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Michelle Seiler Tucker – Seiler Tucker, Author of Exit Rich
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You have found
Authentic Business Adventures,
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the business program, the struggles
stories and triumphant successes
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of business owners across the land.
We can be found locally
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at the Sun Prairie Media Center as well as
nationally at drawincustomers.com/podcast
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or any place where
you can find the podcast.
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We are locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
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My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,
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author, speaker and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.
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And today we’re welcoming/preparing
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to learn from Michelle Seiler Tucker,
the CEO and founder of Seiler Tucker Inc.
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.
Michelle, how are you doing today?
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I’m doing great.
How are you doing, James?
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I am.
I’m doing well.
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I’m actually excited because, one,
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I see your books in the titles
and look at your website.
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Selling businesses seems to be your game,
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which is so awesome because I feel like
a lot of business owners don’t even think
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about an exit strategy when they
start the business. They don’t.
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And that’s why 80 percent
of businesses don’t sell.
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Like Steve Forbes says, 8 out of
10 companies will never sell.
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And the number one reason for that is
because business owners don’t think about
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selling until catastrophic event has occurred
internal, which is health issues,
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partner dispute, divorce or
death, external is just pandemic.
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And when your business is in a
catastrophe, that’s really the worst time
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to stop because the business
is turning down.
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The best time to sell is when your
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business is doing well
and you’re in your prime.
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But most business owners really never
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build a sellable asset
that buyers want to buy.
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Yeah,
so and you essentially help business
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owners create or build their business
to the point of being a salable asset.
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I do.
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I’ve been in business
a little over 20 years.
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I personally have sold over 500 companies.
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My team has sold over a thousand altogether,
A thousand?
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A thousand.
But you personally.
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So I personally have sold five hundred.
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Yes, that’s incredible.
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And so my company has
sold over a thousand.
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But I learned a long time ago when I
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entered this industry that most
businesses are not sellable.
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So a long time ago I started
my my business model where
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I fixed businesses.
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So I don’t just sell them, I fix
them, I grow them.
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I put them on a build to sell model
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and then sell them for
their desired price tag,
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the owners desired price tag
so they too can exit rich.
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Nice.
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And so I specialize in buying,
selling, fixing, growing.
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We buy businesses and flip them.
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We also partner with business owners
investing our capital resources,
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energy, efforts, expertise, and put them
on a build to sell blueprint as well.
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So we specialize in really buying,
selling, fixing, and growing.
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All right.
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I have never heard of anyone
buying a business and flipping it.
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So can you let’s start there,
because that’s that’s pretty exciting.
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Sure.
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So it’s just like flipping real estate,
but a lot more moving parts.
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There are a lot of there are entrepreneurs
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out there that are called
turnaround specialists.
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That’s what they specialize in doing.
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So I’m not the only one,
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but there’s lots of turnaround specialists
that look for distressed assets.
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They leverage the assets of the company
to purchase a business,
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and they fixed the business,
grow the business and sell it for profit.
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What is typical turnaround
time for something like that?
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It just depends upon
the issues in the business.
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Like with real estate.
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I would say for me, for me is
typically three, three to five years.
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Gotcha.
OK, so it’s fairly long term compared
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to real estate, which is
the lesson is clear because real estate
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doesn’t have employees,
real estate does that in assets
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and environmental issues and legal
issues and everything else.
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You know, real estate is simple.
Interesting.
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Flipping businesses is not simple.
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No.
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Is there a certain vertical that you guys stay in or
are you all over? No, were agnostic
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you know, where we sell businesses.
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My sweet spot is selling businesses
for ten million dollar purchase price up.
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However, my company does take smaller
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businesses, we just closed on a dental
lab from one point two million
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last, what was it last month?
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And we’ve got they’ve got another
business that they’re closing on.
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It’s maybe a half a million.
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They got another one they’re working on.
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It’s eight hundred thousand
eight hundred thousand.
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I got another one I’m working on.
It’s eight million.
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So.
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Yeah, well, you know, we help
smaller business owners, too.
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I mean, our big thing is it’s
not so much about the price tag.
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It’s more about helping the owner.
Sure.
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All right.
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So the owner essentially hires you to be
a fixer as well as a broker?
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Well, it depends on what to hire us for.
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You know, a lot of times they start out as
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hiring us to sell their business,
but they don’t realize what a mess their
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business is actually in
and it is not sellable.
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So we work with clients to help
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the business, you know, to help them
get their business ready for sell.
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We also are starting what we called a road
to sell funnel,
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where it’s a step by step,
month by month blueprint to get your
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business into, to get your business ready
to exit in the next one to two years.
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Nice.
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So let’s go back twenty years when
you first started your business.
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What was your first business was this
is or did you learn more lesson now?
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And that’s what separates me from other
M&A advisors and brokers as I’m
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an entrepreneur from many different
businesses and many different verticals.
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I can’t every ask me what
my first business was.
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I want to say I like baking cookies
and selling cookies and lemonade.
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But I also own, like a magazine business,
a wedding, a wedding magazine business,
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an event company.
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I’ve owned all kinds of different
businesses in different verticals.
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So before I got into selling businesses,
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I actually had a franchise sales franchise
consulting franchise development business
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where I took equity and franchise
business and put them on the map.
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And like I said, DeFrancesco ourselves.
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The reason I opened up my firm to begin
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with is because so many business owners
were asking me, do you have an existing
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business for sale or do you have
an existing business for sale?
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Oh, wow.
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And I didn’t have an existing
business for sale.
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And I’m like, you know,
I need to stop saying now.
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I need to say yes.
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So that’s what led me just
to set up my M&A firm.
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All right,
nice. So how long is this business been
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going on? The seller Tucker
business been going?
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Well, I mean, I went through a branding
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change back in twenty sixteen,
but I’ve been selling businesses.
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I’ve had an M&A firm
since 20 cents since 2000.
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Wow.
OK.
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So it’s been a long time.
Yeah.
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A little over 20 years.
All right.
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So you survived the whole 2008 thing.
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The twenty two.
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I was in my it wasn’t
my best year, but I said
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if I also survived Hurricane Katrina,
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which was five in New Orleans,
where 90 percent of my businesses
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literally went underwater,
I survived that, too.
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Wow.
So the majority of the businesses that you
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buy and sell are the New Orleans
ish or the beyond?
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Well, you see, back then in 2005,
most of my businesses were Louisiana.
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Most of them were in New Orleans.
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And when Katrina happened, I said, never,
never, never will I do this again.
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All right.
I will never have all of my business
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in one geographical area,
just like I will be in one industry.
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I won’t be in one geographical area.
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So we sell businesses all over
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the United States plus our own
businesses in other states.
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Yeah, because I never want to go through
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that again to where I’m almost
completely out of business.
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Sure.
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Because all chickens in one basket
and that’s what business owners need to do
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then is to put all their
eggs in one basket.
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I mean, it’s like the restaurant
industry right now.
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I mean,
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you know, they’re dying because they have
the restaurant owner has all their eggs.
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And that one restaurant basket.
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Yeah, they have no other revenue streams.
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And they don’t have enough working
capital to weather the storm, right?
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We need at least eight years
worth of working capital.
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I would say two years
to be on the safe side.
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Yeah, that’s a that’s a tough
business when there’s not a pandemic.
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So right now, it’s a.
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Really, really rough.
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So how did you get into the merger
of mergers and acquisitions business?
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I just told you I was in the franchise
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development franchise,
franchise consulting business.
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I kept asking me to buy existing
businesses that have existing businesses
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and not only had
all, they had new franchises to sell.
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So that’s when I decided to start my M&A
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practice so I would have
existing businesses.
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So you look to acquire businesses first,
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which means that you have to lay out
a lot of capital to get those businesses.
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No, I started my business focused
for my M&A firm
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and I started getting engagements with
sellers and started selling businesses.
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OK, so these were not
businesses that you own.
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You were working as a broker.
Got you.
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No, no, I didn’t start I didn’t
start buying in partner until later.
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OK, later.
How much later?
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I don’t know.
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I don’t remember time
four or five years later.
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Six years later.
Sure.
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Yeah, but I started my M&A firm to sell
businesses and merge businesses together.
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Most M&A firms do not buy
businesses and flip them.
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And I did not partner
with business owners.
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I’m probably the only one that does.
Oh really?
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Why is it?
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Because they’re not focused on that,
they don’t
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a lot of a lot of them and advisers are
brokers and them on the business before.
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OK.
