Digital Transformation in Private Equity: Nik Kapauan’s Journey with Access Holdings

[00:00:00] Sean Mooney: Welcome to the Karma School of Business, a podcast about the private equity industry, business best practices, and real time trends. I'm Sean Mooney, BluWave's founder and CEO. In this episode, we have a fantastic conversation with Nik Kapauan, Managing Director with Access Holdings. Enjoy.

[00:00:32] All right. It is great to be here with Nik Kapauan. Nik, thanks for joining us.

[00:00:39] Nik Kapauan: Hey, glad to be on, Sean.

[00:00:40] Sean Mooney: So for our listeners, you may be familiar with Nik, Nik and his colleagues at Access Holdings were also previously honored in 2024 as the innovator of the year in the private equity industry. And so we've covered some of these things in different levels that we're going to talk about today, but this will be a nice, like, deeper dive, get a different perspective.

[00:01:01] And so I'm really very excited to catch up with you, Nik, and kind of hear the latest.

[00:01:06] Nik Kapauan: Yeah, definitely.

[00:01:07] Sean Mooney: And also hear more of the story of you. And so to kick things off, Nik, can you just tell us a little bit about the story of you? How did you kind of come up? How did you get into this industry? What was your path?

[00:01:19] Nik Kapauan: Yeah, for sure. So I came to private equity, I was in strategy consulting before that, did a lot of work in digital. So innovation strategy, digital business building, digital transformation type of work. Looking for the next thing, I was looking to be a bit more hands on the wheel. Cool. Closer to the front lines of innovation operations, talking to a lot of folks in the venture capital space, there's a big overlap between that world and the work that I was doing at McKinsey, never really thought of middle market private equity as kind of the most innovative digitally forward segment of the economy to do what I was doing before, but I met Steve who heads up value creation here at Access through the McKinsey alumni network, former firm alum.

[00:02:07] And shortly after that, Kevin, who is our founding partner here. And then my discussions with Steve and Kevin really resonated with me as their. The emerging approach that they were rolling out on how to take some of the best practice, digital innovation, capabilities, techniques that were transforming other industries.

[00:02:26] And when we're being applied in kind of the fortune 500, fortune 100 space and applying them to middle market businesses, helping them modernize, helping them digitize, that really resonated as well as kind of their vision to apply that to middle market, private equity investing itself. How do we.

[00:02:45] Increasingly use data automation technology to enhance the investing process from how we map markets to how we engage digitally with potential targets and then obviously how we use it to create value. So after those conversations, you know, really got excited about the mission and approach at Access.

[00:03:05] So made the leap, came to the firm just under three years ago now. So been with Access for about three years. Now I'm a managing director with a firm, I help. drive a lot of value creation initiatives in the portfolio. So strategic planning, strategic execution, also lead our research function. So figuring out what new industries thesis would be excited to invest in.

[00:03:28] And then, I also lead what we call the Access Acceleration Center, which is where I'm sitting in right now. We have our podcast studio in the A2C. The A2C is really the collection of our modern business building capabilities that we bring to our portfolio partners. So digital lead generation, data science, et cetera, can go into more of that in a bit.

[00:03:47] That was my journey into PE.

[00:03:49] Sean Mooney: That's a great background. I think the strategy consulting background is such a great toolbox. I came up through investment banking. Which also I learned a lot but I just think as I were to revisit and as my kids who are now kind of approaching college age start thinking about these things.

[00:04:07] I kind of point them. It's like, you know, try to do the strategy consulting route

[00:04:13] Nik Kapauan: Yeah, especially our investing approach where we're very kind of hands on the wheel type of investors So you almost need that hybrid professional that can do both The financial modeling kind of side, but then also be able to drive those initiatives with our portfolio executives.

[00:04:30] So there's a lot of former consultants around here, recovering consultants. That skill set is very supportive of kind of our investing approach.

[00:04:37] Sean Mooney: It's a great complimentary skill set and not to diminish the investment banking route as well. I don't want to invalidate my entire like upbringing, but, but then I started working with a bunch of consultants.

[00:04:48] I was like, I got to learn how they do. That was great. Great. And you all, as a firm that we'll get into, have a really kind of sophisticated, innovative way to addressing private equity, and also one of the coolest offices I've been to in private equity, but we can talk about that later. Before we get into a lot of kind of the how and the why of what you all do, I don't want to let you off the hook too early.

