Recent posts across ICP.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 ↓↓

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

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

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

The latest episode of The Intentional Owner is an in-the-weeds chat for operating nerds like Sam Rosati and me. We discuss managing winter seasonality & backlog, pricing strategy, crew utilization, and operational leverage. A podcast for small biz owners by small biz owners!

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.

Uncomfortable truth.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

There are two kinds of buyers for your company, and they want completely opposite things from you. Most founders can't tell them apart until it's too late. I call them lights on and lights off. A lights off buyer is usually a strategic buyer. A competitor or a larger player expanding their market share. They want what you've built, but they don't necessarily want you, and they often don't want your operation running for long. They'll absorb your customers, fold in your best people, eliminate the overlap, and shut down what they don't need. The lights go off. For this buyer, you are typically not needed long-term. A lights on buyer is usually a financial buyer. Private equity. They want the business to keep running because the business is the asset. They need the engine humming, the team in place, and very often they need you to stay and roll equity forward so your interests are aligned with theirs. The lights stay on. For this buyer, you are part of what they're buying. Neither one is good or bad. They're just different, and the difference changes everything about how you should run the sale. If a strategic buyer is circling, you're optimizing for price and clean terms because you're probably leaving anyway. If a financial buyer is at the table, you're negotiating rollover equity, your ongoing role, and the second bite, because the real money might be in what comes after the first check. Founders who don't understand the distinction negotiate the wrong deal. They chase price with a buyer who wanted partnership, or they hold out for a seat with a buyer who was always going to turn the lights off. I broke down the full universe of buyers, and how to read which one you're dealing with, in The Exit-Strategy Playbook. Know the buyer before you ever sit down. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #CEO

Buy small. Build bigger. Sell higher. That’s the arbitrage. On my last platform, I bought 8 companies in the first 3 years. Sold it for a 4x multiple of invested capital. Everybody was happy. Then we bought 15 more companies in the next 2 years. That’s how this starts to work. At first, the train is hard to get moving. Then the team learns the playbook. Then the platform gets bigger. Then the next acquisition gets easier. You buy at 5. You sell at 14. That spread is where a lot of the wealth gets created. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

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

"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.

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

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!

Most founders sign the first IOI that flatters them. It arrives with a cover letter telling you you've built something special, that they want to move quickly before the market catches on. Every word is engineered to make you skip a process and negotiate against yourself. I have closed fifty-eight acquisitions. The deals where the founder ran a real process closed at meaningfully higher numbers than the IOI that arrived first. Sometimes 20%. Sometimes more than double. The difference was who else was in the room. The first bid is the floor. Not the price. The floor. Founders who sign that first letter are not closing a deal. They are accepting a number. Call three more sponsors. Then four more. Let the room push the multiple. Find out what your company is worth when more than one buyer wants it. The gavel falls either way. The only question is what number it falls on.

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

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.

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

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...

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

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"

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'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.

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

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

The most expensive mistake in acquisitions is not a bad deal. It is the six months you spent chasing one that never fit. I closed 58 acquisitions across three companies and worked with 9 private equity sponsors. Every one of those sponsors asked the same first question before we pursued a single target: what is your buy box? A buy box is a one-page set of criteria that defines exactly what you are hunting before you start hunting. Revenue range. Geography. Margin profile. Customer concentration limits. Cultural fit markers. It fits on a single page. That single page killed more bad deals than any advisor I ever hired. Without it, founders burn months on diligence for targets that were never going to close. Legal fees stack. Teams lose focus. Opportunity cost compounds quietly in the background. With it, every inbound opportunity gets a 15-minute filter. Pass or pursue. No gray area. Discipline is not the opposite of speed. It is what makes speed possible. I built the buy box framework into Empire Builder Academy because it is the first tool any acquisition-minded founder needs and the last one most of them build. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #acquisitions #mergersandacquisitions

Episode 32 is live! Codestrap’s CxC Ep32: “Private Equity’s AI Reality Check” with Lee McCabe, Partner at Claymore Partners. Lee is a private equity advisor, board member, investor and growth leader with 25 years of experience across big tech, marketplaces, and PE-backed portfolios. Prior to Claymore, he served as Operating Partner at AEA Investors across a 45-company portfolio, and held GM-level roles at Alibaba, Meta, and Expedia. Claymore Partners is a digital-first growth advisory firm helping private equity portfolio companies unlock value by embedding seasoned operators and specialists across digital marketing, data, and technology. https://lnkd.in/g56xAQGN

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

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

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

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.

2 and 20. That’s how private equity firms make money. The 2% management fee is the “keep the lights on” fee. Salaries. Office space. Travel. Marketing. The fancy New York address. It pays the bills. But it is not where the real wealth is created. The real money is in the 20%. That’s carried interest. That’s the upside. That’s why PE firms are so focused on growing your company and selling it for more. If you’re selling to private equity, understand how the people across the table get paid. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

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.

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

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

Partners Group just built a product for the exit market nobody trusts. Last week it launched its new Total Return Strategy: control private equity, lower leverage, up to 12-year holds, mid-teens gross return targets, and an initial annual dividend yield of roughly 5 to 8%. In other words, actual cash flow. Disgusting behaviour. Someone alert the IRR police. The interesting part is not the product name. Private equity has never met a label it couldn’t make sound like a pension consultant had a migraine. The interesting part is what the strategy admits. The old model relied on a fairly simple rhythm. Buy the business. Add leverage. Improve it a bit. Hope the multiple helps. Sell it to the next optimist. Repeat. That worked beautifully when capital was cheap, exits were open, and every buyer could underwrite a slightly more cheerful version of the same spreadsheet. Now the exit market has been frozen for long enough that “temporary dislocation” has started to sound like something people say right before asking for an extension. LPs want distributions. GPs want fundraising. Portfolio companies want breathing room. Nobody wants another quarterly NAV update explaining why the exit is definitely coming next year. Partners Group seems to have looked at that mess and built around it. Do not rely on the exit. Do not over-lever the asset. Buy businesses that can throw off cash. Pay LPs along the way. Let compounding do something useful for once. Radical stuff. Almost like investing. And that is why this matters. Partners Group is not a boutique manager trying to get noticed on a panel about “duration flexibility.” It is one of the biggest private markets firms in the world. When a firm at that scale starts talking about lower leverage, longer holds, dividends and cash yield, the industry should probably pay attention. Because this is not really about Partners Group. It is about DPI mattering again. It is about LPs getting bored of paper returns. It is about operational improvement having to show up in cash, not just board slides. It is about the awkward gap between “we are long-term owners” and “we desperately need to sell this thing before the next fundraise.” The irony is that Partners Group’s new strategy sounds suspiciously like what private equity spent years claiming it already was. Patient capital. Operational ownership. Cash generation. Long-term compounding. Less financial engineering. Apparently we needed a new product wrapper to rediscover the point. The traditional buyout model is not dead. It is still very much alive, very rich, and probably wearing a quarter-zip in May. But it is no longer the only answer. And for every mid-market firm still telling LPs they are “operationally focused,” the question gets a little less comfortable now. If the value creation is so good, why does the return story collapse without an exit? #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #privateequity #valuecreation #DPI

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

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

Would you have backed this, or called it too boring? Would you have invested? Go back to the early 2010s. A private equity firm is looking at a middling regional pest control business. Not software. Not healthcare. Not some glamorous consumer brand with a founder who says community a lot. Pest control. Low tech. Fragmented market. Service trucks. Route density. Recurring customers. A category serious people tend to ignore until they find something moving in the kitchen. Plenty of firms passed. Too boring. Too operational. Too local. Too hard to get excited about in a meeting full of people who prefer businesses with a product demo and an adjective like disruptive. That was the obvious bear case. No real technology edge. No sexy brand. No grand macro tailwind you could put on slide 6 and nod at. Just a regional operator in an industry known for fragmentation and recurring demand rather than glamour. But it was also exactly the sort of ugly little business that can become extremely beautiful once somebody stops being embarrassed by it. The thesis was not complicated. Buy a decent platform. Add branches. Tighten routes. Improve retention. Professionalise the operation. Keep rolling up smaller competitors in a market where scale actually matters. At entry, though, this would not have felt clever to most people. It would have felt small, unglamorous and slightly depressing. Which is usually where the good stuff lives. The outcome? It turned into one of the best roll up returns of its decade. Not because it was fashionable. Because the economics were better than the room gave it credit for. That is the joke with private equity. Everyone says they want proprietary insight. Then half the market walks past the compounding machine because it has bugs in the logo. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

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

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

I've done something like 200 discovery/intake calls with PE execs for Ascend at this point. By far the top thing that these leaders are yearning for? Connection to other PE execs walking a similar path. Not another playbook. Not another framework. Def not another op partner. They want real conversation and peer learning with other execs who are in the arena. Never ceases to amaze me how much of an accelerant this can be. If your port-co CEO is struggling with a challenge, chances are, someone else in that room has seen it and solved it. If you're a sponsor wondering how to best support your execs, it's this.

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

"It's not a sales pitch. It's not an interview. It's an audition." When you walk in, the investor already has a picture in their head of who they want in front of them. Your job isn't to convince them of your strategy. It's to be the person they're looking for. Come in too slick to a fund that wants grit, you've lost them. Come in too casual to a fund that wants a killer, same result. The persona matters as much as the pitch. And if you get it wrong, Kimmer says, sometimes you just blow it. 🎧 My full conversation with John Kim is out now link in comments.

I didn't build most of the businesses I own. I bought them. And in 2026, buying is the smart move. Around 10,000 Americans turn 65 every single day, and tons of them own a business with nobody lined up to take it over. Most people see this as a crisis, but I see the biggest buying opportunity of your lifetime. So here's 8 things I'd tell anyone trying to take advantage and become an owner this year: 1. BUY, DON'T BUILD Roughly 1 in 5 startups doesn't survive year one. So don't start at zero. Buy a business with customers, revenue, and a pre-built team. 2. DIRTY IS PROFITABLE Laundromats, septic pumping, HVAC, and Pest control. A well-run HVAC company can clear 15-20% margins. And the less glamorous the business, the less competition you'll have to buy it. 3. RIDE THE SILVER TSUNAMI Most of those retiring owners have no exit plan. They built something they're proud of, but now they want out. You can be the answer to a problem they've been losing sleep over. 4. THE WRENCH TEST Ask this question before you buy: Does a human need to turn a wrench and do physical labor, or could AI do this better/cheaper? Blue collar business are insulated from AI, because you can't pump a septic tank with a chatbot. 5. MONEY ISN'T THE BIGGEST BARRIER You don't need the pile of cash you think you do. An SBA loan can finance up to 90% of a deal, and seller financing and assumed debt can cover much of the rest. Almost nobody buys a small business with a briefcase of their own money. 6. PROFIT > REVENUE A business doing $2M in revenue and losing money is worth less than one doing $400K that generates $150K in cash. Revenue is the story the seller tells. Cash flow is the fact. 7. USE YOUR NETWORK A lot of the best deals never hit BizBuySell. They can come from a coffee, a referral, or your accountant's brother-in-law. A faded "For Sale" sign on a building you pass every day might be a hidden gem. 8. FIND THE FIT, NOT THE ONE Stop hunting for "the one." Your first deal isn't your last, so find one that fits your skills, your money, and your life. The portfolio gets built after the first deal closes. Not before. There are two kinds of people in America right now. The ones watching the biggest wealth transfer in history happen. And the ones on the receiving end of it. Pick a side. ↓↓↓↓ P.S. If "become an owner" is on your 2026 list and you don't know want more tips like this, you should check out Main Street Millionaire Live. On June 18th, we’re hosting a three-day virtual event on exactly how to find, evaluate, and buy the businesses AI can't replace. Save your spot here → https://lnkd.in/epi7ZE5C

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

"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.

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

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.

The $2 Trillion Shift Happening Inside Finance

30% growth changes the math fast. At that pace, a company doubles in 2.8 years. Triples in 4.2. Quadruples in just over 5. That matters because 5 years is roughly the typical private equity hold period. So the game is not “grow a little and hope the multiple expands.” The game is build a machine that compounds earnings. Organic growth. Margin improvement. Acquisitions. Three ingredients. One target. 30%. That is how private equity thinks. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

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

KKR’s insurance strategy looks boring on purpose. Which is usually where the money is hiding. In 2021, KKR bought Global Atlantic. At the time, it looked like another sensible adjacency. Asset manager buys insurance balance sheet, gets permanent capital, originates credit, collects spread. Everyone nods politely and pretends they were already saying it. Then the numbers started to show the point. Fee related earnings kept grinding higher. Roughly $3.7bn by 2025. Insurance operating earnings became a real line item too. Around $1.1bn. Not the main act. Not a side quest either. A hedge. That is the interesting bit. KKR did not need insurance to rescue the model. The fee engine was already working. What insurance gave them was a second earnings stream with different plumbing. Less dependent on exits. Less hostage to carry cycles. More tied to scale, origination, asset allocation and spread. Private equity people love to talk about downside protection in portfolio companies. KKR actually built some into its own earnings model. Very unsporting of them. The dashed carry line on this chart is the reminder. Carry is beautiful when it arrives, but it behaves like a drunk uncle at Christmas. Loud, occasionally generous, and absolutely not something you build the family budget around. The fee line is different. It compounds. Quietly. Boringly. Annoyingly well. That is what the mega managers are really becoming. Less “deal shop with carry upside.” More earnings architecture. Fees, credit, insurance, permanent capital, balance sheet yield, retail distribution. The old model was win deals, improve companies, exit well, collect carry. The new model is build a machine that earns even when exits sulk in the corner. KKR has not abandoned private equity. It has made itself less dependent on private equity behaving perfectly. Which, given the current exit market, feels less like genius and more like basic adult supervision. #PrivateEquity #KKR #ValueCreation #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity

The morning I published the second edition of The Private Equity Playbook, the first edition was still ranked #1 on Amazon. Five years after publication. That's not normal for any book. It's especially not normal for a book about private equity — a topic most people think is too complex, too niche, or too inside-baseball to sell at scale. But it sold. And it kept selling. Because there was nothing else like it. PE associates used it instead of 1,700-page textbooks. Business owners used it to understand the world they were about to sell into. Fortune 500 executives used it to evaluate whether the PE-backed world was right for them. Foreword Reviews gave it a Clarion 5 out of 5 and called it a "compelling and systematic guide." Kirkus said my style was "as lucid as it is informal" and my "expertise is beyond reproach." So why write a second edition? Because the world changed. When I wrote the first edition, there were about 5,000 mainstream PE firms. Now there are over 10,000 (some estimates as high as 30,000). Assets under management exploded from under $3 trillion to over $6 trillion. Some estimates as high at $19 trillion. The strategies that worked in 2019 needed updating for today's financial, global, and cultural realities. And the section on working with consultants needed to be three times bigger because that ecosystem has fundamentally changed. 233 pages. Everything from the first edition refined and expanded. New data. New rules. Same operator-first perspective. New rules. New playbook. If you read the first edition and it changed how you think about PE — the second edition will sharpen it further. If you've never read either — start here. This is the current playbook. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #CEO

Usage pricing is nothing new. But if your product is powered by tokens, the economics are much different. Pricing models are changing fast. The all-you-can-eat token subscriptions are evolving. Why? Their gross margins were getting destroyed. Examples: GitHub, Anthropic, Figma, and on and on. SaaS operators must understand the seismic shift in pricing and how it may impact their product lines. Read more: https://lnkd.in/erss7a_Z #SaaS

Recruiting is not something you do when you are short staffed. It is something you do every single day whether you need someone tomorrow or not. Most contractors treat hiring as a reaction. The right contractors treat it as a system. One of the most effective recruiting tools we have implemented at Climate Experts is the hiring event. We open our facility to the community. We conduct open interviews on the spot. We give candidates a full tour of our shop so they can see our culture, our equipment, and our team before they ever formally apply. We add a raffle to make it memorable and create an experience worth showing up for. The results have been significant. Many of the people who attend are not ready to apply through a traditional job posting. They want to see the company first. They want to feel the culture. A hiring event removes the barrier and bridges the gap between curiosity and commitment. If you are building a trades company and you are not doing hiring events you are missing one of the most powerful and underutilized recruiting tools available to you. Episode 9 of Escape the One Man Show is live today on YouTube and Spotify. I sat down with Billy Gregus for a real conversation about how to break into commercial HVAC and what contractors need to know about making that move. Go listen and share it with someone who needs to hear it. 🎙️ #EscapeTheOneManShow #ContractorLeadership #HVACRecruiting #TradesBusiness #HiringEvent #ContractorGrowth #HVAC #HomeServices #ClimateExperts #Recruiting #Trades #SmallBusiness Escape The One Man Show

What happens to private equity in a "Carry Winter"? A carry winter is going to make private equity very weird. Not dead. Not broken. Just weird. For years, the industry has talked about DPI, exit backlogs, continuation vehicles, NAV loans and LP liquidity as if they are mainly investor issues. They are not. They are compensation issues. And compensation is where private equity gets very honest, very quickly. A lot of people built careers, lifestyles, retention plans and internal politics around carry that was supposed to show up by now. Except the exits did not. The marks may still look respectable. The quarterly letters may still be beautifully formatted. The portfolio review may still contain fourteen pages on “strategic progress” and one awkward slide on liquidity. But carry is not paid in adjusted EBITDA footnotes. Carry needs realization. When realization slows, the psychology of the firm changes. Partners become oddly focused on management fee economics. Mid-level investors realise their “meaningful long-term upside” may arrive around the same time as their second hip replacement. Operating partners discover their carry points are attached to assets now living in private equity purgatory. This is where the bargain starts to fray. Carry keeps teams together. It justifies brutal hours. It creates loyalty. It makes people tolerate investment committees, Monday pipeline calls and the spiritual damage of hearing “value creation lever” said with a straight face. Push it out far enough and people start doing the maths. No exits means no carry. No carry means harder retention. Harder retention means weaker execution. Weaker execution means worse exits. Worse exits means even less carry. A lovely little doom loop, but with better Patagonia vests. Carry winter will not kill private equity. But it will expose which firms were built on realized performance, and which were built on the comforting assumption that the next exit window would always open before anyone asked too many questions. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #privateequity

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

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.

Want to know what it takes to raise $70 billion across a career? John"Kimmer" Kim has done exactly that, working with some of the world's leading venture capital and private equity firms. He distilled three decades of lessons into The Tao of Fundraising, and in my conversation with him, we go deep on everything the book couldn't fit. We cover his philosophy on raising capital, the art of persuasion, what actually happens in a great meeting, how to structure and compensate a sales team, frameworks for predicting fundraising success, and how he's now applying all of it in an operating role as Chairman & President of Corporate Development at Lila Sciences. If you manage or raise capital for a living, this one is for you. 🎧 Full episode with Kimmer is out now!

I keep remembering, luck is made. -Move Fast -Choose Sides -Solve Big Problems -Be Grateful for the Grind -Surround Yourself with Winners Luck is attracted to this. 1. Move Fast. Rich people aren’t smarter than you, they’re FASTER. By the time their competition is taking step one, they’ve: Failed 4 times Lost a shit ton of money And figured out a better path 90% of success is just doing that on repeat. 2. Choose sides Have the courage to speak out and have opinions. People don't follow fence-sitters, and if you want to build a brand, it has to stand for something. So don't be afraid to ruffle some feathers. 3. Solve Big Problems. You're paid in proportion to the problems you solve. Like Marc Andreessen said, “Elon Musk basically shows up every week at each of his companies, identifies the biggest problem that the company’s having that week, he fixes it, and then he does that every week for 52 weeks in a row.” The bigger the problems, the bigger the bank account. 4. Be Grateful for the Grind. Being an owner is hard. The hours are long, the pressure is high, and the work can be thankless. But working for someone else is hard too. Choose your hard, and be grateful that every hour you work lines your pockets instead of someone else's. 5. Surround Yourself with Winners Successful People Hang Out With Other Successful People Your success as an owner is determined by who you surround yourself with. Not sure where to find the winners? Well, we’re hosting a LIVE, 3-day virtual event with some real winners and future business owners, so make your own luck and snag your spot here → https://lnkd.in/eq2DFjxC

As an incoming PE exec, you don't get a second chance to make a strong first impression. 7 thoughts on how to win the first week in the new job ↓ * * * * * If this post resonated with you... ♻️ Please repost to share with others 🔔 Follow Dan Cremons for more like it.

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

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."

The first exit is emotional. You finally get the wire. You exhale for the first time in years. You tell yourself the race is over. Sometimes it is. But in private equity, that first check can be the beginning of the real wealth creation. That’s the part most founders miss. They spend twenty years building the business, then they treat the sale like the finish line because nobody explained rollover equity, second bites, or what happens when the right sponsor helps you build the next version of the company. I sold the same company five times. Not five companies. The same company. Five multimillion-dollar paydays over 13 years. That changed how I think about exits forever. The first check gives you security. The second payday is where you start to understand the game. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

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!

What a beautiful reflection by Alex Sasse, Ben Sasse's eldest daughter. Full of deep wisdom. Can't imagine a better use of 7 minutes. "Every single day of my childhood, my parents asked the same question at dinner. Not 'What did you learn?' but 'Who did you serve?'" https://lnkd.in/gsxjXRhD

Here's a number that should stop you cold. Take your age. Add the percentage of your net worth tied up in your company. If the total is over 130, you have too much risk concentrated in one place. I call it the Rule of 130, and it's one of the simplest gut checks I know for whether it's time to start thinking about an exit. Run your own math. A 58-year-old founder with 85% of their net worth locked inside their business is sitting at 143. Well past the line. That's not a moral failing. It's just risk. One illiquid asset, one industry, one economy, one lawsuit, one bad year, holding up an entire family's financial future. When you're 35 and starting out, a high number is fine. You have time and energy to recover from a setback. You should be all in. But as you get older, and as more of your wealth gets trapped in equity you can't easily sell, that concentration becomes the single biggest threat to everything you've built. The market doesn't care how hard you worked. A category can get disrupted. A key customer can leave. A recession can compress your multiple right when you needed to sell. And if 85% of your net worth is riding on one company when that happens, you don't get a second chance at that wealth. This is exactly why rollover equity and partial exits exist. You don't have to sell everything and walk away. You take enough off the table to drop below 130 and secure your family, then you keep playing with the rest. De-risk the downside, keep the upside. Most founders never run this number. They assume they'll sell someday, eventually, when the time feels right. The Rule of 130 turns someday into math. I laid out the full framework, and exactly what to do when your number is too high, in The Exit-Strategy Playbook. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

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.

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

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

Apollo is no longer just an alternative asset manager. It is an insurance company with a private equity costume department. That sounds glib, but the chart is doing something useful. For years, Apollo looked like the classic alts model. Fees grinding along underneath. Carry bouncing around like a drunk analyst after bonus day. Great when markets are open. Less charming when exits freeze and everyone suddenly remembers IRR is not cash. Then Athene changed the shape of the business. Post merger, the new line appears. Spread earnings. Big, recurring, balance sheet driven. Not quite fees. Not quite carry. Something more interesting. Manufactured carry. Apollo replaced a revenue stream dependent on realizations with one driven by insurance liabilities, credit origination, and balance sheet spread. The clever bit is that it still has the economic punch of carry, but behaves much more like a recurring engine. That is why the Marc Rowan story matters. He did not just “diversify the platform,” which is the sort of phrase people write when they have lost the will to live. He rebuilt the earnings architecture. Carry is still there. It still matters. But it is no longer the main event. The main event is spread. A predictable, scalable, capital hungry machine that turns retirement assets into private credit origination and converts that into earnings the market can underwrite with far more confidence than the traditional “trust us, the exits are coming” routine. This is the bit a lot of PE firms should study. The best firms are not just adding products. They are changing the quality of their earnings. Apollo did not become less aggressive. It became more insurable. Which, annoyingly, may be even more powerful. Historical carry figures here are directional estimates from filings, so spare me the forensic accounting seminar in the comments. The story is the shape. And the shape says Apollo found a way to make volatility look suspiciously recurring. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #Apollo #Insurance

I built three national companies. Completed 58 acquisitions. Led $2.5 billion in exits across six deals. One of them sold for a billion dollars. By any conventional measure, I should be done. On a board somewhere collecting a check. Or on a beach collecting my thoughts. Whatever retired CEOs do when they've already won. Instead I'm coaching founders. 100+ of them right now. Across dozens of industries. Accounting, roofing, dental, IT services, real estate, home services, and more. I work more hours today than I did when I was a CEO. I take nighttime calls in the US so I can work with clients in Australia in the morning. This is not a retirement hobby. People ask me why. Because when I was building my first company, the seat next to me was empty. Nobody who had done what I was trying to do — at the scale I wanted to do it — was available to sit down and walk me through it. The PE world doesn't share its playbook. The guys who've done billion-dollar exits don't take calls from founders doing $5M. I wanted to change that. So I built The Chairman Group. I wrote four books. I created the Empire Builder Academy. And I started taking on founders one-on-one — coaching sessions, private client relationships, board roles — because I believe the fastest way to change an entrepreneur's trajectory is to put someone in the seat next to them who's already made the trip. I might be the only person in the world who's built and sold a company for a billion dollars and is now available to coach you through yours. That's not a marketing line. That's just the truth. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #leadership #CEO

PE firms don’t grow companies with one lever. They use three. Organic growth. Margin improvement. M&A. That’s the cocktail. If I can grow earnings at 30% a year, the company doubles in 2.8 years. Triples in 4.2. Quadruples in just over 5. That’s not random. That’s the typical PE hold period. My formula was usually simple: Get 10, 12, 14% organically. Add 3 or 4 points of margin improvement. Then bring it home with acquisitions. That’s how the train starts moving. At first, it’s hard to get the pump primed. Then the team learns the playbook. Then the acquisitions start working. Then growth starts picking up speed. Before long, the company is moving faster than the founder ever thought possible. That’s the game. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

One of the most common requests we receive as an HVAC contractor is labor only installation. The homeowner purchases a unit online or from a big box store and asks us to handle the installation only assuming it will save them money. What most homeowners do not realize is everything else required to complete a proper HVAC installation that they would also need to supply. The disconnect box. Whip. Copper line set. Drain line and fittings. Float switch. Concrete pad. Filter drier. Vacuum pump and micron gauge. Refrigerant gauges. An oxyacetylene torch kit and nitrogen tank which runs approximately $1,500 new. A recovery machine. EPA 608 certification to legally purchase refrigerant. General liability insurance and workers compensation coverage. And a state certified contractor license to pull the required permit since on a labor only job the homeowner becomes the contractor of record. By the time all of these costs are factored in the savings from buying the equipment independently are typically eliminated entirely. This is why we prefer to manage every installation from start to finish. We supply the equipment, pull the permit, warranty the labor and the parts, and stand behind the entire job. That is how it should be done. #HVAC #HVACBusiness #ContractorLife #ClimateExperts #HomeServices #HVACInstallation #Trades #SmallBusiness #DoItRight Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric

Quick ping for my PE peeps: enrollment is open for the August Ascend cohort for PE execs. What it IS: A super experiential 6-mo program for VPs and C-level leaders at PE-backed companies. → Tailored to PE → Deep + practical → A tight-knit cohort → Lots of peer learning → Heavy on the inner game → Also heavy on practical value creation What it IS NOT: → Generic → Lecture-based → A lame video library → Long on theory, short on practice What we've heard from past members: it's the first leadership program they've experienced that actually gets the realities of being a PE leader. If that sounds like a fit for someone in your orbit (or you), details in comments ↓↓

Private equity does not have a zombie fund problem. It has a hostage fund problem. Zombie fund was a useful phrase for about five minutes. It describes what these funds look like from the outside: old, tired, wandering around with unrealised assets and no obvious way home. Very dramatic. Slightly Halloween. Not especially useful. The real issue is structural. A hostage fund is a fund where capital cannot be freed because no single actor has both the motivation and the power to free it. The GP may be earning more from continued fees than it can realistically earn from carry. The LPs may technically have governance rights, but not the coordination, incentives, or economic appetite to use them. The assets may be marked at values the market will not pay, so selling means crystallising a loss everyone has been politely pretending is not there. Nobody needs to be evil. Everyone can be acting rationally. That is what makes it worse. The numbers are not small. Global AUM in aged PE funds past their natural term has reached $829bn, up sevenfold since 2013. Median holding periods for PE-backed companies hit 6.4 years in 2025, up 56% from 2007. LP distributions fell to 6% of AUM in H1 2025, versus a ten-year average of 14%. And for LPs trying to get out, the ransom gets uglier with age. Secondary pricing drops from roughly 94% of NAV for funds under five years old, to 71% at year ten, to about 44 cents on the dollar by year fifteen. The longer you wait, the more the door charges admission. The paper argues that the industry has spent a decade treating this as a performance problem when much of it is actually a governance failure sitting on top of weak operational value creation. The exit is the proof. Funds that get out cleanly usually have businesses that actually changed. Revenue moved. Margins improved. The platform thesis happened somewhere outside the board deck. Buyers can see it in the numbers. The ones that stay trapped often have a different problem: the story aged better than the asset. I wrote Hostage Funds because “zombie funds” no longer explains enough. It describes the corpse. It does not explain the handcuffs. Full paper: https://lnkd.in/gR24mE63 #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #Governance

Top quotes from this week's conversation with John Kim, author of "The Tao of Fundraising." 1. "Persuasion is desire minus fear. What people want, minus how scared they are." 2. "Most successful communication isn't about stoking desire. It's about getting past people's fears, insecurities, doubts, and cynicism." 3. "There's a big difference between belief and trust. Most people believe the opportunity makes sense. They just don't trust the person." 4. "Pipeline x conversion ratio x size of the investment = how much money you're going to raise." 5. "Every meeting must start with four things: establish rapport, establish credibility, gain their attention, and generate interest — and you better do it fast." 6. "Your track record plus your differentiation, divided by the complexity of your story, is generally how much money you can raise." 7. "The track record can be good and the differentiation can make sense, but if the story is too hard to explain, people can’t get it through an investment committee." 8. "If I could give anybody one single thing in a fundraise, it’s this: give them a phrase they can repeat — one that makes the complications feel simple." 9. "Objection handling — that's selling. Everybody can sit around a room and talk about what's interesting. Selling is when somebody says no, and you have to get them to say yes." 10. "It's not a sales pitch, it's not an interview — it's an audition. They know what they think they're looking for. Try to be it." With thanks to AlphaSense, Bipsync, and SRS Acquiom. https://lnkd.in/eYKfcibg

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?

