Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / How Melanie Brensinger Built A1A Investment Partners Through Small-Town Values and Healthcare Innovation

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How Melanie Brensinger Built A1A Investment Partners Through Small-Town Values and Healthcare Innovation · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:07
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:10
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:13
adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspodi and
0:16
today's guest is Melanie Brenziger, founder and CEO of
0:20
A1A Investment Partners, a healthcare focused private
0:24
credit investment firm. They specialize in providing
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flexible capital solutions to lower middle market healthcare
0:31
companies, helping them grow and innovate in an ever changing
0:35
industry. Melanie has over 2 decades of
0:38
experience in healthcare investing.
0:40
She is sought after as an expert healthcare investor, speaking at
0:43
conferences and engagements around the country.
0:46
She has deployed nearly $4 billion of capital with no
0:49
realized losses and has sourced over 1000 healthcare investment
0:53
opportunities. She spent nine years at GE
0:56
Capital on the healthcare team and successfully deployed over
0:59
$3 billion of capital. She departed GE in 2015 to begin
1:04
her entrepreneur journey and has since founded and managed 2
1:08
healthcare focused private investment firms with capital of
1:11
over 300 million. Melanie currently serves on the
1:15
boards of various A1A and Anagenesis portfolio companies.
1:19
In addition, she is a former board member of the SBIA Board
1:23
of Governors Co founder of Women's Investment Network
1:27
Council WINC. As a recipient of the Gerard L
1:31
Philippe Award from GE, Melanie stands out for her commitment to
1:36
community and volunteer service. She founded the Pitt Foundation,
1:40
a nonprofit entity providing education to children in Kenya.
1:44
Melanie is also an advisory member for 51 Vets, a community
1:48
that fosters impactful relationships between elite
1:50
veterans and finance leaders. She is passionate about
1:54
advocating for animal rights and rescuing shelter dogs.
1:58
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2:39
All right, back to our guest today, Founder and managing
2:42
partner of A1A Investment Partners, Melanie Brenzinger.
2:46
Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
2:49
Thank you, Anthony. And I'm going to have to talk to
2:50
you about that benefits program. That actually sounds quite
2:53
interesting. Well, make sure that we get to
2:55
that at some point. So Melanie, you were a
2:59
generalist in the early part of your career and then niched down
3:03
into the healthcare sector when joining GE.
3:06
Why did you decide to be industry specific and why
3:10
specifically healthcare? Yeah, thanks, Anthony.
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And the early part of my career, I was a generalist as you
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mentioned. I was working with private
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equity firms doing everything from pasta making businesses to
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motor trucks and fiber optics and and all sorts of things
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across the industries. I had done some healthcare, but
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I'm really focused on healthcare and when I was recruited by GE
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in 2006 for the healthcare team, I really wasn't sure how I
3:41
thought about being industry focused.
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At the time I was a bit naive, believing that if I reached down
3:46
into healthcare it would limit my opportunities within my
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career and also that it might be too restrictive in terms of
3:54
opportunities. And what I found was the
3:57
healthcare industry is just the opposite of that.
4:00
I did like at the time that healthcare felt to me like it
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was giving back to community versus extracting from the earth
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and the broader community versus, for example, oil and gas
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or other industries that are out there.
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So I, I felt really good about healthcare and I felt like it
4:17
was a place where I could make an impact.
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I'd seen the disparities of, of healthcare across the board
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growing up. And so I was really interested
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in in nation gown and and GE and the healthcare team was a great
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place to to go and, and build out that expertise.
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Can you say more about what it was that you saw growing up in
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the disparity of healthcare access?
4:38
Yeah, Anthony. So as as we had talked about, I
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grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, not an Amish
4:45
country, but close enough to Amish country.
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And you know, I saw that we had one primary physician that we
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had gone to, you know, he recently retired frankly.
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So he was kind of the go to primary physician in our town.
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We had one dentist to go to and you know, if you wanted any type
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of more advanced care, you had to drive, you know, whether it
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be an hour or almost 2 hours to, to get to good quality
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healthcare. And, and now that I'm in the
5:12
industry and I see it and I'm an adult, of course, frankly
5:15
looking out, I think a lot of people think about rural
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healthcare and underserved markets being really rural areas
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and kind of across the Midwest and Central United States.
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But you don't have to go too far outside of any urban industry
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and any urban markets to really see a big difference in
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healthcare, not only in access, but also on quality of care.
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And I'm just a firm believer that everybody in the US should
5:42
have the same rights to access to quality of care despite where
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they live. And we can talk about that a
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little bit more as we think about where A1A spending time
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investing in is a focus for us. Yeah, We're going to get to A1A
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here in a minute, but I want to hear a little bit more about
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your time at GE and how those experienced help to shape your
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understanding of the broader healthcare industry.
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Yeah. So when I joined GEI, yeah, I
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joined in 2006 and I was really recruited to GE to bring my
6:12
relationships that I had with private equity firms.
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The healthcare team was just starting to get built out and
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really wanted to focus on investing alongside of really
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quality private equity firms. During that time, I was there
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from 2006 to 2015 and I deployed about $3 billion of capital for
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them across 48 companies. And I don't have any realized
6:33
losses as part of my track record, but during that time.
6:37
Time out. Sorry that, that that one is
6:40
just that one's so impressive. I, I hate to interrupt mid
6:43
thought, but we gotta how is that possible?
6:46
You deployed $3 billion with no realized losses.
6:49
Yeah. And in fact, Anthony, it's a bit
6:51
higher now just given the the last investments I've been doing
6:55
since since leaving GE. But I would say that what I've
7:00
learned over time is that I have no tolerance for capital losses.
7:05
So I feel like I have a tremendous responsibility of
7:09
fiduciary responsibility for investors, not only when I was
7:14
AG, but now running my own firm. And I look at all investments
7:19
through ideally downside protection and capital
7:23
preservation. And I think that a lot of times
7:26
in private credit, people think, well, you're a senior lender,
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you know, worst case scenario, you'll be able to get out of an
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investment. And what I've learned over a lot
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of workouts and a lot of trials and tribulations that when you
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go into an investment, you have to think about downside
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protection and not only the simple things of, you know,
7:44
covenant packages and whatnot, but what could possibly happen.
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And I think, you know, certainly I couldn't predict the OA
7:50
crisis. I couldn't predict COVID
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happening, you know, or Affordable Care Act being
7:55
implemented or, you know, changes in administrations and
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regulatory changes. But what I really learned from
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being a GE, although we were a senior lender, our underwriting
8:05
standards were so high that it was as if we were underwriting
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the last dollar of common equity and and they really had no
8:13
tolerance for principal loss. And so it really taught me how
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to underwrite in a really strong way to make sure that if all
8:20
things went sideways that you had a pretty good chance of at
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least getting your principal back.
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And, and I really, I got to learn and experience that at GE
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and then I took that forward to, you know, now investing private
8:34
capital for individual and, and institutional investors and, and
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my whole team. And I think about it that way
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even today. So part of it it obviously you
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want to put your money in the right places, but you can't
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predict everything, right? Nobody has a crystal ball.
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So in the event that this deal does not work out, how can we
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have it set up so that there are ways for us to at least get our
8:58
cash back right? That's exactly right.
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And Anthony, one of the things that I've learned again through
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a lot of workout experience is that if you're investing, and
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we'll talk a little bit more about this, if you're invested
9:10
in private credit and people think again, I'm a senior debt
9:15
lender. So in a worst case scenario,
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I'll take over the company as in air quotes or you know, if the
9:19
company goes bankrupt, I'll be in a really secure position
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because I have a first lien senior debt position.
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And, and I think on the kind of optically and on the surface,
9:30
all of that is true. The, the difference is if things
9:34
go sideways for a company, whether it be bad governance,
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poor management, changes in the industry, you know, and COVID
9:42
supply chain issues, you know, all these different things that
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can happen to bring you to a workout moment where the people
9:50
in charge, whether it's management of private equity
9:52
firm can't pay their debt back. There is a long series of things
9:56
that need to happen before a senior lender can actually come
9:59
in and secure and and protect their original principal
10:04
investment. And I think what I've learned
10:07
over the years is just being a senior lender with simple
10:10
covenants and financial statement reporting does not
10:14
protect your capital. What you really have to do is
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think about what are the governance protections in a
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downside scenario. You don't want to sit there as a
10:22
senior lender and, and you know, tick your fingers on your desk
10:25
and wait for them to have a payment default, which is really
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when you can act in a very specific way to try to get your
10:33
principal back. So for all of our investments
10:36
today, we make debt and equity investments alongside of our
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debt. And ironically enough, sometimes
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our debt is protecting our equity, but also sometimes our
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equity actually protects our debt.
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Because if you don't sit on the board, if you don't control the
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board, if you don't have the ability to change out management
10:55
in a, in a downside scenario or sitting there as a senior
10:58
lender, you're just stuck until you can take action.
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And most people as senior lenders also don't have the
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operational skill set to actually take over a company.
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So the other thing that we do is we have operational folks around
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us, including a partner that's with me in A1A that has an
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operational experience mindset that if we have to, we can drop
11:17
him in as ACEO or or come with that operational experience.
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So the it's not just trying to sit around and predict well,
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what could happen and how do we underwrite to it?
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But you have to play out a few scenarios of if this happens,
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what can we do and how much room do we have before we really have
11:35
a problem. And covenants just don't do it.
11:37
Covenants or look back, they're not look forward.
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And and lastly I would say Anthony, one thing we do for all
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of our investments which is very unique in the senior debt world
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is we require 13 week cash flows.
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Most people do not require forward-looking 13 week cash
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flows until they're in a workout situation.
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Then they tell the company, hey, we have to check your cash for
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the next 13 week, give us a 13 week cash flow.
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From our perspective and from my experience, companies get in
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trouble because they've run out of money, not because their
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EBITDA goes down or they miss a covenant.
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So you know, people can push back, our borrowers to push back
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and say, you know, why are we doing 13 week cash flows?
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It's very unusual in the market. They should be doing it anyway
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to make sure that their liquidity is strong and their
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liquidity is right. And so we feel it's just
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appropriate to do that upfront and it's really helped us get
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ahead of some really tough conversations and liquidity
12:29
challenges way before it actually happens.
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So what's the magic about the 13 weeks?
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So the 13 weeks are just kind of an industry standard of how far
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out can you reasonably predict your cash.
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You know, most companies can see, you know, some have
12:47
contracts, some don't. But most companies have a pretty
12:49
good indicator of kind of that 12 to 13 week period.
