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How to boost organic growth with corporate acquisitions (and keep growing teams aligned)
109 Plays2 years ago
Steve Sharp is Founder and Managing Director of Nuvo, a leading firm of Chartered Certified Accountants providing accountancy services for owner managed businesses. Nuvo was recently recognised as a UK Top 100 accounting practice, following a sustained period of organic and acquisition-driven growth. In this episode of the First-time Founders Podcast, Steve shares his experiences implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) within a professional services environment and offers advice to fellow entrepreneurs curious about ‘entrepreneurship through acquisition’ (in addition to accounting practices, Steve has acquired a wide range of businesses, from country clubs to facilities management companies).
Interested viewers can reach Steve ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sharp-2391581a/ ) at steve@nuvo.co.uk and Rob (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertliddiard/) at Rob@mission-group.co.uk (or to book some free time with Rob, visit https://www.mission-group.co.uk/work-with-rob).
First-time Founders on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7hcdluu5ywrZ6qFhhI8EVH?si=840a4f564e6d4ea4
First-time Founders on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0SfnHZhV747su-Wnd-9Z0Q
First-time Founders on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-time-founders/id1697488388
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Transcript
Steve Sharpe's Journey and Nuvo's Growth
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the First Time Founders podcast, the show where we talk about how to start a business from nothing and grow into something meaningful. Today I'm joined by Steve Sharpe. Steve's a founder-director from Nuvo, a next-generation accounting practice that's grown spectacularly in recent years. They're just about to or maybe just have broken into the top 100 accounting practices and they've done that through a combination of organic and acquisition-fueled growth. So Steve's very kindly opened up and talked to us about how to go about
00:00:30
Speaker
running a professional services business, he uses the entrepreneurial operating system, which many of you have heard me talk about before, but also how to acquire companies. If you're a founder that maybe recently exited your first venture, maybe your 10th venture, but you've always started a business from nothing and grown it, this episode, you'll hear somebody talk about having done that, but also how they've become attracted to acquiring good businesses that already exist and making them even better through a combination of vision,
00:01:00
Speaker
Good operational discipline.
Strategies for Founders: Enhancing Existing Businesses
00:01:01
Speaker
Again, Steve talks about the use of the operational, the entrepreneurial operating system. And also just generally how to spot opportunities in and around your network if you're a connected founder interested in businesses and being a good steward of great companies looking for their next, to go on their next adventure. So I found this conversation fascinating. I think you will too. So without further ado, my conversation with Steve Sharpe.
00:01:31
Speaker
Welcome to the First Time Founders Podcast. Thank you for doing this, sir. Pleasure.
Transitioning Roles: From Managing Partner to Visionary
00:01:37
Speaker
So Steve, we obviously connected on, not obviously, we did connect on LinkedIn because I had detected that you run quite a successful accounting practice on EOS. Before we dive into that, you've actually got anybody that looks you up on LinkedIn from the show notes is going to observe that you've got quite a few interesting gigs, hats, however you want to describe it. Would you mind setting the scene for those watching and listening, sort of explaining a bit about your day job maneuver and then some of the other things you do outside of running a fast-growing accounting practice?
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So like I said, the day job is Nuvo. I was until recently managing partner. And now I've stepped into the visionary seat as the founder. But along the way, kind of over the last 20 years is building Nuvo up also had other opportunities to invest in other businesses.
00:02:27
Speaker
So I now have non-exec roles in a few of the businesses and investments as well, but the focus is very much on Nuvo and continuing the growth with the business.
Using EOS to Overcome Growth Challenges
00:02:39
Speaker
So you mentioned that you're the visionary for Nuvo, that's obviously entrepreneurial operating system terminology.
00:02:47
Speaker
For folks that are familiar with entrepreneurial operating system, vocab, but maybe can't picture how you might put that into something like a professional services business, would you mind sharing some light on how you came across the system and why you think it works in professional services or why it has worked for you?
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So we were running as a kind of a traditional accountancy practice for the first kind of circa 15, 16 years, very much self-employed accountants working together. And we got to the point where we were really hitting a ceiling, another EOS phrase, but we were struggling to continue to grow at the pace we were without some major changes and investments into the structure systems and people within the business.
