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Heights of Victory with Peter Kirsch · Heights of Victory

0:12
SPEAKER_02: And leaders from across the region.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: You can expect to hear stories of success with left of diversity and resiliency, which would be paired with hard work in the little West Texas grid culminate in the heights of victory.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Heights of Victory.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Jeff Horn, the CEO of Mass Rider Capital.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: And for today's episode, we have my good friend Pete Kirsch with Blue Marlin Partners out of Washington, D.C.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: We're going a little outside the West Texas area today.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: Bring in a trusted uh partner, one of MRC's partners that uh we occasionally invest in in uh in companies with.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: And uh really think a lot of Pete been to three of their conferences uh with Blue Marlin.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: They run a great organization.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: Pete has made it all the way down to Lubbock, Texas.
1:05
SPEAKER_02: And so welcome to the Heights of Victory, Pete.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me, Jeff.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Long way from Washington, D.C.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: It's a little it's a little different here in DC.
1:13
SPEAKER_02: Little different.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: So anyway, we like I said, Mass Rider Capital started working with Blue Marlin nearly four years ago.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: They've got an excellent team of 26 professionals, uh, almost a billion dollars in assets uh under management and capital deployed, and they're just doing a fantastic job and I think work with over 32 platform companies today.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: So, but before we're gonna talk a lot about Blue Marlin and the different investments and all of that here in a bit, but we always started to talking about backgrounds and all those.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: And so, Pete, where'd you grow up?
1:49
SPEAKER_01: I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: I was born in Wisconsin, lived there for 12 years.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh my dad worked for the government.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: We moved out to the DC area and pretty much grew up in Northern Virginia, but was born in Milwaukee.
2:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: What's and and you know, give it, you know, out here, you know, you experience the four seasons of the year in West Texas, a lot of wind, but it's hot in the summer, and you know, it's it gets cold occasionally, but like I envision Milwaukee is like it's really cold, a big part of the year.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: Cold and snow, you know.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm that guy who walked to school in three feet of snow and bare feet, you know.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: But no, it's uh summers are great in Milwaukee.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: They got the lake front in Michigan at Lake Michigan, and so we did get the season, but when it's cold, it's really cold.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: How big of a town is a city is Milwaukee?
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, boy, population, I couldn't really tell you, but I, you know, I went back to Marquette there, so I really, you know, obviously I liked Milwaukee.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's probably one of the cleanest towns, good Midwestern people.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: So I get back there still very often to see a lot of my old friends.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: So what was it like being a young Pete Kirsch?
2:56
SPEAKER_02: What what what were you doing?
2:57
SPEAKER_02: What hobbies were you, you know, were you playing sports?
3:00
SPEAKER_02: You know, tell us a little bit about your childhood.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm an old guy, so back then we did a little bit of everything.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, um when I was in Milwaukee, you know, you had to ice skate, you had to play a little bit of hockey, was terrible at it, was a terrible ice skater.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, I remember uh one day my my mom was curious as why I couldn't ice skate, and I was wearing two left ice skates for about a year and a half trying to ice skate.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: So that was a problem.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: And um, but no, um I grew up, I grew up, I had a great family.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: My dad worked for the government in Northern Virginia, um, Joseph Califorano at HEW.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh my mom was a nurse in in the DC area and at Fairfax Hospital and Arlington Hospital, and had a great child, had three sisters, you know, did sports, you know, did baseball, football, basketball, did track, um, was pretty average at all of them.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, but like like all of us did at that at that age at the time, we we did a little bit of everything.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: What do you take most from your childhood and and maybe specifically like what you maybe have taken, you know, during your life from your f mother and father?
4:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, my like I said, my dad worked for the government.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: He he was uh he was a PR guy um out of Marquette, which is one of the reasons I went back to Marquette, um, other than I love their basketball uniforms.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: Um but he worked, he grinded it out.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: He was always trying to have a side hustle, um, had a great woodworking business, um, had a great cabinet business.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, he owned a little retail store with mopeds at one time.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: So he had a little entrepreneur in him, but was he was a government guy for most of his career.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: My mom, when we left Milwaukee, moved out to the Washington, D.C.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: area, she went back to school.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: She raised us and spent her um spare time at night going to nursing school.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, six years later, part-time nursing school and raising uh family of four, she became a nurse and uh loved it.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: And like I said, she became um head nurse at two hospitals in the Northern Virginia area.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: I know that meant a bunch to you, her perseverance and willingness to adapt.
5:10
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna hear a little bit about your career.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: There's been a lot of adapting.
5:14
SPEAKER_02: It sounds like your dad was an entrepreneur as well.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: So it sounds like you're kind of a good mix of both of them.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, as as much as he had that steady job with the government, he always had side hustles.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, but there was probably, you know, I I I'm a big believer that you might not know when you're growing up, but you're watching your parents.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, now that I have three kids, I kind of look back and go, God, they were kind of paying attention every once in a while.
5:40
SPEAKER_02: Hope my kids figure that out someday.
5:43
SPEAKER_02: It's like, you know, dad, maybe he's not so full of markets.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: They're paying attention, you just don't know it.
5:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you don't know it.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: So, well, you already talked a little bit about why you went back to Marquette University, but but um, you know, you I know that they're they're still important to you today.
5:57
SPEAKER_02: You follow them every year and all that.
5:59
SPEAKER_02: So tell us a little bit about your your love relationship with Marquette.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was really cool because um, you know, my grandparents um on both sides, my mom and dad, they're they're from Wisconsin too.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: So they live there.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: So I went back and um my grandpa had just died.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: He was a cop back in the day, probably one of my heroes, uh, walked the beat doing prohibitions.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: So I was really close to my my uh my grandma and grandpa.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: And I go back to Marquette and stay in the freshman dorm, meet a bunch of my knucklehead buddies who are still some of my closest friends today.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: And my grandma adopted us.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: So I, you know, we went to Marquette and we'd go to my grandmother's house on the weekend and she'd make us ham salad and she'd do our laundry.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: And so she became, you know, the grandmother to my freshman dorm.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: So that was my that was my memory of just getting to Marquette.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: I kind of had a leg up because I had I had family there already.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: So that was pretty cool.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: Um and then just a great, great college experience, right?
7:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, was not a very good student, you know, it was a communications major because it's an easy way to get in and out of college, hopefully.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: And I was a solid B minus, C plus student.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, lived with a bunch of journalists, and my one of my roommates um became a dentist.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: And um, it was just a great experience all around from my freshman year to my senior year.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: Oh and I grant and to my parents' surprise, I got out of there in four years.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, that's that's awesome.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: You know, when you were talking to us about your grandmother, you know, I don't you don't know this, but like my dad's mom, my my grandmother played a huge role in my life in a different way.
7:37
SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, I could I could really sense how much of an impact she really did have because you talk so fondly about that time and how much she really did for you back then.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was it was awesome.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: And she didn't do it just for me, too.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: She she was the grandmother to probably eight, nine, ten of my my my buddies at at Marquette.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and we when I get together with them once or twice a year at a Marquette game, there is at least one or two times where we're we're talking about my grandmother and what she did for us.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, get a good laugh.
8:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm sure they have all have the same affinity and all that as well.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: It's just it's awesome.
8:15
SPEAKER_02: What made you want to go into communications, be a communications major?
8:19
SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: So um, and again, I guess I was paying attention.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: My my dad, Marquette grad, um, journalism major.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: And his first job was in public relations working for Evan Rood Motors in Milwaukee.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: And he was a PR guy and a communications guy.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, maybe I watched a lot of Bewitched and like Darren Stevens and the whole advertising world, but that's what I liked, and that's what I wanted to do.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to write.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be, you know, a guy who promoted things.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: And um, it's interesting when I graduated, I went back to the Washington, D.C.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: area and failed miserably getting a job in public relations.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: What I quickly learned was public relations and public affairs are two very different things.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: And public relations didn't really exist in Washington, D.C.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: So I fumbled away around there.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: But um I just I just like promoting things and talking to people, relationship building.
9:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:18
SPEAKER_02: You're great at it, by the way.
9:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I appreciate that.
9:21
SPEAKER_02: Seeing a lot of the interviews you conducted and you know how you handle people and and all that.
9:27
SPEAKER_02: You just you can really tell that you're polished in that regard.
9:30
SPEAKER_02: So tell us a little bit about how you, you know, you you you met your wife Patty at Marquette.
9:35
SPEAKER_02: Y'all been married 37 years.
9:37
SPEAKER_02: How'd you get introduced?
9:39
SPEAKER_02: Give us a little bit about the story.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: I didn't meet my wife Patty at Marquette.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: I met her the first year after Marquette.
9:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
9:45
SPEAKER_01: And my wife and I tell two very different stories about um about the first or second date.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: But it um the first date, um, we actually met at a party and um we had a conversation, and then about a week later we met.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: We we literally bumped into each other in a bar.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: And she might write you a letter after I say this, but um, I asked her out on a date, and the small PR firm that I was working for, um, we were we had four tickets to the Neil Diamond concert.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: And I asked Patty to go to the Neil Diamond concert, and she went and she thought I was a you know a massive dork because I was gonna take her to a date to the Neil Diamond concert, age 23.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: And I know for a fact she passed up or canceled a date with a doctor to go on a date with this dork to the Neil Diamond concert.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: That is a great story.
10:41
SPEAKER_02: That is a great story.
10:42
SPEAKER_02: So y'all get married and you get started with your professional career.
10:47
SPEAKER_02: And why don't you tell us about the start of your career and and and what you started doing?
10:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, so again, try to get a job in PR.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: My first job was selling alarm systems in around the Washington, D.C.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Beltway.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: And I thought I was really good at it.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: What I quickly learned was the model was was was broken.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: Um I was making$17,000 a year and I had a$150 gas stipend.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: And the model for Beltway Alarm Company, the company I was working for, was to give away the alarm systems.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: So I was really good at giving the alarm systems away to the retail stores, and they were going to make everything up on the monitoring fees with these alarm systems.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, that cash flow model didn't really work.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: And about a year later, the business was out of business and I was out of a job.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, I found my way to a, I don't even know if they still have these anymore, but a temporary personnel agency called Personnel Pool.
11:46
unknown: Yeah.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: And back in the day, you know, you would have secretaries, now administrative assistants and receptionists who, when they were on leave or on vacation or called in sick, you needed temporary help.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: Some of it was legal help, some of it was receptionists, et cetera.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: And um I got a job selling temporary services.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: And my territory was downtown Washington, D.C.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: And again, I was pretty good at it.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, for the first couple of months, I met a lot of people and I was selling a lot of temporary services, meeting, you know, secretaries and administrative assistants to use us to be their temporary personnel agency.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, one day I walked into a very small public relations and advertising firm in Washington, D.C., very influential in my life, by the way.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, the guy's name was Wayne Dixon, and the woman's name was Carol Felix, and the firm was Dixon Felix.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: And for whatever reason, we spent a lot of time talking.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: We got along, and I told them I wanted to be in the PR world.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: And they said, Well, we can't pay you, but why don't you come and spend some time and do some work for us, quote unquote, as an intern.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: So I did.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: And as it turns out, um, I probably spend seven or eight hours a day as an intern, not working or not getting paid by Dixon and Felix.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: I was going into Personnel pool in the morning, and I would fill out my my call report of where I was going to visit that day.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: But what I would do is I would go to Dixon and Felix and I would make my phone calls and take my orders.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: And I was one of the top salespeople at Personnel pool.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: And that lasted a little over a year, um, where I was getting great experience in the PR and advertising world, not getting paid, but I was making money selling temporary services.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, that all ended one day.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: My dad, my dad had a heart attack.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: And the hospital found called my my business personnel pool and said, Yeah, because there's no cell phone.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: There's no cell phones back then, right?
13:54
SPEAKER_01: So the hospital finds where I am and they call my boss at personnel pool and they say, we need to get a hold of Pete.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, she looks at my call list and says, geez, Pete's supposed to be at Sarah's office appointment at two o'clock.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: I'll just call Sarah.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: And um she calls Sarah and says, Can you have Pete, you know, call the office when he gets there for his two o'clock appointment?
14:18
SPEAKER_01: And Sarah said, I haven't seen Pete in seven or eight months.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: He just calls me every day and I give him my order.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, the shade was over.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I went back and I got fired.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, one door closes, another one opens.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: Dixon and Felix found a way to hire me and pay me.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: And I spent seven years there.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was an awesome experience.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Created a great work ethic, you know, um, press inspections at three in the morning.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, we had little teeny tiny Macintoshes doing um ad designs, copywriting.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: We grew the firm to seven, eight people, and it was it was a great experience.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, so one door closes, another one opens.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: But I did get fired.
