Billy Batt

The Deal Tape Is HVAC, Machining, and MSP — Not Just Agencies

Billy Batt — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 23:43:19 +0000

Skip to content

ON THE RECORD · DEAL TAPE

The tape is HVAC, machining, and MSP — not just agencies.

Billy Batt · Managing Partner, Prime Acquisitions Group · 30 August 2026 · 4-min read

Yes, that name. No, not the Goodfellas guy. I’m the living one.

People hear “digital M&A” and picture agencies. That is one lane. It is not the tape.

Prime Acquisitions Group publishes phase-by-phase walkthroughs of live deals. The ones on the record include an $8.4M HVAC roll-up funded in 90 days at 4.4× adjusted EBITDA (August 2024), a $12M precision-machining deal taken past the SBA ceiling on alternative capital and an earn-out (February 2025), and a $3.1M-revenue MSP that was under LOI. There is also a contested agency deal we won buy-side. Agency work is in the mix. It is not the headline of every close.

If you only read the podcast title, you would think I buy agencies. I do, when the books are clean and the owner can leave the room for a week. I also buy and structure HVAC platforms, machine shops, and managed-service businesses, and I use SBA preapprovals, seller financing, and earn-outs when that is what gets a deal to close. The public walkthroughs are on the deal tape.

Why this matters for a search

A buyer looking for someone who has actually closed an HVAC roll-up should not have to guess from an agency-only page. Same for a machining owner who is past the SBA limit, or an MSP operator who wants a clean earn-out. The work is already documented. The personal site should say so in the same words the tape uses — no extra zeros, no invented volume.

Deal counts still disagree across the internet (this site, the firm site, a YouTube title). Until that is settled, I am not picking a new headline number. The walkthroughs stand on their own: named vertical, named structure, named date.

Figures in this piece are from the firm’s public deal tape on this site, not a third-party audit.

How Agencies Actually Get Sold: My M&A Playbook, on the Rising Talent Podcast

Billy Batt — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 01:59:57 +0000

Skip to content

ON THE RECORD · RISING TALENT PODCAST

How agencies actually get sold.

Billy Batt · Managing Partner, Prime Acquisitions Group · 15 August 2026 · 6-min read

Yes, that name. No, not the Goodfellas guy. I’m the living one.

Dennis Yu interviewing me for the Rising Talent Podcast, July 2026. About nine minutes.

Dennis Yu had me on the Rising Talent Podcast to walk through how agencies actually change hands. Not the theory of it. The part where an owner who has never sold anything works out what their business is worth, gets their numbers in order, and gets to a close without losing the deal halfway through.

Here is the short version of what I told him.

Most owners have no idea they are allowed to sell

This is the thing that surprises people. A founder will run an agency for nine years, take a decent income out of it, complain about it constantly, and never once seriously ask what it is worth. They assume selling is something that happens to other people, at other sizes, in other industries. It is not. If a business has clean books and can run for a week without the owner in the room, somebody will want it.

Dennis and I spent most of this conversation on that gap, because closing it is most of the job.

Stop betting on the Hail Mary

The mistake I see on the buy side is falling for one deal. An operator finds a business they love, decides that is the one, and spends four months chasing it. Then the seller gets cold feet or a better offer, and the operator has nothing. Four months, no deal, no pipeline, back to zero.

The fix is unglamorous. Build deal flow so no single conversation carries your whole year. When we are running properly we will have around twenty-one offers out at once. Not because every one closes, but because the ones that do close are the ones you were never emotionally married to.

Nobody is running ads for this

We do not buy ads to find deals. Automation and AI do that work now, and the difference is not small. Our sourcing costs came down by roughly seventy to eighty percent, and the volume of deals we see went up around tenfold. Same team, same hours.

That is also the honest answer when people ask what AI actually changed in this business. It did not replace judgement about which businesses are worth buying. It removed the expensive, boring part in front of that judgement.

Exit prep is not complicated, and it should not cost you anything

When an owner tells me they want to sell in a year, the first thing I ask for is boring: a clean profit and loss, three years of financials, and a CIM that explains the business to somebody who has never heard of it.

That is the whole starting kit. If a broker wants to charge you to assemble it, walk. We put that together for owners at no cost, because a seller with organised numbers is worth more to everybody in the room, including us.

AI integration is now the biggest single lever on your multiple

This is the newest change and the one most owners have not priced in. Two agencies with identical revenue no longer get identical offers. The one that has genuinely built AI into how the work gets delivered gets a materially better multiple, because the buyer is purchasing margin that scales rather than headcount that does not.

If you are eighteen months out from selling, this is the highest-return work available to you. Not a rebrand. Not a new website. Rebuilding delivery so it does not need another twelve people to double.