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It usually includes enough payroll cycles and enough
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payment of their bills that you can.
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You don't want to do that just for one cycle.
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You kind of want to have, you know, a few months there to say,
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like, what am I seeing? And then also you want to make
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sure if there is a liquidity crunch, do you have enough time
13:09
to respond and either find a way to get that liquidity or or, you
13:15
know, come up with another solution about how the company
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is going to pay their bills. The worst case scenario is you
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get that call on a Friday afternoon and the company says
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we can't make payroll. And unfortunately that can
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happen. And when that happens, you know,
13:30
what are you going to do? And most traditional senior only
13:34
lenders, that's an A ha moment for them and that's where they
13:38
end up losing principal because they don't have the answers to
13:41
that question when that problem presents itself.
13:45
So if I'm understanding what you were saying just a moment ago
13:47
correctly, the fact that you're taking both an equity stake as
13:52
well as putting some debt in place with, with, with your,
13:57
with your portfolio company, 1 of those is helping to support
14:02
your strength in the other. But I I'm not exactly clear how
14:06
can can you explain that a little bit more?
14:07
Or yeah. So we're and they first and
14:10
foremost, we're a private credit fund.
14:11
So we lead with our debt products.
14:13
So we wouldn't do equity without doing debt again back to the
14:17
point of capital preservation. So as we think about delivering
14:21
our strategy to our investors and delivering our expected
14:24
returns to our investors, our main focus is again we're you
14:28
don't want to lose your principal.
14:30
So we start out by saying let's do a debt position.
14:33
What does this look like? What differentiates us a bit in
14:36
the market is that we're focused on lower middle market.
14:39
So that means companies traditionally have less than
14:41
15,000,000 of EBITDA. So we look at healthcare
14:44
companies in that space. We don't take any FDA risks.
14:47
So we're not doing any like preclinical trial risk for
14:50
pharma and Med devices. We'll do pharma and Med device
14:53
deals, but only if they've been approved by the FDA.
14:56
So first and foremost we go to the company and say what do you
14:59
need? What are you trying to
15:00
accomplish? Are you trying to grow your
15:01
business? Do you want to do acquisitions?
15:04
You know what is happening that's bringing us to this
15:06
conversation? Do you need to refi debt?
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What is it? And a lot of times the 1st
15:13
challenge is that everyone has their boxes.
15:15
All, all lenders traditionally have their boxes, Investors have
15:18
their boxes and they try to get companies to fit within their
15:22
box. Well, if you have a company with
15:23
less than 1590 EBITDA, that company doesn't want to go to a
15:28
bank for a working capital line. You know, somebody like us to do
15:31
a term loan, a mezzanine lender to do junior debt and equity
15:34
holder to do equity. You know, most of these
15:37
companies have never even had institutional capital around
15:40
them that's too overwhelming for their infrastructure.
15:42
So we come to them and say, what do you need?
15:45
And let us provide a flexible solution that works for you.
15:49
And typically, again, that's going to include debt and
15:52
equity. And so we look at the debt and
15:54
say we want to be senior debt, we want to control the debt
15:58
position. We want to have again a lot of
16:00
covenants, a lot of financial statement reporting and we're
16:03
sitting at the top of the capital structure.
16:05
We're typically priced that call it 14 to 16% interest and our
16:10
leverage is usually around three times.
16:12
So we don't over lever the businesses, which is the first
16:14
key point. We don't over lever the
16:16
business. Explain that for the layperson
16:18
14 to 16% interest and then leveraged at 3X.
16:22
Yeah. So on the interest, so 14 to
16:25
16%, Anthony, if you think you know if you have $100 and you
16:29
put it in the bank, you're maybe getting the point, right.
16:32
It might be getting 1% if you're lucky, right in today's
16:36
environment, despite where interest rates are.
16:38
So if you think about if you're an investor with us, for
16:42
example, let's put your investor hat on for a moment.
16:44
For investors, what our strategy is really attractive because our
16:48
debt positions are kicking off 14 to 16% interest every quarter
16:53
back to our investors. So if you think about if you put
16:56
that same $100.00 with us in our fund, look at the return that
17:01
you're getting, that's just on the deck.
17:03
So for our companies, think about it, if you go to the bank
17:07
and get a loan, you would pay us 15 to 14 to 16% to get a loan
17:13
for us. So you might say like, wow,
17:14
that's a lot of it's a high-priced loan for, for a
17:18
company. And it's true, we're not the
17:21
cheapest people on the street, but we also add a lot of values.
17:24
So I always tell people because we are industry focused and we
17:28
are a true partner, we remove the commodity discussion around
17:32
our cash. So if only if a borrower and a
17:35
company appreciates the partnership we bring to the
17:38
table and and values and wants that, does it make sense for
17:42
them to to pay that incremental amount If they're just looking
17:46
for cheap debt, that's not us. So our debt is attractive for
17:50
our investors from a return perspective, which obviously
17:53
there are clients first and foremost.
17:56
And then to the borrowers, we want to make sure that we can
17:59
charge that money for our investors, but also that we're
18:02
delivering and we're not just, you know, charging a bunch of
18:05
money without creating value. So when we're looking at
18:08
partnering with a company, we need to make sure, OK, do they
18:11
appreciate what we're bringing the table and we can talk about
18:13
that. And also for that, they're going
18:15
to have to pay us. We're not, you know, we're not
18:17
going to give them a, a Bentley and, and in charge, you know, I
18:22
don't even know Kia pricing or something.
18:24
So, so we, we kind of preach what we, what we deliver and we
18:30
expect to get paid for it. So that's the debt position.
18:33
And then we, we do an equity piece alongside of the debt
18:37
position. And the equity position is
18:41
preferred debt, meaning that we sit really high in the equity
18:45
structure. So that if things do go
18:47
sideways, we're the first equity that will get paid in a downside
18:52
scenario. And typically that equity
18:55
position, we will have a board seat.
18:57
Sometimes we have more than one board seat.
19:01
If we're not controlling the company out of the gate, whoever
19:04
is controlling the company, we say, listen, you can control the
19:07
business. But if your EBITDA, which is
19:09
kind of the metric of of how you know companies are measured from
19:14
an earnings perspective, if your EBITDA drops below a certain
19:17
amount, we actually take a springing control right of your
19:20
board. So you can go run your business.
19:22
But if you muck this up, we're going to take control of the
19:25
board so that again back to some of my earlier points, we can
19:28
replace management, we can make sure that the value doesn't
19:32
continue to decline over time, make whatever changes we need to
19:36
protect our capital position. So in that scenario, that board
19:41
springing board, right, for example, that will actually
19:44
protect our debt, ironically enough, and also protect our
19:47
equity. Because once we can get control
19:49
of the board, we might be able if we need to, to make changes
19:53
in management. We might be able to stop
19:56
acquisitions from happening. We might be able to do cost
19:59
controls or bringing other people in.
20:01
If you don't have control of the board, you can't as a senior
20:04
lender make those changes. You have to go to the board and
20:07
and say, hey, we, we want you to make these changes.
20:10
But ultimately they make those decisions.
20:13
So that's why I'm saying sometimes, like if we were only
20:16
in the debt. We couldn't get that spring
20:18
control of the board and a lot of people think we've got the
20:22
spring controller board. You're protecting your equity,
20:24
but at the end of the day that also protects the senior lender
20:27
because you're stopping the the bleed and you're stopping cash
20:31
from going out of the company, which preserves the cash to be
20:34
able to repay the debt. And and I should mention you
20:37
asked about leverage. So in the typical world of
20:41
private credit, you know, think about when you get a mortgage,
20:43
for example, the bank will give you 80% of the value of your
20:47
home. You have to come up with 20%.
20:49
So leverage and private credit is very much the same of if a
20:53
company is worth 6 times EBITDA, for example, how much debt do
20:57
you want to put on the business and how much equity do you want
21:00
to have behind your debt to show alignment from a, you know,
21:04
whoever owns the company's perspective.
21:06
But also, if you think about when you're levering up for
21:09
mortgage, for example, people ask you what's your cash flows?
21:13
How much do you, you know, make every month and how much you
21:15
know, what are your bills? And it's the same way with
21:17
companies. For us, we look at how much does
21:20
a company generate in cash flow? And then also once we layer on
21:23
our debt, how much debt can they actually support that they don't
21:27
feel like their cash flows are constrained.
21:29
Again, back to the point of we want them to be able to service
21:32
their debt and not have a liquidity issue.
21:34
And So what is that? 3X number referred to
21:36
specifically, yeah. Three XS for example, so they
21:39
have 10 million at EBITDA and EBITDA is essentially in
21:43
layman's terms, how much money they have, so net income and
21:48
other people's terms. But EBITDA is essentially the
21:50
earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization.
21:54
That's where the IT DAW comes from of EBITDA.
21:57
So it that's what it's earnings before interest, depreciation,
22:00
amortization. So it's trying to get a, a true
22:02
kind of earnings line and saying how much debt do we want to put
22:06
against that. So three times mean if you have
22:08
a 10 million EBITDA business, you'd give them 30 million of
22:11
debt and that's where the three times come from.
22:13
And typically what happens in the market and why like in the O
22:17
8 crisis happened and many other crises before that, if you've
22:21
heard about leveraged lending guidelines and too big to fail
22:24
at banks and highly leveraged transactions, what would happen
22:28
is people were pushing leverage very high.
22:30
When I came into the industry in early 2000s, we were doing deals
22:36
that had like 8 or 9 times leverage, sometimes 10 times
22:39
leverage for these companies, which is just insanity when I
22:43
think about it. But those were in the heydays of
22:45
leverage lending really starting out and and there wasn't enough
22:51
trouble that had happened as a result of that.
22:53
Now we've gone through many cycles to understand why that's
22:56
not responsible to lever companies that way.
22:59
So three times leverage is a very modest leverage for these
23:03
companies. And a lot of times people will
23:06
also stretch their leverage, meaning increased leverage
23:09
because when you increase the leverage, arguably you should
23:12
charge more because you're taking more risk.
23:15
But what we're able to do is we're able to keep the leverage
23:17
at a modest level, keep our pricing where our investors want
23:22
and what we what we tell our investors we want to deliver.
23:25
But then that incremental value that we're creating along the
23:29
way in partnership with the companies is how we're getting
23:32
that incremental spread, not by taking incremental risk.
23:35
Gotcha now. As I understand it, A1A
23:38
Investment Partners was not your first entrepreneurial effort,
23:42
correct? Tell me about.
