The short answer
Mike Lander shares lessons from multiple buy-build-sell cycles, including how experienced operators think about negotiation differently from first-time sellers.
Key takeaways
- The mistake people often make when deciding whether to use an advisor in a business sale.
- Whether you are building a business or you are choosing a freelancer path (both are worthy options) but the difference comes down to your mindset.
- The head start you can get by acquiring an existing business, rather than building one.
- The benefit of scale when it comes to a buy and build strategy.
- The magic number for EBITDA.
- The two critical things you need to understand when it comes to selling.
- Mike’s advice on how to start gathering information if you are an entrepreneur looking to build a business to sell.
Listen to the podcast
45 minAbout this episode
Meet Mike Lander – a next level expert when it comes to buying, building, and selling multiple 7-figure businesses. Now leading other business owners through the art of successful negotiations, Mike’s experience, both as a Procurement Director buying over £400m of services for clients and buying/selling a number of companies as an entrepreneur, is helping other up-and-coming entrepreneurs grow their empires through acquisitions and exits.
A hugely successful guy who is incredibly easy to talk to, this episode of Buy Build Sell hears Mike explain his analogy as to why business deals are a bit like Hollywood films. Further, Mike poses the few key questions you have to ask yourself when you’re just starting out--including the critical moment when you have to decide whether you’re a freelancer or want to build a company.
Steadfastly believing in the importance of finding, dominating, and defending your niche, tune in to this episode to learn more about Mike’s tried, tested, and true strategy about acquiring businesses, drilling down into their core expertise, and how this helped him sell them and move on. Wondering if your company is prepped to sell? You won’t want to miss this conversation with Mike.
The Newscast
How to value, grow and exit your company
Get two useful emails each month: founder stories and lessons in the Buy Grow Sell Newscast, plus the latest small and mid-market M&A insights in The Wire.
Related episodes
About Mike Lander
Mike Lander is a successful entrepreneur and expert negotiator with a proven track record of buying, growing and selling businesses for seven-figure sums. He’s raised over £6.5m of acquisition/growth capital in his career and grown companies to over £20m revenue and £4m EBITDA.
Mike has a uniquely valuable perspective on negotiating commercial deals, having worked on both sides of the table as a Procurement Director and an entrepreneur. In one of his roles, Mike worked as a Procurement Director for what is now one of the world’s largest RPO/MSP organisations worth in excess of $1bn where he negotiated 100s of deals with staffing agencies.
He launched Piscari in 2010 and leveraged his specialist knowledge and experience negotiating hundreds of deals worth over £400m in total to empower leaders and sales teams to negotiate more profitable deals, especially when procurement is involved.
Connect with Mike Lander
About the show
Buy Grow Sell is hosted by Simon Bedard, founder and managing director of Exit Advisory Group, a boutique mergers and acquisitions advisory firm that helps Australian business owners value, prepare for and navigate a sale. Every conversation draws on real deals and the patterns behind them.
