[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 founder and CEO. In this episode, we have an awesome conversation with Mark Langer, Managing Director with CenterOak Partners. Enjoy it.
[00:00:34] It is great to be back with Mark Langer. Mark, how are you?
[00:00:38] Mark Langer: I'm doing well, Sean. How about yourself?
[00:00:40] Sean Mooney: Doing great. So I've, I've been looking forward to this and we'll maybe get a little bit of the backstory here. I've known Mark for a long time and he was probably one of the original sources of the best advice that we ever received at BluWave, and so maybe we'll weave that into the conversation before we do that.
[00:00:57] Let's dig into the story of you. So Mark, can you give us a little bit about your backstory? Tell us kind of how and where you grew up. College path to private equity, all that fun stuff.
[00:01:08] Mark Langer: Yeah. I was born in New York City, grew up in the, in the suburbs of New York. I had a great upbringing. I had three brothers, two older, one younger.
[00:01:17] I think that really in a lot of ways built me into who I'm family was important part of growing up. Still really close with my brothers and learned a lot from them over the years and continue to, so I think that was probably the most important part, being a part of a bigger family. And I had tough parents.
[00:01:36] My parents are really hardworking. My mom is 76 years old. My dad has turned 80 years old this year. They built both, still work, full-time. It's impressive. They're pretty tough people and they instilled that in me at a pretty early age. I always joke that I remember I was about 13 years old and. I think we had like a Christmas break or something like that, and I was looking forward to having like a week or 10 days or whatever it is when you're a kid to have that off.
[00:02:01] And my mom was like, yeah, you're not just like sitting around the house, you gotta go see Tim in town. I was like, who? Who's Tim? And she's like the fish guy in town. I worked like 10, 11 hour days over Christmas break, peeling shrimp and fileting like fish. I learned how to filet fish and I smelled horrible.
[00:02:22] And one of my older brothers had worked for him. She kind of mined out that labor as well. I mean, it was crazy. I think the guy was paying me like $3 an hour under the table or something like that. I think there was probably some kind of kickback to my parents too. They were like, yeah, they probably took some of the cash that I made every day.
[00:02:38] That was always the way it was growing up, like you always had a job. That was an important part of what was instilled in me at a really young age. That built me probably to who I am today, is just to kind of like always be able to grind through anything. 'cause I had a lot of really bad jobs growing up, some of which my mom like threw me into at early ages.
[00:03:00] I played a lot of sports growing up. Played basketball, soccer, tennis. That was a, a big part of my life, was pretty good little athlete and helped me get outta college. And then ultimately went to a school called Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. Small liberal arts school. And again, like as I think about decision trees in your life, right?
[00:03:20] I have two brothers that went to like pretty big schools and then I had a another brother that also went to Bucknell. It was not like a familial school or anything that my parents didn't go there. I really liked it. It was small and that honestly probably drove like the rest of my career in a lot of ways.
[00:03:36] It was a great four years. I'm very grateful for the education I got there. Very grateful. My parents paid and took on that debt. To put me through school. School. I know it was a lot for them to do that. When I was there, I, I got on campus and I was for sure gonna be a lawyer and everyone in my family always thought I was gonna be a lawyer.
[00:03:54] My dad in particular. And I remember after like my first semester, he got me like the LSAT book and he was like, yeah, like this is what you're gonna do. And I was in English history major, or it was going to be, and I took an accounting class my second semester and fell in love with it and then took another class that was.
[00:04:12] Called MG 1 0 1, where you basically start your own business with your classmates, and I fell in love with being an entrepreneur. I graduated right after nine 11, which was a pretty tumultuous time in the country. Jobs were tough to come by. I got rejected by the IRS, like I was trying to find a job. My junior year internship was supposed to be with Arthur Anderson, and then that year Arthur Anderson went out.
[00:04:39] And so I lost my internship like a couple weeks before I was gonna go to New York. One of my professors that I later found out my intermediate accounting professor sent my resume to Johnson and Johnson. Unbeknownst to me, I think he had heard some people had lost their internships with Arthur Anderson.
[00:04:57] And I got this call and they were like, Hey, will you come to New Jersey? And I was like, okay. And I remember I asked my parents, I was like, Hey, can you help me find an apartment? Some money so that I can find an apartment and they're like, no, and no. And in this day and age, parents maybe micromanage kids a little too much.
