The Dynamics of Fundraising in Private Equity with Christian Bullitt

[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 amazing conversation with Christian Bullitt, Managing Director in Raymond James Private Capital Advisory Practice.
Enjoy!
So, I'm very excited today to be here with Christian Bullitt. Christian, great to be here with you. Sean, thanks for having me excited to be here. So Christian and I have known each other for a long, long time through various iterations of both of our careers. And this will be a fun one because Christian's got a perspective that I think most people in the private equity industry really want to know.
And so we're going to be talking about the fundraising market and how what's the current now lens into how that world is evolving as PE firms kind of. And this ecosystem matures and evolves and then in a little bit about maybe where it's going. Does that sound like a good plan, Christian?

[00:01:15] Christian Bullitt: It's a great topic.
Everybody's asking about it.

[00:01:17] Sean Mooney: Anytime there's a bunch of PE firms together in a gaggle, this is almost always a conversation that is sheepishly asked between different people about how you doing, how you doing. And very humbling for many. Absolutely. But before we jump into that, Christian, and we've known each other for a long time, but let's introduce yourself to our broader audience here.
So can you take just a few minutes here and share just a little bit about yourself, kind of how you came up in this broader PE industry, how you got to where you are now, and that will be a good platform for the discussions that we're having.

[00:01:53] Christian Bullitt: Happy to. Although my career path Transcribed May not be able to be summed up in a couple of minutes.
I'll give you the abridged version. I always tell young guys when they reach out and they want to know how I got to the position I'm in. The first thing I say is mine is the least replicable path within the private equity environment. I started out in communications, actually in a PR and advertising firm.
I was never a finance guy. But I wanted to be in private equity. I figured that out pretty quickly. I started at a fund of funds and then I got my break. I got a job at a private equity fund in Philadelphia to build their origination function. And it was a great fit and it was very successful. And I grew their origination function and ran it for 10 years.
And then in 2017, I had the idea to move to banking. Which was something that I'd never done as a young guy, but I moved into the sponsor's role at Raymond James, which is where I am now. And I was in the sponsor's team for four years. Which is essentially the mirror image of what I was doing at my old private equity fund.
And then I had a chance to move to our private capital advisory group, which is a new team at Raymond James. That's where I am now. This is the third and last leg, hopefully, of my career. I didn't know you actually started off in

[00:03:28] Sean Mooney: communications. And you and a number of our kind of mutual friends We're kind of in some of the real OGs in the kind of the creation of the business development function within private equity as the industry matured.
And that's when we came to know each other. And then what's really interesting about your career is you've now seen kind of like that holy trinity of the ecosystem in terms of the private equity side itself, the investment banking side, and now the capital advisory side. So that gives you, I think, a really unique.
lends into this world. I think so. Maybe before we jump into some of the meat of the conversation here, one of the questions I'd love to ask people just to even drill down a little further is, we'd know you better if we knew this about you. So what would be one of those things?

[00:04:19] Christian Bullitt: Well, I thought long and hard about it'll make sense for those who know me, but my high school dream was to be an actor.
And so I did a lot of that stuff in high school and even a little bit in college. And so I spent a lot of time in front of people on stages and presenting basically. Wasn't going to go anywhere as a career, but it served me well in my professional life as I am often in front of a room full of people telling the story of what we do.
I think that's a great

[00:04:50] Sean Mooney: background. So my daughter is a theater kid and it's such great training in terms of one, you got to work hard. Two, you have to be prepared. Three, you have to be ready for anything that happens, and will happen. Something will go wrong. Four, you gotta land on your feet. And then five, it gives you this amazing poise.
All of one through five, I lacked as a kid. So

[00:05:16] Christian Bullitt: Well, you've gotta be able to improv, and you gotta be able to think on your feet, and not lose it. When you're off script. Now, were you doing musical theater and kind of more traditional drama? Yeah, I did a little bit of that. I did some acting. I tried some stuff on film.
I auditioned for a couple things on film and I every once in a while think about what it would have looked like had I gone West and Made an attempt, but I'm very happy where I am.

