Exit Planning Archives - Page 10 of 11

Life After Exit — Time is of the Essence

June 11, 2020December 3, 2017 by John F. Dini

From time to time, we share real stories about life after exit from owners who have sold their businesses. Some are great and some… not so much. The have agreed to share their experiences to help other owners prepare for both the process of transferring their companies and what comes after.

The Business

BVA Scientific, a distributor of laboratory supplies and equipment, started in Bob and Nancy Davison’s bedroom with the garage serving as the “warehouse.” Both had a background in laboratory supply sales, and they focused on building deeper customer relationships than the multi-billion dollar vendors who dominate the industry.

That approach helped the company grow with a balanced customer base. BVA has a presence in food testing laboratories, water and wastewater plants and the Texas oil fields, rather than the typical dominance of doctors and hospitals for their type of business.

Not surprisingly, BVA had attracted multiple inquiries from private equity groups. None of those came with management, however, and all wanted the Davisons to remain as employees for a long time after the acquisition. While they weren’t in a rush to get out the door, Bob and Nancy wanted a clear path to retirement

Here is how they describe the transaction

“First, let’s kill all the lawyers…”

Nancy: “We knew that the business had grown beyond what a couple of salespeople could handle well. Supply sources were moving to Asia, and I felt a bit out of step. I think the real impetus was when a general manager to whom we planned to sell the business left for, of all things, his own sign shop franchise. We hired a replacement, but we could see that he wasn’t our exit plan.”

Bob: “I’ve always been very active in our trade association. A colleague with a much larger operation had asked me several times to let him know if we would consider selling. When he repeated the offer at a conference, we decided to start talking seriously.”

Nancy: “The due diligence almost killed me. The buyer’s attorneys kept asking for more information. Halfway through the deal their lead attorney went on maternity leave, and her replacement wanted to restart the whole process from the beginning!”

Bob: “Our legal bills wound up being so much more than we anticipated. I think my biggest surprise was finding out how many adjectives could be used to modify the word lawyers.”

Nancy: “The closing date was delayed multiple times. Then our biggest customer told us privately that they were planning to shift their purchasing for high-volume items to China. It was a gut check, but we shared the information with the buyer. We had to restructure the deal with a portion tied to an earn-out, based on the level of business we maintained for a year after closing.”

Life After Exit

Bob: “Nancy stepped back pretty quickly. I wasn’t quite ready to retire, and now I have the added motivation of watching our earn-out. My role is technically sales-related, but it is just as much about keeping the employees happy through the change.”

(Note: As we approach the end of the earn-out agreement, BVA Scientific has easily reached all the goals required for full contingency payment. Nancy and Bob continue to enjoy life after exit.)

This story and others are in my latest book Your Exit Map: Navigating the Boomer Bust.

About YourExitMap.com

November 6, 2020September 21, 2017 by adminex

About YourExitMap.com for Business Owners

YourExitMap.com contains a growing library of interactive tools, educational materials and practical exit planning resources for business owners. The content is designed to be engaging and entertaining, and deliver valuable information about the most influential factor in a successful transition strategy. Is your business prepared to generate the value needed to fund your retirement goals?

Use the companion resource, Your Exit Map: Navigating the Boomer Bust by John F. Dini, to guide you through the generation of real-time results using the ExitMap tools and your actual numbers.

Contact Information

A Transition to Exit Planning

June 11, 2020February 12, 2017 by John F. Dini

It is time for a new direction. This marks my 400^th posting to this site. I’ve enjoyed writing weekly about the daily issues and opportunities of business owners for almost ten years, but it is time for a change.

Awake at 2 o’clock has a new look and new navigation, although we decided to keep the title, logo and banner. More about that in a bit. First the why behind the change.

Regular readers may have noticed that, over the last year, I have been turning more frequently to exit planning subjects. That reflects my own career progress.

Before 2007 I sold businesses as a certified business broker, and helped numerous owners through transition as an executive coach. That year I wrote my first exit-related article (titled “Boomer Bust?”) for the business journal.

My research for that piece convinced me that there was a seismic event on the way in the retirement of the Boomers. I also learned why they were the most entrepreneurial and competitive generation in history. I hadn’t yet heard the term “exit planning”, but I was already thinking about the advisory help I knew would be needed.

