In this episode, Isobelle joins the podcast to discuss her experiences and insights from working in the UK market, particularly focusing on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) of Managed Service Providers (MSPs). Isobelle talks about Evergreen’s growth, including partnering with seven MSP businesses across the UK, and their approach to acquiring and supporting new businesses. Isobelle also touches on the importance of valuation, the quality of revenue streams, and the operational maturity of businesses. The conversation further explores the differentiation of Evergreen as a permanent partner, their decentralised model, and the extensive support they offer to their partner businesses.
00:00 Introduction and Greetings
00:40 Company Updates and Achievements
04:53 Team Expansion and Operations
06:33 UK Summit and Business Insights
08:17 Financial Metrics and Valuations
18:47 Revenue Quality and Business Growth
26:11 Differentiation in the Competitive Landscape
33:33 Conclusion and Contact Information
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Connect with Isobelle Coventry on LinkedIn by clicking here –https://www.linkedin.com/in/isobelle-coventry
Connect with Daniel Welling on LinkedIn by clicking here –https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-welling-54659715/
Connect with Adam Morris on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcmorris/
Visit The MSP Finance Team website, simply click here –https://www.mspfinanceteam.com/
We look forward to catching up with you on the next one. Stay tuned!
Transcript:
Adam: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to It’s The Numbers Game. I’m Adam Morris popping in just long enough to tee up a cracking conversation because Dan Welling is flying solo on the mic today, Dan sits down with Isabel Coventry UK deal maker at Evergreen Services Group. To unpack the fast moving MSP acquisition scene, stick around and you’ll discover the EBITDA multiples. Evergreen is paying and the levers that push your numbers higher. The difference between good versus great revenue and life after the check, what forever. Ownership team, career opportunities and hands-off autonomy actually look like once the deal closes.
With that, I’ll step aside and let Daniel and Isobelle get straight into the numbers. Enjoy the episode.
Daniel: [00:01:00] Isobelle, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Isobelle: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It’s great to see you again. Great to get a chance to chat.
Daniel: We, we have been threatening this for a little while. we’ve,met on the event scene,over the last year, CompTIA Huntress, oh G-T-I-A-I should now say, was Comptia when we met there though. So
Isobelle: We’ll still prompt you back then. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel: and it’s been great to,see and hear your progress in the UK market.
Sydney, a very kind join, join us on the podcast last year. so we really wanted to start with just, just a bit of an update in terms of, you, you’ve had the checkbook out on a few occasions. so, so yeah, do tell us, what you’ve been up to.
Isobelle: Absolutely. And I think, you know, in short, I think time flies when you’re having fun. It’s been a really, it was a fantastic first year on the ground in the uk. [00:02:00] and I can’t quite believe we’re already, what, nearly two years into our journey, in the region. I should probably preface that. You know, we, I. Pretty much around the time that we acquired our first business in the UK is when I joined Evergreen, to beat some boots on the ground and build things out. so yeah, last year was very much the focus on getting our UK activities off the ground. so fast forward since when you spoke to Sydney, gosh, a while back now, we now have seven businesses across the uk. so really excited, but also honored to have partnered with, seven really awesome MSPs. we, have got, close to London. We’ve got beyond the final step. That was our first business here in London. We’ve got, three businesses across the kind of southern region. so CIS and Oxford Chair It builder over in Hartfordshire.
I know James is a listener to this podcast, so hope he’ll hear this reference, digital Origin, over in Milton Keynes. And, going a bit, further up, the motorway. we, partnered with [00:03:00] CMS over in River Chester and we’re up across the Hadian wall into Scotland with, certain and, more un under the fold, in the coming months.
So it’s been a really, it was a really awesome first year on the ground. Not just, as I say, acquiring some fantastic businesses and partnering with them, for forever and ever going forwards, but also I think just getting the name out there, spending a lot of time building the presence in the local community as you write, refer to, there’s no, there’s no lack of events.
to attend in this community, which I think is a wonderful thing. So, last year was also a lot of, as I say, being boots on the ground and, and spreading the word and, but putting forward evergreen as an option, when it that time comes to assess, that next space for that business.
be the exit sale or, or what have you.