Oh, that’s very fair.
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Extremely fair.
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I can tell you that the ones
that I talk to, you
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wouldn’t even know where to start.
Exactly.
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So they’ve never owned a business before
because I’m on so many different
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businesses in different verticals, I have
a lot more vast experience than I do.
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Why do you feel that you own so many
businesses and haven’t stuck to one thing?
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Because why would I stick to one thing,
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I just a lot of people do.
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I’m not saying right or wrong.
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And I said what industry agnostic I would
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never sell just manufacturing or just car
dealerships or just this or just that.
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Number one, I get bored easily.
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Number two, a lot of buyers don’t
really know what they want.
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So are a lot of a lot of buyers are
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industry agnostic, a lot of buyers or
even a specific industry agnostic.
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So I think I would be limiting myself
if I focus on just one industry.
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Sure.
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And I like I like the variety of different
types of industries, you know.
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And like I said, there’s five different
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types of buyers and most of the buyers
are industry agnostic.
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Sure.
So how do you help a buyer decide what
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type of business they’re
going to purchase?
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So depends upon the buyer.
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There’s five different types of buyers.
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90 percent of buyers
are first time buyers.
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They need a lot of help because they
have no idea what they want to do.
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They don’t know what their
strengths and weaknesses are.
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Many of them want to just jump
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into the restaurant industry
because they think that’s easy.
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And I can I can’t be further
from the truth of owning a restaurant is
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extremely hard, probably one of the
hardest industries you can partake of.
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So with first time buyers,
I don’t really walk many first time buyers
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at all because the businesses
I sell are 10 million and up.
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But my team does and we educate them
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and we do a skill set analysis to see what
their strengths are, what their weaknesses
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are, what their passions are,
what they like to do, you know, and
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just do that analysis and see
what’s the best fit for them.
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We don’t we don’t stick people in Russia.
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You know, a lot of times buyers like we
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had the sweet lady we
dealt with years ago.
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They called us about a restaurant.
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And she had been in banking
industry for 30 years.
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And she’s very close to retirement.
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But she wanted to buy a business.
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And I asked her, why do
you want a restaurant?
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Have you been in restaurants?
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Do you know how to cook or chef?
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Do you have any family members
at a restaurant owners?
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And she said, no, it’s just I think it’s
easy and it will always be the man.
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I’m like, no.
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And I really like if you have
no restaurant experience.
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Yeah.
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You don’t need to be
in the restaurant industry.
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I said, what do you want?
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Because I want nine to five.
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I said, well, that’s not restaurants.
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So she said, I have three hundred three
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thousand dollars and fifty
thousand dollars.
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I will invest three hundred thousand.
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I want to say fifty thousand
for working capital.
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I like to find an owner that will do
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financing and I like to make
more than I’m making now.
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She was making about one hundred twenty
five thousand a year,
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so I would tell my clients that their
business kind of fell in that ballpark
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range and a lot of them
wanted more money down.
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But I found a flooring company
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that was making about the cash flows
between three hundred to four hundred
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thousand a year
and it included real estate.
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And I said, yeah,
we’ll agree to 300, 300000 down.
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And so I ended up putting her
into a flooring company, why her?
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Why?
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Because always when it’s the first time
buyer, you always got to figure out,
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though, why do they
want to buy a business?
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Because so many she has so many people
telling her, what are you crazy?
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You’re this close to retirement.
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Why would you just not stay
in banking and retire?
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So why it’s going to be strong enough.
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You know, it’s got to keep you motivated
to keep you in the game
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because you’re going to hear all these
naysayers tell you that you’re crazy.
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You shouldn’t do that.
[00:13:18]
So how why was that?
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Her husband had contracted Agent Orange
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in the military and he had outlived
really all the doctors prognosis.
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He shouldn’t be alive.
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And she said when he dies,
I lose his benefits.
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Plus, I don’t have
anything for my daughter.
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I want to pass on my legacy to my child.
[00:13:40]
So that was Hawaii, which is
a pretty strong ally, right?
[00:13:43]
It is.
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She left her job left
for early retirement,
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and it was the best decision she ever made
because she was making about five hundred
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thousand a year now,
paying back the debt of the business.
[00:13:54]
She grew the business.
All right.
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But if I were to let her just go
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into the restaurant industry, that would
have been financial suicide for her.
[00:14:01]
Yeah, she’d be living
in a box now, right now.
[00:14:04]
Other buyers, as first time
buyers turned on specialists.
[00:14:07]
They know what they want.
They buy distressed assets.
[00:14:09]
And then there’s private equity
goes private equity groups.
[00:14:12]
Now they’re going to buy on platformer add
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ons and then strategics
and competitors know what they want.
[00:14:18]
Same thing with serial entrepreneurs.
[00:14:20]
They’re pretty much industry agnostic.
[00:14:23]
They just chase cash flow.
Mm hmm.
[00:14:26]
So the only ones you really have to figure
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out what you want are
the first time buyers.
[00:14:30]
All right.
Interesting.
[00:14:32]
The other ones are educated
and experienced enough, educated,
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experienced enough to kind
of know what they want.
[00:14:38]
Again, they check us.
[00:14:39]
So if we got businesses of a million
[00:14:41]
dollars, but we have lots and lots
and lots of buyers for those businesses
[00:14:45]
because there are more buyers for good
businesses and are good businesses to buy.
[00:14:50]
Totally.
[00:14:50]
Yeah, because I imagine most people,
when they want to get out of the business
[00:14:53]
is not because they’re
making money and having fun.
[00:14:55]
Right.
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Because they’re not making money
and it’s taking all the time.
[00:14:58]
Right.
Interesting.
[00:15:00]
So how do you find a business that fits
[00:15:03]
that that mold that you believe that you
can grow it to the point that’s profitable
[00:15:09]
and then therefore
salable? How do you find.
[00:15:11]
Do I find a business?
[00:15:13]
I don’t find a business.
They find me.
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They find you.
[00:15:16]
So they are find me OK?
[00:15:18]
Yeah, I know I’m not going to partner
with 20 businesses a year.
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I might do one or two dollars a year.
Gotcha.
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OK, I do one or two deals where I buy
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the rest of what we do is selling
and operating in my current businesses.
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All right.
[00:15:32]
Now, Christine, I
know you have a few books out.
[00:15:35]
I do.
[00:15:36]
And it looks like clearly Exit Rich
is the one you’re pushing.
[00:15:39]
So how about you tell us about that one?
Yes.
[00:15:41]
So, yeah, I make it very obvious.
[00:15:44]
Yeah.
Nothing in there.
[00:15:47]
That’s all.
Good.
[00:15:48]
So I get rich.
[00:15:49]
I wrote about my very first book.
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I’ll give you a little education
on the business landscape.
[00:15:54]
Oh, my very first book called
Sell Your Business for More.
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It’s worth in twenty thirteen
[00:15:58]
and did the research in 2013
and learned that ninety five percent
[00:16:03]
of all startups from one to five
years would go out of business.
[00:16:05]
Right.
That’s pretty much common sense.
[00:16:07]
We all know that.
Yeah.
[00:16:08]
But then were well extra rich and 19
and 20, 20 was Sharon Lechter.
[00:16:12]
I do the same research and learn
[00:16:15]
that the business landscape
has actually flip flopped.
[00:16:18]
So now only 30 percent of startups are
going out of business, only 30 percent,
[00:16:25]
however, out of twenty seven
point six million companies.
[00:16:29]
Those businesses have been
in business ten years or longer.
[00:16:34]
Seventy percent of those businesses are
[00:16:35]
going out of business
and these business owners are exiting
[00:16:39]
poor, not exiting rich,
or selling for pennies on the dollar,
[00:16:43]
closing their doors or even
worse, filing bankruptcy.
[00:16:46]
Mm hmm.
[00:16:47]
And so you hear about the big public
[00:16:49]
companies all the time,
like Toys R US and business.
[00:16:51]
Seventy five years goes out of business.
[00:16:53]
Mm hmm.
[00:16:55]
Megamix Ward goes out of business.
[00:16:57]
J.C. Penney is in trouble.
[00:16:58]
Steinmark goes out of business.
[00:16:59]
Everyone one goes out of business.
[00:17:01]
Godiva closes up fifteen
hundred locations.
[00:17:04]
GNC closes nine hundred locations.
[00:17:07]
So and the main reason for that is because
[00:17:09]
business owners stop
doing what I call aim.
[00:17:12]
I am aim is always innovate and market.
