Two Growth Stories – Acquisition & Franchise

Two partners share two different growth stories – David Tramontana grew a company from 2 to almost 2000 employees (about $50M in revenues) through both organic growth and acquisition, and now he and Jim Collins lead a professional services business whose entire franchise is growing 30% per year.

We start with David’s home care acquisition-focused growth model. For background, about $24M of his company’s $50M revenue (prior to his exit) came from 14 acquired businesses (with median size acquisition revenues of $800K – ranging from $200K to $8M in revenues).

5:00 – what caused 2 of 14 acquisitions to fail? “Not controlling the timeline… employees were leaving… not controlling timeline and messaging… (7:09) technology and timeline.”

7:24 – “it’s not mergers & acquisitions but acquired & acquiree... (8:15) we always communicated to the seller this isn’t a merger, it’s an acquisition.”

Jim and David both talk about the growth story of the fractional CFO service they now lead.

12:39 – asked why he joined a franchise, Jim said “the primary reason was adding structure to the service offer…the franchisor providing back office/admin… structured marketing… and being able to focus my attention.”

20:04 – about the ideal company for utilizing a fractional CFO service is “$5M to $15M of revenues… likely more interaction with their bank, other advisors, and the owner and management team lack the expertise and time, where a fractional professional can help.”

27:05 – “you like the concept of ‘entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs’… growing a service business, what’s both simple and hard is finding that quick way to differentiate yourself, to define your hedgehog concept, isn’t that what drives the growth of a service business?”