#350 Confidence, First Deals and Sector Experience

/ Hi, this is Jonathan Jay, and welcome to Business Buying Strategies, the number one podcast for anyone who wants to buy a business without risking their own cash. So if you've listened to our recent episodes, you'll know that I invited seven of my Inner Circle members to the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith last month, and we spent an entire day answering business, buying questions from our listeners and live audience last time. They answered questions about the qualities needed of an effective deal maker, and discussed how you are often the biggest bottleneck in your own business.

This week, the Inner Circle members discussed their individual experiences of the sectors they chose for acquisition and how they each got their first deals done. I hope you enjoy it. /Now, I wanted to basically ask you that, what's the end game here for? And this applies to all of you.

Okay, you've done the acquisitions, but where do you want to go from here? Do you want to keep holding these companies? Do you want to keep growing or do you want to have an exit at some point? So nobody touched on that, and I think I'd like to get an idea about , how that looks.

I would imagine many of you would want to this bolt on strategies growing these companies and then eventually selling it for something larger. So I'd like to get some feedback on that. I'll jump in. So I've got a really clear set of way points that I'm looking to achieve.

The idea is a 25 million pound technology group of companies by March 28th which I'll be 55 years old, and we'll see how I feel at that stage. I'll look at what the, how I'm feeling and how, what my health is, what the impact of this dream is, will have on me. And then if I'm good to go, then the next stage is to a hundred by the time I'm 60. And that's the technology group.

And I'm looking at the real estate group and I wanna build a hundred million pound portfolio of real estate as well. And that's the generational wealth side of things, so I'm very focused on those two numbers. But the m and a journey, like I say, it is way point driven. So it's March 28th first and then it's 2032, which will be for my glorious 60th birthday.

So you intend to to exit at that point. Is that the plan or what? Right now the goal is to achieve the a hundred million in in, in the group turnover. And.

Again, we'll get to 60. We'll see how I feel. And ultimately, I don't ever see myself retiring, right? I, what am I gonna do is sit around and do nothing.

Play golf. I, it's not who I am. So yes, there'll be some exits along the way, but for me it's, it comes down to, and again, what Martin said, it's who I'm becoming on the journey. That's really what it boils down to.

So as long as I'm having fun, as long as my health is good, as long as I'm being a great father and a great grandfather at some point, and an amazing husband, they're the things that's important. So for me, the, this is the mechanism for which I get to explore my growth style personality. But yeah, of course there'll be an exit, but it's not a number driven it's a, when it's no longer fun, when it's no longer serving me as a human being, that's when I'll exit and the number will be irrelevant at that point.

Okay. Just out of interest, any of you did any of you have exits so far? I don't think so. My mine is similar.

I plan on, I'm building like that's the best way to grow a business, right? To build like your building to sell. But I don't ever see myself getting outta business 'cause I enjoy it, but I do want to de-risk and make it more a fun game instead of when the majority of your net worth is in a business. It's a stressful thing.

But yeah, I just wanna keep doing this, but make it more fun and less stressful. Same. So we are working on a buy and build strategy at the minute as well in a specific sector. This sector specifically in Scotland where I am is quite fragmented, so we are, we're buying up smaller businesses on say two to three times multiple.

Rolling them up into a group over the five, next five years, then we'll exit at a five or six multiple. So we'll get a, a good exit there. That's the strategy behind that. And for me personally, it's to buy time more than anything else.

So if you've bought time with your family or have choices in life because you are financially free, you've got long-term wealth in your family for the next generation, then you can choose what to do with your life. Yep. And I would add to that and say that in my mind, if you are not starting with the exit in mind or your end point in mind, you're doing it wrong. So what I see with a lot of deal makers when they come in is that Jonathan does this thing, and I think you've all been on fast tracks or where you've been to masterminds and done it where you say, what is the number that you're looking for that would change your life?

The challenge is as you get better and better, that number keeps going up and up. So what I would say is that at this point, it's about looking and saying, what is it you want to achieve? So for us, yes we have exits in mind to get us there. 'cause if you do a buy and building, you exit at 10 million, take 5 million off the table, get it away, get it in your pension, get it away in your family.

Go and enjoy your life with it. Secure your life and then go and play with the other 5 million. Have fun with it. And I can honestly tell you 3, 4, 4 years ago, I didn't think I'd be up here saying take 5 million off the table and go play with 5 million like it's poker chips.

