Underpriced — Why Every Pound Left on the Invoice Comes Off the Final Offer

Pricing and Margin Before an Exit: How everyday pricing decisions change what a buyer will pay

Mark Mills OBE has built and sold five businesses, including Cardpoint, and he finds the same money in almost every company he now advises: profit the owner has already earned and quietly handed back through soft pricing and unbilled work. Most owners treat price as a fixed feature of their market and go hunting for growth instead, when the fastest uplift is usually sitting in the invoices they send every month. He works through what a buyer does with that margin, using the 40 step sale process he codified from his own exits to show how a modest lift moves the multiple and not just the monthly figure. He is blunt about the resistance, including the owners who insist their customers will walk and then find that almost none of them do. Listeners leave knowing where to check their own pricing first, and what a corrected margin is worth once offers land.

About Mark Mills

Mark Mills, podcast guest

OBE Business Sale Advisor Helping UK Founders Maximise Exit Value

5 Businesses built & sold£175M Cardpoint exit valuation6,500 Cash machines in Cardpoint network£500M+ Monthly cash dispensed by Cardpoint network

Mark Mills OBE is a business sale advisor who helps UK founders sell their businesses for maximum value.

He got into this work after spotting overlooked value as a child selling broken biscuits at school and then carrying that instinct into founding and exiting companies. The early biscuit story taught him to see what others ignore and to turn small advantages into commercial wins, a thread that runs through his approach to identifying hidden value in mature businesses. Over time that practicality led him from founding companies to deliberately learning from each exit and packaging those lessons into a repeatable system.

He has built and sold five businesses, most notably building and exiting Cardpoint at a £175 million valuation; Cardpoint floated on AIM at £7 million, grew to 6,500 cash machines and 300 employees, and dispensed over £500 million a month. Since 2007 he has worked as a Non-Executive Chairman and advisor applying his methods to other owners. In December 2024 he was awarded an OBE for services to Business and Charity and he holds the title of Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire.

Day-to-day he steps in as Non-Executive Chairman, works directly with founders to uncover hidden value, and manages the full sale process from preparation through to finding the right buyer.

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Don’t BE for Sale: Mark Mills on Building Leverage and Maximizing Your Exit
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The Exit - Presented By Flippa· Listen to Mark Mills on air