Your Orlando Florida Business Broker

Legal Due Diligence at the M&A January 22, 2016  by  Michael Shea PA Although Josh Logan at Achieve Legal in Orlando has oriented this to the M&A level of business sales there are some lessons to be learned from this youtube video. Good Legal counsel is critical in a deal.  Filed Under:  Buy a Business ,  Immigration and Business Buying for Foreign Nationals ,  Selling A Business, Selling Your Company Tagged With:  #business #businessbroker #sell your business ,  #buyabusiness #businessbuyer #Buyereducation ,  #buyabusiness #sellingabusiness #merger #aquisition ,  #sellingabusiness #sellerfinance #buyingabusiness ,  due diligence ,  Transworld

10 Questions You Must Ask Before Buying a Business May 20, 2015  by  Michael Shea PA 10 Questions You Must Ask Before Buying a Business 10 Questions You Must Ask Before Buying a Business 1. What are your biggest challenges right now? You want be aware of potential minefields. For example, if you’re buying a company that will need $1 million in capital improvements, you need to learn that upfront while you’re still negotiating the purchase. 2. What would you have done differently? This question can get the owner talking about opportunities he didn’t pursue but would have liked to. This question could help you learn how much growth potential the business offers — from untapped markets to additional product lines to new marketing opportunities. 3. How did you arrive at your asking price? Often, sellers will base their asking price on arbitrary factors such as how much money they’ll need to move on with their life. Find out what quantitative information they ha...

Why Use Transworld to Sell Your Business? March 12, 2015  by  Michael Shea PA   (Edit) When asked why someone should use Transworld Business Advisors to sell their business over other Brokerages a Picture is worth a thousand words.  Selling a business is a complicated matter with many moving parts and variables not the least of which is the legal, financial and procedural pitfalls that can occur when the transaction is not handled properly. When selling your business use a professional that has sold over 200 transacations successfully in over a decade. Filed Under:  Buy a Business ,  Immigration and Business Buying for Foreign Nationals ,  Selling A Business, Selling Your Company ,  Uncategorized Tagged With:  #business #businessbroker #sell your business ,  #business sale ,  #sellingabusiness #sellerfinance #buyingabusiness

Selling a Business March 25, 2015  by  Michael Shea PA   (Edit) Selling a Business When contemplating your exit from your business, you will require specialist advice from seasoned business brokers. Similar to most business owners, you will have a majority of your capital tied up in the business itself. If the sales process is handled poorly, there may be serious financial implications. Problems can arise from: Breaches in confidentiality The business being valued incorrectly Not pre-qualifying potential buyers and knowing they are genuine Recognizing the intentions of the buyer Incorrectly prepared sale & purchase agreement documents Poor management of the due diligence process Enticing the wrong buyers through poorly structured promo material The Transworld Business Advisors Process Selling a business is a complex process, requiring a high level of brokering skill. The Transworld team is made up of senior brokers, with a remarkable track reco...

Rules of Thumb are for the birds October 11, 2015  by  Michael Shea PA   (Edit) In the world of small business sales and mergers and acquisitions every buyer thinks every business is overpriced and every seller thinks its worth more than what you tell them. Over the years “industry experts” of which I am apparently one, bandy about “rules of thumb”. In other words….business X sells at 2 x cash flow or 70% of sales etc etc etc. I recently had a broker call me up and tell me that a business was overpriced (not her job) and that the proper valuation method was a $ value per customer. Oddly enough a month prior she had a different position entirely (#notethesarcasm). Valuation is an art and there is data to support proper pricing. But in simplest terms there is not one method that is correct; however sellers need to be particularly cognizant of market dynamics like supply and demand and inventory levels. Yes even in small business sale and mergers when inventory...

Let's get one thing straight right now.   If you are  looking for the perfect business, stop looking, it doesn't exist.   And if you really want to buy a business you need to settle!  That's right buying a business is a lot like being in a bar at 2am...ponder on that for a moment.   Seriously all businesses have their drawbacks, risks, pain points, skeletons in the closet and warts.     Your job is to find them all, understand them completely, decide if you can manage them and if they will stop you from buying. Let look at some of the business attributes you will want to rate: Income - This is my number 1 concern.   You are not buying a hobby, you want to buy a future  income stream.    So you want to know if it is provable, sustainable, and can you grow it. Length in business  - I love businesses that have been around for more than 5-10 years.   You should too.   Customer...

