0:07
Give us like, you know, the minute version of who are you and then also what is permanent equity?
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0:13
Yeah, so permanent equity is we like to describe ourselves as a family of companies that buys family-owned companies.
0:17
So technically we're private equity firm now.
0:20
We were just a small collection with my own capital in the beginning.
0:24
I was an entrepreneur and then accidentally bought a business about 10 years ago and that's what led into kind of what we do today.
0:34
But we raised a You accidentally bought a business?
0:37
Yeah, so I had a mutual acquaintance say, "Hey, you should meet this guy.
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He's in your He's in your industry."
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And he just got left at the altar for the second time.
0:45
And I took that to mean I should try to buy his business cuz why else would he tell me that? He had no idea.
0:47
He was just trying to connect two people that were, you know, in the same in the same field or similar fields.
0:52
And so I don't know, I look about what, 24, 25 now.
0:57
I looked about 13 or 14 then and sat across from this guy and told him I wanted to buy his business and he he laughed at me and said, "Two Two grown men are trying to buy buy my business.
1:07
How in the heck do you think you're going to do it?"
1:08
And I said, "I don't know, I'll figure it out."
1:09
And we negotiated and uh he told me no, thank you.
1:12
And then 7 months later called me back up and said, "All right, let's move forward and get it done." So.
1:19
What was your company before?
1:21
So I started a kind of collection of regional marketing companies.
1:23
We had started in 2007, kind of really got going in 2008 and 9, which were as you all know, interesting times.
1:30
But it actually allowed us to grow and we adopted some video technology that ended up becoming standard.
1:37
We think we were probably the first people in the in the world to use it for commercial purposes.
1:42
But uh What does this mean?
1:43
What's regional marketing?
1:45
You know, we were doing Look, we were doing like ad agency type work.
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We were doing media buying.
1:48
We were doing digital work.
1:52
You know, trying to scrape and claw and and sort of make a go of it. You know.
1:57
So, you're just an You're You're an agency just figuring it out. Yeah, we were an agency.
2:00
We had some unusual talents kind of under that agency because being in mid-Missouri, we didn't have access to a lot of specialty groups.
2:07
So, we started building out our own specialty groups.
2:08
So, we built out research.
2:09
Um, we did some um mobile and app development as well.
2:12
Um, and uh and then some film work.
2:14
So, those were kind of the three unusual buckets that you typically don't get into an agency. And how big did it get?
2:20
Yeah, give us a sense of the like level of success.
2:21
I think a lot of people one of the things we hear a lot is from the audience is like they hate when we fast forward and someone's like, "Yeah, I did this thing and then all of a sudden these amazing opportunities opened up."
2:33
And they sort of were like, "Wait, where were they before?"
2:34
And so, give us the before picture.
2:36
How were you doing How was that business doing financially?
2:38
Did it Was it a big business, small business?
2:40
Uh you know, what was that business like?
2:43
Yeah, so we um so, let's see here.
2:43
So, um I'm trying to It's been a been a while since I've thought about the numbers.
2:49
Um, so we grew to 26 employees.
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I think at the peak of that kind of before we were um So, we were look, we were doing fine.
2:57
I could make a living doing it.
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I made a good living doing it.
2:58
It wasn't um The agency business is hard. It's really really hard.
3:02
And I think that's uh um probably what I've learned in my career is I've made all the mistakes and I've tried and tested a lot of business models and sort of taste and try something and you're like, "Oh, didn't realize how hard that was going to be."
3:13
And you sort of you know, move around.
3:16
Um, and so, you know, I would say we you know, moderately successful regional marketing firm. Um, nothing special.
3:21
I mean, I would say um you know, when um uh yeah, when when we bought the the firm that we did called MediaCross, um you know, we were kind of co-equals is how I'd describe it kind of in the marketplace.
3:34
Um, they were much more focused on government contracts than we were.
3:36
We didn't have any government contracts.
3:39
So, that was really attractive about the acquisition.
3:40
And um being able to combine those uh organizations gave us a lot more um cash flow than than having them separate just based on cross-selling different products that we had and being able to fulfill a lot more of the um uh a lot more of the uh gross profit through sort of the larger organization that they've been farming out some stuff.
4:00
So, that was uh that was kind of a nice combination of the did you buy that first company under the umbrella of your of your marketing business? Yeah. Yeah, correct. Got it.
4:10
And so so it wasn't its own entity.
4:13
No, well, I mean, it was its I mean, if you want to speak technically, it was its own entity, but it was 100% owned by me and 100% of the other firm was owned by me.
4:19
So, I mean, it's shared resources, probably. it.
4:21
So, you didn't have a co-founder or any outside investors or anything?
4:25
Yeah, so I bought it with an SBA loan.
4:27
Um thank god for the SBA.
4:27
Um and so um no, it was it was just a it was an SBA loan and rolled the dice.