From Bulldog to Skycrest Roof: Ryan Burke on Founding, Growing, and Partnering

Michael Burcham: Welcome to Microcap Moments, a podcast from Shore Capital Partners that highlights the stories of founders, investors, and leaders who have taken on the challenge of transforming ideas and small companies into high-growth organizations. The journey of building and scaling a business takes one down many unexpected paths. It’s a journey where we learn from our mistakes, fall down often, but have the entrepreneurial grit to pick ourselves up and persevere.

Within this series, we will share these stories of success and failure, of the challenges and the rewards faced by those who dare to dream big. And through their lessons learned, we hope to inspire others who are on a similar journey of becoming, growing, and leading.

Anderson Williams: In this episode, I talk with Ryan Burke, the founder of Bulldog Roofing, which is a market partner of Skycrest Roof. Ryan started Bulldog in part because he didn’t like a lot of what he saw in the industry. He loved the hard work. He loved the sales. He loved being outside, but he didn’t love some of the shady dealings and poor customer service he saw around him.

Even at 23 years old, he knew he could build something that made money and treated people better, both his team and his customers. With the support and encouragement of his wife, he made the leap to start Bulldog. Ryan talks about the early days, largely surrounded by friends and family, and the rapid growth that came from a shared sense of hustle and teamwork and motivation.

He also talks about when that early-stage hustle, which he describes as sometimes being chaos, started to hit its limits, and he knew he had to start doing some things differently in the business. And then after a year of massive growth, how new chaos began to emerge and the business started to hit its limits again. Given the wisdom of those experiences, Ryan talks about the idea of readiness and when he knew he wasn’t ready to sell his business and then when he knew he was.

Finally, he talks about his own evolution as a business leader and the types of businesses and leaders Skycrest Roof is looking for as it continues to grow

Welcome, Ryan. Thanks for joining me. Uh, will you start just by giving us your name and telling me what you do and where you do it?

Ryan Burke: Yeah, my name’s Ryan Burke. I was born and raised in Longmont, Colorado, and I started a roofing company called Bulldog Roofing in Longmont, and I sold it to Shore Capital in November of 2024.

I still run the business. I’m the president of my region, is what we’ve titled it. And yeah, thanks for having me.

Anderson Williams: And you founded Bulldog Roofing, if I remember correctly, at 22 years old?

Ryan Burke: I was 23.

Anderson Williams: 23.

Ryan Burke: 23 years old, 2017-ish.

Anderson Williams: Okay.

Ryan Burke: Yep. Me and my father-in-law at the time founded the business together.

Anderson Williams: So take me back to that what… Had you done roofing before? Like, what spurred you to start your own thing?

Ryan Burke: Yeah. I, in college, big golfer, went to school to play golf, is, is how I always say it. Found a job working for a roofing company down in Colorado Springs at the time, and kind of fell in love with the industry. I’ve always been good at talking to people. I’ve always liked sales. I’ve always liked being outside and not sitting in an office all day.

And I got a job selling roofs for a company in the Springs and fell in love with the industry but as I kept going down that path, I started seeing, you know, just bad actors in the industry. And I, and I started working for people that I didn’t necessarily align with morally, and I had customers that were treated poorly.

And I saw the opportunity and the financial gain in the industry and the freedom and flexibility, but I couldn’t find the perfect place to kinda settle down and work for that I really aligned with.

Anderson Williams: So talk about those early days, just how did you get started? I mean, as a young, an entrepreneur and really wanting to do something differently than what you saw in the industry, at least in your experience. How did you get that moving?

Ryan Burke: Truthfully, where it got to is I just got so fed up working for the people I was working for, and it was kind of spurred from a resentment. And I had a six-month-old daughter at the time, and I told my wife one night that I thought I could do better and that I was tired of it, and it was either leave the industry or do it by myself.

And my wife pushed me, you know, and she said, “I got it,” like, “I’ll cover the bills. I have a job that’s paying enough right now. Take a risk, and I believe in you.” And I quit my job and started with what we had, which at the time was a truck, a couple dollars for some business cards- … a ladder, and some motivation, really.

And that’s kinda where it all started, but we truly operated out of my living room-

Anderson Williams: That’s amazing …

Ryan Burke: for, for those first six months or so.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. So fast-forward a little bit. What did growth look like for you?

Ryan Burke: Yeah. We were growing fast, and we were aggressive, and we always reinvested quickly. In the early days, it was let’s just try to keep the lights on. And we started selling some roofs. We started finding some success, and then we started hiring some friends and family members to come help us really once we had enough work.

