Archive for category: Know Your Broker

One of the ways a broker joins our team is by being a client of ours. We either sell their business, or help them buy one, and they end up loving the process and come knocking some years later. Ken Weiner is one of the former: Valerie Vaughn sold his company, Creative Candles, in 2016.

The company was a Kansas City-based candle manufacturer, started in 1961 by a flower-child artist type and her chemistry-oriented spouse. They specialized in hand-dipped taper candles and featured a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. They had a very good run for a while, but by the time that Ken bought it in 2005 it was in pretty bad shape. They had never updated what had made them successful in the first place. Unfortunately, they were people with a great idea who didn’t build a business that could stand the test of time.

In a sense, it was a fixer-upper, and Ken spent a lot of time rebuilding the brand by working closely with major customers like Bloomingdales, Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, and Simon Pearce. His frequent trips to NYC made him an expert on what it took to succeed in the hard world of retail.

But this knowledge of business and its inner workings goes back to his childhood. His father owned an independent pharmacy and seemed to always struggle. Ken was only in grade school but already he had the concept that, “owners weren’t supposed to work so hard.” As he looks back on it now, he thinks his father was really a job person that got talked into a business by a friend. Indeed, Ken’s dad, “was probably someone who should have just worked as a staff pharmacist; he would have been a lot happier,” Ken muses.

This taught Ken early that skill in a particular field, be it in pharmacy, or as he would learn later on, in candle-making, does not qualify you to run a business in that field. You have to know that you don’t know a lot and be willing to learn. As you learn, you have to put together a process and training that goes along with that for your team.

On the other side of the table, with those who would like to buy a business and don’t know where to start, Ken often asks about someone’s personal and professional life. It’s not always possible to buy a business aligned with a passion (e.g. buying a candle business when you’re a big candle fan already) so he often will ask them to look back and review what they were not only talented at but really enjoyed.

When he’s not helping buyers and sellers, Ken lives in Kansas City, where he can enjoy the company of his three grandchildren, who sometimes accompany him up to the family lake home in Miami County. If you want some running tips, don’t hesitate to ask him: he’s run six marathons.

For more information on each of our brokers, view our team profiles.

Doug Hubler has been a broker for over two decades now, so you might be forgiven for forgetting he had a whole other life before he ever started selling businesses, a life that took him all around the Midwest and up the ranks in the financial world.

Doug’s degree was in finance, so a job with GE Capital was a great opportunity out of the gates and he stayed with them for 14 years, going to Dallas, then Denver, then on to Chicago, where he made a switch to Ford Credit, once again heading back to Colorado (this time to Colorado Springs) to help Ford open up an office under the name Fairlane Credit. But three years later, realizing that not coming up in the auto business or with Ford family connections made it difficult to get things done, he decided to come back to Kansas City and start a remodeling business. Doug admits that back then he didn’t know you could buy a business instead of building one.

But those of you who’ve had experience know that the remodeling business isn’t an easy one, and a couple bad situations later, one with a subcontractor and one with a customer, Doug decided the remodeling business was probably not for him, and decided to see what was available out there.

Want Ads

Younger people will need to ask their elders about these things called “want ads” but there used to be such a thing in printed newspapers, and in between the pages of the Kansas City Star was a sales job for Sunbelt Business Brokers. It had all the expected verbiage of such an ad, including “unlimited earning potential” and “make your own hours.” With a young family to support, Doug grabbed the opportunity.

The big problem? Doug joined in mid-2001 and September 11th happened later that year. All business transactions were paralyzed and for a while, no one was thinking about buying or selling anything. For business brokers, it’s all about surviving your first year or two. That time allows you to build up rapport and a network, and a pipeline that you can begin to harvest in good time. But Doug held on, then thrived, and by 2005 he became a manager at Sunbelt and by 2010 he was in a position to buy the franchise.