Let's get one thing straight right now.   If you are  looking for  the perfect business, stop looking, it doesn't exist.   And if you really want to buy a business you need to settle!  That's right buying a business is a lot like being in a bar at 2am...ponder on that for a moment.   Seriously all businesses have their drawbacks, risks, pain points, skeletons in the closet and warts.     Your job is to find them all, understand them completely, decide if you can manage them and if they will stop you from buying. Let look at some of the business attributes you will want to rate: Income - This is my number 1 concern.   You are not buying a hobby, you want to buy a future  income stream.    So you want to know if it is provable, sustainable, and can you grow it. Length in business  - I love businesses that have been around for more than 5-10 years.   You should too.   Cu...

A Skilled Lawyer is Needed in a Business Sale November 29, 2016  by  Michael Shea PA   (Edit) A lawyer I do business with quite a bit emailed me last night and asked “what is going on?” “Why are so many deals dying?” My response was somewhat anecdotal but simply “there are allot of attorneys doing some crazy things lately,” to which he replied with some recent experiences to validate that assertion. The dirty little secret in business sales is there are deal makers and deal breakers and a great many attorneys fall in the bucket of deal breakers. The successful sale or purchase of a business is in large part a function of the principal (buyer or seller) picking the right team: attorney, business broker, and accountant. Each must know their job and how they function within the framework of a team of counselors working toward an end. This team must communicate in a timely manner, leverage the roles of the other transaction partners, and work toward a goal while p...

Price vs Value in buying a business December 29, 2015  by  Michael Shea PA PRICE: The amount of dollars or consideration a buyer agrees to pay and a seller agrees to accept under specific circumstances surrounding a transaction. VALUE: The worth of something There is is….two simple definitions that drive the question of every #business sale in Orlando and anywhere else. Add to that mix conundrum the many #advisors and #opinions that get thrown into the mix and you get a scary statistic. Namely less than 20% of all businesses that go to market sell. I could go on for days about business value but the simple answer to this challenge is deals only get done when one does not fixate on value or price (buyer or seller) and each party recognizes the deal has to work for both. Some things to recognize in no particular order: 1. There is a vibrant and fluid marketplace here in Florida. Business sales are tracked far more closely than any other state in the union so th...

Books and Records what do they mean July 28, 2015  by  Michael Shea PA Buying a business is a scary thing. And there is a direct correlation with the quality of the records and the sale “ability” of the deal. The simple fact is that buyers and their advisers relay upon those books to prove to them what the business is really doing. That being said there are some realities that buyers need to live with. 1. Being a business owner is hard and taxes on business owners makes it very difficult to operate. The simple fact is that banks generally do not lend or offer favorable lending terms to business owners. In almost every circumstance I have ever seen the operators of businesses use credit cards, lines of equity, and personal guarantees to finance operations. Regardless of your political position this is reality and business owners have to scrape and scratch to survive in a less than business friendly environment. So what does that mean to you? It means you need to under...

Business Valuation of Vacation Rental Property Management In Central Florida March 6, 2015  by  Michael Shea PA   (Edit) Anyone remotely aware of the small business market in Central Florida is no doubt aware that the sale of vacation rental management companies is a significant portion of the market place. For the past several years I have sold dozens of these companies and have come across some really bizarre statements from buyers and brokers alike about what is the methodology for valuing one of these companies. The purpose of this blog post is to provide what i hope is some reasonableness to what I think is the appropriate methodology for valuation. Some background first: There are some 17,000 or more homes and growing of properties that are in specific zoned zip codes where this type of business can be conducted. The number of companies handling services known as vacation rental management are @500 or more. An absolute number for this is not definitivel...

Murphys Law in Business Sales / Mergers & Acquisitions February 11, 2016  by  Michael Shea PA Did you know that in Business Sales Nationally less than 20% of the businesses listed ever sell. Did you also know that 50% of what goes to contract dies before it ever gets to closing. Now with those types of statistics one would think that you would vet and choose your professional business broker or intermediary with a bit more caution and thought but you would be surprised. All of the deals and all of the failures add up to experience and lessons learned and when interviewing a broker you should insure they have been in the trenches and got deals done. The ability to anticipate, forecast issues and navigate the process is vital to the successful sale of a business. Degrees Matter, Certifications Matter but give me the scarred veteran any day of the week. For more on this topic and many other items related to selling and buying a business go to our website at  ht...