Private Equity Spotlight: Chris Cathcart on Cultivating Entrepreneurship in PE

[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 Chris Cathcart, Managing Partner with the Halifax Group, enjoy.
I am super excited to be here with my friend, Chris Cathcart, Chris, thanks for joining us today. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. This will be a fun one for those of you who know Chris. He's an exceptional human being. For those of you who don't, you'll find out. To jump right into it, Chris, let's talk about how did you get into this industry of private equity?
Everyone has different paths and you're more of one of the OGs in a good way. For those of us who don't know your story, I'd love to hear it for our guests here.

[00:01:06] Chris Cathcart: It's a fun story to tell. I'm passionate about where I sit and what I do with working with small entrepreneurial businesses. I'm the son of an entrepreneur, but it's kind of in my DNA.
I actually remember the morning, I was probably in eighth or ninth grade. My father was a suit and tie guy and he came down one weekday in khakis and a polo and I went, Oh, that's, that's odd. He shared with my sister and I that he was starting his own business. It was one of those things where maybe I was young enough not to think about the risk involved, but just to me, it was hugely exciting.
And he's still running that business today at 75 and I don't know why I have to drag him out of his chair, but just sort of who I grew up thinking about and just loved the nature of entrepreneurial endeavors. And then I think for me, my first job out of college was working for entrepreneurial medical technology companies, you know, helping them navigate FDA reimbursement policy.
I think 80 percent of that industry. The companies are fewer than 50 employees. You start thinking about all of those things and what makes kind of America great is the success and the breadth of small businesses and entrepreneurial businesses in our economy. So for me, it's always just been a ton of fun and a passion and part of my DNA working with entrepreneurial companies.
So for me personally, I went back to business school. I was one of those rare birds. I came out of a liberal arts background, and so I was a rare bird that I wanted to go to finance class, wanted to go to accounting class. Turns out I like them. Don't tell anybody. I really like accounting. And so for me, that experience was hugely important for me to build some of the quantitative or hard skills.
And then I was kind of taking business school as an opportunity to learn those things, fill out the aspect of my career that I didn't have. And I intended. I think ultimately to go and use those skills to be an entrepreneur myself. And before I did that, I was going to go be an investment banker and had a summer internship and a full time offer and was kind of this close to accepting it.
It was a little firm called Bear Stearns and my friend and now partner here at Halifax called and said, Hey, we have the opportunity to stand up an origination strategy in the lower middle market at the time was pretty novel. And then also work with our founder in raising capital. And I went, wow, this would be awesome.
Right. Sort of had an entrepreneurial aspect of it for myself, right. And standing up a new function, but also the opportunity to work closely with entrepreneurial businesses. And so I always joke, it's just how good an investor I was that turned down the best terms offer came to Halifax, but it really was an opportunity to leverage what was in my DNA, the passion for working with entrepreneurial companies.
And It's been a heck of a lot of fun being here for now, 17 years. That's amazing. So this was right out of college. It was right out of business school. So it was an opportunity also. I was a DC guy, grew up North of DC. So it was also an opportunity to come home, but really just a great opportunity to take that academic training, my professional experience and passions.
And marry it all up here in this opportunity at Halifax.

[00:04:10] Sean Mooney: I love that story. And that's the story that's not often told about private equity, particularly as you think about the middle market and lower middle market, it's entrepreneurial investment firms, investing in entrepreneurial companies, small and mid sized businesses, investing in small and mid sized businesses, and kind of fueling the good to great dreams that they have.

[00:04:33] Chris Cathcart: That's exactly right. I think it's one of the great powers and we can maybe talk more about that. To me, it's one of the great advantages that our country has, that our economy has, and then of course, it's really fun and fulfilling to be a part of that.

