Corbin: So when we walked into the company and we asked for like, you know, the CRM, so this is my favorite like thing, I walk in and she’s like, “Oh, yeah, we have a CRM, it’s here,” and so she opened up a closet and there are just shoe boxes full of business cards with notes, notes written on them, thousands of ’em, and she was like, “Yeah, you know, when a show comes up, I just pull a box off and look through the notes and, you know, give whoever I want a call.”

(intro)

From SMEVentures, it’s The Search Fund Podcast, a show about hungry entrepreneurs who, instead of starting a business, decide to buy one. These are their stories of success, failure, and the lessons they’ve learned.

Jake: This is Jake Nicholson of SMEVentures and on today’s show, we’re joined by Corbin Butcher, who, together with his wife and business partner, acquired Beire Exhibitions in the Czech Republic. But here’s the thing, Corbin is not Czech. And when he and his wife decided to launch a search fund, nobody had successfully closed a search fund deal in the Czech Republic ever before. In this episode, we’ll learn what brought Corbin to this decision and how he got it done.

(interview)

Jake: All right, Corbin, thank you so much for joining today. Really excited to talk to you and hear your story.

Corbin: My pleasure. Looking forward to it.

Jake: Yeah. Let’s just start with the basics. Where did you grow up?

Corbin: I actually grew up just north of Chicago, yeah, and then I moved out to Boston for high school and found my way to upstate New York for college and studied abroad a little bit in between there.

Jake: Did you have a fairly normal childhood before going to — you went to Andover, right? For high school?

Corbin: I did. I think fairly normal, as normal as going to boarding school, you know, is, you know? Like someone said that’s a pretty privileged background so — but other than that, it was fairly normal. It was two working parents, you know, and something of an affinity for traveling and working abroad but that sort of came out later.

Jake: How did you do in school?

Corbin: I would say I was a mediocre student. I tried to take tough classes, especially as an undergrad. I majored in physics and German, I would say excelled more in the language piece. I was an extremely mediocre physics student. But, honestly, the fact that I was challenged sort of in that discipline, you know, kinda worked out, even though I was fairly average.

Jake: How did you choose German as an area of study?

Corbin: Well, it actually was the foreign language that was automatically assigned to me in my elementary school and really was just the inertia of that placement carried me through. I just found a niche that I really liked. My parents were very supportive of German. I mean, at that point, Spanish was sort of omnipresent, but, you know, German was sort of just coming back from its woes, I guess. And I sort of followed it through and really, really enjoyed the culture, the language, and the literature and eventually found kind of a home in Central Europe.

Jake: So you went to Hamilton College, which is a fairly prestigious liberal arts college in the Northeast, to do your physics and German studies. And right after, you joined the military, is that right?

Corbin: Well, no. So I went to college before I joined the military and so then right out of Hamilton, I joined the OCS program and went and commissioned as a Marine Corps officer.

Jake: My understanding of Hamilton is it’s not only an academically rigorous school, a liberal arts school, but it’s also I think, politically, leaning toward the left. I can’t imagine there were many people in your class that were joining the military right after. Were you fairly unique in that regard?

Corbin: Yeah. I remember walking — so the poor recruiter, he was out of Albany and, you know, he would set up station in sort of a classroom or, you know, a room, and I’m pretty sure I was the only one of my class who visited that poor guy. But at least he got one out of Hamilton my year and I think, and especially during that time, it was, you know, as Iraq was getting fairly more intense and I think there was some more interest, but, yeah, I mean, the draw into a military facility from Hamilton was limited to one or two per class. Yeah, I think most people are really drawn to finance or consulting or these types of disciplines.

Jake: Why were you attracted to join the Marines?

Corbin: Well, my dad served in Vietnam and so it was a family thing, but I think overall, I had a very privileged upbringing. I got to go to Andover, I went to Hamilton. I pretty much had every advantage afforded, you know, to a person going through the American system and I thought, well, this is a place where I think I can give back, be productive, have a positive influence on. You know, a bunch of people join the military for a variety of reasons, from a bunch of different diverse and socioeconomic backgrounds, and I thought it was something that I needed to, you know, round me out, to build me as a person and prepare me for the other things that I wanted to do in life, which I’m doing right now.

Jake: Do you feel that you were different in that regard from your classmates at Hamilton?

