Episode 067
Private Equity Spotlight: Transforming Manufacturing with Jessica Ginsberg of LFM Capital
In this episode of the "Karma School of Business Podcast," host Sean Mooney and guest Jessica Ginsberg, Managing Director at LFM Capital, explore the nuances of private equity within the manufacturing sector. They discuss Jessica's unexpected entry into private equity, the inception of LFM Capital, and the firm's strategic approach to transforming manufacturing businesses.
Episode Highlights: 1:25 - Jessica's serendipitous journey into private equity. 3:36 - Origins and focus of LFM Capital. 6:00 - Jessica's impact on LFM's business development and growth. 7:46 - LFM's passionate investment philosophy in manufacturing. 10:29 - Insights into Jessica's leadership and workplace culture. 12:31 - LFM's criteria for evaluating investment opportunities. 17:34 - LFM's collaborative strategy for value creation. 23:51 - The pivotal role of leadership and culture in LFM's success.
For more information on LFM Capital, go to https://www.lfmcapital.com/ For more information on Jessica Ginsberg, go to https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalginsberg/ For more information on BluWave and this podcast, go to https://www.bluwave.net/podcasts/
Episode Highlights: 1:25 - Jessica's serendipitous journey into private equity. 3:36 - Origins and focus of LFM Capital. 6:00 - Jessica's impact on LFM's business development and growth. 7:46 - LFM's passionate investment philosophy in manufacturing. 10:29 - Insights into Jessica's leadership and workplace culture. 12:31 - LFM's criteria for evaluating investment opportunities. 17:34 - LFM's collaborative strategy for value creation. 23:51 - The pivotal role of leadership and culture in LFM's success.
For more information on LFM Capital, go to https://www.lfmcapital.com/ For more information on Jessica Ginsberg, go to https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalginsberg/ For more information on BluWave and this podcast, go to https://www.bluwave.net/podcasts/
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[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 Jessica Ginsberg, Managing Director with LFM Capital, enjoy.
I am very excited to be here with Jessica Ginsberg with LFM Capital. for having me. Jessica, thanks for joining us. Sure, Sean. Thanks for having me on. So Jessica is near and dear to our heart here in Nashville for a variety of reasons. One, she is of the Nashville variety of private equity, which is a growing senior.
So that's fairly good. And she's also a Hoya, which is also another great thing that's near and dear to my heart. So Jessica, this is great. Absolutely. Also kids at the same school, we have all sorts of maybe some other little minor little connections here. So we'll keep you out of these kind of deep dive stories.
And maybe what we'll do is take us back a little bit into the Wayback Machine and talk a little bit more about the story of you. So I love it if you can just tell us a little bit about how you came up and how you got into this industry of private equity.
[00:01:25] Jessica Ginsberg: Sure. So the answer is that I wound up in this industry completely by accident, Sean.
My undergrad degree from Georgetown, like you mentioned, was in Accounting and Finance. And I saw my peers basically going down two paths, Big Four Accounting or Investment Banking. I did an internship in Big Four Accounting, and I knew that wasn't the direction I wanted to go. So, Investment Banking it was.
Although, I had no idea what that meant. I literally didn't know what Investment Banking was. So as luck would have it, I got placed into a leveraged finance group, and so most of what I was working on was debt financings for private equity deals. So it didn't take me long to realize that being on the buy side of private equity was more fun and exciting than being on the debt.
Once I made it over to the private equity side, the two parts of the business that were most immediately attractive for me. One, we were constantly learning about new industries, new businesses, things that you hadn't even thought about before. And then two, that private equity is not just a transactional business.
It is truly about building long term partnerships to really make an impact on the companies that we invest in.
[00:02:42] Sean Mooney: I love that background and it's one of the constant themes on this podcast. Everyone thinks it's just a linear path. People come from all parts of the country, all parts of the world, from every different angle to get into the industry.
And one of the things that I think really resonates with me is that you're talking about like getting into investment banking or P& I and really probably not even knowing what it was and I had the same thing as a, you know, as a young Hoya. My roommates were all from Northern New Jersey and I grew up in Texas.
So that junior year, it was a different time. I'll date myself where we were planning on what we're gonna do after college. You know, by the time we were sophomores in high school, like we would think about it our junior year and I said, well, what are you guys going to do? And they say, oh, we're going to go into investment banking.
I go, what's that? Okay. Are they serious about a hundred hours a week? And they're like, yes. So like, no way. The way we went.
[00:03:29] Jessica Ginsberg: That's right. That's right.
[00:03:30] Sean Mooney: I love the background from leverage finance. How did you end up getting into kind of PE and making that jump?
[00:03:36] Jessica Ginsberg: I picked up the phone and uh, you know, it just so happened that a firm kind of down the street, I was in Charlotte working at bank of America, a firm down the street was hiring on the private equity side at the time it was Wachovia capital partners.
It's now Pamlico. So they ultimately spun out of what was Wachovia now Wells. They were looking for an associate to come in and build models and do diligence on deals and meet with management teams. Fantastic education for me. They were more of a generalist firm. So doing deals across, you know, a broad range of industries, just an awesome training ground.
[00:04:10] Sean Mooney: And then there's been this since then, and Pamlico is a great firm, so we appreciate that, and certainly I remember that time when all the PE firms were spinning out. I was with a PE firm that did a similar kind of spin out.
[00:04:20] Jessica Ginsberg: Yep.
[00:04:21] Sean Mooney: And since then, there's been this great migration of really great, capable people like yourself who are going from some of the big kind of capital centers like Charlotte to places like Nashville.
Sure. How did you end up in Nashville?
[00:04:33] Jessica Ginsberg: I am a really good wife. Uh, that, that is the short answer. No, you know, my husband went to business school, came out of school, and a couple years later had an opportunity to pop up here in Nashville. I thought my career was over as I knew it. We moved right around Halloween, had two little kids at the time, now have three medium sized kids.
And, um, you know, decided, okay, I'll take a couple months and kind of once the calendar flips in January, I'll start looking for a job, went out, started networking, met with everyone I could think of to meet with, and about a month later, like I was done. Nashville was very, very small at the time. It's grown a ton and it's just become such a dynamic market.
But, you know, ultimately right time, right place connected with the team at LFM. It was a brand new firm. Essentially, we launched in the fall of 2014, raised our first fund. The team kind of went heads down on a deal and realized that the pipeline gets really dry when that happens. And they were looking for somebody to lead business development.
And for me, having come from sort of the deal execution side of things and knowing how that world works, I was actually really excited to kind of take a step back, not be on the front row of the roller coaster, but sort of somewhere in the middle where I can still play along my head's in the game. I'm watching and involved in these really exciting deals, but I can sort of do it on my own time and really manage the relationship side, the people side.
I get to tell an incredible story about an incredible firm every day. And it's awesome.
