The Deal Table

Kelly Ann Winget bought a profitable ammunition company with $11 million in assets out of Chapter 11, and put up no cash to do it.

More on Kelly Ann Winget and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/kelly-ann-winget

The company had less than $3 million in debt and does $6 million to $8 million a year. After a fire, its bank pulled the capital out and forced it into bankruptcy. The owner could have sold the equipment and walked away with about $8 million. Winget structured a deal that keeps him running the shop, protects what the equipment would have paid him, and gives him equity if the turnaround works.

She was making close to six figures part-time selling car washes in high school, skipped college to work for operators, and raised about $1 billion for other people's deals over almost 15 years, $100,000 at a time. In 2020, when a family office asked her to soften what negative oil meant for its investors, she formed Alternative Wealth Partners the next day.

AWP runs like a mutual fund of alternatives for accredited investors: drilling projects, operating companies, real estate and venture in one limited partnership. Her first fund closed at a little under $20 million and made about 30 acquisitions. She explains why she only invests where she can take control, how oil and gas and qualified opportunity zones shelter cash flow, why private equity loses family businesses, and why her next fund targets defense and national security supply chains.

Kelly Ann Winget is founder and CEO of Alternative Wealth Partners, a private investment firm she founded in 2020 that manages diversified funds of alternative assets, including energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, real estate and private businesses, for accredited investors and family offices. She grew up in a fifth-generation Texas oil and gas family, guest lectures on alternative investments at SMU, and hosts The Wealth Alpha podcast. She was named to the Inc. Female Founders 500 in 2026.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Intro

04:17 Six figures selling car washes

14:36 A mutual fund of alternatives

17:22 Why sell an asset paying 12% to 15%

30:09 "If I run your company, I own it"

31:21 Fired, then founded the next day

34:17 The ammo company bought for $0

42:56 ADHD as a deal superpower

01:05:10 The Boiler Room line

01:11:54 A QOZ fund for defense

Newsletter: thedealtablepodcast.com/connect

Alternative Wealth Partners: alternativewealthpartners.com

Misbehaving, Richard H. Thaler: link.amazon/B0205oFM4

Lane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: amzn.to/48nLElW

Follow The Deal Table: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X

The Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.

Sponsored by Capital Southwest, Security National Bank, Blockchain.com and IMA Financial Group.

Margot Carter has worked on hundreds of deals and can count the bad ones on one hand. Her rule: the best deal is sometimes the one you don't do.

More on Margot Carter and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/margot-carter

Carter was chief legal officer of FYI, later Sourcecorp, at 27, after helping it merge its first eight companies and go public. It went on to buy two or three businesses a month, and Jerry Jones, an original investor, still tells people it was one of his best investments. Days after September 11, her old law firm asked her to help rebuild the legal department at Cantor Fitzgerald, where about a third of the employees were left. She went on to SoundView, which she helped sell to Charles Schwab, and The Princeton Review, then spent 2010 to 2015 as global chief legal officer of RealPage.

She treats the legal seat as a growth job. At RealPage she pushed the company to become a licensed money transmitter so it could earn a share of the rent payments it already collected. On the board of Interior Logic Group she helped buy a virtual home design platform so the company would be valued on revenue instead of EBITDA. It sold to Blackstone on the morning it was set to price its IPO.

Today she sits on three NYSE boards and runs Cien, the AI company she co-founded 10 years ago. She explains how Cien turns CRM data into a growth plan, the client where it found $180 million in opportunities and recovered $20 million within a month, the three questions she asks before joining a board, how boards recruit directors, why deals fall apart before closing, and why she thinks AI is still in the first inning.

Margot Carter is founder and president of Living Mountain Capital, which she started in 1998, and co-founder of Cien.ai, an AI sales-intelligence platform. She is lead independent director of Installed Building Products and an independent director of Eagle Materials and Tyler Technologies, all NYSE listed. She was EVP, global chief legal officer and corporate secretary of RealPage from 2010 to 2015, and earlier held general counsel roles at FYI/Sourcecorp, SoundView Technology Group and The Princeton Review after starting her career at Morgan Lewis. She holds a J.D. from Fordham and is chair emeritus of NACD North Texas.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Intro

04:45 Chief legal officer at 27

08:29 A third of Cantor was left

14:55 Turning rent payments into revenue

16:21 Sold to Blackstone on IPO morning

22:41 $180 million found in one CRM

30:47 The best deal is the one you skip

34:16 Her three-question board filter

39:36 "We're in the first inning"

57:59 Michael Singer's Surrender Experiment

Newsletter: thedealtablepodcast.com/connect

Cien: cien.ai

Give and Take, Adam Grant: amzn.to/46lxErw

Lane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: amzn.to/48nLElW

Follow The Deal Table: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X

The Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.

