Think Big, Buy Small

Think Big, Buy Small

Are you looking for an alternative to a career path at a big firm? Does founding your own startup seem too risky? There's another compelling path open to you: acquiring a small business and running it as CEO. Co-hosted by Harvard Business School Professors Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff, the show is an extension of their courses on small firms, including Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, which has been taken by thousands of MBA students, and their highly-regarded book, HBR Guide To Buying A Small Business, which has sold more than 65,000 copies. In this series, Rick and Royce guide listeners through the different milestones of the journey to acquiring an enduringly profitable small business, sharing insights on how to evaluate prospects, raise capital, and ultimately determine if this path is right for you.

Episodes

The Role of Culture in Scaling an ETA Business

September 14, 2026 • 51 mins
After a self-funded search led to the acquisition of Ally Waste in 2020, James Crawley grew the company more than thirty-five-fold. What did it take to scale the business from a handful of employees to a nationwide operation, with hundreds of team members working independently across dozens of states? Many entrepreneurs focus on systems and processes when growing a business. James, however, argues that culture deserves equal attent...
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The Rise of Long-Term Holding Companies in ETA

August 31, 2026 • 52 mins
In Season Two, Kent Weaver, one of the most experienced operators and investors in the search ecosystem, joined Rick and Royce for a wide ranging conversation about entrepreneurship through acquisition. In this episode, they focus on the rise of long-term holding companies, vehicles designed to acquire and build multiple businesses over an extended time horizon. The conversation explores why some entrepreneurs are choosing to build...
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Season Three Questions and Answers with Rick and Royce

December 1, 2025 • 47 mins
Hosted by producer Katie Zandbergen, Rick and Royce return for their end-of-season dive into listeners’ most pressing questions – those that many aspiring acquisition entrepreneurs wrestle with. They explore how age and personal finances may influence ETA risk tolerance; whether an MBA truly matters for success in a traditional search; how to handle the loneliness that often accompanies searching for and running a small...
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Partnership, Purpose, and the ETA Path to Concierge Medicine

November 24, 2025 • 52 mins
Partners in search, Nick Kerr and Shaquille Walker, join Rick and Royce to share their journey from risk-averse upbringings to acquiring HealthBridge, a concierge primary care clinic on Long Island. In this conversation, they discuss how their backgrounds, family considerations, and desire for autonomy led them to entrepreneurship through acquisition, while also reflecting on the emotional highs and lows of searching for, buying, a...
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Navigating Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition as a Family

November 17, 2025 • 38 mins
In this special “Friends and Family Night” episode, Rick and Royce speak with Meghan Orzetti about the experience of entrepreneurship through acquisition from the perspective of a searcher’s spouse. Drawing on her personal experiences, Meghan shares candid reflections on supporting her husband, Season One’s Michael Orzetti – a Marine Corps veteran, turned searcher, turned CEO – through the uncert...
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Reshaping One’s Career Through Acquisition Entrepreneurship

November 10, 2025 • 41 mins
Ike Ukawuba was a self-funded searcher whose path to entrepreneurship began far from the boardroom. Raised in a single-parent household in Chicago, he began his career in engineering before discovering his true passion for business and problem-solving. After several years at Accenture, followed by experience at some startup ventures, Ike found his stride in entrepreneurship through acquisition – a model that allowed him to le...
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Pioneering Search in Frontier Markets

November 3, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode, Rick and Royce sit down with Rob LeBlanc, Co-Founder at Ambit Partners, to explore the evolution of search fund investing beyond traditional markets. Rob traces his path from building an ETA platform in South Africa to backing searchers across frontier economies, offering an insider’s view on how entrepreneurship through acquisition is adapting globally. The conversation examines the unique dynamics of s...
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CEO Success in Operating Small Business Acquisitions

October 27, 2025 • 44 mins
Michael Aubrey, having walked the path from searcher to successful operator and investor, draws on his wealth of experiences to offer a masterclass in small business growth. In this episode, he talks candidly about navigating early operational setbacks and hiring challenges, the strategies he employed to build a national salesforce, and why he believes a deep understanding of one’s customers is the foundation for real improve...
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Bonus Episode: The Art and Strategy of Negotiation, with Jim Sebenius

October 20, 2025 • 28 mins
In this bonus episode, hosted by Adam Outland, we're featuring a conversation from our friends at The Action Catalyst, a top-rated leadership and entrepreneurship podcast. While Think Big, Buy Small focuses on the unique entrepreneurial path of acquiring and operating a small business, The Action Catalyst shines light on all types of entrepreneurs and the distinct insights they offer. This episode welc...
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Climbing the Revenue Ladder: Understanding Quality in Business Acquisitions