You've seen the posts. "Thrilled to announce that [firm] has been recognized as a Top 10 [whatever] by [publication you've never heard of]!" Cue the champagne emoji. The humblebrags. The "grateful for the recognition" comments etc. Nobody asks the obvious question. How did they win? Last week I went after private equity conferences. Today, I'm coming for the industry award racket. Here's how most of these "awards" actually work: 𝟭. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻'𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 "𝘄𝗶𝗻" 𝗮𝗻𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗱. You received an unsolicited email saying you've been "nominated." It's very flattering. All you have to do is pay $5-25K to "accept." There are no judges. No criteria. No evaluation. Just a fee and a logo for your website. 𝟮. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗽𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴. Many of the major business awards programs guarantee some form of recognition to every paying participant. Let's call it what it is (a participation trophy with a wire transfer). 𝟯. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 "𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻" 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗳𝗲𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁. The revenue from your "award" funds more outreach to more businesses. The entire model runs on flattery and invoices. This is the corporate self-indulgence economy, and it is MASSIVE. 𝟰. 𝗡𝗼𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸𝘀. A fake law firm once submitted an application with a photograph of actor Danny Glover as the founding partner and a wildly inappropriate logo. They won. Twice. From two different award organizations ("FLF Abiola & Co") 𝟱. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄. Your clients don't care about your obscure award. Your competitors know it was paid for (they have one too). The only people who take it seriously are the ones who don't understand how the game works. Real credibility comes from real work. Client outcomes. Operator referrals. A track record that speaks for itself without a purchased logo next to it. Next time you see a company page post a "Thrilled to announce..." on LinkedIn, ask them, "How much did your firm pay?" (DONT actually do this, but you can certainly think it whilst chuckling to yourself).

Private equity does not have a zombie fund problem. It has a hostage fund problem. Zombie fund was a useful phrase for about five minutes. It describes what these funds look like from the outside: old, tired, wandering around with unrealised assets and no obvious way home. Very dramatic. Slightly Halloween. Not especially useful. The real issue is structural. A hostage fund is a fund where capital cannot be freed because no single actor has both the motivation and the power to free it. The GP may be earning more from continued fees than it can realistically earn from carry. The LPs may technically have governance rights, but not the coordination, incentives, or economic appetite to use them. The assets may be marked at values the market will not pay, so selling means crystallising a loss everyone has been politely pretending is not there. Nobody needs to be evil. Everyone can be acting rationally. That is what makes it worse. The numbers are not small. Global AUM in aged PE funds past their natural term has reached $829bn, up sevenfold since 2013. Median holding periods for PE-backed companies hit 6.4 years in 2025, up 56% from 2007. LP distributions fell to 6% of AUM in H1 2025, versus a ten-year average of 14%. And for LPs trying to get out, the ransom gets uglier with age. Secondary pricing drops from roughly 94% of NAV for funds under five years old, to 71% at year ten, to about 44 cents on the dollar by year fifteen. The longer you wait, the more the door charges admission. The paper argues that the industry has spent a decade treating this as a performance problem when much of it is actually a governance failure sitting on top of weak operational value creation. The exit is the proof. Funds that get out cleanly usually have businesses that actually changed. Revenue moved. Margins improved. The platform thesis happened somewhere outside the board deck. Buyers can see it in the numbers. The ones that stay trapped often have a different problem: the story aged better than the asset. I wrote Hostage Funds because “zombie funds” no longer explains enough. It describes the corpse. It does not explain the handcuffs. Full paper: https://lnkd.in/gR24mE63 #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #Governance

The better you look, the more money you’ll make. And that’s not a hot-take. An economist named Daniel Hamermesh wrote a book called Beauty Pays to answer one question: does looking good actually make you money? The answer? Absolutely. Turns out, the best-looking workers earn 10 to 15% more than everyone else across their careers, translating to about $230,000 more in lifetime earnings. And that translates directly to your business. Let’s look at one of our portfolio companies, Pink's Window Services... When two guys in Austin got laid off from marketing jobs in 2020 and started washing windows, they knew they needed to stand out. So they refused to dress like everyone else. They put stylish, retro collared shirts and pink Converse on every crew, instead of letting people wear ratty t-shirts and dirty pants. Now customers take one look and know the Pink’s crew is different. The company just LOOKS professional. So people pony up for the pretty window cleaners. Fast-forward to 2026, and the average Pink’s location clears north of $450,000 a year. Turns out looking good scales. ↓↓↓ And if you’re interested in learning more about why small businesses like Pink’s are dominating in 2026, check out this FREE report we put together. → https://lnkd.in/eXAaYfbU

Most founders start preparing for their exit 90 days before the LOI. That's not preparation. That's panic. Adam Coffey built a diagnostic that strips the emotion out of the exit question. He calls it the Rule of 130. Take your age. Add the percentage of your net worth locked inside your company. If the sum exceeds 130, you have too much concentration risk. Period. A 55-year-old founder with 80% of net worth in the business scores 135. That founder is in the red zone and running out of runway. A 40-year-old at 90% sits at exactly 130, right on the line. The math is blunt because the math needs to be blunt. Founders wrap identity around the company. They tell themselves they'll know when it's time. They won't. The Rule of 130 replaces gut feel with a number. And here's what that number demands: exit engineering starts 2 to 3 years before the sale. Not the quarter before the LOI. Years before. That window is where value gets built, where concentration risk gets managed, where the founder stops being the single point of failure in their own wealth. I've watched Adam walk founders through this calculation. The ones who act on it build exits. The ones who ignore it build regret. Run your number. If it's past 130, the Empire Builder Academy is where the engineering starts. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #founders

I remember growing up watching Wayne Gretzky. Now I’ve had the privilege of spending time with people like Tom Brady, Jack Nicklaus, Phil Jackson, Lionel Messi, and Gretzky himself. One thing Wayne told me changed how I looked at success forever. “You can’t become the best unless the people around you understand the sacrifice it takes to become the best.” He said during hockey season, his family knew he was all in. Everything was hockey. Eat. Sleep. Breathe. Repeat. That hit me hard because most entrepreneurs are trying to build extraordinary lives while surrounded by people committed to average ones. People say life is about compromise. I disagree. Life is about becoming who you were meant to become. Too many people sacrifice their dreams just to make other people comfortable. If your ambition makes someone uncomfortable, that’s their insecurity talking. The truth? It’s already hard enough to win. It’s even harder when the people closest to you don’t believe in the mission. You cannot drive an F1 car at 227 MPH while doubting yourself every turn. The same applies to business, leadership, speaking, sales, AI, entrepreneurship, or greatness in any form. Most people stop dreaming early. They settle. Then they try to convince you to settle too. Misery loves company. But greatness loves obsession. I never imagined as a kid I’d one day be on the ice with Gretzky, sharing stages with world champions, billionaires, and icons. The sacrifice was never easy. Still isn’t. But it’s worth it every single day. Because when you truly love what you do, it stops feeling like work. So if you want to become the best: Get people on board with your vision. And if they can’t support your growth, they should not have front row seats to your future. #Millionaire #Mindset #Winning #Inspire

The degree changed your title. What you do with that title is entirely up to you. I have watched two chiropractors graduate from the same program, with the same training, the same boards, the same clinical hours. One built something significant. One spent years wondering why the practice never reflected the effort. The difference was never skill. It was how they saw themselves the moment they walked out of that building. The chiropractor who builds at the highest level of this profession does not wait to feel ready. Does not wait for the practice to grow before deciding they are the kind of leader a growing practice requires. Does not shrink in rooms they should be commanding or apologize for the authority their degree represents. They make a decision before the evidence supports it. That decision is the business. Everything else, the systems, the team, the culture, the revenue, it all follows the identity of the person leading it. Patients feel your certainty before you say a word. Your team rises to the standard of the person setting it. The organization reflects the self image of the operator running it. I built RxWellness to 12 clinics, 40 plus doctors, and eight figure revenue. The first and most important investment I ever made was not in a location or a system or a marketing strategy. It was in deciding who I was before anyone gave me permission to be it. You did the work to earn the degree. Now do the work to own it. The profession needs doctors who walk into rooms like they built them. Start there.

The same investor helped Yale grow its endowment from $1B to $40B using private markets… Later, that investor told everyday investors to avoid private equity altogether and stick to index funds. At first, it sounds completely contradictory. But one thing we’ve realized recently is that much investing advice only makes sense when you understand who it’s meant for. Institutions play a very different game than individuals: - different liquidity needs - different time horizons - different access - different risk tolerance This week in Wealth Stack Weekly, we break down the 3 real reasons behind these opposing strategies and why understanding the context behind investing advice matters more than most people think. Honestly, this one has entirely changed how we think about alternatives. Join 500k subscribers! Full breakdown tomorrow 👇 www.wealthstackweekly.com

Blackstone’s best private equity deal may have been escaping private equity. The chart is the whole story. The gold area is fee related earnings. Recurring. Scalable. Predictable enough that public market investors can squint at it and pretend it is a software company with nicer shoes. The grey dashed line is total distributable earnings, including realized carry. That is the bit everyone in private equity likes to talk about at dinners, on panels, and during the third glass of something expensive. Look at the gap between the two. 2014 was lovely. Carry everywhere. Everyone clever. 2020 arrived and carry fell off a cliff. Fees kept paying. 2022 was the peak carry moment. Then came the carry winter. Exits slowed, realizations got awkward, and suddenly everyone remembered that paper marks do not fund dividends. Fees kept paying. That is the model shift. Blackstone stopped being valued like a traditional private equity firm and started being valued like a scaled alternative asset management platform with recurring revenue, permanent capital, private wealth distribution, credit, insurance, infrastructure, real estate, and a management fee machine underneath it all. The market is not paying 30x FRE because it loves buyout nostalgia. It is paying for durability. Which is mildly inconvenient for the rest of the industry still pretending the old model works because the brand deck has a tasteful photo of a bridge on page 7. The real debate is whether Blackstone deserves that multiple alone, or whether KKR, Apollo and the rest of the grown-up alts get pulled into the same frame. The smaller debate is whether carry comes back. The bigger debate is whether private equity firms that still rely on realizations to look clever have a very uncomfortable few years ahead. Source: Blackstone filings and earnings releases, FY2010 to FY2025 estimate. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #AlternativeAssets #ValueCreation

The Navy teaches something you'll never hear in business school: Put People First. Thought it'd be good to reshare this clip from my episode with Rodney Comegys talking about the importance of caring about people on a day like today. Rodney we thank you for your service, and your time spent with us, sharing how he turned his Navy experience into running one of the world's largest index fund operators Vanguard Capital. Full episode with Rodney is linked here, perfect for those of you traveling the roads this memorial day 🫡 https://lnkd.in/eeT5jWev

Most buyers don’t realize how weak the target company’s contracts are until after LOI. A surprising number of lower middle market businesses operate on: ▪️unsigned agreements ▪️outdated templates ▪️poorly documented email modifications ▪️customer relationships that evolved beyond the scope of the written contract Even where properly executed agreements exist, many: ▪️prohibit assignment without consent ▪️contain vague indemnification language ▪️lack meaningful limitation-of-liability protections ▪️fail to clearly address payment mechanics or dispute procedures Weak contracts can slow financing and delay closing, but the bigger issue is usually operational. One issue that shows up frequently in ETA deals involves the transferability of key customer contracts. Buyers often assume those relationships move with the business automatically. In many cases, they do not. Certain agreements require: ▪️counterparty consent ▪️advance notice ▪️financial disclosures ▪️renegotiation before assignment That can delay closing or create immediate customer risk post-close. The diligence process is not just about validating financial performance. Buyers also need to assess which contractual issues may create operational friction, revenue disruption, or legal exposure after closing. If you are in an active deal and want to better understand the target company’s contracts, or if you recently closed and want to clean up legacy agreements, the below link provides an overview of common contract issues. https://lnkd.in/eAPEMvTr

I enlisted at 17 with $150 in my pocket and a duffel bag on my back. The Army gave me discipline, brotherhood, and a foundation I've stood on every day since. But I came home. Today isn't about the ones who did. Memorial Day isn't for me, or for any of us who served and made it back. It's for the men and women who didn't. The ones who gave everything and never got the years the rest of us were lucky enough to have. The careers, the families, the quiet mornings, the long lives. They traded all of it so the rest of us could keep going. So today I'm not working. I'm remembering. The names, the faces, the families who carry an empty chair at the table this weekend and every weekend. Whatever you've built, whatever you're chasing, it rests on a foundation other people died to protect. Take a minute today to remember the cost. We remember them.

A lot of HVAC technicians and install departments have made the switch to Stay-Brite 8 and the reasons make sense on the surface. Significantly less heat, faster installs, less risk of heat damage to surrounding components, no nitrogen flow required at those temperatures. I understand why it is gaining traction. But there are consequences to that decision that do not show up during the install. They show up years later. Stay-Brite 8 requires flux. Flux inside a sealed refrigerant system is contamination. Over time it can become acidic, travel through expansion valves, contaminate compressor oil, and contribute to system restrictions and failures. This is not theoretical. It is documented. The joint itself melts at 430 to 535 degrees Fahrenheit. A standard HVAC brazing alloy melts at 1200 to 1500 degrees. The difference in thermal safety margin matters enormously when a future technician is working nearby with a torch and does not know the line set was soldered instead of brazed. Most major manufacturers including Carrier, Lennox, and Daikin specify brazing in their install documentation. Not soldering. Brazing. When a compressor fails and a manufacturer warranty review reveals soldered joints on the line set the conversation becomes very difficult very quickly. There are legitimate applications for Stay-Brite 8. I am not saying it is categorically wrong. I am saying the standard for refrigerant line set installations on new equipment should account for the full life of the system not just the efficiency of the install day. My company standard is flow nitrogen and braze the lines. Because the decision made during the install is the decision the homeowner lives with for the next 15 to 20 years. Build the standard that protects your customer long term. Not just your install time today. #HVAC #HVACContractor #LicensedContractor #TradesLife #ContractorLife #HVACEducation #Brazing #HVACInstall #StayBrite8 #DerekCormier #EscapeTheOneManShow #HomeServices #HVACBusiness #Trades #RefrigerantLines #HVACStandards #QualityInstall #ProfessionalTrades #HVACTraining #LongTermThinking Climate Experts Air Plumbing & Electric

The board story on revenue is usually fiction with formatting. When we start working with a PE backed business at Claymore, the first thing we ask is very simple: Where does revenue actually come from? Not the high level version. Not the board deck version. Not the one where everything is neatly grouped into channels, segments, and growth buckets that make management look vaguely in control. The real version. Which customers. Which products. Which salespeople. Which locations. Which campaigns. Which referral sources. Which repeat cohorts. Which pricing decisions. Which random pockets of demand the business has been quietly living off without properly understanding. The answer is almost never what the board thinks. The board thinks growth is coming from the strategic initiatives. The new channel. The cross sell programme. The digital investment. The sales transformation. The market expansion story everyone has been polishing for six months. Meanwhile, the actual revenue is often coming from somewhere far less glamorous. A legacy product nobody talks about. A handful of reps carrying 60 percent of the number. A single referral source the business treats as background noise. Repeat business no one has measured properly. A founder relationship everybody keeps pretending is institutional. Or some weirdly resilient niche the company stumbled into years ago and never bothered to analyse. That gap matters. Because if you do not know what is really driving revenue, you cannot underwrite growth properly. You cannot allocate investment properly. You cannot fix the weak spots. And you definitely cannot sit in a board meeting talking confidently about value creation. A lot of PE backed businesses are being managed at the summary level. Revenue by category. Revenue by region. Revenue by channel. Fine. But summary views are where truth goes to die. Real insight usually sits one or two layers lower, where the story gets more uncomfortable. That is why this is the first question. Before new tools. Before a new agency. Before a shiny commercial plan. Before the latest transformation initiative. Where does revenue actually come from? Because until you answer that properly, most of what comes next is just intelligent sounding guesswork. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

One of my best business decisions has been going all-in on... Content distribution. Investment deals, new product ideas, our best hires, and our biggest customers. All of it started with a piece of content the algorithm served up to the right person, at the right time. That's why I keep telling operators: distribution arbitrage is the most underrated skill in business right now. Because as AI makes creating cheaper and faster, getting seen is going to get more expensive. Here’s what what our distribution system allows us to do, at scale: -Test new ideas fast, because we have thousands of real people to ask -Acquire customers at a fraction of paid CAC -Spot market gaps long before they show up in pitch decks -Compound learnings into a database that only grows over time -Build products from real-time signal, not assumption -Win deals because the people building things already know who we are And if you're an operator reading this, here's what I want you to understand: None of that would have been possible if people couldn’t find us in the first place. Sam Shank, who built HotelTonight, says it pretty well: “Don't start with the product, start with distribution. Most flip that and wonder why nothing catches.” You’ve got to OWN your channels. Double down on social media. Send those newsletters. Dominate your SEO. Because the more your ICP sees you, the more likely it is they’ll convert. And here's where it gets interesting. There’s a new distribution channel on the rise that almost everyone is ignoring. (At least for now…) When someone wants a recommendation in 2026, they're not always opening Google. More and more, they're opening ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity. And 60% of Google searches already end without a click. These answer engines collapse pages and pages of links into a single chat window, so whichever brand shows up gets the business. Everyone else is invisible. So the brands that get this right early are going to dominate answer engines, while the ones who miss the boat are going to have to spend the next five years clawing back market share. The problem is, while most businesses are aware this is happening, they don’t know how to DO anything about it. And honestly, it was the same for us. Until HubSpot launched something for this “invisible” channel: HubSpot AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Their new tool shows you how your brand appears across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. It also scores your visibility so you know where you stand, shows you where your competitors beat you so you can see your blind-spots, and gives you a prioritized fix list so you know where to focus. So here’s my challenge to you. Pull up ChatGPT and ask for a recommendation in your category. If your name's not there, you've got work to do. Click the link below to try HubSpot AEO free for 28 days. Because why be part of the question, when you could be the answer? Start your free 28-day trial: https://lnkd.in/eSX99TwN #Ad

The question every PE board member should ask: "Am I making my CEO more effective, or less necessary?" Making them MORE effective: → Defaulting to coaching (vs. telling) → Opening doors they can't open themselves → Providing objective perspective on blind spots Making them LESS necessary: → Making operational decisions for them → Asking for "quick updates" far too often → Setting strategy instead of approving theirs One builds great CEOs. The other builds dependency.

70% of Operating Partners think they add "significant value." 20% of their portfolio company CEOs agree. It gets worse. Blue Ridge Partners ran a CEO/Operating Partner survey in 2018. Here are some of their findings: Operating Partners expected an NPS of +41 from their PortCos.  The actual number was -3. (A 44-point delusion gap). Half of CEOs say their OP doesn't deliver enough value to justify the cost. Meanwhile, 10x more OPs than CEOs believe they deliver 10x their cost in value. ~30% of CEOs say they get "little value" from their OPs. CEOs say their OP shows up with their own agenda and zero coordination.  OPs say the CEO is too defensive to accept help.  Both think the other one is the problem. "𝘔𝘢𝘹, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵!" I hear you cry. Sure. 2018 feels like a lifetime ago. But in 2026, holds are longer. The EBITDA bar went from 5% to 12%. And 30% of PE assets are now over 7yrs old. The pressure on private equity-backed CEOs has compounded for 8yrs. The OPs delivering that pressure have multiplied. Call me a cynic, but I can't imagine the dynamic has improved over time. And if OPs and CEOs can't agree on whether the OP adds value, imagine how misaligned they are on everything else. Strategy. Talent. Capital allocation.    I can guarantee this misalignment has a price. But it doesn't show up neatly on the balance sheet.

JULIA ROBERTS: IS SHE CHASING RABBITS OR HUNTING ELEPHANTS? I had lunch with Julia Roberts near her home in Malibu, and we ended up talking for almost 3 hours. One of my favorite parts was that I also brought 3 of my JT Foxx 100 members with me because my philosophy has always been simple: If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for you. At one point, I asked her if she’d ever come to one of my biggest events, Mega Success. She smiled and said: “I’d love to… but I don’t want to leave my Malibu bubble.” I laughed and said: “It’s only 45 minutes to an hour away.” And she responded: “That’s an hour too far.” That hit me. Because when you meet highly successful people, you realize something very quickly: It doesn’t matter how much money you offer them. If they don’t want to do it, they don’t do it. Julia Roberts gets offered movies, endorsements, appearances, partnerships, and opportunities constantly. But she turns down 99% of them. Why? Because she’s not chasing rabbits anymore. She’s hunting elephants. And that’s the lesson. When most people start, they need rabbits. You take the speaking gig. You take the client. You take the small opportunity. You say yes because you’re trying to survive. But eventually, if you become successful, you have to evolve. Because if you spend your entire life chasing rabbits, you’ll never have time to hunt elephants. At the same time, if you ONLY hunt elephants too early, you may starve before you ever catch one. So the real strategy is this: First chase rabbits. Then hunt elephants. Build momentum first. Build cash flow first. Build confidence first. Then eventually you get to a stage where saying NO becomes more important than saying YES. Ironically, what made me successful was saying yes to almost everything. Now my next level requires me to say no to 95% of things. Different seasons. Different strategy. The question is: At this stage of your life… Are you chasing rabbits or hunting elephants? #BusinessStrategy #Entrepreneurship #SuccessMindset #Leadership

More than $70 billion raised became a masterclass in persuasion. John Kim, author of The Tao of Fundraising, shares the craft of raising capital: sales, investor psychology, meeting dynamics, and what three decades of fundraising taught him about influence. https://lnkd.in/eYKfcibg With thanks to AlphaSense, Bipsync, and SRS Acquiom.

