Q&A with Mno-Bmadsen CEO Julio Martinez

MISHawaka, Ind. – The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians recently assumed full ownership of Mishawaka-based private equity platform Mno-DREK, expanding its manufacturing portfolio as part of a long-term effort to diversify its business operations beyond gaming. Mno-Bmadsen, the Pokagon Band’s non-gaming investment enterprise, now has full ownership of three precision manufacturing companies in Michigan and Indiana. The investment company has about 600 to 700 employees across roughly 20 entities that are part of its audit. The company is also preparing to rebrand following the acquisition and recently announced Anthony Kramer as chief operating officer.

Inside Indiana Business spoke with Mno-Bmadsen CEO Julio Martinez about the company’s investment strategy, the manufacturing portfolio and what it looks for in potential acquisitions. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Inside Indiana Business: Tell me a little about your background and your role at Mno-Bmadsen.

Julio Martinez: I’ve been here since 2016, so I’m in my 11th year. I started as the chief financial officer, then in 2021, I took the role of chief executive officer, which is really chief investment officer as well, because we are an investment firm.

I’ve worked with tribes and tribal nations right out of college. I’m 61 years old now, so a long time. So it’s like family for me.

Inside Indiana Business: Why was diversification beyond gaming important to the Pokagon Band?

Julio Martinez: The Pokagon Tribe saw early on that relying on just one principal revenue stream was dangerous because things happen over time and it can be impaired. The idea behind Mno-Bmadsen was to create an entity that would make other types of investments so that they can continue to provide services to its tribal citizens.

Gaming was the big economic engine that was made available to tribes back in 1987, through the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Before that, they were relying on government grants primarily, natural resources for some tribes and other types of small entities.

Back in 2012, this tribe started the process of creating the Mno Charter that lays out the ground rules for diversifying and investing.

Inside Indiana Business: How would you describe Mno-Bmadsen’s investment strategy today, and how has it evolved as the company has grown?

Julio Martinez: The strategy has pretty much held steady. It’s called buy, hold and grow. We don’t sell companies. The idea is to find companies that are well-managed. We don’t do turnarounds and we don’t generally do startups but we have in the past.

That is the principal strategy and to diversify into different sectors. We’re in a number of different sectors, including manufacturing.

When we acquire a business, we look to grow it either by acquiring a similar company or just growing the existing company with technology, people or other things.

Also, there are some advantages for tribes in terms of contracting, so we take advantage of those strategies as well. So for businesses that couldn’t take advantage of those opportunities, once we acquire them, we layer on those strategies.

Inside Indiana Business: What factors does Mno-Bmadsen consider when evaluating a potential investment?

Julio Martinez: D.A. Dodd, for example, was a very early acquisition. It was just a well run company. Mno now takes a different view than it did when it was first starting.

Now, we have a slate of companies that we can build. Well, before we can build it more, you have to start somewhere. So we thought that construction was a good sector to be in, especially HVAC and plumbing. The company was familiar to the tribe. It had done projects at the casinos and the owners wanted to exit. We thought it was a good idea to acquire and grow it.

We’ve owned it for 10 years and there’s been significant investment over that period.

So we’re looking at sectors where we’re not currently in. The utility sector is one I’ve talked about publicly quite a bit. We’re not going to be building power plants or data centers, but everything beyond that, meaning all the infrastructure and all the things that need to be done in order to distribute power. I’m just picking on that but there’s a lot of other things that are associated.

When you have a portfolio of companies, including architects and engineers, you start to get the synergy between these companies. So wherever we can have multiple companies overlapping, including our real estate company, Cressy Commercial Real Estate, which is headquartered in Indiana, we think it is really important.

The strategy shifts as you get bigger, but it’s always buy, hold, grow.

Inside Indiana Business: What does full ownership of Mno-DREK allow Mno-Bmadsen to do differently with its manufacturing portfolio?

Julio Martinez: Having complete ownership allows us to do a lot of different things. One of the things we can do, which was constrained when we had partners, is to hold companies for long periods. In other words, we’re not going to sell the business. When I leave here, somebody else will run this company, and the companies will continue to grow.

Our partners didn’t have the same time horizon, which is understandable, and we knew from the beginning that was the case.

We want to invest further into these companies. Manufacturing, in particular, requires capital investment, especially in equipment, which can be expensive. Now having full ownership, we can make those decisions within the timeline that we have, independent of a partner.

One of the things that’s going to guide the first few years is evaluating where we can expand by reinvesting in these companies and expanding their capabilities in personnel, equipment and location.

In addition, most of the minority set-asides where we have preferential contracting, require that the tribe be in control. Obviously, having 100% ownership that does not come into question.

Inside Indiana Business: How much does location factor into Mno-Bmadsen’s acquisition strategy?

Julio Martinez: We don’t have any geographical constrictions but we like to stay here in the Midwest. We’re southwest Michigan, northwest Indiana-centric.

D.A. Dodd is our biggest portfolio company and is located in Indiana. We’ve expanded greatly and we just opened up a brand new facility in Lafayette, more than double the size of the previous one and we’re continuing to expand there.

We also did a complementary acquisition in Mishawaka, adding a company called OJS Building Solutions to D.A. Dodd. That building has just been renovated and we’re about to build a 50,000-square-foot building on that property to grow that business organically.

That same strategy will now be layered onto the manufacturing portfolio.

Inside Indiana Business: What role do South Bend, Elkhart and the surrounding region play in Mno-Bmadsen’s investment strategy?

Julio Martinez: South Bend, Elkhart and Mishawaka are ancestral lands of the Pokagon Tribe. Some of these investments are pure investments, like you would invest in the stock market, but investments in real property on the ancestral lands of the Pokagon tribe are very important to us.

So all of those things weigh in our investment decisions.

Inside Indiana Business: What are Mno-Bmadsen’s biggest challenges and opportunities as the portfolio continues to grow?

Julio Martinez: The biggest challenge in general is attracting and retaining talent. If you can’t attract good people and keep good people, it’s very difficult.

The tribe has always prided itself on being good to its employees. We try to make sure that our companies are really good places for people to work because that not only attracts people, it keeps people. We obviously pay fairly and we treat our employees with respect.

Part of what we do is show our employees that the benefits of these companies, instead of going to an individual, are really benefits for the tribe overall.

The synergistic effect of our growing portfolio represents a lot of opportunity. I started with a few cards in my deck and now I have a whole bunch of cards that we can use to synergize.

For instance, the D.A. Dodd building in Mishawaka, our architects and engineers are designing it. Our company is doing the HVAC and plumbing, and we have experienced project managers that can handle and run the project.

So the biggest opportunity is in leveraging our existing portfolio.