[00:00:05] Sean: Welcome to the Karma School of Business, a podcast about the private equity industry, business best practices, and realtime trends. I'm Sean Mooney, BluWave's founder and CEO. In this episode, we have an awesome conversation with Tyler Ashley, Head of Business Development with McNally Capital. Enjoy.
[00:00:39] I am super excited to be here today with Tyler Ashley. Tyler, thanks for joining.
[00:00:45] Tyler: Hey, good to see you, Sean. How's it going?
[00:00:47] Sean: Good. Good. I've been looking for this one for a long time. We're gonna have a very interesting conversation for a number of reasons here. Why don't we jump up with the preamble of the story here.
[00:00:57] So Tyler, can you share a little bit about yourself, kind of how you grew up, where you went to college, how you ultimately got into private equity?
[00:01:04] Tyler: I am from New York originally, upstate New York, Albany area, about three hours from Boston, two and a half hours north of the city. Lived there my whole life, never really saw myself leaving the Northeast and really only looked at colleges in the Northeast.
[00:01:16] And then I had an aunt and uncle who moved down to Winston-Salem, North Carolina when I was a junior in in high school. And told me I had to come down and look at Wake Forest, and I didn't think I wanted to go that far away from home and flew down on a beautiful September day and kind of fell in love with South and school with great academics and sports and, and, and everything.
[00:01:37] And so I believe if I got in, that's, that's where I'm gonna go. And so I did. So I went to Wake Forest for undergrad, moved down to North Carolina, lived down there for four years, got a really good taste of a different part of the country, which was great, and kind of had that itch to do more of that after college.
[00:01:53] I actually wasn't positive what I wanted to do. I, I was a business major, looked at some of those rotational development programs, wasn't completely sold on any of the job opportunities I had, and randomly also applied to go work at a ranch in Wyoming, a guest ranch, and got that. So I
moved out to Wyoming in May right after I graduated from college and took a job as a chef at a guest ranch in South central Wyoming.
[00:02:20] Basically just catered to people who wanted to go out and live the cowboy life for a week. It was awesome. Lived in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. Got to use all the amenities at the ranch, horseback riding, fly fishing, hiking from May till September. Worked out very well because I also met my now wife working at that ranch, so we both worked there at the same time.
[00:02:39] We kind of parted and both went our own separate ways post the ranch, and I moved down to Argentina and actually taught English down there for a little over a year, which was great. I had a lot of fun. I didn't speak a word of Spanish when I went down there. Lived with a family that didn't speak a word of English, and this was in 2010 to 2011.
[00:02:59] And basically I had a pocket dictionary. I didn't have an iPhone and basically had to figure out how to speak their language or, or I wouldn't speak for a year. Lived down there, taught English in this small rural town, traveled a lot in South America, and then finally my parents cracked the whip and said, all right, you gotta put that business degree we paid for to use.
[00:03:15] So moved back to the Northeast to New York City. Lived there for a bit and worked for a year at a, at a tech startup, and then moved over to the BBC, the British Broadcasting for about three years. Always in kind of business development, marketing, sales type roles, but kind of had always wanted to do something a little more analytical with my life and had a desire to go back to business school.
[00:03:39] And to be honest, I thought I wanted to get outta business school and start something my own and be an entrepreneur. I went to Babson College, which is just outside of Boston and really their bread and butter is entrepreneurship. And I thought I was gonna come outta Boston with this great idea and start a business of my own, realized quickly that I didn't have that idea, and it's a lot harder to start a business than maybe just getting your MBA and basically entrepreneurship.
[00:04:02] But I started taking some M&A classes at Babson that I really enjoyed, thought maybe I wanted to move into the world of either investment banking or private equity. But at that point I was in my late twenties life as an investment banking associate. Even post MBA, just, I was about to get engaged.
[00:04:18] Didn't really seem like the world for me, so I kind of gave up on that. But then my second year of business school, I saw a posting for a internship opportunity that was a business development role at a private equity firm in Boston. I immediately applied for that 'cause it kind of mirrored the world I wanted to get into with what my previous world was in business development, marketing and sales.
[00:04:40] Got the internship and essentially served as the business development associate. At a lower middle market, industrial tech firm in Boston for about a year as my whole second year of business school turned into a full-time job afterwards and now has turned into almost a, a decade long career in business development for private equity.
