Michelle Seiler Tucker, Mergers & Acquisitions Specialist | Lessons Learnt From Selling 1000+ Companies

Thanks again for joining me. Today we're sitting down with Michelle Siler Tucker who is the founder and CEO of Siler Tucker Incorporated. She holds an M and AMI mergers and acquisitions master immediate, immediate title as well as certified mergers and acquisitions professionals of CM and AP. She is a certified senior business analyst, CSBA, and she has been working in not only the start of space, but more exciting for me actually is the the exiting. So where are you bringing that start up once it scales and grows and now you want to have an exit event. So she is a 20 year veteran in the M and A industry. She's regarded as leading authority, I'm buying, selling, fixing, growing businesses, her and her firm have sold over get this 1000 businesses in almost every vertical and have a remarkable track record of success. She's going to speak about like I said, sustainable scalability, a sellable building sellable businesses and basically the technique that she has repeated again and again again with lots of entrepreneurs. So this is an interesting one because like Michelle, thank you for joining me, but I'm curious to speak with you because most people speak about how to build a business and they don't have that vision or that exit event in mind, which I think they should. But you know, I want to hear more with that first tell me your story, how do you get into this. All right, well, thanks God for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you. So I didn't wake up one day and say, oh my God, I'm a sell businesses. But I always knew as a kid that I was going to be my own boss, I was going to be an entrepreneur and I never really come from a family of entrepreneurs. I mean, my dad owned his own business and that was about it. But you know, I always knew that I knew what I liked, you know, even as a kid, I never played with toys and I never played with dolls and my mom, my mom's like, what's wrong with you? I know, mom, that's the wrong question. You should be asking what's right with me. And so I will walk around the notebook and pin and everything and ask everybody a million questions, right? I would just walk up the strangers and start asking questions. And some of my mom's like, oh my gosh, she's going to be the next proper Walters. So I knew I liked people and I knew I liked writing and I would always ask people, what's your problem? Let me let me fix it for you. And this was that seven years old, eight years old. So I always know it's going to be a people person, a problem solver, a writer, an entrepreneur because I don't like, you know, I don't like anybody tell me what to do. Like that's my biggest pet peeve. It's somebody telling me what to do. I mean, even when my husband had 25 years, I'm like, don't tell me what to do. And so it's so anyway. So I've always owned businesses and I've owned businesses in different in different industries, different verticals. But I did kind of get caught up in corporate America. Xerox recruited me. I went to work for Xerox. I said, you know what? Let me try this corporate position, Fortune 500. And so I did that. I was there for about six months in sales. And my neck name became the closer because every time they couldn't close something, they will come to me and say, Michelle, go close this deal. You're the closer. So I was a closer. And then my manager came to me and she said, you should really throw your hat in a ring and interview for the vice president, regional position for Xerox. She goes, you will never get it because you've been here six months and Xerox doesn't promote when somebody's only been here six months. You're up against people have been here five, 10, 15 years. I said, well, if I'm not going to get it, why would I do it? You know, why would I waste my time? And she says, well, it's a three month growing process. She goes, but it is a learning process. And you'll learn more doing this than anything else. And you know, everybody knows Xerox has like one of the best training programs in the world, right? So I threw my name in a hat. She was right. It was a three month ruling process. And you know, we had to meet with all that top level executives Xerox around all around the world and do Q&A's presentations, demonstrations of their equipment to again. So it was very pressure and a lot of pressure. And I ended up getting it when everybody said I wouldn't get it. So I guess I truly end the closer. So Xerox is not bad. I know. But I know. But what happened was Xerox did what most companies should never do. You don't take your top salesperson and promote them the management. Big mistake. And I didn't like it. When I went into management, I'm like, oh my gosh, all we're doing is set of meetings to have more meetings. All we're doing is meetings. So we weren't doing what I love anymore like we weren't meeting with the clients for building lifetime relationship. So I told my husband. I said, I really, really miss entrepreneurship, but I don't want to leave my six figure career with great benefits, right? And so I stumbled across a franchise that had two locations and my husband knew the owner and I said, look, I want to buy a franchise operated on the side. And they said, no, we don't want you to buy a franchise. We want you to partner with us because we know of your your reputation. We know you're the closer and partner with us and we'll give you a franchise. And I said, wow, I said, well, I'm not going to leave Xerox for a franchise where it has two locations, you know, because you're not very successful. So I said, I'll do I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll try it for six months because you don't have to say yes or say no. Sometimes there's a middle road right that you can take. So I said, let me keep my great position here because I was climbing up to Xerox ladder really quickly. And I said, let me try it for six months and see what happens within six months. I saw so many franchises. I called Drupal, my salary as Xerox. So then it became a no brainer to leave Xerox, partner with this franchise or and they gave me a franchise. Now, here's the problem. A lot of business owners will start a business, but they never build the foundation. They