Our Approach

Every engagement, whether the goal is to have an M&A process that can support two acquisitions or twenty, is built on the same foundation: translating growth strategy into a disciplined, repeatable process, not ad hoc deal chasing.

• Consistency: clear strategic and financial screens, so the team can get to “no” quickly and react with conviction when something fits

• Visibility: a funnel and pipeline that give the CEO and PE sponsor confidence the right activity is happening, at the right pace

• Accountability: every priority target has a specific next step, owner, and due date

• Proprietary sourcing: building direct relationships with owners, operators, and internal ecosystem contacts, rather than relying solely on brokers and bankers to bring opportunities

What changes across engagements is velocity and tooling, not the underlying discipline. Below are three examples spanning the range.

High-Velocity: Building an Acquisition Factory

Industry: PE-backed express car wash roll-up… rapid acquisition and integration IS the strategy

Problem: Growth strategy depended on rapid, high-volume acquisition in a highly fragmented market, but the company lacked a standardized process to identify, screen, and close deals at the pace the investment thesis required.

Action: Built and owned the full M&A playbook - market mapping and prioritization, target identification and screening criteria, a capital committee process, site-finder coaching, and a custom CRM implementation to manage the pipeline. Layered proactive outbound cold-calling and ‘harvesting’ in-market intelligence of regional operators on top of traditional broker channels to generate proprietary deal flow, and built funnel-health tracking to understand where and why targets fell out of the process.

Result: Grew acquisition volume from 4 sites to 35 sites across 10 transactions in 12 months - a systematic, repeatable sourcing engine rather than a series of one-off deals.

This model fits clients where M&A is a primary growth lever and volume is the point: the priority is building infrastructure - screens, pipeline, CRM, outbound motion - that can sustain 15-30+ deals a year.

Lower-Velocity: Standing Up the Function While Executing Deals

Industry: PE-backed specialty chemicals manufacturer

Problem: Acquisitions were not initially a core part of the company’s growth thesis vs. organic growth and so there was no internal corporate development function - some preliminary screening criteria and generic investment banker target suggestions but no repeatable process - and leadership needed a scalable approach that didn’t consume management’s time on ad hoc deal work.

Action: Serving as the company’s outsourced Head of Corporate Development, translated strategic objectives into acquisition criteria and standardized strategic/financial screening frameworks. Mapped the addressable market (including deep dives on adjacencies), built a prioritized pipeline of targets, and tailored outreach based on ownership profile and target characteristics. Implemented CRM-based pipeline management, governance, and reporting, and supported management through evaluation, diligence, and execution on live opportunities.

Result: A fully functioning corporate development capability - the infrastructure, governance, and prioritized pipeline needed to pursue a handful of high-quality acquisitions a year through a disciplined process, rather than reacting to whatever a banker happens to bring in.

This model fits clients doing a steady handful of deals a year, where the function needs to be built from scratch alongside - not before - live deal pursuit and execution.

The Common Thread

High velocity or low, the work is the same underneath: turn strategy into a defined set of screens, build a pipeline against those screens with real ownership and accountability, and prioritize proprietary sourcing - direct owner and ecosystem relationships - over waiting for brokers and bankers to bring the right deal… and in many cases, bankers pitching platform deals to PE firms rarely touch the smaller, less visible opportunities — those move through entirely different channels. What scales up or down is the tooling and cadence, not the discipline.