How to Grow Revenue 50% in Year 1

That's, that's everybody's realization. But, but when you, but really you were you in your office were alone in, in that realization or at least in that being enough of a motivator to cause you to, you know, leave your corporate path and go buy a business.

And so for all of my guests who have a similar pattern, even though, you know, it's a self selecting audience on this podcast and they, and it feels like everybody follows that pattern or so many people follow that pattern, you're still very much the outliers in the world from which you come because all of your colleagues could have had a, that could have lit a similar fire in them that it did…

I mean there was an entrepreneurial spirit in that team in and of itself. Like we were a relatively smaller private alternatives asset manager, I mean, 16 billion. So when you're compared to the hundreds of billions, like you're still a smaller, relatively small fish.

And I mean the leadership and the partners there, you know, they all had their careers that they were at big banks with and they took the risk as well to, you know, grow this to what it is today. And so I don't want to, you know, it's not a disparaging thing, I guess, but point out the fact that it wasn't just the deals themselves that gave me that exposure. But I mean, it was a great learning…

They approach deals in entrepreneurial fashion. We are much more higher octane kind of higher risk lender of sorts. So you kind of had to have ownership mentality, if you will.

And the last thing I'll say is while I was mo. Working mostly on real estate, you know, I was on every single investment committee call and we were industry agnostic.

So I got Exposure to all different types of industries and similar stories more in the operating company level of borrowers who or folks who started out small, grew something and eventually were tapping the capital markets to either do dividend recaps or you know, refinance the loans. They, you know, things like that. So kind of a. It was a really great environment I think to foster this, you…

So. Great. Well, good qualification, good call out. Thank you. Crestline. Yeah. On Onward. Okay, so you. So social media ETA grabs, you take us from there. Yeah, so I probably started my search.

I was still working full time at the beginning of 2024. I was looking with my brother. He as we'll talk about.

He's a minority investor with me, but it kind of just manifested in us sending, sending screenshots of listings. And he'll be the first one to tell you he's more of a high level kind of guy and I'm the one actually doing the numbers and diligence and analytics and whatnot. So, you know, ping ponging a couple Biz by Sell listings, you know, getting some initial inquiries and meetings done.

And he kept sending me listings from this brokerage firm called Trans World Business Advisors. And I found a lot more success in a hit rate going through their site as opposed to the third parties. And sure enough, you know, it was the second listing we really looked at through them, looked at it hard, ended up being the frame shop. So.