Over 290 M&A Transactions: An Insider's Look on the Deal-Making Journey with Craig Dickens

This episode was brought to you by The Magnolia Firm. Specialty M&A Business Brokerage firm helping business owners sell their company. https://exit.themagnoliafirm.co/top
In this YouTube video, Craig Dickens from JD Merit Group is interviewed about his experiences in the world of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Craig begins by sharing his background, including his success in building a mail-order company for tri-athletes, which he eventually sold. He then discusses how he used the proceeds from that sale to pursue his next ventures.
SHOW NOTES:
00:00 Episode brought to you by The Magnolia Firm
00:51 Intro to Craig Dickens from JD Merit Group
01:23 Building mail order company for Tri-Athletes - 26k mail list - and sold that
05:59 What was next? Parlayed the proceeds
07:11 How much did you parlay to the next opportunity
08:53 Finding his niche size
11:18 Buying & Selling a QuickBooks company
12:23 Looking for another acquisition - How you make decisions to invest
15:20 Bending will to reality - the endowment effect
16:23 Elon Outlier
18:25 Any of those acquisitions not work out and why?
21:45 Why Craig sold one at a time
23:18 What usually happens when you over pay for acquisitions
25:08 Did you use partners?
27:18 How Craig structures deals - Finding the deal, Sponsoring the Deal
29:22 How much money does Craig bring to deal
30:52 Example of $20 million deal - law of large numbers Capital Providers
33:30 PE or FO or HNWI
35:24 Why he moved from owning the companies to M&A Advisor
37:30 Personal Guarantees - learning from our failures
40:04 Should I sell now?
42:24 How do you know - John Warrillow - Built to sell
44:24 How do you find clients - Guess what? LinkedIn
45:45 Why do they pick your firm over others?
49:12 First time sellers - first time buyers
51:24 What do you do if seller wants more than company is worth?
54:57 Fastest deal done - and average
56:45 How much of your tri-athlete mindset helped you in M&A - learn to accept suffering
58:24 When you deal has hair on it - the M&A Axiom - price the risk
59:54 How Craig's M&A firm charges
1:02:01 How many deals do you work on per month
1:02:30 How do feel about your work today
LINKS to Craig Dickens
https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigdickens/
https://jdmerit.com/