Do you know the Golden Rule for selling your business and maximizing value?
You should.
After all, you have one chance to get it right when selling your business. Don’t blow it.
What about having the best investment banker, exit team, and business model?
When it comes to maximizing the value, you have order qualifiers and order winners. An order qualifier is what you need to be in the game. An order winner takes you over-the-top.
The best investment banker, exit team, and business model are order qualifiers.
What is the Golden Rule for selling your business, and how do I know?
I was that kid right out of school who started his EdTech with no money, experience, or team. Despite the odds, my EdTech became the industry leader and a success.
The first offer to buy my business came from a sophisticated and savvy buyer from a Fortune 10 company. In reality, the buyer was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and it showed.
I turned down the 7-figure three times EBITDA offer with the promise to master the art of selling a business. It wasn’t long before I immersed myself in the world of mergers and acquisitions.
What I learned shocked me to the core. Most sellers lose the battle on the value before they’ve even begun. What you don’t know can and will hurt you.
My exit playbook came from the trenches and strategies that had a track record of success. It was two years later when I sold my EdTech for a 9-figure offer based on 13 times EBITDA.
What made the difference, you ask?
The Golden Rule for selling your business.
What is the Golden Rule for selling your business, and how do you prosper from it?
Keep reading.
The Golden Rule For Selling Your Business Is An Order Winner, Not An Order Qualifier
It is not enough to know what is good: you must be able to do it – George Bernard Shaw
Your future depends on you mastering the Golden Rule for selling your business.
Enough with the suspense, you say. Tell me what this mysterious Golden Rule for selling your business, you demand.
Your wish is my command.
To master the Golden Rule for selling your business, understand the buyer mindset.
In a general sense, buyers have ‘order qualifiers’ and ‘order winners’ for buying a business.
What are order qualifiers for buyers, you ask?
Your future buyer wants to know that your company runs without you.
Don’t even think about passing ‘go’ if you don’t have thorough financial reporting. And speaking of financials, buyers look for happy customers and a track record of profits.
Another order qualifier is ensuring your business model that doesn’t suck.
It always helps the sales process and company value with strong company culture.
Each item above is an order qualifier.
Know this and know this well. Order qualifiers on their own are not enough to have buyers either move forward or pay a premium.
Not having order qualifiers will either prevent a sale or lower your value (a lot).
So what is this Golden Rule for selling your business, you ask?
That’s the precise topic of the next section. Keep reading.
Revealed: The Golden Rule For Selling Your Business Every Seller Must Have To Prosper
The worst financial transaction you will ever make is selling yourself short – Greg Gilbert
The Golden Rule for selling your business in one word:
Hope.
Give your buyer hope for a better tomorrow.
Buyers can buy companies that run without you, have a great business model, and a rich culture all day long.
Buyers want a company that has a bright and prosperous future.
What represents a bright and prosperous future to a buyer are things that you either haven’t yet done or can’t do.
Have you been struggling to enter a new market that you neither have the time nor money to pursue?
What may seem like a so-called failure to you is gold to your future buyer.
Your future buyer brings resources, experience, and money that you don’t have.
And this, my Rockstar entrepreneur, is a great attribute.
Speaking of winning attributes, read 5 Reasons You Suck At Selling Your Business (And How To Fix Them)
Don’t hide your so-called failures. Promote your failures like there’s no tomorrow.
Do you have a dream for your business that you can’t usher into reality?
Great, tell your future buyer all about it.
Paint the picture of what you want with your company, but haven’t had the time, money, or expertise.
Not sure where to find your field of dreams?
No worries.
A smart Chief Exit Officer helps you uncover untapped opportunities in your business.
And the best news is if you don’t end up selling your company, you have a road map for success.
Follow the Golden Rule for selling your business and unlock your sweet success.
How do you do this, you ask?
Keep reading.
The Golden Rule For Selling Your Business Has You Find What Keeps Your Customers Up At Nights
Every problem has a gift for you in its hands – Richard Bach
Your success came from being the best in the world to solve a painful problem. You solved the painful problem so well, your customers pay you to take your pain away.
Times change.
And so do problems.
With your success comes new challenges. And opportunities.
Providing hope for your future buyer is finding new problems for your business to solve.
Solving new problems take your business to new markets and usher in opportunity.
[tweet_box design=”default” url=”https://jef.tips/j13grfs16″ float=”none”]Solve painful problems, and you change lives while building your empire[/tweet_box].
How do you find painful problems that you’re passionate to solve?
Ask your customers one question:
What keeps you up at nights?
A quick story.
My EdTech, Embanet, solved the problem of keeping online students in their seats.
What made Embanet go from good to great with a 9-figure exit?
I put the original Embanet, let’s call it ‘Embanet 1’, out of business with ‘Embanet 2.’
How?
I asked my customers what kept them up at nights.
