Positive Enterprise Value

For over 30 years, I've had the fun of meeting with thousands of seasoned, successful private business owners and working closely with hundreds of them. In this podcast, I interview some of the most high-performing successful EOMs from both the for profit, and the not-for-profit domains. On this episode I interviewed Kyle Reagan who is the Chairman and CEO of DECCO, Inc., a mechanical contractor that specializes in the most complex capital projects for the pharmaceutical industry. Kyle came from a working-class background. He was a great high school baseball player and in fact got drafted. He played for both the Cincinnati Reds and the Atlanta Braves as a catcher. When he transitioned out of the professional baseball world, he realized that he really wanted to work with people in an environment where he could help them unlock their potential, particularly people who didn't have much. Thus, he began work at a company called DECCO as a Project Engineer. The former owner of DECCO had a succession plan and Kyle found himself a part of it. With Kyle now part of the leadership team, the business grew and transformed from being basically a company that provided complex mechanical piping and electrical solutions for semiconductor manufacturers to one where Kyle began to guide the strategy and pivot towards pharmaceutical manufacturers, all the while staying true to his lifelong focus of unlocking the potential in others. Kyle views part of his role as a facilitator to helping even the most junior workers at DECCO begin to have a life where they could feel appreciated and valued in their work life, which would spill over into their personal life. Kyle's work with DECCO has recently culminated in its acquisition by Comfort Systems, a strategic public investor where DECCO is now a wholly owned subsidiary. I had the fun of interviewing Kyle in his offices in January 2024. I hope you gain some learning from it and enjoy it just as much I did.

This is Pete Worrell from Bigelow, and I'm happy to bring you another episode of the Positive Enterprise Value Podcast. Today my interview guest is Flora Bowley. Flora is a world-known artist, entrepreneur, teacher, retreat center owner, who makes her principal headquarters on the west coast. She's an example of an entrepreneur as a creative, and if you've listened to Positive Enterprise Value or read our blog posts at Bigelow, we believe that entrepreneurs are creatives and Flora's just a great example of that. Today she candidly and generously shares with us the evolution of her professional and personal goals over her lifetime, a little bit about some of the chapters she's been through, the overarching journey, what was in her head growing up, and how she extracts the juice of the creative process, which then becomes her original artwork. Over time in her life, and this applies to all of us entrepreneurs, Flora really started out first as a practitioner, as an artist with brush on canvas, if you will, which she still does, but she's evolved her role to also be a teacher and now a retreat center owner as well. So she tells us a little bit about keeping herself alive as a young entrepreneur by working in grocery stores to earn a living while pursuing her art, and how she's really taken her approach to a whole different medium, including as an author, chatting a little bit about her new book called The Art of Aliveness: A Creative Return to What Matters Most. The parallels of how we create art is actually aligned with how we live. Flora will say how we paint is how we live. So, she shares with us advice regarding one of my questions about giving her 50-year-old self, she's almost 50, advice from her 60-year-old self, which involves filling up the well. It's all about recovery for high-performing creatives. Flora goes on to share a little bit about her new retreat called Nest. She tells us about some of her online courses, her FREE FLO community on Mighty Networks, and some of what she's got in store for the future. I think Flora is just a massively talented, charismatic artist who has a lot to say and a lot to teach us about being a successful creative as an entrepreneur. You can find more about Flora at florabowley.com. Without further delay, here's my interview with Flora Bowley.

Hi everyone, last week I had the fun of being a guest on the 137th episode of The Atlas Society Asks (TASA) podcast [maybe give a link to the podcast page here]. The Atlas Society Asks is hosted by Jennifer A Grossman, the President & CEO of The Atlas Society. The Atlas Society celebrates the remarkable potential and power of the individual and promotes learning about the capitalist system juxtaposed against the other kinds of systems in the world, so that young people in particular can make informed choices about which is the kind of system they want to live in and whether they're willing to make the decisions that allow them to be successful in a capitalist society. We cover a board range of topics from my upbringing / formative years and the influence that growing up in the 1960s and 1970s had on my entrepreneurial spirit, to my life’s work of helping Entrepreneur Owner Managers to unlock their individual potential by building and capture Enterprise Value through a capital gain transaction, and so much more in between. I hope you enjoy.

