Summary

Kevin Ramsier, CEO of Sier Capital Partners and Rival Capital, shares his journey in the M&A industry. He discusses his background and the motivation behind starting his own business. Ramsier reflects on the importance of aligning personal values with business decisions. He shares his experience of buying and selling companies, including SWOT Environmental and Sage Integration. Ramsier also discusses the role of partnerships and relationships in finding deals and the importance of buying businesses at the right price. In this conversation, Kevin Ramsier discusses the due diligence process, deal sourcing, building relationships with sellers, and working with unmotivated sellers. He also talks about flexible deal structures, managing sellers through change, and maintaining confidentiality in deal discussions. Kevin shares insights on understanding seller goals, challenges of transitioning ownership, and handling disagreements and respect in partnerships. He explains how to select partners, evaluate potential deals, and assess financials and growth prospects. He also highlights the strategic competitive advantage in the greenhouse industry and the importance of capitalizing the business and preparing for headwinds. The conversation concludes with a discussion on partnership structure.

Takeaways
• Aligning personal values with business decisions is crucial for long-term happiness and success.
• Building relationships with family offices, private equity firms, and other professionals can lead to deal opportunities.
• Timing and pricing are key factors in successful acquisitions.
• Having a clear growth strategy and leveraging unfair advantages can drive business success. The due diligence process involves legal due diligence, insurance and risk due diligence, and quality of earnings due diligence.
• Building relationships with sellers is crucial for deal sourcing, with half of the deals being off-market and the other half coming from failed processes.
• Flexible deal structures, such as allowing sellers to roll equity and providing strategic guidance, can be attractive to sellers.
• Managing sellers through the transition involves understanding their goals, being patient, and providing support and creative solutions.
• Confidentiality is maintained through signing NDAs and emphasizing the importance of trust and respect.
• Understanding the seller's financials, growth prospects, and strategic competitive advantage are key factors in evaluating potential deals.
• The greenhouse industry offers growth opportunities, particularly in design, build, maintenance, and repair verticals.
• Properly capitalizing the business and preparing for headwinds are essential for long-term success. • Selecting partners requires finding complementary skills and personalities that align with the company's vision and values.

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Transcript:

Jon Stoddard (00:00.712)
Welcome to Top M&A Entrepreneurs. Today, my guest is Kevin Ramsire. He is the CEO of Sire Capital, Partners and Rival Capital. So right now, if you go to his website, he has got a portfolio of eight companies. And I'm just gonna guess at least $16 million minimum, at least in EBITDA. So welcome to the show, Kevin. By the way, we're gonna talk about how Kevin got here and what's he looks for and how he builds this and how he gets deal flow.

Welcome to the show, Kevin.

Kevin Ramsier (00:31.874)
John, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Jon Stoddard (00:34.52)
Yeah. So let's talk about this. I got to go way back, way, way back. Looking at your LinkedIn profile. You are in the Wesleyan, Ohio Hall of Fame for football. What position did you play?

Kevin Ramsier (00:47.938)
Yeah, I was a guard. I played offensive line.

Jon Stoddard (00:51.844)
Yeah. How does one get in the hall of fame for an office lineman? Is it the pancakes or what?

Kevin Ramsier (01:00.63)
Well, you know, someone said that I didn't give up many sacks, but I led the league in holding. So, you know, you've got to protect your quarterback at every cost. So.

Jon Stoddard (01:07.897)
Oh

Jon Stoddard (01:11.192)
Hey, that's a same kind of deal with Babe Ruth, right? Home runs, but let in the strikeouts. Yeah, so Kevin, Sire Capital, let's talk about that. Where did that start? How did that start? You know, why did you start it?

Kevin Ramsier (01:15.018)
Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Ramsier (01:27.506)
Yeah. So I think it was from an early age, John, I grew up not with a lot of financial resources. My mom raised me by herself in a small town in Ohio. And if you wanted something, you had to go out and work for it. So I started doing spare, mowing yards, everything like working for yourself, basically, because no one would hire you. There's not a lot of employment opportunities in a small, little rural town. But I went to college, got out and I

I got a job with a big investment firm called Invesco and I was there. Multiple success stories there, rose up the corporate ladder and 10 years later, I remember like it was yesterday, this was over 20 years ago, I woke up in a hotel room and I remember looking in the mirror, John, and I was like, I never thought as a little boy, I would be this financially successful coming where I came from.

I was also the most unhappy I've ever been in my life. And I was happier building my own little businesses on my own. And I always, I felt like I, I turned my back on that dream because I, I think this happens to a lot of people. I became a victim of my own success. And, um, and so I remember it like it was yesterday. I just decided I'm going to leave. I'm going to go buy a business and I'm going to grow it myself. Um, and so.

That was where it all started when I just made this realization, John, that I needed to do some, my core values change from doing everything I could for the company to the decisions I was going to make from then on out were going to be to build more freedom and happiness in my life. Those are still core decisions that I help make personal decisions on today.

Jon Stoddard (03:14.832)
Yeah. I gotta ask you about that time that you were looking in the mirror. This is almost sounds like a movie scene where the main character gets up in this hotel room. He's alone again. He looks at, I don't know if you're wearing clothes or not wearing clothes, but let's say you look in the mirror and like, it's a long time. It's just like time goes by. What are you, what are you saying to yourself? I just, I don't like, like the way I look or what's going on. Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (03:20.407)
Ahem.

Kevin Ramsier (03:25.719)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (03:37.663)
Well, uh-oh.

Kevin Ramsier (03:41.994)
No, it was more about how I feel. It was, I remember driving by businesses as a little boy sitting in the back seat and looking at all these businesses as I passed by. I'm like, what does that guy do? I'd love to, I wanna do that someday. I wanna own this. And I had got caught into, I think the education system at that point in time, there was no ETA. There was no really, there was no searchers. I was kind of.

Jon Stoddard (03:56.857)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (04:11.094)
just doing something on my own, that I wanted to buy something that was already existing. But it was a feeling that I had let myself down and that I did not want to be on my deathbed someday and have regrets and think, man, what could I have built if I would have had the guts and fortitude to go do this on my own? So it was a wake-up call for me.

Jon Stoddard (04:34.084)
Yeah. And what did you say about the decision? Did you say, I got to set a time for it? Cause that's the trap, right? We all look in the mirror and go, I don't like doing this, but I got to keep doing it. And you never do anything that go to the next thing.

