John founded BluestemUSA in 1987 and sold the firm to Matt Frye in 2021. He remains active, providing direction, guidance, and managing business sales for his business owner clients.
John has devoted full-time focus on professional mergers and acquisitions for over three decades as advisor, advocate and intermediary for business owners. He has managed scores of business sales – giving counsel, analyzing strategic value, preparing to go to market then leading clients through their acquisition or business sales.
Experience
Educated as an engineer, John also earned an MBA and gained strong experience with Fortune 100 companies and through personal businesses owned, built and sold. He appreciates and respects business owners’ sacrifices, effort, stresses, and risks. He also knows the unburdening, release and exhilaration that owners feel as they successfully complete a sale of business exit to live their “life after business.”
John’s career began with large firms where he worked and managed professional staff in investment assessments, feasibility studies, operations analysis, strategy plans, and mergers and acquisitions. He then owned, managed and grew a distribution company before exiting through a strategic sale.
John is a founder and active managing partner with IBG Business, a national M&A firm with eight offices across the U.S.A. plus dozens of M&A professionals internationally. IBG’s founding partners each bring over thirty-five years of M&A experience and have successfully overseen over 1,100 transactions.
Professional Credentials
- BS in Petroleum Engineering (The University of Tulsa)
- MBA (Texas Christian University’s Neely School of Business)
- Certified Business Intermediary (Lifetime CBI & Fellow)
- Mergers & Acquisitions Master Intermediary (Lifetime M&AMI & Fellow)
- Founding member, Board of Directors & Chair of The M&A Source,
M&A Source Darrel Fouts Award for visionary leadership in M&A
- International Business Brokers Association (IBBA) President, Board of Directors, Chairman’s Award, Tom West Award for outstanding contributions in developing the profession and its ethics
- S. Small Business Administration’s Award – Oklahoma Financial Services Advocate of the year
- Past President and Board Chair of the Tulsa Executives Association
- Tulsa Metro Chamber – Small Businessperson of the Year Finalist
If you are considering selling a business, today or in the future, now is the right time to contact John to confidentially discover how together you can achieve your best business sale.