Private Equity Spotlight: Lessons in Leadership and Growth with Casey Myers

[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 an awesome conversation with Casey Myers, partner with Edison Partners. Enjoy.

[00:00:31] So I am super excited to be here today with Casey Myers. Casey, thanks for joining us. Yeah, yeah. My pleasure. I've been looking forward to this for a lot of reasons. One of which is I came to know, first know Casey when we were on a panel together in one of these big private equity conferences and Casey was just really dropping all the pearls of wisdom and not afraid to kind of like say it in some ways how it was and is.

[00:00:57] And so he was probably one of the most, like, positively quoted persons at the entire conference. So I was like, we got to get you on this thing because it'll be a lot of fun.

[00:01:06] Casey Myers: Life's short, man. You can't beat around the bushes.

[00:01:09] Sean Mooney: Absolutely. He is really, I think has a unique perspective and I'm looking forward to this.

[00:01:13] And then the other thing that's great about Casey is his firm is one of the most recent kind of Nashville transplants in the broader private equity growth equity world. So I get the pleasure of seeing Casey on occasion and they're super awesome, cool offices. It's good to see Casey here and looking forward to jumping in.

[00:01:30] Casey Myers: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Sean.

[00:01:33] Sean Mooney: So as we kind of get into The discussion here, maybe first what I'd love to do is get a little bit of the story of you. Kind of how'd you come up, how did you eventually make it into this industry?

[00:01:43] Casey Myers: It wasn't by design. Um, and certainly everything happens for a reason in my book, but I've been an operator.

[00:01:49] In fact, funny enough, but I tend to kind of say I've only been on the dark side for about two years. Probably because most of my kids are Star Wars fanatics, but I've been an operator for like 22, 23, 24 years, and in my last gig, I ran our exit process, which by the way, we kicked off January of 2020, which was the worst month in the history of the earth to start the process.

[00:02:13] But through that, I met with 52 different private equity firms. And that's a lot. Again, keep in mind, this is back in 2020, 2021, especially in 21. Capital was cheap. It was all over the place. Everybody wanted to throw money around. Valuations were crazy. But just so many of them fell so short when it came to actual operator support and help, right?

[00:02:37] We wanted more and look, we were down in kind of firmly lower mid market and looking for growth capital and looking for more than just money. We needed help. We needed wisdom. We needed people to come alongside us and help us see around certain corners. As an organization and leadership team, we ended up finding a great home.

[00:02:56] But through that process, it just gave me a perspective of How PE, I'm not making too general of a, of a statement, but the way that they didn't put enough value in operator support and what's called quote unquote value creation back then they use words like value add, it was just super apparent to me that they needed help.

[00:03:16] Yeah. Decided to become part of the solution versus sit there and complain about it.

[00:03:20] Sean Mooney: I love that on a number of fronts. One, it's a reflection of the really positive maturation of an industry that's becoming an industry, right? The private, it used to be. In the early 2000s, our value creation plan was we're going to upgrade the accounting system and add a salesperson.

[00:03:38] Casey Myers: Right. Or change pricing and packaging. Like there's, there's, there were two or three kind of plays that we would ask, right? We would say, Hey, what do you do to help us capital? Let's set deal formation aside, capital structure aside. You're not going to lever us up with a bunch of debt. How are you going to help us build the business?

[00:03:55] The answers were, We'll give you our internal recruiter and help you change some butts in seats who will help you optimize pricing and packaging and yeah We'll throw an FP& A wonk and reporting structure on top of your head. Is that it?

[00:04:09] Sean Mooney: Yeah, lots of information requests. That's what You're gonna get to know our VP really well.

[00:04:16] I Had like the reverse track of yours, so I was 20 something years in PE I had the benefit of a lot of pattern recognition, but until I kind of sat in this seat here, I never really appreciated how hard it is and how multifaceted, how lonely at the top of these firms it is when you're building these things.

[00:04:36] in how much you have to like prioritize doing fewer things better. But when I was in PE, I was like, we're going to do 10 things. By the way, all that cash flow you had, we're paying off our debt now. And you just got to make it happen. Good luck. I'll talk to you in a quarter. And I'm over exaggerating, right?

