
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


This M&A conversation reveals how Paul Avins helped owners do 50 deals with no money down plus scale to seven and eight figures and exit for sizeable amounts. You will learn why business exit strategy starts with clear strategic planning plus optimized money models plus strong senior leadership that buyers trust. If you want to understand how to sell a business for maximum value, this episode gives proof from £148 million in client exits in six years plus over 1000 entrepreneurs trained past seven figures.
Paul shares his SCALE model covering strategic plan plus sales plus channels plus cash plus automation plus leadership plus exit. He explains why business valuation rises when recurring revenue grows plus talent depth improves plus partnerships create durable growth. You will also hear why mergers and acquisitions demand focus plus capital discipline plus an identity shift from operator to CEO.
James Lamb digs into real stories including scaling to 415 people and selling in your 20s plus Ada robot earning £80 million in free PR plus a client doing £5 million with 4 people plus AI agents. Whether you are selling your business or buying a business or planning succession, you will get practical moves to avoid burnout plus deploy capital wisely plus exit on your terms.
Key topics covered:
Chapters:
(00:00) Introduction
(00:55) Meet Paul Avins plus £148M exits proof
(04:30) Scaling to 415 people and selling in your 20s
(10:45) Staying relevant with AI before it was mainstream
(13:40) Ada robot plus £80M free PR story
(20:10) Identity shift from operator to CEO
(22:00) Why talent lifts valuation multiple
(24:20) CEO top 3 jobs cash talent partnerships
(33:35) Money models one off repeat recurring
(35:30) SCALE model strategy to exit
(52:30) £5M with 4 people plus AI agents
(58:20) M&A warning plus focus plus hiring better talent
(01:07:45) Corporate athlete plus plan connect reflect
Show: The Ownership Journey
Our Website: Visit our website
Guest: Paul Avins
Host: James Lamb
Follow for weekly conversations with people who have built, bought, and sold real businesses.
Business succession planning is central to What Happens To Your Business If You Die Tomorrow? In this episode of The Ownership Journey, host James Lamb sits with Carl Jaffer, founder of Legacy Vault Pro, to explore what happens to business value, staff, family and clients when an owner dies or loses capacity without a clear plan. This episode is built for buyers, sellers, scalers and exit planners who want stronger control over value, risk and legacy.
Carl shares why 1 in 4 small businesses would stop at once if the owner died or faced critical illness and why 52 percent of owners still have no exit planning in place. You will hear real cases from the transcript including brothers locked in court over missing shareholder agreements, a 3.8 million turnover firm with 14 staff that had no cover if the founder missed Monday, a 15 million glazing company led by a single director, plus the emotional cost when families cannot find accounts, pensions, crypto, contacts for solicitors, accountants and wealth managers. Carl also explains why wills and lasting powers of attorney miss digital assets, how 100 personal accounts plus 50 to 60 business accounts create chaos, and how a LinkedIn anniversary post for someone who had passed showed the need to manage digital footprints with care. You will also learn how buyers view missing paperwork during diligence and why clean records support higher value when you sell my business or position for buying a business growth.
Finally Carl walks through Legacy Vault Pro, built for buying a business, selling a business and scaling toward a clean exit. The platform records bank accounts, savings, pensions, crypto, key documents, advisor contacts and clear operating instructions, flags gaps in business exit strategy and business continuity, supports intergenerational wealth moves with timestamped gifting, and lets you appoint a digital executor for business, personal and social accounts without storing passwords. Carl also shares focus on process, onboarding guides with video help, plus plans to work with advisors, membership groups and employers across the UK before expanding abroad. If you plan to sell my business in future, buy companies through mergers and acquisitions, or simply protect staff and family, this conversation gives you a practical path to stronger business succession planning, smarter estate planning and sellable value that survives the unexpected.
Key topics covered:
Chapters
Show: The Ownership Journey
Our Website: Visit the website
Guest: Carl Jaffer
Host: James Lamb
Follow for weekly conversations with people who've built, bought, and sold real businesses.
This Daniel Priestley focused episode with dealmaker David Horne reveals what happens behind the scenes when owners fund acquire consolidate and exit real businesses in the £2M to £20M sweet spot. Host James Lamb explores buying a business business exit strategy and mergers and acquisitions through £60M raised and 7 acquisitions that scaled turnover from £1.1M to £27.7M. You will learn why fractional CFO discipline business valuation and fundraising rigor protect price legacy and family wealth for anyone planning to sell my business.