It wasn’t long before I learned that filling the seats was the new so-called problem.
Embanet 2 solved the problem of filling the seats and made Embanet 1 a rounding error in profits.
The best days of Embanet 2 were still ahead but limited to my team and myself based on our experience and capital.
The Golden Rule for selling your business, in this case, Embanet, was too tempting for the buyer to pass by.
Hopes were high that Embanet could go further and do even more with new leadership and capital.
And that’s exactly what happened after the sale.
Solve the problem of what keeps your customers up at nights. In the process, you follow the Golden Rule for selling your business.
Everyone wins.
Why The Golden Rule For Selling Your Business Works
Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible – Helen Keller
When you follow the Golden Rule for selling your business, you welcome success.
Why?
Your investment bankers will tell you, as they told me, that facts, figures, and data is what creates value. Not hope.
Expect to hear, many times, that the value for your company is a calculation in a spreadsheet cell.
Right?
Wrong.
Know this and know this well.
People buy on emotion first and justify the action with logic later.
Your future buyer is no exception.
The feeling of hope is part of the human experience, and often, the one thing that has people say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no.’
Hope that there are better days ahead for your business is where opportunity is born and dreams made.
When your buyer asks you to paint the future for your business, you better be brash, bold, and hopeful.
Anything less and you’re not believing in your business. If you don’t believe in your business, why should others?
The hope of a better tomorrow has buyers pay a high premium for your business. All day. Every day.
The Golden Rule of selling your business has you show both how and why better days are ahead.
Entrepreneurs always have and will continue to be problem solvers.
The intersection of transforming the “impossible” into “I’m possible” is where the magic happens.
Bottom line is the bottom line.
The more hope you instill in your buyer, the more value your future buyer places on your business.
Long live the Golden Rule of selling your business.
Why The Power Of Hope Can Make You A Prince Or A Pauper When Selling Your Business
The Golden Rule for selling your business helps you prosper and succeed. Period. End of story.
The best investment banker and exit team can only do so much in the mind of the buyer.
The hope of a better tomorrow gives your buyer the confidence to put a high value on your company.
If there’s no hope for your business future, your buyer will either lower your value (a lot) or walk.
Why is the Golden Rule for selling so effective at increasing value?
The heart of being an entrepreneur is finding a big problem you’re passionate to solve. The problem creates so much pain that people pay you to remove the pain.
Sound familiar?
This is how you started your business and achieved success.
The Golden Rule for selling your business is at the heart of entrepreneurialism.
Your business success today is no guarantee for success tomorrow.
Continue to find and remove the pain of your customers’ experience, and you live another day.
In the process, you give yourself hope that tomorrow you can help more people and earn more profits.
And it’s the hope that’s at the heart of the Golden Rule for selling your business.
It’s the same hope that takes your business from good to great in the mind of your future buyer.
The first offer to buy my business was a 7-figure offer based on three times EBITDA. Two years later, my same business received a 9-figure offer based on thirteen times EBITDA.
What made the difference?
The Golden Rule for selling your business. The same process helped me put my original business out of business.
And it was the same process that enabled the buyer to have the hope that the same would occur again. And it did.
Conclusion
The Golden Rule for selling your business is often misunderstood at best or ignored at worst.
The so-called experts insist that the value of your business comes from hard data, not hope.
As usual, the so-called experts are wrong.
How is it that companies with no profits go public with a billion dollar (or more) valuation?
Hope.
Investors have hope that tomorrow will usher in profits and world domination.
Whether the investors are right, or not, isn’t the focus of our discussion. Instead, read the article Cockroach Startups: What You Need To Know To Succeed And Prosper.
What do investors buying companies with no profits show?
The power and effectiveness of the Golden Rule for selling your business.
And I should know.
I was the kid right out of school who started his EdTech with no money, experience, or team.
By operating as a cockroach startup, I beat the odds and built my EdTech to become an industry leader.
Along the way, I turned down a 7-figure three times EBITDA offer. Two years later, I welcomed a 9-figure thirteen times EBITDA offer.
What made the difference?
The Golden Rule for selling your company.
Sell your business or keep it forever, you’ll always prosper when you follow the Golden Rule.
And the great news is that you already have everything you need right now.
What are you waiting for?
You can do it. I know you can.
Here’s to you and your success.
Your BIGGEST Raving Fan,
Jeffrey Feldberg
Today, Feldberg's passion is helping you extract your deep wealth. The 90-day Deep Wealth Mastery program helps create a solid foundation for three areas: increasing profits to enterprise value and optimizing post-exit life. Deep Wealth Mastery offers strategies and insights drawn from Feldberg's rich experience. The strategies from the trenches get results. Jeffrey's vision is to increase the social fabric of society one entrepreneur at a time.
Learn more through https://iapdw.com/prosper
