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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, selling the business, buying, entrepreneurs, create, exit plan, revenue, investors, invest.
SPEAKERS
Marvin Storm, and Amr The Internet Guy
announcer
Online with Amr, the internet guy stream it today on your favorite podcast platforms. This podcast focuses on entrepreneurs and business owners helping them become more successful and conducting their business on the web without being stuck with technology, getting a headache, pulling their hairs out or buying expensive software.
Amr The Internet Guy
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of online, Has it ever occurred to you what makes businesses sell and others don’t? Like I do understand when you start a new business, you’re usually not thinking about selling it, you’re starting it because you like doing something specific, and you’re good at it. And you want to make a business out of it, and it helps other people. But you know, believe it or not, many entrepreneurs have become serial entrepreneurs in a way that they start a business they grow, it becomes a big, and a good business that’s making profit and helping a lot of people when somebody else offers them to buy it off their hands, and many of them do sell the business, then once it’s sold, they think about the next challenge or the next venture, and they just go through it again and again. So I’m not saying you should start your business with the intention of selling it. But what I’m saying is, when you start a business, you need to understand how your business will be valued in the eyes of others could be the public the community you’re working with, or venture capitalists or you know, if you’re planning to go on Shark Tank, or Dragons Den, or if you need to get a loan from the bank and things like that. So there are bits and pieces of your business that you need to be aware of that will control or you know, influence how this business is valued, or will be valued in the near future. So in order to understand and navigate this whole world, I spoke to an expert in selling your business and somebody who can help every entrepreneur, think about the right stuff, and also how to get the best value if you’re actually in the process of selling your business. So without further ado, let’s meet Morgan. Morgan, how’s it going?
Marvin Storm
Well, great. Thanks for having me on. I’m excited to talk a little bit about business and how to optimize the value of a business when you get ready to step away and sell the business.
Amr The Internet Guy
Perfect. So would you mind telling our audience where you are? And what you do? I’m sure you do more than one thing.
Marvin Storm
I do I do. I you know, I had a business years ago and spent quite a bit of time building it up like most entrepreneurs do that get into business, you get into the trenches, and you putting out fires and growing and scaling your business on a day to day basis. And, you know, what I was really focused on was optimizing my revenue and pulling as much money to the bottom line as I could. And you know, from there, eventually, I decided that it was time to get an exit and step away from the business. And in my particular situation I had brought brought in some outside investors. And whenever you do that, those investors have a timeline on where they want to return on their investment. And so that’s one of the things that I didn’t really quite, I understood it intellectually. But you hear one thing intellectually and, yeah, a few years later, when that that intellectual thought process and understanding starts to come to reality, and they start talking in board meetings and stuff, they start saying, Okay, we need to start planning to, you know, monetize our business here and sell it. I wasn’t really ready to sell, but that though, I had agreed to it when I took the money, you know, you kind of sign on. And I’ve often said to entrepreneurs that I work with, you know, that are thinking about selling their business is that though when you take the money, you know, you have to understand the terms and be able and willing to abide by those terms. And so for my situation, it was a profitable exit and you know, after spending a lot of time you know, working hard and you know, with the pedal to the metal sort of speak you know, and putting in long days and seven days a week sometimes when you step away and you aren’t doing that every day, you know life in the slow lane gets Got a boring, and that was what happened to me and I, you know got I love podcasts I listen to podcasts all the time. So I, I’m just gonna do a podcast because I, I kind of reason that that’s good. Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of other people out there like me that haven’t gone through an exit, you know, entrepreneurs become really good at what they do, because they do it every day. And they continue to hone those skills and the ability to execute. But when it comes to selling or stepping away from your business, you maybe only get once or twice, maybe three times in your old career unless you’re a serial entrepreneur. And you don’t do it all the time. So you don’t get really good at it. Yeah, and sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. And that was kind of a situation I was in, if I had been a little bit more dialed in, I probably could have done better. So I started a podcast on my own. And I decided I would talk to the deal makers, the mergers and acquisition specialists, the investment bankers, Business Brokers, CPAs, wealth managers, people that are involved in the kind of the transaction flow of making a deal happen for entrepreneurs to exit their business, and they bring to the podcast stories, transactions they’ve been involved in, they bring to good stories, where the exit went really well. And in some cases, maybe better than well. And a couple of stories that went sideways, maybe had its challenges and problems maybe got sold, maybe didn’t. And why, what are the takeaways from that? And it’s just been phenomenal. And fantastic. I had had a podcast like this before I, you know, sold my last business, I would have done better for myself. I know that so. So it’s been a great, great, great journey.
