On Doing What You Say You Will with Selective Search CEO Courtney Mohr
Founded in 2000, Selective Search is North America’s leading luxury matchmaking firm, using executive recruiting methodologies to help commitment-minded individuals build exceptional relationships. Selective Search has been a part of the Permanent Equity family since 2019. In 2020, we recruited a new CEO to work alongside founder Barbie Adler. The following are excerpts from a conversation with Selective Search CEO Courtney Mohr on being an operator within Permanent Equity’s portfolio. Having worked with multiple private equity firms over her career, she shares thoughts on how doing what you say you'll do is more than good intentions.
Permanent Equity is the fifth private equity company that I have had the pleasure of working with, but it is the first who had a stated long-term investment objective. I was very curious to learn more about how that was really going to play out with the operators. Everyone can say that they have a long-term objective, that they want to build companies that will grow sustainably. But how does that really play out in the day-to-day relationship that you have with your operators.
So I think early on in our conversations, I asked a lot of questions about how that [works]… How you plan with your operators... where you put the emphasis in terms of your goals.
When I say long-term objective, it's not that we don't want to aggressively grow year after year. I wanted to be sure that we could all still have shared goals. Growing rapidly and being aggressive in our strategies and outperforming our competitors, but doing so in the right way where we are making smart decisions about growing the business in a way that it's going to last. That it’s really built to last, not built to flip. That was important to me.
I do remember early on someone used the words, “Performative board meetings… We don't have performative quarterly meetings.” I thought that was an interesting way to put it because it can get performative if you're only checking in four times a year.
You spend a whole lot of time just preparing for discussions that you could be having as you go along. And I feel like you guys are really in it with us, so we can pick up with every subsequent conversation right where we left off without a whole lot of refreshing you on the specifics of our business.
In many private equity firms, doing what you say you’re going to do is normal. I think it's probably everybody's intention. Having worked with four PE companies before Permanent Equity, the experiences were all different.
I think PE firms sometimes in general get a bad rap. I'm not one who believes that they're riddled with bad actors or they have bad intent or they're just in it for the short term. I really don't believe that. That hasn't been my experience in any of the firms that I've worked with.
I do think sometimes firms don't always have the capabilities and the resources to match their aspirations, and so that's where I think things can fall apart.
I can use the example we talked about earlier. We talked about sustainable growth. No one wants to grow irresponsibly. All private equity firms I think are going to say that they want to grow in a way that's sustainable.
But if you don't have alignment between that stated objective and your values and your hiring practices and the capabilities you have in your team to really be thoughtful in determining which strategies are going to truly be sustainable and which ones are going to unravel, [things go wrong]. When you don't have the capabilities to do a number of successive acquisitions, for example, or whatever the strategy is, then you can't do what you're saying or you're going to do no matter what your intention was.
I don't think it's an intention issue. I just think sometimes it's a misalignment of skills, capabilities, and the way that some of the firms are staffed.
For me, doing what you say you're going to do, it's more than just that. Are you trying to be honest and pure of intention? I think it really just has to do with whether you are equipped to deliver on your promises.