HEAD OF TRANSACTIONS

Helps business owners turn a lifetime of work into the outcome they deserve.

Hi, I’m Brent

Growing up, every Christmas Eve, my grandfather walked the aisles of his home and garden center and handed his employees envelopes of cash out of his own pocket to thank them for their hard work that year. He never got a formal education for any of it — he learned the business from his own father, my great-grandfather, who came off a boat from Italy as a teenager who didn't speak a word of English and built a life here anyway, one car wash and one bowling alley at a time.

The spirit of the self-made business owner is in my blood.

I grew up hearing those stories at Sunday dinner, every single week, without exception. And somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn't just proud of them, I was hooked on them. 

What does it actually take for someone to build something out of nothing? What's the moment they almost quit? Who believed in them when it made no sense to? Those questions have quietly run underneath everything I've done in my career.

I believe every business has a story worth understanding — not just a valuation worth calculating.

These values are a big part of why I spent over ten of those years involved with the Entrepreneur of the Year program at Ernst & Young, a program built around recognizing entrepreneurs and telling their stories.

I wasn't the one running the business. I was the one asking the questions, learning how they got there, what adversity they'd fought through, and helping them find the words for a journey most of them had never stopped to put into a sentence. I loved it. I still do.

It taught me that behind every balance sheet is a person like my grandfather who bet on themselves to build a life they can be proud of and provide for their family.

These are the values that have stuck with me throughout my life and career.

That instinct to look for the potential other people miss shows up just as much on a field as it does in a deal room.

I've coached my kids' teams for over a decade now: baseball, basketball, football, whatever they needed a coach for. And coaching taught me something no classroom ever could. It's rarely your five most talented players who win you the game, it's figuring out how to get the right five playing well together. That means understanding people. Where they come from, what motivates them, how they handle pressure, how they respond when things aren't going their way.

Sports gave me a front-row seat to competition, to teamwork, to staying level-headed when it's not going your way, and to connecting with people who don't see the world the way I do. I use every bit of that today.

I love what I get to do here at Doescher Group.

I get to sit across the table from business owners who built something out of nothing, the same way my grandfather did, and help make sure the numbers finally tell the whole story of what they've built.

In my opinion, there's no better honor than helping a self-made business owner see the real value of what they've created, and make sure they get what they've earned, for themselves and for the families they've been fighting for the whole time.

Although I spent the bulk of my career advising private equity and strategic clients as a Partner at Ernst & Young, working on over 100 transactions from both the buy side and the sell side, and later stepped in as Interim CFO for a $500M investor-backed business navigating a period of major growth and change, my passion has always been for the self-made business owner sitting on the other side of the table.

I've spent over 20 years advising businesses across a wide range of industries and deal sizes, on everything from financial due diligence to purchase agreement matters to the operational realities that actually make or break a deal.

As a Partner at CrossCountry Consulting, I focused on seller-side due diligence for private equity portfolio company exits, meaning I was almost always representing the owner, not the buyer. 

I believe those owners deserve an adviser who's sat in every seat at that table, not just one of them, and in too many of the deals I've been part of, I watched capable, hard-working owners walk into the biggest financial event of their lives without anyone in their corner who was thinking about their outcome first.

If you’re the kind of person who prefers a list of what got me to where I am…

Formal Education Experience

  • MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge MA, MBA

  • University of Michigan - Ross School of Business, Ann Arbor MI, BBA

  • London School of Economics & Political Science, London England, General Course

On the Job Experience

  • Quantum Construction, CFO, private equity backed construction firm

  • Quantum Ventures, Investment Professional, family office

  • Clinton River Medical Products, Founding General Manager, medical devices

  • Robert Bosch, MBA Management Program, automotive aftermarket

  • Tegu, Director of Supply Chain, toys

  • Ralco Industries, Strategy Manager, metal stamping

  • The Blackstone Group, Analyst, financial restructuring

  • Goldman, Sachs & Co., Analyst, investment banking

Brent’s Facts

  • Season ticket holder, 75 pieces of gear, and yes, I'm flying to Germany to watch them play this fall. My wife will tell you it's a problem. I'll tell you it built my character.

  • My wife, Maggie, and I met as caddies at the same golf course the summer before our senior year of high school, and somehow survived four years of separate colleges before making it official. These days it's the two of us chasing around three kids — 16, 14, and 12 — who keep the house loud in the best way.

  • Winters mean a full day making my grandma's pasta sauce from scratch. Summers, it's whatever's on the grill. Either way, it's happened every single week of my life — and now my own kids are growing up the same way.