Amr The Internet Guy
This brings so many questions that are jumping up and down now in my brain. The first one like is a simple one. What was your business? The one you sold?
Marvin Storm
Yeah, I was in the logistics business. I
Amr The Internet Guy
you exited at the right time?
Marvin Storm
Yeah, well, yet. It was a few years ago. So was it wasn’t in the current environment here. But you know, I had locations around the country, and it was commercial and had kind of retail presence too. And it was a lot of moving parts. And, you know, it was a great ride. And as I said, if I had had my druthers, I would probably still be in the business today. But you know, I brought in outside capital to be able to grow and scale the business. And we did we tremendously expanded the footprint of the business and quadrupled revenues and all that good stuff. And, you know, people that make an investment want to return and they don’t want to wait forever. And sometimes entrepreneurs want to die in the chair, you know, they just Yeah, so right.
Amr The Internet Guy
The something that is so interesting, why would someone want to sell their business,
Marvin Storm
water reasons. You know, if I were to put it into categories, I would say that there are the planned events, you know, people think about retiring, or going on to the next thing. Some people, you know, just have a personality that they like to build a business, they don’t necessarily like to run one. Once they get to a certain level, it becomes routine, redundant and boring, predictable. And entrepreneurs, a lot of times have a personality that they just like the thrill of starting from nothing and growing and, and building. But once it gets built, they want you to move on to the next thing. So that’s one reason and retirement, obviously, there’s a lot of baby boomers out there that may be listening to your podcasts that you know the time is coming, you know, you’re not going to live forever. Most people aren’t anyway. And so there comes a time when you you need to pass it on to somebody in the business, maybe an employee or management team or someone that you know, and or you’re going to sell it to a third party, someone you don’t know. And that’s an entirely different process than selling it to someone that you know.
Amr The Internet Guy
So I see on both ends, like I see entrepreneurs, especially if it’s a small business not not as large as a logistics company with branches all over the states. But I see like the small you know, someone with a shop somewhere in the local town or and who get scared, if you get them to think about selling their business is not about how much money or what’s the current value that what can they get for it, but it’s the fact that them being out of Whatever they build scares them. And on the other end of the spectrum, I see people who are, you know, the typical technology entrepreneurs who build an app or a piece of software. And their goal is to get acquired by a larger company, or to sell it to a group of investors, and exit and go make another app. So I think, some have the mindset of, like serial entrepreneur, or, let’s build it, sell it, build the next thing, sell it, and so on. And that’s their adrenaline. And others think, Oh, my God, no, I can’t like, there’s nothing else I can do. If I sell my business, like, I don’t know, like, it’s scary. So, in your experience, it didn’t look like you’re planning to sell your business, because you’re retiring. It sounded from what you just mentioned, that it was a deal when you took on the investment that at some point when probably when you reach a certain size of the company you had to sell.
Marvin Storm
Right, and I think you know, you you touched on a very pertinent point. And that in the tech world, there’s a lot of capital out there, to invest in very scalable businesses, you talk about apps, and you know, SAS programs or platforms that are built, you know, that they’re those investors, those venture capitalists, or angel investors that get involved in those types of businesses, they generally are the people you’re talking to are the partners of those funds. And they are the front men, they are the people that bring investors in to their fund. And that fund has a specific objective, and a specific timeline for deal flow and for deal maturity. And it may be a 10 year fund, it may be a seven or 12 year fund. But generally when the prospectus is created, and the general partners, they go out and talk to their investors and institutions and individual investors that invest, those investors are buying into the management of that fund, as well as the investment terms, you’re going to invest in a certain type of company, you’re going to invest for, you know, bringing those companies public or being acquired or merged into another company. And the investors are looking for those partners that they invest with, to execute on that business model and plan. And so when you take money from those if you’re an app developer, or a software developer, and and you have a great idea, and you pitch it to those, you know, those VCs or those angel investors, and they invest in you, they’re investing because they want a monetization event at some point in time. They don’t want to live, they don’t want to be in this investment for 2030 years, they want to be able to monetize it, make a great return, and then go back to their investors and say, Look how much money we made you, we have another fund. And we want you to roll this money into the next thunder, we want you to invest more money in that fund, because we’re such great investors. And we know how to pick companies. And so they have a real vested interest in making sure they find the right companies the right concept, the right management team, and that they are able to monetize that return because other than that, it’s just paper profits. You know, it can go up or down and you don’t recognize anything. So you really have to have, you know, real exits that generate a return. So that can go into the next prospectus.
