Elevate Your Business’s Exit Strategy: Valuation Tips from Ron Douglas

Achieve improved valuation and successful business exit planning.
Fostering a profitable business isn’t just about managing daily operations or increasing sales; it’s also about envisioning the end game – the exit strategy. What’s unique about the exit planning process is that you can’t just start preparing when you decide to sell. It’s a journey that ideally should begin on day one of your business venture. The proper groundwork and strategic planning can greatly enhance a business’s value when it’s time to exit. This demands continual considerations about how every business decision impacts potential selling price and eventual exit opportunities. Ron Douglas, an experienced entrepreneur who has bought and sold over 40 businesses, emphasises on this exit planning perspective. He shares his experiences and insights on how considering exits and evaluations for each business decision, can substantially boost the business value. By continuing to ask himself how each decision would impact the business’s valuation or improve the odds of a successful exit, Ron learned how to expertly navigate the often-tricky landscape of buying, building, and selling businesses.

• Maximise your business value with expert exit planning strategies.
• Learn how to evaluate potential opportunities for a successful business exit.
• Discover the secrets to achieving improved valuation for your business.
• Unlock the potential of strategic splitting and specialisation for your business exit.
• Gain insights into effective exit strategies to maximise your business’s value.

Welcome to the podcast that’s dedicated to helping business owners to prepare for an exit so you can maximise value and exit on your terms. This is the Exit Insights podcast presented by Succession Plus. I’m Darryl Bates-Brownsword, and today I’m joined by Ron Douglas. Hey, thanks for joining me today, Ron, and welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Hey, good stuff. Now, Ron, we have discussed, I guess, a few things back and forth over a little while now preparing for this show. Why don’t you just give the listeners just a little bit of a background around Mentoring Giants and how you help business owners get ready for exit and what your role is in the planning.

Yeah, so I started mentoring Giants a little while back. I had an addiction there for a while of buying, building, selling businesses. And I’ve owned over 40 companies and I just, I had a lot of fun. It was a long ride. It was a lot of fun, learned a lot. But we specialise now in both entering and exiting a company. So I help people build a company and I help people exit, do exits. So we got kind of two things that we do there, but we help with exits because so many people just leave so much on the table and don’t realise how much time it takes to prepare and get ready to do an exit properly.

Absolutely. So you speak in our language, but you just slipped something in there and I just want to pick up on that. Did you say you’ve been involved personally in 40 plus exits?

Yes, Sir. So, yeah, I’ve had over 40 companies and I’ve had 40 successful exits.

Yeah, that sounds like an addiction to me.

Yeah, it just started with one business. I thought, oh, I’ll just buy this business. This guy needs some help and I’ll just buy his business. And before I knew it, I was addicted. I was like, oh, let’s just buy it. What other businesses are in trouble? Let’s start buying businesses.

So all addictions start with just one. But let’s explore that a bit. Because the Exit Insights podcast, the whole reason we set up this podcast in the beginning was to, I guess, tap into the fact that most SME business owners, and when we’re talking about SME business owners, we’re talking they’ve got more than ten people involved, employed in the business. They’re typically doing anywhere between one and 20 or 30 million in revenue. And I deliberately left the currency out because it sort of applies the same globally to where our audience is. But if we talk about that marketplace, they’re owner led businesses. So at some point, they want to change hands, and because they’re at that smaller end, they either want to sell them onto someone else or hand them over to a family member. Or the third option is, unfortunately, they just sort of have to liquidate it and fade away. But the reality is that 80% that go to market the stats shells, 80%. So four out of five that try to sell their business fail. So you’ve acquired and been in and out of, let’s say, 40. So there’s a bit of experience there. What do you notice, what have you noticed when you’re on the buying side? Because I’ve got so many questions that I just want to tap into your experience. But on the buying side, what did you notice when people were trying to sell their business to you? What did they do to help the process? And what did they do to hinder the process? Let’s start there, shall we?

