Badass Is The New Black (Season 3) Episode #18 Building A Well-Planned Exit Strategy With Michelle Seiler Tucker
Mar 12, 2022You have probably never thought about selling your business, or thought it was possible. But if you build your business with the intention to exit your business, you will build one that runs without you there, has your customers talking about you to everyone, and keeps your bank account growing. You know this is what you want or you wouldn't be here listening to Badass is the New Black. So while you might not have thought about selling before, do yourself a favor and keep listening to hear from mergers and acquisitions expert Michelle Seiler Tucker as she gives you tips to build a massively successful business that will allow you to exit rich.
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Building A Well-Planned Exit Strategy With Michelle Seiler Tucker
Michelle Will Provide Insight Into Building A Sustainable, Scalable, And Sellable Business, Utilizing Her Proven Techniques Outlined In Her Newest Book Exit Rich®.
You have probably never thought about selling your business or thought it was even a possibility but if you build your business with the intention to sell your business, you will build a business that runs without you there, have your customers talking about you to everyone and keeps your bank account growing, which is exactly what you want. While you might not have ever thought about selling your business before, do yourself a favor and keep reading to know from mergers and acquisitions expert, Michelle Seiler Tucker, as she gives you tips to build a massively successful business that will allow you to exit rich.
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Let's welcome, Michelle Seiler Tucker. She is the Founder and CEO of Seiler Tucker Incorporated. She holds the M&AMI, which is Merger & Acquisition Master Intermediary title, as well as a Certified Merger & Acquisition Professional and a Certified Senior Business Analyst. Michelle also owns many other businesses in several different industries. As a veteran in the M&A industry, she is regarded as the leading authority on buying, selling, fixing, and growing businesses. Her firm had sold over 8,000 businesses in almost every vertical and had a remarkable track record of success. Michelle, welcome.
Thank you, Krissy, for having me.
I am excited to have you here because this is a topic that I don't think a lot of people in this space, coaches and course creators, people with digital products think about selling their business at some point but it's possible.
It is possible. It's not just the online marketers that don't think about selling their business. It's almost every business owner doesn't think about selling their business until they have to. Steve Forbes, who endorsed my book Exit Rich says 8 out of 10 businesses will not sell, 80% will not sell. The main reason for that is because business owners don't think about selling their business until they have to due to a catastrophic event occurring, whether that's internal or external. Internal meaning health issues, partner disputes, divorced and death. External is this pandemic we are in. The worst time to sell your business is during a catastrophic event. The best time to sell your business is when your business is doing well and it’s in its prime. That's when everybody wants to hold on to it when it's in its prime. You should start what I call your ST GPS Exit Model from day one of starting or buying your company. You should plan for your most valuable asset.
Business owners have to start changing their mindset. They have to stop thinking of their business as their baby. They have to stop thinking about, "I'll never sell it because I love it forever." Nothing lasts forever. What goes up must come down. Businesses, unfortunately, go out of business every single day. You need to build your most valuable assets. You can set up your desired sales price when you're ready. You build a business that somebody wants to buy. That's the number two reason that businesses don't sell is because business owners never built anything that a buyer wants to buy. That's one of the Six Ps, the infrastructure, building your business to run all accelerators, all Six Ps comes in that we also talk about in my book Exit Rich.
Most businesses don't sell because owners never built anything that a buyer wants to buy.
The worst time to sell your business is when it's going down. I'm picturing Shark Tank. They asked them, "Let's get into the numbers. What are your numbers?" They're like, "We're having a dip in the sale." They're like, "Why would I want to invest in your business when it's going down?" It's the same idea and concept. "Why would I want to buy your business when it's going down?" Unless the reason it was going down is something that whoever's purchasing it or investing it knows they can turn it around but probably not likely the case.
There are five different types of buyers. One type is a turnaround specialist. They buy distressed assets but you're never going to maximize value and get the highest price if your business is going down. Also, these business owners and veterans on Shark Tank also have unrealistic expectations of what they think their businesses worth. Never has a Shark said, "You undervalued your business." They say, "You've overvalued your business almost every single time." That's the same thing with selling businesses.
