As with any major transaction, many things can go wrong when selling a business. You need to be well-informed and diligent from the very beginning. Some mistakes or oversights could end up reducing the value of your firm or saddling you with a high tax liability. Working with qualified professionals from the start can help ensure you get the most value and other conditions you want from your sale. In this episode, Gail invites attorney Manny Clark to the podcast to discuss what factors owners need to consider and plan for when deciding on their exit strategy from their business. Manny is a corporate and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) lawyer and shareholder in the firm Winstead, P.C. His practice is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Manny stressed the importance of developing an exit strategy as early on in the creation of the business as possible. He also recommended that when it comes time to execute that exit strategy owners engage the counsel of qualified professionals at the start. Doing so can help prevent costly mistakes or delays and ensure that the seller gets the best deal possible. Gail asked Manny what owners should ask when seeking a professional to work with. First, he said, ask them about their ability to handle your transaction. Do they have experience in your industry? How many sales or mergers of your kind have they performed before and what was the outcome? Ask them to explain what issues are involved in the transaction. If you are working with a firm, find out who is going to be leading the transaction and doing the actual work; a senior member or a junior member? How much experience does that person have with your kind of transaction? What fees can you expect and when will they be due? Manny then walked through the three major stages of executing the exit strategy. “The single most important thing you have to do is consider that you have to exit your business,” he said. Be clear in your mind what you want your exit to look like and who should be involved in it. That includes putting together a team of qualified professionals to help you with various aspects of the process, such as an M&A lawyer or broker, investment advisor, CPA, and evaluator. The other stages involve setting your house in order, especially your financials, and organizing your business. “You ultimately have to understand how your business grows,” Manny said, and what are the prospects for future growth for the buyer. Manny also listed some of the biggest mistakes sellers make in exiting their businesses as well as some of the challenges of trying to sell a small business. For many more details, listen to the entire podcast. If you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s10e7-shownotes Mentioned in This Podcast For more information about Manny and to contact him directly, go to his page on the Winstead, P.C. website. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2_OralVUxU Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript Hi, Manny, thank you for joining us today on the Creative Genius podcast. You and I chatted a few months ago and I thought it would be of great value to our listeners to think about their exit strategy. We've had a few other people on our podcast to talk about their experiences as sellers of businesses and we've had people that have been on that are actually brokers for businesses. So now we're going to talk to you from the aspect of you being an attorney. So welcome to the podcast. Awesome. I'm so glad to be here. really appreciate the opportunity, Gail, and so excited to talk to you and to speak to you, the creative, genius listeners. All right. Well, thank you so much. Well, let's talk about your role and how you're involved with business owners in the process of exiting their businesses. Absolutely. So, you know,