Daniel: and of course, thinking back to last year, another event you very kindly joined us at was the Tech Tribe London Meetup. so, so you’re welcome, welcome back. in [00:04:00] 2025. it’d be good to be, good to see you. see you there. And, and you mentioned digital origin. Steven has,very kindly been a guest on the podcast.
So perhaps, our long-term, listener, first time guest, James maybe would like to join us too.
Isobelle: we’ll, if you’re listening, James, we’ll see you. We’ll see you in the hot seat very soon by the sound of it. no. Yeah, it was great to really, great to be in the room at Tech Drive. Gosh, that was a long time ago now. but, it just, I think it’s just a testament to this community, right?
There’s so many pockets of ideas and knowledge sharing, going on. Across the UK and, it’s great. It’s great to be a part of it and contribute, contribute to that continued growth of that community.
Daniel: So I’ve got so many questions and,I’m sure you won’t be able to answer them all. it is just you and I on this conversation. Don’t worry about all the other people listening. If there’s, you know, if there’s any confidentiality, but,always interested in the numbers.
what can you tell us, about the journey so far, per perhaps, some of the [00:05:00] stats would be interested in like, number of people now in the, in, in the combined team, the number of clients or endpoints. obviously I’d love to, I’d love to know. Your view on, valuations as well, but appreciate that may be a difficult, topic to cover, but, yeah.
tell us what you can, numbers wise.
Isobelle: Well, but actually I would say,contrarily, I feel like valuations isn’t often asked questions. It’s always good to share a view on that. yeah, we have expanded a lot, I would say, on my side in terms of sourcing opportunities. it’s not just myself on the ground.
I’m really excited to be joined by. My colleague Scott, now also in the uk, who is works alongside me in terms of, sourcing our finding opportunities, finding the next best businesses to partner with, and building relationships with those business owners and their teams. we, as you know, Daniel, we have,larger operations business called Lara Technology that.
Sits across, each of our MSPs a bit like an umbrella or board of directors. as you know as well, each of our MSPs,we are not [00:06:00] centralizing them given our decentralized model. but Lara acts as that, larger resource to support. Each of those businesses in that organic growth piece and value creation over time. And there we’ve invested a lot. so we, we really are excited to continue to build out, more of a regional team for here in, in the UK and Ireland. for across Lara we’ve got, our UK. specific CEO Will Dawson, who’s been spending a lot of time this side of the pond, when it comes to, to, spending time with our businesses.
We’ve got also our VP of operations, Henry, who is, a bit closer to home and, he’s really in the weeds. I think he’s, I’m not even sure if he uses his own office, I think he’s spending each week at one or another of our MSPs just. Being, fly on the wall and helping spot those, those opportunities to, to accelerate growth, which is really exciting and heartening to see. other updates. we did our first, UK specific summit, so this was. [00:07:00] For our businesses, all of our business leaders, and their second in commands or other, management team members, all got together in a room. this is something we’ve done, over the years,as a global. Group of MSP businesses. but it was the first time us putting this together specifically in the uk. I was there, fly on the wall, just ob observing and,and as I said, it was really heartening to see just what great people we, we’ve partnered with and how everyone is, really driven, I think,to see shared success across each business.
There was a lot of shared learnings, a lot of real talk about how to improve. be things from an operational standpoint, sales perspective. there’s a lot of good conversations there. So there’s been a lot of, of those kind of updates and,you’d, I’d have to go back to the drawing board in terms of, confirming to the number of endpoints we’ve got now in the uk. certainly more than it was this time last year. and yeah, really proud to see what we’ve built, and what’s in store, I think for the next, the rest of this year and beyond.
Daniel: , That’s really interesting to hear [00:08:00] how there’s like a community of the businesses that are part of the,the Evergreen family. I dunno what your description is.
Isobelle: that’s a great description. Yeah.
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Daniel: And,the,the businesses that, that have,have been, acquired in, in the last year,what sort of typical size have they been? number of staff or number of, yeah, number of clients may be.
Isobelle: Yeah. Well, I think in terms of, like business scale, when I think of things like revenue, ebitda, all those fun things, most of our acquisitions across the UK have fallen pretty nicely and what I’d say is our, like, acquisition sweet spots. so probably around, Six to 750,000, EBITDA adjusted, which roughly translates to around 4 million in turnover.
