How to Sell Your Business

What has the greatest potential to be the largest asset to any business owner? Their own company! Leo and Claudine cover the groundwork on how to build a business in order to properly sell it and, on the returning side, how to buy a business.
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Speaker 0 00:09 My goodness.
Speaker 1 00:10 Hey, good morning everybody. Happy Saturday. Welcome to business and legal talk with Leah. Claudine. Good morning. Good morning. Hey, this is me with our coffee. Crazy. I know, literally Starbucks for you. I know we had this, uh, I could close, there’s a Starbucks across the studio and I saw it from a distance, but I know I was running late and I needed to get started. Uh, but, but I am so excited about today’s topic that, you know what, forget about coffee. I can handle the next, I don’t know if you want me to run in, you know, bouncing off the walls here, but, uh, this is a very exciting topic today. I’m super, super, super and this is kind of a real thing. I mean, this is, um, we’re going to touch on something that, what’s great about this show, uh, for those new listeners, we help businesses.
Speaker 1 01:01 We’re all about helping the entrepreneur in California and beyond. If you are in a central Valley, you can work with us one on one. If you are anywhere in the U S we can work with you, but we’re all about scaling businesses, new, profitable and sustainable. Claudine, you are the guru attorney. Passionate guru. Yeah. Plenty of tea. Whatever you, what do you have that no, no, no, no sweetener. What? No, you serious? Wow. Sweetener. Sweetener in the coffee right there. Sweetener. She’s just like a black like that. Wow. All right. So it’s a, today is a, you know, there’s a whole lot going on in the world and I’m not going to get into it because I can eat easily derailed. Right? But now let’s focus on this. It’s just, there’s just the things that, um, I think you know, today the thing about is how to sell a business and if you’re in the receiving end, how to buy a business, right?
Speaker 1 02:01 This is a topic that has been coming up and coming up a lot. So if you are a business owner, you should be paying attention because what you’re building, it probably is your, is your most precious asset. Correct. Now, how, what do you do with it? You have, it’s like a fork in the road, right? You come to a fork in the road with your business, do you scale and hope for a bigger pay day or you cash in this success of your business now. Right? But what if you don’t want to sell it? You don’t have to sell your business, but how do you ensure that it’s going to take care of your family as a passive income? You know, that proverbial cash cow, right? Right. So that’s what we’re talking about today. So, um, how are you doing? I’m doing good. And I’d like to add a little to that. Um, I, I think it would be really fantastic to see a lot of businesses for sale, not necessarily because people are going under, going out of, but just
Speaker 2 03:00 a really vibrant market here in the central Valley, particularly in our area. Um, with a lot of people buying and selling businesses. And you know, because you started in a, in a particular type of business or even a particular type of industry, you know, the availability to buy an already up and running business, um, that may be different than what you started off doing, but you have the skillset to do it. You know, just having that availability, that choice, that, that ability as an entrepreneur to say, Hey, you know, I was in the construction industry for, you know, 10 years and I think I would like to change. And you know, I’m looking at a retail type business or I’m looking at some other different type of service business. Um, for me I think I would really love to see a more vibrant, um, business for sale.
Speaker 2 03:45 Um, inventory market. Yeah, market, Martha. Good way, good way to put it. But so I think part of it is I’m a shopper at heart. Ah. So I literally shop, I shop for everything all the time. So I’m always looking at whether it be vehicles or horses or businesses or whatever. I always money burning a hole in your pocket. I am one of those people who is always looking for another opportunity. Does that part of my brain never stops? And so, um, I do look at other businesses. I, I imagine what it would be like. I w I think it would be fun, um, to own, um, some type of restaurant business, whether it be like a coffee shop or you know, a lunch spot. Um, we have, um, a great lunch spot that’s near my office and you know, no names, whatever. But, um, it’s a family owned business. It’s a great little lunch spot and I look at it, I think it’d be kinda fun to own that. Now I recognize that no matter what business you get into it, there’s going to be grueling times. It, you know, every business is, um, is Gus comes with it’s hard work and you know, you want to where your
Speaker 1 04:52 formula for success. And I think, uh, so I was looking at what, you know, what are we going to title this show once he makes it into the podcast? It’s, um, you know, if you are a business owner and you are in the sales side of things, how to sell your business for the highest value now, uh, there’s a four step process that will guarantee you the biggest payday plus the single biggest thing you could do today to double the valuation of your business. Ah, really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Is it because there’s more than one way to evaluate it? There is, yeah. We’ll get into that. But, um, I think it’s, it’s, um, so before we get into it, any, any hot stuff, any, any updates? Um, I know that the whole thing about, I’ve been getting a lot of emails about the 10 99 is coated. It’s on, Oh man, it is fun. It is on, we are getting phone calls left and right. Um, one fair Amano your practice right now is dealing with his labor wage and hour, right?