never put in the infrastructure for it to succeed. So they focus on sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. But what happens when you get all these clients coming in and you don't have the infrastructure. So they were over promising under delivering, they weren't servicing the franchise these and I realized very quickly that our values weren't aligned. So at that point, I said, buy me out. So then I said, well, gosh, what am I going to do now? So then I said, I'll just transition to selling businesses. How much harder can it be? So then I transition to selling companies, small businesses at first and I transition very quickly to selling large businesses and then learn that what Steve Forbes said is true. Eight out of 10 businesses don't sell. And by the way, Steve Forbes endorsed my book, Exit Rich. So I said, if I don't fix him and grow him and build to sell, I'm going to starve to death and have to go back to Xerox. So that's my story. I like the story and it's interesting how one point that I just want to take out of that is that you didn't go full into entrepreneurship and just totally negate your job. Like when you did that, when you took the franchise and you started and you were successful at it eventually, you still did it smartly. You did it the correct way and you sort of dipped your tone to the water, you know, so to speak. And then you found out it was successfully sort of took that that's a smart entrepreneur lesson. Because I think that people sometimes like you said, they start businesses, they don't know what they're doing, they put all their life savings or their energy into it and they just quit their job and they go full tilt. That's that's usually if they don't have the right mentorship, that's going to screw them up, screw them over really. Okay, so you found out that you're good at selling businesses. What is the market? What is the industry? Who are your competitors? Are you competing with lawyers or who else does what you do? I'm competing with lawyers at all. I never compete with lawyers. Typically other M&A advisors, you know, I belong to M&A source, so other M&A advisors, other brokers from time to time, sometimes investment bankers. Those are my competitors really, but it's not really competitive industry. It's not like a lot of other industries like real estate is so competitive. Everybody sells real estate. So it's not as competitive as you would think. I mean, there's 32 million businesses in the United States and there's probably 3000 brokerage firms and M&A firms. So how do you choose which businesses that you want to help sell? What's the business that you go after? Yeah, and I don't just sell businesses. I want to just make that clear. I also, so I really specialize in buying and selling fixing growing. So I buy businesses and flip them. I also partner with business owners because there are a lot of businesses that are not sellable for the price tag that the owner needs to exit their business. So I partner with business owners, investing my money, resources, time energy effort and expertise or like I said, I'll buy and flip all say, look, this is your plan. Build this is what you need to do. Come back to me when you're done. Yeah. And now we have an online build to sell course that we're finalizing. So business owners can walk through that course. So the way that I decided who I'm going to sell is me personally, my businesses that I focus on are typically $10 million and not been purchase price. But I have a team of analysts and a team of agents and they'll sell smaller businesses. But for me, for my company to decide to take on a client, you know, they've got the owner has to be realistic. The owner has to understand valuation that they want $20 million for the business and their businesses were $5 million. Then either they're going to have to work with us at $5 million or not work with us at all. There are plenty of brokers and advisors that will take that engagement and just put it on the market and hope somebody educates their sell. I don't do that. If my sellers are not coachable from the beginning and if they're not going to listen to my expertise, then I really don't want them as clients. They're going to move my statistics too. That's true. No, it's a good point. It's a good point. Actually, I sort of got ahead of myself. I got excited about trying to figure out, you know, who you're, you know, target customers. You mentioned I was actually watching before we jump into watch your sizzle your sizzle reel on your on YouTube, I think. And you made a really good point and you do a lot of keynote speaking, which is that, you know, that impressive because I think that this is something entrepreneurs have to hear. A lot of people build themselves a job and not a business. Let's start. That's like sort of like the basis. So what does that mean? What do entrepreneurs screw up? So that is the basis. And that's one of the biggest reasons that businesses are not sellable that eight out of 10 businesses don't sell because entrepreneurs have built themselves a job, meaning that the business is attached to them. They're doing everything. And I'll give you some examples. Let's say you have a dental practice. One dentist, dental hygienist. You pull that one dentist out of the dental practices or a business. No. The dentist has created a job to where he goes to work every day. He hasn't created a business that works for him. He can't take long vacations. He can't leave his practice. And that's a job. That's not a business. Same thing with chiropractor. You know, we're trying to sell a chiropractor clinic right now. They have two chiropractors. And the owner was just so confident that those two chiropractors were staying and guess what they're not. So now we're back to square one. So you got to build a business. They can operate without you and ask the first P that we talk about the six P's the ST six P's in exorich is people. You got to build a business. You don't build a business. You build people and people build the business. Otherwise, you just have a glorified job. