Say Hello to Christopher Jadhav, a business intermediary at Sunbelt Business Brokers. Christopher works with lower mid-market M&A clients and is a subject matter expert on investment in business immigration to Canada. He works extensively with domestic and international buyers.
What does a business broker do?
Let’s start at the beginning. Where is support typically necessary in Christopher’s world of business brokering? Well, in the areas of business valuations, confidential marketing, attracting/screening buyers, as well as negotiation and closing of deals that provide value for both sides of the transaction.
His firm, Sunbelt, is the world’s largest business brokerage with approximately 250 licensed offices globally. More than 1,400 Sunbelt brokers annually coordinate an estimated 4,000 Main Street and Middle Market business transactions.
Historically, Christopher says, their primary focus has been on Main Street business transactions, which is defined as businesses with sales of less than $5M. Main Street businesses typically include franchised and non-franchised restaurants, retail stores, professional service firms, small manufacturers, and a broad array of other small, privately-held businesses. “Usually businesses which we work with have revenues of between half a million dollars to about 25 - 30 million. I would say these businesses are typically trades, manufacturing, import export businesses, restaurants, professional practices, tourism operators, hotels, motels, gas stations, a lot of auto repair shops, body shops, self-storage facilities, and there's huge growth in healthcare, electronics, telecom and technology. So that's basically everything!” Christopher says.
The secret to selling your business
When you’ve been in the business of buying and selling businesses for a very long time, Christopher says you understand why some deals go through, and why some deals don't. The core need is a system to ensure that the probability of getting the business sold is as high as possible. This is the premise of Sunbelt’s operation.
Christopher advises that business owners need to determine their goals in selling their business first. “That’s the deepest part of the entire process where we actually go down to an emotional level; an analytical level. You know, at every level, we're trying to understand whether this business can be sold, if it should be sold, and how it can be sold. Valuation pricing and the technical stuff comes later. The initial discussion happens around the goals.”
He advises that there is a very definitive and thorough evaluation done when sitting with a seller to understand if the best possible outcome is on the table. And sometimes that means that the time isn’t right to sell the business and the seller needs to walk away. There could be other solutions that are more appropriate in the lifecycle of the business that the founder and leadership team might not be able to see clearly. This is where an advisor can help.
Fun, frank advice from Christopher Jadhav
“I remember Sid Caesar who said that ‘in between goals is a thing called life that has to be lived and enjoyed’. It's very important for both parts of the transaction to understand this. There's a life out there to enjoy. Friends, family! And that's how I feel it should be.”
If you’d like to listen to the audio interview on my podcast, you can find it here: https://iamamillionairesonowwhat.libsyn.com/the-business-of-buying-and-selling-businesses-0
Enjoyed this piece? Here’s an invitation that might be of interest to you.
If you’re in Ottawa, you may be interested to hear that I'm reintroducing “Elevated Conversations” which originated in 2018 where I brought together smart investors and business owners to talk about interesting topics in technology and finance that are disrupting our world. With COVID and the end of dinner parties, we moved to virtual roundtables and now I’m bringing back masterminds in person. Let me know via LinkedIn or email if you’re interested.
Save the date: October 26, 2022