Starting a business and scaling it to be sellable can seem like an impossible feat. But what if I told you that there is a proven way to build a sustainable, scalable, and sellable business?
Well then this episode is for you! I’m so excited to share our guest Michelle Seiler Tucker, who will be sharing with us insight into building a sustainable, scalable, and sellable business utilizing her proven techniques.
MAIN TOPICS
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Why it is important to know what type of business you own
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Some of the biggest mistakes business owners make
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Why is it important to plan your exit strategy from day one
KEY TAKEAWAYS
How you are able to sell businesses for more than they are worth
The 6 P’s and why they are so important
How to build a sustainable, scalable, and sellable business
MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST
Michelle Seiler Tucker is the Founder and CEO of Seiler Tucker Incorporated. As a 20-year veteran in mergers & acquisitions, Michelle and her firm has sold over a thousand companies in almost every vertical. She owns and operates several successful companies and holds the following profes- sional designations and certifications: Merger & Acquisition Master Intermediary (M&AMI), Certified Senior Business Analyst (CSBA), Certified Mergers & Acquisitions Professional (CM&AP) Certified Business Broker (CBB), Panelist for M&A Source, Keynote Speaker. Michelle is also the Best-Selling Author of the book ”Sell Your Business for more than it’s Worth”, and her latest book “Exit Rich”, a Wall Street Journal and USA Today Best-Seller, is available now for purchase.
In addition to being featured in INC, Forbes, and USA Magazine, Michelle makes regular radio and TV appearances on Fox Business News and CNBC. She has spoken alongside many prominent speakers: Eric Trump, Kathy Ireland, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Donna Karen, Stedman Graham, Randi Zuckerberg, Steve Wozniak, and more. Michelle also shares her wealth of experience with perspec-tive M&A advisors by conducting multiple training, mentoring, and partnering programs. Over the years, these programs have helped many individuals become successful M&A advisors and busi-ness brokers.
Recognized as the leading authority on buying, selling, fixing, and growing businesses, Michelle sees opportunity where many are discouraged or have given up. Her passion is to save businesses that might otherwise close. By identifying and correcting the top mistakes business owners make, Michelle will fine tune a business into a well-oiled machine. Sometimes investing her own money to help owners build their business, Michelle’s primary objective is to sell for huge profits.
Michelle Seiler Tucker’s remarkable track record proves her dedication to her clients and has solidified her as a formidable force in her industry. She closes nearly 98% of all written offers and, on average, obtains 20-40% above asking price for her clients. Through this process, she empowers her clients to afford the lifestyles they have always dreamed of and, most importantly, deserve!
EPISODE TRANSCRIBED
Today's guest is Michelle Sigler Tucker, She is the founder and CEO of sealer Tucker Incorporated. She holds the M and A m i title as well as certified mergers and acquisitions, professional and certified senior business analyst. Michelle also owns many other businesses in several different industries. As a 20 year veteran in the m&a industry, she's regarded as the leading authority on buying, selling, fixing and growing businesses.
Continue ReadingHer and her firm have sold over 1000 businesses in almost every vertical and have a remarkable track record of success. I'm so excited to talk with her today. And if you're listening today, and you own a business, which most of you are ladies, you don't hear women talking enough about scaling and selling, and setting up your business to actually do those two things. And so Michelle, you are an expert. It's amazing, like how many businesses and how many acquisitions you've done. Like, it's so awesome. And it's not talked about or shared. And I know you have a new book. And so I want to talk about that in a few minutes. But before we even dive in, can you share with our listeners a little bit about your background, your journey, like how have you gotten to where you are today, I've always I've always been an entrepreneur, I've always owned different businesses in different verticals. I did go to work for corporate America, I went to work for Xerox for a short period of time, very short, actually recruited me from their competitor. And
I ended up leaving Xerox and going into franchise sales, franchise development franchise consulting, and I ended up being a partner with a few different franchise doors. And then I really got tired of saying no, no, no, because I believe in law of attraction and sound like saying yes, CSS. And I can't say no, because buyers wanted to buy an existing business, you didn't want to buy a franchise. So because I was only doing franchise sales, I didn't have any existing businesses. So I said to myself one day I'm like, Why do I keep saying no, no, no, I should be saying yes, I should just open up an m&a firm. Yes, I did. You know, that's really how it all transpired. And so then I opened up my m&a firm, but first I started, you know, selling small companies, and then very quickly, so large businesses 10 million and up. But I learned very quickly that what Steve Forbes says is true, that eight out of 10 businesses will not sell 80% of businesses will never close. So then I thought to myself, gosh, if I don't