INSIDE THE INTEGRATION | Chapter 1 of 4 — The Reluctant Beginning
FROM RESISTANCE TO OPENNESS
COMING HOME
When Chris Schwalbach returned to AVL as CEO in August of 2024, the question followed him into nearly every conversation.
Are you excited to be back — or are you being dragged back?
It sounds light, almost teasing. But underneath it sits something profound: What does it mean to return to a company you built, after time away, armed with the perspective distance provides?
For Chris, the answer wasn’t simple.
He had liked retirement. He appreciated the quiet, the chance to think, the relief of not carrying the weight of daily responsibility. And yet the pull of the business — of unrealized potential, of ideas he could now see more clearly — sparked an energy he couldn’t ignore.
Both things were true. He could value the break and still feel called back to the mission.
What surprised him most wasn’t AVL’s operations. It was his own emotional response to being back inside. The founder instinct reignited quickly: What else could this become? Where might we take it now?
And that curiosity led him toward a topic he had kept at arm’s length for years.
M&A.
THE STORY HE TOLD HIMSELF
For much of his career, Chris carried a private narrative about mergers and acquisitions. To him, the process felt clinical, exposing, almost adversarial. It seemed like volunteering for scrutiny at the most intimate level — strategy, leadership, culture, numbers — everything opened for inspection.
He once described it as inviting someone to tell you your baby was ugly.
Founders understand the metaphor instantly. A company is not merely an asset; it is accumulated sacrifice, identity, and memory. To imagine someone evaluating it, pricing it, finding fault in it — that can blur into something deeply personal.
Chris recognized this fear in himself long before he named it.
In some ways, it echoed a memory from when he was sixteen. He didn’t tell anyone he was going to take his driver’s test. If he failed privately, it was circumstance. If he failed publicly, it was humiliation.
Better not to declare anything.
A NEW PERMISSION
What ultimately shifted wasn’t the market.
It was the permission he gave himself.
Through conversations with coaches, peers, and founders who had already navigated similar paths, Chris encountered an idea that slowly loosened the resistance: exploration is not commitment.
Talking to people could simply be learning.
Information, even uncomfortable information, could still be valuable.
And most importantly — he could always say no.
Once he accepted that, the emotional temperature changed. Curiosity, which had been buried under self-protection, started to breathe again.
Before he ever sat down with Ampleo, the fear had already begun to lose its grip.
SEEING AVL AGAIN
Back inside the company, Chris found himself noticing something else.
When he had stepped away years earlier, he had worked hard to surround the business with leaders who compensated for his weaknesses. It was responsible and necessary.
But absence creates vacuums.
He began to realize that some of the things he uniquely brought — permission to try, deep trust in professionals, the instinct to empower people to run with ideas — had naturally softened without reinforcement.
The opportunity in front of him, therefore, wasn’t only about scale or valuation.
It was about restoration.
About reintroducing energy.
About rebuilding the cultural muscle of belief.
THE MIRROR MOMENT
Chris had long imagined diligence as a moment of exposure — the harsh light, the uncomfortable inventory of imperfections.
Instead, he found something different.
AVL’s accounting was strong. The financials were disciplined. The team showed up with pride and competence. The foundation held.
The flaws he saw so clearly — the ones magnified in his own mind like blemishes in a mirror — were not nearly as defining from the outside.
And in speaking openly about what he wanted to improve, something unexpected happened.
Credibility rose.
Transparency built trust faster than polish ever could. Momentum followed honesty.
DETACHING FROM THE OUTCOME
When founders now ask Chris what he learned in those early days, he rarely talks about structure or multiples.
He talks about detachment.
Exploring options is not betrayal.
Information is not condemnation.
Curiosity about the future does not erase loyalty to the past.
You are allowed to look.
And sometimes, the most courageous act in leadership is simply granting yourself permission to do exactly that.