[00:06:00] Sean Mooney: That's great. And I love the perspective that you're able to bring from the business development side with the deal side know how, because it informs everything.
[00:06:08] Jessica Ginsberg: It absolutely does. I think it makes me more credible as sort of a forward facing person, because look, I've walked in the shoes of the guys that are in the spreadsheets and on the shop floor and doing what we're doing to make a difference at these companies.
[00:06:21] Sean Mooney: So two things on LFM. One, I'll say having been to your offices, you have some of the coolest offices you're going to see at a private equity firm. And so for our listeners, if you're coming to meet LFM and Jessica, you got to see their office.
[00:06:35] Jessica Ginsberg: Um, yes, absolutely. Our office is in an old firehouse. Actually, the original firehouse first erected in Nashville in the 1800s.
At one point it actually burned down, which is kind of funny, but we bought the building, gutted the space, couldn't change the outside, didn't want to change the outside, but it's a historical building and I've turned it into our home. I think it feels very different from any other private equity firm anyone has ever walked into.
There is nothing that feels corporate about it at all. We love that because that's who we are. We also have a handful of guys that drive a really, really big trucks and a downtown parking garage just wasn't going to work.
[00:07:13] Sean Mooney: So they could have their cake and eat it to be in a really cool spot.
[00:07:16] Jessica Ginsberg: That's exactly right.
And we are actually building a second building adjacent to our firehouse. It'll connect with the breezeway. But as we move from fund three, which is what we're currently investing out of to eventually fund core, we need more space.
[00:07:30] Sean Mooney: That's a good problem to have. And then the second question I have on LFM.
So I've always known you all's LFM, which is a very well known, highly regarded private equity firm, not only in Nashville, but across the country. And what I've never known is, what does LFM stand for?
[00:07:46] Jessica Ginsberg: Yeah, that's a good one. So LFM stands for Leaders for Manufacturing. LFM used to be the name of a grad school program at MIT.
The program has since changed names. It's now called LGO, which stands for Leaders for Global Operations. And Steve Cook, who founded the firm, went to that program after spending eight years as a pilot in the Navy. Went back to grad school to sort of figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up. This is a program that really prides itself on breeding the next generation of manufacturing leaders.
It was founded at a time when so much manufacturing was going offshore and young bright minds were going to be investment bankers or attorneys or consultants and there just weren't a lot of young people that were really excited to go work in a manufacturing facility. And so big U. S. manufacturing companies like GM, Boeing, Caterpillar, et cetera, partnered with MIT to launch this program.
So Steve went through that program. He came out with just a tremendous passion for U. S. manufacturing. And just really the fundamental belief that this country's economy rides on the backs of these small manufacturing companies. So Steve went on to have a very successful operating career. eventually explored private equity and then broke off of another firm to start LFM.
His first call was to Dan Shockley, another alumni of that MIT program. And then the next call was to Chris Lynn, who also went to that MIT program. So it is very much in our DNA. I'm stuck with my Georgetown degree. I can't claim MIT, but it's really fundamental to who we are. We are still very close with that program today.
One of our partners has sat on the board for years and years. We very actively take interns from that program and put them into our portfolio companies, as well as recruit people out of the program, both immediately and much later in their careers. So it's just been an amazing source of talent for us.
[00:09:47] Sean Mooney: See, that is the rest of the story I didn't know, and I love that story. It's a, what a great entrepreneurial story of people kind of going through this journey and then figuring out serendipitously this kind of path that led to creating a hugely regarded private equity firm. Well,
[00:10:00] Jessica Ginsberg: it is, and it's funny because Steve will tell people he had no idea what private equity was at that time.
He had never heard the words private and equity next to each other in a sentence. And here we are.
[00:10:12] Sean Mooney: So we've covered some good background on you, but one of the other questions I'd love to touch base on before we move into kind of the meat and potatoes here of our conversation is maybe some of the lesser known factoids about yourself.
So what are one of the things that we would know you better if we knew this about you?
[00:10:29] Jessica Ginsberg: Yeah, so good question. So the easy button answer would be to tell you about my kids, but there's no fun in that. So, you know, I think it would be that I am a total jokester. I love making people laugh. I am known in the office as the queen of one liners.
One of the things I get to do is every Monday morning I present new deals to our team and I'll be darned if I don't slip in a pun or a joke at least once every single week. So for example, a couple of years back, we bought a company called APQS. APQS makes automated quilting machines. And I was pounding the table about the team stitching together an investment thesis, right?
Or we once looked at a deal. It was a company that manufactured almond harvesting equipment. And I sat down and I was like, guys, this deal's nuts. , you know, I would not be me if I wasn't trying to crack a joke.
[00:11:28] Sean Mooney: I love it. So you've got the mom or dad jokes kind of on on, ready to go all the time.
[00:11:33] Jessica Ginsberg: Ready?
[00:11:33] Sean Mooney: There's like a drum, you know, ?
[00:11:35] Jessica Ginsberg: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
[00:11:36] Sean Mooney: I wish I had those skills. , I'll Google them and just torture my children with things that I'll read on a daily basis. Oh, I
[00:11:42] Jessica Ginsberg: do. I do that too. I can't
[00:11:43] Sean Mooney: do them organically. I do that too. Yeah, that's that story. But it shows also a lot about the culture of the firm where you can, you can have those moments versus like just the facts.
For sure. So maybe turning the page here, Jessica, when I was in PE, one of the things that I developed, because you're just looking at too many companies is this like yardstick. And I'd say, what are some of the common elements of value that I would look at? To understand if a company is good or probably more importantly could or will be good in order to kind of make the world a smaller place and then by extension, these are probably also things that every business leader should think about it because it's important to you and your firm.
They're probably pretty important to creating value. So I'm curious, what are some of the things maybe that you think about when looking at a business and saying, this is your yardstick.
[00:12:31] Jessica Ginsberg: So at a very high level, we're looking for manufacturing companies of a certain size. With a certain margin profile, digging deeper than that, the couple of things that we're really focused on.
Number one, what is the company's moat? You know, what is this company doing better or differently than everybody else? We can see it often in their margin profile, but yet it can look really different from company to company. Sometimes it's a unique distribution strategy. Sometimes it's patented products.
Sometimes, you know, it's just a better mousetrap. The second thing is growth. We like to see companies that have multiple growth levers. It can't just be a roll up strategy. We have to see an opportunity to grow footprint, broaden the channel, add new products, and on and on and on. The more levers that we can identify, the more excited we are.
And then to be able to sit down with management and really prioritize. Where are we going? How fast, how hard are we pushing? Let's get aligned and then let's do it finally. And this is really the most important one. And also, you know, sometimes the hardest one to figure out. Why are we the right buyer?
