Playing the Long Game: Building a 30-Year Private Equity Fund with Brent Beshore [Ep.131]

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Private equity is a fast-paced game. You buy a business and often only have two to five years' worth of investor capital to improve the business before you need to sell it for a profit. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This doesn’t give you a lot of time to make meaningful improvements and often results in changes that destabilize the business long term.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That’s why Brent Beshore decided to turn the concept of private equity on its head. Brent is the founder of Permanent Equity, a PE firm that invests in family-held businesses. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The twist? Brent has no intention of selling the businesses. Forget two to five years, he works with a 30-year time horizon. He also uses no debt in his acquisitions and takes zero fees or reimbursements. Instead, he splits the cash flow that the business earns, putting his firm, the investors, and the family that owns the business on equal footing. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This almost indefinite timeline, and the fact that he doesn't have a debt looming over his head, means Brent has the freedom to grow the businesses sustainably and with everyone’s best interests at heart. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In this episode, Brent joins us to share his unique take on private equity. He explains how he built his funds with longevity in mind, and why he steered away from the traditional private equity approach to debt. According to Brent,</span></p> <blockquote> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Buying a business with debt means you have to sacrifice cash flow every month to repay that debt. That gives you less flexibility to reinvest back in the business. Less flexibility to grow. And when things get hard, which they will, it forces you to make decisions that are not in the long-term best interest of the company.”</span></em></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brent also explains why he has cho