is a plan that didn't work out. A mistake is a decision made alone, without self-awareness, that you wish you could take back. Joshua Steiner Our industry has built rituals around failure. Post-mortems. Lessons learned. IC debriefs. We've built almost nothing around mistakes. They get buried. That gap is where most of the real learning sits. Full episode with Joshua Steiner linked in the comments below.

Top quotes from this week's conversation with Joshua Steiner, co-author of "From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn’t Own You:" 1. "A mistake is a decision that you make, almost always by yourself, where you're not aware of your surroundings or your emotional state, and then it leads to regret." 2. "Each mistake is a three-act play. There’s act one, and that's when your schemas are generally developed. Act two is when you make the mistake itself, and then act three is how do you deal with it." 3. "Never judge a decision by its outcome." 4. "A lot of investing needs to reflect underlying emotions. It needs to reflect the personalities and characters of the CEOs that you're backing." 5. "Almost every compelling investment has an approach-avoidance capacity. It's that willingness to understand what is compelling about it and what is making us fearful." 6. "As soon as you’re a fiduciary for anybody else, the standard is entirely different, and the process you have to use is entirely different." 7. "Can you look your partners in the eye and say, 'Your incentives and my incentives, your objectives and my objectives are as closely aligned as possible'? That’s the most important question." 8. "If you talk to a CEO and they can tell you the career aspirations of their five or six direct reports, the likelihood that they're a really good manager is quite high." With thanks to AlphaSense, Bipsync, and SRS Acquiom. https://lnkd.in/eE7hd9HM

Imagine being subpoenaed for your personal diary and then having to testify before Congress about its contents. This was the reality for Joshua Steiner, who served as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Treasury during the Whitewater investigation. Faced with a choice on the stand, he had to decide whether to confirm a diary entry he knew wasn't entirely accurate or correct it, which could imply he was either lying to his diary or to Congress. This early-career misstep ultimately inspired him to write "From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn't Own You", a book focused on making mistakes, best practices for putting them in the rearview mirror, and how to not let them define you. The full story from Joshua Steiner is well worth a listen in the episode linked in the comments.

SEO has changed fast over the last 12 months. Most home service companies haven’t adjusted yet. AI Overviews are changing how customers search, which companies get clicks, and what actually ranks. The old SEO playbook is getting outdated quickly. Lisa Appleby, Head of Organic Search & Websites at Service Scalers, is hosting a free live session breaking down what home service operators need to understand now. She’ll cover: - How AI Overviews are impacting local search visibility - Why E-E-A-T and brand authority matter more than ever - What technical SEO foundations still move the needle - How conversational and AI-powered search are changing customer behavior - What HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies should prioritize over the next 12–24 months When? June 2, 2026, at 1 PM ET Save your seat...https://lnkd.in/eUUzYnG4

We pass on way more deals than we say yes to. Why? Because a bad acquisition can drag you backward. The wrong ingredients slow growth, burn cash, and distract from the business you already know how to run. Knowing what's inside your "buy box" allows you to make informed and confident acquisition decisions. What's inside your buy box?

Reputation is the reason one company gets the call while another gets ignored. The good news: it’s not random. This playbook breaks down how to build trust, generate momentum, and turn your reputation into a consistent growth engine week after week. Share with an operator who needs to see this.

Your business does not grow from fixing problems (although troubleshooting is part of your job). It grows from presenting better options, building trust, and creating enough perceived value for customers to take action. Let today's newsletter be your guide...

A lot of contractors look at competing companies with 20,000 Google reviews and assume the game is already over. False. Today's newsletter tells you why.

Bukowski knew a few things about waking up next to the wrong person. He had strong opinions about how private equity selects its portfolio leaders. All jokes aside, PE treats talent sourcing and talent assessment like the same job. They're not even the same profession. I rant about this topic weekly, yet my DMs are full of people who think I'm a recruiter (I'm not). Here is the difference: 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗷𝗼𝗯 (led by recruiters). You're combing through networks, vetting experience and credentials, then selling the opportunity to top talent. Placement = payment. 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗷𝗼𝗯 (led by business psychologists).  You're predicting how a specific human will perform under board pressure, capital constraints, and a hold clock. With zero placement incentive. Assessment professionals dig into what the resume will never tell you. What a leader is like at their best and at their worst. Beyond the polished interview performance. Different training. Different methods. Different professionals. The big search firms know this. Yet they bundle "assessment" into the search engagement anyway, because unbundling it would cost them margin (and we can't have that if the search firm is also PE-backed.) But who is kicking the tires on what really matters? CXOs rarely get pushed out for lacking technical competence. (Ok, maybe the HVAC founder's nephew was actually a bad CFO). But I'm talking about operators that the PE firm selects vs inherits. Most of their exits come down to the "psychological intangibles." Rigidity. Failure to adapt. Inability to make decisions with incomplete information. Emotional volatility. And pissing the wrong people off. None of this lives on a resume. Your Big Box search firm can't see it (and doesn't want to). Both would slow down the placement machine. And considering the 7-figure cost of CXO churn, the industry can no longer afford to take shortcuts. As Bukowski's once said on the Joe Rogan podcast, "Knowing people is a dirty business. You've got to sit with them long enough for the mask to slip. PE guys don't have the patience or the stomach for it. They want a spreadsheet that tells them a man is good. There is no such spreadsheet."

"I ran the numbers on your labor costs and I think you can deliver the same output with fewer techs in the field." A mid 20s private equity associate walks into a board meeting with a recommendation he built in Excel over the weekend. He's never managed a team.  He's never run a lemonade stand, let alone a P&L.  He's never had to fire someone and explain it to the remaining employees on Monday morning. Yet he speaks with the conviction of a gray-haired industry veteran. And that conviction is what kills the operator-board relationship. The irony here is that none of this is ever done with ill intent. The PE sponsors are also under pressure and genuinely think they're being helpful. But good intentions don't prevent the breakdown. PE sponsors hire me as an independent third party to evaluate their Portco leaders. But I've come to realize that I'm often the only unconflicted observer watching the frustration simmer. That frustration has nowhere to go. Which is where I come in. There are things operators wish they could tell their boards. They fantasize about grabbing them by the collar of their Patagonia vest and shaking them vigorously. Telling them that what they are doing is actively hurting execution. That if they really wanted to help, they would get out of their way. Open doors. Remove barriers. And clarify priorities. But they can't say it directly to their PE sponsor. The incentives and power dynamics punish radical candor. So oftentimes, I'm the neutral party who has to tell the PE sponsors that their breath stinks. In every portfolio company, the operator-board relationship is the most important and most neglected dynamic. Sometimes, truth-telling has to come from outside. Or both sides will keep talking past each other until the CEO quits or gets pushed out.