From Seed to Success: John Mickelson’s Courageous Journey in Private Equity and Personal Trials

John is a founding partner of Midwest Growth Partners, with a rich background in finance. He has been a Managing Director at The PrivateBank (now CIBC) and an investment banker at First National Bank of Omaha. John’s expertise in M&A has earned him recognition as one of the top 40 M&A professionals under 40 by The M&A Advisor. He began his entrepreneurial journey at 14, owning and operating three small companies.

Educated at the University of Iowa, John holds a BBA, MBA, and JD. He was an Academic All-Big 10 selection and letter-winner on the football team. Beyond his professional achievements, John has served as a City Councilman for West Des Moines, a board member for various organizations, and is active in his church, St. Francis of Assisi.

John’s wife, Brooke, co-founded “The Iowa Wave Shirt,” a non-profit that has donated over $1.5 million to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital, where John serves as a board member. Passionate about fitness, John’s greatest joy is spending time with Brooke and coaching their four boys, Jack, Tucker, Hansen, and Hunter.

https://www.mgpfund.com/

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Full Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Courageous by Crossroads Apologetics, a look into what motivates us to step out in courage and the everyday bravery of men and women like you. In each episode, we hear a personal story of bravery centered around this. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And now your host, founder of Crossroads Apologetics, Jeff Johnson. 

Jeff Johnson:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the courageous Crossroads. Our next guest, John Michaelson, is a founding partner of Midwest Growth Partners. And beyond being a successful businessman, he’s also got a rich history in scholarship as well as athletics. He played football for the University of Iowa back in the day. But he’s got an amazing story of courage and how one act of faith, one good step of courage multiplied and turned into many steps of courage. And I think his story is really going to inspire you as you’re looking at doing something brave and courageous in your life. So I can’t wait for you to hear from my friend John Michelson. Without further ado, here is John. 

John Mickelson:
Thanks, Jeff, for having me on. And hopefully an hour from now you’re still happy that you had me on. We’ll find out, right? But we’ll get through it together. Yeah. So, founder and managing partner of Midwest Growth Partners. We’re a private equity fund by companies predominantly in food and agriculture, you know, either directly or indirectly, that touch food and agriculture. Typically it’s from a retiring business owner and so, you know, he decides it’s time to move to Florida and doesn’t have a family member that’s, you know, interested in running the business. And that’s usually where we step in. We also do some non control investments where a business owner might have an idea of how to grow their business but needs capital to do it. And so we’ll partner with them and do that as well. So been at that for 11 years. 

John Mickelson:
So we’re just celebrated our 10 year anniversary last year, which was amazing and have about 3,300 employees across the platform, across our portfolio. Yeah. So we’re proud of that. Getting to do that from Iowa. You don’t often hear, you know, Iowa and private equity in the same sentence, but we figured out a way to do it. So it’s a lot of fun and very rewarding. But originally from West Des Moines, so I haven’t gotten very far about a mile from the house I grew up in, where we sit right now and spent time in New York, Chicago, Omaha. Earlier in my career went to the University of Iowa, played football there, did a joint law and MBA program there and we moved back here in 2010. 

John Mickelson:
My wife and I have been married for 18 years and have four boys and spent seven years on the West Des Moines City Council after we moved back. So I rolled off that December 31, 2019, which was better to be lucky than smart. Good timing. I was able to avoid a lot of issues in 2020, which would have been tough. So it was a great experience to be elected official. But I did my time and it was time to move on. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow. So what got you into this line of work? 

John Mickelson:
Yeah, what’s your motivation for that? So I’ve always been entrepreneurial as long as I can remember, had lawn mowing services and stuff growing up and have started some businesses when I was in grad school, when I lived in Omaha, you know, that have had mixed degrees of success but sort of always had that bug. And then my schooling was sort of traditional finance route and so did studied finance in undergrad and emphasized that in my grad school. And so I always knew I sort of wanted to go into finance but didn’t really know what that meant and so ended up doing investment banking, which is sort of the precursor to private equity and really enjoyed that, enjoyed the work, enjoyed the people I was with. But for the most part to be in private equity you have to live in a large metropolitan area. 