Speaker 2 05:54 It is. And we are now starting to get calls from employees that have kind of woken up and, and there’s people out there that seem to think that, that there’s a great opportunity for a little cash grab. Um, I don’t like to see that because I don’t think that’s what the legislature intended was to create a cash grab situation where employees, um, you know, or excuse me, independent contractors who have been working for years and, and they wanted to be independent contractors. They enjoyed the benefits that coming with, um, that came with being an independent contractor. And now because the rules have changed, it’s an and they are a rec retroactive. Um, and so we, we’ve been really searching and combing over AB five, just literally daily, um, really trying to get familiar with all the exclusions and the exemptions and there’s quite a bit.
Speaker 2 06:41 So for every exemption or exclusion that exists, those are retroactive too. Um, but man, I can’t tell you what a shift this is and don’t know where it’s going to end, honestly. But a lot of folks are kind of, I’m looking at it from an opportunity to stick I and thinking, Hey, I can run back to that, uh, that person who, um, utilize me as an independent contractor. I can go get a few bucks out of them. So I suspect we’re going to see a number of nuisance claims where, um, those, those are the type of claims that come up where they’re, I know, short on merit, but in order for the employer or the, um, you know, the business owner to fight it, it takes more than what it would take just to give them a check and have them go away. And that is the saddest thing. I, I really think that, that, that is the saddest thing. Um, for business owners, it breaks my heart when I see people do it. It’s to me it’s deft. It’s theft.
Speaker 1 07:42 So, so on our side, I think, all right, so for most businesses right now, this is the time. If your calendar year is your fiscal year and your business ends, your cycle ends on December 31st. You should, we’re at the beginning of the fourth quarter. You should start kind of honing all your budget. You look at your year to day financials through the end of the third quarter. We have just began the fourth quarter people come on, how are we doing against your goals? Three quarters of the year’s gone. You know, if you don’t have a goal and you go, we’ll do right. If you don’t have a target, any target will do. So. Where I am with all of the clients that we work with is we’re starting to kind of evaluate where we are against our budget and the budget versus variance. And if are you 100% of budget or, or 100% of your plan or whatever goals you set for yourself, where are you? This is kind of the the time to take stock and measure and really more importantly, start planning for the future.
Speaker 2 08:34 And I just want to throw it in. If you, if you set goals earlier this year or this time last year and you didn’t meet those goals, it’s important to sit down and analyze why don’t don’t just, you know, kind of kick the dirt and Oh man, you know, feel like somehow you, you know, didn’t measure up because there are things that ebb and flow in business. There are things that happen in business. There are people that come and go out of your business that truly affect your ability to reach those goals. So it’s important to, to not beat yourself up for not reaching the goal. More importantly, analyze what happened during the year that caused you or prevented you from hitting that goal. Um, and get started again. Cause here we come right now the economy’s still good. Um, I know there was a lot of talk a few weeks ago in the media about recession and it seems that, um, those folks are now in agreement with, you know, recession,
Speaker 1 09:25 you know, if, I ha if I actually, if I actually did pay attention to that, which I don’t a lot of it, you know what I don’t want you see in the media, it’s a lot of fearmongering, right? Yes, yes. We are. Keeps us watching the television hate. Hate to tell you that. But Mo, a lot of people are like cattle. They will follow the noise, right? Where, where we’re we’re, or better yet, we’re like sheep, right? We just follow and we just follow whoever is telling us what our ears when I hear. Anyway, so, Hey, we’ve got a great show for you today. We’re going to get it to stay tuned. We’re going to tell you about the four things you need to do to increase the value of your business. They told, we’ll be right back.

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