[00:04:54] We weren't, and certainly I wasn't that tone deaf. But it's not until I kind of sat in this seat, like, whoa, you've got to really be intentional about what you're going to do and then tying real resources to do it. And so to have that background, 20 something years in the seat, and now bring it into a great firm like Edison, that's got to be a huge benefit and advantage for you all, both as an investor, but also as the beneficiaries of your capital.

[00:05:19] Casey Myers: Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's operators doing investment deals, right? It's not investors doing deals and slapping on an operator kind of bandaid after the fact.

[00:05:29] Sean Mooney: I want to get into a lot of that in terms of how you all look at the world and what you all do to kind of create value, right? And which is the name of the game.

[00:05:38] It's the economic reality. You have to, and those who do so. But before we do that, one of the questions Casey, I always love to ask is we'd know you better if we knew this about you. And so what's something about you that we'd know, I'll know you better if we knew.

[00:05:52] Casey Myers: Well, I would say, I think if you spent 15 minutes with me in a boat fishing, you'd probably see me pretty quick and certainly in a golf cart as much as I can get out there and play.

[00:06:04] But life of the PE operator and partner doesn't allow for too much fishing and golfing these days.

[00:06:10] Sean Mooney: So, we're on a fishing boat with you. What would be maybe some of the subtle differences between Fishin Casey and Boardroom Casey?

[00:06:18] Casey Myers: Oh my gosh, I don't think there's much of a difference, honestly. Sometimes I like to say I'm Edison's token Southerner, but Edison spends a lot of our time and investment in portfolio in those underserved markets in the Southeast.

[00:06:31] But I grew up in the South, been down here, been in Atlanta for 26 years, born and raised on Amelia Island, just North of Jacksonville. And we just, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the South, you kind of just wear it on your sleeve. That's really what you're going to get for me in a boardroom or on a deal or in a management team meeting, or certainly in a boat, it's just, you know, it's It's a little bit more refreshing of a conversation and quite frankly, environment in a boat versus a boardroom.

[00:06:58] That's for sure. It's more about being out there and getting perspective on why you're doing what you're doing. 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week.

[00:07:08] Sean Mooney: It's that moment of calm.

[00:07:09] Casey Myers: We all need that, right? Yeah, you need just a moment to put life in perspective. We should all have those places to kind of go and be, whether we're catching fish or.

[00:07:18] In the woods hunting or doing or hitting a golf ball.

[00:07:23] Sean Mooney: Hey, as a quick interlude, this is Sean here. Wanted to address one quick question that we regularly get. We often get people who show up at our website, call our account executives that say, Hey, I'm not private equity. Can I still use BluWave to get connected with resources?

[00:07:37] And the short answer is yes. 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.

[00:07:55] If you want to use the exact same resources that are trusted and being deployed and perfectly calibrated for your business needs, give us a call. Visit our website at BluWave. net. Thanks. Back to the episode.

[00:08:11] One of the things I'd love to maybe turn the chapter on here is you've got this great experience as an operator. Now you get to see it from the full kind of spectrum of also being an investor, a value creator, in support of operators in kind of doing in this symbiotic way. What are some of the traits that you're now looking through both of those lenses of saying, you know what, this is a good company, or probably as importantly, could, should, or will be a good company because it has these kind of elements of value or these foundations.

[00:08:44] Casey Myers: We got to put it in context, right? So, I mean, Edison plays lower mid market, we're growth equity, first institutional capital, quite frankly, a vast majority of our CEOs are first time CEOs, founder, CEOs, and teams. And so, In that context, yeah, you've got your unit economics, you've got your, look, are they breakeven?

[00:09:04] Are they growing? All kind of the core things, which is kind of easy to quickly decipher, but I personally kind of look for two or three things over and over and over again. One, I'd look at the character of the leaders. I mean, look, at the end of the day, a couple of reasons. One, these are the people you're going to work with.