23:43
That first experience, yeah. So I I.
23:46
Was at GE, as I mentioned, for nine years.
23:49
You know, I was there during the OA crisis.
23:51
I was there when the Affordable Care Act, now Obamacare, was put
23:55
in place, you know, in the OA crisis, if you remember, GE
23:58
almost went bust. They actually know having to
24:01
take money from Warren Buffett because their funding was really
24:05
connected to the commercial paper market, which went
24:08
sideways in the OA crisis. And so the boxes in which people
24:14
could invest kept getting restricted and then also people
24:18
kept moving up market. So the lending environment
24:21
changed a lot after OE. And although private credit was
24:24
around in O8, it really exploded after the O 8 crisis because the
24:29
banks became highly regulated and this was a way for people to
24:33
raise capital and be able to invest in the credit world.
24:36
And when I think about where private credit is today relative
24:39
to that, I mean billions and billions of dollars have been
24:43
raised around private credit. But for our industry, I saw an
24:47
opportunity in the market, I said, gosh, there's no one, no
24:50
one else out there focused in on healthcare for private credit.
24:53
People had we're doing healthcare within large private
24:57
credit platforms. But I didn't know anyone out
24:59
there that was 100% focused on healthcare and then focused in
25:02
again on lower middle market, less than 15 of EBITDA.
25:06
Who could say to borrowers, you know, let me help you find a
25:09
solution that works for you versus you fitting in my box.
25:13
And that was really my thesis. I said, you know, if I leave GE,
25:17
I think this is what I want to do.
25:18
I see a gap in the market. Someone out there must be doing.
25:22
So I started to ask around, does anybody know a private credit
25:25
fund focused on healthcare? Oh yeah, sure, sure.
25:27
And they would name like a venture fund or equity fund or
25:30
net, like all these different things.
25:32
But nobody was doing private credit help and private credit.
25:36
Credit specifically is just lending money exactly directly.
25:40
Like without. A bank?
25:41
Exactly so. So what gets confusing, like it
25:44
should really be called private debt, frankly, but it's really
25:47
private credit. But if you think about the
25:49
broader world of investing, you have private equity, which is
25:53
pretty obvious. You know, that's like private
25:55
equity firms are raising big pools of capital to put equity
25:58
in their companies. Traditionally, like early in my
26:01
career when private equity firms were making investments in
26:05
businesses, they would put in the equity and they'd go to a
26:08
bank and and get the money to support that acquisition or
26:12
transaction or takeover of the company.
26:15
And then companies would go to banks to get lending like all of
26:19
us do, right? But with private credit
26:21
exploding, it's essentially like going to a bank without going to
26:24
a bank. So the funds are set up just
26:27
like traditional private equity funds, but the money is going to
26:31
debt investments versus equity investments.
26:34
And again, we're hybrid, we do debt and equity, but traditional
26:38
private credit just means you're lending money just like you
26:40
would a bank. But you don't, you're regulated
26:42
with the SEC, you're not regulated by the bank regulating
26:46
authorities. So, you know, one of the, I
26:49
think broader risks for private credit is that you don't have
26:53
the regulatory controls from banking perspective that banks
26:56
have. And so private credit has a
26:58
tremendous amount of flexibility of what you can do with a
27:01
private credit fund, again, according to SEC standards, but
27:04
the actual way in which you lend money and the way you structure
27:08
your deals are all up to you versus having the bank
27:12
regulatory authorities tell you if you're doing too risky of
27:16
lending. Gotcha.
27:17
And so you found. That there wasn't anybody doing
27:19
private credit to the healthcare industry in this lower middle
27:23
market sub $15 million EBITDA. So you're like I, I sort of
27:27
found a niche here. Exactly.
27:29
Exactly. And you know, my, my family has
27:34
some entrepreneurial spirit to it.
27:37
My, my dad owned a landscaping business and tree trimming
27:42
business in addition to his, his regular employment.
27:46
And he he owned that company. My brother left Siemens at a
27:50
very young age and started his own healthcare business.
27:53
And so, you know, I saw in within my own family a lot of
27:58
success to lead, quote UN quote, the the security of a paycheck
28:02
to go do something different. But it was terrifying.
28:06
And, you know, I didn't know. I knew what I knew and I knew
28:10
what I didn't know. And I thought, like, is this
28:13
possible? Can I do this?
28:14
You know, I had been working my entire life, you know,
28:18
collecting a check, if you will, and being an employee.
28:20
And I thought, like, gosh, how can I do this?
28:22
Do I have enough guts to be able to do this?
28:24
And This is why I was saying Anthony, ignorance is bliss.
28:30
So. So many.
28:31
Entrepreneurs have this story. If I had known what I knew now,
28:35
I wouldn't have done it. No, I would.
28:37
Have been so scared that I would never have taken the jump and
28:43
you know the glamorous part about being an entrepreneur is
28:45
sometimes what is always shown but it's those quiet moments and
28:49
those dips you know there's books written on dips those dips
28:53
are brutal when you're an entrepreneur and so to pull the
28:56
RIP cord and I had a very successful career G as I
29:00
mentioned you know I was I was a top performer there I was making
29:04
very good money and my my crew was going in a great direction
29:08
and so to pull the RIP cord and say go to nothing and you know
29:13
back then they still had BlackBerry blackberries.
29:15
I don't know if you remember that Anthony with a little red
29:17
light would go off on your BlackBerry.
29:20
And I thought, like, man, who's going to call me my BlackBerry
29:22
if I quit my job? So I, I just looked around and I
29:28
said, I really know healthcare at this point.
29:30
I feel really confident that I'm an expert within the industry.
29:33
I knew that I could originate deals like, you know, no one
29:38
else on the street. It's one of my strongest
29:40
strengths. I knew I had a really good
29:41
underwriting skills at that time.
29:43
I'd already founded the Pitt Foundation, so I did a lot of
29:46
fundraising in the nonprofit side of the world.
29:50
And I knew I was gritty enough and scrappy enough and humble
29:53
enough that if I didn't know something, I would find somebody
29:57
who knew and, and be comfortable enough to say, like, I don't
30:00
know, come, can you come help me?
30:03
So I knew those are strengths I have, but I knew I never, you
30:06
know, found an investment firm. I knew I didn't have
30:09
institutional investor relationships.
30:12
I knew I hadn't fundraised. And that's a big gap.
30:14
Right, exactly. You know, I hadn't fundraised
30:16
before and I think this is a broad statement and I, I don't
30:21
think it's controversial, but in general, I think that women are
30:26
a little bit more adverse in terms of risk taking or feeling
30:31
like we have to like check every single box before we move.
30:35
And again, this is general is general statement, but and I've
30:39
seen this even in hiring men and women.
30:42
And so for me, I was like, gosh, I don't know all these things.
30:45
Maybe I need to find learn all these things before I can do
30:48
this or, you know, and I was really in my head about this.
30:51
And then I had met somebody along the way I'd done and deal
30:55
with and he had suggested at the time that he had those skill
31:00
sets to bring to the table. And so I thought, you know, this
31:04
could be a great combination. He brings the things that I
31:07
don't have and I know what I bring to the table.
31:10
Let's go out and do this together.
31:12
So we partnered up in 2015. It took us three years to raise
31:17
the the pool of capital, but we were able to close on a $274
31:22
million fund, which is very successful.
31:24
Again, lower middle market healthcare, flexible solutions
31:30
and, and so that really started, started my journey.
31:33
We had to made a decision and raising the next fund that we
31:37
are not going to raise another pool of capital together.
31:40
So A1A was kind of born out of that experience.
31:44
And we can talk about that a little bit more.
31:46
But A1A, I'm a sole GP, meaning I, I run and manage A1A myself
31:52
and over time, you know, plan to make some changes and bring in
31:57
and, and further develop my team in the part or level.
32:00
But right now I'm 100% owner and I've learned so much about,
32:04
about business building and entrepreneurship through that
32:07
transition as well. It it sounds like there's.
32:09
Probably more to the story there, you raised hundreds of
32:12
millions of dollars, very successful right out of the
32:14
gate. You know, the first fund that
32:15
the two of you have done together and then I feel like we
32:19
almost kind of yadda yadda, yadda because it like what?
32:21
Why? Why not continue?
32:23
Yeah, I would. Say that Anthony, and this is I
32:27
think when and I I mentor a lot of people and talk to a lot of
32:31
people who are wanting to leave and go found their own firm and
32:36
you know a lot. I know of another firm that has
32:38
four partners and they kind of work together and are friends
32:41
and they're like, this is going to be amazing.
32:42
We're going to go raise a fund. I'm like, well, what if it's not
32:45
right? What if you hit the dip and
32:48
you're not making money? You're having to fund a
32:52
business. Somebody's goes through a
32:55
divorce, somebody has another kid that they weren't expecting
32:59
or the wife quits your job or you know, and I say why?
33:03
Because these are all happening to men.
33:04
Like what happens or you get in a big fight or you think
33:08
somebody handles stress one way and they handle stress a
33:10
different way, or you think that somebody moves in the world one
33:13
way and then under stress they move completely different.
33:17
What are you going to do, right? How are you going to navigate
33:20
the breakup And when you have a two person partnership if you're
33:26
not clear about those things day one?
33:28
And then also you don't have things documented in a way that
33:33
allow for, again, just like underwriting in a deal.
33:37
Like I was so clear, Anthony, about that downside protection
33:41
on the investments I made and protecting my investors capital.
33:47
I had never translated. Hindsight's always 2020.
33:50
But in setting up a partnership, you have to have the same
33:53
mindset of what ifs. And it's not just you're
33:57
bringing this, I'm bringing this, you have a track record, I
34:00
have a track record, let's go do this.
34:02
Everything's going to be perfect.
34:04
You have to really look at that other person or people and say,
34:08
do they align with how they again, move in the world more
34:12
broadly? Do they align with how they
34:15
think about things? Do they align with how they
34:18
treat people when they're under stress?
34:20
What do they do? Do they lean in negatively?
34:22
Do they lean in positively? How do they navigate that?
34:26
And then if they pick up bad habits on along the way, how are
34:29
you going to address it? And in an Armageddon scenario,
34:32
how are you going to separate? I mean, think about it's almost
34:35
like a business divorce in many, in many cases.
34:38
And and so you know, I now coming through this other side
34:43
when I'm working. And I would say for your
34:45
audience, if you're thinking about creating a partnership,
34:48
thinking about creating a business with somebody, you have
34:51
to have these tough conversations.