Corbin: I think a bit might have, I was definitely different than your typical, you know, guy or gal that went to the Northeast and went on a different — some of these, you know, either general management or business or banking or…so it was something I definitely wound my way outside of the Northeast and, you know, these other areas where you find Hamilton and these types of graduates sort of co-located. And, yeah, I think the mentality was a little different. You know, there were people in Hamilton who had gone through tough times, who had worked their way through college and done all these things and had a tougher road and really wanted an opportunity, “better opportunity” right away.

Jake: So then you spent about six and a half years in the Marines and I know you can’t talk much in detail about some of your experiences there but perhaps you can give us a high level idea of how it shaped you, like if Corbin six years into the Marines were to chat with 18-year-old Corbin just starting a degree in physics and German language studies, you know, what would you wanna tell that younger version of you?

Corbin: Well, I think if that version — that version of me was pretty set on going in the military to begin with. It wasn’t clear back then that we would have 9/11 and the Iraq War with all the political sort of drama besetting that. I think, through my experience, I was an infantry officer and did two tours in Iraq and then worked out of embassies in North Africa and in Central Europe and I think I would have told an earlier version of myself that I think the military is a great place to learn a lot of fundamental skills. It is not a place you go to learn practical skills. When I came out of the military, I would say I had almost zero knowledge of business, you know, fundamental, you know, the fundamentals of business, in terms of accounting, finance, marketing, but I did have a good basis in, you know, how to manage people, how to deal with problems, how to solve problems, how to approach it, tenacity, you know, sort of in these, you know, non-descript but sort of innate skills. And I think I would tell a person like that you have to be comfortable with that, you know? You have to be comfortable in the fact you can build up your skill sets later on and do it quickly but that you’ll use the military as an experience that really is more of a fundamental, you know, character build and a life experience type of endeavor. Of course, depending on what specialization you take, some people in the military do much more focused stuff but I thought I wanted to be right in the center, I wanted to be leading Marines and leading Marines that were putting their lives at risk. I thought that was meaningful and that’s where I wanted to pursue my interest in the Marine Corps, at least initially.

Jake: I just noticed that you started college in 2001, which means 9/11 happened literally within probably some of your first days at college. Was that impactful to you? Did you understand what was going on in the world at that time? How did that affect you?

Corbin: Yeah, absolutely. Actually I just finished a calculus class and I was getting breakfast and watching the news and saw it unfold and immediately I called my dad and the both of us knew immediately that this was gonna be a huge deal. And, you know, at that point, no one knew exactly that we were gonna go to Afghanistan and, of course, no one knew about, you know, Iraq, whatnot, but it was pretty momentous and it definitely solidified, you know, as, of course, things started to unfold after that, it definitely solidified my desire to go in the Marines, which was already there before 9/11. I already knew that was a path I wanted. But it really solidified and made it a little bit more urgent, for sure.

Jake: So far, you’ve studied at Andover, you’ve studied German language and physics at Hamilton, you spent six years as an officer in the Marines, and then you decide to go get your MBA. Were you tired of military life or you wanted — what, you wanted more money? What was it? What drove that decision?

Corbin: I think there’s an interesting part in the trajectory of a military officer and its sort of private counterpart. And if you look sort of what the trajectory is, it’s sort of about the time — you are endowed with a lot of responsibility early on in the military. You’re given a platoon, you know, I was in charge of 40 guys running millions of dollars’ worth of equipment in Iraq, you know, at age 23. And if you look at the counterpart, my Hamilton counterpart that went the consulting route, they’re doing consulting, you know? They’re sort of just churning out PowerPoints at that point. But an interesting thing happens, sort of the progression starts to taper off about six years in when you become a captain, whereas on the other side, the level of responsibility starts to go up very dramatically. And so, at that intersection, I really wanted to switch over because I didn’t wanna become a career military person, for a variety of reasons. I did what I wanted to do and, you know, I felt there was a lot more — you could be a lot more entrepreneurial. And I just wanted to be involved in a more business-focused endeavor anyway. But that was the right juncture, I thought, to switch over. The only way for an American or anyone in the world really to switch out of that capacity and then jump into something that’s equally as sort of stimulating is really to pursue an MBA or a law degree or whatever vocation you want. So it was a combination of, yeah, I wouldn’t say more money, I would say more career diversity, for sure, because in the military, it’s really well tracked pretty much what you do, at least if you wanna move up the ranks. And so that was the route I started pursuing in the last year of my military contract, was apply to business schools.

