E280: The Art of Quiet Compounding w/Mark Sotir

Why do the best investors spend more time preparing for what can go wrong than forecasting what might go right? In this episode, I talk with Mark Sotir, President of Equity Group Investments, about what it really means to invest with an owner’s mindset. Mark shares lessons from working alongside Sam Zell for nearly two decades, why staying alive matters more than maximizing any single outcome, and how long-term capital changes behavior inside portfolio companies. We break down why protecting downside creates asymmetry, how adaptability beats prediction, and why value creation comes from operating discipline, not transaction timing.

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

• 0:00David Weisburd?

  Today, I'm excited to welcome Mark Soder, president of Equity Group Investments, the private investment firm founded by the late billionaire investor and entrepreneur Sam Zell. So you worked with Sam Zell, one of the most legendary investors for 18 years before he passed away in 2023. What did Sam teach you about private equity?

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he, as you said, I mean, he was an investor for over 60 years and I got to spend a long time with him. He taught me a lot. Probably the biggest thing that has to do with private equity is just having an owner's mindset, right? He would always say all the time, he's an owner, not an investor. And what he meant by that was we buy businesses and we hold them and we build them. And we're not transactional. We're not just buying and selling stuff really quick. So that was like a really important driver of what we do. And obviously he taught us that. The other big thing was just assessing risk. And we all talk about it, but it was, he spent an immense amount of time trying to understand the downside, trying to figure out how to protect us, you know, protect our downside. So everybody does this, but very quickly he got to, I think I understand the thesis.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  I can imagine what the upside is. We all hope it happens, but just convince me that things can't really go wrong. And then the last thing is he would, he would always talk about, are you getting paid for that risk? Right? So, you know, every investment we make has risk. Do you understand it? And are you getting paid for it? I would also say, he didn't use these words, but we, we're the kind of place that thinks about the hundred year storm every 10 years. Right? We just assume more things are going to go wrong than you put into your thesis or your underwriting. Just, you know, stuff happens, right? And so you kind of really drilled that into our head. The, the last thing I would say is, you know, investing, you could say PE, but just overall investing, it just evolves quickly and we're seeing it as we speak. And he was able to reinvent this place every five, seven years.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  And that's how you stay in business and investing for 60, right? We don't do anything close to what he was doing 60 years ago or even 10 years ago. And so the ability to kind of reinvent ourselves on the fly is really, really important.

• 1:58David Weisburd?

  And Sam Zell also taught you that a hundred year storm happens every 10 years. What does that mean exactly? And how do you practically apply that to your everyday business?

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's really hard. I mean, first of all, like don't over live. Okay, if you want a very tangible answer, I don't know what I don't know. I just know there's going to be more problems than I anticipated, right? Some of them I can't predict. We own a warehouse business that has warehouses on the East Coast ports. It's a great business. I mean, literally right on the port. So the ships come in and they unload stuff right into our warehouse. It's a fabulous business and we've expanded it all down the East Coast. Done really well, but we didn't anticipate tariffs, right? It's all imports, so they've had some impact from tariffs, not a lot, but go over lever. So it's kind of start there, number one. And number two, the companies, just like I said a minute ago, the companies have to have flexibility. Right? Like it's, and I think this is true in most industries, but things are just changing so fast

• 2:49Speaker 01

  that if you're, if you've got a rigid mindset, a rigid management team, a rigid structure, if you don't experiment, don't try some new things, boy, when that storm comes, you're just, you're just going to keep doing the same thing and you're going to be in some trouble. So look, it's not a great answer to it. It's really hard, but you should just know that you, I mean, another way to think about it when you plan a budget, yeah, do you need a cushion? Yes. You need to know that when you build your plan for next year, something's going to go wrong that you didn't anticipate. So you better be striving for higher than where you need to be, right? Because you know you're going to get a setback someplace.

• 3:20David Weisburd?

