In this episode of Jackquisitions, we break down the essential expert team every acquisition entrepreneur must build before buying a business. Whether you’re acquiring your first HVAC company or scaling into multiple service businesses, assembling the right support system can make or break your deal.
From legal frameworks to SBA loan processing, we cover the professionals who will help you move quickly, avoid costly mistakes, and access high-quality deals. Plus, we spotlight post-acquisition roles that keep your operations tight—like a skilled bookkeeper and a rock-solid insurance broker.
If you're planning to buy a business in 2025, this is your checklist.
🚨 In This Episode, We Cover:
🔹 Why Every Buyer Needs an M&A Attorney
🔹 Using a CPA to Vet Financials and Forecast Performance
🔹 Finding the Right SBA Lender to Get Funded Fast
🔹 How Valuation Experts Can Protect You from Overpaying
🔹 Post-Close Must-Haves: Bookkeeping, Insurance, and Staff
🔹 Bonus: Outsourcing Your Customer Service with Quick Staffers
🎙️ Host:
💼 Shoutout to Quick Staffers LLC
Need trained HVAC & plumbing CSRs at a fraction of the cost? Quick Staffers LLC specializes in placing top-tier global talent with the best SOPs and scripts.
🔥 Get $1,000 off your first placement here
204 Transcript
Jack Carr: [00:00:00] If you are going to buy a business, you're gonna lose. If you don't have a team, good deals, they don't stay on the market for a long time. As you start the process of how to find a good business and how to buy a good business, one of the first and best places to start is you need to start building a community around you.
Some of these are good, but not all of 'em. So I'm here to walk you through. What type of people you need on your side when you're getting ready to buy your first acquisition.
If you are going to buy a business, you're gonna lose if you don't have a team. As you start the process of going through and trying to figure out the SBA seven A loan process and how to find a good business and how to buy a good business. One of the first and best places to start is you need to start building a community around you.
Let people know that you are going out there to buy a business. This will open doors for you. It will open [00:01:00] doors to meeting people who know people who bought businesses and get you in contact with friends and family. Some of these are good, but not all of them, so I'm here to walk you through. What type of people you need in your, in your court, on your side, when you're getting ready to buy your first acquisition?
So before the acquisition, before you even get started, one of the first people that you should start reaching out to is an m and a attorney. This is going to be a person that you can lean on for NDAs and Lois and APAs and all these, these three letter Accu acronyms, which it always seems to be, but it helps you to cover yourself.
So as you get kind of weird and wonky things that come out of the woodworks that you, as someone to, to bounce it off of. Um, for me, when that started, one of the weird things that I received that I ended up sending to a, uh, an. BA or m and a attorney. It was a NDA that was [00:02:00] wild. It said you can't do this, you can't do that.
Uh, if you buy a business in the next five years, you still have to pay us as buy side. Like it was just didn't make any sense. It was probably not gonna hold up in court, but still, it wasn't something that I was gonna sign and it was a huge red flag. But having this person in my field allowed me to come into deals and come into the LOI process and, and work with.
Sellers with the confidence that I have a team behind me, especially a legal team, that can help me if I need to pull the triggers fast, right? Good deals, they don't stay on the market. They don't stay on the LA market for a long time. So if you have a slow attorney or slow m and a attorney, it's just you're most likely gonna get bid around or underbid or overbid and, and they're gonna swoop it up just because it's the only bit on the table or the first bit on the table.
So having a good m and a attorney is key, but also an m and a attorney. So there's a lot of attorneys out there that they might do large m and a. They might do m [00:03:00] and a for, you know. A hundred million dollar deals. It's a different process, right? The, the amount of legal paperwork on a hundred million dollar deal that indemnities and all these kind of clauses you need, it's gonna be so more, so much more stringent on a large deal than it is a small deal.
So a small deal m and a attorney for lower middle market is who you are looking for to bring in your court. Because that's gonna be somebody who's doing these kind of deals, someone who's working in this space, because that's gonna be what helps you win. It's gonna get you to the deals faster. It's gonna make you, um, more accurate at what the seller's expecting, what the buyer's expecting.