The twenty-four to thirty-six month window

Most sales that go well were set up two to three years before the close. That is the window where you clean up the books, reduce owner dependency, and get the operational story straight. It is also the horizon that matters for SBA financing, which is how a large share of these deals actually get funded.

Selling in ninety days from a standing start is possible. It just costs you money, and the money it costs is usually more than two years of preparation would have.

Why deals die

You cannot force love. I have had deals with perfect numbers on both sides fall apart because the seller could not picture handing their people to that particular buyer. That is not irrational and it is not a problem you fix with a better spreadsheet.

What you can do is have enough conversations running that one collapse is an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe. Which brings it back to deal flow.

Structure is what actually closes it

Price gets the attention. Structure gets the signature. Seller financing, earn-outs, SBA preapprovals, an equity rollover so the founder keeps some upside: those are the tools that bridge the gap between what a seller wants and what a buyer can defend to their own capital.

When a deal feels stuck on price, it is usually not stuck on price. It is stuck on risk, and structure is how you move risk around until both sides can live with where it sits.

Watch the whole thing

The full conversation with Dennis runs about nine minutes and covers all of the above plus how we work with investors on the buy side. If you are an agency owner thinking about an exit in the next couple of years, the exit prep section is the part to start with.

Deal volumes and cost figures in this piece are from my own firm rather than an outside auditor, and are described as I gave them on the episode.

Yes, That Name. No, Not the Goodfellas Guy: Owning Your Name as a Living Operator

Billy Batt — Mon, 11 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Skip to content

From Billy’s Desk · The Name

Yes, that name. No, not the Goodfellas guy.

Billy Batt · Managing Partner, Prime Acquisitions Group · 11 May 2026 · 5-min read

This entire essay is the chip, expanded. For the record →

The Short Version

I share a name with “Billy Batts,” the Gambino soldier whose murder Goodfellas made famous, a dead man who pulls 2,889 searches a month while my exact spelling records zero. A rugby Hall-of-Famer who died in 1959 outranks me too. This is what it’s like to run M&A diligence with a mobster squatting on your name, and the disambiguate-first playbook I’m using to take it back.

Meet the dead men holding my name.

Type my name into Google and you don’t get me. You get William “Billy Batts” Bentvena, d. 1970, Gambino crime family, the man Frank Vincent played in Goodfellas, the “go home and get your shine box” scene, the body in the trunk. His spelling pulls 2,889 searches a month, plus another 1,177 for “billy batts goodfellas.”*

Behind him: Billy Batten, an English rugby league Hall-of-Famer who died in 1959. In Google’s Knowledge Graph the mobster scores 284, the rugby legend 75, and me, the one who’s alive, with a firm, a book, and a deal tape, roughly 24. When BlitzMetrics audited my name in June 2026, I had no Knowledge Panel, no Wikidata item, and no entity home. Two dead men were beating me at being me.

Understand the diligence moment.

Here’s why this isn’t a funny cocktail story. In M&A there’s a moment after the handshake when the seller’s lawyer opens a laptop and checks you out. For me, that search returned a murdered gangster, a 1950s rugby player, fragments of my LinkedIn, and an SEC alert on an unrelated Chicago company that happens to share my firm’s name (no affiliation, for the record).

Deals don’t die loudly at that moment. They just go quiet. Nobody emails you to say the search results felt off. The audit put it better than I could:

“He closes a broker’s year of deals every month. Google thinks he’s a dead mobster.”

— Billy Batt Authority Audit, cover page (BlitzMetrics, June 2026)

Disambiguate first. Amplify second.

The instinct is to shout louder, post more, run ads, flood the zone. Wrong order. Amplifying an ambiguous name just sends more people into the wrong search results. You don’t out-corroborate a Scorsese film on the dead man’s spelling, and you shouldn’t try.

The win condition is narrower and completely achievable: make my exact spelling, my firm’s name, and the AI-engine question “Who is Billy Batt?” resolve to the living one. “billy batt” had zero recorded search volume at audit time*, an empty lane. On zero-volume names, the first definitive page typically owns the result within weeks.

Build the home before the audience.

So the first move wasn’t content. It was plumbing: billybatt.com/, unregistered until June 2026, about twelve dollars, built as a facts-first entity home. Person schema with a disambiguatingDescription that names the difference in machine-readable terms. One canonical identity string on every surface. The same footer line on every page of this site, telling Google and every checker exactly which Billy this is.

It’s the same trade I’ve always run, honestly. The oilfield taught me you don’t pour product through unpressure-tested pipe. My whole story is finding undervalued assets and rebuilding them right, it just took an audit to notice the most undervalued asset I owned was my own name.

End the joke on your deal tape.

