John F Kettley

The reason why most businesses are NOT sale ready!! Despite what most business owners think... When it comes time to sell, most business owners sincerely 'believe' that they are sale ready, when for 90% of them, nothing could be further than the truth!! The first thing any potential buyer is going to focus on are the financials which from my experience is the first major challenge in that the numbers rarely add up to the desired asking price for both financial and sales reasons (explained in the video) The second thing a buyer will focus on is the sales forecast for the next 12 and 24 months and how much substance the forecast has, to back up the assumption that the sales revenues and profit will actually materialise into fact. The third focus is on how well the company can run without the business owners direct input over a period of more than 90 days, if the business requires the owners input then the business owner is going to have to commit to a period of working with the buyer until that business can genuinely work without them. If you've decided that it's time to sell up, I'd love to engage in a conversation, if you want to sell up but you know that the business is NOT sale ready I can help you by putting a team in to make the business sale ready in the shortest possible time... Either way I would welcome you getting in touch

How to go into 2025 on point... At this time of year we all ponder where we truly are on our journey, but very few of us STOP, to work out the answers to the big questions that will drive us into the new year on purpose. I'm not talking about new years resolutions, I'm talking about working out how to make a genuine difference to how we create true wealth within the next 12 months.. I hope that you will take at least one strategy from this short video and use it to alter your thinking as we cross over into a brand new year

Is a Mentor a cost or an investment? 80% of people see it as a cost, 20% as an investment and of that 20% only half will see it through to a solid return on that investment!! I’ve mentored and trained a huge number of people in business over the years and while it pains me to say this, only the few have achieved a level of success that was beyond their expectations!! I can’t tell you how many times I questioned my ability to teach what I know to be the formula for creating success in virtually any situation, I’ve re-engineered my trainings and the supporting exercises to try and gain a higher success rate with those who joined me on my courses. In the end I came to realise that there are 3 types of people (1) Course junkies – They love courses but never action the learnings (2) Magpies – They rave about what they learned, do a bit, then see something shinny and simply don’t follow through. (3) Do’ers – They soak up everything, plagiarise it and put it into action Tony Robinson the world-renowned personal development coach said it best, he used to sell a 20 CD-disc program; in his opening pre-frame of his course, he tells the listener that his research has confirmed that only 20% of those who buy his program ‘listen beyond the 3rd CD’!! This will sound contrary to everything you hear about how to sell information products and mentoring i.e. I now install a strategic filter into the process of taking on new mentoring and training clients, it’s what I call the ‘no hope’er’ filter that stops the Course junkies and magpies from signing up. For obvious reasons I can’t say what that filter is, and yes it does drastically cut down the number of course & mentoring clients that I could make money from but I’m happier with a smaller number of quality clients who will go on to actually achieve the success ‘they want’ and ‘massively reduce’ the number of failure customers i.e. those who then moan that they didn’t get value from the offering. The moral of this story is anyone ‘can achieve’ extraordinary success BUT most simply won’t because of their mindset… It’s the exact same scenario when buying companies, never buy a company from someone you struggle to get into rapport with, who is difficult or demanding to deal with, it won’t end well… There’s a reason why some people succeed and most do not, a mentor is a cost if you don’t listen & take action, but they’re a massive game changer to those who listen and go all in to achieve their goals. If you are 100% all in on your ambitions, I would get a mentor who has been where you want to go to accelerate your journey, they’ll earn you more than they cost

Feeling frustrated? It doesn’t have to be that way, While it's been a tough year for many in the business owners who’ve had to handle increasing competition, costs, cashflow and HR challenges, the shrewd and switched on are looking for the angles to grow and flourish regardless of how the economy looks for the year ahead. If you choose to sit down with a blank sheet of paper, to design a brand-new pan of action I can almost guarantee that you’ll find ways (strategies) that will firmly put you on the front foot as we turn the page of the year. Having been in tricky situations many times over the last 4 decades I know from personal experience that the answers are NOT (except in a one scenario) to simply borrow more money to tackle the cashflow challenges. I’ve learned from experience a basic 4-step method that works in virtually 90% of of situations when a business owner shares their business frustrations. (1) CALIBRATE – by which I mean get out a blank sheet of A3 paper and mind map the entire business canvas. Only by doing this can you start to see the bigger picture. (2) IDENTIFY – the subjects that are causing ‘you’ the greatest amount of anxiety and impeding the positive cashflow profitability you want from your business. (3) PRIORITISE – the subjects that must be solved to increase revenues, cashflow & profitability (4) SYSTEMATICALLY – action each step of your plan to immediately rectify each and every impediment to increased revenue, cashflow and profitability In all honesty, while this is a very simple process it can be incredibly challenging to do on their own without a third party ‘working with you’ because of being so close to the mirror so to speak (It’s amazing how creative your mind can be when you are bouncing it off someone else!!) I hope this simple process will help you to recalibrate over these next few days before the new year. If you want to bounce a conundrum off me or you want to have a chat with someone who has genuinely been where you are on your business journey, please do get in touch..