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. And actually, you know, that I was going to that's a good segue into that point because you have frameworks and models. And of course, these frameworks are meant for exiting that, you know, that is your bread and butter like you have 1.1 have a transaction for the business. But there's two models that you mentioned when we're chatting before, there's GPS exit model and six P's. These are proprietary. You sort of build these over your career. This will teach entrepreneurs. I think these are good models to go through regardless of having that exit plan today because I think these are just really, really good frameworks for building successful businesses. Period. And I don't know what your thoughts are in that, but I would love to like, just sort of dissect at a high level. Obviously, you can't put all the detail on the podcast, but at a high level, what are these frameworks, which one do you want to start with? Yeah, what's with the GPS exit model because then it kind of leads into the six P's. Okay. So an exit rich is not just about selling your business, because like you said earlier, rather you want to sell now or later exit rich is actually about building a sustainable scalable asset. So that you actually have something to sell when you're ready. There are so many business owners that would love to sell, but they're reinforced to sell for pennies on a dollar closer business or file bankruptcy. You know, when I wrote, sell your business for more than it's worth in 2013, I did the research back then. And I, you know, found out that 85 to 95% of startups with clothes, right? We all know that startups are always at great risk, but those one to five years are the most vulnerable where startup will go out of business. But guess what Scott, when I wrote exit rich in 2019 and 2020, I did the same research. And I learned that the business landscape has changed dramatically. It's only 30%. It's a flip flop. It's only 30% now of startups that will go out of business. Only 30% startups are at last risk, but out of 27.6 million companies, those businesses have been in business for 10 years or longer. 70% of those businesses will go out of business. 70%. They're failing much later. They're failing much later. They're failing much later. You said you just hit the nail on the head. It used to be Scott that if you were in business five, six, 10 years, you're golden, right? You can write your ticket. That's not the case anymore. The business landscape has changed. Now you hear about the public companies all the time, like twice or us, been in business 70 years gone, came out gone. Sears having trouble, JC pennies, Montgomery Ward, I mark here one GMC close on 900 locations. But what you're not hearing about are the private companies. Those are public companies. You're not hearing about the private companies on every street corner and every state, you know, across a great nation. So that the reason for this is because business owners are not. They stop doing one thing I call aim, which is always innovate and market, always innovate and market because Amazon has changed the way that consumers purchase products and services. Amazon has made it so easy to purchase anything. You can practically buy a horse on Amazon and have it delivered to you in two days. So business owners have to keep innovating. So the GPS exit model is set up for success. And the problem with business owners is I don't think about selling until catastrophic event has occurred. They'll call me up when they say, look, there was a death, there was a death, you know, the owner died or there's health issues or there's marital issues. We're going to have a divorce or COVID or a hurricane or a tsunami or tornado or fires in California. I mean, the list is goes on and on. The worst time to sell your business is when a catastrophic event occurs because the business is typically turning downward. So business owners don't have a plan. And the GPS exit is designed to plan your exit from day one is starting or buying your business. No one, when you want to drive somewhere, what's the first thing that we all do now? We don't pull out maps anymore. You're too young to remember maps. But now we pull out our phone, right? We pull out our phone. We plug in our destination. It's so easy these days. We'll plug in our destination. And we tell our GPS where we want to go. Well, same thing in business. The business owners need to figure out their in game. They need a destination to drive to. They need to figure out what they want to sell their business for. So if they say, look, I want to sell my business for $20 million, right? Now we have a start of a plan and we have a number. We have a target, right? Now what does the GPS need to know? The GPS needs to know, well, where are you starting from? What's your current location? So business owners need to know their current valuation. No, Scott, I've been in this industry for 20 years. Humans get physical annual checkups every year, right? The humans that want to stay on this earth for a long time. We take our cars into the shop and we get checkups on our automobiles. But we never get a valuation checkup on our business. It is financial suicide because there are. Things that happen to increase evaluation and decrease evaluation in COVID has decreased evaluation for a lot of companies, but there's other industries that has increased evaluation for. So know your in game. I want to sell for $20 million. No, where you're starting out. What is your business for today? Let's say it's worth $5 million. The problem is that business owners don't have a road map. So they drive around in circles going up and down the financial heels to end up nowhere or out of business. And that's what we want to prevent. So once you know your in game $20 million, you know your current valuation $5 million. Now you need to know time frame. So let's say you want to do this in 10 years. Now we have a startup plan. We need a reverse engineer it. Now guess what you need to know? Who your buyers are going to be? I say buyers not buyer. So many sellers put their eggs in one buyer's basket and I can promise you in all likelihood that they will fall apart. So you need backup buyers. There's five types of buyers. Let me tell you who's not going to be your buyer. A strategic. I'm sorry. A startup is not going to first time buyer is not going to buy your business because your business is $20 million. Start up. First time buyers