Jason Andrew

Arbor Group

Arbor Group is a financial services group supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs to accelerate their growth.

We do this through a range of operational, financial and capital solutions.

http://www.arborgroup.co/

The Arbor Group of companies comprise of:

 - Stark Naked Media (starknakednumbers.com)
 - SBO.Financial (sbo.financial)
 - Assurety (assurety.co)
 - Arbor Capital (arborcapital.co)
 - Arbor Permanent Owners (arborpermanentowners.co)

Co-Founder | Director

Arbor Permanent Owners

Arbor Permanent Owners is a holding company that buys exceptional, private businesses, deliberately built for long-term success. Inspired by Berkshire Hathaway, our goal is to be a custodian of Great Australian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and grow them over the long term.

CoFounder and Investor

SBO Financial turns bookkeeping and accounting into sophisticated finance for growth-focussed entrepreneurs.

Accounting looks at the past, operational finance focuses on execution in the future.

SBO is a member of the Arbor Group of companies. 

sbo.financial

CoFounder | Director

Stark Naked Numbers

Whether you're a startup or scale up, traditional accounting is way too confusing. Most CPAs either needlessly dress up your financials or are just focused on preparing you for tax season.
In this groundbreaking book, accountant and entrepreneur Jason Andrew shows you a radical new method of accounting. By stripping your financials down to the bare essentials, you can see your numbers stark naked and identify the facts that really matter. His simple techniques reveal the game-changing insights you need to turn your company into a profitable, cash flow machine.

In Stark Naked Numbers, you'll learn loads of counter-intuitive wisdom, financial truths you can start using immediately to accelerate you light years ahead of the competition. Lessons like:

- Why the profit your CPA reports to you is fake
- Why selling more of your product or service will not make you more profitable
- Why you should fire 80% of your customers

Complete with practical examples, you will gain tactical knowledge about critical questions, such as:

- How do I unlock the cash in my business?
- When can I afford to hire my next employee?
- When can I give myself a raise?

After spending over a decade as a Chartered Accountant at a global firm, author Jason Andrew started his own company, SBO - helping high growth businesses improve their cash flow, profitability and be accountable to their financial goals. With a wry sense of humour, he conveys the practical secrets the world's best CFOs and revered investors know about building a business that lasts.

Purchase a copy:

DTC: starknakednumbers.com
Via Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0648424006

Author

Arbor Capital

Arbor Capital invests patient capital into high-growth technology companies.

https://arborcapital.co/

Assurety

Assurety helps entrepreneurs solve complex, strategic problems.

We do this with a range of mergers and acquisitions and strategic advisory services.

Assurety is a member of the Arbor Group of companies.


www.assurety.co

Crowe Horwath Australia

Crowe Horwath's Corporate Finance division assists clients in a wide range of transaction and consulting assignments, including due diligence, capital markets advisory, business restructuring, valuations and expert reports.

Manager - Corporate Advisory

- Cashflow forecasting and analysis
 - Key Performance Indicator development  - financial and non financial
 - Organisation performance analysis and benchmarking
 - Strategic planning
 - Taxation compliance for small to medium enterprise

Supervisor - Business Advisory

Brisbane Junior Chamber of Commerce

The Brisbane Junior Chamber of Commerce is an NFP organisation focused on providing an environment for young business people, between the ages of 18 and 40 to:

•	improve their business, personal and leadership skills, 
•	create an environment for developing management, entrepreneurial and organisational skills;
•	mix and meet with like-minded people and provide an opportunity to build long term career defining networks.

President

Queensland Treasury Corporation

Projects Queensland is a unit within Queensland Treasury and Trade established to enhance the Queensland Government's infrastructure delivery capability.

Senior Analyst | Secondee at Projects Queensland

Prosperity Advisers Group

Undergraduate accountant
 - Australian Taxation compliance
 - Financial accounting
 - Corporate Secretarial compliance

Accountant

Hey, it's Jason

I’m a chartered accountant and have spent over a decade of my working life as a business and corporate advisor. I help my clients on a range of areas including M&A, financial strategy and performance improvement.  I also know just enough about Australian tax to be dangerous... 

My passion is helping business owners extract value from their numbers and financial data. My personal mission is to improve the financial literacy of entrepreneurs and change the current worldview of the accounting profession. 

