Transcript

Enda Brady: Okay, good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us at this morning’s webinar. My name is Enda Brady, I’m a Certified Financial Planner and one of the owners with my brother Coman of iQ Financial. Today’s webinar is titled, Own Your Journey: An interview with Jane Brady of Brady Insurance, selling, scaling, and taking back control of your business.

We are very happy to welcome Jane today, and firstly, at the start, some housekeeping to make sure we make the most of the next 40 minutes or so. I will pass you over to Maria Devine, our Senior Financial Planning Administrator and Office Manager here at iQ Financial.

Maria Devine: Hello, my job today is to keep things running smoothly, and I’ll also be keeping an eye on any questions you may ask. The way you can get involved is by clicking the Q&A button on your screen, where you can type your questions. We’ll answer them at the end. We want everyone to have their questions answered.

I will put a couple of links in the chat to our iQ Financial website, where you can access our guides for business owners, and where you can book a Learn More Call, or sign up to our monthly newsletter for business owners.

After the webinar, we will send a follow-up email with a recording of this session, the slides, and the links to the guides for business owners, so if you miss anything the first time round, you can catch up later.

Okay, now I’ll hand back to Enda to get started.

Enda Brady: Thanks, Maria. We’re conscious that there are some attendees that may not know about iQ Financial, or Jane and Brady Insurance.

At iQ Financial, what we do is provide a financial planning and investment management service to business owners. We advise business owners over 45 who want to sell, retire, or make work optional in 5 to 10 years. We help owners plan for retirement, exit their business, reduce taxes, provide for their family, and invest wisely. IQF.ie is the best place to learn more about us, and we’ll share more ways to get in touch before the end. We’re celebrating 20 years in business this year.

And we’ve received some fantastic news recently. For the second time running, or the second year running, we are shortlisted for the Financial Advisor of the Year Award at the 2025 Irish Pensions Awards, and we’re delighted with that.

Jane Brady is an experienced insurance broker and company director running Brady Insurance a 65-year-old, award-winning brokerage with 50 employees.

Jane has been innovative in her industry, having spun out an underwriting MGA from her brokerage called Brady Underwriting, that wholesales insurance to brokers across Ireland.

Additionally, Jane founded Insurtech firm Vistre, which facilitates insurance underwriting with customers in UK & Ireland.

Jane is Deputy President-elect of The Insurance Institute of Ireland, former President of the Sligo Insurance Institute, and ex-Chair of MyIBA.

She represents broker interests nationally, promotes new products, and champions professionalism in the Irish market. Married to Colm McGrath, Jane has two children.

Okay, Jane, how are you? Thanks a million for coming on.

Jane Brady: I’m super Enda, thank you for having me. I’m honoured, and just want to say congrats on being shortlisted for the Pension Financial Advisor of the Year. That’s amazing. Well done.

Enda Brady: I didn’t tell you, I didn’t tell you. So, we’ll get into it, see how we go. So, firstly, Jane, you sold a majority stake in 2021, and

bought it back in 2024. Can you walk us through how the original sale came about, why you decided to sell originally, and we might touch on, then, what prompted you to buy the business back.

Jane Brady: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the start of the story was kind of prior to COVID, and I’m sure the attendees will know that insurance brokers, in general, were being acquired all over the place, and there’s a lot of consolidation.

So we’d had numerous approaches, and I was sort of chatting to one particular company at the time, and they wanted to buy the entire business.

But just as COVID hit, the deal was put on, sort of, pause.

And I was like, I guess we had a lot of time of reflection, and I thought maybe I’d reconsider and think about it, so I went and got a business coach, a kind of a mentor, life coach, and I was talking to them about the decision and everything, and it was really great, because I used that COVID time to kind of look inwardly and kind of figure out what the future should look like.

And, really, they were like, whenever you talk about your business, you get so excited, and you light up, and really, why are you selling it? So I then went, you know what, maybe I shouldn’t be doing that. I was just, I guess, excited about the cheque, being honest.

