Cautionary Tale #10: Sinking Sales with Selfishness

Cautionary Tale #10: Sinking Sales with SelfishnessIn our Cautionary Tales series we try to alert buyers and sellers to pitfalls we’ve witnessed in business transactions. We’ve discussed not allowing attorneys to run deals, why PPP money shouldn’t be considered “income,” and how a poor attitude can wreck a business just after the sale. But did you know that a selfish attitude can make sure the sale doesn’t even happen in the first place? Today we are going to talk about two examples that we’ve seen in the last 12 months: one that was a near miss, another that blew up.

“That’s Not My Job”

There are many unwritten courtesies that come along with a transaction. For example, it doesn’t need to be written up in a purchase agreement that an incoming owner should be nice to the employees. Or that an outgoing owner should try to make sure that there are no major disruptions before the deal closes. One of those unwritten courtesies is helping an incoming owner with some of the backend stuff.

For example, you may have a payroll company you use and love, and want to give a warm handoff to the representative of that company. Or you may not like it, have been thinking about making a change for a while, but didn’t want to do it in the midst of a business sale. You can pass that information on to the incoming owner. It’s not going to do you any good to hold on to it.

We recently had a situation in which the incoming owner wanted some information on payroll companies, insurance, office supplies, etc. The seller was adamant: “that’s not my job,” he said. “He (the buyer) can figure that out himself.” As one of our brokers tried to advocate for the buyer, the seller accused the broker of “working for the buyer.”

Clearly, to most rational beings, this is not “working for the buyer.” It’s actually known as “common human courtesy.” But business sales are often not rational: they are highly emotional. 

So this is an example of how a broker earns his keep and has a calm conversation with the buyer explaining why it’s unreasonable to have such an attitude, reminding him that ultimately the transaction is about everyone winning and being successful. While we can’t claim to have reformed the seller’s attitude towards life in general, we can say he got on board with helping the buyer beyond the explicit terms that were spelled out in an offer to purchase

“You Need Me”

A situation in which we were less successful was with a business that was going to sell under the new SBA rules, which allow an outgoing owner to retain some stake in the business. In this particular case the seller held a license that the buyer could not easily obtain on his own. The seller knew this and managed to work in a corresponding “you need me” attitude into almost every communication. 

At some point, the buyer got spooked. “How do I know he won’t leave after the deal closes?” the buyer asked. When we went back to the seller and let him know his attitude was causing friction, he (unsurprisingly) crossed his arms and reiterated how important he was.

Well, that attitude won him the prize of getting to keep his business instead of selling it. The buyer, understandably concerned at closing one of the largest financial transactions of his life with someone determined to hold something over his head, backed out.

Selfishness can sink sales. As we said, business sales can be very emotional. And if you let that emotion rule, you’ll put yourself in severe danger of not having a sale go through at all.

Need some help staying objective during an emotional business transaction? That’s what we’re here for. Give us a call today.

Cautionary Tale #9: Manage Your Attorney

Cautionary Tale #9: Manage Your AttorneyWith a title like “Manage Your Attorney” in a series called “Cautionary Tales” you might wonder if we are teeing up that line from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2: “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Not at all. Some of our team here at Apex are married to attorneys, or were raised by them. We work with attorneys on every single deal. 

What we want to make sure is that buyers and sellers remember that ultimately, it’s their deals that are on the lines, and that attorneys are meant to be advisors, not parties, to these deals.

Remember that part of the skill set that any entrepreneur has to gain if he/she doesn’t already have it is risk management. Entrepreneurs look at given situations, sometimes with incomplete information or risk assessments, and make decisions. Up to the time of that decision you want to gather all the information you can, but then you have to move forward on your own.

Not Signing an NDA

One of the first things new clients do with us is sign a non-disclosure agreement. We are going to be sharing confidential information, including a private company’s financials and tax returns, and sometimes other sensitive information. We have to have the assurance that you will not make this private information public.

We didn’t make up our NDA on our own. We had lawyers help craft it and it’s the same NDA we give to all our clients. It’s not negotiable.

On more than one occasion, we’ve not even got out of the starting blocks. “My attorney told me not to sign this,” we’ve heard. Well, then there’s nothing to talk about. 

We are not going to share confidential information with someone who won’t sign a confidentiality agreement, period. If you find yourself in this situation, you might need another lawyer or you might need to ask yourself if you’re serious about buying a business.

