People think buying a business is all spreadsheets and tidy numbers.
It isn't.
It's getting halfway through a deal and finding something in the accounts that doesn't quite add up. A reconciliation that's been quietly carried forward for years. A grant that should have been written off. A supplier rebate that turns out to be a one-off rather than recurring.
It's a seller changing their mind after weeks of progress — sometimes about price, sometimes about structure, sometimes about whether they're really ready to step away from a business they've spent decades building. That hesitation is human, not bad faith.
It's finance that looked solid suddenly needing to be reworked at the last minute. A lender's appetite shifts. An underwriter wants different security. The terms move and you have to find a way to make the transaction still work for both sides.
We've got a few acquisitions in motion at the moment and none of them are straightforward. That's just how it goes. If a deal looks too clean from the outside, I usually assume we haven't found the issue yet — not because every business has skeletons, but because every business has its own quirks, and surfacing them is exactly what diligence is for.
Good deals aren't perfect. They're understandable. The difference matters. A perfect-on-paper deal that hides things will eventually create friction post-completion. A messy-on-paper deal where everyone has talked through the issues openly tends to land much better.
What we look for is sellers who'll have the conversation honestly — including the parts that don't reflect well on the business. That's far more valuable than a polished pitch deck. We can work with reality. We can't work with surprise.
If you're thinking about selling and there are things you'd rather not say in a first conversation — they're probably exactly the things worth saying.