Kevin Ramsier (04:40.419)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (04:46.111)
Right.

Kevin Ramsier (04:49.738)
Yeah, it was just a decision that I needed to treat finding a business like it was a business. And I was going to leave and I was going to find something. And I was fortunate to be able to do that.

Jon Stoddard (05:02.394)
Yeah.

And you're going to, and you said, I'm going to, I'm going to buy it or are you going to start it because that's another trap of, okay, I'm going to start.

Kevin Ramsier (05:10.258)
Yeah, no, I have always wanted to. I think what I learned is I can, I'm really good at something, getting something to the next level that's already existing. And I'll start, I had hair when I started this, this whole process. So yeah, it's been a journey, but I, uh, I knew I wanted to buy something that, you know, many.

Jon Stoddard (05:27.933)
It's like, yeah, me too, man. That's why we're here. Hahaha.

Kevin Ramsier (05:37.61)
Many successful business owners start out and they don't ever think that they would be as successful as they are and they get blinders on. And I wanted to find something that I thought would do well and if it was doing well in one small town, how could I take that to other towns across the country and to have the same success?

Jon Stoddard (05:55.212)
Yeah. And you'll, you'll leave this in Vasco. Did you already have something in plan or you just say, I'm going to go cold Turkey, cross the Rubicon, et cetera.

Kevin Ramsier (05:59.938)
Yep. Yeah, I had, there was a buildup there of me being curious about industries and opportunities and talking with potential partners and things like that. So I had some things in place that I know I wanted to do. So yeah, it was, I had a good vision and clarity around what I was going to do.

Jon Stoddard (06:25.604)
And you had the idea to, I'm going to bring in partners because of this to multiply my efforts or just help you with gaps that you didn't have the skills or talent for.

Kevin Ramsier (06:38.198)
Yeah, it was more of we're going to buy the first business I bought was with a partner and we went in and we kind of divided and conquered duties and grew up from there.

Jon Stoddard (06:47.768)
Yeah, what was that business?

Kevin Ramsier (06:50.618)
It was called SWOT Environmental, was the first one that we bought.

Jon Stoddard (06:52.98)
Yeah. And I'm looking at your website by the way, it's sirecapital.com. For partner companies, SWOT, you've exited that company. How long did you own that?

Kevin Ramsier (07:06.202)
Oh, that's a good question. We, we originally franchised it, went across the country and then we, um, I exited a portion of that, uh, about all in all it was probably 10 years, 10 years running, yeah.

Jon Stoddard (07:20.216)
Yeah. So let's talk about how you bought that cap stack that offers everything. Because usually when I talk to people on this podcast, it's like that first company always is the template for the next one because they make all the mistakes. They write their SOPs in place and then they kind of take that to the next one. How did that go? Tell me.

Kevin Ramsier (07:33.974)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Ramsier (07:43.978)
Yeah, so we bought, we found the seller who was a retired individual who really started this as a hobby and it grew beyond his control. And he was like, I need help growing this. And it was in Michigan, it was in Lansing, Michigan. He had lived in Florida and wanted, he had, his wife had moved to Florida after retirement. So they had a condo there. He wanted to move down there.

And so we literally met in a big boy restaurant and closed the deal over a conversation. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. It was a good, it was one of the best breakfasts I've ever had. It was a great deal. We, we helped him get out of the business and enjoy his retirement. And then, you know, he had a handful of employees that we, that we brought over and then we grew up from there.

Jon Stoddard (08:15.888)
I love big boys.

Jon Stoddard (08:32.4)
How did you finance that? What did that, you brought your own money in? What did that?

Kevin Ramsier (08:35.318)
Yep. Yeah, we brought our own capital to the table there.

Jon Stoddard (08:39.387)
Okay. And did you pay 50%? How much did you put down on that business? Cause a lot of private, let's say private equity, look for 40, 50% of equity into some debt and then a rollover.

Kevin Ramsier (08:46.987)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (08:51.882)
Yeah, so we paid him. He carried a seller note and the rest we paid in cash and then we paid that seller. It was a five year term, but we ended up paying it off in like six months. So yeah.

Jon Stoddard (09:05.74)
Yeah. What did you learn about... I got it. Why did you sell it?

Kevin Ramsier (09:11.962)
Um, it was a private equity firm ultimately gave us an offer that was, you know. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (09:17.308)
Too dumb to refuse. Yeah. And how did you grow that? I mean, you say, you said your talent was finding companies that are already at the one position and going to two to four versus zero to one.

Kevin Ramsier (09:27.435)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (09:31.542)
Yeah, I always think in every business we have, we try to find what's our unfair advantage here, like what can we, what do we do differently than other people and how do we, how do we lean into that heavily to, to grow the business? And, and so I think we were, and I think we still are today. We're really good at sell marketing and sales. And I was fortunate enough to have a partner who at the time, this was a long time ago, who really embraced.

Google and this was a home services business. So we were popping up on every zip code that we offered services in and we became the number one player in the industry pretty quickly.

Jon Stoddard (10:10.328)
Yeah. And who did you put in position as general manager or did one of the, that partner sit in?

Kevin Ramsier (10:18.346)
Yeah, that partner was really involved in, uh, we build a custom technology. He was involved in overseeing that and then getting the phones ringing and making sure that the salespeople were doing their job and closing and saying the right things and not over promising. But, and then I was in charge of like making sure that we operationally, that we, we had all of our ducks lined up.

Jon Stoddard (10:40.612)
Yeah. What kind of, I get curious about the multiple that you paid for that versus the multiple expansion that you created and what the private equity purchased it at.

Kevin Ramsier (10:52.702)
Yeah, it was a significant difference. It was, we didn't buy it for a lot of money, but we sold it for quite a bit. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (11:00.792)
Yeah. And that time, how much did you grow it? Did you say?

Kevin Ramsier (11:06.409)
Um.

Kevin Ramsier (11:10.834)
It was.

Kevin Ramsier (11:14.326)
Well, we were in one town when we bought it and when we sold it, we were in 34 states. Yeah. It was large.

Jon Stoddard (11:20.516)
Oh, okay, that gives me an idea, yeah. And that was a franchise, right? And you sold it.

Kevin Ramsier (11:26.518)
We did franchise it. We had company-owned locations. We had a franchise operation as well. And then, you know, we kept some core states and markets that we wanted to operate corporate.