But it's okay to do that. And part of what our strategy is, 'cause you were asking is that the reason I'm doing multiple buy and builds is we got to the point where in the accounting group they were saying we need to slow down. We have to integrate these properly. We can't take another acquisition for six months.

Or when you know you're really good at doing something and you really get a massive kick outta doing it. It's like saying to someone who goes to the gym, I'm sorry you've gone to the gym too much. You need to take six months off. Now obviously I don't go to the gym too much yet, but we'll get there one day.

And I was like let's go and do these multiple buy and builds. And the reason being is that if you start a buy and build, once you know what you're doing, and this is a caveat, it's an advanced thing 'cause we've done so many now, if you start a buy and build every three to six months, in three to five years, every three to six months you have an exit, which then allows us to go to the next stage of where our plan is, which at that point is then to become a private equity firm.

We've just geared up and restructured to allow that. And then our total end goal is eventually it's to become a funder that specializes in funding SME acquisition. Now I can tell you that plan did not exist a year and a half ago, a year and a half ago. The plan was grow the accounting group to 5 million exit and then see what I wanted to do.

But as you get bigger and bigger, not as a business, but as the person in your knowledge and your experience, and you become that better person, your end point in your goals will change because what you thought was significant becomes insignificant. 'cause you need to get to the next level, if that makes sense. So don't view it as an ultimate endpoint, just look at it as your next step in the stepping stone in life because you don't know where it's gonna take you. But also on the other side is be totally okay.

There's nothing wrong with tapping out and taking two, 3 million quid and going living on a beach in Bahamas for the rest of your life, if that's what gets you where you get to. You'll find a lot of us, and I think Adrian touched on this, we get a drive out of doing acquisitions and growing the business during COVID. We put a team in place and we got to the point during COVID that we were growing faster than anyone else because of the strategic direction I put in place in a market where the market was shut to us, but I had nothing to do on a day-to-day basis, and I was miserable because I didn't have a purpose.

Then we started doing m and a and that purpose became really clear, and that's what it's about for me, is it's about delivering your mission because money is an energy flow. It doesn't actually exist. If it did, we won't be able to buy three businesses at three times and that whole group be worth six times just by doing. You create money outta thin air.

It's an energy flow, and it comes down to what is it you want to achieve with that? And I'm a big believer that the more money you generate is simply a direction of how much wealth that you've created by how much value you've delivered to the world. And if you knew you could deliver a hundred billion pounds worth of value to the world, why would you tap out at a billion? If you knew you could deliver a billion, why would you tap out at a hundred million?

Because you're not achieving your potential, but you're starving the world of your impact on the world. So just view your next steps at this point as your goal, as the next step in the journey of becoming who you're meant to be. Hi. What do you think has given you like the confidence and the competence to not only do the acquisition, but then to maintain and grow the businesses you acquire, especially if they're in different sectors and you have no experience in that sector?

Hi there. I'll take that. So for me, I think business skills are transferrable regardless of sector. You've still got the same processes, you've still got debtors, creditors, cash flow sales, marketing, et cetera.

So depends if it could be UK based, international. My business was international. I find what I'm doing at the moment, very easy 'cause I'm dealing in one currency, I'm dealing with the uk. We've all got different skill sets, right?

But those skills are totally transferable. And you'll realize that I've gone from investment banking to fashion to barbershops to what I'm doing at the moment. So they're very different sectors. But transferable skills, I would caveat that with those certain sectors probably are more difficult than others.

So my main business is m and e, mechanical and electrical. And there's so much that can go wrong there. So there's probably some that you might. Look at rather than others if you don't have experience in that sector.

Just to extend on that, Ben I went on this journey of, I call it looking outwardly. So when I first started the Dealmakers Academy on in 2024 I felt like I was looking for a shiny object. And I was disregarding what I already had. And throughout the two year journey, my business did exponentially grow because I didn't have a choice.

I had to grow it in case an acquisition didn't come up. Now, going back to your point, Emma, I ended up buying somebody in my supply chain, and I think that lends itself quite well because they know you, they like you, and they trust you, hopefully. And typically they're the best people that, that, that are gonna come to you first. And it's the same with raising finance.

They have very similar, benefits is that the people that will always lend to you are people that know like you and trust you and likewise for selling a business. So it's always the best place to start. But that was the answer for me is that the first place I looked with the best element of success was the supply chain, which is, it's always a good place to start. So you said two words, confidence and competence.

Confidence you just gotta believe in yourself in anything that you do, right? But equally is I'm not doing anything for the first time. I'm an r and d specialist. Rip h and duplicate.

