Your Orlando Florida Business Broker

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...

The Role of the Business Broker in a Business Sale September 15, 2015  by  Michael Shea PA We are certainly in interesting times. I recently put to market a #property #management company. Here in #Orlando these #businesses are highly sought after. It is a fragmented industry where the operational model ranges from owner operator to web based platforms with multi revenue streams. In Orlando, there are something like 700 of these companies of varying sizes ranging from mom and pop operations to publicly traded entities. Anyway when these things come to market the wolves come to dinner namely larger companies trying to scale come to the game and try to beat down a seller by telling them “how valuations are done” and “what the rule of thumbs are for selling prices”. So back to my title….”What is the role of the Business Broker in the Business Sale?” It is in short to drive competition to create as high a demand for the business and subsequently the highest price for the ...