Bonus Episode with David Barnett

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbarnettmoncton/
Company Website: www.DavidCBarnett.com
Email: dbarnett@alpatlantic.com

Jason Cutter [00:00:00]:
Hey everybody. Welcome to the After Show. My name is Jason. With me I have David C. Barnett. David, we just finished recording the main show. Long conversation, lots of good nuggets. How are you feeling about that conversation?

David C. Barnett [00:00:13]:
I feel great. I, I don’t think that I mispronounced anything.

Jason Cutter [00:00:17]:
You did good. There was one point where you didn’t do any. Did do some math that you want to do at the end, but it’s probably for the best. People tune in, they can find out why it’s probably best you didn’t do that math. I thought it was great. I always know and I always know because I’ve done a lot of podcasts over the years and interviewed and hosted a lot of things. I know based on how many notes I take. If anyone watches the show and they can see me taking notes, it’s interesting stuff and I like to reference it so I can always tell when it’s a good conversation, when I’m taking lots of notes.

Jason Cutter [00:00:48]:
And then we’re here now in the after show. This is kind of like, you know, the main show is done. The, that part is, is, is complete. Now we can talk about some other topics and if people want to find out your background and all of your information, the links will be in the show notes. They can find you on LinkedIn, they can find you on YouTube. DavidCBarnet.com is also the, the main site for you as well. But let’s jump into these. This is kind of like the bonus questions, the things that are always on my mind that I love asking everyone.

Jason Cutter [00:01:17]:
So the first one I’m going to throw at you is what do you think business brokers need to do to survive in 2030 and we’re recording this late 2025.

David C. Barnett [00:01:28]:
Oh, that’s a great question. I think that what is happening is that the, there’s going to be an increasing intermediation between the web and the people and it’s going to be this AI and right now people are using ChatGPT, it’s Google and it’s, it’s giving them answers by surfing the web. I, I think what’s going to eventually evolve is people are going to create their own personalized filters of the Internet just like the algo feeds you certain content. I think people are going to start to create sort of their own kinds of algos and so I think it’s going to be more important than ever that if you’re going to be a business broker that you need to be creating something online that’s talking about deal making. And I think you’ve got to have some stuff in there that is going to get through these filters. And a business owner is almost certainly going to be filtering for help to sell my business, because my business is X. And this is why I think it’s so important that your content has to be integrated not just how to sell a business, but how to sell your lumber mill. Right.

David C. Barnett [00:02:42]:
So that the lumber mill owner out there will land on that piece of content. And I can tell you from someone who’s been making YouTube videos for over a decade, that old content, it comes up like top 10 most viewed videos in the last calendar quarter. I checked it the other day. Only two of them are from 2025. The rest are from earlier years. So don’t be afraid of creating content that is going to sit on the shelf for a while because the robots can find it.

Jason Cutter [00:03:11]:
And, you know, evergreen content like that, things that are valuable will be valuable now, they’ll be valuable in five years. Right. The fundamentals are there for the most part. And I think that’s great advice and I think that’s, that’s fascinating to think about that. And one of the things, like you said, the personalized filters for the Internet is something where we all find it kind of creepy, but we all accept it is we want things personalized and customized. As much as people don’t like, let’s say Facebook listening to you and then showing you ads for what you just talked about. We also like that because then it serves up things that are, you know, feel personalized and customized to us, which is then giving us the right things. If, if you want to buy this versus buy that, it’s serving that up to you.

Jason Cutter [00:03:53]:
And you, it’s creepy. You don’t like it, but you like it. And then you, you use it and then it rewards the platforms. And so you’ve got to do that. You got to make everything personalized and everything customized. Like you said to that lumber mill owner who, who’s in this size of a lumber mill, maybe even this state. Right. They got to feel like it’s to them.

David C. Barnett [00:04:14]:
Well, this is why I said in the interview, I think you need to stake out certain industries or at least descriptions of certain kinds of businesses that you help with so that your content becomes peppered with the words that will flag that to these AIs.

Jason Cutter [00:04:29]:
And we won’t get off on this tangent, but I just posted something. As of when we’re recording this, I was talking about SEO being dead. It was actually part of a conversation I had With Adam Coffey recording for the podcast. And it’s interesting to think where we’re playing the SEO game just doesn’t work as well because people want that specific thing for them, not just what the SEO algorithm’s gonna tell them. It’s like, what do real people actually want and what resonates for them? And so let’s go to the next. Oh, yeah, go ahead.

