Value Creation and Philanthropy: Jon Pressnell’s Multifaceted Strategy at Blue Point Capital

[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 Jon Pressnell, partner with Blue Point Capital Partners. Enjoy.

[00:00:32] I'm super excited to be here with Jon Pressnell.

[00:00:35] Jon Pressnell: Oh, thanks for having me.

[00:00:37] Sean Mooney: Yeah, I've been looking forward to this one for a number of reasons. One, we're going to talk about Some really interesting aspects in terms of just the world that you live in, the business of private equity, business building in general, but also something that you are doing in a really important and impactful way in terms of kind of giving to your portfolio companies in a pretty unique way.

[00:00:59] The Blue Point Cares program, which is very exciting. We'll be talking about that in just a little bit, but before we do all of that, let's go through some of the story of you, Jon. I'd love to hear kind of. How you came up, how you got into this world of private equity.

[00:01:13] Jon Pressnell: My background getting straight into private equity, probably pretty similar to most was in MNA before I joined into Blue Point like 17 years ago.

[00:01:21] Now, growing up, my parents were both on the social work side. My mom was a true social worker. My dad worked for the County Board of Developmental Disabilities. So I spent all my time kind of in that world and then thought at one point I was going to be a dentist who worked as kind of a dental assistant for a while in high school and It was going to go down that path and then decided I was going to follow my grandfather on the accounting trail.

[00:01:44] So I went to put on a football scholarship and ended up blowing out my shoulders in my second year and was done playing football and graduated in three and had no idea what I was going to do with myself. So then I decided to stay in and go to Notre Dame for a year and get a master's and went to UI.

[00:02:02] It was probably Notre Dame where I first even like knew that there was investment banking and private equity, that kind of stuff. One of my coworkers at EY who had left said, Hey, are you interested in joining the M& A group at key and got introduced there? And then from there kind of went the traditional path from M& A into private equity.

[00:02:21] Sean Mooney: It's a really interesting background that you shared there because in some ways it was the prototypical accounting and then PE. But the first part, not so much. And so it's always fascinating with these conversations where there's a lot of folks in the P industry who start off with parents who were teachers, who were social workers, who worked for the state, those type of things.

[00:02:43] And so it's not the path that a lot of people think, Oh yeah, naturally this person's going to be the next like leader in private equity industry. How did that work in terms of like migrating maybe away from the family business a little bit of social work?

[00:02:57] Jon Pressnell: Yeah, I was never going to go down that path.

[00:03:00] Was always kind of geared more towards the analytical and sciences. So I knew that that wasn't where I was going to be, but I think it's definitely played a role of thinking about kind of the world is bigger than the bubble we kind of live in, especially within private equity and being able to be relatable and understand kind of where people are coming from.

[00:03:19] I think it's definitely helpful and you realize that you're incredibly blessed

[00:03:24] Sean Mooney: that'll serve the later part of our conversation about Blue Point cares really well. Now that I know that it's like, Oh, this makes sense. And not just because of we're increasingly seeing these types of activities, but also because of who you were probably from the foundations of a kid.

[00:03:40] Jon Pressnell: I spent my summers picking food bags in the food kitchen.

[00:03:45] Sean Mooney: I love it. That registers with us as well. We do a lot with the second harvest food bank in Nashville here. So. the Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs. That's right front and center there. Maybe the other, just quick question on your background. I didn't know you were a college football player.

[00:04:01] Jon Pressnell: I was kind of, I blew out my shoulder on the last day of three days, my redshirt freshman year, and then had surgery, six months of rehab, had another surgery cause pulled all the pins out of my shoulder. And then they opened me up instead of arthroscopic surgery. And then six more months of rehab. And I hadn't even really been doing anything related to football.

[00:04:24] It was about that point that I realized that I was a year away from graduating and was like, all right, I may not be destined for the NFL anymore.

[00:04:32] Sean Mooney: Jon, I'd love to pull back the layers of you a little bit further. And one of the questions I'd love to ask is we'd know you better if we knew this about you.

[00:04:42] What's something you'd share there?

[00:04:43] Jon Pressnell: Maybe this for people that know me probably wouldn't be shocking and they would understand it. But for most people, I think I would come across as pretty extroverted, but I am a complete introvert. Pretending to be an extrovert trains all the energy out of me. And I need like time by myself and probably a dark room would be the best to just like re energize, but I am a large human being.

