We value your company (bizval): Recent Episodes
bizval
Three entrepreneurs and professionals have come together to build bizval, an online company valuation tool that distills years of investment banking and advisory experience into an easy-to-use, but advanced algorithm. In these podcasts, we tell our stories and yours.
John Sweeney is focused on helping business owners achieve a successful business exit. In this episode of the bizval podcast, he joined host The Finance Ghost to not just define what this actually means, but also to unpack some of the key considerations for business owners:
- Readiness for an exit - personally and otherwise
- The sweet spot for buyers
- Strategic vs. financial buyers
- Private equity buyers and why they shouldn't be a concern in most cases
- The roll-ups in the UK market and why these deals take place
- Key take-outs for business owners looking to built towards an exit
You can visit The Business Exit Academy's website here and you can connect with John on LinkedIn here.
John Driscoll is a consultant, speaker and growth hacker. He has vast experience in building start-ups and solving problems for clients, currently serving as Founder and CEO of Naked Development, a creative development agency in California.
His passions come through clearly in this conversation with The Finance Ghost, including:
- How his love of golf led to an opportunity with the PGA of America, along with a deep understanding of how to engage with a broader base of people and appreciate how the top of a funnel makes all the difference.
- Building out value ladders in organisations that have products ranging from free to premium.
- The importance of not trying to appeal to everyone and thus being invisible, but rather building a brand that is appealing to enough people to be successful and loved.
- Creating culture in an organisation and how important this is.
- Recognising when you are selling a service that people really want vs. something that is a grudge purchase.
- The funding ecosystem in California and how failure is treated vs. elsewhere in the world.
- A strong belief that a global start-up can be built from just about anywhere, with John welcoming approaches and ideas from global founders.
John’s insights are invaluable for global founders looking to build more valuable companies. To engage with him, find him on LinkedIn here.
From freelancer to freedompreneur: Lien de Pau strongly believes that you’ll live the life you build. Why can’t your passion project also be a successful, valuable business that allows you to have the money you want and balance in your life?
Her claim to fame is that she wakes up every morning without an alarm clock, despite being a successful serial entrepreneur.
It’s easy to talk yourself into the trap of “things will never get better” and “my life will always be this unbalanced” – but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can build a valuable business that is independent from you as the owner, allowing you to experience all that life as to offer.
You can read Lien’s work on Forbes at this link and you can engage with her blog and courses on her website, The Big Exit.
Search funds are well-understood in regions like the US and Europe, yet the concept is almost unheard of in South Africa. Sibusiso Mbonambi plans to change that, with a strong belief that search funds offer great exit opportunities for founders who have struggled to achieve the succession planning that is usually a prerequisite for a successful exit.
In this episode, he explains the concept of a "BOB" (Boring Old Business) and why it is a perfect candidate for acquisition by a search fund.
You can learn more about Cosworth Capital at this link and you can connect directly with Sibusiso on LinkedIn here.
Renier Lombard believes that just one relationship can change your life. This has certainly been his experience in building a business. Through the work he does in FLANCE Creative Directors, Renier helps founders, executives and people of influence in unlocking the same experience through their online engagements, specifically on LinkedIn.
With absolutely no effort made at sugar coating the journey, Renier explains how FLANCE has been built and why he always knew that he would be an entrepreneur.
To connect with Renier on LinkedIn, find him here. Learn more about FLANCE by visiting the website here.
Ted Leverette calls himself The Business Buyer Advocate. He has spent more than 30 years helping people find and buy the right businesses in the right ways. Having advised clients across the world, Ted has deep insights into the similarities and differences across various jurisdictions.
With hard-hitting views on the realities of buying and selling private companies (“If you don’t have an exit plan, you’ll sell on the buyer’s terms”), Ted is well worth the investment of your time in listening to this podcast hosted by bizval co-founder The Finance Ghost.
Topics discussed include:
- What makes businesses difficult to sell and what are some of the biggest mistakes made by founders is trying to build a sellable operation?
- The importance of preparation of a business for sale – including preparation of the owners themselves!
- The distinction of self-employment vs. having a sellable business.
- Strategic vs. financial buyers and the core differences, not least of all in terms of offer price, handover periods and more.