34:54
If I think about my brother and his business partners have been
34:57
now together about 18 years, they have the best partnership I
35:01
have ever experienced across my entire business world.
35:06
And not just because of my brother and his partner, but
35:09
because they always have each other's backs.
35:12
When if you're with one of them and you say like jokingly who's
35:15
the boss, they always say the other person's the boss.
35:18
They have had had to go through eggs and flows with one another
35:22
and they're always aligned. You know, they were looking at
35:26
selling their business a couple years ago and one wanted to
35:29
sell, one didn't want to sell. And they both talked to me
35:32
separately saying like, gosh, I really want to sell.
35:34
But if he doesn't sell, like I'm not going to sell like or, or,
35:37
you know, and they so they always stuck together.
35:40
There was no Plan B. There was no other option.
35:43
And they just, it wasn't always perfect, right?
35:46
But they always said, you know, this is our guiding light.
35:49
And they're very similar type of people, meaning they have
35:53
boundaries and borders in life in which they won't cross.
35:56
And I think that when you partner with somebody, those are
35:59
the things that get missed early.
36:01
People focus on the the again, like, can you do this?
36:04
I can't do that. Do you have a track record?
36:06
Do you have the money to do it? How are we going to do it?
36:09
And you don't focus on strategy versus like, who are you as a
36:12
human being? Yeah.
36:13
So let me ask you like 1. Like key clause or one key
36:17
condition that you would recommend anybody going into a
36:20
new partnership like make sure that you do this thing.
36:24
Make sure you have this set up. You have to have in your.
36:27
Documents a way to either remove the other person or buy out the
36:32
other person. And that could either be because
36:35
of a disagreement or even something simple Anthony, like
36:39
on death. So for example, say you're with
36:42
a partner and your partner dies. Guess what?
36:45
Next thing you know, that person's husband or wife is
36:48
going to be your new partner to control the company, right?
36:52
Most times, that's probably not the wisest thing to do.
36:55
They don't have the same skill sets, the same.
36:56
Personality, they don't have an understanding of the business
36:59
and that happens an. Operating partner of ours,
37:02
ironically enough. Neighbor ended up dying in a
37:06
plane crash and this company had no succession planning in their
37:10
documents. Nothing.
37:11
This wife, his wife ended up running like a huge company
37:15
because he passed and so goes to the estate and she controlled
37:19
the estate. You can imagine for investors in
37:22
that company like holy cow, what is happening?
37:24
Like not anything negative to her, but you know, she was a
37:28
stay at home mom and now she's the CEO of this massive company.
37:32
So I think making sure you say in the documents, what if, what
37:37
if? And you don't have to guess what
37:39
it is. What if the partnership needs
37:41
the dismantle? What are we going to do?
37:44
What are the steps that we have in place?
37:46
Upon death, your economic interest can still remain with
37:50
your partner, but the controlling of the business has
37:52
to revert to the other partner so that again, you are making
37:56
sure that you are the one if you're the one remaining, that
37:59
you're controlling the company and therefore protecting your
38:03
investors. So I'm gathering that with your.
38:05
Prior partner, you guys just sort of going through the the
38:09
business together, you figured out that you're sort of not
38:13
aligned in terms of either values or personality and so how
38:16
painful was sort of the unwinding of that arrangement it
38:21
was? The most brutal experience,
38:24
Anthony, of my entire career, mainly because my guiding light
38:30
for every everything was people look, I look people in the eye
38:35
and they look me in the eye and they trusted me with their
38:37
capital. And I take that very, very
38:40
seriously to the point where I told you I've had no realized
38:44
losses. I can't imagine someone trusting
38:48
me with their capital and me losing money for them.
38:51
So my guiding light was every single day, am I doing the best
38:56
I can possibly do for these investors?
38:58
They gave me their money. Am I waking up every day and
39:01
deploying it correctly, deploying it responsibly,
39:04
managing it responsibly and in a downside scenario, protecting it
39:08
with all my ability to do so to that last dollar is recoup from
39:13
them. And through this experience,
39:16
that was my guiding light to say this is a difficult situation.
39:21
Difficult decisions need to be made, but am I putting the
39:24
investors first? And in putting the investors
39:27
first, I had to put my own economic interests and my own
39:31
friendly well-being on the sidelines because those two
39:34
things unfortunately couldn't exist at A at a period of time
39:37
together. But through that experience,
39:40
I've learned that so many other folks out there haven't ever had
39:46
fiduciary responsibility tested. And I think the fact that it was
39:52
tested for me argue that early in my career in many ways, I'm
39:57
so clear about this, doing this now for A1A and so clear about
40:03
what it means to hold fiduciary responsibility in high regard.
40:06
And I teach this to my team every day, all the time we talk,
40:11
we have to put their interests 1st.
40:13
And I think it's made me, frankly, a much better investor.
40:17
Anthony, what investors have told me is that they know they
40:20
can trust me. They know that I'm going to be
40:22
transparent with them. They know that I can have
40:25
crucial difficult conversations. And at the end of the day, I'm
40:29
going to be honest with them. And so many times investors are
40:34
looking for that. They're not looking for the
40:36
shiny track record. They're not looking for the
40:38
perfect answers. They want to know, can they go
40:42
to bed at night trusting you with their money?
40:45
And a lot of times it's not tested.
40:47
And so I feel, you know, ironic sort of way that this experience
40:52
has reshaped me to be an even better investor, you know, for
40:57
my for my underlying investors and I and I feel like I have a
41:01
lot of conviction around what that means every day with how we
41:04
do what we do, you know, earlier in the interview.
41:07
You talked about growing up in a small town and that gave you
41:11
sort of a window into different levels of access that folks have
41:15
into healthcare. I also wonder now hearing you
41:17
talk about these strong core values that you have, if that's
41:21
been in any way influenced by that same kind of small town
41:26
upbringing. Yeah, absolutely, Anthony.
41:28
Like my parents, you know, we, you know, my brother and I both
41:32
played sports our entire life, but we always had dinner every
41:36
single night at the dinner table.
41:37
Even if it was very late by the time we got home from our sports
41:41
activities or our games or whatever it was, we had dinner
41:44
every single night. Both my parents work, by the
41:46
way. You know, we had dinner every
41:48
single night. On Sunday evenings, my parents
41:51
would sit at the kitchen table and balance their checkbook.
41:54
You know, my my dad used to talk about, you know, he would get so
41:59
annoyed if he'd lend out, you know, a piece of his equipment
42:02
and people would return it like not cleaned and the gas tank
42:05
wasn't filled. You know, it's like you should
42:07
return something better than you received it.
42:09
You know, he always thought really strongly about paying for
42:13
things and not having handouts and if somebody did something
42:17
for you, really appreciating that.
42:20
And, and, you know, my mom is such a caring and, and beautiful
42:25
person that I think her compassion and empathy and
42:28
understanding kind of comes through with some a lot of the
42:31
philanthropic work that I do. And you know, my brother, if
42:35
arguably my brother and I have been wildly successful relative
42:39
to where we came from our, you know, my graduating class had
42:43
less than 100 people in my high school.
42:45
So it's very small school. But I think ironically enough,
42:49
Anthony, that town I grew up in was a farmer town.
42:52
My parents aren't farmers, but I think that farmer mentality of
42:56
getting up every day and soiling, you know, or, or towing
43:02
the soil and, and creating something out of nothing and the
43:05
hard work it takes from making a seed to a plant of food.
43:10
There's something about that discipline and that rigor and,
43:14
and tenacity. I think that was around me all
43:18
of the time and and it came through and I think about, you
43:22
know, my brother and I both do this, but I've seen my brother
43:25
do this. My brother handwrites, thank you
43:27
cards. My brother, you know, is so
43:31
giving and and careful to do those same sort of things of of
43:35
really honoring what somebody does and like taking what people
43:39
do in high regard back to you and taking it seriously when
43:43
somebody trusts you and, you know, not wanting to disappoint
43:47
somebody when somebody's relying on you, some of those things.
43:50
And he's incredibly tenacious too.
43:52
Both he and I are that same way. So I think there is something to
43:56
that, Anthony. And I think on the values side,
44:00
you know, it wasn't my childhood wasn't like strict like these
44:03
are how you do things, but there were certain things you're like,
44:06
you just don't do those things to other people.
44:09
And I think like it sounds like your parents were living by.
44:11
Example. Yeah, exactly like.
44:14
Oh, somebody returns. The weed whacker and it's dirty
44:16
and the gas can't, you know, it's not filled up.
44:18
And so you hear your dad talk about that.
44:20
That just sort of gets filed away.
44:21
Yeah, you know, and absolutely you know, and.
44:23
We would go to the farmers market and if somebody, you
44:26
know, would, would, would, you know, give extra portion of
44:30
whatever it is, is like, you know, my parents would be
44:33
forever grateful and always go to that stand, for example.
44:36
So that sense of loyalty also is certainly in there.
44:39
But it does, it did shape me, Anthony, where I am today.
44:42
And ironically enough, it made those tough decisions back to
44:46
your initial question a lot easier for me because I, you
44:49
know, a lot of people say like, just do the right thing.
44:51
And I always say, like, gosh, if everyone just did the right
44:53
thing, like imagine how beautiful the world would be.
44:55
And someone asked me, Anthony, like, how do you know when
44:58
you're doing the right thing? I'm like, come on, When you're
45:00
not doing the right thing, don't you feel it in your belly?
45:04
You feel it in your belly, right?
45:06
And I don't know, maybe some people just don't have that
45:08
feeling in their belly, but or they've gotten better at
45:11
ignoring. It I don't know, I just like
45:13
every night I want to lay my. Head down on my pillow and say,
45:16
especially in this part for business and and the investors
45:19
dollars, I want them to know that like if I'm not sleeping,
45:24
it's because I'm looking after their capital.
45:26
I don't want them to lose sleep because they made the decision
45:29
to trust me. Yeah.
45:31
And. So as you were going through
45:33
that difficult breakup and and you use the word brutal and and
45:36
I understand that been there before and and it can be
45:39
incredibly trying. How did you get through it?
45:42
Who did you lean on what? What were sort of your coping
45:46
mechanisms? Yeah, Anthony, you know one
45:48
thing. Is that I think that the only
45:53
like 1 of the words that comes to me is really about.
45:58
I would never have said before that I am courageous.
46:02
I think when people use the word courageous, they think like,
46:05
would I jump out of a plane? You know, like would I do all
46:08
these, you know, courageous things?
