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

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Sam (@thesamparr) and Shaan (@shaanvp) speak to Brent Beshore (@BrentBeshore) today about how he plans to invest $250M in cash-flow positive businesses, how much corona virus will impact the economy and explains why he'd only start non-tech businesses in today's climate. Brent is apart of Permanent Equity which has raised a total of $300M to deploy into businesses that actually make cold hard cash - their collection of companies made approx. $160M of it in the last year. Want to make your first million with your mobile app? You have to prioritize app performance first. And HeadSpin is here to help. With your custom HeadSpin benchmark report, get deep insights into app performance, from cold and warm starts, to errors, crashes, and response times, including audio and video quality and biometric responsiveness. Our state-of-the-art Global Device Cloud provides unique carrier network, device, OS, and app level insights, on real, SIM-enabled devices in hundreds of locations around the world. No SDK required. Get your custom HeadSpin benchmark report at headspin.io /myfirstmillion. Today's topics: Who is Brent Beshore? (4:04), What type of companies is he buying with quarter of a billion dollars stashed? (12:17), Military staffing lead gen is a defensible business (14:53), How to handle owners and managers post-acquisition (16:54), How much do owners of cashflowing businesses take home? (20:34), Why he won't touch debt with his businesses (24:10), How Brent grows the businesses they acquire (25:32), How do owners transition to the passenger seat? (30:36), Corona Virus predictions and impact on the economy (36:16) and what he'd do if he started his career again (51:03).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

All right, we got a friend of the show here, Jordan Harbinger. He's one of the guys who's been advising us on how to build this podcast because his podcast is way more successful than ours and has been around. He's been doing podcasting for like 12 and a half years, which, Jordan, that's got to be as long as podcasting has existed, right? Yeah, I think podcasts have been around for like 14 years and I've, or 15, and I've been around for 13 of those. So, yeah, when I started, there was no way, there were no iPhones.

So you couldn't get podcasts on your phone. You had to use an iPod to play them. Yeah, straight to cassette. That's how long this guy's been doing it. So Jordan, you know, I like your show. I've been binging it while in quarantine because, you know, what else am I going to do besides try to learn something new or improve myself in some way? And I got to say, I like it because you do the, you know, the interview style show where you go deep with a guest. I think, you know, I was listening to the one with Tony Hawk, which is pretty awesome. And I got to say, I like that you don't do the kind of surface level, you know, just, just, you know, pity patting around. with the questions or trying to do, you know, inspirational fluff where you're just saying, go, you can do this. So with that episode with Tony Hawk, what was that like? Because Tony Hawk's an icon. How is it, you know, interviewing Tony Hawk?

It was great. He's a really interesting guy, really open and fun. And he told some pretty funny stories. One, which was very apropos of what's going on right now is one day he walked into his agent or some sort of marketing team that he'd hired. He walked into their office. This is like at the height of video games where he's making, I don't know, 50 million bucks off these skating games and these brands.

And he goes in and he says, look, I got this backpack that was made pretty shoddily, and it's got my name and face on it. I don't want any more stuff like that. And as the agent market or whatever is sort of nodding his head and understanding, Tony goes, wait, what's that on your shelf? And it was a roll of toilet paper with Tony Hawk's name, face, and logo on it. And he goes, what the hell is that?

And the guy goes, oh, yeah, anything we put your name and face on does so, well, we were joking that we could put your face on toilet paper and we'd still be able to sell it. And he fired them on the spot because it was clear that they didn't value his brand, which I thought was a funny story. And he's got a ton of stuff like that that he talked about on the show. That is epic. You know, I actually met Tony Hawk. We went on a trip to Africa, a charity trip together. And believe it or not, we were halfway up up a mountain in Ethiopia where, you know, it's a, like, this is a mountain village. And somebody saw him there and they were like, Tony Hawk. You know, that's probably the only English word they said to us all day.

They identified Tony Hawk on a mountain in Ethiopia. That's how famous that guy is. So that's an amazing guest to have on the show. Imagine being that famous that you get recognized in the middle of countries where, like, nobody speaks to your language and they maybe don't even have skateboards. Yeah, we were there trying to give people clean water. They didn't even have water, but they knew Tony Hawk. That's how famous that guy is.

Amazing. Awesome. Well, if you want to hear more from Jordan, we're going to be having him on more and more. He's a friend of the house. And you should listen to his show. It's one of the podcast that I would recommend. If you like Tim Ferriss's stuff, if you like our stuff, you're going to like his stuff. And so go check out the Jordan Harbour and Gear Show on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast.

You'll find them there. What's up, everybody? Sean here with Sam and special guest for this episode. Brent, how do you say your last name? Be sure. Be sure. All right, cool. I've been trying to get you on for months.

I think our email thread goes back months. The reason why is because I'm interested in the business. of buying businesses. I've been looking to do this myself. So after I sold my company, I said, great, I got some cash. I can either put this in the stock market. I could do, you know, I can go gamble this on a riverboat or I can potentially buy a cash flow in business that's a good, solid, stable business. And so I started learning about that world, stumbled around and saw permanent equity. And yeah, I've been interested in having you on the podcast since then. So why don't you tell us, give us like, you know, the minute version of who are you?

and then also what is permanent equity? Yeah, so permanent equity is, we like subscribers as a family of companies that buys family-owned companies. So technically we're a private equity firm now. We were just a small collection, it was my own capital. In the beginning, I was an entrepreneur,

and then accidentally bought a business about 10 years ago, and that's what led into kind of what we do today. What does that mean? You accidentally bought a business? Yeah, so I had a mutual acquaintance say, hey, you should meet this guy. He's in your, he's in your industry. And he just got left at the altar for the second time. And I took that to me and I should try to buy his business because why else would you tell me that? He had no idea. He was just trying to connect to people that were,

you know, in the same, in the same field or similar fields. And so I don't know, I look about 24, 25 now. I looked about 13 or 14 then and sat across from this guy and told him I wanted to buy his business. And he laughed at me and said, two grown men to try to buy my business. How in the heck do you think you're going to do it? And I said, I don't know, I'll figure it out and we negotiated and he told me no thank you and then seven months later called me back up and said all right let's move forward and get it done so what was your company before so i started a kind of collection of regional marketing companies uh we had started in 2007 kind of really got going in 2008 and nine uh which were as you all know interesting times uh but it actually allowed

