Owners of thousands of Canadian mid size businesses are expected to retire in the next 15 years. The entrepreneurial explosion that has taken place in Canada in the last 30 years has resulted in record numbers of such businesses with revenues over $5,000,000. Many of the owners of these businesses, which were started in the eighties and early nineties, are now in their mid to late fifties are considering transitions.

When these companies were created, the owners were first often creating a job for themselves and then, as a result of their hard work, determination, and business acumen, some of them created a business from which they have generated a significant income stream. Now they want to take the third step, which is to turn their business into an investment.

Most owners have spent the better part of their working lifetime building their business. Through constantly striving to improve and grow their business they have honed their skills in manufacturing their product or delivering their service, providing excellent customer service to those customers that they have chosen to serve on a profitable basis. The mistakes made in one year often contribute to competence and success in future years.

In contrast owners sell their business only once in what is a very emotionally charged event, resulting from a combination of pride in what has been built and a desire to see the continuation of a legacy, a fear over loss of personal identity when the business is sold, and a concern for the financial security of a family and in many cases their employees.

In many businesses that Mosaic looks, at the owner's motivation is just to sell to the highest bidder. In those cases any buyer will do, and Mosaic is probably not that suitable a buyer. However, if the seller's business represents the creative work of a lifetime and forms an integral part of their personality and sense of being, than a transaction with Mosaic allows the continuation of their legacy.

For businesses that meet our criteria, Mosaic can be the perfect steward of your business legacy. Our portfolio consists of well-run businesses in various industries where the management that remains with the business after our purchase has demonstrated a consistent ability to generate strong cash flow from the business. Our role is to support management to continue doing what attracted us to the business in the first place.

Each business runs autonomously; we don't change the name or parachute some new manager in from head office to "add value" or pile on lots of debt. We are buying your business to keep it. We have no one that we have promised an opportunity to run one of our acquisitions that feel they know how to improve your business operations. If we are attracted to your business it is because your management style has proven itself to be better than almost all others in the field. If your management style requires our assistance in the day-to-day operation of the business then we have made a mistake in our acquisition. Mosaic's role consists of involvement with management fundamentally in 3 key areas:

1) capital allocation;
2) senior management compensation structure; and
3)assistance to management with strategic planning.

Some of our acquisitions have resulted in us owing 100% of the business. In other cases we have partnered with the existing owners or management to have majority ownership. When we find a business that we like, we are very flexible with how we structure our involvement. We consider ourselves as stewards of the legacy created by the current owner and management of the business and in many cases the owner wishes to retain an interest in the business so that they can still have some involvement in seeing the continued success of their legacy. Generally, the owners of businesses in which we have an interest have made enough money from their ownership that they are not selling because they need the money, but rather there are health issues, or they have decided that it is time to reap some of the rewards of their hard work and success and take more time off. One of the most common comments that we gets is that they missed their kids growing up because they were working so hard building their business and they don't want to miss their grandchildren growing up.