[00:04:58] Sean: It's a really fascinating background, and I was, I was about to ask you while you're talking. So is your last name Dutton by chance? Or, or your middle one? I was like, like, man, you had an exciting, like, adventure, like going to live on a, uh, a ranch in Wyoming. And then going down to Argentina, that must have just been
[00:05:16] spectacular.
[00:05:18] Tyler: It was amazing. I have a lot of friends who went straight into the workforce post-college and that's great and all, and they probably were getting bigger paychecks than I was and, and kinda living that life. But I took all in probably about a year and a half off to pursue some things I wanted to do post-college and then jumped right into the workforce,
[00:05:35] kind of didn't skip a beat and don't feel like I'm any further behind in my career than if I just went straight into it and gained all these awesome life experiences. Met some awesome people. Obviously met my wife working at the ranch, and that probably wouldn't have happened if I worked there. So that completely changed the trajectory of my life.
[00:05:50] But then also, like my host family that I lived with in Argentina, I didn't speak the same language for probably a good three, four months. I could barely, language is not my strength, so it took me a while to to learn Spanish. I studied French in school. There are some of the sweetest people, some of the most amazing people there at my wedding.
[00:06:06] But yeah, it was awesome.
[00:06:08] Sean: You ultimately made it into private equity and there's almost a serendipitous journey that led you there. But one of the things that, particularly in the modern era of private equity, is this kind of openness to let the world come to you and see the world of opportunity that's in front of you that may not look obvious.
[00:06:24] And so in some ways, these early adventures in life seemed like they're probably perfect training because you, you can't just go on the straight narrow path in your business anymore. It's, you gotta be looking to the left and to the right to see kind of these little pockets of wonder and opportunity and find them where many don't think they may
[00:06:42] exist.
[00:06:43] Tyler: Right? To be honest, in my career, not just my career in private equity, but even pre-business school, what I found was having that unique start, that was the thing I would talk about most on my resume and still today it gets brought up being like, wait, what's the, what did you do here? And I think it is a differentiator and you get out there, and again, I, I serve in a business development capacity and so I'm out there and I'm interfacing with a lot of different folks from McNally Capital.
[00:07:09] And a lot of times I can say I went through the traditional route and sure, that's great. A lot of people and I would've learned and done a lot there, but, it really sticks out and is a little bit memorable when you kind of talk about different things you did. And then not only is it memorable 'cause it's unique, but it's also memorable because you find commonality with someone, right?
[00:07:26] Oh, I worked out at this ranch in Wyoming. Oh. I used to vacation with my family at a ranch in Wyoming. What ranch did you work at? Or, you know, I lived down in Argentina and it is, oh, I did that in China, or I did that in France or wherever. And you have a lot of commonality that you can then build a relationship off of because I think so much of this,
[00:07:43] too, in this role or any business development role is, yeah, you need to know the business. You need to know the industry you're talking about, but you need to connect on a personal level too. And I've found that to be a great asset for me in my career.
[00:07:54] Sean: And so much of, of the PE world today, and really always, and PE is like, you're gonna see hundreds of companies a year.
[00:08:01] You're gonna be doing things every day that you've never done before, and your boss or whomever would say like, all right, just go figure it out. And he had to figure it out and like, what's more of, go figure it out than being dropped off on a dirt road five hours west of Buenos Aires without speaking the language.
[00:08:20] And then to figure out how to teach people English before, that's a go figure it out job right out of the gates. I feel like I've already asked you this question, but I'm curious to see if there's more. The next question I I often ask people is, we'd know you better if we knew this about you. I already know things that I never knew about you, that I feel like, holy mackerel, I didn't know that.
[00:08:38] So is there anything else that, uh, we can pull back
[00:08:41] the layers of Tyler on here?
[00:08:44] Tyler: I guess an uncommonly known fact and also very random fact, but ties into why I, I studied French and not, not Spanish, never spoke Spanish, was I have dual citizenship with France. My father was born in New Jersey, but his father is French and grew up there.
[00:09:00] He moved here before he had a family. And then, when my dad was eight, moved the whole family back to Paris. He owned his own kind of import-export cocoa bean business, and moved the whole family back to Paris. And then my dad moved back here from college and met my mom, who's New York-born and raised and had us in New York.
[00:09:16] But I got French citizenship through my dad being a French citizen and never really used French. I, I now can maybe tell you like three words. Spanish is more of what I know now, but for someone who I don't consider myself super worldly, but, given that, given the time I've spent abroad in Argentina and all that, I definitely have gotten around.