46:11
I think that for me, through that experience, I thought about
46:17
people who were whistleblowers or people who did things and
46:24
you're like, holy cow, I can't believe they did that.
46:27
Like it destroyed like on the outside, like their lives.
46:32
But to do the right thing or like in extreme ways, right?
46:35
Or like, gosh, this person like, you know, took a stand for
46:40
something to because they were principled and, and and had a
46:45
bigger sense of responsibility than just themselves.
46:50
And, you know, I think that when I heard those stories before, I,
46:56
I never could really like understand it or think about
46:59
like, why did they do that or what compelled them to do that?
47:03
Or like, what did that really mean for them to have to do
47:06
that? Like what were they risking?
47:08
What were they willing to risk? And why and how did they go
47:11
through that? And like this is, this is like
47:14
a, such a smaller thing than that.
47:16
But I would say that it took so much courage to say this is what
47:23
needs to be done. And I don't know how this is
47:27
going to work out, but this is what needs to be done.
47:30
And some days, Anthony, I would say, like, what am I doing?
47:36
How did I get here? What happened, What is going on?
47:40
And I think, you know, I have some people in the industry that
47:45
are senior to me and years and wisdom that I spent a lot of
47:49
time talking to about this to say, what did you have to do?
47:53
I mean, other people have had partner breakups before.
47:56
So like, how did you do it? What did you do?
47:58
How did you think about it? I think all of that was really
48:01
important in terms of logistically, how do you do
48:03
things from a business perspective?
48:05
But then in my personal life, I also relied on people who know
48:10
me and know kind of who I am as an individual and where my
48:14
stress points are. And it in an ironic sort of way,
48:18
Anthony, if I didn't do what I was doing, I would feel it in my
48:22
belly to say, this isn't right. I got to do what's right.
48:26
And so ironically, going through this and thinking about being
48:31
courageous, following that fiduciary responsibility, it
48:34
allowed me a sense of calmness that that being terrified of
48:38
what the outcome is going to be. Again, I could lay my head on
48:42
the pillow at night knowing that I was at least doing the right
48:44
thing. Everything else I couldn't
48:45
control but doing the wrong thing.
48:48
And, and, and not having all the turmoil, just like it wasn't
48:53
palatable for me anymore. So I had to, I, I felt like I
48:57
had no choice. It wasn't like I just made some
49:00
decision. I felt like I had no choice and
49:03
I had to do what I had to do. And so how did that?
49:06
Transition from the previous venture into A1A happen.
49:11
Yeah. So you know I.
49:13
Launched when? When we decided we weren't
49:16
raising Fund 2 together, I launched A1A.
49:20
You know, we're based in Florida.
49:21
So A1A, as you might know from the old Vanilla Ice song Ice Ice
49:27
Baby, it talks about A1A Beachfront Ave.
49:30
So A1A is a long highway in Florida.
49:33
For trademark purposes, we're not named after a Federal
49:35
Highway. We are first in the phone book.
49:38
If there's a phone book out there, we're first in the
49:40
alphabet for conferences. And so I rebranded under A1 AI,
49:46
brought some folks over for my prior firm and augmented the
49:50
team and really took all the great lessons from my prior firm
49:55
and brought it forward to A1A and complemented it with with I
49:59
think even greater skill set and greater future and opportunity.
50:03
As I mentioned, you know, I brought on a partner that has
50:06
very strong operational expertise.
50:09
He was a former operator at a number of dialysis businesses
50:13
and under other healthcare companies.
50:16
And so he brings and has a bit of a financial background as
50:20
well, but really brought him on from an operational perspective.
50:23
And also I should mention my investment team comes from the
50:27
GE background. They've all been at GE at one
50:30
time or another. So has that strong underwriting
50:34
background and skill set that I talked about before with no
50:37
principal losses and really underwriting senior debt as if
50:41
you're common equity and comes with kind of that same mindset.
50:45
Not that we all think the same because we have a lot of healthy
50:49
debates together, But again, the core values of our team align
50:54
really well. And I can trust every one of
50:57
them that if I'm not in the room, they're representing our
50:59
brand well And, and I feel proud of them wherever they are.
51:04
I know that they're representing me and they're representing the
51:07
brand. And I know that they feel the
51:08
same way about me. And I think that that's a really
51:11
special thing when you, you have such a great team that you can
51:15
trust and rely on and you know that you can interchange any one
51:18
of us and you're probably going to get a similar answer because
51:21
again, our core guys align nicely.
51:24
And a lot of the philanthropic work I do, I involve the team
51:28
and I love that they're always ready to, to jump in and and
51:33
take a hold. And let's talk about some of
51:35
that philanthropic. Work.
51:36
You're really busy, Melanie. You're, you know, you built
51:39
another, you know, large fund, lots of investments.
51:43
And why, why are you carving out so much time for all these
51:46
philanthropic efforts? Yeah, I feel Anthony.
51:50
That they're, gosh, there's so much work to be done and for
51:54
there's so many initiatives and goals and people and, and just
51:59
so much good to do in the world on that say the world's bad, but
52:03
there's so much good to do. And I always just try to
52:06
encourage folks, you know, to find what they're passionate
52:11
about or what they believe in. You know, we were talking about
52:14
breast cancer and things of that nature, you know, whatever
52:17
anyone's passionate about can get behind, you know, just do
52:20
it. And it doesn't have to be money.
52:22
A lot of times in in nonprofit where it's also time.
52:26
And I think that having a passion and contributing outside
52:32
of something that's not directly economically beneficial, you
52:38
know, back to you. I find that when I do this work,
52:43
what I get in return is so much more than what I'm giving.
52:46
And so I feel like for me, it fills up my teacup when I'm
52:52
doing different types of work and I see that something small
52:56
that I can do makes such a huge change in someone else's lives.
53:02
And I think that sometimes people think that they have to
53:05
do some big grand gesture to make a change.
53:08
But sometimes it's a small stuff like when, you know, I lived in
53:12
New York for many, many years and you know, I, there was AI
53:17
worked at 299 Park at G and there was an old woman, she was
53:20
probably 80 years old, Anthony, who was homeless living on the
53:22
street. And she would be at the church
53:24
right next to us every morning because they had a food bank
53:28
there. And I would stop by and I would
53:30
talk with her every day. She knew my name.
53:32
She knew all about my life. I knew her name.
53:35
We would chat, you know, I offered to bring her into my
53:38
home to allow her to shower. I would bring her food.
53:41
And she was such a prideful woman.
53:43
She would never want to take things when I first met her.
53:46
And then I got to know her a little bit more.
53:48
I would take her to go get some food and stuff.
53:50
And I remember one day, Anthony, I was sitting talking to her and
53:53
a guy walked by and he threw a banana down on the ground.
53:58
Now, mind you, I'm like leaning down in a full business suit
54:01
talking to her. And he throws this banana down.
54:04
And I thought, what are you doing?
54:06
You know, she's not like a monkey in the zoo.
54:09
This is a an elderly woman. And I actually stood up and I
54:12
went, imagine me running down the street, tapped him on the
54:15
shoulder and stuff. Like, what are you doing?
54:17
It's like, oh, I figured she wanted something to eat.
54:20
I said, have you ever thought about that?
54:22
That could be your grandmother. He's like, my grandmother would
54:25
never be homeless. And I thought, like, why am I
54:27
engaging in this ridiculous conversation?
54:29
So my point is, is that I really believe like me stopping and
54:34
talking with her connected me to humility in a way that when I
54:40
walked in the doors of GE and all the the power and greed and
54:45
money and success and everything else that goes along with my
54:49
industry more broadly. It's a great balance to say at
54:53
the end of the day, we're all people and we have to think
54:56
about each other as such. And, and so at GE they had a
55:01
matching program where whatever we would agree to do, they would
55:04
match. As long as there's a 5O1C3, they
55:06
would match. So they never told us what we'd
55:09
have to contribute. You could choose and they would
55:12
match. And I love that idea because it
55:14
allows people to decide what they want to do.
55:17
But for my team, we've done all sorts of things together. 51
55:21
Bets is a prime example helping, you know, Navy Seals, Green
55:24
Beret or other elite veterans enter the financial services
55:29
world. And my team has helped out a ton
55:31
there. You know, the, the Pitt
55:35
Foundation I I created after going to Kenya and my first trip
55:38
was between my, my prior bank and GEI was there for 21 days
55:44
with no water, electricity. And, you know, it's my first
55:47
time going to Africa and met some kids there and just felt a
55:51
tremendous social responsibility to do something.
55:53
And, and, and now I spend a ton of time advocating for animal
55:58
rights and helping shelter dogs, as I mentioned.
56:01
And you know, what I've learned is that, you know, if something
56:03
happens to your pet, in most states, animals are considered
56:07
property and, and there's no accountability or recourse
56:11
back-to-back to individuals because it's all about the price
56:13
of the animal. And for rescues, you know,
56:16
technically they're worthless. So, so there and I feel like
56:20
that, you know, animals in general and and specifically
56:23
dogs, that's where my passion is.
56:24
Don't have a voice. So, you know, sometimes it's
56:28
about being the voice to the voiceless.
56:29
But you know, I would encourage people to to think about kind of
56:34
what puts that smile on their face and helping other people or
56:38
things or doing just something that balances out the other part
56:43
of the world of accumulating things and accumulating wealth.
56:47
I love all those. Philosophies.
56:50
I just kind of want to give that last segment a giant big hug.
56:52
And I know another one of your philosophies, Melanie, is when
56:57
it comes to sort of determining, you know, your investments, if
57:01
you do good patient care, everything else flows from
57:04
there. Can you talk more about that?
57:06
Yeah. So, you know, investing.
57:08
In healthcare, it can be a double edged sword because as
57:13
much as Healthcare is a great way to give back to communities,
57:17
the underlying patient populations and with which our
57:20
portfolio companies are servings are mothers, daughters, fathers,
57:25
sisters, brothers, grandfathers. These are all us, right in many
57:29
ways. And again, back to that sense of
57:33
accountability and responsibility that I talked
57:36
about previously from a value perspective, you can make money
57:41
in health, in the healthcare industry in ways that can
57:46
compromise patient safety, can compromise patient care, can
57:51
drive up costs, which could limit access to care.
57:56
There is a, but you could as an investor, you can make a lot of
57:59
money doing some of those things.