And then I thought, well, actually, I think I should look for somebody to take a stake, so that we could get investment, get some advantages through an acquisition, and that’s when the acquirer, Covery’s European Holders, came into the mix, and they wanted to buy 51%. So that made sense, and it would mean that we were part of a bigger family of MGA insurance wholesalers. I guess, I wanted to get some strength in numbers and be part of a European story.

And it went great, but really, like, the nuts and bolts of the business went the same during that period of being owned by Coverys. Every day, the same team, the same meetings, the same everything, and we were continuing to grow quite well.

Jane Brady: But really, Covery’s strategy changed, and, they had very little input in the day-to-day, but then they decided to change their strategy, and luckily for me, we had a phenomenal lawyer. Shout out to Flynn O’Driscoll, they were our lawyers that helped us with the deal.And we had a carve-out that we could buy back if ever there was a change, so we bought back the company, and the future is bright, that happened last November, and we’re absolutely delighted to have full control again.

Enda Brady: So, Jane, I’m very interested in the mentor you had. Would it be fair to say that the first deal where you were going to sell 100% of the business, because of COVID, or that deal falling through, that was a bit of a blessing in disguise. Would that be fair to say? That triggered you getting the mentor, which might have made you look at what you actually wanted to do instead of potentially chasing a number. Is that fair to say?

Jane Brady: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that that acquirer was looking for was our tech. And they wanted, really, me to change job.

And that was one of the things that really kind of bothered me. They wanted me to run their tech operations, and I was like, well, I just like being a broker, being honest. And, it really, I focused in on what made me tick as a human being and as a person, and also being in my locality in Leitrim. I didn’t want to be getting on airplanes every week, and I was happy to do it the odd time, but it really made me kind of go, actually, what’s the future going to be like, and what do I want for my family and my spare time? You know, so it kind of came down to the selfishness of the human being, really. It was like, do I want this? And I really when I looked at it, I didn’t.

Enda Brady: I know, it’s a powerful thing, Jane, to kind of be forced by accident to revisit what you actually want yourself, and then know the type of deal you want thereafter. You partially said this, but I just wanted to be sure. That meant, then, that you were looking for somebody to buy parts of the business. You always wanted to keep a business to keep that control, so you could have that control over being still able to continue with broking, and not be too corporate, and be able to stay a bit close to the customer. So finding somebody to buy part of you, not all of you, became important in deal number two, is that right?

Jane Brady: Yeah, exactly, and it was really accidental. I mean, I’m sure people will find this interesting, but it was a connection on LinkedIn.

It was, it was a fortuitous meeting. Some guy contacted me, and I thought it was about, like, new capacity for Ireland, and I’m always on the hunt for new opportunities in the Irish market. And we were having this conversation about capacity, and he went, maybe, would you like to be bought? And, like, we had a lot of approaches, but that one resonated with me, and that’s why we went that direction.

Enda Brady: Very good. Brilliant, brilliant. Jane, when people are thinking about planning for a sale, and they’re thinking about valuations, do you have any practical advice, you could give to other business owners looking to maximise value, or how to prepare for valuation conversations?

Jane Brady: I guess so. I think it’s obvious to anyone in business that you have to focus on your fundamentals, and, like, we really we were running a really tight ship, I think. But we did look at our costs, we looked at how our image was, because you want to present the business in the absolute best way possible. And luckily, the fundamentals of Brady Insurance was really good, and we have excellent control of all our expenses, but it was a little bit of a PR exercise also. You want to show your team, and show them off, and what we can do, and the hunger that you have as a business to grow, because anyone that wants to buy you, wants to buy you for the turnover, and the team. And they want to show that that team is there to take the ball and run with it, and pay back their investment in the company. So, I guess we did do a good job on presenting ourselves well.

Also there needs to be, like, a fit with the acquirer. They want to see how you will fit with the organization, what you can add to the equation.