My business partner and I are building a holding company of private companies, with the goal to build generational wealth. 

Thanks for listening. 

Now, here's how I might be able to help you:

👉If you're looking for a growth and future focused accountant to help you get on top of your numbers and taxes, check out SBO.Financial

👉If you're looking to buy a business and need help with financial due diligence, check out assurety.co

👉If you're looking to sell your business, please check out https://arborpermanentowners.co/

👉If you're looking to improve your financial literacy in a safe and self-paced learning environment, check out starknakednumbers.com

----

You can also:

 - Connect with me here
 - Sign up to our free newsletter for weekly emails on finance, business and wealth creation: https://sbo.financial/newsletter/
 - Check out my book, Stark Naked Numbers: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0648424006

cheers

If you’re thinking of starting a business for the first time, do it:

a) before having kids
b) when they’re older (14 +)

Anything else is a recipe for unhappiness.

This isn’t a self-limiting belief.
It’s a bandwidth problem.

A young business will demand your full emotional and cognitive attention.  So will raising children.

Trying to give both 100% is how you torch yourself and still do neither justice.

I acquire exceptional SMEs. Follow me to learn more.

Just got off the phone with our banker - he got angry at me.

We just paid off our acquisition debt - 6 years earlier than the bank expected. Not a typo.

Which means that Arbor Permanent Owners has c.$35 million of permanent capital ready to invest into great Australian SMEs.

We move fast and with conviction - 90 days from NBIO to Completion.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Our Criteria
 • Industrial, manufacturing or technical-services businesses
 • $5m–$50m revenue
 • $2m–$10m EBITDA
 • High re-ocurring/repeatable demand
 • Mission-critical products
 • Long customer relationships
 • Strong margin profile
 • Low customer concentration
 • Owner looking for a clean, respectful succession plan

Got a deal that ticks the boxes? Send me a DM or give me a call 0432646634

Arbor Permanent Owners - long-term custodians for Australia’s best SMEs.

Next time someone tells you it's cheaper to make coffee at home - send them this.

Book: The Art of Spending Money

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listen, you can't blame the bloke for selling $50m of his shares in his own company to buy a 3-bed, 1 bathroom family home in North Sydney.

I spent all of today updating the copy in our sales letters - based on the advice of hedge fund Billionaire Bill Ackman.

this Derrimut gym bloke is crying about the collapse of his gym chain.

"cost of living crisis, too much red tape on small businesses"

just need to look at the balance sheet to understand what has actually killed his business.

I've seen some pretty chunky Div7A loans in my time, but crikey me $14m is right up there.

“Cash is not ‘dry powder’ — it is a loaded gun. In a crash, $1 in cash buys $3 of assets. The investor who says ‘cash is trash’ is not sophisticated — he is broke. In March 2009, we bought senior bank debt at 50 cents. The yield was irrelevant. The margin of safety was everything. Cash is not lazy. It is asymmetric warfare.” - Howard Marks

𝗩𝗶𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝘅 𝗕𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗹: 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗩𝗶𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗮

5 years ago - Virgin Australia was in an emergency landing. 

$5bn worth of debt.

Planes were forced to stay grounded because of COVID. 

And the government wasn’t bailing them out. 

Once a cheeky upstart that dared to challenge the world led by Branson’s rock-star swagger — Virgin Australia was staring into the abyss.

Most companies would have quietly folded their wings.

But a nationally critical business like Virgin couldn’t just disappear.

So Bain Capital stepped in to do what Private Equity does best. 

- Cost control
- Restructure the balance sheet
- Remove the lossmaking segments

5 years later, Virgin is back on the ASX trading for ~$2.5bn. Bang. 

All in all, Bain actually did a pretty solid effort here, saving us taxpayer dollars by preventing a government bailout and keeping the airline afloat. 

But are the worst times behind Virgin? I’m not so sure...

Let’s unpack how Bain Capital landed this cash-hemorrhaging machine and took off back onto the ASX.

Link in the comments.

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It was pretty fun contributing to the Financial Times on one of my favourite nostalgic hobbies - Warhammer - and unpacking the incredible business model behind Games Workshop.

A masterclass in community, IP, and pricing power… all wrapped in plastic sprue, overpriced paint and lore.