58:01
You can find niches, niches in the reimbursement environment
58:05
where you can do investments and make a ton of money for your
58:08
investors, but you're playing games right with with the
58:12
reimbursement world. And sometimes that can stop or
58:16
you could end up backing pharmaceutical drugs or Med
58:20
device companies or services that knowingly could do harm to
58:25
patients. And so, you know, I've seen
58:28
people make a lot of money in healthcare around some of these
58:31
things. I would say that they're not
58:33
intentional about everything I just said, but they're also and
58:38
not looking directly at it because it's better to look at
58:41
like, hey, I can make a ton of money for my investors.
58:45
So I think, and I know as we're doing it, you can make great
58:49
return for your investors. Our return profile, and these
58:54
are some more complicated return perspective, but our returns are
59:00
above 20% gross IRM. In the land of investing, that's
59:05
usually private equity returns and we're getting that on like
59:08
debt structures. And I would say we make really
59:11
good returns for our investors, but we do it in a socially
59:13
responsible way. So if we see a company that we
59:19
could go in there and we could slash costs, we could get rid of
59:23
a bunch of services, We could pull out a different geographic
59:26
markets that maybe aren't reimbursing the way that other
59:30
high reimbursement markets would do.
59:31
But it could like close down a hospital, a Community Hospital
59:35
or close down access to care. We won't do those deals.
59:39
We firmly believe that we can make money for our investors and
59:44
not hurt people in that way. And you know, there's examples,
59:48
Anthony, of deals and investments we've looked at
59:50
that. That would absolutely happen in
59:52
order to make the numbers work. You would see like if you look
59:56
at the opportunity and say, well, these like 5 locations are
59:59
making a lot of money. These three locations, they're
1:00:01
making next to no money. If we cut those three locations,
1:00:05
we can obviously drive our revenues and our earnings up.
1:00:09
And that's great for the business.
1:00:11
But now what happens to those communities?
1:00:13
If we're closing down the, you know, only neonatal care unit in
1:00:19
in that area or we're closing down the only pediatric
1:00:24
neurology, you know, center in that market, what is this going
1:00:29
to mean? You know, there is areas of
1:00:31
healthcare, Anthony, where women are driving nearly two hours to
1:00:35
get to the closest OBGYN pregnant women.
1:00:41
So you can imagine like what if she goes into birth?
1:00:44
What in labor? You know, what if she's driving,
1:00:47
trying to get to the hospital for care?
1:00:49
I mean, those are things that you like for us when we're
1:00:52
making investments in healthcare, like we just won't
1:00:54
do we there's a way to make money in healthcare and still do
1:00:58
good by patients. So we look at what is this going
1:01:01
to mean to the patient population and then back up from
1:01:04
there about how do we think about the investment?
1:01:06
And so is that a deal You would just walk?
1:01:08
Away from or you would approach it differently, you could look
1:01:13
at it and say, oh, if we close these two centers, we'll be
1:01:15
profitable right away. We'll start getting a good
1:01:17
return right out of the the gate.
1:01:19
Are you like, we're just going to walk away from that?
1:01:21
Or you're like, what's a way we can participate in this deal and
1:01:24
try to fix those centers? It would depend.
1:01:28
Anthony, about the management's views on this.
1:01:31
So if if they were saying like we want to close these locations
1:01:37
because we want to drive up revenue and like you're coming
1:01:40
into the deal, so sure you want that and we say, listen, we
1:01:44
don't actually want that. Let's there's other ways to
1:01:46
drive revenue without closing these three centers and they're
1:01:51
like, great, let's do that because we were doing this
1:01:53
because we're bringing an outside investor then like I
1:01:56
love that, right? If they're like, listen, we need
1:01:58
to drive revenue because we need to make money for ourselves and
1:02:01
like, who cares about these three locations?
1:02:04
They came to us through an acquisition and we're going to
1:02:06
close them down. And I asked the question and my
1:02:08
team asked the question, what about that community?
1:02:11
And they're like, not that they'd say we don't care, but
1:02:13
like that's somebody else's problem.
1:02:15
Then we might not do that deal. So it depends on how the
1:02:19
management or other investors react and respond to that to
1:02:24
know do we have the right partner again back to like how
1:02:27
we move in the world, like how did they end up there in the 1st
1:02:30
place? And then how would they fix it?
1:02:33
And are we aligning that? We can't hurt the community and
1:02:36
the patient population and how they react to that will tell us
1:02:40
what we need to know looking into a deal.
1:02:42
So we might pass or we might adjust the strategy to to make
1:02:47
the changes as needed. Now Melanie you Co founded the.
1:02:50
Women's Investor Network Council tell us about the work that
1:02:54
you're doing there. Yeah, so I as I.
1:02:56
Mentioned in the bio, I was on the SBIA Board of Governors,
1:03:00
which is the kind of an organization that works kind of
1:03:04
in tandem with the SBI for the SBIC program, which is a way for
1:03:09
people to fundraise and get money to raise essentially
1:03:14
private credit funds. And this is across the board in
1:03:19
finance. But as you might imagine,
1:03:21
there's not a whole lot of women who are out there founding firms
1:03:23
and and leading organizations and phones.
1:03:28
There's certainly partners that are out there, but very few
1:03:32
entrepreneurial women who are doing this and very few sole GP
1:03:37
female entrepreneurs. So Wink was really founded by
1:03:40
myself and two other female owners of their firms and
1:03:45
founders of their firms to really support each other.
1:03:50
So other founders and other women within our in in our
1:03:53
universe who are founding partners or managing partners or
1:03:59
sitting kind of that high level seat at the management company
1:04:02
and the GP running funds. But also, how can we support
1:04:06
other women in the industry, giving them access to us to talk
1:04:10
about, you know, if they're interested in their own
1:04:12
entrepreneurial journey, how would they go about doing that?
1:04:15
You know, giving that and that courage to like, you know, jump
1:04:18
off the off the side of the building.
1:04:20
Not scaring them, Anthony, though, because they'll never
1:04:22
jump. But also tell them a little bit,
1:04:24
but not so much they. Need a little bit of that
1:04:26
ignorance is bliss kind of thing.
1:04:28
I'll have a bungee cord. For you, so jump and watch what
1:04:31
happens or if they're not ready to jump, how to help them have
1:04:35
the conversation around carried interests and ownership
1:04:38
interests so they can start to get the mindset of being an
1:04:41
owner versus just collecting a paycheck.
1:04:45
And so WINK is the acronym we created, but WINK was really
1:04:50
created to provide a networking solution for people in the
1:04:55
industry to and women to come together and provide those
1:04:59
resources. And it's not just a networking
1:05:01
like go and, you know, have a tea party together, but where
1:05:04
are there gaps in either a skill sets or access to knowledge?
1:05:10
And and then also like giving an Ave. to have those difficult
1:05:14
conversations. So as part of link, for example,
1:05:16
some junior women have reached out to me and say, like, Hey,
1:05:19
I'm about to get promoted. You know, I don't even know what
1:05:22
type of carried interest to think about.
1:05:24
And again, that's like a, in our world, that's like a
1:05:26
distribution of profits that come down to people in a fund.
1:05:32
And like sometimes people don't even know how to have that
1:05:35
conversation, Like what carried interest should I get?
1:05:37
Or negotiating salary increases or, you know, wanting to take a
1:05:42
board seat, a voting board seat and having the courage to say
1:05:45
like, hey, I've never had a voting board seat, but I think
1:05:48
I'm more than confident to do this, allocate that board seat
1:05:51
to me. So it's networking, it's skill
1:05:54
building, it's resource building.
1:05:57
And it just provides A pathway and an Ave. for, for women to
1:06:00
come together and have those types of conversations within
1:06:03
the industry. Before I ask my last question
1:06:06
here. Melanie, I'm going to give
1:06:07
people your website so they know how to find you and get in touch
1:06:09
with you. That is A1 aip.com.
1:06:14
The IP is for investment partners and the one is the
1:06:18
numeral 1, not spelled out, so A1 aip.com.
1:06:23
So last question for you, Melanie.
1:06:24
You and I connect one year from now and you are celebrating
1:06:28
something big. What is that thing?
1:06:31
Yeah. So gosh, one year from now.
1:06:33
So my goal longer term for A1A is that I'll say personally and
1:06:39
professionally, my goal for A1A is so when somebody thinks about
1:06:43
healthcare, they think about A1A.
1:06:45
And ideally, over time, we have a pool of capital raised so that
1:06:50
if we see a great healthcare investment, whether it's the
1:06:54
venture healthcare, venture healthcare venture debt
1:06:57
healthcare, private equity, healthcare, real estate,
1:06:59
whatever it is, we have a pool of capital to be able to deploy
1:07:03
in those great investments. In addition to that, we're
1:07:07
building out through my partner, I mentioned on the operation
1:07:10
side, a group of operational experts who can come in either
1:07:15
for our portfolio companies or for other people's healthcare
1:07:18
companies that are potentially troubled to help them right
1:07:22
size, whatever it is that's happening.
1:07:24
And so a year from today, from a, a business perspective, I'd
1:07:29
love to see some of those strategy growth strategies for
1:07:33
A1A to continue to develop and expand.
1:07:36
I know that a year from now, we'll still have done a number
1:07:39
of good investments because I, I can't imagine doing anything
1:07:42
else. And I'm really excited to see
1:07:45
our, our team continue to grow and develop.
1:07:47
Watching talent, you know, do things and, and my team members
1:07:52
do things that they didn't think were possible is something I
1:07:54
find really exciting. So that's how I think about our
1:07:58
business a year from now. I would say that some of the
1:08:01
philanthropic work that I just mentioned to you, you know, a
1:08:05
year from now, I'm hoping that and in the local level we can
1:08:11
start to get some laws changed to have a little bit more
1:08:15
flexibility for domesticating animal rights.
1:08:17
And then on the shelter side, I've been doing a lot of medical
1:08:21
sponsorship to get dogs out of high kill shelters.
1:08:26
So we've done 88 so far in the last two months and I hope in a
1:08:30
year from now we have a lot more success stories around that.
1:08:33
So and I'm just super excited, Anthony, come back to you a year
1:08:37
and and find out what we're up to as well.
1:08:41
Melanie, that was awesome. Anthony, we went all over the
1:08:44
place. It was great, wasn't it?
1:08:46
Nothing in our questions. We were everywhere.
1:08:48
I was like, I hope this is OK. So more than OK.
1:08:52
You know, it's interesting, when I first started the podcast, I
1:08:54
had a chance to talk to somebody who'd been podcasting for a
1:08:57
while and, you know, just kind of talking about the approach.
1:09:00
And they said something that stuck with me.
1:09:02
They're like the best interviews are ones where you don't even
1:09:06
look at the questions. Like it just happens naturally.
