Chelsea Wood: The Psychologist in the Deal Room

In the noisy world of online business education, where influencers promise passive income and easy riches, Chelsea Wood stands out as a "brick wall of reality." An Industrial-Organizational (IO) Psychologist by training, Wood spent 15 years in corporate M&A—helping SSM Health grow from $3 billion to $6 billion in revenue—before co-founding Acquisition Lab with author Walker Deibel.

Her journey from corporate executive to building a leading M&A accelerator is defined by a focus on the psychology of the buyer rather than just the math of the deal.

By early 2020, Wood had built a formidable resume. She had managed complex transactions involving 18,000 employees and transitioned into high-level consulting. However, the 16-hour days required in corporate M&A came at a personal cost: she wasn't seeing her children.

In February 2020, Wood found herself at a crossroads. She had three executive job offers on the table, but ran into an acquaintance, Walker Deibel, at a conference. Deibel, the author of Buy Then Build, pitched her a "fourth option": partner with him to build an accelerator for acquisition entrepreneurs—essentially a Y Combinator for buying small businesses.

Wood’s initial reaction was a "hard pass." It was risky, and she had been the primary breadwinner for her family while her husband finished his chemistry degree. However, her husband offered a logical rebuttal that changed her trajectory, as she shared in an appearance on The Expertise Economy Podcast.

"You want to throw your career away that you've just killed yourself building... when you finally get an executive offer, you want to say no. Instead, you want to go over here, and you want to build a business for a guy that wrote a book telling people not to build businesses but to buy them... because startups fail. Am I understanding correctly?"

Recognizing that she hadn't been excited about work in a decade, she took the leap. She launched Acquisition Lab in the second week of March 2020, immediately before the global lockdowns. Despite the timing, the risk paid off. By 2024, the Lab had served approximately 750 lifetime members.

Wood’s background as an IO Psychologist shapes the curriculum of the Acquisition Lab. She realized early on that while buyers worry about financial statements, their actual points of failure are usually emotional or psychological.

One of the primary tools she utilizes is the Change Curve. Wood notes that searchers inevitably hit a wall of doubt and panic, often around the three-month mark or immediately after closing.

"They all feel like they're going to throw up. They all say... 'What am I doing? My whole life is over.' I've gotten more than one call from them, like right after closing, where they're like [in] the fetal position, and they're panicking," Wood shared on Acquiring Minds Podcast.

By framing this panic as a predictable stage of the change management process, she helps searchers push through the "valley of despair" to reach the integration phase.

Acquisition Lab operates as a "do-it-with-you" buy-side accelerator. Unlike many courses with low completion rates, the Lab employs a high-touch model with daily office hours and a team of 11 to 12 advisors.

The results are statistically significant in an industry known for "tire kickers" (people who browse but never buy):

Regarding women in the search space, Wood observes distinct challenges. "We have had sellers just blindly say no, I'm not talking to you, because it was a manufacturing company and it's a woman trying to buy the manufacturing company." Her advice to female searchers is to "lead with money," i.e., demonstrating financial capacity and decision-making authority immediately to penetrate bias.

Wood argues that the number one reason searchers fail is a lack of a clear Value Proposition.

Many buyers enter the market with a general resume, hoping to buy any profitable business. Wood insists that buyers must treat the target business like a puzzle and view themselves as the specific missing piece.

If a buyer has a background in sales and marketing, they should not buy a business that needs operational restructuring, even if the financials look good. Conversely, an operations expert shouldn't buy a business that needs a marketing turnaround.

"If you do not figure that out, hands down that is almost always the reason someone is not moving on their search... when they look at a listing, they can't pull the trigger because they can't see it clearly how they're going to grow the business," she says.

In the Lab, members create a "Buyer Profile" that functions as a specialized resume to send to brokers. This document highlights their specific "target statement" and proof of funds, differentiating them from the flood of unserious buyers.

Despite her success, Wood is critical of the booming online education industry surrounding M&A. She warns that social media has "over-glamorized" buying businesses, presenting it as a passive, easy path to wealth.

She notes that there are "no barriers to entry" for educators in this space, leading to a proliferation of low-quality courses. Her approach is to act as a filter, turning down more applicants than she accepts to ensure that only those with the financial stability and psychological resilience to succeed enter the program.

Wood’s philosophy is rooted in long-term integrity over short-term revenue. While a monthly subscription model might yield higher profits, the Lab offers lifetime access to keep successful alumni engaged, creating a feedback loop of experience for new members. As she puts it, "I'm not here to convince everybody to buy businesses... I'm here to help those of those folks that want to do it do it in the least risky way possible.”