us to grow and uh we adopted some video technology and it becoming standard we think we were probably the first people in the in the world to use it for commercial purposes but what does this mean what's regional marketing you know we were doing look we were doing like ad agency type court we were doing media buying we were doing digital work you know uh trying to scrap and claw and and sort of make a go of it you know so you're just an agency just figuring it out yeah we're an agency we had some unusual talents kind of under that agency because being in mid-Missouri we didn't have access to a lot of specialty groups. So we start building out our own specialty groups. So we built that research. We did some mobile and app development as well. And then some film work. So those were kind of the

three unusual buckets that you typically don't get into an agency. And give us, yeah, give us a sense of the level of success. I think a lot of people, one of the things we hear a lot is from the audience is like they hate when we fast forward and someone's like, yeah, I did this thing. And then all of a sudden these amazing opportunities opened up and they sort of were like, wait, where were they before. And so give us the before picture. How were you doing? How was that business doing financially? Was it a big business, small business? What was that business like? Yeah. So we, so let's see here. So I'm trying to, it's been a while since I've thought about the numbers. So we grew to 26 employees, I think at the peak of that, kind of before we were,

so we were doing fine. I could make a living doing it, make a good living doing it. It wasn't, you know, the agency business is hard. It's really, really hard. And I think that's, probably what I've learned in my career is I've made all the mistakes. I've tried and tested a lot of business models and sort of taste and try something. And you're like, oh, didn't realize how hard that was going to be and you sort of, you know, move around. And so, you know, I would say, you know, moderately successful regional marketing firm. Nothing special. I mean, I would say, you know, when, yeah, when we bought the firm that we did called MediCross, you know, we were kind of co-equals, is how I would describe it, kind of in the marketplace.

they were much more focused on government contracts than we were. We didn't have any government contracts. So I was really attractive about the acquisition. And being able to combine those organizations gave us a lot more cash flow than having them separate just based on cross-selling different products that we had and being able to fulfill a lot more of the, a lot more of the gross profit through sort of a larger organization that they had been farming out some stuff. So that was kind of a nice combination. Wait, so did you buy that first company?

under the umbrella of your marketing business? Yeah, yeah, correct. Got it. And so it wasn't its own entity? No, well, I mean, it was, I mean, if it was technically, it was his own density, but it was 100% owned by me and 100% of the other firm is owned by me.

So, I mean, it's shared resources. Got it, got it. So you didn't have a co-founder or any outside investors or anything. Yeah, so I bought it with an SBA loan. Thank God for the SBA. And so, no, it was just, it was SBA loan and rolled the dollar.

And so just to give people a sense of where you're at now, I think permanent equity, you guys raised a second fund, $248 million. It's a 27-year fund, which I think is interesting, and you can talk about that. And you have a 10-year investment period. And so the first fund, $50 million, second fund, $250 million, roughly. So what are you guys up to you? Explain what the model is here and why that should be interesting for people. Yeah, well, so if you think kind of from first principles, Families got wealthy by getting involved in a business and holding it for a very long time,

and then overtime using those cash flows to either fund new investments or opportunities. And so we just have very much a similar mindset. Private equity is kind of the main methodology of how people have bought and sold companies in the past. And it's a very short time clock, if you think about it that way. You're really, from the time you buy to the time you sell, it really needs to be probably no more than four years or five years at most. and that's if you catch it kind of early on in a life cycle. Most private equity funds are seven years with three one-year extensions,

so up to 10 years maximum. I mean, technically if you can't sell the asset, you can go longer than that, and everyone gets irritated at you, but you're expected to sort of have the capital return. And so what that forces is, you know, you just can't think longer than your time horizon for holding the business. And so when you combine that with a, you know, most private equity firms are trying to put in as little equities

they possibly can and maximize the debt. And so what you end up doing is you take these great family businesses, have been around for a long time. You're sort of hitting them with a needle and trying to supercharge them to grow them and get a higher multiple when you sell. And you're making just very short-term decisions by necessity. And you're opening yourself up, which is pertinent now. It wasn't as pertinent three or four weeks ago. But now you're opening yourself up to a lot of downside risk. You just can't withstand nearly as much shock as you could if you didn't have any debt.

So we've just really taken the opposite approach and said, we want to own businesses like a family would. So we buy with no intention of selling the business. And we're typically using no debt as part of our transactions, which in the private equity world means that we're the weirdest duck in the world. So what's the total revenue of the collection of companies then? Well, see, so total revenue. Gosh, I mean, 100 and, oh gosh, 100. 80, 180 million, something like that. And then I imagine you guys try to run this like super profitably.

So then if you have 180 million in revenue, I bet you have 40 million in cash flow. Let's see here. So hold on. You literally are putting me on the spot here. I've not done our calculations recently. Yeah, I mean, we're highly profitable. I mean, the organization does real well.

I don't know if we're at 40 million because we have some lower margin businesses. We're lower than that. but yeah, we do real well. And look, I don't own all that anymore, right? So just from a, like, I don't want this to come across differently than this. We've got investors, the first fund owns five of those investments, and then I own four outside the first fund that were the group that we put together before we raised that first fund.

And then the second fund, we haven't deployed any of that capital. And, yeah, so we've got a bunch of dry powder. I mean, obviously, it's been extremely fortuitous for us to raise the time that we raised. I've been having lots of conversations with our investors. And there should be lots of opportunity, lots of pain out there, which is unfortunate. We've got to try to tow that line. We can talk about it between being a white knight and a loan shark. And that's not an easy one to tow.

Right. And so let's just, if we just take a look at the portfolio as is, what types of companies are you trying to buy? So you're trying to buy, is it a certain price point? Is it a certain business model? Is it a certain type of owner? What are you trying to buy? Yeah, so we first want to buy something that we think is going to be durable and around for a really long time. So, you know, if you look at our current portfolio, we are in the swimming pool business, like digging holes in the ground, shooting with concrete.

We're also manufacturing in that space as well. Another company that's unrelated in the backyard product space, so a bunch of different skews that sell through mass retail. We are, we have a military recruitment firm. That was the first firm that I acquired, Medi Cross. We've got a military recruitment firm. So is that like lead gen for military? Yeah. So we actually, so we work.