[00:05:42] Sean Mooney: Maybe that's the final chapter of your career. The Disney movie come back,

[00:05:47] Christian Bullitt: right? That would be something. No, I'm very happy in investment banking.

[00:05:51] Sean Mooney: The final kind of question on this is something that I'm really jealous of. kids who go through particularly some avenue of the musical portion of that avenue is usually they have at least kind of like decent level karaoke skills. And so I don't know if you do, but I have like, it's anytime I've ever been up there, it's the most daunting.
My wife

[00:06:15] Christian Bullitt: has superior karaoke skills than I do, but we've been on a karaoke stage together.

[00:06:22] Sean Mooney: You know how to at least get through it. In a plausible way. So whereas I don't even have that. So that's great to hear. Let's jump into Some of the core parts of what we're going to talk about today one of the things that I'm really curious to get your thoughts on kind of given this triangle of experience that you've had is Going to the current now where you are the capital advisory the fundraising experience The private equity industry, as we've talked a lot on this show, is pretty rapidly evolving and maturing.
And I think what a lot of people want to know is, what are some of the most important traits in a private equity firm that LPs are looking for? Just as private equity firms are assessing companies, how are LPs assessing private equity firms? What's their yardstick?

[00:07:11] Christian Bullitt: It's a great question. And it's been a Pretty dramatic evolution within private equity, just from when you and I started where there was, I'd say most of the industry were generalist private equity funds that didn't have much operational focus and were really smart guys doing deals and buying companies and trying to make their returns on the buy.
And really not adding a lot of value in that process. Now, obviously that's changed dramatically. If you look at what the market is now, where it's by and large verticalized for lack of a better word, where you have to focus on specific industries, firms that have been able to pick one industry and maximize their investments there.
They're shining examples of those out there. Other firms that have picked two or three are still successful at it, but they've really had to focus on not just their investment capabilities, but really value creation, the world of operational improvements that they can bring to bear for those companies.
So if you're in a pretty efficient market now, where. There's not really a proprietary deal anymore. There are sometimes some deals done outside of banking processes. But people still have to pay pretty healthy multiples to get good deals done. And so how do you make your return that you told LPs you're going to make?
And that's through operational improvement. Knowing the key metrics that are going to drive a software business or a health care business or a manufacturing business. So what LPs are looking for now is repeatable processes, both from sourcing and from operational improvements to drive outcomes. The word playbook gets thrown around.
There are some firms that truly have a, maybe it's digital now, but a real playbook in terms of what they do in the first hundred days and then ongoing after there. But most private equity funds, if they don't talk about their playbook, if they don't talk about how they improve their portfolio companies through operational focus, generally are at a disadvantage.
If only because they're in stark contrast to those who do.

[00:09:47] Sean Mooney: I think those are great. Observations and piece of advice. It certainly gels with the experience I had. You know, I started the first P firm in P operation. I worked on the late nineties where beta was good enough. The disconnect was there was more people looking for capital than capital existed.
And so we could kind of pick the best of the best. And you're really about assessing and picking the pick of the litter, if you will. And then more and more P firms came in all our friends from investment banking started becoming private equity investors and more firms more capital and suddenly you had more demand for companies than companies existed and purchase prices go up and if you don't do something else returns go down.
And so I started at a generalist P firm and then I moved to a specialist P firm because it's like. I've got to be able to see something that's in this book. We know we can do that. No one else can. And we know it when the book shows up. And to your point, there's a lot of different ways to do that. And then we're seeing a lot of different P firms, whether it's industry specialization, operating specialization, some sort of execution capability.
So everyone's kind of playing the hand differently, but the business of private equity is turning into a business much like a Danaher.

[00:10:59] Christian Bullitt: Absolutely. There are many private equity funds that are 50%. Deal execution guys and 50 percent operational guys and professionals. So it's a stark difference. If you look at the original LBO firms, they would buy a company and they'd borrow 90 percent of it and they just pay down debt.
You didn't have to grow the business, right? You could sell it five years later and make three X your money. If you didn't do anything, you just paid down debt. And so compared to now, it's an archaic model

[00:11:30] Sean Mooney: when I started and I was like, Oh my goodness. I wish I was 10 years older, like everybody's going to crush it in these early days.
And they did. They

[00:11:38] Christian Bullitt: did.