[00:09:23] So you have the right to be picky, to deploy the capital where you want to deploy it. You're going to spend a lot of time with these people. So what does that dynamic look like? And what does that character look like? But two, their character at the top, it's very difficult to measure culture. In pre deals and diligence, right.

[00:09:44] You can't tend to really understand the way that culture operates until you're sometimes many quarters into the relationship. I just firmly believe that the character leader at the top, especially these are founders and first time CEOs, it's permeated the organization, right. They have brought in talent that has stayed because they like that leader.

[00:10:05] That is a leader worth following. So. I think character for me is fundamental one. Fundamental two for me would be, and this goes back to the operator in me, call it product market fit, call it service addressable or obtainable market. But I look for correlation to pain. Is what the company is doing, buying, selling, deploying, is it solving pain for their customers?

[00:10:29] Are you selling something that's nice to have or something that is a must have? I think if you can kind of dig and press on that, as opposed to how big is the TAM, how big is the SAM? It really, for me, is about the correlation to pay. And so those customer interviews, client interviews, prospect interviews, those are the kinds of things that you spend a lot of time and can validate that.

[00:10:48] And then the third, I think, because we are in the tech space, tech debt is not something that's fun to kind of like jump into. A lot of founders don't appreciate and get this as a growth equity investor. A lot of these founders don't think like an investor. And so if you've dug too deep of a hole with tech debt.

[00:11:09] It's tough to get out of it at the same time as meeting the criteria and growth requirements that private equity is going to lay on you. It's not growth at all costs, but it's durable, smart growth. If you're trying to dig out of the tech debt bucket, it's just fighting against you from the get go. So that the tech debt thing is something I tend to push on a little bit.

[00:11:31] Sean Mooney: For our listeners who are outside of the world of technology and software, how do you define tech

[00:11:35] Casey Myers: debt? You built a product in some way, shape or form, right? Whether it's tech enabled services or like pure, pure self service software as a service product, and you've sold it into the marketplace and you've built that on some type of code base.

[00:11:52] But when you come into these founder led organizations, sometimes these are 10, 15 plus years old. And depending on what you want to do to expand back to that TAM and SAM and SOM, if you need to expand that, what are you going to do from a product and architecture perspective? A lot of these folks have built different stacks, different products, so now what are you trying to do?

[00:12:13] Consolidate code bases? There's a scalability to the architecture and code that fundamentally It's either something that these companies have already solved for, or it's something they need to solve for. Depending on how big that gap is and how big that chasm is, it's something that some private equity firms don't want to take on.

[00:12:34] Sean Mooney: It's such a great point. And I remember when I was in my investing days and doing kind of information data analytics companies, and then immediately we would go into the code and then you start saying, okay, A, is it organized or is it just kind of a rat's nest? B, is it notated? And then C is there like, if there are notes or any kind of ads in there, is it all in some language that no one in the company speaks cause they outsourced it all to some far away place or is it all in the beautiful mind of lull in the steam tunnels and like, lull has them over, you know, like just held hostage by having all of this swirling code in their mind and so.

[00:13:17] That always left an indelible mark on me. And so as we were kind of going through and building up our platforms and the AI behind it and everything, one thing we were really purposeful about was exactly what you're talking about. And then secondarily, we would regularly and still do regularly do tech diligence on ourselves.

[00:13:35] We'll bring in the groups that you all will hire to look at targets. And we said, no, come look at us. And like, it's just a check. Are we doing it right? Is it the latest and greatest? Can we do something better? Are we looking at the right KPIs? And anyone can do that. If you're a founder out there, if you're building a company, take that time to measure twice, cut once, do it right and build it with a thoughtfulness and an organization, knowing that you're going to want to get monetized some point in your life on this business.

[00:14:04] And that's going to be a big issue if you haven't done it right. All this is solvable.

[00:14:09] Casey Myers: It is. It all needs to be done. It's just a matter of timing. You have to think about it. It is just a risk barrier to scale, and we are in the business of scale up. So it's a question of how much risk you're going to take on to get them to be able to scale.

