Steven's acquisitions in digital marketing

Welcome to the number one podcast for people who want to buy a business the smart way. Jonathan J is one of the world's best known experts on teaching beginners how to buy their first business without risking their own cash. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Jonathan's first emidae deal, grab your free business buying toolkit packed with 16 downloadable reports, checklists, videos and cheat sheets. Plus, Jonathan's latest book at www.dealmakerspodcast.co.uk. This is the ultimate toolkit for everyone who wants to buy a business successfully. This episode is sponsored by Jonathan's personal emidae lawyer, John Andrews, email [email protected]@JMW.co.uk and he can be your lawyer too. Hi, this is Jonathan J and welcome to Business Buying Strategies, the number one podcast for people interested in buying a business successfully. Now, we've got a lot coming up over the next few weeks. We are already enrolling people into Mastermind 2025. So if you're interested in having your hand held through the entire business buying process, you should be looking at that. In January, in the UK, we have our dealmakers live event at Wokefield Park near Reading. And in Australia, I'm running a three day business acquisition seminar on the Gold Coast. You will find information about all of those events on our website, dealmakers.co.uk. This week, we meet Stephen, Stephen joined Mastermind a couple of years ago and he set out on a mission to build a group of digital marketing companies. And in this part one episode, you will find out about the deals and how he did them. And then in part two next week, we will talk about what happened after he bought the businesses. So Stephen, let's start with where you're at now with your business acquisitions. What do you own and then we'll work backwards to figure out how you found the businesses, how you funded them and how you got the deal done? Cool, thanks Jonathan. So right now, we're at four acquisitions. So we've done four complete acquisitions. Some of them are share sales, some of them are asset purchase. But ultimately, what we've ended up now with is two functional businesses. We've done a couple of mergers and we've disposed of one. So as it stands right now, we've got two active agencies, they're both creative agencies. One is in more branding and identity sizes, one specializes in the care sector. And so yeah, we've got two teams effectively about 14 people across the business and we're on track to do probably around 1.5 million pounds over the next 12 months. So we're getting there, getting started, we've got a good platform to start from now. That's excellent. So what was the time frame then from doing that first deal to today? It's been a little while. So I suppose the first deal ended up, I mean, I really got started with this probably January last year is when I've sent my first batch of letters out. And then we ended up doing first deal, we signed the papers and everything for the first deal in July last year. So it's been quite a while to get there. And then we did a second deal in August and then subsequently we've done another two deals this year, one we saw, well, we actually started the very first lead we got, we started the conversation in March last year, but we only signed it now in January. And so that's technically our third acquisition, even though it's the first conversation we started. So some of them take a little bit longer than others and since then we've just signed another deal in July. Okay, that's fantastic. And so that'll be the fifth one. Yeah, so great. So so what I think people find interesting about your story is that these businesses are in the UK, but you live in France. So I know that presents certain challenges we can talk about those later, but what was it that made you decide that buying a business was something that you wanted to do? So yeah, I mean, for a long time, I've been sort of running my own business. I had, I had my own custom software agency back in South Africa many years ago. And then I was co-founder and kind of ran the operation side of, you know, relatively large and growing business, technically based in the US, but we ran it remotely. So I've always, you know, for a long time, for the last sort of 15 years of, I've been running a business of some sort, whether it's my own or as a partner. And I think somewhere along the line, I've always wanted to have multiple companies, wanted to sort of own, I think for a while, I wanted to run multiple companies for more of the opinion now rather own multiple companies. Yeah. And there's a big difference between running and running, yeah, very much so. And I think we're not, when I decided to leave, like I was CEO at a company, you know, we're a team of 26, we were doing about $6 million a year, and we'd built a really good business. And I decided, I think it was time for me to sort of move on and look for something else. And funny enough, that was in the self-development or personal development field. And I actually came across a webinar of yours that was promoted by one of our partner speakers. This was probably October 2022, okay. And I think listening to that webinar, I'm like, this is possible to even realise there was an option. And so that's when it kind of hit me that I could do this, that the possibility was out there. And so when I left that company at the end of 2022, I started that acquisition side. So that was January 2023. So you joined Mastermind in January 23? So I think I signed up late 2022 at some point and then yeah, we got started in January. And yeah, so I was attending a few of them online from South Africa at the time, okay. And then try to get to a few in person. Would you really kicked it off from probably January was really the first time I got to one of the events? Well, I often tell people is one of the hidden benefits of a programme like the Mastermind programme are the