[00:09:37] So that's something else that unique about me.
[00:09:39] Sean: Yeah. So you are a man of the world here, so you're, it's gonna be a Dos Equis commercial with you in it here and so...
[00:09:45] Tyler: exactly. Don't ask me to speak the languages, but.
[00:09:50] Sean: Hey, as a quick interlude, this is Sean here. Wanted to address one quick question that we regularly get. We often get people who show up at our website, call our account executives that say, Hey, I'm not private equity. Can I still use BluWave to get connected with resources? And the short answer is yes.
[00:10:06] 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.
[00:10:30] Visit our website at BluWave.net. Thanks. Back to the episode.
[00:10:38] So maybe as we, as we turn the, the page on our conversation here, Tyler, as I think back on, all the people in PE that I knew when I was in PE and, and then now all the people like you that, that I serve in this current chapter of my life with BluWave is that people in private equity, everyone is smart.
[00:10:57] That's kind of like table stakes and the world's full of plenty of smart people. I think one of the biggest differentiators in the people that are drawn to this industry is they're also off the charts, tenacity, grit, resilience. And when they come into challenge, they find a, a way to overcome and it changes their perspective on how things existed before and how to take on the world as it unfolds in the future.
[00:11:21] And so, Tyler, I'm curious maybe what's one of these hard things that you've encountered, that was something you had to take on? How'd you overcome it and how to change your
[00:11:29] perspectives?
[00:11:31] Tyler: As you know, we have been trying to schedule this conversation for a while now, and we had to schedule it earlier this year, but unfortunately I had to postpone this.
[00:11:39] It's, it's October now. I think we were supposed to speak in in February or early March, but I've been a skier my whole life. Grew up in the northeast, mostly skiing there, but skied my entire life since I was three years old. I've had some falls and accidents before, but nothing really serious. But, my second day out skiing this year in early January, last run of the day,
[00:11:58] so that's a big tip. Never call last run. Last run of the day, we were going down for lunch. I got in a pretty bad ski accident where I was cut off, kind of hit an edge, lost a ski, and I, I was going fairly fast and went into the woods and hit all kinds of stuff, hit rocks, roots, trees. I was knocked out, but was found on my back, and long story short, I had to be tobogganed down.
[00:12:20] Unfortunate thing was I was pretty much a minute and a half from the base, so, so pretty close to the end. Long story short, after an ambulance ride, this happened up in Vail from Vail Health down to Denver Health. Here in Denver, I had a dislocated fracture to my sternum, which required surgery, a few compression fractures in my spine and a concussion.
[00:12:41] They assumed again, I was knocked out. PSA for any of the skiers out there. Make sure you wear a helmet. A helmet was completely concaved in on the outside, but you looked at the inside. It looked like it hadn't been touched. But long story short, that culminated in a, a surgery the day later to repair the fracture of my sternum.
[00:12:57] And then unfortunately, I had to battle infection in that incision site, which culminated in a second surgery about a month later. So all in, I was fairly outta commission from a travel or work standpoint, which is obviously a really important part of my role, from early January to the end of March. Really, my first kind of big foray back into the world was, was the ACG DealMAX conference this year, which was, was great to reconnect with everyone there, but learned a lot from that experience.
[00:13:24] You know, I'm in my mid to late thirties at this point, and you think for a while that you're invincible and nothing can happen to you, and in a split second that can all change. And so for me it was eye-opening, not only from a personal perspective, I have two young kids at the time were two and four years old.
[00:13:41] They're just learning how to ski and having to be in the hospital for three or four days and not not see them and come home and kind of have them question me and my son, we were just working with him the weekend before the accident and saying, "Buddy, you gotta work on your pizza and don't do as many french fries.
[00:13:55] Make sure you turn to slow down." And when I saw my son, the first thing he asked me, he goes, "Dad, were you not turning?" I probably wasn't turning like I should have. But it really put into perspective what's important in
life. Where I should be spending time and what I should be doing and how I, I live my life should change a little differently on a business front.
[00:14:16] I was very lucky that my firm, McNally Capital, was super understanding and pragmatic of what had happened to me. I mean, I essentially had surgery and I was fine. My head was fine, I could still move around, and probably at the end of the week I was logged back in just checking emails, right? And I wasn't doing anything drastic.