[00:04:46] Sean Mooney: And I love the fact, you know, growing up with an entrepreneurial father, seeing the shock of khakis in a polo, I can see it in my mind, I too grew up in an entrepreneurial family and it was more of a manufacturing business.
My job's growing up where like. steel toe boots and hard helmets and doing ridiculous things meant to like build character for me. But I had that kind of like khaki and polo moment with my kids. And I was like, by the way, kids, you know, that job I worked my whole life in private equity to get, we're going to start a company and we're going to move to Nashville.
You're like, what, what? This is crazy, dad. I can, Intimately appreciate that moment that you experienced. I hadn't thought of that, but you're exactly right. You were on the flip side. My kids were in the younger Chris seat where they're like, what, this is nuts. If it could only turn out so well here as it has with your father, who's still in the seat and sounds like he's loving it.

[00:05:41] Chris Cathcart: It's been fun. And he's like a lot of entrepreneurs we run into though, right? They're passionate about what they do and really no interest in doing anything else.

[00:05:49] Sean Mooney: I appreciate his staying power because I'm quite confident at some point, a private equity firm will old yeller me and walk me behind a barn.
And I'm like, no, no, no, you just give me a fishing rod or something, you know, but don't do it in a freight

[00:06:02] Chris Cathcart: away,

[00:06:02] Sean Mooney: you know,

[00:06:04] Chris Cathcart: don't do that either. Nonsense, Sean. They will find you a chairman role. Yeah,

[00:06:08] Sean Mooney: exactly right. I'm ready. Cause you know, it'll be sweet justice. You know what goes around comes around. We've learned a lot about you, Chris here.
I'd maybe love to peel the onion back just even a little bit further. And as think as our listeners know, I'd like to ask this question. We'd know you better if we knew this about you. What would be one of those?

[00:06:29] Chris Cathcart: I'll give you a combo of three. Of course, I have to find a way to call it with alliteration.
It's faith, family, and forest. The part that I left out before forest is wake. Unfortunately, it doesn't start with an F. If I'm going to describe myself, and I think many people know many of those things about me, but for me, the first and foremost, most important thing about who I am is my faith. I'm a faithful Christian and I bring it up in this context, not to mention that, who it is or who I am, but.
I think it also has a real bearing on, again, why I'm doing what I'm doing. I don't want to go too big with it, but I do think that entrepreneurialism, capitalism more broadly, massive force for good, for human flourishing, and I think about what we do and who our constituencies are. If you looked at our website, our mission statement, You know, we all collectively put it together and certainly I was part of that and we take seriously the responsibility to serve our constituencies.
So certainly our management partners, right? You think about what we can do to help them flourish and then their teams and of course by extension it impacts their communities. We take very seriously the responsibility to serve our LPs, right? My mother was a teacher for 25 years and has a pension. We don't invest in behalf of her state, but I'm really glad they have SMART.
PE professionals investing capital on her behalf. Teachers don't make a ton of money, right? So to be able to have the support post-care through their pension, I think is hugely valuable. I would love to see the stats, Sean, you may have some of these, but the number of scholarships that have been supported for academic scholarships and high schools and colleges as a result of the work that private equity does.
And then we have our own constituency here, our own team. You have 20 people here at Halifax that we're contributing to their flourishing. For me, it's very oriented towards my faith. To me, it's a very easy extension, very fulfilling for me to be able to be that close to what's really important to me and then be able to manifest that and be a part of that and use whatever few gifts I've got toward that end.
It's pretty exciting and I'm passionate about it. I mentioned family. My wife is the saint. She's an incredible partner to me, but apart for her decision making around men, obviously, you know, picking his spouse and we've got three great kids. The thing that people know about me now is, I have a nine year old, a seven year old, and I have a two year old.
And I joke that I'm the oldest dad since Robert De Niro, right, at this point. So I joke with my LPs, if they have any question about our alignment, you got three college educations to pay for, we're motivated, we're very motivated. And then I mentioned the Wake Forest thing. I'm a huge, passionate, super fan.
It's a little bit like being a Cubs fan, though. We're everybody's second favorite team. A Cubs fan without the World Series title. Not threatening to anyone. And I feel a little bit like that 80 year old Cubs fan, right? Before they won the world series, talking about the great days. I kind of do that too.
I was at wake during the Tim Duncan era. So I wistfully long for the return of those days on the hard court. But those are the three things I think that people should know about me.

