Mills Snell (@thegeneralmills) is joined by Mark Brooks (@markbrooks), Managing Director at Permanent Equity, to talk about investor-operator relationships, integrations, pre-close involvement and post-close dynamics, cultural fits, empowering leadership teams, handling tough conversations, and much more.-----Thanks to our sponsors!MoreNow.co: We help owners build a high functioning, experienced team by leveraging the top manager/director talent in the Phillippines. Go to morenow.co and fill out the form. Or email hire@morenow.co. Mention this pod for 20% of your first hire.-----* Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.* Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show!* Follow us on twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations.-----Show Notes:(0:00) Intro(2:33) How do you interact with Portfolio companies?(3:48) How do you alternate between remote and on-site work?(5:00) What do you think of passive ownership of a business?(7:08) How do you prepare pre & post-close for a deal to be successful?(11:07) You talk about integrating yourself into the operational workflow; have you experienced pushback on that?(14:05) How do you recognize success in the first phase of integration? (16:33) What is your thought process of discovery when assessing a new business?(20:55) Morenow.co(22:46) How does the investor-operator relationship begin?(27:15) How do you structure KPIs & metrics?(30:39) When and how would you escalate into operating one of the portfolio companies?(32:58) What are the early signs of a leadership issue?(35:34) How do you handle tough conversations?(42:31) What do you think about industry expertise? Is it necessary to run a business?(45:40) How do you handle cultural fits, team chemistry, and leadership anomalies?(50:11) What is the influence of incentives on behavior?-----Past guests on Acquanon include Nick Huber, Brent Beshore, Aaron Rubin, Mike Botkin, Ari Ozick, Mitchell Baldridge, Xavier Helgelsen, Mike Loftus, Steve Divitkos, Dzmitry Miranovich, Morgan Tate and more.-----Additional episodes you might enjoy:#64 How to find the expected benchmarks and KPIs for your industry?#67 I bought a business. Now what? Learn with us from an expert - Dzmitry Miranovich joins us once more#42 $900k Moving and Storage Company / $500k Rural Mini-Storage#61 Two Manufacturing Businesses for Sale - Brent Beshore - Founder and CEO at Permanent Equity--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dealtalk/support