Amr The Internet Guy
So would you say, for every entrepreneur, no matter what they do, it’s a good thing to plan your exit when you’re planning your entry.
Marvin Storm
Well, you talk again, I’ll go back to your example of tech entrepreneurs. I mean, they start with the end in mind, they want to be acquired, you know, they want to merge, they they want to sell, they will, they are looking toward, you know, some type of event where they can recognize a financial return and profit on all their hard work. More often than not, though, traditional investors that are non tech oriented, that may be in more traditional type of businesses. don’t often think about the exit. They spend a lot of time thinking about how to get into business and researching competition and the market size and the type of products they’ll offer and they do all this, you know, research but they don’t spend 10 minutes thinking about how they’re going to get out of the business. They just think that someday they’ll magically decide to sell and there’ll be, you know, blind people waiting to write Yeah, yeah. And that it generally
Amr The Internet Guy
is not the case. Yes. I mean, I, a friend of mine, who was a prominent was a prominent web designer, turn now to web designers Coach and Trainer. And you know, he’s got courses online. And he sold his web design agency. And for him, this happened naturally, it wasn’t planned. But now when he talks about it, he’s telling everyone look when you build your business, so if you’re building a web design business, or web design agency, you have to plan to sell it at some point, even if you’re not gonna end up selling it. So, but other there are steps that you should take, there are things that you should do in mind, for example, do not become the brand it has to function without you. So you know, it’s not on your name. And it’s not, you know, Amores web design, it’s something else. So, so that when you sell it, the brand name continues, it’s not, you know, you don’t get to the nitty gritty, to the nitty gritty and try to deliver every project yourself, you have to hire a team, so that you can sell the agency and whoever comes to run it, it doesn’t even have to be a web designer, because the team does everything. And, and that was like an eye opener for you know, because in most cases, this is like being in trades. It’s like being a plumber, or an accountant or, you know, event dentist, but you’re in, you’re still in tech somehow. But you’re not, you’re not an app. So you’re kind of not investable. However, what people will buy would be two things, the brand name, and the clients. Because you know, you have, we do have maintenance, like annual monthly maintenance plans that people subscribe to. So you build their website, and they’re with you on a plan to update and, you know, take care of their security and stuff like that. So whoever is buying is actually buying some recurring income from point one, existing clients who are loyal. And obviously, they’re looking into not just buying something that’s already working, but they’re looking at buying something that they can grow more with their own ideas, maybe with their own teams and so on. You told me something that was very interesting. That, I don’t know, I can’t remember your exact words when you know when you emailed me the other day, but my understanding was that there are things that you need to be aware of in order to get the best. I don’t know if he said he didn’t say the best deal or the best offer. But I think you said something in order not to lose when you’re selling your business. Is that right? Did I put it right?