[00:09:38] Sean Mooney: I love those answers. And once again, kind of resonate, which is why we get along and have gone along so well over time is the faith side.
I'm. Absolutely in that bucket, although I come from the Catholic variety, I also understand the guilt part of a place, the branch that I came through. So that's good. It keeps me honest. And then there's certainly, I similarly have a saint of a wife who is thank goodness for our parents, because if it were up to me, they'd be in a lot of trouble.
I can also very much similarly remember iconic basketball teams of past as a Georgetown Hoya. There was a time in our history when we played basketball and we were quite good. Fingers crossed on the future.

[00:10:18] Chris Cathcart: Well, it's funny, you and I've talked about this before. I have a banker friend in the industry.
He's a huge Hoya supporter and he makes the point that college basketball is better when you have the traditional powers involved, Georgetown, Wake. There were some great traditional powers. They need to return for the good of the game.

[00:10:37] Sean Mooney: I'm there's always next season. That's what I'm ready. That's what I'm ready for.
It's hard living man. A hundred percent, but that's what makes us so resilient. And probably part of the reason why you're so good at your job. That's right.

[00:10:50] Chris Cathcart: We learned to dust ourselves off and get going in the next season.

[00:10:55] Sean Mooney: So Chris, maybe to turn the page here. I'd love to get your perspective on how you think about elements and value in private equity and we've talked about this here before in this show here is you get the rare privilege of seeing at this point, companies are probably number in the thousands per year.
And when we were both coming up, maybe if you saw a hundred, you're like, Whoa, it just shows the maturation of the business. And I always found it so hard to process. You couldn't read a thousand Sims in a year. And so you needed a yardstick of here's what I'm looking for. And through pattern recognition, it just got better and better and better.
And I'm curious, what are some of the important traits that you look for in a company that will say, you know what? This is. A, a really good company, or B, has the foundation to become a really good company, which is probably even more important these days.

[00:11:49] Chris Cathcart: That's a hard one. As you know, to pick one, you do see so many different businesses and a lot of them do a lot of very special things.
The one I think that, if I think back at all of our great investments, and. Over my 17 years in Halifax, but even before that, and certainly as we're evaluating businesses, even now, I really think it comes down to excellent leadership in management. Now it's important because you talked about the thousands that we'll look at every year.
We don't get to meet management and all of those, right? And that's one of the great advantages of being a private investor, right? There's several, but I think that's one of the great advantages that we get to know management. But as I think about the really successful investments, they've had really incredible leaders in the C suite, entrepreneurs, founders, management teams.
And I think they certainly have been very strategic thinkers. They have a great facility with the numbers. They know the various parts of their business, how they're impacting change, how they're dealing with change, how that's going to inform their decisions going forward. But I think a core of some of this then is also the team they assemble around them, which I think is a great leadership quality.
We actually were with a management team this week. I had dinner with them on Monday night and it's really struck as I was talking to a number of them and listening to them talk amongst themselves. They talked about. Specifically, they'd say, you know, I have these really great skills, but she has a totally different set of skills.
And together we were able to attack this problem in a really novel way. And it struck me that the leaders of this business had assembled a team who were certainly talented, certainly smart, certainly hardworking, but they were complimentary. And the sort of the quintessential, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
By the way, it helped that they seemed to really like each other too. And those things are probably not unrelated. But. It was really, I thought, another excellent real time example of terrific leadership. And by the way, the proof is in the pudding. The business is superbly excellent in so many ways, but I put that leadership capability of the management team at sort of the top of the list, and then we've seen it obviously partnered up with these folks over time.
So I think, to me, that's the number one that I can point to from my seat, the number one quality that I've seen that makes businesses truly special. Thank you.