[00:14:26] Tech either needs to be a contributor to scale or a hindrance to scale, and it's okay if it's a hindrance, but it's a question of how big that hindrance is and whether you can get the return on investment. And ultimately, these are companies that you, that you want We're not going to own forever. We're not a whole co.

[00:14:43] So you have to pass those on and be a good steward of those companies and people and technologies. And so these founders, you have to think about when you're going to, how you're going to, where you're going to exit and what those individuals want. So it just goes back to kind of eating our own dog food too.

[00:15:01] Like who is our ICP? What is our ICP? We preach this to our customers and portcos, but the reality is we have to think about it for ourselves as well.

[00:15:09] Sean Mooney: One of the mantras we have here is like, so often the things that I would look at companies that go, you know, I always wish it was done this way, but historically, this is what we've done.

[00:15:18] And so I've tried my best to ban the word historically. And like everyone we bring in, we bring in talented people who have unique skills that we need. It's like, always look at what we're doing. If there's things that you say, I always wished it was done that way. It's like, no sacred cows, just let's do it that way.

[00:15:34] It was so liberating. And so I think our listeners who are listening to what Casey's saying is like, as you look at your own technology, your own workflows, processes, just take it on now. Just fix it. And then you'll be better for it.

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[00:16:11] Sean Mooney: The other thing that I really liked was your point on character. What are some of the things that you look at that show within an organization, like, these are good people with integrity that are doing things the right way, and maybe what are some of the signals that you say, oh, this could be a red flag.

[00:16:28] Casey Myers: A lot of it shows up in some objective KPIs like executive churn. If you really push also down into the organization, churn down in the organization, you're going to get normal kind of individual contributor churn. But if you see management churn and frontline manager churn, you got to kind of question what the actual culture is that's driving these people out.

[00:16:50] And certainly there's always a degree of healthy churn, so to speak. I think that's one of the more objective ways to pick up on it. And this goes to the relationship building you need to do way before a letter of intent. This is about getting to know individuals, maybe back to the fishing boat. You've got to build and establish a relationship, and it has to be based on trust, and I turn 50 this next year.

[00:17:17] I hope that I'm a better judge of character today than I was in my 20s and 30s. And so you just need to spend quality time with these people and be a judge of character. And it also shows up in how they manage their executive teams, right? Are they command and control, or are they trust and inspire people?

[00:17:36] It's just all of those kind of soft things that ultimately give you a bit of a bead.

[00:17:42] Sean Mooney: And I think that's spot on. Really the second thing you mentioned that we're going to touch just right here is this whole pain correlation. Are you solving a problem? Does water flow downhill towards the solution or are you pushing it uphill?

[00:17:54] And that was whenever I would look at kind of SaaS businesses and you just know they're hiring the most expensive, like killer salespeople to just force adoption. Discounting anything they can to get another dollar of recurring revenue, even though every dollar that they've gotten took two dollars to get.

[00:18:13] It's like, go where water flows. If it's not flowing in your product, you haven't solved it yet.

[00:18:18] Casey Myers: Yeah. Listen, this just goes back to how I cut my teeth as an operator. Literally, knocking on doors, in Atlanta, in a suit, in August, selling switched long distance plans to small businesses. Yeah. First of all, thank God nobody's doing that anymore, but you have to solve a pain point, whether it's cost, whether it's slow growth, whether it, it doesn't matter if you're solving pain, you're able to articulate that and directly connect that to your solution.

[00:18:52] It just makes it easier to grow. It's brutally hard to build a business. Why would you do it with a nice to have that's a little fuzzy correlating pain to the solution? So. Yeah. Just a question of kind of slightly easier path to scale and profitability.

[00:19:09] Sean Mooney: So for our listeners, this is a masterclass. Like listen to this, these are things that every one of you should be looking at in your businesses in terms of like, can you not only be a good company, but can you be a great company?

[00:19:20] Good's good. But, you know, if you aspire to be great, these are things that really matter. Another thing I'd love to just get your perspective on is, it seems like the last four or five years, it's just we've been in this washing machine of good news, bad news, good news, bad news. And I think just a lot of people are exhausted by it.