Turns out all those hours painting Warhammer minis as a kid were preparing me for a career in finance...

link in the comments

When I started my first business over a decade ago I literally had no idea what I was doing. I was a technically trained accountant that had skills to balance books and advise clients, but when it came to growing and building my own business from scratch, I was starting from ground zero.

So when making key decisions, like hiring, when to accept or reject prospective clients, and when to expand or reinvest in growth, I always sought data to support it. 

The problem, like most things in business, is that the data was either incomplete or never there.

In business, we crave certainty:

- We want the spreadsheet to tell us what to do;
- We want advisors to validate our thinking;
- We want data to fill the uncomfortable gap where uncertainty lives.

But the decisions that actually move a company forward – acquisitions, key hires, pricing models, and product development – rarely come with perfect information.

At some point, every leader reaches a moment where:
- the data is incomplete
- the “experts” are biased and only speak from their own experiences
- the numbers lean both ways
- the risks can’t be eliminated
- and the clock is ticking

In these moments, all that’s left is your gut - which is really just a shorthand for "everything you’ve ever experienced in your life".

In the early years I never trusted my gut, primarily because I didn’t have the conviction in myself to make the call. To make the right decision armed with imperfect information. 

You know that unexplainable feeling “that something is a bit off”. It could be when assessing a new hire or a new business opportunity. Well historically, I would accept that maybe I’m wrong because the data and external opinions of others says that I am.

Most decisions are reversible - so making the wrong call isn't a big deal.

But over the years I have made a few significant "wrong" calls - even when my gut was telling me it was way off. 

These calls have cost me several millions of dollars in hard $$ and opportunity cost.

They cost me dearly - but it was a price to pay to help me realise I needed to trust my gut more. 

So what gave me the conviction to trust my gut?

My experience. That’s what’s changed.

With over a decade in the trenches, making decisions, I’ve been able to develop judgment.

Judgment is a muscle - and is one every business leader must develop to be effective.

In my latest article with Smart Company, I talk about how to develop judgement in business leadership.

“We have owned See’s Candy for forty-five years and it has been a wonderful business every single one of those years. But if we had paid three times what we actually paid in 1972, the return would have been mediocre instead of sensational. 

The business itself did not change; the price we paid changed everything. That single example contains the entire investment philosophy of Berkshire: a great business plus a silly price equals a lousy investment.” - Warren Buffett

yo how much does your family spend on groceries every month?

we're a family of 4:

2 adults 
1 year old and a 4 year old
protein heavy diet - good meat from butcher + 4/5 cartons of eggs a week 
includes the odd pre-made meal (Dineamic)

 $2k a month 

add daily coffee and fortnightly takeaway of $700 a month 

total c.$2,700 a month 

is that typical?

You know it's the top when hedge fund managers start giving relationship advice.

We're at the very beginning of dialling up growth mode at East West Engineering. 

Excited to announce the appointment of Domenic Chizzoniti, an industry veteran to capitalise on the growth in the sunshine state of QLD. This is the beginning of a national roll-out of new BDMs across the country.

Very exciting times for this Great Australian business.

East West Engineering is ramping up its national presence under new management, making significant moves to strengthen service, support, and availability for customers across Australia.

As part of this expansion, the company is proud to announce the appointment of Domenic Chizzoniti as its new Business Development Manager in Queensland. Domenic brings over 20 years of hydraulic and mechanical forklift attachment experience from a globally respected manufacturer, offering a wealth of industry knowledge to its customers. He is now the dedicated on-the-ground resource for customers across Queensland, ready to provide expert guidance and help businesses find the right material handling solutions. 

This appointment highlights East West Engineering’s continued growth and commitment to the materials handling and forklift industry. 
To further support national growth, the company is seeking additional business development team members to service customers across all states and territories in Australia. These roles offer the opportunity to join a rapidly expanding, Australian owned business, backed by solid engineering expertise and a strong customer-first approach. Relevant details can be found on Seek https://lnkd.in/gGQpmtvP 

“These appointments provide our clients greater access to our technical expertise, further demonstrating why East West Engineering is Australia’s leading engineered materials handling business.”

excited to share the stage with a couple of legends Stew and Pete to discuss ETA in Australia.

With the upcoming 'silver tsunami' of aging Australian SME business owners reaching retirement. We're seeing a groundswell behind the sector called Entrepreneurship through Acquisition (EtA). 