On this episode of the Positive Enterprise Value podcast, I am thrilled to have as my guests, my friends and clients, Dave and Cindy Francis, who have kind of a hero's journey to tell you about. Dave and Cindy have had many chapters in their journey as entrepreneurs. They started out with Cindy growing up in the family business, Fowler High Precision, which was run by her dad, Fred Fowler, who himself was a second-generation owner. Cindy tells us a little bit of the story about what that was like growing up with her dad as a wild man entrepreneur, getting together and then marrying Dave and their journey thus far. They go on to share when Dave initially joined the business, but ultimately decided to leave and how he and Cindy moved to the middle part of the country. Having some entrepreneurial experiences, they decided to go out on their own, and then moved back to the East coast and started a different company. And then, finally, when Cindy's father, Fred, was diagnosed with a terminal illness, we hear about Dave coming back into the business in the breach, theoretically temporarily, to solve some problems with the business, and now just having come through a very successful recapitalization, they share with us about their dreams and hopes for the next chapter. I think Dave and Cindy have a story that is particularly rich with lessons, comedy, humor, things to focus on, things not to do, and I have no doubt that any Entrepreneur Owner-Manager, or aspiring entrepreneur will get a hell of a lot out of it. I sure hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy bringing it to you.

Today’s interviewee on this episode of the Positive Enterprise Value Podcast is Heidi Feinstein. Heidi is the CEO of Hearth Food Garden, a startup business in formation which will open its European style food market on the street level of 60 Penhallow Street in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire sometime in late 2022. Heidi, whose warmth and charisma oozes through in this podcast, previously was a super successful restaurateur as the Founder and CEO of Life Alive Cafes, which she called the Life Alive Urban Oasis and Organic Cafes, which she built into a very significant and successful business in the Boston area over 10 to 12 years. Heidi and I talk about her background, some of her hopes and dreams for the Hearth Food Garden, as well as some of the things that she's learned along the way with Life Alive and other places. You'll hear her laugh about some of her learnings, some unlearnings, and some of her plans for how the Hearth Food Garden will actually be different than what she created with Life Alive. I hope you'll enjoy this interview with Heidi as much as I did.

On today’s episode of the Positive Enterprise Value podcast I am interviewing, Jennifer A. Grossman who goes by the nickname JAG. JAG is the President and CEO of The Atlas Society. JAG lives in Malibu and travels so extensively, I'm not sure that she would say they have a headquarters every- anywhere. As you might have guessed from the name, The Atlas Society, which is, drawn from the book Atlas Shrugged, the fantastic novel by Ayn Rand. The Atlas Society celebrates the remarkable potential and power of the individual and promotes learning about the capitalist system juxtaposed against the other kinds of systems in the world, so that young people in particular can make informed choices about which is the kind of system they want to live in and whether they're willing to make the decisions that allow them to be successful in a capitalist society. JAG is a fabulously interesting person who, after an Ivy League education at Harvard, spent time at the White House as a speech writer. She also spent time in the private sector. She has also advised other for profit and non-for-profit entities. I think she's been with Atlas about six or seven years. She's made enormous transformable- transformative changes there moving their curriculum to focus a lot of resources on young people and is very open and candid about her challenges in doing so over the last few years. And I think you'll really enjoy hearing her so without further delay, here's my interview with Jennifer A. Grossman, JAG.

My guest today on the Positive Enterprise Value podcast is Dr. George Shapiro. George is the Chief Medical Innovation Officer of Fountain Life. Fountain was formed about three years ago, with the mission to revolutionize the current healthcare system (actually I would call it the sick care system), by switching the primary focus from a sick care reactive system to a pro-active and preventative healthcare system. All the advancements that have been made in technology and AI, now allow us to detect illnesses earlier than ever before, so that we could have the possibility of living much longer, healthier lives—really interesting, but it takes a long time to find its way to your general practitioner. George Shapiro, M.D. had a traditional education and background in medicine. He went to New York Medical College where he received his M.D. He had his undergraduate degree from the Albert Einstein College at Yeshiva University, and he then became a fellow at Columbia University in the cardiology center. George, in my view, has kind of seen it all. He's seen people practice by focusing on the symptoms, which it seems like is what our mass popular culture and the sick care system especially is focused on. I mean, I'm sure you have the same stories that I do when you go to see a practitioner and really all they address is what symptoms you're having and I think George would say, "Wow, the technology we have allows you to look at your health care pre-symptom. Why would you wait until the engine in your car seizes up until you go get it fixed? Why wouldn't you have a low oil indicator go off before, and actually go get that fixed before it seized up?" George is very, very skilled in this area and has a lot of scar tissue from the traditional medical system. I hope you'll have fun listening to him. So, without further delay please join me in listening to George Shapiro, M.D. from Fountain Life.