[00:14:35] I obviously wasn't traveling or anything. My green light would be on on we use teams and people would be questioning me weeks after the accident. "Why are you on right now? Why are you doing this? We see you're on get off." And it's like, what else am I doing? I'm just sitting, sitting in my bed here. I can respond to emails and do all that.
[00:14:51] And I mean, finding an organization that really values the people that work there, understanding who you are and that you have a life outside of that, what's going on, being able to work with you is really important. I certainly found that here. I found that in many jobs that I've worked at in the past.
[00:15:08] But you've heard horror stories of, of things like that happening, you know, to other people and companies not being as understanding. So I learned a lot about kind of what's important in my own life personally, which also encompasses right from a business perspective as well, 'cause you never know what life might throw at you.
[00:15:26] Sean: I mean, that's terrifying, and it's one of those things where so often, unfortunately in life, it takes something terrifying to kind of change people's perspectives, right? So many of the people that, that we all associate with, we're all kind of like, land on our feet people,
[00:15:41] but it is moments like that where you really appreciate how fragile life is. And so I'm, I'm so grateful that you're okay. And obviously you had your family there to be supportive as they were.
[00:15:55] In some ways, as we kind of maybe get back to the business of this conversation, that's a great part to, to preamble because it puts everything in perspective.
[00:16:04] And there's still things that we have to do. Right? And part of the great thing about that's I think, fun and exciting, you know, if you look at the, the ups of what's coming is you all get to build these companies that have
tremendous impact on people's lives in terms of making them provide more and more opportunity and create value and do something that matters.
[00:16:24] It pales in comparison to some of the more kind of life conversations we've had, but it still matters.
[00:16:30] As maybe we turn the page into the next part of our conversation. What is your approach at McNally to more broadly investing and then, and then how do you tie in resources to support the value creation and, and building something that also matters in the, in the business world with your portfolio companies?
[00:16:49] Tyler: McNally Capital, it's a bit unique when it comes to private equity, and it's something that really attracted me to the firm that I know for many of the founders and business owners that we partner with is, is differentiated too. So, our roots are actually with a very old, privately held family company.
[00:17:07] Rand McNally. Our founder, Ward McNally's sixth generation McNally with the family from Rand McNally. His father was running and operating Rand McNally in the late nineties When the family decided to sell the business, they were in traditional print and publishing. A lot was changing with, with internet and GPS at that time, and the family made, made the decision to to sell the business outside the family.
[00:17:31] They started a family office and at that time our founder, Ward McNally, had a career in private equity, started advising initially just his family's family office and how to do direct private equity style investing. Made it his full-time gig in, in 2008 when he founded McNally Capital. So sometimes there's confusion that we are the McNally family's family office.
[00:17:51] We're not, we are actually the direct investing arm on behalf of all the McNally Family Family Office does all their direct investing through McNally Capital. But then when we initially started off, we started doing direct investing on behalf of a multitude of family offices in our network that didn't have direct investing capabilities.
[00:18:09] So we started off our first decade or so of existence was really operating as an independent sponsor where we were going out finding deals and finding capital from a very committed group of family offices within our network on a deal by deal basis. And then f
ast forward to 2021 and that's when we started
[00:18:27] making investments out of our first institutional fund, which was $130 million fund that we were investing out of and made our fifth and final investment in in early February of this year. Now we'll be investing out of our, our second fund, which is called McNally Capital Fund Three. Our focus here, given our roots in a multi-generation family business, is strictly on founder family management-led deals.
[00:18:52] We really like partnering directly with the founder or the children of the founder or a long-term employee of the business who's taken over ownership and really helping them build and grow something that has been their lifeblood, their family, their community's lifeblood for a long time, and really being able to take it to that next level and really where, where those existing owners want to remain at the helm and continue to operate, run the business with assistance.
[00:19:18] We can bring to them from our experience specifically in multi-generation family businesses. Then also specifically within the industries we focus on. So we are very thematic in our approach. We strictly focus on really two core areas of focus. The first being aerospace and defense, and the second being industrial technology and services.
[00:19:37] So we, we've really differentiated ourselves, not only with our history and our background in kind of founder family health businesses, but also from our industry standpoint, we're strictly focused on, on really the lower middle market. Five to thirty of EBITDA is where we spend time, and I don't really foresee that changing anytime in the near future.
