Adam Coffey is the best-selling author of The Private Equity Playbook. Over the past 20 years, he has served as President and CEO of three national private equity-backed service companies across different industries. He currently leads CoolSys, a commercial refrigeration and HVAC service company. The Orange County Business Journal named him one of their Most Influential Leaders multiple times, and made him part of their prestigious OC Top 50.

In this episode, we talked about leadership, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, new business development, strategic planning, operations management…

Show notes

• Introducing Adam Coffey. [1:18]
• Adam’s history, and how much private equity has meant to his life. [4:47]
• A brief overview of what private equity and EBITDA mean. [9:21]
• Understanding how much you’ll make back from your investment, and why private equity tends to have a negative but unfair connotation to it. [14:59]
• Explaining private equity and the “buy and build” concept. [17:37]
• Pondering the question, “When’s the right time to sell?” and how you gain security and lose nothing with the right approach. [25:45]
• Getting with a brokerage to help in selling a business: how to be ready for that, and what to expect. [33:36]
• The three people you need when you’re selling a company. [41:34]
• What the integration process looks like in private equity. [47:44]
• Some nuggets of wisdom about accelerating a company’s growth. [53:00]
• Creating a stronger work culture. [1:02:11]
• The generational changes in how employees want to be treated, and the mindset that helps accelerate growth in companies. [1:09:41]
• How to get Adam’s book. [1:13:04]
• Three books on Adam’s reading list. [1:15:35]
• Adam’s most important piece of advice to home service business owners. [1:18:28]

Resources And People Mentioned:

• The Private Equity Playbook by Adam Coffey
• Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow
• General Electric
• Selling Your Business for a Premium: Securing a Strategic Buyer by Tom McKaskill
• Salesforce
• Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins 
• The ONE Thing by Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan
• Home Depot 
• Target 
• Walmart
• Unilever
• Amazon
• Apple
• LinkedIn
• Kindle
• Google
• Facebook
• Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras
• Move: The CEO’s Playbook for Capturing Value by Sandy Ogg
• Grow: The CEO’s Master Playbook for Coaching Value into Existence by Sandy Ogg
• Unilever
• The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas J. Stanley