E348: Why “Boring” Businesses Beat Venture Capital

Is private equity alpha really about picking great deals—or about executing the same playbook better than everyone else? In this episode, I discuss with Monty Yort, Managing Partner at GenNx360 Capital Partners, about how disciplined execution and consistency drive long-term outperformance in private equity. We break down how GenNx360 approaches proactive sourcing, why lower middle market investing creates structural advantages, and how operational improvement and buy-and-build strategies compound value over time. Monty also shares lessons on leadership, mentorship, and why the best firms continuously refine their process rather than chase new strategies.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Weisburd?

  One of the theories they have been coming up with is asymmetry in finance, specifically in private equity and venture capital. And venture capital is a little bit more pronounced, you know, about this power law, where if you get enough shots on goal, one of them will be the next Uber, the next SpaceX, the next Anthropic. But I also think that that happens in private equity, perhaps not with 100x returns, where if you stay in business, you do the right blocking and tackling, you get the shots on goal, and you'll have one of these pags where it might go 20x. Have you found that to be the case?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  I do believe in private equity and venture capital are very different. Our goal is to have a loss ratio of zero. And the way we set up that opportunity is by being consistent in the types of investments that we make, that proactive sourcing strategy, identifying sectors that have the appropriate characteristics, partnering with the right leadership. Those are critical building blocks to what we're going to execute on, and then executing on that strategy. We've now done 33 different platform investments at GenX, over 100 add-on acquisitions. Our loss ratio is very low because of the consistency. Now, it's evolved over time. We've gotten much better at what we do. So if you think about our more recent funds, we're performing better than our more historical funds because we've just gotten better and better at it. And I think private equity enables you to do that. You enhance the strategy, evolve your processes, and you continue to execute with a great team.

• 1:09David Weisburd?

  Double click on proactive sourcing. What does that mean and how do you implement that on a day-to-day basis?

• 1:13Speaker 01

  If you step back in time for us as an organization, we had some rough learnings early on around selecting sectors that didn't have the right characteristics. So we learned from those, this is really going back to our first fund in the Great Recession, we learned that we weren't targeting the right area. And specifically, we were in industrial manufacturing, lumpy businesses, cyclical businesses. We stayed focused on industrial services, industrial in particular, but we shifted to industrial services. Industrial services are generally larger industries, high fragmentation, attractive growth dynamics, recurring revenue streams. Those are the critical components. So in essence, that was a core part of the thesis. Okay, so those are the sectors we want to invest in. So instead of just sitting and waiting for opportunities to come to us in our through the Boston banks, we developed the proactive process. And that proactive process in essence entails identifying those subsectors within industrial services that have those characteristics.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Oftentimes going and finding sector executives that have been there and done it in the space. Database in the industry, developing intelligence, getting a broad-based perspective, identified opportunities, proactively reaching out to opportunities, and then ultimately finding the right opportunity and closing on that opportunity. You go back to PAG. PAG, we identified the sector in 2015. We didn't close on the investment until 2018 because it took us that long to find the right investment opportunity in the space. That discipline is really important because it then enables us to drive the successful investments over time.

• 2:26David Weisburd?

  Perhaps this is a dumb question, but what are second-order effects of proactive sourcing? What does that help you do and what does that help you avoid?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  You focus on sectors that you know have the attributes that you're looking for. That increases the likelihood of success of the investment. If we do this properly, we're databasing an industry, we're getting really smart. We're confirming that it's a fragmented industry with lots of add-on acquisition opportunities. So that's important. So that bind-build strategy is critical. So you fragment an industry, confirming that it is through your proactive sourcing. Oftentimes, we're even identifying in specific add-on acquisitions that we're going to close on once we find the platform. But we find the platform, on occasion, we identify and proactively identified and proprietarily acquired. So you can even get a more attractive valuation. But even in the cases where you don't, we get really smart about the space. Oftentimes, I have a sector executive we've partnered with that knows the space well. So we have greater conviction on the assets that we ultimately acquire. Then we're able to move quickly because we've already databased the industry for the add-on acquisitions.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Oftentimes, we're closing on our first add-on within the first three months of when we close on the platform acquisition.

• 3:21David Weisburd?

