We asked a $18.9B Investor how to survive the AI bubble
15 years ago, we set an objective to become the number one performing private equity fund. Since we set that goal, the 4 funds we invested after that have all done 5x or better.
How do you do 5x in 6 years? Well, you go get Navy SEALs to run plumbing companies. It's like, oh, that makes perfect sense to me.
Yeah, it works pretty well. Oh yeah.
In your world, there's a bunch of like AI roll-ups. We're gonna buy a company, we're gonna throw AI in it, it's gonna be awesome. Is that a good strategy?
These venture-backed apps, they'll have $2 million of revenue and a $500 million valuation and they're going to go to zero.
How do you see the world in the market? Where do you see opportunity? Where do you see destruction? And where do you see overhype?
Okay, I'll start with overhype. How about that?
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel.
All right, well, listen, uh, we have Graham Weaver here today. You've seen this guy all over YouTube, TikTok, wherever you've been seeing What I'm interested in is I would have always loved to go to Stanford and go to Stanford Business School. There's probably a lot of people listening to this that kind of wonder what would it be like? And, you know, that would be cool to be able to go learn from the best at one of the best schools. Well, we get to kind of do that today. We have somebody who not only is out in the field, you've got a private equity fund that has almost like $20 billion in assets under management, but you also teach at Stanford. And I think today it'll be fun if we get to hang out and pick your brain and be students like we're in your class.
I love it. Looking forward to it.
You know what, what's funny is like you, I, I've watched your talks for a long time and they're, they're amazing. How to Live an Asymmetric Life was a really good one. How to Live Your Full Life. I think that, that wasn't the exact title of one, but that was my takeaway from another talk. And I was doing research on you and I'm like, I didn't even realize this guy had a PE fund. And it's, and I think that's great that your, your ideas are actually what you're known for more than your work. So are you, Besides the talks, can you explain with, with your fund, how, how successful are you beyond just the talks?
About 15 years ago, we set an objective to become the number one performing private equity fund in the world as measured by net MOIC, you know, the return on capital. And our last, since we set that goal, the 4 funds we invested after that have all done 5x or better, or the 4th one's on track to do that. So it's been, it's been great. Like it's all the, all the content that I try to bring to my talks or to the students at Stanford. You know, I, I like to think they're really based in stuff that really works. There's a lot of, a lot of amazing people that are, have a lot of really good motivational content. I, I like to try mine out in the real world a lot and see what actually, what actually works. And I've, and I think there's, you know, the stuff that I, I try to talk about is, is exactly what we, what we do at Alpine. But yeah, we've had a really great run and I'm really proud of how we've done it too. We've done it, you know, with people, treating people really well. We built our entire business around the people at Alpine and the people, the entrepreneurs in our portfolio. And, um, you know, try to be a force for good. The 3 goals are be the top performing fund, be a force for good, and be a place where the best people want to come and work and spend their careers. And I think hopefully we've done it that way.
So you, you just said you set a goal to be the number one performing private equity fund in the world. No big deal. That's right. So, and you said 5x MOIC, which is multiple on invested capital. So, and that's over like 10 years or what's the timeframe we're talking here?
I mean, from the day the first dollar comes in to the last dollar goes out. Yeah, maybe it might be. It's probably easier to talk about. Probably average is about 6 years. Of the average investment is probably about 6 years.
That's pretty remarkable. So you normally, you know, sort of rule of 72, you put your money in the S&P 500, in 7 years you should double your money. So you should get 2x if you're there and you're basically in roughly the same timeframe trying to get a 5x, right? So you're really trying to outperform. Can you in plain English, because Sam knows this, I spent the last 2 days having— I had 40 private equity meetings and, you know, I'm, half the time I'm just like, they're like, yeah, we're a small fund, $1.5 billion under management. And I'm like, that was the story all day. I was like, how much money do you guys have and what the hell do you guys actually do? So can you give me the simple what the hell do you guys actually do? Are you guys buying like HVAC companies? Are you buying software companies?
So, I mean, private equity is a very broad classification. There's lots of different strategies. So I'll tell you specifically what we do. I know there's a lot of talk around AI buy and builds, which we can dive into in a little bit. But we do primarily buy and build. So we'll, we'll take a, we'll find a really amazing CEO that a lot of times has worked with us in a smaller capacity, whether they were the CFO of a company we had or they came through our training program, and then we'll back them. We'll go find an industry that we think is really interesting. We like the prosaic industries like the ones you mentioned, plumbing, HVAC. We also do software too because, uh, there's a number of strategies where roll-ups in software can be really attractive. So we It's a small part of what we do though, smaller than the services stuff. And, but a lot of these really prosaic industries are massive. You know, the plumbing and HVAC industry you mentioned is like, it's like a $170 billion industry. So it's, so if you get it right and you actually figure it out, you know, you can, you can grow, you know, almost forever 'cause it, you just don't run out of, run out of TAM, which is why we like to buy and build 'cause we'll get it right once and then we'll stamp it out a number of times. The other thing that's really cool about buy and builds is it really plays to our core competence, which is just talent, you know? So the buy and build strategy, the way we do it, really is a talent strategy. You know, in a lot of cases, we're putting high-attribute, like military veterans in to go run these plumbing business, and they're just incredible leaders. And so our secret superpower is really training these awesome leaders and giving them an opportunity to do something they might not have had the opportunity to do otherwise.
Sam, isn't that hilarious? Sam, you could be like, how do you, how do you do 5x in 6 years? It's like, well, you go get Navy SEALs to run plumbing companies. That makes perfect sense.
That's actually right. That's actually a pretty simple, simplified expression. Yeah. Navy SEALs run plumbing companies. It's, it works pretty well.
The deck is only one slide. I like it.
The Navy SEAL is actually a very common, um, background of our, of our leaders in these businesses.
And how big of companies are you buying?
So the add-on acquisitions, which is primarily what we do, I mean, I think the average deal we did is like $30 million. So the company might have $15 to $20 million of revenue, something like that.
Oh, it's pretty small.
Do you—
and you do you borrow money to— and do you borrow money to buy it?
Yeah, we do. So we'll— once we get it going, we can usually finance all the acquisitions with cash flow and debt. So we don't have to put in any more equity. That's important. Obviously, if you're, if you're trying to have a high MOIC, the not putting money in part is, is a big part of that.
The main part of your model that's, I would say, kind of differentiated is, is you kind of— I don't know if it's not a search fund exactly, but you basically start with an operator or a CEO in-house, which most private equity guys don't do, right? They're mostly like, we buy you, we hope the management team really stays on. That's really important. Or we're going to later install and do a search for an executive to run the company. But what you guys are doing is you start with the person, you kind of run a search with them, it seems like. Tell me what I get wrong. Is it not like— what's different about it than a search fund? They come in-house basically is the difference.
