How Barry-Wehmiller Built a $3.6B M&A Machine Fueled by Culture with Bob and Kyle Chapman

25:09Yeah. What I'd add to what Kyle said is people say to me all the time, I can understand having a good culture in your core business, but how do you bring it to all these companies that you've adopted, acquired all over the world? How do you do that? And I say, one of the things we've learned in this 20-year journey is that everybody in the world, regardless whether you're in China, India, Serbia, Italy, Germany, you simply want to know that you matter. Okay. That is a universal human truth. And I'll never forget. I was in Los Angeles where we were adopting a company and I was talking to the team members and said, welcome to the family.

25:47You've got a good future with us. And a lady spoke up and she looked like she might've been in her forties. She got tears in her eyes. She said, I never thought I was going to get a chance to work for a company that cared about me. Okay. So I would say to you, whether the company is financially successful, whether it's struggling, the universal truth is people want to know they matter and they hear about us, but they think a lot of companies say good things, but don't live those values. We're only as good as our reputation. So remember what Kyle and I are sharing with you has been validated. Harvard wrote a case study about eight years ago on our culture.

26:25And it's become one of their better selling cases with 70 universities in the world using it to teach leadership, how to care for the people you have the privilege of. One other opportunity, we had an opportunity to acquire a company in France. It was a good debate with our board because of the challenges that they perceived of operating businesses with all the government intervention and workers' councils. I eventually got them comfortable. Well, I flew over to meet with the workers' council. Okay, in fact, the union, but they represent everybody but management. Sat down with about eight people.

26:58I explained, welcome to the family. We're going to build a good world together. And I share with you what we believe in. And I shared our guiding principle leadership, our overriding statement. We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people. Normally, workers' councils, unions are in conflict with management. At the end of the discussion with this group of eight people, A gentleman named Felipe looked at me and said, Mr. Chapman, could I say something? I said, sure. He said, Mr. Chapman, we've been waiting for you for 32 years. And they began crying. Wow. Why? Because even the government can't protect your soul.

27:33The government can't show that you matter. In Serbia, we had a unique opportunity to acquire an exceptional company in Serbia, competing against all of our competitors who wanted to acquire it. And the owner picked us because of our culture. And we now have almost 500 people in this plant and the culture is amazing. So this is a universal truth in every part of our country and every part of the world. People want to know they matter. OK, and that is not simply you can't ask people to care. You have to teach them how to care, which is what we do. So I would say to you, we didn't do this to attract companies.

28:08We didn't do this to attract people. We did it because it's a responsibility of leadership for those people in your care to Send them home each night knowing that who they are and what they do matters because the way you lead your company impacts the health of your team members and impacts the way they go home and treat their family. You matter and teach people to care. Yep. Novel idea. So a lot of the things you both described, I talk a lot about buyer-led M &A. And this is my observation that first time you do an M &A deal, it can be very seller-led. maybe the bank process. You go through it and then you do another deal and the process evolves and usually around deal 10, it shifts, it becomes very buyer-led.

28:48You've described that you're proactively sourcing these deals. They're not just showing up to you with the book. You're actively building these relationships over long-term that you got to know them. That's buyer-led, very proactive, very intentional. And then the other part is the culture piece. In terms of the integration, it sounds like it's so much driven around the culture. I was curious about the execution. Is there things that you do? Because the transparency is the other big thing you emphasize, Kyle, which is all again, fire lead. It's like, there's no surprises. This is what's going to happen.

29:20When it comes to actually executing deals and making them successful, what does that look like in terms of being proactive to get the alignment on integration and planning and the leadership and everything to really make it successful? Because again, a seller-led process, you're dead focused on closing the deal. You get the deal closed and it's, here's the keys. And it doesn't sound like you're doing that. No, he said, I wish it was something more dramatic or some unveiling. It's literally just about sitting down with our intentions with the business. Sometimes we'll buy a business whose facility is in a place that doesn't make sense for us.

29:55And we'll say, listen, we cannot buy your business and keep this facility. It is up to you if you choose us. But if we have to leave this facility, we want to be intentional about it. We want to treat people well. We want to let them know well in advance and help them either make the transition with us to another facility or help them find their next role in life. But if somebody says, oh, I can't tell them that, we're out. If we can't be transparent with owners, with what our intentions are, the other thing is we share information. We're a private company. We could be like, oh, you know what?