Yeah, they did plenty to hinder it. I can tell you that. The biggest problem that I’ve noticed with buying and selling a business is nobody takes the time to look at it from the opposite person’s perspective. And so if you’re the business owner, you’re not making sure that there’s enough meat on the bone, so to speak, and they’re not making sure that there’s enough of a deal there for the person to buy it. It should be a no brainer deal. If it’s not, then there’s a problem. And I guess that’s one of the advantages I’ve had, is usually when I buy a business, my intention is to build it to a certain point and sell it. So I’ve already got the mindset and I’m already preparing to make it look good. But that’s not the case with most people. Most people are like, oh, I’ve been working this business for 20 years, or ten years or 15 years, and this is my baby. And they haven’t really prepared their business to exit, and they haven’t prepared their business to get out of the way. And the worst ones are the people that it’s kind of like life insurance, right? Nobody’s expecting that day to happen where, unfortunately, you’re not here anymore. And business owners die every day, or business owners are in car accidents every day, and then their spouse is left trying to clean up this mess and they have no idea what to do with it. So your business should always be prepared to sell, and you should always have your books in order. You should always have everything in order and make it look like a presentable company that somebody wants to jump on and buy.

Yeah, well, if you want something to happen with your business, if you want things to be handled a particular way, some sort of legacy, what happens after you leave, you got to begin with the end in mind is what you’re saying, isn’t it? And if that happens from a timing perspective that you’d rather not, I E, unplanned exit, get hit by a bus or what have you, you want to know that what happens to, A, your family, they get looked after and treated the way you would like, and B, the rest of the business, whatever happens to that, happens in the way that you want it to happen. That’s what we’re trying to achieve for business owners. So, yeah, you got to act and have your business so that it’s ready for exit at any point in time.

Absolutely. I mean, life changes all the time. I had a buddy who, his wife came back and she had cancer. And that changed everything. That changed their whole perspective of life. That changed their direction. Why am I working this business 70 hours a week? Why do I even do This? I need to get out of this and spend more time with my family. Things change. Everybody changes. Life changes all the time.

Yeah, I was talking to someone the other day, and I think we’ve come on a way to help, because business owners, if they’re entrepreneurs, they’re optimistic people. They’re always looking forward. They’re more optimistic and visionary and proactive people who make it happen. So I was having a conversation with this guy and he said, look, Darryl, look, I’m not going anywhere in a hurry. I’ve got to complete this project and I’ve got to get this business ready and built, and I need to achieve it. And I said, okay, so you know that you’re going to sell it at some point. He said, yeah, I’m going to sell it and someone bigger. I’m going to make it attractive for a bigger organisation to come and buy it and it’s going to be a strategic buyer. And I said, fantastic. You’ve got that end in mind. So what if that buyer is looking and they come across your business today and they make you an offer too good to be true? And he goes, well, I take it. And I go, yeah, but once you sign the paperwork and for due diligence, they’re going to have a look at your business and they’re going to run away because it’s not ready to be acquired yet. They’re just going to go, look, this is just too much of a risk for us and they’re going to run away. And he said, but they approached me, I said, yeah, they approach you because of all the messaging that you project on the outside looks good. When they start looking at the nitty gritty and they see that it’s a mess or just not ready, they just want to know that they’re investing a whole lot of money in a business. They want to know how risky that is and how secure that is. And, and if it’s too risky, if it’s too dependent on you, you haven’t got all of your reporting and record keeping all tidied up. They’re just going to go, look, it’s a nice business, but it’s just not ready for us yet. And they’ve gone, oh, okay. So I need to get ready for an unplanned exit is when someone comes and taps you on the shoulder just as much as a bus taps you on the shoulder, so to speak.

Yeah, absolutely. And it happens so many times, people are just not ready. People die a drop of heart attacks every day. And I’ve acquired several businesses, I hate to say this, but unfortunately from untimed, unplanned deaths and people have reached out to me, said, well, I know this guy, he might buy your business. And talking to the spouse who doesn’t know anything about the business and it’s just a mess, the books are a mess, everything’s a mess. I have to offer them much less than it’s worth. I know that they know that I explain it to them because I have to decipher everything. I mean, they don’t have constant book, they don’t have bookkeepers. I’m going through old emails and trying to figure out what the heck is going on and where the orders are. Just, it’s just a know. And that’s not what your spouse wants to be dealing with exactly.

