229: The Journey of Buying a Business with Julie Murphy

With us on the podcast today is Julie Murphy. Julie is the Owner of Designer Draperies of Boston, a full service to the trade workroom. She began as a home-based business in 2006. In 2014 she purchased Designer Draperies of Boston and merged the 2 businesses. She has tripled the size of her team as well as sales since transfer of ownership. She attributes her growth and continued success on 3 things: Quality, Effective Communication and Exemplary Customer Service. 

Today we will focus on her journey to make a business acquisition – the highs and the lows.  

Topics Mentioned:

• Purchase type 

• Policies and Procedures 

• Employee retention 

• Support Teams 

  Thank you for joining us today. If you have questions about purchasing a workroom, feel free to reach out to Julie. And if you want to get your business pulled together – not just to sell – but to enjoy the benefits of a well-run business for yourself, sign up for a discovery call at scarletthreadconsulting.com. Choose to be organized which leads to profitability – because profit doesn’t happen by accident. 

   

  Key Thoughts:

   

  • I wished I had reached out to somebody, at some point, and waved my white flag, and said, I need help in figuring out how to deal with business growth. Julie Murphy (45:59)

     

  • I still talk to clients and people all the time that are using pen and paper and I get it or they're using Excel to run all of their financials. I get it. I did it too, for a couple of years, until I realized that as you said, I could not get reports. I could not see where I was, I couldn't understand the impact or the cash flow or any of those things, what was happening truly happening at a glance, even if I was keeping up with those details to hand off to my accountant in a year. They were not helping me manage the day-to-day of what I was doing. I mean, that's the whole reason that we've even built Metrique is to take all of that data and to be able to put it in one place to look at it because there is knowledge and power in looking at those things. Michele Williams (48:38)

     

  • I would say really look into what the business has for documented procedures. The other thing that I'm running into too, is what's in place for your staff, human resource-wise. As a small business, we don't have to have certain things. Even if you have three employees, I think it's important to make sure that you are doing everything that you're supposed to be doing. Julie Murphy (54:00)

     

  • The more you document, the more you keep up with your financials, and the more you show that you're able to be paid and then the beautiful thing is if you can show that growth, that continual growth year over year over year, even at 10%. Michele Williams (57:54)

   

  Contact Michele:

  • Email: [email protected]

  • Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

  • Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

  • Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

  • LinkedIn: Michele Williams

  Contact Ericka:

  • Email: [email protected]

  • Website: http://www.designerdraperiesofboston.com

  • Instagram: @designerdraperiesofboston

  • Facebook: @designerdraperiesboston

  References and Resources:

  • Work with Me

  • Metrique Solutions

  • Scarlet Thread Consulting