I'm watching what other people have d done the business that I set up on my own. 15 years ago, I worked for someone in that business for seven years. I learned how to do what he was doing by just doing what he did, and I just did it bigger and better. And now I heard Jonathan speak at an event and I heard this story about, this how you buy a business.

I went, okay, if someone else can do it, I can do it. Competence. We'll see on that one. I think the thing with both of those things, competence and confidence is that it's relative.

And just by being here and engaging with Jonathan and being in the m and a world you probably already know more than you think you do. And the odds are, a lot more than the seller that you're gonna be talking to. The vast majority of people even if you say m and a to them, don't necessarily know what you mean. So I think, yeah don't feel like you're, you are a disadvantage by having the conversation for the first time because you're not actually having the conversation with the first time.

You're just doing it live for real. So yeah don't be, you just gotta crack on it and get it done. And that's what builds the confidence. It is stepping outside of the comfort zone and it is having conversations and it is ing and ing your way through, through a few conversations with sellers, and they're realizing, actually at the end of it, you've, you're having good conversations and.

You walked out an hour later and didn't feel like you you were blagging it for the entire conversation. Just for most of it. So yeah, it is just give it a go. There's literally nothing that bad that can happen other than you never speak to that person again.

So it's just getting involved in getting started and the confidence builds from there. And I would add the other thing to that, 'cause I would reiterate everything people have set up here. For me, it's about the support network around you. So when you're by yourself, you have no one to talk to.

It's lonely place. Running businesses and knowing that, for example, I'm in the inner circle, I'm part of mastermind, I'm in the millionaires boardroom. You have the connections that if you don't know the answer, there's someone else in deal makers or your support network who does. Even down to, I joked with my wife over winter 'cause we had a tree come down in the field and I was like, oh my God, I feel really grown up.

'cause I've got six lawyers on speed dial. I can pick up who know me by name and I know them by name. And that didn't happen four years ago. And it's just because of where you are in the journey.

But having that support network in place, you don't have to know all the answers. You just have to have people in your network who know the answers for you and believe in that. And then on the competency, the answer is invest in yourself. You're the best ROI you'll ever get.

So I spend a fortune and have done for years investing in courses not to learn, but to pick up one or two ideas or one or two things that make me a little bit better. And the big thing I would say is that what I'm always looking for is not just the training, because nothing is unique. There's not only one person in the world telling you how to market your business. There's not one person in the world telling you how to hire you.

Look for the environment they create and the community they create to allow you the opportunity to thrive and strive. And that's the big thing for me is yes, get the knowledge, but build the network around you that you've got those support networks. I phone pick up the phone to Tim, to Harry, to Ben. All the time to just bounce ideas off people and say, I've got this thing.

Can I just check? I'm not crazy. I need someone else who's been there and done this before we go do it. And lean on those support networks as hard as you can.

It's how you'll get the best investment outta deal makers. But it's how you get the confidence. 'cause you're not in it alone. You might be, but be alone.

But you're not in it alone in terms of confidence. It's a mindset thing as well. So before I joined Inner Circle as an example, I the startup many years back, instead of saying I could never raise the funds for that, my attitude was how can I raise the funds for that? I simply picked up the phone.

I called several private equity firms in Edinburgh. I've got this idea. This is what my plan is. We'll do X year one.

That was on the Friday. They said, that sounds good. Come up to our office on the Monday with your IM and your integrated financial model. Brilliant.

Sounds great. What the hell is that? No clue what an IM is. Googled it.

Spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday, cobbling something together, a slide pack and a model. Pitched it to the private equity firm on the Monday. They loved it. They seen the vision.

Unfortunately we got all the way down the line. I stated I was going to do 1 million of revenue. Year one, they completely disbelieved it. And it didn't go further.

This was like a week out from completion. And after year one we'd done 6.3 million of revenue, then the phone back and I declined the cut. Just on the confidence thing.

Pick a partner in the deal makers that is more confident than you, they're more efficient than you and more productive than you, . I did this and I partnered up with Tim. I, and whenever you need a real reality check, I thought I worked fast, I thought I was efficient. And then I met Tim and his deal flow and his attitude just made me want to do better and level up.

And that was free. And you can partner with anybody in the room and keep each of her accountable just to WhatsApp message once a week, how many calls did you do this week? How many letters have gone out? And you will quickly realize that if they are more efficient and they're more productive than yourself, then it's gonna, it's gonna kick you the backside really to keep going.

