Know Your Broker: Wayne Swisher

Wayne SwisherWayne Swisher is one of the newest additions to the team here at Apex. As many do, he comes from a business owner background himself, having bought, built, and sold several businesses. Wayne’s worked in everything from manufacturing and distribution to agribusiness to SaaS to real estate.

How It Started

Wayne grew up on a small farm and so was no stranger to odd jobs. His mother even acted as an agent to get him weed-pulling gigs. When he got through college he started out in Fortune 500 corporate America but found out pretty quickly it wasn’t for him.

Instead, he picked up an MBA en route to, along with his brother, buying his father out of a family business which he then proceeded to grow with his partners from 25 employees to over 600. He exited in 2010.

How It’s Going

When asked why he wants to be a broker, Wayne confesses that he loves the art of the deal. “I have been so blessed to work with so many terrific people and to have been in and around deals of many sizes across many industries. I want to share the knowledge I’ve gained to help make others’ dreams come true, be it buying or selling a business.”

Tips

So, even though he’s new to business brokering, Wayne’s not new to buying and selling businesses. We asked for his tips for buyers:

  1. Be patient. The right deal for you is out there. The hurry-up offense doesn’t end well in this scenario.
  2. Think outside the box. Don’t look at what a business is doing now. Look at what it could do. You’re buying tomorrow’s opportunities, not yesterday’s or today’s.
  3. Identify your passion/dream. What is it that you are really passionate about or want to do? The better you can identify that and match it to an opportunity, the better long-term result you’re going to have.
  4. Do NOT buy something “just for the money.” You’re always going to be happier pursuing a passion or dream (See #3). If you’re just doing it for the money, how is it any different from a job?

He’s got tips for sellers too:

  1. Know when it’s time to fold ‘em. Some people chase a “peak” selling point only to miss it and the tremendous amount of value they worked for.
  2. Be prepared well in advance of a sale with SOPs, clean books, customer contracts, and a well-trained team.
  3. Be replaceable. Selling a job is a much harder proposition than selling a business.
  4. Be open to creative deal structures. If you’re fixated on only one possible outcome, you may limit what you can get.

When he’s not meeting clients, Wayne is spending time with his wife Kelly or jamming on the bass guitar.

Can’t get enough Wayne? You can listen to his podcast appearance here.

4 Virtues Your Business Broker Should Possess

VirtueVirtue is a key part of living a useful and rewarding life. Not only are there many virtues any of us can work to obtain, there are levels of those virtues that allow us to always keep pushing and improving over the whole of our lives. Just as some virtues, for example, patience, are particularly important for parents, so too are others for business brokers. In this article we are going to highlight four in particular (though brokers need more than these four to close most deals!).

Fortitude

A broker has to have the ability to keep going. On the podcast we recently noted that a transaction could have as many as 500 points of contact for a broker, whether that point of contact is a 90 second response to an email or a 90 minute phone call to calm nerves. The broker isn’t just responsible for keeping himself going all the way through a transaction, he needs to keep his client and the counterparty in the game too. 

This fortitude is often expressed in a calm resolve that doesn’t lead to panic at obstacles, but rather focuses on solutions.

Justice

A broker isn’t interested in everyone feeling completely happy walking away from a transaction, because it’s often impossible to get everyone everything he/she wanted. But a broker should be interested in having everyone walk away from a transaction feeling that they were treated fairly and equitably throughout the process.

A broker doesn’t want to hide anything from a counterparty or aid his client in hiding anything. A just broker takes pride in leaving a legacy of integrity through every transaction.

Prudence

Prudence keeps a broker and his clients on an even keel. It means not overreacting to adverse news, not panicking when a large obstacle suddenly appears, not allowing ultimatums to be sent in emotional moments.

Prudence also discourages unnecessary intermediaries or “experts” who can just as often destroy and blow up a transaction while they are claiming to be the one necessary part of it. Brokers try to be the neutral party in the room, offering context and advice, but not urging decisions one way or the other.