[00:11:38] Sean Mooney: But then again, if I were 10 years older, I probably wouldn't have even seen the nascency of the private equity opportunity. So if I'm honest with myself, but what you're talking about, the necessary kind of prereq noun, private equity is alpha. Beta is not good enough. And that's kind of what drove me to create BluWave was like, I need all these third parties.
We're almost like in PE, you're often like an architect and a general contractor, and then you need all these different resources. And I was like, I just can't go to the generalist service provider anymore because I need the specialist as well. And there's that same evolution that led me to do this thing.
And that's why hundreds of PE firms use us now in that regard. And so as you look into kind of the world as it exists today, and you were to start a brand new P firm, what would be some of the things you think about in terms of like differentiation to stand out?

[00:12:28] Christian Bullitt: Clearly picking one industry and sticking to it.
And it doesn't matter whether it's, again, software or healthcare or manufacturing, owning your niche and surrounding yourself with the best operators, the best entrepreneurs, and having that playbook and the ability. To know what's the right comp ratio for a salesperson for a software, right? That amount of minutia into driving an outcome for your company.
So I'd obviously pick one industry and build a team of both deal guys and operators.

[00:13:09] Sean Mooney: That's spot on the business of private equity is turning into a business. And just like you, you look at your portcos, kind of look at yourself and like, be better at fewer things and read the book, good to great three times.
And then think about your P from that way.

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[00:13:45] Sean Mooney: To turn the page here, Christian, one of the things, particularly in our world of private equity that we talked about at the beginning here, that's on the minds of virtually everyone is the fundraising market. And specifically when we say fundraising, it's the limited partners investments in private equity firms for their success of fundraisings and funds that occur every three to five years.
What's your kind of read on the current state of the private equity fundraising market?

[00:14:16] Christian Bullitt: What's challenging is as anybody who's out there or has been out there for the last two years knows it's a very challenging environment. A number of factors contributed to it. At first, it was a denominator effect when public markets were off.
Primarily right now, it's a liquidity problem. LPs just haven't had capital coming back to them the way that they had budgeted the last couple of years in order for them to make. The same commitments to their existing managers, let alone new managers. We talked to one LP. This is a great example. They had budgeted for 2023, a billion dollars in distributions coming back to them, and they got 400 million, which is a pretty big Delta.
And so if you're talking about keeping your asset allocation at a steady limit, you need to continue to deploy that capital. And you can't, when there's no. Money coming in. And the reason there's no money coming in is because there's no M and a not no, but it's a very low activity historically of M and a relative to the five years preceding it.
So it's a confluence of factors, but it's very, very challenging right now. I would say top performers, first quartile top decile performers are not having any problems and we'll finish above target and they can do it in under a year, which is. The historical pace of fundraising prior to our current time, everybody else, everyone who's second, third and fourth quartile, it's a slop.
We track the time from first close to final close from launch to final close. And all of the metrics are at all time highs. The bottom line one is it now takes 18 to 24 months for funds to get raised to completion.

[00:16:17] Sean Mooney: Wow. 18 to 24. That's a lot of meetings and a lot of time.

[00:16:21] Christian Bullitt: It's a lot. And what ends up happening is you're doing deals along the way.
So if you have a close at 50%, you have capital to start doing deals. So by the time you finish fundraising, you may be already 50 percent deployed or 55 percent deployed and you've got to turn around and start thinking about it again. So there's this cycle that is right now damaging to itself in terms of.
How long it takes in the need to do deals to attract investors. And then how you end up back in market very soon.

[00:16:56] Sean Mooney: Yeah. The other thing we've been seeing, and I'm just curious if you're seeing the same, is that it's really good firms. And there was also kind of a dissuasion away from kind of the lower and middle market in favor of the large caps, maybe a year ago, we've seen some other firms just say, you know, we're going to close a smaller fund, put it to work faster and then get back out when the time's better.