Not Negotiating Franchise Agreements

One horror-story variant of refusing to sign an NDA was one time when a client racked up $10,000 of changes to a franchise contract.

Now think about this. Franchise contracts are meant to apply to dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of franchisees. What is the likelihood that they are going to make the changes you requested for your contract? And that others won’t find out and demand expensive redrafting of their existing contracts?

The attorney who dealt with this was not someone skilled in M&A but happened to be the equivalent of the “wife’s brother’s friend’s uncle.” Do not pick an attorney for a business transaction based on anything other than someone’s experience and expertise in M&A and business transactions.

Whatever money you “save” or relationship you establish with this individual is not going to help you with the relevant goal in this situation: a business transaction. Choose wisely, or risk the chance of large bills with no payoff.

Not Acting Nimbly On a Deal

On more than one occasion a client has expressed interest in a deal and we’ve called them to let them know other buyers are putting in offers and that the clock is running down. Sometimes we get the answer: “my lawyer’s still working on the LOI.” While that’s certainly one way to go about things, here at Apex we use a signature service called Offer to Purchase (OTP) that speeds this part of the process along. 

While an LOI might be fine, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel (and pay the billable hours necessary to reinvent said wheel). Our OTP covers the major elements of an offer and is easily amendable with additional details as needed.

With delays, deals die, and if you are stuck worrying about the precision of your LOI you might miss out on a great deal. In the meantime, those clients who use our no-charge OTP service have already submitted and are on to other things.

Final Thoughts

In all these cases, attorneys were doing what they were trained to do: flag up risk. But that’s not what entrepreneurs are trained to do or what they execute on every single day. They look at the risk assessment and make decisions. For them, attorneys are assets/counselors who empower them to make decisions, not jailers who tell them what to do.

Manage attorneys in a business transaction or they may manage you out of one.

Need an attorney with M&A experience as opposed to your wife’s brother’s friend’s uncle? We have a whole list of them. Give us a call and we can share them with you.

Cautionary Tales #8

Cautionary Tales #8Often in this series we only have one cautionary tale to share, but sometimes we have more than one, so this article will have shorter stories about three different real-life scenarios we’ve seen around the office recently.

PPP Money Isn’t Income

While we don’t expect business owners to have forensic financial savvy, we do expect them to be able to look at their books and see irregularities.  One such irregularity happened because a fractional CFO had convinced a business owner who had become one of our clients that he had M&A experience.  Yet that experience missed the fact that a significant amount of the reported earnings for the previous year (more than a third) were not earnings at all, but were PPP funds!  Needless to say, that meant that the multiple and the price for the business had to fall significantly, and for some reason, both the business owner and the fractional CFO seemed upset about this.

But there wasn’t any reason to be upset.  A business is worth some multiple of real earnings.  A government bailout is not only taxpayer-subsidized, but it has nothing to do with the value of your business.  Adding it to your earnings and thinking that a serious buyer won’t laugh or that a serious bank will offer financing for inflated numbers is not a serious way of thinking about selling your business.

PPP Funds Aren’t Slush Funds

Some businesses who had no need for PPP funds received them anyway and ended up spending them on personal desires.  Since the loan forgiveness program had no real auditing or certification process, businesses who treated PPP funds as lottery funds now have books strewn with irregularities:

  • PPP funds classified as income (like our first example)
  • New company cars (including, in one case we saw, a company Rolls Royce)
  • Home improvement (no kidding, we saw $250,000 spent in this manner)

This is going to trigger distrust on the part of the buyer.  If you’re willing to be so cavalier with government funds in the last two years, what else has happened in the previous four or eight?  

CapEx Won’t Always Be Part of Your Sale Price

Sometimes the specialized equipment needed to deliver your product or service won’t figure into a sale.  This can happen when an acquirer already has better equipment than you and excludes them from the purchase, leaving you to liquidate them at whatever the market will pay.  Other times, there is no market to sell your equipment.

This happened recently with a client who is in beverage systems and has their equipment in restaurants, event venues, convenience stores, etc. all around the Kansas City metro, totaling almost $1M in capital expenditures. The problem is, the business only has $250,000 in cash flow.  So not only is the buyer unwilling to add another $1M to the value of the business, it’s unlikely that even if a buyer were willing to, that a bank would finance at that “valuation.”  Using capital expenditures to justify a price can only work if there’s a ready market to dump that equipment (at fire sale prices, if necessary).  But there’s simply no local buyer who’s looking to buy a bunch of this specialized equipment on its own, unattached to a business.

