Helping ambitious business owners write their wealth journey, with John Liston (Managing Director) and William Bracewell (Head of Advisory), Liston Ne...

This year, the Australian EtA and Search Fund community is looking forward to its first big event for the region. The EtA Forum (www.etaforum.com.au) will be held in Manly Beach in Sydney, on Friday 16th September.

In this episode I speak with John Liston, Managing Director and William Bracewell, Head of Advisory at Liston Newton Advisory (LNA), who have kindly offered to support the EtA Forum with sponsorship. It is great to have them on board, given they are such dedicated supporters of the Search and EtA community in this region.

This conversation was a good opportunity to hear a bit about the background of LNA and also their perspective on the SME market in Australia, in particular those deals and businesses backed by the Search Fund structure. All great deals and business endeavours will have a network of reliable advisors sitting on the sidelines providing the support, guidance and invaluable advice required to make good progress. LNA is one of those advisors whose clients benefit from years of deep experience and a wide ranging perspective on small and medium business operations.

Please stay tuned as we count down the days and be sure to yell out if you have any questions or comments to offer, so we can make the EtA Forum a great event for all involved.

Tickets available at: www.etaforum.com.au

Connect with Pete: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteseligman/

Connect with John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-liston-6b8bb147/

Connect with William: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-bracewell-74257870/

What we discussed:

02:51 We learn about Liston Newton Advisory and how they help business owners on the growth journey.

06:31 John tells us how he got involved with the search community.

12:45 William talks about the key issues that arise when buying, owning and operating a small business in Australia.

14:43 John & William discuss the opportunities and challenges to look for from a growth perspective.

24:30 John talks about the importance of getting the new structure right in the first 100 days.

Quotes:

We trace that back to why as a business owner do they get into business. Generally, it's because they want to build their own wealth, they want to build their family's wealth.

There is this gap in the middle where there are some growing small mid tier businesses that really need good advice and good support. And it's kind of that juggle between whether or not they can afford to either get it in house or pay for the big guys, or whether or not they need to kind of manage it themselves through the process.

You have to get your data right, get your ducks in a row. And it's a one to two year journey you should be going on before you even think about taking it to market.

You want to really understand what sort of sale you want it to be. So as an asset sale, is it a share sale? So yeah, it really starts from just the first thinking, I want to get into this, and then you sort of build from there.

I think a lot of CEOs and people that come on board with the owners, they really don't understand the level of workload that it takes to own a business.

I find a lot of businesses that we work alongside with, they've gone in with this massive theory of I'm going to buy it today. And it's going to be two, three times the size within 12 months. And I mean, that sort of does lead to a lot of decisions that probably aren't for the best in the business world. And so the first six months is yet again, just trying to understand how the business is run and making sure that you can get things in place.

Can I get the data I want as soon as I want it, because, often you've probably bought it at a decent multiple, because a lot of that stuff is not quite as efficient and not quite as modern as it should be. You've got to update the systems and the software and the processes, but you've also got to find out, okay, who's gonna step up now within the business and actually kind of take control this entire function, because often, they've sort of been able to fall back on the outgoing vendor who's done a bit of everything.

So you've got, you know, the incoming CEO who's kind of bought this business, and now they're, they're just bought themselves a job, essentially. So you're taking a step back, and saying don't worry about pushing that growth as high as you can, in that first 100 days, just take that step back.

It’s understanding if there's a particular problem, or there's a particular service that one of our clients needs, who can we trust?