  It's like the joke, people ask what the next black swan event is. And of course, you could even predict, or if you knew the general area, it wouldn't be outside of this kind of three standard deviation area. So it would not be by definition a black swan. So it's literally an unknowable thing, but you could know that a black swan is likely to happen next 10 years. You just don't know even where, in which direction of the market or what even form factor might take.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And listen, I mean, there's a couple of other things. An analogy I use a lot is just your business plan and your planning process. You know, years ago was just like you look down the road, five, 10 years, and you make projections and you plan everything out. Well, it is very difficult in my mind to predict where the economy is going to be in the next two, three years, where our businesses are going to be exactly. So we try not to predict as much as prepare. And an analogy that I think fits with a lot of companies is you're simply on a raft in the rapids. Okay. And what's around the corner? I don't know. I've never gone down these rapids before, but what can I do? Well, I could have a good raft. Okay, and I can have five other people in the boat who are really good. And everybody grabs a paddle. Don't hit the rocks.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Okay, so, you know, can I predict exactly where we're going to be in a year or two? No, I can't. But there's a lot you can do to be able to take advantage. And by the way, all those, these analogies, like some of them might be positive. Windows open up that you weren't prepared for. Well, you got to be able to run through them, right? Take advantage of them. So a lot of adaptability is what we try to inject into the management teams.

• 4:43David Weisburd?

  Think about this asymmetry of staying alive. Jeff Bezos talks about in the context of business. In baseball, you could, you go up to bat every, you know, 10, 20 at bats or maybe 30 at bats. You get a homerun and you get up to four runs. In business, you could step up to bat and get a 4,000x return. You could win the entire season one at bat. And if you go upstream of that, how do you get these at bats? You have to stay alive. And it is, and staying alive is probably the least, the sexiest, least memorable concept of just like growing, growing. And opportunities will come to you because of the, there's this asymmetry of opportunities that comes to businesses that grow and have cash.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  That was Sam, right? We're looking for asymmetry, number one. And number two, he would, he would actually use that expression. Just make sure we're staying alive. Okay, because yes, we're going to make mistakes and yes, we're going to have setbacks and all that kind of stuff. But if we're still there and we're still batting, you got a chance for a homerun. Right? If you're out, well, then you're out, you're done. And so the asymmetry is, is a very important concept. And I go back to what I said at the beginning. That's why we pay a lot of attention to the downside. All right? If I know, I mean, I can never quite say this, but, but if I have really high confidence that I'm not going to lose our principal. Okay, well then, am I going to make 2x or 3x or 4x or 5x? Like, I don't know, you can all debate, we can all have scenarios and stuff like that. But I know any of those outcomes is a lot better than, you know, than the force.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  So if you could put a lot of energy into understanding what might go wrong and trying to be as prepared as you can for it. Good things over time tend to happen.

• 6:13David Weisburd?

  And those private equity firms, they're selling three years later at 2X. And then that next private equity firm has to buy at enough of a discount in order to generate their own 2X, which gets more difficult as you scale. And then potentially one more, depending on where you started on the scale. So why not hold all that time, generate your 6X and call it a day? And the reason for that is your capital base. So talk to me about that. Why does your capital base give you an advantage over, say, ABC private equity fund that has traditional institutional investors?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great area to spend some time on. So the majority of our capital does come from the Zelle family. We're not a family office. We have a sister company that's a family office for the Zelle family. And, you know, like I said, I'm a, we don't call ourselves a private equity firm, but I'm very similar to a private equity firm, growth, capital, control, buyout. So most of it's the Zelle family. What's really powerful about this is I don't personally spend a lot of my time raising capital. Okay, like we do have partners we bring in. We do probably close to a third of our capital or other, other parties, partners that we know. We, we bring them in on a deal by deal basis. So we'll build an SPV and people can, can come into that. Some people say it's a little less efficient than having a fund. I don't know. I don't spend a lot of time raising capital. So that is really, really powerful, number one. I'm, my background is more operations.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  I used to work at Coca-Cola and marketing. I ran budget rent a car and rider truck rental. I ran a software company. So I've got like an operations background and that allows me and my senior team to spend a lot more time in these companies. Right? So, so that's a huge benefit right there. And then because this capital is dedicated, you know, we, we have real reinvestment risk. And if I sell a company, the money comes back, we pay taxes and I gotta go redeploy it. And, and it's, so it's a little different from a PE firm in that sense. So what it pushes me to do is actually find these companies that I can hold for eight, 10 years. Right? Not just because, but, but it's everything you just said. If I can, you know, hold something twice as long, I have to find half as many deals.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  I have half the transaction costs. And having been an operator, I will tell you, the first year of an ownership change is chaotic and we're not hitting on all cylinders. And the last year of an ownership change, when you put the company out for sale, everything slows down. So you're, you're, you're getting this, this sort of missed efficiency, not to mention all the transaction costs and everything, if you can hold it longer. Now, there's downsides to it, right? One is, You've got to anticipate disruption. It's actually one of the bigger things we have to pay attention to. We step into a company and if you're going to own it 10 years from now, you've got to really understand what you think is going to be happening 10 years from now. And so that's, that's a difficult part of what we do. But the other piece that's really interesting is if you're going to own something for a short duration,