And In 2017, there was two of us, and then in 2018, we got three or four more people and got to about six. And then in 2019, we got to 12, and we just started kinda doubling year after year.

It was hectic and chaotic, and I kinda wore all the hats at that time. But we found that growth so exciting and fun that we just kept leaning into it harder and harder. And yeah, before we knew it, i- it feels like the snap. It also feels like a thousand years. Yeah. But before we knew it, we had, you know, 50, 60 employees and a real operation that kinda stemmed from that living room.

Anderson Williams: When you think about going from the guy with an idea and a plan and a vision to do something differently and better to then growing to a team of 50 or 60 people, I mean, that’s a big transition. That’s a lot of growth, not just for the business, but for you.

Ryan Burke: Yeah.

Anderson Williams: Any lessons learned about… It might even go back to the industry as well, but just any lessons learned about the team, about the business, and that kind of growth in a relatively short period of time?

Ryan Burke: Yeah, I think, you know, part of the, the good and the bad, but I, I hired so many friends and kinda my network in the early days, and they saw such rapid growth with the business and played such huge roles. But in the beginning, what we needed was just people that could kinda wear all the hats. And we didn’t have very defined expectations and goals and metrics and processes to tie people to, and instead it was kinda that fire drill, let’s just get the work done.

And we had to… Once we got big enough, we realized how desperately we needed processes and procedures and, you know, job roles and structure because it was so easy to step on each other’s toes and just get in the way. And so growing that rapidly kinda made us stop at one point and look back and say, “We gotta restructure,” right?

“We have to build the right procedures in order to keep going.” And it was kind of a great lesson in that scale-

Anderson Williams: Mm-hmm. …

Ryan Burke: you know- Yeah … functionality period.

Anderson Williams: And at what point in that journey did you start thinking maybe there’s an opportunity to bring somebody to help with that kind of scaling? You know, you’re there hustling, figuring it out, early stage idea, everybody build and hustle, and then starting to recognize we’ve gotta build some processes.

At what point, or was there a trigger that made you think, “You know, I wonder if there’s somebody that could help me do this”?

Ryan Burke: Yeah. I think there was a couple points. First, in 2022, I believe, we kinda hit that roadblock and felt that chaos inside the business, and I hired a consulting firm to come in and kind of restructure things with us.

We built out some key procedures. We built out org charts. Everybody got more defined roles. It really set us up for that kinda next stage of growth, right? And in 2022, we probably had 20 people, and we were doing 10 to 15 million in revenue. Right after that, the next year, there was a huge storm in Colorado, and we ended up basically tripling the business that year in 2023.

Anderson Williams: Oh, wow.

Ryan Burke: So we, we got to 60 people and did about 30 million in revenue in 2023, and then we kind of felt the roadblock again, right? Like, we got that consulting firm kinda restructured us, and we had some structure, but as we got to that next level again, it was like it still felt chaotic. It still felt like there wasn’t enough defined procedures, and it still felt like things were falling through the cracks.

So I kind of felt that way the second time around 2024 when Shore came in, and I knew the next level required more discipline and more structure and more process really.

Anderson Williams: How did you even get connected with Shore at that time?

Ryan Burke: Actually, I got reached out to by a broker in April of 2024, and it was funny. Like, that day, I just happened to be kind of riffing with my business partner, and I was fed up, and I got this email, and I was like, “Whatever.” And I, I replied to the email, but I wasn’t super interested, and I knew in my heart, like, I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t want it. I had a bad negative connotation around what being acquired looked like or private equity.

But I replied to the email haphazardly really, and it ultimately led to a meeting, which I talked to my business partner into, and we went and had a meeting, and things started developing from there really.

Anderson Williams: I’d love to hear your thoughts. You, you mentioned not being or feeling ready. What did readiness look like-

Ryan Burke: Yeah

Anderson Williams: for you? At that point that you didn’t feel ready, but then at some point you did. Can you just talk about readiness?

Ryan Burke: Yeah. I think it’s so hard when you start a business in a living room, and the whole goal is just keep the lights on and find a way, right? I never once in the early days thought about an exit strategy or what the future looked like or our goals.

You know, like the goal was survival, and once we got really good at that and we started seeing some real success, it was kinda just fun and winning, but I didn’t have a plan of what’s next. There was no way out, and there was no roadmap from me and my partner separating down the road or what a tumultuous relationship looks like or any of those types of things, just weren’t accounted for.

