Should I consider an earn-out when selling my business? If you own a business and you think it is time to sell, an option to add to your tool kit is whether or not you would be willing to receive an earn out as part of the purchase price of the business.
Are you looking for the right business opportunity? Business opportunities seem to abound everywhere whether you live in Sacramento, CA, Chicago, IL or Timbuktu. If you pick up the business news there are new technologies that seem to roll out such as anything with an ‘i’ in its name be it a iPhone, iPod, or iPad.
Is trust important when selling your business? This last ten days or so have been incredibly interesting. On the previous weekend an email
Do you use Key Performance Metrics to run your business? One of the truisms I’ve come to believe wholeheartedly is that no business owner is good at every aspect of owning and operating a business.
To be a little clearer, the skills to own and operate a business are many and varied. What tends to attract a business owner to operate their own business is a self belief that they can do one or two aspects of running a business very well and either hire the skills they lack or learn these with time.
If you watch the TV channel CNBC and in particular Larry Kudlow’s show called ‘The Kudlow Report,’ you will hear his constant preaching that “free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity.”
Always run your business as if it is for sale in case you hear the magic words “I would like to buy your business; are you interested in selling?”
Can I negotiate a lease with the landlord when selling a business may seem an unusual question but it’s worth getting the right answer. And the right answer is – absolutely.
The Small Business Administration (or SBA) has been the provider of many loans for small businesses for many years. If you plan to apply for a loan, here are 10 more reasons for your SBA loan may be declined.
Selling a business is not just about the price. This may seem an unusual heading to an article but it now keeps happening too many times and I feel compelled to write about it.
Everyone is familiar with the Christmas song, the 12 days of Christmas. Without going into every verse of the song, the carol works forward with the first day of Christmas being a partridge in a pear tree, the second day of Christmas two turtle doves and so on.
One of the hardest aspects of being an entrepreneur is staying on top of some things you may not like to do because you either don’t enjoy them or simply aren’t good at them…or both.
Not everyone will agree but I am sure it’s close to the truth that buying or selling a business is unlike anything else. Here are four reasons.
A Covenant Not To Compete is useful when a seller has found a buyer for their current business. This ensures that the new buyer does not open the same type of business as the seller for risk that existing customers will want to do business with the seller and not the new buyer. There are many factors involved to evaluate a Covenant Not To Compete and they are outlined in this article.
For many small business owners, the single most important document for their business is the lease. Unfortunately a lease is generally a long and fairly complicated document. Because of its complexity, many small business owners either accept what they receive or do the bare minimum. Here are some suggestions for you, in no particular order.
If you own a business and have a partner and have not put a legally binding Buy-Sell Agreement together it is probably the most important document you need to accomplish as soon as you can. Hopefully you never need to put your Buy-Sell Agreement in motion but if you do, you want to execute what’s important to you and your partner so it saves time, money and provides the peace of mind it is supposed to provide.
It is important to know what tangible and intangible assets are in business. Knowing the difference and examples of each can help you with your taxes and the transaction of buying or selling a business. Assets can also be a legal matter, in which case it is important to know about legal protection and how they can help you in any business transaction.
The need to understand what and how purchase price allocation works helps when buying or selling a business because it affects both the buyer and the seller. This article outlines purchase price allocation and in what ways in effects a buyer and seller of a business.
Selling a business comes with many challenges. The number one reason most transactions don’t close after a buyer and seller have “negotiated” a deal is that the landlord cannot come to terms with the seller and/or buyer. The number two reason is that finance is not available.
Strategies to successfully sell a business These strategies and top tips when selling a business will increase your chances of success. Successfully selling a business requires a lot of preparation, attention to detail and organization. Most sellers badly underestimate both what they need to do and what to do if a qualified buyer comes along. […]
An add back is a type of tax deduction that small business are able to claim on their taxes. Understanding them and how they work shows one of the many benefits to owning your own business. This article goes into detail about add backs and how they are used after you decide to buy or start your own business.
Getting an SBA loan hasn’t always been an easy task and some recent changes have been to require a business valuation in order for the loan to be approved. An SBA lender cannot provide this service, but a third part like a business broker can. The benefits of an SBA loan and reasons for hiring a business broker to help are outlined in this article.
New business models are emerging that challenge the old assumptions about how to operate a business for profitability.
