Who I am
Tony Pope
Business Sales Specialist
I am a licensed business broker, working out of the Woolloongabba office in Brisbane. My licence is issued by the Queensland Office of Fair Trading, number 4963575, and I am a member of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers.
You built it. I will get it sold. That is the short version, and the rest of this page is how.
What that means practically is that I can provide you with a market appraisal of what your business would realistically sell for, market it confidentially to qualified buyers, and manage a sale process from first conversation through to settlement. What it does not mean is that I am a valuer or an accountant. A formal valuation for legal, tax or family law purposes is a separate exercise carried out by a registered valuer or qualified accountant.
Where the experience comes from
I spent more than twenty years working alongside the industries I now help owners exit, rather than reading about them from a broker's desk.
Senior roles in industrial auction and remarketing, dealing with heavy plant, earthmoving equipment, trucks and transport fleets. I watched thousands of units cross the ramp, which is where you learn the difference between what a depreciation schedule says a machine is worth and what the market will actually pay for it. That is not a small distinction when a fleet represents most of the value in a sale.
General Manager of a national e-commerce window furnishings retailer, running a business built on custom manufacture, measure and install. That is where I learned that revenue in that sector is limited by installation capacity rather than sales capacity, and why builder concentration is the question that decides what those businesses are worth.
Co-founder of a bricks and mortar and online toy retail business that I built to several million dollars a year in revenue and later sold. So when I ask an e-commerce owner about their customer acquisition cost trend or whether their supplier agreements survive a change of ownership, those are questions I have had to answer myself from the other side of the table.
The sectors I know best
E-commerce and retail. Transport and logistics. Earthmoving, plant and civil. Construction and building trades. Mining services and supply. Window furnishings, shutters, curtains and interiors. Toy, gift and hobby retail, both wholesale and retail, online and bricks and mortar. Turf farming and growing. Workplace health and safety consultancy, training and RTO businesses.
These are the industries where I have direct operating background, which means I can talk to a buyer in their own language from the first meeting and I know what they will pull apart in due diligence. That is an advantage, not a limit on what I take on.
I sell businesses in every sector. Manufacturing, wholesale and distribution, professional services, hospitality, health and medical, automotive, agriculture, franchises, trades of every kind, anything else you can name. If your business is not on the list above it does not mean I cannot sell it. It means I will ask more questions before I put a number on it, and I will be straight with you about what I know and what I need to learn.
Behind me is a brokerage network with thirty years in business sales, offices across New Zealand, Australia and the USA, and a database of more than three hundred thousand active buyers worldwide. Whatever your industry, the buyers are reachable. Have the conversation and find out where you stand.
How I work
The first conversation is twenty minutes, confidential, and costs nothing. No obligation, no follow up pressure, and nobody finds out you had it.
Most owners who contact me are not selling this year. They are twelve months to three years out and want to know where they stand. That is the most useful time to have the conversation, because there is still time to change the answer. If the appraisal shows your value is being held back by owner dependence or customer concentration, you have a runway to do something about it. If you are closer to sale ready than you thought, you can move while your sector is strong.
If I think the honest answer is that your business is not saleable in its current state, I will tell you that rather than take a listing that will not sell. And if you have already got an agreed buyer at an agreed price, I will tell you that you probably need a good solicitor more than you need me.
What I believe about selling a business
More than twenty years around businesses and the people who own them has left me with a short list of things I have found to be true. They shape how I run a sale.
- The best time to talk to a broker is two years out, not two weeks.Early gives you room to change the answer. Late only gives you time to accept it.
- Confidentiality is not a nice to have.Lose it and you can lose staff, customers and negotiating position in the same week. It is the first thing I protect and the last thing I relax.
- A business that cannot run without the owner is a job, not an asset.Closing that gap is frequently the single biggest number in the whole transaction.
- Clean books beat a good story every time.Buyers pay for evidence. They discount potential, and they discount it hard.
- Deals die from drift, not from disagreement.Most sales that fall over did not blow up. They slowed down, went quiet, and never started again.
- Nobody wins from an overpriced listing.It sits, it goes stale, buyers start asking what is wrong with it, and it eventually sells for less than it was always worth.
- Your accountant and your solicitor are on your team.Bring them in at the start, not the week before contracts. A sale structured without them is a sale that unravels later.
- If I am not the right broker for your business, I will say so.A listing that cannot sell costs me more than it costs you, and I would rather point you at the right person than waste a year of your time.
Confidentiality, in practical terms
This is not a marketing line, it is the mechanics of how a business sale has to work. Your staff, customers, suppliers and competitors do not find out unless you decide to tell them.
The business is marketed without being identifiable. Every enquiry signs a confidentiality agreement and is qualified for financial capacity before receiving anything that identifies you. Sensitive information is released in stages, with the most sensitive released last and only to a committed buyer. In a regional market, or in an industry where good staff get poached weekly, that discipline protects the very thing you are selling.
