Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Still Want In?
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Still Want In?
Still Want In? episodes
- How Does a Business Actually Get Valued? | Rich Schammel, Venture Advisors
Every business that sells gets four numbers put on it: the seller's, the broker's, the bank's and the buyer's. Rich Schammel explains how they meet, and why it always comes back to cash flow and risk.
Rich founded Venture Advisors in Pasadena in 2005 after three decades in corporate finance, including KPMG Consulting. He is a former president of the California Association of Business Brokers and teaches other brokers how to value a business.
We get into:
- The two documents he reads first, and the check that tells him whether to trust them
- Red flags in a seller's books, starting with inventory that never changes
- Why most small businesses sell for three to five times earnings, and what moves one up or down
- Why add-backs are where the bank pushes back, and why it looks as hard at the buyer as at the business
- Why most of his listings carry no price, and why contractors won't bid without one
- Why sellers care more about cash at close than the headline price
- Deal fatigue, and when a buyer's questions become too many
- Why a buyer with committed financing is "miles ahead" of one using an SBA loan
- Who is buying small businesses now
Still Want In? sits a buyer across the table from the people he deals with, brokers, sellers and lenders, and asks each of them one question. Same arc every time: what standard practice says, where it breaks, and what you should do about it.
Chapters
00:00 Whose number wins?
01:18 From KPMG to business broker
02:58 Value is cash flow and risk
04:55 The two documents he reads first
07:41 Red flags in the books
10:09 The value, and the gaps a buyer will see
14:41 Why small businesses sell at three to five times
18:43 What the bank looks at
20:21 Selling without a listed price
25:57 When you have to post a price
31:02 Cash at close and deal fatigue
36:10 Seat-of-the-pants sellers, analytical buyers
39:30 The perfect-business trap
40:13 Selling to buyers who use AI
46:34 The market now
48:38 Who is buying
51:24 Where Rich finds buyers
Guest: Rich Schammel, Venture Advisors Business Sales & Acquisitions, Pasadena - ventureadvisors.net
Host: George Roche, Laurelton Partners
Full transcript at stillwantin.com
56 min
About Still Want In?
From the publisher's feed
You are about to make the biggest purchase of your life, from people who do this for a living when you don't.
Still Want In? is a podcast about buying and running a small business, built to…
close that gap. Every episode puts a broker, an owner, a seller or a lender across the table from a buyer and asks them one hard question. How does a business actually get valued? What should a seller do in the eighteen months before they list? What breaks in diligence? What does a bank really underwrite? What does it cost to run an HVAC company?
You get the same three things every time. What standard practice says. Where it breaks. What you should do about it.
No highlight reels. No war stories that happen to end well. The honest version, from people who see hundreds of these deals.
Whether you are searching for your first acquisition, weighing a sale, or advising someone who is, this is the show.
Hosted by George Roche of Laurelton Partners, a serial founder and investor who is buying a company to run himself rather than flip. Full transcripts for every episode.
So, still want in?