The Hidden Downside of This Common Management Idea

Cross selling new products and services to your existing customers may be a great marketing strategy, but if your goal is to increase the value of your business, the added revenue may do nothing for your company’s value – and may even lower it.

In order to be acquired for a premium, consider committing to a product, service, or a bundle that does one thing well. Your aim should be to make that offering so irresistible, that an acquirer will stop at nothing to get their hands on it. This focus will help you build a team around your product or service and ultimately make your company a whole lot more attractive when it comes time to sell.

However, most companies do the opposite. They take their initial success and water it down by cross-selling additional products, leveraging their relationship with their customers to sell them merely good offerings on the back of their great product or service. The problem with wandering too far a field is that while add on products may increase your revenue, they decrease your attractiveness to a strategic acquirer. Like being asked to buy a cable package of hundreds of channels when all you want is a few, acquirers don’t like buying things they will not use and therefore often walk away from a deal where a great product has been watered down with dozens of less attractive products or service lines.

How Stelligent Lost Its Focus (and found it again)

For example, take a look at Stelligent, a company in the business of helping large enterprises automate their software delivery process. There was a time when big companies used to install their software deep, deep into operations – but the emergence of ‘The Cloud’ changed that. Employees across the globe now get access to the software they use anywhere they have access to a web browser.

Just as you might rent an apartment in a building, software developers pick one of the big cloud service providers like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or Amazon Web Services (AWS) to rent compute, storage, database, and networking resources to run their software systems. Since Azure, Google, and AWS all take a different approach to hosting, an entire industry has been created to help developers configure their software for the cloud service provider they pick.

Paul Duvall, co-founder of Stelligent, is one of the pioneers of this industry called DevOps – which is a set of organizational, culture, process, and tooling practices that accelerate effective feedback between end users to improve the value of the software that’s being delivered. Duvall started Stelligent in 2007 with his then silent partner Rob Daly. The goal was to help developers accelerate how quickly they could bring their software to market.

Stelligent was a typical consulting company, selling the time of the engineers Duvall hired on contract as his business required them.

By 2012, Stelligent had a half dozen contract workers and a few employees hovered around one million in annual revenue, as project demand ebbed and flowed. Duvall felt he was running on a treadmill. Each new project Duvall won required him to build a whole new team. Around this time, Rob Daly – who had enjoyed success starting and growing other companies – encouraged Duvall to read the book Built To Sell, where Duvall especially found tips around specialization to be most valuable.

With a focus on shifting toward even more specialization, Duvall decided to go all in on AWS.

About a year later, in 2014, Daly then joined the team as its 5th employee and would transition to CEO throughout the course of the year becoming very influential in building a team of specialists focused on helping enterprise customers.

As time went by, Stelligent began earning a name for itself as the AWS specialists. As Amazon’s cloud provider service grew in popularity, so did demand for Stelligent’s services. Over the next three years, Stelligent blossomed into a multi-million-dollar business with 30 full-time employees.

By early 2017, Denver-based HOSTING Inc. saw how quickly AWS was growing and concluded that by acquiring Stelligent, they could leapfrog their competition and become a market leader in AWS almost overnight. Later that year, HOSTING acquired Stelligent for about double what a typical consulting company would hope to command for a similar-sized business (when comparing multiples around high-growth companies in the technology sector).

The story of Stelligent is a reminder why you should focus your limited resources on becoming so good in your niche that an acquirer reasons it would take too long – or cost too much – to compete.

Most small businesses with limited cash, can only afford to get that good at solving one problem for their customers. That kind of focus is the opposite of what most sales and marketing pundits preach but it may be the one thing that will make your company irresistible to an acquirer.

Presenting alternative views is something that I routinely do with clients.  I can help you tackle these issues and also help you increase the value of your company.  Call me, Frank Mancieri at (401) 651-1585 or email him at frank@gtGrowth.com.

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Why You Should Exit While You’re Ahead – A Cautionary Tale

The very best time to sell your business is when someone wants to buy it. While it can be tempting to continue to grow your business forever – particularly when things are going well — that decision comes with a significant downside.

Take a look at the story of Rand Fishkin who started his entrepreneurial journey when he joined his mother’s marketing agency as a partner:

When Fishkin realized how much his Mom’s customers were struggling to get Google to display their company in a search, he immersed himself in the emerging field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

He began writing a blog called SEO Moz, which led to an SEO consulting and software company. By 2007, Moz was generating revenue of $850,000 a year when Fishkin decided to drop consulting to become solely a software business.

The company began to grow 100% per year and by 2010, Moz was generating around $650,000 in revenue each month, attracting the attention of Brian Halligan, co-founder of marketing software giant HubSpot.

HubSpot wanted to buy Moz and was offering $25 million of cash and HubSpot stock – an offer almost five times Moz’s $5.7 million of revenue in its last complete financial year.

But Fishkin wasn’t satisfied. He believed a fast growth Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company was worth four times future revenue and was confident Moz would hit $10 million by the end of that year.

Fishkin counter offered, saying he would be willing to accept $40 million. HubSpot declined.

New Plans Ahead

Instead of selling Moz, Fishkin raised a round of venture capital and started to diversify away from SEO tools into a broader set of marketing offerings. The further Moz veered away from its core in SEO, the more money his business began to lose.

By 2014, Moz was in full crisis mode, and Fishkin had begun suffering from a bout of depression. He decided to step down as CEO, describing his resignation as a “lot of sadness, a heap of regrets and a smattering of resentment.”

Fishkin became a minority shareholder in a company he no longer controlled where the venture capitalists had preferred rights in a liquidity event.

A Lesson Learned

In the ensuing years since turning down Halligan’s offer, HubSpot went public on the New York Stock Exchange and had been worth nearly 20 times as much.

Fishkin revealed that today, his liquid net worth is $800,000 – much of which he was about to spend on elder care for his grandparents. The Moz stock he holds may or may not have value after the venture capitalist get their preferred return. At the same time, Fishkin estimated HubSpot’s offer of $25 million in cash and HubSpot stock would now be worth more than $100 million (based on the increased value of HubSpot’s stock).

Fishkin’s tale is a cautionary reminder why the best time to sell your company is when someone wants to buy it – a story that is shared in his book Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World.

What if an offer was made for your business today? Would you be ready to sell? Would you regret if you said no?  Frank Mancieri & GT Growth & Transition Strategies can help you prepare for the day an offer is presented and help you increase the value of your company until that time.  Call Frank at (401) 651-1585 or email him at frank@gtGrowth.com.

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5 Reasons Why Your Business Is Too Dependent On You

If you were to draw a picture that visually represents your role in your business, what would it look like? Are you at the top of an organizational chart, or stuck in the middle of your business like a hub in a bicycle wheel? 

The Hub & Spoke model is a drive that shows how dependent your business is on you for survival. The Hub & Spoke model can only be as strong as the hub. The moment the hub is overwhelmed, the entire system fails. Acquirers generally avoid these types of managed businesses because they understand the dangers of buying a company too dependent on the owner.

Here’s a list of the 5 top warning signs that show your business could be too dependent on you.

1. You are the only signing authority

Most business owners give themselves final authority… all the time. But what happens if you’re away for a couple of days and an important supplier needs to be paid? Consider giving an employee signing authority for an amount you’re comfortable with, and then change the mailing address on your bank statements so they are mailed to your home (not the office). That way, you can review everything coming out of your account and make sure the privilege isn’t being abused. 

2. Your revenue is flat when compared to last year’s 

Flat revenue from one year to the next can be a sign you are a hub in a hub-and-spoke model. Like forcing water through a hose, you have only so much capacity. No matter how efficient you are, every business dependent on its owner reaches capacity at some point. Consider narrowing your product and service line by eliminating technically complex offers that require your personal involvement, and instead focus on selling fewer things to more people. 

3. Your vacations… don’t feel like vacations

If you spend your vacations dispatching orders from your mobile, it’s time to cut the tether. Start by taking one day off and seeing how your company does without you. Build systems for failure points. Work up to a point where you can take a few weeks off without affecting your business. 

4. You know all of your customers by first name 

It’s good to have the pulse of your market, but knowing every single customer by first name can be a sign that you’re relying too heavily on your personal relationships being the glue that holds your business together. Consider replacing yourself as a rain maker by hiring a sales team, and as inefficient as it seems, have a trusted employee shadow you when you meet customers so over time your customers get used to dealing with someone else. 

5. You get cc’d on more than five e-mails a day 

Employees, customers and suppliers constantly cc’ing you on e-mails can be a sign that they are looking for your tacit approval or that you have not made clear when you want to be involved in their work. Start by asking your employees to stop using the cc line in an e-mail; ask them to add you to the “to” line if you really must be made aware of something – and only if they need a specific action from you. 

Once you understand how dependent your business is on you, you can take action to create a business that not only can exist, but can thrive without you.  This is one important factor in assessing the value of a business.  To learn more about this and other factors affecting the value of the your business, please contact Frank Mancieri, Chief Growth Advisor, GT Growth & Transition Strategies, LLC, (401) 651-1585, frank@gtGrowth.com, www.gtGrowth.com.

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Run Your Private Company Like It’s Public

Run Your Private Company Like It’s Public Small businesses often operate as if their sole purpose is to fund the owner’s lifestyle, but the most valuable companies are run with financial rigor. You may be years from wanting to sell, but starting to formalize your operations now will help you predict the future of your business. Then, when it does come time to sell, you’ll fetch more for what you’ve built because acquirers pay the most for companies when they are less risky. There’s nothing that gives a buyer more confidence than clean books and proper record keeping.

Jay Steinfeld is a great example of how to run a business like a public company. Steinfeld studied Accounting at the University of Texas and joined KPMG after college. His wife owned a small retail store selling blinds and window treatments. The store was successful, but by 1994, Steinfeld had noticed a little Seattle-based outfit that was trying to hawk books online. This company with the peculiar name “Amazon.com” started to succeed in selling books online and Steinfeld wondered if he could get consumers to buy blinds online.

Soon after, Blinds.com was born.

Unlike many of the first-generation online companies that were run with little financial controls, Steinfeld grew Blinds.com like an accountant. He was determined to run his business with the same rigor as a publicly listed company. He built an experienced management team and took the unusual step of assembling an outside board of directors even though Blinds.com was private and Steinfeld owned all of the stock.

The board met quarterly and each of Steinfeld’s senior managers were asked to prepare and deliver formal presentations to his board. Steinfeld hired a big four firm to complete a full audit of his financials each year even though all he needed to satisfy Uncle Sam was a simple tax return.

By 2014, Blinds.com had grown to 175 employees and, at more than $100 million in revenue, was the largest online retailer of blinds in America. Even though Home Depot had close to $90 billion in sales at the time, Blinds.com was outperforming them in its tiny niche, which – coupled with their fastidious bookkeeping — made Blinds.com absolutely irresistible to Home Depot. On January 23, 2014, Home Depot announced its acquisition of Blinds.com.

Running your business like it’s public will make it more predictable as you grow and ultimately a whole lot more attractive when it comes time to sell.

If you would like to learn more about how to run your company like it’s a public company and other ways to increase your company value, please contact Frank Mancieri, (401) 651-1585, frank@gtGrowth.com, www.gtGrowth.com. Thank you for reading this newsletter!

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Five (5) Ways to Package Your Service

If you’re a service provider, it can be difficult to separate the service from the provider. Your customers might demand you, which means you can’t scale your business beyond the number of hours you’re willing to work.

In the absence of a point of differentiation, offering generic services leads consumers to evaluate the people doing the work. Referring to your service in a generic way e.g. “graphic design services”, or “lawn care services”, means you’re lumping yourself in with the other providers of the same service.  A quick scan of your LinkedIn profile will reveal that you are likely an expert in your industry which means prospective customers will often demand you, rather than your underlings.

The secret to overcoming this dilemma is to “productize” your service. This involves marketing your service as is if it were a thing. When people start buying the thing, rather than the people providing it, you can grow well beyond the hours in your day. 

Proctor & Gamble is the granddaddy of product marketing, so grab a tube of Crest toothpaste and follow their process for productizing your service:

  1. Name it

Crest is the brand name and it is always written in the same font. Having a consistent name avoids the generic, commoditized category label of “toothpaste.” Do you have a catchy name for your service?

  • Write instructions for use

Crest gives customers instructions for best teeth cleaning results. If you want your service to feel more like a product, include instructions for getting the most out of your service.

  • Provide a caution

The Crest bottle tells you that the product is “harmful if swallowed.” Provide a caution label or a set of “terms and conditions” to explain things to avoid when using your service.

  • Barcode it

The barcode includes pricing information. Publishing a price and being consistent will make your service seem more like a product.

  • Copyright it

P&G includes a very small symbol on its bottle to make it clear the company is protecting its ideas. Do you Trademark the terms you use to describe your service?

Productizing your service is the first step to separating your service from its provider and the key to getting your service company to run without you. Ultimately, this will help increase the value of your business.

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The Big Thing Holding Back Small Businesses

Small businesses stay small either by choice, or because they start chasing growth in the wrong places.

When you strip away the layers, it all comes down to darts.

Imagine a dart board with a bull’s eye and around it is a series of wider and wider circles. The bull’s eye is where the people just like you hang out. They are the people (or businesses) who feel the problem your company set out to solve. They are usually your first customers and raving fans.

The further you go outside of your bull’s eye, the less these prospects feel your exact pain.

Why do entrepreneurs go outside their bull’s eye? When you’re a self-funded start-up, you’re scrambling — just trying to bootstrap your way to a company. You don’t have a lot of money to invest in formal marketing, so you rely on word-of-mouth and referrals, which also means you’re often talking to people outside of your bull’s eye.

These prospects may experience the problem you’re trying to solve, but they are slightly different (that’s why they’re not in the bull’s eye). They like your product or service but want a little tweak to it: a customization or a different version. You don’t see the harm in making a change and start to adjust your offering to accommodate the customers outside your bull’s eye.

Your new (slightly-outside-the-bull’s-eye) customer tells her friends about how great you are, and how willing you are to listen to your customers, and she refers a prospect even further outside your bull’s eye who again, asks you for another tweak.

Making these changes to your original product or service to accommodate customers outside your bull’s eye seems innocent enough at the time, but eventually, it undermines your growth.

Why?

To grow a business beyond your efforts, you need to hire employees (or build technology) that can do the work. As humans, we are usually lousy at doing something for the first time, but can master most things with enough repetition.

Think about teaching a toddler how to tie his shoes. The first few attempts are usually rough. It’s a new skill and their tiny hands have never had to make bunny ears before. You break it down for the child and show them how to master each step. It can take weeks, but eventually they get it. As adults, we don’t even think about tying our shoes — we’ve mastered the skill by repetition.

The same is true of your employees. They need time to truly master the delivery or your product or service. Every time you make a tweak for a new customer outside your bull’s eye, it’s like changing the instructions on tying your shoe laces. It’s disorienting for everyone and leads to substandard products and services, which customers receive and are less than enthusiastic about.

Having unhappy customers often leads the owner to step in and “fix” the problem. While some founders can indeed create the customized product or service for their new, outside-the-bull’s-eye customer, they are making their company reliant on them in the process.

A business reliant on its founder will stall out at a handful of employees when the founder runs out of hours in the day.

The secret to avoiding this plateau, and continuing to grow, is to be brutally disciplined in only serving customers in your bull’s eye for much longer than it feels natural. When you want to grow, the temptation is take whatever revenue you can, but the kind of growth that comes from serving customers outside your bull’s eye can be a dead end.

Keeping focused helps raise your overall business value.  To learn about this and other ways to help raise your overall business value and minimize risk, contact Frank Mancieri at (401) 651-1585 or frank@gtGrowth.com.

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The One Number Owners Need to Start Focusing On

The value of your business comes down to a single equation: what multiple of your profit is an acquirer willing to pay for your company.

profit × multiple = value

Most owners believe the best way to improve the value of their company is to make more profit – so, they find ways to sell more and more. As experts in their industry, it’s natural that customers want to personally engage with them, which means spending more time on the phones, on the road and face-to-face to increase sales.

With this model, a company can slightly grow, but the owner’s life becomes much more difficult: Customers demand more time and service, employees begin to burn out, and soon it feels like there are not enough hours in the day. Revenue flat lines, health can suffer and relationships get strained – all from working too much. Does this feel familiar?

If you’re spending too much time and effort on increasing your profit, you could find yourself diminishing the overall value of your business. The solution? Focus on driving your multiple (the other number in the equation above). Driving your multiple will ultimately help you grow your company value, improve your profit and reclaim your freedom.

What Drives Your Multiple

Differentiated Market Position

Acquirers only buy what they could not easily create, so expect to be paid more if you have close to a monopoly on what you sell and/or are one of the few companies who have been licensed to provide the specific product or service in your market.


Lots of Runway

Most founders think market share is something to strive for, but in the eyes of an acquirer, it can decrease the value of your business because you’ve already sopped up most of the opportunity.


Recurring Revenue

An acquirer is going to want to know how your business will do once you leave – recurring revenue assures them that there will still be a business once the founder hits eject.


Financials

The size and profitability of your company will matter to investors. So will the quality of your bookkeeping.

The You Factor

The most valuable businesses can thrive without their owners. The inverse is also true because the most valuable businesses are masters of independence.

So, if you see yourself in any of these scenarios, it’s time to not just focus on profits, but to also focus on the risk factors that help drive business value.  If you’d like assistance in identifying the ways your company can improve its multiple (the other “number”), please contact Frank Mancieri, (401) 651-1585 or frank@gtGrowth.com for a free initial consultation.

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The Surprising Way Companies Like Netflix and Amazon Conduct Market Research

Companies like Netflix, UrthBox, and Amazon are leveraging the subscription business model to discover what their customers want next.
In a traditional business, the customer buys your product or service once, and it is up to you to try to convince them to buy again in the future. You often have no idea if they liked what they bought and what would have made them buy more, so you’re left having to guess or invest in costly market research.
In a subscription business, you have “automatic customers” who agree to purchase from you into the future, as long as you keep providing your service or product.

Long-term, direct relationship
Unlike a transactional business model, subscribers are opting into a long-term, direct relationship with you. You know who your customers are and which of your products and services they use, so you have a much better understanding of their preferences than an industry competitor relying on a traditional business model.

A subscription business gives you a direct relationship with your customers and an ability to track their preferences in real time. It’s how Netflix knows which television series to produce next and how Amazon figures out what products their Prime subscribers are dreaming of buying next.
But you don’t have to be a sophisticated media giant or billion-dollar e-tailer to track customer preferences through the subscription model. Look at subscription-based ContractorSelling.com, run by Joe Crisara. In return for a fee of $89 per month, you can subscribe and get information, tips, and advice on how to run a successful contracting business. Plumbers and electricians subscribe to ContractorSelling.com for Crisara’s insight, and as they start to read articles and contribute to the forums, Crisara can see what’s on his subscribers’ minds.

That’s important because Crisara also makes money from conferences. Seeing which articles are most popular and controversial among his members gives Crisara insight that helps when he’s picking speakers and topics for his live events.
UrthBox

For $20 a month, UrthBox offers a monthly selection of hand-picked, natural, GMO-free goods to try. UrthBox asks subscribers what they think of the products in each box and rewards them when they respond or refer a friend. Each referral earns points that the subscriber can then use in the online store.
UrthBox then offers the manufacturers of the samples a custom online portal where marketers can see how UrthBox subscribers rated each product. UrthBox uses the data to select merchandise for its online store and prominently displays the products customers like best.

One of the hidden benefits of turning customers into subscribers is the ongoing, direct nature of a subscription relationship, which means you can watch and ask your customers for feedback, ensuring they stay subscribers and buy more over time.

Creating a recurring revenue model for your business is a great way to increase company value. If you’d like some help thinking through some strategies, please contact Frank Mancieri at (401) 651-1585 or frank@gtgrowth.com.

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Creating Sticky Customers

Creating Sticky Customers

Repeat customers are the lifeblood of your business, but customers can be fickle. Here’s how to make them sticky.

In a traditional business, the customer buys your product or service once, and it is up to you to try to convince them to buy again in the future. However, in a subscription business, you have what is called an “automatic customer” who agrees to purchase from you in the future, as long as you keep providing your service or product.

Feeding Rover Automatically

One of the reasons subscribers are such attractive customers is that, once they subscribe, they become less price-sensitive. To illustrate, imagine you own a 100-pound Rottweiler that eats two hearty bowls of dog food a day. Feeding the love of your life is an expensive proposition, so you’re always on the lookout for a deal on dog food. Once every two weeks, you trudge down to the local pet supply store and cart a case of kibble home. In the meantime, if you see dog food on sale at your local grocery store, you’ll buy it. If you get a coupon for a buy-one-get-one-free offer from another store, you’ll take advantage of it.

Eventually, you get tired of last-minute trips to the store, so you subscribe to a service such as Chewy.com, headquartered in Dania Beach, Florida and Boston, Massachusetts. Now you know you’re going to get a scheduled bi-weekly shipment of dog food, and the part of your brain that scans the flyers for dog food starts to shut down, knowing that the convenience of having dog food shipped automatically far outweighs saving a few dollars on kibble.

Integration Drives Stickiness

Beyond the simple convenience of automatic service, subscribers become even more loyal when they start to integrate their subscriptions into their daily lives. Subscribers knowingly enter into an agreement in which the convenience of uninterrupted, automatic service is exchanged for their future loyalty. Rather than buying once without returning, subscribers stick around — hopefully for years, which is why subscribers drive up the value of your company so dramatically.

If you’d like to find other ways to increase the value of your business, take this 15-minute self-assessment: https://gtgrowth.com/value-builder-score.

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Exiting Tips from One of the Top 40 Under 40

Wind Mobile founder Anthony Lacavera has started 12 businesses, six of which he has exited. His exits have ranged in value from the $6 million he got for one of his recent start-ups to $1.3 billion when he sold Wind Mobile. He did it by following two key tips. 

  1. Understand what kind of company you are running

Lacavera has owned hyper-growth unicorns and lifestyle businesses and urges entrepreneurs to be clear about their long-term prospects. Lacavera started a business supplying hotels with internet access and understood the company would be a good cash generator, but would never sell for a mint. He ran the business for almost two decades and used the cash it generated to fund various other ventures. Recently, he finally sold the business, which was generating $1.5 million in pre-tax profit, for $8 million—a relatively modest 5 times earnings, which was fine by Lacavera, because it had served its purpose of funding other companies along the way.

  1. The role of CEO and owner are not the same

Lacavera encourages entrepreneurs to separate the role of CEO and business owner. Even though they may be the same person, they have different functions and, at some point, your business may be better served by separating the two roles. Entrepreneurs who are comfortable handing the reins to a professional manager may do better in the long run than those who need to control everything.

Lacavera had great success, which is visible in the fact that he has won just about every business award there is, including 2010 CEO of the Year, Top 40 Under 40, Deloitte Technology Fast 50, and Canada’s Fastest Growing Company. One of the top secrets to Lacavera’s success — knowing when to bring in a CEO to replace himself in any of his ventures.

If you’d like to discuss and strategize on your exit plans, as far out as they may be, please contact Frank Mancieri, (401) 651-1585, frank@gtGrowth.com.

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Dec – 12 The Enduring Family Business: Sustaining the Value and the Legacy

Upcoming Event
Bryant University ~ Bello Center
Tuesday, December 12, 2018 – 7:30-9:30 AM
Early Bird Price: $45,  other pricing for RI CPE credits, RI Attorney CLE credits, and Students

REGISTER HERE

The Enduring Family Business: Sustaining the Value and the Legacy

There is no more impactful way to sustain the value and legacy of a company than to position the right family members for leadership and ownership succession.  Unfortunately, statistically speaking, only 1/3 of family businesses successfully continue even through a 2nd generation.  For a multitude of reasons, sustaining value and continuing the legacy of the family business continues to be a challenge and arguably may get even tougher. In this panel discussion, you will hear from next generation family members about how they successfully grew the value and continued the legacy of their family’s business along with their insights and best practices to safeguard the business value, and prepare the next generation for a successful transition.

At The Business Value Forum on December 12th, moderator David Karofsky, will facilitate a conversation addressing how to sustain the value of a family enterprise – for the near and long terms.

Please join The Business Value Forum on May 8th for a hot breakfast, and the conversation with seasoned experts who will share their personal experiences and insights into the real impact of women on business value creation.

Register Online

 

Our Moderator:

Mr. David Karofsky

David Karofsky is a Senior Consultant with The Family Business Consulting Group, which has worked with thousands of family businesses over the past two decades, including some of the most successful and influential business families around the world, helping them to build the foundations for value creation and sustainability.

Our Panelists:

Mr. Judd Rottenberg
Principal, Long’s Jewelers

As a Principal at Long’s Jewelers, Judd Rottenberg is the third generation jeweler.  Long’s is a family-owned and operated full-service New England Jeweler with multiple stores, rooted in its 1878 founding by Massachusetts native Thomas Long.  Over the past 140 years, Long’s has become a cornerstone of the region’s luxury jewelry and timepiece market.

Mr. Andrew Salmon
Director of Network Development, Salmon Health and Retirement

In 2006, Andrew Salmon joined Salmon Health and Retirement, a broad service multi facility senior living and health organization in 2006, coming from an administrator position for a healthcare corporation.

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The Biggest Mistake Owners Make When Selling

One of the biggest mistake owners make in selling their company is being lured into a proprietary deal.

The Definition of a Proprietary Deal

Acquirers land a proprietary deal (or “prop deal”) when they convince owners to sell their businesses without creating a competitive marketplace. Acquirers running a proprietary deal know they don’t have any competition and tend to make weaker offers with more punitive terms because they know nobody else is bidding.

Many founders become the target of a proprietary deal without even knowing they have been duped. First, someone senior from the acquiring company approaches the founder, complimenting them on their business. The acquirer suggests lunch, and then high-level financials are exchanged. Soon, the owner starts going down a path that is difficult to come back from.

As the parties in a proprietary deal get to know one another, founders often share information with the acquirer that puts them in a compromised negotiation position. The interactions are set up as friendly exchanges between two industry leaders, but many founders reveal key facts in these discussions that end up being used against them when negotiations turn serious. Business owners also become more emotionally committed to selling the more resources they invest in the process and the more time they spend thinking—perhaps dreaming—of what it would mean to sell their business.

How to Avoid Getting Taken In By a Proprietary Deal

Savvy sellers avoid the proprietary deal by creating a competitive process for their company. Take for example Dan Martell, the founder of Clarity.fm, among other companies. When Martell decided to sell Clarity, he knew the likely buyer was one of five New York-based companies. Instead of negotiating with one, he invited all five to an event he hosted in New York. The five CEOs, all of whom knew one another, saw a room full of their competitors and realized that if Clarity went on the market, they would have to out-bid the other buyers in that room.

Hosting the event was Martell’s way of communicating to all the potential buyers that a proprietary deal was off the table and that if they wanted to buy Clarity, they would have to compete for it.

It’s flattering to receive a call from an executive at a company you respect. Just know that if you accept their invitation of lunch, you run the risk of becoming the latest casualty of the proprietary deal.  If you’d like to get serious about planning and preparing for a future sale of your business, please contact Frank Mancieri, frank@GTgrowth.com, 401-651-1585.