So Ron, let’s tap into that for a know because we’re going to go to Ron because we know he collects businesses, so we’ll see if he wants to buy another one. But on a serious note, putting you on the spot a bit, do you recall how much you had to discount the value to go, hey, look, I’ve discounted it enough to be a safe investment for me because of everything. I just don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to dig up when I go trying to tidy everything up. And compared to what the valuation could have been in those situations?

Well, there’s one situation in particular and I hated to do this. And I was very clear. I try not to take advantage of anybody. Let’s just say that right off the bat because I want to be open and as clear as possible to these people. But there is such a gamble and a risk because you have no idea. Unfortunately, this guy took his own life because his business wasn’t doing well. And so he figured his life insurance would cover things. And so that was a huge red flag for me because I’m like, okay, what am I getting into here? And if the business was dropping that bad that he took his own life, well, come to find out he had depression anyway. And so the business just wasn’t doing as well as he thought it should be doing. And like most people, it was the owner’s fault he was in his own way. But hindsight is 2020. But looking at the business, at the day that she approached me, I told her, I said, I’m not sure what’s going on here. I asked her, if you don’t mind, give me a week to just go through his emails and try to understand what happened, what’s going on with his business. I could not figure it out. And so I had to offer her. And I was upfront with her. I say, listen, you can get another offer from other people. I honestly don’t know what I’m doing. It was an industry I did not know. It was an industry that I’ve never been in. And so I had to offer her pretty much what she had in stock at just what was there. And it was, man, I think it was like $20,000 was what he had in inventory, just basically inventory. I went ahead and she’s like, well, are the shelves of any value? And I was like, sure. So I gave her full price on the shelves. And he had some carts and stuff, and I bought the carts and I bought all that stuff and I took it home. And then I had to go through, and then it took me weeks to figure all this out. The only reason it was of value to me is because the phone, while I was there at the store trying to figure this out was constantly ringing. So I knew that there was business and so I knew there was people there. I just needed to figure out what the problem was. And again, like I said, the problem was he was stuck in 1995 and everything was outdated. The website was outdated, everything needed updated, and he was just doing it old system wise. Somebody asked for a product and he would send them an Excel spreadsheet with all the data and all that. These days, nobody wants that. They just want give me the product. What’s the product? And it was an interesting time because it was like drinking from a fire hose trying to learn this business. For the first two months, I was just completely engulfed in this business and learning it. But I ended up exiting that with seven figures within a couple of years. But it was a lot. I mean, it took me a lot and it was dangerous. It was a calculated risk for me because like I said, one, I didn’t know the industry. Two, I didn’t understand his business model. So I was kind of like really jumping into it. But the only reason I did it was, one, she just didn’t care. She was going to just turn off the phones and shut it all down anyway. She was like, I’m so sick and tired of hearing this phone ring. And I knew the phone was ringing 20, 30 times a day. And I was like, okay, so there’s 20, 30 customers out there, or one pissed off customer that’s calling 20,30 times. But it was a calculated risk. And so it ended up paying off. Actually, that one paid off really big because going through his old emails, I discovered that he had invented a product he was creating through China manufacturers, and it was his own product. And so it was a special LED light that was built to his specifications. And that light ended up being something that’s needed in all the cell towers as emergency lighting for cell towers. And once I figured that out and it was a customer by accident that called me, he goes, oh, he’s not there no more. I said, no, told him what happened and he says, well, he was working on this product for me. And so I went through the emails and found it. He goes, yeah. He goes, I do all the lighting at the Verizon cell Towers and. wait a minute. So I had to reverse engineer this and figure out what was going on. And it just so happened that he was creating a product that every cell tower in the nation needed.  And so, wow.

Yeah, that paid off big. Yeah, but it could have just as easily gone either way, couldn’t it? Like, you could have ended up with 20 grand worth of stock in your garage and having to close leases and employees and what have you. So it is a risk.

It is a risk, but it’s a calculated risk. Again, he’d been open since 1998, so with the phone ringing and being open that long, it was a calculated risk. But I thought, there’s got to be something here because he’s making money. He had made good money several years before when she showed me the books, he was up in the seven figures, and then it just dropped down to.