30:29We'll tell you when we get on the other side. We share our growth. We share our share price. We share our financials. We share our intentions. We share. And yeah, maybe sometimes we overshare, but it's worked more often than it hasn't. And it really helps align expectations, et cetera. We also set expectations on what it means. Sometimes those businesses we bought maybe did or didn't have the best culture. Maybe they didn't share information. Maybe they didn't do cultural assessments. Maybe they didn't do things to recognize their people in a way. We let them know that's coming. Just like somebody would say, hey, I'm going to have KPIs that you're going to look at from a financial perspective, or we're going to do some commercial work together.

31:08The cultural initiatives are as important as anything else. That's what I think we bring unique as a buyer and why people are more and more attracted to this. I would just tell you right now, I wish we had unlimited capital because the momentum that we are receiving right now is unbelievable because of the way we adopt and preserve legacies and grow and scale organizations. Well, Kiesan, the other thing for your listeners to add to that, when I began in 1984 with my just common sense to start doing acquisitions, I looked for companies that had a better market than we were in. But eventually what I looked for, because in the 80s, I really struggled as a company and I learned a lot when I struggled.

31:49And so in 1988, when we had a chance to kind of start again fresh after we spun off two thirds of our company in the London Stock Exchange, and now we were financially stable, I said, what did I learn? What did I learn? What I learned to do was fix struggling companies, which I had done. In our market, there were a lot of struggling companies. So I took what I had learned and I took it to other companies that had similar issues. That's Kyle talked about. We talked about, we started with companies that were struggling. Why? Because I felt comfortable that I could bring value to struggling companies in the future.

32:25And it worked out extremely well. Because what I learned through my mistakes in the 80s gave me a skill that other people didn't look at these companies because they were struggling. I looked at them and saw value. So I would say to you, I'm not that smart, but I have good common sense. I'm creative and I have a positive attitude. So I was able to see value where other people didn't see value and buy at a competitive price because we did the deal. They're not going to sell to us at less than that. I saw value where other people didn't see it. So, again, it was pretty much a passion to diversify our company, reduce our dependence on any one market.

33:01We built this, again, the business model design. So I want to just emphasize that, Dijan. Our business model design is extremely intentional. It's based on a diversity of products, markets, and customers. So if something changes, we don't hurt our people. And I learned that from Emerson Electric. So we're very intentional with our competencies to have diverse markets, customers, and products so that, again, things change. We've seen a lot of change in our country in my lifetime. And we are resilient to that, which has already been tested. And we will continue to make sure that we are thoughtfully diverse in fields that we believe create opportunities for us in the long-term recurring revenue, consulting revenue.

33:46So we're not dependent just on capital spending that tends to swing. We've got recurring revenue and consulting revenue. So the biggest thing anybody in your audience can do is make sure you have a vibrant business model design and you stay within your competency. I did a presentation at Washington University a few years ago on acquisitions. And I read a study that 77 % of all acquisitions fail to achieve the goals of the acquirer. Why? And I said, because of deal momentum. You get in these deals and you got to bid up and then you got to make it work. Usually cut costs and transition people. So I would say to you, we had to do acquisitions to have a future, but we had no money.

34:25So we had to acquire companies that other people don't want. They'll virtually finance it. And that gave us some beginning competencies. And then we had this big event that we spun off two-thirds of our company on the London Stock Exchange, which gave us a financial, Harvard wrote a case study on it. It gave us now a new financial foundation now to build a second company from, again, our history. It began in 1988 with a$20 million company that now is$3.6 billion and is immensely thoughtfully diverse. It's a unique business model that I think will serve all of our stakeholders and our customers well.

34:59What's the biggest risk in M &A? The biggest risk in M &A is overselling revenue synergies. Honestly, that's how people talk. I'm surprised you count them. That's how you convince yourself to pay more. But honestly, it truly is a misread on culture. If you don't have cultural alignment, things just fail. People operate in silos. They don't want to collaborate. Having that cultural alignment is super, super important. When you're aligned culturally and you have standard expectations of what you want to do together. People lean in and work together and collaborate. But if you've got toxicity that exists in one side, it's very difficult to do well.

35:39Okay. Is it fair to say there's two parts? There's front end of the deal, pre-close, it is the price and the right expectations for the deal. Post-close, it's people. It's churn is probably your biggest risk. I wouldn't say churn is. I would say just... You're right. Motivation. It's aligned culture. Yeah. Which might be churn, but... I wanted to get into that because that's when you hear about things going wrong. It is you don't get the good communication. So you have all the FUD settle in. People are uneased about what's going to happen if they still have a job and all these things. And then at the end of the day, people aren't happy.