David breaks down Fund Acquire Consolidate Exit plus his 13 transactions across buy sell and spin out as CFO across Daniel Priestley companies since 2017. He explains business acquisition at 6 to 8 times earnings monthly accounts 13 week cash flow removing founder dependency and business broker ready financials that lift business valuation. He also shares due diligence lessons exit readiness reality where less than 10 percent that go to market actually sell and how business growth discipline protects value.
On fundraising David shares a clear 12 to 15 slide pitch deck with elevator pitch team problem solution traction competitors financials use of funds ask and exit plus how waitlists prove demand and data rooms speed venture capital decisions. He addresses the venture capital gap where all female teams receive less than 1 percent of funding and contrasts promotion versus prevention questions. He closes with practical business growth and fundraising steps to fund acquire consolidate and exit with confidence.
Key topics covered:
Chapters
(00:00) Introduction with David Horne
(01:13) Fund Acquire Consolidate Exit explained
(06:16) Acquiring 7 PR agencies in 2 years
(10:23) Raising £60M and scaling to £27.7M
(28:41) Meeting Daniel Priestley and FACE development
(40:04) Best deal ever French publisher win
(45:17) 12 slide pitch deck essentials
(55:45) Venture capital gap for women founders
(01:05:09) Three legged stool of business finance
(01:09:21) Exit readiness for baby boomers
(01:14:15) Breaking founder dependency
(01:16:05) Moving from CEO to Chairman and close
Show: The Ownership Journey
Our Website: eu1.hubs.ly/H0xgcHW0
Guest: David Horne
Host: James Lamb
Follow for weekly conversations with people who have built, bought, and sold real businesses.
Leigh Wells sold his business for 8x profit after building Comma Group from a bootstrapped start in 2016 to 80 headcount and a trade sale to Amplify in March 2021. This episode of The Ownership Journey with host James Lamb breaks down how to sell your business with real numbers on business exit strategy, business valuation and deal structure. If you want to buy, sell, scale or exit, you will hear exactly what worked, what went backwards in year three and what made due diligence fast and clean.
You will learn how three cofounders funded growth by reinvesting profit, used software vendor partnerships for leads and delivery, scaled to 50 to 60 perm plus 20 to 30 consultants, and ran a 5 to 7 year exit plan with reviews every six months. You will also hear why the US move failed, why redundancies followed, why a European private equity roll up offer was declined, and how a corporate finance introduction led to the Amplify trade sale.
Leigh then explains payment in full. Day one check, two year earn out cut from four, equity rolled into top Co, 8x on his sale versus 16.5x on the private equity buy in, plus removal of the contingent element after year one numbers landed. He then shares The Founders Exit, his platform to make founders exit ready with valuation guidance, deal structure education, data room prep and a strategic journey plan from pre revenue to 30M.
Key topics covered:
Chapters
(00:00) Introduction
(02:21) Cofounders Plus Bootstrapped Start
(05:02) Scaling To 80 Headcount
(05:41) Why Comma Group Plus US Setback
(08:13) Private Equity Approach Plus First Corporate Finance Lesson
(10:47) 8x Multiple Plus 16.5x Private Equity Buy In
(11:38) Day One Check Plus Two Year Earn Out
(12:33) Life After Exit Plus Time Plus Family
(18:30) Why Founders Struggle To Exit Well
(27:45) Inside The Founders Exit Platform
(45:00) Exit Ready From Day One Plus Final Advice
Show: The Ownership Journey
Our Website: eu1.hubs.ly/H0xgcHW0
Guest: Leigh Wells
Host: James Lamb
Follow for weekly conversations with people who have built, bought, and sold real businesses.
Scaling BMS Services from a £10k Order to Million-Pound Contracts is the blueprint Viv Sullivan reveals in this episode of The Ownership Journey. Founder of BMS Services, Viv built a specialist busbar installation and construction business from a single £10,000 hotel order to signing Million-Pound Contracts with hyperscale clients like Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Vantage Data Centres. If you are scaling a business in construction, this business growth strategy deep dive shows how repeatable systems, City & Guilds accredited training and engineering quality create real enterprise value for buying a business, selling a business or planning a business exit strategy.
In this candid conversation with host James Lamb, Viv breaks down the critical gap in the UK construction business: up to 80% of busbar failures are caused by poor installation, not manufacturing. He shares hard lessons from being called to failures at the Houses of Parliament, The Gherkin and a Liverpool hospital built by Carillion, why 5000m+ of busbar installation in a modern data centre carrying 800 to 6300 amps at 10-100MW cannot afford error, and how his team at BMS Services engineered written procedures for every element of the job to guarantee repeatability. You will hear how the company grew from £150,000 in year one to £3.5-4M at peak with 40 staff, navigated cash flow and supplier leverage during COVID, turned Schneider and Siemens manufacturer partnerships into a competitive moat, and why copper at 800-900 degrees melting and 1000 degrees explosion risk means governance matters more than ever for construction company owners.