[00:19:37] But it's also, what that's done is, you know, Giving people the opportunity to kind of like demonstrate tenacity, grit, resiliency, et cetera. And so I'm curious over the last four or five, six years, et cetera, have you gone through one of these and maybe what were some of your like lessons learned and takeaways from that?

[00:19:54] Casey Myers: One, I had many. I, yeah, it's like how many I mentioned before, kind of in passing, but the last company I was at, we started in banker led. Strategic exit process, we actually met in New York to kick it off with the banker in December of 2019, then brought it back in January of 2020 to do the full launch and kickoff, and then some nasty stuff happened within the next couple of months with COVID.

[00:20:24] And look. You get punched like that. It's not like you're just going to stop. You have to adapt. We've been on a change leadership and change management kick with our portfolio companies in the last year or two. It's showed up in kind of our CEO summit content and executive leadership team summit content.

[00:20:41] It's no different than I experienced then. It's a question of kind of what you do with it. And so you got to pivot. You got to be agile. You got to deal with. Current circumstances, but most startup and scale up folks are used to having to be ultra gritty and determined and not take no for an answer. And so you either have that, honestly, or you don't, it's either there and you get better at it through practice, which is not fun.

[00:21:11] What it did, it taught me that grit determination actually. Eventually pays off, but it's just required in those types of macro environments that we've had in the last couple of years.

[00:21:22] Sean Mooney: I mean, it's one of the hardest intangibles to have in life and business, etc. Is this like tenacity, grit, resiliency, someone punches you in the nose, do you get up or do you kind of run away or do you go to the

[00:21:34] Casey Myers: sideline?

[00:21:36] It's also a good question. Go back to character, right? Of the leaders of these portfolio companies that you want to partner with and talk to me about a Valley season. Talk to me about what are some of the more challenging things you faced? Not just this year, but years ago, you're the founder. Tell me your origin story and don't give me all the mountaintop experiences.

[00:21:54] Like I want to know how you learn from the worst three Valley experiences.

[00:21:59] Sean Mooney: That's a great question and a great test of metal, I guess, if you will. That's one of the essences of one of the values that we. not only reinforce here, but higher too. And every year we go through kind of this strategic planning session.

[00:22:13] We just did, like, in all hands, everyone's involved. One of the mindset framers that we always show is this great 80s movie called Better Off Dead. So it's with John Cusack, and it's just this great kind of 80s classic comedy. And there's a scene in the movie where he and his romantic interest, Monique.

[00:22:32] We're at the top of this like daunting mountain and they're sitting up here on the top of this mountain and Blaine John Cusack's character goes look at this mountain. How can you go down this thing? It's like it's we're all gonna die and Monique goes No, it's real easy. All you do is you jump off from right here at this peak.

[00:22:49] You go really, really fast. If something gets in your way, and she goes down, beautifully, like, navigating this incredibly difficult mountain, and then Lane goes, Well, if you can do it, I can do it, and he immediately tumbles down, all the way down. Now, but the difference is, what did he do? He got up, he fell, he dusted off his knees, And he tried again, and he had this bias towards action.

[00:23:16] And then 30 movie seconds later, he was an amazing skier. So every year we show this to the team, because I was like, this is what it's like to do anything hard. You're going to go, you're going to try, you're going to tumble, but if you have the resiliency to just keep on getting up, 30 movie seconds later, eventually it's going to be easier.

[00:23:34] We talked about in the beginning, Casey, this whole point of like the private equity industry becoming an industry. Bringing more than capital is a requirement, and those who do it well, differentially, have been successful and are successful. And so let's talk a little bit about what Edison does. So, how do you all approach value creation?

[00:23:54] What resources do you bring to the beneficiaries of not only your capital, but your expertise?

[00:24:00] Casey Myers: Really our operator DNA is just woven and embedded into the entire firm. I think that's one of the things that really attracted me to Edison. These are really operators who are now making investment decisions as opposed to the reverse that really just shows up in a lot of different ways.