All right.
[00:17:17]
Always innovate and market.
[00:17:19]
OK, so.
[00:17:23]
Exit Rich is all about innovation,
[00:17:25]
it’s all about marketing,
it’s all about not just selling your
[00:17:28]
business because your business
is probably not sellable.
[00:17:33]
So it’s all about planning what I call
[00:17:36]
your exit model from day one to starting
or buying a business and building
[00:17:41]
a business that’s sustainable,
scalable, and we are ready to sell.
[00:17:44]
You have a sellable asset
and then it’s all about building.
[00:17:48]
It’s all about going through your mind.
[00:17:50]
Set to let me let me talk about
that before I talk about infrastructure.
[00:17:52]
It’s all about going through your mindset
[00:17:54]
and determining what is your sanity,
how much money, because business owners
[00:17:59]
come to me and say, oh, Michelle,
I want to sell for ten million dollars.
[00:18:03]
How did you come up with that number?
[00:18:06]
Because their cash flow is like
one hundred thousand seven
[00:18:10]
hundred thousand dollars cash flow
[00:18:11]
and always goes back to that’s
what they need to retire on.
[00:18:16]
That’s what they need to buy a business
or create their next masterpiece.
[00:18:19]
So one of the big chapters and exit after
the exit motto is When and why should you?
[00:18:27]
Your business timing is everything.
Mm hmm.
[00:18:30]
So we take our clients through what we
[00:18:32]
call a solid sanity check
to determine what they really need.
[00:18:35]
And one.
Mm hmm.
[00:18:36]
And then number two,
what are they going to do next?
[00:18:40]
They’re beginning and strategy because
they will never follow through on an exit
[00:18:44]
strategy until they actually
have a beginning strategy.
[00:18:50]
And then we and then we prioritize,
we prioritize what’s the most important
[00:18:56]
thing to them, is it the purchase price
is taking care of their employees?
[00:18:59]
Is it taking care of their clients?
[00:19:00]
Is a growing our legacy.
[00:19:02]
A lot of times it’s not
even a dollar amount.
[00:19:04]
That’s the most important thing to them,
are taking care of their employees,
[00:19:09]
maybe taking care of their employees,
growing their legacy.
[00:19:12]
This is their baby.
[00:19:13]
They want to see their big
name still shining in lights.
[00:19:16]
They want to see a legacy to continue on.
[00:19:19]
And then we take them through how to build
[00:19:21]
the infrastructure on what we call the six
PS because of a business is operating
[00:19:25]
on all six cylinders,
all six PS that will be able to maximize
[00:19:30]
value and we’ll have lots
of buyers to create a bidding war.
[00:19:33]
All right.
If it’s not, then we won’t.
[00:19:36]
So we work with our clients
to tune up those six fees.
[00:19:39]
OK, will you share with us the 60s? Sure.
[00:19:43]
I’ll share with you whatever
you want or my trade secrets.
[00:19:47]
I don’t care.
So this is number one is people.
[00:19:51]
One of the biggest mistakes that business
owners make is they have created a job
[00:19:54]
that they go to work at every day rather
than a business actually works for them.
[00:19:58]
Yes, definitely no.
[00:20:01]
Business owners have to focus on their
strengths and hire their weaknesses.
[00:20:05]
You need to”” learn to delegate
and put the right people and resources
[00:20:09]
to NASA who question who opens the door,
who does what customers,
[00:20:12]
who does illegal accounting, marketing,
manufacturing, logistics, environmental.
[00:20:17]
The clue, James, is used
to never be next to the WHO.
[00:20:21]
Mm hmm.
[00:20:22]
So all of your listeners should
stop what they’re doing.
[00:20:25]
Possessed by Dan Rather,
who’s and then the names next to each.
[00:20:30]
And again, you don’t want to put your name
[00:20:32]
next to any of them because you need
the business to run without you.
[00:20:36]
You also want to make sure you have
[00:20:37]
a management team in place
and then the next P is product.
[00:20:42]
This is your product or service industry.
[00:20:45]
You have to ask yourself, is your
product or industry on the way up?
[00:20:47]
On the way out.
Hmm.
[00:20:50]
Is a thriving or is it dying to have
[00:20:52]
an Amazon here in your prime, or do you
have a blockbuster about to go bust?
[00:20:56]
Right.
And, you know, during this pandemic,
[00:20:58]
unfortunately, there’s a lot
of industries about to go bust.
[00:21:01]
But I always tell my clients that’s
very transformational questions.
[00:21:05]
Amazon did this back in the 90s.
[00:21:07]
They ask themselves,
what business are we in?
[00:21:11]
An your listenership pause again
[00:21:14]
and ask ourselves,
what business are we at?
[00:21:16]
And Amazon, we’re the a
bookselling business.
[00:21:18]
We sell books.
Then Amazon asked, what do we do really?
[00:21:23]
Well, better than everybody else.
[00:21:24]
What is our core competency?
[00:21:26]
What is our USP or unique
selling proposition?
[00:21:31]
And Amazon said.
[00:21:33]
We do much better than anybody else,
[00:21:36]
so this is what is really going
to identify what makes him unique.
[00:21:39]
Right.
And then the third question,
[00:21:41]
the most obvious question
is what business should we be in, huh?
[00:21:47]
All right.
Should Amazon said we should be
[00:21:50]
in the fulfillment business,
we should be fulfilling more than just
[00:21:53]
books, we should be fulfilling
everybody’s products.
[00:21:56]
Those three questions is what transformed
Amazon from a small bookseller
[00:22:01]
to a multibillion dollar worldwide
conglomerate that they are today?
[00:22:04]
Mm hmm.
[00:22:05]
So ask yourself those
transformational questions.
[00:22:08]
Business owners have to get
out of the tactical.
[00:22:11]
The transactional and become
transformational.
[00:22:14]
Mm hmm.
I like that.
[00:22:16]
And then the next piece is processes.
[00:22:21]
Processes are kind of like exit strategy.
[00:22:23]
You never think of them
until something bad happens.
[00:22:26]
And you’re like, oh,
[00:22:27]
we need a process for that process as
most business owners get this wrong.
[00:22:32]
Processes need to be designed
with the customer experience in mind.
[00:22:35]
Mm hmm.
[00:22:36]
Did you ever watch the movie The Founder,
based upon the McDonald brothers?
[00:22:40]
Few times.
Yeah.
[00:22:41]
Yeah.
[00:22:42]
OK, so you remember back in the fifties,
the McDonald brothers said we want
[00:22:46]
to create a restaurant around
this customer’s experience.
[00:22:50]
We want to create the processes.
[00:22:52]
That fast food system, I think is
what they called it back then.
[00:22:55]
We wanted to create the processes
around the customer experience.
[00:22:58]
We want the customers to experience
[00:23:00]
great tasting food that’s hot
served, 30 seconds or less.
[00:23:04]
You remember when the McDonald brothers
went out to the empty tennis court?
[00:23:07]
Yeah.
[00:23:07]
Took chalk on the tennis courts,
all the processes.
[00:23:11]
Yeah.
Systematize it.
[00:23:12]
And they were bouncing
around battling each other.
[00:23:15]
Right.
[00:23:15]
And then you had, I think,
one of the McDonald’s brothers.
[00:23:18]
I think it was Dick or Mac.
I don’t know.
[00:23:19]
I mean, Dick was up on a ladder and he was
orchestrating where they all need to go.
[00:23:24]
And it was just as healthy as a simply
systemize systemizing, right?
[00:23:29]
Mm hmm.
[00:23:30]
And but those processes that were
developed way back then is why you can eat
[00:23:35]
at a McDonald’s, any one around
and get the same experience.
[00:23:38]
That’s why they can replace somebody
[00:23:39]
within 30 minutes and have
them at the front,
[00:23:42]
you know, and they designed it
[00:23:43]
with the customer experience of mine.
Have you ever dealt with a company where
[00:23:48]
you’re like, oh, my God,
this is the worst experience of my life?
[00:23:53]
Just about every new client
that we take on Calls On Call?
[00:23:57]
Well, those are your clients.
[00:23:58]
But what about a company?
[00:24:00]
A bank, a social media company, a vendor?
Yeah.
[00:24:03]
And you have to go through it.
[00:24:04]
Like, I’m not going to say
who the social media company.
[00:24:07]
Oh, my gosh.
[00:24:08]
It took me six months
to get my problem solved.
[00:24:10]
Yeah.
