Ear To Ear Podcast | EPISODE 10: Exit Strategy

Transcript:

 

 

Introduction (00:00):

Welcome to Ear to Ear by Altaworx, a podcast for all things telecom.

 

Forrest (00:06):

Welcome to the Altaworx Ear to Ear podcast, where we talk about all things telecom, and we sprinkle some business stuff in there too. Got a great guest today, Chris. Welcome to the Altaworx podcast. Will you tell us about yourself?

 

Chris (00:18):

Yeah. Hey, Forrest. Thanks for having me. My name's Chris Alman and I'm with the Equip Financial Partners. And we work with business owners to develop exit strategies and, and handle their, their wealth management so that they can have a clear point in mind where they know that they're ready to exit. They have a strategy for that so that they're not like most owners and, and fail to have that plan.

 

Forrest (00:43):

Yeah. They just exit when they exit and don't really have a strategy. Right. Yeah. So this seems like a very niche business or niche or niche or however you wanna call it. How, how did you get started in this business? How did you end up here? I don't know that that's something you can necessarily get a, a degree for. Right, right. It's, it's gotta be something you, you work yourself into.

 

Chris (01:02):

Yeah. So I started off in doing real estate flipping houses and got to the point where I was working with investors on flipping houses, and from there kind of went into financial planning, just realizing that a lot of those folks needed help, just managing the financial aspect of that. And then kind of over the years of doing financial planning, met a lot of business owners and one of the things that I realized real quickly is that most of them don't have any kind of strategy for turning their business into personal wealth. Right. They, they're really good at growing that business, but they just don't have the, the, the plan in place. Right. And that's really important to have. So, you know, just kind of saw that opportunity there. Along with the rest of, you know, the, the owners that I've talked with, they always said that they don't have a good source of information for that because most of the financial advisors and guys that they've talked with, it's always about investments. And so, you know, really just found that opportunity there and, and wanted to seize it.

 

Forrest (02:05):

Yeah. I think you've got a lot of business owners out there that have dreams of retiring, but they don't necessarily have goals that line up to get to retirement. Would that be a fair statement?

 

Chris (02:14):

Yeah, I mean, they, they're good at what they do a lot of times and that's why they get into it. That's why they love their business and that's why their business grows. But yeah, they, they're not always thinking about, well, what am I gonna do after this? Because at some point, you know, you're gonna have that, that realization that you can't do it forever.

 

Forrest (02:33):

Right. Yeah. It's interesting. I know you and I have had some conversations in the past couple of years, and most recently I'd reached out to you and you looked at my LinkedIn profile and said, man, I didn't know you talked about business equity and, you know, why do you talk about business equity in telecom? But really on the telecom side, you know, everybody that's building a business, some type of recurring revenue business especially in the telecom, everybody's looking at some type of exit. How do they exit? When do they exit? And what does that process look like? And one of the things that we looked at in our business is for the future, we've got to have this business structured, organized processes well defined and have goals that are attainable and in line with the, the path to success. So when you're talking to a business owner, what are the biggest gaps that you see in those owners' plans in quotation mark to exit their business?

 

Chris (03:26):

Yeah, so there's, there's quite a few things that that can come up. But really the, the number one thing that I hear and and that I see is that the business relies on the owner. That's probably the most common one, is that they're doing everything to grow their business, but they, at the end of the day tend to be the guy that, or the girl that has all the responsibility of either, you know, securing contracts or just making sure that things get done. They don't have, you know, a CEO or a president or someone else that has, you know, the same authority, but just not the ownership to help run the business. And so they end up feeling like they're stuck. Right. Like that's one of the main things that I see. Beyond that though, it's just not having, you know, systems and documentation and pro and processes in place so that they can, you know, bring people in and there's a clear path for them to do, you know, whatever it is that they're working on at the time. Yeah. So they just don't have that structure and the systems in place to be able to do that. So it makes it really tough.

