Know Your Broker: Kevin Layton

Kevin Layton was an entrepreneur from an early age. At 17 he had a letter of intent and was doing diligence on a dairy operation in Central, PA not too long after he got accepted to Penn State in Dairy Science. The more he learned about business the more he couldn’t make the math work to buy the herd and then farmland on the limited earnings the dairy business supplied.

Before too long he put the agricultural business out to pasture and focused on a degree in Computer Science which took him to climb the ladder quickly at GE Aerospace, SAAB-Sensis, and Lockheed Martin; culminating in a role as SVP of Technical Operations for SRA International, a $1.8Billion publicly traded company.  In 2013, following a strategic planning consulting opportunity, Kevin took the job as CEO of Data-Dynamix a $10M revenue per year digital marketing company and two time Inc 5000 awardee.

Kevin brings a cosmopolitan worldview to his work, having lived in Australia (6 years), Germany (3 years), and Czechia (3 years) where he also ran a business with contracts in 37 countries. In the US, as side business ventures to his career, he owned three franchised sub and bagel shops in upstate New York, bought and sold a radar product company, and started a B2B lead generation business.

All that travel and business building has given a real appreciation for what it’s like to be on both sides of a transaction, and he brings that knowledge to his clients. “I want to get business owners the best deal for the sweat equity they have invested in building a successful business.”

One thing he always counsels is the importance of positivity throughout the process. His clients see added credibility and value in that positivity and it often leads to better transactions. “People work with people they like,” he adds.

As all our team here at Apex does, Kevin stresses due diligence. “People think diligence is just paying attention to the data room. It’s a lot more than that,” he says. “You gotta ask tough questions.” When he’s not advising clients, Kevin makes his home in Overland Park with his wife Tanya.