cannot afford a $20 million company. So first time buyers is one type of buyer turn around specialist or not going to buy your company. So it's either going to be a private equity group. Strategic flash competitor or serial entrepreneur. Now you need to know what what's the numbers need to look like for me to suffer $20 million. Where's the gross revenues have to be? Where's the profit profit margins? Most importantly, where does the EBITDA means before interest taxes, depreciation and arbitration have to fall? So if you get a sell for $20 million, you're even just going to have to be around $3 to $4 million. Then you need to know what's the characteristics. What are the synergies that buyers will pay top dollar for? And then you build that business based upon based upon that blueprint of what buyers are looking for. That's how you create a bidding war. So when you're ready to sell that asset in 10 years, you're ready. You're not having to start from the beginning and then you need to know your why. Why do you want to sell business for $20 million? Because how many people come up with goals and New Year's resolutions got and they never keep them all of them. That's right. So you have to have an reason to keep them is because they don't have a powerful why? The why has to be so strong that has to keep you motivated has to keep you in the game. It has to keep you, you know, weathering the financial storms and all the catastrophic events that occur because they will occur. So you're going to have a powerful powerful why to keep you motivated. And then once you figure that out, start building a business on the six piece. Any questions on that? No, well, I'm going to ask what the six p's are. I guess my question because you work with a lot of entrepreneurs. Is why is this not more common sense? Why is this not something that people like it makes sense to me when you explain it. It makes sense to me to have the vision. It makes sense to me that even if you don't know if you want to sell the aim for the KPIs and the milestones that would that an investor would need to be a purchasable business because if your business is purchasable, you're probably doing pretty well, right? You're probably doing pretty good. So why not? Why do people not take this into account? You know, common sense is not very common. That's one of my favorite things, too. Hey, it's Scott here. I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of our show Teachable. What is Teachable? Well, let me start with this. If 2020 has taught us anything, it's that nothing is for sure. Nothing is a guarantee. Everything was flipped on its head, including our job security. A lot of people realize that brick and mortar had to move online, had to move digital and those jobs that we've had for 20 plus years weren't so secure. So what do we do? How do you future proof? Well, you start your own thing. You build your own business. It doesn't have to be completely replacing your nine to five. It could just be a side hustle. But you are finding ways to productize yourself, your knowledge and things that you can sell to people that can benefit them that will allow you to bring in multiple streams of revenue and income. So how do we do that? Well, Teachable is the platform that allows you to productize and monetize your knowledge. 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I think what happens because like you said, I mean it's so logical, it's so common sense that build a business even if you don't want to sell it, at least you got a profitable asset that's making you money and it's on cruise control, right? So I think the reason why the biggest reason why is because business owners just get so stuck in the mentality of running their business, you know, and I call entrepreneurs firefighters because what are they really doing? They're the business putting out fires every day, lots of fires occur, right? And so a lot of entrepreneurs are wearing a lot of different hats and they're putting all these different fires and they're working in the chaos in the business versus on the business. You need to work on the business as a visionary and have an integrator that can carry out your vision and make sure it gets integrated, make sure it gets implemented. So I think business owners just go so stuck in their head plus they think, oh, this is my baby, I'll never sell my baby, you know, it just makes no sense. It's the same thing like a parent that has kids, what do we do? We plan for our kids, right? Where they're going to go to school? Where they're going to go to college? And you know, if we have, we do a state planning, we have a will, but we don't plan for the biggest asset. And I think it's just because business owners just have these blinders on and they're not they're not thinking about their future. All they're thinking about is today. And that's why we have to change it because if we don't change it, we're going to have a lot more than 70% of businesses go out of business and small businesses are backbone of our economy and pulling over half the US workforce. If we lose small business, we lose our economy. Yeah, well, not only now, now with the tumultuous nature of brick and mortar and wherever that's going to end up after, you know, pandemic and lockdown. I think that this future proofing and planning is probably more important than ever. Absolutely. And you just made a great point. This pandemic also changed the way that we purchased products and services. They purchased what's it's changed what's important to us. It changed how we buy things, you know, Amazon changed it first. And now the pandemic changed even more. Nobody even wants to go to the grocery store anymore. No, I've gotten good at grocery delivery. You know, I've gotten really good at it. It's interesting how much we shifted like our habits just in the past year. Abbas could shift very quickly, but the problem is the business owners are not pivoting enough to keep up with the shift in habits. And that's you mentioned that I've, you know, when you said that aim, what was it? What's the acronym? I always innovate and market. Yeah, I love that acronym. It's so relevant. I think the last year's shown that it's more relevant than ever. But that's that's one of the best acronyms I've heard to teach