5.5 minute listen
Portsmouth, NH
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 a 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.
Listen to the interview here:
What I am Reading / Listening to
Miracle And Wonder: Conversations With Paul Simon (2021)
By Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam
Historically I have not been a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I find his predictable NYC style of cynicism to be personally off-putting. And I dislike his taking the credit for repurposing others’ scholarly work to achieve mass celebrity (e.g., Anders Ericsson’s 10,000 hour theory now being referred to as Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule in Outliers). Okay okay you say, then why we are we talking about him?
Miracle And Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon by Bruce Headlam and Malcolm Gladwell is a stunning piece of work. This audio-only work proves the power of audio containing candid conversations, insightful reflections, and the creative lyrics and music of Paul Simon spontaneously recorded live with him in interviews. From listening to “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in 1970 in the cellar of Andrew Comendul’s mother’s house in Manchester, NH, I have admired Paul Simon from afar as have many of my generation. But Headlam and Gladwell really illustrate the breadth and depth of his nearly 70-year career (Simon is 80 and first recorded he thinks when he was 12!). So much insightful remembrance from Simon.
For Entrepreneur Owner-Managers we know, just being an EOM is a creative act. Simon gives us the full sweep of his thinking of the flood and ebb of his creative, insight to how his creativity energy in the early years is/was so different than in the mature years, refusing to be put in a creative “box” even when it was really unpopular (“Graceland” and “Rhythm of the Saints” overlapping with strife in apartheid South Africa), and being called to the next chapter, and the next, and the next. The book is six hours long and I wish it was 12.
Entrepreneur Owner-Manager Quote
“I’ve worked with several M&A advisory firms over my career. For Q-Centrix, I wanted someone who would roll up their sleeves. I can honestly say that there’s millions in value that wouldn’t have happened without Bigelow. It was a phenomenal experience from a business standpoint and also a personal standpoint. You couldn’t have scripted it any better.”
-Robert Schwager, Founder and former CEO of Q-Centrix LLC