Now, Sean, you nailed it. It's like a search fund where we try to improve on the search fund model. Like if you think about a search fund and for those who may not know, you know, search fund is you're backing a young person to go buy a business and then they're going to go run it. But The thing where it kind of falls down is the first part, which is someone has to go source and buy a business. They have to go build an entire private equity firm to buy one company. So we do all that ourselves because we are obviously doing this repeated on a repeated basis. But the general part about having a really high attribute person betting their career on a business is a great formula. And probably a lot of what you talk about on this podcast. I mean, it's, it's the greatest formula there is. So we love that part of the DNA of a search fund model. We're hiring very similar kind of high-attribute people, maybe a little bit older than the search fund, a little more experienced, bigger businesses. But generally it is what you just said, Sean. It is, it is kind of like a superpowered search fund model.
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So the simplified way of thinking about this is you find a really high-attribute person. We'll call them the Navy SEAL for now. Just say, you know, somebody who's clearly a go-getter, a winner, organized, effective individual who's willing to work really hard for 5, 6 years to create like life-changing wealth for themselves and build and own their own business without having to come up with a great idea from scratch. You go with that. You're already looking at whatever, hundreds of deals. You have thesis around stuff. You go and you buy the best deal you can find there and then you do add-ons. So you go buy the plumbing company. It's already a good business. That person should operate it maybe to be a better business growing organically. And then you're going to buy maybe more tuck-in plumbing businesses to grow the thing using the cash flow from the first business.
Exactly. And then the other thing is, once you bought 10 plumbing companies, you know what it looks like to run the best in the world because this one company might do really well on training. This other company does great on customer acquisition. This other company has a purchasing advantage. This other one has a training advantage.
The superpowers of each.
Exactly. You grab and eat. And usually that's true. Usually each company has a superpower. But after, let's just say, 10 deals, you've got all the superpowers, you know, and, and now your next deal, your 11th deal has 10 superpowers. Often you can improve that business dramatically, really fast, just 'cause you, you take that playbook. And the reason you can make that playbook consistent is 'cause you're putting your own people in to run it. This took me 10 years to figure out, but we would, we would back founders and then say, hey, we have all these great ideas. And the founders would just smile and write stuff down and never do anything, you know? And, and that's not that we don't love founders, but you can't, you know, You're not gonna buy a, a guy who's run a plumbing company for 35 years and be a, and then, you know, come in and tell him how to run his business. That doesn't work.
So Sam, sh— should we do Graham a favor and make him likable? Uh, because you're too hateable. You're happy, you're good looking, you're super successful. You're like, we just got this model that prints, this is amazing. And I'm gonna do you a favor here because that's the endpoint, but that wasn't where you started. Like the start of your story is You're mowing lawns in Ohio, listening to self-help tapes on a, you know, in your earbuds while you mow lawns to try to figure out what the hell you're going to do. And then I, my understanding, you tell the fun part of the story, but my understanding is you kind of in college bootstrapped this with credit cards and went through the financial crisis, a bunch of stuff like that. So can you, can you bring it down a notch and go to the, the part that makes us root for you?
Like what's, what's hard about this?
Yeah. Well, uh, first of all, thanks for the kind words. I appreciate them. But, uh, I grew up in a small town in Ohio, went to a public school, and it was a blue-collar town outside of Toledo called Perrysburg. Nothing special about it. And, um, I, I was, I was probably just average in just about everything, athletics, school. And this isn't false humility. I mean, this is actually, I didn't make the basketball team. I got cut, you know, from the wrestling team. I mean, I, I just wasn't, really, and I was, I was okay at grades, not nothing special. And just as you said, Sean, you know, I, I was mowing lawns and I started— the Sony Walkman came out and I started listening to tapes by guys like Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins and Earl Nightingale and, and guys like that. And so you're imagine you're like a 14-year-old kid and you're literally and figuratively brain— I'm brainwashing myself with this content because I listen to so many hours of it in the walking back and forth. And, uh, the two big concepts, the first concept they, that they said was you're either gonna be your own best friend or you're gonna be your own worst enemy. So you figure out you first, you know, like you think that the world's happening. Like for example, you, you think you got cut from the basketball team and you, all this stuff happened externally, but really it's, it's you, you know? And, and that was a very hard message to hear cuz I was like, wait, what do you mean? I had all these excuses lined up, like I wasn't tall enough and I hadn't started playing early enough and my parents didn't get me in wrestling early enough and all this stuff. It's like, nope, you don't get to have any of that stuff. You gotta— it's like, let— you gotta, you gotta get rid of all that and just, you gotta accept total accountability for your life. And that was absolutely brutal. And I realized they were talking about me and I wasn't doing that. And I was, I was exactly who they were talking about. So if the first thing is kind of get out of your own way, The second one was like, figure out what you really want. And I give Brian Tracy the most credit for this about like how to set goals. And I think he may be the best, you know, at least back then was the best in the world at setting goals. And so I literally would write down my goals every single day, multiple times a day in high school. And it was just incredible. The combination of those two things, it's like pretty undefeated formula, you know, get out of your own way and don't allow yourself to make excuses and then write down what you want. Be super clear. And then, and obviously you got to go do the stuff you write down. But that, that formula was like really powerful. And there was just something in me, I guess, that wanted more than what I had. And so I, so I just kept plowing through. And then, and then the story is definitely not even close to linear. I mean, everything you could imagine goes wrong, you know. I mean, I, I wasn't great at wrestling. I I cut a ton of weight in wrestling. I mean, I was 125 pounds at 6 feet tall. I mean, do, do that math. And then, and then with Alpine, I mean, our first fund lost money, drained my savings account. Uh, then we started clawing our way back, got smacked by the Great Recession, drained my savings account again. You know, it was, so it's, it's definitely not been a linear story at all, but I think the, this story is just one of like being clear about what you want. And then just this crazy amount of, like, persistence.
I love that. I want to switch gears and ask about AI. So what the hell? What are we supposed to do? You know, like, 5 years ago, if you— if I was advising my cousin on what to do, I'd be like, go study computer science. I mean, like, the technology curve is only going this way. Learn to code. You'll be— you'll be set. Now they're graduating and they're probably like, you know, yeah, hate their uncle now because Uncle Sean told them to go learn to code. And maybe that— maybe that's irrelevant. Maybe it's super powerful. We can't tell. Either way yet. And so there's all these kind of— there's all this uncertainty. I want to hear from you, kind of like, how do you see the world in the market? Like, where do you see opportunity? Where do you see destruction? And where do you see overhype? I want those three categories from you: opportunity, destruction, and overhype.