'cause it's easy to fall into the background. And I just don't want that for anybody else either./ Ready to accelerate your business acquisition journey? Join Jonathan Jay's fast track program for comprehensive training live q and a sessions and exclusive resources to help you buy businesses successfully.

Secure your spot today at deal makers.co.uk/fast. Hello.

This is nie. I've been with the Jonathan Par a couple of years now, and my experience is not that great. So I just want to get your inputs and help how to achieve my goal. And I might have sent 30,000 of letters and I rarely got a response.

That could be because of the sector where I'm targeting. I was targeting it, recruitment sector. Because that's my expertise in terms of building the teams and all offshore teams. So I wanted to expert make use of my expertise and grow bigger.

But my experience was like, I received only 10 responses, and out of which all of them were already with the brokers and there asking price was too high. So I just want to understand like, how do I target a sector? Should I go out of my expertise and target, and what should be the mode? Like how did you get your first deal done?

I'm gonna ask you the most basic question here. Did you use the deal team? Because when I see VAP Accelerators turn and say, I've sent out loads of letters. I've sent out all of this.

And you drill down, either they tried to source the data themselves, they tried to print themselves. One guy actually went out and bought a fricking machine that hand writes letters to try and test it and then stack them all themselves. Or they've not used the template. I can honestly tell you, I have never ever seen a deal maker do 30,000 letters and not buy at least one business if they follow the system.

Yeah. Following the process and doing your homework, but then also maybe using your expertise is a good way to go. But if you're not getting the results, like pivot slightly, maybe vertically or horizontally, buying something in the same sector. And getting advice from, even from us or people have already done it just to how you can just tweak it a bit.

So for me, I'd be doing smaller batches. I'd be looking at the letter and iterating the letter. 'cause whatever you've got in the letter is not appealing to them. That's one thing.

And then second thing is maybe looking at doing some more targeted campaigns where you're focused on on, in, on the businesses you wanna actually be acquiring. 'cause you sent 30,000, left it to 30,000 different people. How many responses have you actually had? I had 10 calls, 10 responses.

But all all of them were already with the brokers. With this one it's, I'd go into it. How long is, has it been with the broker? The broker's paid anyway, usually look at the T's and C's, they're pretty watertight on that.

But I, Jonathan's talked about this many times on his podcast, et cetera. And it is basically just saying to them, look, whatever the broker number is, half it, half it. Again, that's what you're looking at. There's different ways of doing it.

But also it depends how motivated they are. Have they got a timeframe they want to sell? And it's, it is based on many things, but Jonathan does it perfectly in terms of whatever the broker says. Harvard, again, has it sold what we know, what you know as an expert buyer, what businesses are selling for in this sector.

It's positioning yourself as the expert buyer. They've got one business to sell. You are looking at loads. So it's, it is a mindset thing.

I think one of the things to really try and do is get into the seller's head as to, why has that business been marketed in the first place? How frustrated are they? What are they gonna do with the money when they've sold the business? What are they gonna do with their time when they sell the business?

And they've probably shelved all those plans if they've been sitting on the market for a year with a broker. That, that excitement that they originally had when they were marketing and expecting something to happen is, it's probably faded away and you need to reignite that. And if you can get 'em thinking about the crews or the time with the grandkids or the holiday home or the, whatever it is. 'cause the majority of these people will be retirement sales.

And you can reinvigorate that in them. So there's a bit of motivational, like interviewing going on really to try and just get them excited again. And at that point it then becomes a, the challenge in their head around the, I could hang out for another year and maybe get an extra little bit extra or I can take a haircut here and move on with my life. And if they've not heard anything from a buyer for six months and the broker's not been calling them, and that, that dream is that ever bit further away and you are the answer, then you're in a, you're in a strong position.

So absolutely, you can get into handling the valuation objection from a technical perspective, completely valid. But if you can start to chip away at that that desire in the head for more money and actually sell the benefits of you right now and selling to you right now is I've got a cruise to go on or a holiday home to buy or whatever it is and bring that back into the thinking for me as well. It's sometimes you have to educate the vendor as well. So my first question would be of the 10, did you physically go and meet them face to face?

Okay. Yeah. So I've been in this situation before. No, I didn't.

You didn't. He nothing. Oh, you didn't? Sorry.