I certified as an Exit Planner (CExP) in 2011, and gave up my Business Brokerage practice in the same year. In 2012 I published a new edition of my first book 11 Things You Absolutely Need to Know about Selling Your Business, and began speaking about “Beating the Boomer Bust” to audiences nationally.

In 2013 I published the award-winning book, Hunting in a Farmer’s World, which looks at the psyche of business owners, including their challenges when leaving their businesses.

I also developed an online product, The ExitMap®, to help owners and their advisors begin conversations about exit planning. It is based on my coaching experience with hundreds of owners and fills a gap left by the more technical/financial assessments that currently dominate the market. We’ve built a national network of professionals, experts in multiple disciplines, who are committed to exiting owners’ need for skilled and experienced help.

Finally, in 2016 I chose not to renew my 20-year franchise with The Alternative Board® in order to concentrate on helping owners leave their businesses. In the last decade I’ve progressed from not fully understanding the term “exit planning” to practicing it full time.

This year I will publish my new book, Your Exit Map: Navigating the Boomer Bust, which is accompanied by an online library of resources for business owners at www.yourexitmap.com . It has turned into more than a consulting skill. The millions of transitioning Boomers who need assistance have become my calling.

People ask me all the time, “Why is your blog called Awake at 2 o’clock?” Most business owners understand the reference to those nights when you can’t sleep because you are thinking about the business. It seems appropriate to keep the title when considering the biggest single financial transaction in most owners’ careers; the sale of their businesses.

We have a new tag line: Plan…Build…Exit…Enjoy. It describes both the path to a successful transition as well as the four topic areas we will discuss in this space.

Plan

Exit Strategies. These articles will focus on the big picture. What do you need to know in order to prepare well and successfully implement a lucrative transfer of the business? What do the acquisition markets look like? How do current events impact your time frame or financial objectives?

Build

Improving Value. Enhancing the value of your business takes on new importance when you are looking at cashing out. How do you secure employees and customers? How do systems and processes affect your sale price? What specific areas of improvement will make your business more attractive?

Exit

Exit Options. Should you be targeting a specific segment of the buyer market? How can that be accomplished? What technical issues will you face with taxation, negotiation and contract structure? The specific and unique challenges of Family, Employee and Third-Party sales.

Enjoy

Life After the Business. The purpose of exit planning is to…EXIT! In collecting reader recommendations for my latest book, the most frequently submitted suggestion was to include discussions of the ways people enjoy their post-ownership lives (or don’t.) We’ll collect real-life stories and share them.

I plan to mix up my approach a little more. Instead of merely relating my observations and experience about ownership, I will invite guest bloggers, review new books on exiting, and interview entrepreneurs about their own experiences. If it will help business owners who are planning the next stage of life, it belongs here.

I will post when I have something worthwhile to share. Since the subject matter is more focused, I will no longer have the flexibility to post every week on whatever topic appeals to me. A little discipline never hurt.

Finally, in a world where content is paramount, we aren’t discarding the 200,000 or so words already cached on this site. You can still search by topic for any past posts.

I know that some subscribers are not planning their exits right now, but I encourage you to stick around. Sooner or later every owner leaves his or her business. Expanding your knowledge about the process now will prove handy down the road. Your exit planning objectives should be influencing how you run your company today.

I am very excited about this new direction and plan to continue writing with the same passion and enjoyment that has fueled this column since 2008. As always, thank you for reading!

John F. Dini, CMBA, CExP

Not Just Workers…Qualified Workers

April 27, 2023December 13, 2015 by John F. Dini

A few weeks ago I attended one of Trinity University’s Policy Maker breakfasts. Although living in a large city has its drawbacks, it is great for access to events such as these. It takes substantial ticket sales to justify top-rank speakers, and Trinity’s series brings the best.

The speaker was Richard W. Fisher, immediate past President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, as well as almost 11 years on the Federal Open Market Committee, where he voted on monetary policy under Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen.

In Q&A time, I had the opportunity to ask how he could project robust growth over the next 20 years with the large number of Baby Boomers leaving the workforce and scaling back their consumerism.

Mr. Fisher had already warned the audience that he had no intention of making controversial or otherwise newsworthy statements, so his answer surprised me a bit.

He said that he remained confident that productivity gains through technology could offset much of the drop in workforce growth. The real problem, he said, was the failure of our educational system to prepare a generation of workers with the skills they need to succeed.