Jake: So you finish up the military, you head to Chicago, your hometown, to pursue an MBA. This is where presumably you learned about the search fund, is that right? 

Corbin: That’s correct.

Jake: How did that come about?

Corbin: I had a very good friend who — he went a completely different route but we, you know, that’s the beauty of business school, you come across people, you know, with different sort of interests and whatnot. And a fairly conservative fellow. When I say conservative, I mean religious, you know, in all sorts of ways of life, you know, very devoted to traditional family ways. And it wasn’t completely my genre but we found things that we were interested in, I guess. And he had pursued this with his brother and he had gotten backing from some of the big names in the search fund industry, Peter Kelly was one, a lot of some other West Coast funds, and he had done a tour, a roadshow tour, and immediately he started telling me about it and I knew immediately that was what I wanted to do, because he had come from private equity, he said, “You know, I really liked the investing side but, you know, this is really where I wanna be. I wanna be an operator to impact people’s lives, to really take charge of the employees, develop a strategy, pursue these things,” and I knew immediately that was for me. And, of course, I was at Kellogg with my wife and it also seemed a way to mesh family life with your professional life in a way that was still higher order but didn’t take away from the amount of time you could devote to your family and into your overall life. So, I immediately knew that was something I wanted to pursue and when I discussed it with my wife, we immediately jumped at it.

Jake: Let’s talk a minute about your wife, Ivona, am I saying her name correctly?

Corbin: Yeah, you are.

Jake: So did you meet her at Kellogg or before?

Corbin: No, I actually — when I was stationed in Germany, I met her before. She was a trained economist, PhD, PhDr, the European designation, I guess. She was working for an investment company and, you know, was on TV doing interviews on different, you know, economic issues, was really focused on the Prague Stock Exchange. And when I met her, I knew she was way more qualified than I was to attend a place like Kellogg and so we applied together. We weren’t married but we applied together. And, fortunately, we both got in and that was really where we set out together.

Jake: Now this is important because she would later become your partner in launching a search fund, right?

Corbin: Absolutely.

Jake: And so did that idea start to bubble while you were at Kellogg or did it come later?

Corbin: It started to bubble while we were at Kellogg but I think it was important that we both did something else. So, as I said, you come out of the military not knowing anything about anything. I really had to study hard at Kellogg. And then it was important to me that I do something else. So, in my case, it was going to banking before we started the venture —

Jake: Which to some people may seem crazy, like you were a German literature student who spent six and a half years in the Marines and then, all of a sudden, you get a degree and you’re doing sophisticated banking work in New York. Did that feel like a natural transition to you or did you have a clear idea of your path ahead? I mean, how did you handle that?

Corbin: Well, it helped a lot that by the time I was graduating, there’d been a lot of military people that had done the transition to Wall Street. It wasn’t as built out as it is now but there was still some — there were some role models and you could look to those people to say, “Okay, well, that’s how they did it,” but it was important to me, I thought banking was a quick way to learn, you know, the fundamentals of investing, of, you know, how to valuate companies, how to face a client, provide a superior level of client service. And so it was a step, as I saw it, it was either that or consulting and I just thought banking was much better for my purposes. And so going through that path, it was clear that I was gonna use that to step off into hopefully this but, potentially, as it actually came, I took another step before we actually launched the search.

Jake: Let’s talk about that. You went to Zolfo Cooper, which is now AlixPartners. Why did you make that move?

Corbin: Well, that was because once, after I spent some time in banking, which wasn’t — I wouldn’t say I loved it. I would say it was very informative and it was a great background job, but it was not an environment I thrived in, but I wanted to get more on the operational side before we launched the search fund. Of course —

Jake: So you knew before you made that move that you were eventually gonna do a search fund?

Corbin: Absolutely. Yeah. And —

Jake: Got it.

Corbin: — I also knew that, you know, this was a turnaround company so I could eventually work on an actual turnaround project and get some operational experience and that was exactly what I did. And, of course, Ivona was working at a hedge fund during this time, not so much in an operational capacity, she was working with clients and was doing work that I can barely understand. But it was important for the two of us that at least one of us had some operational background before we went and started pitching investors so at least we could say one of us had some background in that.

Jake: And you didn’t think your military leadership experience would be enough?