- The types of businesses that Ted is familiar with and how bankable they are.
- Advice to sellers to help make them more attractive to buyers.
- Controlling vs. minority stakes and why Ted's clients generally want to own 100% of what they buy - with rare exceptions.
- Why buyers should invest in sectors they are familiar with and how this improves credibility in the market and reduces risk.
- The myth of being a silent partner and how dangerous that type of thinking is for buyers.
The podcast ends with a strong checklist for buyers on what they absolutely have to be thinking about when embarking on this journey.
To connect with Ted, you can find him here on LinkedIn. You can also read his how-to books for buyers on Amazon. Visit the website for the Partner On-Call Network, LLC here.
Chay Stockdale started as a trainee at Iridium Business Solutions and worked his way up to being a shareholder and director in the company. Today, he is Head of Advisory and plays a key role in the engine room of the business.
In this podcast, bizval co-founder The Finance Ghost spoke with Chay about topics like:
- The importance of the operational side of any business and how it filters into other areas.
- The ways in which founders become unstuck when moving into new territories.
- The meaning of the word “scale” in the Iridium context.
- Areas of activity in South Africa, like renewable energy and business process outsourcing.
- The need for automation in businesses.
You can connect with Chay on LinkedIn here.
Jeff Erickson may currently be with Forecastr, but he has done many things leading up to this point.
After a few minutes of talking about the overlap of sport and business (Jeff’s two great passions), host The Finance Ghost and Jeff discussed how a hobby business became a substantial consumer-facing operation that was eventually sold to a private equity firm. As is sadly so often the case, the acquirer subsequently drove the company into the ground.
Nevertheless, Jeff moved on to work and invest in startups. With so much experience behind him, there’s much to learn from Jeff and the path he has travelled in his life. For those looking to sell or buy businesses, or just get insight into the world of venture capital and startups, this is a great podcast.
You can connect with Jeff on LinkedIn here.
Life after exit. This is what you’re working towards, isn’t it? The ability to not work around the clock and stress in ways that only other founders will ever understand.
To talk about this exciting potential phase of your life, Attila Kadikoy joined The Finance Ghost on this podcast. Attila was born in Turkey and grew up in the UK before settling in Cape Town just over a decade ago. He co-founded Levantine & Co. to manage portfolios for high net-worth individuals, focusing on an offshore strategy.
Important concepts covered in this podcast include:
- The risk of tunnel vision and how entrepreneurs need to lift their heads from being hyper-focused on one particular asset to being exposed to a diversified portfolio.
- The mindset shift from growing a business to achieving a risk-adjusted rate of return that is acceptable in global markets.
- Thoughts around investing a portion of the exit money in another opportunity and how correctly identifying the reasons for your desired exit can help with that decision.
- Whether everything in the long term becomes a toaster (no, really!) and what this means for longevity of wealth.
- The importance of saving and investing from the time when a business is successful, not just when it is sold.
- How a portfolio evolves over time and some key considerations around equity, fixed income and ongoing dividends from businesses that form the underpin of family wealth.
To connect with Attila, find him on LinkedIn here or visit the Levantine & Co website.
John Barnes was locked out of his office and his earphones refused to work. Luckily, we didn’t let this get in the way of a great podcast! Thanks to his work with founders in the United States in terms of exit planning and other services as part of his business Pendleton Street Advisors, John has plenty of knowledge to share.
In this bizval podcast hosted by The Finance Ghost, topics covered included:
- The various stages of businesses and how Pendleton thinks about business needs at different points in that journey.
- How long it takes to create a valuable business – with limited exceptions.
- Capital raising environments across different markets (and even regions within the United States) and how this differs based on stage of business and risk tolerance.
- Required rate of return and why it is so important that more founders and investors understand this concept.
- The importance of looking at your company in the same way that an investor would, recognising the essential metrics and the right way to explain them.
To connect with John, you can visit the Pendleton website here or connect with him on LinkedIn here.
Eitan Stern of Legalese joined bizval podcast host The Finance Ghost to talk about how the firm works with entrepreneurs and founders. Disruption is a topic close to the heart of any founder and that culture is core to how Legalese operates.