What can we do specifically to unlock that company's potential? Our money is as green as the next guy's right. But it really comes down to who we know, what we know, and where we've been. Industry experience, operating experience, our network. What can we bring to the table?
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[00:14:21] Sean Mooney: I love your perspectives there, Jessica. And one maybe area I'd love to delve a little deeper on is this concept of a moat.
People talk about that a lot, like, Oh, what are your competitive barriers to entry, et cetera. But that can mean a lot of things. So as you think from a manufacturing context, like what do you think that creates moats?
[00:14:39] Jessica Ginsberg: Yeah. I mean, it can be a lot of different things to be honest. What's interesting is all we do is manufacturing, right?
So the kind of quick assumption is that moat better be something that they're doing, you know, on the floor, it's a manufacturing process. That's not always the case. Sometimes it's how you're selling. We own a business called ShopSaber outside of Minneapolis. They make CNC router tables and plasma tables.
And their sales strategy had always been, and I would say even like before social media was cool, you know, they had this cult following on YouTube and they would make these videos and they had this sort of personality, Router Bob was his name, and he would make these videos that would show people how cool the products were.
And so, yes, the products are incredible and they make the products in the most amazing way. And so, But we were so impressed by that strategy and how they had just gained this cult like following over the years that that was a huge attraction to us about that business and just looking at it and saying, you know, how can we grow this and build on this?
So I guess that's one example, but it can look a whole lot of different ways.
[00:15:39] Sean Mooney: Yeah. No, I think that very often it's the little things that people don't notice. We all know there's this concept of flywheels in business and everyone thinks it's like from the outside it's, Oh, it's one thing. Right. But it's a bunch of little things that in sequence create these and creating a cult following is in some ways the biggest identifier of a passionate user base and good luck displacing those people.
[00:16:00] Jessica Ginsberg: Yep. Yep. Nope. that's exactly right.
[00:16:02] Sean Mooney: As long as you don't change the color or, you know, the product or something like that. And the other thing I really loved what you said was this whole concept of, are you the right buyer? Because so much of the art of PE today is transformation. It's not financial leveraging.
It's not kind of buy low, sell high. It's how do you fundamentally create value in the business? Right.
[00:16:22] Jessica Ginsberg: And for us. So much of that is fit. So much of that is, can I look the seller in the eye and trust that this person's going to do what they say they're going to do? We're going to do what we say they're going to do.
And we've walked away from deals on that basis. Like we just don't trust these people. Great business. Don't trust these people. So it is huge for us.
[00:16:43] Sean Mooney: I think that's a great segue to the next topic. I love your thoughts on is the art of private equity right now. It used to be kind of a one instrument band, if you will, and now it's a symphony of motion where people are working together in a credible, collaborative way towards a common goal.
And so back in 1999, when I was in private equity, it was deal teams. And a whiteboard that we could wax poetic on it. But today it's evolved to a multifaceted approach where multiple functional areas, not only within the portfolio company, but within the PE firm itself are working in harmonious, synchronous motion with each other.
And so I'm curious, as you think about building these relationships and building value and transforming these companies, How do you all manage the interplay between your business development professionals, your deal team, your ops teams, your senior advisors, your portfolio executives?
[00:17:34] Jessica Ginsberg: I love this question because I think we take a fairly different approach in just how integrated we are from the very beginning.
Really starting with our operating partners who are very much ingrained in the LFM team. For the most part, they sit right here in Nashville. They are in our office every single day. I mentioned part of my job is that Monday morning meeting, bringing new deals to the table. Every single team member weighs in on those deals, from operating partners to interns.
We welcome everyone's view. We think it's super important, diverse viewpoints. I think some firms kind of bring in operating partners for management meetings, and then once the deal's closed, you know, sort of swoop in, swoop out. Our ops team is integral to our decision to pick up a deal from day one.
They're integral in the diligence process and they're integral in ultimately building and executing on a strategy. Everyone has buy in, everyone is aligned. We just think that if everyone has buy in along every single stage, we're all running toward a common goal. We also think having our operating partners involved early really helps in building trust with management teams.
If our first interaction with a team includes an operating partner who has in many cases walked in the same shoes as the founder owner of the business, it really builds a strong foundation for a relationship. There's trust, there's shared experiences, there's mutual respect. And then that same operating partner becomes chairman of the board and leads the deal through our whole period.
That is one sort of philosophy that we are very big on. And then thinking about portfolio company management teams. We really view our operating partners as sort of mentors and coaches for our CEOs. We're not running our companies day to day. We are empowering our management teams too. So all of our operating partners have been CEOs with P& L responsibility.
So they are incredible at offering advice. They're incredible at just being a sounding board. It's a little cliche, but it's lonely at the top. And CEOs don't have. A peer set typically. And so our operating partners help with that. We use what we call a pull strategy. We make sure our management teams know who we know, what we know, and where we've been.
And then we say, call us when we can be helpful. We're not going to be in your hair. We're not going to bother you. Now, if there's a problem, yeah, we're going to step in and help you figure it out. But we would rather you call us and we'll be there.
[00:20:00] Sean Mooney: Yeah, I think that's a really good tangible demonstration of why BluWave named LFM is one of the top private equity innovators.
This whole idea that you're running your firm increasingly and a lot like a company, your diligence really is rooted in value creation and you're bringing in your ops teams at the very beginning because. The art of where PE is going and certainly is already today where you guys have already been doing this is Knowing what this company can be before you even do something
[00:20:30] Jessica Ginsberg: Well, I think that's exactly right and when we hear sort of horror stories of private equity firm buys a business closes the deal brings in an operating partner to fix it or maximize it and the operating partner says I didn't want to do this deal to begin with Our philosophy is much more like we all make the bed, we all sleep in the bed.
And we think a lot of times our success is really, you know, knowing when to get out of the way.
[00:20:56] Sean Mooney: It's such a good observation and acting on that observation is part of your business. I remember in the early days, I would put together these glorious decks and these wonderful models. And then we would close the deal and then we'd bring in our operating partner.
You go, here's what you're going to do. And it's like, horror. They're like, what?
[00:21:16] Jessica Ginsberg: I'm doing what?
[00:21:16] Sean Mooney: You know, the first phase of my career, I was doing more industrial private equity. And, um, I can tell you, I got a couple of people stuck in China for a long time. Twice.
[00:21:25] Jessica Ginsberg: So sorry. Right. And, and I mean, so for me, one of my favorite things that I will see around the office regularly is, you know, we hire associates, right.
Who are people who have spent a couple of years in investment banking, and then they're making the jump over to private equity. So their background is really finance. It's modeling, things like that. What I love to see is when I walk into an office and I see an associate and an operating partner sitting side by side, looking at the model and the operating partner is really informing what numbers are going in and why.