Jon Stoddard (11:38.528)
Yeah. And this partner you mentioned, you sounded like that, is he still with the company or is this a different person?

Kevin Ramsier (11:46.034)
He stayed on for a little while. I don't, he's no longer there.

Jon Stoddard (11:49.408)
Okay, so how did you come back around? Okay, your second company? I'm cool What was that?

Kevin Ramsier (11:56.202)
Yeah. And so the second company I bought was a company called Rescon. It was out of Colorado and it was in the restoration space. We brought on, really supported a management team to come in and grow that business. We raised additional, that was the first time that I've done this. We raised additional funds. We raised about 60 to $70 million to go out and make acquisitions in the space.

And so we basically did a roll up in that space and that business is still an operation. So it's still existing.

Jon Stoddard (12:32.152)
Yeah. And that's still under your portfolio. So, uh,

Kevin Ramsier (12:34.858)
Yeah, we got diluted a lot because, you know, those are lessons learned. There's things that, you know, I look back and there's things you would do differently, but they came in and with every acquisition we would get more diluted. So not really actively involved on the board. We aren't in that business, but it's been a good investment for us.

Jon Stoddard (12:54.692)
Yeah. And is it throwing off kind of like the Berkshire Highway that throws off free cash flow to you, a percentage of it, at least of what you own?

Kevin Ramsier (13:03.03)
And that business, it does not. So typically when we structure these, we will take on, you know, we'll get a couple of turns of leverage on a business. We pay that down pretty rapidly. Today, most of our deals and not all of our deals are on our website. We need to update that, but it will have a lot of sellers stay on and roll. And we've had a lot of success with that of making their next check.

bigger than the one that we gave them.

Jon Stoddard (13:35.064)
Yeah. By the way, I'm going to take a second here and bring up your current partners. Can you see that on the screen? Yeah. Rescon. So how big is Rescon? Rescon's, I mean, this type of a niche service is really big today and the franchising.

Kevin Ramsier (13:42.718)
I can, yes.

Kevin Ramsier (13:54.646)
Yeah, that one has grown primarily through acquisitions. The rest are more organic, the other portfolio companies, but that was the one where we went out and bought, in some cases, larger players than we were at the time. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (14:09.656)
Interesting. And you had a private equity or a lender say, here's 60 million to work with. That was debt. Say we're ready to provide you debt or...

Kevin Ramsier (14:21.398)
Yeah, it was a combination. They came in with, with both. Yep.

Jon Stoddard (14:24.796)
Okay. And then you've got professional management. They're running that. How do they, how do you create this relationship with the professional management? It's like, you know, don't come to me or come to me anytime you need, or what does that two-way communication look like?

Kevin Ramsier (14:44.514)
I say, Rescon's a little bit of an outlier because we don't control that business. Most of the other ones we do. And in the case of like 58 or Sage or others, we have, when we first buy a business, I think it's important, we'll create an organic growth strategy that we want to deploy over 12 to 18 months. And during that timeframe, we're on weekly calls with the CEO and the management team and the stakeholders.

So we do weekly calls with them and we help them. We're really good at opening doors. So we help them grow the business by introducing them to the right people, but also solve problems. We want them to bring, this is the thing that I'm struggling with right now. If you were me, how would you fix this? So we wanna be very supportive to those teams. And then after that timeframe, we'll do bi-weekly calls with all of our management team and we'll maybe move towards a little bit of...

getting interested in smaller acquisitions as tuck-ins are add on.

Jon Stoddard (15:46.22)
Yeah. So let me go back to that conversation you have. Do you start with an imperative? We need to grow 30% or say, and then work backwards. How do we get there? Could be through organic growth, some in M&A.

Kevin Ramsier (16:02.002)
Yeah, we kind of try to win the battle before we go in. We're working on one right now where we've just closed in our due diligence. We've closed over seven figures in sales for that company. So hopefully we close on it. But so we will make sure that there is a, at a simple level, we want to, we want there to be greater demand over the next five years for this product or service than there is today, and we want to have a very detailed plan of how we're going to go out and capture.

that growth and then some. And so, you know, it's all relative. Our typical company is our average kind of company that we're buying now is probably a six to seven million of EBITDA. And our last transaction was much larger than that and the prior one was a little smaller than that. So we're really focused on first people. Can we find the right people that we can back to go in there to grow this?

And then the industry, like, is this something that we really believe in? And there's growth here.

Jon Stoddard (17:07.704)
Yeah. Let me ask you about the people. Are you talking about people that can grow, you know, some of your players are regional players, and then all of a sudden you want to go national on this to get the growth. Do you have a group of people that you go to all the time and just bring in their marketing thesis and apply it?

Kevin Ramsier (17:20.098)
Hmm?

Kevin Ramsier (17:29.706)
Yeah, so we have a bench of really strong operators that we talk to on a regular basis that are looking. We kind of help them. We get Deal Flow on our own. We'll pass along to them and share those. They bring Deal Flow to us. We help them think through that and help them do diligence and help them communicate with the sellers and write the right offers. We just coach them along through the whole process and then we come to the table with the capital stack that they need.

Jon Stoddard (17:55.472)
Yeah. How deep is that bench? How many conversations do you have to have? So, hey, we got a new project. Are you interested? And they go, no, I got three kids in college. I can't do it. And because they're graduating and...

Kevin Ramsier (18:01.302)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (18:10.514)
Yeah, look, we've had hundreds of conversations and of those, I would say we've got 25 to 30 really strong, we would say leaders that the challenges early in my career, I moved many times to go build a business and support a management team. And you just don't, it's very difficult to have, you know, we've lost opportunities before because we have a, we have a great business in Tampa.

with a perfect ideal operator in Connecticut, but they don't wanna move. So that's one. And I think the other dilemma is, I think a lot of searchers wanna go after smaller deals. And oftentimes I speak out of both sides of my mouth here because I did a smaller deal and that's why I don't have hair. The first three years were extremely difficult there.

getting it up and running and making sure that things were going well. But I just think there's a lot more safety in larger businesses and we're not coming in and asking people to personally guarantee any of these notes. They're backed by the business. The business is big enough to handle that. So, and that we can pay those people what they deserve and give them some carry and give them great equity consideration and they become a partner of ours.