And it, it's just gonna be a cheaper option for you. You don't wanna go and spend a hundred thousand dollars on an LOI that is applicable for a, you know, a $500 million corporation. It just doesn't make any sense. Um. So that's one of the first people you're gonna go and look for. The next person that you're gonna go and look for is a good accountant, a CPA accountant.
Um, this is gonna be someone that can help you [00:04:00] with financials. They're gonna help you look at the ebitda. They're gonna help you look at validation. They're gonna help with projections and modeling. This is not someone that you necessarily need day one, but as you get closer to that, a PA and the final purchase, this is someone that you want in your pocket.
Specifically if that person can do Q of E, quality of earnings, QOE. Either way. Um, quality of earnings essentially just means that this, this company is gonna come in, they're gonna examine financials, they're gonna examine statements, they're gonna examine bank deposits, make sure everything matches up, and then they're gonna examine the quality of that.
Because if it's a residential company, but it's taking in. You know, $4,000, 8,000, $10,000 a month regularly for rent expenses. You don't want to pay for that if that's not gonna continue. Or maybe it's this one big off project that's worth $2 million and, but normally they only do 800,000, right? But this year they did 2.8 million [00:05:00] because man, they had one big project.
You don't wanna pay a multiple of something that's not sustainable, not long term. Um, or it's not really just good business, it's just a singular project that's bloating their books. So this, this person will, should help you to get rid of the bloat, make sure that you're paying a fair price. Um. And then after the fact, right?
A lot of times a lot of these CPAs or the these companies that do this, they also do bookkeeping and CPA work on the backend. So you close on the small business, you need a bookkeeper. You could go with the old owner's bookkeeper, but it's probably better to just use somebody who you trust who's gonna treat you well, is gonna do well for you, which is gonna be this individual.
So take your time, find a good CPA spec, specifically one that works in kind of the the same market. And who does QOE? So QOE. I keep saying it, but hey, either way. Um. That's a great second pick for your lineup, your bench. Just answer the [00:06:00] phone. It's one of those phrases that's always easier said than done.
I know it was hard for me and my business 'cause the phone always rings while you're out in the field trying to get something done. Or it's 8:00 PM and you're trying to get your kids to bed. Well, I have the solution for you. I'm extremely excited today to announce Quick Staffers your go-to solution for building a high performing cost effective customer service team.
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The next person that you're gonna want in your court is a really, really good SBA lender. So an SBA lender who is going to work with you specifically. 'cause we're talking about the SBA loan. If you have a. If you're going conventional or you're going private, like obviously go find a good lender. That's the key.
A good lender that's gonna work with you, right? Because that at the end of the day is. A [00:07:00] partnership that you need to make sure is a solid partnership. We are partnering with Alan Peterson because that first internet bank, Alan amazing. I've seen his work, I've seen him work personally with friends of mine.
Uh, amazing guy closes deals. And that's like, that's a lot of the key is you wanna find someone who can close deals and who has a, how can I, not a, we can't mentality because the SBA does have rules. They have really stringent rules, but. The banks also have a lot of rules, and so the rule that you're getting or the pushback you're getting might not be a bank pushback or might not be a SBA pushback, but is actually an internal bank pushback.
And so you need to find someone who's willing to work with you within a logical and reasonable standpoint. Right? The bank's rules are there for a reason as well. But some of them can be tweaked just a little bit. Hey, you know, we don't want to do this. We wanna do it kind of like this. I'm going to put down some extra money so that it covers, or whatever the case may be.
There's a [00:08:00] How can I mentality that's so important. Alan Peterson does a great job, but I don't care who you use. Just use someone good. Someone who's gonna take care of you. Someone who understands the loan process and the SBA and. Um, when you're working with the SBA lender specifically, make sure they have in-house SBA lending.
Um, a lot of times if you work with a newer lender, they might get a slightly better deal, but it's gonna take six months to close because they have to send all the paperwork up to, I believe it's North Carolina or Washington. Maybe it makes sense if it was Washington, but. Uh, they have to send all the paperwork out to a third, to the SBA itself, to underwrite and to do all those processes, whereas an in-house SBA lender at first Internet bank would just take care of that in-house for you.