I mean, we have a number of different clients, but one of our main clients is a civilian branch of the Navy that resupplies the ships that never come into port. So it's called Military Seal of Command. And we're responsible for finding and onboarding all of their staff on a yearly basis. So it's like a staffing firm for a ship? Yeah, well, for a whole branch of the military. So it's, there's, their staffing, I mean, there's a lot, you know, 14, 15, 1,700 civilian mariners a year into that division.

So it's a pretty large operation. Is it digital? Some of it's digital. Yeah, yeah. We have, you know, online application products. But not mostly. I mean, there's a lot of physical activities as well. We have physical recruiters.

And it's, you know, online, offline. It's the not sexy where the rubber meets the road, real deal business. All right, everybody, if you want to make your first million with a mobile app, you have to prioritize app performance first. And that's where our sponsor, Headspin, is here to help. You can get a custom Headspin benchmark report that will give you deep insights into your app's performance, from cold and warm starts to errors, crashes, responsiveness times, including audio and video quality and biometric responsiveness. That's right. There you have a state-of-the-art global device cloud that provides unique carrier, network, device, device, OS, and apps.

app-level insights. And these are all happening on real SIM-enabled mobile devices that are in hundreds of locations all around the world. No SDK required. I like to think of it as having my own fleet of testers all around the world with a push of a button. And you can get a custom headspin benchmark report at headspin.io slash my first million. Again, if you have a mobile app and you want to see a benchmark report of your performance, it's headspin.io slash my first million. Can that be huge? Yeah. I mean, so we want to find a leadership team that we can partner with. There's so many, you know, it's so hard to grow a business, right? And so a lot of the businesses we're looking at, we either call it, has been right before the line of professionalization,

or maybe it's just crossed it. And there's this real interesting, you know, sort of in-between gap where a lot of these firms, they're too big to be small and too small to be big. And the leadership team's kind of capped out. They're just brute forcing as much as they're, possibly can, but they don't have the systems, the talent on staff to be able to grow larger. And so a lot of the times we're trying to figure out from them, you know, do they want to get bigger? There's some firms we talk to and they say, well, even though I want to get bigger, but the CEO's answering 60 calls a day on a cell phone. And I mean, there's just no way, right? And so we're looking for a leadership team that I think has the base skills. It's really,

really excellent at what they do. And we're looking for the company to have a position in the marketplace that is protected somehow, right? So, I mean, we're not looking to get into just commodity-type businesses. We want them to have something unusual about them that we can really build on and help them grow. And then, you know, this is going to sound like a, like a maybe a no-brain or obvious one, but we got to get to a price in terms that are acceptable to both parties. Right. And there's roughly 400 decisions that have to be made sort of during the acquisition process. I mean, it's 400 opportunities to not agree. and it's very difficult and time consuming.

And so a lot of it is just trying to make sure that we think that a deal could be done as well. And so when you say the leadership team can, you know, what you want them, you want them to scale, so why are they selling if you want them to stay in place? So they're not looking to kind of like go do something else or retire or whatever. You want them to continue to operate. And are they just looking for liquidity? What is the kind of core motivation to sell? And then do you have a problem where once they've sold,

Or do you structure the deal so that they're still incentivized to stay on and do a good job? Yeah, it's a good question. So part of it is, so the leadership team and the ownership is not always the same thing. So some of the organizations that we get involved in, the owner is very much part-time and hasn't been directly involved in the business for a long time. And so for us, it's actually, that's a decently good situation because we love to just, you know, continuity of it, keep the leadership team, treat them well, and try to augment the talents kind of as we go along. Some of the owners that we've got involved in have stayed on

and it's worked out great. The second body of the apple, they get down the road be much larger than even their first payment, despite them selling a majority of the company. So it really is a situation specific. I mean, I would say, yeah, for the most part, some are wanting to take chips off the table. Some, you know, realize that they need help in scaling and growing. So it's, you know, it's a variety of different reasons. I would say that all of them have an exit somehow in their minds. I mean, if you're in your, call it 30s or 40s and you want to work for the next 30 or 40 years, I don't think many people like that are selling their business, at least in the size range and the style of businesses that we buy. Earlier you said that one of the best ways that families have created wealth was by having a business and owning it for a very long time.

so something tells me that you study like the wealth creation process i'm not talking about like just building a business that makes money but like like creating like a true wealth and so i guess what i'm wondering is with these people who are building these companies like i'm looking at i'm looking at like things that maybe won't ever be like massive massive but can create great wealth so i'm looking at game group i'm looking at selective search which is executive search meets personal matchmaking. That actually probably could be big. Anyway, when you're doing this, like, what, what are some of the paths? I mean, like, because in Silicon Valley, where Sean and I live, the path for most people, or the sole Silicon Valley stuff, which is sometimes bullshit,

sometimes not, is creating something and raising loads of money and owning a very small percentage and not truly getting wealthy until after you sell it, or not getting liquidity at least. and their salaries will be $100 to $150,000 a year and you're living in San Francisco, so you're not building it there. But I have a feeling that you guys look at this differently. Is that true? Yeah, well, I mean, certainly the types of businesses.

I mean, you know, we have a rule we don't buy from somebody who's not already wealthy because if they didn't get wealthy doing it, we're not going to. So they're already doing well. I mean, these people are the chairman of the country club. They're in the geographies they're in. They're probably the people that, you know, the Chamber of Commerce would point to and say they're a really vibrant good local business,

or they're a bigger business, national business that's based in that geography. And so, yeah, I mean, the- They're getting wealthy from cash flow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, these things make money. I mean, you know, we're typically, I mean, if we're getting involved now, the company's making more than $3 million a year of real, you know, real owner earnings, what it sticks to the owner. So, look, anybody, and these are closely held, so typically the owner will be,

one to maybe three or four people at most. And so, you know, usually the one, two, three people that are owning the company are doing very well. They've taken a lot of risk, which maybe sometimes it's hard for people to see. And they built it over a long time. But I mean, yeah, they've done well for themselves. And they're successful in, you know, separately and outside of the transaction itself. And so the owner, let's just walk through a typical one. So I'm, you know, hypothetical owner of a business that manufactures wheelchairs were based in Oklahoma, and I'm the owner, I'm the sole owner, and I pull in, let's call it, $3 million of your owner earnings. And owner earnings would be different than sort of EBDA in this case, right?

