Why You Should Buy a Business Instead of Starting One with Jory Evans (Part 2)

Why You Should Buy a Business Instead of Starting One with Jory Evans (Part 2)

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 265 of the Business Development Podcast. If you missed part one, go back to episode 244, why you Should Buy a Business instead of Starting One with Jory Evans. In this conversation, Jory unpack the fundamentals of acquisitions, how to structure the deal and the power of vendor financing, but that was just the beginning.

Today in part two, we're gonna go even deeper into the realities of making an acquisition actually work. We're talking about execution, logistics, culture, leadership depth, and the hidden pitfalls that cause 60 to 75% of acquisitions to fail. This episode is critical if you are serious about growth through acquisition because it gives you the playbook of not only how to buy a business, but how to integrate it successfully.

And protect everything you've already built. Stick with us. You don't wanna miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more.

This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development Capital bd.ca.

Let's. Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 265 of the Business Development Podcast. Today we're continuing an important conversation with Jory Evan. A seasoned entrepreneur and visionary leader Jory has transformed Evan's Trucking from a single truck operation into a thriving enterprise with over 100 trucks, a heavy duty mechanic shop, and a commercial construction company.

In episode 244, Jory joined us to break down the essentials of business acquisitions with a focus on structuring deals and the benefits of vendor financing. Now, in part two, we're diving even deeper into the logistics of making an acquisition work from creating a solid execution plan to avoiding common pitfalls that could derail your success.

Whether you're thinking about your first acquisition or fine tuning your strategy, Jo's insights and expertise will help you navigate this complex process. Jory, once again, it's an honor to have you back. Thank you for coming for part two.

Jory Evans: Yes, as always, lots of fun. We'll see if we can stay on point today.

Kelly Kennedy: Honestly, dude, I was, I was thinking back to like what is the right words for part one, and it really was an exploratory adventure. Yeah, I absolutely love that conversation. We got into a whole bunch of stuff. Well, we went down some rabbit holes for sure, but those are the funnest conversations anyway, you know, they're the ones that keep me engaged anyway, so you gotta have a little bit of fun with it.

But honestly, we really got into the meat and potatoes at the end and it was like, oh no, there's so much more to this. We have to have a part table.

Jory Evans: Yeah, we're, we're not even scratching the surface at an hour and a half. It's like, oh, this is how these guys do these three hour long, just like this. I guess.

Kelly Kennedy: My goodness. It was funny. Me and Shelby, we were talking the other day, we're like, what are the most successful podcasts? And and we were thinking about it. We're like, you know what? They're the ones that you turn on at bedtime and completely forget about five minutes in.

Jory Evans: Yeah. They just keep rolling and rolling.

That's right. Yeah. That's good. It's funny, I was thinking about that podcast and we went down some interesting rabbit holes, but important ones. Yeah. 'cause there's a lot to talk about in business. You can go, man, there's so many nuanced topics and so many things to know and so many things to learn and assess.

And it's just fun to talk to people that, that can go down those roads and go deep into those rabbit holes without losing sight of like, you know, that we're trying to give value. Totally outta we're having a conversation about.

Kelly Kennedy: It all, it all provides value, right? At the end of the day, every conversation we had in part one provides value.

Did we get maybe into the acquisitions part, sooner than we could have? Maybe not, but I think that there was an important conversation that maybe needed to happen before that, and now that's why we have a part two. Perfect. So, you know, bring us into it because part one, we were really talking about the deal itself, you know?

Yeah. Essentially the part one, really like the first thing, does this deal even make sense for you? And if it does, how do we pay for it? But there's so much more to it than that, and you really, you really hit it at the end, is like, there are multiple parts even after this that the whole thing can blow up in your face.

Jory Evans: Yeah. Yeah. And you need to be aware of 'em going in because it's like. You think, oh, I got this deal structured and we got this all worked out. It's like you've just gotten started. Yeah. Like this is far, far from over. Or even started technically.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And it's funny 'cause I like, I actually think about it in like, we just bought our first house so it's super exciting we're moving here really soon.

But you're right, it's like making the offer on the house is just part one of the entire gigantic process that now has to unfold with many situations that can blow up in your face.

So yeah, it's the same thing on a certain level,

Jory Evans: even with houses or, or any kind of deal you're making. If you're not a seasoned veteran of making deals, you can get emotionally invested in a deal.

Yeah. At the early stages and forget that. There's a lot more to this deal. Like it's that how, I can't remember what, what the technical term is, but basically when you're too invested in something early on mm-hmm. And you stick with it, stick with it because you have already invested too much.

Yeah. And you won't back out of something.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Is it a cost sunk fallacy?

Jory Evans: I I could be like, that costs whatever. Yeah, thank you. It's like, oh, I'm already got too much into this. I can't back out now I have to make this work. And, and I think acquisitions can be that way very much so. As well as houses or any deal that someone makes as you go, okay, I get stage one of 10 and I've already put so much into this, but I can't even imagine stopping at this point.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Just lead us right into it, you know, let's get into, let's assume that we found a deal we, like, we were able to come to some type of financial structure agreement to pay for the thing. Mm-hmm. What's next?

Jory Evans: Yeah. So I think what's next is the logistics of the deal.

And so I, I think I just kind of touched on this in the last one, but I want to get way deeper into this and I see a lot of deals that go through kind of the sunk sunk cost bias thing where they've made the deal but they haven't figured out the logistics, and then they get going without figuring out the logistics and they fall on their face hard.

And this is where, I can't remember this, where I heard it, but it's been in a recent podcast, but the amount of acquisitions that ultimately fail is like 60 to 75%. Wow. It's a huge number. It's still less than startup failure. But it's still high, right? So it's going okay. An acquisition isn't a slam dunk guarantee, just because they've already got an active business.

You can totally bungle it. And where you, you goof up is in your logistics of what you plan for your deal. So there's a book we're reading as a, as a leadership team in our companies right now, which I found super helpful on this which is called How The Mighty Fall. It's all, it's by Jim Collins, who also wrote Good to Great and Built to Last.

And the one thing that he's talking about is in this book a lot is the mistake successful companies make in acquiring. Other businesses or taking steps into new, shiny, fancy, exciting things without having the depth in them to make that move. Like they, they change your focus and then they start going down this road.

Yeah. Right. And so with an acquisition, you could have a really good core business and you could have a really good acquisition deal on the table, but you can lose sight of your main business. And you can, and shift your focus and focus so hard on this new thing that you're dealing with, that you can actually let your other business spin out the background because you're pushing so hard to try and move in this direction, but you didn't have the depth in your team, in your finances or in your situation to actually take this on.

