Archive for category: Build A Better Business

There are two ways you can grow your business: the fast way or the slow way.  What’s important is that there is no easy way.

Both have their pros and cons, and in this article, we’ll examine the question of whether you should grow your business through acquisitions.

Organic Growth

If you have the time and the money, organic growth is almost like compounding interest: it will happen as long as the fundamentals are sound.  

You can add new products or services, increase sales, increase market share, etc. This growth will be part of a narrative that will make for a valuable exit one day, but it is a day in the far future, as organic growth is slow.

Growth through Acquisition

On the other end of the spectrum is growth through acquisition.  You can instantly acquire new revenue, resources, and introductions to markets.  But you have to pay for it with time and money as well, just at a different pace.

• You will have to pay for the acquisition.  Sometimes a good earnout can be negotiated with an outgoing seller, or good payment terms negotiated.  What is important is never to pay too much in cash or to take on too much debt.
• You need to have a plan.  Since this business will need to be integrated with your existing one, you’ll need to have a plan as to how departments will come together, including the hard decisions to let some people go.  Those first 100 days after the acquisition are a key part of success.

Beware of Deal Fever

We’ve seen this illness before, and it can happen to the most rational and cool-blooded among us: like Ahab chasing the white whale, people can get lost chasing a deal.

• Keep in mind that pursuing an acquisition can become a part-time job/project.  Don’t let yourself be distracted from your core business that you are looking to improve through this acquisition.  Either have someone (like a broker) help you through it, or make sure you delegate parts to your team so that you don’t take 2 steps forward only to take 2 steps back.
• Don’t let deal fever blind you to the facts.  Sometimes we want a deal to happen badly enough that we will ignore our own due diligence and say our “gut” is telling us to move forward.  Deal fever can confuse you: that’s why it’s important to have an unbiased third party (like a broker) help you evaluate numbers and your integration plan.

It’s not binary.  You can grow organically and through acquisition.  What’s important is to stay focused and enjoy the journey, never letting present success go to our head as we plow forward to possible future success.

Are you considering making some acquisitions to grow your company?  Give us a call to see if we have any listings that are a good fit for you.

There are so many questions you might ask yourself when thinking about becoming a business owner.

In fact, we’ve addressed many of those concerns in previous articles, here and here.

But today we wanted to focus on three important ones that have to be answered.

Where will I get the money?

We’ve discussed various ways to get the money for buying a business in the past.

While it’s always best to just have a large amount of cash laying around, most of us are more likely to pull from multiple sources, including retirement accounts and SBA loans.

Exploring and understanding this step well (including a solid relationship with a banker) will give you the range of purchasing power you have. In addition, you’ll have a snapshot of the variety of businesses you could consider in that price range.

Do I buy a franchise or an existing business?

This has just as much to do with personality as anything else. Are you the sort of person who wants to follow a proven system or do you want to experiment, make mistakes (and find successes) through your own initiatives and trial and error?

Franchising offers the appeal of trial-tested methods, whereas your own business offers you flexibility and nimbleness that can’t exist at the level of a national brand.

Are the books in order?

On the broker side of the business, there’s nothing more unfortunate (or less surprising) than finding that a business doesn’t have its books in order. “Good enough” has been the standard for so many years, with no forethought of a future in which a buyer might want more than a box of receipts and incoherent financials.

A business with a solid and reliable set of books, not just for the current year, but for many years back in its history, tells you a lot about how the business is run and the priorities of the ownership and staff.

The books will show you where the opportunities and the weaknesses are. These are the medical records of that business. We try to avoid listing or representing a business that can’t supply historical financials or has troublesome tax issues. Make no mistake… you should be extra cautious when considering buying a business with those issues too.

Do you have follow up questions for any of the questions that we listed above, or any questions on any part of the buying process?  Give us a call at 913-383-2671. We’d love to help!

As your business grows over the years, things change. You may come to find that the reasons you started the business aren’t the same reasons you’re running it now. Or even the reasons you aspire to in the years to come.

If you can’t easily answer “Why are you still running your business?”, it may be a good time to revisit why you started the business in the first place. Here are a few ideas:

Because you love the industry

If you were to look at some high profile industries, like surfing, coffee, or food, outsiders might look at them and say, “It would be so cool to have a business in that industry!” But in all likelihood those outsiders don’t realize these businesses aren’t just about celebrating something really enjoyable. They also have a lot of hidden challenges and difficulties that can’t be seen.

What keeps people in many companies year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, is a true love of the industry.  If that love is still there through all the ups and downs of growing your company, you’ve got a good “why.”

Because you have great staff

Oftentimes people spend more time with their work colleagues than they do with their families and friends. Ideally that time shouldn’t just be tolerable, but enjoyable.

Camaraderie and a respectful spirit of collaboration often make all you do feel a lot less like work. Owners who are intentional about this process have created a great workplace that makes it a joy to be part of every day.  This is another good “why.”

