redactedThere is no formula It’s beginning to feel like fall, which in New England means crisp air, flannels, changing leaves, pumpkin spice… and ETA conference season. While we don’t attend as many conferences as we used to, it’s still fun getting on campus when we have the chance. Reconnecting with old friends, meeting new people, and hearing the latest industry chatter is energizing. At these events, we often meet a lot of “search-curious” folks. They range from tire-kickers who will inevitably take more traditional corporate jobs to people who will definitely embark on their own ETA journey. Increasingly, we tend to get very specific questions about the mechanics of what we’ve built, the intricacies of fundraising and recruiting, the specifics of due diligence and company evaluation, and the nuances of legal structuring. We have no doubt that some of the people asking these questions will be very successful, but the conversations remind us of a passage in Anna Quindlen’s excellent memoir, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake in which she writes about meeting ambitious younger women seeking advice. From the book: “Every once in a while we meet our long-ago selves across a dining table or a desk, when younger women come to ask for advice or to interview for a job. They’re so eager and so smart, with their dresses and their shiny hair, and we know exactly what they want because we once wanted it, too. They want a formula, a plan, a set of directions, an assembly kit. Connect A to B, C to D, and in the end there it is, the life you crave. The job, the salary, the companion, the home.” The problem, Quindlen observes, is that there is no formula. We have been pretty transparent about the building blocks of Chenmark. It’s not rocket surgery: Step 1: Buy a stable, cash-flowing business for a reasonable valution. Step 2: Use all available cash flow to buy more stable, cash-flowing business for reasonable valuations. Step 3: Hire great people and give them as much autonomy as possible. Step 4: Repeat the first three steps for the rest of your life. Pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, that’s not where the magic happens. The magic happens in the mistakes, the surprises, the lucky breaks, and the unfortunate turns. It’s when you hire completely the wrong person, or realize that an FP&A person has sticky fingers. It’s when you get an anonymous complaint and spend the next couple of days with a sick feeling in your stomach. It’s when you realize you’ve bought a bad business and have to live with the consequences. It’s when a business plan clicks. It’s also how you treat people when they disappoint you. It’s how you balance a deep, almost pathological desire for growth with some level of prudence. It’s walking the fine line between being empathetic and upholding standards. It’s how you celebrate the wins. It’s how paranoia visits in the night, and you wonder if you’re too paranoid or if you’re not paranoid enough. It’s how you take the red-eye home after a long day and show up the next morning ready to roll. It’s how you would do anything for the team. And then it’s how you do all of that, day in and day out, for the rest of your life. Quindlen’s broader point is that, looking backward, our lives are shaped by accidents, unexpected turns, failures, and paths we never intended to take. She argues that over time, we learn not only how to fail, but how to get back up. The same is true in business. There is no formula. You can copy someone’s capital structure. You can copy their acquisition criteria. You can copy their org chart, incentive plans, recruiting process, meeting cadence, and even their website. What you can’t copy are the experiences that taught them what to do when none of those things work as planned. Over time we have learned that success comes not from what someone does, but how they do it. We’d love to have more conversations about that.