[00:05:16] Yeah, I had to figure it out. I remember. So I drove to Princeton, New Jersey, and this is 2001. The internet was okay, but you couldn't like really find apartments and stuff like that. So kind of went door to door and ultimately lived in a house in Princeton, New Jersey with MC Hammer's former driver. It was an interesting summer, and what I tell people a lot is Johnson Johnson's an incredible company.
[00:05:43] I'm very grateful, but I learned that that was not for me. I couldn't work at a large company. I set out to try and figure out what I was gonna do, and after nine 11 was pretty tough. Ultimately, I had this idea to go into middle market investment banking, which in 2002, 2003, like that wasn't really a big thing.
[00:06:02] You either kind of went on Wall Street or you didn't. I didn't wanna live in New York. It was a tough time in the city and interviewed with a firm out in Colorado and they were convinced that I was an East Coast guy and I was gonna come out there and I was gonna leave them. So I didn't get the job at first, but I was very persistent.
[00:06:21] The m and a market picked up and they ultimately brought me in and hired me, and it changed my life. And you think about decision trees at the time, and this is not on my resume, I was doing audit. I was auditing the sheet Metal Workers Union across the United States, and I was living in Washington, dc I remember, I, I called my dad and I was like, Hey, dad, like I got this job in Colorado.
[00:06:43] He's like, you can't take that. You, you just started, you've gotta honor like the couple years. And I was like, dad, I'm like, miserable. Like I really hate audit. And ultimately we didn't see eye. He.
[00:06:59] Transformed my life in a lot of ways. I'd never really spent a lot of time out west growing up. I'd been to Colorado once or twice during college when I visited a guy that post-college had moved to Vail. Ultimately, I spent four years out there. I met my future wife out there. I was there for four years and I got a call from a private equity firm in Westport, Connecticut.
[00:07:21] I accepted the job. My wife and I were not married at the time, and I told her, I was like, Hey. Lemme go check this out for like six months. I dunno how this is gonna go. She moved out six months later and I was like, we'll be here for like 18 months or so. And we lived there for 17 years. And you know, my first private equity experience was incredible.
[00:07:42] It taught me a lot about being an investor, about how to build a firm, about how to treat people. Really special people I worked with. I was very blessed. I was there for six years and then went to another firm. In Connecticut. I always joke, I made this like terrible mistake and I went from a firm that had like a couple billion dollars of assets under management to a firm that was easily, could easily raise money to a firm That a hundred had $140 million of assets under management and the promise of like, Hey, we're gonna raise this money real fast.
[00:08:15] Well, it took two and a half years to raise the fund and it was a grind. We had a lot of infrastructure that had been built at my previous firm and at the new firm it was basically like. Me and three other guys, and I was in my early thirties and we just had a baby and I was pretty scared. I was like, wow, this is maybe wasn't the best idea.
[00:08:32] I don't think I told my wife that, but you know, you live and learn and ultimately scale that, that firm to over a billion dollars of assets under management. In the back of my mind, I kind of remembered that promise to my wife and her whole family lives in Colorado, so three brothers and sisters, and we ultimately moved to Texas about three and a half years ago.
[00:08:54] I love Texas. The state resonates with me in a lot of different ways. I love the people here. Great business community actually had a great event hosted by service provider last night, and one of the speakers had just moved here three months ago, and he kind of says exactly what I said, which is a very welcoming place.
[00:09:13] Sean Mooney: Hey, as a quick interlude, this is Sean here. Wanted to address one quick question that we regularly get. We often get people who show up at our website, call our account executives and say, Hey, I'm not private equity. Can I still use BluWave to get connected with resources? And the short answer is yes.
[00:09:30] 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 everyday top proactive business leaders at public companies, independent companies, family companies. So absolutely you can use this as well. If you want to use the exact same resources that are trusted in being deployed and perfectly calibrated for your business needs, give us a call.
[00:09:54] Visit our website at bluwave.net. Thanks. Back to the episode.
[00:10:02] It's a great story and so much of it resonates with me, and where you started off really resonates with me in particular. So I grew up in a large kind of Irish clan.
[00:10:13] Yeah.
[00:10:14] You know, that driller and it was just like, oh my gosh. I mean, my dad was one of 14 kids, if you can imagine that.