What sits behind me
You deal with me directly from first conversation through to settlement. No assistant, no call centre, nothing handed off partway. Behind that sits a brokerage network established in 1996 and now Australasia's leading business brokerage, with a stated commitment to managing the sale of businesses to the highest standards of ethics, confidentiality and integrity.
That network is not decoration. A Queensland business marketed only to Queensland buyers is competing in a small pool. The same business presented properly to a national and international buyer database is a different proposition, and it is frequently where the best price comes from.
The systems your sale runs on
Selling a business well is a process problem as much as a judgement one. These are the systems that sit behind the work, and what each one actually does for you.
It works from your normalised earnings against comparable sale evidence from across the network rather than a rule of thumb, which is what makes a market appraisal defensible when a buyer questions the number. This is what sits behind the free appraisal.
Buyer and deal management. Every qualified buyer the network has registered, searchable by sector, budget and location, so when your business comes to market it is matched against buyers already looking rather than waiting for someone to find an advertisement. It also tracks every enquiry, confidentiality agreement and stage of your sale in one place.
It distributes your anonymised listing across the network site and the major business sale portals simultaneously, so the campaign goes live everywhere at once without your business becoming identifiable in the process.
Market reports, industry articles and case studies published by the network. Useful to you as a seller because it is where market conditions in your sector are tracked, and it informs the timing conversation rather than leaving it to opinion.
The network's formal broker training programme, which I have completed in full. It covers appraisal methodology, confidential marketing, buyer qualification, negotiation and due diligence management. It is the reason the process you get is consistent rather than improvised.
How the process runs
Appraisal, positioning, buyer qualification, negotiation, due diligence and settlement. I manage every stage rather than handing you off partway, and I work alongside your accountant and solicitor rather than around them. They know your tax position and your legal exposure better than I do, and a sale structured without them is a sale that unravels later.
Advice based on facts rather than guesswork. I understand how businesses in my sectors are actually appraised, from plant, contracts and work in hand through to licensing, compliance and the quality of online revenue. Nothing is released to any buyer without your approval and a signed confidentiality agreement.
Common questions
Is Tony Pope a licensed business broker?
Yes. Tony Pope holds a Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence, number 4963575, and is a member of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers. He operates from the Woolloongabba office in Brisbane, partnered with LINK Business Brokers Brisbane.
What areas of Queensland does he cover?
The territory runs from Beenleigh in the south to Caboolture in the north, covering Brisbane, Logan, Redlands and Moreton Bay, then west through Ipswich and the Lockyer Valley to Toowoomba and the Darling Downs, and south to the Scenic Rim. All of it is serviced in person. The network has offices across the rest of Queensland, so an enquiry from outside this area can be handled or referred to the right broker.
Which industries does he specialise in?
E-commerce and retail, transport and logistics, earthmoving and civil, construction and building trades, mining services and supply, and window furnishings and interiors. The specialisation comes from more than twenty years working alongside these industries, including senior roles in industrial auction and remarketing and general management of a national e-commerce window furnishings retailer.
What does a market appraisal cost?
Nothing. A confidential market appraisal is free and carries no obligation to list or sell. Many owners get one a year or two ahead of selling simply to know their number and understand what would lift it.
Is the first conversation confidential?
Yes. The first conversation is private and nothing is disclosed to staff, customers, suppliers or competitors. No listing, marketing or approach to any buyer happens without explicit approval from the owner.
How do I know you will not just take any listing?
Because a listing that does not sell costs me more than it costs you. If your business is not saleable in its current state I will tell you, and if you already have an agreed buyer at an agreed price I will tell you that you probably need a good solicitor more than you need a broker. Taking on work that cannot succeed is not a business model.
Do you work alone or is there a team behind you?
You deal with me directly from first conversation through to settlement. No assistant, no call centre, nothing handed off partway. Behind that sits a specialist business sale brokerage with more than thirty years in the market, offices across New Zealand, Australia and the USA, and a database of more than three hundred thousand active buyers.
What if my business is in an industry you have not worked in?
I sell it using the same process and the same buyer network. The fundamentals that determine value are identical in every business: normalised earnings, owner dependence, customer concentration, recurring revenue, transferable systems and clean records. Where I do not have direct industry experience I say so, and I do the work to understand your business properly before it goes near a buyer.
Why should I talk to you rather than a bigger name?
Because you get the person who has actually run businesses in several of the sectors I sell, rather than whoever is available. More than twenty years across industrial auction and remarketing, general management of a national e-commerce window furnishings retailer, and co-founding and later selling a multi million dollar retail and online operation. When you describe your business I am not learning it for the first time at your expense.
Why is there a rhino on the Tony Pope website?
The rhino is my mark and it reflects how I work. Rhinos have poor eyesight and exceptional hearing, which is most of this job, because the value in a business is rarely the part you can see from the street. They have thick skin, they do not reverse, and a group of them is called a crash. Nobody sells a business on their own.