Brent Diamond was bitten by the private equity bug after growing a small surf magazine into a robust set of sports publications. He nurtured the company from a family business to a full-fledged brand, and when the family decided to sell, he got a firsthand glimpse at the acquisition process.
It was this experience that made Brent realize he liked growing businesses. He’s not a subject-matter expert; instead, he wants to come in and drive growth for organizations across sectors. In his latest venture, he and his partners are looking to find an organization that they can acquire, intending to place Brent in the CEO position.
Of course, their search for appropriate businesses, which began before the start of the year, has changed a lot since COVID hit. In every industry they consider, they’re finding companies that have been rocked by the pandemic.
Most businesses fall into one of three buckets: those that were hit hard and will likely never recover, those who struggled at first but have found a way forward, and those who are booming as a result of the pandemic.
Brent revealed that most of the organizations he’s encountered fall into that middle category. Even if there is a way forward for these organizations, that doesn’t mean now’s a great time to buy or sell. Brent preached patience for both sides.
The Zooms of the world, were they looking to sell, would be looking for big bucks. But can a buyer rest assured that their explosive growth will continue post-pandemic? For those who have felt some negative impacts, they’re asking buyers to ignore the last seven months on the P&L.
Investors who want to make a deal now need to focus on which changes are temporary and which will remain for years to come. Sellers shouldn’t be too eager to make a deal, lest they undervalue the years (or generations) of hard work they’ve put into building the business.
Brent and the live audience identified a fascinating outcome of this particular crisis: the discrepancies among how businesses within the same sectors have been affected.
Usually, when a crisis strikes, we see an entire industry take a hit. An outbreak of mad cow disease, for example, would affect the beef industry but would leave the auto industry unscathed. With the pandemic, all industries were hit, but brands within the same sector are having radically different experiences.
One member of our audience cited the example of Flywheel versus Peloton. Both brands offer essentially the same service: cycling classes. Flywheel built its model around in-person classes, and they’ve just filed for bankruptcy. Peloton sells an at-home bike and a monthly subscription to virtual classes, and business is booming.
Investors look for trends in the market and evaluate opportunities and risks. Brent shared several case studies throughout the episode, giving listeners a firsthand look at his thought process in assessing companies. Whether you’re looking to buy, sell, or simply grow your business, understanding the steps that go into sizing up a business and the market at large is a valuable skill for all leaders.
Episode Transcript
Rob Ristagno: This year, we’ve all learned the challenges that come with running a business in a pandemic, but what about those who are looking to buy or sell a business? Our guest today is a seasoned private equity portfolio company executive. He shares what those who are looking to be on either side of a deal need to know about the current private equity and mergers & acquisitions landscape, and why the coronavirus pandemic is different from every other crisis he’s lived through.
Announcer: This is the CEO Campfire Chat with your host, Rob Ristagno. Taped in front of a live studio audience, join us to hear successful growth stories for middle-market companies just like yours. Sponsored by the Sterling Woods Group.
Rob Ristagno: Welcome to the CEO Campfire Chat. I’m your host, Rob Ristagno, and joining us today around the campfire is Brent Diamond, a serial CEO for private equity owned businesses. He’s led several companies in the media and information spaces, including Beckett Media, The Daily Racing Form, and a division of Prime Media. He’s worked with investors from KKR, Wix, and Spectrum. Currently, he’s partnering with some investors to acquire and then run a company. Welcome, Brent.
Brent Diamond: Thank you. Great to be here.
Rob Ristagno: Now, Brent, you have a long track record running PE-owned businesses. What got you interested in the space in the first place?
Brent Diamond: Well, funny story about that. So I was living in California, had the opportunity to work at Surfer Publications. I called that my hobby job, wasn’t really a job. We were surfing, skiing, snowboarding with our customers every day, but it was great. And really, the company was breakeven when I joined and the goal was to really turn it around and get it to make money. Over the next eight years, we launched new products. We launched a snowboarder magazine, a skateboarder, bike magazine, which was a mountain bike magazine and we built this company into a really kind of a robust, cool media company. The owner got sick. His son was a priest and had no interest in running the business. So the family decided to sell it.
Brent Diamond: The end of eight years, we took it through the sale process, sold it, made a lot of money on that. At the end of the day, the company we sold it to have their version of me. I found myself just having spent eight years building this great little company and nothing in return for it. So I said to myself, “I’m never going to let that happen again.” And luckily within weeks, I’d met the Prime Media people. It was a little bit different than private equity. KKR owned it, but they had already taken it public, but it started with just getting a taste of stock options starting in that cherry process. So that’s kind of how I got into it.
