The Fishing Trip

When John Bowen received a non-binding letter of intent from a global bank to buy his business for $37 million, he thought the offer was too good to be true.
As it turns out, it was.

Bowen had received a non-binding letter of intent from a global bank, who made their bid with no actual intent to buy his business. Bowen came to believe their offer was a decoy designed to disguise their real objective: to understand Bowen’s strategy so they could compete better with him. Bowen got wise to their strategy and ended up selling his business to another buyer, Assante Wealth Management, for $25 million.

Bowen reveals his three strategies for evaluating the authenticity of an offer to buy your business during our interview.

Falling prey to a fishing offer is one of the many hazards to avoid when preparing to sell your business. You’ll discover many of the other sleazy tricks buyers and competitors use when you begin to apply The Value Builder System™ to your own business. It all starts with getting your Value Builder Score.

Check out our full M&A Glossary

About Our Guest

John Bowen founded CEG Worldwide in 2000, with the goal of leveraging the lessons he had learned during his career to the benefit of financial advisors and the institutions that work with advisors. His 26 years as a financial advisor and investment firm CEO taught Bowen that many advisors lack the high-quality empirical data and pragmatic business experience necessary to build hugely successful businesses. Bowen founded CEG Worldwide to fill that void, with the belief that providing advisors and institutions with reliable research about the best practices of top advisors—and the coaching to use these practices effectively—would help them achieve new levels of success.