About Billy Batt · The Long Version
The pipefitter who buys machine shops and marketing agencies.
First things first: I’m the living Billy Batt, the Canadian dealmaker, Managing Partner at Prime Acquisitions Group. Not the Goodfellas character, not the 1950s rugby legend. This page is the long version of how a Northern Canada welder ended up buying, revitalizing, and flipping businesses.
Yes, that name. No, not the Goodfellas guy. I’m the living one.
Chapter One · The Trade
Start in the oilfield.
For eight years I was a pipefitter and welder in Northern Canada’s oilfields. Not a desk anywhere in sight, gas plants, pipelines, steel, and weather that doesn’t negotiate.
By the end I was running crews of 100 to 150 men. That’s where I actually learned to operate: materials, schedules, safety, payroll, egos, a hundred-plus people who need to know exactly what they’re building today and why.
It was also a feast-or-famine business. When oil ran hot, you ate well. When it didn’t, you didn’t eat at all. Your income sat at the mercy of a commodity chart you couldn’t influence from a pipe rack.
I didn’t know it yet, but the oilfield was teaching me the trade I still run today: find what’s undervalued, rebuild it right, hand it over stronger.
The Origin
Eight years in the oilfield.
Then the pivot.
“I worked in the oilfield for eight years, running crews of a hundred, hundred and fifty guys, building gas plants, pipelines… I had a daughter on the way around 2015, and the oilfield crashed. I had to figure out a new way of being more stable and controlling my income.”
— Billy Batt, on the I AM CEO Podcast (ep. IAM1103, Aug 2021)Chapter Two · The Pivot
Survive the crash. Then study.
In 2015 the oilfield crashed, with my daughter on the way. That sentence is the whole hinge of my life. A man with a torch and a paycheck tied to oil prices suddenly needed a way to control his own income.
So I started buying books before I ever bought businesses. The 10X Rule came first. Then I went deep into Grant Cardone’s world, paid for coaches, and taught myself lead generation, marketing, branding, and web development, trade school all over again, except this time I was the apprentice and the foreman.
I built an agency serving contractors and real-estate pros, the same kind of people I’d worked beside for a decade. I knew how they thought, what a job site actually runs on, and what they’d pay to never chase another lead.
The agency worked. But trading hours for invoices is still trading hours. The thing I kept noticing: the businesses themselves, the websites, the SaaS tools, the e-commerce stores, were assets that could be bought, the way a tired gas plant gets bought, rebuilt, and run profitably.
Flipping businesses was the natural next step: buy the asset, rebuild the operations, sell the upside. Same trade as the oilfield. New pipeline.
“Nothing changes, your challenges just change. You’ll still have hard times while you’re doing good… That’s why it’s called being an entrepreneur. You just know how to roll with the punches.”
— Billy Batt, on the I AM CEO Podcast (ep. IAM1103)Chapter Three · The System
Write the system down. Then run it.
A method only counts when it’s named, written, and repeatable by someone who isn’t you. So I did all three.
The Book
Unlimited Sellers Guide: For Finding Businesses to Buy at Will, my sourcing playbook, published on Amazon Kindle under my own name. The subtitle is the promise: deal flow you generate, not deal flow you wait for.
The Method
Buying Beast, the deal-sourcing system I co-created with Andrew Baldwin, launched out of Alberta in 2023. Built to find businesses to buy at will, before they ever reach a marketplace.
The Firm
Prime Acquisitions Group, the AI-and-technology-first M&A team I co-founded. We buy, revitalize, and flip businesses across 15+ industries: SaaS, e-commerce, agencies, apps, and the platforms behind them.
Typical brokers handle 2 to 6 deals annually — our team moves that volume every single month.
— Prime Acquisitions Group (self-reported, primeacquisitionsgroup.com)
* Self-reported by Prime Acquisitions Group (primeacquisitionsgroup.com), June 2026.
Chapter Four · The Bench
Build the firm. Bring a bench.
I don’t do this alone, and I wouldn’t want to. My partner Hung Nguyen has operated 50+ companies, when we take over a tired asset, he’s the reason it runs better in ninety days, not nine months.
