#37 | Rogers Healy: You Were Seven Minutes Late and Pitching Me

Rogers Healy will tell you exactly what disqualifies a founder: showing up seven minutes late and not mentioning it. That is close to the whole test.More on Rogers Healy and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/rogers-healyHe built one of Texas's largest independently owned real estate brokerages, worked out that a service business cannot scale past the person selling it, and hired himself out of his own job. As he puts it, he cannot show Lane's house and show Ryan a condo at the same time.He now runs Morrison Seger Venture Capital Partners, writing $2 million to $10 million checks into consumer brands one deal at a time. There is no fund. Every deal is raised as its own special purpose vehicle, which he cheerfully calls the hardest possible way to do this, across roughly 150 investments including Mosh with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Goat Fuel, Pathwater and Snaps.The diligence is mostly about people: present, responsive, kind, on time. He calls it a smell test and it has cost founders deals. Also in here: meeting Kevin Lavelle while mentoring undergrads in his mid-twenties and later becoming the largest investor in Harbor, why bad news is survivable and surprises are not, and building a pitch like a Disney movie.Rogers Healy is the founder of Morrison Seger Venture Capital Partners and of Rogers Healy and Associates, one of the largest independently owned real estate brokerages in Texas. He has made roughly 150 investments, each raised as its own special purpose vehicle, across consumer brands.KEY MOMENTS00:00 Selling the Schwarzenegger family03:49 Meeting Kevin Lavelle by mentoring06:42 Hiring yourself out of your own job14:36 A service business will not scale26:41 Pre-revenue or the last check in27:48 $2M to $10M checks, all one-off SPVs34:25 The Mosh bar deal37:32 Bad news survives. Surprises do not.41:45 "You were seven minutes late"53:05 Build the pitch like a Disney movieNewsletter: thedealtablepodcast.com/connectLane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: amzn.to/48nLElWFollow The Deal Table: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, XThe Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.Sponsored by Capital Southwest.