Because you love the challenge

All business owners know that the sport of business is a daily, often hourly challenge. It will bring out the best in you and test your IQ (emotional and actual) in ways you couldn’t imagine.

The reality is that sometimes people are business owners simply because they couldn’t find a challenging-enough job to push them on a daily basis. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone on a daily basis is another good “why.”

These are just three reasons to help you get the conversation started within yourself if you don’t really have a grasp on the “why.” As hard as you may work, you owe it to yourself to be able to answer that question when others ask.

“I love email.”

Said nobody, ever.

There’s been so much that has evolved in the last 25 years in communication.  Mobile phones have proliferated to the point of being ubiquitous. We used to use those phones for voice calls, but now they’re really used mostly to send messages and access the internet.

Every now and then we use them to make calls, but many of us use it to access email.  Email, the one piece of technology that hasn’t changed much since its inception at the dawn of the internet.  Think about how shocking that is – that you work with something so often that has fundamentally not evolved to match our digital devices.

You still have a sender, a recipient, a subject line, etc.  For most people, it’s the beating heart of their businesses, but they dread having to deal with it.  What’s worse, sometimes people use email as a crutch – as a way to avoid dealing with talking to someone, be it over the phone or in person.

When dealing with buying and selling businesses especially, it’s important to make sure that you’re choosing your words carefully.  We’ve seen deals fall apart simply because a series of emails were birthed from a misinterpreted tone, intent, or piece of content in an email that should really have been handled by a phone call or in-person meeting.

So it might be even more of a relief to hear that there’s been an evolution in messaging that has the ability to destroy the scourge of internal company emails – and beyond that – actually make communicating with your team something fun and that you can look forward to.

That’s where Slack comes in. 

Slack is an archivable, searchable, hive mind that allows you to move all of those long, terrible, threaded email conversations into various separate threads.  These conversations are accessible via mobile apps or a browser.  You can watch everyone chime in on various topics and issues without having to resort to searching through an email pile (which nobody loves).  You can even adapt Slack to use it to communicate with vendors or important clients.

What companies use Slack?
LinkedIn, Salesforce, Google, PayPal, eBay, Dropbox, and Stripe, just to name a few.

What’s the catch?  Well, Slack is part of the popular SAaS (Software As a Service) industry.  Mailchimp, a well-known SAaS product, works off the same principles: provide a basic level of service for free.  This will satisfy many people who have small teams or who don’t need a lot of technical integrations into their Slack channels.  But, should you need more features, etc., you can purchase them via a monthly per-user charge.  Many small businesses simply use the Basic Slack plan at no charge and transform the way they communicate with each other.

Yes, it will be a bit hard to change – but once you’ve adapted, you’ll wonder why you didn’t switch sooner.  And you won’t miss the massive pile of internal email you’ll have eliminated with this one simple switch.

Want to learn more? Check out Slack’s website.

Apex is actively looking for Advisors to join our team. If you or someone you know would like to learn more, contact Doug Hubler at or 913-433-2303.

“A contract isn’t in place for when things go right.
It’s to account for the possibility that things might go wrong.”

You can google the title of this article and you’ll find hundreds, perhaps thousands, of articles, many of which take a position as to why you should “never” have a partner or “always” have a partner.

We’re not going to do that today, not only because we think such a binary answer to a question that involves humans, who are pretty complex in general, never mind when it comes to business, isn’t useful, but also because we really want you to step back and look at the larger issues in place when you consider a business partnership.

Have an agreement in place

Figure out how decisions are going to be made, who’s going to do what, what happens in the case of a death, a sale, or someone just getting tired of it all and wanting to quit. You’ll find that just the exercise of coming to an agreement as a valuable first proof of whether you should have a partnership…and whether you should have a partnership with this particular person.

What are your track records during tough personal situations?

If you aren’t well acquainted with a possible business partner, ask to speak to former employers and close friends and ask the tough questions. Difficulties are going to arise while running your business, and you need to know what’s going to happen to this person when the going gets tough. It’s easy to say, “I’ll hang in there,” but your past performance is your best indicator of future reactions.

Do you both feel equally strong about the business?

We know that sometimes in relationships one person feels stronger than the other. Try to avoid that here. You need to find someone who is enthusiastic about the business for their own reasons, not just because they get caught up in your excitement and get pulled along in your wake.

Are you friends already?

And are you willing to possibly sacrifice this friendship for this business? This is the non-business risk that you take when getting into a partnership with a friend. Things could end very badly, ending not just your partnership and business, but a friendship too. This obviously goes back in line with everything else we’ve discussed above.

Can you do this without each other?

Do you really need a partner? Or do you just need to hustle longer and harder? Sometimes people think they need a partner, but what they really need is to contemplate if they could do the business alone and calculate the possibilities.

Remember that anyone who tells you that you should “always” or “never” have business partners is going for an easy, oversimplified answer to a complicated question. The correct answer is…It depends, just as much on you as the potential partner.

Apex is actively looking for Advisors to join our team. If you or someone you know would like to learn more, contact Doug Hubler at or 913-433-2303.