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In The Trenches — 151 episodes · page 1 of 2
The Most Valuable A.I. Use Cases as Reported by Searchers, CEOs and Investors
How to Apply Business Tools and Frameworks to Improve Your Personal Life
Who to Hire and Who to Fire
The Case for Focus, Profitability, and Saying No to Growth for Its Own Sake
A Cybersecurity Survival Guide for Small Businesses
A Glimpse Into The First 90 Days as a New CEO
The Most Meaningful Lesson that I've Learned Over the Past 12 Months
A Peek Behind the Curtain: What Small Business Ownership *Really* Looks Like
$2B Company Founder on Youth, Inexperience, and Why You're More Ready Than You Think
When Both Sides Are Right: Navigating the Trade-Offs That Define Leadership
The Wisdom of Failure: Growing from our Personal and Professional Setbacks
The Real Reason Why Most Companies Miss Their Annual Goals
Ten Ways to Underwrite a Conservative and Realistic Base Case
Hiring Your Second in Command: With Cameron Herold, Founder of the COO Alliance and Former COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK
Identifying the Irrational Beliefs Hindering Your Decision Making
"Great CEOs Are Lazy": Why the Best SMB Leaders Do Less—But Achieve More
Are Search Funds Moving Up Market?
The Four Stages of Leadership Maturity: Why the CEO Must Change Before the Company Can
“Don’t F*ck It Up": Les Trachtman on Avoiding Post-Close Founder Succession Mistakes
Why Most Incentive Plans Fail—and How Thoughtful CEOs Get Them Right
Installing an Operating System in Your Business: Lessons from Real EOS Implementations
The Working Capital Adjustment
Hard to Kill: A Four-Part Framework for Evaluating Small Business Acquisitions
Facing the Worst-Case Scenario: How Jed Morris Lost His Business and Rebuilt His Life
How AI is Transforming the Acquisition and Operations of Small Businesses
Technical Debt: What it is, How Much of it You Can Live With, and How to Incorporate it into an Investment Thesis
Announcing the Launch of Mineola Fund II
Stress, Panic Attacks, Debilitating Anxiety, and a $170M Exit: iContact Founder Aaron Houghton
Rob Markey: Creator of the Net Promoter Score and Founder of Bain's Global Customer Strategy Practice
Building Better CEOs: Lessons From a Veteran Executive Coach
The Acquisition Entrepreneur and Mental Health
Evaluating Customer Retention in Recurring Revenue Businesses: With Craig Zingerline
Rethinking Asset Intensity in Search Fund Acquisitions
Should Search Funds Buy Healthcare Practices? A Deep Dive with Scott Becker
A Finance Survival Guide for SMB CEOs: Liquidity, Hiring, Budgeting, Capital Allocation & More
Is Home Services Still a Good Bet? A Veteran Operator’s Take on a Saturated Market
How to Price, Structure, and Diligence Around Customer Concentration
A Playbook for Growing People-Intensive Service Companies
How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers—with Casey Brown
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together: With Dr. Sherry Walling
The Art (and Science) of Building a High-Performance Sales Organization
A Super Primer on Evaluating and Acquiring a Software Company
Randy Street: Pioneer of the Topgrading Hiring Method & Co-Author of “Who: The A-Method for Hiring”
Is the Search Fund Acquisition Rate Falling? With Jim Edmunds, Badge Stone & Kent Weaver
How to Avoid Common Stumbling Blocks in an M&A Process: With Raam Jani
How to Get Your Exit Proceeds (Mostly) Tax Free
Dr. Daniel Crosby: How our Psychology Impacts our Spending, Investing and Risk Taking Decisions
Long Term Holds: With Zac Carman, CEO of ConsumerAffairs for 14+ Years
Leverage: Doing More With Less
"Like Changing Tires on a Moving Car": The Unseen Realities of Managing Rapid Growth
Achieving the Entrepreneurial Dream Through Franchise Ownership
An Investing Masterclass with Brent Beshore
Five Ideas That Every CEO Should Know
In Conversation with 3 Founders Who Sold Their Companies to Search Funds
How to Build a Business that will Attract a Private Equity Buyer
The Link Between Money, Meaning, and Happiness
The Entrepreneur and the Spousal Relationship: Part 2
Dr. Bill Hudenko: Professor of Psychology at the Dartmouth School of Medicine and a 4x Founder & CEO
From Combat to Classrooms: How Jim Vesterman Went from Special Forces to a 13.5x Return in 8 Years
17 Lessons on the Psychology of Being a Searcher and CEO
You Don't Have an Engineering Problem, You Have a Product Management Problem
Evaluating The Most Common Forms of Debt Used to Finance Small Business Acquisitions
From $7M to $50M via 14 Acquisitions: A Consolidation Success Story With Jay Davis & Jason Pananos
Why You May Be Ignoring Brokered Deals at Your Peril
Why You May Want to Reconsider Your Industry Roll-up Strategy
45 (More) Things That I Think Are True
The Constellation Software Playbook for Acquiring and Growing Software Companies
Evaluating Stock Options as Attraction, Retention, and Incentive Alignment Tools
Can Ambition and Inner Peace Coexist? With Rob Dube
Answers to Recurring FAQs from Current and Prospective Searchers
Profit Before Anything Else: With Mike Michalowicz, Author of "Profit First"
Royce Yudkoff & Rick Ruback: Educators, Mentors, and Leaders Within the SMB Community
Jeff Stevens & A.J. Wasserstein on The Future of Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
Michael Girdley on The Rise of Holding Companies
Questions You Should Be Prepared to Answer Before Buying (or Selling) a Small Business
What I'd Change if I Could Re-Do the First 90 Days of my Search: 3 Searcher Case Studies
Dr. Victoria Medvec on the Art and Science of High Stakes Negotiations
Peter Lehrman, Founder & CEO of Axial, The Largest Online Marketplace to Buy & Sell SMBs
Conscious Leadership with Executive Coach and Best-Selling Author Kaley Klemp
Building a $5.5B Mid-Market Private Equity Firm: Brent Belzberg, Founder of Torquest Partners
My Experience With Anxiety
A Deep Dive on Compensation
A Deep Dive on Hiring
"A Guide to the Good Life": What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Stoic Philosophy
Venture Capital “Orphans”: Exploring an Emerging Search Fund Investment Thesis
When Search Funds Don’t Go As Planned (Part 2): With Jim Sharpe
Lessons Learned From 400+ Post-Exit Entrepreneurs: John Warrillow, Host of Built to Sell Radio
When Search Funds Don't Go As Planned (Part 1): 3 Searcher Case Studies
75 Things That I Think Are True
The SMB Credit Markets: Bank Failures, Rising Interest Rates, and a Looming Recession
The Merits, Risks, and Possible Unintended Consequences of Earn-Outs
Mental Health for High Achievers: Ambition, Anxiety, Perfectionism, and Balancing Striving vs. Self-Acceptance
The 2023 SaaS CEO Survey
Kent Weaver: Building, Working With, and Learning from your Board of Directors
How to Know When it's Time to Stop
Are You Selling to the Wrong Customers?
Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Working with a Partner: With Dr. Noam Wasserman, Author of The Founder's Dilemmas
Evaluating the Correlation Between Hours Worked and Success Achieved
The Smallest Changes That Had The Largest Impacts: 4 CEO Case Studies
Constructing, Managing, and Working with a Board of Directors