Here’s the twist I’ve come to enjoy: the collision is also the hook. Nobody at a conference forgets the M&A guy who opens with the shine-box joke. The audit’s rule for using it:

“Nobody forgets the M&A guy who opens with the shine-box joke, provided the joke ends on his deal tape.”

— Billy Batt Authority Audit (BlitzMetrics, June 2026)

That’s the whole playbook for any operator with a crowded name. Lead with the wink, land on the receipts. Mine are 16+ closed deals across a $1M–$48M range*, eleven of them documented on a public tape. The dead man has the movie; I have the transactions.

If your own name is sitting unclaimed, or worse, claimed by someone you’d rather not be confused with, register the domain this week. It’s the cheapest acquisition you’ll ever close. And if the business you want to discuss is one you’re selling, you know where to find the living Billy Batt.

* Search and Knowledge Graph figures: Ahrefs (US) and BlitzMetrics KG Explorer, pulled June 10, 2026, per the Billy Batt Authority Audit. Deal figures self-reported by Prime Acquisitions Group (primeacquisitionsgroup.com), June 2026; largest documented transaction $24M.

The Data The Authority Snapshot The full scoreboard this essay quotes, with 284 vs 75 vs ~24. The Origin From oilfield pipelines to deal pipelines The 2015 pivot that started all of it. The System The Buying Beast method How the deal tape the joke ends on gets built.

How the Buying Beast Method Sources Off-Market Deals

Billy Batt — Thu, 07 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Skip to content

From Billy’s Desk · The System

How the Buying Beast method sources off-market businesses.

Billy Batt · Managing Partner, Prime Acquisitions Group · 7 May 2026 · 4-min read

Yes, that name. No, not the Goodfellas guy. I’m the living one.

The Short Version

Buying Beast is the deal-sourcing method I co-created with Andrew Baldwin in Alberta and documented in my book, Unlimited Sellers Guide: For Finding Businesses to Buy at Will. The premise is in the subtitle: don’t wait for listings, build a system that finds willing sellers before they ever reach a marketplace, then structure each deal to close. It’s the sourcing engine behind Prime Acquisitions Group’s self-reported 16+ closed deals.

Stop shopping where everyone shops.

Walk into any business-for-sale marketplace and you’re standing in a picked-over aisle with every other buyer on earth. Listed deals come pre-loaded with competition, inflated expectations, and a broker whose job is to run the price up on you.

The good businesses, the tired SaaS with loyal customers, the e-commerce store run by a founder who’s quietly done, mostly never get listed. The owner sells to whoever shows up first with respect and a workable structure. The entire game is being the one who shows up first.

Source at will, that’s the entire promise.

That’s why we built Buying Beast, the sourcing method I co-created with Andrew Baldwin out of Alberta, launched in 2023. And it’s why my book is titled the way it is: Unlimited Sellers Guide: For Finding Businesses to Buy at Will. Not “when the market cooperates.” At will.

A named, written-down system beats a talented improviser every time. I learned that running oilfield crews, where the checklist is the difference between a weld and a funeral. The method makes seller-finding a repeatable production process instead of a lucky break.

Let the machines make the first pass.

Prime Acquisitions Group is an AI-and-technology-first M&A team, and that’s not a brochure line, through Xcept AI, where I’m co-owner, we build the systems that power our own deal flow. AI-driven sourcing surfaces businesses before they hit the open market; humans spend their hours on the conversations that matter instead of the haystack.

“Typical brokers handle 2 to 6 deals annually, our team moves that volume every single month.”

— Prime Acquisitions Group (self-reported, primeacquisitionsgroup.com)

That volume claim is ours and I label it that way, self-reported.* But the mechanism behind it is exactly what this essay describes: when sourcing is systematic, volume stops being heroic.

Structure to close, not to impress.

Finding a willing seller is half the method. The other half is structuring a deal that actually closes. Look at our public transaction tape and you’ll see the toolbox in use: SBA preapprovals, seller financing, earn-outs, including a three-year performance earn-out on a $13.5M e-commerce SaaS, and a PE syndicate on a $24M enterprise AI deal.*

Off-market sellers aren’t auction sellers. They care about their team, their customers, and certainty of close, often more than the last dollar. A flexible structure is how you pay for certainty with something other than cash.

Show the tape.

Methods are claims. Tapes are receipts. Ours shows eleven documented transactions from a $275K productivity app to that $24M enterprise AI SaaS, inside a stated record of 16+ closed deals across a $1M–$48M range.* One aesthetics practice went from first conversation to closed in four weeks, that’s what showing up first with a workable structure buys you.

“Investors come to me when they want to buy online assets & businesses.”