Jon Stoddard (19:29.708)
And that was just to trial and error your evolution. If you're thinking there's less risk in a bigger business than a smaller business. And to all players, I mean, investors, well, equity, debt and operations, yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (19:38.742)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (19:42.11)
Absolutely. But it's a different mindset. It's hard to get someone to think, I'm going to have a smaller piece of a much bigger pie or I can have the whole pie, but it's a small one. And I'm not saying there's pros and cons to both. Absolutely. But I think everyone in their head has this balance between security and opportunity. And if we can balance that out for each individual and say, you're going to...

make what you deserve to get paid. And then here's the upside. It comes with some equity and some other benefits that come along with wealth building.

Jon Stoddard (20:18.968)
Yeah, I'll give you a perfect example. I have a student right now just going through my courses, just looking at a landscaping business in New Jersey. And it's only throwing off $280,000 in net or kind of EBITDA. He would have to put down a 68% loan to value for the SBA loan. And he's still very concerned about the personal guarantee on that. Because the recourse is like, they're gonna go after your personal assets. I mean,

Kevin Ramsier (20:39.82)
Yep.

Kevin Ramsier (20:43.404)
Yes.

Kevin Ramsier (20:47.838)
Absolutely. Yeah, it's a valid concern.

Jon Stoddard (20:48.568)
If it goes south, especially, yeah, the smaller the business, the riskier it is. Yeah. So what was the third business that you purchased? And I want to just go back to this. I'm going to pull up your partner companies here because I like looking at this.

Kevin Ramsier (20:53.798)
right.

Jon Stoddard (21:13.2)
All right, what was the next business, the third business that you bought?

Kevin Ramsier (21:18.562)
So we bought a business called Sage Integration that we currently own. That's been a great business for us. Sage does security integration. So any technology around security, whether it's facial recognition or security cameras, access control, drones, anything like that we do for a lot of public utility companies, large corporate headquarters, gunshot detection, stuff like that.

Jon Stoddard (21:22.363)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (21:44.886)
And unfortunately, when something gets in the headlines, the demand for those services go up. And so that business has grown dramatically. And that was a business that we actually partnered with a family office on. We brought a family office in that was strategic for us and got us, helped us open up some doors and helped us think through how we're going to grow the company. And then we ultimately bought them out. And

Jon Stoddard (21:59.611)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (22:13.506)
We still own that business.

Jon Stoddard (22:15.128)
Now, when you went to them, was it, it was too big to bite off or what was the reason for bringing them in?

Kevin Ramsier (22:24.354)
So we have a lot of family office relationships. And occasionally, if it makes sense, strategically, we will invite them to come in and invest with us. And this was the case here. This business had some hospital clients, and we thought that was a good case for us to go do security at hospitals as well. And

and this family office had an extensive network in the hospital space. And they came in, they came in invested with us and did very well.

Jon Stoddard (22:57.752)
Yeah, that sounds like a little bit of a helpful advantage or unfair advantage to say, Hey man, I got access to a lot of customers that fit your perfect profile. Great. You want to come in. Yeah. Where do you find all these deals? The Rescon, Sage, Integration, 58. Where do you find them? How do you?

Kevin Ramsier (23:02.445)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (23:06.474)
Yeah, exactly. That's right.

Kevin Ramsier (23:17.822)
Yeah, there, I would say over my career has been spent on calling on centers of influence. And so I've had tons of relationships with family offices, with other private equity funds, with CPAs, financial advisors, these people that have trust relationships build around trust with sellers, with business owners. And so...

Jon Stoddard (23:45.818)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (23:47.03)
And then there are some regional M&A firms that will reach out to us with specific deals. And then our network of operators, we teach them where to go in their local community to build relationships and, you know, we want to be an option. If they run into a deal that is too big for them, bring it to us and if we like the deal, we'll make sure that it gets done.

Jon Stoddard (24:07.86)
Yeah. What are your expectations about the timing on it? Is it more like, you know, not just going to biz by cell, finding a deal and you go through this. It's like, hey, I'm planting an apple seed. It's going to be about a couple of years before that bears any fruit.

Kevin Ramsier (24:23.914)
Yeah, I wish I could put a specific timeline on it, but I think we've been, I've talked with an operator that we loved and three months later we had a deal under LOI and we've got folks that have been looking for over a year and a half and just haven't found the right thing. I think it's a, depending on the industry and the size and the location restraints,

If someone is very wide open and is willing to look at a large geography, I think that they can slim that number down significantly.

Jon Stoddard (25:02.692)
Yeah. What are your rules for buying? You know, if you look at, read that book, that great book, eight unconventional CEOs, they never overpay. Nobody overpays. What are your rules about, will you? And I just remembered a quote that Warren Buffett talked about buying Dairy Queen. He said, we weren't going to pay over $28 million. Now seeing that it's a multi-billion dollar company, I may have, if I've seen the future, I may have paid a little more.

Kevin Ramsier (25:12.001)
Right.

Kevin Ramsier (25:23.254)
Yeah. Ha ha.

Kevin Ramsier (25:29.758)
Sure. Yeah. No, you obviously, I think it's never what you buy, it's what you pay for. A lot of that, and I have a partner now, Adam Althaus has been my partner for almost 10 years, and Adam is really good at structuring and he's just a phenomenal partner. I couldn't ask for someone better. Part of our thesis is we want to get great returns for ourselves and our other stakeholders, our LPs and the management team.

And so the biggest part of that equation is making sure that you buy them right. And you structure them the right way. So, um, Adam joined, joined me almost 10 years ago and about four years ago, we brought on Aaron and Aaron was, um, uh, went to, went to Wharton, got out, worked for a big investment bank and we had met Aaron and he just brings a level of kind of financial acumen when we buy a company.

and look and do our due diligence. He has been instrumental on helping institutionalize our business.

Jon Stoddard (26:33.164)
Yeah. Do you, does he do the due diligence or do you outsource that to an organization?

Kevin Ramsier (26:39.838)
Yeah, we'll outsource it to a few firms, but he leads it. He does a lot of the qualitative checks and balances on the third party's information. So we will do the legal due diligence. We bring in a law firm. We do insurance and risk due diligence with another firm. And then we'll do quality of earnings with typically the same firm every time.

Jon Stoddard (27:03.768)
Yeah. So a lot of most of these deals are, are they off market or possibly on market through Woodbridge or generational?

Kevin Ramsier (27:13.214)
No, we've never bought anything from a group like that. We have bought from a regional investment. We honed a company called Integrated Laboratory Services in that, I'd call it health tech space. And so we bought that and then sold it for a great return. And that, we had a lot of, I would say, specialized investment banks that were in that space that would reach out after that transaction and say, hey, I got this one, take a look at it.

