For a long time I struggled to find work that was both meaningful and something I was actually good at. I bounced between roles. What I kept coming back to was one thing I could do well: look at a system, find where it was broken, and fix it with better numbers, better division of labor, and a better process.
One of those roles was a sales job at an outsourcing company, selling marketing to small businesses. Simple work, but the floor was stalled. Nobody was hitting quota, morale was flat, and you could feel it walking in every morning. No amount of hype from sales trainers moved the needle.
So I did what I always do: I went to a whiteboard. I worked out the lead volume, the daily averages, the numbers I'd need to actually make a living. And the math stopped me cold. At the pace the process ran, I was never going to hit quota, and neither was anyone else. It wasn't a talent problem. There were genuinely good reps on that floor. It was the slow, monotonous process everyone was following.
On that whiteboard I mapped a different plan: automate the busywork, send more volume to lists that actually fit, and write messages built to connect with the owner and earn trust instead of bragging about the product. I launched it the next week. Pretty soon my desk turned into a hangout, with reps who'd told me they were about to quit starting to see replies again. I showed the whole floor how it worked. I wanted the people around me to win.
That's when I learned something that shaped the rest of my career: plenty of people love the idea of innovation and resent the practice of it. I got called into a manager's office and told to stop and get back on the standard process. I tried to explain what it was costing the company. It didn't land, and I could see nothing was going to change. I left that August and started the first version of Aligned Profit. (The program shut down a year later, and more than thirty people on that team were laid off.)
In 2023, a few dental-side business brokers asked if I could point the same approach at sourcing acquisition targets. It worked fast. Within a year I was running sourcing for more than fifty brokers across the country, and three of those brokers were earning $500K+ a year off the deal flow. One crossed $1M.
The breakthrough that made it work came from a scary place. I was newly self-employed with a four-month-old at home and not much runway, and the campaigns had to work. I remembered a marketing idea called intent-based messaging: make the message genuinely relevant and people will actually listen. So I found a way to pull public information on the dentists I was reaching out to and wrote a thousand messages, each one specific to the person receiving it. Within a week I had a hundred replies and twenty calls. That's still the core of how we work.
Then the broker model broke, twice. Some of those brokers started bidding on the very deals I was finding for them, the deals they'd been hired to sell. And a $65,000 sourcing fee I'd counted on for months evaporated on New Year's Day, for reasons I couldn't control. The broker owned the relationship. I owned the labor. I was building someone else's business.
Around the same time, buyers started reaching out and asking me to source for them, and that fixed the conflict completely: the owner we surface goes to the buyer who paid for the search. No shared pipeline, no divided loyalty. So I pivoted the firm, and built the model so the incentives can't drift: one client per segment, a trained operator on every call, and the owners we find for you going to you, never shopped elsewhere and never bid on by us.
We start with the right owners, not a giant list. Your buy box is scored against millions of records on 15 data points: owner age, tenure, ownership structure, lease and hiring signals, and more. Better targeting is the first step toward a deal sellers actually want to do.
Personalized, research-backed outreach across email, mail, LinkedIn, and phone, run by a trained M&A operator. Owners can tell the difference between that and a generic blast. It's how trust begins.
Before an opportunity reaches you, we've done the pre-diligence groundwork: surfacing financials and pressure-testing fit. The seller feels prepared, and the deal moves faster.
A dedicated two-person team runs your search. The people don't change tier-to-tier or mid-engagement. The toolkit they have to work with does.
Runs the search day-to-day. Kickoff strategy, criteria refinements once the campaign is live, and the first call with every owner who responds. Qualifies fit. Surfaces financials. Pressure-tests seriousness.
Runs the sourcing engine. Builds the buy box, validates contacts, drafts outreach from the research captured during validation. Manages send cadence and deliverability, and writes the weekly report.
Sourcing works when both sides bring something real. So we're selective about who we take on. Here's where we say no.
If your buy box is too small for the methodology to earn its keep, or so broad it isn't really a buy box ("any profitable business under $5M EBITDA"), we won't start. We need a defined sub-segment, geography, and deal-size range before we source against it.
Equity uncommitted. Debt unsourced. Plans built on 100% seller financing. The methodology won't fix the underlying position. We expect capital ready to deploy against the thesis.
Plenty of buyers reach out after finishing a book on acquisition entrepreneurship and figure they'll source their first deal in a month. We respect the ambition. We're not the right partner for the first $5M of your education.
We don't compete in parallel pitch processes. We don't run searches for buyers who aren't seriously looking. If you're shopping firms for the lowest quote, this isn't the engagement.
We build relationships with sellers on trust and honesty.
We expect the same from our clients.
We're a buy-side deal sourcing and consulting firm. We identify, contact, qualify, and cultivate prospective business sellers on behalf of buyer clients for potential acquisition.
We're not a registered broker-dealer. We don't represent clients in securities transactions, negotiate terms, participate in closings, or provide legal, tax, or investment advice.
Our role ends when a qualified, cultivated owner is introduced to you and the conversation moves to terms. From there, your legal counsel, financial advisors, and diligence team carry the deal to close.
We'll put together a Buy Box Viability Analysis™ on your target industry and geography. Twenty minutes, yours to keep. If the fit isn't right, we'll say so.