John Baskott co-founded 1LoD with Paul Hodge in 2017. In 2024, they sold their company – an events and information provider for the financial services sector – at an impressive multiple. Theirs is a journey many media entrepreneurs hope to take. Here, John shares the lessons he learned along the way, when working with Collingwood to scale and then sell his business.
1) First, validate the opportunity
Before we even had a business, we spent months speaking to potential customers to be sure there was a need for our planned event. We had the advantage that Paul was from our target sector and had spotted the opportunity for a new offering, but still we took the time to develop the idea based on real-world feedback.
It sounds obvious, but we meet fellow media entrepreneurs who don’t spend much time at the validation stage. If I started another business, I would do this again because it meant that once we did start investing real time and money in 1LoD, we had removed a lot of the risk of early failure. We knew that people were going to turn up.
2) In events, succeed or fail fast
When you start an events business, it’s quickly pretty clear whether you have a success on your hands. People either attend and like what they experience, or they don’t. If it’s a conference you’re running, your event should cover its costs from year one, and it should be possible to get to market without much upfront investment*.
While we spent time validating our idea, once we went to market we moved quickly so we soon knew whether we had a business that was going somewhere. There is a lot to be said for succeeding or failing fast. If that first event hadn’t quickly succeeded, at least we could have moved on without wasting too much time.
3) If you are willing to hire, that’s a good sign
When we started encouraging people to join our team, it confirmed to us that we were confident in 1LoD’s potential. If you are willing to convince someone – and likely someone that you already know – to leave their secure job and join your growing business then it indicates that you see a future in it.
4) Know what success looks like
We decided very early on that we’d consider ourselves successful if we created a business that we could sell for a specific, life-changing amount of money, and that we wouldn’t sell for less than that figure. The target really focused our minds and made us brave about investing in the business because we knew the size of the prize we were going after was substantial.
In addition, knowing this figure was really useful in that early hiring phase because discussion about options were much more real. If you offer someone, say, 3% of a target number rather than 3% of an unknown figure, it’s clearly a more motivating goal. It makes it easier to say, “please give up your safe, high-paying job and join us!”.
5) Get support to plot the journey
Although having a target was really helpful, we needed help to plot the journey to that goal, to break it down into steps, to ensure we did what was needed to get to that financial outcome.
This is where Collingwood came in. We worked with the team from the early days of the business, through the Covid pandemic, and on until our exit. Our Collingwood advisers were vital in ‘holding our feet to the fire’ to ensure we set and delivered on meaningful objectives, and in helping us believe our goal was possible.
Hiring an advisory firm was an inflexion point for us. We never wavered once we started working with Collingwood. We really saw the value in good advice, and that advice paid off for us again and again.
In the most basic terms, Collingwood advised us to grow scaled events and that ultimately was why we were acquired at a great multiple.
6) A new hire isn’t always the right investment
When you are growing your business it is tempting to think that more employees are the best investment you can make. You are often very stretched and really need to delegate. This situation stops people investing in advisers as they compare the cost of an advisory firm to a permanent hire and opt for the latter.
For us, we believed that Collingwood would get us to an exit faster and ensure we got the best valuation. Much as good people are everything, we couldn’t say that of one single hire in isolation, so it was a no-brainer to invest in advisory services. Turns out we were right to make that investment. And Collingwood helped us make the right hires, too.
7) An additional voice is often vital
As co-founders, Paul and I didn’t always agree. At times, our Collingwood advisers were essential in providing a much-needed third opinion. Our decision-making was usually better and faster due to the additional voice in the room.
Some of the most valuable advice we received from Collingwood was around sales strategy. I’m from a sales background but still found that new perspective extremely valuable. The sales processes Collingwood helped us put in place are used by the business to this day.
In addition, we soon realised once we started getting interest from buyers that they weren’t always totally on our side. They of course protect their own interests first, and that is understandable. But with Collingwood, we knew the team was always in our corner and benefitted hugely from their management of buyer conversations.
When selling 1LoD, it really made a difference that we had been working with Collingwood since long before we tried to exit. If we had gone through the sale process with people that didn’t know us, I think it would have become completely unstuck. Too much time would have been spent getting new sale partners up to speed. Or worse, incorrect assumptions about what we wanted might have been made.
Ultimately, the deal we achieved exceeded our highest expectations, in terms of valuation and structure.
8) Hire from your customer base
Other voices that added particular value to 1LoD were the hires we made from within our customer base. These subject matter experts kept us aligned with customer needs and became a real differentiator for us. In complex, highly technical markets like ours, ensuring you have the voice of your customer in the business at all times is not just valuable but necessary.
9) Remove founder dependency
As we approached our exit, I took 4-5 weeks out of the business to work on our three-year business plan (which you need if you are serious about attracting a buyer). This was only possible as we had created an excellent senior management team (SMT) who got to the point of being able to run the business with minimal involvement from Paul and I.
We knew that if the business was dependent on us, that would be off-putting to buyers, so we really prioritised forming and developing the SMT. This investment really paid off when we entered the sale process. The process is unavoidably stressful, no matter how well-prepared you are, but much less so if you can be confident your business is running well while you dedicate the time needed for a good result.
Explore more
For a five-step guide on embedding governance within your organisation, use the form on the right to download our Governance Is Your Friend report, which includes a case study with 1LoD co-founder, Paul Hodge.
More details on the 1LoD sale to Infopro Digital can be found here.