A game changing moment… But only if you choose to look where most are not… Turbulent times always create huge opportunities for those who ignore the negative energy that is being broadcasted by both the traditional ‘and’ alternative media. For those who choose to rise above the negative noise & see the bigger picture, this is a moment of phenomenal opportunities. From an entrepreneurs lens, the great thing about turbulent times is that 90% of people are simply too busy on their personally constructed treadmill to take time out the time to calibrate on where these opportunities truly are and put a well-considered plan together to capitalise on the gaps in the marketplace. The bottom line is, most SME’s are zombie businesses, meaning they've been making roughly the same turnover and profit for years because they are either in a comfort zone or simply don’t know what to do next. So, where are these opportunities? Well we know that here in the UK we have a government who clearly have no understanding of the challenges small and medium businesses face and so for the next 4 years it’s going to be ever higher tax's and building a bigger state. To build their 1.5m houses large scale construction is going to be a growth area as will HR, accountancy and certain types of law firms to deal with increased regulations and the red tape this government love Manufacturing of ‘niche products’ is another area the government want to promote and incentivise, the challenge of being that while most manufacturers are engineers, they’re not great entrepreneurs hence the opportunity. Med tech is a fast-emerging area of growth, specifically anything to do with longevity (like most subjects that are in their infancy there are huge opportunities here if you are willing to take the risk). Commercial office space might sound like a strange potential growth area, but home working is not working for most businesses, which is why so many companies are now pulling people back into the office, but a shortage of office space in most towns means this area has potential. As inflation grows and banks pull facilities I believe we see huge number of businesses get in trouble this year just as they did back in 2008 which is why I think there are huge opportunities for people who train to be a professional turnaround specialist (contact me if you would like to learn how to become a specialist in this area) With so many businesses under £20m coming up for sale due to retirement but with few ‘real’ buyers out there, I see a huge opportunity for those like me who buy these businesses and add them to larger group structures. (if you have a company to sell please contact me) These are just a few of the many opportunities I believe are waiting to be capitalised upon over the next few years. I share this to offer some positivity to offset the doom and gloom of the media. Please do share your thoughts of how you see 2025 and beyond, I’d love to learn your thoughts.

It’s time to get clarity of the master plan or suffer the consequences!! I think it’s fair to say this year has been incredibly turbulent across the entire business landscape, not just because of war driven global inflation and elections, high interest rates and now Rachel Reeves misguided budget. As business owners we’re used to handling challenges, but it does make it hard to stay on track of the ‘master plan’ I.e. drifting off the path to our core ‘purpose’!! It’s at times like this, having a good mentor to keep us on point can mean the difference between achieving our objectives in a timely manner or being on a hamster wheel to nowhere… I generally work with 5/6 business owners each year, who are either fed up with not making the progress that they want, or who’ve made the decision it’s time to get ready to sell their business. This year 2 of the companies I've worked with have turned treadmill businesses into growth businesses and 2 are now in shape to sell for a dramatically higher valuation than they were at the start of the year. I’ve forged a new partnership & purchased a number of companies as part of a roll up we are building to an exit in late 2025/ early 2026. It hasn’t been an easy ride, but through tenacity of purpose and working with open minded business owners we've eventually achieved what at times felt like the impossible dream. Every year has it's challenges which is why I now go away each November for the best part of a month to look out to sea and ponder What worked? What didn’t work? What would I do differently? knowing what I now know... It’s only by taking time out like this, to ask ourselves these questions that we can become sharper and shrewder about what to do differently in the year ahead…   Clarity of purpose & massive action are the 2 things that make our ambitions a reality and to gain that clarity we must detach from the noise of the matrix to calibrate and simply be who we really are, only by doing this can we gain true confidence before making our moves. So as I sit here looking out to sea after many days of calm and contemplation, I can see 3 distinct areas of potential growth during the next 18-24 months and where I personally am going to focus my energies (1) Construction (2) MedTech (3) Mentored teaching I’ll personally be focusing on adding 4 more businesses to the Peak Capital umbrella, and find within the next 2 weeks, 2 more business owners to work with & mentor to achieve their ambitions in 2025. I share this with you to hopefully inspire you to take stock of where you 'really are today', and the plan of actions that you must create to achieve the ambitions you want to make a reality in 2025 and beyond... If you have a significant goal you want to achieve faster, and you think I just might be the person to help you make it happen in 2025, please reach out. I hope there was something in this share that you can take for you, so that you will be ready to hit the ground running in 2025.