00:03:30
Speaker
By chance I had a client who was an EOS implementer and on one of her year end reviews we were speaking generally about business and she suggested I read the traction book
00:03:46
Speaker
And pretty much as soon as I read the intro, I knew it was answering a lot of the questions to where we were as a business. So we looked at implement EOS.
00:04:01
Speaker
do all of the kind of the structure that EOS brought to the table and that's where I initially became the integrator and visionary in a joint role as we built the team up.
00:04:17
Speaker
always with a view of I'm more kind of forward thinking, big picture, big relationships, rather than the detail. So my business partner, Simon, has took over the managing partner role, so the integrated role, which allows me to spend more time on the visionary role.
00:04:37
Speaker
It's been an interesting 20 years, like I said, 15, 16, very much stereotypical business. And then these last three years via EOS has really helped us to break through not only the initial ceiling that we're in, but we've pretty much tripled in size during that three year period.
00:04:54
Speaker
That's amazing. I can't wait to get into that because I know you've done that organically and then by acquisition as well, so it's super interesting.
The Dual Role of Visionary and Integrator
00:05:00
Speaker
Before we do, let's talk a bit about being in the visionary and the integrated seat together because my background originally was I was a lawyer. I wasn't clever enough to be an accountant, sadly, but I think this is probably, it was true for me and I would imagine it would be true for a lot of accountants.
00:05:15
Speaker
In order to even survive a little bit in that world, you have to be able to make the trains run to some degree. And so when I did the EOS worldwide test about whether you were a visionary or integrator, I was kind of somewhere in the middle, but with a bias to being a visionary. Did you find the same thing? And if so, did you feel a bit embarrassed to become a full-time visionary?
00:05:35
Speaker
A little bit because accountants by nature aren't particularly visionary and like you I was a bit of both.
00:05:47
Speaker
I enjoy doing a dual role, but equally it brings its own difficulties in focusing on the shorter term, managing the team, making sure everything is integrated, especially as you're going through a high growth phase, acquiring new businesses, new offices, there's a lot of integration to be done.
00:06:06
Speaker
And that tends to come first because it tends to be more urgent and therefore you don't always get to the visionary longer term strategic planning, making sure the core values are in place. So it was enjoyable but it was always for a temporary period until we built the team up to be in a position where we could split that role out.
00:06:29
Speaker
So yeah, I did enjoy it. It was challenging. And was I embarrassed going into the visionary role? It was more just the perception to the wider team to make sure it didn't look like I was kind of stepping back or out of the business and to illustrate the difference to the team of having somebody focused on the vision and going forward.
00:06:54
Speaker
and the longer term planning is of benefit to the businesses overall. And having Simon now in place as the managing partner, as the integrator, was a good thing for the business. So we used the opportunity of our staff day to kind of explain and illustrate to the whole team the change. The main thing was as an accountant, I don't particularly enjoy being called a visionary because
00:07:20
Speaker
It's just that term that I think accountants don't really relate particularly to. So my title then became founder-director rather than visionary or any other terms that visionaries might otherwise have. So that was probably the challenge is finding a suitable title just to go along with the role.
00:07:42
Speaker
As interesting, actually, you worked with an implementer because it might have been tempted to change quite a few of the tools and the terminology if you didn't have someone there keeping you honest and keeping people... Was it Alice that you worked with? I don't remember.
The Impact of EOS Implementers on Business Change
00:07:54
Speaker
Yes, yes, it was Alice Jordan in a strength, which was useful because we already had a relationship, she'd already been a client for a period before that. So we used to speak a bit about business, but then honestly, it was a game changer. Alice getting involved and facilitating
00:08:13
Speaker
the changes that we made, and we needed that person to help us through it to make sure we gave the time and the focus on the project. Otherwise, it's too easy to be stuck in the day-to-day running of the business, especially when you're in a kind of a deadline-based business where there's always work to be done, there's always deadlines coming up, there's always client projects ongoing. So to actually have that structure and time to step out of the business, we needed a third party to come and help us along the process.