[00:24:10]
And I couldn’t call anybody and I kept
emailing and we kept doing all the stuff.
[00:24:14]
Their processes are designed
[00:24:16]
with the owner’s agenda in mind, not
with the customer’s experience and mine.
[00:24:21]
So bottom line is,
owners need to start getting this right,
[00:24:25]
create happy clients and you
will be in business, right?
[00:24:29]
If you don’t, your competitors
will take them over for you.
[00:24:32]
So your your processes should always be
[00:24:35]
designed with the customer
experience in mind.
[00:24:37]
It should be productive and efficient.
[00:24:39]
If your processes are not productive
[00:24:41]
and efficient, you’re going
to lose money totally.
[00:24:44]
And then you need to have them documented.
[00:24:46]
You need to have the systemized approach
[00:24:48]
like a McDonald’s or Burger King or want
a burger where you have your S.O.P
[00:24:52]
checklist, you have your manuals,
you have your employee checklist
[00:24:55]
and handbooks and non competes
and contracts right there.
[00:24:59]
No answers where it’s all up here right
now because that’s the problem.
[00:25:03]
Like I had a sweet little lady call me
[00:25:05]
the other day and she wanted her husband
dropped dead from a heart attack.
[00:25:10]
Oh.
[00:25:10]
Left him with a mountain of debt,
left her with a mountain of debt.
[00:25:13]
She knows nothing about
finances or the business.
[00:25:16]
She said, can you please sell this
for me so I could pay off the debt?
[00:25:18]
That’s start asking questions.
He no employees.
[00:25:20]
We had no people.
[00:25:22]
Then he had no processes,
[00:25:24]
everything was in his head when
he died, the business died.
[00:25:27]
You got to get stuff out
of your head onto paper.
[00:25:31]
Mm hmm.
[00:25:31]
OK, the next P is
the highest value driver.
[00:25:35]
So business says I have a million dollars
[00:25:37]
in EBITA even as earnings before interest,
taxes, depreciation and amortization,
[00:25:42]
they typically
will trade with anywhere from one
[00:25:45]
to three, maybe four if
they got some synergies.
[00:25:48]
Let’s just say one of the four businesses
[00:25:50]
over a million dollars in April will
typically go for four or five and up.
[00:25:55]
But this is for fire, Terry.
[00:25:58]
So proprietory assets
will get you a much higher multiples.
[00:26:04]
Pay attention to this P if you don’t
pay attention to anything else.
[00:26:08]
And there are six pillars to this,
[00:26:10]
so no one is branding them all while
branded you are the more I can sell your
[00:26:15]
company for as long as your company
brand is relevant in the mind
[00:26:21]
of the consumers. Meaning is anybody
paying any money for Blockbuster?
[00:26:26]
Now, what’s the most valuable brand
in the world? Do you know Coca-Cola?
[00:26:33]
Now everybody says Coca-Cola.
[00:26:34]
They’re the top 10,
but they’re not the most valuable.
[00:26:36]
All right, then I have
to admit ignorance here.
[00:26:42]
Apple,
Apple, Android,
[00:26:44]
no rival to top that Apple, no more than
three hundred and fifty nine billion
[00:26:50]
dollars just for the just for the brand,
just for the last,
[00:26:54]
not including cash for real estate,
inventory, assets, accounts receivables,
[00:26:58]
just the brand is over
350 billion dollars.
[00:27:01]
How do they come up with a number like
[00:27:03]
that? Because there’s a lot
of different metrics.
[00:27:06]
There’s a lot of different matrix
of formulas and things like that.
[00:27:08]
And plus how the company
I mean, the public.
[00:27:12]
So they’ve got Matrix as well.
[00:27:14]
It’s easier to come up with a brand
when you have a public traded company.
[00:27:20]
And then so trademarks are very valuable.
[00:27:23]
Company trademark your podcast,
[00:27:25]
trademark your company name, trademark,
except Rich the six as a sex symbol.
[00:27:32]
Here’s the mistake the business owners
[00:27:34]
make, James as they go open up interstate
sediq open up in California.
[00:27:39]
They get a trademark for the state
[00:27:40]
of California, but they never
check the federal database.
[00:27:44]
They go to GoDaddy first to make sure
[00:27:47]
the domain is available and never
check the federal database.
[00:27:52]
So I’ve had clients in business for five,
[00:27:53]
10, 15 years all of a sudden receive a
cease and desist letter.
[00:27:58]
Oh, so they’re hiring attorneys spent a
lot of money, but they’re going to lose.
[00:28:02]
And then you got to start all over
again and build that brand back up.
[00:28:05]
So make sure that you get
a trademark attorney.
[00:28:08]
It’s not that expensive, like fifteen
fifteen hundred two thousand.
[00:28:11]
And protect your assets, right.
[00:28:16]
We have a we have a business
that we’re selling products to.
[00:28:21]
So if you have any exclusive name
products, it could be restaurant,
[00:28:24]
it could be producing, you know,
all kinds of different things.
[00:28:28]
We got a company we’re selling that has
[00:28:29]
exclusive product for each one
of the grocery store chains,
[00:28:32]
and each name has a federal trademark
that’s worth a lot of money.
[00:28:37]
Mm hmm.
[00:28:38]
Patents are valuable, too,
if you have a large shark tank was
[00:28:42]
the same question all investors
ask all the inventors.
[00:28:46]
They’re asking for. They want to know what
their secret sauce is, proprietary is,
[00:28:51]
what do they own that special
to them right now?
[00:28:53]
Do you have a patent on that?
[00:28:54]
You have a patent pending
to have utility patent.
[00:28:57]
In fact, that offers always
contingent upon the patent.
[00:29:01]
Oh, we want to start a business, right?
[00:29:03]
Ten million dollars that wasn’t making
any money, but they had 18 patents.
[00:29:07]
Wow, contracts.
[00:29:10]
Also, big manufacturing contracts,
vidro contracts, distribution contracts,
[00:29:15]
any type of exclusive contracts,
franchise or contracts that has lots
[00:29:17]
of franchises and then client contracts
that are most valuable
[00:29:21]
because business buyers want to buy
a business that has revenue coming in.
[00:29:26]
Right.
[00:29:26]
Especially those contracts have
subscription models reoccurring.
[00:29:30]
Rather, they are the most
valuable to strategics.
[00:29:33]
Here is the caveat to contracts.
[00:29:36]
I’ve been in this industry for 20 years.
[00:29:39]
I have never met one business owner
that has a transferability clause in our
[00:29:43]
contract that says this contract is
transferable to the new entity,
[00:29:47]
ninety nine point nine percent
of all sales or stock sales.
[00:29:51]
And that’s a big loss to do an asset sale
or the clients agree to accept to transfer
[00:29:57]
and stop dead in its tracks.
[00:29:59]
So that’s a huge one.
[00:30:01]
That’s huge.
[00:30:03]
Get the transferability clause.
[00:30:05]
Be proactive.
[00:30:06]
Yeah, there wasn’t there was a M&A firm
that sold it was a business brokerage
[00:30:11]
firm,
that sort of private equity group
[00:30:15]
and a private equity group to diligence
team didn’t do their homework.
[00:30:19]
They never looked at the contracts.
[00:30:21]
None of the contracts were transferable.
[00:30:24]
They spent millions on this business,
[00:30:26]
did a big hoopla, congratulatory
party for the franchisees.
[00:30:30]
Franchisees didn’t like the private equity
[00:30:31]
group like they know
nothing about our industry.
[00:30:34]
So none of them transferred over only one
out of like fifteen hundred franchises.
[00:30:39]
Oh, it’s not me.
[00:30:41]
Ended up going bankrupt.
[00:30:42]
And then as soon I entirely legal and due
diligence team and obviously one.
[00:30:48]
But you have to have your
contracts transferable.
[00:30:51]
Right.
[00:30:52]
Database’s is another
proprietary Facebook page.
[00:30:56]
Nineteen billion dollars for WhatsApp
[00:30:58]
and WhatsApp was hemorrhaging
money hemorrhaging.
[00:31:01]
But they had a synergy.
[00:31:03]
They had a billion users
and Facebook knew they can monetize.
[00:31:06]
And I could all I they could get
a return on their investment.
[00:31:09]
They paid nineteen billion
for a billion users.
[00:31:12]
Wow.
Celebrity endorsements are big.
[00:31:15]
Know we have a client that’s got Oprah
that is endorsing their products.