Hope

It may sound a bit cheesy, but all the best brokers have a solid supply of hope in their lockers. This isn’t about fake cheerleading or fake smiles, but about keeping a positive mindset and attitude, with a “let’s move forward” tendency. 

Interestingly, hope is contagious, so a hopeful broker often shares that with his client and even the counterparty: “we are going to get to the finish line together.”

While we are proud of the experience in our office, we’re also proud of the mosaic of virtues we hold as a team that make us better brokers and better servants for our clients. If you’re looking for brokers with these virtues, give us a call.

Know Your Broker: Doug Hubler

Doug HublerDoug Hubler has been a broker for over two decades now, so you might be forgiven for forgetting he had a whole other life before he ever started selling businesses, a life that took him all around the Midwest and up the ranks in the financial world.

Doug’s degree was in finance, so a job with GE Capital was a great opportunity out of the gates and he stayed with them for 14 years, going to Dallas, then Denver, then on to Chicago, where he made a switch to Ford Credit, once again heading back to Colorado (this time to Colorado Springs) to help Ford open up an office under the name Fairlane Credit. But three years later, realizing that not coming up in the auto business or with Ford family connections made it difficult to get things done, he decided to come back to Kansas City and start a remodeling business. Doug admits that back then he didn’t know you could buy a business instead of building one.

But those of you who’ve had experience know that the remodeling business isn’t an easy one, and a couple bad situations later, one with a subcontractor and one with a customer, Doug decided the remodeling business was probably not for him, and decided to see what was available out there.

Want Ads

Younger people will need to ask their elders about these things called “want ads” but there used to be such a thing in printed newspapers, and in between the pages of the Kansas City Star was a sales job for Sunbelt Business Brokers. It had all the expected verbiage of such an ad, including “unlimited earning potential” and “make your own hours.” With a young family to support, Doug grabbed the opportunity.

The big problem? Doug joined in mid-2001 and September 11th happened later that year. All business transactions were paralyzed and for a while, no one was thinking about buying or selling anything. For business brokers, it’s all about surviving your first year or two. That time allows you to build up rapport and a network, and a pipeline that you can begin to harvest in good time. But Doug held on, then thrived, and by 2005 he became a manager at Sunbelt and by 2010 he was in a position to buy the franchise.

Apex Begins

While the franchise model may have made more sense in the early days of Apex, Doug decided to go an independent direction which would allow him to do some marketing and outreach that made more sense in the local market. Since then Apex has gone from strength to strength and is one of the first names people turn to in the area when considering a business transaction in the Main Street and Middle Market sectors.

When he’s not leading the team at Apex (or trying to recruit new team members), Doug keeps busy with his wife, three children, and two grandchildren. He also enjoys acrylic abstract painting, something he does fairly regularly (check out some of his work on Instagram) as an outlet for his own thoughts about what’s going on in the world. When asked about what he enjoys the most about what he does, he responded, “What gets me to come to the office every day is working with a great team of brokers, collaborating and strategizing on their specific deals. Those deals often end up with a seller reaching his/her ultimate retirement goal, and a buyer starting a brand new adventure.”

Doug is always looking for the next Doug Hubler. He can’t put a want ad in the newspaper anymore, so feel free to call us instead!

Choose a Business Advisor, Not Just a Broker

Choose a Business Advisor, Not Just a BrokerOf course here at Apex Business Advisors we are business brokers. We go to the business broker conferences, we have the business broker credentials, and we probably have some business broker t-shirts or mugs lying around here somewhere. But if you’re looking to buy or sell a business, a broker is the minimum you need. What you really want is a business advisor. Let’s talk about what that means.

What a Business Broker Does

At a basic level a broker is defined as someone who collects information from you so that he/she can list your business. But as we’ve spoken about in so many articles, that’s only one part of the beginning of the process.

What a Business Advisor Does

As we mentioned in our “day in the life” article, business advisors very rarely have a typical day. We are often working on different batches of activities for our clients. They can fall into a few different categories. Let’s discuss a few.

