From champion one day, to therapy the next - the myth of the happy seller

One man's tale of post-deal trauma could be a lesson for many

Jo Sellick looked across the pitch from a private executive box at Manchester City Football Club and he felt content.

It was April of 2019 and he’d just rented the space for the final completion meeting to seal the deal to sell his recruitment business, Sellick Partnership, to the French giant Samsic.

He’d tried to organise a space at Old Trafford, home of his beloved Manchester United, to toast the deal with Thierry Geffroy, president of Samsic Group and Gilles Cavallari, vice-president of Samsic HR, but it was City who once again came up with the goods. 

Football had played a big part in the lengthy courtship between Samsic and Sellick, prior to then inking the deal to buy his £43m turnover recruitment business covering finance, legal, HR, actuarial, procurement, housing and property services.

The Rennes based business has strong links to Rennes Football Club in France’s Ligue 1, and the new team bonded over football, including in a game against Paris St Germain (pictured).

Little did he imagine back then that before his five year earn out period with his suitors had ended, he would end up knocking on the door of the private health clinic The Priory seeking help as his mental health deteriorated. 

The story has a happyish ending. Jo is OK. His relationship with Gilles and Thierry is good. But at the turn of the year he left the group for good and is now contemplating life without the business that bears his name.

It’s a salutary story, and in opening up over tea and biscuits to me, Jo hopes that maybe doing a deal should carry the health warning for entrepreneurs. That as well as engaging their advisers to sell their business, invest their proceeds, they maybe should put some preparation in for the loss that may follow.

Doing the deal

Samsic wasn’t the first buyer to court Sellick. Other suitors were keen on a meeting once Jo had engaged Boxington, a London-based independent M&A advisory house that specialises in human capital and recruitment businesses. 

“I turned down two offers,” he says, “we didn’t want private equity, but we ideally wanted a family owned business that felt Sellick could give them something they didn’t have.” 

Founded in 1986 and based in Rennes, France, Samsic fitted the bill. One of Europe’s largest business service providers they employ 90,000 people in 25 countries, generating a turnover of €2.6bn annually.

They took a majority stake in Sellick and said at the time that they were looking to expand in the wake of the deal.

The idea that a larger than life figure like Jo Sellick would just walk away from a business that has been created in his own image - passionate, driven, and ambitious - was unthinkable. But he didn’t just stick around to see the deal through, he was retained on a five year minimum earn out, and at first, was pretty much left to run the show, but with the confidence of their backing in a “strategic advisory role”.

Jo Sellick said at the time that the deal reflected the “whole team ethos” of his business that Samsic valued. 

“Sellick Partnership opens the door to new sectors and markets for Samsic,” he said, adding that their “strategic investments in businesses like ours” was to be the “springboard for accelerated expansion over time.”

When the deal was signed Sellick Partnership had more than 100 employees in Manchester, Liverpool, Derby, Leeds, Newcastle, Stoke-on-Trent and London.

As well as having his name above the door, and on the chequebook, he still decided who to hire and who to promote.

Edging away and going into therapy

But as time went on Jo started to feel the overall control slipping from him. His relationship with France was always good, but by the spring and summer of 2023 his long term role within the business was getting discussed. What started as them checking in with him, started to unsettle him and, as he reflects now, it could have gone in several directions.

“With your name above the door the ‘unknown’ started to become very challenging and it became a stressful period for me,” he says.

“I walked into the Priory one day and explained my situation.  A week later I sat in front of a lady whose opening question was ‘so why are you here’ which was fair enough.”

All through our conversations he’s been hugely aware of the privileged position he found himself in, but felt that a huge part of his life was slipping away. His sense of purpose felt like it was vaporising before his eyes.

“With a potential ‘crossroads’ of my life having spent 22 years building a business she assured me that what I was experiencing was very, very normal.

“She explained she had met countless entrepreneurs in my position who potentially on a Friday we’re happily employed but then on the Monday didn’t have a role.”

“Her advice was if my role was to change then I should try and visualise how the future might look and feel.  How my day might pan out.  Family.  Kids.  Dog.  Sport.  Hobbies.  Exercise.  Non executive roles.  Charities etc etc – you get the picture.”