A business owner says, "I want $20 million for my business." I'll ask them, "How did you come up with $20 million? Your EBITDA is $100,000." They'll say, "That's what I needed to retire on." The buyer doesn't care about what you need. They could care less about what you need. They care about what the value is to them. That's why I'll walk everybody through what I call the ST GPS Exit Model. Let's go through that. Number one is determine. If you want to drive some more in Atlanta, what do you do? You pull out your phone. You go to Google Maps. What's the first thing you plug in?
The address.
It's your destination. Business owners don't have a destination. They have no idea where they're going. They drive around in circles. Drive up and down the financial hills to end up broke. They ended up exiting poor. All business owners should stop. Get a piece of paper and pick a number. Let's say you want to sell your business for $10 million, it's great. That's a number. A lot of business owners get hung up on the number like, "I don't know where to start." Pick a number. Let's say your destination is $10 million. What does the GPS need? It needs to know where you're starting from. What is your current location? In other words, what is your current valuation? What is your business worth now?
Most business owners have never ever gotten a business valuation. I've been in this industry for many years. My company sold over 1,000 companies. Most business owners have no idea what their business is worth. They never get a business valuation. We go to the doctor once a year to get an annual physical checkup to make sure our hearts and were still kicking, which I go the car to the mechanic to make sure we get an annual tune-up but we never get an annual valuation checkup. That's financial suicide. There are events like this pandemic that can increase value and decrease value.
Every year you need to know what your business is worth. Let's say you want to sell for $10 million and then you're worth $1 million. The next thing you need to know in a GPS Exit Model is timeframe. Let's say you want to do this in ten years. You don't want to sell it for $10 million. "I'm currently worth $1 million. I want to do this in ten years." The next thing you need to know is the buyer. "Who are my buyers going to be? What do buyers look for in purchasing a $10 million company?" There are five types of buyers. First-time buyers are number one. Ninety percent of buyers are first-time buyers. They're not going to buy your $10 million company. They buy small businesses. Turnaround specialist or number two. They buy distressed assets. They don't buy $2 million companies.
You've got private equity groups that buy based upon platforms and add-ons. If they want to buy a platform, they're not even going to look at you unless you have at least $3 million in EBITDA. If they want to buy an add-on, they look at less than $1 million EBITDA. They buy based on platforms and add-ons. Do you understand what platforms and add-ons are?
I think so. Why don't you explain it?
Let's say we got a manufacturing business for sale. They want to be in food manufacturing. They've never been in food manufacturing. They are looking to get into a platform of food manufacturing. They wouldn't even consider that platform at least it's $3 million to $5 million in EBITDA. Let's say they're already in food manufacturing. Now, they're looking for an add-on. Maybe we have a seasoning company for sale. That's congruent to their food manufacturing business. They'll look at an add-on for less than $1 million in EBITDA. You then have strategic competitors. That's the fourth type of buyer. Strategic competitors pay the highest multiple of EBITDA because they're buying synergies that are going to catapult their current business to the next level like contracts, databases, branding, patents.
You have the last type of buyer, which is a serial entrepreneur sophisticated buyer. They are industry agnostic. They chase EBITDA. They chase cashflow. Those are your five types of buyers. If you're trying to sell a company for $10 million, you're not going to sell the first time or turnaround specialist. You'll sell the private equity, strategic competitor or sophisticated. You need to reverse-engineer your plan and say, "What are the numbers have to be? If I want to sell it for $10 million, where are my gross revenues have to be? Where's my EBITDA need to end up?" EBITDA is Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization. Your EBITDA needs to be between $1.5 million to $2 million depending upon your synergies.
You then have to ask yourself, "These three types of buyers, what do they look for? What synergies are they buying? What are they willing to pay top dollar for?" You build to meet their specific needs. It's like how business owners, startup business, the first thing they do is they say, "I'm going to sell this widget. Who is my ideal target market for this widget?" It's not everybody. They ask, "What are my customer acquisition costs going to be? What are these buyers looking for?" That's how you start a business. That's how you enter the marketplace. It's the same thing for selling your company. Identify who that buyer is going to be, reverse-engineer it, figure out what they're looking for and build to meet their specific buying criteria.
I talk a lot about the ideal client avatar. Who is that person? That's exactly what you're thinking.
The best time to sell your business is when your business is doing well.
