Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:32:42 · Michael Brown
[00:32:42] S0: Yeah. It it is. I think because because we're doing it in a way where everyone wins. I think of it as, like, retiring owner who built the business and slept on a couch, right, to sort of get it off the ground. They win first, right, because they built the business. They own the business. They took all the risk. And then Teamshares sort of win second, if you will, because we sort of put up all the capital to buy the business. And we bring in employees as equity partners. And then if the business is able to produce and grow and everything, then the employees really win over time, too. So we think of it as win win win. And then I think then there's the intellectual nature of it. It's really yeah. You know, what we do hasn't really been done before in the exact same way. Right? And so there there are definitely certainly programmatic acquirers. There are many. There are many... So probably 30 programmatic acquirers of sort of slightly larger companies across a range of industries. But taking on companies of this size in a diversified way and in such a tech enabled way, that hadn't been done before. And I think that that is something that I think is really intellectually interesting too. Because even if you look at the people that are we have a team of people that build software at Teamshares. And we don't try and build software that already exists. So we would never try and build something competitive with Toast because Toast exists and it's great. So we'll have the company switch out into Toast. We build the sort of horizontal layer at the parent company that helps us acquire the companies confidently and then run them confidently and see all the numbers of the businesses. And so you've got this intersection where you've got, say, like, an accounting team that's all sort of big x big four and then an engineering team that's come from really great companies. Right? And they say, like, look. I... I've done these sort of large technical at scale, you know, minutiae problems. I wanna take my skill set. I wanna apply it to the real economy. And that's what's really interesting. I think the intellectual component of Teamshares of, like, how do you take these skill sets out of these other great companies and bring them and then apply this into this new way to create, you know, a tech enabled factory?
00:34:43 · Michael Brown, Alexa von Tobel
And it's a factory that has deep relationships, so there are stakeholders too. But we have to be able to move a company through in a cost effective and efficient manner from start to finish. [00:34:53] S1: I love that. And the repeatability that you are maniacally focused on, I feel like, is a real strength. I'm going to transition to our quick fire, but I want to cover one topic, which is, Michael, in just the last, you know, six ish years, you guys had such interesting market environments that have been tumultuous. As I said, we invested right as you were going into COVID, and obviously, that changes a lot for small business, as we know. Then a couple of years later, you were hit with the shock of 2022 and 2023, rising rates, capital tightening very quickly. You've really been through a lot. What have you learned about being a stable set of hands through truly external shock waves?
00:35:40 · Michael Brown
[00:35:40] S0: So what have I learned? Great question. That they're gonna come every year or two. At least that's been the pattern of the... And I started my career in 'six. I think they were a little more spaced out back then. Right? Yes. Sort of I think, from 'eight until late... There was a longer recovery period. But it seems like they have become very frequent, that sort of every two years, we have some sort of great question mark or some sort of disruption. So I think one is to learn to expect it. And then I think actually this is partially the job of leadership, to be steady hands and heavy hangs the head. And I think that's part of our job is to be a buttress and to absorb that stress and that pressure. Right? And be very long term minded so that when something happens, you you need to sort of do these two things that sound like they're in conflict at the same time. You You need to be aware of what's going on and have really good situational awareness. But when something bad happens, you need to, like, not panic. Right? You need to, like, always think about what's happened over the long term, what do we need to do, what's changed, but you need to be really, really steady and stable. And so I just think that that's just part of going through lots of different economic cycles and environments. And it helps. It's a version of compounding. It's sort of like leadership compounding.
00:36:58 · Alexa von Tobel, Michael Brown
[00:36:58] S1: I love it. All right, I want to run through some of your best tips. And we're going to start with, what's a book that shaped you? It can be anything. It doesn't have to be a business book, but a book that you recommend everybody read for their life. [00:37:09] S0: That is a great question. I... So... Okay. On the business side, the the book that I think for sort of business people, whether you're a startup or whether you're running like a oil and gas service business, anything, I I think that actually a great way to learn how to just run a business day to day is a book called Traction by a guy named Gino Wickman. And he just wrote this book on how it was basically a marketing tool for their consulting business. But it's just a really, really simple way to break down running businesses. I think that I like a lot of history books and biographies. And so I really like Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs. I thought that it was really fascinating. And he's a complicated person. But I think it was really cool to read sort of the in-depth story of Apple and of him. [00:38:02] S1: Love the book, too. What's a mantra that kind of runs in the back round of your mind?
00:38:02 · Alexa von Tobel, Michael Brown
[00:38:02] S1: Love the book, too. What's a mantra that kind of runs in the back round of your mind? [00:38:08] S0: Everything is workable. I remember... I don't know where I saw it, but I saw it and now... I didn't have a mantra before that. But I think it goes back... It it relates to your question, like, a a couple of minutes ago. Like, that's the mantra. That's it. Everything is workable. You get dealt a different hand. Okay. So you gotta adjust. Right? And so if you have conviction in what you're doing, right, everything is workable. [00:38:32] S1: In some ways, Michael, that is your superpower, which is that you have such crazy conviction in what you're building that it makes everything actually easy. That is actually one of the superpowers. It just hit me that you have more conviction, than most founders in your future, and it actually makes weathering storms easy. [00:38:52] S0: That's right. [00:38:55] S1: So many more questions. When a problem feels really big, how do you break it down? Just give us the... How do you process big problems?
00:39:02 · Michael Brown
[00:39:02] S0: So it depends on the nature of the problem. Have a phrase... I don't know where the phrase come from. I think it might be an engineering phrase called rubber ducking. But basically, sometimes you just need to talk out loud. It depends on the nature. There's versions of problems that are like, hey, this is kind of like a quick decision. I'm overcomplicating it. That's like a good sort of rubber duck where you just sort of like, you know, talk to talk to a peer or a colleague or someone like that and sort of think through it. If you're trying to build out something that you're like, we're we're really, like, reviewing our strategy for x, for our software, for our financing, whatever. I'm actually a big fan of getting in a room and actually just whiteboarding and taking a couple of days if it's that important a decision or set of decisions you're making. I really like having multiple stakeholders with multiple viewpoints and getting in a room. And then I think then if it's a project, I think that's classic project management of breaking things down into phases. And knowing... I think you got to sort of... I mean, the process of going public is a very good example. We started that process sort of last June. It's gonna take sort of almost a year to complete. And so you sort of need to know, okay, what's the arc of all the phases? But, like, you don't need to know in phase five the minutiae of everything. You just sort of need to squint and say, okay. That's what it's gonna look like, I think, when you get there. And over the over the next sort of two months, here is all the steps we have to do, and here is gonna... Who's gonna own each step and have a good structure for sort of project management around it. So I don't know. Those those are the sorts of things that come to mind for me.