Corbin: No, I didn’t. And the investors tore me apart. If I had started down that path, they would have absolutely tore me apart. I didn’t go down that route but I quickly became aware that really what they’re interested in is what’s really applicable to what they’re putting money in.

Jake: So you’ve put these pieces into place, you discovered the search fund model during the MBA, you and your wife decided, “Okay, we need to go do some other things first, gain some other experience,” but you’re enticed by this search fund idea, as you go explore banking, get some more operational experience, and then you figure, “We have these blocks in place, we’re ready to launch,” so, yeah, and you’re how old at this point?

Corbin: Maybe 29, yeah —

Jake: Twenty-nine? And you decide to launch your search in the Czech Republic. Was this the plan from the beginning?

Corbin: It was and the reason for that was that we just thought that we had a better competitive advantage. And, of course, with Ivona being from there, we had a good support network, her family and, of course, the cost of living is so much cheaper. But, you know, we just thought that there are tons of people in search funds in the US, the number of funds that were being raised was going parabolic and, you know, the investors were interested in us doing it in the US but we thought, “Well, we’re gonna have a much tougher time coming up with a differentiated value prop for a buyer than we will in Czech,” and so, ultimately, we were really focused on going to the Czech market.

Jake: And how did that land when you went to investors and said, “Hey, we’re gonna go launch a search fund in the Czech Republic and buy a company,” had there ever been a search fund acquisition completed in Czech before?

Corbin: No, never. A lot of them — and we were living in New York at the time and when we started pitching the investors, a lot of them didn’t know Czech, but they were open to the idea, of course. They’re all savvy people. Ultimately, it landed with pretty much of a dead cat bounce, they really weren’t thrilled about — well, of course, it’s a new place, former communist country, you know, of course, their minds go to corruption, vagaries around rule of law, these types of things —

Jake: And is there truth to that? Are their concerns grounded?

Corbin: Not really, actually. That really wasn’t — and in the end, we were able to bring them around and really show them through research and different, you know, benchmarking statistics that Czech Republic really has come a long way and it really is basically like a little Germany in terms of rule of law and corruption, that stuff’s really not as big a deal as it is further east. But then the issue became local investor interest and it also became probability of success within the search phase. So, they looked at it as a small market, which it is, 10 million people, you know, of that, maybe there were 50,000 companies that would be in our size range, of those, you know, maybe, you know, half of those would actually be in an industry we would want, you know, and then maybe 20 percent of those would have reoccurring revenue metrics and then, you know, maybe half of those would have, you know, the profitability metrics, blah, blah, blah, and then you have 1 to 2 percent turnover so they just said the market wasn’t big enough to justify the probability of success to fund an actual search.

Jake: And so, often, when entrepreneurs go to investors and they keep hearing rejection from very smart, accomplished people, they start thinking, “Well, maybe I’m wrong.” Did that thought cross your mind?

Corbin: It didn’t. I thought we were right. I understood where they’re coming from, because they look at the numbers. I mean, these are professional investors and they go by the numbers and that’s what their guiding light is. I thought that our thesis was pretty strong in that, you know, you had a company that — or a country that liberalized in the early 90s and now you’re coming up with that first generation of entrepreneurs that want to retire so there’s a wave of companies that were started in the wake of communism that are looking for succession opportunities. This is not a country with good succession legacies or even just private company legacies because it’s one generation long. So I thought there’s gonna be a large wave of companies that were coming to market and I thought that was a unique — and Ivona and I, you know, provide a unique and differentiated solution for those people who wanted their companies be in good hands and go forward.

Jake: And how about you personally, not having — I don’t know, did you have some experience in the Czech Republic during your military days?

Corbin: No.

Jake: And did you speak Czech?

Corbin: No.

Jake: And you were the one with the operating experience. Did you have confidence that if you did buy a company, you and your wife would be able to successfully operate it?

Corbin: I thought so. I mean, on a personal level, I honestly felt that when you look at Czech Republic, one of the big problems is that you have underemployment, you know? You have people who don’t realize their potential. And I thought as an American, and especially someone who’s in the military, you’re trained to be optimistic and trained to take risks with people and I honestly thought that was something that would be extraordinarily valuable in this market. Just from a cultural standpoint, I thought that’s something that I and Ivona, that we could do really well, you know? Building up a company, a culture, you know, endowing people with responsibility, taking risks on people. And that was something that I saw in Czech. It’s also true, overall, I think, in Europe, more so than in the US. Maybe you think about it a little bit as like cultural arbitrage and, you know, maybe that was a little foolish but, in the end, I think it’s bearing out, you know? Especially in the industry that we came in.

