oday's episode has two segments.

The first is the story of Matt Brunnig building a holdco.

Back in 2017, Matt was eager for an offramp to his high-travel, 90-hour-week life in the power plant industry.

It was either find another job or find a business to buy.

He kept an eye on BizBuySell, and, funny enough, actually skipped over the business he eventually bought.

But when he realized that it was just over a mile from his house in St. Petersburg, Florida, he figured why not go take a look.

And what he discovered was a tiny manufacturer with under $700k in revenue, but one with good employees and an international reputation.

He bought it, and has since grown organically and inorganically to over $3m in revenue.

(Listen for Matt's donut story.)

In the second segment we bring on Kevin Peer, whom Matt hired in October of last year.

Kevin was a searcher, raising for a traditional search fund.

He connected with Matt on Searchfunder when he saw they were both in St. Pete.

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[INSERT: Matt + Kevin.jpg;alt text: Matt Brunnig & Kevin Peer;caption: Kevin & Matt]

One thing led to another, and instead of continuing his search, Kevin went to work for Matt as a "part-time CFO, part-time some other stuff." This would give him operational experience in a small business and allow him to stay in St. Pete, which he wanted.

That was about 8 months ago, and since then Kevin's role has evolved into something best described as "searcher-in-residence."

We unpack what this novel role entails, and its benefits to both searcher and existing owner.

When I first met Matt & Kevin in St. Pete, we talked about Kevin's amorphous, as-yet-unnamed role and how it's emblematic of a pattern I've seen.

I've received many emails, especially since we launched Smithlist.com, from people who say something to the effect of:

I've been searching but haven't found anything or I'm not yet ready to search, I'm not quite sure this path is for me. What I'd love to do as an intermediate step is work as the GM or chief of staff to an existing small business owner. Do you know an owner who could use something like that?

Those are the emails I've gotten, and what they're describing is this searcher-in-residence concept, a moniker that Kevin later came up with.

See what you think. Would you like to work as an SIR at a small business?

Or if you already own a business, would you hire an SIR who could work with for you a year or two on special projects or whatever it might be?

I'm curious if this concept has legs, so let me know.

And feel free to reach out to Matt and/or Kevin as well; their LinkedIns are, as always, in the show notes.

Also in the show notes, the one-pager that Kevin prepared that we lean on in the interview and that really explains the model point by point.

OK, here is Matt Brunnig, owner & president of Octal Ventures, and Kevin Peer, searcher-in-residence at Octal Ventures.