Ein Unternehmen verkaufen: Schritt für Schritt

0:008.5 million um in trailing 12 months, $1.2 million in profit. Could I grab some advice on telling employees we're selling the Yes. Let me let's talk about this. How do you balance long-term growth when the business is on the market? Dude, it is your lucky day. I have so much to say about this. I'm going to try and talk really fast, so just listen faster or watch the recording. All right. So, having sold a bunch of businesses, I have made a lot of mistakes on this.

0:26First thing that you don't do is tell your employees that you're selling. Rule number one, why would you not tell them? Some people like that's dishonest. One, you don't know if the deal is going to go through yet. So, you have no idea. And so, to create that kind of uncertainty in their lives is horrendous. Number two, every single one of them has a horror story that they heard that everyone's going to get fired, which of course makes no sense because why would someone buy an asset and then fire all the people within that asset? right now, in a strategic merger or an acquisition where it's like two things you're going to combine. That's different. But I'm assuming that in your business, um, that's probably not the case. And so, thing one, don't say it.

1:01Thing two, there's good reasons why you don't say it because people have lots of preconceived notions. Thing three, okay, you're going to go as far as you possibly can in this process without anyone knowing about it. at the point where you have to include your CFO and maybe your COO, you include them and you make it very clear that they are not to share this under any circumstances. All right? And only those two people are probably the only people required um for that. Now, after that point, it's a pure need to know uh and you should be already past signed LOI and very late in diligence close to closing the sale um where maybe you would have a couple key leaders that you absolutely trust. Now, a way to make sure that you can um keep them in it is I took a tiny sliver of the pot and I said, "Hey, you guys are going to get a slice of this uh so they're incentivized to one keep mouth shut and also to actually see the deal through, you know, in in the deal process." Um, how do I balance long-term growth in the businesses on the market?

1:59Really, really good. I would strongly encourage you. The only thing that you want to potentially not do is maybe a huge capital expense um in the business, but otherwise you need to operate as though you're not going to do the deal. And I would encourage you to do this because it's going to do two really important things. Number one, you want to operate as though you're not going to do the deal because there's very strong chance the deal doesn't happen, right? Statistically, very few businesses sell um especially for good numbers. And so the stats are against you. So, I would not I would not like really change my behavior very much. Number two, if there is something that's truly one time, now if every year you always make capital investments, then you need to just keep doing keep running the business. But if there's something that is oneoff and odd, then I would let the acquirer know that you're planning on doing this and that you like don't want that to be don't want to don't want it to affect the deal. And so, I would just be transparent with them. Most acquirers would say, "We'll do whatever you need to do to make sure the business continues to run because they want to buy an asset that's continue to work, right?" So, uh, we keep it super super need to know, uh, on the team side, slice out a tiny bit of the cash and give it to key leaders who are going to, uh, make sure that the transaction works. Um, number one. Number two, within the actual running of the business, you want to grow, dude.

3:15Because I'll tell you this, the kiss of death to these deals, especially to your valuation, is how the business performs in the 12 weeks from signed LOI to deal closed. All right? They're going to be looking at everything under a microscope and they're going to like they're going to like you're going to feel so much pressure during that time. So, if you want to open up a can of whoopass, that is the time to do it because that is what's going to close the deal faster. That's what's going to give you more leverage in the negotiation. Because if you're if you're if you're plateauing or going even a tiny bit down, all the leverage is jacked, they're going to ask for terrible terms, more more earnout stuff, more payouts, all of this kind of stuff that you don't want. Um, and it's going to be miserable. On the other hand, if you start crescendoing up right as the deal's happening, you can be like, you know what, guys? The business is doing great. I'm not even sure if I want to sell it anymore. They're thinking, "Oh my god, we put 500,000 in diligence into this business. We can't lose that money." they start getting deal pregnant. It works both ways, which means they want to have the baby. They want to close the deal. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The deal is not done until you have the wire in your account. All right? So, like the number isn't the number. The terms aren't the terms. You can do whatever the hell you want. They're going to make it seem like this is set in stone. We don't change the terms. Blah blah blah. It's all posturing. It's all positioning, right?

4:33the deal isn't done until the the docks are signed and the cash hits your account. Which means at that point, right, like as you're crescendoing in, you want to have the position of strength, which means that your business has grown since they gave you that LOI. So that you can be like, "Hey, listen, man. Um, my valuation is probably higher than it than it is right now than you guys are giving me. And so I want all my terms. It's my terms." And so you always have the frame of price and terms. And like what you don't want is their price and their terms, right? And if you get your price their terms, still kind of sucks. You want your price your terms.

5:07But there's only one way to do that and that's with leverage. The only way to get leverage is you grow. So you want to hit it hard. If you have like some seasonal plays, you want to hit up your email list. You want to run some I'm not saying discount promos, but if you want to hit it hard, that's where you put extra gas on the sales team. You give extra commission to the manager. You hit the email list hard. You post more content during that period of time. So you drive up revenue in that short period of time. And then that's how you that's how you crush it. So Trenton, hopefully that helps.