Wow.

Down to the six figures pretty drastically. And I couldn’t understand why. Later I figured out it was because he just got in a depressional funk and just didn’t answer the phones, just wasn’t doing the business. He was just sitting there in a depression.

Right, okay, so there’s an example. Two years later, you were able to turn it around and on, sell it as a going concern, and you made some good money out of it. Is that typical? We see that the difference in valuation is significant compared to what it could have sold for when you bought it if it had been in good order? Okay, and is that typical of the experience you’ve got where business owners aren’t prepared for exit when you’re coming to buy? Is that sort of typical of the scenario you experience?

Yeah, absolutely. If you’re not ready to buy, it’s pretty much an auction or a sale at that point. You know what I mean? What do you have in stock? What’s the evaluation on your vehicles? And usually it’s about half that. So the evaluation of whatever you got. Ten trucks and they’re worth $10,000 a piece. Great. That’s $50,000. That’s about. What’s about a company is worth. And that’s it. And it’s so much more than that. If you prepared your business, it just took a little bit of time. You could triple your valuation easily compared to going on the auction block.

Yeah. And I guess it’s a difference, isn’t it, between your balance sheet valuation nowadays, which in good businesses, the balance sheet is like only ten or 20% of the valuation of the whole business, because the intangibles make up 80 OD percent of the valuation. And what you just explained is, in a worst case scenario, when the business isn’t prepared, the intangibles are the stuff that are invisible, so you can’t value them. So all you’ve got to go on is the balance sheet items. And as you say, they’re already written off. They’re used items in a lot of situations, depending on what all of the items are. But it’s the lowest possible valuation you’re going to get in most modern day businesses, where intangibles and intellectual property are a big part of the going concern. Or what’s collectively known as goodwill.

Absolutely. And the problem is, another problem that happens is because you’re in this business day in and day out. What’s the term? You can’t see the forest for the trees. And so a lot of times you’re just like, man, my company is not worthy. I’m barely taking home anything, or whatever the case may be, and that’s just not true. You just got to change a couple of puzzle pieces around, and all of a sudden, your company is worth quite a bit. I went into this one company, this guy, actually, the one where his wife ended up with cancer, and he’s thinking his company is worth. What was it? He was thinking, like, 800,000. I went in there and, long story short, changed a few things around, and he ended up with 3.5 million. He just was just ready to just auction it off for the value of the machinery, which was $800,000. And I was like, no. And he’s like, nobody’s going to buy this business. Well, yeah, you’re right. Nobody’s going to buy this business because it’s a mess. Change a few things here and change a few things there. And we did, and we changed just a little bit, and it ended up selling for 3.5.

Yeah. And what you’re highlighting there, Ron, is the importance of bringing in someone who knows how to value a business, who knows how to extract the intangible assets and get them out of the closet and put them on display so that people can see them and they’re not just the world’s best kept secret. So if you’re trying to sell your business yourself, you’re in big trouble, because you’re only ever going to do it once. For most people, if they’ve just run one business, it’s not like selling their product. It’s a total different market to selling their business as it is to selling. Their product or their thing.

Exactly. And the other thing is, like, for instance, he wanted to keep it hush hush. He didn’t want his employees to know. Well, if your employees don’t know, that’s a personal choice. But if your employees do know and you’re doing it for a good reason, like, he wanted to spend more time with his wife. That was kind of like all hands on deck. They were fixing the paperwork, they were fixing all his financials and getting everything corrected, and they were spending time doing the right things instead of just doing the day to day running of the operation. And they quickly jumped on board and helped get this business ready to sell. And that made all the difference because he had a good team and they were there to support him in the exit.

Okay. It’s all about preparing. Ron, one of the things I want to ask you is at its highest point, how many businesses did you own and therefore were in control of in one point in time?

20

20. So you’re owning and arguably running, I’ll use that word loosely, 20 businesses at once. Now, how the heck did you manage to do that? When most business owners are consumed by 60 hours or more a week in running just their own business and their business consuming their time and barely making a profit, how did you do that for 20 businesses at one time?

