Exit Planning Tools for Business Owners

business planning

Where Will All the Small Businesses Go?

by

What would the small business landscape look like if over one million small businesses disappeared? Get ready, it’s about to happen.

I write and speak frequently about the passing of the entrepreneurial generation. Driven by competitive pressures to succeed, the Boomers became small business owners in unprecedented numbers not seen since. They now account for about 2/3 of all the small employers (under 500 workers) in the United States.

The two generations that follow, the Xers and Millennials, don’t have the capital, the material ambitions, or the need to chase the Boomers into small business. For a free download of my ten-article series on this transition, go to The Boomer Bust and use the password “Woodstock.”

For one moment, let’s just review the numbers. In 2018, all Boomers will be between 54 and 73 years old. Eight thousand a day will be turning 65. The Xers who can buy their businesses will be turning 45 only at a rate of 4,000 a day. Nothing can be done to change this gap.

closed doorsJust over 7% of Boomers own companies with employees, or about 5,500,000 small businesses. That equates to about 215,000 owner retirements annually. If the Xers were willing and able to buy businesses proportionate to their numbers (and they are neither willing nor able,) we will still have over 100,000 businesses a year without buyers. That is 300 businesses a day closing, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for ten years.

I’ve been discussing this demographic tsunami since 2007. A few other writers are beginning to realize how big this shift will be. There is no cure. We can’t make people who aren’t interested in a Boomer lifestyle into workaholics. We can’t fund budding entrepreneurs who  have no means to secure traditional financing. We can’t change the sheer volume of retiring owners.

The term “exit planning” is spreading fast, and with good reason. It is going to be the hot button for millions of small business owners throughout the rest of this decade and the next. If your plan is to work until you just don’t feel like it anymore, and then expect to have someone jump at the opportunity to take over from you, think again. The market will be crowded, and only the best-run small businesses will find a buyer.

This week we were reviewed by Martin Zwilling in the Huffington Post. Thanks Martin!  Hunting in a Farmer’s World: Celebrating the Mind of an  Entrepreneur is a nominee for Best Small Business Book of the Year. Please support us, and entrepreneurs everywhere, by taking a moment to cast your one-click vote here. Thank you!

1 nomination badge

 

Ready…Set…Exit! Part II

by

Last week we discussed the tsunami of Baby Boomer retirement, and how we will reach a peak of nearly 500 unsold businesses a day within the next 5 years. The statistics are immutable. The birthrates of the last century are fixed in stone. (If you haven’t read my e-book Beating the Boomer Bust you can get it for free here. Use the download code “Woodstock”.)

Once you understand the inevitability of competing to sell your business in a buyer’s market,  you have five choices.  The first  is to simply ignore it and hope for the best. For any owner who holds most of his or her net worth in the company, that’s not a great option.

The second is to watch, and wait for an opening. That requires following small business sales for favorable trends, and a flexible retirement plan that can take advantage of market conditions or an unexpected opportunity.

The third is planned liquidation. If you can achieve your financial goals by running the business a while longer, and you choose not to invest in building a company that runs without you, this is a viable strategy, albeit without the satisfaction of a large final payday.

The fourth is to build a business suitable for sale in a highly competitive environment. Such a company must have strong systems, dependable revenues, accomplished management (not including you), and profitability greater than most other companies a buyer might consider, whether those are in your industry or not.

handoffThe fifth strategy is to build your own internal exit plan, and execute it without many of the unknowns involved when taking your business to the market. It requires choosing an insider (family or employee) who understands the business, and is happy to have the opportunity to own it. Of course, that person should also have the ability to run it successfully, or at least the potential to learn those skills.

But wait. Didn’t I just write last week that selling the company to employees for a note was a terrible exit plan? I did, and it is. Selling the company to insiders doesn’t require that you bet your retirement on their continued success. With time and careful planning, it can be done in a way that minimizes or eliminates your risk.

First, any owner has to accept the fact that the company’s cash flow is the only means of payment for a purchase. Whether a buyer gives a note to you, borrows the price from a third-party lender, or invests cash with the expectation of a return on investment, the profits of the company are the source of repayment.

Selling to an insider is  a process where you take a note from the buyer before you leave, while you are still in control of the business. The buyer’s right to purchase is predicated on improving performance. You surrender some immediate income in return for incentive triggers that make your total sale price equal to or higher than what you would currently realize.

Once your internal buyer accumulates sufficient equity to qualify, he obtains a loan for the balance of your ownership. You receive 80% or more of your target price on the day you retire, and walk away with minimum ongoing liability. (I say 80% because most financial institutions like to see some incentive for the former owner to watch and advise for a few years. It can be up to 100%, depending on the lender and the company.)

