Cambridge Business Association
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Your Guide to Building a Self-Managing, Fast-Growing, and High-Profit Business

Steve Preda
Steve Preda, 2021
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9

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So, you want to start a company, or you recently opened the doors of your new business. You know intuitively that this is an all-consuming activity, so you never take your eye off the ball. What’s not intuitive is planning for where the ball will bounce when you want to sell your business. M&A expert Steve Preda explains that “proactive” owners who plan for this eventuality deliberately develop “buyable” businesses and can reap big rewards. “Reactive” owners who fail to plan for a future sale may find that their firms are “unbuyable” or end up selling at a discount. Preda tells owners how to structure their firms for maximum buyability – when the time comes. 

 

Summary

Profitably cashing out at the right time should be a main benefit of owning a business, but few owners reap that reward. 

Owning a good company means you can sell it. To be “buyable” – a firm needs predictable revenue, regular cash flows and replicable business processes. But many business owners become so wrapped up in day-to-day operations and the quest for profit that they never plan for their firm’s eventual sale. 

Statistics indicate that most business owners have a minuscule, ten-in-one possibility of selling their company for the value they want. But those who “groom” their businesses for future sale can achieve prices 30% to 50% higher than if they hadn’t prepared to sell, eventually.

Though many companies are “unbuyable,” proper management can make them marketable, although that takes time. To reduce that period, business owners can use seven basic management concepts and 10 management “blueprints” to create a stable, salable company and harvest its full value.

Create a buyable company through creative entrepreneurship, franchise ownership or a structured operation that follows a ...

About the Author

Steve Preda is a management consultant, M&A adviser and business sales coach.  

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