BizMark

08/09/2026

Real questions from Irish owners and buyers about selling up, buying in, and everything in between.

No names, no fluff - just straight answers.

First edition of Ask Bizmark is live → https://bizmark.ie/blog/ask-bizmark-aug-26/

Got a question of your own?

Ten real questions Irish owners and buyers are asking right now — valuation, timing, tax and financing. Straight answers from Bizmark.ie.

25/08/2026

New on Bizmark: a handyman business in Dublin with 700+ customers, plenty of it repeat work.

14 years trading, no advertising spend — it's all word of mouth. The owner only runs it part-time and is heading into retirement, so there's real room for a full-time operator to grow it further.

€98k turnover. Asking €120k.

Good fit if you already run a trades business and want an instant customer base, or you're building out a group of local service businesses.

👉 Full listing: bizmark.ie/business-listings

Thinking about selling your own business in the next few years? Even if you're just curious what it's worth, get in touch — we're always looking for good businesses to bring to serious buyers.

30/07/2026

New listing: a gelato and dessert café in the middle of Galway city.

Ten years trading in Eyre Square Shopping Centre — one of the highest-footfall retail spots in the west of Ireland. The owners are relocating abroad, so this is a genuine sale with a real deadline.

→ c. €200k annual turnover, 72–75% gross margin
→ Owner's earnings c. €35k–€40k before a wage
→ €74k of equipment at original cost — fully fitted, walk in and trade
→ 8+ year assignable lease, break at year three
→ Brand, recipes, supplier relationships and social accounts all transfer
→ Open-ended handover and training from the owners

And before anyone asks about winter: December is the second-busiest month of the year. Two years of monthly records back that up.

Ref 2606. Asking €49,500. Stock at cost on handover.

Full particulars and the data room: bizmark.ie/business-listings

20/07/2026

Opening 5 buyer places for Q3.

If you're funded and serious about buying an Irish business, I'll do the finding, valuing and negotiating for you — start to keys.

Details in the comments.

17/07/2026

Ireland is great at helping people start a business. It's terrible at helping them buy one.

I wrote up why — and what a fix could look like. First edition of The Irish Exit is live, link in comments.

What am I missing?

The Silver Tsunami is coming — and financing the sale, not finding the buyer, is the real bottleneck. Employee-ownership reform gives retiring founders another succession option.

02/07/2026

The owners who sell for the most don't do anything dramatic in the last six months.

They do the unglamorous work 12–36 months out.

A few examples of what that actually looks like:

**Clean up the books.**
Buyers look at 3 years of accounts. If year one is messy and years two and three are clean, they'll price in the risk. If all three are consistent, audited and clearly presented — they won't.

**Reduce owner dependency.**
If you can't take a two-week holiday without the business struggling, a buyer will see that. Documenting your role, delegating key relationships and building a management layer takes time — but it moves the multiple.

**Deal with customer concentration.**
If one customer is 35% of revenue, spend the next 18 months actively diversifying. This isn't just about value — it's about getting the deal to close.

**Sort out any loose legal or contractual issues.**
Leases, supplier agreements, IP ownership — buyers' solicitors will find all of it in due diligence. Better to know what's there before they do.

The full preparation framework is in *The Irish Exit*. Free at bizmark.ie/irish-exit-ebook. Link in comments.

Free Ebook — Bizmark.ie

29/06/2026

I literally have hundreds of buyers actively looking for Irish businesses - of all types.

The appetite in the market is unreal.

If you, or anyone you know is thinking of retiring, selling their side-project or want to move onto a new project, check out www.bizmark.ie.

Free tools, valuations and more.

Dm me for confidential enquiries

26/06/2026

Finding the right buyer is hard.

The worst thing you can do when selling your business is take the first offer.

The second worst thing is going to market without knowing who your buyer actually is.

There are broadly four types of buyer in the Irish SME market: trade buyers (competitors or adjacent businesses), financial buyers (private equity or investment firms), owner-managed buyers (someone who wants to run a business), and management buyouts (your own team).

Each type values your business differently. Each has different motivations, different timelines, different expectations for your involvement post-sale.

A trade buyer might pay a premium because they want to eliminate a competitor or acquire your customer base. A financial buyer wants clean, recurring earnings and a clear growth story. An owner-manager buyer needs to be able to run it from day one.

Knowing which buyer type suits your business — and finding them discreetly, without tipping off your staff or customers — is most of what a managed sale process actually involves.

Chapter 5 of *The Irish Exit* covers buyer types, how to approach them, and why the highest bid isn't always the best outcome.

Free at bizmark.ie/irish-exit-ebook — link in comments, or DM me.

Free Ebook — Bizmark.ie

24/06/2026

If you're an Irish business owner planning to sell, there are three letters you need to know: CGT.

Capital Gains Tax. Currently 33% on the gain from your sale.

But here's what a lot of owners — and some advisors — don't fully plan around:

**Retirement Relief** can reduce that liability to zero for qualifying business owners over 55 selling to a child, and significantly reduce it for sales to third parties. The rules changed in 2024 and the new structure has lifetime limits and age-based caps that you need to plan around *before* you sell — not after.

**Revised Entrepreneur Relief** gives qualifying sellers a reduced CGT rate of 10% on gains up to €1m. The conditions are specific, but if you qualify, the difference between 33% and 10% on a €1m gain is €230,000.

These aren't loopholes. They're reliefs the government created specifically to reward business owners who built something. But they require planning.

A tax advisor will charge you thousands to map this out. The chapter I wrote on it in *The Irish Exit* is free at bizmark.ie/irish-exit-ebook.

Link in the comments. And if you know an accountant who works with SME owners — they might find it useful too.

*(Not tax advice — always work with a qualified advisor on your specific situation.)*

Free Ebook — Bizmark.ie

22/06/2026

There's a difference between a business that's *valuable* and a business that's *sellable*.

A lot of owners conflate them. They assume that because the business makes good money, someone will want to buy it. That's not always true.

Buyers look for things beyond profit. Things like:

Can this business run without the owner? If the answer is no — if you are the business — that's a major red flag. It's also the single most common reason Irish SMEs sell for less than they should, or don't sell at all.

Other factors buyers weigh up: customer concentration (if 40% of your revenue comes from one client, that's a risk premium), recurring vs. one-off revenue, documented systems, key-person dependency in the team.

None of these are hard to fix. But you can't fix them in the last three months before you go to market.

The first chapter of *The Irish Exit* walks through the six things buyers actually look for — including a self-assessment scorecard. Free at bizmark.ie/irish-exit-ebook. Link in comments, or DM me if you'd prefer I send it directly.

Free Ebook — Bizmark.ie