I learned that a company. What’s the word for it? What’s the best way to explain this? It was easier for me to buy a company and split it because a lot of times a business owner gets into too many things. Give you an example. Right. And so, like, I bought a solar company one time, and the solar company was also doing well pumps because he can sell the solar kit for the well pump. And then he was also doing solar kits for greenhouses. And then he was doing solar kits for cabins, like homesteaders. And then he was also selling solar kits to yachts and boat owners that wanted solar for their boats. Well, that’s a completely. The boat owner is a different person than the ranch owner in Wyoming. Right? And so I started splitting these companies off and micro focusing on the ranchers, and that just doubled and tripled and quadrupled the sales because I was able to devote more time to the rancher. And then, same with the boat and the yacht owners right. I was able to break that off and focus and cater the business. So when they went to the website, when I clicked on the website, he had, well, pumps and fancy yacht owners right next to each other, which you know what I mean? It’s a mixed message, it’s a confusing message. So by doing that and by changing it up and breaking these companies up into micro niches, I was able to get several exits out of one company. A lot of times, for instance, I had bought a greenhouse company, and then I broke off the solar part of this other solar company and matched it with the greenhouse Company and put all that together, and then sold the greenhouse company with the solar kits separately, then the yacht owners solar kits companies and separate than the ranch solar kit companies. You know what I mean? I just broke it all up.

You didn’t go buy a yacht company just so that you could merge it with your yacht solo around?

No, I tried to stay in my lane. Don’t know nothing about yachts, and I didn’t want to get into it, but I broke them off and I ran those companies for a year or two to show the financials and focus on building just a yacht specialist. Once I did that and I realised that a lot of people just got their hands into too many pockets, and a lot of these companies can be purchased and broken up into a couple of different exits, they became way more successful.

The lesson there is focus on one thing. When you’re trying to focus on everything, you’re focusing on nothing from a product or a market perspective, and you’re not niching down and you’re just like the general practitioner doctor. Whereas if you’ve got a problem with your ear, you don’t want to go to a GP, you want to go to an ear specialist. And it works in all areas of business. So there’s one of the lessons. What about running the day to day? Like, did you have general managers in your business or CEOs or whatever? I’m having a guess here, but you can’t get in and run 20 businesses at one time yourself at a micro level.

No, I didn’t. But at the same time I was doing this, I also was doing a TV show on Discovery Channel called Blue Collar Backers. I was burning the candle at both ends because I was doing this TV show on Discovery Channel and trying to run all these businesses at the same time and I had the largest What was the title on that? It was the largest emergency preparedness expo in the nation at the time. It was called the self Reliance Expo. It’s now been sold off and renamed and stuff, but we had over 100,000 attendees of that. So, I mean, I was going in all these different directions. Yeah, it was not easy, let me tell you. Don’t try and do 20 companies. But the only reason that that happened is because I bought one and I was able to divide that into four and then get specialists in there, you know what I mean? And so I was breaking them up, and then before I know it, I’m like, holy crap, I got 20 companies here I’m trying to deal with. And yeah, that was too much. And obviously it’s way too much, but I didn’t want to hurry up and sell them because I didn’t want to sell them at such a discount just to try and hurry up and get rid of them. So I still had this two year commitment on each one of them so that I can show in the books the growth rates and all this other stuff. The beauty of that, though, was when I hire a web technician to do websites, I got them busy. Hey, build on this site. Build on this site. Build on this site so I could keep them full time and just keep them going. There was a little bit of positive that came out of it, but it definitely doesn’t worth it. Well, it was worth it, but it was just a lot of work. Golly, I was burning the candle and we were just going 100 miles an hour in every direction. But once I got them under control and able to sell a few of them and put the money back in the pot, man, it just started just getting bigger and bigger because the longer I kept the companies, the more I was able to grow them. And then the more I was able to grow them, the more return I was able to get when I sold.

Sure. And Ron, what were you doing in the business number 20 and 30 in terms of exiting them that you weren’t doing in business number one and two that you wish you had been, if that makes sense?

Yeah. Business one and two were my babies. Right.

Yeah.