Three to 4 million turnover, just to give you a flavor of that, size profile. and then obviously. Number of employees for a business of that size. You know, that can depend on the level of automation in the business at the back [00:11:00] end, or, maybe where there’s, other efficiencies in a business, but typically seeing kind of mid twenties, early to mid twenties, I’d say, in terms of like full-time employees in, in that business. and as I say, that’s very much our, kind of our sweet spots. I think we are. Have a really strong methodology for supporting a business of that’s that scale, that maturity, and, how we can, support their growth, in the short, medium and long term. we start acquiring businesses around, you know, slightly smaller than that profile.
there’s a real upper bounds. To that acquisition. You know, I think of someone like Digital Origin, then they’re more of an at scale, size of business. a recent, acquisition, which, you know, to be announced in the next month or two is more around that size profile as well. So very much a nice mix of, as I say, it’s that kind of, where you are on that journey in terms of not just scale, but operational maturity and overall growth. An expansion of that business. It’s nice to have a blend across the UK [00:12:00] portfolio.
Daniel: And when you mention, adjusted ebitda, this is adjusted and normalized for active shareholder remuneration. Question mark.
Isobelle: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a typical, that typical way of thinking about it. I think, I think that’s a good question actually. ’cause I think a lot of people wonder what does this reported EBITDA versus adjusted mean? there’s a, you know, there’s a lot of myths to dispel on that rightly so. very much so typically just means, If someone,if we are partnering with a business where that business owner is looking to depart from the business at close, then we would adjust out for any costs that they, that are, that just associated to themselves, which would cease to exist in that business. Post-sale. so that could very well be exactly that, the level of remuneration they’re taking out, if they have personal vehicles, home office, those kind of expenses as well.
Daniel: you sometimes see some funky stuff going on in there, but pretty much so I [00:13:00] think particularly if they’re working with the likes of yourselves annual, there’s probably some quite nice clean books. I, I was wondering where you going there, but yes, quite right.
Isobelle: Absolutely. Yeah, no, no, certainly.
Daniel: And, but then they’re leaving the business. so of course their direct associated costs would also,cease to continue. But if they’re active in the business, then there’s a market competitive remuneration that you need to add back or to normalize for, correct.
Isobelle: Yes. Yeah. So as, as we mentioned previously, we, feel really, great that we can accommodate a lot of different go forward futures for that business as you’re to what you’re referring. We can support, a case where that business owner wants to depart from the business at close to say what they want to exit, and we’ll bring in a go forward MD business leader and match them to, to the business equally.
So when I think of an example like IT builder and [00:14:00] Hartfordshire. James wanted to stay on, with the business and partner with us in that next phase of growth. so yes, in that case, when we are thinking of the numbers and what that EBITDA picture looks like, we want to normalize. Costs, that a business owner would typically take in the UK versus what that looks like? post, post-close. So, yeah, in the UK it’s fairly common for a business owner as you know, to be, not taking a full salary through the p and l, but mostly through dividends. So that is an, that’s a normalization example that we would look to make.
Daniel: Su super and,and of course that can work for and against, a, vendor. if they had been, un underpaying them, underpaying themselves, then then obviously their EBITDA would perhaps go down. But equally, if they’ve been overpaying themselves, their EBITDA might go up because actually, yeah, you know, we can replace you, Daniel, for a lower value.
I think it’s a good point because yeah, it’s worth bearing that in mind, as you say, if you are,you as a small individual business, you can, as we say, you can [00:15:00] take out most of your salary through something like dividends. So that’s not going to be the case to pretty much any buyer you sell too.
Isobelle: that will change. same as what you’re saying, I think it’s. Not necessarily just purely the actual cost, but that part of indirect costs of you being a business owner and a founder. You’re typically playing at least one and a half jobs, I
feel, oftentimes. And that’s not co, that’s not Renu for typically. So if you are, you know, you, your, off go to exits from a business, then it’s worth bearing in mind. Well. That acquirer definitely needs to bring in a full salary for my, myself going forward because, you know, I’ve been playing, I’ve been wearing many hats and that needs to be, that can’t come out of thin air.