Entrepreneurs buying private, profitable SMEs off retiring business owners and injecting both energy, technology, and capital into growing them. These businesses are the heartbeat of the Australian economy and many young operators are seeing this as their opportunity to break out.

Join us at our annual Runway conference (27 Nov in Brisbane) to hear from two of the most prominent folks in the EtA community on whether to Buy vs Build a business.

- Pete Seligman - Multiple time acquisition entrepreneur, super investor in multiple searchers and SME acquisitions, and now investor at EtA fund SME Capital.

- Jason Andrew - Holdco operator at Arbor Permanent Owners, having just bought their first operating business and generating long-term enduring value.

Tickets in the comments below.

#entrepreneurship #ETA #acquisitions

SSSS protocol 

Sunday
Swim
Sauna
Smoking meat

strategic typos in all written communication (reports, blog posts, emails etc.) to signal it was written by humans not AI

this is an excellent summary. we're following this playbook religiously at APO.

As ETA entrepreneurs across the U.S., Canada, and Europe increasingly consider committed-capital, multi-acquisition HoldCos, one question keeps surfacing:

Which types of businesses work for this model—and why?
To help answer that, we put together a practical framework that connects this trend to the proven business attributes highlighted in the Stanford Search Fund Study and to the real-world performance of public serial acquirers in Sweden and Constellation Software.

At Endurance Search Partners, we pulled these strands together into one article.

It covers why certain industries and business models are truly HoldCo-compatible, how revenue quality and fragmentation influence long-term outcomes, why pacing matters so much in the early years, and how the “invisible assets” inside a HoldCo—relationships, know-how, judgment, culture—compound just as powerfully as capital.

Our hope is that it gives ETA entrepreneurs a clear, evidence-based blueprint as this model continues gaining momentum.

We’d welcome your reactions and challenges.

#ETA #SearchFunds #EntrepreneurshipThroughAcquisition #HoldCo #LongTermHold #PermanentCapital #SerialAcquirers #PrivateEquity #Entrepreneurs #EnduranceSearchPartners

Why Sweden’s Serial Acquirers and Constellation Software Are Public-Market Proof of What Works As ETA entrepreneurs consider shifting from a single-bu

Open article: Building a Committed-Capital HoldCo: A Blueprint for ETA Entrepreneurs by Richard Augustyn • 7 min read

Building a Committed-Capital HoldCo: A Blueprint for ETA Entrepreneurs

5% FCF yield for the GOAT SaaS compounder?

Looking like a pretty good deal.

Helping small businesses gain traction through brand, model and operations optimization. 

The Bill Kerr

How to build culture by a founder (me) whose company has 90% engagement—80% is considered excellent.  

I will start from the beginning. 

1/ When starting a company, set the foundation. 

Whether you are a solo founder or a team, you should figure out what you stand for and do it on day one. Here is how to do it:

- Google '200 brand values Liza Furze.' This is the most comprehensive list of values on the internet. 
- Spend 10 minutes with music on, working individually to choose every value that you align with. Go fast, trust your gut. You should have 20-30 values.
- Take 20 minutes and compare notes. 
- Put 10 more minutes on the clock and then score each value from 1-10, 10 being the highest. Again, move quickly so it comes from the gut.
- Add your scores, and cull until you find 3-4 (maximum 5) values that you agree on. Easy because the scoring should take care of it. 

2/ Humanize your values.

Empathy, communication, speed, etc. Humans don't connect with words; they connect with stories. So give them mini-stories. 

For us, an example is the value of integrity. So our full value is: 

'Driven by integrity. Build strong relationships with everyone you meet through honesty, integrity, and trust.' 

More life, more meaning. 

3/ Hire people who will live by these words. And hold yourself to account. 

Your first hires—and how you present yourself—will set in motion a chain of events that will form your early culture. 

If you are a dickhead, or you hire dickheads, your culture will erode before it's really even built. 

As long as this all goes well, proceed with the next step...

4/ Reset your values as a team ~2 years or 30 people in.

The same exact process as before, but in a group setting. 

Make it an event. Get a guest speaker, give the team some homework on their favorite value-driven brands. Should last around four hours total, maybe less. 

Throughout the event, make sure to have ample space to let people share why they chose what they chose. It's powerful.