In this podcast, some of the talking points included:
- What is a “creative” these days and how has the general understanding of this term evolved?
- Why is business strategy all about understanding your personal Venn diagram of skills?
- The benefits of starting a business under tricky circumstances, either personally or economically (or both!)
- Eitan’s excellent take on businesses that raise capital vs. businesses that are profitable.
- The considerations in protecting intellectual property and how this works across different countries and categories.
This is a punchy podcast that is a worthwhile listen for any founder. You can connect with Eitan on LinkedIN here.
Great advertising is about making the strange, familiar, or the familiar, strange! In Mike Abel’s world, it’s all about the customer and recognising that every interaction that a customer has with a business is part of building the brand.
Mike works with some of the biggest brands in South Africa. On top of this, he has experience in leaving the safety net of corporate to start something new. This gives Mike a unique viewpoint on the world that resonates with founders.
In this podcast with The Finance Ghost, some of the topics covered included:
- How did Mike enter the advertising industry and how did the deal with M&C Saatchi come about?
- Mike has been on the receiving end of the same hard lesson that many others have learnt when leaving corporate, but he was well prepared for it. What was that lesson? Clue: it relates to having sufficient runway for a startup.
- How do large clients think about their advertising budgets?
- How do B2B and B2C strategies differ, particularly in terms of the sales cycle?
- What is the danger of clients regularly changing their advertising agency?
- Why is it so important to obsess about the customer, not the brand?
- What is the value of sports-related marketing and is it always a winner, or is there a more scientific approach to figuring out how to reach the right audience?
- Which campaign or project is Mike proudest of?
- What are his views on the Twitter / X rebranding?
Mike ends off with a frank discussion about what it takes to get the desired result with campaigns. He’s passionate about what he does and it comes through in everything discussed on this podcast.
You can connect with Mike on LinkedIn here.
Eli Michal started his career as a Flow Cytometry Engineer, so a passion for analytics has been part of his career from the very beginning. After working in corporate roles in banking and insurance, he left to form Payabill in 2017.
In Eli’s view, banks aren’t great at lending to small businesses. The process is clumsy and takes far too long, particularly as small business owners generally need access to working capital on short notice. This pushes entrepreneurs into taking unsecured loans, which isn’t an efficient way to service this market.
Any entrepreneur knows how tough it is to manage working capital and access funding. In this podcast, Eli speaks to his passion for entrepreneurs and how Payabill services this market.
You can connect with Eli on LinkedIn here.
Some of the best projects happen almost by accident. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll enjoy what you do at least every second day.
The restaurant industry will keep you humble. In case you don’t believe us, just listen to Neil Swart talk about the journey of building two excellent fine dining restaurants in Cape Town.
To turn this into a full-circle discussion, Serge Raemaekers also joined Neil and The Finance Ghost on this podcast that was recorded at the Galjoen restaurant with the sounds of dinner preparation in the background. Serge is the founder of ABALOBI, a platform that seeks to create a sustainable way for the public to enjoy interesting seafood.
This is an insightful podcast for anyone interested in the restaurant and fishing industries, as well as social enterprise.
Galjoen, Belly of the Beast and the restaurant industry:
- What is it really like to own a fine dining restaurant and is it anything like the movies / TV series?
- Do restaurants work better with partners?
- How important is it to do something you genuinely love doing?
- The back-story to Galjoen and how the name is intertwined with everything that the restaurant is about.
- How does a fine dining restaurant differ from a “normal” restaurant?
- Why is the restaurant industry so difficult for commercial success?
- The challenges of operating a business that is constantly getting judged by the public and one review away from a potential crisis.
ABALOBI
- The delicate balance in the oceans and what sustainable fishing really means, with ABALOBI’s role as a platform business that brings authenticity to the market.
- The thinking behind a non-profit structure like the one used at ABALOBI and how it has attracted attention from many international participants in the sustainable fishing industry.
- The danger of “go green or go home” and the damage this unrealistic approach does to the broader ecosystem and the people who need to make a small-scale living from it.
You can learn more about how ABALOBI elevates small-scale fisheries through data and technology by visiting the website here.
If you are in Cape Town or planning a trip and you fancy a trip to one of Neil’s restaurants, find out more about Galjoen here or Belly of the Beast here.