fix them, if I don't tweak them, grow them and put them on a bill to sell plan, then I'm going to starve to death. So that's what I did. I really started specializing in buying, selling, fixing growing, I partner with business owners investing my money, time, expertise, resources. I also buy businesses and flip them. Plus we do mergers and acquisitions. And we sell companies. In fact, we've sold over 1000 businesses today. And we do lots of valuations, business valuations we have I have about 98% closing rate and we you know, on average, obtain a 20 to 40% higher selling price for our clients, which is amazing. You guys like it? It's It's incredible. So are there specific types of industries that you look for to go in and flip a business and get it ready to sell? Or can you pretty much go into any industry and know what what the need is? So I can say that the answer is different for different things. As far as selling businesses, we're industry agnostic, so we can sell every industry we've pretty much probably sold a business in every single vertical there is I don't know if there's any verticals, we haven't sold at least one
business and as far as partnering, there's businesses I won't do, I won't do restaurants. Okay, you know, I'm not big into retail on that big into things like that. If I'm going to partner, I would rather partner in a business that services, a niche, something different, that has an unique selling proposition. And then I've got to be very selective about not only the industry, but also very selective about the partners, who I'm going into business with, are they coachable? You know, can I train them? And when they listen, I don't know if you've ever watched a prophet, the prophet with Marcus, I love Marcus. But you know, they don't listen to him. And I found, you know, kind of the same thing that you'll never grow a business beyond what you can grow the owner. So really gotta be able to grow that owner. And if you don't have the patience, and the ability to grow the owner, you'll never grow the business. Amen. Amen. It's so true. And Marcus doesn't really grow the owner, you know, he, he puts his head up against the wall, because they're not listening. And they're not listening, because he's not really putting the time, energy and effort into them. He's putting more into the business. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And, you know, you hear the saying, it's like, it starts from the top and it trickles down. Like, you've got to have the the leadership and the mindset in place before it's going to trickle down. Would you say one of the biggest mistakes that business owners make is to not go into a business with the mindset of scaling and growing it, I would say that's absolutely the biggest mistake that they make, because business owners are so close to their business, you know, they are working in their business, not on it. In many cases, business owners have created a glorified job, and one should go to work every day versus a business that actually works for them. And they think of it as their baby, you know, and so they really don't put you know, we talked about an exit rich on the budget business with the infrastructure on the six P's. They don't really focus on building the infrastructure, they focus on sell, sell, sells, get the clients through the door, get money coming in. But unless you have a solid infrastructure on what I call the six fees, your business is not going to be sustainable. And it's certainly not going to be scalable. So 80% of businesses don't sell because business owners never think about, hey, I need to build this as a sellable asset. You know, they're taking money out of it, they're living out of it. And so they really need to go into they don't really think about so until like a catastrophic event has occurred at all, you know, health issues, partner, partners dispute divorce death, I mean, I had a sweet little lady call us a couple of months ago that wanted to sell, because her husband dropped down, have a heart attack, unexpectedly, my gosh, and left her with a mountain of debt. But when I start asking all these questions, he owns a construction company had all subcontractors, he didn't have any employees, he had no processes, you know, no procedures in place, everything was in his head. So when he died, the business died. So that business owners don't think about selling until that catastrophic event occurs. And they don't set down think about setting up their family for success. If something was to happen to them, is my family taking care of Do I have a key man, insurance policy? Do I have an exit strategy? Do I you know, that's what they really need to start thinking about. And that's the number one reason businesses don't sell. Yeah, and I find that, I mean, just unless you even if you went to school for entrepreneurship, which back when I was in college, that really didn't exist. And so it's like, they're not teaching us as entrepreneurs, and business owners and leaders, how to build a business Don't get so connected to it. And it's like, we're just thrown out there. And then I know, I kind of had to learn the hard way. But one of the reasons that I'm sure you were inspired to do this new book that you have exit rich was was that it is like, I need to teach people and let people know like, how they can think differently rather than what you're taught in school. Can they read the book and, and walk away saying, Okay, now I have the mindset of setting this up and thinking differently and having that mindset, they really can and you know, a couple of things. I want to say that they really can. Yeah, gentlemen just wrote us a letter who bought exit rich, and we're, you know, we're in the middle of pre launch. So he bought the book with sending the PDF. He ran the book, he sent us a letter today saying I've been in business 20 years. So the hardest speak on a