 

Forrest (04:28):

Yeah. I've, I've talked to a lot of people over the last I guess I've been eight years now that they've built a great job where they have people working for them, but they don't have a business where people are working for them. And it goes back to the, the business is not a business without the owner if you don't have that structure in place. So

 

Chris (04:45):

Yeah, if you don't have the structure, then you don't have the business, you have a job and you know, you might not have a great boss either. Right.

 

Forrest (04:52):

<Laugh> So it, it's funny cuz one of the best questions I've learned to ask so our business is, is in telecom, but we have agents and resellers that are, are Salesforce out there. And so there are guys out there that build a recurring revenue model with commissions that they're making commissions. And then we've got people that white label our services. But that's one of the first questions I ask when I'm having an initial conversation. A discovery call is, what is your exit strategy? And it amazes me how many people that throws them completely off. And these are typically guys that own the business. They may be you know, a shareholder with other owners, but I'm dumbfounded at how many people don't have an exit strategy. So are are you finding that when you talk to people that they did, they just don't even have an exit strategy other than they wanna sell? Maybe? Or where are you finding? Yeah,

 

Chris (05:41):

Absolutely. So it's, I think the numbers around like 56% of, of owners plan to transition their business to their child or a family member. And of that 56%, you know, it's, it's a very low percentage that actually successfully transfer their business to the next generation. And a lot of that comes down to the next generation. Are they ready? Do you have, do they have the desire to be in the business? Because a lot of times they've seen how hard you work as the owner and they're like, you know, it's, it'd be easier to just go work for someone else. I don't have to have all the stress and the responsibility. So a lot of times that doesn't work out. But then when you look at the, the broader scale, a lot of owners were, you know, their next thought is that I want to sell my business to a third party.

(06:29):

They're in it trying to get the most money out of their business that they can. And then, you know, I think it's 60, let's see, it's 75% or 78, I can't remember, but 78% of those business owners believe that they're going to fund their next stage, whether that's retirement or just, you know, that next stage of life or they're gonna get into another business. 78% of 'em plan on selling to fund that. And only about 20% do. Yeah. And when you ask the, the owners, it's, you know, 60% or so of 'em that don't have any kind of plan in place at all. So they agree that they should mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and they'll say, you know, it would be helpful to have something that's written, but at the end of the day, most of them don't have anything that's written. They might have something in their head. Right. But as you know, it's like if you don't have it written down that you really don't have anything, there's no proof. Right. Nobody knows what's going on in your head. So Yeah. That's, that's very common.

 

Forrest (07:30):

And it's amazing cuz these, these guys are, they do well in their business. They seem to have an organized business, they're successful at growing it, but they just don't think far enough ahead to think about how that exit strategy works.

 

Chris (07:42):

Yeah. And I think you'd be surprised too at, at how large businesses can get before they ever even have, you know, that inclination that, Hey, I need to have a plan in place. It's, it's pretty surprising. Yeah.

 

Chris (07:55):

I talked with one guy that had a a 20 million business, and I mean, it was still basically just him and you, some employees, but the question is, what happens to that business if he can't run it? Yeah. You know, those employees want that stability. Yeah. And you, that, that poses some risks in itself.

 

Forrest (08:17):

Yeah. Yeah. And as business owners, you know, they should be thinking about and caring about the people that work for 'em. We had a conversation recently internally, and we were trying to figure up how many people are dependent on Altaworx. Well, you've got the 26 employees, then you've got the 26 spouses potentially, then you've got, you know, four or five kids or you know, how many, how many people are dependent on that business. And as business owners, I would think it's important to look at that, to understand the magnitude of what you've created so that you can make sure you take care of it and set that up for success wants you depart. So.

 

Chris (08:56):

Absolutely.

 

Forrest (08:58):

So with with telecom, you know, people build their business on recurring revenue. Talk to me about the importance of recurring revenue versus single sale revenue. So what's the difference there?

