David Lylis Business Broker

David Lylis began his business career as a small business owner in custom cabinetry and specialty woodworking, and has been in business management and operations his entire adult life. After a period as a Director at a multinational Fortune 500 company, specialising in marketing and sales and running a $40 million division, he accepted an invitation to join a business brokerage franchise and changed direction.
He found his footing quickly, closing mid-market deals almost immediately and being asked back by the same clients to sell further businesses. As the market moved toward ecommerce he specialised, and has worked as an ecommerce intermediary for the past seven years.
His stated rule is Clients First, and he means it literally: the client’s needs come before everything else. A number of his friendships started as client relationships, which he treats as the measure of whether the approach works. His phrasing is that you should be able to look a client in the eye after the sale and know you did right by them.
He is direct with clients about market conditions, funding and how long a transaction really takes, on the basis that telling people what they want to hear helps nobody. He vets buyers for funding, skills and experience, because a seller is handing over something they built, and he wants a buyer who can grow it and who will reliably make any payments due after close. He walks clients through the sales strategy rather than assuming they already know how it works.
At home he enjoys interior decorating and has the building skills to do most of it himself. He travels, reads, listens to music, and plays a Fender Stratocaster with ambitions toward the blues. He is originally from New England, which he says makes every Florida day a pleasant one.