[00:05:05] I got a pretty big personality and realizing in what we do, personality and personability is kind of key. So I can mask it pretty well as an extrovert, but it is draining.

[00:05:16] Sean Mooney: How do you overcome that? Like, what's your approach? Because that's kind of what you need to do to be a partner at a top P firm and be out there and a leader.

[00:05:24] How did you overcome that?

[00:05:26] Jon Pressnell: I think I just realized that if you want to succeed, this is kind of what you have to do. It's a lot more fun to have management presentation dinners when you're interactive and you're talking to people and you get to hear their stories than sitting there in silence. So at some point you just kind of, you bite the bullet and have to do it.

[00:05:41] But I do have to prep myself a little bit.

[00:05:43] Sean Mooney: That resonates with me on many, many levels. I've put myself in the same bucket. I call myself a reluctant extrovert. It's like you can do it, but you got to flip a switch and then you just feel the battery draining as you're going through. And so I don't know about you, but like, what's it like when you go to a conference?

[00:06:04] Jon Pressnell: I despise conferences. Thank God that we have Megan on the BD side who does most of that for us. That is like my nightmare situation.

[00:06:13] Sean Mooney: Yeah. I was recently at a large kind of PE conference where they had 500 operating partners there. And many, many of which were. Customers in, I do these things, same thing.

[00:06:23] Like I've got to like tell myself the little train that could story. I think I can. I think I can. I know I can. And then when I came home from it, almost every conversation I go, my wife knows that like I'm going to be catatonic and almost like nonverbal. You just like get out a bottle of wine and pour the glass to the top and go into the bedroom and turn off the lights.

[00:06:47] Jon Pressnell: My wife still doesn't quite get that, like, cause she sees I get home and it's the introvert side, like has to come out. And so unfortunately she gets the, like, I just want to sit here quietly. I don't need to talk. You can talk to me, but I'm not going to be super interactive for a little while, at least.

[00:07:04] Sean Mooney: We'll have our wives talk. They'll understand. It's like, I can't, no talkie talkie. I'm done. But most days I'm okay. And that's why I really like these podcasts because it's just a conversation. The next thing I'd love to kind of dig in is, as you think about people who enter and succeed in PE, and maybe this is like a self reflection, I think the industry is filled with smart people, smart enough people, And do really well in that regard, but I think one of the defining characteristics is kind of like this tenacity and grit and knowing that there's going to be challenges in business and life and doing your best to kind of deal with it while always knowing that, like, there's never necessarily going to be a perfect outcome, but you're going to continue to try.

[00:07:56] And so with that mindset in place. I'd be curious, like, what is one of the things, just knowing you're in this industry that demands a lot, what are some of the, or one of the challenges that you face as you think about being successful and, or at least doing what's required as part of being in the industry that you're in?

[00:08:17] Jon Pressnell: It's not a specific moment or time, but I think the constant struggle for me is just kind of that work life and really work family balance. I probably average at least. A day, a week on the road, staying in hotel rooms. And then between my wife's work, the kids activities with three kids, there's just a lot going on trying to be a completely competitive type a personality.

[00:08:44] Like you want to succeed at everything, but always feeling like you're failing on some front because family's demanding, work's demanding, and how do you balance those effectively without dropping too many plates? It's always on my mind.

[00:08:57] Sean Mooney: What have you figured out so far? You're never going to get it right.

[00:09:01] I like, so I never got it right.

[00:09:02] Jon Pressnell: Yeah. I asked my wife,

[00:09:05] Sean Mooney: marry someone great. That was my plan.

[00:09:08] Jon Pressnell: I think really being cognizant of what I say yes to and what I say no to. I have a tendency to over commit and trying not to do that, especially on the work front. There's some things that are super important that have to be done and there's some things that are great if I have the time, but really thinking about in terms of I can either be doing this or I can be spending time on something within the portfolio or a new deal, or I could be spending time with my family.

[00:09:34] Trying to always keep that in mind and really be cognizant about it, I think is probably the key one. And then I use a calendar app that brings together like five different calendars so I can always see what's going on across all of them. When I'm making decisions, sometimes I'm not as good about that as other times, at least it's helpful for just keeping it front of mind of what my commitments are.

