You’ve controlled your numbers. You’ve controlled your growth. Now it’s time to control your wealth.
Most business owners are running their business. Very few are in control of it.
Obsessed Acquisitions is where the wealth your business has built starts buying other businesses – properly, and with people doing this themselves.
Free · 45 minutes
10,000+
BBC · Channel 5
250+
Metro Bank
Active Acquirers
Accounting
Control your numbers
Advisory
Control your growth
Acquisitions
Control your wealth
Two routes into controlling your wealth.
The Academy is for learning to acquire businesses properly. The 1:1 is for when you’re in a live deal and need Ben’s input on the call you’re about to make. Both run by active acquirers, in the market themselves.
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A 12-month programme covering the full process of acquiring a business. Run by Ben and the Advisory team – people who acquire businesses themselves and are doing so right now.
You’ll learn how to find the right businesses to look at, how to run the first call with a seller, how to value a business properly – and there are specific, different ways of doing this that work for different situations, all of which we cover. You’ll learn how to structure and finance the deal in ways most buyers don’t know are possible. You’ll learn how to negotiate, how to get to a signed agreement, and how to get through the rest of the process – due diligence, contracts, completion – at the speed it should actually move at.
When you reach a live deal, the Obsessed Accounting team is available alongside you for the financial work. You stay in the driving seat. We’re in the room.
By application
01
By application
A 12-month programme covering the full process of acquiring a business. Run by Ben and the Advisory team – people who acquire businesses themselves and are doing so right now.
You’ll learn how to find the right businesses to look at, how to run the first call with a seller, how to value a business properly – and there are specific, different ways of doing this that work for different situations, all of which we cover. You’ll learn how to structure and finance the deal in ways most buyers don’t know are possible. You’ll learn how to negotiate, how to get to a signed agreement, and how to get through the rest of the process – due diligence, contracts, completion – at the speed it should actually move at.
When you reach a live deal, the Obsessed Accounting team is available alongside you for the financial work. You stay in the driving seat. We’re in the room.
02
For acquirers who want Ben in their corner from the start. Working alongside you through the process – in real time, on the deal you’re actually doing.
Helping you structure the deal. Helping you get into the right conversations with the right sellers. Working through the negotiation with you – including the creative ways through that come from doing this for a living. Sitting alongside you on calls and decisions as they happen, not after.
Ben acquires businesses himself, and he’s doing it now. When you work with him 1:1, you’re working with someone in the same work – bringing what he’s learning on his own deals into yours.
02
Invitation only
For acquirers who want Ben in their corner from the start. Working alongside you through the process – in real time, on the deal you’re actually doing.
Helping you structure the deal. Helping you get into the right conversations with the right sellers. Working through the negotiation with you – including the creative ways through that come from doing this for a living. Sitting alongside you on calls and decisions as they happen, not after.
Ben acquires businesses himself, and he’s doing it now. When you work with him 1:1, you’re working with someone in the same work – bringing what he’s learning on his own deals into yours.
Sourcing to completion. Five areas of work; in plain language.
A 12-month programme covering the full lifecycle of acquiring a business properly. Below is what’s actually in it – the five areas you work through, and the level of detail each one goes to.
01
Sourcing & First Conversations
Building a target list and getting in front of business owners directly – the outreach methods that actually generate calls (including the letter format that still outperforms email for owner-operator businesses). The discovery call structure. The twelve questions you ask on every first call – and what each answer is really telling you. How to read seller motivation in real time, why “I’m not desperate” usually means the opposite, and how to end a call so the seller sells you on the deal rather than the other way round. By the end of this stage you have a working pipeline, you can spot a real seller from a tyre-kicker on the first call, and you know which businesses are worth a second meeting.