A private equity fund has a clock built into it. Most founders have no idea it's ticking, and that single blind spot costs them leverage in every conversation they have with a PE firm. Here's how the money actually moves. When a fund is raised, investors commit their capital but they don't hand it over right away. The firm has roughly six years to call that capital and deploy it into companies. So for the first half of the fund's life, money flows out. Capital calls go out, acquisitions get made, the tide rolls out. Then it turns. Somewhere around the midpoint, the earliest investments start getting sold. Money begins flowing back to investors. By year ten, the fund is fully wound down and the capital has returned, hopefully with a return that doubled or tripled the stock market. Out, then back. A ten-year tide. Now here's why this matters to you. That clock creates pressure the firm cannot escape. They must deploy their capital, because if they don't, their investors don't get returns, and if investors don't get returns, the firm can't raise its next fund. A firm that can't raise its next fund is finished. That's the one cardinal sin in this business. It's why there's over a trillion dollars in dry powder sitting in funds right now, hunting for good companies. The money has to move. And if a fund bought your company in year five of its life, they need to grow it and exit it before year ten. Every board decision, every growth target, every push on timing traces back to where you sit on that tide. If you don't know the vintage year of the fund that owns you, you're negotiating blind. They are not patient investors. They are investors on a deadline. Understand the deadline and you understand the leverage. 90% of business owners couldn't explain any of this. Find out where you stand before you sit across the table. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #CEO

Working with private equity is harder than working for Jack Welch. I’ve done both. Jack was tough, but Jack knew the business. He knew the people. With PE, you’ve got more personalities in the mix. Partners. Associates. Mid-levels. Board dynamics. People flying in, reading a deck, making a snap call, barking orders, and flying back out. That part can be frustrating. I defend private equity all the time because most of what people hear on TV is just the bad story. But let’s be honest. This is not easy. You need to know how to pick the right partner. You need to understand the game. You need thick skin. Do that, and the wealth creation can be tremendous. Do it blind, and it can get ugly fast. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

I don’t think about an exit the way most founders do. Most founders think: “I sell the company. I get paid. I’m done.” That can work. But it’s not how the biggest wealth gets created. The bigger play is usually this: Sell part of the business. Keep meaningful equity. Partner with the right sponsor. Use their capital, their balance sheet, their M&A engine, their board. Build something bigger than you could have built alone. Then sell again. That’s the second payday. And if you do it right, the second check can be bigger than the first. I lived this. I sold the same company five times over 13 years. Worst rollover was 2x. Best was 11x. Not because I was smarter than everyone else. Because I learned that the exit is not always the end of the road. Sometimes it’s just the first rest stop. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

Being deliberate about value creation planning is no longer optional. Why the sudden urgency? The old PE playbook broke: ↳ Deals everywhere → scarce opportunities ↳ Forgiving markets → zero error tolerance ↳ Mult expansion → organic growth required The new requirements in this new era: ↳ Systematic value creation planning ↳ Intentional execution from day one ↳ Clear roadmap to returns 🔴 "We'll figure it out post-close" 🟢 Systematic VCP from the start 6 ways to tune-up your value creation planning practices ↓ (And plenty more in Ch 17 of my book Winning Moves. Link in the comments.)

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

The trades are under pressure from a threat that most independent owners are not taking seriously enough. I sat down with Billy Gregus, owner of Integrity Refrigeration, and asked him directly what he believes poses the greatest risk to independent contractors today and his answer was private equity. Firms with enormous capital reserves are entering local markets across the country and competing aggressively for the same customers you have spent years earning. Billy’s perspective was not doom and gloom though. His belief is that independent owners have an advantage private equity cannot buy: the ability to genuinely care for customers at a personal level. When you execute on that, customer retention improves, referrals increase, and your dependence on paid marketing shrinks. That is the competitive edge. Full episode releases Wednesday. #EscapeTheOneManShow #Trades #HVAC #ContractorLife #PrivateEquity #TradesBusiness #Leadership #Podcast #SmallBusiness

What they told me about partnerships was bullsh*t. The Disney movies got it wrong. It’s not knights on horses and damsels in distress. Instead, it’s two animals, defining territories, testing boundaries, pushing one another. I wish they would have told the truth. That I’d need to step up, be more, set lines, move some, and allow him to be the wild, strong, hard-edged independent man he is. I wish they would have told him he’d have to back down, lift me up, and allow me to be the spark, the fluid, mercurial, creative woman I am. And sometimes... be late to sh*t because timelines are more like suggestions right 😉 Half the problem today is we try to tame one another. We want men who have six-packs, can throw us up against a wall, leaders of men, and build empires... but we want them to “want” to wash the dishes and fold their underwear properly. Men want women who are sexy, strong, make their own $$, well-dressed, actually like to listen about golf scores but also, who cook them apple pie like their mommies. Extra points if you do it in aprons. The TRUTH... You gotta choose. Do you want the mommy, do you want the docile tame non-threatening man, or do you want the edges? Turns out only edges allow you to sharpen one another. So I’ll choose edges, adventures, questions, and creation any day. We’ve never been given anything the easy way… but man is it more satisfying on the other side of two humans who do the work.

Calling all Farmers, Ranchers, Outdoor Enthusiasts and Rednecks... Its Sunday and I get to wander a bit... The question of the day... John Deere Gator 845R or Polaris Ranger 1000 Ultimate? Uses - Light duty on my Redneck Ranch and zipping around back roads to my local restaurants and watering holes... #johnDeere #Polaris #offroad #redneck #farm #ranch

Everybody wants the outcome. Very few people want to spend 20 years earning it. That’s the part people miss. The freedom on the other side of a good exit is not some lifestyle fantasy. It is the byproduct of building a better company, growing it the right way, and understanding how to turn one transaction into long-term wealth. Not hype. Not luck. Not timing alone. Execution. Structure. Patience. Knowing how the game is actually played. If you do that well enough, life gets different. You get options. You get margin. You get time back. You get to enjoy what you built with the people you built it for. That’s what the game buys. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

PE firms decide whether you keep your CEO chair before the deal closes. Not after. I've been on both sides of this across 58 acquisitions. The pattern is consistent. Founders who walk into the deal process thinking like founders get replaced by operators who already think like PE-backed CEOs. It has nothing to do with performance. The company can be thriving. Revenue up. Team intact. None of that matters if the buyer watches you run meetings, answer diligence questions, and present growth plans like someone who has never operated inside a value-creation playbook. PE firms are pattern-matching during every call. Every data request. Every conversation about reporting cadence, EBITDA optimization, and bolt-on strategy. They are deciding in real time whether you are the person who runs this business on Day 1 or the person they thank on the way out. The founders who kept the chair in my experience all had one thing in common. They learned to operate in PE terms before they ever entered a process. That is exactly what I built Empire Builder Academy to do. Not financial prep. Personal and operational readiness for the way PE actually works. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #ceostrategy #exitplanning

I've been involved in hiring lots of CEOs for PE-backed companies. It's not easy. The 10 biggest mistakes I've made & learned from: 1. Hiring under duress – Desperation makes you rationalize bad decisions. 2. Cultural misalignment - CEO who excelled in a corporate environment may not fit the pace/scrutiny of PE. 3. Overweighting charisma – Charm feels good but doesn't predict performance. 4. Assuming experience equals skill – Previous CEO title ≠ effective CEO. 5. Ignoring instincts – Use data, but don't override your gut completely. 6. Overvaluing credentials – Fancy degrees don't automatically make you qualified. 7. The "airport test" trap – Personal chemistry matters, but beware affinity bias. 8. No agreed-upon scorecard – If you don't define success upfront, you can't evaluate objectively. 9. Attribution error – just because they were at a successful company doesn't mean they're good. 10. Overweighting industry experience – "Been in the space" isn't the same as "solved your problems." Others?

A younger version of me would have thought this was the finish line. “Welcome Mr. Coffey.” A NetJets account. A paid-off house. Zero debt A portfolio hitting record highs. But funny enough… none of those things are why I still work. I spent 21 years as a PE-backed CEO, completed 58 acquisitions, and participated in billions in exits. Eventually, I left the CEO seat because I was bored. I had already climbed the mountain I set out to climb. What I discovered next surprised me. The real adrenaline rush isn’t me winning anymore. It’s helping other people win. Watching founders scale. Helping entrepreneurs engineer life-changing exits. Seeing someone finally “get it” and level up their business and life. That's why I write books. That’s why I built Empire Builder Academy. To compress decades of lessons, scars, mistakes, and victories into a roadmap others can use to build their own empire. People sometimes ask me: “Adam… why do you still work?” I usually laugh and say: “For jet fuel.” But the truth is a little deeper than that. I work because purpose doesn’t retire. And because somewhere out there is another founder sitting where I once sat… trying to figure out how the game is really played. Who's next up? Link to the Academy in the comments #leadership #entrepreneur #privateequity #founders #businessgrowth #exitstrategy

Most businesses fight for attention. Legendary businesses create obsession. Titanic was not just a movie. It became an experience people wanted to relive. People watched it multiple times. They brought friends. They talked about it for years. That is branding. John Paul DeJoria once told me: “We’re in the reorder business.” One sentence. One billion dollar lesson. The Savannah Bananas understand this perfectly. They are not selling baseball. They are selling energy, emotion, entertainment, and identity. That is why people travel to see them. That is why their clips spread across the internet every single day. That is why fans become walking advertisements. Most entrepreneurs are trying to go viral once. The smartest businesses build something people want to come back to again and again. Attention gets you noticed. Connection gets you remembered. Experience gets you repeated. The real question is not: “How do I get more customers?” The real question is: “Why would people come back 2, 3, or 5 times?” How many times did people go watch Titanic?

The schema "Repress for Success" nearly cost him his sanity. 😬 We all develop coping mechanisms in childhood to hide the shame and embarrassment that come with making mistakes. It's a natural occurrence, almost an inevitability. The challenge arises when these childhood mechanisms carry over into adult life and business. This week's episode features Joshua Steiner, co-author of "From Mistakes to Meaning..." The discussion centers on mistakes and how we can overcome them, moving securely into our past without carrying lingering baggage. The full episode of The Capital Allocators Podcast is live now, available wherever you get your podcasts. 🎧

If you're in your 20s, read this. A few nuggets from the last 38 years: ↓ ↓ ↓ If you liked this, you'll love my newsletter. Get it here →  https://lnkd.in/e7DSWqMT

There is a video going viral right now of a homeowner pouring what appears to be muriatic acid down a bathroom sink drain while his wife brags about him being a handyman. It ends with a hole eaten through the bottom of the sink. Mom is in the background holding her face. It is funny until you realize how often we see the aftermath of situations exactly like this as a licensed plumbing contractor in Florida. Here is what most homeowners do not know. A slow draining sink almost never requires chemicals. The fix is almost always a clogged trap. The trap is the curved pipe directly under your sink. You unscrew it by hand. You clean it out. You put it back. The entire process takes about three minutes and costs nothing. Chemical drain cleaners and acids do not just risk damaging your fixtures. Over time they eat away at your pipes from the inside, corrode fittings, and create conditions that lead to leaks behind walls and under floors. By the time you find the damage it is always far more expensive than the original problem would have been. Muriatic acid is an industrial strength chemical used for stripping concrete and cleaning masonry. It has no business being anywhere near a residential drain system. The right tool for a slow drain is your hands and a bucket. The right person for a plumbing problem you cannot solve yourself is a licensed plumber who knows the difference between a clogged trap and a damaged line. #Plumbing #LicensedPlumber #HomeOwner #DIYFail #PlumbingTips #ContractorLife #ClimateExperts #FloridaPlumbing #HomeServices #Trades #DoItRight #PlumbingEducation

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

Founders pay for ignorance with time before they pay for it with valuation. I watched this pattern repeat across 58 acquisitions and 21 years as a PE-backed CEO. A founder spends 18 months learning what a quality of earnings report really means. Another burns a year chasing the wrong add-on targets. A third loses two rounds of LOIs because their financials weren't buyer-ready. None of them were stupid. All of them were guessing. Guessing has a carrying cost. Every month spent figuring it out alone is a month where enterprise value sits on the table uncaptured. Compound that over two or three years and the number gets ugly fast. That is why I built the Empire Builder Academy. Not as theory. As a playbook. The same frameworks I used to drive $2.5B in exits, compressed into a system that collapses the learning curve from years into weeks. Trial and error is not a strategy. It is a tax on founders who don't know the playbook exists yet. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitplanning #acquisitions

In 2016, I closed on an eCom business, even after it declined mid-deal. Ten years later, it cost me $300K out of pocket. It wasn’t the market, and it wasn’t “bad luck.” It went against the due diligence data that told me to walk. As the deal dragged on due to a bank holdup, I watched year-over-year revenue pull back. I had already negotiated the purchase price down, and the seller wouldn’t budge further. But I'd spent over a year searching and ninety days deep in this specific deal. So I said my final words: "I've already come this far." It was an unprofitable first 2-3 years, but I was able to claw it back. Ten years later, the site took a major hit, and I had to write a $300,000 check out of pocket. I’d love to say persistence kept me there, but really, it was avoidance. I didn’t weigh what I’d already lost against what I’d lose by staying. I was simply too afraid to back out of the deal. In acquisitions, emotion is expensive. Sometimes deals blow up, but the most insidious ones are the ones you should have left a long time ago.

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

*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!

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 ↓↓

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

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!

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

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

"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.

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.

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

Seller Financing Sounds Smart, Until You Own the Business

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

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

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 ❤️

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

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

That HVAC company is not a trades business. It is a membership business nobody has bothered to build yet. Most portfolio companies still describe themselves far too narrowly. They think they are in installs. Repairs. Truck rolls. Dispatch. Seasonal demand. A local service category with decent margins and the usual staffing headaches. Fine. But that framing leaves a lot of value on the table. Because the better version of that business is not built around one off jobs. It is built around recurring customer relationships. Annual service plans. Priority scheduling. Maintenance subscriptions. Discounted repairs. Replacement planning. Cross sell into air quality, plumbing, electrical, insulation, or whatever else the customer will sensibly buy from a provider they already trust. That is a different business. And once management sees it that way, the decisions change. Marketing stops chasing only emergency demand and starts thinking about customer lifetime value. Operations starts treating retention and renewal as seriously as fulfilment. The call centre stops sounding like a booking desk and starts sounding like an account management function. Pricing gets smarter. The database gets more valuable. The multiple gets more interesting. That is the point. A trades business gets judged on volume, utilisation, and near term revenue. A membership business starts to build predictability. It creates a base of recurring cash flow. It lowers customer acquisition waste. It improves capacity planning. It gives the company more chances to sell, retain, and expand the relationship over time. Same technicians. Same vans. Same market. Very different economics. This is one of the simplest reframes in value creation and one of the most useful. Because a lot of portfolio companies are not missing opportunity because the market is bad. They are missing it because they are still describing the business as a narrower, less valuable version of itself. Call it HVAC and you get a service business. Build it as a membership model and you start to get a platform. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

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

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

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."

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.

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.

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

A lot of founders can sell. Fewer know when not to. That’s the whole game. You can take the decent offer. Nice outcome. Nice check. Nice story. Or you can build for the number that actually changes things. That usually means more discipline. Better leadership. Cleaner financials. Maybe a few acquisitions. A company that looks a lot more valuable a couple years from now than it does today. That’s why I always tell founders this: Don’t sell the company you could still scale. The gap between a decent exit and a life-changing one is usually strategy. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

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.

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

KPMG published one of those reports PE firms will quote in LP meetings and quietly ignore on Monday morning. They surveyed 500 private equity leaders. Only 18% were operating partners. That is quite something for an industry now telling everyone returns will come from operational alpha. Operational alpha, apparently, is being delivered by a small group of people who are stretched across five, ten, sometimes twenty portfolio companies while the deal team continues to breed like rabbits in a spreadsheet factory. KPMG also looked at the 10 largest PE firms and found 56% of employees sit in investment roles. Operational value creation is 10%. That tells you quite a lot. The industry spent twenty years building machines for sourcing, underwriting, financing and closing deals. Very impressive machines. Beautiful logos. Excellent vests. Calendars full of management meetings that start with “just double clicking on that.” Now the market has changed. Leverage is less forgiving. Exits are slower. Holding periods are longer. Multiple expansion is no longer turning average companies into genius investments. LPs are starting to ask whether “value creation” means anything beyond a slide with five workstreams and a blue arrow pointing up. And the answer, in too many firms, is still headcount-light operating theatre. One operating partner with twelve companies is not a value creation model. It is a hostage situation with better business cards. The firms that win from here will look very different. More operators. More data talent. More pricing discipline. More commercial execution. More people who have actually run something without calling it a transformation office. The firms that lose will keep calling themselves operationally focused because they hired someone from industry in 2019 and put them on the website. That may have worked when rates were free and exits were easy. Sadly, the spreadsheet has stopped doing all the heavy lifting. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

I got bored. That's the real answer when people ask why I left the CEO seat after 21 years and $2.5 billion in exits. Not burned out. Not pushed out. Not ready to retire. Bored. I'd built three national companies. Navigated nine PE sponsors. Completed 58 acquisitions. Sold the same company five times in 13 years. I knew how the machine worked. I could run it in my sleep. And somewhere in that certainty, the challenge disappeared. So I asked myself a different question. What if instead of building one more company, I helped dozens of entrepreneurs build theirs? That question became The Chairman Group. Today I coach 70+ founders. I work with a dozen PE firms. I serve on boards. I run coaching sessions and private client relationships with CEOs across every industry — roofing, dental, IT services, home services, real estate, and more. Every one of them is building something real, and every one of them is facing problems I've already solved. That's not arrogance. That's math. 21 years in the seat means I've seen the $10M ceiling, the $30M identity crisis, the first PE board meeting, the first acquisition that goes sideways, the first exit that changes everything. I've lived every chapter of the story these founders are writing right now. When I was a CEO, I helped one company at a time. Now I help dozens. The frameworks are the same. The playbook is the same. But the impact multiplied the moment I left the single seat and opened the door to anyone ready to use what I'd built. I didn't leave because I was done. I left because I was ready to do more. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #leadership #CEO

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.

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 best 3x deals are usually too boring to make the panel. Private equity conferences love the glamorous stories. The AI platform. The software rocketship. The sexy consumer brand. The deal everyone can talk about without sounding like they spent three years underwriting waste hauling in Ohio. Meanwhile, the boring services roll up quietly does exactly what it is supposed to do. It buys sensible businesses in an unsexy category. Improves pricing. Tightens operations. Adds density. Professionalises the back office. Removes obvious stupidity. Grows steadily. Uses leverage without pretending it is wizardry. Exits at a reasonable multiple. And returns 3x. Nobody writes a breathless case study about it. Nobody puts it on a conference stage with dramatic music and a moderator asking about transformation. Nobody calls it category defining. It just works. That is the bit the industry loves to forget. A lot of the best outcomes in private equity do not come from brilliance. They come from discipline. Not overpaying. Not getting distracted. Not mistaking novelty for edge. Not underwriting a heroic future to justify a present price. Just buying a business with solid demand, fragmented competition, and obvious operational headroom, then doing the job properly for five years. Boring, apparently. Private equity says it wants repeatability. Then it spends a lot of time publicly admiring the deals least likely to be repeated. The quiet 3x is usually built on fundamentals people find too dull to brag about. Route density. Branch economics. Procurement. Labour efficiency. CRM adoption. Pricing discipline. Add ons that actually fit. Management that tells the truth. A commercial engine that does not need a miracle. No glamour. Just competence. Which is why these deals rarely become folklore. They do not flatter anyone's self image. They do not make the sponsor sound like a visionary. They do not give conference organisers much to work with. But they are often the deals that make the fund. The industry talks a lot about exceptional returns. A lot of firms would be much better off building a machine that can produce boring 3x outcomes on purpose. That is far less exciting. And far more useful. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

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

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

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

Private markets firms are still asking what it takes to make unified data work at scale. On Investment Management Operations, Scott MacDonald speaks with Cesar Estrada, Head of Private Markets at Arcesium, on building a data platform across internal teams and fund admins, and applying it to reconciliation, NAV oversight, AI, and the future of investment operations software. https://lnkd.in/ePvknVgd With thanks to Carta.

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 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.

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

Nobody ever taught you this. Here's the entire private equity landscape in eight slides. I teach a module on this inside Empire Builder Academy. When I'm done, founders tell me it changed how they think about their business, their exit, and their leverage. Not because the information is complicated. Because it was hidden. PE works like a mutual fund - except it's private, it's locked up for 10 years, the minimum investment is typically $5 million, and the returns double the stock market over long periods. That's why money keeps flooding in. That's why there are now over 8,000 firms managing $7 trillion. The firms raise capital from investors - pension funds, university endowments, wealthy families - and they have roughly six years to deploy it into companies. If they don't deploy it, their investors lose opportunity cost and won't invest in the next fund. That structural pressure is why PE must buy companies. It's existential. They make money through "two and twenty" - 2% management fee to keep the lights on, 20% carried interest on every dollar of profit. That 20% is the engine. It drives every decision your board will make. Swipe through for the full breakdown. Then take the quiz and find out how much of this you actually knew before reading it. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #CEO

Somewhere tonight, a founder is on a red-eye reading this book. They've got a meeting in the morning. Maybe it's with a PE firm for the first time. Maybe it's with a broker who called out of nowhere and said "I've got a buyer interested in your company." Maybe it's with their own leadership team to finally have the conversation about what comes next. They're reading it because they realized — probably too late, probably this week — that they don't know how any of this works. They've built a great company. They can run the operation in their sleep. But private equity? Multiples? EBITDA adjustments? Rollover equity? Value creation plans? That's a different language. And nobody taught them to speak it. I wrote Empire Builder to be the book you read before that meeting. The one that takes you from "I've heard of private equity" to understanding how $7 trillion in assets under management actually works — how the funds are structured, what the firms are looking for, how they evaluate your business, and how you can position yourself to capture the maximum value from the partnership. It covers the full arc. Unit economics and the 30/20/10 Rule at the foundation. Organic growth, margin improvement, and M&A as the scaling engine. The PE pyramid, multiple arbitrage, and exit engineering at the top. 252 pages. Every framework tested across 58 acquisitions and $2.5 billion in exits. Written in plain language because complex doesn't have to mean complicated. A Goodreads reviewer compared it to reading Kahneman — except it's about building a company instead of behavioral economics. An Audible listener said they started applying advice from chapter one the same day they heard it. That's what a playbook is supposed to do. Not inspire you. Equip you. If you've got a meeting coming — any meeting where the stakes are real and the numbers are big — read this first. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #CEO

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

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

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

Half the PE industry calls itself software-led now. Sounds excellent in an LP meeting. The decks are immaculate. Everyone has read the Bain report. Someone has said “agentic” with a straight face. Then you ask what the AI plan actually looks like at portfolio level. Usually, it is a job title. A Head of AI hire. An offsite with OpenAI. A few pilots. A steering committee. Then a press release written in that strange hostage-note language where nobody is allowed to say what the business actually does. Meanwhile, nothing important has changed. The product is still the same product. The pricing still assumes old switching costs. The roadmap still has the same 14 epics it had two years ago. The customer is already testing three vendors, one internal tool and something built by a 24-year-old in procurement who is now accidentally more strategic than the board. That is the problem. PE bought software because it was sticky. But a lot of the stickiness was never product love. It was friction. Bad integrations. Workflow lock-in. Training pain. Data trapped in weird corners. Contract fatigue. The glorious moat of “we cannot be bothered to move.” AI eats that first. The Bain report calls it K-shaped. CNBC said PE may end up eating its own software portfolio. That sounds dramatic until you sit inside a portfolio review and realise half the “defensible software assets” are really just workflow toll booths wearing Patagonia vests. The winners will pull away quickly. AI-native products, data advantage, pricing power, better margins. The rest will discover that “mission-critical” is not the same as “irreplaceable.” Anyone who bought vertical SaaS between 2020 and 2022 should be staring very hard at what they actually own. Vertical SaaS was meant to be the safest room in PE. It may just be the one without a fire exit. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #AI #Software

Finally, a full episode about what doesn't work in investing and business. On today's episode, I sat down with Joshua Steiner, the youngest-ever Chief of Staff at the U.S. Treasury, co-founder of Quadrangle and SSW Partners, Bloomberg operator, nearly a decade on Yale's investment committee, and co-author of From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn't Own You. The whole conversation is about mistakes. The high-profile one Josh made in Washington. Frameworks for not making them. And in a twist, Josh turns the tables on me to open up about a mistake I've never shared publicly. 🎧 Full episode with Joshua Steiner is availble now and linked in the comments down below!

Back in February, we launched something new for PE execs and those at the funds who support them: a semi-annual briefing called The Operator's Edge. Honestly, I wasn't sure anyone would read it. But the response was super positive. So we're doing it again. I'm nailing down the topics for the Q3 edition, which will drop in July. A taste of what's inside this one: → An intuitive approach to value creation planning → How to build a strong relationship with your PE board → Coaching your team when you barely have time to think → Patching your inner OS before it crashed your leadership → A simple tool for making bolder decisions more confidently ...and more. If you're an exec or PE professional who wants in, drop a comment below and we'll add you to the distro list. ↓↓

PE's favourite strategy is copying whatever just happened to work. Private equity has a recency bias problem. The last deal that worked quickly becomes the template for the next five. One healthcare services platform performs well and suddenly everyone has deep conviction in fragmented healthcare services. One software roll up lands nicely and now every mediocre vertical SaaS asset is apparently a strategic priority. One home services deal gets bid up and suddenly half the market is pretending to have spent years studying HVAC, roofing, and pest control. It is all very convincing in the moment. Success in private equity has a strange way of being rewritten as foresight. A deal works, and the industry immediately decides it was not one good investment made in a specific context. No, it was evidence of a broader repeatable truth. Now there is a playbook. Now there is a pattern. Now there is a sector thesis. Now there are six more firms crowding into the same trade explaining why this time it is disciplined. That is usually when the returns start getting worse. Because what made the first deal good was often timing, price, or scarcity. What follows is usually imitation at a higher multiple. The first investor gets paid for being early. The next five pay up for the privilege of calling it a strategy. This happens constantly. Private equity loves to talk about pattern recognition. Quite a lot of what it really means is pattern overextension. An idea works once. Maybe twice. Then people stop asking whether the conditions are still attractive and start assuming the shape of the deal itself was the edge. It rarely is. By the time an entire segment has become consensus, the easy money is usually gone. Valuations are higher. Sellers know the script. Bankers know who to call. Management teams know which buzzwords to use. And suddenly a once interesting theme becomes an auction process with prettier slides. The industry calls that conviction. A lot of the time it is just delayed mimicry. The best firms are not the ones that copy the last winner fastest. They are the ones that know when a good idea has already been fully socially accepted by private equity, which is usually a decent sign the return profile is about to get much less interesting. That is the problem with recency bias. It makes the industry feel smarter right as it starts overpaying in formation. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

A high-profile mistake became a framework for growth. Joshua Steiner, former Clinton administration Treasury Chief of Staff and co-author of From Mistakes to Meaning, discusses mistakes across government, investing, leadership, and life — and turns the table on me to discuss one of my own. https://lnkd.in/eE7hd9HM With thanks to AlphaSense, Bipsync, and SRS Acquiom.

"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

Middle-market private equity deserves WAY more respect than it gets. *** The elitism in the industry is so forced. You can see it in people's faces when you mention KKR vs a middle-market firm. Their eyes widen. They listen a little more intently. I get it. It signals prestige. It signals credibility. Like mentioning you're friends with a celebrity. But the hardest deals in PE aren't happening at firms like KKR or Carlye. They're happening in the middle-market firms nobody talks about. Hear me out. Large cap PE buys a Fortune 500-tier company with an existing management team, established infrastructure, a bench of talent, and a literal army of consultants on speed dial. Middle-market PE buys a dusty founder-led company with:  -- A CEO who still signs every check and uses Yahoo email -- An accounting 𝚝̶𝚎̶𝚊̶𝚖̶ (nephew) running the business on QuickBooks  -- 0 documented processes  -- A culture built entirely around one person's relationships  -- And a stack of deferred maintenance that didn't show up in the CIM Then they're expected to professionalize the business, build the team, implement systems, grow revenue, and hit a 3-4x MOIC with a CAPEX budget that would make an operating partner queasy. They do more with less, operate in higher complexity, navigate messier talent situations, and can't hide behind a team of 50 when things go sideways. Mega funds can afford to throw money at problems.  Middle market firms need to fight tooth-and-nail to create value. This ain't even the same sport. Cheers to GPs and Operators in the middle market for making miracles happen daily. May is (unofficially) Middle Market Recognition Month.