over to entrepreneurs for sure. Okay, the other thing I want to touch on because it's obviously, you know, this is part of this framework, like this part of exit rich and what you do for entrepreneurs is six piece. What are the six piece? I'm sure they're very valuable for entrepreneurs. That's how I want to go into them. So yeah, they are very valuable. And let me tell you, even if you're not going to sell your business, if you use this foundation, you're going to have a profitable business that can operate without you. Number one is people, right? People is number one. You know, you don't build a business. You build people and people build the business. You got to make sure that the business is not dependent upon you because borrowers want to buy a business, not a job. So you have to have the right people in the right seats. So many entrepreneurs want to do it there. Do everything. You need entrepreneurs need to focus on their strengths and hire their weaknesses. And make sure you have the right people in the right seat. And then Scott, most importantly, ask the who question? Who opens the door? Who handles customers? Who deals with marketing? Who handles customer relations, customer service issues? Legal accounting, you know, workers comp, who handles environmental, logistics, transportation, manufacturing, I mean, the list is goes on and on. The clue is you should never be next to the who Scott. The best way they build the business without you is to make sure you have answered the who and put the right people in the right seat and have a layer of management. Most entrepreneurs are not good managers. A lot of entrepreneurs are not always good leaders or not always get operations. So focus on your strengths, hire weaknesses. And then the second P is product. And product is more crucial now than ever before. And that's the industry you're in. So you have to ask yourself, is your industry on the way up on the way out? Are you thriving or dying? Do you have an Amazon or a blockbuster? And if you have a blockbuster, don't panic. This is not the time to panic. This is the time to align yourself with an expert and trying to, you know, a lot of times an expert and outsider can see things that you cannot see. Because when you're in your fog, it's foggy, right? In the middle of the chaos is hard to be delayable from the inside of the bottle. So always say get an outsider's perspective and ask three transformational questions. If you're in an industry that's dying. Number one, do what Amazon did. Number one, Amazon asked themselves, what business are we in? This was years ago. We're in the book selling business. What do we do really, really, really well better than anybody else? We do fulfillment better than anyone else. What business should we be in? We should be in a fulfillment business. They moved that quickly into fulfillment. Those three transformational. Now remember, transformational. So many business owners are in transactional. You got to get out of transactional and become transformational. Those three questions took Amazon from a small bookseller to a multi-billion dollar roll. Billion dollar roll. Why conglomerate that they are today? Okay. So those three transformational questions. And then the third P is processes processes. So so many business owners got never really think about processes processes until something something happened. You know, let's say, let's say almost son and somebody gets hurt in the warehouse. Oh my gosh, we need a process for our health and safety. Or clients get upset and are bashing the company on the internet. Oh my gosh, we need a process for client customer appreciation. You know, processes need to be designed from the beginning of your company. Have you ever watched a movie that found her based upon the McDonald's brothers McDonald's? With with Ray Crock. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're a clock. Did you watch the movie? Yeah, I did. I did. And that he was it was almost like obsessive about process where he was timing how people are moving around the kitchen. That's where you're talking. Even before even before Ray Crock, the McDonald brothers back in the 40s, they had to drive up sonic type restaurants. Yeah, but back in the 40s, they never really perfected the processes. So the food was always cold. The order was always wrong. And it took so long. So McDonald's back in the 40s without Ray Crock said, we want to design a restaurant. That's for restaurant with a customer experience in mind. What is our customer objective? We want our customers to get great tasting food that's hot. In two minutes or less. How do we do that? Do you remember when they went out to the empty tennis courts? This is way before Ray Crock. I do actually. Yeah, I do. I know I'm thinking back. I watched on Netflix a while ago, I think, but I can't remember what they did. I remember the scene sort of they went to the empty tennis courts. I took all their employees and I said, okay, let's figure this out. And I drew it out. And I erased it and drew it out. And they were their own day. I remember that. They figured out who takes who takes the order? Who toasts the bonds? Who cooks the burgers? Who puts the pickles on the buns? Who gives the order to the clients? Two minutes or less. Those processes. Now yes, they get perfected as you go. Yes, they get tweaked as you go. But those processes is why you can eat at a McDonald's and Singapore McDonald's and in Australia or USA. Because the processes are designed with the customer experience. I know, no matter where you are, it's the same experience. Yeah, it was almost like. Yeah, there was almost like they got it took their choreographing almost the workflow of. They were for a graphic. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they did it with the customer experience in mind. This is a point I want to drive home to your listeners. So many business owners. Map their processes with their objective. Not with the customers. And that's why they have a lot of unhappy clients. So there are a lot of processes that really alienate us. Think about when you're trying to call your credit card company and you have to push all these buttons. You know, you have to push like 12 buttons before you can get a live person. That's not a good process. And there's so many processes. Think about how much business you do with other companies that really are like, oh my God, that's a terrible process. They really should think rethink that right. Processes should always be designed with the customer experience in mind, be productive, efficient. Here's the caveat. Well documented in a policy procedure manual with SOP checklist. You'd be surprised how many companies 10, 20, 30, $40, $50 million. They don't have good document or processes. I can't even emphasize enough. It doesn't matter if it's stuck up here in the CEO's head. It has to be something you can peak. Well, that's another, that's another brilliant point. We have a fabrication company. We've been trying to sell for a little while. And the point, and it was a problem when I took, took, took it on, but I took it on as a paper to a friend, two owners, been in business 35 years, got four employees. What is all the data in their head? The reason we haven't been able to sell it is because the owners are like almost 80 and the buyer is like, there is so much information on their head. None of its document. We don't know what to do after we would buy the business, how we would operate that business. So it's really important to get that document out of the CEO's head on to paper. So, so it can be duplicated. Yeah, no, very good. Okay, we got three P's left. I want to, I want to make sure that we don't loot run at a time because this is really good stuff, but it could probably go for longer. Anyway, so we got the last three. All right, so the last two, the last two are quick, but proprietary is going to take me a little bit of time because proprietary is the highest value driver. For proprietary, you can take you from a five multiple to 10X multiple like that. So number one in proprietary is branding. How will branded are you? The bigger the brand, the bigger the price. You know, as long as that brand's got, it's relevant in the mind of the consumers. Is anybody going to pay anything for blockbuster? Not not today. Not today. I've turned it down a few times for a couple of or who was it? Was it? No, it wasn't that Netflix could be who was the one who there was one company who. I think I think it was I can't remember. I mean, there was a block. There was a company that offered blockbuster to purchase to purchase blockbuster. And I think they turned it down. And they were offered to buy Netflix and they turned that down. That's the answer. Yeah, so they they could have bought Netflix and they turned that down big, big, big mistake. And I also didn't aim. They didn't innovate. So, so branding is huge. The biggest brand in the world is, you know. I don't know the like the, well, I guess Amazon. Like everybody knows Amazon. I don't know Tesla's up there right now. What is this? Apple. Apple. Yeah, no, no, I see I was sorry. I was looking up. I was looking up who offered to buy blockbuster. I was trying to figure out the name of the company. So I switched off. I switched off the video. My back. Apple is the biggest brand in the world. Apple brand is what the 189 billion with a B billion dollars. That's without cash. Well, that's without equipment inventory receivables assets, anything real estate. So build your brand, build your exit. Trademarks got very important trademarks. Here's the problem in America. Business owners go start a business. Are they buy a business? This works on the buying side too. And they never check the federal database. They go and get a state trademark for the company name. They're in business, five, 10, 15, 20 years, all of a sudden they receive a letter in the mail that says you have to season this stop using this company name because somebody else has your federal trademark. It's been the $1,500, $2,000 and protect your company name. If you have a podcast and you're starting to build some momentum, you better go trademark that get a federal trademark. I registered exit rich or registered the six P's and the GPS exit model. Go protect your IP also patterns huge, huge. Do you watch short tank? Yeah, yeah, I do. Every shark always asks what question Tim mentors. Do you have a patent? Do you have a trademark? Yeah, yeah, you have a patent. Yeah. Yeah. So go out and get those patents. Very, very important to get those patents. I and we sort of cut me for $18 million. It was losing money, but they had 18 patents was sort of from million a patent. The other things that are valuable are contracts, manufacturing contracts vendor contracts distributed contracts. Franchise or if you have a bunch of franchisees, the most valuable of all contracts are client contracts because buyers want to buy cash floating want to make sure you have real client revenue. You got customers on contracts. So, you know, they're going to continue to get money for a year to years, three years. Here's a caveat to contracts. They have to have the two synthesis transfer ability clause. If you haven't learned anything yet, learn that the two synthesis transfer ability clause because 99.9% of all cells are asset cells. Not stop. And if you have 300 contracts and you're not transferable, it literally could stop the deal in its tracks. And when you sell, but when you sell, is it normal that when you create these contracts, that's what you're setting up ahead of time so that the client can't exit the contract when the business sell. Correct. There was a franchise order so that have 1500 franchisees. The buyers, that private equity group, by the way, never did their due diligence. They go side, never did all the due diligence. They never, they did due diligence, but they never looked at the contracts. None of the contracts were transferable. They had this big party for all the franchisees, two franchisees transferred over. All the rest of them started their own franchise together because they didn't have a non compete because the franchise agreement was not all in void because it was not transferable in the asset cell. That pet, private equity group, when it ended up going out of business and that following bankruptcy and suing our entire legal department. Well, we're not protecting. So make sure so databases, really important databases databases are typically overlooked by most advisors. You could be losing money, but you could sell this. What