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Which Is Better, a Financial Buyer or a Strategic Buyer?

 If you decide to sell your business to an outside acquirer, you’re going to have to decide between a financial and a strategic buyer—understanding the different motivations of these two buyers can be the key to getting a good price for your business.

A financial buyer is acquiring your future profit stream, so they will evaluate your business based on how much profit it is likely to make and how reliable that profit stream is likely to be. The more profit you can convince them your company will produce, the more they will pay for your business.

But there is a limit to how much they will pay, because financial buyers are playing the buy-low, sell-high game. They do not have a strategic rationale for buying your business. They don’t have an army of sales reps to sell your product or a network of retailers where your product could be merchandised. They are simply trying to get a return on their investors’ money, so they tend to buy small and mid-sized businesses using a combination of this investment layered on top of a pile of debt, and they want to buy your business as cheaply as possible with the hope of flipping it five or ten years down the road.

Because financial buyers are usually investors and not operators, they want you and your team to stick around, so they rarely buy all of a business. Instead, they buy a chunk and ask you to hold on to a tranche of equity to keep you committed.

A strategic buyer is a different cat—usually a larger company in your industry, they are evaluating your business based on what it is worth in their hands. They will try and estimate how much of their product or service they can sell if they added you into the mix. Because of their size, this can often lead to buyers who are willing and able to pay much more for your business.

If you are contemplating selling your business now or down the road, and especially before you are approached by a prospective buyer, you should gain this understanding of the different buyer motivations.  If you’d like someone on your side to help you plan, understand your options, and help you get your business ready and positioned for transfer to a new owner, please contact Frank Mancieri, frank@gtgrowth.com, (401) 651-1585, www.gtgrowth.com.

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Sept 25 Business Event – Constant Contact: The Billion Dollar Idea Hatched in a Brookline Attic

 

Constant Contact: The Billion Dollar Idea Hatched in a Brookline Attic

Tuesday, September 25, 2018, 7:30-9:30 am
Bryant University – Bello Center, Smithfield, RI
Breakfast Meeting

Constant Contact was founded in 1995 and was sold 20 years later for one billion dollars…
Co-Founder Alec Stern was one of three who were responsible for the company’s hyper growth, transition through its growth stages, and the development of its impressive value. His wide range of responsibilities at the company included senior roles in strategic partnerships, channels, business development and sales. Leveraging what he learned as a business owner and leader, Alec was additionally responsible for the creation of Constant Contact’s channel partner programs. He also spearheaded strategic innovation, community-based entrepreneurism and vertical industry thought leadership for the company.
Adding to his Constant Contact successes, Alec has since worked with thousands of new and growing small businesses. He has distilled his knowledge and experience into strategies that help businesses adjust their perspectives and adopt effective tactics to cultivate their value.
On September 25th, Alec Stern will bring his hands-on company growth expertise to the Business Value Forum. We look forward to his first hand insights, and his ownership, leadership and advisory experiences.
Please plan to join The Business Value Forum and New England business owners, leaders and advisors for another important program and conversation over breakfast at Bryant University. We hope to see you there.
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The Business Value Forum, Inc. is a non-profit, non-member organization offering unique information, learning and connection opportunities to New England business owners, leaders and advisors.

Information & Registration: https://theforum-2018-09-25.eventbrite.com

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The Build vs. Buy Equation

If you’re wondering what your business might be worth to an acquirer, there is a simple calculation you can use.

Let’s call it “The Build vs. Buy Equation”

At some point, every acquirer does the math and calculates how much it would cost to re-create what you’ve built. If an acquirer figures they could buy your business for less than they would spend on both the hard and soft costs of re-deploying their employees to build a competitive product, then they will be inclined to acquire yours. If they think it would be less costly to create it themselves, they are likely to choose to compete instead.

The key to ensuring that what you have is difficult to replicate is focusing on a single product or service and building on your competitive point of differentiation. When you create a product that is unique and pour all of your resources into continuing to differentiate it from the pack, you can dictate terms, because re-creating your business becomes harder the more you focus on one thing.

The worst strategy is to offer a wide range of services and products only loosely differentiated from others on the market. Any acquirer will rightly assume they can set up shop to compete with you by simply undercutting your prices for a period of time and driving you out of business.

C-Labs Focuses On Building an Irresistible Product

Chris Muench started C-Labs in 2008 to go after the burgeoning opportunities presented by the Internet-of-Things (IOT). He began by writing custom software applications that allowed one machine to talk to another. In 2014, he got the industrial giant TRUMPF International to acquire 30% of C-Labs, which gave him the cash to transform his service offering into a single product.

By the end of 2016, Muench’s product was showing early signs of gaining traction but C-Labs was running out of money.

In the end, TRUMPF acquired C-Labs in a seven-figure deal that could stretch to eight figures if Muench is successful in hitting his future targets. Why would a large, sophisticated company like TRUMPF acquire an early-stage business like C-Labs? Because they knew that re-creating Muench’s technology would cost much more than simply writing a seven-figure check to buy it outright.

In other words, TRUMPF used The Build vs. Buy Equation and realized that buying C-Labs was cheaper than trying to reproduce it.

Selling too many undifferentiated products or services is a recipe for building a business that—if it is sellable at all—will trade at a discount to its industry peers. By contrast, the trick to getting a premium for your business is having a product or service that is irresistible to an acquirer, yet difficult for them to replicate.

To avoid eventually selling your business at a discount, GT Growth & Transition Strategies, LLC can help keep you on track to building a differentiated and more valuable business.

Frank Mancieri, 401-651-1585, frank@gtGrowth.comwww.gtGrowth.com

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One Tweak That Can (Instantly) Add Millions to the Value of Your Business

If you’re trying to figure out what your business might be worth, it’s helpful to consider what acquirers are paying for companies like yours these days.  

A little internet research will probably reveal that a business like yours trades for a multiple of your pre-tax profit, which is Sellers Discretionary Earnings (SDE) for a small business and Earnings Before Interest Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) for a slightly larger business.

Obsessing Over Your Multiple

This multiple can transfix entrepreneurs. Many owners want to know their multiple and how they can jack it up. After all, if your business has $500,000 in profit, and it trades for four times profit, it’s worth $2 million; if the same business trades for eight times profit, it’s worth $4 million.

Obviously, your multiple will have a profound impact on the haul you take from the sale of your business, but there is another number worthy of your consideration as well: the number your multiple is multiplying.

How Profitability Is Open to Interpretation

Most entrepreneurs think of profit as an objective measure, calculated by an accountant, but when it comes to the sale of your business, profit is far from objective. Your profit will go through a set of “adjustments” designed to estimate how profitable your business will be under a new owner.

This process of adjusting—and how you defend these adjustments to an acquirer—is where you can dramatically spike your company’s value.

Let’s take a simple example to illustrate. Imagine you run a company with $3 million in revenue and you pay yourself a salary of $200,000 a year. Further, let’s assume you could get a competent manager to run your business as a division of an acquirer for $100,000 per year. You could safely make the case to an acquirer that under their ownership, your business would generate an extra $100,000 in profit. If they are paying you five times profit for your business, that one adjustment has the potential to earn you an extra $500,000.

You should be able to make a case for several adjustments that will boost your profit and, by extension, the value of your business. This is more art than science, and you need to be prepared to defend your case for each adjustment. It is important that you make a good case for how profitable your business will be in the hands of an acquirer.

Some of the most common adjustments relate to rent (common if you own the building your company operates from and your company is paying higher-than-market rent), start–up costs, one-off lawsuits or insurance claims and one-time professional services fees.

Your multiple is important, but the subjective art of adjusting your EBITDA is where a lot of extra money can be made when selling your business.  GT Growth & Transition Strategies, LLC can help you identify the “adjustments” that will bring added value to your business.

Frank Mancieri, 401-651-1585, frank@gtGrowth.com, www.gtGrowth.com

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Learning From Acquisitions That Fall Apart

John McCann sold The Bolt Supply House to Lawson Products (NASDAQ: LAWS) at the end of 2017.  

McCann’s strategy involved learning from the acquirers who knocked on his door. He invited would-be buyers into The Bolt Supply House and listened to what they had to say. He was not committed to selling, but instead wanted to know what they liked and what concerned them about his company.

One giant European conglomerate, for example, approached McCann about selling, but after a thorough evaluation, they backed out of a deal, worried about McCann’s central distribution system.

McCann thanked them for their time and set to work turning his distribution system into a masterpiece. Eventually, Lawson cited this as one of the many things that attracted them to The Bolt Supply House.

When it finally came time to sell, McCann commanded a premium, arguing that he had built a world-class company he knew would be a strategic gem for a lot of businesses. He ended up getting five competing offers for The Bolt Supply House and eventually sold to Lawson.

When a big sophisticated acquirer approaches you about selling, the temptation is to decline a meeting if you’re not ready to sell, but hearing what they have to say can be a great way to get some superb consulting, for free. The investment bankers and corporate development executives who lead acquisitions for big acquirers are often some of the smartest, most strategic executives in your industry and—provided you don’t get sucked into a prop deal—hearing how they view your business can be an inexpensive way to improve the value of your company.

If you need help handling and navigating these inquiries, or just continuing to build you company value, please contact Frank Mancieri, Chief Growth Advisor at GT Growth & Transition Strategies, (401) 651-1585, frank@gtGrowthcom.

 

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Growing Fast? Here’s What May Kill Your Company

If your goal is to grow your business fast, you need a positive cash flow cycle or the ability to raise money at a feverish pace. Anything less and you may quickly grow yourself out of business.

A positive cash flow cycle simply means you get paid before you have to pay others. A negative cash flow cycle is the direct opposite: you have pay out before your money comes in.

A lifestyle business with good margins can often get away with a negative cash flow cycle, but a growth-oriented business can’t, and it may quickly grow itself bankrupt.

Growing Yourself Bankrupt

To illustrate, take a look at the fatal decision made by Shelley Rogers, who decided to scale a business with a negative cash flow cycle. Rogers started Admincomm Warehousing to help companies recycle their old technology. Rogers purchased old phone systems and computer monitors for pennies on the dollar and sold them to recyclers who dismantled the technology down to its raw materials and sold off the base metals.

In the beginning, Rogers had a positive cash flow cycle. Admincomm would secure the rights to a lot of old gear and invite a group of Chinese recyclers to fly to Calgary to bid on the equipment. If they liked what they saw, the recyclers would be asked to pay in full before they flew home. Then Rogers would organize a shipping container to send the materials to China and pay her suppliers 30 to 60 days later.

In a world hungry for resources, the business model worked and Rogers built a nice lifestyle company with fat margins. That’s when she became aware of the environmental impact of the companies she was selling to as they poisoned the air in the developing world burning the plastic covers off computer gear to get at the base metals it contained. Rogers decided to scale up her operation and start recycling the equipment in her home country of Canada, where she could take advantage of a government program that would send her a check if she could prove she had recycled the equipment domestically.

Her new model required an investment in an expensive recycling machine and the adoption of a new cash model. She now had to buy the gear, recycle the materials and then wait to get her money from the government.

The faster she grew, the less cash she had. Eventually, the business failed.

Rogers Rises from the Ashes with a Positive Cash Flow Model

Rogers learned from the experience and built a new company in the same industry called TopFlight Assets Services. Instead of acquiring old technology, she sold much of it on consignment, allowing her to save cash. Rogers grew TopFlight into a successful enterprise, which she sold in 2013 for six times Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) to CSI Leasing, one of the largest equipment leasing companies in the world.

Rogers got a great multiple for her business in part because of her focus on cash flow. Many owner think cash flow means their profits on a Profit & Loss Statement. While profit is important, acquirers also care deeply about cash flow—the money your business makes (or needs) to run.

The reason is simple: when an acquirer buys your business, they will likely need to finance it. If your business needs constant infusions of cash, an acquirer will have to commit more money to your business. Since investors are all about getting a return on their money, the more they have to invest in your business, the higher the return they expect, forcing them to reduce the original price they pay you.

So, whether your goal is to scale or sell for a premium (or both), having a positive cash flow cycle is a prerequisite.  If you have extensive growth plans or are struggling with cash flow due to existing growth, GT Growth can help you plan your cash flow and help you secure an adequate supply of cash.

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Successful Entrepreneurs Can Be The Doer And The Dealmaker

 Where do you sit on the doer vs. dealmaker continuum? On one hand, you have business owners who are really good operators. They have a plan, know their numbers and work that plan. They look for small improvements every day and hesitate to entertain new strategies because they know what works.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the dealmakers. They quickly bore of the doing and are constantly on the prowl for the next big idea. They are always on the lookout for a business they can buy, a new concept they can negotiate the rights for or a partnership they can forge.

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs can be equally good at being both doers and dealmakers, and most business owners have a little bit of both personalities, with a tendency to tilt in one direction or the other. However, problems occur when you lean too far in one direction.

Let’s take for example, U.K.-based Jonathan Jay, a twenty-year veteran of the start-up world. Jay got his start publishing magazines, but quickly wanted out, and he sold his publishing company by the age of 27. He then started a coach-training business which competed with one other provider. His competitor ran into trouble and Jay decided to buy his business after less than a week of diligence. Jay then sold the combined entity for a seven-figure payday.

Bored after a week or two of retirement, Jay started a digital marketing company. He found client acquisition a challenge, so he partnered with a marketing guru who had a pre-existing following of customers. Jay gave his new partner 50% of his company in exchange for access to the marketing guru’s list, but he skimped on writing the partnership agreement because he was resentful of the legal bills he was paying to defend an unrelated claim.

Soon after merging, the partners fell out and Jay had to wrestle his shares back without the help of a formal partnership agreement. Unbowed by partnerships, he then found another distressed marketing agency to buy, which he did by assuming its debt and putting virtually nothing down. He put the business into bankruptcy after carving out the one piece that had value and merging it with his marketing company. Within a year of buying the business, he sold the combined entity for another seven-figure exit.

Jay’s story is exhausting. It’s a high-wire act of high-stakes negotiation, success, mistakes and eventual triumph. You can’t help but wonder if he would have been even more successful—and a lot less stressed—if he had been a little more of a doer and little less of a dealmaker.

Whether you are more dealmaker or doer, it’s worth asking yourself whether you’re tilting too far in one direction.  As you find yourself swaying (or stuck) in one direction, you might seek the help of an outside advisor to help you stay on a more even plan.  Contact me to help you build a plan and strategy, (401) 651-1585, or frank@GTgrowth.com.

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How to Lure a Giant like Facebook into Buying Your Company

A great business is bought, not sold, so, if you look too eager to sell your business, you’ll be negotiating on the back foot and look desperate—a recipe for a bad exit. 

But, what if you really want to sell? Maybe you’ve got a new idea for a business you want to start or your health is suffering. Then what?

As with many things in life, the secret may be a simple tweak in your vocabulary. Instead of approaching an acquirer to see if they would be interested in buying your business, approach the same company with an offer to partner with them.

Entering into a partnership discussion with a would-be acquirer is a great way for them to discover your strategic assets, because most partnership discussions start with a summary of each company’s strengths and future objectives. As you reveal your aspirations to one another, a savvy buyer will often realize there is more to be gained from simply buying your business than partnering with it.

Facebook Buys Ozlo

For example, look at how Charles Jolley played the sale of Ozlo, the company he created to make a better digital assistant. The market for digital assistants is booming. Apple has Siri, Amazon has Alexa and the Google Home device now has Google Assistant built right in.

Jolley started Ozlo with the vision of building a better digital assistant. By 2016, he believed Ozlo had technology superior to that of Apple, Amazon or Google. Realizing his technology needed a big company to distribute it, he started to think about potential acquirers. He developed a long list, but instead of approaching them to buy Ozlo, he suggested they consider partnering with him to distribute Ozlo.

He met with many of the brand-name technology companies in Silicon Valley, including Facebook, which wanted a better digital assistant embedded within its messaging platform. They took a meeting with Jolley under the guise of a potential partnership, but the conversation quickly moved from “partnering with” to “acquiring” Ozlo.

Jolley then approached his other potential partners indicating his conversations with Facebook had moved in a different direction and that he would be entering acquisition talks with Facebook. Hearing Facebook wanted the technology for themselves, some of Jolley’s other potential “partners” also joined the bidding war to acquire Ozlo.

After a competitive process, Facebook offered Jolley a deal he couldn’t refuse, and they closed on a deal in July 2017. Jolley got the deal he wanted in part because he was negotiating from the position of a strong potential partner, rather than a desperate owner just looking to sell.

So, keep in mind that a great business is bought, not sold.  Consider a “partnering” offer to another party that you would like to acquire your business, and build on that.

Whether or not you are actively looking to sell your business, you should always be working on building your business value.  Understand the value drivers in your business and industry, and understand the risks to a future buyer.  Contact me to help you build a plan and strategy to get you to a higher value, (401) 651-1585, or frank@GTgrowth.com.

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How to Avoid Disappointment When It’s Time to Cash Out

How do you avoid not being disappointed with the money you make from the sale of your company?

Perhaps you’ve heard that companies like yours trade using an industry rule of thumb or that companies of your size sell within a specific range, and you want to get at least what your peers have received.

While these metrics can be useful for tax planning or working out a messy divorce, they may not be the best ways to value your company.

The Only Valuation Technique That Really Matters

In reality, the only valuation technique that will ensure you are happy with your exit is for you to place your own value on your business. What’s it worth to you to keep it? What is all your sweat equity worth? Only when you’re clear on that will you ensure your satisfaction with the sale of your business.

Take Hank Goddard as an example. He started a software company called Mainspring Healthcare Solutions back in 2007. They provided a way for hospitals to keep track of their equipment and evolved into a slick application that hospital workers used to order supplies.

Goddard and his partner started the business by asking some friends and family to invest. The business grew, but there were challenges along the way: Goddard had to fire his entire management team in the early days, product issues needed to be solved and operational issues needed to be resolved.

At times, it was a grind, so when it came time to sell in 2016, Goddard reasoned that he had invested more than half of his career in Mainspring and he wanted to get paid for his life’s work. He also wanted to ensure his original investors got a decent return on their money.

He was approached by Accruent, a company in the same industry, who made Goddard and his partners an offer of one times revenue. Accruent had recently acquired one of Goddard’s competitors for a similar value, so presumably thought this was a fair offer.

Goddard brushed it off as completely unworkable. Goddard had decided he wanted five times revenue for his business. Even for a growing software company, five times revenue was a stretch, but Goddard stuck to his guns. That’s what it was worth to him to sell.

A year after they first approached Goddard, Accruent came back with an offer of two times revenue and, again, Goddard demurred.

Mainspring had developed a new application that was quickly gaining traction and he knew how hard it was to sell to the hospitals he already counted as customers.

He told Accruent his number was five times revenue in cash.

Eventually Goddard got his number.

Being clear on what your number is before going into a negotiation to sell your business can be helpful when emotions start to take over. Rather than rely on industry benchmarks, the best way to ensure you’re not disappointed with the sale of your business is to decide up front what it’s worth to you.

If you are looking to plan your exit or stick with it awhile and increase your business value, contact Frank at 401-651-1585 or frank@gtGrowth.com.

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The Anatomy of a Successful Exit

Stephanie Breedlove started Breedlove & Associates in 1992 as a way to pay her nanny. The big payroll processors weren’t interested in dealing with one person’s wages and doing it themselves was complicated and time-consuming, too much for the then overwhelmed Breedloves.

 

Breedlove saw a business opportunity and started a payroll company for parents who needed to pay their nannies. By 2012, Breedlove & Associates had grown to $9MM in revenue and then she received a $54MM acquisition offer.

To give you some context of how incredible it is to sell a $9MM business for $54MM let’s look at the numbers. Through The Value Builder System™, more than 25,000 business owners have completed the Value Builder Score questionnaire, part of which asks about any acquisition offers they may have received. The average multiple offered is 3.76 times pre-tax profit. Even the best-performing businesses, those with a Value Builder Score of 80+, only get offers of 6.27 times pre-tax profit on average. Breedlove got close to six times revenue.

What did Breedlove do right? We’re going to look at the five things Breedlove did—and that you can do—to drive up the value of a business.

  1. Sell Less Stuff to More People

When Breedlove hit $30K per month in revenue, she quit her job at Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting) and devoted herself to Breedlove & Associates full-time. To grow, she had a choice: sell more to her existing customers (e.g. busy couples often need lawn-care, house-cleaning, or grocery-delivery services) or stick with her niche of paying nannies. Most consultants and experts would say it’s easier to sell more to existing customers (and they’re right), but it doesn’t make your business more valuable. Breedlove decided to stick to her niche and find more parents who needed to pay their nannies, and that decision laid the foundation for a more valuable business.

Investors from Warren Buffet look for companies with a deep and wide competitive moat that gives the owner pricing authority. When you have a differentiated product or service, we call it having The Monopoly Control and companies with a monopoly get significantly higher acquisition offers.

Rather than selling existing customers generic services in commoditized markets, Breedlove focused on selling one thing to as many customers as she could find.

  1. Strive for 50%+ Net Promoter Score

One feature that interested acquirers look for is your customer satisfaction levels. Increasingly, they are turning to the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a measure of this. NPS was developed by Fred Reichheld and his team at Satmetrix, who discovered that your customers’ willingness to refer you to their friends or colleagues is highly predictive of your company’s future growth rate.

The NPS approach is to ask your customers how willing they would be to refer your company to a friend or colleague, on a scale of 0 to 10. They are then categorized into Promoters (9s and 10s), Passives (7s and 8s) or Detractors (0–6s). The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Promoters from the percentage of Detractors. Most businesses achieve an NPS of 10% to 15%, while the very best companies (think Apple and Amazon) get scores of 50% or more.

Breedlove obsessed over her company’s NPS and realized the key to driving it up was perfecting the first few interactions with a new customer. When you call a big payroll company looking for a service to pay your nanny, the response can be underwhelming. With only one person to pay, you are often relegated to the most junior staff member and even they would rather be dealing with a larger client.

When you call Breedlove, by contrast, you get a team of professionals totally focused on setting you up. You’re not an afterthought. You’re not passed on. Instead, you get the best onboarding talent the company has to offer.

This set-up team was a big part of how Breedlove achieved an astonishing 78% NPS.

  1. Create Recurring Revenue Streams

The third thing that made Breedlove’s company attractive was recurring revenue.

Regardless of what industry you’re in, recurring revenue models give acquirers more confidence that the business will keep going strong after you leave.

By 2012, Breedlove & Associates had grown to $9MM and, given the nature of the payroll business, 100% of their revenue was recurring.

  1. Reduce Reliance on Customers, Employees and Suppliers

Breedlove’s company was also attractive to buyers because she had a highly diversified customer base with no single customer representing even close to 1% of her revenue. If more than 10% to 15% of your revenue comes from one buyer, you can expect prospective acquirers to ask a lot more questions.

Customer concentration is one of three factors that make up The Switzerland Structure Module. The Switzerland Structure measures your business’ dependence on a single customer, employee or supplier.

  1. Find an Acquirer You Can Help Grow

By 2012, Breedlove & Associates was growing 17% per year, which is good but not blow-your-mind good. So how did she attract such an incredible acquisition offer? The trick was showing her acquirer how they could grow.

In Breedlove’s case, she sold her company to Care.com. Think of Care.com as the Angie’s List of care providers (e.g. child care, senior care, etc.). If you need someone to care for your kids or an elderly relative, you enter your address into their website and Care.com will give you a list of vetted caregivers in your area.

At the time of the acquisition, Breedlove had 10,000 customers and Care.com had seven million members. Breedlove argued that if just 1% of Care.com’s members used Breedlove’s payroll service, it would equate to 7X growth in Breedlove & Associates almost overnight.

In 2012, Care.com acquired Breedlove & Associates for $54MM—an outstanding exit made possible by Breedlove’s focus on what drove her company’s value, not just their top-line revenue.

To get your Value Builder Score and begin understanding what drives value in your business, please chick here: https://gtgrowth.com/value-builder-score

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Why Some Mature Companies Stall

 Have you ever wondered why some mature companies stop growing? Sometimes they run out of potential customers to sell to or their product starts losing market share to a competitor, but there is often a more fundamental reason: the founder(s) lose the stomach for it.

When you start a business, the assets you have outside of your business likely exceed those you have in it, because in the early days, your business is worthless. As your company grows, it starts to have value and becomes a more significant part of your wealth—especially if you’re pouring your profits back into funding your growth.

For most business owners, their company is their largest asset.

Eventually, your business may become such a large proportion of your wealth that you realize you are taking a giant risk every day that you decide to hold on to it just a little bit longer.

95% of His Wealth in One Business

In 2000, Etienne Borgeat and Olivier Letard co-founded PCO innovation, an IT consulting firm. The company took off and, by 2016, PCO had 600 full-time employees and offices around the world.

As the business grew, Borgeat and Letard started to become uneasy about how much of their wealth was tied up in their business. By 2015, the shares Borgeat held in PCO represented 95% of his wealth.

That’s about the point that aerospace giant Boeing came calling. Boeing wanted PCO to take on a very large project and Borgeat and Letard turned down the opportunity reasoning that the project was so large it could risk their entire company if it went wrong. In the early days, the partners would never have turned down a chance to work with Boeing, but the partners had changed.

That’s when Borgeat and Letard realized the time had come to sell. They agreed to an acquisition offer from Accenture of over one times revenue.

The success of your company is probably driven by your willingness to put all your eggs in one basket. You’re all in. However, at some point, you may find yourself starting to play it safe, which is about the time your business may be better off in someone else’s hands.  GT Growth & Transition Strategies can help you continue to grow your buiness and help you start planning for your eventual transition, something that should be done well before your actual transition date.  Call Frank at (401) 651-1585 or email him at frank@gtGrowth.com.

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Why Now Is The Riskiest Time to Own Your Business

Most people think of starting a business as risky, but unless you invest a significant amount of start-up cash in your venture, you’re not really risking much other than your time. 

That changes if you’re lucky enough to get your business off the ground. As your company grows, you start to risk more and more of your wealth because the business you’ve built is actually worth something. The longer you hang on to it, the more you have to lose.

This phenomenon makes owners become more risk averse as their business grows, potentially squeezing off growth to avoid risking what they’ve created. This can mean the owner goes from a company’s great asset to its biggest liability.

Cigar City Brewing

For an example of how growth can impact an owner’s appetite for risk, let’s look at the case of Joey Redner, the founder of Florida-based Cigar City Brewing. Redner’s craft beer operation started off in 2009 with the relatively modest goal of selling 5,000 barrels of beer per year.

Cigar City proved popular with the locals and Redner was able to sell 1,000 barrels of beer in his first year of business.

Cigar City Brewing continued to grow but was thirsty for cash, eventually forcing Redner to take on an SBA loan. Redner quickly surpassed his 5,000-barrel goal, and by 2015, had scaled all the way up to 55,000 barrels per year, at which point he ran out of capacity in his brewing facility.