Apex Begins

While the franchise model may have made more sense in the early days of Apex, Doug decided to go an independent direction which would allow him to do some marketing and outreach that made more sense in the local market. Since then Apex has gone from strength to strength and is one of the first names people turn to in the area when considering a business transaction in the Main Street and Middle Market sectors.

When he’s not leading the team at Apex (or trying to recruit new team members), Doug keeps busy with his wife, three children, and two grandchildren. He also enjoys acrylic abstract painting, something he does fairly regularly (check out some of his work on Instagram) as an outlet for his own thoughts about what’s going on in the world. When asked about what he enjoys the most about what he does, he responded, “What gets me to come to the office every day is working with a great team of brokers, collaborating and strategizing on their specific deals. Those deals often end up with a seller reaching his/her ultimate retirement goal, and a buyer starting a brand new adventure.”

Doug is always looking for the next Doug Hubler. He can’t put a want ad in the newspaper anymore, so feel free to call us instead!

Having been a business owner multiple times, Ryan Wenrich is another one of our brokers here at Apex for whom business ownership isn’t a theory, but a way of life.

Ryan was born and raised in Garden City, Kansas, but had plans of living in a completely different world.  His undergraduate degree was in finance and international business, with some study abroad time in Japan.  He had planned to return there to start work and a career, but there was a girl, and she had no plans in Japan.  He made the decision to stay stateside.

Without a corporate career to build, Ryan decided to buy some restaurants from his father.  His dad had been a CPA and to diversify his income had bought some restaurants as Ryan was growing up.  Ryan managed to talk a brother into going in with him on it.  They had some early success and before he knew it, Ryan had restaurants, a property management company, an accounting firm, and even a florist shop!  He was serving on multiple boards and felt spread a mile wide and an inch deep.  He made the decision to scale back a lot.

Most of the businesses got sold but some of them were simply closed and with all that restaurant experience he took on a role as Director of Food and Beverage for a local Kansas City business with over 60 different food and beverage concepts.  While he enjoyed the work, when Covid-19 hit, he was let go right away and he pondered what he would do next.

We had actually helped him sell a business some years ago and he had kept in touch with us.  Knowing we are always looking for solid team members, Ryan reached out to have a discussion.  What he loved about the possibility of brokering was the chance to exercise his entrepreneurial muscles: he would get to look at all kinds of businesses and talk with owners, but he would also be back in business ownership, in a way, by developing his broker practice.

Though he is a newer member of the team he’s already got some great stories.  One of them included a deal that almost fell apart at the last moment.  The buyer needed a license in order to operate the business he was purchasing and during the diligence process it became clear that he would not be able to obtain the license, which then affected the amount of the loan the bank was willing to finance.  Ryan got everyone back to the table and after a friend of the buyer who could obtain the license was brought in and cut into the deal, and the seller agreed to carry the financing that the bank would not, the deal went through.  “It’s all about getting everyone crystal clear about what they want to achieve from the transaction,” Ryan noted.

On the other end of the spectrum, before deals are even in the works, Ryan finds that a lot of owners have unrealistic expectations of what their business will fetch in the marketplace.  As we always say, a business is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and by the time you get to a realistic valuation and the tax implications, a lot of sellers can get discouraged and say, “Well, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing now and earn this money.”  At that point Ryan tries to get to the root of the issue by asking what’ll be different X years from now if they keep on that path.  A business either sells or closes, and given that 99% of business owners have never done exit planning, sometimes our first conversations with them can be a difficult serving of hard truths.

While he’s done a few deals with dental and optometry practices, Ryan is resisting a specific niche: “I’m a generalist and want to see every type of business that’s out there.”

When he’s not working with buyers and sellers in KC he’s at his home in Topeka where his eight year-old daughter lives. What time he has after that he likes to spend outdoors: skiing, sailing, snowboarding, kayaking, mountain biking, and trail running.

