For those of us who are Chief of Staff or COO personas rather than visionary inventors, Entrepreneurship through Acquisition (EtA) offers a practical alternative. It allows you to skip ‘zero to one’ and focus on growth.

Buying an existing company in the Australian and NZ market gives you a marketable platform and audience that already has:

• An established customer base: You aren't begging for your first “yes."
• Proven cashflow: You can pay the bills (and yourself) from day one.
• Operational history: A foundation that is much harder to sink than a new, more fragile startup.

As I often say, when you step onto a ship that has already been sailing for years, it’s hard to sink it completely. If you run into trouble, you can usually course-correct or pass it on without losing everything.

What makes a business ‘buyable’?

When assessing acquisitions, I look for essential industrial niches. The criteria that guided SRO's success included:

• Specialised expertise: Direct relationships with blue-chip customers who value technical capability over the lowest price.
• Structural resilience: Industrial or engineering services that are sticky within a broader market.
• The layer beneath: A team (like our senior technicians) that provides continuity beyond the founder and reduces risk.

When the winds change: a lesson in market disruption

Not every deal followed the script. 

In 2015, I acquired a wholesale travel business. While it had strong relationships, we underestimated the speed of digital disruption.

The lessons were sharp. 

You don't need a booming market to succeed, but you must respect structural headwinds. If an industry is facing a fundamental shift, improving operations isn't enough. Moving too far outside your core experience adds unnecessary complexity, so stay close to what you know.

The scaling playbook

The biggest mistake new owners make is trying to reinvent the wheel in the first 90 days. 

My advice is simple: Stabilise and Learn first. Transform later. 

Once the business generates consistent profit and internal capital, you can explore strategic pivots. Until then, focus on two fundamental levers:

• Team dynamics: People are everything and culture is foundational - start here.
• Operational excellence: Do what the business already does, but do it better.
• Customer relationships: Speak to the customer!

At SRO, this approach saw us grow from 5 staff to almost 100, and from one location to six. Over time, I was able to hire a strong leadership team and move into a more forward looking Managing Director role. That is the long-term goal for many acquisition entrepreneurs: a business that runs more independently of you so you can focus on growth.

If you enjoyed this content you can find more in-depth discussions on my podcast HERE or resource hub HERE. (And if you’re interested in learning more about the EtA pathway or the role of an NED in this space, head over to ETA Central to see the work we're doing.)