Building Powerful Brand Stories & M&A Strategies with Mark Tarchetti

0:00All right, on today's episode, we interviewed Mark Tarchetti, where we really did a deep dive into how should people think about their brands, right? How do larger companies think about consumer brands, right? How do they build a story around those brands? And really, how do you apply some of those techniques and things into, you know, as a person buying a business, right? What should you take away in terms of those brands? So Ben, what were some of your big takeaways? You know, I mean, Mark's been around, you know, some big companies. He's done a lot of M&A, you know, with these big companies and really structured deals and helped them kind of grow in the consumer product space. And I thought it was a really interesting podcast today because he kind of talked, you kind of pulled back the curtain a little bit on those bigger deals. But also, I think the other thing too, that our listeners are going to enjoy, it's just kind of the psychology of how you, you know, you make those connections with those founders is what he was calling them. But really, it's just business owners folks, right? Because at the end of the day, it's not all about who pays the highest price. It's the one that makes the connection that is going to take care of the legacy of that business owner and ultimately grow the company. And I think our listeners are really going to enjoy that part of the episode today. Yeah. And the other thing too is just really

1:02thinking about brands have strategy behind them, right? It's not just, hey, today I'm going to sell a tennis ball and that's it. It's about how do you build a strategy around it? How is yours the best tennis balls? Yours the most yellow and easier to see or is it the best balance or whatever it is, right? And he kind of dives into just how do you start to think about strategies? Because, I mean, personally, I think one of my biggest failures has been not understanding that in a previous business, right? The value of sales and marketing. And so it's a critical part of any business and that's really what the set of folks is on. So enjoy. Welcome to the M&A Launchpad podcast with your host, Casey and Ferris with Equity Launchpad. On this podcast, you will get insights on acquiring investing in and selling profitable businesses in the lower to middle market. Whether you're a business owner, investor, or a spa entrepreneur, at Equity Launchpad, we will provide you with the knowledge, guidance, and capital to navigate the world of mergers and acquisitions. Hey there. This is Casey with the M&A Launchpad podcast. Want to let you know about October 25th, put it on your calendar. This is a do not miss one day

2:04event. There's going to be incredible headliners that are really at the end of the day. You're going to get a chance to talk to people that have made acquisitions, learn from some of the challenges that they've made because this is definitely a challenging process. But more importantly, there's going to be people there that can help you and support you along the way from great vendors quality of earnings, how to run the due diligence process, and how do I get financed? How do I raise capital? How do I structure all of these things? October 25th in Chicago, we're going to be gathering, it's going to be hundreds of people that are all focused, light-minded people, and man, everyone that's come has given us incredible feedback. So mark your calendar, October 25th in Chicago, we look forward to seeing you. Hey Mark, welcome to show. Nice to be here, thanks for having me. Likewise, likewise. So far listeners, you want to just give a little bit of background about yourself and kind of what you're doing. Yeah, so I'm a sort of 30-year veteran of consumer products. I've worked in big corporations and the last six years I've run a boutique consulting firm with people I've worked with the last 10, 20 years. We're all growth

3:07operators, so our passion is scaling businesses and helping brands unlock their potential. So we're the opposite of the steady-state maintenance approach that you see in a lot of corporate assets, particularly. We like to get things done, we like to build things, and we've learned a lot working on two, three hundred brands, over a hundred categories in those long careers, and excited to kind of always be chasing new potential. Got it awesome. And so for the listeners, maybe before we kind of go down that path, how'd you break into it? Because everyone always wants to understand how do you get started in the space? And so what was kind of your pathway? Yeah, so I was my brother and I were the first in our family to ever go to college, and nobody in my family ever worked for a big corporation, grew up in a small town with an unemployed dad. And I went to college and I was lucky to join a really big consumer products firm off the back of that. I spent my time at college not studying, getting life experiences, running the student council and things, and that set me up really well for getting a job. So I joined Unilever, which is one of the world's biggest fast-moving consumer goods companies, and I started

4:14as a graduate trainee, worked my way up to the global head of strategy, and did that in my final three years there. So I was 14 years at Unilever, and then I started my own firm, because I'd begun to major in strategy, so I loved figuring out what to do with businesses. I'd learned by doing, I'd learned by the size and breadth of Unilever, full of wizard smart people and great brands. And so I set up my own firm in an American corporation, asked me to help them with their strategy, and over a period of about 18 months, they moved me to the States, and I took the number two operating role and ran all the growth functions, ran all of corporate development. So if I kind of learned the theory at Unilever, I was the big operator in that second job, which I did for seven years. And so whether it was marketing, design, innovation, M&A, e-commerce, I was running all of that across a very complicated company with a couple of hundred brands. And so I kind of learned by doing, I've kind of learned that way, and surrounded myself with great people that complement me, and the firm that I now represent, we started in 2019, I go back 10, 20 years with all