For the past two decades, Cliff Spolander has been building businesses in the UK and working with other founders on a journey of scaling their businesses.
It's tough to grow beyond £1 million in his experience, but it can be done with the right people, processes and procedures.
In this podcast hosted by The Finance Ghost, Cliff shares his views on what scale really means, the importance of business by design, techniques to free up time and the importance of being ready for an exit at any time given the unpredictability of life.
Cliff can be found on LinkedIn here.
In this episode of the bizval podcast, we bring more international insights to our community of entrepreneurs. Hugh Stafford-Smith has been in the sales game for longer than podcast host The Finance Ghost has been alive, so there’s no shortage of experience on this show!
Having spent a lot of time in Africa, Hugh is also very familiar with emerging markets and their intricacies. His career has led him to his current work in Vuka Innovation, where the Vuka Works business design tool helps entrepreneurs put together thinking frameworks in their businesses that design, assess, validate and activate business ideas.
To understand the thinking behind this process and concepts like start-ups vs. stay-ups, listen to this episode of the bizval podcast. You can connect with Hugh on LinkedIn here.
Johnny Kipps is a beekeeper. He also happens to live on the Isle of Man, having relocated from Cape Town in the 1990s. To add to the international intrigue, he is now the CEO of Forecast 5’s UK business, managing software that was born in New Zealand.
We can now pack the atlas away and focus on what this means for accountants.
Although Excel is the language of business, it opens everyone up to errors. This is a passion point for Johnny. With integrations into major accounting packages, Forecast 5 offers feature-laden forecasting and budgeting software.
To find out more about why this is important and what Forecast 5 tries to solve, listen to this podcast with Johnny Kipps. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.
“When you’re 90, you might want to sell it.”
When that's how you think about your businesses, you know you’re having fun. This has always been the key for Huenu Solsona in her business interests. After figuring out early in life that she wanted to start her own businesses, there was no going back to a traditional job after tasting this lifestyle and excitement.
With various well-known South African businesses under her belt including the Galileo Open Air Cinema and Adventure Bootcamp, Huenu attributes much of her success to extensive travel and the related benefits in identifying business opportunities. Importantly, she is a particularly rare breed of entrepreneur in that she has successfully sold businesses before. In fact, one of her businesses is for sale right now!
Topics discussed with host The Finance Ghost included:
- How to figure out whether it is time to sell a business and the approach taken to this process;
- The absolute importance of building businesses that are fun;
- Whether entrepreneurs tend to make better personal financial decisions;
- The use of business plans in practice – or not, as the case may be;
- Whether business is being taught by the right people in the education system;
- The importance of differentiation; and
- Heunu’s latest fascinating projects.
Serial entrepreneurs are a rare breed. With seemingly endless energy, Huenu’s passion for business is contagious. Listen to this show and find out for yourself.
Johan Taljaard is a director at Aurik Business Accelerator. With well over a decade of experience in mergers and acquisitions in the SME space, Johan now spends his time helping entrepreneurs design and engineer their businesses for growth and potentially an eventual sale.
In his experience, roughly 4 out of 5 businesses cannot be sold. This is a tragedy in a country where employment is such a problem, as many of these businesses close down when the entrepreneur decides to move on. If things were different, these businesses could become legacy businesses that provide sustainable employment opportunities.
It is an economic imperative that more entrepreneurs build businesses that can be sold, even if the eventual plan is to put professional management in place and collect the dividends.
In this episode of the bizval podcast, Johan spoke to The Finance Ghost about his passion in this space and the important lessons for entrepreneurs.
Aurik has helped over 3,000 companies achieve average annual increases in revenue of 28.9% and profit of 32.4%. Visit the Aurik website at this link for more information.
Mike Finger was 10 years into building a business that had 50 employees. He then discovered that the business was “unsellable” – an awful realisation for any founder, especially at that size.
There wasn’t enough cash flow. It was too dependent on the owner. In Mike’s words, he was building a list of what not to do when trying to build a business that could be sold. Five years later, he had done enough to successfully sell the business.