[00:10:20] Mark Langer: Wow. That's crazy.
[00:10:21] Sean Mooney: My mom was one of six.
[00:10:23] I think I have more than a hundred first cousins. I don't even know. So
[00:10:28] Mark Langer: doesn't sound like anyone knows.
[00:10:29] Sean Mooney: Yeah. I mean,
[00:10:32] but when I think a lot of that goes, and I think it's so also pervasive in private equity, is you get this sense of tenacity and grit and resilience and figure it out.
[00:10:41] Mark Langer: As I look back to like how I got here and like how I've done okay in life, a lot of it was like, again, I go back to the, I think there's too much, there's over-parenting today and I think a lot of it, my parents would like figure it out.
[00:10:56] I think that's probably like a, a big part of who I am today.
[00:10:59] Sean Mooney: And it's interesting, even just think generationally and I think when both of us grew up, they had to have a TV commercial that would come on and say it's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your kids are.
[00:11:08] Mark Langer: Oh yeah.
[00:11:10] Sean Mooney: Just like don't come home. So let's go back to the earlier question that you allude to Tell me more about one of the things we'd know you better if we knew this about you, mark.
[00:11:22] Mark Langer: Yeah, I'd say the one thing. That's not on the resume. When I worked at Compass, which is a private investment firm based in Westport, we had two pools of capital. The first pool capital was like a flagship private equity fund, but we also invested money on behalf of like a multi-billion dollar charitable trust.
[00:11:41] And when I joined, I was the only associate. There were no VPs and no principals, so I worked directly for partners. First year was really tough. I was there for six years. And about three years in or so, the guys had approached me about taking on more responsibility and the head of the firm had come to me and said, Hey, the trust is decided.
[00:12:05] As the lead investor, you kind of said, Hey, I want you to deploy $50 million in Africa, and I started laughing at him. I was like, I've never been to Africa. I couldn't tell you anything about it. He's like, okay, you've got like six weeks or eight weeks and then you're gonna present to the trust and me. And the partners of the firm on how we're going to deploy $50 million in Africa.
[00:12:27] And I was like, okay, like I'm a North American buyout guy. Uh, okay, I'll figure it out. Back then they didn't have like GLG and all these like expert networks and all this other kind of stuff. So my first way to approach it, it was like I started going and talking to people in the State Department, like XCIA people, all sorts of different stuff to try and get a flavor for like the political situation in various different countries.
[00:12:52] Ultimately, I presented some preliminary thoughts to folks and they were like, this is really good. Like you did a lot of work. Basically like, Hey, this is better than we thought it was gonna be. And I was like, oh, thanks. And they're like, so when are you going? I was like, what do you mean? They're like, when are you going to Africa to go figure this out?
[00:13:09] And I was like, I hadn't really thought that far. I didn't know I was gonna have to go. And they're like, well, you're going. I went straight from my bachelor party in New Orleans, 30 hours. From from New Orleans to Atlanta, Atlanta to South Africa, South Africa, to Hara, Zimbabwe,
[00:13:26] Sean Mooney: Holy mackrel!
[00:13:28] Mark Langer: That'll change your mindset pretty quickly.
[00:13:31] And I would go over to Africa ultimately for kind of 20, 30 days at a time or more. I had to figure out the strategy and I'd meet with investment managers. I had direct assets, uh, some of the largest publicly traded companies on the continent. I was young. I was really young. Um, I was in my twenties. And for a lot of the, the time I would be by myself, and again, it go, it kind of goes back to what we talked about at the, at the beginning, which is like, figure it out.
[00:13:58] Right? And I figured it out. That hasn't been on the resume in a really long time. That confuses people and some people are like, what are you talking about? It's a very interesting experience and certainly makes me very grateful for being in this country too. Like, uh, you go to some places that are less than desirable.
[00:14:17] In some tough situations.
[00:14:19] Sean Mooney: How did you make the choice to go to Zimbabwe first? What was the rationale?
[00:14:23] Mark Langer: Agriculture. So at the time, and for a long time, Zimbabwe was a bread basket of Africa. Robert Mugabi, who was a dictator in the country, he created quite a bit of instability in the country, both from a currency perspective, from uh, race relations, all sorts of different stuff.
[00:14:41] The economic situation was pretty precarious, but they did, they always had. Solid infrastructure and some agricultural opportunities, and that was what brought me there.