Business podcast I was on. And he said, I read the entire book. He said, I now know what to do
this for years, and I had no idea what I was doing. So he says, Now, I'm getting all my peas in order because I talked about the six fees. I'm betting my infrastructure and getting all the peas in order and getting my proprietary taken care of, and making sure I have the right people in the right place. And he says, I want to sell in two to three years. Thank you, you've put me on the right path. I had no idea what to do before that as one gentleman. So I said ritually as like Steve for says exit riches, a goldmine for those entrepreneurs that truly want to, you know, be successful and not leave so much money on the table, because that's what happened. So many business owners are extreme poor. You know, when I wrote sell your business for more henceforth in 2013, and did the research, I learned back then that 85 to 95% of all startups will go out of business right now just one to five years of the most risky, but then when I will exit rich in 2019 and 2020 I did the exact same research and realize that the business landscape has flipped flopped. So now it's only 30% of startups about a business only 30%. So this is great news for startups. However, the 27 point out of 27 point 6 million companies, those businesses have been in business 10 years or longer.
70% of them will go out of business 70 so you see how I flip flop. So if you've been in business for five 610 years ago, then you're going to be in business forever. Not anymore. So it has completely flip flop you hear about the big you know, box public companies and the media like Toys R Us goes out of business after being in business 75 years Kmart, Kmart, JC Penney's, Montgomery Ward, you know, GNC is closing down 1500 900 locations, cadavers closing down, I think 1500 locations, but you're not hearing about all the private companies that are being forced to sell for pennies on the dollar closer business or even worse file bankruptcy. So that's what exit which does is it really addresses how to build that sellable. You might not even think about selling right now. And that's okay. However, you need to plan your exit, you need to still have a plan, so that you and I call this the stps exit plan, so that you can build your business with that in mind, and then build it on the infrastructure. So yes, sustainable, so it is scalable. So when you're ready, it is sellable, and you won't become a part of a statistic. The reason the 70% of businesses are going out of business, is because business owners stop doing what I call aim, aim, always innovate and market.
innovate market, Toys R Us didn't do anything different. for 75 years, blockbuster saw Netflix and opportunity to buy Netflix and did nothing. And now they wonder why they're out of business. No Exit rich walks business owners from A to Z. As far as how to plan your exit from the beginning, follow the sta GPS exit model, build for the specific criteria, there's five different types of buyers, identify what type of buyer is best for your business, and then also whatever business do you owe? And then it also takes you through the sellers mindset. When should you sell? You know, what is your seller sanity check, what do you want to walk away with? And then of course, it takes them through the six PS, how to evaluate how to negotiate how to create a bidding war, and get a higher price for their business and actually close. And then not only that, but because it's not what I sell your business for. It's what you walk away with. So how to mark your money. We're not paying huge capital gains. Mm hmm. I would love for you to dive more into like the six P's and what people need to be thinking about as they're, well you guys just need to get the book first and read the book. And we'll we'll put that in the show notes for everybody on how they that they can get it. And at the end of the show, I'll tell I'll tell your listeners, the extra goodies extra golden nuggets that they get now if they buy and pre sell. That's awesome. But can you take us deeper and tell us a little bit more about what are the six PS and how did you come up with that? So how did I come up with it? It's my 20 plus years of experience being in business and not just selling businesses but owning my own businesses. So first and foremost, you know, it's been in the trenches, but the first P is people because the number one reason businesses don't sell is because business owners don't plan or exit. The number two reason that businesses don't sell is because the business is 1,000% dependent upon the owner. I take that owner out of the business there is no business. You know we have a tensas that came to us that wants to sell one dental one dentistry dental hygienists
In a business for 45 years, and I said, Look, I can sell your business, but you can have to stay over two to three years. He's like, Honey, I'm not staying on, I'm exhausted. I said, Well, then I'm not gonna be able to sell your business, because when you leave the patients leave. Yeah. So the first P is people. Yep. You don't build a business, you build people and people build the business. Yep. So you got to make sure you have the right people in the right seats. And you got to ask the who question, who opens the door? Who does because who handles customer service, who handles marketing and legal accounting and logistics, manufacturing, you know, all of these different things that have to be done in your corporation. The clue here is that you should never be next to the who.