Information Analysis

It’s one thing to collect information from a buyer or seller, it’s another thing to understand what that information means, especially if a client is in an unusual business category. An advisor is going to look at all that information, make notes, and come back with questions. Some of those might be:

  • Why there are certain trends in the books (good and bad)
  • Where are tax documents (if any are missing/never filed)
  • What the legal status is of the company and how is the ownership distributed
  • What’s the status of payables and receivables
  • If there is paperwork substantiating any important decisions in recent years

Sale Prep

A business advisor has to get a business ready to go to market, and very rarely do business owners come into our office and plunk a business down that’s immediately ready to sell (though we would LOVE that). An advisor is going to look closely at:

  • Does the valuation make sense for the business and the marketplace?
  • What is the situation with key employees and employee turnover in general?

He/she will also look at current SDE and how to improve profitability and curb appeal of the business by ensuring there are manuals and systems in place.

Another part of sale prep that a business advisor is always doing is cultivating an engaged and serious pool of buyers and sellers so that when the right opportunities come along, making the connection happens quickly. Here in the office we’ve often seen advisors with great lists get genuine offers within hours of learning about a new opportunity via an email blast.

Confidentiality and Negotiation

Most business owners do not come into the process with multiple transaction experiences nor do they necessarily go on to have more after working with us. Very often a business sale is the largest business transaction of their lives, and despite those high stakes, clients can fail to trust the professionals who deal with it every day, multiple times a day. Two big client failures (when they happen) are in confidentiality and negotiation.

Business owners don’t realize that confidentiality is key in transactions, not just customer-facing confidentiality, but internal, employee-focused confidentiality. Deals have disintegrated in front of everyone’s eyes because this wasn’t respected.

Negotiation is particularly important because a business advisor has no emotional attachment to a business that will lead to him/her acting irrationally in a negotiating situation. Not only does this objectivity help in the actual negotiations, it helps before that even starts, as advisors help craft a negotiation strategy based on valuation, the client’s needs and wants, the realities of the marketplace, and the thinking and attitudes of the counterparty.

Business advisors also have experience, not just their own, but also those of their peers that they can consult who have been in similar situations and can then crowdsource that wisdom to the client’s benefits. No matter how well connected or networked a client is, he/she won’t have that specific and targeted (often even industry-specific) experience at his beck and call.

The bottom line? A broker might help you sell a business, but an advisor is going to help you do it for the best price and help manage expectation and the experience along the way.

We’re Apex Business Advisors for a reason. We’d love to offer that advice to you. Give us a shout!

Know Your Broker: Andy Cavanaugh

Andy CavanaughAndy Cavanaugh has had a taste for running his own businesses since his teenage years, when he was mowing yards for cash.  He wasn’t certain that was going to be his career path, however, and after an undergraduate degree in business and an MBA from UMKC he took the corporate path for a while.  But that life never really took with him, especially when trips took him away from his wife and two daughters and even more so when he was told he might need to be on the lookout for an email on a weekend evening, and possibly respond right away.  

He diversified into doing some tech development, consulting, and even running restaurants.  His last business was a franchise that he sold after running it for ten years.  He wasn’t thrilled with the franchisor and felt it was time to move on.  The level the business was at wasn’t a good fit for us here at Apex so Andy ended up selling it himself, learning a new the lessons we see every day here as brokers.

He had three buyers look at the business and had takeaways from the first two that backed out that helped him get to the finish line with the final buyer:

  • The first buyer was going to buy the business “for his daughter” but after two months of emails and phone calls, the daughter was nowhere in sight (Lesson: get all the stakeholders in the room before you can take a deal seriously).
  • The second buyer had some money to put down, but didn’t seem too interested in understanding the fundamentals of the business (Lesson: make sure there is alignment between buyer and seller regarding the opportunity).
  • The final buyer seemed to be a tire kicker, with 20 questions right off the bat, but ultimately he got serious and ended up buying the business (Lesson: don’t be scared off by a raft of questions; even if this person doesn’t end up being serious you’ll have those answers for someone else).

Andy sold the business this year, which means that he experienced what many business owners could never have foreseen: months of operating during Covid-19.  That experience taught him a lot, but now that he’s a broker he has a new respect for small business owners who toughed it out and made it work through an end-times scenario.

