Owner To Owner Podcast

PART 2 - Saaed Joulaei from Centreline Engineering shares his experience of leaving employment to buy and run this business.

Episode Summary

PART 2 - Saeed Joulaei talks about his experience of buying his current business, Centreline Engineering. While he has started a business from scratch before the lower risk of an established business made it much easier to make the big move from being an employee to a business owner. Start your own or buy an existing #smallbusiness. Saeed has now done both and can talk about the pro's and con's of both.

Episode Notes

@SaeedJoulaei talks about his experience #buyingabusiness and the big move from being an #employee to a #businessowner.

It's a very topical discussion. If you've ever thought about becoming a business owner you have two main alternatives. 

Start your own or buy an existing #smallbusiness.  Saeed has now done both and can talk about the pro's and con's of both.

He grew up in a little town in North of #Iran above his dad's little grocery shop and was a very young employee! After finishing an electrical engineering degree he co-founded his first business which for the first time brought the internet to his small hometown.  As a #startup he did a lot of all-nighters to get things moving. He still draws on those experiences today. An opportunity came up to move to Australia in 2008. He gave himself  time to get to know the culture and the environment. He worked as an employee before buying @CentrelineEngineering in 2019. 

In our discussion Saeed shares his personal experiences and tips on buying a business - we cover;

• the online search process he used to find businesses for sale
• the filters e.g. industry, geography he used to help sort through the thousands for sale
• how the maths he did on starting his own business (i.e. how long it would take to be viable, the risks etc) led him to buying an established business
• remembering the feeling the moment he came to realise "you don't have to build it from scratch" - and the relief that he felt with that
• the different risks you can or can't take at different ages
• dealing with #businessbrokers
• feeling unprepared for the buying process, stopping for a while to educate himself with any book or other material he could find to just filter through all the jargon, what the numbers mean,  and how they've come up with the number they've come up.
• how long the process took
• treating the search as a hobby while working as an employee
• the ideal time to get professionals involved
• the importance of understanding the reason why an owner is selling
• why it's not  always about the dollar - the business has often been someone's baby and you need to factor that in
• multiples and  well-understood approaches for valuing businesses
• #earnouts
• Centreline today - designing and #manufacturing the best #IndustrialAutomationMachinery for #Food and #Pharmaceutical Industries.
• #localmanufacturing
• the challenges in finding a #skilledworkforce
• the need to do a lot of work on yourself if you're moving from being an employee to owning a business
• the upside of tapping into your community
• having your stakeholders 'in the loop' - communicating with your partner, your family and making sure they understand the implications - that's very important to help get through the hard times later down the track

@kerrcapital