15:02
SPEAKER_02: That is a very uh that's a very interesting story, and all the different things from security systems to you know temporary staffing.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: I've actually been involved with the factoring receivables of a staffing company.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: A lot of staff, I'm sure you know this, a lot of staffing companies factor their receivables because they're having to pay their temporary people weekly while they invoice those companies and get paid in 30 to 60 days.
15:28
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, there's there's a lot of that still going on today.
15:31
SPEAKER_02: So well, how long did you then, you know, you ended up staying there?
15:34
SPEAKER_02: And then how, you know, how long did that last before moving on to the next role?
15:40
SPEAKER_01: So um one of our we had found a little niche in the, you know, DC back then was it was association management, it was trade shows, conventions, it was government and tourism.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: There was really no business in Washington, D.C.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: So um one day um I had an opportunity to go work for the American Society of Landscape Architects, which was a customer of ours.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: We had found a niche in association management and kind of the green industry.
16:06
SPEAKER_01: And I had an opportunity to go be the marketing director at the American Society of Landscape Architects.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: And I had just gotten engaged.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: They were gonna pay me more money, it was a real stable.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: And Patty thought it was a really good opportunity.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was really painful because I loved, I loved Wayne and and Carol at the PR firm.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, I went over there and very small organization, about$4 million in in revenue.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, back then it was probably six or seven thousand members.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: And the whole purpose of that organization was to tell the world that landscape architects, you know, did large-scale land planning and sustainable development and wetland mitigation, stormwater management.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I fell in love with the profession, fell in love with the people.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: And they wanted to tell the world that they did not cut grass and mulch, but they did these other really cool large-scale things.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was really hard because landscape architects didn't make a lot of money and the organization was small.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, after a few years into it, uh they they the CEO parted ways, and I became the CEO of the organization.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: And I guess that sets the stage for a lot of the things that I've done in life.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, I didn't read the playbook for association management.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: If you go back then, um I knew that we needed to create some non-dues revenue to build a bigger pot of money to create to accomplish the mission of the organization.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: And like I said, these guys didn't make any money.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: So we ended up buying a couple companies inside of our association to produce non-dues revenue.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: I hired a few salespeople who made a lot more money than I did as the CEO, and our trade show um took off, and our magazine advertising took off.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: And uh all of a sudden, we ended up, you know, with a lot more members.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: We had a lot of non-dues revenue.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: We had a magazine called Garden Design that we ended up selling to a New York publisher.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, and all of a sudden we had an endowment to be able to tell the world that we didn't cut grass and mulch, but we did all those other things.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: And when I left there in 2000, um we had grown the organization to about 13,000, 14,000 members from six and to about 12, 13 million of revenue from four.
18:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: So really proud of that.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: And I I guess that uh if you could really look back on in time, I guess I kind of was an entrepreneur and very non-traditional, which is everything I've done in my life.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I didn't read the association management playbook.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: And I did it out of with out of my gut, I think.
18:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and didn't really maybe know you were an entrepreneur at that point.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: I would have never can I would have never thought of myself as that.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: Um and yeah, I know this now.
18:57
SPEAKER_02: You probably did a lot of trade shows.
18:59
SPEAKER_02: A lot of trade shows.
19:01
SPEAKER_02: A lot of trade shows.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: Still feel those feet hurting from the colour.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: A lot of them.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:05
SPEAKER_02: So I wish they made these shoes.
19:07
SPEAKER_02: I know, you know, the the comfortable comfortable shoes.
19:10
SPEAKER_02: I know, man.
19:11
SPEAKER_02: That would have been great 20 years ago working on those trade shows.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: But um, so then you get an opportunity to go work inside of a family office of a real successful business.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: Tell us that story.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, in between uh the family office and ASLA, I left the landscape architects in 2000 because I had an opportunity to go uh run a tech company.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: You got that landscape architecture to tech.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: It makes a lot of sense, right?
19:39
SPEAKER_01: And they were offering me these things that they were everyone was getting back then called stock options, and I wanted some of them.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: And I went to run this tech company, um, probably a little ahead of its time, but um, you know, uh we were using dial up to do all the internet, so everything was really slow.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: And I started there in January of 2000, and um two months later, March of 2000 rolled around, which was the big, the big bubble bust, uh dot com bust.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: And we had a we had a business that didn't really have a future, and it was a lesson learned.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: And in August, um I quit.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, we had a crappy product, to be blunt.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: And um, you only have one reputation.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: I I I couldn't run a company with a product that um wasn't good enough to be in the market.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: I quit.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: I had obviously married, had three kids, didn't have any money.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: And I was fortunate enough to be um one of the founding advisory board members of Colin Powell's nonprofit called America's Promise.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: And I got to know him because at ASLA we became a community of uh promise for his nonprofit.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: And he was a board member um at AOL.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh Jim Kimsey, West Point grad, um, co-founder of of AOL, um, had stacked the board with all his uh West Point buddies.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: And um through a friend, um, I got introduced to Jim, and then I used Colin Powell as a reference and pretty good reference.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, probably one of the greatest men I've ever been around in my life.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: And Colon ran into to Jim Kimsey one day and he said, I'm I heard you're talking to Kirsch about running your family office.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, you need to hire that guy.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: And I got a call the next day, um, and I was hired, and it changed my life.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: Um you know, Jeff, back then, this is this is 2000.
21:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: Family offices weren't even around back then.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: And Jim was chairman of the board of AOL, Steve Case was running it.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, those guys got rich overnight, you know, and Jim had a Jim had an office with a lot of people doing a lot of stuff.
21:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: And he needed someone to organize it.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And so changed my life.
21:59
SPEAKER_01: That's where I Went, um, spent 10 years there, cut my teeth on venture capital, private equity, spent a bunch of time um working on a State Department project called the International Commission on Missing Persons, spent some time in the Balkans and Iraq, and that was really, really cool and meaningful work.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: But the the the private equity and venture capital stuff is what changed my life and launched me into Bloom Marlin.
22:23
SPEAKER_02: I'm curious, where did you start?
22:24
SPEAKER_02: You know, there wasn't a lot of family offices.
22:27
SPEAKER_02: There wasn't a lot of these conferences for family offices and all that.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: Where did you start of life?
22:32
SPEAKER_02: Because you had never run a family office until that point.