[00:31:20]
A strategic competitor will pay a lot
[00:31:22]
of money for that because everybody
wants their products in front of Oprah.
[00:31:26]
She’s the queen Restaino saying they love
[00:31:29]
radio personalities like Glenn Beck
or Kate Codecs or any of these.
[00:31:34]
I used to say Rush Limbaugh, but
unfortunately, he’s on there right now.
[00:31:38]
So good.
[00:31:38]
Now, these celebrities and radio
personalities can only endorse
[00:31:42]
one skincare at a time, one diet company
at a time because they lose credibility.
[00:31:47]
So this is what we call
prime digital real estate.
[00:31:50]
And then for e-commerce businesses,
[00:31:53]
if you got any of these top positions
on Etsy, Wayfair, modern Amazon, eBay,
[00:32:01]
that is a lot of money strategics will pay
for that digital real estate placement.
[00:32:06]
So that’s proprietary.
[00:32:07]
Build your proprietary assets.
[00:32:09]
These are synergies.
[00:32:11]
Nice, and then the next
year was a lot right there.
[00:32:15]
I did the next year,
[00:32:16]
Patrias and I could go on and on and on
and little proprietary, you know,
[00:32:21]
let’s say you’re an engineer or architect
and you have all these blueprints.
[00:32:27]
That’s proprietary.
[00:32:28]
Let’s say that you’re an online educator
and you have all these curriculums
[00:32:33]
that’s proprietary,
you know, there’s so many different
[00:32:36]
examples of proprietary that’s
extremely valuable to Meyer’s
[00:32:43]
patrons as a whip.
[00:32:45]
This is your customer base.
[00:32:47]
You want customer concentrate?
[00:32:49]
I’m sorry, one customer diversification,
not customer concentration.
[00:32:52]
And typically the business rule,
the businesses follow the 80 20 rule where
[00:32:57]
80 percent of the revenue comes
from 20 percent of clients.
[00:32:59]
I’ll give you a quick case study.
[00:33:01]
So we’re selling all manufacturing
[00:33:02]
business and have sixty five percent
of the revenue tied up in BP.
[00:33:07]
All right, 65.
[00:33:08]
That’s a law that is a lot we have as
[00:33:11]
a company in the nine point
eight nine dollars range.
[00:33:13]
We have 550 buyers for this one company.
[00:33:16]
We narrowed it down to 12 letter
[00:33:18]
of intent, but every letter of intent had
a caveat to the contract, to their alaoui,
[00:33:24]
the stated that
what the payout was going to be
[00:33:30]
tied to the BP contract.
[00:33:32]
So if they lost BP, then the seller will
lose a percentage of that purchase price.
[00:33:36]
I can earn out self-financing, etc.
[00:33:39]
But then we found one buyer that has some
[00:33:41]
more products and services and this buyer
had been trying to get in BP for decades.
[00:33:47]
I could never get in.
[00:33:49]
So he was willing to take the risk because
he’s like, if I if I met with this
[00:33:52]
company, I can get my other
products and services in there.
[00:33:55]
So he ended up offering 15 million.
[00:33:58]
He paid 50 million for 70
percent of the company.
[00:34:02]
Which is one hundred twenty six
percent more than the asking price.
[00:34:05]
Wow, prizefights just to get in the VP.
[00:34:08]
That’s how we create that’s how we
identify those synergies and identify
[00:34:12]
those buyers that are willing to pay
top dollar, willing to pay more.
[00:34:15]
And I bet everybody else.
[00:34:17]
So on something like that,
[00:34:19]
how do you find a buyer like that that’s
looking for BP or access to BP,
[00:34:24]
but they may not necessarily
looking for a business?
[00:34:26]
Right.
[00:34:28]
Or were they not get it done?
[00:34:29]
I they have to buy the business.
[00:34:32]
But how do they find you or you find them?
[00:34:35]
Well, I mean, we don’t advertise.
[00:34:37]
Sixty five percent of revenues would be
[00:34:38]
big because then we probably
would never get them free.
[00:34:41]
But we found we found buyers
[00:34:44]
and the manufacturer oil manufacturing
space that were growing through
[00:34:47]
acquisition and wanted
to buy more businesses.
[00:34:49]
All right.
And we were fortunate to find one that had
[00:34:53]
very similar products and services
they’ve been trying to get in BP.
[00:34:57]
Sure.
[00:34:58]
A lot of times a lot of time
to answer that question.
[00:35:01]
We are because we’ve been
in business for 20 years.
[00:35:03]
We already know
what what private equity groups want,
[00:35:07]
what they’re looking for,
what synergies are looking for.
[00:35:09]
Same thing with strategics
and competitors.
[00:35:11]
We already know it’s it’s in our CRM.
Right.
[00:35:14]
So I imagine much like real estate,
a lot of the stuff that a lot
[00:35:18]
of transactions that happen
don’t ever get listed.
[00:35:21]
Yes.
Very true connections that people make.
[00:35:25]
A lot of our stuff never
goes on the open market.
[00:35:28]
As Carax We’re seeing a lot of times what
[00:35:30]
you saw in auctions, like, well,
we’ll go sort out who the buyers are
[00:35:34]
that we think are best and we’ll do
a structured auction on those
[00:35:38]
on that business, really
at that price point as well.
[00:35:42]
Wow.
[00:35:44]
And then so the last piece,
the most important B is profits.
[00:35:47]
Everybody wants to make money.
[00:35:50]
And the reason I come off as last is
[00:35:52]
because lack of profits
is never the problem.
[00:35:56]
Clients come to me all the time.
[00:35:57]
So much of a profit bubble like now you
[00:35:59]
have a problem in the process of a lag if
you’re not making money in your company.
[00:36:06]
Mm hmm.
[00:36:07]
Go and look at the people
in your organization.
[00:36:09]
Look at your product.
You have convert revenue streams,
[00:36:12]
get your processes are designed
to have happy clients.
[00:36:16]
They gave you referrals or they designed
to alienate customers and they go
[00:36:20]
somewhere else and you’re losing
market share and they look at your IP.
[00:36:24]
Are you spending more money to protect
[00:36:27]
your intellectual property because
you didn’t do it from the beginning?
[00:36:30]
Lack of profits is never,
ever the problem.
[00:36:33]
It’s the symptom.
[00:36:35]
If you’re running all five cylinders,
I guarantee you’re going to be making
[00:36:39]
money profits automatic
at that point, correct?
[00:36:42]
That’s fair.
Totally fair, right?
[00:36:44]
Yeah, that’s a symptom.
[00:36:45]
Not the that’s the symptom.
Not the problem.
[00:36:48]
Yeah, I get it.
Interesting.
[00:36:50]
So that’s the sixth phase.
That’s pretty cool.
[00:36:52]
And that that all wrapped up is
in your exit rich book is that right.
[00:36:55]
It is.
[00:36:55]
So the first half of exit rich as as
a model, how you should plan your exit
[00:37:02]
from day one, you and me running
through that real quick.
[00:37:04]
Sure.
OK, so day one,
[00:37:07]
you need to plan your exit.
[00:37:09]
You need to start with the end in mind
[00:37:11]
that Stephen Covey principles
start with the end in mind.
[00:37:14]
And when you want to drive some more,
James, what do you do?
[00:37:17]
You pull out your phone, you go to Google
Maps and you plug in your destination.
[00:37:22]
Destination business owners
have to have a destination.
[00:37:26]
Business owners have no destination.
[00:37:27]
Business owners don’t plan
to tell their fellow plan.
[00:37:30]
Right side of the plans,
[00:37:32]
driving around in circles, driving up
and down the financial hills and nowhere.
[00:37:35]
Hmm.
[00:37:36]
So you need a destination,
need an end game.
[00:37:38]
You need a desired sales price.
[00:37:41]
Pick a number.
[00:37:42]
I tell all my clients pick a number like,
oh, no, no, no, no.
[00:37:46]
Just pick a frickin number.
[00:37:48]
If you want to sell for twenty million
dollars, wait, there’s a number for you.
[00:37:51]
Twenty million dollars.
[00:37:53]
Then what is it you want or need to know.
[00:37:55]
You needs to know where
you’re starting from.
[00:37:59]
What is your current location,
what is your evaluation.
[00:38:02]
Most business owners never,
ever get a business valuation.
[00:38:06]
You know, it’s financial suicide.
[00:38:07]
We go to the doctor once a year to get
[00:38:10]
a physical checkup to make sure all our
hearts are taken and we’re still kicking.