This is your avatar to buy your business.
It's totally different. Instead of your buyer to buy your product, it's the buyer to buy your company.
This plan should be started from day one in buying or starting your business. Once you figured out where your financials need to be, then you need to build the business to operate on what I call all Six PS and start building avatar synergies. The last step in the GPS Exit Model is your why. Nothing gets done without a big enough why. If you have children and you want them to do something, you have to create a why to get them to do it. Here's the bottom line. If it was easy to sell a $10 million business, everybody would be doing it. You have to have a powerful why that's got to keep you motivated. It's got to keep you wondering all the different financial storms that will come your way to keep you in a game.
It's interesting because I never thought about selling my business. For my readers, they know that I've got girl workspace providing marketing material for network marketers, specifically Young Living. I have my personal coaching brand, which I've created courses for and things like that. I never thought about selling a business. They just happened, I don't want to say by accident, because there was a lot of work that got put into it but it evolved naturally. My husband works in private equity. He's very familiar with this space. He was like, "Why don't you sell this over?" I was like, "I've never thought about it."
With the Exit Model, even going through that, I'm thinking, "That's so much clear to me if that was my plan, what I would need to think about if I wanted an exit strategy." I'm thinking of my audience. Why would they want an exit strategy if they're like me? I'm an ideas person. I've got lots of ideas but I can't have twenty businesses unless I have these massive teams. For me, I love getting things started, growing it and scaling it but there might be a time where I'm like, "I'm ready for something else. I'm ready for something new. I have this new idea." That could be an opportunity to exit. With people, even if they don't have any plan to exit their brand or business, do you think they should be thinking about it just in case?
They should because nothing lasts forever. Businesses go through a business cycle like humans go through a life cycle. It's called the life in business cycle. Humans die. Businesses die. Nothing lasts forever. Here's the bottom line. Even if you don't sell your business, even if you don't exit your business, if you build a business that's sellable, that somebody wants to buy, it's going to be much more profitable, much more sustainable and scalable. I had a sweet little lady called me whose husband dropped dead from a heart attack. He left her with a mountain of debt. She asked me, "Can you sell the business? I don't know nothing about the business, nothing about the financials." I started asking her a few questions. I'm like, "It's not sellable." He has no employees. He has no independent contractors. He has subcontractors only. All the data that for the 45 years he ran the businesses were all in his head. When he died, the business died.
To me, it's a smart, prudent decision to build your business with the end in mind and build your business to sell. You will have a much more profitable business. People sell for different reasons. People sell for health issues, divorce, partner disputes, moving, business is not doing well. You want to go out and create your next masterpiece. You want to do something different. You don't want to stay in one thing forever. At the end of the day, if you don't build a business, all you've built is a glorified job that you got to work out every day and you're calling it a business. That's what most business owners do. They built a glorified job that they go work out every day and not a business that works for them. When they go to sell it, it's not going to sell. It becomes part of the 80% of businesses that don't sell because they never built a sellable business. Why not try to build a sellable business? It makes more sense that your biggest asset, which is your business, you should be able to sell that.
I love automation, hiring help, teaching people how to hire help so that they're not doing everything. That rings in my head when you mentioned his business died when he died. I think about grow the workspace. If I were to get in a car crash and die, God forbid, I have an entire team of people working on this business. It could continue to thrive without me because I've set it up that way. That was more for lifestyle purposes so that I could have a lot more time to do other things that I enjoy doing.
Thinking about that in guys out there reading, when I talk about automation, when I talk about hiring help, building support around your business that can also be valuable. Not only for lifestyle but what Michelle's talking about exiting your business if you need to or if your spouse needs to sell the business because, God forbid, you passed unexpectedly, divorce or health things. We don't know what the future holds for us, so being prepared the best that you can is one of the smartest things that you can do for your family. This is where I knew six was coming from. You have the Six Ps, how to build a sustainable, scalable and sellable business. Do you want to give us a little insight into that?
