Second-Time CEO Buys a $30m Title Company

To learn more, contact Jenny thier directly at jthier j t h e a r@engagepeo.com or click the link in the notes and then so you Through YPO meet some people who are traditional search fund folks, including Raj, who will have aired a couple episodes before this one. You at this point are in your mid-30s. You're not a freshly minted MBA.

That is the typical profile of somebody who does a traditional search fund. Their traditional search fund investors go and recruit and promote themselves at the at the top tier business schools. So if you are somebody who's more mid career and not plugged into that circuit, how do you access traditional search fund and how did you access traditional search fund investors?

They want to know that you're going to put in the work just like you would have to if you're out searching for a business to buy. They want to know that you're going to make those cold calls, you're going to put in those emails and you're going to going to find a way to reach them. And that's a part of kind of proving your your ability and your drive, if you will.

Thankfully, I had successfully run a company and one of the things that always stood out to me, one of my investors kind of made the quip that I got my MBA on the job and there's not many folks in the search space who have already run a company and run it successfully. Bill Egan, a former board member of mine, passed away somewhat recently. We were having dinner one time and his remark to me was,…

The best searcher may never find a company and the worst searcher may find the best company. So I'm not going to bet on that. But you've done this before and I have confidence that you can run a company and so that's what I'm going to bet on.

And I think I don't know if you've seen the most recent search fund study that came out. It's starting to kind of prove that to be true. That really what you need to bet on is somebody who's going to get in and be able to run a business well.

It's tough to financially manufacture a great outcome with the way the markets have changed. Multiples are changing. So finding somebody that you can really trust to get in and run a good business or even take an average business and make it a great business is how you're really going to get a good return.

Well, that comment of Bill is something that I think the audience can take as just understanding. Yeah. That the search, your ability to close a transaction and then your success as its owner operator are just very different outcomes, very different scenarios. So much of the search is, you know, luck based and you can increase the surface area of luck.

It's, you know, it's a numbers game. You can do things to affect, increase your, your odds, but ultimately there's, there's going to be a lot of chance to it. Whereas once on the other side of the acquisition, once you're in the, in the ownership seat, more of that is going to be about your capabilities as a, as an operator.

And so for a potential investor there, or at least what Bill was doing was assessing that, weighting his decision on that, not on the chance of an acquisition happening or not exactly very interesting. Okay, Randy, anything more, anything to say then about how you proceeded with your search or should we jump right to the business that you found?

Search is not for the faint of heart. It's a lot of work, but it's well worth it. It's a fantastic opportunity, especially if you're not, you know, if you're bringing in investors or you know, if you're doing this on your own.