22:34
SPEAKER_02: I mean, where did you start?
22:36
SPEAKER_01: No, it's it's funny.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: I um I tell the story.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: I I think if it wasn't for Colin Powell um recommendation, I don't know that he could have found anybody because he was looking for somebody who had PR experience, who had nonprofit, for-profit experience, wasn't a friend, wasn't a family member, um, didn't work at AOL.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: And I'm I think I was the only one in the Washington, D.C.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: area that had had that resume.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, so where did I start?
23:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, like I said, these guys got rich really, really fast when AOL went public.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: And I I spent the first couple of years cleaning a lot of stuff up.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: There was a there were a lot of investments made.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: Um Jim was a very generous guy, both philanthropic-wise and in the um operating venture world.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: And so I learned a lot by digging in and cleaning up a lot of the investments that that he had made and learning about them for um for the first two years.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: Um and then what what I, again, in my non-traditional way, or I guess not having read the textbook or the playbook, I just didn't understand the traditional PE model.
23:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, got to be careful because these, you know, PE guys make a lot of money, the traditional fund guys.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, 2% fees and partnership expenses and capital calls where you don't get to pick and choose what you want to do.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: Um that I didn't quite understand it.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: So that kind of set the tone for the future, uh, doing direct investing in.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: And to be honest, that's the model for the thesis for Blue Marlin that we're running today is direct investing with our friends and our partners and great relationships.
24:18
SPEAKER_02: So you did that for about a decade or so.
24:21
SPEAKER_02: And then then, you know, before we get into all the Blue Marlin and all that, you um believe, you know, go join a landscape venture.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, in 2010, you know, it was right after Lehman.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: Um times were there, times were difficult.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, we weren't doing a lot of uh work um in the investing side anymore.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: And you know, 10 years is a long time um to be at a at a at a family office at that age.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: And um Jim was great.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: He helped me through the process.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: Um and it was just time for me to move on.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: And my my very good friend, uh Scott Brickman, who built a very large business cutting grass and mulching called the Brickman Group.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: His grandpa started it, um, his dad took it over, and then and then Scott grew up in the business.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: He's a he's actually a landscape architect from Penn State, and he you know brought in private equity and grew the business organically, did some acquisitions, and in 2010, he asked me to come help him.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: And so I went over and sat on his executive committee of of four people who had built that company and spent three years hopefully making an impact on the business.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: And in 2013, Scott sold the business to KKR for um over a billion dollars.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: So um that was that was a time for when he after he sold the business, it was time for me to take my next step.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I went there to work with my pal Scott.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: He was um now moving on to better things.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Um and I left and did some consulting for a few years trying to figure out what was next.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: But I always had that itch to build a uh a private equity model based on the thesis that I developed around the the traditional private equity world and did it.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: A little bit.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: I don't know the the exact way to put this, but like, you know, traditional private equity or the first waves of private equity that you know that that came out seemed um, you know, I I've heard you tell this story a lot, you know, slap a little leverage on it, yeah, you know, grow the business a little bit, expand the multiple, sell it, you know, get somebody out five years.
26:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it seemed very Wall Street, you know, like and and really, you know, with the with the influx of businesses transitioning and more people having capital and trying to find places to put it in, other than just the public markets, you know, you uh Blue Marlin is very similar in what they do to Mass Rider Capital in the sense that you're trying to marry investors who've created wealth uh and put it to work in really good companies that are in the lower to middle market that aren't these big, huge public companies and and bring and bring that access to them.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: You know, um, you know, a big part of our thesis, maybe the most important part of our thesis is um we're just not going to be um financial engineers or we're just not going to provide capital.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: We want to bring a lot of value to the business.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we all of our investors, our owners of Blue Marlin, we'll talk a little bit more about that.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: But all of them have built and been involved in very successful operating companies of all shapes and sizes and all industries.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: And um, we're not going to financial engineer anything.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: We want to bring value and help the founders whose businesses we're um acquiring an interest in get a really nice big second bite of the apple.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: It's almost like bringing a mentor in, but not really calling it a mentor, just successful operators to help.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: And and so you've had this over a decade now.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: Blue Morgan started in 2015.
28:21
SPEAKER_02: And I think the thing that that I see uh as a participant is that, you know, a lot of your investors, you you're approaching a hundred investors today.
28:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:32
SPEAKER_02: Um, but a lot of your a lot of your deal sourcing happens within the same group.
28:38
SPEAKER_02: It does in the industries.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: Talk a little bit about that.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: It does.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: We're we're really fortunate.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, the majority of our investors are single family offices or investors who really don't want to have an office but want another, want an arm of direct investing or private equity.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, get involved when they want to get involved.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we've got we've got investors who sell their business and they want to keep investing, but they might not want to be involved in a in a in a board role for four or five, six, seven years.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden I get a call and say, Pete, you know what, I played golf for six years.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: I can't get my handicap under 10.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: I think I'm gonna put the band back together.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: And that's music to our ears.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: So our investor base comes from whether it's, you know, uh people who built monster optical centers or Scott, who built a big landscape company.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: We actually rinse, washed, and repeated with Scott about four years ago.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, Scott opened his playbook, had a bunch of his old Brickman guys in another landscape company, and it was a it was a tremendous success for us.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: Not every deal is that easy, but when you have an opportunity to invest in, you know, a guy like Scott's next landscape company, or um, not to mention any names, but somebody's who's built a big optical center, his or her next optical center, or not every deal is like that, but that's really the perfect storm for us.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: No, I mean it makes a lot of sense too.
30:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're not, you're not, you're taking a lot of risk out by backing somebody that's done it before.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: A lot of I mean, and that's it's hard to do.
30:17
SPEAKER_02: Not everybody can do it.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Jeff, I I, you know, I I say this all the time.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, there's a lot of people, um, very, very successful who are one or no.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: There are very, very few people who are two and oh.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: You know, they they have a nice exit, they're one and no, and they wake up three or four years years later, then most of them are one in five or one in eight or one in ten.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: So we like staying in our lane, our discipline with the people who have been in that same industry and doing it again.
30:44
unknown: Yeah.
30:44
SPEAKER_02: No, that's I hadn't heard it that put that way, but that is that is so true.
30:49
SPEAKER_02: Tell us a um, you know, tell us a little a few of the companies that Blue Marlin um has in their portfolio today as a portfolio company and and what excites you about them.
31:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we we we love the we love the lower middle market, um boring, old-fashioned cash-flowing businesses.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: We've got a we've got one or two that um is kind of an outlier to that thesis, but you know, the the good old-fashioned businesses that, you know, um need people and crews and kind of in the industrial space.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: One of the businesses that um I think is really interesting is a business here in Texas, Fort Worth, a business um Pipe View.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: We have a CEO's name's Nick Matthew.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: And we were fortunate enough to partner with him about four and a half years ago.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, Nick had built an awesome sewer inspection business.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: He runs cameras through sewer lines um after um utilities or construction to make sure that the utility or the sewer lines have been maintained the integrity has been maintained in that sewer line.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: And Nick had built a really nice business, up to 31, 32 crews, um, nice bottom line.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: And he was gonna sell the business.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: It was gonna be his first exit, a way to secure his family, which I think we all understand and we all get.
32:13
SPEAKER_01: And um when he and I met, I said, Nick, sell us a you know, a percentage of your business and we'll help you get it to that next.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: You can take some money off the table and we'll help you get it to that next level.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: And we ended up doing that.
32:28
SPEAKER_01: And today, um, Nick has just done a terrific job with the help of, you know, one or two of our partners who sit on the board and know that business pretty well.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: And um, as of this morning, he's got um over 80, he's got 86 crews going right now from 31 five years ago.
32:46
SPEAKER_01: And so he'll get a nice big second bite at the apple.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: Um we we have a really nice investment um in a in a 185 Dunkin Donuts, you know, a business that we originally passed on.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: It was 62 stores in Dallas, Phoenix, and Scottsdale.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: And one of our investors um called me up and said, Pete, why are you passing on this?
33:12
SPEAKER_01: We I know this business really well.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: And um, he just happened to run a tech company that was doing all the loyalty programs for for Duncan and had a loved, loved the whole franchise space and loved Duncan.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: And so we told took it off the pass line and you know, on a deal that I originally passed on 62 stores, 70 million of revenues, now 185 stores and 240 million revenue, all because one of my investors took the lead on it.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: So really excited about um, you know, the the the model and the the portfolio that we have going right now.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:48
SPEAKER_02: No, it sounds like I think you have 32, or you've been in 32, maybe eight or nine exits or something.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we have uh we just closed our 32nd business last week.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: Um really nice fleet management business.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh really excited about that, that company.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, that'll we'll hold that for I don't know, um, three, four, five years, I think.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: And we have a great partner of ours who knows that business, is chairs the board, and is going to help kind of executive chair that business into some significant growth.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, but we have we and we also had our ninth exit uh two weeks ago.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: So the at a time when you know traditional private equity is really not exiting and um um providing capital back to their investors, that was our that was our sixth exit in the last 18 months.
34:36
SPEAKER_01: So when we say we're gonna exit, we don't have a traditional fund, so we can just exit.
34:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:41
SPEAKER_02: No, that's it's one of the great things is your investors can make a decision on which opportunities they want to invest in or not invest in, but you know, and also you know, trying to, you know, control that exit time time frame to fit your needs.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: I think that's exactly the thesis that we that so before we dig a little deeper and talk a little bit about a business and entrepreneurship, I want to give you the opportunity.
35:04
SPEAKER_02: I know you love your family.
35:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, proud of your kids that are all quite the athletes.
35:09
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, tell us about the Kirsch family.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: All right, let me brag a little bit.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh first I have to again, I know when my wife sees this, um you're you're probably gonna get a letter or an email.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: So um I like to think that I was a pretty good athlete.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: Um my wife and my kids might argue that.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: I was I was um I graduated high school at 17.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: So I was I was the smallest kid um in high school on a regular basis.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: I came back from college.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: I was 175 when I graduated, my senior year high school.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: I came back after my freshman year of college.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: I was like 220, 230.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: So had I stayed back, I would have been a great athlete, but I was a pretty good athlete.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: Um kind of joke about that.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: My wife was a great athlete.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: She um went to Delaware and played volleyball.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: Um she's 62 years old.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: She still plays volleyball at a high, high level today, um, plays in the senior Olympics on the volleyball team.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: So she's she's um, she was a was and still is a great athlete, even as a senior.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: My older son, um, all three of my kids went to St.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: John's High School in Washington, D.C., um, part of the WCAC with the Matha and Gonzaga and Good Council, one of the best conferences, I think, in the country.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: And my older son, um, two three sport athlete there, and um, ended up going to Delaware to play baseball.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, my middle son ended up going to James Madison to play football.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: And my daughter, after her senior year at St.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: John's, went to Virginia Tech to swim and then transferred to GMU.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: So my three kids were very, very good on my tuition pocketbook.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: Um and today, my older son, um, when he after he graduated, he worked for a startup for um about eight years.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, I always I teased him a lot and I said, When does a startup stop being a startup?
37:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, when does it become an eight-year-old company that just loses money every year?
37:10
SPEAKER_01: So he had a little bit of an exit and I talked him into coming to work for Blue Marlin.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: And uh, so he's been uh part of the team now for three years, which is awesome to have your kid um as part of the business.
37:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh just a side story in that, I called a number of our investors and told them what I was gonna do.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: That I wanted my son to come work at Blue Marlin.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: I said, What do you think?
37:30
SPEAKER_01: And a hundred percent of them said, you know, um, I wish I would have got one of my kids into my business.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's been a really cool experience to have my son there.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: My middle son is married um to an awesome young lady in Fort Worth, Texas.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, when he graduated from GMU, he had a cup of coffee with the Chicago Bears.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh, when he got cut, he went to SMU um and coached there for three years.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: And when Sonny left there, took him to uh Fort Worth to TCU.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Texas Tech.
38:06
SPEAKER_01: He went with Sonny to TCU and um has done a really, really nice job there.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: And the first year they went to the national championship and really proud of um what he's doing at at TCU, and even more proud because now I that he and Dory gave us a 16, uh, we now have a 16-month-old grandson, which is awesome.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: And then my daughter, after she got done swimming, she um graduated during COVID.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: So, what do you do when you graduate during COVID?
38:36
SPEAKER_01: You go get your master's at Georgetown.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: So she did that.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: And then her first three years she spent uh working for the Washington Nationals.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: And now she's working for a technology company uh in Washington, D.C.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, real proud of all my kids.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's none of them are on my payroll, which is really cool.
38:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, that's that's fantastic.
38:54
SPEAKER_02: No, that's fantastic.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if you know this.
38:57
SPEAKER_02: Sonny Dykes, you know, his dad was the second all-time winningest coach here at Texas Tex, Mike Dykes.
39:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: So Yeah, and I'll tell you, you talk about men being mentors to to young people.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: Sonny has just been an awesome part of my son's life.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: So it's been really cool to watch that.
39:13
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
39:14
SPEAKER_02: Which gets us into the next section, digging deeper.
39:17
SPEAKER_02: And the first question here is mentors.
39:19
SPEAKER_02: Who who are the people that have had the greatest influence on your life and your business career?
39:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a that's a great question.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, right when I when we started talking about this, I I started talking about Wayne Dixon.
39:33
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, unfortunately, Wayne passed away a couple of years ago.
39:38
SPEAKER_01: But I I there is I still think about that time when it was in my 20s when he gave me a chance to work for him for free.
39:47
SPEAKER_01: And um and he I still remember a lot of the things that he taught me about writing and and about um your customers and your clients.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: So I have to believe that Wayne, it, though I didn't know it at the time, was a massive influence on my life.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's one of those things, unfortunately, you don't stay in touch as much as you wish you did.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: So Wayne was a really important um person in my life.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: Even before that, though, my my grandpa was just the coolest guy in the world.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: You know, he's a cop who walked the beat and on the south side of Milwaukee.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, uh, I remember he had biceps, you know, like Rocky, even when he was 60, 65 years old.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: And that was really, really cool to be around him as much as I could.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, and then, you know, as I as I grew in my professional career, um, you know, it's the work for the founder of A.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, for Kimsey changed my life.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: I met a lot of great people.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: I was fortunate to be, you know, um, I don't want to call it the centerpiece, but like I said, all the deals came through our office.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: I got to meet so many awesome people in the DC community, whether, whether they're our office is right across from the White House.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: So some of the politicians, um, all of the great entrepreneurs that came out of AOL, who I still consider friends today.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: So that was um, that was really, really impactful to sit away and watch and be around a lot of those people at a at a very influential time in my life.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: Have have the roles reversed?
41:21
SPEAKER_02: Are you mentoring people uh today in your role as CEO of Blue Marlin?
41:27
SPEAKER_02: And and how's it been to flip the sides of the table?
41:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Jeff, I I like to think I am.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we've built a really awesome culture at Blue Marlin.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: We've got a very young team.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, culture is about, you know, making making sure you're happy when you come to the office, make sure you never miss your kids' soccer game, um, which Jim was really, really good about when I was in his office.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: So I like to think that um, I like to think that I am um mentoring and providing a good environment for people to learn and create a a culture that is enjoyable and profitable and um down down the road.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: Um again, I'd like to think they're paying attention.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: We started with the kids.
42:15
SPEAKER_01: Your kids are paying attention, you just know it until they leave.
42:18
SPEAKER_02: No, that's right.
42:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no.
42:20
SPEAKER_02: Um I think one of the things that's the neatest about your story, and you've been so forthcoming about you know, sharing is like what you set out to do and what you've ended up doing, yeah, you know, are vastly different.
42:35
SPEAKER_02: And so looking back on that, what advice would you give to young professionals?
42:41
SPEAKER_02: Because there's a lot of kids graduating from college, maybe not going to college, they enter the business world, they think they know what they're gonna do.
42:49
SPEAKER_02: What would be your advice?
42:50
SPEAKER_02: What's your advice to them after going through that?
42:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, um, yeah, I never thought that Blue Marlin would be where it is today.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: When I when I launched it, if if Jeff, if you would have said, you know, 10 years later, Pete, you're gonna have a hundred million dollars of capital deployed and you're gonna have five deals and two exits, I probably would have said, that's a great result.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: And um we were flexible enough to kind of roll with how the business was growing and listen to our investors who wanted to continue to build the model.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: And that's resulted in, I think, a really successful uh platform for Blue Marlin.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: So I I say that because I I think, you know, it's easy to um the easy button is not to take any risk.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I had a lot of sleepless nights building Blue Marlin, but no risk, no reward.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's it's I don't know that I have any advice for the young people today getting a job other than chase your dream.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Um I I do have counselors, some of these, some people about.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: How liberating it is to have your own business.
44:03
SPEAKER_01: You know, um, there's a lot of young entrepreneurs today who are chasing their dreams and a lot more successful than I'll ever be.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: So don't think you can't do anything.
44:14
SPEAKER_01: Do something, take a shot at doing it.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: Timing's everything too.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, I I could have never done this when I was raising the children.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: And so when my nest got empty, it was when I took a shot.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a lot of young people taking a shot before their nest gets full.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: And um, take an opportunity.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: So that's the only advice I give.
44:36
unknown: Yeah.
44:36
SPEAKER_02: We, you know, we've had an opportunity here at Mass Ryder to work with uh the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech and some of their students, and they come through, and one of the questions they often ask is like, you know, when is the right time to take that risk?
44:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, and we always tell them like it just depends.
44:53
SPEAKER_02: It depends on what your tolerance for risk is.
44:55
SPEAKER_02: You know, when you're younger, you make a mistake or or take a misstep, you can recover a lot better.
45:02
SPEAKER_02: Well, but it also takes capital.
45:04
SPEAKER_02: So you might need to be a little bit older.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: But when you're older, you're now more into your marriage, you're you most likely have children, you've got other things going on.
45:12
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like, there's probably not just the perfect time to to take a risk, you know.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: It it just is when you're ready.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I'd I'd agree with that a hundred percent.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I always dreamed of having my own business and um never could pull the trigger because I never had that risk tolerance to maybe go on a couple of weeks or a month without a paycheck.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I started Blue Marlin, I went a long time without a paycheck.
45:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: And I had the risk tolerance to do it because I was an empty nester.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: So I think you that advice of when it when's the right time, who knows?
45:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, um yeah, who knows?
45:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:52
SPEAKER_02: And looking at all of these opportunities that you've invested in and and people that you partnered with and and this big investor network that you've created at Blue Marlin, you know, there's you know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in there.
46:08
SPEAKER_02: What is a common fabric that a lot of them have that you have seen and and found?
46:17
SPEAKER_01: It's a common denominator with all these investors um drive.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: I think it's absolute drive and um and the ability to our earlier point to take some risk.
46:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a few of them who um who I don't wouldn't say inherited, but took a family business to a whole nother level.
46:43
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's just as exciting as starting your own business, you know.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think the the ability to, you know, see around the corner a little bit, you know, where the opportunities lie and taking advantage of it.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: Um I could, I could list um a whole bunch of our investors, you know, um the the Tiffany Masterson story on Drunk Elephant is fantastic.
47:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, she she built a organic skincare business out of um, you know, a trip to to Africa, um, where she decided that, you know, this product there, this this plant there was going to be a good basis for um her business and the skincare and cosmetic business that she grew into a monster company.
47:30
SPEAKER_01: And it was because she took an opportunity and saw around a corner.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: And um, so I think that's I think that's probably the the common thread um amongst all of our investors.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:45
SPEAKER_02: What what challenges have you encountered in um in your professional career?
47:53
SPEAKER_02: What have been what you know, what's been maybe one of the biggest one or two challenges that in and how did you how'd you overcome that?
48:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:01
SPEAKER_01: Not going without going without a paycheck for a year, a year and a half was pretty, pretty good challenge.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: Ask my wife about that.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: Um I you know, you got to grind through it, live within your means.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, I I tell you, one of the one of the really interesting and fun conversations that that Jim used to have with young people who'd come into our office, they'd they'd say, Mr.
48:21
SPEAKER_01: Kimsey, what you know, what's the most important thing in um in business?
48:26
SPEAKER_01: And he asked, what were the challenges that you would you faced?
48:28
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, you know, challenges were never having enough money to do what you wanted to do and build your business.
48:34
SPEAKER_01: So my advice to you is make sure you always have more money coming in than going out.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: And these young people would look at them thinking this great sage advice, and I would go, it's pretty good advice.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: Make sure you have more money coming in and going out.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think having the having the resources to to build your business and then also having the the insight to go, okay, we still have to live within our means and our business, so we can't grow that fast.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: So those were some of the challenges that I had at Blue Marlin.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that um one of my investors told me when I was building Blue Marlin is, and I I'll never forget it, when you have capital, hire good people.
49:19
SPEAKER_01: When you have capital to build your business, your focus should be hiring great people to help you build the business.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget that.
49:27
SPEAKER_01: And I that's the one thing that I I live by when we have capitalists, make sure we hire great people.
49:34
SPEAKER_02: Totally agree with that.
49:36
SPEAKER_02: You know, I at Master Rider Capital, we talk a lot about you know, uh my experience, Brooks' experience, Dusty's experience in operating companies before we became an investment firm or family office.
49:51
SPEAKER_02: And I think I would say that you're you're you know, you're for Ray into running the the uh landscape association and and then running the family office really it provides a unique and uh perspective for an investor because I think you're able as an investor with the operational background to be able to spot potential challenges because like as an operator, that's what you deal with every day.
50:18
SPEAKER_02: Is like you're like, where am I where are my blind spots?
50:21
SPEAKER_02: What are the problems coming that I can't see?
50:24
SPEAKER_02: And then when problems do occur, how do I fix them?
50:27
SPEAKER_02: I mean, would you agree with that?
50:28
SPEAKER_01: I would absolutely agree with it.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: And I I think it's interesting the the diversity of experience that I had, whether it was with a the the association, a nonprofit, or in Jim's office.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: By the way, running his office was also a job, right?
50:43
SPEAKER_01: So just not the companies or that or the portfolio companies or the philanthropic work we are involved with the State Department, but you're also running the office.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: And so you take all those experiences, and I think that that develops into some really, really good strategies that can be, I think, um, that you can you can lay across a number of different businesses in our portfolio.
51:07
SPEAKER_02: Well, appreciate all the sage advice and and the conversation.
51:12
SPEAKER_02: We have one more section to go.
51:14
SPEAKER_02: It's called the Around the Horn.
51:15
SPEAKER_02: Are you ready?
51:16
SPEAKER_02: I'm ready.
51:17
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna I'm gonna come out and ready.
51:20
SPEAKER_02: You haven't seen any of these, so we'll get started.
51:22
SPEAKER_02: But all right, who is your favorite Marquette athlete of all time?
51:27
SPEAKER_02: Dwayne Wade.
51:28
SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow, yeah.
51:29
SPEAKER_02: He was awesome.
51:30
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
51:30
SPEAKER_02: Great guy.
51:31
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
51:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
51:32
SPEAKER_02: All right.
51:33
SPEAKER_02: What sports teams do you follow?
51:36
SPEAKER_01: I follow the Green Bay Packers.
51:37
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: Washington Capitals, huge Washington Capitals fan, season ticket holder.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: And um the I have to say on the baseball side, Milwaukee Brewers and the Washington Nationals, because when I was in Kimsey's office, we were responsible for getting the Washington Nationals to Washington from Montreal.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: So I have a soft spot for the National.
51:56
SPEAKER_02: You know, what's really neat when you go up north, there there's uh I'll see if you agree, there's a big affinity for pro sports teams.
52:04
SPEAKER_02: And down south, it seems to be generally more towards the college teams.
52:07
SPEAKER_02: Do you agree with that?
52:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
52:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:10
SPEAKER_01: And Marquette, you know, Marquette didn't have a football team, so whatever my son's coaching is who I really, really should root for.
52:17
SPEAKER_02: So now you're a horn from a huge horn from the floor.
52:19
SPEAKER_02: So you'll be here the Saturday after Thanksgiving for the game.
52:23
SPEAKER_02: AI, where are we headed with AI?
52:26
SPEAKER_01: Um boy, if I if I knew exactly where we were where we were headed, um, I'd be there.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: We actually, um, this is gonna be a little longer than around the horn answer, Jeff.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, you were there two years ago when we had Joel Leonoff and Karen Ann Terrell talk about what's going on in the applied AI world, right?
52:48
SPEAKER_01: Vertically integrated technologies, not the large language models.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: And um, this might be a little plug.
52:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, Karen Ann, um, you know, a CIO or at Walmart and Chrysler and Baxter, she's on the on a number of public boards.
53:05
SPEAKER_01: She's involved with um Google in a number of areas, and Joel Leonhoff built a couple of large payment management systems.
53:12
SPEAKER_01: When they led us through that conversation, a number of our investors said, Pete, why are we not following Karen, Ann, and Joel into these applied AI technologies?
53:22
SPEAKER_01: Why are we not investing there?