Jake: So, obviously, you did find some money. How did you do that?

Corbin: We decided to go anyway, but we built a lot of good relationships when we did this roadshow. We talked to a lot of smart people, a lot of people liked us, they liked sort of the thesis, they weren’t really willing to put their money behind it but they said, “Of course, you know, stay in touch and, you know, if you come across something and you think it’s compelling, like, of course, we’ll look at it and we think you guys would be good operators.” So we said, okay, so we basically ran our search like we would have if we were funded, you know? We took good notes on what the investors were interested in in terms of the industries, we sent them updates on our pipeline, and we kept in touch. And we tried to make sure that — it was almost just like a service, you know? We tried to keep in touch, we paid attention to what they wanted, what they were looking for, and if we found stuff we thought was relevant to them then we let them know and asked for their guidance.

Jake: And you had saved up some money to live on throughout the search?

Corbin: We’d saved up some money and moving from New York to Czech Republic is, you know, your savings goes a much longer way, which was really helpful. We lived in a dilapidated old house that my wife inherited from her grandparents. It hadn’t been remodeled since probably just after World War Two. Really rough. But we thought, you know, it was a temporary thing, we made a little office in the attic and, you know, barebones operation, you know? No offices, no nothing. The only things we spent money on was travel to go see owners, travel to go meet with, you know, capital providers, banks, lawyers, you know, stuff like that. When you look at some of the search funds, you know, they’re working at a WeWorks and stuff like that. That was not us. I mean, we had leaky roofs and, you know, space heaters and, you know, but you look back, it made it a lot of fun.

Jake: I love that image. Instead of the Silicon Valley garage, it’s the war-shot and leaky attic in the Czech Republic. That’s awesome. And did the search pan out as expected? High quality leads flowing in at high volume right away?

Corbin: Oh, no. I think — and this is a whole discussion but, you know, it was tough. I mean, we had to make the rounds. We went through Prague, we talked to capital providers, we mined the Kellogg network, that was helpful. You know, in the end, you know, that was the wrong place to go, you know, talking to banks, you know, and they have their preferred private equity clients, they don’t care about us. Talking to different — we talked to different private equity companies about stuff and they kind of started to see us as competition pretty quickly and so we initially hit a bunch of walls, I guess, with that. And, of course, then we started reaching out to business brokers and that would turn out to be more fruitful. But, really, the base of our operation was developing this Python program to mine this data out of this database that Czech Republic requires all business to file and we ran a process like that and that was — that started to yield some actionable contacts with business owners.

Jake: Given that Ivona was the native Czech speaker in this partnership and you have different professional experiences, how did you go about dividing up the labor?

Corbin: Yeah, that’s a good question. So, because I was coming fresh off banking and restructuring, I was doing a lot of the initial screening and sort of the financial screening and also doing the modeling for, you know, when we came across a company we thought could be pretty good. Also, I was putting together a lot of materials. And I also knew the process. So, it was up to me to really set up the process for an LOI and, you know, or for an IOI and then an LOI and move different owners to these stages. Ivona was really focused on sort of the human aspect, so reaching out to business owners, quickly understanding what their position was, you know? Did they really wanna sell? Did they just want some valuation? If they wanted to sell, why? What was the angle we could use in terms of their concerns about us or the process? And so she was much more involved in this like relationship development aspect and also outreach. She worked with a bunch of our interns to really standardize and get the feelers out to different types of business owners and make sure that they’re getting a good interaction with us.

Jake: You mentioned business owners concerns with you. Were you and Ivona taken seriously when you approached business owners in Czech Republic?

Corbin: I think we were because, I mean, their first question was, “Well, do you have any money?” and the truth was we didn’t but we built relationships with investors who said, “Listen, you can use me and I would be perfectly willing to invest in you into a transaction that that you put together,” so once we were able to use these people, then we were able to say, okay, we present ourselves as a team, and especially because all these people came from abroad and in Czech Republic that’s normally reserved for huge transactions, you just don’t see international investors on a smaller scale so when we were able to bring that, these business owners started to take us seriously, that we were real buyers.

Jake: So you bought the company, Beire Exhibitions, am I saying that right?

Corbin: Yes, you are.