With the right plan and the right people, the business transfers at a fair price with minimal cost and lower risk. The buyer(s) (whether one person or a management team) are incented to keep growing the business to qualify for ownership. While they are doing that, they are also assuming the management duties from you as a prerequisite for ownership.

Most important, you maintain control of the business until you are paid. For most owners, that is the most influential argument of all.

This is a column about the general issues of business ownership. I discuss exiting regularly because it is an important issue, but it isn’t the only aspect of ownership we discuss here. To receive my biweekly newsletter on exit strategies and issues, please subscribe here.

Picture Credit

Ready…Set…Exit! Part I

by

For the last six years I’ve been writing and speaking around the country to business owners about the coming tsunami of retiring Baby Boomer business owners. My e-book “Beating the Boomer Bust” details the  statistics (For a free download, go here and enter the seminar attendee password “Woodstock”), but the numbers are inescapable.

According to www.bizbuysell.com the brokerage industry reports the sale of less than 8,000 small (under 500 employees) companies each year. There are between five million and six million such businesses in the USA that are owned by Boomers between 48 and 68 years old. That makes business owners about 7% of the Boomer generation (78,000,000).

By 2018, Boomers will be reaching their 65th birthday at a rate of 8,000 a day. That pencils out to over 550 business a day reaching  a logical point of sale. At current volumes, the brokerage industry can handle from January 1st almost through January 15th of every year. The other eleven and a half months you are on your own.

There are hurricanes, super storms, and perfect storms. The arrival on the ownership scene of GenX and the Millennials, who have less money and less enthusiasm for 60-hour work weeks, makes the wave of retiring owners a super storm. The need of big businesses to replace their retiring Boomers by offering higher salaries, better benefits and more flexibility make it into a perfect storm.

out the doorOf course, business brokers and the burgeoning industry of exit planning professionals (disclosure: I am certified in both) intend to cash in on the wave of sellers by vastly increasing their businesses. Even with a shortage of buyers, I’m sure they can double or triple their number of successful sales. Tripling would reduce the number of unsold businesses to only 485 per day. That’s 20 small companies with employees unsold hourly… 24/7/365. Do the math.

Of course, not all of the companies that change hands sell through business brokers. Some are passed on to families. Many are acquired privately, with accountants or attorneys facilitating the transactions. Others are sold to employees.

For small business owners, the third option, selling to employees, is too often the option of last resort. Owners ask their legal and financial advisors what to do. They prepare their company for sale (for a really solid new book on getting your company ready for a third-party sale check out The Exit Strategy Handbook by Jerry L. Mills). They list the business on the Internet or with a broker.

For any number of reasons, the business doesn’t sell. Perhaps they don’t have enough time because  the owner is burned out or ill. Their return on assets is too low, or their industry outlook is poor. The financial markets are tight, or there are just too many other businesses available for a limited number of buyers.

Finally, in desperation, they “sell” the business to employees for an installment note. In some ways these transactions often resemble the subprime mortgage market. The employees really aren’t qualified to grow the business. They need a job, and the terms can be stretched to any length to fit the cash flow available, so they are willing to sign whatever looks sustainable. If they don’t make the payments, the only recourse is for the owner to take back a company that he doesn’t want, and whose value has declined.

It’s a bad way to get rid of a company, but for many owners it is the only one they have left. It doesn’t have to be that way. We will talk about the alternatives next week.

Picture Credit

 

Boomer Business Owners’ Retirement Accelerates

by

Pepperdine University, in cooperation with the International Business Brokers Association and the M&A Source, publishes a quarterly Market Pulse Survey on the sale of small businesses in the United States. The most recent report, covering the fourth quarter of 2012, shows that “retiring Baby Boomers” is for the first time the number one reason for selling a small business in the United States.

I’ve written since 2007  in this space and elsewhere about the impact of Boomer business owners leaving their companies. You can download my e-book on the subject at www.theboomerbust.com. (The password for my faithful readers is “Woodstock.”) The Market Pulse Survey is just the latest indicator of a crest that is building, and which will have a huge impact on the American business landscape.

hedge mazeIf you are as acutely aware of the impact of Boomers on the American economy as I am, you begin to see it in a lot of places. I attended a luncheon with an official of the Federal Reserve a few weeks ago, and a question was raised about the recovery of residential housing. He pointed out that the introduction of 30-year mortgages with only 20% down transformed the US into a country of homeowners.

