Post-acquisition integration is where most M&A acquisitions succeed or fail. Steve Nunn is CEO of Intista, a company that helps to integrate acquired small-to-midsize companies (“air traffic control for integrations”). As a follow up to Ep #18 with Steve, in this episode we’re having a chat about his journey of bottling his secret sauce - by building a subscription online training model that “turns employees into integration managers” and a Mastermind Group for graduates.
2:53 - “We develop a five-step process…it’s just simplifying a way to integrate businesses… these five steps are equal in importance but differ greatly in length and work effort.”
3:56 - “Small-to-midsize businesses fly at a different altitude (compared to) billion dollar companies, where the integration process will be much more detailed, more arduous.”
4:34 - “I use this image of ships going through the water and the size of the business is the size of the ship… the smaller you get in business, the more reactive and more affected they are by the turbulence of the change that goes on…but they’re more agile.”
6:40 - “With teaching what I’m doing I’m actually getting employees to learn my business… I’m actually putting myself out of work.”
7:54 - “We turn your employees into integration managers.”
11:25 - “It was very hard, creating a simple process… if it was simple to write a simple process, somebody would have done it before.”
15:40 - “I took anyone’s advice. Sometimes that wasn’t all that useful. In hindsight, I would have tried to validate the advice… be careful who you listen to.”
16:27 - “I made so many mistakes…but did make it in the end… this ‘keep going’, ‘I made so many mistakes’ has really stuck with me on this journey.”
17:22 - “You cannot grow unless you’re willing to make mistakes, able to make mistakes and keep going, fix them… and don’t make the same mistake twice.”
22:22 - “In consulting you become worried about giving away the secret sauce…but I see it as an opportunity to build trust… the more you give away, the more you can do together.”
If you’d like to speak with Steve one on one, you can email him at Steve@Intista.com