5:18those people pretty much, and so it's kind of hand-picked team that I trust and enjoy working with, and we kind of cover the growth discipline. So it's entirely a story of practice over theory, and working on brands of all shapes and sizes. And I started in the mega cap of Unilever, the big corporate job I was talking about, average brand size was 25, 50 million when you took a portfolio of a couple of hundred brands, added up to a big number, but was a lot of small brands. And I learned a lot from founders, I did a lot of work with business founders, buying businesses from them, and learning from their stories. And that's really set me up for what I'm doing today, which is more and more of that, trying to help people scale. So curious, man, especially Unilever, I mean, everybody knows, we know the company, but also you probably know a lot of the brands too, right? Our listeners would be, how do you break it all down? Like, where do you see, like, I guess it's two questions. Where do you see your most, because you've just talked about a lot of things, from e-commerce, to marketing sales, to operations,

6:19what do you really like to do? Where do you see you really make the most impact? And then how do you break down when you're at that level at a mega-cap company? What are some of the tips and strategies? Because I mean, I think as entrepreneurs, we're always looking for hacks, right? How do you get more efficient or develop strategies to be more productive throughout the day? And I'm just curious when you're operating at that level, and you've had so much experience. What are those life hacks that you're kind of doing, too? So I think, you know, the biggest piece of advice I always give is go where the action is, right? In any situation you're sniffing for what's going to move the needle, because there's a ton of people in any company, big or small, that will keep the lights on, keep the big wrists at bay, keep things flowing. What most businesses lack is the game changes, the deltas, they under-resource them, they don't have enough courage or imagination to find them. And consumer products, honest, is a pretty simple industry. There's only five or six levels that matter, and your job is to figure

7:19out in the next period, which ones are going to make the most difference, and then be really aggressive. And don't kind of, I don't believe in democratic management in the sense of spreading your bets, putting a little bit on everything, trying lots of little things. You know, whenever I look at businesses, I'm always amazed how much PowerPoint there is, just activities and stuff. And there's no coherence to say, this is the one thing that really matters. If we do this well, he'll set it up, and then hey, we have a second idea. If the first idea goes really well, it'll fund the second idea for free, because we'll take some of the proceeds, and then you get into this virtuous cycle. So it's a mixture of kind of courage and really prioritizing a bet, and then getting into this fly, we'll wear bet one, funds bet two, and you're gradually getting bolder and more confident. And that applies to culture and management as much as business ideas, right? Like you just, you just have to astute steady state. There's a lot of comfort in just bringing in the year, incremental budget ideas, keeping your board happy. But we weren't put on this earth to do that.

8:22You admire the brands, the people that move things forward. And if that's what you keep majoring on, and I was fortunate to get into strategy, because that's fundamentally what strategy is about. It's imagination, then making choices, then decisively resourcing them. And I do that with people, I do that with business ideas, and I try to instill that culture in all the businesses we work with. Yeah, so really quick before moving to the M&A side of things, talk about brands and strategy, right? Because I think one of, you know, me personally, one of the biggest mistakes I made in a previous company is not understanding the value of sales and marketing, right? And I think a lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake, you know, of not really understanding how those are just as important as the product that you provide. And, you know, maybe for entrepreneurs that are getting into the space, right, maybe smaller businesses, maybe even mid-sized businesses, what are just some of the biggest mistakes you see people make around brand and marketing? So I think in brand, particularly it's fragmentation. A lot of brands have kind of shrunk to the point they don't have a bold story. We've seen a lot

9:26of up and coming brands in the last 10 years, because the big brands left too much consumer opportunity on the table. They focused on cost savings, homogeneity, quite often ripping off the product for profit reasons to cover inflation. And they left all this space for what the consumer really wanted, which a number of small brands came through and they broke in because e-commerce democratized availability before that you had to wait years to get in Walmart. So, you know, the brands have to have big ideas and they usually found it on a big idea and then they lose their way where they stop innovating. And then they try to mask that with a pottery of promotions in stores, a load of social media activity, but none of it has a robust story that's going to inspire you to buy more or use more or pay more for the premium innovations that they're bringing. And so that timeless model of innovation and then really cutting through with your communication, that's always been what's needed. Now it's more digital, of course it is. Now technology might come into the product. People might expect things like personalization more than they did,