To get to the next level, Redner would have had to find another $20 million for a major expansion, but he was tired of the feeling of being “all in” at the poker table. He had built something successful and wanted to enjoy financial security rather than having to roll his winnings into even more debt that he would have to personally guarantee with the bank.

Redner decided to sell even though his business was still growing and he had built a brand Floridians loved.

And therein lies one of the hidden reasons owners decide to sell. They are tired of shouldering all of the risk. Most of us have a limited appetite for risk, and as the Bob Dylan song goes, “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Start-ups aren’t risking much, but when you build something successful, every day that you decide to keep it is another day you have all (or most) of your chips on the table, and no matter how strong your hand, eventually we all decide to cash in.

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5 Lessons From Home Depot’s Acquisition of Blinds.com

Jay Steinfeld built Blinds.com into a $100 million e-tailer before selling out to Home Depot. Here are five things that made it a spectacular exit. 

 

 

Win The Make vs. Buy Battle

Companies like Home Depot have a “make or buy” decision when they see a competitor winning market share. They can opt to buy the competitor or choose to simply re-create what they have built.

An acquirer will likely opt to buy your company if you are so dominant in your niche that recreating what you have built would take too long and cost more than acquiring it from you.

Blinds.com got acquired, in part, because they were a big fish in a small pond. At more than $100 million in revenue, they were the largest online retailer of blinds in America by a long shot. Even though Home Depot has close to $90 billion in sales, Blinds.com were outperforming them in their tiny niche and that made Blinds.com irresistible to Home Depot.

Run It Like It’s Public

At the time of the Home Depot acquisition, Blinds.com had 175 employees, yet Steinfeld had been running the company as if it were public for years. He had put together a top-drawer management team and taken the unusual step of assembling an outside board of directors. He had quarterly board meetings with formal presentation decks, and Steinfeld hired a Big Four firm to complete a full audit of his financials each year.

Steinfeld credits this rigorous approach to running a relatively small company as a major reason Home Depot was interested in Blinds.com and able to close on the acquisition so quickly.

Keep Most Of The Equity

Steinfeld invested $3,000 of his own money into a basic online presence for his blinds store back in 1993 and grew Blinds.com to more than $100 million in sales without diluting himself by taking three or four rounds of institutional investment, as would be typical of an internet start-up. Steinfeld took a small investment from friends and family and used bank debt to help him buy distressed companies for pennies on the dollar. It wasn’t until 2012—almost 20 years after starting the business—that he accepted his first round of “professional” money from a private equity firm who wanted to invest more, but Steinfeld refused, only taking enough to buy out a few of his original investors and pay off some debt.

Keep Investors Aligned

One of the reasons Steinfeld accepted an investment from a private equity group was that he had become misaligned with two of his original investors. The investors saw the success of Blinds.com and wanted Steinfeld to start declaring regular dividends. Steinfeld, by contrast, was focused on building a growth company and needed the cash to fuel his 25% per year growth. After a while, his investor’s expectations got so far out of whack that Steinfeld opted to buy them out.

Share The Love

One of Steinfeld’s best memories is the day he told his employees Home Depot had acquired Blinds.com. Steinfeld had made sure every one of his 175 people had Blinds.com stock options and so stood to gain financially from the sale. Steinfeld went further and gave each employee $2,000 of his own money to start an investment account as a personal thank you for all they had done.

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5 Reasons Why Now Might Be The Right Time To Sell

Are you trying to time the sale of your business so that you exit when both your business and the economy are peaking?

While your objective to build your company’s value is admirable, here are five reasons why you may want to sell sooner than you might think:

  1. You May Be Choking Your Business

When you start your business, you have nothing to lose, so you risk it all on your idea. But as you grow, you naturally become more conservative, because your business actually becomes worth something. For many of us, our company is our largest asset, so the idea of losing it on a new growth idea becomes less attractive. We become more conservative and hinder our company’s growth.

  1. Money Is Cheap

We’re coming out of a period of ultra-low interest rates. Financial buyers will likely borrow money to buy your business so—at the risk of over simplifying a lot of MBA math—the less it costs them to borrow, the more they will spend to buy your business.

  1. Timing Your Sale Is A Fool’s Errand

The costs of most financial assets are correlated, which is to say that the value of your private business, real estate and a Fortune 500 company’s stock all move in roughly the same direction. They all laid an egg in 2009 and now they are all booming. The problem is, you’ll have to do something with the money you make from the sale of your company, which means you will likely buy into a new asset class at the same frothy valuation as you are exiting at.

  1. Cybercrime

If you have moved your customer data into the cloud, it is only a matter of time before you become the target of cybercrime. Randy Ambrosie, the former CEO of 3Macs, a Montreal-based investment company that manages $6 billion for wealthy Canadian families decided to sell in part because he feared a cyber attack. Ambrosie and his partners realized they had been under-investing in technology for years, at a time when cybercrime was becoming more prevalent in the financial services space. Ambrosie decided to sell his firm to Raymond James because he realized the cost for staying ahead of hackers was becoming too much to bear.

  1. There Is No Corporate Ladder

In most occupations, the ambitious must climb the ladder. Aspiring CEOs must methodically move up, stacking one job on the next until they are ready for the top post. They have to put in the time, play the right politics and succeed at each new assignment to be considered for the next rung.

By choosing a career as an entrepreneur, you get to skip the ladder entirely. You can start a business, sell it, take a sabbatical and start another business and nobody will miss you on the ladder. Your second (or third) business is likely to be more successful than your first, so the sooner you sell your existing business, the sooner you get to take a break and then start working on your next.

It can be tempting to want to time the sale of your business so that the economy and your company are peeking, but in reality, it may be better to sell sooner rather than later.

Bottom line: be prepared to exit on your terms.  Meanwhile, keep working on building value in your business.  For a quick view into where you stand, take this self-assessment. CLICK HERE

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The Forum’s Inaugural Breakfast Event – Join us on Oct 19

Announces Inaugural Breakfast Event at….

Bryant University ~ Bello Center
Thursday, October 19, 2017 – 7:30-9:30 AM

Register Online

“Building Value in Your Business While Running It”

Company owners, executives and advisors are generally focused on business operations and performance. Most tend to defer thinking about how the components of their business’ operations and performance influence the overall value of the organization. It’s the enterprise value that is of prime importance to lenders, vendors, potential partners, suitors and some customers – all of whom play a pivotal role in a company’s future.

Our Topic, “Building Value in Your Business While Running It” …brings together experienced practitioners and business people who have had hands-on experience in building business value. They will share their knowledge and insights into how an understanding of a company’s value helps drive the kind of decisions that build real value for the long term.

Chris Mellen will be our Conversation Moderator….

Chris is Managing Director with Valuation Research Corporation in Norwood, MA.  Chris has over 28 years of business valuation experience involving the valuation of over 3,000 businesses and intangible asset valuations.  He has started, ran for 15 years, and sold his own business; earned 6 professional certifications; served on several valuation committees; published several articles; led over 100 seminars; provided expert testimony in court; and co-authored a valuation text book – Valuation for M&A:  Building Value in Private Companies. https://www.valuationresearch.com/professional/chris-mellen

 

Panelists include:

David Hirsch a Corporate Attorney with Hinckley Allen & Snyder LLP  in Providence.  David focuses his practice in the areas of corporate and business law, including commercial and public finance and mergers and acquisitions. He represents companies in general corporate matters and assists with a broad range of business and financing transactions. David also has experience advising financial institutions regarding regulatory compliance. https://www.hinckleyallen.com/people/david-s-hirsch/

 

Rob Kerr is Managing Director of CBIZ Tofias in Providence.  Rob is a CPA with more than 15 years of experience in tax planning, consulting and compliance services for public companies, privately-held corporations, partnerships and individuals. Rob specializes in the private equity and venture capital industry where he provides assistance with domestic and international tax planning and compliance projects. And extensive experience working with Internal Revenue Code Section 382, assisting clients with ownership changes and associated impact against the certain tax attributes. https://www.cbiz.com/about-us/employees/employee/eid/3220/name/robert_kerr

Mike Tamasi is the President & CEO of AccuRounds in Avon, MA.  A second- generation owner since 1985, Mike is responsible for overall strategy and organizational alignment guided by “The Path to Perfection” – providing opportunity for every member of the AccuRounds team.  Mike is co-chair of the Massachusetts Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative and Chairman of Business Leaders United. https://www.accurounds.com/about-us-executive-team.htm

 

Register Online

Thank-you to our sponsors for their support of the Southern New England business community

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2017 The Business Value Forum, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:

The Business Value Forum

11 South Angell Street – #319

Providence, RI 02906

Check out our website

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Announcing the Launch… The Business Value Forum

Announcing the Launch… 

From the decades of business experience of its founding Board and from their reputation for offering valued educational and informational programs to Southern New England businesses comes The Business Value Forum, Inc.[Working with Bryant UniversityForum Board members have previously led the Breakfast at Bryant series that included such programs as “We Are Market Basket”, “Would You Buy Your Business”,  “A Case Study in Performance Excellence – The Ocean House”….]

The Forum is a non-profit, non-membership organization whose mission is to provide business owners, leaders, and advisors with educational programs and information to help develop, grow and sustain an organization’s value.

The Forum, formed by its founding board in collaboration with Bryant University offers valued programs focused on contemporary business challenges encountered at each stage of the business life-cycle… from inception to ownership transition. The Forum regularly convenes a mixed group of business leaders, advisors and educators in an environment that encourages information sharing and idea generation.

Please watch for The Forum’s coming organization and breakfast program announcements.

Advance Information – The Inaugural Program

TopicBuilding Value in Your Business While Running It
Time and Location:  7:30-9:30 AM on Thursday, October 19th
at Bryant University

Please hold that date – more detail and registration information to follow.

The Founding Board:

Itamar Chalif – Rockland Trust
Frank Mancieri – GT Growth & Transition Strategies
Raquel Cordeiro – Bryant University
Kevin McNally – Interactive Palette
Stanley Davis – Standish Executive Search, LLC
Mike Mellor – DiSanto Priest & Co
Norman Gauthier – Heritage Hill Partners Inc.
Rob Piacitelli – ThirdSide Capital
Larry Girouard -The Business Avionix Company, LLC
Mario Zangari – Zangari Cohn Cuthbertson Duhl & Grello P.C.

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3 Ways To Make Your Company More Valuable Than Your Industry Peers

Have you ever wondered what determines the value of your business? 

Perhaps you’ve heard an industry rule of thumb and assumed that your company will be worth about the same as a similar size company in your industry. However, when we take a look at the data provided by The Value Builder Score™, we’ve found there are eight factors that drive the value of your business, and they are all potentially more important than the industry you’re in.

Not convinced? Let’s look at Jill Nelson, who recently sold a majority interest in her $11 million telephone answering service, Ruby Receptionists, for $38.8 million.

That’s a lot of money for answering the phone on behalf of independent lawyers, contractors and plumbers across America.

To give you a sense of how high that valuation is, let’s look at some comparison data. The average starting point value for companies completing The Value Builder Score™ is 3.6 times pre-tax profit. When we isolate the administrative support industry that Ruby Receptionists operates in, the average multiple offered for these companies over the last five years is just 1.8 times pre-tax profit.

Nelson, by contrast, sold the majority interest in Ruby Receptionists for more than 3 times revenue.

There were three factors that made Nelson’s business much more valuable than her industry peers, and they are the same things you can focus on to drive up the value of your company:

  1. Cultivate Your Point Of Differentiation

Acquirers do not buy what they could easily build themselves. If your main competitive advantage is price, an acquirer will rightly conclude they can simply set up shop as a competitor and win most of your price sensitive customers away by offering a temporary discount.

In the case of Ruby Receptionists, Nelson invested heavily in a technology that ensured that no matter when a client received a phone call, her technology would route that call to an available receptionist. Nelson’s competitors were mostly low-tech mom and pop businesses who often missed calls when there was a sudden surge of callers. Nelson’s technology could handle client surges because of the unique routing technology she had built that transferred calls efficiently across her network of receptionists.

Nelson’s acquirer, a private equity company called Updata Partners, saw the potential of applying Nelson’s call-routing technology to other businesses they owned and were considering investing in.

  1. Recurring Revenue

Acquirers want to know how your business will perform after they buy it. Nothing gives them more confidence that your business will continue to thrive post sale than recurring revenue from subscriptions or service contracts.

In Nelson’s case, Ruby Receptionists billed its customers through recurring contracts—perfect for making a buyer confident that her company has staying power.

  1. Customer Diversification

In addition to having customers pay on recurring contracts, the most valuable businesses have lots of little customers rather than one or two biggies. Most acquirers will balk if any one of your customers represents more than 15% of your revenue.

At the time of the acquisition, Ruby Receptionists had 6,000 customers paying an average of just a few hundred dollars per month. Nelson could lose a client or two each month without skipping a beat, which is ideal for reassuring a hesitant buyer that your company’s revenue stream is bulletproof.

Nelson built a valuable company in a relatively unexciting, low-tech industry, proving that how you run your business is more important than the industry you’re in.  How do you run your business?  Are you maximizing its value?  Take The Value Builder Score™ and learn where you stand.  Then take action to increase your business value.

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Three (3) Surprising Reasons To Offer A Subscription

You can now buy a subscription for everything from dog treats to razor blades. Music subscription services are booming as our appetite to buy tracks is replaced by our willingness to rent access to them. Starbucks now even offers coffee on subscription.

Why are so many companies leveraging the subscription business model? The obvious reason is that recurring revenue boosts your company’s value, but there are some hidden benefits to augmenting your business with a subscription offering.

Free Market Research
Finding out what your customers want is expensive. By the time you pay attendees, rent a room with a one-way mirror and buy the little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, a focus group can cost you upwards of $6,000. A statistically significant piece of quantitative research, done by a reputable polling company, might approach six figures.

With a subscription company, you get instant market research for free. Netflix knows
which shows to produce based on the viewing behaviour of its subscribers. No need to
ask viewers what they like, Netflix can see what they watch and rate.

For you, a subscription offering can allow you to test new ideas and gives you a direct
relationship with your customers so you can see what they like first hand.

Cash Flow
Subscription companies are often criticized for being hungry for cash. Many charge by
the month and then have to wait months—sometimes years—to recover the costs of
winning a subscriber.

That assumes, however, that you’re charging for your subscription by the month. If
you’re selling your subscription to businesses, you may get away with charging for a
year’s worth of your subscription up front. That’s what the analyst firm Gartner does,
and it means they get an entire year’s worth of cash from their subscriber on day one.
Costco charges its annual membership up front, which means it has billions of dollars of
subscription revenue to float its retail operations.

Loyalty
Customers can be promiscuous. You may have a perfectly satisfied customer but if they
see an offer from one of your competitors, they might jump ship to save a few bucks.
However, if you lock your customers into a subscription, they may be less tempted to try
a competitor since they have already made an investment with you.

One of the reasons Amazon Prime is so profitable is that Prime subscribers buy more
and are stickier than non-Prime subscribers. Prime subscribers want to get their money’s
worth, so they buy a wider swath of products from Amazon and are less tempted by
competitive offers.

The obvious reason to launch a subscription offering of your own is that the predictable
recurring revenue will boost the value of your company. And while that’s certainly true,
the hidden benefits may even be more important.

Recurring Revenue is just one of the many factors that help increase a company’s value.  Learn about several others factors and how your company rates, by completing a 13-minute free questionnaire called The Value Builder Score™.

Click Here: https://gtgrowth.com/value-builder-score/

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Business Valuation

Business valuation goes beyond simple mathematics, but to get some idea of what your business might be worth, consider the three methods below.

Your business is likely your largest asset so it’s normal to want to know what it is worth. The problem is: business valuation is what one might call a “subjective science.”

The science part is what people go to school to learn: you can get an MBA or a degree in finance, or you can learn the theory behind business valuation and earn professional credentials as a business valuation professional.

The subjective part is that every buyer’s circumstances are different, and therefore two buyers could see the same set of company financials and offer vastly different amounts to buy the business.

This article provides the basic science and math behind the most common business valuation techniques, but keep in mind that there will always be outliers that fall well outside of these frameworks.

These are strategic sales, where a business is valued based on what it is worth in the acquirer’s hands. Strategic acquisitions, however, represent the minority of acquisitions, so use the three methods below to triangulate around a realistic value for your company:

Assets-based
The most basic way to value a business is to consider the value of its hard assets minus its debts. Imagine a landscaping company with trucks and gardening equipment. These hard assets have value, which can be calculated by estimating the resale value of your equipment.

This valuation method often renders the lowest value for your company because it assumes your company does not have any “Good Will.” In accountant speak, “Good Will” has nothing to do with how much people like your company; Good Will is defined as the difference between your company’s market value (what someone is willing to pay for it) and the value of your net assets (assets minus liabilities).  Typically, companies have at least some Good Will, so in most cases you get a higher valuation by using one of the other two methods described below.

Discounted Cash Flow
In this method, the acquirer is estimating what your future stream of cash flow is worth to them today. They start by trying to figure out how much profit you expect to make in the next few years. The more stable and predictable your cash flows, the more years of future cash they will consider.

Once the buyer has an estimate of how much profit you’re likely to make in the foreseeable future, and what your business will be worth when they want to sell it in the future, the buyer will apply a “discount rate” that takes into consideration the time value of money. The discount rate is determined by the acquirer’s cost of capital and how risky they perceive your business to be.

Rather than getting hung up on the math behind the discounted cash flow valuation technique, it’s better to understand the drivers of your value when you use this method. They are: 1) how much profit your business is expected to make in the future; and 2) how reliable those estimates are.

Note that business valuation techniques are either/or and not a combination. For example, if you are using Discounted Cash Flow, the hard assets of the company are assumed to be integral to the generation of the profit the acquirer is buying and therefore not included in the calculation of your company’s value.

A money-losing bed and breakfast sitting on a $2 million piece of land is going to be better off using the Asset-based valuation method; whereas a professional services firm that expects to earn $500,000 in profit next year, but has little in the way of hard assets, will garner a higher valuation using the Discounted Cash Flow method or the Comparables technique described below.

Comparables
Another common valuation technique is to look at the value of comparable companies that have sold recently or for whom their value is public. For example, accounting firms typically trade at one times gross recurring fees. Home and office security companies trade at about two times monitoring revenue, and most security company owners know the Comparables technique because they are often getting approached to sell by private equity firms rolling up small security firms. Typically you can find out what companies in your industry are selling for by asking around at your annual industry conference.

The problem with using the Comparables methodology is that it often leads owners to make an apples-to-bananas comparison. For example, a small medical device manufacturer might think that, because GE is trading for 20 times last year’s earnings on the New York Stock Exchange, they too are worth 20 times last year’s profit. However, if one looks at the more than 13,000 businesses analyzed through the The Value Builder Score, it’s clear that a small medical device manufacturer is likely to trade closer to five times pre-tax profit.

Small companies are deeply discounted when compared to their Fortune 500 counterparts, so comparing your company with a Fortune 500 giant will typically lead to disappointment.

Finally, the worst part about selling your business is that you don’t get to decide which methodology the acquirer chooses. An acquirer will do the math on what your business is worth to them behind closed doors. They may decide your business is strategic, in which case back up the Brinks truck because you’re about to get handsomely rewarded for your company. But in most cases, an acquirer will use one of the three techniques described here to come up with an offer to buy your business.

Curious to see what your business might be worth? Get a free valuation here: https://gtgrowth.com/value-builder-score/

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Market Share vs. Addressable Market – Impact on Value

Imagine you’re a farmer and you’ve been tending to your crops all year. It’s harvest season and finally time to collect the spoils of your labor.

You start harvesting your crops only to find out that pesky rodents have been quietly eating away at your fields. You’re devastated as you come to the realization that much of what you have been working so hard to cultivate has already been taken.

Feeling like there is not much field left to harvest is what acquirers and investors are trying to avoid as they evaluate buying your business. Metaphorically speaking, acquirers want to know that if they buy your business, there will be plenty of fresh farmland left for them to till. 

Addressable Market

Investors call it your company’s “addressable market” and it is one of the main factors buyers will look at when they evaluate the potential of acquiring your company.

Business 101 tells us we should strive for market share so we can control pricing. Market share is a worthy goal if your objective is to maximize your profits. However, if your primary objective is to increase the value of your company, you want to be able to communicate that you have relatively low market share across the entire addressable market. In other words, there is plenty of field left to plow.

Consider the following ways you might expand the way you are currently thinking about the addressable market for what you sell:

Demographics

Demographics involve segmenting a market by objective measures like gender, income, age and education level. Marriott is a hotel chain but they have created a variety of brands to address the various demographic segments they want to serve. Ritz Carlton is a Marriott brand that appeals to affluent travelers, but if all you want is a basic room, you could opt for a Courtyard Marriott. It’s the same company, but they have expanded their addressable market by focusing on different demographic segments.

Psychographics

Psychographics involve segmenting your market according to the way people think. Toyota produces the Prius, which gets 50 miles per gallon and is a favorite among environmentalists. Toyota also produces the thirsty Tundra pickup truck and, at just 15 miles per gallon, attracts a different psychographic segment.

Geography

Success in your local market is good but if you want to really boost the value of your company in the eyes of an acquirer, you need to demonstrate that your concept crosses geographic lines. McDonald’s has more than fourteen thousand locations in the United States but they have also demonstrated that the golden arches can draw a crowd in other markets. McDonald’s has nearly three thousand stores in Japan, two thousand in China and more than a thousand locations in each of the European countries of Germany, Canada, France and the United Kingdom.

You don’t actually have to become a global giant like Marriott, Toyota or McDonald’s to increase your company’s value but you do need to be able to communicate that your concept could work in other markets and that there is still good land left to plow.

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Would you like to learn how to potentially increase the value of your business by up to 71%?  

Click Here

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Will this be the year you seriously drive up the value of your company?

If you have resolved to make your company more valuable in 2017, you may want to think hard about how your customers pay.

If you have a transaction business model where customers pay once for what they buy, expect your company’s value to be a single-digit multiple of your Earnings Before Interest Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA).

If you have a recurring revenue model, by contrast, where customers subscribe and pay on an ongoing basis, you can expect your valuation to be a multiple of your revenue.

Buyers pay up for companies with recurring revenue because they can clearly see how your company will make money long after you hit the exit.

Not sure how to create recurring revenue? Here are five models to consider:

Products That Run Out

If you have a product that people run out of, consider offering it on subscription. The retailing giant Target sells subscriptions to diapers for busy parents who don’t have the time (or interest) in running to the store to re-stock on Pampers. Dollar Shave Club, which was recently acquired by Unilever for five times revenue, sells razor blades on subscription. The Honest Company sells dish detergent and safe household cleaning products to environmentally conscious consumers and more than 80% of their sales come from subscriptions.

Membership Websites

If you’re a consultant and offer specialized advice, consider whether customers might pay access to a premium membership website where you offer your know-how to subscribers only. Today there are membership websites for people who want to know about anything from Search Engine Marketing to running a restaurant.

Services Contracts

If you bill by the hour or the project, consider moving to a fixed monthly fee for your service. That’s what the marketing agency GoBrandGo! has done to steady cash flow and create a more predictable service business.

Piggyback Services

Ask yourself what your “one-off” customers buy after they buy what you sell. For example, if you make a company a new website, chances are they are going to need somewhere to host their site. While your initial website design may be a one-off service, you could offer to host it for your customer on subscription. If you offer interior design, chances are your customers are going to want to keep their home looking like the day you presented your design, so they might be in the market for a regular cleaning service.

Rentals

If you offer something expensive that customers only need occasionally, consider renting access to it for those who subscribe. ZipCar subscribers can have access to a car when they need it without forking over the cash to buy a hunk of steel. WeWork subscribers can have access to the company’s co-working space without buying a building or committing to a long-term lease.

You don’t have to be a software company to create customers who pay you automatically each month. There is simply no faster way to improve the value of your business this year than to add some recurring revenue.

So are you ready to drive up the value of your business?  Take this 13-minute assessment to learn where to focus your efforts on driving value.

START BY CLICKING HERE

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The Downside of Selling Someone Else’s Product

Are you tempted to re-sell someone else’s product to boost your topline revenue?  

On the surface, becoming a distributor for a popular product can appear to be a simple way to grow your sales—simply find something that is already proven to be successful elsewhere and negotiate the rights to sell it in your local market.

While distributing someone else’s product may be a relatively easy way to grow your topline, all that revenue growth may do little for your company’s value. A typical distribution company will be lucky to sell for 50% of one year’s revenue, whereas if you control your product or service—and the brand that embodies them—you should be able to do much better.

How Nike Became One of the World’s Most Valuable Companies

For an example of the dangers of not owning your own products, take a look at the evolution of Blue Ribbon Sports into Nike Inc. As Nike co-founder Phil Knight describes in his recent autobiography Shoe Dog, the company started off by negotiating the exclusive rights to sell Tiger running shoes in the United States. Knight’s company was called Blue Ribbon Sports and he imported the shoes from Onitsuka, a Japanese company.

Despite their exclusive agreement with Blue Ribbon, Onitsuka started to court other American dealers. When Knight protested the obvious breach of their contract, Onitsuka threatened a hostile takeover of Knight’s business or to shut him down outright. Knight’s company was tiny at the time and so deeply reliant on Onitsuka for supply, he could do virtually nothing to enforce their agreement.

Given its dependence on Onitsuka, Knight’s company would have scored close to zero out of a possible 100 on what we call The Switzerland Structure, a measure of your company’s reliance on a supplier, employee or customer. The Switzerland Structure is only one of eight value drivers we measure, but abysmal performance on any one factor can be a significant drag on the value of your business.

Onitsuka’s snub became Knight’s impetus to start Nike, which gave him control of his marketing, supply and product development. Instead of simply re-selling someone else’s shoes, Nike developed their own designs and contracted the manufacturing of their products to other factories. By owning its own products and brands, Nike has become one of the world’s most valuable companies and regularly trades north of 20 times earnings.

To see how your business performs on The Switzerland Structure and the other seven factors that drive your company’s value, take 13 minutes and complete the Value Builder questionnaire now.  CLICK HERE

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Three (3) Advisor Attributes to Consider When Building Your Exit Planning Advisory Team

For business owners who are thinking about exiting their business in the future, there are many things to consider to assure the business transition happens in a smooth manner and accomplishes your personal and professional / corporate goals. Owners are wise to seek the counsel of advisors in this complex and delicate area. Your choice of experienced advice in this area can mean the difference between success and failure to reach your goals. Not only do you need to know which types of advisors to choose but also when to bring them onto your team. This newsletter provides the top three things to consider when building your exit planning advisory team.

1. Process-Oriented vs. Solution- Oriented Advisors

Exiting a business is a process, not simply a transaction. The process includes an owner thinking through all of that owner’s personal and company goals as well as the implications of the business running without their individual efforts, and how the owner will live without the business. Owners who go through this process ask themselves, ‘who can run the business, other than me?’ and ‘what would fill my life in the absence of working in the business?’

Unlike a solution-oriented approach, where issues are identified and your advisor brings you solutions to the problem, the exit planning process requires time and self-reflection to decide what is best for you, both from a business and a personal perspective. The advisor leading this initial process should have a practice that is designed to support this type of ongoing engagement with you, the owner. This is generally not consistent with the placement of products or solutions at this stage of the planning; generally speaking, solutions and the advisors who provide them come later in the process.