Mike has been on a journey of incredible relevance to every founder and entrepreneur. Today, Mike owns an advisory business called Exit Oasis where he works with small business owners in the US. With approximately 80% of businesses listed in the US failing to sell, helping entrepreneurs sell their businesses and create legacy wealth is an economic imperative.
On this bizval podcast, Mike joins The Finance Ghost to talk about the journey of building a business that can actually be sold. This is a must-listen for every single entrepreneur.
Mike is active on LinkedIn and loves connecting with entrepreneurs and founders. You'll find him here.
In this episode of the bizval podcast, David Duchemin joined bizval co-founder and podcast host The Finance Ghost for a discussion on family offices and how they differ from other institutional investors.
David works with high-net-worth families that are focused on building legacies, with needs ranging from management of lifestyle assets through to philanthropic pursuits.
We covered topics like:
- The concept of a family office and what this really means.
- The difference between a family office and an institutional / corporate investor.
- The prevalence of impact investing among family offices.
- How attracting the right family office investor could give founders the partner of a lifetime.
- How to meet family office investors.
As the founder of 2A Family Capital, David Duchemin can be contacted via LinkedIn.
Adi Kaimowitz is proof that building a business and providing the underlying service are two different things. Spotting an exciting gap in the market for actuaries, Adi and the team at Virtual Actuary have built a brilliant business despite Adi not being an actuary himself.
Adi has written a book called “Slaying Giants in the Mega Gig Economy” – an insightful look at business strategy in the digital age. There’s nothing romantic about the idea of entrepreneurship in Adi’s world. Instead, it is simply a way to move into the equity layer and enjoy the lifestyle that comes with the success.
His practical approach to life is hard-hitting and real. Topics in this podcast include:
- The use of technology to take a South African skills base to the world.
- The importance of your personal brand and how platforms like LinkedIn provide an extraordinary opportunity to connect with people across the globe.
- The magic of “observing with purpose” – spotting a gap in an industry after properly understanding it.
- The value of building with gig economy colleagues rather than investors, taking pressure off the process if you can get it right.
- Thoughts on artificial intelligence and what it means for the Virtual Actuary business.
We ended off with the myth of work-life balance for founders and Adi’s best tips for dealing with this.
To connect with Adi, find him here on LinkedIn or visit the Virtual Actuary website.
With extensive experience in corporate business development and M&A roles, Mark Davidson has been on the "other side" of many transactions in his career. He now consults to founders in the UK looking to grow and possibly sell their businesses.
When corporate buyers have dealmaking in their DNA thanks to frequent bolt-on or strategic acquisitions, founders need to be particularly aware of the need to obtain proper professional advice to level the playing field.
In this podcast hosted by The Finance Ghost, discussion points included:
- Financial vs. strategic buyers
- The importance of getting proper advice when selling to seasoned dealmakers
- The role of succession planning in increasing company value and improving the likelihood of a successful deal
- Rules of thumb for valuation multiples in the UK
- An indication of current "hot" sectors for dealmaking activity in the UK
- Levels of acquisitive activity in the UK market from foreign buyers
To connect with Mark, find him on LinkedIn here or visit the Crest Business Advisory website here.
To learn more about bizval's approach to valuations and helping companies prepare for transactions, visit our website here.
In this episode of the bizval podcast, Mark Sack of Sally Williams Fine Foods joined The Finance Ghost to talk about the colourful story behind this business and the journey of building a household name in the confectionary aisle.
As a terrific example of a business that was started in a garage and went on to become a formidable brand, Sally Williams has carved out a niche for itself in the FMCG sector - one of the toughest places of all to build a business.
In this podcast, topics covered included:
- Insights into supplying the retail industry and the ongoing battle to have the right amount of stock on the shelf.
- The importance of optionality and adaptability in a brand and a business model.
- Infrastructure challenges in exporting from South Africa.
Mark's approach is no-nonsense to say the least. This discussion is a raw look at life as an entrepreneur and its highs and lows.
To learn more about Sally Williams Fine Foods, visit the website here>>>
In this episode of the bizval podcast, Syft Analytics co-founder and CEO Vangelis Kyriazis joined The Finance Ghost for a discussion on Syft’s business and insights into the journey to build it.