Rob Ristagno: I’m sure you learned a lot, and I hear the story a lot that people really are at the helm of a business, but they don’t really get to participate in the upside and that motivates them to take some of these positions here. So makes total sense. So now though, fast forward to where you are now. You’ve been looking to acquire business. You started your search long before COVID was a thing. Let’s rewind the clock. Tell us a little bit about what you were looking for, what criteria you were using to assess opportunities and just what you’re seeing out there pre-COVID.
Brent Diamond: Sure. Everybody, feel free to jump in, ask questions if you want. Let’s make it as interactive as possible. But I think the thing that I look for first and foremost is a company that has a stable revenue and profit over a number of years. That seems to take a lot of the risk out of an investment. It doesn’t necessarily have to be growing, but the stability there is something I look for first and foremost.
Brent Diamond: Secondly, I like a company that has a defensible position in the marketplace, and none of these criteria are going to surprise any of you, but they have some kind of unique differentiator that sets them apart from their competition. The kind of the things that make it really interesting to me as I look for companies that need new management. So typically, they’re founders they’ve taken the company about as far as they can take it or as far as they want to take it, it’s been a little bit under-leveraged during the past few years, and that has logical opportunities to grow. So that’s where I really find some value and some companies that are easier to grow than other companies.
Rob Ristagno: All right. Yeah. That stability, we’ll get to it in a minute, but I’m curious to hear how that’s that stability dimension has changed over the last few months. Now before COVID, I imagine it’s really tough to find something. There was a ton of dry powder, but there still is a ton of dry powder. Valuation’s quite frothy. What were some things that you were having some struggles with finding a company even before COVID?
Brent Diamond: Well, before COVID, I think the challenge was finding something that you could make work in your financial models. So when the multiples heat up, the private equity firms that I work with, we can’t win in those models. So when multiples get to double digits, it doesn’t work for us. So there were lots of really great companies, great software companies, but you just couldn’t get them at reasonable values that we could make work.
Rob Ristagno: Do you think the companies that were, the investors that were acquiring at these really high multiples, are they going to hit their IRR targets? Are they just doing a deal for the sake of doing a deal? Was there some sort of strategic upside? How are people justifying these astronomical valuations?
Brent Diamond: Well, I think the easiest way to justify it is when a strategic buyer acquires it. They can justify. They can take a lot of expenses out immediately that a financial buyer can’t do, but I think some firms are just more aggressive than the ones that I work with and they roll the dice a little bit more than we are. I’m pretty disciplined in the way that I approach it. If I don’t see a real way to create value and add something to it, it’s just not worth doing.
Rob Ristagno: I see, I see. The discipline is key because a lot of times, you win or lose on your purchase price. Jack, do you have a question?
Jack: I’ve got a question, Brent. So are these companies on the market or are they… How do you find out about them if they’re not?
Brent Diamond: Sure. Most of them are, but some aren’t. So the firm that I’m working most closely with, we find deals two different ways. We have a network of brokers that we work with, but something that we’ve started doing recently, and I’m kind of surprised at the response that we’ve had, is just taking kind of a shotgun approach, so picking sectors that we’re interested in. You can get email names of the owners pretty easily these days. We buy those email names and do an email blast. Surprisingly, there are a number of people that respond and say, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about this, but I haven’t really explored it. Let’s have a conversation.” So I’m seeing those are the two ways. Some are on the markets, some aren’t and there’re early discussions.
Jack: Thank you.
Rob Ristagno: Any secrets to getting someone, who’s not on the market, interested in selling?
Brent Diamond: I think they’ve got to have an interest in selling to really have a discussion. If they have no interest in selling, it’s hard to convince somebody to part with that thing that they created. They have so much emotion wrapped up and it’s just part of their identity. So unless they’ve had that moment where they said, “You know what? Maybe it’s time that I’m done,” it’s just I haven’t found anybody that can be talked into it.
Rob Ristagno: When you were speaking, I saw several audience members make the money gesture with their fingers. Our listening audience at home can’t see that. So what you’re saying though, sometimes money is not enough? It’s not just money. It needs to be some sort of mindset, plus money.
Brent Diamond: Yes, just not enough. Then typically, some of these owners think their company is worth far more than everybody else thinks it’s worth too. Yeah, we do see that a lot.