• 8:53Speaker 01

  the value creation is in the transaction itself. Are you buying cheap? Did you structure it correctly? Did you get it done quickly? And when you sell it, did you sell it at a really high price? That's, that's where you create the value. If you own it for 10 years, most of the value actually gets created, you know, during that time within the company, during that, that eight or nine year period in between. And number one, it's longer, but more importantly, it orients us to spend our time focusing on organic growth. We've got to get these companies seriously growing and generating cash. And that's like the other important part that, again, if your duration is a little shorter, you're very worried about the exit multiple. All right, so what are you going to sell it for?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  And, and when you buy it, you better have a view on what you're going to sell it for. I think over the last 10, 15 years, you know, multiples have gone up and it's, it's worked well for people. I think that's going to be a little harder in the future. And for us, because our duration is longer, it's much more important for us to create the value in year two, three, four, five, six, seven. And actually, you know, it's a big, it's a big kind of key driver for us. Companies actually have to generate cash. Right. And I know that sounds very basic, but what we don't do is buy something, make a few changes, sell it and all the money comes in then. We, we are very focused on our companies generating cash for us. And when you nowadays hear people talk about DPI, you know, because all the PE firms is like, okay, are you selling these companies? Get me my money.

• 10:18David Weisburd?

  I was just an LP karaoke and one of the LPs did a song about DPI.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:23David Weisburd?

  Neither here nor there.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  We never heard the term years ago, but, but our DPI for our unrealized investments right now is one. Okay. So out of my entire portfolio, I have all our money out. Now, some companies it's more than that, some of the newer ones, it's less than that. But what we're not doing is saying, oh, we're going to buy a company, work on it for 10 years and then we'll return some money. Okay. And again, my background, I'm an operator and I just, it's just very good discipline to, you know, we're not doing high tech startups. So there are situations where what I'm saying doesn't fit, but in a lot of old economy, you know, businesses, you should be able to generate cash. And yes, sometimes you redeploy it back into the company and you grow and CapEx and maybe

• 11:06Speaker 01

  an acquisition or two, but you should, you should have the discipline to be able to generate cash. Sam, one of his little slogans was, you know, his definition of cash flow is when you gave me my money back. So you can talk about EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA and this, that and the other thing. I believe you when the money I gave you, you give it back to me. And so it's just part of what we do. We, we expect our companies to throw off cash. It's a nice discipline and it also de-risks the portfolio along the way. Right? It's really different when you've got all your money out and then some, and you're still thinking you can grow the business. Back to that asymmetric conversation.

• 11:41David Weisburd?

  A lot of gems there. Sam taught you about having an owner's mindset. What's the opposite of an owner's mindset?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  At the extreme, it's a day trader. Right? It's just somebody buying and selling all the time really fast. And again, not that one's better than the other, but if you think you can own something for a while, um, you know, he started by owning apartments and owning buildings. Right? And my guess is it came from, you don't invest in a building, you buy it. You own it, it's your building. You may not rent an office there, but you're, you know, you, you take some pride in it. And so there's a lot of, um, frankly, pride that goes into the companies we buy and we put a lot of energy into them. I think the opposite is you buy a share of General Motors and you know, five days later you sell it. And that's, I think the other extreme.

• 12:20David Weisburd?

  Does distinction being that you're in the business? This is your business, not, oh, I put money in there and then I go home and I do my own thing and it just, you are, it's a living part of the business.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  That's right. Number one, we're, you know, in PE speak, we're, we're a controlled buyout firm. So we, we always have control, not just because, right? We, we take control because there's a lot of change in the companies that we buy that needs to happen and we need to make sure that that, that can happen. Number one, and then two, yeah, to your point, we're, we're very involved in the companies. I think some other PE firms are, you know, have those capabilities too, but we're, we're very, very involved, not micromanaging, not in tons of detail, but you know, if you build out an investment thesis that's got eight or nine different, you know, levers that you want to pull or, or strategies, yeah, we, that's what we spend our time on. And we don't go away. We don't just kind of outline, well, here's the ways you guys are going to make money. And then six months later, we're all talking about 10 different things.