[00:19:55] It's our bread and butter. It's what we know, it's what we like. And being cognizant that we know our place and where we play within the spectrum. And there's groups that are really great at being kind of that second institutional capital. And this is a niche for us. Really where we differentiate and I, I think how we win deals.
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[00:21:23] It's a great story in the McNally family. And the Rand McNally kind of business, if you will, is kind of legendary, but it stands kind of a testimony, and from that comes people who continue to be business builders and your firm through Ward and and team grabbed the bull by the horns and, and took it not only from maybe what's in the gene pool, but also to whole different area on just industrials and aerospace and defense.
[00:21:48] And so I'd love to hear, and then how you took it further, and how do you think about the business building resources that you bring to the companies that you partner with?
[00:21:56] Tyler: Yeah, it's been an exciting journey even so I've been with the firm for a little over two years now and seeing how the firm has grown and scaled in my short two years here has been really exciting.
[00:22:08] I think Ward has been really pragmatic about understanding that this business is obviously different than the Rand McNally company, but there's a legacy there that we're continuing on here and it's really cool to being able to build upon that. We've met many extended members of, of the McNally family.
[00:22:26] So it's really a, a family affair for them. So it's great to be a part of that and kind of be able to make our own mark and see where that's going. So as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, I joined about two years ago to lead our business development efforts, so really helping with that thesis development and refinement.
[00:22:43] And over our two years, we've actually become a little bit more narrow in scope in terms of where our expertise is and where we wanna spend time from a thesis perspective. And so that's where we've really dialed into the aerospace and defense and industrial technology services, the specific sub-sectors within them.
[00:22:58] Another area where we've spent a lot of time of building out within the firm is our value creation methodology, and it's been somethin
g that we've been working on since the firm's inception, but it's really something we've codified and, and, and branded over the past few years to really make it more into a concrete thing that we can
[00:23:18] speak to business owners about and really kinda show them how that works in practice. So we've branded our value creation initiative here as Atlas, and that's really our roadmap. You see what we did there with Atlas and I love it. It's really our, our roadmap for building long-term value and growth for our portfolio companies.
[00:23:36] And it's a proven methodology and infrastructure that we've been working on since the firm's inception and really for our partners and principals here since well before that. What we do with with Atlas is we support the end-to-end life cycle with everything from sourcing, to due diligence, to a hundred day planning, and post close value creation all the way through exit.
[00:23:57] So it's a proven kind of step-by-step process that encompasses everything from operations, to business foundations, to technology, human capital, strategy, capital itself obviously. So it encompasses everything that we do. Each company that we partner with is different and distinct, so we bring Atlas to it.
[00:24:20] But then we also bring a great network that we call our McNally Network Advantage. And that's a combination of not only the professionals within McNally, but also industry experts that are, are partners to the firm, select board members that we bring on that really bring a professionalized clip and
[00:24:40] experience to a lot of these lower middle market companies that may not have access to that value creation approach or those individuals that we can bring onto it. And something else that we've really built on, I guess over the past two years is building out a steadfast value creation team internally at McNally.
[00:24:57] So our portfolio value creation team now consists of five individuals that run the gamut, coming from some of the large, big consulting groups that you know of out there as well as people who in a former life were either tech entrepreneurs or CTOs. Obviously, we live in a world today where technology, AI, automation, especially within industries we invest in, is something that's front of mind for everyone.
[00:25:23] But I guess all industries, you can't avoid it these days. And so we have these in-house individuals who come from that background that can really infuse those technical chops and knowhow to these lower middle market companies that typically do not have someone in the CTO role. To really kind of bring that value and catch 'em up to speed really quickly.
[00:25:42] So it's been really interesting and fun to kind of see the development of that team and everything we're doing from a value creation standpoint. I love that.
[00:25:50] Sean: And, and it just speaks so much how the industry is, is evolving. When I started in PE in the very late nineties, it was buy low, sell high, upgrade the accounting system, and add a salesperson.
[00:26:03] And you know, as I, I hear you talk and I was thinking about it, the business of private equity is turning into a business and what a lot of great businesses is, they have a system, they have a way, whether it's the Toyota production system or the Danaher Business System or the McNally Atlas, right? You're coming up with ways of doing things that enable you to systematically create value and no doubt give you a flexibility, but also kind of a common North Star, and you're coupling that with both internal and external resources to help.
