This is the first time I’ve described all of the things we did wrong the first time I tried to sell a business. It’s also the story of the first time I lost several million dollars.
How Not to Sell a Business – Don’t Blow The Biggest Deal of Your Life
This is a talk I gave to the Vancouver Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) on February 19, 2009. It is consistently the most viewed video on my blog.
In this talk, I compare my first experience selling a business to a more recent one where everything was perfectly planned and executed.
Part 1:
- This is the first time I’ve described all of the things we did wrong the first time I sold a business. It’s also the story of the first time I lost several million dollars.
- During this presentation, I compare my first business sale to a more recent one where everything was perfectly planned and executed.
- My story begins with the launch of my first company, Nexus Engineering, while I was still in university.
Part 2:
- I wish we had done a secondary sale before we sold the business.
- I confess that we had never discussed our exit strategy.
- We start to learn about exit strategies at the worst possible time.
- We make the classic error of having the CEO sell the business.
- I learn that every business sale needs multiple bidders.
- What happened because we hadn’t checked the alignment on our exit strategy.
Part 3:
- Painful lessons about how nasty take-over battles can get when you sell a business.
- I was a rookie and ended up playing defense all the way through.
- We finally get the business sold, but my regret was that we ‘rode it over the top’.
- It took me another ten years to understand all the things we did wrong.
- The truth is… we were lucky. To this day, I wish we’d had a good exit strategy and checked the alignment before we started to sell the business.
Part 4:
- This is the story of the Parasun business sale – where we did everything perfectly.
- We developed alignment on a simple exit strategy at an offsite planning retreat.
- At Parasun, we successfully executed two secondary sales before we sold the business.
- We sell the business right on schedule, but the price was 48% higher than the target.
- A comparison on the Nexus and Parasun exits – what to do and what not to do selling your business.
Click here for the Part 1 video.
Many of these lessons are described in my new book on selling businesses for entrepreneurs and angel investors – www.Early-Exits.com.
If you enjoyed this video, you might also like this one on Exit Strategies or this series on Maximizing Value in Business Sales.
Great presentation! It gets right to the point and offer advise you can use.
I think it’s a good read for any entrepreneur. Selling your company requires planning from the start, before you’ve even made your first dollar.
Refurb – glad you found it informative.
great presentation, wish i had the information 30 years ago
Hi Terry,
I wish I didn’t have to learn those lessons the hard way :-).
Basil
Great information.
Glad you found it valuable, Martin.
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