Right. so that’s something that, that would, yeah. Again, it’s those kind of thinking of when it comes to a pragmatic approach to, to, to those costs and normalizing.
Daniel: in Indeed. And, and of course if,if anyone is listening to, to, to this,just to, to clarify [00:16:00] that, had you been. Taking less money out of the business and therefore perhaps, accruing retained earnings in the business. Then the good news is that at an exit event, you can remove that.
one of the m and a terms that, sometimes people are unsure of is the, debt free, cash free, description. Perhaps you could just, enlighten our listeners for that and how that works.
Isobelle: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s a good, it’s a good point. And it is one of those, as you say, it’s one of those kind of jargon things that get thrown up into, like ahead of times or something without a lot of context. I think cash free, debt free in general,it can be a really good thing, particularly when you know, the MSP industries, like an asset like. Industry by and large, depends if you are maybe have substantial like data center operations and obviously there’s a lot more like CapEx and tends to be those kind of associated costs involved, for example. But in general, if you don’t have, like, when you think of a cash free, debt free basis, the acquirer [00:17:00] will, if there’s any cash in the business that’s not required to continue the business running.
As normal and they will, that acquirer will calculate like an average of what’s needed to keep that business running. not like anything surplus, just purely maintaining the business, keeping the lights on, anything surplus of that. the, at least when it comes to our deals that, business owner, founder will, owner will take that cash home. so it can actually be quite a lot if you are running like a really, Cash positive business and, you know, keep got good amount of savings in there for, investments in the business or just savings for rainy days or preventative measures. the same obviously goes as well with debt-free if you are, running a business without any loans or anything like that. then. Whilst those are things that you would be responsible for, for resolving. If there’s nothing bad then there’s nothing to be, to be having to pay back. So, as I say, it can work really well and I think goes to shows to the benefit of running a clean business and [00:18:00] clean books.
’cause then, you know, you know what’s in front of you and you know what, where, you know, actually you could be accruing potentially even like. Five to 800 k more potentially depending on how much, as say extra cash there is just flowing through the business on the day to day.
Daniel: Sure. And,well, and I guess we’re sort of, we’re honing in on the valuation, gold, golden nugget. Then. So let’s say, for example, a t typical MSP, that had, say a normalized ebitda, in the, 500 to a million, bracket. what sort of multiples would we be expecting at the moment?
Isobelle: that age old question. it’s interesting. also I feel there’s been a lot of like interesting updates and reports recently around where the market sits today. I feel like we are still in a pretty similar boat. I often get asked with, you know, as say, is economic,at downturn, tailwinds changes.
Does that impact multiples Very much. And I think by and large [00:19:00] the. if I think of a more, a business more around that 500 K adjusted EBITDA mark, very much a ballpark estimate, but it seems to be typically, buyers that are looking to pay around anywhere between five to seven x on that normalized ebitda. that’s a very much a take it with a pinch of salt number. It’s very easy to index on what that lowest and the highest figure and not look in between. It is fair to say that as you scale, as a business, you can expect to garner like a, a valuation towards the upper end. you know, of buyer worth their salt is going to, consider the scale of the business you’ve built.
However, I would very much emphasize, and I think it’s something that’s often, not considered enough, but. Really what’s important is the quality of those revenues. So you can have a really, you can have a business that’s super profitable. the hefty margins resulting in, as I say that nice million plus, EBITDA price, price [00:20:00] tag. but if it’s made up of maybe lower quality revenue streams, there’s limited. Pure IT support. For example, in there, majority of profits are coming from licenses, resale, or, fluctuating projects, for example, or just, line items that are less, less kind of, valuable over the long term. Then,that’s not going to play.
So po positively in terms of the overall valuation. Equally importantly, is to think about what’s the maturity of the business like? Is it understaffed? If a buyer acquires your business, are they gonna have to immediately bring in a lot of hires because,you’ve been focused on, on, on keeping profitability high, maybe preventing making those extra hires.
Again, thinking of that founder playing that one and a half to two person roles, oftentimes. things like, what’s the sales process like? Do you have. Is it founder led sales or do you have, someone in the business who’s going out and bringing in new leads, like playing that sales hunter role and, a different individual who’s the [00:21:00] account manager?
those are exciting pieces that we want to see in a business and you know, that’s gonna help. Push your push, a potential valuation upwards because we are ultimately excited to, pay a fair price for a business that, is operationally mature, has exciting growth. Tailwinds is focused on, forward thinking areas within, you know, the industry.