The client had always thought of these capital expenditures as effectively loans that would get paid back to him, but in this particular case, that wasn’t true, and led to a 4X devaluation of what he felt entitled to, price-wise, for his business.  It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s reality, and one that should be accepted by other owners in similar situations with their CapEx.

We don’t take any joy in sharing these cautionary tales.  We only do so to make sure that future buyers and sellers don’t repeat the same mistakes.  Need advice on dealing with one of these situations above?  We can help.  Give us a call.

7 Ways for Sellers to Avoid Wrecking a Deal

Avoid Wrecking a DealThere’s obviously a lot more than seven ways to wreck anything in life, not just business transactions. But over the years, we have seen some particular situations come up over and over again that need to be highlighted.  We’ve divided them into things to keep in mind before the transaction begins and during the transaction.

Before the Transaction

1. Price appropriately  

One way to pre-wreck a deal is to price inappropriately so that you don’t get any lookers, much less any offers.  Remember that you’re rarely objective about anything you’re personally invested in, and as a business owner, you also probably don’t have the skillset or experience to know what your business is worth in a particular marketplace.  Even if you’ve done some valuation calculations yourself, for best results, get a certified valuation.  It makes the deal bankable and much more likely to go the distance.

2. Keep confidentiality

Loose lips sink ships.  There’s a reason that saying has come down to our present day.  Confidentiality means your employees don’t get scared off and your vendors don’t let something slip to the competition.  It’s an exciting and momentous period in your life, no doubt, but you can talk about it to your heart’s content when the deal is done and the check has cleared the bank.

3. Be prepared

One of the more tiring but perhaps most necessary aspects of a business sale is the due diligence. We’ve talked about how important it is to have your company financials in order and your taxes up to date (and we’ve also shared stories of what happens when you don’t). You should have up to date paperwork because it will help you run your business better anyway, so get in the habit and you won’t have to do much more when it comes time for a sale.

4. Encourage competition

While ultimately you can only ever sell your business to one buyer, that’s no reason to only have one buyer competing to buy your business.  Some of the best outcomes for everyone occur when there are multiple buyers battling for a business.  As the seller you then get to evaluate the qualities of the buyers for fit with your business and the amount of their offer.  

During the Transaction

5. Stay flexible

You should have your deal breakers clear in your mind throughout the process, but remember to think expansively and creatively about solutions when the buyer is making a demand.  It doesn’t always have to be a binary “this for that” swap.  Sometimes you can ask for something in the future or work out something with the real estate, or ask for a royalty.  That doesn’t mean settling for a bad deal – it just means thinking positively rather than negatively about deal points.

6. Don’t lose momentum

It’s very simple: with delays, deals often die.  Part of our jobs as brokers is to keep the ball rolling, making sure questions are answered, concerns are addressed, and technicalities are noted.  Just as before the transaction begins you need to have your paperwork in order, when you’re in the transaction you need to keep the paperwork going.  It can feel infinite at times, but we promise it’s not: see the light at the end of the tunnel.

7. Stay focused on your business

One of the advantages of having a broker is the chance for you to stay focused on your business instead of pouring all your time and resources into making a transaction happen.  Remember that a buyer wants to see the business as a going concern from start to finish with you, and if your business deviates from the norm during the transaction that can often cause you to take a haircut on the closing price.  You’re the owner until you’re not, so act appropriately.

The most successful sellers keep all seven of these ways in mind from the start to the conclusion of a transaction, but if you even have four of them clear in your mind when we get started, you’re well on your way to success.  

Concerned about one of these in particular?  Give us a call and let us know how we can help.

Cautionary Tale #7: Excess Inventory Blocks a Sale

Excess InventoryWe all make mistakes in business. Sometimes it costs us money immediately, other times in the long term. In the worst cases, all the way through and including the sale of your business. Particularly when an owner is ready to sell and is in the mindset of “cashing out”.