Jake: First of all, what does Beire do?

Corbin: We design, build, assemble, and service trade fair exhibition booths, primarily in Central Europe, but also worldwide. Also in the US, Middle East, Russia.

Jake: All right, so you do the deal. About how big, maybe in terms of headcount?

Corbin: Well, we’re growing now, so maybe about 50, 50 people —

Jake: When you bought it?

Corbin: When we bought it, it was a little bit smaller, maybe about 45 —

Jake: Okay.

Corbin: — then we lost some and then we gained some,

Jake: And you step in, what positions did you and Ivona take?

Corbin: So, we started as co-CEOs, she with the focus on HR and operations and me with the focus on sales and marketing and finance. Actually, I would say we both shared the financial overview. Yeah, so that’s how we delineated it.

Jake: And once you closed and you stepped in, was everything as you expected it to be? Were there surprises?

Corbin: You know, the sellers were really upfront with all of us. One of the issues that we had when we went in is that there was a pending legal investigation on one of the owners for subsidies fraud with respect to the company. You know, they were very upfront with, and that was the biggest skeleton, but they were very upfront with everything. And this is also a couple, I mean, it was a Dutch woman and a Czech guy and we were taking over as an American guy and a Czech woman so it was almost the same dynamic, you had a Czech and a foreigner, you know, sort of replacing — and it was a couple as well so you had a very similar dynamic. And we liked them and we built this relationship, we’re still friends to this day and they really did everything they could to make sure that we understood everything about the business and there were no surprises. Some of the things obviously turned out differently than we had anticipated but, from their perspective, they handed us a company that was really completely open.

Jake: And what did you see as some of the biggest value creation opportunities? What did you uncover during your diligence that you thought you might be able to — what levers did you think you could pull on post-acquisition?

Corbin: Yeah, so when we walked into the company and we asked for like, you know, the CRM, so this is my favorite like thing. I walk in and she’s like, “Oh, yeah, we have a CRM, it’s here,” and so she opened up a closet and there are just shoe boxes full of business cards with notes, notes written on them, thousands of ’em. And she was like, “Yeah, you know, when a show comes up, I just pull a box off and look through the notes and, you know, give whoever I want a call,” and in a day where —

Jake: There’s something beautiful about that, right? You know?

Corbin: There is and she was so proud of it, you know? And so, you know, in a day and age, of course, where every one of our generation knows that digitalization and high touch and automation is like key to growing a company, I was horrified beyond like the elegance of her system. But that’s where I saw the low-hanging fruit, you know, was to take these shoe boxes and, I mean, it was painful, we had to digitalize all that information, all that client information into a new system. Painful but obvious, you know, at least. And stuff like that, like ERP, you know, managing the resources, inventory management. We take a walk through the warehouses. They had stuff that was decades old they had never used, you know? They didn’t know what it was. They had boxes that were just hanging out. And someone knew. There was someone at the company who knew what was in that box but you’d have to guess who that person was and if they were there and, you know, so you’re talking about like asset allocation, not shipshape. So things like that I thought were the immediate value creation types of rectifying those types of things. 

Jake: So you’re about three years in to the deal now. You bought in 2018. Obviously not knowing what was going to transpire in 2020. How are things going now for the business? How affected have you been by COVID — I mean, you’re serving the events industry, I imagine you’ve been affected.

Corbin: Yeah, we have. And this is something that you learn about in search fund conferences and whatnot. But, you know, when you buy a business, you’re running a small business and there are just a lot of things you can’t control, you know? You have to be ready for stuff like this. I mean, it was devastating. Our revenue dropped 80 percent. And, you know, eventually subsidies came in to backfill that but we really had to draw on our reserves. Fortunately, we had good, you know, client payment schedules so we were sitting on a lot of cash so we could make it out okay. Reoriented the company. We focused on digital stuff, virtual products. We did some, you know, high-end carpentry. We focused on retail space, residential. You know, we were able to diversify but not replace the revenue. But I think the bigger issue was really what do you do on a personal level? I mean, our business is completely gone. You know, how do you keep going to work? How do you keep your employees there? How do you keep them occupied? How do you retain employees who are not, you know, completely busy? And so these were all issues we had to grapple with. And, you know, now the tide is sort of turning, but back then, it wasn’t so clear when things were gonna end and how it would work out for the company.