So that was really the main learnings, just looking at your costs and your image, and showing how you can go forward.

Enda Brady: And, in your case, Jane, and it’s not always this case, but in your case, it was a multiple of EBITDA conversation, is that right?

And in terms of going through the process twice, was there anything you learned going through with the first time with due diligence or conversations around EBITDA that helped you the second time you had to do a bit of haggling?

Jane Brady: I guess so, like, the EBITDA figure, like, the first deal we had was really strong, so I knew that we were in attractive position, it gave me the confidence to play hard. Now, the EBITDA numbers have gone down, I think, since those days, but it did give me the confidence to go, yeah, this is what we want.

But you’re always nervous when you’re selling, because you’re like, do they believe this? But in fairness, like, we were, you know the way that you’ve kind of got that self-doubt, but actually, we were one of the best performing acquisitions, as far as I’m concerned. So we were worth every penny of it.

Enda Brady: Yeah, and I think, you mentioned this to me before, Jane, I hope it’s okay to say it, that, you can’t always plan these things. You got so much out of a deal not happening that it really helped you when the deal did happen. Like, you weren’t as focused on the number in deal 2, because you knew what you wanted to do after the deal was completed. So,there was untold learnings from deal number one, even though it didn’t go the way that you wanted, you know?

Jane Brady: Yeah, absolutely.

Enda Brady: Jane, listen, so, you were growing before you were purchased and before you were re-bought. Acquisitions have played a major role in your journey. Are there things you on the other side of this, when you’re buying, are there things you look for when buying a business?

Jane Brady: Yeah, now we’ve been very fortuitous, you know, some things happen organically, and I would say that was the case with the first acquisition we did, which was Loftus Insurance, and then we followed on earlier this year with Mannion Insurance. And they were just, both of those, the right timing and all of the rest. But what I guess we’d look for is the synergy and fit with the businesses,the team, in both of those examples, it was all about the employees and the amazing team that they brought to us. Everyone, I guess, can resonate with the fact that there’s a skills shortage, and it’s hard to get people, so for us, it was really about the people in the business. I guess location comes into it.

The other thing is that the business is not too small. There is a cost, I was saying this to you the other day, there is a big cost to acquiring a company, in particular. A book of business is a little easier, but if you’re acquiring a company, there’s a lot of due diligence, so the turnover has to be adequate to cover the cost of buying it. And there is a lot of accountancy fees, and we have our own internal accountant that does a lot of the work and the due diligence, but it’s an arduous enough process, so the company has to be big enough.

And also the fit with you as the acquirer. Will it work well? Is the principal up for it? They’re ready to, like, stay on for a little while or move on? How does that work? So, really, it’s about that synergy of all of those things.

Enda Brady: Very good. We didn’t talk about this before, Jane, but is there certain levels of turnover that you’ve seen, even across the general insurance industry, that normally points to somebody that’ll probably have sufficient EBITDA or sufficient, you know, resources to be bought. Is there any guide you could give people there in terms of the level of turnover that’s normally a trigger for somebody who might be saleable?

Jane Brady: It’s a hard one to answer, but I, I mean, I guess at the upper ends, towards a million euro. That’s if it’s an entity. And we have worked on the costs, you know, bringing the cost down, but there is a lot of due diligence buying a firm. A book of business can be smaller.

Enda Brady: Just bear with me one sec, Jane. I just wanted to make sure the guys know how to interact, and if they’re thinking about a question they want to ask at the end. Maria just has a quick reminder there for the attendees.

Maria Devine: Yes, so just to let you know that you can click the Q&A button to write your questions down, and we’ll read them out at the end, and to let you know that anything you write in there is not visible to everybody, just the presenters and myself can see them. The comments in the chat are visible for everyone. If you want to talk about any of the topics in more detail, you can also send us a message in the Q&A, and I can set up a meeting for you, or you can click the link in our chat on our website to book a Learn More call. Okay, so I’m going to hand back to Jane and Enda.