we're talking about right now are synergies databases as a synergy contracts or synergy patterns or synergy. So you could be losing money and sell your database, Facebook paid one 19 billion dollars for what's app? What's app was hemorrhaging, but they had a billion users, right? So what I'm trying to get your listeners to understand is build these synergies because this is what gets you the highest price and this is what creates a bidding war. And then last but not least, and proprietary, and I'm almost done with this is what I call IP real estate, IP real estate. Let's say that you have a skincare line and you're on Oprah's favorite things and Oprah Winfrey hasn't forced it. Do you know how much money that's going to get you for the sale of your company? Yeah. Let's say that you manufacture couches and furniture and your number one on wave fair. Number one on wave fair number one at sea number one on Amazon any of the search engines is huge. Strategic will play a huge penny for that. Okay. So that's it for proprietary. My fourth fee is patrons. And as your customer database, most business owners follow 80 20 rule where 80% of their business comes from 20% of the clients. Yeah. Now they lose a couple clients and they can literally be out of business. So you want customer diversification, not customer concentration. A lot of businesses have customer concentration. Plus if you're aging, if your business is, you know, 15, 20, 30 years, guess what? Your clients are probably aging out. So you always have to aim, innovate so you can get the millennials. The millennials don't buy the same way that baby boomers and Gen X buy. Okay. And then the last fee. The most important thing on entrepreneurs is profits. Everybody's in this to make money. But profits are never the problem. They're always the symptom of not operating on one of the other five P's. clients will come to me and say, we should have a profit problem. I'm like, no, you have a people problem. You have the wrong people. You're trying to do everything yourself. Or no, you have a process problem. Your process is costing you this much waste, which is causing you to lose money. So profits is never the problem. It's always the symptom. Yeah, making money. Go back and look at those five P's. So that's that's that's really it. If somebody's focused on the profit and they're all about the lagging indicators for why their business is failing. It is a good KPI. And if you're not profitable, that is a key performance indicator that you're missing some of these five P's. Yeah, very, very smart. And that's like I said, I knew it was going to be a good framework. Those are all like those are all very good points. And I think that. And it's common sense. All right. It is. It is until it is until you're stuck in the day to day. You don't have time to think about it or you're stressed and you don't, you know, you're putting it off. I'll reevaluate my, you know, my standard operating procedures later on. I'll reevaluate, you know, I'll read, look at my workforce. I'll make sure that I'll audit my team like all that. I have to push that out till later because I'm chasing a big client. I'm, you know, I'm doing all these different things that I probably shouldn't be doing as a CEO or a founder. That's why you have to have an integrator. Yeah. You have to have somebody because visionaries are typically not the end of the writers and you can't do everything yourself. So you have to have somebody else that make sure your policies and procedures are intact. Make sure that your IP is protected. Make sure you got checks and balances as somebody's not stealing money in your company. I mean, this happens all the time. You know, I would say probably one out of five companies I've worked with had an embezzlement problem. That's surprising that it's at that level. But if, you know, it's, it's, if the entrepreneur is not paying attention. Then you can't just assume everyone's going to be trustworthy. If they're given the accounts, the books, all that for years and nobody's paying attention to what they're doing. That's why you're going to have checks and balances and inspect what you expect. Trust but verify. Very good. Okay. So close up. I have a couple rapid fire questions just to bring out some last insights from you your career. Is there anything that was from your book or something. Something to do with what you do that you wanted to bring up that we didn't talk about. I do want to tell your listeners, but they can go buy exit rich because we're in the middle of pre cells. Okay. Let's do it. I actually know what. Tell them at the end. Tell them at the end because you'll give your social stuff and they're going to go check you out and go get the book probably on Amazon and wherever it's listed. Just what I'll ask you now just a few rapid fire questions from your career because I want to draw out some lessons. So somebody who is looking to work in M&A. Right. I actually made the mistake of saying are you competing with lawyers, investment banks is probably a smarter thing to compare your work with. I guess I'm just thinking suits for whatever reason, but if somebody wants to work in M&A. Where, you know, what do they do? What do they have to learn? How would they pursue a career like yours? Yeah. So the M&A world is not an easy world. It's actually pretty tough for all with about a 98% failure rate. So the first thing you want to do is not do it alone. You want to, you know, maybe find an organization that has multiple locations or somebody is opening up multiple locations or go work in an M&A firm. You know, we have a partnership program. So if somebody's looking to get in an M&A, they can partner with us. We have, you know, a five day training course. We have a 600 page training manual. We do all the valuations, all the Sims, all the corporate, all the corporate like work here. And we provide all the leads and everything else. So I was just say, don't do it alone. Go into business with somebody. So your business, you know, for yourself, but not by yourself because it is a tough industry. I mean, credibility. The most important thing in M&A is credibility. What is one myth about selling a business that you want to debug? One myth about selling a business. I want to debug the sellers think