Most entrepreneurs think about Growth in one way. Sell more products, add more customers, hire more people. But what if there was another way to grow your business dramatically without having to sell more “stuff”? My guest today says there is.
Joining me today is Marty Fahncke, a seasoned marketer and mergers and acquisitions advisor with more than 30 years of experience growing and scaling businesses, and over 20 years of experience in M&A.
Over the course of his career, Marty has helped companies scale to more than one billion dollars in total revenue and has executed more than $450 million in mergers and acquisitions transactions.
Interestingly, Marty’s introduction to acquisitions came early when a business he co-launched with friends was acquired for seven figures after just 18 months. That experience launched a career helping entrepreneurs buy businesses, sell businesses, and grow through acquisition.
Today Marty is a Certified Merger and Acquisition Advisor and a partner at Westbound Road, where he helps founders navigate the complex process of buying and selling companies.
In this episode we’re going to talk about two topics every entrepreneur should understand:
How acquisitions can be used to grow a company dramatically, and how to position your business so that when the time comes, you can sell it for maximum value.
Marty’s Website:
WESTBOUND ROAD, LLC
https://www.westboundroad.com
Mike Konrad entered the electronics manufacturing industry in 1985. Four decades later, he continues to dedicate his career to advancing reliability within the industry. In 1992, he founded Aqueous Technologies, an equipment manufacturer serving the electronics sector. Becoming an entrepreneur was never part of his plan, he simply had a passion for a product he designed. When his employer declined to build it, he realized the only way forward was to create it himself.
Mike entered business with strong technical skills but no business acumen. His early assets were ego, passion, arrogance, ignorance, and above all, a poor assessment of risk. Ironically, those traits proved useful in the beginning, ignorance really was bliss. But as his company grew, Mike recognized that those same traits could lead to its downfall. To survive, he had to transform himself, developing business acumen, adopting sustainable strategies, and evolving from reckless enthusiasm into purposeful leadership.
Today, with 40 years of industry experience, Mike shares both his technical expertise and his entrepreneurial journey, offering lessons from personal and professional growth, the near-misses that almost derailed him, and the strategies that carried him forward. He is also a strong advocate of “conscious marketing”, moving beyond traditional chest-thumping advertising toward education-driven authority building. By offering value through knowledge rather than hype, Mike helps organizations connect with a new generation of decision-makers who prefer independent research over bold claims.