2. Relationship-based vs. Transaction-based Approach

Similar to ‘process-oriented’ vs ‘solutions-oriented’ advisors, owners should consider whether their advisors are relationship-based or transaction-based. This distinction applies both to that advisor’s approach as well as to their manner of compensation. The world of professional advisors can be generally divided into two types; relationship-based advisors and transaction-based advisors.

Relationship-based advisors are those who come into the business owner’s lives and work with them, year-in and year-out, on a consistent basis. Two of the leading relationship-based advisors are accountants (for reasons stated already) and attorneys (often at the beginning of a business venture and again when the need arises). Many owners also confide and place their trust in financial planning professionals, insurance and risk management advisors as well as general business coaches and consultants.

These advisors take the approach that a relationship with a business owner exists over a long period of time and they remain available to these owners as needs arise.

Transaction-based advisors are those who approach the relationship with the owner with an eye towards addressing a specific, non-recurring issue for that owner. These advisors might include real estate brokers, consultants who start and complete certain projects for owners, valuation professionals as well as mergers and acquisitions advisors. These advisors enter the lives of owners to execute a certain transaction. For the most part, these advisors also plan to leave the owner’s life shortly after the transaction / project ends.

Shifting from ‘Planning Team’ Members to ‘Execution Team’ Members

Owners are advised to initially seek out planning team members who are relationship-based as well as process-oriented to lead the initial stages of the exit planning. However, an exit planning process often culminates with a transaction. When this happens, transaction-based advisors are necessary additions to the team. At this point in the engagement the focus shifts from the ‘planning team’ to the ‘execution team’ and different players are needed.

3. Planning Team Members vs. Execution Team Members

Planning team members – those described above – are critical to taking the owner through the initial stages of the exit planning process. However, when your exit planning brings you to the point that you are ready to transact, you will need to employ the services of transactional advisors. These include:

– M&A advisors to help find buyers and explain the business to the future owner, as well as to assist in the actual transition of the business to the next owner.
– Legal advisors who focus on transactions – these are ‘transactional attorneys’ who have experience negotiating and structuring deals for owners.
– Accountants and tax advisors who understand and have experience in the world of transactions and can help assess the tax implications of a transaction for the owner.

There are a number of other transactional advisors that need to be identified for the transaction team. These will vary depending upon the details of your transaction.

The Vital Role of the Quarterback

No matter where you are in your planning or transacting, it is helpful to seek out an advisor who can and will serve as the quarterback to your exit planning as well as your exit transaction. These multi-skilled advisors are some of your best allies in drafting a plan for your exit while also helping you to recruit all of the necessary ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skilled advisors who will be needed for this multi-year engagement. The quarterback holds a special place with the owner through all stages. Owners are well advised to seek out exit planning quarterbacks who have made a commitment to being trained, supported and have the tools and the right network to recruit the people needed for the planning and transaction.

Concluding Thoughts

This newsletter makes the argument that owners need to consider different types of advisors during different stages of the exit planning process. Generally speaking, owners should seek out the counsel of ‘relationship-based’ advisors in favor of ‘transaction-based’ early in the process to create and begin implementing a multi-year exit plan.

Later in the process, when a transaction is ready for execution, advisors with a different skill set will need to be employed.

The exit planning process is one that should not be conducted alone and should include the patience and approach that relationship-based advisors bring to the owner as well as the execution skills that are needed later in the process. We hope that you find this helpful in advancing your exit planning forward.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

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Five (5) Traps to Avoid When Planning Your Business Transition

planningWhen it comes time to plan and execute a business transition, there are several common “traps” that business owners fall into that end up either killing a potential transaction or otherwise harming the process. Like most things in life, the sooner that you can recognize these issues, the easier it will be to avoid them. This newsletter is written for owners who are thinking about planning for a future transition from their company and would prefer not to make the obvious mistakes that other owners have made, time and again, in the past.

Five traps:
1. Believing That Your Exit Will be Easy
2. Believing That You Can Do It Alone and Without a Plan
3. Believing That Selling the Business is the Only Way to Exit
4. Procrastination
5. Leading with the Business, not the Personal Concerns

1. The First Exit Planning Trap to Avoid is Believing That Your Exit Will be Easy
Getting out of business can be as difficult, if not more difficult, than getting into business. Difficult questions need to be answered, such as: Who will own the business after you? What is it worth? How will you get paid? Will your employees, vendors, customers, and family be OK? When should this transaction take place?
On this final point you need to consider that if you leave the business too early, then you have not brought the company to its maximum earning power and efficiency under your watch. This could mean that you get less money or don’t complete your building process. However, if you hang on too long (which is the most common problem with owners) then you’ll be trying to move your asset to someone else who may no longer want to own it.

Timing is only one of the difficult considerations to consider. The toughest issue, however, may be letting go – i.e. are you really ready to get out of the game? And do you know what you will do next to fill your time in a productive manner?

Building your business was not easy – it required a plan, and the ability to adapt and compete in your marketplace. Successfully exiting your business could prove even more challenging.

2. Believing That You Can Do It Alone and Without a Plan
All too often exiting owners believe that their success in business qualifies them to design and execute their own business exit. Just because you have proven successful in one field does not make you an expert in all fields. Most successful owners recognize that when they built their businesses, they had quality individuals and advisors who provided assistance. When it comes time to plan and execute a business transition, the right team and a well-thought-out, written plan can have the same, or likely a greater impact, to your goals as the team and planning process that helped you with your success and you can avoid this trap.

3. Believing That Selling the Business is the Only Way to Exit.
Selling your company to a competitor may seem like the most logical way that most owners would want to exit. However, a sale transaction is only one of the several options for a future business transition. While not simple to understand, it may be possible to bring an investor into your company, experience a successful management buyout, create an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP), and / or gift shares of your company to others. Once all options have been explored, an informed exit decision can be made and you can avoid the trap of thinking in only a linear manner about only a sale transaction.

4. Procrastination
With so much information to process, it is easy for owners to put off creating an exit plan. The truth is, however, that an exit strategy should ideally be created along with a business plan, and assessed and adapted as necessary over the life of the business. Creating an exit plan will provide an “end goal” to strive toward through meeting smaller “mini” goals, and allow for progress towards those goals. If you put off beginning your exit planning now, it may, unfortunately, quickly become too late.

5. Leading with the Business, not the Personal Concerns
As stated in issue #1, business owners often fail to adequately consider their emotional attachment to the business or to the stature, and time consumption that owning a business entails. Many owners will resist accepting a seemingly strong offer for their business if they do not have their next stage of life charted out. Remember that there is little getting past the fact that an exit is a highly personal and emotional event and if you begin the planning process from a personal perspective, you are likely to get a better result.

Concluding Thoughts
No matter where you are in your business life-cycle, creating and routinely adapting a written plan for your business exit / future transition is a critical part of the planning process. Through examining these key five (5) traps to avoid you will be able to recognize and hopefully navigate these issues when it comes time for your own exit. Remember that your business is an investment, and as with any investment, you must study and plan in order to create the most financially, and emotionally, profitable outcome.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2015

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Leading your Business Transition / Exit

leadershipMany owners of privately-held businesses are not pro-active in planning for their exit and the company’s transition.  This is true mostly because the ‘exit planning industry’ is nascent and many owners are simply not aware that a service exists to help owners with this complex issue.  This newsletter is written to advocate the position that owners should be pro-active and should actively lead their exit plans by involving those that help them manage the business.  An owner’s successful exit is an entry point for another owner to take the company to the next level, creating potential opportunities for the leaders in your organization.  However, without leading the process, it is not something that you can rely on without proper planning.  You might get lucky, but luck is rarely a solid strategy.

Exit Planning & Mountain Climbing

Let’s first examine how leading an exit is different from growing a company.  We will use a helpful analogy – mountain climbing.

Climbing up a mountain requires determination, focus, strength, and management of many obstacles.  The ascent is often arduous, creating doubt in the mind of the climber as to whether they will reach the pinnacle.  There is a summit that can be identified and a specific point at which one turns to begin the equally, if not more so, challenging act of descending down the mountain.

On the way down a mountain a different skill is required.  One’s weight is now working against them.  There is a different need for balance and coordination of activities.  In fact, Sir Edmund Hillary is not so much known for his ability to be the first Westerner to scale Mount Everest.  Rather, he is famous because he was the first to survive the descent.  Will you, and your business, survive your exit?  The answer to this question may depend upon the new leadership skills that you learn.

First Set the Path for Your Exit

Before the climb and descent begins, a plan is established to reach milestones as well as the ultimate goal – you don’t climb a mountain in one day.  It takes months, if not years, of preparation and the climb and descent requires careful planning.

A strategic, long-term plan for the business – including alignment of key employee’s incentive compensation with that plan – is an excellent start to setting the right path.  When you take the time to formulate a strategic plan as well as align key people, you put the Company on a path to [eventually] succeed without you.  When you can define a vision both for the Company as well as for yourself, you can work faster towards being the leader that your organization needs you to be to more effectively handle your exit plan.  Without direction, there is no catalyst for positive momentum forward.

You Need to be a Leader in Your Exit, Not Just a Manager of the Exit

Your exit will require a different skill set than growing your business, the same way going down a mountain requires different skills than going up.  You need to adopt a leadership mindset towards your exit.  In fact, it will mostly be your ability to let go of the responsibilities that you have grown so attached to that will define the success of your exit.  In order to let go you need to build a team who can assume your responsibilities.  And in order to build that team effectively, you need to become a leader.

Empowering Others – An Unselfish Act

As you set your company plans remember that you are leading, not managing these tasks.  For example, management is more about getting a task done, often with the self-centered objective of successfully driving a result.  Leadership, however, is about the empowerment of others.

When you move from management to leadership, you focus on the strength of your team and begin to more effectively work yourself out of your job.  Your overall strategic plan should have you working hard to eliminate yourself from the day-to-day running of the business.  This is not so much to put you out to pasture but more to increase the transferability of your Company to someone else in the future.

Your Team Will Help Your Future Owner Manage the Business

Your exit will depend on your team because that team will lead your company into the future.  Think of the situation in these terms – no matter how you decide to exit, it is the company that will pay for the value.  Simply put, if the ‘golden goose’ stops laying eggs then an exit cannot be financed.

It will be the team that you develop and lead to self-sufficiency that will run and grow that company into the future.  This is true whether you exit via sale to an outsider, or whether you exit via internal transfer to managers, family or employees.  Someone has to run the business and be empowered to do so.  The team that you build and lead will be that catalyst for the future and will define your exit.

Are You Developing Your Talent on a Regular Basis?

A leader is able to see out over the horizon and prepare for changes within the marketplace and the business.  The success of your exit will depend upon your ability to replace yourself in this regard.

Do you have a process for recruiting new talent and assessing existing talent within your organization?  Are you able to let go of large responsibilities and trust that they will be handled well by those that you lead?  These are critical questions to ask and answer in advance of your exit because turning over the reins of a business is often an emotional event for an owner.  Working through this emotion and putting the right people in place is an unselfish act that is done for the long-term growth and survival of the business.

Concluding Thoughts

You worked hard to establish your position in your company, industry, and community.  Now you need to work just as hard to replace yourself in that role.  This unselfish act (or more appropriately, series of acts) sets the stage for a successful exit because you are building your own replacement by leading the organization to a whole new level.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

 

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Insuring Your Future Exit

growthBusiness owners are risk-takers by nature.  Interestingly, however, is the fact that these same owners are often-times not risk averse.  What this means is that owners will assume risks in one area of their lives, but not necessarily work to mitigate risks in other areas.  The primary issue in not mitigating risks lies in the fact that there are a lot of people in your world who rely on you and the decisions that you make.  This newsletter challenges the use of insurance in the singular manner of addressing a loss of life.  In fact, insurance products are useful tools throughout the spectrum of advanced planning for a future exit.  This newsletter is written with the intention of discussing risk mitigation and broadening owner’s views on how and where insurance can ground and solidify your plans for a future exit, i.e. while you are still alive.

An Aleatory Business Contract

Let’s begin by taking a look at insurance by starting with the concept of an ‘aleatory contract’.  Insurance policies are known as aleatory contracts.  An aleatory contract is defined as “an agreement concerned with an uncertain event that provides for unequal transfer of value between the parties. Insurance policies are aleatory contracts because an insured can pay premiums for many years without sustaining a covered loss. Conversely, insureds sometimes pay relatively small premiums for a short period and then receive coverage for a substantial loss.”

So the financial industry provides a marketplace to understand your business risks and allow you an opportunity to share those risks with another institution.  In a limited sense it is a forecast of the future – in the case of insuring the loss of life, if the event / death that you are insuring occurs, you “win” and the insurance company pays.  If the event does not occur, you don’t necessarily lose because you have some peace of mind.

Insurance as an Asset Class

Insuring for the loss of life is only a small part of utilizing insurance in an exit plan.   However many business owners fail to see the benefits of certain other forms of insurance.  Insurance can serve as an asset class and a tool to harvest savings, share benefits and leave assets on your company balance sheet, as well as sharing an asset with key people to more easily retain them at your company.  Most business owners, when thinking about planning for their exit, fail to see insurance as a tool for many facets of a transition plan.

Insurance as an Accumulation Asset for a Future Exit

Some typical goals of business owners who are thinking about a future exit, include:

  • Having enough retirement income to sustain your lifestyle.
  • Retaining key people and aligning incentives to grow the business
  • Having a tax efficient transfer of wealth as the business changes hands.
  • Avoiding complex tax code provisions inside of your key person incentive plan
  • Providing a path for key people to potentially purchase the business interests from you, the owner.
  • Having access to cash that is needed to run and grow the business.

Insurance contracts can serve as a ‘funding solution’ for the issues listed above.  The primary goal of this newsletter is not to provide complex details of how this can work, but rather to help to re-conceptualize the role that insurance can play in your future plans.

Remember that insurance is a unique asset in many respects, not the least of which is the ability to harvest tax benefits, provide disciplined savings with your planning, and to customize an agreement that retains your key people.

Solving or Not Solving for Death

As mentioned, business owners too often view the purchase of insurance only as a vehicle to deliver needed cash in the event of a death.  The use of funds is often to replace business income or to fund family needs and / or estate taxes.  Many business owners hold contracts that are set to address these contingencies.

However, there is another way to look at insurance:  as a tax-efficient, forced savings plan for you, your company, and your key people.  In this case, the purpose of insurance is not necessarily to anticipate a death and for cash to be provided at the time of death.  Rather, this form of insurance is for cash accumulation, either within the company or held outside of the business.

Overcoming Immortality

One of the reasons that insurance is looked down upon as an effective tool for exit planning is because many owners have survived against insurmountable odds to grow their business.  Also, there is the uncomfortable issue of dealing with death.  However, when insurance is viewed in more broad terms as a tool to accomplish many goals while you continue to grow your business and make plans for a future exit, the options and alternative uses begin to grow.

Concluding Thoughts

For better or for worse, it is often said that insurance is something that is sold, not purchased.  In other words, the use of insurance in an exit plan has historically required a sales process in which a purchaser of insurance needs to see a vision of what could happen to their lives without insurance.  This newsletter is written with the intention of moving business owners in a direction where a desire to learn about and utilize certain forms of insurance is something that is ‘purchased’ for the benefit of you and your company, and not something that needs to be ‘sold’.

Take Action Today

Call your insurance advisor and request a review of your existing policies for your business and your personal lines.  Seek to learn about the different ways that insurance can serve as a catalyst and disciplined approach to advancing your plans for a future exit.  You worked a lifetime to build what you have.  Just as you were responsible for the success of your enterprise, you are equally responsible for seeing its succession and/or transfer, including your exit.  Be sure to remember to insure your future exit.  In doing so, you will advance further towards the peace of mind that comes as a result of proper planning.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

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Seeing the Big Picture with Your Exit

The success of exiting a business depends greatly upon the mental perspective and preparation of an owner during the exit process.  Business owners tend to fixate their thoughts only on running and growing their business.  However, there is a tremendous amount of value in seeing the ‘big picture’ with your exit and thinking about the future and where you would like both the company, and yourself personally, to end up.  The owner who is able to see the larger picture, and understands that stepping out of a business is an opportunity to move both themselves and their company toward a new stage of life, will be best prepared to execute a successful business transition.  This newsletter is written to help owners think through the ‘big picture’ and align their thinking and resources towards a successful exit.

The Transfer Timing Slots

One of the first ‘big picture’ concepts that owners should grasp is the idea of ‘timing slots’.  Much like a slot machine, you want to see if you can match up three (3) critical areas – (1) personal timing, (2) company preparedness, and (3) market timing.  A solid ‘big picture’ of an exit considers all three.

Let’s Begin with Market Timing

Markets run in cycles and timing is important.  If a business is performing well because there is a favorable economy, all things being equal, this can be an optimal time to consider an exit.  Valuation is high, employees are engaged, and – often times – buyers / investors have a high degree of interest and activity.

As the chart below indicates, the last three (3) decades have followed a similar market cycle and this decade is following suit.

U.S. Ten Year Private Transfer Cycle

 

Therefore, if you believe the information above, your ‘big picture’ in terms of market timing indicates that the next few years are ideal in terms of market timing.

Company Preparedness

The 2nd ‘big picture’ concept for an exit is Company preparedness.  In other words, your business needs to be [at least somewhat] transferrable to have a successful exit.

There are a large number of items that can lead to poor timing for an exit and lack of company preparedness.  For example, you may have recently had a departure of a key manager or you may have lost a key customer and need time to replace that revenue.  Alternatively your CFO or controller may not have your finances in order or you may have a law suit pending that should really be resolved before moving ahead with a transfer of the business.

While timing can rarely ever be perfect, it is important to think through the current and forecasted profitability and valuation to see that your company’s preparedness is optimal for a successful transaction that will result in a valuation and deal structure that works for you personally.

Personal Timing

The final ‘big picture’ concept – and the third consideration in the timing slots of an exit – is personal readiness.  In fact, it probably makes sense to begin the ‘big picture’ thinking of an exit with personal planning.  The reason is that this can be the most complex and take the most amount of time to navigate.  Also, how an owner thinks about an exit is what is most likely to drive the exit process.  In other words, the market and company can be perfectly positioned for an exit, but if the owner does not want to leave, it is possible that an exit process will not begin.

A Vision for a Personal Future Without the Company

Prior to considering any of the various options for exiting your business, you must be able to recognize two key elements within yourself:

  • Realization of where you are right now, and
  • A clear vision of where you want to be after the exit

As a successful business owner, you realize that you have created self-worth and profit for both the company and those around you, including your family members.  In building a company, you have built a personal identity, perhaps the only one which is recognized by some family, friends, and business associates.  Many owners, without properly considering their new, post-exit identities will be unable to successfully pursue a business exit because of their continued attachment to the business.  In order to ensure a smooth transition, you want to be able to articulate both where you are in your business today and the personal challenges associated with getting you to where you want to be.

Developing Exit Skills

The key to achieving the vision – or the ‘big picture’ – for your exit is an understanding that the tools and skills which have enabled you to build your business will likely be of limited value in planning your exit from the business; you’ll need to learn new skills.  If you are using the same tools, skills and thoughts that you used to run and grow your business, it is very difficult to move on to the next phase.  The primary reason why this is true is that the development of business value is not entirely consistent with the development of fulfilling personal needs and values.

A ‘big picture’ look at your situation will have you begin to ask questions about ‘why’ it is important to design an exit plan that meets the needs that you have defined.

Concluding Thoughts

Seeing the “big picture” in your exit involves taking the time to reflect on goals of the business, the timing of the market, but most importantly, your interests and objectives outside of the business.  Exploring your personal goals allows you to confidently move forward to the next phase of life, which may or may not include continued involvement with the company.  As in so many aspects of one’s life, perspective is key to ultimate success.  By viewing your exit as an opportunity to a begin a new lifestyle instead of as a loss of your business identity, you can begin develop a ‘big picture’ for your exit.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

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Private vs. Public Securities, Exiting Means Liquidity

Owners of privately held companies often times have the majority of their wealth tied to their business.  These owners are well served in understanding the challenges faced in converting an illiquid asset into cash.  For example, unlike the valuation and liquidity for a publicly traded company, the value and ability to cash in a privately held business is a more subjective and complex matter.  This newsletter is written to highlight the differences between public ‘liquid’ and private ‘illiquid’ securities.  By having this level of understanding, owners can more accurately understand the differences between private and public stock ownership and the challenges faced with turning their illiquid business stock into cash that they can use in retirement. Investment

No Open Market Exists for ‘Illiquid’ Shares

The most obvious difference between ‘liquid’ and ‘illiquid’ company shares is the lack of an established ‘open market’ through which shares can be traded for cash.  When a company’s shares are owned by the investing public and there are shares traded on an exchange, then liquidity has been achieved and the owners of those shares can cash in at any time, based on the current market price.

Privately held businesses do not have this luxury.  In fact, the owner of a privately-held company needs to, in effect, create their own market for the sale of their shares.  Buyers need to be identified and a valuation will be based on a negotiation that takes place during that process.

Private Ownership = Ultimate Control

So, while there is a sacrifice to liquidity for a private business owner, the advantage is being able to enjoy the benefits of control over their business.  In fact, private company owners often do not report the performance and activities of their business to anyone except for the government and, perhaps, their bank.  By contrast, if your business was publicly traded there would be requirements to report on a regular basis the company’s performance to non-controlling shareholders.

Private Business Ownership Limits Portfolio Diversification

A private business owner pays a certain price for control in the form of personal risk.  That owner has a concentration of personal financial risk within one investment, their business.  By contrast, holders of publicly traded shares can buy and diversify their holdings, creating an investment portfolio that insulates their wealth from industry/segment-specific fluctuations.

A Lifestyle vs. an Investment

An important difference between public and private ownership is in the management of a business and the owner’s motives.  Public company management motives are fairly simple—increase shareholder wealth by producing the highest possible profit in order to increase the price of the stock.  To the public shareholder, the entity is a mere investment.

By contrast, private company managers and owners are usually one and the same.  And ownership represents a whole lot more than an investment; it’s a personal wealth builder.  For instance, the private manager will often-times look to ‘suppress’ the profitability of a company in order to manage his or her personal tax liability.  Beyond tax savings, the owner enjoys lifestyle benefits, such as a company car, additional compensation, premium benefits, extended vacations, and the personal satisfaction that comes with complete control over the entity.

Balancing the Benefits of Private Ownership with the Need for Liquidity

So the advantages of control and privacy are off-set by a lack of liquidity.  These contrasting points come to a head when it is time to design and execute an exit plan from the business.

In order to attract a buyer for your company’s shares, an owner will need to disclose how their business is run – this includes the good, the bad and the ugly of how you handle your company’s management, strategy and finances.  The owner also needs to accept that many of the perks of running the business will come to an end for them someday.  For many owners, it is a challenge to share with others how your privately held business is run.  Think of the analogy of selling your home – the place where your family lives and memories are made – and then the uncomfortable process of having strangers parade through your living area with judging eyes determining if they too want to live there one day.

The way that an owner can balance the privacy that they enjoy with the need for future liquidity is to set a plan for their future exit and understand how and when certain items will be disclosed.

Concluding Thoughts – Making Your Private Business Marketable to Someone Else

The exit planning process is about anticipating the needs and demands of your future owner so that you can prepare yourself and your business for this transaction and transition.  An effective exit plan recognizes both the benefits and limitations of private business ownership.  A well-prepared owner will not only understand these differences but will be in a position to explain them to a future buyer – much the same way that public companies disclose their business dealings.  Such preparedness helps to assure the protection and preservation of the wealth that is ‘trapped’ within your privately held business.

We hope that this newsletter has helped you to see some of the challenges faced in designing an exit plan by comparing your privately-held business with that of a public company security.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

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Rich vs. Famous

Did you set a goal for your company this year? growth

If you’re like most business owners, you’re striving for an increase in your annual sales. It’s natural to want your company to be bigger because that’s what everyone around us seems to celebrate.

Magazines profile the fastest growing companies, industry associations celebrate their largest members, and bigger seems to be better in the eyes of just about every business pundit with a microphone.

But growth can come at a steep price and can even detract from your ability to build your personal wealth.

The Contrasting Exits of Michael Arrington

For example, let’s take a look at an entrepreneur named Michael Arrington. Arrington started Achex in 1999. It helped facilitate payments in the early days of the internet, and Arrington was focused on growing it. He accepted two rounds of outside capital to fund the company’s expansion.

Achex was ultimately sold to First Data Corporation for $32 million in 2001. Unfortunately, because Arrington had been focused on growth above all else, he had not only raised two rounds of financing but also reduced his personal stake in the company down to next to nothing. As he told Business Insider, “When I started my first company, Achex, we raised $18 million in venture capital in 2000 from DFJ. The company later sold for $32 million, but due to a 2x liquidity preference (common in those days), the founders essentially got nothing, just a few hundred thousand dollars to not block the deal.”

Arrington then went on to start the technology blogging website TechCrunch in 2005. This time Arrington wanted to grow the business, but not at the expense of his equity. Instead, they grew the company within their means and funded the business largely out of cash flow. Arrington still owned 80% of the company, according to Business Insider, when he sold it for approximately $30 million.

Apparently Arrington had learned his lesson—growth is good, but not at the expense of all else.

The Alternative to Growth at All Costs

The alternative to focusing on sales growth as your primary objective is to focus on the value of your equity within your company. Growth will have a positive impact on your company’s value, but your growth rate is only one of the eight drivers that impact what your company is worth. As you build your business, you will be faced with many forks in the road where growth may come at the expense of both your company’s value, and your personal wealth. For example:

  • You may have to dilute your personal stake in the company by taking on outside capital. Depending on the return your investors are looking for, and the performance of your company after you take on outside investors, your smaller slice of the larger pie may be worth less than a larger slice of a smaller pie.
  • Cross selling your largest customer more products and services may be a relatively easy way to grow your top line, but if they already represent more than 15% of your sales, the extra revenue may dilute the value of your company because acquirers discount companies with too much customer concentration.
  • Giving lazy customers 90 days to pay may keep them buying, but those charitable payment terms may detract from the value of your business because an acquirer will have to fund your working capital.
  • You could choose to invest your sales and marketing resources into winning a big, one-time project that would boost your sales but this may not boost the value of your business, which may be more positively impacted by a smaller amount of recurring revenue.

Growth is important and how big your company can get is one of the eight drivers of your company’s value. But growth is only one of eight factors—to learn about the other seven, get your Sellability Score. https://gtgrowth.com/the-sellability-score/

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Did Microsoft Overpay For LinkedIn?

acquisitionMicrosoft’s recent $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn provides an illustrative example of a strategic acquisition – the type of sale that usually garners the most gain for the acquired company’s shareholders.

You may be wondering what a billion-dollar acquisition has to do with your business, but the very same reasons a strategic acquirer buys a $26 billion business holds true for the acquisition of a $2 million company.

