Shawn Rodricks, Head of M&A - Independent Consultant

Scaling an M&A function follows a predictable pattern. But it’s not because the deals aren't there. It’s because the operating infrastructure wasn't built to hold quality as pace increases. The playbook lives in a PDF no one reads, integration is labeled a post-close problem, and the team is undersized. When five deals land in the same week? Everything slips at once.

Shawn Rodricks has been on the other side of that problem. Over 15 years in corp dev, he closed 220 acquisitions across two organizations: 37 at Rexall in the pharmacy sector, then 183 at Amerivet Veterinary Partners. He joined as employee number six and scaled the function from near zero to a platform that sold. He built the team, the playbook, the diligence methodology, and the integration process. He also made early mistakes that taught him to wire in before you scale. This episode is the operating system behind those 220 deals. It’s also the part most practitioners skip until it's too late.

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What You'll Learn

• The five-part operating model behind 220 acquisitions
• How to hire for biz dev vs. corp dev roles in a lean M&A team
• The pre-close vs. post-close integration framework
• Why roll-ups that confuse acquisition with strategy fail
• How a deviation tracker makes your platform exit cleaner when it's time to sell
• Why qualitative diligence feeds directly into your forecast and purchase price
• The closing-week SWAT team structure to use when multiple deals land in the same week

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If you're scaling a deal function and want the operating framework behind Shawn's approach, DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, has the Buyer-Led M&A™ Certification, built from 400+ practitioner interviews into a framework you can actually run. mascience.com/buyer-led-ma-certification

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