Yeah, I would say EBDA minus operating interest, any sort of necessary capital expenditures to keep the business on current trajectory and a normalized compensation structure for the owner if they're in leadership of the company. So it's like kind of if you hired somebody to run the company for you and you made all the necessary reinvestments, how much would be left over at your discretion where you can either try to inject it back into the company and grow it further or buy a boat.

So fill in the blanks for me. So if I'm making $3 million a year, what's a typical EBITDA then for that company if the owner's pulling in $3 million on the types of companies you look at? Yeah, I mean, probably EBDA would be three and a half to four, something like that. Say it again. So that was on $3 million in owner earnings.

would be four million in EBDA roughly. Yeah, roughly. I mean, three and a half to four. I mean, it depends on the type of company. I mean, we looked at an aerospace company a couple of years ago, and they were doing seven in EBITDA, and owner earnings was like three and a half or four. Why?

It depends on, because of all the investment. So they just, they just, they needed a large cash buffer. No, no. They're having to reinvest in equipment to just keep their market share and sort of stay steady in place. It just, you know, all that cash flow would be rolled back into buying new equipment, buying more inventory, you know, all the, all the type of things that the cash would be sucked into. And how are they getting the money out of the business? I mean,

uh, are they, is it, are they typically LLCs or? Yeah, typically. I mean, it's a mixture. I mean, I would say probably 90, 10, maybe 85, 15 is, uh, LLC's. Um, but either way, I mean, if, if they're a C corp, you'll typically see owners, you know, paying themselves a lot to avoid that double taxation. So they're just paying themselves big old salaries and just having to pay 50% tax. Yeah, I mean, if you live in California. And so, so let's, let's keep going for a second. So let's say you're at three, three and a half to four million EBTA. And when you guys go to buy these businesses, what type of multiple, of course it depends on industry and it's very dependent. But what's a range? Is it 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x? Is that the sweet spot of kind of the bulk of your deals?

Yeah, I would say kind of three and a half to five and a half would kind of be the be a normal range. I mean, maybe we'd go higher for a really high quality asset. but I would say that's a pretty normal range in our segment, which is kind of our strike zone is three to $8 million of owner earnings. So in that range, I mean, on the upper end, you can get into more traditional private equity territory, and you can see some, well, you used to see as of three weeks ago. This is, again, I've got to reorientate myself to the new reality.

But, yeah, I would say three and a half to five and a half times. And then there's usually a component of that that's held back, earned out, or downside protected in some way. So we're typically paying, two to kind of two to three and a half times cash at close and then the rest kind of on on the upside depending on what happens. Gotcha. So you might have a let's say $10 million price tag for the cash at close and then plus maybe $4 million, $3 million that's earned out. So now you go to SBA and what you were saying is that you guys don't do debt. You guys do no debt or you use less

debt than a typical private equity firm? Yeah. So the SBA was on the first transaction. I did I don't do my own money, that we have no, we have no involvement with banks or the SBA or anything like that now. So you guys just do cash deals. You say, here's 10 million bucks. We're done. And why don't you use debt? Yeah, well, so debt's one way to take a good company, make it a fragile company. You know, the more debt you're layering on and the sort of the wider, the variation of outcomes that you expect to happen. And obviously, pandemic risk is something that was not on a lot of people's radars, us included until recently. But it's a good example of why we think that not levering these companies, especially in the beginning when you're starting to get to know

them. I mean, until you own these companies, you just don't know what you're getting, really, until you get underneath the hood. And there's always more risk there than you think there will be, right? So, you know, our mentality has been going with all equity, no debt, try to keep them very, very robust on the balance sheet and make sure, and we're buying these with full balance sheets attached to them, right? So working capital is all included. So the net worth of the company will be fairly robust going into the transaction. And then, of course, over time, as we build cash into these companies, then we can decide what to do with it. But working capital bucket is kind of like the, you've got to fill up the bucket first before the owners can get anything out, right? Because you've got to

keep the machinery lubricated. And when you buy a company, what is the first three months, six months? Are you hands on with that? Is it, do you have an operating partner who does that? How do you you guys make sure that you and you buy an asset you don't a destabilize it and b you actually start to grow it which is i assume why you bought it in the first place yeah so so our our philosophy there's a lot of uh private equity firms out there that have these like you know 30 day 90 day 120 day plans right um we don't do that um what we try to do is is take a humble attitude towards it and say look we we we know some things we have some talents but but we want to learn and and come alongside them they're the experts they've been doing it for a long time um so there's a team

of 16 of us. So it's not certainly, if I don't get the impression, this is just me. There's people far talented, more talented than I am on staff. And there, we have a dual hook and structure post close. So our financial team hooks into their financial team and creates feedback loops. And then we have a, we call it a portfolio partner. They're kind of a board of directors in a box that is overseeing kind of the executive leadership, helping make very high level decisions. I mean, these are autonomous operating units. I mean, so these are not we're not injecting these people into the companies to run them but they're in touch with the leadership teams all the time um doing you know a variety of different types of uh calls and

meetings throughout the year and how many companies are there there's nine um that you guys own got it so that seems manageable yeah i mean it's so for every kind of three to five companies we we acquire we got to hire one high level financial person and one portfolio partner um and that's kind of their grouping of companies that they're kind of running. So we're almost creating like a fractal, if you want to think about it that way, down into the organization so that it scales as sort of linearly in that way. So Andrew from Tiny, Choney and I are friends with him and I just shoot the shit with him every once in a while.

And he emailed me. He, like, tweeted this thing. And he sent me the tweet of how he met a guy who had a cool furniture store. And he goes, oh, this is neat. You need to put that on Shopify. Okay, I'll partner with you. Let's do it. Now I own part of it.

And he also did the same thing with like a local news outlet in Victoria, where he just like, it seems like he's spinning up stuff so fast. I'm like, Andrew, I don't know how you track all this. This is crazy. Tracking nine is easier than tracking nine is hard, but it's a little simpler because it appears from the outside as though he has got 40 different things. How does that compare, do you think, with what's up in like tiny? And does keeping on top of all this?