[00:14:50] Sean Mooney: As you reflect back on your experiences, what was one of your favorite things or things that makes you smile when you think about your time there?
[00:14:58] Mark Langer: It's probably two things. One, I had never really seen the world before. It was an opportunity to see the world. It opened my eyes to the plight of others and how despite some challenges in this country, I think like this is an amazing place and we're all very lucky to be here. The second thing is I got to go to Cape Town a couple times and, and Cape Town's a pretty special place, and it feels like you're about to fall off the earth and there's ocean.
[00:15:25] You have mountains, you have city. It's a pretty special place. You got to explore that all by myself, right? Yeah, I'm, I'm very grateful for that.
[00:15:34] Sean Mooney: I mean, what an amazing, particularly when you're younger, that's something that in the moment you go, wow, this is really hard. I think we've all had those. You look back on those things and you go, that was pretty amazing though.
[00:15:46] I can re
[00:15:47] Mark Langer: Yeah, I mean, it's, the first time I was there was, God, it was like 15, 16 years ago. At least. Now, like now, I'm, I'm very grateful in the moment. I was like, wow, this is really hard. Like, what am I doing here? And I'm like, how am I gonna figure this out? But now I'm look back at it, I'm like, oh yeah, that was easy.
[00:16:04] Sean Mooney: Maybe with tenacity, grit, and resilience in mind. Are there any things else you've kind of encountered that have hard, that you kind of took on? And that certainly seems like one to me.
[00:16:12] Mark Langer: That's probably the one. There's others that I, I'm sure I've encountered, but that one was pretty tough.
[00:16:19] Sean Mooney: And so Mark, you've had this great set of experiences that are, I think, singular in an amazing way.
[00:16:26] You've gone through coming out of this kind of big family in New York where you gotta figure things out and then you, you go to a smaller school and then you come out after nine 11 and then you're thrust into far away places. You've had this great set of kind of interplay and you've seen the private equity industry and it's modern eras.
[00:16:44] It's developed as both of us kind of came up in a similar time in PE. Now private equity is kind of evolving into much more of a business and whatnot, and you have these multifaceted elements to business building as we think about your firm, like what are some of the ways that people who you invest in should come to expect that like this is how this interplay of all these motions occur.
[00:17:09] Now, specifically in your firm, which has really kind of dialed in and up, the approach around interplay between the deal team and the operating executives and the leadership teams, et cetera.
[00:17:19] Mark Langer: What I always say is that, particularly in like the middle market, which is the sandbox that I've been in my whole career.
[00:17:26] It's very labor intensive. I think that's just a part of my personality as well. My goal starts with just making a business better than it was when I started. Like that is a core mantra. Just make it better, better experiences for the employees, better opportunities for the employees, better culture. I think if you do that, everything else kind of comes into place.
[00:17:50] Something like was really important in my family and one of the first jobs I had growing up too. I, I remember the guy was fanatical about doing it the right way. It was all around me growing up, and I think that's been kind of my mantra and what that means for me is like, it's a little bit of a balance and it's something that I, I struggle with a little bit on access.
[00:18:12] To me, my executives, they're CEOs of businesses that I partnered with years ago. At a prior firm or we sold a business and I still talk to these folks on a like semi frequent basis. And in fact, like a couple days ago I just spoke to one that just sold. I try to still be that trusted confidant for life.
[00:18:34] Like, and that's an important part of it. So as I think about what all that means is that like the relationship with the CEO is, to me, the most precious thing. They have to trust me, I have to trust them. What that translates into is that I also have to run kind of quality control for all things. And so whether that's our business development team, an operating partner, a service provider that we put in front of them, it's my pool of political capital that I have with the exec and I have to put the right people in front of 'em, and if I don't, I need to fix it.
[00:19:09] That's my responsibility. I think we do an amazing job here on the business development side. The last two funds we've done kind of 16 platforms, over 170 add-on acquisitions. I kind of call the business development function like the white glove service that we provide, sourcing transactions, and then me and my team executing the transactions and helping with kind of the post close integration process.
[00:19:32] Like that's a really important part of our value creation. On the operating partner side, it's pretty bespoke. It depends on the situation. It depends on what the business needs. I think one of the challenges, particularly in the middle market, is finding like a, an operating partner that is part of the four walls of a private equity firm that fits in every situation.