. My Instagram bio, @billybattofficial, the whole method in one sentence

If you want the long version of how I got here, it’s on my About page. If you’d rather skip to the part where we talk about your business, buying one or selling one, the channels are here and my DMs are open.

* Deal figures self-reported by Prime Acquisitions Group (primeacquisitionsgroup.com), June 2026. Largest documented transaction: $24M; 11 deals on the public transaction tape.

Previous Essay From oilfield pipelines to deal pipelines The 2015 pivot that made the method necessary. The Receipts On the Record The full deal tape, the book, and every verified placement. Next Essay Yes, that name. No, not the Goodfellas guy. Owning your name as a living operator.

From Oilfield Pipelines to Deal Pipelines: The 2015 Pivot

Billy Batt — Mon, 04 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Skip to content

From Billy’s Desk · The Origin

From oilfield pipelines to deal pipelines: the 2015 pivot.

Billy Batt · Managing Partner, Prime Acquisitions Group · 4 May 2026 · 4-min read

Yes, that name. No, not the Goodfellas guy. I’m the living one.

The Short Version

I spent eight years as a pipefitter and welder in Northern Canada’s oilfields, running crews of 100 to 150 men on gas plants and pipelines. When oil crashed in 2015, with my daughter on the way. I taught myself lead generation, marketing, branding, and web development from books and paid coaches, built an agency for contractors and realtors, and eventually became a M&A operator. The trade never changed: find what’s undervalued, rebuild it right, hand it over stronger.

Run the crews.

Before I ever heard the term “deal flow,” I ran pipe. Eight years in Northern Canada’s oilfields as a pipefitter and welder, gas plants, pipelines, steel that has to hold pressure in weather that wants to kill it.

By the end I was running crews of a hundred to a hundred and fifty men. People think welding was my education. It wasn’t. Logistics was. Materials, schedules, inspections, payroll, and a hundred-plus guys who need to know exactly what they’re building today and why. That’s an operating company. Nobody calls it that on a pipe rack.

Watch it crash.

The oilfield is feast or famine. You’re either eating well or you’re not eating at all, and which one isn’t up to you. It’s up to a commodity chart.

“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.”

. Me, on the I AM CEO Podcast (ep. IAM1103, Aug 2021)

That sentence is the hinge of my whole life. 2015: oil collapses, the work disappears, and my daughter is on the way. A man with a torch and a mortgage doesn’t get to wait out a cycle. I needed income that answered to me.

Buy the books before the businesses.

My first acquisition wasn’t a company. It was a library card’s worth of other people’s experience. The 10X Rule came first, then everything else in Grant Cardone’s world. Then I paid for coaches, real money I didn’t really have, because tuition is cheaper than a decade of trial and error.

I taught myself lead generation, marketing, branding, and web development the same way I learned to weld: badly at first, then less badly, then well enough that people paid me. Trade school all over again, except this time I was the apprentice and the foreman.

Build for the people you knew.

I didn’t chase glamorous clients. I built an agency for contractors and real-estate pros, the people I’d worked beside for a decade. I knew what a job site actually runs on, what a slow month feels like, and what they’d pay to never chase another lead. Speaking customer wasn’t a marketing skill I learned; it was a first language.

Trade hours for assets.

The agency worked, but trading hours for invoices is still trading hours. What kept catching my eye was the asset underneath: the websites, the SaaS tools, the e-commerce stores. They could be bought, the way a tired gas plant gets bought, rebuilt, and run profitably.

So that became the business: buy the asset, rebuild the operations, sell the upside. I wrote Unlimited Sellers Guide to document how I find businesses to buy at will, co-created the Buying Beast sourcing method with Andrew Baldwin out of Alberta, and co-founded Prime Acquisitions Group, an AI-and-technology-first M&A team. As of June 2026 the firm reports 16+ closed deals across a $1M–$48M range,* with eleven transactions documented on our public tape.

Roll with the punches.

“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.”

. Me again, same episode

People hear “oilfield welder turned dealmaker” and assume the crash was the bad chapter. It wasn’t. It was the forge. The oilfield taught me that nothing stays up forever; 2015 taught me to own the thing that pays you. Everything since, the agency, the book, the firm, is just that lesson, compounding.

The full story, with the timeline and the receipts, lives on my About page. And if you’re holding a business and wondering what it’s worth to someone like me, my DMs are open.

* Deal figures self-reported by Prime Acquisitions Group (primeacquisitionsgroup.com), June 2026. Largest documented transaction: $24M; 11 deals on the public transaction tape.

Next Essay How the Buying Beast method sources off-market businesses The system that came out of the pivot. Also From the Desk Yes, that name. No, not the Goodfellas guy. Owning your name as a living operator. The Long Version My Story Oilfield → crash → rebuild → the firm, with the timeline.