EE444: Paul Buckley (Multi-Exit Founder): $0 to $84M in 3 Years and The Exit That Nearly Broke Me

The Entrepreneur Experiment

In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Gary Fox sits down with Paul Buckley — the fiercely honest and deeply reflective founder behind C2O Group. From nearly going pro in golf to blowing his savings in a poker room, to scaling and selling one of Australia’s fastest-growing engineering companies, Paul shares his rollercoaster journey through ambition, burnout, and bold reinvention.

You’ll hear how Paul built EPS Group Australia from the ground up, scaled it to $84M in revenue in just three years, and exited in a major acquisition — only to find himself mentally and emotionally depleted in the aftermath. What followed was a two-year reset, a $14M relaunch, and a second act that’s bigger, sharper, and backed by one of the world’s leading private equity funds.

If you're a founder who's exited (or wants to), this episode is your blueprint for navigating what comes next — the highs, the regrets, and the resilience it takes to start again.

🧠 Show Notes

In this episode, we cover:

💡 Starting with Nothing: From selling Christmas trees out of a van in Cork to leading billion-dollar infrastructure projects across Australia

🏌️‍♂️ Sliding Doors: What it felt like to lose to Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry — and walk away from golf for good

💸 From Broke to Boardroom: Blowing $30k in 7 weeks... then managing 30+ workers on a $3.5B desalination project in Victoria

🚀 Scaling Fast: How Paul co-founded EPS Group Australia and scaled it from $0 to $84M turnover within 3 years

🧨 Burnout After the Exit: The emotional toll of selling his company and staying on through a high-pressure earnout

🧱 Rebuilding From Scratch: How Paul raised $14M to acquire two businesses in the US and Australia — and build C2O Group 2.0

🧭 What He’d Do Differently: The tax incentives, legal lessons, and partnerships he wishes he'd understood the first time around

👨‍👧‍👦 On Legacy: Why he won’t hand the business to his kids — and what succession means to him now
“It brought me to the lowest point in my life by far… I was totally broken, barely able to stand up. It probably took me 12 months — probably 24 — to get my feet back underneath me properly.”
— Paul Buckley
Links & Resources

• C2O Group: https://c2ogroup.com/

• Follow Paul Buckley on LinkedIn

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