Enda Brady: Thanks, Maria. Jane, the next thing I wanted to chat with you about is, you were purchased by a larger corporate, a larger company. What should a business owner know before selling part or all of their company to a larger corporate or larger outside investor?

Jane Brady: Yeah. Well, the first thing is, it’s really exciting. Like, you’re delighted, because it’s the point you’ve been working toward all of your career. So, like, let’s take that as read, that you’re all excited, someone’s going to hand you money, and you’re like, woohoo!

So that’s lovely, but then you have to kind of be realistic about what they’re going to do for you. Now, every deal is different, because you might be staying on and doing an earn-out, or you might be jumping ship and retiring. So, obviously there’s nuances there in how it goes, but for my learning, what I’ve learned is that I had I needed to be realistic about what they would do. I think I maybe had higher expectations than really became reality. Like, so be wary of drinking the corporate Kool-Aid, you know? They want you to think it’s all going to be marvellous, but really, I don’t know whether this is everyone’s experience, but my experience was big corporate doesn’t care about the nitty-gritty. Not the way a business owner does, and not the way if you have a business that’s around a long time, or maybe it’s a family company, you care about everything, every paperclip, every broken tile. Everything in the business you know about, and these corporates they don’t care.

They want your people, your location, they want to put a dot on the map to show that they have this location, and they want your turnover. And the nitty-gritty that you maybe were passionate about, they don’t care about. So I found that a little bit disheartening, I guess? But then I got over it. Like, it’s like, okay, I’m still running the ship, so it’s fine. I know I’m protecting the employees, and I know my team and we almost kept them out of it, you know?

Yeah, they want your location, and the other thing I guess I’d say is have a clarity, I think I touched on it before, clarity about what you want in your future, how much you want to work.How much you want to sit back, how much you want to let them take control.We really maintained control. I guess we had a 49% stake all the way along, but, really, it didn’t make much difference to our employees or to our customers, more importantly. So, I guess just think about what the future will look like for you as a human being and for your team.

Enda Brady: I think you mentioned somewhere along the line, Jane, about the fact that the grass mightn’t always be greener on the side in that, corporate services around compliance, or extra strategy help to go after new deals, or that’s not necessarily, that doesn’t happen, you know, automatically when you’re bought by a larger provider. You have to be aware of that, and maybe look for those terms in advance if it’s something that’s really important to you in a purchase. That kind of corporate support is not there automatically. Is that is that fair to say?

Jane Brady: Well, I guess that was part of our experience. We had we collectively, with Coverys, like, we collectively had ideas that we wanted to do, and we worked on them, and then the corporate strategy went in a different direction. So, you know, it is what it is, but I guess for other types of businesses selling, you know, let’s say you’re a supermarket or something, it mightn’t matter as much, you know? But for us, yeah, like, you could be promised a lot of stuff, and maybe it always easy to execute.

Enda Brady: I’m with you, I’m with you. Okay, Jane, looking to the future a little bit. Can you just tell us a little bit about services or products that you might specialise in, or what areas you’re hoping to develop for the future?

Jane Brady: Yeah. Well, just to say, Brady Insurance is, we have a team of 51 people, so we do every kind of insurance, from personal insurances, high net worth insurance, into all kinds of business insurance. So, like, there isn’t a product, really, that we don’t do. However, we would be known for events and leisure. We do a lot of movie business. We would be known for professional indemnity. All the SME packages, like offices and shops. And we have a very strong team in motor trade and garages. Yeah, so construction, SME, that kind of stuff would be very good. I think we’re a very compelling business, you know, we stand up to the big boys.

In the future, we’re looking to grow our wholesale lines. We do, a lot of schemes that we design ourselves. We’re currently working on expanding our professional indemnity offering. And we’ve loads of ideas in the bag, but generally speaking, if you’re a customer looking for insurance, we have a solution.