John Mickelson:
So I was in New York, was in Chicago, but knew I didn’t want to live there permanently and raise a family there. So when we came back here in 2010, kind of gave up the career path of high finance I guess, but was okay to do that just cause it was a personal trade off. So didn’t really have much options for applying to work at a private equity fund and so basically had to start one. 

Jeff Johnson:
So that’s what you did. 

John Mickelson:
That’s what entrepreneurial. 

Jeff Johnson:
See you and I know each other a little bit and you know that I’m involved with a fourth generation family business. I have so much respect for people that are entrepreneurial because I’ve got no experience with that. You know, it’s taking over and running something that’s been in existence through your family for multiple generations has its own. 

John Mickelson:
Challenges, has its own set of issues. 

Jeff Johnson:
But that entrepreneurial gene feels like it comes with a lot of courage, I think. 

John Mickelson:
So, yeah. 

Jeff Johnson:
So that’s the topic here at Courageous Crossroads is the idea of what is courage? And we come down to the main question, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? Which I’ll ask you here in a minute. But before we get there, I want to understand your mind a little bit on the idea of courage. So what do you think of when you think of courage? 

John Mickelson:
You know, making decisions that maybe aren’t the most popular thing, depending on what the room you’re in, but you believe at your core and based upon your values, that they’re the right thing? I think also, and I’ll talk about this a little bit with our story, but, you know, being willing to, you know, be uncomfortable and press the envelope a little bit where maybe it’s outside the norms of what people consider to be socially acceptable. I think not doing that in a mean spirited way, but doing it in a way that, you know, puts yourself and your family and your loved ones and your business puts them sort of, you know, out front and you’re acting in their best interest. You know, in today’s world, there’s things that I think 10, 20 years ago would not have been. 

John Mickelson:
Be considered courageous, but you have to be a little courageous to talk about certain issues in today’s world. And that’s just where we’ve gone with the cancel culture and things like that. So, you know, being willing to speak up for those things which you, what you think are right, I think is also another example of courage. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, for sure. Okay. I only ask smart people on this podcast, so I give myself license to ask really difficult questions. Okay, so here’s one. You’ve got such a varied background with athletics, playing football for the Iowa Hawkeyes, and then the education that you’ve gone through, which sounds rigorous. And also being an entrepreneur. Is the same courage applied to each one of those three things, or is it a different flavor of courage for each one of those? 

John Mickelson:
Yeah, it’s probably. It’s probably similar. 

Jeff Johnson:
I suppose they’re all rooted in discipline. 

John Mickelson:
But that’s exactly where I was going. You hit it. So I wouldn’t consider myself to be, you know, in the top, you know, percentage of intelligence or athleticism or, you know, even to have the sort of mettle of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. But I think. I think what I do have is the ability to grind on whatever the thing is. And so certainly in athletics, certainly as a business owner and entrepreneur, and certainly in the academic setting, if you have that discipline to put the work in and, you know, grind through the tough issues as they come, you know, more often than not, you’ll find yourself successful at the end of the road. And so I think that is common across all three of those. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, yeah. Is there somebody that you look at that exemplifies courage for you, somebody that you look up to and you’re like, that’s a courageous person. 

John Mickelson:
Yeah. I mean there’s lots of people in my life. I’m very blessed to have folks. You know, my wife had lost both of her parents, she was still in her 20s. And you think about that both died independently from different causes. But you know, usually that happens when people are in their 40s, 50s, you know, 60s, or maybe someone loses one parent, but not both so young. And so, you know, she had a lot of courage to deal with that and get through that. You know, my mom, I grew up in a house with just my mom and she worked as a commissioned, you know, real estate agent. So if, you know, if she didn’t sell a house, you know, weren’t going to have income. There wasn’t a salary there. So that took a lot of courage to do that. 

John Mickelson:
But just day to day people, you know, raising families and getting by and doing it on their own and being self reliant, I think there’s a lot of courage just with people that do that. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah, you said we and I agree with this. It takes a whole different kind of courage in today’s day and age with all the other, all the things that we wrestle with. Do you think our society is lacking courage or is there a plethora of it out there? Are we deficient across the board in courageous activities and attitudes or are we lacking? 