Jon Stoddard (27:42.297)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (27:42.326)
We ended up buying another business from one of them. But typically these are, I'd say half of our deals are off market deals and the other half someone ran a process and didn't like what they saw. You know, I look at our companies now, we just had this conversation. A lot of them said no to us at first, like it wasn't the right. They didn't think it would be the right fit, but.

build a relationship with these people. And we've got hundreds of companies like that in our database that we just keep tripping on. How's it going? How's everything going? So, you just never know. Timing is very important in all of this, as you know.

Jon Stoddard (28:21.496)
Yeah. What does build a relationship with these at the moment, unmotivated sellers? What does that mean? I mean, do you're.

Kevin Ramsier (28:30.526)
Yeah, I would say, I don't know if unmotivated is the word I'd use. I think they know they're getting ready to sell. They know that they probably should. They have a vision of what they want to do other than what they're doing now, but it's timing. And look, we lose more deals that way than we win because we actually help them. We'll help them think through it. We'll help them think through, look, if you really want to take this to market, here are some things that you should think about.

And in the case of one of our companies, even ILS, we were told no, and we ended up buying it and partnering with the seller who became great friends and now invest in our deals with us. And L.L. Klink, the same way, they were going to a strategic and we came in and they wanted to maintain some equity and they didn't want to go with a bigger competitor or a strategic buyer.

So they came to us and said, what if we could work out a deal that did this? And I think one thing that we bring to the table for sellers is the flexible structures that we offer. We are very, very flexible. We don't have a fund. This is our own money and our LP's money. So when we come in, we can think really creatively about solutions to get the sellers to where they wanna be.

Jon Stoddard (29:48.152)
Yeah. And could you give me an example of what that looks like to, you know, profile of a seller? He, he doesn't want his fingers in anymore, but he wants to make sure that you guys are maintaining quality of the company. But is it a second bite of the apple kind of thing or what is it? Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (30:04.491)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (30:08.306)
Yeah, our most successful ones are second bites of the apple world. They'll roll 15 to 30% in some cases, right? And, and they know they need to institutionalize the business. They need an ERP system. They need to expand to another geography. They're getting asked by clients to do things. And, uh, I always say this because it reminds me, they started 35 years ago with a ladder in the back of their truck and never thought they'd be making 5 million bucks a year in profit. You know, like.

Jon Stoddard (30:15.451)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (30:37.326)
They built this business up and now they, and 95% of their net worth in many cases is in that business. So what do I do here? I can take some chips. I still believe in this business. I need a team to come in and help me think through the next phase of this. How do we quadruple it from here? How do we go to other markets? I need someone to help me think strategically through that. But I also need to probably take some chips off the table and plan for my own retirement.

Jon Stoddard (31:06.564)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (31:06.594)
So we've been really successful with structures like that.

Jon Stoddard (31:11.085)
How do you manage the seller? This is the same guy, the guy that was at a truck and a ladder, and now it's a $5 million EBITDA business, right? And then you come in with a whole bunch of pencil pushers and say, hey, we need to do this and this and this, and they adjust to that rapid change. How do you have that conversation and help them through that?

Kevin Ramsier (31:36.107)
Well, I think success breeds success. So having these sellers talk to other people that we've done this with, who will vouch for us and say, these are stand-up guys, they do exactly what they say they're going to do. I've enjoyed my relationship with them. They took my business from this to this and here's where we're at today and where we're going. And I've never been more invigorated about the business now. So in many respects, we have

Lots of people now that can do this, that type of selling for us, like, Hey, call Joe. He'll tell you what we did with his business. And that, that's our most powerful attribute, I think, for a seller is talk to other folks, talk to the handful of other people that we've done this with. So that.

Jon Stoddard (32:19.404)
And you set those meetings up, say, hey, call this guy. Happy to talk to story. And he goes, yeah, hey, it's so and so from a company, talking to Kevin and, oh yeah, yeah. So when a deal, I wanna go back to like the deal flow. When you have the centers of influence and somebody says, hey, I got this possible, guys looking to sell. He's just mentioned a couple of conversations. And how does that go about? Because sometimes there's a,

Kevin Ramsier (32:27.594)
Yeah, we do that a lot.

Jon Stoddard (32:50.277)
a wall of confidentiality that, you know, seller doesn't really want the CPA to be talking about that he's having a conversation selling or a wealth manager, right? How do you have those, breach those walls of confidence?

Kevin Ramsier (32:52.738)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Ramsier (33:03.51)
Well, we typically always sign an NDA, right? And let them know that I think it's also imperative that I've been on that side of the table before as well. Like I know how important confidentiality is. I've been through the emotional rollercoaster that you're going through right now or that you're about to go through. Selling a business is the most important decision, financial decision you're probably gonna make in your life. And so...

It's not always about the number that's on the check. It's also who signs that, right? Like you want to make sure that this is your baby that you've built and you want to make sure that you're handing it over to the right people. And so having third party validation of that, having people that we've worked with, whether it's a financial institution, another seller, another management team, having them talk to that person about our capabilities and how we handle situations like that is important.

and then signing an NDA and then getting, we never jump right into, tell me about the business. It's mainly the initial conversations are about, tell me what got you here and what you wanna do in five years from now, what do you wanna be doing? And how do we get you there? Like that's my goal is how do we get you to that spot? So your blissful five years from now, this is where I wanna be.

Jon Stoddard (34:21.989)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (34:29.226)
Let's work backwards. Here's what we can do for you if you're open to it. And so we start the conversations with really all about them. And that's the most important thing, is how do we help them get to where they want to go?

Jon Stoddard (34:41.964)
What do those buckets usually look like? Hey, I just want to be spending time with my grandkids to I want, you know, an X dollar number, like $10 million in my bank account. Cause I like looking at that number in the bank account, whatever it is.

Kevin Ramsier (34:51.115)
Yeah.