 

Chris (09:11):

Yeah, so the, to step back just a little bit, you have to really look at your business and say, you know, what is it that drives the value of your business? You know, and that's a different question than what is the value of your business, right? Right. Because you might have great cash flow, you might have all the things that, that you need to have from a, a revenue perspective, but not have things that are actually building value in your business. Right. And that comes down to a lot of other pieces, you know, like intellectual property and assets and systems and processes and things like that. But specifically when you are looking at the revenue if you have contracts in place, then that adds a lot of stability for the buyer that's looking at it because now they know, hey, they're, I come in and I've got guaranteed income, you know, at least for a little while that's going to be there because of the, those contracts being in place. So the, the customers that they're used to serving, they're, they're not having to recreate things. So that really adds a lot of stability versus having that sales, that one time transaction. You know, there's a lot of businesses that are built like that and that's great, but if you can have those contracts in place, it just makes it that much easier because from a buyer's perspective, that's what they want. They want stability.

 

Forrest (10:31):

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, and we've seen that on the telecom side. Again, we've got agents that work for us that make commissions, and then we've got resellers that white label the products and then sell 'em to their clients. And the multiple difference between somebody that's commission based, even though it's quote recurring revenue mm-hmm. <Affirmative> versus, to your point, owning the contract with the customer off the charts. It, it's definitely a big difference where you own the customer. So talk to me about some of the things that you think businesses can do to protect their value of their business. So definitely grow recurring revenue. Got that. But what are some other things that business owners need to be doing to protect the value of their business?

 

Chris (11:13):

Yeah, so when you, when you look at, you know, like I said, what makes your business valuable, a lot of times it might be your intellectual property and do you have, you know, patents on things that are, that need to be patented? Do you have trademarks where they need to be? Do you have you know, the legal structure in place to protect those assets? Like, that's part of it. When it comes to the contracts, you know, having, you know, essentially the, the structure in place to keep those people happy, to keep those customers happy it, it really just depends on having those open lines of communication, right. So that when stuff doesn't go that the, that they hoped they've are going to call you first. Right. So that adds a lot of protection there. But then when you start kind of looking outside of just the customers and the cashflow and things like that, you have to look at, you know, just as an owner, do you have, you know, insurance in place, right?

(12:09):

Do you have, you know, disability for yourself so that if you're, if you can't be there and you're an integral part, which we've, we've discussed, you know, most owners that's a big deal is that they're a big part of it. You know, do you have something that's going to pay you income Yeah. For a while? And do you have, you know, beyond that, do you have, you know, key man insurance? So like if you have that top sales guy that you can't really live without, what happens if he's injured in a, you know, an ac some kind of accident, can't work for a few months, or, you know, can't come back at all. Like, you wanna make sure that you have something in place there that can allow you to, you know, find someone to bring in whatever that might be. Yeah.

 

Forrest (12:51):

Yeah. Keyman insurance is something I learned about, I don't know, three or four years ago, and we realized the importance of that because, you know, you've got to be able to have some runway to find that replacement that may take six, nine months a year but also make sure that you've got that revenue potentially covered that they might have been bringing in. So there's

 

Chris (13:11):

Also business overhead, right? You have to think too if you're not there and, and the business, you know, you might have your disability insurance that's going to pay you income, but the business still has bills too, right? And if your team's not structured, you don't have the management team in place with, again, those clear processes and everybody knows their job and their role, then yeah, it's gonna be really hard to make enough revenue, have enough income to pay those expenses. So there are forms of insurance for that. Not, I don't sell any of it. Yeah, I'm not, not into the sales world. But it is very important to have because it just adds, it lengthens the runway so that they have more time to get, get things in place, get back in, in the swing of things.

 

Forrest (13:59):

So do you typically work with businesses that are sole proprietorships a single owner? Or do you work with businesses that have multiple owners? Where, where is where's your experience been?

 

Chris (14:10):

Yeah, both really. So when it comes to the, the businesses and, and specifically the owners, there's not really, it doesn't really matter if there's one owner or three owners 10. The question, the thing that I'm doing is working with that particular owner on, you know, identifying like, where are they at financially? Like what is their situation, right? Where, what are their hopes for their future? How are they seeing things going? Because they need to be clear on that so that they can be clear with their partners if they have those. Right. And, and it helps just drive the conversation as far as, you know, where are you taking your business? So a lot of times it be a sole proprietor not generally like one person that's in that business, but maybe a sole owner. And then you have employees. But you know, from a revenue perspective, size wise generally once they've kind of hit that million dollar mark in revenue, they can afford to, you know, start getting help that they need. Right. Because it's really challenging to, you know, add a lot of strategic planning and things like that in when you're still struggling just to, to make the day-to-day stuff.

