#644 Breaking the $20M Barrier: Alexis Sikorsky on Founder Scale Traps

What keeps so many founders stuck between $5M and $20M in revenue—and what does it really take to break through?

In this episode of Talking with the Experts, Rose Davidson welcomes Alexis Sikorsky, entrepreneur, advisor, and author of Cashing Out. Alexis has lived the scale-up journey firsthand, growing New Access from startup to a $100M+ private equity exit. Today, he helps founders restructure operations, overcome leadership blind spots, and prepare for their next chapter.

Alexis reveals why even highly successful entrepreneurs stall out in the “stretch” phase of growth. He unpacks the invisible traps—delegation hesitation, operational sprawl, and culture drift - that silently erode scale-up potential. More importantly, he shares the proven strategies he uses to help CEOs simplify, track the right metrics, and build resilient leadership teams.

Through his APEX methodology - Assess, Plan, Execute, Exit - Alexis equips founders with a clear framework for moving beyond the chaos of fast growth into sustainable scale. This is not theory; it’s lived experience from someone who’s navigated the highs and lows of international business, negotiation, and exit planning.

Whether you’re a founder feeling “successful but stretched,” a CEO navigating culture challenges, or an entrepreneur eyeing a private equity future, Alexis provides the insights you need to break ceilings and build your next chapter.

If you’re ready to learn what to stop doing, what to track, and what to outsource immediately—this conversation is for you.

🔗 CONNECT WITH ALEXIS

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexis-sikorsky-consulting/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexissikorsky/

Website: https://www.asikorsky.com/

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Transcript

Intro | 00:00
Business insights on talking with the experts. Hosted by Rose Davidson. 

 Rose | 00:10
Alexis Sikorsky shares with us insights on the invisible wall founders hit between $5 million and $20 million in revenue. And why most never make the leap? He talks us through the common traps, delegation, hesitation, cultural drift, operational sprawl, and how he helps entrepreneurs restructure for scale. Now, Lexi is a strategic advisor to founders who are serious about scaling faster. And exiting strong. With the nine-figure private equity exit under his belt, Alexis isn't speaking from theory. He's lived the entrepreneurial highs and lows across decades of company building, boardroom negotiation and international leadership. His fractional... Flagship book, Cashing Out, lays out the APEX methodology, a four-part framework, which is assess, plan, execute and exit that demystifies the journey to private equity for founders feeling stuck or overwhelmed by growth and decision fatigue. Alexi, thank you so much for joining me on Talking With The Experts. It is such a pleasure to meet you. 

 Alexis | 01:18
Thank you, Rose, for having me. 

 Rose | 01:21
Well, how did you get to, you know, exit your business with such a great outcome. 

 Alexis | 01:28
God... Mainly luck. At the time and Yeah, started the company in 2000... Build a you know, semi-decent 10, 12 million revenue business, 3 million EBITDA. By 2007, the business is banking software, so software for private banks. 
 So 2007, like I'm the king of the world. I think I'm super successful. I hire left and right. And 2008. The global financial crisis. 100% of my customers are banks. On one phone call, I lost 75% of my revenue. 
 So... Five, six years of very hard grind after that, like literally cutting three quarters of the company and mortgaging my house every month, asking myself, is it worth it to continue? 
 So that brings us to 2014, 2015, and at that point, I'm absolutely exhausted. And I get the phone call from the private equity. 
 Like your listener will know when you have a company, whether it's good or whether it's shite, you get a weekly phone call from private equity say, I want to buy your company. What you're doing is fantastic. And usually you obviously don't answer. And this one for some reason, because they were French because they were from software. 
 So okay, let's talk to them. So they came to Geneva and I've been super honest with them. I said, listen, at that point, I'd say with some creative accounting, you could say the company was breakeven. It was on the way to be breakeven and obviously back to around 10, 12 million revenue. Break even, no cash, you know. And I've been super honest with them and say, listen, I'm going to make you a deal. I want to sell. I'm exhausted. I'm ready to sell. But not now because now my company is worth zero. 
 So I make you a promise. You Dall-E back in two years. In two years, I'll be back to three million, three and a half million EBITDA. And I won't even do an auction. I'll sell to you if you make a reasonable offer by them. They say, yeah, thank you. Very interesting. We're not going to do that. Actually, we're going to do something a little bit different. That you're going to go home. You're going to spend the next week building a business plan. And we're going to come back in a week. I said, okay, did the business plan, very creative business plan, because you're allowed, right? That's something I always say to my clients, you don't die or hide a dollar, even an Australian dollar. To your private equity because they will find it. But when you talk about the future, you're allowed to dream. They expect you to dream. 
 So I came back with this very optimistic business plan and I said, OK, so what we're going to do, we're going to buy your company now. We're going to use the EBITDA in two years and we're going to pay 85% cash and 15% turnouts. And at that time, I was really thinking that was a friend of mine doing a prank or a practical joke or something like that. But it was not. And that's how I sold my company. 

