My guest in this episode is Ryan DeCaire. Ryan joined a private equity firm called Ashbridge Partners in Toronto Canada and became president of one of their portfolio companies, Geroline, in February 2019. Geroline is an industrial safety products company that sells ice cleats to companies in the energy, aerospace, mining, transportation, and construction industries among others. Geroline has a pretty incredible growth story from the time of acquisition in February 2019, when it had low double digits revenue, Ryan and his team doubled the size of Geroline and sold for 10x gross return to investors only 16 months later.The story of how they did it with sweat and tears will have a familiar theme to anyone in a growing small company. Ryan and I discussed building systems and a growing business, hiring for culture, creating an incentive structure for their team, going to 55 trade shows per year, and all the work needed to handle those leads and the challenges of being a business with only one or a small handful of products. Think Like an Owner has teamed up with the podcast app Clever FM to provide show-specific features like searchability, sorting episodes by tags, episode transcripts, and the ability to highlight and annotate episodes. Do us a favor and download Clever FM on Apple or Android and tell us what you think and what other features you would like to see.Listen weekly and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.Links Mentioned:Ryan DeCaire on LinkedInSureWerx Official WebsiteThink Like an Owner SponsorsLive Oak Bank — Live Oak Bank is a seasoned SMB lender providing SBA and conventional financing for search funds, independent sponsors, private equity firms, and individuals looking to acquire lower middle-market companies. Live Oak has closed billions of dollars in SBA financing and is actively looking to help more small company investors across the country. If you are in the process of acquiring a company or thinking about starting a search, contact Lisa Forrest or Heather Endresen directly to start a conversation or go to www.liveoakbank.com/think.Hood & Strong, LLP — Hood & Strong is a CPA firm with a long history of working with search funds and private equity firms on diligence, assurance, tax services, and more. Hood & Strong is highly skilled in working with search funds, providing quality of earnings and due diligence services during the search, along with assurance and tax services post-acquisition. They offer a unique way to approach acquisition diligence and manage costs effectively. To learn more about how Hood & Strong can help your search, acquisition, and beyond, please email one of their partners Jerry Zhou at jzhou@hoodstrong.com. Oberle Risk Strategies – Oberle is the leading specialty insurance brokerage catering to search funds and the broader ETA community, providing complimentary due diligence assessments of the target company’s commercial insurance and employee benefits programs. Over the past decade, August Felker and his team have engaged with hundreds of searchers to provide due diligence and ultimately place the most competitive insurance program at closing. Given August’s experience as a searcher himself, he and his team understand all that goes into buying a business and pride themselves on making the insurance portion of closing seamless and hassle-free.If you are under LOI, please reach out to August to learn more about how Oberle can help with insurance due diligence at oberle-risk.com. Or reach out to August directly at august.felker@oberle-risk.com.Interested in sponsoring?