Authentic Achievements with Special Guest Michelle Seiler Tucker
From Bestselling author, currently writing the forthcoming book Authentic Achievements – The 7 Secrets to Building Brave Belief, Unstoppable Sales, and Turning Your Leaders Into Talent Magnets for Guaranteed Sustainable Growth, this show shares advice, stories and inspiration to help you achieve exponential growth personally and for your business. Featuring interviews with industry leaders and a separate series on #confidencehacker to help you build authentic confidence.
In this episode, I am delighted to be joined by the fabulous Michelle Seiler Tucker. Michelle is the Founder and CEO of Seiler Tucker Incorporated. As a 20-year veteran in mergers & acquisitions, Michelle has sold hundreds of businesses.
She owns and operates several successful companies and holds the following professional designations and certifications: Merger & Acquisition Master Intermediary (M&AMI), Certified Senior Business Analyst (CSBA), Certified Mergers & Acquisitions Professional (CM&AP) Certified Business Broker (CBB), Panelist for M&A Source, Keynote Speaker.
Michelle is also the Best-Selling Author of the book “Sell Your Business for More Than It’s Worth”, and her latest book “Exit Rich” was released nationwide in Early 2021. Get your copy today at exitrichbook.com In addition to being featured in INC, Forbes, and USA Magazine, Michelle makes regular radio and TV appearances on Fox Business News, MSNBC and CBS and CNBC.
She has spoken alongside many prominent speakers: Eric Trump, Kathy Ireland, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Donna Karen, Stedman Graham, Randi Zuckerberg, Steve Wozniak, and more. Michelle also shares her wealth of experience with prospective M&A advisors by conducting multiple training, mentoring, and partnering programs.
Over the years, these programs have helped many individuals become successful M&A advisors and business brokers.
If you want to find out more about Michelle head to https://seilertucker.com/ or https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelles… If you want to find out more check us out at www.authenticachievements.co.uk
If you enjoyed it, please check out our YouTube or our recent blog or subscribe to our Mastermindset Newsletter
Full Transcript Authentic Achievements with Special Guest Michelle Seiler Tucker
Michelle Seiler Tucker
Kim-adele
00:00:14
Hello, and welcome to this episode of authentic achievement, right? It’s my privilege to be joined by the fabulous Michelle Seiler Tucker, who is the founder and CEO of Seiler Tucker incorporated. She is a 20 year veteran, emerges and acquisitions. Michelle sold hundreds of businesses. She owns and operates several successful companies and holds the following professional designations and certifications merges of that acquisitions, master intermediary certif certified senior business analyst, certified mergers and acquisitions, professional certified business broker panelist for M and A source keynote speaker. Michelle is also bestselling author of the book, sell your business for more than it’s worth. And her latest book exit rich was released nationwide in early 20, 21. And more recently, the audio book was available from may of this year. You can get your copy today@exitrichbook.com. And in addition, she’s been featured in INC Forbes USA magazine. Michelle makes regular radio and TV appearances on Fox business news, CNBC and CBS and CBC, and has spoken alongside many prominent speakers from Eric Trump to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Donna Karen, Randy Zuckerberg, Steve Wasniak, and many more. Michelle also shares her wealth of experience with prospective M and a advisors conducting multiple training, mentoring and partnering programs. And over the years, these programs have helped many individuals become successful M and A advisors and business brokers. Michelle, welcome to the show. It’s a joy to have you.
Michelle
00:01:54
Thank you, Kim. Thank you so much for having me on it’s a pleasure to be with you and I love your red, you know, it’s perfect for my brand.
Kim-adele
00:02:02
I was gonna say we matched without you realizing that we were going to, so the best plan are often those ones aren’t they? So Michelle you’ve had such an amazing journey, but could you share with us a little bit about your journey so far, please?
Michelle
00:02:16
Sure. How far back would you like me to go
Kim-adele
00:02:19
However far you would like,
Michelle
00:02:21
Yeah, I’ll just make it really brief. Cause I’ll just make it brief, but I’ve always been into entrepreneurship even as a little girl, you know, I wasn’t your typical little girl. I didn’t play with dolls. I didn’t play with toys. I walked around with a notebook and a pen and I would walk up to strangers with my mom. You know, I would just kind of like walk away from my mom and walk up to strangers, but a no pen. And I start asking questions like, Hey, what do you do? Do you own your own business? How did you get started? And I would just go up and ask them a million questions and I knew way back then seven, eight year old, eight years old that I didn’t want to be. I didn’t wanna get a job. You know, I didn’t want that JLB. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I knew I wanted to make a change in the world. And you know, I knew I didn’t want an employee, you know, employees to tell employers to tell me what to do. Like that’s my biggest pet pee. Don’t tell me what to do. Just yesterday. I was telling my husband of 20 years, don’t tell me what to do.