 

Forrest (15:23):

Yeah. Take the payroll. Yeah.

 

Chris (15:24):

Yeah. So, so it's generally once you've kind of hit that million dollars in revenue, it makes it a lot easier. But in terms of, you know, what industry and things like that really doesn't matter. It has more to do with the mindset of the owner mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, right? Like, are they realizing that, hey, I need to start planning for my future. I need to have a plan. Because at the end of the day, you know, you talk about exit strategies, at the end of the day, it's just good business strategy, right? Right. If you focus on what makes your business valuable, you know, the rest takes care of itself. You know, the cash flow follows it.

 

Forrest (15:58):

So with those businesses that I have multiple owners, do you have any discussions with them about strategy as far as, we were talking about Keyman insurance, but there's also insurance that's available to buy out owners if that Yeah. Buy

 

Chris (16:11):

Sell agreements.

 

Forrest (16:12):

Yeah. Buy sell agreements. So talk to me a little about that, about how I, I know you don't sell that, but no, talk to me about how you help guide those, those types of conversations.

 

Chris (16:20):

Yeah, so one of the things I'll do when there are multiple owners is I'll ask, if I'm just working with one of them, I'll ask like, Hey, can we get a copy of that? Let me look at it. Because nine times outta 10, it's from 15 years ago, <laugh>, you know, it's just way outta date and it hasn't been reviewed. Or they're using some kind of a formula to determine what that buyout amount would be. And that formula is just not relevant anymore. Their business has changed, they've restructured, they have more people, there's a lot of moving parts, and they're not accounting for those. So that, that's one of the, the things to do is just look at it and see, you know, where are we

 

Forrest (16:56):

At? Dust it off, right? Yeah. You know,

 

Chris (16:58):

It should be reviewed at least annually. Yeah.

 

Forrest (17:00):

That was gonna be my next question, is how often doesn't

 

Chris (17:02):

Yeah. Doesn't, yeah, it doesn't matter. If you do anything with it or not, you may not need to change anything, but that's, that's the case with a lot of things. You just wanna look at it, make sure it's still good, if it's good, you know, put it back on the shelf and look at it again next year. But yeah, that is a big concern. You know, so I generally am working with one of the owners on that just to kind of, because I, you know, it, when you start looking at the business as a whole, there's a lot of people and they all have different motives where they want to go. So for me, it's, it's really important just to understand that one. Now I'll help facilitate conversations with the other owners and help 'em bring things to the table, talking about, you know, having an advisory board and things like that in place. But at the end of the day, for me, I really enjoy with the individual owners on their personal stuff too. So being able to help that, that person to get where they're trying to go that's a lot of fun.

 

Forrest (17:59):

Yeah. I would imagine there's a lot of business owners that their businesses, their retirement, you know, oh, most of'em, they've cashed in their 401k, they've cashed in their IRA to start the business, and that's their sole source of retirement income. <Laugh>.

 

Chris (18:11):

Yeah, no, no doubt. And you might find it surprising I read an article the other day that was talking about I forget the research paper, but it, it mentioned that most businesses that have a 401K plan or some form of retirement plan, the employees generally are better off and have more saved than the owner. Hmm. No, it sounds, I mean, and it sounds funny, right? Yeah. It's like, well, man, they have it. They're not even putting money in and they can put the most money in of anyone there. But the thing is, is they're not putting their money in into that. They're putting it into the business because that's where they're getting the most growth, right? And so, right. A lot of the owners I've talked with, like I said, they want to have financial advice, they need that, but the conversation is always driven towards investments. Well, they have a great investment, they don't need all these other things. Most they

 

Forrest (19:00):

Have control over that investment. Right? Or like, some of that control.