Having been a business owner also means he can have a frank conversation about best business practices.  When he was looking over some owner benefit items from a potential client recently he got curious about a one-time $7,000 charge for “building enhancements.”  The seller said those were for his wife’s cosmetic surgery.  While this might qualify as an “enhancement” it certainly wasn’t on the building and isn’t anything a buyer wants to see.

Having been the less seasoned business owner who ran too many personal expenses through the business in his early days, Andy told him that what’s done is done, as those charges were from 2019, but that the cleaner the books are, the better price a business will fetch (and the sooner it will sell).

Recently Andy also had an interesting conversation with a seller who wanted to know why Andy wasn’t pursuing things with a certain buyer.  “She doesn’t like the way your building faces, so we need to move on.”  The seller was upset and took Andy to task for not “selling his business.”  After hearing him out, Andy asked if the seller was willing to turn the building so that it faced South instead of West (what the buyer was interested in).  The seller started to realize Andy’s point and replied, “No.”  Andy pointed out that there are dozens of potential buyers who are fine with the current building’s orientation and those are the people we need to focus on, not the people who have problems with the business that cannot be fixed.  

When he’s not spending more time with his family to make up for all that travel in his consulting days, Andy can be spotted, like many of us, at Chiefs and Royals games.

Know Your Broker: Ryan Wenrich

Ryan WenrichHaving been a business owner multiple times, Ryan Wenrich is another one of our brokers here at Apex for whom business ownership isn’t a theory, but a way of life.

Ryan was born and raised in Garden City, Kansas, but had plans of living in a completely different world.  His undergraduate degree was in finance and international business, with some study abroad time in Japan.  He had planned to return there to start work and a career, but there was a girl, and she had no plans in Japan.  He made the decision to stay stateside.

Without a corporate career to build, Ryan decided to buy some restaurants from his father.  His dad had been a CPA and to diversify his income had bought some restaurants as Ryan was growing up.  Ryan managed to talk a brother into going in with him on it.  They had some early success and before he knew it, Ryan had restaurants, a property management company, an accounting firm, and even a florist shop!  He was serving on multiple boards and felt spread a mile wide and an inch deep.  He made the decision to scale back a lot.

Most of the businesses got sold but some of them were simply closed and with all that restaurant experience he took on a role as Director of Food and Beverage for a local Kansas City business with over 60 different food and beverage concepts.  While he enjoyed the work, when Covid-19 hit, he was let go right away and he pondered what he would do next.

We had actually helped him sell a business some years ago and he had kept in touch with us.  Knowing we are always looking for solid team members, Ryan reached out to have a discussion.  What he loved about the possibility of brokering was the chance to exercise his entrepreneurial muscles: he would get to look at all kinds of businesses and talk with owners, but he would also be back in business ownership, in a way, by developing his broker practice.

Though he is a newer member of the team he’s already got some great stories.  One of them included a deal that almost fell apart at the last moment.  The buyer needed a license in order to operate the business he was purchasing and during the diligence process it became clear that he would not be able to obtain the license, which then affected the amount of the loan the bank was willing to finance.  Ryan got everyone back to the table and after a friend of the buyer who could obtain the license was brought in and cut into the deal, and the seller agreed to carry the financing that the bank would not, the deal went through.  “It’s all about getting everyone crystal clear about what they want to achieve from the transaction,” Ryan noted.

On the other end of the spectrum, before deals are even in the works, Ryan finds that a lot of owners have unrealistic expectations of what their business will fetch in the marketplace.  As we always say, a business is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and by the time you get to a realistic valuation and the tax implications, a lot of sellers can get discouraged and say, “Well, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing now and earn this money.”  At that point Ryan tries to get to the root of the issue by asking what’ll be different X years from now if they keep on that path.  A business either sells or closes, and given that 99% of business owners have never done exit planning, sometimes our first conversations with them can be a difficult serving of hard truths.