Michelle
00:03:19
So anyway, so I own many different businesses in different verticals. I did end up getting that job though at Xerox fortune 500 company, they hire, they actually recruited me as a high volume manager. And then within six months promoted me to regional vice president over, over the south region in the United States. And I was managing a hundred, 150 salespeople. And I learned right away, there was a reason why I said I never want a job. And I certainly didn’t want a corporate job in corporate America where you’re working for a fortune 500 company and you can’t get anything done. You know, there’s so much see so much red tape you have to, to, to go through. And you know, that’s not me. I’m, I’m a problem solver. I’m solution oriented. I wanna get things done. You know, I wanna get ’em done right away and I don’t wanna go through all that red tape.
Michelle
00:04:09
So I ended up leaning Xerox and transitioning into my own franchise sales franchise consulting franchise development company, where I had equity partner with, with a different franchise or, and really built up franchise ORs businesses. But then I, I had so many buyers that kept coming to me and say, look, I don’t wanna buy a franchise. I wanna buy an existing business. Do you sell existing businesses? I would have sellers come up to me and say, I wanna sell my company. Do you do that? And I kept saying, no, no, no. And I’m like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I’m a Bob Proctor fan. I believe in long attraction. I need to stop saying no. And started saying yes. And that was over 22 years ago. I transitioned into M and A emerging positions.
Kim-adele
00:04:54
I love, I love, I love that your entrepreneurial journey started so young. It’s amazing that that passion for solving, solving problems for, for seeing the art of the possible and, and like you, I’m a big Bob Proctor fan. I, I love his simplicity of just thinking, thinking about what it is that you want and then making it happen, going and saying, yes, the university is giving you these opportunities. Like we wanna, we wanna buy businesses instead of saying, no, go, okay, there’s gotta be a way I can make that happen. So how did you go and how did you go about that? How did you go about pivoting from doing those franchises to suddenly going and selling people’s existing businesses?
Michelle
00:05:36
Yeah, it was that, that’s a good question. It, it was, you know, you would think it’s kind of easy, but it wasn’t easy at all. It’s, it’s completely different. Like night and day selling franchises, selling existing businesses, you know, it’s like oranges and apples. And so I went to my very first M and A conference back in 2000. I think it was 2000 and I walked in, it was in Vegas and it was a big old convention center with a bunch of conferences going in. I walked into the M and a room after I registered. And there were probably about 3000 men there. They all looked the same. Ballets were great boning heads and they all turned around and one jump book up and he goes, Hey lady, dermatology conferences down the hall. And I said, Hey, man, I’m here for M and A, maybe you should be in a dermatology conference.
Michelle
00:06:28
And that was my, that was my intro in the M and A, I was the only woman in that conference. And like I said, that was back in 2000. And so I went to the M and a conference. I started learning and teaching myself and I already had a vast amount of experience. I had a different experience because most M and a advisors, business brokers, you know, they don’t really have bus. Most of them, some do, but most of them don’t have the business entrepreneurship experience. They’ve never even owned the business before. They never had to make payroll payroll before they never had to make the, the tough decisions about, well, who do we pay? What do we call? What do we do? You know? And so they’ve just, they sell cars or they sell life insurance or they, you know, or financial advisor or something.
Michelle
00:07:12
I decided decide to sell businesses because there’s a lot of money in selling companies, but they don’t really have the experience. And my background was very different because I have owned businesses. I have made those tough decisions. I’ve been in many different verticals, franchise sales, franchise development. I knew everything there was about leasing and equipment and inventory and buildouts and all of that stuff. So what I really had to learn more about anything was, you know, recasting financials, doing evaluations, things that you don’t really do in selling new franchises, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t that difficult for me because like I said, I already had a pretty strong background. I was obviously in sales, I’ve been a salesperson my entire life, but I think I came from a different place of sales. I didn’t come from a car sales approach. I used car sales approach.
Michelle
00:07:56
I came from an educational approach. Well, I wanna educate buyers and sellers. I wanna educate buyers, you know, on what they should be looking for and why you shouldn’t buy a restaurant because it’s the worst decision you will ever make in your life and why whatever making your life and why maybe you should buy this type of company instead. And you know, why sellers should hold on before they sell their business so they can maximize value. So mine came from more of an educated approach with the seller. Buyer’s best interest in mine versus just trying to get a paycheck.
