Following is a short recap of some of the best articles I’ve read recently on selling your business, buying a business, business value, as well as other useful nuggets of small-business wisdom. [Plus a photo from my travels around Main Street USA.] Staging Houses and Staging Companies Great punch list of action items broken into nine [...]
The good folks at the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal published my latest guest commentary this week [subscription required]. It was part of the “Northwest Arkansas’ Largest Private Companies” issue. Here is the article in its entirety. Enjoy! I’m a sucker for a good list, and the annual round up of Arkansas’ Largest Private Companies is [...]
Selling something you love is difficult, but not impossible. Here are four things to keep in mind when you’re going through the process of selling your business — or anything that is dear to you.
A New York Times blogger writes about the sale of a business that ended in disaster. Despite all of the details provided, it’s hard to know exactly what went wrong and why. Regardless, it’s a great opportunity to try and learn from someone else’s experience and avoid repeating these three mistakes.
If you have ever promised your child a treat in return for good behavior, you know all about negotiating leverage. When selling an attractive business, you also have leverage — but only up to the point where you sign a letter of intent (LOI). Here are seven things you can do — before you even put your business up for sale, and before signing an LOI — to minimize the chances of your deal dragging on for months and becoming watered down.
It’s not often that I’m able to weave grandmothers, due diligence and airborne mashed potatoes into one post, but last year I managed to do it in a New York Times piece titled 5 Reasons Selling Your Business Is Like Thanksgiving Dinner. I had a ball writing it, and I hope you’ll have fun reading it. Following is an excerpt that includes reasons number one and two.
Whether you believe you built it — or feel as if you couldn’t have done it alone — it’s likely that the primary motivator for selling your business will be the same one that made you start it: freedom.
As we get ready to welcome ghosts and goblins to our front door this Halloween, now seems like a good time to name some of the nagging fears we tend to have about selling our business. Following are four fears that can get in the way of a successful sale.
My recent post in the New York Times deals with the thorny issue of transferring ownership of a family business from one generation to the next, or more accurately the decision not to. While family-owned businesses have impressive results, outperforming public companies in areas like stock price and return on equity, the statistics associated with ownership transfer are sobering. Following is the uncut version of my recent Email interview with author and third-generation business owner, Tom Deans.
Regardless of the size of the business, its age – or that of its owner – the industry or geographic location, most of us end up reaching our limit as business owners in much the same way. Here are three reasons why my husband and I decided to sell the first business we started together back in 2003.