Yep. You know, John, it's a good question. It varies. We've had people, the one we're working on now, he's like, I still want a significant piece of this business. It's here. I just, I'm not capable of managing a larger team and expanding this out. Like help. I need someone to come in and help me with that. And they, many times these owners, if they could take a step back off the operational world.

take everything you don't like to do and let's let us take care of it. We're going to bring people on that can handle it. We might not always get it right and we'll make quick decisions to fix it. But let us work towards taking those things off of your hand. You say you like the one instance that we own a company called the Sage integration, the seller on that business had three big accounts that he loved working with and he wanted to, he wanted to.

spend most of his time with those big accounts getting more business from them. And we're like, why don't you just handle those? You're the face of the business to those accounts. Make sure that those people are happy, bear hug them every day, do the thing that you enjoy there. And we're going to bring a support system behind you to grow the business and bring on new accounts and, and to grow the business. So, um, it has worked well. Again, it's being very flexible around what they want to accomplish.

Jon Stoddard (36:15.308)
Yeah. Well, I want to get back to that part because a lot of, you know, when you start selling your company that somebody's grown over 20, 30 years, they, you know, they have their tentacles in everything and an ego with this. But to grow a bigger company larger, they got to have systems and processes in places. And sometimes those intersect and creating friction. How do you like say, hey, give us stuff you don't like, but

He doesn't really like giving it up that much. He's not really giving indication. He wants to give it up, he just said it, but he doesn't.

Kevin Ramsier (36:51.286)
Yeah. I think you need to be very clear on the outset with these folks is that here's the, this is where we're working towards. This is what we want. We want to, you've already agreed we need a new ERP system that does this, this and this. We need to be able to implement that. And that change can be very disruptive and perfect progress does not exist. There will be mistakes that are made, but you got to know all of us have this vision in mind. We are going to get this right. We're going to get there.

You have to be patient with us. And along the way, I was in line one time and this lady said this to her children and I've used it ever since in like board meetings or something and she said, she was saying this to her kids, she goes, disagreements are fine, disrespect is not, right? So this goes both ways. We can have disagreements, we're going to and to prepare them to say,

once we get something wrong, we're going to fix it. And you're going to do something that we don't like as well. Like have a understanding. It is like a relationship. It is like communicating with a spouse. You have to be transparent. You have to over communicate. And you know, you have to show grace sometimes.

Jon Stoddard (38:06.04)
Yeah. Oh boy, that's hard, isn't it? Easier said than done. Let me ask you about that because disagreement and disrespect and that it's a big, you know, you remember that, you heard it, you remember it and you use it. So it had to happen sometime where you had to confront somebody that was maybe subversive or what was it? You know, the example I give,

Kevin Ramsier (38:09.22)
Yeah, yeah, easier said than done, right?

Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (38:30.68)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (38:35.116)
a student that we were looking at a $6 million software company. And I said, looks cool. Looks great. It provides some kind of software to the O&G industry. They always pay their bills. They're never going to go bankrupt, et cetera, but 90% of your clients are this. But he had six people that were related by marriage or DNA in the company. I said, that's going to be difficult because if you have a bad month and

Thanksgiving or Christmas happens, there's only going to be one talking about one person and that's you. And that may not be good. So how do you handle that if you do see signs of disrespect that you classify?

Kevin Ramsier (39:17.95)
Yeah, there's a rule here where we just won't work with jerks either, right? Like at some point you have to put a line in the sand and say, and this happens, I think, occasionally with negotiating LOIs or purchase agreements or, you know, it's the details that matter and you can get into some very critical conversations that can get heated. And I just think I've used that line a lot, like, you know.

Jon Stoddard (39:23.609)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (39:46.586)
where you can disagree with us, but we're never going to disrespect you. And we expect the same, something like that. And, you know, we've had to, we've had to pull the plug on some deals because ultimately it was a good thing too, because you want to work with people that you enjoy working with. And, and if someone's intolerable, there's no way you're going to spend the next three to seven years growing a business with them, because it's challenging enough without working with jerks.

Jon Stoddard (39:51.865)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (40:11.524)
Yeah. Life's too short for that. Yeah. L- let me go back to the lead flow and you get this deal from some of these in centers and influence, and then you have this conversation, you sign NDA. And you know, th- I kind of imagine they're not a hundred percent sure that they're selling yet, but they say, I'm happy to share the financials. What, what did they share with you to say, okay, it's over $2 million EBITDA. We, we kind of like the deal. We're going into a pass or pursue, right? Let's pursue.

Kevin Ramsier (40:13.847)
That's for sure.

Kevin Ramsier (40:41.61)
Yeah. So they obviously they'll share tax returns and financial statements, stuff like that. And we will ask as well, like what is, what's some of the problems right now that you're facing with and where do you think, what's a reasonable, give us a narrative of if you had everything at your disposal, where do you, what would you do with this business to grow it?

And having conversations around that, get them thinking about, wow, like we could do this, and this. And then we come with ideas and good questions about what do you think of this? And they're not always right, but we'll come with our own questions to say, Hey, we have a relationship with this. Would that be a meaningful new client for you if we could bring something like that on board? And, and we'll talk through that, but to get them to, to get them first, to be transparent about where the business is about.

the challenges the business is facing, the reasonable growth prospects, and then for us to get them, if we like the business, for us to get them excited about working with us.

Jon Stoddard (41:46.744)
Yeah. And what filters do you put on to say, hey, we like the business. It's definitely 2 million EBITDA. We, let me go back to your partner companies and why you do this, our focus.

Kevin Ramsier (41:58.358)
Mm-hmm.

Jon Stoddard (42:02.622)
I like people looking at the screen the same time I'm doing it.

Jon Stoddard (42:09.78)
All right. 2 million EBITDA, which sounds like you do a lot more than that today. Reoccurring customer base. So that Sage is probably definitely reoccurring. History of revenue growth. What does that look like? Are you talking about 5% a year? Is there some kind of threshold?

Kevin Ramsier (42:20.962)
Hmm?

Kevin Ramsier (42:29.514)
No, there's no threshold. We do want to see some consistency there. If there's big ebbs and tides and you know, we go through COVID and you see a lot of these adjustments made. We just, we want to make sure that we're seeing stuff that is real and a reasonable growth rate. Um, we definitely like to see, although, you know, if you look at over the last five years on a business and maybe they had one year where they, they.

tried to do something that didn't work or something like that, we know we factor that into it as well, but you definitely we don't want to see volatility in the top line.

Jon Stoddard (43:06.508)
Yeah, it's consistent. It's not fluctuating, you know, 20, 30, 50% per year. It's just consistently in and out. And supportive tailwinds. What do you, can you give me a definition of that? I mean, I got a sense of that, but like it's an essential product or service. People need it. It becomes part of what, like I was having a conversation with somebody the other day about purchasing a,

Kevin Ramsier (43:08.568)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (43:12.078)
Correct. Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (43:38.128)
some Amazon delivery services, like the trucks. And I said, well, I would consider that an essential service today, because you can't get away with it, and it just keeps growing.

