Small Business Australia Chair Bill Lang joins Michael Kerr to explore the rising trend of entrepreneurship through acquisition and how AI is rapidly shifting the landscape for modern solopreneurs. Tune in for expert insights on buying established businesses, managing cash flow, and future-proofing your operations in a fast-paced digital economy.
In this episode of the Owner to Owner Podcast, Michael sits down with Bill Lang—Chair of Small Business Australia, Co-chair of Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs for Oceania, and a seasoned business founder and advisor.
They dive deep into the rising trend of "entrepreneurship through acquisition," exploring why buying an established business is becoming an increasingly popular and less risky alternative to the traditional startup model. Bill shares fascinating insights from his recent Harvard Business School reunion, highlighting the explosive impact of AI on the "solopreneur" movement and how technology is fundamentally lowering the barriers to entry for new business owners.
Beyond trends, Bill delivers practical, hard-earned wisdom for current SME owners. From the critical importance of documenting your business processes and preparing for unexpected succession, to managing cash flow and learning from Other People's Mistakes (OPM), this episode is packed with actionable advice for building and sustaining a successful business.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
Chapters:
01:20 The Evolution of Entrepreneurship
06:24 Changing Perspectives on Business Ownership
11:34 The Rise of Solopreneurs and AI
16:29 Navigating the Landscape of Business Acquisition
21:36 Preparing for the Unexpected in Business
26:36 Lessons from Past Acquisitions
26:58 The Impact of Capital on Startups
30:04 Navigating Tax Changes and Business Opportunities
32:02 The Future of AI in Business
34:54 Leveraging AI for Small Business Growth
38:43 Aussie Post's Role in Supporting Small Businesses
42:23 Lessons from a Small Business Journey
46:52 The Need for Practical Experience in Politics
#SmallBusiness #Entrepreneurship #BusinessAcquisition #Solopreneur #SmallBusinessAustralia #BusinessAdvice #AIforBusiness #SuccessionPlanning #BusinessStrategy #PodcastSEO
Small Business Australia: Connect with Bill Lang and find resources to support your business journey at smallbusinessaustralia.org.
Michael (01:20):
Welcome into the Owner to Owner Podcast. Bill Lang, fabulous to have you back in the studio chatting small business. Great to see you.
Bill Lang (01:28):
G'day, Mike. Always great to catch up, mate, and looking forward to having a good chat.
Michael (01:33):
We're going to chat about entrepreneurship through acquisition, with your Harvard connection, but more broadly that whole movement of entrepreneurs buying established businesses. If we get time, we'll chat about some work you're doing with Aussie Post and regional small businesses through a stakeholder council. These are absolutely core topics for Owner to Owner and building and sustaining our SME economy.
Bill is the Chair of Small Business Australia, the Chair of the International Rehabilitation Institute (which is a China-Australia business), Co-chair of Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs for Oceania, Co-chair of AusGlobal Ventures, and co-founder of Free Online Sharing and Dr. Dog. You come from a small business background—you've run, started, sold, and founded small businesses, and worked with a lot of small business owners. Welcome again and thanks for taking the time to come on.
Bill Lang (02:29):
It's a pleasure, Mike. And I think you should add in there: I've pretty much made every mistake you could make. Sadly, in some cases, a few times over! But there have been a few wins alongside the losses. So far, it's been a great journey. There is nothing more exhilarating than working with private business owners—people with the get-up-and-go to have a crack.
Michael (02:50):
Thanks, Bill. The bittersweet reality of being involved in a small business is when it doesn't go so well. The flip side is that when you're advising, counseling, and mentoring other small business owners, you can do it with credibility and a real gut feel for what they're going through.
Michael (03:44):
Let's get to your capacity as Co-chair of the Oceania Harvard Alumni Club. You said something to me recently about the numbers of recent graduates choosing to buy an established business. I think when you graduated more than 30 years ago, there was a strict pathway to strategy consulting and investment banking—the cream of the crop of jobs. What's happening now and why is it different?
Bill Lang (03:44):
I just got back from my 35th MBA reunion. Out of the 800 of us, more than 350 turned up in Boston for three days of get-togethers. Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs is a global network of about 22,000 of us involved in starting, building, owning, managing, investing in, and advising private business owners.