36:11They're not very productive. I want to click into what does that look like from day one? What does that look like when a company comes to your organization day one? We share with them what we believe in. It starts with a very unique relationship. And let me go back to your statement about cultural alignment. We rarely buy a company with a good culture. It's not that we have cultural alignment because we rarely have leaders who focus on culture. They focus. Do you do any culture? Sorry to interrupt, but do you do any like cultural diligence? Is that a big part of it? Nope. One of the biggest companies we acquired up in Wisconsin,$200 million company, had a horrible culture.

36:48They'd been through layoffs and changes and churn and market. We'd already struck the deal. and we went up and interviewed some of the top people and we said, everybody hates everybody. And it's been one of our most successful acquisitions because the minute you give - I have to tear up my M &A playbook now. You should. Because when we stepped into this company, we said, we believe we have a future together. Let's go do good things. And it changed overnight. Okay, so we don't need cultural alignment. We need to make sure that we can be good stewards of this business and then share our vision. So the first thing I do is sit down and meet with people and say, welcome to the family.

37:26Here's our vision together. And then we live it. And we can show them people who, like Kyle is talking to, that are talking to us about wanting to bring their company to us. They can go look at some of these cultures. We live in a country where 88 % of all people feel they work for a company that does not care about them. You're not going to find good cultures. You're going to find maybe a good business from a financial standpoint. And maybe you'll find a nice family company with a nice family. But it's not an intentional culture. just happens to be a nice place to work. We don't really do cultural due diligence.

37:57We make sure we can be good stewards of this business. And then when we step into it, like I did in France, I sit down and say to them, welcome to the family. You have a good future with us. Let's go do good things. And people virtually come to tears. Okay, so let's say I'm an incoming leader from a newly acquired company. I'll be VP of sales. That's a fun role. What does it look like? Like day one, I get that maybe there's a town hall and you're bringing this message. which gets to some level of excitement. But I know things. We do this and then things die off really quickly and it's business as usual.

38:29No, no, no. There's nothing about business as usual. Teach me. How do you sort of really make the actual change? First of all, we have a vision. We have a very specific vision of what we're going to do with this business that we share. So it's kind of like being in the locker room and developing your play pattern. So Bill closes and the team runs out in the field and executes the play pattern, okay? It's not, oh my God, we bought it. What are we going to do now? Again, we want to be good stewards of these companies that we have the privilege of adopting. I like the word adoption rather than acquire.

38:57Nobody wants to be acquired. They want to be adopted. Our goal is to have a play pattern. That VP of sales, he's now excited because he's now part of a company that he has a future with. Again, 140 acquisitions around the world and you have this culture. How's that possible, Bob? Because people want to know they matter. They want to feel safe and they want to feel they have a future. And that is what they feel in our company. And it doesn't take long for them to feel that and look around. My first call this morning was with 53 new team members from around the world who joined our company to hear how they have experienced our culture.

39:31And the stories of the major companies they worked with are horrible. Most people work for, in quotes, legendary companies, but they were not treated with respect. They were laid off, downsized. We have something that we've been blessed with is very unique, which we care about the people we have the privilege of leading. and we treat them with respect and dignity and people respond immediately to that. We touch their soul and they share gifts. So your VP of sales, you're the happiest guy in the company because now your clients are going to see that you're part of a company that has got a strong culture.

40:05When we have customers visit our plant, the first thing we do is have our team members welcome them because we're people. We're not machines, we're people. Minutally short story, I was interviewed by Washington University organizational development professors a few years ago. And after an hour and a half interview, they looked at me and said, you're the first CEO we've ever talked to that never talked about your product. And I thought of it and I said, I've been talking about our product for the last hour and a half. It's our people. I won't leave this earth proud of the machinery we build. I'll leave this earth proud of the people who built that machinery.

40:35It caught them completely off guard. So we have been blessed with the vision that people are our purpose. OK, and giving them a good future means performing at or above industry norms, attracting good talent. Since Kyle has joined us, attraction of talent that he has brought in to now with our scale, the future of this company is unbelievable in terms of the talent we have right now. Blended with this culture, blended with our robust business model is something that we want to share because it could heal a lot of this issues we have in this country where people don't feel value. They feel used, laid off, downsized, right-sized, fired.