  Today, you have AI seemingly improving every single day, maybe every single hour. How are you using AI in order to improve your sourcing and what have been some of your latest developments?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  We think about AI in really two different ways, really three different ways. One, we think about AI on the investments that we make. It's critical to understand, is AI a risk for the investments that we're going to consider? Secondly, on the investments that we make, how can we utilize AI to support these businesses? Whether it's on a commercial side, operational side, back office side. But from the sourcing perspective, same situation. We're using AI to identify and really dig into the sectors that have the characteristics that we're looking for. So we use AI to help us source the sectors of interest. We use AI to then help us diligence those sectors of interest. And then you can utilize AI to even go and identify the potential add-on acquisitions. So it's pretty robust. We're still in the early stages. We've got a team dedicated to how to utilize AI, but so far it's proving out to be a great resource for us.

• 4:11David Weisburd?

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• 4:54David Weisburd?

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• 5:37David Weisburd?

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• 6:14Speaker 01

  So we made an investment in a company by the name of IT Savvy to hit your point. IT Savvy had a tremendous CEO that understood the benefit of AI. And we invested in IT Savvy probably three years ago, sold it about a year ago. This individual helped us to recognize that his view was if you're not utilizing AI, your competitor is and you're going to lose your competitor. So similar mindset. So he opened our eyes up to AI early on. We use it as a tool. When we invest in businesses, we invest in a lot of founder family owned businesses. So the reality is a lot of those executives, those family owners, family and founder owned businesses don't have a full appreciation for AI. I think they're fearful of it. So they are looking for a partner that can grasp it, help them to understand it and leverage it. So it is a tool that we use. Oftentimes we introduce it to the portfolio companies that we're working with.

• 6:56David Weisburd?

  Taking a step back, talk to me about Gen X. Talk to me about the firm's history, AUM, and how the firm has evolved since inception.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Take a lot of pride in the organization that I've been a part of. It's really been a tremendous experience. Firm came together in 2006. Four individuals partnered. One individual Ron Blaylock, partner came from the investing side. Three individuals that came from the operating side, all ex GE individuals with the mindset of building a business focused on the lower middle market that had operational excellence, really bringing operational excellence to these lower middle market companies. So that strategy has been the hallmark of the organization from day one and one of the three pillars of value creation. So how we've evolved over time, I mentioned early on, we invested in manufacturing and had some challenges with the great recession. As we shifted to fund two, recognized that we need to shift our focus, stay in industrial, but focus on services. So that was the first evolution was really focused on services. Next, we introduced the proactive sourcing, saying if we're going to target a sector that we know of, let's be thoughtful around how we identify opportunities and let's

• 7:49Speaker 01

  focus on proactive sourcing. At the same time, we shifted our strategy in terms of value creation, bringing in with the operational excellence, bringing in a focus of growth versus just driving efficiencies in the business. And then the final point was the buy build strategy. That's really the element that we brought in towards the end of fund two. So every transaction today now has a proactive sourcing strategy around it, a growth strategy around the operational influence, and then the growth strategy and the buy and build. So that's consistent across all of our investments. As a result, we've gone from a firm that had some challenges at fund one to fund three, in essence, top quartile desktop, top desktop performance.

• 8:22David Weisburd?

  And you've consciously decided to keep the fund size consistent. Talk to me about the trade off and conversations with LPs and how did that develop as a strategy?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Our view was shifting our scope would not enable us to maintain that attractive returns that we've been able to drive. So our LPs are very supportive of us staying within that size range. What we have done is we've in essence grown the organization. We've evolved our capabilities. So our fund sizes are getting bigger and bigger, but all within a controlled situation so that we don't shift our scope. And we don't get outside of really what our core expertise is.

• 8:53David Weisburd?

  Having hundreds of these conversations with GP's, but also LPs, it's becoming obvious that capital markets are changing from purely a blind pool fund to blind pool and co-invest and continuation vehicles and all these things.

• 9:06David Weisburd?