95% of people use free AI. Think about that for a second. They are literally training trillion dollar companies for free… while using AI at the lowest possible level. Meanwhile, the wealthiest entrepreneurs I know use multiple AIs every single day. ChatGPT. Claude. Gemini. Grok. JT1 (mine) Why? Because every AI thinks differently. One sees strategy. One sees logic. One sees patterns. One sees execution. One sees opportunity. Yet most people barely use ONE. That’s the difference. The top 1% are not using AI to save 15 minutes. They are using AI to compress years of mistakes. To make faster decisions. To write better. To negotiate stronger. To market smarter. To see opportunities other people miss. And here’s the scary part… AI already tells people almost exactly what to do. How to make money. How to scale. How to market. How to build systems. How to improve their health. How to fix their business. How to create content. How to save time. The problem is not lack of information anymore. The problem is implementation. Most people ask AI questions… but never execute the answers. The gap between rich and poor is about to become massive. Not because of AI itself. Because some people will use AI like a calculator… …and others will use it like an executive team. The people who learn how to think with AI instead of casually playing with it will dominate the next 5 years. 95% of people still think AI is optional. That will become one of the biggest financial mistakes of this generation. Link in the comments if you want to use mine #AI #Entrepreneurship #Business #Innovation

Read the book. Took action. *BOOM* 9-Figure Exit. I love getting messages like this in my inbox. To be clear, Russ Allen and his team are the real heroes of this story. They built the company, created the value, and earned the outcome. But knowing that my books, podcast appearances and coaching may have played a small role in helping entrepreneurs achieve life-changing exits is incredibly rewarding. Over the years, I’ve had multiple clients — and multiple readers — go on to achieve 9-figure outcomes. Who’s next? Russ — welcome to the 1% Club. And remember… the first exit is often just the first rest stop on the wealth-creation highway. Here’s to second bites of the apple down the road. You can find my books anywhere fine books are sold. Amazon makes it easy: hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and Audible. I donate all book royalties to charity. 📚 The Private Equity Playbook (2019 / 2024) 📚 The Exit Strategy Playbook (2021) 📚 Empire Builder (2023) #exit #privateequity #founder #mergersandacquisitions #entrepreneur #businessowner

$7 trillion. That's how much capital private equity controls right now. And it has an incessant need to go out and buy stuff. That's not my opinion. That's the structural reality of how PE works. A PE firm raises a fund. That fund has a 10-year life. They have roughly six years to deploy the capital. If they don't invest it, their investors don't get returns. If their investors don't get returns, they won't invest in the next fund. If they can't raise the next fund, the firm dies. They must buy companies. It's not optional. It's existential. And right now there's over a trillion dollars in dry powder — committed capital sitting in funds that hasn't been deployed yet — and a shortage of good companies to buy. Read that again. A shortage of good companies. Too much money chasing too few deals. That means if you're running a profitable, growing business with recurring revenue in a fragmented industry — you're exactly what $7 trillion is hunting for. And you have more leverage than you think. But only if you understand the mechanics. Most founders think PE holds all the cards. They don't. They hold a checkbook with a deadline. The fund has an expiration date. The money has to move. The investors expect returns. Every year that capital sits undeployed is a year the firm can't justify its existence. When you understand that — when you really understand the pressure on the other side of the table — the entire negotiation shifts. 90% of business owners can't pass a basic 10-question quiz on how PE works. That means 90% are walking into conversations without understanding the leverage they already have. Don't be the 90%. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #CEO

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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

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

Never too late.

If I could sit down with the 31-year-old version of me, I wouldn’t talk theory. I’d talk about how the game actually works. How to build a company that scales. How to think about acquisitions. How to sell for more than you thought possible. And how the first payday is rarely the biggest one. That’s the whole idea behind Empire Builder Academy. The 61-year-old me, with $2.5B in exits, teaching the founder version of me who was still figuring it out the hard way. Play better. Learn faster. Make more money. That’s the point. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

The real reason I coach isn't on my website. It's not the revenue. I did fine on that front across six exits. It's not the prestige. I was a CEO for 21 years — I've had plenty of titles. It's the seat. When I was running my first PE-backed company, there was nobody available who had done what I was trying to do, at the level I wanted to do it, who was willing to sit down and explain how any of it worked. I figured it out company by company, deal by deal, mistake by mistake. That's an expensive way to learn. And most founders don't survive it. So I decided to fill the seat I wished someone had filled for me. That's The Chairman Group. That's the Academy. That's the books. That's the 70+ founders I work with right now. Swipe through for the full story. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #leadership #CEO

The exit isn't the finish line. It's the first rest stop on the wealth creation highway. Most founders optimize for the wrong thing at the table. Watch the clip. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

Budgeting for AI: The Free Ride Is Ending I recently held a tech CFO meetup. A major topic was the rapid growth of AI usage and token spend. Some of the larger orgs are seeing material internal token spend. Others are dipping a toe in the water. I think the token reckoning will come this Fall when CFO's kick off budget season. Internal AI must be justified like any other spend. There is only so much capital to go around during budget season. Some existing budget line items will get cut (people, tools, etc.) to make room for increased AI spend. Here are 5 of the 10 takeaways from our meeting. Practical Takeaways for CFOs 1. Start tracking AI usage before it becomes material AI spend can scale quickly. CFOs should push for visibility by user, model, department, and use case. 2. Separate internal AI spend from product AI spend Internal productivity tools and customer-facing AI features may need different accounting, budgeting, and margin treatment. 3. Do not let everyone default to the newest model Model selection matters. Expensive models should be used when needed, but cheaper models may be sufficient for many tasks. 4. Assign budget ownership eventually Centralized AI spend may help during experimentation, but long-term, department leaders should probably own their own AI budgets. 5. Measure specific AI tools differently from general-purpose AI Customer support bots, sales tools, and marketing tools are easier to measure. General tools like Claude or ChatGPT require different ROI frameworks. #SaaS #CFO

Why is it easier for people to make $100 million than it is to make $100,000? Because $100,000 is where people still care what everyone thinks. $100 million is where they stop. They stop needing approval. They stop explaining themselves to people who have never taken a real risk. They stop shrinking their vision so insecure people feel comfortable. Most people do not fail because they lack talent. They fail because they keep asking permission from people who have never built anything. At some point, winners stop asking: “What will people think?” And start asking: “What will my life look like if I keep playing small?” That question changes everything. The first level of wealth is usually not a money problem. It is a courage problem. Small money is controlled by fear. Big money is built by people who stopped caring who clapped. #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #Business #Success

One of the most valuable roles a PE board member can play? Helping management FOCUS. Many board meetings drown in updates. But the best boards cut through noise. Here are 3 questions you can use to do this: QUESTION 1: "What is the biggest opportunity or challenge facing the company, and how are we going to address it?" ↳ Forces prioritization. Eliminates the laundry list. QUESTION 2: "What is the one thing, such that by doing it this year, our 5-year vision becomes significantly more attainable?" ↳ Separates the vital few from the trivial many. QUESTION 3: "What will have more impact on our overall success this year than anything else?" ↳ Cuts to the chase. Truth is: Most port-co management teams are drowning in "priorities." 47 initiatives, 12 fires, and a hundred "urgent" requests. When this happens, the forest disappears behind the trees. And that's where a great board member steps in. Not to add more noise, but to help clear it away. * * * * * If this post resonated with you... ♻️ Please repost to share with others 🔔 Follow Dan Cremons for more like it.

When would you fire yourself?? When it comes to exiting PMs, the best, most honest exit is the one you never have to make. No marketing-to-CIO escalation. No bad feelings. Everyone stays friends. Transparency, set on day one, turns the hardest conversation in this business into the easiest one. No marketing-to-CIO escalation. No bad feelings. Everyone stays friends. Transparency, set on day one, turns the hardest conversation in this business into the easiest one. 🎧 Full episode with Derek Drummond, Will England & Tony Caruso, available now wherever you stream your podcasts.

The single biggest QoE mistake I see founders make. Letting the buyer's quality of earnings be the first one written. A buy-side QoE has one job. Find every reason the EBITDA you presented is too high. Add-backs that should not be there. Revenue that should be deferred. Costs that should be capitalized differently. Customer concentration that justifies a discount. Working capital normalization that pulls cash out of the deal. That is not a bad thing. That is what they are paid to do. The problem is when it is the only QoE in the room. The buyer walks in with a thirty-page document that systematically lowers your EBITDA, and you have nothing to push back with except your gut feel and your accountant's monthly close. A sell-side QoE flips the dynamic. Same financial statements. Same business. Different analyst with a different mandate. Their job is to surface every legitimate add-back and adjustment that increases normalized EBITDA. Owner perks. One-time legal expenses. Non-recurring losses. Investments in growth that are being run through the P&L. Synergies a buyer should pay for. The number you walk into the process with on a sell-side QoE is almost always higher than the number a buy-side QoE produces on the same business. Same financials. Different narrative. Different number. The cost of a sell-side QoE in the lower middle market is somewhere between 25 and 75 thousand dollars depending on the firm. The impact on the deal can be one to two turns of EBITDA. On a 5 million dollar EBITDA business, that is 5 to 10 million dollars of price. Best return on advisory dollars in the entire process. Get yours first. #MergersAndAcquisitions #QualityOfEarnings #BusinessExit #SellSide #LowerMiddleMarket #DealMaking #ExitStrategy

A video circulating on Facebook shows an HVAC technician using 410A refrigerant to clear a condensate drain line and venting it directly into the air. This is a federal violation. Section 608 of the Clean Air Act prohibits knowingly venting refrigerants into the atmosphere. The fine is up to $44,539 per day per violation. Not per incident. Per day. Beyond the legal exposure there is a practical point worth making to every technician and contractor reading this. If you are ever in a situation where refrigerant feels like your best option for clearing a drain line something has gone wrong with your van inventory and your preparation. A shop vac pulls a drain clog out in 30 seconds. A drain pump pushes it through just as fast. Both tools should be standard on every service van. Neither one carries federal liability. The trades industry is full of experienced people doing excellent work every day. Videos like this one create a perception problem for all of us. Hold the standard. Be prepared not a hack. #HVAC #HVACContractor #LicensedContractor #TradesLife #ContractorLife #HVACEducation #EPACompliance #RefrigerantHandling #DerekCormier #EscapeTheOneManShow #HomeServices #HVACBusiness #Trades #ProfessionalStandards #BePrepered #ClimateExperts

People see the jet. I see the years before it. The bad hires. The acquisitions. The missed sleep. The deals that worked. The ones that taught expensive lessons. That’s why I’ve never been impressed by the arrival itself. The arrival is just a consequence. You build a better company. You learn the game. You stay in the seat. You roll equity. You do it again. Eventually, what used to look extraordinary just becomes part of the landscape. That’s the point. Not the jet. Not the optics. The freedom. The access. The ability to move when you want because you built something that earned it. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

My mission is simple: give founders the information PE firms already have. Level the playing field. Remove the information asymmetry. Watch the clip. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #CEO

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?

Every portco CEO with one of those sponsors got a meeting they didn't book. If your firm is part of the Anthropic JV or the OpenAI DeployCo announcement, your portfolio companies are about to find out what "embedded engineers" actually means. Six people in a Slack channel nobody set up. A roadmap nobody asked for. KPIs the CFO did not agree to. Invoices routed through a vendor the sponsor owns a piece of. I've sat with enough CEOs three weeks into a sponsor-driven transformation to know how this ends. They are not enthused. Grant Thornton just measured the actual state of AI in PE. Five percent of portfolio companies are fully integrating it. Five. After three years of "AI native" annual letters and AI operating partner job titles. The constraint was never the model. The constraint is operating capability. The same CFO who could not finish a Salesforce rollout is now expected to absorb six Anthropic engineers and a workflow redesign. The same OP team that struggled to land a pricing project is the lead vendor manager on a multi-portfolio AI programme. What about hiring the JV changes that. The firms that wrote the cheque have not solved the operating problem. They have outsourced one variable inside it. The talent gap, the board cadence, the change discipline, the willingness to replace a weak leadership team in under nine months. None of that is in the JV deck. When the sponsor co-owns the consultant, the value creation math also moves. The fee flows out of the portco. The equity owns a piece of the vendor. The carry is calculated on the portco. Three economic vectors, one set of partners, all three sides of the trade. The question for the next LP advisory committee is not whether your sponsor is doing AI work. It is what actually changed in your sponsor's operating capability between the last quarterly call and this one. There is a slide doing the rounds at PE firms right now. Anthropic in the value creation column. Zero entries under either conflict of interest or operating readiness. That is the slide that will age the worst. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

The Maui Jim Sunglasses ʻOkina in Shiny Dark Havana just landed exclusively at MyEyeDr. I’ve always valued partnerships that deliver real quality. This frame brings classic rectangular style and Hawaiian Native pattern details together with PolarizedPlus2 lens technology. That means clear, glare-free vision that makes every moment outside better. What sets MyEyeDr. apart is our focus on bringing you exclusive options like this. Trusted brands. Advanced lenses. A shopping experience built around what works for you. Good partners let us deliver that every day. #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #MauiJim #Eyewear #Sunglasses #EyeCare #Partnerships

They speak a language you don't. And they know it within minutes. I've been on both sides of that table. As a CEO buying 58 companies, I sat across from founders who understood the deal and founders who didn't. The difference was obvious before the first document was opened. The PE firm's side of the table has IRR calculations, MOIC projections, hold period timelines, capital structure models, and carried interest math. They've done this hundreds of times. They know exactly what every number means, how every structure favors them, and where every dollar lands. The founder's side of the table has instinct. Grit. A great company they built from nothing. And almost zero understanding of the mechanics driving the person across from them. That's not a negotiation. That's a surrender wrapped in a handshake. Two and twenty. Do you know what that means? It means the PE firm charges 2% of committed capital to keep the lights on and takes 20% of every dollar of profit as carried interest. That 20% is what drives every request they make about your company. Every growth target. Every margin push. Every exit timeline. If you don't understand that, you can't contextualize a single thing your board asks you to do. You're just reacting. And reacting from a position of ignorance is the most expensive thing a founder can do. Hold period. Fund vintage year. Capital calls. Rollover equity math. Value creation plan levers. Multiple expansion mechanics. LP return expectations. This is the language of the table. And 90% of business owners can't speak a word of it. Five minutes. Ten questions. You'll know exactly where you stand. Link in the comments. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #CEO

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

Everybody keeps talking about AI like knowing about it is enough. It's not. Execution wins. Every single time. That's what SUMMIT is about. Getting in the room with people who are building, growing, making moves, and figuring it out in real time. Next week is not about theory. It's about what happens when smart leaders get in the same room and push each other to think bigger. If you're coming, buckle up. If you're not....you're going to wish you were! Registration closes TONIGHT: https://hubs.li/Q04gMMVb0

Ferruccio Lamborghini did not build Lamborghini because Ferrari inspired him. He built it because Ferrari ignored him. That is the business lesson. Some of the greatest companies are born from problems nobody wants to solve. Ferruccio had a problem with his Ferrari. The story goes Enzo dismissed him as a tractor maker. So Ferruccio stopped complaining and built the answer. Want to make money? Solve a problem. Want to make a lot of money? Solve a painful problem people will pay a lot of money to fix. Want to build a brand people remember? Solve it in a way the world cannot ignore. Ferrari became speed, status, precision, and winning. Lamborghini became power, rebellion, boldness, and attention. 2 brands. 2 stories. 1 lesson. The market does not reward the person who complains the loudest. It rewards the person who builds what everyone else said could not be done. This Saturday at 9 AM Eastern, I am breaking down how Ferrari built its brand, how Lamborghini built its brand, how I built mine, and how entrepreneurs can use experience, access, and positioning to stand out in a crowded market. I will also show you the Ferrari and Lamborghini business experience I created in Italy for the last week of July. Check the comments. Your next big business may be hiding inside the problem everyone else keeps complaining about. #Entrepreneurship #Branding #BusinessGrowth #Leadership

Most PE media reports deals. Very little of it judges them. One of the things I like about Not Very Private Equity is that it actually has a view on deals. That should not feel unusual. It does. Most private equity media stops at description. Who bought it. What the multiple might have been. Which banker advised. What the press release said. A few tidy quotes about strategic fit, sector conviction, and exciting next chapters. Fine. But was it a good deal? Was the price sane. Was the thesis real. Was the market attractive. Was this actual conviction or just another fund putting more leverage on a fashionable sector and hoping the next buyer is even more optimistic. That is the interesting bit. And it is the bit a lot of PE media avoids. Partly because neutrality has become the default posture. Partly because access comes with manners. Partly because once your business depends on the same ecosystem for sponsorship, subscriptions, and conference revenue, you tend to develop a very careful editorial line. Not Very Private Equity does not have that problem. It has no access to protect. No relationships to manage. No reason to pretend something looks smart when it does not. Which means the team can look at a deal and say what it actually looks like. Not what the press release says it looks like. Some of these deals are genuinely impressive. Some are panic dressed up as strategy. Some are multiple expansion fantasies with a capital structure attached. Some are perfectly decent businesses bought at a price that turns competence into a rescue mission. Pretending all of these deserve the same polite treatment is not analysis. It is just stenography for finance people. The industry does not need more summaries pretending every deal is thoughtful. It needs sharper opinions, clearer thinking, and a bit more willingness to say that buying a mediocre business at an absurd price is not a sophisticated strategy just because the sponsor used the word platform. That is one of the reasons I think Not Very Private Equity is useful. It is not there to recycle announcements. It is there to have a view. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

One employee can quietly become a multimillion-dollar operational risk in an acquisition. Most buyers focus heavily on customer concentration during diligence. A surprising amount of operational risk actually sits with employee concentration. In many lower middle market businesses, one person quietly holds together a significant portion of the operation: - the estimator who prices every job - the operations manager who knows every vendor relationship - the salesperson tied to key accounts - the office manager who understands how billing actually functions - the technician who built undocumented internal systems over 15 years That risk often stays hidden while the seller is still involved. Then closing happens. Employees can react differently to ownership changes than buyers expect. Some become nervous. Some want leverage. Some were more loyal to the founder than the company itself. The issue is usually not whether the employee has an employment agreement. It is whether the buyer identified: - operational dependency - undocumented knowledge - transition risk - incentive alignment - whether the business can realistically function without that individual This is an important risk factor to identify before the transition process starts. Doing so allows buyers to evaluate retention strategy, knowledge transfer, and whether the business can retain that individual post-close.

I'm not above using our Booth value creation class to bait old pals into flying across the country to teach + hang. Loved spending Thurs evening with Matt Moore and Kam S. Phillips-Sadler talking culture & value creation. Real talk: culture is one of the squishiest topics in PE and ETA. And too many convos on culture get papered over with platitudes about "building high-performance culture" without anyone saying what that actually means... let alone how to do it. Yet anyone with half a brain knows how much culture impacts value creation success. So we spent 3 hours pulling the topic out of the clouds and onto the ground for small biz operators. And no better people to help do that than Matt and Kam. Matt: An old teammate at Alpine, and a partner there now. Helped architect one of the most studied operating cultures in PE at Alpine Investors, and is a true champion for culture in the portcos he works with. Kam: CEO of KidKare, where she led an amazing cultural transformation (eNPS in the high 80s? Come on!). She's a walking example of a head-and-heart leader. Her story is awesome. Matt's comment after class: "I was blown away by how many questions these students were asking." Props to our amazing students for "bringing their 100" last night. I'll miss Thursday nights when this Q wraps in 2 weeks... though def won't miss the 5a wakeup call to catch my Friday morning flight. Alex Hodgkin, CFA Montgomery Miller

Every founder who has gotten top dollar for their business prepared this way. Not three months out. Three years out. The data backs it. Buyers in this market reward preparation more than they ever have. Quality of earnings is now table stakes, not a differentiator. AI utilization shows up in diligence. Cybersecurity reps are scrutinized. Technology stack matters. Customer concentration matters. The depth of your management team matters. You cannot fix any of that in a quarter. The 36 month rule is simple. Treat the next three years like you are running a process the entire time, even if you have no plans to sell. 36 months out. Get your books clean. Move to accrual accounting if you are still on cash. Normalize EBITDA for owner expenses, one-time items, and below-market salaries. Get a quality of earnings report commissioned now, not the week before LOI. The number you get back will probably surprise you. That gives you 36 months to fix the things it surfaces. 24 months out. Reduce founder dependency. If the business cannot run for 30 days without you in the room, it is worth less than your EBITDA suggests. Document processes. Move customer relationships off your phone and onto the team. Hire the second-in-command you keep saying you do not need. 12 months out. Engage advisors. Build the data room. Tell the story before you have to. Pre-market the business through relationships, not a process. The best deals start with conversations long before a banker sends out a CIM. Founders who do this get bidding wars. Founders who do not get one bid, often well below what they expected, and a long list of diligence findings that justify chipping away at it. Three years feels like forever when you are running the business. Three months feels like seconds when the deal is on the table. #BusinessExit #MergersAndAcquisitions #ExitStrategy #LowerMiddleMarket #PrivateEquity #DealMaking #FounderJourney

When you control capital, everyone wants to know you. Your calendar fills up, conferences feel like reunions, and you're never short on dinner invitations. But pull back the curtain, and a lot of it is transactional. It took Derek Drummond, 25 years to figure out who his real friends actually were. The tell? Reciprocity. Not the polished kind, the unglamorous, show-up-when-there's-nothing-in-it-for-them kindness that only those who truly care show. Shrink your circle and increase the quality standard of those around you and you'll increase your quality of life. This is the stuff we do it for, full episode with Derek, Tony Caruso, and Will England is out now and linked in the comments below.

There was me, that is Chad, and my 3 droogs, Bryce, Hunter, and Thad. And we sat in the Midtown coffee bar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the portfolio. The Midtown coffee bar served "coffee-plus."  Coffee plus Adderall. Or Vyvanse. Or ZYN, which is what we were consuming. This would sharpen you up and get you ready for a bit of the old "ultra-leverage." We headed south to a middle market HVAC company. What we were after now was the old surprise visit. A platform acquisition with a founder who didn't know what was coming. And then the real horrorshow began. We levered the business 10x. Replaced the management team with our droogs from McKinsey or the old "Friends of the Operating Partner." In traditional private equity fashion, we handed the new CEO a value creation plan he had no input on. And when it didn't work, we replaced him too. Some of the bleeding hearts talked about "clear mandates," "independent leadership assessment," and "onboarding." Bollocks. Why diligence the leader when you can simply replace him? It's easier that way. Better yet, nobody has to admit they picked wrong if you use a Big Box search firm. The LPs never questioned it. And we collected our 2 and 20. Viddy well, little brother. Viddy well.

Most homeowners do not know that in Florida a handyman has zero legal authority to perform plumbing work. No county business tax receipt changes that. No years of experience changes that. The law is clear. Almost all plumbing work in Florida requires a licensed contractor. Here is what the credential stack actually looks like in the plumbing trade. A handyman has no plumbing license. Full stop. Any plumbing work they perform is illegal in Florida regardless of how long they have been doing it or how good they are at it. A master plumber has a real credential. It requires field experience and a trade exam. But a master plumber cannot run a plumbing business, cannot pull permits, cannot hire employees, and cannot be the contractor of record on your job. They must work under a licensed contractor. A certified plumbing contractor is the real credential. Four years of verified experience. Criminal background check. Credit check of 660 or better. Proof of financial responsibility. One hundred thousand dollars in liability insurance. Two separate state exams covering trade knowledge and business and finance law. That is what it takes to legally operate a plumbing business in Florida and take responsibility for the work in your home. And just like HVAC many plumbing companies qualify their business using an outside license holder with no day to day involvement. The person working in your home may have zero credentials. The company name on the invoice may be riding on someone else’s license entirely. Before you let anyone touch your plumbing ask for their license number and verify it at DBPR.MyFloridaLicense.com. It takes 60 seconds. #Plumbing #PlumbingContractor #LicensedContractor #FloridaPlumbing #HomeServices #TradesLife #ContractorLife #DerekCormier #EscapeTheOneManShow #HomeOwner #ConsumerEducation #MasterPlumber #PlumbingBusiness #Trades #KnowYourContractor #FloridaContractor #BuildingTrades #SkilledTrades #BusinessGrowth #Accountability

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.