Kim-adele
00:08:22
So really is focusing isn’t it on that problem solving. So you’re working out what their problem is, and then helping them learn how to solve it so that they go away, better equipped to get the answers that they’re looking for.
Michelle
00:08:34
Yep. Thousand percent, because otherwise, I mean, you could just shove a buyer into a restaurant because all first on buyers think they wanna buy a restaurant because they think it’s easy. Well, I got news for you. The restaurants find one of the hardest it’s difficult industries. You can all ever be a part of, and it’s not easy. And unless you’ve got direct experience, you probably shouldn’t own a restaurant. So we really do the right thing for the client. And if we don’t have the right business for ’em, we tell ’em that, you know, if we don’t think a business is sellable for the price tag that the business owner wants, we tell ’em, we don’t just take the engagement because we wanna get a deal, you know, and, and put it up on, on the marketing sites at a higher price. We educate them on what buyers look for, what the valuations are based off of.
Michelle
00:09:18
You know, we educate them. We have a program called road to exit rich where we take ’em through our whole program, because in America, I don’t know about the UK, but in America, Steve Forbes who endorsed exit rich says 80% of businesses on the market will never sell. Well. That means Kim, you have less than a 20% chance of success. Yes. So most business owners in the us are exiting poor. They’re not exiting rich, they’re selling opinions on a dollar closing or business rate remorse, following bankruptcy, you know, so it’s very, very, very important to, to educate business owners. And we take them through that process of how they get their business ready so they can maximize values. They can bridge that gap between what they want from the business and actually what the business is worth today. So we’re based on all education. It’s, it’s our goal. It’s our mission, our passion to really educate as many business owners as we can.
Kim-adele
01:10:06
I love that. Cause it really is about making sure that people have got the information available. Isn’t it. And probably also tackling some of those preconceived ideas that they might have either about what they’d love it to be worth versus what it is worth or what they’re going to need to do to be able to exit it in the way that they want to exit it.
Michelle
01:10:27
Correct. Correct. Most, most, my most sellers are in shock when they call me and say, Hey, I wanna sell my business. And I always ask the question, what do you wanna sell your business for? I have a gentleman that I just talked to and he said, well, my partner and I been thinking about this and tossing around. Now we know we’re not experts. He said, but we let, we wanna sell it for 60 million. Well, 60 million’s great. We sell businesses for 60 million all day long, but guess what is even as 2 million. Wow. So that’s a, that’s over a 30 multiple.
Kim-adele
01:10:57
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michelle
01:10:59
So we really, that’s what we really gotta sit back, educate the client, educate the business owner on what businesses are worth. If you want a 60 million price tag, then you gotta build a 60 million business.
Kim-adele
01:11:09
Yes.
Michelle
01:11:09
And then that’s where our world to exit rich program comes in.
Kim-adele
01:11:13
I love that. So I heard somewhere a statistic. You’ll probably know significantly better than me that when business owners are getting ready to exit and, but they perhaps aren’t there yet that often they can bring in an MD to try and run it for them. And in 85% of cases that fails and they end up back in the business because what they do is look for somebody like them, rather than look for somebody who’s able to take it on that next trajectory. Is that what you see in the industry?
Michelle
01:11:43
Can you repeat that first sentence? Cause I didn’t really hear that.
Kim-adele
01:11:46
Sorry. Yeah. So I, I read somewhere that business owners, if they, they want to have sold their business, they’ve not sold it yet. And they decided to almost semi retire early, they bring in an MD to do the day to day running.
Michelle
01:11:58
What do you mean by MD
Kim-adele
01:12:00
Managing director? Sorry.
Michelle
01:12:01
Oh, OK. You call would MD
Kim-adele
01:12:08
Forget sometimes localisms over here. So our managing director would probably be your CEO or your president. They,
Michelle
01:12:16
Yeah. We call him CEO. Our COO former CEO. Yeah.
Kim-adele
01:12:20
Yeah. And what they find is that in 85% of the case, is it totally fails. And the owner has to come back in because what they’ve not done is look for a CEO. That’s capable of taking it on that next trajectory. They’ve looked for somebody like themselves. Yeah. And, and therefore they don’t get the exponential growth that they were looking for. Is that something you see
Michelle
01:12:40
A thousand percent, a thousand percent. And this is what we talk about all the time. When we talk about, you know, building your business on the six P method, which is a six feet method that we explain in exit rich and we take our clients through, and this is huge because the first P in exit rich is people. You don’t build a business, you build people and people build a team. The biggest mistake that business owners make. And one of the number, one reasons that businesses are not sellable is because the businesses a thousand percent dependent upon that owner. And in most cases, the owner is a control freak. And the owner thinks if you want it done, right, you gotta do it yourself. So the owner’s got their fingers in every pie and business owners really need to focus on their strengths. How are their weaknesses?