Your values are not what the founders think; they are the sum total of the organization. This exercise, done right, will make people feel like they are now at *their* company. Which they are.

5/ Join every final culture call for as long as you can. 

Pitch for the first 25% of the final interview with candidates. If their eyes don't light up, or if you feel any vibes that don't align with what you stand for, do not hire. 

6/ Start every onboarding week with a 'Brand history' session. 

Tell people the entire history of the company, warts and all. Ups and downs, fun facts. Let them know there is a reason this all exists. 

And then let them know the next pages will be written by them. 

Do this and you have the foundation for a great culture. 

And remember ... culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Bill Kerr

🌎 Helping companies hire global talent at Athyna 📚 201,240 founders, investors, and leaders read my newsletter Open Source CEO

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The reason the left has been losing ground culturally is a natural pushback on the 'boy-that-cried-wolfism.'

Sydney Sweeney does a jeans ad saying she has good jeans.

And all of a sudden, she's a MAGA, white supremacist. 

Perhaps the ad was referring to the fact that she is, actually, just a beautiful woman. 

If you call someone a racist, sexist, misogynist, transphobe, every chance you get, your words lose meaning. 

There are real battles to fight right now.

We need to do better.

My friend Tyler Denk 🐝 and the team at beehiiv showed me what they are cooking for this season's winter release...

It gave me real OpenAI 'oh shit they just killed company x' vibes.

If you are building media as a creator, or leading a comms strategy through your startup, you don't want to miss this.

Register here: https://lnkd.in/gh3tKmCZ

When you close that three cloud engineers for your client in less than two weeks.

Most brands are boring as hell. Some do well, others are strong ... and then there is PostHog.

Brand works very similarly to NPS. 

If your brand is a 1-6, your brand is a negative indicator. 7-8 it is neutral. And if it's a 9-10, people will talk about you. 

PostHog does this better than anyone in tech. 

From their designs (like this movie poster), to their hedgehogs (shoutout Lottie Coxon), to founder memes from 🦔 james hawkins. 

The company is walking pattern interrupt of the best kind. 

We should all be like PostHog.

This week I tried Cor's new Obi 2.0, the most human-like AI onboarding agent on the market, and it was wild. 

It's as if you have a friendly human walking you though every step.

Indistinguishable. It's wild.

With Obi 2.0, we are introducing AI video calls to help you:

1/ Deploy Obi anywhere with just a link
2/ Engage users across key touchpoints throughout their lifecycle
3/ Fully replicate human-led training calls at any scale
4/ Get detailed visual feedback from meeting recordings

Software companies spend about 20 percent of revenue ($300 to $400 billion dollars) on R&D, but roughly 80 percent of software features are rarely or never used. 

This changes today. 

Check out Cor for yourself at the link below. 

www.getcor.ai

POV: When another Fortune 500 comes to you hire their cloud engineers.

OpenAI is coming for your chats. Group messages in ChatGPT are now piloting in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan.

If you sit somewhere in the cultural and political middle, there are only two podcasts you need to listen to in order to be fairly well-informed. 

Centre left Ezra Klein, and moderate right Ross Douthat.

Ezra's recent topics include: 

Fuentes and the Groypers.
Trump's rural power base.
AI apocalypse. 
The new paramilitary force. 
MAHA's strange influence.

Ross, on the other hand: 

Machines are harming us. 
Liberal feminism.
What Palantir sees. 
Theocracy in the U.S. 
Hasan Piker.
Trump v academia.
Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, and more.

As a liberal, I align more with Ezra's views, but man, does Ross find some fascinating guests. 

The New York Times is literally crushing it with these two.

There are leaders, and then there are leaders. 

And then there is LeBron James.

LeBron James has scored at least 10 points in every NBA game he has played for 19 years. 

With one second to go, a tied game, and his streak on the line, LeBron did what he has done since the first game of his career...

He made the right play. 

The most selfless leader in sports.

A thing of beauty.

Ray Kurzweil created this slide in the year 2000. 

How do you think we are tracking?

Ahead, on track, behind?

🌎 Helping companies hire global talent at Athyna 📚 201,240 founders, investors, and leaders read my newsletter Open Source CE

Founders! Let's do a quick market check. How are things going for you so far this year?

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The Battle

Jason Andrew

The Bill Kerr

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