In the book “Firms of Endearment – How World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose”(Wharton School Publishing), the authors, Sisodia, Sheth and Wolfe, provide many examples of how companies that take care of all the stakeholders – not just the shareholders – achieve significantly higher profits.
SPICE is their acronym for all the stakeholders:
Ethics you should expect from your business broker when selling your business or buying a business in Sacramento, Los Angeles, New York or anywhere should be non negotiable.
Though the price is an imperative part of buying or selling a business, the terms of the deal are also crucial. This article shows some of the reasons why understanding the terms can help you when it comes to any business transaction.
A business for sale is similar to a house for sale in some respects but very different in others. Some helpful tips to consider when selling your business include: considering commercial real estate, how helpful a team of advisors could be in your journey to sell your business, what assets there are and that the value of all things included in the business are properly valued.
When trying to sell your business, getting an appraisal is beneficial for a number of reasons. Understanding what assets are part of the sale, removing any personal items that aren’t for sale and deciding the worth of your business with a professional ensures success when trying to sell your business. This article outlines the benefits of an appraisal and why it is critical when selling your business.
If you experience difficulty selling your business, there are options available to you. It is important to take care of your lease if applicable, assess your assets and see what you can do to get the best price for your business and work on your inventory. This article goes over these steps and more to help you when you find you cannot sell your business.
To understand your financial statement, you might consider an assessment of where you are right now with your business in terms of sales and goals. A Profit and Loss statement is useful when trying to understand what’s happening with your business and a balance sheet ensures you stay on track with all things going on with your business. These small steps help business owners understand where they are in terms of their financial statements.
If you are selling your business what is your tax position? If you own a business and wish to sell, do you need to understand your tax position before you sell? You are a business owner who is thinking about selling your business.
To successfully sell your business, there are 9 important areas to consider before selling. They range from creating a team to support and help, goals to achieve, tax responsibilities, income necessary, different legal matters to consider, etc.
A business should be a constant ball of energy moving in different directions as the economy changes, new tools and innovations come to the market, the stress and strain from competitors and the ever changing demands of customers.
An area that a lot of businesses don’t spend a lot of time measuring but is very easy, cost effective and critical to do is the key performance areas of the business. These key performance areas or metrics can show whether the business has all the parts working together
Email, websites, online bill paying, Amazon.com, FaceBook, Twitter, WI-FI, online banking; how did we survive prior to the internet? The virtual world is all around us and guess what; it’s only going to get more immersed in our everyday life as we look to watching TV and movies
So you’ve made your New Year’s resolutions which included building a business plan. This includes setting your personal and business goals. You also did a budget to make sure you can afford to do what you’ve planned. You are therefore all rested and dressed up and ready to go. Bring it on you say. My question is therefore, you know WHAT you want to do but HOW are you going to do it?
Chances are you have a list of projects and tasks you want and need to do. It probably doesn’t include answering phones, sending and receiving emails, reading articles and newsletters, attending conferences, staying on top of compliance items that affect your industry but numerous day to day activities that lead most entrepreneurs at the end of the day to say “Where did the day go?” And that’s the point of a Productivity Plan.
Buying or selling a business is a complex matter. There is no question about it. The complexities start from the moment a buyer and seller start interacting but there is natural conflict in place. For a start, the buyer doesn’t have any history of the operation of the business and so has to rely entirely on the representations of the seller. Conversely, the seller has lived and breathed the business, knows its upsides and downs including its strengths and weaknesses. My Golden Rule when assisting with a business transaction is for each party to put their feet in the shoes of the other party. In other words, the seller should see things from the buyer’s perspective and the buyer should see things from the seller’s perspective.
The life blood of what we do as human beings and the glue that keeps us all together as a society be at a local, regional, national or indeed international level is the ability to communicate with one another. Many times that communication breaks down and many times this leads to
The sales and marketing plan is a document that most entrepreneurs don’t have time to get around to putting together. I’m not sure why that is as it’s just as important as the business plan and indeed complements it.
Being an entrepreneur requires the need to constantly make decisions. Being a successful entrepreneur requires constantly getting most of those decisions right. No entrepreneur gets every decision right. Just ask Tiger Woods.
One of the hardest aspects of being an entrepreneur is staying on top of some things you may not like to do because you either don’t enjoy them or simply aren’t good at them…or both. Doing math back in school just wasn’t fun for me.
