Cooper — Business Buyer
I’ve always liked building things.
My dad built our family home. I was two and a half, following him around the site, trying to help with whatever I could reach. That’s where it started.
By primary school I was spending whole weekends in the garage making skateboards with his power tools. I’d take the new board and bomb the local hill to feel how the design handled speed, turns, and the occasional oncoming car. I’d sell a few to friends to keep enough float for materials, then roll back into the garage and start on the next one.
Not much has changed. I’m looking to buy an established Australian business. Get inside it, understand how it works, and keep building.
Start a conversation
The Mission
My mission: buy and operate a strong Aussie business.
Not to flip it, and not to grow it hard for a few years and sell it on. To step inside it, learn how it really works from the people who built it, and keep it thriving for the long run.
Acquisition Criteria
What I’m Looking For
- Where
- Sydney (Northern Beaches or North Shore preferred) or Newcastle and surrounding areas.
- What
- I’m not locked to any one industry — I’ll assess based on the quality of the business. That said, trade services businesses fit my experience.
Financial & operational profile
Not all of these are essential — but the more boxes checked, the better the fit.
What I’m looking for
- 15+ years of trading history
- Strong track record: loyal customers, tenured staff, steady profit and growth
- Low customer concentration (ideally no single customer over ~15% of revenue)
- Durable, needs-based demand
- Recurring or repeat / contract-based revenue
- $750k–$3m EBITDA, or thereabouts
What I’m not looking for
- Retail or hospitality businesses
- Asset-heavy or capital-intensive businesses (trucking fleets, heavy plant hire, owned-vehicle transport and logistics)
- Truly discretionary-spend businesses (dining, entertainment, non-essential leisure)
- Businesses with rapid recent growth — I want a stable base to learn from, not one still finding its shape
About Me
About Me
I’ve always been drawn to things where good outcomes have to be earned.
For most of my life I pushed hard in competitive sport: swimming, surf life saving, and distance running at university in the US. What I loved wasn’t winning for its own sake, it was working toward a long-term goal and putting myself to the test to get there.
These days, that same drive lives in business. It’s shaped every chapter of my career since, each one teaching me a different piece of what it actually takes to run a business.
Engineering spurred my curiosity to understand how things work, design technical solutions, and see the real-world impact of what you’ve built.
Construction management is where I cut my teeth on execution, coordinating trades, solving problems on the fly, making sure nothing falls through the cracks.
Sales taught me that it’s not about talking, it’s about understanding. Asking the right questions to uncover not just problems, but what’s actually important to people. Engineers have a reputation for technical depth and weak people skills; sales has been my counterbalance to that.
Buying and running a business draws on all three — technical rigor, operational execution, and people skills — and I know there’s an enormous amount still to learn. That’s not a deterrent. It’s the challenge I’m looking for.
For Business Owners
Why Sell to Me?
A lot of buyers in this market are optimising for returns, not stewardship.
They want your business to run itself so they never have to operate it. Whether the plan is to run it as a cash machine for a strong annual return, or grow it hard for a few years and sell it on to private equity, your business ends up as a vehicle for someone else’s exit.
That’s not me. I want to buy your business and be with it for the long term — not flip it, not grow it hard for a sale. I’m ready to step in as an operator myself and want to keep the name, build relationships with your team, look after your customers, and continue the legacy you’ve created.
You’d be giving me a chance to jump off the corporate ladder, get my hands dirty, and tackle a new challenge that I know will test me, but that I believe I’m up for.
I’m flexible on deal structure and transition timing. Whether you’re thinking about moving on tomorrow or in a couple of years, I’d love to start the conversation now.
Start the conversationApproach
How I Work
I’m ready to step in as the operator.
Early on, I’ll be a sponge, learning about the business from the experts — you, the team, and the customers. No major changes in the first few months.
As I get to know the business, I will look for opportunities using two approaches I trust:
Alan Miltz’s Cash Flow Story — to help the team understand the numbers behind the business.
Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints — to find and ease the biggest challenges faced by the business.
I make decisions with a balance of inputs: the team’s knowledge and feedback, the numbers, and my own judgment from experience. Tenured staff often understand the day-to-day of the business better than I will starting out, and I want that input feeding into how I run things, not overriding it.
Transition, on your terms
I’m flexible on transition. Whether that’s working alongside you for a period before you step back, a handover where you stay on part-time or as a consultant, or a clean break on day one, I’ll work with whatever suits you.
How it’s financed
I’m financing this through a mix of my own hard earned savings, bank debt, and investor capital, and I will pursue an earn out as part of the structure.
Get in touchContact
Get in touch
Whether you own a business, know someone who does, or just want to ask a question — I’d love to hear from you.