people that you meet. And it's really hard to put a value on that. But I consider that value to be absolutely enormous. So just talk for a moment about the people in the room and the friendships and colleagues that you've made. Yeah. I mean, so it was an interesting one because I started a little bit on, you know, through the online, just watching the YouTube videos and so on. But I was in the LinkedIn forums and I was getting connected with people and having conversations, which was great. But I think it really kicked off when I got to the in person events and made some personal, you know, sort of face to face meetings, you know, connected with a lot of different people, you know, all on the same kind of journey at varying levels, which was great. And I think I've made some incredible contacts through that, you know, we've stayed in touch all the way through, you know, and it's the sort of idea of learning from shared experience, right? Because everyone's at a different stage in the journey along acquisitions, wherever they might be, putting different deals together, maybe they're different sectors and so on. And so just chatting about that brings a different perspective to things and often you realise like you're getting stuck on something and somebody else's found quite easy so you can just ask for a problem. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's been hugely, hugely valuable, yeah. Fantastic. So, so you joined Mastermind, started to get serious about this, you got out there talking to business owners, how many conversations did you have, if you can remember this, before you found the first deal or one of the deals that you did, because you said that one of the first people you spoke to, you actually completed as the third deal, but how long and how many conversations did you have until you found something worth pursuing? Quite a few. I think it would be difficult to remember how many, but I sent, I'd sent out, so probably started in January last year, I'd sent out batches of letters, so following the technique teaching in the academy, we started off with, I think, a thousand letters at a time and I sent about two or three batches. And so quite a few conversations of that. I want to think it was in the range of about 30 to 40 conversations and you know, it was quite an excellent, because it was very much a learning curve right from the start. So, you know, I'm experiencing running business in the operations side, but having a conversation about buying a business was quite new to me. So, it was definitely a learning curve as we were getting into those conversations. And that's actually very interesting, because we have people who are very experienced business owners, and they've done everything in business, except by business, and it is a different skill set, isn't it? An additional skill set, and actually it's coming back to me now, because I remember you at one of the live events saying that you'd had 30 conversations with owners, and everyone was very impressed because you were taking action, you were out there talking to people, and did you not find, though, that after the first six conversations, you get into a flow, and the confidence is there after those first half doesn't cause? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the first call was a little bit intimidating. Sure. It was actually really helpful that they just, off the back of my letters, somebody just picked up the phone around me. So, it was really a bit easier than having to pick up a call and actually phone somebody directly. Yes. So, that was good, but it was a case of following the process. So, I had all started my template of questions to ask based on the teachings in the academy. And so, I felt like I was fairly prepared for it, but of course, when you get into the conversation, it's a new experience. Yes. So, it took a few calls to kind of dial that in. I think I did benefit from having the experience of working in entrepreneurial coaching before in one of the businesses, so I got comfortable talking to business owners about their strategy. It was a similar kind of conversation, but very different sets of questions. So, it was asking about their business, but the biggest thing I found quite different was asking about their motivations for saline. Yes. And so, yeah, it took a few calls, probably about four or five to get into the flow of it. And with volume, definitely the practice helped. And I think by call number six or seven, it was, I was happy to jump on a call and just you answered. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, you found the first business to buy. What were the circumstances of the seller? So the first deal we did was a conversation. It wasn't the first conversation or not, wasn't the first one in the pipeline. Well, in fact, maybe let me take you back to a previous one where we almost signed a deal, but we ended up backing out. Okay. So, that was the very first one we started having a formal discussion and met up in person with the sellers. So, we ended up walking away from this deal. And motivations were quite similar across the other deals that have done to some degree. And it was really, it was owners that at both up a good agency that worked for a while and now that we're looking at some sort of retirement options, so that we're looking to get out of the business one way or another and looking for the right partners to do or to exit with that. So, I found that's been a common theme for a lot of the owners of spoken to. That's, and the other one is just on the distressed business side where the owner just wants to get out. So, the very first deal we started to progress and we got to a heads of terms, we almost signed it and then I ended up backing out of the deal. But the motivation for the sellers was really that is they've had a good business, they've worked long and hard, they've worked many years and they're just looking to basically retire