10:26but the underlying business model is timeless just so many brands have lost their way. And if you're one of the up and coming brands, I know you guys work with a lot and so do I. Your whole challenge is how to do it at scale because it's quite easy to get the first run of sales to actually get national distribution, to actually be able to sell direct and through wholesale, to have a runway of innovation that builds you a big portfolio and scale over time. It needs a lot of deliberate steps and people are quite good at the first product. And then they're often surprised by how much adoption it gets, but then they're kind of sure on the runway for the next three or five years, or they're just too busy. They don't invest enough in the team in scaling. They don't have enough money. They didn't get investors. And so they kind of work really, really hard, but they're only touching 30, 40% of the opportunity. And that's the brands we love working with is where it's kind of a turn up. They're doing really well. They've got a brilliant team, but there's three things they just can't get to or they don't have the skills for. And that kind of expansion we can help with. So, you know, it's a very simple business model. And on the sales

11:28side, you know, for years, I've been talking to folks about how much channel rotation there was, the obvious at the Amazon's, but then it was clear that Bed Bath was going to struggle department stores were going down. And it was clear that Walmart, Costco, Target were going to be winners. Home Depot was going to be a winner. But if you went to a brand, they wouldn't have a point of view on that. They wouldn't say, what's your footprint going to be in three or five years, they weren't positioning for where that trend would end. And in some cases, they might have a really big share in a declining retailer and a much smaller share in the winner. And that has to be addressed. And I found people were often lacking a point of view. And then on e-commerce for years, brands were playing catch up. They didn't bet early enough on Amazon and some of the retail.com platforms. They were, they were scared of where it might lead. They assumed it wouldn't be profitable. And they lost a ton of consumers to these other brands that started with Amazon. So again, it's, it's all back to keep the business model really simple and be super decisive about how you execute it and do fewer things that you can do really well. And then when they work,

12:29take that some of the money from that. Don't give it all to your shareholders and investors, put it into round two because you can't do it all at once. So get the sequence right, generate money, spend money. And that's how you grow a business, grow a team. Whether it's the marketing or sales side. And honestly, that's most of it in consumer goods. Those two variables, you mentioned, you know, you obviously know the space because those are the two biggest things that make a difference. You don't get a manufacturing advantage these days. Maybe have a bit of technology, but you know, you broadly compete with people with the same backend. It's, it's the brand and what you do with it that matters. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I mean, the retained earnings is a, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, right? I mean, you need to continue to reinvest in your business. Exactly. And I love, I love the idea of, you know, it's being decisive because I think it a lot of people, they, there's a lot of this analysis paralysis with people. Yeah, especially if they've had some success in one thing, they're like, let's just stay in our lane, you know, we don't have to, you know, it's always going to work out. Yeah. And then they can live behind because the next guys come along saying, well, I can do that a little bit better than them. And then I also have this other idea. And so, you know, we love that as, you know, on our side too,

13:32right? You just being decisive and really stick into what we do best. And I think that that's important as an entrepreneur, like don't, don't, don't spread yourself to that, right? And exactly. Exactly. Don't take it all out of it, right? So, yeah. And so maybe, you know, shifting more towards kind of the M&A side of things, right? So maybe share with the audience just a little bit about where you are in the M&A journey. Yeah. So I've spent a lot of my career the last 10 years in M&A. I think I've worked on 30, 40 billion of deals. Often as the principal in corporate, did a lot of big disposals, a lot of big acquisitions and worked with a lot of founders. Honestly, the highlights of my career are when a founder agrees to sell you their business or to partner with you. That's the biggest compliment anybody can give you. And so I've really enjoyed learning some of those up and coming growth stories and being part of taking them to the next level. So I've had sort of experience of all shapes and sizes, different types of deals. And again, you learn by doing. So plenty of tips and tricks that come out of that. And now we advise sort of three areas, really. We partner one or two family offices

14:38where we're trying to be the operating partners to them. They've got the capital. They're interested to invest in spaces, but they really need help with the team scaling the business and getting a return. We work with private equity, advising them on transactions. And, you know, we sometimes work with corporates. We worked on the Trappicana acquisition that came out of Pepsi, for example. Got it. And so maybe let's talk about that first one though, right? Because I want to think maybe relates the most to the listeners, which is, you know, you have a family office that's backing you, right? You're going out identifying businesses. And presumably the hopes of a founder saying yes to sell to you, you can step in by the business and continue to scale it. And so can you give some, I guess two questions, you know, how does the family office relationship come about? I think for a lot of listeners, that's a mythical thing, right? So what is a family office? How do you find them? You know, how do you work with them? And the other side of that is how has it gone, right? Can you maybe give an example as, hey, here's a deal we identified. Here's how we bought it. Here's how we structured it and what we did post acquisition. So we're actually hoping to