So this is where logistics come into play. So like when I'm looking at an ex acquisition. We just completed one like January of last year. Well, January of 2024, we did a a takeover and we're looking at doing another one January, January, 2025. So, you know, I've, I've, I'm three, nine months through the first one and looking at stepping into another one.

And so I've learned a lot in the last nine months to a year on kind of what the logistics looks like. I had a logistical plan for the first one, and then I saw where it worked and I saw where it didn't. Yeah. And now it's rein informing me for the next round. And I look at how logistically we need to bring value through an acquisition.

Obviously everything is nuanced with a company that you're buying, whether you're buying them as a vertical or a benefit to your existing core. Yeah. Core business. Or if you're buying something that's completely different than your existing core business and. It's not necessarily gonna be a cohesive or bring together thing.

We bought a trucking company, we planned to bring it into our trucking company and we were gonna bring together all of our operational benefits to this new company that's gonna make them better, right? Where the one we're looking at now still in the trucking industry, but not directly very asset based trucking.

And so there isn't a lot of operational benefits we can bring to them as a company. And so it's a different game that we're kind of playing mm-hmm. In that execution. And so when I'm looking at my team right now, you know, we are, we're 150 people in our organization and we've doubled, and we've doubled our mechanic shop.

We've five times our construction company, we've 20, 30, 40%. It depends how it plays out and grown. Our trucking company. And so my leadership team bench is thin already and a little bit tired. And 'cause they've already gone through an acquisition in the last year, we've changed softwares. We've brought on new leaders, we've rejigged people's positions and they're just, the dust is settling right now.

Right. And so I'm looking at a tired, thin leadership bench because I've kind of already taken leaders out and put them into new positions to take on more weight. And now I'm looking at another acquisition. I'm going, holy I don't know if we actually have enough depth in our team to take a couple key people out and send them out to take over this situation or to support the transition.

And so there's a logistical risk. Yeah. To doing this. And then I also have to look at that company that we're taking on, or any company we're taking on and look at what leadership and and value of depth they have in their bench as well. And need to look at every employee and, and consider that situation.

Because typically, again, every acquisition would be different, but when you're acquiring a small business and similar in both cases we're going through the main leader, CEO, owner, controller, top salesperson, whatever they be, are leaving that business through the process of you acquiring them. And so in both cases that we're dealing with here, I'm creating a leadership void the minute I take over.

Yeah. Right. And I have to fill that leadership void very quickly and effectively or else I can see that, see some serious problems coming up. Interestingly, I'm watching. A bigger company than us that I know pretty well and we deal with very directly by another business that we deal with very directly that would be a competitor.

And they're, they're kind of bringing the companies together right now or trying to and about again, twice the size we are. And I'm watching them fail ethically at doing that and seeing how their core business, that was pretty solid when they went into this acquisition, get eroded. And, and, and very shaky and unstable through the process of acquiring another company.

And it just really highlights to me the importance and the power of making sure that you have a logistical plan and the depth and your leadership and strength within your, your company, whether it be executives, leaders, or staff that you're gonna do this move with to be prepared to take on what you're gonna do.

Because you can spin everything out. Yeah. Doing it improperly. Things that I'm kind of considering when I'm doing any kind of acquisition is what is their leadership structure? What is their management structure? Who's in place there? The, and how is that going? You know, are there key people there that everyone defers to that can hold the line when the owners leave?

Or is there nothing there and everyone is going to be floundering the minute that they leave. Right. Yeah. How disruptive is this acquisition gonna be to the key people in that business that are operating in it and moving and changing it?

Kelly Kennedy: I just wanna pause you there quickly. Joy. Yeah. How do you find that out?

Without be essentially being there and watching how everything is happening.

Jory Evans: It's tricky. It's not easy. We actually just decided to do something that's totally counter to like, when the, the counting and lawyer people that I dealt with on our last acquisition got involved at the point that we brought them in to start.

Doing the legal of the deal. They were like, what the heck are you guys doing? Nobody does it like this. I'm like, I don't really care if you like it or not. This is how, and we literally had people on site working in the business at the other business two months before the deal executed. Wow. So I put my managers onsite in their building, working with their team months before that it actually took place now.

And before that, obviously we had a, a letter of intent and a verbally agreed upon deal. And we all know what's going on. And we built some trust in these cases. And again, not everyone would go that way. And it really depends on what you're acquiring and what's going on there. But, you know, when you're acquiring a company that might have, in our case, 20 to 30 employees, each of the ones that we have, like there, there's a, a significant logistical piece to their people, their culture, their leadership, all these types of things in order for this to be a successful transition.

A lot of acquisitions in the, the higher end corporate world, we're literally buying customer lists. We're buying part a company for its parts, and then we're breaking it all apart and then taking advantage of its parts. I see that working, like if you're just a corporate rater and that's what you're up to, okay, I can see how that works and what you're doing there, but that's not, not the way that we've gone about doing acquisitions.

We're trying to take really good working vertical businesses that exist out there, that we can add value to our business and expand without losing their culture, without losing their their value to their customer without, disrupting everything that's going on there. And like in these more hostile type acquisitions, they're gonna go in going, okay, when I do the math on this deal, I'm expecting we're gonna lose.

20, 30, 40, 50% of their staff, of their customers of this or that or whatever. Yeah. Because we're gonna go in and just bull those our way through. Right. Yeah. And I think that's sad to lose so much value and disrupting, disrupt something that maybe is working really good going in because you're actually just not good at logistics.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. With the culture itself. And so, like I know you and I know how much you put value on values in your business, right? Yeah. It's very interesting from that standpoint, because you could buy a business with very different values from what Evan's Trucking values, from what you value. How would you handle that situation?

Because I know for you, values is something you, you put a lot of weight to it. Like you run your entire organization based on your values.

Jory Evans: It's everything to us, right? So we looked at another acquisition that we end up passing on. This last year which was a d pretty, again, similar size companies to these ones that we've been looking at.

In transportation, again more completely different than what we're doing. It was an agricultural thing. And when I looked at the company, I knew their culture was almost opposite to our culture. Like it was what I would've considered a turnaround as a company. Not that they were like necessarily in the, in the tank or dying or anything, but I looked at their culture and they went, I would have to do a complete cultural turnaround.

I'm probably gonna lose a good percentage of their staff, whether I fired them because they don't fit or because they left 'cause they don't like the way we do things.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Jory Evans: Then I'm looking about having to replace all those people and the effort that's gonna take and the depth of our team and all these, again, the same questions, but then I'm going, okay, that culture is gonna create such a disruption to us trying to overtake it.

That it, it, the chance of success was gonna go way, way, way down. Which means also the value goes way, way, way down. Yeah. Because I might lose a bunch of the value in the process of doing this and changing a culture is like a huge undertaking. It's not a small thing. Yeah. And this is what I'm seeing in this one that is really struggling right now is, is they were what I would call like mortal enemy competitors Wow.