  There's this interesting industry practice of taking a business, growing it three to five X and then selling it to your competitor and flipping it to your competitor because of these fund lives and because some of these dynamics. Have you talked to LPs or thought about doubling down on your assets and doing things such as co-invest, continuation vehicles or growth vehicles?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right. If you go back 10 years ago, it was a sin to sell or to purchase a business from a private equity firm. Today, it's a pretty common practice. One of the things we've gotten very good at is buying build strategy. So we used to be able to build businesses from five to 15 million to 20 to 30 million EBITDA. But today, we can take that same business, five to 15 million. If we're better at selecting the sector and the industry, greater fragmentation, greater scale, greater potential to really build that business and expand into different geographies, different products. So we've gotten great at building businesses that are not 15 million EBITDA going to 20, but now we're going to 40 or 60, or in the case of PAG, 140 million EBITDA. So that's requiring us to think a little bit differently about how we fund those transactions. So we are bringing in co-investors earlier, recognizing those co-investors will support our buy and build strategy. We're also doing continuation funds.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  So we've done two continuation funds to date, single asset. In all those cases, we're taking really good businesses with great teams and great sectors. And now we're able to support them. I'll give PAG is one example, right? We grew PAG from 12 million to 62 million EBITDA. Did the continuation fund because we saw path to growth to 200 million. So now in the case of PAG, we've now grown it as we did the continuation fund, we took it to 140 million. Horst, Bergen Scott, similar situation. Whitson's another situation where we see this path to grow beyond what the fund enabled us to do because we ran out of capital in the fund. So we bring in this third party capital, so to speak, continuation fund or co-investors.

• 10:44David Weisburd?

  In that case, you're giving LPs the ability to cash out or roll into the new investment.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And I think that's critical. First of all, I don't think the continuation fund strategy works if you're just fixing a broken asset or a broken fund. For us, it's really driving accelerated growth in those companies that are performing and giving the opportunity to those investors. So PAG was out of fund too. Okay, so PAG grown it to 62 million. We went out and raised a continuation fund, brought in some great partners, but we had to go to our existing investors and give them the opportunity to invest. And the ones that chose to reinvest, I think, have done exceptionally well, but those that didn't reinvest, they took over four times money off the table. So it was a win-win for everybody.

• 11:20David Weisburd?

  And technically a secondary, so you get to print that DPI. So then when you go out and raise your next fund, you could show DPI. I love continuation vehicles. A lot of LPs are ambivalent about it, mostly because they don't have the team and the capacity internally to look at one-off deals. They also have this weird cognitive dissonance between having to ride along the GP that they've already underwritten. So you are the expert in the space and now we have to decide whether we agree or disagree with you. Again, it's almost like a second underwriting, but ultimately I do think it's a better outcome than the other outcomes, which is just selling the asset early, which is probably the worst thing. And two is these elongated DPI cycles where it was supposed to be a 10-year fund. Now it's a 12, 13, 14-year fund, venture capital, it could be even worse.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  It is really interesting because I've had this debate before with people about the benefits of the continuation fund. And listen, there's a lot of different types of continuation funds and vehicles, right? That people are doing. For us, it's very simple. It's simple, single asset, it's performing businesses, opportunity to continue to support that business. And here's the benefit for us. We are now taking businesses from 60 million to 140 million, as PAG is an example. Arguably, it's a little bit outside of our size range, what we're used to doing, but we know the management team well. We know the industry exceptionally well. We've data-based industry. We know where the add-on opportunities are. We know the fragmentation. So. The beta in our minds is lower because we figured out all those challenges. New investments for us are different. You know, we're getting to know the industry. We're getting to know the management team. We're still identifying the add-on opportunities. So there's lower risk, our minds and the continuation vehicles that we're pursuing,

• 12:42Speaker 01

  because these are really good businesses with great trajectory.

• 12:45David Weisburd?

  There's inherent trade-off, which I think should be made explicit, which on one side, you're getting to deploy the Stanley, Dragan, Miller, Invest, Investigate. You know this team. You know their strengths. You also know their weaknesses. It's kind of like the devil you know. You de-risk a lot of the management team. You know the industry because you've done a deep dive. You've really consciously thought about it. The downside or the trade-off is you're operating lower middle market. This is maybe middle, middle market. And do you know how to grow a 140 million EBITDA business into a $500 million EBITDA business? That's what's an LPS to underwrite.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  For us, the greatest challenge with any one of our opportunities is leadership, getting the right leadership in place. Because that leadership is going to drive the success of the business. And we're, as I mentioned, we're investing in five to 15 million dollar EBITDA businesses, founder, family owns, over 60%. These individuals did a great job taking the company to where it is at that point in time. And the question is whether or not they are the right team to take it to the next level. Nine times out of 10, we are working with that existing team, identifying the gaps, trying to figure out where the opportunity is to really enhance leadership. So we'll add a COO. Oftentimes, they don't have one. We'll add a CCO. Oftentimes, they don't have one. These are businesses that rarely are focused on growth the way we are. Oftentimes, we're assessing the CFO to make sure it's the right CFO that can bring the right information to the team. So all that's critical. And then continually over time, assessing the leadership to make sure it's the right team and they're in the right place.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  David Mas is a great example at Pag. Here's an individual who literally founded the business, grew it to 12 million with us in partnership, grew it to 62 million when we did our continuation fund, and now it's $140 million. Unique characteristics with an individual like that. That has the leadership skill, has the willingness to not micromanage, has the recognition of putting the right infrastructure in place in terms of information to be able to make the right decisions. Those are the types of things that an individual, when he starts a business, has to think about if he wants to grow to that scale.