[00:05:11] And one of the questions I'd love to ask is, we'd know you better if we knew this about you. So Nik, what's one of these tidbits of trivia on you that we'd know you better? I

[00:05:21] Nik Kapauan: thought you were going to go for two truths and a lie for a second there. Before I was in strategy consulting, I was an engineer.

[00:05:27] So I started off my career as a software engineer. I did computer engineering. Out of undergrad up at University of Waterloo, I grew up in Toronto and I still somewhat consider myself an engineer. I love thinking about systems and I love building things. So especially my role here at access, like wearing my research hat, thinking how industry segments, value chains kind of operate, you know, what are the different archetypes within that how all, the different pieces of value chain kind of work together and then businesses themselves and how they operate.

[00:06:01] Their growth formula, how do they grow? What are the key capabilities needed? That systems thinking and taking apart industries and business models and really understand how to advance and grow within that structure, I think throws back to my engineering training and it's something that I've taken with me my whole career.

[00:06:22] Engineering systems, kind of mindset, applying that to the strategy and then I might work in an investing role.

[00:06:28] Sean Mooney: Yeah. I love the engineering degree. Yeah. Absolutely. I always called it, when I was coming up in college, I was like, that's the smart person's degree. I was like, you got to be really good to get the engineering degree.

[00:06:38] And then as I've kind of come up, you can see that it's one of the most prolific kind of backgrounds in the world of private equity, but also business builders and operators within companies. At least as I view it from afar, this gives you this amazing way to think and this framework to kind of diagnose systems.

[00:07:00] that can be very complicated and making things simpler and easier to understand and then optimizing it over time.

[00:07:06] Nik Kapauan: I love seeing kind of programming backgrounds, even in backgrounds, like strategy colleagues just really think it helps you think through how to in a hyper structured way at it, like take problems apart, decompose them, really gives you that process that systems mindset.

[00:07:21] Sean Mooney: Hey, as a quick interlude, this is Sean here. I wanted to address one quick question that we regularly get. We often get people who show up at our website, call our account executives and say, Hey, I'm not private equity. I'm like, Can I still use BluWave to get connected with resources? And the short answer is yes.

[00:07:37] Even though we're mostly and largely used by hundreds of private equity firms, thousands of their portfolio company leaders, every day we get calls from every day top proactive business leaders at public companies, independent companies, family companies. So absolutely, you can use this as well. If you want to use the exact same resources that are trusted and being deployed Imperfectly calibrated for your business needs.

[00:08:00] Give us a call. Visit our website at BluWave. net. Thanks. Back to the episode.

[00:08:10] Let's turn the page here. One of the things I'd love to get from your vantage and your perspective is how do you look at a company with this engineering mindset? How do you break it down? What are some of the traits that you look for in a company when you're assessing it for an investment opportunity?

[00:08:28] Nik Kapauan: As a classic consultant, I'll start off with an it depends answer and then go more towards things that we look broadly across the board. But one of the things that we. Really focus on doing here at access is taking a research driven approach to investing. So before we're talking to any individual target or well before sometimes years before deploying a dollar of capital into a given segment, we're deeply researching the industry.

[00:08:53] So market trends, customer behavior, value chain structure, competitive dynamics, institutional activity, really trying to understand and decompose entire value chains and then narrow down where the opportunity is. And then through all that research, we're doing a few things. So one is we're building our confidence that this is a segment that meets our criteria for an access investment.

[00:09:13] And it's got durable demand, persistent demand. It's sufficiently fragmented for a build and buy play, right? There's material synergies to density and densifying within regions. So we're thinking through kind of industry selection, but through that research process, we're also using all that data to, Define how we participate in the industry.

[00:09:33] Like, what are the characteristics of a segment leader in this space? And we're doing that through talking to experts by gathering benchmarks on businesses and the industry, looking at different business models and different types of businesses and seeing, okay, what works and then giving kind of some of the macro trends we're seeing in this space, what's going to continue working in the future.

[00:09:56] We believe that insight drives strategy. So the more you understand things like market trends and market structure, the winning strategy becomes obvious. It's all there to say, Sean, I think in each of the industry segments that we're exploring from a research perspective, we define, okay, what does good look like in this industry?