Miguel Silva at CalPERS meets 200+ managers a year. He says the number who come fully prepped is very low. Not because the information is hard to find.  Because managers are short-staffed, stretched thin, and treating big LPs as long shots anyway. Which means the ones who do show up prepared stand out immediately. The research takes maybe a couple of hours: ✓ Read the CalPERS’ AB 890 report (last 4 years of commitments) ✓ Watch one investment committee meeting on YouTube ✓ Find the gap in their portfolio your strategy fills A couple of hours. For a meeting that could take years off your fundraising timeline. 🎬 Full conversation: https://lnkd.in/dKwHniae #InvestorsAndOperators #MergersAcquisitionsDivestitures #EmergingManagers

People see the jet. I see what it took to get there. Years of building. Years of risk. Years of carrying payroll, making acquisitions, fixing mistakes, and staying in the game long enough to win. This part is not about glamour. It is about optionality. The ability to move fast. The ability to be where you need to be. The ability to spend your time the way you want because you built something valuable and exited well. That is the game. Build a better company. Grow faster. Sell for more. Then, if you do it right, do it again. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

Before you sell, make sure your goals and your buyer's goals are actually aligned. Misalignment at the table costs founders millions and breeds unhappy outcomes. Watch the clip. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

Claude has decided the next frontier is not another Fortune 500 innovation, it is Bob’s HVAC. Yesterday Anthropic launched Claude for Small Business, with connectors into tools like QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Canva, DocuSign, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. The pitch is simple. Claude can help plan payroll, close the month, chase invoices, run campaigns and deal with the operational admin that usually gets done at 10:47pm by an owner who has already spent the day fixing actual problems. This matters more than another breathless enterprise AI announcement. Small businesses are roughly half the US economy and employ nearly half the private sector workforce. They also tend to run on duct tape, heroic owners, one terrifying spreadsheet, and a CRM last updated during the Obama administration. Most AI commentary still talks as if the world is made up of software engineers, consultants and people who say “agentic” without being asked to leave the room. But the real adoption curve gets interesting when AI moves from white-collar productivity theatre into businesses where time is brutally scarce and admin directly steals money from the owner. The HVAC company does not need an AI transformation roadmap. It needs invoices chased. Calls logged. Quotes followed up. Service plans marketed. Payroll checked. Google reviews answered. Technicians scheduled. Customers reactivated before the competitor with a better follow-up process gets there first. That is where AI becomes dangerous. Not because it writes a better memo. Because it gives small operators some of the functional leverage that used to belong only to companies with departments. A $12m local services business with sharper follow-up, cleaner books, better campaigns and faster admin is suddenly not quite so “mom-and-pop” anymore. A lot of private equity value creation plans still assume small businesses stay operationally dumb until somebody professionalizes them after acquisition. Claude may have other ideas. Rather inconvenient, obviously. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #AI #SmallBusiness #PrivateEquity

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

The smartest PE firms are financing the destruction of their own portfolios. On 4 May, TPG, Brookfield, Advent and Bain backed a $10bn OpenAI deployment vehicle. The same day, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman seeded a $1.5bn Anthropic joint venture to push Claude into PE-owned companies. This week Apollo and Blackstone are negotiating $35bn of private credit to fund Broadcom's AI chip build-out. Meanwhile their software portfolios are being hollowed out. I've sat in board meetings where the CFO can't explain why ARR is decelerating. The answer is that almost every buyer is drawing the same chart at the same time. Per-seat licences cancelled because a Cursor subscription does the job. Vibe-coded internal tools replacing entire SaaS layers. Anthropic shipping a model that ports legacy COBOL in an afternoon. PE spent $440bn over a decade on a SaaS thesis that just broke. The same firms now writing cheques to the companies breaking it. The official line is that the AI exposure hedges the SaaS exposure. It doesn't. A hedge requires the two sides to be roughly equal. You cannot offset a trillion-dollar software book with a $5bn slice of an OpenAI joint venture. It is just the next trade. Same firms. Same playbook. Different bag holders. Three years from now someone will write this exact post about the AI infrastructure boom. The firms financing it today will be the ones trying to exit it. This is how the cycle keeps closing. The firm that lit the fire ends up underwriting the water.

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

Let's make PE value creation super simple. You need four things: → A goal → A plan → A system to get you there → The resources to make it happen That's basically it. The GOAL = your exit targets. ↳ Where does this business need to be at exit to hit return targets? The PLAN = your value creation plan. ↳ The 4-5 value creation initiatives that will get you there. The SYSTEM = your planning & execution OS. ↳ Quarterly planning cadence, monthly operating reviews, weekly KPI dashboards, clear owners and accountability The RESOURCES: right talent, capital, and capabilities. ↳ Right people in the right roles. The needed capital. The capabilities required to execute the VCP. That's really it. This is no different than training for a marathon. You need: → A goal → A plan → A system to get you there → The resources to make it happen The GOAL = Finish? Hit a time? Not die? The PLAN = Training plan + nutrition plan + race day plan. The SYSTEM = Daily habit of training. Morning alarm that gets you out of bed. The RESOURCES: Gear, gels, maybe a running group. We understand this intuitively when it comes to running or losing weight. Yet sometimes, we overcomplicate it when the stakes get higher.

Ferrari and Lamborghini are not cars. They are proof that the right brand can make people want the product before they ever touch it. Most entrepreneurs are not building a brand. They are decorating a business. A logo is not a brand. A website is not a brand. A nice video is not a brand. A real brand makes people feel something before you explain anything. Ferrari makes people feel speed, status, power, wealth, precision, and winning. Lamborghini makes people feel bold, rare, loud, disruptive, and impossible to ignore. That is what most entrepreneurs are missing. They are trying to get more likes, leads, followers, and attention. But they have not built a story powerful enough for people to repeat. Your competitors can copy your ad. They can copy your funnel. They can copy your offer. They can copy your content. But they cannot copy access. They cannot copy relationships. They cannot copy credibility. And they cannot copy a story they were never part of. That is why I created something different. The last week of July, I am bringing a small group to Italy for a Ferrari and Lamborghini business experience. But this is not about cars. It is about using 2 of the most iconic brands in the world to elevate your story, credibility, positioning, and brand. Sydney Opera House was powerful. Red Bull Racing headquarters was powerful. Andrea Bocelli’s home in Italy changed how I thought about access. But this may surpass all of it. This Saturday at 9 AM Eastern, I am breaking down how Ferrari built its brand, how Lamborghini built its brand, how I built mine, and why experience may be the fastest way to separate yourself from everyone trying to look successful online. Check the comments. I am going to show you what I created. Most people are trying to be seen. The great ones build something people remember. #Branding #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #PersonalBranding

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.

One thing I’ve always liked about this channel is that the best conversations usually happen after the meetings are over. Over dinner. On a patio somewhere. Random side conversations that turn into big ideas. Especially right now. AI is changing the space fast and the people who are going to lead the next era of the IT channel are the ones willing to rethink old assumptions and have real conversations about where things are headed. The people building the future of the channel aren’t guarding information anymore. They’re learning from each other and thinking a lot bigger about what’s possible. Spent a week in Oahu for Pax8 President’s Council with some really smart people having the kinds of talks that remind you how much opportunity is ahead for those willing to evolve.

Only 1 in 5 Emerging Manager websites make the right first impression. We reviewed 208 The other 4 in 5 range from forgettable to actively making the firm look less credible. The best sites answer three questions: → What do you do? → Why are you credible?  → Why should I care right now? For Fund I and Fund II managers...  You don't have much brand equity yet.  You need to build it.

The best operating partner I knew came from nearly going bust. The best operating partner I ever worked with did not come from consulting. She came from running a $40 million services business that nearly went under. Which meant she was actually useful. She had lived the things most operating partners like to describe in polished language. Payroll stress. Customer concentration. Bad hires. Margin compression. Broken reporting. Cash flow panic. The kind of Tuesday that makes a board deck look like historical fiction. That experience changes how somebody shows up in a business. She did not arrive with a framework and a workshop. She arrived with judgment. She could tell within ten minutes whether management had a real problem or just a favourite excuse. She knew when a process was broken versus when a leader was weak. She knew the difference between a reporting issue and an execution issue. And she had absolutely no interest in theatre. That is what made her credible. When she walked into a portfolio company, the management team could tell within five minutes that she had done it for real. Not presented it. Not benchmarked it. Not recommended it from a safe distance. Done it. That matters. Because people respond differently when they know the person sitting across from them has been where they are. It changes the conversation from advice to collaboration. From theory to experience. From "you should consider" to "this is what I did when mine was falling apart." Private equity is still mostly hiring operating partners from consulting and corporate backgrounds. Then it hires people whose main operating experience is advising other people to operate. That is not the same thing. There is a world of difference between recommending a fix and being the person who has to make payroll if the fix does not work. The best operating partners tend to have scar tissue. They have made bad calls. They have been too late. They have trusted the wrong person. They have had to recover from a business that was wobbling harder than anyone admitted in the board meeting. That gives them a level of commercial instinct and bullshit detection you do not get from a cleaner career path. Private equity loves polish. Actual companies tend to prefer credibility. And when a business is in trouble, credibility wins by a mile. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

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

"My hit rate is 53%. I'm wrong 47% of the time. But if I can keep that up, that's a great business." Nate Silver and Philip Tetlock studied this. They found two types of forecasters: Hedgehogs: great storytellers. Total conviction, sounds amazing in a pitch. Foxes: think in probabilities. Openly admit what they don't know. Foxes are dramatically better predictors. But hedgehogs get all the attention. When I look at portfolio managers, I'm hunting for foxes. That kind of honesty is rare. In investing, it's everything. 🎧 Full conversation with Tony Caruso, Derek Drummond, & Will England on Capital Allocators link to full episode in the comments below!

**It was at this very moment the CEO realized there was no escape** (Tales From the Middle Market Part 3) It's 2021. Your company just got sold to the next private equity sponsor. You toast champagne and think about your next move. "Stay on, roll your stake, and you'll make 2-3x on the second bite," they tell you. The pitch is compelling. So you decide to stay on for one more round. Afterall, the next exit could be life changing equity. That was 5yrs ago... The market turned. The Fed hiked rates to 5%. The VCP has been revised 4 times. Holds have stretched. The exit window closed. And your rolled equity is just sitting there. Illiquid. Potentially worth millions. Potentially worth nothing. (The math has always been unclear). You can't leave. Walking away means forfeiting the payout you've been grinding toward for half a decade. Your entire financial plan is built around an exit that keeps getting pushed. But you can't stay. The stress is constant. Board meetings feel like the Spanish Inquisition. Your eye twitches involuntarily as they ask (again) what your plan is for taking the company to exit. There is no f*cking plan. They bought the company at 12x EBITDA. There is no way in hell they'll find a buyer in this market. "W-we're exploring a few b-bolt-ons to grow into the multiple," you mutter in exasperation, knowing it could take 18 months to fully integrate them. Every decision you make gets filtered through "will this threaten my equity?" instead of "will this build the business?" The board thinks you've "lost your edge." They start whispering about a leadership transition. They don't realize they built the trap that dulled the edge in the first place. But the cruelest part is that you can see it happening to yourself. The sharpness fading. The risk appetite shrinking. The slow shift from building the business to protecting your position. You used to make decisions based on what the company needed. Now you make them based on what your equity needs. And those 2 things stopped being the same a long time ago. "I just need to survive the quarter. Things will calm down," you tell yourself. But you've been telling yourself this for 3yrs. Somewhere, the devil is laughing. The exit has always been a mirage.  The hold period is a flat circle.

Family offices are quietly rewriting the lower middle market. According to Citi's research, roughly 70 percent of family offices are now engaged in direct investing. JP Morgan's 2026 Global Family Office Report says half of them plan to execute direct deals through independent sponsors over the next two years. The capital is flooding in. The infrastructure has not caught up. Only half of family offices doing direct private investments have private equity professionals on staff to source, diligence, and structure those deals. 44 percent of US family offices cite understaffing as their primary bottleneck. This is the most interesting gap in the market right now. Family offices have the capital and the patience that traditional PE often does not. They can hold a great business indefinitely. They can write checks without fund clock pressure. They can be the dream partner for a founder who does not want to be flipped in five years. What they often do not have is the bench to actually find those businesses, run the diligence, structure the deal, and oversee the asset post-close. That is where the rest of the ecosystem fits in. Independent sponsors who can bring sourced deals to family office capital. Advisors who can quarterback a process the family office cannot run alone. Operating partners who can sit on a board the family office does not have the bandwidth to fill. For founders, this matters too. A family office buyer can be one of the best outcomes you will find if the fit is right. But you need to know going in that the deal may take longer to close, the structuring will be deal-specific rather than standardized, and the team running diligence may be smaller than what you would see across the table from a brand-name fund. The premium they pay in patience, alignment, and long-term ownership often makes the friction worth it. If you are an advisor, an independent sponsor, or anyone who can plug the staffing gap, the door is wide open right now. The capital is here. The execution capacity is the bottleneck. #FamilyOffice #PrivateEquity #IndependentSponsors #MergersAndAcquisitions #LowerMiddleMarket #DirectInvesting #DealMaking

The founder who built a $5M company working 80 hours a week and the CEO who built a $50M platform with systems and partners are not on the same path. They just started at the same trailhead. I ran three PE-backed companies over 21 years. Made 58 acquisitions. Generated $2.5B in exits. Not because I worked harder than other founders. Because at a certain inflection point, I stopped being an operator and started being a CEO. Most founders never make that shift. They stay buried in execution. They confuse motion with progress. Revenue goes up. So do hours. So does complexity. And one day they realize they built a job, not an asset. The difference between staying busy and compounding is not effort. It is architecture. PE partnership gave me the capital structure, the board discipline, and the repeatable acquisition framework to build for multiple outcomes. Not one big exit. Sequential ones. That is exactly what I teach inside Empire Builder Academy. The same frameworks I used across three platform builds, pressure-tested over two decades. At what revenue did you realize you had built a job instead of an asset. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founderlife #acquisitions

Private equity is not just capital. It is a game. There are rules. There is leverage. There is language. There is structure. And if you do not know what is happening across the table, you are already behind. That is where a lot of founders get into trouble. They built a real company. They know their customers. They know their team. They know how hard they worked to get there. But sitting down with a buyer is a different skill set. You are not just selling a business. You are negotiating your future. Your role. Your rollover. Your upside. Your control. Your second payday. Most founders learn those rules too late. You do not want to figure them out while the deal is moving. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #founders #exitstrategy

The exit isn't the finish line. It's the first rest stop on the wealth creation highway. Most founders optimize for the wrong thing and leave money on the table. Watch the clip. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #exitstrategy #wealthcreation

Thrilled to continue to expand our award winning deal team - especially with Lippes Mathias LLP’s continued exceptional growth in Florida! Welcome aboard Matthew Brust - look forward to introducing you to a number of our fast growing private equity / independent sponsor clients.

"You learn more about a manager in three days on Dockside than three years if you invest in a fund." This episode is with the creators of Dockside, a platform that allows you to peer into the day-to-day trades of investors and simplify the compexities of managed account investing. Intra-month volatility is always higher than you think. The real signal is in how a PM behaves when things go wrong, not what their fact sheet shows at month-end. 🎧 Full episode of Capital Allocators with Will England, Tony Caruso, & Derek Drummond, is live now wherever you get your podcasts!

When a mom puts a 51 Vets sticker on their car, then you know you're doing something right for your members 🤣 Nolan Remlinger, we can send your mom more swag 😃 (post approved by Nolan)

AI didn't fire those people. The board did. AI just gave them a press release. PayPal cut 4,760 jobs last week and called it an AI overhaul. Fidelity laid off 800 the same week. GM trimmed 600 in Austin and Warren and said AI was part of the decision, though not all of it. Strip the press releases away and the picture gets uglier. Most of these companies have not deployed enough production AI to fire one person, let alone five thousand. What they have is pilots, dashboards, a handful of automated workflows in finance and IT, and a 12-month roadmap. The cost programme was already on the board agenda. AI is just the cleanest way to brief the analysts on the call. I see the same thing in PE portfolios. Every IC memo this year has an AI line. Every operating plan has an AI workstream. Almost nobody can show me a clean dollar of AI EBITDA from last quarter. The latest FTI numbers say two-thirds of firms plan to spend over a quarter of their budget on AI this year. Most of them cannot tell you what they got back from the last quarter's spend. AI is doing two things at the same time. It is producing real productivity gains in narrow workflows. And it is giving every CFO and every COO the cover story to run the headcount cut they have been queuing up for three years. A restructure used to need a memo and a consultant. Now it needs a slide that says Agentic AI. The market loves it. Analysts cheer the margin. Boards approve the plan. The people who used to do the work just have to find new jobs in an economy that has decided their function is a punchline in someone else's deck.

Private Credit Is Reshaping the Fixed Income Market

Private equity is very good at escalation. Less good at knowing when escalation has become the problem. That is why The Untouchables works so well as a PE meme. The whole scene is about raising the stakes. Someone moves. You move harder. Someone pushes. You push further. Someone brings a knife. You bring the industrial logic, the leverage model, the synergy case, three consultants and a 94-page value creation plan nobody in the business asked for. The investor presentation version has strategy, operational excellence, commercial acceleration, digital transformation, procurement savings, pricing initiatives, AI, and a very serious looking partner pointing at a waterfall chart. The real version is often much simpler. The company misses plan, so the pressure goes up. The pressure goes up, so the CFO starts managing the spreadsheet instead of the business. The CEO starts defending last month instead of building next year. The operating team starts producing more meetings than decisions. The board pack gets thicker. The business gets slower. And eventually someone calls all of that “cadence,” because apparently Stockholm syndrome needed a consulting term. Escalation has its place. Sometimes a business needs urgency. Sometimes the cosy founder-era habits need to be dragged outside and shot in the car park. But escalation is not an operating system. If every problem requires more pressure, more leverage, more consultants, more add-ons, more reporting and more “alignment,” there may be a tiny possibility that the value creation plan was mostly theatre. The best operators do not just escalate. They simplify. They find the few numbers that matter. They fix the plumbing. They make ownership painfully clear. They stop confusing activity with progress. The Midtown way is funny because everyone recognises it. It is also funny because it is uncomfortably close to half the board meetings in private equity. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation #OperatingPartners

You don't get hit by the beer truck anymore. Well, maybe after a SaaStr afterparty. You get hit by the token bus. Inference spend is scaling faster than token prices are dropping. My latest post covers a "revenue density" metric that all AI product line operators should adopt. You can check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gJj9zNCy There is no standard set of AI finance metrics yet, but they are being developed. Be sure to follow as I develop my AI finance metric framework for operators. #SaaS #SaaStr

To my LinkedIn community, I need your help. I have a 29 year old entrepreneur client. A few years ago, she was making $80,000 a year. Then $120,000. Then $150,000. Then she took the leap and started her own company. The beginning was brutal. Stress. Fear. Pressure. Uncertainty. Now she is finally winning. She has employees. Momentum. She is making over $200,000 a year. And now she wants to take 12 days off to go to F1 Monaco and Europe to reward herself and it’s her birthday. At the same time, she told me she cannot come to big event In Australia (where she lives) to meet a legitimate billionaire, build relationships, and elevate her brand. I completely disagrees with it. Because every billionaire, elite entrepreneur, and high net worth individual I have ever met told me the same thing: When momentum starts… you double down. You do not rest at the beginning. You do not rest in the middle. You rest at the end. When I was building my companies, I did not take a vacation for 6 years. Not when I was broke. Not when I had $18 million in the bank. And because of those sacrifices, I got opportunities that money alone cannot buy. I got to spend the day at McLaren with Zak Brown and Lando Norris. This year in Las Vegas, I will be inside the F1 paddock. None of that would have happened without sacrifice. Because in the end, I never wanted to be a spectator. I never wanted to be just another fan. I wanted to become a player. And when you make enough sacrifices, eventually the doors open and you become one. Am I wrong?

One of my favorite podcast episodes was with Michael Painter from Plexus. Here's a clip about thinking through viewing a company as a functional family vs pro sports team.

The most expensive mistake in PE is a management team that performs confidence. Everyone in private equity worries about overpaying. Fair enough. Pay too much on the way in and you give yourself very little room for error on the way out. That part is obvious. It fits neatly in a model. You can argue about the multiple, tweak the downside case, and all feel intellectually alive. But the biggest risk is usually not price. It is spending five years with a management team that tells you what you want to hear. That is the real killer. The CEO who always has a reason. The CRO who says the pipeline is strong. The CFO who presents clean numbers with just enough caveats to avoid panic. The team that knows exactly how to manage the board, speak the language, and keep hope alive one more quarter at a time. That destroys more value than an extra turn on entry ever will. Because overpaying hurts once. A management team that performs confidence instead of facing reality hurts every month. Every month the problems do not get addressed. Every month the good people see what is happening and start updating their CVs. Every month the market moves and the thesis gets harder to recover. And nobody rings the bell because the management team is doing what it has been quietly rewarded for: keeping things calm. That is how PE hold periods go long. The board wants to believe. The sponsor wants stability. The management team knows how to keep the mood just above the threshold where anybody has to act. So the business drifts. Margins soften. Growth slows. Good people leave. Customers feel the wobble. Execution gets worse. And every board pack somehow still lands with an upbeat summary and a lot of arrows pointing in the right direction. Brilliant. A mediocre management team that is honest can still be fixed. A polished management team that knows how to tell investors what they want to hear is much more dangerous. Because by the time the truth becomes undeniable, the value destruction is already well advanced. Private equity spends a lot of time trying not to overpay. It should spend at least as much time asking whether the team is capable of telling the truth when the story stops looking good. That is where a lot of returns really go to die. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

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...

Bernie Madoff called private equity's relationship with big box executive search firms, "the most elegant racket in professional services." All jokes aside, Imagine convincing a private equity firm to let a target company do its own Quality of Earnings review. Because that is exactly what big box search firms have done when it comes to leadership assessment. Beyond the obvious conflict of interest, there is the quality issue. They offer assessment the same way my gas station offers sushi.  Except gambling on one costs millions in investor capital. They administer a "proprietary leadership profile." And the client gets to believe they paid for a rigorous selection process. In reality, they gave the candidate an online quiz that spit out a few cute graphs that give the illusion of rigor/objectivity. As someone who evaluates PE-backed leaders for a living, I've heard and seen what happens behind the scenes (and directly from former Big Box Search partners). When the candidate "assessment" conflicts with the search partner narrative, they ask: "How should we frame our findings?" They don't want to do anything that would jeopardize the placement fee (upwards of $300k). They know that most candidates can survive 12 months in the role anyway. The conflict of interest is baked into the model. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲. 𝗙𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽. As Madoff famously said on Piers Morgan (from federal prison), "My mistake was Wall Street. I should have gone into executive search. Same conflict of interest. Better margins. And nobody goes to prison!"

Interviewer: "Tell me about your leadership style..." Adaptive PE Leader: "Well, first tell me about the situation..." Adaptive leaders don't have one style. They own a collection of leadership hats. And focus on wearing the right one at the right time. Different situations. Different hat. The 4 hats every leader must wear ↓ * * * * * If this post resonated with you... ♻️ Please repost to share with others 🔔 Follow Dan Cremons for more like it ⬆️ Check out our PE exec accelerator (link in the comments)

The best founders do one thing brilliantly... Hire. Here’s how we think about finding & attracting A-players for our portfolio companies: Most owners hire like they're running a restaurant. They think more cooks = faster service. Instead, they get a kitchen full of people bumping into each other, burning food, and blaming everyone else. That’s why hiring isn’t a numbers game. You don't need more people. You need the RIGHT people. It’s impossible to build a worthwhile business with mediocre talent. Over the years, we've developed a framework to find, attract, and close the top 0.001%. I call it the 4 C's to Top-Level Talent: 1. CURATE Start hiring before you start hiring. Follow smart people in your niche on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn. Bookmark stuff that makes you say, "Damn, I wish I wrote that." Treat talent like a portfolio. Study first, invest later. The best hires happen when you're NOT desperately hiring. 1. CULTIVATE Engage without being weird. Compliment their stuff. Comment. Ask smart questions. Send them ideas. The best talent moves when THEY'RE ready, not when you need them. Plant seeds early. Water them consistently. 3. CLOSE When it's time to close the sale, go HARD. Fly them in. Meet their spouse. Pay more than you're comfortable with. I wasn't even looking for a company President when I met Marc. I wanted a CRO. But after one conversation, I knew he was our guy. So I changed the org to fit HIM. That's how good hires work. They change you. Don't squeeze top talent into your current structure. Bend your business around exceptional people. 4. CONTINUE Top performers won't always stay forever. That's okay. Even when they leave, keep them close. My old Head of Content now runs a 7-figure business. We still trade notes. They send better talent than any recruiter ever could. As someone who’s hired 100s of people, take it from me: Your best hires won't walk in the door with a resume in hand. They're already working somewhere else, crushing it. It’s your job to go find them. Hiring the right people is one of the most powerful growth levers for any business. ↓↓↓ If you want to see exactly how we attract and retain top-tier talent across our portfolio, I’ll be breaking it all down in an upcoming workshop. This is just one of several proven scaling strategies we’ll cover - more info here: https://lnkd.in/eWYJ2AYJ

Texas Medley shared something on the latest episode of Escape the One Man Show that most contractors would never show a customer. He calls it Clear Cost pricing. Every line item on the invoice is broken down so the customer can see exactly how the price was calculated. Business essentials. Overhead. Labor. A transparent profit margin. All of it visible. All of it explained. Most contractors hide their pricing model because they are afraid of what customers will think. Texas Medley built his business around showing it. And the result is customers who trust the price because they understand it. Transparency is one of the most underused competitive advantages in the trades. When a customer understands where every dollar goes the conversation shifts from why does this cost so much to I can see exactly what I am paying for. The full episode drops TODAY. Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, search Escape the One Man Show. #trades #contractor #HVAC #tradesbusiness #escapetheonemansshow #contractorpodcast #pricing #transparency #customerexperience #businessowner #leadership #homeservices Escape The One Man Show

A founder I worked with last year was thrilled with his deal at signing. Strong headline number. Reasonable structure. Earnout that could push the total even higher if the business hit certain targets. A year later he was in a different mood. The earnout was contested. The buyer was making decisions that affected the metrics. Lawyers were involved. The relationship was poisoned. He is not alone. The 2026 SRS Acquiom Deal Terms Study just came out. Earnouts are back at 24 percent of deals, up from 22 last year. Of the deals where earnouts come due, only 59 percent result in a full or partial payment. The other 41 percent end in zero or in dispute. The math is brutal. Almost half the time the contingent piece of the purchase price does not pay at all. And the rate of disputes is climbing as deal volume comes back. Here is what I tell founders before they sign. The earnout is not part of your valuation. It is a coin flip on top of your valuation. The closing number is the only number that is real. If the cash at close does not feel like a win, do not let an earnout convince you otherwise. If you are going to take an earnout anyway, fight harder on three things than you would think necessary. Definitions. EBITDA is not a fact. It is a calculation with a hundred levers. Lock the definition down to the line item. No room for interpretation. Buyer covenants. What is the buyer required to do during the earnout period. What can they not do. Without this, post-close decisions kill earnouts every time. Information rights. You need to see the books. Monthly. If you cannot verify the number, you cannot fight for the payout. The best earnouts in this market are short, simple, and tightly drafted. The worst are long, complex, and leave too much to good faith. Plan for the cash at close. Hope for the earnout. Never the other way around. #MergersAndAcquisitions #DealStructure #PrivateEquity #BusinessExit #LowerMiddleMarket #Earnouts #SellSide

I left the Army with a duffel bag and $150. At GE, I was in rooms full of Harvard MBAs. I wasn't the smartest guy there. I knew it. So I made a different deal with myself — they will not outwork me. Earlier mornings. Later nights. Through the obstacle, over it, around it, under it. Most entrepreneurs start from a defeatist position. They don't actually believe they can do the thing. That's the first wall to break — and it's internal. #privateequity #empirebuilding #entrepreneurship #mindset #founders

📑 Add this one to your due diligence checklist! Interesting issue and not one I fully appreciated until reading this. Extremely relevant for many affiliated company, distributor, and long-term branding relationships we see in practice. A few of the biggest risk areas seem to be: - use of trademarks without clear written license terms - lack of meaningful quality control or oversight - informal arrangements between affiliated entities - distributors or partners using branding beyond the original scope - legacy relationships that evolved operationally without updated documentation Good reminder that trademark protection depends not just on ownership of the mark, but also on maintaining actual control over how the brand is used.