Michelle
01:13:24
And that’s what I really work with my clients on. But you go back to what you just said. They want to hire people who are like them. A lot of entrepreneurs are intimidated to hire somebody much smarter than them and have better core competencies in the areas that they could be wink because they wanna maintain that control. And I always say, in order to grow, you have to let go of the control. So yes, you must hire people smarter than you. You can’t be afraid to do that. You know, you still own the business. It’s kind of like if you go back and look at some big leaders, you know, in the industry, Steve Jobs, he’s a visionary, right? Steve Jobs is a visionary. He’s one of the best visionaries of all time. I mean, he was brilliant, but Steve Jobs, didn’t do everything himself.
Michelle
01:14:11
He and Steve Wozniak and Steve Wozniak was smarter than Steve Jobs in certain areas. And Steve Jobs was smarter than Steve Wozniak. If you go look at Donald Trump, love him. I hate him. They’ll get mad at me. Cause I brought up Donald Trump. So if you go look at president Trump, you know, before president Trump was ever our president, he did a bunch of deals, right? He did huge, huge, huge deals. But Donald Trump was the visionary. He was the one that was structured the deal in his mind and, and make that vision, you know, he would express that vision to the team, but it wasn’t Donald Trump that bought that vision to life. Yeah. Without George Ross, who was his, his right hand person, his attorney to put the legal ease to that vision, that vision would’ve come crumbling down that vision would’ve never worked. So if you look at some of the most brilliant people in the world, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, they’ve all got people on our team smarter than them.
Kim-adele
01:15:07
So true. And
Michelle
01:15:08
It’s, it’s so true for entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs are visionaries. They’re not integrators.
Kim-adele
01:15:14
I love that. It’s a little bit like, you know, I, I always wanted to clients about this the other day. It’s like, imagine your business is like your baby. We put so much effort. Don’t we into, into our companies as entrepreneurs. But imagine you’ve now got it ready to go to college. It’s like, do you want it to go to the local college? Or do you want it to go to Harvard or Yale? If you want it to go to Harvard or Yale, you’re gonna have to hire a Harvard or Yale professor. You can’t, you, it can’t be you. You’ve got to be able to change that mindset and go and get somebody that scares you because that’s gonna be the thing that, that helps your,
Michelle
01:15:46
And they scare you. They don’t scare you. And if you’re not intimidated by them, you got the wrong person. I love that analogy that you just used. I love that analogy. That’s that’s a good fit. So yeah, you gotta have somebody that really scares you. And here’s the bottom line that CEO, that MD, you call it in UK. It’s going to change because what got you? What got you here? Won’t get you there. So if you’re a 10 million company and you wanna go to a, a 50 million company, you’re not gonna get a 50 million company with the same team you have. Yeah. What got you? What got you here? Won’t get you there. So you’re constantly, you know, you’re constantly changing your team. As your business continues to grow, you should change your mentors. You change your team, you change your coaches, you change your management, right?
Kim-adele
01:16:36
You change the people that you surrounded with because
Michelle
01:16:38
You change the people you’re surrounded. I mean, who do you think VE gates surrounds himself with around themself worth
Kim-adele
01:16:44
Really bright people. But, but they, they, I guess this is where the mastermind concept came in. Isn’t it was 1927. I think it was when Napoleon hill first coined it. But that was based off looking at the successes of the likes of Del Carnegie and Henry Ford, et cetera, and saying, what, what was it that, that was different and unique. And all of them were part of a very small mastermind group. They realized that surrounding themselves with brighter people than they were allowed them to have E exponential growth of their brains. So actually we’ve now got eight people focused on the problem, but really, really bright people who are able to view things from a different vantage point to you.
Michelle
01:17:25
You say your network equals your network, your network equals your network.
Kim-adele
01:17:32
I love
Michelle
01:17:32
That. You wanna be broke. You hang out with both people. Yeah. You wanna be rich. You all rich people, you yeah. Be successful. Hang out. You wanna be a multimillionaire. You don’t hang out with millionaires. You hang out with billionaires.
Kim-adele
01:17:47
That makes total sense though. Just you want to be able to see and learn from, from the people that you aspire to be like. And it’s so important on that visualization, isn’t it? And it’s easier to visualize it. If you’re around people that are doing it than it is. If you are sat around with people that aren’t doing it, trying to visualize what it must be like to, to live the life you dream of.