[00:10:15] And often that's unique to a particular industry is there are certain type of And customer and segment exposure that you want or a certain kind of service mix, right? We want more exposure to service and maintenance type revenue versus install type revenue because you have less exposure to construction cyclicality or something like that, or Here are the key assets or capabilities that are critical for a business to be successful in this, certain kind of differentiated value proposition, or access to a certain kind of scarce resource, or access to certain kinds of talent and skill profiles.

[00:10:49] So we're building that perspective on what does good look like in this segment, what are the attributes of winners, and ultimately what is the vision for the type of business that we want to build that's going to be a category winner in this industry. So that's the, it depends answer, but I think generally across the board where we're also really trying to understand is we call it the growth formula.

[00:11:10] What's the growth formula for this business? What's the full potential of this business? A lot of the businesses that we're looking at are kind of service based businesses. They behave in some cases like airplanes, right? With expiring inventory. So we're looking at things like. What's your average utilization of your assets and what do we think we can get that to?

[00:11:30] And that asset could be a capital asset, like a piece of equipment that you rent out, or it could be a dog groomer that is running at or below kind of that full capacity. So we try to map out what's the full potential of this business, what are the different drivers of that full potential, and then how do we get that business to its full potential and even expand that full potential.

[00:11:53] So what's the growth formula for that business is what we call it. What's the process that you invest a certain amount of growth capex or hire additional sales people or hire additional Capacity for a certain service and kind of see how do we build a system that can predictably creates value once you put that capital into the business.

[00:12:12] Sean Mooney: I really like that It depends answer because it's the right answer in that you're not a hammer And everything's a nail.

[00:12:20] The one thing that I really appreciate about Access's approach here is first you're gonna do the hard work. Know which industries you wanna play in and intimately break those down into their sub-components to understand how the industries work. And then when you know how the industries work, then you can can say, for each one of these that you're interested in, here's the criteria for success.

[00:12:42] Let's go find those. Versus kind of broadly having these play doh molds that may or may not work in different parts of the world. So I think the way you described it as the right one, it's the hard way to approach private equity because it means you got to know before you need and know before you buy.

[00:12:59] Nik Kapauan: Exactly. And the more that you start looking at common business models, you start getting an idea of what works or doesn't work in this general category of business, but it's very much really understanding how do these businesses work fundamentally, how does this system work that drives this growth formula and then talking to as many businesses as we can, building our benchmarks database, just seeing through data.

[00:13:23] What works, like where are we seeing strong performance, if you take all your strong performers, put them in one bucket, all your medium and poor performers, put them in another bucket, there's going to be certain attributes in that strong performer bucket that you kind of generalize and be like, okay, businesses that have deployed this kind of go to market process generally fare better than others, it's gathering insight and using that to figure out What a winning strategy is, but it's also looking at, as many case examples of success that you can and kind of extrapolating for that.

[00:13:54] And I think both of those help us define, our ultimate vision for the type of business that we want to build in any given segment.

[00:14:00] Sean Mooney: Well, you portray there is also really important that it's not only the work, it's not only understanding the market maps, but it's getting the data and using the data to inform decision making and increase expected value, right?

[00:14:15] It's not going to be a perfect predictor, but it sure as heck makes it a lot more likely that you're going to be successful each time you're up at bat.

[00:14:22] Nik Kapauan: Yeah. And you're hitting on one of kind of the foundational parts of our process, which is data. There's so much, we call it digital exhaust. There's just so much data out there that's available that we can use to inform Our perspective on market selection and then also strategy that's out there.

[00:14:39] We map the market and try to understand who the players are. There's a bunch of things we can do to try to estimate performance and market share just outside in before obviously you could engage with an operator, sign an NDA, get their financials, interview management team, understand the guts of the business.

[00:14:55] But how do you get some of those insights at scale completely outside in? So we have four servers, I'm scraping. The web constantly trying to pull in data on customer views. What are their customers saying about them? What type of employees do they hire on LinkedIn? What kind of volumes do we think they're getting?

[00:15:15] A lot of these things you can kind of capture externally and then use that to understand outside in as a business performing well versus not, and then using that to enrich our understanding, help us prioritize which businesses that we want to talk to.