15:42consummate our first deal with our lead partner in the next few months. I can talk about it. I just can't share the exact details, but all of our business, whether it's consulting or M&A comes off recommendation. It's all word of mouth. We've got banking contacts. We've got folks like yourself that we partner. And so we got introduced to a couple of family offices that way. The one that we're hoping to consummate our first deal with, I mean, got close on three others. You know, it's been three years of dating and we've invested heavily to help them think through multiple situations. The deal that I hope we'll go through is actually two years in itself in the making. So it's gone through dying a few times and being resurrected. For those listeners, you have to be prepared for deals to drag out for deals to die. I mean, Casey, who's usually kind of the mother co-hosts on the podcast, he's out right now meeting where they sell or on a deal that died back in kind of Q4 and stack on the table for us to probably go get a deal done.

16:43And I guess that leads neatly to the reason that one's still live is the family office partner really believes in relationships really invested in the sellers irrespective of the deal dynamics. So he's maintained a very high quality and built relationship irrespective of the transaction. And that's actually why we jailed. So you ask, what's the key? We actually share values. We've connected on that. I found whether it's team partners, business partners, founders, it's always about values. If you can share backgrounds, if you can share philosophies, the business bits easy because even if you see the business slightly differently, you know the other person well enough. You've got high trust. You've got high interest. And that true bond allows you to respect each other's points of views and to get the best out of it. Sometimes you immediately agree. Other times the whole point is you've got complementary skills and you've got to put them together to get the best outcome. And so the office were closest to it's very much a values fit. Built over two and a half, three years. And every time we catch up,

17:48it's not been a test. It's actually reinforced that belief. We always leave dinners meetings, whatever it is we've been working on or getting together socially with that sense of there's a real connection there. So I think that's key to M&A, like behaving with integrity, transparency, clarity, building trust. And when there's bumps, it's better to walk away and say now's not the right time. We can't give you what you want, but maybe things will change in this environment. So call us whenever it does. That's way better than any of the alternatives, trying to jam things through, trying to win. I'm a big believer in values-based relationships and looking for partners. Yeah, and I think I wanted to kind of dive a little bit for that. What I think our listeners need to understand, as the journey kind of pertains is, when you're trying to talk with these sellers, this is like their legacy, this is their baby, this is one of the most important transactions, if not the most important transactions they're

18:49ever going to do in the life. And a lot of people really, really love and have an emotional attachment to this product service or business that they have. I think you touched on something Mark that really people need to take in is you have to build up that trust that you're going to be a good steward of their baby, right? And you're going to take it to the next level and you're going to really maintain that legacy that they built. And in some cases, some of the people that we talked to have been running the company for 30, 40 years, that's their whole life. That's their whole life, right? And I think that's important. Yeah, and imagine, I think that's super smart advice. I mean, imagine the alternative, which is you're just there for a transaction. Why would somebody give up their life's work to somebody transactional, unless they're forced to, occasionally, you know, sadly, people are forced to, but, you know, just you would never do that in any walk of life. So why would you do that? For what's probably your biggest financial decision, your biggest emotional decision, you know, you're going to fret no matter who you partner about, it could go wrong, you know, there's inherent risk in a founder transition, regardless of the partners. So you're

19:53a thousand percent right. And that's why I say that the highlights of my career have been getting through those journeys when those deals are signed and meant way more to me than deals between public companies that were. And you'd be surprised too, right? If you would think about like the cash, like unless you're just going to add an extra zero or two to the check size, right? Most people, they'll take less cash from somebody that they trust. Totally. Then the guy that's going to the stroke the biggest number, right? Totally. And I think that's what that's what our listeners need to understand is is, because I think a lot of people get caught up in like, oh, I got to pay this higher multiple or I'm going to be able to compete on this. And I think in a lot of, especially in the lower middle market, and you could probably see even on the mega, the mega deals is probably even right true to there. Yeah. They're going to take a little bit less to do the deal with the people that they like. Yeah. And there's value, you know, and the problem is right now we're in a tech world. And everybody thinks, especially some of the people that are on the buy side, they can just hop on a Zoom with a seller and you know, let's get it done. But your seller probably is twice your age. You know, yeah, they can turn, figure out how to turn on a Zoom, but doesn't mean they