The number one reason that businesses are not sellable is because business owners haven't built a business that somebody wants to buy. They built themselves a job. The number one P is People. You don't build a business. You build people and they build the business. Entrepreneurs have to stop trying to control everything. Entrepreneurs are control freaks. They like, "If you want to do right, you have to do it yourself." No. If you want to build a sustainable business, you got to hire people to do it for you. You need to focus on your strengths, hire weaknesses, put the right people in the right seats and then ask the who question. Who handles customer service? Who handles marketing, legal, accounting, manufacturing, logistics, technology, environmental? All of your readers should stop, take out a pen and paper, jot down all the who's in their business and assign a name next to each who.
The clue is your name should never be next to the who because you want the business to run without you. You've built your business or lifestyle but you build your business to run without you. If something will happen to you, your business could sustain itself. A lot of business owners can't say that. That is not the case. I had a dentist that came to me that wants to sell his business. One dentist, three dental hygienists have been in business for many years. I said, "I can sell your business but you're going to have to stay on for 2 to 3 years." His dental hygienists were his family members. When he leaves, they're leaving too. He said, "I'm not staying. I've had enough." I said, "You're not selling because the minute you leave, your patients leave."
The people are important. That's number one. Number two is product. Product is your industry, your service, your product. Ask yourself is your industry, your product on the way up or on the way out? Are you thriving or dying? Do you have an Amazon in your Prime or do you have a Blockbuster and you're about to go bust? A lot of industries were thriving before COVID, dying and vice versa. If your industry is about to go bust, that doesn't mean you close up, go home. That means you asked yourself three transformational questions. Amazon did this back in the 90s. They've asked themselves, "What business are we in?" All of your readers should be asking themselves, "What business are we in?” Amazon did that. They said, "We're in a bookselling business. We fulfill books."
Ask yourself, "What's your core competency? What's your USP, Unique Selling Proposition? What do you do better than everybody else?" Amazon said, "We do fulfillment better than everybody else." The next obvious question is, "What business should we be in? What should we be doing?" Amazon said, "We should be in a fulfillment business. Not just fulfilling books. We should be fulfilling products for everybody," which is what they did. Those three simple questions are what transformed Amazon from the small bookseller to a multibillion-dollar worldwide conglomerate that they are now. These questions sound easy. For a business owner to answer these questions, a lot of times they need an outsider's perspective to do so.
People go to the doctor once a year for an annual checkup but don't do the same for an annual valuation checkup.
You need a coach for all the things. You don't know what you don't know until you know.
Don't just hire any coach. Make sure you get a mentor who's been down the path that you want to travel. There are many coaches out there that never even owned a business before. You want to make sure you hire a mentor like me. I've sold 1,000 businesses. You don't want to get a mentor to sell one. You want to make sure you get a mentor that has the right experience and skillsets to help you.
If you're going to hire a coach, you have a need and you find someone very specific to that. Someone who's been there and done that. If you're trying to scale your business to $1 million with digital products, you find someone who's done that before. If you were trying to build your business to sell it, you hire Michelle, who's done that before. That's through product.
We got processes, systems. You can't run a business without processes. You'll never be able to be sustainable. You'll never be able to scale. You'll never be profitable if your processes aren't efficient. Here's the thing about processes. Most owners get this very wrong. It's like an exit strategy. Most business owners don't think about exit strategy until they have to. They don't think about processes until something bad happens.
We once had a client at a manufacturing plant. His employee got hurt on the manufacturing floor. It was catastrophic. He lost a limb. There were lawsuits coming down. He's going to file bankruptcy. He said to me, "Michelle, I need a process for health and safety on the manufacturing floor." I'm like, "You needed that before. Now, it's too late." This is where business owners get it wrong too. They design their processes around their agenda, not around the customer experience. Let me explain. Did you ever watch the movie The Founder?
I did.
The McDonald brothers started McDonald's restaurant back in the ‘50s. They said, "We want to create a restaurant. We want to create a fast-food system processes around our customers' experience. We want our customers to experience great-tasting food that's hot, fast, 30 seconds or less." Do you remember when they went out to the tennis court, they drew out the processes and all their employees bumping into each other going around? They spent nine hours at that tennis court. One of the McDonald brothers was on the ladder, orchestrating everybody what to do and how to do it until they had a symphony, systems, or processes that would deliver on their customer experience.