Michelle
01:18:08
And those people are gonna come up with opinions and you and I both know what opinions are. You don’t wanna seek opinions. You wanna seek counsel cancel from, from mentors. Very successful. People have been down the road. You want to travel.
Kim-adele
01:18:22
That is such great advice. So tell us a little bit more please about exit rich and the audio that’s come out.
Michelle
01:18:29
Sure. So exit rich, let me, let me kinda give you a little background. So exit rich, you know, it was supposed to come out in 2020. I finished exit rich. I think it was January of 2020, but like all of us, I had the pivot because of the pandemic. So we ended up coming out within 2021. But exit rich is endorsed by Steve Forbes, Steve for says, exit rich is a gold mine for all business owners, hoping to sell a business one day because they leave way too much money on the table. And 80% of businesses will never sell my co-author is Sharon Lecther who co wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad with Robert Kiyosaki. She’s a CPA, she’s a financial literacy expert and advisor to a few different presidents. And we have, I don’t know if you guys have short, I don’t think y’all have shark tank. I think y’all have Dragon’s Den in the UK.
Kim-adele
01:19:19
Yes, we do.
Michelle
01:19:20
We have shark tanks. So Kevin herrings, one of the original sharks on shark tank both to forward. So we have some great testimonials, but shark tank is not just about selling your business, who shark tank, exit rich, not just about selling your business. Shark tank is definitely not about selling your business. So exit rich, you know, who’s it for exit rich is really for anyone who owns a business, runs a business. Anyone looking to buy a business, start a business, even high level executives, high level management team, exit rich is right for all of them. And the reason for that, because exit rich is not just about selling the company exit rich is making sure that you don’t end up in the 80% statistic of the businesses. Exit four, exit rich is all about building a sustainable business that you can scale. And when you’re ready, you’ll actually have a sellable asset. One day.
Kim-adele
02:20:10
I love that. And when I was looking into the, one of the other bits that I, I loved when I in doing the research was that you, you recommend that people kind of almost start with the end in mind. So think about what your, what plan is your exit strategy is at the point that you are building, not at the point you’re ready to sell. So really using it as one of the foundational blocks of what it is that you are trying to build.
Michelle
02:20:34
Yeah, we can, we can go over that really quickly. That’s called the, the S St. Which is Seiler Tucker GPS, exit model and the GPS. The reason there’s so many reasons, but one of the biggest reasons why businesses don’t sell is because business owners never think about selling their company until catastrophic event occurs. Internal, external, internal catastrophic events are health issues, partners, dispute, divorce, death. There’s a 51% divorce rate in our country. And guess what? Everybody’s gonna die. I had a lady calling me up from Dallas. Her husband dropped out of a heart attack at the age of 45. Wow. Left. So with a mountain of debt and wanted me to sell her business, his business, he had nothing to sell. He, the business was a thousand percent dependent upon him was a construction company, had all subcontractors. And when he died, the business delight.
Michelle
02:21:22
So exit rich is all about really planning your excerpt from the beginning. Kind of, I wanna go back to your analogy, cuz I thought it was brilliant. Your analogy was, if you wanna go, if you want your kids to go to, you know, if you want to go to a high point, which I love high point, that’s a great entrepreneur school in the United States. President is my very good friend, Dr. Neil Kaba, who sits on the board, a lazy boy, bright. I mean he sits on the board, probably 20 different companies. Anyway, high point university, Harvard, Stanford, whatever Vanderbilt, you know, you, you think about this when your kids are babies, right? You start when no kids are babies, we plan not to hold future. Sometimes we don’t give ’em a choice. This is where you go to preschool. This is where you going to preschool.
Michelle
02:22:05
This is where you going to high school. This is where you’re going to college. This is who you’re gonna marry in some countries, you know, we pull out their whole life. But then we look at our business, which is one of our most valuable assets. And we don’t plan for its future. That true. We want a kid to go to Harvard, like you said, we’re gonna hire the right coaching team. And I’ve, I’ve spoke at Harvard. We’re gonna hire the right coaching team to get our kid in into Harvard. Right? I’m and so we’re planning that way ahead. We’re not gonna wait until a kid graduates high school. I say, okay, now get ready to go to Harvard and national business owners are doing with their business. You know, they, they reach a milestone where they’re sick of their business. They’re sick of turning, you know, play the employee game.