Kevin Ramsier (43:41.73)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Ramsier (43:48.522)
Yeah. Well, we use some third parties for this as well to make sure that the industry is growing. But I think if you look at most of our portfolio companies, there's an unbelievable narrative of the industry growing. LL Clink is an 80, 90 year old company that designs, builds, and maintains massive greenhouses. If you look at the data in that space, there's going to be more greenhouses over the next decade than there are today.

It's one of those things now since we've owned that. Everywhere I go, I see a greenhouse now and it's something that I never would have noticed. There are a lot of them. They're everywhere. And the ability to build the highest customized greenhouse in the industry has put us, given us an unfair advantage of not being beholden to one specific manufacturer or one type of greenhouse, being able to provide a custom solution that we can build.

and then come in and regularly maintain that and upgrade it. And then if something happens in the event of a storm or a fire or something like that, we can replace and build, which we do all over the country for insurance companies.

Jon Stoddard (45:00.476)
Let me ask you a question about this greenhouse solution. So I'm just, I don't know a lot about it. I can't speak any authority, but I grew up in a small town in Wilcox, Arizona, and they built a greenhouse as the Dutch came in and built greenhouses to grow tomatoes. And they made some really robust grow tomatoes and they killed the market for about 10 years, but they, then everybody else started doing it and they lost that advantage. What are you talking about here?

Kevin Ramsier (45:05.794)
Hmm?

Jon Stoddard (45:30.844)
to.

Kevin Ramsier (45:32.182)
So you think every big clients of ours are universities, institutional greenhouses. So we just built Ohio State's greenhouse. It's one of the largest, most complex greenhouses in the country. We're doing several other universities that kind of put us on the map and we're able to grow and showcase that. And now you get a handful of universities that have some of the top greenhouses in the world.

Jon Stoddard (45:37.984)
Oh, okay.

Kevin Ramsier (46:00.378)
And to remain competitive, other universities have to do the same. And they're starting to reach out and say, you know, if we want the types of students that are coming to some of these other universities, we have to have the correct and the right facilities. So that's a big client. We do a lot of design work. We have a whole design team of architects that will, if you think about the technology, it would blow your mind. It's not just a greenhouse inside these greenhouses, measuring the humidity and.

the water supply and what's in the water, what are you feeding, what chemicals are you putting in these plants or whatever you're growing. And every industry is a little different. And then suppliers, like there's large grow facilities that supply to like the Lowe's and the Home Depot's and others of the world to their nursery centers. And they are massive large industrial greenhouses. And we're not building the small greenhouse that you might go buy marigolds at to put in your garden. We're building massive, pretty large structures.

Jon Stoddard (46:57.58)
Yeah, by the way, the greenhouses were bought by cannabis companies. Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (47:02.25)
Yeah, yeah, that business is a, it was a big part of the business. It slowed down. There was a little bit of an oversupply in that industry, but it's coming back. Yeah. Exactly.

Jon Stoddard (47:11.076)
Just a little bit. I mean, based upon my shares of stock in this company that helped do an acquisition for are worth freaking zero right now. It's an OTC company, so.

Kevin Ramsier (47:23.658)
Yeah, it's been challenging. That's been a

Jon Stoddard (47:26.552)
Not pretty. Let me ask you about that strategic competitive advantage. When you put a pitch deck together, investment analysis, and you're going to go out to syndicate it to your investors, it goes, so what's their strategic advantage? And you said putting greenhouses in for universities because there's just a lot of money and they build big and whatever. How do you dig and

the number of questions you have to ask to find these strategic competitive advantage for each of these companies that you look for. I mean, to me that is like, that's the Colombo, right? You keep asking, just one more question. Just one more question. Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (48:03.69)
Yeah. Right. No, I think in many cases, in most cases, they already have it. Like LL Clink, for example, and Sage and all that. They had this. They had in-house the capabilities. The world just didn't know about it. Like you've got to scream at the mountaintops and that's marketing, right? Marketing and sales are completely different in my eyes. Marketing is getting your right...

customer, the ideal customer to raise their hand and to say, hmm, you know what, raise their eyebrows a little bit and say, tell me more. That's marketing. How can you get those people to raise their hands? And sales is then building relationships with those people. And so we are just good at that. We are really good at coming in and seeing what the business does really well, telling the right customers that story, and then asking for large commitments from those people.

Jon Stoddard (48:58.3)
Yeah. Let me ask you about that thesis because you see it, you come in and there's an opportunity, but sometimes you look at these businesses and you pass on it because they they're tapped out on their thesis. Like, well, nobody else is buying green. I'm just saying this, like nobody else is buying greenhouses, right? It's a great business. Lovely. 5 million, 10 million EBITDA, but we're tapped out unless we go international.

Kevin Ramsier (49:11.284)
Mm-hmm.

Please.

Kevin Ramsier (49:23.594)
Yeah. Well, in that case, there are really three, I'd say four primary buckets. So we try to categorize these growth verticals. And in the greenhouse space, it is design. There are sometimes companies will come to us and say, hey, we're thinking we got to go to some board to get this approved, but we don't have the designs. So we need to design a state of the art greenhouse.

So we have people that just do that sometimes to help facilitate a budget meeting or something to get approved for this, which in many cases leads into us bidding on the actual work. We know it better than anyone else. And the second bucket is build. So we have a design, a build team, and then we have a maintenance team. These things break down in GreenNet. We have to come in and do audits and check on all of this stuff and make sure that everything's working correctly and to sign up a service agreement with these firms.

And then a big part of our business is repair, right? A tornado comes through somewhere and one of the first things to go down, they're not the most stable structures, right? These are plexiglass and metal frames. They can come down pretty easily. And in many cases, the, sometimes the crops inside these buildings are worth more than the building. So the insurance company wants us to come in and make sure that we protect those crops. So we have crews all over the country that come in and repair those. So.

getting comfortable with each of those verticals and what's our message in each one and how can we grow them significantly and operationally how do we support that is, you know, these are fun challenges. So, you know, I think it was one of your other podcasts. I forget which one I was watching, but you're asking, you know, what are challenges or something? And, you know, I think that I was told at an early age that problems don't age well.