Enda Brady: Jane, just the predominant audience that, that registered for the webinar would be business owners, or have previously been business owners, the SME market, I suppose you could call it. Could you explain just a little bit what the, what the MGA [managing general agent], what the underwriting is, that wholesaling part of the business. So, you’re doing more of the underwriting on behalf of the insurance company, so you can deliver different products faster to the SME market, is that right?

Jane Brady: So the retail side of the business is Brady Insurance, and then the wholesale side is our underwriting wing, Brady Underwriting.

In Brady Underwriting, we’ve become Lloyd’s coverholder, so it’s basically having a license to wholesale. And you either go through Lloyd’s or other insurers. Generally, they’re from the UK market, but not necessarily. So back in 2012 we designed a scheme called Event Insure, which was for events, festivals, all kinds of leisure launches, conferences. So we wholesale that, and through a platform we designed here internally. We sell that out to brokers. So if you’re a broker in Waterford, or in Galway, or in Dundalk, you can log into our system and get insurance for the local book fair or the local festival. So we wholesale a lot, so we would be a market leader in events and leisure.

We also have schemes for personal accident, for, you know, for tradesmen, for sports clubs. We do, professional indemnities. So, we’re able to, deliver specialist products to the brokers that might have a gap in their offering. And we do it in a very online, efficient way. It makes it cheaper, it makes it better for the customer.

We do a significant amount of business in the movie industry also, so productions, we do some Netflix and Disney dramas through that wholesale arm. So, it’s a really exciting part of the business. You know, you can design an offering, see a gap in the market, make a business plan, and get somebody to give you the delegated authority to write it.

Enda Brady: From Carrick and Shannon to Hollywood, Jane.

Jane Brady: Yeah, we did the Wednesday Addams series recently, which is a big name we did this year, so yeah, it’s really under the radar, but it’s something we’re very proud of, yeah.

Enda Brady: Very good, very good. Just the Insure tech, the Vistre, is that running the platform for the wholesaling, or is that doing all the stuff as well?

Jane Brady: In general, yeah, that was the system we designed back in 2012, and has grown and grown and grown, and it grew legs and arms.

So we decided to incorporate it, and now it’s been sold out to other MGAs like ourselves.

Enda Brady: Very good. Yeah. Very good, very good, excellent. Jane, listen, I, Maria is keeping an eye on questions. I hope we have questions, and we’ll come to them in a second, but just, if you wanted to leave the attendees with something to land in their head. If you’d known 10 years ago what you’d known now, is there one thing you would have done differently, or failing that, like, what’s the biggest learning?

Jane Brady: Well, I guess if I start with what I think I did okay, I did okay at networking, and I did a lot of education and self-development. So, I’m happy about those things, and also surrounding myself with people better than me. So, a great team. That was three things I’m really, really delighted we did. We did very well. But what I guess I’d look back and go, I wish I’d taken risks sooner. A little bit sooner. We were risky enough risky enough taking, but I guess I doubted myself a bit. I wish I doubted myself less, and had that I guess, the courage to take moves. And maybe just the work-life balance, you know, it’s hard to do that when you’ve got young kids and everything, but you’re trying to grow a company. But yeah, we’re really delighted with the journey. But yeah, I sort of wish I had more cojones 10 years ago. I only grew them recently.

Enda Brady: Okay. I will remind you of that. Well, now, there is no getting away from that now. So, in fairness to you, three stepping stones to success, you said at the start there, networking, surround yourself with people who are better than you, your team, and education. And maybe when you put the three of them together, it’s easier to have cojones then after that, Jane.

Okay, listen, thanks a million. Maria, what’s the story with questions, or can we, we, can we see what we have there, please?