Michelle
02:22:51
They’re sick of this pandemic. You know, they were just diagnosed with cancer. They just got a divorce, whatever it might be. And they’re like, okay, now I’ve gotta sell my business. Now not gonna go to Harvard. Well, you don’t have a Harvard. You don’t have a student that’s qualified to go to Harvard. You know, I have a business that’s qualified to sell maximum value for the desired sales price that you want. So you’re gonna exit rich. You’re gonna exit poor. You’re not gonna exit rich. So what I always tell my clients, Kim is follow the GPS exit model. When you wanna drive somewhere in the UK, what do you do? We do it all around the world. We pull out our phone, we go to Google maps and what do we plug in the destination? And if you don’t plug in a destination, what happens?
Michelle
02:23:28
You get really lost. You do get really lost. I mean, this is all really common sense, but common sense. That’s not as common as it once was nice, you know, to get lost and business owners, don’t plan to fail business owners. Don’t go and invest all their money, time, energy, and effort say, I’m gonna fail my business. I’m gonna exit for I’m gonna follow bankruptcy. They don’t do that, but they don’t plan. So right now I want everyone listening to Kim show to get out of pen and paper. And I want you to plug in your destination. What is that desire of sales price? What do you wanna sell your company for the number pin, the number everybody gets hung up on a number. Kim, it’s a number you can, you can increase it. Let’s say you wanna sell your business for 10 million. Boom, you got a number.
Michelle
02:24:08
What’s the now that’s your destination. What’s the next step in a GPS exit model. In order for you to get to your destination, what does a GPS need to know where you’re starting from and where you’re going, starting from? Where is your current location in business? What is your current evaluation? What is your business worth today? So let’s say you wanna sell it for $10 million and your business is worth a million. Now I would tell you, Kim, this is so important because most business owners never ever get their business evaluated. Yeah. And that’s financial suicide because your business should be most valuable asset. You should always know what your businesses for because there events, they increased valuation or events to decreased valuation. Look at this pandemic. It’s, it’s decreased valuation for a lot of industries all around the world. This is a worldwide pandemic. So go to M and a expert do not go to CPA to evaluate your business because they don’t evaluate synergies.
Michelle
02:25:01
It just evaluate your business on, on cash flow. So you wanna am an expert and you wanna get an annual evaluation checkup. Okay? Annual evaluation checkup. So let’s how your businesses worth 10 million. I, you wanna set, put your million to worth a million today. Now you need to know who your buyer’s gonna be. There’s five types of buyers. A lot of sellers will come to me and say, Michelle, I already have the buyer. I just need you to do everything else. And mark it to one buyer. And I always say by, right, no, I’m not doing that. Find someone else. They’re like, why are you mean why are you not doing that? Because your business is probably not operating on all six PS. The six pieces that I talk about. Yeah, your business probably is a financial mess. You probably don’t have the financial records.
Michelle
02:25:45
You know, it might not be value. It might not be sellable for what your price tag is. And so I said, there’s a lot of work I have to do. And I’m not gonna do it for one buyer. Because if that one buyer falls apart, you have no backup buyers. Yeah. And you can’t maximize value because how can I create a bidding world on a party of one with a party of one? So there’s five types of buyers really quick in America. First time buyers are 95%. They don’t buy $10 million companies. Then you got turnaround specialists that buy distressed assets. You got private equity groups to buy based on platforms and add-ons, but they won’t even consider your business as a platform. Let’s say they wanna get in food manufacturing. They won’t even look at your company unless you have three to 7 million in EBITDA on before interest taxes, depreciation, amortization at they’re in food manufacturing, you have a, a food manufacturing company for a hundred million dollars, an E, but then they’ll look at your company.
Michelle
02:26:35
Then fourth type of our strategic competitors. They typically pay the most, the highest multiple, because they’re buying those synergies that will help catapult their business to the next level. Then the last type of buyer, sophisticated entrepreneurs. So really quick now, you know, you wanna sell for 10 million, you know, you’re worth a million. You’ve identified those three last fires. Now you need to know where do my numbers need to be? If I’m worth a million and I wanna get to 2 million, where’s my gross revenue in is my cogs. You know, my operating expenses, where does my EBITDA need land? And if you wanna sell for 5 million, EBITDA’s gotta be around, you know, 1.5 to, to $2.5 million. Now, if you’re a SAS company, it’s a multiple gross revenues, never on multiple EBITDA, every other industry’s a multiple of EBITDA. And so then you need to ask yourself, okay, now that you figured out the numbers, what are the synergies? What are the criteria that these buyers are willing to pay a top dollar for? What are they looking for?
Kim-adele
02:27:31
That’s that?
Michelle
02:27:33
And then ask yourself, what is July? Why do you wanna sell for 10 million? Because if it was easy to sell for $10 million, everybody in the world would be doing it.