[00:09:56] Sean Mooney: I need that app. What app is it?

[00:09:58] Jon Pressnell: Morgan. Okay. It's a to do list plus a calendar.

[00:10:03] Sean Mooney: I'm going to download that. I totally get what you're saying because in most of my career before this, I was in PE and there's no shortage of things that you can do or have to do because there's always new deals to look at.

[00:10:16] There's always portfolio companies to work with. There's always something to think about. And the biggest challenge that I would face was not only particularly when you're coming up and you're trying to kind of prove your mettle, The biggest thing beyond just like in the first years, I don't know how well my kids even knew my name, like, like, who is this guy?

[00:10:36] But then the biggest struggle I had was vacations too, because even when you'd go on vacations, conference calls in the morning. I got the point kind of like you, like, there's a deal coming up, investment banker says, this is your slot for the management meeting. And it's like, all right, kids, dad's going to go away for a couple days, and I'll see you in a couple days at the beach, you know, but.

[00:10:56] I'm going to Des Moines for a management meeting. Have fun, get a really nice dinner. Have you navigated that or are you still kind of like constantly battling the puts and takes?

[00:11:08] Jon Pressnell: I don't know if you could ever get away from that battle. It's the way this industry works. You can definitely try to push things in the right direction as much as you can and try and, Set aside days of the week that work better than others because of everybody's activities or things like that.

[00:11:24] But I do try to get to all of the competitions and events that I can for the kids and trying to make a point of that. And if I have to miss a dinner because of that, I'm definitely more willing to do that now than I used to be. God bless my wife. She is extremely understanding most of the time. We took our honeymoon on our five year anniversary.

[00:11:47] Sean Mooney: I don't know that what a lot of people really appreciate is PE folks, people like yourself, the challenge of planning is almost impossible.

[00:11:57] Jon Pressnell: Yeah. What is it?

[00:11:58] Sean Mooney: I could look maybe two weeks out in my life and know for certainty what was going to go on. So even things like, okay, we're going to take the kids to Florida.

[00:12:05] And I just could never plan. A that far out because I didn't know when there was a management meeting. I didn't know when something was going and some fire would sweep across. So I never felt like I could plan virtually anything.

[00:12:19] Jon Pressnell: I mean, how many times have you spent in the hotel room during vacation in Florida where you're working, where everybody else is somewhere else?

[00:12:27] You're like, okay, I'll meet you for dinner.

[00:12:29] Sean Mooney: Every vacation. I'd meet him at noon to the calls in the morning.

[00:12:34] Jon Pressnell: Yeah. Sitting reviewing documents next to a pool, all that fun stuff.

[00:12:39] Sean Mooney: I have a lot of empathy for that. It's really hard. And I think it drives home that really in any field, there's challenges in particularly in private equity that comes with sacrifices.

[00:12:52] It's not this world of bond bonds and caviar that people sometimes misconstrue given, you Name the 1980s movie they watched. The

[00:13:01] Jon Pressnell: industry is a little different than portrayed. Today's episode

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[00:13:27] Sean Mooney: Jon, one of the things I'd love to dig into is. Understand the Blue Point approach to private equity a little bit. And one of the amazing things about the E is there's these really kind of dynamic strategies and tactics taking place in very different ways across all of these firms, as you kind of take action to be better at assessing opportunities, creating value, creating alpha, and for people not familiar with the term with alpha, there's like, you're going to do as well as the market, or you're going to do better than the market.

[00:14:02] And that's the onus on everyone in PE is like, how do you do better than the market? And then if you've got a whole industry of trying to be better than the market, it creates no vacations. So, Jon, I'm curious, what is really Blue Point's approach to creating value? What are some of the resources that you bring to bear per the strategy?

[00:14:22] Jon Pressnell: Maybe to take a step back before I answer that question, where we play. The majority of our deals were the first outside capital coming into a business. So we're working with families and founders that own a business previously for the most part, it's probably 75 percent of what we do. And so our strategy, a lot of it has been set around what is most helpful for that profile of business and not necessarily this specific industry or things like that.

[00:14:50] So what we tend to see is underinvestment in technology, underinvestment in The finance department, at least relative to what we will need going forward and what will allow us to really make informed data driven decisions going forward. And then just people generally people do as well as they can. But I think us coming in provides just a different level of support as well as gentle nudging towards like, this is what we've seen work really well.