Private equity diligence may actually work better if it was in a roast format. Not the polite version we use now. Not the beautifully formatted diligence report where every sentence has been washed through legal, the bank, management, three consultants and some heroic VP who thinks “further analysis required” is a personality. I mean an actual roast. A room full of people forced to say what everyone is privately thinking. “Your TAM slide looks like it was built by a banker who confused ambition with arithmetic.” “Your CFO is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Lots of structure, absolutely no protection, and somehow everyone is still drowning.” “Your customer concentration is not a risk. It is a hostage situation with invoices.” “Your sales team is one founder, two passengers, and a CRM that looks like it was last updated on a BlackBerry.” “Your adjusted EBITDA has been adjusted so many times it now qualifies as a missing person.” “Your revenue bridge has more holes than a Florida sinkhole.” “Your AI strategy is one ChatGPT login, a McKinsey article, and a head of ops who says ‘agentic’ because he heard it at a conference.” “Your tech stack is nine SaaS tools, three spreadsheets, and a controller called Denise who is now the single point of failure for Western civilization.” “Your pipeline is not weighted. It is fictional.” “Your retention analysis excludes churned customers, which is bold in the same way driving blindfolded on I-95 is bold.” “Your gross margin improvement plan is just vendor abuse with a logo on it.” “Your management team has depth in the same way a kiddie pool has depth.” “Your founder transition plan is adorable. He is still approving printer paper and emotionally attached to the Google Ads account.” “Your organic growth story is paid search wearing a fake mustache.” “Your board pack has 84 slides and somehow says nothing, which is impressive in a white-collar crime sort of way.” This is what diligence should do. Take the polite language out of the room. A broken tech stack becomes broken. No attribution becomes no idea what is working. A sales leader with no pipeline discipline becomes a very expensive motivational speaker. A business held together by founder magic, Excel and fear becomes a business held together by founder magic, Excel and fear. Everyone knows this already. They just call it “value creation opportunity” because that sounds better in an IC memo. Most bad deals do not fail because nobody saw the issue. They fail because everyone saw it, softened the wording, buried it on page 74, and decided reality could be handled post-close. Private equity does not need more diligence. It needs fewer euphemisms and more people willing to say the business looks like a dumpster fire with recurring revenue. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation #DueDiligence

When we started Ascend, I figured people would talk about the executive skills stuff at the end. Better board mgmt, better VCP, that kind of thing. Turns out, a lot of the feedback is far more fundamental: "I'm more present with my kids." "I'm able to better navigate the stress of the job." "I stopped pretending I had it all figured out.. and it's liberating." I've realized a lot of "executive skills" are just regular human skills. → Adaptability → Inspiring belief → Self-regulation → Self-awareness → Situational awareness → Overcoming limiting beliefs We're filling the August cohort. Few spots left. Details in comments.

Summer means more time outside. Longer days, more driving, more sun! That means your eyes are doing more work than you realize. Between brighter light, UV exposure, and dry air from heat and A/C, summer is the perfect time to be a bit more intentional about your eye health. A pair of UV-protective sunglasses, staying hydrated, and making sure your prescription is up to date can make a bigger difference than most people realize. It doesn’t need to be complicated. Just a few small habits that help keep your eyes comfortable and protected while you enjoy the season. If it’s been a while since your last eye exam, summer is the perfect time to take care of it. #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #EyeCare #SummerEyeHealth

Midwest Deal Summit is the ONLY curated LMM deal event open exclusively to GPs, LPs, boutique investment bankers, experienced independent sponsors and select lenders/private credit. All the deal makers you want to meet, without the distraction of those you don't. If you're a boutique investment banker - you still have time to get into the meeting scheduler opening later this week. https://lnkd.in/eCkd4ia7 Thanks to our MWDS Outreach Committee: Erik Dykema Bonnie Harland David Acharya Jason Cunningham David V. Duke Kate Faust Dan Gaspar TJ Gaul Kam Kielhorn Addison K. Stephen Natali Jeffrey S. (Jeff) Piper Scott Seelbach Michelle Sherlock Matt Steffen Brian Boorstein

Ugly deals often look ridiculous right before they look inevitable. Would you have invested? Go back to 2013. A PE firm is looking at a majority stake in a Canadian outerwear brand at an implied valuation of about C$250 million. The business is doing roughly C$200 million in annual sales. It is known for one thing: expensive winter jackets. Made in Canada. Premium price point. Highly seasonal demand. Limited product breadth. Plenty of people could look at that and see a niche business with cold weather exposure and fashion risk wearing a parka. The red flags were not hard to find. One category. One obvious season. A high ticket product most normal people do not need. Questions around how far the brand could travel outside its core base. And the usual private equity anxiety attack around whether a niche premium label is a real platform or just a good few years in a favourable market. The thesis, though, was interesting. The brand had authentic heritage. Real product truth. Genuine scarcity. A growing following in markets where the cold weather story travelled. And a management team that understood premium positioning and brand discipline. So at entry, this is what you were really betting on: That a business built on premium parkas was not too narrow. That seasonality would not cap the upside. That scarcity and brand discipline would matter more than category breadth. And that a company dismissed by plenty of people as too niche could become something much bigger once professionalised and scaled. A lot of people would have passed. Too concentrated. Too fashion-adjacent. Too dependent on one hero product. Too easy to sound clever while saying no. The outcome? The company IPO'd in 2017 at about C$1.8 billion. The shares surged in their market debut, and the business that looked like a very expensive coat company turned into one of those deals everyone later pretends was obvious. That is the game. The ugly deal is often just a category people have not learned how to respect yet. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

2026 is flying by, but if you’re still looking for a home service business to start this year, this should help. These models move fast. They generate real order values. And they compound when run well. The short list: /Plumbing, HVAC, and electric: Essential services with consistent demand and strong long-term upside. /Water treatment: Recurring maintenance, clean bolt-on to plumbing, solid average tickets. /Damage remediation: Project-based work with fewer leads needed to drive meaningful revenue. /Roofing: High-ticket jobs that justify aggressive marketing spend. /Foundation repair: Fewer jobs, bigger checks, unique lead dynamics. /Lawn care and landscaping: More than mowing. Add-ons like hardscaping and plant work change the math. Different quirks. Same theme. Clear paths to scale and eventual self-sustainability. Pick the one you’re willing to operate hard.

Most private equity professionals roll their eyes when they hear "culture." And I don't blame them! (Hear me out). *** For decades, Human Capital / Talent advisors have been using the absolute squishiest language imaginable to describe their value proposition. It sounds like they're selling butterfly catching in the meadows and kumbaya sessions. When you say, "psychological safety."  They hear, "expensive feelings." When you say, "employee engagement." They hear, "pizza parties." Investors hear this flowery bullshit and yawn. They don't hear anything that aligns with their priorities or concerns. As an org psychologist who works with private equity sponsors, I've seen what works and what doesn't. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵: DON'T say: "Build a culture of excellence" DO say: "Cut turnover costs by $2M annually" DON'T say: "Enhance employee experience" DO say: "Stop losing your best people to competitors" DON'T say: "We need better leadership alignment" DO say: "Your CEO and CFO disagree on the growth plan. The board doesn't know and it's burning 2 quarters of execution" Leadership and culture are the foundation of any durable business. But we trivialize their importance when we use flowery/nebulous language. You can't expect investment professionals to blindly drink the Kool-Aide without speaking to their priorities/concerns STOP speaking HR. START speaking money.

Tony Caruso, manages $11B in hedge fund assets, but his career started with a squeegee.   Tony watched a window washer collect $300 in cash from a neighbor's house. So he recruited some friends, built a route, and cleaned 100 houses that summer.   He would later do the same, co-founding Dockside, a platform that's quietly rewiring how institutional capital accesses investment talent.   The best investors I know didn't just learn to allocate capital; they learned how to create something.   🎧 Full episode of Capital Allocators with Will England, Tony Caruso, & Derek Drummond, is live now wherever you get your podcasts!

We are in an asset ownership race. ↓↓↓ Read this if you want to learn more about the State of Mainstreet in 2026. My research team spent months putting this together: https://lnkd.in/eXAaYfbU

A DIY HVAC content creator recently posted a video showing homeowners how to install push fit fittings on refrigerant lines. The video is going viral. Refrigerant systems on R-410A run at 300 to 400 PSI on the high side. A failed fitting does not announce itself. It quietly leaks refrigerant until the system is low enough to freeze up or the compressor fails. The content is well intentioned. The consequences are not. My technicians braze every single refrigerant connection, pressure test with nitrogen, and leak check before refrigerant ever goes in the system. Not because we are trying to make it complicated. New technology and new solutions in this industry are worth paying attention to. Innovation matters and there are legitimate advancements that make our work better, faster, and more reliable. But easier to install does not always mean better for the customer. Sometimes what is easier to put on is easier to fail. The real question every licensed contractor should be asking is not how fast can I get this in, it is how will this perform for the life of the system. Not just during install. The customer is not thinking about your installation time. They are thinking about their home five years from now. That is the standard we should be holding ourselves to. #HVAC #HVACContractor #LicensedContractor #HomeServices #HVACEducation #TradesLife #ContractorLife #FloridaHVAC #DerekCormier #EscapeTheOneManShow #HomeOwner #ConsumerEducation #HVACBusiness #Trades #KnowYourContractor

Most founders still think about selling their business the old way. Find a PE firm. Become their next platform. Run the company for them for five years. Exit. That world is shrinking fast. Three out of four PE buyouts in North America are now add-on acquisitions, not platforms. PitchBook has tracked the number climbing for a decade and it sits at roughly 75 percent today. Buy and build is no longer a strategy in this market. It is the operating system. What that means for sellers in the lower middle market. The buyer most motivated to acquire your business is probably not looking for their first platform. They already have one. They are looking for their next add-on to bolt onto it. That changes everything about the conversation. Add-on buyers care about different things. They care about how cleanly your business integrates into theirs. Whether your tech stack will fight their tech stack. Whether your customer base overlaps in a way that creates cross-sell or cannibalizes. Whether your team will stay or whether you are the only person who knows where the bodies are buried. The founders who win in this market are the ones who can answer those questions before the buyer asks them. The founders who lose are still pitching their business like it is a platform candidate when nobody in the room is shopping for one. If you are thinking about a process in the next 18 months, know which game you are actually playing. The buyer pool will tell you. You just have to look. #PrivateEquity #MergersAndAcquisitions #LowerMiddleMarket #BuyAndBuild #BusinessExit #DealMaking #AddOnAcquisition

Most buyers don’t realize how weak the target company’s contracts are until after LOI. A surprising number of lower middle market businesses operate on: ▪️unsigned agreements ▪️outdated templates ▪️poorly documented email modifications ▪️customer relationships that evolved beyond the scope of the written contract Even where properly executed agreements exist, many: ▪️prohibit assignment without consent ▪️contain vague indemnification language ▪️lack meaningful limitation-of-liability protections ▪️fail to clearly address payment mechanics or dispute procedures Weak contracts can slow financing and delay closing, but the bigger issue is usually operational. One issue that shows up frequently in ETA deals involves the transferability of key customer contracts. Buyers often assume those relationships move with the business automatically. In many cases, they do not. Certain agreements require: ▪️counterparty consent ▪️advance notice ▪️financial disclosures ▪️renegotiation before assignment That can delay closing or create immediate customer risk post-close. The diligence process is not just about validating financial performance. Buyers also need to assess which contractual issues may create operational friction, revenue disruption, or legal exposure after closing. If you are in an active deal and want to better understand the target company’s contracts, or if you recently closed and want to clean up legacy agreements, the below link provides an overview of common contract issues. https://lnkd.in/eAPEMvTr

Top quotes from this week's conversation with Will England (Walleye Capital), Derek Drummond, CAIA (State of Wisconsin Investment Board), & Tony Caruso, CFA (UTIMCO) of Dockside Platforms: 1. "You learn more about a manager in three days on Dockside than three years if you invested in a fund." - Tony Caruso 2. "Ten years ago, you would have a manager that would take a managed account and it was almost their last resort. Now you have PMs that have worked at some of these shops for five, 10 years, profitably, you have their track record, and they want to go be entrepreneurs." - Derek Drummond 3. "Intra-month volatility is a lot higher than you think. If you get one-month snapshots and then you get to see the ride throughout the month, it can be a very different story." - Derek Drummond 4. "When it comes to investing in hedge funds, typically performance attracts assets and assets ruin performance." - Tony Caruso 5. "Live your life moving forward, not backwards. You can only control the future." - Will England 6. "Take some of the best practices from a structure standpoint and a risk management standpoint as the multi-strats have utilized and do some of that themselves." - Will England 7. "PMs take real pride in opening up their own business. They have a culture they want to grow, a business they want to grow, they want to grow the next layer of talent below them and give them something to work towards." - Derek Drummond 8. "The most adult conversations are when there’s transparency. If things didn’t work out, that’s fine. No hard feelings, and let's move on." - Will England With thanks to AlphaSense, Canoe Intelligence, and SRS Acquiom. https://lnkd.in/ejnv-RA5

I'm in SFO for the Impact Summit and SaaStr. Never a better time to finish a new post on an AI metric that I'm adding to my 5 Pillar SaaS Metrics Framework. Actually, I'm adding a 6th Pillar to cover AI finance metrics. One box will include the Inferency Efficiency Ratio. New post will be released on Wednesday. Subscribe via my profile to receive it. If you are in town for SaaStr, let me know! #SaaS #SFO #SaaStr

HOLLYWOOD FOXX VS BUSINESS FOXX A lot of people dream about Hollywood. The fame. The movies. The chance to become someone else. But maybe that is the real problem. Some people want to play another character because they are tired of the one they are playing in real life. The job they tolerate. The business they no longer believe in. The partnership that drains them. The circle that keeps them smaller than they know they are. Here is the truth. You do not need to become someone else. You need to stop betraying yourself. Every major decision has a consequence. Leaving has a consequence. Staying has a consequence. Changing has a consequence. Doing nothing has a consequence. But short term pain is better than long term resentment. People say, “You only live once.” Wrong. You live every day. You only die once. I have been in Hollywood movies. My favorite part? In almost every one, I die. Why? Because when your character dies, you get to leave the set. Hollywood taught me patience. Business taught me speed. Hollywood rewards repetition. Business rewards decisions. Hollywood lets you become someone else. Business forces you to become yourself. I respect great actors and actresses. But I will take entrepreneurship all day long. Because at this stage of my life, I do not want to play a character in someone else’s story. I want to build my own. I was asked to be in another big movie. This time, I think I am going to say no. Stop auditioning for a life you do not even want. Build a life you do not need to escape from. PS follow me if you want to get to know me or build a relationship this is the point of social media. #Entrepreneurship #BusinessMindset #Leadership #SuccessMindset

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

The polite name for cost cutting in 2026 is “AI restructuring.” Fidelity is cutting roughly 800 to 1,000 jobs while hiring thousands more, including early career engineers. The official line is a new technology and product delivery model. Fidelity has said AI was not the reason. Naturally, everyone immediately turned it into an AI story anyway. That is the point. AI has become the corporate fog machine for decisions companies were probably going to make regardless. Flatten management layers. Move work to cheaper talent. Pause hiring in bloated functions. Reduce service cost. Close underused offices. Consolidate teams. Cut roles that somehow survived the last three rounds of “transformation.” None of this is new. It just sounds better when you put “AI enabled operating model” on the slide and let everyone pretend the spreadsheet has become sentient. Across portfolio companies, public companies and large corporates, the language is becoming painfully familiar. Nobody is cutting headcount anymore. They are “reallocating resources toward AI capability.” Nobody is reducing management bloat. They are “building a more agile, AI ready organization.” Nobody is doing ordinary cost discipline. They are “capturing the AI productivity dividend.” Lovely phrase. The dividend is usually paid by the people who used to do the work. AI is real. In some businesses, it is already taking serious cost out. Customer service, sales support, coding, content ops, finance workflows, legal review, scheduling, reporting, analytics. There are real examples where companies are removing 20 to 30 percent of cost and improving the customer experience at the same time. That deserves credit. But the gap between the AI press release and the AI operating outcome is now wide enough to fly a reasonably priced private jet through. Most AI restructuring over the next four quarters will not be AI restructuring. It will be normal cost cutting with better branding. The CFO did the firing. AI took the credit. The board nodded approvingly. Most companies will not have an AI advantage by 2027. They will just have fewer people and a much better paragraph in the investor update. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

Early in my PE career, 2 days stood out on the calendar: → The day Seth Klarman's Baupost letter dropped → The day Warren Buffett's annual letter came out Not because I was big-time enough to do anything major with the lessons. They just made you think. I'd print them out, save them for Saturday AM, and spend all morning at Starbucks with highlighter in hand. Somewhere along the way, The Great LinkedIn Deluge happened... and the feed filled with AI-generated leadership/investing junk. This is part of why we started writing The Operator's Edge. Not pretending to be Buffett or Klarman. Just trying to write something useful & practical for PE operators and those who support them... with my own 2 hands. The next edition drops in July. Grab the Jan edition at the link below ↓↓

Every hold period has its emotional arc. What starts as "a bit more time to execute the plan" usually ends with everyone discovering new and inventive ways to describe the same problem. The thesis is intact. The deal team got enthusiastic. Growth did not magically reappear. Management is suddenly "part of the discussion." And eventually somebody says continuation vehicle as if they have invented fire. Private equity does not always create value. Sometimes it just moves through the stages of grief in a very expensive spreadsheet. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

There’s a brutal stretch in the trades between $2M and $3M in revenue. You’re doing good work. You’ve got a team. But you’re stuck. Not big enough to scale. Not small enough to stay lean. Here’s how to break out. 1. Acquire Small, Grow Fast If you want momentum, go buy something. Not a massive deal, but a one- or two-person shop for $50K–$60K. You get: • 2–3 techs • A customer list • A couple of vans String a few together and you can go from $2M to $3.5M almost overnight. They’re messy, but they work. 2. Sacrifice Personally, Grow Professionally Most owners in this range pay themselves too much too soon. One operator didn’t take home over six figures until the company crossed $15M in revenue. Every dollar stayed in the business: • That boat could have been two hires • That car could have funded marketing • That vacation could have bought another truck You don’t want to look rich. You want to be rich. 3. Pay People to Win With You You can’t scale alone. Hire killers and pay them like it. • High commissions for sales • Flat rates for installers who care • Clear goals tied to dollars Ask yourself: How can I pay someone $200K a year and make $200K net off them? What else would you add?

A barstool brainstorm became a billion-dollar platform. Will England (Walleye Capital), Derek Drummond, CAIA (State of Wisconsin Investment Board), and Tony Caruso, CFA (UTIMCO) built Dockside Platforms to give institutional allocators direct access to portfolio managers through a multi-strat's infrastructure — and explain exactly how manager sourcing, trade-level due diligence, and capital efficiency make it work. With thanks to AlphaSense, Canoe Intelligence, SRS Acquiom. https://lnkd.in/ejnv-RA5

A founder asked me last week which buyer was better for his business. A strategic or a sponsor. I gave him the answer that sounds annoying but matters. It depends on the business. Strategics pay premiums when they can plug your company into their existing infrastructure and unlock real synergies. Distribution they already have. Customers they already serve. Costs they can strip out the day after closing. When those numbers are real, a strategic can outbid any PE shop in the market. But synergies are not always real. They are pitched in every IOI and delivered in maybe half. When they evaporate, so does the premium, and the founder is left working for a corporate parent that does not value what made the business special in the first place. PE looks different. They pay for the business as it is and for the business they think it can become. They are not buying you to plug you in. They are buying you to scale you. The plan is to make it bigger before the next exit, not to absorb it. What matters is matching the buyer to where the business actually creates value. If your moat is the operating system you built, PE knows what to do with that. If your moat is a customer or product set a strategic needs, the strategic will pay more. If you cannot tell which is true about your own business, that is the first conversation to have before any process starts. Price and fit are not the same thing. Founders who optimize for the first usually regret it. The ones who optimize for both end up with the kind of exit they actually wanted. #MergersAndAcquisitions #PrivateEquity #LowerMiddleMarket #BusinessExit #StrategicBuyers #DealMaking #FounderJourney

Meet the guys who turned a barstool brainstorm session into billions! I sat down with the trio behind one of the most interesting joint ventures in hedge funds today. Will England, CEO/CIO of Walleye Capital, Derek Drummond, CAIA Head of External Public Markets at the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, and Tony Caruso, CFA of Hedge Funds at UTIMCO. A rare combination: a hedge fund CIO and two of the most sophisticated allocators in the country, building something together instead of sitting across the table. 🎧 Full episode of The Capital Allocators Podcast is live now wherever you get your podcasts!

The average person thinks having a job is safer than starting a company. I disagree: CTA: ↓ ↓ ↓ Does this make you change your perspective on your job? I have something for you to start learning the possibilities of business buying: "6 Ways to Buy a Business with Less Money" Get it free here → https://lnkd.in/evrW63Di

Private equity firms measure EBITDA with clinical precision. But they approach portfolio leadership like old hippie-cowboys. I'm an org psychologist who specializes in assessing PE-backed leaders, and I'm frequently in awe of the investment professionals I work with. A lot of them legitimately have MENSA-level IQs.  They are ruthlessly discerning.  There is no bullshitting them. But then something bizarre happens when they start talking about leadership. 𝗘𝘅𝗵𝗶𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝗔. How PE professionals describe the business: • "Entry multiple: 6-8x EBITDA" • "Target net MOIC: 3x" • "Leverage: 3.0-3.5x net debt/EBITDA" • "Run-rate synergies: $8M by month 18" 𝗘𝘅𝗵𝗶𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝗕. How PE professionals describe the leadership needed to run the business: • "We need a player-coach" • "Someone who knows what good looks like" • "Willing to break glass" • "Transformational but also hands-on" Like they've been passing around a joint at the IC meeting, they'll rattle off flowery leadership cliches and assume that's enough to make a 7-figure hiring decision. And the Big Box search firm doesn't care either. They don't want to make waves. They just want to get the origination fee locked in. 6 months later, the PE firm is looking through a generic list of recycled resumes (that some 24yr old search associate pulled). They all look the same. Then the PANIC hits. And the panic forces them to choose a portco CEO based on previous PE experience paired with any of the following: • "Worked at McKinsey" • "Went to Harvard" • "Worked with the Operating Partner 10yrs ago at GE/Danaher" They'll end up replacing the CEO in 18 months and start the process over again. The process feels long and laborious. But it isn't rigorous. They'd never underwrite a deal this way. But they'll underwrite a CEO hire like this damn near every time because it's all they've known for the past 30yrs.

Texas Medley and I talked about one of the most common things that stalls contractors at every level of growth. Analysis paralysis. The fear of making the wrong decision becomes so overwhelming that no decision gets made at all. Meanwhile the business sits still and the opportunity cost grows every single day. There is no perfect answer in contracting. The market changes. Customers change. Your team changes. Waiting for certainty in an uncertain business is a strategy that guarantees you fall behind. The best operators we have both seen up close share one trait. They make decisions quickly with the information available, accept that some of those decisions will be wrong, learn from the outcome fast, and implement the correction even faster. The mistake is rarely what kills a business. The unwillingness to move is. Full episode drops Wednesday on Escape the One Man Show. #trades #contractor #HVAC #tradesbusiness #escapetheonemansshow #contractorpodcast #leadership #businessowner #decisionmaking #growthmindset Escape The One Man Show

Installing a surge protector on a residential AC disconnect is one of the best investments a homeowner can make to protect their equipment. Here is what proper installation actually looks like. The surge protector should be mounted through a knockout on the side of the disconnect enclosure not the bottom. Mounting it on the bottom allows water to follow the wiring directly into the unit creating a moisture environment inside a component designed to protect against electrical damage. Each lug should have one wire only. If multiple wires need to terminate at the same point they should be pigtailed first with a single wire running to the lug. Stacking multiple wires on a single lug makes it impossible to achieve proper torque on each conductor. Improperly torqued connections lead to resistance heat buildup arcing and in worst case scenarios an electrical fire on the exterior of the home. Worth adding that a surge protector alone only addresses voltage spikes. In markets with frequent brown outs and low voltage events a dedicated voltage range monitor should be installed alongside it. Low voltage conditions damage compressors just as effectively as surges and are often more common. The fundamentals of electrical safety in the field are not complicated. But they do require attention to detail on every single job. #HVAC #trades #contractor #homeservices #hvacinstall #electrical #hvacbusiness #qualitymatters #tradesbusiness #surgeprotection #homeowner

As PE-backed companies grow, new levels require new leadership To get break thru $1M, it needed scrappiness and athleticism. To get to $10M? It needed systems and managers. To get to $100M? It'll need specialists and strategy. Each phase demands something new. What got you here won’t get you there. Hard truth: Some leaders can grow with the business. Others won’t. The founder or CEO who refuses to see this isn't being loyal. They're being naive. So ask yourself: Is our team built for where we’re going, or where we’ve been?

Independent Sponsors are experiencing major breakthroughs according to Global Emerging Manager Institute’s webinar with Founder Ed Stubbings and John Koeppel of Lippes Mathias LLP.   The Independent Sponsor model has become a credible launch path for operators, investors, and sector specialists who can source high-quality deals and raise capital around specific opportunities.   The market has changed. A decade ago, going deal-by-deal often meant convincing a small group of co-investment investors to make an exception. Today, there is a deeper ecosystem of family offices, SBICs, private capital providers, and other sponsors willing to back direct deals.   But the bar is also higher.   The best Independent Sponsors are not showing up with vague ambition. They are showing up with a thesis, a network, a sourcing edge, and a clear view of where they can win.   ICYMI, here are a few sharp takeaways: 🔷 Do not launch without a plan - The strongest Sponsors know their sector, their investor audience, their personal runway, and the kind of deals they should avoid. The advice was simple: know thyself before asking the market to back you. 🔷 Your first deal matters more than your biggest idea - Going from zero to one is the hardest step. The best first deal is often not the flashiest. It is usually understandable, financeable, and supported by a real operating angle. A good deal is not always a good Independent Sponsor deal. 🔷 Legal planning starts before you leave - Anyone coming out of a PE firm, bank, or operating role needs to understand potential restrictive covenants, non-solicits, investor limitations, and separation terms before making a move. It is never too early to plan, but it can be too late. 🔷 Flexibility is the model’s superpower - Sponsors can pursue opportunities deal by deal, bring in operating partners selectively, form co-sponsor relationships, warehouse smaller assets, or build around a committed family office relationship. There is no single route to success.   ISN's takeaway: Independent Sponsorship is not just “fundless private equity.” It is a more flexible, more transparent way to build an investment platform - but only if the sponsor is disciplined enough to pick the right first deal and thoughtful enough to build for the long term.