[00:15:27] Sean Mooney: Let's peel back the onion a little bit further here, Nik.

[00:15:30] You've done the work, you've looked at the data, you've informed your decision, you've kind of built your thesis in terms of what this can be. And now you've partnered with the company and you own the business and you're looking to transform it into its best possible self. So how does Access then approach value creation and what resources are you bringing to then go and seize the day?

[00:15:57] Nik Kapauan: That's another big focus of ours. Being able to bring a lot of these capabilities is growth infrastructure that helps these businesses scale. Based on where we play in the middle market, our entry platforms are squarely. Lower middle market even sub middle market. Our average entry platform is in the 30 to 50 million dollar range.

[00:16:16] Our average infill is even sub 10 million, which is below middle market. So we're playing squarely in that lower middle market end of the spectrum. Obviously we grow these things into 100, 200 million plus top line businesses, but when we're entering these are very kind of subscale platforms.

[00:16:32] They have a solid product, they know their customers, but they don't necessarily have the infrastructure in place needed to scale. The systems infrastructure, they're coming in with QuickBooks and nothing else, and we need to put in the right ERP and CRM and all those processes. Financial reporting likely isn't there, enterprise grade, HR, IT, finance, like all those functions still need to be put into place.

[00:16:55] So when we're participating at that end of the market. As a necessity, just based on our investing approach, we need to be able to bring all those capabilities into the business and rapidly. We can't really wait for that to build organically. We need to accelerate that infrastructure build, putting that gross scaffolding in place, and that's really the driving force behind why we created the Access Acceleration Center, the A2C.

[00:17:20] So the A2C is our Incubator for these smaller middle market businesses to bring some of the business building capabilities that they need to scale and innovate. So within the A2C, where I'm sitting right now in the A2C's podcast studio, we bring things like digital capabilities. So we have a digital lead generation team is all about.

[00:17:42] Digital marketing, tech enabled business development, and it was originally built for helping us source M& A opportunities, but that team also helps our platform companies source B2B, B2C, customer leads, even help recruit for talent.

[00:17:56] We have an in house data science team that does everything related to data collection, data engineering, data science. We have functional experts, so we have an in house markets team a real estate team. We have domain experts in communications and marketing. We have someone here whose sole focus is on getting financial reporting and financial reporting infrastructure like ERP systems, stood up rapidly at our platforms.

[00:18:26] And then on the talent side, we have a number of talent programmatic recruiting capabilities. So one of the big programs that we drive out of the A2C is called our Access Creating Executives or ACE program. Through the ACE program, we recruit, call it elite, mid career, early career talent that goes into our portfolio company.

[00:18:45] So think three to five years out of business school or a manager at a company. Strategy consulting firm type of level. And that way that we can inject some of this elite talent into our, our portfolio companies that their competitors would have difficulty accessing. So it gives us a competitive edge.

[00:19:00] So there's just a few examples of some of the capabilities that we have at the A2C, but just covers people process technology. How do we recruit the right people, the right talent into our portfolio companies?

[00:19:11] How do we put in place the right process? across all those different functional domains. And then how do we put in place the right technology and tech stack and data infrastructure needed to kind of extract value and insights from data?

[00:19:24] Sean Mooney: What I appreciate about your approach is how integrated it is and thoughtful in terms of the application of what particularly lower middle market businesses can use in the hard part of what they're trying to do, particularly when they're maybe moving from like a family status or a Founder owner status into kind of the best next and then you're layering on acquisitions and all these other things and personally one thing that kind of resonated with me was with the data, the analytic rigor and capability that you're able to bring because even just from even building blue, I can tell you that was the daunting part in the early days was how do you build a program like that?

[00:20:02] And fortunately for us, we're able to use BluWave on ourselves. So I was like, if I didn't have that. It would be so hard to even go, where do I start? And I think it's daunting to a lot of people. So you can come in with those capabilities day one and that automatically supercharges it. And then you're tying talent to it as well.

[00:20:23] You're tying playbooks to it. So it's this whole kind of approach, like we're not just going to go to the founder owner of the business and say, grow faster. Like we're going to give you the people and the resources and the tools and the data driven insights to really kind of hit the gas and give those to the leaders of those businesses going forward in a way that's.

[00:20:43] Supportive and you're bringing something clearly more than capital.

