HOUSTON BUSINESS REVIEW

BUYING AND SELLING BUSINESSES (AND RELATED TOPICS)
By Ralph Fain

Ralph Fain is a principal in the brokerage firm, R/Fain Group. Mr. Fain also has over 20 years of broad business experience with Fortune 500 companies. R/ Fain Group is a professional business brokerage firm which confidentially represents the interests of various sellers and buyers. Each week Mr. Fain will give tips on Business Brokering, and how to sell your business.

Over the next several months, I will be writing articles on the numerous aspects of buying and selling businesses. Both undertakings are complicated and time consuming and it is highly recommended that these transactions be entered into only with the assistance and guidance of professional advisors (CPA, attorney, business broker). In addition, in later articles, I will offer advice on how to grow and expand your business.

The series “Expanding and Growing Your Business” will cover such topics as Financing, Strategic Planning, Establishing Company Metrics, Employee Development/Measurement, and Company Benchmarking /Best Practices. Hopefully, this series will serve as a broad crash course for small to medium sized business owners to assist them in their efforts to expand and grow their businesses. This series will be an adjunct to the primary set of articles which will deal with the intricacies of buying and selling businesses.

The articles specifically addressing the issues of buying and selling businesses will be segregated into two major groupings with each weekly article concentrating on a specific or several specific aspects of the process. The major groupings will be entitled “Tutorial on Buying a Business” and “Tutorial on Selling Your Business”.

We are going to begin the weekly series with the “Tutorial on Selling Your Business” – this set will encompass 6 – 10 weeks of articles and will cover, in summarized form, a host of issues specific to the sale of businesses. These writings range from “Preparing Your Business for Sale” to “Protecting the Seller Post Sale”. Subjects within this series discuss how to prepare your business for sale (what you need to do to maximize sales price and marketability), keys to a successful sale, pricing the business for sale (valuing your business), form of the sale (asset vs. stock), due diligence process, completing the sale of your business, closing process and post sale issues.

Following the Selling Your Business Tutorial will be the “Tutorial on Buying a Business”. As in the above, this will be a weekly series which will run approximately 4 – 6 weeks. These articles range from a discussion of the types and numbers of businesses available to a discussion on considering exit strategies. Subjects within the series will explore determining the right business to purchase, buying an existing business/buying a franchise, the buying process, reviewing the financials, due diligence, choosing the legal structure of the business (S corp, C corp, LLC, etc.), choosing the name for your business, and exit strategies.

Hopefully, the reader will understand that due to limitations of space, these topics will necessarily have to be discussed in highly summarized form. Should you like more detail or should you have any questions regarding the articles, please feel free to contact the R/Fain Group at 832.646.0832 or via our web site. Looking forward to seeing you on these pages next week.