• 13:13David Weisburd?

  We kind of stick. Since you're you're owners.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. In fact, we we joke with management teams. Sometimes we'll say, well, we kind of are consultants, but actually we also own the firm too. So you can't just take the report and put it on the shelf and move on. That's just not going to happen. So.

• 13:28David Weisburd?

  When you're underwriting these companies for a decade, which in some ways sounds like an infinite amount of time, in some ways, maybe not so long. How many of those opportunities, those levers that you talk about pulling, how many of those emerge in years two through 10, just naturally as opportunities sets? And how much of those are predictable in the industries that you're in, which are not high tech, traditional businesses, but what percentage are known? Here's how we're going to add value versus kind of emerge as a result of growing the business?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  If you own something for eight or 10 years, there's things going on then that you didn't anticipate. But I would tell you that the vast majority, you know, the opportunity is there. It's really the reverse, right? It's you think there's 15 levers and there's really only 11. Right? And so we are very focused on having in our investment thesis, there has to be a significant amount of ways to make money. Right? So if I could go way back, you know, Sam started in real estate and you know, back in the day, you bought an apartment building and if you pay the right price and you sold it for the right price, you did you did well, you had to get it right. There weren't a lot of levers to pull. And, you know, we're at the other end of the spectrum of that now, right?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Because PE has become very competitive and there's lots of people who can do transactions. And every company has had five PE firms approach them already. So it's getting difficult to buy a company where you think you're getting in a really amazing deal on day one. What you have to, I believe you have to know is that we really do have all these levers. We all we do have all these ways to improve the company. Some of them won't work out. That's okay. If we were wrong about something, well, I got 14 more to go type of thing. And the duration, again, our focus isn't on duration. It's just, that's the flexibility we have. So if I find a company where we've got a business that's in eight markets and we're getting it where we bought it two years ago.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  We're getting it running. We're getting it cash flowing well, all that. Well, eight's going to go to 10, it's going to go to 15, could go to 30. I don't know how far we'll go with it at the end of the day. But so I see that that opportunity, it's just going to take years to execute it. And that's the interesting part about it, right? It's, it's once you have a strategy that's working and you know this value to create for years. Yeah, you can sell it and try to convince the buyer that they should pay for that potential value creation. Or I can extract a lot of it myself, which is what we tend to do.

• 15:52David Weisburd?

  Is there trade off to that in that you're so in the business, you might become too attached and you're not able to just look at it from a consulting, from an ivory tower like view and that you can make more rational, more calculated decisions and that you get to know everybody and everything becomes kind of a personal thing. One thing that I've learned from talking to hundreds of investors, founders and business leaders is that planning for the future isn't just about growing assets. It's also about protecting the people who matter most. Life comes with a lot of important milestones. Maybe you're buying a home, starting a family, planning for college, or simply thinking more intentionally about your financial future. As those responsibilities grow, it's worth making sure you protect those you love. Not sure what kind of life insurance you may need? Concerned about how much it may cost? Think life insurance is too complicated? Your local State Farm agent can help answer those questions.

• 16:37David Weisburd?

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• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a great question. Number one, I think with a lot of the businesses we buy, that's actually where management is, right? That's actually where the current owner is. We do a lot of family and founder owned businesses and it's really interesting because sometimes the founder who, I was talking to someone last week in a situation and he, he said, look, we've been at this for 25 years. They have a great business. It's growing. It's done very well. But he said, look, I'm just way too close to it and I need some perspective, number one. And number two, I think we've capabilities wise peaked. And I need some fresh blood to come in and sort of not just be sounding board, but show us what's going on in the rest of the world because we're in a very narrow segment. And I gotta hear what else is going on out there. So is there a danger for us?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Maybe a little bit, but the the counter to that, you know, our mandate from the family is I invest in all kinds of industries. Right? So if you think about our team, I we own a hospital chain. We own a John Deere dealership. We own a company that distributes software to the NSA. And we own a bluefin tuna fishing and farming company. So, you know, built into our mandate is my people, I'm looking for best athletes. Right? I'm not just looking for the hospital expert and all that. And oh, by the way, the person working on the hospital also works on the John Deere dealership. So you're getting just sort of day to day, you're just getting a lot of breath. That I think helps kind of, you know, make sure there isn't an echo chamber and you're not just sort of stuck in one mindset.