So when I say ready, in my mind, I’m 31 years old today. I had this preconceived notion of I’m young, like I can just keep doing this forever, and I don’t really need that plan. My partner, on the other hand, was pushing 60 at the time, right? And he had a different vision of what he wanted, and those two things started coming together where I wanted more, and he wanted less, you know?

And I didn’t– we didn’t know how to really bridge that gap together, and it’s not something we ever planned for. So I didn’t think I was ready just ’cause I was young, and I had this bad idea of it in my head, but also didn’t really know what that looked like or what to expect.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people, you know, always say if you’re curious about private equity, don’t google it because there’s so much bad- out there.

What shifted your perspective, whether it was in that conversation with Shore or just in your own research with other groups, whatever it might be? What sort of opened that door to you as maybe this isn’t all bad, maybe there’s something different on that side of the story than what I knew?

Ryan Burke: Yeah. Well, it, it’s funny. I think if you googled roofing, you’d have the same experience, right? There’s a lot of bad actors in both, and what really started to shift my perspective with Shore, was the people I met ultimately, you know? And I had this idea in my head of what it was gonna be like, and then I met really good people that seemed very genuine and motivated and smart and professional and helpful ultimately.

And, you know, from that first meeting with Shore, then they invited me to Day with Shore, which was kinda their commercial in Chicago to show you about private equity and what this would look like and all the other sellers you got to talk to that went through this experience on their own unfiltered, right?

There was no bias in the room. It was just reality of what happened to other people, and I got real-life experience. And the more I kept doing those types of events with Shore and the more people I met inside of Shore Capital, the more I really fell in love with the kinda culture here, right? There’s just so many good people, and I, I believed in the vision, and I– it’s ultimately, it’s always come down to people for me.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. I mean, that’s where you started and-

Ryan Burke: Yeah. …

Anderson Williams: You know, at the very beginning. I’m sure that there are a lot of people in your industry who have concerns, or the first thing they hear, if they hear private equity, they, they probably are thinking the way you were thinking. Will you just speak to the specific kinds of fears that you had?

And I’m, I’m sure they, they didn’t just, like, snap and go away with the first conversation- Yeah … with Shore, but talk about those fears and how you got those satisfied beyond meeting people that you connected with. So if you’ve got somebody listening to this podcast who’s thinking about it from a business owner perspective-

Ryan Burke: Yeah.

Anderson Williams: What were some of those, and how did you overcome them?

Ryan Burke: Yeah, I think ultimately there’s a couple parts, right? Like, the money is great. Selling your business and getting money is great. Awesome. But that wasn’t the main concern. For me, the main concern, like I mentioned before, is most people in the business were my family and my friends, right?

And most of my concern was I have to take care of them, and I have to make sure that they have a good place to continue their career, and that was priority one for me. And my biggest fear with private equity or the connotations I’ve heard in the industry are they’re gonna come in, they’re gonna fire everyone, everyone’s gonna become a number, no one’s gonna care about anyone anymore, and you’re gonna lose your culture.

And I felt we built a really amazing culture at Bulldog, and the people were so much more to me than just employees. You know, they were… My mother-in-law was in the business. My best friend from my childhood was in the business. My sister-in-law was in the business. So it was– I had such big relationships with these people inside and outside of work that I couldn’t jeopardize that.

And that was a topic I talked to a lot of people about in the early days of this process. And yeah, I think it’s not that… Obviously, in this model, we have to grow the business to succeed, right? And it has to make sense for the investors and all the people involved once this business was acquired. But I still truly believe, and I’ve seen it, that Shore Capital cares about the people in my business, right?

And has helped, if anything, pave a new way for them to grow in a larger business. And that was one of my biggest hopes from this was that this acquisition would lead to a growing path for my people that they would have never had without Shore Capital.

Anderson Williams: What did they ask you? What did your… You don’t have to pick on your mother-in-law or what did your people, uh, your friend, your mother-in-law, or just team members you really cared about, what did they ask you when you first presented this idea to them?

What were their concerns and questions?

Ryan Burke: Yeah, I think everybody in that original kind of scenario is always concerned with, “What’s this mean for me?”

Anderson Williams: Sure.

Ryan Burke: “Am I gonna make less money? Do I still have a job?” Those are the main, like, first couple questions. Once we put those to rest and everything was fine, I think people started understanding the process and asking more, like, questions about the vision and where we’re going.