So that's people. Also you need to have a layer of management. Business owners are the visionary, they're not entrepreneur, they should be working on the business should have that layer of management, and then everybody else working in the business. Second, P is product. So product is your industry. So you have to ask yourself, is your product your industry in a way up on the way out the thriving dying? Do you have an Amazon? Or do you have a blockbuster? Yeah, and this is where most businesses fail. So when it 70% of businesses go out of business, is because their industry, their product is dying. You're either growing or dying. So this is where innovation is key. So always get my clients to ask these three questions. Amazon did this back in the 90s. ask themselves, what business are we in? And they said, Oh, we sell books? on selling business? No, no, like, Well, what do we do really, really well, better than anybody else? And they said we do fulfillment better than anybody else? And then the third question, the obvious question is, what business should we be in? Hmm. And I said, we should be in the fulfillment business. Those three questions as simple as they sound, transformed Amazon from the small bookseller to the multibillion dollar railway conglomerate that they are today. So everyone, every business owner should really look at their business and ask themselves this question. You know, because a lot of business owners get stuck doing things the way they've always done them. Well, consumer buying habits change. Zoomers don't buy things the way they used to, especially now with the pandemic. Now, Amazon changed the way that we, we purchase products way before the pandemic. Now the pandemic has changed the way we buy groceries.
Sorry, business owners have to adapt to have to pivot, you have to ask your clients, what do you need? What do you want? How can I better serve, serve serve you? How can I make it easier for you to do business with us? Because here's the bottom line. Anyone that makes it easiest for the consumer to purchase products and services, the company is winning Amazon winning because they make it so easy to purchase anything and have it delivered in two days. Yeah.
Therapy is processes,
processes. So processes are kind of like exit strategy. Business owners don't really think about it until something bad happens. And then they're like, Oh, we need a process for that.
You know, we were one selling a manufacturing company. And there was an injury on the manufacturing floor. One of the employees got hurt, it was a catastrophic event lawsuits were coming down, they were gonna go out of business filed bankruptcy, and they were not sellable anymore. And the owner looked at me says, you know, we really need a health and safety process for the manufacturing floor. And I'm like you think
you needed that before, it's a little late for that. So processes really should be designed from the beginning, they should be designed with a customer experience in mind. Now, McDonald's, the McDonald's brothers who started McDonald's, back in the 40s, said, we want to design a fast food restaurant around the customer experience. We want the customers to experience great tasting food. That's hot, fast. So even though that was back in the 40s, no matter which McDonald's you eat out all over the world, you're going to get pretty good tasting food. It's hard and fast, not the best customer service. Not necessarily organic or healthy. But they design their processes around the customer experience. most business owners, many business owners designer processes around their own agenda,
creating a negative customer experience. So you really want the processes to be is designed with the customer experience in mind number one, and number two, it's got to be productive. It's got to be efficient, gotta be well documented. You have to have policy and procedure manuals, those asset checklist, employee handbooks, noncompetes, contracts, etc.
Absolutely, if you don't have those things, you a lot of people that I know they do what you exactly just said, it's like, oh shit, something happened. So we need to create something around it. Yeah, so you know, stop that oh shit moment. Yep.
And do it from the beginning. So for fee, which is really the highest value driver, this will take you from so businesses are under a million dollars and even even as Earnings Before Interest taxes depreciation amortization
those businesses will typically trade for for under multiple so anywhere between one to four businesses over $9 a day, but I will typically trade for five and above.
Now if you want to get a higher multiple 678 10 you got to build these proprietary assets. So this P is proprietary, there are six pillars to proprietary this P takes me too long. Yeah. So there's six pillars to it. Number one is branding. The more well branded your company is the more I can sell it for as long as your brand is relevant in the minds of the consumers.
Is anybody paying any money for blockbuster?
No, wah, wah, wah wah, the most valuable brand in the world right now. Do you know who that is? Oh, is it Amazon or Apple is an Apple, Apple.
