00:44:22 · Mikk
[00:44:22] S0: Did you ever expect to grow this thing so large in in short ten years? Was it like a plan, or you just did your work, gave your best, learned from each other, learned from Alpine, and just went went doing this day by day? Or how has it been?
00:44:38 · Ramsey Sahyoun
[00:44:38] S1: Yeah. No. No. It was definitely a plan. Like, we set big, hairy, audacious goals. The first one that we set before we owned any companies was to get to $100,000,000 of EBITDA by 2023. And we did that. And, you know, we're going after our next BHAG right now. So thing Alpine instilled in us is these BHAGs. So look out, you know, five or ten years and set a big, hairy, audacious goal. It might feel impossible or far out, but then work back, like take the... The important thing after that is not just to have the goal, it's to backwards plan from the goal like, okay, you know, if we wanna get to 100,000,000 of EBITDA by 2023, and we assume a 10% organic growth rate, like how many companies do we need to acquire each year? Like what does that acquisition waterfall look like? Okay, next step, how many companies do I need to talk to to buy one? And so you really got to go through that backwards planning exercise. I think a lot of people throw out a big hairy audacious goal. And maybe they continue to talk about it, but they don't kinda get into, like, okay, like, what are the inputs that I need to get there? So I think we're pretty, like, methodical about that. And I think that's been a big key to our success is, you know, we put these these big goals on on the page, but then we, like, hold ourselves accountable to achieving a goal this quarter that we think will, you know, contribute to that outcome occurring in seven years. Like, so I think that's just been an important thing. I know some people are, you know, take a more approach of like, just take it day by day. And I get that, and you want to be nimble and adaptable and everything. But I do think the goal setting and being very systematic about that has has allowed us to get to this point without it being like that surprising that we're here.
00:47:05 · Mikk, Ramsey Sahyoun
[00:47:05] S0: How much time have you actually spent on putting together the systematic plan? And the... It was just like, yeah. [00:47:15] S1: Yeah. A lot of time. That's actually a good question. A lot of time. We spend a lot of time working on the business. So every quarter, and is another thing we learn from Alpine. So so we we have a one page plan and that one page plan has our, you know, on the left hand side of the page, it's got our vision and values, and then it's got like your five year goals on another column, your one year goals and your quarterly goals. And so we kind of run the business on that one page plan. And then every quarter we're getting the holding company team together to, you know... It it... It's a little bit different every time, but we call them renewals. So basically, we we look back at the quarter, what went well, what didn't go well, where are we tracking, where are we not tracking, what do we need to change. Yeah. And so like, I mean, it's kind of, I think it's kind of extreme to take the whole company for a couple days a quarter to just work on the business. Like, basically, you know, taking time away from the day job to to go work on improving the business and goal setting and things like that. So we we spend, I think, kind of now that I think about it, we spend an outsized amount of time on that. And I think that's that's served us.
00:48:49 · Mikk
[00:48:49] S0: Served us very well. A few people reached out to me knowing that Alpine is an investor in this platform, saying that you must know this charismatic leader of Alpine, Graham Weaver, very well. So yes, there are those Stanford speeches which he has given and the goal setting which you just said. There is actually a presentation about this which I recognize. So... But what else have you guys learned from from the guys in Alpine? Because they're doing so well and they have this charismatic leader in the BE space.
00:49:28 · Ramsey Sahyoun
[00:49:28] S1: I think we've touched on on on a lot of these things, but, I think Graham specifically, I think he's a great investor. And I think because he has a lot of content on things like goal setting and a lot of other stuff that I don't think he doesn't talk a lot about investing. But my experience, he has a real knack for understanding what are the key two or three things that are gonna make or break this investment thesis. So I think he's a really good investor. Talent is another one. I mean, is just obsessed with talent. Think around Alpine, it's not Okay to just ignore the talent side, which is I think what most private equity firms do. They focus on the playbook. And the playbook is critical. But Alpine starts with the talent and who's executing the playbook and do we have the right leader in this business? They're just obsessed with that. So I think that creates this environment where it's never okay to ignore talent as an input to to investment success. And then I think the other thing is just the the push on value creation. Alpine and Graham are always asking us the question of like, why are businesses better after they join Evergreen than they were before? Like, make that clear. And I think that's been really helpful as we've started, you know, over the last four or so years to like really get good at value creation post acquisition. I think it was really that push from that. So yeah, those are a few a few of the key ones.
00:51:27 · Mikk
[00:51:27] S0: Now you and Jeff are the talent which you're describing here. So I'm trying to understand now building this large firm, this institution, how have your roles changed over time?