I mean, that seems really hard to focus on where to put your focus. Yeah, I mean, I know Andrew a little bit. I don't know him super well. I mean, it seems like he's been successful. I think they're getting involved in, for the most part, more internet-based software-based type companies. So it's just a very different model. So I would say, I have no idea how they're organized internally. I can tell you on our end, is it a lot of work?

Is it difficult? Of course it is, right? Anything worthwhile is to be hard. You know, internally how we've created that structure, though, it creates a very manageable focus group, right? So you can allow a small group of people be highly focused on certain outcomes as opposed to being all over the place. I mean, if it was just me and a partner of mine, like that we were trying to ham and egg this thing, like I'd go nuts. There's no way. Especially right now, I mean, with all the turmoil that's happening, there's just no way you can keep everything separate.

And, you know, watch legislation that's coming out and watch legal and accounting and meet debilts. for audits and I mean it's it takes a full team and so um yeah I mean we're obviously blessed to have that earlier you talked about the one of the things you buy a company I you okay so you said that there's there your sweet spot is in between like it working out like it working and it being professionalized right yeah um and I think that when I so I started the company that I have I started it when I was 24 it's it's a good business now but what I learned the hard way was that actually to make something more valuable, you need to take yourself out of the equation, as opposed to like, you know, this Mark Zuckerberg thing where you're just going to

super Superman this thing into like existence. It's actually far more valuable, even if that means you have a lower revenue number to have it where it's like a machine where people can be where you have put people in place and it's not just on the shoulders of one person. Sure. Can you, and I learned this from David Houser. Sean, you know David Houser? I don't. Okay, this guy named David Hauser, he's one of our little, we've raised a little bit of money. He's one of our investors. He started Grasshopper, which it was like, you know, grasshopper?

Okay, he started that. Okay, so it helps entrepreneurs. It gives small businesses a phone. So it's like Google Voice on steroids. And he sold it for, I think, $300 million, really successful. And he wasn't even the CEO. He started it and owned the company and hired a CEO to run it. And he taught me how to do that.

And I think that's fascinating. you talk, but that's different than what a lot of our listeners probably think about. They think about if they're going to start it, they've got to be like running the show. Can you talk about where you've learned this process and why? And I guess the companies who you've bought, how have they successfully navigated that to where the owner is no longer like the person? Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, for us, I mean, well, one, I knew my own limitations. I knew that there was no way that I could just brute force this thing on my own. and I mean, I think always subscribe to the bring people that are far smarter and more driven around you. So that's how we build the organization. I hope in three to five years I'm completely useless and they just give me my ball of yarn and let me play with it. So but in the organizations that we look at, we call this founder remote. So this is probably the biggest danger of acquisitions as you buy a company that is that largely all of the goodwill is tied up in the relationships, expertise, drive of the founder.

And there's just no really way to transition those separate from maybe coming alongside them and over a very long period of time making that transition happen. So for us, we try to select against that. We want to see repeatable processes. We want to see a healthy layer of non-owner management. We want to be able to see that we always call it hit by a bus risk. So if anybody in the organization can get by a bus and destroy the value of the business, that's just a no-go for us.

But tell me what you've learned on these people. So how do I want to make my company like that? How have you got what, what have, who, how have they done it best? Yeah. So, I mean, I think that the methodology that we've seen work the best is take the things that either you aren't good at or you don't want to do and start giving them to other people. And then over time, as you sort of continue to offload and offload and offload, you just kind of move up until eventually there's nothing much for you to really be working on.

I mean, if you have a lot of free time and you have a lot of flexibility, we always talk about if you have the optionality to get involved or not to get involved, a lot of these owners, you being a good example, that could probably add a lot of value if you chose to get involved, but you also know that the thing's going to work out fine if you don't get involved. And so that's always ultimately the test now. We also have a lot of owners that we talk to and they say, oh, I'm not needed in the office at all. This thing runs itself and we say to them, oh, that's great. When was the last time you took a vacation? They're like, oh, I think three years ago, I went on a weekend, get away with my wife. And yeah, you know, and you're like, really?

So there's that balancing act of self-awareness as well. Is there any resources that you turn to or have turned to to learn this or that you can tell me and our audience to turn to in order to learn how to do this successfully? Gosh, I don't. It's more of just getting hit in the face over and over again, hard knocks. Where are you finding these companies? Are you, is it a broker network? Are you, are their websites you use? Is it inbound because you do a lot of content?

or, you know, what is the, explain how you find the companies that you end up looking into and potentially buying. Yeah. Yeah. So we're fortunate now. We do a lot of content out there. Actually, podcast is one of the things that's been helpful for us. So thank you guys for having me on.

But we have, it's all inbound at this point. So we're not going outbound to anybody. By the way. Website. Oh, there you go. I got your book. If you're listening to the audio version, which you almost certainly are, I'm holding up the messy marketplace, which is Brent's book.

I bought this like, I don't know, six months ago. I bought it right after we sold our business, so it wasn't really applicable. I was kind of like, oh, what did I do wrong type of thing? But, yeah, it turns out just timing was good. You know, getting in before the whole world descended into chaos was a good idea, a good time to sell. But I didn't know that. But you put out this book, and it seems like you do more content than I would say the typical kind of buyer or private equity firm. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I owe most of my career to just ripping off venture capital is in reality.

So you just look at how did all the, you know, Fred Wilson's, Bradfelds, Schuster's, and Dresen, all those guys, how do they break into the world? And it was basically by pulling back the curtain and helping educate people. And so, I mean, that's what we've taken that to heart. And we've started very early on. So we've been producing content talking to people for probably seven or eight years now. It's gone back a long time. And so, yeah, over time that compounds. Right in the beginning, you're just shouting into the darkness and no one cares.

And then over time, you sort of get people's attention. Our goal is just to be the first stop for anybody who wants to sell their business. And we also try to be helpful on the back end. So all that's inbound, we have a scout network, which is common in Silicon Valley, but very uncommon in private equity. So we've about 700 people now that scout opportunities for us, which is fantastic. and we obviously pay them when we are able to consummate the transaction. And you have a capital camp, right?

Yeah, yeah. So Patrick and I, yeah. So we were complaining one night about how all the events in finance were terrible and how it would be fun to get like a cross-section of people together because there's typically, you know, VC events, there's very few events that get sort of a broad cross-section of people doing interesting things together. And so we complained about it enough. I said to Patrick and said, well, why don't we just do something about it?