214. So Amazon's in the top 10, Disney's in the top 10 Amazon's at the top they're worth $249 billion.
That's just the brand. That's not assets, inventory, real estate. Anything else that's just around. Wow. So build your brand. trademarks are very valuable. But you got to make sure you get federal trademarks. Business owners will go start their business and not get their state trademark, but they never checked the federal database to make sure that federal trademark is available. So they'll be in business 510 15 years and all of a sudden, I've seen this happen when I receive a system desist letter, and they have to stop using that name. They'll go to GoDaddy and say, fam, I got that domain, I can use that name. But I never checked the federal. So they can't use it. So then they have to, they have to start all over. And the hardest thing in business is branding. So go get that federal trademark, it's only 1500 or $2,000. The second thing is very important is
patents. If you got something that's really unique, get a patent, every single investor on Shark Tank, always ask the same questions. Do you have a patent on that? Do you have a patent pending? You know, in fact, when I make an offer, they make it contingent upon the patent. Right? So fans are huge. contracts are also really big. Manufacturing contracts, distribution, vendor contracts exclusive and franchise zoar contracts, extremely valuable, the most valuable of all contracts or client contracts because buyers want to make sure that they're buying a business that has revenue flowing in. Now, those contracts that have reoccurring revenue, or subscription model are really valuable and will get a much higher multiple. Yeah, databases are big, you can be losing money and still sell your company and make money. Facebook paid $19 billion dollars for WhatsApp. And WhatsApp was hemorrhaging. They weren't just not making money, they were hemorrhaging. And they paid 19 billion because Facebook had a I'm sorry, Whatsapp had a synergy that Facebook wanted to buy. And that was a billion users. Yeah. So what are your synergies? You know, identify your surgeries. That's what we do. When we evaluate businesses, we We help business owners identify what those synergies are celebrity endorsements, we have a client whose products are endorsed by Oprah. As huge synergistic competitive buyers will want to pay more money for that company because they want to get their products in front of Oprah, celebrity endorsements radio personalities, huge because they can only endorse one vertical at a time. Right You know, Jennifer Aniston is a spokesperson for a vino hmm you don't see her doing any other skincare cuz she loses credibility. Same thing with radio personalities. They do one diet, one skincare, one children's education plan. So that's what we call prime real estate because those positions are hard to get celebrity endorsements are very hard to get. And then
for my ecommerce businesses anytime you can get in the top three positions on Amazon wayfarer Etsy you know, those are huge value drivers.
So this is proprietary build your proprietary assets, you will build your value. The fifth P is patrons.
So patrons does your customer base, many business owners follow the 8020 rule, right 80% of their business comes from 20% of their clients. Well, if you lose a client, you know a few clients, you can be in big trouble. We want a media company we were selling. And they have five clients were selling for in the $10 million range five clients.
And the reason for that is because they dealt with five big casinos, the biggest casinos, but they lost two during the sales process. So the revenues dropped in half, for sales dropped in half, they're even dropped in half, they were not sellable anymore. merging them with another company. So customer, you know, you want to make sure your customer diversification rather than customer concentration. And then the last p, the most important feature all of us is profits. We're all in business to make money, not lose money. But lack of profits was never ever the problem.