[00:19:54] And part of what, again, my responsibility is, is to be a good listener and to figure out alongside the CEO and the management team, what does this business need? And then getting the right person in front of them. That's really important. 'cause I think a, a good operating partner and an operating executive.
[00:20:12] Can be very helpful as we're scaling these things. I always say that the lower middle market is inherently chaotic. Small businesses are just, no matter what you do, there's gonna be some amount of chaos in the business. And what that means is just people wearing multiple hats, or you kind of go in the extra yard for a customer because they're 7% of your business or whatever it is, right?
[00:20:36] I love that. But part of my job is to try and reign in that chaos. And that entails putting the right people in the right seats as well as introducing the right people into the situation.
[00:20:48] Sean Mooney: Hi, this is Sean. Wanted to take a quick moment to tell you a little bit why BluWave exists. It's based on this whole notion that assessing opportunities and building businesses is really hard.
[00:20:59] We all know third party expert service providers can dramatically help, but at the same time, it's hard to know who's good, usually leaving you like I would do and call friends and ask, do you know someone who does this? Or just go the square peg, round hole route. So after nearly 20 years in PE, I decided to solve my own problem and create a BluWave.
[00:21:21] Today many hundreds of PE firms, thousands of portco's leading public companies, private companies, all call BluWave, to instantly get connected with the exact third party service provider that they want that's pre credentialed by BluWave and perfectly calibrated for their need. Really good. You too can give us a call or visit our website at bluwave.net.
[00:21:41] We're free to use and you can benefit the same way other top PE firms do. Back to the show.
[00:21:48] I really like your, your perspective and your point there. And if you look at CenterOak, you have everything that. You would hope to get in a partner in terms of thoughtful investment partners, you have operating executive, you have BD people to help with the sourcing.
[00:22:01] You have kind of the full stack. And what I really like to hear about the approach that you're taking is, is that you're really describing this in a way that I almost hear is almost like servant leadership at point. And so I think a lot of times it's confusing within other firms where like you don't really know who to go to or how to navigate.
[00:22:19] The operating partners kind of come in, but they're almost an island unto them own deal partners doing their thing and other, so it's almost like these different spheres in orbit of each other, but it's not really clear. And the way you're describing to me is like you're here to run point in service of the CEOs you're working with to make them successful and get them the resources they need to do their job.
[00:22:40] Mark Langer: Well, I think you nailed it and, and to be a sounding board. Right. And I've kind of partnered with enough teams to build businesses and thankfully be successful in doing that. And you do this for long enough, you get enough experience doing it. It's exactly what you said. I think where people get this misconception, particularly when you're younger, is that you beat dictatorial with the management teams.
[00:23:07] That might work for a month. It might work for a year. It doesn't end in a successful partnership. It just doesn't. That's not how this works, particularly in the lower middle market. It's not a successful long-term strategy in my opinion.
[00:23:20] Sean Mooney: I a hundred percent agree. I think that's why private equity is, is such a great team sport because everyone either does well together or they all fail together.
[00:23:30] And if each and every deal that you're investing at in concert with your management team isn't surviving and thriving, then no one in your firm does well. Right? And so you need everyone to start pulling on the orgs together. But I really like what you're saying is like you're gonna be there to like be on point to make sure.
[00:23:47] Each one of those porticos that you're pulling orders together are kind of going in the straight and forward versus bouncing left and right. You can tell I grew up in Texas 'cause I only know how. Speak metaphorically. Uh, no, I
[00:23:56] Mark Langer: love it. I've been here a couple years now. It makes sense to me. And I say guard rails, like I use that term a lot, especially with my teams.
[00:24:05] I'm like, listen, like I'm giving you kind of the tools. I mean, I'm gonna give you kind of like my feedback and I'll guardrail for you. Like, don't get too crazy. Like you can't go spend $5 million to go do x. Right. Here's a million dollars, let's go do it. Let's go win. And if we're successful, then maybe there is another 4 million bucks.
[00:24:22] But like let's stair step it a little bit.
[00:24:24] Sean Mooney: I love that as we kind of build our conversation forward, there's been some themes that we've talked about like tenacity and resilience and the chaos of business building. A lot of people in their minds have this like romantic vision of what it's like to be in a restaurant, but restaurant's a lot of hard work and it's controlled chaos, right?