The financial vs. strategic buyer

A financial buyer is buying the future stream of profits coming from your business, whereas the strategic buyer is buying your business for what it is worth in their hands. To simplify, a financial acquirer buys your business because they think they can sell more of your stuff, whereas a strategic buyer acquires your business because they think it will help them sell more of their stuff.

One might argue that Microsoft overpaid for LinkedIn given that LinkedIn only generated a few hundred million dollars in EBITDA last year, meaning the good folks in Redmond paid an astronomical multiple of LinkedIn’s earnings.

But earnings are not the only thing strategic acquirers care about when they go to make an acquisition.

Microsoft‘s acquisition of LinkedIn is a classic example of a strategic acquisition. The Redmond-based technology giant has been undergoing a major transformation from being a software company focused on operating systems to a business concentrating on cloud-based software applications. Microsoft enjoys a dominant market share in the basic tools white-collar business people use to get their job done, but other software packages have begun to nip at the heels of their dominance in many product lines.

Take Microsoft Office for example. Many businesses have started to use competitive offerings from Google and Apple. Even more companies cling to older versions of Microsoft Office software, even though Microsoft is keen to move everyone over to the cloud-based Office 365.

In purchasing LinkedIn, Microsoft saw an opportunity to suck data from LinkedIn into Microsoft’s cloud-based software applications, making them irresistible. Imagine you’re a sales person and you just landed a big meeting with a new prospect. You enter the appointment as a Microsoft Outlook event and suddenly the details of the event feature everything LinkedIn knows about your prospect.

Now you can make small talk about where they went to school, the previous jobs they have held and know the scope of their current role – all without ever leaving Outlook.

Microsoft is betting this kind of integration across its platforms will compel more people to upgrade to the latest software applications. While your company is likely smaller than LinkedIn, the same thing that makes a giant buy another giant holds true for smaller businesses. To get the highest possible price for your business, remember that companies make strategic acquisitions because they want to sell more of their stuff.

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Aligning Your Key People With Your Future Exit

PEGThere is an old saying that goes “show me how I am paid and I’ll show you how I’ll behave”.  The issue is simple for business owners – the right incentive plans help to grow the value of your company while the wrong (or no) incentive plans leave key employees with little direction as to help you, the owner, grow the company to the next level.

When it comes time to think about a transition or exit, often times key people are, rightfully so, the initial consideration.  People issues can be some of the toughest that you will face in your role as manager, owner, and leader of your private business.  The key is not only to attract these value-add managers but also to retain them and, perhaps also align their efforts with what drives value through your Company.  If done properly, aligning your key people can not only result in a more profitable business, but also a more transferable company as well.

Typical Compensation Plans

Owners will often-times set up compensation for key executives in a few different ways.  First there is base compensation and next there is some form of ‘year-end’ (or quarterly) bonus, based upon the performance of the business.  The 2nd part of the compensation formula is often times the least well developed.  The reason is that owners do not want to make a financial commitment that is not aligned with the performance of the company, so owners take a wait and see approach to determine what is available to pay at the end of a measuring cycle.

The challenge with this form of subjective compensation planning is that it leaves too much to the owner’s discretion, which, in turn, leaves room for the wrong interpretation from the key person.  Moreover, when bonus plans are subjective, the key person does not feel like they have control over their income and that many times their positive efforts (which should be rewarded through a bonus) are being off-set by non-performers in the Company.

A Path Toward Alignment

So, owners who want to more closely tie the performance of the company to the compensation of their key people should start to focus on the key performance indicators in their business.  “KPIs” are the metrics that are measured to determine the business’ success.  Now, many owners will go right to revenue and cash flow as key metrics.  That is natural because both of those items are critically important to making payroll and meeting other financial obligations.  However, other key metrics that drive operational performance as well as help the company with its marketing efforts are equally, if not more important because those items set that stage for tomorrow’s revenue.

Alignment in a compensation plan considers both the short-term and the long-term.  It thinks through the behavior that the owner wants to see versus the behavior that exists today.  This is a highly customized approach that varies by different departments and job functions.

A Warning Regarding Profit vs. Value

Owners who are moving in the direction of aligning key executive compensation with Company performance should be forewarned not to focus only on revenue and cash flow.  Rather, owners are well served understanding what drives value in a privately-held business and striving towards incentives that encourage behavior that produces more value-creating activity and not simply more revenue and cash flow.

The Starting Point for Alignment

So in order to get started with aligning your key people, you need to think through the overall goals of the company.  If you ‘begin with the end in mind’ you can think through a future destination where you want the business to arrive, and then set a roadmap, through the incentive plan, to help reward the key people who get you to that destination.

However, this is where most owners fall short with longer-term planning.  The reality of business ownership is that too much focus is on ‘working in the business’ and not ‘working on the business’.  A lack of a strategic plan and forward thinking goals prevents the build-out of a comprehensive incentive plan that details the path forward.

Sharing the Build-out of the Alignment Plan

For owners who undertake to design an incentive compensation plan, you are well served in making your key people a part of the design process.  This is a far better approach than simply creating a plan and delivering it to the key people.  By discussing the details of an incentive design with your key people, they can feel a part of the process and also get a sense of ownership of the plan that is designed to help benefit both the company and their individual efforts.  Take feedback.  Involve key people in the process and you’ll end up with a better plan that has stronger buy-in.

Incentives that Lead to Growth and Eventual Exit

A well designed incentive plan will challenge both you and your company.  It will put folks in control of their incomes and assure that increased income for key people first benefits the company.  When you can do this, you begin to make the business less dependent upon you and increase the transferability of the company.

The alignment of your people therefore is key to the success of your exit.  The overriding point is that you need to build a strong management team and design incentives that excite and challenge them.  In doing so you will be personally challenged with ‘letting go’ of many responsibilities.  When faced with this struggle, simply remember that the highest and best use of your talents lies beyond the day-to-day running of your business.  Align your people to build a successful exit plan.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

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Exiting a Business vs. Selling a Home

PEGAcross America today there are millions of baby boomer business owners who are thinking about how they will transition the ownership of their business to someone else as they reap the rewards of a lifetime of business success.  However, because most of these owners have no experience with selling a business, they do not truly know what to expect in the process.  And for a transaction of this complexity and size, it is likely that what owners do not know will materially hurt them in the process of transitioning their companies.

This newsletter is written to help owners get past the first, and most crucial preconception – that selling / transitioning their privately-held business will be similar to the sale of their home. Because so many business owners believe that selling a business is akin to selling a residential home, this newsletter explains the differences between selling a business versus selling a home – or, for that matter, how selling a business differs from the sale of virtually any other asset that you will sell in your lifetime.  These comparisons become very significant because, generally, a privately-held business is that business owners’ largest and most valuable asset.

It is my objective to make owners aware of these differences in order to begin the process of educating owners who hold this pre-conceived and very false assumption.

The Mental Process of Associations

As human beings we learn through experiences and our associations with those experiences.  So when we are presented with a new concept, for which we have no experience, we look to associate the new concept with something from our past.

In the case of the sale of a business, owners often look to a sale of another large asset that they may have experienced in their lifetime, the sale of their home.  In fact, the sale of a privately-held business differs from the sale of a home in five (5) material ways that are provided below.

  1. Valuation & Buyers
  2. Deal Structuring
  3. Taxes
  4. Transaction Types
  5. The Impact on Others

Difference #1 – Valuation & Buyers

Home sale values are based on the comparable sales method for neighboring homes that resemble the house being sold.  This means that the seller of a home can most accurately see what their property is worth by seeking the closest comparable sale transactions in their neighborhoods.

This analogy is only partially true for trying to compare the sale of a business.  While other companies like yours that have sold in the past is some indicator of what your business may be worth, there are large differences between a static, free-standing structure such as a home versus a dynamic, ever-changing entity such as a privately-held business.

Moreover, the value of a home is not dependent upon who the buyer is.  In the world of residential real estate, all buyers are [essentially] equal – they are either qualified for financing or they are not.  In the world of business sales, the type of buyer that you are talking to is critically important. Different buyers bring different attributes to the business sale – some will pay more than others, and some will have to pay you out over time, i.e. not all cash at the closing.  For example, a competitor may pay more for your business than, say an employee who you would like to see own the business but does not have any money for the purchase.  That employee would need to pay you from future cash flows and the idea of getting a higher value can be tough.  This leads us to difference #2.

Difference #2 – Deal Structuring

When a homeowner sells their home, they get paid the negotiated selling price at the closing.  In business sale transactions, the amount of money received at the closing often times represents only a portion of the total proceeds that are part of a larger negotiated selling price.  Generally speaking, smaller deals – those less than a few million dollars – are subject to more ‘structuring’ of payments over time, while larger deals tend to get more cash at closing.  That being said, if a company is, for example, highly dependent upon an owner, then there may be a larger earn-out or payment associated with the sale.  Again, when you sell your home you certainly do not expect to be paid only a portion at the closing and the balance over time.

Difference #3 – Taxes

When you sell a home, there is [generally] one (1) tax rate.  When you exit a business, there are an endless number of potential tax outcomes for the transaction.  The most easily recognized tax rate for a sale transaction is the capital gains tax rate.  This rate applies to the gain – the amount of value exceeding the cost basis of the stock – that is realized in the sale of shares of the company.

However, not all business sales are ‘stock’ deals that qualify for capital gains taxation.  Rather, many are ‘asset’ deals that fall into a separate category and allocation process to determine the appropriate tax rates.  Payments to an exiting business owner under an asset deal can have a variety of tax consequences that will impact what an owner will net from the transaction.  This is not the case in the sale of a home.

Difference #4 – Transaction Types

The sale of a residential home includes all of the property and the structure(s) that are on that property.  Therefore, residential home sales are an ‘all or nothing’ deal.  Business sale transactions come in a variety of different forms, with owners able to sell all or only a portion of the company’s stock.  Could you imagine a home sale that included only a few bedrooms and a garage, for example?  Naturally that is not possible.  However, in the sale of a business, the owner can sell all or only some of the equity and can also have an option of either continuing to stay involved with the business or not work any longer.

Difference #5 – The Impact on Others

Our final and greatest difference between selling a business versus selling a home is the impact that the change in control has on other people.  When an owner sells or transitions a company to a new owner, many people are impacted including employees, customers, vendors, as well as the owner’s family.  While the sale of a home is an important event, it will not have as a dramatic impact as the transition of a company whereby so many people depend on that business from a financial perspective.

Concluding Thoughts

There are certainly more than five (5) differences between selling a business versus selling a home.  This newsletter was written to raise awareness to owners who are considering a transition of their company and have not fully thought through all of the implications because these owners do not have the experience and any similar associations.  I hope that this newsletter has helped you see that the selling of a business is very different from the selling of your home and I encourage you to seek out experienced advice in this area so that you do not make the same mistakes that owners have made in the past who had this same assumption.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

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Selling vs. Exiting Your Business: 10 Differences

planningWhen business owners think about transitioning out of their companies, some of the first thoughts that come to mind relate to the sale of their business.  In fact, many business owners believe that in order to exit their business they need to sell it to someone else.  As a result, the term ‘exit planning’ is often misunderstood and interpreted by owners as a ‘sale’ of their company.

This newsletter is written to help owners to see that developing an ‘exit plan’ for their eventual transition from the business is not the same as the sale of the business.  In fact, as the ‘exit planning industry’ continues to develop, a strong track record is being developed that demonstrates that owners who plan for their eventual exit fare better than those who simply view an ‘exit plan’ as a sale of the business and wait until the last minute to take action.

This newsletter seeks to differentiate selling a business from establishing an exit plan so that owners can consider the benefits of a plan for their exit as a way to protect and harvest the value that is inside your privately-held company.

Ten (10) Differences between Selling and Establishing an Exit Plan

The table below was created to provide ten differences between selling a company versus establishing a plan for an eventual exit.

Sell The Business Develop an Exit Plan
Advisor motives rule Owner motives rule
Advisors are transactional Advisors are relationship-based
Goal is ‘sale of business’ Goal is to achieve business owners’ stated goals
Process includes ‘finding buyers’ Successors/buyers are found or ‘created’
Sales process at ‘mercy of market’ Transfer process is controllable
Outside party necessary for deal ‘Internal’ transfers considered w/ external
Company is ‘shopped’ to market Company examined for various transfer options
Negotiations center around price Discussion include various transfer methods
Large advisory fees & taxes paid Taxes & fees can be controlled and managed over time
Company sale – primary consideration Personal and corporate objectives considered

 

As the chart indicates, there is a great difference between the sale of a company and the strategic development of a plan for an exit.  As the chart illustrates, the benefits that an ‘exit strategy’ can provide include:

– Evaluation of various transfer options

– Potential for creation of a buyer

– A controllable process happening over time     

 – Enhanced management of taxes and fees

– A comprehensive and objective process that includes both personal and corporate objectives to drive the overall decision-making process 

These combined differences make the larger point that an ‘exit strategy’ can be developed and executed over a long period of time without the time-sensitive influence and pressure that comes from the sale of a business.

So given these large differences, let’s discuss the merits of a well-developed exit plan and show how the sale of your company may or may not be one of the last action items in the overall plan.

A Well Developed Plan for an Exit

Owners who engage in an exit planning process may or may not sell their company in the future.  However, before any decision is made to sell, a process can be followed to determine an owner’s goals and the readiness of that owner to reach those goals.  Further, owners are educated on different options during an exit planning process whereby the pros and cons of different exit alternatives are evaluated to get to the one that works best to help you achieve your goals – within the time frame of your choosing.

The benefits of developing an exit plan long before any consideration is given towards the potential sale of your business are many and great.  Most of all, you as an owner will achieve a certain amount of clarity that the transaction that you are choosing will be the one that is best for you – this may or may not include selling the company to an outside buyer.

Concluding Thoughts

Consider the formation of an exit strategy from your business today and join the growing number of business owners who are learning that ‘selling’ is not their only option.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

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Exit Planning is a Path to Diversification of Wealth

PEG

Most owners of privately-held businesses have the majority of their wealth trapped in their illiquid business.  What this means is that without a path to turn the value in your business into cash, your overall wealth will continue to stay concentrated in your ownership of your business.  So the fact that your business provides for a solid income and lifestyle is separate and distinct from considering how and when you will be able to turn that illiquid wealth into cash.  This newsletter is written to help owners see that a business exit plan can be a vital first step towards diversifying your overall portfolio while also protecting the wealth that resides in your illiquid, privately-held business.

The Basics of Diversification

There is an old saying that applies to many business owners – that “in order to get rich, you need to own a lot of one thing, but in order to stay rich you need to own lots of different things.”  Many business owners today ‘got rich’ through the ownership of their privately-held business.  However, in order to stay rich, many owners will need to diversify their personal wealth through the transfer of ownership of their companies.

If you are like most business owners, your business comprises the majority of your wealth.  Also, like most owners, your business is likely highly dependent upon you.  Therefore, if you want to protect your overall wealth through the process of diversification, you can consider planning for the eventual transition of your business, whereby a point in time will come for you to turn your illiquid wealth into cash.

Why Plan to Sell Something So Valuable?

Many owners understand the logic of diversifying their wealth through an eventual exit but they do not take immediate actions because they have a very good thing going with the success of their company.  For owners who agree with the logic of diversification but perhaps have not taken any action in this direction, we offer another question to ask yourself:

  • “If I sold my business today [for a reasonable price] would I turn around and invest all of those proceeds back into the same business or into a single stock that does not have an actively traded market?

The answer for most owners to both questions is a resounding ‘no’.  Not only would most owners not turn around and repurchase the business that they just sold but they would also not be looking to reinvest in a concentrated, single asset for the same sale proceeds.  The obvious reason for not repurchasing your business or to re-concentrate your wealth is because the RISK of only owning one stock – after achieving liquidity – is too high.  There is a single point of failure with that financial plan because the investment dollars are not DIVERSIFIED.

This is the financial reality of many owners of privately-held businesses today.

Why Most Owners Do Not Begin the Process of Diversification with a Plan

An exit plan is a written document that assists an owner with consideration of different ways to diversify their wealth by eventually becoming liquid from a transfer of ownership.  Given that the sale of a business is the largest and most emotional transaction for most owners, it makes sense that a plan would come before an action that is taken.  However, we find that most owners do not take action to plan for their diversification for a variety of reasons.  Many business owners offer a number of reasons, listed below, for their lack of planning, including:

  1. “I don’t perceive my business to be a RISK” or
  2. “I am not ready to SELL the business so I cannot DIVERSIFY, or
  3. “I bought plenty of life insurance to take care of my family if something should happen to me (in other words, ‘my demise is the only RISK that I really perceive to exist regarding the future profitability of my business’) or
  4. “I am DIVERSIFIED. My business sells many lines of products and/or services”

In each instance we see that the owner’s ‘plan’ is quite limited and does not actually diversify the owner’s family’s wealth.  Perhaps somewhere in this list of common responses you see one that fits your reaction to this question of planning for diversification?

The Psychology of ‘Selling’

If there is so much logic behind diversifying wealth through an exit plan, then why don’t more owners do it?  One answer lies in the psychology of an exit.

As an owner of your business you are the master of your own destiny.  You have survived the odds against ‘making it’ in business and continue to fight them each and every day.  For the most part, thinking about an exit strategy plan cuts against the grain of thoughts of business growth and expansion.

So, given this gap between logic and action, how do you begin to turn this bridge, this divide and start developing an exit strategy plan that protects all of the wealth that you have accumulated?

Seeking Help is the First Step in this Planning Process

The most successful owners know that they do not climb a mountain all by themselves.  Rather they surround themselves with a team that knows more than they do about areas that they are venturing into.

The same process holds true for planning for a business exit.  We advise that you seek out professionals with experience in this area to help you begin the planning process that ultimately leads to the protection of your illiquid wealth.

Concluding Thoughts

In closing, most business owners will make up their minds to do something when they are good and ready to do so.  Therefore, we can only continue to impress upon the millions of business owners out there that diversification is a key component to securing the success that you have worked a lifetime to achieve.  In this regard, one can say that it is never too soon to begin thinking about an exit plan, but without a plan, it could one day be too late.  We hope that this newsletter has assisted you in thinking about your overall wealth and how an exit plan can begin the process of helping you protect it.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

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As You Exit, Who Will Do Your Job

planning

As the owner of a privately-held business, you are likely a catalyst for the ongoing running and growth of the business.  The roles that most owners fill in their companies often span a number of different areas within the business.  Even with an established management team, owners are often still the ‘straw that stirs the drink’ on a daily basis.  Without the stirring where would your business be?  And, as you consider your exit from your business, you need to answer two questions on this topic.  First, ‘how dependent is my company on me’, and next, ‘who will do my job when I leave?’

What is Your Job at Your Company?

In your business are you the sales person or are you the head of operations?  Or are you both?  Do you innovate within your product line or do you watch over the finances on a regular basis?  Or do you do some of both?  Are you the leader amongst the staff or are you the owner who stays in their office in order to empower others to do their jobs without micro-managing them?  Overall, how much of your company is dependent upon you and who will fill those roles after you exit from the company?  Again, these are critical questions to answer if you want to have a smooth transition of the business and achieve the highest value with the fewest continued obligations from you during a ‘neat and orderly transition’.

Are You a Bottleneck for Your Business and Your Exit?

An important question to ask about the job(s) that you perform at your company is whether or not you actually slow down the growth of your business.  In other words, are you a bottleneck to your company?

You likely are a bottleneck to your company and your successful exit if any / all of the following apply to you:

  • You are critically involved with decisions on a daily basis, to the point where projects or steps in a procedure cannot advance without you.
  • You are the only person who holds key vendor and customer relationships and the only person who takes those phone calls and /or meetings.
  • Product design and innovation only comes from you.
  • You are the only person who knows the company’s financial position and has bank relationships to fund the business.
  • The strategic direction of the business is primarily set and understood by you.
  • Employees are generally disempowered to make decisions without your input and/or final approval.

The Challenges to Overcome

Owners typically resist changes to how they work in their businesses for a variety of reasons.  Some simply don’t want to make any changes after years of getting things the way that they want them.  Other owners want to make the changes but don’t want to do the work or do not know where to begin.  While others do not want to spend the money on new hires to do the jobs that these owners should not be doing.  Further some owners simply do not trust other people with these critical functions.

Give serious consideration as to what is holding you back from making these changes and letting go of certain tasks that others could more easily complete.  One motivation to make these changes is that your pool of potential, future owners becomes more limited if you are a bottleneck to your business and do too many jobs.

The Exit Challenge to a Bottleneck

Overall, the only person who will be willing to own your business after you is someone who not only wants the exact job that you currently have but also is as qualified as you to do that job.  If you have not properly assigned and delegated critical responsibilities, then it stands to reason that in most cases, the only person who can do your job after you is someone with the experience to do so as well as the financial backing to purchase your company.  All things being equal, this person, if they exist, is likely running their own business today.

Exit and Other Benefits of a Low Dependence

When you can reduce your owner dependence by distributing these responsibilities to others, you are in a stronger position to execute on an exit plan that liberates you from your business.  What is also interesting about going through this exercise is that your business will likely actually run better once you begin to take a step back and empower capable people to do certain tasks without you.

We hope that this perspective will assist you in achieving a more successful exit as you further define your job and discover who can replace you at your company after you exit, along the way reducing the dependence that your business has on your individual efforts.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2016

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A Time To Reap, A Time to Sow

Life and business are both like the harvests in that they run in seasons.  And from this truism comes the saying that “there is a time to reap and there is a time to sow”.  Harvests are most successful when the seeds and growth have occurred at the right time and the end product is ready to be plucked.  While the seasons in nature are driven by weather, the seasons of business are brought in terms of economics.

A Change in Seasons

The Great Recession of a few years ago can easily be characterized as the economic equivalent of a frosty, winter season.  This was a time when conditions for growth were not optimal.  Since the natural tendency of most business owners is towards growth there was a different mindset – one suited to that season – which developed.  This was a mindset of ‘sowing’ with the thoughts that owners could reap the benefit – i.e. a successful exit – during a season of better economic times, or full harvest.

Unfortunately, a change in economic seasons is not as easy to detect as a change in the weather.  The reason that this statement is true is because the factors that influence a business transition are often not fully understood by owners until they engage in the exit process.

A Harvesting Season

The chart below indicates that today, we are in a Harvesting season – or in more appropriate terms – a Seller’s Market, or Prime Selling Time.  Review the chart below to see the trends that each decade has followed and how this chart illustrates a Harvesting Season today.

transfer cycle

 

The Opportunity to Reap What You Sow

If you have been thinking that you would one day look to reap the benefits of your hard work, then perhaps that day is upon you.  A number of years ago, the advice to owners was to think about questions such as “who will run/buy my business in three years [when the markets recover]?” and “what capital will be available for my future owner / successor to buy me out?”  Owners who asked and sought to answer those questions over the past few years are in a position today to look to either identify their next owner or to executing on plans to transition the business to an owner that they had previously identified.

The Manners in Which you Can Harvest

When it comes time to harvest, you will want to get answers to certain questions, such as “do you want to give up control in a transaction?”  If the answer is “yes”, then a sale/merger or leveraged recap with a private equity group may be the right exit option.  However, if the answer is “no”, then perhaps a sale to a co-owner or management buyout – perhaps accompanied by an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) – may be the way to go to take some chips off the table and set the company up for future ownership.

How a Lack of Planning Can Impact What You Reap

Many owners will look at this current season as an opportunity to harvest their business profits and will attempt to do so without any planning.  Many owners will simply try to transact with a party or hire a transactional advisor to identify a buyer without any level of planning.  One of the challenges in failing to plan is that owners are not anticipating the information that will be needed by their buyers in order to close a transaction.  Owners who do not plan are subject to many surprises during a selling process that could easily be addressed during a planning / preparatory process.

Moreover, a properly designed exit plan integrates your personal needs along with the needs of the business.  So a comprehensive planning process will include both business and personal needs.

Concluding Thoughts

There truly is a time to sow and a time to reap.  The decisions that you made over the past few years to sow the seeds for your readiness for an exit perhaps are now ready to reap a benefit to you in this new harvesting season.  We hope that this newsletter accomplished the goal of having you think through your personal and business objectives to harvest your profits at a time that fits you from a business and personal perspective.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2015

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Eight (8) Reasons to Plan Your Exit in 2016

With each New Year comes thoughts of new beginnings and resolutions.  For businesses, this also comes with planning for the year ahead.  This newsletter is written for business owners who run their own companies and have the majority of their personal net worth tied to that illiquid business.  2016 may be the opportune time for you to begin planning a future exit from your business.  Listed below are eight (8) reasons why you should consider planning your exit in 2016.

1. The Timing is Right

In real estate, the saying is ‘location, location, location’ – with business transition planning, it is ‘timing, timing, timing’.  Just as timing was important as you built your business, it is critically important during your exit.  If you are ready to exit within the next three to five (3-5) years, then 2016 could be an ideal time to plan for, and potentially execute your exit.  To put this in perspective, let’s look at the transfer spectrum chart below which indicates that we are currently in the middle of a prime selling time.

If you are ready to exit your business then you may want to take advantage of the fact that the chart forecasts another three (3) years of prime selling time in the transfer cycle. If you do not exit in this ‘window’ you will likely have to wait another eight (8) years (until 2023-2028) when the next ‘exit window’ opens.

transfer cycle

 

2. There is Still Good Demand Today for Solid Businesses to Be Purchased by Private Equity Groups

Investment groups, called private equity groups, are continuing to purchase solid companies today.  These investment groups exist to purchase private businesses and add value to them.  As a result of thousands of these groups being in the market today, there is solid demand for good companies.  If you can catch this wave of buyers you may be advantaged in achieving a higher value for your exit.  There are two (2) caveats to this statement.  First, the demographics show that a large number of owners will want to exit their business, and second, interest rates may be higher.

3. The Supply and Demand of Exiting Owners is About to Shift Dramatically

The oldest members of the Baby Boomer generation started turning 69 this year. This means that over the next five (5) to ten (10) years, roughly 3.6 million business owners per year[1] will be looking to exit their business via a sale to a future owner.  Simply put, there will be more sellers than buyers in the marketplace.  Therefore, in order to stay ahead of this cycle, you might consider 2016 as a starting point for your exit planning before too many businesses create a large supply of sellers.

4. Interest Rates Could be on the Rise

Interest rates are likely to begin to creep upward after a decade of historically low levels.  When interest rates rise, borrowing costs increase.  When this happens, a segment of the market that finances acquisitions with debt, i.e. the private equity groups mentioned previously, is impacted as these buyers have more expensive debt.  When the cost of borrowing increases, generally speaking, this reduces the levels of value that these buyers will pay for a business.  As a result, some of the buying demand that exists today could begin to wane when borrowing costs rise.

5. The Role of the U.S. President is Unlikely to Reduce Uncertainty

By the end of 2016 we will have a new President, but one has to ask ‘what is really going to change?’  Uncertainty stems from a number of different factors, from economic to geo-political to global threats.  Whether a Republican or a Democrat occupies the White House, there will still be challenges to the overall economy that will impact your exit through continued uncertainty that exists in the world.