John Mickelson:
We were just visiting about Oxford a moment ago and when were over in Europe two weeks ago, we visited Normandy. And so when I think about courage, I mean, sort of like the pinnacle when you go to Pointe du Hawk, you know, I would not have wanted to climb the cliff and get shot at from a, you know, machine gun that was elevated above me. So, you know, that kind of courage, you know, thank God, you know, we don’t have to have lots of examples of that going on there. There are some, but we don’t have to have sort of that level of self preservation type courage going on. 

John Mickelson:
But you know, like I said, I think, you know, I think about people that struggle with substance abuse or they struggle with family dynamics or, you know, whatever it is, and they put themselves in the best situation that they can. I think that requires a lot of courage to do that. So I think there’s a lot of courage out there in terms of speaking out on certain subjects. You know, I think that’s a little bit of a pendulum. So I think you see the pendulum swing back and forth. And for a couple years there, everyone was sort of walking on eggshells, careful about what they said and what they didn’t say. And I think that’s probably come back the other way. So, you know, the truth’s probably somewhere in the middle. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. Courage and courageous people really inspire me. So that’s, again, that’s my very selfish motivation for doing this podcast because I like to be around people like you. So let’s come down to the question, John. What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? 

John Mickelson:
Yeah, well, you know, first of all, I don’t consider myself courageous. So, you know, it’s flattering to be on here and I’m happy to share my story. And when you first asked that, there were a couple things that came to mind that, you know, aren’t the answer, but I think will be instructive later in the story. But, you know, one we talked about already. So as an entrepreneur, we had just had our third son and I was an elected official at the time, so had plenty going on in our life and we’re busy and I went to my wife and said, hey, I think I’m going to quit my job and start a private equity fund and going to make less money and work harder for a couple years. And certainly that last part turned out to be very true for a while. 

John Mickelson:
And you know, that with her at home and three, you know, kids, four and under at home, that took some courage to do that, but, you know, turned out to be, you know, one of the best decisions of my life. So doing that, having her support to do that took. Took courage. The other one we’ve touched on already, you know, joining the first recruiting class of a 42 year old coach that no one really wanted the university to hire, who was coming from the powerhouse of the University of Maine, took a lot of courage. And of course that’s Kirk Ference. And that continues as I’ll probably touch on later, but that continues to have positive ramifications on my life. But whether I knew it or not, when I was 18, that took courage to go there. 

John Mickelson:
It was a relatively unproven situation, new coach, new staff, everything. So that took courage. But you know, the one that definitely stands out would be my fourth son. So he has a genetic kidney condition that he was born with and continues to seek treatment for. But going through the process of his treatment initially definitely took the most courage. And I can just go and walk through it if you want, or I don’t know. Please. Clarifying questions. Okay, great. So he was our fourth kid, so weren’t inexperienced parents. And after he was born, something just seemed off. Actually, when Brooke was pregnant, something just seemed off. And we asked and they said, well, maybe he’s colicky or maybe whatever, but he wasn’t feeding right, wasn’t gaining weight. Something just seemed off, just in our intuition. 

John Mickelson:
And so at a regular appointment checkup, they did blood work and his sodium levels were like off the charts, like he was at risk of having a seizure. So were. He was admitted to BLANK here in Des Moines. So if you think about courage, you know, dealing with a sick kid, like anyone that’s had that experience, like your life just stops. But, you know, we had three other kids at home that needed our support and our love. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

John Mickelson:
And, you know, needed stuff, needed rides and food and, you know, all those things, you know, had to be there for Hunter. I had, I had an elected official position to worry about and I had a new, you know, business, Midwest Growth Partners to worry about. And so, you know, the courage to sort of stand up with all those things was a lot. But that’s not the most courageous thing. What Brooke and I learned in our few weeks at Blank was that when you’re in a healthcare setting, you need to have the courage to be your own advocate. And so her and I don’t have any healthcare training or background, but like everyone who’s in that setting, whether it’s for you or one of your loved ones, you need to learn to ask questions, ask about alternative treatments. 

John Mickelson:
Not in a derogatory way, but just push back. Why are we doing it this way? Have we thought about this? You know, seek other options? Because, you know, if we hadn’t done that with Hunter, I’m not sure that the, you know, the outcome would have been as good as it was. So were there a couple weeks, you know, didn’t have a great experience, but had sort of a hypothesis for what our, for what his condition might be. And so they suggested, actually they sort of forced us out, but we got discharged on a Thursday at like 5:00 with no real treatment plan. They said, well, we’ll monitor it. And he hadn’t gained weight in the few weeks that were there, which is a five month old was obviously concerning, but they said you have to get in with a geneticist. 