Viv also explains why business growth only works when you systemize before you scale — from the City & Guilds assurance qualification achieved in June 2022 covering busbar installation method, busbar connection and electrical installation, to the mechanical and electrical skill blend that busbar trunking demands.
Key topics covered:
Chapters:
Show: The Ownership Journey
Our Website: eu1.hubs.ly/H0xgcHW0
Guest: Viv Sullivan
Host: James Lamb
Follow for weekly conversations with people who've built, bought, and sold real businesses.
High performers often look unstoppable from the outside yet many high performers feel trapped by their own success inside. In this powerful episode of The Ownership Journey, executive coaching expert Tayabba Jordan reveals why business success can quietly create misalignment between ambition, identity and wellbeing and how that misalignment fuels founder burnout, drains company culture and blocks sustainable high performance.
Drawing on her Alignment Method and real world stories from boards and founding teams, Tayabba shows why achievement without alignment leads to a success trap that keeps even the most driven leaders stuck, exhausted and disconnected from joy.
This conversation goes beyond surface level leadership coaching advice to explore the psychology behind leadership mindset and the hidden costs of constant doing. Tayabba shares her journey from acclaimed television set design on major UK shows to becoming a sought after leadership coaching and executive coaching authority after navigating personal upheaval and deep research into human performance and burnout recovery.
You will hear how dopamine driven high performance culture, poor employee retention and toxic company culture patterns signal deeper misalignment and why buying a business or preparing a business exit strategy without addressing leadership mindset and cultural alignment dramatically raises the risk of value erosion and succession planning failure.
For owners thinking about succession planning, business exit strategy or buying a business, this episode delivers proof driven tools you can use immediately. Learn the two minute reset to calm adrenaline and protect decision quality, the seven minute morning delay to set intention and rebalance happy hormones, and how to dilute dopamine dominance with endorphins serotonin and oxytocin rituals that improve sleep, focus and resilience.
Tayabba also explains why employee retention, clarity of direction and honest dialogue are leading indicators of business success and how her Fast Reset and Lead Like a Human principles help founders and teams stay aligned, human and ready for what comes next.
Key topics covered:
Chapters:
Show: The Ownership Journey
Our Website: eu1.hubs.ly/H0xgcHW0
Guest: Tayabba Jordan
Host: James Lamb
Follow for weekly conversations with people who have built, bought, and sold real businesses.
How to buy a business with no money sounds impossible, but Louis Jackson did exactly that while living in a hostel. In this episode of The Ownership Journey, Louis shares how he went from homelessness and addiction to buying a debt recovery business for £100,000 with no capital, no business experience, and no safety net. He reveals the exact conversation that convinced the owner to lend him the money, and how he repaid every single penny.
Louis's story does not start in a boardroom. Raised around organised crime, he witnessed violence and drug use from the age of four. By his late teens he was battling cocaine and alcohol addiction, suffered an overdose that nearly killed him, and was sectioned for his own health. A reactive depression followed the loss of a pregnancy at 26 weeks, and in 2017 he was homeless with his ex-wife and two daughters, moving from hostel to hostel. It was in that rock bottom moment he decided there had to be another way.
From there Louis built an ecosystem spanning property, data, and media. He scaled the debt collection business by hiring himself out of day to day operations, acquired 91 properties in three years using a rent to rent model, and launched the Next Level Podcast as a form of therapy that grew into a platform for real connection. Today he mentors founders, takes equity stakes in businesses like Collections Cloud, and shares hard won lessons on buying a business, hiring for consistency, the fallacy of work life balance, and the TRUST model investors actually care about.
Key topics covered:
Chapters:
Show: The Ownership Journey
Our Website: eu1.hubs.ly/H0xgcHp0
Guest: Louis Jackson
Host: James Lamb
Follow for weekly conversations with people who've built, bought, and sold real businesses.
Buying a business is the fastest route to business ownership, and Robert Felters explains exactly how to buy a business the right way. As founding partner of Wolfgang Capital, he has spent six and a half years acquiring eight profitable B2B companies, scaling his first deal from a £750,000 turnover medical lighting business into a portfolio he plans to hold forever.