6. The Entire Tax Code is Set for an Overhaul After the Next Election

The last time that the tax code was overhauled was in 1986 under President Reagan.  These overhauls occur approximately every twenty-five (25) years.  And, since the United States is burdened with $19 trillion dollars in debt, it is unlikely that tax rates and / or deductions and loopholes will continue to be available to those who are going through a large liquidity event, such as a business sale.  It is hard to predict what the tax code changes will look like, but again, if you are early with your planning, you may be able to take advantage of certain tax benefits that may be going away with a tax code overhaul.

7. Your “Lifestyle Business” May Not be Providing you with the Lifestyle You Expected

If you are like many owners of privately-held businesses you probably have a lifestyle business, meaning that the business provides for your personal lifestyle.  With tax rates having increased and the marketplace changing, you may not be experiencing the same lifestyle that you once did.  Planning for your exit in 2016 may help you focus on your post-exit lifestyle and assesses your current ability to define and meet your post exit objectives.  If your business value is higher today because of increased profitability, then perhaps an exit plan can help you pull the pieces together.

8. Your Business Likely Showed Improved Performance in 2015 – Hence A Trend Towards a Higher Value

The future owner of your business will ultimately care about two (2) financial components related to your company’s performance: (i) the future cash flows and (ii) the [perceived] risk of receiving those cash flows into the future. Therefore, each additional year that you can show a trend towards improved performance is one more arrow in your ‘negotiation quiver’ to argue for – and defend – a higher value for your business exit.  This is particularly important if you need that additional value to meet your personal, financial goals, as presented above.

Concluding Thoughts

This newsletter was written to inform, educate, and provide a template and some rationale for thinking about your plans for an exit from your business.  It is our hope that this objective was met and that you are further along in your thinking about forming an exit plan in 2016.  Contact Frank Mancieri @ GT Growth & Transition Strategies for a free consultation as you first step in the process toward your ultimate goal.

[1] Source: Pew Research Center   https://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/baby-boomers-retire/
Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2015

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Measuring the ROI of a Private Business

ROIWhile most business owners focus on the annual profit or cash flow of their business, it is less common devote time and attention to an equally important measurement, your business’ return on investment. An ROI measurement can help an owner determine whether their business is not only providing them with a solid lifestyle, but also whether or not they are keeping pace with the competition and making the most of their ‘risk adjusted’ returns for all of their wealth. Do you know if the risk-adjusted return on your business is high or low?  Do you know if you are getting the return that the market would require for the risks that you take in your business?  These are important questions because if you want to exit your business someday, a prospective buyer will base his or her buying decision on their expected ROI from the purchase of your business.

Has Your Business Provided a Return to You?

The ROI of your business can be a measurement by the financial gain provided to you over the years that you own the company.  A simple calculation, provided on the following chart, can assist with understanding an answer to your company’s ROI to you.

ROI calc

As demonstrated in the chart, the owner of a business that can sell for $8,000,000, which had an initial cost of $200,000, has an annualized return on investment of 27%, when also factoring in the ‘excess salary’ each year.  In this case, the exiting owner grew the business over a 15 year time period while also generating ‘excess compensation’ (compensation as an owner, not as a manager) for each of the years of ownership.

Will the Same Business Provide a Suitable ROI for a Buyer?

The same ROI calculation can used to measure whether or not a business will generate a return for the next owner.  As an exiting owner, it is helpful to look ahead to show a buyer/successor the type of return that they can expect to get by owning the business.  Having this knowledge will help you argue for a higher value when the time comes to engage with a future owner.

Put simply, a buyer or successor for your business is interested in what future return the business can generate for them, not necessarily what the business has provided for you in the past.  As an exiting owner, you can improve their positioning in the succession planning process by determining what the buyer or successors’ future expected returns will be and then describe the risks involved with generating those returns.

Knowing Your Buyer’s Motives

One of the most effective ways to get comfortable with engaging buyers is to understand their motivations and the math behind their calculations.  Because buyers and successors have many options for investment opportunities, an exiting owner needs to understand how and where they can be a competitive investment for the buyer.

Minimum ROI requirements for prospective buyers can vary by buyer type or fluctuate depending on other business deals available to that specific buyer.  If a buyer has, for example, a 25% return expectation for your business, then they will adjust their pricing to get to that level of return.  In order to reduce the potential to have a buyer lower their valuation, an owner can look to demonstrate a higher ROI by projecting what will happen in the future and selling that future story to the buyer.

How to Get Paid for A Future ROI

Owners often make the mistake of overvaluing their businesses because of their emotions and the potential that they see in the company.  These owners need to change their thinking to accept that an investor will have his or her own expectations and goals for future growth.  And just because your business has provided you with a nice lifestyle, this does not mean that your future buyer will see it the same way.

The ultimate question then for you, the exiting owner, is not ‘has my business provided me with a great lifestyle over the years?”, but rather ‘can my business meet the return criteria of a potential buyer or successor in my industry so that I can both get a deal done and get paid the value that I would like to receive?”

Concluding Thoughts

Understanding your ROI and the ROI that a future buyer can expect from owning your business is a valuable tool in designing a plan for your eventual business exit.  It is therefore crucial for an owner to objectively, accurately, and fairly portray the company’s ROI, both for himself and for potential successors. This is an important way that an owner can determine the true value and health of his or her business, and that a potential successor can make an informed decision to buy your business.

We hope that this newsletter has helped you to see that the exit from your business is the beginning of someone else’s investment.  The better job that you can do in explaining a buyer’s ROI, the higher the likelihood will be of having success in your exit process.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2015

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What Your Future Buyer May be Looking For From YOU (not your Company) in Your Exit

 

PEGOwners who think about exiting their business should wonder who the future owner will be and what will they be interested in when acquiring the business.  These future buyers will consider both the company that you run as well as, potentially, how you run it in making their determination of the value of your business and, in fact, whether they want to make the acquisition at all.  This newsletter is written to help owners understand some of the personal traits that professional buyers look for when purchasing a business – items that go beyond the company, its prospects and management team and its profitability.

Who are ‘Professional Buyers’

There is a world of professional investors called Private Equity Groups (PEGs).  This is a formidable group of buyers in today’s marketplace as the overall desire of investors to purchase privately-held businesses has grown.  Typically a wealth individual or institution will allocate a portion of their total investment portfolio (of stocks, bonds, etc.) to the purchase of privately-held companies.  And, to serve that need of investors, Private Equity Groups have formed and grown in number over the past few years, to serve as a facilitator and manager of the private businesses that they purchase.

If you are looking at an exit that involves an external buyer, in all likelihood Private Equity Groups will be a part of your process, either seeking to acquire your business as a ‘platform’ company or as an add-on to an existing ‘portfolio company’ that they own.  In either case, these PEGs often are also looking for owners to stay with the business for some period of time to assist with growth plans.

Leading Personality Traits that PEGs Look for In Owners

PEGs are looking for solid ‘investments’ (not just lifestyle companies) to own and run.  These include businesses that show promise for future growth, solid management, solid and repeatable earnings, low customer concentration and a host of other factors.  However, before a PEG will invest, they are also typically looking for certain traits from a business owner.

Ability / Desire to Learn and Grow

A Private Equity Group that purchases the equity in your company will do so because they see the opportunity for growth.  Typically, the PEG will see an opportunity for growth that the current owner cannot see so easily.  The PEG brings to the ‘investment table’ experience with owning and running numerous privately-held businesses.  Therefore, the PEGs often-times have considerable experience with making changes to a business to help with that growth.

However, what most PEGs also know is that owners often make horrible employees.  Owners have been doing things their own way for so many decades that the idea of change is often hard to grasp.  So, an owner who can demonstrate a desire to learn and grow will be sought out by the Private Equity Groups.  By contrast, an owner who is too set in their ways and resists change will often discourage a Private Equity Group from making an investment or a privately-held company.

Trying New Things

A PEG should serve the role of a ‘progressive innovator’ for your company.  What this means is that the PEG should bring to the business ideas on how the company can change and grow.  However, these changes should happen over time – not all at once.  The saying that applies is that you should not try to ‘boil the ocean’, meaning that changes should happen incrementally.  However, an owner who is not willing to try new things will not do well with an investor who is looking to innovate in order to grow the business.

Willingness to Enforce Accountability

One of the elements that private equity brings to a company is enhanced professionalism of the business.  Often times this translates into accountability at all levels of the organization.  For the typical owner of a private business, the personal relationships that exist within their employee base make it difficult to enforce accountability.  And, therefore, parts of a privately-held business will typically be run in a sub-optimal manner because of the owner’s willingness to overlook certain items and not hold employees accountable.

PEGs look for owners who are willing to enforce accountability on the path to growth and greater profitability.  This can be difficult for a number of owners to adjust to.

Concluding Thoughts

When considering the big picture of your business exit, you may think about the idea that either someone will run your company after you or the company will cease to exist.  And, if you do not have family or management who have the ability to (and / or can afford to) run the business after you, then an external buyer / investor may be needed.  And, if you consider Private Equity Groups amongst those who may own your business next, you may want to think through your willingness to learn and grow, to try new things as well as to change the manner in which you run parts of your company in order to determine if you are a solid candidate for a professional investor.

We hope that this newsletter is helpful in having you think through who a future owner of your company may be and what they may be looking for from you.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2015

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A Good Business versus a Good Investment

InvestmentWhen it comes time for a business owner to contemplate an exit from their business, it is important to consider the differences between a ‘good business’ and a ‘good investment’.  The next owner of your company will be looking for a ‘good investment’, not just a good business.  Therefore, if you want to attract a qualified buyer for your business and get the highest value, then you’ll need to create a ‘good investment’, not just a good business.  This newsletter is written to assist you in identifying the differences between the two distinctions.

Hallmarks of a Good Business

Most privately-held businesses are lifestyle businesses.  In other words, the business generates enough revenue and profitability for an owner to live comfortably.  Often times owners focus on the personal benefits of business ownership over the potential for the future of the business.  For example, business owners will often live with slow / no growth in the business as a trade-off to not having to work as hard, not having to borrow money and not dealing with excess complexity.

When a business owner has a ‘good business’, such as the lifestyle business describe above, there will often-times be a limited set of professional buyers for that business.  In fact, the largest pool of potential buyers for that business may be individuals who want to enjoy the same lifestyle as the owner.

Professional buyers are not just looking for good businesses, they are also looking for good investments.

Hallmarks of a Good Investment

There are many hallmarks of a ‘good business’ that are also considered to be a ‘good investment’.  The list below is by no means a complete accounting of all attributes of a desirous company, but it will provide an overview of areas that professional investors consider important when purchasing a privately-held business.

A Business That Can Run Without the Owner

Owner dependency is a major issue with professional buyers.  If your company is highly dependent upon you in order to run (and grow) into the future, then buyers may not consider your company a good investment.  If you think about your investments in public securities or mutual funds, those companies run without you.  In fact, it’s likely that you do not know who runs those businesses because you are merely an investor.  There is a separation of ownership and management.  In most small businesses the owner is intricately involved with many facets of the business.  While some management may be in place, this can often-times not be enough to reduce the high levels of owner dependency.  Therefore, in order to make your company a better investment, you may want to reduce the company’s dependency upon you.

A Business that Has Management in Place, Successfully Pursuing a Strategy for Growth

The next attribute that will help define your business as a good investment is how empowered and successful your management team is in pursuing growth through a defined strategy.  If you have managers who take initiative, make good decisions, measure and report their own performance and can be entrusted to direct themselves towards achieving strategic goals, then your company begins to look more like an investment.

A Business that Is In an Industry that Has Attracted Capital and Has Growth Potential

If your business is in a slow / no growth industry but provides for a good income for you and your family, then it may not be perceived as a solid investment for a professional buyer.  However, if you are in an area of growth and outside investment is finding its way into your industry, then it may be the case that an outside investor will value your business as one that has a growth story that can be realized.

A Business that is Out-performing its Peers in Terms of Profitability

It is not enough for a company to be independent of the owner, to have empowered management and to be in the right industry.  For your company to be considered a good investment, it is also important that your company’s performance is stronger than your peer group.  A good investment is not just one that makes money, but one that is ‘best in class’ – a company that outdoes the competition.  To the extent that you can articulate the reasons that your company outshines the competition, even better.

Concluding Thoughts

It is important to present a good investment to a future owner, not just a good business.  There are a number of things that you can do today to determine the difference between the two.  I would be happy to help you assess your own situation.

Frank (Mancieri), Chief Growth Advisor, GT Growth & Transition Strategies, LLC

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2015

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Measuring Risks in Privately-Held Businesses

There is an old saying that ‘there is no return without risk.’  Business owners accept certain risks as a part of their day-to-day existence because there is risk in owning and running any privately held business.  Understanding how to measure and compare these risks can assist in understanding how to compare the risks in your business with other risks.  In the context of planning a future exit, this is particularly helpful because it helps to shed light on the potential manner in which value will be placed on your business by a buyer or successor

scaleDifferent forms of Risk

Risk is measured in many different ways including business risks, risks of product obsolescence, competitive risks, credit risks, market risks, as well as ‘opportunity cost’ risks – to name a few.  However, the most important risks to evaluate are those that an outsider will use to evaluate your company.

Numb to the Risk

Too many business owners, because they ‘live in their businesses’ are under the false illusion that the risk in their business is ‘controlled’.  However, the riskiness of any business, as a whole, should be measured more accurately by examining what a buyer or successor would be willing to pay for a controlling stake in that privately held business.

An exiting owner should ask:

  • How would an outsider view the risks in my business, and
  • What would my business’ return on investment be to another buyer?

Outside buyers do not understand the inner-workings of a private business.  Therefore, they see risk at every turn.  As a result, these investors are typically looking for annualized average returns on investment from a privately-held business of sixteen (16) to thirty-five (35) percent.  In fact, sometimes greater returns are required for earlier stage companies.

Converting Return Expectations into Multiples to Get to Value

Another way to look at the expected returns of an outside buyer is to translate the 16% to 35% expected returns selling multiples cash flow, or EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization).  Here, the expected returns of 16% and 35% convert into multiples of 2.8 times to 6.25 times the company’s cash flow.  What this means is that depending upon how much risk a buyer sees in your business, they will adjust their cash flow accordingly.

The Conversion Process

In order to arrive at the conversion of a return expectation to a multiple, you simply divide 100% by the percentage return required.  For example, if a buyer expects a 25% annualized return, this converts into a four (4) multiple.  However if the buyer sees less risk and only requires a 20% annualized return, then the multiple jumps to a five (5) multiple.  This is by no means a comprehensive formula for calculating the value of a business.  However, this simplistic method is a helpful way for owners to see how risk converts into what someone will pay for your company.

Why Buyers Lower Valuation When They See More Risk

So why does the buyer of a privately-held company require a 16% to 35% return from owning privately held stock?

There are a number of reasons but the easiest way to understand the high expected returns are due to the illiquid nature of privately-held businesses. Unlike publicly traded companies, there is no ‘ready market’ for the trading of shares of private businesses.  Therefore, there is no liquidity for these investments – which raises the risk associated with owning the business.

As a part of the illiquid nature of private businesses, there is also a lack of transparency.  In other words, privately-held businesses have no requirement to disclose information about their company to anyone except the government and, perhaps, their bank.  In fact, business buyers look at their role as needing to uncover issues that they cannot see before they will take ownership of the company.  Experienced buyers look to identify risks before an investment and when they see risks they either lower their valuation or they walk away from the deal entirely.

Concluding Thoughts

Business owners are well served in knowing what the marketplace of buyers thinks of the risks that will be perceive in their business.  As an owner, you can create a greater opportunity to achieve a higher value for your business if you can focus on reducing the perceived risk in your business.  And, regardless of the ultimate exit option that you choose, being well informed when heading into any transaction is solid advice for any owner.

In conclusion, exit planning can be a complex endeavor for many exiting owners.  These plans are not a part of the typical ‘business building’ that many exiting owners are so good at achieving.  Applying some of the basic concepts of finance to your privately-held business helps in the process.

We hope that you found this newsletter helpful towards assisting you in thinking through a future exit from your business.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2015

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Five (5) Key Planning Areas for Your Business Future

Your business success has been the product of years of hard work, dedication and focused results (and likely a little bit of luck).  As you think about a future transition of the company there are a number of factors that need to be considered because your future exit will impact a number of people who rely upon you and your company. A comprehensive plan for an exit includes a combination of personal planning and business planning to assist you in reaching your goals.  This newsletter highlights five (5) key planning areas that we hope helps you organize your total planning for a future exit.  planning

The key areas of planning are:

  1. Business planning
  2. Exit planning
  3. Financial planning
  4. Estate planning
  5. Advisory Team planning

1.  Business Planning

Privately-held businesses are constantly evolving to changes in the marketplace.  As such, your business has likely undergone some significant changes in the past few years.  It is important to focus on the future, looking ahead to what an exit can mean for you and a future owner.  Specifically, this means making plans for your business to run without you, including reducing risks that could jeopardize a transition.  A business plan for a future transition includes consideration to how the business will run without you and over what period of time these changes will be implemented.  Most importantly give thought to each business decision and ask whether or not it supports your future exit / transition.  By thinking about your exit as you make business decisions, you will build your business to better suit the exit that you have in mind.

2.  Exit Planning

As a part of your business planning, you should consider the options available to you for your future exit.  As an ancient proverb states, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago – the second best time is now.  Now is the time to begin or advance your exit planning.  Without a written [or substantially well-informed opinion] of how and when you are going to exit your business, it is likely that you will continue on the same path that you have been on for years and you and your company will not be prepared for a future transition.  Your future exit has a chance to produce a lasting legacy for you and your business as well as protect your overall wealth, perhaps for generations.  A solid exit plan can also be the gateway to you enjoying a newly defined life that is the reward for your business success.

3.  Financial Planning

Most owners have a high financial dependency on their companies.  Between their income, distributions and perks, they ‘live out of their businesses’.  Figuring out how much money you need to extract from the business in order to live without the business is a key element to your business and exit planning.  If you can measure your ‘Value Gap’, i.e. the difference between what you have saved today and what you need to meet your post-exit lifestyle, then you can begin to analyze the viability of your exit.  This Value Gap will also be a strong indicator of the exit options that you have available to you and how and when you will need to get paid for your illiquid business.
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The Supply & Demand of Business Transition Advice and Planning

This newsletters is written to make business owners aware of the needs for advice for the future transition of a business.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau statistics, there are nearly 30 million businesses in the United States today, meaning that a majority of these businesses will require a process other than an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock in order to achieve liquidity or turn the company stock (or assets) into cash.  Our objective in this newsletter is to bring a few of these facts to light and provide some guidance as to who may be a buyer of your business in the future.

A Wide Base of the TriangleUS Businesses

The majority of businesses in the United States today are ‘small’ businesses – enterprise values of less than a few million dollars.  The following chart illustrates the wide base of small businesses relative to the very small number of large, publicly traded businesses (organized by the number of employees within each organization) that sit at the top of the pyramid.

 

Implications for the Exiting Business Owner

Since a large number of business owners are Baby Boomers, this means that as the Baby Boomers begin to exit these businesses through retirement, the supply will likely outweigh the demand for business ownership.

Size Matters

To put this challenge into even greater perspective, it needs to be stated that smaller business owners are generally going to have a harder time with their exit than larger businesses.  Small businesses are often times more dependent upon the individual efforts of the owners of the business.  As a result, many owners of smaller businesses are actually not selling an enterprise, rather they are selling a job.  It is helpful for owners to understand the difference and to be aware of what, if anything they are able to sell to someone else.
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Getting to the Equity in Your Business

hourglassToday’s newsletter is written to address an important topic in planning for an owner’s transition, namely, ‘how to get to the equity in your business?’  We’ll look at how business owners view their companies and then offer some planning-base suggestions as to how to draw the equity out of your business over time, assuming that you are not selling to an outsider.  We hope that this newsletter content inspires you to begin planning for how you too will get to the equity in your business.

Getting to Income vs. Equity

There are two very different aspects to getting the money out of your business.  On the first hand, there is the income that you draw from the business in terms of salary, personal/business expenses, and bonuses that you pay to yourself and/or retirement plan savings. All of this constitutes money that’s coming to you from the cash flow of the business going towards the lifestyle that you have built for yourself.  The second and potentially much more important aspect, is getting to the equity – the illiquid part – of your business.  The equity is your ‘owner’s value’, the reward for growing your enterprise and taking the risk as a shareholder and investor.

Leading with Personal Planning, Measuring the Value Gap

As a part of the process of tapping into your equity value, it is helpful to first know your Value Gap – i.e. how much money you need to extract from the business in order to maintain your lifestyle without the business.  The chart below helps to illustrate this point.

We see that Bill Brown has $1,000,000 saved for retirement but needs $7,000,000 to maintain his lifestyle.  Bill’s Value Gap is $6,000,000.  The question becomes, ‘How can Bill get to the equity in his business in order to close this Value Gap?’

Value Gap

Like most business owners, Bill is focused on running and growing his business.  Bill has some money saved for retirement.  However, as we can see, it is nearly impossible for Bill to extract enough ‘income’ from his business, at his age, to meet his personal financial goals – Bill needs to get to the equity in his business.  The question that Bill is looking to answer is, ‘how can I plan to tap into my business equity, over a long enough time period, to draw it out to meet my personal goals (without hurting my company’s cash flow)?’

The Many Paths to Harvesting Equity Value

The first step is to realize that there are many ways to get to the equity in your business.  You can find a buyer, groom a successor, or even create a buyer for the shares of your company’s stock.  The most important part of this planning process is to recognize that any one of these options requires a process.
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Are You Building Equity or Income in Your Business

Many business owners run their businesses based on their current lifestyle needs. However, when you begin to consider who will own your business after you, i.e. your exit from your business, you need to ask yourself whether you are focused on creating a stream of personal income from your business, or whether you are actually building equity, i.e. ‘value’ within the business. The difference between these two opposing perspectives will reveal itself when your turn comes to exit your business and may have a large impact on your ability to transition your company.planning

Is Your Business a Job or An Investment?

An owner who builds their business with a primary focus on personal income, for the most part, has a job. An owner who builds their business by making decisions that are likely to increase their equity value has an investment. One day someone other than you will be running your business. Will that successor be purchasing a job from you or an enterprise?

Your eventual buyer or successor will likely be interested in knowing about the equity that you have built, not about the income that you have achieved within your business. And, as an owner who is considering a future exit, you want to speak in terms of equity and not just in terms of income.

You see, income can vary according to the personal needs of the owner-operator. However, equity can be expanded and value can be driven into your business once your focus moves to an ‘equity driven’ model.

The Building of Equity Value

Technically, ‘equity’ is a Balance Sheet term which is equal to your assets less liabilities; this equation reveals your owner’s equity. However, we are not discussing the financial reporting within your business, we are discussing the manner in which you make operational decisions to increase the value of your business.

Let’s look at an example to make the point. Jim owns a distribution company and spends most of his time focusing on building strategic relationships to increase sales, as well as increasing the capacity of his business to distribute more products. He does most of this work alone, without an empowered or incentivized management team. Sounds simple enough. However, Jim’s mindset is towards conducting these activities so that he can take a larger salary and bonus at the end of the year. Again, to most reading this newsletter, that sounds like a very reasonable objective. But there is a problem, a very predictable and obvious problem once Jim is aware of it.

The problem is that Jim is not spending any time considering who would be doing his ‘job’ at the company in his absence. While it is true that the company can run for a week or two as Jim takes his vacations. Or perhaps the business could even sustain for a few months if Jim were to want time off or had a physical problem that prevented him from working – these instances alone would not materially affect Jim’s income. However, Jim is not protecting the equity in his business with his decision making process. Jim’s equity, and hence his illiquid business wealth, is at risk because Jim has not focused on his business as an investment.
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5 “Strategic” Ways to Sell Your Company

dollar Last year Facebook acquired Internet messaging service WhatsApp for $19 billion? It represented the largest-ever acquisition of an Internet company in history.

WhatsApp is a pearl for sure. The messaging service allows users to avoid text-messaging charges by moving texts across the Internet instead of the mobile phone carrier networks. This can save people who travel, or who live in emerging markets, hundreds of dollars a year, which is why WhatsApp is adding one million new users per day.

At the time of the acquisition in February 2014, WhatsApp had acquired some 450 million users. Their business model is to charge a subscription of $1 per year after their first full year of service. Even if all 450 million WhatsApp users were already paying, that is still less than half a billion in revenue. Why would Facebook acquire WhatsApp for a number that is somewhere north of 40 times revenue?

Nobody know for sure what is in Mark Zuckerberg’s head, but we can only assume that at least part of the opportunity Facebook sees is the opportunity to sell more Facebook ads because of the information they glean from WhatsApp users. Global advertising giant Publicis estimates 2013 online advertising spending in the US alone to be around $500 billion. Presumably Facebook believes they can get a larger chunk of the global online ad buy because they know more about its users by owning WhatsApp.

And therein lies the definition of a strategic acquisition. Most acquisitions run a predictable pattern of industry norms, but a strategic can pay a significant premium for your business because they are looking at your business for what it is worth in their hands. Rather than forecasting out your future profits and estimating what that cash is worth in today’s dollars, a strategic is calculating the economic benefit of grafting your business onto theirs.
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Growing Into Your Eventual Exit

growth - plant in handIt has been said that ‘timing is everything’. Well in business transition planning, timing is important, but so is transferability. Today’s newsletter discusses both and is intended to provide you with some guidance as to how you can begin to design a plan for a successful business transition, which includes growing the transferable value of your business towards an exit that is a number of years into the future.

Gaining an Exit Perspective

Setting a plan for an exit requires a perspective on what you are trying to achieve and when it is possible to attain such an outcome. An important consideration for every business owner is that of ‘exit windows’, or, how to time your exit to meet your business and personal goals. Once you understand the timing of your exit, there is an opportunity for you to begin planning and making decisions today based upon achieving this future exit. Without this type of planning, you are likely to be without direction for your exit, and possibly missing the next exit window.

Exit Windows

The chart below illustrates the cycle of business exits and shows that the next likely window for exit is within the next few years. According to this ‘ten year transfer cycle’ chart, in 2015 we are inside of a window for exit that may last for another three (3) years or so – see belowPicture0001

 

So, how can you grow into your exit? Well, you can begin with the end in mind. You can begin by understanding when you would like to exit and then build the business around that timing.

Three Concepts Relating to a Transferable Business

In order to manage anything in life and in business, you need to be able to measure it. A measurement of your current value becomes very important. A plan to grow that value as you approach your exit becomes a critical part of the exit planning process. There are three (3) concepts that you should be looking at when thinking about growing into your exit. They are:

1. Profitability
2. Sustainability
3. Transferability

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What You Don’t Know About Your Future Business Transition May Hurt the Most

planningThere is an art to successfully running a privately-held business which includes a balance of hard work, knowledge, common sense, experience and occasionally some luck.  On the topic of knowledge and experience, it is true that everything that we learn about running a business was taught to us by someone else.  At some point in time either you learned something about your business from someone else or from an experience that had taught you a lesson.  So, given the truth of this statement and the importance of taking care of your most valuable asset (i.e. your privately-held business) it is also true that there is a lot that you don’t know today about a successful transition.  This statement is particularly true if you’ve never experienced a business sale or transition in the past.  This newsletter is written to assist you with gaining a more clear understanding of how we learn as individuals and how this can, and likely will, impact your future plans to transition your company.