20:57enjoy it. That's what we believe and really just go and belly to belly, right? I mean, again, our part of the case is out meeting with a seller like, yeah, he could've got a phone call, he could have done a Zoom, but now he's out there in person going belly to belly because that, you know, you see people face to face, you break bread, you meet with them, you get to build rapport with them. And that's how the best deals transact. Yeah, you meet their families, you stay at their houses, that's when you know you're getting somewhere and you don't rush it. It's not a transaction, it's a partnership. Even if the founder wants to exit fully, quite quickly for personal reasons, it's still a partnership. They're still going to forever ask you what's going on. And to sort of build on what you're saying a little bit, you know, I think, you know, we only ever get called on transactions because we're different. We're not the big firms. We're not, we've got no juniors that do the road staff. And I think, you know, the floor and a lot of deal processes right now, the reason deals aren't happening is people can't imagine what to do with the business. The days of cheap money, the days of really reliable EBITDAs because consumer products, its attractiveness was always

21:59so stable. You're always buying toothpaste from Walmart, right? How can it go wrong? But this last few years, we've seen all sorts of variation. And while the brands have come through it, it makes the private equity deals and things much harder. But if you try to apply that to the types of businesses we're describing the founders, you're effectively rocking up and grading their business. You're saying, I need to mark your homework. I need to go through everything you've done and tell you what I think it's good enough. And I find something that's not perfect. I'm going to try and lower the price. The founders start the other way, which is, why should I give you my baby? What do you plan to do with my baby? Why would that be better than what I can do myself? Why would that honor my legacy? Protect my team? Build my team? And more often than not, the culture is half the reason for the results. And culture is amorphous. But most of these businesses, they're very driven, they're very entrepreneurial, they're very focused. They may not be intellectually focused, like some of the big mega companies are in terms of all the PowerPoint and stories around it.

23:02But they do all the things I was talking about naturally. We don't have the resources to do 100 things. We know what matters. We're close to our customers. We listen to our consumer feedback and we act on it. So they've got the right business model and that that culture has to survive the deal. And that's what the founders are looking for. And the idea you can rock up as a financial firm or something and say, okay, 30 days to mark your homework and then tell you all the problems. Well, we would have paid this, but now to be a bit less. It's like a foreign language to them. And then I agree with you 100% on trying to do that, but it zooms. Praise on it that a kid is ugly, right? And I think that people take, they take a real insult to that. And then they, well, you are you saying that I'm lying or that I'm somehow conscious of a group of generation that were typically dumb? Oh my gosh, you know, I mean, we've seen that right. No, no, everything's cool. You know, you have to get past that. And I think that's a journey that baby's not ugly. I just think you get a different haircut. Yeah, I remember probably the toughest found right dealt with it was a deal that took about five years

24:03was on the other side of the world, literally. And very impressive guy, but it was a really tough decision for him and it took a long time. And we agreed to deal after years of trying. And then we did find some bumps and he called me for him. It was very early in the morning and he wasn't another guy and it was late for me. And he went through the issues and he said, I'm really worried about what's going to happen. And I said, we had a handshake. Shook hands on a deal. That deal still intact. That handshake means everything to me. The lawyers aren't going to change that we've we've formed terms. Nothing you've nothing you're talking about is going to break that. He obviously got responsibilities to your shareholders to make sure everything stacks up. But it was all the story of a handshake. And then, you know, that took all the angst away because he he remembered he could trust me. And I wasn't a faceless member of a corporation. I was a person and I believed in him and his business. And the couple of little bumps that snowboard when lawyers got involved, we could just work through them and get to something fair. And it was super

25:06easy, but it was that handshake philosophy, not hiding behind lawyers or numbers or like you say, trying to point out the errors or whatever. And you know, that that really helped us bond. We're still friends now. Yeah, like I said, you got to be the person that does what they say they're going to be do and need to be reasonable to work with. And that gets you very far in life. Yeah, I mean, it's as simple little psychologies of the buy sales side, right? You know, I mean, it's it's, you know, you just say what you're going to do. You beat, you know, you, you beat candy, beat transparent, you know, and you ultimately fall through with these promises that you're going to make, right? I think a lot of people they get, you know, and this is, and I'd love to hear your input on this too. I think in a lot of ways, especially people who are starting off, they feel like they have to like pump their chest up and make, you know, big, you know, promises or over-promise certain things, you know, just to make themselves either look bigger or more confident. And I think in a lot of ways, people can smell through that or see through that, right? And it's, it's like, hey, if you don't have the money lined up or you don't have your