Maria Devine: Yes, sure, we’ll take a look at all the questions now. We do want to finish on time, but we’re happy to stay online to answer any more questions as needed. Everyone who registered for the webinar this morning will receive a recording and a copy of the slides, so you’ll be able to watch the questions section back if you need to. Okay, now I’m just going to, some of the questions were put in during the time Jane was talking, so you may have touched on some of the answers, but I’ll read them all out so we can reiterate. So the first one is, who was the business coach Jane used, and would she recommend them?

Jane Brady: I have to get her details. I actually don’t want to call it out without her permission, if that’s okay.

Enda Brady: We can come back to that person, Jane, we can link you separately, yeah. Yeah, no problem, we can just make sure we get that person’s details, Maria, and we’ll get back to them after this.

Maria Devine: Yeah, if they want to, they’d sent that anonymously, so if you want to send your details, I’ll get back to you.

Next one, where or how does Jane find businesses that are right for her to purchase?

Jane Brady: Actually, in the main, it’s been about being at events and networking with people. I mean, I would have said there was obvious, for me, almost obvious acquisitions, which were the Loftus and Mannions, and every time I met, Liam Loftus or Jim Mannion, I’d be like, when are you selling me your business? So I was just wearing them down slowly over a period of 10 years.

Maria Devine: Very good. We have another question here. What two main things would Jane suggest business owners should do now if they are thinking of selling in three to five years’ time?

Jane Brady: I guess, get your fundamentals of your business right, get some growth, if you can. If you’re thinking if it’s a 5-year window, you have time, and maybe there’s an initiative or, like, a new business opportunity, like, you want to max up your EBITDA. So, you want to get as much growth into it, and a trajectory of growth, that you can show that.

So I would be just really focusing on the basics. Maybe upgrade your website, just make sure you look good to anyone that’s thinking of buying.

Maria Devine: That’s excellent, thank you. And another question we have, would Jane buy a business that depends heavily on the current owner in a situation where the owner doesn’t want to stay on?

Jane Brady: That’s a hard one. It depends on the price, doesn’t it, really? Because, I was faced with that exact situation, in a recent one.

Not the ones we did do, but yeah, like, where the owner is going to go, and you know that they’re the one that’s been driving it, that’s really tough. I guess it’s whether there’s any support staff that can step up.

Whether it folds in very well, you know, is it close enough to you that the customer won’t feel abandoned? You want to make sure that the customer feels that they’re in safe hands, even without, let’s say it’s Enda, you know, selling to them. Or maybe they have this really tight relationship with Enda, and as soon as Enda’s gone, they’re going to leave. So that’s a hard one. Yeah, you’d really have to look at that carefully, because maybe the principal was the driving force all those years.

Maria Devine: Next one. How important is it to have the right advisors in place to assist you through either the sales process or the acquisition process?

Jane Brady: Oh, this is a great question. Unbelievably important.

We had brilliant advisors. We, in different deals, we’ve, our accountants are RBK accountants in Roscommon, in Athlone, and Galway. God, they’re everywhere. Anyway, they were really great all the way along, but we also have a phenomenal financial director, Brid McTiernan, in-house, so, she was able to cut through a lot. Our lawyers were Flynn and Driscoll, and they carved out a lot of helpful things for us, and saw the wood through the trees for us in many ways. So, your choice of advisor, your solicitor and your accountant are the be-all and end-all. We also use Millview Advisory, which is a firm in Dublin, to help us with some of the planning. And also the last deal, they worked on that for us. Your advisors are really, really key.

Maria Devine: Yes, that’s great, thanks, Jane. I have a question, well, Justin has written a two-part question. Even though you were acquired partially, and now the acquirer, would you still consider being acquired again? And then he also wants to ask, how did you initially value the business?

Jane Brady: Hey, Justin, call me. No, I’m joking. No, I really, we’ve had, actually, some approaches recently, and I’m vehemently not for sale at the moment. We’re just too into it. We’re very excited about business now. Myself and my team, we’re really, really busy and really happy doing what we’re doing. We feel like we have a compelling offering to the market that stands up to the big boys, so at the moment, we’re not for sale. But then every business should always, a friend of mine always says, everyone’s always for sale, but I don’t know. Part two of the question was, how do you value.