David C. Barnett [00:04:57]:
Well, I, I don’t think you’ll ever do badly. Making good content that people want to read, that’s got to be the ultimate thing.

Jason Cutter [00:05:05]:
And, and the key is for people who might not understand what I, What I’m saying is that some people play the SEO game in order to get people to come to their site or get Google to rank them higher versus what you’re saying, which is the key punchline, which is just create good content for the right reasons to the right audience and they will find it and then you’ll be rewarded with that. Right, Right. That’s the key with that. So going into the next question is what do you think is the number one tech shift for M and A? And obviously for anyone listening to the main episode, make sure if you haven’t check out that first episode is, we know that your answer is not going to be automation in the M and A process, in the business broker process. So what do you think? Is the big tech shift happening or going to happen?

David C. Barnett [00:05:56]:
I don’t know because. And I’ll tell you why. I have this YouTube show about doing small business deals. And so I get a lot of attention and in some months I hear from two or three different people who want my opinion on their new tech thing for M and A. And so there are all kinds of computer folks out there trying to create some kind of new tool that’s supposed to make it all easier. And what I find interesting is that we’ve been in the Internet age for over. We’ve been in the Internet age now for 30 years, right. And really all that’s been able to happen, seriously with technology in this field is that the Sunday paper business for sale ads have gone online and we can, we can email things to people instead of FedExing them and I guess deal rooms.

David C. Barnett [00:06:46]:
But that’s not new. Like, yeah, it’s. People are really trying hard to make some kind of tech thing that’s going to make it easier. And I struggle because as anyone will know, in this field, there’s like not even standardization between financial statements on different businesses. Two, two different businesses in the same industry could have different bookkeeping conventions about where they record one thing versus another. One person puts something in, cost of goods sold, the other person does not. So it’s tough. I mean, you could maybe have some kind of tool to automate the analysis of gas stations or something like a really specific type of business.

David C. Barnett [00:07:32]:
But I, I think it’s challenging and I’ve have, I’m running to more and more people who are using AI stuff to try to cut corners. And I was actually given a report that somebody created with an AI prompt that they’ve been working on for months. And I thought it was great. It was very informative, it gave me a lot of information. I knew someone in that industry and I emailed it to them. I said, what do you think about this? And they said, well, I completely forgot this, this, this, this and this. And that’s the problem with AI. It sounds very convincing.

David C. Barnett [00:08:03]:
And if you don’t know an industry, you may. AI might lead you to a place where you’re missing some fundamental information.

Jason Cutter [00:08:12]:
I think that’s always fair and accurate with things. Right? It’s the trust but verify and the ability to understand what’s valuable. And that is interesting too what you say about like, where technology is and where we’ve come in 30 years and really what it all means if you boil it down to what it can do. I can grab my phone and I can order something to be delivered maybe even in the next 30 minutes. But you know, what’s really different about life and that, you know, other than the connectedness we’re recording this late 2025. What’s big lesson from this year so far for you?

David C. Barnett [00:08:51]:
My big lesson this year is just how resilient things can be. Like, you know, I’ve spoken with so many business owners who are really dealing with a high degree of uncertainty and to see numbers come out from these statistics branches of the government showing that things are doing as well as they are. I’m surprised because every business owner I took, I talked to guys who use steel and aluminum in the United States and their manufacturing, and they say, hey, my cost of goods just went up 50% because of a tariff. And I talk with people who used to sell pieces of equipment into Europe but now can’t compete because their costs have gone up in the US And I talk to people in Canada who say I’m worried to make any kind of investment because I’m down the road from a steel mill and I don’t know if those guys are going to get laid off. And so all through the economy there Are people now sitting on their cash, sitting on their hands, afraid to do things because nobody knows what’s going to happen? And so I thought the wheels were going to fall off things a lot sooner than they seem to be.

Jason Cutter [00:09:56]:
Yeah, yeah, it’s so true.

David C. Barnett [00:09:58]:
Right.

Jason Cutter [00:09:59]:
And a lot of people don’t think about those, the, the trickle down effects of all that. And so if we look at that. Right. The resiliency, which is important, what are you most excited about in the next year?

