Rob Parker
speaker
1,301 appearances
75 recordings
5 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 29 Aug
Rob Parker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 74 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 42.
Appearances
Pro Wrestling Nation, 24-7, channel 156.
But just a reminder to everybody, all financials are is the output from everything else that goes into the business. Operating the company efficiently, driving leads, converting those leads. What's your average ticket once you've made that conversion? All those things that make a business great, that's the part that really matters. The numbers are just the output of all those things.
So the numbers are important and it is the metric that a buyer will use. But you have to tell the story behind the numbers. That's really what matters, is the story behind the numbers, not just the numbers themselves.
Good to be here. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having us. It's great to be here. Great to see all the success you've had building A1 and even since the sale process a year and a half ago. So congrats to you and thanks again for having us. I started my Wall Street career in New York at a firm called Donaldson, Lufkin, and Gen Red.
I was in the mergers and acquisitions group, worked there for a number of years in New York. We had a large Los Angeles office. When the head of that office went to UBS, he brought me and a few others with him. So I went out to LA for a few years and worked with him at UBS doing mergers and acquisitions and leveraged finance. I'm originally from Detroit, Michigan, that's home.
And as I was thinking about starting a family, raising a family where I wanted to build roots and build a family, I wanted to move back home. So I did move back home and joined Comerica Bank, had a small mergers and acquisitions group, joined those guys. It was a great experience. We had a lot of fun. Those were great years. In 2009, when they took TARP money, like all the big banks did,
They told our little M&A group they're going to shut us down. So at the end of 2009 was maybe my darkest day in my career. Comerica said, we're going to shut down this group. You guys are small and profitable and don't necessarily cost a lot for us. But we're really turned upside down as a result of the great financial crisis. And we're just going to focus on our core lending business.
So they shut us down. So in the beginning of 2010, my partner and I started our own firm. We were entrepreneurs. We started at my partner's kitchen table. We were at my kitchen table and literally built it from nothing and into a firm. It was called Corton Partners. We built it brick by brick and eventually had five offices in Europe, three in the U.S.
And in January of 2019, we were acquired by Cowen. Cowen's a publicly traded Wall Street investment bank. So my life kind of came full circle. I was back part of a big public Wall Street investment bank again. I ran the sell side M&A group for them and then ultimately ran the business services sector group. I was with those guys for a while.
And then earlier this year, left Cowen to go join one of our competitors, Piper Sandler, where I am now and thrilled to be there and be part of such a great, great organization.
Yeah, good question. I mean, they're similar in a lot of ways. They're of the publicly traded Wall Street investment banks. You know, there's the very largest players, B of A, Goldman, JP Morgan. And then there's firms that are on the smaller side of the large public companies. Cowen's one of those. Cowen's now part of Toronto Dominion Bank. And to me, that's the biggest difference.
Toronto Dominion Bank is a very large commercial bank And they're heavily regulated, like all those banks are. And it's just a different environment from what Cowan was and what Piper is today. And for me, being part of a nimble organization that lets people like Eric and I and our team be more entrepreneurial, that's just a better fit for someone like me. And I'm glad to be there.
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah. Well, there's a lot about the home services sector that appeals to private equity, that appeals to investors and appeals to the capital class. The addressable market sizes are massive. These are huge markets. They're very fragmented. Every town has four or five companies that can fix your garage door, for example. Or 500. Or 500, yeah, in some cases. Yeah, exactly.
So they're super fragmented, which creates an opportunity for organic growth. So if you're a best-in-class operator, you can take share from the less sophisticated competitors you have, or you can grow inorganically through acquisition. So that appeals to the private equity class. In the residential world, there is typically very little, if any, customer concentration.
So if you lose your top five customers, you barely even notice. So there's a lot about the sector that people like. The nature of the demand is non-discretionary. If your garage door is broken, you have to have it fixed. It's a security issue, if nothing else. So the nature of the demand is very strong. So it really appeals to private equity. And I think that appeal is durable.
So the private equity interest in the sector is going to remain for a long, long time. So I feel very, very good about that. And it's not really a surprise that there's been this kind of interest. And
I just think more and more, I feel like Eric and I have a conversation every week with a new private equity firm or a new family office or even more and more sovereign wealth funds, large pension funds that have interest in the sector. There's new interest every week, and I don't think it's going to stop for a while.
And Tommy, I'll tell you, I mean, they, There is a lot of interest in the space, and I'm sure a lot of your viewers and your listeners are getting calls all the time from private equity. One thing I would say is it's really important to not just look for the money. That's important. But the last dollar is less important than getting the right fit. Well, if you're going to roll a spot.
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