[00:17:14] Christian Bullitt: Flat is the new up for sure. Most targets are revised or not really communicated. And there's a lot of firms that would be happy with a flat or they're about fun. There's no rule book that says you need to grow 20, 30 percent every year. And there's a number of funds that they're in the midst of a.
Generational change in leadership. And there's questions around the capabilities of new teams where being flat is great, and maybe they take two or three years at flat and, and really demonstrate their abilities as a new team before they start increasing the size of their funds. That's perfect way to go.

[00:18:00] Sean Mooney: I'd love to maybe circle back a little bit on. The fundraising and the liquidity effect. What's driving the fact that the LPs are getting fewer dollars returned in this market?

[00:18:12] Christian Bullitt: So that's the M& A market. So that's one part of the flywheel is M& A market has dropped considerably from three years ago when things were at record highs, there's still a very large Delta between expectations on both sides of the table.
A lot of deals were done at. Frothy multiples in the last five years, pre 2022. And so their owners are not ready to move on where they think businesses should be priced and buyers aren't willing to stretch the way they used to, to pay these multiples. I talked to one of our bankers recently and said, there's no credit given for forward revenue.
It's just. What's your revenue now, what's your profitability now, what's your EBITDA now, that's where we are. Whereas four years ago, you were getting pro forma 2025 revenue fully adjusted. You were buying the business off of that. That's not happening anymore. So there's a very big slowdown on the M& A side.
And even if everybody said, okay, well, I'm going to pay a little bit more and I'm going to sell it for a little bit less. It still takes another nine months or a year for that capital to get back into LP's hands once you go through a process and HSR, and then it finally comes back to LPs, then they've got to make their current commitments before they start thinking about new commitments.
So we're not close to being back to the good old days.

[00:19:47] Sean Mooney: And that makes sense. And as you think about there may be some coming in at higher multiples, the has been, well, not in a. Maybe classic recession where every measure is down. But I think a lot of the economy globally has been, there's been headwinds.
And as you think about a private equity firm, the LPs perspective, and I think certainly pundits in the industry are like, why don't you just start selling? And as a collective, sure. It makes sense. Like all of private equity, you just start selling. But individually their behavior is pretty rational. Like we only get one chance to sell this asset and we only get one chance to get carried interest on that.
And so, yeah, we think everyone else should sell, but we're going to grow into this thing cause we only get one shot. And so, right.

[00:20:32] Christian Bullitt: It's everybody else who's going to break, not us. We're very disciplined. Something does have to give, if you look at the overhang, the number of. Companies owned by private equities.
It's only growing. And if you look at the overhang of capital to be deployed, it's only growing. And at some point that dynamic has to change.

[00:20:51] Sean Mooney: At some point. Yeah. The drumbeat from the LPs are, it has to be heard and people are going to have to sell suboptimally and that's what happens in a market correction and what used to happen every six to eight years.
But 15 year mega cycle. It's all built up and

[00:21:07] Christian Bullitt: it's not just that they have to sell subopinantly. They have to deploy capital. You talk to funds who are like, we're very disciplined and we haven't done a deal in a year. That's not really what they're paid to do. They're paid to put capital to work. And so those funds that sit out for a long period of times have their own problems later on.

[00:21:27] Sean Mooney: Well said as well. Their job is to buy and sell, buy and sell throughout cycles. And I guess the one. Bit of hope that we'll find and see how this plays out. And the second quarter of this year in 2024, we just published our quarterly insights deck on the P industry. And we saw a pretty market surge in due diligence activity by private equity firms, looking to buy new companies, which also on the flip side, it means there's also a lot of companies that are being sold.
Yeah, that's a great indicator. And when they call us, they're spending real money on real projects. So it's. Fingers crossed, and we'll see if there's still room for pencils down, but we're starting to see the green shoots coming up from the ground. This too shall pass. It always does. It always has all the cliches.
It's darkest before dawn. I think it's on the uprise. So when this opens up, deals start going. What's the leading indicator for you that you look at? Okay, the fundraising market should start coming back. Maybe not back to peak boom times, but to a more new normal. And which types of PE firms will start getting kind of brought back into that adjustment?

