Exit Planning Tools for Business Owners

selling a business

What the Heck is Exit Planning?

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The wave of Baby Boomer retirements is beginning. I’ve been writing and speaking about exit planning nationally for the last ten years, (you can download my free eBook on the subject here), but the inevitability of the demographics is gaining momentum.

Today, Boomers in their late 60s are starting to sell the businesses they’ve built over the last 30 years or so. They are just the tip of the iceberg. Millions more are steadily approaching their career finish lines at a rate of hundreds every day.

Exit Planning is a new discipline, developed to meet a massive market need. Unfortunately, like any new service offering, there are a lot of people who use the term without fully understanding it, or in hopes that it will associate them with a growing field of professional practice.

Accountants say they do exit planning when they help clients structure their business and personal holdings to minimize the bite of the IRS.

Estate attorneys say they do exit planning when they protect assets and document transfers of inheritances.

Wealth managers say they do exit planning when they provide retirement projections and validate lifestyle assumptions.

Consultants say they do exit planning when they recommend ways to increase the value of the business, presumably maximizing the proceeds from a sale.

Business brokers say they do exit planning when they value and list a company for acquisition.

Insurance brokers say they do exit planning when they write policies to protect owners, their families  and their companies against premature departures, or the absence of key employees.

Which of these professionals really do exit planning? There are two answers:

  1. All of them
  2. None of them

Exit Planning Map MazeExit planning is the process of developing a business owner’s strategy for what may be the biggest financial transaction of his or her life…the transfer of the business. That strategy may be a succession to the next generation of family. It could be a sale to employees. It may be a sale to another entrepreneur, or acquisition by a larger company. In some cases, it could require an orderly dissolution.

In every case, it involves tax, legal, financial, operational and risk management expertise. No one practitioner (including me) has all the knowledge required for every aspect of the plan. Exit planning, in the true sense of the word, is coordinating all those skills so that they work together for a single objective.

Let’s say, for example, you run a warehouse with delivery services. You decide to make it as efficient as possible.

  • You tell the purchasing manager to only order product when pricing and inbound freight are the least expensive.
  • You tell the warehouse manager to develop a system for picking orders with methods that require the least amount of labor.
  • You tell the shipping department to pack up orders using the least possible amount of material.
  • You tell the dispatcher to plan routes for times with the least traffic and the lowest fuel use.
  • You tell the sales department to promise the customer anything that will close the sale.

Now, without letting any of these people talk to each other, you announce that tomorrow you are implementing all their results simultaneously. You go home dreaming about how amazingly profitable your business is about to become.

You don’t have to be a distribution expert to know what is going to happen. The uncoordinated plans are going to explode when combined. You’ve just come up with a great way to go out of business.

Now, what if you told one manager that your overall goal is to sell more product and give excellent service, so customers would become loyal buyers and the company will increase revenues and profits?  Then you had the other managers report to him, so that all of their plans would compliment the overall objective.

That’s what an exit planner does.

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Too Busy to Do Business

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Another tax filing season has passed, and the entire US accounting profession comes up for air. Of course, thousands of businesses and individuals have filed for extensions, thereby postponing the pain of calculating their final numbers for anywhere from a few days to six months.

As the CPAs emerge from their winter burrows and blink in the sun, the rest of the business community reenergizes, suddenly able to move forward with planning and analysis that has been languishing while their numbers-crunchers were busy losing sleep and feasting on ramen noodles.

I met with one firm about doing some valuation work in late February. They appeared to be excited about getting the business. When I called in mid-March with my first project they responded with “It’s tax season. Can you wait until mid-May?”

Perhaps it isn’t totally illogical to expect that an exiting business owner, having spent 30 years developing his largest single asset, should be willing to wait a few more months to begin his transition. The question isn’t so much whether it is unreasonable; it is why it should be necessary.

I have multiple clients with various needs, but all require some interface with their accountant. Some CPAs respond with quick but unsettling responses. “I think you can do this, but you’ll have to wait until after tax season for a definite answer.” Great. Business people always like making million dollar decisions based on “Maybe or maybe not.”

Others simply beg off. “I can’t even take the time to think about that until after April 15th.” Still others don’t respond at all, obviously expecting that their clients will automatically forgive what would be an unforgivable breach of professional service expectations at any other time.

Even the definition of “any other time” is narrowing. The tax rush used to be the few weeks leading to April 15th. Then the weeks leading to March 15th (the business filing deadline) moved back the start of the out-of-service CPA season. With the increasing complexity of tax laws, and the concomitant rise in extension filings, the time between September 1st and October 15th has also become a no fly zone. The week or two leading up to May 15th and June 15th are slightly better, but not by much.

shutterstock_93857353Tax complexity makes handling almost any transaction without professional advice foolhardy, but are we really supposed to just draw a line through 16 weeks, or 1/3 of the annual business cycle?

