#4 Sell to Someone Like You

The world:  Most of us small business owners do OK competing with the big businesses in our industries or we don't survive. But when it comes to our exit strategy and succession planning, most of us fall on our face.

This episode is to explore business valuation and exit strategies.

An exit strategy is just like doing a will, but here you try to maximize the dollars you get out of your life's work.   Nobody wants to see you liquidate. That's getting pennies on your dollars. Tangible assets get sold (fire sales) and the intangibles are lost forever. Liquidation is the worst kind of liquidity.  

Most of us will sell our business through merger or acquisition. But, if we get much over two-to-three times sales or six times earnings, we all think we've done very well. Yet, when big business sells, they usually begin at six times earnings. Then we see 40 times and even 300 times earnings on the open markets. Why should we be satisfied with so little?

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