02
Valuing the Business
The fourteen factors that actually drive what a business is worth – clients, contracts, dependence on owner, recurring revenue, sector, competition, and the others. The five valuation methods you’ll use depending on the deal: net book value, entry valuation, comparable analysis, discounted cash flow, and price-to-earnings multiples. Why EBITDA is the wrong yardstick for businesses under a certain size and what to use instead. Add-backs – both non-recurring (legal fees, redundancy, relocation) and discretionary (normalised manager salary, commercial rent, mates’ rates, family on payroll) – and how each one moves the real number. By the end of this stage you can value a business on the spot, see through inflated EBITDA, and walk into a price conversation with a number you can defend.
03
Financing the Deal
The five financing routes most first-time acquirers don’t know exist: asset finance against the target’s plant, machinery and vehicles; invoice discounting against B2B debtors (typically 80–90%); cashflow financing against future contracted revenue; company loans drawn at completion; and vendor financing where the seller carries the deferred element. How to combine them so the cash you put in personally is far smaller than the headline deal size. How to structure a deal you can actually finance when the seller’s price is too high – by adjusting terms, deferred payments, and earn-outs rather than chipping the headline. By the end of this stage you can take a deal you’ve been offered and tell, on the spot, whether it can be financed, how, and what the structure should look like.
04
Negotiation & Heads of Terms.
The negotiation playbook in detail. Why the seller must always name price first and the four ways to make that happen when they won’t. The flinch – what it is and why it works. How to lower price expectations without killing the deal. The four legally binding parts of a HOTs document – jurisdiction, fees, confidentiality, exclusivity – and the five special conditions that protect you (no personal guarantees, no material change, family members out before completion, financials stapled to the deal, and the others). How to get to signed HOTs at the first meeting before the seller takes them to a solicitor. By the end of this stage you can walk into a price conversation knowing exactly what you’ll do at every fork – and walk out with signed exclusivity that takes other buyers off the table.
05
Due Diligence to Completion.
Asset purchase versus share purchase – what each means for risk, timeline, and price (six weeks versus twelve, typically). The three streams of due diligence: financial run by your accountant, legal by your lawyer, commercial in-house. How to manage lawyers properly – fixed fees over hourly rates, daily prodding, when to switch firms, and the three-firm panel approach that keeps the seller’s lawyer accountable. Property and lease handling across the three scenarios (leased from a third party, owned in the trading company, owned personally by the seller). Why you never sign an Authorised Guarantee Agreement and never give a personal guarantee. The Sale & Purchase Agreement structure – warranties, indemnities, non-compete, price and terms, completion accounts. How to renegotiate off the back of DD findings without losing the deal. Distressed business situations – pre-pack acquisitions through insolvency practitioners and the rules for buying assets without inheriting liabilities. By the end of this stage you can take a signed HOTs through to completion without burning the deal in the legal process.
Got money to invest in acquisitions – but no interest in running them yourself?
Some people want to acquire businesses themselves – operate them, grow them, build a portfolio they actually run. Others have money to invest, but no interest in running another business.
Obsessed Investors is the route for the second kind. Same group, same active acquirers, different relationship to what we buy. You back the work, we run the deals. How that’s structured gets discussed properly on the Investors side, not here.
Three routes in. Same programme.
The Acquisitions Academy works for three different starting points. The right one for you depends on where you are right now – and what you’re actually trying to do.
You’ve worked through your numbers and your growth. Acquisitions is the next gear – buying other businesses in your sector and applying what you already know to more of them.
You’re running a real business, doing real numbers, and the current accountancy setup is friction. Books late. Compliance reactive. The phone goes unanswered. You want one team handling it all – books, VAT, tax, HMRC – and a proper conversation about your numbers, not a brown envelope twice a year.
You’ve got money ready to invest in acquisitions, but no interest in running the businesses yourself. The Academy isn’t built for you – Obsessed Investors is the route to look at instead.
It all starts with one Advisory Session.
Whichever level fits, every advisory relationship starts the same way – one honest conversation about where your business actually is. We go through your numbers, understand where you are, and work out which of the three options above is right for you.
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Book your free Advisory Session
45 minutes with the Obsessed team. Your numbers, your business, where you want to go.
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We go through everything
What your numbers are actually telling you, where profit is being lost, what’s driving your growth and what’s getting in the way of it.