Kim-adele
02:27:40
It’s true. It’s true. But I, I love that whole breaking it down into the, into those steps. So where is it going? Where is it? You starting from
Michelle
02:27:49
Yeah. Who is it? And that’s a promise. His business owners don’t have a plan, which is crazy me because you, you map out the entire future for your children. Okay? Right. We have a financial advisor that we’re mapping out a retirement plan, but we’re not taking our business, which should be most, very grass asset and mapping out that future it’s financial suicide. And this is why 80% of businesses don’t sell
Kim-adele
02:28:12
It’s. I makes such sense. It reminds me of a study that was done by, it was actually done by Harvard business school. And they, they studied, I think it was a hundred people and only, only 13% of them had actually got a written down goal. Sorry. Only 13% of them had a goal, had a clearly defined goal of what they wanted. Only 3% of them had written it down with some form of action plan, irrelevant of whether it was a good action plan or a bad action plan. But at least they had a goal and a plan. And yet when they came back and checked that 3% outperformed everybody else in the study by more than 10 times. Yeah. You know, they, they, all of the research says, like you say, we do it with our children is have a plan, write it down, have a, have a destination and then work out how you think you’re gonna get there. Even if one of those fails, you know, you think I’m going to, I’m going to New York. I’m gonna get on a plane. And actually you can’t get on the plane. So you have to get on a boat instead, but at least keep looking at how you’re going to achieve it.
Michelle
02:29:15
And one of the major steps I left out is timeframe. So let’s say you wanna sell for 10 million, you’re worth a million. You gotta figure out what’s your timeframe. Let’s say you wanna do in 10 years, you know, that’s great. You got 10 years to get to $10 million. Let’s say you wanna do it in five years. You’re just never gonna get there unless you have a specific plan unless it’s written down, unless it’s in front of you every day. Cuz it’s one thing to, to write down a plan. But look at it once a year, you know, some of the most successful, wealthy, famous people in the world have their ghosts in their pocket. I mean, if you look at Napoleon hill, he talks about it and can you grow rich and actually wrote a chapter and think you grow rich today, but he talks about, you know, carry your ghosts. Your goes in your pocket, look at it every day. What’s the famous actor. Oh my gods. So funny, Jim. Carrie. Yes. He carried around a million dollar check. I think it was a million dollars. Wasn’t it?
Kim-adele
03:30:04
I think it
Michelle
03:30:04
Was yeah, a million dollar check in his pocket until, until he actually got a million dollar check in his pocket. Cuz it’s visualization. You know? So you gotta, you gotta, you gotta write it down. You gotta go back to it every day. You rethink it, go rich. I mean, it’s one of the best books of all time.
Kim-adele
03:30:21
It, it is, it is an amazing is amazing book because it, again, it’s that it’s just giving you that thought. Isn’t it? One of the things that I I’ve been listening to a lot recently is the unusual secret by Del Carnegie, which is based also on what he learned through Napoleon hill. But it is in that, you know, thinking about it. And he, he talks in that about having your goal, having it written in front of you and looking at it regularly throughout the day. And again, referencing people that, that have done just that Michelle it’s, it’s been an absolute delight. I could chat you day. You’ve added such great insight for us. So what’s next for you.
Michelle
03:31:02
So what’s next. I’ll tell you what’s next. And I want to tell everybody where they can, you know, find me, locate me, get the book. So what’s next for me? That’s that’s a good question. We’ll continue to grow. I’ll probably have another book come out in a year. You know, I’ll probably write another book at the end of the year. I write books in six weeks. I do take off. I do take a sabbatical, you know, a couple years because I need that break because it’s pretty intense for those six weeks. I have another book probably coming out. We are just launching the road to exit rich program because you know, it’s really my mission, my passion to help save the American economy by staying in one business at a time and going out of business because one business has got a business, we lose jobs and we lose spinning power and economy crashes. And I’m sure the same is true with the UK and many other countries around the world. So we got some big things we’re working on, but it’s confidential. So I can’t really say here,
Kim-adele
03:31:57
Just watch this space.
Michelle
03:32:00
Yeah. But the thing I will always be doing is helping business owners, exit rich and helping business owners build rich.
Kim-adele
03:32:06
I love that. You’ve shared such amazing insight. I hope everybody watching has done exactly what you said. Got out that pen and paper and written down where they’re going, where they’re starting from when they plan to get there, who is there going to go and see? Who is the buyer? What do they look? What do they look like? And that they take advantage of getting hold of your book or both of your books because they are packed with insight.