without just, you know, basically stop trading and dissolve the business. And I think once they'd received my letter, they realised it's an option to sell and really thought about that. So, the discussion was really about how we could sort of help them achieve their goals through a sale of the business for them to be able to retire and structure it in a way that makes sense without forking out loads of fees to consultants and so on to kind of facilitate the deal. So, there was really the primary motivation for them and then moving on to the deal that the very first deal we actually signed, it started off in a similar conversation, but it very quickly moved to the owner just wanted out, just a business that was fairly distressed and the owner just wanted to do like kind of hand the key so it wouldn't run away just about. They just didn't want anything to do with it anymore because it'd been through COVID and lots of some personal challenges and so on and so it was just a case where just didn't want to run the business anymore. Understood. So, you know my feelings about distressed business. I do. We can talk about this for a moment because buying a business where the owner is distressed is very different to buying a business where the business is distressed. So, distressed owner is someone who's at retirement age, can't see any sort of a session plan with their children, their grandchildren and what do I do with this business and it costs you money to close down the business before it's easier just to sell it to someone else. So you've got this distressed situation where the owner just wants to get out for whatever reason. Quite often health goes hand in hand with retirement. So then we've got the distressed business which is on a knife edge financially, maybe it's losing money, it's got debt and maybe the two do go together but they are also two clearly defined situations. Now, I always say the businesses that have the debt that are on the knife edge that lost in customers, they've got some issues, you've got to have a really thick skin to be able to manage all of the emotions in that situation. Plus, you've got to be comfortable with the fact that it's not going to be plain sailing. Now you quite clearly have a thick skin and you're comfortable with it not being plain sailing. So tell us about navigating a distressed acquisition. Yeah, I mean, those every time I think about it, I remember your messaging and every workshop I've been in, you've always stressed like, you know, don't start with a distressed business and ideally don't look at distressed companies. Rather always the distressed owners who you've got a good business and they're just looking for a way out. 100% agree that's the better option. I think with my situation being in remote living in France and working in the UK, it's added some challenges. And I thought, well, I've done a little bit of a turnaround, well, I've managed to sort of fix a couple of broken businesses in the past, I thought, okay, well, so you had some experience of that. Yeah. So I've got some experience from the operational side of helping fixed businesses where they had challenges. And so the first deal that we signed was chatting to the owner and it was a situation where it was both a distressed business and a distressed owner. And so I knew that going in and we were having a discussion and I think one of the core things that's driven me for most of my career now has been just helping other business owners like achieve some sort of success, whatever that might look like to them. And rightly or wrongly, I think, you know, that has popped up for me now when I'm chatting to the owners because I see a problem and I'm trying to help solve it. And definitely a learning curve in there for me is to how much of the pain I want to take on myself, but you know, that at the time it felt like, okay, well, I can see a solution for the owner here and I feel like I've got the experience to kind of tackle this one. And I also, but I was very careful to look at the downsides. Like what are the risks attached to this? And I very carefully looked at like, okay, if it all goes very south, then I can just walk away. We'll buy the business for a pound. Well, if it all goes horribly south, we can just shut it down and walk away. Sure. So I was very sure to limit any downside from that and I was very clear that it was a real possibility that we wouldn't be able to fix a business. So you went in eyes open to the possibility that this might be too much for anyone's handle and if it came to it, you could just close the business, walk away, no personal risk whatsoever. Correct. Yeah. So I don't make sure I did all the things like follow the correct company structure and make sure we set up everything correctly to to minimize any potential risk. Yes. As you say, going in, knowing what I'm walking into basically, of course, you never really know until you're in it. Sure. And it's always worse than it's been portrayed 100% yeah, it's always worse than you think. As much digging as you can do from the surface level stuff, you know, you're going to find stuff on day one, stuff's going to keep popping up the desk drawer full of the bills that haven't been paid. Yeah. Things like that. But it worked out that we ended up getting like a really amazing team out of it. The people are fantastic. They're still part of the team today. And so we managed to get in there and kind of stabilize the business. It's taken a lot of work. And I mean, this is from July last year, we closed the deal. We're only really stabilizing it now. So it's taken quite a lot of time and effort to get there and quite a lot of structural changes to make that happen. So it's been a long and difficult path and it hasn't really made us any money yet. But for me, the upside is, you know, one day if we sell the group, this is positive, upside. So I feel like it's been worthwhile and we've managed to save a couple of