00:08:42
Speaker
Alice is brilliant as well. I mean, I only qualify, we implemented EOS within my software business. I only recently qualified to work with other organizations and Alice has been so good. She's just, she's a really interesting combination of like direct but kind
00:08:58
Speaker
Which is exactly what they teach you to do in EOS Worldwide. It's all about entering the danger. And I've learned a lot from her already, so I can see why you're attracted to her style. We needed a bit of that as well. A bit of, not necessarily tough love, but a bit of directness. And like I said, it helped that I already kind of knew of and worked with Alice anyway.
00:09:20
Speaker
But it is, you do have to be direct and we weren't very good as a team at being direct with each other. So as part of the process, things came out that enabled us to move forward and have better communications and being more direct. So yeah, it was an interesting process, but Alice was great all along the way.
Achieving Growth Targets Through Acquisitions
00:09:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. So you've grown significantly. Have you grown roughly in line with your original sort of your vision in EOS terms or has that changed over time? Did you know that was going to be through acquisition and organic?
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah so the story was we set up in 2004 and in 2009 we came across our first acquisition almost by accident and it basically doubled us in size overnight and it was relatively easy compared to going out and winning new clients when there's a long lead time winning clients organically
00:10:19
Speaker
and then taking on a client from another practice, the professional clearance, setting up on our systems. The first year always takes twice as long as subsequent years, whereas going out and being able to acquire a block of fees with those clients already integrated within that firm, we're just taking over that firm and then integrating the systems. And also acquiring some good staff was almost like a cheat code for us at the time.
00:10:45
Speaker
We did really well in kind of founding the business and growing it to a certain size, but then that first acquisition really changed our thinking about how we can grow the business. And then since then we acquired another eight firms before we implemented EOS, so we've kind of grown to a size where we were.
00:11:05
Speaker
three offices and really hitting the ceiling between we were a 50-50 business at the time of being able to continue to grow and then implementing EOS really kind of opened the door to be able to do more acquisitions. So we've done another nine since EOS in the last three years.
00:11:26
Speaker
The original VTO, back to your question, three years ago was to become a top 100 UK firm. That was a seven-year plan. I know it's initially meant to be a 10-year plan, but we wanted to align that with our personal plans. And we're going to have achieved that in this next full financial year, so achieved it in four years.
00:11:46
Speaker
bit ahead of schedule and the market for us in terms of acquisitions is very good at the moment because there's a lot of people looking to exit the industry and not a lot of succession planning in firms. But EOS has allowed us the opportunity to be able to take advantage of the opportunities in the market because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to successfully acquire the firms we have in the last three years.
00:12:12
Speaker
Do you have any sense of how big you can or should get? Because I mean, if you're in the top 100 now, there's got to be a long way to go, right? Particularly given how forward thinking you are around running the practice. So I don't want to make people cringe with all the puffery, but it is true, isn't it? There are not that many professional services businesses that have committed to culture and structure in the way you have. So I mean, how far do you think it can go?
Building Foundations for Continued Growth
00:12:35
Speaker
The first thing was to get the foundations right. So we feel that we've done a lot of work over the first two years of EOS of getting the right team in place, getting the right structure, getting the right people in the right seats, the right systems and processes to allow us then to continue to grow.
00:12:53
Speaker
Now that we've done another vision because we're close to succeeding on the initial top 100, that's become more of an internal shareholder value vision to try and focus the senior management team on maximizing shareholder value rather than kind of a top line top 100, which was more of a kind of get the whole team
00:13:21
Speaker
on board. So it's a bit more of an internal vision, shareholder vision rather than external vision. The external vision still remains the same until we achieve the top 100. And then we'll have a nice big party and decide what we want to externally vision with the team, the wider team going forward. But in terms of where we can get to, I think now we're working on a revised five year plan.
00:13:48
Speaker
And there's no reason why we can't triple insights again in the next five years. There's the opportunity out there. We're a young management team. We're all focused and driven on continuing to grow in the market. There's lots of opportunities. There's not a lot of people doing what we're doing at our level. There's a lot of larger consolidators.