41:13The language of business is broken. Everybody always thinks that when we do an acquisition, like the Barry Rambler bus shows up and drops a bunch of people in and everything's solved. We only invest in things we fully understand. We have proven playbooks, commercial playbooks, people playbooks, financial playbooks, all these various strategies. And because we're buyer-led, we've been very intentional about talking to people about that and due diligence and asking them questions. and they realize, oh, you face those problems. Yes, we have. We know how to tackle them. So if as VP of sales, you aren't excited by the time this deal is struck by researching Barry Wambler, talking to your leaders, then we haven't done a great job.

41:51Most of the time, it's pretty transparent that we're coming in and they know that our intent is long-term, buy, build, and hold, and we are proven business scalers. And as somebody looking to develop personally and professionally, you're gonna bring cultural programs and you're gonna bring opportunity for me for growth. As dad said, I'm the happiest guy alive. Remember, you described a family business, but we have 600 investors in our company, team members and outside investors and several high net worth families. And they look at this stock and they look at its performance and they look at what it stands for.

42:27And it's a highly attractive stock. It's attracted some exceptional families that want to put their money in a company they believe in. So again, it has attracted capital, it's attracted talent, and it's attracted opportunities, and it's attracted our clients. I want to role play a little bit, just like a first deal scenario. We're a young company, about 10 million ARR, 50 employees, but I'm ambitious to bring M &A to our organization for growth. And I'm exploring, I'm looking at a couple of deals now. Culture has come up in both of them. I have one where, question mark, engineering culture. The other company is a question mark on the entire culture.

43:02And that was one that I thought like, maybe I just want to stay away from that one. But now you've got me thinking about it differently. Can you coach me on this like first time doing acquisition? How do I make this work? How do I not screw it up? So remember, when I started doing deals, I couldn't have failed. If I failed in my first deal, it was all over. Okay, I was so financially fragile. You have to look at this opportunity. Are you confident that you can bring value to this organization that two plus two equals five? because again, once you build that muscle memory of behavior. So if you're looking at a couple of opportunities right now and you've got, you'll always have cultural issues.

43:39I've never bought a company that had a good culture. Okay. I have a lot of companies that have a good culture today, but because we brought that to them. So what you got to do is what is your message to these organizations? And how are you going to pay a fair value that does not burden a company because you overpaid and you have to turn around and you lose the confidence of your investors because you overpaid and you underdelayed. So many people think, oh, two plus two is going to be five. We're going to put these together and then we'll get this. I say, make sure you know exactly how, when you put them together, you need to be extremely clear on how you're going to create value.

44:15And again, that's the way I started because if I failed, it was all over. I learned my skills with failure is not an option. I was incredibly intense to make sure that I was a good steward of these. So if you look at these opportunities, I remember we had Bill Smithberg, who was chairman of Quaker Oats on our board. And he said to me one time, Bob, how on earth do you find all these opportunities? And I said, Bill, we are looking every day for opportunities. Every day we are looking for opportunities for the right one. We're not chasing deals. We are targeting companies that we believe in the long term would fit.

44:50And as Kyle said, one company I pursued for 20 years. Okay. So I would say to you, in terms of the deals you're looking at, You've got to make sure that you know exactly how you can be a good steward of that business and what price you can pay. It's not going to burden that company with debts. It's going to turn around and cause it to fail. Because again, 77 % of all deals fail. My quick advice would be everybody says they've got a great culture, but there's some cultural cracks in every company we've bought. And the key is to understand where the root cause is. So we bought businesses where the leader was the cause of the bad culture.

45:29And the one that dad was talking about where we did a massive turnaround, it was that one. I've done another deal where the leader was like a wet blanket sitting on top of the organization. And once we got that, the organizational vibrancy popped. You got to understand the talent, where things lie, etc. Then as dad said, what's your point of differentiation? Why you? Or why the company? What do they bring to you? If you're just capital, then you're winning because you're paying the highest price and not because there's a point of differentiation. They fill a gap. They have talent or leaders that you have.

46:05They have a technology that you want or that you have a technology you could deploy. So you really have to have that clear path to synergy. And then lastly, you have to have multiple ways to win. Everybody's got gravity growth and all this stuff, but you have to have some plan B's and C's. that you understand, listen, if something doesn't go right, if we lose a customer that we thought would stay or whatever, how am I going to make up for that through other avenues? And then I would just be transparent with folks and meet with many folks. A lot of times, if you find that a leader does a smaller business, a lot of your acquisitions are really people dependent, right?