[00:15:19] It's likely different than what many family owned businesses have in place when we get there, but it will pay off in the end. And how do you reduce turnover? Be the employer of choice in the area. How do you do that? Cause that impacts everything down the road. We have operating partners as pretty much every firm does.

[00:15:37] Now we've got folks that are focused on finance and some that are focused more on operations and other areas. We actually had a Shanghai office for almost 20 years. That was really focused on supply chain in China because China was kind of the answer to everything in the two thousands. And then 2010s, you started to see a shift and then mid 2010s, you really saw a shift when the tariffs came in.

[00:16:00] After COVID, Dennis, who's been with us since 2005, I think running the Shanghai office, he actually moved to Vancouver, Canada, and his experience before joining us a while ago was global sourcing. So he had experience beyond just China. So he's still really impactful with our companies of how do we just help them buy better and move products better, obviously more applicable to our manufacturing and distribution businesses and then service businesses.

[00:16:27] But that's one area that we've just seen. In area where we can kind of drop in and be really helpful right off the bat, but another area of focus for us is data and digital. So how do we make sure we've got the right ERP system in place? The last time I checked on this within our last two funds, I think we did some type of either large change to the ERP or a full ERP implementation, like 75 percent of our portfolio, which is something that a lot of private equity firms I think really shy away from.

[00:16:57] We take it with the knowledge that it's going to be tough, but it's the right thing for the business. And a lot of times we're coming into a business that's on QuickBooks or something similar where it's just not scalable to the level that we want it to be. But also there's strategic pricing. And Utilizing new technologies as they come in to make better decisions around your PsyOps process so that you can get your production in line and things like that.

[00:17:21] So just, there's a lot of data that's already within these companies, but we just find that they're not using it as much as they could. And may not have brought in the people that are able to use it the way they can. And so we can help do that either with our folks internally or with external folks that we've developed relationships with.

[00:17:37] And then the final piece for us is really around human capital. So that's an area that we've invested over the years, both in terms of resources at Blue Point, as well as developing kind of go to partners that we utilize. To my point earlier, how do you make sure. That you are the place that someone wants to work and where would I want my kids to work and things like that.

[00:17:57] And so focusing on how do we make sure we've got the right people at the C suite level and making sure that we're adding to the team because most of the time we're increasing the team, not decreasing the team back to the point on what you saw from movies in the eighties, like come in and slash and burn doesn't work anymore.

[00:18:13] You got to grow in order to make a return. So how do we get people that will help us grow? At the executive level. And then how do we make sure that we've got folks at every level of the organization that want to work there and are excited to work there and believe in mission, vision, values, and everything else.

[00:18:28] Sean Mooney: I really like your approach there. I think it's a very smart and then B shows a lot of kind of agility and evolution as the world has changed. And so the Shanghai office absolutely get that after WTO. Probably being way far ahead. I think of most of your peers, because I remember I was investing in Chinese companies in 2002, we bought up.

[00:18:54] Auto parts company in China, like all SOEs, it was just crazy.

[00:19:01] Jon Pressnell: That world is just different.

[00:19:02] Sean Mooney: For six years, every day is at 8am or an 8pm call. And it's like, you said, yes, it was at a yes, yes, or no, no, or yes, no, or no, yes. And then like, okay, I'm getting on a plane. And so, but to have that kind of skills and capabilities resident during a huge transition and kind of the global economy, a, what a benefit.

[00:19:22] But then be showing the evolution as it moved from really the world of all from a China strategy to a China plus one or two, and then it's going in different places. Now we'll see, but having that agility to say, Hey, we need to have these capabilities as part of your strategy, investing in manufacturers.

[00:19:41] And while that must have been a huge benefit as supply chains were disrupted during COVID as inflation occurred, is that something that added a lot of value?

[00:19:50] Jon Pressnell: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you remember, there was an article, I think it was like front page of the journal that was about companies chartering full container ships just because you weren't able to get your single container on.

[00:20:02] I think Dennis was doing that for, he was pooling our companies across the board and doing that probably three, four months before that was on the front page of the wall street journal. So. We were able to help our companies get PPE by finding the right suppliers and being able to get some things. We ended up procuring a bunch of masks and we actually donated them to hospitals around our offices once we got them.