Not that long ago, we were working with a Main Street interior design/contracting business with $800k in annual revenues. The total owner benefit was $300,000. He had $1.8M in real estate and $1.5M of inventory tied up with the valuation of the business. The problem was, not only was that 4 years of inventory… But more than $1M of that inventory was a particular type of natural stone that the owner loved and had “gotten a deal on” some years ago. But never really moved.

When we asked him about it, he responded by saying he “wanted more display options” and that “it would sell eventually.”

While the latter might be true, it may be across an unacceptable time horizon for the buyer. The display options statement was a smokescreen to avoid dealing with the embarrassment of a bad call. The reality was as the years continued on, this type of stone would only be more out of style with current trends, making it even more difficult to move. He was right that it would give “more display options,” but the reality was the obsolete inventory in the display made new stuff look that much better!

There were a few options here:

  • Liquidation of the outdated stock wholesale in a one-time event. This would result in some tax-loss harvesting benefits for the current owner and could be easily demonstrated as a one-time write-off for a potential buyer. This would also serve as a useful “cautionary tale” about operating that particular kind of business.
  • Drastically mark down the pricing to make it attractive for buyers. This could lead to more cash on hand for the current owner as well as demonstrate that at a certain price the inventory can move.
  • Exclude the obsolete inventory from the business. If the current owner really believes the inventory will move, then he can strike up a deal with the buyer in which the stone would be sold on a consignment basis over a fixed period of time.

It’s no failure to make mistakes in business. The real failure is in not admitting those mistakes or dealing with them so they don’t cost you yet again. In this case, it could obstruct an exit.

Don’t be that type of owner. Own your mistakes so that you can move on to what you’d like to do next.

Cautionary Tale #6: Accounting Woes

Accounting WoesWhenever we discuss commonalities in successful transactions, inevitably “clean books” will be one of the first three things mentioned. Numbers don’t just matter for your valuation, or for tax purposes, or just to track where the money has gone: without clean books, a buyer can’t know whether he/she is looking at a solid business.

Here are three examples of people who came to work with us who didn’t accept that basic premise:

Bad Books, Buyer Balks

We had a seller who was looking to sell a car wash, but had inconsistent and sloppy books. The buyer understood this and was willing to wait as the books got cleaned up. For some reason, the seller had been using a tax attorney to do the accounting. $20,000 and some months later, the seller had clean books and was square with the IRS. But in the process, the buyer had long since flown the coop because of the time lag and lack of responsiveness from the seller. To compound his woes, the previous accountant/attorney was suing him for non-payment of previous bills.

Don’t put yourself into this situation. Startup owners do it all the time by handing a shoe box of receipts to their new accountant/bookkeeper. Don’t do that. Start on the right foot from the start.

Full Disclosure Matters

In another situation similar to the one above, a seller was not as responsive as she could have been with her books, and the buyer started to get uncomfortable. At some point, it came out that there had been a $180,000 bad debt write-off from an old account. The situation was completely explainable as a one-time occurrence that shouldn’t affect the value of the business, but the seller had already been slow in responding. The buyer saw this disclosure as only the first in what might be more shocking disclosures, even though the reality was that this was the only real accounting issue to discuss.

The seller had created an atmosphere of concern and doubt, so it didn’t take much more to dissolve that confidence entirely. Always show and tell all the warts of your business to your broker. We’ve seen them all, and one thing we can say for sure; when you lead with honesty, you create and foster trust with your buyer.

Lying to the IRS

Another time we had a seller with a business that took in $2.2M in annual gross revenues, which led to $400,000 of declared owner benefit. But the owner also took $200,000 of unreported cash for himself, which was obviously not declared to the Internal Revenue Service. When we told him that he couldn’t get what he was asking for for the business since the books didn’t back the narrative, he insisted that we list the business anyway. “I’ll get audited if I go back and fix it now, anyway,” he said. While that has happened in certain circumstances, we told him that this wouldn’t be attractive to buyers.

Unsurprisingly, he got precisely zero offers, for the simple reason that potential buyers thought, “if he’s willing to lie to the IRS, which will run over your grandmother to collect what it’s owed, what else is he willing to lie about… to me?”

Honesty is the best policy. It is one of those lifelong bits of wisdom our mothers taught us long ago.

We all make mistakes – if you haven’t been straightforward with your books in the past, there very well may be ways to fix them and prepare your business for a successful sale.  Call us and let us connect you with people who can help you do precisely that.