And people, I think, hope to see that opportunity in the vision. You know, once we acquire 15, 20 businesses and we’ve gotten triple, quadruple, 10X our revenue, there’s a lot more roles in the business and opportunities to step up that weren’t there before.

Anderson Williams: Yeah.

Ryan Burke: So I think people, once they got over the original fear and started seeing the opportunity and meeting the people and the players, they started hoping to achieve more in the business and maybe find a second wind to-

Anderson Williams: Mm.

Ryan Burke: Drive towards.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. And you mentioned culture before. What does that look like now as compared to then?

Ryan Burke: Yeah. I think- Our culture was always very fun, right? We had fun at work. We worked because it was enjoyable and because we were succeeding, but it was never, at least for me, and I’m biased, but I, I woke up every morning excited to go to work. And yeah, when you do what you love, you never work a day in your life, right? The classic saying.

The culture today has been very similar, and I think we’ve kept the majority of it, and I’d say the benefits and changes have been procedure improvements, really. So w- we’ve gotten clearer procedures. Everybody has a more identified role and, and understands their purpose in the business more so and, and how they can affect the business bottom line.

But we still have fun in the office. It’s still the same place. It’s still the same people. Nothing’s really changed except for we all know where we’re going a little clearer than we ever did before.

Anderson Williams: And what about you? I have to believe that as a, a founder, an independent thinker, an entrepreneur, someone who’s built this thing, it’s got family and friends in it.

There’s legacy. There’s all kinds of personal ties. There’s bound to be some fear or concern that a partner like Shore or anybody else is gonna come in and tell you how to run your business. That would seem to be an obvious concern. What about for you since the partnership? What does that look like for you?

Ryan Burke: There’s a lot I could talk to you on that question. Ultimately, I have a seat at the table still. I’m still a decision-maker in the business, and my expertise and my words are very valued at the table, right? We have a CEO, we have a boss, but he’s very open-minded, a- and this whole process has not been shove it down your throat, this is what we’re doing.

It’s been, “Hey, this is my expertise. This is your expertise. Let’s come together and find the solution.” So I still feel very involved in running the business and the directions we’re going, and I feel like I’ve been a key decision maker throughout the whole last year and a half. But yeah, it’s different.

It’s never gonna be the same again, but there’s a new horizon, and it’s been a fun experience. And on top of that, the people that have come into the business, like the board, the executive team, all the members of Shore, the deal team, are just really smart people. So if anything, I’ve learned a ton about how to run a business, and I’ve learned all kinds of new tricks and had so many new people to bounce ideas off of that I never really had.

As a business owner, it can be really lonely, and you never really know who to turn to, and it can feel lonely when you just have to make decisions by yourself based off what you know, right? And having so much more expertise and wisdom to lean into in those times has been really critical for us.

Anderson Williams: I love that. I think it’s really fascinating and a credit to your sort of staying open-minded in this process. But I’m curious if there are other mindsets or things that you’ve recognized about how things were that this process has helped you see more clearly in terms of your limitations from a growth perspective or as a leader perspective, or otherwise that this has actually helped you see, “Oh, I was stuck there because I was thinking this,” or otherwise. I, I’m just fascinated about that evolution.

Ryan Burke: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think, like I said, you know, I went to school for golf, ultimately. I wasn’t a finance kid. I didn’t have all the answers. I had a lot of drive and sales experience ultimately. But as I started running a $30M operation, I started realizing, like, “I don’t know how to run the books of this business.”

You know, I don’t know how to make sure we’re in compliance with all these rules, and some of the rules are hard to find and hard to understand, and that you need lawyers and teams to really dissect.

So part of the acquisition that took great relief off of my plate was having a full-time CFO.

Anderson Williams: Mm. …

Ryan Burke: And a financial team that was so much more capable than I was or, you know, at the time, the people we had in the business to actually run that whole sector of the business from, you know, insurance to general liability and licenses and contract law and finances and the books and, and all these different topics that I just wasn’t a professional at, ultimately.

So that’s been a huge blind spot I had that has been solved. But on top of that, you heard me talk about the consulting agency that we engaged in ’22. The next stage today really was we tripled the business since then, and the new processes that our executive team has helped build in the last few years have been critical to going to that next level, really, to tripling again.

And, and that’s the goal. But for instance, to give real world kind of picture, a lot of our production system was just based off of tribal knowledge. Like, people did things because they knew that was what to do because they had been in the business for five, ten years. So the next step was really, let’s just document it all.