jobs in the process. We carried on serving some clients. And so it's worked out, but it's definitely been a steep learning curve. And I'd be very cautious with any other additional sort of distress businesses where the business itself needs to be more substantial than what we took on on this, because I don't know that this one as much as we've solved some problems. I don't know that it's necessarily worth the amount of effort we put in. Aside from having effectively found the really good set of team members, like the team are fantastic and they're part of my team today. So that's been the biggest one out of the whole lot, but yeah, it's definitely had some challenges. Yeah. And I understand work. And you compare that to buying a business that's doing well already. It's profitable. It's profitable despite the owner not being there. So the owner isn't instrumental to the operations of the business and you've got something that makes money day in day out. That's really what the ideal business to go after isn't it, because it just cuts the whole curve of turn around, which turn around's work and turn around's don't work. And there is always that risk. So tell us about the best deal out of the ones that you did. The one that you feel those the most upside, maybe it was the easiest one to do. Tell us a little bit about that one. It's a good question. I think there's for me, there's a bit of a toss up between two of them. So one being we close the deal or we started the discussions back in March last year. Well established business, they've been operating for about 20 years. They got a good team and it seemed like a really good deal. We put everything together. We followed all the normal processes. We did the due diligence and the legals and all of that. And we put together a really good deal. I did have some risks that we were well aware of, like quite high client concentration and again agency services. And so we managed to factor all of that into our agreements and we made sure we covered any possible downside. And it's turned out to be a pretty good business. Couple of challenges obviously taking on a business and you know it's a change of ownership. This generally change happens and sometimes settle some things. But overall it's been a really good transition and a good join into the group. So that's been a really good deal. Probably I'd say one of our best. The other one I'd say it's maybe a little too early to tell. But we've just signed this deal in the end of July. And again an amazing team, really great people to work with. And it's been such an easy deal to kind of put together. But it was an asset purchase, it wasn't a share sale. So we've managed to bring effectively the client base and the team over to merge into one of our existing businesses. And it's been such a smooth sailing. We've just been doing on board in the last month or so and it's just been like a dream deal. It's been it's everything's gone together really easily. The team are great. We get on really well. And it's a great addition to the culture that we already have. So it's maybe a little too early to tell. But I think this deal is one of the better ones for sure just because it's been so easy. And do you think part of that though is you're now more experienced and you know what to look for, what to avoid. You're more discerning now than you might have been a year ago. I think it's a combination of that and also just who you do business with. I think there's a big challenge or a big difference between if you connect with owners that are that you align really well with, generally you can immediately align quite well with the team and to the culture lines of quite well. And often if you do work with people you know like and trust, it's just a whole lot easier, right? So, but definitely the experiences played a part in that getting to quickly pull rapport with owners around a structured deal, kind of knowing what, you know, having built on the experience of doing a few deals in the past. I think all of that does help. So certainly following the processes and getting experience of the mobiles has helped. But yeah, just working with great people I think makes things easier. And I think if you've got, if you've got enough sort of deal flow and I know you talk about this quite a lot is having deal flow, you can be more discerning. You can choose which deals you want to work with. Yeah, exactly. How is your deal flow? It's slow at the moment, we've actually taken a deliberate step back at the moment just so we can stabilize the businesses we have in the group right now. There's a few things we need to do to pull that team to be able to cater to on board the next acquisitions. So we'll probably kick off deal flow again in the next sort of two to three months. So let's go to negotiating price in terms. How did you agree prices with these owners? How did you agree terms? How did the negotiations look like? Were they face to face? I imagine they would have been possibly rather than email, I hate email negotiations. But so how did it all work? So it's had a bit of a mixed opinion on the deal. So of the fall that we've signed now, they've all gone a little bit differently. I've tried to do as many of them as possible in person now because I'm buying companies in the UK and I'm living in Toulouse and France does make it a little bit more challenging. Yes. So line up meetings where I'll fly and basically thankfully it's a short flight. I can fly and set up a couple of meetings for the week and then head home. And so absolutely initial conversation is almost always on the phone. It's just generally not as immediate as just a phone call to kind of just kind of get a sense for where the seller is at, what the sort of outline of the business is and that's part of the qualifying process I suppose you could call it. Once we've had a few discussions like that, then I'll try to meet in person to actually run through a lot more