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Do Not Do Your First Acquisition Until You Hear This (with Seth Deutsch)
12/23/2025
Do Not Do Your First Acquisition Until You Hear This (with Seth Deutsch)
Most founders treat buying a business like a shortcut. In reality, your first acquisition is old-school marriage. It cannot end in divorce. Seth Deutsch joins me to unpack how to know if you should acquire at all, how to avoid blowing your first deal, and how to build an anti-fragile business that investors actually want. Most founders think they have a growth problem. In reality, a lot of them have an acquisition problem waiting to happen. In this episode I sit down with Seth Deutsch, deal architect, investor, and operator who has led or advised on more than 70 acquisitions, helped build nine private-equity-backed platforms, and worked on over 2 billion dollars of enterprise growth. We talk about buy vs build, why acquisitions are like merging families, and the mindset you need before you go anywhere near your first deal. Seth breaks down culture, vision, peer-group cashless mergers, and what it means to make a business anti-fragile from an investor’s point of view. We get real about customer concentration, deal structure, earnouts, and why buying a company to save a struggling one is like adding fuel to a house that is already on fire. He also opens up about complex PTSD and severe childhood abuse, how he hid it for years while building a high-performance career, and why he now speaks openly so other founders know it was not their fault and it does not have to define them. If you are thinking about buying a business, selling your own, or just want to understand how investors really see your company, this conversation will give you a real-world lens most people never share. __ ► Free resource: 90 Day ROI Playbook — Multiply Your Profits with the Skills No One Trains __ Guest: Seth Deutsch Topic(s): Mergers and Acquisitions, private equity, owner operator, small business, investors, leadership, enterprise growth, cashless merger Music Licensing by Audiio License #: 0981896904 #cashlessmerger #business #privateequity
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