Cautionary Tale #5: “I’m an Owner – You’re an Operator”

One of the key pieces of advice we give to all our new owners is: “Don’t change too much too quickly.” In fact, you should guard against any kind of changes in those early days. You should be soaking up everything you can about the business, learning why it’s gotten so successful such that a person like you has come along to buy it in the first place. But as you might guess, not everyone takes our advice.

A recent cautionary tale came in the form of a business that was open for sixty years. It only took eighteen months for the new owners to put it out of business.

Attitude

CautionAs brokers, we can dispense business advice but often we have to give life advice as well. We could see that the two incoming owners had a “know-it-all attitude”. You can gently try to offer some correctives, but at the end of the day, it’s their life and their business to do with as they wish. But from the get-go, the outgoing owners and the entire company saw that attitude on display.

It started in the morning. The owners would be in at around 7:30 each morning, usually slightly before any other staff arrived. This allowed them some quiet time to do work before the office got busy, but it also allowed them to demonstrate to their team that they took this at least as seriously as everyone else did.

Not so with the new owners. They made sure to get to the gym — not an early morning session — but one that allowed them to roll into the office around 10 or 11. When they did arrive, they didn’t ask for training or orientation, they were just happy to assume the title of management without earning the mantle of leadership.

A perfect example happened when the new owner called out to a staff member to come into their office. When the employee came in, he was handed a sheet of paper: “Please fax this to so-and-so.” After the employee left, the old owner leaned over and said, “We usually do those sorts of things, no need to bother the staff.” Without skipping a beat, the new (and soon to be former) owner replied, “That’s the difference between you and me.  I’m an owner – you’re an operator.”

Departures and Decline

As I’m sure you can guess, that sort of attitude wasn’t confined to private remarks in an office, but leaked out to how the staff was treated, and before long, people started leaving. The front line staff were the first to go, almost all of them left within 90 days. Some months after that, the management team followed suit. As the cash flow dried up, the new owners couldn’t take a salary and worse, had to take high interest loans (without their bank’s knowledge or permission) to stay afloat. From that point forward the death spiral accelerated and before long they had crashed, largely because of their own hubris.

Perhaps being an operator so that you could learn how to be an owner of that business might have been in order?

Whether you consider yourself an owner or an operator, you’d be wise to pay attention in those early days at the helm of a new business. Continue to write down and note exciting ideas you may have for change and growth, but wait until you have a real sense of the business, instead of relying on perhaps your (too healthy) sense of self, before making any changes at all.

You bought the business for a reason. Give yourself time to understand the business completely.

Bad Deal or No Deal?

Bad Deal or No DealOne important reason you hire a broker to help you sell your business is the addition of a person to the transaction who is not emotionally tied to the business. We are there as your representative – to make sure you get the best deal possible at the time you are listing your business. And sometimes that advice will be to walk away from a transaction if we don’t think everything lines up in your interests.

Sometimes, no deal is better than a bad deal.

Bad Deals

There are many reasons why a deal may be a bad one, but there are two in particular that we see often that we try to deal with as soon as we can.

Price: this is before an offer is made, of course, but we try to make sure that the price we market the business for is not just in line with the financials and tax records of the company and the growth trajectory, but also with what the market is currently paying for businesses in your industry. That’s why it’s always so important to get a true valuation for your business. It’s objective, unemotional, and has nothing to do with what you “think you deserve” for your blood, sweat, and tears over the years.

But apart from a marketable price that we are confident will sell in a reasonable time, there also has to be consideration for the seller’s financial situation. For example, will the sale, after taxes, clear all the business debts of the seller? If not, would it make more sense to operate the business for some more time in order to be free and clear at closing?

Terms: this is after an offer to purchase and will usually be part of a package of negotiable deal points.  Almost all successful transactions have a fairly balanced allocation of financial risk.

On the seller’s part, some financing may be in order, whether as part of SBA requirements or simply because of the buyer’s need. The buyer may also ask for some assets to be classified in such a way that will result in more taxation for the seller.

On the buyer’s part, some personal funds may be included as part of the purchase, and income statements scrutinized to make sure he/she is not overextending him/herself to buy the business.

As we’ve said often in these articles, successful transactions also usually leave both buyers and sellers feeling that they did sacrifice something they would have preferred.  That’s why it’s called negotiation.

No Deal

It’s important to note that just because there’s not a deal doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason for it.

