So we were really, I think, building that team that could run the business and run all the individual departments at each business, working with us at the same time as we were trying to put those tools in their hands.
Acquiring Minds
The Origin Story of a Compounder ($80m and Counting)
Excerpts · 298 segments · ~1:25:04 long
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Yeah, this also sounds like around the inflection point that you told me about on the pre call of your recognition that you were working to in the business, the three of you were working to in the business. And for this business to really take flight, you needed to be working on the business. When was that inflection point? Was that in this era?
I'd say a big part of it was in this era, all of these things. There were, I'd say multiple big inflection points. We always knew we wanted to be working on the business, not in the business, but we, we needed the leadership that we could hand it off to.
I think that, that when we moved from having a couple of small acquisitions, but we were still running everything out of one building in New York City to where now we have two major locations, I think that alone forced us to. To operate differently because we weren't in the building every day for someone to ask us a question or for us to, to be managing things.
And, and part of what we loved about that business that we bought in 2022 was that that they had a strong management team. There was a, a seller who was, who was a little bit younger and still interested in continuing to work in the business in a more direct sales and engineering role.
And there were some longtime employees who were not owners of the business before we got there, but who we, you know, we, the seller and us, believed that they could play a really large role in continuing on the leadership of this business. And so even though I think we still had a lot to learn about how to, to set up and coach and work in these management structures, it was a big inflection…
And then I would say the next big inflection point came around 2023, 2024, when. And we had been trying to hire some really great people into the business in leadership positions. We didn't quite get any of those hires to land and work out and come in full time.
Around 2024 is when we started to get a couple of pretty senior really great leaders to see enough of the vision that we saw that they would come in and hitch their wagon to our train. And really, I think that was a huge inflection point for us because now we're not just employees in the businesses, but other leaders who could take on really huge initiatives in major areas.
And I think that's when we, when we started to do that so that we could step out, work more on and, and a little more specialized. That's when things started to really take off.
Oh, okay. Well, and that's pretty recent. I mean, that's just two years ago, 2024, when, when you really work on, start working on and versus in. And it's also when you went and raised outside capital for a larger vision.
To date, you'd been doing deal by deal. So that Westchester, your, your third acquisition or your kind of second material one you did the bolt on and then Westchester, you raised money to buy that one on a deal by deal basis just for that one business, correct?
That's correct. So we were, we were still going back to the same four investors who had backed us for Stanley Ruth. And we would use some combination of either just cash flow from operating for the smaller ones or going back to those same foreign investors and offering that opportunity for them to reinvest. And that was what we did up until really last year when we did a larger external fundraise…
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