A Searcher’s Second Act: Building a $25m Holdco

LK was founded in 1930. And so when we bought it in 2015, it was 85 years old. And, um, yeah, we've got a hundred year anniversary coming up with the company soon.

Oh, I love it. That's so cool.

I'll have to think from memory here. I think the company had about 33 or 33 employees when we bought it. And, um, uh, still on the company today has a lot, has a lot fewer employees now, but it had about 33 employees at the time.

Okay, great. And when this cycle, the down cycle started, you've told us kind of how you managed that, but just kind of emotionally, how bad was it?

Yeah, I think, you know, emotionally, kind of the hardest moments are coming in there and having to let people go. Sure. You know, sometimes we can do these analyses on the computer and it's kind of very clear. You got to get to a certain number and this is how you get there.

But I think, you know, when you sit across from someone and you've got to actually make that change, it's hard. And I think it's OK to talk about that. There are emotions in doing that.

changing people's livelihood and having, you know, to have that tough conversation. So I think, you know, that, that was always kind of first and foremost, the one thing that I think was, was always hardest was having to let people go who it wasn't their fault. Right. I mean, the business had just changed.

They had done a good job for us. I think the other emotional aspect of it is, um, There was a lot of really good ideas that we had that had to find their way to the shelf.

There just wasn't the cash to do it right now. So some kind of new marketing ideas that we had or kind of new products that we wanted to spend time building just had to wait until the business recovered. And I think that was hard, too, because, you know, 27 at the time, 26 years old at the time, we've got a lot of energy behind wanting to do certain things.

And, you know, you just have to wait until you have the resource to do it. And I think. That was interesting to kind of see how that played out. Some of those ideas ended up being able to be implemented later, which was nice.

But, you know, certainly it was hard to kind of see them have to wait. And I think the other emotional aspect of the business is it just takes a lot more of your time as an operator when that happens. Right. You have to get there a little bit earlier, you know, work a little bit later.