[00:22:36] Christian Bullitt: I think you're already seeing some adjustment in the U. S. market in terms of where they're deploying the capital that they do have available. You're seeing a pretty demonstrable shift in focus from middle market private equity, which you would define as over sort of a billion and a half to lower middle market.
There was something I read this morning and shared with our team on New York state. Thank you. Changing their asset allocation from their private equity portfolio away from middle market, making that around 15 percent to lower middle market being 55%. So you're seeing the funds that are getting raised very quickly and attracting the most attention from LPs are first time funds, spin outs, and lower middle market funds.
That's where LPs are going to think they're going to find out for middle market funds. They're probably the most challenged at the moment. Somebody in that two to 5 billion range, multi industry focus been around for 20 years. There's a lot of great, great firms out there, but it's the challenged part of the market for sure.
What we'll look for is in conversations with LPs is people saying that I'm going to commit new dollars for 2025 and I'm looking for five to six new managers. That's the indication we need to hear from them versus I don't know if I'm going to have anything in my budget for a new manager this year.
We're focused on our re ups and all of our re ups are getting cut back. That's what we've been hearing.

[00:24:15] Sean Mooney: It's an interesting observation and I think that's another measure as I kind of play it forward that if they're going back to the lower middle markets, it's, I think it's another sign of like going back kind of moving from more like safety and size to alpha again.
Because at least the last couple of years, we saw a lot of flight to safety from the LPs going to like a large cap and probably middle market as well, bigger ships, displaced water, better and rougher conditions. And now they're moving to the race boats more, where traditionally the data has been pretty clear that, The higher returns have been had in the lower middle market, at least historically.

[00:24:54] Christian Bullitt: To that point about flight to safety, that's still happening. The behemoths out there are raising capital at a continuous frantic pace and they're getting bigger. I, like I remember when a 10 billion fund was massive and they couldn't raise any more. And then it was a 15 billion fund. They couldn't raise any more and it was 20.
And now these firms are talking about raising 30 billion buyout funds. And KKR wants to have a trillion dollars under management in the next five years, and they have 30 different strategies. One of the really telling stats that we talk about is the fundraising amount, the total dollars raised in 2023 was not terribly far off from 2022.
It was a little bit down, but not the same, but it was by 40%. Percent fewer funds, which speaks to the power of the large funds to Hoover up capital. They have these massive IR teams, these massive fundraising teams, and there's no pocket of money in the world that they haven't overturned to get access.
And so to that earlier point, you're not going to get fired for investing in KKR. You're not going to get fired for investing in Apollo. And they've all got just so many different strategies. That's adding to the challenge for middle market, second, third quartile managers in their current fundraisers.

[00:26:26] Sean Mooney: That once again makes sense. They're hedging their bets a little bit. They're still going to the big ships, the big brands. And I do think large cap private equity, we talked about the business of private equity becoming of a business and the Dana herization of private equity. It seems like that's happened at the upper market.
And so it's natural that they flow there and that's trickling down. But then you're saying, okay, we're going to do safety. And then at the edge, we're going to make our bets on the alpha and the lower middle market. And it's the in between that so often gets in a jam. That's really insightful. And so given the world of fundraising, capital raising the way that it is, it just is what it is.
How is Raymond James kind of supporting it? Where are you all coming in with the resources to help them do whatever they are the possible is in this market?