53:24
SPEAKER_01: And I simply said, because I'm too old for early stage.
53:27
SPEAKER_01: I would like boring old-fashioned cash-flowing businesses.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: And the next day they said, Peter, Blue Marlin doesn't do this.
53:32
SPEAKER_01: We're going to go talk to him and do it ourselves.
53:34
SPEAKER_01: So Karen Ann came on as our managing director, and we are investing in um revenue-producing applied AI technologies that are integrated into an industry.
53:46
SPEAKER_01: And I'll just use Pipe View as an example.
53:48
SPEAKER_01: There's a bunch of AI now plugged into our cameras.
53:50
SPEAKER_01: So we're getting a glimpse into what a technology might be really useful in the sewer business.
53:56
SPEAKER_01: So we've already made two investments in that early, early stage following Joel and Karen Ann's lead through our accelerator fund, company called Ethermed and a company called In the White Space.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: So we focus on the industries where there's an AI technology in a healthcare or a landscape or a sewer or a vertically integrated industry.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: That's the that's where we are focused right now.
54:22
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, where is it going?
54:24
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: But I'll tell you, um, we're lucky.
54:29
SPEAKER_01: Um if I could give young people any advice right now, it's man, the the technology world is tough.
54:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, and being in the industrial world, electricians, plumbing, learn to own a plumbing business, learn to own an electrical company, learn to own an HVAC business because those guys are doing extremely well right now.
54:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, because AI is not going to take their work away.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: We were at a conference, I was at a conference recently and they were talking about AI.
54:57
SPEAKER_02: Certainly every business is going to be addressing how they use AI in their business to improve their efficiencies, bottom lines, all that.
55:05
SPEAKER_02: But heavy, tangible asset companies versus intangible asset companies right now.
55:12
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, as the growth moves ahead, you know, the tangible side, I heard you say it earlier with an industrial investment and all those seem to be the place to be until the AI, until AI settles more into mainstream, you know, and stuff like that.
55:28
SPEAKER_01: I have to believe we're gonna see the the acceptance or rebirth of the vocational, the vote schools, right?
55:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they were there when I was growing up and they've kind of disappeared.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I agree with that.
55:40
SPEAKER_01: You you get a big win, how do you celebrate?
55:43
SPEAKER_01: Oh, how do I celebrate?
55:44
SPEAKER_01: I go fishing.
55:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it takes some time off and I go fishing.
55:47
SPEAKER_01: No, it's exactly how we celebrate.
55:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, all right.
55:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, speaking of fishing, Miller Light and I go fishing.
55:52
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're looking for here.
55:54
SPEAKER_02: Miller light and fishing.
55:55
SPEAKER_02: So where's your top fishing spot and what are you fishing for?
55:59
SPEAKER_01: So my top fishing spot is site eleven off the right in Delaware Bay, off the coast of Delaware.
56:05
SPEAKER_01: So we we have a small little beach house in Lewis, Delaware.
56:08
SPEAKER_01: We go fishing in Delaware Bay, we go fishing on the surf.
56:11
SPEAKER_01: But my favorite spot is site 11.
56:13
SPEAKER_01: You get flounder, we get sea bass, and this weekend, um, I'm actually going in a tuna fishing in a tuna tournament.
56:20
SPEAKER_01: Oh, awesome.
56:20
SPEAKER_01: So that's how I celebrate.
56:21
SPEAKER_01: That's my I don't golf very well, so I fish and I do that pretty well.
56:25
SPEAKER_02: That is awesome.
56:26
SPEAKER_02: Um, do you enjoy buying a company or selling a company more?
56:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, well, I think the the the logical answer is selling it because you put money in everybody's pocket.
56:42
SPEAKER_01: Your investors are happy, you're celebrating a success over a period of time because not every every business is is is success comes to a successful exit.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, and you make your team really, really happy.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: So I think absolutely selling.
56:57
SPEAKER_01: But I I also really, really, really like the um the in-between time.
57:02
SPEAKER_01: I like helping the journey.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
57:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
57:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's like anything.
57:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, you you win a championship.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: What's next?
57:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, you gotta wait till next year.
57:11
SPEAKER_01: So the journey's fun.
57:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:13
SPEAKER_02: Your favorite vacation spot?
57:16
SPEAKER_02: Is that a fishing spot?
57:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you know, my um my favorite, we our family started going to Captiva about five years ago, and that's become a really cool destination for the family.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a little bit of everything there for us.
57:29
unknown: Yeah.
57:29
SPEAKER_02: And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask what's your first impression of West Texas?
57:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, dry, hot, flat.
57:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, and um, there's a lot of awesome resources here in Lubbock um in West Texas.
57:50
SPEAKER_01: I we have an office in Dallas.
57:53
SPEAKER_01: My son's in Fort Worth.
57:54
SPEAKER_01: And if I found Texas anywhere in Texas, with maybe a few exceptions, and this this is not one of them, I would have probably never left Texas.
58:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
58:03
SPEAKER_01: I love everything.
58:04
SPEAKER_01: I love the people here, the most friendly people.
58:07
SPEAKER_01: They share their everything about Texas I love.
58:11
SPEAKER_01: Lubbock, Fort Worth, Dallas.
58:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe a few places I won't mention that I'm not real fond of, but I I would have never left Texas if I'd found it in my 20s.
58:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
58:21
SPEAKER_02: No, well, Pete, Texas loves you, and we appreciate you.
58:25
SPEAKER_02: Appreciate you being here.
58:26
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for time for for making the time to come down and visit with us on the Heights of Victory.
58:31
SPEAKER_02: It's really impressive what you've built with Blue Marlin, and we're we're very happy to be a partner of Blue Marlins and a participant in your business.
58:40
SPEAKER_02: And so thank you very much for coming down.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: Jeff, you and and Dusty and your whole team have just been awesome partners for us.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we can't we couldn't go to central casting and find a better partner than than you guys here at Mastrider.
58:52
SPEAKER_01: So we appreciate you guys as well.
58:53
SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you, Pete.
58:54
SPEAKER_02: That wraps it for this episode.
58:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh, thank you for joining us.
58:58
SPEAKER_02: And please subscribe to our channel.
59:00
SPEAKER_02: And if you have a comment, uh please email us at heights of victory at master.com.
59:06
SPEAKER_02: We'll see you next time on the next episode of the Heights of Victory.