Audience Member: Are these acquisitions that you’re looking at typically majority stakes or are they partial stakes? Because we find that the majority are the ones that are very hard to sell, but if someone wants to take some money off the table and still stay involved, that it’s a little bit more palatable to separate a portion of the equity.
Brent Diamond: Yeah. Ours, the way we do it as a hundred percent acquisition. Now, we do like to see the sellers roll over some equity. They don’t do it in every case, but it sure is a little bit comforting mentally, at least, to know that they believe in the future of what they’re selling, that they’ll roll over some equity.
Audience Member: Got it.
Rob Ristagno: The M&A game: fun, exciting, challenging, in non-pandemic times, then COVID comes. As COVID hits, we’ve found that companies are left in one of three buckets, generally speaking. One is companies whose revenues took a very hard hit and likely, they’re not going to return unless there’s some sort of major pivot. That’s type one. Type two: companies whose revenue streams have been impacted, but they’ll pick up again relatively quickly once things start opening up. And three: companies like Clorox or Zoom whose revenue streams have grown and really taken off during this age. So I really want to get your opinion on how you approach to these three different types of opportunities from an M&A standpoint. Let’s take one at a time. Let’s start with that first one, the decimated companies. Are you even looking at decimated companies?
Brent Diamond: Well, we see them, but we’ll likely take a quick pass for a couple of different reasons. What I’ve seen is these have been decimated. In order for them to come back, they’re either going to need a major pivot or a complete reinvention because they’re just not going to come back the way they did. Even if we did think that they could make a comeback, the banks would likely not lend against the company that’s lost so much revenue like that. So we’ll look at them, but it’s usually a quick pass. I’ll give you an, for instance, a company that we’d looked at. It was a really solid company. Not very sexy, but they sold to corporations throughout the tri-state area, anything they have in their break room, their main item was coffee, but you can imagine- [crosstalk 00:11:23]
Rob Ristagno: I think coffee is sexy. So I wouldn’t… [Crosstalk 00:11:26]
Brent Diamond: I love my coffee, but they did a great… It was like $40 million business. So decent size little business. The pandemic hit. Nobody’s going into the office. His revenue stream dries up overnight and he’s just scrambling to figure out how much of it’s going to come back. Is it going to come back? What size of footprint are all these? Are all the people going to come back to the office? 20% of the people? So he just really has no idea how to predict what’s going to happen when things open up again.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. I’m trying to think how you would even structure that deal if you can’t lever it at all because you can’t get that… If you put all equity and it’s highly risky, any ideas if you were to have moved forward?, How do you even get a deal like that done?
Brent Diamond: I don’t think you can get a deal like that done, but if you were, it would have to be on a very, very small amount of money up front and a series of earn outs based on milestones over a period of time. I think that’s the only way you could get it done, and that’s probably not going to be enough money for the seller because the seller’s just put 40 years of his life into this company and he’s going to wait and see if it bounces back because it’s going to be worth a hell of a lot more then than it is today-
Rob Ristagno: Yeah. I see.
Brent Diamond: … if that makes sense.
Rob Ristagno: That makes total sense.
Jack: Brent, in the way you’ve set your organization up, are you also looking to be involved in the acquired company on a management level or board level, or are you transaction-oriented or the money guys to find the right deal and negotiate the deal and then take a piece of the rock as it goes forward? How does it work?
Brent Diamond: Yeah. So in my case, I’m looking to help find the company, do the diligence, acquire and then I would go in as the operating CEO. Now, a lot of private equity firms like to back the existing sellers. So the sellers have to want to stay on and run it, but I think a lot of private equity firms feel like that de-risks the investment and adds some stability to it. But in our case, I would go in and be the operating CEO. I would likely structure some kind of a consulting arrangement with the current owner for maybe a year transition period. We typically like to negotiate a three months transition period into the purchase price and then maybe a consulting contract for the following year.
Jack: Following up on that, forgetting about the CEO, how about middle-management or other maybe upper-management people. Are those people that generally you want to see be very, a strong presence and you want to try and retain them generally? How does that work?
Brent Diamond: Yeah, generally, I’d like to retain them and for a couple of reasons. I happen to be a sector agnostic. So I believe in functional expertise and I don’t have the industry specialization in a lot of the industries that we’re looking at. So I really want middle-management to stay on, help, help me run and grow the business and I’m willing to set some equity aside to incent the right people to be there with me. So I think that’s critical. If all of the middle management wanted to leave, that’s probably not a deal that I would do.