While he’s done a few deals with dental and optometry practices, Ryan is resisting a specific niche: “I’m a generalist and want to see every type of business that’s out there.”

When he’s not working with buyers and sellers in KC he’s at his home in Topeka where his eight year-old daughter lives. What time he has after that he likes to spend outdoors: skiing, sailing, snowboarding, kayaking, mountain biking, and trail running.

Know Your Broker: Chuck Campbell

When Chuck Campbell worked on his first deal at Apex, his client got seven offers in the first four days.  We tried to remind him that this wasn’t how every deal was going to go, but Chuck knew that instinctively.  Even though he’s one of our newer brokers, he’s been preparing to be a broker for many years by his career trajectory.

Chuck got a degree in business administration from KU before getting a Masters in Real Estate finance from UMKC.  After a stint at Marion Labs he went on to work at Loch Lloyd, where he helped create a neighborhood house-by-house.  Chuck loved interacting with buyers, builders, architects and creating a community that mattered.

He moved onto what seemed to be an exciting venture: supervising a beta version of a factory that hoped to create a new industry standard.  Once that beta was perfected, the strategy for building more in other locations around the US would be his main task.  As it turned out, the beta never achieved the new standard it hoped to and Chuck learned a valuable lesson.  One of the major backers of the project had just had a very successful exit and fell into the fallacy that many business owners do: well, since I sold this business, I can do pretty much any business now!  It’s much more humbling (but more realistic) to realize that success in a business venture only means that: you were successful in that venture.  You’ve got to do your due diligence and put forth the effort for anything else that follows.

He came to Apex actually looking to buy a business, but in the middle of the first conversation, realized it might make more sense to get on the other side of the transaction and become a broker himself.  He jumped in with both feet, joining the IBBA and completing his CBI certification.  He’s been off to the races since.  

When asked if there was a niche he preferred, he noted that he prefers to stay agnostic: “All businesses operate on the same principles, and for me, it’s closing deals I love, not just deals in certain industries.”  

One way those deals happen is by old fashioned face-to-face conversations.  Chuck really enjoys taking the time to get to know someone and seeing how he can help or offer connections to others in his network.  That said, sometimes even the best built relationships won’t get a deal to the finish line.  Chuck recalls one particular case in which he thought he had found the perfect business marriage.  In fact, he had built all the bridges himself.  He identified who the best acquirer was for a business, developed a relationship with someone who would be able to make an introduction, and started a conversation.  But when it came time to put together an LOI, the buyer made a terrible offer, far below asking and a lot in highly complicated earnouts.  Despite Chuck explaining that this wouldn’t go over well with the seller, the buyer came back with an even worse second offer.  Needless to say the deal fell apart, but Chuck had learned two valuable lessons:

  • A deal is never done no matter how “good it feels” during the process
  • Be wary of negotiators who need to prove how clever they are: they often out-think themselves more than anyone else

Chuck enjoys travel, entertaining, and golf.  He occasionally heads down to Texas to visit his children, who live in Dallas and Austin, otherwise he and his significant other like to head to La Quinta, California, where they have a vacation home.

When asked his advice for buyers and sellers, Chuck said, “Find balance between your head, heart, and gut, and don’t lose perspective on the overall objective.”  As for Chuck’s overall objective, he says it’s always to make sure that his clients feel proud for trusting him with one of the biggest events of their lives: a business transaction.  Earning that trust every day is what gets him up, genuinely excited, every morning.

If you’d like to learn more about our awesome team of brokers, you can read their profiles in our Know Your Broker series.  You can speak with any one of them by giving us a call today!

Know Your Broker: A Day in the Life

Know Your Broker: A Day in the LifeNot everyone has a good sense of what we Kansas City brokers “do” in getting our buyers and sellers to a successful conclusion. Yes, they know we have to send a lot of emails and make a lot of phone calls. But what else? In this article we’ll give you a bit of a look at a hypothetical “day in the life” of one of Kansas City business brokers.