Okay, I'll start with overhype. How about that? You know, I was— I graduated from business school in '99, which was like— it felt like this exact time right now, but it was the dot-com era. That was the time when you had like petfood.com and Webvan and all this nonsense. I think the, I think there were 400 companies that went public and the only one that I'm aware of that survived was Amazon, maybe eBay. Um, but it was like, it was a bloodbath. And, and so people were right that the internet's going to transform the world. And look at us right now. We're on a podcast having, you know, over Wi-Fi.
And by the way, I can order DoorDash, uh, just like Webvan might've wanted to do Instacart, right? Even the idea might have not have been terrible, but the way they were burning money and, and, you know, that wasn't good.
And, you know, you think about today, I mean, your, your mobile phone and you think about like, imagine just your Wi-Fi doesn't work for a week. Good luck. You know, like that. So it transformed the world more than people could even imagine back then. But there was a lot of like false starts and hype that people didn't really know where to place it and they kind of misplaced it. I think that's kind of where we are in AI. And my example of, I'll just, just to back up, I think there's kind of 4 places you could play in AI. You could be in the infrastructure layer, which is really, you know, all the chips and data centers and energy. And, you know, that's a very exciting area. That's going to have growth for as long as we can see. Then the next is the large language models. There's really not a lot of those. So, you know, I don't know that you can really play there unless you're a big business and even investing in those. Like you're already paying a price that assumes success for those. So I don't think that's really that interesting. Then there's the app layer, which is where kind of all the, most of the venture money's going. And then there's the use case layer, which is you're a customer, you know, um, like a HVAC company and you're going to use AI. And I think, and, and, and that's, you know, that's why I think a lot of these venture firms are jumping into these AI rollups because they're realizing that the first 3 layers are kind of tough and they're going to play in that 4th one. But where the hype is, is the third one, which is the apps. You know, I'm gonna be an app that I'm gonna help law firms settle their cases faster. I'm gonna make call center software that's gonna allow you to not use humans, or I'm gonna whatever. I mean, there's a million of those applications. I think that's where a lot of the hype is. We, we see all these companies as vendors to our businesses. So we, they're, they're pitching us all the time, these venture-backed apps, and they'll have $2 million of revenue and a $500 million valuation and they're going to go to zero. Like they're going to be worth absolutely zero.
But a lot of them are— a lot of them are getting like huge revenue fast. Are you saying that you think some of those guys are going to also go to like— is it— is the churn going to be so high they're going to go to zero?
I think that you have to say like ultimately what's the barrier and what's the moat that they're going to be able to build? There are— there will be apps that will be successful, just like there were dot-coms that were successful, but they're gonna get attacked by above and below. You know, they're getting attacked below from the companies that can have now, they can build their own stuff. They're gonna get attacked also from the LLMs who are introducing interfaces and new products that, that are like literally just taking the business to some of these apps. So there's gonna be this constant pressure on them. I think if you can build proprietary datasets, which is harder than it sounds, um, or you can build really deep interfaces with your customers, which is also harder than it sounds. Those are, those are moats you can build. But really, I think sometimes what you're really, you know, you might be 6 months ahead of where the LLMs are going to ultimately go, and that you can make a lot of revenue for a short period of time. Again, use it going back to the internet. There was a ton of businesses in the, er, in the, you know, '90s where it was like, get your marriage license online. And those businesses made a fortune and they grew really fast. Hundreds, I mean, they were growing at 100% plus a year. They were until Google just absorbed all those rents. You know, it's like that. And that's a little bit of like the analogy of the LLMs, I think, absorbing a lot of the rent. So I'm not making a blanket statement that all apps are going to fail. I just think that's— you ask where I think things are overhyped. I think that's where they're overhyped.
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I think the reason that people are approaching the strategy is because they're probably seeing a little bit of what I was describing about the app layer and saying, gosh, I'd rather be the person using the AI than someone, you know, developing it. So I think that's why they land in these AI rollups. I think you gotta be careful. I mean, we've been doing rollups for 15 years and AI is a, a huge thing. It's important. Depends on the industry. Of course, some industries are, AI is a much bigger factor than others. But the other basics of like getting the talent right, getting the companies right, integrating, doing the transition management, having your workforce stay on, you know, doing training, recruiting. Those are really the core elements. The technology. I mean, here's probably a hot take. I think the technology in many, many industries is going to be, is going to be commoditized. You know, like, like I'll give you an example. I'll give you a real example. In property management, we happen to be in property management. I know there's been a bunch of AI-native rollups launched by venture firms in property management. What technology— like, what's their real advantage? Like, are they going to have technology that's better than anyone else? I, I would say the answer is no.
So what's the, what's the moat then?
Exactly. Like, the moat in property management is all the stuff I was mentioning before, you know, hiring well, building, you know, good, good cultures, retaining, recruiting. But the technology, at least in that particular segment, is going to come through the— I think the software companies are gonna— and, and so we're, we're all gonna have access. And this is, this is my take, you know, this isn't— I mean, there can be other opinions on this, but I think ultimately, I think most people are going to have access to the same technology. So it'll be a tool and it'll help everybody, but it's not going to be the thing, you know, it's not going to be like the real differentiator. Um, and so, so like, I, I still would go back to say, if you want to win in AI rollups, you got to win in all that other stuff I was saying.
Yeah, that makes sense. I think what some people are doing, which is not really the rollup part of it, but, you know, you go buy a property management company that does $6 million a year in EBITDA, and then you use AI to make the business more efficient. And now it's doing $8.5 million in EBITDA and you're priced at a 5x difference. You've created $10 million to $15 million of value just by like running it more efficiently. And even though another property manager might be able to do the same exact thing, doesn't really matter. Plus, most property managers are going to be slower to adopt AI than like you might be if you're really bullish on this.
I think that's the thesis. Like what you just described is the thesis. And we'll, you know, we'll see how it plays out. We'll see. Like, I'm sure there will be some people that execute really well and have some version of what you said. It probably won't be as dramatic. And then it's just like where the rents go and do that, you know, just how much that rents ultimately get passed down to the consumer. I don't know that you necessarily win on technology per se.
So you must get this all the time. If you're teaching at Stanford, I'm sure somebody's raising their hand and saying, hey, I graduate, you know, next semester. What should I go do? Like, where should I go? I'm a smart, hungry person who wants to be successful. You see the landscape and you know what's going on. Where should I be going? What should I do? What's the opportunity?
I would say if I were graduating right now, I mean, knowing everything I know now, I would go do a services roll-up because I know how to do that. It works really well. I think it, it, I think AI is a tailwind. I do that in an industry where you can build real moats and stickiness with the customers. Not all industries allow that.
What does that mean? Like services? You're talking about like pest control? What are we talking about here?