Prior to this acquisition. Yeah. And, and from a business standpoint and just goes, oh, it's a, it's a beautiful exactly what they needed to do. So all of that up and it added a huge amount of business and customers and things to them, but their cultures were literally opposite. Yeah. And even once they become one company, they were literally at and still half a year to a year later at each other's throats internally.

Yeah. Because they've been doing that for two decades, fighting each other to the death. Right. And so I'm just like, man, not taking that into account and considering. What is gonna be required or what is gonna be done, the strength of the leadership required to overcome those types of challenges. I think people don't cons.

They go, the deal works, the math works, this works, this works. All the business part makes sense. We're just gonna figure it out. And I'm going, well, this is why I, businesses are 60 to 75% failure rate because they are not considering the logistics of what's gonna happen and they think they can just mow over a cultural core values issue.

And it's not that simple.

Kelly Kennedy: Man. Okay. Okay. I, so what I think I'm really understanding here is that an acquisition where you are really not able to transfer, let's say at least 75 to 80% of those staff is going to go incredibly badly. Like it, it's not successful really, unless you're able to bring the staff with you.

Because if you don't bring the staff with you, what did you buy? Am I, am I reading it right?

Jory Evans: Again, I, I'm always gonna say it depends somewhat on what type of business you're doing. If, if you can buy a customer list and not change the customer experience and suck it into your company, there's gonna be some loss and some fallout because people love, people buy from people, not just from businesses.

That's right. So your sales reps and your your, anything that, that's relationship based inside, if you discount the value of that relationship, you're gonna be sadly mistaken. And this is, again, what I'm seeing in this other comparable company is it's like, okay, there's relationships there that they took for granted and they're watching many, many, many customers walk away because they've either laid off, let go, or angered internal employees who have nurtured relationships over years with customers.

Right? Like it's much more complex than just transitioning a customer to a new system or a new salesperson or whatever. There's relationships, there's people, there's culture. And the reason people deal with your company in many, many ways. It's not just your product, not just your execution or you know, the service that you provide.

It's your people. It's your culture, it's your values. That means a lot to the customer ultimately. And if you're gonna disrupt that completely, and it's not the same place as it used to be, that's changing the customer experience. And customers don't like that. Yeah. Right. So people, people are the most important thing.

And so if you discount the people part of an acquisition, you are very naive. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And so, okay, so it sounds like obviously buying the business or deciding to make a buying decision is just part one. There's so much more past that. But I think you're right. I think in my mind, negotiating a deal to me that that seems to be like, okay, we can think through that one, that one we can justify in our heads and make sense.

Mm-hmm. That's exactly what we struggle with, is now how do we integrate this company? With our company and keep as many of the staff as possible, keep the customers as happy as possible. And a lot of that is emotional, not logical.

Jory Evans: Yeah. It's not math, it's not mathematically an equation. It's, it's more about feeling and understanding the, what the impact of this disruption that you're causing is to your own company and to theirs.

And this is why I, I call it logistics. You could call it a couple other things, but like culture fit, leadership, trust, employee retention, customer retention, threats offsite communication. Like if your company now needs to communicate with that company very effectively and you don't have a good onsite connection and you're not able to do good remote conversations, it's gonna cause communication issues that cause breakdowns in, in effectiveness and efficiency.

Like the company that we bought last year, they were like eight kilometers away from us. Yeah. I could, I struggled very hard getting their people and my people to communicate effectively. They don't know each other. They don't have a long-term relationship. They don't have a rhythm of how they communicate.

They don't have systems. And people, things that aren't like fall out of bed easy are really hard. Like if you, here's a great metaphor. If you build a building and you put offices upstairs that were previously downstairs and they have to go up and down the stairs where they used to not and use, let's say you take your accounting or your operations or your management and you put 'em in an upstairs, it's a small stairway.

It's not that far. It's not a big deal. Okay? People will not go up there and see them and visit them as often. Yeah. This is a human fact. You cannot just put someone upstairs and think that they're gonna be as good at communicating with people downstairs as they used to. It sounds silly. It sounds ridiculous.

That's a fact. I could put math to that. Yeah. Right. And so that's the kind of slight inconvenience that can break down a whole, like if this person used to talk to this person five times a day, 'cause they walked by their office, but now it's up a set of stairs, they're gonna talk once a day maybe. Because it's just not convenient. Yeah. To go and see them anymore. And so then that connection is gonna break down and not gonna be as effective as it was previous just because of proximity. So from the time we bought them, six months later, we moved them into our new building. When we were completing a renovation, 50% of my communication problems went away like that.

Wow. I didn't have to change any systems, I didn't have to do anything but logistically change their place. And now their office is beside the other office and the communication just happens. We have a nice meeting rhythm, everything rolls. It's convenient. And so now again, we, I could probably have canceled one to two management people.

That would've been required to maintain that long term. Yeah. Just by moving them onset.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. Okay. So you really do have to find a way to ease the logistics of simple communication to make it effective, really.

Jory Evans: Yep. Yeah. And you know, people talk about working remote and there are people who are effective and there's ways of doing it.

And I've talked to people and studied you know, how to be remote and effective and build strong communication, relationship. There's ways to do it well, but I, I will never agree that you, you can do it better than being in proximity to people. It's just not the same thing. So that's just one logistical thing.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so these little inconveniences and these little tiffs or these little cultural. Edginess, is there tensions that exist between people? If you don't see those and figure out ways to remove them or ease them, it's going to cause this friction in your company. That just doesn't work if your new salespeople can't easily connect with their sales manager, whereas it used to be in their office, but now it's offsite, it's gonna make it hard for them and they're gonna feel that leadership void that they used to have.

And you have to do something to build that void. Because people don't leave companies. They leave teams and they leave managers. Yeah. And so if it's not the same team that used to be, it's not the same manager it used to be, it's not as good or better. You're gonna find people just finding their way outta your organization and you not understanding why, because you didn't deal with the emotional, logistical side of what's going on with this change in this transition.

Yeah. Yeah. We talked, we had a meeting yesterday with one key member from every department. So like sales, marketing dispatch, finance, operations. About a software change we're looking at doing, and partly because of an acquisition we're doing, we're going, okay, we may have to force that company to change software and on day one of when we take them over and there was a and a half hour conversation about the logistical damage that could do to that company and potentially lose employees because they, it was too frustrating or hard.

Or stressful to change softwares. Wow. It seems silly like people need to do what we need to tell them to do for work. Yeah. Until they leave and hang you out to dry and you don't have someone to fill that with. Yeah. Like you have to take these things into account. So then the conversation went, even though it might be better for our team, if they changed softwares, it might be too disruptive for their team in the early days before we built trust and relationship with them.