From the very start of her career, Debbie Small was interested in small businesses and entrepreneurship. Even as a child she confessed, “I didn’t read Glamour magazine like my girlfriends, I read Entrepreneur!” In college, she put those lessons to work and created Party Pizzaz, a business that sold unique party favors to sororities and fraternities at Kansas State University. She spent the first decade after college as a Senior Media Consultant for Time Warner producing comprehensive television advertising campaigns for small business owners and placing them on cable networks. She found the work fulfilling and loved the opportunity to consult with business owners to assess their needs and grow their revenue.

Due to her experience, she is recognized as one of the top brokers in the country!

Utilizing her core strength of working with business owners, Debbie joined the Apex team in 2004. She’s now worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions industry for nearly 20 years. While she’s sold hundreds of businesses in a variety of industries, she’s still the same friendly and approachable person that she was when she first started as a broker. Her longevity and seniority with Apex have given her extensive experience helping business sellers and buyers navigate the numerous complexities of selling and buying a business. She’s helped many sellers avoid challenges that can arise when cashing out of one of their largest assets, their company.

Due to her extensive experience, work ethic, and customer focus, she is consistently recognized as one of the top business brokers in the country!

Debbie was named Apex Broker of the Year & the International Business Broker Association’s Platinum Chairman’s Circle Winner!

When asked why she loves selling companies, Debbie replied, “there is nothing better than helping make business buyers’ and sellers’ dreams come true! It’s the American dream to own your own business, to be an entrepreneur, and then sell your company, reaping the financial rewards of all your hard work!”

She went on to share the example of a manufacturing company she sold that was generating $1M a year in profit. Within five years of buying the business, the buyer had tripled his cash flow profit on the company and came back to Debbie to sell the operation. She said that “it is difficult to find that kind of return on investment anywhere else including the stock market, real estate investments, or securities.”

Debbie noted that buyers can face challenges when trying to acquire a company. “The buying environment is very competitive.” Debbie has thousands of buyer confidentiality agreements on file with only a small percentage of buyers actually acquiring a business. Savvy buyers become the ‘squeaky wheel’ with her to get her attention and rise to the top. She advises buyers that “there are too many well-capitalized buyers in the market to play the waiting game on making an offer. A solid business will be snatched up immediately! It is best to come to terms with the seller on an accepted purchase price prior to doing a deep dive into due diligence.”

Along with working as a broker, Debbie loves being a mom to a teenage son. She also owns and manages residential real estate properties. Even now, as Apex’s Broker of the Year, she still remains as driven to achieve as she did when she was that young girl flipping through business magazines!

To learn more about Debbie’s broker services, feel free to contact her at .

In this occasional series, we will share profiles of our team here at Apex so you can get to know the men and women that make us best qualified to help you buy or sell a business.

“This is the first time in my career that I have found myself still challenged after the 3-year mark, because each situation is complex in its own unique way – I love it!”

Valerie has a rock-solid educational foundation (apparently a Ph.D. in Chemistry wasn’t enough for her; she also has an MBA) underpinning dozens of years of work at some important companies: Marion Labs, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, just to name a few.

The roles at those companies challenged and encouraged her to keep going deeper with her core competency: problem-solving.

“To be honest, I love that it’s complicated,” she opines. “It’s complicated to find sellers, to get them to the point of selling, to find the right buyer, do the dance and get the deal closed. I love putting all the pieces together to form a puzzle.”

Valerie has been at Apex for over 4 years now, and she’ll tell you that the first year was the hardest. She was doing a lot of networking, meeting a lot of people, and “drinking too much coffee.”

But she knew that she was doing the right things and putting in the work, and in time she would get to help represent manufacturers, HVAC companies, and women-owned businesses, the last of which are a particular passion of hers.

“I think you’ll find that a lot of women-owned businesses tend to be in really good shape financially, with systems in place, which, of course, de-risks the purchase for the buyer.”

She currently serves as the President of the Kansas City Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) where she gets to see a lot of the challenges (and success stories) of these businesses up close.

“I’m not looking to close a deal as quickly as possible, but rather feel as though I helped everyone at the table win. My clients often tell me that they appreciate how much I really cared about getting them what was best.”