Kevin Tawil

And about halfway through, I decided it was time to pivot to plan B, which was doing a search fund.

And I thought,

oh gosh, it's not going to be as good because I want it to be my company.

I wanted this to have my fingerprints all over it from the start.

What I know now but didn't realize then was when you buy a company through a search fund, yeah, your fingerprints are going to be all over it from the start.

If not from day one, certainly within a couple of months, you are the person that the culture is going to be built around.

So the fear I had about not being able to get that out of the search fund was not founded.

I think I raised a little over $200,000 in eight or nine or 10 increments.

Instead of looking in the healthcare industry, Jim Ellis took over as case writer about the time I raised the fund.

And so he was officing at Stanford.

He was your successor, right?

who was my successor as a case writer and then my eventual partner here at Road Rescue.

While Jim moved into my office, I didn't move very far.

I just found an empty office and started my search out of that empty office.

I didn't really tell anybody.

I felt like it was, you know, just keep my head down and nobody will figure it out.

Eventually somebody figured it out and they kicked me out after about six months.

But it was important because I got a chance to spend time with Jim every day.

I was helping him with getting up to speed on case writing.

Jim saw what I was doing.