1:09:09
Like, you know, if you and I were to meet at a dinner party,
1:09:12
like, how would our conversation go?
1:09:14
I'm not pulling out, you know, like a a little CHEAT SHEET.
1:09:16
It's like, oh, wait, you did what?
1:09:18
Oh, wait, you said something about animals.
1:09:20
Why? Why animals?
1:09:21
You know, tell me, tell me about this small town you grew up in.
1:09:24
So yeah, no, it's and it was. Funny, Anthony, because I
1:09:28
realized that some of the stuff we talked about are the things
1:09:31
that people don't like. I could come and talk, you know,
1:09:34
talk to you a ton about like the business part of what I do.
1:09:37
We covered a bunch of that. But I think sometimes it's also
1:09:40
to connect to the person and understand, right?
1:09:43
Because those are the Nuggets that if I think about your
1:09:45
audience, hopefully they can pick up some things, whether
1:09:48
they're going through something or, you know, and there, you're
1:09:51
right, there's so much more to my partner's story, which I was
1:09:53
trying to dance around that a little bit, I could tell.
1:09:55
So I didn't pry too much. Yeah, but basically long and.
1:09:58
Short Anthony. He's just a bad actor.
1:10:00
Yeah. And he was doing some completely
1:10:03
inappropriate things. And I knew I was like, if I go
1:10:07
down this path with him, he's going to get, we are 5050
1:10:11
partners. We are going to get in a world
1:10:13
of hurt. And I'm not willing to destroy
1:10:16
my reputation for him. And his way of dealing with
1:10:19
stress was in a lot of unhealthy ways.
1:10:22
And you know, every time he would do things, he would say,
1:10:25
like, I'll, you know, it's like being with an addict.
1:10:27
Like every time we do something, he, oh, I'll change.
1:10:29
I won't do it again. But then he started to do some
1:10:32
of it in front of my investors and my investors asked me about
1:10:36
it. And I basically had a whistle
1:10:37
blow on our company and say, yeah, he is doing these things.
1:10:42
I'm trying to manage it. And I tried to buy him out.
1:10:44
The investors told him to leave. And he just said, like to me,
1:10:48
remove me. Wow, I'm not leaving.
1:10:50
So he refused to leave. And it was so tough, Anthony.
1:10:54
And I just said like, I can't, I have, I have to do this.
1:10:57
And you know, when I told on when I confirmed the investors
1:11:01
this is happening, we got our management fee cut off.
1:11:05
And so economically it was terrible for me.
1:11:08
But I said, you know what, if at the end of the day, the
1:11:10
investors say I can trust her and I know in a difficult
1:11:15
situation, she'll come talk to us.
1:11:17
Like eventually I got a long career ahead of me.
1:11:20
Like this is going to work itself out.
1:11:22
And sure enough, like the others, investors that were in
1:11:25
Anagenesis came over and invested in A1A and are very
1:11:28
supportive. And like my former partner, I
1:11:30
don't think we'll ever be able to raise a dollar in the
1:11:33
industry or ever get a job in the industry again.
1:11:36
And you know, he, the person that I signed up with him was
1:11:41
like the sunny day person, but in an entrepreneurship journey,
1:11:46
you have so many rainy days. How to go through all the rainy
1:11:49
days? And he like escalated his
1:11:52
behaviour as he got more stressed.
1:11:54
And that was a real a real struggle.
1:11:57
And those are just like borders. I wasn't willing to cross back
1:12:01
to some of those. Wow, Like hats off to you.
1:12:03
Because that's a really tough position to be in and you're,
1:12:09
you're being pulled, you know, at different directions.
1:12:11
It's like there's the financial side of you that wants to keep
1:12:13
trying to make this work and but there's the this is just wrong.
1:12:17
This is just plain wrong. Part of you and like to take
1:12:22
that bold step of getting the management fees cut off.
1:12:26
Basically, I, you know, kind of what's the the metaphor I'm
1:12:29
looking for? You're you're sort of cutting
1:12:31
the the tree off at its roots, right?
1:12:32
So this is this is the only way that you could think of to let
1:12:35
it die. I mean, if you think about
1:12:37
Anthony. We were making 2% on
1:12:39
$274,000,000 a year. You could do the math around
1:12:42
that and that would have gone on for another five years.
1:12:47
And we could have raised fun too, so easy because we had such
1:12:51
good success. And by the way, in my in the
1:12:54
track record in anagenesis, we did 16 deals and I did 15 of
1:12:59
them. He did one and his deal went
1:13:01
sideways. And so I end up having to work
1:13:03
out his deal. And I told him at one point I
1:13:05
said, just go sit in your office.
1:13:08
Don't make any problems, just don't screw anything up and
1:13:10
like, we'll figure this out. And he couldn't, he couldn't do
1:13:14
that. He couldn't just sit on his.
1:13:15
Hands. No, I said.
1:13:16
You know what? You're going to get us in
1:13:18
trouble with the SEC, with the SBA, with our investors.
1:13:21
Like I'm not willing to take that reputational risk.
1:13:24
And on top of it, you did one deal and you totally mucked up
1:13:28
that one deal. And now and then you weren't
1:13:31
even honest when it went sideways.
1:13:33
And I have to work out that one deal.
1:13:34
And I just thought like, life is too short.
1:13:36
And I thought about we could have easily raised fun too if,
1:13:40
if this didn't happen, like fun too was pretty much already in
1:13:43
the bag. So we would have probably raised
1:13:45
another like 500. And you do 2% off of that.
1:13:48
Like these are huge numbers. But I said, you know what, like
1:13:53
I can't do this. I can't be so stressed about
1:13:56
like, what is he going to do next, right?
1:13:58
Like what is going to happen? Cuz as we were starting to raise
1:14:01
fun too. And we were like thinking about
1:14:04
doing that. He was doing some stuff with
1:14:06
like some of the public pension funds and whatnot, which are
1:14:08
like major no no's for the SEC. And I'm like, I own 50% of the
1:14:12
company. And like, you see enough of
1:14:14
these stories where somebody is like, well, did you know?
1:14:18
And like, I, I was like replaying in my head, like I'm
1:14:20
sitting there like, yes, I knew, OK, why didn't you do anything?
1:14:24
Oh, I don't know. You know, because it was better
1:14:27
financially for me not to do anything.
1:14:29
Like it's terrible, right? Like I would replay like how
1:14:32
this whole thing was going to unravel and I basically had to
1:14:36
go to the investors and say this is what's happening.
1:14:39
And they were like, we've never had anyone do this before, you
1:14:43
know? And, and now I know so many
1:14:44
other people have this happening in their firms, but they do it
1:14:47
like undercover because usually you don't have two partners that
1:14:51
are 5050. You might have 3 or 4 where if
1:14:54
you have to boot 1, you can still kind of move on with your
1:14:58
firm and like they'll create some story like once it's been
1:15:00
more time with his family, OK and.
1:15:04
It's down undercover. But for us two person show, you
1:15:08
know, it had to be done in a way that, you know, you know, I
1:15:12
couldn't really. And I told him, like, let's
1:15:14
create a story. I'll buy you out.
1:15:16
You can go do something else. And he just, he said if I'm
1:15:19
going down, you're going down. Wow.
1:15:23
Just digging his heels in. Yeah, so it you know now.
1:15:26
Though, Anthony, like when, when tough things come with me, I'm
1:15:29
like, what? Come on, that's nothing.
1:15:31
You've got pretty. Thick skin by this point.
1:15:33
Melanie. Yeah.
1:15:35
Yeah, that's nothing. I.
1:15:36
Can handle that, which I think again, I'm a much better
1:15:39
investor because of it and it also one of the other things we
1:15:43
didn't talk about this Anthony, but I, I, I mentioned this a
1:15:48
little bit but it's almost like when you think you haven't
1:15:52
figured out you forget that there's blind spots.
1:15:56
And So what I was saying is like I knew on the investment side
1:15:59
like I can figure out how to protect downside and structure
1:16:03
and like all these things but I had a blind spot when I came to
1:16:07
my own partnership right right. That was that was the
1:16:10
interesting thing, I. Started.
1:16:12
I was getting ready to call that out and we moved on to something
1:16:14
else. You, you were so accustomed to
1:16:16
building these structures to to protect against sort of the
1:16:19
outside world that in in your own office, it kind of, yeah,
1:16:24
you kind of, it was wild. It was really.
1:16:26
Wild. And it's such a lot of lessons.
1:16:28
So now I talked again other partnerships about like, here's
1:16:32
how to do it. So anyway, yeah.
1:16:36
And I didn't talk about this in the recording because I didn't
1:16:38
want to get upset, but my dog actually was killed.
1:16:42
I she was only four. She's a rescue and I took her to
1:16:45
Blue Pearl Animal Hospital because she had like a little
1:16:48
snag nail on her on her foot. She snagged it running up the
1:16:52
steps. So I called her vet and they
1:16:54
were closed and they said I'll just take her to Blue Pearl.
1:16:57
It's an emergency. That hospital, they'll just put
1:17:00
a little lighter clip on a Clipper nail.
1:17:03
So my husband and I went to the Blue Pearl.
1:17:06
We went to the back of the exam room and they said we'll take
1:17:08
her in the back, come up with a care plan and come back.
1:17:11
They came back 30 minutes later. Anthony said her heart stopped.
1:17:14
They were giving her CPR. We're like, what are you even
1:17:17
talking about here? They confused her with another
1:17:21
dog. No, and they gave her methadone
1:17:24
and killed her. They gave her methadone for £110
1:17:27
dog. Now mind you, they didn't even
1:17:28
have permission to give her methadone, let alone overdose
1:17:32
her on methadone. And so I learned through that
1:17:36
that just happened March of this year.
1:17:39
And I learned through that experience that, you know, I was
1:17:42
like, this vet needs to be held accountable.
1:17:44
Like they were crazy and they they like tried to hold her
1:17:47
hostage after they killed her until we paid the vet bill,
1:17:51
which the vet bill was like $1700 for killing your dog.
1:17:55
Exactly. And a. 1000 of it was to.
1:17:57
Give her CPR to try to bring her back.
1:18:00
And and I realized like when when I talked to the medical
1:18:04
director there, you know, she's like she was going to die
1:18:07
anyway. It just happened to be in our
1:18:08
care. I'm like, what are you even
1:18:09
saying? Is that your medical opinion?
