The Flywheel of Buying Businesses in a Single Region

So you, the first thing is, is that re. That place would need the 5 el. 5 elements. It would need closely held businesses that need transition.

Well, that's, that's happening everywhere. You need local capital. It doesn't make sense for the coasts to invest in this.

Sleeping Giant I think has been successful in part because of that connection to the university. I mean right now the three of the four CEOs in residents we have are Western Michigan University alum. You know, they basic, they, they came back after know, 20 years out professionally and have come, you know, come full circle.

So you need a regional university and then the final piece is you need a, you need the Jeep, you need a gp, you need a, an entrepreneur, somebody to kind of spin up that model. Somebody, you know, like, like me or my partner Derek. And so you know, those are the five elements that you need.

And that's, there's a lot of places that have that. So how does one go about, about doing it? Where would they start first?

I think it's somebody who needs to have really great relationships across a lot of different sectors that can pull something of this off. I mean I am talking to professionals, I'm talking to businesses, I'm talking to investors, I'm talking to students, I'm talking to administrators, I'm talking to, you know, service providers. Somebody who's really good at creating those, those networks.

And I think is, is really critical if you wanted to actually replicate what we're doing, you would need to be able to be both a professor or at least have a teaching function at a university as well as the, you know, the capital allocation and, and kind of business, you know, fund leadership as well. That doesn't need to be a tenured track faculty member. I mean we were joking about this at the…

There is really unrealized value in the fact that, you know, tenured track faculty, you know, the curriculum is the, the jurisdiction of the faculty. And so if you want to bring in this, this LBS teaching component we have for undergraduates, you need some way of engaging your curriculum. And we've explored ideas of how Western could be a part of that.

But those are really some of the high level elements that you need to, to be able to start to pull all those, those stakeholders together.

Yeah, let me press on the need the tie into Western Michigan University because while I, while I can see it's added tremendous value in Sleeping Giant, I, I worry that anybody who thinks your model is really cool and would love to replicate in their market if they don't have Some a similar tie in to a local university or there isn't a regional university there that they'll say oh this isn't for…

And I wonder and I think it could be, I think it could be because those opportunities that you're providing your undergraduates while valued, while super valuable and to them and then also kind of helps create this long term flywheel. It doesn't seem actually to be required of the model necessarily is that fair? I think it's, it's, it depends on what your investors want to see.