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.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 74 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 42.
Appearances
And part of that, part of why it takes six months is we spend a lot of time bringing a knife to a gunfight comment. We spend a lot of time up front preparing. And that's really important because when you launch the process and we're having live conversations with real potential buyers, that momentum at that point makes a big difference. You do not want to slow down.
You want to have answers to their questions. You want to be prepared and everything organized and assembled. It makes it as easy as possible for them to really assess A1 in that case so that they stay longer.
And the more you have groups in the process all the way till the end, the longer you've maintained that competitive dynamic, which means you keep prices up and can possibly even raise them further, further along in the process.
Yeah, that's a really good question. I've seen great CEOs come from a financial background. I've seen great CEOs come from an engineering background, sales background. I've had great CEOs that had MBAs from top business schools. We've had great CEOs who never even finished high school and everything in between. So there is no particular background.
There is no one path that we could recommend somebody follow. People are kind of born leaders or they're not. And I think to me, what I would say, a great leader is one who is able to get the best out of the team that he or she has. You're a motivator. Your passion for what you do inspires and motivates others to be better than they ever thought they could be.
So that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. I think inspiration, motivation, concern, passion, those are the things I think make great leaders. There are some nuts and bolts things. I mean, you definitely have to understand what the numbers are telling you. And you need to have a vision for the business. I mean, you need to be someone that is thinking six months in advance.
Where is my industry going? Where is my business going? You have to be a visionary and you have to set a strategic plan based on your vision of the future for your company. Then you've got to be able to motivate people to execute that plan.
Yeah, I've been doing this since the late 90s. And there was a time in our world where you saw more of that. You saw more of the private equity world being a financial engineering game, using leverage, selling off assets, cutting costs to generate a return. Very difficult to do that today.
it's way too competitive that dynamic everyone kind of gets the same leverage deal people are going to value the business much higher where you can't cut your way to success really and maybe there are a handful of exceptions but really the way you're going to generate returns in the private equity world today is by making the business more valuable and growing it so i
I haven't seen that in a while where a private equity firm comes in with the motivation to cut their way to a return. You really don't see that as much anymore. It's way more today about growth, which then goes back to Eric's point is, does the CEO align with the private equity firm on what's the best way to grow the business?
And there might be different PE firms might have different views on how they want to grow it. And that's why it's really important in the process to make sure you're getting to know these groups. You're doing reference calls with other CEOs that are with them now, were with them before, and maybe have been sold. So how do these guys do it? Do they only grow through acquisition?
Do they bring anything to table on digital marketing or some other area to grow a business? And find the one that best aligns with you. And that part of the process really becomes critical.
Yeah, communication too. I mean, I think like many things in life, good communication between the CEO and the private equity team that he or she is working with. As long as the communication is really good, really that gets in front of any issues.
I mean, if the CEO doesn't want to be the CEO at the time they exit the business, so the new buyer is really backing somebody else, that's okay as long as there's enough time to prepare for it.
and that's that's true really when it comes to succession planning how long ceo wants to be there as long as you're communicating well with the private equity firm there's no surprises time to prepare anything anything can be accepted and that's what i said to cortec and i just told the team i said look
Yeah, I mean, it's I think for a lot of people, there are a lot of different criteria for that decision. I think ultimately, even with an institution, even with, you know, in earlier in my career, I did a lot of work for big public companies, you know, Masco and and companies like that, IT, TRW and big, big companies like that.
And folks like that, private equity firms or entrepreneurs like you, I do think there's an emotional part of it. I do think there is a big part of the decision. And there's sort of the check the box stuff. You know, they will do references on former clients of ours. They'll look at what kind of valuations we've gotten. They will want to know how well do we know this sector?
Are we going to articulate it well? Are we going to get the story quickly? Do we have experience in the sector? All those things matter, but you probably don't even get invited to sit down and present your qualifications if all those boxes haven't already been checked.
I think at the end of the day, there's a view of who has the most conviction about why this business is valuable and who is going to go out and get me the best possible deal. And that oftentimes leads with price. But it's not just price. It's price. It's fit. It's legal terms. It's all the things that go into a deal. Who's going to go get me the best deal? And who do I trust to tell me straight?
If they don't think this is a good deal, they'll tell me. They won't tell me to just take it because it's in their interest. They'll give me the right advice. So I think a lot of it is an establishment of trust. a relationship that's been built over time, and then just who do they believe is going to do everything they can to go deliver the best possible deal.
Showing 1261–1280 of 1,301 · page 64 of 66
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