What IS my business worth? | North Dallas Gazette

I have to add my comments to this article because so much of it is misleading and generally what happens when people who are not in the business of selling businesses write articles about selling businesses.  Suppositions the author states in the article I must address:

1. You can sell your business and run it simultaneously.  Possibly.  However, selling a business is time consuming work.  It often is wise to team up with professional advisors to help you prepare, market and sell your business while you keep running it.  These advisors include your accountant, possibly your business attorney and your financial planner, and obviously a business broker.

2. Sellers can time the market.  If it were so easy.  The reality is it could take as much as two to three years to prepare your business for sale and as much as six to twelve months, or more, on the market to sell it.  You can no more time the business sales market than you can time the stock market; however, you can always keep your business prepared to sell if the right offer comes along.

3. Have audited financial statements.  Well, that is great if you have the $40K it costs to have a CPA firm audit your books.  The key point should be make sure your financial records are easily understood by a buyer, i.e., if you have "personal expenses" on the books, make sure you have your accountant clearly identify these for a buyer.

Below is the first paragraph and a link to the full article.  Don't bother reading it.  After the first paragraph, I've covered what you should have taken away from an accurately written article.  Furthermore, the article never attempts to answer the question posed in the title.

"When selling a business, owners time their exits for many reasons: health, retirement planning, availability or lack of family successors, competition, technology change and many more. Yet overwhelmingly the question most often asked of financial advisors by entrepreneurial companies is “what’s my business worth?” Mark Van Mourick, CEO and president of Optivest, Inc., provides five tips to help enhance the value of a business."

Read more at:

What IS my business worth? | North Dallas Gazette:

For additional information regarding Florida business sales, acquisitions and valuations, please contact Eric J. Gall at info@buysellflbiz.com or 239.738.6227. Also, visit our Florida Business Exchange website at www.fbxbrokers.com and my personal website at www.buysellflbiz.com.