And so he and I partnered up. And we hosted the first one last year. It was fantastic. About 250 people from 11 countries. Five continents came in. And that was great. We had a wonderful time. Hosted in Columbia, Missouri, my backyard.

But it was, you know, I think there was one other guy from Missouri there. So it was very not a regional crowd, if you know what I'm saying. And unfortunately, this year we had a postpone it due to the virus. So we're pushing into September. Hopefully that. we are able to flatten enough by then that we can have it hosting them. Give us some predictions about the virus and the way the sort of what's happening to businesses right now. You know, on one hand, you said your timing was good in the sense that you raised your big fund before all this.

And now a bunch of businesses are going to need liquidity. They're going to need, you know, somebody who's a stable capital partner to come in and buy them. What are you guys seeing? What's your prediction on how this is going to play out? both for you and for the economy, I would say. Yeah, well, so for, well, let me believe it's broader, I think, what we're predicting, and of course, no one has any idea, right? I mean, trying to do best we can to triangulate information.

We think it's going to be a pretty long, if you want to think about it. A good analogy I heard was a blizzard, a winter, an ice age, right? It's kind of the three stages probably. You know, I think the blizzard is going to last for another, at least six to eight weeks, probably longer than that. And then I think we're going through a period of, it's going to be hard to restart a lot of these businesses. So there's, in theory, it sounds, oh, there's economic problems. It's no big deal.

You just kind of go into hibernation and come back out of it and everything's fine, right? In practice, there's a lot of start, stop problems. I mean, you guys have run businesses, you know. If you had to mothball everything and try to restart it, I mean, you're not able to do it. It will be very difficult to do it. And so my guess is there's going to be a lot of pain and suffering. So in our portfolio, you know, because we don't use debt, we have good balance sheets, and obviously we have a financial firm to back it up, you know, we're going to be fine.

I mean, a lot of the businesses we're involved in have been doing better than we expected probably two weeks ago. With that said, you just have no idea where demand is going to go. And, I mean, we're bracing and we have plans for, you know, depending on what level of pain and suffering, you know, happens, you know, what the plan is. And, you know, we're going to try to get the things back up and running as fast as we possibly can. you know the government intervention that just came out is interesting in how it's structured so the CAR Act just got passed I don't know 20, 30 minutes ago and you know it is it's better than nothing

it's going through the SBA and the SBA is to be generous like the DMV of the finance world and so it's not going to be an easy thing to get all that money deployed also the SBA lenders that we're talking to that are at these banks, and we're not using the SBA, but obviously, if it's forgivable loans, then it'd be insane for us not to participate in that. And they don't even know what the rules are, right? And so they're trying to get triangulated on what things are. So I think there's going to get a lot of confusion. I think it's going to take a lot of time to get the money into people's hands. I'm not sure it's going to actually stem the tide as much as they think it will on unemployment. And so I fear that unemployment could go to 20, 25, maybe even 30%,

which is great. Do you think that's realistic? Yeah. Fucking A, man. That's crazy. Yeah. To put that in perspective, the Great Depression was, what, 18 or 20? I think it touched high 20s. So, I mean, at the peak. And like I said, I mean, I hope I'm wrong. Right.

Let's just say what it is. I mean, I hope that that's not. But this is not a good environment for us, actually. I mean, this is an interesting. We could talk about as being a firm that has a lot of cash right now. I don't think this is a good environment for us at all. I would much prefer a 2008, which was much more shallow downturn recession. The violence of this is basically rendering all information available like a non-issue.

There's nothing predictive about what's happened in the past and how it goes in the future. And demand curves, I mean, we don't, no one knows. No one knows what the demand curve looks like. What are you betting for a 20% or 30% unemployment rate? Well, I'm not betting on it. That's why I think's going to happen. But I think that you think that's going to happen? I think we'll probably touch 20%.

I think we could touch 30%. Yeah. And I think we'll see it in the next six weeks. We'll be when it really comes down. My guess is I called the jobs number, the unemployment number that came out. I had said previously I thought it was going to be about 3.5. It ended up being about 3.3,

which was wildly higher than what the sort of consensus was a million. And if, look, if you're involved in small businesses and you said there was a million people filing from employment. I said that's like a joke. Of course it was going to be way higher than that. There's no way it couldn't be way higher than that. And I mean, what we're seeing is, I mean, I had a buddy this week who laid off 4,000 and 5,000 employees this week.

Had another friend who laid off 585 of 600. I mean, and that's just me. Were they in the hotel industry or was it just an industry that? Yeah, food service is one and construction was the other. So it's just it's a tough. I mean, and why do you say this is, this is not a good time versus 2008? What is the core difference there? Yeah.

So the core difference is the violence at which this has downturned is basically, you could see in 2008 a nice trend, right line. Like you could see it's kind of like a soft, you know, in private businesses, right? I'm not going to talk about the stock market. Stock market and private businesses are totally different. Right. But in the stock market, it was, you know, sure it had a violence to it and then, you know, kind of petered and then had another violence to it. This happened in fucking eight days.

Right, right. I mean, obviously, Lehman and all that stuff come crashing down. Oh, no, I'm talking about right now. Oh, but yeah, right now, that's what I'm saying is right now in private businesses. It is worse in private businesses than it's reflected in the stock market right now. It's hard to know what's priced in and what do you do with monetary policy when you have basically an unlimited bid. I don't know, right?

But, I mean, when you look at it from the businesses that we interact with, it's carnage everywhere. I mean, you maybe have, I would say, 90% of businesses have been adversely affected. Five percent are probably, you know, sort of unaffected, and then maybe five percent have some sort of tailwind that's weird because of this. But 90 percent are just, it is suffering. I mean, it is unbelievable what's happening right now. And I remember, I mean, Sean, like four weeks, no, wow, only two weeks. Whenever you sent me that link, Sean, or you go, the MBA's canceled.