It's always a symptom, and not operating on one or the other five PS, I have clients that come to me and say, Michelle, I have a profits problem. I'm like, No, you have a people problem. Process problem. Yep, lasted six days, if you operate in on all five PS, I can promise you, you will be very profitable.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. It's funny, because from a productivity perspective, the foundation, we call it four P's. But our four P's, your six PS are very different on a very different level. For creatives, our four P's. And some there's some similarities, but to me, it's like they mean different things. But the thing that I know at the heart of all of this is is like our first beat, like your P is people, if you don't know how to communicate, based on psychology based on how first understanding how people perceive you as a leader. And then, like I've had to learn how to communicate to people the way they need to hear it. And so I'm always like, the first P is like people, but it's like the psychology of the makeup of the people so that you're hiring people for their strengths. I don't care about your weaknesses, I want to know what drives you. And that is so important for our second P is processes, but it's all about paperless processes, and technology, and like making sure that your processes are in the cloud. And like you were saying like a lot of people, they don't even know what s o p ‘s are. And I'm like, Well, if you are going to have a notebook, that's great. Or if it's in your head, get it out of your head, put it in a notebook, but then also put it in the cloud, make sure that you have everything in a either even a Google Doc is fine or in Dropbox. But make sure things are paperless. And then productivity is our third page. But when I talk about productivity, I'm talking about software and automation, 100% automation, which is only speaking to the businesses that really can automate some of their processes, you still need the people to automate the processes. But people get so overwhelmed, because there's so many different platforms out there. They don't know what's right for them. And then number four is profit. If you're not making a profit, why the hell are you doing it? We work with so many people that and a lot of them are women. And they're passionate. And it's almost like they feel bad for charging, because they're making money doing something they love. So they never take the time to sit down and figure out. Okay, what do you mean overhead? And what do you mean, I need to make sure that I can pay myself before I pay other people. And so there's this huge misconception. So I see, like our peas, like being the very stepping stone to the foundation of beginning of business. And then build, build, build, build, build, and then you guys can go to exit rich, and follow those peas because they mean something very different. When you're starting a business, it's all about the mindset and setting it up. But if someone starting something and they read, exit rich, and they can at least have the mindset and know like we've got to have the people and the processes. And some of these things. Some of the words you were saying 10 years ago, I didn't know what that meant, because no one taught me until I joined an entrepreneur organization. And I would just be like, Okay, I know you guys are gonna make fun of me and call me dumb blonde, but what does that mean? So you're googling it. Like I didn't even understand the difference between like net and profit. You know, I had to have an accountant sit down and educate me on all this and so
It's okay to not know but like, ask, and you want to learn. And there's people like you who are out there teaching people what they need to know, to be successful, because I'm not learning this in school by any means, like, this isn't the easy part. But if you have the mindset from the very foundation of starting a business, I feel like people would be able to sell their business, like you said, for so much more. But it's like, they're they don't understand the bottom line of I need all these things to make sure that my business is actually really sellable. Right? Is there one more piece of advice or guidance? If someone's thinking about selling their business and really exiting? Would you tell them to contact someone like yourself, or I don't know if it's called like an agent, or, you know, someone to represent you to actually go sell your business, right? It's kind of like real estate, if you're going to sell your house, her real estate agent or put it on the market yourself. And I'm like, Oh, my God, hire an agent. Like, I'm not gonna do any of that myself. I don't know what I'm doing. So I know that there's pros and cons, people think that, but why would someone want to not sell it themselves? Well, selling a house, I could sell my house myself selling a house, it's not that difficult. selling a business, it's kind of like if you need heart surgery, you're gonna pull out your heart, cut your chest up and pull out your heart and operate on your own heart know, right, this is your most valuable asset, you will never want to risk that. And most business owners know how to run their business are experts at their business, but they have no idea how to sell it. Yeah, no idea how to do evaluations, down No idea. You know how to identify those synergies, they don't know how to deliver No, there's five different types of buyers. And I have no idea how to identify what buyers are willing to pay more or how to create a bidding war, you know. So they really don't know any of that you really have to hire a mergers and acquisitions master intermediary. If you're trying to sell a business, I would say, 5 million and up. If you're trying to solve a small business, you can maybe go to a business broker, not always encourage y'all to, you know, everybody to call a solid talker. Because we've been doing this for 20 years, we probably we have, you know, most experience in the industry. And we probably have what we do have the largest data buyer, buyer database in the industry, and read exit rich, and here's the deal, you might think you're ready to sell. But then when we do an evaluation, you know, and this is what typically happens is a business owner says oh, I want $10 million from my company. Well, their business is really worth maybe 2 million, and we're nowhere close to that. So you might want to sell but you're nowhere close to where you need to be in order to retire. So you really need to start that process now. And start to ask a GPS exit model now, which is number one, you got to determine your endgame, determine your destination, when you drive somewhere, the first thing you do is you pull out google map, you plug in your destination, otherwise, you're going to drive around in circles. Same thing with business owners, if they don't plug in their destination, then they're going to drive around a circle drive up, up and down the financial hills to end up nowhere or end up broke, you know, extreme poor, not actually rich, then on a GPS exit model, you need to know where you're starting from, what is your current location? What's your current evaluation? What is your business worth? Right now, most business owners make the huge mistake of never having a business valuation usually get a business evaluation every single year. Because there are events that increase valuation and events like COVID that decrease business valuation. So you need to know where your business stands every year. So really follow the GPS X amount to say, you know what, my destination is $10 million. I want to sell for $10 million. Right? That a number number two, what else am I worth? Today? I'm worth $2 million.