 

Chris (19:02):

And most of them, you know, they're, they're skeptical of the stock market because they see all the fluctuations. And in your business, you're not seeing those fluctuations. You're seeing what you do every day and it's always growing. Sometimes it's down, but for the most part, you have a lot more control over it. So, you know, that's kind of that, that disconnect there is they, they see their business, it's a great asset, has a lot of growth potential compared to really any other investment. So why wouldn't they put their money there? Right. Right. So my goal is just to help, you know, diversify that a little bit, cuz you've got all your eggs in one basket, right, <laugh>.

 

Forrest (19:39):

Yeah. I, I think back to the days for, for those of you who don't know me well, but I used to be a pool player and I will not, I've been to Vegas many a times, I've never pulled the slot machine, but when I was a pool player, I would gamble on myself playing pool. It's kinda like in business, if you own that business, you have a little bit more control and a little more have ability to make an impact on

 

Chris (20:01):

Your and the confidence.

 

Forrest (20:02):

Confidence and the confidence. Yeah. Yeah. So you, you mentioned a little bit, but I want to try to put some, some bookends around. What, what's a typical ideal client for you? If you had the, the perfect client out there in the marketplace, what is a typical perfect client for you?

 

Chris (20:18):

Yeah, really it, it comes down to the mentality that you have. As an owner, do you want to have a business that is sellable? Right? Do you want to have a strategy where you can for sure, you know, exit your business and have the wealth that you need to live that next stage of life? Because like I said, there's 78% of you out there that do you want to have a business that you can sell, and in reality, only 20% of them will. Right? So it comes down to that mindset. I mean, like I said, from a business perspective, you need to have the income, you need to have a business that is, is sellable, right? So if you've got something, you're profitable, you've got the cashflow really the better or the earlier that you start your exit strategy, the better. Right?

(21:08):

So at the end of the day, you know, you really need at least five years before you're kind of expecting to exit because, you know, depending on the size of your business, if you're in that lower middle market or, or just the upper end of the, the, I guess you could say the main street businesses, then it's going to take probably two years to get through the actual sale of your business because there's gonna be that due diligence period and they're gonna dive into everything. Right? So you need to have a little bit of time before that to kind of get things in order, clean up, get ready. Yeah. Right. So kind of at, at the end of the day, it's like you need to be at least five years out or before, preferably before, because the earlier you start, I mean, if you started when you started your business, you just have a plan in place, the plan's gonna change. Yeah. Yeah. You don't, you don't have to say like, I'm gonna sell it to a strategic buyer 15 years from now.

Forrest (22:00):

Yeah.

 

Chris (22:01):

It doesn't matter if you say that it's probably not gonna happen. But if you are aware of your options, you know, what types of exit strategies there are, because there's a lot of 'em out there. And, and most of the time we only focus on two.

 

Forrest (22:14):

Yeah.

 

Chris (22:15):

So,

 

Forrest (22:16):

Yeah. One of the things that talk about eos, cuz we talk about that a lot on this podcast, is that there's a process you go through when you start a business where you build out your vto, it's called a vision traction organizer. And in that process, you look five years out, 10 years out, three years out, and build what the business looks like. The beautiful thing is it's, it's an idea and a plan, but yet the plan can change. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, the business model may change, the valuations may change, the exit strategy may change, but if you don't start out from the beginning at least having a concept of where you want to go with it, you're just gonna be floundering around. So, yeah.

 

Chris (22:52):

Yeah. So as a yeah. By nature, I'm a, a financial planner, right? But I've also had a lot of training in being an exit planning advisor. And one of the things that I learned through the estate planning, or not the estate planning, the exit planning institute, is that there's this, they call it the value acceleration methodology and vam. So essentially when you start thinking of exit planning, like I said, it's just good business strategy, right? But if you focus on what most people would call exit planning, it's all about the future. It's all about the exit. And even there, there mean there's tons of publications out there. Even the exit planning community as a whole tends to focus on the exit, which it's really not about that. It's about creating a process to build value so that you have a business you can sell.