Business owners have to stop for a minute and think about what you do want their customers to experience and design the processes around that. That's what creates raving fans, happy clients. Most business owners get this wrong. They designed the processes around their agenda. Have you ever been to a doctor's office, chiropractor's office and they're like, "There's a Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 9:00 to 12:00? We come back around 3:00 and work until 5:00. Tuesday and Thursday are this. We’re never open in the evenings. We never open on Saturdays?"
It is very painful. You're already in pain. The process makes it excruciating. Did they think about the patient's experience? No. They're thinking about their own agenda. How many times have you been on the phone with a bank or retailer, social media company where you try a social media company came and got somebody on the phone? You're trying to get your problem to solve and you have to push all these different buttons to get to someone, then you have to tell your story seven times to try to get it resolved. Has that ever happened to you?
Yes, before closing on our lake house. This is a big dream come true. I'm trying to do this thing. “Why isn't my wire transfer going through? Why was it rejected?” I got bounced to seven different departments and no one could say anything. I'm like, "I have to go into the bank." I drove there and she goes, "You can't do wire transfers over X amount of dollars from home." I said, "That would have been nice if someone would have told me that on the phone." First of all, they had no idea. It's a rookie move. I've been there and done that.
The processes are designed to alienate you and piss you off versus creating a happy wild experience for you. This is where most business owners mess up. Stop the process, go back to the basics and ask yourself what you do want your clients to experience and build your processes around those experiences. McDonald's did that in the ‘50s. Even though they've taken the processes along the way, no matter what McDonald's you eat at anywhere around the world, the experience is the same.
Your processes have to be designed with the customer experience in mind, not on your agenda. They must be productive, efficient, well-documented in policy and procedure manuals, that SOP checklist, employee handbooks, non-compete agreements and employee contracts. When you try to sell your company, you have to have this paper. McDonald's can also fire somebody at the front and rehire somebody within 30 minutes. They're up and running because they have the processes and systems in place. Processes can make or break a company. It is a difference between creating happy and unhappy clients. If you don't create happy clients, your competitor would be happy to do it for you.
Here's another example. In GROworkspace in our business, we've got a membership platform. There are different markets people can choose from. They can do all of the markets at all of those or they can pick one if they're in Canada and they don't need the US content. We did this whole entire website revamp. One of the things is we had to add these products one by one each month. We add them, remove them. We're like, "We want to simplify our process for our people on our team to make it more efficient." In doing that, we realized we screwed up because people couldn't add on 2 out of the 3 markets if they wanted. It was either all or one. After realizing, people are like, "I don't want that third one. I want these two. I want English and Spanish. I don't need Canada. I want Canada and US English. I don't need Spanish." We were like, "We screwed up."
Nothing lasts forever. Businesses go through a business cycle as humans go through a life cycle.
We created this process to make our lives easier on the backend and it messed up the flexibility that our customers could have. Now, we're going backward and we're saying, "We need this for our customers. We need to make them happy. If they want 2 products and not 3, we need to give that to them. When they do 2 products instead of 1, that's better for our business. It's going to have to be manual one time a month for us on the backend." It's going to take a little bit more time. The customer experience is going to be better and the customer will buy more.
The customer will buy more plus a referral. They're happy, so they're going to refer more customers to you. You always got to look at what is the experience. Stop trying to design your processes around what's better for you. You're in business for yourself but you're in business to service your clients. If you don't service them, someone else will. Let's talk about business valuations. I'm not getting into business valuations because that's a whole another show. Businesses that have an EBITDA, Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization, below $1 million typically will trade for 1 to 3, maybe 4 if they got some synergies. Businesses over $1 million have a lot more buyers or more buyers for good businesses and/or the businesses to buy. Businesses over $1 million will trade for typically five and up depending upon your proprietary assets.
The fourth P is Proprietary. Proprietary assets can take you from a 4 multiple to a 6, 5, 10, 8. Proprietary assets are the highest value driver of any other P. There are six pillars to proprietary. Let me explain it. Back in processes, when you design your processes around your customer experience to create happy raving fans, every time you do that, you move up what I call the branding ladder. Every time you do the opposite and upset a client, you move down the branding ladder. Do you know what the steps are in the branding ladder?
I don't.