• 18:18David Weisburd?

  You mentioned team players. There's a famous Moneyball scene where Billy Bean is the manager of the Oakland Athletics. And he talks about he doesn't build as close of a relationship with the players because at some point he needs to be able to trade them and to ship them. So it's kind of this cold, but necessary part of the business.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Look, I mean, this is why it's a very hard thing that we do, right? We're actually pretty empathic. When it's a family and founder own business, you can't just come in with a bunch of spreadsheets and tell everybody what to do and just start barking out orders. It just doesn't work that way. So there's one side that has to be, look, we have to work with that company's culture. And, you know, that entrepreneur, I've had several people. We bought businesses from, tell me, look, Mark, you know, I've never had a boss ever. And and we got to figure out how to get used to that. So there's this part of what we do that is like, actually, we spend a lot of energy on how do we interface with this group of people? And build the relationships and kind of work in their culture and all that. But to your point, the other side is the reason we're there is to take the company to the next level.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Right? And sometimes the team that's there isn't quite the right team. We end up not usually overhauling teams, but we end up supplementing that founder a lot. We usually end up bringing in some more professional management to kind of help that person get to where they need to get to. You know, the other thing is it our again mandate is we tend to focus on. Finding businesses that we can really scale four, five, six times, you know, that almost by definition says that you're going to change the management structure. You're going to bring in some different people and all that. So, so yes, it's, it's, you, you kind of need to toggle back and forth. You need to have both of those skillsets.

• 19:55David Weisburd?

  There's a quote that's become almost its own meme. What got you here won't get you there. I think it was originally Marshall Goldsmith in the context of careers. But I imagine as you're working with these family businesses, you have this patriarch that has become successful because they're micromanagers, because they know all their clients, they know all their employees. In order for them to get to that five X 10 X return that you're looking at, they need to do something fundamentally different in being on the business versus working in the business. To what extent is that true? And how do you get this founder and family business owner to have this come to grips moment where they realize this truth? And they must evolve themselves in order to evolve the business?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a really, it's really core to what we do. First of all, the, the biggest way we do it is during the transaction, right? We are almost never the highest bidder. Usually we're not even in a process and in our, our sweet spot is yes, there's a founder. They've been very successful. We know they need to change and they, and we tell them that, right? And we also have them roll a healthy chunk of, of, you know, their equity into new companies. So they're, they're aligned with us at the end of the day. And guess what? There's people who just won't do that. Most companies don't actually fit this model that we're talking about. Most companies probably should be sold to a PE firm and, and just do what everybody does. And it's all fine.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  What we get are the people that really have looked in the mirror and have said, as I said, I was talking to somebody last week who said, I think we, and I meant myself, we have peaked in our ability to grow this company. Now I want to grow it and I know the company can grow. And I know the industry is there for us to really, really dominate. And I need some help. If they don't feel that way, and implicit in that is we're very strict about this. We're going to be the control investor. So that's like the test, right? If the, if the owner won't give up control to us. One, we're not going to do it. And two, they're probably not really ready for that kind of change. But if they're going to hand over controls to us and keep some money in and stay at the helm, then there's a decent shot of making that work. Number one.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  And number two, we're not there to teach that person how to run their day to day business. Okay, we own a John Deere dealership. If I had to go teach management about tractors, then I have a whole different issue to deal with altogether. Okay. And, you know, so these companies, to do what we're trying to do, if they're serious, they end up signing up with us. And a lot of people don't, right? And not, not everybody's cut out for this. And, and sometimes people just won't make the leap. So that's the big part of where we, it's like a litmus test. And, you know, are they, are they ready to play? Now, after all that, it's, it's, there's just a lot of, um,

• 22:47Speaker 01

  a lot of personal interaction. We have to adapt ourselves to their culture, not vice versa. We try not to come in with playbooks. We try not to say, you must do it this way, this way, this way, this way. The first month or two, we're, we're, we're just extending our diligence, like trying to learn how they do things and why they do it the way they do it. And then we start tinkering around the sides. And, and over time, we start, you know, think about like a coach of a sports team or something. If you just come in on day one and you're just getting rid of people and, you know, yelling and screaming and everything, it's just, usually doesn't work. And certainly not for your star player, right? But a good star player is going to listen to their coach because they've done it before.

• 23:23David Weisburd?