(23:43):

And the way that that kind of works is essentially there's, there's three stages to that. So the first stage is really to get an assessment of where you're at, to know, Hey, what's my business worth? You don't have to know exactly what dollar amount you have. You just need to kind of know, are you on the upper end or the, the lower end of the scale, and how do you compare to others in your industry? So you want to get an idea of what your business value is. That might be an opinion from a business broker or an m and a advisor. Just get a starting point. And the same thing's true for your personal finances. Like, you need to know, how much money do I need? How much money am I spending right now? Because most of the owners I talk with, they run so much through their business that they, they don't really have a clear picture of how much they need personally.

 

Forrest (24:28):

Yeah. I think I saw you mention that in one of your posts Yeah. Is that there's a lot of business owners that when they're thinking about exiting,

they don't even know how much money they need to make Yeah. To live comfortably because they're running so much through the business.

 

Chris (24:39):

Yeah. And so, you know, you might, I ask that question a lot, and the answer I get is, you know, 5 million. I'm like, well, why that number? It's like, well, I'll probably lose, you know, a third of it to taxes. And it's like, okay but why that number? It's like, it just sounded good. It's a nice round number that'll leave me a few million dollars to live on. I can do that. But it's not really about whether you can live on that amount of money. It's, is that the right amount of money. So, so that first stage is really just identify where you're at, know what your business is worth, know how much you need. The next stage is to put a plan in place, like to start mapping out, you know, how you want to grow your business if you need it to grow.

(25:22):

Because in that first stage, if you've identified I need, you know, 10 million to live comfortably, and your business is only at six, you've got some work to do. Right? Or you have to adjust what your plans are for that next stage. So putting a plan in place, like you said, you, you guys use the, the EOS and the rocks and, and that's a great system from the business perspective, right? It gives you those clear sets of goals and, and you know, what you're working towards over that long-term period. But then also backing it down into, you know, the five year, the three year, the one year, quarterly, monthly, and then weekly at the end of the day having an extra strategy. It comes down to executing things today, right? Right. You've gotta start with that today. And the same thing's true on your personal finances.

(26:11):

You've gotta start making the right decisions today to set yourself up for later. So once you have an idea of where you're at in your business, and then you know, you know what that next, what your plan is, like, how you're going to grow, and I don't do that. I'm not the guy that goes into the business and, and fixes those things and, and helps develop that. There's really great advisors that I rely on to do that part of it while I focus more on the personal and the financial side, because they're all equally important. Without one, you know, the whole thing kind of collapses. So once you are, you know, going through that process and it's a process of repetition, you're gonna go through it over and over because that's what execution is, right? You just constantly, the goals are changing. You've got the next step.

(26:56):

So every 90 days or so, you see like, okay, am I ready to exit now? Well, I mean, if you're having fun and you're growing your business, like no, you're not, you're not ready. But you're, you're thinking about it, right? You're just seeing where you're at and you're able to track that progress. And so eventually you'll get to a point where you start feeling that call, like, maybe I'm ready to do something else. You know? And then when you hit that point, that's when you're kind of at that last stage, like making the decision. And then that's when you really truly evaluate, okay, who do I want to sell it to? Why do I want to go that way? You know, is it going to be a sale to your employees? Is it going to be to a third party? Is it an owner operator, somebody that wants to come in and maybe it's like you, they wanna run the business. Right. You know or it might be a, a strategic buyer, somebody that, that sees something special that you have in your business that you've developed, whether that's a process or

 

Forrest (27:51):

RP or something.

 

Chris (27:51):

Yeah. You know, something of that nature. They can, you know, they may pay top dollar for that because they, they see it as a great add-on. They may not care about every part of your business, and there might be a part of your business that you love that they don't <laugh>. Right. They're like,

 

Forrest (28:06):

Your baby's ugly, that part.

 

Chris (28:06):

Right? They're like yeah. Yeah. So it's like, you know, I know you love this part, we're gonna scrap that, but we're gonna take this part and I'm willing to pay you twice as much as you would've gotten for the other. Yeah. So

 

Forrest (28:18):

That, that's good advice, good process to lay out for people. So with your clients, you know, what do, what do you think your clients find the, as the most surprised when you counsel them? What's, what's the, the big thing that you see people go, wow, didn't even think about that?