The Learning Process of Human Beings

Human beings learn things in a variety of ways – through the transfer of knowledge as well as through specific experiences.  Every experience and / or interaction that a person has develops an association with that event.  For example, if you learn something in a book, you may recognize that concept in the real world and associate with it.  Also, if you have an experience, such as falling down and getting injured, you’ll have an association with the pain that occurred the last time that you had such an experience.  Running a business, therefore, is a series of learnings and experiences and, depending upon the skill and disposition of each business owner to apply those lessons, the business grows, stagnates or dies.  In fact, it has been estimated that successful business owners can make 10s of thousands of mistakes before achieving success.
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Five (5) Key Planning Areas for Your Business Future

Your business success has been the product of years of hard work, dedication and focused results (and likely a little bit of luck).  As you think about a future transition of the company there are a number of factors that need to be considered because your future exit will impact a number of people who rely upon you and your company. A comprehensive plan for an exit includes a combination of personal planning and business planning to assist you in reaching your goals.  This newsletter highlights five (5) key planning areas that we hope helps you organize your total planning for a future exit.

The key areas of planning are:

  1. Business planning
  2. Exit planning
  3. Financial planning
  4. Estate planning
  5. Advisory Team planning

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Is My Industry the Largest Driver of Value for My Business

hammerBusiness owners considering an exit often want to know who their likely buyers will be and how much money those buyers are willing to paydollar. In order to forecast a realistic sale price, owners often look to standard metrics such as the ‘multiple of earnings’ – a valuation theory based on the idea that similar assets sell at similar prices. This way of thinking often leads business owners to the quick conclusion that the easiest way to increase their business value is to increase the earnings of the business. This newsletter examines that basic concept and challenges this conventional thinking by first asking the question, “Does the industry that you are in have the largest impact on the value of your business?”

Value is a Prophesy of Future Cash Flow

The most important concept in valuation is the idea that a future buyer for your business will pay you for the cash that they expect to generate from your business in the future. A prospective buyer will only write you a check for your business if they are confident that there is a ‘future’ for your company. The price and terms a buyer will pay are driven by the riskiness of the future, as they perceive it. There are three (3) important items to consider:

  1. Increased profitability will generally drive your company value higher.
  2. Reduced risk in your business will also drive your value higher.
  3. The industry in which you exist will produce willing investors who can best evaluate the risks of future cash flows.

In reality, in order for an owner to monetize their illiquid business, they need a buyer or investor willing to pay them for their future cash flows. Additionally, the industry the owner is tied to is one of the leading indicators of value, as it will determine how investors perceive the industry and are willing to invest in the future of that industry.
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5 Ways To Attract The Attention Of An Acquirer

In any negotiation, being the person who makes the first move usually puts you at a slight disadvantage. The first-mover tips their hand and reveals just how much he/she wants the asset being negotiated.

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Likewise, when considering the sale of your business, it is always nice to be courted, rather than being the one doing the courting. The good news is, the chances of getting an unsolicited offer from someone wanting to buy your business are actually increasing.

According to the Q2, 2014 Sellability Tracker analysis released in July 2014, 16% of business owners have received an offer in the last year, which is up 37% over Q1. Said another way, you’re 37% more likely to get an offer to buy your business today than you were at the beginning of the year.

Big companies are buying little ones for a lot of reasons and the current market conditions are accelerating their appetite: interest rates are low and stock markets are high, which provide the ideal platform for acquirers to realize a return on their investment from buying a business like yours.

So how do you ensure you are on their shopping list? Here are five ways to get noticed by an acquirer:

1. Win an award

Getting recognized as the “Widget Maker of the Year” by the Widget Makers Association is a great way to get the attention of acquirers in your industry.

2. Hire a PR person

Engaging a public relations professional to tell your story to the media can get you on the radar of buyers in your industry. A lot of media relations professionals focus on the big mainstream publications, and while these are important, ensure that your PR firm also targets trade publication and industry-specific websites that are read by acquirers in your industry.
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Exit Thinking – Is Your Business a  ‘Consumption’ or an ‘Accumulation’ Asset?

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Thinking About a Future Transition

 At a certain point in time, a successful business owner stops thinking about all the day-to-day operations and the strategic planning for the company’s execution in the marketplace, and starts to think about the future ownership and who will own and run their business after them.  This process is often referred to as ‘exit planning’ and will often begin with the personal desires of that owner, including their personal goals as well as what they would like to see happen with the business.  When considering your personal goals, it is helpful to identify whether your business is an accumulation asset or a consumption asset.  This newsletter will provide details around this distinction and assist you, the business owner, in thinking through how your business asset may be transitioned to someone else in the future while helping you achieve your goals.

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What a Study of 14,000 Businesses Reveals About How You Should Spend Your Time

 IMAGE: Getty Images
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You’ve heard that you need to be “close to the customer”, but a new study reveals founders should actually keep their distance in order to maximize the value of their company.
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Who does the selling in your business? My guess is that when you’re personally involved in doing the selling, your business is a whole lot more profitable than the months when you leave the selling to others.

If your goal is to maximize your company’s profit at all costs, you may have come to the conclusion that you should spend most of your time out of the office selling and leave the dirty work of operating your businesses to your underlings. After all, you’re likely the most passionate advocate for your business. You have the most industry knowledge and the widest network of industry connections.

However, if your goal is to build a valuable company–one you can sell down the road–you can’t be your company’s number one salesperson. In fact, the less you know your customers personally, the more valuable your business.

The Proof: A Study of 14,000 Businesses

We’ve just finished analyzed our pool of Sellability Score users for the quarter ending December 31. We offer The Sellability Score questionnaire as the first of twelve steps in The Value Builder System, a statistically proven methodology for increasing the value of a business.
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How to Overcome Five (5) Truisms About Small Businesses that Hinder Growth

Five (5) Truisms About Small Businesses that Hinder Growth and Exit Goals (and how to overcome them)   growth - plant in hand

Many successful business owners try to answer the question ‘how do I get my company to the next level?’  Many owners exhaust themselves and their resources each year, pushing their businesses to perform at higher and higher levels.  However, there are a number of ‘truisms’ about small business that, once understood and accepted can make the growth (and transition) process more effective.  The five (5) truisms listed below are symptoms that face each small business that is trying to grow and transition, at some future point in time, to a new owner.  This newsletter is written for those owners who are trying to grow so that they can reap certain benefits that may come when it is time for an exit.

Truism #1:  Nothing happens in a privately-held business until the owner(s) decide it will happen 

Privately-held businesses that are run by the founder / owner are driven by that owner’s goals and ambitions.  And, what you slice away all of the strategy and other decision-making in a business, the reality is that nothing truly happens until the owner decides that it will.  A privately-held business will not grow until an owner decides that it will happen.  The same business will not begin a transition or exit plan until the owner feels that it is needed.

As we’ll see in the next few truisms, many owners are not motivated to grow a business, increase the value, or prepare for a transition because other motives are driving their decisions.  Therefore, understanding our first truism about an owner needed to ‘authorize’ any action set an important foundation.

Truism #2:  Most businesses are run for the lifestyle of the owner

Of the many challenges that face growing the value of a business, the largest one is the owner’s motivation to act.  And, in this regard, it is helpful to point out that most businesses are run for that owner’s lifestyle.  Therefore, if an owner is happy with their lifestyle today, they may be hard-pressed to take risks to grow the business which may impede on their lifestyle.

While there are many risks in owning a privately-held business, the reality is that the risks are worth it to most owners because the business provides the owner’s lifestyle.  To that owner, the alternative of going back to work for someone else is so offensive that it is hardly an option at all.  Therefore, to this owner, taking risks that possibly compromise their lifestyle is often not worth moving forward with – even if all of the logic in the world points to reasons why a business should grow and increase its value.  In short, growth means extra work and risk and those are often two (2) words that do not resonate with what an owner values most.
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How to increase the value of your business by 71%

How much did your home increase in value last year?  Depending on where you live, it may have gone up by 5 – 10% or more.

How much did your stock portfolio increase over the last 12 months? By way of a benchmark, The Dow Jones Industrial Average has increased by around 13% in the last year. Did your portfolio do as well?

Now consider what portion of your wealth is tied to the stock or housing market, and compare that to the equity you have tied up in your business. If you’re like most owners, the majority of your wealth is tied up in your company. Increasing the value of your largest asset can have a much faster impact on your overall financial picture than a bump in the stock market or the value of your home.

Let us introduce you to a statistically proven way to increase the value of your company by as much as 71%.  Through an analysis of 6,955 businesses, we’ve discovered that companies that achieve a Sellability Score of 80+ out of a possible 100 receive offers to buy their business that are 71% higher than what the average company receives.

How long would it take your stock portfolio or home to go up by 71%? Years – maybe even decades. Get your Sellability Score now and you will be able to track your overall score along with your performance on the eight key drivers of Sellability. Like a pilot working his instrument panel, you can quickly zero in on which of the eight drivers is dragging down your value the most and then take corrective action.

Your overall Sellability Score is derived from your performance on the eight attributes that drive the value of your company:

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GT Growth is Open for Business in 2015

Hi Everyone.  Happy New Year 2015!

GT Growth & Transition Strategies, LLC is looking to add 3-4 new clients in 2015.  We’re looking for proactive, privately-held business owners who want to take control of their destiny by planning their future: the growth of their business and/or the “future” transition of the business.  Luck is something that happens to you.  Strategy is something you plan.  Take control in 2015 (and beyond) to achieve your goals.

Begin Here!

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Will your business be more valuable this time next year?

For many, January is a time of rebirth and resolutions. It’s a month to reflect on last year’s achievements and to set goals for the year ahead.

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Some people will set personal goals like losing weight or quitting a nasty habit, and most company owners will set business goals that focus on hitting certain revenue or profit milestones. But if your goal is to own a more valuable business in 2014, you may want to make one of the following New Year’s resolutions:

  • Take a two-week vacation without checking in with the office. When you return, you’ll see how well your company performed and where you need to make a key hire or create a new system.
  •  Write down at least one process per month. You know you need to document your systems, but you may be overwhelmed by the task of taking what’s inside your head and putting it down in writing for others to follow. Resolve to document one system a month and by the end of the year you’ll own a more sellable company.
  •  Offload at least one customer relationship. If you’re like most business owners, you’re still your company’s best salesperson, but this can be a liability in the eyes of an acquirer, which is why you should wean your customers off relying on you as their point person. By the time you sell, none of your key customers should think of you as their relationship manager.
  •  Cultivate a new relationship with a new supplier. Having a “go to” group of suppliers is great, but an over-reliance on one or two suppliers can create a liability for your business. By spreading some of your business to other suppliers, you keep your best suppliers hungry and you can make a case to an acquirer that you have other sources of supply for your critical inputs.
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Top Ten Reasons to Begin Planning Your Exit In 2015

The New Year is a time for resolutions and for looking ahead to the promise that 2015 holds.  As the New Year approaches, we wanted to provide a bit of guidance on how you can begin to think about planning for your business exit.  Listed below are the top ten (10) reasons why you should think about planning your business exit in 2015.  We hope that this newsletter is helpful towards encouraging you to start planning for this critical transition for your company, whether the actual event will happen in the next year or in the next ten (10) years.

  1. The Timing is Right to Begin Planning Today

  2. Avoid Owning Your Business During the Next Recession

  3. A New Congress Could Bring New Changes

  4. Your Business Likely Showed Improved Performance in 2014 – Hence a Trend Towards a Higher Value

  5. Interest Rates Are Low

  6. Capital Is Available for Acquisitions

  7. Relatively Low Supply of Companies to Purchase

  8. The Supply / Demand Imbalance is Not Likely to Last

  9. Tools and Resources Have Never Been Greater

  10. You May Simply be Tired

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The Exit Transfer Timing Chart, a 2015 Update

Owners who are thinking about an eventual transition from their privately-held business are well served in understanding the optimal timing for that exit transaction.  Whether an owner is thinking about passing the business to insiders or selling the business to a financial group or a strategic buyer, timing matters because the economy moves in cycles.  The economic cycle that drives business behavior and performance will also, in all likelihood, have a substantial impact on an owner’s exit.  This newsletter is written to provide an update on a decade-old chart and concept that helps owners predict and plan for the timing of their optimal exit.

Introduction to the Transfer Chart

Rob Slee, in 2004, introduced the U.S. Ten Year Private Transfer Cycle chart through his book, Private Capital Markets.

transfer cycle

In short, this chart predicts that every ten years or so, the transfer cycle (which matches the economic cycle) repeats itself, providing good and bad times to exit a business.  If this is true for the current decade, then business owners may want to consider that by 2018, the window to transfer or exit your business may close in a manner similar to the way that it did in 2008.

Where We Are in the 2010-decade Cycle

To summarize the cycle that we are currently in, we begin with a review of 2008 and the last financial market decline.  Similar to prior cycles, the market decline started towards the end of the last decade.  However, unlike prior decades, the 2008 economic drop was a once-in-a-generation type of collapse of the world financial markets.  The timing of the last drop was predictable.  However, what was less predictable was the severity of the decline.
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Creating a Transferable Business™ – Overview of the Five (5) Step Process

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Running a privately held business is a very large challenge.  On a daily basis, owners are confronted with a countless series of interdependent issues that require their decision-making abilities.  One of these issues is the future ownership of the business by someone else.  More succinctly stated, the issue is whether or not, you the owner of the business, are taking actions today with the decisions that are being made in the business that will increase or decrease the likelihood of having success in finding someone else who will be able to run your business in the future.

Owners who are thinking about the future and are asking the question “who will own my business next?” need to consider two (2) very important questions in preparation for a future transition. The first question is “Is My Company Transferable?  The next question is “how do I go about Creating A Transferable Business?”  This newsletter provides five (5) steps that owners can take in Creating a Transferable Business.  It is written with the intention of having you think through the transferability of your business and what decisions you can make today that will make your business easier to transition to a new owner in the future.

The Five (5) Steps in Creating a Transferable Business

The following five (5) steps can assist you in Creating a Transferable Business.  They are:

  1. Adopt an Exit Planning Process and Mindset
  2. Measure and Manage your Company’s Owner Dependence
  3. Assess Your Current Management and Support Team
  4. Understand and Evaluate Your Industry Transfer Statistics
  5.  Review and Act Upon Your Company’s Relative Performance

This newsletter will introduce these five (5) steps so that you, the owner of your business, can, today, begin to take action in the specific direction of Creating a Transferable Business.
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Have you fallen into The Mile Wide Trap?

trap

If your company’s revenue has stalled after a period of rapid growth, you may have fallen into The Mile Wide Trap.

Consider the case of Kim who runs a public relations firm. Kim studied marketing at school and went on to work for a big advertising agency where she spent ten years learning a variety of marketing disciplines, from public relations to advertising to direct marketing and social media.

Then Kim decided to leave her job to start a public relations firm. Given her depth of experience and connections, she quickly landed an international distributor as a client and was asked to handle their regional dealer events. She hired some helpers and her start-up agency quickly began to grow. Kim did a great job with the dealer events, so her client asked her to handle their annual sales conference. Again she delivered with style and creativity.

Impressed by Kim’s innovative approach to the event, her client asked her to handle some of the creative for their next advertising campaign.  Kim had started her company to do PR, not advertising, but her client was a great client so she agreed to help out with the ads.

Then her client asked her to take a look at their website. Kim’s new employees had no experience with web design, but Kim had done some website jobs back at the ad agency. Not wanting to disappoint her client, Kim started to personally handle projects that her employees didn’t have the ability to execute.
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Great Exit Planning Conference in Boston Oct 2-3

Thank you to John Leonetti and the staff of Pinnacle Equity Solutions for the great 2-day conference this past week.  Special thanks to Frank O’Shea, Mindy Jones and Jesse Giordano for their efforts on the Conference Committee organizing a great line up of learning and training experiences on industry topics, transactional information, sales and marketing, and best practices.  Also, thank you to all of the speakers, panelists and sponsors who made the event possible.  It was a great time interacting with current colleagues and meeting new ones.  The exit planning industry continues to emerge.

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The Entrepreneur’s Paradox: Looking Desperate Is Not Sexy

Posted by John Warrillow

When you’re an entrepreneur, there’s a strange phenomenon that occurs: the more you look eager to sell your business, the less likely you are to get an offer. We recently analyzed some 9,779 businesses that have used our tool over at www.SellabilityScore.com, and we discovered that the longer you say you want to hang on to your business, the more likely you are to get an offer.

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The contrast is stark. We asked business owners if they had received an acquisition offer in the last year. Then we asked them how long they expect to keep their business before selling it. Overall, 16.1% of all the businesses we analyzed had received an acquisition offer in the last year. For those planning to get out within the next two years, 14.6% had received on offer, meaning the folks who want to get out sooner are a little less likely to get an offer.
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How To Get a Big Company Multiple For a Small Business

Posted by John Warrillow

Big public companies trade at a significant premium over small businesses in the same industry.  Investors perceive big, sophisticated companies as a safer bet than small, owner-dependent companies and therefore place a premium on the value of big businesses.


Let’s take a look at the professional services industry.  Although most consultancies are a small collection of experts, there are also a handful of big publicly traded professional services firms. Omnicom (NYSE:OMC) is a massive marketing services company with a market capitalization of around $18 billion. For all of 2013, Omnicom reported pre-tax income of $1.66 billion, meaning they are trading at around 11 times pre-tax income.

Over at www.SellabilityScore.com, we ask smaller business owners (our typical user has between $1 million and $20 million in sales) if they have received an offer to buy their business, and if so, the multiple of their pre-tax profit the offer represents. When we look at the professional services segment, we find the average multiple over the last two years was 3.81—almost three times lower than Omnicom.
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When we isolate professional services companies with at least $3 million in revenue, the multiple being offered goes up to 4.97 times pre-tax profit, but it is still less than half of Omnicom’s 11 times.
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The Secret Great Leaders Know About Being Happy

Most gurus will tell you that the secret to happiness is cultivating a sense of gratitude. But gratitude alone is not enough.

I walked into the kitchen as the sun was rising above the water. My friend–let’s call him Ray–was sitting at an oversized harvest table sipping a coffee made from a machine that costs more than a small car.

The kitchen was complete with every trinket befitting a cashed-out entrepreneur. It was one of probably 20 rooms in a 7,000-square-foot mansion perched above 150 feet of waterfront. I had been invited to stay at Ray’s family home for a few days while passing through on vacation.

Gobsmacked by the setting, and without thinking very much, I asked Ray, “Do you still appreciate this view every morning?”

“Every single morning,” he said.

“Really?” I probed, thinking that even an amazing view like the one I was witnessing would become old after a while.

“Yes, really. It may sound corny, but the overwhelming feeling I get when I look out over the water in the morning is gratitude. I feel so lucky to have two healthy kids and a great wife, and to live in this house.”
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To Achieve True Happiness, Pursue a Quest

Feeling burned out from the hours and stress of getting your business off the ground? Now may be the time to replace your everyday goals with a quest for something bigger.

Building a business is tiring work. In the beginning, it’s just you. There’s nobody to coach, cajole, or encourage you.

But you keep going anyway. If you stick it out long enough, you may hire a few employees. With full-time staff, you have a built-in motivation to meet payroll, but at some point even having others rely on you can start feeling hollow.

In some ways, having a boss is easier; someone else sets your objectives and holds you accountable. You don’t have to constantly motivate yourself to do more, because someone else is already asking.

Do You Get Motivated By Setting Goals?

As an entrepreneur, the motivation to always carry on has to come from inside you. To cope, a lot of us become compulsive goal setters. Our objectives become our guiding light and the reason we get up in the morning.
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5 Numbers That Can Predict the Perfect Time to Sell Your Company

BY   @JOHNWARRILLOW
There’s a downside to timing the sale of your company on the basis of external factors. An alternative approach may leave you with a lot more money in your pocket.
Do you feel a little richer this month?

You should. The value of your business just went up.

Since 2012, my team at Sellability Score has been analyzing offers entrepreneurs have received to buy their businesses. Every quarter, we look at the average multiple offered, and it is now at its highest point since we started tracking offer multiples.

For the most recent quarter, ending June 30, 2014, the average offer received was four times pretax profit (offers were much higher in some industries and among businesses with certain attributes), or about 10 percent higher than the average multiple offered lifetime of 3.66 times pretax profit.

When the value of your largest asset jumps by 10 percent, it may be tempting to hurry and get your business on the market. After all, isn’t it better to buy low and sell high?

The Downside of Selling at the Peak

The thing many of us forget is that when you sell your company–possibly your largest asset and the biggest wealth-creating event of a lifetime–you have to do something with the money you make.

These days, that means you’ll have to turn around and invest your windfall into an asset class that is equally bubbly. The stock market has more than doubled since 2009. The price of residential real estate has been growing at a rate of 1 percent per month in many major centers. The same trend can be seen in many markets that offer exclusive beach houses or ski chalets. (more…)

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Increasing Business Value: Increase Earnings or Decrease Risk?

Are Your Company’s Earnings or Risk Factors More Relevant For Your Successful Exit?

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Most business owners at some point in time want to know the value of their privately-held business.  Further, many owners who see their ‘exit’ as being many years in the future would like to know what they can do today to improve and grow that value. This newsletter asks a rather simple question for owners to consider today, “is it better to increase your profits or to reduce your ‘transition risk’ in order to increase the value of your business?”

The Risk and Return Formula For Valuations

A buyer of a business will pay for the cash flows that they believe will happen in the future, which is measured by the overall riskiness of those forecasted cash flows being achieved.

Let’s translate this a bit further.  A business is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it – that is the ‘price’ at which a business may sell.  However, the ‘value’ of a business today can only be measured using certain specific ideas about how a future buyer would view the business.  As a general rule, buyers will pay for future cash flows but only at a rate at which the riskiness is properly reflected.  Therefore, a complete analysis of how to increase the value of your business must include both increasing profits (i.e. cash flows) as well as analyzing and reducing risks in the business.

EBITDA Multiples

Many owners are familiar with ‘industry multiples’ for sales of businesses.  For example, many owners will understand what it means when someone says that “Jim sold his manufacturing company for ‘5 times’ the company’s earnings”.  The ‘5 times’ is simple to understand.  Jim’s company, in this example, had a certain amount of annual profitability and the buyer of Jim’s company paid 5 times that number.  For example, if Jim’s company had $1 million in annual profit, the buyer paid $5 million for the business – simple enough.

Increasing Profit as the Default for Increasing Value

Using the example above, many owners in the same industry as Jim will forecast a realistic sale price for their own business by looking to these standard metrics such as the ‘multiple of earnings’  under the theory that similar businesses (i.e. their business) will sell at a similar price. This often leads business owners to the quick conclusion that the easiest way to increase the value of their business is to increase their own company’s earnings.  Why wouldn’t an owner think in this logical way?

However, the question that is less frequently asked is “what is comprised of the ‘5 times’ multiple and does my business have the same risk factors as Jim’s in the example above?”

Deriving a Multiple from the Risk Factors in a Business

To understand multiples, one must first see that a buyer is paying a certain multiple because of their perceived riskiness of the future cash flows of that business.  There are many factors that impact the riskiness of a business and, therefore, impact the value.

For example, let’s assume that Jim had a solid management team in place and only worked in the business one (1) day a week.  When a buyer sees that they will gain access to the same management team when they purchase the business, they see less risk in the transition of the company and that element factors into the multiple that they pay.  Whereas if you are running your business by making day-to-day decisions and taking little or no vacation time, most buyers will see more risk because you represent a single point of failure for the business.  In this case a buyer would see more risk and would, therefore, pay a lower price – all things being equal.

So, in an attempt to answer the primary question in this newsletter, one must ask themselves whether it is easier to increase the profitability of your business (i.e. grow cash flow) or is it easier to staff the company with an initial quality manager or two in order to reduce the risk?

There is no right answer to this question.  However, this newsletter is written to challenge your conventional thinking about increasing the value of your business.

Other Risk Factors that Impact the Multiple

Let’s assume that you are of the mindset that it is easier to hire a manager or two than it is to increase your company’s profitability over the next few years.  You might then be asking what else you can do to reduce the riskiness of your business in order to increase the multiple that you may receive.  Here are a few items:

  1. Improve the quality of your financial reporting.
  2. Reduce customer or vendor concentration.
  3. Have a clearly defined, written strategy for company growth that is shared with others in the company.
  4. Improve your procedures and operations manuals.
  5. Document and execute on dynamic marketing and selling programs.

These are just a few of the ‘non-cash-flow’ components of your business that will reduce ‘transition risk’ and will help you to increase the value of your company.

 Reducing Risk is About More than Increasing Value Alone

Hopefully by this point in the newsletter you are seeing that there are many factors that go into the value of a business and many ‘risk reducing’ measures that can be taken to increase your value.

That being said, it is important to also point out that reducing risk is not just about increasing value, it is also about making your company more saleable overall.  You see, if a buyer sees too many risks in your business it is just as likely as not that they will walk away from the transaction as opposed to reducing the overall purchase price.  Many buyers don’t want to fix a business that they consider broken – it’s easier for them to find one that has less risk and is easier for them to run profitability in the future.  The translation is that by ignoring risk and only focusing on increasing profits, you might actually scare buyers away, therefore eliminating the ‘gains’ that you felt you would achieve by simply increasing your profits.

Concluding Thoughts

Every business owner will one day exit their business.  Some will get paid top dollar while others will spend years trying to ‘get out’.  This newsletter attempts to make the point that it may be easier, cheaper and more efficient for you to focus on reducing risk before jumping right into the process of trying to increase the value of your company by growing profits.  We hope that this newsletter has you thinking more about your future exit and what you can do today to increase the success of that future transaction.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2014

 Frank Mancieri, Chief Growth Advisor, GT Growth & Transition Strategies, LLC, 401-651-1585, frank@gtGrowth.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Growth vs. Value: not all revenue is created equally

When you look ahead to the next year, will your growth come from selling more to your existing customers or finding new customers for your existing products and services?

The answer may have a profound impact on the value of your business.

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Take a look at the research coming from a recent analysis of owners who completed The Sellability Score questionnaire. They looked at 5,364 businesses and found that the average company that had received an overture from an acquirer was offered 3.5 times their pre-tax profit.  When they isolated just the businesses that had a historical growth rate of 20 percent or greater, the multiple offered improved to 4.3 times pre-tax profit, or about 20 percent more than their slower growth counterparts.

However, the real bump in multiple came when they isolated just those companies that claim to have a unique product or service for which they have a virtual monopoly. The niche companies enjoyed average offers of 5.4 times pre-tax profit, or roughly 50 percent more than the average companies, and fully 20 percent more than the fastest growth companies.

Nurture your niche

Chasing “bad” revenue by offering a wide array of products and services is common among growth companies. The easiest way to grow is to sell more things to your existing customers, so you just keep adding adjacent product and service lines. But when a strategic acquirer buys your business, they are buying something they cannot easily replicate on their own.