Sponsored by Capital Southwest, Security National Bank, Blockchain.com and IMA Financial Group.

Beth Van Duyne ran a city before she ran for Congress. She says the mayor's office moves an economy more than Washington does.

More on Beth Van Duyne and this episode: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/beth-van-duyne

Van Duyne moved out on her own at 17 and worked two and three jobs at a time to pay rent, then went to Cornell on loans that took her 10 years to pay off. She got into local politics over shade at a neighborhood park. When a zoning fight put her across from a city councilman nobody wanted to run against, she ran, was outspent 8 to 1, and won. She became the first woman elected mayor of Irving, served at HUD, and won her seat in Congress in 2020.

Her North Texas Job Fair drew 6,000 people its first year. This year it drew 50,000 to Globe Life Field, where 670 employers were hiring for 68,000 jobs. Companies deciding where to relocate, she says, look at schools, roads, flights out of DFW, housing and whether they can hire, and the city that sells itself hardest wins.

She also covers how a bill actually moves through Congress, why her small business regulation bill passed the House and stalled in the Senate, why she sends back checks from donors who expect a vote, and the most effective way for a business owner or executive to get a member's attention.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne represents Texas's 24th Congressional District. She serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and chairs the House Small Business Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax, and Capital Access. Before Congress she was HUD's Southwest Regional Administrator, Mayor of Irving from 2011 to 2017, and a member of the Irving City Council. She began her career in business and ran her own consulting firm, and graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Intro

06:01 6,000 to 50,000 job seekers

18:04 On her own at 17

21:47 Outspent 8 to 1, and won

26:36 "Enemies accumulate"

30:22 Why mayors move the economy most

43:14 How a bill actually becomes law

45:19 Why a House-passed bill stalls

51:51 How executives should engage Congress

57:59 $12 an hour to $65 an hour

Newsletter: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/connect

Rep. Beth Van Duyne: https://vanduyne.house.gov

Lane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: https://amzn.to/48nLElW

Follow The Deal Table

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thedealtablepodcast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedealtablepodcast/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedealtablepodcast

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedealtable

X: https://x.com/thedealtablepod

The Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.

Sponsored by Capital Southwest, Security National Bank, Blockchain.com and IMA Financial Group.

Capital Southwest: https://www.capitalsouthwest.com/

Security National Bank: https://securitynational.bank

Blockchain.com: https://www.blockchain.com

IMA Financial Group: https://imacorp.com

Jonathan Lusk gives away the hunting marketplace for free. BirdDog makes its money on ranch taxes, loans and insurance instead.

More on Jonathan Lusk and this episode:

https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/jonathan-lusk

Lusk spent his early career in wealth management at Goldman Sachs and then at his own firm running money for 25 Texas families. One of those clients, ICON CEO Jason Ballard, told him he was wasting his life, asked him to manage his ranch, and put up capital when the hunting marketplace Lusk went looking for turned out not to exist. Lusk co-founded BirdDog in 2022, and Colt McCoy was his second investor.

BirdDog started as the Airbnb for hunting and now charges landowners nothing to list. The hunts bring landowners in. The money comes from what they need next: Section 180 soil-fertility deductions billed at $40 an acre, 50 to 100 basis points on the spread of ranch loans for the life of the loan, and the insurance policies BirdDog brokers. Lusk says the company broke even in the first quarter of this year and now works with landowners in about 40 states.He also covers why almost every ranch runs in the red, the capital calls that split ranching families, how his head of sales used Claude to build a loan-qualifying tool in 30 minutes, why he put headquarters in a town of 600 instead of Austin, and the four-step decision framework from Terry Looper's Sacred Pace.