Like take wealth management for example. You know, if you go into that business, you're like, okay, well I'm helping people buy stocks or whatever, but what if You were helping people buy stocks and you were doing their trust and you were doing their taxes and you were helping them with all their estate planning and, and, and, and, and that's your, uh, moat against AI. It's old-fashioned stuff. It's, it's your moat against AI is like the deep, deep relationships with your customers. So I would say go into something where you can really build those kind of customer moats and then AI is nothing but a tailwind for you because Your customer doesn't care how you're doing your backend, you know, but I would just be playing around with that. I think it's like, it's gonna be a language that I would advise anyone, anyone, no matter what age you are, but it's certainly if you're a young, uh, student graduating, like you want to know that language extremely well. You want to speak that language cuz that'll also allow you to look at an opportunity and say, okay, I know I could do this with it because I'm so facile in these tools.
So I think so. Sean and I have both started companies and without sounding too like grandiose, I think that sometimes we view ourselves a little bit artisty and creative, more so than like good or even interested in like financial models and things like that. And, and because of that, I think it's partially because I was jealous and partially because it's true that I thought that PE was kind of nonsense. Not in the— I thought it was very effective, but I thought like, well, buying a company and firing a bunch of people, that's not the only value creation is that is for like the owners of the PE firm, not necessarily like the betterment of the world, which there's a million examples of why that's totally wrong. But I think what's interesting about you is you're sort of the antithesis of that where you're putting out this content that's quite soulful. And when I talk to you and when I see your talks, I'm like, this guy's got it. He makes me feel good. And yet he's in like the most soulless industry.
Because you got to be good at both, right? You must be great at the ruthless analysis of business and finding the levers, cranking out out that gross margin and doing, doing all of that stuff while still like clearly not getting, not, not becoming what the caricature that Sam's painting.
Yeah, you know, like if I had to keep it really simple, I would, I would say like, let's pretend for a second that I wasn't interested at all in being a force for good and I was just interested in generating returns. I'd run my business exactly the same way. A lot of it is for me is like, it's, it's having the confidence in building something that's going to be durable and enduring. So like, I'll use a real example. Let's say that I have this strategy. I won't use any names, but let's say I'm a software buyout firm and my strategy is I go into a business, I buy a software company, I fire people and I double price. I'll make money in the short term, but you look at a time like now where AI is coming like, you really want— the companies that are going to win in software have incredible teams that are on top. They're making, you know, agentic products on top of their software, and they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna have AI be this incredible tailwind for them. And, you know, if you, if you just destroyed your, your, your team and your cost structure, you're going to get attacked from, from both sides, from your customer side and from You know, the LLMs. So we found that building things, it's a lot more durable than ripping things apart because you can make like 1.5 times your money or maybe, maybe even 2 times your money ripping stuff apart if you're lucky, if you time the exit just right. But if you actually build something, time's your friend and it could be, I mean, you can make 100 times your money. And so like, I do think a lot of it is time horizon. I think underneath that is even deeper. Like, why are you in this business in the first place? Like, if your goal to be in the business is to make money and you want to do it as fast as possible, then, then maybe that behavior does flow from that. But, but in terms of just being good at private equity, I don't think ripping things apart— I don't think you're going to be the best in the world, you know, doing that.
What's the best deal you guys have ever done? What's the hero deal?
You know, we've had— we've had a few really, really good ones that rhyme with what I'll describe. But, you know, you picked the plumbing and HVAC example at the beginning, that's one of our best deals. I mean, we, we backed two people that we hired right out of business school. They joined our CEO in training program. They went through that program. They became the eventually the co-CEOs of the business. We bought a small plumbing and HVAC business that had like $8 million of earnings. This year that business will do $500 million of earnings.
How long, how many years did that take?
It took 6 years.
6 years to $500 million. You have to break that down.
$500 million of earnings, not earnings.
Yeah. $3 billion of revenue, $500 million of earnings. And, and we— I think importantly that that happened without us putting in any additional money.
Wow. So, so an initial buy of like, what, $30 million or something like that?
How much?
We put in a total of $50 in the first deal. We might have put in like that first year, like another maybe 9 or so that first year, and then that was it. Then we never put in any more.
What was going on? Was it that you just— you guys just went on an acquisition spree and picked up all the mom-and-pops, or was it that they weren't doing any sales? They didn't know— they didn't have a good website. Like, what was— what was missing that you guys added?
We got— we got fortunate that the third deal that we bought, we partnered with this guy. So the CEOs are named AJ Brown and Will Masson. And then the third deal we did, we partnered with this guy named Ira Pruitt, who was like the, the grizzled HVAC veteran and just this wonderful guy. He had 7 of his kids in the business and like, and he gave us a lot of the playbook levers. And then the next deals after that, we were adding to that playbook. So eventually we just ended up with this amazing playbook about how to run those businesses. And then we began that talent program we were talking about earlier where we started attracting a lot of incredible leaders. A lot of, not all of them, but a lot of them veterans. And, and then that allows us to go buy businesses that other people can't buy because like really the line of people that wants to go buy a $12 million revenue plumbing business in the middle of Louisiana that requires a management change is short. It's a short line.
You have to address this. So you just, you described one of the guys, I forget his name, as a grizzled HVAC guy, which in my head I have a, I have a picture in my head of what that is. So I Googled, so I looked up the company you're talking about is called Apex Service Partners, I assume.
Assume.
Yeah.
And I looked up Will Matson. Sean, go ahead and look up Will Matson.
And yeah, he probably looks like the opposite of a grizzly.
Will is a baby-faced guy. Honestly, he, he looks— and he might actually be 28 years old. I, I think he, he looks very young. And he worked at JPMorgan and went to Wharton and worked at McKinsey.
So the grizzled guy is named Ira Pruitt. And, and the combination of AJ, Will, and, and Ira's like Amazing.
So that's what I want to ask about. I want to ask about what makes this such a high-functioning team to go from $8 million to $500 million in profit. Teach me what makes such a powerful team and what attributes are needed in order to grow a business that fast. Because these guys look like the Fairly Odd Couple.