[00:14:09] Sean Mooney: Those are really, really spot on points.
And if you think about even the era we're living in, and I look at it through the lens of. What we're doing at BluWave is the more and more people talk about our future robot overlords and chat GPT, the more and more we get needs for recruiting executives. And it's part because maybe that magic hasn't happened yet and they haven't built those complimentary skill sets.
But if you think about a fully formed company that pings all of those, it's the ones who have already done that. So for any CEO out there, start building that team that has that complimentary As close to A's that you can get as possible and then everything becomes easier. I experienced that firsthand building this company here because in the early days of any company's entrepreneur, it's like on your shoulders and you feel the weight crushing it and then eventually you say, Oh, I'm going to bring in really good people and then they do their thing.
And you're like, Whoa, this is pretty amazing. And then similarly as I even think about all the management meetings I was in when I was in P. E. The one thing I'd always look for is, is the CEO the only one talking? And then if so, like you got troubles or you're going to be calling BluWave a lot for recruiters.

[00:15:23] Chris Cathcart: No, that's right. It's critically important. And when you get it right, the results become obvious to a deal. I would say the really successful outcomes we've had, we had great leaders.

[00:15:35] Sean Mooney: I love that. And I love this. concept that you've talked about, like being excellent in certain things and then building moats.
Because that's where I think a lot of leaders maybe sometimes forget is they can build a great thing, but the chess of business is multi dimensional. You do something, someone else is going to do something in a competitive landscape. So you got to build concentric circles of protection around what you're building, not just build something and think it's going to last.

[00:16:02] Chris Cathcart: That's right. And in services land, at least for me, it's less obvious. You do have to get in, understand precisely what they're doing and get close to management and understand how they're viewing that market.

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[00:16:34] Sean Mooney: It's kind of a good segue here in terms of As we look at the evolution, while we were in the early days of PE, it was, in some ways, bilo cell high. Let's be candid. And it was still really hard because there's so much information asymmetry.
It was so hard to get the data. So you were making a lot of gut kind of decisions because you just couldn't get the data to fill in the gray space, but as the industry has matured, so much of it is taking a, what is maybe a really good company and turning it into a great company. And in part, what that then does is create jobs and creates value.
And there's this selfish altruism that's been created as this industry of private equity has become a huge engine of the economy. And part of that now means like you got to create the value. So for Halifax and for you and your team members, how do you all think about creating value and what are some of the resources and support that you bring to your portfolio companies to help them be all they can be?

[00:17:35] Chris Cathcart: It is a good segue. It's going to come right back to this human capital, ultimately, I believe. For me, the value creation aspect of what we do specifically at Halifax, but also private equity more broadly, I think is really important, right? And it's really differentiating why I think it has such great impact, right?
And we go back to this raison d'etre of PE, but also for why I'm here. And I think one of the things, and the way Halifax executes its strategy That word is really important to us, right? We want to set up a strategy with entrepreneurs to, as you rightly pointed out, Sean, amplify the growth of these businesses.
Build on the foundation, successful as it's been, and in all cases, they've been wildly successful, but how do we then take them to the next phase of growth, or the next growth over the next three to five years? What we're finding is that it's really important to invest heavily in the platform to support that growth.
The growth initiatives, I think, get a lot of the headlines. They're important, but you can't do that without investing in the people and the systems to support that. This will be music to your ears, Sean, right? I mean, this is quintessential BluWave stuff, but it's really important. As a quick aside, I think there's a lot of Misunderstanding about what private equity does.
And maybe there are strategies out there where it's cut costs and lever up and all those things, at least in the lower middle market, and specifically at Halifax, it's far more about investing in the people, meaning a lot of times adding people. And it's certainly about adding systems. I give a kind of an interesting example.
So when I got here 17 years ago, one of the very first things I did is I set up a little survey and had conversations with many of our portfolio companies and also our prior portfolio companies at the time. And one of the conversations I had with a really successful entrepreneur, and our partnership with him was extraordinarily successful.
He was very, very thoughtful and very novel model that he was exploiting in his industry. But he said something that was really impactful to me. He said, Chris, before my partnership with Halifax, look, I was a manager of my business, but I was also a husband and father. So I was making decisions, at least deep down in my heart.
I was making a decision about how I invest a dollar in my business, or is it a dollar that goes in the college fund? Said another way, that's a very expensive decision. It's his own capital, no clear answer about when that dollar would come back and if it would come back as 2 or 50 cents. And so for him, very expensive approach to making managerial decisions.
After his partnership with Halifax, obviously his personal risk mitigation strategy was fulfilled. And now he was telling me, Chris, now I'm making decisions as a true, pure manager. And by the way, along the way, we were solving the other quintessential problem of being an entrepreneur is it's very lonely.

