The Business Bulletin
Spotllight on…
Spotlight on Christina Robinson Christina Robinson of Green Umbrella Marketing shares some insights into her management buyout of the company and her journey since then.
It’s an interesting journey in terms
intricately, when I was looking at the
you’ll see the value of the business in
of how you became the boss of
figures I was very much ‘I know this
a very different way.
Green Umbrella. It might be quite
is going to happen’ and ‘I know that’s
useful for those that might be an
going to happen’ and ‘I know the
employee in a business or thinking
other’s going to happen’.
about buying a business. You’ve obviously gone through that experience, so what was it like for you? What are some of the top tips you’d give anybody that was looking to maybe buy a business from a previous owner? I’d worked with the previous owner
Your purchasing decision is not made in the same way when you’re buying a business from within. You’ve got to be able to go to someone that doesn’t know the business in the same way you do and present them with the figures because essentially, the only thing you should be going
for a number of years and we’d got
on is what’s happened to date - not
quite a close working relationship,
what you believe is going to happen
so it was very difficult to draw a
in the future.
line between the emotional and the commercial. That’s something you really need to consider if you’re looking to go through a management buyout scenario. A mistake I initially made was that because I knew the business so
32 | Issue 2 – Sales and Marketing
If you were buying any other
At what point on that journey did you realise that you were going to buy the business? I came into the business as a freelancer initially. Within a very short space of time I became a full-time employee, very dedicated to the business and buying it was just not on the cards. I never imagined myself as a business owner. I was having a conversation with the previous owner and she explained that if she were to ever sell , she wanted to sell it internally and asked if that was
business that’s how you’d be
something I would ever be interested
thinking. But, for me, in an MBO
in. At the time I went yeah sure! But
situation you get hooked in.
in my head I was thinking that’s
Depending on which part of the
never going to happen, it’s a long
relationship you are (whether you’re
way off! I was absolutely flattered by
buying or whether you’re selling)
the question.