Marvin Storm
Well, yeah, there are certainly things that are like in any type of I mean, if you use a sports metaphor for those folks out there, since we’re in a football season here, there are a coach will do certain types of things to motivate his team. They’ll have practice, they have a methodical method they go through to prepare for the opponent, and they have this process in place, and they play the game on Sunday, and then Monday they get together and every day is something else. And you know, finally, it’s Saturday and the day before the game, they have this process in place, all geared because of experience, to be at the peak performance when it comes time to play the next team. And, you know, using that overused sports metaphor, it’s not a whole lot different running a business. A business has seasons, you know, there’s the startup season, you know, where you’re scrambling and learning as you go. And then you start to scale your business and it takes different skills to scale your business. And then you sort of get to maturity, where as you said, you start hiring and replacing yourself. So the business just isn’t you. It’s a team, you branded appropriately, your friend that, you know, sold his web design business and counsels every, you know, consults with others now to you know, not make it Joe Smith web design business, paid to him as a personality, but to create a brand that’s enduring, that is essential. And then, you know, you have to know what you’re making and, you know, have to have financial metrics and you have to know the type of revenue you mentioned. renewables, you know, subscription type of revenue, that is a different revenue and is valued differently in the marketplace than one off revenue. And so it’s these things that you some of which have you have mentioned that is a part of process to create value in the business and for those that follow a process, and it’s not rocket science necessarily. But most entrepreneurs are the type of people that focus on the excitement of building the excitement of starting the excitement of just execution, you know, that’s what gets them up in the morning, that’s what gets the juices going, you know, systematizing the business and, you know, creating it, the position to be able to pass it off to the next owner, doesn’t get them excited. You know, it’s, it’s more or less this kid. You know, it’s not what, it’s not kind of what their personality is all about. But for those that do, like your friend that sold his web business, you know, sometimes it just happens. Yes, you know, and he was not legs. Yeah, you get lucky. However, data and statistics, if you look at all businesses out there that sell the the data and statistics are, is that eight out of 10, more than eight out of 10 businesses that are listed every year for sales do not find a buyer. That’s the hard cold facts. And if that’s the facts, then you have to ask yourself the question, where do I want to be? Do I want to be in the 80%? Or do I want to be in the 20%. And out of that 20%, there is the top 10% of that 20% that get more for their business than they thought it was worth. And that may somewhat be timing and being in the right place at the right time. But more often than not, it’s because they’ve done the right things to make their business appealing and attractive to a buyer. And so just you know, I often tell entrepreneurs, and I’m talking with people that you know, I really good at what they do. I said, think about your business as a buyer. If you were buying your business, yeah. Would you pay what you’re going to be asking for your business? Would you write that check? And a lot of times they kind of shuffle their feet or look down at their desk and say, you know, I don’t know if I would or not, you know, but they’re willing to ask that. Yeah. But would they be able to buy a business like yours and pay that much, because they know where all the bodies are buried, and they know what the problems are? And, and a buyer is going to try to uncover and figure out why you’re selling? Indeed, what are you telling them? And so they have this big long list of due diligence checklist,
Amr The Internet Guy
what are you not telling them?
Marvin Storm
That’s true, you know, and depending on the type of buyer that you’re selling, to, some people are going to just step in and do the same thing you’re doing. If you are kind of an operator type of business, you are the business, then you’re looking for someone that fits that role, someone that will roll up their sleeves and do what you do on a day to day basis.
Amr The Internet Guy
That’s the hardest thing. Morvan that’s like, yeah, and that’s probably why some of the businesses aren’t sellable. Because like, you know, it’s really hard to find someone who’s got the exact same passion as you. So I would believe that from the beginning, yeah. From the beginning, you have to plan your, your, this involvement, like, gradually. So you know, when overnight, yeah, you said something very interesting, because we talk about it, we hear about it in coaching, and you know, YouTube videos and all these free things out there, which is replacing yourself. But the problem is, many people think that just by hiring, like my example, I’m a designer by trade. And I have other web designers working with me, right? But it’s not that they cannot run the business end to end. But when I hired them, I hired them so that I can give them projects to do. I never heard anyone with a thought process that why can’t they run the full thing, and you know, they become responsible for customer communications and fulfillment is not just delivering the websites. And many people think that just by hiring a few people, they’re replacing themselves but you’re not. You’re one or maybe more than one of your hires together as a team should be able to do every single task that you do, not just the product delivery related board.
