Great, Randy. Okay, well, I only have you for a couple more minutes, so five years of your tenure in a couple minutes. We, we've heard about the revenue, new growth. We've heard that you've done some acquisitions.
Acquiring Minds
Second-Time CEO Buys a $30m Title Company
Episode
Excerpts · 345 segments · ~1:22:28 long
Short excerpts only — hear the full conversation on the publisher's site.
05:00 Lawyer to CEO at 2911:00 Wanting equity, path to search18:28 Accessing search capital mid-career23:41 Finding and understanding Meridian Title33:40 Title industry cyclicality risk46:59 Deal structure and financing55:15 F reorg saves the deal59:09 Reps and warranties surprise1:05:59 Leadership changes and CFO1:13:04 EOS Lite operating model
We haven't heard about some of the leadership changes that you made. I think that that is material, as is the EOS Lite model that you have embraced. So let's go through those and then anything I might be missing.
Yeah. So one thing I would. So this is unsolicited advice for folks as you come into a business. Be slow to make change.
Learn the business. Gain the trust of people. There were probably some things that I would have done differently early on. Inevitably, the right decisions, but change that came faster than maybe the company was ready for.
And having a little bit more trust and credibility with the team would have made the change a little bit easier for us.
Can you tell us what it was?
Yeah, we made some IT related changes, some personnel changes. Um, and I'd say some of it just. They weren't all seen as the right choice at that time.
Inevitably, it was by far what the business needed. And if we had just probably taken a little bit more time to. To work on those things or really build the trust.
Because I was coming into a team, I was coming in to lead a team that had been there for a long time. So I'm the new guy. Yes. I've run a business before, but they don't know me. I've got to build a whole new set of credibility with these folks.
The old owner's out, and so I probably should have taken a little bit more time to build that credibility before we pulled or made some of those decisions. But in terms of leadership team itself, we had a little transition with some of the old ownership that we weren't expecting, which inevitably worked out great. I think that they had kind of been preparing for retirement.
So it gave us a little bit of a lift as the market started to turn down in terms of some folks who. No more that we shed their salary, but didn't necessarily lose productivity. Wonderful folks, but they were ready to retire.
And so it worked out well. We had a transition early with our sales leadership that turned out to work out, out in our favor in the long run. And we've got great leadership there now.
Want what comes before or after? Hear the full episode on the publisher's site ↗