[00:26:36] The old African proverb, "You might go faster alone, but you're gonna go further together", and you're doing it both internally and externally to get in there. So that's a great methodology that you've put there. And it shows where the business of PE has come from, but also where it's going. And maybe with that in mind, one of the biggest evolutions that tectonically has occurred in PE overall
[00:26:58] is that PE, understanding that they're in the business of business was this whole idea of the advent of the business development role and knowing that they needed to have sales and marketing of sorts in a more competitive landscape. You've, you know, had a long experience as a leader in that field, in multiple PE firms.
[00:27:18] And so I'm curious, Tyler, to get your perspective. If you look at the industry today. What role is BD playing in the modern PE world and how are the really good
[00:27:31] differentiating in that role?
[00:27:32] Tyler: I think private equity, even in, in my almost decade of, of working within it, has evolved quite a bit
from, it used to be the deal team and they used to wear all the hats, right?
[00:27:41] And that used to be fine. When there was less competition, there were different just ways of working back then that maybe don't exist today and I don't know if you saw this meme, I think it's been circulating a lot in our community, so you probably have, but the meme where there's more private equity firms in the country than there are McDonald's.
[00:28:00] I think it said like 19,000 private equity and 14,000 McDonald's, although I think those numbers may be a bit skewed. I think that may encompass everything from funded groups to independent sponsors to high net worth individuals that are investing family offices. There's a wide array of private equity investors,
[00:28:19] maybe we're not rubbing up against all the time. But that said, it goes to show just how, how crowded this landscape has become and really how do you differentiate. You have to differentiate and obviously you're doing a lot both internally and externally as, as we just discussed, from a value creation standpoint to differentiate.
[00:28:36] And that may mean new hires in development of portfolio ops teams, strategic hires internally, whether that be more back office support. Certainly this business development role is something that you've seen grow quite a bit. I mean, it's been around for a while, but I think really within the past five, ten years I've noticed a, a tremendous increase in the amount of business development professionals and firms with dedicated BD people or BD teams even.
[00:29:03] I mean, you're starting to see teams of upwards of three, five people on them, and I think that just is a dynamic of how do you get out there and how do you ensure that you are seeing the most deals that are relevant to you and your investment criteria out there? And there was a stat I saw out there at some point that mentioned that of the deals within their target that are actually coming to market each year.
[00:29:29] the best firms out there are only seeing about 30, somewhere between 30 and 35% of those deals, which is incredible, right? For an industry that we work in, that we pride ourselves on being intelligent individuals and being super efficient at what we do, to only see 30% of all the deals that come out there seems low to me,
[00:29:47] right? But if that's what the best are, are seeing out there, it just shows how inefficient this market is. So having someone who is dedicated to going out there and being in front of the market, making sure not only the sell side intermediaries and investment banks are hearing from us and are aware of where we're spending time and what we're doing and how we're differentiated, but then also getting in front of the entrepreneurs themselves and making sure
[00:30:09] you have a proprietary outreach strategy as well to get in front of the sellers directly there, increase that 19,000, 'cause now you're competing against all the investment banks that are out there too, that are trying to, you know, win that business directly from this seller. So I think this role is necessary.
[00:30:25] I think that's clear, and just the increase in the amount of professionals you're seeing in this role and just the size and, and, and capabilities of the teams. You're seeing people who come into this role, many of them are coming from the deal side. Oftentimes you're seeing people maybe more similar to me that are coming from a business development sales or marketing type background.
[00:30:44] You see people coming from consulting, you're kind of seeing all different flavors and seeing what works. I don't think there's any right way to cut it and to the point that I spoke about earlier where where you're seeing different teams. I think in order to see more deals, the bigger the team you have behind you, the better.
[00:31:00] If I had two more people on my team, we could be doing more of a direct proprietary outreach approach on our behalf. There's just different strategies you could take that just makes this role very important. Another point I wanted to make just about this role is that it's more than just being the person out there and at the right conferences and playing golf in the right places and doing the right boondoggles and doing all that stuff.
[00:31:23] There's definitely kind of a BD kind of sales aspect to that, but a lot of this is also very strategic in nature. You really need to know the strategy of your firm, but you also have to know kind of the thesis that you invested inside and out. I'm not an operator or have a background in industrial technology and services or aerospace and defense, but I've had to catch up on that really quick over my past two years in order to speak not only to the intermediaries in the space, but also speak to the business owners themselves when we come across them.