Jake: When you decided to launch a search fund, presumably, you had some goals in mind. Three years in, do you feel you are on your way to achieving those goals, personal, professional? Do you have more things you wanna do in your career or are you pretty satisfied at this point? Where do you think you are on that career path?

Corbin: I think the scope, so we came in and we said, okay, this is a five-year — we had a five-year investment horizon with the investors. Of course, with COVID, that’s been extended. I think it really opened my eyes to a lot of things that I wanted to do — that I really liked and I really wanted to pursue. You know, we’re kind of a creative industry and I had never been in a creative industry. I was never a particularly creative person. But it’s an aspect that I really enjoy. And involving science behind that is something that I enjoy as well. So there are more things I wanna do in terms of product development, where I see myself, you know, in the future, building it out from this platform that I never would have seen beforehand. You come into an industry that’s new and so you’re some new eyes and so you see the industry in a different way than the people who’ve been in the industry for 20, 30 years and I think that breeds opportunity, you know? I see where the exhibition industry is lagging, where there is — where clients are not being served, where value is not being created, and there are really ways that clients really should be better served. And I think that’s exciting. I mean, you look at different types of, you know, ventures, startups, and that’s what all these other entrepreneurs want to do. They wanna make a client experience really good and really take away some of the frictions and some of the bad points of these industries and I start to see that more in our industry and it’s motivating for me and for Ivona as well.

Jake: Twenty years from now, where do you think you’ll be? Do you think you’ll still be operating something? Do you think you wanna be an investor? What do you think you’re gonna be doing?

Corbin: Twenty years from now, probably, I would like to move on to the investing side. And I think within Central Europe, you see that there’s so much talent here, and is something that we experienced, you know? We saw the local investors here and how they looked at us and scoffed at our thesis and to be able to bring into a place in the world like this, you know, the ability to invest in people and be maybe one of the few people to start doing that in this part of the region of the world, I think, would be pretty exciting and pretty fulfilling.

Jake: That’s awesome. Searchers around the world are listening to your story and many of them are in countries that are brand new to search funds as Czech was when you arrived. What would you like to share with these aspiring entrepreneurs that perhaps you wish you had heard when you were weighing the pros and cons of launching a search fund and particularly launching a search fund in the Czech Republic?

Corbin: I guess it doesn’t need to be said that it’s fairly ambitious. You have to have a lot of confidence in your thesis and in what you’re doing. I also think having a partner makes a whole lot of difference. You know, I can see where a solo searcher can do well in a developed market in the US where they know an industry and they’re familiar with all these things, but I think if you’re gonna try to blaze a new trail in a new country or maybe even in a country that has a search, maybe one or two but not that many, I think having a partner, it made all the difference in my search. And, yeah, I think that’s about all I would say that would be generic and applicable, I think, to every region.

Jake: Wonderful. Corbin, thank you so much. And do you have a family?

Corbin: I do. I have two girls, one’s six years old, the other one’s two and a half —

Jake: Do they consider themselves Czech or American or bicultural?

Corbin: It depends who they’re talking to. If they’re talking to me, they’re as American as anyone. If they’re talking to Ivona, they’re as dumpling-fed Czech as anyone else. So it really focuses on what company they’re keeping, but they can really hold their own in both of those cultures.

Jake: And you see yourself staying there for a long time.

Corbin: Yes, I think so. But I also would like to, if we could find a way to move the company and maybe open up a target market in the US, I think that would be super interesting for us as a family and also for the business, because I think we can do a lot of things in the US. So, that is one of the advantages, of course, with buying a company is you can set the strategy a little bit that aligns with personal utility, although, of course, the US is a huge market for what we do so it would be an ambitious sort of extension as well.

Jake: Wonderful. Corbin, thank you so much for your time, really appreciate it. Fascinating story. I don’t know that we’re gonna find a more unique path in this podcast. So, really appreciate you sharing it with us.

Corbin: Absolutely, Jake. Thanks for reaching out. Happy to be talking to you.

(outro)

Jake: When Corbin and his wife bought Beire Exhibitions, it was doing a bit over US$4 million in sales and they managed to buy the company with 85 percent debt through a combination of bank debt and seller financing. They’ve since been paying down that debt and using the COVID pause to build capacity for some pretty big growth plans over the next few years.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, you can find more at the searchfundblog.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m Jake Nicholson of SMEVentures and you’re listening to The Search Fund Podcast.