All told, he had six sessions and says that they worked brilliantly, they enabled him to clear his mind and face the future. 

“The therapy allowed me to articulate my feelings and to explain everything I was experiencing was normal and should be embraced,” he says.

In January 2024, he formally announced to the staff and then to clients and the public that he was to leave the recruitment business that bears his name 22 years since he set it up.

His colleagues Hannah Cottam and Ray Wareing, who had been working alongside him since the early days, were to take over.

The future

Like I keep saying, he seems Ok. He’s always had an energy to him, and he insists he still enjoys good relations with Gilles and Thierry. They bought him a decent sized bottle of Rose when they last met and he’s still edging towards the last phase of his earn out.

He says he wanted to speak to me about what he’s been through, precisely because of the feedback from his own therapy. This is not uncommon.

It’s all very well financial advisers lining up investment strategies, but the shock of not having a job and the change of circumstances is profound.

Hearing this has given Charlotte Ashton a renewed zeal.

Having worked in a senior corporate advisory position for Grant Thornton, then as an investment executive at Palatine, the Manchester-based, and founded, private equity business, she has formed a view about what she wants her business, Implicit Advisory, to stand for and to provide.

In essence she wants to champion founders of businesses to achieve a successful exit, but on their terms.

She founded  Implicit Advisory in 2021 and provides independent advice, coaching and education, on-demand or via programmes and memberships.

I’ve known her since her Grant Thornton days as she was building her career, but I’ve also got to know her more recently whilst walking in the Peak District in a group we’re both part of called Freshwalks.

The conversations on these walks can be profound and revelatory - they can also be about pork pies and real ale - and a few business owners, and coaches and wealth managers, have started talking more deeply about the psychology of the deal. The mental readiness for the dramatic change.

She supports business with profits ranging from £0.5m to +£5m across a wide range of sectors and uniquely says she combines her skills as an corporate finance accountant, private equity experience, with certified executive coaching qualifications and a Diploma in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Divorce, drink and unhappiness

Along the way she’s had clients who have been through a turbulent journey.

“One sold to a private equity backed trade buyer and feeling so restricted in the role, suppressed from making decisions despite being part of the senior leadership team that they walked away from an earn out that would have added another 25% on to their consideration.

Some of the feedback around Jo Sellick’s eventual exit was that he worked a five year earn out. Opinions differ as to whether that was too long, but she says when it comes to business sale, entrepreneurs tend to assume they have to make a binary decision – to stay in the business and retain full control or to sell and leave.

Is this normal?

I asked Jane Booth, head of the Manchester office at UBS Global Wealth Management, how soon before selling their business should an entrepreneur start thinking about the change to their life it will entail?

“In all honesty, it’s never too early to think about your future after an exit,” she says. “This can inform decisions about recruitment to your board and the business plan more generally.” She says she would typically start to have conversations with entrepreneurs 18 months ahead of an exit.

“That is often when they have engaged corporate finance advisors or been approached by Private Equity and are starting to get an indication of value and the steps that need to be taken to get the business ready for an exit,” she says.

She certainly recognises the circumstances Jo Sellick found himself in.

“In many cases, professional and financial considerations of a sale tend to be the focus for people. However, the personal impact should not be neglected. Exiting a business is a huge change to the entrepreneur’s life. Even for those who may have gradually stepped away from some areas of responsibility, it is a real shift. For those without a plan, life after a sale can feel overwhelming. These people are left with feelings of ‘what next?’ or ‘what is my purpose?’”

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Thank you for subscribing to Rainmakers. 

Here’s now this is going to work going forward.

There will be a longish and lively read piece on Tuesday and Thursday, for subscribers only. 

Typically, one will focus on happenings going on in the advisory and funding market - what it means and where things are going.

The other will look at deals from a market perspective. How much was paid? what the vendor wants, who the management team are, an interview with a CEO on the buy or sell side.

On Friday, free to everyone, we’ll pull out a few of the completed deals from that week and look under the hood a bit more. I might even have an educated guess at some of the prices paid on all of the undisclosed deals we get to hear about.

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