They are. They are an odd couple. So the combo in this, in this, in this particular instance, the combo is AJ is incredibly focused on the talent, and he's the one that rallies the Navy veterans and flies around and gets them excited. Will does the finance and the M&A and a lot of the holdco functions. And then Ira is the one that's like, hey, this is, this is how you actually run a plumbing business. Here's the playbook we got to implement. So that's what— how the combination works, what they all have in common. And then to answer your question, like what we look for in these leaders, Number one is just this white-hot will to win, and that's more important for us. We found that to be way more highly correlated than like, you know, any other factor— IQ or background or experience. But like, each one of these three in some version of their life has just demonstrated this crazy will to win. We learned this from a book called Who?, which was the sequel to the book called Topgrading. And it's about basically how to hire. And so we do like a 3-hour interview and you start with the person in literally like in high school and you go through yesterday and you're just walking through their background. It's kind of a conversation just like this. It's not, it's not super formal, but you're, you're collecting data on this person and you're, you're in, in AJ and Will's case, you know, you'll, or, or Ira or really any, anyone that had gone through our program, you know, you're just going to see example after example of like, hey, this thing went really wrong and it was a bummer and here's how I handled it. I got, I got up, you know, I plowed through, you know, I put my shoes, boots back on and I kept marching forward. And you're going to see that again and again and again. We always say like, if it'll leap out of that interview, like, and if it doesn't, then they probably don't have it.
So speaking of deciding what to do and a bunch of your talks, it's basically like I call it my rich life. It's like how to live a rich life. You call it an asymmetric life and you've done a bunch of different talks on similar topics. You have this cool thing called the genie question, which I forget exactly how you phrase it, but it's basically like, what would you do if you couldn't fail? And it's an exercise to basically get people to decide truly what they want, because a lot of people listening to this, Shawn and I included, were ambitious people and sometimes will be we only listen to where the— where's the money? Or where can I fit into some traditional sense of success? Along with a lot of your Stanford guys, they all think the same thing, like where fear talks us out of something. Yeah, like, I can't do that. Like, I was supposed to, like, go to business school. I got to go to McKinsey, then I got to do this. I can't do this other thing. So you have this question of like, what would I do if I couldn't fail? What would you say is the most common reason why people are really bad at answering that question?
So there's a few, a few things I'd say. First is I think people don't ask the question. So that's, that's probably 90% of people. It sounds crazy, but they never ask themselves, what do I really want? You know? And they haven't given themselves like the permission to even think about that. Or, or like, I think it's almost like the highest form of self-love is to trust yourself enough to say, I'm going to be on the path that excites me. You're asking why people fail. I'd say, so I'd start with people haven't given themselves the permission to even think like that. So let's, let's assume now you have done that, but I would say for your audience, like, give yourself that permission, you know, to re— you matter. Like what you, what you get excited about in this world matters.
What are some example answers to that question? You've obviously helped a lot of people go through this process. I assume it's at your— when you teach at Stanford.
I'll give you a couple just from my class in the last couple of years. Last year I had a student who's building a theme park in Dallas, in Texas, like literally a theme park. Let's give a shout out.
What's that called?
Yeah, I think it's called Texas Land. I'm not sure, maybe they haven't finalized that as the name, but, but that was her thing and she's going and doing it. I have a student this year who is— he is brilliant. He could go to any consulting or finance firm. He's going to India, um, where his, his family's from, to help them build free hospitals. And like, that is his thing. Like, it's super clear. That's, that's his answer to the question. I give him so much credit that he has the courage and commitment to go do that, and it's going to be very hard. But that's his answer. You know what you guys are doing? I mean, you guys are building a podcast that's like really helping people. And you can just tell from being on this podcast, you guys love it. You're having a blast like you're doing it right. I mean, you're, you're doing the thing that you follow that energy and gave yourselves permission to be like, hey, that's a good place.
And but I, but I almost hate saying it that way because I don't want people to think that there aren't doubts yelling at us or anyone who's successful all the time. Because I think in another talk, maybe the same talk, you were like, I do this exercise. And Alpine is a $20 billion fund. And I think you said for the first 14 years you thought it was going to fail or you weren't confident that— I forget the phrasing, but you weren't confident that it was going to be a home run.
Yeah, I think all of us have these like crazy limiting beliefs like that run through our minds all the time that are like beating us up with like, I shouldn't do this, I have to do this, I should do that, I might fail. Oh no. And the thing about that is that's very normal. Like, having that fear and those doubts is 100% normal. Everyone has it. It's just what, like, what do you do with that? And I think one of the things I try to help my students do is like, we have an exercise where literally we like spend an entire class writing all that down. Like, we like, like, empty your mind of all the limiting beliefs that are getting in your mind. Just let them flow out. Okay, I might fail. I might run out of money. This— no one might watch my podcast. You know, Alpine might not make it, AI might not work, whatever it is, write all that stuff down. And then, and then once it's down on paper, you've removed it. Like, it does the most damage to you when it's in your subconscious and you don't even realize you have it. So if you're, if you're walking around with some fear and you don't even know you have that fear, it just looks like inaction and paralysis, and I'm not going to go forward and I'm going to say stay stuck. But once you have it down on paper, let's say one of your things is I want to start a company, but I don't know how I'd pay myself or pay my loans or whatever. Okay, so fine. You— for if that's in your head, you're just not going to start a company. But if you write it down, you're like, you can rephrase and say, how would I start this business in a way that I could service my business school loans and still pay my rent? You know? And now that's a problem to be solved as opposed to a fear that is creating complete paralysis. And so I like the act of just going right at your fears, doubts, and limiting beliefs.
That's a— it's a great exercise. I highly recommend that. I also just think like the, the, you know, you have the blank page and like there's a lot of things you could do with the blank page because I think you said it right. I think 90 is low. Probably 99% of people don't really take the time to examine their life or think about what they really want and actually go answer that hard question. Because it's a lot easier to scroll. It's a lot, it's a lot easier to worry about what's going on in Iran and then what's going on in the market and what's going on everywhere else besides, you know, here. Because, you know, those are, those are arm's length away, whereas it's very, very personal to, to be here. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe 7 or 8 businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury.
Why?
Uh, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like, very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards, uh, one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com/personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and ColumbNA, members FDIC. For the person who's like, I want to build the theme park in Texas. Awesome. I want to build the hospital in India. Sounds great. I've been in that position before where it's like, I'm ready to have that answer, but I have no idea. And I'm kind of saying one out loud. It doesn't even feel right. I'm just making it up. Um, and I had to— I've taught myself to basically go through this process of sort of dabbling. Like, you know, just take this mentality of a dabbler. Like, how do I go and run either lightweight experiments or brainstorm or just not feel like I needed to commit right away, but like go try to see where the energy is? How do you advise people to— if they don't have the answer of, oh, this is the thing that would light me up, like maybe you don't even know, where do you go to figure that out?