46:42There's a few people that are driving a lot of value. So making sure you understand how contingent and how risky those are and that you have points of communication with them prior to close. Because if somebody's not letting you talk to them, that's potentially a cause of a bigger issue. Either they're not happy or there's just some things to think about as you develop this stuff. And then post-closing, be there, be present, be transparent, be human, all those simple things. When I began doing acquisitions in 1985, there may have been private equity firms, but I wasn't aware of them. There were mainly diversified companies like Dover and Bemis who has acquiring companies from, you know, companies where acquisitions didn't work out.

47:27The environment I see today that you're up against, that Kyle's up against, we're up against is the emergence of capital going into private equity and what they're willing to pay to place their money and what they're willing to do to make sure they get that return is a dramatically different environment than when I began this, okay? I've seen some prices that are, I cannot even imagine what people have put at risk by some of these companies at the prices. If you overpay for a business and it doesn't work out, it's difficult to have a good culture because again, we want a fair return on our investment.

48:05We want to be good stewards. We want to feel good about it. So it's a real, there's so much money that's gone into private equity now that is chasing deals and is ratcheting up the price. It's a really much higher challenge today than when I began in 1985. I'm sensing it. So creating value, making sure you have a real clear, thought out approach on how you're going to create value. I like the point Kyle, you made on understanding the points of differentiation, both your company and the target and the people factor. Understanding where the value lies in the people and their influence on the culture.

48:41because you might have that one bad leader and that's area you want to focus on. Where you're at too is like different maturity. Guy can't come in trying to replicate the Barry Weymiller way of doing things just yet. If you feel like that really took time to establish that reputation around the culture where probably you mentioned is people actually look forward to it. They know what's coming. I'm not in that position. I got to maybe start communicating, hey, this is what our culture is like. But it sounds like some of that stuff actually comes over time. We have case studies written about us.

49:07We have a showcase that we can let people to our facilities without any chaperones. Even when I started Forsyth, I had no credibility. We were just an offshoot of Barry Wainler, but I pointed to Barry Wainler. So I got to point to case studies. I said, we're bringing that tool set to the businesses we're investing in. I had an upper hand getting started. But yeah, you're right. But just, you got, if you have to be consistent and you have to be transparent and you'll develop that track record quickly. This is great tips, gentlemen. Kyle, so I got to ask from your perspective, third generation family member of business.

49:41Historically, this is the third generation is one that screws everything up. Yeah, about 12 % success rate. Thanks for bringing that up. Seems like it's going pretty good just talking to you. The fact that you can be on the same call with your dad is actually a good sign. You know, it reminds me of, I was reading the book, The Throning the King of the Anheuser-Busch Takeover, which is in St. Louis. And I had a good friend of mine, actually he was a CMO at the time. So it was got to see both sides of the story. But I'd love to hear just your journey and how do you make it work? What's good? And maybe some advice for me, if I can bring one of my generations to the business.

50:16The third generation versus second generation. There's a whole other podcast around the growth of the business from the 70s up to 83, the almost death of the business from 83 to 87, the public offering, which again, there's a case study on that. And then the rebirth of Barry Wainler in 1987. So I like to say we're still in the second generation of the rebirth. I hope that just helps my statistics a little bit better. So that's one thing. But I'm the youngest of six children. I have three older brothers and two older sisters. We have a wonderful family. And no one worked in the business. I always felt that the best gift you ever gave me was no entitlement.

50:54So I went out and saw new things. I saw new ways to structure deals. I saw new ways to go into a plastic film manufacturer versus a distribution business versus buying a property and casualty insurance company. So I saw all these things. And then I wanted to get into a business. So I went and joined one of the businesses, the private equity firms I bought. And I wanted to see what it felt like to be on the other side. I knew nothing when I was in private equity. I was like, oh, do this, do that. And then I'd go back behind my Excel spreadsheet and wait for the next board meeting to say things that didn't make sense.

51:27And so I wanted to have a little more substance to who I was, went into a business and felt that what it felt like to be owned by private equity and a little bit of more shorter term thing. All that said, the opportunity came back to start Foresight Partners, leveraging my private equity background with my dad. The board and they thought it was interesting, but it was like this cute little side project. Well, we built just under a billion dollar business at Foresight. I talked to you about early days I was pulling from Barry Wainler, like grabbing things to take to our businesses. And by the time we started getting bigger, Barry Wainler started looking at things we were doing.