[00:20:46] Nik Kapauan: That really is our approach. And when we're talking to a new operator, we do something called destination planning, effectively strategic planning. All of our research has helped us identify what does good look like in this industry?

[00:20:59] Like what's the type of category winning business we want to build and destination planning is really about how do we get from where we are now to that point. And that helps drive alignment and that we're both going towards the same direction. We have the same North star. Also drives accountability.

[00:21:14] Like here's what the operator is responsible for. Here's the capabilities that we're bringing to help support you on that journey, which is really an important part too, for the ATC is because. Not only are we building that destination plan together, we're also saying like, Hey, we bring a lot of capabilities, people, process technology that help us achieve this destination plan together.

[00:21:36] It's a very compelling kind of value proposition to potential partners, operators, when we're having these conversations with them. Circling back to your point on data and tech stack, that's one of the big things that we've been focusing on. In the past years, how do we stand up internal capabilities to create and extract value from internal data?

[00:21:57] So we look at it, you know, it's a big problem, right? There's a lot of angles to that problem. So you got to chunk it up, right? One layer is, do you have the right operational tools in place? HRAS? Do you have that tech stack in place? And we're increasingly trying to have a predefined tech stack, pre configured with preferred tools and preferred implementation partners.

[00:22:21] So we just get that stuff up and running. as quick as possible. Then the layer above it is putting in place a data layer. So we have a data platform product called Cortex that we put in place at all of our portfolio companies that's already pre configured to kind of suck in data from all of those source systems.

[00:22:37] And especially in a high velocity M& A buy and build context, you're always adding new businesses. You've got data fragmented across multiple functions, multiple operating entities, multiple regions, right? So having that data layer, that data platform layer is really important, kind of aggregating it all into one place.

[00:22:54] One of the things we also do, and I think it's fairly unique, all of those data platforms that we put in place at each of our portcos sends data to us here at Access Holdings, so we've got a live connection. We're looking at the data the same time that our operators are seeing it coming out of their source system, so we're converting it into our standard data model, and we're using it for portfolio monitoring, helping identify issues, seizing opportunities as they come up.

[00:23:20] And then our data scientists kind of sit on top of that and are looking for opportunities, warning signs in that data. It's a very kind of active approach, active in real time, near real time as possible approach to portfolio monitoring.

[00:23:34] Sean Mooney: And once again, I think it's just so forward thinking in terms of, And this is stuff Nik, you and I have talked about before, it's just the business of private equity is turning into a business and you need that integration from the very tippy top of the P firm all the way down to the entry level employee at the port coast in order to generate true alpha.

[00:23:54] And there's all sorts of benefits that ripple to that, not only to investors, but it causes your companies to be job creators. Efficiency experts and bringing services and products to places that don't exist because of the data centric approach that you have, you can see where it's needed. And so I think all of that is.

[00:24:13] Spot on in terms of how to play to where the puck is going versus where it is or has been.

[00:24:21] Commercial: Today's episode is brought to you by BluWave. Building a business is hard. Top third parties can help you create value with speed and certainty, but it's difficult to know who's best. That's why you need the Business Builders Network.

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[00:24:43] Sean Mooney: So you have the business, you're helping them out, you're putting in these resources, and then The challenge is, as we all now, live and play on a three dimensional chessboard, the world is constantly kind of moving in different directions. Nothing is static and stays one way for long. And so I'm interested to see what are some of the top value creation opportunities that you are thematically engaging in with your porcos, and by design, maybe some things that other business leaders should be thinking about as well.

[00:25:15] Nik Kapauan: One of the things we've been really focused on recently is defining This concept of a modern business, to your point, things are changing constantly. You have the major consumer trends, you have this rising generation of new consumers that behave differently than previous generations.

[00:25:31] There's a lot of Change happening in the market from a consumer perspective, obviously from a technology perspective, which rapidly increasing technology cycles from a competitive perspective, partly because of changes in technology are starting to see new competitors enter some of these traditionally mid market spaces, tech enabled digital native competitors.

[00:25:52] So there's a lot of change that's impacting our economy in general, and also the middle market. And one of the things that we believe that in order for businesses to survive and thrive and take advantage of this change, they need to modernize, they need to become modern businesses. So we've recently been building out and we rolled out a white paper on this, but what does that modern business look like?