Syft is a wonderful example of South Africans taking their talents to the global stage, with a locally developed software product that services clients across the world by plugging into leading accounting tools.
In this podcast, topics covered included:
- A brief background on Syft’s business.
- The concept of managing cash for small businesses and how it looks simple at first but gets far more complicated as different taxes etc. come through.
- The importance of plugging into the different accounting systems and to what extent the product roadmap was in place at the start of this journey.
- “Learning by doing” and iterating the business while it is being built.
- The demand for management accounting by entrepreneurs rather than financial accounting.
- The time taken to achieve product-market fit in Syft and having critical mass when it comes to features.
- The value of having in-house skills in the product development phase, along with thoughts on internal resources vs. outsourcing.
- The availability of capital in the US vs. South Africa for entrepreneurs and what this means for the way that startups are built in South Africa.
- The benefits of bootstrapping in terms of having the right mindset from day one and focusing on unit economics.
- The potential impact of artificial intelligence on this industry and on Syft’s business.
And of course, the podcast ended off with Vangelis giving his advice to any entrepreneur who is currently in a scaling phase. Spoiler alert: it relates to hiring.
For more information on Syft Analytics, visit the website here and connect with Vangelis on LinkedIn here.
For more information on bizval, visit the website here and connect with our CEO Graham Stephen on LinkedIn here.
Murray Clarke is a young entrepreneur who thinks about property completely differently. Instead of seeing every building as a net cash flow stream, he sees them as neighbourhoods with the potential to build communities.
It sounds cliché, we know. It sounds like marketing gumph. But if you’ve ever been to one of the Neighbourgood buildings, you’ll quickly realise that something special is going on here.
Murray joined the bizval podcast for a discussion with The Finance Ghost that included:
- His background in both entrepreneurial endeavours and property.
- The cultural DNA of Neighbourgood and how this permeates into the property developments that create co-working spaces that attract digital nomads from around the world to Cape Town.
- The growth strategy for Neighbourgood, both within Cape Town and abroad in other destination cities.
- The funding strategy for Neighbourgood, including a desired co-ownership model.
- Mistakes made along the way - we all have them!
- Insights into juggling business and personal lives, especially with a miniature Murray running around at home.
- Tough, but absolutely correct advice for young entrepreneurs and anyone on a growth path.
You can learn more about Neighbourgood at this link
Enjoy this episode and visit the bizval website to learn more about our services to help entrepreneurs value and prepare their businesses for sale.
A father and son team in entrepreneurship (or any other family combination of course) often means members of the family working in the same business. But in the case of Howard and Justin Blake, it’s been a journey of mentorship and knowledge-sharing rather than working together directly.
In fact, Justin worked particularly hard to get out of the family business and build his own operation!
In this podcast, we explore how growing up in an entrepreneurial family helped Justin find his way as a successful founder himself. Justin has built Silvery, an online personally jewellery business.
We also touch on the realities of being a genuine entrepreneur, which is a lonely road that can have a substantial impact on families.
Other topics included the journey to break-even for a founder and the importance of understanding value creation, not just profitability. There was plenty of candid discussion on concepts like self-employment vs. scaling a business.
With the sounds of commerce in the background (literally – Justin recorded this from his factory), this podcast is for entrepreneurs who need context to their personal journeys.
Join The Finance Ghost as he hosts Howard Blake and Justin Blake on the bizval podcast.
Enjoy this episode and visit the bizval website to learn more about our services to help entrepreneurs value and prepare their businesses for sale.
It’s no coincidence that a large percentage of entrepreneurs are avid poker players – The Finance Ghost and podcast guest, Jared Kahn, included. Some might argue that it’s the thrill of the risk that attracts a certain personality type.
We believe that some people just have a knack for seeing a gap and making the most of the cards they are dealt, whether in life or at the poker table.
In this episode of the bizval podcast, The Finance Ghost interviews his good friend Jared Kahn - serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and unrepentant risk taker. With a founding influence in established brand names like Earthchild and Whitehouse, some may accuse Jared of having the Midas touch. Fortunately, he’s agreed to dispel that myth with his version of events, which paint a more accurate picture of an entrepreneur’s resilience, ingenuity, and success-at-all-costs mindset.
