with Julie Wilkinson
The Build and Exit team is thrilled to announce our partnership with Acquisition Masters. Having worked closely with the founders of AM in 2024, Julie is excited to strengthen this collaboration and broaden the scope of support available to acquirers across the UK.
Acquisition Masters is an exclusive community of UK entrepreneurs and business owners committed to growth through strategic acquisitions.
With over 612,000 UK businesses led by baby boomers expected to retire in the next 5–10 years—many without succession plans and eager to safeguard the legacies they’ve built—we provide the tools and support needed to help members acquire competitors, vendors, and bolt-on businesses.
Our approach combines a collaborative community, expert guidance, and a powerful mastermind network to empower business owners to seize these unique opportunities.
The Build and Business Exit podcast will include conversations, stories and real-life examples of day-to-day challenges business owners face, different methods of growth including business acquisitions and mergers, and top tips on how owners can transition from working in their business to working on it, enabling them to maximise their value on business exit. I will also include episodes where I share my own learnings on business management and how Wilkinson Accounting Solutions are planning to continue to grow through business acquisitions.
In this episode Kush Birdi and I discuss where due diligence can impact deals and our personal experiences working with both sellers and buyers throughout the due diligence process. We cover where lawyers and accountants fit into the process and the biggest problems we have seen throughout our time working in the acquisitions space.
You must get used to hearing “No” when trying to raise funds to start a business idea. Knowing that eventually you will hear the yes you need is all the motivation you need to keep going.
That was the belief my guest in this episode had to get his idea off the ground. Robert Riza is the Co-Founder and CEO of RacketPal, a platform built out of a love for racket sports.
He talks about what it took to get funding for the project and how getting the funding was only the start of the challenges he faced. He also gives advice on what you need to generate funding and the information he reports to investors.
In this episode Julie gives the business side of her story, talking about how her business journey started, the advice she has for people looking to become entrepreneurs and the fundamentals that every business owner should have in place when running a business.
Dr. Steve Day interviews Julie Wilkinson, an expert in mergers and acquisitions. Julie shares her background as a chartered management accountant and explains how she started her own company, Wilkinson Accounting Solutions.
Julie Wilkinson brings over twelve years of financial expertise, serving diverse companies from SMEs to large corporations. With a mission to prevent failed acquisitions, she’s dedicated to assisting business owners in achieving sustainable growth, transforming businesses from lifestyles to valuable assets.
The first 72 hours of taking on a new business is always eventful. But a salesperson syphoning leads, and the police called in to stop diggers tearing down buildings at a school must be up there with the hardest first days of any business owner.
This was the reality for my guest in this episode, Adrian Knight. He had a lot of firefighting to perform within his acquisitions that led him to really focus on the back end, something many people don’t do.
Achieving financial freedom is the ambition of many that are building to sell their business. But knowing how to get there is a whole different ball game. Understanding the financial side of how to build and exit a business is key to making this dream a reality. My guest in this episode is Fiona Hudson-Kelly, who has sold businesses for multi-million pound deals. She has experienced selling through venture capitalists and independently.
This is a special episode of The Build & Exit podcast where the tables get turned and Julie is in the hot seat. Julie was interview live on NTV to tell her personal and business story. In this episode Julie gives the personal side of her life story. You’ll find out about her passions from dogs to being out on the open water. She tells all about how the loss of her mother at an early age impacted her life and how her wellness routine has transformed not just how she starts every day but her mindset towards everything.
Distressed business deals can be a quick and high earning way to grow by acquisition. It took Steven Pettigrew 4 days to close a distressed deal and since then has grown a business of 80 people. In this episode Steven gives his insights into how to grow through distressed acquisition deals, managing seller relationships, and the strategies behind industry deals. Steven Pettigrew is an entrepreneur with over 13 year’s experience across multiple industries