[00:27:17] Christian Bullitt: Well, first of all, being on the Raymond James platform is a huge advantage in the last, even just two years, most middle market banks have bought or built a private capital advisory business.
All of our competitors now have fundraising and secondaries advisory capabilities. As a boutique, it's very hard right now. There's some successful boutiques out there for sure, but as payment terms get stressed and fundraising takes longer, it's harder to be a boutique. So first of all, so being on the Raymond James platform is a huge advantage for us and they're fully supportive of us and have helped our team grow from about 20 folks to almost 60 folks in the last two years.
Our team We believe is uniquely positioned, not just because of our breadth of capabilities that we can bring to a sponsor, particularly a lower middle market growing sponsor in terms of all of our M and a capabilities and all of our advisory products that we can bring to bear for them. Our team is built as a combination of a primary capital raising team and a secondaries advisory team.
We think those two skill sets. belong together. There are others out there that will have separate PNLs and separate teams for the primary team and the secondary team, and neither the two will talk to each other. We truly believe that a secondary is another fundraising process, and we can bring folks who might invest in your next fund in a primary capacity to your secondaries process.
We also believe that there are secondary strategies that can be brought to bear to a fundraise when they're doing their primary fundraise. So having that combination capabilities under one roof where we're talking to each other all the time, our teams are sitting next to each other and always in communication about what they're working on and how they may benefit each other.
We pitch as one team and it's a great advantage. I'd also say our team is populated with Many former people from the LP world. And so we approach underwriting of a GP with an LPs mind. And what do we know that they're going to look for? What do we know that they're going to ask? Where do we know that they're going to look for the skeletons?
And how do we anticipate what they're going to in an underwriting process? Those are really the two outstanding ones. If there's a third one, I'd say that our. Playbook for raising capital in the private wealth channel is something that's very differentiating. We have a playbook and are able to bring to bear the ability to raise capital from the global private wealth channel.
So wire houses, private banks, RIAs. And that's been very successful with both middle market and blue chip clients alike.

[00:30:20] Sean Mooney: And for our P kind of partner listeners, I really appreciate your approach there. One it's. You're bringing kind of an all weather strategy, and I like how you don't disconnect primary and secondary.
Slightly different tools for the same job that you can deploy throughout the continuum of fund to fund. So they're not different, and I like how you're kind of putting together because they're maybe just used at different times in different situations, but they're adjacent to each other for sure. And bringing in former LPs is really good because you've got the voice of the customer that's resident in your business.
And then lastly, We all know that high net worth down to like normal mere mortal high net worth. They've done well, but it's not just the billionaires are absolutely trying to get into private equity because of the alpha brings to their own portfolios. And so having access to that is really, I think, helpful in showing where the market's going.

[00:31:17] Christian Bullitt: There's really a proliferation of multifamily offices now as a result of the tremendous wealth creation over the last 20 years, but there's, there's A lot of multifamily offices that adhere to an institutional asset allocation model. And so it's not just 60 percent equities and 40 percent credit, it's 30 percent alternatives.
And 20 percent of that may be private equity. And so there's much more appetite for these funds in a portfolio that used to not have space for it.

[00:31:54] Sean Mooney: And I think that's right. It's only going to get. More so in the days ahead. So having access to that is a real advantage. 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 and say, Hey, I'm not private equity. Can I still use BluWave to get connected with resources? 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. 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.
As we kind of bring our conversation here towards kind of the final chapter here, one of the things that I think you and I, we both appreciate is successful people are usually liberal borrowers of other people's insights and perspectives that have been earned the hard way. So there's certainly I have, I'll say, like if my life were up to me alone, I would have been in a lot of trouble.
So I very generously borrow from others through reading and. Being a benefit of others recommending books to me. And then I try to Frankenstein myself with all of this. I'm curious, what's maybe one of the books that has made an impact on you and some of the takeaways.

[00:33:32] Christian Bullitt: The one I just finished and everyone in finance should read.
This is the fund. I think the author's name is Aaron Copeland and it's about Bridgewater associates in Connecticut, the largest hedge fund. It is a very eyeopening and. Harrowing tale of what their culture was like our leader, our group head, the woman who founded the business that Raymond James acquired, her name's Sunaina Sinha.
She worked there and she experienced that unique culture firsthand. And it's very much reflected in the culture that she has in her team now, which has gotten quite big. I'll say it's without a doubt, the best culture that I've ever worked in professionally. Lots of great things about my former colleagues, but this is by far the most team oriented and team success focused culture that I've ever been a part of.
And it was clearly evident that a lot of that is a reflection of the craziness of Bridgewater Associates, this very successful, but very chaotic culture at that firm. It's wild. I can't even begin to start describing the stories of what happened there. There's some debauchery, but it's more about the internal culture of feedback and watching everybody else.
I can't even begin to describe it, but it's wild. It's a great read. It's not super long. And I recommend a lot of managers of people should read it.