When I was there, we had a couple of subjects with the word "entrepreneurial" in them. The professors defined an entrepreneur as someone who "relentlessly pursues an opportunity without the required resources." Compared to back then, when more than half the class wanted to go into management consulting or investment banking, today, nine in ten of the current students (typically aged 25 to 29) see themselves as future entrepreneurs.
The university is innovating to support this. They've launched "The Foundry," funded by Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit. It uses AI to drastically reduce the friction of starting a business—you can test an idea in the real market five minutes after having it. However, many students are looking at a different strategy: entrepreneurship through search. They are looking to buy and invest in an existing company to become masters of their own destiny. That terminology didn't even exist decades ago.
Michael (06:42):
It sounds like this esteemed institution is adapting, partly driven by entrepreneurial grads. So, they are focusing on both finding and buying an established business, as well as starting up new ones?
Bill Lang (07:06):
Absolutely, Mike. It's much less risky to buy an existing business. Some want a predictable cash flow and want to make it more profitable. Others want to buy it, implement new technologies, and use it as a platform to roll up other existing businesses. You buy from an owner looking to retire for two or three times revenue, scale it on your infrastructure, buy half a dozen more, and then sell the group for ten times the profit. It's a great way to generate economic value. As an old American mentor of mine used to say about Huskies pulling a sled: "If you ain't the lead dog, the view never changes." Many people just want to be the lead dog.
Michael (09:04):
Is that reflective of different kinds of graduates, or just a generation that wants to be their own boss and not wait around for corporate structures?
Bill Lang (09:21):
We have a million small businesses in Australia using Stripe. One of the founders of Stripe was in Sydney last week, sharing the stage with a founder of Canva. They noted that since AI and ChatGPT became available, there has been an explosion in the "solopreneur"—the one-person startup. Stripe demonstrated that in five minutes, you can create a business, have a website, and take payments. The barriers to entry are incredibly low now.
However, there is also a group of middle managers and junior executives leaving large, soul-destroying corporations. Michael Gerber from The E-Myth says there are three psychologies of owners: the artisan who loves their craft, the manager who left the corporate world and wants their own thing (often franchises), and the true entrepreneur aiming for massive growth. In Australia, roughly 50-60% are artisans, 25% are managers, and 10-15% are growth-focused entrepreneurs.
Michael (11:48):
Ross Cameron does really gritty research on that. I look forward to his reports every month.
Bill Lang (12:05):
Yes, and Ross has been talking to the same business owners every three to six months for over 15 years. He’s seen the whole journey and is a solopreneur himself.
Michael (12:50):
This move to buying an established business—do you see that going on more broadly? Pete Seligman in Sydney is highly active in the entrepreneurship through acquisition space. What support is out there for these aspirant business owners?
Bill Lang (13:45):
We are starting to see more business coaches and succession planners focus on finding buyers. It's an attractive market for former corporate managers looking for established systems. On the flip side, we are going to see more corporate executives pushed out as AI automates information management. Those roles will disappear, pushing highly skilled managers into the business acquisition market.
For current owners listening, the more you can articulate and document your processes—like a franchise would—the easier your business will be to sell, and the better price you'll get.
Michael (17:27):
The challenge is getting owners who are later in their careers to take the time to do that. The irony is, the more you systematize, the less pressure you're under to sell because it can run under management.
Bill Lang (18:06):
At Small Business Australia, we help members take on "digital business cadets"—university students looking for internships. These kids know how to use technology. Even as an owner, you can just talk into a voice-to-text AI app, and it will generate the first draft of your operations manual. It's nowhere near as difficult as it used to be. Plus, it brings young people into your business who could potentially become future buyers.
Michael (19:17):
A lot of businesses won't ever be advertised for sale, but that doesn't mean they aren't for sale. Off-market transactions happen all the time.
Bill Lang (20:23):
It's critical to be prepared. I recently had a friend, just 61 years old, black out while driving. Five weeks later, he's diagnosed with stage four terminal brain cancer. It really brings home the need to have a succession plan. If the owner suddenly isn't available, you don't want to leave a mess for your family to grapple with. Take a few steps to prepare. Luck stands for "Laboring Under Correct Knowledge." Have a strategy.