Today, my guests are Don Oakes and Fran Philip, who came to be entrepreneurs in the second chapter of their professional lives. Both Don and Fran were very successful senior executives with L.L. Bean. Fran, ultimately, was the chief merchandising officer, and Don worked in senior positions in creative and brand. Fran has a great deal of professional governance experience not only with private companies where she's very active, but also with public companies with firms including Vista Outdoor, Vera Bradley, and PacSun. About 10 years ago, they departed L.L. Bean for different reasons, and you'll hear them talk about how Fran called Don one day and said, "I've got this interesting business. I think we could make an investment in it or maybe even acquire most of and we could run it and it's called Maine's Sea Bags." And I think Don probably heard that discussion with a teensy bit of professional skepticism after being a senior executive of a more than a billion-dollar company and said, "Well, Fran, how many stores do they have at Sea Bags?" And she said, "Three." He said, "What do they do?" And she said, "They make tote bags out of used sails from sailboats." So, I think what you're going to hear we have a double-barrel interview today because we'll hear both Don and Fran talk about their individual experiences, some of their insights and ideas that they shared with each other, some of the ways that they work in different seasons of the year (believe it or not), and some of their hopes and dreams for Sea Bags. Sea Bags now, by the way, is a very widely known national consumer brand with more than just bags, and I think probably as of this recording, 50 retail stores, in addition to a very robust online presence. So, listen and learn. I hope you enjoy listening to Don and Fran. I sure enjoyed having them on the podcast.

In the Positive Enterprise Value Podcast, we have the fun of interviewing and listening to some of the most seasoned, successful Entrepreneur Owner-Managers on the planet. The journey through their lives and through their enterprises, through their communities, through their families, and in their successes they leave behind breadcrumbs for us to see and to examine. This week, I have the fun of interviewing my friends Barbara and Ed Wilson, the founders of Wilson Language Training. Wilson Language Training is the most widely known firm to provide curriculum or pedagogy for teaching students, dyslexic students, how to read. And, perhaps even more importantly, how to teach teachers how to teach dyslexic students how to read. You'll hear from Barbara and Ed how they began their business, basically as a coaching or tutoring operation teaching a few dozen kids at a time, and realized the massive scale of demand of the millions of students who needed their help to learn how to read across the country and around the world. They generously and candidly share with us stories from their 38 years of marriage and their 35 years of running this business, including trying to attract and retain great talent; some of the foibles of trying to work with school systems across the country; their very clever, almost intuitive, sense of setting the company up to really scale; and a bit about a recent event where Bigelow helped them to architect a recapitalization with Alpine Equity Partners, which specializes, among other things, in education businesses. I hope you enjoy this session with Ed and Barbara as much as I do. I think you'll hear their authentic kindness come out in the podcast, as well as their perspicacity, their attention to detail, and their mastery of their domain.

UPDATE

Today, I had the fun of interviewing Jason and Amy Case. Founded by Jason Case in 2009 and headquartered in southern Massachusetts, Case Facilities Management Solutions has grown rapidly to become a leading tech-enabled service provider for snow and ice management, landscaping, sweeping, and janitorial services for over 10,000 customer sites. Case FMS utilizes a proprietary technology platform and a hybrid service delivery model to provide services for the healthcare, financial services, supermarket chain, convenience store, transportation and retail industries. This podcast was recorded on February 8th, 2022, in the home of Jason and Amy Case. I had the fun of interviewing them together as we talked about the founding of their company, and the founding of their relationship and their family, all of which was widely watched since together they were the winners of the 23rd season of CBS’ “The Amazing Race.” So, let's listen and learn from these real-life stories of Jason and Amy Case. Maybe we'll even see a little of ourselves in this interview. Hope you enjoy it.

Most of our podcast interviews have been with CEO’s of mature, highly successful enterprises. Today, we have the fun of interviewing Bill Kapp, MD who is the CEO of a two year old startup—Fountain Life. Fountain, originally conceived by Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis is bringing together state of the art therapies with world class practitioners to address health span—not merely lifespan, but health span. If you are accustomed to thinking about your personal or family’s health in a “sick care” model, where you only seek care once symptoms of a problem have appeared, then I expect you will be challenged by Fountain Life’s proactive model. I appreciate Bill’s expertise of exponentially changing, state of the art scientific medicine, combined with his 30 plus years of practical application. Listen and learn.