52:05Of course, I then started pulling us over. Just this wonderful culture of Barry Wainler. Everybody kind of pushes everybody to get better. Then naturally, I was asked by the senior leadership team and my dad and the board to come over. Now, would I say, hey, T-son, have your son, go into private equity, give him a fund, see how it goes, and then he can help run the business. It's not a natural course, and it's not really replicable, but it allowed me, without a sense of entitlement, even when I came back to start Foresight 16 years ago, I never thought I was going to work in the mothership. I thought I was just going to build off this thing.

52:42And I realized that things that we were doing collectively as an organization really worked with each other. It just happened naturally. And my dad and my relationship is phenomenal. You can probably tell we balance each other well. Stories and anecdotes versus data, that might be one element. I don't have the entrepreneurial flair he does, so I have to make a lot more data-driven decisions. But the transition has been amazing. The company is amazing. Again, my path, I don't think I could say, hey, copy paste this, that lack of entitlement, Go do things. Go learn. Go see. Because you can become really insular if you work in a business for 30 years, having not seen other business models or how the world works.

53:23And that's given me an advantage to help this transition even better than it would have otherwise. No entitlements. Yes. I have three kids. I'm feeling inspired to have three more. I have four and I'm not inspired to have two more. let me add cal's background is spectacular with great business education he worked with some great people at bank of america for capital investors and then he had a chance to work on one other platform and then he started his own business with and build his own credibility it was an unbelievable path i had a totally different but equally unique when i joined barry waymiller in 1969 when my dad said would you consider working for barry waymiller here i am 21 years old 22, doing well at Pricewaterhouse.

54:08My dad said, would you like to join this company? I need somebody I could trust. Okay. So my title was somebody he could trust. And we didn't have a great relationship, but we thought we could do it together. The beauty is I went into my own management development. I worked in manufacturing. I worked in license agreements. I worked in customer service. I worked in finance. I had a chance to get behind how a clock works, not just looking at the hands, but understanding how it comes together to create time. And so when I stepped up, when my dad passed away, and all of a sudden, I understood so many parts of the business that that really allowed me to see things other people couldn't see.

54:46So, again, I would say to you, the key to my is my comment. I saw value where other people didn't see it. And my creativity allowed me to apply it. So, again, Harvard did the case study on our culture, which, again, as I said, is one of their better selling cases. But they didn't do one on our business model because it's very unique. kind of the uniqueness of the way I came up. The reason we started Foresight Capital, as I said, the world needs to evolve beyond private equity, which is about deal flow and flipping to long-term value creators. Kyle has really embraced this. So again, the way I got here, I don't think is replicable, okay?

55:22The unique journey that got here. Now, the way Kyle's taking it is he's captured the legacy, the good news, but he's brought his skill sets in today's world and we're continuing to grow and organically and through intentional adoptions. We kind of got here in a unique way, but we're now blending those two together to create a great future for the people who put their faith in us. That's a really great context. And it sounds like you're very humbled through that experience as well of having those different roles and likewise with not having entitlement. I got to ask, what's the vision? Where are we going?

55:55What's, because now we got multi-generational aspect to it. We've sort of accomplished quite a bit. What's the next decade generation look like? Until Kyle joined the firm, I felt that when something happened to me, that the company should be sold to a thoughtful buyer because of our unique journey. And then when Kyle joined the firm, it gave me a whole new perspective because he embraced the legacy of his grandfather and his father to carry this forward. But he brought totally different skill sets. So I would say to you that the legacy that we're very proud of now, I believe will carry on because Kyle's embraced it.

56:34The organization embraces it. So, again, in my opinion, what we are blessed with is this legacy. It's not about creating more wealth. It's about being a symbol in the world for the way business could be a force for good to heal this poverty of dignity in the world where people don't feel value, they feel used. I always say you can retire from a job, but you cannot retire from a calling. We've been blessed with the message that could heal the brokenness and business could be that force for good if we knew how to care for the people we have the privilege of leading. Where our vision is, we are just getting started.

57:09So we're a three and a half billion dollar organization. You could characterize us historically as an industrial equipment business with this little investment thing over here and this engineering consulting services over here. and what the transformation we're going through right now is Barry Wainler Group is really a value-added operator and investor in business models we understand with an unending pursuit of people and performance and harmony and a permanent capital mindset. And when you talk about your organization in that way, and I told you the two business models we really understand, it opens the aperture of our growth.