And then our associates are learning to view the deal, not just from their financial engineering investment banking lens, but also through the ops partner. And so we're really helping to grow and develop this sort of younger talent pool that hopefully Sticks around at LFM for the long haul.
[00:22:13] Sean Mooney: I really like that as well because I think a lot of that you think about private equity is still very much an apprenticeship model.
They talk about 10, 000 hours. It's a 30, 000 hour apprenticeship to kind of become a fully formed, you know, person. So complex and I think even the firms are doing kind of what you're doing. The apprenticeship probably starts more at the VP level. And so to build that into your associates experience where they're getting that multifaceted kind of tutorship early It's got to be a really special opportunity.
[00:22:40] Jessica Ginsberg: Absolutely, and another thing that we do is, you know, we give opportunities to anyone in the firm who wants it to participate in lean implementation or Kaizen events at our facilities just to say, Hey, we're all in manufacturing now, you know, so we should all spend time on the floor and figure out how the sausage is really made.
[00:22:59] Sean Mooney: There'll be legions of now very successful private equity professionals. When I was tutoring them in their early days of their career. So here's how you really do this. The fifth year of your model, that's where you juice it. And then you pull in working capital and you're going to create a cash flow.
And that equals getting this through investment committee. So the way you're doing is much better.
[00:23:19] Jessica Ginsberg: We hope so.
[00:23:21] Sean Mooney: So for our listeners, particularly those who are emerging in their career, do as Jessica says, not as I did. That would be my advice to anyone trying to get a successful career in the new age of private equity.
One of the things I'm really interested in learning your thoughts on, Jessica, is this whole idea of this kind of fluid world we're in. And it's always fluid. It's never easy. It's always moving in different directions. I want to learn a little bit about like maybe some of the things that you all are thematically engaging with right now in terms of setting up your partners for success.
[00:23:51] Jessica Ginsberg: Sure. So this is another one where I could go in a lot of different directions. We could talk about implementing ERP systems and collecting more real time data from our companies. We could talk about AI for days. We could talk about automation and our factories, but the truth is for us, it's people. We are all about the people.
We are all about leadership. You can have the best ERP system. You can have the most automated facility, but if you don't have the right person at the top, and if you don't have a highly, highly engaged team with a strong culture from the tippy top to the very, very bottom, it doesn't matter. So we're focused on building leaders.
We're focused on developing people, maximizing employee satisfaction. If the team is engaged, motivated, excited, they will run through walls. And that's what we've learned. And so our top priority is figuring out what is the formula to build those types of teams. An example of that, we talked a lot about the MIT program.
We have used that as sort of a foundation for a CEO training program where we will hire recent alums from top schools, MIT and others, and we will hire those people to step into operating roles across our portfolio. We are very careful and intentional about how we match the individual with the company and the situation.
What does that individual need from a development perspective? What can that person learn and how can they learn it the fastest? And then we will offer these individuals multiple opportunities across the portfolio over years to really prepare them to be LFM portfolio company CEOs. Not all CEOs are built the same.
Not all CEO roles are the same. So we're really focused on finding the right ones, the ones that want to work really, really hard, the ones that want to get their fingernails dirty. And who are as passionate as we are about building strong teams and culture. You know, everyone in private equity talks about deal size from a EBITDA perspective.
3 to 10, 3 to 15, whatever it is. We do that, but what we really mean is 250 employees or less. Because for us, that's kind of the max number where if you've got more than 250 people, CEO's not going to know everyone's name. CEO's not going to know everyone's wife's name, for sure. That's what we're It's hard to build those really cohesive, energized organizations when there's just more people than you can count.
[00:26:26] Sean Mooney: That's another fantastic perspective. And as I kind of reflect on the day to day here at BluWave, and it's fascinating, like case study every day, because we have hundreds of the best business builders in the world. If you merely think of the private equity investors like LFM, and we get to see what you are doing as part of us equipping the tools to execute on these great visions.
And people will say really often think it through like the lens of a 1980s movie that private equity is about taking out costs. And what I see here is almost one in two projects today revolve around people. And it's we need more, we need specialized, we need to train them, we need to build culture, we need to understand the voice of the customer.
The voice of the employee and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger every single year.
[00:27:13] Jessica Ginsberg: It's true. And you know, you talked about sort of private equity firms mimicking real companies, right? With different teams and we have our business development team and our ops team. We actually recently made a hire to our ops team of a chief HR officer.
What you're seeing a lot of firms do, it is a very different functional role from firm to firm. In our case, this is a person who we've hired whose 100% focus is. Leadership development across the portfolio, employee satisfaction across the portfolio. How can we do better to create better work environments so that everyone from the hourly factory workers to the management team is as engaged as possible, wants to come to work with a smile on their face.
And it's been less than a year, but already hugely impactful.
[00:27:58] Sean Mooney: I think that's one of the best trends in private equity is bringing in human capital, and of course we have to human capital, but it's such a important role that is gaining traction that you all are already taking action on, and I'm sure the results are proving themselves out front and center.
Yeah, so far so good. So, Jessica, as we round out our conversation here, what I really want to know is if you could go back to younger 22 year old Jessica. She's sitting You don't
[00:28:24] Jessica Ginsberg: think I'm, you don't think I'm 22?
[00:28:24] Sean Mooney: Do I not look 22? I thought it was 29 ish maybe? You're sitting at your barstool in the tombs.
You see you're trying to go for those at the 98 day club, and I know your first piece of advice is don't do that club. What would be the second piece of advice if you'd say, here's something I wish my younger self knew that you wish you knew then?
[00:28:45] Jessica Ginsberg: Great one. I actually was just interviewing a much younger person and she asked me the same question, so I'm prepared.
It would be to not take myself so seriously. Be patient. Explore more. I think as a much younger person, I thought that life and careers, especially everything had to be linear. You use that word earlier. Everything had to be up into the right. My best advice would be like, learn as much as you can stay as open minded as you can be opportunistic and always trust your gut.
I just think it's super important, and that's what you have to fall back on. I also have come to realize, I think it takes us until we're like, 35, to really know who we are, and what we're about. So as long as you get there by 35 ish, everything's going to be okay.
[00:29:36] Sean Mooney: I'm 35 and I still don't know who I am.
Yeah, right, right. I'm a little bit older. No, but I think that's phenomenal advice. And I think for probably a lot of the listeners on this podcast who are high achievers, who are goal oriented and particularly everyone who's gone through that life's journey and is on it right now, right? You never get anywhere.
You're just constantly going towards some destination you can't see. And it's so easy to get caught in like just collecting badges and medals and ribbons. And I was certainly that kid growing up. And you look back and you're like, I wish that guy chilled out a little bit.
[00:30:08] Jessica Ginsberg: Well, right. And I think, you know, every so often you've got to step out of the box and you've got to take a risk.