Jonathan Lusk is co-founder and CEO of BirdDog, a land intelligence platform based in Chappell Hill, Texas, that helps private landowners make and save money on their ranches and farms. He grew up in Whitesboro, Texas, studied at Texas A&M, earned an MBA from Rice, and worked at AT&T, Goldman Sachs and Avalon Advisors before founding his own investment firm. BirdDog's investors include Morrison Seger Venture Capital Partners and former NFL quarterback Colt McCoy.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Intro

05:47 "You're wasting your life"

09:16 Why BirdDog dropped its 20% take rate

10:27 Section 180 at $40 an acre

11:16 Earning the spread on ranch loans

20:25 8 to 10 times revenue vs 30 times

28:09 99.9% of ranches are in the red

40:53 "Red flags never come down"

45:17 A loan tool built in 30 minutes

01:05:25 Sacred Pace by Terry Looper

Newsletter: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/connect

BirdDog: https://birddogit.com

Sacred Pace, Terry Looper: https://amzn.to/3VLTFOg

Lane Carrick on selling a business,

The Optima Advantage: https://amzn.to/48nLElW

Follow The Deal Table

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thedealtablepodcast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedealtablepodcast/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedealtablepodcast

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedealtable

X: https://x.com/thedealtablepod

The Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.

Sponsored by Capital Southwest, Security National Bank, Blockchain.com and IMA Financial Group.

Capital Southwest: https://www.capitalsouthwest.com/

Security National Bank: https://securitynational.bank

Blockchain.com: https://www.blockchain.com

IMA Financial Group: https://imacorp.com

Donna Letier built the first gardening company insurance will pay for. More than 500 organizations use it, and 85 percent come back.More on Donna Letier and this episode: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/donna-letierLetier spent three decades in retail marketing, starting at Neiman Marcus under Stanley Marcus, before co-founding Gardenuity with Julie Eggers. Gardenuity runs gardening programs for more than 500 organizations, including Cigna and Johnson & Johnson, and most of the business is now corporate. Its biggest markets are New York, California, Virginia and Chicago.The company was built on one statistic: 90 percent of first-time gardeners fail. Gardenuity matches plants to the buyer's zip code and season, ships fully rooted plants from about 90 growers, and texts customers before bad weather hits. 98 percent of its gardeners succeed. A call from Cigna before the pandemic opened the corporate channel, COVID moved the workshops onto Zoom, and insurance brokers now bring in the clients.She also covers the Christmas complaint that created the giftable garden, why her fourth quarter is as big as her second, ringing the Nasdaq closing bell with her entire team, why mediocre retail will not survive, and why she tells executives to measure less and tend more.Donna Letier is co-founder and CEO of Gardenuity, a technology-enabled gardening and workplace wellness company. Before Gardenuity she spent 30 years in retail marketing at Neiman Marcus, Borders, MGM and Barneys New York. Gardenuity partners with Scotts Miracle-Gro and Bonnie Plants, and closed out Nasdaq's Wellness Week by ringing the closing bell.KEY MOMENTS00:00 Intro09:03 The garden insurance pays for12:32 90% of first-time gardeners fail29:02 How Cigna opened the corporate channel29:55 COVID cancels everything, then Zoom33:32 "You ruined my entire Christmas"43:54 Ringing the Nasdaq closing bell48:08 Measure less, tend more48:59 The future of brick and mortar retail01:00:42 Books she recommendsNewsletter: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/connectGardenuity: https://www.gardenuity.comThe Well-Gardened Mind, Sue Stuart-Smith: https://amzn.to/4y6NGkyThe Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett: https://amzn.to/4rRN4OjLane Carrick on selling a business, The Optima Advantage: https://amzn.to/48nLElWFollow The Deal TableYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thedealtablepodcastLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedealtablepodcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedealtablepodcastTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedealtableX: https://x.com/thedealtablepodThe Deal Table is hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick, filmed in Dallas, and produced by Harper Belmont Media.Sponsored by:Capital Southwest: https://www.capitalsouthwest.com/Security National Bank: https://securitynational.bankBlockchain.com: https://www.blockchain.comIMA Financial Group: https://imacorp.com

"If we owned this company, we wrote the $50 million check to control this business, is that who you would hire to put in that job?"