  I like to think of the founder, there's maybe one or two or maybe three things that they're just world class in, and they should be focused like 59% of their time or maybe 80% of their time on. How often is it just like one or two things like business development? And maybe recruiting and everything else they shouldn't be really working on. And once they're able to do that, the, the business grows.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  I'm generalizing, but yes, I, I think that's true often, right? And that's true for all of us. Like people are good at a couple of things, do it really well. And we're all charged to be doing everything.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  I actually, what I see a little bit more is not, oh, how do we get them out of doing a couple of these things? But it's actually those things that they're not spending time on have atrophied. Right? That they actually have not spent, they're not the general manager that sort of cut across the whole business and look at everything equally. They're, they tend to focus on what they're really good at. And again, you can imagine why, if they're really good at customer relationships and, and growing and all that, why that probably lends itself to being more successful, but you find on other parts of the business, they're not world-class at all. Because not that this person has their fingers into it too much, but in some ways they don't have their fingers into it enough. So that's where we start, right? We start with, okay, where are the places that need help?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Because by the way, if you think about it, like if, if the places in the organization that need help are the parts that the entrepreneur is really good at, something's really weird and that's, something's wrong.

• 24:44David Weisburd?

  Then it's the best market of all time. There's like these health spa markets where really poor operators and they end up going exceptionally, despite the entrepreneur that they do exist, but they're

• 24:53Speaker 01

  But, but, but exactly, but it's, you know, but generally what we find is they're very good at a couple of things and they like to do those things and they're really good at it. And that's where they spend their time and we have to come in and supplement some of these other areas. And so, you know, in a, in a way it sort of works out because they're like, wow, that's great. If you guys, I, I rarely have an entrepreneur who says, push over, I want to spend a lot of time on the new ERP implementation. Okay. Like it just doesn't happen at the end of the day. And, and that implementation is critical. And if it goes wrong, it's not going to be good, but you don't see them spending all their time on it, you know? And so those, that's how we fill in along the sides at first. And, and then you start, you know, as you get over to the growth side, we bring a lot of science around, you know, are you using your CRM?

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Okay. Usually it's in this person's head, but it's like, wait, you have a whole bunch of salespeople. How are they doing? How are we measuring them? Are they incented correctly? Are we feeding them the right kind of leads? Are they calling on the right kinds of business? And there's a ton of work that they can go into the biz dev side, even around that. And you usually get the entrepreneur kind of nodding their head to that too. And then look, the last part is over time, this succession planning. Right? There is, and this is very hard. You eventually have to, if the person's not in the company, you have to bring somebody in from outside who, again, doesn't replace that owner or operator, right? But usually comes in underneath. So sometimes you'll have the CEO owner, and then we'll bring in a president underneath. And you have to navigate what responsibilities you hand off and which ones you don't. But that ties into sort of the owner's personal interests.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  And as they get older, they want to step back a little bit. So, you know, if we do it right, it's the best of all worlds. The owner gets to stay involved, keep an equity stake, keep an eye on things, make sure the culture's kind of the way they wanted it, help us out where they can, and they can slowly get out of the day to day. When we can do all that, that works just fabulously for everybody.

• 26:40David Weisburd?

  One of the things I find with especially smaller businesses, but most businesses, is that the owner believes that they're just a micromanager, and that's just intrinsically part of them. And once you bring in somebody world-class on another function, the owner finally has this epiphany of, holy crap, there's somebody that could not only do this as good as me, but could actually do it better. Their mind explodes, and then they realize that this is a thing, that it's not about lowering your standards. A lot of entrepreneurs, the reason they've been so successful is because they have such high standards. And my advice to them is always, don't lower your standards. Find somebody that's actually a higher standard. You don't have a high enough standard. If you think that you're doing your controlling, and you've never been formally trained, and you haven't done hundreds of companies, you're actually lowering your standards.

• 27:21David Weisburd?

  So kind of getting over this false choice is, I think, really critical.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  No, that's right. There's a technique in there to help, which is, you know, anybody who's micromanaging, at some point, you know, the fear of letting go is, well, I won't know what's going on, and I don't even know if there's going to be a problem if I let it go, right? And so we start a lot with, you don't have to make every little decision as you step one layer back, but you can still see those decisions. So visibility is like a really interesting technique in this conversation, where we tell people, look, you can stop making those decisions because we have really talented people who can make them, but everybody's going to keep you very, very current and very in the loop. And so if you don't like where this is all headed, you can weigh in, all right? But what happens sometimes is you bring someone in, they try to take over and take charge and all that,

• 28:11Speaker 01

  and all of a sudden, the owner entrepreneur is like, hey, everything just went quiet. I mean, no meetings, I'm getting no emails. It's all shut down and they get really nervous. And it's like, okay, well, don't, don't allow that to happen.