[00:20:25] Just didn't feel it was right to use them at the company's level. So we were able to do a lot of things that we definitely wouldn't have done or been able to do if we didn't have Dennis and that kind of connection there.

[00:20:36] Sean Mooney: I think it's really smart. It's not new for you. You've been doing this for 20 something years, if not more, right?

[00:20:41] And then what I also really liked is kind of the digital, the data, the acumen, it informs hypotheses, higher expected value and decision making. The ERP as a former investor in lower and middle market companies totally resonates, never fully appreciated until now. We would really resolve things. And now that we are the proud owners of a new NetSuite system this year, a whole career, like talking with our CFO, I was like, how hard could this thing be?

[00:21:13] Load the data and flip the switch, right? Yeah. And now, you know, my hair's been on fire for three months. I'm like, Oh, this is pretty hard. So bringing that kind of acumen and hands on ability to support is also something that I really appreciate having now in retrospect, probably not being nearly as Understanding is I should have been.

[00:21:36] Jon Pressnell: It can be a game changer both ways. If you get it right and you get it wrong, it's a game changer. And hopefully you get it right. The other area that we're dabbling with, but moving forward on some things is around AI, that's kind of the next frontier from a off the shelf solution. There's not a lot geared at the enterprise level for our size companies, but we've got a few that have been pretty forward thinking about utilizing it.

[00:22:00] My hypothesis is as it develops, it'll allow you to do some things that would have required an ERP implementation or upgrade that you no longer have to, because you can get the information out that you need to.

[00:22:11] Sean Mooney: I think you're so smart on that. And literally every week we get a call on AI and groups that can help with it.

[00:22:18] And. Kind of in the beginning of this part of our conversation where I think you're being really thoughtful is it starts with the data. Until you get the data, the underlying systems kind of good to go, it's going to be hard to do this. But then once you get that, then these AI tools that are just really starting to emerge in support of tactics that you have are going to be super powerful.

[00:22:41] And I think you guys are taking absolutely the spot on approach. And the other thing I really like to appreciate is the hands on support on human capital. As much as we all talk about the robots, it seems like we get more and more calls every day from folks like you all for people. I don't think the robots are taken over quite yet.

[00:22:58] Jon Pressnell: Every aspect of this business is about people. So how do you make sure that you're somebody that people want to work with?

[00:23:04] Sean Mooney: With that in mind, I would love to maybe segue into the conversation around your Blue Point Cares program. Can you share a little bit about the kind of the why behind it, what you're doing, the impact it has?

[00:23:18] Jon Pressnell: The table set a little bit. So the Blue Point cares program is an emergency assistance fund that we've set up and we're going to implement it. All of our portfolio companies going forward, where we will fund what we hope is probably the life of our investment period in terms of assistance necessary into a nonprofit and canaries working with us, kind of administering everything, and it will allow employees, if they have.

[00:23:44] Medical issues and medical bills that they need to pay. If they've have housing issues, if there's a death in the family, they'll be able to get a tax free grant from the nonprofit that allows them to pay those. It's been something I've thought about for a long time. It was actually a CEO that I worked with Shane.

[00:24:05] He's now the CEO of advanced auto parts, but was the CEO of Patrick choice. And he had come from home Depot and a lot of the large companies have these and Walmart's got one home Depot has one and they can, because they're huge organizations and they have the resources to do it. It can be a heavy lift and Shane did it.

[00:24:23] Essentially it was a labor of love for him where he was administering the nonprofit. He was going through and fundraising for it. He was doing the grants and reviewing the grant process and things like that. And so I thought it was a great idea and asked him about it. And then he started to say, here's what you have to do.

[00:24:40] If somebody wants to do it, they really have to want to do it. And it's going to take some time for them to do it. So it's something that we'd love to do with all of our portfolio companies was my thought at the time. But how do you get somebody to make sure they're as interested and committed as they need to be?

[00:24:57] And kept looking at it and investigating it. There's got to be some way to do this and found canary as a partner. They've been working with a couple other funds to try and get something similar to this in place. They have, we've got a few of them in place already, but we're pretty early on here, but essentially taking the administrative burden off of the company and they take care of administering all of that and making sure that everything's in compliance.