[00:20:31] Sean Mooney: Amen. You

[00:20:31] Chris Cathcart: have people with whom you can bounce ideas. But that statement really stuck with me. And I heard that repeatedly in various forms, but the way he couched it really kind of sat with me in an impactful way. And so now as we think about where we're spending our time, again, with a novel strategy in place to grow this business, we're spending time.
Now we're saying, do you need a new CTO? You're really good Mr. CEO or Ms. CEO at working with your customers. Let's have you focus there, but maybe we amplify that, right? Maybe we get you a whole sales team that's around you. And oh yeah, by the way, that ERP system that you really loathe having to spend money on, maybe it's time now to give you the dashboards and the KPIs and the data to inform the decisions that you're making.
Maybe it's time to make that investment. Those kinds of things. And I think for us, consistently, that's what we're seeing, irrespective of who was there before us, whether it was another capital partner or a corporate partner. entity, or they were an entrepreneur, which I think is obvious to see. Inevitably we've seen that there's been underinvestment in the platform.
We're going to bring that to bear here. We're going to bring some of our experience to come alongside management and certainly that shared vision, that shared strategy. I glossed over this at the beginning, but I think if you talk to my partners, they're going to talk about this being the most exciting part of private equity today.
I think you alluded to that where it used to be. Buy right and sell higher. I think the really exciting part of private equity investing today. It's Getting that shared vision that shared strategy With our management partners and then executing the program to create value during our whole by the way We have a name for that.
We call it our value factors program The reason we even have a name for it is it's so ingrained and so repeatable and so regular In terms of the challenges and the opportunities we're seeing when we make these investments You

[00:22:25] Sean Mooney: I think all that strikes on many levels for me, Chris, and it makes me think about a conversation I recently had with a mutual friend of ours, and he was an investment banker that many of us know.
And he goes, as I think about it and the landscape of investment firms, you think about hedge funds, they're really good at finding value. What private equity does is create value. And that struck me true and true. And I don't think the industry gets credit for that. Certainly, if I think about the modern era of P.E. Which you can pick a date. Maybe it's 2010, maybe even 2005, but probably 2010 when it really started getting into value creation mode at an onset, I don't think I made a single investment where we took expenses down. Every single one of 'em went meaningful up because even if we wanted to buy low and sell high.
That arbitrage was gone and it came down to, no, we're going to buy high. If we want to sell higher, we're going to have to create value. And for that, you need lots of people and you need lots of new resources. You need fuel. And at the same vein, if you're a lower middle market founder, you're so constrained, not the least of which is behavioral economics, because you're like, oh my gosh, I've worked my whole life to build this thing.
It's all tied up in this company. I got to pay for food, water, shelter. In college, which is bigger than all of them,

[00:23:43] Chris Cathcart: especially at Wake Forest.

