Brent Engelbrekt

Brent Engelbrekt is a Managing Director at True North Mergers & Acquisitions, where he has spent more than a decade selling privately held companies. Before that he was an owner himself. He ran his own businesses and led several business and real estate transactions as a principal, which is where he learned that the financial part of selling a company is rarely the hard part.

His work is concentrated in industrial services, manufacturing, and distribution, the sectors where customer concentration, operational complexity, and margin discipline do most of the work in setting a price. He has been central to several of the firm’s largest and most complex engagements, including transactions above 100 million dollars, and he spends most of his time on the part of the job this book is about: positioning a company, building real competition for it, and holding a price together once buyers start pulling on it.

Brent holds the Certified Business Intermediary (CBI) and M&A Master Intermediary (M&AMI) designations through the International Business Brokers Association and M&A Source, the Certified M&A Professional (CM&AP) designation from the Coles College M&A Academy at Kennesaw State University, and the Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA) credential from the Exit Planning Institute. Among a field of several hundred advisors, he was named CBI of the Year in both 2021 and 2024, and he has received multiple IBBA and M&A Source Platinum Chairman’s Circle Awards for production.

He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Minnesota State University, Mankato, with concentrations in marketing and finance and a minor in economics.