Selling your Business – Valuations

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Hi this is Judi Otton with GrowthCast and today we are continuing our series on exiting your business. Today I want to talk to you about valuations, and I want to give you three things to think about with respect to valuations. The first one is, do it early. Even if you’re thinking about exiting your business in five years, it’s great to get a baseline valuation as soon as this is a thought in your head because if the valuation is not what you expected, or not what you need it to be, you have time to do something about it. I know it’s gonna cost you money but this is a great investment especially if you want to get the most out of your sale. Second of all, this isn’t something you can do yourself. I know there are formulas on the internet and yes, I’m sure you can run the calculations in Excel but there’s so much non quantifiable stuff that factors into a valuation. For example, how strong is your team or how dependent are you on a small set of customers or vendors and many many other subjective things that factor into the valuation. Also valuation experts have the ability to research comparable sales so they’ll be able to see what businesses like yours have been selling for. So yes, you are going to have to hire a professional to do this. And finally, try not to take it personally. This can be a very emotional thing for business owners. We’ve all built our businesses from scratch. They’re our babies. You may also be be dependent on this. This may be your single biggest investment so you may be dependent on this for your retirement. But we’ve all got blind spots we all don’t see all the things in our business that an objective outsider will see and don’t be upset if it’s lower than you expected because if you did it early and if you ask the valuation expert for ideas on how to improve your valuation, you have time to make a difference. Next week I’m going to be talking to you about what your financials need to look like in order to exit your business in the best way possible. So I’ll see you next week. This is Judi Otton and from GrowthCast with your Fiscal Fitness Tip of the Week.