I’ve written previously about how small businesses are being saddled with the job of teaching young workers basic job skills. Just getting them to understand that cutting class doesn’t carry over into cutting work, that there are no unlimited extra credit assignments to make up for lack of effort, and that everyone doesn’t always get a passing grade, can be a real challenge.

Some years ago I employed a young Dutch woman who had come to the USA as a student in a top university. She also apparently had sufficient financial support that dropping out and taking a part-time job with me wasn’t a hardship. Eventually, more out of boredom than need, she enrolled again in the local state university.

She came to me one day to coordinate her class schedule with work for the semester. (I think it was her second half of sophomore year.) These were her courses:

Great Women in Architecture
Diversity in Art
The Sociology of Class Distinction
World Geography

I asked why she bothered going back to college if she wasn’t going to study anything that prepared her for a career. She laughed, and informed me that she was just catching up on the core courses required before she could declare any liberal arts major.

I’m sure each of those topics were interesting, and contributed to a well-rounded world view. What they contributed as far as preparation for the workplace, however, remains a mystery to me.

A recent survey of college students found 21% believe that the First Amendment to the Constitution should be modified to exclude free speech that is offensive.

A widely circulated essay on Vox.com expresses a liberal professor’s fear of violating the “safe place” of university learning by teaching offensive literature such as the writings of Mark Twain.

Universities now publish their 6-year graduation rates (fewer than half graduate a majority of students in 4 years.) Students with failing grades receive almost daily emails as final exams loom, reminding them that they can drop classes without penalty (except, of course to their parents’ wallets — refunds aren’t offered.)

It may be helicopter parents, politically correct coursework or just a general corruption in the education system driven by billions in student loans that require no accountability. Whatever the cause or causes, a college education no longer seems to carry with it an assumption of career-readiness.

There are certainly many good colleges, and an excellent education is still a great beginning for a successful career. As an employer, however, I’ve long since stopped assuming that a six-figure degree is, by itself, any sort of qualification for a job.

Hunting vs. Farming

March 4, 2012 by John F. Dini

At the family gathering, you are being introduced to a distant cousin you haven’t seen since childhood. The introduction usually includes your status as a business owner. “Do you remember little Cousin Bobby? He owns his own company now.” Or you hear it as you pass a conversation; “There goes Rebecca. You know, she has her own business.”

You know what they are thinking. It may be the somewhat awed tone of being in the presence of success, or a “Who would believe it?” skepticism. When you are a business owner among non-owners, the undercurrent of envy and admiration comes from certain commonly held beliefs about the lifestyle of a business owner.

You pay yourself as much as you want. As the holder of the checkbook, you can just decide how much salary you need, and take it. After all, if you determine other people’s compensation, so you determine your own, right?

You only work as much as you want. No one tells you to be in the office by a particular time. No one orders you to stay at your desk until a deadline is met. You can’t get fired for leaving early. You don’t have to accrue vacation. If you work a lot of hours, it’s probably just because you like money so much, and want more. (See belief number one, above.)

You only do what you want to do. That’s why you have employees. You can pay people to do whatever you don’t like to do. You write your own job description, as well as everyone else’s. No one is crazy enough to write a job description for themselves for a job they wouldn’t want to do! (Are they?)

Of course, you are probably smiling right now. We know what it takes to start and build something that achieves that level of freedom. It can take years to get there, and it’s seldom an easy road. Many of us never make it that far.

But it could be true. The vision other people have of an ideal entrepreneur’s life isn’t wrong, it is merely miss-timed. The entrepreneur always believes that such a lifestyle is in the future, it just isn’t here yet. It will just take a lot of work, a lot of talent, and at least a modicum of luck to make it happen.

It should be true. Along the way, however, many (if not most) entrepreneurs stall in the “lots of hard work for inadequate reward” stage of building a business. It happens because as the business grows, they are drawn away from what they enjoyed the most, from what they were best at, and into what the business demands that they do. They become farmers.

Management is farming. Balancing the checkbook is farming. Paying the rent is farming. Locking up the business at night, or opening it in the morning is farming. Purchasing supplies is farming. Writing procedures is farming.

Bringing in new sources of revenue is hunting. Finding and training great employees is hunting. Closing deals is hunting. Outmaneuvering your competitor is hunting. Motivating people to excel is hunting.

As an entrepreneur, you owe it to your company, your employees, your customers and yourself not to get tied down in farming activities. You started your business to do what you do best- not so that you could teach yourself a set of skills that you have little inclination to learn.

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