"If you can unlock a marketing and sales pipeline that works, turn up the volume and find a way to double down on that effort"
In this exclusive interview with ValiantCEO Magazine, Malcolm Peace, CEO of Tsetserra Growth Partners, shares his unique approach to buying and building small, family-owned businesses in Texas with a long-term mindset.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Malcolm Peace: Tsetserra Growth Partners specializes in buying family-owned small businesses with established Texas legacies. We are Texas-based, and we believe in its future. Unlike traditional private equity and business brokers who buy or sell businesses with a short-term relationship in mind, we uniquely position ourselves to purchase businesses to operate and grow them for the long-term.
If you were in an elevator with Warren Buffett, how would you describe your company, services, or products? What makes your company different from others? What is your company’s biggest strength?
Malcolm Peace: We buy and build blue-collar/industrial-type businesses headquartered in Texas term them into sales first with a long-term mindset. Creating a culture of building sales-first companies, means finding new opportunities in the market, going back to the customers that previously purchased (low customer acquisition cost), and we follow up religiously.
This is accomplished through implementing a set of software to track these important metrics, allowing the business to reach our goal of doubling revenue in 2 years.
The difference we are achieving is in the day and age of tech jobs and more white-collar jobs this work is already being implemented. We take this traditional playbook, without recreating the wheel and do it in a space that is not as sexy to talk about.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle keeping talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are adapting to the current shift we see?
Malcolm Peace: Employees are happy when they are appreciated. When we recognize their hard work and tell them how they were able to help us and that they matter a lot to the company. A simple “thank you” whenever we assign tasks to them is enough to let them know that we value them and their work.
As an employer, I make sure that I thank them for everything that they do. We also respect their decision if it comes to the point that they have to leave and wish them good luck on their journey.
Here is a two fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Malcolm Peace: Range by David Epstein. This book changed my life. There is so much out there communicating that your career needs to look linear. This wasn’t the case for me personally. I took a very untraditional path and often said I was a really bad employee because I would see that I wasn’t a good fit within 60 days but push through because I thought it just need to be shaped into someone that would be a good fit over time.
However, what I came to find out is early in your career specialists are highly prized and it’s not till later that generalists are those that are the leaders of the organizations. This was a game changer and caused me to find opportunities where a generalist will be more prized, purchasing businesses to build them. Needed to know just enough to hire folks that could come in a specialists.
Christopher Hitchens, an American journalist, is quoted as saying that “everyone has a book in them” Have you written a book? If so, please share with us details about it. If you haven’t, what book would you like to write and how would you like it to benefit the readers?
Malcolm Peace: No published books. Currently have an outline of a book titled “Pay Bills Acquirer Skills” “A guild to a nonlinear career path”.
The contents of the book are centered around how to navigate building a skill set when you see your peers who are specialists grow in their careers when you are more of a generalist in nature and skill set. Giving hope to those that are trying to navigate those early years of aspiring to be great.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Malcolm Peace: Consistency at volume, when things are already working. Small businesses are a struggle and it takes one key thing in order to get over the hump, doing more of the same thing that works at volume.
If you can unlock a marketing and sales pipeline that works, turn up the volume and find a way to double down on that effort. This will change the game.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Malcolm Peace: The ultimate superpower would be the ability to “Hyper Focus”. Too often when you are building businesses and running day-to-day operations you cant focus. For a while you will be in the middle of the business, getting pulled in different directions and getting distracted putting out fires that don’t move the needle.
If were to acquire this skill at a superhero level. I would be able to block out the noise as it comes in during the day to make sure the current focus gets completed first before moving on to the next thing. The greats can do this.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Malcolm Peace for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Malcolm Peace or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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