Yeah. To force the software change on that team. It might be smarter logistically to wait six months or a year or whatever before we push a software change. So that we can maintain and have more time to build trust and relationship and connection with that offsite team. Yeah. Yeah. So this is just one example of a logistic goal, say.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That actually makes a lot of sense. So like in your mind, if you are, if you are gonna be taking over a company, it really doesn't make any sense to shake stuff up. It makes a lot more sense to play it safe, try to understand the way that they're doing it, work with the teams for a little while, keep their business running, as usual, and then make changes down the line, allowing time.

And I agree, like me and you both know, building, building relationships is critical. It gives you time to build those critical relationships to build trust so that when you do bring that idea to them and say, Hey, I think this might work better, they're gonna be a lot more receptive to it. And you may have a lot less turnover.

Jory Evans: Yeah. And then on the other hand, sometimes you just have to disrupt things. Like in the, in the company we. Not the one we're buying, but the one we bought we had to replay and re brandand all of their equipment. The first day of takeover that just had to happen, there was hundreds of thousands of dollars in the balance that had to be dealt with.

And so we did it and it disrupted a lot of things. So then when, when you are gonna disrupt things like that, now there's the logistical thing of, okay, how do we communicate this to them early? How do we give them some information? How do we set expectations? How do we build trust instead of, how do we make it less painful for them through logistics?

Like a lot of people just need to, if you give them fair warning, you give them good training and you give them good support, it's not such a bad thing. And you can actually win people over through that process. Yeah. But again, people just maybe don't give enough time and energy and thought to these sort of things prior to doing them.

To like really walk out the battle plan of how this is gonna affect the deal. Yeah. Some of these, you know, a little thing like a software change can blow a deal up. It can, at the end of the day, if you go, okay, this has to happen or this has to happen and this is what's gonna happen and could happen in light of this.

And if that does happen in light of this decision maybe this deal isn't viable anymore. Financially, physically, maybe the risk to our company's disruption, like this was the weight that we put on the last few deals we've looked at is, okay, my bench is thin, my leadership is tired, I only have so many people and they're already all carrying pretty heavyweight of responsibility and leadership and management.

So without bringing in or training up some more talent and some more gun, like more horsepower into our leadership and management team maybe it's unwise to do an acquisition right now at all. Yeah. And there was many meetings with our team about that through the course of this acquisition, when other opportunities have coming up going, Hey our team's tired.

Our team's not like, who are we gonna send that isn't gonna disrupt in a very negative way, our core business.

Kelly Kennedy: So how do you, you know, how do you mitigate that? Because I know you and you're ambitious and you want to grow. Does that mean that you have to expand your team now before you take on the next big acquisition?

Jory Evans: Potentially. Yeah. Yeah. It means that for me, like depending on how much time I have it means that I might have to really ramp up my leadership training. I might have to headhunt somebody that I wanna bring in and then give them some time while they're on site here to get up to speed. That, in that other acquisition, I brought in an outside operator whom I knew and had a good relationship and trust with.

To take over this company, so I didn't have to send some someone fresh from our company to do the gotcha. Right. So I, I went, okay, we don't have the right person for that position. And so I need to find the right, I won't do this deal unless I find the right leader to fill this leadership void and do this effectively.

And that was a, a, a key factor. Like when I was putting the, the aligning the stars for that deal, there was a person that was part of that alignment. It's like, if this person doesn't come, I don't know if we do this right.

Kelly Kennedy: And, and that, and that's tough because you're trying to do it on a timeline, right?

Like they don't just, the doors don't just open forever. Usually you're working within a constrained time period. So like from the day that you're like, Hey, I'm looking at this and you gotta find somebody, me, you both know finding the right person really frigging hard.

Jory Evans: Yeah. And then this is where the, you know, it separate the men from the boys, so to speak.

It's just like, okay. Someone comes to me, they want, they are looking to sell, they're interested in us buying. They like our culture, they like us. They feel that we could be the right fit for that. I go through the deal and then I think about the logistics and it's like, okay, it's crunch time. I gotta find this right person.

And if I've been wise in previous, I've been nurturing many relationships with many potential people that I could bring in for things like this. And I've been keeping them kind of in the back of my head and building relationships with them along the way so that when the time comes, I can potentially bring them on.

Yeah. For these types of things. But then now it's like, okay, I got three months, so maybe I've two or three people in mind that could work. I gotta talk to them. I have to like, I have to just freaking execute. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like it's crunch time. I'm gonna talk to these people, I'm gonna pick my number one pick, I'm gonna run, run with them and give them, not, you know, enough time to make a decision or think about it, but not enough time to.

To spin out and, and fail the deal and you know, one or two people or three people have these conversations, do the figuring out, get them in place, do the timelines. Like it's all a very nuanced thing, but you have to do it and you have to execute and you have to, and move. You just can't sit there and waffle around and, and think about it too much.

It's like, if this is gonna work, I'm gonna keep moving. And this is kind of where, this is a step-by-step program and you have to appreciate that in any deal is like, first we do the business and the math. If that's good. We check that off. We give 'em a letter of intent. Great. Okay. Now we do the logistics of the deal, which we were thinking about before, but now, okay, this is actually happening.

Yeah. So now I'm starting to talk to my potential operators. Now I'm thinking about who in my organization might be the right fit to go do a takeover. Now I'm ramping up my leadership training or, or picking off a specific person or team and starting to prepare them. I'm communicating with them. I'm explaining to them what's needed.

I'm preparing them physically and emotionally for what's potentially coming. Okay. If all those things click together, now we're interviewing their team. Now we're looking at their situation. We're really diving deep into their culture and their trust and their fit and their leadership and putting that all together.

And when we have a, a logistical battle plan that we think we can execute on as well as plan B and plan C, and if this happens and all these other things, now we move on to execution phase. Okay. Right. And this is where, where, you can have a plan, but that plan can blow up in your face on, on day one of executing.

Kelly Kennedy: Right. So, so take me into how do you plan for an effective execution? Like what are the steps that we need to consider to execute a deal properly?

Jory Evans: Yeah, so this is where we've done something different. Where I say I, part of my letter of intent and deal is that I'm putting management people on site one to two months before the deal executes.

So that if, if this is not gonna work we're gonna find out early and when we do execute on when the paper gets signed and the, and the ownership changes that we are not, we're not coming up with any crazy surprises. Yeah. If you've got the right operations and the right people in place and you spend the right, right amount of time before the deal goes down, you can pretty much anticipate the majority of the.

The big hurdles that you're gonna have to go over, right? You're gonna buy, you know, if you put a month time in you're gonna see which employees might not be a good long-term fit. You're gonna see, okay, yeah, they have a good culture, but, they're a little bit cowboy, flippant yeehaw about how they do things here and they don't follow the rules real well.