John Mickelson:
And I didn’t know this, but apparently that’s a really specialized field. There’s like two in the state of Iowa. 

Jeff Johnson:
Yeah. 

John Mickelson:
So we called the one in Iowa City and said, hey, we need an appointment. And I was like, six months out or something. So this is a little bit where the stories start to intersect. And so Mary Ferencz, Kirk’s wife, had been sort of just checking in house Hunter, you know, how are things? And we told her that, hey, we’re gonna try to get into this geneticist six months later. So her and Kirk have been very generous with their time and money with the hospital over there. So she said, let me make a phone call. So, long story short, she got us in, like, the next morning. So we got discharged from the hospital 5pm Thursday, blank. Have a, you know, 9am appointment at Stead with a geneticist. So Hunter, Brooke and I drove over there and had an appointment with him. 

John Mickelson:
And the nurse said, when the appointment was done, you know, is there anyone else here that you would like to visit with or talk to? And we didn’t know what we didn’t know. But back to the courage thing, we had learned that in a healthcare setting, like, you want to speak up and ask questions and be your advocate. So we didn’t know what was wrong with him, but it was like, he’s not gaining weight. So she was going through all the specialists that we could meet with, and she finally got to pediatric gi, which turns out has nothing to do with this condition. But I was like, well, he’s not gaining weight, so it must be a GI issue. Anyway, so Dr. Hannah came in, and on the spot, Dr. Hannah’s like, I don’t like what I see. I’m going to admit him. 

John Mickelson:
And so were like, whoa. Like, we. We just got out of the hospital less than 24 hours ago. We’ve been there a couple weeks, like. But having the courage to ask the question, to get Dr. Hanna to show up, having the courage to trust the process, anyway, ended up having a wonderful experience instead. You know, could not speak more highly of it. They got him the treatment he needs. He continues to go there. Dr. Brophy ended up being our attending physician. He was a pediatric nephrologist. Unfortunately, he just passed away last summer. But, you know, we stayed in touch with him. Great, great friend, great man. And made. Made, you know, such an impact on our life and Hunter’s life. And then to kind of tie this all together because of that experience, something really cool has happened. 

John Mickelson:
And so the first year they did the wave from the new building at Stead Family Children’s Hospital in Iowa City. We happened to be at the game, so it was a pretty Emotional moment with Hunter there. We said, hey Hunter, we’re waving at kids just like you were treated at the same hospital. And so it was a cool moment, but we didn’t really think it would much would come out of that. Came home that week and my wife Brooke and Lori Willis, which is Jason’s wife, one of our friends, and then Megan Phillips, which is married to Cy Phillips, who’s a teammate of mine at Iowa, they had this idea they were going to print like 50 shirts and sell them for 20 bucks and donate a thousand bucks to the hospital that said the wave and move on. 

John Mickelson:
So were going to go to Cyan Megan’s house and drink wine that Friday and put the shirts in boxes and that was going to be it. So, you know, we sold the first 50 shirts within like four seconds and then the next 50 shirts within like four seconds. And you know, all of a sudden were, we had committed to sell like thousands of shirts, which we of course didn’t have. And we didn’t have any intellectual property and we didn’t have a, you know, LLC set up. We didn’t have a non profit set up. And so then it sort of became a real business overnight. Or we, you know, we tried to make it a real business overnight. So that was six years ago. Or I think this will be our, actually I think this will be our seventh season. 

John Mickelson:
But my cousin Molly Jorgensen, she’s our employee, so she, you know, runs the day to day for us. And then we’ve donated, you know, two and a half million dollars to the Stead Family Children’s Hospital since we started it. And so, you know, to sort of loop everything together. Long story. 

Jeff Johnson:
This is incredible. 

John Mickelson:
Yeah, sorry. Sorry for a long story. But to loop everything together, to have the, you know, courage to take the appointment in Iowa City, have the courage to say, yes, we want to see Dr. Hanna, you know, have the courage to kind of put up with all that, get Hunter the treatment he needs and, you know, care for our family. You know, ultimately that’s had, you know, a good impact on sick kids, which is there’s nothing better in the world you can do than help sick kids. 