 Rose | 05:04
Wow, that is luck. 

 Alexis | 05:07
Yeah. 

 Rose | 05:08
It is luck. Well done to you. Tell me about the Apex methodology. What does it do? How does it work and how can people put that into place in their businesses? 

 Alexis | 05:22
It's very simple. It's like... It's a methodology in the sense it's a guideline. It's not like step one to step 12. If you do the 12th step, you'll be cured of your addiction, right? It's a guideline. Basically, every company I work with have the same kind of issues. When you reach the, like, six, seven, eight, 10 million mark, you start to have serious growing pains. And the apex is, well, First of all, it helps you define what it is you want to do with your company. There are a lot of people who don't have a clear plan. They have fantastic engine, but tiny steering wheels. They don't know where they're going. They're going fast. They're going very good, but they don't know where. 
 So the Apex methodology first tell you like. Okay. Okay. My MO is reach a hundred million valuation and sell the company for a hundred million. Is that what you want? Lots of companies have lifestyle business, like they're making a million per year in your company. The car is in the company, the holidays, the et cetera. It's perfect, but it's not what I do. I bring no value in that and the apex will bring no value in that. 
 So first you define what you want. Then the assessment is what is your company. You'll be super surprised how little people know about their company. First of all, they don't know their numbers. 
 Like I still work with founders of 10 million companies who get the numbers once a year. And that's like, you might as well have no number. It's like... 
 Yeah. Once a year, they go to the accountant and they get their numbers. And it's like flying a plane and the GPS telling you, by the way, you overshot your airport by 200 miles. It's too late. They don't know their customers. They literally don't know what their customer wants, what their customer feel. They don't talk to them. They don't know their unique selling proposal. They don't know their markets. They don't know anything. And it's not their fault. I'm not blaming them. They've been grinding. What I say a lot is like you get to, you have to get to a point where you don't confuse what's urgent with what's important. And that's part of the work on the founder. 

 Rose | 07:54
But don't they often leave that work up to, you know, the people, you know, their managers, their marketing people, their teams around them, and, you know, they're happy just to rake in the dollars and just let everyone else do all the work. 

