How to Sell Your Business: 5 Things You Must Start Doing Now with Erin Austin
Sep 27, 2022
If you're like most business owners, at some point you may want to sell your business. But if you don't start doing these five things now, you'll have a much harder time getting what your business is worth. In this episode of Cash In On Camera, strategic lawyer and consultant Erin Austin shares the 5 things you must start doing now if you ever want to sell your business.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll hear…
▶️ [2:31] Well, the answer to that is no, it's not too early, because the same things that make a business saleable someday, and we'll talk about why use the term saleable instead of sellable are the same things that make your business scalable, more profitable. And so putting those things in place helps you while you're running your business. Making it a more enjoyable, sustainable, and scalable business. And those are the things that will transition you into building a saleable business as well. So it's never too early.
▶️ [5:20] The two big buckets are exclusivity and predictability. And within that are the five elements that we're gonna talk about one by one. But overall exclusivity means that you have something that would either be impossible, very difficult, or overly expensive for them to build themselves. So it makes more sense to buy you than to do it themselves. And predictability means that they have to be confident that if they buy your business, they'll be able to grow it.
▶️ [7:59] And I am an intellectual property lawyer, and when we're in the expertise space, our assets are generally intellectual property. They aren't all, but generally, they're in the intellectual property space. And what is intellectual property? It is a legal monopoly so that Monopoly is exclusivity. The only way somebody else can have access to your intellectual property is to either buy it from you or license it from you.
▶️ [12:07] And so the three elements of predictability are independence leverage and protection. So on the independence side, especially if you have a very small business, is the business just you and your brilliance, or is there a real business there that is independent of you as the owner so that when you sell it that all of the clients won't go away? All of the employees won't go away, and all of the vendors won't go away. Make sure there's a real business that operates independently from you as the owner.
▶️ [15:22] Yeah, absolutely. Looking at the revenue model that you have, like how do you charge for the value that you provide to your business, whether it's one-on-one or some sort of productized service or some side of some sort of product are all options for figuring out how to decouple that income from your time. And then the protection piece. I personally think what I do is everywhere, but the most obvious piece that people think of when they think of a lawyer is a protection piece.
▶️ [19:15] I just love these tips and what I think you've done is really paint a picture of what steps would need to be in place in order to get the maximum benefit or be able to sell your business. For what it's worth, if that were to come along, whether it's five years or 10 years, it doesn't matter what the timeframe in the future might be. Regardless of the timeframe, these things need to be in place to appeal to a buyer.
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