Michael (25:34):
You've had a couple of acquisitions that didn't go to plan. Looking back, what would you do differently?
Bill Lang (25:52):
One was an HR technology business. We bought it before modern SaaS platforms existed. We didn't do enough technical due diligence on the new platform they were developing. We should have tied the purchase price directly to the successful delivery of that working technology.
Secondly, we underestimated the capital expenditure required to keep up with giant startups. We are going to start seeing this with all Software as a Service (SaaS) providers. Once you are locked in, they ratchet up the prices—just like Xero recently raising their fees by 10-12%.
Michael (29:29):
In the last budget, there was a hit to residential housing investments. Is this a time to increase the percentage of average family wealth generated from small businesses?
Bill Lang (30:04):
We’ve had young entrepreneurs asking if they should even start their businesses in Australia, as opposed to Singapore or Dubai. For digital businesses, changes to the capital gains tax and small business discounts are highly problematic. We are driving innovators away. I spoke to a legal tech founder recently who, after watching the federal budget, realized the government is just taking more money out of their pockets. They are already being approached by US venture capitalists trying to drag them to America to launch AI law firms.
Bill Lang (32:56):
AI is in its absolute infancy—like electricity when it was first replacing gas lamps. We are seeing AI that can listen to psychiatric sessions in real-time and suggest diagnoses based on tone and speed of speech. With 6G technology, it will even analyze physical gait and stance.
Michael (34:39):
For a typical SME owner, what would you encourage them to do first with AI?
Bill Lang (34:54):
Go to ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot and ask it: "What can you tell me about [Your Business Name]?" Ask it to recommend a service provider in your industry and area, and see if you even show up. Increasingly, people are using AI bots for search instead of traditional Google SEO. If you aren't in the AI's dataset, you won't be found.
Just remember, these bots don't have real experience, and they are designed to agree with you and keep you engaged. Don't treat them like a human, but definitely use them to generate ideas, marketing posts, and strategy outlines.
Michael (38:31):
Let's talk about Aussie Post. You're a member of their stakeholder council. What are you working on there?
Bill Lang (38:43):
The stakeholder council brings perspectives from different sectors of society—elderly Australians, disabled communities, online retail, and small business. Australia Post is critical for e-commerce. They have about 4,500 points of presence. While 1,000 are corporate-owned, the rest are Licensed Post Offices (LPOs).
LPOs are small businesses themselves, often serving as the central hub in regional and remote towns. Our role is to provide input to the executive team to ensure these essential hubs are supported. I encourage locals to work with their LPOs, form a collective, and advocate to local councils and MPs to get the services their towns need.
Michael (42:35):
You grew up in a small business family, and your son is starting his own business. What is the best piece of advice you've given him?
Bill Lang (42:35):
Without customers willing to pay you more than your costs, you don't have a business. And remember: what people promise doesn't matter until the cash is actually in the bank account.
Years ago, with Dr. Dog, we hired drivers and suddenly saw sales plummet. We physically watched them and realized they had hidden their own hotdogs and buns in the back of our vans, selling their stock instead of ours for cash! The business dies when you run out of cash.
Michael (44:47):
Rich business lessons learned by having a crack and making mistakes. You are a huge advocate for finding mentors to avoid those mistakes.
Bill Lang (45:23):
Exactly. The first night of Dr. Dog, we took out 300 hotdogs and sold five because we parked in the wrong spot and the van's lights died. The next night, we moved across the road, brought a backup battery, and sold out in two hours. You can learn through your own experience, but the best way to learn is through OPM: Other People's Mistakes.
Michael (46:18):
To finish, what about the idea of compulsory small business experience for politicians?
Bill Lang (46:52):
It would only work if it actually impacted their ability to get elected. If I were the boss of Australia for a day, I would do three things:
Michael (49:45):
Excellent. Bill Lang, you're a champ. Thanks so much for your time.
Bill Lang (49:59):
Great to see you, Mike. People can reach out to me on LinkedIn or via the Small Business Australia website.