 Alexis | 08:09
It's not about wrecking the dollars and having other people do the work. It's about identifying the task you as a founder are uniquely qualified to do. And the bigger the company, the smaller this number is. 
 Like if you are the founders of a multimillion dollar company, basically your only task is talking to investors. And before that, in the 8-10 million, your task should be, depending on the company, but basically you should be dealing with clients. And with investors, if you have investors, and with strategy, right? What is it you want to do? Every minute you spend doing something else than that is not a minute well spent. And that we see a lot of that. It's not about not working. It's about being efficient in your work. 
 So when you're done with the assessment, You get to a goal and when the assessment, I always ask what is your number? So like, let's assume you have a growth business and you want to sell your company because if you don't have that, then you don't Dall-E. I'm useless if that's not your goal. What is your number? How much do you need to... Be able to live for the rest of your life without working another day. We get to that number and we assess if that number is achievable within four years. If it's not... I don't take the client. I stop at that point because I don't believe in plans that are... More than four years. 
 Like, life has a sense of humor. So if your plan is a 10-year plan, I'm not interested. 
 So we make the plan. So that's the next step is we plan. How do we get to there? And How do we get our growth? Is it organic growth? Is it M&A, etc.? 
 So we have all these phases of planification. Then the execution phase, I basically get out of your hair and let you execute your plan one, two, three years. Usually the clients want me to be in their ExCo or in their board meetings, so I get in touch with the company once a month. Obviously, you plan and you pivot a lot, so you have to fine-tune the plan and sometimes do big changes when the market changes and stuff like that. And the last phrase is, exiting the company. 
 So exiting the company with a private equity, it's a technical process that requires knowledge. And if you don't have this knowledge, you're going to leave money on the table. I say it's one of my motto if I started a company now, If I started New Access now, knowing what I know, instead of 2000, I would be 50 million richer and I would have sold five years earlier. 

 Rose | 10:58
Yeah. It's sometimes it is, you know, what would I do differently if I knew what I knew now, what I didn't know then. 
 So yeah, it can be a bit challenging for, you know, business owners to understand. You know, make those right decisions if they don't have all the facts. 

 Alexis | 11:20
Yeah, and if they don't have people who've been there and done that. To help them. 

 Rose | 11:26
Absolutely. So you've..... Had the new access It was making $100 million. What types of businesses do you work with? 
 I mean, what's the goal of... Of the business. 

 Alexis | 11:42
So my, - Target is business that Do... Between 8 and 20 million revenues. Below that, they have other problems that they can solve without me. 
 You know what I mean? The 3, 4, 5 million business, they don't need experts to that level. I work with business that are founders led. I don't work with boards, with investors, with CEOs. 
 So my ideal Target is somebody who's been grinding for a few years to get to 10 million. And there is lots of companies like that. And I want. People who are... Mission Driven. 
 Like, the, I'm happy doing what I do. I have a restaurant in the main street. It's full every Friday. That I love when people love what they do. And... 
 So usually there are companies that have lots of opportunities, but they don't exactly know how to tackle them. And... At that point, most of the companies hit the same Growth pain which is the need to C-Level people. They just cannot afford C-level people. 
 So that's usually the soft spot for me to start intervening. 

 Rose | 13:14
Yes, yeah, that's interesting that you say that that's the level of person that you're looking for. There are a lot of people out there that are in need of your services because I've not quite honestly not heard of somebody doing what you do. 

 Alexis | 13:31
So surprisingly, first of all, I do two things. I do My... My friends call it the founder's whisperer. I do my advisory job and that is very hands-off. I just talk to the founders and help him. That's one side of my business. And the other side of my business is actually... I have a group of 12, 14, 20 people around me, all my friends. I've been working with them for years and. We come in. And we help the company grow and then we get out. And we come in as a team. 
 So depending on the, clients need, I bring a CFO, a CTO, a head of sales, a head of marketing, and a head of HR. That's like a very common package. We storm in. We put all the procedure in place. We transform the company. It takes a few months. We put people in place and we pull out. That's how we work. And to answer your question, no, I haven't seen lots of people do what we do, and especially the ability to come as a team, right? No, I haven't seen. I don't know why. To be honest, to do that properly, you need to have exited a 100 million company. And people who exited a 100 million company, usually they don't want to work anymore. 

 Rose | 14:58
That's probably very true. Very true. Alexi, what advice would you give someone who's thinking about exiting but doesn't quite have the equity behind them? 

