M&A Talk, by Morgan & Westfield

Every morning, partners Kirk Barnett and Dennis Adkins stood witness to the success of their former bakery/restaurant, Dulce, as tables were filled one by one and the queue of people at the cashier gradually reached the door.

For the partners who were used to starting each day with a full house, business is good and life is as sweet as Dulce’s handmade pastries. So when it came time to sell their well-loved Santa Fe-based restaurant in 2016, their line of thinking was, “Who wouldn’t want to buy this business?”

Although the business was enjoying steady revenue growth since its inception in 2010, Kirk and Dennis soon realized that not everybody shared their dream of running a successful restaurant. Locals might be eager to whet their appetites with Dulce’s artisan bread and award-winning quiche, but most of them were not eager to purchase and operate the restaurant themselves.

“This whole process took longer than we had thought… I think what we realized is that not everybody wants to do this for a living firstly in a town like Santa Fe,” Kirk recalled.

The former owners found out that there was more to selling a business than putting a profitable, established restaurant in the market.

“We just learned that it takes a lot of patience and a lot of starts and stops to go through this process,” Kirk said.

When Jeremy Wells decided to put his business on the market, he was facing a lot of challenges. “It was a difficult year for me,” Jeremy admitted. The business was slower than in the previous years. Jeremy was dealing with health issues with some family members. He was selling his business while managing other companies that he owned. He was running the business that was for sale while meeting with prospective buyers. “It's very challenging to try to begin the process of selling the company when you're right in the middle of running your company ... It's a bit like trying to design a new part of your ship while you're sailing,” Jeremy said. Jeremy could have waited a year or more for the situation to get better before selling his business, but he realized, “Once you’re already engaged in that process, it’s really difficult to make that mental shift to go back.” And so Jeremy Wells went ahead with the sale of his creative arts service firm. 

When the previous owner-turned-manager left the business due to health reasons, Phil Nader had to run two stores that are 100 miles apart. This became a challenge as he had to leave his family every week and neglect managing the Michigan store while running the branch in Ohio.

On this episode of Deal Talk, former owner of Simple Computer Repair in Maumee, Ohio, shares his experience working with Morgan & Westfield, talks about how he’s able to sell his business hassle-free and getting the results he wanted from the beginning.

What does life after retirement look like?

Emery Orosz, Morgan & Westfield’s Senior VP for Franchise Resales, has done it all — he has worked in corporate America for three decades, retired at 48, built and sold three houses, sold his own business and moved to a foreign country. After years of enjoying his life post-retirement, he got bored and went back to work doing what he loved.

What can we learn from Emery’s risk-taking attitude that made him and his spouse embrace retirement and the series of adventure and changes that came along with it? 

If you’re selling your business for retirement without any clear plan on how you will spend the next years of your life, listen to this episode with our guest, Emery Orosz, to find out what’s waiting for you on the next phase of your life.

Morgan & Westfield is not your typical business broker. While traditional business brokers and business brokerage firms have always patterned their business model after that of real estate brokers, we at Morgan & Westfield deviate from this norm by operating like professionals, such as accounting and law firms.

We’ve optimized the sale process to give business sellers quality services for a fraction of the fees that your average business broker will charge. How do we do this?

First, we have a large backend support team that allows us to become more focused and run our processes more efficiently.

Second, we save time and resources by letting business owners physically show their business to the buyer. By cutting this step from our process, we have adjusted and reduced our fees accordingly.

Third, unlike traditional full-service business brokers, we offer our services on an a la carte basis. Our clients can choose which of our services they need and pay only for those services.

In addition, we also offer our assistance to business owners who may be contemplating the sale of their business in the future by providing valuation and customized exit planning services aimed at increasing the value of their business.

At Morgan & Westfield, we only have our clients’ best interests in mind; we strive to give business sellers only the best services, assistance and guidance while providing significant savings.

Professional coaches have becoming increasingly important in recent years, and businesses of all sizes understand why: They help make good leaders better leaders of their teams and companies. Interestingly, however, one of the most important impacts a business coach can have is in an organization’s valuation. Dr. Janine Nicole-Desai, founding business coach of Outside Partner, talks about how a business coach can help increase bottom line statistics and your company’s value, and points to research to back it up. Dr. Desai also discusses at length who in a business can benefit most, as well as common issues that can be improved through the use of a professional coach.