Wow. I didn't really see that from the outside looking in. Of course. Yeah. Oh, wow. They run a real tight cash flow. So it's a daily problem in there, and I didn't really see that from the outside. Oh, they have very finicky customers and they have high, high, high expectations of execution internally.

And so everybody spends the majority of their time babying and coddling their customers because they have these are all the little nuanced things. When you start executing, you go, oh, okay, this, this is something I didn't really expect. That I'm gonna have to overcome. Yeah. Once I get in there, right.

And I need to have my people prepped and I need to be aware of that I need to use their software and see how they do their day-to-day with their TMS or their point of sale or their accounting software or whatever they're doing, and see what their frustrations are, what the hurdles are, which employees are the ones that actually know what's going on and which ones are following along.

And so this is where execution gets to be key, because there's, when you're in the deal making phase and the logistics phase, you don't know what you don't know about this company yet. And so this is where execution is key and you have to be really, really. In ready stance when you start taking over this company because something's gonna come at you.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

Jory Evans: Yeah. And when we took over this other company, their biggest customer was like 20, 25%, which was a threat, and I was aware of it. And one of their competitors took a run at them. They smelled blood in the water. They knew there was a change coming if the, the pan was hot and it's time to strike, so they, they took a run at their biggest customer and ended up convincing them to leave in the first three months of us being in this business, while we're kind of. Struggling and flattering now since then, we've gotten them back because that other company wasn't us and we're better than them and they had to find out the hard way.

Yeah. But that's the kind of thing you just can't anticipate going in, right? Yeah. You can drop 25% of your revenue in the first three months and be like, holy shit. Mm-hmm. Like rodeo time and these things happen, and then you gotta be able to come in and, and, bolster the troops and have these meetings.

You have to execution of, okay, how do we transition customer relationships from the owner who was friends for 30 years with a couple of these customers to liking and transitioning to the new ownership or the new operator, or the new salespeople that they have to deal with. Okay. There's a process to executing that and the timeline and when you're taking on something new like that, it's just gonna be so, time consuming and so mentally stressful that you can just really drop the ball on your execution if you don't put enough horsepower behind it. In the early days of the ex of the company.

Kelly Kennedy: What you talked about is some incredibly challenging stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Reestablishing a new relationship after a prime, you know, relationship dissolves 30 years, right.

You know, as well as I do. Going in and reestablishing that relationship from scratch is not easy. What are some of the techniques that you use to make sure that you're able to secure those long-term customers?

Jory Evans: Yeah, so, one of the executional, logistical pieces of the deals that I've structured so far is that the ownership or the key salespeople are what, in let's say sales, operations, and finance.

Are there on site for three months every day doing transition work for the first three months of the business. So we're talking about, we're taking the new people out and we're doing customer meetings with both, Hey, I'm Jim. I've been your guy forever. This is Carl. He's gonna be the new guy. I like Carl.

Carl's a great guy. Yeah. Yeah. Let's go out for lunch. Let's get to know each other. And then we're not just showing up with a new guy Yes. Saying, Hey, the old guys are gone. I'm the new guy. Right. We're building trust. Yeah. And, and forming forming a bond with each customer or each key relationship.

Yeah. And we're not forcing it upon them too quickly. Yeah. Right. So we have a couple of these types of meetings over the first three months. Okay. And then in the next three months when we kind of get their, they're not on site day to day, now they are phone call following up with their customers.

Or their drive truck drivers in our case, or op, like their teams. If it's a sales person or an operations person or a finance person, that key person is now offsite, but following up socially with the people that used to be their customers or used to be their team members, or used to be their day-to-day people.

Yeah. And going, how's it going with the new guy? Yeah. Anything you don't like. Are you happy? Are you unhappy? You can call me anytime if something's not going the way you want to. 'cause I know we have a bond and the trust, and you might not feel comfortable talking to your new person about the problems that are going on, or you don't know how to deal with them.

And so for the next three months we're doing recon and support. And that person is going, Hey, the new guy, really good person. I trust them. I think they're gonna do a good job for you. You, you maybe need to talk to 'em about, about this, or I will talk to them about your concerns. And we're keeping that communication rhythm open.

Yeah. And building some more trust and more transition. But they're getting used to the idea that they're former leader or they're confidant, the person they liked is just, they're going away. Things are changing, but it's not happening in such an abrupt way that it just disrupts people's lives and makes them, you know, upset or wanna leave or whatever.

We're, we're building relationships, right? Yeah. And teams. Yeah. And then after that six months, we put them on a, a six month consulting scenario, whereas, okay, in the first three months you were here. And the next three months you are available, but not here all the time. And the next six months you're not here at all, but you're available on the end of the phone and by the end of that six months, you're pretty much hands off.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Okay. So you're looking essentially at about a year and a half to transition properly with keeping, you know, key players still around in some capacity to help out with these challenging moments.

Jory Evans: Yeah, and and for me, this is one of the keys of the vendor finance is, is that, you know, you, I really want the former owner of the company very invested in us succeeding going forward, and so that, that ask of that six or 12 month period post transition of the business isn't a heavy ask when you, they know that you're making a payment to them every month and they really want you to keep making those payments. That's right. Right. And so they are invested in your success and they, they need, you actually need you to succeed.

They need to help. Their employees come to terms with the changes that are happening. They need your new operator to know you're making Sally and Jennifer upset by the way that you're communicating with them, and you need to work on that. Or you could lose these people. Yeah. They need to be that invested for that period of time.

And then even a year or two years later, if they, you know, they're paying attention to your success and how things are going, they may still follow up with a customer once a year and go, Hey, I, or see them at Costco and go, Hey, how's things going? And they, and they're motivated to ask the questions and make sure things are going good.

That's right. That's great. And so that's the beauty of a vendor finance is that the vendor is actually. Long term invested in you succeeding, which is worth so much more than you think. It's, yeah. It's like it's worth a lot.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Like, honestly, from our last conversation, I was like, why would you buy a business any other way?

Like it doesn't, I don't know, maybe I'm missing something, but to me, well, there's a scenario where

Jory Evans: the vendor is a sneaky, horrible snake of a person. You want them as far away from you as you can. True. I would also say maybe you shouldn't be buying that business. Yes. Yes. Due diligence. Due diligence.

Everything has its own nuance for sure. Like there's a time and a place for everything under the sun potentially. But, you know, there's a, there's a, there easier way to do it and a harder way to do it and not considering these things is the harder way. And you, you could find it could disrupt you and take you down.