This episode is a masterclass in business acquisition for anyone who wants to buy, sell, or exit a business. Robert breaks down business exit strategy, exit planning, and business valuation with the numbers to back each one. You will hear how the group grew from zero to £27 million across three businesses, then collapsed when interest rates spiked from 1.6 percent to 6 percent, and how a third generation business died in just four weeks because the owner ran out of time to find a buyer.
James Lamb presses Robert on the real mechanics: what makes a good acquisition target, how he structures deals with debt and his own cash, the first 100 days after you buy, and the US acquisition that went badly wrong. Whether you want to sell your business, scale one, or start buying businesses yourself, this conversation on mergers and acquisitions, business growth, and entrepreneurship is a proven, numbers first playbook for anyone who wants to own, grow, or exit a business.
In this episode:
Show: The Ownership JourneyOur Website: eu1.hubs.ly/H0xgcHW0
Guest: Robert Felters
Host: James Lamb
Editor: Taran (mail: [email protected])
Follow for weekly conversations with people who've built, bought, and sold real businesses.
Over 52% of business owners have no exit plan in place, and with the biggest wealth transfer in history already underway, the window is closing fast. In this episode of The Ownership Journey, Adam Strong breaks down exactly how to build a business that runs without you — the kind of company acquirers actually want to buy. If you are searching for a proven business exit strategy, this conversation delivers the blueprint to exit on your terms.
Adam Strong is a strategic advisor and high performance business coach who has helped hundreds of founders scale, prepare, and exit their businesses for maximum value. He shares why founder dependency is the single biggest business valuation killer, how to use an exit plan to identify gaps in your company, and the mindset shifts required to overcome the revenue ceilings that trap most entrepreneurs. Whether you are exploring selling a business now or building toward a future exit, the frameworks in this episode will change how you think about business growth and sell your company timing.
This conversation goes far beyond traditional exit planning and business strategies. Adam opens up about his personal journey from elite distance runner to McDonald's store manager to trusted advisor, revealing how high performance business habits replaced his unsustainable hustle mindset. You will learn why entrepreneurship demands rest and recovery as much as it demands output, how to pre qualify clients using diagnostic tools, and why Adam calls his approach "business to human" instead of B2B or B2C. For any founder ready to scale your business, exit strategy business frameworks, and build toward exiting your business, this episode is your starting point. Adam also unpacks the key differences between business exit approaches across the UK and international markets, and why building a business acquisition strategy early changes everything.
Key topics covered:
Show: The Ownership Journey
Our Website: eu1.hubs.ly/H0xgcHW0
Guest: Adam Strong
Host: James Lamb
Editor: Taran (mail: [email protected])
Follow for weekly conversations with people who've built, bought, and sold real businesses.
Bitcoin for business is no longer a fringe idea. It is a rapidly growing movement among UK entrepreneurs. Bitcoin entrepreneur Jordan Walker, founder of the Bitcoin Collective and the Bitcoin Business Network, joins James Lamb on The Ownership Journey to break down what Bitcoin actually is, why over 100 UK companies are now holding BTC on their balance sheets, and how business owners can start accepting bitcoin as payment. From explaining the bitcoin protocol and self custody to demystifying volatility and intrinsic value concerns, this episode is a practical guide to understanding digital assets for any entrepreneur.
Jordan shares his journey from launching a podcast during Covid to hosting the UK's first major bitcoin conference in Edinburgh with over 550 attendees, featuring speakers from Coutts Bank, Fidelity, and members of Parliament. He reveals how the bitcoin business network grew from a single event into a nationwide community of business owners interested in cryptocurrency, investing, and using bitcoin as collateral for quick capital. The conversation also tackles the decline of fiat currency, with the British pound losing 95 percent of its purchasing power since 1970, and why scarcity makes bitcoin a compelling store of value.
For business owners and entrepreneurs still on the fence, Jordan addresses the top objections head on: volatility, environmental concerns around bitcoin mining, and the question of intrinsic value. He outlines practical steps for dollar cost averaging into bitcoin, the difference between hot wallets and cold wallets, and why the blockchain matters. With institutional giants like BlackRock now recommending 1 to 3 percent portfolio allocation to bitcoin, the question for businesses is no longer why bitcoin but how fast you can learn.
In this episode:
Show: The Ownership Journey
Our Website: eu1.hubs.ly/H0xgcHW0
Guest: Jordan Walker
Host: James Lamb
Editor: Taran (mail: [email protected])
Follow for weekly conversations with people who've built, bought, and sold real businesses.
From the publisher's feed