[00:24:42] And at the end it creates something beautiful. In the same way in my career, in, in lower middle market, PE and then now building this company. Everyone has a business. This romantic vision of a business is like this, like up into this, right? Kind of like beautiful ascension. What people don't realize, it's a, it's like a sign curve, maybe at an angle where it's ups and downs and ups and downs, but more often than not, if you're doing it right, you end up in the right place.
[00:25:09] Mark Langer: That's why I kind of go back to the like make sure you're, you're building the business for the long term, you're making the right decisions and trying to leave it better than you started. Nothing has ever been like linear, like perfectly linear. Like there's always some bump in the road. I mean, there's a CEO that I'm really close with on a personal level, and he and I partnered together this probably seven or eight years ago, and we were doing really well.
[00:25:34] And then we doubled the size of the business with an add-on, and we just happened to close it in January of 2020. And this business got rocked for like six months plus during COVID and our supply chain got like thrown off and there was all sorts of stuff that we had to work through and we worked through it together and it took our relationship from like a seven or eight to like a 10.
[00:26:01] Right. And we're still close to this day 'cause we're doing it together. We figured it out together and ultimately it was an incredible exit for us. But it was not linear. I mean, there were some times where I was like, we made a terrible mistake, I think. Right? I didn't say it out loud, or I'm saying it to myself, and you have those nights.
[00:26:18] I'm sure it's a similar thing when you're an entrepreneur. I always say that entrepreneurs and folks in private equity probably make hundreds of decisions a week, maybe more, right? And you're gonna get a lot of decisions wrong. And what makes a successful entrepreneur or a successful investor is. Fixing those mistakes, like recognizing that you are wrong and that you need to pivot.
[00:26:41] That is hard. That is really, really hard to admit that. But sometimes you gotta do it. I would agree with you. Unfortunately, I haven't had many like linear investments in my career. I've done pretty well. But there's always something, right? Always something pops up. I think that's part of being in the lower middle market.
[00:26:58] Sean Mooney: When I was in PE almost nearly 20 years, I don't think I had a single investment that ended up in the place where it ended up. For reasons we thought it would in in our investment deck.
[00:27:10] Mark Langer: Yeah, exactly. Like those four or five reasons that you listed that like are really cute and you're like, yeah, we're geniuses.
[00:27:16] Like this is how it's gonna play out. There's always like something else that maybe ends up being the tailwind and you're like, wow, I didn't see that. That was gonna be the reason why we grew 15% a year.
[00:27:28] Sean Mooney: And you would always get there, but for reasons you didn't know, and the reasons you got there were the ones that I think you just so elegantly shared is that.
[00:27:35] It's tenacity, grit, resilience, and if something gets in your way, you don't stop. You go left, you go right, you go above it, you go below it, and you keep on moving forward.
[00:27:45] Mark Langer: Just keep moving forward. That's exactly right. There's always gonna be impediments in life, professionally, personally, you gotta dust yourself off and just keep going.
[00:27:54] Sean Mooney: So when we started BluWave, it had some different elements to it. It was gonna be fully self-service. It was gonna be a platform and it was gonna be like a SaaS product. 'cause that's what I invested in. I'm forever grateful because you were very upfront as I came through and I've come through Mark's office in Connecticut and I'm like, Hey, we're in business now.
[00:28:12] Here's what you think. And you gave me utterly honest, straightforward advice and I go, you're right.
[00:28:21] Mark Langer: I'm known for being like probably overly transparent with people. I bet you walked outta that meeting and were like, I hate that guy.
[00:28:28] Sean Mooney: No, no.
[00:28:30] Mark Langer: But it's funny, like. We've had a good relationship for a really long time and it's funny how relationships start.
[00:28:37] I walked outta that meeting, I was like, man, I don't know how that's gonna go. And then here you are, 15 years later,
[00:28:43] Sean Mooney: Well, eight. It feels like it.
[00:28:45] Mark Langer: Oh my God, it feels like 15. I've been doing this too long. But I remember I was like, I have no idea how that's gonna go. Yeah. And that guy probably hates me. And then here you are now, and the way you've scaled the business is really impressive.
[00:28:56] How entrenched you are in like the deal community. The name BluWave, I mean there's few private equity folks that don't know BluWave. To be able to do that is, is impressive in a short amount of time.
