I started my private-equity firm, Alpine Investors, in my dorm room more than two decades ago when I was at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Today, Alpine manages $17 billion in assets.

But the first fund, raised a couple of years after I graduated, actually lost money. Subsequent funds did better, but as the Great Recession approached, we were still unsure about what differentiated our company from other PE funds. We just did what everyone else did and tried to do it a bit better, which is a tough way to go.

The recession flattened our business, along with many others. At the time, I hadn’t even heard of the term “executive coach.” But after meeting JP Flaum, a longtime coach based in Denver, Colorado, I was impressed. His business must have been hurting because he offered me a deal. Joking, of course, but I took him up on it.

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