They don't always pay off, but you always learn something about yourself, about the world. It's worth it every time. I
[00:30:22] Sean Mooney: think that is great advice. I'm writing it down and I will share that with my kids tonight. And I don't think they'll listen, but it's good advice. There's something that I wish I knew before as well.
So Jessica, this has been an amazing conversation. I've really enjoyed it. I've learned all sorts of things I wish I knew an hour ago that I haven't known and I'm lucky and fortunate to know it now. So thank you so much. Of course. Thank you for having me on.
[00:30:47] Jessica Ginsberg: And thank you for enriching our Nashville private equity, uh, scene.
[00:30:51] Sean Mooney: Absolutely. We're growing in numbers here. It's been fun to watch it all grow. And so, and likewise, thank you for making Nashville a better place as well.
That's all we have for today. Special thanks to Jessica for joining. If you'd like to learn more about Jessica Ginsburg and LFM Capital, 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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And we'll support your success. Onward.
I am very excited to be here with Jessica Ginsberg with LFM Capital. for having me. Jessica, thanks for joining us. Sure, Sean. Thanks for having me on. So Jessica is near and dear to our heart here in Nashville for a variety of reasons. One, she is of the Nashville variety of private equity, which is a growing senior.
So that's fairly good. And she's also a Hoya, which is also another great thing that's near and dear to my heart. So Jessica, this is great. Absolutely. Also kids at the same school, we have all sorts of maybe some other little minor little connections here. So we'll keep you out of these kind of deep dive stories.
And maybe what we'll do is take us back a little bit into the Wayback Machine and talk a little bit more about the story of you. So I love it if you can just tell us a little bit about how you came up and how you got into this industry of private equity.
[00:01:25] Jessica Ginsberg: Sure. So the answer is that I wound up in this industry completely by accident, Sean.
My undergrad degree from Georgetown, like you mentioned, was in Accounting and Finance. And I saw my peers basically going down two paths, Big Four Accounting or Investment Banking. I did an internship in Big Four Accounting, and I knew that wasn't the direction I wanted to go. So, Investment Banking it was.
Although, I had no idea what that meant. I literally didn't know what Investment Banking was. So as luck would have it, I got placed into a leveraged finance group, and so most of what I was working on was debt financings for private equity deals. So it didn't take me long to realize that being on the buy side of private equity was more fun and exciting than being on the debt.
Once I made it over to the private equity side, the two parts of the business that were most immediately attractive for me. One, we were constantly learning about new industries, new businesses, things that you hadn't even thought about before. And then two, that private equity is not just a transactional business.
It is truly about building long term partnerships to really make an impact on the companies that we invest in.
[00:02:42] Sean Mooney: I love that background and it's one of the constant themes on this podcast. Everyone thinks it's just a linear path. People come from all parts of the country, all parts of the world, from every different angle to get into the industry.
And one of the things that I think really resonates with me is that you're talking about like getting into investment banking or P& I and really probably not even knowing what it was and I had the same thing as a, you know, as a young Hoya. My roommates were all from Northern New Jersey and I grew up in Texas.
So that junior year, it was a different time. I'll date myself where we were planning on what we're gonna do after college. You know, by the time we were sophomores in high school, like we would think about it our junior year and I said, well, what are you guys going to do? And they say, oh, we're going to go into investment banking.
I go, what's that? Okay. Are they serious about a hundred hours a week? And they're like, yes. So like, no way. The way we went.
[00:03:29] Jessica Ginsberg: That's right. That's right.
[00:03:30] Sean Mooney: I love the background from leverage finance. How did you end up getting into kind of PE and making that jump?
[00:03:36] Jessica Ginsberg: I picked up the phone and uh, you know, it just so happened that a firm kind of down the street, I was in Charlotte working at bank of America, a firm down the street was hiring on the private equity side at the time it was Wachovia capital partners.
It's now Pamlico. So they ultimately spun out of what was Wachovia now Wells. They were looking for an associate to come in and build models and do diligence on deals and meet with management teams. Fantastic education for me. They were more of a generalist firm. So doing deals across, you know, a broad range of industries, just an awesome training ground.
[00:04:10] Sean Mooney: And then there's been this since then, and Pamlico is a great firm, so we appreciate that, and certainly I remember that time when all the PE firms were spinning out. I was with a PE firm that did a similar kind of spin out.
[00:04:20] Jessica Ginsberg: Yep.
[00:04:21] Sean Mooney: And since then, there's been this great migration of really great, capable people like yourself who are going from some of the big kind of capital centers like Charlotte to places like Nashville.
Sure. How did you end up in Nashville?
[00:04:33] Jessica Ginsberg: I am a really good wife. Uh, that, that is the short answer. No, you know, my husband went to business school, came out of school, and a couple years later had an opportunity to pop up here in Nashville. I thought my career was over as I knew it. We moved right around Halloween, had two little kids at the time, now have three medium sized kids.
And, um, you know, decided, okay, I'll take a couple months and kind of once the calendar flips in January, I'll start looking for a job, went out, started networking, met with everyone I could think of to meet with, and about a month later, like I was done. Nashville was very, very small at the time. It's grown a ton and it's just become such a dynamic market.
But, you know, ultimately right time, right place connected with the team at LFM. It was a brand new firm. Essentially, we launched in the fall of 2014, raised our first fund. The team kind of went heads down on a deal and realized that the pipeline gets really dry when that happens. And they were looking for somebody to lead business development.
And for me, having come from sort of the deal execution side of things and knowing how that world works, I was actually really excited to kind of take a step back, not be on the front row of the roller coaster, but sort of somewhere in the middle where I can still play along my head's in the game. I'm watching and involved in these really exciting deals, but I can sort of do it on my own time and really manage the relationship side, the people side.
I get to tell an incredible story about an incredible firm every day. And it's awesome.
[00:06:00] Sean Mooney: That's great. And I love the perspective that you're able to bring from the business development side with the deal side know how, because it informs everything.
[00:06:08] Jessica Ginsberg: It absolutely does. I think it makes me more credible as sort of a forward facing person, because look, I've walked in the shoes of the guys that are in the spreadsheets and on the shop floor and doing what we're doing to make a difference at these companies.
[00:06:21] Sean Mooney: So two things on LFM. One, I'll say having been to your offices, you have some of the coolest offices you're going to see at a private equity firm. And so for our listeners, if you're coming to meet LFM and Jessica, you got to see their office.
[00:06:35] Jessica Ginsberg: Um, yes, absolutely. Our office is in an old firehouse. Actually, the original firehouse first erected in Nashville in the 1800s.
At one point it actually burned down, which is kind of funny, but we bought the building, gutted the space, couldn't change the outside, didn't want to change the outside, but it's a historical building and I've turned it into our home. I think it feels very different from any other private equity firm anyone has ever walked into.