A large company will place less value on the revenue derived from products and services that you have in common. They will argue that their economies of scale put them in a better position to sell the things that you both offer today.

Likewise, they will pay the largest premium to get access to a new product or service they can sell to their customers. Big, mature companies have customers and systems, but they sometimes lack innovation; and many choose a strategy of acquisition as a way to buy their innovation.

Focusing on your niche is one of many areas where the long-term value of your business is at odds with short-term profit. For example, if you wanted to maximize your short-term profit, you might avoid investing in new technology or hiring a head of sales, arguing that both investments would hinder short-term profit. The truly valuable company finds a way to deliver profit in the short term while simultaneously focusing their strategy on what drives up the value of the business.

You can get your own Sellability Score, and see how you compare on the eight key drivers of sellability, by taking our 13-minute survey.  https://www.sellabilityscore.com/b2b-cfo-1/frank-mancieri

 

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Your Business Value vs. Market Correlation

value It is a fact that a privately-held business will, in most cases, represent the largest financial asset in a business owner’s personal portfolio.  This newsletter is written to have business owners consider a simple question – ‘how correlated is your business value to the overall economy?’  The reason that this question is so important to ask is because most business owners put the majority of their financial wealth at risk when they fail to view their business as an asset; in particular, as an asset that fluctuates in value.  Therefore, this newsletter is designed to get you, the owner, thinking about protecting your overall wealth by thinking through a potential future date when you will transition your business – perhaps before the next economic downturn.

Investing 101:  Diversify Your Assets

It has been said that there is such a thing as a ‘free lunch’ when it comes to investing – that ‘free lunch’ is the diversification of your assets.  The reason that diversification is called a ‘free lunch’ is because in a liquid portfolio of investments (i.e. stocks and bonds), diversification costs almost nothing beyond some transaction costs.  However, the low / no cost of diversification provides a substantial amount of benefit to the investor because the investor is not solely invested, or ‘concentrated’ in a single investment or perhaps in only a few investments.

In fact, in a well diversified portfolio, different types of assets / investments rise in value in certain markets while others will fall.  Overall, the investor is provided protection of their wealth by spreading it out.

However, when a business owner’s largest asset is their illiquid privately-held business, how can they apply the same diversification mentality?

The first way that an owner can begin to address this ‘concentration of risk’ in their privately-held business is to understand how their company’s value is correlated to the overall marketplace.

Your Business Risk Relative to the Market

Let’s begin with a simple question:

  • When the overall economy is on an upturn, does your business become more profitable?

For the majority of business owners, the answer to this seemingly simplistic question is an obvious ‘yes’.  Most owners rely upon favorable economic conditions to increase the value of their businesses.

If this is true for your business, i.e. the profitability and value rises with overall economic conditions, then, of course, the same is true when the economy falters and the value of your business will fall when the economy slows down.

“Correlation” vs. Market Returns

If the statements above apply to your privately-held business, then it can safely be said that your business value has a ‘high correlation’ to economic conditions.  As such, you are likely hopeful that the economy will improve so that your business value can increase. However, having been through a number of recessions, you also know that you cannot control the overall economy.  What you can control, however, is how well prepared you are to protect and/or harvest the value of your business despite the timing of the next economic downturn.

Shifting the Riskiness of Your Business

Can the value of your business somehow be immune to the next economic downturn?  Probably not – at least not 100% of the value.  However, one of the concepts that you might embrace in your thinking is that of ‘shifting the risk’ to another investor.  This could include taking on a partner in your business.

The average business owner enjoys the freedom and financial advantages of running and owning their own business, so they don’t want to sell it.  However, they also realize that having the value of their largest financial asset tied to the overall economy is also something that makes them very uncomfortable.

Taking Chips Off the Table

If you were to think of your business the way that you think of your liquid investments, you might sell off some of them (or technically ‘raise cash’ in order to reduce the fluctuations that can occur when a downturn in the economy sets in).  Private equity groups invest in privately-held businesses but also partner with the existing owner and work on growing the business together with you.  This is a way that you can stay actively involved in the business without needing to keep 100% of your business value at risk.

An Abundance of Capital vs. Continued Control

Today’s capital markets are flooded with ‘dry powder’ or investment capital that is waiting to be deployed into profitable businesses.  If you have a profitable business today (i.e. more than $1 million in annual profits) then you might be attractive to an investment partner such as a private equity group.

While capital alone is not a reason to transact, you may also take into consideration that with so much capital looking to be put to work, you are actually in a relatively good position to choose the form of the partner or capital that you attract to your business and, perhaps, work with these capital providers to continue controlling parts of the operations of the business while working to increase its overall value.  In short, the diversification of your personal wealth might also serve as the catalyst for growth at your company.

Concluding Thoughts

We hope that this newsletter has accomplished the objective of having you understand that while the economy is a large indicator of the value of your business, there are planning techniques available to reduce the overall risk to your total wealth.  Paying attention to not only the economy but also to the sources of capital for your business, may lead you in the direction of reducing the overall riskiness of your business while protecting your wealth.

Pinnacle Equity Solutions © 2014

Frank Mancieri, Chief Growth Advisor, GT Growth & Transition Strategies, LLC, 401-651-1585, frank@gtGrowth.com

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The hidden goal of the smartest business owners

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What are your business goals for the year? If you’re like most owners, you have a profit goal you want to hit. You may also have a top line revenue number that’s important to you. While those goals are important, there is another objective that may have an even bigger payoff: building a sellable business.

But what if you don’t want to sell? That’s irrelevant. Here are five reasons why building a sellable business should be your most important goal, regardless of when you plan to push the eject button:

1. Sellability means freedom

One of the fundamental tenants of sellability is how well your company would perform if you were unable to work for a while. As long as your business is dependent on you personally, there’s not much to sell. Making your company less dependent on you by building a management team and creating just-add-water systems for employees to follow means you have the ability to spend time away from your business. Think of the world of possibilities that would open up if you could choose not to go into the office tomorrow….

2. Sellable businesses are more fun

Running a business would be fun if you were able to spend your days on strategic thinking and big picture ideas. Instead, most business owners spend the majority of their day on the minutia: the government forms, the employee performance reviews, bank reconciliations, customer issues, auditing expenses. The boring details of company ownership suck the enjoyment out of owning a business—and it is exactly these tasks you need to get into someone else’s job description if you’re ever going to sell.

3. Sellability is financial freedom

Each month you open your brokerage statement to see how your portfolio is doing. Not because you want to sell your portfolio, but because you want to know where you stand on the journey to financial freedom. Creating a sellable business also allows you peace of mind, knowing that you’re building something that—just like your stock portfolio—has value you could choose to make liquid one day.

4. Sellability is a gift

Imagine that your first-born graduates from college and as a gift you give him your prized 1967 Shelby Ford Mustang. Your heavily indebted child takes it on the road, but after a few miles, the engine starts smoking. The mechanic takes one look under the hood and declares that the engine needs a rebuild.

You thought you were giving your child an incredible asset, but instead it’s an expensive liability he can’t afford to keep, and nor can he sell it without feeling guilty.

You may be planning to pass your business on to your kids or let your young managers buy into your company over time. These are both admirable exit options, but if your business is too dependent on you, and it hasn’t been tuned up to run without you, you may be passing along a jalopy.

5. Change takes time and planning.

There are some things in life that take time, no matter how much you want to rush them. Making your business sellable often requires significant changes; and a prospective buyer is going to want to see how your business has performed for the three years after you have made the changes required to make your business sellable. Therefore, if you want to sell in five years, you need to start making your business sellable now so the changes have time to gestate.

Are you curious about how sellable your company is and what you would need to tweak to sell it when you’re ready? Then it’s time to get your Sellability Score. The questionnaire takes about thirteen minutes and your responses are kept confidential. You can complete the questionnaire by clicking on this link: https://gtgrowth.com/the-sellability-score/.

 

Frank Mancieri, Chief Growth Advisor, GT Growth & Transition Strategies, LLC, 401-651-1585, frank@gtGrowth.com

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“My Mental Readiness for an Exit is LOW”

A recent release of findings from an ongoing research effort being conducted by Pinnacle Equity Solutions, Inc., a national leader in the emerging field of exit planning, reveals that 85% of business owners who are considering a future exit from their privately-held business currently have a Low Mental Readiness for their exit.  This newsletter discusses these findings and provides insights for owners of privately-held businesses to learn how you might begin planning for your own business transition or exit in the future by knowing more about what your peers are thinking and doing. 

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Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth – Financial and Mental Readiness

In October of 2008, John Wiley & Sons published John Leonetti’s book, Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth – A Strategic Guide to Owners and Their Advisors.  This seminal book on the topic of exit planning provided a system for owners and their professional advisors to plan a business exit.  This exit planning system provides two (2) initial components that an owner should assess – their Financial Readiness and their Mental Readiness for a future business exit.

An owner’s Financial Readiness is simply a measurement of the amount of wealth that is held outside of their business, and/or other sources of income, that can pay for maintenance of their lifestyle.

A business owner’s Mental Readiness is an indication of how much longer the owner would like to continue working in their business.  For example, a business owner with a High Mental readiness is someone who is NOT enjoying working in their business today and would like to move on from the business.  However, a LOW Mental Readiness reflects an owner’s desire to continue working in the business because they enjoy the continued challenge and thrill of running their business.

The data presented in this newsletter are the initial results of more than seventy-five (75) owners of operating companies who have completed an assessment conducted by Pinnacle.  The results provide a view through which we all can better understand an owner’s attitude and preparedness for their future business exit.

Traits of LOW Mental Readiness

The following attributes apply to the 85% of owners who have a LOW mental readiness for an exit.  As a group, they generally:

–          Have no written plans for an exit

–          Have not thought about a future without them working in their business

–          Take less than 3 weeks of vacation per year.

–          Are performing at the ‘top of their game’.

–          Lack the management team to replace their responsibilities at the company

–          Continue to have a high level of enthusiasm to work at their companies.

These traits vary in degree among different owners who completed the Pinnacle report, but are the general areas where they all reply positively to the survey questions.

How Can You Apply These Survey Results to Your Exit Plans?

As you review the list of traits in the preceding paragraph regarding owners with a LOW Mental Readiness, you may see many that apply to you.  If so, you may begin to consider your own Mental readiness for an exit and how this could impact your planning.  And, notably, if your desire is to continue to run your business into the future because owning and running your business is what you enjoy doing, then you are in the majority of your peers.

However, our important message to you in this newsletter is the following:  just because you desire to remain with your business does not mean that planning should be ignored or put off until a later date.  In fact, ‘exit planning’ does not (and should not) mean that you are leaving your business.  Rather, planning for an exit includes growth planning (i.e. increasing the cash flow and value of your business), leadership planning and development (so that the business can run without you), personal planning (so that you have the peace of mind that you can afford an exit) and contingency planning (to assure that you don’t lose what you created if someone unforeseen should happen to you).  These are all very important areas that you can plan for today, even if – like the majority of other owners – you do not plan to exit for a number of years.

Concluding Thoughts

We hope that this newsletter has accomplished the objective of having you understand what your peers are thinking and doing for their exit plans so that you can better define your own.

© Copyright 2014 Pinnacle Equity Solutions, Inc.

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Thrive: How to Build a Simply Irresistible™ Organization

New research shows that organizations must work harder than ever to create a meaningful, humanistic work environment to drive engagement, performance, and a magnetic attraction for people.

We call this the “Simply Irresistible™ Organization“- one that people love to work for.

This is good for business. The Great Place to Work Institute has published studies which show that “100 best places to work” outperformed the S&P 500 by over four-fold from 1990-2009 and there’s no reason to believe this won’t continue. (“The Great Workplace,” by Michael Burchell and Jennifer Robin.)

But there’s more. There’s a personal side to this story.

We as individuals also have to take care of ourselves, and Arianna Huffington’s new bookThrive (just published) can help us understand this issue. Huffington’s book and her new website The Third Metric redefines what success means: slow down, disconnect, get more sleep, and become more mindful about our lives.

“Health creates wealth,” she says. Healthy, focused people are not only happier, they make better decisions, become better leaders, and drive greater value for their organizations.

Do business leaders understand this? Are we creating a workplace which lets people thrive? In most cases, not yet.

Our Global Human Capital Trends research, just completed, found a tremendous gap in the area of workforce engagement, stress, and overload.

Here’s the data: 79% of businesses are worried seriously about engagement and retention (it is their #2 issue after leadership) and two-thirds of business leaders cite “the overwhelmed employee” as a top business challenge. And Gallup research shows that globally only 13% of employees are highly engaged at work. (View the Deloitte Human Capital Dashboard to explore the data interactively.)

Despite these numbers, only 8% of large companies feel they have programs to help employees adapt. Forty percent of us men work more than 50 hours a week and 80% of men want to work fewer hours. In order to thrive, we need employers, HR departments, and CEOs to help.

While most companies haven’t dealt with this issue, some have. Fortune’s Best Companies to Work (Google, SAS, Boston Consulting Group, and Edward Jones) have built amazing workplaces – environments where people literally line up to apply for jobs. These organizations have created what we call a Simply Irresistible™ workplace. They not only attract great people, they also create an environment where people can truly thrive.

After studying this issue for the last year, I’ve concluded that this problem goes far beyond measuring “employee engagement.” We have to take a holistic view.

To help people understand this, here are what we believe are the five key elements of the Simply Irresistible™ organization.

1. Meaningful work.

The first and and perhaps most important challenge is to give people “good work.” Jobs must give people enough autonomy to be creative and enough time to perform well. Even call center workers want time to learn, improve, and help customers.

Studies show that companies that empower employees, give them the tools to succeed, and pay well outperform those who attempt to “reduce the cost of labor.” When we pay people fairly and give them cross training they learn, help customers, and improve operations. Call center, retail, health care, and hospitality workers all benefit from this approach.

In todays’ economy nearly every business drives value through service, intellectual property, or creativity. This means people are the product, so businesses should try to design jobs which give people what author Daniel Pink calls “autonomy, mastery, and purpose.”

2. Great management.

Management is one of the most important parts of any organization, and companies have to develop and support great leadership.

Our research shows that people thrive through coaching, feedback, and opportunities to develop. Managers who criticize people, demand too much, or avoid communication create stress and fear among employees. The same can be said for old-fashioned performance appraisals, which often create fear, reduce performance, in generate stress. We have to remember the nobility of management, and help people learn to manage others well.

We also have to teach managers how to be “mindful,” and help their employees slow down and see the big picture. One of the fastest growing competencies in leadership development programs is “self-awareness,” something Arianna Huffington describes in her new book.

(Read Learning to Be Yourself for more tips. If you’re interested in the topic of modern performance management and how to motivate high performers, please read the Myth of the Bell Curve.)

3. Growth opportunities.

Among the many reasons people leave companies, one of the biggest is for lack of opportunity. Our research clearly shows that organizations which invest more heavily in training, career development, and mobility outperform their peers in almost every industry.

But it has to go further. Not everyone will move into management or get promoted – Irresistible organizations enable facilitated talent mobility. People can move from job to job without fear of failure – supported by leadership as well as HR. Today only 3% of the companies we surveydeliver strong mobility programs at all levels, yet this is one of the strongest drivers of engagement and continuous learning.

What happens when you give people the opportunity to grow? People stay excited, the business becomes more agile and innovative, and high performers want to stay.

4. An inclusive, flexible, fun environment.

Companies that have ping pong tables, free food, and flexible vacation time show that they care. These benefits are fairly inexpensive to provide and they give people the freedom to work as they want to work. Google has a bowling alley. The Huffington Post has nap rooms (something I feel like I could use often!). PixarDeloitte, and WL Gore are well known for their open office spaces and highly flexible culture.

And look at Zappos’ focus on Happiness. The company is out to prove that focusing on fun and collaboration is the most productive way to run a business. Zappos even offers its Zappos Insights program, an educational initiative to help companies learn how to build a meaningful, fun, inclusive environment.

Many hot Silicon Valley companies offer these kinds of benefits, and many offer far more. Here we see companies providing bus service to work, free dry cleaning delivery, personalized workstations, unlimited vacation, and health and gym facilities on campus. This is a trend we cannot stop – it’s a humane and loving way to treat people

5. Leadership we can trust.

The fifth element is inspirational leadership.

The days of the hard-nosed, profit-obsessed CEO are slowly coming to an end. While most businesses expect people to work hard, CEOs now realize that it’s the soul of the business that inspires people to contribute. Does your company have a mission you can relate to? Do your leaders trust employees to make the right decisions?

These values of trust, consciousness, and soul start at the top.

Books like Thrive teaches us how to apply “The Third Metric” in our daily lives. Now it’s time for CEOs and other leaders to embrace these values and embed them in the fabric of our organizations.

About the Author: Josh Bersin is the founder and Principal of Bersin by Deloitte, a leading research and advisory firm focused on corporate leadership, talent, learning, and the intersection between work and life. Josh is a published author on Forbes, a LinkedIn Influencer, and has appeared on Bloomberg, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal, and speaks at industry conferences and to corporate HR departments around the world. You can contact Josh on twitter at @josh_bersin and follow him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bersin 

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8 ways to know if you have a Job or own a Business

The ultimate test of your business can be found in a simple question: would someone want to buy your company?

Whether you want to sell next year or a decade from now, you must be building an asset someone would buy – otherwise, you have a job, not a business.

Here are eight ways to ensure you are building a company, not just doing a job:

  1. A job requires that you show up at work to make money, whereas a company generates revenue whether you are there or not.
  2.  If your company is so reliant on a single customer that they can dictate how you deliver your product or service, your company is more like a job than a valuable business.
  3.  A job is a place where your personal reputation impacts your results, whereas a company is a place where the brand is more important than the personality of the founder(s).
  4.  A job requires you to use your personal experience and expertise to get a result, whereas a company is a place where a process – not a person – consistently produces a desirable result.
  5.  In a job, you get fired for taking too much vacation, whereas if you own a company, the more vacation you can take without impacting your company’s performance, the more valuable your business will be.
  6.  In a job, the harder you work, the more money you earn. In a company, the smarter you work, the more money you earn.
  7.  In a job, you solve the problems. If you own a company, your employees solve the problems.
  8.  If the majority of your customers know your mobile phone number, it’s likely you have a job, not a company.

If you’re not sure whether you have a job or own a business, it’s time to get your Sellability Score. Whether you want to sell now or in a decade, the Sellability Score assessment allows you to see your business as a buyer would see it, and to identify how you perform on each of the eight key drivers of sellability. The questionnaire takes about 13 minutes to complete, and after you’re finished you’ll get a customized 27-page report outlining how you performed and where you could improve the value and sellability of your company. Get your score now (Click Here).

Sellability Score

Frank Mancieri, 401-651-1585, frank@gtGrowth.com, www.gtGrowth.com

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Planning an Exit Requires a Relationship, Not a Transaction Mindset

For business owners who are thinking about exiting their business in the near (or not so near) future, there are many things to consider to assure the business transition happens in a smooth manner.  Owners are wise to seek the counsel of advisors in this complex and delicate area.  While discussing an exit with a professional advisor, owners are well served in asking how the advisor that they are speaking with perceives their role, as well as, how that advisor is compensated.  This newsletter makes the argument that in order for this process to go smoothly, owners should seek out the counsel of ‘relationship-based’ advisors in favor of ‘transaction-based’ advisors to create and begin implementing a multi-year exit planning process.

Understanding an Advisor’s Role in an Owner’s Life

 Advisors enter a business owner’s world mostly on a reactive basis, usually because there is a need for assistance with an outstanding issue.  For most owners the relationship with their accountant is the most consistent and often the most trusting in the realm of financial issues and that is simply because state and federal governments require, at a minimum, that businesses – and their owners – file their taxes each year.  This is, again, a reactive (albeit very important) approach to the process of finding an advisor.

However, some business owners buck this trend and actually take a proactive approach to working with their advisors, including a commitment to planning for the future.  These owners recognize the importance of ‘staying one step ahead’ and they seek out the best advisors for their short-term and long-term needs.

The Relationship-Based Advisor versus the Transaction-Based Advisor

So, given that most owners work with professional advisors, it is helpful to categorize them.  The world of professional advisors can be neatly divided into two (2) types; relationship-based advisors and transaction-based advisors.

Relationship-based advisors are those who come into the business owner’s lives and work with them, year-in and year-out, on a consistent basis.  Two of the leading relationship-based advisors are accountants (for reasons stated already) and attorneys (often at the beginning of a business venture and again when the need arises).  Many owners also confide and place their trust in financial planning professionals, insurance and risk management advisors as well as general business coaches and consultants.  These advisors take the approach that a relationship with a business owner exists over a long period of time and they remain available to these owners as needs arise.

Transaction-based advisors are those who approach the relationship with the owner with an eye towards addressing a specific, non-recurring issue for that owner.  These advisors might include real estate brokers, consultants who start and complete certain projects for owners, valuation professionals as well as mergers and acquisitions advisors.  These advisors enter the lives of owners to execute a certain transaction.  For the most part, these advisors also plan to leave the owner’s life shortly after the transaction / project ends.

Exit Planning is a [multi-year] Process, Not a Transaction

The process of exiting a business is not a transaction, but rather it is a process.  The process includes an owner thinking through all of the implications of the business running without their individual efforts as well as how the owner would live without the business.  Owners who go through this process ask themselves, ‘who will run the business other than me?’ and ‘what would fill my life in the absence of working in the business?’

Answering these seemingly simple questions and planning a separation from your business has a high level of complexity that takes time to understand and, once understood, to make critical decisions around.  Unlike a transaction, the exit planning process requires the benefit of time and self-reflection to decide what is best for you both from a business and a personal perspective. This newsletter suggests that a relationship-based advisor is a critical partner in helping to gain clarity around these issues.

Now, with all of that being said, an exit planning process may very well end with a transaction.  When this happens, those transaction-based advisors are invaluable to the process of completing a deal.  However, there are a few important caveats to remember:  (1) a transaction is the output of the process, not the immediate objective and basis for an engagement, and (2) the transaction-based advisor can learn from the exit planning process to execute on the transaction that best meets your goals.

Why Relationship-Based Advisors Are Ideal for Exit Planning

Given that exit planning is a process, it is important for owners to have a trusting relationship with the advisor who guides them through this multi-year process.  Relationship-based advisors set up their businesses to view clients as ‘lifetime clients’, coming in and out of their lives as needed.  And, as an owner going through an exit planning process, it is likely that you will want time to answer the sensitive questions that await you.  Your relationship-based advisor will take the time to help you reach your long-term goals while transaction-based advisors, generally speaking, are not equipped to conduct a multi-year process to guide an owner in this way. Rather, many of these advisors would prefer to be called at the time that a transaction is ready to be executed.  As an aside, if you find a transaction-based advisor who is truly willing to serve in a relationship basis with you, then you should consider yourself fortunate as these advisors are hard to find.

Next Steps in the Exit Planning Process

This newsletter is not written to judge one type of advisor as better than another.  Rather, it is crafted to remind owners that an exit planning process is one that should not be conducted alone and should include the patience and approach that relationship-based advisors bring to the owner.  We hope that you find this helpful in advancing your exit planning forward.

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What Factors are the Largest Detractors of Value for my Business?

Business owners who are thinking about an exit often-times want to know what challenges they will face in a sale process and whether or not someone else will want to own their business after them.  A solid exit planning process includes both personal and business factors to be considered.  On the business side, it is helpful for an owner to know about the elements that are likely to reduce the value of their business in the eyes of potential buyers.  When an owner is aware of these factors, it is likely that these ‘risks’ can be mitigated over time, leading to a higher exit value for the business.  This newsletter takes a look at the factors that generally reduce the value of a business and provides some recommendations as to ways that owners can address these items years in advance of an anticipated exit or sale transaction and therefore increase not only the potential value of the business, but also the overall likelihood of a successful sale.

What Buyers Fear Most

As an owner who is thinking about a future exit, you are well served in understanding the concerns and fears of potential buyers for your business.  The largest fear that a buyer has is that of the unknowns and the risks that accompany not knowing what the future holds.  In other words, privately-held businesses do not report earnings shareholders and do not disclose ‘material’ and ‘non-material’ items to research analysts in the manner that publicly traded companies do.  Therefore, when it comes time for a buyer to review your business for purchase, they will have countless questions about how the business operates, the markets that it serves, key people who run the day-to-day operations, as well as the overall strategy and business plan for the future.

As each question is answered, the buyer’s concerns should be reduced.  Ideally, those concerns are reduced to a point where a future buyer is eager to write you a check to take ownership of the cash machine that is your business so that they can become the next owner / partner in the company.

Pre-Sale Risk Reduction

Although every privately-held business is different, there are common factors that can be identified which contribute to the overall riskiness of a business in the eyes of a potential, future buyer.  Some of those items include:

  1. High levels of dependence upon the owner
  2. The lack of a management team (which goes along with owner dependence)
  3. Lack of a clearly-defined strategy for growth
  4. Low levels of profitability (relative to industry comparable percentages)
  5. High levels of customer or vendor concentration
  6. Incomplete or non-existent operations and procedures [manuals, etc . . . ]
  7. Incomplete or non-existent marketing and selling programs
  8. Poorly kept, non-GAAP compliant financial statements

The factors listed above exist in the majority of small businesses today and as you look through this list of factors, you will likely see many that apply to your business.  If you look ahead to what a future owner of your business will see as important, the manner in which you can answer questions relating to these [and many other] items is likely to significantly impact the success that you have in selling your business. 

How Many Years Does it Take to Fix These Issues?

Some factors are easier to fix than others.  An approximate time-frame to address each of the factors listed above is provided below:

Factors That Can be Fixed in Less than One (1) Year

  • Lack of a clearly-defined strategy for growth
  • Poorly kept, non-GAAP compliant financial statements / records
  • Incomplete or non-existent operations and procedures [manuals, etc . . . ]
  • Incomplete or non-existent marketing and selling programs 

Factors that Take More than One (1) Year but Less than Three (3) Years to Fix

  • Low levels of profitability (relative to industry comparable percentages)
  • High levels of customer or vendor concentration

Factors that Take More than three (3) Years to Fix

  • High levels of dependence upon the owner
  • Lack of a management team

Timing Your Eventual Exit

An owner’s exit from their business is primarily a personal decision and should be lead by that owner’s goals and objectives, both personally and professionally.  With that as a background for this important level of planning, the time frames listed above should help you understand how long it can take to plan and execute your exit.  For that reason, it is recommended that you begin your planning sooner rather than later because the factors and timeframes listed above are merely estimates.  Your company may take longer to fix many of these issues and, if you sell before they are addressed, you will likely be transferring the business at a lower value than you may desire (or otherwise deserve).

Concluding Thoughts

We hope that this newsletter has accomplished the objective of having you see that there are many factors that increase the riskiness of your business in the eyes of potential buyers, thereby reducing the value that you might otherwise be paid.  Knowing what these factors are and having the time and commitment to fixing them may allow you to substantially increase the value of your business prior to your envisioned exit.

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