Maria Devine: Yeah, initially, how did you value the business?

Jane Brady: Well, the value is whatever someone will give you, but, from my experience, brokers have been selling for, at the low end, smaller ones, from 6 times EBITDA, up to, I’ve heard that some of the big boys got sold for 20x EBITDA, but MGAs and kind of medium to big-sized brokers could get from 10, 12-ish EBITDA. The smaller you are, the lower the multiplier. The bigger you are, the bigger the multiplier. But obviously, some of these deals don’t get published, but anecdotally, I guess it’s 5X up to, 20X. But I’d say that the 20 has come down in recent years.

Maria Devine: Thank you. We have another question. Should we be worried about how consolidation in many industries in Ireland and acquisitions seems to be diluting or eradicating Irish ownership of businesses? Are a lot of businesses going to be sold to outside acquirers, private equity, etc.

Jane Brady: A little bit, I think that’s true. I think we should be a bit worried, because the growth, the multiples that big equity-backed companies that are buying are large brokers in Ireland, they are looking for growth and growth and growth at all costs, so who pays for that? The customer has to, and there isn’t, I don’t believe that there’s that much growth available. You know, like, how much more can there be? That’s why I think it’s really compelling to deal with an independent broker.

Jane Brady: What was the second part of the question again?

Maria Devine: Being sold to outside acquirers, private equity, that’s all part of the same question,

Jane Brady: Yeah, I think I’ve answered that, yeah. It does concern me, where does it end?

Enda Brady: You made the point earlier, Jane, that, you know, if it’s too corporate-dominated and further away from the clients, there’s inevitably some sort of long-term impact, you know, with that. So I think you’ve answered that one well. I think we’ve covered that one, Maria.

Maria Devine: Okay, the next one. Is Jane’s plan to acquire other smaller insurance companies? Could she have done it without the outside investment?

Jane Brady: Yeah, well, I mean, with any acquisition, you can use any cash you have, plus go to the bank and get help. So we have funded our acquisitions through a mix of those things. And yeah, we are looking further, but very carefully, and not, I kind of feel like we’re not going to grow that significantly more. We’re very happy with the team we have, and the management team we have, and the ratio we have in the business, so, like, we are open to it, and we are kind of talking to a couple of things, but I don’t want to have a 100-person company. I don’t think I could cope with the stress of that, so we’re just steady as she goes, is really the story from Brady Insurance.

Maria Devine: Very good. This is a big question, but what other industries are ripe for acquisition in Ireland?

Jane Brady: I don’t know. Enda might answer that. I mean, I guess nursing homes, where there’s loads of cash, I don’t know.

Enda Brady: Any business that has good recurring income and good growth prospects, you know, through the history of time, will inevitably attract interest, so that’s a bit of a general one, that’s a bit of the big one, Maria.

Maria Devine: Yeah. I have question from Chris. I’ve recently moved into a CFO role. We’re a bit off selling, but any advice on when to engage with advisors, like corporate finance, and any recommendations when to engage with advisors?

Enda Brady: I might take that one, Jane, if it’s alright. So, in our experience, it’s really helpful if you engage with advisors. Five years is a good milestone, is a good rule of thumb. Five years before you think you might like to transition out of your business or potentially sell some or all of your business.The 5 years is a good rule of thumb, because, depending on what your team is like, in our experience with the clients that we’ve helped, 5 years is a good lead time to potentially find additional expertise, or to grow existing teams into new roles that might be staying with the business.

We can separately give some recommendations for corporate finance advisors that our clients have used, and we can get back to Chris with that. We’ve co-hosted a webinar earlier this year with one of those corporate advisors, Cantwell Corporate Finance from Athlone, and we use others. They can help giving advice directly to the entity, directly to the unlimited company. Jane, do you want to give other recommendations there or in addition to who you’ve already, mentioned?