First and foremost, step one is brand absence. This is where most consumers don't know who you are and what you do. 90%, 95% of businesses live in brand absence. The next step is you go from brand absence to brand awareness. They know who you are and what you do. You go from brand awareness to brand preference. When I go, "I prefer to drink diet Coke over Pepsi." You go from brand preference to brand insistence. I speak all over the country or I did before this pandemic. Every time I stayed at a hotel, I'm like, "I'll take a diet Coke." They're like, "Is Pepsi okay?" "Pepsi is not okay. If I want a Pepsi, I would ask for Pepsi." Brand insistence is where you go, "I only drink diet Coke. I will only buy Apple products. I will only use iPhones." That's brand insistence.
Brand advocacy is the highest. You can be on the branding ladder. That's when somebody else is selling you, instead of you selling yourself. That's when somebody says, "Krissy, go Google this." What are they doing? They're selling Google, those Xeroxes. "Chill out. Have a Coke." That's brand advocacy. It's always better when someone else tells you than when you sell yourself. When you get your business brand advocacy, the money is rolling in. You're doing so well because you've built your brand. Branding is number one in proprietary assets. The more well-branded you are, the more I can sell your company for as long as your brand is relevant in the mind of the consumers. Is anybody going to pay any money for Blockbuster? No.
The most valuable brand in the world is Apple. Apple is worth $259 billion just for the brand. That's not taking into consideration cashflow, assets, real estate, inventory, account receivables. The other thing that's very valuable is trademarks. Trademark your company name. Trademark your show. I've trademarked Exit Rich. Here's a mistake that most business owners make. Let's say they start a business in Georgia. They get a state trademark. They get their name at GoDaddy. Most people determine their company name by what domain they can get. They go to GoDaddy first. "I got this domain." They go get their state trademark and they never checked the federal database to make sure it's available.
That's happened time and time with shows, slogans and company names. I've seen clients in business for many years and all of a sudden receive a cease and desist letter. They have to stop using that company name. Go get the Federal trademark. It's $1,500 or $2,000. Protect your company name, logo, slogan, or anything that's unique to you. Exit Rich is unique to me, the ST Six Ps, GPS Exit Model. All of that is trademarked. I have a company that has twelve different products. Each product is exclusive to Walmart, Target, and different chains. Each product has a Federal trademark. You don't just trademark names. You trademark products too. Strategics will pay more money for that. Patent is another thing.
If you watch Shark Tank, every single investor always asks every single inventor, "Do you have a patent on that? Do you have a patent-pending? Do you have a utility patent?" Their offers are always contingent upon you having the patent. We sold a company for $18 million. It wasn't making any money but they had eighteen patents. Those contracts are huge. Contracts are big. Contracts with manufacturing, distribution, network marketing and franchisors. They have franchisees, any type of exclusive contracts.
The most valuable contracts to buyers are client contracts, especially if they have a subscription model of reoccurring revenue. If you've got members all paying you $100 a month, that's recurring revenue. Buyers love that. They will pay a higher multiple for that synergy. Here's the caveat to contracts. If your husband's in private equity probably knows most business owners never have the transferability clause in their contracts that says, “This contract is transferable.” If the buyer's not willing to do a stock sell and clients are not willing to sign consent to transfer, then your joke would fall apart. You always want to make sure that you're proactive and include that $0.02 of transferability clause.
In many years I've been doing this and 1,000 businesses later, I have never come across a company that has transferrable contracts. There was an M&A firm that sold to a private equity group. They have 1,500 franchisees. The private equity group paid millions. The due diligence team never looked at the contracts. They had this huge celebratory party. The franchisees hated the private equity group because they didn't feel like they knew anything about their industry. None of them transferred over. One transferred over. Within 90 days, they had to file bankruptcy. They sued their entire legal team.
Databases are big. If you have databases, nurture your database. We were talking in repurpose, you could sell that. Facebook paid $19 billion for WhatsApp. WhatsApp was hemorrhaging but WhatsApp had a synergy. What we're talking about are synergies that strategics and competitors will pay a lot of money for. They had one billion users. Facebook knew they could all lie and monetize on that sale. Celebrity endorsements, you've seen Cindy Crawford. She represents Rooms To Go. She's only on one furniture company. We have a client that's being represented by and been endorsed by Oprah.
Nothing gets done without a big enough why.