Becoming a mother changed everything for me. It shifted how I see time, how I prioritize my days, and what I consider important. Work has always mattered to me, but motherhood gave me a clearer perspective on where my energy really belongs. There are meetings, deadlines, and responsibilities that fill the calendar… and then there are the moments at home that don’t compare to anything else. Being a mother has a way of putting that into focus quickly. I’ve learned that showing up well at work actually starts with knowing what matters most outside of it. When family is grounded, everything else becomes more intentional. On Mother’s Day, I’m especially grateful for the balance, the lessons, and the reminder that no matter how full life gets, family is what it all comes back to. Wishing a very happy Mother’s Day to all the moms who are doing their best every day, in every part of their lives. #MothersDay #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #Family

Becoming a mother changed everything for me. It shifted how I see time, how I prioritize my days, and what I consider important. Work has always mattered to me, but motherhood gave me a clearer perspective on where my energy really belongs. There are meetings, deadlines, and responsibilities that fill the calendar… and then there are the moments at home that don’t compare to anything else. Being a mother has a way of putting that into focus quickly. I’ve learned that showing up well at work actually starts with knowing what matters most outside of it. When family is grounded, everything else becomes more intentional. On Mother’s Day, I’m especially grateful for the balance, the lessons, and the reminder that no matter how full life gets, family is what it all comes back to. Wishing a very happy Mother’s Day to all the moms who are doing their best every day, in every part of their lives. #MothersDay #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #Family

Oddly unpopular take: Don't apologize for chasing money. If you are out there hustling... don't apologize for it. You don't have to be interested in brunch. You don't have to slow down and chill. You don't need to say yes to everyone. It's okay if you're in your hustle season. It's okay to be obsessed. It is very hard to change the world when you are broke. It’s okay to ignore everything else until you fix that. Work-life balance when you can afford life.

What Belongs in AI COGS? The Financial Framework SaaS Companies Are Scrambling to Build Finance is playing catch-up, but we are also at the edge of what can be implemented now versus what is theoretical. What do we want this framework to look like? Nothing is set yet. In today's episode, let's get back to the basics. What should be included in AI COGS? And we do code this to Dev Ops or do we create a new cost center? Apple: https://lnkd.in/gVgVay9p Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gWZ--3WK #SaaS

Texas Medley and I had a conversation on the latest episode of Escape the One Man Show that most people in the trades are not willing to have publicly. Everyone is talking about the hype right now. The millionaire plumber. The HVAC entrepreneur cashing out to private equity. The trades as the new path to financial freedom. Nobody is talking about the reality. Contracting is a low margin business. The average HVAC company nets between 2.5 and 5 percent. The owner carries the most risk, has the most liability, and is often the last one to get paid when things get tight. There is no guaranteed salary. No paid time off that someone else covers. No HR department handling your problems. Just you, your decisions, and the consequences of both. That does not mean it is not worth doing. Both Texas Medley and I built real companies in the trades and we would do it again. But we built them with a clear understanding of what we were getting into not based on what we saw on social media. If you are thinking about starting a contracting business do it with your eyes open. Understand the margins. Understand the liability. Understand what it actually takes to make it sustainable. The hype is loud. The reality is quieter. And the reality is what actually determines whether you make it. Full episode drops Wednesday on Escape the One Man Show. #trades #contractor #HVAC #plumbing #electrical #tradesbusiness #escapetheonemansshow #contractorpodcast #businessowner #leadership #homeservices Escape The One Man Show

Solve big problems, they pay better. ↓↓↓ Running a company is simply a game of prioritizing problems. I wrote about how to become the "Chief Problem Officer" in your biz here: https://lnkd.in/ezatids8

A few years ago I logged 1,000,000 meters on a rowing machine. It was one of those Hydrow-style setups with the screen. I was rowing through the Charles River, with the Boston skyline in the background. For the first 20 hours, I mostly watched the virtual coach lead the workouts. Then my attention drifted to the buildings behind them. I remember thinking: Who owns all these buildings? How do I own a building? At the moment, it felt like harmless curiosity. Three years later, we’re building the largest mass timber building in the world. Some call this obsession. To me, it feels like an itch I can’t ignore. Once my brain locks onto a question like that, I don’t get to decide when it turns off. It shows up in the middle of the day. It steals from my sleep. It hijacks normal conversations into, “Yeah, but how does that work?” But that same question, asked 100 different ways, finally turns into an answer. One question becomes “Let’s hop on a call.” A quick call becomes an unexpected partnership. A few years later, you’re building skyscrapers out of wood. When people look at visible wins, they assume there’s a secret. Most of the time, there isn’t one. Someone just found a thread and kept pulling on it long after most people would’ve dropped it. What’s the thing you keep coming back to, even when you try to drop it?

Every operator talks about leads. Fewer talk about what happens after the phone rings. That’s where revenue quietly slips away. Next week inside Owned and Operated, we’re hosting a free live session with Justine Delgadillo and Kathleen Buffington from Quo to break down how top HVAC, plumbing, and electrical operators manage customer conversations at scale. They will cover: - How high-performing teams manage calls, texts, and follow-ups without losing context - Systems that improve visibility across your pipeline - How analytics can uncover communication gaps before they cost you jobs - Practical ways to tighten handoffs and improve the customer experience When? May 12, 2026 at 1:00 PM ET If your business is generating demand, this session will help you convert more of it. Save your seat: https://lnkd.in/gk5D4a8f

"The competitive edge isn't building the tool. It's being willing to throw it out two weeks later." That line from Dave Joerger and Sloane Payne on Capital Allocators is the most honest take on AI in investing I've heard in a while. WCM has built real internal tools: Sherpa, Everest and they're already actively rebuilding them. Not because the tools failed, but because tech is moving that fast. The edge isn't the model. It's the willingness to walk away from something you just built.

Blackstone built a $4B asset out of Justin Bieber. That is modern private equity in one sentence. Sony, in a joint venture with Singapore's GIC, is in exclusive talks to buy Recognition Music Group from Blackstone for up to $4 billion. Recognition owns or manages the rights to more than 45,000 songs, including catalogues from Bieber, Neil Young, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Justin Timberlake and Shakira. Bloomberg expects the deal to close inside a week. People will write about this as a music story. It is not. It is a fixed-income story. The pitch Blackstone took to LPs five years ago was simple. Streaming makes royalty payments predictable. Predictable royalty payments behave like coupons. Coupons can be securitised, leveraged and sold to whoever needs duration. The artist is incidental. What you are buying is a long-dated cashflow with brand recognition stapled to the front. This is the playbook PE has been running on culture for a decade. Music catalogues, golf courses, dental practices, RV parks, fertility clinics, school photography. Anything with a recurring revenue line and a sentimental story attached. You buy it, dress it up, package the cashflows, and sell it to a strategic that needs the inventory. Almost nobody in the chain is thinking about the song. Sony will tell its shareholders this acquisition deepens its publishing footprint. Blackstone will tell its LPs this proves the music thesis. Both are true. They are also both polite cover for the actual transaction, which is the financialisation of the back catalogue of the last forty years of pop. Next time a PE professional tells you they are an investor in cultural assets, ask them what coupon they are buying. The honest ones will laugh. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

"Two people can see the exact same reality and see different things." Watch this clip to understand what Nir Eyal means: ↓↓↓ This episode blew my mind in multiple different ways. Watch our full podcast here: https://lnkd.in/eyr-M7Ae

Growing up, my favorite movie was Rocky. So when I had the chance to meet and spend time with Sylvester Stallone, I did whatever it took to make it happen. Because Rocky was never just a movie. It was a blueprint for my life. Most people forget how Rocky started. Nobody knew who he was. Nobody believed in him. Nobody expected him to win. Then one opportunity changed everything. That is life. Right now, there are people reading this who are talented, intelligent, capable, and dangerous... but the world simply does not know who you are yet. Then one day, you get your shot. One stage. One meeting. One deal. One person who finally gives you a chance. And suddenly... you are on the radar. You start winning. Money comes. Success comes. Recognition comes. People start treating you differently. But success has a dangerous side. Comfort. Because while you are celebrating yesterday’s win, someone else is training for tomorrow. While you are enjoying luxury, someone hungry is studying your every move. While you are slowing down, someone obsessed is speeding up. And eventually... life hits you hard. Business humbles you. People betray you. You lose money. You trust the wrong people. You discover that some people were only loyal to your success, not to you. Then comes the hardest part. Starting over. Not from zero. From experience. And that hurts even more. Because rebuilding after success bruises the ego. You used to be the champion. You used to be on top. You used to walk into rooms and people noticed. Now you are rebuilding quietly while the world thinks your best days are behind you. But that is where hunger is reborn. That is where greatness is rebuilt. The people who win long term are not the people who never get knocked down. They are the people who refuse to stay down. That is why Rocky connected with millions of people around the world. Because deep down, every entrepreneur, every leader, every fighter eventually realizes... Rocky is not about boxing. It is about life. And after spending time with Sylvester Stallone, I realized something powerful: Rocky was his life too. The rejection. The doubt. The struggle. The comeback. The fight to matter. And maybe that is why the story connected with so many of us. Because all of us are fighting for something. A dream. A comeback. A second chance. A breakthrough. A life bigger than our current circumstances. One thing Stallone told me that always stayed with me: “Keep punching.” No matter how hard business gets. No matter how many people doubt you. No matter how many times life tests you. Keep punching. Because your next round may change everything. Follow me if you are building something bigger than your current circumstances. Let’s win together. #Leadership #EntrepreneurMindset #BusinessGrowth #NeverSettle

51 Vets member request 🙏 Dallas-Fort Worth connections Scott Washle - West Point '18, 4-year football letterman - 8 years Army Ranger - Platoon Leader and Company Executive Officer at 1st Ranger Battalion - M&A advisory experience at Trackhawk Advisors - TCU EMBA starting Fall '26 - Married, relocating to DFW this summer Looking for 🎯 - Operations leadership & Chief of Staff roles at PE-backed portfolio companies - PE business development roles - Geography: Dallas-Fort Worth - Available to start July In DFW May 20th - 31st and available to meet in person ☕

A home inspector recently advised homeowners to pour a bleach and water mixture into their AC drain line to eliminate musty odors. There are several issues worth addressing here. The port he used to pour the bleach into is the safety float switch port which connects directly to the evaporator pan. This is not a drain access point. It is a safety device designed to shut the system down when the pan overflows to prevent water damage. More critically bleach is corrosive to copper and aluminum, the primary materials in your evaporator coil and pan. Introducing bleach into that environment over time accelerates corrosion and can cause refrigerant leaks in one of the most expensive components of the system to repair or replace. The correct approach to drain maintenance is to flush the line with warm water or a purpose made drain treatment, clean the evaporator pan manually with a brush, and apply a condensate treatment product like Viper that kills bacteria without damaging the system. The condensate pump also needs to be cleaned regularly as it accumulates the same bacteria and sludge as the drain line. A musty smell from an HVAC system warrants a proper diagnostic evaluation covering the air filter, evaporator coil, air handler interior, drain system, and ductwork, not a single point solution with a corrosive chemical. The person inspecting your home is not always the right person to advise you on maintaining it. #HVAC #trades #contractor #homeservices #homeowner

Every fund deck has one hero deal and three missing bodies. Every private equity fund deck has the same case study. One beautiful winner. 5x return. Perfect timing. Clear thesis. Operational improvement. Disciplined execution. Everybody involved looking like a cross between Warren Buffett and a Navy SEAL. What you do not get is the rest of the story. The three deals in the same fund that returned 0.8x. The one that dragged for years and quietly died. The platform that never integrated properly. The asset where "multiple expansion headwinds" was a more polite way of saying the original underwriting was nonsense. The business that consumed partner time, operating time, management energy, and a great deal of pretend optimism before limping over the line. Those deals rarely make the deck. Funny, that. Private equity is very good at presenting performance as if success is more repeatable and failure is more incidental than reality tends to support. The winner becomes evidence of the firm's process. The losers become market conditions. The case study is always the one where the thesis played out. The one where the thesis did not play out gets redescribed as a learning. And nobody ever explains how the same firm, the same process, the same diligence approach, the same IC, the same operating team, can produce a 5x and a 0.8x in the same vintage year using the same methodology. Because the honest answer is uncomfortable. Some of it is skill. Some of it is timing. Some of it is luck. And some of it is that even the best fund in the market is likely to contain several deals that did absolutely nothing except prove that paying 14x for a business with "clear whitespace" is not, in itself, a strategy. The interesting question is never whether a firm has one great deal. Most decent firms do. The real question is what the full distribution looks like. How many misses. How many stalls. How many capital intensive clean ups disguised as hold extensions. How many assets that only look acceptable because the winner is doing all the reputational heavy lifting. That is the bit people should spend more time on. Because one 5x story tells you the firm can catch lightning. The rest of the fund tells you whether it knows what it is doing. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

Happy Mother's Day to all the women who shaped how we see the world. Literally and figuratively. Style is part of how we carry ourselves — it evolves, it surprises you, and when something finally feels right, you know it. I've always gravitated toward pieces that are well-made and built to last, which is exactly why I love what we've done with Coach this season. The MyEyeDr. × Coach Mother's Day Edit is luxury for your face — botanical details, oversized shapes, frames that feel like spring without trying too hard. A small way to celebrate someone who does so much. #MothersDay #Eyewear #Coach

If you’ve been heads-down running your business, you may have missed a few things. Here’s what actually mattered in home services the last ~30 days...

Value creation class 7 of 10 is in the books. This one was a doozy. My fave topic: talent. Talent matters to value creation as much as anything. It's a "meta-lever." It's also the hardest thing to quantify. And almost nobody has a system for it. Last night's class was about closing that gap. Massive thanks to Michael Aubrey and Stephanie Resnick. They built Mission Veterinary Partners behind a talent-focused strategy. 30 hospitals to 300+. Lowest turnover in an industry famous for the opposite. Then they merged with another platform in a deal that had 3 commas. The discipline they brought to talent (selecting, onboarding, activating, leading) is a big part of what got them there. Great discussion, Stephanie and Michael! Alex Hodgkin, CFA Montgomery Miller

The year is 2046. After the Great Private Equity Collapse, the industry became a wasteland ruled by a handful of PE warlords. A brief recap of how we got here: 𝗕𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟴, every HVAC, plumbing, and roofing company in North America had been rolled up into 4 mega-platforms. Each one leveraged at 20x EBITDA. Each one run by an ex-strategy consultant (or an Operating Partner's golf buddy). 𝗕𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟯𝟬, AI had automated nearly every white-collar job. 100% of LinkedIn content was AI generated. As were the comments. The profile pics. And even the DMs. 𝗕𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟯𝟲, the PE bubble burst. 14,000 portfolio companies defaulted simultaneously. DPI hit 0.0x across the entire asset class. The LPs went underground. No new funds would ever be raised again. 𝗕𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟰𝟬, the surviving PE firms had gone feral. Small roving bands of MDs and Operating Partners wandering the wasteland in tattered Patagonia vests, clutching their value creation playbooks from 2009. 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆... The few HVAC companies that survived are hiding in the hills. They've seen the black vests on the horizon. The PE warlords offer founders a choice: be acquired with a board seat, or be acquired without one. Tirelessly they roam the wasteland looking for acquisition targets. "The world may be ending, but value creation is forever!" they howl as they ride into the night.

McKinsey published numbers in February that should be on every M&A advisor’s wall. By 2035, six million small and medium businesses in the US will face an ownership transition. Five trillion dollars of enterprise value at stake. Today, 92 percent of small business exits happen through closure. Only 5 percent are completed as a sale. Read that twice. Ninety two percent of business owners reach the end of their tenure and shut the doors. They lay off the team. The supplier relationships die. The customers scatter. The enterprise value evaporates. Sometimes that is the right answer. Often it is not. The reasons are knowable. No succession plan. Owner is the business. Books were never built for a transaction. Customer concentration. Key person risk. No one helped them prepare in time. For PE firms, independent sponsors, family offices, and strategics with discipline, this is the largest sourcing opportunity of our lifetimes. The question is not whether deals exist. The question is whether you can find them in time and structure them in a way the founder will actually accept. The opportunity is not finding deals. It is keeping good ones from dying. For founders sitting on a viable business with no plan, the kindest thing I can tell you is this. Start three years out. Get your books cleaned up. Reduce founder dependency. Document everything. Build the team that can run it without you in the room. Three years feels like forever. The closure statistic exists because most owners gave themselves three months. #SuccessionPlanning #MergersAndAcquisitions #PrivateEquity #BusinessExit #LowerMiddleMarket #FamilyBusiness #ExitStrategy

Key advantage of direct / independent sponsor deal. #independentsponsor Lippes Mathias LLP #directdeal

SaaS CFOs...it's time for an AI finance maturity assessment. Most finance teams are at Stage 1. Stage 1 means your AI costs are buried. - Finance does not know which LLM models are buried in the product. - There isn't an estimate of monthly token spend and forecasted spend. - Inference costs are invisible on the P&L and not tied to customer usage. Here is the full maturity model: Stage 1 — No Visibility AI costs buried in cloud infrastructure. No one can answer "what margin does AI cost us?" Stage 2 — Cost Awareness AI COGS isolated as a separate P&L line item. IER and AI COGS Ratio tracked monthly. Stage 3 — Unit Economics Gross margin calculated by customer cohort. Cost distribution measured. Pricing stress-tested at median and top-decile usage. Stage 4 — AI-Optimized Dashboard live. Pricing, ICP, and cost structure aligned. Board gets a one-page AI economics report every month. Where are you today? If most of your answers are "No" in Stages 1 and 2, you are making pricing and investment decisions without seeing the underlying cost structure. And that cost structure is changing fast. The screenshot below is from the AI Finance Maturity Assessment I built for my students. It is a self-scoring checklist — answer Yes or No to each item, and it automatically calculates your current stage. Three actions to move from Stage 1 to Stage 2: → Set up cost allocation tags in AWS / GCP / Azure → Create a dedicated GL code for AI inference costs → Pull the last 30 days of AI API spend from your billing console We're so busy chasing the latest prompt that we overlooked how AI has changed our financial framework and close process. #SaaS

Just returned from a few energizing days at the Milken Institute Global Conference.  The mood was clear: private capital is not stepping back. It is repositioning for the next era. AI infrastructure, energy, healthcare, aerospace and defense, and broader infrastructure were at the center of many conversations. These are not just “themes.” They are the investable backbone of where the global economy is heading. One comment that stuck with me: roughly 50% of what Brookfield owns today is in businesses or sectors that did not exist 15 years ago. That is a powerful reminder of how quickly the opportunity set changes — and how important it is for investors to keep looking forward, not backward. A few takeaways:  ▪️ The US still offers the strongest risk-reward profile in the world. Even with uncertainty, North America remains the market where innovation, capital formation, and scale come together best.  ▪️ Real estate may be nearing an important turn. After four difficult years, the setup for recovery is becoming more compelling.  ▪️ Europe will continue to face structural challenges, but there are real pockets of opportunity — especially in renewable energy and healthcare.  ▪️ Private markets are getting bigger, more global, and more concentrated. ▪️ The possibility of 30 funds reaching $1T+ in AUM over the next 5–10 years says a lot about where capital is flowing and what scale will mean for the industry.  ▪️ And yes, liquidity, resilience, and total portfolio thinking are becoming much more central to the conversation. The old silos are breaking down. Brookfield's Bruce Flatt said it well: “The best is yet to come.” #MIGlobal #PrivateCapital #PrivateEquity #Infrastructure #AI #Energy #Healthcare #Investing

We're partnering with PwC to help enterprises reimagine the office of the CFO with AI agents built for real finance workflows. Together, PwC and OpenAI are building agents across planning, forecasting, reporting, procurement, payments, treasury, tax, and close, starting with production work inside the OpenAI finance organization. These agents can help teams automate repeatable work, connect context across systems, surface risks, and support better decisions with governance and human oversight. OpenAI finance teams have already used tools like Codex to process 5x more contracts with the same-sized team and IR-GPT to manage more than 200 investor interactions during the recent fundraise. Learn more at the link in the comments below.

“Wait… I can do that with my IRA?” Meet Kaaren Hall. Back in 2008, she was a newly single mother with two kids, trying to figure out her next move, when her friend introduced her to a small, obscure corner of finance: Self-directed IRAs. Her job was simple: get new accounts in the door. She did far more than hit quota. She lapped it. “From the very first day IRAs came into law in 1975, you've been able to self-direct them.” Kaaren says, “It’s just that nobody told you it was possible.” I had this same realization several years ago when a friend told me about SDIRAs. How come no one told me about this? With a rented desk and $50k in seed funding, Kaaren built a firm around one idea: show investors the menu they never knew about (but have always had.) Today, that company, UDirect IRA LLC, administers $1.3B. Here’s my takeaway from her story: Most IRA “limits” are set by your brokerage’s menu, not the IRS. But the institutions holding 96% of America’s retirement capital have no incentive to surface those options, so most people stick with their traditional brokerage, and it’s a stocks-and-bonds-only plan. SDIRAs might sound like a new loophole, but they’re just taking full advantage of what the tax code allows. And the cost of not knowing it exists is decades of tax-advantaged compounding. In this week’s issue, we show how that amounts to a $3.9M difference between the same investment held under two different tax treatments. Read the latest issue of Wealth Stack Weekly here: https://lnkd.in/ettC5M7y

I learned about this interesting principle in aviation: the 1-in-60 rule. For every 1 degree you're off course, you'll end up 1 mile off your intended path for every 60 miles you fly. The idea: small deviations early on compound over time and distance. This perfectly captures the essence of why it's so important to nail the First 100 Days in PE deals. Here's an article I wrote on the topic a while back ↓ https://lnkd.in/gCQ56HgJ

Their edge is no longer building the Ai tool. It's being willing to throw it out two weeks later when something better comes along. Dave Joerger and Sloane Payne walk through how WCM is building an "AI task force" into their investment process as a research assistant pulling signal from earnings transcripts and expert networks, a culture analysis tool that scales how they evaluate competitive advantage, and a cross-department task force chasing three goals: build better portfolios, pick better stocks, and make analysts more efficient. Curious to hear from other investors — what's your AI tool of choice right now? Internal build, off-the-shelf, or some hybrid?

Selling to PE changes the operating rhythm faster than most founders expect. The first 90 days after selling your company are a strange experience. You go from making decisions in real time to making decisions inside a system. That is not necessarily bad. It is just very different. Before the deal, you probably just did things. Hire the person. Change the supplier. Push the pricing. Kill the product. Call the customer. Fix the branch. Back the operator you trust. Move. After the deal closes, more people need visibility. There are board packs. Weekly check ins. Monthly reviews. Budget conversations. Headcount approvals. Reporting templates. KPI definitions. Integration plans. Procurement thresholds. People who want to “socialise” things before they become decisions. It all makes sense on paper. And some of it is genuinely useful. Founder-led businesses often need better reporting, cleaner financials, stronger controls, sharper accountability, and fewer decisions living exclusively inside one person’s head. That is part of why PE can work. But founders should be prepared for the shift. PE ownership usually brings more structure, more governance, more measurement, and more people around the table. The business may still be yours operationally, but it is no longer yours emotionally in quite the same way. You now have partners. You now have a board. You now have investors who need to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and whether the plan is working. That can be helpful. It can also feel deeply unnatural if you built the company by moving quickly, trusting instinct, and solving problems before anyone had time to schedule a steering committee. The best founder and sponsor relationships work because both sides understand the trade. The founder accepts that institutional capital brings institutional expectations. The sponsor understands that the founder’s judgment, speed, context, and commercial instinct are usually part of what they paid for. The goal should not be to remove the founder’s operating style. It should be to support it with the right level of discipline. Enough reporting to see the business clearly. Enough governance to avoid stupid mistakes. Enough structure to scale. Not so much process that the founder becomes a guest speaker in their own company. That is the bit to prepare for. Selling to PE is not just a transaction. It is a change in how decisions get made. And the first 90 days will tell you very quickly whether the new system is going to make the business better, or just make everyone much busier. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

If one channel drives 50% of your revenue, you're one algorithm change away from a bad quarter. Most businesses don't realize this until it's too late. They ride whatever is working with Google Ads, Meta, SEO until it stops working. Then they scramble (and some never recover). The operators who don't panic? They never had all their eggs in one basket. Google Ads. LSAs. Direct mail. Field marketing. Referral programs. Yard signs. Local sponsorships. When one slows down, the others hold the floor. That's how you build a real business.

Steinbeck warned private equity that the easy money wouldn't last forever. Nobody listened. All jokes aside, We've all read the headlines. Private equity is at an inflection point. And the stakes are legitimately existential. Adding to the apocalyptic stress, PE firms are BOMBARDED (daily) with service providers/vendors selling the silver bullet solution that promises to fix all of their woes. "AI-powered" diagnostics and online assessments. Strategy consultants peddling more playbooks. And even LinkedIn Claude prompt guides. 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. The industry has forgotten that execution depends on the people doing the executing. Your portfolio leadership team is the asset. And you need to invest in rigorously assessing, aligning, and supporting them. Many PE firms still can't answer basic questions about their portfolio leadership: What are their strengths? What are their shortcomings? Who can be developed/promoted? What support do they need to execute the VCP? They couldn't answer these questions when debt was free. Now that the math demands 12% EBITDA growth over 7yr+ holds, they really can't afford not to. As Steinbeck famously said on the Joe Rogan podcast, "When the easy money disappears, the only thing left is the leader. And most firms have no idea if they picked the right one."

