The First Step Starts With Us
We can help you decide what’s next for you. And your company.
Leave A Legacy
SELLING YOUR BUSINESS
Selling your business isn’t easy. We know how hard you’ve worked, how much of your life you’ve invested in it. Now you’re thinking about options and what’s next. There’s excitement, stress and maybe even some guilt. We get it. We can help. It starts with a relationship built on trust, integrity and experience.
Make An Impact
JOIN OUR TEAM
Running a business is challenging. If you’ve always wanted to lead a company, why not earn the opportunity to lead one of ours? We’re always looking for dedicated, passionate people who believe they have what it takes.
What Our People Say
There was so much trust and confidence in dealing with Chenmark. Selling to them was the right decision for me.
Rarely in business do you get an opportunity to have such an impact with each and every project.
For any owner who’s looking to sell but wants to keep their dream alive while ensuring the well-being of their staff, talk to Chenmark.
Chenmark is a family business and we were a family business, so for us it was a great fit.
Weekly Thoughts
Lessons From The Godfather
We think most would agree that The Godfather is one of the greatest movies ever made. This week, we were interested to learn that at the time of production, success was far from certain. Francis Ford Coppola himself was not the studio’s first choice to direct the film, and once in the role, he clashed constantly with studio executives. From a Fresh Air podcast with Coppola:
Three Things
Our first post of the year always revisits three core concepts that continue to shape our thinking. Dare to Be Great Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital is one of the great writers on the investment process. We enjoy reading each of his very popular memos. Early in 2014, he published Dare to Be Great II which, building on the original Dare to Be Great, discussed the necessary conditions for exceptional investment performance. From the memo: “For years I’ve posed the following riddle: Suppose I hire you as a portfolio manager and we agree you will get no compensation next year
Results
Like our children, we love all of our values equally. However, the most uncomfortable (at times) value we uphold is our desire to Keep Score. This is because it is possible to chase better, play the long game, and put the team first–but not produce results. That’s a tricky situation.
Small Business CEOs
This week, we stumbled across the work of Adam Bryant, author of The New York Times Corner Office column, in which he interviews CEOs of various companies about leadership and management. In October, Bryant published his final column, “How to Be a C.E.O.,” which reflected upon his findings from 525 interviews over the course of almost 10 years.
(Small Business) Market Wizards
Before we started our first “real” job, our soon-to-be boss gave us Jack Schwager’s iconic Market Wizards, which featured interviews with some of the world’s top traders across financial markets–people like Paul Tudor Jones, Bruce Kovner, Michel Steinhardt, and Ed Seykota (if you don’t know these names, they are impressive traders).
That C-Corp Life
We are often asked why we chose to set up Chenmark Holdings as a C-corp, rather than a more traditional investment fund. We are not tax or legal professionals, and our experience is not necessarily applicable to others but rather a reflection of our unique path, so talk to your advisors before making any decisions.
Mack vs. Clowney 2.0
Our regular readers know the Chenmark team are fans of professional football. This week, when catching up on some “reading”, we came across an article about Khalil Mack’s insane strength, which reminded us of an article we wrote back in 2016 about the two highest-drafted defensive players from the 2014 NFL draft, Jadeveon Clowney and Khalil Mack, and what their starkly different paths to the NFL might say about their success in it.
Baby Shark
Like many readers, we spent a good amount of time this week closely tracking pivotal news cycles and just had to chime in with our thoughts. Yes, we are talking about Pinkfong’s “Baby Shark” becoming the most-watched video ever on YouTube, racking in 7.043 billion views (that’s billion with a “B”, folks).
How to Negotiate
Over the past couple of weeks, some of our team members have been working their way through an online negotiation course. Much of the content has been both useful and interesting, one of the most relevant topics has been the emphasis placed on differentiation vs. commoditization for any company involved in a negotiation.
Cave Diving
We learned recently about the phenomenal Jill Heinerth, a cave diver who has some serious nerves of steel. At the age of 55, Heinerth leads technical dives into areas no living person has ever gone, facing considerable danger in the process (for example, she led the first dive into an iceberg which self-imploded minutes after her team got back to the boat).