 Alexis | 15:14
Well, first of all, Be sure of your company valuation. That's a very tricky exercise. And that's how the private equity get the founders is they're very good at evaluating the company. The founder usually is not so that's lots of money he lives on the table. But you think your company, if you think your company is worth 50, there's a good chance it's worth 60. For many reasons that will be long to explain, but there are technical reasons why this is true. Second of all, do your due diligence on the private equity. That's something nobody does. And I don't, to be honest, I don't understand why. They, I mean, they're going to do a six months due diligence of your company. I call it the six months colonoscopy. It's going to be hard. It's going to be painful. It's going to be long. It's going to be exhausting. You do a due diligence on them and you tell them, you said, thank you for your offer. I'm going to get back to you in a week after I do my due diligence on you. 
 And then, yeah. Yeah, go. 

 Rose | 16:27
Ahead. That would be pretty basic. I would have thought that, you know, if someone's going to buy into your company or buy your company, that you'd want to know who is buying them and whether they've really got the money behind them to be able to do that. 

 Alexis | 16:42
Yeah, no, having the money behind them is usually not an issue. Like if it's a proper private equity, they'll have the money. 
 Yeah, you get the phone call of people who want to build a deal flow and don't have the money. But that's more a VC thing than a PEP have the money. It's not a question of having the money. The question is how they're going to treat you after they buy you. And well, it's two questions. That's one, how they treat you after they buy you. And the second one, you need to avoid. Tactic a few private equity have, that one of my clients call it fish and chip. Which I think is a fantastic name. 
 So they fish you with a very high valuation. Then during the due diligence, they chip at your valuation. And that's extremely, that's mean. And it's extremely efficient because like we human being, right? We spend six months with a number in our mind and like you start spending this money in your head. Or if you're me, you start spending this money in real life. And if at the end they say, well, you know what, we thought it was 100 million, but now it's actually 80, there's a good chance you're going to accept it. 
 So that's the two parts you need to do diligence about. 

 Rose | 17:56
Yeah, okay, yeah, I understand that. Yeah, I thought it would have been, you know, you'd have to make sure that they had finances behind them, but you're quite right. People aren't... Always as honest or as nice as they could be in the long run. 

 Alexis | 18:12
And I even have a technique to do that due diligence, actually super easy. You asked the private equity, you said, I'm going to do a due diligence. Can you please give me five names of people you bought and that would be ready to describe the experience? 
 So they give you five names. Obviously, you're not calling these people, you're calling all the other ones. And you find that knowing what a private equity buy, bought, it's super easy. It's usually on their website. Then you find the founder on LinkedIn, you send him a message and say, hey, I'm talking to X private equity. I know they bought you. Would you mind spending half an hour with me describing? Not once to that day, they've said no. People love to tell their stories. And that's how you know. It's easy. It's a very easy, simple process. Nobody does it. I don't know why. 

 Rose | 19:02
Well, that's a bit silly, really, isn't it? I don't know. 
 Anyway, if you want to find out more about Alexi and you've got that, you know, $5 million that your company is worth and, you know, you're thinking about leaving, you can find Alexi on LinkedIn. You can find him on Instagram as well and on his website. A sikorsky.com and you have something else that you want to make today alexi Yeah, what about your book? 

 Alexis | 19:29
No, all good. Let me know if you have other questions. 

 Rose | 19:34
Where can people find your book, Cashing Out? And what's it about? Yes. 

 Alexis | 19:39
Well, it's about basically giving this knowledge to as many people as possible. So, like, obviously, it's not like it's not a personal development book. It's not like I read the book and I get to 100 million. But it gives you an idea and a bit of a process and where to find it. Amazon, Audible, the usual suspects. I'm lucky enough that I have a complicated name. 
 So when you search my name, you don't find 60,000 authors with the same name. 

 Rose | 20:13
Yes, absolutely. Alexi, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing with us today. 

 Alexis | 20:19
Thank you, Rose. 

 Rose | 20:20
Bye-bye. 

 Alexis | 20:22
Bye. 

 Outro | 20:24
You've been listening to Talking with the Experts with Rose Davidson. The podcast that brings you real stories, bold insights and strategies that work. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast channel so you never miss an episode and dive into our full library anytime at TalkingWithTheExperts.com. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing and keep talking with the experts.