Liz Jackson
Most owner-managers can build a business. Far fewer can grow one with a clear-eyed view of how it will eventually be sold, and fewer still can lead through the personal disruption that comes with that transition. The result is companies that plateau years before exit, and founders who reach the sale unprepared for what follows it.
Liz Jackson MBE is an entrepreneur and M&A advisor who helps owner-managers grow, sell, and live well beyond their businesses.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Liz Jackson
- She has been on both sides of the table: founder of a B2B marketing firm she ran for 17 years, and now Sales & Marketing Director at M&A advisor BCMS, where she works with owner-managers through valuation, growth-to-sale, and the transition into life after exit.
- She runs The Fellows Group, a network of more than 200 entrepreneurs who have already sold their companies through BCMS. Few speakers can draw on a live, operational community of post-exit founders for their material.
- Her credibility on resilience is earned, not borrowed. She lost her sight at 25, the same year she founded Great Guns Marketing, and built the business into a multi-site national operation while blind. The MBE in 2007 was for services to business, not for personal story.
- She turns the conversation about disability and inclusion into a problem-solving conversation. Her framing, that disabled people develop unusually strong problem-solving instincts because they have had to, gives leadership teams a sharper lens on adversity and capability than the standard inclusion talk.
Biography highlights
- MBE, 2007, for services to business
- Honorary doctorate, Staffordshire University, 2012
- Founder, Great Guns Marketing, a national B2B telemarketing business she led for 17 years
- Sales & Marketing Director, BCMS (Initium Corporate Finance), advising owner-managers on sale and transition
- Host of The Fellows Group, a network of 200+ entrepreneurs who have exited their businesses through BCMS
- Featured on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire
- Author of StartUp!, published by Pearson Prentice Hall
Biography
Great Guns Marketing was launched in 1998 by a 25-year-old with no degree, a £1,000 grant and a £4,000 loan from The Prince’s Trust. The same year, its founder lost her sight. Over the next 17 years the business grew into one of the UK’s leading B2B telemarketing firms, with offices across England, Scotland and Ireland.
That arc is the foundation of Liz Jackson’s commercial credibility, but it is no longer her main subject. As Sales & Marketing Director at BCMS, the M&A advisor for owner-managed businesses, she now sits inside the transactions she once would have been on the other side of, coaching founders through valuation, growth-to-sale and the life that begins the day the cheque clears.
She also hosts The Fellows Group, a network of more than 200 entrepreneurs who have exited their companies through BCMS. It gives her a working evidence base on what actually changes for founders after a sale, the parts that are well rehearsed and the parts that are not. That material sits behind her work on entrepreneurship, growth strategy and exit planning, and it is what distinguishes her from speakers whose entrepreneurial story stopped at the founding moment.
Jackson’s MBE, awarded in 2007 for services to business, and her honorary doctorate from Staffordshire University in 2012 are the public markers of that record. The Channel 4 Secret Millionaire appearance and her book StartUp!, published by Pearson Prentice Hall, are the points where her story has reached a broader audience. Inside a leadership room, her sharpest material is on how owner-managers can run a business now with the discipline of a business that will one day be sold.
Key speaking topics
- Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership
- Growth strategy for owner-managed businesses
- Sale readiness and post-exit transition
- Sales and B2B customer acquisition
- Resilience and adversity in business building
- Disability, problem-solving and inclusion
- Networking and founder community
Ideal for
- Owner-managers, founders and shareholder-directors of mid-market businesses
- M&A advisors, private equity portfolio companies and corporate finance audiences
- Sales and commercial leadership teams in B2B businesses
- DEI and leadership audiences seeking a substantive voice on disability and capability
Audience outcomes
- A clearer picture of what running a business “to be sold” actually looks like operationally, not just financially
- Specific insight from a network of 200+ post-exit founders on what makes the transition succeed or fail
- A sharper framing of disability and adversity as a source of commercial problem-solving capability
- A direct account of how a national B2B business was built, and sustained, by a founder operating without sight