Jack: Thank you.
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Rob Ristagno: Well, let’s pivot then, Brent, to type two. These are companies that got hit by COVID. However, all signs seem to point to the fact that they’ll be fine over the long run. I imagine this is probably a majority or a big bulk of the companies you’re looking at. I could be wrong. How do you look at these deals, especially if you said one of your key criteria was stability? So how do you discount or not discount some of this instability over the last few months?
Brent Diamond: Sure. That’s a great question. And you’re right. That’s where most of the companies fall, which is, I think, kind of the frustrating part for me personally right now is so many of these deals need a year to be able to be ready to come back on the market. But let me give you an example of what I thought was a really great company in the marketing services business. So it’s a direct mail, direct response business. They have kind of a proprietary format that they use. It’s unique. I’m sure you guys have seen it. You’ve probably received it in your homes.
Brent Diamond: In addition to that, their kind of secret sauce is they have some proprietary software they developed that really helps in the targeting. I didn’t get far enough along to see exactly how the software works, but he claims that they increase response rates two to four times. So their customers are typically big franchises. A good percentage of their customers are the restaurant franchises. So you can imagine how they were hit. They’re projecting their revenue to be 50% in 2020 as what it was in 2019. Now, one can imagine that as soon as the restaurants open back up, that they’re going to have to fill those tables and get people in and they’re going to need the market. And things will likely, I think, you can logically assume things will go right back to where they were and maybe they’ll even be some pent up demand.
Brent Diamond: We have to put those deals on hold and primarily, it’s in the seller’s best interest to keep it on hold because if we paid them… They want to get paid on their pre-COVID revenue and EBITDA [crosstalk 00:18:09] and we want to pay them on their trailing 12 months. That’s the way we’re going to get it financed and a bank wouldn’t even finance it if we were going pre-COVID numbers. So those deals are impossible to get done. And really, I think what you have to do with these types of deals is just agree that we’ll give it a year and a year from now, we’ll come back and revisit the deal.
Rob Ristagno: Got you. Is it possible you’re building up a pipeline for yourself for 12 months from now?
Brent Diamond: If you have the patience for 12 months from now, I think there’s going to be a lot of activity, just a lot of pent up demand.
Rob Ristagno: And coming back to that discipline point, people who are disciplined now and not just jumping, knowing that they’re overpaying for something or knowing they’re taking on a bigger risk, waiting stinks, but it could be the right strategy in a lot of cases.
Brent Diamond: I think it has in a lot of the cases. It’s hard to do. It’s hard to be patient and wait when you’re ready to go.
Audience Member: So Brent, maybe I’m jumping ahead here, Rob, but I’m kind of curious, what’s the sweet spot for you because you talked about pre-COVID valuations being a little frothy and I know you’ve come kind of come out of more subscription services, information types of businesses. Obviously, if they’re decimated, they might be a bargain on the one hand, but no one’s going to finance it. If they’re Zoom, they’re not going to be a bargain. So is there a sweet spot that you are targeting in terms of, “Hey, it’s still a great business. It hasn’t been decimated, but the price expectation is gone down into the range that we can support”?
Brent Diamond: Yeah. Yeah. Let me give you an example of a company that’s like that. I’ll tell you up front, our bid was probably, we just missed out. We were second. There was one bid that was higher than ours. So we missed this deal. So it was in the reasonable range. But let me describe to you what kind of company it was and you’ll see why, because they’ve actually flourished during COVID. What their product is, is they install all the docks, the overhead doors and all the technology that runs the docs in these huge distribution centers. So if you’ve ever, I don’t know where everyone’s located in the Northeast, if you’ve never driven South of the city through New Jersey, you see all distribution centers that probably have a hundred bays or more.
Brent Diamond: These guys do all the technology and all the docs, and their biggest customers are Amazon, Wayfair, a lot of the food companies. These guys just continue to either open new distribution centers or they’re refurbishing or retooling their existing ones. So it seemed like every couple of weeks we were meeting with these guys, they have just one, two, or three new contracts each time we met with them. So the purchase price kept changing all the way along as it should because those contracts were signed. This is an example of a company that just they couldn’t have done better during. They just fell right into it.
Audience Member: So weren’t they looking then for a substantial premium? How come they weren’t on the frothy category?