[00:24:18] We don't charge for our operating partners. So it also kind of brings other challenges, but the reality is it allows us to truly walk the walk when it comes to we're here to help. It's very much a pull method as opposed to a push method down in lower mid market. It's taking a playbook and a process and then shoving it down a 25 million ARR company is not usually a best practice.

[00:24:43] We have to meet them kind of where they are and help them along. We're functionally aligned. We've got five different centers of excellence across the normal ones, like finance, governance, product, and engineering, certainly go to market. I mean, there's a lot of wood behind that arrowhead when it comes to value creation.

[00:25:01] But my favorite is actually people and leadership. I say it's my favorite center of excellence because I just firmly believe that that's where foundational value creation occurs. When I say people in leadership, you and I have bantered about this in the last number of Months and quarters and years. I don't mean human capital, which is what a lot of private equity kind of nomenclature defaults to.

[00:25:26] And honestly, it was my experience as an operator, right. In a couple of different exit experiences, when they talked about value creation opportunities with quote unquote human capital, it was really just a glorified recruiter that they would give us access to, and that's evolved. I think over the last number of years, we've seen a lot of positive kind of talk and momentum in the industry.

[00:25:48] I also think, by the way. It's almost a must have for these PE firms because their whole periods have had to be longer. They've run all the tricks around commercial excellence and FP& A improvements, and they've done all the things that they kind of know to do. And what's left in a whole period at that point is people develop.

[00:26:07] And so when I say people in leadership, Really for us, it means very, very focused and intentional CEO leadership development and very, very specific team effectiveness and team performance. And so that's where we spend most of our, so to speak, wood behind that arrowhead, is in that particular area.

[00:26:27] Sean Mooney: I love that perspective on a couple fronts.

[00:26:30] One, at the end of the day, just even looking at our own data, we work with and support hundreds of PE firms, thousands of their portfolio companies. And if I were to go back to 2018, 18 percent of the projects were related to people. Today it's well north of 40 and at times close to 50%. And I was trying to understand, like, why is this happening?

[00:26:51] And part of it is because the name of the game in PE is good is no longer good enough, right? It's great. And how do you become great? You've got to bring in really capable people, amazing skills that are additive to the teams, but that doesn't mean you just go get rid of all the people, right? You got to upskill and invest.

[00:27:09] The people you have have created something that very few could ever accomplish, right? In terms of like being a founding team and building something out of nothing. Right. And so to diminish that is, I think, is folly. But to go and invest and say, no, we're going to, we're actually going to invest in upskilling you and upgrading your talent, but also bring in some net new to help fill maybe voids and gaps because you never, particularly as an entrepreneur, you can never do everything until you bring in kind of the fuel you're talking about and even then you're constrained.

[00:27:39] And so I really like that approach. And you kind of mentioned the term human capital. And P. E. loves jargon, and so, it's like, for me, it's like, I have no chance of speaking like a human being, A, from growing up in Texas, and then B, growing up in private equity. They're like, can't you just speak like a human being?

[00:27:58] I'm like, what? No, I'm going to tell you, I'll use a metaphor, and I always have to use the words like and as in almost anything I talk about. But human capital, I was turned off by it in the beginning when they started using it. Cause I thought it was like, are you dehumanizing your most important kind of elements of your business by saying capital?

[00:28:16] The only thing that changed my perspective on that term of art, I was talking to Joelle Marquis, a friend of mine, she's a senior leader at a well known P firm, and she came out of People Talent. And it's probably one of the first, like, top, top execs at a P firm coming out of People Talent. And she's like, well, I originally came out of what was then called Human Resources.

[00:28:36] And that made me feel sick to my stomach, because it's like resources are depleted. They're used, they're expended. And she goes, the way I view capital, why I like it so much is like, capital is invested and it's something that makes something bigger, better, safer, stronger, faster, and grown. That is a great explanation, and why has never anyone said that out loud?