So a focus on, cybersecurity, in getting involved in ai particularly like backend automation or things like that. Those are all areas that we are really excited to own a business that, that operates as such, and are gonna help boost your valuation more than just the number, at the bottom of the PLP and L alone.
Daniel: really interesting. And so, if we were to have a lineup of best quality, income,we’d,in the, in the platinum gold end, we’d have,recurring managed services, presumably with a good,good contractual term and,good healthy contracts and,and then.
and then we go [00:22:00] down into,into the silvers with re recurring resale items. So like Microsoft 3 6 5, which again, can have a lower,margin, but also are more commoditized. you can buy Microsoft licensing from. lots of places, but you can only buy Daniel Welling. Managed it from Daniel Welling.
Right. And therefore there’s a value to that. And then the poorest quality revenue is the,is the non-recurring, product resale, and somewhere in between or manage,implementation projects. So professional services.
Isobelle: it’s a, it’s an interesting way of looking at it and it’s, I would almost say whilst I, I agree that I think the gold standard that we love to see is a really good proportion of total revenue coming from, as you say, the Daniel Welling it support offerings. because. The way we think about it is, because it’s such a service oriented, sale, right?
You are able to, you can continue to add value to that over time. [00:23:00] There’s always areas you can improve it. You can bring in, price increases, you can add extra layers, so there’s offerings. So it’s a really, it’s got really good longevity in terms of the value of that offering. What I would say though is I think when I think of a really strong MSP that has a very sticky offering, really, great tenure customers who, rely on that business for that very much end-to-end sup support, and. View their, view, their MSP as that tech advisor, right? Rather than just, just the IT people. which I think is where we want to get to. I get so excited when I, see examples of businesses who are, you know, sitting in on their clients leadership meetings, for example, or running those q you know, quarterly business reviews, QPRs, doing all those things to, to be that. Value additive partner to their client. and in order to do that, I think you need to have the suites of offerings. so it is important to, there’s definitely [00:24:00] areas you can make, like non-recurring revenue, pretty value additive as well. I think that,can be challenging as well to get right.
But, I think of it sometimes as a bit of a cycle of kind of sales. So you. Hopefully bring someone through the door when it, and get them, embedded into your IT support offerings. Potentially. There’s a different, you have different tiers of support, so they’re working their way through, through that premium offering, which is that really all the good stuff.
alongside that, your classic, help desk monitoring, offerings. But then I think alongside that, once they’ve. Purchase that contract. you wanna be working out, oh, where maybe do they want, do they need to, migrate, some of their, maybe they’ve got some more devices they need to put into Azure.
Where do they need to, where can we help them with that implementation project? To your point, where can we help them with, actually really fine tuning some of the, the tools they’re using, which don’t fall into, that recurring support piece. but in order, by [00:25:00] capturing those opportunities, you are becoming that really sticky partner to the client.
and. It adds to that level of surety that they are a, they’re a long term client to you because they just go to you. There’s no question of them needing to look elsewhere,for IT support or technology in one way or another. So I think it is important to have that balance right, as we say in that kind of cycle effect of sales opportunities to clients.
Daniel: Yeah, interesting. we could, we could really drill into the sort of service offering. may, maybe that’s our next,our next, episode, with,with yourselves to,to really look at, you know, how we, how we should. Create our offerings and then manage the implementation with the clients.
one, one question I,I had, really interested to hear, from you on this would be, I. kind of the value is the value. and let’s say the range is five to seven. what does the non-value based competitive landscape look for you [00:26:00] in, in, in, targets your, you are talking to, like how do you differentiate yourself from, I’ll say all of the other private equity. And I know that we are not necessarily wanting to say that private equity is, you know, the different levels. In fact, that was the title of, Sydney’s episode with us. but but yeah, presumably if I am, if I’m sat on a half million plus of ebitda, I’m gonna have options, right?
There’s gonna be lots of people that are interested in talking to me and have the. Ability, credibility to, to,to, to work with me. So, how do you compete in that landscape?
