In The Trenches Steve Divitkos
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- Business
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The only podcast dedicated exclusively to Entrepreneurs and CEOs running Small to Medium Sized Businesses (SMB).
Nobody knows what it’s like to be an Entrepreneur or CEO unless you’ve been one. Though many understand the rewards of company leadership, very few understand the arduous journey that’s required to get (and stay) there.
I share my own lessons as an Entrepreneur and CEO, and interview experts spanning Sales, Leadership, Mental Health, M&A, and Operations (among others) all with a single goal: To improve the personal and professional lives of Entrepreneurs and CEOs running SMBs.
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From $7M to $50M via 14 Acquisitions: A Consolidation Success Story With Jay Davis & Jason Pananos
This episode is brought to you by Oberle Risk Strategies: Insurance Broker and Insurance Due Diligence Provider for Search Funds and Other Small-to-Medium-Sized Businesses
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This episode is brought to you by The Profit Line: The Outsourced Finance & Accounting Department for Small and Medium Sized Businesses
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I recently published a blog post, Why You May Want to Reconsider Your Industry Roll-up Strategy, within which I detailed many of the ways in which consolidation strategies can go wrong. In today’s episode, I want to look at the opposite side of that coin and dig deeply into an instance where a consolidation strategy went very right.
I'm joined today by Jay Davis & Jason Pananos, who, after graduating from business school in 2008, acquired Vector Disease Control, a company that they grew from ~$7M to ~$50M in revenue in ~7 years through successfully executing on 14 bolt-on acquisitions. -
Why You May Be Ignoring Brokered Deals at Your Peril
This episode is brought to you by The Profit Line: The Outsourced Finance & Accounting Department for Small and Medium Sized Businesses
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This episode is brought to you by Oberle Risk Strategies: Insurance Broker and Insurance Due Diligence Provider for Search Funds and Other Small-to-Medium-Sized Businesses
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Today’s episode is all about participating in brokered transactions, and working with brokers more broadly (by "brokers", I am referring to investment banks, accounting firms, business brokers, or any other sell-side advisor whose job it is to help clients sell their companies). To inform our discussion today, I’m joined by Ryan Farkas, a Partner, Managing Director and the Practice Leader in M&A and Capital Markets at BDO, who has successfully closed countless sell-side advisory transactions spanning dozens of industries. -
Why You May Want to Reconsider Your Industry Roll-up Strategy
This episode is brought to you by Oberle Risk Strategies: Insurance Broker and Insurance Due Diligence Provider for Search Funds and Other Small-to-Medium-Sized Businesses
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This episode is brought to you by The Profit Line: The Outsourced Finance & Accounting Department for Small and Medium Sized Businesses
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Though pursuing the consolidation of an industry is not necessarily a new thesis within the search fund ecosystem, I have observed that it has become increasingly popular over the past few years among prospective searchers. Though there have been, and will continue to be, many consolidation success stories within the search fund ecosystem, I suspect there will be an equal number of failures, though this latter outcome will surely be much less publicized. Though I’m not against consolidation theses in and of themselves, I do find myself more skeptical than most when presented with one. In today’s blog post, I’ll attempt to explain why -
45 (More) Things That I Think Are True
This episode is brought to you by Oberle Risk Strategies: Insurance Broker and Insurance Due Diligence Provider for Search Funds and Other Small-to-Medium-Sized Businesses
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This episode is brought to you by The Profit Line: The Outsourced Finance & Accounting Department for Small and Medium Sized Businesses
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In a previous post (75 Things That I Think Are True), I compiled quotes from countless books, mentors, podcasts and blogs to present 75 ideas that I believed to be fundamentally true, spanning both business and personal considerations. Since publishing that post last year, I have come across 45 additional quotes that I thought were also worthy of presentation. I hope that some of these new submissions also distill a lifetime of wisdom into only a few words. -
The Constellation Software Playbook for Acquiring and Growing Software Companies
This episode is brought to you by The Profit Line: The Outsourced Finance & Accounting Department for Small and Medium Sized Businesses
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This episode is brought to you by Oberle Risk Strategies: Insurance Broker and Insurance Due Diligence Provider for Search Funds and Other Small-to-Medium-Sized Businesses
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Constellation Software is one of the world's most widely followed and admired software companies, having acquired upwards of 500 lower-middle-market software companies since its founding in 1995. Our guest today, Mike Dufton, is the CEO of the Volaris group, one of the six major operating units within Constellation, that itself owns upwards of 200 portfolio companies. -
Evaluating Stock Options as Attraction, Retention, and Incentive Alignment Tools
This episode is brought to you by Oberle Risk Strategies: Insurance Broker and Insurance Due Diligence Provider for Search Funds and Other Small-to-Medium-Sized Businesses
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This episode is brought to you by The Profit Line: The Outsourced Finance & Accounting Department for Small and Medium Sized Businesses
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After many years of using company stock options as attraction, retention, and incentive alignment tools, I’ve come to appreciate their merits, risks, and possible alternatives. I intend to share these lessons with you today. More specifically though, I will argue that while options do have their time and place, there are often much simpler and less expensive alternatives that arguably have a greater impact on attraction, retention, and incentive alignment.
Customer Reviews
Helpful for operators, investors, or anyone in the business world
Steve’s podcast is packed with insight and incredibly helpful content. He is engaging, the guests are world class, and it’s a strategic and tactical guide for anyone looking to improve in business.
Extremely thoughtful and insightful
I’ve listened to both of Steve’s podcasts on mental health as an entrepreneur and CEO. As an aspiring CEO/Entrepreneur I found the personal experiences he shared very thought provoking. Thanks for being so vulnerable!
Great show. Love the content
Great content thats very practical and useful. Keep it up!