The Flywheel of Buying Businesses in a Single Region

You know, I could, you know, I was conversation at a board meeting yesterday and they're like well I have these really great, you know, financing option for you that's often Wall street and where we could actually, you know, bring some of our financing over over to them. And I thought well that's great but you know, that's not elevating where I live and providing jobs and opportunities to where I…

And so what that focus on place does is it should create better economic development, smarter win win decisions locally. And we are doing that in a way that yes, we want to see that impact and we want to see that impact with our university and what we want our university to, to be better. But we are taking that in a non concessionary approach.

That we think that those things can go together and that we can deliver a great return. At the same time we're, we're making those decisions both with service providers and with jobs and with the university that elevate, elevate our community. But, but to press you on that, Doug, the financing decision, bringing in capital or financing from Wall Street's a great, a great example.

These businesses are going to be confronted by decisions all the time where the financial benefit could be higher by violating the place based philosophy. Right. So at some point they're going to have to make, you know, choosing to keep the financing local or regional. Maybe your terms aren't as good for the loan and which eats into your ebitda.

The EBITDA of the business, which eats into, you know, the, the returns to investors. So it's, so at some point there's got, it's got to catch up with you if you're not making decisions strictly based on, you know, the, the numbers in this, in. Yeah, I think you get my point.

Yeah. Well, so my, my pushback to that would be, is, you know, I'm, I'm getting access to off market opportunities and sellers who believe in our long term place based approach and if I start making decisions that are maybe short term financially that give me a, maybe a better loan here in the, in the immediate. But my reputation in the marketplace becomes not the thing I want it to be.

Well, I've, I've undermined what my, my model is and you can't, you're not going to be something that you aspire to be and that, that undermines the whole thing. So the, I think, I think when you take the long view that these, these short term decisions about concessions and how we think about, you know, the, the, the opportunity of, of you know, saving on a loan.

But if you put it to Wall street it's like, okay, well, but then the relationships I built, built with these local banks who have referred opportunities to us. I mean they're less inclined to send opportunities to us because they know that if you buy this company, they're gonna, you're gonna send their business to another place.

And so you know, I, I, I think it's at, at a hot, at a quick, short term view you can see that, but in the long term view I think you can still create that, that mutual benefit in those kind of place based approaches.

Yeah, well, and I, I, I think, allow me to, to put it in my own words, which is there is, you're getting access to opportunities. That is the opportunity to buy businesses from sellers who wouldn't otherwise sell to somebody coming in from New York, somebody coming in from the coasts, private equity, whatever they, they want to sell to somebody local, regional or to an interest that is local or…

So you're getting access to these opportunities that's kind of alpha, to use a, kind of an annoying term you probably wouldn't use with them, but that is real alpha in real differentiation for you guys that you can buy businesses that others don't have access to, couldn't buy. And so maybe that's where also you are able to get advantage and offer a competitive returns to your investors that maybe…