There are lots of suggestions about how to simplify the code or spread out the reporting deadlines. A flat tax is interesting, but would largely remove the ability of legislators to show favoritism to big supporters and home-state causes, so I’m skeptical of its chances.

Another proposal is to let individuals file by their birthdays, or let calendar-year businesses pick another year-end. The government’s excuse is that it would delay revenues for the year of implementation. Really? Like they were planning on a balanced budget that year? Heaven forbid they would have to borrow any more than the $1,000,000 a minute they do already.

Until we find some more sensible way to fund the public sector, business owners are subject to double indemnity. Not only do we have to pay the bill, but doing so correctly requires that we also at least partially delay our attempts to earn the income that will be taxed.

What is the Right Price?

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Of all the misconceptions by business owners, the ones surrounding their company’s value are both the most common and often wildly inaccurate.

I’ve been working for the last couple of months on the training videos for advisors in our new product, The ExitMap®. (You can take the assessment for free at www.myexitmap.com). In one session, we role-play a vignette about a financial planner discussing the value of a business with a client planning retirement. Part of it goes something like this.

Q: “So Bob, how much do you expect to realize from your business when you sell it?”

A: “I’ve heard from my accountant that most small businesses sell for about five times earnings.”

Q: “And how much would that be?”

A: “Well, I made about $150,000 in salary last year, and another $200,000 in profit. Add in my insurance policies and my car, my wife’s car and a few trips that combined business and pleasure. Say around $500,000 in total benefits. So I’d expect to get somewhere around $2,500,000 for the business.

Q: “What would that be after taxes?”

A: “I’d have to pay capital gains, so I’ll net in the area of $2 million.”

Simple, right? Let’s look at the reality.

abacusBob is calculating what the brokerage industry calls “Seller’s Discretionary Benefits” or SDE. While it is a legitimate way to look at the full value of business ownership, ball park valuations of 4-5 times pre-tax earnings don’t apply to that calculation. Cash flow expensed for benefits (rather than dropping to a taxable bottom line), isn’t included in those earnings multiples. The traditional multiple for a small business sale averages 2.5 time SDE, or half of what Bob is estimating. We are immediately reducing the likely price to something like $1,250,000.

Next, about 90% of small business sales are asset transactions. Only about 10% close as a transfer of stock ownership. Double that tax estimate from 20% capital gains to a 40% ordinary income rate.

Businesses transfer debt-free. So if Bob owes another $300,000 on his credit line, that comes off the top from the proceeds, but the tax is still payable on that $300,000.

So Bob’s $1,250,000 drops to $750,000 after taxes, and to $450,000 after debt repayment. He has lost three quarters of the amount he was planning on for retirement.

The problem is exacerbated when the planner dutifully enters $2,000,000 in his retirement software, assuming that the owner certainly knows the value of his business. That happens more often than I care to discuss.

These misunderstandings are just the tip of the iceberg. There are another half-dozen common mistakes when owners look at their value. In many cases it results in owners being highly insulted by legitimate offers from qualified buyers. I’ve also seen them renege on accepted offers when they finally have a CPA model the tax impact.

(NOTE: I do not perform valuations, give tax advice, or broker businesses. My recommendations here will not generate revenue for me.)

If you are like 85% of all owners and plan to sell your business to a third party, the first thing to do is engage a valuation professional. The second thing is to take that valuation to your accountant for tax modeling. Start your exit planning by embracing reality. You’ll be a lot happier in the long run.

Thanks for reading “Awake at 2 o’clock”. Please share it with other business owners.

The 7 Deadly Sins of an Entrepreneur — Reprise

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I make no claim that using the Seven Deadly Sins as a metaphor for business behavior is original. Of course, the original concept is a codifying of “undesirable” human behaviors, or sins. The work probably comes from the Latin word sons (guilty). Various sources attribute it to Old English and Hebrew, but since Latin was the language of the church, this seems most likely.

The concept of personifying the seven sins for popular consumption, as I mentioned in the first column in this series, goes back at least to Dante in the early 1300’s. It’s been used regularly in popular fiction including Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the five golden ticket winners each represent a sin, with Grandpa as Envy and Willie Wonka as Wrath); and in “Sponge Bob Squarepants” (I’ll assume that most readers don’t know the characters well enough to make identification worthwhile.)

gilligans-titlePerhaps the most amusing application was in “Gilligan’s Island.” The seven castaways fill their assignments well. There’s Gilligan (Sloth), the Skipper too (Wrath).  The millionaire (Thurston Howell — Greed) and his wife (Gluttony). The movie star (Ginger — Lust, of course); The professor (Pride) and Mary Ann (Envy), here on Gilligan’s Isle (Hell?)

My apologies if I just stuck that tune in your head for the rest of the day.

