Luca Ferrari

So that's phase one.

And then you make an offer.

As I said, we try to make an offer that's sometimes the maximum world to pay or close to it because we think although we could probably get a better deal

In the moment, if we started lower, then we don't want to establish a reputation for people you can push around and get more out of.

We're more like the Warren Buffett model of, I'll give you what I think is actually a very good offer.

And I'm okay if I hear no, but don't think you can get 25% more out of me.

Just asking.

And then you've got to be disciplined when they ask for more than you're willing to pay.

You absolutely need to not have fallen in love with that particular business and say, okay, you know what?

That's not to be.

We'll move on to the next one.

We need to define this because we look at actually thousands of businesses each year.

We don't make an offer to thousands of businesses.

I'd say we probably make an offer to twice as many as we buy.

You know what?

We have never lost a bid before.

There has never been a business we made an offer for and someone else got it.

Those we didn't buy were ultimately the seller just chose not to sell to anybody.

So that tells me our offers are typically super competitive.

It also tells me we're probably not very good at negotiating.