David C. Barnett [00:10:12]:
What am I most excited about in the next year? That’s a great question. I think I’m most excited about the stuff going on in my own business and how we have plans to grow and, and you know, I’ve, I’ve, there’s some, there’s some new services and new markets that we’re trying to address that we feel are underserved. And so we’re, we’re hatching a plan to try to, to try to diversify ourselves to do something a little bit different for the next year. And I’m excited to see how that’s going to play out.

Jason Cutter [00:10:42]:
I love it. I’m excited to see what that’s going to look like. If you’re excited about it with everything that you’ve done, like what that’s going to be. So we should do a plan on at least one, maybe two kind of comeback visits.

David C. Barnett [00:10:55]:
Sure.

Jason Cutter [00:10:55]:
Hear some stuff and I’m excited. Uh, and then last question. If you had a magic wand, you could get one thing, one marketing related thing or task done automatically, like it just done, just happens. What would that be?

David C. Barnett [00:11:12]:
Oh, it’s easy. I would want all of the people who could become my customers to get together in one room and so I could have 75 minutes in front of them.

Jason Cutter [00:11:20]:
Really?

David C. Barnett [00:11:21]:
Yeah. So that, yeah, I could make a pitch to them, tell them about how I could help them and have them, you know, have the opportunity to create a relationship with me.

Jason Cutter [00:11:32]:
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Until then, you got to do all your digital breadcrumbs and all the content and all the things out there to get them to you. But we’ll, we’ll, we’ll see what we can do. Maybe that’s what the tech wizard should put together. Some way to just get all of them all together.

David C. Barnett [00:11:46]:
A conference.

Jason Cutter [00:11:48]:
There is that, that’s the, you know, going. You talked about it in the first show. It’s like, you know, old things becoming new again. There is that mode, there is the conference mode as we close out. Anything else that you want to share? Anything you Thought of, you know, from the first segment that didn’t have a chance to share anything you want to leave the audience with before we close out?

David C. Barnett [00:12:07]:
Yeah, it’s. I think that if you are someone who’s considering a career in business brokerage, I think that there are opportunities in business brokerage. You’ve got to have a realistic timeline, a realistic understanding of the timeline it’s going to take to get yourself to the point where you’re actually earning money on a regular basis. And this is what people tend to underestimate. And even if you need to have some kind of other income stream, you know, I think that would be wise. Back in my very first sales job, we were selling yellow page ads and we would submit contracts on like NCR contracts. We would submit them and then based on our sales, we would be given commission.

Jason Cutter [00:12:49]:
Right.

David C. Barnett [00:12:50]:
But the phone book wouldn’t be printed for months. So in a way that commission was kind of an advance. Right. And I actually had someone I worked with who would get hard up for money and they would write a contract that wasn’t real and they would submit that contract and get paid a commission. And their whole idea was that if they then corrected it before the deadline, no one would know. But, you know, that is obviously was completely unethical behavior. And here’s the thing that I’ll point out to people is that very few people would choose to do something unethical because they want to get money. It’s the lack of money that puts people into a position where they’ll actually do something that is unethical.

David C. Barnett [00:13:36]:
And so it’s when you’ve got the mortgage payment, the car payment, et cetera, and you don’t have the money to pay it and you feel like your back’s up against the wall and you feel like you’re in a desperate position, that’s when you might do something that you would never normally dream that you’d be willing to do on a normal day. And so my warning to people is have a realistic understanding of what the cash flow of the industry is so that you don’t put yourself into a position where you’re going to have your back up against the wall because it’s. I can’t imagine it’s going to be a good feeling to years down the road, remember, and say, oh, I did that thing that I’m not really proud of. It’s tough.

Jason Cutter [00:14:15]:
Yeah, for sure. No, I think it’s good. Just like expectations for the business owners who are trying to sell, having the right expectations and then playing the long game and understanding what you’re getting into and then making it a success, I think is great. And David, I appreciate you being here again. For everyone tuning in, the links will be in the show notes. Just search David C. Barnett. You’ll find him, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Jason Cutter [00:14:39]:
Again, David, thanks for spending some extra time here with myself and sharing all this with the audience.

David C. Barnett [00:14:45]:
Thanks, Jason. Have a great day.

Jason Cutter [00:14:46]:
All right. And for everyone else, as always, you know, until next time, stop hoping for deals and start growing your pipeline. Until next time, we’ll see you.