Jane Brady: Yeah. Well, I only have experience of the companies I already mentioned, so.

Enda Brady: No, that’s okay, yeah, yeah.

Maria Devine: We’ve already touched on this a bit, but what multiples of EBITDA has Jane come across in valuations?

Jane Brady: I think 6 to 20. It’s a wide, a wide, wide, wide, goalpost.

Maria Devine: Another question, what are the key numbers businesses should work on in terms of their financial performance?

Jane Brady: The EBITDA. Which is the bottom line number. It’s your earnings. Which, your turnover and your costs feed into that, so the EBITDA, I presume most businesses are valued by EBITDA.

Enda Brady: Yeah. That’s the key number to drive the valuation, the EBITDA. Maria, we’ve given that a good airing.

Maria Devine: Okay, another question here. Is the team you’ve assembled just as important in a sale as something like growth, and does their happiness, comfort with the sale impact decision making?

Jane Brady: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, you have to bring people along with you, you know, like, it’s a balancing act, actually, who you  tell that you’re selling. We have a very tight management team, and they were all aware of every sale and acquisition. So you need to get that buy-in. Luckily, we were always on the same page, and, you know, we didn’t have any worries. But I guess it’s more a problem for the acquired business sometimes. You know, that the people that you’re buying in an acquisition, that they’re okay with it, that they’re comfortable with the new ownership. That’s one area that I think can throw up curveballs sometimes.

Maria Devine: Thank you. And, the final question that we’ve got here, what’s the end goal for Jane?

Jane Brady: I don’t know. I mean, what’s the end goal? I actually feel like that, I’m so into business at the moment that I’m really happy out. I can’t believe I’m saying it. I wish I had a bit more work-life balance and wasn’t quite as crackers, but the end goal is, I guess to keep doing what we’re doing. I’m happy coming into work every day, and eventually, I’ll retire and, go off into the sunset with a pina colada at some stage, but at the moment you know, I’m happy out. So, like, I feel like I’ve achieved a lot. I’m very happy that, we sold and got some money off the table, and it helped me and my family. So there’s a great comfort in that, but, right now, I’m just into insurance. God, how boring does that sound for anyone listening? But yeah, we’re really happy as a business, and the end goal is enjoy every day, really.

Enda Brady: Very good. Thanks, Maria. That was the last question, Maria, was it?

Maria Devine: That’s right, yeah.

Enda Brady: All right, folks. Folks, if you want to talk to us about your business, or how you might plan for the future for you and your family, and make the most of your exit. You can visit our website, which is iqf.ie. You can book some time with us directly using the Book a Learn More Call button at the top. And to contact the team at Brady Insurance, you can go to bradyinsurance.ie. Thanks a million for your time today, Jane. It’s really, really appreciated. You were great. You were great, it worked out, you were great.

Some of you may already know, or certainly have guessed, but yes, Jane is our cousin. When we asked ourselves who we could invite to share real experiences that would help business owners thinking about growth, or even buying or selling in the next 5 to 10 years? The answer was right in front of us. Jane, well done on all your success so far. As we like to say in the office, onwards and upwards, and we’re certain that’s exactly where things are headed for you.

Jane Brady: Thank you, Enda, and thank you, Maria, for hosting. Really a pleasure to talk to all your attendees today, and it was a bit of fun, so it was a lovely start to my Wednesday, and I appreciate the offer to come on, so it’s lovely for us.

Enda Brady: Cool, thank you. So, folks, we hope you all found the interview valuable, and welcome any feedback to help us with future events. At the end, we’re going to put up a slide, and we would be grateful if you could leave iQ Financial a review about this particular interview on Trustpilot, using the link and the QR code that we will leave up for a minute or two now in one second. This is the third of four in our webinar series for business owners in 2025, so look out for the next webinar, which we’ll be communicating in the coming weeks. Thanks a million for your time this morning, and goodbye.