Mark Jason Embraces Technology at LINK Without Losing the Human Element
Mark Jason Embraces Technology at LINK Without Losing the Human Element
Mark Jason started his career in finance, working for Bloomberg and Barclays Capital in London and New York. He enjoyed the environment but found the large corporate world increasingly monotonous, and felt removed from the "coalface" of what was happening in business.
In 2004 he came home to join the Sydney brokerage his father had started 36 years ago. His parents had arrived in Australia as refugees from Poland after the war and worked hard to build their lives, and supporting them was a key part of his motivation. At the time the business was a one-man operation in a difficult financial position. Mark lent it the funds it needed and got to work. "I got stuck into the business," he recalled. He built a website and started to grow the brokerage.
He went on to secure the franchise rights for LINK in New South Wales. Deciding that his passion was in driving transactions rather than management of a firm, he recently returned to focussing on his broking efforts, which has aided the firm to record its best year ever. He’s even preparing to move to a larger office. The team has changed too. In what Mark once called "a bit of an old man's game", four of his six recent hires are women, and a younger generation of brokers is bringing new technology and a modern approach into the profession.
What has not changed is the reason he left finance in the first place. Mark was no longer looking at businesses through spreadsheets alone. He was dealing directly with owners, buyers and the practical problems of getting a transaction done. Twenty-two years on, with AI reshaping how brokers work, he believes that closeness to people is still what wins deals.
Deals With Purpose
For Mark, the most satisfying transactions are not necessarily the biggest. They are the ones where understanding what the client actually wants changes the structure of the deal.
In one transaction involving a business valued in the $50 million range, Mark identified that the owner's concentration of responsibility created risk and affected the multiple buyers would apply. The initial advice was to restructure the management team and hire six or seven people into different roles.
"I think it was a bit too much for the owner to undertake," recalled Mark. "We found a private equity group prepared to buy 20 per cent of the business." Once the owner moved out of day-to-day operations and onto the board, a second transaction was triggered, allowing him to sell more of the business. Helping the owner change his relationship with the business is what made the deal particularly satisfying.
A family-owned business presented a different challenge. A husband, wife and three brothers each owned 20 per cent, and two of the brothers, the COO and CEO, had become unhappy and disengaged. Mark found a buyer who understood the industry, bought out the parents and one brother, and injected capital into the business. The new owner has since undertaken a roll-up, and the business is now approaching an exit stage.
"The next time I saw the brothers, they looked 10 years younger," Mark noted.
Part Lawyer, Part Psychologist
Deals like these are why Mark believes successful brokers need more than valuation knowledge and sales ability. "It's about tenacity and grit. If a deal doesn't fall over repeatedly and you don't take “No” as an absolute answer, it's going to be hard to be successful," he said.
Brokers also need to understand that a business sale can be deeply personal. Owners may have spent 30 years building a company and identify their own worth with its value. Telling someone their business is worth half what they expected is an emotional conversation as well as a commercial one.
"You have to be part lawyer, part accountant, part salesperson, part psychologist," Mark commented.
He sees the broker as a matchmaker, helping each side understand the other's reality. That means having difficult conversations, understanding what drives each party, and addressing concerns before they derail a transaction.
Technology That Serves the Conversation
Technology is changing the work itself. LINK has a database of 7,000 transactions and is using AI to build strategic buyer databases, identify competitors and complementary businesses, map supply chains and automate parts of its response and transaction processes.
"It's absolutely amazing," Mark said. "I'm excited about all of that and embracing it, and helping our team embrace it as well."
LINK now works across Australia and New Zealand with about 200 brokers, and Mark estimates it completes around 1,400 deals a year. The more potential buyers brought into a transaction early, the greater the competitive tension and the better the chance of getting the deal across the line.
But he does not see the human element disappearing. He believes it remains one of the main differences between business broking and purely analytical advisory work. Clients are increasingly choosing his firm over larger advisory businesses, he said, because the team backs itself to deliver a result instead of relying on large upfront retainers, and because the brokers have built and sold businesses themselves.
"You've got to be able to cold call and you've got to be able to pick up the phone," Mark said. "You've got to be able to have the hard conversations with empathy."
The tools have changed dramatically since his early days in finance. The fundamentals have not: understand the people, understand the business, and do the work required to bring the two together.
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