[00:38:13]
We drive a car, the mechanic,
[00:38:15]
to get an annual tune up,
but we never get an annual evaluation
[00:38:19]
checkup on our business,
our most prized valuable asset
[00:38:24]
or events to increase valuation
and reverse it, decrease valuation.
[00:38:29]
So you need a valuation
checkup every year.
[00:38:33]
So you need to know where
you’re starting from.
[00:38:34]
So let’s say you want to sample twenty
[00:38:35]
million and you’re currently
worth five million.
[00:38:38]
Next thing you need to know is what?
[00:38:41]
How do we get their time frame,
time frame, OK, time?
[00:38:45]
Yeah, huge.
[00:38:47]
Let’s say you want to do it in 15 years on
a cell for twenty nine to five million.
[00:38:52]
I want to sell in 15 years.
[00:38:53]
Next thing you need to know is who’s my
buyer’s going to be not buyer but buyers.
[00:39:00]
Clients come to me all the time and shout
[00:39:01]
out I got the buyer just represent me
with this one buyer and I’m like
[00:39:05]
OK let you do yourself a disservice
because I can promise you
[00:39:08]
that that buyer is probably not going
to buy your business,
[00:39:11]
are going to find something that they
don’t like and not going to belong.
[00:39:14]
You need to have backup buyers.
[00:39:17]
And I want to tell you about
your eggs in one basket.
[00:39:20]
Plus, how can you maximize value?
[00:39:22]
How can you get a higher sales
price if you have no competition?
[00:39:25]
Right.
Introduce competition last.
[00:39:28]
You’re so out of five types of buyers.
[00:39:30]
If you’re trying to sell a 20 million
[00:39:31]
dollar company, you’re not going
to be talking to first time buyers.
[00:39:34]
You’re not going to be talking
to turnaround specialist.
[00:39:36]
So you were talking to private equity,
good strategic competitors and or
[00:39:39]
sophisticated entrepreneurs
to chase cash flow.
[00:39:42]
Then you need to reverse
engineer the numbers.
[00:39:44]
It’s OK to sell my company
at twenty million.
[00:39:46]
What is the top line revenue need to be?
[00:39:50]
Was the gross profit margin,
[00:39:51]
most importantly, was the Ebola
virus before interest, taxes,
[00:39:55]
depreciation and amortization have
to be for sale for 20 million dollars?
[00:39:59]
You need a company is doing about four
[00:40:01]
million, four or four
and a half million in Ebola.
[00:40:04]
All right.
[00:40:06]
So it also depends on the industry,
[00:40:08]
depends upon the industry,
but that’s that’s a good rule of thumb.
[00:40:12]
You three, I would say between three
and a half to five, OK, and EBITA.
[00:40:16]
And then you need to know what synergies
[00:40:19]
are these buyers willing
to pay top dollar for?
[00:40:21]
And that’s what brings you back
to the 60s, putting those infrastructures,
[00:40:24]
putting out those proprietary
assets as proprietary synergies.
[00:40:27]
All right.
And then the last thing in the
[00:40:30]
exit model is my why
why do I want to sell to my mind?
[00:40:34]
If it was easy to do,
everybody would be doing it right.
[00:40:39]
So you have to have a powerful ally strong
[00:40:41]
enough to keep you in the game,
to keep you motivated and keep you
[00:40:44]
weathering all the financial
storms that will occur.
[00:40:48]
So do you ever take somebody through
[00:40:50]
a practice like this and then they realize
they’re making bank,
[00:40:53]
they’re happy with the business now
that you finally helped them,
[00:40:56]
so then they changed their mind and like,
I don’t want to sell right now.
[00:40:59]
Everything’s cool.
Yeah.
[00:41:01]
Happens.
[00:41:02]
And a lot of times your first
offer is your best offer.
[00:41:04]
And I’ve also seen business owners walk
[00:41:07]
away from a really good offer and then
lose everything shortly after that.
[00:41:11]
Oh really?
Yeah.
[00:41:13]
Oh, I timed your first offers,
your best offer and.
[00:41:17]
Yeah, because I get greedy and I’m like,
oh I don’t, I get greedy.
[00:41:21]
And here’s the bottom line.
[00:41:23]
A business has life cycles
just like a human does today.
[00:41:27]
And what goes up must come down.
[00:41:28]
Nothing stays good forever.
[00:41:30]
And businesses go from the incubator
stage when they’re born.
[00:41:34]
Only 90 percent of ideas like how
the incubator babies go to an incubator
[00:41:38]
in a bar high and then they
go from incubator to infant.
[00:41:42]
What is an infant business need? Twenty
[00:41:44]
four hour supervision, a lot of money,
a lot of help.
[00:41:48]
And then it goes to toddler a lot
as a toddler. Do you have kids?
[00:41:52]
You have toddlers or one
not a toddler anymore.
[00:41:54]
Thank goodness.
[00:41:55]
We remember to travel to Syria for
those holidays.
[00:41:59]
You know, they’re starting to walk.
[00:42:00]
They’re starting to make a lot of they’re
starting to destroy everything.
[00:42:04]
But I still need a lot of supervision,
a lot of money.
[00:42:06]
And then I get them.
[00:42:07]
Teenagers and teenagers are rebellious
and think they know it all and they need
[00:42:11]
more supervision and money,
a lot of money.
[00:42:14]
And and then you go from young
[00:42:16]
teenagers to young adults and they’re
starting to figure it out.
[00:42:19]
They don’t need as much micromanagement.
[00:42:21]
They don’t need as much money.
[00:42:23]
They’re starting to figure out.
[00:42:24]
And then you go to a doll,
a doll is in your prime.
[00:42:27]
OK, so let me give you an example.
[00:42:28]
Toys R US was in their
adult phase in twenty.
[00:42:32]
Honestly, it was twenty,
fifteen, twenty, sixteen.
[00:42:35]
All right.
[00:42:36]
They were worth eleven
point five billion dollars.
[00:42:40]
And adult phase adult is when
you should sell your business.
[00:42:44]
Yeah, because,
you know, it’s going to stay an adult
[00:42:47]
for so long and at some
point it’s going to go down.
[00:42:49]
Mm hmm.
So they should have sold then.
[00:42:54]
So they went from adult eleven point
five billion to the very next year.
[00:42:58]
Jane’s filing bankruptcy.
[00:43:01]
Was it really it was the very next year
[00:43:04]
you got from adult to senior citizen,
all right.
[00:43:07]
They filed bankruptcy.
[00:43:08]
Then you got from senior citizen to death.
[00:43:12]
Two years after they were in our dollface,
they closed up all their locations, yeah,
[00:43:17]
online and then they went from death to
rebirth and it opened up four locations.
[00:43:23]
And I tried to innovate.
[00:43:24]
They did a much smaller boutique model,
but did it innovate enough?
[00:43:29]
And so they’re back out of business again.
All right.
[00:43:32]
I knew they fired back up, but I did
not know that they close up shop again.
[00:43:35]
Yeah, did.
[00:43:36]
Isn’t that perfect example of
the business cycle?
[00:43:39]
Life cycle?
Totally.
[00:43:41]
Now, going on that example,
[00:43:43]
if they would have sold in twenty fifteen
for eleven and a half billion dollars,
[00:43:48]
whatever, do you think that they would
have they would still be alive now.
[00:43:53]
It depends upon into the buyer
is it depends on who the CEO is.
[00:43:57]
It depends on the visionary.
[00:43:58]
I mean the problem is had you know,
[00:44:00]
I don’t know who was at the top,
but the person at the top, like vision.
[00:44:04]
Right.
Lacked innovation, just.
[00:44:08]
Yeah.
[00:44:08]
So that’s hard to answer
because I don’t know.
[00:44:12]
All right.
All right.
[00:44:14]
It’s like Apple.
Apple was almost dead
[00:44:17]
until Steve Jobs came back.
[00:44:19]
And then Steve Jobs came back and said,
do ask the same questions.
[00:44:23]
What business are we in?
[00:44:25]
You really, really well.
[00:44:26]
A business should we be in?
[00:44:28]
That’s when I said we need to be
[00:44:29]
in the iPhone business, the iPad business,
the iPod, this and that.
[00:44:33]
And they need to be
in the connection business.
[00:44:35]
It’s just like the founder
of the movie The Real Estate.
[00:44:38]
I’m sorry.
[00:44:40]
Just like the story in the movie
The Founder,
[00:44:43]
when Ray Kroc was at the bank trying to
borrow money because he loves his house.