I don't, I think people maybe aren't scared enough of that when they're looking at these deals is this could end the whole thing if I do this badly.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Right. You know, I wanted to touch on one of the points that you mentioned, and you mentioned, you know, part of the execution plan for you is absolutely getting some of your key players into that organization one to two months ahead.

Mm-hmm. Now, to me, what I'm thinking is, you're a smart guy and what you're trying to figure out is, is this, should I pull out of this? Right? Like you're looking for red flags. Tell me about the red flags jury that if you had your team in there one to two months ahead, that you'd be like, Nope, out not doing this.

What are they?

Jory Evans: I haven't experienced them yet, but I would say the things I'm looking for is lying absolute, not truths. They say, they've said to you all along, this is the way we do things. And you get in there and you're going, maybe I don't see that you're looking for the employees putting up a front.

Yeah. This is how we do things. If you know what I mean. You're looking for things that they might be doing illegally, liabilities that come, could come back to bite you after the fact you're finding out about the thing no one's talking about. Right. Oh, like there's something that came up in our negotiations towards the end is like, oh yeah, that truck had gotten in an accident where a train had hit it, and there's still a three year long legal battle going on about that.

Wow. Oh, okay. Whether you forgot about it or we just didn't discuss it yet, that's gonna have to be written into this deal because I'm not taking on the liability of CP rails suing you for everything you're worth. Yeah. And so like, there's, there's. A lot of the things you're looking for, but there's legal things there's financial things like, are is there anything with the way that, that things are being reported, put into the financials, the books is there a lack of trust between leadership and, and management?

What's the accountant to business owner relationship? What is their, you know, what are they their professionals acting like when they're around them? If you go to a meeting with them and their lawyer's got shifty eyes and is afraid to say things when you're in the conversation, then, you know, maybe need to dig a little deeper into what's going on there.

But the, with these deals, for me, trust is a very, very, very important for me and from the person I'm dealing with, because if you don't trust each other the accountants and lawyers are probably gonna tear the deal apart. And they'd be happy to 'cause they get more billables and, and they want, yeah.

You know, it's. I don't know if we talked about that in the last one or not, but I wanted to point that out. No, not yet. When you're doing these acquisitions and this is why trust is so important, I need to have confidence that between me and the person I'm dealing with and making this deal with, that we have a certain level of trust within each other so that when we verbally agree on something, that's the way it is and that's not gonna change.

Yeah. Because what happens is, is once you get that deal into a letter of intent or an official offer, lawyers and accountants are gonna start getting involved and their job is to tear it apart. They're gonna tell you about all your liabilities and all the reasons this is a bad idea, and all the things that, that couldn't work out.

And, and there's a value in that. And it's important to have a good lawyer and a good accountant. But you have to be able to see past that. Any deal's gonna have risk and liability. And at the end of the day, this deal is only gonna work if I trust the word of the person I'm dealing with on the other side.

Because if I don't trust him and I'm worried and I want my lawyers' accounts to tear apart everything about him, and they, they will find stuff or make stuff up. Yeah. They, you can spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal and you can have a deal blown up and take six months or eight months or a year longer because lawyers and accountants will bat it back.

Their lawyer and your lawyer are happy to bat this deal back and forth for a year. Of course, they're actually not motivated to close quickly for you because they make more money if this is complicated. Yeah. And so you have to be very leery. Have a good lawyer and be very careful not to let the lawyers get ahold of the reins of the deal.

Yeah. It's a big mistake. Big mistake.

Kelly Kennedy: It's become, it's become so apparent to me in this conversation with you the whole time that the entire thing relies on trust in relationships. There's no way that this deal works out well if you can't establish trust and good relationships along the way. It just, you can't smash two businesses together without it.

Jory Evans: Yeah. And what, and people do it without it and apparently fail 60 to 70% of the time.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Jory Evans: And, and I don't like those odds. I'm not gonna be a part of that statistic. Yeah. And so this is where trust has to be established. And I spend a ton of energy and I have it written down the wishes, wants and needs of the other party that you're dealing with.

And finding a way to make a win-win. People who are ruthless shrewd negotiators and business people. This becomes a very hard here because you're gonna have to make some compromises if this is gonna go well, most likely. And you need to consider what the other person wants. When I'm like, the first business we bought the couple wasn't super old.

And they were actually transitioning to a different business in the us and that's kind of their reason for selling. So understanding why they were selling and what they're trying to get out of it was really important to making them happy with the deal that we provided. Whereas this other one we're going through right now, their retirement age, they don't wanna do another business.

They, you know, they're potentially financially in good shape already. This is just a part of their investment portfolio. Yeah. Selling this business and settling it down, they mostly just want. To get free of the stress and the day-to-day of business, and they haven't been able to accomplish that within their situation.

So this particular deal is a lot of more about a smooth transition and getting them confident that we can come in and take care of their baby and their, you know, their employees that they've built over the last 30 years that they care very much about. It's like this deal is all about making sure they feel like, and know that we are going to take care of the thing that they've spent their whole career building and a lot less about how much money they can get out of this deal.

Yeah. So I can get a really good deal on this business if I can provide this, and this. Yeah. But if I don't perceive that, and I go, okay, we're gonna come in and we're gonna tear this part, and these are gonna move, and if they don't wanna move, we're gonna let 'em go. And this is how we, we can, that deal's not gonna work.

'cause I don't actually understand what the owner of the business is looking for out of this deal.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And for you there's a lot of people who would buy a business through a business broker, but for you, I feel like most of the businesses you've bought, you've actually known these people.

You've been able to have that one-on-one conversation and you see it in real estate all the time. They don't want you talking to the owners. I imagine with business brokers it's kind of the same thing. But your recommendation really seems to be, try to really understand the people you're buying this business from.

Jory Evans: Yeah. It going in blind. Like I, I get the, and so your lawyer will tell you not to talk to them. Your account might tell you not to talk to them. Yeah. Like that is not good advice. That's bad advice. At the end of the day, if you leave it in the hands of your lawyer to resolve the problem, they will draw it out.

They're motivated to draw it out and make it as complicated and last as long as possible. If the deal blows up, they still get paid. Yeah. And in fact, they make more money if they draw this out for a long time, the deal blows out and now you gotta go find another deal. And so you can't leave it in the hands of them.

And at the, every time that I've gotten into a scenario where the lawyers start batting back and forth and I've made a few mistakes where I've let that go on and go on, and then eventually got really mad and went and found the other person and sat down with them and hashed it out with them, and it was over like that.

Yeah. And there was something that they misinterpreted it or conceived through the legal jargon and the fighting conversations and the tension that wasn't even true, or they're upset about this and I need to apologize about it because I'm, I said something wrong, or I did something wrong, or I took something for granted, or I pushed too hard in a certain area and not offended them, or whatever it is.