 

Chris (28:35):

Well, there's, there's two things really. The, the first one is that they've been planning on being able to sell their business. And they have an idea from what they've heard out there, that they know what their business is worth. And then the first step that I say is like, let's get a, you know, an opinion of the value. It's always below what they thought always. I've never had one that was higher <laugh>, so that's never

 

Forrest (28:57):

Had one surprised in a positive

 

Chris (28:59):

Way. Right. Right. You know, that's like, that first shock is that they realize, wow I'm behind. Right. And that's, I mean, we always feel behind as, as an owner, like you're, you're constantly feeling like you're behind you. You're always trying to grow, so you're never going to be ahead. Right. so that's kind of the first thing is that just realizing that, hey, maybe I don't have everything quite as buttoned up as I need to. That's a big shock. But then the next, the next thing is that just realizing the tax burden, like a lot of 'em really don't account for it. You know, think, okay, I'll sell my business for whatever amount, and you know, of 'em will think, wow, you know, I can take 30% off the top, but that's not, that doesn't have to be the case. You don't have to pay a lot of those taxes up front.

(29:51):

I mean, there's a lot of ways that you can structure the sale. Depends on, you know, if you're selling goodwill or you selling assets, you know, real estate, like where's the, the value from your business, where's it coming from? How do you structure that? And then if you, you know, start early enough, you can put plans in place to, you know, really push out that tax burden for 10 plus years, which most think it's gonna be due on the day, day to day, receive that check. You know? And that's just not the case. And so I can't tell you how many conversations I've had around that, where they realize like, wow, like, I didn't know there were strategies out there. You know, you hear about the, the strategies that only the wealthy know. A lot of people know 'em, but you're just not asking the right questions. Right.

Forrest (30:38):

Well, you've been a wealth of knowledge on this. I think it's, it's helpful for any business owner, any owner of a business to be thinking about the future and thinking about what to do and, and how to prepare their business. Is there any other advice you can think of that you want to give out? You've given a lot today, but what other advice would you like to hand out before we end? Yeah,

 

Chris (30:57):

I would say just don't be afraid to start. Right? I mean, have the realization that you, you may be behind where you need to be, but don't let that stop you from starting. Just like, it didn't stop you from starting your business. Right. You, you know that it's going to be tough. You know, there's going to be challenges, but that's why you love your business is because it challenges you every day to keeps you on your game. Right. I mean, a lot of people feel like if they ever quit, they'd die. You know, they're just like, I'm just gonna do this until I die because I can't imagine doing anything else. Right. So, you know, at the end of the day, it's not about selling your business, it's just about having a business that can be sold so that, you know, if something happens to you, your family's taken care of, your employees are taken care of. Like, there's, there's things in place just to make sure that your business and the legacy that you want to have lives on beyond you.

 

Forrest (31:49):

It sounds like the earlier you get started, the better. So I know you said five to 10 years before the business exit, but you know, it's kinda like retirement. The sooner you start putting money into a 401k, the bigger the nest egg's gonna be.

 

Chris (32:01):

Absolutely. So, you know, most people don't start the process until they're filling that mental call that I'm getting tired, or I'm ready to do something different. And at that point, you're not giving yourself really much time when, if you would've just started years ago when you weren't ready to sell, you're gonna be in a much better position and you're gonna have more opportunities to sell.

 

Forrest (32:28):

Yeah.

 

Chris (32:29):

So

 

Forrest (32:30):

Don't put it off right now. Right? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, appreciate your time today, Chris. Thanks for coming in and talking to us about business valuations and exit planning and, and how do you get your business prepared to sell. I hope this has been a, a good podcast for everybody. Hope you've learned something and we'll be including the information, how you can get in touch with Chris on the website when this is posted. So appreciate your time, everybody. Have a great Yeah. Thanks for having me. All right. Bye.