Buy Grow Sell

Heath Maguire started talking to Simon Bedard about selling his digital agency, Wolf IQ, four to five years before he went to market. When the conversation turned to price, his answer was this: "It was never a number. It was more so what the deal was going to enable me to do."

For Heath, that meant a six-week holiday with his wife and two kids, and paying off the family home. Exit Advisory Group ran the sale, so this is a client's account of the process from his side of the table.

He talks Simon through how he planned it: merging two agencies so the business could be sold as one, documenting it so thoroughly that over 200 pieces of information went into due diligence, and a three-month handover. He also covers growing on referrals in a medical-specialist niche, building a team in the Philippines, and what he would do differently.

In this episode:

- How to set a goal for your sale that keeps emotion out of the negotiation

- Why the structure of your business may need fixing years before you go to market

- What a buyer pays for in an agency, and why recurring revenue matters

- How documented systems shorten due diligence and the handover

- How to weigh an upfront payment against an earn-out

Exit Like an Expert, Simon's book, is the practical guide the show is built on: https://exitadvisory.com.au/exit-like-an-expert?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=bgs-ep104&utm_content=description-book

Full show notes, transcript and FAQ: https://exitadvisory.com.au/podcast/how-heath-maguire-sold-wolf-iq?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=bgs-ep104&utm_content=description-episodepage

Connect with Heath Maguire

Website: ⁠https://hmedge.com.au/

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathmaguire/

Connect with Simon Bedard

LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/srhbedard⁠⁠⁠⁠

Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://exitadvisory.com.au/⁠⁠⁠⁠

Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://buygrowsell.com/

Related episodes: EP103 Charlie Emery (SOILCO), EP102 Geoff Green (Fliteboard), and EP101 Jason Howard (StudyLink)

0:00 Simon introduces Heath

1:34 How Simon and Heath met

2:13 From the family restaurant to events to his own agency

4:15 A car wash at 12, and what family business teaches you

5:51 His mum's lesson: just show up

7:03 Starting Wolf IQ and finding the medical niche

8:57 Starting a business before you quit your job

11:19 Growing on referrals and white-label work

13:55 COVID, working from home and the Philippines team

16:32 Making an offshore team work

20:43 Why he started planning the exit early

22:54 Clarity takes the emotion out of a sale

23:51 Two agencies into one before going to market

26:43 Where AI is taking agencies

29:44 The sale process and the broker's role

33:12 The right outcome, clients and legacy

34:47 Exit by design: the business in a binder

36:21 Owning a business versus being a business owner

37:21 What he would do differently

38:54 It was never a number

40:01 Terms have value too

41:14 Upfront payments and changing term sheets

42:57 What sets a multiple

44:28 Advice for agency owners thinking about selling

46:12 Life after the sale: Simple Home Edit

50:31 The book and Simon's takeaways

Charlie Emery got the call from his parents to join the family business in 2001, alongside his brother Mark. Twenty-odd years later, it's SOILCO, a national organics recycling platform, and Charlie is the CEO.

In this episode, Charlie walks through what it took to build on what his parents started: buying into the business with real money, setting up an outside advisory board, and walking away from two investor processes that were not right, one where a corporate buyer halved its offer after due diligence and one where the deal just did not feel right, before landing on the growth-capital partner who actually fit: an infrastructure investor comfortable funding a business that needs years of investment before it pays off.

Simon Bedard and Charlie also get into what it took to buy into a family business with real money rather than be handed it, why an outside advisory board matters more than people think, and Charlie's own advice for owners: be honest with your own strategic plan, or nobody else will believe in it either.

Connect with Charlie Emery

Website: https://soilco.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-emery-09b56422/

Connect with Simon Bedard

LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/srhbedard⁠⁠⁠

Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://exitadvisory.com.au/⁠⁠⁠

Website: ⁠⁠⁠https://buygrowsell.com/

Geoff Green was the first external investor in Fliteboard, the Byron Bay company that turned an electric surfboard into a global brand and sold to NYSE-listed Brunswick in 2023. He sat on the board from the outset and helped scale it to around $145 to 150 million in revenue in just four years.

In this episode, Geoff shares the question that guided every decision: who is the right owner for this business at this point in time? It is a reframe that changes how you think about your own exit.

Simon Bedard and Geoff cover funding fast growth without heavy dilution, why even an experienced board hired a corporate adviser to run the sale, what makes a growth story a buyer actually believes, and the identity shift that hit after the deal was done.

Connect with Geoff Green

Website: https://www.grgmomentum.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffgreenthesmartbusinessexit/

Connect with Simon Bedard

LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/srhbedard⁠⁠

Website: ⁠⁠https://exitadvisory.com.au/⁠⁠

Website: ⁠⁠https://buygrowsell.com/

Jason Howard calls himself a 30-year overnight success. He built StudyLink across three different businesses, from a CD-ROM directory to the admissions software universities ran on, and never set out to sell it. At the end of 2023, he sold to Flywire, a NASDAQ-listed payments company, in a deal that closed in about six weeks.

Simon Bedard and Jason talk through what made the business saleable without an exit plan: knowing your number, making yourself operationally redundant, finding a strategic buyer you already work with, and the personal toll of an exit that nobody prepares you for.

Connect with Jason Howard

Website: https://www.bowerbridge.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-studylink/

Connect with Simon Bedard

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/srhbedard⁠

Website: ⁠https://exitadvisory.com.au/⁠

Website: ⁠https://buygrowsell.com/

One hundred episodes. One consistent theme: the conversations business owners need to have about exit and rarely do.

In this milestone episode, Simon Bedard steps back from the interview format to answer the seven questions that have come up most consistently across 100 episodes of conversations with founders, advisors, and acquirers. No guests. No framework. Just straight answers to the questions business owners are actually asking.

Connect with Simon Bedard

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srhbedard

Website: https://exitadvisory.com.au/

Website: https://buygrowsell.com/

In this special episode of the Buy Grow Sell Podcast, Simon Bedard sits down with Warren Hogan, Managing Director of EQ Economics and Chief Economic Advisor at Judo Bank, to discuss Australian inflation, interest rates, the succession cliff, and what it means for business owners planning to exit.

Connect with Warren Hogan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/warren-hogan-835581116/

Website: https://eqeconomics.au/

Connect with Simon Bedard

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srhbedard

Website: https://exitadvisory.com.au/

Website: https://buygrowsell.com/