• 14:27David Weisburd?

  You used the word leadership twice because a lot of people couple management and leadership as one person or one function. The leadership is essentially the spiritual leader of the business. Management, sure, you could bring in a COO that's scaled from 140 to 500. Maybe they don't have that skill set. But you do need this leadership, which is extremely hard to find. It's very hard to in-source leadership. Especially when it's not the founder. And two is the management is something that you could actually. It's a solvable problem. It's a predictable problem. How do you know somebody has scaled from 140 to 500? They've done it three other times.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:56David Weisburd?

  It reminds me of the Charlie Munger quote, which is somebody was asking how they choose managers. And he said, well, we find somebody that's done it a bunch of times. And then we hire that person. They said, but what about somebody that's coming in that that could develop in that scale? He's like, we don't do that.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  We are actually investing in businesses, right? Where you've got an individual that's taken the company to where it is. And we have to make an assessment over time. Is that the right person to take it to the next level? And what we've learned is one of the best ways to, you know, to help him together is to surround him with the right people. Get that C O O in place. Get that C C O in place. Upgrade, you know, the finance team to the extent you need to. Get in the F P and A analysts. Get all that right information and provide that C E O with guidance. Sometimes we'll even provide them with coaching to enable them to succeed. Because you're hitting on an important point. Leadership and building a culture. And sometimes that founder, family owner, they have built that culture where it is today. And you don't want to break, you know, the culture by building the business. So that's the balance is getting, making sure you've got the right leadership that is supported by the right management.

• 15:51David Weisburd?

  You have a really interesting vantage point in that you've done this probably dozens of times. And this, this exercise of sitting with the C E O, essentially doing a SWOT analysis on them, figuring out where their strengths and their weaknesses are. Double click on that. Let's say I'm the C E O of a company. It's grown. I founded it. It's now grown to 50 million EBITDA. You believe my leadership is there, but my hard skills are not there. A, how would you approach that conversation? B, what would the exercise be in order to upscale my team?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  There's an art involved in this. I mean, that's, I think where private equity can succeed or fail is your ability to really interact, develop a relationship with that leadership team, that individual. Help them to understand the challenges of taking that business to the next level. And hopefully get him to the point where he realizes we're partners. And our goal is to succeed as a partnership and for this company to win. That's really the ultimate goal. And getting them to recognize that sometimes they're stepping back. Is the better answer for the overall organization. And sometimes it's them stepping in in order for that business to succeed. And it is an art. There's no tool that you can specifically use that's going to enable you to do that. It's it's an art to understand the team and you're testing and retesting. Probably the most important thing as an organization, though, is to recognize that you have to continue to test it. And when in your gut, you feel that it's probably time to change. It's probably the right thing to do and not to wait.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  And that's one of the things we've evolved very well at is historically, we'd leave the same leadership in place and kind of a hope and pray that they're going to get there. We don't have the patience to do that. But then it's a process of how do you?

• 17:09David Weisburd?

  And oftentimes the team around them, it's very obvious to them what needs to change. Sometimes it's hard to face your own limitations, but everybody around you, if you're such a forty sixty.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I totally agree with that.

• 17:19David Weisburd?