Bill Rowe is founder, chairman and CEO of Rowe Global, a retained executive search firm that recruits CEOs, CFOs and presidents for private equity portfolio companies, PE funds, family offices and private companies. He went into retained search straight out of SMU in 1991, spent almost 10 years at Foster Partners and 11 as a founding partner of Pearson Partners International, and launched Rowe Global in 2013 so the principals would make the calls and meet the candidates themselves.

He asks his team the $50 million question about 20 times a week, usually when a search is down to two or three qualified finalists. After nearly 25 years recruiting for private equity, he says he thinks more like a PE investor than a recruiter: where the fund sits in its investment cycle, what the debt looks like, and what kind of leader a leveraged portfolio company can afford. The market has shifted against the buyer of talent. Private equity has grown so broad that "there's more leadership needs than there is proven operators," the best candidates are weighing two other deals or waiting out a payday at their current portfolio company, and the industry average search runs 122 days from go to yes.

Executives who move from Wall Street or a Fortune 50 company into a family office fail, he says, when they arrive without the mentality of "I'm here to serve." And he remembers every placement that did not work: "I still can remember like a death of a child, every placement that wasn't good. And it eats at me."

Also in this episode: executive search for private equity, how a retained search firm defines a role, hiring a CEO for a portfolio company, recruiting executives into Texas and to secondary markets, a search that ended with a hire in Ghana, what moves a candidate besides compensation, and the question his three kids asked him at Thanksgiving.

Hosted by Ryan Harper and Andy Swartz. Produced by Harper Belmont Media.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro

2:28 Sponsors

3:50 The forever pledge at Old Parkland

13:06 The client is the company

13:41 A boutique, not the next Korn Ferry

15:54 Fill the job, don't survey the market

18:36 11 years building Pearson Partners

20:14 The emergency call to New Orleans

23:51 A scared SMU senior reads Forbes

27:07 Coaching a new leader in

28:43 Every bad placement, remembered

29:42 "We wrote the $50 million check"

31:30 Partner versus transaction

33:57 Thinking like a PE investor

37:39 Why executives fail at family offices

41:25 Forget the job description

42:12 How long a search really takes

45:07 More PE jobs than proven operators

46:30 Waiting out the payday

49:02 Two smart decisions

50:44 A third of the work is recruiting into Texas

52:05 Recruiting to West Texas

53:13 A search that ended in Ghana

57:08 What moves a candidate besides money

59:46 The left and right side of the page

1:01:31 A landmine field

1:03:15 The Old Parkland spring cocktail

1:06:12 The Rowe Global Ranch Party

1:07:49 "Dad, do you even like what you do?"

1:09:58 10 years at the Indy 500

1:11:55 SMU's next 35 years

1:19:05 Sam Susser, filming next

SPONSORED BY

Capital Southwest | https://capitalsouthwest.com

Security National Bank | https://securitynational.bank

Blockchain.com | https://www.blockchain.com

IMA Financial Group | https://imacorp.com

Rowe Global: https://www.roweglobal.com

The Deal Table: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

Ryan Harper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansharper/

Lane Carrick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-lane-carrick-65a728/

Lane's book, The Optima Advantage: https://amzn.to/48nLElW

"People thought I was crazy 12 years ago. You're going to ask people to spend $99 to ride a bus. They thought I was nuts. And I thought I was nuts a little bit."Alex Danza is the founder and CEO of Vonlane, the premium motorcoach company he launched in Dallas in May 2014 with two coaches and a single route to Austin. Twelve years on, Vonlane runs more than 500 weekly departures across Texas, Tennessee, and Georgia, has carried 1.8 million passengers over 36 million miles, and has never taken a dollar of institutional capital.

The original plan was a regional charter business. Danza killed it once he saw the industry competed on nothing but who bid lowest, and a coach salesman offered him a way out: an empty shell he could finish however he wanted. What came back is closer to an airline than a bus line. Terminals in downtown Dallas, Austin, Houston, and Nashville rather than an airport twenty minutes out. Twenty-two first class seats, an attendant on every trip, Starlink, meals included, and a library voice policy enforced with a discreet card and a piece of chocolate. Net promoter score runs at 90, and the first two coaches he bought are still on the road and still earning.