If building a business was easy, everybody and their neighbour would be Richard Branson. Jared’s story is a testament to overcoming challenges and finding a way around when the inevitable brick walls come up, trusting your gut to lead you where you need to be along the way. Taking the big risks may be stressful, but they often lead to the biggest rewards.
Listen to this episode of the bizval podcast and enjoy discussion points like:
- The jump from a professional career into the unknown world of entrepreneurship
- The value of turnaround opportunities when you have limited capital
- The decision to work for “sweat equity” in a marginal business with high risk of failure
- The process of scaling an operating and why a dose of laziness can be your best friend in the journey
- Why some entrepreneurs just cannot get out of the game and will always be involved in building things
- The differences between venture capital investing and turnaround stories
Visit bizval.co to value your company and put your efforts on the scoreboard. As Jared has demonstrated, the numbers are what really matter at the end of the day!
From working in the business to working on the business - this is the story of GreenHouse Energy, a company that was ahead of its time in the South African market.
It looks easy to now be in the solar market, as Eskom continues to implement "load shedding" (rotational power blackouts) across the country. In reality, this business has been years in the making.
It takes incredible bravery to change a business. The founders made the decision in 2018 to walk away from 60% of revenue in order to focus on the most profitable activities.
The strategy worked.
In this episode of the bizval podcast series, co-founders Craig Herbst and Graham Jones joined The Finance Ghost to talk about topics like
- The biggest challenges in starting a business with a friend and the impact that it has on the relationship
- The importance of hiring people with similar values and how long it took before making the first hire
- The experience as a founder of venturing into the great unknown and making substantial changes to a business, especially for long-term gain and with short-term risk
- The appeal of the Tesla Powerwall in South Africa and thoughts around servicing higher income South Africans looking for premium products
- The concept of building a business for sustainable income vs. for sale and how that changes over time
- Advice for entrepreneurs going through tough times
Enjoy this episode and visit the bizval website to learn more about our valuation tool that helps entrepreneurs value their businesses at an affordable rate.
It's easy to assume that technology companies are only bought and sold in exotic places like Silicon Valley. The truth is that technology entrepreneurs are found everywhere, carving out niches and cementing competitive advantages in their region of focus.
In this episode of thie bizval podcast, The Finance Ghost interviews Jonathan Kropf. As the founder and CEO of Velocity Group, Jonathan has plenty of wisdom to share and scars on his back to show us from building a successful company.
It's not easy starting a business. It's even worse when you left your corporate job just days before the Global Financial Crisis rocked the world and people at Lehman Brothers had to pack their belongings into boxes and leave the office.
With a great combination of famously bad market timing and strong levels of resilience, Jonathan is now looking to expand in the UK. We wouldn't bet against him.
You can learn more about Velocity Group at this link and you can find Jonathan on LinkedIn.
Although a valuation becomes a necessity when there's a deal on the table, regular valuations can really help an entrepreneur in a journey of business growth and wealth creation. By giving yourself a scoreboard either annually or even every six months, you'll know if you are on track and meeting your value creation goals.
In addition to these concepts, we used this episode to give more insights into the world of dealmaking and how these insights have been incorporated into the model.
Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely and at times overwhelming journey. By using bizval as a compass, you can give some context to those late nights and tough weekends that every founder has experienced.
The truth of it is that business valuations are complicated things.
This is exactly why bizval was created - to simplify the process into an easy-to-use engine that still brings in the numerous technical elements of a professional valuation.
In this episode, we share the secrets behind improving the valuation of your business. We explain some of the technical concepts in a way that any entrepreneur can understand, helping you unlock value and grow your wealth.
We know how hard it is to grow a business. Our passion lies in making sure that you get paid a fair price for it.
And if you are considering buying another business, this episode will help you understand what the key drivers of value are and where to focus your financial due diligence efforts.
In the first episode of the bizval show, we introduce you to the founding team behind the business: Howard Blake, Graham Stephen and The Finance Ghost.
After explaining our professional backgrounds, we discussed how we came together to start bizval and why we did it. As entrepreneurs ourselves, we have great empathy for what founders go through in starting, growing and possibly selling a business or bringing in an investor.
Welcome to the bizval show - we love having you here.