Yeah, I love that. Well, here's any, here's one idea is maybe don't have one thing. Make a list of like 9 things that would light you up, you know, here. Okay. I, I think I'd like to go to India. I also think I'd like to start a podcast. Maybe I really want to, I don't know, become a DJ. You know, I don't know what, write down your things. And then like you said, you know, keep your day job and devote X number of hours a week to testing those things out. Maybe you're going to do some work on it, take some classes. You're going to start hanging out with people that do it. Maybe you're going to get trained. Maybe you're going to do podcasts and nights and weekends and see if it's as fun as you thought it was. And you're not looking there for— this is what I think is really important. You got to, you got to be careful that you're not going to get a false negative on the outcome. So like a student who says, okay, I want to start a company. So I'm going to spend 5 hours a week. This quarter and if I get traction, I'm gonna do it. Like, no, no, no, no, no. You, you're gonna get no traction. Like 5 hours a week. If, if you could build a business in 5 hours a week, like it wouldn't be worth building, you know? So it's not that you're looking for, like, does it light you up? It like in that 5 hours a week, was that the 5 hours you were looking forward to that all week? Or was that 5 hours where you were like, kind of like, oh man, I gotta do 5 hours on this thing. You know, like that's what I think you're looking for in those like experiments. Because by and large, if you are lit up and you— I mean, you plus being lit up plus a long time frame, there's very few things that won't yield to that. And that was me at Alpine. You mentioned, you know, it took 14 years for us to know it was going to succeed. Yeah, but I was fired up. I was willing to do it for a long time, and I was in it. I was excited. And like, most things will yield to that formula with enough time.
Was that right? In year 14, were you still like, eh, TBD if this is going to work? And what were the numbers? Can you say whether you— what your numbers were then? Because I would think you would— you were financially successful at that point.
No.
Well, we lost money on our first fund. So Fund 1 was 2001. We lost money. That means that—
how did you get a second fund? Yeah, exactly. You lose money on the first.
Well, we were, we were very transparent with our investors about what was going badly, what we were fixing, what we were learning. So they were very like, they were like, okay, we see you're on the right trajectory. You're transparent. You know, at one point that fund was marked at 40 cents. We ended up returning like 95 cents. So they appreciated that and they gave us another shot. Thank God, you know, and, um, but, but what I was going to say is, so we had Fund 1, was it, you know, we had that anchor for more than a decade because these businesses, you have to go in, you buy the companies, you run the companies, you sell the companies. It takes, probably 10 years, and then Fund 2 comes along. And so it was kind of another 10 years after that, after Fund 2, where we actually had some success, you know, where, where we could have the outcome of that fund, you know, proving out that it was working. And so that, that's the 14 years I talk about. But to give you the numbers, we were 14 years in, I want to say, managing maybe $200 or $300 or $400 million, something like that.
That sounds sensible, right?
It might sound like a lot, but we're trying to run an entire team and we have all these portfolio companies.
And well, let's ask the question. So we called the podcast My First Million, and yeah, we started— there was a tradition, we would always ask every guest when and, yeah, when and how did you make your first million? And we all— we like to really put that reference because a lot of times the answer was longer than people think. You try to get, you know, when you're 20 years old, you think it's going to be when you're 20 and a half, you know, you think it's right there, and it takes a lot longer. It took me— I was 30 when it happened. Took Sam, I think, same thing, 30, 31. And so it takes a little longer. And also we talk about How did it feel like? What do you know? What did anything change and what changed?
I love that. That's such a great question. All those are such awesome questions because it's so not what I thought it was going to be. So a couple of different ways to answer the question. One thing to be a millionaire on paper. It's another thing to have $1 million in the bank. Yeah, they're different. They're different feelings, as you guys probably know.
Yeah. One pays the rent, one doesn't.
Yeah. So I'll say $1 million in the bank because I think that's the— that's when I actually felt like I had $1 million. Yeah. And that was the— that was year 14. That was one week.
No shit.
That was year 14 of start. So I'm— I was 29 plus 4. So yeah, I'm in my 40s, I guess, when I— when I made my— actually had $1 million in the bank.
But to put that in context, by the way, that is pretty slow, love. Like having a— having like a PE firm, your job is to get good returns and to not having like that.
Well, yeah, I want to, I want to say what we had, what's called a European waterfall, which means we have to return all the money in the fund plus an 8% return before we take any profit. And so we had, we had to, first of all, Fund 1 generated no carry at all. And then Fund 2, we needed to sell. It was really the very last business in that fund that we sold until, until we got paid. So it was— that's what I was saying, like the part about paper on paper versus in the bank. You know, I was, I was a millionaire on paper before that, but actually in the bank it was, it was 14 years. But I want to, I want to talk about wealth for just one second. The interesting thing is like I felt wealthy way before that because my denominator is— has always been small. So, you know, like there's two parts of, of wealth. There's the numerator, which is what you make, and your denominator on what you spend. The biggest mistake— and this is something everyone who listens to this podcast can benefit from— the biggest mistake people make is the denominator. And they— so they, they go like, here's a perfect example: I really want to start a business, I'm going to go take this other job first. And then I'm gonna make some money, and then I'm gonna, and then I'm gonna start my business. Okay, that's what they say. Never happens. Because they go take that job, then they get a new house, then they get a new car, then they move to this other city, then they have kids, then they have kids' schools, then blah blah blah, and their denominator is keeping pace or even surpassing their numerator, and they're never feel— they're never actually feeling wealthy. And ironically, they're creating less freedom every year, you know, because there's fewer, fewer things they could do to maintain the lifestyle, and there's no way they could, they could start that business. And so probably like one of the most underrated things that happened in my life is my wife— I married my wife who was an elementary school teacher and made $18,000 a year pre-tax. And like our first apartment that I think was like $900 a month, you know, she thought it was the Taj Mahal, you know, and like So we never, I never really—
does the IRS just send you money if you're making $18,000 pre-tax? Do you actually just get a bunch of money every April?
That's awesome.
They literally should. They, they should. I mean, she would drive around for like 30 minutes to save, you know, $2 on parking. I was like, okay, well we gotta not do that. But, but, but that, so yeah, the denominator, I, so I felt wealthy way before that because I, I just had a big cushion between my, what I earned and my expenses.
So there's this story, and I don't think at this point that this is true, but it's Rubin Carter. Have you guys heard that song? The Hurricane Carter. Cane by Bob Dylan. Yeah, it's basically about a boxer who—
great movie too.
Yeah, it's basically a Black boxer who is incorrectly imprisoned for triple murder, and he didn't actually do it, but it was like a racist thing. And there's a story that's part of this that I— at this point, I think it's fake— where he was like, I don't belong in prison, and I'm going to take cold showers every day just to remind myself that this ain't home. I'm only here for a minute, but I'm going to get out eventually. And like I said, I don't think it's real anymore, but I heard about that story when I was like 15 years old. And so when I moved to San Francisco to like start things and like, I remember making a little bit of money sometimes and then I would go for long droughts where I wouldn't make any money because I was trying to start something. And I was like, when I— when the money comes in, I still got to take cold showers because I can't get used to this. I'm not out of it yet. And so I was always reminding myself, like, take cold showers. We're not home yet. Do not get used to this. But I remember there was freedom in that.
