The Kevin Harrington Way to Structure the Sale of Your Business
Mark Timm built Cottage Garden, a company selling decorative music boxes, to $8 million in revenue and around $1 million in EBITDA when he decided to sell it.
Timm sold the business for around 4.5 times EBITDA. He got half of his cash upfront, with the other half paid over a five-year earn-out. Timm not only stayed for his earn-out but when the acquirer decided to move the offices of Cottage Garden, Timm agreed to repurchase the business, only to sell it two years later, for a second time.
Walking Away From an 8 Figure Exit
Josh Davis started Spirit of Women, a marketing agency selling content about women's health to hospitals. Davis built the company up to almost $10 million in annual revenue when he kicked off a process to sell it, which he hoped would garner an offer of around 7x Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA).
Start-Up To Ferrari In Five Years
Zain Hasan started an insurance agency called National Insurance Consulting Group (NICG), in 2014.
3 Ways to Untangle Yourself from Your Business
Debbie King was running on a treadmill so familiar to service company owners. Her company, Association Analytics, helped associations make sense of their member data, and she was wasting time on proposals that often did not get accepted. Then, when King did win a project, she was creating a custom solution for every job that required her to hire senior-level staff and personally get involved in client work. The model put a cap on her business, and when she reached 20 employees, she decided it was time to get out.
The Doer vs. The Deal Maker
Entrepreneurs can be categorized into two groups. On one hand, you have the doers. These are the people who organically grow a business over time. They plod along for years, or even decades in the same business. They look for small, incremental improvements every day.
The downside of accepting shares as payment from your acquirer
Doug Chapiewsky built CenterPoint Solutions Inc. into an Inc. 500 company with $5 million in revenue and more than $3 million in EBITDA before he sold it to Israeli-based Nice Systems.
How the Fine Print in an Acquisition Offer Can Leave You Penniless
Before the pandemic, fancy salad bars were popping up in major cities across the US, making the category one of the fastest-growing sectors of the restaurant industry. Despite their popularity in major cities, when Ana Chaud moved to Portland, Oregon, she was surprised to see a shortage of good salad options.
Inside the Mind of a Private Equity Investor
Frank Cottle led an investor group to buy Hi-Mark Software for 10 times EBITDA. Cottle then sold a chunk for 15 times and ultimately sold his last tranche of equity for more than 16 times EBITDA to Lufthansa.