Jeff Johnson:
John, that’s a amazing story. And forgive me, one of my pitfalls at interviewing is I’m such a good listener and I’m also a captivated listener too. So when I hear a story like that, I just get stuck in it. But that is, that’s an amazing story and I love this picture of courage too. I don’t think we’ve had that yet on the podcast where it hasn’t been one particular event or one particular thing, but it’s been a collection of courageous acts and being able to trust and move forward and take that next step and then they all come back and they knit together. 

John Mickelson:
Yeah. 

Jeff Johnson:
This unfortunate event with your child ends up being a two and a half million dollar blessing back to the hospital. That was such a blessing to your son. 

John Mickelson:
That’s right. 

Jeff Johnson:
I mean, that’s amazing. 

John Mickelson:
Yeah. 

Jeff Johnson:
What role does faith play in all of this, John? 

John Mickelson:
A lot. You know, we’re not, Brooke and I aren’t perfect, but you know, we have a strong faith life and certainly during those dark times we relied on that. We relied on our faith community, you know, folks that were active with at church in. You know, I think there’s a Bible verse or something that talks about this. But you know, it wasn’t like we decided at that moment were going to get faith in our life. We’d had it in our life and sort of build a foundation when times were good. So that when times were bad, it was already there. So it wasn’t like we flipped a switch. And I think that’s important. 

John Mickelson:
You know, certainly spiritual life, you know, physical well being, we had built a decent foundation so that when we entered this really dark time, you know, things didn’t fall apart because we had put the work into to be able to withstand that. 

Jeff Johnson:
Wow, that’s an amazing story. What’s that do to you now? Again, some of these questions might feel like they’re, I don’t know, kind of obvious because you’ve been acting courageously your whole life long. I think I could ask anybody walking down the street, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve done today? And they’d have answer for that because, you know, it’s in the moment too. But what does that particular story that you just told do to your faith and do to encourage you to step out in bravery going forward? I mean, it must just firm you up. 

John Mickelson:
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I think have enough self assurance that things are going to work out. So what we do, basically my whole job is to take calculated risks and then mitigate them as much as possible and do that with hundreds of millions of dollars of other people’s money. So that is inherently risky, inherently takes courage. But you know, we do things the right way. We do what we say we’re going to do. And we’ve done that for 11 years now at MGP. And so you know, firming up, like you said, like, you know, are willing to take those risks. We’re willing to have the courage to do what we do here at the office and then at home, because I think a lot of that’s been validated. 

Jeff Johnson:
I’ve got a lot more questions, but maybe this is the last one, and I’ll let you go with this, but there’s somebody out there that is on the edge of making a difficult decision or wondering whether they should do it or whether they should not do it. Maybe they got the sweaty hands or sleepless nights or whatever it is. What would you say to them to help bolster them so that they can take a step of faith and act courageously? 

John Mickelson:
Yeah, I mean, I’m pretty analytical when it comes to many of these decisions. And so I evaluate the alternative, evaluate the downside. So let’s say you make the decision to commit to the 42 year old coach that no one knows who he is and it doesn’t work out, he gets fired after a year. At that point in time, I could have stayed at University of Iowa and studied business and not played football, which would have been a fine outcome. Or I could have transferred to another school and found a coach I like. So there were reasonable alternatives in like the nuclear scenario. And so I try to think about the, you know, the alternative. And the worst case scenario is, the worst case scenario, is that catastrophic. If it’s not catastrophic, you know, it’s probably a risk that’s worth taking. 

John Mickelson:
So with Hunter’s condition, you know, if we ask, hey, you know, why are we doing this blood draw at 2 in the morning? Why don’t we let him sleep until 7 in the morning? And they say, you know what, you’re right. Like, let’s let them sleep. Like, there’s no harm in asking those questions. 

Jeff Johnson:
John, thanks so much for being on the podcast. 

John Mickelson:
Appreciate you having me on. Thank you. 

Outro:
Thank you for joining us today on Courageous. If you’d like to hear more about the work and ministry being done at Crossroads Apologetics, please visit our home on the web at crossroadsapologetics.org Would you or someone you know like to be featured on Courageous? Send us an email at info@crossroadsapologetics.com or info@crossroadsapologetics.org telling us about the most courageous thing you’ve ever done.