VoiceAmerica Radio Interview

A couple days ago I spent close to an hour on the phone talking mergers with Rick Corrado, host of The Independent Business Owners Show on VoiceAmerica. 

Corrado is an energetic, high-achieving, entrepreneurial guy who’s easy to talk to.  Our conversation hustled across an array of topics, hitting myriad aspects of M&A such as corporate culture, employee issues, and important leadership behaviors in the context of mergers. 

You can listen to the interview by clicking on http://www.voiceamerica.com/voiceamerica/vepisode.aspx?aid=49428.

Most of the listeners in Corrado’s audience are small business owners.  But make no mistake—in their scheme of things, small deals are big deals.  Whether acquiring for fast growth or selling to cash out on their life’s work, the stakes—relatively speaking—are indeed high.  And these small business executives face integration challenges as daunting as those that confront the leaders in Fortune 500 companies.

Think I’m exaggerating?  Want a second opinion?

I remember some years ago coming across an in-house memo circulated in Westinghouse.  It said that, in Westinghouse’s experience, small deals were every bit as difficult to make work as large ones.