They Say No One Will Buy Your Business? Think Again

Many highly successful and profitable businesses are built on personal goodwill – the trust and relationships with customers and clients built by the owner. These businesses often generate significant cash flow and provide an excellent personal income with few fixed assets in the company.

The owner kept hearing “you can’t possibly sell this kind of a business … there’s no value if you’re not there … you just have to wind it down.”

Yet when the owner of just such a business started thinking about retirement after many successful years of serving the construction industry, he kept hearing “you can’t possibly sell this kind of a business … there’s no value if you’re not there … you just have to wind it down.”

When the owner approached Bridgepoint to discuss a professional valuation for the company, business broker and founder Travis Kellett saw the value the others had missed. “All of a sudden the lights went on,” the owner recalled. “Travis immediately saw the potential for a new owner to capitalize on the contacts and relationships I’d built up over the years.”

“Travis immediately saw the potential to capitalize on the contacts and relationships I’d built up over the years.”

Putting a realistic number on that value required highly-specialized experience and expertise. “I had people telling me the business was worth nothing. I had others telling me I should get a couple of million in cash. Travis was the only one who came up with a number that he could explain in plain English … a number that not only made sense to me, but was higher than I had ever expected.”

The business sold in five months for 97% of the asking price.

That price and the structure of the deal made sense to the buyers as well. The business sold in five months for 97% of the high six-figure asking price, with a healthy piece of the payment in cash. Bridgepoint structured a tax-efficient share sale that benefitted both seller and buyer.

Kellett feels this successful transaction proves that every business sale or purchase is an individual case. “When you look for the value in a business, you have to forget what ‘everybody says’. No two businesses are exactly the same. In this case we were able to turn the significant amount of personal goodwill the owner had built up over the years into business goodwill and show the buyers how that represented real value for them.”

“We were able to turn the personal goodwill the owner had built up over the years into business goodwill and show the buyers how that represented real value for them.”

Find out how Bridgepoint Business Brokers can unlock the hidden value in your business. Call Travis at 306-979-8750 or click to email Travis.