For small business owners, selling their business often is the biggest financial transaction they will ever undertake. It can be a highly emotional and stressful time. Sellers need to be prepared to undergo a multi-stage process that will demand a substantial amount of their time and attention.

In this episode, Gail talks with William Lieberman, founder and managing partner of The CEO’s Right Hand, a boutique financial and human resources services firm based in New York. Among its other services, the firm advises on and assists with mergers and acquisitions, exit planning, and corporate valuation.

Plan ahead. Get help. Don’t let the demands of selling your business distract you from running your business. Continue to maintain and grow the firm’s value. That, in a nutshell, is the advice William had for interior design firm owners thinking about selling their business sometime in the future.

“You need to start sooner rather than later,” he said. It takes time to plan ahead, to get the business in order, and to ensure it is valuable and profitable at the time of sale.

Prior to taking steps to sell the business, you’ll need to collect all the necessary documents, make sure all financial records are correct and up-to-date, and educate yourself about what’s involved in evaluating and selling the business. You also want to have an exit plan in place and know what you want to get out of the business in terms of cash, future involvement (if any), and rights.

William outlined an extensive multi-stage process for selling a business. It begins with selecting an advisor to work with. “You do not want to try to do this on your own,” he cautioned. It then moves through evaluating the business, identifying an appropriate pool of potential buyers, marketing to those prospects, soliciting and negotiating letters of intent, performing due diligence for both parties, and drawing up the necessary legal documents. If all goes well, you can then move to closing the sale.

In addition, William provided advice on how to select an advisor and a firm to conduct the business evaluation. He gave more detail about what preparations owners should make before approaching an advisor about selling the business. And he talked about some of the challenges owners may encounter during the sales process.

To get all the nitty-gritty, listen to the entire podcast.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, read the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s9e1-shownotes

Mentioned in This Podcast

William provided a brief explanation of EBIDA (i.e, earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization), which is a measure of a company’s earnings and value.

To learn more about William and the services provided by The CEO’s Right Hand, go to the firm’s website at theceosrighthand.co.

The CEO’s Right Hand would also like to share the following tools with our listeners:

To learn more about what investors look for when valuing your business, and how to improve your valuation, check out TCRH’s free guide, ‘What Investors Really Want’.

And for a comprehensive overview of TCRH’s proprietary approach to holistic financial management, download Financial Infrastructure 360°™. FI360 outlines the 5 key components of responsible financial management, real life examples of avoidable issues, and a self assessment to jump start your financial planning. Download the guide here: https://theceosrighthand.co/resources/financial-infrastructure-360/