Speaker 1
Okay. I want to talk about positioning yourself as an investor, in order to attract more deal flow. One of the key things to remember is that most people don’t want to sell their businesses. Businesses generally aren’t for sale or particularly the ones that we’re looking for aren’t for sale.
Speaker 1
So, how do you have an honest conversation with these businesses? Well, quite often businesses have issues. They have motivations. Business isn’t as straightforward as you think it is when you first start out.
Speaker 1
A lazy entrepreneur solution to most of those problems is to throw more money at it. Most businesses fail and the owners believe that they failed because they didn’t raise any debt or they didn’t raise enough investment in order to keep the business going.
Speaker 1
Well actually, business is fundamentally pretty simple. You need to have more money coming in than going out and if people haven’t fixed that fundamental problem, then they’ll see the only solution is being to throw more cash at it.
Speaker 1
Well, I describe that as trying to fix a leaking bucket with more water. It’s not a sustainable way to fix the business’ problem and take it forward. However, if you can find one of these opportunities, we have a whole bunch of strategies on the Harbour Club that can help you re-engineer the balance sheet, re-engineer the profit-and-loss and most importantly, re-engineer that cash flow so that the business has a more sustainable future.
Speaker 1
That, in itself, has huge value to the value that you’re dealing with and that value can be reflected in shares, in equity. So, quite often, you can buy a business that’s looking for investment, but actually doesn’t need investment. It needs those fundamentals fixed so that it can go forwards.
Speaker 1
Sometimes, if you want to attract the right kind of honest conversation with someone, positioning yourself as an investor in small-to-medium sized businesses is a great way to have honest conversations with people who are looking for investment. You might quite well come across some really good investment opportunities and amongst that, so you can do some good investments.
Speaker 1
But, in my experience, 90% of the people seeking investment are seeking it for the wrong reasons. It’s rather than fix the underlying issue or it can be a lack of knowledge around how to fix the underlying issue. But either way, that word, investor, is a great way of attracting people to you.
Speaker 1
I’ll give a really good example. If you go to one of these networking breakfast meetings, you know where everyone sits around a table and you all stand up for a minute and explain what it is you do. You go along to one of those meetings and stand up and say you’re an investor. Honestly, at the end of the meeting, you’ll be beating them off with a big stick, trying to get rid of all the crowd of people that would have gathered around you.
Speaker 1
It really is quite a powerful thing to go out and talk about. Try positioning yourself as an investor at a couple of meetings. Try it on for size and see how it works from a deal flow prospective.
Speaker 1
Don’t forget, you are who people google. So, quite often, if you go to one of these meetings and you say you’re an investor and somebody googles you and it says you’re a painter and decorator, that’s not particularly congruent. You need to make sure your story matches up across all media and that you are pretty are seemed to do whatever it is that you are saying you do.
Speaker 1
That’s it for now. Position yourself as an investor and you will attract more opportunities to talk to people.
Speaker 2
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