Michelle
03:32:31
Yeah. The other big thing that we to talk about Kim was the six feet. And I’ll just give you a high, just give you a high, high, high level people. You don’t build a business. You build people, people build a business. If you don’t have any people, you don’t have a business. You have a qualified job. So you go to work out every day versus a business that actually works for you. Second one is product. Are you in a thriving industry or dining industry? Do you have an Amazon? And you’re in your prime. If you’re in a prime, you sell, sell, sell, or you have a blockbuster and you’re about to go bust. Then processes, processes can make and break your company. You know, you can have all the right people in place, but if you don’t have the right processes to drive the people, then you’re going to have a failed business.
Michelle
03:33:10
And then proprietary. Proprietary is a number one value driver. These are your trademarks, your patents, your contractor, databases, your content, your celebrity endorsements. I mean your radio personality endorsements. I can go on and on about proprietary, but proprietary can take you from a three to five to eight to 10 multiple build your proprietary assets. If by far is a number one value driver and then Patriots such a customer base, you know, in American, I’m pretty sure the UK, cuz we have some UK businesses that we’re actually working with to sell. But usually most businesses have the 80 20 rule where 80% of the revenue cuz from 20% of their clients, right? So that’s customer concentration. If you lose a couple clients, you’re out of business. So you want customer diversification. And then the last one is profits. We’re all in business to make money. But can I, it could shock you to know how many businesses actually never make any money. And so always say lack of profits is not your problem. Lack of profits is the symptom up now having the right people over the place, not having the right processes, buttoned up, being in the dying industry, not a thriving industry, not protecting proprietary assets and not having customer diversification.
Kim-adele
03:34:22
I love it. And I love that. It starts with people because I think it does. Doesn’t it? I mean everything.
Michelle
03:34:27
Yeah, because without people, what are you gonna do? You’re gonna have processes for yourself.
Kim-adele
03:34:31
Absolutely.
Michelle
03:34:32
You have nothing to sell because the business is dependent upon you. So when you go to sell, nobody’s buying you because people don’t people not gonna, people do buy people. Don’t get me wrong. That’s what sales is. They gotta trust you. Like, you know you to do business with you. But when people buy us, buy a business, they’re only gonna buy a company. They’re looking to buy a company. They can operate without them.
Kim-adele
03:34:53
I love that as owners, they have to make themselves dispensable through competence, not incompetence, but by creating the right team around them, that’s gonna do it. And I know it. I sometimes talk to business owners all the time and what I do and they’ll say, oh, community, it’s really complicated. Cause I’ve got like, you know, I’ve got my team or their people and I’ve got suppliers. Yeah. Their people. And I’ve got customers, their people and I’ve got, you know, business partners, their people, all of them are, people get good at people. And the rest of it becomes so much easier. Cause our base human beings, we wanna be listened to understood and respected. If you can do that for all of the people in your business, whether that’s the colleagues, the clients, the, and suppliers, then the rest becomes so much easier. Doesn’t it? Cause they build the rest of it for you. And I love that. That flows so beautifully through what you say.
Michelle
03:35:43
Yeah. Thank you so much. And so I know you’re running out of time. I would love every one of your listeners to connect with me and overwhelm me and bless my website. But you can all connect with me at, at STI that’s silo, token incorporated, but just by STI @three sixty.com STI @three sixty.com. You can also buy the book. I know that Kim, you mentioned @exitrichbook.com and yes you can buy the book there. If you’re in the United States. If you are in Australia, if you’re in the UK, if you’re in, you know, some other country go to Amazon, the shipping costs are ridiculous. I don’t want you to have to pay those high shipping costs. So just go to Amazon and if you wanna buy the audio version, I, I do believe because we launched the audio version in may, that we still have the, the price is way down on the audio version.
Michelle
03:36:32
I think you can get from anywhere from 2 99 to 7 99, and you can buy that on Amazon, on apple, you know, bars, noble, anywhere that you like to buy your audio books, you can go get the audio book, you get the print version and connect with me. Like I said, the Sti@360.com has all my links there. We have a podcast called exit rich that we really talk about. Great, great, great business ideas and, and multi billion dollar million dollar exits as well. So follow us there. And we write for ink twice a month. So you can read our article of zero on how to get your business ready for sale.
Kim-adele
03:37:06
I love it. And we’ll make sure all of your links and all of the ways to connect with you. Michelle are in the notes. So for anybody who’s watching, wants to get in touch, they’ll be down below. So do that. Michelle, it’s been a joy. I look forward to chatting again really soon. And thank you so much for sharing your journey with us today.
Michelle
03:37:25
Thank you, Kim Thank you for having me on.