[00:44:47]
Yeah.
[00:44:48]
And he had a bunch of franchises, but his
percentage was so close relative, so low
[00:44:54]
that he wasn’t making any
money, was losing money.
[00:44:56]
And then a gentleman followed him outside
[00:44:58]
of the bank and asked him,
what business are you at?
[00:45:00]
Right.
[00:45:01]
Because I’m a businessman,
a hamburger business.
[00:45:04]
He goes, no, you need to be
in the real estate business.
[00:45:07]
You going to be buying up the land?
[00:45:10]
Put it up the buildings leasing
to the franchisee after noncompliant
[00:45:15]
with the contract to buy another
franchisee another, and they pay you rent.
[00:45:19]
Mm hmm.
[00:45:20]
And that leverage right there asking those
two questions is what gave Ray Corp
[00:45:26]
the leverage to be able to take
McDonald’s away from McDonald brothers?
[00:45:30]
Yeah, that’s why they’re one
[00:45:31]
of the largest real estate
holding companies in the world.
[00:45:33]
Mm hmm.
Well, back to the questions.
[00:45:35]
If your business is not doing well,
go back to question.
[00:45:39]
What business are you in? What do you do
really well? What should you be it? Right.
[00:45:43]
That’s awesome.
[00:45:44]
Yeah, that’s such a good movie.
[00:45:46]
I love it because the whole systematizing
[00:45:48]
thing, a rule with my business
is a systematize everything.
[00:45:52]
I’m working with some authors and some
publishers and they’re just like,
[00:45:57]
I can’t systematize is
like you can systematize.
[00:46:01]
Just unties almost everything.
[00:46:03]
And the problem with the McDonald brothers
is that systematizing processing.
[00:46:07]
But they want good visionary’s.
[00:46:09]
They they they you know,
[00:46:12]
every time I came up with an idea,
they said, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:46:16]
Really good visionaries.
[00:46:18]
There’s not one restaurant.
Right.
[00:46:20]
No interest,
[00:46:21]
no interest in growth beyond the place
that they had because they won’t really
[00:46:25]
look at not every
entrepreneur is a visionary.
[00:46:27]
Steve Jobs was one of the best
visionaries of all time.
[00:46:30]
Mm hmm.
You know, Ray Kroc was a great visionary.
[00:46:33]
Mm hmm.
Not all entrepreneurs are visionaries.
[00:46:35]
No, very true.
[00:46:37]
And McDonald’s wasn’t really a great
[00:46:38]
visionary, the brothers right now,
because I wanted to control everything.
[00:46:44]
You cannot grow without
letting go control.
[00:46:47]
Oh, I love that.
[00:46:48]
It’s perfect right there.
[00:46:50]
I going to hang that up back here.
[00:46:52]
You cannot grow without letting go
[00:46:54]
the control and they won’t
let go of the control.
[00:46:56]
Yeah.
And that’s why he did the real estate
[00:46:58]
holding company was able
to take everything over.
[00:47:00]
Yeah.
[00:47:01]
I remember the scene in the bathroom when
[00:47:03]
the one of the brothers I don’t
know which one was upset.
[00:47:05]
It was a little like a dick,
I think was a big one.
[00:47:08]
Dick is a little one.
All right.
[00:47:10]
And Ray said, who’s the one with the
million dollar check in your pocket?
[00:47:14]
What’s that?
[00:47:15]
When the brother was kind of upset at Ray
essentially stealing the company.
[00:47:20]
Yes, he owned the company Realtor.
[00:47:22]
He said it was the one
with the million dollar check now.
[00:47:25]
And I never did get paid the royalties.
[00:47:27]
We knew they weren’t going to right now.
[00:47:30]
So it wasn’t that Ray Kroc wasn’t the most
[00:47:32]
ethical guy,
but he certainly was a visionary.
[00:47:35]
And, you know, without Ray Kroc,
there’d be no McDonald’s today.
[00:47:39]
Right.
Right.
[00:47:40]
Good or bad orgood or bad.
[00:47:43]
Right.
So it’s certainly a great example.
[00:47:46]
Tell me about your business as far as
[00:47:48]
employees and stuff like that and how
you’re working and growing your business.
[00:47:52]
Well, I have a lot of different
[00:47:54]
businesses, hovercrafts, gone,
medical companies, medical companies.
[00:47:57]
Oh, I have lots of different businesses.
[00:47:59]
I don’t just have one business.
[00:48:01]
I don’t put all my eggs in one basket.
[00:48:03]
And I am a firm we have
a team of analysts,
[00:48:07]
we have marketing, we have brokers,
we have transaction facilitators.
[00:48:14]
OK, and are these employees are they
they’re both like a combination
[00:48:19]
of employees and employees to ninety
nine thousand combination of interns.
[00:48:24]
Gotcha.
[00:48:25]
And how you must have managers below
you that help you manage all that.
[00:48:29]
Yes.
Yes.
[00:48:31]
Because that’s that you
have to follow my own rule.
[00:48:34]
All right.
I go of the control the girl.
[00:48:38]
Is that bit hard?
[00:48:42]
I don’t think it’s so much
hard to let go of the control.
[00:48:44]
It’s the hardest thing for any business
owner is to find the right people,
[00:48:50]
to put it in the right spot.
Oh, my gosh.
[00:48:52]
Yes, that’s the hardest thousand
times over a thousand times over.
[00:48:56]
Because you think you have the right
person, then you realize, oh, my gosh,
[00:49:00]
I don’t like waking up one day
and got married the wrong person.
[00:49:06]
A couple of people have done that.
Yeah.
[00:49:08]
Yeah.
New Jersey and over 20 something years.
[00:49:11]
I’m good.
Nice.
[00:49:13]
Congrats.
Thank you.
[00:49:14]
So where do you see your businesses going
in the next let’s call it five years.
[00:49:18]
So my, you know,
my graphics company,
[00:49:21]
we have that on the built to sell
model within three to five years.
[00:49:25]
Nice.
Same thing with my medical company.
[00:49:27]
Most of my companies are always
on a bill to sell three to five years.
[00:49:31]
The only one that I don’t really have
[00:49:33]
an actual time for is my life
farm because I love what I do.
[00:49:37]
All right.
[00:49:38]
Get all my other businesses
on a business plan.
[00:49:41]
Very cool.
[00:49:42]
So that said, in three to five years as
[00:49:44]
you sell these, will you be looking
into acquiring other ones as well?
[00:49:49]
I’m looking at acquiring
a franchise company right now.
[00:49:53]
Nice.
[00:49:54]
It’s got so many franchises.
[00:49:55]
What we think we can blow them up.
All right.
[00:49:58]
Yeah.
[00:49:58]
So we’re looking at that and
looking at other businesses.
[00:50:02]
Very cool. Do you for stuff like that,
[00:50:06]
do you have investors that you
bring on for other businesses?
[00:50:09]
I if I bring on a partner,
I invest my money and if I bring
[00:50:12]
on a partner, I expect them to make
an investment to get you OK.
[00:50:16]
And last and last are trading services
for equity, should I say it’s a marketing
[00:50:20]
company and the business needs marketing
and we might bring on a marketing firm
[00:50:25]
and give them a percentage
of the company, give them equity.
[00:50:28]
All right.
[00:50:29]
And terms for service
in exchange for service.
[00:50:33]
All right.
I know we don’t have a ton of time here.
[00:50:36]
So besides Exit Rich,
what other books do you have?
[00:50:38]
Can you remind us? I have Sell Your
Business For More Than What It Is Worth, Exit Rich.
[00:50:42]
I did write a chapter in a book called
Think and Grow Rich. I of a book that’s already
[00:50:46]
written but not out yet about growing
your wealth through acquisitions.
[00:50:50]
Oh,
that’s coming down the pipeline that is so
[00:50:54]
Exit Rich is the one
we’re focused on right now.
[00:50:56]
Yeah,
[00:50:57]
Exit Rich it’s going to launch in June 22nd
[00:51:02]
but you don’t
have to wait till June.
[00:51:03]
Your listeners can go to Exit Rich book club.
I’m sorry.
[00:51:07]
exitrichbook.com
exitrichbook.com for twenty four
[00:51:10]
dollars and seventy nine cents
which is less than Amazon.
[00:51:13]
Right.
They can buy the book.
[00:51:15]
We will email them to digital
download immediately.
[00:51:17]
So they don’t have to wait.
All right.