Oprah is the queen of everything. Lots of competitors or strategics will pay a lot of money for that because they want to get their products in front of the queen. Radio personalities like Glenn Beck had a product show. They can only endorse one vertical at a time, one skincare, one diet company at a time. This is all what we call prime digital real estate that buyers will pay a lot of money for and then eCommerce businesses. If you got any of those top positions on Amazon, Etsy, Wayfair, Modern, eBay, we could sell that for a lot more money. Get you a much higher multiple. These are proprietary assets that you want to build on.
The fifth P is Patrons. Most businesses follow the 80/20 Rule, 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of their clients. They have customer concentration. We were once selling a manufacturing business. All manufacturing businesses would price it for $9.8 million and 70% of their revenue tied up in the BP contract. We have 550 buyers narrowed it down to 12, narrowed it to 10. Every single LOI had a contingency in there for that BP contract. We found one strategy that has similar products and services. They have been trying to get into BP for decades but could never get in. They said, "I'll bet everybody else. If we can get in the door with this company, we can get our stuff in the door."
They pay $15 million but the company price it at $9.8 million. $15 million for 70% of the company. They paid 126% more than the original price. That doesn't always happen. That's why I tell my clients, “Try to have customer diversification, not customer concentration.” The last P and the most important piece to all your readers are profits. We're all in business to make money. Lack of profits is never the problem. It's always the symptom of not operating on one or the other five Ps. I have a client that comes to me and says, "Michelle, I have a profit problem." I'm like, "No, you have a people problem. You have a process problem." If you're running off five Ps, you're going to be profitable. If you're not, you won't.
This has been enlightening. It's been so valuable. I am ready to read your book and I know everyone else's too. There are some of the things that you said where I'm like, "I teach that." I even have more of an understanding and want to even dive deeper to think more about in terms of an exit strategy. Thank you for that. This has been super helpful. Let's tell everyone how they can start reading Exit Rich.
You can go to ExitRichBook.com. For $24.79, which is less than Amazon, we will send you the digital download immediately so you can start reading it. When the book launches, we'll ship the hardcover cover to your doorstep for no additional shipping costs if you live in the United States. We will give you a lifetime membership into the Exit Rich book Club that has video content. Me talking about these different strategies, techniques and doing deep dives on each plus documents to operate your business, documents to sell your business, sample employee handbooks, non-competes, org charts, policy and procedure manuals, sample letter of intents, purchase agreements, sample due diligence checklist and closing docs.
All of these documents are there for your review and your immediate download. If you try to recreate these documents, it will cost you over $30,000 with your attorney. You can use the template. Plus, we're giving you a 30-day free membership in the Club CEOs, which is an entrepreneur mastermind where we asked transformational questions and help business owners build a sustainable, scalable and wonder-ready sellable business.
I'm going and doing that. I know the readers are going to do the same thing. Where are you hanging out so people can connect with you?
I'm everywhere. I'm on Twitter, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and on Facebook. If they want, text Michelle at (888) 526-5750. My website is on all my social media pops up so they can follow me and connect with me on LinkedIn. My main website is SeilerTucker.com.
Michelle, see you inside your groups.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Krissy. It was a pleasure to be with you.
See you. Bye.
Bye.
Important Links:
- Michelle Seiler Tucker
- Exit Rich
- ST GPS Exit Model
- Club CEOs
- Twitter - Michelle Seiler Tucker
- Instagram - Michelle Seiler Tucker
- LinkedIn - Michelle Seiler Tucker
- Facebook - Michelle Seiler Tucker
- https://Podcasts.Apple.com/us/podcast/exit-rich/id1517139025
About Michelle Seiler Tucker
Michelle Seiler Tucker is the Founder and CEO of Seiler Tucker Incorporated. She holds the M&AMI (Mergers & Acquisitions Master Intermediary) title, as well as Certified Mergers and Acquisitions Professional (CM&AP) and Certified Senior Business Analyst (CSBA).
Michelle also owns many other businesses in several different industries. As a 20-year veteran in the M&A industry, she is regarded as the leading authority on buying, selling, fixing, and growing businesses. She and her firm have sold over a thousand businesses in almost every vertical and have a remarkable track record of success.
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