Yeah. I like a few hours before that I booked a flight to Germany and because I was going to a conference so they paid for it but I like gave them my information. I was they're like yeah the conference is on and then Sean sent me this link on at seven or maybe five o'clock at night and he goes the MBA is canceled. I was like oh you mean like they're just pausing it for like five days. It's like no, no, no. Like it's done for the year. And then and then the next the next day it was like, oh, my flights canceled. everyone's flights like it was like that was only two weeks ago Sean yeah that's insane I remember

people thought I was crazy I started working from home the week before everybody did because I was like hey I think there's like this once-on-a-hundred-year virus out there I'm just going to start working home we did one podcast together and I was like yeah I'm not doing any more in-person stuff I'm not coming into the city I'm not doing any of this and then it just felt like day after day it's like escalation escalation and now I think the the sort of the data is outpacing the fear even at this point. I think that the situation is worse that people realize even now because it's growing exponentially. And so I totally hear you, Brent, you know, my sister owns schools, my brother-in-law owns gyms, my father-in-law owns nursing homes. My brother owns a concert

promotion business. And nobody prepares for zero revenue overnight for two months. You can't plan for that. Yeah, we were talking about our revenue. I mean, I, you know, again, calculating in my head, maybe we're going to be a 160 this year, let's say under normal. I mean, we may be a 110 or 120. I mean, we have no idea. I mean, it depends on how things go off the cliff, right? I mean, it's literally no one has any idea what's going to happen. What we know is that it's not good. If you look across our business, I mean, our military business is very robust and obviously we want to keep people, you know, employed in that. But I mean, if you look in construction, there's a longer lead time. The sales cycle is longer, right? So you'll have to have,

have a longer tail to it. But that's still, if you're shut down on its construction site, we were working, one of our companies was working on the wind casino, they just shut everything down. I mean, there's like nothing to do. And so you have all the materials you bought, you have all the labor that's right there, everything, you're coordinating it.

And what do you do? I mean, it's like, I said it was like prohibition except for everything. So where's the opportunity here? Well, I mean, the opportunity is there's going to be a lot of these family businesses that are very durable, you know, business under any sort of normalish circumstances, would have easily gotten through a 2008, which everyone would consider to be a detonation prior to this,

that are going to need help and they're going to need capital to get through this. They're going to need capital to restart the businesses, if that's what it takes. And as well as just taking some chips off the table. I mean, you know, if you're, there's a lot of people we've talked to that are holding on for sort of last couple good years and then they want to sell. And, you know, we had these conversations two or three months ago with an owner who, he's like, look, I'm in my 70s.

I certainly can't go through another 2008, but man, business is really good right now. Like, I'm just going to hold on for another couple of years. That changed. You know, it's tough. And by the way, I'm not saying it was the right thing for him to sell then either, right? I'm just saying it's like it's always a bet. And, you know, one of the things that is maybe nice, it's not, you know, if there's any silver lining in this is I think people had gotten, certainly not immune, but had gotten a pretty good resistance built up to risk in general. and I don't think most people were seeing it.

I mean, most of the people who are talking to is, hey, there's nothing on the horizon, there's no contagion that could cause things to go down. I mean, I would hear people say this all the time. I mean, what could it be? Could it be student loan debt maybe? Ah, that's going to be contained. Could it be, you know, the bubble in private equity?

Ah, that's going to be contained. Gosh, we had no idea what was getting ready to come down the fight. I think that's what Mark Andrescent or maybe Peter Thiel was talking about once, which is that when everybody keeps asking if thing X is a bubble, that's not the bubble. When we're all aware of it, and we're all talking about it, that's usually not the actual bubble. It's something that a very few, you know, a small set of people are sort of saying,

wait a minute, we've removed too many of the jingo blocks here. This thing's about to tip. And, you know, it's a sort of ignored minority. Yeah. This wasn't a bubble-driven thing. I mean, you know, it was a war. It literally is a war. Like that, I mean, I think that's the best analogy for it.

I think this is closer to Pearl Harbor than it is to 2008. Yeah. Oh, I would, I mean, I would absolutely agree. And the issue is that, you know, For Pearl Harbor, obviously, a lot of people went over and fought, but it never come on to, you know, home soil. I think this is the thing is everyone's fighting a war in their backyard. And I don't think that's ever, I mean, look, you don't know, you don't know what the death rates are actually going to turn out to be. You don't know what the infection rate's going to be.

You know, I certainly don't want to be comparing it to things that are horrible traumatic events that affect generations and generations. Maybe, and God help us if it turns into that. But at the very least, I mean, the economic side of it is just absolutely unprecedented. in every way right now. And anybody who thinks this is going to be a short, like, the recovery where it's going to just pop right back out of this thing, it has never been in a business. And those are most of the people that I hear that are investors saying stuff like that. They never operated a business. I mean, you guys know. Well, if this makes you feel any better, Brent, I feel horrible right now. I called the hospital to get, I try to get a test. And

they're like, eh, like, don't waste it on yourself. But it sounds like you have it. And so they think I have it, but it's not confirmed. It sucks. It doesn't suck that bad. But for a 30-year-old, it stinks, but it doesn't. The way I describe it, it just yesterday crossed the threshold where I would stay home from work and not exercise. Really?

So you think you have it? Yeah, well, me and the doctors, but it's not confirmed. He's pretty sure he has it. Yeah. I mean, like breathing sucks, but it's more annoying than it is scary. and yeah. I am so sorry, man. I had no idea.

I mean, I'm... Well, I know. It's not... No, my point is not to get sympathy. My point is to let you know. Maybe for most people, it's not the worst. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's great.

I mean, and look, I hope that's the case, and I hope we can get back to some semblance of normal life. I think that the, unfortunately, the economic damage, even if you wave the magic wand and brought everyone back to these businesses right away, I think there's a lot of damage that's been done, depending on how long your lead cycles are and all that stuff. But I mean, it's just, it's tough.

I mean, it's tough. As demand dries up, I mean, you've got to think about the supply chain all the way back. I mean, people aren't ordering stuff from factories, right, because their demands dropping off on the other side. If the store said, no, no, no, we want all of your inventory now. They'd say, we don't need anything to sell you. Right, right? Because everyone's preparing for winter.

And so, yeah, the stop start problems are just going to be tremendous. Wait, Sean and Brent, you guys are both, I mean, we are all, I have no idea where people are, but we all are people who probably aren't poor. Have you guys cut your spending? Oh, yeah, for sure. I did the first thing I did was I cut my exposure to the stock market, which I think is going to drop like a rock now.

And so that was the first thing I did, because that's more than spending is just wealth destruction. And so I wanted to avoid wealth destruction first. And then the second thing on your monthly subscriptions? I didn't go through that yet. But we have sort of, like me and my wife, now before we do something, we're like, yeah, do we really need to? And so it's starting to creep in.