[00:25:22] It also creates a benefit where it's not somebody within the company who's reviewing the fact that, Hey, I've got a housing issue or I have food issues or things like that. It's a third party and everything we get. In terms of statistics is anonymous from them. So hopefully it will allow people to feel more comfortable doing it, but really back to the company is all about the people and what happens at home impacts how they perform at work and whether they want to work there.

[00:25:47] And so hopefully we will start to see a lot of knock on benefits of this and would love it to be something where we've got it in place and when we go to exit and most of the time we're selling to another private equity group, we'd love to see them continue it and expand it.

[00:26:02] Sean Mooney: Is it just curiously in terms of.

[00:26:04] The organization and the tactics of it. Is it funded across your companies as a portfolio? Does each one have their own kind of individual instance of this program?

[00:26:15] Jon Pressnell: It's pulled and it's individual. The money is pulled, but it's tracked individually so that as they exit, they can either keep it with canary or they can put it into a different nonprofit.

[00:26:26] If that's the direction they wanted to go, but those funds, as we contribute And hopefully as others contribute alongside them, they will continue to be available to that specific portfolio company. You wanted to make it so that it felt like it was individual, but take advantage of the scale by not having too many complications.

[00:26:44] Sean Mooney: Now, like, so you get the benefits of the scale of the broader Blue Point portfolio, but it can be administered individually and severable so that it can persist and live beyond your holding period.

[00:26:55] Jon Pressnell: Yeah, and then we at Blue Point are funding the administrative cost of it.

[00:26:59] Sean Mooney: Oh, that's great. And how long did it take you to kind of get this going and build support internally?

[00:27:05] What was the process there?

[00:27:06] Jon Pressnell: The support was there almost immediately when I brought it to the rest of the partner group. It took me longer to get it in place because It's not my full time day job. Canary folks would agree that it drug on a little bit, cause it would be something that would get my attention for a day.

[00:27:23] And then the next fire would catch somewhere and I'd have to put that out, but kept making progress. And a lot of it was just trying to figure out what is that right structure of how much of it is pooled? How does it work when we go to exit and making sure that we had all those in place before really pulling the trigger on it, but.

[00:27:40] So it was probably two years from initial discussion to when we got it in place, but we could have gotten it in place in probably a month if we had even a portion of my time committed to just getting it done.

[00:27:54] Sean Mooney: It's hard though. There's so much going on and this is something that's not pervasive in news, so it's not really a copy paste, right?

[00:28:01] You're kind of creating an approach to something in a way that really matters. That's also something you don't want to rush and just go running into a tunnel and go, Oh my God, that's a train.

[00:28:12] Jon Pressnell: Before we were announcing that we were going to do this for all of our companies going forward. I wanted to make sure we'd be able to do it and we wouldn't run into a whole bunch of headaches and issues that we didn't think about, so maybe overthought it a bit just to make sure it was right.

[00:28:26] But I think that was the right approach. Now it's essentially. Brought our second company into it since we announced this. And now it's just kind of get them in the loop ahead of closing, make sure that it's in the funds flow and then introduce the team and the concept to the HR team at the company. And they're off and running.

[00:28:44] Sean Mooney: I love that approach. It really is something that. is important and valuable. And so thank you for doing that. And I love to follow it to see how it's coming along. Hey, as a quick interlude, this is Sean here. I wanted to address one quick question that we regularly get. We often get people to show up at our website, call our account executives and say, Hey, I'm not private equity.

[00:29:05] 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.

[00:29:24] 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.

[00:29:43] So maybe as we bring our conversation full circle here, one of the things that as we bring ourselves back to just the everyday humanity, in some ways, probably less magnanimous, but in my mind, also Very heartwarming and important to me as someone who loves to just figure out not only the big things, but the small things.

[00:30:03] One of the things that I think people appreciate is I'm one of the bigger connoisseurs of gadgets and life hacks, and they make things a little fun, a little easier. And so, Jon, I'd be curious, is there something that you've kind of encountered, a life hack, a gizmo, a gadget, that you've kind of Adopted that just make things a little different, a little more fun, a little more interesting.