detail, this between the phone call and in person meeting, I would have asked for the financials and a bunch of information, I'll go through that and then we'll have a proposed deal structure. Then we'll head up to an in person meeting and we'll run through what a potential deal could look like. And the price negotiations and the terms, it all depends on what the owner is looking for. So what we do is we try and work with the owner to find out a find a solution that is, you know, to win for both of us. Because we're trying to help solve a problem of theirs one way or another, either that's looking for them to retire, for them to exit the business or to just handle for business that I don't want to be in anymore. And so we'll try and line that up so that we when, you know, we basically put together one deal. Sometimes there's some complications because a broker is involved and we have to factor in some commissions and so on. We've done that on one of the deals now where we sort of negotiate around that. But yeah, it's generally been an in-person discussion to do that. And then usually a fair amount of follow-up, whether that's additional in-person meetings or on a phone call, I tend to avoid email where possible. Great. I'll follow up on email, you know, to make sure everything's in your mind. Like a confirmation. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But it's not a negotiation. And what you've just described is the classic deal makers process. And I love it that you're sticking to that phone call right at the start because I've seen some people recently say, well, you can do that on Zoom. And I don't think you should be seeing each other in that first conversation. I think the first conversation should just be a voice to voice. It's almost like there's too much too soon if you go straight in with a Zoom call. So you're doing the phone call, you're getting the information prior to the meeting, you're having the meeting, you're following up. I mean, absolutely textbook process, stay in very good. Yeah. I tend to agree with that. I have done a few where the initial calls were on Zoom more recently. I do prefer the phone calls first. I must be honest. It's great to have, if you just want to sort of meet someone and do a bit of an introduction as Zoom calls great, but ideally to run through the list of questions and to get some clear information, I much prefer that phone call process first. And then I've got a script I ran through, I'll ask a bunch of questions. It's easier to do that on the phone before we get into Zoom. And I tell you the reason why is because there's less rapport on the phone and you don't need that much rapport. In fact, I don't think you want that much rapport at the start because if you're going to position the negotiating dynamic as you being the person asking the questions and this is your deal, that is harder to do in a Zoom call where it becomes way more equal. You need to have that upper hand on the phone conversation, which can only be done on the phone conversation rather than the Zoom. That's my theory behind why the phone call is always better at the start. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about it like that. And I think if I think about the Zoom calls versus phone calls now, like the Zoom calls have always been a bit more casual and a lot more about getting to know each other and then we'll report the questions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is great. But it doesn't really, it doesn't really help you get through. If you've got good deal flow like you should have, you kind of need to work through them a bit quicker. And you need to be a little bit firmer on, on actually qualifying it to start with. You can have a five minute phone call, but a five minute Zoom call is quite hard to end isn't it? We've every Zoom call I've had is, well, not everyone, but a few of them have ended up being well over time, just because when I was, so when I was sourcing leads, and this was primarily through LinkedIn, which is a very different ballgame, I preferred the letter approach. But through LinkedIn, we were doing some outreach. We teach a lot of LinkedIn now, but yeah, yeah, because it's always good to have more than one way of doing things. Yeah, sure. And the two actually complement each other quite nicely. Okay. Yeah, I mean, so we were doing that, but then I'd end up booking instead of a phone call booking onto Zoom. And I must have, I've done a lot of calls like that, spoken to amazing owners, but it turned out generally because we end up having a good rapport and we end up just chatting about business in general and not necessarily sticking to the script to qualify them as a deal. And so yeah, so I do prefer the phone call method to start with just to kind of get a sense for is there a deal potentially here or not? And then follow that up with some information, some accounts and figures, and then jump into either a Zoom or ideally a face to face. Yeah. And when it comes to deciding price, how did you do that and any tips for our viewers on how that can be managed? It's been an interesting one because I, as far as possible, I was trying to stick to the sort of script of saying, well, I don't want to know what you want for the business. I know what you, I want to know what you need for the business, you know. So when I'm talking to a good piece of scripting, by the way, Stephen, I wonder where you're going to say, hey, I've heard that one, but it's a great line, isn't it? Tell me what you want. Tell me what you need. Yeah, it's definitely been an interesting one because with the deals we've done so far and a lot of the discussions we've had, people have got very different ideas of what they're one for the business and what they think the business is worth. I think there's an element of possibly having spoken with the owners, if they've spoken with the brokers, sometimes with a friend or with their accountant, they've