Then COVID erased two and a half years. He was two weeks from launching Nashville when March Madness was cancelled, went dark for six weeks, took Vista Bank's first Main Street lending loan, and did not reach Tennessee until 2023. On the fare he is plain: it started at $99, it is $129 today, and it will never be dynamically priced. "It is an airline on the ground, this business." The pricing is the one part of the airline he refuses to copy.

Also in this episode: how Vonlane picks a route and why it runs to Buckhead instead of Hartsfield, why he will not hire a driver without two years on a 45 foot motorcoach, what he actually wants from autonomous vehicles and the DOT, raising capital in one ten minute phone call, why he would sell to private equity or a family office but never go public after Andersen and Enron, and what solving ground transportation for NetJets taught him first.

Hosted by Ryan Harper and Andrew Swartz.

Produced by Harper Belmont Media.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro

2:01 Sponsors

3:17 Starting a thing that should already exist

3:53 The 200 to 250 mile problem

6:50 Downtown terminals, not airports

10:01 $1.2 million a coach, and why the IRR works

11:21 The first two coaches, 12 years later

11:56 The original plan was charter

13:18 "I'll just sell you one that's empty"

15:07 Competing on productivity, not price

16:59 How a route gets chosen

18:35 Buckhead instead of Hartsfield

20:00 COVID cost them two and a half years

21:29 Two weeks from Nashville, then March Madness died

26:14 Six weeks dark

26:32 Vista Bank's first Main Street loan

27:53 Maintenance and a 0.04% month

29:27 Two years on a 45 foot coach, no exceptions

35:51 "People thought I was crazy"

39:35 Sixty percent book inside seven days

41:48 Fifty-fifty business and leisure, NPS of 90

42:37 The shutdown sent them 30% more riders

43:37 He wants DOT hours, not a driverless bus

48:56 Raising the money: one call, ten minutes

50:42 No institutional money, ever

51:57 $99 to $129, in very small steps

54:01 The library voice policy

56:21 225 employees, and Miles the AI agent

1:00:16 When a coach goes down in Waco

1:04:30 The endgame: an exit, not an IPO

1:06:35 Andersen, Enron, and staying private

1:09:48 Events are the business

1:14:15 Before Vonlane: Y2K and the road

1:15:31 Solving what NetJets could not

1:19:39 What people get wrong

1:21:31 Close

SPONSORED BY

Capital Southwest | https://capitalsouthwest.com

Security National Bank | https://securitynational.bank

Blockchain.com | https://www.blockchain.com

Vonlane: https://www.vonlane.com

The Deal Table:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

Ryan Harper:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansharper/

Lane Carrick:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-lane-carrick-65a728/

Lane's book, The Optima Advantage:

https://amzn.to/48nLElW

His P&L was measured in lives, not dollars. Allen West commanded 650 soldiers in Iraq, then carried the same leadership system into Congress and into business.

More on Allen West and this episode: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/allen-west

West spent 22 years in the U.S. Army, commanded an artillery battalion out of Fort Hood, and advised the Afghan National Army in Kandahar. He then spent two years in Congress on the Armed Services and Small Business committees. Most of this conversation is him teaching.

The five C's of leadership: courage, competence, commitment, conviction, character. Commander's intent broken into purpose, method and end state, and why an operation briefed that way survives the plan falling apart. Why the 100 percent plan always gets beat while the 65 to 70 percent plan wins. Why every company should run a weekly after action review, good, bad and ugly. Why the leader's job in an ambush is to get off the X and decide, and why refusing to decide is the worst option available.He is direct on what government owes a business owner, which is conditions and a level playing field rather than a definition of success. He is just as direct on quarterly earnings myopia, on why a company aiming at the 25 yard target loses to an adversary thinking in 50 to 100 year cycles, and on why the military is bad at helping veterans translate what they did into a resume a hiring manager can read.