00:14:10
Speaker
operating with bigger acquisitions but at our level we've got a very successful model so it's normally win-win for the business that's looking to exit and for us to require. Along with
00:14:27
Speaker
It's not all acquisition growth. We're doing some really good things with some organic growth as well. We use software called Go Proposal as our standard pricing system across the whole of the practice and the mentality behind Go Proposal which aligns really well to EOS making sure we're billing
00:14:46
Speaker
the correct prices across the whole business for all of our clients for all of our services is leading to some really good double digit organic growth to go along with the acquisition and then obviously if we can acquire and then have some organic growth on the acquisitions it's win-win again so yeah exciting times. I can believe that what was the sort of the sweet spot in terms of client like client size and profile just
00:15:10
Speaker
Before I start pontificating on my view of the accounting world, I might not have any experience with your target market. Yeah, sure. So our clients are split into three.
Focusing on Core Services Over Diversification
00:15:20
Speaker
So what we did day one is say that we're going to stick to quite a narrow core focus. We're going to do what we're good at and do lots of it rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
00:15:29
Speaker
So what we don't do is almost as important as what we do do. So we've never gone into corporate financing solvency, IT services, wealth management. We've stuck to our core focus of the core compliance accountancy services. But what we do do is all of the core compliance accountancy services, and we focus on doing them all well. So we do bookkeeping, payroll, VAT management, cashier, and tax and audit.
00:15:56
Speaker
So in terms of then our type of clients, we've got three main types of clients. We've got a lot by number in terms of individuals. So we'll do individual tax returns for people earning over £100,000 or rental property or additional tax income. So we'll do about five, six thousand tax returns.
00:16:18
Speaker
Then at the top end, we're audit registered. So we've got three clients over 100 million turnover and circa 40, 50 audit clients. And we've got an audit partner and an audit team that look after the audit clients. But then the mass by
00:16:34
Speaker
value of fee income is the ones in the middle. Owner managed businesses who are large enough to need an accountant, normally more than once a year, but not large enough to employ one in-house. So typically one, two person owned businesses, they might have five to 20 staff,
00:16:53
Speaker
We'll do the payroll. We'll help on the bookkeeping support. They might have an internal bookkeeper and we just help at the end of the month or quarter. We'll provide financial information for them throughout the year so they're not running the business blind. We'll help with any business issues throughout the year, whether it be raising debt, cash flow, etc.
00:17:14
Speaker
And then we'll do the compliance work, the year end accounts and tax returns at the end of the year. So it's a little bit more closely working with clients, building better relationships than it is just once a year, nine months after the year. And that's part of the whole EOS journey is making sure our systems and processes are proactive, very
00:17:34
Speaker
quickly after a year end we're getting the the accounts and tax returns done so we can actually talk to clients about their plans going forward and help them build their businesses and achieve their goals rather than just doing the compliance bit which is kind of has to be done no matter what but I can see why you the acquisition you can get this interesting flywheel with acquisitions and then organic growth because I don't think it's any secret across the entrepreneurial community that
00:18:02
Speaker
A lot of entrepreneurs don't feel very well qualified to hire great accountants, particularly with compliance at the core, because I think the fact that we have to file our statutory filings means that we kind of have to pick someone. A lot of us do that fairly unthinkingly.
00:18:18
Speaker
So i can totally see how if your local accounting gets acquired by nouveau and then suddenly you see this transformation in the experience that you get and the value you get while you would be open to buying a wider range of albeit still related services you know that that completely makes sense to me i mean i'm probably on my fourth
00:18:37
Speaker
set of accountants and my little entrepreneurial journey over the last 15 years and I would say I've really only just reached sophistication on what I want and then of course you need to make sure you've got the resources to be a good fit for the type of accountant that you want but I've definitely learned by trial and error and I can't be the only person that's learned what a good accountant looks like by doing it the wrong way.