Home ownership grew to over 60% of households by 1960, fueled by larger families (Boomer children) and the GI Bill. It stabilized at around 65% from the 1970s through the late 1990s, when it began climbing again, largely as a result of political pressure to let the Federal Government (through their proxies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) make mortgages available to a wider portion of the population. By 2007, the percentage of homeowners had reached almost 70%.

Residential housing markets began cratering in 2007, largely because too many people had been financed into homes they couldn’t really afford. They weren’t just the poor, but also included millions of Boomers who “traded up” in their quest for material success. (See the e-book for more on that Boomer drive.) The presenter pointed out that the population of homeowners was now stabilizing at much closer to 65%, which is assumed to be the normal equilibrium.

What if that is only a “Boomer equilibrium?” After all, the growth in home ownership occurred in a 50-year long expanding economy fueled by Boomers, first as household size increased, then as they became consumers. Aren’t we working with an assumption that the following generations will repeat the Boomer quest for more? Will GenX and the Millennials really get in line to splurge on ageing McMansions, or will they be satisfied with a more reasonable standard of functional shelter?

If the housing market suffered so badly in adjusting from a temporary high of 70% back to a more “normal” level of 65%, what will it look like if the next normal is 60%, or even 55%? (Prior to WWII only about 40% of US households owned their homes.)

The Market Pulse Survey also found that it is increasingly a buyer’s market for small businesses. That trend will inevitably accelerate, especially as we reach the 2018-2023 period, when Boomers turning 65 years old out number the GenXers turning 45 by 4,000 a day. If you are a young business owner, or plan to be one, the time is coming when you can pick and choose your opportunities.

But I’d be cautious of businesses focused on high-end residences.

Picture Credit

The Road Less Traveled

by

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Perhaps Robert Frost’s famous poem isn’t a perfect expression of what I am trying to convey, but the idea he expressed has been ingrained in us (the Boomers- I think Maya Angelou has replaced Frost as required poetry reading in schools) enough to serve my point.

Some thousands of business owners have heard my presentation on the inevitable issues of selling Boomer businesses. Hopefully, even more will  hear it in the future. Many have read my column, caught me on the radio, or bought my book on selling a business. Even so, they represent a small fraction of the estimated 6,000,000 Baby Boomer entrepreneurs with employees in the US.

If you are reading this, you are better informed than 99% of your peers. Whether you are a Boomer preparing to exit, or a gen X or Millennial thinking about becoming a business owner, you know more than almost all of your competition.

I can’t do anything about the birthrates of 65 years ago, or of 45 years ago, or of 25 years ago. Neither can you. From 2018 onward we will have a dramatic, decade-long imbalance between 60 somethings and 40-somethings in the workforce. That has implications for the economy, politics and general business, but it will have a special impact on retiring small business owners.

The Boomers will retire. Some have done so already, some will wait for as long as possible, but sooner or later they will all leave their businesses. We’ve discussed how “the curve” of Boomers entering any given age bracket exploded markets in home building, college graduations, franchising, fitness and so much more.

We could expand the discussion to other industries, from motorcycles (Harley-Davidson has been caught without a product for middle-aged Xers) and cars (Ford recently said that they had sold as many retro Mustangs to 55 year olds as that market will absorb), to garden homes and second-career counseling.

America has grown, and 78 million Boomers in  country of 320 million obviously won’t have as much impact as when they were 40% of a country with 190 million people. But it is a generation exceptionally oriented towards being successful, and working very hard to own the material indicators of that success. Their passing will still create huge ripples.

If you’ve read this series, you are armed with knowledge; the realization of an inevitable glut of small business sellers, and the coming shortage of buyers. You understand why the generational traits of Boomer sellers have made many of their businesses undesirable to their prospective buyers. You should also have a pretty good idea of what needs to change in your business, and how to start down the road of making those changes.

But tomorrow your business will still require the same attention that it does today. You will be just as busy, and making long-term changes will be just as easy to postpone until you have “more time.” Investing time, energy and money in a Second-in-Command or a Successor-in-Training is easily left for another day.

A few business owners will choose the road less traveled. They will begin to shift their perspective from the immediate issues of competing in the day-to-day marketplace, and instead start to focus on competing for a successful end game.

Those are the owners who will beat the Boomer Bust.

 (This is the tenth and final installment in a series about “Beating the Boomer Bust.” Previous installments are The Approaching Tidal Wave, The Pig in the Python,  The Brass Ring, Work-Life Balance, Outsourcing America ,  The X Factor, The Gen X Business Buyer , Beating the Boomer Bust and Choosing a Buyer for Your Business.)

Picture Credit