The $60k Acquisition that Grew to a $77m Exit

I think that's fair. That was, it's a little more probably after we sold those other markets, but that's, that's probably fair. And then, and then you rolled, you.

Kept 10 in and then he kept building it and then sold it outright. Right. A few years later for it was. Above 70, it was just under 80.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so it was, it was a great experience for me. It was, it wasn't. You know, we did other things together. We bought real estate together and did some other investments together.

And, and I, I just wanted to go see if I could, could I scale this, could I find people that were like me that to invest in and spread that money out and help them continue to grow. And that was, that was my really passion at that time was to go out and try to put all this money to work and see if I can, if I can grow these and help coach them and grow those businesses. And, and say more about…

In our, in our pre. Call you, this theme has come up with you in my handful of conversations with you about investing in people. Another way of thinking about this is investing in private markets versus public markets.

You, you dabbled in, in public stocks and had held Enron. That didn't work out well. Yeah, so, so there is something in you that's really drawn to the lower middle market private businesses and the people that populate them.

So please say more about that. Yeah, I, I think it is more about having the opportunity to control outcomes.

If I go buy Tesla or I go buy a public, I'm not having any influence on the outcome of the performance of that company. This I believe we have very hands on. We have a tremendous say, if not the final, we have the final say in the direction and strategies that these businesses take to create amazing outcomes.

And to me, look, especially when you go through a situation like you have a piece of your net worth in a, you know, publicly traded company that is no longer with us and that disappears and you're like, I had nothing to do with, I had nothing to do with this other than picking a horrible, you know, stock to, to invest in. I was like, if I'm going to go down, it's going to be on my decision.…

And so I really, I really wanted to bet on myself. So to this day a small piece of my, you know, net worth is in public Markets and I would rather own private companies that I can control.