00:19:03
Speaker
It's a very fragmented market. Obviously the term accountant isn't actually protected by law like solicitors are. So you've got a lot of very good qualified accountants and you've got some not so good qualified accountants and you've got some good and bad not qualified accountants to various different
Adding Value Beyond Compliance Through Advisor Matching
00:19:25
Speaker
levels. So it's a very confusing
00:19:27
Speaker
market very fragmented and I always suggest it's about matching your advisor to the type and style of business and type and style of business person that you are and that tends to be where we fit well with owner managed businesses who not only want to look after the compliance yes we can do that no problem but where they want something a little bit more whether that be financial
00:19:53
Speaker
management information or just a call every quarter to chat about the business and be a bit of a sounding board, especially for single owner managed businesses that maybe haven't got that. So I think we've got that balance where you can stick to the core services as we do, but you can also add some value on that and be business advisory around those core services for those clients that want and value that. And then you build good relationships with those clients and then back to the organic growth.
00:20:21
Speaker
There doesn't seem to be that many clients who come to us who have a recommendation of a good firm. So you do a good job for one person and it's amazing how many people they'll go and tell. I can totally, totally see that. It's exciting. So we spoke nearly 20 minutes about the core business. Now I'm dying to get into how one goes about buying
00:20:42
Speaker
country club and other interesting businesses and full disclosure to those watching or listening, that's definitely the path I want to take my career on next, having sort of built semi-scaled and then sold a business.
00:20:56
Speaker
But not for a gazillion dollars. Having seen that process on the seller side, I'm now quite interested in being on the buyer side. I understand there's lots of reasons why people might sell a good business at an entry price that makes sense for the acquirer. Because of course, in popular media, all you ever hear about are
00:21:16
Speaker
zillion dollar outcomes where the price seems sort of, particularly in the tech world, it seems like it bears no relation to the intrinsic value of the asset. Or you hear about these horror stories of businesses going pop that business journalists seem to sort of morbidly enjoy. You hear very little in the middle. So would you mind sharing some of your experience and some of the acquisitions that you've done outside of your
00:21:37
Speaker
your accounting practice so that other founders listening that might want to pursue entrepreneurship to acquisition next as opposed to day one founding can maybe learn a thing or two from your your your wins and your losses mistakes and otherwise yeah sure so i suppose to start with i've always been interested in business i've i became an accountant i left school at 16 and did an apprenticeship in accountancy because i saw that was the
00:22:02
Speaker
best way of getting into business, so it wasn't necessarily becoming an accountant for an accountant's sake, it was a door into the business world. Then founding a firm, which is hard work those early days, working from the bedroom, your first employee, your first offices,
00:22:25
Speaker
Very rewarding as you grow because it is all about you, but it was difficult. And then that first acquisition we did in 2009, like I said before, it almost felt like we found a bit of a cheat code.
00:22:41
Speaker
Got into some other opportunities that were presented mainly through the network, through business connections.
Lessons from Failed and Successful Investments
00:22:51
Speaker
We actually invested in an alcoholic ice cream business, which was really exciting at the time.
00:22:58
Speaker
It was an SEIS investment, so obviously it was tax efficient, it was a contact that we knew, and it was one of those businesses that it was high risk, but could have been absolutely amazing in the food industry, but it was trying to launch a new product into a new category in the food industry. So with hindsight, I mean, it was a great experience. I put our investment that we ultimately lost in that down as my university education that I never had.
00:23:28
Speaker
and learned a lot more from that than I did with any successes. So yeah, no regrets on that, but it was just an opportunity that came about. And then my wife Francesca, she's a HR leader and she was HR manager at a Gulf and Country Club. I was asked by the managing director to help on a management buyout.
00:23:57
Speaker
introduced into a few high net worth clients and quickly decided that this was something that was a great opportunity a bit different to the professional services businesses that I've been involved with before but a solid business case it was a buy invest
00:24:16
Speaker
business model, underlying good business, you just needed some investment in the asset. It was an older owner that was looking to exit for a couple of years before, so he was motivated to exit and the business just needed that fresher, newer look. And with
00:24:36
Speaker
a couple of other business partners, we felt that we could add some value to that business. And again, it was an exciting opportunity. I think ultimately dealing with lots of different businesses over the last 25 years as I've been in the industry, you learn most businesses are ultimately the same.