got, I would say unrealistic expectations of what market will actually pay for their business. I mean, we've seen small businesses that are entirely dependent on the owner and they're looking for three to four times EBITDA. Now you take the owner out of the business, there is no business. And so it's not worth that and it'll, and often they're not even being paid like a market related salary. So you couldn't even replace them the works that they're doing in the business for the same amount. So actually the business isn't worth anything. Exactly, yeah, it might be worth something to you, but that's really a different conversation as exactly. Yeah. So that's, I found that is quite a hard one when somebody's got this expectation that their business is worth several hundred thousand pounds and then you tell them, well, actually no, after you've made these adjustments, it's not really worth anything. And that can be a little bit shattering. It's a difficult conversation to have, but it leads well into the insanity call realistically then what do you need for the business? And then you can be a little bit more sort of negotiable around how you can make a deal work. Because then it's not necessary about how much you pay for it is, what a deal can you put together that works. So we then dive into the sort of cash flow of the business, what the financials look like, and what deal could make sense. If we can do salif financing, we'll look at, you know, we can be more flexible on the terms, then we can give a better price for example. So if owners happy to take a sort of a longer power term, maybe over five years or something, then we can structure it in such a way that they get a much better price, but the terms are more preferable to us. Yes. So it kind of depends. You can generally be more negotiable on either price or terms, generally not in both. So it depends on what the owners are needing. If they need money today, you know, it can change the price of it. So what many new people to this subject don't understand is why anyone would accept anything less than all the money on day one. And what I explain is that is the starting point of any seller requirement, as it would be for you or if we were selling, you know, that would be our starting point. Of course, we want all the money on day one who wouldn't, but in the absence of other options, plus that motivation, there might be age, stress, illness, just had enough other interests moving to another country, whatever it might be, then the option that you're presenting is always going to be better than continuing owning the business. I agree with that. And I think this is where the conversation and the negotiation becomes really important because you need to understand the motivations of the seller. You need to know what's most important to them and then you construct a deal around that. If the most important thing is going to be the money on day one, then you probably haven't asked enough questions because that's usually not the biggest factor. Usually there's something like they want to retire or they just want to literally sail off into the sunset. Whatever it might be, you know, going enjoy some more freedom, free time, not having to be in the business. Usually there's other motivating factors. And if you can find those and address those to a structured deal, usually the money up front is not as much of an issue. There's certainly an element of owners wanting to cover risk. So if depending on how you finance in a deal, they want to know that they're going to get all their money. So whether that's on day one or not, and usually they want more money on day one, just to cover that risk. So if you can find a way to manage the risk as well as give them, you know, settle around the, they're real motivations for selling or getting out of the business, then you can put together a pretty flexible deal. Yes. Absolutely. And again, it's finding that seller where money isn't number one motivation. If you're finding a seller in their thirties, probably it is going to be the number one motivation. They've watched a lot of dragons den and, you know, they, they thought they've invented the next Uber or Facebook. So, so finding the motivated owner where the motivation is something other than money gives that flexibility because it becomes, it, everything becomes a lot more movable when you've got someone who says, yeah, I want to be on that world cruise in one month's time. I've got to do a deal in four weeks, otherwise I'm just going to lock the door and walk away from the business. So identifying those people is really important. And that deal flow really helps because the more deal flow you've got, the more options you got, the more options you got, the more likely you have to find those people. The worst, the worst number in business is the number one. We've got one of anything. We've got one person doing something or one, one method of getting customers or one business to buy. And they've got one business to buy that you'll never get a good deal. So what have you learned about negotiating deals that would be useful to people listening to this? Well, I think we've covered some of that already in terms of just really understanding the motivations of the seller. I think that to me is the number one thing. The other thing is probably that you're kind of generally when you come into conversation like this, often you found potential sellers, if you follow in the different methods of sending letters or reaching out on LinkedIn and so on, you're finding business owners who don't necessarily know anything about selling a business, have not necessarily sold one before. And so you need to educate yourself, I think, as much as possible on the process so that you can be confident in how this works. Yes. And does any doubt in your ability to facilitate a deal, owners will start to pick up on that and think, well, is this going to work out? Yes. And it adds