26:09financing or capital stack lined up, just be upfront with the seller. Like, yeah, this is what I'm going to do. I have to go to these five, you know, investment banks or, or, or, or lending partners, and I got to line up this equity. A lot of people will be like, yeah, I got the money in the bank, and this person's ready to finance me. And then you get into the deal and you find out 30 days later, like, shoot, like, that's not actually the case. Well, guess what? That trust is immediately gone. It's amazing to be upfront. Because with founders, particularly, you know, a lot of this is a foreign language anyway. So all the things that are impressive when you're in your own C suite are completely meaningless to them. And I try to always learn. And the family office I was describing, the principal of that I've learned a lot from the last few years. And he kind of taught me one thing, which I had a little bit, but he's really made me internalize it, which is when you meet those folks for the first time, start your story with who you are, not what you've done, not who your firm is, not, you know, why you're interested in the business, start with who you are and build from

27:12that. And everything then is in the context of you as a real person. And you're not trying to drop names of which brands or companies you work with, you're not trying to impress them with how big your firm is or anything. You're starting with you, the other side of the table. And obviously, you know, it's always best when you can go second after you've learned that about the other person. And you know, I've seen so many people just come in, you know, dressed in suits for founders that are in jeans, give out the big business cards with titles on or it immediately start talking about the firm. And then they basically almost say, why should we be interested in this? And I've got to get on a plane to look at another business tomorrow. It's like if you're going to do what we're describing, you're going to be very choiceful. You can't do this on 20 businesses. You've got a, you can filter before you go. But once you get involved with these guys, you've got to be committed and don't waste their time. And you can't do that on 10, 20 situations at once. Again, if it's transactional, there's no transaction coming. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, kind of switch of gears. So you talked about at the beginning of the show, right? You know,

28:16one of the bigger deals or maybe the biggest deal that you did was the Trophicana deal. You know, to the extent that you can devolve some of the the secret sauce or the sauce is making behind it. Like, you know, what was your role in that? What did that look like? Some of the numbers. I mean, I think everybody loves to like hear those like really big success M&A stories. So can you kind of talk us through how that kind of went down? Yeah. So we got called in relatively late because it was a big deal for a big, very successful private equity firm. They'd hired a bunch of advisors over six to 12 months, but nobody could tell them what to do with the business. They could give them lots of diligence analysis, lots of linear extrapolations. But there was there was no so what could we do? How could we create value? And all we do is growth and business development. So that's all we we look at. And honestly, they gave us, I think they cut the contract into three or four stages. They could let us go unless they were impressed at each stage and things. And and we ended up doing the bulk of the business case. A fairness opinion was done on it, which never happens with growth plans. You know, I was presenting it to lenders co investors and it was all about

29:19taking the research Pepsi had, the data and the knowledge, which was profound. But then comparing it to the reality where a lot of it wasn't being aggressively used because it'd been a very low priority for a very big company. So it had a new team quite often, lots of rotation. Its objectives were very short term. We need you to get this budget this year, get there how you like. There wasn't really a vision. There was a lot of passion in the team. But they weren't in a condition where they could, you know, unlock that potential. So our job in pretty short order was to get very specific real activities, exact things you could do on the brands, cost them up, use the research to prove that they're valid. You know, the biggest thing we use in our work is consumer research and data so that you can back it up with, I can prove to you the consumer once, I can prove to you it's this size opportunity because it's data driven, not just an ethereal idea or something to get excited about where you're like, that sounds great, but is it real? This is going to make me money. And, you know, it was a tough deal because orange juice has been declining. There was a

30:21lot of cost pressure on price of oranges, a bit of a mixed portfolio and some things that have been missed over the years. So you had to put it again into a sequence. It couldn't all be risky, it couldn't all be long term. You needed wins in year one, needed wins in year two. That same funding philosophy gets some easy wins on the board quickly from distribution, customers, simple product gaps or making things bigger that we've already got. And then use that to fund the bigger breakouts, which some stuff's been coming to market the last couple of years as evidence to that. But that was always going to take a little while. So it was getting that plan and then it was still risky no matter what you did. So we always build off a do nothing scenario like it's going to do this unless you intervene. So there's a realistic base. But, you know, we had probably 10, 15 ideas and we put five or six in the business case. He had inherent hedging in it's not all in. You don't have to catch and sink this. And yeah, that was a that was a terrific experience. And, you know, because the deal happened because it was public, we've been able to celebrate that a little bit.