Brent Diamond: Because they’re not necessarily a technology company. They’re not a SaaS software business. Those are the really frothy companies right now that I see. They’re more in the construction business and it’s never going to command probably the double digit premiums.
Audience Member: Okay, thanks.
Brent Diamond: Yeah. Now, what was intriguing is some of their revenue was recurring because they didn’t only install, they also had service contracts on all of those systems too. So a good portion of their revenue was recurring, which is what I like.
Rob Ristagno: So thinking a little bit more about these type two businesses, ones that got hit by COVID, but we think there’ll be fine eventually; what we’ve seen is a few of these companies have experienced what I’d call a lucky accident. Part of their business got hit. Let’s say they get a lot of leads from trade shows. You can’t go to trade shows right now. So they had to quickly figure out digital marketing and generate some leads online that are worth something. Did you come across any of these businesses who, “Yeah, we got hurt, but we figured this out and we have a new strategy for the future”? And if so, how do you think about valuing and acquiring a company like that?
Brent Diamond: Yeah, there’s one company that I looked at that he didn’t get hurt. His business was he imported products from China and sold them into all of the independent grocery stores across the US. So if you’re in a grocery store and you go down that aisle that has all the kitchen supplies in it, chances are, and it’s an independent grocery store, chances are he imported those from China and sold them into that store. It just so happened that when COVID hit and nobody could get their hands on any, no pun intended, any hand sanitizers or masks, his sources that he was already buying from in China have plenty of that and he just started throwing that into the containers was already importing and his business just shot up overnight completely accidental. There was no planning, nothing. That was just one of those fortunate accidents.
Rob Ristagno: Have you seen maybe, shifting to a little bit more about type three, have you seen businesses that are clearly winners in this environment? The hand sanitizer, native hand sanitizer type businesses, other businesses that have really doubled their business over the last few months?
Brent Diamond: Yeah. The company that I just told you about comes to mind. Most of the companies that I’m seeing are in that second category where they’d been hurt a little bit; some a lot, some just a little bit, and they just need a little bit of time to rebound, but there are a few of those that have done really well.
Rob Ristagno: This is not the first time you’ve been involved in M&A activity during a crisis and economic downturn. There was 9/11, there was the financial crisis. Other guests on the show have told us no crisis is the same, but there’s some similarities. There’s some differences. From an M&A standpoint, what do you think is similar to some of your prior experiences and what is brand new in the COVID world?
Brent Diamond: What was really different is during the big downturn, the 2008, 2009, that was a time where a lot of companies had just been over-leveraged. You have the whole mortgage thing going on. I happened to be living in Orange County at the time and Orange County was like the mortgage capital of the US. I happened to be looking for real estate in the deal that I was doing, and we were going in and seeing office space where the company was there yesterday, and then gone today. Literally, you could still see pictures of families or their kids on their cubicles. They were there and then just gone overnight.
Brent Diamond: So there were a lot of crazy things going on then. What I see now is just, in so many businesses, it’s kind of a temporary. It’s not this super long-lasting effect, at least yet, that we saw in the recession. Businesses, there are businesses that are still doing just fine, not everything. So this one seems to be a bit of a more of a mix than at least what I’ve experienced before and it’s still pretty easy to get money now, which I think back in 2008 if you found a good, solid deal, it was pretty hard to get money for a deal back then.
Rob Ristagno: How does some other people in the audience feel about this crisis versus other ones, either from an M&A standpoint or from any other standpoint? Mark?
Mark: So I think this… I started my first business in August of ’87. So this is number four for me as well. The biggest difference in this one is there’s absolute winners and losers, and there’s a lot of dislocation going on, and sometimes in almost the exact same business. [inaudible 00:27:07] In the last two weeks, two companies that basically do the exact same thing, but they do it in different ways, one upped their revenue forecast by over a billion dollars for the year and the other says they’re closing the doors. If you talk about riding a bicycle indoors, Flywheel is closing their business, chapter seven, and they’re going out of business. And Peloton increase their revenue estimates by a billion dollars. They do the same damn thing. They just do it differently. The dislocation is like anything I’ve ever seen within an industry.
Mark: You can go industry by industry and say, “Who are the winners and the losers?” You can go to the restaurant business. If your business is delivery and drive through, you may be having a great year. If your business is dine-in only, you may be one of the 18,000 that’s already closed their doors, and I think that’s the tip of the iceberg. So if you’re a business that is going to supply those dine-in restaurants, you’re not necessarily recovering in the near term. So I just think you can go industry by industry and say, “Who are the winners and the losers?” Right? Netflix is soaring and movie theaters are dying. They both are delivering a similar product, but in a different way.