[00:51:20]
Once we email them the digital download we
[00:51:22]
will shipped our hardcover
to their doorstep to
[00:51:24]
anybody who lives in the United States for no
[00:51:25]
additional shipping cost when
the book launches in June.
[00:51:29]
Plus, we give them a lifetime membership into
[00:51:31]
the Exit Rich book club includes video
[00:51:34]
content and me doing deep dives in these
different techniques and strategies
[00:51:38]
that I’ve been working with over the last
twenty years in the trenches,
[00:51:41]
plus documents. Documents to operate your
business, documents to sell your business.
[00:51:45]
Example: plause and procedure manuals,
employee handbooks,
[00:51:48]
non-competes, org charts,
sample LOI’s, letterman tents,
[00:51:52]
purchase agreements, diligence
checklist, and closing docs.
[00:51:55]
They’re there for your review
and your immediate download.
[00:51:58]
You can use the templates.
[00:52:00]
If you went your attorney to try
[00:52:02]
to recreate all of this, it will cost
you over thirty thousand dollars.
[00:52:05]
Yeah, attorneys are not.
[00:52:06]
And so you’re getting this for twenty four
dollars and seventy nine cents, right?
[00:52:09]
Yes.
[00:52:10]
We’re giving you a 30 day free membership
into club CEOs, which is a entrepreneurial
[00:52:16]
mastermind that I started to ask those
transformational questions and help
[00:52:21]
business owners pivot
so we can build that sustainable,
[00:52:25]
scalable and an already scalable
business so that you can get rich.
[00:52:28]
I didn’t want to say Steve Forbes
has endorsed the rich.
[00:52:32]
Kevin Harrington has written to forward
his original Shark Tank lectures.
[00:52:36]
My coauthor who wrote with Shepard
out with Robert Kiyosaki.
[00:52:39]
Hmm.
[00:52:40]
She’s a New York Times best selling
author, five year, five times now.
[00:52:44]
And she’s a CPA,
[00:52:45]
a financial literacy expert and advisor
to many different presidents.
[00:52:48]
She writes and mentors
after every chapter.
[00:52:51]
Plus, we’ve been endorsed by Les Brown,
[00:52:53]
Jack Canfell and Chicken Soup
for the Soul.
[00:52:56]
Mark Victor Hansen and Tracy Tompkins.
[00:52:59]
Yeah, yeah, yes.
That’s cool.
[00:53:02]
That’s very cool.
[00:53:03]
I’m talking to some authors in a few
months here in Canada,
[00:53:07]
and it’s interesting to see what you got
going on with the book,
[00:53:11]
like, oh, you got you’re doing
all right with this skincare.
[00:53:14]
I love it. Well,
it’s a great title, right?
[00:53:17]
Yeah, it’s definitely a great title for it
now because, I mean, this is actually more
[00:53:24]
so for twenty four dollars
and seventy nine cents.
[00:53:26]
You get all of that and a bag of chips is
less expensive than going to McDonald’s.
[00:53:31]
And they have
[00:53:33]
all they have to do is
actually implement it.
[00:53:35]
Right.
And actually do they got to implement it.
[00:53:36]
We had a gentleman who sent us
[00:53:38]
a testimonial letter that read the PDF
version and he said, oh my gosh.
[00:53:43]
He said, why have you bet in 20 years?
[00:53:45]
You said, my marketing and media business.
[00:53:48]
He says, I haven’t I didn’t
do any of this stuff.
[00:53:50]
I had my accident on
my infrastructure in the 60s.
[00:53:55]
And he said now he’s doing everything step
by step by step, and he wants us to
[00:54:01]
work with him because we have a mentor
program that we’re that we have.
[00:54:05]
It’s called Road Road to Sell.
[00:54:07]
OK,
and so anyway, he says he’s been making
[00:54:12]
some huge changes and his company has seen
a huge profit from just implementing these
[00:54:17]
little tweaks that we
talked about the next reg.
[00:54:20]
That’s going to be a good feeling.
[00:54:21]
Yeah, of course.
[00:54:22]
Testimonials like that.
Absolutely.
[00:54:25]
I love hearing from clients
or from students.
[00:54:28]
All that jazz.
Yeah.
[00:54:29]
Like, hey, I did this thing that you said
[00:54:32]
that I thought, you’re
crazy for telling me.
[00:54:36]
Like,
[00:54:37]
you know, all of this sounds so common
sense, but common sense is not so common.
[00:54:41]
Not at all.
[00:54:44]
Anyone that’s ever tried to hire someone
knows that, oh, my God, hiring is
[00:54:49]
that’s that’s the biggest
challenge in every business.
[00:54:52]
And I always say, you know, if you can’t
change or people change your people.
[00:54:56]
Yeah.
[00:54:58]
Oh, I love that.
[00:55:00]
We can’t throw that one back there.
[00:55:02]
And you have to be honest.
[00:55:03]
You have to have an assistant.
That’s another thing I always say.
[00:55:05]
If you don’t have an assistant,
you are the assistant.
[00:55:07]
Yes.
Yeah.
[00:55:09]
That is something that’s interesting
[00:55:10]
that goes hand in hand with the
letting go of control thing.
[00:55:13]
Yeah, because that’s one of those things
that I’m graduating to that I know
[00:55:17]
it’s tough, but you talked me
into taking the step there.
[00:55:22]
SoI love it.
[00:55:24]
I love it.
Well, cool.
[00:55:26]
Michelle, thank you so much
for being on the show.
[00:55:28]
Can you remind us again where people
can find you. So exitrichbook.com.
[00:55:32]
Go get the book, twenty four dollars and
[00:55:33]
seventy nine cents for all the goodies
and all the golden nuggets.
[00:55:36]
They can also go to SeilerTucker.com,
which is my main website.
[00:55:42]
Spelt S-E-I-L-E-R, seilertucker.com.
[00:55:43]
They can also text Michelle to 8885265750
[00:55:49]
and when they text me, my websites pop up,
all my social media pops up,
[00:55:52]
they follow me on social media
and connect with me on LinkedIn.
[00:55:55]
Nice.
[00:55:56]
That is the first time
anyone’s ever offered that.
[00:55:59]
Oh really? That is cool.
I’m innovative.
[00:56:02]
Nice
[00:56:04]
I love it.
I love it.
[00:56:06]
That’s super cool.
[00:56:07]
Michelle, thank you so much
for being on the show.
[00:56:09]
Thanks, James.
Thanks for having me on.
[00:56:10]
It was a pleasure to be with you.
Yeah.
[00:56:12]
This has been
[00:56:12]
Authentic Business Adventures the business
program that brings you the struggles
[00:56:16]
stories and triumphant successes
of business owners across the land.
[00:56:19]
We are underwritten locally
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
[00:56:22]
If you’re listening to this on the Web,
please give a thumbs up,
[00:56:24]
subscribe, comment, and of course, share
with all your entrepreneurial friends.
[00:56:28]
My name is James Kademan
and Authentic Business Adventures is
[00:56:31]
brought to you
by Calls On Call, offering call answering
[00:56:34]
services for service businesses looking
for growth. On the web at CallsOnCall.com
[00:56:39]
As well as
Draw In Customers Business Coaching
[00:56:42]
offering business coaching services
for entrepreneurs all over the country
[00:56:45]
on the Web at DrawInCustomers.com.
And of course, The BOLD Business Book, a book
[00:56:49]
for the entrepreneur in all of us
available wherever fine books are sold.
[00:56:53]
We’d like to thank you are wonderful listeners as
[00:56:55]
well as our guest, Michelle Seiler Tucker,
CEO and founder of Seiler Tucker Inc.
[00:57:01]
Michelle, thank you
so much for being on the show.
[00:57:03]
This is so much fun.
Thank you, James.
[00:57:05]
I had a blast with you.
Thank you.
[00:57:06]
Good to see you.
I’ve interviewed a lot of people.
[00:57:09]
I always take away at least
one or two nuggets.
[00:57:11]
I think you gave us about
fifty seven of them.
[00:57:13]
So thank you so much for that.
[00:57:15]
That’s a good number.
So that’s, we made some progress here.
[00:57:17]
So that’s cool.
[00:57:20]
Past episodes can be found
[00:57:21]
morning, noon, and night at the podcast link found
at DrawInCustomers.com.
[00:57:24]
Thank you so much for listening.
We’ll see you next week.
[00:57:27]
I want you to stay awesome.
[00:57:28]
And if you do nothing else.
[00:57:29]
Enjoy your business.