• 28:23David Weisburd?

  And the only thing that come up to them are the problems. So they don't see the 99 good decisions. They see the word bad decision because they don't have transparency. They, they think that.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. So look, if you, if you sort of connect a couple of these pieces together, we, we have the ability to hold these things a little longer. Again, we're, we're not a family office. It's not 20 year holds or anything, but, but we, we have capital that allows us to, to hold it a little longer. We buy these businesses that haven't been optimized. Okay, there's, there usually is a jewel there. There's something amazing about the business because it's done. It's grown, but we also use this analogy like they're, they're pedaling in first gear. Right. And they're pedaling really hard. They're really talented, but let's kick it into second gear, third gear. And that combination of finding the right kind of company with all those levers, and then having the capital to allow us the time to, you know, go after all those levers. That is how we get to 5X.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  All right. Because people like, oh, well, well, you know, and by the way, I'm not talking about just ignoring IRR. It's really important. I'm not, you know, yes, we have to move very, very quickly. The point is we can extract value a little farther down the road. So, you know, in a way, we're like our own continuation fund. We have a business. It's really good. I'm in eight markets. I could go to 20. I don't have anything telling me I have to sell that company. Okay. If it's the right time to sell, we'll sell it. If it's not, and I can keep growing it, that is, you know, I've taken a lot of the risk. So this is back to Sam. Take the risk out of the system. And then it's asymmetric and then I can keep running that play. You know, until we decide that we've, we've made enough money and, and we move on.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  But I've always been interested, just as a former operator, how much work this industry does. Sourcing deals. It is really, really hard to source deals now.

• 30:07David Weisburd?

  And winning.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Right. Well, and then you have to, right. And you have to win. So you have to find it. Then you have to, you have to transact. That is an immense amount of time, energy, money, stress, everything. And that just gets you to the starting line. And then you go to work and you make all these changes and you do everything we've all been talking about. And you get it running and it's working. Right? What in God's name do I want to sell that for? That's the one I want to sit there and just kind of run for a while. And so, look, it's not, it's not novel. It's just, we have the right kind of people. We're chasing the right kind of deals and we have the right kind of capital. And I wrap it together and that's what allows us to do this.

• 30:44David Weisburd?

  It's very meta because typically in these private equity conversations and interviews, we talk a lot about the investing side, portfolio construction and leverage and different vintages and fundraising, which are all important. I'm not trying to discount them, but our entire conversation was about the business and about, it was literally the owner's mindset throughout the business. So it's been absolute world-class. Really appreciate you jumping on the podcast. What would you like our audience to know about you, about equity growth, group investments, or anything else you'd like to share?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  I think two things. One, everybody in our world here should know that this industry is changing a lot as we speak. All right, we're supposed to be experts about assessing industries and all that. And there was an article, I think, at Bloomberg, or there are more PE funds in the US right now than there are McDonald's. Okay, so just think about that for just a second. That's the space we're playing in. It has gotten very, very competitive. There's lots of money, but there's, more importantly, there's lots of firms and lots of professionals that do this for a living. So your last point, yes, I would love to buy companies cheap. Yes, the transactional nature is there. Yes, you have to go raise the capital. All those things are very important. We're not ignoring them at all. We do them. My point and message is it's not enough. It was enough 10, 20 years ago.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  It's not enough as you look forward. You've got to bring something else to the party. What we bring is helping these certain companies scale significantly. And then for an investor, we're just not churning stuff. Right? And so I'm not saying it's better or worse than any other model. It just really, really works for us and it works for a certain type of capital base that's looking for that. So, so thank you, David. I really appreciate the time.

• 32:22David Weisburd?

  Thank you, Mark. That's it for today's episode of How I Invest. If this conversation gave you new insights or ideas, do me a quick favor. Share with one person in your network who'd find it valuable or leave a short review wherever you listen. This helps more investors discover the show and keeps us bringing you these conversations week after week. Thank you for your continued support.