Finding and Qualifying Buyers

Each broker has his/her unique network of buyers that has been cultivated over the years. The best brokers will have also taken the time to qualify those buyers by making sure they aren’t just lookers or tire-kickers. We make sure that our buyer list is as qualified as possible, so that no one wastes their time. We may keep that buyer network “in the loop” through emails, forecasts, or even blogs like this one. 

We want to stay top of mind for those looking for businesses for sale in Kansas and Missouri (we are also active throughout the Midwest). So when we get a new business listing that we like, we send it out to our network. We get new listings all the time, so these touch points happen regularly. On any given  day we might be communicating with this network or bringing it up in discussions in our ongoing networking and other meetings in the community.

First Steps

Once buyers display genuine interest in a particular business due to an abstract we’ve provided (confidentiality is important so we don’t get too detailed), we will then get a non-disclosure/confidentiality agreement from them. This allows them to get the information they need in order to make a serious decision to move forward. We want the buyer to meet with and interview the seller as soon as possible to determine if the business is the right fit for the buyer.

If there is interest, it is important to move to an  Offer to Purchase to solidify their position ahead of other potential buyers. In this phase we get the seller to disclose high-level detail and not getting too deep into the weeds with specific and detailed questions. That’s the thing to do during due diligence.  

Diligence

After an acceptance of an offer, emails and phone calls really get rolling. We will arrange for the buyer and seller to meet and facilitate information gathering necessary for diligence and deal financing. At this stage we wear different hats, depending on the email, phone call, or conversation:

  • Mentor: Many clients are first time buyers or sellers and really don’t know how the process works. We have to tell/show them. 
  • Coach: Just as there are certain exercises and drills that sports players have to do in order to get to game day, there are certain documents and legal issues that need to be addressed prior to closing day. We gently prod, but sometimes have to be less gentle when people are zoning out/procrastinating.
  • Professional: Some clients will need help with issues like tax planning, obtaining financing, or negotiating real estate. We have seasoned professional contacts that we can refer people to.
  • Friend: We will often field a panicked phone call or respond to a troubling email with empathy. Many of us have owned businesses before and we know that seller remorse is real (and how to deal with it). Again, each broker brings his/her own particular personality to the table to deal with specific situations.

Every broker will tell you that on any given day we’re wearing at least one of these hats at any moment.

Closing

There are various parties that will sometimes do their best (or maybe their worst?) to derail transactions. They may do this consciously or unconsciously, but whatever their mentality, it’s our job to mitigate their destructiveness.

Our role is to clearly and professionally deal with roadblocks, obstacles, and any other challenges that can keep these two parties, buyer and seller, from walking away happy in a transaction, both getting (mostly) what they wanted. Our brokers’ secret weapon is experience. This is not the first time we’ve dealt with these challenges and we have plenty of stories to tell about unbelievable last-minute problems that nearly sunk great deals. But we dealt with them in a timely manner, with patience, and as noted above, with empathy. We are closing deals on any given day and preventing them from going astray.

As you can see, our days can vary, but there’s a consistent theme: helping our clients get to a successful finish. We happen to be good at that. If you want to learn more, give us a call!

Know Your Broker: Debbie Small

From the very start of her career, Debbie Small was interested in small businesses and entrepreneurship. Even as a child she confessed, “I didn’t read Glamour magazine like my girlfriends, I read Entrepreneur!” In college, she put those lessons to work and created Party Pizzaz, a business that sold unique party favors to sororities and fraternities at Kansas State University. She spent the first decade after college as a Senior Media Consultant for Time Warner producing comprehensive television advertising campaigns for small business owners and placing them on cable networks. She found the work fulfilling and loved the opportunity to consult with business owners to assess their needs and grow their revenue.

Due to her experience, she is recognized as one of the top brokers in the country!

Utilizing her core strength of working with business owners, Debbie joined the Apex team in 2004. She’s now worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions industry for nearly 20 years. While she’s sold hundreds of businesses in a variety of industries, she’s still the same friendly and approachable person that she was when she first started as a broker. Her longevity and seniority with Apex have given her extensive experience helping business sellers and buyers navigate the numerous complexities of selling and buying a business. She’s helped many sellers avoid challenges that can arise when cashing out of one of their largest assets, their company.