[00:23:44] Sean Mooney: Yeah, exactly. Quick aside, my daughter's a junior and we visited Wake Forest and I looked at the cost. I'm like, how? I'm pretty sure Georgetown's probably like, yeah, I'm sure they're not better.
None of them are better by the way. So that's a side conversation we'll have over a beer. But it's this whole idea of not only are you creating value, but you're empowering the entrepreneurs to do so by taking some of the risk off their plate so they can go back to their more natural selves of saying, I'm going to take more informed risk to create more value.
And if I can take some of the basics off the table, then that frees me to be who I know I can be while not constantly living under the sword of Damocles. I

[00:24:26] Chris Cathcart: mean, look, it ties back to where we started the conversation. I'm kind of a true believer, right? I mean, I really do believe that. We sit in a very unique spot, right?
In this economy that we're in leveraging really a lot of great financial capital and human capital to make businesses better. And ultimately that serves the communities, the businesses are in the people that are making up the business, our investors, of course, and their communities, it all comes back.
And I think is self reinforcing and is really a unique and special opportunity to be a part of that. I agree with you over the last 10, 15, 20 years, it's become very evident, right? Even as probably there were folks that were doing that before, but very evident today that the value is going to be created by investing in these businesses and creating value together with these management teams.

[00:25:17] Sean Mooney: And I completely agree. And to be fair to all of us. Not everyone gets it right all the time. And so I don't mean for us to be so like, Oh, it's all perfection. Democracy and capitalism are not perfect processes, but I think the vast majority of the time, this industry is doing things really, really well.
And it's good to see it from your vantage and how you all are doing this, because are you going to get right? A hundred percent of the time? No. If you were getting things a hundred percent of the time, we'd all be retired. And so, and bored with the AI. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So with that in mind, this whole idea that life in business are these journeys, the world is constantly changing.
And if you think it's not changing, then it's running right by you. And so we're in this unique period in history, but for you and, and Your team members in your portfolio companies, what are some of the top value creation opportunities that you're thematically engaging with your port co leaders? And as a proxy, this is probably something that other business leaders should be thinking about as well.

[00:26:23] Chris Cathcart: The thing that we're seeing regularly and repeatedly is this investment in the platform. There is very rarely a company we're coming and touching and being involved with that has invested in every aspect of their operations and their systems that they want to. It's not that these management teams don't know they need it.
They do. They want to invest in it. But In the land of scarce capital and in the land of balancing risk and reward, they're making decisions to say, well, you know what, I'm not going to invest here right now because I'm investing over here. But in a world where they have the freedom to make decisions as a pure manager, they are going to invest in their platform, they're going to invest in their systems, and they regularly invest in people.
That's the key theme that we're consistently seeing. We saw it last year, we saw it the year before, we're going to see it now. In real time, as we're looking at investments and in the future. To me, it's thematic in that it is consistently an area where business leaders have not invested in their businesses in a way that unlocks value or allows you to unlock value.
I'd say the other thing related to that that's maybe not as obvious is it's clarifying, right? That's the other thing that we oftentimes are seeing is there's inherent complexity in these businesses when we arrive. And if we can, again, back to this creating a strategy, shared strategy together, even before we make the investment, we're coming alongside management team.
We're talking about their vision. We're adding our experience and thoughts and resources. We're contemplating a new strategy for the business. And inevitably it's going to be part of clarifying the mission, removing the complexity that has developed over time. Such that then we've got clear opportunity.
Okay. Here's the strategy. Here are the five pillars that make that strategy up. They're going to be aspects of platform building. They're going to be aspects of growth and repositioning in the business, but very clear. And then that allows you then to be singular in your focus of. What are we ultimately aiming to do by the time we're finished with our season with the business and for the entrepreneur to think about the next phase after Halifax, it's back to those core themes of sitting with management, building an honest strategy, creating a strategy for the business, and then executing on the key elements there.

[00:28:45] Sean Mooney: I really like how you frame that, Chris. And in some ways it's easy to get caught up in the changing times and get lost in that noise. And what you're articulating as I listen here is, let's not overcomplicate things. Let's get a good strategy. Let's attach resources to it, which starts with people and systems, and then let's execute on it.
The cycles are going to come and go, but those core maxims that you're talking about are foundational and timeless.