Um, this is a key, use them. Early on when I was working with them, I actually was able to get an LOI from the other deal so that I didn't have to pay an m and a attorney. So I cut a few corners there. But it wasn't, I wasn't looking for the entire [00:09:00] LOII was looking for just a clause. Like they had a specific clause on how something worked and how they've seen it.
And so I'm utilizing my resources. I have an m and a attorney who's doing my regular draft, LOI, and then I want to change it up a little bit. And so I'm gonna go and grab, hey, this little clause, say, Hey, I want a clause like this, but it does this, this, and this. So I'm using the tools and the people around me who are in this every single day to be able to drive better, more efficient.
Um, and, and, and easier, frankly, closing. Um, so next you want a business valuation expert. So this could be your CPA if they have experience doing it, but it's probably gonna be a third party. I really wouldn't worry about this to the end. The bank will actually order one or force you to order one. Um, not a huge deal, in my opinion.
Um, but it is important because if the valuation comes too far away from what, um. Your purchase price, like the bank's gonna have issues with that. [00:10:00] It's the same thing in real estate. It's nothing new, but generally, um, you know, it's, it's something that you want to do at some early-ish stage to make sure that you're not, you know, shooting yourself in the foot and having to come up with two, three, 400,000 more in cash just to close.
Um, the next is, like we talked about, is you can go with that CPA to do due diligence with QOE or you can go with a third party. Um. Yeah, there's a few good third parties out there. They're all over Twitter, they're all over LinkedIn. You can find some, some good reviews, um, making sure that you're getting that.
And then after you close on that transaction, some people you want in your corner, and this is like really early on, is you want to ensure that you're starting to work with that bookkeeper, whether that's the same bookkeeper from the CPA on the front end, but usually I like to make sure that it crosses over, you know, the close barrier, if you will.
But really making sure that you have a bookkeeper day one that's your bookkeeper or that's your CPA accounting firm because. When you utilize someone else's, [00:11:00] there's, there's so many things that can happen. You don't know if you trust them, you don't know, especially as you go through the due diligence process.
Like they, they put some stuff weird, they hide things, they move things. Who knows? It's better to start fresh. Um, another one is insurance and broker. You might need this upfront right before you close on the SBA loan. Just because, um, they're gonna require you have insurance to close, most likely at least life insurance.
I think some other insurances as well. But if not. Get an insurance broker right away, someone who's gonna actually go to bat for you. And same with healthcare insurance broker. Like you want these insurance brokers to really go to the market and, and try to get you the cheapest rates possible because these are gonna be some of your largest expense items.
So making sure you're sitting down with them, you're understanding, I know day one you want to just get into the business and, and understand operations. And if you're in a plumbing, you want to do plumbing. And if you're an electric, you want to do the electrical like you got in business and to own a business 'cause you want to like do that trade.
But insurance actually is [00:12:00] almost more important, right? You save, if you can save for 40, 50, 60,000 a year on insurance, like that's an area where you could potentially do that. Um, health insurance, you wanna make sure your team's happy that they're getting the great insurance coverage that they need, that nothing changes over the transition.
'cause you will lose people if you have lapses in, in healthcare coverage. So making sure that after the fact that that person is extremely important to bring on, uh, right after you close. I think those are the, the big five groups that you really need. There's some other people that that. Or in the weeds.
There's some groups that are, that'll help you understand the m and a process better. Uh, you can find them out there. Um, there's some groups that'll help you find deals out there as you're going through the deal process. But in terms of like must have, these are the five people you must have in your corner ready to go.
As you're starting to go on your search, do it early, find them, make those connections. Start talking to them because these connections are gonna be the difference between. A [00:13:00] good, clean, fast, close, and long drawn out high expenses, just a brutal close at the very end of the day. If you like what you heard today, if you found any value in it, like share, give us five stars wherever you listen.
We appreciate it and, uh, keep coming back for more.
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