  Continuing on with this idea of keeping your best assets and doubling down on them. I had Sam Zell's longtime partner, Mark Sotter, they worked together for many decades. And one of the things that he said that I think is very underrated is the friction of investing and selling the business. You essentially have two lost years. You have the year when you're getting up to speed and then you have the last year where you're basically dressing up assets to sell. And as a family office, he figured out, well, that's a lot of friction. There's obviously tax friction as well for a taxable investor. How can we roll this and avoid these two out of five years are lost years? Have you found that in that where you're, we have a fixed timeline with an asset? You have these kind of two, two lost years.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  I think it's a really good point. And we, as an organization, it took us a while to recognize the first year. And one of the things that this proactive sourcing enables us to do, and I should have mentioned it earlier. We eliminate some of the risk of the first year because we've gotten to know the industry so well. By the time we close on that investment, we already have an action plan as a how to drive value creation. Oftentimes identifying the positions that we need to fill in the leadership role, identifying the add on. So we try to take that first year and concentrate it into a three to six month time period with an action plan to do that. Then you're right, you've got the exit side as well and the friction associated with that. And it's absolutely friction that's impossible to avoid. Can you concentrate that as well? The continuation fund does enable you in some respects to miss that second or at least push it out till the next exit. We as investors have to return capital to our LPs.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  So you're balancing what's the right time to exit? What's the friction associated with that exit to minimize that as much as possible?

• 18:48David Weisburd?

  There's several themes that smart LPs invest into. One consistent theme is lower middle market PE. Maybe you could explain why is lower middle market a smart alpha trade? And also talk about the competitive environment.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  I've been in lower middle market all my career, so I might be biased here. But when I think about the opportunities, the levers that I can pull on to create value in the lower middle market, they're pretty significant. First of all, you're investing in a company that's this family founder owned business. There's an opportunity to really optimize and professionalize the business. That enables you to drive efficiencies from a cost perspective. It enables you to accelerate growth from a revenue perspective. Oftentimes, the companies we invest in haven't even built out a sales organization or true go to market strategy. So there's a huge opportunity to really professionalize and drive that growth. So that's on the operational side. Couple that with on the buy and build front, lower middle market, typically greater fragmentation, smaller opportunities that you can acquire to create value with. So if you think about these different levers, and we've assessed this, driving that organic growth has been our greatest attribute to value for us because of the focus on that organic growth.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  But when we do the buy and build strategy, you're able to, with every add on acquisition you do, be able to drive down your purchase multiple for the overall business. And on average, our add ons are about two and a half EBITDA turns below the platform.

• 19:56David Weisburd?

  So just to put some numbers on that, you might be buying the main asset for eight X EBITDA, and then you're buying the bolt ons for six X, and then they basically blend into the eight X, so you're getting that premium.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. And couple that then with also the synergies that you're going to get. So that eight to six times differential, you're then driving synergies that you'll get. So you accelerate your growth on that. You drive efficiencies from that. And then the third component is really what did you pay for the platform originally in terms of a multiple? And what do you exit it for? So what we're seeing oftentimes is that company that we're buying for five to 15 million EBITDA may trade at a multiple of, call it eight to 12 times. But the premium that you're able to get when you take that business, professionalize it, professionalize the management team, expand the TAM that it's servicing, I expand the overall business, we're exiting at 12 to 15 times. And we can give lots of examples of doing exactly that. And the key for us is to do it on a consistent basis. And I think that's the whole evolution of an organization is you get better and better at your processes to increase the likelihood of that consistent outcome.

• 20:50David Weisburd?

  Most smart investors understand that size is the enemy of returns in basically every asset class. There's almost, there's very few asset classes that actually have economies of scale in investment management. Have you resisted the urge to get bigger?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  The way we're able to put more capital to work is, I think, by increasing the success of the bind build strategy. So once again, where we take companies from five to 15 million to 20 to 30 million in EBITDA, we're now taking the 40 to 60 million in EBITDA. So we're able to actually get bigger and put more capital to work without really changing our strategy. We're still focused on learning the market. We're still focused on the bind build, professionalizing and optimizing. But that's how we've been able to do it. So our fund sizes are getting bigger, but our scope hasn't changed.

• 21:27David Weisburd?

  Private equity is evolving at a blistering space, almost as fast as AI. Where do you think Gen X will be in 2030 and what's going to fundamentally change?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  We, as an organization, are going to continue to grow. We're going to continue to identify new sectors for investment focused on that same proactive buy and build strategy. I could envision us potentially acquiring or providing different capital solutions. Maybe we step into some different types of credit alternatives to provide to our investors. I think those are all areas of uncertainty in Frank's. Right now, our focus is to just keep doing what we do now, just do it better and better.

• 22:02David Weisburd?

