I learned business behind a counter in Chattanooga.

My parents ran a hardware store in Chattanooga for 26 years. I grew up in it.

That store taught me that a small business is mostly people who keep showing up: the customer who has come in for twenty years, the employee who knows where everything is, the owner who opens the doors in the morning and locks them at night.

I watched what it takes to keep a place like that going. It doesn’t look like much from the outside. From the inside it’s everything.

Later I ran a 220-person warehouse operation in Memphis for four years.

You don’t run a floor like that from an office. You run it by being on it, listening to the people who do the work, and fixing the problem in front of you before it becomes two problems.

That job taught me most of what I know about running something. It also taught me that the people who have been there longest usually know best.

Then I went to business school. I mention it because you’d find it anyway. It taught me some useful things about numbers and contracts. It is not the reason you should trust me with your company.

Today I run Harpeth Bridge Partners in Nashville. Fourteen investors back my search. They put up the money for me to find one company, buy it, and run it myself.

That’s the whole plan. I’m not building a collection of companies, and I’m not buying one to sell it again. When I find the right company, I move to its town and go to work.

Because I grew up watching what a well-run small business means to a town. Somebody built it, and somebody has to keep it going when that person is ready to rest. I’d like to be that somebody, for one company, for a long time.