There is nothing that feels corporate about it at all. We love that because that's who we are. We also have a handful of guys that drive a really, really big trucks and a downtown parking garage just wasn't going to work.
[00:07:13] Sean Mooney: So they could have their cake and eat it to be in a really cool spot.
[00:07:16] Jessica Ginsberg: That's exactly right.
And we are actually building a second building adjacent to our firehouse. It'll connect with the breezeway. But as we move from fund three, which is what we're currently investing out of to eventually fund core, we need more space.
[00:07:30] Sean Mooney: That's a good problem to have. And then the second question I have on LFM.
So I've always known you all's LFM, which is a very well known, highly regarded private equity firm, not only in Nashville, but across the country. And what I've never known is, what does LFM stand for?
[00:07:46] Jessica Ginsberg: Yeah, that's a good one. So LFM stands for Leaders for Manufacturing. LFM used to be the name of a grad school program at MIT.
The program has since changed names. It's now called LGO, which stands for Leaders for Global Operations. And Steve Cook, who founded the firm, went to that program after spending eight years as a pilot in the Navy. Went back to grad school to sort of figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up. This is a program that really prides itself on breeding the next generation of manufacturing leaders.
It was founded at a time when so much manufacturing was going offshore and young bright minds were going to be investment bankers or attorneys or consultants and there just weren't a lot of young people that were really excited to go work in a manufacturing facility. And so big U. S. manufacturing companies like GM, Boeing, Caterpillar, et cetera, partnered with MIT to launch this program.
So Steve went through that program. He came out with just a tremendous passion for U. S. manufacturing. And just really the fundamental belief that this country's economy rides on the backs of these small manufacturing companies. So Steve went on to have a very successful operating career. eventually explored private equity and then broke off of another firm to start LFM.
His first call was to Dan Shockley, another alumni of that MIT program. And then the next call was to Chris Lynn, who also went to that MIT program. So it is very much in our DNA. I'm stuck with my Georgetown degree. I can't claim MIT, but it's really fundamental to who we are. We are still very close with that program today.
One of our partners has sat on the board for years and years. We very actively take interns from that program and put them into our portfolio companies, as well as recruit people out of the program, both immediately and much later in their careers. So it's just been an amazing source of talent for us.
[00:09:47] Sean Mooney: See, that is the rest of the story I didn't know, and I love that story. It's a, what a great entrepreneurial story of people kind of going through this journey and then figuring out serendipitously this kind of path that led to creating a hugely regarded private equity firm. Well,
[00:10:00] Jessica Ginsberg: it is, and it's funny because Steve will tell people he had no idea what private equity was at that time.
He had never heard the words private and equity next to each other in a sentence. And here we are.
[00:10:12] Sean Mooney: So we've covered some good background on you, but one of the other questions I'd love to touch base on before we move into kind of the meat and potatoes here of our conversation is maybe some of the lesser known factoids about yourself.
So what are one of the things that we would know you better if we knew this about you?
[00:10:29] Jessica Ginsberg: Yeah, so good question. So the easy button answer would be to tell you about my kids, but there's no fun in that. So, you know, I think it would be that I am a total jokester. I love making people laugh. I am known in the office as the queen of one liners.
One of the things I get to do is every Monday morning I present new deals to our team and I'll be darned if I don't slip in a pun or a joke at least once every single week. So for example, a couple of years back, we bought a company called APQS. APQS makes automated quilting machines. And I was pounding the table about the team stitching together an investment thesis, right?
Or we once looked at a deal. It was a company that manufactured almond harvesting equipment. And I sat down and I was like, guys, this deal's nuts. , you know, I would not be me if I wasn't trying to crack a joke.
[00:11:28] Sean Mooney: I love it. So you've got the mom or dad jokes kind of on on, ready to go all the time.
[00:11:33] Jessica Ginsberg: Ready?
[00:11:33] Sean Mooney: There's like a drum, you know, ?
[00:11:35] Jessica Ginsberg: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
[00:11:36] Sean Mooney: I wish I had those skills. , I'll Google them and just torture my children with things that I'll read on a daily basis. Oh, I
[00:11:42] Jessica Ginsberg: do. I do that too. I can't
[00:11:43] Sean Mooney: do them organically. I do that too. Yeah, that's that story. But it shows also a lot about the culture of the firm where you can, you can have those moments versus like just the facts.
For sure. So maybe turning the page here, Jessica, when I was in PE, one of the things that I developed, because you're just looking at too many companies is this like yardstick. And I'd say, what are some of the common elements of value that I would look at? To understand if a company is good or probably more importantly could or will be good in order to kind of make the world a smaller place and then by extension, these are probably also things that every business leader should think about it because it's important to you and your firm.
They're probably pretty important to creating value. So I'm curious, what are some of the things maybe that you think about when looking at a business and saying, this is your yardstick.
[00:12:31] Jessica Ginsberg: So at a very high level, we're looking for manufacturing companies of a certain size. With a certain margin profile, digging deeper than that, the couple of things that we're really focused on.
Number one, what is the company's moat? You know, what is this company doing better or differently than everybody else? We can see it often in their margin profile, but yet it can look really different from company to company. Sometimes it's a unique distribution strategy. Sometimes it's patented products.
Sometimes, you know, it's just a better mousetrap. The second thing is growth. We like to see companies that have multiple growth levers. It can't just be a roll up strategy. We have to see an opportunity to grow footprint, broaden the channel, add new products, and on and on and on. The more levers that we can identify, the more excited we are.
And then to be able to sit down with management and really prioritize. Where are we going? How fast, how hard are we pushing? Let's get aligned and then let's do it finally. And this is really the most important one. And also, you know, sometimes the hardest one to figure out. Why are we the right buyer?
What can we do specifically to unlock that company's potential? Our money is as green as the next guy's right. But it really comes down to who we know, what we know, and where we've been. Industry experience, operating experience, our network. What can we bring to the table?
[00:14:00] Commercial: Today's episode is brought to you by BluWave.
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[00:14:21] Sean Mooney: I love your perspectives there, Jessica. And one maybe area I'd love to delve a little deeper on is this concept of a moat.
People talk about that a lot, like, Oh, what are your competitive barriers to entry, et cetera. But that can mean a lot of things. So as you think from a manufacturing context, like what do you think that creates moats?
[00:14:39] Jessica Ginsberg: Yeah. I mean, it can be a lot of different things to be honest. What's interesting is all we do is manufacturing, right?
So the kind of quick assumption is that moat better be something that they're doing, you know, on the floor, it's a manufacturing process. That's not always the case. Sometimes it's how you're selling. We own a business called ShopSaber outside of Minneapolis. They make CNC router tables and plasma tables.