Marvin Storm
I agree totally. I think what you’ve said is sort of the essence of creating value. If you are the person that has to be there every day, then you have a very little admitted pool of buyers. Yeah, and you’re looking for, maybe it’s an over exaggeration to say a needle in a haystack, but you’re looking for a specific type of person. And depending on the geographical area, or the scope, whether if you’re an internet based business, it doesn’t make any difference where you live. Or if you’re a business that is tied to some sort of physical location, you may have a relatively narrow pool of buyers. And just a simple fact of doing what you are doing like you described it you hot you bring on people that can do web design, you bring on people that are, you know, handle, the financial side of the business you bring on people that handle are good at customer service and client acquisition, and you create this little team. And, you know, you don’t have to be there every day. Yeah, then there’s a whole new world of buyers out there that are interested in your business, because they’re not buying you. They’re buying what you’ve created. And they they know that you don’t have to be there necessarily. And so there’s a lot more people out there in that pool of buyers than there is and the first one we talked about that has a specific skill set that you’re trying to replace yourself. And so that’s where real value is created. And it sounds like your friend who sold his web design business, he had created that. And somebody else was willing to buy that customer list and what he had created in the systems and processes and everything else. And they wrote him a check. And hopefully it was a big check.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah, I mean, I know both of them. I worked with both. Because I worked with the agency, right? So I worked with the past owner, we’re still friends, we still do things together. And I’m one of his students as well. And I worked with the new owner. So I can see it’s, it’s it’s really interesting, because you can see, you know, what the person bought into and what they’re doing with it. And you can see that it’s working because it was laid out correctly. And the fun part is that now when the person who exited his teaching, how he did it, he didn’t plan on doing it, he just happened like it just happened. This is how he grew his business. And it just happened that he reached the point when he thought you know what, I want to exit and I want to focus on coaching and training others now so that they can be as successful as I was. And and this is brilliant. One of the things that you know, we were during this conversation so far, one of the things that we were discussing, just an example that I’ve seen, which is funny. I’ve worked with a CEO, who is an excellent salesperson, like in all my professional life, I haven’t seen anybody better and says that this guy, right? And he’s still there, and he’s still going strong, and he’s still growing his business. But the biggest problem is, when he hires sales people, they can’t compete with him. So it’s kind of like a catch 22 situation, because they have targets. But this guy is so good. And he doesn’t want to let go. So every other sales manager or sales director, after a few months in the company, they feel a little bit threatened, because like they’re competing with their CEO, you know, what can be done in a situation like that?
Marvin Storm
Well, that’s the experts paradox, because the entrepreneur slash expert is so good at what he does is that it’s very tough to fill the shoes. But that is a limiting factor on value creation. So put yourself in the buyers situation right now you’re going to buy this company and the real value of the company is tied up in the expertise and the ability to execute on sales that the CEO has. And so it’s tied to that individual. So what kind of check are they going to write? Well, probably not a very big one, they’d be buying the underlying assets without him there. And there may not be a lot of value there, because the value is tied up in him. So if you know the proper thing for him to do is to realize that he is Michael Jordan of his business, but he needs to create the Chicago Bulls. You know, nothing to start, you know, you have a key player, but you got to create the team. You got to you got to look for the Scottie puffins you know the the backup players that support the main guy and then you have to figure out a way to create as much revenue that you yourself generate so that there is value without You there. And when you have the dilemma of the entrepreneur slash expert dilemma, that is a conscious effort to be able to overcome that, if you don’t overcome it, you are capping the value of your business, and you’ll never fully optimize that value, and the ability to exit rich, that you, you will probably be able to exit and people will buy, the company you’ve created. But what they will pay for that company is a low multiple, versus an astronomically high multiple, because you’ve created the revenue engine that can continue to churn out customers and revenue without you. The key is to be able to, you know, replace yourself.
Amr The Internet Guy
Would that work? If a fire? Would it work if a buyer buys the business and gives you, let’s say, a couple of years to transfer this expertise, or, I mean, ideally, you should have transferred the expertise first, before attempting to sell the business. But if that didn’t happen, and you get an opportunity to sell while you’re not ready? Is there something there to negotiate with the buyers to say like, Hey, you know what, I’m happy to stay for a year or two. To fully,
Marvin Storm