[00:29:00] Casey Myers: Totally agree. I think it's the broad assumptions when people, and certainly portfolio companies, hear human capital is what do they think of? I don't know how much they think of, is my PE firm investing in my leadership development? Are they really focused on making my executive team high functioning and high performing?

[00:29:21] And you were talking about this before, that's hard work. It's easy to just deploy a recruitment and search tactic. It takes back to grit in the foxholes, in the valleys. It's hard creating a high functioning team. And this is also part of the context of where each firm and fund kind of fit, right? Because we live in getting these founders across this chasm of startup to scale up, right?

[00:29:53] Of early stage to growth stage. And listen, They've built some awesome stuff with awesome people, but it's the inevitable kind of what got you here is not necessarily going to get you there. And it starts with the team of people around them. Yes. Can we upskill? Can we develop, but can we also, because of the pattern recognition, can we look ahead and help them look ahead?

[00:30:18] Because most times they haven't seen 50, 75, a hundred plus million in revenue. We kind of know what they're going to need from a, not just skill, but will. And so to be able to help them loosen the reins a little bit, bring in an executive team that will really help them go further faster, that is more art than science.

[00:30:41] Edison has this, you know, we, we talk about taking a people first approach and a people based value creation strategy. And that's really where the rubber meets the road.

[00:30:48] Sean Mooney: It's really interesting. You're talking to me like what gets you to where you are is not going to get you to where you're going. And that's just life, right?

[00:30:54] Right. We've all been through that and this year I tried to be as self aware as I could and the beauty is I get to see what you all do and I'm just like, I'm going to Frankenstein myself with that. And so I hired a coach at the beginning of the year who came from kind of like the fast growth company ecosystem and I was like, what I'm doing now that got us here, which is like determination and grit and probably not nearly as like deft and elegant as it could have been.

[00:31:19] It's like, if there's any chance that I don't get Fredo too soon in the game. I've got to change who I am. And it was a really beneficial experience. And so the things that you're talking about in terms of like every operator, no matter who they are, it's a journey. It's not a destination. Amen. And it's like Tom Brady has six coaches or had six coaches.

[00:31:38] Why can't a middle market or a lower middle architect have one and someone to help the team work a little better. I love that you all focus on that. It's unique and it's really important. It's also just fun.

[00:31:49] Casey Myers: Like, this is just the way I'm wired. We started our own little Edison YPO groups, the idea of peer based learning and this community lever.

[00:32:00] It's fantastic to watch these folks kind of develop as leaders. Most of these folks really do want to be better. It's just the ability to kind of help them get there.

[00:32:09] Sean Mooney: I love it. So Casey, as we kind of round out our conversation here, I always love to think about pieces of wisdom that others have learned that I can then Frankenstein onto myself without having to figure it out the hard way.

[00:32:23] And then what I like to say is I've learned every good lesson at least three times. By the fourth time, I get it. If you were to go back to 22 year old Casey and give yourself a piece of advice that you wish you knew then, admittedly that 22 year old Casey may not have listened to. Oh, for sure. Yeah, no doubt about that.

[00:32:42] But what would be one of those pieces of advice that you would give yourself then?

[00:32:47] Casey Myers: I got married when I was 22. I was thoroughly distracted with that. Vocationally, I would say, don't be afraid of the Swiss army knife label. So I had the Really the blessing to go through a number of kind of startups and scale ups to actually start my own thing with my father.

[00:33:08] We did a three, three and a half year stint of raising our own fund as well, which was fascinating and learning, but as an operator, I always felt like it was a curse having broad experience versus deep experience, right? And I would tend to personally get frustrated with that. Maybe not outwardly, but in my heart and mind and soul, I would get frustrated with the breadth of experience I was getting.

[00:33:38] And I mean, I literally was called in the number of these startups and scale ups like the Swiss army knife of XYZ company. My mind would assume it's more of a kitchen junk drawer version. And then I read Arthur Brooks's book. In fact, I've got it sitting right here. Strength to Strength. Arthur Brooks wrote Strength to Strength, and it is about making that shift from building things to teaching things, and a fluid intelligence that you have in your younger years, just metaphysically, versus crystallized intelligence that you have in your later years.

