@PermanentEquity

Permanent Equity stewards companies that care what happens next. We invest with no intention of selling in family-owned companies throughout North America.

 Columbia, MO
permanentequity.com
Joined February 2011
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At Permanent Equity, we’ve long said that we buy boring businesses, but the reality is that’s not the full story of what we value and what we do. When we invest, we steward companies that care what happens next. Read about the journey here: permanentequity.com/writings…
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Taylor's Bruce Springsteen Syllabus | Qualified Facts

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Searching for Friction | Qualified Facts

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When Remote Isn't Remote | Qualified Facts

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The One About Packing for Work Trips | Qualified Facts

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Guys, It's a Grocery Store | Qualified Facts

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The One About Editing | Qualified Facts

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Send Better Emails | Qualified Facts

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The Snowmobile Incident | Qualified Facts

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Permanent Equity retweeted
Brent Beshore
@BrentBeshoreSep 14
If you're headed to @MainStSummit this week, a few thoughts: 1) Please join me for praying for safe travels and lightened burdens. 2) It'll be hot. Bring shorts and tennis shoes. You'll be more stylish than me (not hard). 3) Come more excited to make friends than do deals.
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Emily Holdman
@emilyleldridgeSep 14
Countdown for @MainStSummit has begun! Safe travels into town. And apologies in advance for the I-70 construction…
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New pieces from our Director of Health are live, all about making the right outcome the default (rather than relying on spotty effort). Willpower is finite, structure is renewable, and health is solved by engineering fewer decisions. Three angles at permanentequity.com/health-a…
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. @timhanso is taking an extra-long break from Unqualified Opinions. But before he hands the keyboard over to the rest of the PE team for Qualified Facts (yes, that's the new newsletter), he has a final gift: All the F-Bombs, in one place. permanentequity.com/content/…
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Hello Qualified Facts | Unqualified Opinions

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Tim Hanson@timhansoAug 30
This might be the last installment. Available at @MainStSummit !
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The last word in our firm vocab is the one we hold ourselves to: helpful, not impressive. It's how we try to show up at the companies we back – genuinely useful, never load-bearing, and definitely not flashy. The goal is to add something real and still be the kind of partner the business would be fine without. @BrentBeshore has described his own aim as "useful, but never necessary.” In other words, whenever he finds himself necessary, he treats it as a problem to solve and finds a way to empower someone to do it better than he can. That's the whole posture. Put the knowledge in the open, the decision in their hands, the credit on their side of the table. It runs against every instinct that says your value is in being needed, and it's the only kind of help that doesn't quietly trap the people you're helping.
Definition card for Permanent Equity's term "Helpful, Not Impressive." "My goal was, and is, to always be useful, but never necessary. Each time I was necessary, I would make a note and try to figure out a way to empower someone to do it better than I ever could." This definition comes from "Awe, Health, and Fear: 2023 Annual Letter."

ALT Definition card for Permanent Equity's term "Helpful, Not Impressive." "My goal was, and is, to always be useful, but never necessary. Each time I was necessary, I would make a note and try to figure out a way to empower someone to do it better than I ever could." This definition comes from "Awe, Health, and Fear: 2023 Annual Letter."

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More on "useful, but never necessary": permanentequity.com/content/… And, more on "helpful, not impressive": permanentequity.com/content/…

Awe, Health, and Fear: 2023 Annual Letter | Permanent Equity

Brent Beshore's 2023 Permanent Equity annual letter: what the firm invests in and why, future funds, health and longevity, Charlie Munger, and two competing worldviews.

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You'd think a firm with 30-year funds and "permanent" in its name would be the patient, sit-back-and-wait type. Not quite. Waiting, on its own, is just decay. When we say patience, we mean something active (i.e., the stillness is still work). The upshot is that the way you earn a good long term is to be relentless about the few right things in front of you, every single day. Or, as we say it, the long term is a series of short terms. Think in decades. Be rigorous about today.
Definition card for Permanent Equity's phrase "The Long Term is a Series of Short Terms." "If you're focused on the wrong things, it doesn't really matter how often you focus on them, but if you're focused on the right one, you should be ruthlessly short-term about focusing on them all the time." This definition comes from "The Long Term is the Short Term."

ALT Definition card for Permanent Equity's phrase "The Long Term is a Series of Short Terms." "If you're focused on the wrong things, it doesn't really matter how often you focus on them, but if you're focused on the right one, you should be ruthlessly short-term about focusing on them all the time." This definition comes from "The Long Term is the Short Term."

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More from @timhanso on the short term and the long term: permanentequity.com/unqualif… And, more on active patience: permanentequity.com/content/…

The Long Term is the Short Term | Permanent Equity

Tim Hanson on Buffett and Dimon against short-termism, why the problem is GAAP EPS orientation rather than time horizon, and why now matters because of entropy.

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The instinct, when you take over a business, is to walk in and start improving things. Our first move is almost nothing. We call it Do No Harm. It's our Rule #1. It sounds like passivity, but it takes real confidence to assume the people already running the business know things you don't (hello, Chesterton’s fence). The clunky system, the vendor nobody would pick today, the spreadsheet column that looks pointless until the one week a year it saves you: there's usually a reason. So we spend a long time understanding before we touch anything. And the flip side of not breaking what works is letting great be great.
Definition card for Permanent Equity's term "Do No Harm." "Everything in a small business was put in place because somebody thought it would be good for something. If we can't figure out what that something is, we've likely missed some other thing and misplaced our humility." This definition comes from "Rule #1: Do No Harm."

ALT Definition card for Permanent Equity's term "Do No Harm." "Everything in a small business was put in place because somebody thought it would be good for something. If we can't figure out what that something is, we've likely missed some other thing and misplaced our humility." This definition comes from "Rule #1: Do No Harm."

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More on Rule #1: permanentequity.com/content/…

Rule #1: Do No Harm | Permanent Equity

"Do No Harm" is Permanent Equity's Rule #1: stay humble, remember Chesterton's Fence, let great be great, and get to the root. Simple to say, hard to practice.

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