yeah. Put yourself in the in the shoes of the buyer? How would you as a buyer, how would you negotiate if if the main revenue generator is the entrepreneurial calling, Jim? Yeah, Jim is the main revenue generator, and you’re buying his business and you know that he is the source of most new business or keeping customers existing customers happy, then you’re going to tie the sale to Jim. And you’re going to tell Jim, okay, Jim, and this is how I would if I were the buyer, this is what I’d be talking to Jim about, Okay, Jim, we’re going to pay you a million dollars for your business. However, we’re only going to give you 500,000 in cash, okay. And we’re going to have an urn out. For the next three years, we’ll say, five years for illustration purposes. And you’re going to get $100,000 a year, if you hit the sales targets, if you hit the sales targets, we’re going to write you a check for $100,000 a year. Now, Jim, you said you’re really good at sales. So you shouldn’t have a problem agreeing to this, because you’ve been doing it for the past five years, why wouldn’t you do it for the next five years. And we’ll pay you and a sophisticated buyer will even because they do this all the time, and Jim is the first time he’s ever sold his company. He doesn’t know the ins and outs of selling his company, a sophisticated buyer will say, Okay, you need to, you know, generate these sales targets over the next five years. And if you hit the sales targets of the next five years, you’re going to get $100,000. So you get your million dollars, okay? And so you should be happy, Jen, you ask for a million, we’re giving you a million dollars giving you exactly what you’re asking, just the timing is different. Then they say okay, because I’m a sophisticated buyer. Well, Jim is used to being the boss, and he’s using to have a $50,000 a year budget to support his sales efforts. And so the new owner comes in and says, Well, we want to optimize our profits, because that’s what we buy this business. And so we’re only going to allocate $20,000 a year to support sales efforts from Jim. Well, Jim was made the assumption that he would have that $50,000 He’s not sophisticated enough to guarantee that that money would be there. And so now, he’s trying to hit the sales targets with a fraction of the sales but marketing budget, and he misses those targets, so he doesn’t get his $100,000. And he’s saying, Well, this is hogwash. You know, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna have to work harder, I guess. And the next year, they cut it to $10,000 because their strategy all along was they didn’t want to pay that $500,000 You know, they just wanted to be able to maximize their investment on the existing $500,000 investment. And they have their internal metrics that they measure, and they may be doing very well on their $500,000 investment. And Jim just squandered 50% of his value away because he was not really knew how the game was played. So for Jim, the best thing for him to do is to say, I’m going to create a system that doesn’t require me to be there. And I when I sell I’m going to get 100 A million dollars cash, and I’m going to walk away and I don’t have to be there and I may stay three months, six months to help. Yeah, this is great. But I’m not going to be around for an urn out for 1235 years.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah, I think that will be too much as well. Because you’re, if he used to be the big shots was calling all the shots there. And then suddenly now you’re like, a high ranking employee, but it’s not your decision. And the more you say you don’t own your company anymore, yeah. And the more you stay, actually, the worse it is for you. So it’s better to just exit quick.
Marvin Storm
Now, you may think that this is an unusual set of circumstances, but I can tell you from experience and interviewing the hundreds of people I have on my podcast, and the stories that are told, this is very, very common. This is a key strategy for people that acquire companies, especially funds, private equity that acquires companies, they’re very skilled at crafting deal deals that sometime are almost impossible to meet the targets, you gotta be very careful, and they
Amr The Internet Guy
make it very appealing to the person selling the business. A lot of people could, that’s the thing, that’s where we’re seeing a lot of people if they didn’t plan for this ever, and then didn’t give it a lot of thought they wouldn’t know. So for them, it’s new. It’s somebody proposing, and like, hey, you know, I don’t have to leave the business that I built, and that I love and the team that I’ve been working with day in and day out, and we have a great family like relationship. And it may seem like a good idea to stay five extra years with them, after you’ve taken like, half a million dollars, Jim, right. But why you don’t know that you’re actually losing half a million not not taking off a million.
Marvin Storm
That’s right. You, you understand what the situation is, in this type of situations, it’s opportunity cost. And, you know, it’s all in the planning, the ideal situation for Jim and for other entrepreneurs out there is to create something that you can get all or, you know, 90 95% of your money out of the business when you sell it. And the reason you can do that, is because you’ve created something that can make money without you there.
Amr The Internet Guy
Do you test it, like, go on holiday for a month or something like, see if it’s still running and making the money?
Marvin Storm
But that may seem you know, you say that in jest, but that’s exactly how you do it. You know, you you, you know, most entrepreneurs who start a business I mean, you know, when I when I no one
Amr The Internet Guy
thinks of it, yeah, you just when I
Marvin Storm
got involved in my first business, you know, I was there seven days a week, 15 hours a day, you know, and, you know, comes to comes to a point where you’re gonna burn out, or the wheels are gonna come off the bus or whatever, and you have to start that migration process. And it is exactly as you said, you start hiring people, and you will probably screw it up. hire the wrong person the first few times, yes, yeah, you’re not going to get it right the first few times, but you got to be persistent, and you have to be patient. And then you’re going to find that person that can be dependable can get most of the things done, probably not as good as you are. But you, you can fill in the gaps. But then you do take a long weekend, then you do take a week, and then you do take two weeks, and then you do take a month. And you you see how it goes. And you know those that get really good at it. And the key is hiring the right people. If you do hire the right people. Sometimes you’re you get in the way, you know, people are better better at it than you are.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. And if you’re gonna say, go ahead.