[00:26:17] We did a survey of 520 middle market CEOs and asked them, Hey, what are the challenges You're seeing in the market where the challenges that you're seeing to growth and then used all that information to kind of distill down into seven general buckets of areas that middle market businesses need support on in order to scale and innovate.

[00:26:39] It's things like you need preferred access to talent, the kind of skill sets and mindsets needed to embrace and adapt and be successful. In a time of change is different from a lot of these businesses have from a legacy perspective. You need to embrace technology to transform business processes across the board.

[00:26:58] You need to embrace data in everything you do. So it's really outlining what is that standard for modern business across these pillars, being able to diagnose our portfolio companies and new partners that we're talking to. against that standard and then building kind of a gap closure plan to be able to meet that modern business efficiency standard.

[00:27:19] And the way that comes out in kind of the business operation is that these modern businesses really use data to understand their markets, understand their customers, understand their competitors, tech enable their go to market process, digital lead generation, for example, and then use data, both exogenous data, external data to kind of understand all those things about their market competitors, the environment that they find themselves in, But also, internal data, endogenous data, being able to, through this data stack that we help support, really understand what's happening in my business, so management knows where to focus their attention, but not only that, like, look around corners.

[00:27:57] So we really help. Some of the use cases that we find a ton of value on are things like revenue forecasting, demand forecasting. So to be able to optimize your operations and plan for future demand, dynamic pricing, like all huge opportunities across our portfolios that are really realized by being able to ingest data, analyze it to predict the future and make the right changes out of the curve.

[00:28:22] Sean Mooney: Those are spot on. And once again, and I don't mean to be a repeating record here, but I really appreciate this kind of integrated approach where you're enabling the companies to execute on their own strategies, maybe fully own the core core resources, but you can bring them some supercharged capabilities up at your PE firm level that compliment what they're doing at their porcos and give them that extra thrust that maybe then is probably enabled by you by a little bit more economies of scale, being able to provide it to a host of portfolio companies.

[00:28:53] Versus trying to build those complete functional areas within each and every portfolio company.

[00:28:58] Nik Kapauan: Yeah. I mean, there's definitely synergies in doing a lot of that stuff centrally at our side and the R& D. But really the ultimate goal is we have all these capabilities here as A2C or data science and digital lead gen and programmatic recruiting.

[00:29:13] The ultimate goal is to lift and shift that into the portfolio company over the whole period. We have those capabilities, we've invested heavily in those capabilities here so we can deploy them out the gate, start creating value from day one. But in order to really create value and also have that value as part of the portfolio company, we need to be able to lift and shift that into the portfolio company.

[00:29:34] Call it our build, operate, transfer model. For example, right, in the early days of our portfolio company, we might have our business development rep, So the Access Lead Lab is our digital lead generation team here, part of the A2C. In the early days of our portfolio company, we'll have a business development rep from the Access Lead Lab running digital lead generation campaigns to source customer opportunities for our portfolio company.

[00:29:59] We can put that capability, put that on top of the portcodes go to market function and immediately drive new leads into the business, crank up organic growth. Over the first 18 months of the whole period, we're hiring what we call a lead, which is a junior kind of business development resource that sits with our team at the Access Lead Lab, learns our tech stack, learns from them.

[00:30:20] They're an employee of the portfolio company. They sit with our team, get certified in all our tools and processes and our digital lead generation playbook. But they're employees of the portfolio company and ultimately go and sit at the portfolio company. We have a Salesforce and marketing cloud tech sec that's configured to do just that digital lead generation.

[00:30:39] But then. We're running that out of our tenant, but then over time, we'll set that up for the portfolio company. So in the early days, it's our BDRs running lead gen campaigns using our tech stack, but then, fast forward six to twelve months. It's the lead that sits in the business, that gets trained by our team, that's using portfolio companies tech stack to execute these.

[00:31:00] Just a small example, but that's a playbook that we run for data science, for capital markets, for real estate, for all the other functions that we support our portfolio companies in.

[00:31:09] Sean Mooney: That's great. You've got common principles and capabilities within the overall broader access family. But then you have the ability to kind of customize the application of them and then transfer them down in a more nuanced, deft way versus, you know, everything as a square peg or a round hole.