When I present “The 7 Sins of an Entrepreneur” to business audiences, they take special delight in identifying their own behaviors. Maybe it’s because they are relieved (“Gee, I only have four.”) or because they are naturally competitive (“Hey, I hit on all seven!”)

What ever the reason, it’s an easy way to organize negative behaviors. Perhaps that’s why it has remained so dominant a concept. Regardless of your failings, they can probably be categorized as one of the seven sins.

Here is a synopsis in order, with the corresponding “virtues” that counteract each.

  • The Operational Sins: Those which reduce your personal effectiveness as an owner and leader.
    • Lust: Allowing whim du jour to drag the company in differing directions. (Counteracting behavior: A Personal Vision.)
    • Gluttony: Hoarding all authority and decision-making for yourself. (Delegation)
  • The Tactical Sins: Those which denigrate the effectiveness of your organization.
    • Sloth: Settling for “good enough.” (Metrics and Benchmarking)
    • Wrath: Using adrenaline to drive performance. (Planning)
    • Greed: Addressing any problem with more effort or more intensity. (Budgeting)
  • The Strategic Sins: Those that prevent long term vision and improvement.
    • Envy: Thinking that no one else has your problems. (Outside advice and knowledge)
    • Pride: Believing that you are the single most important factor in your company. (Exit Strategy)

The sins are addressed in order. Dealing with the Operational Sins allows you to tackle the Tactical problems. Strategic improvement is only possible if you’ve first dealt with Tactical issues.

The Seven Deadly Sins of an Entrepreneur are an excellent mnemonic for considering your own behavior and those of your company.  Keep them in mind as you run your business day-to-day.

If you enjoy “Awake at 2 o’clock,” please share it with other business owners. Thanks for reading!

Is Your Business in the “Neutral Zone?”

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As Baby Boomers business owners approach retirement (the youngest of them turned 50 this year) they face a unique challenge. The market for small businesses is increasingly a buyer’s smorgasbord A shrinking middle-aged population, corporate competition for talent and less interest in the long hours associated with many traditional small businesses combine to make selling many Boomer enterprises a more difficult proposition.

The best-of-class companies on both the smaller and larger end of the spectrum will still stand out as appealing propositions to buyers. On the main street side (companies selling for less than $3 million or so) there are still plenty of aspiring entrepreneurs who seek a lucrative opportunity.

The mid-market (companies with over $1 million of pre-tax income) has more money chasing fewer target prospects. Current estimates calculate over $1.6 trillion (about the GDP of Japan) allocated by Private Equity Groups and corporate M&A departments for purchasing those businesses.

stuck in betweenWhat about the companies in the middle? As in the Star Trek “Neutral Zone,” the place where neither the Federation nor the Romulans travel, these businesses have a special challenge when their owners seek to transition, and especially when they want to exit with the value of what they’ve built.

A generic history of these Neutral Zone companies applies to thousands of them. A Boomer entrepreneur bootstrapped a business thirty years ago. Badly undercapitalized, he or she struggled for years to make a decent living. As time passed, a four decade long expanding economy, driven by the influx of workers and consumers from the same generation, helped to grow the business until it provided a comfortable living.

Now in their 50s or 60s, those owners have achieved their life goals. Their labors have resulted in an enterprise that employs between 15 and 50 people, and puts between 300,000 and a million dollars to the bottom line above and beyond their own salaries. Compared to 95% of Americans, they are “rich.”

But they are too big to sell easily in the small business (main street) markets, and too small to attract mid-market buyers. They are in the Neutral Zone.

In main street sales (as I’ve explained here before) solid companies sell for an upper limit of around three times the pre-tax profit combined with the owner’s salary and benefits. As that pricing exceeds $3 million, and certainly above $4 million, it becomes difficult to find an individual entrepreneur who can leverage that purchase price.

In the mid-market, where the cost of a transaction limits targets to those with $1 million and more in EBITDA, many Neutral Zone owners would have to grow the business by 30% to 70% just to make the entry level numbers.

A Boomer entrepreneur who is in the “harvesting” phase of business ownership; enjoying the benefits that come from decades of dedication to the business, is often not interested in another big push. It may require more investment, more risk, and probably a lot more effort.

He or she built the company with a belief that it would fund a certain post-business lifestyle upon sale. Now they are finding out that a well run organization with solid and sustained profitability may not be enough.

I typically work with between 15 and 25 of these owners at any given time. For many, the solution can be to “hire a buyer.” Their companies are financially capable of recruiting top management talent. That talent should first be capable of taking the day-to-day management duties from the owner, but in addition, be entrepreneurial enough to eventually assume ownership in turn.

The secret to realizing the full value of a Neutral Zone company may not lie in bringing it up to another level (or, perish the thought, down to a lower level) of prospective buyers. Instead, consider using the organizational strength and profitability you’ve created to engineer an internal sale on your own terms, in your own time, and under your control.

 

Do you enjoy “Awake at 2 o’clock?” Please share it with other business owners.