31:22It was a big deal for a firm of our size. There's only 15 of us for us to be called and play that role and deal with a very, very successful PE firm. You know, that was that was a real moment of pride actually. It's certainly the biggest advisory we've done. I've done big deals. I don't remember that Pepsi announced just the public price that they sold it for. Oh, so the enterprise value was like about five billion, I think, from memory and Pepsi retained a JV. So we had to convince Pepsi of our plans too. They retain. Here's all things you can do right. And we're going to do them, but you can stick around a little bit. They had to be convinced that you were, you know, again, the right owner that would get them, they kind of the only reason they were selling was they thought somebody could run it better and create value. That's why they were retaining a stake. So they were kind of open to it. But yeah, you had to, you had to convince them because they knew lots about the business. So it was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. That was sort of a real sort of badge of honor for our plan when management sort of signed up to the bulk of it. All right. Perfect. Awesome. Well, I guess that's probably the best trigger. So we'll go

32:23ahead and move on to our rocket round where we have the, the, the guest, the same three questions. So first question, what do you like to do every time? So I'm a big foodie. So I love cook in, I love eating, I love wines, anything around the food and drink space. And then I have to work out to compensate for that. So it's a good, good, bad cop model. Ben and I both like the first part of what you said. It's important not as much. All right. So let's talk about the most memorable moment in your business journey. I think it's, it's, it's probably the founder DLI was talking about that took years because it was just such a personal connection in the end to, to have somebody trust you, like I felt that with each of the founders I work with. So I feel bad picking one. But you know, we're still friends. We still see each other in now totally different contexts. But you know, that really felt like somebody's trusting you with their baby. And it was really hard. The

33:24reason it took so long, it was really hard. You had to be patient to wait for when he was really ready. And I was a pretty neat experience for it, for a kid from a small town that never knew what M&A was growing up and things. That was like, wasn't my biggest deal, wasn't the most famous deal, but it was the one I'm proudest of. And, and I do think you, you know, deals give you an energy that a product launched and things don't always like that. There is still that adrenaline around those, those things. So kind of probably, probably that's my pick. All right. Last question. What's your favorite tool or resource? So this is now very much in an AI context, but we've always used consumer research as the foundation of our work. It's not about us being the smartest. It's about us literally mining and being obsessed with what the consumer really wants and then decisively acting on it. A lot of research is a lost in organizations, so they know everything Tropicana could have done, but they're buried

34:24outside the sea suite. So our job is take that consumer knowledge and make it actionable. And we now do that with a lot of digital tools that combine a lot of knowledge very quickly, very efficiently, the contest ideas. So it's gone from a very analog thing. Many years ago, to now a very digital thing, but the philosophy is the same is know your consumer obsess about it in a very data driven way. So you know that you've got you've got ideas that will work. And let's go into that. Let's go into that really quick. Where are there free resources for consumer data, right? So you can get a ton out of the GPTs. I mean, there is a ton of published. What we do is we work, we have a partner called Market Logic that's got a great version of that that they applied to proprietary intel for a particular client. So they've got tools that will work with confidentiality. So if it's public, you will do really well. If you if you work on learning your prompts, you would do really well with the chat GPT or equivalent. You can get a lot of

35:25market info. You can obviously scrape reviews and things like that. But you know, the best research is using proven techniques. It's not about just reading Amazon reviews and things. It's about knowing the key questions for a brand, having a proven technique that's been used many times so that you can get quality results but interpret them versus norms. So it really is behind firewalls that you get the special stuff to be honest with research firms and then use an AI to mine it. That's kind of how we would work. And we use a firm called Market Logic that's a partnership we've signed recently that has that capability that allows us in a diligence to mine everything the client knows. So you know more than them very, very quickly. But yeah, chat GPT with the right prompts. You'll get a fair way. You'll certainly get hypotheses. You may not be able to prove them and you may want to go get some expert help to prove it, but you'll certainly get the genesis of the ideas. Awesome. And kind of going off script just as a personal question, I think our listeners would love to come here, right? You know, somebody's that's kind of starting

36:29off and we'll use consumer products because that's the industry that you're in. Somebody's looking to get in and be on the buy side of this, right? What is the first thing that they should be looking to do? Giving them some kind of tips and strategies of like, hey, maybe you've had some time in corporate America, you're stepping in and you're going to go buy your own company. What are some of the strategies, some of the things that they should be doing to weigh in that first acquisition? So I do think passion really matters and you know when you start looking at something, whether you've got a passion for that product or the category, if you don't, if you're agnostic, move on to something else, I think you learn a lot watching in store. You know, looking at what consumers are excited about, that tells you there's some opportunity there and it's never fully realized. There's always more ahead. So a mixture of your passion intuitively, then seeing it around whether it's online reviews, whether it's in store, we spend a lot of time in store just watching because that tells you you got something to work with and then,