an element of risk to them. And then that sort of, either their price will go up or they'll back out of the deal. Yes. I agree with that. So I tend to, I think, you know, you need to make sure you know what you're doing, which, again, is deal makers academy. I think there's a good space to be in for that. Well, recently there have been so much information on the internet from all around the world. I first started running these programs, they're just handful of sources of this type of information and now there's like, it's like so much, but it's all free stuff on the internet. And what worries me is when people watch or listen to too much free stuff on the internet, they think they're now an expert, but there is a huge gulf and a huge difference between reading some articles, watching some videos, listening to some podcasts and actually having a structured approach so that you know more about buying the business than they know about selling it. Because if you sit down with someone that knows more about selling a business than you know about buying a business, you'll come out with a deal, but it'd be a really bad deal for you. So you're absolutely right. Knowledge, very detailed knowledge is just so important. Yeah, 100%. I think the more you can know about the process, the better. And this is especially important if you're speaking with anyone who's already listed with a broker, you need to know the ins and outs of that. Or if they've involved their accountant in the process. And often the accountants, while they may be great at helping them run their business, they don't necessarily have experienced that in a business either. And so you need to really understand how it works and how to structure a deal. And ideally you need to understand the ins and outs of how to value a business. So you can have an informed discussion. And so when somebody throws a number at you, you can question it and get to the bottom of how do they get to that, how do they calculate it. And so you really need to understand the formula to put something like that together. So yeah, I think a structured approach to that and a detailed approach. And as you said, there's loads of free stuff on the internet, but most of it is relatively high level, I'd say. Well, it has to be, doesn't it, because it's is general advice for the whole world. Yeah. And so I think this, this is part of the reason of being part of a mastermind where you can ask questions specific to the deals you're looking at. And specific to the sort of setup that you're on. You can ask that in a group of people who have experience of what they might have come across something similar, or they can help identify gaps that you've missed. It's really important to cover those off. I think so just getting the experience and the skills and the understanding that you need to put together the best deals, I think that's by far the biggest learning curve that I would say people need a focus on as they're approaching sort of buying companies. And so the other key thing is you need to know what you want out of it. You need to know, because we touched on this earlier, like you need to know if, do you want to own a business, do you want to run a business? Because there's a massive difference in the kind of businesses that you can buy depending on what that answer is. Now, I've pushed it thinking I'm quite happy to run a business, but ultimately I just want to own it. I don't want to keep running businesses. And so I knew going into the deals that I've got, I'm going to have to be involved in the running, but I'm building a team to take me out of the day today and we're making pretty good progress on that. But you need to be clear on that. The other thing is, is probably sector experience. Now, you can do a very broad approach. You can chat to owners like if you've got fairly good business overall business experience, management, experience and stuff. I don't think it's too much of an issue, but certainly talk into owners in the sector that you understand. You can speak the same language, which goes a long way to setting up confidence and, you know, between ability. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So Stephen, people listening to this often are sitting on the fence. It's like, do I do it? Don't I do it? What would you say to those people? I'd say go for it. I mean, there's no harm in trying. I think that if you're keen to own a business and rather, I'd say, especially if you want to own a business rather than running one, I think this is a fantastic way to go is to buy and companies. There's so many people out there looking for a good way to sell, but they don't necessarily realise it yet. So I think there's loads of opportunities. It's definitely been a very different experience for me from running businesses in the past. Absolutely go for it. But do it with the right support. Like don't try and do it on your own. Like I'm a good one for trying to do stuff on my own. But I understand the value of getting the right experts around you and having the right connections to help you because there's going to be stuff that comes up where you need some support or you need maybe a bit of a push just to take action. And so getting the right supports and right environments around you is really important. So if you can do that, then absolutely go for it. Fantastic. What I'd like you to do is to come back and do another podcast with me where we talk about what happens after you've bought the business because I think people would be very interested in finding out what you need to do once you own the business. Stephen, thank you very much. It's been great talking to you. Excellent. Thanks Jonathan. Good to be here. Thanks for listening to this week's podcast. Have you got your free business buying toolkit? It's a huge free resource that Jonathan's put together to help you get your deal done. Go to www.dealmakerspodcast.co.uk and claim your free toolkit now.