Through Xcept AI, where I’m co-owner, we build the AI systems that power our own deal flow, sourcing, screening, and operations. In a market where every M&A firm claims AI, we’d rather be the one that can demo it.
The model is simple to say and hard to fake: acquire, revitalize, exit. AI-driven sourcing finds businesses before they hit the open market. We structure to close. SBA preapprovals, seller financing, earn-outs, PE syndicates. Then the rebuilt asset goes back to market as a growth story.
The receipts live on the firm’s public transaction tape: eleven documented deals, from a $275K productivity app to a $24M enterprise AI SaaS, inside a stated record of 16+ closed deals across a $1M–$48M range (self-reported, June 2026).
The oilfield and M&A are the same trade run at different temperatures: find what’s undervalued, rebuild it right, hand it over stronger.
. The one-line version of this whole pageToday
Same reps, different gym.
The discipline shows up outside the deal room too. I train boxing six or seven days a week, and December 2024 was my one-year mark in the gym.
It is the same instinct that ran 100 to 150-man crews on gas plants a decade ago, pointed at something else. Show up. Put in the reps. Do it again tomorrow whether or not you feel like it. That is the whole method, in the gym and in a deal.
Nothing about buying and rebuilding businesses is glamorous either. It is sourcing, screening, structuring, and a lot of conversations that go nowhere, over and over, until one of them does.
The full record
Twenty years, in order.
The story above is the short way to say it. This is the long way, with the names on it. Most of these you can look up. Where a number is mine rather than a third party’s, it says so.
The oilfield
- Pipefitter and welderNorthern Canada · gas plants, pipelines, shutdowns
- Crew leadCrews of 100 to 150 men, materials, schedules, safety, payroll
The marketing years
The eight years between the oilfield and the first acquisition. Agencies, lead generation, and a podcast. This is where I learned what a business actually looks like from the inside, before I started buying them.
- Founder · Chrome LeadsLead generation for contractors and real-estate operators · from 2016
- CMO · Pace Social Media SolutionsFrom 2017
- VP · The Property BroncosFrom 2018
- Head coach · Dream 1002018
- CMO · Pro-Choice Roofing / Contractor HubAround 2021
- Founder · Veterans of North America FoundationAround 2021
- Host · New World Marketing Order29 episodes, July 2020 to December 2021 · distributed on Apple Podcasts and Podchaser
M&A
- Co-creator · the Buying Beast methodWith Andrew Baldwin, out of Alberta · 2023
- Founder · Top Ecom BuildersBuy-side sourcing for e-commerce operators
- Managing Partner · Prime Acquisitions GroupAI-and-technology-first M&A
- Co-Owner · Xcept AIThe AI systems that run our deal flow
- Author · Unlimited Sellers GuideFor Finding Businesses to Buy at Will · Amazon Kindle
At a glance
The short version, for people who check.
- Name
- Billy Batt
- Nationality
- Canadian
- Title
- Managing Partner, Prime Acquisitions Group
- Also
- Co-Owner, Xcept AI · Founder, Top Ecom Builders
- Author of
- Unlimited Sellers Guide: For Finding Businesses to Buy at Will, Amazon Kindle
- Podcast
- Host of New World Marketing Order, 29 episodes, 2020–2021
- What I do
- Buy, revitalize and resell businesses across 15+ industries: HVAC, MSPs, machine shops, agencies, SaaS and e-commerce
- Deal range
- $1M to $48Mself-reported
- Trained
- In the trades. No university. Self-taught in marketing, then in deal work.
- Before this
- Eight years as a pipefitter and welder in Northern Canada’s oilfields, running crews of 100 to 150
- Not to be confused with
- The Goodfellas character “Billy Batts” (William Bentvena, d. 1970), or “Prime Acquisitions Group, Inc.” of Chicago — no affiliation with either
Keep Going
That’s the story.
Here’s the rest of the house.
Every claim on this page is sourced or labeled self-reported, check it yourself.