[00:31:28] Nik Kapauan: Yeah. And through that process, we're also able to see best practices happening at individual porcos that we want to absorb and learn from and bring it into our toolkit that we can spread across others. I also see the A2C as almost like a searching for best practices right across the entire network and bringing them back here at the core so we can kind of distribute it more programmatically across all of our partners.

[00:31:51] It's a two way street.

[00:31:53] Sean Mooney: So, as we kind of round out our conversation here, Nik, the other thing that I love doing when I have really capable people here on the other end of the conversation where I can borrow and copy paste things into my life is I love little life hacks that make things in my day to day world just a little easier or better or more fulfilling.

[00:32:19] And I'm constantly in search of these things, apart, I love gizmos and gadgets and whether it's a process or a device. It just makes things a little bit easier for, particularly with all of us, we have such kind of crazy, hectic lives. And so I'm curious, do you have anything that you've kind of embraced that's made a difference in your day to day?

[00:32:38] Nik Kapauan: Yeah. First of all, as a father of three kids, five and under.

[00:32:43] Sean Mooney: I didn't know it was three, five and under.

[00:32:45] Nik Kapauan: I'm in the thick of it. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of my tactical life hacks are very much kid related. Prepare lunch the night before all that stuff. But really what I've been focusing on recently is especially with the family life and work life, both kind of cresting at this point of my life so far is just really learning how to not just manage my time, which still is a challenge sometimes, right? Finding that right balance, but also focusing on managing my energy. There's time and there's energy to be able to do those things that I need to do both at work and at home.

[00:33:18] And there's certain things that I try to actively understand, okay, what gives me energy throughout the day, what takes up energy throughout the day and really thinking about things through that angle. So I might, for instance, there's a certain topic or a certain initiative that I really find energized when I talk to this person or I talk to this person about this topic.

[00:33:37] It really picks me up for the day. It's like, you know, sequencing those meetings, like maybe I'm going to want to start my day off on this particular topic or with this particular group of people just to get me going. Or maybe there's Some other initiative that I'm working on, it's more on the other side, it's like draining energy.

[00:33:53] Just learning to understand and sequence those things to practically manage my energy levels are throughout the day and then also making sure that I have enough energy at the end of the day when work is done, laptop closed, coming home, spending time with my kids and my family, being able to manage my energy sufficiently and sequence tasks and not just thinking about time commitments.

[00:34:18] And things like that, but how things that I'm doing affect my energy levels throughout the day. That's one thing, obviously, that I'm definitely not an expert in that yet, but something I've been actively trying to be aware of.

[00:34:31] Sean Mooney: Yeah, I like how you're thinking about that, because I've always thought about managing my time, and then what I've really just lived by is just, I'm going to constantly burn the candle at both ends and be exhausted.

[00:34:42] I'm interested, Nik, how do you kind of monitor your energy and then what do you do to either preserve it or recharge it?

[00:34:50] Nik Kapauan: I've gone through that as well and still very much brute forcing it. You have 20 things you gotta get done to just power through and that works up to a level.

[00:35:02] Definitely not sustainable in the long run. I think for me, it's like really identifying what are those tasks that give me energy versus expend energy. And just being aware of that, I think is really the first step. So when you're planning your day and kind of sequencing things out, you're able to at least just understand how your energy levels fluctuate during the day. Based on what you're doing and the different activities and then being able to plan and sequence accordingly before that.

[00:35:29] Sean Mooney: What are some things that give you energy that you've identified?

[00:35:33] Nik Kapauan: Work related, a lot of the research, I think throwing back to the beginning of our conversation about how I feel like I'm still an engineer at heart. I think any kind of whiteboarding or thinking about thesis development. What's our strategy for a particular industry talking to some of our research teams like hey, where are you learning?

[00:35:52] Where are you finding out about this industry? What does good look like and then strategizing around where in the value chain should we play? What kind of business do you want to build that would create a ton of value? Why thinking about industry segments and business systemically? I think that is very intellectually stimulating for me and gives me a ton of energy a lot of the work that we do and codifying Some of the stuff that we're learning internally and turning into thought leadership, things like this that we're doing are like sharing some of our best practices and the things that we learn, trying to radiate that out there.

[00:36:24] That also gives me energy. I really enjoy that type of work.