Isobelle: Great question. I can answer it,for hours, but maybe, and in, probably in many ways, but I’ll try and
Daniel: A, a fourth episode then?
Isobelle: We’ve got a whole trilogy of episodes coming up. the, opportunities are endless. no, I think in terms of that differentiation piece,in broad, I’ll mention kind of broad, broader times and then maybe also when it comes to the actual offers you might see, because I
think it’s important to understand. Under the hood what, under, [00:27:00] what an offer looks like. And I can hopefully give a bit more clarity in terms of what that could, what that deal can look like in when we think about it. I think I always go back to like, what are our kind of core tenets when I think about our differentiation, the first being that we are a permanent partner for your business.
So we as a holding company, we are never selling our MSPs. we’re never selling any of the businesses we acquire. We really believe in being that forever home for your business, for your teams. and, we are not under any pressure, you know, unlike a, maybe a conventional private equity backed, player in the market to, reach a certain. Scale or XY Z’s number, within a typical private equity holding period. that’s the beauty of our model. And then I think the second piece that we promise is to, We really care about what happens to that business once we partner with it. And we want to [00:28:00] preserve all what you’ve built and that’s good about your business, maintain the identity, the brand, provide meaningful long-term growth opportunities for your team. Avoid any disruption, or, changes to that service quality that your customers know and love. These are all things we care about and prioritize when we think about how can we help grow your business and how can we create the best environment for it to excel. And that’s why the third piece that we offer, I think makes us very different is really the, not just the breadth, but the depth of support and resources we offer to each of our MSPs. All the while maintaining a high level of autonomy. So I think, It’s exciting to see when business owners, want to stay along with us for the ride and, continue growing alongside us. we bring, really high quality executive talent into each business we partner with. As I say, that can be that go forwards, Andy, where that can also be like finding a really awesome CRO VP of growth, ops [00:29:00] leader, whatever that business individually needs. to bring a fresh pair of eyes and insight into that business. we can support meaningfully in terms of, the making the most of our scale when it comes to vendor purchasing. We’ll never tell you to, you have to change from one stack to another, or you have to move on to x, y, Z process and what you’ve been doing originally. If it’s working well, you know, as the saying goes, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. but ultimately provide you with being able to. make more, value out of the existing agreements that you have. and, helping with hiring and talent and those recruiting costs. And I, there’s loads of different ways we help support and I feel really good about.
it’s all about adding onto what is already an existing good business, but taking it to the next level. and I think the last piece I’d say in terms of just us in general is there’s a lot of. Different, opportunities we can provide when it comes to that go forward picture. I think I’ve gone on quite a bit about how we provide a really [00:30:00] strong, kind of safe home for your business and legacy,for the long term. if what you care about is preserving that legacy of your business and leaving it in good hands. but equally, if you are, really, you know, driven and want to. I want to, you know, continue to grow a business, but, be able to do so at the next level. we really care about making, Iterable rewarding experience.
we’ve been working on some really exciting incentivization plans and strategies for those who, really are those over performers. and go on to, you know, exponentially. Grow the business alongside us and making sure that you continue to feel skin in the game, and both yourself as that owner, but also having the ability to reward those A star employees in your business who maybe have not.
- Felt that, uplift from a deal as such, not being shareholders themselves, but being able to have that opportunity to share, in that success with your team. So there’s, there’s really [00:31:00] excited to explore what is the right option for each individual business. and equally feel pretty proud that we can, find a rewarding, rewarding deal.
pretty flexible in that sense.
Daniel: Maybe there’s a fifth episode as well here to. the recruitment topic, which,I’m, sure. there’s an interesting di dimension there. for example, if I’m an exiting, shareholder and we need a go forward MD for a business, where do you go and get one of those, presumably from within your estate to your community of,you know, it’s the next step up.
There can only be so many senior leaders in each individual business, but is that part of the appeal?