And their sales strategy had always been, and I would say even like before social media was cool, you know, they had this cult following on YouTube and they would make these videos and they had this sort of personality, Router Bob was his name, and he would make these videos that would show people how cool the products were.
And so, yes, the products are incredible and they make the products in the most amazing way. And so, But we were so impressed by that strategy and how they had just gained this cult like following over the years that that was a huge attraction to us about that business and just looking at it and saying, you know, how can we grow this and build on this?
So I guess that's one example, but it can look a whole lot of different ways.
[00:15:39] Sean Mooney: Yeah. No, I think that very often it's the little things that people don't notice. We all know there's this concept of flywheels in business and everyone thinks it's like from the outside it's, Oh, it's one thing. Right. But it's a bunch of little things that in sequence create these and creating a cult following is in some ways the biggest identifier of a passionate user base and good luck displacing those people.
[00:16:00] Jessica Ginsberg: Yep. Yep. Nope. that's exactly right.
[00:16:02] Sean Mooney: As long as you don't change the color or, you know, the product or something like that. And the other thing I really loved what you said was this whole concept of, are you the right buyer? Because so much of the art of PE today is transformation. It's not financial leveraging.
It's not kind of buy low, sell high. It's how do you fundamentally create value in the business? Right.
[00:16:22] Jessica Ginsberg: And for us. So much of that is fit. So much of that is, can I look the seller in the eye and trust that this person's going to do what they say they're going to do? We're going to do what we say they're going to do.
And we've walked away from deals on that basis. Like we just don't trust these people. Great business. Don't trust these people. So it is huge for us.
[00:16:43] Sean Mooney: I think that's a great segue to the next topic. I love your thoughts on is the art of private equity right now. It used to be kind of a one instrument band, if you will, and now it's a symphony of motion where people are working together in a credible, collaborative way towards a common goal.
And so back in 1999, when I was in private equity, it was deal teams. And a whiteboard that we could wax poetic on it. But today it's evolved to a multifaceted approach where multiple functional areas, not only within the portfolio company, but within the PE firm itself are working in harmonious, synchronous motion with each other.
And so I'm curious, as you think about building these relationships and building value and transforming these companies, How do you all manage the interplay between your business development professionals, your deal team, your ops teams, your senior advisors, your portfolio executives?
[00:17:34] Jessica Ginsberg: I love this question because I think we take a fairly different approach in just how integrated we are from the very beginning.
Really starting with our operating partners who are very much ingrained in the LFM team. For the most part, they sit right here in Nashville. They are in our office every single day. I mentioned part of my job is that Monday morning meeting, bringing new deals to the table. Every single team member weighs in on those deals, from operating partners to interns.
We welcome everyone's view. We think it's super important, diverse viewpoints. I think some firms kind of bring in operating partners for management meetings, and then once the deal's closed, you know, sort of swoop in, swoop out. Our ops team is integral to our decision to pick up a deal from day one.
They're integral in the diligence process and they're integral in ultimately building and executing on a strategy. Everyone has buy in, everyone is aligned. We just think that if everyone has buy in along every single stage, we're all running toward a common goal. We also think having our operating partners involved early really helps in building trust with management teams.
If our first interaction with a team includes an operating partner who has in many cases walked in the same shoes as the founder owner of the business, it really builds a strong foundation for a relationship. There's trust, there's shared experiences, there's mutual respect. And then that same operating partner becomes chairman of the board and leads the deal through our whole period.
That is one sort of philosophy that we are very big on. And then thinking about portfolio company management teams. We really view our operating partners as sort of mentors and coaches for our CEOs. We're not running our companies day to day. We are empowering our management teams too. So all of our operating partners have been CEOs with P& L responsibility.
So they are incredible at offering advice. They're incredible at just being a sounding board. It's a little cliche, but it's lonely at the top. And CEOs don't have. A peer set typically. And so our operating partners help with that. We use what we call a pull strategy. We make sure our management teams know who we know, what we know, and where we've been.
And then we say, call us when we can be helpful. We're not going to be in your hair. We're not going to bother you. Now, if there's a problem, yeah, we're going to step in and help you figure it out. But we would rather you call us and we'll be there.
[00:20:00] Sean Mooney: Yeah, I think that's a really good tangible demonstration of why BluWave named LFM is one of the top private equity innovators.
This whole idea that you're running your firm increasingly and a lot like a company, your diligence really is rooted in value creation and you're bringing in your ops teams at the very beginning because. The art of where PE is going and certainly is already today where you guys have already been doing this is Knowing what this company can be before you even do something
[00:20:30] Jessica Ginsberg: Well, I think that's exactly right and when we hear sort of horror stories of private equity firm buys a business closes the deal brings in an operating partner to fix it or maximize it and the operating partner says I didn't want to do this deal to begin with Our philosophy is much more like we all make the bed, we all sleep in the bed.
And we think a lot of times our success is really, you know, knowing when to get out of the way.
[00:20:56] Sean Mooney: It's such a good observation and acting on that observation is part of your business. I remember in the early days, I would put together these glorious decks and these wonderful models. And then we would close the deal and then we'd bring in our operating partner.
You go, here's what you're going to do. And it's like, horror. They're like, what?
[00:21:16] Jessica Ginsberg: I'm doing what?
[00:21:16] Sean Mooney: You know, the first phase of my career, I was doing more industrial private equity. And, um, I can tell you, I got a couple of people stuck in China for a long time. Twice.
[00:21:25] Jessica Ginsberg: So sorry. Right. And, and I mean, so for me, one of my favorite things that I will see around the office regularly is, you know, we hire associates, right.
Who are people who have spent a couple of years in investment banking, and then they're making the jump over to private equity. So their background is really finance. It's modeling, things like that. What I love to see is when I walk into an office and I see an associate and an operating partner sitting side by side, looking at the model and the operating partner is really informing what numbers are going in and why.
And then our associates are learning to view the deal, not just from their financial engineering investment banking lens, but also through the ops partner. And so we're really helping to grow and develop this sort of younger talent pool that hopefully Sticks around at LFM for the long haul.
[00:22:13] Sean Mooney: I really like that as well because I think a lot of that you think about private equity is still very much an apprenticeship model.
They talk about 10, 000 hours. It's a 30, 000 hour apprenticeship to kind of become a fully formed, you know, person. So complex and I think even the firms are doing kind of what you're doing. The apprenticeship probably starts more at the VP level. And so to build that into your associates experience where they're getting that multifaceted kind of tutorship early It's got to be a really special opportunity.
[00:22:40] Jessica Ginsberg: Absolutely, and another thing that we do is, you know, we give opportunities to anyone in the firm who wants it to participate in lean implementation or Kaizen events at our facilities just to say, Hey, we're all in manufacturing now, you know, so we should all spend time on the floor and figure out how the sausage is really made.