No, I didn't do, yeah, apologies. So I would've went and sat with them face to face, have an honest conversation, explained that agents, typically 90% of the businesses that they have on their boots do not sell. That's fact. All the 10% do they rarely advertise in a public forum, all the businesses they have for sale, because they just simply don't sell.

Simple as that. The next question would be, you are asking for x for your business on x multiple. It's clearly not worth that because it would've sold by now if it was. So bring their expectation down a little bit.

Give them some co comparables. Say ultimately, if you want this, I can pay you this. It's just going to take longer. The earnout period will be longer, but right now it's not valued at that.

So as Rob mentioned there, sell them the dream. What would you do with the cash upon exit? Then they start spending it in their head. Then they come round to the fact, I could take half a million now or 1 million in three years time, but that might never happen.

The deal on the day that's on in front of them now is real and that cash is there. So try and sell them their dream and convince them that they have to maybe drop their expectations somewhat to get what they're after. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, and I would add to that is that if you haven't met them face to face or if you haven't had a Zoom call or whatever, you've just had that initial discovery call and you've discounted them, that's where part of your problem lies. Because I see often people will try and challenge a evaluation straight on the second they say it, and sometimes you have to earn the right to have that conversation and you have to be authentic to you. I have spent five years trying to perfect Jonathan's, and it just comes across like I'm being cheesy and it doesn't work.

Jonathan does it incredible. It doesn't work for me. So I don't do that because I sabotage the sale, but I do the similar sort of processes. Is that I'll just say that's steep for your sector and your size, but if the business is worth it and we can find a way to justify it, no problem.

We can come back to that later and then go through, talk about the outcome they're looking for, talk about their business, and then you can come back and challenge the valuation. But the fact you haven't had that face-to-face means you've not even got to that point. You've probably discounted it straight from day one without any of the information, but just saying six times doesn't mean anything. Now I would look at it when you're selling a car, when you're selling a house, every single one of us, and I say to people, let's be honest, you wanna sell your 200,000 net profit for 200 million quid if you could, and I wanna buy it for a penny.

We both have to be realistic, but I'm happy to pay you whatever the business is worth if we can find a way to make it work. Does that sound fair enough? Yeah. And then once you've done that, you've got their agreement, and then you can start chipping away and challenging it when you're going through.

But have the conversation, they've just give you a number. They haven't said that's what they need. They've said that's what they want. They're two completely different numbers.

And then on the response rate, I would have a look and Google yourself, because if you're getting 10 outta 30,000, that's unusually low, and there's some credibility factor there, that's an issue. I was just gonna add one thing here, and it's based on what we did in VRP Accelerator. We, one of the calls, 'cause someone thought they'd follow the system. Precisely.

And I always remember Tony Robbins saying that if you play golf, the difference between one degree wrong when you strike the ball is the difference between hitting the green and being on another hole. And it's the same with the system. Don't change things. So to give you an example of how minor it was, they'd spent a lot of time getting a professional letterhead done.

That looked incredible. But the letter was, I'm not a corporate buyer. I'm an individual buying businesses just like yours. You can't be an individual with a really fancy corporate letterhead that you've sent your letter on.

And that one dichotomy there caused 'em to get no response. The second they removed this fancy letterhead, they spent thousands on the next letter that got sent out. They got tons of responses because there wasn't a conflict on day one. And it was that one degree of change from the system that meant they, they knocked it onto another hole and missed the green completely.

So keep it as simple as you can is the best advice. So I've got question with two parts. I'll keep it brief for everyone else in the room. But the first one is in terms of pre pre headss of terms, when you are speaking to a potential seller and it's off market and they're just getting to the idea of, oh, I can sell my business.

How would you say you would position yourself if, for example, for context I'm someone with experience in the industry, in property and looking to acquire in that same sector. But unfortunately may not have as many as 20 or 30 years of experience in the sector. So positioning in a way that presents. An individual like coming to them so they don't, for example, go to someone else oh, I can sell.

Maybe let me explore with so and so or cast the net wide and go end up going to brokers. How do you keep that warm relationship? How do you keep the seller like engaged in conversation? I guess that is open to anyone.

My thought is, 'cause bear mind, my first business I bought was accountancy practices. I'm not an accountant. I've got no experience. There is, don't overthink it.

You've, if you go on the training, there's a short, literally 32nd intro. That is all you need to build credibility at that point going forward. Everything else is the fact that more about the process than they know about the process. The way you demonstrate the knowledge is by asking 'em questions and challenging them, their thoughts and walking them through the process.