[00:36:28] Sean Mooney: I'm kind of latching onto this because I've never really even thought about A, being intentional about what gives and takes for my energy level and what fills up the cup and what drains it. But two, I never really thought as well as do you sequence things so that you can tap yourself up.

[00:36:45] as the day goes by. That's something that's going to cause me to do a lot of pondering this weekend, where it's just like, what does give me energy? What takes energy away from me? Then that'll take me down a spiral. Then I'll go into a conversation. I brought in an executive coach earlier this year, because we're reaching kind of new altitudes where I'm going to need to be a different and better self.

[00:37:08] My coach, she was saying like, what are your hobbies? What do you do to kind of recharge? And I thought there. And from that first conversation, I go, I don't know, I don't think I have any hobbies. It's probably like a lot of people, it's kind of depressing where you're like, don't golf. It's family and work.

[00:37:25] And so I think you're taking it to this kind of next level. You can see your engineer's mind, you're breaking kind of the system down into components and saying, okay, how do we optimize the system of Nik? I've never done that or been that intentional. And sometimes it's because. I'm always scared to dare to look into my own self.

[00:37:43] And so I was like, that's a scary place. So I've latched on to meditation because that just quiets everything. But the intentionality around your energy and maintaining it through the day is something I've never thought about.

[00:37:55] Nik Kapauan: I can't take credit for it. It's actually a piece of advice that was given to me by one of my mentors recently.

[00:38:01] It's just being aware of it, being intentional about it. And similar to you, I struggle to find time for just personal hobbies, I feel like. Work focus and family focus right been finding that time for yourself, but that really helps you kind of understand Okay, what are the hobbies and things that actually give me a ton of energy whether it's a sport or spending time outdoors?

[00:38:22] It's also with my engineers mindset. I'm always looking for ways to optimize So I put my son into hockey for example, because that's a personal I played hockey growing up and I love watching it so being able to watch him and learn how to play the game and get excited about it also gives me energy and also lets me enjoy something that's a hobby of mine.

[00:38:42] Just like you said, it's the intentionality of it. Like just being able to understand what gives, what takes energy is the first step. It was an amazing piece of advice that someone gave me. It helps me plan and sequence things out. And also just being aware of like, okay, Wednesday night, I'm going to be absolutely spent just looking at kind of the topics that I'm dealing with during the day.

[00:39:04] Just helps me like plan ahead, even if there's nothing you can do about it, at least just being aware of that and how your energy levels move up and down during the day I think has been a great piece of advice that someone gave me.

[00:39:13] Sean Mooney: I'm gonna borrow that, I'm gonna dare to ponder. And then also I'm going to really try to get a hobby that extends beyond watching Netflix and have a couple glasses of red wine at night, and so that's a different conversation that we'll have later.

[00:39:30] Nik Kapauan: You must have had some ideas of things that you'd love to do that maybe you did in the past and have time for.

[00:39:36] Sean Mooney: Well, it's interesting. So now my kids are kind of entering that high school going into college phase So I'm really not even that wanted around anymore. So it's a great opportunity for me to get some hobbies.

[00:39:47] Nik Kapauan: Yeah.

[00:39:47] Sean Mooney: I'll have to go to one of these like hobby finder assessments and then just start doing something All right, Nik.

[00:39:54] Well, this has been a really wonderful Insightful conversation. You've taught me all sorts of things. I wish I knew before and that's a tremendous gift So Thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:40:05] Nik Kapauan: Glad to be here, Sean, and appreciate the opportunity.

[00:40:18] That's all we have for today. Special thanks to Nik Kapauan for joining. If you'd like to learn more about Nik and Access Holdings, please see the episode notes for links. Please continue to look for the Karma School of Business podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcasts. We truly appreciate your support.

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Private equity insights for and with top business builders, including investors, operators, executives and industry thought leaders. The Karma School of Business Podcast goes behind the scenes of PE, talking about business best practices and real-time industry trends. You'll learn from leading professionals and visionary business executives who will help you take action and enhance your life, whether you’re at a PE firm, a portco or a private or public company.

BluWave Founder & CEO Sean Mooney hosts the Private Equity Karma School of Business Podcast. BluWave is the business builders’ network for private equity grade due diligence and value creation needs.