[00:22:59] Sean Mooney: There'll be legions of now very successful private equity professionals. When I was tutoring them in their early days of their career. So here's how you really do this. The fifth year of your model, that's where you juice it. And then you pull in working capital and you're going to create a cash flow.
And that equals getting this through investment committee. So the way you're doing is much better.
[00:23:19] Jessica Ginsberg: We hope so.
[00:23:21] Sean Mooney: So for our listeners, particularly those who are emerging in their career, do as Jessica says, not as I did. That would be my advice to anyone trying to get a successful career in the new age of private equity.
One of the things I'm really interested in learning your thoughts on, Jessica, is this whole idea of this kind of fluid world we're in. And it's always fluid. It's never easy. It's always moving in different directions. I want to learn a little bit about like maybe some of the things that you all are thematically engaging with right now in terms of setting up your partners for success.
[00:23:51] Jessica Ginsberg: Sure. So this is another one where I could go in a lot of different directions. We could talk about implementing ERP systems and collecting more real time data from our companies. We could talk about AI for days. We could talk about automation and our factories, but the truth is for us, it's people. We are all about the people.
We are all about leadership. You can have the best ERP system. You can have the most automated facility, but if you don't have the right person at the top, and if you don't have a highly, highly engaged team with a strong culture from the tippy top to the very, very bottom, it doesn't matter. So we're focused on building leaders.
We're focused on developing people, maximizing employee satisfaction. If the team is engaged, motivated, excited, they will run through walls. And that's what we've learned. And so our top priority is figuring out what is the formula to build those types of teams. An example of that, we talked a lot about the MIT program.
We have used that as sort of a foundation for a CEO training program where we will hire recent alums from top schools, MIT and others, and we will hire those people to step into operating roles across our portfolio. We are very careful and intentional about how we match the individual with the company and the situation.
What does that individual need from a development perspective? What can that person learn and how can they learn it the fastest? And then we will offer these individuals multiple opportunities across the portfolio over years to really prepare them to be LFM portfolio company CEOs. Not all CEOs are built the same.
Not all CEO roles are the same. So we're really focused on finding the right ones, the ones that want to work really, really hard, the ones that want to get their fingernails dirty. And who are as passionate as we are about building strong teams and culture. You know, everyone in private equity talks about deal size from a EBITDA perspective.
3 to 10, 3 to 15, whatever it is. We do that, but what we really mean is 250 employees or less. Because for us, that's kind of the max number where if you've got more than 250 people, CEO's not going to know everyone's name. CEO's not going to know everyone's wife's name, for sure. That's what we're It's hard to build those really cohesive, energized organizations when there's just more people than you can count.
[00:26:26] Sean Mooney: That's another fantastic perspective. And as I kind of reflect on the day to day here at BluWave, and it's fascinating, like case study every day, because we have hundreds of the best business builders in the world. If you merely think of the private equity investors like LFM, and we get to see what you are doing as part of us equipping the tools to execute on these great visions.
And people will say really often think it through like the lens of a 1980s movie that private equity is about taking out costs. And what I see here is almost one in two projects today revolve around people. And it's we need more, we need specialized, we need to train them, we need to build culture, we need to understand the voice of the customer.
The voice of the employee and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger every single year.
[00:27:13] Jessica Ginsberg: It's true. And you know, you talked about sort of private equity firms mimicking real companies, right? With different teams and we have our business development team and our ops team. We actually recently made a hire to our ops team of a chief HR officer.
What you're seeing a lot of firms do, it is a very different functional role from firm to firm. In our case, this is a person who we've hired whose 100% focus is. Leadership development across the portfolio, employee satisfaction across the portfolio. How can we do better to create better work environments so that everyone from the hourly factory workers to the management team is as engaged as possible, wants to come to work with a smile on their face.
And it's been less than a year, but already hugely impactful.
[00:27:58] Sean Mooney: I think that's one of the best trends in private equity is bringing in human capital, and of course we have to human capital, but it's such a important role that is gaining traction that you all are already taking action on, and I'm sure the results are proving themselves out front and center.
Yeah, so far so good. So, Jessica, as we round out our conversation here, what I really want to know is if you could go back to younger 22 year old Jessica. She's sitting You don't
[00:28:24] Jessica Ginsberg: think I'm, you don't think I'm 22?
[00:28:24] Sean Mooney: Do I not look 22? I thought it was 29 ish maybe? You're sitting at your barstool in the tombs.
You see you're trying to go for those at the 98 day club, and I know your first piece of advice is don't do that club. What would be the second piece of advice if you'd say, here's something I wish my younger self knew that you wish you knew then?
[00:28:45] Jessica Ginsberg: Great one. I actually was just interviewing a much younger person and she asked me the same question, so I'm prepared.
It would be to not take myself so seriously. Be patient. Explore more. I think as a much younger person, I thought that life and careers, especially everything had to be linear. You use that word earlier. Everything had to be up into the right. My best advice would be like, learn as much as you can stay as open minded as you can be opportunistic and always trust your gut.
I just think it's super important, and that's what you have to fall back on. I also have come to realize, I think it takes us until we're like, 35, to really know who we are, and what we're about. So as long as you get there by 35 ish, everything's going to be okay.
[00:29:36] Sean Mooney: I'm 35 and I still don't know who I am.
Yeah, right, right. I'm a little bit older. No, but I think that's phenomenal advice. And I think for probably a lot of the listeners on this podcast who are high achievers, who are goal oriented and particularly everyone who's gone through that life's journey and is on it right now, right? You never get anywhere.
You're just constantly going towards some destination you can't see. And it's so easy to get caught in like just collecting badges and medals and ribbons. And I was certainly that kid growing up. And you look back and you're like, I wish that guy chilled out a little bit.
[00:30:08] Jessica Ginsberg: Well, right. And I think, you know, every so often you've got to step out of the box and you've got to take a risk.
They don't always pay off, but you always learn something about yourself, about the world. It's worth it every time. I
[00:30:22] Sean Mooney: think that is great advice. I'm writing it down and I will share that with my kids tonight. And I don't think they'll listen, but it's good advice. There's something that I wish I knew before as well.
So Jessica, this has been an amazing conversation. I've really enjoyed it. I've learned all sorts of things I wish I knew an hour ago that I haven't known and I'm lucky and fortunate to know it now. So thank you so much. Of course. Thank you for having me on.
[00:30:47] Jessica Ginsberg: And thank you for enriching our Nashville private equity, uh, scene.
[00:30:51] Sean Mooney: Absolutely. We're growing in numbers here. It's been fun to watch it all grow. And so, and likewise, thank you for making Nashville a better place as well.
That's all we have for today. Special thanks to Jessica for joining. If you'd like to learn more about Jessica Ginsburg and LFM Capital, 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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THE BUSINESS BUILDER’S PODCAST
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.
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.
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