If you believe in you, if you, so I always have this thing that if you are more passionate and you believe in you more than they don't believe in you. You will buy their business. If they don't believe in you more than you don't believe in you, then you won't. So as long as you are confident in yourself, as long as you've gone through and practiced, you won't have a problem.

Because remember, in the land of the blind, the one a person is king, have that confidence. Nail your introduction in the first 30 seconds. They will decide in the first 30 seconds whether you're credible or not, to sell the business to, and it is never an issue after that point. Yeah, I was gonna say as well, has this happened or is this something that you think may happen?

No, it's something that I'm thinking that might happen. Yeah. Like Martin said, you're only thinking it. I think I, I wouldn't preempts because those things are about what if have that conversation.

Yeah. I you can. And it's not just yourself. A lot of people over the years, you sit in, at Masterminds and what if I ask this and how do I answer that?

You will. And it doesn't. I wouldn't worry about how do I, it'll just come. Yeah, I wouldn't overthink that at all.

Just be yourself and be authentic. 'cause ultimately people like to buy from people. So if they can see themselves where you wanna take over their business and they can work with you, that's far more important than however many years that you've got experience in that. I think.

Yeah. For me it's have an identity of who you are in this realm that we're talking about. Know who you are. So when somebody's asking you questions, you are answering with from that frame of mind.

How, it's an m and a identity. So you're buying properties, right? Prop like lettings businesses, property management companies, but specifically, unlike of my deal criteria is very specific. There's stuff that I'm like, I don't want, I don't want that, I don't want that.

So I just wanna make it very specific. So I don't even think there's like 30,000 of these companies in the uk. So yeah. Yeah.

So you're really clear on what you wanna get out of it. Yeah. So that's great. So just build a story around it.

And it's a 32nd introduction. So when you get on the phone with that first person, you are really well rehearsed in it. You're gonna sound authentic, you're gonna sound confident and that way, when you're speaking to the right person as well, right? Because they're gonna go, yeah, that's not me.

And they put the phone down and the thing is, they're not rejecting you. You are pre rejecting them by telling 'em exactly what it is that you're looking for. So just have that certainty from yourself. Yeah.

Thank you. The other thing I'd add as well, particularly in this a sector I've got a bit of experience in and we all wanna know how many managed properties the client has and what their average rent role is and what the management fees are and all the rest of it. And it's very easy to get into an interrogative kind of conversation where you're trying to extract this information out somebody so that you can assess the deal. And that should really all come secondary to rapport building.

And just going back to, to, to having that salesmanship hat on when we're in these conversations is around asking open questions and getting them doing the talking. If you're asking closed questions and they're just giving you numbers or they're giving you percentages, or they're giving you yes or no answers to questions, rather than telling you the story of how they built the business, why they set it up, what the pains are, what the good stuff is, what their motivations are, what their dreams are what this all means to them you have to say a lot less and they will tell you.

Information without even realizing what they're telling you. And you just sit there and listen. So I think rather than sitting there and thinking you've necessarily got to lead the conversation, we feel like we are the buyer. We've gotta do the asking, the interrogating the finding out.

Actually just ask some simple, if you've got property experience and you've ever done evaluation with anyone in their home and you're sitting on a sofa and it's exactly the same conversation and the exactly the same structure to get them doing the talking and you just actively listen to what's going on. And one last thing I would have two or three questions following on from Rob. How many properties do you have on your book? What your, what's your rent role and stuff if you get asked a difficult question, I don't know the answer, but my colleague Rob owns 28 letting agents and the circle I have around me are the expert team in the UK on m and a.

But something more basic, first impression is quite a strong thing as well. A business that I'm in discussions with now was approached last year by an acquiring party. They received a letter. Arranged a face-to-face meeting and the gentleman turned up in shorts and crocs for the first meeting.

That didn't go anywhere, obviously. Just don't sweat details either. I made the mistake early on 'cause my background is engineering. I thought I had to know every single answer to every single question before I could sign head to terms.

And I attended a session with Jonathan and Tim and it was called Roast My Deal. So I got roasted for an hour and a half and the message that I left that meeting was with his you will never know all of the answers. On that day. And more than likely, by the time it gets to completion, all the answers that you got are all gonna be changed by due diligence and all that type of stuff.

So you, I'm not telling you to lower your standards, but equally just be a bit more accepting in the information that you've got. But I don't wanna bash so much on building rapport. It is about chemistry, but also not about drilling down on too much detail. 'cause it might be the reason why head to term is not happening.