Yeah. You should have the people skills and ability to go and sit down and resolve a conflict face-to-face with the person you're actually dealing with, because our legal system was not built to support that end. They don't care about that, frankly.

Kelly Kennedy: So legal, legal is obviously a spot where we really need to watch for pitfalls.

Mm-hmm. What are some of the other spots that we need to be careful about on the pitfalls?

Jory Evans: Obviously the financials, like having a really, really strong understanding of profit and loss accounting balance sheets having a really strong accountant or CFO or somebody who can like, really dig through that.

I'm pretty good at that. I've learned a lot in that realm over the years of business. So I can take a set of financials and make a pretty good call on what I think a business is worth, where the value is in the business, and where the potential threats are. But I always will do it myself first, drop the same thing on my CFO's desk and say, Hey, I want you to dig through this and bring everything that you can think of to me.

And then maybe even have a third set of opinions thrown at you from another professional. And then really, really dig and grind through the things that are unseen in financials. And this is another reason where the, the onsite early thing is just so that you can go, okay, these are the things I see that are, I really need to know more about, but might not, I need to see with my own eyes.

Yeah. Basically what this means in the day-to-day of the business. So the legal and the financial side are, are really, really important. Okay.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome. Awesome. And you know, one of the questions that I had, you know, throughout this whole thing is we started the show by you explaining like, Hey, there are some businesses that maybe you just shouldn't buy.

One of the things I wanted to ask you was. You know, most of the businesses that we're talking about that you're looking at are complimentary to what you already understand. You understand transport, logistics, trucking, you know, mechanics, commercial. Those are all things within your realm. So in my mind, anything related to that you could probably buy, would you ever buy something that you don't understand that's completely different from what you understand?

Jory Evans: I wouldn't say, I would never of all the business books that I've read, whether they're about acquisition or just business at all really, really, really, really worn against that. Getting outside of your wheelhouse, it be your expertise.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Jory Evans: There's stories of big public companies or big businesses.

We're talking like Circuit City, Rubbermaid up to like. Amazon and things like that who have bought businesses that were outside of their wheelhouse thinking, oh, this is a, a genius idea. And tried to take their, you know, their team and their expertise to that thing. And failed epically. Yeah, epically and eventually thought they could just do anything and be good at anything.

And became, if you, the good to great thing from Jim Collins and I, I really appreciate Jim, his, his insights into business are beyond the best advice you're gonna get ever. Is Hi. His insights are that basically that if you can't be the best at the world, in the world at something, like if you genuinely don't believe that you can become the best at this in the world, you should not touch it.

Yeah. And I, I've come to learn that the hard way a couple of times. Nothing too hor, horrifically bad, but I bought I thought I was gonna be a farmer and I bought a couple hundred head of cattle and I was gonna start trading cows and bought some cowboy boots and got into it. And I had some friends doing that sort of thing.

And I learned the hard way when I lost, five, 10% on that deal. Which was not a small amount of money that I don't know what I'm doing here. And I am not willing to put enough time and attention to be the best at the world in cattle rearing and trading and commodity of that style. And I looked at it and went, that's a really good example of stepping outta your realm into something you don't understand and, and getting your hand slapped.

Yeah. It's there. Those examples are everywhere if you go looking for people, and I think anyone who has done business for a long time and tried a lot of things and failed, would give similar advice. Don't, and and the other part, again, from Good to Great is something you can be passionate about. So if you can be the best of the world at it and you're passionate about it, then you got a really good combination.

I'm doing trucking, mechanics and construction. Construction was pretty far outside of my wheelhouse when we started. I've learned a lot about it. I'm, I'm pretty passionate about. You know, design and construction and what we're doing there. But, you know, we're struggling at the part of being best in the world at, because there's a lot of really beautiful, wonderful construction companies out there to compete with.

And and we have a lot of growing to do to be the best at the world at it, but we're gonna run at it. In the cases where I have stepped out, I've always made sure that I have a best, a best in the world operator or partner when I'm going in. Okay. So, you know, value that can be brought. I, if I was gonna buy a restaurant,

Kelly Kennedy: yeah.

Jory Evans: I'd want to make sure that I have someone who has a ton of expertise who's passionate about it and, and I think is one of the best people in the world at that to go with me into it. And that's where I've succeeded better. Okay. I might be great at finance, great at efficiency, great at operations, great at sales, great at marketing.

But if I don't have a clue about restaurateur, I, I need someone who does that can drive that business and, and push on that flywheel.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Okay. So it, it's not impossible, but you really do need to find that person to be with. You either hire them or partner with them, but you need that person who is passionate, who is like one of the best in their field to do that with you.

Jory Evans: Yeah. And they exist. They're out there, not easy to find. But there I think a lot of those opportunities are scenarios where you go, okay, I found a person that's just absolutely the best at this thing, but they're, they have some holes from an entrepreneurial standpoint. Yeah. And they're they could do a really good job of this, but they're a bad money manager or they are not a salesperson, but they're in a spectacular operator.

And I can look at my skillset and their skillset and I can go, I can make a really powerful team up here. They focus on what they do. I focus on what I do, and we bring that together to do something. It's definitely possible, but it's a lot less. Your chances of success are less for sure.

Kelly Kennedy: What if you bought a company that was excellent at something like, let's say that they were like an excellent, another construction firm or something like that, and you didn't have the expertise in construction, but maybe you could structure a deal as such that you could potentially have the owner work in that business with you for the next five years or whatever it is.

Would you consider it then, or would it still be too far outside of the wheelhouse?

Jory Evans: I've seen deals structured that way and I, I've shred and seen a lot of scenarios where people think the owner's gonna stick around for five years or seven years, or even they're paid to stay and they get paid out less if they leave early.

I've seen that fail a lot of times. I, I don't know the statistics on that, but I wouldn't have huge confidence. And the other thing is that person, if they're an alpha personality and you're an alpha personality, you're gonna butt heads with them and they're gonna be in your way, and you're gonna be in their way and you're gonna have some problems.

And that's what I typically see. Even in the transition phases of the businesses we have acquired. There is a phase or a stage of the transition where you're, where the, the ownership has to get out of the way. And some people do it graciously and, and most people don't. And so there is a bit of a, like a painful cutting period where it's like, you're not the boss anymore.

We're doing this my way now. Yeah. And you need to let go. And so that's a, it's a tough thing. It's a really tough thing and I wouldn't wanna, wouldn't wanna bet on that horse too hard.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Jory Evans: It might be a great asset and it might be a good transitional thing, but you, you're not in control.

That's the fact of the matter. Yeah. Is if you keep the owner in place or they're really excellent, like if you're buying a business where the owner hasn't been involved in the operations with the day-to-day business for a long time and they're a big strong powerhouse of a business without the ownership and when they leave, it's not gonna change anything.