[00:31:52] 'Cause it's very easy for them to sniff out when you say you spend time somewhere versus when you actually spend time there. There's an industry research part to this job. Oftentimes there's an event planning, right? Most firms are now hosting events and doing a lot of marketing and collateral development and
[00:32:06] social media presence. And again, I never fancied myself as a social media person, but that kind of falls in your lap with this and making sure you're keeping up with the right ways to get out there and get in front of the right folks. So it's really exciting time to be in this. It's really fun to kind of see it develop over my past decade doing this and excited to see where it's gonna go for the next five, ten years.
[00:32:27] Sean: I love how you shared that as you were speaking. It was making me think about studying industries and how they mature and evolve in general. So many industries, including private equity that you participate in and I did for probably the bulk of my professional career, the product market fit was so good,
[00:32:43] in the early days, you didn't need sales and marketing. And then lo and behold, what happens anytime there's a really good market? Entrants came in. And then you had sales, and now you need not just sales, now you need marketing, right? And so what you're describing is the maturation of an industry and the really good ones like yours are treating it like a business where it's like we're gonna do really, you know, sophisticated sales and marketing motions so that you have the best opportunity to have as many at bats as part of the addressable market as possible.
[00:33:12] And treating that more like a funnel.
[00:33:15] That resonates a
[00:33:15] lot.
[00:33:16] Tyler: And if you think about it too, right? I mean at our portfolio companies that we work with or any private equity firm works with, right? What do you look at? I mean, sales and business development is often one of the first things you look at and say, what's your engine there and how can we revamp that?
[00:33:29] So a lot of private equity firms, you gotta look back internally at yourself and say, this is like another portfolio company or our own company.
You gotta invest in that as well to make sure you're staying competitive and relevant.
[00:33:41] Sean: I love it, and I think it's a great metaphor for what's going on. And likewise, it'll be interesting to talk again in a few years to see where it's going, but I think you're on the pulse of where it is already.
[00:33:51] And so maybe as we bring our, our conversation full circle here, Tyler, one of the things that I, I love to ask people for purely selfish reasons, as I seek to coach myself and my children, and so you've seen a lot, you've learned a lot. You've had a, an adventurous life. You've taken the road less traveled as well as kind of the loftier roads as you kind of worked your way through your career.
[00:34:14] If you could kind of look back and take in, you know, a lot of the lessons that you've gleaned traveling the world and navigating your career and life with some pretty impactful moments, you know, even recently. If you could go back in time and meet your 22-year-old self, what might be one of the pieces of advice that you'd give your person then that you wish you knew then?
[00:34:37] Tyler: One thing I, I'd say more on like a personal note. My wife and I joke about this a lot with two kids, aged three and five. Now it's like we didn't know how much free time we had when we were twenty-two and kid-less. Then what are the things I could have done with that time that I didn't? Like you don't know what free time is until you have kids and realize you have none of it.
[00:34:58] So you definitely realize you are at a point in your life at 22 to have some free time that you may not have, or commitments that you may not have later on in life. So use that free time productively, whatever that is to build your career, health, family, friends, vacations, whatever it might be. You're not always gonna have that much free time, so definitely use that productively.
[00:35:19] But I think on a more professional basis, the advice that that I give to family and friends, or sometimes I get outreach on LinkedIn even with people I don't know, or interns of ours, whatever it might be, that are kind of more in that age range, is build a network. Start building a network at 22. I mean, do it beforehand.
[00:35:38] Build it in college. Having a great network that you build from a young age and you curate and maintain it, that network is gonna stick with you throughout your entire career and life. Definitely from a professional basis, but also on a, on a personal basis. And I definitely, as alluded, came from more of
an untraditional background, and I kind of had my mindset post-business school that I thought this was the industry I wanted to get in.
[00:36:05] I got lucky with an internship, right? But then if I didn't curate the network and the relationships I made from that internship, I never would've moved on to any of my other jobs post that internship, especially for me in a business development role. Network's, everything, right? You never know where a new deal can come from.
[00:36:22] You never know where a new opportunity can come from. So maintaining that network is sometimes a full-time job in itself, but that kind of, for me at least, ties into my real job. But for a lot of folks, it's really important to really kind of stick to that network to, don't be afraid if you see someone on LinkedIn or see them at a conference or on a panel or something, reach out to them.