Due to her extensive experience, work ethic, and customer focus, she is consistently recognized as one of the top business brokers in the country!

Debbie was named Apex Broker of the Year & the International Business Broker Association’s Platinum Chairman’s Circle Winner!

When asked why she loves selling companies, Debbie replied, “there is nothing better than helping make business buyers’ and sellers’ dreams come true! It’s the American dream to own your own business, to be an entrepreneur, and then sell your company, reaping the financial rewards of all your hard work!”

She went on to share the example of a manufacturing company she sold that was generating $1M a year in profit. Within five years of buying the business, the buyer had tripled his cash flow profit on the company and came back to Debbie to sell the operation. She said that “it is difficult to find that kind of return on investment anywhere else including the stock market, real estate investments, or securities.”

Debbie noted that buyers can face challenges when trying to acquire a company. “The buying environment is very competitive.” Debbie has thousands of buyer confidentiality agreements on file with only a small percentage of buyers actually acquiring a business. Savvy buyers become the ‘squeaky wheel’ with her to get her attention and rise to the top. She advises buyers that “there are too many well-capitalized buyers in the market to play the waiting game on making an offer. A solid business will be snatched up immediately! It is best to come to terms with the seller on an accepted purchase price prior to doing a deep dive into due diligence.”

Along with working as a broker, Debbie loves being a mom to a teenage son. She also owns and manages residential real estate properties. Even now, as Apex’s Broker of the Year, she still remains as driven to achieve as she did when she was that young girl flipping through business magazines!

To learn more about Debbie’s broker services, feel free to contact her at .

Certifications Matter: What Do All Those Letters Mean After Our Names?

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Photo Credit: woodenearth.com

We really have a wealth of experience in our office here at APEX.  

People come from insurance, real estate, and financial services backgrounds.

And when they become brokers they often bring Series 7, CFP, CPA, real estate, and even health and life insurance certifications and licenses with them.  

Those certifications give them added insights into transactions involving those specialties.

But we also have certifications for the brokerage industry, and so in this article, we’ll shed a little light on those.

CBI: Certified Business Intermediary

This is really an entry-level certification that can help those new to brokering gain some broader experience beyond what they may have experienced “in the trenches” working on deals. You need to:

  • Have spent three of the last ten years as a full-time broker, or
  • Have a college degree, or
  • Have equivalent work experience which can be substituted for two of the three-year requirement, and
  • You need to have taken at least 60 credit hours of courses in various aspects of brokering and transactions, and
  • Be the lead broker on three transactions in the last 12 months, and
  • Have attended at least one conference, and
  • Be a member in good standing of the IBBA (International Business Brokers Association), and
  • Swear to uphold a code of ethics, and
  • Pass an exam with at least a 70% score.

This needs to be recertified every three years, with conference attendance, a number of continuing education hours, and fees.

CM&AP: Certified Mergers & Acquisitions Professional

Some see this as an additional step beyond CBI. It’s aimed at those who are continuing to develop their mid-market transactions, and it comes with at least 40 hours of coursework, usually completed within a one-week conference.

It’s also a certification that many private equity firms pursue to better educate their principals, less for the letters and more for the education. This shows you that this certification is really of value, given that non-business brokers pursue it.

M&AMI: Mergers & Acquisitions Intermediary

This is the next step up from a CBI certification and can be seen as a compliment or a logical follow-on from a CM&AP certification.  Requirements include:

  • A CBI and 20 hours of coursework, or
  • 40 hours of coursework if not holding a CBI, and
  • Proof of three years full-time as a broker, and
  • At least three transactions in the last three years greater than or equal to $1M in value, and
  • Conference attendance

It has similar recertification requirements to the CBI, and in a nod to sensibility, you can synchronize your recertifications for the CBI with your M&AMI, meaning if you complete requirements for the M&AMI  then you’re automatically recertified as a CBI.

All of our brokers bring different approaches and experience and certifications to the table, but we all share a passion for doing deals the right way. Give us a call to see if we can help you!