they can do this on their own. It's like if you need a heart surgery, you're going to rip up in your chest and pull your heart out and operate on and stick it back in your chest. No. I mean, selling a business is your most prized asset. You need an expert. There's too many things that can go wrong. Good advice. A lesson that you would tell your younger self. Get a mentor early on. Align yourself with mentors and experts who've been down your path early on. You know, I didn't really start getting a mentor or start working with any type of mentors or leaders until probably 2011, 2012. Start that earlier. Yeah. And then last question. I'll probably be president of the United States about to start earlier. Yeah. Although they don't make enough. Yeah. Last question. In business or career, what does success mean to you? Success to me means lots of referrals. It means that I've really made an impact on somebody's life. That I've really helped somebody succeed or help somebody, you know, sell their legacy. Success to me means that I help business owners exit rich when so many of them are unfortunately exiting poor. I like that. I like that a lot because you know you're killing it from a professional point of view. You're making money, but it's a feel good story at the end of the day too. Right. So it's it is also very unselfish when you think about like what you're doing. It's a good feel. It's a good feel. Okay. Most importantly, where can people get the book? Check it out on social. I have all your handles, but let like list them off and I'll put them in the links too. Okay. So first and foremost, let me just tell them a little bit more about the book. I'm really proud that Steve Forbes endorsed the book, because that means Steve Forbes doesn't put his name on everything. Plus the book is the ink original. I was surprised that he endorsed it when it was an ink original. But because they published books too, Forbes does. And then Sharon Lekters, my co-author, who wrote Richard Porta with Robert Kiyosaki. She's a five times best time selling author, but she's written several books in Napoleon Hill Foundation. She's a CPA of financial literacy expert. The advisor to many different presidents and her husband is an intellectual property attorney. So at the end of every chapter, you have her wisdom at the end of every chapter from her perspective. And sometimes her husband's perspective, especially when we talk about proprietary. And then we have some really heavy hitter testimonials from my glass brown. I love in a door by Tracy Tom Hopkins, Mark, Mark Victor Hanson, that can't feel. You got some big names on there. You got some very big names on there. Good for you. Congratulations. David Meltzer, you have some really, really big names. And then, so where can I get Exit Rich? I can go to, and by the way, Exit Rich also is not just about selling. It's about building that foundation, but there's six or seven chapters dedicated to valuations. And how to negotiate with each of the different types of buyers. And what's the important negotiating techniques to each one of those buyers. Okay, so anyway, go to exitrichbook.com. We're in the middle of pre-sales. I can get the book right now for $24.79, which is less expensive than Amazon. We will email the digital download to them immediately, Scott, so they don't have to wait. And then when the book is launched, we will send a hardcover to their doorstep to anybody in the USA. Outside of USA, we'll send them the Kindle. And then they will all get a lifetime membership into Exit Rich Book Club. Exit Rich Book Club is video content and me training all these different principal strategies and techniques that I've built over the last 20 years plus, even more importantly than that, is documents. So a lot of business owners are like Michelle. What if you have an example of an employee handbook or not a P or an org chart or a policy procedure manual. And then a lot of business owners are like, I don't even know what a letter of intent looks like, or what a purchase agreement looks like, or a sample due diligence checklist for closing docs. And here's the thing about all these documentation. There were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars to get them created or to look for them on the web. And then I have them all right there for your media downloads. So that right there was worth probably $25,000 right there. And then we also give them a free membership in the club CEOs, which is a mastermind. It's an entrepreneurial group where we do hot seats, Q and A's and things of that nature. Awesome. I'm glad you I'm glad you broke that down. I didn't realize there was so much to it. So you get you get the book, but then you get a whole bunch of other. You get a whole bunch of other and you get the whole bunch of other now. Like you don't have to wait to launch date. You get it all right now. And then we we send this beautiful 360 page hardcover to your doorstep. Amazing. And just to reiterate, it's not. You know, a lot of people come in the show and speak about books and some of the books, you know, some of the books are just based on their life and some of the books are highly specific to what they've done in their career. Just from talking to you. I feel comfortable saying that this is for any entrepreneur, not just if you're exiting obviously, but really like the principles that you're discussing I've worked with entrepreneurs are working in a lot of different business environment. And these are all things that people have to learn. So I think that, you know, that's a lot of value for a book and I think I'll probably end up checking it out after this because there's a couple things that I want to learn. I think I might have access to that mastermind group to that be useful for me. So that's that's really good. That's really, really good. Awesome. Wonderful. But thank you. Is there always any more content to the library too. What are your what are your outside of the book? Give other places that people should go to connect with you social. Yes. So my website is silertucker.com. Silertucker.com. And they can also text Michelle to 888-526-5750. And all of my social media will pop up. So I have Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. I have all that stuff. Thank you.