He still carries the worn 3x5 cards he carried as a battalion commander. Cool heads always prevail. Soldiers don't care what you know, they want to know that you care. Issues come with two recommendations. Leaders take responsibility, never credit.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret.) is the executive director of the American Constitutional Rights Union, founded by Ronald Reagan's attorney general Ed Meese. He served 22 years in the U.S. Army and led 650 soldiers in Iraq. Elected to Congress in 2010, he was the first African American Republican to represent Florida since Reconstruction. He is a former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, hosts the weekly Steadfast and Loyal podcast, and is the author of three books.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Intro

04:05 The five C's of leadership

08:23 Commander's intent, in three parts

20:13 Get off the X and decide

24:00 Why quarterly thinking loses

33:58 The weekly after action review

36:40 The perfect plan always gets beat

51:39 What government owes small business

1:13:09 Hiring veterans, and why it works

LINKS

American Constitutional Rights Union: https://theacru.org

Steadfast and Loyal: https://allenwest.substack.com

Guardian of the Republic: https://amzn.to/4iMJO4r

We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway: https://amzn.to/4xw3QnjThe Law, Frederic Bastiat: https://amzn.to/3UW2F2S

Deal Table newsletter:

https://share.hsforms.com/1Tfx_WobCTPuXWenG1-69EQoavsd

FOLLOW THE DEAL TABLE

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thedealtablepodcast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedealtablepodcast/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedealtablepodcast

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedealtable

X: https://x.com/thedealtablepod

Produced by Harper Belmont Media:

https://www.harperbelmont.com/

Sponsored by:

Capital Southwest: https://www.capitalsouthwest.com/

Security National Bank: https://securitynational.bank

Blockchain.com: https://www.blockchain.com

"Private equity rarely loses." George Baker says it as a director of the company he founded, watching his own shareholder value climb. Lane Carrick, who sells founder-owned businesses to private equity for a living, pushes back: you think it's about the math? "I know it's about the math."

George Baker Sr. is the founder of ParkHub, now JustPark, and the founder and managing partner of 2 the Moon Ventures in Dallas. He swept his father's commercial parking lots downtown at 12, founded ParkHub in 2010 to attack cash leakage in a $40 billion industry that had seen almost no technology, and built it into a B2B parking and mobility platform serving stadiums and airports. Jerry Jones was an early investor. LLR Partners put in $100 million of growth equity. More than 20 bolt-on acquisitions followed, then a merger with UK-based JustPark and an FTV Capital recap that moved Baker from chairman to director.

The mechanism was boring and enormous: digitize the cash. Parking operators saw revenue lifts of 30 to more than 50 percent. Inside the venue the transaction fell from over 20 seconds to under five, congestion dropped and food and beverage sales rose 19 percent. In 2014, reading the consumer window closing, he shut down his own reservation engine, called Ticketmaster, and rebuilt the entire company as B2B software. Growth ran 400 percent, then 300, then 200.

What he gave up was not the money. "We were a band of brothers. I don't think I will ever have that much fun." He has not seen much private equity put weight on culture or job creation, and he does not believe founder culture survives the invitation. He has made peace with that, and he is specific about the trade: four years of school runs and family dinners after a decade of not being around.

Also in this episode: why an operator turned investor now buys Texas consumer brands instead of software, why western wear is a $130 billion market, how he judges a founding team in a single conversation, and the advice he gives anyone entering a transaction, which is to write down what success looks like in one sentence, date it, and seal it in an envelope, because the deal will take two to three times longer than the LOI says.

Hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick.

Produced by Harper Belmont Media.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro

1:40 Sponsors

3:35 Sweeping his father's parking lots at 12

6:02 The problem statement was cash leakage

18:29 Revenue lifts of 30 to more than 50 percent

20:07 Destroying his own business model

21:12 Shutting it down and calling Ticketmaster

21:39 Jerry Jones invests, then 400, 300, 200 percent growth

22:20 EOS, traction, and a band of brothers

23:26 A $40 billion market with zero technology

28:28 Twenty seconds to five, and what it did to the venue

30:06 More than 20 bolt-on acquisitions

31:17 The JustPark merger

31:52 The FTV recap, chairman to director

32:27 Founders backing founders at 2 the Moon

36:23 From parking software to boots and cookies39:12 Western wear is a $130 billion market

44:20 "You think it's about the math?"

44:49 "Private equity rarely loses"

44:55 Can founder culture survive private equity?