[00:29:08] Sean Mooney: Well, it's kind of you to say, but it's actually the advice you gave to me was incredibly valuable and, and appreciated because when I was testing this idea, first I would go to all my friends and they go.
[00:29:18] That sounds amazing. You should do that. Like, well, I'm not gonna do it back. And like, no, you should do it. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna do it. And then I brought him back and I'm like, well, we're not gonna use that. Like, wait a minute.
[00:29:28] Mark Langer: You're like, but you, you told me this is a great idea.
[00:29:31] Sean Mooney: Whoa, why didn't you tell me that before I left the job that I worked my whole life together? So, so when you gave me the straight shot, I was like, you dust off your pants. And you go, you know what? He is right. And that was one of the core conversations that we had that you gave me that caused me to pivot it that caused the, the BluWave flywheel to start spinning all of a sudden.
[00:29:52] So I'm forever grateful of that. But it's that candor is, is a gift that so often people don't appreciate 'cause they think it's not. And that's, I think, a core strength of yours.
[00:30:01] Mark Langer: Yeah, I appreciate that.
[00:30:03] Sean Mooney: With kind of this tenacity, grit, resilience in mind, what's some of the piece of advice you're giving your colleagues today to kind of manage through these times?
[00:30:10] Mark Langer: Right now, I think it's a couple things. One is I try and encourage young people to make mistakes, to challenge themselves in ways that they didn't think. It's the same thing I tell a lot of our CEOs, like the CEOs that I work with, I try and encourage 'em, it's okay to make, like no one's gonna be perfect, like, and we'll get through this together.
[00:30:31] Like, we'll figure it out. There's no finger pointing. It's just like, okay, well that didn't work, but let's pivot and try something else. I always try and encourage people. To be willing to make a mistake. That's probably the first thing. I think the second thing to me is take a longer term approach. I feel like sometimes, particularly in this day and age, we're so focused on the now, on like the next hour, the next month, and lose sight of what we are trying to be either as people, as a company, as a firm, whatever it is, and just take your time and build for the long term.
[00:31:11] I remember being in my twenties and thirties and like, that's one of the more challenging things. You want it now or you want to get through it. And particularly as our mid-levels and junior folks are interacting with our management teams too, like they gotta realize that like these people have families, these people need to go home and just because we want to buy the company and sell the company in four to five years.
[00:31:36] That doesn't resonate. You've gotta try something else. And it kind of goes back to the compelling somebody to do something as opposed to partnering with them to do something. And when you show people that you are willing to be in the trenches with them and that you're in the fight with them, and you'll be an advocate for them, whether it be extending a timeline or getting them the resources they need, that resonates a lot more with people and gets people to like believe in you and want to work with you.
[00:32:03] Than it does of, like Langer told me, you have 20 days to get this done. I don't care how you get it done, get it done. That doesn't work. And then probably the last thing is like everyone needs to find their own voice and their own kind of brand. Just because something works for me, whether it be, we talked about like being very candid, not everyone needs to be candid.
[00:32:24] There's other people that can do different things and have different approaches and just be equally as successful. That was another thing that my parents always taught growing up, which is like be very respectful of different cultures, different people, and, and learn from those people. I'm grateful for that.
[00:32:40] I still treasure that in a lot of ways because part of what we were talking about earlier is like, not everything's linear, but people can get to the final result in different ways, ways, and that there doesn't necessarily need to be a right or wrong on how you get there.
[00:32:53] Sean Mooney: I think those are all really timeless piece of advice that I think all of us wish we knew back in the day, and I think through those, it's one, this whole idea of taking chances is so important, particularly today.
[00:33:07] Everyone feels paralyzed because everything's recorded. It's all memorialized now. It's all transcripted on these recorded devices. God, and, and there's just no room for error and, and canid, particularly in private equity, that's what I felt the most is like I need to innovate. I need to do things differently because the market's competitive, but I can't take any risks because there's such a penalty for failure.
[00:33:30] But the only way to differentiate and breakthrough is by taking risks. I think that's lost on a lot of people, and as a result, people play the safe game and you get safe outcomes. It's not good. I mean, I guess it's good enough. It depends on what you want, but the people in your line of business usually want more.
