- Tracy, having built a business from 40 million, you mentioned from 40 million to
200, and then deciding to sell, what were kind of some of the decisions? Why now?
I mean, there may have been business decisions that made that, but was there any
overriding thought process around valuations, marketing in general that kind of
prompted that, or?
You know, as the previous panel was talking, when it's hot, you got to jump, and
so we had the Carlisle, so my company was owned by Warburg Pincus first,
and then we grew to from under 40 to over 100 million, and the Carlisle group came
in, and we had another private equity group come in because of an acquisition that
we had done, and it was the hot market, it was the right time, But it was such a
great asset that Warburg -Pingas didn't want to just give it up completely, so they
continued on. So I completed my term. You know how you get golden handcuffs?
Mine came off at the end of last year. So my sweet spot is actually growing mid
-market companies into larger ones. So the company, I'm still invested in it, but
it's still running. So we're holding longer. This is why I was talking about the
longer hold. So we're looking at how can we leverage a lot of our operational
efficiencies, how we're using AI in it in order to be able to gain that premium
multiple, but I expect we'll be selling soon. Any particular advice you'd pass along
to some of the families here who might have private equity holdings, they're not so
sure about them, write it out, or in general, what were some great lessons that you
learned from that? I think the great lessons that we learned is that there's always
operational efficiencies that you can find. You just have to go and look for them.
And that is a way that, you know, you were just talking about, right? You need to
have great cash flow. You need to be looking at how are you going to be able to
ensure that you've got good profitability. Look for those. And I think it's worth if
you hang on just a little bit longer and find those that you'll get a better
return.