[00:36:42] I think a lot of times people have fears. I don't wanna reach out to someone because they're too busy or have too much going on that they won't wanna speak to me. My advice to those people when they kind of come back with that is you never know if you don't try, right? And so if you reach out to them on LinkedIn or do a cold email, or I mean even call their office, right?
[00:37:01] The worst thing that can happen, someone says no. And if they say no, then do you really want them as a part of your network anyway? Probably not. The next worst thing is they don't respond. And that could mean, one, they're not interested in talking to you, or they're super busy and they're getting tons of emails in or LinkedIn messages or calls, it gets hard to manage.
[00:37:18] So keep trying. I mean, don't be annoying about it, but you can be a little persistent. Or best case scenario, and, and I'd say for most people, you want are they say, yes, I can take 20, 30 minutes outta my day to hop on a call or grab a coffee, or a drink or something and talk to you about my career or how I got here, or, or whatever it might be.
[00:37:35] So my advice for people at 22 is build that network, curate that network when you get great people in your network. Maintain it, find mentors through that network, and those are people that are gonna stick with you throughout your entire life, no matter where you work, what you do. And that's gonna get people far.
[00:37:52] So that's probably my, my biggest piece of advice for people who are 22.
[00:37:57] Sean: It's so wonderfully said, and it's, it's kind of interesting, you know, it's, I perceive the world probably my, my biggest piece of advice for people who are 22.
[00:37:57] Sean: It's so wonderfully said, and it's, it's kind of interesting, you know, it's, I perceive the world probably too often through kind of like data and patterns, and everyone, as we all know is talking AI, AI, AI, AI, and we get a lot of requests for AI.
[00:38:11] Guess what we get two to one on. We still get calls two to one on people. It's the people that matter. We've been a tribal species for tens of thousands of years. We're meant to be together. And in order to be part of this tribal species, you have to be outward and put yourself out there into it. It's so easy just to say no, and like, I'm not gonna do this,
[00:38:34] I'm, I'm afraid of it. And you're talking to, like, most people are surprised. I was painfully introverted and shy for most of my childhood. And to this day, you know, I'm getting ready to go to a big conference later this week and my battery will be at -20. But you find a way to get exhilarated in the moment and it becomes awesome.
[00:38:54] And I love your point was like, what's the worst person someone could say is no, it's two letters. So it so much aligns with the rest of our conversation. You've kind of found these ways to say yes to everything. You're like, yes, I'm gonna go to Wyoming. Yes, I'm gonna go all throughout Argentina. It doesn't matter if I don't know Spanish.
[00:39:13] Yes, I'm gonna reach out to someone. And what if they say no? Who cares? And so I think that's just such great advice. Be part of the world, exist with people. That's the way we were meant to be. And what's the worst someone could say is no. Yes is a lot better. And you're usually gonna get that.
[00:39:29] Tyler: Exactly, and it just extends, you know, at least from my role too, it's, you never know where a new deal is gonna come up or who in the network,
[00:39:36] and I, I constantly will get outreach from people to my network. They may have no clue what we invest in, but say, "Oh, hey, I came across this deal, or I heard about this deal. Will this be something you'd be interested in?" I can't say it's just like a random outreach saying, "We have this deal for you" has ever come into a deal that we've closed, but one of these days it will.
[00:39:52] So turn over every rock, meet people, and maintain that network. It's crucial.
[00:39:57] Sean: I love it. There's no better way to to end our conversation than that. So Tyler, I really appreciate you spending your time with us, such a tremendous gift. I know you're tremendously busy. I'm very grateful that you're okay from really a scary situation and the world's certainly better with you in it,
[00:40:16] and I'm looking forward to speaking again soon.
[00:40:19] Tyler: Well, thanks for the opportunity here, Sean. This has been great. Yeah. Looking forward to, uh, catching up again here soon.
[00:40:36] Sean: That's all we have for today. Special thanks to Tyler for joining. If you'd like to learn more about Tyler Ashley and McNally Capital, please see the episode notes for the links. Please continue to look for the Karma School of Business Podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcast. We truly appreciate your support,
[00:40:52] if you like what you hear, please follow, rate, review and share. It really helps us when you do this, so thank you in advance. In the meantime, if you want to be connected with the world's best in class, private equity grade professional service providers, independent consultants, interim executives that are trusted by the best business builders in the world,
[00:41:09] including many hundreds of private equity firms, please 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. Onwards.
[00:41:21] The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the individuals presenting and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any other persons or entities,
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