October 13, 2025 • 47 mins
In this episode, Rick and Royce are joined by A.J. Wasserstein, Senior Lecturer at the Yale School of Management, for a deep dive into one of the most critical – and often misunderstood – aspects of buying a small business: revenue quality. Together, they unpack the full spectrum of revenue types, from transactional to contractually recurring, and explore how these distinctions impact everything from growth potential to...
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The Journey From Engineer, To Entrepreneur, To Exit

October 6, 2025 • 58 mins
Rick and Royce sit down with a former student of theirs, Paige Sopcic, an engineer turned entrepreneur, to discuss her inspiring entrepreneurship through acquisition journey. After leaving a promising career at GE and earning her MBA, Paige launched her search in partnership with an accelerator and acquired a specialty canning company called CanSource. In this episode, she shares how she found the business, scaled it rapidly throug...
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An Experienced Lender’s Perspective on Acquisition Financing

September 29, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode, we’re joined by Bruce Marks, a veteran SBA lender with decades of experience and well over 1,000 business acquisition deals under his belt. Bruce draws on his deep expertise in the acquisition lending space to reflect on the role of SBA financing in ETA, how lenders assess deals, the importance of debt service coverage, along with evaluations of risk, and factors that searchers should consider when evaluating...
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You Don't Need an MBA to Pursue ETA

September 22, 2025 • 46 mins
It's always fascinating to hear the journey of someone who doesn't have a conventional MBA background but still finds their way to ETA, identifies high-quality acquisition opportunities, and then successfully buys and operates a small business. In this episode, we meet Tom Allsworth, who was in the Merchant Marine Academy and the Marines Corps, followed by some work experience at home and abroad, before acquiring Pacific Oppor...
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A Bird’s Eye View of ETA

September 15, 2025 • 50 mins
Will Smith, Partner at Minds Capital, has been host of the Acquiring Minds podcast for over four years and, during that time, has had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of searchers-turned-entrepreneurs, affording him a true bird’s eye view of the ETA landscape. In this wide-ranging discussion, Will reflects on personal traits that set top-performing searchers apart; company characteristics that can stack t...
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The Value of Roll-Ups As Seen Through the Lens of Music Schools

September 8, 2025 • 52 mins
Jeff Homer is the founder of Ensemble Performing Arts, an organization that provides back-of-house support to music schools, allowing teachers to focus on what’s most important to them, excellence in music education. Though there are now over seventy music schools under Ensemble’s umbrella, it all began with Jeff’s acquisition of a single school in Colorado, initially meant as a side hustle that would allow h...
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Where Are They Now? A Conversation with Nick Wheeler 

August 25, 2025 • 24 mins
Last summer when, after a self-funded search, Nick Wheeler was only a few months into his new role as President at Tra-Cal, Rick and Royce had a chance to speak with him about his early experiences at the company’s helm. In that Season One episode, Nick confessed that he was “drinking from the fire hose”, but he also believed that Tra-Cal had been a high-quality acquisition and was optimistically looking ahea...
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Questions and Answers with Rick and Royce

April 21, 2025 • 53 mins
At the end of each episode, Rick and Royce ask listeners to reach out with any questions they may have related to entrepreneurship through acquisition. In response, we’ve heard from people at all stages of their entrepreneurship through acquisition journeys, along with other stakeholders in search. Now, in the final episode of Season Two, our hosts address many of the queries that were received. This wide-ranging discussion i...
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A Successful Model for Roll-Ups in Automotive and Beyond

April 14, 2025 • 55 mins
A few years ago, Logan Leslie began his search with the goal of rolling up smaller, same-industry enterprises under the umbrella of one company. Fast forward to today and Logan is CEO of Main Street Auto, which is the parent company to over ninety auto repair shops around the country. In this engaging conversation, Logan shares why he believes the auto industry is ideal for roll-ups, along with his strategy for doing so therein; hi...
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The Journey and Impact of a Mission-Driven Searcher

April 7, 2025 • 53 mins
In the last three years, Adriana Garcia Ceja graduated from Harvard Business School, became a mother and, after a funded search, acquired an aging life care management business called ElderTree. Many would-be CEOs set out on their searches primarily wanting to experience the joys of operating a small business, while being more agnostic about what the company does. This was not the case for Adriana, who from the outset wanted to acq...
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Learnings From a Former Searcher, Current Investor, and Industry Wise Man

March 31, 2025 • 45 mins
Kent Weaver was an early participant in the world of search, completing a self-funded search that led to his acquisition of a healthcare company in 2002 and then, four years later, putting on his investor hat to make his first investment in search. Today, he’s one of the most experienced and highly regarded funding partners in the space, having invested in over one hundred searches, both traditional and self-funded. In this w...
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