Buying or selling a business is a major step for all entrepreneurs. It comes with obvious financial risk which everyone understands and prevents many would-be-entrepreneurs from starting their journey. However, an element not many understand is that the business ownership comes with
As an environmental consultant it seems that hardly a year passes that does not bring along with it some new potential concern, previously unidentified liability or new tougher regulations that must be adhered to. In this article, I wanted to inform our members of recent changes required by the Small Business Administration (SBA) as part of their updated environmental program.
Just as there are different sellers with different motivations, there are also buyers with different types of needs and personalities. If you’re the seller of a business or looking to buy, understanding these different personality types may help you be more successful.
Owning and operating a business always comes with many challenges. For different reasons the current recession seems “the worst we’ve ever experienced.”
We’re all familiar with the story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; the person with two completely different personalities. Just as there are different types of buyers with different motivations, there are also buyers with different types of personalities. If you’re planning on buying a business or if you own a business that you want to sell, here are some Dr. Jekyll “traits” that would discourage a seller revealing too much information about their business.
Everyone hates to fail. Everyone hates to fail at anything. Sometimes it is difficult to find out if and when you are failing. It’s like falling over when you trip. Often you don’t even know you have tripped and fallen until you hit the ground. Owning and running a failing business can be the same.
Selling a business is rarely a simple and straight forward process. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve found is that the seller doesn’t put themselves in the shoes of the other parties be it the buyer, lender, landlord, employees, franchisor or whoever.
Can I sell a business in tough times? Should I buy a business in tough times? With negative economic news grabbing the headlines in the United States
If you are considering the sale of your business there are a growing number of brokers and mergers and acquisition specialists available to offer professional assistance to help you determine the value of your business and how the market might respond.
The current economic climate continues to hinder some business sales, but even with a challenging environment, businesses are changing hands. Regardless of the economy many aging boomers are looking to retire, while younger boomers are interested in buying and becoming their own bosses.
Can the seller can stay after selling the business? Selling a business and walking away can be very difficult. But in many cases, there’s a transition
Is business ownership right for you? The reality of the current downturn in the economy is that many companies will need to restructure to create the private sector jobs President Obama is talking about.
Due diligence is a critical window of time in the process of buying and selling a business as the buyer gets the opportunity to bring their experts and prove all the claims made by the seller during the negotiations.
If you plan on selling your business, it will help you to understand the different types of buyer. Each buyer who inquires will have their own unique reason to want to buy.
Do thoughts of selling your business ever cross your mind? As a business owner you certainly know that the day will come when you will walk away from your company’s operations.
The Baby Boomer generation is planning their retirement and for many, this means selling the business they built over many years.
The baby boomer generation spans many years creating a unique situation in the business world. Aging boomers are looking toward retirement, while many younger boomers find they’re ready to be their own boss. But what does it all mean?
Selling and buying a business is rarely a simple and straightforward process.
Need a small loan to keep your business going? The economic stimulus package includes a $35,000 life preserver for small businesses drowning in red ink. Under the law, the Small Business Administration temporarily will guarantee 100 percent of loans of up to $35,000 issued by banks to small businesses that are struggling to make payments […]
What is the process of buying a business? Buying a business is a process that takes time. It can sometimes take years to find the
The economy’s tough, unemployment is at a record high and growing and you’ve decided your best option is to start your own business, be your own boss and put yourself in control.
Many business owners that run as a C Corporation consider converting to an S Corporation so they can avoid the double taxation that a C Corp brings. While this sounds good in theory, there are tax consequences that need to be considered and understood before making that final decision. Below are some questions and answers to help with the decision.
Selling a business comes with many challenges. The number one reason most transactions don’t close after a buyer and seller have “negotiated” a deal is that the landlord cannot come to terms with the seller and/or buyer.
What are the benefits of a good Business Broker? Many buyers and sellers of businesses will use a business broker to assist with the business-for-sale transaction. In simple terms, business brokers act as middlemen between business buyers and sellers and handle most if not all the details to see a successful transaction. One means by […]
Here are five more services to expect when hiring a Business Broker or third party to represent you in selling your business
There are many options to considering when hiring a Business Broker or Sales Agent or third party to represent you in a transaction, whether you are buying or selling a business.