37:34you know, if you're going to buy something in consumer products, functional performance really matters and you have to be confident the product really delivers because most of the preference drivers like an obvious one is detergent. You need it to remove stains. You want your whites white. Easy one. Yeah. It's smelling nice, having cute packaging. Yeah, fine. I might try it because I assumed it would work when I find it doesn't work as well as my tide detergent. I'm running back to tide. So that's true of most categories and people try to obfuscate that with scenarios with packaging and that's that's hollow. It may still grow a bit, but one day you'll pay the piper and you'll prove you didn't have it and unfortunately by then you've generally got wrong economics in the business. You can't add in the goodies. You can't find the technologies. You can't hire the R&D people. It's too late. So, you know, the third one, too intuitive. The third one then is the cold hard. Why believe in this product? Product is everything and there can be some peripheral products that aren't so great, but the core needs to be genuinely efficacious and

38:38normally that's functional and normally it's on very important things that obviously matters. So you know, again, a detergent's example. Yes, people want to wash at low temperatures. They're interested in a sustainability story, but not if it doesn't clean their clothes and get their whites white. Like that's an expectation probably of the whole category now and it's important, but you can't just build a brand around that and not deliver on the others. You've got to be, you've got to be on those drivers of preference that really, really matter and know the product delivers. I think it's interesting that you bring that up because I mean like in the in the age of Amazon and Google reviews, right? I mean, you're going to get, you're going to get scorched, you know, very, whereas, you know, 1500 years ago, you might be able to to play that up for a few years and still make some money. The marketing could outcompete the reviews because, you know, you have to have someone that actually uses it to tell you something versus now. I mean, you're immediately getting scorched, right? That your product doesn't work and then people are their first instinct, at least when I'm looking at a new product or services, I'm going to go check out the reviews, right? Yeah. Especially on like an Amazon, right? They make it work. You know, I read a book

39:40during COVID, we require, it's a firm because of COVID, I read a book on all of this and we looked at all the insurgent brands, so all the up and coming brands, they've been about 10,000 of them in in the core consumer products categories. We had data for a 98% of them never got to half a point of market share, not half of 1% of market share. So that was for all those reasons. So you have to, the only way you know which ones are going to get beyond that, it's not the Instagram influencers, it's not the amount of buzz that's tapering over the core, it's that does the product truly deliver. And what you're honestly looking for what I always love is when it really does deliver, but a lot of people haven't heard of it yet, when it's got this real loyal audience, but it's small, it might be in one state where the product was invented, it might be in one retailer and so constrained, because those are the easy business cases where you go, great, we've got, we've got scale evidence works, but we've also got this candy store, it might take a few years, might take some investment, but we don't even need more product, we can blow it out where it's available, more people hearing

40:41about it, more recommendations, that's where consumer products really kicks in. So you're looking for those kernels that are not yet at scale, but they've got some kind of scale proof that they work, they deliver, and a loyal following, and then you just need confidence that there's more people that's relevant to, occasionally there's niches where it's got a loyal following, but there aren't many people that want that, but normally in these categories, they're pretty accessible and they're pretty broad audiences. Awesome. Diamond in the rough, right? Yeah, Mark, so to kind of maybe wrap, how can people get hold of you? So our website's alchemyrx.com, my email is market alchemyrx.com, we would always love to hear from people, you can find me and my team on LinkedIn, we publish content, newsletters, my book's called Pick a Lane, you can get from Amazon, but really just as we've been talking, real dialogue, rather than emails and social listening, so we just love to meet people, and we rely all of our business comes from word of mouth, so we really appreciate people that say

41:47they sound interesting, not relevant to me, but I know somebody looking like those things, we try to pay it forward in return, so even if what I'm talking about isn't 100% for you, but you know somebody that is, we always, we're the underdogs in this world and we appreciate those connections and believe in relationships, so please reach out and we'd love to meet and greet any of you that are interested in what we do. Absolutely, and we'll put that in the show notes for the listeners, and like I said, it's always the second or third tier relationships, the ones that actually, you know, exactly, we're going to something, so Mark, thank you very much, appreciate having the show. Thank you. Mark, we appreciate you buddy. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the M&A Launchpad podcast. If you've enjoyed today's podcast and would like to support us, please leave us a rating and a review after you listen. If you're looking for guidance on your next business acquisition or sale, capital to support your next business transaction or to invest in a private equity opportunity, visit equity launchpad.com to learn more and to connect with our team. If you know of an individual, you would be a great guest for the show, head over to equitylaunchpad.com ord slash nominate where you'll have the chance to

42:51refer yourself or someone else to be a guest on our show. I'm Casey Menshu and I look forward to talking with you next week.