And so I didn’t have an intention to sell them. I did them because I loved them. And I think the biggest problems was, again, myself, I was not prepared. I did not have a person handling the finances and doing it correctly. And I was trying to hide as much as I could because I didn’t want to pay taxes like everybody else. Right. And so when a cash deal comes, it was a cash deal, and I tried to keep it off the books or whatever I could do to write off stuff. And obviously, once I started learning that it’s multiple times how much you can prove you’ve made, that changed everything. It’s like, oh, yeah, we’ll put it all on there and improve the evaluation rather than try to hide it and then try to convince them, oh, no, you do make money on the side. You can make money here and you can make money there. That just doesn’t work. Nobody pays for that. Nobody pays for what your mouth delivers. They only pay for what’s on your tax returns.

Exactly what you can prove. So you started thinking valuation in terms of revenue or profit.

Right. And it all came down to valuation. Right. And I was very strategic about my purchases and stuff like that because it was like, well, what does this improve? Do we need new trucks? Yes, the trucks are old on the fleet and we need to get newer trucks. Great. What evaluation will that improve? I started looking at it from that standpoint and do they need to be new trucks or can we buy used trucks or whatever that needed to be done to give us the best evaluation, not what was necessarily what I wanted to do, you know what I mean? And so I started focusing on evaluations and what the exit strategies always looked like. Every purchase I ever made, it was always with the thought of, what is this going to do to the evaluation? What is this going to do to the exit? And you start looking at businesses that way, you can really increase the values quickly.

Okay, so what you’ve learned is, if I can recap somewhat, is in the early businesses, they were your baby, and perhaps you’re a little more emotionally attached to them once you’d got up to business 20 and 30, you are thinking purely, how do I improve the valuation of this business if I act in this way, if I do this, if I purchase that, what impact does it have on the valuation? If I adapt this marketing strategy, if I adapt this pricing strategy, what impact does it have on the valuation of the business? Because I always want to be ready to take advantage of any exit should it land in my lap, so to speak. 

Yes, absolutely. And give you a specific example, one time this guy kept asking me, one of the employees kept asking me, the giant drill press that comes down, and it was like, I don’t know, $100,000 machine. And the one we had was from 1940s, it was, like, old. And he’s like, we need a new one. We need a new one.

He kept telling me how much we needed a new one. Well, but how much does that increase the valuation of the company? Dump out $100,000 into this machine when I’m getting ready to sell next year? Anyway, long story short, it wasn’t the smartest move. And so I waited and I was more impatient. But if I was passionate and this was my baby, then, yeah, I’d maybe spend $100,000 on that machine. Well, then that changed the valuation. Right. And so you’re not going to ever get that $100,000 back when it comes time to sell. So, luckily, I was able to find another company that was going out of business and bought that $100,000 machine for like $40,000 and put it in.And that helped the valuation. Much better spending the 40 than it was spending the 100. Anyway. Yeah, it’s just stuff like that. When you start thinking about it from Evaluation standpoint, you start getting creative.

Okay, so, Ron, everything’s hinging on this question.

Okay.

I need some sound effects, don’t I? So, just tapping into your experience and what you’re seeing with all of the businesses you’ve bought and sold, what’s the one key point, if you were to go, to say to any of the listeners that are listening to this episode, here’s the one key message I really want you to hear. After all my experience of exiting and acquiring 40 OD businesses, here’s the one thing I want you to know that I wish I knew at the beginning.

I think get one question. Yeah. The one question I ask and a lot of people answer it negatively is knowing what you know about your business and knowing what you know about your industry. Would you buy your business?

Oh, that’s a good answer.

And almost everybody says no.

Yeah.

But it’s not ready, it’s not correct.

They know that’s really directive in pointing them in of suggesting what they need to do to change that answer. That’s a really helpful think.

Yeah. So that makes them look at it differently because I flip the table on them and make them become the buyer.

Ron, that is a beautiful way to, I think, finish up the episode. I really do appreciate you sharing your exit insights with us today. What I’ll do is I’m going to grab all of your contact details and we’ll put them in the show notes so that if people want to tap into you and perhaps get some help with what they’re doing and their business exits and planning and valuation, they can get in touch.

Sounds great. I appreciate it, bud.

Thanks for your time, Ron.

You bet. Take care.