I love that. I love that. And the freedom part is so true, Sam. You know, like the steepest curve of utility with money was going from like, the first one was having peace of mind of like not having to worry if I had to fix my car or whatever, you know, some, some unexpected expense happened, but I've got money saved away and I don't have to stress. That was, that was actually very steep because that wasn't always true for me. You know, like my car would break, I'd be like, oh no, you know? And, and then the next, the next curve that was really steep was I have enough money to do what I really want to do with my life. I mean, how magical is that? Like, that's really where the utility— it's flattened out after that, you know? So that's really where the utility of money comes for me.
But when you're giving advice to your students, what do you tell them that number is? For example, some people say that like financial freedom is 25 times your annual spending. Some people have like— some people will say like, as long as you have 6 months of savings, like, that you're good. Like, is there like a, like a threshold that you—
Yeah, there is. I would say having 3 to 6 months of savings is level 1, which is like the peace of mind. Because then, you know, like I said, you have some unexpected expense and you're, you're fine. You don't, you don't lose sleep over that. You know, you don't have to decide if you're going to pay your rent or fix your car. That's like 3 to 6 months of savings. That doesn't sound like much. It's dramatic. It makes a huge, huge difference in your life. And then the next one, I think it's lower than that. Like when I say freedom, I don't mean like the like, okay, I'm going to live off the interest of my money I have in Treasuries. You know, that, that I'm okay. Sure, that, that's nice if you get there. But, but I'm not even talking about that level. I'm talking about I'm spending— I'm still working, but I'm spending my day doing something that I enjoy. That is the job that I want to have. I think that's probably 9 to 12 months of savings. It's not— it's not that. So I think both of those are really within people's grasp. People who are like, oh, I really want to get to the like, fuck you money where I never have to work or anything. And then what? You know, like, then what are you gonna— like, then what are you gonna do? And, and I want to go back to the other question you asked. Did it feel the same that you thought it was going to feel? No, it did not. So when I actually had wealth and I'd worked, and I go back all the way back to the lawn mowing and the— all the sacrifices I made and getting good grades and getting into the right school and then getting the job and then suffering through Fund 1 and then finally getting on the other side and then finally getting this big liquidity event. It was, it was like the most disappointing and like, it, it, it, cause, cause I thought it was going to change everything. It didn't really change hardly anything.
And, and like what was still there was like maybe the thing I'd been running from, which is like, I'm not enough, you know, like, well, so what, what, like, what career milestones, since everyone listening to this is interested in business, but it could, and family's too easy to answer, uh, but like what career milestone actually did move the needle on happiness? If it wasn't like a financial thing, is there anything else? Like, for example, you probably have hundreds or thousands, I don't know how many employees you have, whatever it is, like you've created like an institution. Has that made you feel good? What, what, what teaching at Stanford, what career milestone have you had that a listener can like be like, okay, that's like a cool idea on how he actually got happy via career.
Good question. There are two ways to answer it. First is you could— one answer is you're not going to solve an internal problem with the external outcome. So like, if I feel like I'm, I'm gonna be enough when, like, whatever you answer that with is going to be disappointing to you, you know. So that on, on that answer, it's, it you can't kind of get there with the career. And, and you, you have to— at least for me, I had to do a lot of internal work, therapy, coaching, journaling, um, meditation, and, and start to just like let go of this, you know, I'm not enough part. And that, that's, that's probably created more happiness and peace of mind than the, than the career. The— probably the career achievement that I remember the most, it wasn't even really an achievement. It'd be like my 3 partners and I up in Napa, you know, together working through something where I would just have the self-awareness to look around and just be like, wow, this is, this is really special. You know, these are people I really love. We're doing something we love and we created this together. And it— so it wasn't like a big wire came through or something.
It was more just like these little moments Can we get some secondhand smoke therapy from you? So, you know, you talked about like doing the work, kind of like internal work, therapy, coaching, reflection, introspection, all that good stuff. You know, a lot of people either haven't had the time or don't have the sort of guts, don't make enough time to do that sort of thing. But I think, you know, if they're listening right now, we can kind of benefit them. I remember we had Daniel Negreanu, one of the great poker players, come on the pod, and he told us Nothing about poker. I don't remember anything about poker, but I do remember he said the most impactful thing in my life was a mentor, a lawyer guy who I really liked. I thought he lived life well. He told me I should go to this event, and I went to the self-help event. I hated every minute of it, but they made us do this one exercise about, like, total radical accountability where you write the worst thing that ever happened to you and you rewrite the story where you are the cause of all of that thing and you own the entire thing yourself. You don't blame anybody. Rewrite the story. He's like, that changed my life. And so, like, you know, I almost secondhand got the benefit of going to that seminar, just understanding that principle, then, you know, then taking it and doing it myself. I'm curious, were there any kind of breakthrough, really important kind of realizations or exercises or questions or conversations you had anywhere along the way that we would benefit from?
Yeah, 100%. And I'll give you a couple things that I learned. So one is almost all your battles that you have are you against you. Like, it's true. It seems like this whole thing is happening out there and you're, you know, you're winning this or you're doing this and like, but you're— remember, all that stuff that happens goes through this filter which is called like the story you're writing about it. Then it goes internal and like you can, you can change it. The easiest part of changing your life is to change that filter. You know, it's, it's way easier than changing what's going on out there. It's a lot easier to change how you're interpreting it. And so you can either be your own worst enemy, or you can actually be your own best friend. And I can tell you that I was my own worst enemy. Like, I— it did— it almost didn't matter what was going on out there. I would look for what was wrong. I would have a bad story about it. I would beat the crap out of myself. And then I would tell myself another story, which is me beating the crap out of myself is why I'm successful. Total bullshit. Um, it was just what made me miserable. It's like running through life with your foot on the brakes. So one is just that awareness, like that, wow, I'm, I'm having more to do with my peace of mind, meaning success, uh, happiness than anything that's happening external. I think if you really think about it, you'll realize that's true. And then the, and then the formula for like actually programming, you know, actually changing that. I finally understood like in a simple way why to meditate and, and how to be, how to be, um, how to make it work and, and how to have it actually impact your life. So you go to the gym and you work your bicep and your bicep, you break it down, it gets stronger, and then, you know, it regrows and is bigger. So meditating is very similar. Except the muscle you're working is your, basically your mind and your, your self-awareness, your presence. So you pick your meditation, you're counting your breath, you know, that's simple one, right? You just close your eyes, you count your breath, and then your mind starts going off and talking about, thinking about whatever, you know, I messed up this conversation, or I should do this, or I've got tomorrow, I gotta do this, whatever. And then you notice that, and you, it might take you a while, but you notice that your mind just took off and you bring it back. Back to your breath, and you do that again. And then it happens again, you notice that, you bring it back. You're basically building this muscle. You're building a muscle. The muscle is like, I'm going to— two things. One, I'm separating from my thoughts. I'm realizing those thoughts that are happening aren't me. I'm creating this muscle of observing my thoughts versus just, you know, succumbing to them. And second, and even more powerfully, I'm building the muscle of being present. Like, if you want to have a great life, like, be present. Like, if, if everyone in the world was present and here, right here, all the time, and not in their head, like, people would be like in this great state of joy. Like, and so building that muscle of, of watching your thoughts coming back and being present, um, is the same muscle of being your own best friend because you're, because you, you're, you're, you're seeing like Oh wait, I see that this thing happened and I, you know, maybe I didn't answer this question really well. Or I could let that thought go and just be here, you know, and like doing that over and over.