Mark: So I just think that the dislocations and then the opportunities are permanent changes, sea changes, and their accelerations from perhaps trends that were already underway, that we just fast forward five to 10 years in many cases. So I think that’s unbelievably fascinating and it’s going to create just incredible opportunities. Then Brent, I agree with you. There’s money out there. The PE-owned funds have raised record funds this year. Since the pandemic, we have commercial lenders we’re owned by private equity, we’re levered up, go to my bank, I’m looking at some deals. They’ll lend us everything we want.
Brent Diamond: Yeah. It’s easy right now.
Mark: Yeah, but anyways, I just think the dislocation is the point I’d like to make with even within certain industries, not industry to industry.
Rob Ristagno: That’s really insightful. It’s not a macro issue. It’s not even a sector issue. It’s really a micro issue. Anyone else have experiences to share on this crisis versus other ones? Tough to top that comment.
Brent Diamond: I think it’s also forcing us to think differently and operate differently and just to his point earlier, it’s forcing us to do it differently, it’s accelerating maybe things we are already looking at, but I do believe that there will be a lot of opportunities coming out of here, coming out of this, this pandemic because it’s just everyone’s thinking differently now already. For everyone who’s paying attention, I think there will be opportunities.
Rob Ristagno: Brent, anyone who’s listening in the audience who’s looking to buy a business right now, what is the one most important piece of advice that you have for them?
Brent Diamond: Yeah. The one is just make sure that the company has a reason to exist today, there’s a logical way to grow it, and there are people on the other end that would probably like to acquire once you’ve grown it. That’s in its most simplistic form, but I don’t ever look at a deal without hitting on those three things.
Rob Ristagno: What about the other side of the table if someone’s thinking about selling? What would you say to them?
Brent Diamond: I think if you’re doing well… I would say if you’re thinking about selling and your business has been hit, hang on to it for a while because you’re either going to get more or you might be better off just taking the cashflow for that business than what you can sell it for today. So think about why you’re selling and if you are going to sell, and I think you have to, depending on where your business is, you have to be reasonable in your expectations.
Rob Ristagno: Thanks, Brent. Any other questions from the audience?
Audience Member: I’ve got a question about investment bankers. When you’re talking to this network of brokers and you’ve also got this direct marketing or discovery method, what is your view of a company that’s on the market, but it already has hired an investment banker? Does that make any difference to you one way or another?
Brent Diamond: No, not at all. Not at all. In fact, a lot of the hard work when they have hired investment bankers, chances are, a lot of the hard work that we would have to do is being done by bankers. So in some ways, it’s actually a really good thing. We see a lot more professional approach to the process when they’re involved.
Mark: You also see a lot more bidders when they’re involved.
Brent Diamond: Yeah, yeah. A lot more. So, hence the direct outreach program on our behalf, because we can get a lot better deal if we source it on our own than through an investment banker and the seller likely saves some money as well.
Mark: That’s for sure.
Rob Ristagno: All right, Brent. Well, thank you so much for your time. One last question. What can the group do to help you?
Brent Diamond: Well, if you know of any companies that are at that inflection point and saying, “Is now a good time for me to sell?” I’d love to be introduced and help him think about that and see if it made sense for them.
Rob Ristagno: What’s the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
Brent Diamond: Easiest way is to shoot me an email. It’s easy to remember. It’s a Diamond.Brent@gmail.
Rob Ristagno: That’s a good one. Well, this has been The CEO Campfire Chat with our special guests, Brent Diamond. I’m Rob Ristagno, and if you want to learn more about the CEO Campfire Chat, listen to previous episodes, sign up for the email companion or take a two minute growth assessment online. Visit CEOCampfireChat.com. That’s CEOCampfireChat.com. We’ll see you next time around the fire.
Rob Ristagno: This episode of the CEO Campfire Chat podcast is brought to you by the Sterling Woods Group. Middle market executives and private equity investors need to achieve rapid revenue growth, but face limited resources and time. We’ve developed a proven system to quickly and confidently uncover your best opportunities for growth so that you can scale up and maximize exit value. To learn more about our proprietary data-driven approach, check out SterlingWoods.com.