[00:29:13] Chris Cathcart: I think that's right. In terms of the actual issues that we are, as investors are facing right now, they've been sort of legendary over the last three years. Every year, I think we start the year thinking it's going to be a normal year again.

[00:29:26] Sean Mooney: Yeah. We're going to go back to a

[00:29:27] Chris Cathcart: normal year. Right? I mean, go back to the conversations we had in the dark days of COVID in early 2020. Those were obvious risks, but what I think has been consistent since that time is the number of risks and the. Seemingly haphazard nature of the risks, they're coming at us from many different directions.
It makes it really, really hard to, as an investor, underwrite those things. If you have one known risk, you can always underwrite that. But when you're getting these, in 2020 it was COVID, then 2021 it was COVID recovery, 2022 was what's normal, to say nothing of a land war in Europe. It's this a very unique time as an investor.
So I think that was really the nature of your question, but I'm unfortunately not terribly smart enough to be able to answer that. But I would make reference to that. It's not terribly easy time to be an investor or a business owner. I

[00:30:23] Sean Mooney: think you actually gave the spot on answer though. And one of the, is, you know, me, Chris, I only know how to speak through metaphors and cliches and I blame that on my Texas upbringing.
And so the thing that I always, as I look past this time, it's like, A, I've been saying this too shall pass for. Four years and probably even longer than that. The other metaphor that really came to me as I reflect on what everyone's been going through, like we've been living in this kind of sequences of storms.
I saw this, it was like something that came across my social media clip and it was about buffaloes in a storm. And what happens mostly in a storm is. Every other animal, every other species, they kind of hunkered down. And then what buffaloes do is they go towards the storm and they march through it with this innate genetic understanding.
That they're going to get out of the storm faster if they walk it and they run towards it and they go through the storm. And that's exactly what we saw PE doing. And we see it time and time again, is you all like, no, we're going forward. We're going to get through this. Cause we're going to get out of it before everyone.
And what your articulate is like, no, we're just going to stick to the basis. We're going to go onward. Let's get through this and we're going to all get out of it faster. And the data shows that through and through as well.

[00:31:34] Chris Cathcart: Amen. You have always been a great evangelist for our industry, Sean, and we appreciate it.
But I think you're spot on. While we're reminiscing about that storm in particular, on a microcosm, it was really fun to see my partners and teammates on a micro level run to the storm. Get close to management teams. Let's figure out how to solve these problems. And by the way, there have been subsequent challenges and problems over the last four years.
Not just the COVID pandemic. And the pandemic issues that we had, but that was very clear. You saw people running into the storm to come along and provide resources and assistance. Again, no different than what I was talking about, being able to be a partner to these management teams, keep an eye on the big strategy, but then bring the tactical issues that have to come along to, so you can get back on that path.

[00:32:21] Sean Mooney: 1000%. This is a great next topic to talk about is this whole idea that we're always learning. There's always problems. I think people are in this industry and business in general, or people like to fix things. We've probably all had Lego sets as kids and they would break and then you'd figure out a way around it.
And one of the things I'm always trying to, it's this concept that you're constantly on this journey of improvement. And I try to be As introspective and retrospective as I can without getting too much into the craze of my own internal storm in my head. But there's all these things that I wish I knew, and you know that I send these emails out to people like, I didn't know you can do that, and I was like, this is what I wish I knew then.
And I'm curious, Chris, if you could go back to 22 year old Chris, And give yourself a piece of advice. What's one of the things that you would share that you wish you knew that?