On more than one occasion we have seen exceptional growth in financials for the current fiscal year and have advised our clients either not to list or to de-list their business so that we can get one more corporate tax return and thus boost the valuation of the company. Sometimes no deal is a strategic retreat rather than giving up.

But sometimes no deal happens because we’re not dealing with a motivated seller, or because the client doesn’t trust what we are telling him/her.

In our experience no deal is often better than a bad deal, because you can always try for a new transaction, trading on the lessons learned in the previous attempt, whereas a bad deal leaves you stuck with the consequences.

If you’ve got questions about pricing your business to sell, give us a call!

Cautionary Tale #4: Waiting for the Next Best Offer

WaitingSome time ago, we had a seller who had a wildly profitable business in medical equipment. He was one of the first to market, and as such had a great competitive advantage and enviable cash flow. In fact, when we first took on his business, he had several serious offers, one as high as $12M.

Unfortunately he was always looking to trade up. Instead of seeing the offer for what it was, which was more than fair given the circumstances, he kept thinking he could get more. He never really got serious with any of these offers. Despite having engaged with us as brokers, he also hated the idea of paying a commission, and so was looking to make his own deals so he wouldn’t have to pay us. We can tell you from experience that doesn’t usually work out well for the seller.

And then…reality happens

The market knows. That’s why it’s the market. Any time someone is making a lot of money, competitors are going to be attracted to the opportunity.  Competitors mean slimmer margins and the end of complacency.

Worse, the technology improved and what he was selling was no longer the newest/best. He hadn’t prepared properly for the upcoming changes and got a bit left behind. When he did end up selling some time later, it wasn’t for the $14M that he wanted or the $12M that he could have had if he had taken our advice. It was for less than $4M. That’s not shabby, for sure, but it was $8M less than he could have had.

To review:

  • When you hire a broker, you’re hiring a professional who has a vested interest in helping you sell your company. Yes, we will get paid for doing so, but that’s part of the deal. If you want to sell on your own, you’re welcome to try, but it’s going to be a lot more work than you expect, and not nearly worth what you think it will be in “savings” of your time or money.
  • Be aware that sometimes you’re making money hand over fist not because you’re special, but because you’ve hit optimum market conditions. Unless you’re going to dig in and make a career of it, it’s wise to take great offers when they come your way instead of chasing the mythical “next best offer.”

Cautionary Tale #3: The Answer You Want Isn’t Always The Answer You Need

Questions and AnswersThis is a continuing series of stories we want to share with our clients so they don’t make the same very costly mistakes.

One of the many reasons you hire a business broker to help guide you through a sale is because we will tell you important truths without fear. We want a successful transaction and that can’t be done by hiding things or not being fully truthful. But that sometimes means that a client will want an answer you simply can’t give.

One of our clients had retired from a twenty year career in a field, and had decided to get into a food franchise. The first location that he picked was about thirty minutes from his home, so he had a general manager in place. The location wasn’t losing money, but it wasn’t making money at the rate he expected.

He also bought a second location of the franchise much closer to his house, which he had great expectations for. He wanted to get rid of the old location so he could focus all his energies on the second location. There was a problem, though. He didn’t have a sellable business.

There are many reasons to buy a franchise, but once you’ve committed and bought one, you simply have to put in the work.

Because the business wasn’t in a strong position, the sale price wouldn’t clear the debt that already existed. This meant that the deal couldn’t be financed. Worse, he still had an existing lease obligation that had some strings attached.

We told him the numbers had to be better so that we could help him sell his business. He disagreed.

Not only did he disagree, he went around asking for second and third opinions. Word kept coming back to us from friends and colleagues that he wanted someone to look at his business and give him the answer he wanted. We couldn’t give him that answer because it would have been a waste of everyone’s time.

Any business owner starts with dreams about possibilities. But once the business starts in earnest, those dreams meet with reality. Once you are ready for a sale, that reality has to pass the smell test of our team here at Apex before we will put it out on the market with our name behind it.

Sometimes, having a broker serves the purpose of telling you that you don’t have a business that’s ready to sell…yet. But if you take our advice about what to improve, you can have one sooner than you think. But that means you have to be willing to hear the answer you need, not the answer you want.

Want to avoid being part of a cautionary tale?  Give us a call so we can discuss implementing better systems in your business so you’ll be in a position to sell when you want.