00:24:59
Speaker
they sell something, they do something and they account for something, whether that's a goal from Country Club where it's more focused on the sales and the marketing and delivering the experience and then making sure that that's all priced to make a profit, or whether it's on the accountancy side, I think once
00:25:20
Speaker
Once you know business, you know business and you can change those, you can adapt those skills across different businesses. We then also got involved in a facilities management business. So we employ about 500 people through the facilities management businesses that we've acquired. Again, doing a buy and build structure. So we bought one initially. It was a business that I knew through Nuvo. Guy that was looking to sell had been messed around on the
00:25:50
Speaker
by the potential buyer. And there seems to be a lot of that in the market now. There's a lot of people who've been looking to buy businesses, maybe gone on some courses and they can buy a business for nothing, got no experience at running a business. And yeah, good luck to them. Look, there's opportunities in the market. I'm sure there's some very good people looking to buy the businesses. But with my background of founding a business, looking after a lot of businesses through Nuvo,
00:26:16
Speaker
and then doing the Golf and Country Club project, it just put me in a good position to be able to look at other business opportunities.
The Importance of Structured Operating Systems
00:26:24
Speaker
So yeah, it tends to be more reactive to opportunities that are either presented to me or that I come across rather than proactively going out to any industry and looking, but we've invested in a recruitment firm.
00:26:38
Speaker
That was through EOS actually, so we identified we needed 13 positions filled and through doing the EOS kind of modelling on the accountability chart and changing our structure all the way from recruiting a finance director, which was a new position that we never had, to some kind of heads of departments and various other roles throughout the business.
00:27:06
Speaker
And we always struggled as a business because we're under the radar because we've grown through acquisition rather than doing a lot of marketing. Our employer brand wasn't particularly strong, so we've struggled to recruit really good staff. Once we've got staff,
00:27:23
Speaker
That's interesting. Retaining and motivating them has been relatively straightforward. We've put a lot of focus and effort on it, but our retention rates have always been good. But actually recruiting was difficult, so we decided to make an investment in a financial recruitment firm with my wife who, like I said, is from an HR background.
00:27:46
Speaker
to really get that direct access to the market to the people because our business is all about people. So having better access to better people ultimately benefits the business and was an interesting investment for us to do as well. So yeah, we did the financial recruitment firm, did a bit in the legal sector as well. And then the buy and build on the facilities management side.
00:28:16
Speaker
That's unbelievable. You're not boring, are you? I mean, it's interesting. So actually, if I was to play back what I take from an advice and maybe what other founders listen in, and please correct me or extend, beware the personal brands you build as an acquirer. If you kick tires and you mess people around, that's going to adversely affect your deal flow. And then it sounds like your experience at least has been
00:28:38
Speaker
what did Warren Buffett call it, kind of circle of competence, but I guess it's also thinking about what's in orbit around your network and your core business. You wouldn't necessarily pick that up from LinkedIn, but as you tell the story in narrative terms, it actually completely makes sense, especially really helpful for anyone in my position to introspect on where the right first step might be, always being mindful of not being seen as a time waster.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yes, and I think when somebody is selling their business, it's a very personal transaction for them. It's probably the biggest single financial transaction they'll make in their life and their employees and their customers are quite often friends and family.
00:29:19
Speaker
them having the confidence in whoever's buying the business, I find as being a lot more important than necessarily the deal structure, the price, the quantum of the actual deal. So I always make sure that I sit down with somebody face to face. I think having
00:29:38
Speaker
the fact that I'm a chartered accountant, the fact I've set up a business and helped a lot of businesses along the way and got a successful accountancy business helps, the fact I've got investments in other businesses and I can refer people to those previous business owners as a successful transaction definitely gives you credibility, but then also the fact that I tend to
00:30:01
Speaker
not deal with anybody that isn't recommended to me means that you've already got that introduction rather than having to build from a cold relationship. So anybody looking to buy a business, I think the first thing to do is to try and explore networks face-to-face recommendations rather than going on a website for businesses for sale.
00:30:26
Speaker
and then build the story on the credibility to prove why you're a credible buyer because even though it's a buyer's market, there's a lot more businesses for sale than there are people looking to buy. You've still got to prove that you're the right person for that business owner and for their staff and for their customers. So yeah, that's what I'd suggest.