Let’s write out the procedure, right? In case something happens, in case we have a new person come in, they’ll know exactly what to do once we document it. Before Shore, we never took the time to do things like that because we just got caught up running the business every day, you know? It wasn’t a lack of want. We just didn’t know how important it was more so.

And just this year in January, this is just an example, but our production manager had a fatal heart attack and passed away. And it was horrible on the business, and it was horrible on everybody and the families that were affected, but it left a hole in the business also.

And, you know, we went through all this documenting and procedural work so that we could hire a new person and not… Obviously, our hearts missed a beat, but the business kept going, right? And as a business owner, and I don’t want that to sound cold, but-

Anderson Williams: No, it’s- …

Ryan Burke: There’s two pieces to that. It’s like I have a personal side with all of my employees that I love and cherish, and as a business owner, you have to make sure that the boat is steady and on the right path ’cause it supports everybody in the business-

Anderson Williams: Yeah.

Ryan Burke: Not just one person or a family. So both are equally important. And doing all those types of process work and steps to document out everything we do in a day in each role and department really just creates stability and functionality for the whole operation.

Anderson Williams: Well, and in that incredibly unfortunate case, resilience, right?

I mean, that you have the personal reality of dealing with that loss, but then you have a whole other team that’s relying on you to keep the business going.

Ryan Burke: Right.

Anderson Williams: To keep– I mean, so you have to both mourn and lead the business simultaneously.

Ryan Burke: Yeah.

Section: Building Skycrest Roof

Anderson Williams: So when you think about Skycrest’s growth, you think about partnering with other founders like you, what are you looking for? What is Skycrest looking for? What’s the right kind of founder?

I mean, you obviously mentioned earlier that just like in private equity, there’s some people who aren’t necessarily acting on the up and up, so we won’t beat that horse. We know we don’t want any bad actors. But when you think about like an ideal partner for this kind of opportunity, what does that look like to you?

Ryan Burke: Yeah, that’s a great question that we’ve had a lot of internal talks about, obviously. What we’re looking to acquire currently is first, it has to be the right people, and that’s kind of been the culture I started and, and that’s the culture we’ve run with since. People that are hungry and humble, do the right thing because it’s right, and just live by the values that we have.

The second part of that, and in those right people, you can kind of see it in their history when you look at a business based off of their Google reviews and their reputation and their market and their employees’ experience of leadership and, you know, all those different things. But right people is number one.

The next is really like a market leader in an area that we wanna go to next. So for us, we’re specifically targeting getting into the Middle East of the country and the Northeast of the country. So that kind of Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky area, and the upper northeast of the New Yorks and the New Jersey and Maine and Connecticut.

So we know where we wanna be market-wise next. Over the next five years, we wanna be everywhere, but right now we’re super targeted at those couple of areas. And then ultimately, it’s a market leader that’s got the right leader in place. And that person is super important. We’re– Every time we buy a new business, we have to bring them into our culture and ultimately move over and make room for them, right?

Which that person has to fit in the room, and that person’s gonna have a seat at the table just like I did. But we gotta make sure that all of our egos can fit in the room, and we’re all going in the right direction, and we’re all aligned on what we want out of this venture. So someone that is truly open-minded and works well with other people is colossal.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, and seeing and getting excited about what Skycrest can build. It’s understandable that any founder would think about their baby and what happens to their baby and the people, as you’ve already articulated, and that’s part of being a good leader and a good, you know, ethical founder. But also what you’re describing is somebody who still has the aspiration and the hustle to see this Skycrest vision-

Yeah.

Now. Is that fair? Like, they need to see what could be even beyond their business as it has been.

Ryan Burke: And I think, you know, one of the beautiful parts of Shore and the deal team there is they’re so willing and able to be creative with their deals, right? So they can fit the deal to the partner. And for instance, in my scenario, like I said, I had a father-in-law who was kind of aging out.

I had myself who wanted to take on more and step further into the business. And Shore really created our whole deal to fit our situation, right? So the situation allowed my father-in-law to retire and kind of take more cash off the table and allowed me to really jump in and get more equity and have a bigger bite of the next venture.

And that was meaningful to us, right? It kind of fit all those pieces of the exit strategy that we never planned ultimately.

Anderson Williams: Yeah.

Ryan Burke: And I think it’s the same for other founders, where sometimes people are aging out and they don’t wanna be in the business, and maybe we have to hire someone or figure out a way to run the business after them, and we can craft the deal to make that work.