Is there an appetite for this ? I speak to a lot of business owners in the course of what I do, some own traditional business's, some own consultancy's and others own M&A practices but all of these conversations generally orientate around asking me the same 3 core questions (1) How do I get more business's to come to me? (2) How do I convert more of my conversations into business? (3) What should I do next? In the past I've done a huge number of 1-2-1 mentoring, live training courses and peer mentoring groups, all of which I've really enjoyed delivering over the last decade and a half, but I'm wondering if it's now time to convert all of the knowledge, methodologies and tactical strategies I've acquired over the years into a range of video based tutorials with supporting exercise docs and playbooks? I'm really just putting this out there to see if there's an appetite and would love to gain your feedback as to whether you would genuinely invest in any of the following potential interactive training courses? 1.     How to set up shop as an M&A specialist 2.    How to qualify and close an M&A deal 3.    How to sell a WIBO deal 4.    How to Turnaround & Grow a business 5.    How to build a successful Coaching/Mentoring business 6.    How to become a successful deal maker 7.    How to become successful in business I know there's a ton of online courses, but do they actually sell? and do people actually complete and profit from them?? I would sincerely appreciate your thoughts in the comments below or if you prefer to share privately in a direct message to me here on lInkedin. Thank you in advance

Time to think outside the box!! When everyone appears to be looking at it one way, it’s time to look the other way… The media and social media are all talking about how tough it is at the minute e.g. how 2 tier Keir and his chancellor have no clue what they’re doing and how Mr Trump is going to solve his country’s problems by insulating it from the rest of the world back. Personally, I think Trump and Elon Musk are going to achieve things that the world’s leaders are going to fight against but will ultimately replicate parts of, to solve the same challenges they are up against. My take is that they are coming at their challenges with BIG thinking, disregarding the past norms and creating new ways of tackling those challenges for the greater goal of reducing costs and creating massive potential growth for their country. Whether in the sands of time they are proved right or wrong only time will tell. If we are to achieve something epic in our own lives, we too must think outside the box and on a big scale (for us) regardless of how those around us will say they can’t see it working… Herein lays the challenge for us in the SME business world; our financial institutions only ever see the world through an empirical lens which is why they have fixed ideas around how business works, but as we’ve seen from the past, it’s the mavericks like Henry Ford, Richard Branson and Elon Musk who find new ways of achieving things that most say cannot be done While clearly I’m not remotely on a par with these titans of business, what I can see, is a huge amount of turbulence on the business landscape across 2025, by way of example it’s clear that the repercussions from the recent UK budget will see unemployment, inflation and interest rates rise in the months ahead which of course will have huge effects on the SME business landscape for those who are not already planning what they’ll do to dissolve these challenges and take advantage of the opportunities that will inevitably materialise. It’s time to think big and create strategies for growth through the impending recession, especially as we are fast approaching a new year so that we are ready to pivot towards where most are NOT looking. The 3 main areas that I believe will sail through the upcoming turbulent times are specific areas in the construction sector, longevity med tech and renewables, if you’re in one of these sectors it’s going to be a very interesting time ahead. Please do share your thought about how you see the business landscape over the next 12 months…