[00:35:10] Sean Mooney: It's really interesting. So before moving to Nashville, when we started BluWave, I lived in Darien, Connecticut. And so there's a lot of Bridgewater people.
in and around that area because Westport is just right up I 95. And there's so much intrigue. It's also a culture where they don't really talk about it.

[00:35:27] Christian Bullitt: They're not allowed.

[00:35:29] Sean Mooney: So I've always, I was like, what's it like there? And at one point I was even recruited. It's like, do you want to come work here? And I'm like, I don't know.
I haven't heard, but I don't know what it's about. So I didn't really go far. But A, they've been tremendously successful, but there's certainly a lot of intrigue about how it works. So I'm extremely curious to read this book to get kind of that inside lens because it's so much that's just been kind of confidential.

[00:35:55] Christian Bullitt: It's wild. That's all I can say.

[00:35:57] Sean Mooney: And what is it about your culture here that it sounds like it borrowed some of the tenets but not all at Raymond James and your group that you think really works in terms of that pivot? I love it.

[00:36:08] Christian Bullitt: We recognize that it's a team sport. It's not an individual sport. I can originate and find as many great GPs, but I'm not the one raising the bulk of the money, or I'm not the one executing the deal.
And we have this very large project management team. They're all very talented people. They're just ninjas about process and scheduling and moving a very large process along and keeping a lot of distribution and sales folks up to speed on what's happening. It's a fully team approach. That is the first thing you learn is that there's no room for people who want the spotlight solely on themselves.
We open every full team call on Monday morning with what we call values in action, where we basically give shout outs to people on the team. And so it can be a senior team member saying, I'd like to give out a shout out to Sean, he worked on this pitch in a very short timeframe, he crushed it. It was just a really great deck and I just wanted to thank him for all his hard work.
Or it can be from a junior person saying I want to give a shout out to somebody else for Covering me while I was away or for so and so and helping to Help get work done answer some questions and be grateful and helpful in getting my work done It's a habit that everybody gets into, and it really fosters an environment of collegiality that we all know we're sort of going towards the same goal.

[00:37:43] Sean Mooney: I love that. And in some ways it reminds me, as we talk about the business of private equity turning into a business, and we're starting to see that same kind of cultural metamorphosis in many of the PE firms we work with. And similarly, most of the PE firms. Came from the investment banking trees. And it sounds like the business of investment banking is also kind of turning into a business in certain spots as well, where you're doing the things that you would hope your former portcos would have done and treating your business group there, just like you want a company and being kind of culture and values first as part of an overarching strategy.
I love that. It is unique. I think still to this day. in this whole ecosystem, but also it's good to hear that your group is kind of like leading with this as well. But like all of the maniacs we both worked with in like the early 2000s, it's good to hear like some of those are now being turned into books and that's where they've stopped.

[00:38:40] Christian Bullitt: No, it's, I'm having a lot of fun and it's a great place to be.

[00:38:44] Sean Mooney: That's

[00:38:44] Christian Bullitt: great.

[00:38:44] Sean Mooney: Well, Christian, I've really appreciated you take the time to share your perspectives. I've learned all sorts of things I wish I knew before. And so I'm really, really grateful for you taking the time to share a bit of a behind the current lens in terms of what's happening in not only the broader P world, but also the really important fundraising market, which is the fuel of the industry that kind of supports us all.
So so much. Thank you so much for taking the time.

[00:39:12] Christian Bullitt: It's my pleasure. It's always good to see you. And this has been fun. Thanks for having me, Sean.

[00:39:26] Sean Mooney: That's all we have for today. Special thanks to Christian Bullitt for joining. If you'd like to learn more about Christian and Raymond James, 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.
If you like what you hear, please follow Five Star Rate, review and share. Take care. There's a free way to support the show and it really helps us when you do this, so thank you in advance. In the meantime, if you want to be connected with the world's best in class, private equity grade, professional service providers, independent consultants, interim executives that are deployed and trusted by the best business builders in the world, and you can do the same, give us a call or visit our website at BluWave.net. That's B L U W A V E, and we'll support your success. Onward.

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.