Natalie Hughes - Simply Corporate
The crucial part is, I suppose, having the appetite for a deal. Not everybody will be in that position where they’re going to sell or buy a business.
Selling a business can be quite stressful, the due diligence process is burdened, and a lot of people are tired by the end of it.
And if you’re in a position where you’re still in the business, it can be difficult to get back on track and think, ‘Right, come on, let’s get back to it,’ and see it as your own. I know you’ve got the earnout perspective, but it must still be tricky.
We’ve already been approached by a competitor with a view to being brought out. That happened quite early on.
We said it was far too early, but it did trigger a thought of that ten-year plan that has been mentioned and what the strategy is, where we are going.
We’re involved a liquidation at the moment, for a company that had thrived for years. It had a supplier in the Netherlands that was taken over by a huge multinational. The service levels became an absolute shambles and that impacted on the UK customer base, with refunds, compensation.
The business is going into liquidation just off the back of a change in a supplier that has had a direct impact on the customer base. Profits have gone, they snapped and that’s it.
But what is reassuring is the fact there are so many successful businesses. And as well as insolvent liquidations, we deal with solvent ones. A member’s voluntary liquidation can allow people to extract cash from the sale of the business.
Richard Few - Sales Geek
I was quite fortunate at the point where we started the business. I was only 33 and it was me and my wife Lucy, who is my engine room.
We didn’t want to build something just to sell it. We wanted to build something that would still be around when our son was old enough to leave university and do something.
You can’t have a mission statement which is changing the way the world perceives sales and cash out after five, seven, ten years.
So, our whole model has been built around getting to a point, and to be honest, a trajectory where we can consider floating on one of the smaller markets like AIM, I suppose following that social chain model a little bit. And that is driven by our personal life journey and how it ties into the business.
I also feel a massive debt of gratitude to a lot of the people that have swerved other careers to come and take a punt on us. We’ve got a whole office full of people that feel that energy and
feel like they’ve got some reward out of it as well. It can’t just be about us.
Listening to other people today what has stood out is the point when the number gets put in front of you.
You don’t know how you’re going to feel about it until it happens, and I guess although we have a clearly laid out path, and it’s easy to sit here on my high horse and go, ‘We just say, ‘No’, and we’ll just do this and we’ll just do that,’ it’s serious when that happens because it’s guts and glory.
I foresee that by the time you get to a point where an option is put in front of you, there are a lot of battle scars. There’s fatigue, there’s tiredness.
So, I’m definitely not arrogant and I’m saying, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll just bat that off and just say, ‘No’,’ because you don’t know.
I’m fortunate I’ve been predisposed by some experiences, also fortunate to have some good people around our board that have been there and done it before.
I’m surrounded by people that have done that journey and we’re all aligned on where we want to go, which might make it easier to stay on that path.
I get asked all the time, ‘What’s your exit strategy? What’s your way out?’ and I think people talk generally in business in three and five years, but in five years’ time I’ll be 43.
I get bored quickly and I’m conscious of that. I’ll have the other half of my life to live at that point and starting something from scratch is really hard, so I’d rather stay in this for the longer term.
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DOING THE DEAL
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