Well, it's a great reframe, right? Because normally if you meditate and then you're, you're sucking at it, you know, your mind is drifting, you're not doing it, you're not having fun with it. You're like, I'm, I'm bad at this. This is not working. It's like going to the gym and, you know, you pick up a weight that those last 3 reps are hard, but you're at the gym, you know, oh, that's great. I did exactly the thing I was supposed to do. I was building the muscle. If I, if I just went and I did curls with a 3-pound dumbbell, like, I wasn't doing anything, then I shouldn't have even been here. And so reframing the meditation, the failure in meditation as more of, great, I'm building them, I'm building this practice, this muscle. I'm getting better at doing that. And how do I get better?
By failing at it.
Hey, can I ask you really quick before we wrap up about parenting? I saw that you've got 3 kids.
You blogged about how one of your kids went to college.
Do you do any of these exercises with your children? And at what age did you start doing that? Or were they like, you're my dad, I ain't listening to you no matter what?
All of the above. My kids are definitely like, you're my dad. You know, it's funny because in most circles, like worlds, I'm, you know, I'm a professor, I'm running a firm or whatever. At home, I'm— I get, you know, I have teenagers, like they're ruthless, right? They make fun of everything I do. Um, and, uh, I, I do it in a, in a way that's not maybe as obvious, but, you know, I'll give you a real example. It's easier. You know, my son was like trying to decide his— he had a really tough year his freshman year, and he was deciding if he was going to play lacrosse the next year because he had a tough season. It didn't go how he wanted, and it was brutal. And so, you know, we— I did an exercise with him, and we said, okay, said, okay, Blake, like, let's go through and talk about, like, I want you to play out your next 3 years as though you didn't play lacrosse. Like, let's go through it. Like, I want you to really, like, think through, okay, we get home from school, here's what you do, you know, here, here's where the cross season comes along, your friends are playing, you're doing this. Now I want you to go through, and you go through the season, but it's hard, you do this. And after that, he's like, I, I I definitely want to play lacrosse. Like, I know for a fact that's what I want. Like, by the end, you know, when I get done with my, my 4 years, like, I want to have gone through that. And so yes, I use these tools, but it's, it's more letting them kind of— it's in service of their, their lives. And, and it comes up more like as when they ask, almost when they ask for it, versus me saying, okay, it's Tuesday, we're going to sit down and do this. Having said that, my kids also watch— you know, your kids watch what you do more than they listen to what you say. And so, you know, my kids have goals, they work hard, they write down their goals, they, um, they try their best, I like to think. But I think a lot of that just comes from osmosis.
What, what about your employees? Because when I listen to your stuff, I listen to your stuff because I'm looking to change my behavior. Most people don't change their behavior, though. And you talked about hiring these, these operators, these like people who have these wonderful backgrounds and who have a track record to where they have this white-hot will to win. Are you able to change any of their behaviors ever when you hire someone, or are you looking for someone who already has it?
So I'm definitely not looking to teach someone how to be motivated or to care. Or to run through walls. Like, I can't teach that. However, we've bought 800 companies. I've been doing— I've been in private equity 31 years. We built some incredible businesses. So we have incredible frameworks and tools and playbooks that we use that have been battle-tested. And they're— if one of the things we're screening for is, are they— do they have a growth mindset? Are they open to learning? And so Our, if, if you look at our companies that we have in our portfolio, there is a pretty much a 100% correlation between how much of the playbooks they're running and how successful their businesses are. So they're coming into Alpine wanting to say, hey, look, I'm 32 years old. I want to run through walls, but I don't know how to run a business. Can you help me do that? And, and that's a great partnership because we have so many great tools. And now, now they will take our playbooks and they'll make them their own. So 5 years from now, they've added to it, they've, they've, you know, changed it, they've, they've, they've made them better and they've made them work for them. But, but we're definitely providing a lot of the foundation of like, here's some amazing tools. You know, like we have Kaizen projects we run, we have process mapping, we have a one-page planning, planning tool we use.
Have you ever published this? And can I have it?
Is this like Colonel Sanders' chicken recipe?
Yeah, I'd be happy to share with you. It's probably come through in some of my materials, but, um, but yeah, we've— I mean, we've, we've, we've definitely codified a lot of this and over the years. And yeah, I'm happy to, happy to share with you.
That's awesome, man. You're, you're wonderful, you know. I don't want to compliment you too much because I don't want to make you uncomfortable. But Sean and I have this— we have this joke where we call it the total man. We're like, you know, we interview all these amazing people. We've interviewed people who are deca-billionaires. We've interviewed people who whatever. And like, we're always—
19-year-old who just sold his company, you know, the whole spectrum.
The whole spectrum. And we're always looking for someone who's like this combination of a good parent, a good husband, a good business person, is interesting, looks like— seems like they have fun in life and is kind to one another. And I think you've checked a lot of the boxes and it's really cool talking with you because you— I think you're a good inspiration of what like a person should aspire to be.
Oh, thanks, Sam. That, that really means a lot. I, I really appreciate that. And I really admire you guys a lot. And I've— I really enjoy your podcast. And this has felt to me just how you said it would, which is just hanging out and talking about fun stuff that we all really are excited about. And I'm Really grateful you had me on. Happy to come back anytime. It's really fun.
Awesome. Thank you so much for doing it. Where should people— where do you want people to follow? Is YouTube kind of your main spot, or Instagram, or TikTok?
Um, yeah, probably, uh, probably Instagram, uh, and I mean, I'm on all the platforms, but, um, I'm Graham C. Weaver, uh, at— I think that's my— that's all of them. I think I'm the same per— same username at all of them. So yeah.
Well, badass, brother. We appreciate you coming on. That's it. That's the pod.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.
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