Why Choose Ownership Over Being a CEO

I think that rightly so. It's one of the fastest ways to become CEO. And these are very prestigious jobs.

Tell us what you learn there about what it is to be the CEO in a private equity company and what you learn about yourself.

And we show up and it's a business that's been, you know, chugging along successfully but not really growing. It's very profitable, but it, it hasn't had a lot of growth. And so I had a background in more marketing Growth and sales.

And so that was why they put me in that specific business. They felt like I could help turn on the growth engine for this IT firm. And I quickly realized that actually a lot of the issues that business had were personnel issues, were process issues, were finance and accounting issues.

We'd gone through prior to my being there, four accountants in a matter of 18 months. So they had acquired the business. There had been a general manager of the business who had been part of the company before the acquisition and had stayed on with the business.

And he was much more technical in his expertise, so also was struggling with the sales piece, which is why they brought me in. And so he continued to run the technical side side of the business while I focused on the growth as well as the sort of management piece of finance, accounting, personnel.

And I think the best example I can give of something that I learned about myself, but also learned about why private equity and being just an operator was not for me, was that there is a budget process. And each year they say, hey, these are the metrics that you need to hit for your business. The that all rolls up, right?

One portfolio company has to grow 30% because the portfolio as a whole needs to grow a certain percentage so that, you know, they can be able to pay not only their debt, but also be able to get a return to the LPs in this fund. And so you're just one cog in a very large wheel. And I had a accountant who told me she was going to quit if she wasn't able to find a way to support her mother who was…

And it was going to cost us a thousand dollars more a month. My accountant was offshore in the Philippines. And again, she had been the longest term accountant we'd had in the two years that Evergreen had owned this portfolio company.

And was incredible. And I said, I can't lose you done. We're going to give you a higher salary so that you can pay for help to take care of your family and so that you can keep doing your job for my business. And she said, great.

I really, truly appreciate it. I went to my board, at my monthly board meeting and I said, by the way, you know, we're going to have an increase in our accounting costs this month and that's going to, you know, impact the margin about half a percent for the entire year of growth. And I came saying, you know, that means, yeah, we need to sell one or two more contracts or clients in order to make…