[00:33:14] Chris Cathcart: Apart from giving him advice that being a dad in your mid forties is questionable. Exactly. Said more positively, being a dad's a young man's game.
Just leave it at that. It's funny because I think the way you approach it with your emails. That I like a lot and I think it would inform what I would advise myself or other 22 year olds today. There are two things, part of which is sort of you can't get, I mean, I think it's patience and perspective.
Perspective, the truth of the matter is, you only get that by being 50 and by being 75, will have different perspective as you get more experience. And so maybe the only way to really do it as a 22 year old is get good mentors, right? You have to sort of synthesize the perspective. And that's important.
It's hard to do, right? You want to find people who you trust, who have the same values alignment, who have analogous experiences and I think that's the way you have to do that. But the patience thing would be advice I'd give to myself. I don't think I had the maturity to look at different seasons of my life are great opportunities to learn.
I look at our younger professionals. By the way, whether they're on the investment banking side or they're in the private equity, and maybe it's because we have this sort of in our industry, a two to three year window that each professional that you kind of go through. But the young professionals who are really excellent are the ones that seem to approach each of these seasons as an opportunity to learn.
So every task, every deal, every day to day interaction is an opportunity to learn more about business, to learn more about their trade. To learn more about anything that they're interested in, but that's how they attack it. And they want more and more and more. I gave this advice actually to a Wake Forest senior recently, he's going to go and join a middle market investment bank that we all know well, very, very good.
He knows he's going to work really hard. That was the advice I gave him. I said, listen, take this next two or three years and think about as an extension of your academic career. Fortunately, you're going to be renumerated rather than having to go the other direction, but you're going to learn. in this phase of your career.
And then the next two to three year stint, you're going to learn something more. I didn't sort of realize that until I went to business school, right? I was going back, I was going to pick up these and complete that. But fill in the pie chart of my personal development and stuff I hadn't gotten. And then that would have been my investment banking approach as well.
I would have done two or three years there again to learn everything I can about how businesses work. That's sort of the approach. I wish I had learned earlier and appreciated earlier. And I think for today, and I think this is true, particularly for folks in our industry, where you've got a lot of really smart, ambitious, hardworking people.
I see, and I was guilty of this too, a lot of happy feet, whereas looking back on it, take it as this really special opportunity to learn as much as you can and have the patience to do it. That would be my counsel to myself and wish I had the maturity then that many of my colleagues do. I see it. They have it.
So it's neat to see.

[00:36:17] Sean Mooney: I think that's really, really profound advice in some ways that also hit just even hits me as I think about just where I even where I am in my life. Many people in our industry and in people who've been successful, you kind of have this concept of you never cross a finish line. What that means though, it can be daunting because you're on this endless race and there's no break to it.
It can be fatiguing. And at times that also causes me to lose perspective on like the mile markers and the seasons as they're turning. I love your concept of seasons because it has that concept of perpetuity. But it breaks it up into natural way points where you can more naturally kind of experience and reflect on and appreciate the growth and the winds in between versus this one ongoing kind of march that you're just trying to run faster and faster.
So it really struck me as you were saying that I was like, that's a great way to think about not only having this idea that you're perpetually trying to get better and improve and go faster and better and faster, It's a process, it goes through these seasons, and you can have these natural delineations to take a breath, look left or right and go, yeah, I got something done.

[00:37:30] Chris Cathcart: That's right. And, let's face it, gives perspective and meaning to what, inevitably, there are going to be long, arduous days in our industry. And so, having that perspective and that patience, I think, is key. Helps endure.

[00:37:49] Sean Mooney: I love it. So I think that is great advice. I'm gonna add that metaphor to my roster So everyone's gonna be wondering why I'm talking about seasons and about two days from now Chris This has been a really really not only fun, but informative Educational conversation where I learned all sorts of things that I wish I knew before.
So thank you so much for sharing it and joining us and investing your time in imparting the things that you've learned over time. Thanks for having me, Sean. A lot of fun. Absolutely. Talk soon.
That's all we have for today. Special thanks to Chris for joining. If you'd like to learn more about Chris and the Halifax Group, please see the episode notes for links. Please continue to look for the Karma School of Business podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcasts. We truly appreciate your support.
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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.