Marvin Storm
You’re the entrepreneur that has all the great ideas, they may not be the ideal people, but they can execute better than you can.
Amr The Internet Guy
I was going to say if you’re going to judge them, based on how close they are to being you, you’re not doing yourself a favor. So you should it shouldn’t be you know, this is how I do it. This is how the other person does it. And how close or far away from how I do it. They are. It should be. What’s the target? If they get to it like what what do I want to do? What do I want to get out of this person’s work? For example, if it’s a, let’s say sales, because that’s the easiest thing? Okay, the target is X amount of money or X amount of or X number of projects, right? If they get it, it doesn’t matter how they got it. Like, I don’t care. You shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t be like, Oh, but if I was there, I would get more. It doesn’t matter. The target is 10. They got you the 10 you can say after that. Oh, but if I did it, I would have gotten 15 Not just then, well, it doesn’t matter they’re not you.
Marvin Storm
Well, that’s we come back to the example we were talking about the Super salesman You know the CEO that no one could match him and he intimidated everybody else in the company, the proper thing to do is exactly what you said, is set targets and sales goals. And you know, you could have done better. But that’s not your goal, your goal is to create something that can generate income, and revenue and profits without you being there, let me tell you, the minute you are able to do that, you’ve created value that goes beyond you as an individual. And the, the key here is, is the pool of buyers, that will be interested in your business is 10, tax, it is 10 times more people will be interested in that type of business, then you being the key component of the business. And then if you’re really smart, and you really take time and plan, you start looking for a strategic buyer, you start looking for someone that will buy your business because what you’re offering is important to them, and they can sell your products and services to their customer base. And so they will pay more than your business is worth because it is worth more to them than it is worth to you.
Amr The Internet Guy
It becomes a an important component of what they do. Right. So Marvin, Where would people go to get help with, you know, educating themselves about this?
Marvin Storm
Well, I think the thing that I would recommend that most people do is it starts slow. And probably the one of the best ways to do that would have been for me if I had had a podcast like the one that I have this business exit stories, which is a compilation of good stories and bad stories hold by the dealmakers, the mergers and acquisition people, the attorneys, the wealth managers, business brokers, all of those people that help make deals possible for entrepreneurs selling their business. They bring good and bad stories and the key takeaways of why the deal went well, or why it didn’t. There are four takeaways for stories on each episode. And if I had listened to 100 of those episodes, I would have been much more dialed in when I got ready to sell my last business. And so I would suggest that just take it easy, you know, you know, I know you’re busy running your business, and you’re working long hours, and you’re working hard, sometimes six and seven, eight days a week, sometimes it seems like just take that, you know, 45 minutes or so a week and listen to four stories and, you know, being able to understand the takeaways and how it relates to you. And if you can do that, that will put you miles ahead down the road. And then I also have a kind of a free takeaway, a downloadable document that talks about how you can double the amount of money that you put in your pocket. When you sell your business and you just go to business exit stories, forward slash report to that’s numeral two, report to the podcast address a website, podcast address, and download it and take a read on that. Listen to a few episodes. And that will get you in the frame of mind of just thinking about someday you’re probably going to sell your business and what do you need to do between now and then. And I think and you can get the podcast wherever you get your podcast, it’s like your podcast. Just go to Apple or wherever and type in business extra stories and subscribe and, and you’ll you’ll start that long process because I know you’re busy. I know you don’t have a lot of time because you’re running your business. But positioning an exit is about about a thought process more than it is about doing something today.
Amr The Internet Guy
Perfect, thank you very much Morvan, guys, I’m gonna put the links below and this episode is published so that you can click and get there really quickly.
Marvin Storm
Thanks. This has been great, phenomenal, being able to talk to you and to share my you know, some ideas with your audience there that I know that will benefit them down the road.
Amr The Internet Guy
I appreciate it. Have a great day. Thanks a lot. Hey, guys, and before we go away, I’m sure you know that one of the main things that people look at when evaluating your business is your website. So if you’re not sure how your website looks to, you know, the people outside your organization or how it performs just head to human talents.ca and take your complimentary website audit. There is no strings attached and what you get is quick video of me auditing your website and telling you what are the strengths and the points that are not so strong as well and give you like an easy way to get everything fixed. You don’t have to with me. In fact, you don’t have to do it with anyone at all. There’ll be easy to follow, and you can do it all yourself. Thank you and see you in the next episode.