[00:30:29] Jon Pressnell: The thing that I've really come to love back to the conversation about being on planes and traveling a lot the last year or so, maybe longer than that, I've had a pair of X real airs, which are AR glasses effectively where it projects a screen in front of you. Through the glasses. I think it's like 130 inch screen in front of you, connected to your phone or your laptop.

[00:30:54] Being on planes and trying to get work done or trying to just relax and watch a movie without everybody seeing what you've got on your screen. I'm going through a document. I can put it up on the glasses. Nobody can see what I'm looking at. It may look at you a little weird. I've definitely gotten that before, but the size of normal glasses come in a little case and being able to have a full screen in front of you, especially cause I'm 6'6 If I'm trying to type on a computer and look at the computer, I'm in the T Rex position in the middle seat.

[00:31:24] So it's nice to be able to get my head up and not feel. Quite as crowded when I'm using them.

[00:31:29] Sean Mooney: I've never heard of these. It sounds awesome. And because the same thing where every time I'm on a plane, I have my laptop out. Very often, you got some pretty sensitive documents out and I'm just kind of looking over and like moving my, cause there's always someone inevitably there's like an investment banker sitting next to you and you don't even know it or a competitor.

[00:31:48] You're like, ah, they just saw our five year plan,

[00:31:52] Jon Pressnell: but how does it work? You plug it in with a USB C, it plugs right into my phone. I usually use it with my phone, and then I've got a Bluetooth keyboard. Without using a computer, I can have a keyboard in front of me, I can have the screen up, just looking through it through the glasses, and open up my email app and work from there.

[00:32:10] It's really just kind of a monitor in and of itself. It's platform agnostic, I guess is the way to put it. So you can plug it into a Mac, a Windows computer, whatever, or Android or iPhone, and then it projects, like you would plug in your. Second monitor to a computer.

[00:32:27] Sean Mooney: That's really cool. And it just looks like sunglasses or something.

[00:32:30] Jon Pressnell: Yeah.

[00:32:31] Sean Mooney: So you're not like one of those Apple ski goggle people.

[00:32:36] Jon Pressnell: They look like large Ray Bans, I guess is probably the best way to put it.

[00:32:41] Sean Mooney: And the battery works well.

[00:32:42] Jon Pressnell: It just runs off your phone's battery.

[00:32:44] Sean Mooney: All right. I'm going to hit order right after this. That is a great gadget. You're at the hotel or something and you want to watch a movie and you don't want to like Sign in with your personal account on Netflix, on the hotel screen, you just put those things on and you can hang out or watch ESPN or something like that.

[00:33:03] Jon Pressnell: Yeah, exactly.

[00:33:05] Sean Mooney: That is really cool. Maybe this will go on my Christmas list and I'll say, honey, she's always looking for things that I want. And so I've got to save a couple of things for the birthdays and holidays.

[00:33:16] Jon Pressnell: It's been a bit of a game changer for me. I've actually had a couple of people who recognize what it was and asked me how I liked it.

[00:33:21] So I don't think a lot of people know about it, but. I guess it's more for gamers. So if you're using like a portable gaming unit, you can plug it in and then you've got a full screen, but it works just as well for work as it does for gaming, I guess.

[00:33:34] Sean Mooney: Yeah. PowerPoint and ESPN on the road. I love that. I'm going to.

[00:33:39] Start negotiating on how to get this. Not only did I learn more about your backstory, which was really interesting and impactful to me, but I also learned a lot about some of the things that you're doing as corporate citizens, and I have a new gadget to invest in right now as well. So this has been an incredibly valuable and generous conversation that we've had here, Jon.

[00:34:00] I really appreciate it.

[00:34:01] Jon Pressnell: No, I appreciate it too. It's been a fun conversation.

[00:34:04] Sean Mooney: That sounds good. And next time you find yourself in Nashville, let's catch up in person. Otherwise, till we meet again here and it was great talking.

[00:34:23] That's all we have for today. Special thanks to Jon Pressnell for joining. If you'd like to learn more about Jon and Blue Point Capital Partners and or their Blue Point Cares program, please see the episode notes or links. Please continue to look for the Karma School of Business podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcasts.

[00:34:39] We truly appreciate your support. If you like what you hear, please follow, five star rate, review, and share. This is a free way to support the show and it really helps us when you do this. So thank you. 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, including hundreds of private equity firms and thousands of portfolio companies, 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.