But we haven't gone and audited and said, hey, necessary, unnecessary, unnecessary, unnecessary. But yeah, you know, probably should and probably will. Even though, like, I have plenty of money to last for a very long time, I'm like, I don't, I'm one up by the generic brand of this food. We're still spending on food, but I mean, if you look at our bills in the past, it's been a lot around travel and yeah we're not doing that I mean we did we did spring by the way the best investment I've ever made I've got three girls under six and we just bought a bounce house and uh have in the backyard and by the way that's the best it's the best three hundred dollars I've ever

spent my life there's a business there's a business you should buy that sounds not sexy but interesting enough exactly bounce houses for viruses yeah okay my last question for Brent is this you're you're 25, 30, 35, and currently, like, let's just imagine you are. I have no idea how old you are. I'm 37. But let's say you're young enough to like start. Okay, well, let's say you're starting your career.

You're in the middle, early part of your career now. Knowing what you know about what makes valuable companies and what builds wealth, what are some businesses that you'd want to start right now, and what would you optimize for and what metrics would you? you try to optimize for and how? Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on what you're what you're trying to optimize for if you're just trying to go. I'm asking you. Well, I'm asking you for me personally. I mean, I really find value in balancing home life and work, right? So family is super important to me. So my answer would probably be a little bit different for me and I want to live not in a big city.

That's okay. I want to hear what you would do. Yeah, yeah. So if I was starting over today, I would probably start something in the construction space or home services space, office services. I want to get in something that's, I like competing in areas where there's not a natural selection of people into that, right? So you don't want to be in the winery business because everyone in Silicon Valley that exits a business goes and buys a winery, right, and pumps a bunch of money into it. Like, I don't want to be in the film business because everybody who, you know, every son

of a billionaire, you know, makes movies. You know, owning restaurants is really difficult. I mean, separate from all the stuff we're going through now, because everyone, you know, that makes any money, thinks it to be easy and wants to own their own restaurants. So I like to things that sort of have a natural selection biased against them. Like nobody drives by somebody building a swimming pool in Arizona in the summer and says, you know what?

I really want to quit my job in the air conditioning and go dig a hole in the ground, right? So we want to, you know, get involved in things like that. I would try to take something probably that is small and partner with them, that they already have the infrastructure in place, the sort of the technical side and the systems there. And then I would really try to spend some time, you know, how can we use, you know, latest technology to make us more efficient, try to build something that's scalable, sort of beyond a geography, and get a model down, a billing model, a sales model down that we thought was replicatable, and it really had some sort of mode around it.

and then I would try to scale it over time. And I think there's a lot of company. Yeah, anything specifically? I think it would depend on largely on what I could find in the geography. I mean, here in Columbia, I mean, there's a fantastic HVAC service company that's still fairly small, but they've got great systems. They actually develop their own software. Be something like that that I'd want to partner with and say, okay, look, look,

I want to get my hands dirty. I want to get involved in it. I mean, I'm not an investor by heart. Like, I mean, I'm an entrepreneur. That's what I love to do. and that's how we think about our business is being operators and entrepreneurs. And so I wouldn't necessarily get involved in finance.

I mean, finance to me is a mechanism that allows and enables entrepreneurship and running real companies. It's not trading paper back and forth. So I would probably get far more involved in sort of non-tech entrepreneurship, which I know you guys are in Silicon Valley and this can fall in deaf ears.

No, I like what you're saying. So you said HVAC? You said HVAC. Yeah, pools, lawn service. I think I like... Lawn service. Yeah.

Like lawn and garden care type stuff. I mean, have you ever tried to get somebody to call you back? Yeah, you want to hear something cool? We had, so Brian, you know who Brian Scudamore is? Scudamore? 1-800 got junk? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so the guy who owns it, his name's Brian. He's Canadian, he's friends with me and Sean. I shoot the shit with them every once in a while. It's like a, what is that, Sean? Like a $500 million-dollar-year company. owns all of it. And he, either me or someone of us asked him where opportunity is and he goes, man, if I had to do

the same thing, I would do $1,800 got junk, but I would do it for lawn care or for irrigation. Yep. Yep. That's type of stuff I'm talking about. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's, there's all these like strange, I mean, niches that you can get into. What I would do is probably take my time and go and talk to a lot of people who are already in business and say, what is your biggest problem? Like, who's the supplier that you're most annoyed with? You know, what's the customer that you have? that's just killing it, that type of thing. And I'd probably go try to snake my way into one of those businesses.

And then it's really just about getting a foothold, right? I mean, that's what you need is you need a foothold, and then you can start building on it from there. But, I mean, the problem is if you've got a, if you've got a boat that you're trying to row that's rickety and it may look pretty on the outside, but it's just not going to go anywhere. It doesn't matter how hard you row it.

And I think that's early in my career when I was involved in, you know, more of the agency business. That's how I felt. I felt like, I mean, I could just row that thing as hard as I could. and I maybe get an inch further. And that's where I just want to get out of businesses that are like that. Right. All right.

Well, we should wrap it up. Brent, thanks for coming, man. If you're listening to this, you want to get a hold of you, what's the best way for people to follow you, you know,

keep tabs, become a scout, whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so permanent equity.com is the website. And I'm on Twitter at Brent BeShore on LinkedIn.

I mean, just hit me wherever. Try to be very available. And if I can be helpful, let us know. Yeah, it's been wonderful to have you guys on. Man, I hope you feel better.

That doesn't sound like any fun. Now you're terrifying me. Well, no, look, my point was the opposite, was to not terrify. Look, do I seem sick to you? I mean, I'm sleeping in, so I didn't get out of bed. I didn't wake up until about 9.30 or 10 a.m. this morning because I was like, I'm just going to sleep as much as possible. I'm drinking a lot of water.

I would not exercise today. That's how bad I feel. I would not go to work today. but I definitely would not even consider going to a hospital. And normally I wouldn't even go on to a doctor. Oh, all right. Well, this is how I'm trying to paint this as in a positive way as best as I can. Well, Sean, don't you get sick.

All right. You can't get it through Zoom, so we're good. All right, guys. Take it easy. Really appreciate it. Thanks. Take care. Bye.