[00:34:10] And it's those things that allow you to kind of maintain fulfillment and go from kind of building things to teaching things. His most recent book, Build the Life You Want, was also fantastically aligned to those same kind of concepts. We actually had Arthur speak at our annual general meeting this past May and it was super, super impactful.

[00:34:29] So I think I'd go back and tell my 22 year old self, listen man, it's okay. Like, lean into all the different hats you could possibly wear. And it pays off in the second half of your life because You have the ability to walk into almost any portfolio company door and relate to almost every one of the functions.

[00:34:50] Sean Mooney: I love that. We're similar age. We're both probably products of the feral Gen X generation. And I think a lot of the time when we were coming up, there was this, you need to be a specialist. And that was the age of specialization. And I think those remnants still exist today. I think your advice is wise for a number of reasons, but also I believe pretty strongly that in this age of AI, the ability to be a generalist is going to be so much more important because that hard earned specialized knowledge is now at the hands and the tips of the fingers of anyone who dares to be curious about it.

[00:35:31] As I talk with my kids, my daughter is on the verge of college, and my son is not too far behind. These liberal arts degrees are going to be back in vogue. It's just like, can you think? Can you problem solve? Because they had access to that specialized knowledge that you and I, when we were coming out, didn't exist.

[00:35:47] I mean, maybe if you spent enough time on the internet, you could figure it out. Now it's distilled in two minutes. Not to overstate the power of these tools. It's the ability to synthesize knowledge. hard earned wisdom is going to be so much better. So really now it's like, can you be a problem solver? Can you be a thinker?

[00:36:04] Can you figure out a variety of issues? So I think the advice you just share there for anyone, whether they're a young age or even younger ages, that's the future that's coming. That's really good advice, not only for 22 year olds, but 15 year olds and 50 year olds, in terms of the way the world is going to be coming very quickly.

[00:36:22] Casey Myers: My risk profile is much different today than it was when I was 22. But the more you can put yourself in smart, uncomfortable positions Out of your comfort zone, so to speak, a, you learn more about the ecosystem and the macro dynamics, but you also learn more about yourself and really what you're really, really good at.

[00:36:41] And uniquely wired to go do is very difficult to figure out your strengths if you're not pressure testing and putting yourself in a lot of different environments to deal with a lot of different people and a lot of different processes and challenges. I encourage my kids to really, I mean, don't say no to anything in your twenties.

[00:37:00] My gosh. You can get a little bit more picky in your thirties, but man, just go do as much as you possibly can. Be self aware and reflective of it, right? Let's think about what you're going through. But that's definitely what I would tell my 22 year old self.

[00:37:15] Sean Mooney: And there's longevity to the advice, right? Even as a kid, you want to have a variety of experiences as you're coming up, right?

[00:37:21] My brother, Tim is like the Zen one. I'm one of six kids. We're different and we fit in different kind of like perspectives and he's the one who's kind of like open to the world and he's just like, you got to be listening to the universe because if you dare to listen, it'll tell you where to go. Yeah. And so like that being open to things is great advice.

[00:37:39] Go on the journey. And you end up in, more often than not, being in the right places. But also, it's this idea of like, as you progress in your life and in your career, you will naturally go from being more of the doer to the teacher, and having those life experiences really help. And so I'm not familiar with that book, but I am 100 percent clicking on Amazon right after this.

[00:38:02] It'll be a good holiday read when I have a week off, and I've got like 30 books on the side of my table. Casey, this has been a really fun conversation. I've learned a ton of things that I wish I knew before, and so that's an incredibly gracious gift. So, thank you so much for spending time with me. Some of your scarce time with us and imparting some of the perspectives insights and wisdom that you have my pleasure.

[00:38:28] Thanks, Sean

[00:38:38] That's all we have for today Special thanks to Casey Myers for joining if you'd like to learn more about Casey and Edison partners, please see the episode notes for links Please continue to look for the Karma School of Business podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcast. 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.