Isobelle: Well, we spend quite a bit of time going out and finding really good talent. We have a dedicated talent team for that executive talent placement piece. They, do, you know, spend a lot of efforts getting really up to speed with particularly the local talent market. I think it’s important to bring, you know, [00:32:00] ideally as local as possible with individuals into. each business, because you know, they know the culture. They understand what your particular customers want in that, that regions that you provide support for. that also, that said also in addition to, as I say, finding good talent, making sure they really match that culture, they match the energy of that business well. we’ve had a good few opportunities. For example, here in the uk when I think of like. CIS is a really good example. We, partnered with Neil, Matt, and the team, late last autumn. Neil, the founder, has been running an awesome business based over in Oxfordshire. wanted to, depart from the business, but leave it in good hands.
And, his number two, Matt has been running yeah, running the show for a good while. By partnering with us and selling to us, it was, we were able to facilitate him stepping up and really taking the reins. I feel really good about giving that opportunity to really driven individuals who otherwise would not have been able to say, buy out their, [00:33:00] the business owner.
That’s very challenging to do. but, you know, be able to step into those shoes and actually grow themselves professionally. you know, we’ve had examples as well where, we, some of our best performers historically, we’ve been able to promote them from within to move up into, Lara leadership.
so our Lara Group, CEO President, they’re both former. Evergreen, business owners that are running our businesses. so there’s a lot of those sort of upwards mobility opportunities as well from within, which is, yeah, really exciting.
Daniel: Brilliant. so as I promised,we’ve managed to overrun our target episode length. but, but I think some really interesting, insights there. So, it’s normally around. This time in the episode, I’ll offer a shameless plug to our guest. I kind of feel like we might have already done a bit of that, already.
but, if anyone wants to carry on the conversation,how best to get in touch with you.
Isobelle: Yeah, absolutely. And well it’s been a great chat. It’s been a great, I appreciate. I could be at a surface level, so I know there’s a lot of [00:34:00] areas that people might still have questions on. do feel free to reach out. We’d be that on LinkedIn, on, you know, email ever Evergreen websites. we also have a, A MSP valuations tool on our website as well. So you can actually just enter a few very surface level like metrics and details about the business. and we will, it’s a real person, but. Oftentimes me or our colleague who puts that valuation together, it’s not a robot. and we’ll send that to you. Very high level estimates ’cause based on pretty sparse information. But, what’ll give you an, a flavor of what actually your business value could be today? Definitely no strings attached. We’re not gonna be hounding you for the next God knows how many weeks or months after that. But, do believe in contributing and providing value,in general in this industry. And I think. it’s quite helpful to, to get a sense of where things sit today. I would lastly just say like, I think it’s important to have these conversations and get a sense of where things look like in your business today.
Even if it’s a very early, the thought of a sale [00:35:00] exit or one form of exit or another is maybe many moons away. I. Do you firmly believe it’s never too early to start knowing what your options are and having those conversations and leveraging buyers, be that ourselves or anyone else, you know, make the most of the information they have about m and a, about what their deals look like, what deal structures and pitfalls, you know, things can come up and opportunities there are, as well as.
Understanding how they value businesses. I think I’ve touched on quite a few areas about what we care about and what is less important. that there’s a lot to be had in terms of understanding, what’s important, for an investor when they value a business. And then, you know, when you start to then plan out your next year, 2, 3, 5. 10 x number of years growth plan, you can focus on the things that are gonna generate the most value in your business. so if any, you know, if you wanna have a chat and just understand what we are looking for,and, I’m always open. I love those conversations.
Daniel: [00:36:00] And,you’ve almost, given. Us a reverse plug here because, exactly the,the thought process we go through, Adam and I with our clients to start with the end in mind, what you are trying to get to, and then work back from that so that you’ve got a, an intentional plan and yeah.
a hundred percent agree with,this is a huge topic and you’ve gotta educate yourself on it well ahead of time. And,and,in truth, we’ve never had as good a, availability of information. the increase in m and a within the MSP marketplace over the last decade has produced a lot of.
a lot of good quality assets and, for former players and,and cu current and active. so, so yeah,there’s a lot to soak up and, absolutely agree. do soak it up. learn even if it’s not, Even if it’s not right, right now. so, so yeah.
and there we are. We’ve gone even further over time. So, if you’ve hung on to this point in the episode, thank you very much for your company and, Isobelle, thank you very much for joining us and, look forward to seeing you [00:37:00] at an event very soon.
Isobelle: absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. And yeah, see you and everyone listening at the next event on the calendar this year.
Daniel: Super. Thank you.