Yesterday I ran an intimate M&A deep dive breakfast with eight professionals who all touch mergers and acquisitions from different angles and what came out of that room was something none of us expected.
I asked one participant, a guy with experience across the entire M&A spectrum as advisor, buyer, and seller, why clients hire him. He gave me the standard polished answer that could have come from any consultant’s website.
But then he kept talking.
Turns out he’d worked with a large mining company where the engineers wanted to blow everything up and the chemists wanted slow steady processes and they were at each other’s throats. He helped break down those internal walls and the company’s EBITDA went from $50 million to $500 million through changes he implemented in less than 90 days.
I nearly fell off my chair. I stopped the conversation and told him that right there is his headline. Not “I advise on operational improvements.” You helped a company 10x its EBITDA in 90 days. That’s a completely different conversation with a completely different type of buyer.
Then another participant who runs a fractional finance practice shared how she got started helping her husband’s friend who was too ashamed to admit he couldn’t read his own financial statements. She helped him past the shame, fixed the cash flow, and turned the business around. Her real superpower isn’t spreadsheets. It’s getting owners past the ego that prevents them from asking the questions that could change everything.
Neither of these stories came out in the first answer. They had to be drawn out with the right questions in a small room where people felt comfortable enough to go beyond the rehearsed pitch.
The most valuable thing about what you do is almost never the first thing you say when someone asks. Your gold is already there. You just need someone to help you find it.
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George Sotiropoulos shares insights from an M&A deep dive breakfast in Dubai where the right questions helped two professionals uncover their true differentiators — one who 10x’d a mining company’s EBITDA in 90 days and a fractional finance specialist who helps owners overcome shame around financial literacy. The article illustrates how the most valuable aspects of a business are often buried underneath generic positioning.