What's my timeframe I want to sell in 10 years. The next thing you need to know or who are my buyers going to be? You never want to have one buyer I have sellers call me all the time and say, Michelle, I have a buyer, I just need to represent me. And I'm like, No, because we need to put it on the market because I can promise you this buyers probably gonna fall through and you have no backup buyers plus, how can you maximize the the price of your business? If there's no competition? Yeah. So God wants you to come in and I want to sell for $10 million. I'm worth 2 million I want to do this and in 10 years and know who your buyers are going to be there's five types of buyers. It's not going to be a first time buyer because they buy small businesses. It's not gonna be a turnaround specialist because I buy distressed assets. So it's gonna be either a private equity Group, a strategic competitor and they typically pay the highest more
Because of buying those synergies
or a serial entrepreneur that buys that are industry agnostic and I buy even at a by cash flow. And then the last step of that GPS exit model is know your why, you know, if it was easy to sell business for $10 million, everybody would be doing it. Yeah, yeah. Why it's gotta be powerful enough strong enough to keep you motivated to keep you in the game.
so helpful, so helpful, so many things to just think about. As as you're sit here, as you're sitting here saying, like, every year I'm like, Oh, shit, I should probably go
to town get some away from you so quickly. What time does it get away because business owners again, get stuck doing the day to day business owners have to learn to focus on their strengths, hire their weaknesses, focus on our strengths, how their weaknesses. And if you don't do that, you're always going to be stuck in a job that you've created yourself versus a business that that actually works for you. So let me just tell you a couple things about extra rich my co author Shannon Electra, who wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad with Robert Kiyosaki, awesome, but she's a New York Times bestselling author of five times a CPA, financial literacy expert, any advisor to many different presidents. Steve Forbes has also endorsed x rich calling it a goldmine for entrepreneurs as so many entrepreneurs leave too much money on the table. And then Kevin Harrington, our very own original Shark Tank, gay read wrote the foreword for x rich, so you can go get exit rich exit Rich book.com. The book launches in June but we're in pre sell so you can buy it now at zebra calm for $24.79. We will email you to digital downloads, you can start reading it today like that other gentleman I told you about at the beginning of the show, you know, he said it's already changed his business. So you can start reading it today. Then we'll ship the hardcover to anyone in the United States. for no additional fee. Plus, we will give you a lifetime membership to the x rich book club where there's video content and me doing a deep dive trainings. And there's documents documents to operate your business documents to sell your business. So sample, employee handbook, sample noncompete, sample org charts, letter of intent, purchase agreements, closing docs due diligence checklist, all these documents would cost over $30,000. If you try to recreate them with an attorney, they're there for your review and for your download. Plus we get we will also give you a 30 day free membership into club C, which is a entrepreneur manager mastermind that we started in was to help business owners build those sustainable, scalable and sellable businesses. That's amazing. Y'all check it all out. It'll all be in the show notes. A lot of our people like drive why they commute? Listen, I'm like, don't read don't pull ever will. But
this is all super helpful. You guys go and get exit rich. And really get your mindset right. So that you don't sell poor you want to sell rich. And Michelle, thank you so much for being here today. This is thank you and then also wanted to tell your listeners that they could text Michelle 28885285750 all of my social media pops up plus my websites and they can follow me on social media connect with me on LinkedIn. Plus, our main website is Salo talker.com if they need some assist. That's amazing. Me. Awesome. Thank you for so much for your time and everybody just listening. Thank you so much for tuning in. And be sure to tune in next week to another episode of business unveiled. Bye guys. That's it for this week's episode of business unveiled. Now that you have all the tools that you need to conquer the world and GSD get shit done. Would you share this with your friends and fellow business leaders? One thing that would really really help us and help new listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a comment and Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you tune in and listen to business unveiled. You can check out the show notes at Angela proffitt.com slash podcast and link up with us on social media so you can share your biggest insights. And I want to know your aha moments. Until next week, remember the profitable shifts and structures you're creating in your business help you be more present in your life. So get out there and GSD