57:42So now our business isn't, we're a packaging platform, a converting platform, a consulting platform of this. We have an industrial and packaging automation platform. Our most mature, but we've got innovation and growth going over there. We have our professional services segment, which has high organic growth opportunities, unbelievable people running it. And there's a lot of other businesses with similar business models in that that we can grow. We have an engineering consulting business, but we've also grown an insurance services business from mid-30s million to 500 million. We see an opportunity to grow organizations there.

58:16And we have this budding life sciences technology business where we help automate the assembly of medical devices. And we make single-use centrifuges that are helping cell and gene therapy, drugs go through clinical trials. And each of those have tremendous growth opportunities. So that's at$5 billion that's selling it short. We could be$6,$10 billion over time. We are our biggest governor because we're family-held and we have capital that needs. So the vision is unbelievable. But my real vision is that people talk about Barry Wainler and my dad's leadership style, like they talked about GE and Jack Welsh and Honeywell and Larry Boskey and all these other greats, these wonderful people that turn businesses around and did incredible things.

59:05But I want us to be our unique approach to business with people and performance in harmony, not one in sacrifice of the other, to prove out that business can be the most powerful source for good. That's the mission we're on. That's the momentum we're gaining. We want to be a wonderful place for companies to preserve their legacy, for people to develop into their full potential, and for shareholders that have aligned expectations for us. And we can do those three things. Again, we're just getting started. I feel like a$3.5 billion startup. I'm really inspired. I want to start listening to this conversation and rethink how we approach our own culture and internally and externally.

59:44Kyle summarized it beautifully. The most important thing for us, every time we have the chance to adopt another company, it's like opening another church in another community. The ripple effect is dramatic. By getting scale and global impact, we believe we can be a symbol for what business could be. And we need to not talk about it. we need to live it and share it and start a movement so business becomes a force for good, exactly as Kyle said, because we live these values and we live them around the world. It's a global impact and it could heal this poverty of dignity we have in the world. So we're very much on a mission that with the talent we have and the business model we have, we can be good stewards of all the people whose lives we touch.

1:00:26I gotta ask, what's the craziest thing you've seen in M &A? When we talk about a buyer-led strategy, that means you do a lot of things in order to get a seller to sell to you. Dad once had to go visit with a gentleman and his doll collection. The things you do to get those early deals done, that's when he had no credibility and no money. He had to get people to like him. The craziest thing I see right now is multiples people are paying for businesses. Yeah, Kyle and I look at it all the time. But the crazy, obviously, the things I did to do equity, as Kyle said, I had to go visit the guy's dolls he bought for his wife around the house.

1:01:02There was a doll on every single piece of furniture in their house I had to look at. And I didn't get the company. So I would say to you that prices I see people being forced to pay to get deals because you got all this money that's got to be placed. I'm astounded at the price that people come to and the damage that's going to do in terms of the people that have got to be restructured to make that number work. So I'm very concerned with the pricing levels and the impact it's going to make on the company's ramifications of you pay too much, it doesn't work out and people get hurt. It's hard to get returns now, that's for sure.

1:01:39Yeah. This has been a great conversation, gentlemen. I appreciate you taking the time, helping me become a better M &A scientist. Thank you. Appreciate it. Our goal is for you to help us make people aware of the need for business to be a source for good in the world. Your questions have been great and we appreciate your interest and we hope you help us share this message with the world. Fellow M &A scientists, if you listened this far, I got to hear from you. I had so much fun doing this interview. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. Let me know what you think. Give me the good, give me the bad. Give me some ideas for other topics.

1:02:11Give me some criticism. I welcome that too. That's how I get better at this. Till next time, here's to the deal.

1:02:43that you already have. We're here to help. And if we can't help you, we probably know someone that can. You can reach out to me by email, Kisan, K-I-S-O-N, at mascience.com. Or you can text me directly at 312-857-3711. If you just want to keep learning at your own pace, visit mascience.com for a lot more content and resources. That's where you can also subscribe to our newsletter, Again, that's mascience.com. Here's to the deal.

1:03:27Views and opinions expressed on M &A Science reflect only those individuals and do not reflect the views of any company or entity mentioned or affiliated with any individual. This podcast is purely educational.