John Block

Every day waking up, little improvements.

Again, whether you're on the top of the universe, there's always ways to push to do more and get better.

Or whether you're going through a tougher spell in a business, in a market, whatever, you're still going to owe it to yourself, owe it to your team, owe it to each other, your investors in our case, or our partners that operate businesses, the employees at our portfolio companies, the people behind our investors who benefit.

We owe it to all of them to wake up every day and look to get a little bit better.

Yeah, absolutely.

I grew up in St.

Louis, Missouri.

My dad was a roofer.

Mom was a stay-at-home mom.

I did not dream of being in private equity because I didn't know what private equity was growing up.

Yeah.

Tommy, I probably thought one day it would be you, to be honest.

I looked around at people that had small businesses, which of course you're using now, but when you started, I looked around and said, people that are running small, whether it's trades, plumbing, et cetera, as I said, my dad was in roofing, that's what I grew up with, and that's what I always thought I would do.

Started my career...

Well, I went to watch UN St.

Louis, played sports, ended up having a chance to play Division III, so I was a hero, but played Division III football, did that, and then started my career in consulting.

and had the good fortune of getting a chance to just learn how to think.

I tell people that the beauty of consulting is you get to stare at a lot of different things and just learn how to break down problems, learn how to think, assess situations.

I did that for a couple of years.

And then I got into private equity where I spent a couple of years as an associate, at which point I often joke I was the master of the universe.