Or vice versa, someone wants to take on more. I mean, the whole point is Shore is very willing to negotiate and put the chips in the right spot so it, it just makes more sense for the families.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. Well, I think that that’s a really important point for, uh, I would imagine if anybody’s listening to this and they’re even considering it is have the conversation because I, I think what you’re describing is Shore’s been as acquisitive as any company in the world, and we acquire and partner in the microcap space.

We work with a lot of-

Ryan Burke: Yeah …

Anderson Williams: Family-owned businesses- … and founder-led businesses, and that creativity comes from-

Ryan Burke: The necessity for it …

Anderson Williams: E- exactly.

Ryan Burke: Yeah.

Anderson Williams: Exactly. And so it’s, it’s just as I was listening to you, I was just thinking, you know, it’s like the message for anybody who’s listening might be interested or even think they might be interested in a conversation of taking on a financial partner.

It’s like, just have that initial conversation and see where it goes, assuming they’re running a good business-

Ryan Burke: Yeah. …

Anderson Williams: They’re taking care of their people, right? Like all the things that you listed.

Ryan Burke: The first thing I always ask founders when we go to meetings is, “You know, what do you want?” That’s ultimately what’s gonna guide this whole process is what do you wanna get out of it, and knowing that earlier is only gonna help the rest of the process for you and for your team and for everybody.

The more we can align early, the quicker we can figure out the path that works best.

Anderson Williams: So when you look at the next, let’s say 18, 24 months, what’s on the horizon? You can pick your timeframe if it’s not that. What’s most exciting to you for Skycrest?

Ryan Burke: Yeah, I think we’ve been through the mud in the last year and a half of just building the foundation for this platform.

It’s not the fun work, it’s the hard stuff, right? Building the processes and getting the right people in the right seats and professionalizing the business so that when we add on additional layers of revenue or next companies, we can actually support it, and that’s where we’ve spent the last year really is focusing on that foundational work.

I think we’ve gotten to a great place. There’s always more work to be done, but now it’s time to buy some companies and light a fire under it and be able to really see that growth. So it’s… We’re finally to the exciting part, and I can’t wait to see what the next couple years looks like. But the vision currently is we need to buy two pillar companies in our regions that we wanna be in in the next two years for sure, and then we can start growing organically inside of all those regions and really see the next steps.

Anderson Williams: I can’t help but think about our conversation a minute ago about readiness. It sort of feels like you and the rest of the team have been building Skycrest through these first couple of iterations and getting your feet under you to be ready for that kind of growth.

Ryan Burke: Yeah. We have. Last year alone, we redid our sales model. We created a sales management model. We redid our production process, and we’ve created a whole new supplementing process.

So all the real inner workings of the business have been redefined and shaped to exactly how we want them, something that’s scalable, that’s repeatable, that’s easy and measurable.

And that’s, like I said, that’s not the fun work of, of a business. It’s not the winning part that everybody wants, but that’s what it takes to really get to that next level.

Anderson Williams: So before we wrap up, Ryan, what haven’t I asked that I should’ve about your business, about your role and your transition into your role with Skycrest as a founder from Bulldog?

Other thoughts for potential partners who might be listening to this? Just anything I haven’t asked that I should’ve asked.

Ryan Burke: I guess just to summarize my experience If you’re meeting with private equity firms and different potential buyers of your business and they’re only telling you about the pretty and the good in the world, there’s probably a sign there to see.

And I think one of the things that Shore did so well is a lot of bad stuff came up through this process too. And Shore and their deal team worked with me as partners on it, you know, and every time that an issue arose, they’d come to me and be very fair and reasonable and we’d come up with a negotiation that was reasonable and we’d move forward.

But when you sell your business, you’re getting in bed with someone, right? So the person you’re getting in bed with obviously is the most important part of that. And the team at Shore is so willing to work through issues and be a reasonable partner because that’s ultimately what they are now is just a partner that we’re growing together and in this together with.

Anderson Williams: If you enjoyed this episode, check out our other Microcap Moments episodes at www.shorecp.university/podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts. Here you will also find our Bigger. Stronger. Faster. and Everyday Heroes series, each highlighting the people and stories that make investing in the lower middle market unique. There you will also find our newest video podcast series, Raw Talent.

This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners with story and narration by Anderson Williams. Recording and editing by Austin Johnson. Editing by Reel Audiobooks, sound design, mixing, and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.

Special thanks to Ryan Burke.

This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the Terms of Use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.