Right? Like you've got to, if you see something, a problem, you got to fix it. But I also think that there are, there are really two types of challenges. There's good challenges and then there's bad challenges for us. We want to create a bunch of good challenges. Hey, we got a new customer or sales are up 50% year over year. We need to add more to me. Those are good problems. We have to solve good problems. The bad problems are, are we going to make payroll in two weeks? Right.

Jon Stoddard (51:46.618)
Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (51:47.358)
You want to make sure that we, there's always going to be problems, but how do we create more good challenges, the ones that are really fun to work with.

Jon Stoddard (51:56.256)
Yeah. Let me ask you about that because making payroll, not all businesses have, you know, sales going up all the time. What do you guys put into place like a constitution? This is like a constitution you put them in place. Like this is what we do if we're heading towards some headwinds, not tailwinds, but to headwinds. What do you guys do in that case?

Kevin Ramsier (52:06.318)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Ramsier (52:21.354)
Yeah, well, I think you've got to think through that on the upfront. Like how do you properly capitalize this business? And there are a lot of great resources for that legal and everything else to help you think through and we've been able to do a good job. We've, we're buying these businesses, right. And we're buying them in industries that are growing. So, and they're large enough. Now, early on in my career, we did have, there's liquidity issues and concerns.

our business was growing and it all looked good on paper, but all that profit was in to buy new trucks or expand to a new market. Yeah, we became like this financing company that is like, we are growing at a record pace and we have to fuel that growth. These companies are big enough to avoid that, but you still want them to be properly capitalized, right? And have funding backups, lines of credits and other things in place that your...

Jon Stoddard (52:50.724)
Going back to more capital. Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (53:15.294)
that your support team, your lenders and your investors and everybody believes in, that we're gonna put this much capital to make sure that if things go sideways, we're gonna be able to get through it.

Jon Stoddard (53:27.313)
Yeah. Let me ask you about this partnership. How do you set this up now that, you know, Kevin's in the spot, then you brought the other guys, Adam, at a later date? How do you set up that partnership?

Kevin Ramsier (53:39.646)
Um, so Sire Capital Partners is just us three. It's, it's, it's myself, Adam and Aaron. And so we are, we're all partners and we.

Jon Stoddard (53:49.452)
Is it like 33 or is it kind of a bigger slice for because you were there started?

Kevin Ramsier (53:54.72)
It doesn't work out to that degree, but Adam and I are equal owners and Aaron just came on in the last four years, but he still has partnership in all of our deals and he's a vital part of our business.

Jon Stoddard (54:03.513)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (54:07.877)
Yeah.

So let's kind of, I'm kind of running out of time here, but let's fast forward from that moment. This is like, I'm making a movie and it's a script. You're not in a hotel room anymore. You're living at home and you look in the mirror, what is Kevin saying to himself today based upon the decisions he made, you know, 20 years ago. 2002 was when you guys started Sire Capital. Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (54:16.972)
Yes.

Kevin Ramsier (54:23.432)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (54:36.778)
Yeah. It's in many aspects, John. It seems like it was yesterday and then it seems like it's been 50 years sometimes, you know. But I am proud of what we're doing and what we've built and the journey we've been on. I think I always push to want to do more. We don't do, we do a couple deals a year. We're not doing 20 deals a year.

Jon Stoddard (54:46.011)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (55:02.224)
You don't have a mandate to do three or five. You're just doing good deals. Two to three a year, yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (55:06.142)
Yeah, we flip over a lot of rocks, kiss a lot of frogs. We find really good deals that we have high conviction in, and we roll up our sleeves and help them grow. And so we're at a cadence now where we'll have exits and then we'll do a couple acquisitions. So we're at a really good cadence. I'm really proud of what we built. And I was in Adam's wedding. I think I was the oldest guy ever to be in a wedding, but he...

I told my wife if we got married today that those two guys would be in my wedding and they're just like my family and we work really hard together and we have fun. We laugh every day, sometimes at each other, but we have a lot of fun and I think that's important.

Jon Stoddard (55:38.906)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (55:52.452)
Yeah. Let me ask you about that. How you select a partner, because it's, it's easy to have conversations on zoom or over the internet, but you don't really know a person until, you know, sometimes they used to say, I used to hear this, like, you don't know a lot about a person until you had some drinks with them or you been in battle with them, right? Cause you could see who their real personality is. Yeah. How do you push that to

Kevin Ramsier (56:12.834)
Yeah.

Jon Stoddard (56:19.672)
you know, find that and see that and go to a point where he said, I'm, I'm inviting you to my wedding. You're in my wedding. Right.

Kevin Ramsier (56:26.026)
Yeah, I do think you have to go through battles with someone too. And I've known Adam for a long time and watched him and his career develop. And Adam, Adam would be a partner at some private equity firm today if he wasn't with us, you know, like he, if he wasn't my partner, so it was a no-brainer for me to bring Adam on. He is like, Adam is one of my mentors.

Right? Like he's 20 years younger than me, but every day he teaches me something. And I respect him so much. He is, I always say smarter, better looking and younger than me. And he brings a different perspective than I don't have. And Aaron does the same thing for both of us. Aaron has more fine financial acumen than Adam and I stacked on top of each other a hundred times, like he, he really helps reel us in. Sometimes Adam and I can be like, we.

I think I can make everything work, right? And Aaron.

Jon Stoddard (57:26.514)
You're a sales and marketing guy. Just like there's nothing that sales and marketing can't fix, right?

Kevin Ramsier (57:28.043)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think we can make it work. And Aaron was like, hold on, he'll reel both of us in and make us kind of take our blinders off and see the real, the bigger picture. And to me, that's the making of a great team when you compliment each other.

Jon Stoddard (57:48.444)
I don't know if you're a trackie, but that's who we used to like watching the old Star Trek where Captain Kirk would ask the intellectual, then he'd ask the emotional guy Spock, then he find out what Scottie could do. And it was just around the horn. Gene Roddenberry to me was like a genius. Yeah. Well, Kevin, I want to thank you for spending time with me. I'm already up on the hour and I think I go more, but thank you so much for being on Top M&A Entrepreneurs.

Kevin Ramsier (57:53.035)
Yeah.

Kevin Ramsier (58:04.108)
Exactly. Yeah, that's funny.

Kevin Ramsier (58:16.098)
John, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Jon Stoddard (58:21.58)
Stop!