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We tell you straight
Which advisory level fits where you are, what it involves, and exactly what it’s going to take to get your business where it should be.
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If you’re the right fit, we’ll offer you a space
We don’t take everyone – that’s deliberate. Every space we offer is one we genuinely believe we can deliver on.
Free · 45 minutes
I watched self-proclaimed coaches destroy businesses. So I built something different.
Ben Jacob-Smith
I’ve sat across from people teaching acquisitions courses who’ve never bought a business. Frameworks pulled from books, multiples quoted from podcasts, deal structures they’ve read about but never signed. Charging fifteen grand to teach a process they’ve never run. And on the other side: first-time acquirers with personal guarantees they didn’t understand, completion accounts they didn’t argue, lease assignments they shouldn’t have signed – businesses they overpaid for, because nobody told them how to read what was in front of them.
Obsessed Acquisitions is built the opposite way. An active acquisitions programme – built now, in the market, signing real heads of terms, walking away from real bad deals. ACCA-regulated practice. FCCA principal. Master’s degrees as a minimum across the team. The Academy is taught by the same operators running the deals – not by people selling a product they don’t actually use.
If you’re going to learn how to acquire businesses, learn it from people who are. If you’re going to invest twelve months and serious money in doing this properly, do it with people who know what acquisitions actually involve – because they’re in the middle of one.
Qualified.
Not just experienced. Master’s-qualified team, a PhD researcher, an ACCA-regulated practice.
First-hand.
Not theoretical. Every word tested in real businesses, with real numbers.
Regulated.
Not self-appointed. Governed by the global body for professional accountants.
The world doesn’t need more advice from people who haven’t done what they’re advising on.
Frankie · Wedding and Events Planner
The questions worth asking.
Practical, honest, brief. If your question isn’t here, it’ll get answered properly in the session.
What deal size is realistic on the programme?
The Academy doesn’t fix a deal size. We’ve worked with people pursuing acquisitions from sub-£500k to multi-million. What matters more than headline price is the structure – how it’s financed, what’s deferred, what risk you’re absorbing. We work that out with you for the deals you’re actually looking at, not in the abstract.
Do I need prior acquisition experience?
No. The Academy is built for first-time acquirers as well as people who’ve done deals before. The full process is taught from the start — finding businesses, valuing them, financing, negotiating, completing. What we do need from you is operator experience — you’ve run a business yourself, or you’re seriously close to that level of understanding. The Academy isn’t suited to people with no operational background.
What’s the time commitment?
Roughly half a day a week of structured work, plus whatever time the deals you’re working on demand. The structured side is paced – modules, calls, work between sessions. The deal side scales with what you’re actually doing. People in the middle of an active negotiation spend more time. People in the sourcing phase spend less. There’s no fixed weekly hour count we’d pretend is real.
Is it cohort-based or individual?
Individual. You join when you’re ready, work through the programme at the pace your situation demands, and engage Ben and the Advisory team on your own deals as they come up. You’re not waiting for the next cohort or syncing your work to other people’s timelines. It’s structured but not synchronous.
How does the Obsessed Accounting team integration work?
The Academy is delivered by Ben and the Advisory team. When you reach a live deal – heads of terms agreed, due diligence opening – the Obsessed Accounting team becomes available alongside you for the financial work: deal modelling, due diligence on the target’s accounts, structuring analysis. You stay in the driving seat throughout. This isn’t done-for-you. It’s the financial work being run by qualified people who know what they’re looking at while you negotiate the deal.
What if I’m not the right fit?
We’d rather tell you that on the discovery call than take you onto something that won’t work. There are three honest outcomes from the call: the Academy is the right place for you, you’d be better starting at Advisory first to get the rest of your business in shape, or what you actually want is closer to Investors – backing what we’re acquiring rather than acquiring yourself. We’ll say which one, and why.
This is where it starts.
Everything we’ve described – the structure, the team, the work itself – starts with one honest conversation about where you are and what you’re trying to do.
Free · 45 minutes