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
That’s Just The Way It Is
Long-time readers know that certain members of our team are unabashed Tom Brady fan-boys. How could we not be?
Three Things
Our first post of the year always revisits three core concepts that continue to shape our thinking.
Main Street Market Report
We are pleased to introduce our inaugural Main Street Market Report – a quarterly survey of direct insights from small business owners and operators.
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.
Popularity vs. Intensity
We recently read a (paid) Jonah Goldberg post highlighting the difference between the popularity of an idea as opposed to the intensity of support for an idea. The basic gist is that there are all sorts of great-sounding ideas out there: free healthcare; free college tuition; ripped abs; a good mile time; better terms with vendors; a good relationship with your children. Unfortunately, all things in life come with some sort of cost.
Managing Uncertainty: Part 4
Last week we covered how our goal at Chenmark is to underwrite deals so that we continually acquire companies that demonstrate asymmetric payoff profiles. Ideally, when we “lose” we are muddling our way through, figuring out what is going wrong, and establishing a plan to do better in the future.
Managing Uncertainty: Part 3
So far in our series on managing uncertainty we have discussed the importance of taking an expected value-based approach when making investment decisions and also covered why there are practical limits to a pure expected value methodology in the world of small business.
Managing Uncertainty: Part 2
Last week, we went over some first principles concepts related to risk and uncertainty. The core idea was that if you have a strong understanding of the range of outcomes, the probabilities associated with those outcomes, and your ability to tolerate a negative result, you should consistently make positive expected value investments.
Managing Uncertainty: Part 1
The last few months, we have spent quite a bit of time discussing potential acquisitions or deal underwriting more generally. While each of these conversations tends to focus on the idiosyncrasies of the company being evaluated, conceptually speaking, we are engaging in a form of betting exercise, where our challenge is to make the best possible decision despite having limited information and a high degree of uncertainty.
Stupid Is As Stupid Does
Lately, we are feeling our attention is scattered. With all that’s going on in the world combined with extra communication between multiple email accounts, numerous Slack channels, group text messages, FaceTimes, Zoom meetings, and phone calls, there is a lot of potential for distraction.