Today we have done something different, and to make it easy for Positive Enterprise Value podcast listeners, we are recording this blog post as an audio only. Hope you enjoy it. This week I am speaking to you about the private transaction market. We are in a time of abundance Superabundance of capital. Private company enterprise values are approaching all-time highs. And with good reason. Entrepreneur Owner-Managers create the most pro-social and pro-economic enterprises on the planet, and their superior financial performance coupled with increased capital gain value, result in the highest return on investment. Privately-owned companies have been undervalued all our professional lives. We are simply in a period of catch up. Think private company values are high? It’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Today, my guest is Chet Jordan. Chet is one of the co-founders and co-owners of Digital Architecture, a business that he and his partner Ken Blais began. I think it's accurate to say they began it in Maine before they moved it to Florida. Their mission was to digitize and make it easy to use college and university course catalogs. They've expanded into way more than that, but that was the initial opportunity for them. And they began to digitize course catalogs so the students and professors in the universities and colleges they work with would be able to access the course catalogs quickly - see what was available, and what wasn't. If you've been a student in higher education you know that getting a course into your curriculum related to your major is often a challenging undertaking, and they digitized that and made it infinitely easier. I hope you enjoy.

Last month we held our first Bigelow Connectors event live at The Music Hall in downtown Portsmouth, NH. We gathered 80 of the best expert advisors to Entrepreneur Owner-Managers to focus on unlocking our collaborative energy, build relationships, engage in scholarly discussion, and hear from our keynote speaker, Greg McKeown, the New York Times Best Selling Author of Essentialism (2018) and Effortless (2021). During our evening together I had the fun of interviewing Greg after his incredible keynote. During this brief half hour interview Greg shares deeper insights into his concepts of Essentialism and Effortless, some personal stories and life lessons, and what his focus is for the future. Sprinkled throughout you will also hear some very poignant questions from the other expert advisor attendees as well.

On this latest episode of the Positive Enterprise Value podcast our guest is Ken Johnson from MAS Medical Staffing. Ken, and his partner Jay Hamel, owned and ran MAS Medical for the last 20 years, building it into a very well-known and respected medical staffing business, serving the Northeast and the middle Atlantic states. Jay and Ken built the business basically from scratch. Twenty years later or so, they engaged Bigelow and we helped them with architecting, the recapitalization of MAS Medical by Periscope Equity. And Jay Hamel was able to transition quickly out of the business while Ken stayed on as a principal stockholder. Ken relates to us very candidly and very humorously, a lot of the opening chapters of MAS Medical, some of the challenges that they had with the market, their products, and their services, along with some of the ways they stubbed their toes along the way.

On the latest episode of the Positive Enterprise Podcast my guest is Adeline Druart. Adeline is the president and CEO of Vermont Creamery, which is a part of the Land O'Lakes group of companies. Adeline has a fascinating story! After graduating from university in France, she came to Vermont Creamery as an intern, met the love of her life—both in her personal life and, actually I would say, in her professional life as well—and over time went from an employee at Vermont Creamery in the plant, to head of Operations, and ultimately President and Chief Executive Officer. What a story!

Do Entrepreneur Owner-Managers fundamentally operate at the level of data and analysis, or do EOMs fundamentally operate at the level of feelings and emotions? That’s the question that Jim Collins famously posed to Brené Brown and I loved it so much I posed it to Lisa Allen, the Principal Stockholder and Chair of the Board of Directors of the third generation family business Ziegenfelder Corporation. Ziegenfelder, headquartered in the hills of Wheeling, West Virginia, is one of the leading makers of frozen ice pops (what most of us think of as popsicle treats). What could inspire a more positive emotion than a popsicle treat in the heat of the July summer? (Hell, if more popsicles were available to more high performing entrepreneurs, we’d probably save a lot of money on therapy, who knows?)

Growing up with her family in Bolivia, do you think Jan Herschkowitz ever dreamed she’d become a successful entrepreneur business owner in America? I don’t. Having already gotten her professional start, Jan got the call from her Dad that he needed temporary help in the business that he acquired called PRL. She left a promising career with an electronics manufacturer in Chicago and traveled home for a short-term assignment to help her Dad. Tragically, his sudden death soon after her arrival, set the stage for Jan investing 32+ years leading the business from a small non destructive testing business into a high-tech, vertically integrated defense contractor making mission-critical nuclear components for the Navy. Jan generously shares candid comments with us on what it was like to lead the most successful company in a male-dominated industry, how she kept her perspective between professional and personal roles, and how she’s coping with being a passive investor in a business she ran for multiple decades.

In this hour-long podcast, Cary and I talk about family businesses and the different roles that you play in them, the challenge of following big footsteps, the crisis that turned into a positive transformation, keeping his feet on the ground all the way. Lots of insightful learnings and unlearnings from this unpretentious entrepreneur.