Some of the best decisions I have made came from listening to people who saw things differently than I did, asked harder questions than I wanted, or pushed me to think beyond what felt familiar. That has been true since the early days, when I was still figuring out how to build something better and learning that the right people around you matter more than having all the answers. As the company has grown, that has only become truer. The bigger the responsibility, the more important it is to surround yourself with people who will challenge you, tell you the truth, and make the work stronger than you could have alone. That is what I have always wanted in a leadership team. Not agreement for the sake of it. Not comfort for the sake of it. Just good people who care enough to push, and care enough to stay aligned once the direction is set. #LifeAtMyEyeDr. #Leadership #WomenInBusiness #CompanyCulture #LeadershipStyle #Teamwork #EyeCare

What they dream of: Starting the next Apple What I dream of: Owning a painting biz... Trillions of dollars are about to fall into the hands of those who are paying attention. Let's talk numbers: - 33.3 million small businesses in the US. - That's 99.9% of all businesses. What does this mean? A sea of opportunity. Here’s what’s interesting… Over 80% of these businesses have no employees. Just solo owners, doing their thing. But of the other 20% (aka 6.6 million)... Many are ready to sell. Problem is, most people are still daydreaming about sexy startups and AI breakthroughs. They’re not daydreaming about plumbing companies. Laundromats. Self-storage units. Because they’re not sexy. In fact, they kind of smell like hard work. They smell like Main Street. But the thing about these businesses is: They quietly cashflow. So.. why don’t you just start one? A few reasons why starting sucks: • Cashflow takes time • You start with 0 employees (aka, you do all the work) • You start with 0 customers (aka, even more work) • You have to find a profitable biz model. But there’s another option… BUYING a business (done right) means: • Instant cash flow. • Existing customers. • Proven business model. You're not reinventing the wheel. You're taking something that works and making it work better. It's a path to financial freedom that most people overlook. The opportunity of a lifetime is hiding in plain sight. So here's my challenge to you: Stop dreaming about the next big startup. Start looking at the businesses in your backyard. Then go big and DO the damn thing. ↓↓↓ Here's your first step: • Mark your calendar for June 18-20 • Come to my live 3 day crash course on biz-buying It's very intensive and will answer your questions about business-buying - whether you're brand new to the idea or have been thinking about it for awhile. Save your spot here → https://lnkd.in/gubmPaBM

Two contractors. Same equipment. Completely different installs. A bad condenser install uses channel locks to force a brass suction line fitting onto an undersized line set instead of upsizing the copper to the correct size for the system. That undersized line set restricts refrigerant flow and reduces system capacity and efficiency from day one. Brazes without flowing nitrogen which creates carbon scale inside the copper that circulates through the metering device and compressor. Skips the filter dryer which is the system’s primary defense against moisture and debris in the refrigerant circuit. Does not use heat block to protect the service valve gaskets during the brazing process. Leaves the electrical connections into the condenser without proper connectors so wires can simply be pulled loose. Does not pull a proper vacuum or verify the refrigerant charge. A good install does every single one of those things correctly. Not because it is faster. Because it is right. Here is what most homeowners do not understand. The price you pay for an HVAC install does not determine the quality of the work. The cheapest bid and the most expensive bid can both result in a bad install depending on who is doing it and what their standards are. Before you hire a contractor ask them to walk you through their installation process. The ones doing it right will have no problem telling you exactly what they do and why. The ones cutting corners will not have much to say. Standards matter. Process matters. Who you hire matters. #HVAC #trades #contractor #homeservices #hvacinstall #hvacbusiness #qualitymatters #tradesbusiness #condenser #homeowner #contractorlife

A founder called me last month. Wanted to know what his 3PL was worth. I asked him to walk me through the business. Forty thousand square feet. Twelve clients. Mostly e-commerce fulfillment. Solid relationships, ten plus year tenure on the top three accounts. Margins around 12 percent. No proprietary tech. His expectation was 9 to 10x EBITDA. The market reality was 5 to 7. It is not a bad business. It is a real business. But what the market pays for in this category right now is not square footage or client tenure. What the market pays for is the operating model. Tech enabled, asset light freight brokerages are trading at 12 to 14x. Software enabled fulfillment platforms with real WMS integration, API connectivity, and automation are getting 9 to 12. Regional asset heavy 3PLs running on legacy systems are getting 5 to 8. Same revenue. Same EBITDA. Wildly different multiples. The premium is not size. It is the operating model. For 3PL founders thinking about an exit in the next 24 months, the math is simple. Investment in technology that genuinely changes how the business runs is not just capex. It is multiple expansion. The dollar you spend on automation today is worth four dollars on the multiple at exit if it is real. Buyers can see the difference. They reward it. The 3PLs winning the bidding wars right now are not the biggest. They are the ones who have built a business that does not depend on the founder solving every problem with a phone call. #ThirdPartyLogistics #SupplyChain #MergersAndAcquisitions #PrivateEquity #LowerMiddleMarket #BusinessExit #Logistics

Most ETA roll-up structures don’t get stress tested on the first acquisition. They get stress tested on the second one. The first deal usually feels straightforward: raise capital, buy a company, close. Then acquisition number two shows up. Now the structure starts creating friction. Existing investors may expect participation rights. Governance approvals slow execution. New equity raises create dilution concerns. Management incentive pools become harder to allocate. Economics across subsidiaries were never fully addressed upfront. This is where HoldCo structure starts to matter. A lot of buyers default to structuring around the first acquisition instead of structuring around the platform they intend to build. That works until growth actually starts happening. The legal structure behind a roll-up directly affects: - acquisition flexibility - governance speed - investor alignment - future capital formation - exit optionality Many of these issues are difficult to unwind once multiple investors and subsidiaries exist. I wrote a longer breakdown on how HoldCo vs. OpCo structures affect ETA roll-ups and where buyers tend to encounter friction as platforms scale here: https://lnkd.in/ej2xtmwj

This is one of those employee on-boarding tasks that new business owners fail to catch. Great overview from my colleague Michael Freestone discussing why it's critical to build this into your on-boarding workflow.

“Kindness without accountability is avoidance dressed up as kindness.”   One of the hardest lessons in building a business is realizing that kindness without accountability eventually hurts everyone involved.   Sloane Payne shares a story about the growing pains of scaling the firm at WCM, how small mistakes became real liabilities, and why nobody wanted to have the honest conversation because they cared about her too much.   Great cultures aren’t built by being harsh. They’re built by giving honest feedback sooner, not louder.   🎧 Capital Allocators with Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger is live now wherever you get your podcasts.

Most people post on LinkedIn like it's a vending machine. Insert post, wait for impressions, complain when nothing happens. I just pulled the numbers on my own account. Thirteen weeks. Every single week looked the same. I write about 7 posts a week. 50 of my posts drive impressions every week. About a quarter of those impressions come from posts I wrote weeks or months ago. Seven published. Fifty working. A 7x ratio of distribution to effort, every week, without me doing a thing. That is what compounding actually looks like. Not a viral hit. Not a lucky algorithmic bounce. A back catalogue of posts that keeps quietly pulling reach while you get on with the day job. The part nobody explains when they tell you to "be more consistent on LinkedIn" is that consistency is not the slog. Consistency is the asset. Every post you write is a small piece of distribution that keeps running long after you forget you wrote it. The compounding does not start until you have a year of inventory on the shelf. Most PE professionals I speak to have written nothing in twelve months. Then they wonder why their inbound is dead. Why nobody invites them onto deals. Why the sourcing partner in the next chair is building a brand and they are not. You cannot rent the trust that comes from a year of posts. You can only build it. And the compounding only starts working for you when you start. The pattern is the same with portfolio companies. Founders treat content as a campaign. A burst of activity, then silence, then surprise that nothing compounded. The firms that win treat it as inventory. Posts are assets that sit on the shelf and keep selling. If 100% of your weekly impressions come from this week's posts, you have no inventory. If you wrote nothing, you are paying interest on a loan you never took out. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

I'm live with Jack Carr at the Owned and Operated Breaking $5 Million workshop. Not here? We've got another one scheduled for Sep 15-17, 2026. It's never too soon to reserve your seat: https://lnkd.in/eiz523Wd

Buyers often assume fraud is the same as “Fraud” in the purchase agreement. There is often a critical distinction between the two. That distinction shows up when a buyer believes they have a clear path to recovery and then looks to the escrow. “Fraud” is frequently a defined term. And that definition controls how a claim is treated under the agreement. It can be: - limited to intentional misrepresentation - expanded to include equitable fraud - expanded further to capture negligent misrepresentation Each version changes: - what must be proven - who can be liable - whether the claim fits inside the indemnification framework Now layer in the holdback. In many deals: - escrow secures indemnification claims - fraud sits outside the exclusive remedy If those concepts are not aligned, the result can be unexpected: Buyer asserts “Fraud,” Seller argues the claim is not an indemnification claim, and Escrow becomes unavailable. Now recovery depends on pursuing the seller directly instead of accessing a secured pool of funds. That is a different outcome than most buyers underwrite when negotiating a holdback. Before asserting a fraud claim, confirm: - how “Fraud” is defined - whether it sits inside or outside indemnification - whether escrow is a permitted source of recovery This is not just a legal nuance. It affects where the money actually comes from. Have you seen “Fraud” definitions limit access to escrow post-close?

Last month marked 10 years of creating SaaS finance content. I grabbed an open domain name, and that accidentally became my brand today. You could say things have changed a bit over the past 10 years. Did I think I'd be posting about token costs and AI COGS today? No way, but here we are, and it's fun times in software. Today's post covers AI COGS. What should be included? What new general ledger accounts do we need? Software is changing faster than our financial frameworks. Let's catch up. Today's post: https://lnkd.in/ggkTzqb2 Will I be blogging 10 years from now? Not sure, but we are living in a SaaS CFO utopia right now. Change brings a lot of learning. #SaaS

Coinbase just laid off 700 people and called the survivors player-coaches. That is the new euphemism. Not managers. Player-coaches. Brian Armstrong sent it round in a memo on Tuesday. Five layers max below the CEO, no pure managers, something called AI-native pods. The whole thing will cost $50 to $60 million. That works out to about $80,000 a head to remove the manager class and pretend it was an AI decision. The going rate for a strategic communications upgrade in 2026. Every PE-backed CEO read that memo and forwarded it to their CFO before lunch. They have been waiting for someone to give them the script. Cut the middle layer nobody can defend. Call the rest player-coaches. Attach the word AI. Ship it before the next board meeting. I have no problem with companies getting flatter. Most of the middle layer was calendar Tetris with a job title. The problem is the language. "AI-native pods" is what you say when you do not want to say "we ran out of growth." Player-coach is what you call a manager you could not justify keeping but cannot fire without help from a McKinsey deck. The new operating partner job in 2026 is not running better businesses. It is finding the right vocabulary to describe what the spreadsheet already decided. Coinbase did not restructure on Tuesday. It found a new word for the same memo we have all been writing since 2008. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

The Kentucky Derby fashion delivered as always, with bold hats, vibrant color, and statement silhouettes. What stood out most was how personal the looks felt. Confident and intentional, each one reflected the moment and the people in it. And of course, the classic Derby hat offers just enough shade to protect your eyes while still turning heads. That same sense of progress carried onto the track. Watching Cherie DeVaux become the first female trainer to win was a moment I won’t forget. Moments like this are a reminder that legacy and evolution can exist side by side. The Derby honors where it’s been while still making room for what’s next. See some of the standout looks from Yahoo Sports here: https://shorturl.at/xWSbg #KentuckyDerby #DerbyFashion

Only 34 of 196 Emerging Managers studied have video. 83% trying to build trust with…text & pictures Where you should have video: → Website - first impression → LinkedIn - ongoing visibility What matters: → Clear thinking → Consistent presence → Shipping, not polishing Read where it’s easiest to start: https://lnkd.in/d8bscr9Y

Milestone alert!! 🚨 👀 > 375 closed deals > approaching 400 and $2 billion > Florida now number one, Texas two & Cali three > Buyers moving up market All credit to our amazing clients! Find a group of entrepreneurs having more fun than us... you can't Cc: Kevin Henderson, Sam Rosati, David Brackett

What Makes Content Work? Join Our LinkedIn Live Breakdown (Today)

If your dashboard has 12 KPIs, you have no dashboard. If your portfolio company dashboard has more than 7 KPIs, nobody is looking at any of them. They may say they are. They may even nod thoughtfully on the board call. Someone might circle back on one of them to look engaged. But in reality, once the page gets too crowded, attention collapses. This is one of the most common mistakes in private equity reporting. Every function wants its metric. Every executive wants their area represented. Every board member wants one extra cut. So the dashboard swells into a bloated museum of things that are theoretically important and practically ignored. Then everyone wonders why nothing gets managed properly. A dashboard is not meant to be a filing cabinet. It is meant to force focus. The point is not to capture everything. The point is to surface the handful of numbers that tell you whether the business is healthy, whether the thesis is working, and where management needs to act now. That means maybe five things. Revenue trajectory. Pipeline health. Customer retention or churn. A leading indicator for whatever the operation is actually delivering, and whether cash is behaving itself. That is enough. Once you need a guided tour to explain the dashboard, it has already failed. Most portfolio company reporting is designed to avoid omission. Very little of it is designed for decision making. That is why so many dashboards are unreadable. They are built by committee, expanded by politics, and presented as if more information automatically means more control. It does not. Usually it just means the real problem is buried on page two under seventeen numbers nobody has looked at since last quarter. Good operators know this. If everything is important, nothing is. And if your dashboard has more than 7 KPIs, it is probably not a dashboard. It is a hostage note from the management team. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

Everyone is fighting for the same digital leads, but... - Costs keep rising - Competition keeps getting tighter - Too many businesses have become overly dependent on platforms they do not control All of that creates risk, especially when one algorithm change can slow the phone down overnight. At the same time, old-school channels are still quietly producing results. And that's what today's newsletter is all about.

Born in Canada. Made in America. Growing up in Canada, I never learned about money. I never learned about branding. I never learned about building wealth. The only thing I knew about rich people came from watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And honestly… I never thought that life would ever be mine. Growing up in Montreal with a French mother and an English father, the message was simple: Go to school. Get a safe job. Do not take risks. Stay realistic. Nobody ever told me to become dangerous. Nobody ever told me to think globally. Nobody ever told me to win. That changed when I got a sports scholarship in America. America changed the way I thought forever. In Canada, I learned how to be polite. In America, I learned how to compete. And there is a difference. Canada felt like 10 seals and 1 shark. America felt like 10 sharks and 1 seal. And if you did not move fast… you did not eat. America taught me something powerful: Nobody was coming to save me. Not the government. Not my parents. Not my teachers. Not the system. It was on me. But now the irony is this: America has started to become 10 seals and 1 shark. Nobody wants to work. Nobody wants pressure. Nobody wants criticism. Everybody wants the rewards without the sacrifice. Everybody wants to win. Everybody gets a medal. And that shift is exactly why opportunity still exists for people willing to compete at a high level. Being on tour this week through Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver while speaking, doing AI deals, and working on M&A transactions made me realize something: Most people completely underestimate how global success really works. If your product works in America, it can work in Canada. If it works in Canada, it can work almost anywhere. I have clients in 104 countries. The fundamentals work everywhere. What changes is culture. You do business differently in Japan than Texas. Different in Norway than South Africa. Different in Singapore than Australia. The entrepreneurs who dominate globally understand culture BEFORE they sell. Most people try to sell first and understand culture later. That is why they fail internationally. Looking back now, I realize something: Canada gave me my authenticity. America gave me my edge. One kept me grounded. The other made me relentless. And together, they built the person I became. I’m genuinely curious: What country, city, or background shaped the way YOU think about money, ambition, and success? #Entrepreneurship #Business #Leadership #Success

Specialty and emergency veterinary medicine doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s built on shared expertise, trust between teammates and the systems that allow great clinicians to do their best work. At Veritas Veterinary Partners, we’re focused on strengthening that foundation so our teams can continue to deliver at the highest level. World Veterinary Day may have passed, but hearing our teammates’ “why” is a reminder of what makes this all possible.   https://lnkd.in/eUE3HqRR #WhyChooseVeritas #VeritasVeterinaryPartners #VeritasVetPartners #VetMed #VetMedCareers

Grant Cardone recently posted a video on a jet ski telling HVAC contractors and roofers they could turn a million dollar business into a billion dollar valuation. Without exaggeration. He mentioned he started in roofing. So I looked into it. Grant Cardone’s early career was in sales training, not roofing. He is an extraordinarily successful sales trainer and marketer. That is real and that is legitimate. But it is worth knowing who you are taking business advice from before you pay for a conference in Scottsdale. Here is what I know from actually building a trades business from the ground up. The gap between one million and fifteen million has nothing to do with consolidation strategies or billion dollar exit planning. It has everything to do with people, culture, operations, and showing up every single day to solve problems nobody else wanted to solve. The trades industry does have massive opportunity right now. That part he got right. But the path to building a real, sustainable trades business is not a conference. It is the unglamorous work of building a team, developing leaders, creating systems, and earning trust in your market one customer at a time. If you are a contractor looking to grow I talk about what actually works every week on Escape the One Man Show. Real tactics from someone who has built it, not studied it. Two million a week though. I did consider it. #GrantCardone #HVACBusiness #ContractorLife #TradesLife #EscapeTheOneManShow #DerekCormier #HomeServices #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneurship #ScalingABusiness #Leadership #ContractorMarketing #HVACContractor #BusinessGrowth #Trades #OperationalExcellence Escape The One Man Show

Most PE firms have financial, market, and legal due dili down to a science. Yet it's the "soft stuff" (leadership, talent, and culture) that often makes or breaks the deal. This can be the difference between: → a good deal and a bad one → value creation success and failure → smooth sailing and a post-close mess That's why org due diligence is finally having its moment. Here's how to approach it ↓

A lesson I wish I learned sooner...if you want to win more, quit more. I’m one of the biggest quitters you’ll ever meet. - Quit Wall Street. - Quit 7 figure jobs i hated. - Quit businesses that lost me money. -Quit relationships that drained my energy. - Quit deals that looked sexy but smelled stupid. We were all taught quitting is weak. And if you pull the plug because something gets “tough” - yes that’s weak. But quitting because priorities changed, you received new information, or a personal goal was reached - that’s calculated. I would argue that quitting has led to some of my most profitable decisions.

I built and scaled e-commerce brands before I ever sat in a deal seat. Watching the Amazon aggregator boom from inside that world was wild. Brands I knew personally were getting offers at six and seven times EBITDA. Founders who could barely manage payroll were waking up to wires that changed their lives. Then it all collapsed. Thrasio raised 3.4 billion. Bankruptcy. Perch was acquired in distress. Benitago filed. Roughly 100 aggregators competed for the same brands, drove multiples to levels where mistakes became fatal, then could not operate the assets they bought. The lesson everyone took was that rollups do not work in e-commerce. That is the wrong lesson. Rollups work. Private equity has proven that across dozens of industries for decades. What broke the aggregator model was the gap between dealmakers and operators. The thesis was sound. Buy fragmented brands. Centralize back office. Centralize sourcing. Negotiate better terms with Amazon and freight carriers. Compound the gains. The execution was broken. Most aggregator leadership had never actually run an Amazon brand at scale. They were finance people with a spreadsheet thesis. They paid 7x for assets they could not operate at 5x. The new generation of e-commerce buyers I am seeing in the market right now look different. They are operators. They have run the playbook. They buy at 3x to 5x with a clear thesis on each acquisition. They optimize for cash flow, not the next valuation round. If you are a brand owner thinking about an exit, those are the buyers worth talking to. If you are a buyer looking at this category, the discipline of an operator beats the capital of a financier every time. The graveyard is full of proof. #Ecommerce #MergersAndAcquisitions #PrivateEquity #Amazon #BusinessExit #LowerMiddleMarket #DealMaking

I divorced my wife and put my kids up for adoption. And replaced them with 5 AI agents. (Here's how I did it) *** My LinkedIn feed is clogged with Claude prompt guide lead magnet bullshit. It pains me to see 1st degree connections fall for these posts. Like seeing one of your friends fall for the Nigerian prince scam. You'd think they'd know better. (Particularly C-suite leaders) With childlike wonder, senior leaders are fixated on AI. Using LLMs daily. And for everything. Shamelessly commenting "PLAYBOOK". Convinced that this technology will transform their personal and professional lives. And indeed, it is. Just not in the way they think it is. Here is what the research says about AI/LLM usage: • 62% of UK C-suite leaders use AI to make the majority of their decisions. 70% second-guess their own judgment when it conflicts with AI's recommendation (Confluent / 3Gem, 2025) • 65% say decision-making has become less collaborative since adopting AI (same study) • 64% of CEOs are comfortable making major strategic decisions based on AI-generated input (IBM May 2026) • 58% of workers say AI "did most of the thinking" on planning and strategic reasoning tasks (APA April 2026) Like China in the 1800s, the C-suite is flooded with a digital opium that lulls senior leadership into LLM dependency. I don't know what the next 5yrs looks like, but this AI hysteria feels like it's doing more harm than good. And a CEO that can't think without a chatbot is a liability for employees and private equity investors.

Top quotes from this week's conversation with Sloane Payne and Dave Joerger of WCM Investment Management: 1. "The things we try to practice at work — seeing other people’s perspectives, being curious, honoring the absent, being honest, giving hard feedback — are the same things you do in good relationships outside work. It's the same damn stuff." - Sloane Payne 2. "Trust is the operating principle versus systems and processes. That's a little bit inverted from how a lot of operational teams think." - Sloane Payne 3. "We overtrust people before they're ready and put them in roles before they've proven they can do them." - Sloane Payne 4. "We don’t hire people we have to protect from each other. We hire people who protect each other." - Dave Joerger 5. "You want people to feel safe enough to be honest at work but also trusted enough to take ownership and initiative." - Sloane Payne 6. "Have a really big field with really wide fences and let people run." - Sloane Payne 7. "When mistakes feel survivable, people tell you the truth, they tell you earlier, and you solve problems faster and better." - Dave Joerger 8. "When you are too kind to be honest. That's not kindness. That's avoidance dressed up as kindness." - Sloane Payne 9. "You have to be smart and super intelligent. Once you establish that everything else you bring to the table as a person matters so much more.” - Dave Joerger 10. "Self-awareness is the whole ballgame." - Sloane Payne With thanks to AlphaSense, Canoe Intelligence, and SRS Acquiom. https://lnkd.in/eM55htnP

Private equity just outsourced AI to OpenAI on a guaranteed return. The Deployment Company closed yesterday. $10 billion vehicle. Nineteen investors. TPG anchoring it, with Brookfield, Advent and Bain Capital alongside. The structure is what's interesting. OpenAI guarantees the consortium 17.5% per annum for five years. OpenAI engineers get embedded inside portfolio companies. PE pays for the privilege. Read it again. PE is paying a vendor, on a guaranteed return, to send engineers into portcos and deliver the AI strategy that PE has been telling LPs it could deliver in-house since 2023. I've watched this pattern for years. A firm raises a tech-enabled value creation fund. Hires three Operating Partners with consulting CVs. Builds a deck called something like the AI Acceleration Programme. Two years in, nothing material has changed in the portfolio. So you import a vendor, slap a partnership banner on the LPAC slide, and call the next vintage data-driven. Anthropic ran the same playbook with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs on the same day. $1.5 billion. Embedded engineers. Forward deployment. PE-owned mid-market healthcare and manufacturing as the proving ground. Two AI labs both copied Palantir's services model and pitched it at PE. Both got buyers in twenty four hours. Thoma Bravo passed. Orlando Bravo wanted to know what the economics look like when a 17.5% floor sits on top of services revenue from companies you bought yourself. Fair question. Most of the industry didn't ask it. This is what value creation theatre looks like in 2026. The buyers knew what they were buying. They were buying a story for the next pitch deck. Whether the EBITDA shows up is somebody else's problem in fund vintage 2031. Something we keep seeing at Claymore Partners is the gap between the AI line in the value creation plan and the person who actually owns a P&L for it. Almost nobody has one. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity.com #PrivateEquity #ValueCreation

Oh boy. Let me tell you about Andy. He’s on the right. In 2023, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund paid $4.9B for a mobile gaming company called Scopely. Most people won’t recognize the name. Everyone in gaming knows exactly what it was. Scopely proved that a very specific operating model works at scale: License known IP. Build games on top of brands the world already loves. Partner with elite external development. Keep a lean internal team focused on operating excellence, not studio sprawl. They did this with The Walking Dead. WWE. Star Trek. Marvel. Monopoly. Scrabble. The architect of that model was Andy Kleinman. The IP licensing strategy that turned Scopely into a $4.9B exit was the playbook he helped build and run. After the deal closed, Scopely launched Monopoly GO with Hasbro, and it became the fastest mobile game in history to cross $6B in revenue. Then Scopely turned around and bought Niantic’s gaming division (including Pokémon GO) for $3.5B. Now Andy is applying that same model at Delphi. Same architect. Same playbook. Scopely ran it on mobile free-to-play. Delphi runs it on AAA console, where individual title economics are roughly an order of magnitude larger and the IP universe is even more iconic. That's why I wired more money than I'd ever invested before into Delphi as the first check. Our first game, 007: First Light, launches May 27. To learn more about how I’ve invested in franchise IP, “like” this post and I’ll DM you an invite to a private webinar I’m having this week. *This is not financial advice. Consult your financial advisor.

If I was CEO of LinkedIn, I’d make five changes. Not because the platform is broken. Annoyingly, it works. That’s why we’re all still here, scrolling past people being humbled by promotions they clearly campaigned for. But LinkedIn is sitting on one of the most valuable professional data sets in the world and still behaves like its main job is to show us whatever our network accidentally liked during lunch. First, I’d build real industry intelligence. Give me “This Week in Private Equity.” Not another newsletter. A proper AI summary of what credible people in the market are actually talking about. Fundraising sentiment. Exit activity. LP pressure. AI adoption in portfolio companies. Operating partner debates. Hiring patterns. Hot sectors. Cold sectors. What CEOs are worried about. What investors are pretending not to be worried about. Then do the same for every industry and function. Second, I’d fix the feed. Your network is not a market. It’s a professional terrarium where the same people agree with each other until everyone thinks they’ve discovered strategy. LinkedIn should let users filter for signal by industry, seniority, role, topic and credibility. Less “great insights.” More actual insight. Third, I’d give creators proper analytics. Not “your post got 84,000 impressions,” which is LinkedIn’s way of saying “something happened, best of luck.” Show who read it by industry, seniority and function. Show saves. private shares. profile visits. follows. website clicks. audience quality. Which posts attracted buyers. Which attracted people trying to become creators by commenting into the void. Better data would create better content. Fourth, I’d ban lead magnet theatre. No more “comment PLAYBOOK and I’ll send you my framework.” If something is useful, publish it. If it needs 900 people typing “interested” underneath it like Victorian children queuing for soup, it probably isn’t. Fifth, I’d turn all of this into paid products. Premium intelligence for professionals. Creator analytics. Sales Navigator overlays. Recruiter market signals. Company page category intelligence. Better advertising built around real professional intent. More useful for readers. More useful for creators. More valuable for LinkedIn. LinkedIn has the chance to become the Bloomberg Terminal for professional reputation, expertise and business intent. At the moment, parts of it still feel like Facebook got an MBA. #ClaymorePartners #notveryprivateequity #LinkedIn #B2BMarketing #PrivateEquity

CFOs...I know we don't want to add more general ledger accounts, but our COA must change with AI. This is for both internal AI productivity and AI delivered through our products. I was on a panel at Sage Future last week, and one attendee said their CFO doesn't want to add more GLAs. Well, that has to change. Join me live with Cloud Capital as we dig into the changing gross margin profile of software companies. The evolution of pricing and software delivery is changing faster than our financial frameworks. I’m co-hosting a short session with Ed Barrow, CEO of Cloud Capital. Let's track this properly before it gets too messy. Save your seat here: https://lnkd.in/eVVc86rs