Knowing what kind of seller you are turns out to be one of the most important things you can figure out before you ever take a meeting with a potential acquirer. There are three: the transactional seller who wants the money and the door, the transitional seller who wants to land the plane, and the transformational seller who sells to go bigger.
Cameron Passmore built one of the largest independent wealth management firms in Canada, roughly 3,000 families and about $8 billion under management, and owned half of it. Most founders in that seat cash out and leave. Cameron sold to OneDigital at 60 and has no intention of going anywhere. He rolled 40% of the deal into equity, and now uses OneDigital’s capital, deal expertise, and acquisition currency to buy other firms. He has acquired five and roughly doubled the business in under two years. In this episode he explains why he sold to build rather than to leave, and how you discover how to:
- Tell which of the three sellers you actually are before you take a meeting with a potential acquirer
- Read a buyer’s real intentions from the structure of their offer, not its size
- Sell a quarter of your company to your own employees and make it worth more in the process
- Use vendor financing through payroll so junior people can buy in without a bank
- Spot the difference between a buyer who wants to invest in you and one who wants to absorb you
- Take two years to reach an LOI on purpose, hunting for the reason to walk away
- Turn an acquirer’s balance sheet and expertise into a growth engine instead of an exit
We sold to build, we didn’t build to sell.
— Cameron Passmore
