oday's guest had a phenomenal run buying a business using a traditional search fund.

But his ownership started ominously.

‍Soon after closing on the asset rental business with a supposed $2.5m in earnings, Ned Tomasevic realized that in fact earnings were more like $1.5m.

‍We hear how that terrifying crisis affected Ned as a young, first-time CEO, and how he pushed through.

On the positive side, we also hear how a key insight unlocked earnings in dramatic fashion.

‍In just 3 years, Ned grew EBITDA from $1.5m to $6m, and almost all of that was in margin improvement, not new sales.

Which is to say a key change to the business's existing function quadrupled EBITDA without revenue growth.

A great reminder that revenue is vanity, profit is sanity.

Today Ned is a search fund investor, and we spend time on his perspective from that side of the table.

Listen for his caution that you should do search as an end in itself, not as a means to some other end (like becoming an investor).

Here is Ned Tomasevic, former CEO of EZRack and general partner at Searchers Fund.