[00:33:47] In order to do that, you have to be able to take risks, and then another thing that really resonates whole, but take your time. You know it's not all gonna happen at once. Africa experience for me was, was China. And so I got sent at a young age, like right after WTO.
[00:34:02] Mark Langer: Oh wow.
[00:34:03] Sean Mooney: And I'm like, what is going on?
[00:34:04] And gotta have these conversations like with the Port Co we had over there. And they would yes and no. Did not mean yes or no. They mean I acknowledge you said something and it could mean something. And so I was like, was that a yes, yes or a no no. Or you yes no or a no? Yes. And then I'm like, alright, I'm getting on a plane.
[00:34:21] Mark Langer: Alright, we're gonna figure this out in person okay?
[00:34:24] Yeah.
[00:34:24] Sean Mooney: And I was at a dinner and one of the things there, just as a quick aside, which is hilarious, is they, they love to drink a lot at ceremonial things as they thought they could coach you into doing business.
[00:34:34] Mark Langer: Yes. I've been to China much time.
[00:34:36] Sean Mooney: This drink called baijiu, if you recall.
[00:34:38] Mark Langer: Yeah.
[00:34:38] It's so bad. At least the stuff that I drank was not tasty.
[00:34:41] Sean Mooney: I think it's an acquired taste for sure. And what the rule there was like the senior people could delegate. To the junior person to be the designated drinker if you'll, and so my bosses would always designate me and I just would drink like half a bottle of BI Joe with all these government officials.
[00:35:00] At one point I got taken aside and when very senior person who was great, I don't his name, but he was a really good guy and he, he would call me young. He used always tell me like, take your time, young bull. You know, like you're gonna get there. And he'd be like, pat me on my head. And then he was like, Gombe.
[00:35:15] And I'm like, oh no, I can't have one more.
[00:35:18] Mark Langer: Here we go again.
[00:35:18] Sean Mooney: like young bull, come here. And then he'd tell me. But he was always, just take your time. We're gonna get there. I think the advice you shared is really good. And then you combine that with be yourself. I dunno about you, but I think it's something that a lot of people struggle with and you eventually get comfortable with.
[00:35:33] But like the whole imposter syndrome thing that I had so much as like this up becoming professional where you're just so eager to please. And it wasn't until way later I was just like, I'm just gonna be myself. I think that's just such a good advice for anyone. So you got the makings of your book here.
[00:35:48] Mark your three core themes here, but I, I think it's such good advice.
[00:35:53] Mark Langer: I appreciate that.
[00:35:54] Sean Mooney: Mark, this has been a, a blast. B, I'm glad to finally be able to get you on here. Because I have been forever indebted to you for the gift of candor that you gave me early on, because had I undo that thing, it would've been a much shorter ride.
[00:36:10] So
[00:36:10] Mark Langer: you would've gone back to private equity too. Yeah,
[00:36:12] Sean Mooney: exactly. Which would've been great. You always say kind of like last thing is like you made me think about is like everything's chaotic and, and whether I was in private equity or I was in the, in the seat. Now the similarity was, is like I'd say as like.
[00:36:25] I've got the highest highs and the lowest lows in either of those jaws and I have 'em seven times a day. But I wouldn't trade it for anything else.
[00:36:31] Mark Langer: I agree. The best way to describe it, there's, I'm sure at right after I get off this podcast, I'll have like some email where I roll my eyes and I'm like, oh my God, I did not need that on a Friday afternoon.
[00:36:43] But you get through it.
[00:36:45] Sean Mooney: And then I followed up and I go, that's the reason why the only hair I've left is gray. But, uh,
[00:36:52] exactly. So there's, you know, there's two sides to every coin. Alright, my friend, well this has been great talking and I learned all sorts of things that I wish I knew before and. I really appreciate it 'cause a generous gift to share this mark. So thanks again for joining.
[00:37:06] Mark Langer: Well, thanks for having me. I enjoyed it as well Sean.
[00:37:19] Sean Mooney: That's all we have for today. Special thanks to Mark for joining. If you'd like to learn more about Mark Langer and CenterOak Partners. Please see the episode notes for links. Please continue to look for the Karma School of Business Podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcast. We truly appreciate your support.
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[00:37:58] And you can do the same for free. Whether or not you are in the PE world, 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. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the individuals presenting and do not necessarily reflect the user positions of any other persons or entities, including those referenced here in.
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