Well, that was illuminating!! As entrepreneurs, we become acclimatised to handling the unexpected as well as planning how to handle what ‘looks’ to be coming down the tracks that will affect our master plan. We also know from experience that how we react to what happens outside of our control, is the thing that carves out the successful from those who are paralysed by not knowing what to do next. Much has been said about how de-motivational this week’s budget has been for us in the SME space & how much harder it will be to survive let alone thrive from here on. BUT & I rarely use that ‘word’ for good reason, it punctuates that we must be even shrewder about the strategies we must run to stay profitable, & the playbook to achieve our ultimate goals in what I believe will be a turbulent & challenging few years ahead i.e. My belief is that tomorrows US election will to some extent, be the last piece of the puzzle in us all forming a master plan for the next 24 months!! If Donald Trump is elected, I believe he and Elon Musk will begin turning Americas direction around from the inside out, in other words they’ll be reducing big state to reduce the cost of government while rebalancing their relationships with China, the EU and the UK. This my friends doesn’t put the UK in a great place, especially given what our foreign minister has been saying about Trump; add to this that our current government looks to be following the big state, high tax philosophy that has got France, Italy and most of Europe into dire straits and we can see that we're in for a few turbulent years ahead. Forewarned is forearmed as they say, which means that we (business owners) must develop strategies to deal with that turbulence, which of course means that we MUST be 100% focused on doing 'good profitable business' and not simply ‘buy low-profit turnover’ as a means to keeping the cashflow flowing. I would personally rather 'halve my turnover' next year but make a solid profit than be chasing the same turnover at the cost of bottom-line profitability. By way of example, I can afford to lose a good percentage of turnover if I put my prices up e.g. if my company is making a gross profit of 25% and I put my prices up by 10%, I would have to lose over a quarter (28.6% to be exact) of my customers to be worse off!! Now let’s talk ‘Capital gains’ i.e. the main reason most of us entrepreneurs work so hard on our business’s. The bottom line is, it’s a waste of energy crying about what Rachel Reeves has done, we simply have to suck it up and be smarter in how we achieve our end goals, I for one am now seriously looking at the alternatives and while I won’t be sharing these in public, I will say that they won’t be inline with our current government leaders’ utopian ideas of taking the lion’s share of what I’ve ‘worked’ so hard and risked all to achieve… If there was one thing you’ve taken from this past week that will alter your master plan I would love to hear your thoughts.

Finalised the agreement of 2 acquisitions last week!! Could we have completed in weeks instead of months? yes BUT It took the business owners 'time' to acclimatise their mindset from being owners of the business they've spent years building, to a mindset that they have achieved their goal of selling their business. I mention this because so many people 'think' it's just a transaction when in reality it is a complete 'mind shift' from running a business to a completely new chapter of their lives. Having built and sold quite a number of businesses over the years, I know first hand all of the thoughts that run through your mind when negotiating and selling a business i.e. Did I get as much as I could for the business? Will it go through & will I actually get the deferred consideration? Will the transition be a nightmare? Buying a business is a very different experience, in that from a buyers lens we also have many questions running through our mind Have I paid to much? Will the sellers sales and profit forecast be what they said it would be? Will the transition from them to us, be a nightmare? Sounds similar doesn't it :) Buying or selling a business is so much more than just the numbers, it's much more of a human thing i.e. the personalities which is why after many experiences doing this, I now spend much more time making sure the personalities, morals and ethics are in parallel as well as the numbers because if these things are a mismatch it will definitely end in tears... This is why it often takes many conversations (with thinking time between each conversation) to get a deal completed, and of course why I'm punctuating how different 'selling' and 'buying' a business is, to selling or buying a service or product (this is why so many brokers fail in their job of selling a business. they think it's all about the numbers) Together with my business partner Bradley Lay we are in the process of buying a further 4 x businesses before the end of the year to achieve our target of having built a group of companies with a group turnover of £70m in the construction sector. This over course is a numbers target, but what is 'as important' is that we forge solid relationships with each of those business owners in order to achieve out ultimate goal of selling the entire group late in 2025. To successfully achieve this goal will need a strong relationship with each of the business owners in the group, to achieve that goal which ultimately is how we are able to give such strong valuations to those businesses we buy. This of course brings us back to only doing business with good people who each have strong moral fibre and an ambition to do the job right. If you want to sell your business, I hope that you take the points I've made on board, as they will help you to choose the right 'people' to sell your business too; if you only focus on playing hard ball on the numbers I know you'll find the whole process a nightmare instead of an easy road.