  Sometimes the hardest thing and the most boring thing is to do something, continuously doing it better. I had Jackson Craig from HIG and he's been doing credit for 27 years. I think they've grown from 52 million to, I think, 20, 25 or 27 billion. Somebody could fact check me, but it's so incredibly difficult to do the same thing over and over and just get better every day. And it's so unremarkable, but at the same time, so impressive to do it. And this is something that I changed my mind on recently is just being amazed by people that are able to go deeper and deeper in one sector for many years and for many decades. It's something that is so difficult because what they're also doing is saying no to so many other shining objects. Alex Ramosi, who's been on a podcast twice, calls it the woman in the red dress.

• 22:46David Weisburd?

  If you could just put on blinders and focus on anything, you could get good at anything. Said another way, it's the grass is always greener. Oh, let's do this. It doesn't have all these problems. You, obviously, you're not in the business, so you don't know all the problems, but every industry has problems. But just continue to be amazed by these people are able to continually innovate and go deeper in this sector.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  You say that, but at the same time, every day for me is a different day with different challenges. I am doing the same strategy, implementing the same strategy as an organization. We're doing the same thing, but every day I'm meeting a different management team in a different industry, learning about how that company competes in that industry. So for me, I love what I do. And it isn't difficult because there's just so much learning that we're doing on a consistent basis, implementing the same model, but in different subsectors on a consistent basis. And that does require discipline as a willingness to learn a new industry and understand how a company competes in that and how a leadership team competes in that.

• 23:37David Weisburd?

  No offense, but lower middle market doesn't sound very sexy. And I always wonder what gets people up and what makes them excited. And I have a theory that different private equity professionals filter through different things. Some people like the deal, some people like the people, some people like the investments, some people just like the lifestyle. What are the different ways that private equity professionals, in your opinion, filter these opportunities?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  I love what I do is because pretty much every day I get to meet an individual that founded a company. David Mas is a great example. From zero, took it to 12 million in EBITDA. And what a great country that you are, the opportunity to do that, right? That's pretty amazing. I then get to figure out whether or not that's the right opportunity for us and whether or not that's the right leader for us. So to me, every single day is the same now. What do I like to do? Within that, the leadership, meeting with the leadership, working with the leadership, figuring out the capital structure, the right capital structure, negotiating about the business, diligencing the business. There's all these different functional areas that are required that make it fun. So every day is a different day for me. But it's challenged because you've got to consistently do them all well and you've got to remember who you're ultimately speaking to, and that's your investor. And you've got the fiduciary duty to them to continue to execute exceptionally well. And then it's really around building the team around you.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  We've built a great organization, a lot of great people. And that team is what's going to ultimately enable us to continue to do what we do well.

• 24:46David Weisburd?

  If you could go back to when you just graduated at UCLA and you could give younger Monty one piece of timeless wisdom, what would that timeless wisdom be?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  I do like to speak with younger people all the time to try to give them advice. If I step back, I didn't build as broad a mentorship as I wish I had. That probably would help me along the way to maybe avoid some of the challenges that I had and give me the sounding board that would have helped me to maybe accelerate faster. Could be happy with where I am today, but I envisioned the road could have been a little less dumpy. If I had the right leadership and support along the way.

• 25:15David Weisburd?

  Alex Hermosy calls this ignorance debt. We all start our career with ignorance debt. We just don't know about it. It's like the unknown unknowns. And how do you pay down that ignorance debt? You go to people that have gone that path for 10, 20 years. And that doesn't mean you have to replicate what they did, but you take a little bit from everybody and then you get kind of you start to pressure test your thesis. I think about this advice of being around the best people. And in some ways it sounds trite. It's like, who wouldn't want to be around the best people? But there is a trade off there, which it might not be the sexiest industry. It might not be the sexiest product at the time. You know, different asset classes go through different cycles, but if you filter through the people and avoid the sexiness or the timeliness or the products, I think you're going to be much better off than if you do the opposite, which is you look at where the industry is going now and where the sexiest opportunities,

• 26:00David Weisburd?

  but you may not be inspired by the people that people might not be willing to mentor. You might not develop you.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  That's a good point. What I do isn't the sexiest. I'm lower middle market, industrial services, but to me it's extremely fulfilling. The opportunities that I'm able to partner with an executive, build his business, help him create wealth, help him create wealth for his team and do the same thing for our organization is huge. And having a mentor there probably would be a wonderful thing to have or the right mentorships to enable me to continue to do that more effectively.

• 26:28David Weisburd?

  Monty, this has been absolute masterclass. Thanks so much for stopping by and looking forward to doing this again soon.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Love it. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much.

• 26:34David Weisburd?

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