Articles on Practicing Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
When we model the sale of a company, we can get incredibly precise. What’s the valuation? How much cash comes off the table? What are the tax consequences? Is there rollover equity? An earnout? How long does the seller stay? What does working capital look
Redwood trees can grow more than 350 feet tall. How do they get there? They grow up before they grow out. Early in their development, the tree puts its energy toward height. The branching comes
Mistake number one when buying a business is caring about how much you’re paying. I know how ridiculous that sounds. Of course price matters. You can overpay for a business. You can put too much
Less than a year after selling the company he had spent 24 years building, Keith Jacob could leave. His employment agreement with the buyer ran five years, but the agreement was one-sided. Keith had the
I’ve been saying for years that the next decade is going to hand acquisition entrepreneurs the best buying window most of us will ever see. The numbers back it up: McKinsey projects that roughly six
A member of the Acquisition Lab called me a few weeks ago who had investors interested in his deal, and he had no idea what to charge them for it. Good problem to have. I’ve
A seller told me once that his business brought in 108 percent of its annual earnings in December. The other 11 months lost 8%. Not a typo. The year ended in the black – technically.
By the time I stopped paying myself, I’d already been running the company for six years. That detail matters, because it means the year I’m about to describe wasn’t the uncertain first year of ownership,
A guy came to me a few years ago with a business that was throwing off $150,000 a year that didn’t exist anywhere. Not offshore, not hidden in some clever structure. Just cash. Customers paid
Gary poured concrete for chrome tanks that go thirty feet into the ground back in 1976. At the time, he didn’t own the acquisitions that would eventually fill that capacity. He was still running the
Decision fatigue. That’s what the seller felt after 15 hours of conversations in a single week. She ended up canceling the last six calls. Research on decision fatigue shows that the quality of our decisions
It was winter in St. Louis, when it gets dark by 5:00 pm. I had just finished a long day making calls at the hospital and I was sitting in my car, ready to go
Months of preparation can work against you in a seller meeting. You’ve read the books, built the models, reviewed the CIMs. By the time you sit down with a seller, you feel ready. But that
When we model the sale of a company, we can get incredibly precise. What’s the valuation? How much cash comes off the table? What are the tax consequences? Is there rollover equity? An earnout? How
Redwood trees can grow more than 350 feet tall. How do they get there? They grow up before they grow out. Early in their development, the tree puts its energy toward height. The branching comes
Mistake number one when buying a business is caring about how much you’re paying. I know how ridiculous that sounds. Of course price matters. You can overpay for a business. You can put too much
Less than a year after selling the company he had spent 24 years building, Keith Jacob could leave. His employment agreement with the buyer ran five years, but the agreement was one-sided. Keith had the
I’ve been saying for years that the next decade is going to hand acquisition entrepreneurs the best buying window most of us will ever see. The numbers back it up: McKinsey projects that roughly six
A member of the Acquisition Lab called me a few weeks ago who had investors interested in his deal, and he had no idea what to charge them for it. Good problem to have. I’ve
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