46:26 Contact tracing and reopening Live Nation

47:07 The capital he had to give back

47:41 Making peace with it not being his baby

48:19 The trade: four years of school runs and dinners

52:09 Write it down, date it, seal the envelope

1:02:10 It is not the company, it is the entrepreneur

1:03:40 Book recommendations

1:07:03 Close

SPONSORED BY

Capital Southwest | https://capitalsouthwest.com

Security National Bank | https://securitynational.bank

Blockchain.com | https://www.blockchain.com

2 the Moon Ventures: https://2themoon.ventures

The Deal Table:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

Ryan Harper:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansharper/

Lane Carrick:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-lane-carrick-65a728/

Lane's book, The Optima Advantage: https://amzn.to/48nLElW

Private equity principals do not say this out loud: "We need to sell this company before something bad happens." Ralph Manning did it for years, not because the market was right, but because he could not see far enough into his own businesses to know what was hiding.

Edward Crawford and Ralph Manning are co-founders and co-CEOs of Coltala Holdings, a permanent capital holding company in Fort Worth and Dallas. Since 2017 they have deployed more than $400 million across 24 transactions in aerospace, home health, water, and engineering. No fund sits behind it, so there is no seventh-year clock and no forced sale to raise the next one.

What replaced the fear is the Coltala Enterprise System, a lean operating playbook out of Danaher and Toyota by way of Larry Culp, who took Danaher's market cap from $3 billion to $30 billion and now chairs GE Aerospace. The proof is their aerospace business. Lead times sat at 164 days. Two weeks of kaizen on three bottlenecks, one an $80,000 paint shop, brought it to 32 days. Every employee at every Coltala company, forklift operator included, gets a quarterly check from 8 to 10 percent of after-tax profits.

Crawford came to private equity from the Peace Corps, where he built a 300-farmer coffee cooperative, and from naval intelligence in Afghanistan, where he earned a Bronze Star with SEAL Teams 2 and 4, by way of Goldman Sachs. He is blunt about the fit: "If you want a guy from New York who has a Harvard MBA who's going to tell you how great they are, then you can maybe go work with them. But if you want a real partner, we're your guys."Also in this episode: why mission and margin are not opposites, what mission critical means after the pandemic, how defense tech changed once Ash Carter stood up Unit X, the knower versus learner test they run on every founder, and why yellow lights never turn green. The last twenty minutes go elsewhere, to Andrew Jackson at New Orleans and the banana peddler who overthrew a government.

Hosted by Ryan Harper and Lane Carrick.

Produced by Harper Belmont Media.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro

1:44 Sponsors

2:59 Ralph in the hot seat

4:46 Where the name Coltala comes from

7:48 The nonprofit that was going under

9:34 Why mission and margin are not opposites

13:18 What "mission critical" actually means

19:31 Unit X and Ash Carter

23:21 Where founders hit the ceiling

25:03 The Coltala Enterprise System

26:25 The $80,000 paint shop

26:47 164 days down to 32

27:08 The best ideas come from the people doing the work

29:39 Profit share for the forklift operator

31:45 Meeting Larry Culp

34:09 Process is speed, not bureaucracy

37:23 Three credit cards to $400 million

39:22 "We need to sell before something bad happens"

40:47 No fund, so no forced sale

41:27 Growth makes complexity, complexity kills growth

43:05 Going deeper beats being a generalist

44:26 The MRO moat, $1.2 million and three years

47:44 The anti private equity pitch

48:27 30,000 subscribers and fifty relationships

49:40 They are Luke Skywalker, we are Yoda

52:37 Knower mindset versus learner mindset

54:19 If the seller wants top dollar, it is not for us

59:58 "Yellow lights don't turn green"

1:00:49 Peace Corps, intelligence, and ground truth

1:03:19 Andrew Jackson goes to the gemba

1:06:16 Seabiscuit and walking the track at 2 a.m.

1:07:27 The Banana King of New Orleans

1:11:39 Jim Collins on being in frame

1:14:43 Jiu-Jitsu, do not white knuckle everything

1:16:58 Give and Take, givers, takers, matchers

1:18:07 Close

SPONSORED BY

Capital Southwest | https://capitalsouthwest.com

Security National Bank | https://securitynational.bank

Blockchain.com | https://www.blockchain.com

Coltala Holdings: https://coltala.com

The Deal Table:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-deal-table/

Ryan Harper:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansharper/

Lane Carrick:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-lane-carrick-65a728/

Lane's book, The Optima Advantage: https://amzn.to/48nLElW