That's a little bit of a different way of going about it. But then when you get into your logistics, you're going, okay, there's a massive amount of threat here because I can't just walk in and save the day if things start going sideways. Yes. I am not the expert here. I am relying heavily on that. So the question then arises is, okay, what's the depth of their bench?

So are there 10 strong salespeople? And if two left, it would still be okay, are there 10 strong leaders? And if they still left, it'd be okay, are there 10 who are expert in that industry and he still be okay? Or is there one guy propping up this business and if he walks, we're not. Yeah. Right. There's a level of risk to be considered there.

Just knowing that you are not capable of going in and saving the day if this thing starts going downhill. Yeah. It's a dangerous place to be.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So that's fair. So really what you're kind of saying is like, unless you have some serious risk mitigation in place, it's probably too far.

Even if you can bring the expert with you for a period of time, there's, there's still too much that can go wrong.

Jory Evans: I'm, I'm not gonna say too much. This is where entrepreneurs balance risk. Like if you look at it and you go, oh, oh, I'm pretty I got a feeling I'm pretty confident, I've done my due diligence and this is a strong company and they're gonna do well.

There's lots of people who bought businesses they don't know how to operate, you know, like that. There's a lot of successful people that know, own a lot of business. They don't have. Know how to operate, but they're really, really spectacular at bringing in more support people that know how to do it and bringing them up and mitigating that risk.

Like in those businesses where I'm doing that, I'm gonna try and make sure that I have my own person I can parachute in to save the day if need to, if it's not me. Yeah, I got, I'm gonna create some A, B, C, and D backup plans to protect myself against that risk. So you see the risk, how are you gonna mitigate it?

Right. And, and sometimes you've got good answers for all those things and, and it's not that big of a risk to you. Yeah. Or it's a big risk, but it's small in the scope of your operation and you can afford to take the risk. If I'm a hundred million dollar company and this is a really, really sweet little deal and they're two, $3 million company and if it drops off a cliff and fails, it's like, well that sucked.

But man, the upside was huge. Okay, well you can maybe take that risk. It's not gonna disrupt your, your whole operation if this wins or loses necessarily, but you're gonna make a bet on it. Yeah. So again, every question you have has, has a, a lot of nuance and different angles to it. Yeah. From my perspective.

But I, I do think that people need to be weary of the things that they're not thinking of and thinking through. And they need to think of this process, the deal, the logistics, and the execution of how they're gonna do it, and have a really, really strong plan before they go ahead on this.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing, you know, Jory, this has been an incredible series.

Thank you so much for coming in. And you know, I mean, like, you're not, you're not just shooting from the hip, like you're going through this multiple times. You just went through one. You're in the middle of another one at the moment. And I just wanna say thank you. I know how busy you are and I just, I appreciate you sharing this information.

'cause honestly, I don't think I could have got a better rundown on acquisitions than we got from you. So thank you so much for doing that.

Jory Evans: Yeah, you're welcome Kelly. And, and it's a fun thing to do and I won't pretend that I'm the be all and end all expert on that, but as I learn my way through it, I see a lot of, a lot of consistency and I'm seeing a, a rhythm of how to do this that can be duplicated and executed on.

And I think a lot of people could miss massive opportunities by not looking at acquisitions and being able to execute on them. People become very, very wealthy by doing this well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, one of the questions that I had for you as we wrap up today is, you know, we've gone through a lot, but, you know, what would you say to somebody who right now is exploring their very first acquisition?

You know, if, if, if someone came to you right now and just said, Jo, I need something, man, I'm scared. This is freaking me out. I don't wanna make a bad choice here. What would you say to them?

Jory Evans: Yeah. It'd be great to know where they stand on things, whether this, like they're new to business, whether they're mature and been in business a long time.

Kelly Kennedy: Let's, let's, let's take an assumption that they're, they've been in business a while with the, with the business. They understand and they're ready to take that acquisition, maybe not unlike yourself.

Jory Evans: Okay. Yeah. In that case, I would say that you, you need to you need to break it down step by step.

And you need to be unemotional about it from the beginning to the end. And you need to be willing to walk at any time if it's not the right thing for you. There's a process. We've just talked about it. I think it's, I can say it's a proven process for me now. I've done it once very successful, and it's been good and I'm executing on it again.

So it's scalable and duplicatable. So follow the process, but don't get emotionally invested and don't let that sunk cost bias drag you into something that's gonna topple the thing. A lot of people in business are used to vetting the farm. In the early days of, of your business, like if you're starting from scratch, you're betting the farm for a lot of years before before you're out of the point where you're risking it all to make it through the next year.

But once you do have an established business and a rhythm that's going you need to not be going into deals that can sink the whole ship anymore. There's a point where like if we're where I am, I have hundreds of people who count on their paychecks every month. And I have a lot of responsibilities and people that I answer to that I would really hate to disappoint.

And, and an acquisition should not be something that you're going into going manifest doesn't work like, whew. That should not be the conversation we're having. It should be, if this works, it'd be really good. If this fails, it'll suck, but I'll be okay. So that's an important thing to consider is, is don't, don't blow up your core business because of the fancy, shiny opportunity that you're looking at.

Kelly Kennedy: I love it. I love it. And you know, before we before we wrap up today, I want you to tell our listeners about your podcast.

Jory Evans: Yes. So, I, I have a podcast called the Built to Lead Podcast. I started doing it a year and a half ago, approximately, and I just really felt that there's a, I talk to entrepreneurs all the time, just like I'm talking to you now, Kelly, and, and they, I hear their frustrations and I see these hurdles that they can't come overcome or they just don't know what the next step is.

And I feel that it's sad that there's necessarily always a resource for them to help answer these questions. And I think there's a obviously we've talked about core values and, and how I feel about them. And I feel that if people could follow a certain step by step process and overcome these things as I have over the last decades, and if I knew what I knew now when I'd started, how powerful that would be I wanted to deliver that to people and give that value.

And so that's what the Built to Lead podcast is. The first 12 episodes are just my step-by-step breakdown of the things I wish I knew and how, how they can help you build an epic business. And now we've transitioned to a more a focus on leadership and I'm interviewing other leadership built awesome things and just talking about the value and importance of leadership in your business.

And that's, that's what it's about. So if you're interested in that sort of thing and you wanna grow as a leader and you want to and know how I built what I built. It's all in there in the Built Delete

Kelly Kennedy: podcast. Amazing. And they can find that on Spotify, apple Podcasts, everywhere that great podcasts are found.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. We have been graced once again by Jory Evans. Thank you so much for taking the time, Jory. Yep. Thanks for invite Kelly. It's always a fun time. Until next time. You've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.