ALEX McFARLAND
That means the job someone takes, and the company they build, lead, and eventually hand off. If you hire people or you own a company, this is for you.
SUBSCRIBEFREE. FOR OWNERS, LEADERS, AND ANYONE WHO HIRES.
WHITE SANDS, N.M. / JAN 2025
THE WORK
I split my time between two companies.
I founded Persevus to build recruiting technology for trades, field service, and manufacturing companies, the businesses that keep the physical world running.
Hiring has two people in it, the company and the person applying. We build for both, because a hire sticks when somebody actually wants the job.
I'm a partner at The McFarland Group, an M&A advisory firm. I work with owners who are selling or handing off their companies.
An owner spends decades building something, then goes through one transaction that decides what it was all for. Most people do it exactly once. It deserves more care than it usually gets.
The main thing a buyer pays for is a business that still works when the founder steps away. Most of my advice comes down to that.
HOW I THINK
A job posting looks simple until you remember somebody has to live inside that job. A company sale is the same problem. The spreadsheet doesn't show the owner walking out of the building afterward.
What is it like to be the person in here?
The numbers matter, and they never show you that. So I ask candidates, owners, employees, and buyers.
And I try not to build a seat I wouldn't sit in myself.
THE LETTER
Notes on hiring, selling a company, and running one people want to stay at. I send one when it's worth your time. There's no schedule.
SUBSCRIBE ON SUBSTACKFREE. FOR OWNERS, LEADERS, AND ANYONE WHO HIRES.
OFF THE CLOCK
During a long stretch of travel, a village in the Nso highlands of Cameroon gave me a title, Shey. There was a ceremony. I didn't fully understand it at the time.
I had no way to know from the outside what that afternoon meant to the people running it. I only knew what it was like to be me, standing at the edge of it. I still think about that gap.
I served in the United States Air Force. The military decides nearly everything about your days before it's met you.
Some of that was built with care. Some of it was defaults nobody had chosen in thirty years. You learn to tell the difference, because you're living in it.
NO PHOTOGRAPH IN THE CATALOG
I lived full time in an Airstream for a year and a half, with the dog, mostly on two-lane roads.
In that little space, everything you carry has to be worth the room it takes up. It turned out most of what I was carrying was inherited rather than chosen. That's also true of most companies I walk into.
I train Muay Thai and practice yoga. I fly fish often and badly. I play guitar worse than that.
Finnegan is a mini goldendoodle. He's in most of my photographs because he's in most of my life.
Photography is how I slow down enough to notice anything. Look at enough of my frames and you find the same composition over and over: a small figure inside a large frame. I didn't plan that.
I read Integral Theory, Jung, and developmental psychology, and I use them at work more than anything else I read. Most problems that look operational turn out to be about what somebody is experiencing, and those books take experience seriously.