1:18:11
And I was torn, Anthony, because I financed vet clinics before,
1:18:15
like roll up vet businesses. And I was like, you know, like
1:18:20
all these vet companies that are owned by private equity, as it
1:18:23
turns out, Blueprint Ozone, ironic enough, by the Mars
1:18:26
family, which took me down a whole another, you know, the
1:18:29
candy company. And they make dog food.
1:18:32
Yeah, they make dog. Food they do.
1:18:33
Clinical trials on the pharmaceutical side and they own
1:18:37
many of the that not just Blue Pearl, a number of other chains.
1:18:41
They on their website said that they touched 90% of all pets in
1:18:47
the world and they're a private company.
1:18:50
And so when this whole thing happened, her name was Rue.
1:18:54
And I talked with them. I said, this is unacceptable
1:18:57
that, you know, And they said, well, we know you're frustrated,
1:19:00
you know, but don't like be angry with us.
1:19:02
I'm like, I'm not frustrated. Where's your accountability?
1:19:04
How are you going to make sure you don't do this again?
1:19:07
How did this happen? Well, the emergency room's
1:19:09
chaotic. I'm like, think if you're a
1:19:12
human and you go to an emergency room and they overdose you and
1:19:14
kill you, like, it has to be reported somewhere in that
1:19:19
world. It doesn't have to be reported
1:19:20
anywhere, Anthony. So they literally killed her and
1:19:23
it doesn't need, they don't need to report anywhere.
1:19:26
So, you know, I reported that to the Florida Veterinary Board.
1:19:31
I had to write this whole complaint about what happened.
1:19:36
And then I talked to like a, a lawyer about, you know, the what
1:19:42
had happened. Not really for financial gain,
1:19:44
but they when I put negative reviews up on Yelp, this is not
1:19:50
a fascinating thing. Yelp, Google and Reddit, they
1:19:53
actually took down my negative review and I didn't even know
1:19:57
you could take down negative reviews.
1:19:58
But if you look at this Blue Pearl, they have like a 4.8
1:20:01
rating, but it's because they take down negative reviews.
1:20:05
So I was devastated. She was like our, you know, like
1:20:10
our kid and you know, you took her there for a nail and carried
1:20:13
her home. Then we actually drove to
1:20:15
Pennsylvania to my parents property in the little town and
1:20:18
we buried her at my parents property and coming through that
1:20:23
I was like, we can't get another dog.
1:20:24
Like what are we doing? And I said, you know, I'm just
1:20:28
going to go to the shelter and start to just go and sit in
1:20:30
there. I'm like, cuz she was arresting
1:20:32
you just to be around other dogs.
1:20:34
And now, like I told you, in the last two months, I've been doing
1:20:37
these medical sponsorships where, you know, if a dog's at
1:20:40
the shelter and somebody wants to adopt them, but like they
1:20:43
know that there's going to be heavy medical costs because the
1:20:46
dog was sick or hurt, You know, I've been raising money to
1:20:50
basically pay for the vet care. And we've done that with eight
1:20:54
dogs. Like there was a dog and
1:20:55
shepherd that had broken pelvis and we got him to the vet, got
1:20:59
his pelvis fixed. Nice.
1:21:00
He went to a Foster and now he's been adopted.
1:21:03
So And we just last Friday rescued another dog, Anthony.
1:21:08
So it's been a wild journey. And while we were on the
1:21:10
podcast, I thought she might pop up because she came and like,
1:21:13
she's a puppy. She was like chewing the back of
1:21:15
my hair while we're talking. I was like, this is interesting
1:21:19
because she's going to get showcased in the podcast.
1:21:21
That would have been great. Yeah.
1:21:23
So this has been. Like, I mean, I've had dogs all
1:21:27
my life, but this situation that happened at Blue Pearl has
1:21:31
showed me a lot from a political perspective about the laws and
1:21:36
regulations that are in place. And then also has me had me
1:21:39
rethink about if I would invest in a vet roll up again.
1:21:43
And back to the point about patient care.
1:21:46
First, how do you make sure that what you're doing isn't driving
1:21:49
the bottom line in a way that pushes things like this and
1:21:53
mistakes to happen that, you know, animals are getting
1:21:56
killed? Could you create kind of a
1:21:57
whole? New model isn't the right word,
1:22:00
but like an underlying ethos, like you're talking about how
1:22:04
like there's no accountability, you know, it's, it's property.
1:22:08
It's like, you know, very different.
1:22:11
From like if you know. Humans in a hospital like could
1:22:13
you create a a new approach? I don't know.
1:22:17
Well, yeah, Anthony, So what I've been.
1:22:19
Talking to where there's a guy actually who runs another fund
1:22:23
in Tampa and he knows about what happened and he said, well, you
1:22:27
know, my sister is married to the Florida State senator.
1:22:32
If you want to talk to him about animal rights in the state of
1:22:35
Florida, like we can set up that meeting.
1:22:38
And so I think part of it are the laws that are in place, but
1:22:41
also like with the veterinary board and the licensing, like I
1:22:45
feel like if this accident happens or this mistake happens,
1:22:49
as they call it, like you should have to report it to the
1:22:52
veterinary board to say this happened, document it because
1:22:56
the veterinary board is sitting out there and like, they don't
1:22:59
have to have any reporting. They, they don't until I
1:23:02
reported it, they had no idea this incident happened.
1:23:05
And, and now I found talking with people, like another woman
1:23:08
took her cat there to get spaded and they cut off the cat's leg.
1:23:14
They amputated a leg. My God.
1:23:16
Another person had a parrot that they took there like ingested
1:23:20
something and they clipped its wings.
1:23:22
So this is now I know this pattern wasn't just about rude.
1:23:26
They've didn't die. They've done some horrific
1:23:28
things. And I know it's not just this
1:23:30
blue Pearl because I I actually was on a radio, a guy that I
1:23:34
know that hosts a radio show every day.
1:23:36
He put me on the radio to talk about it.
1:23:39
And after I was on the radio, people have reached out to me.
1:23:42
So part of it like as kind of A2 to kind of three wrong approach.
1:23:46
One is getting justice for her, like holding these bets
1:23:49
accountable. This second part is thinking
1:23:52
about other ways to change the industry to make sure that a,
1:23:56
this doesn't happen or B, when it does that it's reported.
1:23:59
And then C is kind of the good side of things like usually
1:24:04
tragedy, people do like something good to try to build
1:24:07
upon that. So so doing what I'm doing with
1:24:11
these medical sponsorships in the rescue is one element of
1:24:15
that. And then second part is that
1:24:17
person who put me on the radio owns a big ranch in Texas, and
1:24:20
he's generously agreed to donate 5 acres of land to build a
1:24:25
rescue there for dogs. So that will be named Rue's
1:24:29
rescue. So in a year from now, hopefully
1:24:32
on my wish list, we'll be getting that rescue going.
1:24:37
So Rue was the name of your dog? Yeah.
1:24:40
Yeah. And she was, you know, I do have
1:24:42
pets at all. Or no, I had a bunch of pets
1:24:45
growing. Up.
1:24:46
We don't have any at the moment. OK, so you know.
1:24:49
With animals they look at sometimes I feel like they look
1:24:51
in your Pierce your soul at times.
1:24:53
So and it and they really made me to the point this last day.
1:24:57
I won't take too much of your time, but to the point about how
1:25:01
things happen and deal with stress.
1:25:03
When that happened and I was like laying over her, like
1:25:07
praying to God that somehow the CPR was going to work to bring
1:25:10
her back. It made me like realize that,
1:25:14
like, this isn't the only loss, right?
1:25:16
Like my parents are still around, they're getting older.
1:25:18
Like thinking about losing something or someone that you
1:25:22
love and how to navigate that. I don't know if you've had a lot
1:25:25
of like, death in your life. Just my grandparents, like I've
1:25:27
been like, been around a lot of people that I know dying.
1:25:31
So like, I had to think about like, how do I work through this
1:25:34
in a healthy way? And like, you know, so many
1:25:37
people would say, like, just take a Xanax or have a glass of
1:25:40
wine. I'm like, no, I'm not going to
1:25:41
do that. I'm not doing that.
1:25:42
I'm going to go and like sit at Miami-Dade Animal Shelter on a
1:25:45
Saturday and cry for like 2 hours and figure out like, how
1:25:49
am I going to work through this, right?
1:25:51
I love that. And so like, I think so much,
1:25:55
I'm telling you this story because so much of this brings
1:25:59
me to like do this podcast with you today.
1:26:01
Like if I did this with you a year ago or like 2 years ago,
1:26:04
frankly, before this happened with my partner and before this
1:26:08
happened with Roo. Like those two experiences have
1:26:11
changed me so much as a person, but also made it so clear about
1:26:17
like what I want to do with my time and who I want to be around
1:26:21
and like what matters to me. And I think it just made me a
1:26:28
better, like, human being in a lot of different ways.
1:26:31
So if you and I did this probably three years ago, I
1:26:36
would have probably been, I don't want to say sharper, but I
1:26:39
sharper meaning like. Less vulnerable, less
1:26:43
vulnerable. It's a good way to put it.
1:26:45
Because like, man, I worked in New York for seven years, right?
1:26:49
You develop an edge, you develop a certain.
1:26:51
Edge to it, yeah, but the way I the.
1:26:53
World now is a little I like. I'm still very successful and
1:26:56
I'm still really good what I do in business, but I just think
1:26:59
about things a little bit differently.
1:27:01
I love that. Thank you for sharing.
1:27:02
That I'm already looking forward to that.
1:27:04
Melanie Brenzinger from A1A Investment Partners, I want to
1:27:08
be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your
1:27:10
story with us today. I really appreciate it, Anthony.
1:27:12
Thank you so much for. For having me on today.
1:27:15
And I have to give a shout out to Peter Harris from a
1:27:17
University Growth Funds. They're doing amazing work at
1:27:21
University Growth Fund as well and I feel fortunate he
1:27:23
connected us together. And for anybody in your
1:27:26
audience, I know you gave our our website address, but for
1:27:30
anyone who wants to connect with me, feel free and we'll be in
1:27:36
touch and I'd be happy to chat more.
1:27:38
How would you like people to get in touch with you?
1:27:39
Melanie, they can go to our. Website but I'm OK giving my
1:27:43
e-mail address to Anthony which is Melanie MELAN i.e.
1:27:47
At A1A ip.com and we'll make sure we include a link to.
1:27:52
That in the show notes. And yes, shout out to Peter
1:27:55
Harris for connecting us. So he's connecting me with a lot
1:27:57
of wonderful guests. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:28:00
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:28:02
Thanks for learning with us today.
1:28:04
Thank you.