00:30:49
Speaker
That's amazing. How strongly do you feel about EOS as an operating system that you generally recommend? Or do you even feel strongly that businesses should have an operating system, even if it's a different one to EOS? Or are you pretty chill about leaving it alone if ad hoc seems to be working?
00:31:07
Speaker
No, I think you've got to have some structure and system, especially if you're growing a business or looking to invest or make changes to a business. Maybe if a business is more plodding and that's where the business needs to be, it's less important.
00:31:24
Speaker
But EOS has been absolutely brilliant for Nuvo. It was just what we needed just at the right time, so it fit really well in professional services. But we've also used elements of it in the other businesses, so the facilities management business. We don't run full EOS. I think we'll probably move towards doing that.
00:31:43
Speaker
but we've taken elements of it as we've needed to, to help us grow there. And then the Gulf and Country Club, we implemented a lot of EOS there. So we kind of took EOS and took the bits that we liked the most and kind of molded a slightly
00:32:03
Speaker
different version of EOS within the other businesses. So yeah, I definitely recommend it to most businesses, especially businesses who are looking to grow or that are suffering from hitting the ceiling, business owners that are spending far too much time and too involved in the business to be able to extract themselves from the business and allow the business to grow. So yeah, and I've recommended it to various clients along the way. So yeah,
00:32:32
Speaker
In simple answer, yes, I would recommend EOS and most businesses should do something around operating systems. It took me 16 years to work it out. Don't worry, I've been a slow learner on that front. Similarly, I think what I like about it as a aspiring acquirer
00:32:53
Speaker
you want to have a really good relationship with the team, if the owner is going to continue and to participate in any way. I love the idea of being able to go in and say, this is an operating system I believe in. This is how I think it would be good to run this organisation going forward. And so there can't be any kind of seller's remorse afterwards. That quite appeals to me as opposed to them feeling like they're just being
00:33:16
Speaker
you know, whipsawed around by whatever the, you know, they were they're answering to the last mad entrepreneur that owned the asset and now someone else has come in and we're going to suddenly run the company based on their kind of random ideas. I quite like the idea that you can refer people to a series of books and say there is a right way, right, you know, you have there's a series of right ways to run a good company, you just have to pick one.
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah and I think it just adds to that credibility point that kind of a serious business person that knows what they're doing, talking about the structure and talking about vision and talking about process and accountability and meeting schedules and rocks and
00:33:56
Speaker
It just gives that credibility and confidence that you know what you're doing and the business is going to be in safe hands. And like I said, that tends to be in my experience the biggest factor in a seller deciding who they want to sell or if they want to sell their business to somebody is that confidence that that person is going to be able to look after the business and their staff and their customers going forward.
00:34:21
Speaker
No matter whether there's lots of deferred consideration or not, take the numbers out of it completely, that tends to be the biggest point. Steve, this has been amazing. I know we've come up on the half hour. Obviously, people watching and listening to this are going to be entrepreneurial folks running businesses of different sizes.
00:34:42
Speaker
If people, I know this hasn't been an advert for Nuvo, it's just been sharing a series of entrepreneurial experiences, acquiring organic EOS and otherwise, but you could see why people might want to work with an accounting practice that kind of get it across all the topics that we've covered. What's the best way for someone to get in touch with Nuvo? We're obviously going to put your
00:34:59
Speaker
contact details in the show notes but i'm assuming you don't want a thousand entrepreneurs doing like like lead gen for no no so they just go to the new version they go to the website or yeah they go to the website or happy to share my details my emails are then filtered through the team and they'll be directed to the most appropriate person to be able to help
00:35:16
Speaker
But yeah, so we're an entrepreneurial business, so we tend to do well in dealing with entrepreneurial clients, clients who are going through a process and growing. It's exciting to help with them, help the compliance and help with adding some value along the way. So yeah, always happy to help.
00:35:35
Speaker
I can only imagine how many mad visionaries there are in your customer population and maybe a few long suffering integrators. Yes, indeed, indeed. Not that many that have made the transition between the two, but yes, I'm glad I'm not the only one. Steve, thank you so much. This has been awesome. Absolute pleasure. Cheers, Rob.